Today we read one of Jesus' most memorable statements about what it means to follow him. Fishing. Yup. Fishing for people. It's beautiful and powerful image, and it captures us and compels us to act.

Jesus’ To Do List:

· First Sunday of the year - be baptized. Check.

· Second Sunday of the year – call some disciples. Check.

Yes, that is where we are in the church year. The calling of Jesus’ companions and coworkers, who would help him in his mission to turn the world upside down.

The church calendar is a beautiful thing, and makes sure we keep the life and ministry of Jesus as the tailor’s dummy, on which we drape our life together.

Now, about those disciples … this Sunday we meet one of them – Nathanael of Cana. He could have been a 21st century Westerner. He’s a cynic. Well, actually, what I really mean is that he begins his encounter with Christ as one, but, as so often happens with folks who meet Jesus, his life is transformed.

This 2,000-year-old photograph proves what we Anglicans have always known - sprinkling is as good as dunking. So, this Sunday, we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of Christ. It's a significant day in the life of liturgical churches like ours, as we recall our own baptisms and fan into flame the deep call to follow Jesus and be God's ministers in the world.

The fullness of God’s time is risky, it is inconvenient, it does not suit our agendas, and even our self-declared availability. The fullness of God’s time arrives in weakness and obscurity. The fullness of time finds us vulnerable, depending on him. But when the fullness of God’s time arrives, when the minute hand of God’s clock ticks over to the moment of completion, when the last grain of sand descends from the top chamber of his hour glass into the bottom, be ready, because the miracle is about to be born.

Sermon 12-17-17: Post-Traumatic Exile by Rev. Duncan Johnston

I’m not sure I’d like John the Baptist. He’s a bit too direct for my liking. No real finesse, not much nuance. And don’t get me started about his clothes and his diet. Not very Episcopalian, at all.

Yet, each year the people who decide these things, demand that we read about him three times in the space of a month – twice in Advent and again early in the New Year. They clearly think he’s important. The first of Gospel lessons is this Sunday. His challenge is shrill, but needed. Get yourself ready – the Messiah is coming. Even if he doesn’t come in an apocalyptic sense today, he most surely will stand at the door of our lives and knock.

The return of Christ has had a bad press. The Church has filed it under ‘embarrassments’, like the eccentric aunt we hide in the attic when visitors come.

It’s not surprising we have lost faith in the Second Coming. The Church has a history of rather unbalanced Christians proclaiming that it’s going to happen a week next Thursday, or some such.

It takes a gigantic leap of faith to believe something so pre-modern and pre-scientific. Jesus returning in a great show of glory, to wrap up this sad, mad, bad order of things and establish God’s perfect reign of justice and peace? Utter foolishness. But then … without this conviction, what are we living for? What hope can we have? Why even get out of bed in the morning?

Welcome to Advent 2017 – season of hope and expectation. Come, Lord Jesus!

Apparently, sheep have 54 chromosomes. Goats have 60. I suspect those extra six allow them to eat coats, climb trees, and do other things that sheep wouldn’t dream of doing.

There’s one other difference between sheep and goats. Sheep earn consistently high marks in the Bible, goats get a bad rap. Sheep are God’s people, special, beloved, destined for glory. Goats are, well, goatish.

Nowhere is this contrast more vivid than in the story Jesus tells in today's Gospel lesson. Sheep recognize Christ in people who are under-resourced. Goats do not. What a pity. If Jesus was obvious about where he was, instead of hiding in plain sight, then maybe more goats would give up their goatishness and act like sheep. Maybe we would be quicker to have compassion on under-resourced people if we knew Jesus was, in some mysterious way, actually them. Maybe.

Jesus tells a story of two risk-takers; two people who see what is possible, step out in faith, and reap the fruit of their courage. They’re both employees of a businessman who goes on a trip, and entrusts his wealth to these two managers. To one he gives 5 coins, to the other 2. Oh yes, I nearly forgot. There’s a third manager, one who digs a hole in the ground and hides his share of the company. But I don’t want to talk about him. It’s the risk-takers that interest me, they are our teachers.

Some days I ask God to renew my fire, because it’s cold out there. I ask God to not let it die, because it’s cold out there.

I feel my flame flicker, because it is so bitterly cold out there.

On this Sunday we read a story of ten bridesmaids, five of whom experienced the dying of their flames. We explore our fires – those deep ones, and we will gather around God’s furnace to fan into flame our passion and faith.