THE 3rd SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY - 23 January 2011

The Gospel: Matthew 4:12-23

When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: "Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles--the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned." From that time Jesus began to proclaim, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea-- for they were fishermen. And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fish for people." Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

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

I’m an Eddie Izzard fan. For those of you out of the loop, he’s an Irish comedian who’s been in England so long you can’t tell he’s Irish by his accent. Actually, he sounds Welsh. And, of course as an Irishman, he’s a Roman Catholic. So, when he first went to England he went to the Roman Church and made his confession. It took him three weeks to work off the penance. He thought, “Boy, these English Catholics are really hard core!” So, the next time he decided to try out the priest at the local Church of England. He went in and knelt down and made his confession, waiting for judgment and retribution. But, instead, the Vicar said, “Oh! You do that too?! Oh, that’s really not a sin. It can be a bit of a nuisance at times, but as far as sin goes, it doesn’t qualify. Just be careful. Everything in moderation, you know.”

My seminary friend, Jack, used to be the curate at St. Paul’s, K Street in Washington D.C. and he had a very similar experience. St. Paul’s is an Anglo-Catholic Parish, one of the few I know who has confessionals. They make Rome look like a Presbyterian Communion Service without the shot glasses. Directly across the street is St. Matthew’s Cathedral, the church from which John F. Kennedy was buried. Jack said that a good number of the Cathedral’s parishioners would come to St. Paul’s for make their confessions because the penances were much softer.

Jack had this one man, obviously very well educated and certainly well dressed, who came to confession every Saturday morning, rain or shine, and confessed exactly the same sin every week. Of course, Jack didn’t tell me the contents of the confession, but use your imagination. I bet we could all come up with some juicy tidbits! This went on for about a year until Jack decided to do something about it.

One Saturday morning, Jack was sitting in the confessional doing the Washington Post crossword puzzle when little red light went on signifying that a penitent was kneeling on the other side. Jack opened the slide and, sure enough, it was the usual guy.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
Jack thought, What? Again? Say it isn’t so!
“It has been a week since my last confession.”
Jack thought, “Yes, I set my watch by it.”
And the man proceeded on with his confession.
About half way through, Jack interrupted the man and said, “Hold on a minute. Let’s talk about this. You’ve been coming here every week for the last year and confessing the same sin and each week I give you absolution, which is fine. But it’s become apparent to me that you really enjoy this sin. So, why don’t you just go and do this sin as much as you can and want and get it out of your system and when you’re done with it, come and see me, make your confession, I’ll give you absolution and you can get on with your life.”
There was silence on the other side.
“Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
“So, how about it? Go do it and enjoy it and get it over with.”
The man replied timidly, “But what happens if I die during the week and I’m not in a state of grace. I’ll go directly to hell.”
“No, no, no,” replied Jack. “You won’t go to hell. You’ll be fine. But you do need to repent.”
“I know, Father,” replied the man. “I have to give up this sin.”
Jack thought for a moment. Then, “So, you see your faith as a sort of celestial fire insurance?”
The man was silent for a moment and then said, “Well, I wouldn’t exactly put it that way.”



“I would,” said Jack. “The problem is that you need to repent but your sins’s not what you need to repent of. You need to repent of how you view God. Your faith is based in fear, not love. Our culture has messed things all up. Even the Church. It's all about trying to control us. But, God isn’t a divine judge keeping a tally sheet of what we’ve done wrong. If God is God, then God is ultimately stronger than sin. God isn’t offended or angered by sin because God is God. He may be concerned about it, but that’s only because he doesn’t like seeing his creation damaged. God is ultimately compassionate. Your sin is already forgiven. You just have to learn how to live with that.”
Dead silence from the other side.
Jack continued, “So, I’m not giving you absolution, but I am giving you a penance which is that I don’t want to see you in here again until you’ve decided that you’re done with this sin. Go out and do it. Enjoy it. Get it out of your system. Get some help if you need to. But don’t come back until it’s done. Do you understand?”
“Yes Father.”
“Go in peace, and pray for me a sinner.” And Jack slammed the slide shut.
Jack said, “I know I was a bit hard on the guy, but things were getting just a little bit out of hand. Just coddling the guy wasn’t helping him any. So, I took the tough love approach. Maybe a bit too far. I knew I’d never see him again.”

A year passed. Jack was sitting in the confessional trying to figure out the answer to 29 down. (You can tell you’re really a boring person if, in the middle of your confession, the priest stops you and asks if you know a five letter word for a South American black bird.) The little red light went on and jack opened the slide. And there on the other side was the man.
He simply said, “I’m done!”
Jack replied, “Oh, I’m glad to see you. You’ve been on my mind. I must apologize for being s too hard on you last time you were in. I may have gone to far.
“No apology necessary, Father,” said the man. “I’ve spent the last year chewing on those words. They just wouldn’t let me go. That idea of God’s love and my need to repent of my fear and see God as he really is just kept nagging at me until one day I realized that what you’d said had begun to take hold. And I began to be thankful for God’s mercy and compassion and love. Inside, I no longer heard condemnation and judgment but words of forgiveness and peace. And all of a sudden, this sin I’ve been enjoying for so long lost its hold. The novelty wore off. It was no longer the forbidden fruit. And I realized I was done. My fear has subsided and now I know deep down inside just how much God loves us, with no strings attached, just as we are with no exceptions.”
Jack was truly impressed. This man had insight that many of his penitents didn’t. He was also very curious, so he asked, “Can I ask you a very personal question?”
“Sure, Father. You know all my dirt anyway. Why not!?”
“What do you do for a living?”
There was silence on the other side of the grill. Then the man said, “I’m a theology professor at Georgetown,” which is the big Jesuit university in D.C.. Both Jack and the man began to laugh. The irony was just too much.
When they had both stopped snickering, Jack said to the man, “I am going to give you absolution with the knowledge that this sin may rear its ugly head from time to time. That’s OK. You’re human. You know that and so does God. And when it does, come to see me if you need to. And for your penance, for the rest of your life, I want to teach what you’ve learned to your students. NO beating around the bush. Just the pure, unadulterated facts. I know it’s not the party line, but I suspect the Jesuits of all people will be able to cope. And the more you teach it to your students, the more you’ll teach it to yourself. Do you understand?”
“Absolutely, Father. “That’s a penance I can and will gladly perform.”
Jack gave the man absolution and when the man stood up and walked out of the confessional, there was Jack. The two men embraced. “Peace be with you, my friend,” said Jack. “And also with you, Father,” he replied.

Jack never saw the man again in confession. But from that day on, every Sunday he saw him in Church.



In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus proclaims, “Repent! For the kingdom of heaven has come near.” It’s an old Aramaic way of saying, “The kingdom is now!” And this is no ordinary kingdom, but it’s as real as any kingdom on the planet. It’s a kingdom where love and compassion and mercy are the bottom line. Where justice is mercy as the Psalmist says. Where children are nurtured and elders respected; where the poor are no longer poor and where there are absolutely no outcasts because they’re known as our sisters and brothers; where God is known as God truly is and love has no strings attached…not even a thread.

So, this morning, Repent! Remember who God really is. Remember that it is the very self of God who came to be one of us; to live and die as one of us; and to be raised from the dead among us; that God made manifest in the person of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

THE 2nd SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY - 16 January 2011

The Gospel John 1:29-42

John saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, `After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.' I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel." And John testified, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, `He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God."

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, "Look, here is the Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi" (which translated means Teacher), "where are you staying?" He said to them, "Come and see." They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, "You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas" (which is translated Peter).


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

My father and I were never close. We were each cut from very different cloth and had very different ideas about life. He was also a very distant figure which my mother attributes to having lived through the Second World War. As she relates, the man who returned from the South Pacific wasn’t exactly the man she’d married before the War and while in many ways he was still the same man, he was in many ways also very different. And she went on to succeed in truly loving this new incarnation. The War also affected me as a kid. As Mom told him in later years, “You were a great provider, but not a very present father.”

Dad was never a devout man. He usually worked on Sundays while Mom and I went to Church. But in his later years and to her great surprise, he began tagging along with her. And he seemed to get something out of it, especially receiving Holy Communion. He never talked about it, but he went.

As with many men who’d survived the War, Dad never talked about it unless he was in the presence of other veterans. And then they had to be veterans of the South Pacific. He claimed that the European war had been a whole different ball of wax. I guess we’ll have to take him at his word on that.

In his early eighties, Dad was diagnosed with a degenerative lung disease which was actually not a result of forty years of smoking. At the age of thirteen, he’d been kicked in the chest by a horse and it had taken seventy years to fester. By now, it was beyond repair.

His last summer, I went back to spend some time with Mom and Dad in rural North Carolina. They’d retired there because there were seven golf courses: one for each day of the week which he did religiously until his health began to fail. Then life wasn’t really worth living anymore. It was just a matter of time and then….release.

One night after dinner, Dad and I sat out on the back patio. It was a warm night and the lightning bugs were out. I was tempted to get a jar and catch some but I was now in my forties. I had to be an adult! It was quiet, the only sounds being the crickets and Dad’s oxygen tank puffing away. The scrub pines aren’t very tall and above them one could see the sky lit bright as day, the stars shining as if powered by electricity.

It was at this moment that Dad decided to talk about the War. Maybe it’s because when death’s near some people let their guard down. I’m not sure and I’ll never know.

He said: I’m not sure which battle it was since at this point they all run together. And there were so many of them. But I do remember that it was summer and monsoon season. We were on an island and trapped by the enemy and it was raining to beat the band. It wasn’t cats and dogs. It was cows and horses. We were knee deep in mud and surrounded. We all knew that it might be our last day and so we were all rather uneasy.

Around eight, the monsoon turned into a full blown hurricane and we were bailing water out of the foxholes slower than it was pouring in. We were tired, frustrated and scared out of our minds, but we kept bailing. It was something to do.

Around midnight, the rain stopped. It was warm and steam started rising from the ground. And then the clouds parted and between the trees all we could see was sky. Blue sky. Black sky. And since we were thousands of miles from any town, the stars shown brighter than those up there. He pointed. The air was still and nobody said a word. Our entire unit just sat in their fox holes and stared at the sky – for the longest time.

There was this guy in our unit named Hershel, a Jew. He wasn’t devout or anything. Didn’t wear a skull cap under his helmet or anything like that. But he’d been raised devout. We all had. That’s how it was in those days. We were raised with it, but most of us had left it behind including Hershel. But it was Hershel’s kosher voice that broke the silence. He said what we were all thinking, what we all knew somewhere deep inside us. “We’re not alone.”

And we all knew what he meant. And for some reason, we all sat back. And for some reason we all felt safe even though we knew that this would be our last night. It was OK. We weren’t alone. And the stars continued to shine.

The next thing we knew, the sun was up and the mud was hard. Jungle birds were squawking and making all sorts of racket. But that’s all we could hear. We packed our gear and slowly crawled out of the fox holes and headed towards the beach. When we got there, it was empty. There wasn’t anybody there. The enemy had gone. And we were still alive.

Somebody yelled, “Hey Hershel, you were right.” Hershel yelled back, “I still am!” for out on the horizon was a battle ship, a British battle ship. And we all began to cheer!!!!

Dad was quiet for a while. The O2 tank puffing away. Then he said: I see those stars up there tonight and I feel the same way I did sixty years ago. Tonight may be the last night. I don’t know. I don’t care. I just know I’m not alone. That’s all that really matters.

In this morning’s Gospel, John the Baptist cries, “Look! There is the Lamb of God!” And those around him would’ve known what he meant. This was no sacrificial lamb of atonement, a metaphor which would be later added by Christian Bishops trying to keep the masses in line. No, this Lamb of God referred to the Suffering Servant proclaimed by Isaiah, the Lamb of God who takes on the burdens of the whole People of Israel and walks with them in the shadow of death. This is the Lamb of God who accompanied the Jewish people in the wilderness to remind them that even though they might be lost, they were not alone. In this Epiphany season, this is the Lamb of God who is the bright morning star shining in the darkness, that star whose light the darkness can never blot out; that star which reminds us that in the midst of the darkness, God is still present and alive and with us, the God who is always with us and isn’t going anywhere.

So, in the coming days, days which are typically dark and dreary in Seattle, drizzly and damp and all around unpleasant weather-wise, keep watch each night and wait for one of those rare but dependable clear, crisp nights where the dark is deep and the stars shine like they’re powered by GE. And bundle yourself up and go outside and just stand and look at the stars. These stars are Sacraments, living reminders of the presence of God, and remember that you and we are not alone; that in the midst of the darkness the light SHINES! That star who became one of us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.