Deep, Bold and Brave

Can you imagine being so committed to your faith that you would stand all day to listen to the scriptures?  That’s how the people felt when they committed to listening to the stories of their ancestors, the stories of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and Leah, Joseph and his dreams, and Moses bringing the people out of slavery.  They were listening to the story of freedom, and they were remembering their own escape from slavery, in Babylon for a generation or more.  They didn’t remember the Temple of Solomon, or the great city of Jerusalem, but they remembered the stories of their parents and grandparents who talked about the destruction of the city, the fall of their king, and being carted off to a foreign land to serve at the whim of other people who worshiped gods they did not know or respect.  These were the generation who remembered stories of Daniel in the Lion’s den, or Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego in the fiery furnace, graffiti on the wall that predicted the death of King Belshazzar, ruler of Babylon.  And then when they least expected it, they were returning, full of stories, full of hope, to stand in the ruins and destruction of what had been a beautiful city, abandoned for decades and with only a few buildings not in need of repair.  And when they heard the words of their past, the description of the relationship God had with their ancestors, the dreams and hopes the people had while following Moses and then Joshua into the Promised Land, rich with milk and honey, they wept.  Scripture gave them a reminder.  That when things looked at it’s bleakest, God still was with them, God still cared.

The same can be said about the Luke passage.  Jesus read his scripture passage.  The passage written by another survivor of the Babylon invasion.  Isaiah who could find inspiration even while describing the disasters that the politics of his time was bringing to Isaiah’s world.  Isaiah was like a Jon Stewart or a Stephen Colbert, able to see the trends and the potential problems that might stem from decisions made by egotistical leaders who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay attention to what was happening in the world around them.  And Isaiah was still, despite the craziness of the times, able to find God at work in his life.  And that in turn inspired Jesus, who also could see what the Roman Empire was doing, it’s oppression of common people, its emperor’s whims having devastating impacts on the Sea of Galilea that suffered from overfishing so bad that fishermen had to patch their boats with pieces of other boats.  Where the power struggles between puppet kings like Herod and Roman Generals like Pilot meant a very precarious life for regular folks struggling to pay taxes and put food on the table for their families.  Jesus had grown up in a poor town, with poor people as his friends and neighbors and family.  He saw the despair and fear and hopelessness they struggled with every day.  And he saw a call to be that voice of courage and hope and inspiration, that voice of change and transformation.  That voice which spoke of God’s healing power to turn around those who felt abandoned, betrayed and helpless.  Jesus, the one whom people remembered when he was a kid climbing trees and getting underfoot, would be the one to bring hope to a terrified and discouraged people.  

I spent a week with incredible leaders from the Yukon, BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, the Maritimes and Newfoundland.  Some are in ministry, some are regional staff.  Some of us cried, some of us laughed, some of us did both.  Some of us were dual citizens, and had voted in the American Election.  Some of us were descendants of refugees or soldiers who fought in World War 2 or who had immigrated because of poverty and violence back home.  Some were from Korea, Kenya, or Zimbabwe, some were from indigenous heritage.  Some were French speakers, or Hungarian translators or only spoke English.  But we all were inspired by the same thing.  A love of scriptures and a love of God.  And a horror of what we saw happening on the news.  A maybe or maybe not nazi salute.  Trans friends worried about being targeted again for more violence especially those who have to travel to the states for work related purposes.  A president who says that people who attack police should be locked up but then releases people who were videoed attacking police.  And here at home, we have people who think this is progress, which is why many in the 2sLGTBQIA community are scared of what might come.  And when a bishop preaches about tolerance, respect and ethics, which is the gospel of Jesus, she is told that she has no right to preach, she is a woman and doesn’t belong in the pulpit, and that she should stick to the bible, which makes me wonder what people think is actually in the bible if it’s not mercy, compassion and empathy.  Above all, she reminded us at 5 Oaks about the importance of being brave in our faith.  When Jesus read that scroll to his community, it was his declaration of his ministry.  That this was the time to be a bold preacher of the bible.  That this was his mission, to heal, to reach out, to stand up for the vulnerable and the weak.  The spirit of the Lord was upon him.  

Is the spirit of the Lord upon us?  Are we ready to be bold and brave Christians who use compassion and mercy to test the politics we hear in this province?  Are we ready to delve deeply into what our Moderator calls us to do, practice deep spirituality that has us weep when we hear scripture, to choose to be bold disciples who will stand up for the marginalized, and to dare to call for justice for all?  One way we can do that is to send postcards to Bishop Budde in appreciation of the truth she has spoken to power.  Another is to reach out to our trans friends and family and listen to their fears and concerns and offer our support.  Connecting with those who are in need is so important right now.  Community and solidarity will help us all find the resiliency to be the people God needs in this hurting world.

Locking Horns

Can you imagine Joe Biden coming to Justin Trudeau to get baptized?  That’s an odd image, isn’t it, two leaders coming together and one, the leader of the bigger country, asking for a blessing ritual from the leader of the smaller country.  This is hard to imagine, but I think it’s close to what actually happened in this story.

When we remember the baptism of Jesus, it points to how Jesus leaded in ways that respected and honored the leadership of others.  

Many times when two powerful leaders get together, it becomes a battle over who has the most authority or skills or money or followers.  It can become a fight over who is the best.  Like two big horned sheep fighting over a ewe, they lock horns and butt heads and crash together. Two bulls in a pasture, two stallions in a wild herd of horses.  You just know that fireworks are going to ensue.  Leaders often lock horns.  Jesus and John didn’t lock horns, they didn’t do anything that suggested that a power struggle was going on.  Luke’s version omits John’s question to Jesus, “Why are you coming to me to be baptized?” which is in Matthew and Mark.  

Jesus didn’t come as someone wanting to take over from John and steal all his followers.  Jesus didn’t come to push John out of the river and start his own baptism show.  Jesus came with respect, honoring the leadership and ministry John had, and recognizing John’s God-given authority to baptize.  And John was clear with his followers, a better spiritual authority was just around the corner.  John didn’t claim to be a messiah, and he didn’t let anyone call him such.  He knew that Jesus was the one people had been waiting for, who would fulfill the promise that no one need live in fear.  Who would share the message that God claims us all and sees us all as precious. God created us for glory and not for locking horns in power struggles.  

Baptism is meant to be a sign that reminds us of this love.  It’s meant to remind us that God is with us, we are not alone.  All too often, baptism has been corrupted and turned into a ‘get out of hell free’ card.  Although that idea was started in medieval times, it has had a long history of being used abusively. The ticket out of hell idea was originally supposed to assure people, and lower their anxiety.  Instead it increased people’s shame and fear. It was abused to show who was an insider and who was not.

United Church Stewardship leaders say that “Baptism is about the affirmation that there is something sacred about life and that a piece of that sacred goodness is found deep within us. Baptism affirms the inherent worth of each of us and is a physical sign of a spiritual reality—that we belong to a loving God and that the goodness that comes from God is deep within us and serves as a communal symbol of God’s unconditional love.”

It’s easy to brush off this idea or pretend it doesn’t mean much in this world of discrimination, political turmoil, horrendous forest fires, and divisive conspiracy theories.  But the reality is that we need to be reminded of the love God has for us just as we are.  Baptism is not what we do for God, anyone looking at a newborn baby knows that they don’t need to be cleansed of any thoughts or deeds, they are too busy learning what the world looks like and what language sounds like and what food smells like.  They are truly innocent.  And we need regular cleansing of our need to be competitive, of our need to put ourselves down before others do, or our need to hide our flaws, or our need to be right.  And this is something we wrestle with, in community as a collection of flawed but beloved human beings.  Like God’s love, baptism isn’t something earned, or something bought or something won, it is a gift bestowed on us and recognized by a loving community as precious in God’s sight.  It helps us remember that we too are gifts of God to the world.  We are enough as we are.

So how do we respond to this astonishing claim that we are gifts of God to the world?  I think that Jesus and John also model a response to that knowledge.  Instead of locking horns, they looked each other in the eye, and treated each other’s gifts with deep respect.  John acknowledged Jesus and his ministry with profound awe.  “One is coming who will baptize you with fire”, he said, anticipating not just Pentecost, but the burning passion his disciples developed for sharing the healing and compassion that Jesus gave them.  The fire of compassion for one another that would send them around the world with their message of hope and healing and love.  And Jesus acknowledged John by coming and asking for baptism.  Jesus didn’t put on any airs, he didn’t say, “Thanks, John, it’s time to tie up my sandals now and be my personal butler,” he said, “baptize me like you have baptized all these other people.”  

What humbleness, what servant leadership that showed!  Instead of us locking horns with those around us, what if we too looked our neighbor in the eye and saw them as also a beloved child of God, one to cherish and support.  Just as if Biden came, looked Trudeau in the eye and said, “I want to become a Canadian citizen”, we can remind ourselves and each other that we are to see each other as a beloved child of God.  Let us honor and respect the leadership of each other the way Jesus and John honored each other, as God loves us, and as we are called to love one another.

Everlasting Light

We had a six hour power outage last Monday. Peanuts compared to what others have had after a bad storm, but it seemed like a looooong time without heat or light.  We couldn't open our fridge door, and we were in the middle of making soup for lunch when it happened. There’s nothing like losing power for a period of time, especially in the winter, to highlight how important light is for Canadians.  The sky starts dimming before 4 pm, and even with candles, it’s hard to read or knit or play cards as the sun quickly sets.  If it’s cloudy or snowy, there’s even less light. And by 5 pm a bunch of candles won’t make much of a dent in the gloom of the evening. We bundled up as the house temperature dropped, and even tried putting a mirror behind the candles to magnify the light.  We were very relieved when everything started up again. It’s easy to take light for granted in this country when we can have as much as we want, whenever we want, at the flick of a switch.  

Light was not taken for granted by ancient people because so much of what they did depends on it.  That dependence explains why people were so aware of what was happening in the night sky. Humans have been fascinated by the stars for a long time. 

The twelve signs of the zodiac were first developed by Babylonian star watchers about 600 years before Jesus.   Outsiders following a star to Bethlehem might not have been that unusual back then.  It may have been their way of doing scientific research.  Did this particular star or planet arrangement mean something significant?  Let’s go test our idea, check out the hypothesis and report back to the others at home. That might have been what the Magi were doing.  There are reports of Magi visiting Nero in 66 AD, and other historic records of similar visits to prominent people, but no records of who the Magi were or where they lived. We still speculate about where the Magi came from and how long they traveled to find Jesus.  One of the reasons for the twelve days of Christmas is that the early church guessed that it took 12 days, a biblically significant number, from the birth of Jesus to the arrival of the visitors in Bethlehem.

This visit by the Magi would have been quite scandalous to Matthew’s listeners.  Matthew and his congregation were steeped in the Jewish scriptures, they would have known the Isaiah passage from frequent readings, they would know the stories of refugees like Joseph’s family going to Egypt to avoid danger, and babies like Moses being targeted for execution by ruthless leaders like Pharaoh.  They would have appreciated Matthew’s family tree for Jesus, connecting him to Abraham and David and Ruth and Bathsheba.  But then Matthew threw his people a shocking thought.  The first people to recognize the royalty of Jesus were not Jewish! Jewish royalty, Jewish spiritual leaders, they were just as surprised as anyone when the Magi showed up on their doorstep looking for a baby and an heir to the throne.

And Matthew doesn’t specify what country they were from, what ethnicity they were, how many they were, or what their names are.  Balthazar, Melchior and Gaspar are first mentioned some 700 years later, not before.  It’s a nice piece of theology to think that they were from three different parts of the world, showing the divergence of the people who were hearing the message of Christ and responding to it so warmly.  The first churches that were established were in places like Ethiopia, Samaria, Egypt, Rome, and India, and that’s a surprisingly broad reach.  The Ethiopian Church prides itself in being the oldest outside of Jerusalem, dating back to the time of Acts.  

So it was foreigners from a different faith tradition who followed a sign, a hunch, a conjunction of planets, or maybe a comet.  Foreigners who came to a palace and went away without meeting the new heir to the throne. The chief priests and religious scholars gave their advice but showed no inclination to check out what may be happening in their own back yard.  Herod didn’t go either, content to stay in his warm palace full of soldiers to keep him safe.  These foreigners found Bethlehem without a tour guide or escort, and found Jesus, their expectations turned upside down, and their assumptions of what made a king was also reversed.  

Many people still go looking for answers even today.  They look for security and safety by travelling far from home when what they look for might be in their own back yards. They go to experts and gurus who are so sure they know all the answers that they won’t try looking with an open mind.  Foreigners and visitors seeking something so astonishing that they will fall to their knees in humble awe in front of something as simple and common place as a baby.

It's easy to be more like the chief priests and scribes, listening to news but not letting it shift our thinking.  Like taking light for granted until we lose electricity. But it’s more life-transforming to hear newcomers with curiosity, to join in their quest, to listen to their surprise and to share in their journey of faith.

What does it take to welcome foreign travelers looking for spiritual meaning?  It takes what the magi had.  Curiosity to ask questions about what they are experiencing.  It takes patience to listen and ask questions, like the Magi did when they went to Herod’s palace.  It takes humbleness; the magi knelt to a baby in a poor household with a dirt floor instead of a palace with marble tiles.  And it takes intuition, recognizing when we are talking to a dangerous Herod and taking the long way home for safety’s sake.

Curiosity, humbleness, patience and intuition are as valuable today for modern seekers as they were for the Magi.  They are tools for a healthy spiritual life and part of the signposts of a healthy congregation.  Curiosity, humbleness, patience and intuition help us grow our own faith.  They also help us make room for both newcomers wanting to find Jesus, and old-timers welcoming others to our community of faith.  They help us invite others to seek the light. May we all seek the light like the Magi did for a more Christ-filled 2025. Amen.