Sermons

The Rev. Brandon Ashcraft preached at our services on Good Friday.

The Rev. Jeanne Leinbach preached at the Maundy Thursday service at 7:30 p.m.

The Rev. Gabriel Lawrence preached at our celebration of the Liturgy of the Palms and the Holy Eucharist on the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday.
Download the sermon text here.

The Rev. Patricia Rose preached at our celebration of the Holy Eucharist on the Fifth Sunday in Lent.

The Rev. Brandon Ashcraft preached at our celebration of the Holy Eucharist on the Fourth Sunday in Lent.
Download a copy of the sermon here.

The Rev. Jeanne Leinbach preached at our celebration of the Holy Eucharist on the Third Sunday in Lent.
Download the sermon text here.

“For those who want to save their life will lose it, and
those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will
save it.”

Names are important. In fact, my name is the entire reason I
have my dog. Years back, I was in search of a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. I
was scrolling through the webpage of a breeder who had some pups for sale, and
I knew I wanted a black and tan cavalier. As I was scrolling, I reached a
certain puppy and stopped, shocked. I could not believe my eyes. There in front
of me was a black and tan puppy with the name Gabriel. I made a call,
and a week later, I was the proud owner of a black and tan Cavvy with my name.
Though I have been tempted, I have never changed his name. After all the whole
reason we’ve enjoyed each other’s company for ten years is our shared name. I
have him because of how he was named.

Names were even more important in the time of Abram and
Sarai. Names were more than just a label. They were a descriptor. They told a
lot about the person who had the name. Names contained identity, vocation,
purpose. God thought so highly of names that he changed Abram and Sarai’s
names. But we will come back to that.

I want us to first look at the text from Mark because I
think this story of Jesus and Peter shows us something important about God. Peter
has always been one of my favorites. Peter is the guy who was always doing too
much. He’s the guy who tried to walk on water. He cut off the ear of a Roman
soldier in defense of Jesus. He told Jesus that he would never deny him, only
to do it not once, not twice, but three times. Peter might be called impulsive
or reckless. But here’s what I love about Peter: He was never afraid to get
close, to wonder, to question, to doubt, to love. It was Peter who was the
first person to identify Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. In
fact Peter does this only a couple of verses before we pick up with him in the
Gospel text today. And yet just two verses after he makes this confession, he
rebukes Jesus. In a matter of just seconds, he is a confessor who then rebukes
the Son of God. And while Jesus in very clear terms tells Peter to be quiet,
Peter will go on to become the Rock. Don’t forget his name wasn’t always Peter.
It was Simon. It was only changed to Peter by Jesus, who called Peter the Rock
upon which the Church would be built.

I think what we learn from Peter is that if we have the
courage to get close to God, our lives just might be changed. Our very names
might change. Our purpose might change. Abram and Sarai chose to stay close to
God, and God changed their names too. We see this closeness that Abram had with
God when he laughed in God’s face when God told him he would have a child,
would be the father of nations. One does not laugh at the Creator of the
Universe if they are not close to the Creator of the Universe. In this story,
Abram become Abraham and Sarai becomes Sarah. God changes their names as a sign
of reward for their trust in God and God’s promise. It is important to note
here, too, that God’s name is also changed. God identifies God’s self with the
name El Shaddai, or “God the Almighty”. Abraham and Sarah have stayed true and
faithful to God, and God has not only changed their names, but also his very
own name. We see these name changes in other stories, too. Jacob wrestled with
God, and his name was changed. Our very own patron’s name was changed from Saul
to Paul, as God changed Paul’s life and called him to new work.

Lent invites us to get close to God. Lent invites us to
practice courage and dare to wrestle with God, to doubt, to trust, to wonder,
to laugh at how much God loves perhaps even us because it hard sometimes to
even believe. Lent invites us to see ourselves in a new way by being honest
about who we are and how we are in need of God’s grace.

So, how do we do this? How do we get close to God? Jesus
tells us. We take up our cross. He says, “Those who want to save their life
will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of
the gospel, will save it.” We take up our cross by taking up all of ourselves:
the good, the bad, the parts we are proud of, the parts we are ashamed of. We
risk giving up the comfort of what we know to step into what God is calling us
to- to risk coming in contact with the power of God’s love and grace. We offer all
our fears, our shame, our sin, and our pride to God. We take up our cross and
we follow Jesus.

As we begin the second week of Lent, I challenge us to sit
with God, to exercise courage. To get close. To find a spot and bring our whole
selves to God. Take some time this week to sit in the silence. Be bold.

God, what might you want to change my name to this Lent?

God, where are you calling me?

God, I am scared. Where are you?

God, what new thing are you asking me to do?

God, how can I do your work in the world?

And if we do this, we just might hear God speak to us. We
just might feel God’s love and grace wrap all of our fears and shame, and
doubt, and speak peace to our hearts. We just might hear God give us a new
name.

The Rev. Patricia Rose preached at the celebration of the Holy Eucharist on the First Sunday in Lent.

In our secular calendar, the First Day of Lent can fall as
early as February 4 and as late as March 10. Its occurrence this year on
February 14 has been the source of some amusement. Indeed, an email I received
this morning from the Plain-Dealer came with this subject line: “Happy
Ashentine’s Day.” This comedic concurrence of Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day
has also given rise to Internet memes that look like this: [holds up three large
wooden “candy hearts’” with the following inscriptions painted on them, to look
like Valentine’s Day Candy Hearts: “Repent,” and “U R Dust,” “Ash 2 Ash”].
What makes these images so comical is the apparent contradiction. The unspoken
implication is that Valentine’s Day is a joyful holiday, while Ash Wednesday
decidedly is not. The suggestion is that Cupid conjures warm and fuzzy
emotions, while Ash Wednesday, with its reminder of our mortality, is cold and
depressing. The subtext is that Ash Wednesday, with its emphasis on sin and
repentance, has nothing to do with love. And my friends, I assure you: nothing
could be further from the truth. Much like Valentine’s Day, Ash Wednesday finds
all its purpose and meaning in a loving relationship – our relationship with
God, the Source of all Love.

The hallmarks of a loving relationship are truthfulness and
trust. Those who love us are the ones who can speak truth to us, and because we
trust them, we can hear them when they speak the truth. On Ash Wednesday, the
truth is spoken to us in love. In a moment, each of you is going to be invited
to come forward to receive a reminder of this truth: that your time on this
earth is finite. That this earthly life we share is but a sojourn. To speak
plainly, today you will be reminded that you are going to die. Of course, we
all know this to be true, so you would not think a reminder would be necessary.
But this message is an eminently counter-cultural one. The world we live in
conspires to have us ignore this truth, if not outright deny it.

The ways our culture does this are subtle, and we don’t
always notice them. But take, for example, the explosive growth of the
anti-aging market. As a consequence of the pandemic, and all the time we’ve
spent looking at our faces on Zoom, the appetite for botox is growing by leaps
and bounds among Gen Z (who are all still under the age of 30). Indeed, the
TikTok hashtag #antiageing has more than 8 billion views. Which is to say that
from a very young age, the world tells us we should do everything in our power
to mask our mortality. But today your clergy, ministers of the Gospel who care
deeply about your spiritual life, are going to send you a very different
message. We will look into your eyes and speak this truth to you in love:
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The world wants you to forget this, but the Church invites
you today to remember that the God of love molded you from the dust. And when
your earthly pilgrimage is over, your bodies will return to that very dust
until they are remade at the day of resurrection. You will each receive a token
of this reminder in the form of cross-shaped dust clinging to your foreheads,
in the very place you were anointed with a cross on the day of your baptism.
Just like that baptismal cross, this cross reminds you that you are a beloved
Child of God. A Child of God who will return to dust, but whose density is
eternal life with a loving Creator. A truth spoken in love and marked on our
foreheads.

Then, after we have received our ashes, we will all get on
our knees, either in body or spirit, and we will pray a special confession of
sin called the Litany of Penitence. Most Sundays, we pray a general confession.
One that acknowledges in language broad and sweeping that we have fallen short
of loving God and our neighbor. But in this Ash Wednesday Litany of Penitence,
we use language vivid and precise to affirm the particular ways we have fall
short of living the great commandments. We will lift our voices together to
enumerate sins of pride, greed, and indifference. We will admit that we have
failed to offer forgiveness as freely as we’re received it. That we’ve ignored
the depth of human suffering and denied our privilege. That we have failed to
care for our fragile island home, the earth that God entrusted to our care.

Ash Wednesday is a day to speak the truth in love. To come
clean about our shortcomings, and not just our personal shortcomings, but the
systems of oppression that are so much bigger than we are, in which we participate,
nonetheless. And by acknowledging the cosmic power of sin, we are liberated to
hear a message of profound grace and love: that our God, as the prophet Joel
reminds us, is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in
steadfast love.” While hardly a traditional Valentine’s Day custom, this
confession of our sin has everything to do with love. At the end of our Litany
of Penitence, Jeanne, a priest in the Church of God, will stand
before us and speak another truth in love: that God’s mercy, compassion, and
forgiveness is poured out freely and abundantly upon us. As we leave this place
to continue our Lenten journey, we can do so unburdened by the weight of sin to
share the love we have received this day with others.

Beloved friends in Christ: Today, on this First Day of Lent,
we begin a 40-day journey together. This Sunday, that journey will take us into
the wilderness with Jesus, as he goes head-to-head with the powers of sin and
darkness. After walking faithfully together these next several weeks, our
Lenten journey will bring us to the holiest week of the Christian year. We will
follow Jesus to the Upper Room, where he will give us food and drink that leads
to eternal life. We will follow Jesus to the foot of the cross, where he will
freely give his life for us. We will keep vigil at the tomb as we mourn his
death, before joyfully greeting the empty tomb on Easter morning to proclaim
that he has conquered death forever, so we are free to live. It is the greatest
love story ever told, and today it begins with sacred truths spoken in love and
written on our hearts. Happy Valentine’s Day. And blessed Lent.

We were grateful to have welcomed Keisha Krumm, Executive Director of Greater Cleveland Congregations (GCC), to the pulpit. Keisha has an MDiv in Christian Community Development from Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary. Watch her sermon on our website.

On this day, we mark the feast of our patron, St. Paul. On
the Church’s calendar, our patronal feast falls on the 25th of January, but the
prayer book allows for a patronal feast of a parish to be moved to a Sunday so
that it can be celebrated in a more robust way. We are doing that today in this
combined service, and I am so happy to see the nave so full. What a way to
celebrate St. Paul and this parish named for him that we love so much and are
blessed to be a part of!

After Jesus, Paul might just be the most well-known person
in Scripture. Indeed, Paul claims more writings in the New Testament than any
other author. We would be hard-pressed to find someone who had as much of an
influence on the spread of our faith as Paul did. So, I thought it might be
good- if you’ll indulge me- to mark this feast of our patron St. Paul by going
through a top five of his most well-known words.

Our first stop on this top five list of comes from his
second letter to the Church in Corinth. Paul writes that “we walk by faith, and
not by sight.” I find this phrase an interesting one, for it was in Paul’s own
conversion experience that he actually lost his eyesight. In today’s text from
Acts, we hear Paul’s call story, but with a few details left out. In a more
full account of the call story in the ninth chapter of Acts, we learn that Paul
was without sight for the first three days after God stopped him in his tracks
and called him to preach and teach the good news of Christ. Paul learned in all
of his trials, on days when things did not make sense, on days when he could
not see any further than to take just one step forward, Paul knew to see with
his spiritual eyes, to trust in God’s grace and love to get him through. And we
know that, too. On the dark days, in the dark nights of our souls when it may
be hard to see or feel God’s presence, to see God with us and in us through the
eyes of faith.

The second well-known verse I want us to look at is in the
first letter to the Thessalonians, fifth chapter. “Give thanks in all
circumstances, for it is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” And this
wasn’t the only time Paul encouraged us to give thanks. Paul admonishes the
early Church to give thanks, to live in a state of gratitude, more than 35
times. Paul knew the power of gratitude. Paul lived a hard life and was even
imprisoned at times for preaching the Gospel, but he knew the power of offering thanks
to break chains - literally break his own chains while imprisoned - and set him
free from his circumstances. And we as St. Paul’s Church follow our patron’s
call to gratitude by gathering here, week in and week out, to offer thanks to
God as a community for God’s work in our midst, on the good days and the bad
days. And that gratitude changes us. It makes us able to do God’s work in the
world.

Our next stop on our journey through Pauline wisdom is in
the fifth chapter of Romans. Paul says here that “Hope does not disappoint us,
because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that
has been given to us. If Paul had a firm grasp on gratitude, he had an even
firmer grasp on hope. Paul mentions the word hope over fifty times. And hope
was central to the message of Jesus, too. Though it’s not mentioned by word in
today’s Gospel reading, the overall theme is indeed hope. Jesus is telling his
disciples that accepting to follow him is sometimes going to be tough. He says
he is sending them out like sheep into the midst of wolves. I love how Jesus
does not mince words here. He cuts straight to the chase and says that this
work is going to be hard. You will be judged, and perhaps even imprisoned. BUT.
When you worry about what to say, what to do, don’t worry. Don’t fear. Your
hope is in God, who will give you the words to say, give you the strength to
carry on. Your hope is in God, and that can’t be taken away from you.

Our fourth stop on our journey is found in Paul’s letter to
the Church in Galatia. Paul writes, “As many of you as were baptized into
Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek;
there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all
of you are one in Christ Jesus.” In this well-known passage, Paul is pointing
to perhaps the best news in the Good News of Jesus: that we are all one. In
Christ, all division cease, walls that divide us are torn down. We participate
in this reality every week in this space when we come to this altar, to receive
from one bread and one cup. In that one bread, in that one cup, we are all made
one in Christ Jesus. We don’t always get it right. We do fail. And that is
precisely why we return week after week to be fed and reminded again and again
that in Christ, we are all one.

Finally, in this list of Paul’s greatest writings, his
greatest must be, without a doubt, his treatment of love. In his first letter
to the Church in Corinth, he writes, “[Love] bears all things, believes all
things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Love endures all things. At the
end of the world, love is what will be left standing. In all our own trials,
love is what will get us through. When we are confused and tired and don’t know
which way is up, love will point the way. In grief and loss and hardship, love
is there to comfort and bless. In the depths of the worst that life can give
us, love whispers hope. Even in the grave, love gives us voice to make our song
alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. At the end of the age, love wins.

Now, I know Paul can be controversial. Paul lived in a time
and place very different from our own, and some of his writings reflect that.
And we are also lucky to be named for this saint who wrote and taught about
seeing through the eyes of faith, offering thanks to God in all things,
clinging to hope, seeing all as our equal, and loving above all else.

A patronal feast can be a time for a parish to take stock of
what has been in the last year and plan for what is to come. I encourage us to
do that work today: to ground all we do in this new year in faith, gratitude,
hope, equality, and love. Thanks be to God for the witness of St. Paul, and
thanks be to God for all of you in this place. Amen.

The people along the sand

All turn and look one way.

They turn their back on the land.

They look at the sea all day.

The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be--
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.

What is it about water? This poem by Robert Frost (Neither Out Far Nor In Deep) rings so
true. There is something mesmerizing about water. How many of us have sat on a
shore and gazed out on a lake, or ocean, or sea? Water is calming in the
repetition of the tide; it is captivating during a storm; it imbues peace in
its glassy stillness. Perhaps we are drawn in by the depths because water is so
integral to life and points us to the vastness beyond our selves. Our gaze taps
into our desire to be one with our Creator. “In him we live and move and have
our being” (Acts 17:28).

Today, we are baptizing five young people: at 9, Poppy
Garg, Rosemary Garg, Danica Mersek and Miles Mersek; at 11:15, Walker Mead. We are
welcoming them into the body of Christ, into the community of Christ. We
baptize with water. In the time of John the Baptist, washing with water was
performed ritually as an outward sign of cleansing the inward self. John the
Baptist pathed the way to a more profound baptism when he proclaimed the coming
of Jesus Christ: “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. I
have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” After
Jesus’ death and resurrection, Christians adopted Baptism as a way of
incorporating new Christians into the Church. Holy Baptism is full initiation
by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s body, the Church.

The film Water, is
part of a trilogy of films, Fire, Earth, and Water, by
acclaimed screenwriter and director, Deepa Mehta. Water is set in India
in the 1930s. The film is based on a custom, drawn from a patriarchal reading
of the Hindu Gospel, of separating women from their families upon the death of
their husbands. Water is the story of
Chuyia, a seven-year-old girl whose husband dies – yes, a seven-year-old girl -
and she is sent to live out her life in poverty among strangers in a widow’s
colony. This film, at times challenging to watch, is an achingly beautiful love
story.

But, at its heart, it is a story about water, and worth a
watch to resonate with the power of this theological reality. The widow’s
colony is located on the river, Ganga. The river is central to the lives of the
widows’ and to the lives of the people in the surrounding village. The film
opens with a person who is frail being helped to drink water. We see people
bathing in the water and being refreshed by the water. We see the water being
used to grow food and vegetation, for cooking and for cleaning clothes. We see the
water being used for transportation and for recreation. And, we see the other
side of water. We see rain pouring down during a storm, a source of death and
destruction. We see bodies being prepared for Hindu burial in the water. In
this film, a life is saved. The weaving of the plot, of love and death and new
life, with the images of water impresses upon us the great power that water
holds over our lives; impresses upon us the theological significance of death
into life through water.

Today, our brief passage from Genesis gives us just enough
of the Creation story to enlighten the Gospel message. “In the beginning, the
earth was a formless void. God said, ‘Let there be light.’ God separated the
light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called
Night.” God took the formless void and brought order out of chaos. We have
Night and we have Day. Just as God delivered the cosmos from chaos, God
delivered the Israelites from the wilderness. They had wandered for forty
years. But, after Moses death, God directed Joshua to lead them into the
Promised Land. From chaos to order, from anguish to hope, from death to life,
the Israelites left the wilderness and entered the Promised Land. And, how did
they cross over? Through water, through the River Jordan. A millennium or two
later, Jesus made a point. “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee
and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” Through Baptism, with water, a
compound so integral to life and death, we die to ourselves and rise to new
life in Christ.

Let’s not forget the Holy Spirit! “Just as Jesus was coming
up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending
like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved;
with you I am well pleased.” After Baptism in water, we seal with Chrism - scented
oil previously consecrated by the Diocesan Bishop - we seal by making the sign
of the cross on the child’s forehead. Anointing is the promise of the Holy
Spirit, who nurtures and inspires our lives. This promise is no small matter. We
are being empowered to accomplish the work of Christ, to love our neighbor as
ourselves. We are being empowered to transform the world one day at a time, one
interaction at a time, respecting the dignity of every human being. In the
Gospel of John (16:13), Jesus says, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will
guide you into all the truth.” In Acts 1 (vs. 8), Jesus tells the apostles,
“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be
my witnesses … to the ends of the earth.” In 1 Corinthians 12 (vs. 7), Paul
tells us, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common
good.” For the common good. Through Baptism, dying to selfish ways and rising
to new life, we are brought into union with Christ, with each other and with
the Church of every time and place. Recognizing our faith as a life-long
journey, we enter into a bond of unity to love one another, to overcome all
divisions, offering different gifts, skills and perspectives for the common
good. Today, we reaffirm our baptismal vows acknowledging with joy and
gratitude that we belong to God, that Jesus lived among us so that we would
know God in our lives, and that Jesus showed us how to live with one another in
God’s love. What is it about water? Belonging…possibility…new life….

The water comes ashore,

And the people look at the sea.

In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Word.
Speech. It’s the way we know each other- the way I know you, and you know me:
by the words that we use to speak, to describe things and places and thoughts.
The Word, that way we know God (God’s things, and places, and thoughts): The
Word was with God. Hidden from us- God, Source of all being- we did not yet
know.

He was in the beginning with God. And has been with
God since the very beginning, since before time and space, since before things
and places and thoughts. Before all things came to be, before the first tick of
a clock, before the first sunrise, before the first day or month or year, God
was, and the Word was, right there with God. In the dark void, the Source of Life
was.

All things came into being through him, and without him
not one thing came into being. And the Source of life, breathed over the
dark void, and out of the darkness was born life and breath; sun, moon, and
stars; sunrises and sunsets; and days and months and years. Time itself was
born from the Source of Life, from divine creation.

What has come into being in him was life, and the life
was the light of all people. And for the first time, the Source of Life had
breath and form, lungs and eyes, leaves and roots, gills and scales, skin and
hair. This life that burst forth was full of so much power and came from a
Source so far beyond our knowing. It was light and love. And light and love
literally lit up the sky and lit up all things that God had made.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did
not overcome it. The dark void does not get the last word. Light speaks to
our fear of the dark, the unknown- that primal fear we first got to know as a
child. It is touched by the warm light of God and is met by the Word who looks
into the eye of the dark storm and speaks the words: “Peace be still. Do not be
afraid.”

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. God
did not send a king or a governor or a high priest. God sent an average man
named John, a man who had grasped the life changing love of God and wanted to
share that love with all those who came to him. This man named John pointed to
the Word as someone greater than himself, pointed to the Lamb that would take
away the sins of the world.

He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all
might believe through him. John knew he wasn’t the Light. But he had been
called by God to point the world to the light, to the Word- the Word who came
from God and was God. He did this so that all might experience the power of
love to turn a heart of stone into a heart of flesh, to raise up what had been
cast down, to make new that which had grown old.

He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to
the Light. And here is perhaps the best news of Christmas: We are not the Light.
We are made of the Light, but we don’t have to be the Light. We don’t have to
be the Source. Only God is that. We participate in the light, and we point
others, like John did, to the light. We sometimes fail, and God’s love and
light is not overcome by our failures. Our work is simply to show the Light to
the world.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming
into the world. Was coming. Not came. Not comes. But was coming. Movement.
Motion. God was on the move. God’s love was breaking through all the walls and
defenses and barriers and self-doubt we put up to keep God’s love from changing
us, transforming us. God’s love does not rest. It pursues, it heals. It comes
to us week after week in bread and wine, and it comes to us in this season in
the heartbeat of the Christ-child.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through
him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own
people did not accept him. And how could we? The hymn says our hearts were
tuned toward strife and so we refused Love’s overture. In Christ, God invited
us into the holy dance of love. And yet, we were terrified of love so pure,
love so sweet. We were made for love and by love, and yet we refused to dance.

But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he
gave power to become children of God. But! This word but, this is the
Word. In Christ, God says, “But wait! There’s more!” In Christmas, our hearts
can be tuned to sing God’s grace. If we sit in the darkness, in the silence,
God in the Christ-child comes to us, bends down, and whispers in our ears: You
are my child. You are loved forever and ever.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us. God’s
speech, the way we know God, became words spoken by THE Word. In Christ, God took
on flesh and skin and hair and teeth and feet and hands. And with all of that
flesh, healed the world. The Word lived with us. An old source says God leapt
from his throne to become one of us. God ran to us. God ran to be one of us.
God lived among us, and God still lives among us.

And we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's
only son. Having seen God in the Christ-child and tasted God in bread and
wine, and heard God in the chirp of a bird, and smelled God in the aroma of a
meal shared with friends, and touched God in the soft fur of a pet or the
embrace of a loved one, we know God. In all that we do, God is with us.
Emmanuel.

Full of grace and truth. In Christ, God has filled the
world. God filled all things. In the gaps where we fall short, God’s grace
makes up the difference. In places of darkness, God’s truth speaks light. God’s
very Word is grace and truth. God’s Word, God’s speech- how we know God’s
things and places and thoughts- God’s Word is found in grace and truth. Joy to
the world, the Lord has come, full of grace and truth.

Our National Parks are magnificent. Two of my favorites are
Arches and Bryce Canyon, both in Utah. The stone formations in Arches National
Park are 65 million years in the making. The longest arch has an opening of 300
feet; the tallest arch has an opening of over 100 feet. As you hike up to these
immense stone formations, the views through the arches are stunning. Once you
arrive and walk through the arch, you feel somehow absorbed into the limitless
sky. Bryce Canyon is a whole different geological wonder. The elevation is over
8,000 feet. The stone formations in this park remind me of sandcastles. When I
was young, we often went to the beach for vacation. My sisters and I would go
down to the water’s edge, fill our pails with water and then scoop in some
sand. Perhaps you recall doing the same. You reach into the bucket, pull out a glob
of wet sand, and then let it drip-down onto the dry sand, building up a cone
shape. That’s where my mind goes with these spectacular stone structures in
Bryce Canyon. They are sandcastles in blazing color: orangey-red spires soaring
into the sky.



Many of us feel a connection to the divine in nature. The
most powerful experience I have had, beyond the beauty of Arches and Bryce
Canyon, was in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River in Yellowstone
National Park in Wyoming. The moment I walked up to the rim of the Canyon
overlooking the waterfalls, I was overwhelmed by the expansive beauty. At that
moment, there were no words, only awe for the existence and wonder of our
Creator; a moment when we are keenly aware that the world is just so much
bigger than our individual selves. The majesty of the Divine in nature is
powerful. The intimacy of the Divine in our heartache is lifesaving. Jesus is
our Savior.



Madeline L’Engle, the beloved author, writes in her poem First
Coming
:

“He did not wait till the world was ready, till men and
nations were at peace.


He came when the Heavens were unsteady, and prisoners cried out for release.

He did not wait for the perfect time. He came when the need was deep and great.

He dined with sinners in all their grime, turned water into wine.

He did not wait till hearts were pure. In joy he came to a tarnished world of
sin and doubt.


To a world like ours, of anguished shame he came, and his Light would not go
out.”

Jesus was born into an oppressive society. King Herod the
Great was in power, appointed by Rome to rule Judea, Samaria and Galilee as a
police state. He was a murderer: ruthless and vindictive. In addition, he
imposed burdensome taxes on the people, largely boosting the wealth of the rulers.
Herod’s brutality was a shroud over Jerusalem at the time of Jesus’ birth. Jesus
entered-into our brokenness.



Some of our most intimate experiences with the Divine are in
difficult times. I know this is true for me. Certainly, I experienced some uncertainty
and anxiety as I made a turn from a consulting career to parish ministry. Before
I even realized I was discerning a change, I had a prescient dream directing me
down this new path. In the dream, I was in a storm and trapped in a town where all
the streets were flooded; there was no way out. Yet, I had this sense of
urgency that I needed to find a way out as soon as possible. For three days, I
frantically searched, but all the streets were impassable. Then, on the third
day, seemingly suddenly, I found a way out, one clear road that would take me
out of town, though all the other streets were still flooded. This one way out
was now so obvious – I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t seen it before. Dreams
are an avenue of inspiration from God. Once I made the “aha” connection, Jesus’
presence during this career transition was comforting.



Jesus is with us through uncertainty and anxiety, and Jesus
is with us through loss. I cried through the months leading up to my divorce and
through the months following, and Jesus’ compassion gave me the courage to look
to a new day. Jesus is with us through grief. One year ago, I lost a dear
friend to cancer. My last visit with her one week before her death was both
beautiful and heart-rending. That night, I woke up at 3:30 in the morning and I
was filled with God’s presence and somehow, my friend was there with us. I
experienced perfect Love, perfect Peace. Jesus was born into an oppressive
society, into heartache. He came into our brokenness and lived fully in his
humanness. He gets us; he lived our emotions. He continues to enter-into our
brokenness, with empathy for the human condition. What is your sadness? With
compassion and unceasing love, Jesus enters-into our heartache. He journeys
with us through the healing process; he comforts and gives us the courage to see
a new day.



On the night of Jesus’ birth, an angel of the Lord appeared
to the shepherds in the fields keeping watch over their flock. “The angel said
to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy
for all the people.’” Good news…of great joy…our Savior has come. Jesus
shepherds us through all of life, helping us to endure and thrive. So, we give
thanks, by loving as we are loved. Through our healing, we are able to care for
and enrich the lives of others. Creation is inherently revealing God through
the grandeur of nature and the intimacy of relationships. We are forever
companioned, forever loved…with God’s grace, forever loving. And, so, we come
before the Christ child, in wonder of the Divine Love, and we sing out, “Joy to
the world! The Lord is come.” In her poem
First Coming, Madeleine
L’Engle concludes:

“We cannot wait till the world is sane to raise our
songs with joyful voice,

For to share our grief, to touch our pain, He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!”

“Who are you?” This question that the crowd asks of John the
Baptist in today’s gospel is one that I have asked myself many, many times over
in the last ten or so years as I have discerned a call to ordained ministry. It’s
a question that on some days I have been able to answer with certainty, and
other days the answer has not come with such confidence. You see, I have lived
most of my life with a stutter. I still have it. I’ve done a lot of work on it,
and some days my speech is more fluent while other days my stutter is more
pronounced. There’s more to the story, but just know for now, my stutter has
been a cause for pause. In answering the call to serve God and the Church as a
priest where speaking occupies such a central part, I have tried to answer the
question “Who are you?” with every other option. “God, I can’t possibly do this
work. Let me do anything else!” But when God calls us to something, God pursues
us. And no matter how many times I have answered the question “Who are you?”
with a shaky voice as I have discerned this calling, God has always answered
the question with confidence. “I have called you, and you are mine.”

This idea that God calls people to service who we might least
expect is common. While we don’t know any of John the Baptist’s call story, I
do wonder how John may have responded the first time God called him. “John, I
am calling you to baptize and call people to repentance. This work will prepare
the way for my son who will come into the world, a person who is greater than
you.” I imagine John may have told God “No!” a few times himself, or said “Please
let me do anything else!” After all, John had his life planned out. He would
spend his days eating locust and honey and sew his own clothes made from camel
hair. These days, we might call John “crunchy”. He’d probably be wearing socks
with his Birkenstocks. I wonder how John might have wrestled with God when God
called him to wilderness work.

Whether or not, we know how John initially answered God’s call to baptize
and preach repentance, we know that John did answer the call. And we hear in the
gospel this morning, not John questioning his own call, but the crowd. They ask
him “Who are you?’’ And the real questions behind the question is “Where are
your credentials?” “What gives you the right to baptize and teach and preach
repentance?” “Are you the prophet?” “Are you Elijah?” You see, the priests and
Levites sent to question John did not expect someone like him to be performing
rites of purification and teaching. These were jobs left usually to Temple
professionals like themselves. John’s type was the last kind of person they
expected to be doing the holy and important work of God.

And John answers them, “I am not the prophet. I baptize with
water, but the one coming after me, (who John already knew to be the Christ),
is someone you won’t recognize either. If we go back a few verses in John from
the ones we heard in our Gospel today, we read “He was in the world, and the world came into being through
him, yet the world did not know him. He came to what was
his own,and his
own people did not accept him.” God sent God’s son into the world, and the
world did not know him. The world did not recognize God made known to us in the
person of Jesus. In the person of Jesus, God did something new. God is always
doing something new. God is always challenging our perceptions. God is always
asking us to find God’s self in places we don’t expect.

And God is always stirring. The collect for today, the Third
Sunday of Advent, begins “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come
among us.” And I can’t think of a text that embodies this stirring up more than
the Song of Mary. She says that God has shown God’s strength, but not how we
might expect. He has scattered the proud in their conceit and honored those who
are humble. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones of power and saved
and given special place to those who are usually left out. He has sent the rich
away empty and given the resources of the rich to those in need. In all of
this, God has flipped the world as we know it upside down. And God did this in
the person of Jesus, who John the Baptist points to as the one who will come
after him.

Part of our work in this season of Advent is to prepare our hearts
to be stirred by God’s power so that we may receive Christ when he comes- so
that we don’t miss Christ at Christmas when we might be looking for someone or
something else. So, where do we find God? We look to the places that make us
wince. The places that stand out. The places that are different. Next week, we
will find God on a cold, silent night in a trough made to feed barn animals,
wrapped in strips of spare fabric. We will find God in Christ not in strength,
but in the weak, helplessness of a newborn child. God will come to us in our
beautiful church, yes, but also in a barn, bugs flying around, mice nesting in
the corner. We will find God tended to not by hired help, but by shepherds-
field hands who have heard the call of God to come and find God’s self in a
place they least expected. God’s love drew them to that place on that holy
night, and God’s love still draws us go to places where we might at first say
no.

As we prepare for Christmas, are we open to finding Jesus in a
stinky, bug-infested barn? Are we prepared to answer God’s call to us even if
we feel unprepared? Are we prepared to allow God’s spirit to call us and equip
us for the work to which we are called?

Stir up your power, O Lord, and come among us. Transform our hearts
and help us to receive you in places where we expect, and in places where we
least expect. Call us to those places and save us in those places. Amen.