Let us pray: Father, in ourselves we are nothing but dust and ashes, so by the breath you have given us we pray that you will send your Spirit upon us, that you will fill us, bathe us, saturate us with your Holy Life, that together we might be gathered into the body of your Son, with him be crucified, with him be raised, that the life we are thus given might be poured out to this world you in Christ love. We pray this in the name of your Son—the one who was and is and is to come . . . crucified. Amen.

Thank you for opening this time to me, thanks for letting me in. It’s not to be assumed that a crowd of people will be friendly and hospitable. Thank you for being that every time we’ve joined you—and for being that this morning. I pray that you will not regret it.
Elesha and I are sort of transient members of this church. We love this church—even if too often we do so from afar. Whenever we worship with you, we find that we have been gifted with hope. You are, you know, the hope of the world. . . . Really. You are the hope of the world. . . . I guess I should say, though, before you begin to get self-inflated that every local church is that: the hope of the world. Even when a local church otherwise loses its way and betrays or denies its Redeemer, it is still—as a church—the hope of the world. It is the body of Christ, the Christ who was hanged on a tree, the cursed Christ who was cut and broken, the damned Christ who was and is the glorification of the holy God in the pit of despair, the Christ through whom God filled to overflowing every corner, room, crack, and alcove of hell. Every local church is—as a local church—the body of that Christ, and so, the hope of the world.

Having said that, I think, though, that I should also say that you are to me not just any local church. It is in fact this little church—The Church of the Nazarene in Mid-City—that I think of when I think “church”—wheat, tares, and all. So, assuming I’ve not made a terrible mistake, look around and behold the glory of the holy God reflected on the faces of your brothers and sisters. Really. Look around. Do you see it shine?

That there is glory in this world has nothing to do with the suitability of the reflecting material—us. In fact in this case the material isn’t important. Just as God has the wherewithal to make children of Abraham out of stones strewn haphazardly along any given dirt road, God is also free to shine off any inherently light-absorbing surface, even your face and mine. And God shines off of yours and God shines off of mine—because you and I are together the body of Christ, the body of the Crucified One in whose crucified body the whole fullness of God is shockingly pleased to dwell. And as God does that shining and as we turn toward one another we find ourselves gazed upon by the one who raised the crucified Jesus from the abyss. And as the gaze of the Father of our humiliated/exalted Lord cuts its way to you and me, it is warm—the way a gaze always is that has the open invitation of love and the future about it.
So.. . hi! Thanks for having me.

This is the season of “Epiphany,” the season in which we consider in a sustained way the light of God that shines, that shines upon us—especially upon us Gentiles. It is the season in which we find ourselves particularly halted by the concussion of God’s entry into this world. It is the season between Advent (that season in which we consider in a sustained way the coming of God) and Lent (that season in which we consider in a sustained way. . ourselves as the ones to whom God comes, we who are dust and ashes—we who are going to die and have death all over us).

Here in the season of Epiphany we are in between—Advent (the season of God’s coming) and Lent (the season of our mortality). But it is also true that already during Advent our mortality is displayed. God comes to us as a baby—and in the Gospel narratives that take us to that coming, we are reminded with some force that babies are easy to kill—even a whole town-full of them. And it is true as well that when we consider our mortality in the season of Lent, we do so only to remember in hope that God in Christ swallows up death in victory—precisely as the dead and damned Jesus is raised from the pit of hell—that is, precisely as God comes to us—we who have death (and damnation!) all over us.

So, here we are in between. As we always are. In between. In ourselves dust and ashes, looking for the coming of God. In ourselves dust and ashes, already children of the abyss-and “Out of the [abyssj I cry to you, 0 [Sovereignj. / [Sovereignj, hear my voice! / Let your ears be attentive / to the voice of my supplications!” as Psalm 130 puts it. And Jeremiah 3 replies: “If you return, 0 Israel, / says the [Sovereignj, / if you return to me, / if you remove your abominations from my presence, / and do not waver, / and if you swear, ‘As the [Sovereign] lives!’ / in truth, in justice, and in uprightness, / then nations shall be blessed by [the Sovereign], / and by [the Sovereign] they shall boast.”

And yet this word of reply-articulated so well while the Book of Jeremiah is beginning-this word does not come to us as a faint and distant decree, not in this season of Epiphany. Rather, it comes here(!), alongside us(!), in your face. . . and mine(!)-the word is here with us who are under the shadow of death. We read in Mark: “Now after John was arrested”-John the Baptist, the prophet soon to be beheaded-”after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.” Jesus came with words not unlike those of Jeremiah-with whom he was compared-but with even more urgency and force he declared the answer of the Sovereign to the cries of the desperate: “The time is fulfilled, and the [Reignj of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Here we are—afraid, uncertain, one foot in the grave, the other unsteadily teetering on the verge—No! Here we are, both feet in the grave—laid out, flat. Shovel-full after shovel-full of grave-digger’s dirt rain down on us . . . and when it seems that we have no voice left, our throats open as if from the outside and we cry out: “[Sovereignj hear my voice!”

I realize that I am laying a lot on you, that this kind of stuff is hard to take. To say all that I have said here indeed seems so extreme, so negative, so pessimistic—pathological, even. But someplace under the piles of garbage that our “optimistic Western society” has dumped on us, I think we know better. We pretend and we pretend and we pretend that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government; the masters of technology; and a fleet of buses full of managers, healthcare professionals, and laboratory technicians will forever stave off the end of our days. But someplace in us we know better. You and I know that you and I are going to die. Death may come in the morning, death may come at noon, death may come in the evening. . . but no matter how much we keep our hearts in tune, death will come—and it is coming for more and more people in this world at the hands of the unrighteous, the unjust.

It seems so wrong to point that out. Aren’t we already afraid enough?! Isn’t it enough that every news report reminds us of the immanent threat of terrorism, rogue nuclear powers, axes of evil, pandemics; of the droughts, floods, and hurricanes that global warming is already beating us with? . . . “Frankly, I go to church to get away from that kind of thing! And here this bozo I don’t even know is beating me over the head with more doom and gloom hysteria!” . . . Well, maybe I am and maybe I’m not. But in any case I really am not out to make you more afraid. In fact the phrase I want to speak to you today is this simple one: “be not afraid!” Really. “Be not afraid!” But “be not afraid” for a different reason than the ones the champions of this world’s principalities and powers preach every election year. Rather “be not afraid” because you are convinced that “neither death, . . . nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

It is Christ Jesus our Lord whom we consider in this season of Epiphany. And what we consider is that through him God has come to you and to me, has faced you and has faced me, and has addressed us both, right up close. Through Christ Jesus our Lord, God has looked you in the eye, has called your name, and after a pause as wide as a whole life has said “Come!” “As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake . . . . And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me . . . .“ The call of Jesus is a personal one. It isn’t individual, as if his call split us apart from each other and destroyed our solidarity with each other. It isn’t isolating. It is in fact a social event. To turn to Jesus is to turn to the one who above all is inseparable from his neighbors—from Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, males and females. But it is personal, as if there were a sea of humanity, a flow of men and women whose lives were utterly entangled in each other— and Jesus points at one very particular human being, one woman with a face, with a story, and says, “Come, Teresa, follow me!”

What we are sometimes slow to remember, however, is that finally Jesus calls us from the cross. In the season of Epiphany, the season between Advent and Lent, we are encouraged to remember this. “When I am lifted up on the cross,” Jesus says in the Gospel of John, “I will draw all people to myself.” Jesus calls us to join him in crucifixion. Certainly, that doesn’t mean that Jesus is all about the snuffing out of one life after another, perhaps joining Queen in gleefully singing with each new casualty, “Another one bites the dust.” No, the one who calls from the cross is the one whom God’s Spirit embraced and saturated with the life of new creation. The one who calls from the cross is the one who calls to us through his empty tomb. His voice echoes in the tomb’s emptiness and is a living voice, when it is broadcast through his bloody cross and so through our own graves. He says “Come!” And to answer his call is to follow him.. . to death. To answer his call is with him to die. That is why we are baptized. In other words, when we are baptized, we answer his call, walk into it—through our own graves, through his cross, and out the other, open side of his emptied tomb. And he is with us every step of the way—gaping wounds in his hands, feet, and side. To answer his call is with him to die . . . to die to death. In him death itself has died—but it has died where death does its worst.

This is good news. When you have died to death, death cannot hurt you—and it cannot make you afraid. When you have died to death, you can face whatever the principalities and powers of this life dish out—because you have already gone through it and have come out the other side. That is why Paul can speak those words of 1 Corinthians that to our enlightened, egalitarian democratic, activist ears sound so hard: “let each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you. This is my rule in all the churches... Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of your present condition now more than ever. For whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ.” . . . This is something I—a member of the privileged class—do not have a right to say (and frankly it is not something I want to say), but Paul says it. Even if you are a slave, he says, they cannot hurt you, they cannot make you afraid. Even if you are a slave, you are free—not in some abstract, ethereal way, some phony “spiritual” way—but really, concretely, in your muscles, blood, skin, and bones. Be free, he says, where only fools think you cannot be free. You have died to slavery. Slavery cannot hurt you. “You were bought with a price,” Paul says—and by that he is saying that where you are enslaved Jesus is enslaved with you and slavery cannot and does not hold him—let it not hold you either. To think that any institution can hold you is to forget that God raised Jesus Christ from the tomb of damnation. When someone who thinks that he is your slave master looks down on you with disdain, look back without fear, look back with freedom, the freedom of the one whom no fist can hold.

And you know what? Living in this way—loving in this way—forgiving in this way—will totally weird out everyone who lives off of human misery and fear. That is Paul’s point at the end of Romans 12—and the beginning of Romans 13. When you are not out to get even, when you don’t play the game of competitive violence, when you don’t acquire, own, have, possess—no one can take anything away from you. These goods are not my own, they’re just a-passin’ through. And so, in Christ we are forgiven, we are gifted, we are gifts—not to be owned, but to be given away in the most inefficient and unprofitable ways. That is to say, freely. As if we forgot how to keep score, how to keep books—as if we forgot how to keep.

To be baptized is to leave the economics of the bottom line and enter the economics of God who through Christ in the Spirit freely gives and forgives—to the point of death, even death on a cross. It is a glorious way to live. It is a way of life that shines with the light of the coming of the Holy God. It is a way of life that is transformed into the image of God, the image that is Christ—transformed from one degree of glory to another. It is a way of life that is without fear. It is a way of life that has eaten the flesh and drunk the blood of the Crucified One and thereby has made the path through his death to his resurrection its righteousness. It is a way of life that prays without ceasing, rejoices evermore, and in everything gives thanks. It is the way of life of the church—the church, which you may have heard is the hope of the world.