Repetition

In the days of my childhood if it snowed heavily on a school day the thing to do was to get up and listen to the radio.  It was on the local radio stations that the list of school closings would be read.  So if you woke up and you saw the kinds of piles of snow on the windowsill that we woke up to yesterday, and if it was a school day, you would huddle around a radio somewhere in the house to listen to the list of school closings, and hope with all your might that your school was on the list.  The list had to be repeated, of course, every so often early in the morning, so that families tuning in at different times could still learn what they needed to know – the important information about whether or not school was on that day.  So you listened to the list as it was repeated, and you waited for what you hoped would be good news.

Any half-attentive church-goer could easily be led to conclude that Jesus repeated himself often.  Since we tend to read the same passages of Scripture over and over every three years, and within that three-year pattern sometimes we hear different accounts of the same story, it can seem as if Jesus repeats himself.  “Take up your cross and follow me.”  “The last must be first and the first must be last.”  “A house divided cannot stand.”  “Let your light so shine before others…”  These phrases are so familiar; we have heard them more than once, surely Jesus must have said them more than once (I know I repeat good material when I have it).  But actually, within the texts of the Gospels themselves, we seldom hear Jesus repeat himself in any one Gospel account.  Maybe good editing accounts for this absence of repetition.

But today we hear Jesus repeat something that’s been said before.  He repeats a stirring phrase from the writings of the prophet Isaiah.  And when he repeats these words everyone in earshot sits up and takes notice.  "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Remember the setting: Jesus is in the synagogue of his hometown, Nazareth, where he spent his childhood, where he was well known by many.  His friends and relatives and acquaintances are there in the synagogue, and they hear something they are not expecting.  What they hear is not Jesus repeating himself, nor is it even only Jesus repeating the words of the prophet.  They hear something that makes them all stare at him in amazement.  Whether they knew precisely what it was they were hearing is impossible for me to say, but they knew it was a moment of significance.  For they heard God repeat himself – and that is a rare thing to hear indeed.

God repeats himself.  But, to go by this example, maybe it’s only once every eight hundred or a thousand years, or more that he does so.  So it is worth paying attention when God repeats himself, which is precisely what we hear happening in the Gospel reading today.

God repeats himself, and what does he have to say?  He says: I have good news for the poor, release for captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed.  Period.  That’s God repeating himself.  That’s what God thinks is worth repeating.  Interesting.

It’s tempting, this Sunday, to take advantage of Saint Paul’s eloquent and prescient teaching on inclusivity and diversity.  Lord knows I am tempted to try to improvise variations on his themes in light of the recent statement from the leaders of our sister churches around the world in the Anglican Communion.  Oh, how I would like to yield to the temptation! 

But doing so would very likely detract from the important opportunity to direct your attention to God repeating himself: making promises to the poor, the imprisoned, the incapacitated, and the oppressed.  If God is going to repeat God’s self, we might want to check our own preoccupations, to make sure we are being attentive to what ever God thinks is important enough to repeat.

Recently, a friend went to go visit the great Anglo-catholic parish of St. Mary the Virgin on West 46th Street, just off Times Square in New York City.  There was no liturgy taking place at the time, the organ was not being played, no special exhibit of art was on display.  It was a bitterly cold winter’s day, and here’s what my friend noticed: the pews were populated with dozens of homeless men and women who had come in to the church to find refuge from the cold.  Pews are often maligned these days, but you have to admit that it’s easier to stretch out for a rest on a pew than it is in a chair.  And I have no doubt that the old wooden pews of Smokey Mary’s were conveying good news to the poor in their own way that cold day.

At least once, God repeated himself.  And what he chose to repeat was not a defense of marriage, or any other matter of doctrine or discipline.  No!  It was good news to the poor, release to the captives, relief to the suffering, and freedom for the oppressed!  These are the things that God went to the trouble of having his Son repeat!

I sometimes find myself wanting to try to say that faith is simple, or religion is simple: all you have to do is love God and your neighbor.  But I know that in reality neither of these things is simple to put into practice.  You have to ask, for instance, “Who is my neighbor?”

God is not simple, and neither are we.  So questions of faith and religion are going to be complicated from time to time: thus has it always been.  But now and then we have to simplify things just to help us get through them

Which is all the more reason to sit up and take notice when God repeats himself, especially since it does appear to be rather a rare occurrence, and since the message he had was fairly simple.

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

So you come to church on a snowy morning, and it’s not a snow day; you were right to come!  But still you want to listen for the thing that is repeated … to make sure you don’t miss the Good News.  You came in from the cold to get warm, and maybe you did not even know that you needed to hear this Good News.  Maybe you were hardly aware of your poverty, your imprisonment, your blindness, or your oppression, until you stopped to listen to see if God would repeat himself.

And God does repeat himself, as you are settled into your pew.  And by his grace, you may hear that this Good News is meant for you: so important that these words of hope are worth repeating.

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

Pray, God, keep repeating it, until finally we have ears to hear!

Preached by Fr. Sean Mullen

24 January 2016

Saint Mark’s Church Philadelphia

Measuring the Immeasurable

Preached by Father Nicholas Phelps

17 January 2016

Saint Mark's Church, Philadelphia

Bothering with Baptism

The first person in line that day was an old woman named Rachel. When she came up from the water, the first thing she felt was relief. She had been waiting a long time to see the Baptizer, and she was glad she had been able to make it to him before she became too frail to make the journey out into the wilderness. After Rachel was Benjamin. When Benjamin came up out of the water, the he felt relieved, too, but that was mostly because he couldn’t swim, and even with the John’s enormous, hairy paw of a hand under his head, he didn’t like to be submerged for any longer than necessary.

After Benjamin was a little woman named Anna. The first thing she thought when she came up from the water, God help her, was that she might have left the fire burning too hot in her oven. Surely her sister would notice if the fire spit an ember out onto the floor, she thought, and then chastised herself for having such a mundane thought at such a profound moment, but God help her, there she was. Anna was followed by Jeremiah, who came up out of the water worried about what the Pharisees might say to him later but certain that there was no place else he’d rather be.

Jesus followed Jeremiah, and when Jesus came up out of the water he was filled with an overwhelming longing to be still and know God, a deep desire to pray. James followed Jesus, a little boy who had only come down to the water’s edge because his mother was in line too but who found himself grinning like a goof when he came up out of the water for a reason he couldn’t quite explain. And Rebecca followed James, and Peter followed Rebecca, and on and on down the line until the crowds had fallen away and the desert had grown dusky and quiet.

Rachel left feeling peaceful; Benjamin feeling wet but brave. Anna left quickly and felt slightly silly but mostly grateful when she saw that her house was still standing. Jeremiah left with a heart full of questions and hope. Jesus left and went to pray, and in his prayer he felt the weight of the Holy Spirit press down on his shoulder like a warm hand, heard the voice of his Father speak low into his ear, “You are my Son, marked as my own forever, and I am so pleased with you.” James skipped over to his mother and held her hand all the way home, and Rebecca and Peter and all the rest went back to their lives a little changed, or a lot changed, or not sure if they had been changed, and they continued to work and play and love and weep and rejoice and wait for the one who would come to baptize them with the Holy Spirit like fire.

And that, my friends, is the Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of Luke. It is a quiet, private, undramatic thing. Here Jesus is baptized as just one of a crowd, when all the rest of the people were baptized. Here there is no conversation between Jesus and John about the suitability of the baptism; in fact, here there is no mention of John at all. And here, when the words come down from a hole in the heavens, there is no indication at all that anyone else hears them. Jesus is praying after his baptism, ostensibly alone, when the Spirit descends, and God speaks only to him – You are my Son – not to the crowds – This is my Son. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’ baptism doesn’t really stand out much. It is a moment mostly between him and his Father.

 All of which raises an interesting question. Why did Jesus bother? If his baptism wasn’t about pointing him out to the crowds who were filled with expectation, why bother? If his baptism wasn’t about confirming to John that this was the meet and right thing to do, then why bother? If John himself had only verses before been downplaying his own baptismal prowess – I’m really only baptizing with water, but soon someone will come with all the fire of the Holy Spirit – then why bother? And finally, if John’s baptism was an opportunity for people to confess their sins, then why in the world did the one who was without sin bother with baptism?

Luke doesn’t answer this question. It could be that Jesus’ baptism was about a kind of solidarity, a holy being-with, which showed that he was living fully as one of the people baptized on either side of him. It could be that his baptism was about marking the beginning of his ministry with a ritual that offered not just cleansing but also a sense of new beginning. Or it could be that his baptism was about cracking him open to begin taking on all of the sins that were sloshing around in that murky water so that he could carry them to the cross and wash them clean again. Why did Jesus bother with baptism? It could be any of these things, or it could be for some reason known only deep within the heart of God.

But the question of why Jesus bothered with baptism leads us to another question, one that is slightly hidden in shadow. And that question is this – why do we bother with baptism? Why bother with baptism? What is the point of this particular ritual – what does it do, exactly? Does it really do anything to us, to the Church, to the world? If we can come here and worship, if we can go into the world loving our neighbors as ourselves, if we can serve and pray and even in some places receive Communion, then what is the point of an ancient cleansing ritual? After all, we aren’t so obsessed with original sin these days, right? We know the pattern of our brokenness – we screw up, we fall down, we repent, we make it right, we step out again in faith. I don’t have to be baptized to make that pattern work for me. Most of us can’t even remember our baptisms, so how can something that we know to be true about ourselves only because we can see the grainy old photographs of us dressed in a tiny white gown really matter in our day to day lives, when we’re choosing a career, or starting a family, or writing a pledge card, or caring for an aging parent? Why bother with baptism, with doing it, first, or with thinking much about it after it’s been done?

Why bother with baptism? Because we need baptism to bother us. We need our baptisms to bother us, to trouble us, stir us up in the best possible way. We need our baptisms to change us, to refuse to let us be the same people we were before. We need our baptisms to transform us from people who love and serve and pray and worship out of the goodness of our hearts to people who are bound to love and serve and pray and worship by a God who has locked us in tight with love. We need our baptisms to bother us, daily, to pray, to recognize and repent for the sin in our lives, to fill the dark places of this world with the light of the Gospel, to respond to people in need, to right injustices in our world. Our baptisms should bother us, daily, because in our baptisms you and I promised that we would do all of those things, and we asked God to help us. And God took us seriously. God is helping us, will continue to help us, whether we ask for it or not. In our baptisms we have opened ourselves up to let God work on us, to bother us and make us over into the people God created us to be, to trouble us out of complacency, to challenge us and support us, to redeem us and save us, to raise us up to a completely new life – one where the decision to be Christ-like is no longer a choice among many but the only choice that resonates with every water-logged cell in our bodies.

Maybe this is why Jesus bothered with baptism. Not just so that Rebecca and Benjamin and Anna and Jacob would know who he was, not just so that his cousin would know who he was, but so we would. So that we could know this moment, when God looked down upon his only Son and couldn’t help but say, I love you, my dearest one. Jesus hadn’t even done anything yet, and still God poured so much love out over him that it spilled over into twelve disciples, and the sick and the little children, into the cross and the empty tomb and into the waters of fonts here, there, and everywhere, transforming our baptisms into baptisms of water and fire, of initiation and transformation, of death and life.

Remember your baptism. Reclaim the truth and promise of your baptismal promises, with God’s help. Let the power of the Holy Spirit moving over you and marking you as Christ’s own forever lead you straight up the axis of our faith, from the font to the table. And if you aren’t baptized yet, begin your walk to the font today. And when you are baptized, and when all of the people have been baptized, follow the path from the font to the altar, week after week, day after day, and leave this place feeling peaceful, and wet but brave, and really very grateful, and with a heart full of questions and hope. Leave this place feeling loved and cherished, beloved and chosen, and filled to the brim with giddy joy. Wonderfully, beautifully baptized and bothered.   

Preached by Mother Erika Takacs

10 January 2016, The Baptism of our Lord

Saint Mark's, Philadelphia