 by lay preacher, Will Harron
All rulers shall bow down before him, and all the nations do him service. For he shall deliver the poor who cries out in distress and the oppressed who has no helper. Amen Good morning saints! In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea. So begins today’s gospel passage, the story of the three wise men, sometimes kings, sometimes Magi. These mysterious figures travel from the east to find a King they scried in the stars and encounter Jesus. Not minding the lowliness of his appearance, they bestow gifts on him from their treasure chest - gold and the sacred anointing spices of frankincense and myrrh, before travelling back to their homeland - and outfoxing Herod the schemer king in the bargain. This is such a great story, and it bookends a season of story. Christmas is a twelve-day-long feast, beginning in the evening of Christmas Eve and ending on the eve of Epiphany, the Twelfth-night. January sixth marks the formal Feast of the Epiphany, and the start of the Epiphany season between Christmas and Lent, a brief return to the regular weekly cycle of Christian life. But all throughout the twelve days and Epiphany, we are treated to the vivid stories of the birth and first days of Jesus. Christmas Eve and Christmas give us the stories of Mary and Joseph seeking shelter and finding it in a barn and the angels appearing to the shepherds announcing glad tidings. Holy Innocents tells the shocking story of the aftermath of the Wise Men’s visit, and the precarity of life amidst the brutal paranoia of empire. Holy Name enfolds Jesus into the Jewish life of his family. And at the Epiphany, we have this story of kingship, of mystery, and of wisdom. What are we to make of all of this? I think this set of stories is so striking partially because it is only through Matthew and Luke’s gospels that we get them. The literary quality of Mark is so striking in part because of its insistent pacing, opening with an adult Jesus beginning his ministry, and the style of John is expressed by opening with the creation of the Universe, and Jesus’s place in it. Luke and Matthew have different but often similar stylistic goals in their telling of the gospel. They both build richer settings, embellishing the spare stories told in Mark with additional details, settings, and explanations. Luke and Matthew feel more story-like, in part because they are aware of and playing into tropes - both in the Hebrew scriptures and in the Greek society they are enmeshed in. They are telling stories that their listeners are primed to hear, and understand. I think this is especially present in Matthew’s story of the Epiphany. His Gospel begins by situating Jesus in the genealogy of David, claiming Jesus’s kingship by tying it to the power of David’s special relationship with God. Matthew then tells of Jesus’s conception and birth by situating Jesus as the answer to prophetic riddles and cyphers about the continuation of Israel after the exile to Babylon and the destruction of the ancient kingdoms of David - another sign of Jesus being the long-promised king, right down to being born in Bethlehem, the ancient city of David. But the story of the Epiphany uses a different set of literary allusions. Wise men from the east - Magi, a word that in Greek derives from the Zoroastrian priests of the ancient Persian Empire, have arrived in Jerusalem. Practicing the arcane and scientific craft of astrology, which requires precise knowledge about the movement of the stars and the meanings of each possible configuration, these mysterious foreigners have determined that a King of the Jews has been born, and they have arrived, inexplicably and with no warning or expectation or further explanation, to give him homage. This isn’t like any other story in the bible. This is a set of tropes out of Greek literature, sounding more like Herotodus or Xenophon than Moses or Jeremiah. But it fits the setting - the Greek-speaking Hellenistic culture overlaid on the region by the conquests of Alexander the Great and his successors, even more than the Roman occupation, have deeply shaped the Judaea of this time. And even if Matthew is writing to an audience further afield, Hellenistic Greek culture and literature dominates the Eastern Mediterranean. Even with this shift in literary genre, Matthew continues to underscore his theme - Jesus is the promised King. The heavens and earth are bending themselves to proclaim it - a universal kingship that is both enmeshed in and greater than any previous understanding of kingship. Imagine the story set today, using some of our current frames of reference: Headline: Nuclear scientists from Los Alamos have just arrived in Jerusalem looking for the next President, because their isotopes have determined that he will be born in the West Bank. This reflects some of the strangeness of this story - and also the authority that the Magi have to make their particular claim, finding meaning in the unfathomable makings of the universe. I think another retelling, using a different set of modern literary references, can give us insight from a different angle. In ancient days, three wizards arrived at the great city in search of the promised king. The usurping lord of the city sought to turn the encounter to his advantage, but the wizards evaded the evil lord and made their way to the most unlikely place, to the most unlikely boy, in a humble village. Bowing to him, they offered him three gifts to use on his quest to kingship: Gold, frankincense and myrrh. They then disappeared, returning to their homeland and confusing the evil lord, who struck out in anger. The mythical, mystical dimensions of the Epiphany are apparent in this retelling. The echos of the hero’s journey, one of our current cultural tropes, give us places to anchor ourselves in the story. We know the child faces a long journey, that the visit of these wizards will send him far from his home, and that even when he triumphs at the end, there will be a bittersweet note to that ending. We can guess that these gifts will have some place in the real or symbolic ending of the story. And we can cheer the fall of the evil lord, whose power seems so real and tangible at the beginning. All of these stories, and all of our Christmas stories, and the Epiphany itself - teach us to pay attention. The Advent imperative to keep awake is redoubled. Incredible things are afoot - the powers of princes and potentates are of no account to the order of the universe, which is bending towards one born in the most lowly and unlikely of places. At the rising of his star, Jesus is born and the world takes notice - even Herod is forced to pay attention, and his cruellest orders are unable to halt the progress of the King of Kings. And this infant grows up, and just as we’ve heard this story before, we’ve heard the story of his ministry, his journey towards Jerusalem, and his kingship, which does not lead where the tropes, ancient and modern, lead us to look, leading conquering armies, being sworn into earthly office, being crowned and anointed atop glittering palaces - but instead leads to something more horrible and more amazing - the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the full re-ordering of life over death, the deliverance from the triumph of evil and the horror of death. This re-ordering is ongoing amidst us to this day. Even amidst the deaths of Holy Innocents, the journey of refugee families fleeing oppression and war, the forces of Empire rampant and rampaging in all of their power and paranoia - there is a star rising, a hope among us, and a child, a king, a promise, that shows us where God is: For he shall deliver the poor who cries out in distress and the oppressed who has no helper. He shall have pity on the lowly and poor; he shall preserve the lives of the needy. He shall redeem their lives from oppression and violence, and dear shall their blood be in his sight Amen  By Lay Preacher, Will Harron
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God Amen. Please sit. Good Morning Saints! This morning’s gospel portion from Mark begins with one of my favorite stories about Jesus. Earlier in Mark’s gospel, Jesus has sent out the twelve disciples two by two, giving them authority over the unclean spirits, to cast out the demons, and to anoint and heal the sick. I think about what that might look like today: Jesus calling his twelve together to transform and liberate communities from oppression, from paralyzing guilt, from the legacies of racism, sexism, homophobia and misogyny, from the crushing weight of corporate greed and environmental degradation - and to bring healing to communities where health care is inaccessible, unaffordable, or even illegal. Two thousand years later, we still need that healing, that liberation. And the disciples - these poor fisherfolk, renegade tax collectors, the scruffiest of small groups - did it. They healed, they cast out, they brought relief to the communities they entered and proclaimed deliverance to the homes they passed through. And they return to Jesus to tell him everything they’ve done. What a joy that must have been, to return and share their own good news. Saints, this is where I love Jesus the most. Because Jesus wants to hear, and Jesus wants to give his disciples rest after their period of courage and ministry, and Jesus recognizes that they’re stretched to the breaking point - approaching burnout, unable to even find the time to eat. So Jesus takes them away to a deserted place, for rest, for a vacation, for a retreat, a withdrawal for strengthening and sustenance and recommitting to their work. Jesus knows we can’t work all the time. God rested on the seventh day and the Gospel is a record that the disciples, as good a group as they are, aren’t better than God. And so they get in a boat and go away to a deserted place to rest. This doesn’t stop the needs of the world around them, though. People see them going, and follow on foot - there is such a desire for the healing they have brought, for the wholeness that Jesus’s good news shows is possible, for the casting out of spirits in a place sorely oppressed by legions of occupying powers. They follow on foot and show up at the deserted beach retreat Jesus has sought out for the disciples. But - and saints, this line teaches me day by day- this doesn’t cut their time of retreat and rest short. God rested on the seventh day and they aren’t better than God. And in fact, God shows up to allow them to rest. Jesus takes charge of the arriving crowds, in compassion giving them what they so deeply need, and the disciples are able to continue to recover from their own shift on the front lines of ministry. It might be hard to catch this message from today’s lectionary passage, because we hop twenty verses right to Jesus again ministering to the crowds. But early among those skipped verses is the disciples showing up at the end of their day of rest on the shore and finding Jesus still caring for the crowds - the disciples’ rest has been preserved. Saints, that is a liberating image for me. I don’t know about you, but life, work, ministry - can sometimes feel nonstop. I need to hear that I can take my rest, my retreat, my time away. Jesus, God, my communities, will show up and support me in this, and support those who I support when I step out to take my rest. It is a delivering word to hear Jesus give his disciples, who he demands so much of, rest. Saints - we aren’t Jesus in these stories. We are disciples. We are the crowds. We know there is always a savior there, giving healing, delivering from oppression, providing for us when we need him, alongside us when we are serving as his hands and feet, and shielding us when we need our holy rest. We are not machines. We aren’t made to run twenty-four-seven. And yet it can be so tough to yield to that gentle voice, to let go of my compulsion to keep control and keep going, and to take my rest. I’ve got to keep going, to get to the end of my work, my projects, my communities needs, my obligations, before I am worthy of stopping and resting. It’s a challenge to unlearn the formation of a world of twenty-four-seven, but it is necessary. I’m grateful for the teachers I’ve had in that task. One of those teachers was the Camino. In the summer of 2010, I had just completed my junior year at Williams College. I had been attending Saint John’s in Williamstown periodically, my first Episcopal church, and I was trying to figure out what I was doing with my life. I had recently switched from a biology major to a history major, had spent a year mentoring first-year students, and was loving my time playing in the marching band. But I was seeking something more, and I was seeking a greater sort of belonging. I applied for a summer fellowship for a “personal spiritual journey,” something offered through generous alumni support, and was awarded a fellowship to walk the Camino de Santiago, the way of Saint James across northern Spain. I wanted clarity about my life that I hadn’t yet achieved. I was twenty one, darn it, I should have things mostly figured out about the shape of my life. And so, I flew to Europe and took trains and busses to the start of the camino. I didn’t know anything about backpacking - I had a borrowed pack, too much clothes and equipment, heavy boots, and a fearlessness that in retrospect is both admirable and a little terrifying. And so I began walking. One day after another, the rhythm was the same - rise early in the morning in a hostel, eat the lightest of continental breakfasts, walk for a time, stop in a town and enjoy a mid-morning or mid-day meal, or pause at the side of the path and eat food I carried with me, arrive in mid-afternoon to a sleepy Spanish town in the middle of its siesta and check into my hostel, shower and freshen up, go to church if there was a pilgrim mass, have a big dinner at the hostel or a local restaurant that offered “pilgrim special” meals, go to bed early, and rise again early the next morning for another day of walking. It was a simple rhythm that was a soothing balm after three years of high pressure liberal arts college life. As I walked, I met people - other seekers, Americans, Europeans, Spanish folks - as well as people out for the physical challenge, for the travelling party scene that could be found if you looked for it, for particular religious obligations, or to mentally recover from war and trauma. I met Episcopalians - some my age, some older, and Catholics, and Presbyterians and Lutherans and atheists and agnostics. I met locals, some of whom welcomed me into the local hostels they maintained, or opened ancient churches for a curious pilgrim to see, or who were just living their lives alongside the path. And I learned more about my own capacity - to walk, to pick up, carry, and lay down burdens, to muddle on day by day when the going got tedious or to be amazed by the new wonders each day of sunlight and shadow on the landscape. I learned about Saint James, about the people who ascribed miracles of healing to him, to the mystical set of stories about the camino that has draw people to Santiago for centuries, and about how to pray when I had learned to desire communion and yet, there was no worship where communion was available - certainly practice for the long drought of the pandemic. And I learned that I needed that rest at the end of the day, that there were limits to how far I could go, that my body would take me as far as I needed if I cared for it, and that there was joy in listening to those limits and cherishing the opportunities for rest. After thirty three days I arrived in Santiago, and despite my joy, I hadn’t found the clarity I sought. I hadn’t figured it all out. And so I pressed onwards for three more days, towards the sea, to Fisterra where Europe meets the Atlantic, and one of the further endpoints of the Camino. I sat on a clifftop over the ocean, watching the sun set, while around me pilgrims celebrated. And I still hadn’t found the completion I sought. I turned my back on the ocean, turned my face towards the deepening night, and trudged back to the hostel. Where would I find this clarity, this certainty, this sense of knowing? Saints, it seems that everyone who has hiked the Camino left their mark on every available surface. Every door, every sign, every flat surface has some sort of graffiti, pilgrim markings left in pen and sharpie, spanning the profound to the mundane. And on the door of that last hostel, amidst the signatures of pilgrims finishing their hike and leaving their final wit and wisdom, I saw words that spoke to my soul. “There is no end.” My quest for clarity, for certainty, for finality, was one that wouldn’t end. My life is and ought to be marked by continual growth, continual change, continual seeking. I’m still on my pilgrimage, surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, saints and strangers all seeking to live our lives in the way that gives the most life, that is delivered from the demonic lies that says we are not enough, we are unworthy of rest, that we don’t belong, that we are un-healable, un-savable, un-lovable. Saints, you and I are together seeking Jesus continually - whether we are the crowd seeking Jesus out for healing and knowledge, or the disciples returning to Jesus tired and with full hearts to share from our ministering. We are constantly seeking, constantly following, constantly drawn on in our pilgrimage because there is something in this Christ we recognize. Like the crowds in Genessaret, we recognize that healing is here, that hope is here, that liberation is possible and we get up and we run towards it. In Jesus we recognize that there is more to life than an empire that says war is peace and slavery is freedom and that an unjust status quo is the best we can get. In Christ, we recognize love and we believe, we hope, we know, that transformative justice, healing, and reconciliation, are possible. In Jesus, we find ourselves changed from strangers into fellow pilgrims, saints and citizens, incorporated into a body that is more diverse and more expansive than we can even imagine, and more powerful than empires can dream. Our pilgrimage is one of rising and setting, of seeking and following, healing each other, and then resting, and experiencing our own healing. There is no end to our journey together, but there is rest for the weary. There is no end to the things we can do in Christ, but there is healing and wholeness for the wounded. There is no end to the wonders of love - but there is work for us to do, together, as saints and citizens and siblings in the Body of Christ. Amen by Will Harron, Lay Preacher  “That Ridiculous Faith Reckoned as Righteousness”
The poor shall eat and be satisfied, and those who seek God shall praise God: "May your heart live for ever!" I’m currently involved in the world’s slowest bible study. There’s no record-checking to prove this claim, but it certainly feels true. For the past year or so, my friend Bird and I have been meeting on a voice call to read through the book of Genesis. It started out weekly, but we’ve both lost track of our schedules, and so are meeting much less regularly at the moment. But the bible study was also slow because we were taking our time. Each time we met, we’d read through a chapter out loud, spend some time in silence, and then spend a half hour or so reflecting on the text. Genesis is 50 chapters long, so this is not a fast process – and Bird and I are nearly at the end. But this study has given me a certain familiarity with the text, a joyful connection to this story and its characters; its families; and its promises. And so, reading through this morning’s lesson from Genesis, I was struck by some of what is included, and what is excluded from the portion. As the lesson shares, Abram is ninety-nine years old and the Lord appears to him and announces that God will make a covenant with Abram. Abram, in deference to God, falls on his face, and God continues: this covenant will make Abram the ancestor of a multitude of great nations, great in both the numerical sense and in the power exercised by those descendants. Abram will now be called Abraham, and his wife Sarai is now to be called Sarah, and she will be blessed by giving birth to a son. The lesson skips over 8 verses that detail that the sign of this covenant is circumcision, and the mechanics of how that sign is carried out, which is fine, but it also ends at verse 16, which I find interesting. In verse 17, Abraham reacts to this pronunciation by once again falling on his face, but this time in laughter. “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” There is a comedic resonance to Abram, falling down on his face before God both in awe and wonder as well as in the throes of hilarity. That makes me wonder, why is our lesson structured this way? What were the framers of the lectionary up to? Sometimes our lessons from the first testament flow in a continuous story, especially in the long stretches of Sundays after Pentecost. In Lent, in Year B of our cycle of readings, however, the first testament lessons serve to echo themes found in the later lesson or the Gospel reading. Today’s portion from the fourth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans gives the key to what this particular selection from Genesis is highlighting. There is a pretty direct connection between the two. Paul is talking about faith – specifically about Abraham’s faith – being what connects us to God’s promises, rather than following laws. This is how he explains it: Abraham lived before the covenant of laws that God made with Moses. Despite not having those laws to follow, he was worthy of God’s promise. Thus, Paul writes, following the law of the covenant isn’t the key thing to being worthy of God’s promise – instead, Paul writes to his audience of Jewish and Gentile followers of Christ in Rome, what is most important is faith. Paul is being a little tricky, playing a little fast and loose with the story to make his point. This morning’s lesson is just one part of a complicated argument Paul is making about the unity of the emerging Christian community, and about the bonds of that unity. He is trying to do something very challenging, to weave ties between the different and feuding communities of Christ-followers in Rome, trying to summon connections that can transcend the previous markers of community, and can also transcend previous grudges and bad feelings – the things that separated one body of believers from another. This is challenging at the best of times, and he’s doing this from across the Mediterranean in a letter dictated to Tertius and read aloud in Rome by Phoebe. So we can perhaps forgive him for fudging some minor details in order to make a larger point – Abraham believed in God’s promises and it was reckoned to him as righteousness; therefore, according to Paul, we who believe in God’s actions in raising Christ from the dead are also connected to that faith which is righteousness. That concept is a tough one to wrap my mind around. “Faith reckoned as righteousness.” What does that even mean, for faith to be reckoned the same as righteousness? My mind immediately resists the concept, thinking of contemporary examples of blind faith leading to catastrophic results. Was that righteousness? How many pieces of our broken world, fragments of the nightmare made from God’s dream, are the result of faith in something death-dealing being treated as righteousness? So, Paul, you’ve got me in a double bind. Because, thinking back to Abraham – and that verse which was omitted from our lectionary - Abraham immediately laughs at God’s promise. Abraham immediately treats it as ridiculous. He falls on his face laughing. “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?” What does it mean for us that in the text of Genesis, Abraham questions God’s promise, even as Paul makes the claim that “He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old).” Paul is no fool – even when we disagree with him, we must give him credit as a skilled interpreter of scripture. What, exactly, is Paul doing here? Let’s carry that question with us to the Gospel lesson. Our Lenten gospel lessons, in one week, have hopped halfway through Mark. We’re now in chapter 8. Just before this passage, Jesus asked the disciples who they thought he was, and Peter confessed his belief, his faith, that Jesus was the Messiah, a promised, anointed deliverer of the people Israel from colonized oppression. Nodding, Jesus tells them that he must undergo suffering, be rejected by the religious authorities, be killed, and to rise again three days later. Peter, perhaps emboldened by the experience of confessing faith in his teacher’s divine status, steps forward again, takes Jesus aside, and rebukes him. That’s not what the Messiah means. Suffering, rejection, death – those aren’t the plot points of the saving of the world. Those are what Peter already sees around him. His faith demands more. Perhaps he doesn’t register Jesus rising on the third day – perhaps it is too ludicrous to consider, or the audacity of the claim underscores the need to get Jesus on message, to keep being the Messiah Peter believes in. Jesus won’t have this. “Turning, and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’ Let’s pause here. This can land with a shock. Peter has just expressed two moments of tender vulnerability with Jesus – first confessing faith in him, then privately pushing back against claims he doesn’t think are fruitful. And Jesus rebukes him and calls him Satan in front of the other disciples. But I believe it is fruitful to dig some more at this. For one, if you recall from last week’s Gospel lesson, Jesus has met Satan. Jesus has experienced being tempted, being accused, being asked to set aside who he truly is for what the world and society around him think the Son of God should act like:
This, to Jesus, is Satan. And so, he rebukes Peter. This is not the way. This is not divine. This is not what Messiah means. And Jesus calls the crowd, speaking to and beyond his disciples – to follow him is to deny oneself, to take up their cross and follow him towards his death. Trying to save your life will fail, but letting go of that fear, stepping with Jesus across the chasm of pain, rejection, humiliation, and death – will bring life, will save life. What good is gaining the whole world – the goal of princes and generals and conquerors and rulers throughout time – when you’re still going to die anyway? That isn’t the divine dream. That’s a human nightmare. Jesus’s rebuke of Peter is a challenge to his friend, an invitation to broaden his faith beyond a narrow conception of what God-breathed liberation looks like and into the expansive faith that destroys death. It is a challenge to the disciples, and to all who hear it – that the Good News isn’t the pursuit of power or glory, but the denial of it, bringing freedom and overcoming death. This is faith reckoned as righteousness – faith that, despite monuments of power, the chronicles of oppression, and the pursuit of death-dealing to stave off oblivion – the true divine thing in this world, the way to follow Jesus, is to give all of that up, give up life itself, to walk in love as God loves us. This sort of faith, for Paul, despite its foolishness, is hope. This faith can bridge estranged communities and heal distrust, can make reparation and repair breaches. It doesn’t matter for Paul that Abraham laughs at the ridiculousness of God’s promise. It is a ridiculous promise, just as the promise of resurrection is ridiculous. But we can laugh at something even as it compels us to follow. Amidst war and genocide; amidst the seemingly irretrievable state of our political institutions, especially in light of unending gun violence; amidst environmental catastrophe; amidst the pervasive and persistent anti-Blackness, homophobia, racism, transphobia, misogyny, and hate within our society and amidst the death caused by such hate; we still get up each new day, we still dream of justice, we still find hope in the love that surrounds us. That is ridiculous, and yet it is true. We may be as good as dead, as Paul quips of Abraham. We’re all going to die, and there’s no escaping it. But the way of Love, the way of divine things, of denying death-dealing systems and embracing the hope that our faith offers, remains. God always offers this mercy, bringing us back again and again to that ridiculous faith which is reckoned as righteousness. Amen. |