Tag Archives: Epiphany

Change (John 4:46-54)

(Photo by Martin Lostak on Unsplash)

(John 4:46-54 NRSV) 46Then [Jesus] came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. 47When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my little boy dies.” 50Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. 51As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. 52So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, “Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.” 53The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he himself believed, along with his whole household. 54Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.

http://www.bibleoremus.org

Lately, I’ve taken to writing in the company of a lava lamp, a quirky re-gift that I scored a few years back in a white elephant gift exchange. The liquid is blue and the “lava” is a bright green, calling to mind the gurgling water in The Simpsons nearby radioactive lake with singular-eyed fish.

I love this lamp. In college, a similar lamp gently illuminated my dorm room, its mysterious liquid gracefully changing form again and again. One moment, four tiny balls of lava were bouncing around, the next, it had stretched into a piece of taffy, and then it became one enormous, satisfied glob.

Almost like a crystal ball, the lamp has given me assurance that change is an essential process to lead to the next thing. Change occurs only so that the another thing may mysteriously occur, so the lava can transform into something new.

This is true as Marcus and I talk through high school registration options for next year with our boys, reviewing forms labeled “sophomore” and “junior”. These new class labels preview changes that will occur so that our boys’ lives may continue to change, one year at a time. The changes are not as graceful as the mysterious liquid in my beloved lamp, (childhood is hard on everyone, if you recall) and yet they are mysterious changes that will transform our boys into something new.

Change is also Jesus’ thing. A few weeks ago, Jesus changed water into wine. Then, Jesus changed Nicodemus’ mind. Last week, he changed a woman from unacceptable to accepted. These changes are just as cool as the transforming lava substance in my lamp, and equally mysterious!

The story above is told when Jesus changed a sick and dying child into a healed and living child, which was sure nice of him. John’s gospel presents a mere three healing stories, far fewer than the other three gospels. In the other gospels, it is common to hear of Jesus changing sickness into health. John’s book is more frugal with these types of changes, and I find this to be refreshing. Sickness does not always change into health. Sickness can change into remission, can change into hospice, as is true this week for my dear friend, Terry. Change is a mysterious process, a sifting around of the lava so that a new transformation may occur.

For those raising kids, change is the air you breathe. Kids grow. They like you one day and dislike the next! They do the right thing and do the wrong thing and up and down and back and forth the changes go. I’m pinpointing the good news in this story not to the healing, but to the changing. Changing, as the lava lamp proclaims, is a steady promise. All things change and not always in the way we desire. But still they change.

For the father of the man in John’s gospel, his sorrow was changed into relief. For you and for me, all of our sorrows are finally changed into relief. Into hope. Into rejoicing. Jesus changes death into life, which is the change that holds us steady when the miracle we waited for does not come. When life unfolds unfairly and without much common sense.

What changes are you presented with in this season of your life? Are you walking your kids through big changes in their lives? Could you hold those changes alongside Jesus’ promise that change can look like four tiny balls changing into a piece of taffy changing into an enormous, satisfied glob because, in the end, change is Jesus’ mysterious, steady, and transforming good news.

Jesus Did What in the Temple?! Yep. (John 2:13-25)

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(John 2:13-25 NRSV) The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15 Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

23 When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. 24 But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people 25 and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.

http://www.biblegateway.com

While evolving into a new parent, I was not prepared for the exhaustion of my own kids’ emotional outbursts. Sure, I have feelings, too! They just don’t burst out and transform my entire being like a mogwai splashed with water. Or like a volcano spewing hot lava.

Emotional outbursts are part of being a kid. It’s what they do. I understand. Kids burst with emotion when and where they feel it is safe for them to do so. An uncontainable flood of feelings regularly courses through their little bodies and it takes a lifetime to know where to put the sandbags.

I was not at all prepared for the emotional bursts! I am an introvert who grew up in a quiet house. There was no yelling or drama, only Norwegians. When my first child began to demonstrate emotional out bursting, I was confounded. To this day, with my youngest a nine-year old, these emotional outbursts become like a tiny hole pierced in a balloon, slowly draining energy.

Did God the Father feel something like this, watching Jesus burst with emotion in the temple? Was it draining for God the Father to witness the only Son of God release fury, disappointment, and who can say exactly which particular feelings?

There must be nothing wrong with an occasional emotional outburst, even for an adult, if Jesus became a hot mess and made such a ruckus in the temple! When we feel certain feelings, anger is the go-to for most humans, even Jesus. If we feel afraid, ashamed, embarrassed, angry, disappointed, intimidated, or lost, it is anger that wins out. When someone is angry with you, or you are the one who feels angry, slow down and pay attention to the actual feelings hiding behind the anger. Are you feeling left out? Betrayed? Jealous? Or maybe you are really tired and simply need a nap. That’s so human, too! Jesus took his share of naps.

This weekend, I am grateful a St. John member will be doing the preaching. (I’ve previewed the sermon and it is lovely!) Like last week, I welcome your ponderings and wisdom around this text. Leave a comment on my blog or Facebook, or email me at lewtonwriter@gmail.com. Your words this week will shape the Prayers of the People.

Tell me, can you relate to Jesus in this story? Or can you imagine being one of the people who witnessed his outburst? What is it like for you to be the one who has to deal with other people’s emotional outbursts? Where do you see emotional outbursts going on in the world today?

Jesus the Winemaker and Why That Can Be a Problem (John 2:1-11)

(Photo by Jonathan Borba on Unsplash)

Today begins a new weekly practice of writing on the upcoming Narrative Lectionary text. I will be preaching more often in the months ahead, and so I encourage you to share your own thoughts and wonderings around each text, either in the Facebook comments or in an email to me at lewtonwriter@gmail.com. Preaching is more fun when a variety of voices speak into the preparation!

(John 2:1-11 NRSV) On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. 9 When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

(www.biblegateway.com)

When our kids were little and wondered about the beer Marcus and I were drinking and why they were not invited to have one, we explained we were having a “grown-up drink.” It seemed to satisfy their curiosity. My son who is nearing the late stages of his teenage years now thinks it’s funny. “How is your ‘grown-up’ drink,” he teases us. “Can we just call it ‘beer’ now?”

Drinking around kids might be a sensitive topic for you. Drinking at all might be a sensitive topic for you. If so, you have noticed, like I have, how much emphasis there is on drinking wine these days. Any home decor store will offer a variety of signs that suggest it’s wine time. I do enjoy a glass of wine with a meal. But not everyone does. Some of you have traumatic memories associated with alcohol. Some of you cannot drink it for various reasons.

And then Jesus goes ahead and makes roughly 900 bottles of wine! It is wildly outrageous, which is not uncommon for Jesus. Jesus is called hyperbolic because he does things to the extreme in order to prove a point.

It is also important to know that in John’s Gospel, Jesus performs signs and wonders. They are not referred to as miracles, but as signs. Signs point. Jesus’ signs point to something we need to know about him. What do we need to know about a guy in his early 30’s who can make an obscene amount of wine at a party? That he’s the Messiah? Honestly that would not be my first response. Instead, I would gather that this guy likes to party! He likes to have a good time and see that the people around him have a good time, too. He saves the best wine for last instead of pouring the impressive wine to make a good first impression. And he listens to his mother. Also important.

But the wine thing. This is a sticky text to preach when every congregation is filled with a variety of responses to alcohol, some extremely painful.

If we follow where the sign points, however, it is not to the wine. The sign Jesus performs at the wedding in Cana is not about the winemaking, but the jaw dropping. His sign pointed ahead, that this ordinary guy in his 30’s was no ordinary guy in his 30’s. Sure, he could make wine. But what else would he do? The wine miracle was remembered long enough for someone to write it into John’s gospel, but it is not Jesus’ most impressive transformation. Turning water into wine is utterly boring compared to turning death into life.

What do you notice in this story?

*It is common for preachers to need to craft a couple of sermons before they arrive at the one that needs to be preached on Sunday. Perhaps the greatest challenge to preaching is narrowing a sermon down to its single most important point. When we deliver a subpar sermon, which every preacher occasionally does, it is often because we did not have time or take time to keep turning the text around and peeling back the layers to discover the one thing God needs the preacher to proclaim.

A Most Memorable Day of Epiphany

(Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)

As you know, this has been quite a day. What began as the Day of Epiphany and light unfolded into chaos, terror and darkness in the United States.

In that city, I fell in love…with coffee. At a Starbucks a short train ride from the U.S. Capitol Building, a dark roast with a splash of cream became the flavor of the city. Recalling my time in Washington, D.C. brings back the taste of that cup of coffee. My eyes were open to the delight of a cup of coffee.

When I indulged in that cup of coffee, I was between sessions at a preaching conference where I heard preachers with black, brown and white skin, women and men proclaim the unsettling peace of Jesus Christ. I’d heard the story before, but never from those voices, with as much depth as my dark roast with a splash of cream, and enough delight to make an old story new again.

The sing-songy words of the glorious preachers proclaimed a peace that does not emerge from power, but in spite of it. Jesus, their words taught me, ushered in God’s dream for the world, overcoming might not with more might, but with peace.

Jesus, I stake my life on it, is a teacher of humility and peace. When Christians sing of success and power and privilege, I know their tune is off. If only they could hear Rev. Jacqui Lewis, Rev. Richard Rohr, Rev. Walter Brueggemann, and the Most Rev. Michael Curry. If only Christians set on power could hear sermons making clear that any hope in success and power and privilege is precisely what killed the Savior.

Jesus spoke on behalf of people left behind by the quest for success, power and privilege. Today, watching the horror unfold in the capitol, I felt deep remorse for the people left behind in my own day, 2,000 years later. I am sorry I have been part of leaving behind my black and brown siblings in Christ. I am sorry violence in my own country’s capitol escalated to waving Confederate Flags in sacred spaces, carrying out a mission to make America the country it had been back when racism was even more normalized.

This is not the Christian way. There is no Jesus in that song of might, no Christian freedom where there is no humility and peace.

If you read the Epiphany story, you will find startling similarities to today’s events. Power is a most dangerous motive. Peace has more depth. And doesn’t need the splash of cream.

Consideration

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At the start of the season of Epiphany in January, our congregation distributed words on small wooden stars. (Epiphany begins with the story of Magi who followed a star that revealed the Messiah.) The “star words” spiritual practice invites individuals to engage with a word. Prayerfully holding onto this word month after month, something new might be revealed to you about life with the Messiah.

My word was “consideration”. And I did not like it one bit.

Many months before Epiphany, a handful of colleagues began encouraging me to consider the call to serve as bishop of our synod. Such a call had not entered my mind before their nudging, so I went to work considering, also known as discerning. My inner sense of call arrived at the same place each time I considered. This is not a season of my life to live such a call. With the travel and on-call demands, I would miss my boys’ high school years and my daughter’s formative preteen and early teenage years. And I would miss my husband. I would miss the work of writing a book and serving as a pastor at a congregation I love with a colleague for whom I am grateful.

But consideration is not a one and done deal. Not long after I finished considering, someone else would nudge and I would go back to considering, again arriving at the same place. Yesterday when the assembly cast its first ballot and I was second on the list, all hell broke loose in my heart. I looked to God with utter confusion. Hadn’t we looked at the map of my life enough by now? After a whole year wasn’t that enough consideration? “What the heck, God,” I gawked, feeling perhaps betrayed after all the time God and I had spent in consideration. And then I cried. And then my husband and my dear, dear friends texted and called and my colleague prayed with me and in the 30 minutes I had to withdraw my name from that list, I arrived at the same place, once again. And God and I are friends again.

Consideration. It is hefty word that requires setting aside all preconceived notions, all prior decisions, all assumptions, in order to consider that God may indeed have something to say. The Magi had to consider following a star in the sky to reveal to them the new Messiah, and the Messiah was not who they thought it would be. Any preconceived notions they may have had did not apply to the tiny king.

Like the number of stars that occupy the night sky, life is overwhelmed with an abundance of decisions. A few of them are gut-wrenching hard and demand you to define who and what is most important in your life in that moment. I suspect the kind of consideration that involves career choices tends to be more intense for women, as we weigh the expectations and needs of our marriage, kids, parents, and who will buy the groceries and take kids to school whenever we are considering our future work.

If we distribute “star words” again in Epiphany, I am going to be very careful in considering my selection. And like the Magi, I will be surprised by whatever God reveals.