When my daughter, Sophia, and I traveled to the Casa San Jose orphanage for the second time last month, I’ll admit that there was some pride involved – the desire to be of service, a good thing, coupled with the self-righteous smugness of telling people that we were spending Sophia’s February school vacation week in Mexico. Not at some fancy ocean resort, mind you, but at an orphanage. With underprivileged kids, as part of a church mission trip. Anyone reading my Facebook status updates would see how saintly and Christian we were, how selfless and altruistic, filled with love and compassion. Yet how much of that altruism was rooted in a desire to simply make myself feel good, by indulging my passion for travel and hugging lots of adorable Mexican children?

So we don’t get sunk before we’re even out of the harbor, I want us to be perfectly clear on one point. The apostle Paul has often been accused of being a body-hating prude, because of the way he throws around phrases like, “Live by the Spirit and do not gratify the desires of the Flesh.” Paul, it seems, would have us all walking around in hair shirts, fasting and praying and looking sour.

Have you ever had a terrible, terrible itch? It’s not life-threatening, but it sure feels like it. It starts as a little twinge, a mosquito bite at the beginning of its bloom, a little psoriasis, a heat rash. You do what you do with itches. You scratch it.

People, we have a reputation. Folks from other churches think First Church Somerville is wicked different, radical, because we have so many young adults who worship here. We must be wild and free to attract so many young people. There are rumors that we go on retreat and abuse the communion wine, and practice the ancient liturgy of apophatic prayer, dancing naked in the moonlight. All I have to say is: what happens on retreat, stays on retreat.

No doubt it wasn’t easy for Simon Peter and Andrew, James and John just to walk away from everything and follow Jesus. They weren’t kids anymore. They were past the age when it is fun to be as rad as possible just to torture your parents. They were grownups, who were not into the latest fad, who were probably such grownups that they had no idea what the latest fad was.

The scripture reading this morning, the second Sunday of Epiphany, comes from the fourth chapter of Luke verses 1 – 13. We started last week in the wilderness, the desert, with Jesus’ baptism. We explored together the important voices surrounding this significant starting place in Jesus’ biography. There was the voice of Isaiah, the voice of scripture, which assured us that all of these happenings were holy and expected over generations. Then came the harsh voice of John the Baptist crying out from the wilderness and preparing the way in a manner that seemed to fulfill a prediction in Isaiah’s holy words. Then came the voice of God from Heaven, mirroring the voice of the Creator in Genesis, to illuminate Jesus’ identity as a beloved Son of God and to name him as “good,” “with you I am well pleased.” We spoke about what sort of a life would lead to a beginning and an epiphany of identity and purpose like this one.

The scripture reading this morning, the first Sunday after Epiphany, comes from the first chapter of the Gospel of Mark, verses 1 – 11. In our liturgical year now we have passed through both Advent and Christmas and come to Epiphany. We waited, the Christ child was born and delivered to us, and now we will follow the major events of Jesus’ life through the season of Epiphany until we come to Lent.