the fifth sunday in lent, year b

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John 12:20-36

So, have you ever bought anything as seen on tv? A Salad Shooter? OxyClean? Don’t try to pretend that you’ve never been tempted to buy Debbie Meyer Green Bags. Or a Big City Slider Station? Can’t you just hear that Bill Mays guy YELLING at you about how YOUR LIFE WILL IMPROVE and YOUR KIDS WILL BE SO HAPPY if you buy a Big City Slider Station so you can make the perfect little, tiny burger JUST LIKE AT THE RESTAURANTS. And IF YOU ORDER RIGHT NOW you can get a Big City Slider Station cookbook FOR FREE. All this can be yours for 19.99. Plus shipping and handling.

We are easily seduced by the urgency of advertising.

Buy it NOW
or ELSE
it won’t be OFFERED
to YOU
AGAIN.

It’s very American of us, isn't it? To be pulled into the fast-paced urgency of NOW and YES and MUST so that we can get SOME before SUPPLIES run out. I make jokes about Billy Mays and the As Seen On TV phenomenon, because it strikes me that it is who we are at our most ridiculous. It exploits our manic frantic need for a quick fix.

We are suckers for a promise, aren’t we? A promise that if we do this we will get that. If we buy this our lives will be easier. If we do this we will be more productive, efficient, happy. We’ll be beautiful. We’ll be rich. It’s all of this stuff, right?

Our culture tells us that the more we have the better we are, and, as a result we can’t get enough of all this stuff that we don’t need.

The current state of the economy isn’t helping, is it?
Everyday it is practically crammed down our throats that supplies are running out.
We’re in the middle of that manic frantic that tells us that there isn’t enough.
We’re losing our jobs. Money is running out. It seems that our natural inclination is to stretch and reach for whatever we can get a hold of.
Whether or not it’s good for us. Whether or not we need it.
Something, anything is better than nothing, and even though we don’t have nothing yet, we’re being told that any day now we’ll find our satchels hollow and our wallets empty. Everything’s gonna run out and nothing is precisely all we’ll have.

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Today’s Gospel lesson from the 12th chapter of John brings us to a time when Jesus’ ministry is just itching to go global. It’s not like in the first century they had airplanes or the internet or digital billboards in the sky, so launching a maybe-powerhouse like Jesus much past walking distance was kinda out of the question. But, at the same time, never underestimate the power of the mouth—word of Jesus and his healing and compassion spread like wildfire.

So. It should come as no surprise that just as his life was approaching crescendo, people from other places started showing up. Today, it’s the Greeks. They make a cameo in today’s gospel—they want to see this Jesus guy.

They started the game of telephone. “Hey, Philip. We wanna see Jesus.” Philip went to Andrew, “Hey, Andrew. The Greek people wanna see Jesus.” Then Andrew was like, “Well, come with me!” And together they said, “Dude, Jesus. The Greeks want to see you now.”

“Well, actually...” Jesus said. “They don’t have to see me, because the hour has come. Everyone’s about to know me. God will be glorified.”

…In today’s gospel text it’s not made entirely clear, but we know the story. We know that soon and very soon, Jesus is going to be glorified on the cross. It’s ironic that John uses the word glorified, because there’s no glory in the suffering whippings and beatings and crucifixion. But it is God’s Glory on the cross that draws us into the radical love of God. Our God who is present to all people at all times in the midst of their recession and pain, suffering and grief.

It’s beginning, folks. Until now, this kind of love was limited to a very specific region of the world.
That Grecian Cameo is an important clue for us. They play a symbolic role in today’s Gospel, because they came from a far away land to see Jesus. They show us that the love of Jesus Christ spreads beyond Judea, Samaria, and Galilee—the land he walked. Turns out that today is the day that we find that Jesus Christ’s availability is universal. His love is open to us all the time, no matter what, no limited time offer.

“The hour has come for Jesus to be glorified.”

The time has come for Jesus to be available outside the limits of his land,
through his death and resurrection,
he’s available everywhere,
all the time, to all persons.
Jesus even says that he’s about to be lifted up
so that all people will be drawn to him. All, all, all.

Rich, poor.
Black, white, yellow, red.
Friendless, needy.
Privileged, impoverished.
Educated and stuck-in-a-rut.
Prostitute and slave, doctor and lawyer.
Gay and straight.
Male and female.
Grown ups and school children.

Jesus Christ + The Cross = God’s Glory = Unconditional, Unimaginable, Unfathomable, 100%, No Doubt Everlasting Life & Love for Every Human Being No Matter What.

Of course there’s a weakness with God’s Great Love Equation. It’s the human being part. All, all, all people get to know God’s Love now, but all all all of us are too distracted and scared to accept it. The promise of God’s Glory doesn’t necessarily result in convenience. We might not be more beautiful or more rich. We might not be smarter or better. In fact, being Loved By God 100% doesn’t mean we won’t suffer in this life. Quite the opposite. What God’s love DOES do, however, is meet up where we are. At all times, and in all places, God is With Us. God’s Name Glorified might not be as handy as a salad shooter; it might not give us the immediate results of Oxyclean. But I tell you what:

God’s Love for us—God’s Name Glorified—is sufficient. It’s all we need.
Stained and miserable, God Loves You Anyway.
Depressed and mournful. God loves You anyway.
Doubtful, cynical? God loves you anyway.

And the Good News is that that this stuff is available in abundance. It never runs out, it never gets old. It’s not a limited time offer. No gimmicks. No smoke and mirrors.

No one—no one!—gets to be exempt from the love of God’s Glory. Everyone gets salvation. Everyone gets salvation. No matter what.

And you don’t have to look far at all to find the Glory. You don’t have to look any further than the people sitting to your left, to your right, before you and behind you. God’s Glory is alive and active in every one of us. God created us out of Love so that we might be able to see the face of God Glorified in each other.

I know one thing for sure and it is that the power of human relationships is strong and resilient force. And I believe that the number one way to know God’s Love is to Be In Love With One Another. To reach out, through thick and through thin, to stick together, to not isolate, but move toward community. Toward relationship.

You don’t need the stuff they sell on the tv. You don’t need your fancy handbags or good grades. You don’t need trophies, medals, honors or degrees. To know God’s Glory, you just need each other.

Your families, your friends, your neighbors. You are what God’s Glory looks like.

And it’s a beautiful sight.

feast of the transfiguration; year b

2 kings 2:1-12
mark 9:2-10
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Elijah and Elisha. Two friends on one huge journey. First they find themselves called by God out of Gilgal, just west of the Jordan river. They are to head from there to the land of Judah into a town called Bethel.

“Stay here,” Elijah says to his friend and successor-prophet Elisha. “I gotta run this errand for Yahweh, and it’s forever away. Stay here and preserve your strength.”

“Nope,” says Elisha. “I’m totally coming with.”

Elisha knows that Elijah’s days are limited. It had been made know to them by God that as soon as Elijah’s prophet-work was through, that he would be taken up in a whirlwind—a mysterious, miraculous taking up to a land far, far beyond the Jordon. Elisha wasn’t going to miss a second of his mentor’s last days.

“As long as you live, I will not leave you.” And so they went.

Once the two hit Bethel, they were joined by fifty other prophets. They questioned Elisha’s friendship with Elijah: “Don’t you get it?” Elisha answered: “Yes, I get it.” His devotion was unswerving.

Elijah heard a word from God to carry on southeastward to Jericho.

“Stay here,” says Elijah. “It’s safe.”

“Nope,” says Elisha. “I’m coming with you. As long as you live, I will not leave you.”

When they arrived in Jericho, the scene was similar. More prophets came out of the woodwork to meet the prophet Elijah, the voice of Yahweh. “Don’t you get it,” they asked Elisha, “Why are you attaching yourself to him if he’s just going to leave you?” “Yes, I get it. And I’m sticking with him. Now y’all hush.”

The scene repeats itself one more time. This time, Elijah gets a call from God to head to the Jordan River again, and Elisha is not leaving the side of his friend, his mentor.

As the two men approached the Jordan, the band of prophets hung back a little. The water was deep, and Elijah knew he had to cross it, so he struck the water with his mantle, and the river parted. The land in the gap was perfectly dry, and the two men crossed it to points east, to the other side, leaving the gaggle of followers on the west bank.

This was Elijah’s final destination. This tour through the Promised Land was his swan song. The miles trekked were his last. The words spoke were final. The minutes passed were a means to an end. And there, at the other side of the Jordan, Elisha asked for even double the inheritance: “You’ve done such good, master, I hope for double of your spirit,” he said. And then, the clouds swirl and part and chariots! of! fire! swoop down between the two friends. Elijah is scooped up and spirited away in a whirlwind of power and dust and glory.

For crying out loud, it took chariots and horses on fire from heaven to separate the two men. Such friendship can only be from God.

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Today is the Feast of the Transfiguration, where we remember another friendship story. Jesus took with him his pals—Peter, James, and John—to the mountain top where he was greeted by the late great Moses and Elijah, prophets who arrived from heaven for a brief spell to give Jesus a celestial high five of sorts. For it was on this day, atop this mountain, among these friends, that Jesus—literally—dazzled with holiness and then the skies parted for God to speak to the others present: “Jesus is my Beloved!” God said. Jesus is my Beloved.

Friends, there is one thing I know for sure:

God did not want us to do God’s work alone.

This grand experiment of God’s isn’t just to keep God company. Sure, we are to live for nothing short of God’s glory, but what is that glory? What does that look like?

I am convinced that the thing that keeps us connected to our creator, the thing that glorifies our God the most, is our capacity to be in relationship with one another. Community. Getting in it with each other, holding hands tight, not letting go, waiting for nothing short of burning, magical chariots to pry us apart from one another only to be joined at last in the company of the forever saints.

Here’s something else I know beyond any shadow of any doubt:

And I can only speak from my own experience….

But my darkest places come when I am not connected to others. I feel furthest from God when I fall out of community. When, for whatever reason, there’s a wedge in my relationship with others, I realize that I miss God’s work around me. I miss Jesus, sparkling on the mountain top. I miss the chariots of fire. I miss the Kingdom at work.

I know for sure that God loves us through the agency of one another.
When we are open and vulnerable enough to never leave each other’s sides.
No matter what. When we find it in our hearts to be honest—truly, blessedly honest—with one another. When our love for each other parts the Jordan River. When we care so deeply that we follow each other up mountains and through Jerusalem, just for the sake of being together.

Because life is short.
And we don’t have much time to gladden each other’s hearts.

It is our call to stick together. Through it all. Until we are parted by death. It is our call to be friends in community with one another so that we may, in turn, know all too well the indescribable, huge friendship of God.

How right and good it is that in a minute we will see a glimpse of God’s character through the sacrament of baptism. Baptism is nothing more than our way of welcoming each other into the presence of community in the name of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Today we will welcome these two little ones into the St. Anne’s Community. Blessed are they, and, because of them, blessed are we.

I love this place. This community shows me over and over again what it means to be in friendship with God through your friendships with one another. I see here a true community of people—you’re not always perfect, but more important than perfect, you are always, always together. If this is your first time here, we welcome you. And hear me say that you will find at here at this church a community of friends who pray together, serve together, read together, play together, cook together, love God together.

You bless me.

And you bless each other.

And I feel certain that God is smiling on you through the rays of sunlight jetting through these windows.

We are about to enter a Holy Lent. During this time we walk with our God to the cross where the skies part once again, and we see God’s Love, bigger than we could ever ask or imagine. Go there together. As long as you live, never leave each others’ sides, and believe me, you will know the power and love of God—as grand as chariots swooping down from the heavens.


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christmas eve, oh-eight.

Luke 2:1-20
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The truth is that the service project with the junior highers was finished an hour earlier than I’d anticipated. I was in a pickle that every youth minister can relate to—how to kill time in a way that doesn’t necessarily involve one hundred rounds of foursquare (at best), a wrestling match, or mindless, reckless running down the halls under the guise of “hide & go seek.”

“Circle up!” I said. Eyes rolled.

We sat and I passed out note cards and my box of markers, and I just started asking fill-in-the-blank questions. I wasn’t sure yet what we’d do with the answers, but I figured I’d cross that bridge when we came to it…

“My favorite time of day is...” “I am happy when...” “I am sad when...”
And then I upped the ante: “I feel close to God ….”

“I feel close to God in church…
…when I pray
...when I visit my grandparents.”
…when I fail a test.”
…when I get hurt.”
…when I’m upset.”
…when I hear bad news.”
…when I’m in trouble.”
…when someone dies.”
…when everything around me is bad.”
“I feel close to God in the dark.”

I’m not sure what, if anything, I was expecting. But I do know that I was, as always with teenagers, surprised and delighted. They tapped into one of the great, beautiful paradoxes of our faith—that we believe that God is so good, so good, so good—AND—we believe that when things are so bad, so bad, so bad, that’s when we know that God’s shown up.

Over two thousand years ago, God showed up.

So, this Caesar Augustus guy decided to do a census. His power had gone straight to his head (it happens), and he wanted to know just how many peeps there were in the region so he could know just how much money he could collect that year in taxes.

This was a world ruled by the Roman Empire—5% of the people owned 95% of the land and resources. So, this census, frankly, was just rotten. An abuse of power.

You know the story—Luke tells it beautifully. Joseph is a good, honorable, very poor man. He’s not going to avoid the census, but he’s also not going to leave his pregnant girlfriend behind. So they saddle up on a donkey, and to Bethlehem they go. They don’t have anything. They are the poorest of the poor. But they care for each other. And for the miracle growing inside of her.

Well, of course they get 45 miles down the road—only half way there—when her water breaks. They veer off over there, a couple miles out of the way, where they know they’ve seen an inn before, but there’s no room (and even if there had been a room, there’s no guarantee they could afford it anyway). So, the keep going—almost there—when the wind picks up and it blows open a barn door just ahead. Shelter.

God shows up.

It was in that shelter—a dirty barn with dirty animals, hay for pillows, and stagnant water for relief—that Jesus Christ is born.

God shows up.

As a baby—a human baby—God shows up with nothing to speak of other than a couple teenagers—his mom and her very poor carpenter fiancé.

In a world where the rich were really, really rich and really, really comfortable, and relatively speaking really, really healthy, God Showed Up In A Barn. Not a palace. Not a castle. Not a house. Not even a rural inn. A barn.

The New Order Has Arrived. And it doesn’t look anything like The Current Establishment.
The New Way, God’s Way shows up in the dark.
The New Way, God’s Way shows up among the poor and oppressed.
The New Way, God’s Way, the New Order meets us in the darkness.

This is Good News Indeed. God Showed Up among the Least of Us. The world has never seen anything like this before—power to the powerless.


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It’s been one heck of a year, hasn’t it?

Terrorism hasn’t stopped. Remember what happened in India just last month?
We’re still at war.
Tornado season yielded nearly 60 deaths in the southern region of this country.
Gas prices are better now, but holy moley, that was a rough four months.
That tropical storm in Myanmar back in May killed over 133,000 people.
Hurricanes Gustav, Hanna, and Ike killed hundreds and hundreds.
And then. September. Lehman Brothers filed bankruptcy, and we knew we were in trouble, didn’t we?

This economic crisis is touching every single one of us.

Yeah, it’s no secret that we aren’t exactly living in The Best of Times. Even Buckhead, Georgia feels a hit, and we’re scared. Words like “bailout” and “recession” are common vernacular these days. Pfft. What a drag.

Never mind everything else.
Who have you grieved this year?
What are your losses?
How much of you is in the dark?


But there is Hope. Hope with a capital H.

Turns out that God’s All Time Favorites are those who are down and out. Eternal success isn’t measured in stocks or property, land or money. Eternal Life is something we all get, no matter what. And the people who know that best, the ones God is closest to, are the ones without. Obviously. Look where he was born.

The birth of Jesus Christ is Good News because in it lies our ultimate security. Hope that no matter how bad things get, we know that God showed up first in the dark.

I am not about to stand before you today to tell you that Everything Is Going To Be Okay. I am here to say that Everything IS Okay.

No matter what you’re going through.
No matter how hard it is.
No matter how thick the darkness.
You Are Okay.

And the darker it gets, the more likely you are to be present to God who—as it turns out—has been there the whole time.

Those middle schoolers that day, sitting in the circle. They hit God’s Great Truth out of the park...

The Truth is that God Loves You more than you could ever ask or imagine. Maybe you’re uncertain about that. Maybe you can’t feel it. But I have proof:

God Still Speaks. Maybe not audibly, like a voice from the heavens or a visitation by an angel—though I’m certainly not going to put it past God to appear to any of us in any way at any time. But tonight—right now—in the midst of the mystery and wonder of God’s Coming—God is speaking to through this most miraculous story. God is speaking in the story of a baby, born in a barn, who was sent to bring peace and comfort to our very affliction.

The story of God Born In A Barn has transcended time and it now gets to be ours.

Tonight. God has Shown Up for us. The Hope is tangible when we’re open and ready. And I believe we are. It’s been a long, cold Advent. We’ve waited with the patience and stillness of Mary. And now, tonight, God Has Come. And everything is Okay. God is with us—no matter what—and we couldn’t be better.

Can you feel the grip of baby’s hand around your finger? Is there anything better than that? “I’m here,” God is saying. “I’m not letting go.”


Sleep in heavenly peace.



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