Sermon for Sunday, Jan. 10, 2021
Mark 1:4-11
Last Monday, I went to see my mother in
Jefferson City. She’s in a senior living
community there, just down the street from the state capitol building. Many of you know I used to work in Jefferson
City; I was speech writer and deputy press secretary for Gov. John Ashcroft in
the late 1980s. I worked in the capitol,
in an office the size of a closet. It
may have been small, but it sure had a view, looking out over the Missouri River. The view wasn’t just beautiful; it was inspiring,
as was the view inside the building. Every
day, I got to see the stunning architecture and paintings and stained glass in
that shrine of democracy. Every day, I also
walked by an inscription in the rotunda, a verse from the Book of Proverbs: “Where
there is no vision, the people perish” (29:18). And every day, I saw the Great Seal of the
State of Missouri, which of course is everywhere in that building, even on the
doorknobs. On that seal is the state
motto: “Salus populi suprema lex esto”; let the welfare of the people be the
supreme law. It was an inspiring place
to serve. So, on Monday, after I saw my
mother, I took a few minutes to go to the capitol, and park there in the circle
drive, and look up to my old office window.
All kinds of memories came back. I remembered late nights at the end of the legislative
session and the pasta feast from Rigazzi’s in St. Louis, served in the House
Lounge among the Thomas Hart Benton murals.
I remembered friends I worked with, people kind enough not to dismiss me
for how young I was and how little I knew.
I remembered working hard to dig up positive stories and deflect negative
ones. I remembered a meeting about the
governor’s reelection campaign in which a brilliant senior staff member talked
about the possibility that our opponent, Betty Hearnes, might capitalize on one
particularly negative story about the governor, and the staffer vowed that we’d
“tear her to shreds” if she did. It was
one of many less-than-holy moments of working in that office, and it helped me
discern that doing press and speeches for a political leader probably wasn’t my
calling. I remembered looking at myself
in the mirror and thinking, “I can’t go on like this.” But thankfully, as I sat in the car last
Monday and looked up at my old office window, what stayed with me was the
beauty and the aspiration that Missouri’s stunning capitol building embodies.
I can’t imagine what it was like then, on
Wednesday, for the staffers in our nation’s capitol in Washington as they looked
out their windows and saw a mob tearing down the fences and climbing the walls. I can’t imagine how they felt as they went
out into the halls to see what was happening and heard glass shattering and breathed
teargas. There they were, watching the
cathedral of democracy being desecrated and fearing for their lives. They must have wondered, where are all the police
we saw at the protests this summer? How
can it be that a mob has breached democracy’s cathedral?
At this point, we know the story of
Wednesday, so I won’t retell it – other than to note that the mob didn’t
win. Violence didn’t win. Our representatives and their staff did what
they needed to do, risking themselves to ensure democracy won instead.
Let me also say this. I think there’s a connection between Wednesday’s
events and today’s Gospel story, and here’s the connection I see: Sometimes, it’s
good to hit bottom. Sometimes, we need
to hit bottom. Sometimes, until
we hit bottom, we can’t see our sin.
Now, you’re thinking, “Uh-oh. Just how judgy is he going to get?” Well, when I put Wednesday’s insurrection in
the category of sin, let me be clear what I mean. Sin is separation from God, turning away from
God’s purposes and desires for us. I
believe God has purposes and desires in mind for each of us, and I believe God
has purposes and desires in mind for our nation, too. We say as much when we offer the collect “For
the Nation” every Independence Day. We ask
God to “give to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength
of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious
will” (BCP 258). That’s absolutely an
aspirational prayer. We aspire to
justice, and we aspire to forbearance.
But we struggle to reach our holy aspirations. We fall short.
We fail, sometimes by what we do and sometimes by what we don’t do. That’s sin.
But over the course of the past several
years – certainly more than just four of them, I might add – we’ve been
aspiring less and sinning more. We’ve
been forgetting what’s in God’s heart and mind for ourselves, our country, and
our world. Our sins have been of the most
pernicious type: slow in their growth, hidden in plain sight. We’ve allowed ourselves to think we don’t
need people who aren’t like us. If the
insurrection at the capitol embodied nothing else, it embodied this lie: “Because
I know I’m right, I don’t have to honor people I think are wrong.” That represents our fundamental sin, our
original sin: the sin of self-idolatry, the sin of placing ourselves ahead of
God and ahead of God’s other children.
That’s the background not just for the
events of last Wednesday but for our Gospel reading today. The story’s spotlight shines on John the
Baptist, but behind that is the reality John saw – a great need among the people
to acknowledge their sin and choose to turn from it. The reading doesn’t name specific sins, but
it does indicate that the problem, like the Jordan River, ran deep and wide: “People from the whole Judean countryside and
all the people of Jerusalem were going out to [John], and were baptized by him…,
confessing their sins” (Mark 1:5). Jesus
joins in with the people as they seek to get right with God – not because Jesus
needed it but because he wanted to be in it with them. And as he enters into this experience with the
people he came to save, the fullness of God’s glory shines forth. The heavens are torn open, and the Spirit
descends on Jesus, and God’s voice proclaims, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with
you I am well-pleased” (1:11).
It’s no accident that the revelation of the
Father’s great love for Jesus, and for each one of us, comes in the context of people
turning from their sins. When people
recognize how they’ve missed the mark, how they’ve denied God’s purposes and desires
for them, that’s when the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit come together
to sanctify our longing to get right with God.
When we come to the river and confess our sins, God joins us there, wading
into the water with us and empowering us to turn in a new direction.
So, here’s a question Scripture never answers:
What led all those people to go down to the river for “a baptism of repentance
for the forgiveness of sins” (1:4)? Although
each one had his or her own story, I’ll bet you most of the people in that
crowd were going through the same thing.
Something had happened, and they’d hit bottom. Many of us can point to a similar moment in
our lives, a time when we looked ourselves in the mirror and said, “I can’t go
on like this.” That’s what leads us to
the water’s edge, where God shows up to meet us.
I believe Wednesday’s insurrection was our
national moment of hitting bottom. Ugly
strains of self-idolatry have been festering within us and among us for a long
time now. More and more, it’s become
acceptable to turn sisters and brothers into others, puffing ourselves up by
talking someone else down. After a while,
the power of evil takes that negativity and turns it into toxicity. And eventually, some of us, at least, decide
it’s OK to break the law and destroy property and threaten others … because, after
all, I’m right, and they’re not. We’ve
been in that downward spiral for a while now, and finally the capitol was
breached. So, I would say we’ve hit
bottom. We’ve come to our national
moment of looking in the mirror and saying, “We can’t go on like this.”
What can the Church do about that? What’s Jesus’ call to us as we come to the
river separated from God and one another?
Well, the Church is about healing and reconciliation. The prayer book tells us the Church’s mission
“is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (BCP
855). And the only way to do that is to
start with ourselves and the people around us.
This Lent at St. Andrew’s, we’ll be
offering an opportunity to get better at civil discourse. The new Advocacy Discernment Committee has
been talking about this over the past month, well before Wednesday’s insurrection,
but we certainly see the need for it now.
Here in our congregation, we are blessed with a rich diversity in point
of view on just about any topic you can name.
Our shorthand for this is “the Big Tent” – that just as the Episcopal tradition
has prayed for all sorts and conditions of people, it holds in tension all
sorts and conditions of perspectives. What
we haven’t done so well is to deal with that tension. Here in Kansas City, we’re very good at “Midwest
nice.” That’s great, in that we don’t have
to worry about people storming the church to replace the rector. But it’s not so great in that we don’t
know how to deal with our differences and divisions beyond politely ignoring
them. So, this Lent, as we take the opportunity
to get right with God and each other, I hope you’ll consider wading in the
water of civil discourse as a way to see how people you disagree with are beloved
in God’s eyes.
But our national moment of hitting bottom
is about more than needing civil discourse.
It’s about our identity, too. What
this week reminds us is that we always have to hold in living memory who we
are. As a nation, we like to think of ourselves
as a people of special purpose, a people who choose to live in the
creative tension of democracy because it’s what Lincoln called “the last, best
hope of earth.”1 But as followers
of Jesus, gathered under this Big Tent, we are more than inheritors of democracy. We are apostles of love. We are God’s beloved children, empowered by
the Holy Spirit to follow in Jesus’ resurrected footsteps. We are people who strive to resist evil and who
come to the river to confess it when we come up short. We are people who live Good News in word and deed. We are people who seek and serve Jesus in all
people, loving those who disagree with us as much as we love ourselves. We are people who strive for justice and peace
by respecting the dignity of everyone – no exceptions, even the folks we understand
least.
As we walk that path, sometimes we hit bottom. But Jesus is there, reaching out his hand, pulling us up, reminding us who we are, and empowering us to try again.
1.
Lincoln,
Abraham. “Annual Message to Congress – Concluding Remarks.” Abraham Lincoln Online. Available at: http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/congress.htm. Accessed Jan. 8, 2021.
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