Sunday
January 12
Winter Light
By Marsh Chapel
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Winter Light
Luke 3: 15-17
Marsh Chapel
January 12, 2025
Robert Allan Hill
We shall take hold this Lord’s Day of what matters, lasts and counts, of the things that will see us through, this hour, this day, this week, this month, this year and this decade. Three of these are Scripture, memory and example.
Scripture and Mysterious Presence
Scripture sees us through, by taking, and proclaiming the long view, including today in Luke.
Let us recall the mystery of Christ, the Stranger in our midst. We can announce his presence today, again today, at his Baptism. He is among us: dealing with issues we dismiss…speaking with people whom we dislike…considering options we disdain…selecting vocations that do not yet fully exist…expanding spaces that we constrict…accepting lifestyles that we reject…attending to possibilities that we ignore…approaching horizons that we avoid…healing wounds that we disguise…questioning assumptions that we enjoy…protecting persons whom we mistreat…making allowances that we distrust. So, strangely, is He among us.
Strangely his voice addresses us.
For the mystery of Jesus Christ falls upon us, approaches us, and enchants us, when and where we least expect Him. In the strange world of the Bible. In the midst of the community of strangers that is the Church. Hidden in the brutal estrangement of our personal life. Here, behold, the Lord Christ Jesus, “L’Etranger”, “The Stranger”.
His presence is neither simple, nor surface, nor easy, nor fundamental, nor shallow, nor ideological, nor one dimensional, nor ahistorical, nor primarily political. He draws us
For St. Luke has captured a collage of portraits of Jesus, “On the Road”, beginning today in baptism. We are on a journey, as Luke reminds the church. We are making a trip to the promised land. We are headed in a certain direction. With our spiritual forebears, we are traveling, on a journey. Israel left Canaan to go to Egypt to find bread. There they became the slaves of Pharaoh. But Moses led them out, parted the Red Sea, and guided them through the wilderness. He brought them the ten commandments. At last, he sent them forth, with Joshua, to inhabit the land flowing with milk and honey. In such a glorious land, they hunted and farmed. They even built a temple, and chose a King. Samuel, Saul, David, and Solomon reigned, but were followed by others less wise and less strong. Although the prophets did warn them, the children of Israel left their covenant and their covenant God, and at last suffered the greatest of defeats, the destruction of Jerusalem and the return to slavery in Babylon, 587bc. On these hundreds of years of history depends the cry of Jeremiah, “O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears, so that I might weep, night and day, for the slain of my poor people.” (9:1) Like Israel marching in chains to Babylon, and then trudging home again two generations later, we people of faith are on a journey, from slavery to freedom. Faith heals, manages, handles the hardest of change.
Come Sunday, our shared role is to announce the gospel in interpretation of and accord with the Scriptures. Scripture gives us the chance for the long view. Scripture gives us a deep grounding, with heaven a little higher and earth a little wider. Which we direly need today. Thank goodness we have the Holy Scripture to which to turn, from which to learn, with which to listen, pray and prepare. Silver and gold have I none, but that which I have I give thee. (Acts 3:6).
Luke’s mysterious baptized Christ meets us today, hidden in the maelstrom of wild, unexpected change and even in the midst of political crisis.
Memory in the Face of Adversity
Memory sees us through, by rooting us in our own lived experience, and its careful memory, over time. Memory of four years ago this week, surrounded the sermon for this day.
I think back on this week four years ago. I remember the headlines. ‘TRUMP INCITES MOB’. 4 dead, not in Ohio this time, but in the nation’s capital city, and inside the nation’s capitol building. Insurrection with presidential incitement.
I remember four years ago this week, including January 6, 2021. We were away for a few days, or so we thought, when I walked by a group of men in earnest conversation about 2:30pm that day. I could not quite understand. So I went and turned on a television at about 3pm, and quickly realized I would need to return early to Boston for the weekly service to be recorded on the next day, Thursday, as we did in those COVID months, and was on a plane at 7:30m, in order to spare a guest preacher from addressing the moment. What was true then, and said then, is true today: For the rest of history, for the rest of our lives, we shall have to live with, and attempt by faith to live down, both to live with and to live down, such utter calumny, such tragic, needless, heedless yet revelatory disaster. It is an apocalyptic—a revelatory—moment, hundreds wrecking the capitol, encouraged by a wantonly graceless leader, and with 6 Senators, 6 Senators (Cruz, Hawley, Hyde-Smith, Marshall, Kennedy, Tuberville), and much other congressional cattle (Jonah 4:11), continuing to feed its root cause. We cannot be at all sure what further difficulty and distress may visit us. One said, ‘this is like 9/11, except we did this to ourselves’. (RAH, 1/10/21)
But at some preconscious level, somewhere down in the declivities of the country’s psyche, we had a sense that this was coming. We did not want to admit it. We hoped against hope to be wrong in that premonition. We hoped to whistle past the graveyard for another few days. Yet we remembered, dimly, our upbringing, ‘don’t play with fire if you don’t want to get burned’. We had years of warning, advisement, signs along the pathway of this premonition. (RAH, 1/10/21)
So, the community of faith gathered virtually come Sunday, January 10, 2021, to listen, pray, and prepare. And we have gathered here again, in person, this Sunday January 12, 2025. You have come this morning, or joined us by phone line or internet, to watch and listen, to wonder. And to remember.
The Gospel of Luke was written for memory. It emerged over long time, with the earliest Christians reciting and recalling their Lord, his love, and their shared shaping by that love, in faith, beginning in baptism. They listened, morning and evening, Sunday by Sunday, and over time, in direct response to weeks both empty and full, they began to write down for future generations what they had heard. Today we have such an account, that of Jesus’ baptized. Today we have such a lesson, the hearing of a voice. Today we start again into an unknown future, within earshot of that same divine voice. For all our failure, for all manner of sin and death and meaninglessness, for all that is wrong, and there is much, especially just now, there is a voice, ringing out and calling to us. Yet for generations women and men have found this particularity strikingly universal, and lastingly, eternally real. Especially in weeks when good news is scarce. And in our time, into dimensions of common ground that may cause us work and make us uncertain, we will want to learn to listen, and listen again.
What a tremendous spiritual gift to Marsh Chapel is our weekly Psalter, and its resounding echoes in our memory. Remember Samuel Terrien teaching us: Here are 700 years of psalms, 1000-400bce. For the psalmists, Yahweh’s presence was not only made manifest in Zion. It reached men and women over the entire earth. The sense of Yahweh’s presence survived the annihilation of the temple and the fall of the state 587bc. Elusive but real, it feared no geographical uprooting and no historical disruption. Having faced the void in history and in their personal lives, they knew the absence of God even within the temple. The inwardness of their spirituality, bred by the temple, rendered the temple superfluous. (279)
In other words, they knew how to live through and out through godless weeks. As we remembered four years ago: Our psalm today, Psalm 29, ancient and redolent with glory, recalls for us how to pray. From your youth you have known. Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. The ACTS forms of prayer. Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication. One is a word of glory, echoing the glory of God that thunders. Glorify God and enjoy him forever. A word of glory. One is a word of contrition, by which we begin every service at Marsh Chapel. Prayer is not only a matter of individual or even personal attention, a certain sitting silent before God. Prayer is also the voice, the responsive voice, of the people of God, echoing in antiphonal chorus, the call, the bowing before glory. GLORY! All have sinned, all have fallen short of that primordial glory. All. A prayer of contrition. One is a word of gratitude. In such a week, it may simply be a prayer of gratitude that things are not yet any worse. A word of gratitude. One is a word of longing, desire, incantation, supplication. Dear God, guide us through these murky moments, like those we have seen in the past, let us pray, and let our learning now make us stronger later. A word of supplication. Prayer takes some set aside time, some quiet, some intentional focus. Prayer is the nursery of memory. Prayer is the nursery of memory in the nursery school of worship (RAH. 1/10/21)
Exemplum Docet: Example Teaches
As with Scripture and memory, example also sees us through. Every day brings new beginnings and open possibilities, known best in example.
The whole of Scripture begins with the divine preparation, in creation, and in speech. ‘Let there be…’ And what might that be, let there be? Light. Watch for the rays of light in the dark. Watch for the rays of light in the dark. Even in Boston where it seems dusk arrives just after lunch. Four years ago, that Wednesday morning, before all, well, chaos, broke loose, a newly elected Senator from Georgia was interviewed. In the same day and near same hour of utter chaos, an example was given, was rising. He was raised in public housing, one of 12 children. Whatever the day, his dad had them all up before dawn. There is a kind of light in winter, even in winter, as was Rafael Warnock’s election that week. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning, he was reminded. Yes, but that’s the thing about the morning, he responded, it begins in the full dark, it begins at dawn, before daybreak. Dean Carter of Morehouse reminded me in conversation Wednesday morning, that when his parents dropped him off at Morehouse, Rafael Warnock had not a dime to his name. His parents could give him only what they had, their powerful, limitless, ceaseless love, pride and belief in him. Their powerful, limitless, ceaseless love, pride and belief in him. THEIR EXAMPLE. Not much? Well. It seems to have been enough, just enough. That’s the thing about the morning. And winter. It begins in the dark, in preparation, awaiting the word… LET THERE BE LIGHT. (RAH, 1/10/21)
In like fashion to four years ago, this very week has given us the punctuation of the gospel, in example, in living presidential example. The living sermon in the life of our 39th President, buried with rightful ceremony this past week, reminds us. He lived a life of simple decency, in the face of the great challenges of his time. After office, he went on to minister to the needs of others, and to use his voice and influence for leverage to that end. He found time to teach Sunday school each week, and, notable, to mow the church lawn when needed. In the best of the Baptist tradition he lived his baptism, not in word only or mainly, but in life, in service, and by example. By example. Our folks told us it not what you have so much as what you do with what you have. ‘Let those who have much not have too much, and those who have little not have too little (2 Cor. 8)’
Said President Carter: I have one life and one chance to make it count for something…My faith demands that I do whatever I can wherever I can whenever I can for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.
That sounds like John Wesley to me!
Hear good news: Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, as a dove, and a voice came from heaven, ‘Thou art my beloved Son; with Thee I am well pleased’.
