Small Sacrifices

 Why do we follow Christ?  Why do we listen to his teachings when he seems to glorify abusive behaviors and torture by embracing his death on a cross?  These are deep, puzzling questions, and the scriptures sometimes help us and sometimes confuse us.

John’s gospel is not for the faint of heart in this regard.  It’s the gospel that almost didn’t make it into the bible back in the time of Constantine.  John was a philosopher, the Steven Hawking of bible writers.  When he described what Jesus taught, there weren’t many down to earth stories like we find in the other gospels, but flowery metaphors and complex images. 

And sometimes, we need flowery metaphors when dealing with the subject of today’s scripture.  Jesus was predicting his death and talking about suffering.  That wasn’t a popular topic back then, and it’s not today either.  Sometimes it feels like a modern slogan for the good life should not be “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” but “Life, liberty and the avoidance of all suffering”.  Our world struggles to know what to do with suffering.  We interpret the good life as being like an Oscar show, full of glittering gowns, fancy tuxedos and cleverly written speeches where everyone looks perfectly happy.  A lot of people put time and effort into looking like they are living the perfect life.  Social media is full of pictures of people living glamorous lives.  Unfortunately, this leads to increasing feelings of isolation, loneliness and depression as people wonder why they aren’t having more successes themselves.  Where are their statues for best actor or best costume designer, best director of the perfect life?  For those who are struggling with chronic illnesses and chronic pain, the push to portray only the happy moments of life can be a cruel expectation.

Jesus had an odd opinion about suffering. Jesus didn’t say that anyone who became his follower would be handed a “Get out of suffering free” card.  Some folks may preach that, and push the idea that Christians automatically get to avoid suffering.  There are people in our community who have turned their backs on Christianity because of that.  A catastrophe happens in their lives, and they take it as a sign that either they are terrible, or that God is angry at them and they don’t know why.  So, they reject Christianity altogether.

Jesus didn’t say that he would save people from suffering.  He did say that he came so that they could have life abundant.  And many of his disciples led very transformed lives that were abundant and fulfilling.  Fishermen became world travelers, tent makers became famous orators, tax collectors became community leaders, and they all followed Jesus’ teachings so passionately that they took his message to the ends of the earth.  Even faced with derision, imprisonment, and even crucifixion, they were so on fire that they kept sharing the good news to all who would listen.

Even Greeks wanted to come and speak with the Rabbi, and Jesus shared his message with them too.  His good news was for everyone regardless of ethnicity.  Often a reference to the Greek people was a reference to the rest of the world, for Greek was the language of intellectuals and philosophers.  Wealthy Romans considered a Greek tutor as a status symbol, like having a child in French Immersion may be considered a status symbol.  And Paul went to Greece, home of Socrates and Plato and schools of philosophy and medicine and was able to plant multiple small communities of faith, house churches with maybe a dozen people across that country that spread until it became a universally embraced way of life.

The disciples did that by making sacrifices.  They left their comfortable homes and their familiar ways and their homeland where everyone spoke the same language.  Now, we may squirm at the thought of sacrifices, but we do it every day.  How many of us sacrifice sleeping in on a Saturday morning because the dog needs to go out for a walk?  How many of us sacrifice our time by volunteering for Meals on Wheels or making lunch for crib players or selling tennis balls for the Lions or raising money for Rotary Club’s international exchange student program?  How many of us sacrifice our money for supporting good causes at the Farmer’s Market or buy fair trade coffee at the grocery store or buy chocolates for a kid’s school fund raiser?  How many of us helped our neighbors during Covid, or supported family and friends when they were going through hard times, or drove neighbors to doctors appointments?  We know how to follow in the footsteps of Christ and we often do it without realizing that we are even making sacrifices.

We sacrifice for others in many ways.  It’s because of those sacrifices, large and small, that we have continued to provide support for so many people for so many centuries.  Peter Drucker, a business guru, would ask industry leaders which organization was the most resilient.  People probably named institutions like the UN, or the Red Cross and the like.  Drucker surprisingly said it was the Church.  It was durable not because it created great leaders but because it allowed ordinary people to do outstanding things. It’s survived plagues, wars, collapses of empires, corrupt leaders trying to produce evil things like crusades and witch hunts, and it keeps returning to its core values of empathy, equality and courage. Or as we say in the United Church, deep spirituality, bold discipleship and daring justice.

Christianity transformed communities over the centuries. It’s easy to forget how resilient it has been and hard to see how resilient it is even now.  We don’t get the big picture when we are wrapped up in our worries and struggles.  When we hang on to our lives tightly, we can get tied up in knots of grief, fear and anxiety.  When we focus on our community and make those little sacrifices that we know so well how to do, we can do bold and beautiful things that make a difference in the world. And God glorifies what we do, saying, “This is my beloved child with whom I am well pleased.”  May our sacrifices continue to glorify God and inspire and empower the world! Amen.

Journeying to hope

Sometimes the Bible is hard to understand.  Strike that, most of the time the Bible is hard to understand.  It’s hard because we don’t really know what kind of book it is.  A history book?  A novel? A fairy tale?  A newspaper report? A bunch of lies and exaggerations?  We scratch our heads and try to force the bible to fit into a category that we are comfortable with.  And many people assume it is an inflexible collection of facts and absolutes, while others throw it out of their libraries and lives.  It’s not to be read like a conventional book from cover to cover.

I often assume that United Church folks try reading with the intention of starting at Genesis and plowing all the way through to Revelation, then give up the first time they hit the begats.  The only time we read our bible is in church but that’s another extreme for sure.

Case in point, today’s reading from Isaiah.  Many would be excited to see the reference to gold and frankincense, and say that this is all about Jesus because Isaiah was predicting Jesus and the wise men on the first Epiphany.  Except, of course, it’s missing the myrrh.  But the bible is inerrant, right?  It can’t have mistakes as glaring as forgetting the third wise man’s gift to Jesus?

This shows up the huge gulf between what we read in the bible and what we think is in the bible.  We often think, for example, that Isaiah and the other prophets were like the stereotypical gypsy fortune teller, using tea leaves, tarot cards or stars in the sky to tell us mere ignorant mortals what would happen in the future.  Isaiah stares into his God-given Crystal Ball and predicts the birth of Jesus.

It’s a shame when we do this.  The Bible is not meant to be a Crystal Ball, and while it is often used as such, I don’t think God wants us to use it that way.  Our pattern of taking chunks of scripture every Sunday can add to that misunderstanding.  The United Church’s “Song of Faith” says that Scripture is our living word passed on from generation to generation to guide and inspire, that we might wrestle a holy revelation for our time and place from the human experiences and cultural assumptions of another era.

It also says the Bible is a library of songs, poetry, stories, memories, sermons and letters where generations of people record their best understandings and experiences with God. Sometimes the understandings clash – is God with us in our suffering or punishing us by sending our suffering?  Is God in history or is God in my life?  Does God care about foreigners or only care about the descendants of Abraham, Jacob and Moses?  And because the bible is a conversation, we see people claiming both views.  Isaiah’s passage today is such a view of Israel’s place in God’s vision, an inspiring beacon of hope for the whole world to gather around. A grand family reunion that also has all the neighbors wanting to join in the party.  So many camels coming that there is a dust storm covering the roads to Jerusalem.  Hope is a magnet for all humanity to gather around!

And Matthew remembered that scripture.  He sprinkled his gospel with many quotes from Isaiah and other prophets.  He referred to them 40 times, connecting what he knew of Jesus with what he knew of his sacred story.  Scholars see these quotes and the style he uses as signs that Matthew was a scribe, trained in scriptures, Jewish traditions and a deep understanding of the heritage of Jesus.  He was also on the cusp of separating from the synagogue institution, like an ancient Luther, John Knox or Charles Wesley, still connected to the faith of his childhood yet absorbing new understandings of scripture inspired by the teachings of Jesus.  He is the only one to talk about wise magi and stars in the sky, which again help him connect his ancient scriptures to the modern understanding he was sharing, the understanding Jesus had taught him.  On one hand, he was making those connections to the Moses story, the Isaiah story, but on the other hand, he was making connections to people who were not part of his ethnic group.  And when he has these images of royalty come from the east, the first thing he has them do is throw themselves down in the humble home in Bethlehem where they found him – no inn here, no manger, just a home – and give their deepest respects.  Only after that moment of worship did they hand over their presents.  That moment of worship which must have confused everyone who saw it, also changed them.  They saw through Herod’s evil plot, and they changed their direction home. 

Their only guide, other than, wait for it, consulting the scripture scholars in Herod’s palace, scribes like Matthew in fact, was the star in the sky. It too has a million explanations and rationalizations.  Even scientists join in the conversation of whether it was a conjunction, a comet, a horoscope event or a plot device by Matthew. In one theory, in 6 BC, Jupiter and Venus shone together like a single star, and Jupiter as the king star or planet shining with Venus, the love star, would have looked like one very bright new star.  The King of Love indeed! For six nights it shone in the early morning twilight, leading the magi forward into mystery. 

I think the Bible can be a star that lights our way, but like the magi, it is best seen through teamwork.  Isaiah and Matthew and all the other writers worked separately on their understandings of God, then church and synagogue leaders put it together like a conjunction of stars and planets. When we gather together to hear these words week after week, we are being like the wise magi, thinking and pondering and asking for directions. This can help us find bible wisdom for our time, hope for our journey, faith and inspiration for our lives. May it be a guiding light for our Epiphany season.

Writing on the Wall - Daniel 5

Guess how old the oldest graffiti is?

Long before people began scrawling ‘Kilroy Was Here’ or before craft stores had to lock up cans of spray paint, humans were making graffiti. There are examples of graffiti on the walls and streets of Pompeii, put there before Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.  Some people argue that the cave paintings discovered in France are the first.  Regardless of when it started, graffiti has a long history, and like modern examples, it has been a record of where people have been and what they have been thinking about.

Often what they have been thinking about has been the issues they feel most passionate about – hunting mastodons for the early Cro-Magnons, where to find women of easy virtue in Pompeii or how ancient tourists felt when standing at the foot of the pyramids in Giza.  Early Christians wrote on the walls of their catacombs in Rome, where they were able to worship safely and secretly together during times of political turmoil.

But I think the oldest written story about graffiti is this one in the book of Daniel.  It has become such a common phrase, 'The writing on the wall’ that I suspect most people don’t know or remember that it comes from the Bible.

Daniel, for those who haven’t heard of him, is more famously remembered as surviving a night with starving lions, protected by God because even the threat of death would not shake his public commitment to his faith and to God.  Like his friends, Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego who were thrown into the fiery furnace, Daniel was part of the first generation of captives from Israel to be targeted for cultural assimilation into the Babylonian system.  They were chosen from the rest for special education, and special food to enter government service.  Their names were changed from typical Hebrew names to Babylonian ones.  Daniel and Mishael with ‘el’ in their names, another name for God, were to be called Belteshazzar, and Meshach.  They were also told to eat non-kosher foods too, something Daniel was able to foil with a clever plan (Daniel 1). 

They stayed committed to the God of their ancestors, which is an amazing feat of itself.  It was common for conquering countries to brag that their gods were the source of their victories.  When they fought, they believed their gods fought, and when they won, their gods won.  A winning God was worth praying to, and a losing God was either seen as dead or added to the family of Gods.  In Egypt and in Greece there were dozens of gods because of this.  The theology of the time thought Yahweh had failed and lost and was no longer to be honored.

So Daniel, by going out on a limb and speaking for God, was being radically counter cultural.  By reading and interpreting the words written on the wall, he was declaring to the thousand officials that his God was not forgotten, nor had he been assimilated, and even though he was surrounded by people who were the ruling class, he had not forgotten to follow the God who cared about the weak, the down-trodden, the widow, the orphan.  The God who cared for the conquered people living in a foreign land, and the slaves who needed rescuing from the powers of Egypt.  The God who nurtured community and compassion. The God of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Joseph, Moses and Miriam, the God of Covenant not conquest.   And when Daniel saw the writing on the wall, he probably knew that God had not forgotten him either.

We too can see the writing on the wall if we know where to look.  We are at a challenging time in the history of humankind, the most challenging in my lifetime, although not for those who lived through the Depression or World War Two.  The extreme heat we experienced this summer, another bad year for crops as well as glaciers dying and permafrost no longer permanently frozen, is a sign that global warming is real and needs to be addressed.  20 years since 9/11 and the Taliban are back in power in Afghanistan.  Surging numbers of Covid cases and hospitalizations in Alberta with vaccination rates plateauing and yet people are surprised that they are being asked to wear masks again.  Like King Belshazzar, we have been focused on the wrong things.  Daniel was focused on different priorities, God priorities.   

Jesus was the same way.  He knew that if he continued to challenge the priorities of the people in power, he would end up in trouble.  He knew that challenging the status quo would have only one outcome.  But he kept his focus on God’s priorities and was prepared to do whatever it took to meet those priorities.

God’s priorities haven’t changed.  Caring for the folks without hope, the people who feel they don’t have power over their lives.  The lonely, the frustrated, and yes, even the folks who think they have all the answers, and the ones who party like kings.  When do we take time to ask what God might think of our society, how God might measure us, count us, weigh us, and challenge us?  The time is now.  The opportunity is there, and the action is simple.  Whether we request a mail in ballot, a trip to the advanced polls, or show up to cast our vote, let’s vote as if we have seen the finger of God writing on the wall of our world.  Vote as if this is the most Christian thing we can do.  Vote as if this is how we follow Jesus even if it looks like it will end up in suffering and challenge and change.  Vote as if we are Daniel, telling a powerful society  that the writing is on the wall.  Because we are called to follow Jesus, and speak truth to power, even if it challenges the culture, even if it goes against what everyone thinks we should do.  And because we are called to see the writing on the wall and tell it to the people even when they don’t want to hear it.  Let’s be brave and bold as we serve Jesus, empowering and inspiring each other to make a difference in the world!

What old bible quote are you interested in hearing a sermon on?  Contact me and I will put it together.  Or leave a comment below.

What’s in your backpack?

Luke 13:10–17 (children's sermon for Blessing of the Backpacks Sunday)

The bent over woman in today’s scripture must have looked a little odd and she must have had a hard time.  How would she have cooked? Or got food from a top cupboard?  I wonder what made her so bent over?  I wonder if she had a backpack that was full of too many heavy things to carry around.  When my kids went back to school, I would lift their backpacks to make sure they didn’t get too bent over from carrying the supplies around.

How heavy is your backpack? Is it weighing you down, hurting your back, bending you over, keeping you from feeling good about yourself and your life, preventing you from looking people in the eyes or having joy in your life?

Let’s take time to look at what is in our backpacks and whether we can lighten our load a bit.  Sometimes that means leaving my favorite book at home.  I can’t take all 7 Harry Potter books to school every day, that would hurt my back for sure.  But we can look at our backpacks as something more.  Let’s play pretend and look at what might be too heavy for our backpacks!

I think we all have an imaginary backpack that we use to carry around some pretty heavy things.  I have my imaginary backpack right here.  Why, it’s full of rocks! No wonder it’s so heavy!

The first rock says ‘pain and suffering’.  I can imagine that this would have been what the Bent over woman had in her imaginary backpack.  Some people might wonder what the difference is between pain and suffering.  I like to think of it as like when a three-year old hurts its finger.  It cries for mommy, who puts a bandage on the finger.  But the three year old doesn’t really stop crying until mommy kisses it better and gives it a hug.  Now we older people know that a kiss won’t fix pain, that’s what a bandage does.  But a kiss reassures the child that it is loved and cared for.  The kiss helps ease the suffering.  People who teach how to take care of hurting folks in the hospital say that when people have caring gentle friends, they can handle the pain, because the friends care.  That caring can ease the suffering.  A gentle hug or a nice joke or even a drawing can be the most helpful medicine.  Jesus knew that and that’s why he was so kind to the bent over woman!  Jesus helped her with both pain and sorrow.  Today we can use bandages, but we also can use doctors and nurses.  Back in Jesus’ day, only the rich could have doctors, but because Jesus healed this woman who was probably poor, now we have hospitals that anyone can go to no matter how much money is in the bank.  I think that’s awesome!

The second isn’t a rock, it’s a brick!  What does it say? Anger!  Anger is tricky.  Like the brick it can be used to hurt or it can be used to build up.  Anger can be a great teacher.  Sometimes we get angry because we are feeling hurt, or in fancy language, our boundaries are being disrespected.  Boundaries are kind of like imaginary fences.  If I am hungry, my plate of food is inside my imaginary fence.  If someone takes my food from my plate, I may feel angry, and like my imaginary fence has been disrespected.  It may be something as simple as food or as complicated as freedom.  When that happens, we can feel angry.

The leader got angry because he thought Jesus was breaking the fence of what was okay for church and what was not okay.  Maybe he felt that Jesus was not respecting him as a leader should be treated.

Jesus got angry back.  Not because the leader was breaking Jesus fence, but because Jesus thought that there was something more important than the leader and that was helping someone not suffer.  They could have gotten into a fight and thrown bricks at each other, but this didn’t happen.  Instead it was a chance for Jesus to teach the leader about kindness.  Sometimes if we can take a breath or say our ‘Be Still’ prayer, it can help us take a moment to ask if our fences are being broken or do we need to teach something?  When I was a kid, I was told to count to 10, but I like praying more.

Here are two little rocks that are very similar.  One is guilt and one is shame.  Those are hard to get out of the backpack.  Sometimes they are so hard that we need help to pull them out.  It’s okay to ask for help to do that.  Sometimes people come and talk to me, and sometimes if the rock is really heavy, they need to talk to a counsellor or coach or psychiatrist.  I have had to get help to pull out my rocks from time to time.  It’s okay!

What’s the difference between guilt and shame?  They can look very similar, but can you feel this?  It’s sticky!  That’s shame.  It’s really sticky because shame says ‘I am bad.’  Guilt says ‘I did bad’.  If I think I did something bad, like I broke a glass, I can fix it by saving my money and buy a new one or use the glue to fix the broken glass.  Once I have fixed what I did, I probably won’t feel bad or sad about it anymore.  But shame says, ‘I am bad’ and that is very sticky.  That takes time and help to fix.  We’re not bad, we’re God’s beloved children who make mistakes and aren’t perfect.  That’s why I like Jesus more than Santa.  Jesus loves us and never says “have you been good?”

Here’s the last one and it’s the heavy one.  What is this one?  Fear!  When we are afraid, we can get angry, or jealous or worried or ashamed.  Fear is terrible to live with.  Jeremiah felt fear.  But God said, ‘don’t be afraid, I am with you’.  Now I think that there are times to be afraid, like when I am walking across the road and I see a loud fast truck coming towards me.  Fear can give me the energy to get out of the way.  But sometimes fear can be more about what might happen than what actually is happening.  Is it real? Will it always happen?  Can I find a way to keep it from happening?  I can look for trucks before I cross the road.  I can listen for trucks before I cross the road.  I can use the cross walk light.  I can walk with other people on the cross walk.  All these can help me be less afraid.  Jeremiah didn’t have to be afraid, even though he was a kid.  God was with him.  And when we are with others who love and care for us like Jesus cared for us, God is with us too and we don’t need to be afraid.  Thanks be to God!

Easter Sunday Halleluiah

I’ve been glued to the news this week.  First there was the Notre Dame Cathedral, then there was the election.  Now there’s a flood in Ontario and an explosion in Sri Lanka at churches. I am so not going to talk about the election, so you can all take a big breath of relief.  We’re going to have a sanctuary time free from all the political debate this morning.

But then I heard some truly dreadful news yesterday morning.  On Thursday, as we were setting up for the Maundy Thursday meal with Allendria, Jean Keefe told me about a cousin of hers, a young man who was running for the Green Party in PEI.  The whole family was excited because it looked like he had a real chance to get in to the legislature, to be elected.  The news yesterday of a young politician with the last name of Underhay having drowned with his son was stark and tragic.  And yes, it was Jean’s relative whose story was in the news.  This gifted leader would never see his children grow up, to experience political leadership in the province he dearly loved, and his son would also never grow up. 

It’s times like these where we face the stark truth that life can be full of tragedy and hurt.  That the world is not like some giant Disney movie where the good team always win the big game, and the people who aren’t nice have their come-uppance.  Some days life is not fair.  Some days Good Friday and the cross weigh heavily on our hearts.  Some days Easter feels like a daydream that is too good to be true.  Some days our lives hurt.

The women coming to the tomb that first morning were hurting.  They had lost more than a man, they had lost their wise leader, their inspiration, their cheerleader, their healer.  They lost the one who had turned their lives upside down and gave them hope that they could make a difference in the world. 

They came in grief and despair, doubt and resignation.  They came feeling the weight of life on their shoulders, determined to do what was the tradition at the time, even though they were struggling with their grief. 

They came, just as you come, with all their fears and worries and anxieties.  They didn’t expect to have their lives turned upside down.  Maybe they were having a moment like John Lennon must have had when he wrote his song 'God'.  In it he lists everything that he doesn’t believe in anymore, he doesn’t believe in magic, he doesn’t believe in I Ching, the Bible, Tarot, Hitler, Jesus, Kennedy and so on.  It’s a long list of things he doesn’t believe in.  That pattern doesn’t stop until he gets to the only thing he can believe in, himself and Yoko Ono and their love for each other.

That’s not too far from what we do in our daily lives.  We live as if the only thing we believe in is ourselves and maybe a special family member or two.  We saw this most starkly in some of the on-line debates between neighbors about the election on Tuesday.  The name calling, the accusations, the glee in which people posted pictures of vandalism of NDP and UCP election posters was shocking.  It seemed like insults and name calling was the order of the day with people on all sides of the debate accusing each other of being blind, stupid, naive and listening to the wrong ‘false news’.  The conversation, as far as I can tell, has not gotten any politer.  There is hurt on both sides, because neither can understand how any rational human being could possibly have a different opinion than they do.  They don’t believe in anything except their own thoughts.  And they only believe in a world that is as angry or as threatened as they are.

 Easter is a time of stories that get turned upside down, of witnesses who claim that their fears have been transformed into joy, that life holds no terrors for them any more. 

They have gone from grief-stricken women who are stammering in their confusion and excitement, to eloquent speakers and workers of great deeds of compassion.  They have gone from rough and tumble fishermen who only knew how to work with their hands to men with a passion and a story to tell.  They have gone from arrogant intellectuals who thought they knew everything there was to know about scripture and God, and who would hunt down and persecute anyone who didn’t think like them, to writing impassioned speeches about how they were wrong, and this new radical community was changing the way the world worked.  They went from terrified peasants and timid religious scholars to bold challengers of injustice that wouldn’t let threats of death stop them proclaiming and witnessing to the crazy story that Christ had risen.

We are invited to share our stories, our witness, of how our lives have been turned upside down by the empty tomb and the good news of the resurrection.  It may seem crazy, it may seem unrealistic, but it still has a message we need to hear.  That all the cruelty that humans can throw at each other in the name of politics or control, is still no match for the transformation when we humbly approach the cross with open hearts and minds.

On this Easter Earth Day, let us boldly proclaim that Jesus Christ has conquered all fear, all hate, all prejudice and resentment.  Love conquers, and when we meet face to face with the Risen Christ, let us be so emboldened that we too will run to be witnesses to a vision of life that continues to turn the world upside down in glories and halleluiahs! Amen

Fifty Shades of Rainbow

Some days I feel like there are two kinds of people, those who see the world in black and white, and those who don’t.  Some might see the world as divided into 50 shades of grey, but what if it’s more 50 shades of rainbow?  When a bus crashes in Ontario, when people preach hatred of immigrants from positions of power, it’s easy to reduce the world to black and white.  But that ignores the brilliant variations in color and tone that make up this big beautiful world of ours.  The kindness of strangers at the ATM machine on a chilly January morning, the choir that sings for the folks at Extendicare, the time when we go to pay for our coffee at the Tim Horton’s to find that someone has already footed the bill.  The glorious blue sky, the clear sharp sparkle of stars in a night sky, the glimpse of the aurora borealis are reminders that our world is much more than black and white.

John the Baptist saw things in stark terms, those who were hypocrites and those who were humbly repentant.  Most mentions of him in the Gospels has him shaking his fist at someone who doesn’t meet John’s standards.  They don’t measure up, especially those judgemental pharisees.  They get blasted and scolded by both John and Jesus and can’t seem to get the holiness thing right.

But lest we think that pharisees are a thing of the past, a recent poll did a survey of Christians in the United States and discovered something odd.  They asked questions like “I find it hard to be friends with people who consistently do the wrong thing, or it’s not my responsibility to help people who won’t help themselves, or If only people followed the rules, they would have a better life, or I prefer to serve people who attend my church rather than people outside my church, and I tell others the most important thing in my life is following rules.”  51% of Christians agreed with these statements.  The researchers based the questions on what Jesus and John said pharisees believed in.  Statements that were based on what Jesus did, eat with sinners, party with prostitutes and so on, didn’t go down so well.  That means that 51% of Christians are more like the Pharisees than we might like to think.  That’s pretty stark.  And the number one reason, that people give for avoiding church? They are afraid, survey says, of people judging them.  If most unchurched people are afraid of being judged and most church goers are likely to judge others, we have a serious communication problem!

Jesus had a different view of humanity than John did.  He didn’t see the world as either Pharisee hypocrites or saintly followers.  He saw them all as flawed human beings.  He could have looked down on all the folks he saw as inferior or lazy or silly or what have you.  Instead, his gaze was one of compassion that saw what fearful lives they lived.  But just like the words from Isaiah, Jesus wanted to help everyone raise above that fear.  Do not fear for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name, you are mine.  When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you!

God loves us just as we are even though we are fearful and anything but perfect, even when we are most like the Pharisees.  We may try to impress God with how well we follow the rules, but God sees us with different ways of knowing.  We may build up false images of ourselves or be stylish or busy with too many things, but in the end it’s not what we do or how we think that impresses God.  We really can’t earn God’s love.  God loves us just as we are.

How do we know that?  Actions speak louder than words.  Jesus didn’t have to get baptised.  He could have started his teaching and healing on dry land, which would have been the sensible and appropriate thing to do and would have impressed the Pharisees.  He could have stayed in the Temple, debating with scholars and pouring over scriptures.  In fact he could have joined the Pharisees.

But no, Jesus saw the folks in the muddy, dirty Jordan river, who were hurting or afraid or broken or guilty or tired or any number of 50 grey shades of reactions to the challenges of being alive.  When he saw all those folks hoping and praying and dreaming of a fresh start, a new beginning, a freedom and a healing, a rainbow of possibilities, well, Jesus went down to that muddy cold river and got right in just like the others.  He was there with them in all their hopes and fears.  He humbled himself in the mud and damp to be with the people.  And when he got down into the waters, Luke wrote, the skies opened up and the world changed.  No longer did people have to hide their bits of shame and fear, but they could experience that through Jesus the word made flesh, God went into the muddy waters with them.  God still reaches down to be with us in all our messy muddy lives.  That’s what we testify to here, it’s what we hope and pray, the ultimate scandal of Christianity, we are not alone, we live in God’s rainbow world, in life, in death in life beyond death, God is with us, thanks be to God.  Amen.