Easter 5B John 15:1-8, Life on the Vine, St. Mark's Episcopal Church Little Rock May 2, 2021

Life on the Vine

Easter 5B John 15:1-8, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church May 2, 2021

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower, and you are the branches. Abide in me as I abide in you.”

What is your image of abiding in Christ, of living on the vine?

Most of us have a pretty specific image of what it is like being in union with Christ.  One common belief is that those connected to the vine never have difficulty speaking their truth if asked what they believe.  In a heartbeat, they can speak eloquently about their faith and walk with Jesus in ways that move and convert others. They are never embarrassed if asked what they believe, and are never shy or reluctant to answer. 1

Let’s see how this sometimes works in practice. Mike and Marty Schaufele share  with us a dear friend, Bob Scott, now a priest in Tulsa.  Bob tells the story of the morning many years ago when he returns from his first Arkansas Cursillo weekend, empowered to reach out to his neighbor and speak about his abiding relationship with Jesus Christ.  He prays in the elevator on the ride up to his office that early Monday morning that God will put someone in need in his life. He walks into his office as a co-worker immediately meets him and asks to speak with him about a spiritual crisis.  Bob looks at him/ and says, “I’m sorry, I have been away for the weekend and am behind in my work. You’ll have to come back later.”

         Barbara Brown Taylor tells us there are more common knowledge false beliefs about real Christians.1 Believers in Christ constantly communicate with God.  They understand what happens to them every day, or at least have the faith to accept whatever comes gracefully. Believers do not have doubts, and  are never afraid. They have absolute confidence that they are in God’s hands and that God will take care of them. When they say their prayers at night, they hear God speaking directly back to them. 1

Another popular belief is that those living on the vine consistently encounter worship as a meaningful experience. They leave church and go out and act on whatever the preacher says. They believe every word of the Nicene Creed. They have a spiritual experience as they receive communion every Sunday.  The faithful are never bored, disagreeable, or feel left out. They have a steadfast sense of belonging to God and to one another. 1

Have we come to your belief about life on the vine yet? What spiritual goal have you placed so high that you can never achieve it? Do you not pray enough, or witness enough, or read and study enough theology? Are you not knowledgeable enough, or enthusiastic enough, or certain enough about what you believe? Whatever it is,/ please stop./ Please stop exiling yourself from the vine, because of your beliefs about what you think it takes to belong to the body of Christ. You are connected to Christ.  You belong on this vine simply because God says you do, not because of what you do or who you are,/ but because you are so loved by God.1

I think you are hearing this message today because you seek an awareness of your presence on this vine.  Chances are the way true believers believe is valiantly on some days, pitifully on others, with faith enough to move mountains on some occasions and not enough to get out of bed on others.  One of my most spiritual friends tells me that she has a deep and abiding faith in God that comes and goes.  Another friend shares with me: “I believe in God frequently.” I have another friend who tells me she sometimes feels she is like the Athenians Paul speaks to in Acts, worshiping an “unknown god.”

         Reread your Bible. Dear friends on this vine, we are all in good company. From Adam and Eve to Jesus and his followers, the Old and New Testaments are a continuous saga about people who have doubts about their relationship to God and what God is calling them to do. Sometimes the best we can do is take C. S. Lewis’s suggestion and act “as if,” as if we are aware of our presence on the vine, and when we do, somehow it becomes true.

Some days we are as firm in our faith as apostles.  Some days we are like tired branches bearing over-ripe fruit.  This means that we belong to the vine not because we are certain of God but because God is certain of us. No one, no action, can take us off of this vine./

Be patient with yourself,/ and while you are at it,/ be patient also with the rest of us on this vine with you. /

What is life like on this vine?  Some years ago, my husband and I spent a week at Kanuga, an Episcopal conference center in North Carolina, learning about life on the vine and living a spiritual life. It was called a Summit on Spirituality, and it was just that.  We listen to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Walter Wink, Thomas Keating, Alan Jones, Phyllis Tickle, Barbara Crafton, and many others, including our own Stuart Hoke.  They share their experience of the spiritual disciplines which keep us aware of our presence on the vine: keeping the daily office, centering prayer, meditation, yoga, scripture, sacraments, corporate worship, journaling, movies, spiritual direction, dream work.

Alan Jones tells us that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.  I should repeat it: the opposite of faith is not doubt but certainty.  This also is now a favorite quote of Anne Lamott. If you go far enough back, you find it in the writings of Paul Tillich.

Barbara Crafton tells us that when you lose sight of your place on the vine and become spiritually dry, change your spiritual disciplines. That is why there are so many ways to feel and know that connection to the vine, to Christ, and each other.

Finally, this is what we learn about life on the vine from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a genuinely holy man.

We are all so loved by a vinegrower who creates us by the bubbling over of his love.  The vinegrower loves us before we are born, and will love us throughout eternity.  The vinegrower loves us so much that all of us are given a divine connection to the vine,/ Jesus Christ. Each of us is a branch connected to this vine. By this connection, we become a God carrier, a carrier of the love of Christ.

         Insight! A vine does not just work vertically. A vine also connects the branches horizontally to each other. Jesus describes in John a dynamic system of nurture, feedback, growth, groundedness.  Christ is the vine, giving himself to the branches, helping them grow and provide fruit. We are dependent on him. / The vine, Jesus Christ, is also the MEANS of our interdependence, our connection with each other, this community. We are born needing to connect to each other.2 This is why we so longed for each other during the pandemic. God calls us to community on the vine. /Right now, get involved in one of the communities here at St. Mark’s, men’s Bible study, Daughters of the King, a Christ Care group, choir, youth group, food pantry, EfM, Sunday forum, Shrimp Boil, Community of Hope. And so many more.

 We are cared for on this vine by the love of Christ/ and by the love of Christ in each other. Like the centurion’s servant healed by  the faith of his master, and the paralytic healed by the faith of his friends who lowered him through a roof to Jesus, we do the same for each other.

Last insight. There is nothing we can do to lose this connection on the vine. We can do nothing to earn God’s love/ or lose it. But, yes, our lives may be pruned, some times more painfully than at others. Harmful parts of ourselves are discarded when we can no longer bear the pain they have brought to our lives and others. We are pruned of the withering parts of our lives that are not God: our addictions, our need for control, our self-centeredness. But the vine grower, God, never gives up on us throughout all eternity.   Jesus calls us today to be aware and to accept this incredible gift of love and connection to the love of God in Christ and each other.

And so, my dear leafy friends, “as we are connected to this vine, the Risen Christ runs through our blood like sap, nurturing us through community, giving our new and old branches more fruit than we can ever believe possible. In this world that is so hungry, so thirsty, what could be better than to be a living branch abiding on this vine of love, fed and cared for by Christ and each other?” 2

1Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Voice of the Shepherd,” The Preaching Life, pp.  143-144.

2Susan Klein, “Fruitful Connections,” Preaching Through the Year of Matthew, pp. 60-62. 

Lent 5B, "Sir, We Wish to See Jesus," John 12: 20-33, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, March 21, 2021

Lent 5B Wishing to See Jesus, Greeks, Phillip, Andrew. John 12:20-33, St. Mark’s March 21, 2021

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

No two people encounter Jesus in precisely the same way, writes the late Rachel Held Evans.1(p. 151 Inspired) Nicodemus comes under cover of night. Zacchaeus seeks Jesus from the top of a tree. A 12-year-old girl sees Jesus as he brings her back to life and tells her to get something to eat.  A hemorrhaging woman follows him and touches Jesus’ garment.  A woman without a name comes into a Pharisee’s dinner party from off the street, washes Jesus’ feet with her tears, dries them with her hair, and anoints his feet with an alabaster jar of costly oil (Luke 7:37). A Samaritan woman at the well gives Jesus a drink of water at noon and becomes the first person he tells that he is the Messiah. Next week on Palm Sunday, we will hear a centurion at the foot of Jesus’ cross look up and declare him indeed as God’s Son immediately as Jesus draws his last breath. There is no formula, no blueprint.1

The good news becomes good because it will vary from person to person and community to community. Today we learn that a relationship with Jesus has a different impact on Andrew, Phillip, and now the Greeks. This is what the New Testament is about; the story of encounters with  Jesus as told from multiple perspectives.

Today we once again meet Phillip, a disciple from the Greek-Jewish town of Bethsaida, and Andrew, a disciple who also has a Greek name. We first come-upon Phillip in John’s gospel when Jesus simply sees him and says, “Follow me” (John 1:43). Phillip then invites his friend, Nathanael, from the village of Cana to come to meet Jesus. John Claypool calls Phillip the careful realist.2  Earlier, when Jesus asks Phillip to feed a large group of people, Phillip tells Jesus there is not enough money to buy even a tiny amount of bread for each person. Next week we will hear Phillip still tell Jesus at the last supper the night before Jesus dies to “Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Why is Phillip never called “doubting” Phillip? Today we get a glimpse of another side of Phillip.  Herbert  O’Driscoll tells us that perhaps the Greeks first come to Phillip because he has a welcoming face.3 Maybe that is why when Jesus first sees Phillip, he only needs to say, “Follow me.”

So, why does Phillip go to Andrew to decide what to do about this Greek situation? Does Phillip have difficulty making decisions, or more likely he is someone who is not too proud to seek help when he  encounters an unusual or difficult situation,/ unlike Peter, who just barges right in.2 /

Andrew is the next disciple in our story today and is the first disciple called in John’s gospel. He is once a disciple of John the Baptist and is with John around four in the afternoon when the Baptist sees Jesus and says, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.”/  Andrew follows Jesus. Then Jesus asks him, “What are you looking for?” (John 1:35-39).  Practical Andrew responds, “Where are you staying? Jesus answers, “Come and see” (John 1:39). Andrew then has a similar impulse as Phillip to share the good news of Jesus with his brother, Simon Peter. “We have found the Messiah.” Later on, when Jesus is with a crowd and asks Andrew to help feed them, Andrew looks for a solution and goes through the crowd to find a young boy with five barley loaves and two fish”(John 6:9) and brings him to Jesus. A little different from Phillip’s “half empty” response at the hungry gathering crowd.  Today we meet Andrew, who affirms that his ministry has become bringing people to Jesus. He brought his brother, the young boy, with fish and bread, and now the Greeks.4/

“No two people encounter Jesus in exactly the same way.”1//

So, who are “some” Greeks asking politely to get a first-hand view of Jesus with their request, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Why are they in this story? Rachael Held Evans again tells us, “The gospel means that every small story is part of a sweeping story, every ordinary life part of an extraordinary movement” (Inspired 157).  Are these Greek Jews coming to the festival of the Passover/ or are they pagan Greeks who are seeking to learn more about Jesus?4  

I know you remember last Sunday when we heard the famous John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” Note the word, the world again.  Jesus came to us for the world, not just to Jews, Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, or even Episcopalians!  That message is now emphasized again today as Greeks come to learn about Jesus. Jesus hints at this earlier as he intermittently goes back and forth across the Sea of Galilee from the land of the Jews to the home of the Gentiles. Remember also how he goes through Samaria to the “unclean” Jews and meets that fascinating woman at the well.  

God loves the whole world, China, England, Russia, all of Africa. Today  Jesus also says, “When I am lifted up (on the cross) I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). Not some, but all.

William Willimon tells us this is the Sunday we remember God gives his life for all humanity.  Jesus Christ stretches out his arms on the cross to reach ALL of us, especially those who may seem like a pain in the neck, those on the other side of the aisle, on the other side of the ocean.5 Hopefully, this story teaches us to see those different from ourselves still as children of God./

Let us remember this as we say the prayers of the people that we are praying for all the different people of the world who, like all the characters in the gospels, will each have a unique encounter with Jesus, just as you and I do.   Every one of us has life and world experiences that only we have had. Jesus meets us exactly where we are and where we have been. Treasure that. Treasure this unique gift from Andrew and Phillip, who bring the Greeks to Jesus// and now, in turn, to us. //

Barbara Brown Taylor imagines that when Jesus hears that the Greeks have come to be with him, he knows it is time. It is finished. The future has arrived. The foreigners have come to take the gospel from Judea and plant it everywhere else in their own language. Jesus is now assured that God’s message of love will be heard throughout the universe.6 /

 Do you see yourself in this story?/ This story is about us./ We are in the story./ Imagine Jesus looks with wonder at his Greek visitors and sees beyond them/ to the host of those far from Judea and Galilee/ to all over the world,/ who will now be drawn to the Father/ for centuries to come./ Among them are you and me,/ coming to worship at St. Mark’s today, who “wish to see Jesus.3”

1Rachael Held Evans in Inspired (Nelson Books 2018).

2 John Claypool in The First to Follow, “Phillip” Morehouse 2008).

3Herbert O’Driscoll, The Word Today, Year B Volume 2 (Anglican Book Center 2001)pp. 37-38.

4 John Claypool in The First to Follow, “Andrew,” (Morehouse 2008).

5 William Willimon in “5th Sunday in Lent, Drawing All to Himself,” Pulpit Resources (March 22, 2015) pp. 50-52.

6Barbara Brown Taylor in Always a Guest (Westminster John Knox Press 2020) p. 216.

 Joanna Seibert joannaseibert@me.com

Lent 1B And Angels Waited on Him. St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Arkansas, February 21, 2021

Lent 1B And Angels waited on Him

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, February 21, 2021

“At once, the same Spirit pushed Jesus out into the wild. For forty  wilderness days and nights, he was tested by Satan; Wild animals were his companions and angels took care of him.”1

They hid behind several desert shrubs, but their overpowering presence cannot be contained so easily. They are still overwhelmed by this recent assignment by the Spirit to reveal to Jesus the slightest hint of their presence. The dust of the wilderness is now holy ground in his presence. The awe of his holiness fills the slightest breeze that passes by his stilled body.

The angels feel like intruders in the presence of their God known as the Word, now an exhausted person who has been tempted by all the evil the world can muster. This holy one had taught the angels that Love is the way,/ the unconditional love that enfolds and reaches out from God the Father, God, the Spirit, and God, the Word.

The Angels attempt to whisper a plan among themselves but cannot utter a word. They are motionless with their wings folded as close to their bodies as possible. This is their God, but they have never seen the God of Love so up close in this form. They instinctively take off their white sandals and  kneel as their white robes and bare feet dust the ground. He lies motionless with an occasional shallow breath, raising the thin woven garment over his chest ever so slightly. His unkept black hair is matted and wringing wet with sweat. His head rests on a nearby flat rock, and his body lies lifeless, extended on the cold ground.  He is not yet aware of their presence.

 The Angels have observed his forty day fast from afar. They remember other spiritual leaders, Elijah, Moses, Esther, who fast before great struggles. The Angels hold their breath each time the devil tempts him, to turn stone into bread, jump from a pinnacle and rely on them to catch him, and finally to worship Satan so that the whole world would be his realm.  They hang on his every answer. “It takes more than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady nourishment of God’s love. God’s Love is the way;” “What good does it do to keep testing the love of  God. We know love is the way;”/ and finally “Leave me, Satan! We are called to worship only the God of love.  God’s unconditional love moves us to serve God.  Love is the Way.” 3 The Angels also hear his inner voice echoing, “Bread is necessary, but the word and love of God is more basic to our lives. There is nothing wrong with  miracles, but we must not make them into spectacular events, and forget the real presence of God in them. Serving the God of love is why we are born. Love is the way.”/

The angels’ proximity to the physical presence of the holy in human form continues to render them paralyzed.  They have served  this God of love since time began. Now their God is in great distress after an unbelievable ordeal carrying all humanity to his appointment with all the world’s evil, not just their personal temptations of the flesh but a  confrontation with the collective economic, religious and political realities who claim godlike powers.4 Their holy one, now human, has collapsed after this physical, mental, and spiritual ordeal. The animals, the lion, the leopard, the foxes are still beside him, keeping him warm as the desert temperature dramatically drops as night approaches.

Then suddenly a synapse, a whisper, a sticky note on one side of their brains uniformly brings them back to the reality of why they are now in this wild desert. They are to minister to him, revive his body,/ heart,/ and soul. For a last moment, however, they remember the holiness of their God of love becoming human and tested almost to the point of death. Also, they remember the privilege of being called by the Spirit to care for him./

Jesus slowly turns his head in the direction of  the Angels, and they intuitively rush with fluttering wings to his side carrying all the nourishment and herbs and spices and balms known to heaven. They surround his body with their wings, protecting him from any more harm. But the greatest healing power comes in the  unconditional love from the multitude of  these Angels who take turns caring for Jesus./ The more usual circumstance is his ministering to them. Love is the way. ///  

On the first Sunday in Lent, we always take an outward-bound wilderness excursion like a national guard preparedness weekend. We are called to honor the God who created us and remember the unbelievable depth of God’s reckless love where God becomes one of us so that God might know all our trials and temptations.  How else can God relate to us unless God walks in our shoes. Our creator loves us beyond our comprehension and is reckless with the generosity of his love even when we treat that love with rejection.

 The Angels ministering to Jesus in the wilderness are icons showing us the holiness of this event. They also are messengers reminding us that the Spirit will likewise send angels to minister to us whenever we encounter suffering./

Martin Luther King Jr. preaches that Jesus in this Lenten story also gives us a new norm of greatness. Jesus models what it is like to be a servant minister, keeping a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.5  Servant leaders differ from the smartest, the  greatest, or those needing to control or looking for admiration from others. Servant leaders build up others, not polish the system or the leader’s self-importance.6//

We will learn more during Lent about this love and servant leadership and Angels’ presence in our suffering in the forum as we study Bishop Michael Curry’s book, Love is the Way7. Bishop Curry teaches us about God’s love in his journey from childhood to becoming the presiding bishop.   He, like Jesus and dare say all of us, struggles and suffers but is always ministered by angels whose nourishment is God’s love. There is Josie Robbins, who stops by his father’s church to drop off a neighbor’s children before she goes to her own Baptist church. (12-13).  When Bishop Curry’s mother has a stroke and his father is overwhelmed as an Episcopal priest, Josie steps in and becomes Michael’s surrogate mother. Cousin Bill takes a teaching job in Buffalo to help care for Bishop Curry and his sister.(31) A local dentist and his wife care for the children during the week whenever Bishop Curry’s  maternal grandmother from Yonkers cannot come. (32) Erna Clark, the Sunday School superintendent, picks the children up from school every day and later helps Bishop Curry decide on colleges.(32) Curry’s seminary encourages him to preach in the style of his grandfathers’ instead of teaching him that emotional preaching is a sign of inferior intelligence.(107-108). Others teach Curry how to receive anger without giving it back. (181).

The book goes on and on about better angels in Curry’s life deeply rooted in his church community. Perhaps this can explain why our presiding bishop knows so much about God’s love is the way. 

Bishop Curry teaches us a Jewish proverb, “before every person, there marches an angel proclaiming, ‘behold the image of God.’”(95-96).

I dare say each of us can remember more angels who drop or march into our lives at difficult times. Give thanks for these angels this Lent./ If they are still alive, call or write./

Always remember how Curry becomes an Episcopalian. His father comes from a long line of Baptist ministers. His mother becomes a devout Episcopalian when she is at the University of Chicago. When the couple becomes engaged in the 1940s, she takes his father to an Episcopal church outside racially segregated Dayton, Ohio. When Curry’s black parents are offered the common communion cup along with the whites in the congregation at the Eucharist, his father knows this is where angels live. (34). Imagine the difference in our lives if his parents had gone to an Episcopal church where the cup was segregated!/

At his mother’s funeral when he is 14, Michael Curry is surrounded by all these angels who wipe the tears from his eyes and remind him of St. Paul’s words, “Love never dies.”8 Love builds,/ hate destroys. (89) “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”9

Bishop Curry writes about that day. “Community is love…… And so, at fourteen years old, I did not conclude that the world is a broken, bitter, and ruthless place. I am not abandoned—I am loved.” (43).

  “The way of Love will show us the right thing to do every time.” (27).

Love is the way.

Joanna Seibert

1 Eugene Peterson in  The Message Study Bible, Mark 1: 12-13.

2 Stephen Mitchell in Parables and Portraits,  p. 34.

3 Eugene Peterson in The Message study Bible,  Matthew 4:1-11.

4 Kris, Rocke and Joel Van Dyke in Geography of Grace in InwardOutward February 2, 2021.

5 Martin Luther King Jr in “Drum Major Instinct,” sermon, Atlanta, February 4, 1968.

6 Bennett Sims in Servanthood, Leadership for the Third Millennium.

7 Bishop Curry in Love is the Way (Avery 2020).

8 I Corinthians 13:8.

9 Martin Luther King in A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from Great sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Epiphany 3B How God Calls, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, AR, January 24, 2021

Epiphany 3B Call of the Disciples

Mark 1:14-20, January 24, 2021 St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

The Call

All our minds are most likely called to the happenings on January 20th of this week at the swearing in of a man and a woman who believe we called them to lead this country. How did they hear this call? One says he heard the call after he saw the violence in Charlottesville, where one race was speaking out violently against another in our country. The other says her upbringing in a minority and immigrant family gave her a voice and ears to hear the call.

We also hear today about the call of four of Jesus’s disciples, Simon, Andrew, James, and John. Why does Jesus pick them, and perhaps more astonishing, what prompts them to respond to that call?

We can surmise that Jesus realizes he cannot find hometown disciples in the hill country of Galilee in Nazareth. So, he journeys 20 miles down to a lakeside village of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. Mark leaves the details to others. John tells us that Andrew and Simon are disciples of John the Baptist. John the Baptist points Andrew to Jesus, and Andrew brings Simon to Jesus.

Herbert O’Driscoll1 believes that Simon and Andrew come from a long line of fishermen. Jesus talks with the two brothers for several days about the world situation and the life they wish for, as they cast and mend their nets. They talk about living in an occupied country under a brutal foreign rule. Friends in the resistance movement called Zealots approach all three, who propose to make changes by violence. Jesus and Simon and Andrew see a common ground in their “no” response to this answer. Jesus questions the brothers closely about others who might want to make changes without violence. Andrew and Simon introduce Jesus to James and John. The five become friends. The four fishermen teach Jesus the art of fishing. Then one night on the beach around a roaring fire, Jesus tells his new friends, “Follow me, and we will fish for people.” The rest is history.

Sam Lloyd2 reminds us that most of the call stories in the Bible are pretty daunting. A voice comes out of a burning bush or down from heaven, or echoing out of the rafters of the Temple. God speaks, and a heroic prophet like Isaiah or Jeremiah proclaims with authority. If those stories are models for God calling us, we may feel left out.

Thank God for Jonah, whose story we hear, in part, in the Old Testament reading today. There is nothing impressive about this back-pedaling, timid, complaining fellow. Every child at Vacation Bible School can tell you the last thing Jonah wants is to answer a call. He just wants to be left alone. But that is not the M. O. of our God. God calls Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh to demand the people repent of their evil ways and turn to God. Instead, Jonah gets on a boat headed as far in the opposite direction as he can go. Nineveh is the hated capital of the Assyrian Empire, now known as Iraq, and it was as hostile to Israel then, as it is now. Jonah has no intention of helping them escape doom.

Then a storm at sea threatens to kill everyone on the boat. The crew decides God is punishing them because Jonah is on board. They toss him into the sea, where he promptly lands inside the belly of a big fish for three days. There he composes a beautiful prayer and is finally spewed out on dry land. This story gets our attention.

In today’s part of the story, God tells Jonah a second time to go to Nineveh. Jonah delivers God’s message, and to the shock of everyone, especially Jonah, the people of Nineveh from the king on down repent, and God forgives them. The story ends with Jonah whining and unhappy because all of those terrible Assyrians have escaped the wrath of God.

Some of us may identify with Jonah more than with the four fishermen. Jonah is not interested in hearing God’s call and doesn’t like what God has in mind when he listens. Jonah’s story cuts right to the depths of our souls: the very human reality that often we really don’t want God to call us, because we’re afraid of what God might ask us to do.

We do want to have a sense of being close to God, but what if God asks us to deal with people we don’t like,/ forgive when we don’t want to,/ say hard things at work or at home when we’d rather not? What if God asks us point blank what we ourselves are doing to help people who are struggling in our city with poverty, inequality, or illness? What if God asks us to make more time to grow in our faith in our already struggling lives? //

Don’t overlook one key part of Jonah’s story. God never gives up on calling Jonah,/ even when he is running as hard as he can in the wrong direction. And God never gives up on those Assyrians either,/ the worst enemies of the Israelites, who are still precious in his sight. That’s the God we’re dealing with—one who won’t stop calling every one of us, Democrats, Republicans, black, white, brown, red, yellow, to bring about God’s kingdom.

We each have a specific gift to offer./

Being called can be elusive and mystical. It doesn’t mean we actually hear a voice, and it rarely means there was a certain moment or an earthshaking experience. For most of us, hearing a call means listening to our lives,/ and sorting through our gifts and passions,/ talking to advisors and friends,/ and trying to imagine this possibility or that,/ asking God to guide and inspire our seeking. Listening for God’s call means refusing to ask what we want for our life and focusing on what God wants from the life God gives us.

We look at our skills and abilities. We pay attention to our passions. We look backward at our life to trace a call by God from our earliest days. We see connections, hints, surprising turns where God has led us along all the way.

The issue isn’t whether we hear a clear call. It isn’t whether we are certain every day that we are doing exactly the right thing. It’s whether we sense ours is a called life,/ a life that is accountable to God and our baptismal covenant, a life that has a mission, even if we may have a hard time articulating it.//

So, what is your calling? What is the one unique, irreplaceable gift you have to give the world, whether you are 9 or 90?

Maybe you are at the place in your life where you are just starting to think about a call, or maybe you think it’s too late in life to hear a call.

I learn the answer to this truth some years ago, from another young boy in his early teens. Events in my life tell me I can only survive by intermittently becoming blind and deaf to the constant cacophony of the world by using alcohol to ease this pain. Slowly, I realize I am called to a different way of life, to answer another call to my family, to the God of my understanding and to my patients. As I tell this to my teen-aged son, John, he looks across the luncheon table at Trio’s restaurant and says, “Mom, it is never too late to change.” That has been my experience, and I offer wisdom from this young person to you./

What is your call? Frederick Beuchner3 says it is where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger./ Deep gladness. What you do that leaves you with an overwhelming sense of peace, something you do which energizes you and those around you./

The world’s deep hunger. In a world where there is so much drudgery, grief, emptiness, fear, and pain, if we keep our eyes and ears and heart open, we will soon find that place./ The phone rings and we jump, not so much out of our skin/ as into our skin. With our eyes, ears, and heart open, the right place finds us… and in that day/ we will connect,/ listen,/ care,/ “fish for men… and women.”//

Even if you didn’t realize it/ when you tuned in this morning, God is seeking you out and calling you. God wants all of us—because there are so many things to do today and tomorrow, right in the midst of our life in this pandemic and our very troubled world and country,/ things that only you can do.//

Today,/ Simon, Andrew, James, and John,/ and even Jonah, are looking over Jesus’ shoulder and saying with him, “Come/ join us./ Bring your deep gladness/ to our world’s ever-present deep hunger.”

1Herbert O’Driscoll in A Greening of Imaginations, “Forming the Circle,” (Church Publishing 2019), pp. 36-37.

2 The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, “What is Your Calling?” Sermon at the National Cathedral, Epiphany 3B, January 25, 2009.

3Frederick, Buechner, in Secrets in the Dark,“The Calling of Voices,” (HarperSanFrancisco 2006), pp. 35-41.

Christmas 1, 2020, And the Word Became Flesh, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Arkansas

Christmas 1B, 2020 And the Word became Flesh

December 27 St. Mark’s, Little Rock, John 1:1-14.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him.”  / This is John’s Christmas story. Christmas is a time for stories.  Here is another lesser known Christmas story about the Word given to us by Barbara Brown Taylor.

Once upon a time, before time begins, before clocks, calendars, or churches, God makes the universe. Only two stories survive telling us how this happens because only the three selves of God, God the Creator, God the Word, The Logos, and God the Holy Spirit are present at the beginning. During this time before time, God, who loves to make things, creates a world and fills it with the most amazing things: humpback whales that sing, fish that swim upstream,/ birds with more colors than a box of Crayola crayons.  God sits back and looks at it all, and God is pleased./ But something seems missing. It dawns on God that everything God has made is interesting and gorgeous, but nothing looks exactly like God. It is as if God paints this huge masterpiece and fails to sign it. So, God makes his signature piece, two of something made in God's own image, so anyone who looks at them will know who the artist is.

Flesh is God’s medium—flesh and blood—extremely flexible, warm to the touch./ God watches his two creatures walk hand in hand, laugh and run, and God falls in love with them. God enjoys being with them better than any other creatures he has made. God especially enjoys walking with them in the garden in the cool of the evening.

It almost breaks God's heart when they do the only thing God asks them not to do and then hide. God searches the garden until way past dark, calling their names over and over again.

 Things become different after that.  God still loves the human creatures best of all, but the attraction is not mutual.  Birds are crazy about God, especially the mallards and those tiny sandpipers on the ocean's edge. Dolphins and deer can not get enough of him, but human beings have other things on their minds. They keep busy learning how to make things, grow things, buy things, sell things, / and the more they learn to do for themselves,/ the less they depend on God. Night after night God throws pebbles at their windows, inviting them to go for a walk, but they say, “So sorry. We are too busy/ or too tired.”

Soon most human beings forget all about God. They call themselves "self-made" men and women, as if that is a significant achievement. They honestly believe they have created themselves, and they like the result so much that they divide themselves into groups of people who look, think, and talk alike.  Those who still believe in God draw pictures of God that look exactly like them, making it easier to exclude people who look different.

Meanwhile, God SHOUTS to them from the sidelines with every means God can think of, miracles, messengers, manna. God gets inside people's dreams, wakes them up in the middle of the night with his whispering. No matter what God tries, however, he meets the barriers of flesh and blood. Humans are made of it and God is not, which makes translation difficult.  God says, "PLEASE!" but all they hear is THUNDER. God says, "I love you as much now as the day I made you, " but all they hear is the persistent honk of the Canadian geese majestically flying south./

BABIES are the exception to this sad state of affairs. While their parents seem deaf to God's messages, babies have no trouble hearing God. They spend all their time LAUGHING at God's jokes or CRYING with God when God cries, which goes right over their parents' heads. "COLIC" the grown-ups say, or "Isn't she cute?  She's laughing at the dust mites in the sunlight." Only she really laughs because God just whispered to her that it is cleaning day in heaven, and what she sees are fallen stars/ the angels shake from their feather dusters.

Babies do not go to war. They never make hate speeches or litter or refuse to play with each other because they belong to different political parties.  They depend on other people for everything, and a phrase like "SELF-MADE BABY" would make them LAUGH until their bellies ache. While no one asks their opinions about anything that matters,/ almost everyone seems to love them, and THAT GIVES GOD AN IDEA.

Why not become one of these delightful babies HIMSELF?

God presents the idea at his cabinet of archangels. At first, God's celestial advisors are silent. Eventually, the senior archangel, Gabriel, steps forward and tells God they would worry if God does this. God would put himself at the mercy of his creatures. If God seriously means to become one of them, there would be no escape, if things do not work out. Why not at least create himself as a magical baby with super hero powers? Maybe the ability to become invisible, or the power to hurl bolts of lightning if the need arises. The baby idea is a stroke of genius./ It really is,/ but it lacks adequate safety features.

God thanks the archangels for their concern but says, no, he will be a regular baby… 6 lbs, 11 oz, 20 inches tall, limited vocabulary, unemployed, zero net worth. A nobody. God's agent. The last, the least of all.  How else can God gain the trust of God’s creatures? How else can God persuade us that God knows our lives inside out,/ unless God lives a life like ours?  There is a risk. A HUGE risk. But this is what God wants his creatures to know: that God will risk everything to get close to us, so we might know how much God loves us.

It is a daring plan. When the angels see that God is dead set on it, they break into applause—not the hysterical kind but the steady clapping that goes on and on when you witness something you know you will never see again.

God then meets privately with his three selves, the Creator, the Word and the Spirit. They do not record this intimate conversation. This is the rumor of what occurs./ God says, “I’d go there myself, but how?” After much loving and respectful dialogue, the Creator kindly says, “I think the Word, the Wisdom, is hearing this as a calling.” “I agree,” says the Spirit, “and I will do everything I can to help.” The Word says, “Let it be with me/ according to your word.”

The Word leaves the cabinet chamber and sheds his majestic robes.  The angels follow him and watch his midnight blue mantle fall to the floor as all the stars on it collapse in a heap. Then a strange thing happens./ Where the robes fall, the floor of heaven evaporates/ and opens up to reveal a scruffy brown pasture speckled with sheep and several shepherds sitting around a campfire drinking wine out of a skin. Who knows who is more surprised, the shepherds/ or the angels. As the shepherds look up at them, the angels push their senior member to the edge of the hole. Looking down at the human beings who are trying to hide behind each other, the angel says in as gentle a voice as she can muster, “Do not be afraid; for I bring you good news of great joy/ for all people: to you is born this day in the city of David/ a savior who is Christ, the Lord.”/

And away up the hill, in the direction of the town/ comes the sound of a newborn baby’s cry. /

“And the Word becomes flesh and lives among us.”

Merry Christmas.

Barbara Brown Taylor, "God's Daring Plan," Bread of Angels, pp. 31-35.

Cloth for the Cradle, Iona Community Wild Goose Worship group, pp. 86-90.