Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land;yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

Luke 4:14-30

Pastor Marc's sermon for 3rd Sunday after Epiphnay (January 27, 2019) on Luke 4:14-30. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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It takes about three or four cold spells to hit our area before I start dressing correctly for the weather. Now, to be sure, I’ve never been the kind of guy who wears shorts when it’s snowing out but it takes time for me to adjust my wardrobe once the temperature drops below freezing. What I do first is switch out my summer newscap for my winter one, pretending that I’ll be warmer even though my ears, face, and neck are still totally exposed. I then put on a thin hoodie under my fake leather jacket so that when I’m standing outside my kids’ school in the middle of December, I can tell myself I’m “feeling fine.” But when the temperature finally gets cold enough to freeze the pipes in my house, I just give up and I start layering my shirts and my pants correctly. After each weather event, it takes time to adjust to the new climate we’re in. We might try to hold onto the weather we’re about to lose, acting as if our fashion choices are powerful enough to change mother nature itself. Or we might be so wrapped up in our own lives that we miss seeing the pattern each individual weather event is pointing to. When we don’t step back and re-adjust our perspective, we end up mistaking the weather for the climate. And this mistake ends up giving us a false picture of the world. So, for example, our experience of the cold caused by a polar vortex might blind us to the reality of climate change. As we busily wrap ourselves up in our down winter jackets, we might miss seeing how, over the last fifty years, our warming climate has caused trees to literally move, shifting their natural habitat further north. We might complain about having to wear heavy wool socks while sitting in our homes yet we don’t realize that our homes were never designed for the new climate were already in. Camp Koinonia, an outdoor ministry that we’ve supported for almost sixty years, had to temporarily close last summer because a wetter and warming climate their buildings were never designed for left them with a ton of mold. We can be so wrapped up in our personal moments that we end up missing the bigger picture we’re already in. When we mistake the weather for the climate, when we act as if our personal perspective is the only perspective worth having, and when we start saying that our opinions are really the only true facts there are, we end up placing ourselves at the center of the universe. And when we put ourselves at the center of it all, we do more than just fail to see the climate we’re already in. We end up missing Jesus, who came to upend our climate once and for all.

So as a way to keep Jesus at the center of it all, we’re going to do something different for the next two weeks. Our lectionary, the three-year cycle of Bible readings we read in worship every Sunday, decided to turn this climatic moment from the gospel according to Luke into two smaller events. The first part sets the stage, which takes place in Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth. Jesus, according to Luke, began his public ministry there. After gaining  some reputation as a teacher while visiting the surrounding communities, Jesus returned to Nazareth and, as was his custom, went to worship. He attended the synagogue he grew up in which means he was surrounded by people who thought they knew exactly who he was. Jesus, as worship got underway, volunteered to be a lector, a reader of scripture, and so they gave him a scroll to read outloud. After unrolling the scroll of Isaiah, Jesus found the specific pieces of scripture he wanted to share. He read those verses outloud, rolled the scroll back up, and handed everything back to the attendant. Jesus, then, sat down, signalling to everyone that he was about to teach. Everyone in that synagogue turned their eyes towards him because they expected him to speak. And so, after reading about bringing good news to the poor and letting the oppressed go free, the lectionary chose to end this first part with Jesus’ one line sermon at verse 21: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Now, that verse is really at the middle of the story. There’s still a lot of text that follows. But if we chose to limit our story to what took place between verses 14 and 21, we could imagine this moment as a happy one. Jesus is at his hometown synagogue, he’s got a good reputation, and he seems to be saying that God is about to bring the community good things. The people in that synagogue heard Jesus say that the blind will see, captives will be released, the oppressed will go free, and that Jesus will bring good news to the poor. Jesus’ words here are very specific, not only implying that these things will happen in the future; he says they’re going to happen in the here and now as well. Nothing in Jesus’ scripture reading and short sermon, on the surface, imply that he might be doing anything that upsets or challenges the people around him. And at first glance, Jesus’ words don’t seem as if they are going to cost those in the synagogue practically anything. And yet, when we go through the whole story, finally grasping the full climate of what’s going on, we see everyone filling with rage and trying to throw Jesus off a cliff.

When we focus on the weather and miss the climate, we end up with an incomplete picture of what is going on. We let ourselves get wrapped up in smaller stories that end up derailing the wider narratives that demand our attention. We find ourselves chomping at the bit whenever some event dominates our short national attention span, choosing to fight over the details of that story instead of addressing the systematic and social realities that allowed such an event to happen in the first place. We see this lived out whenever a discriminatory act is described as fake news or whenever an ugly act of hate is downplayed as an act of “a lone wolf” or “someone who didn’t know better.” Our fights about the weather are our way of ignoring the climate we live in yet the more we ignore this climate, the more unpredictable and scary our weather becomes. The people listening to Jesus in that synagogue assumed they knew what weather Jesus was living in. What they didn’t expect was that Jesus was here to change the climate that impacted everyone. No longer would we be bogged down in whatever weather we are caught up in. Instead, Jesus promised a new reality where restoration, care, and justice was the focus of us all. That kind of climate is a one that knows we can’t decenter ourselves from our universes on our own. So Jesus, at the Cross, did that for us. Through his life, death, and resurrection, God made all of us the center of God’s universe so that we, through our baptism and faith, could make God the center of ours. That new center, rooted in a God who anoints; a God who sets free; a God who restores; and a God who brings good news to the poor; grants to us a new climate where the weather of love, hope, and mercy rules. And since we are part of God’s climate, we can live as if God’s climate truly matters, helping ourselves, our neighbors, and our world change into the place where God’s weather always reigns.

Amen.

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I usually write a longer reflection but in the rush and busyness of this week, I’m finding myself writing this at the last minute. I typically have a lot to say but I’m grateful that this passage from 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a says more than I ever could. I invite you to read it and then read it again. Take your time with it. Read it slowly. Make sure to follow Paul’s grammar and logic in its fullness. Pay attention to the connections. Notice what Paul doesn’t say. And after all of that, listen to what he’s saying to you. You, right now, are essential. You, right now, matter to the church. And the church can’t be the body of Christ without you.

For Paul, faith is always a team sport. Rarely does he write about belief in terms of what individuals do or think. Instead, faith is always centered in a community and without that community, faith doesn’t exist. We, I think, don’t speak of faith in that way. We focus on what “I” believe, what “I” think, and what “I” say about God. Faith is personal, private, and ours. But faith, to Paul, finds its fullest expression when we’re with other people. Faith is how we trust that God loves us and how we realize just how important other people are. Faith connects us to God and helps us see how we need other people to do the things we can’t. We need their prayers. We need their attention. We need others to point out the ways we are trapped in sin. And we need others to help us live. Jesus calls us to be his church and that church needs you and me. Because without each other, we can’t truly love the world like Jesus loves us.

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Some days feel as if they are primarily designed for interruptions. I’m currently writing this message in my home, late at night, with the family safely in their beds. Outside, gusts of wind are hollowing by, shaking the icy tree branches above my head. Every gust of wind causes another garbage can to blow over, sending it careening down the street and making an awful racket as it blows by. All day, I tried to work on this edition of the Messenger, but I kept being interrupted by garbage cans being blown over. Every few minutes I’d look out my window to see my blue recycling can on the ground and I would rush out, hoping to secure every empty soda can and plastic milk jug before they blew out of reach. Every time I was outside, I would find another piece of plastic representing a food item that I didn’t buy or consume. I would pick it up, place it in my blue recycling can and pray that someone else was doing the same with those items that escaped my yard. Eventually, I grew tired of this game and gave up, placing the recycling back into my garage. And as I shut the garage door, I ended up seeing the garbage truck speeding by.

There are days when interruptions dominate what we expected to do. Some of these interruptions can be silly, like chasing recycling as it blows down the street. Others can be more serious, such as an unexpected crisis or accident. These interruptions end up interfering with our routine, upending our plans and sometimes throwing us off course. We can find ourselves suddenly off kilter, wondering if we’ll ever get back to the way we were before.

Yet, I’ve found every interruption comes with something that is uninterruptable: and that’s Christ’s love, mercy and forgiveness for each of us. I like to imagine Jesus was with me as I chased after that empty soda can, encouraging me to find ways to reduce my consumption so that I can help care for God’s creation. I also know that he is present with you, no matter what interruption you are going through. As we spend this month in the season after Epiphany, and before we face the truth of Lent, I invite you to hold tight to Christ through regular prayer, worship and study. Your life will be interrupted, but God’s love for you will not be. Enjoy this long season after Epiphany and look for the many ways Christ is always with you.

See you in church!
Pastor Marc

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On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

John 2:1-11

Pastor Marc's sermon for 2nd Sunday after Epiphnay (January 120, 2019) on John 2:1-11. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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One of my favorite verses in all of scripture comes at the very end of the gospel according to John. It reads: “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” It’s a verse that, on its surface, makes sense. No one book could possibly contain all the actions, thoughts, and experiences that happen in any one person’s life. The best we can do is point to a few moments that highlight who we are. Yet, that’s not why I like this verse. I like it because it’s completely over the top. John wasn’t saying that we needed one, four, or even ten books to describe everything Jesus did. John wrote that world itself couldn’t contain every story coming out of Jesus’ few years of public ministry. Now, according to some estimates, we currently know of around 135 million unique books that have been written throughout history. If we assume each of these books could be published as a 6” by 9” paperback, and if we placed those 135 million unique books end-to-end, they would stretch out over 19,000 miles. That’s only ¾ of the way around the earth so we would need an additional 40 million books to circle the earth one time. That’s a lot of books. And the author of John wrote that even these 175 million books couldn’t contain everything Jesus did. That’s an incredible number and if we take it at face value, then the author of the gospel according to John had a lot of material to work with. They could, with the help of the Holy Spirit, pick and choose from all those different stories to come up with their definitive word. So after looking at everything Jesus did and after examining everything he taught and said, it’s sort of amazing that the first thing John highlighted was Jesus’ party trick. John didn’t start with Jesus casting out a demon or teaching or even preaching. Instead, John’s version of Jesus’ public ministry began at a wedding where the big problem was that the party had run out of wine.

Now that actually was a big problem because weddings in Jesus’ day lasted an entire week long. The bridegroom provided all the food and beverages needed to keep everyone in a celebratory state of mind. A bridegroom who ran out of wine after only three days would spend the rest of their lives being known as the one who couldn’t provide. The society around Jesus expected an abundant wedding feast and if the bridegroom couldn’t provide, they would be shamed. Jesus’ act of turning water into wine rescued the bridegroom from this fate. And Jesus does all of this almost secretly. Only a few people, at first, knew what he did. Jesus chose to not seek out credit or acknowledgement for his actions. Instead, Jesus stayed in the background. He let others be  the center of the story. Jesus was a guest at someone else’s wedding and even after providing the equivalent of 1000 bottles of high quality wine, Jesus let someone else’s story take the lead. Jesus’ first act of public ministry wasn’t designed to show off how amazing he was. His first act was to extend a celebration and let that kind of life, and joy, keep going.

Which is an odd way to start the story of Jesus’ public ministry. If we were compiling the gospel according to John, we might want to start with something a little more interesting, like Jesus having some kind of fight with demonic forces or with Jesus being super dramatic while challenging the status-quo. It feels a bit underwhelming for the Son of God’s first public act to be hidden in someone else’s story. Jesus wasn’t even the host of the party; he was merely a guest. Yet it’s as a guest when God’s abundance, through Jesus, first flows.

By the time the third day of the wedding rolled around, Jesus had probably already gotten to know many of the people at the party. He might have swapped stories of the bridegroom’s younger days with the newly minted mother-in-law and he probably tore up the dance floor by grooving to Ancient Israel’s version of “The Cha-Cha Slide.” Jesus was already at the party before he turn water into wine. And that, I think, is how Jesus introduces us to what an everyday life with God looks like. A life with God doesn’t mean that we’ll receive 1000 bottles of our favorite celebratory beverage every third day. A life with God means that we already have a guest with us who is present in every part of our story. This guest is sometimes a silent partner as we go through the uneventful days of our lives. But sometimes they’re a bit more like the mother of Jesus, prodding us to action. We might, during a crisis, be like the servants and catch a glimpse of God at work in our lives. And there are still other moments when we’ll be like the bridegroom and take credit for something God had already done. A life with God is a life that’s lived and a life that’s lived needs a God who knows what our lives are like. Each of us, through our baptism and through our faith, are united with a guest who does more than just understand the human story. He’s lived all parts of it, from the joy of a good wedding party through even the terrors of death on the Cross. You, as you are, are not left to travel the days of this life alone. You have with you a guest who is with you every step of the way. This gift, this Jesus, was given to you not because you had perfected and prepared everything you’d need for a life of faith and goodness. This gift was given to you because Jesus loves you and he loves you abundantly. That’s why, I think, the gospel according to John started Jesus’ public ministry with a wedding party at Cana. It’s in the very middle of our story when God’s abundant care, support, and mercy shows up. Jesus comes to us, as we are, so that we can become exactly who God knows we can be. This act of abundance is an act of grace; and this grace knows no bounds or limits. Grace upon grace is how God acts and this act can never be fully described no matter how books we write about it. Instead, this grace can only be lived out - which is why we live with Jesus and why Jesus lives with us. The more time we spend with Jesus, the more we realize how we can be changed from vessels of water into vessels of love and grace. And Jesus does that by being a part of who we are, a guest in our lives who promises to never let us go. Jesus gives us grace and we carry his grace into the world so that the world, through us, can be a little more joyous, a little more loving, a little more like a wedding party where God’s abundance always flows.

Amen.

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One of challenging experiences I have teaching Confirmation Class is making the Ten Commandments meaningful to a bunch of 7th and 8th graders. We tend to read these gifts from God as a morality check-list, reducing them to ordinances that we try to keep. We might embrace the commandment "do not murder" but shrug our shoulders about the commandment to reserve the Sabbath for God alone. Martin Luther, in the Small Catechism, showed us that every "don't" in the Ten Commandments is connected to a "do." God doesn't want us to only not lie about our neighbor (the 8th commandment); God wants us to use our words to help our neighbors thrive. One of the more difficult Commandments to teach is the second: do not take the Lord's name in vain. God, I think, is asking us to do more than just stop shouting "Jesus Christ" when we stub our toe. God wants us to pay attention to the power of names. And our reading from Isaiah 62:1-5 shows us just how powerful names can be.

The reading begins with the assumption that Jerusalem means something. Jerusalem, conquered by the Babylonians and its people forcefully deported, is now mocked and teased by the nations around them. In the ancient world, wars were viewed as political and cosmic affairs. A war between two nations was also a war between their gods. The destruction of Jerusalem showed that the gods of Babylon were more powerful than the God of Israel. The nations won. Jerusalem lost. In the view of the nations, God and Jerusalem were symbols of failure and defeat. Their names were meaningless and, now, the butt of jokes.

But when the rest of the world assumes God is no longer potent, that's when God renews God's unending promise to God's people. God will give them a new name, a new identity, and "a new chance at life" (Walter Brueggeman's Isaiah). God will act with a new resolve and Jerusalem's new name will be "My Delight is In Her." If the nations thought God had abandoned God's people, God's new name for them will show how God is now with them. Names have power. Names signal our relationships, commitments, and how we viewed ourselves in the world. The names we give ourselves and the names we give others shape our life. The names we give others will reveal exactly how we will treat them. And the names we own for ourselves will reveal exactly what's important to us. Yet, through our baptism and through our faith, we are given a new name that doesn't depend on what others say about us. This name comes from God and God alone. We are Beloved; we are sealed with Christ's cross; we have Jesus' name. And that name changes who we are, who we will be, and who we can be right now.

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But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you, I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life. Do not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you; I will say to the north, “Give them up,” and to the south, “Do not withhold; bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth— everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”​

Isaiah 43:1-7

Pastor Marc's sermon for Baptism of Jesus (January 13, 2019) on Isaiah 43:1-7. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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It’s a bit scary to be a newborn...

Because you enter the world exactly as you are. You’re small, defenseless, and a little bit confused because you’re now “outside,” away from that precious inner sanctum where there was warmth and food. A newborn might spend its first few moments being poked and prodded by strangers who are wearing white clothes and shining bright lights in their face. Some newborns enter the world with a cry and a scream while others are completely silent. Every newborn goes through their own unique experience when they enter the world but one thing unites them: they come completely vulnerable. A newborn needs to be taken care of - and that’s, sometimes, a frightening way to live. But newborns, of course, know no other kind of existence. They just...are. And God willing, a community of family, friends, medical professionals, and others commitment themselves to do for this newborn what this newborn can’t do for themselves. A newborn needs a community but that community can be a bit...odd. Many, when meeting a newborn for the first time, can’t help themselves but say “awww.” Some feel an incredible urge to pinch their cheeks while others want to tug at their toes. Still more, without even thinking about it, say frightening things like “they’re so cute - I could just bite them.” Being a newborn isn’t scary only because they need to be taken care of. Being a newborn is scary because so many people in the community around them all seem to come down with what scientists call “cute aggression.”

Cute aggression is pretty common and it’s the catch-all term for when we want to “bite, nibble, squeeze, or smoosh the face of something completely adorable.” Studies show that when people look at photos of tiny and adorable things, we often react with pretty aggressive language. If we suffer from cute aggression, we might find ourselves being flooded by an incredible amount of positive emotions whenever we see a newborn baby or videos of baby otters having fun at the zoo. That feeling of wanting to bite a baby’s thighs doesn’t mean we’re suddenly becoming cannibals. It’s a trick used by our brains to help regulate, release, and moderate those moments when we’re flooded with “positive emotions and caretaking desires.” This experience is pretty much universal and some languages even have specific words to describe it. If it’s cute, a little furry, and a bit helpless, we can go over the top with our feelings of compassion, love, and care. It’s a reaction that, for many of us, is just built into who we are. And that’s okay - because, as we see in our reading from Isaiah today, God sometimes does the exact same thing.

God, in these seven verses, expresses God’s “defining and uncompromising love” for God’s people. Written while a large part of ancient Israel was living in exile, this text affirmed God’s “profound commitment…[a commitment] that persists… and is undisturbed by any circumstance.” God’s words began with a very simple but also very overwhelming command to “do not fear” because God is God - and God’s people will belong to God forever. We can imagine the community who first heard these words being a bit… confused. Because they were living in Babylon, having been forcefully deported by the empire that destroyed Jerusalem and burned God’s Temple. They were far from home and had no idea if they would ever return. So the community was spending a lot of time asking themselves “why?” Why did God let Jerusalem fall? Why did God let their loved ones be hurt, killed, and driven far from home? Why did God, in the face of struggle, fear, doubt, and worry, seem to abandon them to their fate? The community felt, at that very moment, as if they were nothing because everything they held dear - their wealth, their power, their homes, their health, their well-being, and their identity - all of that was basically gone. They weren’t only asking themselves why they were living in exile; they were also wondering who they actually were. They were a community that had lost - and they were now tiny, miserable, and insignificant. Yet it’s to them, to those who are nothing, that God does something that happens no where else in the Bible. God says, forcefully, and explicitly: “I love you.” It isn’t to the mighty or powerful or faithful or perfect that God says these words. Instead, they’re delivered to those who are broken, confused, questioning, and doubting. God declares, vividly, that they have an “intimate and nonnegotiable relationship” with God. God’s promise is that no matter where you are, no matter what you’ve experienced, no matter what you’ve gone through, you are God’s. And God’s love, commitment, and devotion to God’s people will be what defines them. It’s not their doubts, troubles, or circumstances that make them who they are. Their identity is centered in the God who loves and claims them. That love is God’s promise made real and for us who are Christians, that promise is made publically and explicitly in our baptism.

When we pass through the waters and when we hear our name on God’s lips, that’s when we discover exactly who God is for us. In the words of Walter Brueggemann, we read these verses from Isaiah as  “illuminations of baptism, a sacrament of relationship whereby we are inducted into the protective and sure care of God.” This claim of relationship doesn’t eliminate the promise first made to the Jewish people. Rather, the words first written for the Israelites in exile are a reminder that God’s faithfulness towards us doesn’t depend on anything we do. Instead, God comes to us first because we are precious in God’s sight. We are, through God’s promise, brought into God’s beloved family through God’s Son, who was born, lived, and who knew what it meant to be broken. When confronted by the vulnerable, the marginalized, and the lost, God could only do what God always does: and that’s just love. God’s love for us ends up being more than just an affirmation of who we are. God’s love also challenges, changes, and transforms us so that we can take seriously what it means to be God’s beloved. If we are loved, if we are claimed by God, and if we truly believe that we are precious in God’s sight, then we are invited to do more than just live our lives; we are invited to discover what it means to live out our identity as the beloved. God’s cute aggression towards those whom God loves is not the limit of God’s relationship. Rather, God keeps telling us over and over again “I love you” because God knows that love is the one thing that will change us into who God knows we can be. We are, no matter our age, always a newborn. We need care. We need attention. And we need love even though we spend much of our lives pretending like we don’t. Yet in our baptism, in our worship, in our faith, and at Jesus’ table, we are reminded that God will never stop saying, “I love you” because God knows that that promise is what will carry us through.

Amen.

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We rarely, I think, picture Jesus as primarily a judgement figure. When we close our eyes and imagine Jesus for us, visions of fire and brimstone are typically far from our minds. Personally, with a newborn living in my home, I lean on the picture of Jesus welcoming children instead of seeing him as someone wielding a winnowing fork while surrounded by unquenchable fire. Yet John the Baptist, in our reading from the gospel according to Luke 3:15-17, 21-22, imagined the Messiah to be someone who primarily judges. This Messiah would come into our world, a place where God's love, generosity, and justice already existed but was, currently, obscured. Work needed to be done to bring all the good stuff of God to fruition. The Messiah, then, would need to get his hands dirty and would be active in the world at large. John used an image of someone wielding a winnowing fork as an example of what the Messiah would do. A winnowing fork was a tool used to sort the good grains of wheat from the rest of the stalk. It was the good grains of wheat that produced good flour while the rest would be given to animals or tossed aside. The Messiah wasn't gentle in the way we think a Messiah to be. The Messiah was active, efficient, and would be harsh. And if we do think about the Messiah being harsh, we usually want him to act that way towards other people and not to us. 

Yet, the rest of Jesus' story after this point doesn't really match this vision. Throughout his 3 years of public ministry, from his baptism to his death on the cross, Jesus rarely is the one with a winnowing fork in his hands; instead, we are the ones acting as if we're the ones who can recognize the good from the bad. We imagine ourselves to be judges and we, like many people in Luke, have no problem casting a judgement on Jesus. Because Jesus has a habit of hanging out with the wrong kind of people in the wrong kind of places and for entirely the wrong reasons. He has meals with people he shouldn't, talks to people he should avoid, and keeps acting as if the gospel is real, honest-to-goodness, good news for the poor. Jesus' first judgement is to preach, teach, and act as if God will be God and that God will keep God's promises. God's promises are always rooted in a God who gives life because that's just what God does. We are thrilled when God gives us life, transforming us in ways we can't imagine. But we're less thrilled when we see God doing the same thing in others, especially in those we avoid. Throughout the gospel according to Luke, the text will show us how our judgements are not God's. The Messiah with the winnowing fork doesn't just separate people in the good and the bad. The Messiah also transforms us, pulling out the good grains of faith from the chaff inherent in our lives. And by encountering Jesus over and over again, through the confession of sins, the promise of forgiveness, and by meeting him in the bread and drink, we also discover what it's like to live as the baptized and Beloved ones we actually are. 

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As a person of below average physical stature, I'm not entirely sure I would appreciate being covered by a multitude of camels. When I'm playing hide and seek, two little kids and two cats jumping on me is about the only amount of covering I can take. Yet in our reading from Isaiah 60:1-6 today, being covered in camels is a good thing. The author of this part of Isaiah was inspired by God's own voice to bring to God's people a divine promise. This promise offered the Jewish people and the people living in Jerusalem a vision of what their future with God would look like. The author's use of the word "you" didn't imagine to be writing to individuals 2500 years later who happened to be reading this book. The "you" here is plural and directed towards the city of Jerusalem. Ever since that city was conquered by David around the year 1000 BCE, the city had experienced a large amount of challenge, prosperity, hardship, and calamity. The city watched David's kingdom split in two and survived when 10 out of the 12 tribes of Israel were lost during an invasion by the Assyrians. Jerusalem survived through God's help and by playing the local political powers against each other. The kings of Judah sent a ridiculous amount of money, gold, and other resources to other political kingdoms as tribute. By this point in the book of Isaiah, the Babylonian exile was already over and the returning community were looking to rebuild the Temple. They were still under control by another nation, the Persians, would who still demand their own kind of tribute. For centuries, Jerusalem sent its resources away on carvans of camels, trying to save themselves from destruction while fueling the lust for powers that others had. But in the future, this would be reversed. All the wealth and abundance of the nations, the best they have, will come to Jerusalem. This is the queen of Sheba story (1 Kings 10:1-13) but on overdrive, pointing to a future where current expectations are replaced by God's great reversal.

On this Epiphany, we are drawn to the verse about gold and frankincense because these are two of the three gifts the magi brought to Jesus. As Christians, we see the great reversal expressed in Isaiah 60 as bearing fruit in the birth, life, and death of Jesus. The magi offered extravagant gifts to an infant who had no army, no sword, and who couldn't walk. Yet they saw who Jesus was, is, and will be. They knew that a relationship with Jesus, rooted in God's love, grace, and faith, would be the one thing no empire could ever take from us. During this life, we will probably never be covered by a multitude of camels. We will wonder why the exploitation by the rich seems to be growing in intensity. The world does not  match the future God has in mind. Yet God has laid out, for each of us, a different way of life that notices who we give our gifts too. And once we see who we give our gifts to, we can embrace a new way of life that lives into the hope when every vulnerable community will know that their light has come. 

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