Year B: January 10, 2021 | Epiphany 1

Jan 10

Epiphany 1, Year B: Mark 1:4-11
Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross
January 10, 2021
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman

To watch a video of the sermon, please visit this page (about 18:55 in).

Today is the first Sunday after Epiphany, which the Church Calendar earmarks for the celebration of the baptism of Christ. This year, the people who compiled the Lectionary clearly want me to focus on the Holy Spirit’s role in that rite of rebirth. We’re also beginning our journey through the book of Mark, and I was hoping to spend some time setting the stage for what has become my favorite Gospel. Unfortunately, I’m afraid we need to set those two things aside this week to deal with more pressing concerns.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably done all you can to avoid social media and news reports since the middle of the week. I’m not ignorant of what’s been happening in our state and national capitols. Sadly, it’s no surprise that the steady stream of not-so-subtle attempts to undermine the U.S. Constitution and the rights of our citizens to choose their leaders have become an open river of insurrection. I actually expected it to happen much sooner.

For more than a decade now, I’ve watched in sorrow—genuine sorrow—as family and old friends who self-identify as “conservative Christians” have tricked themselves first into tolerating, then into accepting, and eventually into embracing words, actions, and behaviors that stand in direct opposition to the Savior they claim to love and follow. I hoped that this week’s violence might finally help them see where their pathway has taken them. But I’ve been hoping—vainly—that the plethora of earlier warning signs we’ve encountered the last few years might open their eyes, too. By Wednesday evening, when I found those same people—people I genuinely love—spreading and attempting to convince the rest of us of the lies they continue to make up to defend and protect themselves from the reality of their choices and associations, I finally had to shut off any unnecessary Facebook activity for the sake of my own mental and emotional health.

I’ve spent years—years—trying to engage gently and help my friends make a slow turn toward truth, trying to guide them from the pathways of death to those of life. I’ve tried silent companionship. I’ve tried humor. I’ve tried delicate warnings. I’ve tried quiet rebuke. But willful blindness and deafness run too deep for my persuasive abilities alone, and lest I’ve been unclear with any of you, either, I’m afraid the time to speak plainly has come.

Despite what it likes to call itself, the events happening on a state and national scale have nothing to do with “conservatism,” as such. Just as the word itself says, a true conserve-ative is one who takes good and useful things from the past and ensures that they’re carried along into the future. Genuine conservatism can be a very good thing. It plays an important role in directing society toward a more just and loving future. It helps us remember both the successes and failures of the past and can offer wisdom and depth to our choices as we navigate our way forward together.

But what we’re seeing is not conservatism. Nor has it been for some time. This is, more accurately, a form of anarchic progressivism. This movement has no interest in “conserving” anything. Its plain goal is domination. Its engine is greed. And it will clearly do anything in its power to destroy both present and past good in order to achieve its aims.

Even more disturbing to me—revolting, to be completely honest—are its attempts to enmesh itself with Christianity. Last summer we talked about the Molech (you might remember this god by his other name: Liber).[1] The Bible openly and repeatedly declares Molech to be an abomination to God. So-called “Christian nationalism” is nothing less than Molech worship. It has nothing to do with Christ. Nor does it have any interest in the good of the nation as a whole. It is the mass embodiment of delusion, selfishness, lust, pride, disregard for others, and—ultimately—death. It is no “way of love.” It is the antithesis of the God revealed in both the Bible as a whole and especially in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a public manifestation of evil. And it, along with its offshoots and supporting organizations, operate fully in the spirit and power of anti-Christ.

That finally said, I look around, and honestly, I don’t know how to fix any of this. I don’t know how to help people I’ve known most of my life, much less the rest of the country. I’m neither Jesus nor any other kind of miracle worker. I don’t have the skill to make the blind see. I can’t restore hearing to those who have gouged out their own ears. Nothing I do or say can or will liberate willing victims from their beloved hell of self-certainty. I’d like to hope that we, both as a society and as the Church, have hit rock bottom. But I also know that this recent jolt is, at best, simply an outcropping along the walls of a bottomless canyon. There is no “rock bottom” to hit. Lies have no interest in slowing or correcting themselves. Their only purpose is to propagate like a virus, destroying from the inside every vessel they invade.

So what do we do? What can those of us who desire to see at least somewhat clearly do to abate this tide of division and death?

Maybe this week’s Lectionary can help us out a little bit after all.

Not necessarily this week’s emphasis on the Holy Spirit—although the Holy Spirit is, truthfully, the only power capable of piercing our pervasive darkness and bringing order to our personal and national chaos. Nor is it necessarily in the baptism of Christ. Our part—the few steps forward that I can see at this point—comes just a few verses before that, between when John begins preaching and when Jesus finally enters the scene:

“…people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to [John], and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.”[2]

The “people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem” were also mired in dark days. They lived in occupied territory under a powerful foreign government, and even though most of them just wanted to go about their lives quietly, an increasing number of terrorists and rebel factions were arising from amidst the common peoples’ ranks. While everyone was hoping for change and a better future, some of them had convinced themselves they would achieve their aims only through violence and sedition. Guilt and punishment by association were very real threats, and it was probably hard to know who you could genuinely trust.[3]

Suddenly, in the midst of all this tension and fear, one man shows up with a new emphasis on a very old message: “Repent!”

We’ve talked before about how repentance doesn’t have to be intimidating.[4] It isn’t some big emotional display. The Greek word for it suggests a change of thinking that alters how one lives, and the word in the Hebrew Bible simply means, “Turn around.”

We, as individuals, as a community, and as a nation could undoubtedly use a little bit of repentance right now. The problem is, I think most of us have forgotten how to even start. That’s where the people in our passage can show us what to do.

“People from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem” came out to see and hear John. John may have dunked them in the river, but that was the showy (and easy) part. The work of the people themselves—and the true beginning to their part in repentance—was “confessing their sins.”

“Sin” can be a scary word for us. We often think of sins either as acts of ill intent or as neglect that results in harm to another. Most people who attend church are probably familiar with the idea that “sin” is some sort of violation of God’s will. I’ve heard people define it as “anything that separates you from God.”

But that’s not what the text is talking about here.

The Bible does reference those kinds of sins: direct offenses against God and others, “what we have done, and what we have left undone.” But the “sins” mentioned here have little to do with that. Because of how tradition has layered so much theology, interpretation, and reinterpretation onto the word “sin” over the last few thousand years, the term found here more accurately reflects our idea of “mistake” or “failure.”

These people—“all” of them, according to the text (which does offer us a bit of hope)—aren’t necessarily “confessing their sins” in the way we think of that phrase. They probably aren’t telling everyone about how they’ve robbed or cheated or murdered. What they’re doing is admitting their faults, owning up to their failures. They’re trying their best to tear up the lies that hide their true selves and knock down the walls of perfection every human tries their best to project. They’re initiating the lives of repentance John preached about simply by being honest with themselves and one another about who they are.

I said earlier that I can’t see a way to fix the mess we’re in as a country, to unmake the lies or settle the paranoia that have brought us to this week’s attempted coup. That problem is far beyond my ability to solve.

But I can take responsibility for me. And I hope that you can take responsibility for you.

If there’s any chance of changing our direction for the better, confessing our faults—even just admitting our weaknesses and owning up to our imperfections—is a pretty good place to start. The Holy Spirit normally begins her movement not in a fiery display or as a swooping bird but as a sacred breath. Maybe—just maybe—if breath joins to breath, if confession joins to confession, if repentance joins to repentance, the Spirit will awaken in a greater way. If a single breath can stir the air in a dusty room, maybe a few more working together can rustle up a small breeze. Breeze met with breeze becomes a wind, and as the winds of confession and repentance—of just plain honesty—rise from our homes and churches, the Spirit, in mercy, may once again release the cleansing gale of re-Creation.

With that in mind, I’d like you to turn to page 7 of your bulletin. This is a modified version of the Litany of Penitence from Ash Wednesday found on page 267 of your Book of Common Prayer. I want us to use it as our corporate confession this morning. But don’t just say the words as they appear on the page. Our written confessions are an outline, a means to remember. Pause inside each category and flesh it out within your mind. Don’t just focus on “big” sins. Confession begins by being honest with ourselves, with God, and with one another about the simplicity of our own weaknesses, mistakes, and failures.

*****

The Litany of Penitence (modified)

Officiant and People together, all kneeling

Together: Most holy and merciful Father: We confess to you and to one another, and to the whole communion of saints in heaven and on earth, that we have [failed] by our own fault in thought, word, and deed; by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.

Officiant: We have not loved you with our whole heart, and mind, and strength. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not forgiven others, as we have been forgiven.

Together: Have mercy on us, Lord.

Officiant: We have been deaf to your call to serve, as Christ served us. We have not been true to the mind of Christ. We have grieved your Holy Spirit.

Together: Have mercy on us, Lord.

Officiant: We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives,