Sermon — January 19, 2025

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

We often imagine ourselves as the main characters of whatever story we tell. Kids read Harry Potter and imagine that they would be among the few Muggle-born children to receive a Hogwarts letter. College students look back on the Gilded Age and throw Great Gatsby-themed parties. Adults watch Downton Abbey and imagine what it would be like to live in that place and time, and when we do, we almost always imagine ourselves “upstairs,” living the glamorous lives of the aristocrats. I call this “the Downtown Delusion.” While the overwhelming majority of our ancestors were ordinary people who spent their time in drudgery, in the Disney movies of our own lives, we are usually the princes and princesses, but only rarely the peasants.

The same goes for Scripture. Like any good book, most of the Bible follows the main character. And as readers, we have a privileged view. We hear the stories of Jesus’ birth that only the shepherds, Mary, and Joseph knew. We hear the explanations that he gave when he took the disciples aside, away from the crowd. We see the miracles he did without anyone realizing at the time. When you read the Gospels, you know more about what’s going on than anyone else but God. And that makes sense: a story that followed some ordinary guy who occasionally bumped into Christ on his journeys around Galilee would be great; but it wouldn’t be the Gospel of John, it would be The Life of Brian.

But most of us live ordinary lives. We are the Muggles who have no idea about the battle against Voldemort happening all around. We are the unseen scullery girls scouring the pans, or the shopkeepers meeting for third-hand gossip about whatever’s happening up at the Big House. Our experiences of life are more like my favorite painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, his “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus”: a ploughman walks behind his horse; a shepherd stands, gazing up at the trees; the business of a city goes on, and over their shoulder, not quite in the background but hard to see if you aren’t looking, Icarus drowns. He’s flown too close to the sun, melting his waxy wings, but they know nothing of that. Astounding things of mythological proportions are happening all around them, but they go unnoticed.

So I want to re-tell this story, not from the point of view of Jesus and his disciples, but from the point of view of one of the guests. Jesus wasn’t the main character in this story, after all; Jesus was just “also there.”

You, the wedding guest, weren’t there for him. No, you were there because your second cousin Ben was finally tying the knot with Becca, and you were glad, because you’d known them both since you were all kids. You’d all worked together in the fields during the harvest. Ben’s dad had often helped to mend your fishing nets. Becca’s mom made the best bread in the village. And here you all were, with what seemed to be a couple hundred other people, too, and no surprise. These village celebrations sometimes grew and grew, and it had been a hard winter, and everyone seemed to have brought another friend of a friend to join in the feast.

In fact, the crowd had clearly gotten bigger than the happy couple had intended, because murmurs started coming back from the bar that the wine was running low. And that was before the dancing even began. The new couple began to worry—Would people remember this wedding as the one that ran out of steam halfway through? That’s not a very auspicious start to a marriage. But no! Thank God. The bartenders must’ve misplaced a few big jugs, or something, because the drinks began to flow again, and the murmurs turned to renewed delight, and no one would remember this night as anything other than the joyful celebration of Becca and Ben that it was.

A couple weeks later, perhaps, odd rumors may have started: your friend Sue said that her brother Mike said that Nate and Phil were going around saying that the wine really had run out, but Jesus—you know, Jimmy’s brother, Mary and Joe’s kid—these are all real, Biblical names, by the way—that Jesus had just stretched out his hand, and ta-da! the day was saved. Water into wine.

You might just politely back away. Or you might enjoy the delicious feeling of being in the know, being an eyewitness to the events, someone who really had the scoop: “Come on, Sue, I was there! Don’t you think I would’ve known if Jimmy’s brother was doing miracles? I saw him. He didn’t even get up from his seat.”

That’s the baffling thing about this story. On the one hand, it’s a miracle of superfluous proportions. It’s hard to even comprehend the scope. Six stone jars, twenty to thirty gallons each: that’s 120 to 180 gallons of wine. Can you picture 180 gallons of wine? Let me do the math. 180 gallons is 23,000 fluid ounces—that’s 4,600 glasses of wine, ready to be served—after all the wine that had already been drunk. And this wine, the steward is surprised to note, is good. In quantity and quality alike, this miracle is remarkable.

But no one notices. Even the steward doesn’t know where this new wine comes from. He’s impressed at the groom’s generosity, not at Jesus’ power. (John 2:9-10) But the groom doesn’t know what’s going on either. The servants filled the jars with water, so they understand; Jesus and his mother know, of course, and his friends. But this is a quiet miracle done reluctantly. Jesus doesn’t give a speech to explain the theological meaning of the sign. He just handles the situation, as his mother seems to know he will. And so it is that “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” (John 2:11) His disciples believed in him. Not the crowd of wedding guests, not the bride and groom, not even the servants who see what he has done; but only that small group really see what’s going on.

In the season after the Epiphany, we reflect on all Christ’s “epiphanies,” all the ways in which God becomes manifest in the world. We hear stories of miracles, small and large, of wondrous events that reveal something about God’s love. But the world doesn’t always seem like a miraculous place. And even when we do have a reason to thank God, we sometimes wish that God had acted sooner. So for example, I’m giving thanks, right now, as many people are, for the emergence of a fragile cease-fire in Gaza, and yet it’s hard to see a miracle in the end of yet another episode in a cycle of violence and destruction, in a world that seems to promise the prospect of more to come.

But I wonder how many miracles are like the wedding at Cana. I wonder how often we play the role of the shepherd in the Bruegel painting, peacefully gazing off in entirely the wrong direction while something amazing happens behind us. I wonder how often we’re like those wedding guests, in fact, who actually receive the gift of the miraculous thing that Jesus has done—who drink the wine, and enjoy the wedding that nearly went awry, without ever realizing who’s saved the day.

I wonder what it would be like to assume that the real story is going on somewhere else. To look for epiphanies everywhere. Not only in the huge, world-changing events, even though they sometimes happen. Not only in the amazing cures, even though they sometimes happen, too. But in the everyday miracles that too easily go unnoticed—in the grown-up son who actually does what his mother suggests, in the gracious guest who compliments the host, in the joyful celebration of a new life begun, in all the smaller ways in which God moves in ordinary life. For all the grief and pain and fear that are in this world, we are surrounded also by grace, and these moments of grace can be new signs every day of Jesus’ presence; little glimpses, every day, that still reveal the glory of God.

Sermon — January 12, 2025

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

There are three questions that always come up when we get to this particular Gospel reading, as we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus on this Sunday after the Epiphany. First: Why does Jesus, of all people, need to be baptized? Second: What on earth is John talking about with this baptism of fire, and why does it sound so scary? And third, for the particularly regular worshipers: Didn’t we just read this? (Like, a month ago?)

And indeed we did! There is a Venn diagram in which the Gospel reading for the Third Sunday of Advent overlaps with the Gospel reading for this morning. In December, we read a few extra verses at the beginning, where John calls people a “brood of vipers” and tells them that “the ax is lying at the root of the trees.” This morning, we read the verses at the end, in which Jesus is baptized. And in the middle, the two Sundays overlap with the winnowing fork and the threshing floor, with the Holy Spirit and the unquenchable fire.

And Michael preached a great sermon on that overlapping part back then. (He’s away for a few weeks at seminary, by the way; I didn’t fire him.) He pointed out that this winnowing process isn’t about dividing between people, saying you are wheat but you are chaff—you will be gathered in, but you will burn in unquenchable fire. It’s about something within each person.

You can compare the image to some others that we get. Jesus talks about a fishnet catching all kinds of fish, and the good fish being picked out, and the rotten thrown away. (Matthew 14:47-51) And he talks about dividing the sheep from the goats, on the basis of how they treated people who were hungry, or foreign, or sick. (Matt. 25:31-46)

You can be a good fish, or a bad one. You can be a sheep or a goat. These are separate categories, and you can sort one from the other. But there’s no such thing as a grain of wheat, without chaff. The chaff is just the husk, the protective outer layer around the kernel inside. And the wheat and the chaff are always both there at first. Even the heartiest whole-wheat flour throws away the chaff; but without the chaff, that grain of wheat could never survive. And so you need to thresh the harvested wheat, to loosen the grain from the straw. And you need to winnow it, tossing it up into the air with the fork, letting the heavier grains of wheat fall back to the ground while the lighter husk, the chaff, floats off.

Wheat and chaff aren’t like good fish and bad, sheep and goats, two separate categories into which you, as a person, might fall. We all have both wheat and chaff. They are two parts of each one of us, one that has served its purpose and can be released, and the other that needs to emerge for you to become who you were meant to be.

This makes some sense, I think. I wouldn’t be the first to observe that many of our worst tendencies—or at least the medium-bad ones that matter for most of us day to day—originate as defense mechanisms. Our annoying or difficult or toxic personality traits start out as the ways we protect ourselves against one another, or our parents, or the world—they are our chaff, our own protective husks. But eventually, they’re no longer helping us, they’re hurting, and it’s time to let them go.

So much for John, for now. We’ll come back to him. But what’s up with Jesus? Why is he being baptized today? (Well, Ethan’s being baptized today. Why was Jesus being baptized back then?) Christian give lots of theological explanations of what baptism is and what it means. And for most of those explanations, the Baptism of Jesus is a confusing event. Is baptism about the washing away of our inherited original sin? The who are most adamant that that’s what baptism does would also tell you that Jesus doesn’t inherit original sin. Is baptism way that we symbolize and embody coming to believe in Jesus and accepting him as our Savior? Jesus’ own baptism seems redundant, then. (It’s a sign that he believes in himself?) Is baptism a way of bringing someone new into the Church, making them a part of the Body of Christ in some mystical but also real way? Again, it seems odd—surely Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan isn’t what makes him part of the Body of Christ; his body, when it goes down into the water, is by definition, the Body of Christ.

These are all reasons that we might be baptized, now. But why was Jesus baptized, then?

I don’t know “why,” of course, but I do know “what.” In other words—I don’t know why it is that God chose to act this way, but I do know what happens, according to Luke: the heavens open, and the Holy Spirit descends, and a voice says, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” (3:22)

Have you ever needed to hear that voice? Have you ever needed God to say, “You are my Beloved Child; with you I am well pleased?” Have you ever just needed to hear someone say that, for someone to tell you that you are worthy, and you are loved, and they are pleased with you?

Everyone who has ever been baptized, or ever will be, is baptized into the Body of Christ. In some mysterious way, we join with him in that one baptism. We go down into the water with Jesus, and with him, we stand back up. And indeed, God says to each one of us, on that day, and every day, “You are my Beloved Child; with you I am well pleased.”

That doesn’t mean there isn’t any chaff in your life, if you want to bring it back to John. It doesn’t mean God likes everything you do or say. It means that God loves you, like the best parent you can imagine would love you. It means that God wants you to be the best and most true version of yourself. It means that God wants you to try to be faithful to God’s promises of love, and to be faithful to God’s commandment to love as you have been loved. And sometimes a life lived in love feels a lot like being threshed—at least how I imagine being threshed would feel, if I were wheat. Sometimes life turns you inside out, and upside down. It whacks you with a big old flail and it picks you up with a winnowing fork and throws you in the air. Sometimes you find yourself on the floor, thinking, “What on earth was that?” And sometimes, on the other side of all of that, you come out looking a little more like wheat, with a few bits of that chaff in your life blown away.

But God isn’t only waiting for you on the other side of all that tumult, ready to love you once you’re perfect. God is already here, now, loving you where you are, and as you are. And the message that Isaiah delivered to the ancient Israelites is the same message that God has for you: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you…You are precious in my sight,” God says to you today, “and honored, and I love you.” (Isaiah 43:1–2, 4)

And everything else—every article of faith, every choice we make in life, every hymn that we sing, each of our baptismal vows—is nothing but our attempt to respond to God in love; to be the beloved children God already knows we are, in the sure and certain hope that we will one day stand before God, and God will wipe off that remaining bit of chaff, and God will say again to each one of us, more clearly than ever before, “You are my Beloved Child; with you I am well pleased.”

Sermon — January 5, 2024

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born…
Magi from the East came to Jerusalem, asking,
“Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?
(Matthew 2:1–2)

The carol “We three kings of Orient are” has always been one of my favorites. It is, at once, both familiar and strange. The tune was composed by an Episcopal priest for a Christmas pageant in New York, but it nevertheless somehow evokes the mysterious East, in the classic 19^th-century Orientalist way. It was my favorite carol when I was a kid, which I guess is a prophecy of my later minor in Middle Eastern Studies. In our pageant, three of the ringers from the choir would dress up as the kings, and each one would sing one of the verses as they processed up the aisle. They were robed in rich and royal garments; but it was really just someone’s dad.

And that’s appropriate, because the Magi themselves are familiar and strange. We’re so used to them that we don’t often ask who they are. Why do they come to Bethlehem, soon after Jesus’ birth? Are they “kings,” or “wise men?” Are there three? What on earth is myrrh?

Of course, if you really want to know what the deal is with the mysterious travelers in our Gospel reading today, then I have to ask you the same thing I asked the mother of one of our Christmas pageant participants when she came to me with his question about these Three Kings: “How much does exactly he know about Zoroastrianism?” (Apparently they don’t teach that in pre-K any more.)

Most of what we say about the Magi comes from traditions we’ve built on top of what Matthew gives us in the text. They may well have been kings, but Matthew doesn’t tell us that. They certainly seem to have been wise, although that’s not really a translation, per se. Matthew simply writes that “Magi from the East came to Jerusalem.” And when I call them Magi, I’m not just being pretentious and saying some word in ancient Greek, although I count three classicists in the congregation, at least. Magi is used in Matthew’s ancient Greek, but it isn’t a Greek word. It’s a Persian word, borrowed into Greek, and it refers to a kind of priestly caste in the ancient Persian religion whose primary figure was the prophet Zoroaster, hence the preliminary question if you really want to understand the conclusion of the Christmas pageant—How much do you know about Zoroastrianism?

And if you answered, “not very much, Gregory,” then you’re on the right track! This was true in the ancient world as well. For the Greeks, Jews, and Romans, the Persians were an exotic people to the east. They were known for the splendor of their royal courts and the wisdom of their astronomers. And there were hints of something more, rumors that they had access to powers beyond what we knew—our words for magic and for mages, after all, simply come from these stories of what the “Magi” could do.

These Magi bring three royal gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh, and so we sometimes call them kings, and give them names, like Balthasar, Caspar, and Melchior. They have the astronomical insight to read the stars like an ancient GPS, and so we call them wise. But in fact, we don’t know how many there were, or where they came from, or their names; we just know they were Magi from the east.

But as mysterious as the Magi are, there’s one thing we know for sure: They’re a symbol of God’s choice to love you and me; to extend the bounds of the family of God to include not just one chosen people, but the whole world. King Herod is worried about a rival king of the Jews, someone who’s going to threaten his control over his own people in his own place. But the Magi come from afar. They’re Gentiles. They’re the mysterious, foreign Someone Else evoked by the Victorian hymn. But the Magi are us, Gentiles drawn toward the God of the Jewish people; strangers and foreigners far away from home, but invited to share in the riches of God’s grace.

This morning, we have a double baptism, as we welcome two children into the family of God. Some of our congregation today came from just around the corner. Some of us have traveled from far to the East. But all of us come here, like the Magi, on our own paths. Some of us come with a deep knowledge of one religious tradition or another, which may or may not overlap with Christianity, any more than Judaism and Zoroastrianism overlapped, two thousand years ago. Some of us come because of our own experience; because we’ve seen something shining in our lives, and followed where it leads. Some of us are just here for a child, but all of us have arrived, along these long and varied roads, to bear witness to something, because we have been drawn here by love.

The Magi offer their symbolic gifts: a chest of gold fit for a king, the incense they would offer to a god, the myrrh with which a body was embalmed. And we come bearing our gifts, too, the humbler gifts we share with one another every day, in our communities or our families or our friendships. The gifts of music, and of art; of baking, and of humor; the quieter gifts of a listening ear, or a compassionate heart, all those things that blend into the holiest gift of love.

The Magi come bearing their gifts, and pay homage, and then they go home. They wouldn’t hear what the grown-up Jesus would teach. They wouldn’t see the wonders he would do. But they returned home transformed, nevertheless. They returned, Matthew tells us in a wonderful turn of phrase, “by another road.” (Matt. 2:12) Their journey isn’t “out-and-back,” from point A to point B and back to point A, on the same route. The way home follows a different road, one they’ve never walked on before.

And so will yours.

Maybe you’re just here for one baptism or the other. Maybe like the Magi you’ll return home, and never see this place again. But the child you see today will change your life, in a small way, or a big one, and already has, and the gifts you offer him or her will become even greater gifts for you.

Or perhaps you’re here because it’s a Sunday morning and this is what you do. But the path you take when you walk out these doors still won’t be the same as the one you walked home so many times before, because you aren’t the same as you were a week or a month ago, and the world is not the same, and even though the changes seem gradual, each one of us is being led somewhere new.

There’s a famous poem by T. S. Eliot about “The Journey of the Magi.” But it’s not that poem that comes to mind today, as I think about their travels from home far to the East along a road that leads back home, but by a different way; as I think about the long journeys that we all take through life, in communities and in companionship with the people we love; as I think how familiar and how strange the Magi can be. It’s a few lines from another of Eliot’s great poems, “Little Gidding.”

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling           (he writes)
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.