on the Feast of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

 

In the Tucson area the feast day of Saint John the Baptist is the beginning of the summer monsoon season. The National Weather Service would tell you differently, and so sometimes would the sky. Traditionally however this is the day to celebrate the relief from the dry days that came before. And as we might note, it is six months before Christmas. The Nativity of John the Baptist comes six months before the Nativity of Jesus. And so we have a little time to prepare. Half a year? Is that enough? Enough to have before you as your world threatens to come apart? We got a little more notice before climate change really struck us between the eyes. And this is monumental. Give ourselves a break: it doesn’t look like much does it? Two kids born far away and long ago, their births barely recorded except that their parents seemed to know what was going on. Listen to the song of Zechariah, as we do so often in morning prayer and in the Eucharistic celebration of John’s feast, and we begin to realize something big is happening. The song itself seems most happy about vindication and freedom from Israel’s earthly enemies. But there is more going on. This child, even this child that is not worthy to untie the shoestring of the next, is powerful. He dresses strangely, like a prophet come out of old, the pages worn and tattered in the holy books: here he is in the flesh. He proclaims the coming of the one that was to come, the one awaited, the one anticipated, the one feared. Herod the Great and his boys knew what was going on. A big threat to the way things were. The way we are now, he seemed to say, is the way things should stay. Are going to stay. If he has anything to say about it. But of course he does not. That privilege goes to an obscure priest, a father, who finds himself saying, “His name is John” - and his tongue is loosened and he is not afraid to give the news. A change is coming: be ready. And his son said it again. A change is coming: be ready. 

We get here through the words of the prophet Isaiah, best known on Christmas, in Handel’s Messiah: Comfort, comfort ye my people… It is a plea, a proclamation, a promise. The one to come is on his way. And we remember it, six months away, the other end of the year, here in the desert on a hot night. 

We remember also something from the Psalms, that the prophecy is real throughout Scripture. It is a plea for light in a time of darkness. I still remember vividly singing a setting of this Psalm (85:10) in choir at my home church: Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. The composer Armand Russell wrote it in anticipation of the beginning of a conflict, as the US troops began to move into Iraq. I know those tanks rolled more than once. And I know the mourning in the voice of the psalm, that even now and always, there was a better way than armies moving into position. 

We need to celebrate, we need to remember, that with the voice of John in the wilderness the good news, the hard news, the true story, is coming into the light. 

In the tender compassion of our God *

    the dawn from on high shall break upon us,

To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the

                             shadow of death, *

    and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

(Luke 1:78-79)

• Isaiah 40:1-11
• Psalm 85:7-13

A version of this meditation was printed in the Keeping the Faith feature in the Home + Section of the Arizona Daily Star, Sunday June 25th 2023, page E3, under the title “Beyond Saint John the Baptist.” and online on the same day under the headline “The feast day of Saint John the Baptist and what's to come” at https://tucson.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/the-feast-day-of-saint-john-the-baptist-and-whats-to-come/article_7a109462-0ec1-11ee-82be-0b5d309a997c.html

visitors

 

In this photo released by Russian Orthodox Church Press Service, the Trinity icon by Andrei Rublev is displayed as Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill conducts an Orthodox service celebrating Trinity Sunday with Russia’s most famous icon transferred from a museum to Moscow’s main cathedral despite the keepers’ vociferous protests in the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, June 4, 2023. The Trinity icon by Andrei Rublev that was kept in Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery since the 1920s was moved to Christ the Savior Cathedral for the holiday on President Vladimir Putin’s order. Putin’s sudden order to hand over the 15th century icon to the church came despite protests from the Tretyakov keepers that the icon was too fragile to move. (Oleg Varov/Russian Orthodox Church Press Service via AP)

https://apnews.com/article/russia-trinity-icon-rublev-moscow-cathedral-c78adcee0c929208013c9936f9969291

Russia's most famous icon handed over from museum to church despite protests (Associated Press, June 4, 2023 at 9:27 a.m. EDT)

On Trinity Sunday on my way to church I heard on the radio that Russia’s most famous icon, by Andrei Rublev, was on its way from a museum in Moscow to a nearby church. This icon is frequently cited as an image of the Trinity, a showing in the persons of three mysterious angelic visitors to the tent of Abraham and Sarah at the Oaks of Mamre. It is a close-up, in effect, of the larger scene, one you can see depicted by Ghiberti on the doors of the baptistry of St John  in Florence, Italy (and replicated on the front doors of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco). 

Looking at the bigger picture you can see Abraham in front of the tent offering hospitality to the strangers, while Sarah peeks from behind the flap of the tent. They are receiving strange news from strange guests. The icon that focuses in on the three visitors shows them in harmonious relation to each other, a dancing image of God, (perichoresis, reciprocal coinherence) since as they are three, or two, or one, they are a “God sighting” as Reverend Billy calls it (theophany), a miraculous appearance or vision of the presence of God.  

The image is from the story in the book of Genesis (18:1-15, 21:1-7) of three strangers that come to the tent of Abraham and Sarah at the Oaks of Mamre, where their flocks and herds are pastured by the trees, and they greet the old man and his old wife, and receive hospitality. And then give her a blessing. There was to be a child, and a great promise.  

For God had said to Abraham, ‘As for your wife— I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.’ ‘And by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves.’

There are elements in this story that probably came across with particular power over the many centuries of the Jewish people. Three strangers arrive, receive hospitality, give a blessing, and tell of a child of great promise. Hard to forget, wonderfully told, a story for the ages.

On Trinity Sunday I wondered if Mary heard it, if it came to mind as she sheltered near Bethlehem with her newborn son. (Matthew 2:1-12) Because here again, there were, so many centuries later, a mother and a child of great promise, and three strangers who said, as those earlier visitors had said, “through this child a great blessing will come to his people, and to all the world.” 

The new mother: did she smile at this? Did she laugh? Did she laugh to hear the news or did she gently accept it or did she do both? What child was this? What parents? Now this one was already born, when the strangers, this time astrologers, Wise Men, Magi from the east, said to its mother, that this child would be a blessing to his people, and to all the world. Again three strangers, again a mother and a child. Again, a great promise, and in both cases that one promise has become fulfilled.

​​http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Pentecost/AProp6_RCL.html#ot1

http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/Epiphany/Epiph_RCL.html

Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7)
Matthew 2:1-12

A version of this meditation was printed in the Arizona Daily Star, Keeping the Faith feature of the Home + Life section, pg. E3, on Sunday, July 16, 2023, under the heading, "3 visitors and a blessing."

Bell

Once you give it away, it’s not yours anymore: a harsh lesson often learned under duress. My congregation, through its governing board, gave away an old bell to a neighboring new congregation. The bell was not made as a church bell. It was made as a bell for a locomotive, and when you rang it, it sounded like the train was on its way. We hadn’t used it for years. It had hung in a decrepit and long demolished structure that people who had not been to church for 20 or 30 years remembered but many of the current congregation had never seen, and they had never heard the bell ring. It languished outside the Sunday school rooms in a utility closet for some time. When the neighboring congregation with its new house church building was looking for a bell, we gave it to them. So that pastor and I lifted it, put it in the truck and moved it to its new home, where it was rung, especially to the delight of children. Several years later that congregation folded, its property was dispersed, and I do not know what happened to the bell. But I do know that some long, long, long time parishioners of my own church still resented its loss. They had lost something they had given away. When you give something away, it’s not yours anymore: a painful lesson whether it’s an old dresser, an old book, a car or a bell. I suppose there’s a sermon in here somewhere about what has been given away for us, what has been given away by us, in a spirit of love, or of housecleaning, and what has been given away to us. Given away, largely by one we have never seen in the flesh. As I say this, I can see from my porch the vultures circling over something that has lost any chance of being given away or received as a gift, but only taken. Jesus wasn’t in the tomb long enough to do more than begin to stink, as Martha and Mary had said of his friend Lazarus. He had been alive long enough for the vultures to have been circling in anticipation for years, and then he went ahead with it. He went ahead with giving away his love, his life and the gifts of love and life that he gave to others; gifts that we never recovered, but only passed on. Perhaps we should do as well to let go of the things that we have given away, and not attempt to recover them, or to resent their departure.

 Bell : an essay for the Buechner writing project of the Christian Century.

Oaks

 It’s amazing! It’s as if you’ve been running around a foreign country and you’ve finally bumped into people who are speaking your language. 

On the day of Pentecost the Spirit reversed the confusion of the Tower of Babel into coherent speech for a diverse multitude.

The Spirit gives us utterance in different ways, expressions in different gifts. The Spirit gives us understanding and inspiration in different ways and by different means. 

How is the experience of the gathered disciples and their hearers on the day of Pentecost, two thousand years ago, to make a difference to us now? 

Will we, gathered or scattered, hear, each in our own heart language, the word of God? Will we be inspired? Will we act - apparently crazy -dancing and singing and praising God? Will we - apparently sober - go out and do the things Jesus commanded us to do?

Will we visit the sick, pray with the despairing, speak out for justice, reach out to the lonely? Will we listen to each other in solemn assembly, seeking the guidance of the Spirit in our decisions? 

Will we have reason to? And how will we encounter the Spirit in our own life and times?

On the border now they talk of encounters with migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, and the desperate wanderers who lose their way. Encounters. Better perhaps than simply saying arrests, as many have entertained angels unawares. This week I encountered a man who asked directions to the bus station. I gave them to him. Then I thought, too late, that I could have given him a ride in the heat of the day. 

There is a story in the book of Genesis. In the heat of the day, while he was sitting in the door of his tent, Abraham encountered three men, strangers to him, who came to him at the Oaks of Mamre, and he offered them hospitality. The hospitality of his tent, his household, his family. 

Sometimes all someone asks of us is directions. Sometimes we are offered the chance to do much more. If we have eyes to see. The three strangers were indeed grateful for the hospitality they received and in turn gave a blessing only they could give. Your wife, they said, will at last bear to you the child you both have sought. And that child - through its descendants - will become the host of the world.

We do not meet God in the person of angels, dressed as strangers who wander through the desert. (Do we?) We do not meet Jesus in the flesh. (Though sometimes we wonder.)

The Holy Spirit is the God we encounter. We have not seen the Father, and Jesus, since his Ascension, has left us in the care of the Comforter, the Advocate, the Teacher; the one who comes alongside us, and yet remains unseen. Unseen, that is, except through permeance. 

Permeating through all of our encounters with each other, and, all unawares, with angels. Pervading too all our days, ordinary and especially significant. 

Look through the prayer book and you will see the Spirit landing upon the baptized, inhabiting the confirmed, blessing the married, consoling the bereaved and accompanying the sick even unto the death bed. Look again and you will see the Spirit invoked upon the ordained, and called upon to bless new ministries and sacred places.

Listen as we celebrate Eucharist, or say our daily prayers. You will hear the Spirit speaking. For the Spirit is here present among us, and through that invisible permeating influence God is here.

Hear the Word. Touch the cup. Taste the bread. Say “peace” to your neighbor. Come Holy Spirit. Come to us. Amen.

This meditation, based on a sermon given on the Day of Pentecost, appeared on the Arizona Daily Star website June 4th 2023 under the title "Encounters with the Spirit are all around us"  (https://tucson.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/encounters-with-the-spirit-are-all-around-us/article_a00ae510-ff02-11ed-a83c-2788b4905516.html) 

Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7)

Acts 2:1-21