The Wine is Giving Out

 The Wine is Giving Out

            The Wine is Giving Out…

            And it is only the third day! 

(yes the third day is pointing to Jesus’ resurrection, no doubt)
 
but there is also a more mundane point to be made as well… 
the wine is giving out on the 3^rd day of a 5 to 8 day wedding… 
—did you know the Song of Songs was thought to be regularly read, a chapter a day, at ancient 8 day royal weddings…

three days in…
But, The Wine is Giving Out…

            There is such shame in that, shame enough to go around.

-The Host has not provided for the guests; he is failing in his obligation, that comes with throwing such a party.

-The Guests have not held up their end of the bargain either. It is their obligation to bring a gift to be shared, to keep the festivities going.

            No one brought enough—the Wine is Giving Out…

 

            It feels like that for us too, right? The wine is giving out…

The whole world was running on empty, and THEN we got the Delta Omicron one two punch… 
any road map for navigating the Pandemic we have is well smudged by this point
—ad libing and calling audables can go on for a while, but it isn’t sustainable… 
certainly not for years…

            Some of us have experienced painful losses beyond words…

Others are exhausted and depressed, landing so low. 
Still others, are bouncing balls of anxiety, 
shouting at the top of our lungs “Just do something!”

            I heard of a Superintendent who collapsed the other day when he was asked to make a decision on whether or not to cancel an event, 
and when he got back up, he simply said, 
“I can’t be responsible for canceling one more thing.”

            The wine is giving out.

 

            That’s what she told her son… 
It’s a strange interaction between the two—Mother and Son, 
but I think implied in the conversation is that she knows what so few do yet—the Ahah! The Revelation! of Epiphany!
he’s the Messiah
—the messiah at a wedding feast, 
a wedding banquet.

She says to him, “Gee, son, none of the scriptures that talk about the Messianic Banquet, 
where all shall be fed, 
where richly strained wine shall flow for the feast, 
and where death itself will be on the menu… 
none of them talk about running out of wine… 
especially on the third day…”

And this leads to Jesus’ first sign in John’s Gospel (that’s what this Gospel calls Miracles, because they point to something beyond themselves)
—before the healings, 
before the feeding, 
before walking on water, 
before raising from the dead
—it begins with this celebration, 
this removal of communal shame,
this joyful abundance…

He takes these stone jars filled with water for ritual purity
—things of holiness… 

(When I was in Israel I got to see some of these, well preserved all the way form Jesus’ day—they were maybe three times wider than me and nearly as talI as I am)… 

            He takes this holy water and makes it into a banquet of joy
—180 gallons of wine… 
1,000 bottles of wine
—rivers of abundance.

            And they respond, struck with joy, these servants and the wine steward
“At the last, good wine! 
At the last, 
at the end, 
hope!” 
On the third day, when all seems lost, 
it is found, found in abundance and with great joy! 

He was in the tomb, 
at the end, his disciples and friends filled with terror and despair and all kinds of worry and disappointment,
 and then… New Life! 
Resurrection!

            

            The wine is giving out
—but we have hope, we have God’s promise… 

The promise and clarity of wine strained clear… 

            The promise that in the midst of holiness, there is also joy!

            The promise that God made life for more than just living, 
but for abundance
—a life more than mere existence and certainly more than the acquisition of things
—an extravagant, sustained and sufficient life in the presence of Christ.

            A promise that banishes shame, 
transforms obligation, 
tames anxiety, 
uplifts exhaustion, 
holds us in his Abundant love, 
in our loss and sorrows.

A resurrection promise, 
a promise of hope, 
even at the last.

A+A

Epiphany

          The Epiphany story starts much as the Christmas story did, just 12-some days ago. 

The important story, 
the story of what God is doing in the world,
is found in the shade of the story that the powers that be tell themselves… 

Last week it was the story of Emperor Augustus
—in all his pretension of greatness, 
this week Herod much the same
—literally known as Herod the Great, 
who killed two of his own sons to hold back challenges to his kingship,
a kingship he can only keep hold of as long as Rome continues to occupy his country

he is a henchman of the Empire.

 

         This great man, 
this self-styled King of the Jews, 
is confronted by the worst words you could say to him, “The King of the Jews” is coming…
To this news, he blanches with fright… 
and all his subjects with him
—when Herod is unhappy, we’re allunhappy!

Herod stays put… 
if he really believed the rightful king had come, he would have rushed out there… 
instead he asks for details… details that he will later use to enact a dreadful campaign, called by the Church, “The slaughter of the innocent.”
All the baby boys of Bethlehem killed to keep Herod as King... 
…when Herod is afraid, 
we all should be afraid…

 

         The Magi
—we have all kinds of fanciful ways of imagining them
—but here’s what we can be fairly sure of. 

They are:

-Astrologers, stargazers seeking answers in the night sky, 
the play of the planets and alignment of the stars.

-Foreigners—citizens of the Parthian Empire!

That doesn’t sound like much today, but they were the Eastern Empire that was the boogie man of every Roman nightmare
—a nation at war, off and on, with Rome for 250 years, 
-a nation who once humiliated and then killed Julius Caesar’s right hand man and bankroller, Crassus…

-A nation who intervened in both the Roman and the Jewish civil wars…

Yes, they were citizens well outside Roman jurisdiction
—coming to a lackey of Romesuggesting he was lacking as king…

-Non-Jews, Pagan, in fact, 
probably Zoroastrians, watching the sky for signs that their good god
—Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Wisdom, 
was coming to save them from the evil god of utter chaos, Angra Mainyu.

         These Magi
—Foreign. Pagan. Astrologers.
—some of the most outsider outsiders you could find
—are let into the good news that Mary and Joseph have long held in their hearts, 
Gospel enmeshed in the very namesof this child, this lord, this messiah:
Yeshua, The Lord Saves. 
Emmanuel, God with us.

         Such joy, 
they have found this star child, 
this Savior, 
this presence of God.

 

They bring him gifts, Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh
—an ancient equivalent of a Savings Bond and Medical kit…
but also gifts heavy with symbolism
—pointing to the kind of King they honor, 
the kind of king who exercises power in a way that leads to the cross.

 

Gold—not unlike the coins that Judas will take in payment for his work IDing and locating Jesus.

Frankincense
—bitter, 
forming tear drops when harvested, 
then darkening red, like tears of blood
—like Jesus’ tears at Gethsemane, 
“Take this cup away from me!”

Myrrh—which was mixed with the wine to comfort Jesus on the cross, 
myrrhbrought to Jesus’ burial.

 

A Savior betrayed, beaten, buried. 
A king exerting the kind of power that gets you killed, that pulls you from the center of a throne and up onto the cross… 
Releasing, instead of clinging, as Herod would cling, 
to all authority and honor and victory.

 

         Revealedin their gifts, his ending in Jerusalem, that becomes a new beginning, for him and for us.

         Revealedwhat kind of Messiah, what kind of Savior, they have found.

         Revealedto these foreign, pagan, stargazers.

         Revealedfor all people

—that’s the meaning of this night, 
the meaning of Epiphany
—The Savior of all people, God for all people.

         God foreven… especially… our enemies.

         God forus all the way through
—life, death, and resurrection.

Godborn in our midst. God moved by our need.

He is born for us. 
He is here to save us.

Thanks be to God. A+A

Build Back Good

There’s that old saying “don’t let the perfect (Better) be the enemy of the good.” And perhaps now is the time for the Democrats to take that admonition to heart. Manchin has been fairly clear about his demands: Cap spending right around 1.75 trillion dollars and make sure the programs last for the whole 10 years of the budget cycle.

So, looking at one version of the CBO scoring and doing some back of the napkin math—pushing everything currently in the Build Back Better bill out for the whole 10 years would make it cost approximately 4 trillion dollars; this is 2.25 trillion more than Manchin is willing to spend.

The costliest item is continuing the enhanced child tax credit ($250-300 per child per month for 35,00,000 families) and the earned income tax credit (assistance for 17,000,000 poor people), that the current bill only funds for one additional year. These tax credits cost 203 billion dollars for one year, but jumps to 2 trillion dollars when multiplied by 10 years. Universal pre-K for 3 and 4-year-olds, and capping childcare costs at 7% of a family’s income, was a 6-year program costing 381 billion dollars, so increasing it to a decade would cost approximately 636 billion dollars. Similarly, the bill planned on shoring up the ACA and Medicare for only 4 years, pumping it up to 10-year costs 420 billion. And covering the cost of hearing aids with Medicare was planned as a 7-year program, bumping it up to 10 pushes the cost to 51 billion dollars. Helping the 800,000 Americans who need home healthcare but can’t currently get it, tackling climate change, and expanding the Pell grant for college students, are all unaffected by Manchin’s constraints.

With all that in mind, there is still room for the Democrats to do some big things and tell the story about how they’re helping the American people. Here are a few examples of “Build Back Good” bills that would fit Manchin’s demands:

 

Protecting Our Children, Our Planet, and Our Health

This configuration just takes the four costliest items in the Build Back Better bill, minus the tax credits that Manchin isn’t so keen on.

$636 Billion—Universal PreK & Child Care

$570 Billion—Climate

$420 Billion—ACA & Medicare

$158 Billion—Home Health Care

 

Investing in our Future

              One of Manchin’s concerns about the tax credits is that they are too universal and should only help poor folk. So, what if number crunchers cut the eligibility for the credits in half, so something like head of households making less than $56,250 and couples making less than $75,000 are eligible for this type of help?

              This version of the bill would focus fairly exclusively on helping younger Americans.

$1.015 Trillion—Modified Tax Credits

$636 Billion—Universal PreK & Child Care

$39.8 Billion—Expanded Pell Grants

 

Our Health, Our Home

              Or finally, what if the focus is on good sustainable healthcare, climate resilience, and plentiful affordable housing?

$420 Billion—ACA & Medicare

$158 Billion—Home Health Care

$51 Billion—Hearing Aids

$570 Billion—Climate

$148 Billion—Housing

 

              All this just to say, $1.75 trillion is still a lot of money, and doing one or two big things that could help a lot of people for the next decade ought not be seen as a consolation prize. It is worth at least imagining what is possible within the constraints of the present.

We Start at the End

        The season of Advent, the start of the Church year, always starts in this strange space

—sometimes called the Little Apocalypse
—this warning and parable about the end
—the end of the temple, and the end of the world.

         We start at the End.

Prayer

 

         We start at the End…

         The End… 
often Christianity gets hung up on this
—we misconstrue our faith as a form of escape
—just whiteknuckle it, until the end, and all will be well.

         But that does such damage to the Way of Jesus.
While there are plenty of apocalyptic sayings throughout the Scriptures, both Greek and Hebrew
—sayings that unveil (that’s the literal meaning of Apocalypse) 
Unveil what all this looks like to the eyes of God, 
unveils what’s going on behind the curtain,
revealing the meaning found much deeper and higher than we regularly go, in our day to day life and interpretation of the world around us.

         While these sayings are our heritage, 
we must admit they are so often jarring and strange
—images that are at once stuffed with violence 
and also packed with heightened hopefulness
—the language of apocalypse is the language of the oppressed and the language of crisis.

 

         Consider the horror of Luke’s day
—revolts against Rome that ended in failure and despair, destruction, and death…
a crisis the scope of which we can not applicate today.
The Temple before which Jesus is saying these things today
—destroyed by Rome, 
Jerusalem and her inhabitants along with her. God have mercy!

         And then there was the natural disaster caused by the explosion of Mount Vesuvius
—it scattered ash for a 750 mile radius, 
darkening the sky and wounding the weather itself, 
famine following close behind. 
Violence and ash covered the known world, like the first snow.

 

         No wonder the Gospel writers preserve this stark, apocalyptic language of Jesus.    
The earth, battered like a sinking ship,
Chaotic waters and roaring sea covering it with fear and foreboding. 
The heavens, sun moon and stars, signaling that all is not well, 
fallen, fallen the powers that be. 
The heavens above and the earth below 
unveiled, revealed, as imperiled and impermanent.

 

         And we could look around at our world and see heavy trouble too
—troubles too big for any one person to handle or comprehend…

-Our present supply chain snafu is so large that you can see the shipping bottleneck from space!
-That horrible tragedy in Wisconsin,
 a small-town Christmas parade turned into a day of death. 
-Omicron, the latest Greek letter in this Pandemic Drama to threaten nation states and financial markets.

What can we even make of it, how can we hold such things? How can we not rush to God and ask, “Show me a sign—make it plain O’ God.”

 

But, for us and for Luke’s listeners too
—the sign of hope is one that won’t show up using satellite imagery, or looking up at hot ash raining down on the earth…

No, the sign we are offered as hope is hard to see, even if it is obvious once it is perceived… 
that’s why we ought to be alert and watchful and prayerful
—so that we don’t go running after the wrong thing…

We will know that the Kingdom of God is near because it will be like a sprouting leaf
—a small thing to be sure, but a sign of so much new life to come!
In hopefulness we will be able to raise our heads, 
hold them high because we ourselves, 
we followers of the Way of Jesus, 
are signs of new birth
—for God has come near to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

 

We start at the End…

The end… 
the goal… the X on the treasure map that guides our adventure, our address from childhood imprinted on our memory that will lead us home…

What remains at the end? 
What’s there when the heavens are obscured by grey cloud 
and the earth rocked to its core?

         We can look up and see the Son of Man
—the promise of Daniel chapter 7
—that while there are plenty of monstrous kingdoms and systems and powers, 
they shall not rule always
—a humane kingdom ruled by the Son of Humanity, 
a Godly kingdom, for the Son of God reigns
—that is one of those final goals, the end we seek. 
A caring, compassionate Kingdom
—that’s the reign of God that is our goal.

         Also we can listen for the Word of God, 
for it too shall not pass away, it too is not going anywhere… 
God’s word is always creative, from Beginning to End.
—creating a world that is declared good, 
-creating promises of freedom from bondage, 
-creating Children of God in Baptism 
-creating the Feast of Heaven, the promise of Holy Communion. 
The Word, always creative, always solid and steadfast

 

         The Word of God—Jesus.

The Son of Man—Jesus.

Ultimately, our end, 
the Revelation of God, 
the unveiled hope to the oppressed and those caught in crisis, 
the one who will not abandon us to any power in heaven or earth, 
the one for whom we wait
—the creative and kind king 
revealed at our every ending…
All of that is Jesus.

Our beginning and our end, our whole life, 
is being found in the arms of Jesus Christ.

A+A

What does it mean that Divinity weeps?

 

What does it mean that Divinity weeps?

         There is a theological and philosophical idea that God is impassable
—that is, God does not feel neither pleasure or pain
That God is a God unmoved.
-this is a vision of God that delighted Deists like Thomas Jefferson in the 17 and 1800s, because such a God would set up clear unchanging rules with which to base science and mathematics
—a God who wouldn’t upturn the world on a whim or abandon rationality based on a rash feeling.

-This vision also fit with some Stoic thought of the first century
—such a God was a God made in their image,
their ideal
—God living beyond the pull of emotion and feeling
–a Divine Philosopher, an Ideal Unmoved Marcus Aurelius or perhaps Aristotle in the sky…

         Yet, if Jesus is God with Us, and he is! Then we must contend with the question:
What does it mean that Divinity weeps? That God sheds tears?

Let us pray

 

         Isaiah writes today’s famous message against death’s destructive power while his city, Jerusalem, was under siege.

Imagine writing such beautiful, hopeful, defiant words, while death is knocking at the gate and seeping in through hunger, disease and warfare.

         Isaiah writes about Death in a mythical way,
he borrows from an older Cannanite description of Death,
Death as a sort of Dragon,
a cosmic crocodile who consumes everything,
who unrelentingly eats all that is, seen and unseen,
traversing the stars until it swallows up the entire cosmos…

         Say what you will about pre-modern people, but, in their own way, they are rather realistic about the power of death
—no hiding death in the corner somewhere and just not talking about it.

 

         But the good news on offer by Isaiah is that this eater shall be ate, the consumer consumed.

Consumed, interestingly, not by a bigger predator, which you might expect,
but instead made into a meal for Death’s prey,
for us,
by a God who loves us,
a God who is with us;
a God who takes the shroud of death and makes it into a picnic blanket,
who transforms disgrace into invitation,
who makes of death a glorious feast…

         A God who loves us and is moved by our tears and wipes them away
—a God, too, who you can imagine weeping with us,
even as those tears are tenderly swept away.

A God weeping like Jesus weeps.

 

One of the shortest verses in the whole of scripture is simply
“Jesus wept.”

Moved as we are moved. These tears for Lazarus are like the tears that Jesus will pour out again in agony in the garden,
steeling himself for his fate,
steeling himself for his confrontation with that consumer of worlds,
dying like Lazarus died…
surrounded by the stink of death, like Lazarus’ tomb.

         This tomb where he calls Lazarus by name
—come out!
Calls Lazarus, and Lazarus listens…
after all, the sheep hear the shepherd’s voice and know it, and come, for they know he means only good for them.
The shepherd’s voice calling him by name,
as Mary Magdalene will be called by name at the Resurrected Jesus,
as she cries for him
—called by name and then recognizes her Lord
—her Lord is risen from the death
—risen as his friend Lazarus is raised…

 

         This one who weeps for all who he loves,
who calls us by name,
who joins us in death that we might join him in resurrection
—he is the same one who swallows up death,
who wipes away tears,
who shares a blessed feast with us
—our salvation,
our God.

         Perhaps Jesus is a poor Stoic
—he wears his heart on his sleeve.

         Perhaps God isn’t a God that comport with solid rationality
—perhaps he is not primarily a God of mathematics or first principles or at base a creature of science
—but that’s okay…
ours is a God of passion and poetry and prophecy and love…
mourning and weeping
—a Loving Parent, like a Mamma Bear,
who would turn over every constant and rule of the universe
in order to constantly care for those who weep and die
and are overcast by death and disgrace, crying out to be saved.

 

What does it mean that Divinity weeps?
It means God feels each death,
cares for each one of us.

         That God who weeps, will also transform,
will make a meal,
will call each one by name—Annette, Roxanne, Mike… all of us…
—call us each like Mary, that we will know him,
call us each like Lazarus, that we will be raised with him.
Thanks be to God. Amen.

Eat Gospel, Friend!

 Eat Gospel, Friend!

 

         One of my favorite lines of scripture comes from the book of Ezekiel, “Eat Scroll, Mortal.” Doesn’t it sound simultaneously commanding and bizarre! Throughout the prophetic books of the Bible this command, in one way or another is made—eat God’s Word, transform your lips by kissing flaming coals for they will speak Holy Words, consume sweet or bitter scrolls…

         Now, we’ve been reading through the 6^th chapter of John’s Gospel for a month or so… 
we’ve been here so long that Karen has rightly started asking me, “Didn’t we just read that?” And in many cases, yes, yes we did… 
we’re still in John 6, still slowly but surely feasting on this meal that John has put in front of us.

         John chapter 6 is saying to us nothing short of, “Eat Gospel, Friend.”

Look, 
God’s saving works continue in this bread, 
in this bread you are one with the Father, 
this bread is the whole of Jesus’ life, 
this bread and cup is offered every Sunday! 
“Eat Gospel, Friend.”

 

Prayer

God’s saving works continue in this bread “Eat Gospel, Friend.”

         Now, John’s good news, this Gospel he is serving us, puts Jesus in an interesting place
—he is the center of all the acts of salvation that God does throughout Hebrew Scripture. John’s Gospel rehashes, remixes, is like, the stories of God saving God’s people throughout the Bible! 
The Gospel of John has the same rhythm as, and rhymes with, the Hebrew Bible.

         For example, in the 2^nd chapter Jesus has a conversation with a Samaritan Woman at a well, and by the end of that chapter we thoroughly know that what he offers is of the same stuff as God’s action with the patriarchs found in Genesis, Abraham, Jacob, Sarah, and so on.

         And so too, in John 6, Jesus embodies God’s saving work at Passover, and his sustenance throughout the Exodus.

         Jesus as the bread of life is: 
Lamb and Blood, 
Bread, 
Manna, 
the Flesh of the Quail, 
every thing that kept folk alive in Egypt and on their desert wanderings. 

         And just as many continued to complain in the desert and rejected what God was doing
—even when God made every effort to bring them along on the journey, 
so too, many folk in Jesus’ day eventually say, in effect, 
“I don’t like this Bread of Life, and honestly I don’t really like that God of yours either.” 
Yet, like the Exodus, there are also those people like Peter who profess, “Lord, to whom can we go, you have the words of eternal life!”

Yes, it is the Passover story in miniature.

 

         In this bread you are one with the Father! “Eat Gospel, Friend.”

         Jesus offers a unique and ongoing connection to Our Father in Heaven! 
He has come among us as both the Child of Mary and the Heavenborn child of God, so that we might be the same! 
So that we can have a life in God! 
That we can eat this bread and lean back and find ourselves laying against the heart of God!

 

This bread is the whole of Jesus’ life! “Eat Gospel, Friend!”

Jesus’ response that we read today; My God!

Unless you chomp this flesh and guzzle this blood! 
…No airy spirituality here, but the concrete 
incarnate 
God we celebrate every Christmas!

My God! Our God! 
Chew on the God who offers His flesh for the world! 
This God who truly shows up in the flesh… 
in our flesh and blood reality
—flesh in the cradle, 
flesh at conflict with religious teachers, 
flesh on a Roman Cross, 
flesh, resurrected! 

 

This bread and cup, offered every Sunday! “Eat Gospel, Friend!”

One of the quirks of John’s Gospel is that there is no last supper, 
or at least no grand recitation of the words of institution
—instead we get that all here with Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000: “It is I; Do not be afraid.” 
“I am the bread of life” 
“Behold, true food and true drink!” 
“His words are Spirit and Life!”

All these things:
God’s saving works throughout history recited so that we remember, 
connecting and abiding, Communing with God, 
the Incarnate One, Jesus Christ, among us
—all of it we find at table. Thanks be to God!

 “Eat Gospel, Friend!” A+A

Genesis 3

 Genesis 3

Snake:

            I was just having a laugh with these dumb buffoon bipeds. I just wanted to flex my cleverness, and expose theirs.

            “So he’s not letting you become a god?” I asked.

            “So you can’t eat anything here?” I asked her. There was a spoonful of truth in my slithery little question, and she took the bate.

 

Eve:

            I was just defending God… 
but I slipped up, 
I accidentally expanded the prohibition
—I said I couldn’t even touch the tree…

But then I did, and touching didn’t do anything…. 
So touching led to taste, and taste then led to coveting
—I wanted the fruit so badly everything else became secondary. 
The Snake, Adam, God
—all of it was expendable for the sake of my desire for that fruit.

            (God help me, somehow between the snake’s words about becoming a god and the yearning for the fruit, I’d broken the commandments, not yet written, broken them from first to last—as humans tend to do…)

 

Adam:          

            There were two goods there
—the good command of my good God, 
and the good offer of good fruit from the one who is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.

            I was not mature enough to discern
—who would be, in my situation?

            She said “look. It is good.”

            And I ate.

            I felt so clever—so wise—and then…

            Then I felt so exposed.

            We were.

            We are.

            Naked.

            Naked, even after we made the fig leaves… 
naked and exposed in such a way that every relationship, 
every interaction, 
every inch of God’s good earth, 
was now a threat.

            Even when I heard God calling, it felt dangerous.

            God said: 

“Where are you?”

“Who told you that you were naked?”

“Did you eat from the tree?”

            Those question marks were like flaming spears hefted at me, and for a shield, I pointed at her…

            I pointed at the bone of my bone, the flesh of my flesh
—the one whom I loved as my self! 
I pointed at her to point away from myself.

            And she in turn pointed to the Serpent.

            And the Serpent, 
no nimble fingers like Eve and I, 
could not point away.

 

God:

            I was just going for a walk, 
the breeze is nice at night, in Eden.

            I was seeking my friends…

            Instead, I found a mess of enemies, 
a circular firing squad… 
The cover-up was so much worse than the crime.

 

            He pointed to her
—this one who was a part of himself, 
and look he was alienated from the Earth
—that is, his very self… 
Adam from the Adamah
—Earthman from the Earth, 
human from the humus. 
He spiraled away from his own soul and all the world that reflected it.

            She then pointed to the Snake, 
and even as her arm stretched out, 
a barrier swung down between each subsequent generation
—mother separated from daughter, 
son from father
—now smuggled into every birth, there was some kind of abandonment…

 

            Then there was that snake, left with no legs to stand on, 
the snake was the start, the separation from them, 
enmity and revilement between the humans and my other creatures.

 

            This cover-up, 
pulled down a thick shade between us all
—ultimately alienation among us
—these poor humans aliens from their interior selves and their progeny, 
aliens on earth itself, 
and alienated too from me….

 

            But still, I seek them out
—walking in the evening breeze, 
asking after them…

            Creating sturdy cloaks for them so they won’t perish in the cold or expire in the heat.

            Starting over with them again and again and again…

-Starting over with Cain, marking him so his crime doesn’t come back upon him.

-Starting over with Sarah and Abraham, Hagar and Ishmael

-Starting over with Moses, when my people cried to me while enslaved

-Starting over with Samuel and Saul and David and his lot.

-Starting over after the exile, empowering prophet after prophet

-Starting over, present to them all in my Son, and in the Spirit as well.

-Starting over with you at every turn.

-Always walking in the evening breeze, asking after you.

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Sermon: Holy Holy Holy

            “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts.”

            When Isaiah is in God’s presence he looks up to see the face of God
 and looks up, 
and up, 
and up, 
and he can’t look high enough to see… 
Only the hem of God’s robe is present, and even it is such a magnificent thing that it fills the whole temple and has no beginning or end.

            For that matter, surrounding the throne are these Seraphim
—these “fiery things”
—angelic beings swooping around the throne 
literally burning with God’s holiness.

            They sing of God, “Different, different, different, Lord God Almighty.”

            Isaiah is overawed by his smallness…
The gap, the difference, between holy and human lands with such a force that the foundation of the temple shakes.

            Yes, God is God and Isaiah is not…And yet! 

 

“The whole earth is full of his glory.” 
God’s grandeur saturates God’s world. 
Through flaming coals Isaiah is brought into the conversation: 
“Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” 
And he can answer, can say, 
“Send me!”

From plain human lips, can come God’s word to the people.

Isaiah can enter into the holiness of it all; can join in the intimate song of the angels:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

 

            Right there, in this short angelic song, is the tension within the human experience of God
—God is holy—wholly other. 
Distinctly separate from the creation, 
transcendent… 
And God is so close, 
so intimate, 
so imminent 
that we can say he is in our heart, without lying.

 

            There is a tension between God the Transcendent One whose name we ought not even utter, 
and God imminent, seeking relationship with us at every turn, closer to us than our jugular vein.

 

            In the Christian tradition, this tension finds its fullest expression in the mystery of the Trinity. 
Our outworking of the connection between the Godhead and the individual Persons of the Trinity. 
The mystery of God expressed in the relatively recent Maoiri Confession we began today’s service with, 
and in the Athanasian Creed we will confess after the sermon, 
and we will sing of this mystery in our closing hymn today.

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

 

Prayer

 

            Holy—the Father, the one who is Creator, not creature.

            Holy—the one who knows the depths of canyons, and sea, and space. Who empowers atoms, cells, and streams of cicadas ascending from the deep.

            Holy—all of it, the laws of physics themselves held together
—the Sustainer of the Universe
—the sustainer, too, of my whole self, from psyche to sense of smell. 
You, dear Lord, give to me all that is necessary for living, 
all of it a gift of God!

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

 

            Holy—He who is the Word of God, 
human and divine, 
the bridge between.

            Holy—Jesus, 
you graft the Holy Holy Holy onto shouts of Hosanna, 
for truly in you we find both heavenly altar and entrance into Jerusalem.

            Holy—Redeemer Kinsperson, 
Son of God
—Heir of all of Creation. 
We belong to you! 
You are our allegiance and our identity!

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

 

            Holy—Spirit, 
our belief in God, that we can trust in God at all
—it was first kindled by you! Kindled and blazing!

            Holy—this continual call, 
a call to your creation, the yearning for completion.
calling your church, foibles and all, this mixed body you bless continually.

Calling me too! Calling me in my divided and disparate self to you!

            Holy—how you:
Gather us like a hen her brood,

Enlighten us so we shine like a lamp on a lampstand, bringing light to the whole house,

And  Sustain us through it all.

 “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

 

Holy Father, Holy Son, Holy Spirit—Holy Godhead.

            You are strong to save.

            In you rests true authority and majesty—our awe, love, and trust!

            You are the great I Am, you were and are and shall be.

            You fill the temple, fill the world, and fill that which is beyond what is.

Holy, Holy, Holy, merciful and mighty! God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!

Amen and Alleluia.