THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD
In reading the story of Jesus baptism we see that He identifies with the people.
He becomes one of them. He goes into the water of baptism with them. They rise with him into new life. He shows them what their fully realized life can be when connected with the Spirit of God. He shows us that as he is loved by God - we are loved by God. The presence of God is within Jesus so the presence of God is with us because we are part of the Body of Christ.

CHRISTMAS

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem he was making his home here on earth to be with us, his human family, to share, laugh, and cry with us. At this time of year we reconnect with our families and those who have loved and shaped us, and who have also shared, laughed and cried with us. Because Jesus has made his home in our homes, we, like family, also share his vision and work in the world. Jesus calls us to seek peace for a broken world and to lift up those who suffer and are oppressed. He also comes to be with us so that we might each and every day start our journey anew to achieve peace, love, and joy in our lives. One of the best ways we can realize these values is to spend Christmastide with others in church services. As we attend church we make a home for the Christ child.

Dancing is a response that takes place in the Bible to praise God and express joy. King David danced on many occasions. He danced mightily when the Ark of the Covenant was brought into the city of David, into the presence of the people. Miriam, Moses’ sister, took a tambourine and with all the women went out and danced when the chariots of Pharaoh went into the sea. In Psalm 150 we are encouraged to praise God with tambourine and dance, strings and pipe. When the prodigal son comes home, his family and friends rejoice with dancing. There is a favorite Jewish holiday, Simchat Torah, where the streets are closed off and the people dance with gratitude for the gift of the Torah. We dance at weddings to express our joy, and some churches have liturgical dance companies to praise God. Some of us have lost the experience of expressing our praise and gratitude through dance. Our religious experience takes place only in our heads and hearts, when God meant for our spiritual life to include the “all of us”. Next time you enter into your place of worship – experience with gratitude the bowing, genuflecting, praise arms, swaying, davening, prayer hands, namaste. God wants us to be present with our all.

Dancing is a response that takes place in the Bible to praise God and express joy. King David danced on many occasions. He danced mightily when the Ark of the Covenant was brought into the city of David, into the presence of the people. Miriam, Moses’ sister, took a tambourine and with all the women went out and danced when the chariots of Pharaoh went into the sea. In Psalm 150 we are encouraged to praise God with tambourine and dance, strings and pipe. When the prodigal son comes home, his family and friends rejoice with dancing. There is a favorite Jewish holiday, Simchat Torah, where the streets are closed off and the people dance with gratitude for the gift of the Torah. We dance at weddings to express our joy, and some churches have liturgical dance companies to praise God. Some of us have lost the experience of expressing our praise and gratitude through dance. Our religious experience takes place only in our heads and hearts, when God meant for our spiritual life to include the “all of us”. Next time you enter into your place of worship – experience with gratitude the bowing, genuflecting, praise arms, swaying, davening, prayer hands, namaste. God wants us to be present with our all.

THE MEANING OF THE THREE KINGS - THEN AND NOW

The Church begins to celebrate the season of Epiphany on January 6th. Epiphany is most familiar as the time the “Three Kings” or Magi came to visit the Baby Jesus after following a star that led them to Bethlehem. (Matthew Ch. 2) The central characters in the story are not only the three Kings, but another king – Herod. The picture of King Herod depicted in the Bible is almost too stereotypical of wickedness, but as a matter of fact, it is a picture which seems to be historically true. Herod always had to be vigilant about his life and his position as king. He did not have widespread support among the Jewish people who felt he was a traitor and he had many wives whose children were always in contention to be his successor. So when the elaborate entourage of magi from the East appeared at Herod's court, he had good reason to be suspicious; so suspicious that he ordered all the infants in Bethlehem to be slain after hearing about this newly born child who was to rule Israel.

Mary and Joseph also had good reason to be alarmed or suspicious when the magi turned up.
None of them knew anything specific about the background of these magi – perhaps their purpose was to enslave the Holy Family or maybe the magi were informed that there was something special about the child Jesus and so his life was in danger. Not only were the magi mysterious strangers but there were two other reasons to reject their presence and their gifts - they were Gentiles, not Jewish, and astrologers. Astrology and occult activities were forbidden by Jewish law.

Not only did the people in this story have good reason to be suspicious, but modern day nations around the world are apparently suspicious too. With all the fighting going on in Iraq and Afghanistan and now Gaza there are negative associations with strangers from the East. The magi were from the East. The main possibilities of where they were from are places where colonies of Jews had resided, and the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh were traditional goods on camel caravans traveling in the desert. This would mean Parthia or Persia or modern day Iran; Babylon or Chaldea or modern day Iraq; and the Syrian desert areas.

This season of Epiphany teaches us two ways to handle the foreign or alien in our presence. We can either be like King Herod and seek to destroy that which is unknown to us, that which we perceive to be our enemy, or we can handle it like the Holy Family. Despite all of their good reasons to be suspicious, they welcomed the strangers from the East. Poor shepherds and foreign magi, anyone and everyone were welcome to worship God. The foreignness
of the Magi did not seem to bother the Holy Family – in fact they were considered a blessing.
That sense of openness to what is different, even strange, is something that is vital to us as a church, to our community and to all nations. The story of the Three Kings in the Bible points to the possibility that when people of differing religions and cultures come together, they can be a blessing to one another. If ever we needed to learn the lesson of welcoming our brothers and sisters from the East, and the gifts they bring with them, it is now.

The way to see God's love, is to see Christ.
Christ is God's love incarnate, or God's love made real in this world.
So, as we look through the New Testament,
as we look for descriptions of what does it mean that God loves us,
we need to look at the actions of Christ.
So, if one is to describe God's love –
it can be described in the action, words and deeds of Christ.
It can be called a reconciling love, a love which brings people together.
It is a love which forgives, it is a love which is willing to sacrifice,
it is a love which is willing to give instead of take.

Noah’s Ark, tells us that the righteous built a strong boat to carry them through the forty days and forty nights of storms. The Bible also gave us plenty of minute and even boring detail about how many cubits the ark should be built. Maybe this is a reminder of how we ought to pay attention to the details of our faith.

What might a weak foundation look like in terms of following Christ?
A mind and heart built with materials like anger, greed, egoism, and fear create a structure that eventually collapses.

Someday we will have to live in what we have built.

Who doesn’t love Palm Sunday. I will never forget the experience of holding my child in my arms and processing around the church singing “All glory, laud and honor, To Thee, Redeemer, King, To Whom the lips of children Made sweet hosannas ring.” My son held the fragrant green and yellow palm in his hand with a look of wonderment and awe. Truly I felt as though the king of kings had entered the world and all would be well. And to make it more splendid, the palm cross I had fashioned would remain on the fireplace for the rest of the year, until the following Ash Wednesday.

Palm Sunday is a festive occasion, a chance to celebrate a little Easter before the darkness and sadness of Good Friday, the day Jesus was crucified on the cross. Yet the palm procession and its accompanying readings are only lived out in the very first part of a church service. The majority of the service is taken up with the Passion of Christ. This refers to the suffering Jesus withstood in the week that follows, called Holy Week. In this week the Church commemorates the Last Supper and the first Eucharist on Maundy Thursday and finally Christ's death on Good Friday. The focus is on the betrayal, arrest, suffering and crucifixion of Jesus rather than on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In fact, "Palm" Sunday has been renamed Palm/Passion Sunday.

In the readings for that day we note that Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey. Why should the Messiah come on a donkey? It represents a countercultural and counter intuitive royalty. This is a kingship not of traditional power and glory but one of self-giving and suffering. The donkey, is seen as an animal of peace, versus the horse, which is the animal of war. Therefore, it was said that a king came riding upon a horse when he was bent on war and rode upon a donkey when he wanted to point out that he was coming in peace.

Palm/Passion Sunday is full of paradoxes, not unlike our own lives that are full of paradoxes and ambivalences. All of our lives have the palms (celebrations) and the passion (the suffering). When we learn to sit squarely in the midst of passion and palm, we too can be harbingers of peace.

The Gospels state that some remarkable things accompanied Jesus' baptism,
and something remarkable happens at ours too. We should not miss it. I believe that when we are baptized, for a brief moment the heavens open up, and God acknowledges us as a beloved child.

One summer I baptized the teenage son of some old friends, at the beach in Fire Island, NY. I informed the life guards, put on my white robe, and processed down to the beach. The family stood on the edge of the shore, solemnly intoning the service. At the moment when I poured the ocean water on Andrew, and pronounced him baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, a huge wave came out of nowhere and knocked us down, engulfing and churning us over and over in the water.

Now that was an outward and visible sign of the POWER of baptism! Baptism engulfs us with the Holy Spirit – churns us up with Jesus – and tosses us out into the world - a new person.

Let us not water down the meaning of our baptism.

And this is the message of the Christmas story... We need Gods caring provision.

There is a theological term for all of this. It is called the prevenient grace of God. Prevenient grace is present even before we have the ability to care for ourselves; even before we are born.

Prevenient grace is divine grace that exists without reference to anything human beings can do. It is Grace at work from the beginning of time, when God created the world and said it was good. We can say it is the inherent goodness of the world. Prevenient grace keeps us from falling to the depths of what humans could be, and it attempts to transform us even before we ourselves seek to be transformed.

Transforming and perfecting grace are at work in us from before the beginning of time, now and in the future. Salvation, Gods work to save us, not our own work, is continual from the moment of our birth, to the moment of our death.

Of all of Jesus' names, the most meaningful is Immanuel,God-with-us. If God is not with us through Jesus, then God cannot save us through him.
In order to save us God has to be with us.

And this is true for us as well.
If we want to help people we have to be with them.

God is always inviting us into deep personal relationship with Christ, and Jesus has given us a hint how that is to happen: He tells his disciples, "Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you,will try to enter and will not be able.”

What does Jesus mean by the narrow door?

Doors are an interesting symbol. There are certain things we just get about them.
They can either welcome you – or shut you out. If one speaks behind closed doors – it indicates a mystery, or the fact that some people are restricted from hearing what is going on, or being present, have full participation in.

We know for certain that this is not what Chrisitianity is about. That was the whole point of Chrisitianity, you didn’t need special knowledge to get that someone died so that you would be free.

Open doors are a warm and welcoming symbol. They signify an invitation to enter. All are welcome. The Episcopal Church welcomes you. We get this, and it certainly expresses Jesus' meaning.

But we also learn that the door is narrow, and something is required of us to fit through it. This door invites us to venture in, because there is often something good that lies behind a door. We want to go through the door because we believe there is something behind it that we want – so we put forth the effort to go through that door.

And what is that effort and what is that door? The door is Jesus and the effort is believing in him. It is the simple key that unlocks and moves us through the door.

Balance is not easy, we all seek balance in our lives. Few of us have it.
It is like trying to cut out a geometric shape or draw a star freehand.
I am always amazed at how bad I am at it.
One side always looks too long, but once you cut it, you throw the symmetry out somewhere else and then you have to trim the other side with your scissors - until there is nothing left of your shape or your star.

Living a balanced life, living a life that is equally balanced between self and God and neighbor - is hard. How do we do this? By living the life we have been commanded to live, love God, love your neighbor, and contained within loving your neighbor is love yourself, with all our heart, soul, body, mind and strength. When life loses its balance it is usually because one of these three is not being attended to.

"Do this and you shall live," Jesus says. (Luke 10:28)

Luke 10:1 "After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go."

There is something about our Christian faith that cannot be lived out merely by attending church - it simply has to be lived out in the world. It is the only way that Christianity can be comprehended in its fullest. Gospel truths become apparent in homeless shelters, prisons, and hospitals.

In the Scripture passage from Luke 9:57-60, Jesus says to a young man, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."


Do you think Jesus is saying that we should forget about our families.
After all, later, in Matthew 12:48-50 he says: "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."

Or is he warning us that we make excuses for things that we do not get done. We constantly shift our priorities from important tasks to the little tasks of life,
And claim that we are too busy.

It is through compassion that miracles occur.
"And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick." Matthew 14:14

Contrary to public opinion, picking up your cross gives strength and structure to the challenges in life. Jesus said: My yoke is easy and my burden is light - Matthew 11:30