Midweek Lent, 2024 ☩ Love One Another ☩ Week 2: Confess Your Sins to One Another

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
Texts: James 5:13-18, Luke 18:10-14

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Jewish sage Hillel the Elder was once challenged to explain the whole Torah – but to do it so simply that he would do it in the amount of time that he could balance on one foot. And his famous response was: “That which is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn.” (You couldn’t tell but I did that one foot!)

In much the same way, a good amount of the New Testament, especially the Epistles, can be summed up in three words: Love One Another. 

The rest is commentary.  And today we hear some rather challenging “commentary” on loving one another from the Epistle of James: confess your sins to one another. 

Now, I think it is clear from the passage that James isn’t really talking about confessing your sin to someone you have wronged, though it is important and very challenging to come face to face with someone you have hurt, to confess and to ask forgiveness, to make amends and repair the relationship.  That is a vitally important practice and also something we are commanded to do in scripture.

But that doesn’t seem to be what this passage is about.  The instruction to “confess your sins to one another,” doesn’t come in the context of repairing a specific relationship. It comes in the context of care for the entire community. Particularly caring for those that might be absent from the community. 

“Are any among you suffering?” James asks. “Are any among you sick?” Who are the vulnerable among you? 

Who is isolated from the community? 

Sickness can be terribly isolating – I think all of us remember that from the pandemic well enough. But even when a complete lockdown and medical quarantine isn’t necessary, sickness still keeps you away from family and friends, from work or school or church, from the life-giving connections with other people.  Suffering, too; sometimes that is the worst part of suffering, being unable to share it.  Maybe because you don’t want to be a burden, or maybe because you resent the people that don’t suffer or who don’t understand your suffering. Suffering, like sickness, is isolating.  

And so is sin. Lying, stealing, injuring, exploiting, envying, hating, hoarding–every way we are hurting one another, depriving one another, ignoring one another, and severing our connections with one another–it isolates us.  And even if you aren’t the person I’m directly hurting, if you catch me lying to someone else, will you trust me?  If I hate a different kind of person, but not you, will you want me around?  Breaking one relationship is pretty much bound to break another. Until all that’s left is isolation.

James sees the dangers of isolation, whether it’s caused by suffering, sickness, or sin. 

And his remedy to address the isolation of the vulnerable is to lean even more into radical vulnerability. To recreate community by inviting others into our weaknesses.  If you are sick, James says, call the elders so they can pray over you and anoint you.  If you are struggling with a sin, confess it to someone else and let others pray for you. And it struck me that this advice is not actually so much about how to love one another, but how to allow yourself to be loved.  Shine a spotlight on your weaknesses and invite others to love you through them.  

And, I’ll have to admit, that sounds terrifying.  

It sounds about a million times easier to pray for someone else than to be prayed for. To visit the sick, rather than be visited. To be the one loving rather than to be the one opening myself up to be loved by speaking up. The Psalmist wrote that “While I held my tongue, my bones withered away,” but speaking of my sins and my weaknesses and my failings–exposing my wounds and everything I am least proud of–that doesn’t seem very good for my bones either! The cure is worse than the disease.  

And it can be. I’ve heard horror stories of spiritually abusive spaces and traumatizing practices in the name of encouraging people to “confess their sins to one another.” I’m not asking you to relive your traumas or just dump them on other people. There is wisdom and discernment involved in seeking the right kind of care in the right kind of structure – like a support group or a prayer partner. I want to name that. 

And another way I think we can often go wrong is by leaving out the crucial part of the puzzle: it’s not a one-sided thing. Confess your sins to one another. Pray for one another.  Each and every one to another. 

Because radical vulnerability – that only works with radical mutuality. 

I confess to you. You confess to me. We confess to one another.  We hold one another. 

What really stands out to me in the parable that Jesus tells in Luke is that these two men, the Pharisee and the tax collector, is that they are both standing in the Temple by themselves.  They aren’t praying in community. They aren’t praying for one another. They are both isolated. The Pharisee is isolated by the sin of his pride: “Thank God I’m not like those people.”  And the tax collector by his guilt: “God be merciful to me, a sinner!”

And the last verse (as it is usually translated), leaves them in opposition: “I tell you, this man [that is, the tax collector] went down to his home justified rather than the other…” They are still apart, still isolated.  

But the commentator Amy-Jill Levine offers a different reading. She focuses on one of the prepositions “para” – from which we get our English word “parallel.” She writes: “That pesky Greek preposition para…can mean ‘rather than;’ it can also mean ‘because of’…or ‘set side by side’. Its primary connotation is not one of antagonism (‘rather’) but one of juxtaposition (‘next to’).” 

And I find a glimmer of hope hidden in that little word.  What if they went down to their homes side by side?  What if we imagine the end of that parable instead treated with James’ remedy of radical vulnerability and mutuality?  

The Pharisee, admitting his struggles to the tax collector, confessing how hard it was to keep company with people who just don’t really seem to be trying to live very good lives. 

The tax collector, praying for the Pharisee, and confessing in turn his pretty severe violations of the community – how he was collaborating with and benefiting from the systemic oppression of the Roman occupiers and exploiting his neighbors. 

And back to the Pharisee, responding in love, praying for the person he most despised. 

What if they had walked home in parallel, arm in arm, no longer isolated? And what if that is precisely what Jesus had in mind?  What the God who loves and cares for each and every one of us, who made us for each other, wants for us? 

That’s the flourishing and abundant life possible in the Spirit, when we love and we let ourselves be loved.  

The confession in itself isn’t the remedy, prayer alone isn’t the remedy: it’s the access to divine life in community. That can heal us.

But it’s a hard thing I’m asking today.  It takes an incredible amount of bravery! Especially to be the first one to step into radical vulnerability.  I certainly don’t want to go first. I don’t want to tell you about my weaknesses. I don’t want to tell you about where I am struggling.  I don’t want to tell you my failures.  

This is as much as I can confess: that my fear of being vulnerable is what makes me vulnerable and keeps me isolated.

And now that I’ve confessed that it’s not up to you to fix it. Confessing to one another is not about getting or giving advice or validation or sympathy – though those things might be helpful.  But the real point is that when we confess to one another, when we practice radical vulnerability and radical mutuality, we insist to one another that we are all part of this community.  And we refuse to let suffering or sickness or sin pull anyone away into isolation. So that we can walk home side by side.

No one has to go first if we all go together.  

Love one another, beloved.  And be vulnerable enough to let yourself be loved.  The rest is commentary.

In the name of the Father, and of the  ☩  Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 

Lent isn’t only a time to wrestle with our demons and the devil out in the world, but also a time to encounter spiritual good and to be served by angels. 

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
The First Sunday in Lent, year B 
Texts: Mark 1:9-15, Genesis 9:8-17 

God’s beloved children, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We start in the wilderness. 

Like every year in our lectionary, the first Sunday of Lent begins in the wilderness, with the “Temptation of Jesus.”  Mark’s account is by far the shortest and it leaves out almost all of the details that we hear in the other synoptic gospels.  But, still, as we begin our forty days of this liturgical season, we hear again of Jesus and his forty days in the wilderness, with the devil and the wild beasts.

This reading and this season of Lent invite us to turn our attention to our own wildernesses: those areas of our own lives where we might be feeling a little lost.   Where we are face to face with the spiritual evil that hurts us or tempts us. Where the wild beasts within our hearts still roam.   It can be a scary place to go.  Spiritual practices can help – giving something up or taking something on, and it helps that we are going together.  But still, it’s hard. 

Which is, I suppose, what I love about Lent.  I like that it’s hard. 

The Rite of Confession that we are including in our liturgy this season is hard.  It’s hard to name my faults, my own faults, my own most grievous faults.  But, you know, when the water is a bit too hot and the scrub brush is a little too stiff and the soap is a little bit too harsh, that’s when I feel the cleanest.  There are blessings – perspective and clarity – out in the wilderness.  Perhaps that’s why the Spirit drove Jesus there. 

But I can also fall for the trap that, I think, our lectionary falls into.

In the other years, when we hear this story, we only hear about the wilderness.  We hear the fuller account of the Devil and the specific temptations offered to Jesus and it means we begin our Lenten season, narrowly focused on this cosmic boxing match.  We can fixate so much on the blow by blow, and Jesus’ one-two knockout at the bell – until that’s what Lent becomes too: a struggle, a contest, a wrestling match where there must be a winner and a loser. The conflict with spiritual evil becomes the entire focus – and it seems like a close match.  

And so the stakes are raised and, with them, guilt.  

Shoot! I forgot and ate that chocolate bar I was supposed to be fasting from.  
Shoot! I wanted to pray twice a day, but I was too busy.  
Dang it! I was going to resist the devil today, but I was just too tired.  

I guess spiritual evil wins this time. It can feel hopeless.  Like losing.  

But the nice thing about Mark’s account, because it is so short, is that we actually get to hear it in context. 

And when we do that, we see that spiritual evil is completely outnumbered by spiritual good!  Because I lied to you.  We don’t actually start in the wilderness. 

We actually begin in the water.  

This year, we begin with Jesus’ baptism, and with the voice from heaven – spiritual good – speaking with a parent’s pride: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”   The Holy Spirit descends like a dove – spiritual good flying into the world.  Angels come to Jesus’ aid – spiritual good helping and providing. And it ends with the proclamation of spiritual good drawing near – the reign of God – the good news – the gospel. 

The water, the voice, the dove, the angels, and the gospel – by my count there is five times more spiritual good in this short passage than there is spiritual evil! 

And, realizing that can change how we view Lent. 

What if it isn’t just a time to wrestle with our demons and the devil out in the world – but also time to be drenched with spiritual good and to be served by angels?! 

Like a lot of modern people, I find it a little hard to talk about angels and demons.  I certainly believe in spiritual activity – good and evil.  But, for me, most everything that angels are said to do, I understand as part of how the Holy Spirit is active in the world.  Protecting, speaking, healing, helping – those are all comfortably within the realm of the third person of the Trinity for me. 

I guess, in my theology, I just don’t need angels? Is one way of putting it.

And I’ve never thought about Lent as an opportunity to meet an angel. 

But who am I to dictate how the Holy Spirit will accomplish her deeds? If she wants to use angels, she will use angels!  Because it is undeniable that for the people of the Bible, and for a lot of people today, angels are a major part of their experience of Christian life.  I heard some beautiful stories this week about encounters with angels from some of you in this congregation. And I expect that if we polled this room we’d hear many more. 

And just because I’ve never seen anything that I would describe as angel, I certainly know about close calls, near accidents, and help that arrived just when I needed it.  I know about words of comfort and encouragement, calling me a beloved child just when I was at my lowest.  I know about the energy of creativity, the hope of restoration, the bliss of intimacy, and the call of justice.  I know what has been good for my spirit. I know spiritual good. So, I guess, I do know about angels.  

And I know about rainbows. 

After every storm, spiritual good materializes.  Painted in the sky for us, we see the reminder of the first covenant God ever made with creation.  A reminder made of arching colors, that God has promised to stick it out with us no matter what.  Even when we face the pounding rain and raging wind of spiritual evil. Even when it seems hopeless. When we need the reminder the most. 

Rainbows appear after storms.  And angels arrive in the wilderness. 

Spiritual good is all around us.   

There’s a gentleman who has visited our church recently, who might be here today, who sits in the back. And one Sunday as he sat among the choir members waiting to process, he looked at me with rapture and said “I’m surrounded by angels!”

At first I thought, “Aww, that’s nice, but no, we’re just people.” 

But maybe he was onto something.  Because when we join the dance of the Trinity, when we walk in the way of God, when love draws us to one another, spiritual good flows through us. We join the ranks of angels – protecting, speaking, healing, helping, we become angels for each other.  You all are surrounded by angels. The ones you cannot see and the ones you can. 

You are surrounded by spiritual good. Five to one, it’s no contest.

And through your Lenten spiritual practices, whatever they are – through fasting and prayer, through volunteering and giving, through silence and singing, through deep intentional tending of your own personal wilderness and through your angelic service in love to those around you – spiritual good grows even more.  

The wilderness is still there. But as we face it together this Lent, remember that you are soaked in the same spiritual good that drenched Jesus in our text today. 

Like Jesus, you carry your baptism with you into the wilderness – for those of you who are baptized.  And if you aren’t baptized, you can be!  Lent was traditionally a time of preparation for baptism on Easter, we’d love to accompany you on that journey.  

And, like Jesus, all of you carry the assurance that you are also God’s child, that God loves you and speaks with parental pride about you! And God is well pleased!

The Holy Spirit flies to you, and keeps you under her wings.

The gospel is proclaimed by you and for you: Jesus, God-With-Us, has been to the wilderness and will be there with you every step of the way. 

And angels surround you.   

In the name of the Father, of the  ☩  Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 

God transcends holy purity to enter into impurity in blood and flesh, sharing even the hard and gross experiences of life with us.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
The Presentation of our Lord
Texts: Hebrews 2:14-18, Luke 2:22-40 

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

It’s hard being trapped in these bodies.

Even in the best of times, when everything is working like it should, these bodies of ours still require so much care, and they still produce so many various fluids and waste. Even when we are perfectly healthy, living in a body is, just a little bit, gross.

That’s what I was thinking about this week as I was imagining this scene in the temple. Imagining the moment when Simeon took the baby Jesus in his arms, I was reminded of the times I held my newborn nieces and nephews. And how cute and tiny and perfect they were – but also how their tiny baby bodies were kind of gross sometimes. Every parent I know has a horror story that ends with the line, “and that’s how we learned that you always need to bring two sets of spare clothes.”

Snot and spit up and overflowing diapers-that’s what being around a baby is like.

Perpetual messiness, briefly interrupted by rare moments of cleanliness. And so who’s to say that while Simeon was singing the Nunc Dimittis, Jesus wasn’t leaving some kind of fluid on him? Like babies do. Because he was. A real alive baby, experiencing the reality of living in a baby body.

And I think that’s pretty amazing! God alive as a baby! Tiny and vulnerable and smelly and alive – just like we are!

And this was clearly an important point for the writer of Hebrews as well.

Our text today begins in the middle of a theological argument centered around Jesus’ divinity and Jesus’ humanity – trying to answer the question that Christ-followers have been grappling with since the days when the New Testament was still being written: Why did God become human?

The Preacher in Hebrews answers: “Since, therefore, the children [that is humans – creatures – you and me] – since therefore the children share flesh and blood, [Jesus] himself likewise shared the same things…to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect.”

To free us and to help us and to reconnect us with God – Jesus shared our flesh and blood.

Actually, in the Greek, it’s the other way around. It says “haimatos kai sarkos” – “blood and flesh.”

It probably shouldn’t make that much of a difference.  Every English translation I could find switched the two around because it makes perfect sense to use the familiar English idiom “flesh and blood.” But I almost wish the translators would leave it in the original order: blood and flesh.

Blood and flesh feels so much visceral, more connected to the earthy stuff of our bodies. The liquids and the solids that make up these meat sacks. Jesus doesn’t just share our “flesh and blood” because we have some kind of kinship in a nice, sanitized, metaphorical way.

Jesus shares our blood and flesh – our experience of life from within our biological containers.

So that he could share in our experiences about everything we undergo in life – every joy and pleasure and satisfaction and every craving and pain and ache and excretion of our bodies. Everything! Even the things that are a little bit gross. The things that are literally called “unclean” in the Torah.

God becoming blood and flesh meant that Jesus, like everyone else, was “unclean,” ritually impure, most of the time.

Purity, for Jews, doesn’t mean a state of sinlessness.

It doesn’t really have anything to do with sin – it has to do with living! Any time you come in contact with the fluids and the stuff of living, because of menstruation or because of ejaculation or because of childbirth or because of burying a corpse¹ – all these things of blood and flesh – which are perfectly normal and perfectly good and healthy – are unclean as well.

The idea of maintaining a permanent state of ritual purity is laughable. It isn’t supposed to even be possible for creatures who are blood and flesh. For Jews like Jesus, permanent purity was only achievable for God, who didn’t experience the viscera of life, or for angels, spiritual beings who didn’t experience embodied earthiness.

Because that’s what holiness is: that set-apartness that transcends reality and materiality.

God’s holiness lies in the fact God isn’t a being, God is Being-Itself.² The creative force of all existence, permeating all existence, and somehow also the things that doesn’t exist – so completely and utterly incomprehensible to us because we are small and finite and contained.  And how could we ever approach divinity with our limited senses and leaking orifices?

We can’t. Holiness isn’t our natural state. And this is what the rituals of purification practiced by Jews for centuries are for. And if you remember, this is half of the reason that the family went to the temple that day: “When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses.” Most scholars assume that Luke was talking about a purification ritual that was required after childbirth. Childbirth is one of the most bloody and fleshy experiences a person can have – an experience so human, so creaturely, so alive, so good, but so different from the intangible, ineffable, disembodied holiness of God. The rituals of purification helped connect the two, helped tend to the joys and sorrows of living and dying, helped unite the physical and the spiritual, helped each person see beyond their blood and flesh container to glimpse the transcendent holiness of God. 

And it is in the temple that day – after going through the ritual practices of purification – that Simeon and Anna recognize the Messiah. Salvation is revealed and the veil is lifted – and what they see is that God has chosen impurity. God has chosen the uncleanness and the grossness of blood and flesh. God has entered into life.

So that Simeon holds in his arms, not God – holy and unknowable, but God – tangible and accessible. God, transcending divine purity itself to become an unclean baby boy.

This is the paradox at the heart of our faith.

The paradox of the kind of love that leads purity to embrace impurity. That depth of love that leads God to share our human body. And this is the paradox that we celebrate every Eucharist when we proclaim with singing God is Holy, Holy, Holy and then immediately turn around and hold up the bread and say the words of Jesus “This is my body.” This is my blood and flesh, eat it so you don’t forget how my love drew me to you – every single part of you. Even the parts of your life that are hard and gross – you are good – you are beloved.

You are saints – holy ones.

You are fleshy containers not just of humanity, but of divinity as well. Catching glimpses of God’s transcendent perspective through Christ. So that your experience of life, though mediated through your blood and flesh, is not limited by it.  Because in Christ you experience life that transcends the limits of your body. In Christ you are free from the fear of death. You are free to embrace the goodness of the grossness of created life, and free to welcome death as a friend. So that like, Simeon, you can sing, “Lord you may now dismiss your servant in peace.” You are free, through the love of Christ, Jesus our brother in blood and flesh.

You are free.

In the name of the Father, of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

 

^{1. This list is adapted from Amy-Jill Levine and Ben Witherington’s commentary on the Gospel of Luke, 2018, pg 64.} 

^{2. This section relies heavily on the works of Paul Tillich, especially Systematic Theology: Volume 1, 1951.}

God calls us twice, with patient urgency, into the reign of God. 

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
The Third Sunday after Epiphany, Lect. 3 B 
Texts: Jonah 3:1-5, 10; Psalm 62:5-12; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20; John 21:1-19 

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

There is an urgency in all of the texts for this week. 

“The time is fulfilled!” Jesus says – his first words in Mark’s gospel. 

“The appointed time has grown short,” Paul writes to the Corinthians. 

“Get up and go,” God says to Jonah.

There is something pressing about the message of all these writers, and it reminded me of something my mom used to say: “If it’s urgent, call twice.” 

That was the instruction she always left for us when we were kids, in the days before texting, on any occasion when we might need to talk to her while she was gone.  “I might not answer the first time,” she’d say. “But if you call back right away, if you call twice, I’ll know it’s urgent and I’ll answer.” That was her promise to us and to this day I know that if I call twice, my mom will drop everything and answer.  She’ll know it’s urgent.

In these texts, something urgent is happening. So God calls twice.  

“God has spoken once, twice have I heard it,” the Psalmist sings.  God calls twice.

“The word of the LORD came to Jonah a second time.”  God called Jonah twice.  Because it was very urgent. The situation was dire.  God describes Nineveh as a place with more than one hundred and twenty thousand people who don’t know their right hand from their left. Whose wickedness, especially their violence, had risen up before God.  

Jonah’s work is urgent. There are people, thousands of them, who must be reached, who must be stopped, the violence must stop.  For the sake of the people that the Ninevites were hurting, and for the sake of the Ninevites themselves.  God calls Jonah twice, because the need was urgent.  It was time for a better way. 

This is the same urgency that drives Jesus. “The reign of God has come near,” he proclaims, and he pairs with an urgent call “Repent and believe the good news.”  As if he were saying: All you people who don’t know your right hand from your left. It’s time for the reign of God! It’s time for a better way.

It’s the same urgency that still drives prophets who speak and spread the reign of God today. 

This past Monday we celebrated perhaps our greatest modern prophet in the United States, Dr. King.  Dr. King understood the urgency of the reign of God. He dreamed of a better way. And he knew the reign of God meant love and power. 

The Psalmist knew it too: “God has spoken once, twice have I heard it, that power belongs to God. Steadfast love belongs to you, O Lord.” 

Power and love belong to God.  That is the recipe for meeting the urgent needs of the people, so urgent that God calls twice.  But power doesn’t work on its own. Love doesn’t even work on its own. That’s the crucial insight that Dr. King understood. 

“Power without love,” he said, “is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”¹

This is the reign of God- power and love, at their best, implementing justice. 

God called Jonah twice because it was time to implement justice.  With both power and love, God saved them all. God saved the victims and God saved the oppressors. Justice and Mercy, Power and Love correcting everything that stood against love.  

This is the reign of God. It’s what God calls each and every one of us into it. It’s incredibly urgent.  And it’s why God calls twice. 

But it’s not the only reason.  

Because God could have called somebody else, when God called the second time, right?  Jonah did not want to do this job, he made that very clear. If you don’t remember the story, the first time Jonah was called to Nineveh, he hopped in a boat and sailed the opposite direction as fast as he could.  That’s how he ended up in the belly of that big fish. Which spewed him up right back on land so that the word of God could come to him a second time. 

God calls twice because God is incredibly patient with us. 

God was certainly patient with Jonah.  Jonah ran away from the first call, because he knew God would be merciful. He knew that God would respond not only with power, but also with love, and he just couldn’t stand it. And in the end the only one who isn’t saved, the only one who isn’t part of the reign of God, is Jonah.  He is left looking down at the city in resentment, telling God he is “angry enough to die!” And the book ends with God patiently loving him too, calling him, yet again, into the reign of God. 

Because it is urgent, God is patient.

God was also patient with those fishers in the gospel for today. Andrew and Simon Peter and John and James. Now, it’s true in this story, they don’t seem to need to be called twice.  “Immediately” they leave their nets and their boats.  James and John up and leave their father in the boat and they don’t even seem to look back.  All four of them are caught up right away in the promise of God’s power and love implementing justice, ushering in the reign of God. 

But we know that they don’t really understand the reign of God yet.  Most of the rest of the gospel of Mark will show how they really don’t get it. And even these men who seemed so eager to leave their nets, will end up back in their boats.  On another lake shore. At the end of another gospel. Lost and despairing because they really didn’t think that God’s love and power in action would look like God dying on a cross. 

But Jesus will call them again. 

He will call these same followers again from their boats.   He will tell them to cast their nets on the other side. He will tell Simon Peter to feed God’s lambs and tend God’s sheep. And he will say, for the second time, follow me.  

Jesus called these fishers twice, in almost the same way. Because God was patient with them, even though they didn’t understand.

And with this patient urgency, God has called you too. 

Even when you, like these fishers, just don’t get it, don’t understand the fullness of the reign of power and love and justice you are being called into. Even when you, like Jonah, don’t like it, when the love of God makes you angry enough to die. God is patient. God calls twice. 

Or three times or four times, or too many times to count!

God has called you into the reign of God.  Maybe you heard God’s voice, saying “Get up and go!”  Or maybe you felt an urge, a stirring from the Holy Spirit that you couldn’t quite explain, maybe you feel it right now, calling you into urgent work. Maybe you heard the words of a prophet with a message as simple as “Repent and Believe.” Or another way you could translate it: “Turn and Trust.”

Turn away from standing against love.  Turn away from the ways you hurt others and hurt yourself.  Turn away from this present world and follow Christ into the new creation.

Turn and Trust.

Trust that power belongs to God. Trust that steadfast love belongs to God.  Trust that God is calling you and will not abandon you. That God will call twice. Again and again and as many times as it takes. 

The reign of God has come near. It’s urgent. Turn and Trust.

In the name of the Father, of the  ☩  Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

_{1. King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Where do we go from here?” Speech. 15 August 1967. Transcript available at https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/where-do-we-go-here. Hear the quoted excerpt from the speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsvSq5_vbL4&t=1s}

In this passage the Temple is functioning the way it was supposed to and God’s salvation is seen in many different dimensions.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
First Sunday of Christmas, year B 
Texts: Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Luke 2:22-40

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

When we think of Jesus in the Temple, we often think of flipping tables.

All four gospels include an account of the “Cleansing of the Temple,” when Jesus drove out the money changers and the merchants. Mark and Matthew include the detail of overturning the tables and in John’s gospel Jesus even has a whip! This encounter lives large in our imaginations and it means that the Temple in Jerusalem, the very center of Jewish faith and religious practice, is primarily associated with Jesus’ righteous fury. Often we only think of it as a place of exploitation and consumerism and corruption.

But in our gospel passage today, we see the Temple in a very different light.

This encounter, like so much of the Nativity story, is only included in Luke’s gospel. And it is a very different account of Jesus in the Temple. There are no whips, no overturned tables, no mention of money-changers. Instead, we see the Temple functioning beautifully, the way it was supposed to.

You can see it with the prophet Anna.

We don’t know much about her, we don’t even get to hear her speak, but we know that she was a widow and that she had lived for a long time without a husband to provide for her. For decades and decades. And we are told that she “never left the Temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day.” Which prompts the question, who was taking care of her? Who was making sure she had what she needed and was holding her in love and respect? In the Temple the answer must be: her neighbors.

Because the Temple was supposed to be the place where the two Great Commandments – to love God and love your neighbor, were fully in effect. Where you could expect the laws commanding care for orphans and foreigners and widows were followed. And where Anna could deliver her prophetic words of critique and comfort and be fed and sheltered. That’s how the Temple should be and, in this story, that’s how it was.

And you can see it in how the young family, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, are welcomed.

They enter the Temple as strangers in Jerusalem, following the law, and presenting their firstborn son to God. They are too poor to offer a lamb, so Mary and Joseph bring a pair of birds to sacrifice, the most they could afford. Yet they are welcomed. Simeon and Anna rejoice over their baby. And their family is held not only in joy, but in pain as well, when Simeon acknowledges Mary’s coming grief, the sword that will pierce her soul. Just as they are, they are seen and embraced.

The Temple was supposed to be a place where everyone could come as they are. Elders and babies, rich and poor, men and women, Jews and Gentiles, gathering at the Temple to rejoice or fast or pray or wait or make an offering or receive a blessing. That’s how the Temple should be and, in this story, that’s how it was.

And you can see with Simeon.

Simeon is promised that he “will not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.” And when the time comes, the Holy Spirit guides him to the Temple. I imagine that the Spirit could have led Simeon to any place to meet Jesus. But Simeon is guided to the Temple.

Because most of all, the Temple was supposed to be a place to have encounters with God, a place where people were expecting God to show up. And when God showed up as the Messiah, not in the shape of a warrior, but incredibly in the shape of a child, Simeon saw! Simeon and Anna were looking for God and they found Jesus. And then they told everyone who would listen, everyone who was looking for God, everyone who was waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem. “Look! God is here!” That’s how the Temple should be and, in this story, that’s how it was.

And here’s the point. When the Temple is what it should be – salvation is seen!

Simeon sees. “My eyes have seen your salvation,” he says, and in the context of this encounter in the Temple (with the Temple functioning the way it’s supposed to) we see it too. We see God’s salvation – and in many different dimensions.

We see the cosmic and eternal dimension of salvation.

Simeon is holding God in his arms! God, enfleshed and alive! Simeon recognizes God-with-us in this baby, who has come to reach us, to be made known to us, to love us, to suffer with us, to forgive us, and to save us. So that our broken selves won’t be this way forever, but instead every tear will be wiped away and every child of God will be restored to glory. This is God’s redeeming work to reconcile with humanity, to make all things new forever and always, and bring us into eternal life in the Spirit. And Simeon saw it face to face.

And this salvation is multidimensional!

Not only personal and eternal, but collective and immediate. Not just for you singular sometime in the future, but for you plural, now.

Jesus, destined to cause “the falling and rising of many,” flipped the tables that needed flipping. When the Temple wasn’t functioning like it was supposed to, Jesus brought salvation, driving out all who oppressed and exploited. So that there might be salvation for the poor – like Mary and Joseph, and salvation for the desperate – like Simeon, for the lonely and dependent – like Anna, and salvation for the outsiders – like the Gentiles that Simon sings of. This is the salvation which topples tyrants and lifts up the lowly, and tears down the barriers between us.

And this is the quiet and ordinary salvation of flourishing and abundant life. The kind of salvation that Simeon might have seen in the Temple that day even if Jesus hadn’t been there. But it was there, when Simeon was holding a child from a poor family, who were just going about their ordinary business of loving God and loving their neighbors, there he saw salvation.

This is why we gather, not anymore at the Temple, but as the church, week after week.

So that like Simeon, we can see all these many different dimensions of God’s salvation. Salvation on the scale of the universe, and on the scale of your own heart. And everything in between. At all scales, God is at work. Salvation is happening everywhere all the time. And we gather so that we can see it. So we can tell each other about what we have seen.

Isaiah imagined God’s salvation shining out like the dawn or like a burning torch so that the nations could see. But the dawn can be easy to miss. If you aren’t looking for it, you probably won’t see it. But God wants to be seen. God wants you to see salvation. God wants to guide you right to it. God wants you to hold Jesus in your arms.

We gather not in the Temple, but as the Temple, so that all are loved and welcomed and cared for, so that we can encounter God and see salvation. The way it’s supposed to be.

In the name of the Father, of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit.