Trinity

Year C, Trinity Sunday
Gospel Reading: John 16:5-15


Trinity
Today is Trinity Sunday, celebrating and recognizing God in the three persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It’s not common in the church calendar to have a day dedicated to an idea or a doctrine, but the idea of the Trinity is central to the way we as Christians understand our relationship to God.
Today’s scripture from the Gospel of John is one of several in the Bible that talks about relationships between Father, Son and Spirit. The word ‘Trinity’ is not in the Bible, but as the church worked out how to explain what it believed, this word was created to express the mysterious way in which Christians encounter God as Father, Jesus as God’s Son and the Holy Spirit in relationship to both and to us.
Though it seems contradictory, the idea of something being many things and one thing is not totally unimaginable. A family is one thing even though there are separate, distinct members; whether there are two or five or sixty people; it’s still the same family. Likewise, a country – we have on our money ‘E pluribus unum’ – ‘Out of many, one.’ The Church also - though we are many people, and we are very different from each other, still we are one body.
Similarly, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct, but they’re one God. How this works is the subject of defining the doctrine of the Trinity.
The idea of the Trinity, though in one way simple, is hard to explain exactly; it took the church a few hundred years to hash out descriptions of it and even still, there are arguments. One of the results of those many, many, many discussions was the Apostle’s Creed, where we say ‘I believe in God the Father,.. and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord..." and "I believe in the Holy Ghost..."

Analogy of Love
Augustine, a bishop in North Africa, spent a big part of his life trying to understand and explain the Trinity. He wrote a 15-volume book about it, even. One of the ways he came up with for describing it is an analogy – the Analogy of Love. Augustine said that the Trinity is a relationship. The Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father back, and the Holy Spirit is the love between them.
Augustine felt that, though good, this analogy didn’t completely work, and he tried to refine it with many variations. He concluded that really no image or analogy can exactly describe the Trinity, but he also thought that, even though he could never perfectly describe it, it was worth trying. And I’m glad he went to all that trouble, because I think his analogy is helpful.

Heart Strings
It helps me, anyway. I think of the Father loving the Son, and the Holy Spirit as love – and I imagine the Holy Spirit, the love between them, like an elastic string tying their hearts together.

This image also helps me in thinking about my relationships with other people. My heart is tied to all the people I love, so when someone leaves, or moves away, or dies, those strings stretch out, pulling on my heart. Sometimes it’s quite painful, but I think of the ache as a reminder that my heart is still tied to the person I’m separated from, and so wherever they are, part of me is there also.
I thought about this when my grandmother on my mom’s side died a few years ago. I felt she had taken part of my heart with her but that it was still tied on to me. In a way, though, that made heaven seem closer, because wherever it was, I knew she had to be there, and part of me was there with her.
You may feel this way about people you love. Some of you may feel like this about Anna. I do. She brought so much life and joy to this church through her music and her spirit. I think she has taken part of us with her to heaven, and we feel our hearts pulling us there, wanting to be with her.
In Matthew, we read that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. So tie your heart to real treasures that will pull you toward heaven. I’m sure we did that by tying our hearts to Nan Nan.

I think this is what happened with those who knew Jesus. Because he lived among people as one of them, they got to know him and love him. They followed him, investing their lives in him, and when he died, it was very painful for them. The wind went out of their sails; they didn’t know what to do. When he rose and ascended back to the Father, though, he pulled their hearts with him toward heaven and blew the Holy Spirit as a following wind to push them on. It changed their direction and their drive; they became more sure of their faith in Christ. Where before, Peter waffled and even denied knowing Christ, later he died for him.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is saying ‘goodbye’ to his disciples. They love him and don’t want him to go away, and Jesus knows it’s hard for them. ‘Because I have said these things, you are filled with grief. But I tell you the truth: it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.’
A little after this passage, Jesus prays to the Father for his disciples, as we read together earlier, and in that prayer, we hear what was supposed to happen later after Jesus went away. "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.
"Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them, and that I myself may be in them."

Signs
The Gospel of John is a very carefully organized work, and it seems to be in two main sections, which scholars call the Book of Signs and the Book of Glory. In the first part, Jesus performs signs or miracles to show and explain to people who he is – God’s Son – and that God loves them. In the second part, his final, most important sign shows the world God’s love in a complete and definitive way, through a total self-giving act.
Many people today are interested in the idea of signs or miracles. I think it’s pretty universal for people to want to hear from God, but we’re not always the best at recognizing how God speaks to us. Today’s reading seems to indicate the Holy Spirit will help open our eyes to what’s true, remind us of what Jesus taught and offer comfort in our struggles. Often, signs of God’s love are all around us but we have to pay attention and look with eyes of faith – faith seeking understanding.
There’s a song by Carolyn Arends that I like which says, ‘I was hoping for a miracle and waiting for a sign/ as if each breath I take is not a gift,/ and I was acting just as if the way you gave your life for mine/ didn’t have my foolish heart convinced. What did I think could cause this hunger – did I ever stop to wonder why every time I open up my eyes...There you are."
In another song, she asks, "Do we dare pay attention, dare even mention, the mystery we find ourselves caught in...And do we dare to remember all that we have forgotten?"
The cross remains for us a sign and reminder of God’s love in Christ’s sacrifice. Jesus told his disciples, "when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself." In the same discourse as today’s passage, Jesus also commanded his disciples to love one another, and this love would be a sign to others.
So the love – the Spirit - that ties Jesus’ heart to the Father ties our hearts together as well in community and communion, creating a web of interconnections – like a huge net. And as Christ is lifted up, the net is pulled up behind him, catching and drawing even more people all together toward God – God who is himself a community of love.

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Given to Vidor Presbyterian
and in memory of Anna Lee
June 5, 2007

Palm Sunday ("I am with you")

Year C, Palm Sunday
Liturgy of the Palms - Gospel: Luke 19:29-40
Liturgy of the Word - Passion Gospel: Luke 22:39-23:56


At the beginning of this service, we heard about Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. People were singing, "Hosanna!" "Save us!" In the Passion Gospel, this tune changed to "Crucify him!"
The Passion means so many things, but one thing it means is that Jesus knows what it's like to be hurt - really, really hurt. He even knows what it's like to die. One of our beliefs as Christians is that Jesus' suffering and death can offer comfort to us, but it's not perhaps the kind of comfort we'd prefer.

Passion
What does it mean to describe this part of the gospel story as 'the Passion' ?
The way it's most commonly used, you'd think passion means long, slobbery kisses in romance movies. There's nothing like that in this story, though - there's a lot of shouting and hitting and pushing and crying; a man gets his ear cut off, and a whole group of people kill someone who's innocent and a couple other people who are probably guilty, but there are no passionate love scenes.
There is a sense in which passion means love, and so Jesus' Passion also means love, but it's a complicated kind of love. Real love, though it can involve kisses, also often involves tears - pain, sadess, confusion and other very difficult things - that's when the idea of passion gets closer to its real meaning.
The word passion comes from a Latin word that means 'to suffer.' And Jesus suffered - a lot. So it's called the Passion because it's about Jesus' suffering.

Suffering
The fact of suffering is one of the most difficult things we have to deal with in life, both because it hurts so much and because it doesn't make sense. Most of our hardest questions for God have to do with suffering.
Jesus' interactions with different people in the story illustrate, I think, questions people still have about pain.
The soldiers blindfolded Jesus and hit him, saying, 'Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?' It's like they were saying, 'If you're God, you should know everything, so where does pain come from?'
The chief priests and elders say, 'If you are the Messiah, tell us.' Jesus says, 'If I tell you, you will not believe...' I think this mirrors the confusion and frustration many of us feel at the fact that God is not tangible in ways we want or expect him to be, and we have to act so often on faith, hoping in things we can't see.
Even if he thinks they won't believe, why won't he tell them? I think because the whole point of his coming here, the whole point of the Incarnation was not to tell them a message anymore but to show them, because they hadn't been able to believe the message they were told.

Two Criminals
Perhaps the most important interaction occurs between Jesus and the criminals executed with him. One of the criminals questions him sarcastically: 'Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!'
The second criminal denounces him, saying, 'Do you not fear God?' He then says, 'Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.'
The first criminal's question is really a hard one. Why would Jesus, if he's God's Son, not use his power to get himself - and us - out of our pain?
I don't fully know the answer.
But I think Jesus' response to the second criminal gives us some idea. 'Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.'
It seems to me these two criminals are both saying essentially the same thing - the same thing everyone had been shouting on the way into Jerusalem the week before - "Save us!" They, and the crowd, and Pilate and the chief priests and elders and everyone else there, and we today, all want relief.


What relief?
What relief does Jesus' suffering offer for our suffering?
I think the 23rd Psalm, which has so often provided comfort in sorrow, offers part of the answer, and one passage particularly: "though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me."
One message of Jesus' Passion was this: I am with you .... I am with you in your suffering.

There is no attempt to answer our 'Why?' with any sort of 'Because...' He simply says, 'I am with you.'
The meaning of compassion, literally, is to 'suffer with' someone. Their pain is your pain. Because of his Passion, his suffering, Jesus is able to have true compassion for us, to suffer with us - our pain is his pain. I am with you in your suffering.

The corollary comes next week, at Easter, when we say that his victory and his joy will also be ours - I am with you in suffering, and you will be with me in Paradise.

In the film, Shadowlands, about the life of C.S. Lewis and particularly his marriage to Joy Gresham, Joy contracts cancer not long after they get married. Though she is dying, there are periods of relative health, and during one of these, they go on a belated honeymoon. While on a walk in the countryside, it begins to rain and they run for cover under an awning. Joy turns to Lewis and begins to talk about what will happen when she dies; she wants him to look after her son. He doesn't want to talk about it, though. A minute before, they had been laughing, and it had almost seemed possible in that moment for him to forget she was dying.
'Don't spoil it,' he says.
'It doesn't spoil it,' she says. 'It makes it real. The pain then is part of the happiness now.'

I think that is also part of the message of the Passion.
God is with us in suffering - and we will be with him in Paradise.
The pain now is part of the happiness then. It doesn't spoil it. It makes it real.
Amen.

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Given to Vidor Presbyterian
Palm Sunday, 2007

Peter's obedience

Year C, Epiphany 5
Gospel: Luke 5:1-11


In this passage, obedience opens up the way for miracles.
This is a powerful story about Jesus calling people to join him in mission. In the last and most recognized part of this story, Jesus tells Simon that he will make him a fisher of men, and they leave everything to follow him.
But leading up to that moment, Simon and his crew make some crucial choices, based purely on obedience, before they realize who Jesus is. Those acts of obedience open up the way for Jesus to do something miraculous.

View from the Crew
There are several people in this story besides Jesus and Simon Peter.
Sometimes, a good way to understand what’s happening in a situation is to mentally put yourself in the place of somebody who was there – Did you ever see those videos in history class, with Walter Cronkite narrating: “It’s 1776 at the signing of the Declaration of Independence and You are there!”
Well, imagine you are a crewmember on Simon’s boat. “It’s 30 AD, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee as Jesus calls his first disciples – and You are there...”
It’s just turning to evening as you join Simon and the rest of the crew in the boat. Simon’s boat is about 20 feet long, wooden, and smells like fish – so does Simon, and so do you.
Simon’s partners, James and John and their crew, are fishing in their father’s boat. Both boats put into the water as the stars are coming out. Fishing is a quiet kind of work; there’s no need to talk, really, and you don’t want to scare the fish.
It’s a long night, throwing the net out, pulling it back in – and catching nothing. Over and over: throw it out, pull it back – nothing, throw it out, pull it back – nothing. Simon steers the boat from one favorite spot to another, and every one of them turns up dry tonight.
The sky begins to get grey, and still no catch. You can see the other boat a ways off, and they’re sitting high in the water, too. This whole night is going to be worthless if you don’t catch something soon. Throw the net out; pull it back – nothing.
Finally, with the sun up, Simon gives the signal, and you pull back in to shore. Total catch for the night – nothing. The fish must have found a good hiding place. Everybody starts washing out the nets.
Nearby, a lot of people are gathered around a man who’s talking. He starts walking over, with the people following him. Apparently, he knows Simon; he gets in the boat and asks him something. Simon looks over and motions the crew back in the boat. What’s this about?
Simon says to row out a little ways from the shore. The crowd on the shore moves closer to the water. Then Simon says to drop anchor. The man sits down in the stern, facing the shore and starts talking. Apparently, he’s a teacher or a preacher, and from the size of the crowd, he must be popular.
How does he know Simon? And how long is he going to talk? You’d like to get home. It’s been a long night.
Simon looks tired and slightly irritated. This is not a time to ask.
The man finishes his talk and then motions to Simon. You hear him ask Simon to put out further and drop the nets.
Simon’s patience is visibly waning. “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing...”
“Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”
The man looks at Simon. Simon looks at you.
You’re thinking, ‘Who is this guy getting in your boat and telling you how to fish?’ He glares back and motions to throw out the net. Whatever. Now is clearly not the time to ask, but later, Simon’s going to have to explain this.
You throw out the net.
And the rest is history. The nets came up so full that they started to break. The crew had to signal the other boat, and they filled both boats so full they started to sink. Everyone was amazed, and Simon didn’t have to explain anything. It was obvious that this teacher had much more authority than they realized, and not just about fishing. When they got back to the shore, they left everything and followed him.

Simon’s obedience (twice)
In the most dramatic part of this story, Simon falls down in front of Jesus, recognizing him as Lord after seeing this miraculous catch of fish. Then, Jesus tells him not to be afraid, that he will become a fisher of men.
Though the catch is the dramatic part, I think what leads up to the catch is just as important, if not more so. What I’m talking about is Simon Peter’s obedience, and also his crew’s obedience.
When Jesus got in Peter’s boat and asked him to put out a little ways so he could teach the people, Peter and his crew did it. Perhaps he did it as a favor, recalling that Jesus had just healed his mother-in-law. Perhaps he did it partly out of respect because Jesus was a teacher.
When Jesus was finished teaching, he asked Peter to do something else – something that didn’t make sense and wasn’t really called for.
Jesus asks Peter to put out into deeper water and throw out the nets for a catch. Peter may have been willing to do Jesus the first favor out of a sense of respect or gratitude, but with this second request, he was stepping into Peter’s territory.
For Jesus to be authoritative in teaching about the Law was one thing, but for Jesus to tell Peter how to fish seemed to be overstepping his bounds.
You can probably think of someone you know who is an expert in everything. No matter what the topic is, they know all about it, even if they don’t. They’ll argue with someone who really is an expert. What do you do? To argue back will just make you crazy; but to let them go on is just as bad.
The issue is who really has authority on the subject. It would seem Peter, the fisherman, should be the authority on fishing, not Jesus, the teacher/carpenter. But Jesus was also God, and having been present at creation to make the sea, the fish and Peter himself, he was actually a much higher authority on the subject.
Peter, despite appearances, decides to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt. He explains that they’ve already tried what Jesus suggests and failed, “yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.”
This is obedience.

Obedience
Obedience is doing what you’re told, not because you want to or because it makes sense or you feel it’s likely to work, but because the person who tells you has authority, and you submit to it.
This concept undergirds all military endeavors; the military depends on clear authority structures and prompt, complete obedience. The idea of obedience is not a popular one in our culture of independence, though. Even the army now has changed its slogan - An Army of One – to reflect our culture’s obsession with individuality.
But we’re starting to see that an excess of individuality, when it becomes a primary good and doesn’t ever bow to the idea of a ‘greater good,’ causes society to deteriorate.
The Church is not an army of one. The Church is a Body with many parts, governed by Christ as its head. When the parts of the body do things on their own, without the head’s direction, it causes problems for the whole body.
I recently learned a bit about Huntington’s Disease, which is similar to Parkinson’s – in this condition, the nerves begin sending signals to the muscles at random times. The result is jerky movements that make it hard for the person to speak clearly, walk straight, eat, or move without bumping things. The person’s thinking is clear; it’s not a disorder of the brain. You could say it’s an obedience problem in the nerves. The nerves send out their own orders to the muscles, without the brain’s direction, and the result is chaotic movement and frustration for the person trying to live in his body while it’s doing its own thing instead of what he’s telling it to do.
When we as the Church focus on self-actualization rather than developing a good ear for hearing Christ’s direction and a quick response of obedience, the result is chaotic movement within the body and Christ getting frustrated that his Body parts are all trying to do their own thing rather than cooperating.
Obedience has nothing to do with how I feel, or what I think; it has everything to do with knowing who’s in authority over me and accepting that direction, regardless. I can express my concerns, my doubts, my outright objections, but if I do it anyway, that’s still obedience, and that’s what’s crucial to being someone God can work with.
God calls people individually, and he knows us each by name, but we can only collaborate with His larger purposes if we obey Him. What Peter and his crew and the partners in the other boat saw that day with the miraculous catch of fish was that Jesus had authority over their world. And it was their obedience, even when they didn’t yet know the extent of his authority, that put them in a position to see this.
There will most likely be times in your life when you’re told to do something that you don’t want to do or that doesn’t make sense or that you don’t think will work. In those situations, you need to discern, not the wisdom of the order, but who’s giving it. Remember the game ‘Simon says...’ If Simon says, you do it. If Simon doesn’t say, don’t do it or you lose that game. If the order is authoritative, then do it. It may open up the possibility of something miraculous.
Jesus told Simon, ‘Let down your nets for a catch.’ Simon objected, but he obeyed, and his crew obeyed him also. That’s why we’re here today. Because these fishermen obeyed Jesus’ directions for catching fish, he taught them to catch people, and they taught the people they caught, until now we’ve been caught and hauled into the boat to fish for others. That’s pretty miraculous.

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Given to Vidor Presbyterian
Feb. 4, 2007

Blessed Are...

Tradition calls these "The Beatitudes." I realized when I was studying this passage that I didn't know what the word "beatitude" meant. I've never heard anyone use it unless they were talking about this passage, or the parallel on in Luke.
So I looked it up, and here's what I found out: It comes from a Latin word 'beatus.' It means blessed, happy, or satisfied.
Beatus is the root of the English words beatify, beatific, and beatification. Beatification is one step in the Roman Catholic Church's process for designating someone as a saint. When a person has been beatified, they are referred to with the title, "The Blessed..."
The English word 'beatitude,' then, describes the condition of blessed-ness. This passage is called the Beatitudes because it's about blessed-ness - almost every sentence begins with 'blessed are...'

Who is blessed? - the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness...
In Luke's gospel, these are simplified a bit. In Luke, Jesus says simply, 'blessed are you who are poor...,' and 'blessed are you who are hungry...'
Both gospels include 'Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you against you falsely on my account...'
Matthew includes some more also: Blessed are the meek... Blessed are the merciful... Blessed are the pure in heart... Blessed are the peacemakers... Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake...
These sound like excellent qualities to strive for, especially with the promises that come with them:
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven... Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Do you feel like any of these apply to you? Or do they seem a little out of reach, like they mainly only apply to saintly people?

If you gave yourself a spirituality performance rating, say on a scale of maybe 1 to 4, what would it be? Let's say 4 is 'excellent,' 3 is 'fair,' maybe 2 is 'poor,' and 1 might be 'too low to rate.' Mother Theresa would probably be a 4. Where does that leave us? Maybe 2? Sometimes, maybe 3. Sometimes maybe 1.
If you'd put yourself at one or two listen to this first beatitude again.
Blessed are the poor in spirit...
What does this mean? It doesn't mean what I thought it did. I thought it meant something holy - the commentaries I read, the writer studied the word that was translated here as 'poor' and it means 'destitute' - it describes someone who's crouching down, begging, because they don't have anything at all and no way to get anything unless someone gives it to them.
If you're poor in spirit, you're spiritually destitute, and you're just hoping to make it through the day. You come up to the gate of heaven with the idea of asking for help - maybe not even for yourself, but when you see God walking up, He's so holy and so powerful-looking and so beautiful that there's no way you could speak to Him. You slip behind one of the pillars and crouch down. But as He gets closer, you're so desperate, you reach your hand out - maybe He'll see you and have some pity and at least drop you some scrap of blessing.
That's poor in spirit. Does it seem accurate to call that a condition of blessedness?
Blessed are the poor in spirir... Blessed are those who are so spiritually destitute and powerless to help themselves that they can only beg for God to have mercy on them - because He will. In Luke, Jesus tells a parable of a man who threw a banquet and invited a bunch of people to come, but they all started making excuses why they had more pressing things to do. So the man told his servant, "Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame... Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full."
It's not a bad thing to be poor in spirit; it's not even an unusual thing. Once you know it, though, the thing to do is find God's house and hang around it, so when He comes by, you can put out your hand, or when his servants come out looking for people to bring inside to the banquet, they'll grab you.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Another of these blessed conditions is for those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake. This group of people we might put on the high end of the 1-4 spirituality scale - people like the martyrs.
I think of Stephen being stoned to death while Saul (later the Apostle Paul) stood by holding the coats of the people who were stoning him. Later, Paul found himself in a position of begging God for mercy and following him to the point where he was also persecuted and died for his faith. How are these saintly people blessed for this sacrifice?
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
I think it's interesting that these two groups receive the same blessing. The kingdom of heaven belongs to people who stand firm in the face of persecution. And the kingdom of heaven belongs to people who can only beg for mercy.
It reminds me of the parable about the landowner who hired people to go work in his vineyard. He hired some in the morning, found a few more at lunch-time, and a few more just before quitting time. Then, when it was time to pay everybody, he paid them all the same - a a full day's wage.
The guys who worked all day were mad about this, but he pointed out that it was his money and what business was it of theirs how he chose to spend it? He gave them a good wage, and he gave the latecomers a good wage. What's wrong with that? He can be generous if he wants to. I think this issue of blessedness is similar. Those described in the beatitudes are not blessed because they do more holy things than other people. Maybe the only holy thing they do is show up just before quitting time and ask God for mercy.
But they're blessed because God blesses them.
We're blessed because God blesses us.
So far, neither of these blessed conditions sound like something we'd want to be in - spiritually destitute, being persecuted. In fact, the others, the rest of these blessed conditions aren't really so nice-sounding either for people living inside them. What's it like to mourn, for instance? Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
So these conditions of blessedness, these beatitudes, are not just for really saintly people. They're for real saints, for us. They're not all categories we'd want to fall into, but it's a comfort to know that God blesses us when we are in these situations.

Given to Vidor Presbyterian

The Word made flesh - Embodying Love

Year C, 1st Sunday after Christmas
Gospel Reading: John 1:1-18

In the service of Lessons and Carols, the title for this reading, the last one is "St John unfolds the mystery of the incarnation"
That's a good image. Studying this passage to try and write about it felt like trying to find a route on a map sitting at a stop light: it kept unfolding and unfolding and went in all directions. Then, the light turned green - I needed to give the sermon, so I had to try and quickly fold it all back up again into ten minutes. So, I would urge you to go back and look at the whole map yourself also.
Thhis passage is incredibly dense and compact and also beautiful. That's what I love about great poetry. You can read it in less than a minute but then think about it your whole life. There is so much here to explore. I'm only going to talk about a little bit of it - mainly one sentence.
"The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us."
The heart of the entire gospel is contained here: The Word was God. The Word became a man to show us God. The entire New Testament and libraries full of books have been written  to expound on this simple, amazing idea. In this passage, it's distilled to one sentence.

The gospel of John is different in some ways from the other three gospels - Matthew, Mark and Luke. One difference is this style of expressing big, complex ideas in simple sentences. One obvious example is John 3:16.
In artwork, the four gospel writers are each represented by a traditional symbol. John's symbol is an eagle, because he has such sharp, clear vision and givs us a bird's eye view of how Christ is related to God and us and all of creation.
Imagine if you could ride on the back of a huge golden eagle, like Harry Potter riding the hippogriff. Gripping under its wings with your knees and leaning forward, you're lying flat on your stomach looking sstraight down as it circles high above the ground. The whole area is laid out under you like a map, the water a piece of wrinkled foil, big patches of green carpet, bright, snaky rivers and thin lines of highways. You can get a feel for where things are in relation to each other and what the land is like on a big scale.
Then the eagle spots his focus, wheels up sharply , folds his wings over your knees and rockets back toward the earth.
This is what the prologue to John's gospel does. It takes us way above the present to show us the scope of events from the beginning of the universe to now. We see the major features: God, the Word, creation, life, light shining into the darkness, the world, people. We get a glimpse of how these relate to each other on a big scale, and then the focus quickly narrows to Jesus as God's word embodied. The rest of the book explores this in depth.

Jesus was not the beginning of God revealing himself and his word to us, though. God has been speaking to mankind since creation, in many ways.
Throughout the Old Testament, God speaks to his people almost constantly. He met with them, he talked to them, he made promises to them, he sent messages through prophets, angels, dreams and signs. He sent them laws, judges, priests and kings.
His message, his Word, essentially was that he loved them and wanted them to respond by trusting him and being faithful to him. Some of the people God charged with delivering his message to the people of Israel presented it clearly, but others garbled it up, and some completely ignored it and led the people in the opposite direction. So God's people were not always his best messengers.
We hear in the Psalms and elsewhere that creation itself tells of God. Job talks about this - even though we normally think of Job complaining to God for not speaking, at one point, he says this about God being expressed in his works of creation:

He spreads out the northern skies over empty space;
he suspends the earth over nothing.
He wraps up the waters in his clouds, yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.
He covers the face of the full moon, spreading his clouds over it.
He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters for a boundary between light and darkness.
The pillars of the heavens quake, aghast at his rebuke...
And these are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him.

I recognized the tune on the news one night and looked up to see why they were playing it: the reporter was talking about John Glenn's first day back in space and said that he had asked the folks in ground control to play the song to wake him up that morning. It caught my breath to imagine him looking out the window of the space shuttle and listening to these words:

O cratered moon and sparrow's wings
Thunder's boom, Saturn's rings
Unveil our Father as you sing
And my soul wells up with Hallelujas

Jesus embodied both God and God's Word and made it visible and tangible.
It seems to me a little similar, if you've seen My Fair Lady to what Eliza Doolittle was asking when she says, "Words, words, words! I'm so sick of words....Don't talk of stars burning above; if you're in love, show me!"
The idea of a person embodying a word can seem abstract, but we actually use this idea a lot in regular conversation. How often have you heard or said something like:
"He always waits to the last minute. If you look up 'procrastinator' in the dictionary, it's got his picture next to it!"
"Sure, I'll wait another three weeks; 'patience' is my middle name."
"You'll never meet a nicer lady; she's kindness personified."

Jesus is both 'God' and 'God's Word' personified. In Jesus, God expressed his word of love in a new way. He embodied it in his Son and sent his Son to live with his people. In Jesus, people could see God with their eyes, hear God with their ears, and touch God with their hands. But this was still a hard connection for people to make.
While they were eating the Last Supper, Philip said to Jesus, "Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us." And Jesus said, "Don't you know me Philip, even after I have been among you for such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father."
Philip may have expected seeing God would be like the Transfiguration - a mysterious, ethereal experience, with lights an clouds, and God would be sitting on a huge throne - and there are times in the Bible when encountering God was described like this. More often with Jesus, though, it was much simpler, like at that moment - conversation, dinner with close friends.
There's a relationship here between church on Christmas and church the week after Christmas.
Christmas is a big deal. It celebrates an amazing event - the Word becoming flesh. We put up special decorations; there's lots of music.. The week after is a bit of anticlimax. We're still talking about Christmas, still thinking about it, but things are starting to get back to their normal, everyday-ness.
The normal thing can seem less important than the extraordinary, but the odd part about the incarnation is that it elevated what had become ordinary by putting God inside it and making it holy. It's not that God is nothing more than the everyday. It's that God comes into the everyday stuff in our lives, making the small details significant, not pointless. That's the meaning of sacrament; it's what communion - and community - is about: God present in us, in our conversation, in our meals together, in everything.
God's word is everywhere revealed, and maybe that's why it sometimes seems invisible - it's hidden in plain sight because we don't realize what we're looking at.
Looking around this room, who would you say embodies 'patience' ?
Who personifies 'kindness'?
Who is the opposite of rude? Who is not easily angered?
Who always protects? Who always trusts? Who always hopes? always perseveres?
In the famous passge from Corinthians, this is how love is described. If we have people who personify these things, then we're on the way to embodying love, and that's quite close to embodying Christ, which is what the incarnation is all about.

Amen.

Given to Vidor Presbyterian  12/31/06There is no shortage of God around us. His fingerprints are everywhere, and through Christ, even human hearts are his temples. God speaks in words written, words spoken, words embodied. He's not trying to hide from us; he's made himself known in every possible way, even to the extent of becoming one of us and living here.Many current songs and hymns express this theme, too. Chris Rice wrote a beautiful song called "Hallelujahs"

Christ the King - A Hope Deferred, Fulfilled

Year B, Proper 29 - Christ the King
Gospel Reading (2nd): Mark 11:1-11

This passage is about the fulfillment of an old, tired, worn-out hope that wouldn't die.
Today is Christ the King Sunday - it's the last Sunday of the church calendar. Next week, Advent begins. For Christians, Christ was Lord at his birth - we have the benefit of hindsight, but most people living at that time didn't know him as Messiah until the events of today's reading - when he arrived in Jerusalem at the head of a parade and claimed to be King.
Israel had been hoping for a king like David to restore its glory. They'd been hoping so long it seemed like just a crazy dream - and then Jesus came along and made it seem impossibly true.

One of my favorite poems is "A Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes.
In the poem, Hughes wonders, "What happens to a dream deferred?"
And he explores some possibilities: "Does it shrivel up, like a raisin in the sun? Does it fester like a sore, and then run?"
His last option, more dramatic - "or does it explode!"
When something is deferred, you have to wait longer for it, and it may not be up to you how long.
What have you been waiting for?
What do you hope so much for that you are hesitant even to say it?
What hope have you voiced so often for so long, that you feel it must be impossible or it would have happened by now?
People in Israel had been hoping for about a thousand years for a messiah to rescue and restore them to the glory they had had under David. Israel under David and Solomon had been magnificent, like a huge spreading oak tree, but by the time of the Babylonian exile, it  had been poisoned and had limbs broken off, and finally the whole tree was cut down and burned - all that was left was a charred bit of stump.
Imagine a rosebush caught by the frost. Some of you know my grandpa grew beautiful roses, and he showed me that even when the top of a bush is killed, it may be able to grow back from the roots.
That's the image Isaiah used to give people hope in a messiah who would be a shoot from the stump of Jesse...(Is )

When Jesus came into Jerusalem, a big crowd of people was there, shouting "Hosanna!" and waving palm branches. Hosanna means "save us!" It comes from Psalm 118, which is a hymn from the Feast of Tabernacles temple worship service. In the instructions for singing this song during the holiday, everyone was supposed to shake palm branches at the Hosanna part. The Israelites came to connect this particular hymn with a hope for a messiah - someone chosen by God to deliver Israel.
Learning this has completely changed my understanding of this passage. Before, I thought Hosanna just meant something like "Hooray!" So, when people were marching along with Jesus, I imagined it something like a Mardi Gras parade.
It has a very different meaning if what they were actually saying was, "Save us!" "We think you're the Messiah, the Son of David, a new king to restore our people!" From this perspective, it sounds like they expected him to start a revolution.

Imagine that a distant cousin of the late President John F. Kennedy announces he (or she) is going to run for President. This Kennedy goes on a cross-country bus tour, culminating with a march on Washington. Before the official compaigning even begins, while the current President is still in office, this Kennedy pulls onto Pennsylvania Avenue in a new black Lincoln, with flags on the front of the hood, red-white-and-blue bunting on the grill and a placard on the back that says, "End the War Now!" A crowd of people walk, run  and ride along, waving flags and shouting "Rebuild Camelot!" and a band is playing "Hail to the Chief"
What Jesus and the crowd did in that parade was deliberately confrontational, throwing down the gauntlet. At that time, it's what people were hoping for - they were tired of being ruled by Rome and tired of being on the bottom of the heap in international matters. They wanted a messiah to deliver them - someone who clearly had God's power on him. Jesus looked like that one.

But things went all wrong.
He got himself arrested and then executed for treason - he didn't even try to stop it.

A good friend of mine is grieving for her older sister, who recently died of cancer, leaving a husband and three children. When she first discovered her cancer, Shannon was terrified and prayed to God: "I don't want to die! I need to be here for my kids!" and she believed God gave her a promise that she would be.
But she died.
How could that happen? Did God not promise her?
We've been trying to figure it out. What was the promise about - Did we all misunderstand it?
This seems to me possibly the situation Jesus' disciples and followers were in after his arrest. They had to be very confused, hurt and scared. They had been so thoroughly convinced. Hohw could they all have been wrong? Was there some impossible way for it still to be true?
Amazingly - this last one was the answer - with God all things are possible.
When he marched into Jerusalem as king, he was the king - king of the Jews - and not only a king but the King of all kings. This, people had no precedent for, though. There was no way for them to understand this, so he accepted it as true when they called him "king." It's the truth but not the whole truth.
So he didn't blame them for not understanding it. On the cross, he prayed that God would forgive them, because they didn't know what they were doing. When he came back and appeared to the disciples, he didn't condemn Thomas for doubting; he showed him what was needed for him to believe.

When I was talking to my grieving friend about this, it was such a big idea - so many parts. It was hard to condense down into one main point - one idea. I felt this scripture teaches us that we can't understand God's promises completely in our own language, but that doesn't invalidate our hope. I felt that it teaches God uses the words and understanding we have to communicate new things, but it can be very painful and confusing for us to grow in this way.
What she brought it down to was this:
God is not a liar.

It's right to hope in the promises he gives us. It's not easy - because it takes faith - you can't see it yet. Sustaining and nurturing hope is hard - and it takes practice and persistence, and we need all the support we can get with it. But also, God can take the smallest, weakest, most worn-out, damaged, dried-up piece of hope, and make it grow, because nothing is impossible for God.

He sent his Son among us, born as a baby, to become King - King of all kings.
Next week, Advent begins, and we re-live the story of waiting and hoping for Christ to be born. In a way, it doesn't demand much of us, because we're just pretending to wait for something that has already happened.
But there are other promises we're waiting on now that seem they will never be accomplished. Those are the ones to practice hoping and waiting for during Advent.
Remember the joy Jesus' followers had when they thought he was fulfilling their hope for a king.
Remember their confusion and pain when he was not a king in the way they expected.
But mostly, remember their amazement and awe - and they strength it gave their faith - when they began to understand what kind of king he really was.
Amen.

Given to Vidor Presbyterian  11/26/06