You are called in baptism to be Christ’s light in the world, and you will be enough, with the help and grace of God.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Baptism of Our Lord, Lect. 1 A
Texts: Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Since the Day of Pentecost, the Church claims we share the same call and purpose as Jesus.

That we are Christ, Anointed, in our baptism, God’s Beloved, just like Jesus was. That Isaiah’s promises to and about the Servant of God today, which we easily connect to Jesus, also apply to you. To me.

It’s audacious to say. That God has given you as a covenant, you as the sign in the flesh of God’s promised love for all things. And that God has given you as a light to the nations. To help people who cannot see to see, to bring the light of God’s justice to the world.

From the beginning of this liturgy, when we blessed waters and gave thanks to God for this gift, until the end when we are sent out in peace to love and serve as Christ, this day claims this is your call, the life you are meant to be for the world.

But today it not only feels audacious to say this. It feels a little naïve.

We can barely breathe this week for anguish and despair, anger and sadness. For the second time in six years our neighborhood is a national focus point because of government sponsored murder and once again we feel helpless to change anything. Agents of our government shoot and kill just blocks from this building. Even that we have to say Renee Good was innocent, which she was, is jarring. Would it have been OK if she wasn’t? Is that now the world we live in? Evil and wickedness work freely in our world and threaten our neighbors, our friends. Us. It’s overwhelming.

The idea that you or I could be God’s covenant in the flesh, God’s light in such darkness, seems laughable. How can we make any difference for God in this? As we mourn Renee and all those who are being disappeared by ICE, as we mourn the absence of safety for nearly anyone these days, it’s hard to see what we can do.

And yet: in a few moments we’re going to affirm our baptism and the promises made there, however audacious or naïve they might be. We will do four important things that will show a way forward.

First, we will renounce evil.

Loudly, with passion, like you always do. We will claim in no uncertain terms the ground on which we stand. That we renounce all spiritual and satanic powers of evil, all evil powers of the world, even any evil within us that works against God’s love and will for the world.

You promise today to work against any evil, denounce and renounce it, and pray to have removed. You commit to never make accommodations with evil, or ignore it, or believe its lies and the stories it spins to deceive.  

What can you do in these days? Stand up against evil as a beloved child of God, and let the world know where you stand.

Next we will confess our faith.

Using the ancient baptismal creed, we will claim our trust that God’s grace has come into the world and still comes. That we believe in a creating God who lovingly made all things, and who came to this world in person to bring love to bear against all the sin and evil of the world, even breaking death, so all God’s children could know the love of God.

We will claim we believe God’s Spirit calls us together as a people of God, enlightens us with the light of God so we can see in the world’s darkness, and makes us God’s holy people. Even when we doubt we are.

What can you do in these days? Claim the love of God that made and saved the universe and belongs to you and to all people. And let the world know that love.

Then we’ll promise to live as Christ.

We will promise to be God’s covenant and light in the world, as Isaiah said. To stay in this community of faith and be fed in Word and Sacrament for our mission. To proclaim God’s Good News in all we say and all we do, and to serve the world as Jesus did, working for justice and peace wherever we can.

Today you will claim your baptismal mission to be God’s Light in the world for love and Good News and justice and peace, however you can be.

One of our four year olds at Mount Olive – if you’re not asking these questions, our children are – one of our four year olds stopped me after church a couple weeks ago and said, “I want to know how Jesus is the light of the world.” And I told him that whenever he was kind and loving to someone, that showed them God’s love. It was like a light in a dark place. And that when Jesus has him doing that, and the person who was standing with us doing that, and me doing that, light spreads in the world.

How is Jesus the light of the world in this terrible time? When you are. It’s that simple.

And last we will pray for the Holy Spirit.

For the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of God, the Spirit of joy in God’s presence.

You will ask the Holy Spirit to give you wisdom and understanding when all you know right now is confusion and fear. To give you counsel, advice, when you don’t know what steps you can take, and the strength to do what you are called to do. To give you joy when despair fills your heart.

God promises to give you all this. How can you live in these days? Go into your baptismal mission with the Holy Spirit giving you all you need to be who you are called to be.

There is no easy answer for how things will get better.

But we all will do what we can as Anointed Ones, some going to protests and vigils, some working on the politics, some organizing. Some doing the many things our Neighborhood Ministry Coordinator Jim suggested in an email last week, like helping people get their groceries, or watching out for neighbors. All this is good.

And it all starts with your baptism. You are anointed as Christ for the world. Not to fix everything. But to be God’s covenant promise that others can see, as Isaiah said, God’s light that pierces the darkness.

And that’s enough. Nothing more is asked of you than you bring whatever light you can shine today. Whatever kindness or love you can bring today, as Christ in the world.

That’s how we will live in these days. And God’s light will shine.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen

God’s people have often lived in deep darkness, in the time of Herod, so our hope is their promise: God’s light still shines, and now in and through us.

Pr. Joseph G. Crippen
The Epiphany of Our Lord
Texts: Matthew 2:1-12; Isaiah 60:1-6

Beloved in Christ, grace to you, and peace in the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

“In the time of King Herod.” That’s all Matthew needs to say.

And now all Matthew’s readers know this story of the visit of eastern strangers to the Christ child won’t end well. It happened in the time of a tyrannical, paranoid despot who saw threats everywhere, and ruled by violence and fear.

There is a little hope in the story. The magi are warned to take another road home. Joseph is warned to flee to Egypt with his family. The Magi are safe. The Child is safe.

But. This is the time of King Herod. Vulnerable, weak, powerless people are never safe. And the town of Bethlehem weeps at the death of their children, mothers and fathers inconsolable.

Darkness shall cover the earth, in our lives, Isaiah says, and thick darkness the peoples. It’s reality.

Nothing Isaiah says is news to us.

Our ancestors in faith, from the Hebrew people to the early Church lived under various Herods, under unjust governments, threatened by people who abused power and worshipped violence.

Our nation is defined by this. Today’s threats to immigrants and people of other faiths, disdain for those who speak truth about what is happening, organized attempts to disenfranchise, outright and open attacks of hate on people who are different, are deeply embedded in our history. Ask the Cherokee and Choctaw nations whether King Herod can be trusted. The president on our twenty dollar bill forcibly removed nearly 60,000 Native Americans from their homes, forcing 13,000 Cherokee and 17,000 Choctaw to march from the east coast to west of the Mississippi, and thousands died on those Trails of Tears.

Or ask our Black siblings in our country who in our history always have had to keep an eye on King Herod, from slavery to lynching to Jim Crow to redlining to today’s disenfranchisement.

Darkness will cover the earth, Isaiah warns, and thick darkness the peoples. Expect this, Scriptures say.

And yet Isaiah also declares a wonder: Arise, shine, for your light has come!

God enters this thick darkness and brings light through this Christ to enlighten all peoples. This is our hope tonight. But this is critical: remember how God’s light shines. It shines in darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it, John says. But it’s still darkness where the Light shines.

Jesus escaped Herod, but the children of his village did not. King Herod lived at least a few more years after these events. Christ’s coming didn’t stop him.

But Isaiah says: lift up your eyes and look around. God’s light shines, even in the darkness, even if it looks weak. Even if this child escaped King Herod only to run into the power of Rome and a Roman cross. Even if this child fled Israel for Egypt only to be turned over by his own people for death. Even so, we declare that this Christ, this light, still shines. Even in persistent darkness.

That paradox is our hope.

God chooses the way of the weak to come to us, Paul has said, and shames the way of power. God’s true power is revealed in that cross, in that vulnerable refugee family fleeing Herod. God’s light is seen not as a day of sunshine but as a lone candle shining in a vast place of darkness.

But that one light is enough to see by. When you’re walking on a path in the dark with a candle, there’s a lot you can’t see. But you can see the two steps in front of you, and you can take those steps. And if someone joins you with their candle, there’s a little more light, and more wisdom about which steps to take. And if you are joined by more and more and more, the darkness has no chance of stopping you.

This is the way God is bringing light to overcome the darkness of this world. And from the beginning of his life, this is the only way Jesus operates, under constant threat of the Herods, by being light. And when Jesus is finally killed, God stuns death by breaking free of its hold. God’s light cannot be extinguished by darkness, not even by death.

And so Isaiah says, “See and be radiant.”

See God’s light in the darkness. And be radiant. Shine yourself.

You are the light of the world, Jesus said. It is who you are. So you leave here and when you see the darkness, you don’t pretend it isn’t real, or despair that there’s no light from God. You don’t have to fear the time of King Herod.

You leave here as light. Maybe tiny, weak, trembling, but that’s the way God’s light works. Even a tiny candle can be seen from a long distance in the dark. You are a light someone else might see, and be drawn to. Like those strangers from the east, someone might come to you and say, “We have seen this light from a distance, and have come.” To find God. To find hope.

And imagine what others could see when you and I join our lights, when we all join all our little lights together. We may not see the end of darkness in our days. But we witness by our light that it cannot overcome God’s light, its days are numbered.

Lift up your eyes and look around: it’s already happening.

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen