Been there, experienced that.

Lent lasts forty days excluding Sundays, because as celebrations of the Resurrection of Jesus they are always feast days and never fast days.

These forty days recall Christ’s fasting and temptation in the wilderness following his baptism by John in the Jordan River. And because we’re in Year B of the three-year Sunday Lectionary cycle, this Sunday’s Gospel comes from Mark (Matthew is Year A, Luke is Year C). As opposed to Matthew and Luke, who give a lot more detail, Marks account is astoundingly brief. The entire forty days take up only two quick sentences in Mark 1. That’s it. We get the specific content of the three temptations Jesus faced in Matthew and Luke.

But still, even in Mark’s brevity, the stunning point is clear: we have a God who knows by experience what it’s like to be tempted and tried. He’s been in the wilderness...and knows—truly knows—what we face every day.

Transfiguration in the Age of Spectacle

In an excellent 2023 New York Times opinion piece entitled “The Age of Spectacle Is Upon Us”, David Brooks makes the case that “spectacle” has become the modus operandi of our time. It’s just the way stuff gets done.

Spectacle is a moment of time in which a collective gaze is fixed on some specific image, or video, or event (Google “Taylor Swift Super Bowl” and you’ll see what I mean). Spectacle is something that captures an instant when our eyes and brains focus and fixate on something projected at us. But spectacle always demands more. It aims to provoke something in us only to extract something from us. It demands all sorts of things—our time, our tears, our outrage, our sympathy, our lust, our affections, our money, and our votes…but mostly our attention.

On the last Sunday of Epiphany each year, we commemorate and contemplate the Transfiguration of Jesus, celebrating the power of God the Father revealing the glory of his mind-bendingly incarnate Self and Son to the world.

But in revealing these he demands something, too. “Listen”—pay attention—“to him” (Mark 9:7). Which is difficult when our attention is elsewhere.

World mission

On Sunday, the Anglican Church of North America commemorates “World Mission.”  Sounds exciting!  As Anglicans, we are certainly blessed with a global perspective since our connections with Africa, South America, and Asia are strong and vigorous.  You can hear that often represented in our Prayers of the People, when we remember our persecuted brothers and sisters and our missionary partners. 

 And yet, what is “World Mission,” exactly?  In our current politicized culture, it may sound colonial or oppressive.  Or to those of us who are not called as missionaries, it may sound distant or irrelevant or unattainable.  

 As we explore our text from Revelation 7, we’ll see that “world mission” is not a program but a process of transformation that includes all of us.  

 O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near: Grant that people everywhere may seek after you and find you; bring the nations into your fold; pour out your Spirit upon all flesh; and hasten the coming of your kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

 Amen.

Sunday to Monday

In preparation for our Thursday morning men’s study this week, we read a stimulating and evocative piece in Devotional Classics by Kathleen Norris entitled, “Finding Faith in the Mundane.” In the final paragraph she writes, “It was in the play of writing a poem that I first became aware that the demands of laundry might have something to do with God’s command that we worship, that we sing praise on a regular basis. Both laundry and worship are repetitive activities with a potential for tedium, and I hate to admit it, but laundry often seems like the more useful of the tasks. Both are the work that God has given us to do.”

This resonates deeply with my core belief that the Four-Chapter Gospel (Ought-Is-Can-Will), the overarching narrative of Scripture, insists on the radical connection of Sunday and Monday. The inseparable nature of worship and work.

In the Psalm appointed for this week the admonition to us, in fact, is to worship God for the work of his hands. God himself desires—by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit—to be known as a worker (a word used to describe him seven times in the passage). And it’s his image in which we are created.

This Sunday we will explore the sacredness of both Sunday and Monday mornings.

Habitual Furniture

As Lauren and I approach our 44th anniversary, we’ve noticed a tendency in us and our adult children to laugh and cry about the same stories of our lives together over and over and over again. Say, “every man for himself” or, “Steve, get home quick” and you’ll get an immediate and emotional response. They’re crucial parts of our bigger story and telling them is what C. S. Lewis compellingly phrased, “a part of the habitual furniture of our minds”.

In this week’s Gospel reading, Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel” But what precisely is “the gospel”? What might immediately come to mind for us, the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, were still future events.

I believe Jesus was pointing to the “bigger” story of God in the world—of which the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension are crucial parts. It’s a story that begins in Genesis 1 and concludes in Revelation 22. A “four-chapter” story that tells not just of human fallenness and forgiveness, but of God’s original intention and ultimate restoration of all his good and beloved creation.

It’s a story of such profound and comprehensive good news that it, too, must become a part of the habitual furniture of our minds.

The Wilds of Discipleship

Have you ever heard of the term re-wilding. An environmentalist term that means letting things grow on their own, letting nature take care of itself. Lets try and read scripture and let it speak for itself. A very wild man in scripture known as John the Baptist points to Jesus, The Lamb of God as one even wilder than he.  Jesus, when the first disciples approach Him, He asks “what are you looking for” and they ask where he was staying he says “come and see”.  Jesus invites His disciples into a way more wild than we could normally expect. What is it to be a disciple? What wilds does Jesus set for those who follow Him. Join us in this message as we dive deeper into the wilds of the Kingdom of God and discipleship.

The Baptism of our Lord

Every year on the Sunday following The Feast of the Epiphany,—the arrival of the Magi, and the revelation of Jesus to the gentiles, January 6—we commemorate and contemplate the baptism of our Lord by his cousin John in the Jordan River…because it helps frame so vividly for us the meaning of God’s incarnation.

In fact, for Christians in the early centuries of the church, as well as for those of us today who embrace the same faith, neither Jesus’ baptism nor our own makes much sense if not considered in light of the incarnation.

A Firm Foundation

After an earthquake if all appears fine at the end and yet the foundation is skewed in any way it becomes unsafe to stay on and must be torn down and rebuilt, though it appears ok from the outside.

If the foundation of the church is shaken can the church survive? I’d confidently say “no not for long.”

What is the foundation of the Church?  Jesus Christ and Him crucified and raised. Not about who Jesus was but who Jesus is is the bedrock of everything. John chapter 1 verse 1 is read every Sunday after Christmas. Its “That” Foundational. Its who Jesus is “The Word of God.”  That very word was made flesh to dwell among us. Join us in this sermon as we learn how this Word is the very foundation that keeps us sturdy and cannot be moved. Thanks be to God!