Elizabeth and Zechariah receive amazing promises about what their son will do for the world, but they probably will not live to see those promises come to fruition. They stand with us on the long road to salvation, playing their part in God’s unfolding story.

 Vicar Jessica Christy
The Feast of St. John the Baptist
Text: Luke 1:57-80

“Prepare the way of the Lord!” That was John’s cry in the desert: prepare! As he taught and baptized his people, he knew that his mission was never an end in itself. Instead, he was merely getting ready, laying the groundwork for someone even greater. Tragically, he was killed before he could fully see what he had been preparing the world for. He never got to witness the wonder of Jesus’ death and resurrection. But even though he couldn’t know exactly how God’s promises were going to be fulfilled, he knew that their fulfillment was at hand, and he lived by that faith. That bold witness is what we honor today.

But funny enough, today’s Gospel isn’t really about John. The Baptist is a baby. Instead, we read about his parents, Elizabeth and Zechariah – and they are even one step farther removed from seeing God’s promises fulfilled. Their job is to prepare the way for the preparer, and they understand that well. They see an unbroken chain between their lives and the coming Christ. They know themselves to be in the midst of God’s unfolding story – not the beginning, and not the end, but along the way on the road towards salvation.

On one hand, this is a joyful place for them to be. They had given up on having children, and now, they not only have a son, but a chosen son who will usher in the Messiah. They are living in a time when ancient prophecies are being fulfilled, when God is showing up in a new and exciting way. They know their Scripture, so they know what God is planning for the world. They know that they are standing on the brink of a new era of mercy and salvation, life and peace. God’s light is dawning after a long and painful night. They clearly see where this story is headed, and it is good. Their role in God’s plans is good.

But on the other hand, their role is also bittersweet. Their story is one of amazement, but also of loss and longing. They are already very old, Luke says, when John is born – so old that it is a miracle that they are having a child at all. So how much of their son’s life will they be present for before they die? Luke doesn’t tell us. Will they get to be proud of his preaching, and of the great crowds that he inspires? Will they ever shake their heads at their strange child’s diet and choice of clothing? Will they get to see their nephew, Jesus, teaching and healing and transforming the world, and know in their hearts that this is what they had been waiting for? Or, more likely, are they preparing the way for promises that they will never live to see fulfilled? When they bring this child into the world, they are embarking on a journey, knowing full well that they probably won’t make it to the destination.

And that’s where we are. We stand with Elizabeth and Zechariah on the long road. We are living in the middle of a sacred story that we will probably not see brought to completion, not in our lifetimes. In faith, we proclaim that the story of this earth will end in joy, when all things are reconciled with God. With Zechariah, we announce that God is coming to forgive sins, to scatter darkness and death, and to bring long-awaited peace. We hold fast to that truth, because in the end, God’s victory is the only truth that matters. But the day-to-day reality of how we live that promise, that’s a harder task. We are in the middle of a long human journey, far from the beginning of the story, but with no clear happy ending in sight. All we can do is take the world that we have been given and do our part to bring it just a bit closer to the reign of God. We love each other, we strive for justice and peace, and we try to leave the world a little less broken than we found it. And then we pass the torch on to the next generation and hope they can build on what we’ve done.

This is hard work, because the world around us says that our shared story is going to end poorly. The news screams it out every day. The church, we are told, is declining, our country is in turmoil, our planet is getting hotter. The world is filled with powerful cruelty, powerful evil, and especially after this painful week, it doesn’t look like that evil will be going anywhere soon. We would have good reason to be overcome with despair. We would have good reason to suspect that we have spent centuries preparing the way for promises that will never be brought to fruition. Even though we say the dawn is coming, it’s easy to feel like the night is going to last forever, like we’re on a journey that’s twisting and turning but ultimately going nowhere. The forces of despair or strong, and the only way to fight back against them is with stories of God’s unquenchable, unconquerable love for the world.

The stories that we tell matter. They matter because we can’t anticipate God’s reign if we don’t believe that God is really coming. Are shaping ourselves with God’s stories of love and mercy and hope, or are we giving in to the world’s stories of futility? Whose truths are we choosing to live by? To see the difference this makes, we need only look to Zechariah. Zechariah is in the middle of the mess, just like us, but he speaks words of hope, not of sadness or regrets, because he is confident in God’s story. He looks back at the long, hard history of his people, and he would have every right to see it as a story of disappointment after disappointment and tragedy after tragedy. But instead he clings to the history of God’s loving promises, from Abraham, through David and the prophets, to his own day – and there he finds the assurance that God’s work isn’t done. He knows that the Holy Spirit is at work in the world, and that the Spirit has given him a part to play to pave the way for Christ.

If we believe that the light of Christ is dawning on all things, then we too have a part to play. We are called to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. The road is long and uncertain, and may at times feel futile. But we can go out with good courage, because on the other side of that uncertainty is God’s sure victory. God’s morning is coming. Blessed are we who are granted a chance to see that, no matter what shadows the world may throw at us. Blessed are we who prepare to greet the dawn. Because when we stand vigil, waiting and preparing and hoping for Christ’s light, then Christ’s light begins to rise in us, and then we know that our preparations are not in vain.

Amen.

 

We might say we love people in theory, but loving them in practice is much harder. It’s what Peter experienced when the Holy Spirit sent him to Cornelius, and what we experience whenever God challenges us to love someone outside our comfort zone.

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Second Sunday of Easter, year B
Texts: Acts 10:44-48, John 15:9-17

Where are the limits of your love? How far are you willing to go, and how much are you willing to lay down before you draw the line? Who are those people who you pray that God loves, because you don’t think that you can?

Today we see the early Church wrestling with the limits of its love. Our reading from Acts is the culmination of a story in which Peter visits the home of a faithful centurion named Cornelius. But the apostle doesn’t go there of his own volition; both he and Cornelius’ household are guided by the Holy Spirit. Peter is staying in a nearby city when he has a strange vision of a giant sheet descending from heaven, filled with all manner of unclean animals – four legged creatures and reptiles and birds. And he hears a voice saying, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.” Now, because Peter is Peter, he fights back – not once, but three times. He objects that he has never eaten anything impure, and he has no desire to start now. To give Peter his due, the problem isn’t just that he thinks that eating a lizard sounds gross. He objects because he loves the law. It’s a fundamental part of who he is. The teachings of Moses were how Peter and his people stayed faithful to their God in a world that constantly threatened them with extinction and assimilation. And now God is instructing him…to let go of that? To turn away from the sacred teachings that have meant not only ritual purity but identity and survival and a sure relationship with God? What God is asking of him is terrifying. God is telling him that he must die to himself in order to be reborn as something new.

Then three men appear and tell Peter that an angel has instructed them to bring him to the home of a Roman officer, and Peter understands what God is asking of him: in order to carry the Gospel where it needs to go, he has to break bread with Gentiles. He will need to lay down his life as he has known it in order to serve others. He goes and announces the good news of Christ to all of Cornelius’ household. And before he’s even finished talking, the Holy Spirit comes down on his audience. That same Holy Spirit that descended on Peter and the believers in Jerusalem on Pentecost now comes to this Roman household. There’s no difference. In this moment, there is no more us and them, just one Spirit-filled people. Peter’s companions are astounded by this sight. They can’t believe that God would come to these foreigners.

Now, this shouldn’t be news to any of them. Peter traveled with Jesus, saw him heal people of all faiths and ethnicities and walks of life. On Pentecost, he quoted the prophet Joel saying that God’s Spirit would be poured out on all flesh – all flesh, not just some. Peter and his followers knew that God’s love could extend to Gentiles, at least in theory. But as we’ve been hearing these past weeks, love isn’t love when it’s just a theory. Peter had proclaimed the expansive love of the Spirit, but embracing the physical reality of what that meant, that was something harder. When he was asked to make that love incarnate, to see it and touch it and eat it, his first instinct was to fight back. He wanted God to love all people, but he hadn’t been ready to do it himself.

And isn’t that what we always do? In this place, we are bold to proclaim God’s limitless, unconditional love for all people. We strive to create a community where everyone can find warmth and welcome, and to live lives that carry God’s mercy into the world. But believing in God’s love is much easier than being God’s love. In reality, there people with whom we’d rather not share fellowship. There are places we’d rather not go. There are differences we’d rather not work to overcome. So who are you afraid to love? Who do you wish you could love not just in theory but in practice, but don’t know how? Is it people with different political beliefs? Is it people of different nationalities or languages? Is it people of different social classes? People whose bodies look or work differently from your own? Who makes you want to leave the room, or look away, or cross on the other side of the street, and say, “sorry, God, but this person isn’t for me.” I wish I could say that my answer was “nobody.” I wish I could love all people without reservation or qualification. But if I said I did that, I would be lying. I believe that God’s love is for everyone, but faced with the flesh and blood reality of what that asks of me, I often shy away. All the time, I choose to love people who are easy and comfortable and safe rather than allowing the Spirit to lead me somewhere new.

But the Holy Spirit is not about what is easy. She pushes us out of our safe, comfortable places and challenges us to be more, to believe more, to love more. No matter how big we think God’s love is, it will always be bigger than that. When we see its incarnate reality, it will leave us astounded. The immensity of God’s love breaks us open and shakes us out of what we know. Sometimes that comes at a real price. Like Peter, we might be asked to rethink who we are and what we believe. We might need to let go of things we cherish – good things that have served us well, but cannot take us where we need to go next. We might need to lay down parts of our lives so that we can recognize new people as friends. This can be scary and painful, so thanks be to God that we don’t do it alone. The Spirit goes out before us and does the real work. She brought Philip to the Ethiopian official, and Peter to Cornelius, and she shows us where we need to go now. She is the one who inspires, and who baptizes, and who brings new life. Our job is simply to follow along, to recognize what the Spirit is doing, and to not withhold the water.

The best way – and indeed, the only way for us to know God’s love is to love each other. Christ says that we abide in the love of the Trinity when we keep God’s commandments, and the ultimate commandment is that we love one another. There are times when that love can only emerge through sacrifice, even loss. But Christ tells us that the love that lays itself down is the greatest and most godly love of all, and he promises that the feast that awaits us at God’s great banquet is far better than whatever meals we eat at our own tables. It is only natural that we feel some fear when we let go of the familiar and venture into the unknown. There’s nothing wrong with trepidation, so long as we hold to God’s truth that perfect love will cast out all fear. If we follow where the Spirit leads, yes, we will astounded, but on the other side of that astonishment is the fullness of the body of Christ. On the other side of that astonishment is God.

Amen.

“Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don’t know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it’s not. It’s a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody keeps pulling it and pulling it.” -Ann Patchett, State of Wonder

Vicar Jessica Christy
The Second Sunday of Easter, year B
Text: John 20:19-31

 

In the novel State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, a character believes that her husband is dead. But then she gets word that she might not have been told the whole story about his mysterious disappearance. Against all odds, the man she loves just might be alive. The reader might expect this revelation to fill her with joy, but it does just the opposite. It fills her with pain and rage. She had finally come to terms with the loss of her husband, but now she has to go through the whole painful journey again, waiting and wondering if she will ever see him again. As she tells another character, she doesn’t want to hope for his return, she just wants to let go, to find closure and move on. She says:

“Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don’t know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it’s not. It’s a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody keeps pulling it and pulling it.”

Ann Patchett hits on a difficult truth in this passage. Hope isn’t all sweetness and joy. Sometimes, hope hurts. It drags us forward when we’d rather give up and stay put. It cracks open our complacency and exposes us to loss. Despair defends us from disappointment, but hope leaves us vulnerable. The woman in the novel doesn’t want to think that her husband is alive, because then she might have to lose him all over again. Better not to hope at all, she thinks, than to subject herself to that kind of heartbreak.

Perhaps this is some of what Thomas is going through when he hears his friends say that they have seen the risen Christ. His fellow apostles tell him that, while he was gone, Jesus appeared, and showed them his wounds, and gave them the gift of the Holy Spirit. They ask him to join them in the good news of the resurrection, but he refuses to believe their story. With that refusal, he is saying: no, I’m not going to open myself up to that kind of pain again, only to be let down. If Jesus wants me to believe, let him show himself to me like he did to the rest of you. Until I see him with my own eyes, I’m not going to let myself hope that he’s really alive. It’s not worth the heartache. It’s not worth the loss.

This unwillingness to hope protects Thomas from hurt, but it comes at a high price. For that long week between Jesus’ two visits, Thomas is alone. He might be hiding in the upper room with his friends, but he’s excluded from their fellowship. The apostles are living together in a joyful new reality, and they want Thomas to join them, but his despair cuts him off from this new thing called the church. He’s being invited to discover new life, but his pain and fear convince him that it’s better to accept death. It’s a safe decision, one that defends his heart, but it traps him in a protective cage away from the people he loves, and away from the possibility of anything better.

History has not been kind to Thomas and his despair, but in our own ways, we have all done the same thing and allowed our pain to turn us away from the resurrection. We all know what it means to doubt God’s power to heal the world when the forces of sin and death seem too terrible to overcome. We make our compromises, and resign ourselves to the way things are, instead of fighting to see God’s will be done. The story of Thomas asks us: What are the things that you are too afraid to hope for? What dreams of life and healing are you suppressing to defend yourself against heartbreak? How are you accommodating yourself to the forces that draw the world away from God? How are you surrendering to despair?

In the face of the brokenness of this world, despair makes a lot of sense. Sin is powerful, and common sense might dictate that we submit to its reign. We could just accept that we will never be free of the ugliest parts of ourselves, and stop struggling to learn and grow. We could just accept that the broken relationships in our lives will never be healed, and stop praying for reconciliation. We could just accept that mass killings are now a part of life, and stop working for change so we can stop being disappointed when that change doesn’t come. We could just accept that our planet is doomed, and choose to make the most of its abundance while we can with no more hope for the future. We could make our peace with death. It would make our lives a lot more comfortable, if we could let go of hope. It would be so much easier if we just didn’t care.

But we are called to never accept death’s triumph. We are called to stay open to the Holy Spirit’s power to breathe new life into all things, not to close ourselves off for fear of being let down. This is a hard thing to do. But hope is not a virtue because it is easy. It takes courage, and commitment, and deep wells of faith. It forces us to believe in things that we can’t yet see, and may never see in our lifetimes. Hope means that we have to let go of our desire for closure, because God’s plan is always unfolding. It means accepting that that fishhook that hope plants in our hearts is going to keep dragging us onward to ventures of which we cannot see the ending. Sometimes that path will lead us to joy; other times it will pass through defeat and loss. But in faith, we can keep journeying forward, because we know that our hope is leading us toward the reign of God. The end of all things is God’s good will for the world, in Christ’s victory over death. The hope that makes all other hope possible is the hope of the resurrection. Because we proclaim Christ raised, we can say in confidence that death doesn’t win. We can find hope in our hurt because we know that pain and loss will not, and cannot have the final say.

To all of us who must believe without seeing, it is only in hope that we meet Christ raised. This can be a challenge, but it is also a joy, because in that hope, we not only encounter the resurrection, but we share it with others. When we live in hope, God heals those around us, using us to bring comfort to the despairing and light to those who walk in darkness. Hope breaks us opens to be the wounded healers this world needs. Yes, it does put hooks in us, and sometimes the pull hurts. But that pull is what draws us into God’s embrace. It’s the pull that lifts us up out of the grave, and raises us with Christ into new life.

Amen.

Even as they are killing him, Jesus’ accusers are half-hoping to witness a miracle – some kind of marvel that will help them “see and believe.” In Mark’s Passion, Jesus has no more teachings or miracles, but the cross shows us a God worthy of our faith.

Vicar Jessica Christy
Sunday of the Passion, year B
Text: Mark 14:1-15:47

Even as they were torturing and killing him, they were hoping to see a miracle.

Throughout his ministry, people were drawn to Jesus because of his power. Massive crowds in search of healing and hope chased him across the Galilee. The press of people was so eager that they forced him to preach from boats and to retreat to remote places. They were desperately hungry for a demonstration of God’s might.

Even though the crowds have turned against him by the time he is arrested, things haven’t really changed. “Prophesy!” his tormentors shout as they beat him. “Prophesy!” – show us your power, if you are so powerful. And then as he is being executed, they jeer, “Save yourself, and come down from the cross! Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.” Yes, they’re mocking him with these words. They’re taunting the helplessness of this man who said he would forever change the world. But in his final moments, they show their hand, and reveal that there is a core of truth in their taunts. As Christ is dying, he cries out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and the people who have gathered to gloat over his death mishear those words. “Elahi, Elahi” – “My God, my God.” They think he’s calling out for Elijah. And this excites them. Suddenly, they rush to try to prolong his life, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to bring him down.” They despise him, and yet they can’t look away because they still think that Jesus might show them God in a marvel. They’re still looking and longing for something to see and believe in.

Jesus, of course, doesn’t give them the show that they’re half-hoping to see. Not only does he deny them signs and wonders, he barely even speaks. Pilate is amazed by his refusal to say a single word to defend or explain himself. In Mark’s Passion, Jesus has no more teachings, no more wonders, no more prophecies. If the people at the Crucifixion are hoping to witness something that will help them believe, they will only see an ordinary criminal dying a shameful death.

As we enter this Holy Week, what are we hoping to see? What are we hoping to believe in? Because if we are hoping to encounter Christ in great marvels and miracles over these next days, we are going to be disappointed. Jesus will be revealed to us in the ordinary – in struggle and in suffering. We will see Jesus anointed for death by an unnamed woman. We will see him breaking bread with his disciples, then going to pray in sorrow in the garden. We will see Jesus abandoned by his friends to die alone and in agony. And even on Easter, we will hear the good news, “He is risen!” but Mark will deny us a glimpse of the risen Christ. There is little glory to see in this story. If we call on God’s power, we will find a God who chooses to be powerless. If we call on God’s eloquence, we will find a God who chooses to be silent before his accusers. If we call on God’s salvation, we will find a God who refuses to save himself. The only Son of God that we can proclaim will be the one who subjects himself to suffering and death on the cross.

This might sound like a bleak picture, but it is far better news than any God of power and majesty, because in this week, we see a God who knows us. We meet God in weakness and despair because that is where God comes to meet us. We are reminded once again that there is nowhere we can go in this life where Christ cannot journey with us. There is no fear that is foreign to him, no hurt that he cannot bear for our sake, and for the sake of the whole world. Christ intimately knows our worst pains and sorrows, and takes them on himself so that he might raise us to new life. A God of perfect, shining glory couldn’t do that. Only a king who wore a crown of thorns and a savior who emptied himself on a Cross could know and love us like that. But that’s not all that we see; we see a God who knows what it means to suffer betrayal and humiliation and death at our hands, and who forgives and saves us anyway. We see a God who would rather be broken than break us. We see a God who has promised to never abandon us, even in the moments when we turn from God. We see a God who would do anything – suffer any indignity, endure any pain, harrow Hell itself – anything to bind up our wounded world.

This is the Son of God we can expect to meet. It isn’t going to look like much, at least not to the eyes of the world. There is no wondrous spectacle, no heavenly proofs to win us over. There is just incomprehensible love, and the promise that Christ can make even the worst instrument of death blossom into the tree of life. This is what we can see. This is what we can believe. And this is how we can live.

Amen.