Category Archives: John

Comfort in the Familiar…

COVID-19, Easter, John

Year A, Easter 6, John 14:15-21
My first Zoom service at Trinity Church, Matawan with Christ Church, South Amboy

We’re just getting to know each other, so I’m going to start with a story. In the first week of my first semester at college, I joined the Episcopal Campus Ministry group at the University of Delaware. In that time of my life, everything was new and scary. Everything was changing. On one of my first nights with the campus ministry group, my new friend Amelia, a sophomore, shared something she’d learned. She said to find something you do or see every day: a tree out your window, your coffee pot, maybe even your toothbrush. Take one everyday object and use it as a reminder. Make it so that every time you see this particular thing, you remember that the God who made you loves you madly, and that God’s love is unbreakable. Since it was fall, I chose leaves falling off trees, and fifteen years later, the lesson has stayed with me. Today’s gospel passage shows Jesus’ offering the disciples a similar teaching. In this passage, Jesus seeks to comfort the disciples by reminding them off all the things they can do to draw closer to God and that God is always with them – no matter what.

In today’s gospel passage, Jesus is trying to comfort some scared, confused disciples. This passage comes from a part of John’s gospel called the Farewell Discourse, John 13-17. In these chapters, Jesus talks to the disciples about his upcoming departure, how he will be betrayed, and how Peter will deny him. I can only imagine how confused and scared the disciples were to hear all of this. Jesus is telling them that everything they know is about to change in some sad and scary ways. Jesus’ words to the disciples are words of comfort that are grounding the disciples – and grounding us – in what we already know. Isn’t it funny the simple things we forget when we’re stressed out? Jesus comforts the disciples by reminding them that they have everything they need to draw closer to God, even when he can’t be there with them.

Today’s gospel passage begins and ends with reminders to follow Jesus’ commandments – Jesus teachings. What do all of Jesus’ teachings have in common? They’re all about relationships: Love God. Love your neighbor. Love God by loving your neighbor. Jesus demonstrates this love with humble service and unceasing compassion. Jesus’ actions are as full of love as his words are. Loving people this way is the path to God, and no matter how much the world changes, this path stays the same. And the more deeply and fully that we love, the more we see God around us.

Both in the opening and closing lines of this passage, there is a promise that God’s presence will always be with us, when we live our lives according to this commandment of love. In the closing verses, Jesus tells us that he himself will be revealed to us; an example of this would be the way that I saw Christ made manifest in Amelia’s loving words of wisdom. Now, in the opening verses, Jesus promises the disciples an advocate who will always be with them; this is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God’s love always accompanying the disciples – and always accompanying us, wherever we go. There’s no place too far, too strange, too scary, too dark, or too socially distanced for the Holy Spirit. She is relentless in her love.

We’re in chapter of history where our world has changed in some big ways that we’ve never seen before. In the midst of all of these changes, we’re all here together for our first Sunday, embarking on a new chapter. I know there will be surprises ahead for us, but I know we’ll face them together, growing in love with God and each other. The path to grow with God is the same love-filled path it’s always been, and we’re navigating it together now. There is a sweet, sweet Spirit in this place – the same Spirit with us in all of the places we’re zooming from today.

Daily Bread That Gives Life to the World

Eucharist, John, Uncategorized, Year B

Sunday Sermon – August 19, 2018 from Christ Church Christiana Hundred on Vimeo.

Year B Proper 15
John 6:51-58

I can still remember the first time I received communion. I was nine years old! I grew up in a small Anglo-Catholic parish, and when I was a little girl, we still did the whole “first communion” thing, rather than focusing on baptism or on our own hearts. For a few Sundays over the course of the fall, my friends Rebecca, Cory, and I met with our interim rector, Mother Alison, on several different occasions to talk through what this sacrament meant in our commitment to love the world and to love Jesus. It was a lot like how I do baptismal prep now… Anyway, while I remember feeling SO grown up when the big day came – The Feast of Epiphany. I also remember what happened after the service. The mother of one of the other girls, Rebecca, made each of us a red, hooded cape – just like the kind our Felicity American Girl dolls had. After the service, most of the congregation left quickly to get home before the snow started, but Rebecca, Cory and I ran around the empty church JOYOUSLY in our white dresses and white shoes with our red capes trailing behind us. Our families had to drag us home.

I’m grateful for that memory in my life with Christ – that pure, innocent joy of childhood. As we grow up and take on more responsibility and acquire more knowledge, life gets more complicated. The questions we ask and the answers we seek get more complicated.

We all have deep yearnings that change through the different seasons of our lives. We struggle with not enough time in our days. We need more space in our heads to remember thing. We all have unique and profound burning questions that we don’t yet have the answers to. Some seasons find us yearning for deeper connections with another human being, or sometimes, the void we’re struggling with is one we don’t yet know how to fill.

In today’s gospel, Jesus tells us that he is the living bread that came down from heaven. We talk about Easter and the promise of eternal life, but the bread that sustains us in our earthly life lives too. What all is Jesus getting at in today’s gospel when he tells us that he is the bread of life for the world?

We break bread together every Sunday. We gather around that table and praise God for the salvation of the world through Christ our savior, retelling the narrative of the Last Supper in the sacrament of Holy Eucharist. Sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward, spiritual grace, given by Christ. In Holy Eucharist, the grace is found in the bread and wine that also become the body and blood of Christ. Grace is that unearned, undeserved, unconditional love from God that forgives us of our since and draws us closer to God and to each other.

The bread of life for the world is that grace: love that redeems, love that sustains, love that breaks down barriers and bridge chasms, love that connects us more deeply, love that abides and abides. In today’s gospel, Christ tells us that when we receive the sacrament of communion with open hearts, we’re taking Christ into ourselves. When we receive the bread and the wine, we’re choosing to abide in Christ and to trust in God’s grace – and when we invite God in like that, God lives in us.

That what Christ is trying to teach his listeners today. That’s what he’s trying to teach us today. Communion. The bread of life. This encounter we have with Christ deepens our relationship with the God who promises us eternal life. I know my heart hungers for that, but what about all of the other things we’re hungering for? We have questions about ourselves and the world; we struggle for more balance, greater clarity, deeper understanding and stronger love. And what about those seasons where it feels like our hearts have a hole in them?

Lord, give us this day our daily bread. We say these words in the Lord’s Prayer every Sunday, after the eucharistic prayer, and they’re about more than eucharist. Daily bread is sustenance; daily bread is not a meal with a dessert cart. When we follow Jesus’ teaching and pray for daily bread, we’re praying for sustenance. We’re praying for what our bodies, minds and spirits NEED to get through the day. The answer we want is not always the one we get, but if we keep our hearts open to God, we’ll have just enough of whatever it is we need to get us through. In all of the seasons of uncertainty that we encounter in our lives, what better sustenance could we ask for than the bread of life?
The Grace of God surpasses all understanding in its ability to redeem and heal and transform and connect us more deeply to God and each other. Come to the table and receive life. Come to the table and be fed. Go out into the world and proclaim that message with every little kind word you say and deed you do and truth you proclaim. Then, come back and be fed again, so as to keep your heart full – so you can keep passing that grace on!

Resolutions: Listen for Your Calling

Achievement Unlocked: Preach a sermon that incorporates the Matrix

(Also, this is probably the only way I’d ever preach using pill imagergy 😉 )

“Follow me.” Christ’s words to Phillip are also calling us. God calls each of us into a new way of being, and we choose whether we answer, and whether we follow.

It’s the second Sunday after Epiphany and the second Sunday of our new sermon series: Resolutions. How can we resolve to be better Christians with the gift of each new day, month, year? Last week, Stephen reminded us that God isn’t calling us to do things because “we’re supposed to”. The choices we make with our lives – the choice to be here – should be about what quenches our thirst and feed our hearts. Following Jesus is the best way to quench our thirst, and for all the ways we follow Jesus by keeping the same covenant to love God and to love each other, God also has a unique call to each of us. God doesn’t care about checking boxes. God knows the best way to nourish the unique piece of Christ in each of our hearts and call us into something bigger. We have to listen, and we have to keep our hearts open to all possibilities, as we chose to go right or left, north or south, red pill or blue pill.

Have any of y’all ever seen the Matrix? In The Matrix, the protagonist, a hacker named Neo, has spent much of his life searching for answers about the world he lives in and the nature of reality. Even within the wild imaginings of brilliant sci-fi, we can all relate to seasons of searching for answers in our lives. In time, all of Neo’s searching causes some strange things to start happening to him: things that don’t make any sense or that he can’t explain. Just as Neo starts to fear for his life, he gets the opportunity to sit down with a man named Morpheous, who has all of the answers he’s been seeking but who warns him that these answers don’t come easily and he needs to decide if he’s willing to take on the weight of listening to such a big truth. Morpheus tells Neo he has two choices, offering him either a red pill or a blue pill. He can take a blue pill and wake up in his bed, believing whatever he wants to believe OR he can take the red pill and embrace this new Wonderland-like reality he’s stumbled into, and see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Could you ever imagine giving up all you know to leap wildly into something more? How can you even be sure that a wild leap is the right one?

I don’t know about you, but sometimes, with all the noise of loud radios and long to-do lists, I worry my own ability to listen. What if I get distracted? I don’t want to miss my cue from the Holy Spirit. Luckily, we have the story of God calling Samuel to comfort us in these seasons of worry. God called Samuel’s name four times before Samuel answered. Samuel heard a voice but didn’t know the source. When Samuel didn’t know what was happening, God persisted. God persists with us, too. If you know me well, you know I can be rather strong-willed, so I’ve tested this. Thoroughly. God’s will is stronger. God knows that God knows us better than we know ourselves.

God knows we sometimes need to hear things more than once, because God knows us. God knows each and every one of us, In today’s gospel passage, Jesus calls Phillip, and Phillip calls Nathaniel. When Nathaniel approaches Christ, ready to follow, Jesus exclaims about Nathaniel’s honesty. Nathaniel is shocked that Jesus already knows him so well, asking “Where did you get to know me?” Christ sees every part of us, even the parts of us that we don’t yet see of ourselves. God sees all of the good and all of the bad and loves us so completely all the same and it is from this complete, radical love that God calls us, each and every one of us to that path that is best for us and unique to us in the choices we make for our vocations, our relationships, and the rabbit holes of life that we might be bold enough to explore.
Christ called Phillip and Nathaniel differently from each other and differently from how God called Samuel. God called Samuel repeatedly and by name. Jesus spoke directly to Phillip, saying “Follow me”, but Jesus knew that the best way to call Nathaniel was not with clear instructions from an unfamiliar face. So, Jesus sent Phillip to find Nathaniel, and Nathaniel’s call consisted of a longer explanation spoken through someone Nathanael already trusted. One of the many benefits of there being a piece of Christ in every human heart is that God’s call to us can come through the mouths of those around us, friends and strangers. With Nathanael, Jesus knew he needed to hear from a friend, whether or not Nathanael knew he needed to hear his call that way in order to be able to answer it.

When Eli helped Samuel figure out God’s call, Eli taught Samuel how to answer readily – to say “Speak, for your servant is listening” Samuel’s answer surrenders his own will in favor of God’s will and the transforming power of God’s love. Part of being a good listener means hearing even the things that we don’t want to hear, that we’re not ready to hear, and that don’t fit with the vision we thought we had of what our lives should be. To let go of the false reality of the blue pill and the choose the life-altering truth of the red one. To be completely open to the transformation of God’s radical love, we need to surrender any expectations we might have that limit its ability to fill our hearts. We need to say, “Here we are, the servants of the Lord, let it be with us according to your word”

God knows us better than we know ourselves. God knows everything we are and everything we can be, even the things we may think we cannot be – or haven’t yet figured out we can be. God called Samuel as a boy knowing who Samuel could grow into as a man. God’s patient persistence journeys with us throughout our lives and through every transformation. Our God is the god who from the darkness created heaven and earth, all that is seen and unseen. Our God is the god who defeated death, and who promises us eternal life. Just as God did these things on God’s time, transformation that happen on God’s time, regardless of what our idea is of how things should go.

Our lives are a series of choices. Shouldn’t we all be striving to be brave enough to choose the red pill? Choosing to answer God’s call is a choice we can make every day. It is a part of all of the other choices we make about how we focus our time and energy, our work and education, and our love for all of those around us. Let us resolve today and every day to choose God: to choose to listen and be in relationship; to choose to join together each Sunday and quench our thirst in the waters of baptism and feast on the grace, as we break bread together at the altar. to choose to be open to every possibility God might be calling us to, even the ones that we’d never imagined. “Speak, Lord, your servants are listening”

 

All Called “Good”

Baptismal Covenant, Christmas, Incarnation, John, Sermons

Christmas 1
John 1:1-18

Preached on December 31, 2017 at St Mark’s Episcopal Church in Basking Ridge, NJ.

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Christmas is one of the primary feasts in our church life, and it lasts twelve whole days.  I love that beautiful Christmas story we hear: It’s the story of, as we hear in John’s gospel today, the Word becoming flesh and living among us. Mary and Joseph journeyed all the way to Bethlehem to welcome the Christ Child in a barn, because that’s all our God needed, even with the same frail human flesh we have.  This is Jesus Christ: the Light of the World, who doesn’t need anything more than a humble space in our hearts to outshine the darkness of our world, even on these cold, winter nights.

Growing up, every few years my parents and I would go to visit my dad’s family in Mississippi for Christmas. I would always stay with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. When I was a teenager, they got a cat: Duke. Duke was a strawberry blonde tabby cat who liked to sneak out of the house and get in fights with other cats. He was, as many cats are, adorable, but he was also cool and aloof and neurotic…. And very proud. He did NOT like to be held. However, late at night, when we were all asleep, Duke would sneak up to someone for a visit. I vividly remember waking up in the middle of the night from deep sleep to someone tapping me on the should. I’d been lying on my side and as soon as I rolled onto my back to see what was happening, the culprit, Duke, would hope onto my chest to demand attention. I’d pet him and he’d purr, only content to be so affectionate in the middle of the night, when he thought I might not be able to see or remember. For all of his tomcat pride and prowess, Duke needed to feel a loving hand on his back sometimes, just as much as each of us does.

As Christians and people of community, we already know that none of us exist in a vacuum…although all of us came from one.

Today’s gospel passage from the first chapter of John begins “In the beginning was the Word;” John speaks of Christ much as the Book of Genesis speaks of Creation. In the beginning, the earth was a formless void, and the first thing God created was light, separating light from darkness. As we’re reminded in the poetry of today’s gospel from John, God created light to shine in the darkness. God called that light – and everything else that God lovingly made (and sometimes perfected through evolution) – GOOD. What God creates is Good. What God creates is never lacking.  What God creates is always enough. Any voice that says otherwise is not God’s voice

What God creates always enough to outshine the darkness. And God created this whole beautiful world, and then decided that this world needed each and every one of us. Because the Word was God; these four words from John’s gospel today remind us that God is part of all things God calls into being. God is part of all of us, just as we are reminded in our baptism that there is a piece of Christ in every human soul. The Word in every human heart. God’s love in every human skin.

The poetry of today’s gospel passage is beautiful, and at times confusing, but some things are made quite clear; “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That is what happened on Christmas. Love came down, and Christ was born of a woman. God came and was born as a baby. The infant Jesus needed to be held and fed and cleaned by human hands just as we did at our birth. Because part of humanity is that we need the love and care of others in order to grow and then, accordingly, we are called to sow this love into the world, too. Sometimes, just like Duke the cat, we all need a loving hand on our back to make it through the long cold night. Through the Light of the World, love shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

The Christmas moment where God took on frail human flesh is the incarnation – it’s central to our faith. Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension – aka the Easter promise that ensures forgiveness of all our sins – first required our fully divine God to also be fully human: frail, beautiful, and lovingly-made, just like each and every one of us.

In my daily journeys throughout this world we live in, I am on the receiving a lot of messages about human bodies and a few more specific ones about my own. As a society, we’re quick to label certain people’s bodies as perfect (cough only God is perfect cough), even though images these same bodies are then airbrushed before they can be published. Even our standards of beauty don’t make sense. We’ve definitely got some work to do, and we are starting to do it. On a very large scale, we’re finally starting to have some much overdue conversations about appropriate ways to talk about and engage with each other about our human bodies: their shapes, sizes, genders, colors, ages. As a society, we’re taking steps, but it’s going to take some time.  And all the messages we get about our bodies not being “good enough” go directly against what we read in Genesis; where God called humanity into being and called us “good.” Both John’s Gospel and Genesis teach us the even in this darkness, the light shines. The light shines and the darkness does not overcome it.

In our baptism and confirmation, we all promise to seek and serve Christ in all people. All people includes humans who do things like cut us off in traffic or give us the stink eye or who offer unwanted commentary on our bodies. All people includes those who incite feelings of shame in us, and therefore, all people can include ourselves. Sometimes we forget what we’ve learned from God and what we’ve read in Genesis and John. Sometimes we’re tempted to look at our imperfect human hearts and imperfect human bodies and think one or the other is not “good enough”. But seeking and serving the Christ in all people includes the Christ in ourselves, in our unique and imperfect human hearts and bodies, all shaped by God in Creation. All called “good” by God; any voice that says otherwise comes from somewhere else – somewhere dark. Lucky for us, John reminds us today that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it.

And the light we’re talking about – that’s the light of Christmas – That’s Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ: The Light of World, whose love will shine into every dark, sad, shame-filled corner of our hearts, if we’re open to letting Him in. Jesus Christ, fully divine and fully human, took on frail human flesh to help us love better. God believed a human body could help us learn to love each other better, and nowhere in our gospels is there a single reference to any sort of divine height, weight, or six pack. The Christmas Story is about love, a God who loved the world so much that God took on flesh and dwelt among us in a human body just like ours. Following Christ means embodying the light of this love every day. It means loving our neighbors and ourselves just as God does: one character flaw, one laugh line, and one lovingly-crafted human heart at a time.

 

 

Sing!

Advent, John, Luke

Year B Advent 4
Luke 1:26-38
Preached on Sunday, December 16 at Christ Church Christiana Hundred in Wilmington, DE

Sunday Sermon – December 17, 2017 from Christ Church Christiana Hundred on Vimeo.

May my soul proclaim the greatness of the Lord and my spirit rejoice in God my savior.

 

The song of Mary is my all-time favorite passage of scripture. In it she proclaims love, faith, and joy – with no sign of fear in the face of the change that God is calling her to. Her words set to music appear in our hymnal – S186[1] – one of my all-time favorites. Today’s gospel passage is just a few verses before her song.

What prompts a song to begin with?

One of my recent leisure activities has been to rewatch one of my favorite shows from my teenage years called Roswell. It’s a typical teen drama, but with healthy splash of science fiction: think 90210 but with aliens. In the past week or so, one of my favorite scenes came up. In this scene, a few of our heroes, human and alien alike, decide to throw a silly, impromptu dance party and rock out to some late-nineties pop music. One of the reasons that I like it so much is that I can picture my friends and I engaging in this exactly activity. Whether we were ten-year-olds and wanting to be Spice Girl, fifteen-year-olds and in the thralls of high school crushes, or thirty-year-olds and trying to deal with the crazy rush hour traffic near the construction merge on 141-North, there is always a song to belt out and dance to break into for every occasion as my hundred iTunes playlists further attest

Today’s gospel gives us the occasion for Mary’s song. We hear the story of Gabriel visiting Mary and delivering news that changed not just her life but all our lives. In the face of a message from God that redefined her world, Mary saw that this was not the end, chose faith overe fear, and found her song. Just before she burst into song, she proclaimed; “Here I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.[2] Our lives our full of beginnings and ends: births and deaths, new jobs and graduations, falling in and out of love. In our efforts to live as best we can, we dream dreams and make plans to achieve them. I imagine Mary had a plan for her life, too, before Gabriel showed up with all of his fanfare, and we know Joseph was a part of her plan. The world Mary lived in can feel far away to us, but within it, I’m sure Mary’s plans had the same bottom line as our plans do: Mary sought to build the best possible life for herself, and for whatever risk that might include for her, she sought to keep herself and those closes to her safe. One straightforward way to stay safe for her, and every other woman of her time, was to avoid getting pregnant outside of marriage, something considered a crime in her world. The punishment for this crime was death by stoning, a painful way to meet one’s earthly end. Gabriel’s message brought an end to the plan Mary had had. All the laws that the governed our human world and that science has determined about human life told Mary that God’s new plan was impossible, but Mary chose faith. Mary stayed true.  Mary didn’t tell Gabriel to go find some other young woman. Mary said yes. To paraphrase REM, for all the ways that it’s the end of Mary’s world as she knows it, and she feels fine. So fine (and faithful!), that she cries out “Here I am. The servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.” She accepts that God has a new beginning for her and bursts into song.

When the changes and chances of our lives and the winds of the Holy Spirit sweep in, it’s so easy to fall prey the fear that creeps in in the midst of all our grief as our lives are upturned, but as Ruth told on the first Sunday of Advent, the Greek word “apocalypto” actually means “to reveal, to uncover, to disclose.” After Gabriel greets Mary and before he delivers the message to her from God, the angel sees that Mary is perplexed and says “Do not fear.” But when we’ve been hurt along the way – knocked to our knees more than once – it can be hard to trust.  It can feel like the safer route is to prepare ourselves for all of the bad possibilities out there rather than to have faith and choose to hope for the good ones.

Let me say that again: It can feel like the safer route is to prepare ourselves for all of the bad possibilities out there rather than to have faith and choose to hope for the good ones.

What God calls us to – and what Mary models for us in today’s gospel passage and in her song– is to choose hope. Perfect love casts our fear.[3] Last week, Stephen told us that when we are struggling to find the new beginning – the new life – that follows each ending, we are called – in our struggle – to strive to be found by God at peace. Being faithful means choosing hope, and choosing to believe in the endless possibilities of God gives us the peace we need to choose hope in the midst of the unknown. When Gabriel says to Mary “Do not fear” and reveals to her God’s plan for her life, Mary chooses faith in God over fear of the unknown and just before she bursts into song, she cries out “Here I am. The servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your word.”

We have songs for dance parties and songs for broken hearts. In the age of iTunes, there can be a playlist for every occasion, every emotion: for striving to choose hope and for rejoicing in that hope from God. There’s a reason we take care in selecting the songs for our first dance, our senior prom. Music can take us to moments or great feeling with people through whom we experience God’s love so deeply. Our songs have great power. There is a song on all of hearts that we go to when we jump for joy. In the words of a band called the New Radicals, “Don’t let go; you’ve got the music in you.”[4] And the music gives us hope. There is a song on each of our hearts to proclaim our love for God and to sing hope rather than fear. In this season of Advent, we are preparing for the coming of Christ – for the light of the world to come in the midst of the darkness.[5] Because Mary said “yes” to God.  Mary had faith that in God all things are possible. She showed us what it looks like to choose hope in a world of fear, and just before she burst into song, she proclaimed “Here I am, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.”

Here we are, the servants of the Lord, let it be with us according to your word.

 

 

 

 

 

[1] The Hymnal 1982

[2] Semisonic “Closing Time”

[3] 1 John

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL7-CKirWZE

[5] For the voice to cry out in the midst of the wilderness

The Baptism Journey: Roots, Branches, and the Beautiful Light of Christ

Baptismal Covenant, Epiphany, John, Sermons

Year A: Epiphany 2
John 1:29-42
The Church of the Holy Cross, North Plainfield, NJ
[Watch it here]

“And John testified, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove’”

Hey, wait, didn’t we just hear this last week? In the last week’s short passage from Matthew telling of Jesus’ baptism, Matthew narrates to us how, when Jesus’ was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended from heaven like a dove and onto Jesus. I told you then and I’ll tell you now just how beautiful I find that image! The Holy Spirit moving gracefully through the air like a bird and into our hearts. But in the gospel of John, John the Baptist says this and continues. Jesus is not only the one upon whom the Spirit of God descends, but also the one with whom the Spirit of God remains. I don’t know about you, but that part about the Spirit of God remaining reminds me of the words we use in our own baptism, when the Bishop or Priest marks the sign of the cross upon the head of the newly baptized, saying “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”

While these two passages from Matthew and John depicting Jesus’ baptism do have their differences, both ultimately assert Jesus’ authority over John the Baptist and see the Holy Spirit moving through Christ in baptism. Now, in today’s gospel passage, we not only have a chance to meditate on Jesus’ baptism, but we get to go on a little further and see what happens next – what happens in Jesus’ life the day after he is baptized!

One of my favorite images to use for baptism is the image of a tree: a tree has roots that ground it, a trunk that centers it, and branches that reach out further and further into the world and closer to the sun with each passing year. And the taller and further those branches reach, the deeper the roots go too. In each of our baptisms, we find our roots which ground us in Christ. We find our trunk which keeps Christ at our core and gives us a center from which to grow. And then we find our branches, exploring new ways to take those promises at the heart of our baptismal covenant and live into them out into the world, striving to reach further and further into the big beautiful light of Christ. From roots to branches. None of us are lone trees but a closely-knit forest – all in this together.

So, today, we once again hear the Holy Spirit descend like a dove on Jesus’ in His baptism, then remain with Jesus as we see what happens to Jesus’ the day after this big awesome sacramental moments.  In this second part of the gospel passage, we hear John address Jesus as the “Lamb of God” for a second time in this gospel passage.

It is John the Baptist’s role throughout the verses where Jesus begins to call his disciples to be a witness, to proclaim as he sees Jesus approach, walk by, that Jesus is the “Lamb of God.” And in that proclamation, he is providing testimony as to who Jesus is and points the way so that others come to recognize Jesus Christ.  This was not the expected Messiah/Savior/Deliverer, the one who would be a great warrior!  John the Baptist was proclaiming him a lamb, that which the Jewish community recognized as a sacrificial offering.

So, this time, when John addresses the newly baptized Jesus as “Lamb of God,” two of John’s disciples hear John say this and so they jump ship and start following Jesus. Jesus, being the brilliant God incarnate who is both King of Jews and king of clever parables, notices that these people have started following Him and they tell him that they are looking for a rabbi, or a teacher. No wonder that first promise in the baptismal covenant is to uphold the apostles’ teaching and fellowship. That’s what’s happening here! Right after Jesus’ baptism! Today’s gospel concludes with the calling of the first disciples! One of the two disciples of John who jumped ship turns out to be Andrew, who is so moved by what he learns from following Jesus that day that he gets his brother, Simon Peter, and they sign on with Jesus to be part of the wild, roots-to-branches ride that is following Christ.

After Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan, he goes out into the world, renewed. We come together every Sunday to renew ourselves and to renew each other in the meditation, grace, love, hope, and story of our faith in our liturgy, grounding our roots and connecting our branches before we branch out again as we are charged with carrying all of this love out into the world as Christians.

Today, we hear Jesus embark on a journey into something new; the great journey of teaching and proclaiming the Good New with His trusted disciples. How many times in our own lives have we embarked on a journey into something new in our earthly lives and ended up finding something heavenly – finding Christ in new places? When have you taken a crazy leap of faith with nothing but Grace to guide you? You know, like how Andrew and Simon Peter did today!

Let me tell you about a time I embarked on something new, other than that time i went to South Africa, that I’ve probably mentioned once or twice (or seventy times seven times) to all of you….

A year and a bit ago, in September 2015, I began my last year of seminary.  While I was used to my seminary community and taking classes and going to chapel, I was also embarking on something new. I was making the decision to now be a half-time student and a half-time intern. In addition to my student life at the seminary in New York City, I was now embarking on a 20-hour-per-week internship gig at St Mark’s Episcopal Church in Basking Ridge as a seminarian and sub-deacon. I had a new commute, relying heavily on New Jersey Transit, and a new community, a new boss and mentor, and so many new names to know.  Every Sunday, I would show up and serve in the service, lead the post-confirmation Sunday school class, maybe preach a sermon, and then shake hands at the door and work the room at coffee hour…. Then, I’d pray to retain all those names while I went through six days of pinging back and forth between my lives as student and as an intern during the week. New Jersey Transit felt like my own personal TARDIS, transporting me between worlds. Names will probably never be my strong suit, but story treasuring – both story-listening and storytelling are two of my soul’s greatest and deepest joys, integral to my call to serve as priest. So, I found that as I got to connect with all of these new people in their stories, where the heart is, I got their names right along with ‘em. And somewhere between the candlelit Silent Night of Christmas and the Great Alleluia of Easter this church full of strangers became a church full of people dear to my heart who honored me by giving me the chance to see the bright, beautiful, and completely unique ways that Christ was at work shining in each one of them. I got to see some of that piece of Christ in each one of their hearts. What wondrous love is this? One that seals us by the Holy Spirit and marks us as Christ own forever. We’ll need an eternity to sing on, indeed.

The sixteenth century Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila, once wrote:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ’s compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which He is to bless [all] now.

This poem is one of the best examples of what this embodiment of Christ is.  It reminds us what happened at Christmas: God became incarnate – became flesh – in Jesus Christ to embody fully God’s love for the world.  And the poem takes things one step further and calls on us to incarnate Christ in our own baptized selves and to love the world as Jesus did.  We’ve got our baptismal roots in Jesus, and now we’re branching out.

Remember the WWJD bracelets?  Nice reminders to treat others as we think Christ would have.  What if, however, we changed that up just a bit?  What if instead we asked WWJBD?  What Would John the Baptist do? By challenging ourselves to be like John the Baptist, we become proclaimers of Christ.  We call attention to Christ!  We shout out to all who are within hearing distance, “Hey, look!  See!  God is alive.  God is in our midst.  The Holy Spirit is at work in us and through us and for us and even in spite of us!  Roots. Trunk. Branches. Behold!  The Lamb of God!”

As much as we are called to seek and serve Christ in others, to be the embodiment of Christ to others, we are also called just as Andrew and Simon were called  to embark fearlessly on every wild and Spirit-filled, journey that God calls to, so that in all that we say and do we may proclaim: “we have found the Messiah! We have been marked as Christ’s own forever! And each day, we’re called to search for new ways to try branch out and to stretch closer to that beautiful light of Christ!!