For at least the first 800 years of the church, adults were baptized at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. They spent three years before their baptism in constant classes and in programs doing works of charity for the poor and needy. They were seated in a special area in church and were dismissed after the sermon to attend their classes or “catechism.” They were not allowed to take communion until after baptism.

The interrogatory portion of the baptismal liturgy where the celebrant asks questions of the candidates or their sponsors, and the candidates and sponsors respond, is an ancient part of our liturgy dating back to the earliest days of the church.

When a new religion enters a region of the world, it does not just appear instantly and wipe out all the earlier religious belief. There is a very common process we call “syncretism”, where pre-existing religious beliefs are incorporated into the new religion. In the early days of the church in the Greco-Roman world, people believed that different directions on the compass had different spiritual meanings. Native Americans hold similar beliefs here. The east, the direction most church altars face, is the direction of the rising sun and is considered the direction of spiritual enlightenment by many world religions. In contrast, the west, the direction of the setting sun, is considered evil.

In the early church there were no pews for people to sit during the 2.5 hour services. When the priest asked the candidates if they rejected the devil and all the spiritual forces of evil that reject God, the baptismal candidates would turn around, face west, and spit, indicating their rejection of the devil.

Temptation is such a natural part of life. Many of you may remember the old Bill Cosby line where the child tells her mother that “The devil made me do it.” Even as adults our motivation for doing something tempting or not doing it connects directly to our image of God and our understanding of Jesus.

Some of us have difficulty getting the idea of God as judge and punisher out of our heads and hearts. Many people like this will endure week after week of “You are bad and going to hell if you don’t shape up” preaching. In this perspective, there is almost no room for Jesus, the cross, or forgiveness. Punishment is almost all self-inflicted.

Others of us have slow conversion experiences. We tend to look upon altar calls, televangelists, and stories of instant conversion with suspicion. We know that God in Jesus Christ loves us and forgives us. It can take months or years or even a lifetime before the knowledge in our heads works its way into our hearts; just like Nicodemus.

We are going to merge the wonderfully scripted Gospel you experienced of Jesus’ temptation with the story for this Sunday of Nicodemus.

Nicodemus, a Jewish leader, is intrigued by the reports he has heard about Jesus. “Could this Jesus be the one? He wondered. So Nicodemus arranges a time to see Jesus at night. He does not want to be seen by his fellow Jews as this might cast doubts on his leadership. But nighttime in the Gospel according to John is also a time of unbelief, ignorance, and temptation.

In their first encounter, Nicodemus interprets Jesus literally and he completely misses the idea how one can be born again or from above (the word translated “born again” is ambiguous and could equally be “born from above”). In his first attempt to get to know this enigmatic Jesus, Nicodemus fails and he disappears from the scene for a while.

In chapter 7, Nicodemus reappears and makes a somewhat hesitant defense of Jesus. He seems to have moved from doubt to possibility. At the end of the Gospel when Jesus is buried, Nicodemus accompanies Joseph of Arimathea with an exorbitant and very expensive quantity of spices for burial. Through this Gospel Nicodemus in three appearances moves from complete doubt to possibility to the position of a generous believer.

Is not the journey of Nicodemus the journey all of us make? We have baptized little Andrew but does that instantly guarantee that he will become a generous believer? What kind of upbringing does it take to make someone a generous believer and what difference does it make in the world anyway?

It takes not just a village to raise a child, it takes a whole community of generous believers; people who believe so strongly in the outrageous claims of the Bible that they willingly give money and give of themselves to other people they don’t even know. Why do they give this way? Because Jesus gave himself for us.

What difference does it make in a world with earthquakes, tsunamis and burning nuclear power plants? Because whether we live in Fukushima Japan or Muskogee Oklahoma, every one of us will one day sooner or later face the dark abyss with the sign posted next to it that says “No hope.” That dark place may be loss of a loved one, disease, accident, or just the process of getting older. In that place we may encounter other generous givers who will be helping us. In that dark place we will also encounter Jesus who will take our place.

Andrew’s Christian life will likely be more like Nicodemus, the slow awakening journey. The Gospel is our guide in this journey. It boils down to the title of a popular movie a few years ago. “Pay it forward.”

Today we line up two stories from John’s Gospel. Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews comes to Jesus by night. The unnamed Samaritan woman at the well comes to Jesus in broad daylight. The contrasts continue. Nicodemus is a Jew and a leader. The Samaritan woman is of a tribe that had unfriendly, even hostile relations with the Jews. The Jews considered Samaritans to be half Jewish because they intermarried with Assyrian tribes for six hundred years. Talk about holding a grudge.

We are told that Nicodemus is a Pharisee, a righteous leader of the Jews. The Samaritan woman has had five husbands in a life that was likely more tragic than scandalous. She comes to the well at noon in the heat of the day to avoid contact with other women of the village. She is outcast and lonely. Her ancestors on the Assyrian side of the family tree worshiped idols. The Jews of Jerusalem haven’t forgotten it.

While both Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman completely miss important things that Jesus says to them, look at who recognizes the true identity of Jesus. As we discussed last week, Nicodemus takes the entire three years of Jesus’ earthly ministry before he slowly warms up and believes who Jesus really is. The Samaritan woman is the first person in the Bible to whom Jesus reveals his identity as the Messiah. Echoing God’s name to Moses, Jesus tells the woman, “I am he.”

So I ask you, does God have a sense of humor or what? Jesus first reveals that he is the Messiah not to Caesar, not to Pilate, not to the disciples, but to an unnamed, lonely, outcast Samaritan woman in the dusty outback of Samaria. And we read this Gospel story of the woman with five husbands the same week that Elizabeth Taylor with her seven husbands (or was it eight?) is called to her rest!

Today I want to introduce you to a topic you probably never knew existed. It is called the history of interpretation. For example during the period of slave trading in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was common for clergy to preach sermons to slaves citing passages from Paul that encouraged them to submit to their masters. Hopefully today we would never interpret scripture along those lines nor preach sermons like that. When it comes to the subject of the treatment of women by preachers and the public, sadly we often find ourselves stuck in the same kinds of interpretations we heard about slaves two centuries ago.

You can line up nearly two thousand years of preaching about the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and how Eve ate the apple of knowledge and wisdom after being tempted by the serpent. Right down to the present day you will hear sermons that say “Eve was tempted. She ate the apple. She committed the original sin.” But if you go back to the text you will find that it literally says “Adam was standing right beside her.”

NOW if you ask whether Adam as master of the household exercised good manly leadership in this situation you find that instead of grabbing Eve by the hand and saying “Let’s get out of here, this serpent is a nut cake” he stands there complicit in his silence. He must be thinking “OK, this seems a little shaky, so Eve, you eat the apple and let’s see what happens.”

NOW that we examine the text a bit closer the issue of who committed the original sin is not so clear. Any reasonable interpretation would have to say, BOTH were guilty. Yet the tired old interpretation that Eve was guilty and therefore women are somehow spiritually or morally inferior is an interpretation that benefits one party (men) at the expense of another (women).

In the same way, if you look at interpretations of this story of the Samaritan woman at the well, you find two thousand years of preaching casting her in the role of a harlot, a sinful woman of loose morals, and even the village prostitute. Yet a closer examination of this text reveals no information that would lead us to these conclusions.

Notice that Jesus does not mention repentance to her, so how can we conclude that her sin is an issue here? The woman could very well have been widowed, abandoned, or divorced multiple times. Her present “husband” could be an arrangement of financial dependence, sanctioned by Old Testament law where a childless woman must marry her deceased husband’s brother. There are all kinds of situations that would render this woman’s life tragic rather than scandalous.

When the woman says “I see you are a prophet”, she is making a confession of faith. Jesus in turn sees her for her dependence and loneliness. Jesus sees her not as a hated Samaritan, not as a woman, not as a person with a tragic past, but as a child of God – with value, significance, and dignity in God’s eyes. Given this reading of the text, why do so many churches perpetuate misogyny in our world today? Why do churches marginalize half of society?

The sad truth is that by interpreting, preaching, and insisting that women are somehow inferior to men, entire churches have historically benefitted. From Genesis to Revelation the projection of masculine fear of the feminine into preaching and the very framework of churches themselves has led to more human misery and suffering than all the wars in history.

What we hear in church and the framework for how our churches are organized matters to society. If the subtext of the sermon week after week contains a message about the inferiority of women, then you will find some families where violence towards women seems to be somehow condoned. If you see male clergy sticking to the tired old line that the disciples were all male, therefore only men can be ordained (I might add the disciples were all Jewish too), you will find businesses clinging to compensation and hiring policies favoring men over women.

If we can only rid ourselves of bias and judgment; if we can only rise above petty moralistic interpretations, these stories have powerful transforming messages for us. This story about the woman at the well is not at all about morality or her sinfulness. This story is about the identity of Jesus, the Messiah who offers us dignity and new life in a relationship with God.

After all, she is the first person in the Gospels to seek out others and tell them about Jesus. “Come and see” she says to her neighbors. Jesus is still at that well today. He looks you in the eyes and offers living water, new life, so that you may live abundantly. Like the woman at the well, can you accept his offer? Will you run to your neighbors to tell them about the Jesus you met at the well?

“Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” – Deuteronomy 6:5

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, our Lord and redeemer. Amen

For twenty five years I lived in a house with three women. In that environment Valentine’s Day is the “Day of Mandatory Chocolate.” Overlooked anniversaries and birthdays could be forgiven (well, eventually) but failure to provide dark chocolate hearts was an unforgivable sin. Looking at this teaching from Jesus about anger, adultery, taking oaths, and the careless destruction of marriage, I wonder if Jesus is really asking us to take a look. What’s in your heart?

Jesus’ teachings today extend his blessings and woes from the Sermon on the Mount. We are also told before this that our righteousness in following the Law of Moses must exceed that of the Pharisees. That’s a tall order. Sometimes Jesus gives us a teaching where the metaphor is stretched beyond achievability, such as a camel going through the eye of a needle. The exaggeration is intended to wake us up and make a point. But in this case, Jesus is not stretching things to make a point. He is completely serious. Our righteousness flows from the attitude of our hearts AND our courage (a word whose root means “heart”) in carrying things out.

Why should our outward actions exceed the actions of people deemed to be the most studious followers of the law? Put in a more modern context, why should our behavior towards our brothers and sisters be BETTER than the behavior we observe with bishops, clergy and seminary ethics professors? Because outward behavior is just the first step of peeling the onion. Jesus is really focusing on what is in our hearts. Even righteous action is not foolproof because it is possible to do the right things and still have your heart in the wrong place. For example there are some people who give but inwardly they give grudgingly. Scripture commends a “cheerful giver”, not a grudging giver.

Developing good moral behavior and good communities is kind of like going to the gym to work out. Sometimes we don’t want to. Sometimes we are too tired or distracted to go. We can make all kinds of excuses. But we know the right thing to do is to eat healthy, go to the gym, and get those muscles pumping. In the same way, as individuals AND as a community we need to build our moral muscles. When a community of faith such as Grace Church fails to go to the moral fitness center, we become overweight, lazy, and complacent. After a while we begin to look not like a community of faith, but instead we begin to look just like the community around us.

Let’s get something straight about Jesus and moral behavior. Moral behavior is NOT primarily about sex or sexuality. It is about the attitude of our heart. Our Gospel today contains teachings about anger, adultery, divorce, and the taking of oaths. Let’s focus on anger since it is the root of all the others.

This is one of those uncomfortable subjects. We are all prone to some kind of anger. Perhaps we would prefer a nice academic sermon about the other three issues Jesus raises? The Greek language has two different terms for the English concept of anger. One is the kind of anger that flares up and goes away quickly. I am thinking here about my thoughts lately when I observed other people’s driving abilities in the snow.

The other term for anger implies a smoldering, long term, just beneath the surface kind of anger. Healthcare experts will tell you that this kind of anger is what leads many people to heart attacks, ulcers, and possibly autoimmune diseases. In some respect we literally eat ourselves up from the inside. Jesus takes aim directly at this kind of anger and tells us (my translation):

“But I tell you, that everyone who smolders with simmering anger towards his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment; and whoever shall say to his brother, “You moron!’ shall be in danger of judgment by the Sanhedrin; and whoever shall say, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of the fire of Gehenna.”

(Gehenna, or “hell” in some translations, was the garbage dump outside the city walls of Jerusalem.)

There is a helpful qualification in this that needs to be pointed out – “without a cause.” (See the KJV) Jesus assumes that if you are angry because your brother or sister has actually done something to harm you, then you need to seek recourse through the courts or even through the councils of the church. What he is talking about here is the unjustified expression of anger towards others – the calling of names, swearing at others, malicious gossip, and other harmful behaviors. Psychologists sometimes call this “gunnysack behavior”, because the angry person takes all the offenses, hurts and transgressions he or she has received from others over a long period of time, and stuffs all that into a gunny sack. Later when the slightest provocation comes along, such as a two wheel drive car fishtailing in the snow, a disappointment, a misinterpreted motive, a missed appointment, and so forth, the provocation is met with the emptying of the gunnysack by the angry person. The confrontation is often shocking and ugly.

While there may indeed by some provoking, annoying, disappointing or untoward behavior by one party, the response of the angry person far outweighs the stimulus of the offending person. After nearly a year together we begin to get real for one another. I have seen this process unfolding inside of families, between individuals in our parish, and between parishioners and members of the wider community. I have seen people dump their gunnysacks at others by electronic communication.

We all have our gunnysacks because in some ways we are all victims of someone else’s hurtful behavior. The world out there is full of people venting themselves on others without real cause. Business schools call it the “Law of the Jungle.” But Jesus wants Christian believers and Christian communities to distinguish ourselves from the world out there. What are we to do?

He gives us some very concrete advice about the process. The passing of the peace in our liturgy is the formal expression and reminder that we are ALL to engage in this process because we all have a brother or sister who has something against us. We have all been on both sides of the coin as victims and oppressors.

If you believe in Jesus; if you want to follow his teachings; if you want to become a better person, then YOU need to take the initiative. Chances are you have offended or hurt someone else. Chances are that someone else has offended or hurt you. That’s what happens inside of marriages and families and communities. It is unavoidable.

Regardless of whether you are the victim or the oppressor YOU need to take the initiative and go to that person. Screw up your courage. Build up your heart. Go to them. It is not about groveling. It is about love. Jesus is calling you to love even the people that cause you pain. This is the high calling of Christian faith. In this process of sharing the peace that passes all understanding, your gunnysack will slowly empty. You will probably live longer. You will certainly live better. Your life will be a greater blessing to you, your spouse, your family, and your community. This is the life that Jesus calls “eternal life.”

People out there in the world think Christians are wimpy because of this process. They laugh at this love and think it is just an excuse for weakness. They prefer to live in the law of the jungle – “Take advantage of others before they do that to you.” Jesus calls you to a love that is stronger that the world out there. They will know we are different. They will know we are Christians by our love. Some of the people in the world out there will be powerfully attracted to that love.

As an alternative to hard work of taking the initiative, Jesus gives us an image of the world out there: Gehenna. It was a steep ravine filled up with human and animal waste and all the organic matter from a thousand years of settlement. It was an enormous compost pile. Occasionally in the desert heat, large bubbles of methane or natural gas would well up from the compost and ignite spontaneously. The burst of flame must have been spectacular. The world out there? It’s hot, unpredictable, and not a pleasant place to be. I’ll take my chances with Jesus.

We are going to start this sermon from the tail end of the Gospel. “Be perfect therefore as your heavenly father is perfect.” What kind of teaching is that? Everyone here who is perfect, please raise your hand. OK, we know we’re not perfect, but what is Jesus talking about?

Once again translation is not our friend. The sense of the word translated as “be perfect” is more about becoming what God intended, or to “be the person God created you to be.” God created us in God’s image. Therefore, being who God created us to be means that we are to live so that our behavior reflects the very nature of God to others. In a modern translation of the Bible, Eugene Peterson gets much closer to the original meaning when his version titled “The Message” says “You’re kingdom subjects. [Christians] Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity.”

But many of us spend our lives living behind barriers we erect to prevent us from living out who God created us to be. Let’s name a few of these.

Anger – A newlywed couple looked forward to having children. They were poster kids for healthy living. Good diet, no alcohol, never smoked, no drugs, in good physical shape. They took their first pregnancy very seriously, doing everything the natural childbirth coach said to do. When the blessed event arrived, the child was a beautiful baby girl with Down ’s syndrome and serious cardiac problems. The mother looked at me between her tears and anger saying “Crack-addicted mothers give birth to normal babies. We did everything right. Why did God do this to us?”

Denial – Jim was a radiologist I knew very well. He was the assistant chairman of one of the major academic hospitals in the United States. He lived well, partied hard, and was well liked by many people. Even when he was personally dealing with a rare disease of the optic nerves that eventually led to his total blindness, he persisted in trying to read X-rays and diagnose other people’s diseases. After some spectacular missed diagnoses, the medical director asked him to step down. He knew the course of the disease that was claiming his vision, yet in complete denial he continued to use his eyes far beyond the point at which he should have stepped down. He died angry and bitter about his loss to the very end.

Guilt – Mary was the wife of a golf pro who died in an airplane crash. Her only problem was that they had an argument the day before he left on his private jet for a tournament. She was supposed to go with him. In her guilt over their marital problems and his untimely death, she first became addicted to prescription pain medications and eventually moved to heroin. Her friends deserted her. She has enough money to live independently but she never leaves the house. She has her drugs to ease the pain. She lives a lonely, terrible life.

Like Mary, we can even manage to live well behind our own barriers, but it is a lonely disconnected life. Living behind a barrier that prevents us from dealing with reality and becoming who God created us to be is not life at all. It is hell. Those in pain who have erected barriers to keep the world away see themselves as victims of a tragedy. Often we find those living behind the biggest barriers are the biggest deniers not just of God but of the church.

It is commonly said that there are “no atheists in a foxhole.” When the enemy is firing rounds over your head, even the most hardened atheist may appeal to a higher power in such moments. So it is not unusual to find those living behind their walls agreeing to all kinds of academic concepts of God. It is just when God gets too close in the form of a Christian community that we find the walls going up all over again.

What does the church have to offer people in existential pain?

To name a few: Love, connection, acceptance, forgiveness, community, a mirror, models of sainthood, presence, reflection, encouragement – these are all characteristics of God. When we live into them, that life is “eternal life.” To live as a reflection of God’s love is much more than being a good Boy Scout however.

When a community of believers goes beyond their personal hurts and pains and they reach out to others, the victim thinking melts away. When you peel everything back, there is only one victim, Jesus Christ, who suffered everything for us. Those of us who hide behind barriers need to experience the overwhelming love and sacrifice of Christ. That is the role of the community of faith.

To deny the church is to deny the community of faith and to retreat behind the barricades. But God has a different plan for every one of us. We are called to get beyond the barriers and concerns that hold us back from becoming the whole person that God created us to be. I encourage you to write down on the paper you are being given the thing or things that hold you back from being the person God created you to be. Fold the paper and put it in the collection plate with your offering. Offer those things that hold you back up to God.

The community of faith is called to a life of generous giving. What we do is to give back what we have received already from God. In the early 400s, Augustine, bishop of Hippo, would break the bread at the Eucharist, look out at his congregation, and say, “Receive who you are. Become what you have received.”

As many of you know February is Black History Month, and since the Edwards are headed to the islands next month, I want to get everyone into that island spirit, break out your drinks with little umbrellas in them, and share with you a popular song that perfectly summarizes today’s gospel

 (play 30 seconds of Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”).

We could have fun in adult education talking about the four antecedents of Fletcher’s situational ethics, explaining how the end point of this song’s philosophy is in fact tragedy, but Jesus and Martin Luther King, Jr. and two millennia of philosophers, poets, priests, and prophets have insisted that an intermediate step is required for happiness. That step is the polar opposite of worry and it is in short supply today: It is JUSTICE.

Martin Luther King, Jr. in his address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1967 brought together the themes from Christian teaching in all of their harmonies and tensions. Talking about power, justice, and love, King said:

“What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive,
and love without power is sentimental and anemic.

Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice,
and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

Yesterday your new vestry and I spent the day in a spiritual retreat addressing what God is calling us to do at Grace Church this year. We are fortunate. We have a great deal of clarity in the tasks before us. Your vestry has a great deal of energy and enthusiasm to accomplish these goals. We have three major goals for the year. They are:

Renew these buildings
Renew the community of Grace Episcopal Church
Renew the connection between Grace Church and the Muskogee community

Now it is time to talk about WHY we are doing these things. When we have completed these tasks, will we make a difference for anybody? For whom? Why not just go play golf instead? Why not just let the big churches with their new buildings do all the work? Does anything we do as a community of faith matter? What is our purpose in doing what we do?

Before we dive into that question, let me weave a few more threads into this tapestry: Declining church attendance, the search for meaning, and why people love Jesus but hate the church. These things are related to our purpose as a church and to King’s teachings about power, justice and love. Let’s see –

Somewhere along the line between the end of the 19th century and let’s say the year 2000 (some would call this the “modern era”), the church, from Roman Catholicism to the little bitty evangelical churches that crop up like dandelions in an April yard; this “Church” lost its bearings. We reversed the incentives for church leaders so that building humongous buildings, having your own network TV channel, and hobnobbing with world leaders became the ultimate quest for church leaders. The Episcopal Church fell into this same trap along with everybody else. At the parish level this meant that clergy sought after bigger churches, bigger paychecks, and bigger retirements. Political squabbles over hot button issues split the churches and provided entertainment for the media.

It would be unfair to say that all churches local and national fell into this. A few were doing the work of the Gospel, but I think as Jesus surveyed his church during these years, he must have wept.

Yes, we are called to be a community of love. But to paraphrase King, “Love without … justice is sentimental and anemic.” We cannot be a true community of love. We cannot be a Christian community WITHOUT also being a community of justice.

If you interviewed the people out there who do not attend church, you would find that many believe in Jesus. They admire him. They see him as a man whose compassion compelled him to teach us to do works of mercy and justice. But if you asked them about the church, they would say things about organized religion that I cannot quote in here. In essence, they would say that organized religion has abandoned the justice and mercy of Jesus – and to a large extent they are correct.

Church attendance declines when the public sees the disconnect between the teachings of Jesus and the actions of the local church. Church attendance increases when the public sees a local congregation vigorously engaged in works of justice and mercy. The two keys are that:

The local church must be engaged in reaching out to the local community

The local church must be visible and seen by the community in doing such things (this requires a lot of organized promotion)

We will renew these buildings. We will have more fun and build a stronger community of faith. We will plug into a lot of Muskogee activities and events. But we do these things because Jesus calls us to serve others as a community of justice and mercy.

We have two active meals ministries. What would happen if we tripled the size of those? What if we addressed the needs of the Muskogee community in terms of housing, education, nutrition, the families of prisoners, victims of violence, and adult education? We could start a community garden across the street from this church; we own the property. We could resurrect the GED program that we ran for 29 years. We could start an ESL program. The opportunities are unlimited right here on this corner.

It starts with each person making a choice. We bow our heads in prayer and supplication. We ask Jesus, “Yes Lord, I want to have your compassionate heart. I want to help other people.” When you travel down that road, your worries will ALL be about other people. And then you will be happy.

On the 100th birthday of the city of Pasadena California, All Saints Episcopal Church gave the city a gift, which was a lengthy, detailed document identifying the needs of the city. All Saints is a parish with several thousand members. It is wealthy and politically powerful. To create this document the church fielded a team of social workers who interviewed every agency, school, and social service in the city for a year. From that work between the church and the city, a number of large and very successful social programs were launched. Some have delivered services to the community for over three decades since then.

As commendable and helpful as these programs are, I wonder if individuals and churches are called to be in the business of meeting social needs? Even more, I wonder if in the process of meeting needs – even when doing a fantastic job like All Saints – can that activity get in the way of our ability to respond to our true calling? I wonder.

John has been living by the Jordan River baptizing people for repentance of their sins for quite some time. He has been waiting for the one who is to come. Jesus gets in line with everyone else waiting to be baptized. John sees Jesus and gasps, “I need to be baptized by you.” Jesus answers him, “No, you will baptize me. It is part of God’s plan that you do not see right now. We must do all that the Father asks us to do.”

The word “obey” comes from two words ab-audio. It literally means to go towards the hearing. Jesus is certainly obedient towards his Father’s Word. I wonder if this enigmatic phrase “to fulfill all righteousness” might mean something like “to obey God” or “to do everything that God calls us to do.”

John could have insisted that Jesus baptize him. That would have been the easy thing to do. John obviously recognized Jesus’ status. John’s needs would have been met and Jesus would have received the proper social recognition of being the superior to John. If that had happened, do you think the heavens would have opened up and the Spirit descended with God’s voice saying, “This is the one with whom I am well pleased”? Did Jesus need the human social thing where the baptizer is superior to the baptized? Of course not.

Jesus heard God guiding him to stand in line like everyone else and he obeys. What is about to happen will demonstrate once and for all that Jesus is BOTH human and of God. He is human because he stands in line and is baptized just like anyone else. But when he comes up out of the water God will convert this ordinary scene to demonstrate that this is God’s son. The next time we hear about the heavens opening up is at the crucifixion when the temple curtains are torn and the heavens open up. For God to act, Jesus must do the unusual, the unexpected, and the unnatural thing. That is true for individuals and for churches as well.

I am not here to downplay meeting social needs or the church’s role in ministering to “the least of these” in our community. But sometimes we can confuse means and ends. Meeting the needs of the poor and the vulnerable in our community are a means for us to understand the nature of God’s compassion. Sometimes we can become so comfortable with our programs that we think that programs and meeting needs is all God wants us to do. Sometimes with the best of intentions while we do good work in our community, we simply quit listening to God.

Sometimes we need to look closely at what Jesus does and try to follow his lead. Sometimes we need to do the unusual, the unexpected, and the unnatural thing – just like Jesus. Sometimes what we think is the right or righteous thing to do may not be what God wants at all. Obedience to God requires that, first of all, we are able to hear God against the noisy background and distractions of our lives. Let’s consider hearing God and discerning God’s plan for a minute.

God does NOT tell us what we want to hear. God is not in the business of granting wishes and fulfilling personal agendas. For example, in our capital campaign we hoped to raise $2M for the renovation of this facility. It now looks like with some borrowing and a general appeal to the congregation, we can get to about $1.7M. You should know that my constant prayer through all this is for the funds we raise and for the buildings we renovate to be blessings for GOD’S PLAN and not for our plans. If we follow God’s plans for Grace Church, then there is no such thing as “failure” or “coming up short.” We must listen constantly. We must pray without ceasing. And we must be ready to do unusual, unexpected, and unnatural things.

As individuals and as a church we must seek out those times when we can be quiet and listen. If we are constantly distracted and constantly busy, we will very likely miss the still small voice that we need to hear.

Finally, we must try new things – and trying new things demands a willingness to look silly sometimes or even to fail. The outcome of our new ventures is part of our discernment process and guides how we go forward. Our new service Thursday night is an example of trying something new. I want to thank everyone for their help in making our first new service a tremendous success.

Individuals sometimes hear God telling them impossible things. For example, when Abraham and Sarah were very old, God told them they would have a son. Sarah laughed at the news. Of course they did have a son and named him Isaac, which means “He will laugh.”

The next time you experience this strange mixture of a new challenge coupled with a sense that it is crazy or beyond your capabilities, you need to pay close attention. It could change your life.

There is an old cartoon where the neophyte seeking wisdom approaches the old guru with a single word question, “Whither”, (or “Where should I go to be enlightened?”). To which the guru points in a direction and says “Thither.” The neophyte travels in that direction and encounters a terrible commotion. The cartoon depicts this graphically along with the word “splat!” He returns and repeats his question. The guru points in the same direction again saying “Thither.” The neophyte travels the same way and encounters another terrible commotion followed by“splat!” This process repeats several times. Finally the neophyte returns to the feet of the guru. He is beat up, worn out, and perplexed at the difficulties he has encountered trying to seek enlightenment. Gasping, he asks why when he tries to go where he is directed that he gets beat up every time. The guru responds saying “You must go through Splat to get where you want to go.”

What did you come out here to see? A reed swaying in the wind? People wearing luxurious purple robes? We heard these lines from Jesus a few weeks ago at another passage about John’s baptismal practice at the Jordan. These lines sound strange to us, but they are direct references to Herod, who had coins in circulation at that time with the image of a cluster of reeds on them. In addition, only kings and royalty wore soft purple robes. In effect, Jesus was saying, “Did you come all the way out here in the wilderness to see the power and luxury of the Roman Empire? Or did you come, perhaps strangely attracted, to see something you do not understand?”

The wilderness in those days had a reputation for being the place where political insurrections took root. Political firebrands would go out into the wilderness and whip up a peasant following. Sometimes they carried their uprisings into the cities against Rome. For five hundred years these wilderness uprisings were always crushed with overwhelming force. The 900 Essene Jews living on top of the natural mountain fortress of Masada watched the Romans build a land bridge for three years to reach them. Legend has it that this rebellious group of Jews waited until the Romans almost reached them when they all committed suicide. Some scholars today believe that Jesus might have been a member of this Essene sect.

Did you come out to the wilderness to see John? Did you risk being labeled a possible threat to the Empire? Are you willing to be followed and labeled a radical just because something attracted you here? When John baptized you did you feel the weight of all your bad decisions leave you when you came out of the water? Did this primitive dip in the Jordan do a lot more for you than the annual scapegoat ritual at the Temple? Maybe all that business about sacrificing animals, Temple priests wearing luxurious robes, rituals in a language you don’t understand, and grand buildings just doesn’t make you feel that God really cares for you. Maybe John’s baptism was just a preliminary thing to wash all that old religious stuff away so you could get to the real thing.

What did you come out to see? What do you seek? Jesus directs this question to John’s disciples who now are following Jesus because John sees Jesus in the crowd again and says “Look HERE is the Lamb of God.” Their question to Jesus, “Where are you staying”, is not about where he spends the night, but is addressing the Spirit of God that they see in Jesus. The question is more like “Where can we find God’s spirit dwelling in you? How can we get it?”

Religions of all kinds go through cycles. At some point the rituals and structure of a given religion become too trite, too rote, and lose substance. They fail to convey God’s spirit to the next generation. John and Jesus came on the scene in the first century to address that very situation. Judaism had become too focused on the Temple, too caught up in the work of the priests, too bound up with the politics of the Empire, and on top of that the common people did not understand the language of the Jewish rituals at the time. Hebrew at the time of Jesus was known only to the Temple priests. Hebrew at the time of Jesus was equivalent to Latin before Vatican II. The language Jesus and everyday people spoke in Palestine was Aramaic.

Some scholars say that Christianity today is in a similar position as Judaism was at the time of Jesus. Nearly all Christian denominations have undergone major upheavals in worship and theology since the 1960s. Roman Catholicism grows not so much because they are reaching those who do not believe but because birth rates are still high in countries that are primarily Roman Catholic. Mainline Protestant churches are mostly in decline. Some of the non-denominational churches are growing, but the dirty secret about many of the large new churches we see is that their average member remains active for about five years.

What are you seeking? Grace Church reflects the body of Christ as well or better than any church I have seen. In my response to your call I was like John’s disciples asking Jesus “Where is the Spirit of God so that I may take part in it?” I found it in you and I was attracted to it. I am here because of who you are and the face of Christ that I see in you.

What are you seeking? The people of a church are a big part, but not the only part, of the package we call “church.” There are the rituals, the music, the system of beliefs, and the good works in the community. God’s Spirit MUST be present in all of these things. If people don’t get the Spirit, they just don’t come.

What are THEY seeking? How about a place that accepts everyone without any conditions or reservations? Check. We do that well. How about a place where the ritual is more engaging and experiential? Hmmm. How about a place where the music is more like what they hear on the radio? Music they can sing along with easily. How about a place where they can come wearing blue jeans or pajamas; where they can laugh or cry or just sit and be quiet? How about a place where their desire to make a difference in the local community gets put to work right away? How about a place where their hearts are touched, where the Spirit moves and is clearly present?

These will be our goals for ALL of our worship and community life at Grace. Moving Grace Church to the place where people are attracted to the Spirit will mean that a lot of us will have to go through Splat to get there. Whatever inconvenience we may experience, whatever cherished beliefs we may have to give up, whatever challenges may come our way, just remember that Jesus did a lot more for us already.

It was an ordinary Friday night. American Airlines was connecting weary road warriors from their business week to their homes through the Dallas mixing bowl. The DC-9 aircraft was packed with men and women wearing business suits. No one paid much attention to the dusty, scruffy guy in 11A. When the aircraft lurched to its final stopping place at the gate, people jumped out of their seats and began opening the overhead bins well ahead of the pilot’s announcement. Everyone was eager to head home.

The man sitting in 11A looked as if he lived in a homeless encampment. He smelled like it too. Through most of the flight his head was slumped down as if he were sleeping, but at some point after we landed, and in the midst of the hustle to get our laptops, he stirred and cleared the air with his throat. He seemed to stair through each person on that plane with penetrating eyes.

With a gravelly voice that could be clearly heard from one end of the cabin to the other, he began to address us with, “You’re all a bunch of selfish brats. Who said you were all entitled to this?” At this point everyone stopped. You could hear a pin drop. “You think your money and your nice homes will protect you, but I tell you they don’t mean nothin’. Nothin’s gonna protect you unless you do something to change yourselves. Do something to help someone who doesn’t have all the money you have. Do SOMETHING for somebody else.”

He stood up, grabbed a leather bag out of the overhead bin, and walked right through the crowd. He was the first to get off the plane. The next one out was quite a distance behind.

As the author of the Gospel of John frequently notes, this story is true. I tell you this story is true because I sat next to the guy. I bought him one of those little bottles of red wine, which he gratefully consumed and went to sleep. During the flight I just thought he was odd. Afterwards I thought we had been visited by John the Baptist. He did tell me that he lived alone deep in the desert in Arizona. He liked his solitude with his cactus and the scorpions.

Today is only 20 shopping days left until Christmas. How many days do we have left until judgment? John’s message to us then and now is repent. The Greek word for this has two meanings: one is to completely change your mind; the other is to know God more intimately.

John drew crowds, including kings, rulers, soldiers, rich people, religious leaders, and common everyday folks. John forced people to make decisions about their lives and face the truth. If you were standing there on the banks of the Jordan listening to John you would have had to choose between a shallow observance of religion and dependence upon the might of Roman armies – or you could change your mind, be baptized, and depend upon the mercy of God. Our job as baptized Christian today is to lead others to this kind of a decision. Maybe we do not need to eat locusts and wear camel skin belts, but how do we lead others to a deeper intimacy with God?

In the first century kings and rulers were not supposed to travel up and down hills or around curves because those places could be used for a surprise attack. As much as possible, kings were supposed to travel on level ground in a straight path. That is why you hear John’s proclamation quoting Isaiah, “prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” This language was politically loaded because it heralded a new king. Referring to the one to come as king is ultimately what led to political executions of both John and Jesus.

John’s cry for us to repent, to change our minds completely, asks that we look inside ourselves and remove those road blocks that prevent the Christ from coming into our lives. Those obstacles could be addictions, pursuit of sex, wealth, or power – but there is more. John is also asking how we AS A PEOPLE, as a church, as a city, as a nation, are removing roadblocks.

When John was in prison and sent his disciples to ask Jesus if he was the One, the Messiah, Jesus replied that “the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the POOR HAVE THE GOOD NEWS PREACHED TO THEM.”

John is not talking about removing roadblocks that prevent more Episcopal Churches from being built. He is talking about roadblocks in our society that remove freedom and dignity from other people. Those terms, “ensure the freedom and dignity for every human being”, we promised to do at our baptism.

Let’s look at a couple of roadblocks to freedom and dignity:

Food security – A household is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. In spite of our obesity epidemic in the United States, 15% of households are NOT food secure. When one household in seven does not have enough food to eat or lives in fear of starvation, it is a national disgrace. This roadblock is all around us right here in Oklahoma. Yes, we have some good meals programs and those should grow – but what are we doing to address the roots of this problem?

Another roadblock is education. Our nation may still be an economic powerhouse, but if you put the United States on a baseball team in terms of education, we would be sitting on the bench. The US ranks 18th in the world in terms of secondary education. In addition, educational performance and food security are connected. Grace Church had a very fine GED program for 29 years. We graduated over 600 people from high school. What can we do today to prepare the way for the king?

Martin Luther King, Jr. also quoted Isaiah about removing stumbling blocks for our King when he said, “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low. The rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight – and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

The list of ways our society beats down and oppresses people is endless. These are not political problems that our government should solve. These are conditions that affect the freedom and human dignity of our brothers and sisters within a ten block circle of this church.

Last week I started out with a humorous bumper sticker for Advent: “Jesus is coming, look busy.” This week I want to give you a new bumper sticker: “Jesus is coming. Get busy!”

The trouble with most Christian believers is that our hope and expectations for Jesus are simply too small, too narrow, and too lame. As a result we are unable to see the miracles and everyday resurrections all around us.

On the way home for dinner Wednesday, I stopped at a store for a quick errand. The sales clerk asked the woman in line in front of me what she was doing for Christmas. The woman replied ,“Since my husband and I have no children at home, we don’t do anything for Christmas. We travel somewhere so there are no presents, no drama, and no stress.” I thought I was in the presence of a female Grinch. When I started to get into my car in the parking lot, I was startled by a loud crunching sound. I looked over to see that the Grinch had backed her supersized SUV into a small car parked in the lot. The ensuing exchange between the owners of the two vehicles was ugly and acrimonious. I thought to myself that this woman, of all the people in town, could really benefit by a dose of real Advent and real Christmas. Her hopes and expectations for Jesus had dropped below zero.

In last week’s Gospel, John described the one to come after him in terms of “his winnowing fork [for judgment] is in his hand.” The Jewish population of Palestine was occupied by a foreign army from Rome. Their interpretation of the same texts from Isaiah that we read during Advent were for a messiah who would come and kick the you know what out of the hated Romans. The one to come, the anointed one, the Messiah would vindicate the Jews militarily. He would rule over Israel like David. He would judge his people, separating the righteous from the rest.

John baptized Jesus. He knew Jesus was the one, but then he listened to the reports about what Jesus was doing. John did not hear reports that Jesus was winning military battles. He did not hear that the Romans were running scared. Nothing he heard lined up with his understanding of Isaiah’s prophesies. John is in prison because of politics at Herod’s palace, so John sends his messengers to ask Jesus if he really is “the one”, or should we be looking for another? Jesus replies that “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

Upon hearing this, John must have been really perplexed. This Jesus, this chosen one, just isn’t measuring up to John’s expectations. It is likely that this Jesus doesn’t measure up to our expectations either?

Not too far from here in Wichita, Kansas, is a family that constitutes most of the membership of what passes in US tax code for a “church.” They have been the subject of a Supreme Court case because they believe that the death of US soldiers is God’s punishment on the United States for the country’s support of homosexually oriented people. They picket the funerals of soldiers across the country. I have personally seen them picket the Episcopal Church national convention with signs proclaiming “God hates [gays].” Their hatred and belligerence is breathtaking. For this family and many other people, Jesus is the judge and punisher of other people for their sins.

There are others who interpret Isaiah literally. They look to Jesus not only as the righteous one, but when he returns he will set things straight. Governments will fall in line under him. The environment will be perfect. The entire world will be Christian with Jesus as the ruler. Everyone will march off into a happy “Leave it to Beaver” existence. For this group, Jesus approves and supports a certain lifestyle.

Then we have people suffering from overwhelming physical pain or spiritual pain. Sometimes we encounter very faithful Christians who have come by way of pain and suffering to the foot of the cross. Those in pain look to Jesus for relief and it is completely understandable.

Finally we have the cynics, the hedge-your-bets crowd, and the armchair atheists. For them Jesus may be a nice fairy tale to believe in, but in the end this Jesus won’t make much of a difference in the world or in your life.

Here we are in the middle of Advent, waiting expectantly for the Christmas arrival of a baby who is the son of God. Do we really hope for or expect much of a change in the world because of the one who is to come? Do we see the resurrections and miracles and changes around us every day, or do we have so little hope that we miss it all?

Jesus did NOT come and will not come again to be the punisher, the world ruler, the analgesic, or the fairy tale. His mission is far bigger than we can ever hope or imagine. These things reported back to John such as the deaf hear, the blind see, the lame walk, are NOT the mission in themselves. These things serve as sign posts telling us that things are radically different now. Grace and Peace have come into the world. Fix your hope, your expectations on grace and peace, and your eyes and ears will be opened.

I have seen Grace and Peace come into peoples’ lives. I have seen people reconcile. I have seen people quit high paying but soul-killing jobs and become joyful again. I have seen couples deal with infidelity, homeless people go to graduate school, and I have seen families with a special needs child become even more loving once they quit asking God “why.”

I have often said that a rector’s biggest role is that of a cheerleader. I am here to tell you today to expect MORE from Jesus. Increase your hope for the one who is to come. Christ Jesus, in the form of Grace and Peace, will come into your life. Grace and Peace will not fix your bank account. It won’t ease your pain. It won’t guarantee you a place in heaven. But God’s love and the grace and peace of Jesus Christ will come into your life and CHANGE YOUR HEART. It will change the way you look at things. You will see all the signs Jesus reported to John. You will smile knowing that God is here. And THAT will make all the difference. 

After three years in seminary followed by three years as an assistant rector, I was eager to serve in my own parish. Starting in August 2001 at a parish in the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC, I found a case of embezzlement during my first week on the job. The parish was in total disarray from the reconstruction following a devastating fire that struck six months before my arrival. Next came 9/11, and a tornado hit a few weeks later. By the time Christmas rolled around, I was truly eager for some good news.

First up on Christmas Eve, the children’s pageant went off with all the chaos and charm of a Garrison Keillor story. Parents were snapping pictures. Everyone was happy. A heavy wet snow was beginning to fall outside.

Because of all the reconstruction from the fire, electricians had rewired the old parish hall and entry ways to the church just a few weeks before. Around 9 pm the junior warden organized a work crew to clean up the snow on the sidewalks and put down salt. I was inspecting the entryways when I found that a single light fixture over a darkened entry had a burned out light bulb. “No big deal changing a light bulb”, I thought to myself.

I found a bulb in the closet and realized that I could not reach the light fixture. There was a wrought iron railing on either side of the entry so I stood on the bottom rail to give myself just enough extra height to reach the light fixture. My legs pressed against the top rail wet with snow. Light bulb in hand I stretched and reached up to insert it in the fixture. Before I could insert the bulb my hand touched a metal part of the fixture. I could feel electricity coursing through by body into my hand and out through my legs touching the top of the railing. I shook violently for what seemed to be an eternity before my body reflexively threw itself off of the light fixture and railing. My back slammed into the matching rail on the other side of the entry.

Later we would determine that the electricians had wired the fixture incorrectly. My back had striped bruises that matched the railing pattern. That Christmas Eve, in a blinding flash, I got the true Spirit of Christmas .

Today we celebrate a pagan festival that was overlaid with a Christian observance in the 4th century in order to make it easier for the majority pagan Europe to convert to Christianity. People throughout Europe had partied for centuries around the winter solstice, and they were not about to give up their festivals after they converted to Christianity. The declaration by Pope Julius I that Jesus’ birth would be celebrated on December 25 was a shrewd and obviously successful move to win more converts to Christianity.

Our present-day commercial Christmas may be just another example of a good thing gone too far. Some Christian churches refuse to celebrate Christmas, and they are correct that Christmas today is way too commercial and the holiday itself did not originate with the early church. But like those European converts, we Episcopalians aren’t about to give up our Christmas festival – not to mention all the parties that go with it. In the middle of all the tinsel, the colored lights, the crowded shopping malls, the endless parties, what we need to recover and what we really need to find and celebrate IS the true spirit of Christmas. From Titus chapter 2 we heard that

… the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

If we combine this reading with John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to the end that all should not perish but have everlasting life”, we just might have all the ingredients for the true Spirit of Christmas.

In human flesh, with us, the grace of God appears on this night making spiritual health, wholeness, healing and salvation freely available to everyone. The very notion of salvation means simply “to be made whole.” In return, what are we to be and what must we do?

We should all know that we cannot DO anything to earn God’s grace. But God clearly wants us to have grateful hearts for the gift of Jesus Christ who came and lived as one of us. God wants us to be truly glad for the gifts we have received and for us to behave towards others out of our gratitude and gladness. This is what Titus means that we might be purified as a people of Christ’s own. So how are we to behave in gratitude and gladness?

In the first half of the 19th century Clement C. Moore, son of a wealthy New York family, taught ancient languages at General Seminary in New York. For years his wife roasted a dozen turkeys for distribution to the poor at their local parish. On Christmas Eve 1822, she discovered she was one bird short of the usual number so she sent her husband by a horse drawn sleigh-taxi to the butcher for another turkey. As they rode to and from the Jefferson Market (now the Bowery section of the city), Moore listened to the sound of sleigh bells and horses trotting in the snow. On this trip he penned most of the poem he titled A Visit from St. Nicholas or what we now know as The Night Before Christmas.

Professor Clement Clarke Moore and his wife were indeed zealous for good deeds. They lived the true spirit of Christmas.

So on Christmas and all the days that follow, out of your own deep gladness that Jesus Christ has come into your life, share something you have with others. Do something for other people especially those you do not know. Like the Moore family roasting turkeys for the poor, when you are “zealous for good deeds” you will find the true Spirit of Christmas.