Christus Victor: Christ the Victorious

This is an edited version of a sermon preached on Ascension Sunday, at the Montesano Church of God.

This is the time in the church year when we celebrate Jesus’ ascension. We’ve walked with Jesus toward the cross, as he is executed by Rome for posing a threat to the empire. We have stood with the women at an empty tomb and rejoiced at the resurrection. Now, we are transitioning from Easter to the time of the church. The disciples are transitioning from a time when they have had Jesus physically present with them to a time when Jesus is leaving them—and leaving them with a mission.

When we read the story of the ascension, what strikes me most unmistakably, is the power of God that is revealed in Jesus. We have seen Jesus live among his people in the tiny two bit towns of Galilee—born in a barn (literally, folks), poor, hungry, without a place to lay his head. We have seen Jesus arrested, imprisoned, executed when the religious leaders and Roman governor see him as a threat—the crucified God, as my favorite theologian says.

Now we see Jesus fully reveal the power of God. Now we see the risen, victorious Christ ascend to stand at the right hand of God. Jesus who tramples his enemies, who tramples death itself, who laughs in the face of his enemies. Who, in the words of Colossians, “disarmed the rules and the authorities and put them to open shame.” Jesus won. The empire, those who opposed him, the powers of this world—LOST.

What Jesus’ Power is Not

You know, there was a time that I was uneasy with talking about a powerful God. For several reasons: Sometimes preachers talk about God’s power as if its all about wrath and judgment—that God’s gonna get you if you don’t believe just the right thing or do everything right.

There is another reason. I visited this chapel in England, one of the oldest in the country. In that chapel, there is a huge stained glass image of Jesus with a crown on his head and a sword in his hand. The Jesus of empire. The Jesus of Constantine. Jesus standing at the head of armies and empires. We know, from Jesus’ own words that this is not the kingdom of God.

Why We Need a Powerful Jesus

Then, I thought about where the term Christus Victor really comes from. The concept first showed up in the art of Roman Christians in their burial sites in the catacombs. It would be inscribed on the tombs of people who had died unjust deaths, inscribed with palm branches as a symbol of victory. Because these men and women—many of them slaves, poor persecuted and oppressed—believed in a powerful, victorious God revealed to them in Jesus. It was an act of defiance—that Jesus was stronger than the empire that oppressed them.

But Jesus is not on the side of empire. I had a conversation with a man the other day. He’s been homeless for awhile—working, but unable to afford housing. We had a conversation about how difficult it has been for him to find a place to stay. Finally, he sighed and said; ”Well, at least Jesus is on my side.”

How God’s Power is Revealed

So, Jesus is revealed to us as King of kings and Lord of lords. More powerful than the Roman governor—more powerful than the Roman Caesar, than the high priest in Jerusalem. How amazing, how revolutionary this must have been for the poor fishermen and tax collectors and women who followed Jesus.

Remember what Jesus said as he was leaving his disciples in Acts? “You will receive power.” I am with you. My power is your power.

When we face hardship and difficulty, Jesus is on our side. When we face death and loss, Jesus is on our side. When we face poverty—because some of us have done that too—when we lose everything, Jesus is on our side. And Jesus is powerful. More powerful than empires. More powerful than the forces of evil in this world.

And Jesus’ call—our mission—is to be witnesses of that promise.

It is my call too and it is my particular call to witness to this promise of the streets of the harbor. The statistics are grim here—a 25% poverty rate. A teen outreach organization is putting together data from the school districts and they have counted 800 children homeless on the harbor. There are probably about 400 people actually living on the street—though the final numbers are not in yet.

We, here on the harbor, and everywhere else for that matter, need a resurrected and ascended Savior. We need the one who defeated the powers of death and promised us “I come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” Sometimes abundant life is hard to come by—especially on the street. We need hope of victory. And the God who set the children of Israel free in the desert, the God who was raised from the dead is on our side!

Because Jesus ascended and sits and the right hand of God a new kingdom is ours.

 

Because Jesus ascended and sits at the right hand of God...

We will rise again—not just individually, not just in the hereafter. But here and now, in our communities too. Abundant resurrection life is ours NOW, given to us by the power of a resurrected Savior.

Hungry on a Fertile Land

When we think of food deserts, we think of inner cities with overpriced mini marts, located a hundred miles and a world away from any usable farmland. We don’t think of rural America.

I live in a part of the world better known for its forests than its agricultural potential. I grew up on a hillside farm with topsoil so thin that it took a decade to grow decent pasture—since loggers apparently didn’t realize that clearing land with a bulldozer and pushing mounds of topsoil over cliffs was a bad idea. However, the broad Chehalis river valley and its tributaries were logged before bulldozers and its deep, rich topsoil once supported crops and countless dairy farms.

Now, most of the farms are sitting empty. Some of the dairy farms have been turned into subdivisions, only half the homes sold and sitting empty since the financial crash of ’08.

And much of Aberdeen, the largest town in the region, could be considered a food desert. A fruit stand just moved into downtown, a hopeful sign. Otherwise, in a very poor city, most of us shop at Wal Mart, McDonalds, and the local mini mart, because we can’t afford otherwise.

I find it shocking, in a region with enough agricultural land to feed itself and feed itself very well, our people eat processed hamburgers shipped from the south and canned goods shipped from China. Or can’t afford food at all. After all, seventy percent of kids in Aberdeen eat free and reduced price lunches and one teacher I spoke with wondered aloud if some of them ate lunch at all when they were not at school.

It all boils down to this: to be poor in this country is to lack access. Access to land in a region rich with natural resources. Access to housing in a region that once supplied most of the material for building homes in this country.  Access to basic needs, like healthy food—or food at all.

We think of the Middle Ages and its feudal system as barbaric in part because people starved on fertile land, people were executed for harvesting or hunting on their lord’s land, because people had no access to land or space in order to thrive—or even survive.

Today, in rural America, people who cut the timber that build your home don’t have a roof over their heads. Today, no trespassing signs guard the vast tracks of land that could provide resources to thousands of poor. Banks own hundreds of empty homes foreclosed during the housing crisis. Today, farmland lies fallow because state regulation and a corporate economy make it impossible for small scale farmers to survive. Today, immigrant families who work harvesting or fishing can’t feed their kids.

We think that capitalism is all about money—and it is. Some people—a few—make a killing off this arrangement. But it is also about land, about space, about access to space. In late capitalism, money buys access. 

The prophet Isaiah condemned the leaders of ancient Israel; “Woe to those who add house to house and join field to field, until there is no more room and you dwell alone in the land” (Isaiah 5:8). In our world, all the space has been bought up and the poor lose. 

In Brazil, in India, in France, in Mexico, poor people with no access to land have demanded access. This is why landless farmers in Brazil take over unused farmland. Why communities in Chiapas decide that they will control their own land and build local economies.

In this place, in a forgotten corner of the U.S., where children go hungry surrounded by fertile land, what will we do? 

The Victor

 
“If the emperor and the empire wish to pursue the course of aggression and slavery that have brought agony and terror and despair to the world, if there’s nothing left for men to hope for but chains and hunger, then my king will march forward to right those wrongs.  Not tomorrow, sire.  Your Majesty may not be so fortunate as to witness the establishment of his kingdom, but it will come!” From the 1953 film The Robe

Christus Victor. Christus Rex. Christ the king.

I squirm sometimes with this language and the history it carries. Cathedrals and churches all over the world, especially the Western world, have stained glass images of a crowned and victorious Jesus. King Jesus, invoked by Constantine to head his armies and by most other European monarchs since. The Victorious Christ, invoked by empire as a figurehead, a leader, a stamp of approval from God for oppression and conquest, eventually the conquest and genocide of an entire hemisphere.

When I left the neo-Calvinism with which I had been raised, one of the reasons I did so was because I realized I could no longer believe in an all-powerful God who sat above human experience as an impassable sovereign. Who orchestrated the world, but was unmoved by its suffering.

I needed a God in solidarity; I needed a God that would walk with me through the pain and suffering of life. It was the crucified God that caught my attention and sustained my faith—and still continues to do so. A God who was revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, who lived and died as one of us. A God who died at the hands of empire—died so that every one of us who has ever suffered, ever been oppressed would know God was with us and God was on our side. This is the core of my theology. 

But, as I began to work in poor communities, I realized that I could not build a theology on a God with no power. Because, in oppressed communities, we need a God that is more powerful than the systems that oppress us. We need a God who can overcome death and the death dealing forces of systemic evil. Not as a cruel king, not as the figurehead of empires, but as the exact opposite; the Jesus of the early church, the Jesus on the side of the oppressed who “disarmed the rulers and authorities, putting them to open shame.” Here in Aberdeen, we need a God bigger than capitalism, bigger than lawmakers, bigger than the American Empire.

We need a victorious Jesus as well as a crucified Jesus. A Jesus who defied empire, not only unto death, but also unto resurrection. A Jesus in solidarity at the site of execution, but also in solidarity in resurrection and power. A Jesus who tramples on the forces of sin and hell that oppress us.

Christus Victor. Christ the victorious. Easter morning, the grave is empty. The empire has lost—the executed God could not stay dead, no matter how hard they tried. We need a victorious Savior; we need a Lord above all other lords; we need a risen Jesus. We need a Christus Victor who fights by the side of his people, his poor, who not only knows their pain, but plans to end it.

Called as a Witness: Lent 4 Sermon

This is the fourth Sunday of Lent. Our texts have been leading us on a journey, a journey toward Easter, toward resurrection, and a journey through some of the stories of John’s gospel.

John opens his gospel by announcing to us that Jesus is God made flesh, living among us, the light not only of his people, but of the world. God has broken into our reality. God is incarnated, infleshed, among us. God has become one of us, entered into solidarity with us. And this breaking in of God into our world is like a great light dawning.

And, in each of our readings, John has brought forward a witness to this inbreaking of God. Nicodemus, a scared religious leader, who comes by night to Jesus to find out more about this new prophet of Israel. A Samaritan woman, a woman of a different religion, a woman despised by her neighbors, who speaks with Jesus and then bears witness to her entire town. And, today, in our reading, a young man born blind, who panhandles on the side of the road, bears witness before his entire town and religious community.

I am fascinated by how John consistently chooses people disrespected in their wider culture to bring the good news in his gospel. Like this young man in our text; a nobody, just a beggar at the side of the road.

The God who becomes flesh, becomes flesh in an obscure region of the Roman Empire, in Nazareth of Galilee. Not in Rome, the political center. Not even in Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious life. In Galilee. All through John’s gospel, people ask; “Can anything good come from Nazareth—that tiny village of peasants, farmers, nobodies?" The religious leaders dismiss him entirely—no decent prophet ever comes from Galilee.

And so the people who bear witness to Jesus in John’s gospel are also nobodies in the eyes of the world around them. They are people told over and over by the Empire under which they live that they are unimportant. This whole region suffers terribly under the Roman Empire—deeply impoverished, living and working on land they did not own, harassed by the roman military.  Only a few decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection, most of the region is utterly destroyed by a Roman army. They are poor, despised, non-citizens, and considered powerless.

But they are not powerless in John’s gospel. Those who have no dignity under empire are called children of God. Those who are considered powerless are called by Jesus to participate in the great work of liberation and redemption.

Our gospel this morning tells the story of a man born blind. It seems that he was pretty young, since his parents are called to answer for him and have to argue that he is of age (13, by the way). Not able to work in his society, apparently his family could not support him and so it seems he spent his days panhandling and was known as a local beggar. The text does not say where Jesus is at the time of this healing, but almost everyone would have been poor in whatever town Jesus was in at the time. But this young man would have been pretty much at the bottom of the socioeconomic heap.

So much so, that locals look at him and wonder what he has done wrong, what mistakes he has made. Clearly, he must be a sinner.

When people look at this blind man, they see someone worthy of pity, but not a full human being.

When Jesus turns to look at him, Jesus sees him for who he truly is. Jesus sees his full humanity, as a child of God, called to bear witness to the glory of God.

And Jesus heals him. A simple and a profound act of healing. The God who comes in flesh heals not just our souls but our bodies; is concerned about our lives.

This act, however, brings a firestorm of controversy over Jesus. The religious leaders are angry that he healed on the Sabbath, angry that Jesus is there at all, angry at Jesus’ message. The people of this village are curious and asking questions. But the religious leaders are so angry they call the young man in and ask him question after question. Then they call his parents in. They simply refuse to believe the story this young man repeats to them over and over.

But this young man will not back down from his story. Jesus healed me. He says it over and over, simply, patiently, not so patiently. “I was blind and now I see.”

Why are the religious leaders so angry? Is it because they feel that Jesus is getting too much attention? Or are they angry that Jesus chooses to call people like the Samaritan woman with a questionable past, or this young man they only think of as a beggar? Are they angry because their assumptions about how the world works are getting challenged?

I started street ministry three years ago, on the streets of Boston while I was in seminary. I joined this ministry and went out there, thinking that I had so much to offer. I was going to bring my gifts to people. I was going to help people.

Well, it didn’t work out that way at all. My assumptions of how the world worked—that there were people who helped and there were poor people that got helped—was overturned completely. I found the gospel preached to me by people our society told me were nobodies.

I didn’t save anyone. They converted me instead. They taught me about faith in the hardest of circumstances. They taught me about love and community when the going got rough. They taught me about courage.

In the text, this blind boy who was healed—this beggar—this panhandler—this homeless person is the bringer of the gospel He is the preacher of the gospel in our text.

Jesus turns the tables on people’s assumptions.

They believe that this panhandling blind man has made bad choices, is a sinner, and is unworthy not only of God’s mercy but of being chosen to bring good news.

Jesus turns the table on them.

And, so, there is a trend in the Bible. We see it in our first reading, when a young David, who was not even invited to his father’s feast because he was thought to be too insignificant, too young is anointed by God to be king.

I want you to listen to this very closely. God calls, over and over in the Bible, God calls people that the world says are insignificant, useless, poor, weak, stupid, you name it.

God reveals himself in the person of Jesus Christ in a bunch of tiny villages in Galilee, in the middle of nowhere.

Jesus chooses a poor blind kid that makes his living begging in streetcorners to tell of the good news.

Perhaps this is the most important news we can hear.

When I tell people I live in Montesano or work in Aberdeen, most people outside this area can’t even find these places on the map. But the God who came to Galilee calls us, here and now, to be the light of the world.

And when I go down under the bridge every week or when I walk and talk with folks, I hear the good news here in Aberdeen. People who have nothing share everything. People who have two blankets give one to a friend. People who are outcast from the wider community create their own community.

So I tell you this. If you have ever felt like a nobody, if you have ever felt like your life doesn’t matter, if you have ever felt like you are wasting your life in this small town, listen now. God has a call on your life. You are the bringers, my friends, of the good news. 

A Lenten Journey: The Dark Night

One of the oldest cedar trees on the peninsula blew over this
month in a storm. The remarkable thing is, in a few years,
this thousand year old tree will be fostering new life and
new growth. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy
comes in the morning!

I have been thinking a lot about journey this Lent, meditating on that journey through the wilderness with God that Lent invites us to. Each week, the lectionary invites us into one stage of the journey.

This first stage, represented by the story of Jesus tempted in the wilderness and by the story of our first parents’ fall in the garden, is one of a dark night of the soul.  Most of us have known times of deep loss and soul-searching, times when God seems to abandon us, times when we feel like we are lost in the wilderness, times when we are tempted to be anything less than our true and whole selves.

As I approach ordination, my practice has been to find my own story in this Lenten journey. And I think about how this journey began. Perhaps all journeys begin with restlessness or with pain or grief or loss.

I remember a time in my life where I confronted the dark night of the soul, full on, in all its terror. Precipitated by the loss of all that had seemed certain in my life, I grappled with God. I grappled with my history and, sometimes, the sheer longing for God and for meaning took my breath away.

And this experience ultimately led to this journey toward priesthood.

We think of times like these as times to avoid at all costs. But they are also deeply fertile times in our life, times when God comes to us in ways we could never have imagined.

It is said that the dark night is not only experienced by individuals, but it is experienced collectively as well. I have been deeply formed by witnessing the dark night of so many communities in this country; in Oaxaca as old ways of life are lost, in the U.S. as immigrant communities seek ways to survive, on the streets of our great cities as more and more people find themselves homeless. I have watched my hometown founder and struggle—as the timber industry crashed, as we became one of hundreds, thousands of rural towns forgotten by a world moving on to bigger and better things. I have watched as mills go silent, as tent cities go up, as shops and farms close.

This, the world's pain, has also formed me on this journey—called inexorably to me to seek for hope for my people.

Writing about the dark night of the soul is an odd thing to do on my birthday. But it is one stage on this remarkable journey—not the whole story. I am overwhelmed with gratitude for all I have learned and all I have become as I walk this strange and exhilarating journey.

Entering the wilderness on this journey is a dangerous thing, but it is also a thing of beauty. As I walk the great forests of my home, I hear the hemlock saplings and the new buds on the alder and the sweet, fresh rain whisper of hope and a future.

Sermon Epiphany 6: God with Us in Galilee--and Allyn!



St Hugh Allyn and their lovely Labyrinth

Text: Matthew 5:21-37

You know, whenever I read this passage that we read this morning, all I can seem to hear is Jesus saying; “If your hand offends you, cut your hands off. If your eyes offend you, pull them out.” And that’s it. I’m done. Jesus sounds perfectly crazy and it becomes hard for me to get to the point of Jesus’ message.

So, before we talk about this passage, I want to set some of the context.

Matthew has a very distinct flow, a very distinct message. The gospel introduces Jesus in the very first chapter as “God with us” as Emmanuel, as the Epiphany of God. God has come to us as a baby born in a barn, as a child fleeing from Herod. God has come to us as a wandering rabbi teaching in the Galilean hills.

Matthew introduces Jesus’ ministry with these words; “The way of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, by way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light; on those who dwell in the region of the shadow of death; on them the light has dawned.” Jesus both starts and spends the majority of his ministry in this region of Northern Palestine, called Galilee.

Now, its important to note that Galilee is considered a backwater region of the Roman Empire. It’s a bunch of small villages and two bit towns with peasants and fishermen. Some scholars wonder if the reason Matthew focuses so much on Jesus’ Galilean ministry is because the gospel itself was written in Galilee many years later, after the fall of Jerusalem. Matthew reminds us that God came to us, not in Rome, the political center of the day; not in Jerusalem, the religious center, but in Galilee, where he grew up and spent most of his ministry. The light has dawned on Galilee, first. Of all the places God could have revealed himself, God chooses Galilee.

There is one more thing to know about Galilee. It, like the rest of the region, is under the rule of Rome. It does not fare very well. It is said that the roads leading from Galilee south into Jerusalem were often lined with crosses—every time there was a rebellion, every time a Roman governor wanted to make a point. The Galileans suffered tremendously under Roman rule. God comes to us in a suffering people.

And on one of these backwater hillsides, Jesus draws a large crowd around him, and he gives what we call the Sermon on the Mount—the longest recorded sermon given by Jesus. Jesus looks at the men and women and children of Galilee—these peasants and these farmers and these fisherfolk—and he says; “You are blessed. You might be poor and mourning and landless now—but you are blessed in the kingdom of God.” “You—you who are told that you are worth nothing, who are told you are at the bottom of the social and economic heap—you are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth.” You are the ones who are going to reveal the Epiphany of God to the world.

Can you imagine how important, how revolutionary those words must have been?

And, then, in our reading this morning, Jesus gets down to business. You blessed people, you people who are the light of the world, you who are called to be part of the kingdom of God—a better kingdom than Rome ever could be—let’s live in light of that.

Jesus is not laying down a bunch of rules so much as he is outlining a new way to live, in light of this kingdom of God. He says—it is not enough simply to not kill each other. You need to learn to love each other, to patch up your arguments. Don’t bring each other to Roman courts—learn to work out your disagreements. Learn to live in love. Learn to live in community.

Its not enough simply not to cheat on your partner. Don’t treat each other as objects, don’t give into lust that demeans and hurts other people. Don’t abandon the one that depends on you for support simply because you feel like it. Learn to live in love, in community.

And be honest and have integrity. Don’t swear oaths—and there were many in the ancient world. Oaths of loyalty to Rome, oaths of honesty in a courtroom, there were religious oaths and vows. Jesus said—be so honest and act with such integrity that you do not need to swear an oath. Learn to live in community.

In other words, treat each other—not like Rome treats you—but treat each other with dignity and respect. Have compassion—that is suffer with—each other. In other words, love one another. This is what love looks like in action.

Nice and easy, right? I know of so many ways I have failed to live in love and live in community. We struggle for the kingdom, we reach for the kingdom, and the kingdom is among us, but it is also not yet.

So, time for introductions. I did my discernment for ordination in a Total Common Ministry church, at St Marks Montesano. Then I decided to go off to seminary. Now, I’ve ended up back where I started, or very close, serving in Aberdeen, back in local ministry in a place I love so much.

Perhaps that is why I love Matthew so much, love the message of Matthew so much. The God who came to us in the tiny villages of Galilee comes to us in the small towns of the Olympic Peninsula. In all of these little towns that most people can’t find on the map, God comes.

And we know something about living in community, don’t we? Something about the importance of staying in relationship with each other when the going gets rough? Like the little towns in Galilee, in our small towns, we have to learn to be neighbors. We have to learn to take care of each other. Its something small towns can teach our larger world, I think. We live in a world that says—look out for #1. We live in a world that glorifies greed and materialism and getting ahead at the expense of other people. Here, in these little towns, we have the opportunity, just like Galilee to model a different way of being in the world.

And I’m working on the street most of the time, in Aberdeen, where there are hundreds of people homeless and the poverty rate is something like 25%. And, there, the message of Matthew is even more important. Every week, I sit down and have conversations with people who are struggling terribly, people who are at the bottom of the socioeconomic heap. And what is amazing, is that I find God there. I find the church there. I find amazing gifts and I find that, indeed, the light comes in dark places. Elderly men who have lost everything teach me about grace; women who have experienced abuse teach me about courage; young people who were born into a devastated economy teach me about hope and survival. We are learning to live in community, to live in love.

So, to you, small towns of the Olympic Peninsula, the light has come, God has made Godself known. The Epiphany, the appearing of God, has come.

You, Allyn and Shelton and Montesano and Aberdeen and the people of God in these places, you are the light of the world.

You, all of you, all of us, are called to live in the light of that grace, to live in community, to live seeking love and relationship. To care for each other in a world that so often seems to have gone wrong.

Sermon Epiphany 5: Christ and Him Crucified

Text: Matthew 5:13-20 and 1 Corinthians 2:1-5

“You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”

I have always been struck by the way St Andrew’s calls itself a “beacon of light on 1^st and G.”

Epiphany, this season following Christmas, is a time we talk about light. The word, epiphany, means appearing, specifically the appearing of God, of the divine into our midst. It speaks of the in-breaking of God into our world, the revelation of God to us.

We, as the people of God, are supposed to reflect that light. That is what Jesus tells us in our gospel passage this morning. “You are the light of the world.” We are a people so touched and so transformed by the presence of God among us that we reflect it to the world around us.

It sounds like a pretty glorious mission, doesn’t it? It sounds powerful. It sounds important. We are light of the world. Whole empires have been built based on the belief that they offer light to the world.

Is that what Jesus means? You are the light of the world? You have all the answers? You are powerful and everyone should look up to you?

Paul, in our reading from 1 Corinthians, doesn’t think so. We don’t always get around to Paul’s writing in the lectionary or spend as much time with it. But he is probably the greatest Christian theologian who ever lived. He writes this letter—a series of letters in fact-- to the churches he has founded in Corinth, that great Greek city sitting on the Mediterranean. And there is a problem in Corinth. There is all sorts of jostling for power. All sorts of infighting.

And Paul says, no, no, no. You want to know what my message, what the Christian message is all about? You want to know what is truly important to God?

Look to the cross. I have determined, Paul says, to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Look to the cross. Now, what do you think about when you think of a cross? Now, in our churches, the cross is revered. We have gold plated crosses all over the place. All well and good, but do you know that for the first three centuries of Christianity, the cross was never pictured or drawn in Christian art? Do you know why?

Because saying that the one you worshipped was crucified was saying that he was executed for treason in the worst way possible. It was like saying—yeah, we worship that guy that was sent to the electric chair. To Jesus’ own people in Palestine, the cross was a symbol of torture and despair, a reminder of the thousands of crosses that lined the roads at that time. To the urban and cultured Greeks of Corinth, the cross was a symbol of shame, of criminality, something that only happened to low lifes and criminals and ne'er do wells.

But Paul says I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified. He goes on and explains that what seems foolish to us, what seems foolish to the cultured and refined Greeks of Corinth is actually wisdom to God. What seems powerless and weak to us, to the world, is where God’s power lies.

God came to us in the person of Jesus Christ, not as a wealthy and wise ruler, but as a poor and crucified carpenter. What’s more, the Epiphany of God came in a barn, on a lonely hillside, on a cross to a lonely and forgotten people in a bunch of two bit towns. And finally, in a garden tomb. The Epiphany of God, the Light of God was revealed in weakness. On a cross. God died, in the person of Jesus Christ, at the hands of an executioner. Can you imagine the powerlessness and the shame of that?

Why? Why did God come to us, not in earthly power, but in weakness and shame? Why did God choose to come to us like that?

So that, every one of us who feels alone
who feels ashamed
 who confronts death
 who experiences death and loss
who is ignored
who feels lost or powerless
 who has lost everything…

 would know that God was with us. In solidarity with us.

So, what does that mean for us? What does this mean to be a beacon of light on first and G? It sounds a little less romantic now, doesn’t it? What does it mean for us to follow a crucified God? What does it mean for us?

It means we are a people, not great and good people so much, as people who have experienced the grace of God. We are, all of us, broken people called to follow a crucified master, and live in the light, in the revealing, in the Epiphany of the grace of God.

We are in a time of transition, a time that makes us feel powerless, that makes us feel uncomfortable, that sometimes makes us feel foolish. We are struggling to remember who we are.

If nothing else, let us remember this. We are a people marked by grace. The light we reflect is only the light of the Grace of God in our own lives. We don’t build God’s work. We only reflect God’s grace, we only live in the light of God’s grace.

I had a dear man teach me something about this. I went down under the bridge on Christmas Day—I was with Bonnie Campbell, the priest from Montesano, and there were only a few folks there. We sat down and talked, looking over the river. He said; “You know, Christmas is all about grace. God comes to us and we share with each other and we care for our neighbors and we find grace.” What is foolish to the world is the wisdom of God. In the places we believe are powerless, the power of God is found.

We don’t know what will come next for us here at St Andrews. But I invite you, just for a moment to lay aside your worries and your uncertainties. Trust in the one we follow, this Christ and him crucified. Learn from this wise man I met. Know that in our weakness, God’s power is made manifest. In our foolishness and our mistakes, God’s wisdom is made known.

Trust in grace. Live in the light of grace. Reflect the light of this grace. Because, you are the light of the world.