4th Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, January 29, 2012

O God of blessing, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

For those of you who have been following along in the Gospel of Mark, we have arrived at verse 21 in the first chapter! (If you blinked, you missed the first 20 verses.) I’ll summarize: John has appeared in the wilderness, calling for repentance for the forgiveness of sins quoting the prophets Isaiah and Malachi. He has announced that one is coming who is greater than he; has baptized multitudes in the Jordan, including Jesus. Jesus has experienced the pleasure of God and the temptation of Satan; he has been with the wild beasts and messengers sent from God served (or deaconed) him.[1] John has been arrested and Jesus has taken up the same call for repentance, proclaiming the good news that God’s love and justice are so close. Jesus has recruited two pairs of brothers for companions. He has promised to show them how to fish for people! And, now it’s as if the Gospel writer leans forward and says, “watch this!” Continue reading →

 
3rd Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, January 22, 2012

O God of good news, grant us the wisdom, the strength and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

This morning, I want us to notice that we have before us in our Gospel reading, Mark’s story of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (we’re only 14 verses in to first chapter of the Gospel of Mark). After John was arrested, according to Mark, Jesus came out of the Judean desert and into the Galilee announcing that God’s realm was very near. Jesus’ instructions were the same as John’s: to repent, that is, turn around toward God. A complete re-orientation is what they were calling for. “Turn around, the God you are searching for is right behind you, loving you, supporting you!” Jesus began to assemble a team to help him spread this good news that there is an entirely different kind of kingdom – or realm – an entirely different way to be governed than the way the empire does it.
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2nd Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, Jan. 15, 2012

O God of calling and questing, may we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth – come when it may and cost what it will.

Those of you who hear me preach on a regular basis know that I often comment on the reading appointments made in our common lectionary. And today is no different. In the midst of sequential readings during the season of Epiphany that are all from the Gospel of Mark, we have a passage from the Gospel of John. I don’t have the foggiest idea why. The answer often given is that the Gospel of Mark is just too short – it moves too fast. (I’ve parroted that answer myself.) But when I stop to think about it, I realize that I’ve never heard anyone in church complain that a Gospel reading (or a sermon, for that matter) was too short!
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1st Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B, January 8, 2012

O God of new beginnings, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will. Amen.

One of the peculiarities of the Western Christian liturgical calendar in these post-modern times is that the glorious Feast of the Epiphany, which always falls on January 6, the 12th day of Christmas, doesn’t get much purchase in our parish churches unless January 6 happens to fall on a Sunday. And the first Sunday after the Epiphany is the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord. That is the feast we observe today. And the problem, at least for our organist Nancy Granert and me (and probably others), is that that leaves no proper place to sing the most exquisite hymn setting of “Brightest and best of the stars of the morning,” except for maybe a hymn-sing in the summer. And so, as we did our usual weekly collaboration on music, we noted with regret that it would seem out of place to sing this hymn on a day that celebrates the Jesus’ encounter with John the Baptist at the Jordan River some three decades after his infancy. But I couldn’t let it go. I asked if it would be too weird to sing it. And Nancy’s enthusiastic response was “it would be weird and fab!” And I thought, “hey, that’s just like us – weird and fabulous!” Continue reading →