Revisit the Rev. Barbara Ballenger's sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, January 16, 2022.Today's readings are:

Exodus 3:7-12 Psalm 77:11-20 Galatians 3:23-29 Luke 6:27-36Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://www.lectionarypage.net/LesserFF/Apr/King.h...

The Circle of Mercy

The Rev. Barbara Ballenger

January 16th, 2022

Let us pray. Lord God, who showed your servant Martin Luther King the way of agape love, guide us in that way as we listen for your word today.

On November 17, 1957, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. walked to the pulpit of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He was sick. The doctor told him to stay home and rest, but he insisted he had to preach that day, so they reached a compromise. King would not go into the pulpit until it was time to preach, and after that he would go directly home and get in bed.

And that's what he did, I imagine. But in the half hour or so that he stood at that pulpit, he preached on the call to love our enemies. He used the text from Matthew chapter 5 which parallels the one that we had from Luke today, but the ideas are the same.

Dr. King told the congregation that this was a topic that they had heard him address before, because he made it a point of preaching on it at least once a year, adding to it as he developed his thinking. It was at the core of his transformative work. His vision of the Beloved Community requires the transformation that happens to enemies when they are loved and forgiven.

He preached, "The words of this text glitter in our eyes with a new urgency. Far from being the pious injunction of a utopian dreamer, this command is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. Yes, it is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies."

And that is hard, he said. Very hard. But Jesus wasn't playing, he said. And neither was Martin. That's likely why dragged himself out of his sickbed to preach on the importance of loving our enemies. Because Dr. King poured out his love, and his health and his very life in a 24/7 commitment to creating a world not only where the enemies of justice would no longer had the upper hand, but where they might become people who no longer despised, oppressed, exploited, or lynched others. This is what he meant by the Beloved Community.

This image of Martin Luther King Jr., struggling with the challenge of illness and the call to preach, made me wonder what he might make of our COVID-soaked world today on the weekend of his 93rd birthday. What would he make of our fights over whether to vaccinate or wear masks to slow the spread of a killer virus? What would he make of the fact that racial injustice remains as deadly a problem as ever, or that it's one of the reasons why our democracy hangs in the balance? What would he make of the lives that are threatened over our polarizations? What would he preach?

I think he would send us back to these words of Jesus: Love your enemies.

And he'd remind us what Jesus meant by this:

Do good to those who hate you, Bless those who curse you, Pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt....If anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.

Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Seventy years ago Martin Luther King offered the people of Dexter Ave Baptist, and us, some very practical suggestions for loving those enemies. We must start by looking at ourselves, he said, at our own participation in the creation of enemies, our own tendency to harm and to alienate.

He said, "Somehow the 'isness' of our present nature is out of harmony with the eternal 'oughtness' that forever confronts us. And this simply means this: That within the best of us, there is some evil, and within the worst of us, there is some good. When we come to see this, we take a different attitude toward individuals."

That helps us to see our enemy as a mixed bag - just like us.

He said, "When you come to the point that you look in the face of every man and see deep down within him what religion calls "the image of God," you begin to love him in spite of. No matter what he does, you see God's image there. There is an element of goodness that he can never sluff off. Discover the element of good in your enemy. And as you seek to hate him, find the center of goodness and place your attention there and you will take a new attitude."

Now remember that this was coming from someone who endured racial slurs, and violent attacks, fire hoses, death threats, jailing, a stabbing and a bombing of his home over his demands for civil rights for black people. Martin Luther King Jr. had enemies. And I'm not talking about where he stood on peace.

Another way to love your enemy, he told the congregation at Dexter Avenue Baptist church, is that, "when the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it." When you have that moment to get even, when faced with the choice to harm or keep someone from moving ahead in life, he said, that's when you choose not to do it.

"That," Dr King said, "is the meaning of love. ... Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all... It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power", he said, "you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system."

And that is what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lived and died doing - working to defeat those sinful systems that caught up people within them and made it so very difficult for them to love or to be loved.

As I considered the preaching of Dr. King this week, alongside the words of Luke's gospel, the ideas of Bishop Desmond Tutu also surfaced for me. Because another word for the love of enemy is forgiveness - and there is no one who has witnessed more fully, painfully and effectively to the power of forgiveness than Bishop Desmond Tutu, who died three weeks ago today.

In The Book of Forgiving, which Desmond Tutu wrote with his daughter, the Rev. Mpho Tutu, the bishop wrote: "Without forgiveness, we remain tethered to the person who harmed us. We are bound with chains of bitterness, tied together, trapped. Until we can forgive the person who harmed us, that person will hold the keys to our happiness; that person will be our jailor.

I recommend this book. It is powerful and practical, and honest. I recommend it to anyone who is either seeking to forgive someone or to be forgiven. The Book of Forgiving.

And I have to say that of late, I'm not sure that I have it in me to rise to the level of Martin Luther King's agape love or of Desmond Tutu's forgiveness. I'm not sure I'm up to the task of loving those that I find myself diametrically opposed to, in fierce social and political combat with, in heart-breaking alienation from. I'm not a saint like Martin Luther King or Desmond Tutu.

I can't, as the Gospel of Matthew suggests, Be perfect as my father is perfect.

But I may be able to do what Luke suggests: To Be merciful as my father is merciful.

I think, with God's help and with your help, I can create a space where I can grow and develop that ability to love and to forgive, a patient space to live inside of and to live out of. I can create a circle of mercy.

Now Divine mercy is at the very core of God's relationship with Israel. It is what makes an undeserving and sinful people into a chosen people - mercy is the patient and gracious time and space that God gives people to repent, to live into the covenant, to grow in love. It is not a time of empty waiting on God's part, but an active time of calling, chastising, teaching, prophesying, lamenting and intervening. Mercy makes a space and opportunity for the undeserving to enter a place of loving relationship with God. "For he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked," says Luke.

Having been both of those things in my life, I appreciate that about God.

What if I were to create a circle of mercy out of which I might be able to love my enemy and forgive those who have hurt me? What do Martin Luther King, and Desmond Tutu and the author of Luke suggest I fill that circle of mercy with?

I can start by filling it with prayer for my enemies, a desire at least for healed relationship. I can fill it with blessing for those I am in conflict with - that force of imagination that sees both me and my enemies as a mix of good and evil, all beloved of God despite our failings. I can make choices in my circle of mercy - the kind act, the held tongue, the stayed hand, the suppressed schadenfreude.

In the Book of Forgiving, Desmond and Mpho Tutu suggest four practices that lead to the love of enemies that we call forgiveness. These include telling the story of the harm they have inflicted outloud to another; and naming the hurts that resulted; and granting forgiveness in its time, and ultimately deciding whether to renew the relationship or release it.

Which is to say, that the patiently held space within the circle of mercy can be pretty full of things to do while we wait. It does not demand that we declare the love of our enemy before we actually have it, or forgive before we've named the harmed, or force a peace before there is peace. But it is a space where we ask God and one another to prepare for it, welcome the possibility of it.

Perhaps we can honor the life, and the death and the resurrection of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by committing to make within ourselves and our faith community such circles of mercy, to pray the "Prayer before the Prayer" as Desmond Tutu calls the prayer before one is able to forgive.

So I'll leave us with the last stanza of his prayer by that name:

"Is there a place where we can meet

You and me?

The place in the middle

The no man's land

Where we straddle the lines

Where you are right,

And I am right too,

And both of us are wrong and wronged.

Can we meet there?

And look for the place where the path begins,

The path that ends when we forgive?"

Amen.

Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Revisit the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel's sermon for the First Sunday after Epiphany, January 9, 2022.Today's readings are:

Isaiah 43:1-7 Acts 8:14-17 Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 Psalm 29

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Epiphany/CEpi...

Please join me in the spirit of prayer.

Lord God, we give you thanks that through your word you address our hearts and our souls and you remind us that we are precious to you, honored and loved. By your Holy Spirit help us receive your word to us and let that word open our hearts that we may live in love with you in each day ahead. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

When my mom would take my sisters and I to go see her sister Thala in Clovis, New Mexico, the troops had a certain ritual. We would fly from New Jersey to Amarillo, Texas. My Uncle Bill would pick us up in his big sedan that smelled like the cattle feedlots where he worked. He would immediately drive us to the best barbecue restaurant on Route 40. It was not much to look at but we would zip in get our barbecue and our Dr. Pepper in a tall glass bottle. At that time in New Jersey you could still not get good barbecue or even Dr. Pepper not to mention Mexican food, which is another story. Then we would start the long trip across the panhandle through the small towns and the cotton fields that went on forever until we arrived in Clovis with our Dr. Peppers empty. And all the bottles all went into one of those wonderful old wood soda boxes, with the cokes and the seven ups. We'd rattle them into the case and I found this all utterly fascinating because in New Jersey we could not redeem buzz and I did not understand the whole idea of redemption.

I still don't, but the notion is that the bottle has value. They call it deposit value. It is still an object of value that through a process of redemption can have a new or second life of fruitful use again.

Now for me as a New Jersiate I just thought this was a useless object on the verge of the landfill. This was junk. But in New Mexico this had value because of redemption.

This is actually how I understand redemption.

Redemption is God reminding us that we have value. Redemption is God reminding us that we have value and restoring us to the relationship that gives us that value in the first place, and it is how God loves us into freedom. This redemption story of God's love for us is all over that Isaiah passage which is a glorious, glorious passage. Our deposit value if you will is illustrated by how the passage is book ended by the prophet Isaiah referring to our creation - "you were created o Jacob, you were formed of Israel". The verbs "creation" and "formed" repeat at the beginning and the end and they are the verbs from the book of Genesis that refer to the creation of the world itself from chaos and the creation of the first human Adam. God formed and created us. We are precious to God as God's creation.

Wrapped up in that creation story is the story of redemption. There is also imagery of Exodus and return from exile. Water, fire, these are images of the people of Israel fleeing from Egypt into the promised land and the story even proposes a whole geopolitical notion of redemption where God has caused the defeat of some nations - the traditional oppressors of Israel - so Israel could be set free once again in the promised land. Our God is a creating God and a redeeming God because God never loses sight of our value even if we do. And then this redeeming story goes even a little heavier because in ancient Israel the redeemer was a family member who had the job of setting you free if you became enslaved due to debt.

So if you became so indebted to someone in your village that that person could literally enslave you, take your freedom, own you, you had a family member whose job it was to redeem you. In other words, ransom you, set you free. Someone whose job it was to remember your value and restore your right relationship, and Israel applied this notion to what God did. God ransoms us at a price and sets us free and this language of redemption is all the way that God says to us how precious we are. How valued we are. How essential we are to what God is doing. Hear that incredibly intimate language Isaiah: "you are precious to me, you are honored by me, I love you." God loves you.

The "you" is second person singular. "God loves you" was an unprecedented statement in ancient literature, an incredible gift and affirmation of our value to God.

The story is a beautiful background for what happens in Luke where all the same elements are at play. We have the reminders of creation. We have water and the Holy Spirit with Christ in the middle. It's an ancient image of creation. The logos, God the father, the creator, the holy spirit that moved over the waters of creation, all are present reminding us that this is a new creation coming into being right in front of us. John is present telling us about the renewal of the covenant. His baptism was a reminder of the passage of the waters through Exodus into the promised land. It was a covenant renewal ceremony where Israel was remade, reformed - those same verbs again - into the people God intended them to be. And as a renewal it was a redemption. So we see the baptism of Christ himself as a next stage in God's redemptive outreach to us. God will send. God will be our relative. God will be our relative whose sins help someone to redeem us from all that enslaves us. From all the depths and relationships that we've entered into that bind us and draw us away from God. God will pay that price and indicate how valuable we are to God by sending a son. Redemption reminds us of our value.

Redemption restores us to the relationships that give us value, and one of the great gifts of this baptism story and there's so many, is that when God addresses Jesus (and in Luke it's private if you'll notice, it's an intimate address) when he comes up from the water and prays, God says "you are my beloved" and we hear the echoes of Isaiah: "I love you." But because Jesus has taken on our humanity and because Jesus has started the new creation of our humanity in incarnation and baptism we can hear those words directed to ourselves.

Those words are for Jesus first and foremost but they're also God's words to the humanity he desires to restore. "You are my beloved with whom I am well pleased." So my prayer for you and for each one of us is to sit in those words today and let those words address you, each one of you, where you are the person addressed.

Hear God's voice to you: "You are my beloved. You are precious to me."

Let those words open your heart and set you free, and let those words guide you, because all those other voices that invade us about how lousy we are, rotten we are, those aren't from God. The voice of God is "I love you. You are my beloved."

Amen.

Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Revisit the Rev. Barbara Ballenger's sermon for the Second Sunday after Christmas, January 2, 2022.Today's readings are: Jeremiah 31:7-14 Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a Matthew 2:13-15,19-23 Psalm 84 Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC/Christmas/C...St. Joseph, Pray for Us

Barbara Ballenger, Jan. 2, 2022

Let us pray. Lord God, you spoke to Joseph in dreams. Speak to us so we may hear and follow.

St. Joseph, the spouse of Mary, has been listed as the patron saint of many things including:

Accountants, barristers, carpenters, dying people. exiles. families. grave diggers. house hunters, immigrants, married people, orphans, pregnant women, social justice, travelers, the Universal Church, and workers.

He is to be invoked if you are doubting or hesitant. And if you want to sell your house you might consider buying a statue of him and burying it in the backyard. I believe my sister did this. Her house did sell, now that I think about it.

For someone whose own back story is a bit vague, a lot has been put on Joseph's saintly plate.

But if it were up to me, if I got to make that list based just what we heard in today's passage from Matthew's gospel, I would count Joseph as patron of:

Those who lay down their privilege.

Those in non-traditional families.

Those who obey their dreams.

And maybe all men who listen to directions.

Joseph, who plays a starring role in today's Gospel, gets a rare moment to shine. In Matthew's nativity story, Joseph -- rather than Mary -- gets the angelic messages, though he's asleep for all of them, and he gets no good lines and no songs to sing. Still, today is a great opportunity to reflect on this quiet, obedient soul, who delivers the Christ child. It's a good day to ask: how are we to follow his example, and for what might we ask his intercession?

The first two chapters of Matthew's gospel gives us nearly all we know about Joseph.

We learn that:

Joseph's family was descended from David through Solomon -- Jesus would inherit that distinction.

Joseph is upright and righteous, which means he keeps the Law of Moses faithfully.

And because of that righteousness, he would have divorced Mary when she was found to be with child, had not the angel told him to do otherwise.

That's because Joseph obeys divine messengers when they speak to him in dreams.

In that regard he bears a resemblance to the Joseph of Genesis, who listened to his own set of dreams, ended up in Egypt and secured safety for his family there, setting the stage for Moses to one day deliver Israel from empire and captivity. Matthew's nativity story looks a lot like the story of Moses, that seminal story of deliverance for Israel. There is an evil king to flee, magicians give counsel, the death of the innocents, and entry and exit from Egypt. Matthew's diverse community of Jews and gentiles would get the connection. They would see how it tells the same story of deliverance as Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection does.

But I think that Joseph, the husband of Mary, is more than an allegorical figure. He had no technicolor dream coat, no grand soliloquies, though he brought an earnest resolve to his role.

Joseph delivered.

Not the way a savior does, but the way a midwife does -- protecting, facilitating, accompanying, assisting in the birth. If it were up to me I'd make Joseph the patron saint of midwives rather than house hunters.

One of the things I love best about Joseph is his ability to lay down his power and his privilege -- the rights that mosaic law and social order gave him over his betrothed. He had the ability to have Mary stoned to death for being pregnant with a child not his own, and if not publicly executed, then quietly divorced. He could well have obeyed the law rather than the angel. The law would have protected his dominance, upheld the toxic masculinity that has shaped cultural norms both ancient and modern.

But he chose not to. And that wasn't disobedience to God's law. It was a higher level of obedience to it -- an openness to the Word of God that transcended what Joseph understood up to that point. He is much like Mary in that way. They make a very good couple.

This kind of obedience made him socially and culturally vulnerable -- to ridicule, attack, arrest, death. Joseph's vulnerability in laying down his power, looks much like the vulnerability that God took on in becoming human. The seminary word for that is kenosis: self emptying as an act of love. This was Joseph's charism, his particular divine gift. He put down the power that society had given him and he picked up the grace that God gave him. This is an essential charism in our time, as well.

To follow the example of Joseph, then, is to practice a form of kenosis, laying down power and picking up grace. It is to obey the call to deliver Jesus into the world, so that Christ may do the work of saving it.

This is humble work, and it's also whiley work, as we see in today's Gospel. God subverts evil, slips through the fingers of empire, hides the divine self among vulnerable people, crosses borders and carries out the divine mission according to God's dream. This is the source of my own hope in these uncertain times, as I consider what will subvert and thwart the powers that plague us.

It helps to tell stories of this ability to be humble and whiley and cooperative in God's dream, as Joseph was. So another story comes to mind for me, one collected by the brothers Grimm and translated by D.L. Ashliman.

When King Conrad III defeated the Duke of Welf (in the year 1140) and placed Weinsberg under siege, the wives of the besieged castle negotiated a surrender which granted them the right to leave with whatever they could carry on their shoulders. The king allowed them that much. Leaving everything else aside, each woman took her own husband on her shoulders and carried him out. When the king's people saw what was happening, many of them said that that was not what had been meant and wanted to put a stop to it. But the king laughed and accepted the women's clever trick.

Other versions of the story invite the women to take what is most precious to them, and they leave carrying the village children under their arms and the men upon their backs. You can tell it's a fairytale because of the happy ending, a king relents and stands by his word, unlike Herod or Pharaoh.

But I think what is most important about these stories -- whether it's the flight into Egypt or the faithful wives of Weinsberg -- is not whether they happened but whether they are true. And the truth I see is this, the act of setting down privilege and picking up God's grace yields a humble and whiley strength, which is required for the work of God.

The author of the letter to the Ephesians says it this way:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.

If we would have St Joseph intercede with God for anything on our behalf, perhaps it should be this.

Amen.

Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Sermon from The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel from the Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas Day, 10:00 a.m. Holy Eucharist, December 25, 2021

Today's readings are:

Isaiah 61:10-62:3 Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7 John 1:1-18 Psalm 147 or 147:13-21Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/YearABC/Christmas/Chris...Transcript coming soon.Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Sermon from The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel from the Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas Day, 10:00 a.m. Holy Eucharist, December 25, 2021

Today's readings are:

Isaiah 52:7-10 Hebrews 1:1-4,(5-12) John 1:1-14 Psalm 98Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/Christmas/ChrsDay3_RCL.html#Nt1

Transcript coming soon.

Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Sermon from The Rev. Barbara Ballenger from the Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas Eve, 7:00 p.m. Choral Eucharist, December 24, 2021

Today's readings are:

Isaiah 9:2-7 Titus 2:11-14 Luke 2:1-14(15-20) Psalm 96Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/Christm...

Transcript coming soon.

Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Sermon from Ms. Anne Alexis Harra for the Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas Eve, 5:00 p.m. Youth-led Eucharist, 2021.

Today's readings are:

Isaiah 9:2-7 Titus 2:11-14 Luke 2:1-14(15-20) Psalm 96Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC_RCL/Christm...

Transcript coming soon.

Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Sermon from the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent.

Today's readings are:

Micah 5:2-5a Hebrews 10:5-10 Luke 1:39-45, (46-55) Canticle 15Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Advent/CAdv4_...

Mary's Victory Song

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

The Final Sunday of Advent, December 19, 2021

Please join me in the spirit of prayer.

Gracious God, you inspired Mary to give us your word and the Magnificat. Bless us whichever way our journey is going, whether we are being cast down or raised up, emptied out or filled up, help us know that it is a blessing to arrive with our neighbor in that place called enough.

In Christ's name we pray. Thank you.

My wife and I love every sort of music. If you know my wife Allison Bowden, she can sing large parts of Britten's Ceremony of Carols by heart and she's a big fan of Parliament Funkadelic, so that's how our family rolls. In fact we have a game we play with music which we call "Next line please." I will sing a line to her and she'll sing it back, like the next line in the song, so an easy one - and you can join in if you want, I will not sing, we will just recite -"Shake it up baby now" (The congregation responds: "Twist and shout.") "Ain't no mountain high enough." (The congregation responds "Ain't no mountain low enough.") "Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner." (The congregation responds: "but he knew it wouldn't last." and so on...)

Now finally, "my soul magnifies the Lord" (The congregation responds: "the spirit rejoices in God, my savior."

In a world without exclamation points - that is, the ancient world - you repeated things to make your point. If you wanted to explain and exalt and emphasize, you said it twice in a row. So Mary is saying essentially, "rejoice again, I say rejoice in our faithful God." She is singing a song, a prophecy of exaltation, of joy, of fulfillment and I want to spend time with it this morning. We've had it twice already. We might say, "that's a lot, Jared." We had it in the psalm position and we had it as part of the Gospel which was optional, but I wanted to do it as many times as we could.

I wanted that because the song of Mary is something I would like us to have by heart and I believe it's also something that's extremely good for our hearts, because in it Mary is teaching us. Mary the apostle, Mary the prophet, Mary the theotokos, the bearer of God's teachings, is telling us how to recognize what our God is doing and who our God is. In fact she is teaching us who our God is by telling us what God does so we can discern the movements of God in our own lives in our own world. She is teaching us that our God is faithful and true and comes through on God 's promises so we can have confidence, we can have hope and we can be humble in our service with our Lord.

Now, the song of Mary is a victory song. She is singing a victory song in a long tradition of woman prophets in Israel. She's in the heritage of Miriam who sings a wonderful victory song after the deliverance at the red sea. She's in the tradition of Deborah from Judges who sings a victory song. She's in the tradition of Hannah who sings a victory song after she is miraculously able to be pregnant, probably the closest to Mary's song. Mary has sung a victory song for what God has already achieved, what God has already accomplished, and it's an odd way she does it.

It involves a special grammar. Now I grew up in the 70s when schools did not believe in grammar. They thought it was oppressive to our cool little souls, so they didn't teach it to us, so I had to do a lot of research this week, but the Magnificat is written in a verb tense that we don't have in English. It's written in a Greek verb tense called aorist a-o-r-i-s-t. We translate it into past perfect which doesn't quite do the job, but the past perfect is all those verbs in there: "has shown the strength of his arm, has scattered the crowd in the conceit of their hearts." I like that translation better. " has cast down the mighty from their thrones, has lifted up the lowly, has filled the hungry with good things, has sent the rich away empty."

In the Greek what all this verbiage means is that this has been accomplished and continues. This has been done, the victory won, and the work continues. God 's work is ongoing and secured by God 's action. That's what makes it a victory song because otherwise we're asking Mary for the footnotes. "When has God done that, when has God done that, when has God done that?" God has done it in the incarnation itself.

In the conception of this child, God has acted decisively to change the history and path of the world. God has acted decisively to reunite God with humanity, to do God 's eternal purpose which was to harmonize humanity with God. This is accomplished in this incarnation and we talk so much about the cross and the resurrection of how God does God 's word but the incarnation is the first stitch. It's the essential beginning of how God makes peace with humanity, how God makes shalom, and I use that word intentionally because it's so much richer than peace. God makes peace with humanity, overcomes our hostility.

I want to pause on that for a minute because this is essential to what the Bible teaches. The history of the Bible is a history of God offering and humanity rejecting, of humanity living in opposition and hostility to God, and we might think to ourselves, "well I'm not hostile to God, I have good intentions, I have a high regard for my own innocence." But the story we live in is a story of rejection of God 's good authority, the rejection of God 's just and loving authority and when you reject God 's Godliness that is hostility. Ask any parent of a teenager. And it's that hostility, that resistance and reluctance and rejection that we bring to this relationship that God overcomes through God 's power by knitting us together forever in his life through the incarnation. This is the first stitch and that is the glorious good news of this story. I want to underline it in a certain way by a practice I have of every year looking out for where do I see the Magnificat? Where do I see how God has shown the strength of God 's arm, where do I see how God has scattered the powerful in their conceit, how has God cast down the mighty, how has God lifted up the lowly and filled them with good things, how has God sent the rich empty away both in the world and in my self?

Well staying on the theme of music one of my favorite recording artists gave me something that looked like the Magnificat this year. He's a wonderful singer-songwriter, if you don't know him, named Jason Isbell. He has a great song called 24 frames which I just adore. I will once again resist singing it to you but the lyric is amazing theologically. He says, "you thought God was an architect now you know he's more like a pipe bomb ready to blow. All you've built was just for show. All gone in 24 frames."

He is a brilliant songwriter but in the country music world which tries to claim him, he is what we might call a burr in the saddle. He has done amazing work challenging the sexism and racism of the country music establishment. So right now he recently had a seven night residency at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Now this is the holy temple of country music. A seven night residency with Amanda Shires, his wife, and what did he do? Every night he picked out an African-American country recording artist who was a woman to open for him. He raised up the lowly, but he doesn't look at it that way. He says each one of these women should be a headline. Each one deserves to be a headliner except for the resistance of racism and country music which we recall was created by segregationist producers who wanted white root's music to sell opposed to black root's music.

Using his influence Isbell has facilitated a raising up and he has challenged those in power to be cast down. He goes even farther. A famous country singer Morgan Wallin famously this year was caught on tape using the worst racial slurs you could think of, and this caused rightly a huge scandal and a major pause in his career as it should have. A leader in this was Jason Isbell making sure there were consequences and making sure this was an opportunity for country music to confront its racist history and present, and here's what Jason Isbell said.

He is a wonderful guy. He's been through recovery and he really doesn't suffer fools and he just said, "look, we are not persecuting Morgan Wallin. He is not being harmed. He is still a multi-millionaire. We are taking him off a pedestal and we are bringing him down to the sidewalk where the rest of us live, where the rest of us learn hard lessons and repent and return to the Lord."

Bring the mighty from their thrones, send the rich away empty, concrete vision of what God is doing as Mary teaches us in the Magnificat, we are invited to join in. We are invited to be a people who facilitate this leveling action of the Magnificat where the rich are sent away empty, the mighty come down from their thrones and the poor are elevated to meet them in this level place called enough.

We are called to be part of that gracious action, that prophetic action and we are called with confidence, with hope and humility that our world desperately needs from us. We are called with confidence because it is accomplished in the coming of Christ. We are called with hope because God is true to God 's promises as Mary tells us. We are called with humility because anything that is done well is only done in God 's power and with God 's help.

Amen.

Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Sermon from the Rev. Barbara Ballenger for the Third Sunday of Advent.

Today's readings are:

Zephaniah 3:14-20 Philippians 4:4-7 Luke 3:7-18 Canticle 9

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Advent/CAdv3_...

Let us pray. Lord Christ, help us to endure the sting of forgiveness, that we may become for you your brain in the world.

Jarrett and I are part of a Zoom-based lectionary bible study for diocesan priests. We're on it each week and a group of us read the Sunday lections and talk about what we might preach about. So if you wonder where my sermons come from, I get them from other people. Or at least, they can really focus me on what I need to pay attention to in these readings, and so this week, I want to give credit where credit is due.

Because I've been thinking a lot about a story that one of the clergy, Robin, told about forgiveness. When her daughter was young, Robin shared, she attended a home daycare that taught the children that when someone apologized to them - as preschoolers are routinely made to do - they were not to say, "it's ok." They were encouraged to say "I forgive you."

Because when someone harms another person it's not ok, and their apology doesn't make what they did ok, and sometimes the feelings that you're feeling are still not ok. So if you want to accept their apology, they children were taught, say "I forgive you." Now, for things like cutting in line or hoarding the best markers, that can be a pretty quick process. For the bigger things we grow into, getting to I forgive you can take a little longer. As they say, little kid little problems, big kids big problems. But that's a different sermon.

One day, Robin said, she apologized to her daughter for something she did, like you do when you're a parent, and her three year old said "I forgive you." That comment startled her. And Robin said it made her a little angry. Who was this preschooler to say if Robin was forgiven or not? Who was she to forgive me?

And here was revealed to Robin the power that is contained in the I of I forgive you. Because it acknowledges that there's a relationship involved there, and the one who was hurt has some agency in determining what happens next, whether things are really, indeed, ok.

Robin's story made me realize that I'm like this. Very often when I apologize, I want the person I'm addressing to tell me that what I did didn't hurt, it wasn't a big deal, it wasn't my fault, it's ok. Often that means what I really want is to be released from my feelings of imperfection, to get rid of the gnaw of guilt, rather than really wanting the person I've hurt to be healed.

So it stings to hear "I forgive you." It stings to hear "Yes you hurt me, and I appreciate that you are taking responsibility for it, and I accept that, and I want to stay in relationship with you." "I forgive you" is a little more truthful than "it's ok." It's judgement without condemnation. Judgement that's graceful and merciful. And that sting just might prompt me to wonder what the path is to things really being okay.

And now we're in the territory of the gospel, though at first glance it seems a bit harsh. I think it's the brood of vipers language that gives it away. That is the tell that this isn't a healing ritual. Because John has stepped into the waters of the old time prophet, of one called by God to help Israel face the truth of who it is and to get ready for what's coming next. Because it's going to demand the full strength of their covenant with God.

John's baptism didn't make the impure clean, it didn't remove sin. It ritually acknowledged that the life had already been cleaned up, that the change had been made, the heart re-turned to God. So unless you've done that work, don't get in John's baptism line.

So what then does John's baptism with water do, and what does Jesus's baptism with fire do? John's baptism invites Israel to return to right relationship with God; it proclaims that Israel has repented and is ready for the life that God will initiate through Jesus.

"What are we to do, John, to show that we are ready for your baptism?," ask the crowd and the tax collectors and the soldiers?

"Stop sinning", says John. "Stop invoking your privilege, and hoarding resources, and keeping aid back from those who need it. Stop misusing your power, and extorting people."

"I'm a prophet," John would have said, "don't tell me this is the first time you're hearing this. Stop sinning. Get your covenant with God firmly in place. Because when Jesus comes baptizing, look out."

"He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire," John says of Jesus. "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."

Luke calls that "good news." Threshings, pitchforks, unquenchable fire - that sounds like judgement to me. And I think this is where we often go in our imagination of what God's judgement of us is. It sounds like brutal, terrifying condemnation. But what if that threshing, and chaff removal and sifting is actually what an encounter with God's love looks like? What if that's the refining process that happens when God says "I forgive you?"

"From our perspective it looks like judgment. From God's perspective it looks like love." Jarrett observed in our lectionary group. That is because God tells us the truth about ourselves. Sure it stings. Because truth stings. What if God's judgement invites us to see ourselves as God sees us, as we truly are. What if that involves freeing the core of us that God rejoices in and delights in? What if on the other side of God's judgement, we see ourselves as beloved as God saw us from the beginning, and still sees us?

Consider how John the Baptist describes the baptism offered by Jesus. The threshing floor, the winnowing fork, the fire that burns the chaff -- these are all means of removing the extraneous material from that valuable, useful grain. If we are talking about people who have already repented and emerged from John's baptismal water, then it looks to me like Jesus is processing the grain for its actual use.

This is the process of God's love in us - removing that which is not love, which is not necessary, which is perhaps not true about us and carefully gathering up and preserving what is true, beloved, essential to us and to God.

You can call this process judgement. You can call it love. To those of us who do not want to let go of any of it, it sounds terrifying. Because I'd rather things be ok, than to admit that I need to be forgiven of all that does not flow from love. I think sometimes I'd rather bring all my sins to God with a little apology for packing so much, coming with so much baggage and just have God say, "it's ok, it's fine, come as you are."

But real reconciliation with God means bringing all the stuff we can't manage to put down and allowing God to remove it for us. When God says "I forgive you," I think it means, "I see your sin, I acknowledge that you have done harm to yourself and others and me, and I remove its power over you and your attachment to it, and we are in relationship". That includes things like our shame, our fear, our perfectionism, our tendency to dominate, our inability to forgive ourselves and be merciful to others. And God calls upon the wind of God's spirit to drive it away from us and the fire of the spirit to consume it entirely.

In stories of God's judgement I think we forget what remains, that there is something in us that is also wonderful, beautiful, useful, effective, necessary to the work of God. The grain of wheat in us that is seed and food remains. That is what God's truthful gaze, God's fiery love, frees in us. Consider that when you say amen to the communion bread today. You are not just consuming the wheat, you are becoming the wheat. And that act of threshing and winnowing and sifting is the powerful work of our transformation into Christ's body.

This puts a new shine on the rose candle of Gaudete Sunday, in this third week of Advent, on this day where we are waiting to make special room to rejoice. It is a lovely light in a darkened room. But put your finger in that flame, and it burns. Because it's fire. "The Lord is near," says the heat of that flame. "Do not worry about anything, it says. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

And that as Luke says, is indeed good news.

Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org

Sermon from the Rev. Jarrett Kerbel for the Second Sunday of Advent.

Today's readings are:

Malachi 3:1-4 Philippians 1:3-11 Luke 3:1-6 Canticle 16

Readings may be found on LectionaryPage.net: https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/HolyDays/...

Please join me in the spirit of prayer.

So early on in my quarantine when I was suffering from Covid these last two weeks (I've had a negative test and I'm completely safe) I decided to turn my quarantine and convalescence into a spiritual retreat. Covid is definitely a Wilderness moment. What does one do with that? Well, one turns it into a retreat where I could take the solitute and the isolation and the loneliness and the misery and use it as a refining fire, as it says in Malachi, to put my soul before God and let God do God's work. That's what a retreat is after all. We get rid of all the distractions and routines and buzzings in our head and the attachments in our hearts so that we can simply put ourselves before God and say, "Work this out in me."

It's an act of surrender in some ways. And that turned out to be a very good use of Covid actually. I could simply say, "God, here I am in my struggles and my frustrations and my failures, and my fallings short, my sins and my confusions and my contradictions." I could put it out there without excuse. "And before you are a merciful God, I can do that." It starts with this gratitude, that we know we can approach God in our full contradictions and find a companion and someone to help sort us out.

So I had a quarantine retreat. I was quarantined into the bedroom and bathroom, with no company and dinner and lunch on a tray.

And what came to me as an image was this cheap toy I found once in a science museum. I've always loved the gift shops of science museums and this was a plexiglass box - a rectangle - and it was filled with iron filings, and the kit came with a number of magnets and the fun you had, such as it was, was applying the magnet to the filings. And of course when you apply the magnet to the filings they go from a disorganized mass into a wonderful organized set that follows the magnetic field of the magnet.

So from this jungle you get this wonderful pattern of the iron filings following the magnetic field of the magnet you apply.

This image came to me as a gift, because I realized that left to myself, I'm a pretty chaotic pile of filings. I'm going off in every different direction. I'm going off in contradictory directions at the same time. I cause myself suffering and angst and anxiety and worry. I fall short and I sin. It's that same pile that I bring into God's magnetic field of love and care and mercy, and then in God's magnetic field of love and care and mercy, my life finds enlightenment, and finds a pattern that is healthy. A pattern that is humble. A pattern that is connected to God most of all. And as we enter into Advent, I want to recommend to you, however you can do it - hopefully without the Covid part - to have some Wilderness time and put your chaotic pile of filings in front of God and let the love of God and the care of God and God's mercy sort them out and help you find your shape again.

Today on the second Sunday of Advent I am very very grateful for the example of Zechariah and Elizabeth and John and Mary and Joseph. These humble, humble people who are so far off to the side of history, the underside of history compared to Tiberius and Pilate and Annas and Caiaphas. All these key names that Luke spreads across the story are all known in the Mediterranean world and then off in this little corner is where the real action is happening. The Empire might spread good news of sorts, but the good news of God is happening in these humble folks, who give us the clues about how to live in the love and the care and the mercy of God that ushers the presence of Christ into the world.

When we look at the Song of Zechariah or the Song of Mary, we look at these humble folk who ushered in our Lord. They were prepared to know God and to welcome God and to receive God because they were immersed in the story of God. We look at the Song of Mary and this incredible Song of Zechariah, and we see people who knew the promises, who held onto the promises of God, who knew that God was a God of liberation, a God of mercy, a God of forgiveness, a God whose tender mercy at the dawn breaks from on high on those who sit in darkness. A God who doesn't forget God's people. A God who is available for us to bring our whole lives to. They were people who lived in the magnetic field of God's grace. And so we immerse ourselves in the worship and the study of the scripture and prayer to be like them: people receptive, people prepared, people ready to see our God return.

We see St. Paul at his most pastoral in the letter to the Philippians where he's just gushing with love for his community, and I so relate to him, because when I read that passage I think of you. I just love being with you in prayer. I just want you to know the completion of grace. He's like a good pastor, wanting his people to be ready for the day of the Lord, the day the Lord returns. Every day is that day. That's the secret. As we live everyday in the day of the Lord, God is always completely present. God is never present in part. God is only ever fully present - we are absent. We are distracted. We are missing what God is doing.

But we are called to this wonderful reckoning where we can be in God's presence fully. Fully, complete, whole, actualized as the people god has called us to be, because we've been prepared. Because like those magnetic fields, we've been aligned with God. And this is our hope, this is our proclamation, this is what we live for in the season is to know that we can live our lives before God, live our lives in the presence of God on that day when God is fully present with us, which is every day in every moment. Thanks be to God.

Permission to podcast/stream music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-701187 and CCLI with license #21234241 and #21234234. All rights reserved.

Video, photographs, and graphics by the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Episcopal Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, 8000 St. Martin's Lane, Philadelphia, PA 19118. 215.247.7466. https://www.stmartinec.org