First Blessings

The Seal of the Confessional: A Priest’s Perspective

Given the appropriate and necessary commitment to protect the vulnerable in our churches and in society at large from sexual abuse, some in the church think it equally necessary to dispense with the sanctity of the seal of confession and to opt instead for mandatory reporting — by priests — to civil authorities. While I honor and share their concern for the vulnerable, I cannot agree with this proposed change to the Church’s sacramental understanding and practice, and I would like to present a case for inviolability of the seal of confession in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).

One holy catholic and apostolic Church
On Sundays, other Major Feast Days, and other times as appointed, the faithful stand during the Liturgy and confess their faith in the words of the Nicene Creed — words including these:

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

This statement is more than a notional recognition of the existence of “a church.” It is an expression of faith in “one Church” that shares a common faith including common holy orders and sacraments. Further, it is a proclamation that we, in the ACNA, consider ourselves part of that Church along with all those who maintain holy orders and faithfully administer the sacraments, e.g., the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. Anything done unilaterally by the ACNA or its clergy in contravention of shared faith and practice strikes a hammer blow against the ACNA’s claim to be part of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church and against the hope for visible, communal unity. It is arguable that those who refuse to acknowledge and fail to practice that which has been believed everywhere, always, and by all (Vincentian Canon) are thereby placing themselves outside the Church catholic.

This has significant ramifications for the ACNA, GAFCON, and the Anglican Communion, and certainly pertains to the abandonment of the seal of confession. The inviolability of the seal is the long established and universally recognized understanding and practice of the Church catholic. The Decretum of Gratian (1215), which purports to compile earlier Church decrees, notes:

Let the priest who dares to make known the sins of his penitent be deposed.

The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) Canon 21 states:

Let the confessor take absolute care not to betray the sinner through word or sign, or in any other way whatsoever. In case he needs expert advice he may seek it without, however, in any way indicating the person. For we decree that he who presumes to reveal a sin which has been manifested to him in the tribunal of penance is not only to be deposed from the priestly office, but also to be consigned to a closed monastery for perpetual penance.

Closer to home, The Book of Common Prayer of the Anglican Church in North America (BCP 2019) contains this instruction regarding the seal of the confessional:

The content of a confession is not normally a matter of subsequent discussion. The secrecy of a confession is morally binding for the confessor and is not to be broken (BCP 2019, p. 222).

Canons, decrees, and rubrics could be multiplied, but it is the case that the one holy catholic and apostolic Church — East and West together — insists on the absolute sanctity of the confessional seal. Until the entire Church — the entire Church — is led to contrary consensus by the Holy Spirit, no member communion of that Church has the right to contravene that sacramental practice and, at the same time, proclaim itself part of the church Catholic. Even less may any individual priest do so. If a priest feels he cannot maintain the seal, he should not receive confessions.

Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s
Many states, including my own, have designated priests and ministers as mandatory reporters of child sexual abuse. That means nothing short of this: those civil authorities have claimed jurisdiction and authority over the sacraments of the Church. And that, the Church cannot allow if it is to render unto Caesar only that which is Caesar’s and unto God everything that is God’s. To capitulate to the mandatory reporters statute simply because it is the “law of the land” is to bow to Caesar as Lord. What sacraments are to “fall” next?

Will the civil authorities one day claim sole jurisdiction over marriage and decree by law that if a church marries anyone it must marry everyone, i.e., that a church may not determine for itself, based on its understanding of the faith, who meets the criteria for Holy Matrimony?

Will the civil authorities one day ban baptism because it imparts a unique identity upon the baptizand that conflicts with society’s notion of identity, as fluid as that now seems?

Will the civil authorities one day define all talk of sin, repentance, and judgment as “hate speech” and impose civil or criminal penalties for the proclamation of the Gospel?

Perhaps this sounds alarmist, but it is currently being realized — at least in part — in Western countries. The Church cannot capitulate even to something that sounds inherently good and reasonable, like mandatory reporting of sexual abuse revealed in the context of sacramental confession lest it relinquish authority over its sacraments.

Sin and forgiveness versus crime and punishment
Sacramental confession exists to address sin and forgiveness, not crime and punishment. A priest is an advocate for the sinner, not an accuser of the criminal. While a priest’s heart can and does ache for the victim of any evil, his focus must be on the penitent in front of him, a penitent who may well be the victimizer. Multiple souls may be in the balance, but this one soul who has come to confess is the one who must take priority in that moment. The priest’s role is to lead this soul to true repentance and amendment of life so that absolution may be pronounced. This is not a matter of crime and punishment.

This also is not callous disregard for the victim of evil: far from it. But where do we stop when we ask the priest to report criminal behavior? Reporting sexual abuse seems so reasonable. But what about embezzlement? That is not a victimless crime and may cause serious and permanent damage. Should a priest report that to the authorities or to the victim? Why not? The selling of illegal drugs: does a priest report it or not? Think through this carefully. What crimes will we mandate a priest to report, and how do we determine that? This is the nullification of the sacrament of confession.

Nothing new under the sun
Ironically and paradoxically, each generation considers itself intellectually and morally superior to all preceding generations (false progressivism) and also fallen from former greatness (false “golden age”). The truth is much simpler, as Ecclesiastes writes:

Ecclesiastes 1:9–11 (ESV): 9 What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
11 There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.

I quote this with no sense of futility, but rather to note that nothing heard in twenty-first century confessionals would have shocked our priestly forefathers; sin is boringly banal in its consistency. Sexual abuse — Lord, have mercy! — is nothing new under the sun, though society’s attitude toward it evolves. Our forefathers in holy orders were presented with the same dilemma we face today: the confession of heinous sin and the sanctity of the confessional seal. They were wise and faithful enough to address the former without forsaking the latter. I submit that wisdom lies in preserving the received wisdom of the Tradition, in keeping with G. K. Chesterton:

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around (“The Ethics of Elfland,” Orthodoxy (1908)).

Now, this next, similar point is entirely personal and subjective and does not constitute a reasoned argument; I insist on it nonetheless. Those who are not in the Tradition, i.e. those who are not in holy orders and actively receiving confessions, should exercise a great degree of humility in advocating abandonment of the seal. The sacraments mean quite different things to practitioners than to theoreticians or critics. Even further — Lord, forgive my arrogance! — those who do not regularly avail themselves of confession should most certainly adopt the humility of the “mature” Job:

Job 42:3b (ESV): Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

Binding and loosing
I write this during the Triduum, the three days of Holy Week culminating with the Great Vigil of Easter. On that first Easter Day, Jesus appeared to his disciple in the Upper Room and commissioned them to carry on his work in the world:

John 20:22–23 (ESV): 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

This, and parallel passages, form the basis for sacramental confession and absolution. It is the apostolic authority of binding and loosing conferred upon the twelve by Jesus through the Holy Spirit, and bequeathed to their successors — bishops and priests — through the laying on of hands. I speak as one who shoulders this responsibility; it is great grace and heavy burden: forgiveness is grace; withholding forgiveness is heavy burden.

The point is simply that the granting of absolution is not automatic nor is it a right that the penitent may demand. It is a prayerful and prudential decision made by the priest. A confession is valid, i.e., genuine and “meriting” absolution only when certain elements are present. The penitent must exhibit contrition: the recognition and acknowledgment of sin and godly sorrow for it. Further, as applicable, the penitent must bear evidence of — or resolve to accomplish at the earliest opportunity — reconciliation, restitution, and restoration. In short, the penitent must submit to justice — the putting to rights, as far as is possible, what he or she violated — and must exhibit or commit to amendment of life.

A few examples might clarify this. Suppose a man confesses that he had spoken angry words to his wife. He now recognizes his wrong and is truly sorry for it. Before pronouncing absolution, I would ask if he had reconciled to his wife by confessing his wrong to her and by seeking her forgiveness. If he had not, I would ask him to do so and then return for absolution. Or, if a woman confesses that she had stolen some petty cash from her office, I would ask if she had returned it. If she had not, I would not pronounce absolution until she does so. Absolution does not bypass godly justice, but rather promotes it and is dependent upon it.

Now a more difficult situation, but no less clear. Suppose a man confesses to sexually abusing a minor. He is contrite. But that is not enough for the granting of absolution. Has he begun the process of restitution and restoration? Has he concrete plans for amendment of life? Has he met the demands of godly justice which would require, in part, his self-reporting to the civil authorities? Until these have been done, I could not, in good faith, pronounce absolution. I would offer to go with him to the authorities; I would not spiritually abandon him. I would, with all that is in me, attempt to lead him to the point where absolution is appropriate, and then journey with him beyond that to amendment of life. What I would not do — what I cannot do — is to violate the morally absolute seal of confession if he decides to leave the confessional with his sins unforgiven and bound to him. Or, if I did violate the seal, I would report myself to my bishop and ask to be relieved of my priesthood.

Summary
On a personal note, I have been a priest for only seven years. But my experience is that Anglicans do not beat down the doors of the confessional or queue up for hours waiting their turn. The opposite seems to be true. Most take advantage of that unfortunate Anglican loophole, “None must.” So, the likelihood of an Anglican priest hearing the confession of a sexual abuser is relatively small. To overturn the consensus fidelium of the Church catholic, to bow the knee to Caesar and relinquish authority of the sacraments to the civil authorities, to turn from sin and forgiveness to crime and punishment for the sake of this unlikely event, to jettison the Tradition is inexcusable, particularly when the priest already has the apostolic authority of binding and loosing. The principle is sound and must be zealously guarded: the secrecy of a confession is morally absolute for a confessor.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Lia Thomas recently became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I title: first place in the women’s 500-yard freestyle. Public response is sharply divided; issues of fairness, equity, personal freedom and self-expression are hotly debated on social media platforms. Many of the positions are expressed with great vitriol: attacks and not arguments at all. Such is unbecoming of a Christian. Jesus commanded us — not suggested to us — to love; I do not recall that he had much, if anything at all, to say about fairness or equity or self-expression.

I think about the issue of transgenderism not as a sociologist and certainly not as a psychologist. I am a Christian — an Anglican priest — and a rather ordinary one at that. I do not think that transgenderism is as much a problem as it is a symptom of a much more deadly disease that has infected our culture: delusion. For those who want a description of that disease, you can find no better than St. Paul’s letter to the Romans (Rom 1:16-32). Our cultural “mind” has become darkened regarding some fundamental truths, not least regarding human anthropology and personhood. I labor under no false illusion that I will dispel any of that cultural darkness. Instead, I write for Christians who are struggling to understand and articulate the Christian perspective on this issue. I write to promulgate both Christian truth — which is simply truth itself — with compassion.

It is important to be right about these matters, but it is equally important to be right in the right way — the way of loving our neighbors as ourselves, a way which requires speaking the truth in love. This is an argument not merely about orthodoxy, but about human flourishing under God. It is neither solely academic nor irrelevant to “real people.” The issue is not simply right doctrine and instruction, but also right pastoral care for confused and hurting people and for those who know and love them. These are difficult and costly truths that partake fully of Jesus’ commandment to take up the cross daily. But they also share in his promise that his yoke is easy and his burden is light — at least easier and lighter than the yoke of falsehood and the burden of sin. We are — all of us — called to follow in the way of the cross, and we are — all of us — promised that we will find it none other than the way of life and peace.

Engaging this issue requires much prayer and prudential discernment in conversation with the Church. It requires much listening to people’s stories and to the Holy Spirit. It requires much humility.

O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment, and light rises up in darkness for the godly: Grant us, in all our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what you would have us do, that the Spirit of wisdom may save us from all false choices; that in your light we may see light, and in your straight path we may not stumble; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

CHRISTIAN ANTHROPOLOGY

Personhood

Genesis 2:7 (ESV): 7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

In speaking of those who experience gender dysphoria or who are transgendered, we are speaking of persons. I say this not primarily to evoke empathy or compassion — though both are expected of Christians — but rather to express a theological conviction about personhood. A person is a unique, particularized expression of our common human nature. So, because we are always necessarily dealing with persons, Christian anthropology is the essential context for any meaningful discussion of these issues.

To understand the importance of an anthropological context, one need only consider a recent commercial by the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly (https://youtu.be/DZjcLJWg5zo, accessed 6/9/2021). Midway in the commercial the narrator says, “the body you are randomly assigned at birth shouldn’t determine how you are cared for.” In the midst of this hopelessly muddled statement, one notion is particularly germane: that there exists a “you” somehow independent of the physical body, a “you” which is randomly, and thus arbitrarily, assigned to a body. This expresses a heretical, Gnostic notion: that the real “you” is merely housed — or imprisoned — in a physical body, i.e., that there exists a distinction or dichotomy between being and body. The Gnostics hoped to escape the bodily prison; some today hope to renovate the prison to make it more homely. Either approach represents a fundamental misunderstanding of personhood.

This misunderstanding of personhood serves implicitly as the foundation for cultural acceptance of transgenderism. If being is independent of embodiment — as is wrongly asserted — and if the body is merely the randomly assigned container for the self — the real you — then assignment error is possible, and it becomes quite reasonable to conform one’s body to one’s true being to alleviate gender dysphoria. It is only such being-body distinction/dichotomy that gives any meaning or imperative to such a confused statement as, “I feel that I am a man trapped in a woman’s body.” It assumes there is a noncorporeal, gendered I — Eli Lilly’s “you” — who finds itself assigned to a body of opposite gender, so that one’s true gender is determined by the “I” and not by the body. Of course, for a naturalist “I” need have no spiritual connotation; it may refer only to self-awareness. No matter: in this erroneous anthropology the “I” is still in some real sense distinguished from the body, and it — not the body — determines gender.

But, Christian anthropology offers a different understanding of personhood. A person is the unique instantiation of human nature in a body; a person is the essential unity of rational soul and physical body. This precludes any notion of the random assignment — and thus any erroneous assignment — of the real you to a body. The real you — the person — is precisely the unity of soul and body, neither independent of the other. There is no true, full human being apart from the body. I am not assigned to or contained in this body; I am this body in its union with this soul.

So, personhood assumes the givenness of the body, i.e., the body as a defining characteristic of the person. Thus, a person with a male body, for example, is a male person. There is no female being — nor female self-awareness — erroneously residing in that male body. The union of soul and body that defines the person as person also defines the person as male through the biology of the body. Any attempt to fundamentally alter that body — chemically or surgically — or to conclude and act as if that body is in error is an assault upon the person. Such attempts do not make the person more female, but rather less authentically male; they do not enhance, but rather damage the person.

The body is never denigrated in Christian anthropology; rather, it is elevated, as St. Paul writes:

1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (ESV): 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, 20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

This truth refutes another foundational assumption of transgenderism, and indeed of postmodern philosophy: the autonomous self and the absolute freedom to create — or re-create — that self. To the contrary, one’s person is not one’s own but instead belongs to God. The proper response is not to disfigure the body, but to glorify God in and through the body.

Mind and Body

A person is the essential union of soul and body. It is to the soul — and the mind — that we now turn.

The soul is that noncorporeal aspect of a person responsible for biological life itself, e.g., metabolism, growth, reproduction; for affective response, e.g., perceptions of pain or pleasure, imagination, desire, emotion, will; and for the exercise of reason, e.g., rational thought, language, choice/decision. The highest capacity of the soul, νους (nous), denotes the human capacity to know God directly — not mediated by other capacities of the soul — as person-to-person. The nous is also the aspect of the soul that, when healthy and acting under the power of grace, rightly orders all other powers of the soul. A renewed nous rightly governs the soul; an ordered soul rightly governs the body. Nous is often rendered as “mind” in English translations of Scripture, as in this text from Romans 12:

Romans 12:1–2 (ESV): 1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind [nous], that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Paul instructs us — by the mercies of God — to present our bodies to God and to be transformed by the renewal of our minds. This applies always and to all, but it perhaps has special significance in the present context. Those experiencing gender dysphoria are to present their bodies — their bodies as they are — to God as living sacrifices. That is the holy response, the action well-pleasing to God. But it is also a very real sacrifice, an offering up of all lesser functions of the soul: desire, emotion, will, pleasure and pain. It is a sacrifice that is made possible by the renewal of the mind (nous) which then orders the soul toward discernment and obedience. In the Christian Tradition, our minds are changed, and our bodies are presented. To the contrary, in transgenderism, the mind is confirmed in its (erroneous) self-assessment, and the body is changed to conform to the mind. That, too, is a sacrifice — a costly sacrifice of true personhood — but not one that promotes human flourishing and not one that is well-pleasing to God.

If presenting our bodies to God — as they are — is a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, then what of refusing to do so? What of altering and defacing those bodies? Such action refuses an acceptable sacrifice and offers a blemished sacrifice instead. Such action misses the mark of that which is well-pleasing to God and so constitutes sin. To radically alter the given sex of one’s body either chemically or surgically or to deny one’s biological gender in word or action is a sin against one’s person and thus against God who created the person.

In our naming of transgenderism as sin, St. Paul’s commentary on the archetypal first sin of Eve offers helpful insight:

2 Corinthians 11:3 (ESV): 3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

Eve sinned under the deception of the serpent. And the deception was, in part, an issue of identity.

Genesis 3:4–5 (ESV): 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

The serpent stirred up in Eve an identity dysphoria: a creature longing to be Creator, a human longing to be like God. Eve was deceived and enticed into sin.

In a similar way, our culture acts as an agent of deception by stirring up and exacerbating gender dysphoria. And, it falsely offers the opportunity for a creature to become Creator through an act of self-creation, the determination of one’s own identity/gender. Just as Eve was a victim of the serpent’s deception and sinned, so too the transgendered person is a victim of cultural deception and sins. It seems important to recognize that, in dealing with transgendered persons, we are dealing with those under delusion. Mercy, pastoral care, and godly counsel — and not judgment — are the proper responses to such persons.

HELP AND HOPE

The Church must not add to the burden of the particular cross of gender dysphoria or transgenderism, but rather must offer Christian help and hope in the carrying of that cross: help in the form of Christian community and koinonia, and hope in the final restoration of all things. Here the whole of Romans 8 is instructive, but this portion speaks powerfully to the real burden that fallen and redeemed persons bear and to the hope that enables us to do so:

Romans 8:18–25 (ESV): 18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

We, all of us, share in the groaning of creation under the burden of sin, in the recognition that all is not as it should be. But we, all of us, also share in the hope that all is not as it yet will be when there is a new heaven and a new earth, when the holy city, new Jerusalem, descends from heaven, when the dwelling place of God is with man, when all sorrow and pain — all the former things — shall be no more (cf Rev 21:1 ff). Such hope is essential to the proclamation of good news and to the pastoral care of those struggling in the present with issues of identity.

SUMMARY

Transgenderism presents a real and growing challenge to the Church, not just in its potential to lead people astray, but also in its difficult call to balance compassion and truth, i.e., in its challenge to speak the truth in love. Truth, rightly understood and rightly spoken, always promotes human flourishing even in its call to bear the cross. What is the truth that we must speak?

God loves those who are confused about gender, no less than he loves those who do not struggle in this way.

Contrary to prevailing cultural norms, transgenderism does not promote freedom, but bondage. It does not lead to human flourishing, but to human diminishment.

While unrepentant transgenderism is sin, it is most often a sin of delusion. It is not unforgivable. While it is different in kind, there is no reason to believe it is different in degree from such sins as pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. Perhaps the greatest difference in these sins is that noted by St. Paul:

1 Timothy 5:24 (ESV): 24 The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later.

Transgenderism is perhaps conspicuous in a way that pride is not. That does not make it more serious.

The Church welcomes into its fellowship those bearing the cross of gender dysphoria and those transgendered persons engaged in repentance and amendment of life.

There is hope, and hope does not fail.

God’s grace is sufficient — and abundant — for us all.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit;

as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

3 Lent: Luke 13:1-17

HAVE YOU HEARD? Has anyone told you yet? Did you catch the news this morning?

If you have ever had someone start a conversation with a question like that, you know you’re in for something: good news, bad news, shocking news — some kind of news. There is something very human about wanting to announce news to someone else, to share news with another: joy shared is joy multiplied; misery shared is misery reduced; shock shared is…well, it’s just shock shared, but at least we’re in it together.

Have you heard? Has anyone told you yet? Did you catch the news this morning?

The one announcing the news has certain expectations for your response, too; he expects you to feel about the news as he does. Imagine to the contrary: a friend comes up to you all excited and says, “Hey, have you heard? Joe’s wife just had the baby.” And you respond, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Well, that’s a non sequitur if ever ever there were one. Your friend is likely to be very confused, if not angry, at that response.

Have you heard? Has anyone told you yet? Did you catch the news this morning?

“Hey, Jesus, have you heard about the Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices?” Someone, some group comes announcing news. Let’s pause the story here for a moment, between the announcement of the news and Jesus’ response to it, for a little background. We don’t know the details of the events surrounding the slaughter of these Galileans, but, historically speaking, it’s not too difficult to reconstruct a plausible scenario. Galileans were troublemakers, at least as far as Rome was concerned: rabble rousing, rebellious insurrectionists always fomenting discontent, likely ready to slit Roman throats at the drop of a hat. Some group of them apparently came to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices at the Temple and in a moment of paranoia or pique — or just because he had the power and could do — Pilate had them slaughtered in the Temple precincts, metaphorically and probably literally mingling their blood with the blood of their sacrificial animals.

“Hey, Jesus, have you heard about the Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices?” Why think Jesus would be particularly interested in this news? Well, he was a Galilean, and, in that sense, these were his people. How do you think those who announced this news expected Jesus to respond? Sadness — certainly. Anger — probably. Resolve to restore the Kingdom of God, by which they meant the ousting of Rome? Just possibly.

And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

That’s confounding; that’s not at all the response they expected. What did Jesus mean by that? To Pilate, these Galileans were no worse “sinners” than any other Galileans; he feared and hated them all. Perhaps he had heard lately some new stirring of discontent in Galilee, some hint of trouble coming. Perhaps he was on heightened alert when he learned of this group’s arrival in Jerusalem. Perhaps he had just had a fight with his wife or a lousy breakfast that morning; some kitchen slave burned the toast. The trigger could have been anything or nothing at all. But these Galileans gave Pilate the chance to send an overdue message that day, a not-so-subtle warning to all Galileans; this is what Rome does to your kind, to those who cause trouble, to those who even think about rebellion. These Galileans were just in the wrong place at the wrong time: no worse than any other Galileans either in reality or in Pilate’s paranoid imagination. Any Galileans would have done as well to send the warning.

And [Jesus] answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

Now, we begin to see what Jesus is saying. Pilate didn’t single these Galileans out because they were exceptionally bad, but because they were exceptionally ordinary, because they were a symbol of all Galileans, of all those people up north who opposed Rome in heart and mind and deed. “This is what Pilate thinks of all of us Galileans,” Jesus is saying. “And Rome will do to all us Galileans what Pilate did to these few, unless….”

No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

And this is the great non sequitur in the story. Those who carried the news to Jesus expected sadness, anger, resolve. What they got was a call to repentance: not a sorrow-filled confession of sin, but an amendment of life and a change of mind about what it meant to live as God’s covenant people — as Israel — in the midst of internal exile and domination by a foreign power. Jesus had told them before in the Sermon on the Mount or in the Sermon on the Plain just what the Kingdom of God looks like and just what it means to live in that Kingdom:

Matthew 5:3–12 (ESV): 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

To repent meant to embrace this vision of the Kingdom of God, to accept that this is what it means to live as God’s people in exile under the powers of this world. That is still what it means to repent.

Jesus pushes the point home to those who brought him the news and to any who were listening. He reminds them of another disaster, what insurance companies rather foolishly refer to as an “act of God:”

Luke 13:4–5 (ESV): 4 “Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”

A tower falls and kills eighteen people. No, it’s not fate. It’s not a judgment of God on these particularly miserable offenders. It’s faulty construction techniques or poor materials or age and weathering or a shifting foundation or…. It’s just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But Jesus’ conclusion is exactly the same. If you don’t repent, if you don’t change your mind about what it means to be God’s people, if you don’t amend your lives, then you too will be crushed under the falling towers — the city walls and the Temple walls — of Jerusalem when Rome has finally had enough and comes in judgment to destroy the city, pulling the walls and the towers down on top of you. You can live in the Kingdom of God as the people of God — you can repent — or you can die clinging fast to your own rebellious agenda. The choice is yours. And that leads us to the parable.

Luke 13:6–9 (ESV): 6 And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7 And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ 8 And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. 9 Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ”

No good Jew could miss the symbolism here, grape vines and fig trees: the symbols of Israel as spoken of by Hosea, among others.

Hosea 9:10a (ESV): 10  Like grapes in the wilderness,

I found Israel.

Like the first fruit on the fig tree

in its first season,

I saw your fathers.

A man planted a fig tree; God planted Israel. What did the man require of the tree and what does God require of Israel? Fruit: righteousness, covenant faithfulness. But he found none. Read Hosea 9 – 10; it’s all right there. The man showed great restraint; he waited three years for fruit and still nothing. Three years: is there anything coincidental about that period, the length of Jesus’ ministry? And now, judgment comes: cut the tree down. And can’t you just hear John the Baptist’s voice ringing out three years earlier?

Luke 3:7–9 (ESV): 7 He said therefore to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruits in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. 9 Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

The time has come. Swing the axe. Throw the tree into the fire. And yet…and yet the gardener asks for a reprieve, just a year in which to dig around the tree, to put manure on it, to see if there is any way at all to bring it to fruitfulness and to avoid its destruction. And then these final, open-ended words:

Luke 13:9 (ESV): 9 Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.

So, the challenge is put to the people. Jesus has issued the call to repent, to live as the people of God in the Kingdom of God in the midst of exile. He has reminded them that the axe is poised to fall on the nation if they refuse to repent. And now, to mix metaphors, the ball is in their court. What will they do? Will they repent? Will they bear fruit? The symbolic and prophetic answer comes only a bit later as recorded by both Matthew and Mark and hinted at by Luke. It comes during what we call Holy Week:

Matthew 21:18–19 (ESV): 18 In the morning, as [Jesus] was returning to the city, he became hungry. 19 And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.

And so Israel’s judgment is pronounced. Within forty years destruction will come when Rome finally tires of the Galileans and all the rest of those Jews who will just not get with the Roman program: blood will be shed — human blood mixed with the blood of sacrifices — and walls and towers will fall crushing people underneath. “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish,” Jesus said.

“Ancient news,” you may say. True and fair enough. “What does this have to do with us?” you may ask. Good question.

Have you heard? Another unarmed, young black man shot and killed by a member of a citizen’s watch group just “standing his ground.” Has anyone told you yet? Two police officers responding to a domestic call set up, ambushed, and murdered. Do you think that these were worse sinners than the rest because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Did you catch the news this morning? Another school shooting, another church shooting, another synagogue shooting, another mosque shooting…another shooting. Do you think that these were worse sinners than the rest because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Have you read the papers lately? Another famine, another drought, another flood, another hurricane, another genocide. Do you think that these were worse sinners than the rest because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

Have you checked your Facebook feed today? Another church scandal: another case of sexual misconduct, another embezzlement of funds, another abuse of power.

Have you heard? Another dirty politician, another greedy corporation, another brutal dictator.

Has anyone told you yet? The rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, homelessness on the rise, refugees living in squalid camps with little shelter and no food, would-be immigrants trapped between two countries neither of which wants them or is prepared to take them.

Have you looked around? A culture deluded and deceived in such fundamental areas as identity, gender, race, justice, truth: what it means to be genuinely and rightly human, what it means to flourish under God.

I am no prophet, but I don’t have to be to know that the axe is already laid at the root of the trees and that every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I am no prophet, but I don’t have to be to know that we are living in a moment — perhaps a fleeting moment — of grace in which the vinedresser is still digging at the roots of the barren tree, supplying nutrients, waiting to see how the tree will respond.

Jesus’ words to those who brought him news of the Galileans’ slaughter were also his words to all Israel. And they are his words to us here in America, here in Tennessee, here in Knoxville, here at Apostles. They are his words to you and to me. Repent. Change your mind and amend your ways. Consider again what it means to be the people of God, living in the Kingdom of God, in the midst of a fallen world. Consider your loyalties and your allegiances. Discern the truth and eschew falsehood. Renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, and embrace the Kingdom, the Spirit, and the Lord. Repent, always. The Christian life is the way of continual repentance.

There is one story left in our Gospel text today, a beautiful story of hope and grace. We need that now, don’t we. While there is no explicit mention of repentance in this story — no call to it — the image that lies at its heart is a holy icon of sin, repentance, grace, and freedom.

St. Augustine was perhaps the first to describe sin in this way, and later Martin Luther elaborated on it: incurvatus in se — man curved inward upon himself. Faith turns outward. Repentance turns outward. Worship turns outward. Sin curves a man inward upon himself.

Luke 13:10–13 (ESV): 10 Now [Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. 11 And behold, there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” 13 And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God.

This woman had been bound by Satan for eighteen years, physically curved inward on herself. Do you think she was a worse sinner than others because she suffered in this way? No; but unless we repent, we, too, are bound by Satan, curved inward on ourselves. Jesus called her and she came. And that is the essence of repentance: coming to Jesus to be freed from bondage, to be freed from whatever curves you inward on yourself.

Jesus laid his hands on this woman and spoke a word of liberation: “Woman, you are freed from your disability.” And immediately she was made straight and glorified God: the formerly barren tree now bearing the fruit of repentance — freedom, grace, worship.

Always, always, there is the temptation to curve inward on ourselves. Always, always there is the tendency to point to those others who are worse sinners than the rest, who are getting just what they deserve. But, thanks be to God, there is now a moment of grace, a moment of reprieve, in which to repent, a moment in which Christ will once again touch us and liberate us from all that curves us inward on ourselves if we will but come to him.

Amen.

Joseph, Husband of the Virgin Mary and Guardian of Jesus

(2 Sam 7:4, 8-16 / Ps 89:1-4, 19-29 / Rom 4:13-18, Lk 2:41-52)

Collect

O God, who from the family of your servant David raised up Joseph to be the guardian of your incarnate Son and the husband of his virgin mother: Give us grace to imitate his uprightness of life and his obedience to your commands; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

I’M A BABY BOOMER, though I resist — and sometimes resent — the caricature of Boomers that is often presented in the media. The main use I see for such a generational designation is the historical context it provides; it reminds me what I have in common with that group of people culturally. I knew it was time to retire from teaching high school when all the formative events of my life began appearing in my students’ history books. With a group of Boomers, at least I know they know — and have experienced — what I’m talking about.

What we Boomers share is pretty remarkable. Some early Boomers remember duck-and-cover drills in elementary school and all Boomers remember the Cold War, the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall. Boomers lived through the tumult of the 60s: civil rights protests, assassinations, the Viet Nam War, the peace movement, Woodstock, and yes, disco. We went from the Mercury Program with Alan Shepherd and John Glenn, the first American in space and the first American to orbit the earth respectively, to Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, to the Challenger disaster and the de facto end of American dominance in space. We went from slide rules to calculators, to room-sized computers, to PCs and Macs, to the internet, to TiKTok, arguably a downward trajectory. We lived through the hyper-inflation of the 70s and the AIDS epidemic of the 80s. Boomers made fortunes in the tech industry in the early 90s and lost fortunes when the tech bubble burst in the late 90s. We survived Y2K — do you still remember that? — with essentially no consequences, only to have our lives radically changed just a year later on 11 September 2001. We lived through the longest war in United States history in the aftermath of 9-11. We went from the Voting Rights Act to the first African-American President to the new attempted suppression of voting rights. We have lived through, and, please God, we’re coming out the other side of what may be the world’s first global pandemic. And now some think we are facing World War III. All of this in the span of seventy years.

The Millennials have their own stories to tell, though there is some overlap surely: the Gen-Xers, too. Even with all the generational differences in these groups, I suspect there is at least one thing we all have in common: from time to time — probably much of the time — we have all felt at the mercy of powers and events and forces beyond our control. With the 24/7 news cycle and the constant access to global news, we just know too much. And given that the media only reports catastrophic news, we are constantly bombarded with gloom, despair, and agony: on our televisions, radios, streaming services, cell phones, and now even on our watches. It’s hard for even a Luddite like me to tune it all out.

And here’s the problem with that. We feel like we are somehow responsible for the world, that there is something we should be doing. Combine that with the fact that we are just ordinary people — not the elite, not the powerful, not the Uber-wealthy — just ordinary people, and we experience this great cognitive and even moral dissonance. What can an ordinary person like me — and, dare I say, like you? — do in the face of the enormity of the world’s problems?

All of this was rumbling around in my head as I began to reflect on the life of the saint whose life we commemorate today: St. Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary and guardian of Jesus. Is our world really more complex, more dangerous, more disorienting than his was? He was an ordinary man caught up in a world that must have seemed chaotic and beyond his control: Roman occupation with their brutal dominance, poverty, early and often violent death. He faced family scandal and persecution by political powers. He he was forced to take his family into exile, to live with a wife and young child as refugees. Joseph was just an ordinary man. What was he supposed to do? I suspect that was his question, just as it is so often our question.

This is precisely where the witness of Joseph’s life offers us a way forward in the mess that is our world. Let me suggest this lesson from his life:

God does not need extraordinary people. Rather, God chooses and uses ordinary people who are faithful, and by choosing them and by using them, God makes them extraordinary.

This is not a tenet of our faith that we’ll find in any creed or catechism; I can’t prove it by quoting a specific Scripture. But I can, from Scripture, heap up example after example in which God has worked in that way. It is the witness of the entire story that leads me to that conclusion.

God does not need extraordinary people. Rather, God chooses and uses ordinary people who are faithful, and by choosing them and by using them, God makes them extraordinary.

Joseph was an ordinary man. Those in his village of Nazareth — itself a very ordinary town — knew him as a tekton (cf Matt 13:55), a word and occupation we often translate as carpenter. But a tekton was more like a general construction handyman, a jack-of-all-trades among builders. Do you need a stone wall built? Call Joseph. A door framed in and hung? Joseph can do it. A wooden chest made or stones cleared from a field? Joseph is good at that. Joseph was a tradesman, what we would call a blue collar worker, willing to do any fitting work with his hands to provide for himself, and later for his family. Ordinary work from an ordinary man. My dad was a tekton: anything needed doing, he could do, provided it was with his hands. Those aren’t my skills. I work with ideas and words, water and oil, bread and wine. But, I’m no less a tekton; I’m building things and making both a life and living. That’s true of many of you. And, like Joseph, in the best sense, we are — most of us — just ordinary working people.

Joseph was poor, like most of the people in his village. I heard recently that the majority of families in the United States have less than one thousand dollars in the bank. Joseph would have thought them fabulously wealthy. He almost surely lived hand-to-mouth or job-to-job. Today, we call people like that the working poor: honest, hardworking folk, who often hold down multiple jobs and still barely make ends meet. We know about Joseph’s poverty obliquely through Luke’s Gospel. Forty days after the birth of Jesus:

when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons” (Luke 2:22-24, ESV throughout).

But, the Law actually requires the presentation of a lamb a year old for a burnt offering. Only if the family cannot afford a lamb, may it offer instead two turtledoves or two pigeons (cf Lev 12). In the offering for Jesus, the Son of God, Joseph must appeal to God’s concession for the poor. He was an ordinary man.

Joseph was a Jew in a land occupied by Rome. Think of an Indian under British rule in the last century, or a Georgian under Russia. Joseph was a son of David. He had royal blood running through his veins. But to the Romans he was just another Jew, just another subject, just an ordinary peasant, just another source of taxes. And like so many other ordinary Jewish men of his generation, he was forced by Rome to return to his ancestral village to enroll himself and his family and to pay taxes that he couldn’t afford. Worse still, he was required by Rome to take his pregnant wife with him — a woman about to give birth any day — on this difficult and perilous journey. There was no appeal, no exemption for Joseph, because he was nobody, just an ordinary man. And to top off this humiliation, when he arrived in Bethlehem at Rome’s command, when his wife went into labor with her first child, Joseph could not even provide a proper place for the birth. He had no money. He had no power. He had no prestige. He was an ordinary man.

I suspect that Joseph had the ordinary dreams of an ordinary man: a small but well-built home in his village, a good wife, steady work with sons to help him, a good name among his neighbors, a place in the synagogue — just a good, ordinary life. But even these ordinary hopes were dashed when Mary, his betrothed whom he had kept in purity and chastity, told him she was was pregnant, told him some bizarre story of an angel and the Holy Spirit and the Son of God: something far out of the ordinary. Joseph responded as an ordinary man would, though perhaps with an unusual amount of grace:

Matthew 1:19–23 (ESV): And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

23  “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,

and they shall call his name Immanuel” (which means, God with us).

This is it. This is when God chooses an ordinary man, chooses to use him in the great plan of the salvation of the world. What will it be, Joseph: an ordinary life with ordinary dreams, or an extraordinary life with angels and visions and much more besides?

God does not need extraordinary people. Rather, God chooses and uses ordinary people who are faithful, and by choosing them and by using them, God makes them extraordinary.

24 When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him: he took his wife, 25 but knew her not until she had given birth to a son. And he called his name Jesus (Matt 1:24-25).

This ordinary man chooses to be made extraordinary in the will of God, having no idea what that meant beyond love and trust and obedience. And those are the very things that transform an ordinary life into the most extraordinary life: love, trust, obedience. The faithfulness of ordinary men and women is the stuff of salvation, tools in God’s hands for the redemption of the world.

And so Joseph’s journey begins. This ordinary man will dream more dreams, will encounter magi from foreign lands and be given valuable gifts probably beyond anything he would ever earn in his lifetime, will be forced to flee — along with his wife and child — flee the rage of a paranoid king, will become a refugee in the ancient land of Jewish slavery, will return home to resume his ordinary life, which he now knows is anything but ordinary.

Is our world, are our lives, really more turbulent, more chaotic, more confusing than his? What can we do in the midst of climate change and political discord and #blacklivesmatter and #MeToo and pandemic and Russian military aggression and just possibly World War III? We can live our ordinary lives, go about our ordinary work, live in our ordinary communities with love, trust, obedience. We can be faithful to the calling God has given each of us knowing that such faithfulness makes ordinary lives extraordinary.

Go to church. Say your prayers. Remember God. Repent. Rejoice. Hope. Have faith. Love — extravagantly. Those are extraordinary things that ordinary people can do. And I am foolish enough to to believe that God can use them, and ordinary people, for the salvation of the world. That’s what the life of St. Joseph tells us.

Joseph, an ordinary man: chosen by God the Almighty as bridegroom for the holy Virgin, father of the Word, guardian of our salvation, protector of him whom the heavens serve and in whose presence hell does tremble.

I am an ordinary man. Perhaps you are ordinary, too? When the world seems too big, too complex, too disheartening, too confusing for ordinary men and women, think of St. Jospeh and the lesson of his life:

God does not need extraordinary people. Rather, God chooses and uses ordinary people who are faithful, and by choosing them and by using them, God makes them extraordinary.

Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

TODAY, IN THE DAILY OFFICE, THE CHURCH BEGINS READING ST PAUL’S magnum opus, the Epistle to the Romans. I thought I’d take this opportunity to orient our reading with some commentary on chapter one.

The Good News

You know jokes that begin, “I have good news, and I have bad news.”

A teenage boy walks into the living room and says to his dad: “Dad, I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is that the airbags in the Volvo work beautifully.”

The Gospel is no joke, but it does contain both bad news and good news. There is a problem — the bad news — to which the Gospel, the good news, is the answer. Paul presents both in Romans 1, first the good news of the Gospel which forms the thesis statement, the very heart of the letter.

Romans 1:16–17 (ESV): For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Paul says he is not ashamed of the Gospel. Does that strike you as odd? Why would anyone think otherwise — that Paul might be or should be ashamed of the Gospel? Consider the introduction to 1 Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 1:18–31 (ESV): For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,

and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

In Paul’s world — the world of Jews and Greeks (everyone else) — the Gospel was a shameful thing: a stumbling block, folly. The idea of a crucified Messiah was incredible to the Jews, an obstacle they simply couldn’t get over or around. The idea of a crucified Jew being the savior of the world — not to mention that foolishness about resurrection — was incomprehensible to the Greeks. So, in his world, the Gospel was considered a shameful thing by all but the relative handful who were convicted of its truth.

It was shameful also because the cross stood right at the center of it, and the cross was designed specifically to shame and humiliate those executed on it and the people they represented. No Jew or Greek would even mention the cross in public conversation.

So why isn’t Paul ashamed? Because he sees God’s own power in the Gospel: power in the events themselves — the birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus — and power in his own proclamation of the events. God accomplished something powerful in and through the Gospel — Paul uses the shorthand term “salvation” to describe that powerful accomplishment — and the continued proclamation of the Gospel brings that power to bear in people’s lives. So, Paul can say without shame that the Gospel is the power of God for salvation.

Paul goes even further to insist that the Gospel is for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, to those who formerly were ashamed of the Gospel. The Gospel comes through the Jews, because they were the elect of God, the bearers of the covenant. In these last days, God, in his righteousness, has been faithful to that covenant and has fulfilled it through the one, true Jew, the representative of all Israel, Jesus Christ. Since the covenant was always intended to address the problem of sin and death for all men, salvation has now come not only to the Jews, but also through the Jews to the Greeks. So, Paul says that in the Gospel, the righteousness of God — God’s faithfulness to the covenant — is revealed “from faith for faith,” that is, coming from the faithfulness of God and being received by the human response of faith. And later he will say, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Who is this Paul who tells a good news / bad news story to the Romans? He introduces himself in the salutation.

Romans 1:1–7 (ESV): Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, 3 concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh 4 and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, 5 through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, 6 including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ,

7 To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

How do you generally introduce yourself to strangers? Perhaps with your name and your occupation. Perhaps with where you live and with possible common acquaintances. All of it is small talk, probably forgotten the minute it’s spoken. If we are ever called upon to introduce a guest speaker at an event, we give a litany of his or her credentials, expertise, and accomplishments. Paul does both of these things, but with a twist. Paul says, “I am a slave of Christ Jesus.”

There is a certain humility inherent in the word slave, but it is not abject humility, not worthlessness. Think here of Abram’s slave who was entrusted with the vital mission of finding a wife for Isaac. Think of Joseph who, as Potiphar’s slave, was second only to Potiphar himself in authority over the household. The key to Paul’s self identification as a slave of Christ Jesus follows these lines, I think: as a slave, Paul acts in the name of and with the authority of his Master, Jesus Christ. He is worth listening to because the message he carries is from the Lord. He emphasizes that when he moves from “slave” to “apostle.” An apostle is one who is sent bearing a message. And Paul says he has been set apart for that purpose, specifically to bear the message of God’s good news — the Gospel — to the Gentiles:

…we have received grace and apostleship to bring bout the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ (Rom 1:5-6).

What is this good news about? A better question — a first question — is this: Who is the good news about? It is about God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord:

who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by this resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom 1:3-4).

Jesus is a descendant of David. Why is that important? Because it means Jesus is of royal Jewish lineage and is the fulfillment of God’s promise to build David a house, a dynasty, and to appoint over it one whose rule would be everlasting. This roots the good news in Israel’s story and in covenant, this time a covenant between God and David. And how do we know that this Jesus is indeed the Son of God who fulfills the covenants? His resurrection from the dead. Paul does not shy away from this claim of resurrection or of the centrality of the cross. There is power in this good news: in the events themselves and in the proclamation of those events. Notice also the trinitarian nature of the good news: It is focused on the Son of God (the Father) and revealed in the power of the Holy Spirit — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit acting together in the Gospel.

The good news is to all people, not least to those in Rome, those who are loved by God and called to be saints: holy ones, ones who are set apart as God’s own. Through the Gospel comes grace and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

So much for the good news of the Gospel. What about the bad news?

The Bad News

Let’s start with a question: How do we know about God?

We have many sources of knowledge: Scripture, Creeds, the teaching of the Church, the Sacraments. Good Anglicans might even appeal to Richard Hooker’s threefold means of knowing: Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. Good. These are all examples of special revelation, examples of God taking the initiative to make himself known in very particular, covenantal and gospel ways. But what about people who have never heard of the Gospel, never heard of either the Old Covenant or the New Covenant. How are they to know about God?

Well, God has not left them without a witness, a witness we call general revelation. Look around at creation. Look at a specific tree. Now, go make one. Oh, you can plant a seed or a seedling and grow a tree, but that’s not what I mean. Go make one from scratch — starting with nothing but your own power. Or a mountain. Or a star. So where did all this come from? Well, not from nothing and not from us. There must be a creative power beyond us that is responsible for all creation, and it must be a power almost beyond our imagining. And it must be a power that has existed from the beginning. If not, then something made it, and that something would be a greater power. But there must be a first in this sequence, a power greater than which none can be conceived, or else nothing would ever be actualized. That is the external witness of general revelation: a nearly inconceivable creative power existing beyond time.

But, there is more; there is an internal witness that tells us something about the character of this power. Here, I am indebted — once again — to C. S. Lewis and his writings about such things. All people — sociopaths excepted, I suppose, though one wonders if they really should be counted as people — all people have a concept of right and wrong. And while cultures differ in some minor ways about the details of what we might call the moral law, no culture is without the moral law. That seems to suggest that morality is an inherent part of humankind, that we were created with it. And, now we are back to that eternal power that created all things, ourselves included. The moral law must come from that power. And what about love and joy and creativity and an appreciation for beauty? Again, though we might differ slightly on details, these things, too, seem to be common to mankind. Perhaps they, too, originate in this eternal power that created all things. Now, the argument behind this reasoning is really more complex and subtle than I’ve let on; you can read the first few chapters of Lewis’s Mere Christianity for a more thorough presentation. But this is enough to say that even those people without special revelation can know a lot about what we call God: eternal, powerful, moral, relational, and more.

Here is the really important conclusion: whether we are operating from special or general revelation, we know that we are not god, and we know that no other created thing is either. These truths are self-evident. And that is the beginning of the bad news. Knowing this, humankind has rejected that truth, suppressed that truth, and embraced false worship.

Romans 1:18–23 (ESV): For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Suppression of the truth about God leads to idolatry. Humans were created to worship and we will worship something, either the truth or a lie. And that has consequences, because we become like that which we worship. Worship the true God in Spirit and in truth, and he transforms you into his likeness in Christ. Worship creatures and become beastly.

Sin begins with a lie, with a rejection of the truth about God, and with the refusal to worship Him. It was so in the Garden and it is so today. All sins — small “s” and plural — all sins like aberrant sexuality, envy, murder, strife — the whole litany that Paul provides here — stem from Sin — capital “s” and singular — the Sin of the lie, the Sin of the rejection of God, the Sin of idolatry.

And, Paul convicts all mankind of Sin. That is the bad news for which the Gospel, the good news, is the remedy.

Romans 1 ends on this bad news, but don’t forget that Paul has already told us the good news, about which we learn much more later in our Daily Office readings of the whole of Romans:

Romans 1:16–17 (ESV): For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Amen.

THE FAMILIAR INFANCY STORIES in Luke’s Gospel — the Circumcision and naming of Jesus, the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple, the encounters with Simeon and Anna — these are very human stories, very lovely and poignant stories that touch both heart and mind. Surely, Mary treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart, just as she had the words of the shepherds. The stories are both treasure and wonder, both gift and puzzle, for us as surely as they were for Mary.

Human stories, yes. Lovely and poignant stories, yes. But not simple stories. These stories plunge us deep into the heart of the Gospel, into a symbolic world of creation, fall, and redemption, into a rich and complex theological portrait painted in flesh and blood.

It is the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple that we treasure and ponder in our hearts this day. But it’s not the Temple in Jerusalem that provides the first stage for that drama; rather, it is the Temple of the Garden of Eden. The Garden is a temple because it is the intersection of heaven and earth, the meeting place between God and man. The Garden is a temple because it is the place where the image of God dwells in the persons of Adam and Eve. The Garden is a temple because it is the place where our first parents serve as the first priests, mediating between God and creation, gathering up and voicing the praise and worship of all creation, presenting it to God as offering. The Garden is the first Temple, long before any structure is built upon the holy hill of Zion.

God gives his priests, Adam and Eve, a blessing and a vocation:

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen 1:28 ESV throughout unless otherwise noted).

This is a two-part vocation,and the two-parts interlock. Subdue the world. Eden is paradise; the world outside is not. Adam and Eve are to subdue the outside world by expanding paradise outward, by bringing God’s order and reign to bear over the whole earth. And how are they to do this? Be fruitful and multiply.

Have children. Send them out from the Temple into the world to order it and govern it and nurture it: the priestly vocation in the Temple becomes the kingly vocation in the world. We can only imagine what this would have looked like. Before it could happen, man traded God’s blessing and vocation for untimely knowledge and fell from the grace of priesthood. And what of the divine vocation? Subduing the earth will be harder now, impossible really:

17 [C]ursed is the ground because of you;

in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;

18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;

and you shall eat the plants of the field.

19 By the sweat of your face

you shall eat bread,

till you return to the ground,

for out of it you were taken;

for you are dust,

and to dust you shall return (Gen 3:17b-19).

As for filling the earth, it can still be done, but only at great cost.

16 To the woman [God] said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing;

in pain you shall bring forth children.

Your desire shall be [toward] your husband,

but he shall rule over you” (Gen 3:16).

Every human birth from this moment on — which means every human birth — takes place in the shadow of sin. Michael Card says it this way: We were meant to awaken in a garden; instead we are born into a sin-impregnated world. The human vocation — be fruitful and multiply — is now tainted by sin. The joy of bearing new life is intertwined with sorrow and pain by sin and is ultimately undone by sin’s unholy companion death. The blessing of the Garden spirals downward into the requirements of the Law of Sinai, Leviticus chapter 12:

If a woman conceives and bears a male child, then shall she be unclean for seven days. On the eighth day, the male child shall be circumcised. The woman shall remain unclean for thirty-three days following.

When the days of her uncleanness are ended, she shall bring an offering to the priest: a yearling lamb for a burnt offering and a pigeon or turtle dove for a sin offering. If she cannot afford a lamb, she may take two pigeons or turtle doves, one for the burnt offering and one for the sin offering (cf Levi 12).

Birth, uncleanness, sin: words that were never intended to be spoken in the same breath are now bound together under God’s Law.

And so Mary comes to the Temple to fulfill this Law, to make a burnt offering of thanksgiving and devotion to God, to present a sin offering as a daughter of her mother Eve, as have countless Jewish mothers before her.

But this birth, this sin offering — they are different. This offering is the beginning of the end of all sin offerings. This offering is not just of a dove; it is a mother’s offering of her son, of God’s only-begotten Son, of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Every offering ever made is swept up and fulfilled in this one offering, in this one moment: a moment which stretches from manger to cross, a moment proclaimed in the dual cry, “It is finished,” and “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen as he said.” It is a moment made present and real in every baptism in which birth by water and Spirit is not tainted with sin, but in which that new birth destroys the power of sin. It is a moment in which Mary becomes the New Eve, consoling the mother of us all:

My mother, my daughter,

Life-giving Eve.

Do not be ashamed, do not grieve.

The former things have passed away.

Our God has brought us to a New Day.

See, I am with Child

Through whom all will be reconciled.

O Eve! My sister, my friend,

We will rejoice together

Forever

Life without end.1

And old Simeon is there: righteous and devout old Simeon, filled with the Holy Spirit, waiting — waiting for the consolation of Israel, trusting in the Spirit’s promise that his eyes would not see death until until his eyes had seen the Lord’s salvation. Please don’t misunderstand these next statements as sexist. They are not; they express the Gospel fulfillment of creation theology. Quite profoundly, this moment in the Temple is woman’s moment, the moment in which Mary, on behalf of Eve and all her daughters, fulfills the uniquely female priestly vocation of fruitfulness, of sending forth her child into the world to rightly order it, to redeem it. No man can add anything to this moment really. Simeon is only a witness, and recipient of the grace of the moment. But he knows what he has seen, and he startles Mary and Joseph with his gift of vision:

29 Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace,

according to your word;

30  for my eyes have seen your salvation

31  that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

32  a light for revelation to the Gentiles,

and for glory to your people Israel” (Lk 2:29-32).

Salvation, light, revelation, glory: Simeon knows what he has seen in this moment. We know what we’ve seen in this moment, too. We bless and light candles this day in witness, and we depart this place in peace according to God’s word, bearing the light we have received: priests leaving the Temple once again, going out into the world to fulfill the divine vocation to proclaim the Kingdom of God — Eve’s sons and daughters, Mary’s sons and daughters, God’s sons and daughters, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Luke seems to conflate two events in his telling of this Temple visit: the purification of Mary and the pidyon haben, the redemption of the firstborn son. And once again we are plunged into the heart of the Gospel, not in the Garden this time, but in the Hebrew slave quarters in Egypt. Nine plagues there have been, nine attempts to convict Pharaoh, to compel him to let God’s people go: all to no avail.

Exodus 11:1 (ESV): The Lord said to Moses, “Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely.

What is coming is so horrible, so devastating, as to be almost unthinkable: a righteous judgment by God, yes, but one that makes us catch our breath and bow our heads.

Exodus 11:4–6 (ESV): “Thus says the Lord: ‘About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, 5 and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. 6 There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again.”

Every firstborn male child in Egypt will die in one night — a generation and all its heirs erased forever. But, the Hebrews will be spared, spared by the blood of the Passover lamb smeared on the doorposts and lintels of their slave quarters.

From this moment on, because God spared them, God claims the firstborn sons of Israel as his own. Every Jewish male child who first opens a mother’s womb is holy unto the Lord and is given to the Kohanim, the priests. This child may be — must be — redeemed from the priests by his parents for five silver shekels, five silver dollars in the pidyon haben, the redemption of the firstborn. And so Mary and Joseph bring Jesus on the thirty-first day of his life to be redeemed.

Luke 2:22–24 (ESV): And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) 24 and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.”

This is a poor family: two pigeons for Mary’s purification is a poor family’s offering. The additional five shekels as the redemption price for their son must have been a burden. The priest, at least the priestly representative today, is allowed to return the money to the father to start a college fund or some such thing. Maybe this Temple priest had mercy on this poor family and returned the money to Joseph, not for college, but for food. Maybe not.

The firstborn sons of the Hebrews are saved by the blood of the Passover lamb, and they are consecrated to God as his firstborn sons. And now one of these firstborn Hebrew sons, the only-begotten Son of God, the Passover Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, the Redeemer of the world is himself redeemed from God by a man who is not even his father for five shekels that he cannot even afford. What an irony that is: what a mystery that is! And yet it is Jesus, even here, just thirty-one days old, entering fully into the human condition, fulfilling the Law, being redeemed that he might become the Redeemer, becoming the Passover Lamb whose blood saved the firstborn of Israel in Egypt, and whose blood — smeared no longer on doorposts and lintels but poured out on the cross — is offered for the salvation of us all: rich, deep, complex theology meant as much for the heart as for the mind.

Candlemas — Candle Mass — we call this day. We bless and light candles as witness to the Light of the World, because, like old Simeon and Anna, we have seen his salvation. We celebrate the Mass — a good word we rarely use for the Eucharist — by lifting up the cup of salvation, a cup containing the blood of the Passover Lamb. And we proclaim our redemption, a redemption not of the firstborn, but a redemption by the firstborn of all creation:

Alleluia! Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us.

Therefore, let us keep the feast. Alleluia!

Then we are sent out into the world — priests and kings all — to fulfill our divine vocation: to love and serve as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

1. (c) 2004 O.I. (Mississippi Abbey, Dubuque, IA). The posted image was painted at the Mississippi Abbey and is available for purchase in several formats at the link provided as a caption to the image.

As one so often does just before sleep, I was thinking again of death last night — neither morbidly nor morosely, but theologically and liturgically. Earlier in the day, standing at the altar with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven and with the host of faithful at Apostles Anglican Church, I proclaimed with the Church universal: By his resurrection he broke the bonds of death trampling Hell and Satan under his feet (BCP 2019, THE PRAYER OF CONSECRATION, p. 133). It was those words I pondered yet again as I lay in the darkness somewhere between waking and sleep.

In what sense has Jesus broken the bonds of death, not for himself, but for me, for you? If Christ tarries, I will die. It seems, then, as if some remnant, at least, of death’s power and of my bondage to it remains intact even after Christ’s resurrection. What bonds, then, were broken?

Hebrews 2:14–15 (ESV): 14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

Death itself has not yet been destroyed (1 Cor 15:26). While we have not yet fully been delivered from death — we will experience it — we have been delivered from bondage to fear of death. Christ’s resurrection has revealed death to be the Wizard of Oz: terrifying and manipulative when hidden behind the curtain pulling levers, but laughable and impotent — all blue smoke and mirrors — when revealed as the charlatan it really is. It is fear of death that drives us to seek power and riches and pleasure and honor, fear of death that enslaves us to the prince of this world. Break those bonds of fear and what do you have? Martyrs who can stare death in the face and back it down with faith. Confessors who facing great persecution can shout for all the world to hear, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!” Great saints who show us how to die in sure and certain hope of the resurrection. And “ordinary” Christian folk who go about the business of living for Christ in a dying world. As Anglican priest and poet, John Donne, wrote:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

But there is more, as St. Athanasius writes in his On The Incarnation:

For these reasons, then, with death holding greater sway and corruption remaining fast against human beings, the race of humans was perishing, and the human being, made rational and in the image, was disappearing, and the work made by God was being obliterated. For as I said earlier, by the law death thereafter prevailed against us, and it was impossible to escape the law, since this had been established by God on account of the transgression. And what happened was truly both absurd and improper. It was absurd, on the one hand, that, having spoken, God should prove to be lying: that is, having legislated that the human being would die by death if he were to transgress the commandment, yet after the transgression he were not to die but rather this sentence dissolved. For God would not be true if, after saying that we would die, the human being did not die. On the other hand, it was improper that what had once been made rational and partakers of his Word should perish, and once again return to non-being through corruption. It was not worthy of the goodness of God that those created by him should be corrupted through the deceit wrought by the devil upon human beings. And it was supremely improper that the workmanship of God in human beings should disappear either through their own negligence or through the deceit of the demons.

St. Athanasius here envisions death as an eternal state of corruption equivalent to nonbeing. As God called forth man from nothing and granted him life, death — through sin — bids him return to nothing: nonbeing. But now, through the resurrection of Christ, Christian death is not corruption leading to nonbeing; it is the temporary rending apart of body and soul — the body consigned to the earth from which it came and the soul returning to God who gave it — in expectation of the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. We are free from bondage to corruption and nonbeing.

So, yes, we will die if Christ tarries; death is not yet destroyed. But we need not, even now, live in fear of it; that bond has been broken by the resurrection. And we must not think of it as nonbeing, but rather as a brief respite on the way to the resurrection.

Collect: Confession of Saint Peter

Almighty Father, who inspired Simon Peter, first among the apostles, to confess Jesus as Messiah and Son of the living God: Keep your Church steadfast upon the rock of this faith, that in unity and peace we may proclaim the one truth and follow the one Lord, our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I AM GOING TO MENTION a few words, with a pause after each. During that brief pause, I would like you to consider your response to each of the words: emotional, intellectual, spiritual response. I’ve chosen these words with no particular social agenda, but simply as a point of entry to the Scripture appointed for the day. Here are the words.

• Politician

• Immigrant

• Redneck

• Lawyer

• Antivaccer

• Feminist

• Fashion Model

All of these words represent aspects of human identity, ways that we characterize ourselves or others. They can be helpful, or they can be polarizing. They can be neutral, or they can elicit strong responses. When I learn that someone is a Democrat, for example, I might instinctively respond, “Oh, he’s one of us,” or “Oh, he’s one of them,” or “Oh, a pox on both their houses.” When I learn that someone is a CNN viewer or a FOX viewer, I might think, “Oh, here is someone who seeks out the truth,” or “Oh, here is someone who is blinded by fake news,” or “Oh, here is someone with too much time on his hands.” I have been cut off by drivers in traffic and had my anger flare up only then to see a church bumper sticker on the offending car. I suddenly became more charitable, because, in spite of the offender’s poor driving, we share the box “Christian.”

My point is that we tend to put people in boxes and to define their identities by those boxes. Boxes are convenient; they keep us from having to do the hard and time-consuming work of actually getting to know a person. Boxes allow us to immediately embrace some and to immediately reject others — no matter that we may be misguided and wrong on both counts. We even get a bit nervous — we find it socially awkward and disconcerting — when we can’t place people in specific boxes, when they don’t quite fit our understanding of the boxes, when they don’t behave as the box demands.

This putting of people into boxes is nothing new; we see it in Scripture, right at the beginning of the Gospel of John, with John the Baptist:

John 1:19–28 (ESV): 19 And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” 20 He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” 21 And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And he answered, “No.” 22 So they said to him, “Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” 23 He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”

24 (Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.) 25 They asked him, “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” 26 John answered them, “I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know, 27 even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.” 28 These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

John is something new, something unexpected, something the authorities have not encountered before. And what do they try to do? They try to find out which box he belongs in. The priests and the Levites that come to examine John have a limited number of boxes, it seems: Messiah, Elijah, or the Prophet spoken of by Moses. When John refuses to identify with any of those boxes, the authorities finally ask him to identify himself, to climb into a box of his own making, as it were. “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,” John says, which surely baffles priests and Levites alike; that’s not one of their boxes, and they don’t know what to make of it, don’t know what to make of him. They never did figure it out. This is God breaking into history in a new way, in a way that defies all our man made boxes, all our definitions of identity. This is God working as Isaiah foretold:

Isaiah 43:18–19 (ESV): 18  “Remember not the former things,

nor consider the things of old.

19  Behold, I am doing a new thing;

now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

I will make a way in the wilderness

and rivers in the desert.

John will not fit in the old boxes; he would rip them apart as surely as new wine would destroy old wine skins.

Today, our Gospel reading takes us forward some three years in the story from John the Baptist. Jesus has taken his disciples very far north, beyond Galilee, into the pagan district of Caesarea Philippi, at the foot of Mount Hermon. In the Old Testament, this site was associated with Baal Worship; Baal Hermon, the mountain was sometimes called. In the first century it was associated with the worship of Pan, the Greek god of the underworld. You likely know that there was a cave opening at the base of the mountain called the Gates of Hell (Hades). That was the geographical context for Jesus’ promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against the church.

While here in Caesarea, Jesus asks his disciples a question of identity: Into which boxes do people put me?

Matthew 16:13 (ESV): 13 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

We’re right back to the John the Baptist question again, and it seems that, like the priests and the Levites, the people have very limited boxes to work with. Who is Jesus? Perhaps he is John the Baptist risen from the dead. Or, he might be Elijah, just as they had proposed earlier about John. If not Elijah, then perhaps Jeremiah or another of the prophets.

But, all these are old boxes, old wine skins, and Jesus rejects them. It’s there in his language. He listens to what the people are saying and then responds, “But who do you say that I am?” That little conjunction, but, is important. It says that all the other boxes are wrong. It says that something new is required, that God is doing a new thing. And Jesus wants to know if the disciples understand that yet, wants to know if they have been given a better box for him yet.

And that is precisely what Peter’s confession is: a better box, the right box, the God-given box into which Jesus best fits, though no box can fully contain the One who created all things.

Matthew 16:15–16 (ESV): 15 He [Jesus] said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

This is right in some sense that none of the other answers is: Messiah, Son of God. We needn’t think for a moment that Peter is expressing some fully developed Nicene or Chalcedonian understanding of the nature of Christ, or even a notion as clear as that expressed later by John in his Gospel Prologue. All of that has yet to be worked out, thought through, inspired by the Holy Spirit. But Peter does take a step forward here, a step in the right direction. More correctly, God moves Peter a step forward. Jesus is clear that Peter has not constructed this new box all on his own, but rather that God has revealed it to him:

Matthew 16:17 (ESV): 17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

Getting Jesus in the right box, is never a matter of human ingenuity; instead, it is always a matter of grace, of God’s revelation to us of Jesus’ identity. Left to our own devices, we always try to put Jesus in the wrong box, in a box that is far too small. You’ve seen it happen; you’ve heard people say, “Well, I believe that Jesus was a good man,” or “I believe Jesus was a great moral teacher,” just not the Christ, the Son of the living God. But those boxes are wrong; they are too small. C. S. Lewis wrote about them in Mere Christianity, in a familiar passage:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse…. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

Lewis is right; that box — great moral teacher — simply won’t do. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

I am not very concerned about us trying to fit Jesus into those far too constricting boxes like “good man” or “great moral teacher,” as if he were a better Gandhi or more compassionate Buddha. No, those aren’t our temptations. But I do wonder if there are other boxes into which Christians sometimes force Jesus, boxes that are again far too small.

There is the social justice or social reformer box: Jesus as the champion of the downtrodden, the poor, the outcast, the disenfranchised — a grander, more universal Martin Luther King, Jr. or Caesar Chavez with perhaps a little Karl Marx thrown in for good measure; at least they all share a common box. Certainly, Jesus does care for the poor. Certainly Jesus does want a righteous society — the Kingdom of God. But Jesus is not primarily a social reformer except in this expansive sense: Jesus came to make all things new — to redeem humankind, to restore and renew creation, and to unite all things in heaven and on earth to himself. What we call social justice or social reform is far too small a box for Jesus. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

There is the gentle Jesus, meek and mild, “can’t we all just get along,” box: Jesus as an easy going, mellow guy who loves to put COEXIST bumper stickers on cars, the one who makes no demands on anyone, and accepts us just as we are. Certainly, Jesus does accept us just as we are in this particular sense:

Romans 5:6–10 (ESV): 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.

Jesus made no prior demands on us before he loved us and died for us, for all of us sinners and enemies. But this is the same Jesus who says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). This is the same Jesus who called and calls for the world to repent and who warned and warns of the judgment to come. Gentle Jesus meek and mild, coexisting Jesus, is far too small a box for Jesus. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

We could go listing boxes. There is the patriotic box: Jesus as the champion of liberal or conservative democracy who has a covenant with America to make our country the shining city on the hill. There is the masculine box: Jesus as John Wayne, the tough, silent Jesus who is tolerant for so long and then, when pushed too far, cleans up the town with guns blazing. There is the feminine box: Jesus as the champion of gender equality and women’s rights. There is the box defined by the verses you’ve highlighted and underlined in your Bibles: you know, the verses you like to the neglect of the ones that make you uncomfortable.

There are boxes galore — most containing some element of truth but all of them too small. The box we are looking for — the box we need — is the same box that God revealed to Peter: the box labeled “Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God.” We won’t find it ourselves or make it ourselves. Just as with Peter, it must be revealed to us by God. So, we look to the revelation we have been given. We turn to Scripture. We turn to the Church. We turn to the faith once delivered to the saints, to the faith preserved in liturgy and Sacrament, to the faith made flesh and blood in the lives of the confessors and the martyrs and the faithful for two millennia. We turn to the work of the Holy Spirit in our own lives.

I’ve used the image of a box in which to place Jesus, by which I mean a label or category used to identify him. Of course, it is only an image, one that’s useful, I think, for illustration. But, the Christ, the Son of the living God cannot be circumscribed, cannot be contained by our feeble, human understanding, cannot be placed in any box, any temple, any created thing. And yet, paradoxically, he condescends to dwell in us, to make us the temple of his presence through the indwelling Holy Spirit. Wondrously, that is the box he’s chosen for himself. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

JUST TWO WEEKS AGO we celebrated Christmas, the birth of our Lord Jesus in Bethlehem: stable and manger, shepherds and angels, carols and candles. Yes, just two weeks have passed on our calendar, but in the Story, thirty years have flown by; today, the fully mature Jesus comes to the Jordan River to be baptized by his cousin John. Why have we skipped over those three decades of Jesus’ life? Is there nothing to be said about them, nothing to be learned from them?

We’re relatively silent about those thirty years because Scripture is relatively silent about them. There are just two events mentioned: the flight to Egypt when Jesus was two years old or under and the Passover in Jerusalem when Jesus was twelve. That latter event offers us some helpful insight into Jesus’ life in those hidden years. I know that you know the story, but let’s hear it again.

Luke 2:41–52 (ESV): 41 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. 43 And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, 44 but supposing him to be in the group they went a day’s journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, 45 and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” 49 And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 50 And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. 51 And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.

52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

What do we learn about Jesus —and his family — from this account? First, Jesus was raised as a good, faithful, observant Jew. Eight days after his birth Jesus was named and circumcised in accordance with the Law. On the fortieth day of his life he was presented in the Temple for the rite of redemption of the firstborn and his mother Mary was purified according to the Law. Now, in this text we see that the family has a custom of traveling to Jerusalem for the Passover each year as required by the Law. Mary and Joseph are raising a faithful son of Abraham in accordance with the Law of Moses.

But, Jesus is more than this, more than meets the eye. At the age of twelve he can hold his own in religious debate with the Temple scholars. Whether his expertise in the subtleties of the Law comes from homeschooling or synagogue instruction or something more, we don’t know; but, he amazes the scholars — no small feat. Jesus also has some understanding — we don’t know how full yet — of his true identity; he knows that his Father’s house is not the family home in Nazareth but the Temple in Jerusalem.

It is the last statement in this account that interests me most: And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man (Lk 2:52). Jesus learned and grew, and he was well thought of by his community and by God.

So, what we have in that brief statement, is a description of a seemingly ordinary life. Jesus grew up and he learned things. He learned how to navigate the joys and the challenges of a family. He learned how to take his place in the life of the community, some forty to fifty households on roughly four acres of land. He learned how to be faithful to the traditions of his people. He learned how to make a living as a τεκτον, a craftsman, like his father Joseph: building walls and rooms, hanging doors and making furniture, doing odd jobs and handyman specials — anything to put food on the table. On the surface, his was a very ordinary life. Of course, underneath all that were well-springs and deep currents of the Spirit, largely hidden from sight, waiting for the right time to burst forth.

That time came with the appearance of a prophet from the wilderness, John the son of Zechariah, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight’” (Lk 3:4b). News of this prophet had spread like wildfire. It had been four hundred years since a true prophet — one like Elijah — had risen in Israel; further, this was the time when one of Israel’s great prophets of the exile had foretold the coming of the Messiah. Expectations — hope — stirred as the news spread as far as Nazareth in Galilee. It seems Jesus heard about John, about his ministry of baptism in the Jordan. We can imagine the scene in Nazareth. Jesus shakes the sawdust out of his hair and brushes off his beard. He cleans his tools, puts them away, and folds up his work apron. He tells his mother that it is now his time to leave, and he turns over care of the family to his brothers. Then he starts walking toward the Jordan and John and his own mission, surely praying the whole way.

When he gets to the Jordan, he probably waits in line with the others in the crowd — ordinary folk, tax collectors, even soldiers — to step down into the water to be baptized by John. And that is strange, Jesus coming to be baptized; it has exercised the minds and faith of the greatest Church theologians for two millennia. Scripture says that John was “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Lk 3:3). But, Jesus comes to him without sin; Jesus comes as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. So, why would, why should, Jesus submit to John’s baptism? If the Eucharistic Prayer is right — and it is — whatever Jesus did he did “for us and for our salvation;” his baptism is no exception. Though it is far more than this, at the very least, Jesus’ baptism serves as the perfect icon, the perfect model, for our own baptism. Jesus’ baptism points to three great movements in every baptism: repentance, vocation, and identity.

First, repentance. When we think of repentance, we likely mean a godly sorrow for sin and a firm commitment to amendment of life. It is that for us, but it is more than that. The true meaning of repentance is to change one’s mind, to move in a new direction. Jesus had no need to repent of sins, to be sorry for wrongdoing, or to amend his life for the better. He did not experience or express repentance in those terms. But, his baptism was the moment when his life moved in a new direction, when he turned his mind toward a new way of being in the world. Up until this moment he had lived in obscurity as a member of a family in a small town working to make a living and support that family like everyone else in that small town. But, no more. Now he will emerge on the national stage as a prophet and more than a prophet, as a rabbi and more than a rabbi, as a rival to the priesthood and the Temple, as a challenge to the illegitimate king of Israel, and as a minor irritant to Rome itself. Jesus’ baptism was very much an act of repentance in this expanded understanding: a change in the direction of one’s life. And that is a model for us, for reflecting on our own baptism. If your life is fundamentally the same after your baptism as it was before — if your relationships with family and community and work, with wealth and power and honor, with politics and justice and mercy are unchallenged and unchanged by your baptism — then it may well be good to reflect on whether your baptism was actually an act of repentance, whether it was a changing of mind and direction.

Second, vocation. I wonder if Jesus was a good carpenter, a skillful stonemason, a master craftsman of fine furniture. I wonder if he was sought out by his neighbors in Nazareth and even called to be part of the great building projects in nearby Sepphoris. For fifteen years or more, that had been his vocation: craftsman, builder, maker, handyman, jack-of-all-trades. Whether he was exceptionally skillful or not, I’m certain he gave a good day’s work for a good day’s pay, and treated his customers as he would be treated. But he left that life behind with his baptism; he changed vocations. His vocation became a mission, not just to care for his family, not just to do good work in his community, but to save the world. Jesus’ baptism marked a change in vocation. Our baptism does, too. For those who are baptized as infants, baptism defines their most fundamental vocation of all, regardless of how they later choose to make a living and do good in the world. For those who are baptized as adults, baptism does not necessarily call them to leave their professions behind, though it may do. Rather, it more typically challenges them to reimagine their profession, their work, as ministry, as a way of proclaiming Christ, as a way of making the Kingdom of God manifest. It poses questions: What does it look like to be a Christian lawyer or doctor or policeman or teacher or businesswoman or secretary or mother or any other mode of living in and contributing to the world? Near the end of the Rite of Christian Baptism, the Church welcomes the newly baptized with these words of new vocation:

We receive you into the fellowship of the Church. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in the royal priesthood of all his people (BCP 2019, p. 190).

However it is we make a living, this is how we are to make a life. This is our new, baptismal vocation.

Third, identity. Here there is a fundamental difference between Jesus’ baptism and our own. In his baptism, Jesus’ identity did not change; it was simply revealed:

Luke 3:21–22 (ESV): 21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

“You are my beloved Son.” From all eternity the Son of God had been the beloved of God the Father. There was never a time the Son of God did not exist, never an instant when the Son of God was not the beloved. Now, at his baptism, that Son of God is revealed to be incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, fully God and fully man. Jesus’ identity was not given, was not made new, in his baptism, but it was revealed at his baptism. And that is the difference: at our baptism, we are given a new identity, because we are born anew, born from above, born of the Spirit. In our baptism, by grace we are made to be the children of God, partakers in the Divine nature. If we only had the spiritual ears to hear and eyes to see, I am convinced that at our baptism the heavens were opened, the Holy Spirit descended upon us and remained with us, and a voice spoke from heaven saying, “You are my beloved child — my son, my daughter; with you I am well pleased.”

So, why was Jesus baptized? The short answer is simply this: Jesus was baptized for us and for our salvation: to lead us to repentance, to a change in mind and direction of life; to give us a godly vocation, to enable us to make not just a living, but a life; and to bestow upon us a new identity as sons and daughters of God.

Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer, in times of difficulty, stress, or temptation would say aloud, “I am baptized.” Reportedly, he carved those words into the desk where he worked. He repeated counseled his people, “Remember your baptism.” The grace that is ours through baptism — the repentance, the vocation, the identity — is an unshakeable foundation of Christian life. May we always remember our baptism. And, if you have not yet been baptized, please seek out a priest or other minister; do not delay in laying hold of this great grace. Amen.

Alleluia, to us a child is born:

O come, let us adore him. Alleluia.

A FEW YEARS AGO, I decided to re-read The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, a classic trilogy that I had read several times in my teenage years. I was surprised that on this reading — well, on this attempted reading — I didn’t care for it. I quickly bogged down in the details — Do we really need a hundred or so pages to describe a birthday party? — and I simply wanted Tolkien to get on with the story. It is a grand story, a grand set of intersecting and interlocking and conflicting stories, that he has to tell. Why bury them under a mound of minutiae? Of course, to Tolkien the details were not incidental to the story; they were integral to it. For Tolkien, the story is found in, comprised of, and flows out of all those details.

We come, this holy night, to another story, to the Gospel according to St. Luke, to the narrative of our Lord’s incarnation. It is not trite to say that this truly is one of the greatest chapters in the greatest story ever told. For Tolkien’s readers, the fictional fate of Middle Earth hung in the balance as Frodo faced the fire of Mount Doom. For all of humanity, the very real fate of the Earth — of the cosmos — hung in the balance as Mary and Joseph faced the birth of a child alone in a cave or stable far from home, far from the loving care of family and friends. How does Luke start this grand tale?

Luke 2:1–3 (ESV): 2 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 And all went to be registered, each to his own town.

The one by whom, through whom, and for whom all creation came into being; the one in whom all creation holds together; the logos, the very Word of God, the only Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one Being with the Father — this one is about to be born in human flesh of a human mother to dwell among us human and to unite us to his divinity. And Luke starts with Caesar Augustus and Quirinius, doing what politicians do — taxing the people? Forget these trivial details, Luke; get on with the story!

But, long before Tolkien, Luke had an eye for details; you see that all throughout his Gospel. For Luke, too, the details aren’t incidental, but are integral to the story. The story emerges from these details.

So, what of Caesar Augustus, whose name would endure beyond this story anyway, and what of Quirinius, some forgettable governor of Syrian whom the world would never have known apart from this story? What do these names, these details of their reign and administration and taxation add to the Gospel?

First, they mark Luke’s Gospel as history and not myth. Luke does not start “once upon a time,” or “long ago in a galaxy far, far away,” or in Middle Earth, but rather in the concrete, factual details of this time and this place and this ruler and this petty bureaucrat and these odious taxes, and this forced travel with this very pregnant wife. This is the real stuff of real first century life — though they didn’t yet mark this time as the first century — the real burdens of real people in a real place in a real time. Luke is an historian, a biographer, a theologian; but, he is not an author of fiction or fantasy. So, these details matter, these factual details matter, because they declare Luke’s intent to tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — what really happened that night. While truth can be told in parable, in myth, in poetry — and we see all these in Scripture — these are not Luke’s genres; his form is narrative history. What he says happened, really happened.

Second, these details tell us that the world was going about its own business when God broke into history, so busy with ordinary things that it noticed the great invasion not at all, so intent on the levy and collection of taxes in this little backwater village that it noticed the rending apart of time into before and after this birth not at all. Augustus might have noticed the foundations of the empire shift under him, but he was otherwise occupied. Quirinius — well, he was just too busy following orders to notice anything but the bottom line on the tax ledger.

As in the first century, so in the twenty-first century, I suppose. We are so busy with the Marvel Cinematic Universe or Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta-verse or the conflicting media-verses of cable new channels or the universes we make of our private lives that we have too little time left to notice the in-breaking of Truth — the coming of the One who is the Truth. And, our politicians are busy with taxing and spending and writing bills that have little chance of becoming laws because other politicians are resolutely and busily opposed to anything at all getting done. So it goes from election to election regardless of which party is temporarily in power. What difference does the birth of a baby in Bethlehem make to our government, to any government, other than perhaps a day off from the hubris of some and the bureaucratic grind of others? No, the powers-that-be largely go about their business of pretending to be powerful: a few Caesars, thousands of Quiriniuses. And we pay our taxes and obey their laws, following the decrees of these days.

The story moves on and leaves these powers behind.

Luke 2:4–7 (ESV): 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5 to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. 6 And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

Geographic details this time: Galilee; Nazareth; Judea; Bethlehem, the city of David. Why? Why does place matter? Long before this night, God had spoken through the prophet Nathan to David, the great king of Israel, when David had proposed building a house for the Lord in Jerusalem. God speaks:

2 Samuel 7:12–14a (ESV): 12 When your days [David] are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.

The prophecy continues to say that this house, this throne, this kingdom of David’s offspring, will be everlasting. So, the detail of birthplace matters, the detail of Bethlehem matters, because Bethlehem is the ancestral home of David, and being born there identifies this child as the offspring of David, as one of royal lineage, as perhaps the one to fulfill Nathan’s prophecy.

Galilee and Nazareth matter, too, because they speak of obscurity, humility, poverty, weakness. Can anything good come from Nazareth? was a common byword of the day: no need to answer; just smile and shake your head and chuckle. All throughout the Law, God had expressed — and God had impressed upon his people — his concern for and their responsibility toward the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the stranger. What better geographical locale to symbolize this very class of the weak and powerless than Nazareth in Galilee: far removed from the locus of power in Judea, far removed in prestige from cosmopolitan Jerusalem. When God becomes man he does so among the very ones he instructed his people to care for, to experience himself in the flesh what it is to be the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the butt of jokes. So, yes, geographic details matter.

As in the first century, so in the twenty-first century, I suppose. Geography matters; birthplace matters. Zip codes matter; they serve as pretty reliable indicators of health, wealth, access to quality education, and more. It is not easy being born in a modern day, United States, Nazareth in Galilee. But, Jesus is there, as he was in the first-century and as he promised to be in every successive generation, there in the distressing guise of the poor:

Matthew 25:35–40 (ESV): 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

The details of geography — and our response to it — matter. But, the story moves on again, this time to a field outside town.

Luke 2:8–14 (ESV): 8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. 10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

14  “Glory to God in the highest,

and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

Gender reveal parties are a recent trend among expectant parents. You have probably seen some on social media or television— particularly those that go badly and hilariously wrong: fathers-to-be who shoot themselves in the face with a blue power cannon filled with blue confetti or mothers-to-be whose homemade cake, when cut, is some indistinct grey color inside instead of a vibrant pink, leaving everyone puzzled. What we have in Luke’s Gospel is the great, divine reveal — not of gender, though that is implied, but of identity: a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. This detail matters! This is not just any baby. This is the offspring of David, the Savior, the Messiah, the Lord. This is the one whose birth merits an angelic annunciation and a heavenly host praising God and proclaiming peace throughout the earth to those with whom God is pleased. And this detail also matters: that the angels appear to shepherds watching their flocks all night long while everyone else snuggles up into whatever comfort they can find. These shepherds are among the essential workers of their day: necessary, but accorded little respect, little consideration, little notice. A collect from the Office of Compline — night prayer — in our Book of Common Prayer comes to mind:

O God, your unfailing providence sustains the world we live in and the life we live: Watch over those, both night and day, who work while other sleep, and grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other’s toil; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (BCP 2019, p. 64).

Why did the angels announce this great news first to shepherds? Well, they were up, working while others slept. The one born this night will have much to say later about watchfulness, about being found at work, about staying awake and being ready when the bridegroom or the master or the king returns. The shepherds were up watching — not for this, of course! — but, they were up watching, doing the work they had been given to do.

But, there is much more in this detail. There is an allusion to, a resonance with David. Psalm 78 tells the story of God and Israel and concludes with these words:

71 He chose David his servant,*

and took him away from the sheepfolds;

72 As he was following the ewes that were great with young, God took him,*

that he might feed Jacob his people, and Israel his inheritance.

73 So he fed them with a faithful and true heart,*

and guided them with skillful hands.

David was a shepherd-made-king by God. The one born this night, the one the angels herald, is the offspring of David who will be the Good Shepherd, who will feed Jacob his people and Israel his inheritance with a faithful and true heart, who will guide them with skillful hands: the Good Shepherd made King of kings and Lord of lords. Is it not fitting that his birth is first proclaimed to shepherds like David, to shepherds keeping watch over sheep in the fields outside Bethlehem, the city of David?

Can we see more in this detail? What need does Augustus have for a Savior when, in his own estimation, he is the great Savior of the World? What attention would Caesar pay to the ευαγγελιον, the Gospel, the proclamation of a royal birth coming from the fields of Bethlehem? What time does Quirinius have to spare, busy as he is with taxes, for a Jewish Lord? But the poor, the powerless, the ones of little reputation — the shepherds and those like them — they just might listen to such news; they just might hope for and in such a savior; they just might follow such a good, fellow shepherd. And so the angels come to them with the glad tidings.

As in the first-century, so in the twenty-first century, I suppose. The good news has always been most readily received by the poor, the powerless, the forgotten — by those who know they need a Savior. Yet, like the priests and the Sadducees of the first century, it seems that the church of the twenty-first century often seeks a seat at the table of the rich and powerful, seems to curry favor with the movers-and-shakers of society, and sometimes forgets to go out into the fields at night, to sit with the shepherds and the other essential workers, to watch sheep and listen for the angels.

The details of St. Luke’s Gospel really do matter, because they tell us of a world very like our own: a world busy with its own affairs — too busy, it seems, to attend to the birth of God-With-Us; a world in which the powers-that-be and the structures and policies they create have little room for the true King of kings; a world in which geography still disproportionately shapes the course of one’s life; a world in which we still depend upon each other’s toil but fail too often to properly honor and reward it; a world where, quite measurably, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; a world where too few hear the proclamation of the Gospel because they have stopped their ears and because the church, sometimes, speak with a mumbled voice.

So, we come again tonight to be reminded of and challenged by all this in the details of the story. We come to listen to shepherds tell their tale of angels. We come to follow them even unto Bethlehem to see this thing which has come to pass. We come to kneel in the presence of the Creator of all things, now in human form, now as a helpless baby born in the wrong zip code. We come to wonder. We come to rejoice. We come to worship. We come to treasure up all these details, to ponder them in our hearts. We come so that we may go out again, returning to our world — to a world changed by this birth — as did the shepherds, glorifying and praising God for all we have heard and seen. Amen.