For Us

Luke 2:1-20

I’ve had a number of conversations this past week or so about Grinchiness. Which I think can be defined as Christmas-related-irritability, a sort of anti-holiday spirit.

Not that most of the friends and colleagues with whom I’ve had those conversations have any desire to go steal the presents and food and trees from their neighbors, in imitation of Dr. Seuss’s original Grinch, but many people I know have – like the Grinch – found some of the traditions and culture of Christmas to be more irritating than soothing this year.

It’s hardly surprising that we’re stressed, many of us, this year, trying to figure out how much “normal” we can have, navigate the constantly changing understanding of what’s “safe” and what’s “too risky” Or just get through the constant change in plans and the disruptions and disappointments that go along with it. 

Who’s felt a bit of that, in the last couple weeks?

Now, some of us are finding that a bit of “holiday spirit” carries us along with the flow, and soothes the irritations. And some of us are finding it just impossible to catch the “holiday spirit” we long for – the sense of joy, or connection, or peace, or beloved-ness or belonging-ness; that essential “magic of Christmas”.

Just about everyone I’ve talked to is longing for that intangible and important feeling, this year. If we have it, we want more of it. If we can’t reach it, the longing just gets more powerful.

We need our hearts soothed and filled. We need that sense of connection, belonging, and joy. We need balm for our souls, this year especially.

I’ll bet there were plenty of people in Bethlehem a couple thousand years ago who needed balm for their souls. People who needed awe and glory, a deep sense of connection to God and to one another. People who especially needed peace, and goodwill to all.

And that’s exactly what happened, in this story we tell on this day, every year.

Awe and glory burst into the lives of certain shepherds, in their field on the outskirts of town. A deep, radical connection to God was wrapped in “bands of cloth”; pulled people into the full holiness of God’s presence while asleep in an animal’s feed tray. Unimaginable love and mind-bending eternity took up residence in the hearts of two parents who never planned it this way.

And it was all news of peace and goodwill to fill the whole world, we’re told. 

I have no doubt that every single character in this story needed that peace and good will, wonder and love, just as much as you and I do, this year.  We tell this story to remind ourselves that they received it, that God’s glory can and does come right to us, in the most awkward and unlikely places and experiences. This story is a promise, whether we feel the fulfillment today or not. 

Which makes me wonder, sometimes, about the people who aren’t named in this story. What about the scribe, the tentmaker, the baker, the launderer, in Bethlehem? Or the shepherds in the other fields around other hill towns? What about the potter or the builder’s apprentice or the Temple priest in Jerusalem, who didn’t have that vibrant, unmistakable experience of glory and wonder, who didn’t hold and touch the universe-filling love of God wrapped in bits of blanket and hay? What about the people who were there, more or less, and didn’t experience the spirit of that moment?

Or the people who heard this story from the shepherds, the next day or the next week, and were amazed, but incredulous – who heard the story but didn’t feel like it changed much of anything. 

Are there people in that original Christmas, in Luke’s story, who see other people having a transformative divine experience, and feel…disconnected?
People who are right there, ready to take part, and still find Christmas doesn’t quite happen, doesn’t feel real?

I suspect there are.

They don’t get named in the story, but they are there.

And they may be the most important part of the story, in fact.

Because fundamentally Christmas is really for the people Christmas doesn’t happen to.

The birth of God in a fragile human infant body, the infinite, powerful love made touchable in soft, messy human flesh, is as much or more for the people who never actually touched that flesh – like you and me – as it is for Joseph who parented that infant into maturity, and for Mary who carried that flesh in her flesh.

And the terrifyingly glorious force of angels gathered in one pasture, the shattering wonder and praise poured into the night – well, the messenger of God explicitly says to the few shepherds right there that this news is for all people, that this is for the joy and peace and goodwill of all the earth.  It’s happening to those “certain” shepherds; it’s explicitly for those of us who weren’t there.

And you and I, thousands of years and miles away from that event of overwhelming presence and glory and power and joy, longing for a real experience of Christmas? We’re who this happens for. Even, or maybe especially, in those years and moments when joy and love and wonder aren’t happening to us, or in us.
Doesn’t matter if I can feel it, doesn’t matter if you have a sense of fulfillment and peace today or if you’re feeling hollow or disconnected, or…grinchy.

It’s happening for you, this focused push of God’s fierce love and heaven’s eternal wonder into our messy, distracting, difficult world.

The candles and the carols, the feasts and the traditions, the stories and the occasional blessed stillness, are for you. For me.

To fill us up with joy and peace, with love and belonging in the presence of God that we missed so long ago in Bethlehem. AND to build all that love and peace, connection and joy into the world around us, to surround and hold us when we cannot experience it for ourselves.

To wrap God’s love around you when you don’t feel “Christmassy”; to protect your heart with God’s own power; to heal your spirit with God’s mercy when you simply cannot feel the wonder and joy you long for.  Other people around us, like the angels and shepherds so long ago in Bethlehem, sing and tell, listen and look, to keep the presence of God fresh around us, Christmas after Christmas, and all the year around.

And you and I, in turn, do our singing, and telling, and listening for others, like those angels and the shepherds long ago. 

Tonight, maybe it’s your turn to feel every bit of the awe and glory and connection and joy. Revel in it; soak it in! You do that not for yourself alone, but for those around us, so that God’s love and power is anchored in you for the people around us. 
And if tonight, it’s not your turn to feel it, well, your singing and prayer, your hearing and watching, are still for the whole world, still anchoring that grace and wonder for everyone who needs it most.

For the original Grinch, even.

Who heard the carols of his neighbors, like the shepherds heard the angel chorus, and whose heart finally grew “three sizes that day.” 

And as the tightness of his heart is finally released that Christmas, the Grinch shares his joy for others. And maybe, even, for us.

Not "Once Upon a Time"

 Luke 3:1-6

“Once upon a time…”

it’s how lots of good stories start. Stories that teach us, that warm our hearts.

But that’s not how Luke starts a story.

No, Luke starts with names and dates:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,…

This didn’t happen once upon a time, Luke is saying, it happened at a very particular time, in a very particular context. In a year and place when Rome ruled the known world; when the country was governed by specific foreign appointees who levied heavy taxes, and even the Temple, the house of God, was managed by men appointed by the emperor.  

In that particular setting, the word of God came to the wilderness. To this particular man called John.

Luke is setting us up for a different kind of expectation than “once upon a time”.  This isn’t a story to warm our hearts, it’s a news report that affects our lives. 

With two thousand years of distance, the details of this story may sound more mythical than journalistic to you and me.  And many of Luke’s early readers might have heard the phrases that echo the launch of Ezekiel and other prophets centuries in their own past and thought “yeah, the word of the Lord… it’s a nice metaphor, but that doesn’t really happen these days.”

But Luke wants his readers – wants us – to step away from the comfort of myth and recognize this coming of the word of God, as something that genuinely happens in our world, in our reality. As part of the history we live through that you’re as likely to see on the evening news as a local fire or flood, the latest Covid variant or Supreme Court case, or the launch of a space telescope. As likely to feel as today’s weather, as likely to respond to as an urgent email or call from your boss.

It’s real, this coming of God. Something that’s going to impact our lives, our neighborhood, our government. Something we in fact need to prepare for.  

Prepare for with the leveling of mountains and valleys; the actual re-shaping of the earth around us, no less. 

Luke’s quote about mountains and valleys from the prophet Isaiah may not help us feel like this is happening to us.  You and I are very much out of the habit of expecting the earth to move under our feet. It’s not usual for us to expect that God will actually reshape the earth while we watch. 

(We’re more used to the smoothing of the rough and the straightening of the crooked and the finding of ways through mountains and bridging of valleys taking years and years of orange cones blocking off lanes of highways – not to mention half a decade of wrangling to get to an infrastructure bill to pay for all that!) 

So Luke anchors us in the calendars and politics that should feel real, so that we’re ready to pay attention to – and actively be part of – the equally real removal of barriers between us and God.

Some of those barriers are less tangible than mountains, but can seem just as insurmountable.

Like the constant pressure of busy-ness and expectations many of us experience, that makes it feel like there’s just no time to be still in the presence of God – or makes it hard to let God claim some of the time on our calendars.

Others might be trapped in uncrossable valleys of isolation because of illness or painful relationships or limits on travel or technology, unable to reach and spend time with the people who help us most naturally experience God’s presence.

Others find that complacency – comfort with the way things are, even when we don’t like the way things are – traps us in detours and byways, needing help to straighten out our path to the closeness with God we deeply desire.

Still others are surrounded by the rough, treacherous, terrain of the modern conditions of poverty or prejudice. Wondering – honestly not knowing – if you’re going to be able to feed your family dinner this week can cut you off from the sense of God’s abundance, just as surely as getting lost in the desert for years did to the people of Israel.  

Losing your home to the financial effects of one unfortunate medical expense can disrupt your connection with God just as brutally as when half of Israel was hauled off to exile in Babylon, and cut off from their Temple. 

But God is determined to remove those barriers – the order to fill the valleys and level the hills and make level ground that we heard from the prophet Baruch today is God’s preparation to bring those Babylonian exiles home, removing all the barriers that cut them off from God.

Those are the kind of barriers, too, that Episcopal Community Services of New Jersey is created to help remove – the barriers of contemporary life that isolate us from one another and from God. 

Across the diocese, today, congregations have been asked to help launch this work of ECS, a project and network that our bishop has called us to build in order to build connections across this diocese of New Jersey. 

Connections among those who are working to relieve the pain of hunger, homelessness, violence, and oppression that can make God feel distant. Connections to unite our voices and actions to help reshape the world – to remove the barriers of unjust laws, abuses of power, or harmful structures and habits of society that keep many of us from thriving and all of us from truly experiencing the presence of Christ in all our neighbors. And connections to provide immediate financial grants to ministries working right now to heal and feed, house and help neighbors in immediate need to bring us all closer to God’s abundance in the world.  

(you’ll hear more about that in a few minutes from Linda Carson)

You and I, at Trinity, are also already involved in several kinds of work to remove those barriers of immediate need – led by our Outreach committee and by dedicated staff and volunteers to feed hungry people and bring joy to people who struggle. 

Many among us – including the racial reconciliation group – are working to learn how to help remove the mountains of habit and culture that separate people from one another today.

Others – including pastoral care volunteers – are working to bridge the valleys of isolation, illness, and loneliness that can make us feel exiled in our own homes.

All of this, so that God’s way to our hearts is wide open, and so that – whatever terrain we find ourselves in – we can see our way straight home to the heart of God. 

Because this coming of God that John’s calling out to us about today isn’t a once upon a time story. It’s a news report of something that has happened, will happen, is happening in the same messy, practical, political, noisy reality that you and I wake up to every day.

John’s out in the wilderness, right now – whether that wilderness is the noisy internet or the cell phone dead spots; the noise of partisan wrangling or the silence of exhausted indifference – in that wilderness, right now, John’s talking to real people, you and me, about the urgent, practical coming of God. And how the real, insurmountable barriers you and I and our neighbors experience must be flattened and removed, because God absolutely won’t be kept out of our real lives. And God won’t let us be kept away from our home in the heart of God.

Not once upon a time,

but in the second year of the Covid pandemic, when Phil Murphy was governor of New Jersey, and the legislatures were re-districting, and Jerome Powell was Chair of the Fed, and Facebook was trying to become Meta,

the word of the Lord comes to the people of Trinity in Moorestown: prepare the way for all barriers to fall – and for your own return to the heart of God, for real, here and now.

When Things Fall Apart

 Mark 13:1-8

A few years ago, I was playing blocks with a three-year-old friend.  We built a tower – as you do – big and tall and kind of random, because we just put whatever blocks came to hand on top of others.

And just as we were about to run out of blocks, my friend gleefully knocked the whole thing over. She laughed, and after a moment, I remembered to laugh, too.

This is what toddlers do, after all. It is (google tells me) an important developmental and learning tool.

I wasn’t invested in that block tower at all, but its destruction made me unexpectedly anxious. (Watching something fall apart just… always gets me.)

Still, my friend and I built more towers and piles, and knocked them down, over and over that afternoon. And though I was having fun, even though I knew it didn’t matter at all, I never quite got used to the little shock every time those blocks scattered over the floor, not one left upon another.  Always felt a little anxious. 

Even when I knocked them over myself.

So the idea of the collapse and utter destruction of 37 acres of large, heavy buildings is doing queasy things to my stomach, as we listen to Jesus and his first disciples talk about the Temple in Jerusalem today.

And even if you enjoy knocking down block towers with all your heart, imagining that scene might make you a little anxious too. 

It’s supposed to.
That Temple Jesus’ disciples are admiring was built as an assurance of the solidity and permanence of God’s presence. It was to be a unifying sign, a building of confidence and certainty.

So its destruction by war, revolt-suppression, and fire a few decades after Jesus passed through its gates was a massive blow to the people of God. You and I might feel something similar seeing our homes in rubble, or if we watched the White House and Capitol torn down. Might have felt something similar in the fall of 2001, when we’d watched towers fall. 

As if the ground itself were no longer stable under our feet.

When things fall down, we sense our own vulnerability and fragility. We feel more exposed, and raw. We feel less safe. More aware of our limits.

More aware of the need for God.

For love and power greater than any destruction. 

In our lives and in the world around us.

Often without realizing it, we may count on the things around us as silent assurance that we’re safe, connected, “normal.”  And the sudden disappearance – or the extravagant destruction – of things and symbols can startle us into actively looking for what we really most need: for miracles, for love, for transformation – in other words, for the effects of God’s presence in the world.

This story Mark is telling today is not really about the destruction of the Temple. It’s about the revealing of God. About what it will be like when God’s presence comes fully and completely into the world, replacing everything we used to count on with the power and will and glory of God. 

It’s a scary story, because in that revelation, all the things we are used to come apart – fall down like a tower of blocks. Even good things, even things that used to reveal the presence of God – the Temple, the church – will come undone so that the fuller presence of God is felt, and seen, and known by all of us.

That happens on a smaller scale already, sometimes. 

This pandemic we’re still in knocked down all kinds of big, solid building blocks of our lives. Knocked down so many of the ways we’re used to meeting God, too.

And I’ve talked to many people who found that when the customs of worship and gathering came apart, they saw God at work in new ways, or their prayer actually strengthened, because it wasn’t ordinary; because we needed it more.

That’s not the way it worked for all of us, but for some.
Others of us know people who’ve been through devastating cancer treatment (treatment that’s destructive of good things in our bodies and identity as well as the cancer itself) and find themselves feeling love and hope and trust – even health! – more strongly in the middle of everything falling apart.

Not everyone, but some.

Destruction around us can leave us lost, or sour, or fundamentally unchanged.

Or it can set us free; open us wide to love and glory. 

And you and I have an advantage, when everything around us – or inside us – falls apart. 

We heard that this morning, in the excerpt from the letter (or probably the sermon) to the Hebrews.

We have confidence, that preacher says, to approach the devastating, awe-inspiring presence of God in everything, as those who are already once for all saved. Hearts clean and true and full of the assurance of God’s faithfulness. 

That assurance is where Jesus is trying to lead his disciples, as he goes on beyond what we heard today. In the midst of everything dangerous, destructive, failing, God’s presence will be with them, guiding them, anchored in what Jesus has already done and taught them.

There’s a hymn we sang a few weeks ago that I think expresses what Jesus is trying to teach his disciples to hold on to, when that Temple in Jerusalem comes down, and devastation is all around them.

All my hope on God is founded; 

he doth still my trust renew,

me through change and chance he guideth, 

only good and only true.

Jesus is warning his disciples – and us – that destruction can go on and on, and we’ll need God’s faithfulness. So that when everything falls apart we may still be scared (we’d be crazy not to be), but we won’t be paralyzed. We’ll be able to trust and stay present, even when we’re anxious and shaken. 

When we meet times and places of destruction as those already saved – those who cannot lose God’s faithfulness – we’re not protected from pain by indifference or detachment. We’re open to compassion and generosity – able to offer it to others, and receive it ourselves.  

When we root ourselves in God’s faithfulness, we can stand in the midst of destruction – of institutions we count on, or our own daily plans – confident that there are miracles coming forth.  We don’t expect to come through unscathed. Instead, we find ourselves making sacrifices with confidence. We can grieve our losses honestly and wholly – because there will be losses – and let those losses open us to new love and hope. 

We need this – the world needs this from us – in all these painful places where we get stuck in anxious fear. 

When we look at a picture of devastation and destruction over the next decades and century, as seas rise and weather and even earth change around and beneath us, like they’ve been doing in Glasgow these last two weeks. 

And in order to do anything together to heal the world and ourselves, we need that confidence and hope and compassion and sacrifice and generosity and creativity – and perhaps a few miracles – that trusting in God’s faithfulness can give you and me.

If we know we don’t need to keep things as they are – that there are miracles, love, and transformation on the other side of loss – we can even knock some towers down ourselves.

I never stopped getting a little anxious when toddler friends knock things down. It’s a visceral reaction to things falling apart that I just live with. But right along with that involuntary anxiety, on that afternoon several years ago, I kept feeling a little wave of love, a sense of faithfulness. 

My three-year-old friend trusted me to keep playing, to stay friends, no matter what we built or destroyed. And I trusted her the same way.

It’s a tiny, faint echo of the faithfulness of God that will not lose us – and actually draws us closer – when things fall apart. Draws us into love, and glory, and transformation no temple could contain.

In the words of that same hymn of faithfulness:

Mortal pride and earthly glory, 

sword and crown betray our trust;

though with care and toil we build them, 

tower and temple fall to dust.

But God’s power, hour by hour, 

is my temple and my tower. 

Affirmation

 Mark 12:28-34

We’re set up for tension.  To expect an argument, a controversy, a debate.

 

After all, that’s what’s been happening anytime Jesus gets into a conversation with one of the religious leaders while he’s teaching in the Temple. They ask questions to trap Jesus, and he confounds them.

And every other time a scribe – a religious legal expert – encounters Jesus in Mark’s story, it’s to criticize his teaching or practices.

 

So when this scribe steps up to ask Jesus “What’s the most important commandment?” we’re set up to be listening for antagonism, for another trap.

 

It’s no surprise to anyone, or it shouldn’t be, when Jesus promptly quotes the Shema – the commandment so central to the faith and life of Israel that it has a one-word, instantly recognizable name, like Beyoncé.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

And all your mind, Jesus adds.

 

This is the commandment that God’s people are to talk about constantly, to wear on their hands and heads, to place at the door of their houses and the gates of their towns.

 

Many rabbis of Jesus’ time – and before and since – taught this as primary. And as far as we can tell, other contemporaries of Jesus also emphasized the “second” commandment – drawn from the scroll of Leviticus – to love our neighbors as ourselves, as key to the whole law, the whole way of being that God commands of the faithful.

 

And if you hang out in church for very long, you’re certainly going to hear Jesus quoted on the importance of those commandments. You heard them quoted last week, in fact. So what Jesus says shouldn’t surprise us, either.

 

But what might be a surprise is that this is not a debate.

It’s an affirmation.

 

This particular scribe has actually set Jesus up to be right. To proclaim the fundamental truth that no one in the Temple (or since) could disagree about.

That the first thing of our faith, the most important thing, is to love God with absolutely all of us – your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind, your whole strength.

And – impossible to separate from this – to love our neighbors (all of our neighbors) as if they are our own whole, committed, loving selves.

 

We – the Temple faithful, scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, unaffiliated folks, Jesus-followers, you and I – are to live as if the whole world is the love of God.

That’s the thing that matters most.

The truth we all share.

 

The scribe affirms this in his own words.

And Jesus affirms him.

And that’s the last time, in Mark’s telling of the story, that anyone questions Jesus about his teaching.

 

Mark doesn’t want anyone to miss that this isn’t up for debate. The centrality of love of God and others is the truth we all share, no matter what our other disagreements.

 

That’s our story at Trinity, too; our fundamental truth about our common life as a congregation: We’re here to grow in the love of God and neighbor.

 

In the best of times, and in pandemic times, we build our common life on that truth.

We worship together – sing and pray and listen together – as a way to love God, to bring our minds, hearts, souls, and strength into the presence of God, and offer our whole selves to that love.

We learn and study together – as children, youth, and adults – for the same purpose.

And the habits of immersing ourselves in the love of God in scripture and prayer, in harmony and in curiosity, also shape us to love our neighbors.

To practice forgiving as we have been forgiven.

To feed others as we have been fed.

To seek the face of Christ in everyone we meet, and to work to build a world of justice and peace, mutual respect and dignity, a world where, because we love God, every neighbor is loved as ourselves.

 

As the people of Trinity, we spend time together in crisis and in celebration. We love our neighbors by showing up for baptisms and funerals, in hospitals and homes; for hard work and parties. We love our neighbors with sandwiches and canned goods, warm coats and deodorant and Christmas gifts. And we do these things not just because we should, but because the practices of loving our neighbor – of thinking about someone else’s needs at the grocery store, of spending time with friends and deepening our human connection – helps us love God with more and more of our heart and soul, mind and strength.

 

Sometimes, we have differences about how we live out that love. About which kind of feeding and fundraising service activities we should focus on, and how much we can do in one month.  About when we wear masks, and when we don’t.  About where to focus staff time and what should be led by volunteers.

But the one thing we can’t differ on – that no one can disagree with Jesus on – is that the most important thing is to love our God with every bit of mind, soul, heart, and strength in us, and to love our neighbors as our own loving selves.

 

We came right back there, more than once, as our stewardship team talked this year about why we give. Opening an annual pledge drive, or talking about the church budget, often seems to set us up for tension. For debate, or at least discomfort.

But if I’ve found one thing out in my years of church, it’s that pledges and budgets are meant to be an affirmation. A recognition of the fundamental truth of the love of God in this community that we all share, no matter what our differences on how to invite people to give, or how much to spend on copier toner and youth curriculum.

 

And that affirmation of our fundamental truth is why I give a tenth of my income to Trinity every year. Because just like singing hymns and making sandwiches, just like bible study and prayer, setting that money aside, and writing that check over and over keeps me focused on and invested in our work, together, of growing in the love of God and neighbor.

Keeping the commitment I’ve made, to make my money a part of the love of God we share here, keeps me grounded in that love in the times when details or challenges threaten to overwhelm me, or steal my focus.

 

That check, that commitment, is a little like having a scribe who asks me, regularly, “What’s the most important thing?”

 

And the answer is always the affirming truth we can’t argue with: to love God with every bit of ourselves, and all our neighbors as if they are our whole, loving selves.

 

And this commandment to love is itself an affirmation. A confirmation of God’s love for us. Because you and I just can’t love that completely by our own willpower. That love comes from the certain knowledge that we are already loved that completely by God. And that we are invited to be loved that way by our neighbors.

 

It goes unsaid in the conversation we heard today, but Jesus knows, and the scribe knows, and both of them expect us to know, that this whole commitment of all the heart in us, all the soul, all the mind, all the strength in us, becomes possible because God first loved every bit of our hearts and minds, soul and strength, even the bits we ourselves are uncomfortable with.

We can love our neighbor – and can be loved by our neighbors - because God loves them; because they too are responding to that comprehensive love that God commits to us, before we ever ask it, before we ourselves begin to love God and one another.

 

That unarguable truth turns every question, every debate, about how we practice our faith into an affirmation of the faith we share. 

Of how the first word, and the last word, of our faith is love.

Given without limits, because we are loved without limits.

Awe-inspired

 Job:38:1-7, 34-41; Mark 10:35-45

“I hope I never recover from this; I hope I can maintain what I feel now.”

William Shatner’s voice almost broke as he talked about his minutes in space this week.  

“I don't want to lose it. It's so…so much larger than me and life…”

He’s not the only one. Many astronauts report an almost indescribable experience as they leave atmosphere, or see the earth from space, an experience that changes them.

They’re talking about awe.

That unnerving wonder, the sense of admiration and uncertainty, of marvelous fear and unsettling beauty that defies words, stops us in our tracks, upends our perspective, makes us feel small, makes us feel immersed in greatness.

That’s what God is talking about, too.

After Job has been asking for hours – or weeks, or months – for God to come explain why his family has died, his home destroyed, and his health lost to a disease that cuts him off from his community, God finally responds. 

And instead of reassurance or explanation, God says:

Think about the construction of the entire universe.

On what were its bases sunk; who laid the cornerstone when the morning stars sang together?

God goes on, invoking mysteries of light and darkness, animals and weather, the shape of the whole earth – what we hear this morning is just a taste.

God is telling Job – and you and me – to stare into the full force of a storm, stand in the center of the open ocean, contemplate the extraordinary complexity of both an ant and a whale. God’s telling us to feel in our bones and skin and souls the direct encounter with that overwhelming, creative, power and possibility that is so, so much greater than you or I.

I’ve felt it being ten feet from a lion for few moments in an open land rover, when the atmosphere shakes with thunder, in holding a newborn, at the top of a small mountain and at the foot of a big one.

I’ve felt it in prayer, and in music, and in the quiet darkness of an empty church.

I’m sure you have felt it, too, somewhere.

That’s awe.

It’s not the answer to Job’s question, really, but it’s what God brings to all of our questions about ourselves.

This shift in perspective – this sense of smallness and immersion in greatness – that frees us from the limits of ourselves – the limits of our experience, our reach, our ability and our desires.

Whether that’s what we are looking for, or not.

And that shift in perspective, where the whole universe is at the center and our sense of self disappears into wonder, that’s what James and John need – what all the disciples need – when they’re talking to Jesus today.

They’re still having trouble understanding what Jesus is about. He’s talked about giving up everything – money and possessions, traditions and expectations, life itself – and he’s just said again that he’s going to be condemned, rejected, abused, killed – and after three days, rise, (which last makes even less sense than what came before).

In that context, it’s a little ridiculous that James and John come to ask for the best seats in the victory party. For recognition and respect and access to power.

It’s ridiculous, but it’s pretty human, too.

Because James and John know that status can protect us in uncertain times. 

Status protects our ideas and egos from disrespect and awkward questions. Tenure – formal or informal – can protect our jobs, our livelihoods. Some kinds of status, like citizenship, even protect our lives in times of widespread danger, and give us extra resources to draw on in the middle of an evacuation or a pandemic. 

It’s perfectly human to look at a risky, uncertain future, and try to get some status that secures your own future. 

It doesn’t work for John and James, of course.

Jesus can’t hook them up with the status they want.

All Jesus has to offer is the power of sacrifice. Of risk and terrifying, powerful possibility. 

Of serving instead of being served.

And that’s where awe matters.

I suspect that the glory of Jesus that James and John think they want to share looks like comfort and deference, admiration and influence. It’s the glow of being special, in a world of ordinary. 

But Jesus’ glory, God’s glory, isn’t like winning an Academy Award or topping the Forbes rich list. 

It’s the eye of the storm, the furnace heart of the sun, the whole entire universe face to face with you in an instant. It’s the extraordinary, terrifying, beautiful wonder of a newborn multiplied by eight billion lives and more.

Getting close to that glory means feeling not special, but very, very, very small. 

And yet infinitely connected to greatness, to possibility, to others.

Astronauts frequently return from the awe of orbit strongly motivated to unify, to remove barriers and borders and bring people together.

Prophets and saints and ordinary people by the thousands and millions have experienced the awe of God’s glory, and been filled with the desire to be part of that love and power so much greater than ourselves.  Filled with the desire to serve as part of God’s healing, love, reconciliation and care; emptied of the craving for security, emptied of the desire to “be served”, to insist on our own importance and status.

That’s why we come to church, actually. We come together in worship to connect with the awe that immerses us in the immensity of God’s glory and inspires us to be part of God’s work; awe that heals the wounds of a world that claws for status and security, awe that makes us a small part of something greater than we can imagine.

The great cathedrals of the world were built with that awe in mind, that connection to the immensity of God’s power, Jesus’ love. 

So is our life here. 

Many of our prayers, much of our music, and the stories we study in the Bible are meant to link us to incomprehensible greatness, so that we feel the desire to share in God’s glory, not for our own sake, but to be a small, tiny part of the creative renewal of the universe, with Jesus.

That nearness to God’s glory that changes all our fears and hopes is what James and John actually want, I believe. They just don’t know how and why they want it, perhaps. Or how to speak the deepest desires of their hearts. 

So they ask for good seats.

And what Jesus promises them instead is an immersion in the entirety of God’s terrifying, magnificent, transformative healing and renewal; in his cup and baptism. 

He promises them awe.

And that magnificent, terrifying, hope-filled experience of glory is what will enable them to become “great” among the disciples – inspired to serve, not to be served. 

Jesus offers that to us, too.

Invites us to meet the deepest desires of our hearts – the desires that status and success and security can’t fill – by diving into awe with him, through him, and letting that transform us.

So if there’s a hunger in your heart this week, a hunger for anything – seek out awe.

If you can’t view the earth from space, you can look at the pictures. 

You can look at the extraordinary complexity of creation in the bird in your backyard, the uniqueness of the human person across the table from you. 

You can stand in a storm or on the edge of the open ocean or the foot of a vast mountain – or remember that time when you did, and your heart and soul were expanded. 

You can read chapters 38-40 of the book of Job, the whole of Psalm 104 – go beyond the excerpts we hear today – or read the story of creation right at the beginning of the Bible, and pay attention to the extraordinary scope of wonder. 

You can dive into the awe of music or prayer that focuses on God’s glory.

Seek out awe, and see what happens.

See what God’s glory transforms in your heart, what limits disappear from your sense of self.

Discover yourself as a small part of God’s immense, healing, powerful work.

See what happens when you’re awe-inspired.