The liturgy had me at hello this year…The service for Ash Wednesday is certainly a beautiful one, but as I was skimming through the bulletin preparing for today, I didn’t expect I would just get caught by the first sentence of the first collect: “Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing that you have made”

You hate nothing that you have made. That’s the opening line for us to enter this time of Lent. And you know, I thought it was in the same time a little bit disturbing and yet so touching and profound. It moved me in a very different way that when I hear that “God loves us”.

God loves us. Isn’t that the truth, and we know that, right? We hear that often enough. Not only at church. On TV, on the radio, we read it on bumper stickers. Maybe we’ve gotten used to it. We don’t really think about what it means anymore.

But God does not hate us. Isn’t that something? It gave me a chill trough my spine.

This line moved me first of all, because it reminds us that although we may keep on rejecting and hating one another, and find good reasons for that, there is nothing like that in God. In a world where we are so often hated for what we look like, how we sound or who we are, God does not discriminate. There is nothing wrong with us in God’s sight. As God created us, so we are, and God upholds us in our being.

And that’s already something.

But there is something that is even more worthy to be noticed: It is that as God does that, as God accepts us as we are, God also accepts who we’ve become and who we’ve let ourselves become. God accepts not only who we are, but also what we did. God does not reject us based on our appearance and God does not reject us based on our deeds. And we mean both when we say that God does not hate us.

God does not hate us. Reading this line reminded me of something I haven’t thought about for a long time. It took me back when I was studying literature in college. There is a very famous classical French play – called “Le Cid” – and it tells the story of a young woman whose lover, to avenge the honor of his father, kills her own father in a duel. And so it’s pretty dramatic, right? But after he kills her father, the young woman has these famous words for her lover:

“See, I hate you not”

I hate you not. It became a famous quotation. I hate you not, meaning I still love you, but even a little more than that. A little stronger than that. It means, even if you do the worst thing to me, it’s not only that I will still love you – that there will be some lingering feelings inside of me – but even if you do the worst thing to me, there is no way I can bring myself to have something against you, there is no room for resentment, no desire for destruction inside my heart.

And I think it’s a little bit of the same idea in our Collect today, when we say that God hates nothing God has made. It does not acknowledge mainly that God has some warm, fuzzy feelings for us we should rejoice about. It acknowledges that although we may have done the worst to God, or although we may have done the worst in God’s sight – and we can think about it as killing God’s Son when Jesus died on the cross, but we can also think about it in terms of wars, genocides, and destruction of the ecosystems – in spite of all this evil, there is no room for resentment in God’s heart, no desire for destruction.

God cannot bring God to have something against us.

God does not hate us: It takes into account the reality of sin, evil and pain and yet, almighty and everlasting is God, and so is God’s love: Almighty and everlasting. It cannot be destroyed.

And so this Collect gave me a chill in the spine because I am afraid that often when people tell us they love us, or maybe appreciate us, or give us a compliment, we wonder if they really know us. We wonder if their love or affection, although genuine, is something that has really taken into account all the aspects of who we are or what we have done or what we could do. We wonder if it isn’t a love that is – without a fault of their own – a little bit superficial.

Maybe they like only what they see, the image they have of us, not our depths.

And people at Jesus’s time were already worried about that, weren’t they? Like most of us, they were trying to look good so they could be, if not loved, be admired or respected, or at least be accepted. They put on all those religious acts maybe because they were worried that there was something so ugly or just so plain ordinary inside of them, that they would be mocked, criticized or rejected if people were to find out. And maybe so.

But God, God does not hate us.

God does not hate us so maybe it’s okay to put down the mask. At any rate, no matter how much we may want to hide, God sees us in secret. God sees us in secret. God sees us in secret. Jesus repeats that six times. And it’s not so much that God observes and keeps tabs on what we do in secret, rather it is that God knows the secrets of our hearts: hurts, anxieties, troubles, shame, regrets and longings– all these things that would make us unlovable, if they knew.

But if God does not hate us – and that’s we are reminded of during Lent – God invites us in a relationship with God. Jesus reminds us in the Gospel today that God asks us to use our religion, our spiritual practices not as a make over, a polish to make us look a little nicer, a little more attractive, a little more acceptable, God asks us to use our spiritual practices, prayer, fasting (the things we “give up”), alms giving (the things we “give away”), as a way to crack open before God and to give our hearts to God – to give not only the bright and shiny, but all the things we work hard on hiding because we feel bad, guilty and ashamed.

Because we should not feel first bad, guilty and ashamed. We should first feel loved, accepted and upheld in our being. Because if God does not hate us, how could we despise ourselves?

If God does not hate us, if God accepts us anyway, then it means that we cannot, that we aren’t authorized to sit around hiding, hating ourselves or the rest of humankind, and we need to move forward and become more loving.

I think that what the Gospel teaches us today is this ridiculously simple thing that to love and be loved, we don’t need to look good, to be good or to do good, the only thing we need to do is to open our hearts. And it is true with God, and it is true in any relationships, if we want to love for real.

You know, our best friends aren’t those who honor us with their friendship because they have it all together, because they stay young and healthy and have those wonderful kids or grand kids and great jobs or retirement places. Our best friends are those we can call at the end of the week and tell them about all the ways we messed up and embarrassed ourselves, and still have a good laugh about it, and feel loved the same and even a little more because we told them.

And we can all be this kind of friends and make others feel loved too.

I think God is this kind of friend.

In God, we discover that we can be loved not because we’re messed up or damaged, but because as we acknowledge the depths of our hearts, we allow ourselves to be known and to be seen. As we do so, we free ourselves to be loved and we will free others to let themselves be known and seen too.

This is the key to give and to receive love and this is called vulnerability. This was called humility in the ancient times. And this is the sign we are going to receive today, the sign of the ashes (humility means humus, dirt). Humility, it does not mean to humiliate oneself, it just means to be simple, to be real, to not take ourselves too seriously, and to be sincere about our shortcomings without being a drama queen, and doing so allowing ourselves to be known and to be seen because if God hates us not, neither should we.

And so this is the opening line, and this is our invitation for Lent. If God hates us not, then we cannot sit around hating ourselves or hating humankind, we have to move forward, and as we open our hearts, do the hard work of acceptance, reconciliation and reparation.

Today is Ash Wednesday and we’re just getting started, but let’s start with the beginning. Let’s move forward and receive the ashes.

Your bulletin mentions today that you will hear a “homily”. In case you don’t know, a homily is a short sermon. I have a friend priest who adds jokingly that if a homily is a short sermon, then a short homily is an omelet. When she’s very busy with church business during during the week, she says: “That’s fine, on Sunday morning, we’ll just have an omelette”.

This week the sermon is shorter than usual because we want to leave time for Lucille who offered to deliver a message for Black History Month. When we had our vestry retreat, I encouraged all vestry members to preach once during their term. It’s important to think of the vestry (and all those involved in church work) as spiritual leaders. They are not only those handling finances, dealing with building issues, but we need to remember that they also decide where the church is heading….

– So first a message about today’s Gospel:

Today is the last Sunday of Epiphany (before we enter Lent on Wed), and it is also the feast of the Transfiguration, we have just heard the story. When I have to preach on a “famous” passage of the Scriptures, I often have a look at what I preached the years before. As I did so this time, I was surprised to realize that I had preached on Mark’s and Luke’s version of the Transfiguration but not Matthew’s.

When there is the same story in different Gospels (which happens quite often), it’s interesting to notice the small details that differ. Those details often give us a quite unique perspective on the author of the Gospel’s theology – his way of understanding God at work in Jesus’s life.

And so what stands out for me when I hear this version of the Transfiguration (compared to the two other ones) is this first sentence: “Six days after Peter had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up on a high mountain, by themselves and he was transfigured before them.”

– “Six days after Peter had acknowledged Jesus as the Christ”.Very interesting to me b/c it acknowledges that Peter first confessed his faith (If you remember, it is this also famous passage when Jesus asks: Who do you say that I am?” Ch 16, we’re in 17) and THEN Peter sees Jesus’s glory. FIRST he confesses, first he believes and THEN he can see it, and then it is revealed to his eyes.

Quite extraordinary right? We expect the other way around: You see (something) and then you believe (it’s real). I never believed there were something like white squirrels until I saw one!

– And yet, it seems that it makes sense though, if you start to think about it that sometimes we need first to believe to be able to see. You know, we all live in the same world and our eyes work the same, yet we see things in very different ways: We tend to ignore what’s not relevant to us but we notice the things that are useful or important to us. Have you ever noticed for example when people give you directions the landmarks they have? Some people notice churches, or restaurants, or they tell you the number of the highway, or that’s it’s right after the liquor store!

For me, we often have those funny dialogues with Xavier who is always surprised that I haven’t noticed the wireless terminal in the room, the camera at the door or the radar on the road! Yet, I am the one who spots first what’s left in the fridge.

We see the world differently, we notice what is important to us, what is familiar, what we enjoy but also we notice what expect to see, what we are looking for. And I think it is important to remember this is the way our mind works because it works the same when it comes to noticing God.

Like Peter, we will start seeing God’s glory / discerning God’s presence in Jesus if we start believing that God is present and acting in Jesus. True also in our lives: We will see God’s actions and God’s glory in our lives, if we believe it’s real.

– If you expect to find God, you will find God. Peter had opened his heart, mind, soul to see God’s glory in Jesus and THEN he was able to see it in his flesh. Of course, it’s not about auto persuasion either. Like if you believe in martians and you will start seeing them everywhere! But it’s a pattern, a sort of virtuous circle:

You start to be open to something and then you start noticing it and as you see it, then you’re even more open to it etc. You start being familiar with God by readings the Scriptures, serving people, praying and then you notice God. We used to call that a “spiritual practice”. But we need to pause to do that, to start noticing, and that is exactly what the disciples are doing today. They go on Mont Tabor to take a break from their busy lives (They’ve just fed the 5000) and, main, they also take a break from their anxiety and restlessness (Jesus’s just announced his passion) and then they are able to see.

– We’re going to do that in Lent. Take time to be with God, reading the Scriptures, praying…b/c we also are invited to see. We need to learn how to see. March 28^th: Artist Peggy Parker is offering a Quiet Day for us. She is an artist but also a teacher, and one of the things she says that I love is that: Seeing is a holy act (Last week, we talked about the sinful act of staring!). We have to learn to see in a holy way – learn to see God’s presence, to see God at work – even and maybe especially when, like the disciples, we feel exhausted or discouraged. When I feel like that, I often do a simple prayer to open the day, to see things in a different way “Let me see your love, your comfort, give me an opportunity to laugh / to feel appreciated” and it happens. Maybe it happens every day but b/c I do the prayer, I notice God’s presence.

We think so much that our job as Christians is to do many things for God…Sometimes it is just to contemplate. It transforms us. When we see beauty, we feel better and we act kinder. Seeing beauty in others, not only people but also in nature, work of Art, and also in us make us more respectful and attentive. We want to take care of what’s beautiful. To honor it. So often, we see the world as tool / we are always on the look what we need (the liquor store) / How we can use the world. But if we pause we are given a chance to see the world for what it is – freely given and filled with God’s glory. Even in difficult times, we can see God at work. I hope you will accept this invitation during Lent towards learning holy seeing.

I – We’re in this portion of Matthew’s Gospel called “The sermon on the Mont” Ch 5 to 7. Big chunk of the Gospel where Jesus teaches the crowd. Before we start having a look at the teachings themselves, there are two observations I would like to do:

1 – Matthew always insists on Jesus’s role as a teacher. There are long passages in Matthew’s dedicated to Jesus’s teachings: His sermons, his parables, his dialogues with the people he met. Yet, the sermon on the Mont stands out among Jesus’s teachings b/c Jesus explicitly comments the Law (and the Prophets) = The Scriptures. It was not that extraordinary at the time – that’s what rabbis did: commenting the Scriptures, interpreting the Law, trying to understand how it applied to specific circumstances. It is still true in modern Judaism, but it is also what lawyers do in our court rooms! We agree on the Law (US Constitution, for example), but then we have to analyze how it is relevant to what happens with individuals, or in our society.

It is important for us to remember that, when some of us Christians are accused by others to “pick and choose”, to not behave “by the book”. Once I was told by a leader of another denomination: “It’s fine that you are an Episcopalian, but you have to know that in our Church, we believe what the Bible teaches”. To which I replied: “Okay, then, what does the Bible teach?” Meaning: It’s not that obvious. Let’s talk about it.

Do you know that, for example, there are three slightly different versions of the ten commandments inside the Bible? (Ex 20, 34 and Deut 5). Jesus, right before the passage we have today, reminds us that there is an Eternal Law. Yet, in the Scriptures themselves there are commentaries on the Scriptures, on the Law. It is our job to understand what the Law means for us, how it is at play in our lives, in our cultures, in our societies. Jesus commented the Law, but rabbis before him and after him did just that as well.

2 – And so commenting the Law was an important aspect of Jesus’s teaching – but, as it is with Jesus, he did things in his own way. To me, Jesus’s teaching is unique in the way that he taught surrounded by the crowd. He went to meet the crowd. At the time, rabbis were sought after, you had to “apply” to become their students, there was probably some sort of “tuition”! Not everybody was seen as worthy to study the Law. On the other way around, Jesus was the rabbi who opened the Scriptures for everybody who wanted to learn (Like theologians did during the Reformation!). We still symbolize this unique way Jesus had to teach when we process with the Gospel during the service: Jesus’s words come to us.

And so Jesus came to help us figure things out. Jesus taught with a special kind of authority: Standing on a Mont, surrounded by the crowd, he appeared as a new Moses: “You have heard that it was said” / “But I say to you”. Jesus invited people to examine what they have been taught about the Law, to understand what God called them to do in their humble and daily lives. Jesus didn’t invite people to “make things up”, to “pick and choose”, to try to find “loopholes” (as did some many lawyers!), but he invited people to look deeper, to think deeper, to live according to the Law.

II – And so now we come to the teaching itself. Well, this is really exciting today! Murder, judgments, anger, insult, hell, fire, adultery, lust, auto mutilation, divorce…It could be a new TV show, but it’s the Gospel. B/c the Gospel is about life, real life. Jesus came to the crowd, not only by being physically present with them, but also by talking to them about something real! This is what TV shows do right? They don’t talk about general principles. They capture our attention by dealing with what is on our minds. No doubt that Anger and Sex are two big issues!

So what’s the teaching of this passage? Well, as Jesus asks us to look deeper, he asks us to look not only at the (righteous) actions, but also at the (pure) intentions. Murder (or violence) and adultery can take many forms, and none of these forms are okay for Jesus. Not only your actions have to be righteous, but it is barely a minimum. Your heart has to be pure, your thoughts clean. Jesus does not look only at the letter of the Law, but as the Spirit of the Law. The trick is, as he does so, he seems to make the Law more demanding:

It’s not good enough not to murder, you should never get angry.
It’s not good enough not to commit adultery, you should not even think about sex.

And so, this is what I was thinking when I was preparing the sermon: I am not sure this is very helpful. And I started wondering: Did Jesus really made God’s commandments easier / accessible to everybody or did he make them impossible? Anger and sexual attraction are the emotions that are the most deeply rooted in our two natural instincts: Auto-conservation and reproduction. Survival. How could we just toss them out of our minds?

As I was struggling with these questions, I remembered that the Scriptures themselves are a commentary on the Scriptures. So I decided to wander a bit further in the Gospels, and I found a few things really interesting that shed light on what Jesus is actually doing.

– First about anger. Today Jesus says in v. 22: “If you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire.” Now if you flip to Matthew 23, you find Jesus getting really mad at the Pharisees, and this is what you read in v16-17, this is what he tells them:“Woe to you, blind guides (…) You blind fools!”.

Wow. Jesus got mad at the Pharisees and he actually called them “fools”. In plain contradiction with his former sermon. So didn’t Jesus practice what he preached?

I think this is something else. Actually, Jesus often got mad at the religious leaders, and he got mad because they used their power and their influence to control and diminish people. To abuse them. When Jesus got angry, it was not on a whim but he used in anger for the sake of justice / to defend the powerless but also to stir some kind of change in those who misbehaved.

So we see that anger is an emotion you can decide what to do with: it can be oriented towards destruction / self destruction, or it can be an energy focused towards building up a true religion and a better society. There is an anger that is without hate – an anger that is righteous indignation. Often our anger comes from a sense of unfairness, in our personal relationships or as we witness what’s going on in our society – now the question is for us: How are we going to use it?

– Then a few things about lust. If you turn to John 8, we have this famous passage of the adulterous woman who “has just been caught in the act”, and you know there are all those religious men who bring the woman to Jesus to ask him if it is right to stone her, as it was required by the Law. And John mentions that, all the while they’re discussing that, Jesus is writing in the sand. There is no explanation for why he did that. But I think Jesus wrote in the sand whereas not to look directly at the woman (probably still half dressed), and he did that out of respect, when all the men were surrounding her, humiliating her with their stares, very likely thinking about all those “sinful things”.

So today, when Jesus asks men not to look at women to “commit adultery with them in their hearts”, I think this is what he means: Don’t look at women to objectify them / to humiliate them. To reduce them to their sexuality. It’s a kind of stare that has nothing to do with genuine affection and authentic physical attraction. It’s actually the perversion of this very desire that God deemed as good from the beginning. (I remind you that actually God’s first commandment in the Bible is asking Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and to multiply”).

– And so, Jesus points to the Eternal Law, the Spirit of the Law, that we have heard about in our first reading, in Deuteronomy. God is the God of life and God’s commandments are meant to be life giving. And so this how we have to interpret the Law: Not using it to scare people, to condemn them, to objectify them, but to lift them up, to affirm their identity and God’s image in them (and in ourselves as we do so).

People are the end and the very reason for the commandments.

Last observation – back to Jesus as a teacher: Like all good teachers, Jesus is an educator. Jesus wants his listeners to understand what the law is really about, being able to make wise choices and be responsible for what they do. Being a disciple is to be called to grow. Paul uses this image (2nd reading) about going from “milk” to “solid food”. There is a time when children need to be given what they need to eat, to be told what to eat, and then comes a times when they can make decisions based on what they know is good and life giving for their bodies. This is also what happens spiritually. We have to keep on studying “God’s Law” (= the Scriptures) to become spiritual adults. We are all an embodiment of God’s word in this world. Our lives, an interpretation of the Law. The Eternal Law is not something behind us, it’s something we’re aiming towards as individuals and communities when we grow in wisdom and strive to live with integrity (Our yes is a yes, a no is a no / the body may be torn apart but the soul remains whole). We won’t need to feel threatened by the judge or the fear of hell to do the right thing, but, as compelling, we’ll do the right thing b/c this what we need to do, for the love of God and the love of neighbor.

I talked several times recently about the Sunday readings shifting to Matthew’s Gospel – we’re now in year A – but today Luke pops up again in our readings. There is a good reason for that. Today, we are 40 days after Christmas, and we celebrate a double event: The Presentation of the Lord and the Purification of the Virgin Mary, and of this double event, we only have an account recorded in Luke’s – who is the author who dwells the longest on Jesus’s childhood.

I am just going to make a few quick remarks since this feast and the Jewish rites they acknowledge aren’t typically well known to Christians, or well understood. The Presentation of the Lord is not to be confounded with the circumcision – that always took place 8 days after the birth of the child. The Presentation is this rite when the first born had to be brought, “presented”, to the Temple as a reminder that every first born (not only human, but cattle and crops) were considered by the Hebrews to belong more specifically to the Lord. A sacrifice had to be offered to “redeem” them, to give something for them in exchange, “a sacrifice”, so you have the right, if you will, to “keep them”. It may seems odd, but not that much if you think about it as an act of Thanksgiving, reminding us that nothing really belongs to us, not even our children, that, in this life, everything and everyone is to be out in the hands of God. It’s also an acknowledgment of the autonomy and freedom of each being: Nobody belongs to anyone, not even their families. Then today, we also talk about Purification. The purification of a young mother is another rite that is part of a set of wider rules in Judaism around the shedding of blood. Blood equal life in the Bible (and we can easily understand why). So if you have lost blood, by disease, menstruation or by giving birth, you have to perform a rite to be purified, to be made whole again once you stop bleeding. You do this rite to re-claim your life as your own.

What I think is worth noticing, in this double rite, is that, as the child is acknowledged to be first God’s possession, and as the mother is made whole again, there is a sense of separation between parents and children. Although a family, each one is called to be his or her own person in front of the Lord. Each one in front of their own destiny.

And to me, among other things, this is what the Gospel is about today: Destiny, fate, facing your own future, your own pain and your own death. They certainly didn’t expect that, correct? Jesus, Mary and Joseph came to worship the Lord, but now they end up with a reading. Simeon shows up and prophetize about the child and his mother and, as if it was not enough, he is followed by Anna, another prophetess, to confirm what he’s just said (In Moses’ law, you needed to have two witnesses to make a story believable). And of course, it’s not just the story of Jesus and Mary, but it’s also about the fate of Simeon himself and of all the people, the Israelites, but also the Gentiles – which meant, at the time, basically: the whole universe.

So what do you think about that? Simeon and Anna’s prophecies? Do you think that what happens in life, from our little dramas to the History of nations, do you think it is all random, it has no reason or no ultimate meaning? You probably wouldn’t be at church if you thought so, right? So what then? Do you think this all written in advance, that God knows exactly what is in store for you, and your life is just the unfolding of a script that has been written in advance? Then, do you also think that all that happen in the world is “part of a plan”? Life, death, sufferings, Mary’s broken heart at the foot of the cross? Mothers losing their children, wars and hate, innocent people being thrown to jail?

Well, as we think about these things, we may want to listen closely to our elders, Simeon and Anna. I think this is great we have them in our readings this week. Because it may be a cliché but yes, even if older people aren’t always prophets, they know something about life that others don’t. They have, as we say, “wisdom”, and it’s very sad to realize that old age is not as much valuated today in our Temples as it was at Jesus’s time. I thought about that recently as a few of us commented on social medias about a church pushing away their older members as they were undergoing renovations to be more “relevant”, to attract younger people and families. Somebody commented: “Is it even a church?”- Because of course, you don’t do that, when you’re a church, you don’t push people away. But it is not only because we should be compassionate to the most vulnerable, it is really because seniors have something unique to offer that actually young families and children need to hear – as it is the case in our Gospel today! And so we need the elders’ “wisdom”…but what does it mean?

What is it that older people really have to offer, have to say about life, death and suffering that the youngest generations need so much to hear? What is this wisdom all about? Is it piety, prophecy, the ability to read the future, or is it something much more simple? Well, I had a glimpse of an answer last Sunday, as I was listening to the Presiding Bishop Michael Curry who preached at the revival in Washington DC.

Bishop Curry was telling this story that, after the royal wedding where he preached his famous sermon about the power of love, he was interviewed by a journalist from TMC – and this is what the journalist said to him: “Our audience is mostly Young Adults, they haven’t lived as long as you did, but they heard about what you said about love, about Jesus and they want to believe it is true, that there is really powerful living in love, they want to believe that love can guide you in life, that love can strengthen you for life, they want to believe that when you are pulled down by reality, like the old folks used to say, “Love can lift you up”. But they don’t have lived as long as you have, and they don’t know if it can really work! Preacher, you preached a good sermon but will it work?”. Bishop Curry said that, when he heard that, he had to stop for a while, and then he responded: “I have been around long enough to know and believe that love is the only thing that has ever worked” And he added: “People who made a difference in your life are the ones who cared”.

“I have been around long enough to know and believe that love is the only thing that has ever worked”. People who make a difference aren’t those who are brilliant, rich, beautiful or perfect, people who make a difference are the ones who care.

This is to me, what wisdom is about. It’s not so much piety, prophecy, the ability to read the future. It is to have lived a life where you have witnessed love at work, where you have worked for love, and now you can be a witness that love works, that love is the only thing that really works, for our own lives, for our nations and for the whole world. In the words of the Gospel, in the mouth of old Simeon and old Anna: Love has power to redeem and love has the power to save, because love is God, and God showed us how God’s love works in the life of Jesus – in spite of sufferings, heart breaks and even death – love has the last word.

I think this is what Simeon is telling Mary today. It could seem very cruel to say that to a young woman, to a young mother, that “a sword will pierce her own soul”. Why didn’t Simeon stick with the first part about Jesus, that is really amazing? That Jesus is the salvation, the light and the glory? Why does Simeon add the part about Jesus being the cause for the falling of many, a sign of opposition, and that Jesus will eventually break his mother’s heart?

Well, Simeon says about himself that he is at peace. Because Simeon knows about life, sufferings and death and he knows that it is all part of the plan and he wants Mary to know so she won’t fall into despair when Jesus is rejected, hated and crucified. It is part of the plan.

But what does it mean? “It is all part of the plan” is one of the Christian sayings that is the less understood. We often understand it as “God wanted it”, “It had to happen”. And so we make it sound like horrific things needed to happen, that it was even God’s will that there would be suffering and death and even sin, and hate, wars and disasters. But maybe this is not what Simeon means. It is not what Redemption is about. On the other way around, Redemption means that all those terrible things will be assumed and integrated into something bigger, that love will work everything out for the best, even if it is as cruel as to have your own child tortured and executed in front of you. Life is probably not a script written in advance, but in the light of love, everything can and will make sense, even the cross.

Simeon is at peace in front of life, and so he can be at peace in front of death too. The Letter to the Hebrews we have just read tells us that in Christ the power of death has been destroyed, assumed and overcome, and it is also something we need to be reminded today. When most people think about death as the ultimate failure, Simeon welcomes death with a sense of completion, of accomplishment. And it is not so much about what he has been able to do with his life, it is much more about what he knows what God can do. Or maybe because he knows that there is not a single thing that God cannot do, or, in Bishop Curry’s words, that love is the only thing that has ever worked. So let us live in love. Amen.

– It’s interesting b/c this week I was mindlessly flipping through a women’s magazine, shopping, fashion, advice column, when I came across something that sort of turned upside down my long-time unquestioned perspective on today’s Gospel.

The article was about high achieving women who are bored at work. How those women pushed themselves very hard, studied for many years, confronted a competitive and sexist environment, all of it to finally discover one day that what they got wasn’t really was they were looking for in the first place, that basically they weren’t happy at work. And they weren’t happy not for lack of success or money, but mainly for lack of meaning. They didn’t feel their work made a lot of sense. Most of them started out with studying something they really cared about, but little by little, they felt more remote from doing it, most of their job ending up in supervising, controlling, organizing, but they weren’t in touch with the real thing their hearts longed for.

And it looks like the women in this article aren’t the only ones to feel like that. In our developed countries, statistics have it that at least 50% of people with an office job are unhappy at work b/c they feel their jobs don’t make enough sense.

And so – it got me thinking b/c of course, if you pay attention, this is exactly where and when Jesus decides to show up: On people’s work places. He does it, of course, in our story today – a well-known one, when he called twice in a row two brothers to leave their nets to follow him (an interesting insistence), and we know also that Jesus recruited Matthew himself, who wrote the story of today, when he was sitting at his tax collectors booth.

So, for Jesus, it was like a pattern, right, to ask people to leave what they were doing? We got used to these “call stories” though – I know I did. But the article of the office women unhappy at work changed my perspective b/c those women testified that one day they had to do something to change their lives b/c they could not bear it any more. They decided to do something concrete, something that made them happy but also something that had meaning, that was in accord with their values, something that brought them closer to nature, to people. Like most Christians, I have always assumed that Peter, Andrew, James and John, and others disciples like Matthew, made a huge sacrifice the day they decided to follow Jesus. I assumed that they did something very hard, to leave behind their daily activities, the life they knew, the relative security and the comfort they enjoyed. But now I think: Well, very likely there was some sacrifice, and some risk taking in leaving everything, but maybe, just maybe – Jesus was all they were waiting for. An opportunity to change their routine, to do something new, meet new people, become somebody else, or more likely, become who they were really called to be (as Simon became Peter) – so at last they could be in touch with their spiritual longing – finding sense and purpose in their lives beyond day to day survival.

From fishing fish for daily survival, the disciples go out with Jesus to fish people: teach, heal and bring hope to people for the Eternal and divine life.

Now this probably tells us something too, right?

I don’t assume we are all called to leave our jobs – a lot of us are retired anyway! – or our families, our homes…To me the text says something more simple, and yet deeper: It says that we all long for meaning, that our daily life cannot sustain us if it isn’t filled with deep spirituality, a spirituality that is not only in our heads but mainly in our hearts and hands, in service and connection with others. It also means that our God is not a boring God, a never changing and remote God who only expects us to do our daily duty and be contented with it, but quite the opposite: God wants to take us on an adventure.

– First point: Our daily life cannot sustain us if it isn’t filled with deep spirituality. The disciples are longing for more than their fishing for fish – and we hear in Matthew 4, a few verses before our passage, Jesus telling the devil: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out from the mouth of God” – as if the supreme temptation was not, as we often assume, greed, but believing that all we need in life is a plate on our table and a bed to sleep in.

Have you ever read the beautiful book “Man’s search for meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl? Frankl tells his story about surviving four concentration camps during World War II, and as a psychiatrist, he says that what he observed is that what was killing people, apart from execution, was not so much lack of food, lack of medication, exposure or exhausting jobs, what was first of all killing people in the camps was lack of meaning, lack of connections and lack of hope. Frankl observed that if you could find a way to sustain that, your chances were greatly improved. Because life isn’t only a biological process, life is first of all a spiritual adventure.

– And this is really what Jesus invites his disciples to do today – to follow him on a journey talking about God, meeting people, helping them, bearing their own crosses and finding new life. We often assume that their dropping immediately their nets meant that suddenly they had it all figured out – I don’t think so. We see later that they had much to learn from Jesus, even after the Resurrection, until they receive the Holy Spirit. I think they dropped their nets because they had this longing in them, even if they didn’t really know what it was about.

Today, of course, Jesus invites us to follow him in the same way, so we can live to the full, beyond who we think we are to be whom we are called to be – from being Simon to becoming Peter. Leading spiritual lives you see, it is not only about saying prayers or reading the Bible, it is about coming closer to God by finding deeper understanding about what’s going on in our lives, how God speaks to each one of us individually – the reason why it was so important to Matthew to remind us again and again that Jesus was a teacher. But spirituality is also about making connections, getting closer to people, especially those who are different than us, as Jesus went to be with outcasts and sinners, and with them hearing the good news and finding healing, even through pain and death.

And so, and it is my second point, this really is a journey. We’ve just heard it in the psalm, when the psalmist says to God: “You speak in my heart and say ‘Seek my face’ – Your face, Lord, will I seek”.

Not so much a journey towards God than a journey with God. We often have in mind this representation of a God to be found somewhere, a God that never changes or never does anything new, but we see in the Gospel that really Jesus came to find people where they are, on their work places, to show us that God is working with us, in us and through us. The disciples started following Jesus b/c they had much to learn, to see and to experience – and this is true for us wherever we are in life. God has always something to reveal to us and create with us, even if we find ourselves in very difficult situations. Frankl testifies that he never learned so much about life than when basically all his possessions were down to his bare existence, an existence that was threatened ten times a day.

This means also that we have power – power to respond to life in a meaningful way, as the disciples responded to Jesus on that day. Meaning in our lives is not so much to be found at is to be created by caring for others, keeping faith and having hope. There is no script – we find it as we go. Isaiah promised that the Messiah would carry the light for the people in deep darkness and Matthew reminds us of this passage of the Scriptures in the beginning of the story: The disciples saw light through Jesus’s life, feeling God’s presence in him, they responded to the invitation of letting themselves be transformed and transform the world.

I think this is what this call to repentance is all about: Making up our minds to see life in a new light. Not as something we have to either enjoy, when we’re lucky, or endure, when we’re not lucky, but as a spiritual formative experience in the way we live, suffer and die, realizing life is an adventure with God and for God.

Finally, it also means that we need to help people along the way with their spiritual needs. That we have to be Jesus on the shore of their daily life as well and “fish” for them, even on our work places. I have a friend who prays daily to see the spiritual needs of people and she always ends up having the deepest conversations with them at random places like the dog park, the garage or the supermarket. You don’t have to be very educated to do that – spirituality is about what’s in people lives, in their hearts – And so you only have to listen to them, take them seriously, discern with them how God is at work in their lives. We often think about being Jesus to others by being nice and helpful, but what about trying out to be Jesus to others by drawing their attention to the way God is speaking to them and inviting them to change their lives? Christians often complain that today people don’t believe in God the way they used to, and yet if we pay attention we will see that there is still a deep thirst for meaning, relationships, and renewal in everyone, as the article I read testified about. When Jesus asks us to “fish for people” it is not about trapping them in the net of our convictions, but maybe “fishing” is about helping them to make the connection with God, finding the thread between their deepest longings and Christ who is still today calling them, as he calls each one of us. Amen.

– I really love our first reading from the OT / Exodus. Short text that says so much about God. I have a book in my library at home whose title is: “What do we speak about, when we speak about God?”. And indeed, it’s a good question b/c so many things have been said about God since the beginning of times! Everybody (each culture / religion / generation and each individual) has an opinion / speculates about who God is and what God wants and how we are to find God b/c of course…who knows?

Yet if we open the Bible, there are some passages that are so clear! Even if we know they were obviously written by a human hand – it really feels divinely inspired (and that’s what we claim). God tells us who God is. And most of us when we introduce ourselves / we may give a list of qualities (I am like this, like that), but isn’t interesting that, instead, the Bible describes what God does? God says to Moses “I am who I am”, so in order to know who God is, you have to know what God does. If we look at the verbs in our OT lesson, this is what God says about what God does: I have observed / I have heard / I know / I have come down / I will bring (my people) up.

And it tells us a lot right? God observes, hears and knows. Now we learned that when we were children, that God knows everything, yet for most of us it is still a little bit frightening to think about that. God sees and knows when we do something wrong, or shameful. But this is not what the Bible says. The Bible says that first thing God sees and hears, it is the misery of those who suffer. God does not know everything to make people feel bad, to judge and to condemn them, but God – and it is two others verbs the Bible uses about God’s actions – God is going to “come down” in order “to bring (his people) up”.

The Bible does not describe who God is by listing God’s great qualities, even if it could. Rather, it tells us how God feels and what God does. God is touched by the people – and I would argue not only the people, but by suffering in general, the suffering of every living thing – and God acts to relieve this suffering. God comes down to the one who is suffering to bring them up / raise them up.

And it is all the story of salvation right? This is not only the story of Exodus. This is also the story of Jesus: Jesus was touched by people’s sufferings, he came to live with the poor, he saw them and heard them, he brought them healing and hope, made them feel loved and accepted. He came to “raise them up from the dead” in many, many ways.

This is what God does and so this is also what we are called to do when we have a living faith / as followers of Jesus – and today, we are reminded of that through MLK’s example. How MLK’s faith in God, being a follower and imitator of Jesus, made him act in very concrete ways: He observed, heard, knew the suffering of African Americain people and he also came to help them and to raise them up. (= be with them, marching and advocating, in order to defend their dignity and obtain for them equal rights). We may think that MLK’s life was so exceptional (and in many ways it was, of course) that it has little to do with us – yet, as Christians, his life is a great example of what it means to follow Jesus.

But how can we do anything like that? It doesn’t have to be that complicated. Quote of MLK I love: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?”

I learned this week reading the newspaper something I didn’t know, that MLK’s Day is “National Day of service”, a day to encourage volunteering. And I love that b/c to me it is the whole idea: To take action, at our own level, to love in acts. Concretely. And it can be small things. The newspaper told stories about those volunteers and they did those little things – like one man described how every week, he took an hour to go read to a student in a poor neighborhood. Yet all the volunteers said they were so proud as they realized they were able to make a difference in the life of others, but also in their own lives. One of the volunteers said: “The reason I am so happy is because I have started to live my life for others”.

To act concretely, to do something for those who suffer, this is what God does and what believers are called to do, because this is the nature of love. I was saying that, since the beginning of the world, people wonder who God is, but isn’t it also true about love? What is love? There are so different many ways to think about love. But this is what the Bible tells us: Love is about seeing, hearing, knowing others, being touched by them, but it is also, and it is mostly, coming down (from where we stand) to be with them and to raise them up / to lift them up. And we can all do that, at our level. Isn’t it wonderful that all of us, wherever we are, we can love as God loves us? We can all decide to start to see and hear and learn more about what’s going on in our world or in our neighborhood, and not just feel sorry or even heart broken, but go and do something about it. We can do it as individuals but also as a community, as a church, no matter if we are small or don’t feel we have much power. We are all called to love this world and to bring more love in this world.

This is also the message of the Gospel today. As Jesus describes love, he uses verbs all the time: “Love” for Jesus is synonymous with “Do good” / “Bless” / “Pray” / “Offer” / “Give”. We often think that this Gospel on the love of the enemies is very idealistic, when to me it is very realistic. It shows love not as a dream or a passive emotion or a mere feeling, it shows what love is supposed to do. What Christians, churches are supposed to do.

You know, I love to celebrate MLK’s Day b/c of that. B/c in the life of MLK, of those who fought for civil rights, we see love in action / transforming a country / changing the world. The Letter from Birmingham Jail we have just read reminds us of that: Love is not supposed to be passive / and so certainly churches aren’t supposed to be passive. In the letter, we can feel MLK’s energy, but also his sadness and disappointment at churches which don’t do what they are supposed to do. Christianity is not mainly a cultural or even a religious identity. Being a Christian is (first and above all) about putting love into motion, letting God work through us, especially as we care for those who suffer – every living creature.

I read something similar this week – written by a pastor (John Pavlovitz): “If you profess to be a follower of Jesus, I’m not concerned with your politics and I don’t care about your doctrine. I’m not interested in the Scriptures you can recite or the prayers you utter out loud. (…) Show me that you actually give a damn about people: not just (…) American people or Christian people or white people—but the disparate parade of human beings in every way you encounter them, in every condition they arrive, with whatever backstory they’ve lived through. If you tell me you’re a Christian, be someone who, like Jesus—looks at the crowds and has a compassion for them that propels them into proximity with their pain.”

The extremism MLK speaks about in his letter is not a politic extremism. It is loving to the extreme – which leads us to take action, concretely, everyday, and not only privately but in the public space when needed. But this is Jesus’s message. When Jesus asks us to love our neighbors, he says that it not about loving only our friends, about being nice to people, it’s about loving those who are different, but also those who hurt us, those who do evil because in the end, being a follower of Jesus is about overcoming a culture of hate. If as Christians we are supposed to bring a culture / an identity, that’s the culture / identity of love we need to bring.

We hear today this great saying of Jesus: to turn the other cheek. But it’s not about letting people hit you. Slapping the cheek in many cultures is a provocation. And so what Jesus asks us when he asks us to turn the other cheek, is to not respond to provocation. To not enter the vicious circle of hate. To resist the hate / not become hateful whatever the reason / to turn the hate around by responding with love to all situations. We have to confess that most of us Christians think it’s okay to hate at some point to hate, whether it’s criminals, immigrants, terrorists, gay people, abortionists, white supremacists…you name it. But to all of us Jesus says: It’s never okay to hate. Jesus knew what he was talking about. Jesus had many people who hated him – so much they put him to death. Yet even on the cross Jesus loved them and showed compassion. As Christians we are supposed to embody love. Not just pity or compassion for victims or criminals, but a love in action that seeks to relieve suffering, bring justice, raise people up – all people. The nature of love is ultimately that it brings Redemption.

How do we do that? Maybe we have to start by confessing our inability to love / how hard it can be to love in a world full of hate and provocation and ask Jesus, as MLK kept on doing, ask Jesus to give us his strength, the strength he showed on the cross / the strength to love to the extreme and to the end. Amen.

– Some of you know that I live very close by the seminary in Alexandria where I studied to become a priest. They have Eucharists everyday at their chapel and it’s not unusual that they ask their alumni, once ordained, to come to lead a service and to preach. I did that for them several times over the years, but one day, a request a little bit unusual came to me. I was asked to lead a liturgy in Spanish because the students wanted to learn. Now, I know a little bit of Spanish. I studied it in high school – that was a long time ago but I thought, why not? I am not great at that but what is the worst that can happen? It’s just a small service with students like I used to be, they’re not going to judge me if it’s not perfect.

The thing I didn’t know is that on that particular day, they had on campus a guest who came to give a lecture, and they wished to honor during the celebration. For that reason, I was told 10mn before the start of the service, a few faculty members were going to attend so they can do the acknowledgment of the guest during the offertory. And so, this is what happened: As I entered the chapel, all vested and ready as much I could be to celebrate and to preach, I realized that in the two first rows in the Chapel were actually seated, not just a small group of friendly students, but most of my former teachers, and, among them – Former Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori – who is, by the way, completely fluent in Spanish.

No to tell you that I felt it would be a “humbling experience” would not even begin to cover it. It was already something to have to preach to my former teachers and to the Presiding Bishop, but on top of that, in my broken Spanish? With my French accent? I started to break in cold sweats – but there was nothing I could do right? I could not run away, although, trust me, I wished I could have crawled under a rock.

So, of course, when I read about John in the wilderness seeing Jesus coming from afar and then Jesus telling him he’s not there to teach him, to give him instructions, or even to have a random conversation, but he is actually asking John to minister to him, to baptize him, well…although (let me be clear) I don’t identify with John at all, I can certainly relate to what he was feeling: “Me? Baptizing you? It is I who need to be baptized by you”. Because of course, having John baptizing Jesus, it didn’t make any sense – it’s a little like me preaching to a bunch of people with a Phd in theology and fluent in a language I just have basic notions of. You don’t feel honored or even humbled when something like that happens to you, what you feel is embarrassment and even maybe shame and fear.

And yet – this is the way it all started. John had to baptize Jesus so “all righteousness would be fulfilled”.

What does it mean? The question is not even “why did Jesus need to be baptized” but why did Jesus ask John? Embarrassed him this way? Why did Jesus asked of John to do something so unexpected / counter-intuitive?

As I thought about it for today, I found 4 levels of explanation

First part: 2 first points. We covered last week during our forum that Matthew is the Gospel “of the church”. Matthew is writing “foundational text” to build up a community. I think it meant something for the early Christian community that John whould baptize Jesus…and I love to have that before Annual Meeting and election of new vestry members next week…It says how leaderships looks like in the church.

1 – Good leadership comes from people who are not interested in power. And it’s hard for us to think about that when of course in the corporate world and politics it’s almost every time greedy or at least ambitious people who lead. In the church, good leaders are those who, like John, are aware of their limitations, don’t cling to their ministry when somebody they think is more able than them show up, feel and express the need to be fed / ministered to as well. Know they are also in need of healing, attention, help. Yet, they are also willing to fulfill their duties as needed, when asked to.

But then, leadership in the church looks also like Jesus: Let others be in charge so they can experience serving, even if there would be a faster or more efficient way to act, empowers disciples to do new things or to carry on their ministry, step back when needed.

In both case, neither John nor Jesus are interested in power or control. Don’t feel the need to be right or to be the center of attention. What they do, they do it to serve, and to make God known (and in the story, God shows up!). I was joking this week that often in the church it’s the one who doesn’t want to do it who is the more qualified to do it: They acknowledge their limitations, are aware of the responsibilities and are not interested in being the center of attention. They do what they are called to do to serve – with great humility.

Isn’t it interesting to realize that both John – who serves, ministers – and Jesus – the one who is ministered to – both do that out of a great humility? Isn’t it what “all righteousness” is all about? Humility is ministering and in being ministered to.

2 – As it turns out, this Gospel is probably more about ministering to one another than about leadership. What it tells you is that in the church, ministering is mutual. We minister to one another. The minister (=priest) is not the one in charge of ministering to everyone, the minister (=priest) reminds us that as baptized people, we all share in Jesus’s priesthood (BCP p.308), and we are called to minister to one another – to be to one another a witness of Christ’s love. I remind you that, in case of emergency, any baptized Christian can baptize someone (BCP p.313). More generally,we pray for one another, we help each other, sometimes it’s not more complicated than showing up, giving a phone call.

We all need help, we all need to be strengthen in our faith, prayed for, talk about the things we deal with. We are not strong by relying on ourselves, we are made strong and firm in our faith by our community but also by those around us: family, friends, but also counselors, doctors, teachers…John baptized in the desert b/c he believed that God wasn’t necessarily stuck in the Temple. God was among people and in the wild. People can minister to us in countless ways, even non believers. Nature can minister to us too. Julian of Norwich: “God is in everything that is good” (I would add: “and right and joyful” as in our Eucharistic Prayer A).

We need to show up for one another as of course Jesus showed up for people and as John showed up for Jesus – even if he didn’t feel that qualified. We all need each other. God became flesh to learn what it is to be human. As long as we are in this life, nobody has it all figured out.

2^nd part: 2 last points / explanation why JB “had” to baptize Jesus less about the church and more “spiritual” (Tell us something about God)…Bear with me.

3 – Why did Jesus ask John to baptize him? Did he want to make a point / show an example / say something about the church – as we may believe when we read Matthew? Maybe. It says something about leadership and about ministry, which we have just covered. But more deeply, I think the reason why Jesus ask John to baptize him it’s b/c Jesus could not help himself. That’s just who he is.

I recently watched on Netflix the movie “The two Popes” about Pope Benedictus and Pope Francis and we see the rising of Francis in the Vatican, and a lot of the comical aspect of the movie is to show how Pope Francis is humble, humble in a way that embarrass the rest of the clergy. For example, we see taht Francis (when still an archbishop) does not want the fancy car to visit Rome, he just rides the bus. But he does not do it to make a statement, he is just happy to see people and to chat with the bus driver. Well, I think it’s a little bit the same with Jesus. He goes where the crowd is, he goes meet his cousin, he let him do his thing – even if John starts to be embarrassed. Jesus does not think twice about what he is doing, he is not making a well rehearsed statement, even if it says something. Jesus asks John to baptize him b/c he is so humble. It’s just natural for him to behave that way.

To come close to God, we have to be very humble, not because God wants to humiliate us, to make us feel little, but b/c God is very humble too. In the very simple things. And that’s where God reveals God’s glory. The language of the psalm is not so much a language of conquest and power, strength, it is the language of awe. God broke into the world in humility. A baby and now a young man coming without armor / naked in a river to be cleansed.

Isaiah describes the gentleness of the Messiah. God is not here to break us. Trials in life may break us, but Jesus came literally to raise us up.

4 – Last, something to chew on: Maybe Jesus asks John to minister to him b/c, in a mysterious way, we are called to “minister to God” and maybe that’s what Christian life is all about. We often think of baptism as this day we accept God into our life, and God becomes part of our story. Baptism is this day when we become part of God’s story, when we receive God into our heart, when God receives us into God’s heart. If we are made in God’s image, God wants as much as anyone of us to be loved – even more than us, since there is only perfect love in God.

How do we show love to God in our everyday lives? How do we give back to God by being our best selves? Living a life of service full of goodness, generosity and joy? That’s our life as baptized people: circle back the love we receive from God. That’s what Jesus calls “all righteousness”.

I used to celebrate Christmas in my childhood in South of France, at my grand mother’s. Many traditions around Christmas there, one of them is to have 13 desserts! The tradition that is the most well known is “creche”, nativity scenes. During Christmas time, you visit different churches, they all have their nativity scene, some of them use as much space as the space we have here for the altar! The whole village is represented – with those little characters called “santons”, not only shepherds as in the Gospel, but the postman, the mayor, the baker, the seamstress..even the priest! Coming to adore baby Jesus. I remember spending a lot of time as a child looking at all of them…Maybe you’ve had a chance to visit at the National cathedral? At this time of the year, they display nativity scenes from all over the world.

Amazing to see all those different people surrounding Baby Jesus, all united around Jesus. Sometimes a little bit like that here at Christ Church. We are really a diverse church. Lots of different backgrounds, but we all come here to worship Jesus, especially on this Christmas Eve.

In our world, so many different people and ways of living: What is it that we have in common? What would you say is, in spite of all our differences, the thing we have all in common?

Well, there are different answers to that, but to me, clearly, the thing we all have in common as human beings is that we all want to be happy. Think about it, think about what you really want for your life, or for the life of your children, of those you love. If you had only one wish you could ask for to a fairy, what would you ask for? Probably for happiness. Or maybe you would not ask it like that, maybe you would ask for health or to be loved by this very person, or maybe you would ask to get this amazing job, or to win the lottery – but if the fairy were to tell you: “I will grant you this wish, but it won’t bring you happiness, in fact, it’s going to make you very unhappy” Well, probably you wouldn’t want the thing you asked for anymore, would you? In the end, what we long for is happiness.

Now, what is it that God wants for us? Maybe it’s hard to tell, we barely know who God is, how could we tell what God wants for us? So we turn to the Bible, to try to understand what God has in mind for people. And as we read the Bible, we may come up with different answers. Some people say that, above all, God wants us to obey, to behave. Or to be good people. Or maybe: God wants us to believe. And that’s all right…

But listen closely to what God is telling us in the silence of this quiet night. Tonight God sends his angel, his messenger, to the shepherds and this is what God tells through his angel: “See – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people”.

And this is the beginning. The beginning of Luke’s Gospel, the beginning of the story of God incarnated, God with us in the person of Jesus, and this is how the beginning is: God wants us to rejoice. God wants to share God’s joy with all humankind. God does not want us first thing to obey, to behave or even to be good people. God wants us to rejoice. And so, no wonder we all have a longing for happiness, because this is what the Gospel tells us today: We are made for joy. We are made for joy and not any kind of joy, we are made for the joy that comes down from heaven. We are made for the joy that comes down from heaven. Maybe this is what it means to be human. To be meant to be filled with God’s joy.

Now you would think: If we are meant to be filled with God’s joy, if it is God’s will for us, and if deep down we want to be happy, things should be very straightforward, no? And yet, when we look around, or maybe when we look inside of us, we know that there is often not that much happiness to be found.

How do you explain that? If God really wants us to be filled with joy, and if we want so much to be happy, how comes happiness is so hard to find? Well, maybe we need to listen to the rest of what the angel has to tell the shepherds on that night, what the angel has to tell us tonight. There are two things that the angel does that I think are really, really important. First the angel ask the shepherds not to fear, and then the angel points them in the direction of Mary, Joseph and the child in the simplicity and the humility of their condition.

“Do not fear”. We’ve heard tonight that when Jesus was born, there was no room for him in the inn and so, it’s often an image preachers use, to say that, for us, at Christmas, we need to make room for Jesus in our hearts. We need to make room for Jesus. And as it goes, there is only so much room in a human heart. Not because we love other people or other things too much but what takes the most space in our hearts, it is as the angel tells us: It’s fear. It’s anxiety. I don’t think it’s our fault. We are humans and there is so little we can control. The shepherds had reasons to fear on that night: fear of the wolves, of the thieves. Fear of the oppressors (they were living under Roman occupation), fear of their own people: people didn’t like shepherds because they had what was considered a demeaning job. So, there were a lot of things that were threatening to them – but the angel says that God is not one they need to fear. God is not threatening them. God comes to them, on that night, as a little baby – not as an Emperor or as a judge. So really, God wants us to believe that although we may be afraid of many things, animals or people – sometimes for good reasons – we really don’t need to be afraid of God. We have to trust in God’s goodness, even if God can be scary because God’s glory is so big. The only thing we should be afraid of is to reject God. God wants us to rejoice in God’s presence, and not to run under the bed to hide away.

And then the angel does a second thing. The angel points to Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus and the angel says this is where the shepherds need to go, this is where joy is to be found. We could spend a lot of time looking at our nativity scenes to understand what joy is all about, where joy is to be found. According to the angel, joy is to be found among the little ones, the poor, the humble. People like Joseph and Mary and their baby. Joy is not to be found in a palace or even in a Temple, joy is to be found in the heart of those who love, and joy will be found for the shepherds as they go to adore the baby. Think about it. The angel announces “A Savior”, but what could this little baby do for these shepherds? They would probably be very old when the child would finally be of age to “save” them! And yet, the shepherds rejoice, they find joy in adoring him.

The thing is – Joy and happiness aren’t exactly the same. Maybe sometimes, they are quite the opposite. We want to be happy, as I’ve said. Yet, have you heard how we speak about happiness? When we speak about happiness, we think about all the things we need to have to be happy, all the things we need to do, all the goals we need to achieve. How we want to be admired and respected. And so happiness seems always out of reach, there is always something that misses in our lives so we can be truly happy.

But this is what God says to us on this very night: It’s the rich who look for happiness as something they have to find, to achieve or even to deserve, and they exhaust themselves in doing so, and they sometimes make themselves and others very unhappy by doing so. But this is the secret: Joy is for the poor of heart, joy is for the humble – because the poor of heart expect God to give them what they cannot give to themselves. Joy is something that God and only God can give us – not as a reward – but because joy is what God wants to give us from the start, because joy, this what God is. In Matthew’s Gospel, we hear God say the day Jesus is baptized: “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Jesus is God’s joy, and God wants to give us Jesus, and this is the gift among all gifts.

To receive God’s gift, maybe we need to be more simple. To renounce to try so hard to find, to achieve or to be worthy of happiness, and to rely on God to give us the joy we were made for, receiving God’s gift into our hearts in adoring Jesus. When we love, we stop thinking about everything that’s not going well. When we love we only want to be with the one we love.

Tonight, like in the nativity scene, we are gathered around the one we love, around the one who love us beyond words, so much beyond words he had to become flesh to tell us. Let’s rejoice to be with one another and as we do so, let us learn how to receive God’s love, to (re) discover the wonders of God’s love for “all the people”, for each one of us. That’s what church is for (and not only on Christmas Eve!): to learn how to love and to share this love in a world that longs so much for joy. Amen.

From Matt 3 to Matt 11: A complete reversal of situation for JB. On the outside but also on the inside. Last time we saw him he was this wild prophet, free from all powers religious or politics, people were seeking after him…And now JB is in prison, on his own, got arrested by Herod. Inside he is changed too. Not so assertive, he has doubts, has to ask his own disciples for reassurances about who Jesus is. JB starts second guessing himself, not so sure anymore about what he has seen, heard – about what he has said.

Maybe it was nothing but a dream, seeing the Messiah.

– First observation: This passage is very realistic about what it is to live in this world. We all have reversal of situations. For the best and sometimes for the worst. Whether it takes a lot of times or whether it is very sudden, we experience ups and downs / more accurately situations where we think we are all what we can be to situations where there is nothing we can do / limited (JB in prison – it can be also for us sickness, aging, depression, financial problems that consume us). We all at some point come to a dark place. Dark place in our lives, but also dark places in our souls.

It’s not so much the suffering but “suffering the suffering”: When we suffer, we start asking What did I do wrong? Basically what JB is asking is: Did I miss something? Misunderstood? Did I lead people to follow the wrong one? What does it mean about my mission and my life?

Doubts about God are never only intellectual. If there is no God or if God isn’t who I believed God to be, what does it mean about who I am, my purpose in life?

– Jesus breaks the cycle of doubts by reminding the disciples that JB is the greatest of all. Greater than the kings, greater than the prophets. JB’s situation may have changed but he is still a great prophet even if he isn’t preaching / teaching anymore like he used to do. Even if he has questions, doubts. Even if he is in despair.

Do we believe that this is the way God looks at us? That we are always who we are / who we are meant to be, whatever life throws at us? We can spend so much time eating our own hearts out with guilt, shame, doubts – could Jesus’s words bring us peace? If being in a dark place is something that happens even to the greatest, then why do we so often believe that is we were wise enough, holy enough, good enough, nothing bad would ever happen?

– Second observation: I think I’ve already mentioned that sometimes bad things happen to you not b/c you did something wrong, but b/c you did something right. That’s actually the case with JB. He lived under an unjust political system and as he denounced it, he was bothering those in power (they were actually afraid of him!) and he was arrested to be silenced.

What happened? We learn later that JB condemned Herod for taking his brother’s wife. It’s not a detail, as with other sexual misbehavior, even if sometimes we want to make light of them. But what we often miss is that it’s not the sexual acts that displease God, it is the abuse of power. The big deal with adultery in the Bible is that it is the taking somebody that does not belong to you / no acknowledging that other people’s bodies are not in your control.

JB said to Herod: You have no right to your brother’s wife / it is unlawful. It’s not about respecting the rule for the sake of respecting the rule. It means: Even if you are the more important man in the country or even in the world, they are limits to your power. Even if there is nobody more powerful than you, you still have to respect the law / the law is bigger than you.

Even the kings don’t make the law. They can make rules but there is a law: Other people’s bodies are off limits – which condemn sexual violence and all other forms of violence.

– Third observation: JB condemning Herod’s behavior enables us to understand better something about John’s testimony and about his ministry, something he may not have understood himself at the time (which would have led him to doubt and even despair): His job was to tell the truth and not necessary to make a lot of disciples (These days, it seems that church’s success is only measured by numbers and attendance!).

JB had to say something when he witnessed Herod’s immorality. JB was close to the poor, the crowds of those who came to see him in the wilderness. He couldn’t stand the abuse of power. Now Jesus still acknowledges him as this great prophet. JB did the right thing, even if he lost his job / his ministry / his reputation.

Barbara Brown Taylor: You don’t become a martyr b/c you want to be a martyr. You become a martyr b/c you get so caught in serving God and following Christ that you stop being careful. That you just do what you have to do w/o caring about the consequences for yourself.

What about us? Is truth telling important to us? Doing the right thing that is right in front of you? Have you noticed how often people advise us (and we even tell that to ourselves) that maybe we shouldn’t do/say something for a greater good? Do you think maybe JB should have said nothing about Herod so he could have continued his job baptizing and witnessing to Jesus in the wilderness?

Yes, but what kind of ministry would it have been? Being on the side of the poor, w/o standing up when there is an abuse of power in the land? Again and again, the Gospel calls us to integrity vs hypocrisy.

When in conflict with two possible courses of actions, we often think we should pick the greater good, but maybe we should pick the “nearest good”. The right thing to do right now in the present, instead of the right thing to do in a hypothetical future. That’s where a lot of people who want a career in public life get caught: They accept compromises to be able to apply their program once they have more responsibilities, but often when they get there it’s too late, they are corrupted and they continue to accept what’s immoral for a “greater good” that ends up being always delayed…

JB lost his career for the sake of the truth. How many times at work, with our families, have we been told to not “rock the boat” so we can secure what we have?

– And yet…Fourth observation: With Jesus’s words come reassurance. “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed…” It is all happening (The Messianic time), even if it’s happening in a way you cannot understand or control or even appreciate.

It is all happening, even if it’s happening in a way you cannot understand or control or even appreciate. Well, that’s probably words we also need to hear for ourselves when we are in dark places. It does no mean Jesus asks us to feel good when we feel awful. But Jesus asks us to trust. And this is really what following Jesus is about. There is a story of Jesus talking to a Saint (a nun in the 18e century) and what he said to her is that what is the most important in his disciples isn’t for them to be perfect or to do a lot of prayers or even a lot of good deeds. What is necessary is to trust. B/c w/o trust Jesus can do nothing. But also b/c trust is the sure mark of love. If you think you love someone but you don’t trust them, think twice – You may not love them as much as you think.

The disciple needs to grow / be perfected by learning trust.

Jesus says that JB is the greatest of all, and yet the last one in the KOG is greater than he. KOG: this place where God is fully present / perfect state of our lives w/ God / Eternal life. What we call “sanctification”, “being made perfect” still needs to happen for JB, for all of us. As long as we live this life.

It is great to baptize people, to preach, to be a political activist, but there is something even more important: It is to learn to trust God. And so, if this time in prison seemed completely wasted on John, he was actually doing the most important work of his life: Learning to trust God and let sanctification happen. Famous preacher in DC (Rev. Howard-John Wesley) announced this week his Sabbatical: “I feel very far from God”. “The worst thing we can do in ministry is to think that b/c we work for God, we are close to God”. True for pastors but isn’t it true for a lot of us who “work in the church” / give so much of our time and energy to the church? When do we “refill”, when do we let God nourish us?

– Last and fifth observation: How do we learn how to trust? If I had the answer, I would be greater than JB! But today Jesus points to the Scriptures (Isaiah) to help us discern signs of hope / see the desert blossom. Needs the ability to ponder / pace ourselves to see them. To spend “free” time with God / with the Scriptures / looking around us. At night, remembering the events of the day, the people we have met, things said etc.

James: reminds us three times to be patient. Impatience for God isn’t always wrong, Jesus at some point also confesses he is impatient (to see God’s K on earth). We pray: Your kingdom comes. But JB was so impatient he thought of Jesus as an “obstacle to faith” (“You take offense at me”) b/c Jesus instead of bringing judgment and establishing his kingdom “just” hung out w/ people! Impatience can lead us to despair, to a very dark place when things do not come our way / the way we want them to come to us. This is what Advent is meant for: to learn how to wait. We have to wait 4 weeks when the prophets waited two thousands years. Maybe we can start being patient with little things, so we become able to be patient for God!

– Back from vacations! I didn’t go anywhere exotic this past week, one of the things I did was used some of this time at home to make room on my shelves…After all, Advent is a penitential season and as I was looking around I thought: “Maybe I don’t need all that stuff” and I had a look at all the books I have purchased and not read yet. One of the books caught my attention. I started reading a few pages and I thought: No wonder I had left it aside. But this time I carried on and read through it. One of the hardest read of my life. Well written but relate the very tough / traumatizing experience of a boy soldier: Ishmael Beah. Maybe you’ve heard about him?

This is his story: 12 years old boy growing up in a village in Sierra Leone in the early 90’s. One day, he leaves with a few friends to visit his grandmother a few miles away from his home, and while they are away, his village is attacked by the rebels and all his family is killed. Beah flees, starts a long walk on his own and hides in the forest. Later, he meets a few other boys in the same situation and together they wander from deserted places to deserted places as everybody else is trying to escape from the rebels, trying to avoid being killed. As months pass by, the boys end up almost starving. But then one day, they finally arrive in a bigger village defended by government soldiers and they start hoping their lives will be better and safer. Unfortunately, it’s the opposite that happens. The soldier start training them to fight: They are brainwashed and taught how to kill: “We did nothing but fight, watch war movies and do drugs so strong I would not sleep for weeks”. Then the boys are sent on the front lines: “I can’t remember how many people I killed” says Beah, and he describes some of the atrocities he committed, destroying entire villages. It lasted for two years until he finally got “rescued” (even if it didn’t feel like rescue at the time) by the UN and placed in a rehab center with other boys soldiers.

The title of his story: “A long way gone”: I wondered what does it mean. Is he now long gone from the war / finally escaped or was he a long way gone and yet, he came back? Traumatized w/o hope of healing / sinned beyond any hope of redemption. Today, Beah lives a normal life in NYC advocating for peace and children’s rights.

– Reading Beah’s story in a parallel w/ our biblical lessons for today was fascinating for me. In our three first readings (OT, Psalm and Epistle), there is this promise that God will bring peace to the world. A peace that is not just the absence of conflict / escaping from a terrible situation, but reconciliation and harmony – against all odds, even against the laws of nature: “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid…” etc. The author of the book of Isaiah wasn’t naive. This book was actually written in a time of war as well. In a time of destruction when there was no hope in sight.

This tells us that hope can’t always be seen but it can be found in God. In this time of the year when we await the coming of the Redeemer, we are reminded that Redemption is possible, even against all odds. We can survive, we can heal and we can turn our life around no matter what we have done or what others have done to us. A journey towards peace: This is the story of Beah – and even if we have never known such terrible things – this is our story too, the story of our world, the story God wants to write with us beyond sin, violence and suffering. We hear in the Gospel today John the Baptist calling us to repentance / which means: to return. We too are “a long way gone” but we can come back, by “Preparing the way of the Lord, [making] his path straight”.

How do we do that? JB: Baptizing and confessing are the way to prepare to let God act into our life / into our communities / in our world. Baptism and confession are sacraments / liturgical acts but they express realities we have to live out.

I learned a lot about baptizing and confessing reading Beah’s book, his own experience of Redemption.

Life was very tough in the rehab center. The boys were used to extreme violence and hooked on many drugs. At the beginning, they had a lot of outbursts, fights and were unkind to the staff and nurses taking care of them. Their only thought was to escape and find drugs and go back to the front lines (They missed the violence!). Yet, each time the boys did bad, instead of getting mad, the staff would tell them: “It’s not your fault”. Quiet amazing as you read Beah’s account of his time in rehab to hear these words again and again from the people around him: “It’s not your fault”.

It seems to me that those words hold a huge healing power. It was like balm on the children’s wounds and water on their fronts: It was like they were baptized again in innocence, brought back to their childhood that had been robbed from them. This is what baptism – as it has been brought to us by John on the banks of the Jordan and as it is still present in the church – do to us: It brings us back to our true identity as children of God, children who have been robbed of their divine filiation by the evil that is in the world. To us too, baptism tells us: It’s not your fault. Look at the liturgy in the BCP. It says that evil was there before us and we have been caught in the cycle of selfishness, hate and violence – but it’s not what we are meant to be and in Christ we have a way out.

It does not mean we have done anything or we haven’t done anything wrong. As the children were told: it’s not your fault, they started opening up and confessed what they had done. Removing the shame and the condemnation, showing unconditional love, the words opened up a space for confession and facing reality. For being finally able to look at their stories, to name what happened to them and what the army had them do. Beah’s book is also his confession, acknowledging what he has done, he found his way back to who he was meant to be in the first place.

Repentance is possible. We don’t have to be for ever the victims or the perpetrators of violence. Isaiah: No preys and predators anymore (They go together!). As we become aware of that, we are healed and can start mending the world.

– Advent is a time for hope and peace. To look at ourselves, at our neighbors and at our world with the beliefs that things can change, that we can change: that we can bear fruits worthy of repentance. JB describes the Redeemer as the one who can purify us from evil (fire images). Children at the rehab center were healed b/c the staff looked at them as children, in spite of what they had done. They believed they could change. John the Baptist and then Christ look at us trusting we can change.

– Do we believe change is really possible? Do we trust we can change / Others can change?

* Do we feel we are “beyond Redemption” because of what we have done or what has been done to us / even if it’s nothing as bad as Beah. I have a 60 years old friend who was telling me recently that after a lifetime of being abused by her mother, she is now choosing to look the future with optimism and let go of the anxiety her mother had fed her. She said to me: I am not the person my mother designed me to be. (= designed her daughter to meet her own needs). She starts to believe she can live a life that isn’t defined by enduring the pain of not being loved.

* Do we enable others to find their way back to their true selves? To our community? To God?Cf the movie “The Green Book”: The chauffeur says to his boss who is estranged from his brother: “The world is full of lonely people who are too afraid to take the first step”. Maybe Christmas will be an opportunity to seek out those from whom we have been estranged / who are a long way gone. Maybe they are just too ashamed to reach out to us. Do we look at those who hurt us with hope? (Does not mean we should be enablers! But we can call them back to be their true / their best selves, as did JB with the religious leaders). We can all “baptize” one another with words of healing, love / washing in innocence.

– Advent: The best is yet to come. “Do we really believe that? Are we just afraid that life will bring us more problems, and in the end sickness and death will have the last word, or do we trust that our life is a path towards God’s kingdom, that there is another horizon / a horizon of peace? Good fruit are to be borne / good things are to be born (Theme of our Quiet day).