Sermon for 4th Sunday after Epiphany – Deuteronomy 18:15-20 & Mark 1:21-28

I remember back when I was in seminary, one of my favorite Old Testament professors preached a sermon about Jeremiah. I don’t remember exactly what she was preaching, but I do remember her talking about how prophets don’t often seem like particularly friendly people. Usually angry. And I remember her saying, “Sometimes you might be a prophet, and sometimes you might just be a jerk.” That’s always stuck with me, because when I picture a prophet, I picture some weird guy with scraggly hair, standing on a street corner, with a megaphone and a sandwich board saying we’re all going to hell. Of course, they say you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but I guess they didn’t get that memo. But, it always reminds me of a question – how do you know whether someone’s really a prophet?

Sermon for 3rd Sunday after Epiphany – Jonah 3:1-5,10

So today we have the story of Jonah, the reluctant prophet. God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh and cry out against its wickedness.” What does Jonah do? He runs away. He hops a ship going to Tarsish so he can hide from God. Which is odd, because he knows you can’t hide from God. The creator of the universe can’t see me if I put my hands over my eyes? But we don’t make awesome decisions when we’re scared to death, so we shouldn’t really judge Jonah. Besides, God’s calling him to prophesy to Nineveh. How intimidating is that? Nineveh is huge! Do the math. Three days to walk across (3mph * 16h * 3d = 144 miles diameter). Want to walk to Cincinnati? That’s a lot of neighborhoods and a lot of fire and brimstone sermons that no one wants to hear. No wonder Jonah runs. Who wouldn’t?

Sermon for 2nd Sunday after Epiphany – 1 Samuel 3:1-20

Have you ever God call you? What was it like? Some folks have pretty interesting stories, like angels singing and wild visions. Others feel like they’ve heard God call in totally ordinary, mundane things. I remember the first time I heard God call. I was at a theological conference of all things. I wasn’t in candidacy or anything yet. Just a casual churchgoer. I remember having a great time. At the end of the weekend, we were standing around a room doing a closing prayer, and it suddenly hit me – “Wait a minute! I’m not ready to leave! These are the folks I’m supposed to be working with! This is what I’m supposed to be doing!” And lo and behold, here I am….

Our Old Testament reading gives us another kind of call story. God calls the prophet Samuel. But to understand Samuel’s call, it’s important to remember where Samuel comes from. It starts with Elkanah and his two wives Hannah and Peninnah. Peninnah bears children but Hannah is barren. “The Lord had closed her womb.” Now, Elkanah is a dutiful husband to Peninnah and father for their kids, but it’s no secret how much he loves Hannah, and Peninnah resents it. So Peninnah bullies Hannah upside and down. Torments her. Treats her like trash. What kind of woman can’t bear children? For years this goes on and what does that do to a person? All she can do is weep. Can’t eat, can’t sleep.

So Hannah goes to the temple and weeps bitterly as she prays in desperation. “If only you would look on the misery of your servant and remember me.” It’s a miracle she prays at all. She feels completely forgotten by God. “Give me a child, and I swear to give him to you as a Nazirite until the day of his death.” Now, that’s strong. That’s a holy order. She’d be giving him up to live his whole life in the temple. But whatever it takes.

Now while she’s weeping and praying her heart out to God, the temple priest Eli is watching. He thinks she’s drunk. So he yells out “how long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself?” But Hannah pulls herself together just enough to say “No, my lord, I’m not drunk. I’ve been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard me as a worthless woman.” Now, Eli is kind of a jerk, but he does one thing right. He bestows God’s blessing upon her. And indeed, she conceives and gives birth to her son Samuel. She even keeps her promise to God. Once Samuel is weaned, she takes him to the temple and leaves him there for the Lord.

Now, I know that’s not in our readings this morning, but we need to remember it in order to understand why God calls Samuel. We hear that “the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” God’s been pretty silent for a while. See, Israel is full of political and social chaos. Israelites brutalizing each other. It’s a bad scene. So maybe the prayer of this one righteous woman so surprises God that God sets something new in motion. Fast forward. Samuel’s living at the temple and serving Eli the priest. But it’s messed up. Our passage says, “Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” Like going to church your whole life and never hearing about Jesus. What’s Eli been teaching him all this time? But Eli’s old and tired and growing blind, so maybe he’s been checked out for a while. We know what that’s like, right?

Sermon for Epiphany – Baptism of Jesus – Mark 1:4-11

Today we kick off our celebration of the season of Epiphany. So, it’s a good idea to unpack what Epiphany actually means. Do any of you know? When we talk about having an epiphany we mean some kind of surprising revelation. If you didn’t know, I’m an engineer. On a good day that means I get to write awesome software that makes folks’ lives easier. That’s why we sign up. But most days I spend figuring out why things are broken, and it’s embarrassing how often it’s my things. It’s hard because the world’s always more complicated than I realize. So I spend a lot of time weeping and gnashing my teeth because I can’t figure out why it’s deleting all your files and crashing your laptop. Good times! But sometimes an epiphany hits me. Out of nowhere, suddenly I can see what I couldn’t see before. Suddenly everything’s different. That’s a good way to think about what epiphany means. It’s that surprise revelation that hits you out of nowhere. Never when you want it, but when you need it the most.

So the season of Epiphany is about two things. One is the surprising revelation that Jesus is the Son of God, because who would guess? The other is that Jesus comes to Jews AND gentiles. A star leads wise men from the east to bring gifts and pay homage to Jesus. God’s not just for the chosen few anymore. No more us versus them. Suddenly we’re all children of God. Surprise! Today we’ve got the story of Jesus’ baptism, and it surprises a lot of folks. Isn’t Jesus God? Why does he need to be baptized?

Sermon for 2nd Week of Christmas – John 1:1-18

Welcome to 2021! We made it! What do we love to do on a new year? Make resolutions. New beginnings. Start new habits. Get our act together. Did you make a resolution? Me, I started walking. Though it’s not actually a resolution. I started a few weeks ago. But, for some reason, it’s really hard for me to just start something new. I have to make it a habit, where it becomes this automatic thing that just happens. So I don’t usually make resolutions because I’m such a creature of habit. Can you relate to that? Not that we want to believe it about ourselves.

New beginnings are the theme of our gospel reading for today. That’s really what Christmas is all about. God finally made good on all those promises that Isaiah prophesied. God sent a Messiah to make things right between us and God. But not the way we expected. We were expecting a real hard-charger to raise an army and wage some kind of holy war to depose the powerful and raise the lowly. But what we got was a baby born in a manger. Vulnerable and innocent. God really knows how to catch us by surprise. Talk about a new beginning! But it’s so new that we need someone to unpack it for us. So John obliges….