“The Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s Favor.” Today this has been fulfilled in your hearing. Mic drop.For Jesus, in his hometown synagogue among people who thought they knew him well, this text from Isaiah is a declaration of purpose. It’s his mission statement. Much like Mary’s magnificat, this text of God’s liberating work resonates throughout Luke’s Gospel with resounding force. It is the Good News of God – that in Jesus God comes among us, to set us free from sin and death. Yet what we don’t hear in today’s Gospel is the reaction of the people. Just a few verses on they are flabbergasted at Jesus’ gall. They assume he’s getting a little big for his britches. After all, isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Aren’t his own mother and brothers with them? Who does he think he is? They get so offended at him they attempt to throw Jesus off a cliff at the edge of town. But he walks through the crowd and shakes the dust of Nazareth off his feet as he goes on mission throughout Galilee. This is a really important edge to today’s story. The Gospel brings freedom, but not everyone wants to admit they’re chained. The Gospel lifts us the lowly and dashes the powerful from their thrones. And those powerful people don’t like the thought of losing their place.  The gospel comes not only to the chosen people, but also to gentiles. And who among them could have imagined that?In many ways, this mission statement from Jesus has a clear target, a clarion call, an honest vision of the way God is at work among us. Jesus comes as an unexpected Messiah, with power from the spirit – but not power in the way the world knows power. Rather power in the way that God loves to let power flow: in bringing life, in healing, in restoring to wholeness, in liberating. So the power of the world that exerts itself by force, by violence, by crushing, and by ego can’t square the Good News of Jesus as Good News.  So the power of this world attempts to silence Jesus by crushing him with pain, by sealing him in a tomb. Only to learn that the power of God always has the final word – and that final word is life. This is the story at the root of our faith. This is our deepest understanding of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. And today, as we see him sitting in the synagogue, so sure of what God has called him to courageously proclaim, we see a picture of God’s mission made flesh. Two thousand years have passed since this moment in Nazareth, and yet it couldn’t be clearer that this mission Jesus declares for himself is the mission he hands on to the church. For us who gather in Jesus’ name, we see this declaration of the Good News, and we know – we must proclaim it in the loudness of our lives.  The Good News of what Jesus has done for us shapes how we respond to fear, shapes how we respond to pain. It shapes how we run our businesses, how we raise our kids. It shapes what we value and who we honor. We are to follow Jesus not only by professing our faith, but by living our faith. And you know – the world just might resist. But the world might also become more free, more loving, more whole. On Sundays when we gather here, at the end of our services, I stand at the outer doors of the sanctuary. I often imagine each of you as you leave this place carrying a piece of light within you as you leave, get into your cars, and spread out into South Austin. I imagine that light filling your homes, lighting up your booth at lunch, shining on the face of a friend or a family member. You are the body of Christ, and individually members of it. You carry the Good News of God with you wherever you go. It shines in the loudness of your lives. This is a sacred responsibility, bearing this light into the world. It’s a holy vocation to follow God and to live your faith. So how is God speaking to you about letting your light shine? How is this miss

Years ago I went to my first river baptism, a rare thing for us in the Episcopal tradition. Christian and I were in Nashville, visiting his old seminary friends at St. Augustine’s. Everyone had gathered on this horse farm one Sunday morning and trekked down to a clear flowing rocky creek. The priest waded out into that water, barefoot, with the current swirling around her alb as she asked us the ancient questions.Do you believe in God the father?Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? We answered on the banks with the Sunday sun warming our faces. When we had prayed and the water had been blessed the time came for the child to be baptized – a baby wearing an all white christening gown. We took our shoes off and joined the priest in that rocky creek as she held the child hovering just over the surface of the water. I baptized you in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the people all said Amen. Like a shot she brought the child up high for us to welcome the newly baptized, and he was passed lovingly through the crowd in the water. Out in Nature, praying for the Spirit to come and fill this child and enfold him into the community gathered in Christ’s name, I felt the Spirit moving in the body of the faithful gathered in that creek. It was as though God was telling us, see I am just beginning to do something incredible in this child. Imagine what I am doing in you. There’s a way in which our baptisms are more than just our own initiative or action, or even a personal decision to follow Christ. Our baptism is a public recognition of what God is already doing in our life and in the life of the church, and a commitment to be present with God in the future come what may.  That one moment of recognition turns into a lifetime of saying yes to God’s call. What begins in our baptisms turns into a lifetime of opening ourselves to the Spirit. God calls us and claims us. Each and every one of our baptisms is a share in Jesus’ baptism. We are baptized into his death and raised out of the water into his resurrection. In our baptism God sees Jesus in us, sends the Spirit to fill us, calls and claims us to join the ministry that Jesus begins in us.  We open ourselves to saying yes to what the Spirit is doing in our lives, day in and day out. I imagine Jesus in our scripture today, headed to the Jordan river with everyone else to be baptized. Perhaps there was a building awareness of the ministry God was calling him toward. Perhaps this baptism was a first step in answering the call God had put on Jesus’ life. Luke tells us later that he was about thirty years old. A lot of time has passed since we saw last Jesus in the Gospel. God has been at work in him, preparing him for the public ministry he is about to begin. Something drew Jesus to the river that day. A desire to be with God, a recognition that something in him had shifted, a sense that it was time. And there praying, in the midst of that relationship of Jesus with the Father, the Spirit comes again to rest on Jesus. In that moment Heaven and earth are joined in this man. Jesus himself recognizes that it’s time to go out to the wilderness and seek God further.  Driven by, empowered by, accompanied by the Spirit, Jesus is able to begin his ministry. It’s no accident then that baptism and being filled with the Spirit are linked for us. They are a sign of God’s adoption of us as his children, a sign of our being entrusted with this ministry that Jesus hands on to the church. When we are baptized and become Christians, we say yes to continuing Jesus’ own ministry in our own lives. It begins here at the Jordan with Jesus.  And it continues through the millennia to now – from the banks of that creek in Nashville to the font at the back of this sanctuary. Baptism is a refocusing of ourselves out of ourselves toward God and the community gathered in God’s name. It’s a radical refocusing of our purpose away from our own selfish sel

I’ve always loved maps. Maps tell you about terrain, about the nature and swell of the land. They hold exotic and enticing names, names of places that evoke a feel for the land and people who live there. Maps are a totem for that feeling of discovery and adventure, of heading out into the unknown for some quest. When I was a girl scout I first learned how to read maps. I thought I had a pretty good sense of direction, a keen sense for the sun and how the moon rose and how to read the shadows as the day passed above our heads. But when I was about sixteen I was sent on a sailing trip with the Girl scouts out of south Florida. We were in adapted lifeboats that had one mainsail, and benches with oars for when there was no wind. We would lay the oars over the benches of the lifeboats at night and sleep with the round hard wood cutting through our sleeping bags into our backs. It was the most thrilling adventure. There on the water we had nautical maps. These maps showed the depth of the waters – the shallows around islands where our boats could get stuck on sand bars. They showed the deep channels where we could tack back and forth and head out into the deep water. They showed the shipwrecks of sailors who weren’t so lucky. They showed the fresh water springs where we could find water to refill our jerry cans. These maps showed danger and hinted at the promise of discoveries I imagined were still to be made. As I imagine my own journey of faith it looks a lot like these nautical maps. There are the shallows where the journey was dicey and fraught, filled with chances where I almost ran aground. There are the deep channels where my faith flowed out to rich waters and the wind filled every sail. And there are the shipwrecks, times when my life crashed in around me and I had no choice but to rebuild and start again. Each year that map shifts and becomes richer. Each year that map tells me something new about my own spiritual terrain – things that I could only have learned by making the journey. The feast of the Epiphany is for me a feast where we celebrate that journey , the journey of faith. This is a feast where we honor the ways that God appears for us, the signs that shine like stars guiding our path. We recognize that on this journey we circle back each and every year to familiar stories, familiar seasons, familiar texts.  But in circling back we return home each time by a different, unfamiliar way. The journey and time have changed us. We can never go back in the same way again. The beauty of this story is that God waits for us in this unfamiliar terrain. These wise sages travelled far afield, into an unknown land to honor an unknown king.  They didn’t find Jesus where they expected to find him. He wasn’t in Jerusalem’s palaces’. Instead they found him where the star led them, to a humble house and a child on his mother’s knee.  These sages are wise because they learn something about God that they could only have discovered by setting on the journey, and by being curious about where God would lead them. In this past year I wonder where you have found God where you least expected? Where did your journey take unfamiliar, maybe even unpleasant turns? Did you find grace there? Did you feel surprised by the revelation of God in your life? Or maybe, are you still looking, still reading the signs of God in the world around you? Dream of what the journey ahead could hold. Learn from what the journey past has taught you. On that sailing trip years ago, we dropped anchor late one night on the shallow shores of small island. We were to head out toward the open water the next day. We rose early, in the light of a full moon at 4am to pull anchor and put our oars in the water. But the tide was out and against us, and as we tried to make our way to the channel we knew from our maps should be just a short distance away, our boats kept running aground on sand bars just below the water’s surface. There was no choice but to jump down into the wat

Sermon by Rev. Anne Hoey

I heard a story recently that I would love to share with you. It might be legend, it might be fact. Google can’t confirm it, but some stories are just too wonderful to not want to believe are true, right? An acquaintance of my husband tells this story about his cousin, who we will call Marcus – not his real name. You see, Marcus lives in Memphis Tennessee. He was the kind of kid who was always in and out of trouble since High School. Occasionally he would end up in the Shelby County drunk tank for minor offenses. Public intoxication, fights, you get the picture. As this cousin aged, the family gradually got more and more fed up with his bad behavior and he burned all his bridges with friends. By the time he was in his mid 30’s around the early 1970’s no one would post his bail or take his calls from jail.Of course he got drunk and disorderly two days before Christmas and smashed up a sign outside a bar, which landed him in the Shelby County lockup again.  He knew would spend Christmas in jail, a new low even for him. Then on Christmas Eve one of the guards came to Marcus’ cell and said “you’ve made bail. Time to go”. Shocked Marcus looked up and asked, “Are you sure? Who paid my bail?”The guard barked back, “Do you want go or not? I’m not here to answer your questions”. So Marcus grabbed his jacket and followed the guard out of the opened cell to get discharged. When he stepped out of the jail, there, resplendent in a sparkling jumpsuit and cape stood Elvis Pressley.  Apparently it was one of Elvis’ secret good works to post bail for everyone in the Shelby County Jail on Christmas Eve so that they could go home and spend Christmas with their families. Marcus went home that night back to his family for the first time in years, and when asked how he posted bail, He just said, “The King set me free”. The King has set me free. The Good news comes to us, my friends, in many forms – sometimes in a King decked in a sparkly jumpsuit, sometimes in an act of kindness from a stranger, sometimes in a word of hope when the darkness seems to press around us. What I know about God is that God arrives where desperate people need him most. The Good news comes to us tonight in a place where we might not expect to find it. Jesus is born not in a well lit room attended by midwives and hot water. No Jesus, the light of the world, is born in the cold dark of a barn among the poor who also don’t have a place in the inn. The Good news comes not to priests in the temple or Govenors in their palaces but to shepherds, wandering in the wilderness in the dark. The angelic announcement comes to those who have no power and no status. The Good News of God’s promise comes to those open to be overwhelmed and terrified and hopeful all at once. It comes to those willing to be awed that the King has arrived to set them free. The arrival of God’s promised salvation dawns in our own places of darkness. It arrives in the depth of our own pain and loneliness. Jesus is born in pain and darkness with crying and a deep abiding hope.  That place of pain, loneliness, and hopeful expectation is the place where God is needed most. That is the place where God is delighted to show up for us. That is the place where I most long to greet the King who sets me free.Where is the King waiting to meet you? In the darkness? In the quiet wilderness of your soul?  In your own places of pain or loneliness? God delights to show up for us there. The beauty of God’s arrival is that he rarely comes how we expect him to. A baby born in a barn, helpless and dependent on his parents. Or like Marcus, the good news of grace might show up in a sparkly jumpsuit with cash for a cab home. Or even more incredibly, God’s goodness might show up in you. As you go from this place tonight, God is on the move in your life is bringing the Good News out there through you into the darkness of this night. You leave from here, and this promise of hope leaves with you. So go from this place tonight, full of hop

Friends, here we are at the edge of advent, the fourth and final Sunday,on the cusp of Christmas Eve – almost but not yet. Advent is aboutwaiting, and so we wait together. We wait together for God to fulfillGod’s promise, even as we observe Mary and Elizabeth showing us whatit looks like to wait together in hope and expectation.I wait together with you because I’m not quite ready to let go of Advent.I’m not quite ready to jump into Christmas. It’s loud celebration, giftgiving expectations, family obligations…no, I want to wait here with youa while, even if it’s only just today pondering what God has promised us.Mary and Elizabeth have both been promised fantastic things,unbelievable things, things that no one in millennia before or since haveseen come to pass. They will be the mothers and midwives of thepromised salvation for God’s people. They are entrusted with caring forand raising and disciplining and shaping the hope of nations. They willwitness the promise and heartbreak that flows when God’s dream forthe world collides against an Empire’s fear and greed.And with deep abiding courage, they say My Lord has taken away thedisgrace I have endured among my people. And My Soul magnifies theLord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.Though they could not imagine how their futures would shift, thesewomen wait in faith for God to fulfill God’s promise.I am in awe of them. And I am profoundly grateful for them.They show us what it looks like to wait together in hope. When God ison the move in our life, we do not shrink away to make sense of this newthing on our own. Instead they show us that we run in haste to thepeople we love and trust so that they might strengthen us, give us hope,and help us make sense of what God is doing in our life. Mary stays withElizabeth for three months! Three months of strengthening one anotherfor this path of raising special children that few around them couldunderstand.Mary and Elizabeth both have the courage to say yes to what God isdoing in their bodies and in their families and in their futures. But theyhave the courage to also seek connection and community. And whenthey do, the Spirit helps them understand more deeply what God is upto.We hear Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, recognize by feeling Johnleap in her body that Mary herself carries the Lord. We hear Mary, filledwith the Holy Spirit proclaim God’s abiding promise to fill the hungry,send the rich away empty, and cast down the mighty from their thronesand lift up the lowly. They understand together that this thing God isdoing within them affects the world far beyond them.Where two or three are gathered together, Jesus tells us, my spirit isamong you. We wait together for God. We wait together to see what Godis doing is our midst.I am grateful for this final Sunday in Advent, this final Sunday to live inthe tension of what God has already done and continues to do in ourtime. I’m grateful for this space to wait with you, and with Mary andElizabeth.Because for me, as I wait in this space, pondering these women and ourown waiting, I see in Mary something that I’ve not noticed before. Andthe gift of waiting together for God to fulfill God’s promises is that theSpirit reveals depth and meaning to our lives of faith.This week as I’ve waited with Mary and Elizabeth, I’ve thought aboutthese women’s bodies. Bodies that build life, nurture life, and usher newGod given life into the world. And I’ve been thinking about a poem of JanRichardson’s. In the poem, Mary is speaking to newborn Jesus. She says,This is my body, broken open for you. To give you life and breath.This is my blood and water, shed for you. To usher you into this world ofpain and longing.This is my body.This is my blood.You see, what Jesus gives the world he first himself receives, in thisintimate way, from his mother. Her body broken, her blood shed, herpain forgotten in the joy of new life.In this mystery of the Incarnation, of God meeting us in our longing inour waiting, we

Gondor has no king. Gondor needs no king.

These are the words of Boromir to Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings, the son of the steward to heir of the throne of Gondor. Maybe you know the story. Maybe you couldn’t care less about fantasy. Lord of the Rings is a saga to be sure, but one that creates a rich world that better helps us see our own human frailties and inner strength.

There’s a tension between Boromir and Aragorn because Gondor has been without a king for generations. The Gondorians have found ways to rule themselves without a king. But the  kingdom has faded from its former glory. And the hope of a good king is one of the few things that might unite what has now become many divided peoples.

But the people who have a stake in the status quo are never keen to give up power. So Boromir says, Gondor has no king. Gondor needs no king. The Gondor that exists certainly exists without a king. But the Gondor that could be needs the grace and leadership of the King.

There are times on Christ the King Sunday, which we celebrate today, when I can almost hear a rumble through the land – We have no king. We need no king. After all, this Sunday wasnt’ always Christ the King. It was just the last Sunday of Ordinary time before Advent.

But in 1925, after the great war that should have ended all wars, the Pope at the time found the world sadly divided. What if, he thought, we saw ourselves as citizens of the Kingdom of God? What if we united under the banner of the Christ the King? Would our divisions dissolve?

Instead of saying, I’m catholic, or I’m protestant, or even I’m American episcopalian or English Anglican – what if we said simply I belong to Christ. I am servant of the King.

What if we saw our true citizenship as being passport carrying members of the Kingdom of God?

Well, what a different world that would be.

Instead of dividing us, our differences would enrich the kingdom. Christ would truly be Lord of Lords and kings of kings. The Law of the land would be the simple rule of love.

So why do we more often than not forget that we are citizens of this Kingdom of God? Why is the everyday world around us more present to us in some ways that this larger reality of brother and sisterhood in the kingdom?

Well, I think that it’s because this kingdom reality is both already here and not yet fulfilled.  We live in the kingdom and yet long for the kingdom. As Jesus says today in our reading, my Kingdom is not of this world.

The Kingdom of God has been inaugurated, but still waits for fulfillment. By that, we mean that Christ’s arrival in human flesh, his ministry, death, and resurrection initiated a shift in humanity’s relationship with God. We have received the forgiveness of our sins. We have been freed from the fear of death by the promise of the resurrection. We have been sent the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth. But Jesus has not yet returned to judge the world. The world around us still groans under the weight of sin. As Anne Lamott says, we are an Easter people living in a Good Friday world.

And so we pray, Thy Kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We pray expectantly, hoping that God helps the kingdom become more present around us here on earth like it is in heaven.

It’s hard to place your life in the kingdom when the kingdom isn’t quite of this world. But Jesus shows us the key to the kingdom. Jesus shows us the way to follow, the model for citizenship in this kingdom. The roadmap to this place isn’t a guidebook at all. We find the kingdom when we find our relationship with God.

Entering the kingdom is about entering into a relationship with the one Jesus called Father. When we begin to center ourselves in this relationship of love, then everything else begins to sift out in connection with that relationship. Our priorities shift. Our values shift. Our friendships shift. The way we conduct business shifts. Our families shift. Centering ours

When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to become an architect. I had a dear family friend who was an architect, and it seemed to me that he got to draw all day and think about spaces and their relationships to people. Seemed like a good gig to me. I recently found some old sketchbooks full of my architecture ideas. It’s clear that I took a literal approach – I designed a building based on its function. A gum factory in the form of a pack of chewing gum. A nursery built as the Old Shoe that old woman with too many children from the nursery rhyme lived in. A tropical resort the resembled a palm tree. You get the idea. My eight year old self thought I was terribly clever.

But we do believe that the physical space we inhabit speaks of identity and relationship. We’ve made our homes a reflection of ourselves. We’ve built skyscrapers as monuments to progress and innovation. And the most massive cathedrals full of the most beautiful sacred art say something very particular about the God that is worshipped there.

So I can sympathize with the unnamed disciple who exclaims to Jesus, “What large stones!” while looking around at the Temple mount with wonder.

But Jesus is already living in the Kingdom of God. He has already seen that true sanctuary not made with hands that the author of Hebrews speaks of.

And into our wondering selves too impressed by the work of human hands, Jesus says not one stone will be left on another.

Of course he’s right.

Forty years after he speaks these words, the Temple will be thrown down by the Romans. Violently suppressing Jewish culture and worship in an attempt to suppress Jewish rebellion against the Empire. It’s an old tactic of Empire – crush and destroy what is sacred to the colonized and replace with the gods of the conqueror.

But the God of Israel cannot be so suppressed.

The God of Israel, the God of Jesus, the God of Abraham and the forbearers is the God who made all out of nothing.

And so I hear Jesus say, not one stone will be left on another and yet the Good News doesn’t depend on a temple or a building to change the world.

The true Temple is not made with Hands.

God sits enthroned in human hearts.

The sanctuary that Christ has built is eternal in the heavens, and present in the people gathered in his name. It’s a place that isn’t really a place at all, but a people.

It’s you. And everyone who calls Christ Lord is a living stone built into that living temple.

As I imagine it in my childish way, I see a space created by a gathering of people from every tribe, people, and nation. We’re joined hand in hand with them to pray, to worship, to share the bread and wine of holy communion. And each one is key to the integrity of the whole. It is a sacred space built by relationships. This sanctuary is a holy people formed by scripture whose lives are shaped by the decisions to love God and their neighbors as themselves. And when we are gathered there, God is among us. Christ is the light that illuminates us all in that holy place as holy people.

Now this vision of what the church is can be abstract. It’s far easier to grapple with stones or think of the church as an altar or a place filled with pews. But as God tells David – did I tell you to build me a house of cedar? I haven’t lived in an house from the day I took Israel out of Egypt to this day. Trying to build a house for God is in some ways an attempt to domesticate God. Trying to keep God in the building of church and not in our lives seven days a week relegates God to a smaller role. Trying to compartmentalize where God is present ignores the world enlivened by the breath of God.

No God doesn’t live in a house of stone or even in this church. God lives in you.

And because God lives within us, and within the people around us, we have a deep responsibility to this people of God.

We have a responsibility to show up for one another. We need this community of Christ to see God on the m

My husband Christian and I were talking this week about all the many contexts surrounding today: Veterans day, stewardship, and even the approach of Thanksgiving. He reminded me of an old Korean War slogan, “All gave some, some gave all”. What a summation of the scriptures this morning. All gave some, some gave all.

As we watch with Jesus on the steps of the Treasury, we see all giving some and some giving all playing out in the life of the Temple. The crowd of people moves toward the offering box. I imagine the rich coming to make their offering, with servants weighted down with chests of gold and silver.  Then there’s Jesus simply watching what’s going on, noting the widow. This widow with her last two cents, pours out her whole house into the depths of the Temple coffers, giving all.

Jesus, calling you and I together with his disciples, places a value here on her self-giving. Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those contributing to the treasury.” All gave some, this woman gave all.

As I sit and pay attention to the widow with Jesus, I recognize that she is for me a mirror for Jesus himself. Poor and seemingly helpless, she nevertheless gives everything she has for what she feels will help God’s people. This widow pours out herself for a temple that should be taking care of her! And here is the mirror. Jesus is God present in humble human form, pouring out all that he has for the good of people who reject him. Jesus on the cross pours out his life for the life of the world.

God sees that offering and glorifies it. In the moment in the tomb, this glorification is the power of God moving through Jesus’ self-offering to destroy the power of death. In the moment today from Mark, this is simply Jesus seeing what is given and honoring that gift.

There is a rhythm here. The gift is blessed, broken, and given for the life of the world. Blessed, broken, and glorified – a little like the loaves and the fish, right? A little like the last oil and flour keeping Elijah and the widow of Zarapeth alive. A little like grace blessed, broken, and poured out for us all in communion.

There is something true of God that takes this complete self-offering and blesses it. There is something true of this life of faith that we receive back far more than we feel we give. The spirit enters our generosity and breathes new life into it.

This is the rhythm of the life of faith– blessed, broken, and given for the life of the world. There are some around us who have the courage to give all, because they trust that God will glorify their gift to bring life to others. What a humbling, spiritually mature witness. A life shaped by the cross is able to shelve the ego, and consistently pour out oneself for others.  

There are everyday examples of this. This veterans day I think about my own grandfather who on December 8th stood in line with his brothers to enlist after the horror of Pearl Harbor, and my grandmother and her sister who served as civilian radio operators. I think about my own Husband, brother, and classmates who served after 9/11. We were formed by these stories of service in our own families.

But I also think about the everyday people of faith who show me what a life generosity and abundance look like. They are the people Jesus is directing me to notice. I think of people like Enrique, who I knew when he lived on the street. He would come to breakfast and church every Wednesday. When he finally got an apartment with the help of his social worker, he would wake up at 4am to start cooking on Wednesdays, and take a bus for an hour with his creations to share breakfast and fellowship with us. He had nothing, but what he had he gave with all his heart. These self-giving people surround us everyday. And Jesus invites us to take notice.

We have an opportunity today to notice how El Buen is meeting people in need by giving all for their care. We can help notice those in need by giving to the a