Keeping the Season

"Nothing that Belongs to Us" by Dee Ashley, on Flickr

Wise women also came
by Jan Richardson

Wise women also came.
The fire burned in their wombs long before they saw the flaming star in the sky.
They walked in shadows, trusting the path would open under the light of the moon.

Wise women also came, seeking no directions, no permission from any king.
They came by their own authority, their own desire, their own longing.
They came in quiet, spreading no rumours, sparking no fears to lead to innocents' slaughter,
to their sister Rachel's inconsolable lamentations.

Wise women also came, and they brought useful gifts:
water for labour's washing, fire for warm illumination, a blanket for swaddling.

Wise women also came, at least three of them,
holdingMary in the labour,
crying out with her in the birth pangs,
breathing ancient blessings into her ear.

Wise women also came, and they went, as wise women always do, home a different way.


-from Night Visions: Searching for Shadows of Advent and Christmas, 1998: United Church Press

"Annunciation Mosaic" by Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P., on Flickr

It came to me, recently, that faith is "a certain widening of the imagination." When Mary asked the Angel, "How shall these things be?" she as asking God to widen her imagination.

All my life I have been requesting the same thing - a baptized imagination that has a widen enough faith to see the numinous in the ordinary. Without discarding reason, or analysis, I seek from my Muse, the Holy Spirit, images that will open up reality and pull me into its center.

This is the benison of the sacramental view of life.

-"A Widening of the Imagination" by Luci Shaw, in Wintersong

"Kanakuk K-7 Trust Fall" by Kanakuk Kamps, on Flickr

Luke 24:44–53
Then [Jesus] said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you — that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

---
I always hated trust fall night at youth group.

The youth room in the church I grew up in had four sets of gray-carpeted risers that you could roll around to move into any configuration you wanted. Basically, it was like a rolling, carpeted, giant staircase, with four levels for people to sit on.

Or, on trust fall night, these risers were there for you to climb to the top of, and then fall backwards into the waiting arms of your friends. No ground-level trust falls for us. Nope, crazy scary trust falls. Off of a riser five feet in the air.

We were trained well. You had at least ten people standing behind you, their arms outstretched and overlapping. You promised, on your part, to keep your arms tucked over your chest, and to fall straight back like a board, and not to bend at the waist. I watched friend after friend fall, successfully, into our waiting teenage arms. But when I was the one standing up there, glancing over my shoulder at the waiting arms below, I froze. Didn’t matter how many other people they had caught. What if they dropped me? It’s not that I didn’t trust them, per se, but I really didn’t trust that their skinny teenage arms would be strong enough. I didn’t trust that I wouldn’t mess up and fall to the side of them, missing their arms completely. I didn’t trust that some act of God wouldn’t happen behind my back and that they wouldn’t all run off to check it out and forget to tell me that they’d left.

I honestly don’t remember whether I actually did the trust fall or whether I crept back down the risers.

Isn’t that just how it is to be human? No matter how many proofs, now matter how much training, no matter how much evidence and precedent and learning we have, it still is so very hard to trust one another, especially when it feels like we are being asked to trust one another with our very lives or souls.

So here we are on Ascension. The disciples have watched Jesus rise up into the heavens, they are nudged down the mountain by two mysterious figures, and they are called and empowered to pick up where Jesus left off and share his good news with all the ends of the earth.

But before they can head down the mountain to do this work of faith, they have to do two things.

1. They have to realize - and believe - that Jesus trusts them to do this work.
2. They have to trust one another to do this work.

For all of the difficult things that Jesus asked the disciples to do - saying "Come follow me," or sending them out in ministry saying, "Take nothing for your journey," or telling them, "If you want to become my followers you must deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me," or saying to them in the garden, "Stay awake" - of all of the difficult things Jesus asked the disciples to do, maybe most difficult thing that Jesus ever asked the disciples to do was to trust one another to carry on his ministry without him.

This is a tall order. Is it any surprise that they just stood there, looking to heaven? Lowering their gaze would mean having to look each other in the eye instead. And it is one thing to trust God, but a far different thing to trust one another on God's behalf.

After a little nudge down the mountain, they bounded to flat ground, rejoicing, which is great and all, but as we read through Acts and through all the letters written to those first Christian communities, we know that the joy of the disciples soon turned into quibbling about what it really meant to follow Jesus and do his work in the world. Do we eat food sacrificed to idols? Do new believers have to be circumcised? In whose name should we be baptizing people? Who gets to talk in worship? Which is more important, faith or good works of the law? What of the Gentiles? What of the Jews? Was Jesus really a human or did he just appear human?

If Jesus had any idea that these mistrusts and arguments were going to happen, he didn’t let on. And it didn’t stop him from sending the disciples out in his name.

The disciples, the apostles, the early church, all of us who have come after: we take what we have learned from Jesus about service, witness, resurrection, and forgiveness, and try to live out his legacy; we chase after a Holy Spirit who likes to get places first and who is keen on the work of improvisation and surprise, and in all of this we are being called to trust that if we are doing the best we can, then so also are our brothers and sisters in faith doing the best they can, and so doing the work of God in the world means getting over ourselves and our anxieties and giving up a little bit of power and control, and giving one another the benefit of the doubt.

Where there are real abuses of power in the name of God, of course, we need to speak out about those things. Never should the name of Jesus be invoked to oppress or harm one another, to hurt or destroy. But when it comes to figuring out the best way to do the work of faith - prayer, devotion, service, witness, advocacy - Jesus empowers us not just to do these things, but to trust one another to do these things, even if we don't quite agree on how they should be done.

But let’s be honest. It’s hard.

I mean, when I walk by that guy with the portable sound system at the corner of Adams and State Street, in downtown Chicago when I'm visiting family after Christmas, and he holds a posterboard sign in one hand that says "Repent," and holds a microphone with the other hand into which he says things like "This is an evil age and you are children of corruption, repent of all your sins or be cast into the fires of hell"...I'm not too keen on trusting him as a fellow steward of God's mysteries.

And sometimes, when my Type A personality is feeling particularly ornery, I don't find it easy to trust that ministry projects will be successful unless all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed and paperwork filed in a timely and responsible manner.

A poll conduced a couple of years ago found that we, as a society, don't trust each other any more. Fewer than one-third of those polled expressed trust in clerks who swiped their credit cards, trust in other drivers on the road, or trust for people they meet while traveling. This lack of trust, according to the author of the report, "diverts energy to counting change, drawing up 100-page legal contracts and building gated communities."

We do the same thing in the church, diverting energy into checks and balances, setting up criteria for trustworthiness, whether it be church membership or being a part of the right denomination; by vetting ministry projects through multiple layers of taskforces, committees, councils, and congregational votes; by setting up expectations about how much Bible or theology one should know before they do ministry.

Except that Jesus gave the disciples about two and a half things - total - that made them worthy to do ministry. He gave them himself - his death, his resurrection, his word; he gave them the Holy Spirit (which will show up in full force next week!); and he gave them his blessing. Or maybe half a blessing, because he was snatched up into heaven while he was still blessing them.

But anyway. That’s what it takes to be a disciple and to do Jesus’ ministry in the world. It takes the word of Jesus, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and blessing. Things that we receive in baptism. Things that we receive at the table. Things that we receive each week in worship.

So this is our only criteria for trusting one another, inside these walls and outside, to carry out Christ’s work of forgiveness and salvation in the world.

And when we don’t trust each other, we have helpful things like confession and forgiveness, corporate or individual, to help us get over ourselves and our egos. We have the sharing of the peace, which isn’t just a greeting time, but is, historically, a chance to make amends with brothers and sisters in faith before approaching the holy mystery of communion.

Our challenge and our calling today is to look at one another and to say, “Jesus trusts you to do his work…and so do I.”

And when we start really believing that Jesus has empowered each and every one of us for his work, when we really start giving up a little control and trusting each other, crazy, beautiful, unexpectedly powerful things start happening.

I think about this last week’s Project Care graduation party, and the way that 80+ people celebrated the graduation of six youth, mostly unknown to them, and how this church and community donated thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts to help these students live independent lives after graduating high school and leaving the foster care system. I think about how grassroots ministries like these happen, and how nothing like this would ever get off the ground if we didn’t trust each other to do ministry.

I think about how there are so many pop-up ministries and charities in our world these days - people banding together for disaster relief, joining together in advocacy efforts, giving micro-loans to women across the world to empower them and improve their lives, feeding ministries, random acts of kindness: whether planned by the church or not, these are all ministries, these are all the work of God in our midst, and the kingdom is unfolding in our midst, if only we trust each other enough to open our eyes to these Spirit-driven acts of service.

Because this Spirit - that calls us together and sends us out - moves forward and backward and sideways, is pesky and unpredictable, and this Spirit is in each of us. But this Spirit is always moving along a trajectory toward God and toward the fulfillment of the kingdom. So if we are empowered by this Spirit, sometimes we are moving across each other and around each other and next to each other or in opposite directions, but we are all always moving toward the same end goal.

So today, remember that Jesus trusts you do to his work in the world. He has given you the Spirit to empower you and to bind us together. He has blessed you. And he has given all of these gifts to the people sitting next to you as well.

May you be blessed today by your faith in Christ. May you be blessed by Christ’s faith in you. And may you be blessed to have faith in one another, for the sake of the one who binds us together and sends us out. May nothing stand in the way of all of the things to which God is calling us, for the sake of his kingdom and for the sake of the world.

Amen.

anatomy" by Ben Giles, on Flickr

Acts 3:12–19
When Peter saw it, he addressed the people, "You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you. And now, friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. In this way God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer. Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out.

1 John 3:1–7
See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that he was revealed to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.

Luke 24:36b–48
[Jesus said,] "Peace be with you." [The disciples] were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you — that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.
---

So you may have noticed that today’s gospel reading from Luke, on the surface, sounds suspiciously similar to last week’s gospel reading from John. Nope, you haven’t stepped into a weird time warp where you are stuck repeating Easter 2 over and over and over again like the movie Groundhog Day, I promise!

Today, we have another story of the resurrected Jesus showing up among the disciples. Like last week’s account from John, the disciples are gathered together in a room, hidden away. Like last week’s gospel, Jesus shows up among them and says, “Peace be with you.” Like last week’s gospel, Jesus shows them his hands and feet, and the disciples, eventually, come to believe.

What is different between John’s gospel last week and Luke’s gospel today is the question of what the gospel writers were trying to prove about the resurrected Jesus. John, I think, was trying to establish the identity of Jesus post-resurrection. Jesus appeared to the disciples and to Thomas as if to say, “hey look, it’s me, Jesus, and not somebody else!” When Thomas finally gets his chance to encounter the risen Christ, he responds with a declaration of identity: “My Lord and my God!”

Luke’s gospel is less concerned with the identity of the risen Christ, and far more concerned with his bodily reality.

Maybe it’s because tradition says that Luke was a physician that he seems more concerned than the other gospel writers with matters of Christ’s humanity, even from the very outset of his gospel. Luke is the only gospel that gives us a real birth narrative. Luke’s gospel is concerned with establishing Jesus as the real human savior for real human needs like hunger and pain and poverty and oppression. And here, after the resurrection, Luke takes care to establish not just the identity of the resurrected Jesus, but also his bodily reality. For Luke, it is important that the disciples and all of us know that Jesus, who fully died, has been fully raised.

"Why are you frightened?” Jesus asks, “And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.

But even having seen these wounds, Luke tells us that the disciples, even in their joy, were yet also disbelieving and still wondering, and so Jesus takes it one step further: He said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence. Ghosts, spirits, disembodied souls: they do not need to eat. But bodies do.

And so he shows his hands and feet and eats a snack to prove that he is, indeed, resurrected in the flesh, because anything less fleshly would cease to be resurrection and would cease to be salvation.

In the opening stanzas of his marvelous poem, “Seven Stanzas for Easter,” John Updike writes,

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The heart of our Christian faith rests upon this truth that Christ was born - really born; body, mind, and spirit - and that Christ died - really died; body, mind, and spirit - and that Christ then rose again - really rose; body, mind, and spirit. He's not a ghost. He is touchable. He is hungry. He has wounds and scars. He - his body - is resurrected from the dead, so that our bodies will also will be resurrected at the end of all things.

Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, writing in the fourth century, said “That which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.”

By this he means that Christ had to take on flesh so that we, as children of the flesh, might be redeemed. More than this, the very death and resurrection of Christ’s own body has united us with God and, in the words of 1 John, has made us “children of God; and that is what we are.” 1 John goes on to say that when Christ is finally revealed, “we will be like him.” Just as Christ was raised not on in spirit but also in body, so will we be like him in our own resurrection - raised not only in spirit but also in body.

This is the same message as we get in Peter’s sermon in Acts today. The crowds have just watched the apostles heal a lame man at the entrance to the temple, and they are amazed, so Peter starts preaching. He asks, ”Why do you wonder about this? Is the power to heal bodies not the very power of God, the same power that forgives sins and the same power that raised Christ from the dead?” Peter’s message here is that the power of God to raise Christ in the flesh is the power of God to forgive us and to heal our human bodies and to save our created world.

Even though we live a bodily, earthy, dirty life, I think that it is sometimes much easier for us to imagine the work of God taking place the spiritual realm, the neighborhood of the soul, the purification of minds and desires, than it is to understand the work of God on behalf of bodies, and not just human bodies, but animal bodies and plants and trees and the entire body of creation.

But when we, in our confession of faith, proclaim, “I believe in the resurrection of the body,” we are confessing that we have a God who cares about not just souls, but bodies; a God who cares not just for the heavenly realm, but for the created matter of this universe; a God who cares not just for matters of the spirit, but for matters of flesh, too.

And why is this so very important, that God cares about bodies?

It is important because somewhere, there is a transgender youth who is trying to figure out what to do with a body and an identity that don’t fit together.

It is important because somewhere, there is a 99 year old man whose joints are failing who feels creaky and useless as he waits out his days in a care facility.

It is important because somewhere, there is a 45 year old woman who has been yo-yo dieting since she was 14, who believes that her body will forever remain unloveable.

It is important because somewhere, there is a college wrestler with an eating disorder who believes that his whole worth is tied u pin how well his body can perform.

It is important because somewhere, there is an infertile couple who feel like their bodies have completely failed them.

It is important because somewhere, there is a woman with a physical deformity that makes her feel excluded and invisible.

It is important because somewhere, there is a child with leukemia who has been sick for more days in their life than they have been well.

This is the power of the bodily resurrection: That Christ in his flesh has won for us the salvation of our bodies and the body of this world.

This is the power of the bodily resurrection: That Christ in his flesh has ushered the kingdom of God into our midst as it unfolds here and now and in the real stuff of crumbling housing projects and cancer and the dirty feet of children whose shoes have holes and the sunken faces of families who don’t have enough to eat.

This is the power of the bodily resurrection: That Christ in his flesh empowers us to feed hungry people and clothe naked people and march for justice and weep over prejudice and care for the frail and heal broken bodies; to care about carbon emissions and polluted water and to be conscious of how much trash we generate and which animal habitats we are destroying.

This is the power of the bodily resurrection: That Christ comes to us each week in this holy meal, where we touch and taste his body, and remember with our hearts and our tongues and our bodies and our spirits that Christ is here, among us, and that this bread and wine that we can touch are the elements of our salvation.

Brothers and sisters, just as the disciples touched the risen Christ, in the body, and by touching were assured of their salvation, so also do we touch Christ not only in the elements of communion, but in the body of Christ gathered here. If you were to reach out and touch the shoulder of the person next to you, you would be touching Christ’s body. If you were to clasp your own hands, you would be touching Christ’s body. If you were to plant your feet firmly on the ground to feel the strength of the foundations of the earth below, you would be touching Christ’s body.

Whatever you feel about your body - love it, hate it, whether it is strong or weak, a finished product or a work in progress - your body is blessed and saved and will be resurrected, and it is given the very power of God to be a blessing in the world.

So let us close by blessing these very bodies that God has given us, through which we know God, by which we are called to be a blessing in the body of this world.

You have heard the holy and saving gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now receive the sign of that gospel on your body and in your heart, that you may know the Lord and the power of his resurrection.

As a sign of God’s endless love and mercy for you,
Receive the + sign of the cross on your forehead.

That you may hear the gospel of Christ, the word of life,
receive the + cross on your ears.

That you may see the light of Christ illumining your way,
receive the + cross on your eyes.

That you may sing the praise of Christ, the joy of the church,
receive the + cross on your lips.

That God may dwell within you by faith,
receive the + cross on your heart.

That you may bear the gentle yoke of Christ,
receive the + cross on your shoulders.

That God's mercy may be known in your work,
receive the + cross on your hands.

That you may follow in the way of Christ,
receive the + cross on your feet.

May God bring you in peace and joy to fullness of life in the risen Christ. May the God of all grace, who has called you to glory, support you and make you strong, now and forever. Amen.
(from the ELW “Welcome to Baptism” rite)

"Love one another" by Paul Scott, on Flickr

John 13:1–17, 31b–35
Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" Jesus answered, "You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand." Peter said to him, "You will never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" Jesus said to him, "One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you." For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, "Not all of you are clean."

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord — and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.' I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
---

Wendell Berry writes,

I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.

I have no love
except it come from Thee.

Help me, please, to carry
this candle against the wind.

The winds are blowing in Jerusalem.

Judas already has it in his heart to betray Jesus to the authorities, who see Jesus as not just a political rebel, but as threat to the general order, to the established patterns of temple life, and to the Roman regime.

Peter is already having his doubts and fears. His misgivings and misunderstandings peek through when he misinterprets Jesus’ foot washing gesture. He boldly protests Jesus’ prediction of his denial, perhaps he doth protest too much, because he knows that he is likely to crumble under pressure, to flake out when the going gets too tough.

Pilate is in town, and Caiaphas, and crowds of people who are easily swayed by mob mentality. The streets are charged with religious fervor, with the celebratory affects of festival, with the latent political clash of God’s liberated people living under Roman occupation.

The winds are blowing in Jerusalem.

And Jesus carries a candle against the wind, along the path into the city, past the palm branches, up the steps into a small, dark, borrowed room where he sits, elbow to elbow with those whom he loves. He carries the candle of love against the tempest that is brewing:

“Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end,” we read.

For everything else that Maundy Thursday is about - holy suppers, washing feet, confessing together and hearing sweet and sacred words of forgiveness - this Thursday in Holy Week is always primarily about love.

The life of Christ hangs in the balance for saying radical things like, “All the commandments boil down into two: Love God and Love your neighbor” and worse yet, he has said stuff like “love your enemies, bless those who curse you.”

And now here he sits at table with his mixed bag of disciples - tax collectors and zealots and fishermen and contemplatives and betrayers and deniers. And at this table, he eats, drinks, serves, and then gives them a new command: that they love one another as he has loved them. A new command that love be his legacy and theirs. A new command to do the work of love, and by love to reveal God the Father and Christ the Son to the world.

The command is new because it is bigger than loving your neighbor as yourself. It is a new command to love your neighbors as Christ would love them. The new covenant in Jesus’ blood is a two-way promise of love. Christ, on his way to die for love of us. We, living beyond Christ’s death to bring his love to the world.

Loving as we have been loved. This is the candle we carry in the wind.

And the winds are blowing outside.

A few weeks ago, a bill passed in Utah to allow execution by firing squad. This morning, an attack on a university in Kenya was carried out by religious extremists. ISIS marches deeper and deeper into the heart of Syria. States in our nation are passing “religious freedom” laws that do not actually advance the cause of holy freedom, but hinder it.

A common thread among major religions of the world is the call toward love and service. And whenever religion interprets the idea of “freedom” or “liberation” as a way to love our ideas and reject our neighbors, then religion has failed.

Especially Christianity.

The new covenant in Christ’s blood, the meal that we share together, is a promise of our own liberation from sins, deaths, devils, and all powers of darkness. It is our promise that God forgives us, loves us, shows us grace upon grace.

We walk away from the meal holding onto two truths: 1 - that we have been shown liberating love in the sharing of Christ’s body, and 2 - that we are called and nourished to show liberating love to all whom we encounter.

Mind you, Jesus doesn’t ask us to like our neighbors, or to agree with them, or to excuse bad behavior, even. But Jesus does tell us to love one another.

There Judas is, sitting at dinner with Jesus and the rest of the disciples, and Jesus already knows that Judas is about to take off running from that upper room to give the secret signal to the police and the army that it’s time.

I can’t believe - can you? - that Jesus particularly liked Judas in that moment. And I’m pretty sure that Jesus didn’t agree with him. But Jesus loved him. Jesus loved him and served him.

And what of Peter? He is going to deny ever knowing Jesus, and he is going to pretend that he never walked on the water and forget that he was named the rock upon which God would build the church.

Around that last meal, I am going to guess that Jesus wasn’t liking Peter all that much, either. But he loved him. Loved him and served him.

Jesus took that towel and fell to his knees and scrubbed the toes of those whom he loved. How beautiful are those feet, the ones that walked the dusty road of teaching and healing and signs and wonders with Jesus. How beautiful are those feet, carrying the message of good news into the towns and countrysides. How beautiful are those feet, even as they will run off in the garden as fear and chaos scatter the disciples. How beautiful are the feet of the tax collectors and zealots, fishermen and contemplatives, even betrayers and deniers. These are the feet that Jesus loved.

“Do you understand what I have done for you?” Jesus asks.

“I have washed you clean and set you free. I have opened your eyes to see that you have been created by love, for the sake of love. I have shown you that love always manifests itself in service.”

“A new commandment I give you: that you love one another as I have loved you. By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you show love to one another.”

Liberation. Love. Service.

This is the way of Christ. This is our new commandment. This is our candle, burning brightly, that the winds of fear and change will never extinguish.

I know that I have life
only insofar as I have love.

I have no love
except it come from Thee.

Help me, please, to carry
this candle against the wind.
(from Leavings, 2010)

"Anointing His Feet #2," 2008 by Wayne Forte

"more clouds." by kaija, on Flickr

Genesis 1:1–5
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

Mark 1:4–11
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit."

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
---

More than ever, it feels like our world is tearing apart at the seams.

In France, a nation rends its garments in grief over this week's shootings. In Nigeria, the border town of Baga has been ripped apart by a devastating attack by Boko Haram which has left as many as 2000 people dead, many of them women, children, and the elderly. In Pakistan, an ordinary day has been torn apart by a suicide bomber killing innocent victims outside a mosque.

Often our Christian theology centers on beautiful things like the kindness and compassion of God. We talk about God in terms of forgiveness, grace, and mercy.

But when the powers of death and destruction in our world seem so prevalent and insurmountable, we are lucky that our story of faith also includes images of God's strength and power, especially over darkness and despair. In heart-rending times like these, we need to have the confidence that God has the power to overcome all these heart-breaking things. We need be able to say to the forces that tear apart our world that our God has power to tear apart the very powers of sin and death and destruction.

In the Old Testament, we see example after example of the power of God which accompanies the Israelites through slavery, in the wilderness, and even in battle. In her Magnificat, Mary sings about a God who scatters the proud with the power of his arm. And at his baptism, Jesus reveals the power of God to break open the very heavens themselves.

Jesus comes to the river to be baptized from John. He plunges into the water, breaking its surface both at his descent and at his emerging. In response, the heavens themselves break apart. God in his power splits open the sky, from which the Spirit pours down upon Jesus and into him, affirming him as beloved Son of God, empowering him to begin a life of public ministry, and setting him at the start of a journey that will eventually take him to the cross. It will be by this cross that the world itself will crack open.

Mark, at the end of his gospel, will talk about the temple curtain being torn in two at the moment of Jesus' death, symbolizing the destruction of the boundary separating God and humans. He uses the same verb to talk about the heavens rending open at Jesus' baptism and the curtain rending in two at Jesus' death to make the point that the power of God does not stand idly by, is not subtle. The power of God as creator and redeemer crashes through barriers and smashes into the world with urgency.

From the very beginning of all things, we hear in Genesis of a God who rips apart chaos itself into little pieces and reorganizes them into the poetry of creation. This same God rips apart the waters of the Red Sea to create a clear path for the Israelites to escape their Egyptian slavery. When God's chosen people are suffering in exile, the prophet Isaiah does not pray for the meek compassion of God to sneak in and calm their grieving hearts. No, Isaiah says, "Oh that you would tear open the heavens and come down so that the mountains would quake at your presence, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!" And then, in Revelation, when we imagine a cosmic battle between good and evil where God in Christ ultimately triumphs over all the powers of sin and death, we hear again of the heavens opening up and God breaking in: "Then I saw the new heaven and the new earth, and I saw the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God."

In our current age, as in all ages before us, we need God to tear apart the heaven and come down. We need to pray this again and again and again. Because unlike the senseless, destructive powers that try to tear apart our world, our God breaks things open in order to fill up the world with his presence, to flood all things with mercy, to pour into our world and our hearts the full measure of his goodness, life, and salvation.

This is what we learn from Jesus’ baptism. God is strong enough to tear open the heavens, and God is gracious enough to break open our hardened hearts, and God destroys evil and death by drowning them in love and grace and hope.

We use lots of images to talk about baptism. We talk about it as a washing or cleansing. We talk about it as dying and rising with Christ. We talk about being clothed in baptism - an image that we recall at funerals as we clothe the casket in the pall at the beginning of the service. We talk about how baptism gives us gifts of the Holy Spirit.

But when do we ever talk about baptism as a rending apart?

When we reject sin, death, and the devil in baptism, we are professing faith in a God who tears us away from the darkest forces in all creation. When we pour that water over our heads, we are trusting God to crack open our hearts and come rushing into us. When we anoint with oil and speak the words, “Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever,” we are breaking apart old identities to make room for God’s claim on us as his beloved.

The author Joanna Macy writes, “The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.” This, brothers and sisters, is what baptism is all about.

By these crushing waters of baptism, we are broken in order that we might be filled with the power of God's salvation. And by this power we get pushed out into the world to resist darkness and create salvation for all our broken world.

In these baptismal waters we ride along on a current, where God acts and God acts in us, and we act in God, and we tumble all over one another and spill out over the edges, and it all sounds very messy, but it turns out that it is actually very beautiful.

For we have a God who tears into the world not for sport but for salvation.

And there is no better, warmer, brighter news for our broken world and our broken hearts than to hear God say to us, "You are my children. You are beloved. In you I am well-pleased." Yes, the fullness of God-in-Christ is pleased - pleased - to dwell in you and to make a home among us.

Oh, that you would continue to tear open the heavens, Lord God.
Oh, that you would continue to rend our hearts, Lord God.
Fill this longing world with your power and mercy.
Pour out your Spirit upon us and move over the face of the earth.
Burst through the skies and come to us, again and again, that we might know ever more deeply what it is to be yours. To be your broken and beloved. To be your children.

Amen.

Three beautiful thoughts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer about the ways that God loves us and comes to us in Advent and Christmas:

Just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives...

God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly… God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken...

Jesus stands at the door knocking (Rev. 3:20). In total reality, he comes in the form of the beggar, of the dissolute human child in ragged clothes, asking for help. He confronts you in every person that you meet. As long as there are people, Christ will walk the earth as your neighbor, as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you, makes demands on you. That is the great seriousness and great blessedness of the Advent message. Christ is standing at the door; he lives in the form of a human being among us.

-from God Is In the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas

"All saints' Day - Kära farmor" by Capelson, on Flickr

"They live on, those giants of our childhood. They manage to even take death in their stride. Death may take them, but it can never take our relationship with them. However else they still live on, they still live on in us. Memory is more than looking back to a time gone by; it is looking into another kind of time altogether. A time where everything that was continues to be – and grows and changes with the life that is in us.

The people we loved and who loved us; for good or for ill, taught us things. Dead though they may be, as we come to understand them in new ways, it is though they come to understand us – and we come to understand ourselves – in new ways too.

Who knows what 'the communion of saints' means, but surely it means that these people we once knew are not just voices that have ceased to speak. They are saints because though them the power and richness of life not only touched us once, but continues to touch us still.

They have their business to get on with – moving 'from strength to strength' – whatever that means. We might imagine ourselves on a fading shore as they move on to whatever shore may await them. But they carry with them something of us, as we do of them. And so, to think of them is not only to remember how they used to be. It is, in some way, to see and hear them as they now are.

If they had things to say to us then, they have things to say to us now – as we have to them. And the things now spoken may not be what they once were."

-Frederick Buechner

"Floating Lantern Ceremony" by Ron Paul, on Flickr

All Saints Day Call to Worship

With thanksgiving on my tongue,
I sing praise for the feet of the saints
who walked this path long before me
who pointed out this path to me
who cleared the path with me.

With thanksgiving on my tongue,
I sing praise for the wisdom of the saints
who shared their vision of God’s ways
who lived faithfully by God’s ways
who loved God all the way.

With thanksgiving on my tongue,
I sing praise for the cloaks of the saints
that sheltered my weary soul from the dust
that marked my life for a new adventure
that gave me some flair for the dance.

With thanksgiving on your tongue,
now sing praise for the voices of the saints
who named God within you
who evoked God from you
who gave God to you.

~ written by Rachel Hackenberg, and posted on RevGalBlogPals. http://revgalblogpals.org/author/rachelhackenberg/