First Sunday of Christmas - Sunday December 26, 2021

Quotes That Make Me Think


"If we struggle with Jesus? being 'fully human and fully God,' it should not be surprising if the child Jesus wrestled with his identity too."

"Stirrings of Divinity,"Peter Storey, The Christian Century, 2000.Religion Online.


"Children find their true home despite us."

"Learning from Our Children," Peter Woods, I Am Listening, 2009.


General Resources for Sunday's Lessons


Prayer
What love you have bestowed upon us, O good and gracious God, in letting us be called your children, and in giving us your Son, Jesus, to live as a child among us in the family of Mary and Joseph.  Let all who seek the face of Christ find him, not only here, in this house of prayer, but in the households, large and small, where your love is revealed in our love for each other.  We ask this through Christ, with whom you have raised us up in baptism, the Lord who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year C, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.

Some Thoughts on Luke  2:41-52
Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text

Resources for Sunday's Gospel

There are no other stories like this in the Gospels.  This is unique to Luke and it remains one of the only stories of Jesus' young life that we know. 

Certainly, scholars will recognize similar stories in the writings of the age.  These are stories of great men who in their youth portray their giftedness; giving a glimpse of their future life and vocation. 
The reader can easily see that without this story there is a 30-year gap in the life of Jesus.  It is perhaps for this reason that people try to mine this for all that can be discovered.

Yet the story is a simple story.  It is a beautiful story about a lost child, parents desperately looking for him, a frantic search,  and a bit of domestic drama between confused parents and adolescent piety.

What do we know? Jesus grew up in a pious family. They tended to their faithful duties including a Passover pilgrimage. 

There are definitely two tensions in the story.  The first is created by a family who is simply doing the normal though pietistic thing.  They are making their way to Jerusalem. They expect Jesus to be in the group, he is found to be lost.  The second tension is in the reality that Jesus is found in the Temple teaching. This is certainly a nod to future events but it is also a tension between Jesus and his family.  While they had all kinds of signs that their son was Lord and God with us; they seemed surprised to find him.  Indeed, he seems surprised that they are surprised.  Jesus himself from this point on will begin to distance himself from his family of origin and begin to spend time with the newly emerging family of God.

At the end of the story, we have a very clear theme emerging in Luke's gospel. Being lost is like being dead and being found is like being alive (Luke Timothy Johnson, Luke, 60).  The theme is a portent where Jesus is lost, he is found, and he is teaching in Jerusalem.  After his death, he will be lost, they will search for him, he will be found in Jerusalem to teach.  Again in the Emmaus story, we have a similar theme. 

I think on this the first Sunday after Christmas we must be careful to not move into mere sentimentality.  The text is present to link the Christ of the nativity with the Christ of mission and proclamation.  The text reminds us that the one in the manger is the one who shall teach us our roles as helpers in the kingdom of God.  The story helps us to remember that it is Christ that we look to for wisdom and for direction.  And, perhaps that this God who is unlikely to be found in human form is also unlikely to be found in all kinds of places; and there, when you find him shall you receive revelation.


Some Thoughts on Colossians 3:12-17

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text

Resources for Sunday's Epistle

This passage from Colossians speaks of the life lived in a community of Christ.  It is about the virtuous characteristics of Christians. 

Not surprisingly the passage follows teaching on morality.  We are to put to death impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness all of which is about us getting what we want.  All of these things are idolatry. Therefore, if we are not to be idolatrous and we wish to follow Jesus and to serve  him a life of virtue will consist of: "compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience."

We are as a community and as individuals to "bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other."  Wow, what would the church be like if we did this?  Christians are to remember that "just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive."

All of this can only be done with love, peace, and gratitude.  We are to dwell on the word of Christ and try to learn from one another.  And in the last part of the reading we are reminded that the essential key is for the individual (regardless of sex or age) to give themselves completely to God and to the other; whether it be family, friend or neighbor.

I wonder after all the time spent with folks over the holidays how well we did on this?  How well do we do it within our church? 

I was recently asked why people love God and are losing their faith in denominations. I believe that people are losing their faith in most kinds of organized religion because we don't do this.  People are genuinely looking for love, peace, and gratitude.  People are looking for compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  If the church, which the scripture tells us is to look exactly like the virtuous community described in Colossians, doesn't look like it then why bother with it. 

The church should be the one place for Jesus' friends - the sinners.  This is true, but it is not permitted to be ugly and tread people with disrespect.  It just isn't.  I want to invest my life in helping our Episcopal church be about these things. I want to work with people who are compassionate, kind, humble, and patient. I want to work with people who support one another and forgive one another. I want to work with people who are invested in love, peace, and gratitude.

I would like nothing more than to spend a lifetime trying to be the church Paul imagines in today's lessons.  Instead of looking back to a community that may or may not have been like what Paul describes, I want to be at work creating the community of the future which reflects the virtues described in today's lesson.

 

Liturgy of the Palms B, March 28, 2021

The Way of the Cross, Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem

Prayer

O God, for whom all things are possible, you have highly exalted your suffering Servant, who did not hide from insult but humbled himself even to death on a cross.  As we begin the journey of Holy Week, take our sin away by Christ's glorious passion and confirm our worship and witness, so that when we proclaim the name of Jesus, every knee shall bend and  every tongue proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord. We ask this through Christ, with whom you have raised us up in baptism, the Lord who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year B, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.


Now, let me say here that I am not in favor of preaching the passion on Palm Sunday. I am well aware that the pilgrim Egeria c380 participated in a palm procession to the Holy Sepulchre in the same day. However, our tradition is a Holy Week and I encourage you to invite people to make it so. I would be in favor of removing the passion reading to an evening service. You will have to read my thoughts on the passion narratives in the Good Friday postings.


Some Thoughts on Mark 11:1-11

"This Palm Sunday can we get beyond a scrap of palm we never know what to do with, & a feel- good procession that leads to nowhere?"
Marginally Mark, by Brian McGowan, Anglican priest in Western Australia.

"The use of palm branches in Maccabees was related to military victories. Is that what the people were expecting from Jesus?"

Exegetical Notes by Brian Stoffregen

"Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan suggest there was not only a procession from the Mount of Olives on the east that day, but also a Roman procession entering from the west, which would have had as a focal point the Roman governor named Pontius Pilate. The juxtaposition of these two processions would have set up quite a contrast."

Join the Feast, Mark 11:1-11, Kirby Lawrence Hill, Union PSCE, 2009.

"Jesus Enters Jerusalem as Messiah," Michael A. Turton's Historical Commentary on the Gospel of Mark, "a complete verse-by-verse commentary on the Gospel of Mark, focusing on the historicity of people, places, events, and sayings in the world of the Gospel of Mark."

Online NRSV Text

"Let us remember, by turning our hearts and minds to the actions of God’s dearest Son, who went not up to joy but first suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified. May God bless us in these days, that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace."

How will you bear witness to Jesus' passion and resurrection?  How will you walk the way with Jesus this week?

One of the first things I want to encourage you to do this Sunday is to really pay attention to the triumphal entry and its narrative offering.  All too often we rush to the foot of the cross! While we certainly have a long tradition of reading the passion this Sunday, we also have a long tradition of bypassing the triumphal entry.

Encourage your people to attend the pilgrim journey through Holy Week.  Dare to preach the passion narrative as it comes. Resist the "cliff notes" version of preaching Good Friday's message Sunday.  Invite people back and invite them into the life journey of Jesus as experienced in our liturgy this week.

So then, what to do with our passage from Mark 11?  This carefully constructed passage parallels 14:12-16; and provides for an understanding that what is taking place is of central importance to Jesus ministry.

He has been very clear from the beginning of his ministry (in Mark's Gospel) that to walk the Way (the reoccurring theme of this Gospel) is to walk towards the cross.  This is true for Jesus' own ministry. It is true in the life and ministry of all those who would follow him.  Here in this passage the pilgrim way of walking leads directly to Jerusalem and to the Temple.  Therefore the way is tied inextricably to the faithful traditions of our Abrahamic ancestors and will in the end unleash God's presence in the world, God's embrace of the world.  The triumphal entry is the point at which walking the way TO the cross arrives on the doorstep of Jerusalem to become the the way OF the cross.

The entrance rite is royal (see Genesis 49:10-11 and Zechariah 9:9).  This is an eschatological and messianic reign that is being unfurled into time.  The stage and the plan are underway and the unfurling of a new creation and new order of living is at hand.

From Psalm 118 comes the imagery of a new Davidic reign.  The gates are open and the people fervently receive their king; yet as the reader know this crown will be laid upon the king not in victorious triumph but complete and utter powerlessness.  The worlds undoing and recreation will come from an explicit rejection of power as this world deals it out and an embrace of forgiveness and grace of which the world had yet to behold.

This is all in juxtaposition though to the victory parade of Pilate who is entering the city on a stallion with the might of an army behind him. By the end of their conflict it will be the one who rides in on a donkey, suffers, and dies...who has no army...and who gives over all the power of God to completely enter the death of the least and the lost that will be victorious.

Note in this Gospel there is no cleansing of the Temple but only an embrace.  Jesus enters, and retires to rest. Why? Because in Mark he has been on The Way to the Cross since chapter 1. The way is a way of suffering where by weakness he will deliver us all unto God. Robert Farrar Capon, Episcopal priest and scholar wrote that while the people are thinking of an interventionist king Jesus has only one thing on his mind and that is his "left-handed" and "implausible" death by which he will become the sacrament of abundant life. ( Kingdom, Grace, Judgment, 433.)

And, so we begin. We make our journey. We choose to follow Jesus along the way of the cross. We pledge fidelity not to power which overcomes, but a power which will yield unto death.  Unlike those who met Jesus at the gate, we greet him this Sunday knowing that only complete submission and not a powerful revolution brings about the creative cataclysm.  And, we rehearse, remind, and remake our way to the foot of the cross as a reminder that our Christian way is clearly marked by grace, mercy, and forgiveness - and not by authority, power, and abuse.

So, I charge you to remember, Walk with determination turning your hearts and minds to the actions of God.  A God who went suffered pain, and entered was crucified. By walking in the way of the cross, may you find a blessing, and a way of life, and a way of and peace.

Previous Sermons For This Sunday

The Irony of Palm Sunday 

Grace, Galveston, March 26, 2018 , Palm Sunday

The School of Rock - I mean the School of Atonement

Sermon on the Atonement and an invitation to experience Holy Week again for the first time. Palm Sunday - Trinity, Galveston. Year B.

Everyone Loves the Other Parade

Sermon for Palm Sunday at Trinity Galveston, 2014. Year A.

We Hope In Jesus: Reflections on the Parade

Sermon preached Palm Sunday, Trinity, Galveston 2013. Year C.

The Man in the Arena

Sermon Preached at St Cyprian's Lufkin Palm Sunday Year B.

This is Jesus - The Triumphal Entry Into Jerusalem

Palm Sunday Sermon preached at St. Cuthberts, Houston, Texas 2011. Year B.

Debes soportar Sufrimientos por el Evangelio

This sermon is in Spanish and was given at San Mateo, Houston, Texas on Palm Sunday, 2009. Year B.

Special Resources for the Reading of the Passion

Epiphany 5 B February 7, 2021

Prayer

With a father's care and a mother's compassion, you embrace as your own, O good and loving god, the sufferings borne by the whole human race, and you join these to all that your Son endured in his Passover from death's bitter pain to risen life. In all our time of trial and testing, purify our hearts and fortify us deep within so that, bearing the light of unfailing trust in your power to heal and save, we may hasten to the support of our brothers and sisters as they face the mystery of illness and pain. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

From Prayers for Sunday and Seasons, Year B, Peter J. Scagnelli, LTP, 1992.

Some Thoughts on Mark 1:29-39

"The healings and exorcisms reveal the effects of Jesus identity and divine power, but the good news is not reducible to them."

"The Secrets We Keep," Alyce McKenzie, Faith Forward, 2012.

"This passage is loaded with wonderful possibilities for the preacher."

Commentary, Mark 1:29-39, Sarah Henrich, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2012.

"You could surmise that Mark is making a point here by having the kingdom start at home. That may not be in Mark?s intention, but its truth stands nevertheless."

"First Thoughts on Year B Gospel Passages in the Lectionary," Epiphany 5,William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

Oremus Online NRSV Gospel Text


After reading and studying this passage I have these two questions for us preachers: Are we bringing people a glass of cold water on the battlefield of life? Or are we delivering them off the battlefield?

Jesus is here to teach (vs 38) and specifically to offer Good News. Joel Marcus points out that this is decidedly the most important message of the verses which follow the healing of Peter's mother-in-law.  (Marcus, Mark, vol 1, 201ff)

Jesus is invited to come and heal Simon Peter's mother-in-law. He touches her hand and she is healed and is so revived that she begins to serve them. Jesus does many works of healing and casting out demons and these are important to show his power and his might over and against the strong man of this world. He is a doer of great deeds. Yet this is not the purpose of his coming (vs38).

Jesus does not come to heal us. He does not come to cast out the demons. He does do these things but they are specifically acts that show his strength and his power. And, in so doing draw us to his teaching and preaching. He has come to proclaim a gospel of Good News. As one scholar put it, to give us the good news from the battlefield. (M. E. Boring, Beginning, 56; see also Marcus, Mark, 146) This ties into Isaiah's prophetic voice of offering good news for the captives.

He has come to tell us the good news. And, that good news is accompanied with mighty acts that free people from their lives. Lives are changed, the world is different.

I wonder what battlefields will be brought into our churches this Sunday morning? What battlefields will you be bringing in with you? How easy it is to stay on the battlefield and to remain captive to our fear and anxiety. How easy it is to be imprisoned by our anger at someone. How immobilizing it is to be so angry that we might avoid our real work.

What about the battlefield where people are hungry, naked, and in prison? What about the battlefield of raising kids alone? Yes...there will be many battlefields carried laboriously into the church sanctuary this week. Can we let the mighty Jesus heal us as he heals Simon Peter's mother-in-law, so that we may hear the good news of deliverance, and serve him in mission?

Some Thoughts on 1 Corinthians 9:16-23

"His evangelism is not a numbers game, but one of drawing people into a relationship with this God who loves, and produces in people the fruit of the Spirit, which is love."

"First Thoughts on Passages on Year B Epistle Passages in the Lectionary,"Epiphany 5, William Loader, Murdoch University, Uniting Church in Australia.

"Preach, or be damned - what would you choose?"

Commentary, 1 Corinthians 9:16-23, Karl Jacobson, Preaching This Week,WorkingPreacher.org, 2009.

Oremus Online NRSV Epistle Text 

Paul believed that he was called to be an apostle. He was called to be one who is sent - that is what apostle means. He believes that he was given a ministry. Yes he has a family and yes he needs the support of the church to do this work. But his family and receiving funds are not about him being an apostle. It is not why he does it.

He has done good work - he believes. People have been drawn to the living and loving God through him. Yet he will not count the numbers. He will not notch his belt for each person saved. Again, being an apostle is not about the numbers. It is not why he does it.

Being an apostle, a preacher, a teacher of the Good News of Salvation and God's love is about being authentically himself. God has given Paul a work to do. He is to carry out God in Christ Jesus' mission. 

This is who he is - an apostle of God. He is sent to people who do not know the living God and his work is to introduce that God to them.

Moreover, Paul says he will chose to do certain things and to not do certain things based upon the sharing of the Gospel. If he does things that keep others from hearing the Gospel he will refrain. For instance, he will not eat meat. Paul is a man who is clear about his ministry and the fact that God has given it to him - just as God called the others along the shore of Galilee and appointed them to share the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Paul believes this is his nature and at the core of his very being.

What is amazing is that Paul offers a vision of ministry which is so God centered. It is about God, what God is doing, how God is using him, and what God is doing through him. Sometimes I feel as though I am the one who has to do it, it is my burden to carry, I have to accomplish it, and if I don't then I am not worthy. The truth is that like Paul I am worthy. God loves me. I am worthy of that love because I am a creature of God's. I am also invited to stop hustling for God's love - as Brene Brown puts it. I am instead, through Paul's example, invited to do the work God is doing through me. I am invited to be a vessel of his grace and mercy and kindness to others. I am invited to share the God of love with other people who do not yet know this God. I am called to remove those obstacles that keep others from coming to this God. 

Finally, I am invited to remember it God doing the work not me...I am only a faithful apostle. I am sent. So... I go.

Some Thoughts on Isaiah 40:21-31 

"So to wait for Christ to come in his fullness is not just a passive thing, a pious, prayerful, churchly thing. On the contrary, to wait for Christ to come in his fullness is above all else to act in Christ's stead as fully as we know how. To wait for Christ is as best we can to be Christ to those who need us to be Christ to them most and to bring them the most we have of Christ's healing and hope because unless we bring it, it may never be brought at all."
"Waiting for Christ," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog.

"Sometimes, no matter how much we long to soar like an eagle, all we can do is barely manage to put one foot in front of the other, over and over and over again. Maybe that is the pinnacle..."

"To be able to walk," Melissa Bane Sevier, Contemplative Viewfinder, 2015.

"When the calculations comparing our smallness with God’s greatness are finished, we can react to our position in the universe in several ways. We can slink away in despair and denial or we can crawl back into God’s big saving hands. Isaiah proclaimed, and the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus confirmed, that this God who knows all, creates all, controls all and plans all also loves all. God has no inconsequential creatures or untended corners of the universe. God tells us how precious we are in God’s sight."

40:21-31 - Isaiah is a master at putting God and humankind in perspective. by Mary W. Anderson January 26, 2000

Oremus Online NRSV Text

The first part of the book of Isaiah, as you may well know, is about Israel's grief. Here in this second part of the book we switch. Walter Brueggeman is famous for reminding us that what we learn from the Israelite experience is that we cannot get to comfort until we deal with the grief that is truly within us.

The God that the prophet is speaking for is a God that is greater than the lesser gods of the Babylonians, greater than their might and army, greater than the ties that are binding them and keeping them from their homeland. This is the God of history and the God of their ancestors - yes...but the God of all.

Moreover, this is a God who while incomparable to the lesser powers and principalities with their totems which attempt to rule this world, is also a God who cares for the least and the enslaved. This is a God who hears the cry of human beings. This is a God who is mighty to save.

This God is also a God who in incomparably merciful and gracious. This is a forgiving God and a God who is to free them.

It is this incomprehensibility of grace and mercy that is true about the revelation of this God's character from the very beginning of scripture and is truth throughout the arc of the New Testament.

This is played out as the author of the gospel of Luke weaves the past to the present and sends it off into the future. As prophet himself, almost mimicing the prophet who wrote these words in Isaiah, he reminds us that this God is the one who saves through the work and mission of Jesus Christ.

Richard Hays, scholar, writes:

The most significant observation here is that in Luke 3:1-6, Luke has taken the keynote passage from Isaiah 40 that declares the salvific coming of Israel's God and worked it narratively into an announcement of the imminent coming of Jesus as the one who would bring "the salvation of God" (Luke 3:6; citing Isaiah 40:5). Considering the full content of Isaiah 40, this identification of Jesus as the one in whom "all flesh will see the salvation of God" is hermeneutically momentous, for it is precisely in Isaiah 40 that we find one of the most radical declarations in all of Scripture of the incomparability of God: To whom, then, will you compare me, or who is my equal? Says the Holy One. (Isaiah 40:25). It is precisely because God alone possesses all sovereign power that the nations are "like a drop from a bucket" before him Isaiah 40:15). (Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, 248.)

Gods incarnation enters the world, the second person is birthed, and comes into being. All power of the God of Israel is contained in the person of Jesus. No nations will be victorious.

Not unlike the people who feared the gods, powers, wealth and armies of Babylon, so Luke reminds his readers that God in Christ Jesus is greater than the gods, powers, wealth, and armies of Rome. In this way the passage today is a reminder that the least, lost, oppressed and forgotten today must remember that they are chosen by God and that this God and this God's community shall be about the work of undoing the world's powerful enslavement.

Previous Sermons For This Set of Lessons

Healed to Serve

Sermon Preached at St. Christophers, Houston, Episphany 5.b. 2018.

Sermon preached at Christ the King Atascocita, Epiphany 5b, 2015, healing of Simon Peter's mother in law.

Superheroes: understanding the power of Jesus' message 

Sermon delivered at Epiphany Houston Texas 2012