Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Two Way Street


Matthew 3:13-17
Baptism of the Lord:  January 12, 2014

I’m grateful that at least once a year I am, by the liturgical cycle of the church calendar, reminded of my baptism.  Or in my case (and maybe yours), I’m reminded that I was baptized, because I was a baby and have no memory of the actual event.   In all honestly, it’s not something I think about much…I don’t spend much of my day thinking about what it means to be baptized, and what it means that Jesus was baptized.  Baptism is a given in our tradition, but unlike communion, we don’t do baptisms every month (though wouldn’t that be nice!).  Consequently, it’s good for me – and maybe even all of us – to think about this important ritual in the life of our tradition.

Many have written about what baptism means.  And like many rituals, it ultimately has a mystery that can’t fully be captured in words and explanations.  But we do try to say some things in our baptismal liturgy about what we’re doing and what we think is going on.

If you read the liturgy of baptism in our book of worship, you will see that there is a kind of two-fold meaning in baptism.  First, in baptism, we are united with God in Jesus, and second in baptism we are united with one another.  In fact we even said this at the end of our prayer of confession:  “Unite us with you and with each other as we remember our baptism today that we might be better reflections of your love and justice in the world.”

What does it mean to be united with God, in Jesus’ baptism?  We talk about all of our sins being washed away.  That we take on the garment of Christ – the sinless one.  We die and are raised with him.  We become, in God’s eyes, like Christ.  Even though we sin, even though we die, because Jesus was resurrected, we are lifted out of that sin and death.  But most important is that we are united with Christ’s purposes in this world.  In baptism we are forever connected to the divine movement all around us.

This union with Christ, of course, only marks the beginning of the journey, because baptism is not the end to our sinning.  But having been united with Christ, we are forever pulled in the direction…We are united with God’s purposes in history.  We are bound to God’s will for human kind.  Life, wholeness, justice, peace.

We are also, we say in baptism, united with one another.  We are, as our liturgy says, grafted into the body of Christ…becoming a member of a body with many parts.  We become a part of the living, breathing Christ in this world, working with one another to bring about the realm of God here on earth.  The baptized one becomes a part of this body of people trying to be faithful in the world.  It is an inclusion in community – the community of Christ.

In this, baptism reconciles us with one another and, having been united to Christ, we become the ongoing work of reconciliation in the world…as our prayer of confession says we will be “better reflections of God’s love and justice in the world.”  Our baptism affirms union with God and with each other, for the purpose of becoming more like God and making the world more like God intended.  It is the beginning of a journey of faith…and that journey is in the direction of God. 

But I feel like there’s something missing in our liturgy of baptism; maybe it’s implied, but it’s definitely not explicit.  It’s a missing direction on the street of union.

We are united to Christ – to God, but that’s just one direction – us to God.  In baptism, God is, in Jesus, also united to us – God to us.  Maybe that’s a fine distinction, but in this union the emphasis is on God becoming human, rather than us taking on the characteristics of God.  I think this I where the baptism of Jesus, rather than our own, becomes so important.

It confused the earliest Christians that Jesus had to be baptized by John. Why would God in flesh need to be baptized?  Surely he has never sinned.  He had nothing to repent of.  He is already fully united to God – fully God.  They were uncomfortable with the fact that John baptized him.  But it makes sense to me.  This is when Jesus chooses to take on our likeness.  God chooses to become us fully. 

We tend to distance ourselves from Jesus and God by comparing our sinfulness and brokenness with divine perfection.  Or we say that we can only be connected to God because our sins are forgiven…we are washed clean.  But the divine is united with us in all our sinfulness and limitations.  The divine is united with us and all that we experience.  God enters fully into this broken world and thus needs what we need – yearns for what we yearn for.  In baptism, we are united with God because in Jesus’ baptism, God chose to fully become one of us.

God is wedded to our lives...our lives as they are at the moment in all their messiness.  This means God is united to the suffering of the world.  It means God is not disinterested; not indifferent; not distant.  God needs nothing from us, but is everything with us.   This is God’s act of solidarity.  Taking on our sufferings as if they were God’s own.  And there is power in solidarity. 

It’s a two way union – us with God and God with us.  I’m not sure you can have one without the other.  If God is not fully united with us where we are, there is no solidarity.  If we aren’t united to the God that is wholeness, completeness, justice, compassion, there would be no movement out of suffering – no pull toward that divine nature.  You need both.  As God looks more like us, we begin to look more like God.  It’s the paradox of the Christian faith. 


This two way street of unity – us being united to God through Jesus and God being united to us through Jesus – might change a little what we hear when we say we are united to one another.  It is a two way street as well. 

When we are united to another, we are reconciled with them – we become like Christ in our unity.  When we come together as the body of Christ we become more and more a reflection of Christ in this world.

But we are also united to each other in the same way God is with us.  We become one another, taking on who they are without condition.  We suffer with. We look into each other’s eyes and see ourselves because we are all created as God’s children – beloved.  In baptism we affirm that though we are individuals, we share universal conditions:  we are limited, broken people living in a world that both reflects God’s goodness and cries out with people’s pain.

Becoming the other is an act of solidarity as well.  We choose to see life from another person’s perspective.  We let go of our egos and imagine what life is like for someone else.  We feel what they feel, even if it’s not a perfect reflection.  We allow ourselves to be affected by their life.  Rather than just understanding what another person is experiencing, we try to feel it as well – take it on as our experience.

I was once reading a book in which the author talks about being stuck in the depths of depression.  He described it as being in a swap land – a murky, mucky, sticky place that he could not make himself plod through.  He told of a therapist that built on that metaphor to describe their relationship to one another.  She said that while he is stuck in the swap land, she is standing on the shore beckoning him out – giving him a direction to go.

But that direction – that path – is only a one-way street; the one who is depressed moving toward the one who is not.  I need the other direction.  I know when I am in the murky, mucky waters, anyone standing on the shore is too distant, too impossible to reach.  I want that person to jump in the swamp with me, and walk with me toward the shore. 

In some ways I’m even willing to give up the shore in order to have someone with me in the swamp.  I know perfection is not attainable.  Life will always have its swampy moments.  Grief, depression, loneliness, poverty, homelessness.  And because our world is not perfect, we are not perfect, there will not always be a fix for those things.  At least not an immediate one. 

But we always have the choice to be united with the other where they are – without condition.  Standing on the shore we are too distant, too indifferent, too detached.  Jumping into the swamp is the act of solidarity.  Of course, solidarity can be uncomfortable.  We might have to sit in pain that cannon immediately be eased, and we don’t like that.

I remember when, right before I was to go get Lydia in Vietnam, I was told I wasn’t going to be able to adopt her.  I was plunged into the swamp.  Some people in my life, who I know loved me and hated to see me in pain, tried to make it better – fix it.  “There will be another child,” they said.  While well intended, I found it unhelpful, and I think it had as much to do with easing their pain as mine. 

Others just felt my pain, and understood there was no fix for it.  They sat with me, as uncomfortable as that was.  That I found helpful – redemptive even.  Not because I felt less pain, but because I didn’t feel alone. 

In baptism we remember that Jesus took on our pain even when he couldn’t make all the pain of the world go away.  That is the God we have.  And that is who we can be to each other.

And then, when we remember the two-way street, we realize that solidarity with another is already union with God – we become the divine movement just by becoming like the other.  Just as when God becomes more like us, we become more like God, when we become more like one another, we together become better and better reflections of God in this world.   And that is redemptive.  Amen.



Sunday, January 5, 2014

It Doesn't Matter How You Got Here

Matthew 2:1-11
Epiphany:  January 5, 2013

The magi are quirky little characters in Matthew’s gospel.  Here we have what was likely a group of Zoroastrian priests intruding on the story of Jesus’ birth and early years.  Only Matthew tells this story of the magi, and he gives the very first words to them – they are the first to speak in his gospel.  Only Matthew has a star appear in the sky leading these people to the Christ child.  What are they doing there? 

I can think of a number of reasons.  But the one I want to suggest today is that they provide us with a model for the faith journey.  I think we might learn something from the magi.  I think they might represent how each of us can come to encounter God in Jesus.  And I think it’s good news.

Let’s start with the fact that these magi were not doing anything out of the ordinary when they set off to find Jesus.  They were not just priests, they were astrologers.  Figuring out, from a star in the sky, that a new king had been born countries away seems out of the realm of possibility to us, but interpreting stars was their job…it was what they did, what people expected of them.  And at that time it wasn’t incredible for them to know such things just by looking at the night sky.  So their journey to Jesus began with them doing what they had always done.

Next, we learn that they screwed up on the way.  We often call these people wise ones.  But I’m not so sure they were so wise.  They walked into Jerusalem, the seat of Herod’s power – Herod, king of the Jews – and started asking around about where the new king of the Jews was.  Either they knew nothing of Herod’s ruthless rule, willing to kill anyone claiming his title, or they didn’t care.  I suspect it is the first.  They were just sort of clueless bulls in a china shop. 

Their actions set in motion a deadly game that would continue for all of Jesus’ life until he was, indeed, killed for claiming to be King of the Jews. 

Regardless, the star led them on to Bethlehem, and when the star stopped over Jesus’ house, they rejoiced, then they went in.  They came right to Jesus’ side to worship him.  They brought gifts – the gifts of their world – and knelt down and worshipped him.  In other words, they came in great humility. 

Yet I would contend they never really fully understood who this child was.  They called him king of the Jews.  For them, kings were simply rightful heirs to the throne.  They had no reason to think of Jesus as a messiah – only Herod calls him that.  I suspect they didn’t quite get it.

But here’s the thing: in the end, even though they weren’t Jewish and even though they bumbled their way to Bethlehem, and even though they might not have completely understood who Jesus was, at the end of the story we’re told, “They left for their own country by a different road.”

You see, they were changed by their journey – by their encounter with Jesus.  The statement that they used a different road is actually quite a powerful one.   The Greek word for road can also be translated “way.”  The early Christians were called people of “The Way.”  The astrologers may not have fully understood what happened, but their lives were wedded to the way of Jesus from the moment they met him.

What about us?  How do we get here?  How do we come to meet God – to meet God in Jesus?

Well, first, we don’t have to be anything special before showing up here.  We don’t have to be anything other than ourselves.  It doesn’t matter what we do for a living, where we live, wealthy or not, abled or disabled.  We don’t have to be doing anything special for the spirit to move us here.  However that happens: 

Maybe you have had some equivalent of a star guiding you here.  Maybe you are here because you have always been here.  Maybe you are here because you yearn for community.  Maybe you are drawn to the stories of the scriptures.  Maybe you come so your kids will have connection to a church.  Maybe you come because when you are here you experience something transcendent.  Maybe you’re here for the music.  Maybe you’re only here because you think you are supposed to be.  Whatever has compelled you here, I believe that is of God.  It doesn’t matter how we got here or why we came.

It also doesn’t matter what we’ve done along the way – no matter how serious.  Regardless of what we’ve done, the journey continues.  We are not forbidden to come here, even if we have messed up in the worst ways possible.  The star still led the magi to Jesus – and they had just endangered Jesus’ life. 

Finally, it doesn’t matter if you understand everything – if you know for sure Jesus is God, or Jesus is the Christ, or Jesus is the King of the Jews.  It doesn’t matter if you have it all figured out, either when you come or when you leave.  The encounter is what matters, not the doctrine. 

It doesn’t matter how you got here, why you came, or what you’ve done along the way.  And it doesn’t matter if you understand everything when you’re here.

Somehow, in the midst of everything, we got here, and somehow, regardless of our past, …we can meet Jesus and be changed by him. 

Today, like we do every first Sunday of the month, we will take communion.  The table is one of our versions of the house in Bethlehem.  Jesus is no longer a toddler to us, but we do say that in communion Christ is present at this table.  The Messiah is here.  We come and we meet him – in worship, in communion, in music, in the Word.  And we can be changed by that.

When the magi arrived at the house, they were joyful, they brought who they were and offered it to God, and they were humble.  This is not a bad way to approach the table.  Joyful that we are welcome no matter what, vulnerable as we come just as we are…no masks, no pretenses, no effort to conform to what we think we should do, just coming with what he have and who we are.  And finally, it doesn’t hurt to be humble.  I don’t think we need to get down on both knees and bow before God as we would a king – though that might not hurt.  But allowing ourselves to be open to the power and movement of God sometimes takes setting aside our egos, our assumptions, our expectations, and allowing for something new to capture and change us.

Too often it seems that our churches are set up so that people believe you have to be Christian before you come.  We’re established, obviously Christian, steeped in the traditions of Christianity.  I think sometimes people look at that and wonder if they can come even if they are not Christian.  Worse, people think, if they don’t come as Christians, they have to leave that way.  They think church is where conversion happens. 

The astrologers were astrologers when they came, and astrologers when they left.  They were no more Jewish than when they arrived.  They received a dream to move them on their way, which is what they knew – they knew how to interpret dreams.  God used who they were – and they weren’t Jewish when they came, they weren’t Jewish when they left, but they did choose a new way because of their encounter in that house.

It doesn’t matter how you got here.  It doesn’t matter what you might have done along the way.  Communion is here for all.  The possibility of connecting our lives with the way of Jesus is here for us all.  You don’t have to be Christian to show up, you don’t have to be Christian when you come to the table, and you don’t have to be Christian when you leave.  It’s not about being converted, it’s about being changed.  You don’t have to believe the right things – have the right doctrine.  You just have to trust the encounter and let that shape who you are. 

Today, as we come humbly to this table, let’s rejoice in that good news.  We can come just as we are – our neighbors can come just as they are – our enemies can come just as they are.  And if we do – if we come to this table…if we come to a sanctuary…if we find some way to encounter God here…we might be changed when we leave.  We will return to our lives, but as changed people.  We will see things a little differently.  We will do things a little differently.  We will love people a little more.

Francis Spufford wrote a book in which, among other things, he talks about the universality of humans messing up.  He calls us the international league of the guilty.  He says admitting to our own mistakes, our own selfishness, our own shadows is the first step in meeting God.  And then he goes on to write about church – what church means to him. 

“Fortunately,” he writes, “the international league of the guilty has littered the landscape with specialized buildings where attention comes easier.  I walk in.  I glance around.  And I see the objects that different ages carried in here because they thought they were precious…not in order to declare, those past people, that this was a place where only a precious and tasteful selection from human behavior was welcome, but the opposite, to celebrate with the best things they had the way the place acknowledged absolutely all of human behavior.  …To any conceivable act you might have committed, the building is set up only to say, ah, so you have, so you did; yes.  Would you like to sit down?”

The magi brought the best things they had to acknowledge the beauty of the place they came to and the welcome they would receive.  We come here and it is full of precious things people placed here:  The cross; the stained glass; the table; the font.  All are testaments to people who came to this place and found something so powerful they were changed by it. 

We continue to bring our offerings of banners, paraments, money, time and energy.  And each time it is because we have found something here.  It’s not because we have figured it all out.  It’s most definitely not because we’re perfect.  It’s because in this place, that accepts all of the international league of the guilty, is somewhere we have found a taste of God. 


I’m so glad that the journey never ends.  We get to come time and time again to this place – to this table.  We don’t have to arrive at a belief, we just come to see if we can find the one we have heard about so often.  The one born a king.  The one born to be followed.  The one born to show us how to love, live, heal, and die.  We come: it doesn’t matter from where, or why, or what happened on the way.  We come to meet the Christ and be sent home changed people.  Amen.