Hold the Sugar*

First Sunday of Epiphany

Baptism of the Lord (RCL Readings)

Mark 1:4-11

homily preached at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church

When I was the Palliative Care chaplain at St. Mary’s

I heard so many stories…

and I slowly came to understand what was actually happening.

To both of us…the teller and the hearer

Meaning was being made

I bet every one here has had that experience

Of telling a story…of your own

A series of real life events

That happened in real time

Events, that…at the time of their happening

May have seemed a simple unrelated string of events

And then…In the telling

Some sense of unfolding appeared

Like puzzle pieces just falling into place

That is the power of storytelling

Isn’t that a big portion of what we do here on Sundays?

We tell and re-tell and listen and re-listen

And because the Christian story is a living story

Because it is our story

It just keeps making new meaning?

Yesterday was the feast of the Epiphany

Which, once again, put an official end to the Christmas season

But I’m not ready!

I did pretty well this year hanging on to Advent

But Christmas is so impossible---

All the trappings

I can’t resist

I love it all!

The decorating…The guests…The gatherings…ALL the family…The cooking

And…I musn’t forget…the sugar

I take my Christmas with a thousand pounds of sugar

Now…Here it is the first Sunday of Epiphany

All I have to show for my ‘liturgical’ Christmas

is a giant sugar hangover

The narratives…the characters…the events and the settings!

All of it is just a blurr

But if storytelling is important to making meaning

I’d like to rewind…

Meet Mary

But  we will skip the sugary parts

…the blue robe…the crown and the halo

Imagine giving birth in a dirty barn

That is where it happened

Mary, whose womb carry’s the Son of God

The Christ-Bearer

The First Disciple…Imagine her there

No person, No place, No time is beyond the reach of God in Christ…it is that ‘YES’…a ‘YES’ like Mary’s…that God longs to hear

Meet Joseph

Usually depicted as quite a bit older

And a little stooped

Joseph…What did you get yourself into?

How remarkable that he listened to a message delivered in a dream

He has no speaking part…not a big talker…but listening

That he does well

And open too

Not afraid of the mysterious

God longs for us to be open and unafraid

To listen for his disturbing

and uniquely personal message

Meet the Shepherds

Living far away from regular soap and water

And away from manners and politeness
My guess is that guiding sheep was a quiet enterprise

In the quiet these shepherds honed their hearing

They had vigilantly listen for threats

And so they heard the call

They heard the angel’s message…Glory to God

And Peace…WHERE?

In a nearby feeding trough?

…And they HURRY

Jesus came eye-level with the human family. 

There is no Caste system here. 

Being a child of God has no requirements…just hear and hurry.

Meet Stephen

Just the next day…the church tells of Stephen. 

The Parish feast day…no sugar here!

This is a whole story

Telling the whole truth

God wants every bit of me.  God wants my whole life.

That is the truth.

Meet Herod

No sugar here either

Ego on steroids

Living in a world whose story is always the same

Competition

Kill the competition

Collateral damage…be damned…slaughter the innocents

That is the only way to be sure

Meet the Magi

From different regions

Of different colors

With Different mother-tongues

And yet in their wisdom they fool the likes of Herod

Resourceful in their journeying

And protective of what they know…but haven’t yet seen

Working together, those who choose love, are stronger than violence

Which brings us to John the Baptist…again…third time in four weeks!

Not just John the Baptist though

I was taught that the most important thing about Baptism

Is what God does

And you know how we like to talk about God being in us?

Which is nice and true…

But at Baptism, the language is different

we are welcomed into the life of God

We are baptized into Christ

Into his death as St Paul says

And we are raised from that water

And we are IN Christ…

Jesus in the Gospel today

Is raised out of that water

And just then the heavens are rent…torn apart

(that is a very forceful image)

And from the heavens comes the Holy Spirit

Descending like a dove

Now in just a couple verses this same Holy Spirit will be driving Jesus into the wilderness

So the descending part is more important than the dove part

(unless you are thinking of a dive-bombing, half-crazed dove;)

There is real power and energy in this scene

Rob and I have close family friends who are going through a rough time in their marriage.    The marriage is RENT... torn apart

There is no going back…

There is no ‘The way things were.’

There is only room for something new

In the Gospel today, The Heavens are torn apart

The word is SCHIZO…in Greek

Mark uses it only twice…

At the very beginning of his Gospel When God breaks in at the Baptism

And at the very end

When God tears apart the veil of the Temple at the death of Jesus

Schizo the word makes bookends around the whole story

This is a tearing apart that cannot be put back together again

There is no going back to religion as usual

Heaven and Earth are NOT opposing forces

God came in the flesh

So that in the flesh we might meet God

No Temple

No Holy of Holies

No ritual blood sacrifice

No transactions

Being baptized into Chirst

Means that we are invited into the story…the really BIG story

God’s story

Along with Mary, and Joseph, and the shepherds, Stephen, and the Magi

… Herod and the Baptist

Our stories belong to this same story!!!

But this baptism thing doesn’t take all at once

We have to let it unfold

And things will get torn apart from time to time

What in me needs rending?

What needs tearing apart?

Top to bottom

What needs to be broken

So that something new, and healthier, and holier might emerge in its place?

Answer: PLENTY

But there is time

Not ALL the time in the world

But time

I’ve been at it for 57 years now

On December 16^th, 1960

My Baptism gave me a role

…a part to play in the drama of salvation

But it didn’t come with a script…no stage direction!

This is no Baptism a la John

This is Baptism by the Holy Spirit

And my friends…

Could that really be all we need to work out our scripts?

Maybe everything we need

And everyone we need to work out our scripts is right here?

Maybe we are each other’s script editors!

Maybe we are each other’s inspiration

…each other’s muse!

How we keep unfolding our baptisms?

When I was putting away all the Christmas stuff

I forgot one little ‘Jesus in the Manger’ sitting on a bookshelf

At first I asked Rob where he put the Christmas box 
I needed the tissue paper and all
and then it happened

…it took on meaning

I’ll keep it out!  It will remind me

That what broke in

On that cold and dirty and ‘not according to plan’ night in Bethlehem

And what broke in on that day by the Jordan River

Is always breaking in

Grabbing us, raising us up, calling us Beloved

And saying

YOU…YOU…are part of the STORY

GO TELL it!