The message was simple.  Homeless residents of Washington have spent too long on the waiting lists of Washington.  People are waiting for housing and waiting to get into permanent supportive shelter.  An estimated 300 teens a night are on the waiting list for the dwindling number of youth-designated shelter beds funded by the city in Washington.  Shelter residents spent much of last year worried about whether the shelters would find their way off the mayor’s “waiting list” to receive their funding.  Homeless citizens are tired of waiting, and over 80 of them voted on Saturday, showing their political power.

        As the City Council prepares to debate the mayor’s budget proposals for the rest of FY2013 and FY2014, now is an important time for the homeless citizens and their allies to demonstrate their political power, and an important time for WIN.  Historically the Washington Interfaith Network has proven effective in turning out traditionally unlikely voters, and the “I Am a Voter” rally demonstrated that capability.  In the next weeks we will be working to turn out more people, members of our congregations and institutions, and other citizens of Washington.  Sign up to contact the council, to act with WIN and DC’s homeless voters to fund homeless services and bring the our homeless voters off the waiting list.

Thank you Chairman Graham for this opportunity to speak, and thank you to the 82 people who came to testify today.  I know it will be a long wait, but your voice is necessary.   My name is The Reverend Mike Angell, and I am a priest at St. John’s Church on Lafayette Square and a member of the Washington Interfaith Network.   I rise today to speak on behalf of members of our organizations, members of our churches, members of our institutions, citizens of this city, voters in the district of Columbia, human beings who live, work and study without adequate housing.

I’m a preacher, and so I tend to talk about Jesus.  There is a story about Jesus standing up in the temple to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.  He read, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me BECAUSE he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”  Jesus does not say “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me AND the Spirit has anointed me.  That would just be a sequence of events.  Jesus says, BECAUSE.  The relationship between the Spirit’s anointing, the relationship between God’s blessing and good news for the poor is not casual but causal, because.  We need to bring good news to the poor.

We live in a city with a lot of poor people. Washington DC announced for Fiscal Year 2013  a $417 million budget surplus, but we can’t find the money to keep homeless shelters open.  The homeless have been told there is a multi-million dollar budget deficit this year for shelters.  In 2008 we projected that by 2014 we would end chronic homelessness.  We would house all the people who are disabled or elderly and who have been living on the streets for more than a year.  There are over 2000 homeless people in Washington waiting for Permanent Supportive housing.  There are waiting lists with hundreds of youth every night for the few shelter beds we have for homeless youth, and in the past months the funding for the youth homeless has been slashed, which means there are fewer beds.   All this is happening while we are hemoraging affordable housing in this city and raiding the Housing Production trust fund.  We should not be cutting programs in years of surplus.  We need to bring good news to the poor.

We need more beds for homeless youth.

We need to make good on our promise to house the chronically homeless with Permanent Supportive Housing.

We need more affordable housing in this city.

These priorities come from listening to members of our churches, synagogues, and mosques, listening to the voters in our institutions.  They care about housing the most vulnerable.  Washington Interfaith Network will be training members of our institutions in voter engagement every week between now and the end of the Fiscal Year 2014 budget cycle.  We will be engaging with this city government to have our priorities of youth homeless services, permanent supportive housing, and affordable housing heard.   This won’t be the last time you see us, you hear from us, around these issues.

We need to bring good news to the poor in this city.

You can see my testimony on the Council’s video feed here (my testimony starts at about 47:40)

Abraham is 75 at the time, he’s made a life for himself.  The call is ludicrous.  Abraham is an old man.  I know, 75 is the new 50, but the Bible wants us to know that Abraham is old.  I have to tell you the image of this old man heading off from Haran, ignoring the good sense of his friends and family, to set off on an adventure captures my imagination.  There’s a reason this guy becomes the patriarch of three great religious traditions.  Abraham has guts..  Abraham also has an over-active imagination, the people of Haran would have whispered.  Abraham had an over-active imagination, thank God.

Two of the most exciting weeks of my life were spent in Austin, Texas at the Seminary of the Southwest.  It was my senior year of college, and I was gathered there with others who were about to be sent out as missionaries with the Episcopal Church.  We had sessions on missionary theology, cultural competency and the like.  The group that gathered was the best part of the gathering.  I made some great friends.  There were people from all over there church, but something about our demographics struck me.  Everyone was either 30 or younger or 55 and older.  People who have the time to spend a year or three serving with the Church in a foreign country were either at the beginning of their careers or were retired from their official careers.  We had a lot of fun together.  Something about bringing together the energy of 20 somethings with the experience of older folks makes for great conversations.  

The first day of our missionary training we gathered in a comfortable room in the seminary and told the story of the call that had brought us to the room.  I don’t remember what I said.  I don’t remember what anyone said, except a 60-something teacher named Sarah.  It’s convenient her name was Sarah, since I’m preaching about Abraham, but it really was her name.  Sarah gave me permission to tell her story.  We were asked to describe how we heard God call us to serve in a foreign country.  Sarah’s story began, “Well two things happened in quick succession in my life recently.  I retired after 35 years of teaching public school, and I got a colonoscopy.”  She had our attention.  “The doctor said my colon was in great shape, and that I didn’t have to come back for 10 years, and I thought ‘I’ve got 10 years.  I better do something with them.’”  You really never know how God is going to speak.  Sarah spent the next three years teaching English in a church school in China.

The leap between “you’ve got 10 years before your next colonoscopy” and teaching in China is a pretty big one.  I’d say my friend Sarah’s leap was almost as big as Abraham’s, between a nice settled life with his barren but beloved wife and the nephew he has taken in as a son and “fathering many nations” while wandering out there with God.  These are not easy leaps.  They take a lot of faith, but they take more than that, they take imagination.

Imagination is much maligned in our society.  We are a people who like hard facts.  We like science and reason and proof.  We like to be able to get our scientific minds around the tangible evidence.  The people in Abraham’s Haran weren’t too different.  In Abraham’s time the gods were made of clay.  Literally, clay.  The primary way of accessing the gods was by having little clay images to place in your home.  Today, in the post Abraham world, we call them idols.  But I can understand the impulse.  It’s nice to think you can get your hands around God, get your mind around God.  Indeed, a good number of Christians in our society think they do have their minds around and hands around God.  They think they have God figured out.  

Abraham saw things differently.   For Abraham, to use the words of Paul Tillich, “there was a God out there beyond ‘god.’” The God that called Abraham out of Haran was not confined to some clay vessel, not tangible.  I can imagine Abraham singing the old hymn, “Immortal, Invisible, God only wise.  In Light inaccessible hid from our eyes.”  Believing in that kind of God took a great imagination, and wasn’t easy.  In this morning’s reading we find Abraham at his wit’s end.  “Where are the offspring you promised Oh ineffable God?”  So God takes him out under the dark desert sky.  “Imagine Abraham.  Your children will be like the stars.”

A sketch by my father, who is also an old man who gazes at stars.

Ibn al Arabi, the great Muslim theologian and Sufi mystic says that the most important human organ for the spiritual life, is the imagination, the creative mind.  We beat up on imagination in our society.  We don’t like “imaginary stories,” but somehow we know we still need them.  Somehow we know we still need them.  We reserve a certain descriptor for really great leaders, for people who take our society to an entirely new place.  I’m not talking about good middle managers, I’m talking about the real greats.  The Steve Jobs and the Bill and Melinda Gates-es sometimes get the title, but it’s more often applied to even greater leaders, people who change the course of societies like Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, or Martin Luther King.  We call these great leaders “Visionaries,” because its as if they were able to see the new world coming before the rest of us could.  Well another way to describe these folks, I’d hazard, is to say they were able to “imagine the world they’d like to see.”  They weren’t just imagining a better life for themselves, anyone can do that.  The greatest kind of leader can imagine a better world, and set the world in motion toward the goal.  

I began this sermon by telling you a William Sloane Coffin story about Abraham, but I didn’t tell you the punch line.  Abraham is setting off to leave Haran, and his neighbors and friends gather to tell him they think he’s crazy.  “Don’t leave. We need you here” they say.  Abraham looks out at them and gives his answer.  He says, “you don’t need me.  No one is indispensable to anyone but God.”  No one is indispensable to anyone but God.  You may be the best middle manager at K-Mart, but you can be replaced.  You may be a fantastic cook, but there are other cooks.  You might be a wise counselor, but there are other counselors.  There is a certain freedom in realizing that we are not indispensable at work, and its a kind of freedom we need here in Washington.
Because it sets us free to realize that we are indispensable to God.  God needs us to have active imaginations.  God does not want us tied down by the responsibilities of being good citizens and consumers in Haran, but ready for an adventure with God, ready to go out there and count the stars.  So, what will you imagine?

Jesus says “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me BECAUSE.”  The Spirit is upon him for a REASON, there is a purpose, there is a BECAUSE.
“Because The Spirit has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
The Spirit has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,  to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

A painting by Pastor Laura Gentry, “to let the oppressed go free.”

Jesus does not say “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me AND the Spirit has anointed me.  That would just be a sequence of events.  Jesus says, BECAUSE.  The relationship between the Spirit’s anointing and good news for the poor is not casual but causal, because.  The reason, the purpose of the Spirit is named.  This is the Mission Statement of the Spirit’s anointing, the Because.  Jesus has just returned from the wilderness (We’ll hear the story of Jesus in the Wilderness with the Devil in a couple weeks at the start of Lent), but he is driven into the wilderness BY the Spirit, after the Spirit came down, swooped down on him at his baptism in the Jordan.  The Spirit has been the driving force for the past chapter of Luke.
So now Jesus explains why the Spirit of the Lord is upon him, why the Spirit came down. “Because, Jesus says, Because.”  There is a reason, a purpose, a because.

Luis used the same word, “because,” this last week in his benediction to close the inauguration of the President.  He’s going to hate that I’m including a bit about him in the sermon, so I will keep it brief.  I have to say we were proud of Luis this last week.  Many of our parishioners who watched expressed that they were amazed that on National TV how Luis seemed “exactly like himself.”  I agree, I think Luis Leon pulled off the best Luis Leon impression I’ve ever seen.  We were proud.  The Luis that the world saw is the Luis Leon we hear preaching here.  He even said, “We pray for your blessing because…with it we can see each other created in your image, a unit of God’s grace, unprecedented, unrepeatable and irreplaceable.”  The same message of love and grace we hear from this pulpit was heard on the National stage.
Unfortunately I can’t get Luis to comment on whether or not Beyonce was lip synching.  He says he was too far away to tell…

Back to the point.  In Luis’ blessing he used the word “because.”  “We pray for your blessing BECAUSE with it, we can see each other created in your image.” BECAUSE.  It’s almost like Luis is riffing on Jesus…adapting Jesus’ words for today.  Luis is in good company: Jesus was riffing on Isaiah.  Jesus knew his Haftarah.  In the theology of Luis’ benediction, in the theology of Jesus’ words today, the theology of the prophet Isaiah’s words there is a BECAUSE for blessing, there is a reason for the Spirit’s presence, there is a purpose to faith, a because.
To bring good news to the poor.  To proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
You know, modest goals for a thirty year old preacher.

That’s just it, there is nothing modest about this “because.”  There is nothing small about Jesus’ sense about what the life of the Spirit is about, about what he is about.  Jesus wants to see the world work differently.  Jesus says, “today this passage has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  Because the poor need good news, I am amongst you.  Because captives need to be released, I’m asking you to follow me.  Because the oppressed need to go free, you need to have faith.  Because we need to declare jubilee, we need to open the eyes of the blind, the Spirit is upon me.  Because.  There is nothing modest about Jesus’ sense of the Spirit’s anointing, nothing small about the faith of Jesus.

Notice what Jesus does not say.  Jesus does not say: “The Spirit of the Lord is Upon me because you all need a lesson in sexual morality.”  Jesus does not say: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because I want to make sure you go to heaven when you die.”  Jesus does not say: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to encourage you to give money to the synagogue.”  Jesus does not say: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to support Sarah’s side in this family argument, her sister Gina really needs to get it together.”  Our faith can get very small sometimes.  Our sense of the Spirit, our sense of “Because” can get us into Spiritual trouble.  When our mission, our because is too small, spirituality can seem trite.  The church can become nothing more than a social club.

There is a video that has been released by the Episcopal Church in Massachusetts, and the video features Bishop Tom Shaw.  Bishop Shaw, in addition to being a bishop, happens to be a monk, an Episcopalian monk.  His day to day clothes are a long black robe, the habit of his order of monks.  In the video Bishop Shaw tells the story of coming out of the Boston Metro, the “T,” and hearing two guys call to him from across the street, “Hey are you a Father?”  The Bishop said yes and they said, “Come here we’ve got a question for ya.”  The other guy said, “So, is it a sin to smoke dope?”  So the Bishop in his robes looked at him and said, “well…how much?”  He said, “just a couple of joints a week.”  So the Bishop said, “no that’s not a sin.  Sin is about the tremendous gap between rich and poor and the poverty in this country.  Sin’s about racism or homophobia and sin’s about war and violence, but it’s not about smoking a couple of joints a week.”  And the other guy said to him, “We want to join your church.”

The questioners in Bishop Shaw’s story have a very small sense of Spirituality.  It’s not surprising that they don’t go to church.  I would be bored of church if I thought that God’s biggest concern was whether or not someone was smoking pot.  But I go to a church where people think Jesus came into the world for bigger reasons than that.  The Jesus I know, the Jesus we know began a public ministry BECAUSE the Spirit of the Lord was upon him BECAUSE he had anointed him to bring good news to the poor, to set the oppressed free.

We live in a city with a lot of poor people. Washington DC expects to announce Tuesday  a $400 million budget surplus, but we can’t find the money to keep homeless shelters open, the homeless have been told there is a multi-million dollar budget deficit for shelters.  There are over 2000 homeless people in Washington waiting for Permanent Supportive housing.  There are waiting lists every night for the few shelter beds we have for homeless youth, and in the past months the funding for the youth homeless has been slashed, which means there are fewer beds.  We need to bring good news to the poor in this city.  We need the Spirit of the Lord and people who are willing to be engaged, anointed.

If you’re feeling down in the Spiritual life, if you’re searching for a connection to God, if you don’t feel like God is paying much attention, I think Jesus might have a word for you this morning.  The Spirit of the Lord can be found in bringing good news to the poor, release to the captives.  If you’re looking for God, probably the best advice I have is to seek God where God wills to be found, among the poor, among the oppressed, among the captives.

I’ve heard the stories from people in this parish who have spent time with our partners at the Kwasa Center in South Africa, with the Bishop Walker School in Anacostia.  I’ve heard stories of how God’s presence was so keenly felt as people reached out to bring good news to the poor.  I lived Honduras as a volunteer for the church for awhile and I watched doctors performing cataract surgery for rural villagers, literally bringing sight to the blind.  Those doctors would say that their eyes were opened as well, to God’s presence in the world, to the work God is doing even now to let the oppressed go free.  If you’re looking for God, a good way to start is to listen to Jesus quote the prophet this morning, his mission is located among the lost, the least, and the left out in our society.  Jesus, seeking to express his purpose, looks to the ancient tradition.  He reads in scripture that Spirit of the Lord has a reason, a because, and it has to do with bringing good news to the poor.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,  to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  These are the unexpected words of Isaiah the prophet, the words of Jesus, and they can be our words.  We can bring good news.  We can bring sight to the blind.  We can bring hope to a world that needs hope.  We can let the oppressed go free. Because we have a God who walks with us.  Because we have a God who sends God’s Spirit to be with us.  Because we have a God who sends God’s blessing so that we might “see one another made in God’s image, a unit of God’s grace, unprecedented, unrepeatable and irreplaceable.”  Because. Amen.

It’s hard to say exactly what they saw that morning on the banks of the Jordan.  It’s hard to know exactly what the voice sounded like.  As the young man Jesus prayed, water still dripping from his hair, the grey sky split.  An arc of sunlight pierced slantwise through a crack in the clouds.  They said they saw some kind of bird.  What kind of bird?  What color were its feathers? Did the bird really rest gently like a dove?  Or did it come crashing down, with purpose, swooping like a hawk?  What did the voice that spoke those words sound like?  What was the pitch, the tone, the cadence?
This Jesus, some remembered the stories of his birth. the shepherds, the angels.  But that was many years ago.  No one expected the sky to split when the young man came, with the others, to be baptized.

Their expectation was for the wild-eyed John.  Some whispered that he, John, was the messiah, the anointed leader.  This bearded man with crazy eyes, wearing musty camel fur, dreadlocks constantly in disarray.  His breath smelled of locusts.  His teeth were rotting (too much wild honey).  But the wild man John scared Rome’s puppet leaders.  He had the guts to call them vipers.  John could be the Messiah.  Rumor had it that Herod were afraid of John.  John could be the one.  But John said “no.”  “Wait for another, I am not worthy.”  So the people waited.
No one expected much from the young man who came to be baptized, the carpenter’s son.  Yes, some remembered the story of the wise men from the East.  Just after his birth these wizards appeared, wandering, following, in search of a star.  They brought gifts to the baby, but since then?  Who would have predicted the strange meteorological phenomena?  Who expected that wild bird to come down?  No one was waiting for that voice.  But that’s the thing about epiphanies, they come when you least expect them.

This epiphany came with words.  The voice came from heaven.  So did it come down from the sky or did it come from “heaven?” which is to say the voice came out of nowhere, and out of everywhere.  The voice came from no one, and yet from everyone.  The words echoed in the hearts of the people, reverberated in the chests of the onlookers, like a deep bass beat.  “You are my Son, the beloved, in you I am well pleased.”
This is sort of Jesus’ IPO- His initial public offering.  30 years after those wise guys came wandering through the desert, not much had happened.  Then boom, another Epiphany.  “You are my Son, the beloved, in you I am well pleased.” Get this, Jesus’ first public act, his initial public offering, is to HEAR the voice of God.  Before he acts, he hears.  Before he heals, he hears.  Before he teaches, before he stirs up trouble, before he calls disciples, before he walks on water, before everything he hears God’s voice saying, “You are my Son, the beloved, in you I am well pleased.”

“Well pleased with WHAT?” we might ask.  We, who live in Washington, the land of confirmation hearings.  We want a public record.  We want to weigh accomplishments.  We want to see a resumé.  WHAT had Jesus done that was PLEASING to God at this point?  Answer: nothing.  Zilch, nada, nein, zero.  BEFORE he acts, he hears.  Before he does anything of note, before he does anything worth writing down, he hears this voice of love and affirmation.  God doesn’t wait for Jesus to act before he announced his love, his approval.
So the voice came as an epiphany, not an expected revelation, but an unanticipated uncovering of the truth.  James Joyce wrote that an Epiphany is when we recognize things as they truly are.  When an object becomes clear, when “It’s soul, it’s ‘what-ness’ leaps to us from the vestment of its appearance.”  This is an epiphany.

An epiphany occurred on the banks of the Jordan that morning, a shared realization, a vision of the “what-ness” of Jesus.  Jesus hadn’t yet accomplished much of anything.  He hadn’t merited the divine attention, but there on the banks, God did not care.  In front of everyone Jesus’ soul leapt into appearance.  The people heard a voice, a voice they understood, a voice which declared “I love this one, and I am well pleased.”  How it happened, the angle of the light, the appearance of the bird, these elements are all left up to our imagination.  It is hard to say how they saw, how they heard, but somehow on the day of his baptism Jesus saw and felt the presence of the Holy Spirit.  The people heard the voice of God.  “You are my Son, the Beloved.”

Luis likes to say that he wishes our dome was retractable, and not because he wants to be more like the Dallas Cowboys.  He wishes we had a Steven Spielberg budget for baptism Sundays.  If he had his way, the dome would open up, a hologram of a dove would come crashing down with beams of light surrounding each person who was baptized.  “You are my beloved daughter.  In you I am well pleased,” the congregation would all hear.
Perhaps today it takes special effects to hear the voice of God, to hear “You are my son, my daughter, my beloved, in you I am well pleased.”  Why is it so much easier to hear the cacophony of voices that constantly say to us, “You don’t make enough money.  You don’t eat the right food.  You’re too tall or too short.  You are too old or too young.  You aren’t pretty enough.  You’re too loud.  You’re black.  English is not your first language.  You don’t have the credentials.  You don’t have what it takes.”  These voices too often drown out the voice of God.  These voices strangle life.  These voices, we need a break from these voices.  We need an Epiphany.It takes courage to hear the voice of God.  It takes courage to have that kind of Epiphany, to embrace who you truly are, your true identity. St. Irenaeus, one of the early church theologians wrote: “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.”  To be fully human, fully alive, is to glorify God.   It takes courage to hear, over the din of self-doubt: “you are my beloved child, in you I am well pleased.”  But God never stops speaking these words.  God never fails to say these words to each and every person.  How do we quiet the voices of culture?  How do we help others hear?  How do we ourselves hear this voice, “you are my child, the beloved, in you I am well pleased?”

God speaks these words to us, not because we merit them.  God’s love is not something we can merit, or fail to earn.  God who created us loves us, loves each and every person, all people.  God loves you.  God is well pleased with you.  God loves your neighbor, and your sister, and your cousin, and God loves the children of Syria, and the widows in India, God loves AIDS patients in Haiti, and God loves the gay rights activists in Uganda.  God is well pleased with infants.  God is well pleased with the vulnerable.  God is well pleased with people who can do nothing.  God is even well pleased with politicians in Washington.  God is well pleased because God looks upon us and sees first a beloved creation, a daughter, a son.
Each time God looks at you, each time God looks at anyone, God has an Epiphany.  God sees who we truly are.  “You are my children, the beloved, in you I am well pleased.”  Do we have the courage to have that kind of Epiphany?

Icon of the Baptism of Jesus

Mary billboard from St. Matthew’s Anglican Church in Auckland, NZ

For me, the lesson Mary learns over those three months with is really captured in the third line of her song.  “God has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.”  Mary is feeling low.  She is scared and frustrated and so she runs off to the Judean hill country.   But there in those three months, Mary learned to see her situation as a blessing.  Mary began to believe that God could work in and through this incredibly difficult situation.  Mary found faith in a God who could bring blessing out of pain.
Mary learned the hard lesson of the spiritual life.  Faith is not about having your life all together.  Faith is not about having answers.  In fact, if you have all the answers, if you have it all together, you can’t have faith.  You don’t need faith if you have everything all together, if you have all the answers.  Faith is for the confused and the frustrated.  Faith is for the downtrodden and the brokenhearted.  Faith is for people who don’t have the answers.  Faith is for all of us human beings struggling to make sense of life.
Faith is for those of us struggling to make sense of what is happening in our world.  I have to tell you that my experience of the past week, and what has gone on in Newtown Connecticut has a particular slant.  I went to a charter school just a few miles from Columbine High, and I was in my sophomore English class on the afternoon of April 20, 1999 when I heard what happened.  Kids I had known since kindergarten hid under tables in the cafeteria as their classmates perpetrated that terrible school shooting.
I hate that Columbine did not spell the end of violence in schools.  In light of the events of Newtown, I join the Bishop of Washington in calling for better overall gun control with specific bans on assault weapons.  I join the Bishop in calling for better access to mental health care.  There is a time for prayer, and there is a time for action.  This is a time for both.  We need new policies about guns and mental health in this country, and we have needed them for a long long time, too long.

These policies need to focus on the health of all of our communities, ALL.  The events in Newtown were particularly tragic, but they are also, tragically, not unique.  Children die as a result of violence far too often in this city and in this country.  I remember people saying about Columbine, “if it could happen here, it could happen anywhere.”  Let’s be honest, Columbine was not a racially diverse school, it was not an economically diverse school.  Columbine received magnified attention because people were surprised that violence was happening at an upper-middle-class white suburban high school.  We don’t always hear as much from the media.  We have come to expect violence in certain neighborhoods and communities.  This is wrong.  God dreams for more for us than EXPECTING VIOLENCE.
I think we need to spend some time with Mary, the real Mary, not the Disney-fied Mary, because she helps us understand what it means to be a person of faith in a dark time.  I believe in Mary, a scared teenage girl who ran away when she found out she was pregnant.  I believe she felt humiliated and frustrated.  I believe she felt like her world was coming to an end.

I believe God met Mary, in those frightening three months, like God meets us.  I believe God comes to us in what can seem like the darkest moments of our life.  In the midst of terror, in the midst of frustration, when we are at our wit’s end, that is when we need God.  Faith is for the frustrated.  Faith is for those who don’t have the answers.  Faith is for people who need some help.  Faith is for people who dream of a better world.

Something happened to Mary between the lines of our Gospel reading this morning.  She changed from the scared girl who ran away into the Mother of Jesus, strong enough to bear with God through humiliating circumstances.  Mary’s most ancient title is theokotos, the God bearer.  It is one of the difficult and beautiful teachings of the Christian faith.  Mary, that scared teenage girl, brings God’s presence into the world.  God chooses to be born in the midst of suffering.  That girl who ran away somehow, through faith, becomes the one who brings God’s presence into the world.

We are, all of us, bearers of God, like Mary.  In little, humble, simple, ways we all help God to be born in each others lives.  Giving birth to God’s presence isn’t easy.  Bearing God means learning to have faith in the midst of pain.  Bearing God means facing derision, means facing suffering.  But our world needs us to bear God.  We can be bearers of God in the way we legislate.  We can be bearers of God in the way we do business.  We can be bearers in God in the way we forgive one another.  We can be bearers of God in the way we shape our communities.  We can be bearers of God in the way we laugh, and cry together.  All of our souls can magnify the Lord.  This Christmas are you ready? Will you bear God to this broken and yet beautiful world?

Where is this kingdom Jesus spent so much time talking about?  Where is Christ King?  Can you find this place on a map?  The hymns we’ll sing today are great for folks tuckered out by tryptophan and too much shopping, but the Gospel text really is not.  We have this strange back and forth between Jesus and Pilate that turns into a philosophical discourse, and it all just seems a little too much.  There is a lot going on in this little dialogue, too much to unpack in a single sermon, but I think by paying attention to the question of “where” we can get an important window into what exactly is going on.  

You might have noticed that I asked Gini to read a couple of extra verses at the beginning of the Gospel text.  I promise we’re not in a conspiracy trying to make church longer.  I think the introduction, which speaks to where this dialogue takes place, is important.  The temple authorities bring Jesus to Pilate’s palace, to the praetorium, the house of the Gentile governor, but they stop on the front step.  They can’t go in, or they will become ritually unclean.  They sort of toss Jesus in to Pilate, like you’d toss food into a lion’s cage, and stay on the outside.

I want to stick on this point for a moment, because it is not something common in our time.  In the first century Jewish worldview, Geography was sacred.  Certain spaces were considered sacred.  Others were profane.  If you grew up in this culture, you knew not to enter a gentile’s house if you planned to sit down at your mother’s passover table later that day.  This concept is foreign to us, as it would have been to Pilate, and I think that this helps us to understand the exchange between Christ the King and Pilate the governor.  Pilate seems perplexed, and eventually gets exasperated with Jesus, who won’t answer his questions.  For Pilate, the question “are you the King of the Jews?” had geographical importance.  Do you claim to be King of this territory, this land where I am governor, where Caesar is Lord?  If Jesus claims this land as his kingdom, Pilate has a case against him.  

But Jesus gives this cryptic answer: “My Kingdom is not from this world,” and it sounds as odd today as it sounded then.  We can almost see long haired, hippy Jesus saying, “my kingdom doesn’t obey the constraints of time and space man.”  We can understand Pilate’s frustration, but we have to see the backdrop.  Jesus is not the only one behaving strangely, by Roman standards.  Pilate also looks on as Jesus’ accusers stand at the edge of his steps, refusing to come in because of their odd ideas about space, time, the holy and the profane.  

Pilate is the governor of the Palestinian territories, and he can draw a map of the land under his charge, but where he sees rocks, trees, water rights and mineral resources, the Jewish people see something else.  They look at the map and they see the sacred stories of their ancestors.  They see places so holy that to enter them is to risk your life, and places so profane that walking through can send you into exile.  This is the reason the conflict in Israel/Palestine today is so intractable.  To the Jewish people, and to the Palestinian people, the land is enchanted.  Resources and stories are layered together in the contested sacred terrain.

Sunset on the Sandias, New Mexico

When Jesus says, “My Kingdom is not of this world,” this is the backdrop.  Jesus speaks to Pilate, looking at the map of his territory, and Jesus sees another map, an enchanted landscape.  In Washington, we do not often have a strong sense of this enchantment, but I just came back from New Mexico.  I spent the week of Thanksgiving, as I often do, with my father’s family outside of Santa Fe, in that State they call the “land of enchantment.”  If you’ve never heard New Mexico called the “land of enchantment,” ask someone from New Mexico why they call the State by that name.  If they are anything like my dad, they will go on and on about the natural beauty, the sunsets, the food, the history, the native cultures, the history of the missions, the spirituality.  Maybe it is the thin air up there, but the people of New Mexico are really sold on their State.  The land is enchanted.

After awhile the enchantment grows on you.  When I stepped out of our rental car in Santa Fe that first night last week and caught the first whiff of that winter air, it was magical.  The air is literally fragrant with the smoke of piñon and the smell of mountain sage.  Religion and Ethics Newsweekly did a piece on Northern New Mexico a few years ago, remarking on the number of spiritual communities that have come to the high desert to set up camp.  Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, Benedictines, Sufis, even some wild-eyed Presbyterians, they have all come to this enchanted land to find a “thin space,” a place where the veil between the material and the spiritual world is a bit thin.

Which brings us back to Pilate, and Jesus’ strange talk about his Kingdom not being of this world.  Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk has said of Jesus’ teaching of the Kingdom: “It is not the the Kingdom of God is not available to us, but that we are not available to the kingdom.”  We are not available to the Kingdom.  Pilate sure isn’t.  “What is truth?” he asks.  Pilate is a cynic.  How often do we cynically dismiss the spiritual side of life?  Cynicism is poison to faith.  Cynicism is poison to spiritual experience.  Cynicism is poison to love, and light, and hope.  Cynicism blocks out the Kingdom of Jesus.

If we follow Jesus’ logic, the kingdom of God is available, is not limited to a sacred space like Israel or New Mexico, is not limited to a specific time.  The Kingdom is available here, now.  Our world is enchanted, we’ve just been to busy to notice.
Here before Pilate, Jesus is vulnerable.  One of the hard truths of the spiritual life is that for the Kingdom of God to break through, we have to be broken open.  Sometimes that breaking open is painful, but we have to be broken out of our cynicism, out of our routine.  Jesus is a vulnerable king, and the way to his kingdom is through vulnerability.

Of course there are moments when the Kingdom breaks through, when it is so inescapable that we can’t fail to see Jesus’ reign.  Sometimes the poor are fed.  Sometimes the lame walk.  Sometimes the blind see.  Sometimes alcoholics recover.  Sometimes people finally ask for forgiveness from one another.  Sometimes forgiveness is given.  Sometimes political parties come together to get work done to help the vulnerable.  Sometimes people fall in love.  The Kingdom breaks through.

Where has the kingdom broken through in your life?  Have you glimpsed this other-worldly place of peace, of joy?  Sometimes Christ’s Kingdom breaks through, but I wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be here, week after week, if you didn’t think we could make our own approaches to the Kingdom of God.  Prayer, worship, giving, pilgrimage, there are many maps to Jesus’ Kingdom, many different spiritual practices that seek to bring us there.  Each of them seek to open us, to help us to glimpse the enchantment in each moment, to glimpse the map of Christ’s Kingdom each and every day.

Today we think of marriage very differently.  No one is bought and sold.  We hold up an idea of two equal partners, standing before one another, their family, friends, and their God, and pledging to love, comfort, honor, and keep one another.  Both people make those promises.  We have in our marriage service what I think is a beautiful statement about two equal partners, choosing to create life together.
I chose that phrase carefully, “to create life together.”  Jesus quotes Genesis when asked about marriage, and surprisingly, I think he quotes Genesis on purpose.  Jesus actually quotes only part of a verse from chapter one when he says God created them male and female.  The whole verse is: “God created humankind in his image.  In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
Jesus assumes the pharisees know this crucial introduction, this story of Genesis.  Jesus knows that the repetition in the first part of the verse places the emphasis there.  The verse primarily tells us something about the nature of humanity.  We are made, all of us, each of us, in the image of God.  Women and men, in the image of God.  Specifically, in the image of the God who creates, the Creator.  We are made in the image of the creator, which makes us co-creators.  We are beings who are given, in our creation, the gift of creativity.  

Creation Window, Chester Cathedral

Humans are alone in creation as made in the image of the creator, with God given creativity.  Notice in the second chapter of Genesis, God has Adam name all of the animals, using his creativity to take an active part in creation.  This is the creativity that scientists use when the come up with theorems which change how we live life and imagine the universe.  This is the creativity that poets use when they use words to express emotions we did not know they had inside of us.  We are made creative, in the image of the creator God.
Anyone who has been married for a good long time can tell you, marriage takes creativity.  Every few years you are faced with a new situation, a job loss, an unexpected child (let’s be real), every few years couples face crisis or joys that change the nature of a relationship.  It takes creativity to respond to the new situations of life.  It takes creativity to respond to the person your spouse becomes over time.  Madeleine L’Engle, the Episcopalian writer and lover of music, likened her music to a piece by J.S. Bach.  In one of her books, she called her marriage a “Two-Part Invention.”  Marriage takes a lot of creativity.
Creativity is not just reserved for married couples, or to couples at all for that matter.   I don’t think that all people are called to be married.  Some people are called to live in marriage, others are not.  I think that all of those stories of princesses and princes finding one another that we hear as children in fairy tales put some crazy ideas in our head.  I don’t think that all people are meant to be married, and I think we do a disservice to a lot of people when we norm marriage, when we make marriage a norm.  I think a lot of people would be happier if they weren’t married, and we would save a lot of anguish if we realized that not all people are called to be married. We’d probably save a lot of money on dating websites as well.  Life outside of marriage takes creativity, takes God given creativity as well.  Creating a network of friends and companions that becomes a family to care for and be cared for by, takes loving creativity.
Similarly we have to face, in our society, the reality of divorce.  Sometimes marriages do not work.  These words about divorce from Jesus are often quoted, and they are tough.  But the Jesus I know is a Jesus whose love and forgiveness is bigger than any single law or commandment.  I think sometimes divorce can be a creative way to respond to a really bad situation, and I mean creative in the literal sense.  Sometimes, sometimes, I think, divorce can be life-giving.  Sometimes it takes an end to a situation which is stifling, to allow new life to be born.  I don’t think that any couple I known came up to an altar expecting to get divorced.  I think that people make their vows with all of the best intentions, but sometimes we can’t fulfill even our best intentions.  That does not mean we don’t try.  I have known some very good marriages, and I have known some very good divorces.

These are hard lessons.  When Luis preached three years ago, he finished his sermon by pointing out that these are hard lessons.  Then he said that in three years he would be wiser about his scheduling.  He wouldn’t preach. Whichever assistant was being unruly, he said, would get to tackle these lessons.  I don’t know what you’ve been hearing while you’ve been away. (Whatever it is Gini did it.) Whatever motivated this act of creative scheduling, I appreciate a good challenge.
I think the readings we have before us challenge us.  They challenge us to live with creativity, in the image and likeness of the God who creates us and who loves us.  They challenged those of us who are married to bring that loving creativity to our marriages.  These scriptures challenge those of us who are not yet married, and those of us who are perhaps never supposed to be married to live lives creatively as well, to gather a community of friends and loved ones.  Because we are not meant to live life alone, but to live life out of love creatively.

What Jesus says next is confounding.  He admits to being the messiah, and then says that the messiah must die.  Peter, ever the good student, pulls him aside.  Notice, Peter pulls him off the path.  He takes him off the road for a moment.  Peter was the first one with the right answer before, and he’s ready to explain to the teacher that the teacher has it wrong.  That’s not how it goes.  The messiah doesn’t die.  The messiah reigns on high, triumphant!  Jesus responds with that famous stinging retort: “Get behind me Satan.”

      “Get behind me Satan.”  The words call Peter a tempter.  That’s the literal translation of satan, “the tempter.”  The role of the devil is specific in the Hebrew and Arabic mind.  That tempting is a common theme in the stories of the Bible, in the stories of prophets and teachers.  Even in the story of the prophet Muhammad, this idea of the tempter, satan arises.

The story about Muhammad and the devil was told in this week’s The New Yorker.  The writer explains the context in which the new religion of Islam was being born.  A nomadic people had just begun to settle down permanently.  The new city of Mecca was prosperous.  Much of Mecca’s financial power came from important temples to three goddesses which stood outside the gates.  The temples were controlled by Mecca’s ruling families, and the offerings made by passing caravans served as fantastic tax revenue.

In the new cities there was a new problem: homelessness and hunger.  In the caravan, this problem did not exist.  You did not leave people behind.  The nomads took care of each other.  The umbrella of extended families, headed by matriarchal leaders, made sure that even orphans were cared for.  Muhammad ibn Abdullah, the man who would become “The Prophet” worried about the growing numbers of hungry and holy people as he walked past the temples to the goddesses on his way to Mt. Hira

On Mt. Hira, Muhammad would retreat from the busyness and poverty of Mecca.  He would spend weeks at a time holed up in the solitude of a cave.  It was at Mt. Hira that the Angel Gabriel appeared and ordered him to recite the verses that would become the holy book of Islam.  According to the New Yorker article, “The ethos of the Koran, the value system it endorses, was, in essence, the vanishing code of nomadic Arabs, the matriarchal, more caring society that did not leave orphans out in the cold.”  The people who would first embrace Islam, would form a new community around the prophet, were the hungry and homeless of Mecca, left out in the cold by the ruling elite who controlled the official religion.

The story of Muhammad and the shaitan, the tempter, satan in English, centers around the revenue generating temples of Mecca.  You see in the polytheistic Arabian Peninsula in the sixth and seventh century, another sect around another God was not a problem as long as the new God didn’t compromise the offerings/taxes that were flowing into the coffers of the temples in Mecca.  According to legend, which goes back to at least the ninth century, one day Mohammed came back from the mountain one day that said that the temples should be honored.  The temples’ “goddesses” were called “lovely birds” and their intercession was desired.  Translation: Mohammed came with a verse in the Koran that validated the offerings to the temples of Mecca.  The revenue streams were secure, the new religion was not a threat.

      Later Mohammed returns to the mountain and comes back embarrassed.  He orders that the verses must be removed from the Koran.  It turns out the prophet had been tricked by Satan, and had misunderstood his whisperings as God’s voice.  The Koran should read that these goddesses are just “names you and your fathers have invented: God has vested no authority in them.”  The author of the article wants us to ask, why Mohammad would have changed his mind about the verses.  Was it possible that at first the prophet thought his new religion might be able to support the rulers of his day, only to realize later that this vision was fantasy?  Did he avoid conflict by not condemning the temples early on?  Did the prophet give into temptation for awhile?  Listen to the voice of the tempter that offered an easier road than one of open conflict with the ruling elite.

This is the story of the “Satanic verses.”  The author of the article in this week’s New Yorker is Salman Rushdie, who in 1988 published a novel called “The Satanic verses,” based partly on the story.  His novel was called blasphemy.  His imagining of the prophet’s temptation gave rise to outstanding anger in the Islamic world.  For years, Rushdie needed state security protection in his home country of Great Britain after the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini issued an order for him to be killed.  The protests led to murders and massacres which shocked the world.

      Much as the world was shocked this week when protests over a film produced in the United States served as cover for the attack on the US Embassy that killed Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans.  The tragedy was terrible, and we ask that you remember Ambassador Stevens, his family, all those who were affected, and the people of Libya in your prayers today.

As I read the article by Salman Rushdie, and saw the stories coming out of Libya, I was struck by an important difference in our times from the late 1980s and early 1990s.  When the riots in the street were happening in response to the “Satanic verses,” we saw in the paper and on the news similar angry crowds.  But we would not have seen the images of other, regular Libyans, everyday people uploaded on Facebook and Twitter, holding up signs that said “We are sorry America.  We also loved Ambassador Stevens.  This is not the message of Islam and our Prophet.”  If you haven’t seen the hundreds of photos of Libyans holding up signs with these messages, Google when you get home.  Regular people proclaiming “Islam is against terrorism” and getting millions of views, show that the internet can be a powerful tool for good.

(Photo from Salon.com…click to see a slideshow.)

      The protests and death threats that came as a response to Rushdie’s book, missed his profound respect for the prophet Muhammad, a man who resisted the tempter.  The prophet replaced the satanic verses with verses that brought him into open conflict with the powerful leaders of Mecca.  Muhammad, in the end, did not give into a lesser vision.  The temptation was for a religion that was less challenging, less transformative of a society that desperately needed reforming.

This brings us back to Jesus on the road with Peter.  I hope you knew that I was going to get back to Jesus.  Kaye, on our staff, says my sermons often cause her to wonder where I’m going.  I’m a bit of a prodigal preacher, away on long wanders, but now we’re going to bring it home.  So, back to Jesus: Why does Jesus call him Satan?  Is it, perhaps, because Peter is offering him an easier road?  Just like the story that occurs earlier in Mark, the story of the temptation, where the devil offers Jesus worldly success, is Peter offering a different, less challenging vision to Jesus?

      I think that may be exactly what is going on.  The “human things” that Peter’s mind is meditating on, comfort, power, prestige, are far from what Jesus and the disciples will find down the road.  Jesus does not want to compromise.  Jesus wants religious radicals.  He wants his followers to be radicals.  Listen to what he says, you have to take up your cross, your instrument of torture, and follow me.  Jesus wants radicals.

I think Muhammad wanted radicals as well, people who would submit to God’s rule of justice and inclusion over and against the exclusion of the society which was leaving orphans out in the cold.  Blowing something up does not make you a religious radical.  Killing for the glory of your religion doesn’t make you a follower of Jesus or of Muhammad.  Hate is not radical.  Hate is too commonplace.  Love is radical.  Justice is radical.

It is far more radical to give your life, to give your waking hours, to give your time and your labor and your treasure to combating the satanic forces of poverty and injustice in this world.  It is far more radical to sit down with someone our society casts out, because you follow a leader who ate with outcasts and sinners.  Our world needs religious radicals, Christians and Muslims, willing to work together so that our world is a little more loving and a little more just.

Maybe that is why Jesus couldn’t let Peter
take him off that radical road, why he told him to get behind him, to follow in
line.  Jesus knew the world needed Peter, a radical Peter who was willing
to spend his life proclaiming the Gospel, the Good News of God’s love and care
for our world.