The Rev. Jennifer Adams – January 7, 2018 , The Baptism of Our Lord, Year B: Genesis 1:1-5, Psalm 29, Acts 19:1-7, Mark 1:4-11

This morning we’ve shifted gears a bit; we’ve changed seasons. This is the first Sunday after the Epiphany which was yesterday, and today we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus.  And if you feel like this transition happened rather quickly, you’re not wrong.

The story did actually just take a dramatic turn.  So if you blinked, you might have missed it.  Over the past few hours we’ve moved beyond the stories of Jesus’ birth, away from Mary, Joseph, shepherds, angels, and wise men and been fast-forwarded by the gospel about thirty years.  Jesus is an adult in this story.  Which means that the shepherds who were there on Christmas Eve have likely all retired, the innkeeper long stepped aside, and the wise men who had come from afar, had by now, long returned to afar carrying with them the good news as it had been revealed to them.

Now it’s interesting to note that the gospel of Mark begins with the story we heard today. We’ll be hearing from Mark all year and so it’s good for us to get a sense of how he works and this is a good opportunity to glimpse that. This was chapter 1 verse 4-11 we just heard and so all we missed was a bit of John the Baptist. There is no birth narrative in Mark.  His gospel starts with John the Baptist, takes only seven verses to tell this story that in other gospels takes as many as fifteen, and throughout the entire gospel there is an urgency that isn’t present in nearly the same way in the other three.

Mark essentially begins with Epiphany.  This is the “open your eyes now!” gospel.  The “open your hearts NOW,” gospel. Nothing fluffy. Nothing even very gentle.  Mark is off and running, straight to the point, and he expects us to be too. According to Mark, this is the moment when the good news begins and so we are to begin now too.  Hold onto your hats. Or take your hats off.  Or don’t even worry about your hats, there is something much more important going on here!

“People from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem” were coming out to the River Jordan,” Mark tells us.  They were coming out to hear John, the voice that was crying out in the wilderness and to be baptized by him.  The people had come out to repent and to receive forgiveness through the waters of baptism.  And on this particular day, Jesus was there too.

So imagine the scene.  Crowds of people. Hundreds, thousands of them.  Many of them dripping wet.  John up to his knees in the River Jordan and the people being soaked through with a message and experience of forgiveness.

And on this day, there was even more that came.  Forgiveness is where this gospel begins but then there is more.  “The heavens were torn apart,” Mark says, “a dove descended and a voice from heaven said to Jesus, “You are my Son, my beloved, and with you I am well pleased.’”  And while there is conversation among various scholars about who saw what, for Mark, and I’d agree with him, that doesn’t much seem to matter.

Because the heavens were torn open, a dove descended, and a voice from heaven spoke, and frankly, that’s enough to go on.  From this moment forward Mark’s Jesus is on the move.  They might have come to the River for repentance and forgiveness, but open your eyes now, because there is more.

Through that tear in the heavens flows mercy.  There comes healing and there pours peace.  Through that tear in the heavens there comes the actual physical presence and touch of God, a welcome beyond reason, a grace that surpasses justice. There comes a way to be beloved and a call to be one.  Through that tear in the heavens there flows a love that passes all understanding, a love that stretches and risks embracing all.  “This is the good news of Christ!” Mark tells us. Open your eyes!  Open your hearts, people of God!  Here is more!

And the urgency matters because this is that for which we hope, it’s what we so deeply crave, what we need.  There is no need to wait – the grace has been given us.  From this tearing open comes that for which the world so desperately longs.  The time is now. For Mark, for us, it always is.

Now there is one more instance of tearing in this gospel. And I think it’s significant that Mark uses exactly the same word for it.  After Jesus breathes his last on the day of crucifixion, the curtain in the temple is torn in two.  The curtain that separated “the common” from “the holy” was torn in two and that’s how Mark frames his gospel: heaven flows into earth.  The common touches the holy and just when we come to believe that mercy and peace, healing and love are the “more” given us in Christ, there comes resurrection, there is new life that flows too.  This beloved-ness is about now and it’s about forever too.

But that’s moving more quickly than even Mark does.  We’ll hear about all of that soon and it already runs through all that we do in this place.  But today we stand at the River, dripping wet and soaked through with forgiveness and more.  Grace has broken through in ways that are meant to and should amaze us all.  This is the good news of Christ!  Stand at the River today and feel the flow of all that comes as heaven breaks through again. And again. And again.

Repent. Forgive.  Be beloved. And live.

The Rev. Jennifer Adams – December 10, 2017 – Advent 2, Year B: Isaiah 40:1-11, 2 Peter 3:8-15a, Mark 2: 1-11

Part of what I love about this season is that in the midst of what are busy schedules, crazy days, upheavals of all sorts and kinds, in here we bring a gentle, holy focus, and some liturgical order to it all.  I’ve heard several people over the past few weeks (me included) go so far as to say, “we need Advent.”

We gather in here and we breath and we hope and we pray. We light candles. We sing familiar hymns.  We walk the labyrinth and center ourselves and focus our faith.  We bring gifts for the family who came to us as refugees. We welcome into the household of God – we won’t baptize every Sunday in Advent but again this morning we will; today it’s Rowan Eugene Lane.  And this season we hear the stories that no matter how long you’ve been a part of the tradition, they sound more and more familiar as the days pass.  We’ve got John the Baptist this week and next. Then it’s Mary and Joseph, then angels, shepherds, an innkeeper, a king, and of course the child who was King too.

And through this gentle intention and liturgical unfolding we are called to become newly awakened.  Advent in the church is sort of an alarm clock in the form of a series of chimes – clear but not too startling in its presentation.  Perhaps that’s our Episcopalian showing, but I think that approach to Advent is ecumenical.  This season, we’re called to be awakened to the promise, the promise that we are moving toward something.  And we proclaim that something to be profoundly beautiful.

We are moving first into the memory of a child come to us, a savior given this hurting world by a God who so loved this world.  And in this movement there is a need for repentance – witness the overwhelming response to John the Baptist: “People from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him,” the gospel says. In this movement there is a longing for God’s mercy – listen to the prophet Isaiah, “Comfort, comfort, o my people.  Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” And soon we’ll hear Mary’s song as she sings of God’s mercy in raising up “the lowly” and “filling the hungry with good things.”  And in this movement there is also vision from Isaiah and other prophets, vision that speaks to the deepest yearnings of our hearts and the deepest groanings of this world, a vision of a place and time where there is peace, where exiles return safely home, and the light of the world is able to shine through the darkness for all the world to see. In Advent we are awakened to those voices inside and outside of ourselves – those voices that speak of repentance, that cry for mercy, that proclaim peace.  And we pause here to let them resonate, one candle at a time.  And they do.

The challenge I find, or one of them anyway, is that life doesn’t happen one candle at a time and as beautiful as all of this is, Advent itself – the coming of God – is often more jarring, more disruptive than we’ve become accustomed to it being.  This challenge of the season is that while we lean into this gentle liturgical unfolding and the lovely awakening-by-chime, the way in which it really happens, in which God really happens, often doesn’t resemble this approach as much we’d like it too.

There really was nothing very gentle or orderly about John the Baptist.  He was wearing camels hair and he ate bugs, and he wasn’t just suggesting repentance, he was out there shouting about it to the point of getting arrested for it.  This season has a clear beginning and end for us, but really John the Baptist was never certain that his timing was right. Was there one candle or two lit on the wreath when he proclaimed repentance?  Just how long until that one who was to come after, would come?  These were John the Baptist’s questions.  And Mary had them too. In the moment of song, Mary’s soul was certain but her awakening was anything but chime-like.  In the not so gentle unfolding of what we now call “glad tidings,” Mary’s traditional wedding plans were dashed and her vision for her future family completely overturned. And Mary’s fiancé Joseph had to completely revise his understanding of what it meant to love another human being.  Not to mention what it meant to love God. What did it mean to light candles when the familial support had backed out, there was no room in the inn, and Herod was going to be breathing down their necks before a new season could even begin to take hold?

So their Advent, that first Advent, wasn’t like this, really.  Rather than settling, it was one disruption after another. One holy disruption after another.  Because that’s how God came to them.

And so we need to leave room for that dimension of Advent too.  Because it would be sadly ironic if in our intentional and well-ordered approach to this season, we missed the ways in which Christ is actually coming among us now.  If in our intense focus on the gentle unfolding, we missed that some of the disruptions are the means by which God is birthing something holy, something of repentance and mercy and peace.

And so this season I invite you to light candles and to walk the labyrinth too.  Gather here and breathe deeply here. Welcome Rowan Eugene and others into this household. But don’t fear the uncertainty, the disruptions, the interruptions. Instead know that there is likely to be grace in them too, because often that’s how God breaks in.

Remember that “Don’t be afraid,” were the first words spoken to Mary by the angel, and “Don’t be afraid,” was the message of the dream given Joseph. Leave room for some uncertainty around God’s timing, prepare to be taken slightly aback by the ways in which God loves us, and expect that the redemption for which we long will come in shocking and unsettling ways.  There are after all, mountains to be made low, valleys to fill in and a new creation coming to be. And so the ground is bound to shake as the unfolding that is God’s takes place in the lives and midst of us all.

The Rev. Jennifer Adams – Sunday, December 3, 2017 – Advent 1, Year B: Isaiah 64:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13: 24-27

Happy New Year, everyone!  This morning, the first Sunday of Advent is the beginning of a new year on the church calendar and so this morning we begin anew.  You’ll notice that the colors have changed.  (Thank you, Altar Guild.)  We’re a beautiful ‘blue’ this morning.  The Advent wreath has been hung and we lit the first candle today.  And to mark the new season, the tone is a bit different today too – during Advent we are called to be a people of anticipation and hope as we await the coming of Christ.  This is our work – we are to very intentionally be or at least commit to become a people of hope.  This season is often described as “a countdown to Christmas” but this is also a looking forward to the second coming when Christ will come among us as the gospel says, “in power and great glory.”

Now this morning we will baptize and welcome Luna, Fletcher, Merrick, Berend and Winona into this household of God.  Now we’re a household that is decked out beautifully, and is busy setting a hopeful tone, but in the spirit of full disclosure, we also need to acknowledge that we are a household that is aware that some very challenging weather, or more accurately, some significant meteorological events could be just around the corner.

“The sun will be darkened,” we just heard, “and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven; the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”  And one of my instincts is to advise us all to take cover – especially the babies. It’s just not wise to mess with proclamations of darkening skies and falling stars.  And of course of all the days for this kind of forecast, it comes on a day that our pews are full of babies!

But actually, given the state of our world, taking cover is one of my pretty much daily temptations – hole up, hunker down, calculate, defend, take care of my own!  Checking any forecast these days, I can’t say that that approach to life in general isn’t somewhat enticing.

But really, I’m not sure that approach is in the best interest of the household.  Nor is it what this household, let alone this season is all about.  Think about the stories that define us here – just last week we heard about caring for, reaching out too, inviting in complete and total strangers – “the least of these my brothers and sisters”.  The week before that we heard about not burying our talents a message about “un-hunkering,” and before that we were advised to make sure that our lights are always able to shine out there, regardless of the weather! And soon we’ll hear about a man who made his home out in the wilderness calling everyone out and into the waters of repentance. Soon after that we’ll sing of a young woman whose soul sang of God’s mercy and whose body carried into this broken world, the savior of the world.  Because God so loved the world.  And because of that love, God came to offer redemption, mercy and peace right here and right now, in all of our here’s and all of our nows.

At the heart of this household is the story about how God in essence (literally in essence,) un-holed-up, un-hunkered, refused to take cover, and came to be here among us.

And so as tempting as it might sound taking cover is probably not what we’ve been called to this season.  Perhaps some weather gear is in order, and if you have extra be sure to share.  We should keep our lamps lit because the days are actually getting darker.  We need to dig out of all of our talents, offer them up and out, and no matter how cold or how warm, we all need to take some regular dips into the waters of repentance.  Because we all need to prepare our bodies, minds and souls to receive – to receive the Christ who is God un-hunkered and here.

And so rather than fear this season, a prayerful, humble, hope-filled kind of courage is what will allow us and our household, and in all likelihood this world that God so loves to thrive.  Our work is to foster that in one another, to offer it to Luna, Fletcher, Merrick, Berend, Winona and anyone who comes. Our prayer at baptism is one that fits us all:

Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of
grace. Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen.

Listen to the forecast this season but remember the stories and the prayers that define us, that remind us who and how we are.  This world will be shaken, over and over again.  Stars will rise and fall and rise and fall.  And so it is. But our work no matter the forecast, is to receive the gift of God – to love this world with all that we can muster and mustering more and more of that is a significant part of what growing in faith is all about.  Which is why we start young.  And why we restart at so many points along the way.

As we receive into the household of God this morning, know that Christ is here too and the entire household has been called into a prayerful, humble courageous way of being in God’s world. The prayers of the prophet Isaiah are being answered, “tear open the heavens and come down, O Lord.”

May the hope of the household be renewed this Advent season.

Amen