Between noon and three

This sermon was preached on January 26, 2025, the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, at St. Mark’s, Berkeley.

Collect: Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

One of the downsides of modern consumer culture, especially since the advent of the internet and social media, is a tendency towards comparison. Am I dressed as well as my friend? Do they drive a better car than I do? Are they ranked higher at work? Do I live in a better or worse zip code? Do they have less debt, higher income? Can they afford to have kids, own a house, replace a roof?

Not only do we have a tendency towards comparison, but the categories by which we compare each other have multiplied wildly: no longer just the classics of conspicuous consumption, house, car, clothes; but now intangibles, too: degrees of fulfillment, happiness at work, value added to society, mMeaning we’ve made or drawn.

With so much comparison flying around, there’s no time to gather the skill or the resources to make a substantive effort. And so we fall into the expedient of performance. Given limited time and resources, if I can at least look like I belong within the constellation of people and causes I care about, then it doesn’t really matter if I actually do belong, if I’ve really earned my place or not. But I don’t have to tell you the effects this has on a person’s psyche. We know the truth about ourselves, even if we’ve managed to hoodwink the world. So, the great promise of mass manufacturing and an internet-connected world devolves into a spiral of ever-increasing loneliness, with an ever-decreasing sense of place or merit.

But you didn’t come to church this morning to hear a priest decry the evils of modernity or social media — so why do I bring this up? Because these kinds of trends seep very quickly into the church, too, and into our lives of faith. When we talk about the health of the Episcopal Church, or any given parish for that matter, rarely do we talk about the actual condition of people’s souls. Instead we’re concerned with how well we look in public, whether thepeople whose opinions we respect think well of us or poorly. We wonder, are we doing enough? By which we always mean, are we doing as much as others? We have a monthly feeding program; others have a weekly meal. We collect coats in winter; others have a whole clothing pantry. We host a drop-in clinic; others have established whole schools for disadvantaged youth. 

Are we doing enough? Underneath the question is always the worry, am I doing enough? And underneath that, am I enough? I wonder, whose response are we afraid of? wWhence comes the judgement we’re so eager to put off?

Notice I’ve gotten a good ways through this sermon without any mention whatever of God. That’s intentional, because I don’t think this line of thinking has anything whatever to do with God. If we identify that voice with God, the voice that says we are never enough, then we are sorely mistaken. The accuser is not God, but rather the devil. Remember that great line from the revelation to St. John, when the devil and all his angels are cast out of heaven, “Rejoice, O heaven, and you that dwell therein, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.”

That’s very welcome good news, especially in our comparison-driven day and age. But if that’s the case, that the accuser does not speak truth, then what other standard is there? What else do we have to stand on, how do we know if we’re doing the right thing, going the right way, valuing the right things?

This is where our readings today suddenly speak with a voice of deep compassion and love. In Nehemiah, the people of God have returned from exile, the temple has been a ruin for decades, Jerusalem a waste, its walls broken down. They have returned to build a life amid the rubble of a past, a civilization, that is no longer. Ezra reads to them the Law of God, and they weep, because they know they have not kept it, indeed they could not have kept it, in exile from Jerusalem and its temple. If the point is comparison, they know they don’t measure up and that it would be futile even to try.

But Ezra is gentle, even tender with them: hearing the Law as they have is a cause for celebration and joy, not for tears. The Law as he reads it is not there to judge the people; rather it is there to create the people, to establish a covenant between them and the Lord their God, by which he would be faithful to what he had promised. Fulfilled or failure, their society is shaped, created, by the gift of that covenant, and they are united in a shared longing to see it in its fullness.

St. Paul is just as tender with the Corinthians. Like ours, Corinth is a rich society: they are heir, in continuous succession, to all the greatest treasures of Greek language, history, art, and thought. They are proud of who they are, and it pains them to think they might be deficient in any matter of virtue. But just like the tragic heroes of their great dramas, this creates a deep underlying vulnerability: they do not see a need to learn from or to honor anyone who is not like them. So, they are not the great, magnanimous lords of the earth their imagination makes them out to be; rather they are small and mean. They do not need to be brought down to size because they cannot get much smaller; rather they need to grow, grow into the full body of which they are merely a member. They had made the mistake of thinking, perhaps, they were the whole body, when it reality they were merely a part, maybe even so small as a hair. But the hair is proud of the body it adorns, and so Corinth may be proud of the Body into which it has been baptized.

And what body is that? Well, the body of Christ of course. And there lies the answer to all our modern anxieties, our fear of not measuring up, of needing to be everything to everybody, or seeming as if we are in any case. To these anxieties, the Gospel replies not with advice to do yet more. Rather it replies with a command: that we grow up. Not that we do more, but a command that we grow up: grow up into the fullness of the stature of Christ, in whose image we were made and into whose Body we have been baptized, in all our magnificent specificity. 

That will require certain things of us, but the point is to grow, to mature, to live — not to accomplish tasks, tick boxes, or look the part. There are too many boxes for us to possibly tick them all. The whole Body is too large for us to possibly accomplish its every whim. And so instead of comparing ourselves to each other, to the Law, to our own past or to our idealized, imagined future, our duty and our joy is simply to grow up, to live, into the fulness of the stature of Christ.

A big part of growing up is not being afraid: not being afraid of our failures, of our sins, of our nightmares. Maybe you know the famous statistic, by far the most frequent command in the Bible is “Fear not; be not afraid.”

Another part of growing up is making peace with the things we have said “No,” to, the opportunities we have not pursued, or for that matter the opportunities that have said “No,” to us; making peace with the doors that have closed, so long as they are truly closed and not merely blocked with our own baggage.

Another part of growing up is making peace with our own limitations. I am sorry to tell you all I will never be a professional football player. Part of that is total lack of natural talent, another part is that I have redirected all my cultivated practice to things that interest me more. I admit it does not grieve me very much to lose this particular future, but other lost futures do grieve me, large and small, and I’m sure you have your fair share of these too.

Part of growing up is making peace with all of these, and making peace in the only way Christians ever make peace with anything: by remembering that Christ’s cross takes both what is best and what is worst about human nature, the world, and every possible story, and offers it all to God. 

On the cross Christ offers it all to God, that God may give it back again, and God does give it back again transfigured beyond all possible corruption or decay, free from sin and death; that now may flourish only light and life where before was sorrow and thorn; that now may grow bright and solid joys where before was only type and shadow.

We remember, and so we live: as Christians we are created by this act of living memory, no more, no less. By this act of living memory, not by point of comparison or degree of accomplishment, or public recognition. By this living memory alone. By it we are kept in touch with Christ our Lord and with the rest of his body as well. In this living memory we are freed, freed in the very depths of our souls: freed from the whispers of the accuser, freed from the pressures of comparison, free to grow into the image in which we were made, free to rejoice in all things, giving thanks for the treasures of grace revealed in all people and in every created thing. 

For Christ has conquered death and hell, and by our baptism we are members of his own body. We have nothing to prove, to ourselves or anybody else. But rather we grow up to tell the tale afresh in whatever small way is ours to say. So the whole world may see and know: there is good news for the poor, release for the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed: for wherever Christ is, there is the year of the Lord’s favor, and with him is every fulfillment for evermore.

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

This sermon was preached on Sunday, January 5, 2025, at St. Mark’s, Berkeley, the Second Sunday after Christmas. We don’t always get a second Sunday after Christmas (sometimes The Epiphany occurs beforehand), and since there are three options for the Gospel, it’s even rarer to hear the episode of the finding of the boy Jesus in the temple. But it’s one of Our Lady’s “joyful mysteries,” and this is Year C in the lectionary (focusing on Luke’s Gospel), so I welcomed the opportunity it presented to consider what to do with Jesus’s childhood and the many years of silence in the Gospels between his birth and the beginning of his public ministry.

Collect: O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings:  Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a; Luke 2:41-52

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

When I would hear this Gospel as a kid, I used to think Mary and Joseph were being too hard on Jesus: I mean, didn’t they know? Why didn’t they check on his whereabouts before they just up and left? And what’s the big deal anyway, it’s not like he was in any real danger, he was in the temple.

When I read it now, however, many years later and as the parent of a toddler, my sympathies are entirely reversed, and frankly Mary and Joseph seem far too calm. “Gone for four days? We’ve been worried sick! What have you been eating? Where have you been sleeping? Don’t you realize this is how kids get abducted, or worse? And what is this attitude, ‘We should not have worried’ – I don’t think you fully appreciate the gravity of the situation. No more trips to Jerusalem for you, young man. If you so much as leave the house without permission you’re grounded through next year.”

Truthfully, there are a lot of questions this episode raises. Why did Mary & Joseph not think twice about leaving with the caravan despite not knowing where Jesus was? Was this normal in that day and age, for kids to wander all over a caravan? Should we suppose that the young Jesus was a sociable kid who made friends easily, and that’s why they didn’t worry about him, because they assumed he’d made friends with the other families going their way? Or should we suppose instead that he was quiet and liked to keep to himself, and Mary & Joseph didn’t worry about him because they knew by then that he liked to find places away from the noise? 

And really, where did he sleep for those four days in Jerusalem? Did the temple staff just let him make himself at home? Was old Simeon still alive maybe, or Anna, or was his uncle Zechariah on duty in the temple again, and did one of them recognize him and make room for him? Or did he sleep on the streets in some alley or under a baker’s awning?

And how big must this caravan have been anyway, for Mary and Joseph not to have known its full breadth? Was there a lot of commerce like this between Nazareth and Jerusalem? Or did the Holy Family have to travel with several caravans, changing maybe at Jericho or up at Beth-Shan or Jezreel, and it was at the transfer point that they noticed him missing? 

Were the caravans full of pilgrims only, or were there traders too, or traveling artisans? Was Joseph carrying samples of his workmanship, hoping to drum up business in Jerusalem or among his fellow travelers? 

What did the travelers talk about on the way? Did they talk about Herod’s new reconstruction of the temple? Did they think it bold and powerful, or flashy and monstrous? Did they appreciate the increase in grandeur and scale, or were they offended at the expense, the labor, the national impoverishment it required to build?

Did they comment on the latest ecclesiastical fashion they saw there? Did they keep humming tunes from the services on their way home, or did they prefer the tunes from the hearths of the inns and the campfires? Did they make their own entertainment on the way? Maybe the played instruments. I’m sure they must have played games.

There are questions of wider politics, too: Herod the Great had died not long before, and these were the early years of Roman governors in Judea. Was there still some hopefulness among the people, some sense that peace might prevail? Or was the writing already on the wall, and dread beginning to spread that this could only end in violence? Was there pride, that even now Judea retained certain trappings of self-rule? Or was there resentment that Judea did not even rate full provincial status in the administration of their overlords, but was rather, bureaucratically, a dependent of the province of Syria, former realm of the hated, Hellenistic Seleucids?

Today’s episode from Luke’s gospel of Jesus’s life at 12 years old contains tantalizing hints at broader life in the larger world of the 1st century Eastern Mediterranean, as well as precious clues about Jesus’s personality and the Holy Family’s home life. But as it is, this is the only such glimpse we get. Between the visit of the Magi, which we will celebrate tomorrow on January 6, and Jesus’s baptism by John in the Jordan, which we’ll get next Sunday, we have absolutely nothing apart from today’s episode. That’s over thirty years of silence.

What are we to make of this? Especially today, on the last, twelfth day of Christmas, when the songs of the angels are still ringing in our ears and we are full of wonder and delight at the newborn Lord? Most of the time, I think we just appreciate it as a nice family sort of story, and then fast forward to the really juicy bits when Jesus’s public ministry begins.

If pressed, we might say it’s a useful story because it illustrates that Jesus had a human childhood. Even though he was obviously special, seriously precocious in matters of religion, he was still a kid with an independent streak who occasionally got into trouble with his parents. That’s relatable, and it’s worth pausing to appreciate that.

But I don’t want to let us off the hook that easily. The clues and questions and tantalizing glimpses of a larger, broader life, I think make an important point: Jesus is the incarnate Son of God, as much in the manger as on the cross, and he is just as equally so in all those thirty years of silence. 

Jesus was just as equally the Son of God in all those thirty years of silence as in the episodes that are recorded in the Gospels. And because of that, all those years, invisible to us, are nevertheless central to his identity as a human person, central to the offering he makes of his life upon the cross, central to the life that rises from the dead and opens the gates of heaven. These are the landmarks of his public ministry, the mighty acts whereby he works salvation for the world and makes all things new. But even as he binds Satan and harrows hell, in there somewhere is still the kid who made his parents worry by hiding out in the temple for four days.

Do you hear why this is important? I’m a priest, I like church, you know by now I’m an ecclesiastical maximalist,  “more is more” as far as I’m concerned. So you might be surprised to hear me say, “Church is not the interesting thing about the Christian religion.” What we do here Sunday by Sunday and day by day is certainly the chief expression of our religion, where we speak most clearly and celebrate most beautifully the central mysteries of our faith. But where it chiefly happens is in you: in your lives, in your homes, in your families, at your work, in your world; where, day by day, you live your lives as people transformed by grace, called to new life, who bear witness in your loves, in your duties, in your recreation, that God in Christ has rescued us from the kingdom of death, and that we now have joy, hope, a future, in him.

Then, when you come to church, you bring with you everyone you have met, everyone you have loved, helped, laughed with, rolled your eyes at, injured, insulted; everyone you have worked with, needed something from, encountered. You bring them all here, with you, to the altar; and you offer them, with Christ’s own offering of himself, to God. 

So, here in church, we join the high priestly offering by which the world is reconciled to God. But it cannot happen without your life out there in the world: your day to day, boring and mundane maybe to you, invisible to the rest of us here in church, is actually the front line of the Christian religion. It is not invisible to God. And when you finally appear before him, and all the angels thunder their celestial “Te Deum” at your welcome through the gates of pearl, it will be as the person who was bored on a Tuesday at work; who chose to say the Our Father instead of honking your horn, who threw a fabulous Christmas dinner party for 12, who made some hard decisions with your ailing mother, who went out hiking but got caught in the rain, who put the left-handed scissors in the right-handed pail in kindergarten.

Do you hear what I’m saying? Much of our lives feel invisible to formal religion and matters of theology. There are no church holidays for Jesus’s graduation from high school, and no doctrine about his success or failure as Joseph’s apprentice. And yet, just as on the cross he offered the whole of his life to the Father, not just the bits we can read about, and therefore offered the whole world; so it is the whole of our lives that God redeems, not just the religious bits. And because he redeems the whole of our lives, his grace, his joy, his mercy, his peace, can break out for us in what might feel like the unlikeliest places. That in turn helps us to offer those unlikeliest places back to God the next time we pray or come to church. And so our disparate and fragmented world is stitched back together, slowly but surely, as a little yeast leavens the whole loaf.

I hope this is some encouragement: your life, especially when you are not in church, not praying, not otherwise religiously employed, is dear to God; it is not foreign territory to him. It is all a part of the story, all a part of the life He is working in you — and therefore it all belongs to the arena of divine agency and gift.

Let the finding of the boy Jesus in the temple be an invitation to you: to widen your horizon of where you see God at work; to live your own day to day as the place where God reveals his mercy and truth; and to bring it all back here to the altar, where we offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving, are fed by the fruit of the tree of life, and are finally found by God and brought home.

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

This was my column for St. Mark’s first parish newsletter of 2025, published on Friday, January 3, 2025. I don’t usually post my weekly newsletter columns to this site, but it seems to have struck a chord with more folks than usual, so it’s here in case others might find it an encouragement. You can hear the King’s whole 1939 Christmas radio broadcast on YouTube, here.

Dear Friends,

This week I was reminded of some words of poetry which King George VI quoted at the conclusion of his Christmas radio broadcast in 1939. Germany had invaded and then annexed large portions of Poland, Britain and France had declared war on Germany, and the long naval battle for the Atlantic was already underway. Meanwhile the Soviet Union had invaded Finland and built military bases in the Baltic countries; Japan had invaded China two years before. But large-scale hostilities between the major Western powers had not yet begun, and the world was clearly on the precipice of an abyss. The poetry quoted by the King at Christmas struck a deeply hopeful note, and proved a source of abiding inspiration to many throughout the long years of war:

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light, that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied,
“Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way.”

For days the media could not identify the poet, who turned out to be the rather obscure but manifestly holy social worker and teacher, Minnie Louise Haskins, who published it in 1912 as part of a collection of poems meant to raise funds for her work in missions. Her famous poem remains a source of inspiration to me today, and I’ve turned to it occasionally since first hearing it years ago.

It is always tempting to plan as much ahead as humanly possible. And on one level, that’s just good stewardship, the path of wisdom. But what happens when our plans are wrecked, or prove insufficient to the task, or otherwise come up short? Then we come face to face with the question of trust, which it would have been wiser to keep in mind all along: Do we trust God to be faithful, who says to each of us, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you; I have called you, you are mine; I come that you may have life, and have it abundantly; taste and see that the Lord is good.” Do we trust him to be telling the truth, even if the whole apparatus of our lives – the scaffolding we’ve spent such effort building – comes crashing down? 

Or, put another way, do we trust God because of the many blessings we have received? Or do we trust him because we have no other? I submit that until we have no other, we will find it difficult to trust God, or anyone else for that matter. So a major task of Christian life is to know, and to increase in the knowledge, that we have but one hope, and that no amount of darkness, failure, grief, or pain can snuff it out or take it away; that no amount of success, prosperity, happiness, or fulfillment can take its place. We grow in that knowledge the same way we grow in anything else: by exercise, practice, taking the risk of putting our finger on the wrong note in the studied intent of playing the right one; by stepping out into the darkness and placing our hand into the hand of God.

Life brings no shortage of opportunities to step out into the darkness. As 2025 begins, I commend to you the practice and habit of trust: to put your hand into the hand of God, and step out into the unknown, into the darkness, into whatever abyss may open before your feet. What God has begun in you, in me, in the world, he will bring to completion. Haskins’s poem concludes, “So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. / And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.” So may it be for each of us.

Yours faithfully,

Fr. Blake