Luke 3:15-22

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, added to them all by shutting up John in prison.

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 like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Baptize

The first Baptism I ever was the officiant for I was really worried I was going to drop the baby.  I was in my mid-twenties and I didn’t have much recent baby-holding experiences, much less one that was six months old.  So I was, of course, honored when the family asked me to officiate.  It was a week before the baptism, as I was trying to do my walk though in the sanctuary, trying to practice what would be happening when, when I realized that, of course, I would need at least one hand free in order to get water from the baptismal font onto the baby, which meant I had to hold the baby with one hand.  I started wondering if I should be doing upper body workouts in anticipation.  As I worried, I pictured wiggling, filled with images of my first baptism ending with tragedy as gasps swept through the congregation.  When the day arrived, I met with the family again and realized just what an amazingly chubby baby this was.  She was all you could hope a baby would be:  smooshy and covered with an amazing, fluffy white dress, healthy, thriving and robust.  And so it came time for the ceremony and I was, with trepidation, about to take this baby from her mother, and I lifted her.  It wasn’t hard at all; compared to the weight of my anticipation; it was only lightness to carry her.  And I got to lift the water and to baptize her, “Alexandra Cassandra, in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, Mother of us all.”  And all of my fear felt so unneeded, because we were talking about grace, and so even if I had forgotten the words, if the outfit had been a mess, if she had been crying her whole way up to the font, if she had found herself with a shockingly imperfect pastor, which she did, with remarkably human parents and a congregation that made promises that just were as earthly as this one, that somehow just as the four friends carried their friend to Jesus on a stretcher, lifting his weight to carry him through the roof, that this heaviness was carried by us all until it became something else: lightness indeed, a  gift, a blessing.  For if we’re talking about grace, how could it be heavy to hear the words, “You are a child of God, beloved.”

In the next few weeks we are looking at Jesus’ beginnings, the places from which his ministry had its start.  And the Scripture tells this story of Jesus’ baptism, as Luke jumps from Jesus the infant to Jesus the twelve-year-old; here Jesus is now thirty years old and for some reason he has come to the water.  I love that in the Gospel of Luke there is this sense that Jesus doesn’t want to make this a big deal.  There is some sort of a question whether John the Baptist was there, or already in jail, and there is this back and forth argument with John where Jesus winks tha

Luke 2:22, 25-38

Jesus Is Presented in the Temple

 When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord

 Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,

 And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’

 There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband for seven years after her marriage, then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped there with fasting and prayer night and day. At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.

Message

The Song of Simeon, just sung by our choir, is often sung at the very end of things: during evening prayers or compline.  It often comes after communion, in order to say, “I have seen your salvation in this bread and cup and now I can depart in peace.”  It is really an incredible thing to say, a liturgical, “Now that I’ve seen this, I can die happy.”  As Simeon, long after he heard the promise that he would see the Messiah of God, sees this child and says, “With this I have witnessed the goodness of God and I can say that my life is complete.”

Most of the time, when we talk about bucket lists, we mean things that we want to do before we depart this life: places to see or things to try or perhaps sky-diving if somehow you seem to lack the very logical fear of falling from great heights.  But what Simeon is singing of is in fact the opposite: not something Simeon wants to do but something he hopes he can see that God has done.  Simeon is not asking to be the one to go to the heights or to save the world but just get a glimpse of the salvation that God is bringing, to get a glimpse and say, “Even this would be enough for my life.”

This song has a history.  An article by Lauren Winner I read this week said that in 1860 at a political party convention they were in the midst of three tense ballots about who would be the Republican nominee, who would be the party’s candidate for president in 1860.  And when the vote switched to Abraham Lincoln, one man started crying and another old man started quoting scripture at the top of his lungs, “Now, Lord, lettest thy servant depart in peace, for these eyes of mine…”  And she goes on to say that, “Yes, Abraham Lincoln and the United States is not actually the same as the salvation of humanity.”  But I was left wondering what on earth in this  life we could see and say, “Yes, after this I can depart in peace.”  What would be big enough to say, “This was God,” and to feel your life so wrapped in it in a way that to witness it is to feel your own purpose drawing to its

Pastor Lisa Horst Clark

November 11, 2018

Genesis 1: 6-10

And God said, “Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called the dome Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good

Psalm 104:24-30

O Lord, how manifold are your works!

Yonder is the sea, great and wide,

These all look to you

Message

The Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean has within it challenger deep a valley 36,000 feet deep, or 10,994 meters.  To give a perspective, Mount Everest is more than a mile shorter than the trench is deep.  January 23, 1960 Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard, in a submersible Bathyscaphe Trieste, were the first humans to reach the bottom of this deepest place in the ocean. It took them almost five hours to descend through the darkness and of course, when they got to the bottom, they wondered what would be there.  For 20 minutes they sat at the deepest part of the ocean, 7 miles under the surface, far away from the surface where oxygen can meet the sea, miles deeper than the last glimmers of sunlight.  They looked out of the window in their submersible, resting on the floor.  The submersible was designed to go up and down and withstand pressure, not to move around when it got there.  And their landing had brought up a cloud of dust.  They just sat there and stared out their porthole at the tiny piece they could see of the deepest underwater trench on earth when something swam by their window.  Even at the bottom of the ocean there was life.  At the time in their excitement they named it a fish, and in time we have learned it was likely a sea cucumber happening by their window in their 20 minutes in the depths of the sea.

Twelve people have walked on the moon, but only 3 have ever descended to the depths in the trench.  Human beings have spent 300 hours on the moon but only 3 hours at the deepest part of the ocean.  The seas are still unknown to us.  About 71 percent of the earth’s surface is water.  I am trying to repeat this because when I think about the “average square mile” of the surface of the earth, my temptation is to picture a place like where I have spent the vast majority of my time.  If not a suburb, then at least some rolling hills, vast forests, deserts, jungles or sprawling urban areas.  My mental bias has trouble thinking that all of those spaces of well, land, where I can stand on my feet simply and breathe air.  That is not even a third of the earth: 29 percent.  By far, most of this spinning orb is water, seas, oceans.  I have known these spaces only by glimpsing their edges, seeing the surface of the water as the sun moves across the skies, a