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How can God get your attention?

How can God lock eyes with you, literally or otherwise, and truly get you to listen?

I’ve recently told a couple of people in meetings that when I was in seventh grade, my English teacher said to my parents in a conference that “Stephen could be looking directly at me, and I can tell he isn’t listening to a word I’m saying.” This is a cute little story, and yet no one I’ve told it to expresses surprise. I want to hear you. I want to listen to you. But it’s hard sometimes. I have a lot going on. And so do you: sometimes what you’re saying doesn’t come across very well. Sometimes I look up several hours later, maybe while I’m waiting in line for the ferry, and I think, “Damn, what did she mean by that? Did she mean what I think she means?” I want to pay attention and get what I’m being told on the first hearing, but I get distracted. Or you say something distractedly, or indirectly. We’re both caught up in other things, and the connection is lost.

Or – one of us doesn’t want to hear it. Maybe I can’t get your attention because you don’t want to hear what you suspect I have to say. If so, I can relate.

The Nazarenes are mad.

Really mad.

Like, attempted-murder-in-the-second-degree mad.

Now, maybe the community of Luke’s Gospel is just being a little hyperbolic, sketching an event in a way that communicates to us something important that they want us to know. Luke likely wants us to know that Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, immediately is met with aggressive resistance, then and now. That rings true.

“The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.”

They watched. They waited.

Maybe they glanced furtively at one another.

What will he do? What will he say?

The problems of the world seem to be relentless.

It isn’t that we are grappling with a worldwide plague, but that it seems to be endless, one month rolling into the next, the infections map turning red, then orange, then briefly yellow, and back to red again.

It isn’t just that violence and insurrection are on a steady rise, or that economic injustice is tearing our cities apart, or that the alarming effects of climate change are in the news. It’s that it’s all just relentless.

It’s like a river.

And so it is that today Jesus steps not into an indoor font, or even a still pond. He steps into a muddy river, flowing endlessly, moving relentlessly, carrying life along its banks, but threatening floodwaters, too.

Have you lost Jesus?

Maybe you never had him in the first place. Maybe you’ve never thought you even needed him. Or maybe this is a painful topic for you: you want Jesus, or you want something Jesus represents, you even (when you’re honest with yourself) want him a lot, but you can’t find him.

Jesus is elusive. For many of us, Jesus seems to recede into a childhood past, into irrelevance. To the extent some people think about him at all, they think of him as a caricature of a religious figure, a gauzy, ridiculous tall white man with 1970s hair, draped in old-time robes from a corny Hollywood bible movie, smiling faintly up from funeral-home prayer cards and tacky glass candle holders. As religious figures go, the Buddha is much more hip and interesting.

In the beginning was the Big Bang. Thirteen billion years ago, the first galaxies exploded forth in the rapidly expanding, brand-new universe. Like our Milky Way galaxy now, their light wavelengths back then were mostly in the ultraviolet and visible areas of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Now, today, out here in the boonies, on the inner side of the Orion-Cygnus arm of the Milky Way galaxy, that same extremely ancient light from those extremely ancient galaxies is flowing. But after billions of years of expansion, these wavelengths of light have stretched out, longer and longer, and so they are no longer visible, or ultraviolet. They are infrared.

Early this morning, the James Webb Space Telescope left Earth, tightly packed into the nose cone of an Ariane 5 rocket. Over the next 29 days, it will make its way to a point between Earth and the Sun, about a million miles from here. It will unfold itself along the way, extending an unprecedentedly large 21-foot mirror, and a sun shield the size of a tennis court. The JWST is an infrared telescope, and it will allow us to see some of the oldest light waves in the universe.

At the family service earlier this evening, there was no Joseph.

There were no sheep or shepherds or angel choir.

At the rehearsal last Sunday for our childrens’ Godly Play liturgy, all we had were three lectors, three Wise Women, a cow, a donkey, and Mary. Only these nine creatures were present to prepare for the proclamation of the birth of Christ.

Earlier this evening, a young girl named JoJo joined us as the Angel of the Lord, but the overall cast got smaller, because many of our youngest members couldn’t make it. (They are far from alone.)

We sorely missed them, but in a way, here at the end of 2021, this is perfect. This tiny cast of characters around the manger—this is our Good News on this night. Our younger members are telling us something.

May we have ears to hear.

“What, then, should we do?”

This is an excellent question.

But notice who’s asking it. That’s excellent too: not just the general crowd, but specifically the tax collectors and soldiers, the people who prop up the unjust economy of the empire. They’re all asking John the Baptizer, “What, then, should we do?”

And John’s answers — they’re also excellent, if ordinary-sounding and straightforward: share food; be ethical with money; build a just society. A just society: not only you and I being just, but all of us joining with countless others to lift up everyone, and remake the whole land as a peaceable dominion, with God’s help.

This is all to the good.

It feels like God is present in cozy places, lovely locations, sweet forest glades of serenity and contentment. I have old photos of our dogs napping on the sumptuous couch, rolled into perfect, tidy cinnamon rolls, tails tucked, eyes fast shut. Surely God is there. I sometimes rest beautifully myself, snug under heavy blankets in a room that is just a little too cold, and I feel delicious sleep returning for an extra hour and a half of rest in the still, solemn hours around a winter sunrise. Surely God is there. We ask God for moments like these. We plead to God for healing, peace, comfort, support.

I am planning a staff retreat for mid-January, but it was originally going to be in Advent, and in my first notions about what we would do, I thought maybe we would talk about what we long for most deeply, Advent being (among other things) a season of longing. So I then asked myself, “What do you really long for?” And the answer came: I long for six straight weeks of normal, even boring, church life and personal life, everyone doing fine, everyone coming and going without event or trouble, everyone yawning a little more than usual, and basically nothing happening. A little bird hops by my office window. And then we enjoy six more weeks of the same thing, after that. Surely God would be there!

(God would be everywhere in that loveliness, but especially in the bird.)

The normal state of the world is catastrophic.

Everything is falling apart: this is the way it is, and the way it so often is. This is how it was in the beginning when the Spirit of God hovered over the roiling chaos and God began speaking creation into existence. This is how it was in the time of Jesus of Nazareth. This is how it is now.

In times gone by, our destructive species shattered temples and flattened cities. Some eras of human history, like the Renaissance or the Enlightenment, seem to be times when everything comes back together. But even then, suffering and injustice persisted. And now, humanity is bitterly divided, and we seem to be at real risk of bringing about the destruction of the entire biosphere.

Everything is going to work out in the End.

Everyone is going to come together at the End.

Lazarus greets his stunned and overjoyed sisters, but the skeptical and cynical onlookers will eventually be brought back into the circle, too.

Jesus is raised from the dead, and he soon greets not only his friends, but his adversaries too, even those who condemned and killed him. He will bring them all back by the End.

The Communion of Saints will gather on God’s mountain. We will all be together. If you like, you can let the theologians—the doctors of the church, as they’ve been called—work out things like “paraeschatological opportunity for baptism,” the idea that before all is said and done, every human soul will be invited to stream through the gates of pearl, as today’s opening hymn sings it. If you’re worried about the finer points of that, you are welcome to join the conversation! But for now, know this:

Everything is going to work out in the End.

One evening in the spring of 2013, I did not want to be recognized. It was May 13, the first day that I chose not to drink alcohol. I decided later that afternoon that I wanted to go to an AA meeting, and I knew there was a Monday night meeting at the church where I was assigned as a deacon. I drove down to the church, found a parking place, and began to walk toward the building. Almost immediately I saw someone I knew, walking into the building. I texted a friend. “Do I really want to go to this meeting?” I asked my friend. “It’s been three seconds and I’ve already seen someone I know!”

I decided to go in, which proved to be a sound choice. I found a place near the back, on the left side. The room was thoroughly familiar: I had led formation events in that room; I had sung in a little choir for Sunday afternoon worship in that room; I had spent dozens of coffee hours in that room. But now I was there for another reason.

Jesus Christ is a loser.

This sounds deeply offensive in the ears of our dominant culture. When I say it, I want to rush ahead and assure you that I don’t really mean it. But it is true: Jesus Christ is a loser.

He came not to triumph over the forces of empire, but to be crushed by them.

He came not to save us from those who trample the poor and kill the innocent, but to be trampled and killed by them himself.

He did not come to win 270 electoral votes; or “own” our enemies with a devastating defeat that shames them; or safeguard anything of material value for us. He came to lose.

Imagine: the plane is going down. You have a minute or two left, and then you will be gone.

What matters most to you? What do you want to do with the seconds you have left? Will you call someone? Will you pray? If so, for what will you pray? That you will be saved? (Saved from what?) Maybe you will pray that God will receive you at the point of death; or that it will happen quickly and painlessly; or that your loved ones might know, or do, or receive, something…

As you continue to grip your airplane seat, you realize that others are going down with you: if you choose, you could interact with one or more of them. If you engage them, what will you say? What will you do?

I am sure that something you are not thinking about in this terrifying crisis is your many earthly possessions.

Let’s talk about hellfire.

Nobody really wants to, I’m almost sure of it. At best, “hellfire” is a dated, cartoonish notion from yesteryear. Or it’s the kind of thing people think of in a ho-hum, thoughtless way. “Go to hell,” you might say to someone, but you’re not really being serious, or literal.

But at worst, “hellfire” is abusive and traumatic. I have a friend who grew up in a part of the country that provided his childhood imagination with plenty of religious material to feel scared about, even terrified about. Even now, in midlife, he can feel haunted by the horrible, inhumane warning that if he does the wrong thing, or if he thinks the wrong thing, he will be sent to hell when he dies. And hell is a furnace of eternal hellfire.

A friend, priest, and mentor of mine once said, “I will tell you what draws me to Christianity.” She said this while leading a confirmation class that Andrew and I were taking, in 2005, the year we were confirmed as Episcopalians. “I will tell you what draws me to Christianity,” she said. “At the center of Christianity, right at the center, is a dead innocent.”

I will never forget this. She is so right, so dead-on, so undeniably correct about this. You and I may love Christianity for many reasons. We may love Anglican/Episcopal Christianity in particular for our gorgeous prayers, our lovely Nativity carols, our open-minded embrace of disagreement and creative tension, our global appeal as a profoundly inclusive, thoughtful, and innovative Communion. These are all good things. But we must never forget that at the very center of our faith is a dead innocent.

If you are angry, I hear you. If you are enraged, I understand. There are many reasons to feel anger right now.

Maybe you are angry on behalf of young women (many of them still girls) in Texas who are in excruciating, catastrophic crisis.

Maybe you are furious with people who resist, or flatly reject, the coronavirus vaccines. There are stories of frontline healthcare workers who remain uncertain whether they want the vaccine: maybe that confuses you, in addition to angering you. There are different levels of resistance to the vaccine, from understandable wariness about the FDA’s slow approval process, to fierce defiance of the whole thing as a hoax, or a liberal plot.

Here’s something fun we could do. Let’s list the things we don’t like about Christianity.

I’ll go first.

I don’t like how elusive and indirect and mystifying Christianity is, right at the very center. Our savior dies and rises again: Yes. I believe this and I proclaim “alleluia” year by year when we preach this Good News to one another. But I have so many questions. He could eat in their presence, but also move through walls. He invited Thomas to touch him, but told Mary Magdalene not to touch him. And Thomas ended up not touching him. Or did he touch him after all? The text doesn’t say. Come on now.

To watch a video of this sermon, click here.

Twenty-four years ago this summer, a film opened in theaters that featured a hero who gave his all to save humanity, even offering himself up to be eaten alive.

The hero’s name is, simply, the letter K. He is played by Tommy Lee Jones. K is one of the Men in Black, a secret organization that monitors and controls alien life on this planet. K and his partner J go to the Flushing Meadows Corona Park, in Queens, where, naturally, an alien cockroach several times the size of a human being is attempting to steal a tiny galaxy, encased in a cat’s collar medallion. The cockroach wants to exploit the galaxy’s subatomic energy, you see, in an evil plot to commit genocide. It’s just the usual kind of thing that happens to the Men in Black, on a Tuesday.

Shall we go and sit under the broom tree?

If we do choose to sit together under the broom tree, we will be in good company.

We will find Elijah there, as we just heard. Elijah has given up hope. There is a price on his head, and he is fleeing in fear. In his flight from danger into the wilderness (where, if anything, there is even more danger), he forgets the truly awesome experience he recently had, when God passed by, extremely close by, in the sound of sheer silence. He forgets that God gloriously helped him in a political triumph. Exhausted, harried, at his wit’s end, Elijah crumples to his knees and sits down under the broom tree.