7January2001sermon.htm

Epiphany 1, Year C, 2001

St Paul's Episcopal Church, Bound Brook, NJ

Readings: Luke 3:15-16, 21-22; Isaiah 42:1-9

It's two weeks after Christmas,
and doesn't it feel
like a long time ago?
The carols are no longer playing, the decorations have come down,
and Christmas trees lie out on the curb
waiting to be recycled
into garden mulch.

It's two weeks after Christmas,
and the baby has been left far behind
in the manger in Bethlehem.
The gospel reading today
already has him
a 30 year old man,
and we are propelled forward with him
into adult life and responsibility.

But do you ever wonder
about the bits the bible
left out?

It's two weeks after Christmas,
and in those two weeks
we've traveled from the newly born baby
in Bethlehem,
to a fully grown adult, being baptized somewhere out in the wilderness
by John, bypassing
on the way
childhood and adolescence,
and the first troublesome years
of adult responsibility.

There's a story or two, wise men from the East,
Simeon and Anna at the temple for his dedication,
the 12 year old left behind on a family trip in Jerusalem,
too busy discussing theology with his elders
to notice
his parents
had gone.

But that's not much
for 30 years of growing up.
You see, by my logic, the gospels tell the story of Jesus' life, and given that
we read them over the period of a year,
if we squeeze 33 years
into 52 weeks,
by my reckoning, we should still be in the midst of diapers and teething,
and perhaps his first tottering
baby steps.

The writers of the gospels
obviously made a decision
that those early childhood stories
which we so love to tell,
especially when they are accompanied
by the family photo album,
those early childhood stories
just weren't as important
in the overall scheme of things
as the later details of Jesus' preaching and teaching and healing.
Remember, these gospels were written in a time
when there were no photocopiers
no printing presses.
When you are writing something out by hand,
every word matters;
every choice
is important.
The writers of the gospels
chose, for the most part,
to leave out the stories of when Jesus was a child,
but they also chose to put in
many, many stories
of that intense period of his ministry
those three years
before he died.

Which is why I always become a little suspicious
when I see a lectionary reading like today's,
with a couple of verses, then a gap, and then a couple more verses.
Because it makes me wonder why
if the writer of Luke's gospel thought it was so important
to include those missing verses,
we choose to exclude them.
Sometimes, of course, it's because the writer has suddenly had a thought,
kind of related, but not really part of the story, and so we skip the bit
that's kind of off on a tangent.
But other times, it seems, it's more to do
with the things we like to hear
and the things
we would rather
avoid.
And in today's gospel, it's a bit of both.

What Luke is really interested in,
in his gospel,
is telling the story of Jesus.
But as he tells it, he inevitably has to introduce John the Baptist,
because John
is well known
for wandering round
in the wilderness,
predicting
the arrival
of the Messiah,
and John
is the one
who identifies that Messiah
as Jesus.
And that's really
the end of John's part
in the story.

But as Luke is finishing up with John, and getting ready to focus on Jesus
agin, he thinks "I must tell them what happened to John." And so we get
verses 18-20 - about how Herod got upset at John
and threw him in prison.

That's one of the bits
we left out
in our gospel reading
today - just an excursus, really.

But there is another bit
we left out, one which is a whole lot more troublesome.
This is verse 17, and I have a sneaking suspicion
that the reason its not in, is because
we don't like it.
You see, verse 17 goes like this,
"His winnowing fork
is in his hand,
to clear his threshing floor
and to gather the wheat into his granary;
but the chaff he will burn
with unquenchable
fire."
It's about judgement, and if there's one thing we like to avoid
it's judgement.
You see, without this left out bit,
we hear a story of baptisms,
of water being poured, over Christ and over us,
and a promise of another sort of baptism, of Holy Spirit and fire,
and our minds leap forward to that other day
when Holy Spirit and fire came together,
the day of Pentecost.

But put the left-out bit
back in,
and it's a whole different story.

Because this is a picture from harvest time.
Throw the newly harvested grain
up in the air with a fork
and the good grain falls on the ground,
while the husks and straw and other debris
are blown away
by the wind,
and then burned.

If this is the picture,
then the story is not just about a watery baptism
or even a fiery Pentecost,
but something totally different.
the holy wind and fire of Christ
blowing among us
to cleanse us,
to purify us,
to judge us
in the very best sense
of that word.

But if you're anything like me,
its hard to imagine
a good kind of judging.
For most of us,
the word judge
conjures up pictures of courtrooms
and punishments
and failure,
and when it comes to the church,
judgement is all about exclusion
and death
and hell.
It's that burning chaff
which sticks in our minds.

But you know, at harvest time,
the point is not
the burning chaff.
That's just a quick way of cleaning up.
The point of this whole process
is the wheat.
It's about separating out
the good grain from the worthless debris,
making sure none is lost,
gathering it up
to be used.

And so
what might be bad news
is actually
good news,
what might be words of condemnation
are actually
words of hope.
Because when you put it together
with the promises of forgiveness and healing
which Christ makes to us,
then the wind and fire blowing through us
work to strip away the debris
from our lives,
the accretions of fear and hurt
and anger and pain,
which get in the way
of us living
fully
and freely
in the love of God.

And they are words of hope
when we remember
that the Christ who baptizes
with holy wind and fire
is the same Christ, who,
dripping from his own
watery
baptism,
was declared
the beloved
of God.
Words which carry with them echoes
from the prophet Isaiah,
"Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice
to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed
he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick
he will not quench;
he will faithfully
bring forth justice."

The justice
and the judgement
brought by this Christ,
are not the justice and judgement
which condemn us
for our weakness
and our failures;
they are justice and judgement which,
knowing our weakness and failures,still offer
the promise
of forgiveness and healing
still offer
the possibility
of hope.

Yes, it is judgement,
but it is judgement
which is for us
not against us;
it is judgement
which is the way
not to death
but to life.

Put the left-out bit back in,
and the story
becomes filled with new richness,
filled with new hope,
filled with new promise.

Because no longer
are we bound
by our failures,
no longer are we bound
by our mistakes,
and our grudges,
and our fear.
The holy wind and fire of Christ
has blown through us,
freeing us from all that,
bringing us cleansing
and freedom,
the holy wind and fire of Christ
continues to blow through us
giving us strength and power
to live as Christ's body
in this world,
the holy wind and fire
sweeps through us
into the world
bringing hope
and forgiveness
and healing.

Thanks be to God

Raewynne J. Whiteley
7 January 2001