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Baptism of the Lord: Mark 1:9-11

 

A Sermon for Covenant

Mark 1:9-11

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

January 15, 2012

Kyndall Renfro

 

In seminary, we practiced baptizing. Really. My class took a field trip to the Baylor Student Life Center. We brought our swimsuits, covered ourselves with white baptismal robes, and climbed in the swimming pool—all 20 of us, and practiced on each other. I imagine it looked as if some strange cult had arrived to occupy the campus swimming pool. I don’t know if the pool was reserved for us that morning, or if everyone just politely and fearfully cleared out when they saw us coming.

It was one of those rare days in seminary where what you learn is practical rather than abstract. For example, it was the first time it ever occurred to me that except in cases of small children, I will baptize people who are bigger than me 95% of the time, and I learned it takes a certain amount of artistic finesse to lower people into the water, especially when you are smaller than average.

Some people are scared to be baptized, even after they are ready to be Christian, and I can’t say I blame them. Giving someone the authority to purposely dunk your face under water is uncomfortable. What if the water is cold? What if the minister holds you under the surface while he prays a long-winded prayer? What if those white robes are see-through, or what if you swallow water and come up coughing? What if your pastor drops you because you’re bigger than she is? You don’t get to be in control during your baptism, and it’s not exactly comfortable. It looks weird, and it’s even weirder to try and explain to your nonChristian friends and family.

And I wonder if John the Baptist’s baptisms were all the stranger still. I mean, at least my class did their practicing on a Baptist campus. John was out in the wilderness dunking people in a river by the hoards, as if John’s wardrobe and diet weren’t enough to make people suspicious.

Baptism is a big deal if you’re Baptist—hence the name. Some people believe that one of founders of our denomination, John Smyth, believed so strongly in believer’s baptism, that he baptized himself, since there were not yet any other Baptist ministers who could do it for him. As a Baptist, I suppose today’s text should be one of my favorite Bible stories—Jesus getting himself baptized. What better biblical support could we Baptists ask for?

But if I were to be perfectly honest with you—there is a lot about baptism that I just don’t understand. Or, at least, baptism hasn’t always moved me in the way I would want it to.

There at least two reasons (that I know of) for my struggle to comprehend baptism. First, I grew up with a Christianity that exerted a lot of energy denying works-righteousness, which meant you had to be very careful when you talked about baptism, because baptism could easily be misconstrued as a “work” by which people thought they could be saved. We don’t want that, so it’s better to downplay baptism than have people mistakenly look to water and rituals to save them rather than God’s grace. I get that.

But I’ve come to the conclusion that in our very attempt to preserve grace, we may have crippled our means of dispensing it, kind of like a treasure that you lock away but never spend. We may have done so much to “protect” the treasure of grace, that we’ve made it hidden and inaccessible. What I mean is: Baptism has never been a way to earn salvation, but baptism has always been a mysterious and sacred gift through which we encounter grace in our very bodies in an inexplicable fashion. You see, we can talk about grace, we can think about grace, we can read about grace, we can sing about grace, but there is nothing in the whole Christian practice quite like the physical wave of grace that hits your very skin in the waters of baptism. The only thing I can think of that comes close is when we taste grace with our tongues in the bread of communion. There are so few things among our religious practices that help take grace beyond an abstract concept and make it tangible. God’s grace is so heavenly, so divine, so esoteric, so huge that we need something tactile, earthy, common, small—like the waters of baptism and the bread of communion—if grace is to be translated to our human flesh.

No, baptism is not a work that we do. It is a mystery that we enter. And if we downplay baptism for fear of missing true grace, well, we might just cut ourselves off from a God-ordained channel of communication.

The second reason I think the meaning of baptism got lost on me is that our brand of Protestantism tends to be anti-ritual. Of course, it’s generally troublesome when you define yourself by what you are not rather than what you are. But more to the point: rituals are good and wholesome. The problem is when we disconnect our rituals from the rest of our living, thinking, and being. Then it becomes an empty ritual, and an empty ritual ceases to be a ritual at all—it is more like the gesture of a clown, meant to entertain, or the wave of a magician, intended to deceive. But living rituals are an absolute necessity for anyone who hopes to get their faith past their heads into their hearts and out into their daily life. Rituals help engage our whole being, and not just our thoughts. Baptism is a ritual, and it’s a mighty good one for a Christian.

However, all that being clarified . . . it is still curious that Jesus shows up for baptism because he doesn’t need saving grace the way we do. He doesn’t need repentance in the way John’s followers needed it. And surely he doesn’t need a ritual to connect him to God, seeing as how he is God. So why, of all people, does Jesus get baptized?

Some say Jesus was baptized in order to an example to us. I kind of buy that . . . but I’ve already been baptized.  So what’s the point of reading about Jesus’ baptism year after year, if I’d already done the deed myself?

Maybe Jesus did it because baptism is messy and physical, and the symbolism is so real it slaps you in the face like a splash of cold water.

When we were growing up, my younger sister was notorious for sleeping in. She would turn her alarm on its loudest setting—loud enough to wake up everyone in the house, except for her, who would sleep right through it until it shut itself off. She kept setting her alarm earlier and earlier, to give herself “time” to wake up—which meant that the whole family was waking up earlier and earlier while she continued to snooze peacefully away. My mom tried everything to teach my sister to wake up, but nothing was working. One day, we had all had enough, so my mom tried a new trick. She took a tiny cup, filled with just a couple ounces of water, and when the alarm started blaring and my sister kept right on sleeping—surprise! My mom woke her up with a splash in the face.

We still laugh about that story today, and my sister claims that she woke up convinced that she was drowning. Just a few ounces of water and she thought she was drowning . . .

Committing to faith can feel like that, I think. Just dip your toes in, and you’ll fear for your life. Feel the sprinkle of a few drops, and you just might think you are drowning. But to put your whole head under? To let a whole new way of life rush over and around you like a flood, to place yourself wholly in the confidence of someone else’s arms, such that you will suffocate if they are not reliable, to hold your breath in the hopes that dying to self really does mean new life on the other side? That’s crazier than it looks from the sidelines. The riverbank spectators may mock, but they don’t even know how insane this business really is. No one knows, until they’ve already waded in up to their waist, and by then, there’s not much choice but to go under, and hope you come back out, alive and clean.

I think this story is supposed to be strange, and odd, and mysterious. I think we’re supposed to wonder why Jesus would get himself baptized, because we’re also going to wonder along the way why we let ourselves get baptized. All that is certain is that we did it, and that it changed us somehow, and that there’s not really a good way to go back to the safety of the sidelines, even if we wanted to. There’s the hope, of course, that the Spirit descended on us, just as it is descended on Him, and that God’s favor was spoken over us in some visible way, that grace was bestowed, and that we were called children of God.

So may we know somewhere in our hearts that even on the worst of days, we would still choose the icy waters of baptism over the numb existence of the sidelines. May Jesus, the beloved of God, beckon us to stand in the waters by his side, and look up, and see the heavens torn asunder, and the Spirit coming to meet us. May we choose the river, mysterious and torrential though it may be, because we’d rather be drenched in grace than remain dry and dehydrated on the riverbank. May we dive in, and meet Jesus. Amen.

Sunday after Christmas: Luke 2:22-40

 

A Sermon for Covenant

Luke 2:22-40

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

First Sunday After Christmas

January 1, 2012

Kyndall Renfro

 

I want to begin with an excerpt from a blog today. It’s a story you may have heard before, but even if you haven’t, I suspect it will start to sound familiar soon enough to some of you . . .

“When Philip Groning wanted to make the documentary ‘Into Great Silence,’ he asked the Carthusian monks at the Grande Chartreuse monastery in France if he might spend a couple of years quietly filming their lives. They said they would think about it . . .

 . . . 16 years later [Philip] received a letter . . . [the monks] had considered his request and were now ready for him to begin filming.

 What kind of slow-moving world do these monks inhabit? 16 years in the modern world is time enough for two or even three careers. Why would these monks assume Philip Groning was still interested in this project or even interested in filming anything at all? How did they find his address after 16 years? Did someone write it on a scrap of paper and keep it in a box all that time?

 The monks of Grande Chartreuse mark time in their own way. Time in their world moves more slowly. Things unfold gradually. Nothing happens quickly, so when things do happen they are important things . . .

 [Did I mention this was written by a pastor? He continues . . . ]

While our church does not move as slowly as these ancient monks, we are a very slow church. When I am at our church I can hear the people of our world rushing by on the highway while I mark steps down the path to the labyrinth. A car that passes our church might travel a mile before I take another step. Five miles while I consider a painted rock left on the ground by a child. Which of us do you think is actually getting somewhere?

 We are a slow church. It is our nature. Many of us are tired [of high-energy churches] . . .  We are a church for people who feel their life speeding along like those moving sidewalks in airports, and they want to get off for a time. We’re strolling through life here, meandering along at our own spiritual pace . . .”

You guessed it—this is an excerpt from Gordon’s writing a few years ago. There’s another line that made laugh, where he writes, “The average time it takes to get a project completed at Covenant Baptist Church is three years.”

When I read today’s text about the eight-day old baby Jesus, what stands out to me is that Anna and Simeon were really, really old, and they waited a long, long time.

No one knows whether the Greek is trying to say that Anna was 84 years old or that she had been a widow for 84 years, which would probably put her age closer to 103. Either way, the point is: Anna was old. Simeon too, scholars presume, since he is ready to die after seeing Jesus. One ancient source claims Simeon was 112. Simeon was waiting for the consolation of Israel; Anna had been waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem. Between the two of them, if you add their ages together, that’s over two hundred years of waiting.

So can you imagine the scene—the joy on Simeon’s wrinkled face, the love in Anna’s wise old eyes? I can see Simeon’s aged, nearly crippled hands—bones and blood veins protruding—shaking mildly, half from excitement, half because he lost the ability to hold them steady over thirty years ago, and it is with those hands that he reaches for a baby so new that the skin is shiny and smells sweet. Imagine a widowed woman who’d never had the pleasure of motherhood caressing the child with a tenderness even Mary couldn’t match for Mary had waited nine months, but Anna had waited a lifetime.

Two elderly folks whom everyone else in the temple regarded as old cooks who’d lost their grip on reality.  If you saw one of them scuffling towards you, you darted off so as to avoid their gaze. If you listened, you could hear them muttering softly about the coming consolation of Israel . . .

but nobody listened. Those two had been around so long they were like permanent fixtures in the temple, easily ignored. Some of the younger priests secretly made bets on who would die first—Anna or Simeon. That was the most excitement either of them caused. They did attract some pity from the more compassionate priests, and those priests were a little worried Simeon and Anna would die from disappointment rather than natural causes. How tragic to wait your whole life and never be fulfilled . . .

Now the presentation of babies at the temple was a regular occurrence. But somehow it felt sacred every time—new life being brought before God in this old place, offering up what was young and human before a God so ancient and so divine. Simeon loved to greet the parents; Anna often asked if she could hold the baby. Decade after decade those two greeted babies and offered up silent words of blessing, but rarely did parents realize their children were being cradled by saints.

Anna and Simeon—the two old cooks who kept watch for the Messiah and blessed the babies. After a century of so, you would think they’d be done, ready to move on. You would think they would have given up on the Messiah. Neither Anna nor Simeon could explain it, but somehow, each baby brought them new inspiration to keep hoping.

They didn’t know they were waiting around for one baby in particular. The vision wasn’t that clear; the “consolation of Israel” was more of a fuzzy dream that you can’t quite remember than a well-defined treasure you could go searching for. A century of waiting, and they never knew how they would recognize it when it came. For all they knew, it could have come and gone, and they had missed it, but somehow, that just didn’t seem possible.

So they waited relentlessly, which is a funny way to describe waiting, but there was no other word for it: they were relentless in their waiting.

And then one day Mary entered the temple with a baby boy tucked in her arms, and the Spirit of God moved through Simeon like an Awakening and the heavens bust forth in a song that only very old ears can hear, and the two old cooks turned out to be prophets in disguise.

Fred Craddock describes Anna and Simeon as saints who were “at home in the temple.” The temple of God, the very presence of God was their home, their rest, their holding place.  And I wonder if we could be like them, or if we see the church as a mere building where we gather rather than a haven where we can hold tight to the wildest of hopes.

I often think about what worship should do to us week after week, if we do it right. I don’t really think that we should leave church every week feeling beat-up with conviction about our sins and shortcomings like all we ever are is screw-ups. But I also don’t think we should we leave feeling warm and fuzzy inside as if all is right and good in the world when in reality, the world is a pretty screwed-up place full of injustice and suffering. Nor should we leave church feeling gushy in-love with Jesus like religion is a teenage romance, or scary in-fear of God like church is the place to escape wrath.

I think we should leave the church building every week feeling as if we shall never give up. That no matter how screwy our world, our family, our habits, or our hearts might be, we keep coming back to the good old sanctuary because hope is palpable here. You can over-turn every rug, open every closet, and search every corner and you won’t find a single quick-fix or easy answer, nothing that feels like a sugar-high and no one who can be the perfect friend. But you will find love and the hope that a new world is possible.

Jesus meets us here. Sometimes it is subtle and sometimes it is entirely secret. On rare occasions, it is obvious and overwhelming. But whether we know it or not, feel it or not, understand it or not, there occurs in this place, week after week the mysterious mingling of God with humanity that changes us little by little and never lets us alone.

That, I think, is the reality that sustained Anna and Simeon all those years in the temple and slowly gave their old, tired eyes a prophet’s vision.

The church’s mail comes across my desk every week, and inevitably there is always a flyer advertising the next greatest seminar on how to make our church relevant to the culture. But it seems to me that God and God’s holy places are always relevant, and that flashy seminars and homage to the latest cultural trends are more likely to obstruct rather than aid our capacity to mingle with the ancient wisdom of God. That’s my take on it anyway.

I believe that part of my calling as a pastor is to place a ferocious amount of trust in the church, no matter how crazy or outdated that might seem. Of course, I’m pretty new at this, so I might lose heart. I might get discouraged. I might get hurt. I’ve got a long ways to go before I can match Anna’s 84 years of faithfulness, and there’s no telling what might come along to threaten my commitment or challenge my faith. I’m not thinking only of the stuff that could happen to me, but all the stuff that might happen to the people I love, too. 84 years is a long, long time to wait for the consolation of God’s people, and the ground is ripe for disappointments all along the way.

But I guess I am willing to dive in anyway because I see you and your unlikely devotion to this place—in short, I can see that you’ve made the church your home, and it gave me the courage to join the family. Of course, you might lose heart too, you might get discouraged, you might get hurt.

But I was just thinking, maybe we could stick together and encourage one another. You know, grow old together. Slowly, but surely, go crazy and confound the world together. Keep watch for the Messiah and bless the babies. Keep hope and never give up. Together, like a bunch of old cooks who are quietly and surprisingly prophetic. Amen.

Advent #4: Luke 1:26-38

 

Advent Reflection

Luke 1:26-38

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

Fourth Sunday of Advent

December 18, 2011

Kyndall Renfro

 

In light of recent news-breaking events, I’d like it to be known that I personally know RG3—i.e. Robert Griffin III, recent Heisman winner and Baylor University celebrity. At least he has spoken to me: once.

He was a freshman, and I was an employee for Student Athlete Services at Baylor. I have to admit, my first impression wasn’t a good one. It must have been a bad day for RG3 because that large grin was missing, and he wasn’t all that nice to me. He mumbled out a “sorry” to me, and that was that.

So when he started getting popular, I was skeptical at first. I warmed up though, and three years, two winning seasons, and one Heisman later, he’s completely forgiven. And, bonus: now that he’s a nationally-known figure, I have a claim to fame. Robert Griffin III once apologized to me.

Have you ever noticed how those of us who are not famous grope after breadcrumbs of renown? Hoping to touch the hem of the garment of a celebrity, as if it had the power to change our obscure lives?

Feeling like we’re near a celebrity creates such a buzz. Why do you think all the tabloids in the check-out line at the grocery store stay in business? Reading those juicy stories makes us feel close to people of influence—people who don’t have a clue who we are or what our names are.

Today’s passage lays out a bunch of details right from the beginning, and not a one of them sounds juicy. (Except maybe the virgin part, but we’re not even supposed to know that she’s pregnant yet.) All we read for starters is: The sixth month. The angel Gabriel. The region of Galilee. The town of Nazareth. A virgin, engaged to a man. A man named Joseph of the house of David. Her name was Mary.

None of these details make for an eye-catching headline. They are details we’ve heard a million times. It’s the part of the story I often skip. I don’t want to read about the boring set, the familiar scenery.

But imagine you are standing in line at the grocery store, glancing at the tabloids, greedy for the latest celebrity update. And that’s when you see it—your name and your picture right on the front of a magazine.

That’s what the Christmas story is like—someone perfectly ordinary, unknown, and unsuspecting gets noticed by God. That means the set and the scenery—the time, the place, the individuals, the details—make the story in this case, because every small and specific detail is a reminder that the God of the universe gets that intimate with the world—specific time, specific people, specific places. Galilee. Nazareth. Joseph. Mary. Someone Really Big knows our names.

Imagine Mary’s shock when the angel appeared to her.

“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”

As far as I can tell, there is nothing particularly startling or threatening about Gabriel’s greeting. I’m not saying I wouldn’t be shocked if an angel showed up on my porch with a message from God, but the words themselves don’t sound all that alarming. “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” Some of us would give anything to hear a word from the Lord that He is with us.

But Mary is not comforted, amused, or pleased. Maybe it would be like wondering how on earth a picture of your face ended up plastered on the cover of People.  Only certain kinds of people end up in People, and you are not that kind of people. There must be some mistake.

“Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you,” the angel says in my NRSV translation.

“But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” The TNIV says “Mary was greatly troubled at his words.” The Living Bible calls Mary “confused and disturbed.” The Message says she was “thoroughly shaken.”

“Do not be afraid, Mary!” Whew, what a relief, Gabriel stepped in to fix her. In the world of angels, I don’t know how they qualify gender, but Gabriel is most definitely a man. “Just don’t feel that way, Mary.”

Yeah right. That approach didn’t work, which doesn’t surprise us women, so Gabriel fumbled on . . . “you have found favor with God.”

Which is what he said the first time—the very thing that set Mary off in the first place, and Gabriel repeated it. I’m not thinking Gabriel’s such a genius at this messenger business, but you’ve got to give him credit for improving. When Zechariah expressed apprehension, Gabriel struck him mute for nine months.

With Mary, he simply continued, “And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son.”

And I imagine this is the part of the story where Mary went from anxious to terrified. Sure, bearing children in that culture was an honor. If. You. Were. Married. Bearing a child out of wedlock? Unthinkable, unbearable.

Gabriel couldn’t stand to look Mary in the eye for the rest of his delivery: “And (gulp) you will, you will name him, J-Jesus. He will be great! And will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of your ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end . . .” Gabriel peaked at Mary . . .

“How can this be . . .?” The strangeness was palpable. The confusion in the air was so thick that Mary and the angel were holding their breath.

“Well . . . the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Gabriel stopped, and there was a long and terrible silence. How could he bear to return to the heavens if Mary said no? The whole redemption of the world rested on the success of this message, and her response. Yes, he fully believed that nothing would be impossible with God if Mary said yes . . . but what if she didn’t? What if it was back to the drawing boards? She looked so scared, so distraught . . . or at least, that was how she had looked last, when Gabriel’s eyes were still open. What if all that God had planned and hoped for the world was not yet to be . . .

He heard Mary shift and clear her throat. He shielded his face with his hands and peeked.

Her voice came out like a whisper, but it was stronger than any human voice he ever heard: “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Gabriel was so excited he forgot to reply, and he darted away without another a word to make the announcement to the heavens: “She said yes!”

The angels threw a loud and rambunctious party that night. Mary sat at home in the quiet and pondered these things in her heart.

It is a mystery to us and to the angels what happened inside of Mary on that day—not just the holy conception, but also what caused the shift from anxiety to bravery. She grew a baby, and she grew courage, and I suppose the Holy Spirit was culpable on both accounts.

Perhaps Mary quit thinking about what this would mean for her, and was able to get a glimpse of what this would mean for the world.

Perhaps the coming of God into the world is too big of a thing to say no to, no matter how ill-equipped you may feel for the task.

Perhaps the coming of God into you is too bizarre and well, delightful, of a thing to reject, no matter what people might say about you.

The whole thing is just crazy enough to keep getting our attention year after year. And no matter what kind of year it has been, we arrive at this season, and call it what you will but something like the Spirit of God comes to us and we grow courage. Amen.

Advent #3: John 1:6-8; 19-28

 

Advent Reflection

John 1:6-8; 19-28

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

Third Sunday of Advent

December 11, 2011

Kyndall Renfro

 

 

Last week, we talked about who John the Baptist was, and what his ministries were.

Today’s text is all about who John the Baptist was not, and what his ministries were not.

 John was not the light, so says John chapter one, verse 6-8. “He came only as a witness to the light.”

John was also not the Messiah, so says John chapter 1, verse 20, and this claim is a quote straight from John the Baptist’s own lips. You see, the priests and Levites had shown up to ask John who he was, but instead, John answered by saying what he wasn’t. “I am not the Messiah,” were the first words out of his mouth. He admitted it readily and freely.

John was also not Elijah.

Not the Prophet, with a capital P.

Not worthy to untie Jesus’ sandals.

And, while John was on a roll, testing negative at every turn, he tested his questioners as well and the results were similar. He discovered what they were not. “Among you stands one you do not know,” John said to them, which may sound like he was addressing their knowledge, but really, John was speaking to their identity. The priests, Pharisees, and Levites were supposed to know God better than anyone—it was their vocation, after all—but they did not recognize the Messiah in their midst. They were not as knowledgeable and priestly as they thought. They thought they were the professional know-ers God, and generally-speaking, this perceived proximity to God gained a priest respect. But John was not your average person, so he saw past their portly perceptions to the undernourished spiritual vision beneath, and he pronounced with a prophet’s poise: “You do not know.”

Perhaps the priests’ inflated sense of who they were blinded them from recognizing the Messiah in their midst. Perhaps it was John’s humility in knowing what he was not that freed him up to see Jesus for who he really was.

I don’t mean to suggest that the priests and Pharisees were arrogant, per se. I think they were good-hearted with good intentions and good wits about them. So what when wrong? How did the ones whose job was to see God, fail to see?

I am reminded of a story about Barbara Brown Taylor, a priest with a tender spot in her heart for lost or wounded animals. One time, she tried to rescue a little bird. She kept it with her in her office, spent her lunch breaks driving across town to buy worms to feed the bird, she fussed and flitted about, meeting the bird’s needs and coaxing it back to health. Eventually the bird grew strong and healthy again, just like Barbara had hoped. The time came to let the bird go into the wild, but there was always a good reason to hold on just one more day. One day the weather wasn’t quite right; the next day the bird didn’t look quite strong enough after all. But after weeks of the bird flying around her office, Barbara finally realized she had to let the bird go. She took him outside to the field by her office and watched him soar away. With a twinge of sadness at the parting, Barbara headed to her car. She was sure going to miss that bird . . . suddenly, she felt talons latching onto the top of her head. The bird was back, he was back in a jiffy, and the grip of his claws seemed to say, “I’m not leaving. You can’t make me.” Turns out he didn’t know how to soar off and be free after she had sheltered him for so long.

Barbara Brown Taylor had to try multiple times before she was able to coax that bird to fly away for good. She eventually drove out into the woods somewhere and let him loose there. She realized she’d gone too far—she had tried to nurse that bird to health so it could be independent once again. Instead, she’d taught the bird to depend on her. Unfortunately, she admits, she’s often done that in ministry and in life too. She tries to be too much, and it poisons the relationship. She was meant to be a channel of blessing and life, but she tried to be the very life itself. Instead of bearing witness to the light, she became the light, and as a result the people she cared for started to think the world would go dark if they had to face it without her. Sometimes she starting thinking their worlds would go dark if she wasn’t there to help them.*

The moon can go on thinking it is the sun, but all that does is wear out the moon.

I suspect those priests and Pharisees began their vocational journeys with good intentions all around, and somewhere along the way, they got themselves in over their heads. By the time John the Baptist arrived, proclaiming that the True Light was now coming into the world, the priests and Pharisees were tired. Really, really tired. Too tired to listen. Too tired to see. They had been fighting hard for righteousness for a long, long time, and it gave them tunnel vision. So when Jesus appeared on the peripheral, they might as well have been blind, because they could not see Him.

We get ourselves into all kinds of trouble when we try to be the light, but it’s not like we meant to take things too far like that.  It feels good to try and be a messiah to someone who in need, to someone who is hurting, to a family member we love. It can feel like we matter, like we’re making a difference, like somebody needs us.

But at the end of the day, our energy is zapped and somehow, despite all the good we’ve done, we feel like frauds. We have ensured that someone needs us, but we are not always sure if they love us, or if we can even follow through.

Maybe this Advent, we need to relinquish the delusion that we are light. Let ourselves sit with the darkness—darkness created by us, the darkness thrust upon us by hurtful people, the darkness inside us, the darkness surrounding us. Sit with all our varying darknesses, acknowledge them, and wait for Light to come.

The Light can shine on you and through you, but you can never be the Light. You cannot be the source, the giver, the electricity. You can conduct it like wire, and that is a worthwhile job, to be sure, but you are not the thing, the point, or the hero. You’re just you. You may be a voice of one calling, “Prepare the way for the Lord,” but you are not the Lord, and the funny thing is, sometimes we forget that. Truth be told, it is a relief not to be the Messiah, or Elijah, or The Prophet. It is a relief when you have the freedom to just be you, and nothing more. It is a relief, when you finally look sideways and see that The Light is coming.

If you see the sun rising on the horizon, and you are the moon, you get out of the way. Sometimes your life will work like a reflector—absorbing the rays of light and casting them back out again—and that will feel wonderful, like you’re alive. People don’t need that from you—heck, they’ve got the sun—but on occasion you will reflect a ray into some dark corner to someone for whom the sun’s blocked out. It will make all the difference to them, but chances are, you’ll never know it. The moon is modest like that.

If you do not know what you are not, the One you’ve been waiting for will come, but you will not know Him, though He is among you. The Gospel of John begins with John the Baptist proclaiming who he is not, which, apparently, makes room for Jesus to come along and proclaim all that he is.

“I am not,” says John.

“I am who I am,” says God.

Way back in Egypt, when God made one of his first appearances to humankind, Moses asked God who he was, and God said, “I am . . . Tell the people ‘I am’ has sent you.”

And when God came again, in the body of Jesus, his message was the same and yet bigger. The Gospel of John asks Jesus who he is, and listen to the ways Jesus responds:

 “Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was born,

I am!

When you have lifted up the Son of Man,

then you will know that I am he.

I am the bread of life.

I am the way, the truth and the life.

I am the vine, I am the gate for the sheep, I am the good shepherd,

I am the one who testifies for himself.

I am the light of the world.

I am with you.

Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.

I am the resurrection and the life.

You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,” and rightly so, for that is what I am.

I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”

And, finally, when the soldiers arrived in the Garden to arrest him,

Jesus said, “I am he. I am he. I told you that I am he.”

 Is there room in your heart this Advent for the invasion of Light? Or have you dressed up your darkness that it might parade as light, and thus stolen the show, worn yourself thin, and obscured your own sight?

The moon must not feel sad

that it cannot be the sun.

For the sun gives its all

and it gives it freely–

so there is nothing to envy.

There is much to receive

and much to reflect.

When the moon

Forgoes all pretension;

When the moon

loves the sun,

then, then the moon dances,

And I’m here to tell you

in the spirit of John the Baptist,

We were all meant

to dance like the moon.

Amen.

---

Advent #2: Mark 1:1-8

 

Advent Reflection

Mark 1:1-8

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

Second Sunday of Advent

December 4, 2011

Kyndall Renfro

 

The way I imagine it, John the Baptist had a wide and hospitable grin. And when he smiled, you could often spot a locust leg sticking out between his teeth, leftover from dinner. He would shake hands with enthusiasm (his hand was wide, the skin was rough) and your smaller hand, once swallowed by his, would kind of stick there—honey residue from lunch. His clothes emitted an unusual odor like the mix of wind, wild flowers, and sunshine. His hair went every which way, his beard was scraggly and unkempt. The sound of his voice was like rushing water—powerful, yet soothing.

Yes, indeed, John was wild, unconventional, not quite convincingly sane. Compelling, yet mildly terrifying. You never knew whether to run out into the wilderness and join him, or run away as fast as you can. At first you felt uncomfortable in his eccentric presence—you’d never met anyone like him before (and you were unlikely to ever meet someone like him again). But after awhile you warmed up and felt more at home with John than you’d ever felt with anyone because you just knew there wasn’t a thing about your appearance, your smell, or your talk that John was going to judge.

Oh sure, he could preach one fiery sermon on repentance, but John let God do the judging. He just did the preachin’ and the baptizing. John liked to keep things simple. Whatever guilt you might harbor—that was between you and God, and John was not going to be a third wheel. Some preachers have themselves convinced its their job to insert their presence into other people’s business; John had the mind to run out into the wilderness and preach from the desert, where people would only hear him if God brought them there.

Now we don’t hear much in the Bible about John’s childhood, but you wonder how a perfectly respectable son-of-a-priest ends up wearing camelhair skirts and pillaging the desert sands for locust morsels. Maybe he had the guts to believe what his mother, Elizabeth, told him about himself and his calling. Maybe he spent one too many days at the feet of Mary, listening to outlandish tales about miraculous births, visiting angels, and traveling wise men. Maybe John grew up playing pretend with a rather unusual cousin, where the lines between imagination and reality were strangely and divinely blurred. Maybe the other kids in the neighborhood made fun of John, so he decided early on he might as well be himself rather than cater to what others expected of him.

As far as I can tell, you don’t get that crazy by choice, at least, not by one choice alone. You start on a path, trusting where the path leads. You don’t look back; you put one foot in front of the other and make up your mind to enjoy the journey, no matter where it leads.

The text says John “appeared” in the wilderness, as if he didn’t exactly mean to end up there, but it’s where he found himself. And since many people who struggle in life end up wandering into some type of wilderness, I suppose John felt this was as good a place as any to start preaching. The people who needed his message would end up in the wilderness eventually, thinking they had finally stumbled into pure God-forsaken territory and John would already be there, preaching and baptizing, living off locusts and honey just to show that life is sustainable in the lands of draught and desert. Lo and behold, the desert can be the birthplace of transformation.

I imagine John didn’t have to do much persuading. He just greeted people when they arrived, and the look in his eyes told them all they needed to hear, “I see you’ve come to repent.” Most people didn’t know that was why they had stumbled there, but once John put words to it, things came into focus, “Yes, of course, I’ve come here to repent.”

In today’s world, we’ve sort of butchered the word “repent,” as if repenting meant to feel sorry for your sins, and maybe do a little begging for forgiveness. In John’s day, people went out into the wilderness to find a whole new way of life. John lowered their bodies under ice cold river water—water to wash the old away, ice-cold to reawaken their senses, open air to pump oxygen into new life.

And then, then, John would proclaim the ultimate promise—a Savior was coming who would baptize with the Holy Spirit! So really, the people were more than repenting, they were preparing themselves for something even greater—the very Advent of God.

That is, after all, how the prophets depict the ministry of John—“a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord! Make straight paths for him.’”

This picture of John’s ministry in Scripture, I find utterly compelling. I have long loved the image of making pathways in the wilderness, and here at Covenant, the image hits closer to home than ever. We know what it is like to clear paths in a wilderness, move rocks around, find the path hidden beneath the stones. John’s ministry reminds me of Covenant, this unique place in the wilderness of San Antonio.

We may at times, wonder, should our church be in the heart of the city, where the people are? God knows we need churches in there, but God also needs churches out here. For people who need to come out to the wilderness if they are to find God.

And like John, we prepare their way. We don’t deliver God on a platter. We don’t insert ourselves where we do not belong. We simply call out into the wilderness, and proclaim good news among the trees and the cactus, which sometimes feels like a fruitless task. Who is even out there who would hear us?

But like John, we’ve simply found ourselves here, so we trust our location, and we start preaching. We preach as we make the paths straighter, more accessible. We remove rubble that stands between people and God, but we do it quietly so as not to disturb the courtship. A lot of our work goes unnoticed, but that keeps us humble, the grounds sacred, and the people who visit here, undisturbed.

I mean, this place can disturb you, from the gut of your insides to the toes of your socks, but only if it is God’s doing. We generally don’t interfere when we see a miracle off in the distance, building high like a wave; we do try to position ourselves just so, that we might feel the wave of God’s mercy pass over and around, like a baptism.

The way we create prayer paths, parking lots, and labyrinths around here speaks to me about the Covenant way of evangelism. We embrace the wild mess of the world, and we refuse to coerce it. We accept what’s there—the rocks that belong, the trees that were here before we were, the land that has a history longer than we can imagine, and we simply and very, very gently, so as not to disrupt any sacred stirrings, help curve paths that make a straighter way for people to find God.

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus the Messiah, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way—a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’”

And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to meet him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Amen.

 

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Reflections While Bell-Ringing

Reflections While Bell-Ringing

 

A lot of people will not make eye-contact if you’re wearing a red apron that reads “I am a Salvation Army Bell-Ringer Volunteer.”

So I learned last Saturday.

But that is not what disturbed me. Amidst the people who deliberately ignored you—wouldn’t even smile when you said ‘Merry Christmas’—there were always people willing to grin, say hello, and donate a little change or a dollar bill.

Nate and I had a good time at Walmart, ringing the bell and greeting the grumpy and the giving alike, and I am glad we volunteered. But the irony of the whole thing wasn’t lost on me.

On the one hand, it was an encouraging relief when people stopped pushing their heavy-laden carts full of goods to nod in our direction, to give a little pocket change to the poor and needy.

But we were collecting funds at Walmart. Walmart. Which is like asking people to donate fresh oxygen after they’ve just bought loads of cigarettes that they plan to smoke in a hurry.

We give pocket-change to the poor (since we feel so generous around the holidays), right after fueling dollars and dollars and dollars into the system that keeps people poor in the first place.

If we did not even donate a penny this Christmas, we would be better off shopping somewhere that paid a fair price to producers, a store that took care of its employees, and a company that sold quality products that we could value for a long time rather than discard in the garbage less than a year after their purchase.

I am not pointing blame here. I buy cheap, low-grade stuff that was probably made in sweat-shops all the time. (I am on a budget after all!) But then, because I am Christian and because I care, I try to make room in that budget for giving to the needy too. Only, when I evaluate my decisions, as I stand there ringing the bell in front of Walmart, it occurs to me that I may not be donating enough to compensate for all my unethical shopping . . . I am stuck in vicious cycle, and there are not enough “works of mercy” I can do to “make up” for my indirect (and often unconscious) works of oppression. Is it possible to find a new way of living in and engaging this world, such that I am not feeding the cycles of poverty, and then trying to feed the hungry people that system has created too?

Today in my prayer time I read Isaiah 3:14, “The plunder from the poor is in your houses.” I looked up from my Bible at the stuff in my house, and although I do not know exactly where all my stuff came from (I may remember the store, but seldom the craftsman or the country), I do know how much I paid for it, which is proof enough that I have plundered the poor. Isaiah wasn’t just talking to an ancient people; he is talking to me.

In Sunday School a few weeks ago, Larry read to us Amos 2:6, “They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed.” Ouch.

A few weeks before that, Renee shared with us about the realities of human trafficking, and she told us that “Just one Fair-Trade purchase from every churchgoer worldwide this Christmas would lift one million families out of poverty for one entire year.” Wow. So there is hope and a way forward, after all.

Here’s to happier holidays and healthier shopping!

Kyndall

(from Covenant newsletter, Dec. 7)

Advent #1: Mark 13.24-37

An Advent Reflection

Mark 13:24-37a

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

First Sunday of Advent

November 13, 2011

Kyndall Renfro

Keeping Watch: the longer I live, the more I find that God lurks in the most curious places.

After I surprise myself by finding God where I didn’t expect God, I think it over, and realize that yes, actually, it does make sense that God would show himself there. This is the world he created after all—why should I think any shadow, nook, or mystery could escape his notice, or misplace his presence? God’s fingerprints are everywhere, if I look for them.

No corner of creation can hide from God, in the way that Waldo was never lost to the illustrator. Waldo only seemed lost to us when we cracked opened the pages of a Where’s Waldo picture book, and the pages exploded with color in our faces. Waldo was small and hidden to us, but not to Waldo’s creator. And just when we thought we’d found a page where Waldo was indeed truly missing, we’d give one final look and experience the joy of discovery all over. Quick, turn the page, let’s do it again.

Of course, Where’s Waldo was all fun and games, but when the Scriptures say, “Keep watch,” that’s a different story, right? I hear apocalyptic warnings like today’s with trepidation, an inner quiver, and an uncomfortable fear of the unknown.

The Sun will be darkened? The Moon will not give its light? The very stars will fall from the sky? Then how will I see???

The Heavenly Bodies will be shaken? Changes are scary, and the Bible paints a picture where nothing stays the same. Even the sun, the moon, and the stars, who have been unceasingly faithful since Creation, will betray us.

When I open texts like this, initially I cannot see past the explosion of odd images. Whatever beauty, whatever truth, whatever comfort is there remains small and hidden—not lost, but very difficult for the unadjusted eye to spot.

Unfortunately, when it comes to texts like these, some Christians dissect the images and offer up strange interpretations that only scare us worse, confuse the picture, and disguise our Hope. If you settle for the first trendy interpretation you can get our hands on, you’ll only end up with a set of lenses that blur the page and make your head spin. Tylenol can’t fix that kind of headache, Adderall won’t bring things into focus, and no pill can calm end times anxiety. You have to get a new set of glasses altogether.

Or, better yet, learn how to see in the dark.

Sit with mystery.

Forsake suspicion.

Embrace suspense.

Explore the unknown corners of your universe.

Turn over rocks, crawl through caves,

scuba-dive your ocean depths.

In other words,

Live to explore and discover.

 

Most importantly,

Don’t be afraid of the dark.

Darkness is a good place to hide,

to wait, to watch.

Like a baby in the womb,

growing strong and gaining nutrients.

God is there,

in the darkness,

when the sun is gone and the stars have fallen.

Darkness can mean something new is being born.

 

Madeleine L’Engle tells a story about how ancient people were terrified by the onset of the winter months because as the sun set earlier and earlier in the day and rose later and later every morning, the people feared the sun would finally desert them altogether and never return, leaving the earth in unrelenting night. Somewhere inside, you and I share that primitive fear. We read texts like these about the end of all days as we know it, which is described like a Great and Terrible Darkness, and we cannot help but feel nervous. L’Engle writes,

It was a long time before I could begin to think of this ending of all known things, all matter, the stars in their courses, music, laughter, sunrise, daises and dynasties, starfish and stars, suns and chrysanthemums, as being in any way something to look forward to with joy and hope. It was a long time before I could turn my thoughts to the eschaton without terror. Long before I’d heard about the atom bomb or the hydrogen bomb, or fission or fusion, I feared the end of the world in much the same way I fear a nuclear holocaust . . .

[And] the end of the world in the eschatological sense  . . . is not just the end of this one planet, but of all the planets, all solar systems, all galaxies.

And what then? Is that it? Annihilation?

No. Annihilation might follow an intergalactic nuclear battle, but annihilation is the opposite of what the eschaton is about. It is not nearly so much a going as a coming, an ending as a beginning. It is the redemption, not the destruction, of Creation.* 

A coming rather than a going, a beginning more than ending, redemption rather then destruction. The re-creation, renewal, restoration and redemption of everything. Suddenly, “Keep Watch” takes on new meaning.

But Christ hasn’t come in 2000 years, and what if it’s another 2000 before He does? The End with a capital E might be a long way off, but that doesn’t mean we should walk around with our eyes closed. Keeping watch is less about peering suspiciously around every corner for signs of the Second Coming and more about adopting a lifestyle and a way of seeing that delights in finding God in every unexpected nook.

The word to keep watch can set us on edge, as if the Second Coming might pop out from behind a common bush and startle us. I don’t know why exactly that always makes us so nervous—God has surprised us before, and we nearly always weep and dance for joy. Sure, it is disconcerting when an average bush can unsettle you by catching holy fire, but a burning bush is the kind of thing you can walk up to and talk with, if you take your shoes off. A bit of proper reverence and the sacred becomes approachable. A sideways glance with proper eyesight and the holy is made visible.

Jesus says, “Keep watch,” which is an active way of living and being and seeing, not a passive way of waiting around for the world to end or for heaven to sweep us home.  Elizabeth Barring Browing reminds us that in the here and now, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; And only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.” My dear friends, keep watch. Yes,

Keep watch

In every nook

Corner

And mystery.

Let God surprise you.

The joys of discovery

Await even you.

 

And of the Second Coming?

They say not

even the angels of heaven

Nor the Son of Man

Knows the day or hour.

So fear not.

The whole universe will be surprised

And the whole universe will weep for joy.

 

Some of us will weep all the more

That we waited so long

To spot Him.

What if we had kept watch

From the beginning?

What wonders, what beauty

Await those

who watch.

Amen.

Grief Service

 

 

 

 

Christ the King Sunday (Matt 25:31-44)

A Sermon for Covenant

Christ the King Sunday

Matthew 25:31-46

Covenant Baptist Church, San Antonio

November 13, 2011

Kyndall Renfro

 

Dear sheep on my right, dear goats on my left, dear audience in front of me,[1]

You have all entered this morning as players in a drama, and unfortunately for you, the cast was set before you were properly warned. Of course, you chose the seat you sat in, but you weren’t aware that you were choosing your eternal fate too. Was this predestination? Or an unfair version of free will—who can really say? Let’s not squabble over minute theological discrepancies. You are sheep (those to the right). You are goats (those sitting to the left). You get to watch (those in front middle). ‘Tis the sovereignty of this seating arrangement.

The head of the sheep committee informed me this morning that he would like to make a public announcement. Proceed.

Sheep Captain (stands up from right side): “We would like to give thanksgiving and praise for God’s abundant favor! We never even knew that we had been with Jesus, serving him when we served a needy brother, loving him when we loved an ailing sister!”

Why, yes, it’s lovely, isn’t it? Thank you.

Apparently, the Head Goat has a comment as well.

Head Goat (stands up from left side): “Um, we would just like to protest that none of this seems very fair. We always thought salvation came by faith, not works. Your theological doctrine is deliberately heretical, and we submit a formal complaint requesting a reevaluation.”

I’m sorry, but this script came straight from Scripture. You may sit down.

My dear sheep, my disgruntled goats, my curious observers, how does it feel to sit where you sit? To hear what you hear, from your angle?

My question, every time I read this text, is which am I—a sheep or a goat? I mean, I’ve been saved by grace through faith, of course, but I’m not sure if that works in this instance, so to stall my confusion, I normally take a backseat as a distant observer, like someone who merely watches a play but never enters the set and walks around inside it, trying on different characters, exploring whether it is scene one or scene two to which I belong.

And it is easy to justify sitting back there as observer because I have two pretty darn legitimate objections to this text anyway. First, isn’t this works-righteousness? How does this story fit with the rest of Christian theology? And second, I want to do works of mercy. I really do. But I’m overwhelmed. There is too much need and injustice and that makes me feel frozen and helpless. I can barely get my own life together—what do I have left to give to others?

This is really one of the only stories in Scripture where we actually get details about judgment. And to everyone’s great surprise, you don’t hear about grace or justification, confessing faith or asking Jesus in your heart. The people in this story are judged based on whether they fed the hungry, clothed the needy, visited the sick. This doesn’t mesh too well with the Roman Road or the EvangeCube or the Four Spiritual Laws . . .

I don’t think the point here is that faith doesn’t count, but rather that faith is, perhaps, a broader concept than we realize. Maybe faith isn’t all about what we mentally agree to only; maybe faith is more holistic and comprehensive than a cognitive decision alone. There’s Christian practices and there’s Christian beliefs, and could it be the question of the chicken and the egg—which comes first? Some people believe, and thus they begin Christian practices to match their faith. Other people practice their way into faith, and I don’t know, maybe some people even die and reach judgment before they’ve comprehended mentally what they’ve been doing with their lives.

Whatever this text suggests to us about salvation, it is certainly meant to unsettle the saved. Did you hear the surprise in their voices? Both the sheep and the goats didn’t realize they had been near Jesus, with the opportunity to serve him. If Jesus was able to whisper in our ears that yes, he was there that time we thought he wasn’t, that was him with the scraggly beard and the cardboard sign on the side of the road, that was him, single mom with three unruly kids at the grocery store, paying with food stamps and a few wadded-up bills from her back pocket—if Jesus whispered, “That was me,” we would all be shocked. The question is, is it a good shock for you or a bad one?

If you found out that you’re mostly a goat at heart, I’d like to sympathize with you for a moment. If the shock left you in awe that you’re a sheep and you didn’t know it, good for you, but you don’t need a sermon anyway. It’s the goats that get to me. I mean, I get why you’re a goat. You hear the overwhelming statistics about poverty and disease, you watch the horrifying accounts on the news, you listen to one organization after another beg for your support, and it is just too much. It’s better to just focus on yourself and your family—that’s plenty to keep you occupied as it is. I’m not making fun either. I mean, really, the amount of suffering out there is paralyzing.

And of course suffering is paralyzing on a cumulative level, but it can also be paralyzing in the details too. In high school, my friend Sara and I were camp counselors to a group of younger kids, and one night I woke up in my bunk bed to the sound of retching, which, by the way, was the start of a nightly event. There was a stomach bug that got passed from kid to kid while we there. I lay in my bunk, listening, knowing I should get up and help. It was my job, but I wasn’t so sure I could stomach it. Paralyzed. Interestingly, my friend, Sara discovered in that week that she actually likes taking care of the kids who get sick at camp, that she doesn’t so much mind cleaning up the vomit and comforting girls when they need it, right there beside the camp toilet. That amazed me; maybe even repulsed me. Sara discovered some strange niche that no one else would have wanted to fill, and she started giving herself permission to fill it, no matter how odd it might look to the rest of us.

I still haven’t figured out how we ever adequately serve the least of these—how we notice each and every one, how we adequately approach the problem of suffering. But I can’t help but think there is at least one sufferer out there who is waiting specifically for me to take note. That there is some strange niche of need that no one else might want to fill, and I need to start giving myself permission to fill it, no matter how odd it might look to the rest of us.

Jesus says, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me,” as if the smallest thing mattered. Jesus does not seem to be commending those who’ve made great, noticeable strides in the cause for justice. The sheep in this story are surprised to learn that they’ve done anything at all extraordinary. I suppose they are the type of people who were first obedient in one small way, and then they just let that small obedience run its course—one thing leading to another, taking them places they never could have dreamed of, and they just kept plodding along until they arrived at the feet of Jesus, and they looked up and lo and behold, he’s welcoming them home.

So what if us goats weren’t doomed to stay goats? What if Goat A started with one, small obedience? Just one for now. One “least of these” who crosses your path, and you normally don’t pay proper attention. Chances are, you don’t even have to go out and find that person. You already know who it is. What if you chose to believe that one person is worthwhile, and then see where that one small belief leads you? Could be interesting. Could change everything.

And what if Goat B did the same thing, and before you know it, some of what Goat A is doing overlaps with Goat B, and I don’t now, it was like, you were a community, and the work you did by yourself suddenly took on new energy, and together you actually accomplished more than you ever realized. In fact, sometimes Goat A just needs a break from helping people, but that’s okay, because Goat B’s got your back, and you can rest awhile and recoup, and the rest of your community now gives to you. And what do you know, by the end of our time together, there’s no longer a left side and a right side to the room, but we’ve all held hands and formed a circle.[2] We sing peace to one another, share grace and trust love, and that’s just the way we plan to enter Judgment Day—where I’ll be darned if we don’t meet Jesus with a smile on his face when he looks down on us, all huddled together in a teary-eyed bundle because we never would have made it that far alone.

Today is Christ the King Sunday—a day where we think about what it will be like to meet our King face-to-face on Judgment Day—and our text began with Christ seated on his glorious throne, surrounded by all the angels of heaven. Our eyes are drawn upward to the glittering golds and the sparkling whites. But Jesus is looking down—down at all the people of the earth, especially the needy, and he draws our gaze away from the glory of heaven to the grit of the earth, and says, “That’s where I’ve been. Did you see me? Did you help me? If your focus was anywhere else but on my dear ones, the least ones, then you missed me.”

My dear sheep, some of us aspire to be sheep too, but we need your help. Encourage us. Notice our gifts. Hold our hand and help us be holy. My dear goats, you are not alone. Many of us are goats, but if we stick together and start small, we can become something new. My dear spectators, I hate to break it to you, but eventually your job gets boring—it’s messy and complicated over here in the action, but you won’t regret joining in.

You may not have gotten to play the character you would have hoped for today (my special apologies to the hell-bound over here), but perhaps all of you can go home and try on a new role for size. It’s perfectly okay if you have to grown into it.

Praise be to Christ, our King, who keeps his eye fixed on the least of these. What a King, what a Savior, oh to be like Him! Amen.