Vicar at Mount Olive

 In the care given to Jesus’ body after death, we glimpse how God comes close to us in the every death. 

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
Sunday of the Passion, year B 
Texts: Mark 11:1-11; Mark 14:1-15:47

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

By now the palm branches should be feeling strange in your hands.

Were we just celebrating?  It seems like a long time ago – like a dream. How did we get here? How did we get from Jesus, vital and assured, riding into Jerusalem to the sound of cheers and singing, all the way to the dull thud of the stone being rolled in place, enclosing the corpse of God? 

I can’t stop thinking about that.  Because of the beautiful and tender conversations we’ve been having in Adult Forum for the last few weeks, I can’t stop thinking about the corpse of Jesus – and about how preciously it was cared for. I keep thinking about the unnamed woman with alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and how she did what she could, she broke it and poured it out to anoint Jesus’ body for its burial.  

And I keep thinking about  “Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council who was himself waiting expectantly for the reign of God,” and how he “went boldly to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.”

He asked for the body of God.

God’s body, which was completely–and unfathomably–helpless. God’s body which, as we heard in Mark’s brutal account, had been beaten and bound and spat upon and mocked and flogged and struck and derided and nailed to a cross until it was just limp flesh, without breath or warmth or life. Just a broken body.

But Joseph went to Pilate “boldly” and asked for it —perhaps out of that stubbornly hopeful expectation that it still wasn’t too late for the reign of God. Or perhaps because he just couldn’t bear to see that broken body hanging there. He had to care for it. To tend it. To wrap it in linen and lay it to rest in a safe place.  To respond to the love of God–shown at its most extreme—with his own love in return. 

And imaging those moments of tenderness and care for the remains of a loved one revealed a new depth of this story for me.

We say so often that the story of the cross is the story of Christ coming close, meeting us in our very deaths.  But our deaths–those are still abstract for us – we don’t know what experiencing death is like yet.  But the story of the cross is also the story of Christ meeting us in the deaths we have experienced, the deaths of those we love.  When we tend their bodies, when we anoint them with costly ointments, when we attempt to memorize their faces, when we sing them to their rest.  When we wash and arrange and bury their bodies – Jesus is there.

Every dead body is also Jesus’ dead body. 

Christ is there in the body that has died in peace, surrounded by loved ones, and Christ is there in the ones that have died alone in fear or pain. And Christ is there in every single body strung up or blown apart by violence and cruelty and hatred.  And Christ is there in the bodies of those taken too soon. Every dead body is also Jesus’ dead body. And every single body is a site of sacred love come close. 

God came to us in a body and God still comes to us in bodies.

We bear the life of Christ to one another and we hold the death of Christ in one another as well.  In the care and kindness we show one another in life and death and in the memories and wisdom that are passed down from our loved ones. One of those souls whose beloved memory we keep in our congregation is Susan Cherwien, whose words in so many hymns and writings still soothe and challenge us. And her words about death have been echoing in my mind as well.  She once remarked that the soul does not inhabit the body, the body inhabits the soul.

And in Christ, we are not souls inhabiting separate bodies, but bodies inhabiting one soul – the very soul of God. 

The soul that holds us all in astounding love – that comes near and meets us where we are – that loves through life and death.

In a few minutes we will celebrate the Eucharist.  We’ll see the bread and cup, Christ’s body and blood for us, wrapped tenderly with linen.  We will hear Christ’s words, spoken once more, “Take; this is my body” – the body that lived and died.  The body that cared for others and was also tenderly cared for.  That came close and still comes close to us in every death and holds for us the promise of the resurrection and restoration of all creation. The body that showed us the love of God at its most extreme. 

Today, like the unnamed woman, we respond to love with love.  And we join Joseph of Arimathea, as we come boldly and ask for the body of Christ and we wait expectantly for the reign of God. 

In the name of the Father, and of the  ☩  Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 

Midweek Lent, 2024 ☩ Love One Another ☩ Week 4: Encourage One Another

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
Texts: I Thessalonians 5:4-14, John 16:12-15, 32-33

Beloved children of God, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

For the last three weeks, we’ve been diving into some of the tougher aspects of the command to Love One Another. 

We’ve talked about agreeing with one another, confessing our sins to one another, and not judging one another. We’ve been dealing with brokenness in our relationships – broken by conflict, and isolation, and superiority. 

But this week, we finally get a fun one: “Encourage one another!” 

This is the kind of instruction that a smiling, optimistic, positive person like me can really get into. I even like all the different ways that you can encourage. You can give compliments, reminding people of their unique gifts: “You’re amazing! You’re so strong!” You can offer optimism, sharing your faith in the restoration that God promises: “Everything will turn out all right! It gets better!” Or you can really lean into the confidence we have as God’s beloved children: “You’ve got this.” “You can do it!”

These are nice things to say and really nice things to hear.  Who wouldn’t want to spend their time offering encouragement and being encouraged? It almost seems silly that we would need to be commanded to do it. And even Paul admits that the Thessalonians are already on it:  “Encourage one another,” he writes, “as indeed you are doing!” 

So what am I going to preach about?

Well, unfortunately, there is a darker underbelly here.  

Because just like you don’t need to be told to agree unless there is conflict, and you don’t need to be told to confess unless there is violation, and you don’t need to be told not to judge unless you are judging, you don’t need to be told to encourage one another unless there is discouragement. 

Because even in a community of faith–even as we are experiencing the love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ and the communion of the Holy Spirit–we sometimes feel discouraged. Dis-courage-ment. 

Sometimes we are robbed of our courage. 

Often by fear–fear of losing the people or the things we love. Fear of the unknown, fear of pain, fear that there won’t be enough, fear of guilt or fear of judgment–we are anxious and afraid and dis-couraged. 

Or sometimes it’s doubt that discourages. Doubt in ourselves and our ability to bear the weight of living. Doubt in each other – will you all really be there for me? Or doubt in God. Doubt in God’s promises or God’s love or even uncertainty about whether God is there at all.  And when we doubt in this whole project of faith and hope and love and life, it seems a lot safer to look out for ourselves, to retreat from each other. Doubt robs us of the courage to believe that God will use the hands of those around us to catch us when we fall. 

And sometimes it’s despair that discourages.  On days when it’s hard enough just getting out of bed, how can we stand boldly in faith and face it all?  When everything seems so hopeless–we keep hurting each other and burning the Earth and we know we’re doing it but nothing ever changes–what’s the point of courage? It’s all lost anyway.

That’s the dark underbelly: Fear and Doubt and Despair. 

That’s why we need our courage back and why we need each other to be en-couraged.  

And we need real encouragement. En-courage-ment isn’t just plucky pick-me-ups or stock sayings about silver linings–maybe that can buck us up when our hearts are a bit faint, but what about when our hearts aren’t even in our chests anymore, but have fallen all the way to the ground?

Compliments and optimism and “You’ve got this”–those things don’t really work then.  Not when fear and doubt and despair shatter our illusion of control. Because no matter how many times I tell you that “you’ve got this,” the truth is, you don’t. And you never did.  No matter how many times you tell me “you can do it,” the truth is, I can’t. I never could.  We were never in control.  And no matter how many times we are told we are children of the light, we still fall asleep. 

But we have a God who never sleeps. And that’s where the real courage comes from. 

I remember two things about the summer camp I went to in high school. 1) I hated doing the high ropes course. 2) I loved rappelling. Which seems weird. Both of those activities involved heights, involved wearing a harness and a helmet, and all of your friends standing around on the ground staring at you, shouting, “You can do it! You’ve got this!”

In both activities you are up high, strapped in, and completely safe.  But I remember clinging to the high ropes course, shaking and trying to will my feet to move for what felt like hours, absolutely petrified, and then the next day, leaning over a cliff to rappel down the side of a mountain in seconds, with no trouble at all. 

Because the crucial difference is that with rappelling, you can feel the rope holding you the whole time.  From the very first moment you lean back over the cliff, you feel the rope tighten and support you. With high ropes – you only feel the rope when you fall off. The rope is the back up, to jerk you to a stop when you fail.  And most of the time you are supposed to pretend it’s not there, and just trust in your own strength and balance – and I hated that. 

Either way the rope was there. But only one of them gave me courage. 

And it wasn’t the one that held me so loosely that I was supposed to forget about it as I figured out how to get through the course under my own power.  It was the rope I could feel the whole time, trusting it with my weight as I descended.  That gave me courage.  

God is our rope – but much better than a rope. God will not let us fall.  And the best, real encouragement that I can give you, that we can give to each other, is not “You’ve got this!” but a resounding “You don’t got this! God’s got this.”  That was the encouragement that Jesus offered his followers, in their last conversation before he died: “In the world you will have distress and trouble, but take courage: I have overcome the world.” I’ve got this.   And it’s the same encouragement Paul offered the Thessalonians: “whether you are awake or asleep you live with him.” It doesn’t matter what you do – whether you’ve got it together or you’re falling apart – you live with Jesus. Who’s got this. Who’s got us. 

So, we need to offer one another better encouragement than just retelling each other the myth that we can do it on our own, that we can be in control. 

The myth that we’ve got this.  Because we’ll just need to be jerked back up again when we fall.  Instead let’s encourage one another, let’s hoist one another up in the Spirit, reminding each other that to lean back and feel the rope, to let the God that will not let us go take all the weight, until we feel lighter than air. 

Until we relax into the peace of Jesus, who has overcome – overcome all the fear, all the doubt, and all the despair that the world can throw at us. 

Dear siblings, this is your encouragement: You don’t got this. God’s got this. 

In the name of the Father, of the  ☩  Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 

Thinking about the Cleansing of the Temple as a jealous rage refocuses our attention not on Jesus’ righteous anger but on God’s jealous love. 

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
The Third Sunday in Lent, year B 
Texts: Exodus 20:1-17, 1 Corinthians 18-25, John 2:13-22 

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

A lot of people really like “Angry Jesus.”  

I’ve noticed especially among my fellow seminarians–we love this Jesus, whip in hand, flipping the tables of stagnant religious institutions; we love imagining him breaking down oppressive systems and driving out those who benefit from them and ushering in justice for all; we are inspired by him, bursting onto the scene at the beginning of his ministry (at least in John’s version) speaking passionate and prophetic truth to power. Maybe it’s because we think we can diagnose everything that’s wrong in the world and in our churches and we imagine that this will be the kind of thing we’ll do when we become pastors and leaders.  “Give us a whip,” we think, “Give us a whip like Jesus and we’ll clean things up around here.”

And I think there is a true impulse there.

I do think that standing on the side of justice requires some anger.  There is a truth to this anger – when we recognize that something has gone awry, and we cannot stay silent. And anger has a purpose–when something is wrong, anger can supply the energy necessary to make the changes that need to happen. Some tables do need to be flipped.

But, at other times I am very uncomfortable with this image. “Angry Jesus” can become a convenient figure to hide behind, and I’m uncomfortable with the way that even well-intentioned activists and allies can respond to injustice with blind anger, not ready to listen and learn, but only eager to fix everything immediately or burn it all down.  It is easy to whip ourselves into a frenzy – and feel righteous doing it – until our anger creates more victims. 

So, I am a bit wary of this story.

Especially since it seems like such an outlier in Jesus’ ministry.  Jesus did not make a habit of brandishing whips and turning tables, he was much more likely to heal and feed and teach, even his enemies. And how could Jesus, whose own experience of being whipped we will soon hear about on Good Friday, respond in this encounter, even in righteous anger, with violence? What happened to God’s love? 

But, maybe, in a way, this story is about love.  Love has many faces. Sometimes it is sweet and tender. And sometimes it is impassioned and intense. 

And sometimes, love is jealous.  

“Jealous” is the adjective God uses in our reading from Exodus, when God commands the Israelites not to worship any other gods: “For I the Lord your God am a jealous God.”  And since I was a kid, this line has always confused me.  Jealousy is bad, isn’t it? It seems like basically the same thing as envy or coveting – which the last commandment tells us not to do! Then why would God admit to being jealous?  

This must be something different. Not a sinful kind of jealousy, but a jealousy that’s actually hard to imagine.  A jealousy without possessiveness or resentment, a jealousy that is entirely fierce devotion. It is jealousy that desires the reciprocal devotion of the beloved, but which is completely entwined in a passionate intensity to protect and provide for the beloved what is best for the beloved. An incredibly zealous love. 

God’s jealous love is what prompts God to remind the children of Israel of all that God had done for them: “For I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery!”  As if God were saying “This is how much I love you! These are the lengths I have gone for you. And all I want is for you to let love grow. To love me back and to love one another so that you can have what is best for you: abundant life. I am jealous for you.” 

But even if God’s jealousy is not a sinful kind of jealousy, it is still not a pleasant experience. 

And it strikes me like a weakness.  God’s jealousy is a love that wants so badly to be loved back but will also fiercely guard the freedom of the beloved. Because love without freedom isn’t love at all. So the God of power and glory and wisdom and honor and to whom belongs everything in heaven and on earth and under the earth doesn’t exercise that power to force us to love in return. We have a choice.  And God chooses to open God’s self to the ache of jealousy and the pain of unrequited love. God chooses weakness, chooses vulnerability, chooses jealousy – which seems utterly foolish for the creator of the universe.  

But the apostle Paul reminds us: “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”  

God’s foolishness is love.  God’s weakness is us. 

God’s jealous love for us is what leads Jesus all the way to the cross.  Embracing the ultimate weakness and humiliation for our sake and for the sake of what can be built and created and grown and repaired through the foolishness and weakness of love.  

And so the scene in the temple takes on a different meaning if we think of it not as righteous anger prompted by injustice, but instead as a kind of jealous rage. 

Because it wasn’t the Romans that Jesus drove away. It wasn’t the empire built on violence, who were exploiting and oppressing Jesus’ people.  There was plenty of justice to proclaim among them.  But it was God’s own people, the ones who had come to God’s own house, the ones who had let their love for what was on their tables turn their hearts from God. 

When seen as a jealous rage, all this business with the whip and the flipping tables — that wasn’t a punishment or a rejection, that was love, jealously intervening on behalf of the beloved.  

As if Jesus were saying: “Get rid of those tables! Forget about all that stuff – it won’t love you back.  I freed you from Egypt and I am freeing you now from the system you are trapped in.  I’ll crack this whip if I have to, to remind you that you don’t need to live like this, devoted to these fleeting things and putting up tables as barriers between one another.  Come back to me! Come back to each other!” 

Jesus is pleading with them with a passionate jealousy, begging them to step into the abundant life of divine love.

Inviting them to come back to the world imagined by the Ten Commandments. A world where they take care of each other, respect each other, where thousands of generations are cherished and beloved and blessed. A world where they love God back and they love the world that God loves. 

And this invitation is for you too. 

This Lenten season of confession is an invitation to examine our tables and everything we have put on them, everything we love that cannot love us back, everything we use to separate ourselves from each other, everything that the world says is wisdom and strength–and invite the Holy Spirit to knock our tables over once again! 

Then we have a glorious chance to put those tables up again – but this time to fill them with weakness and foolishness, with love and care for one another.  This is our chance to respond to Jesus’ jealous rage with a jealous intensity of our own, loving our creator – a God who is able to be loved, who wants to be loved, who chooses weakness and foolishness. And to love each other just as jealously. 

There is a place for righteous anger. But there is also a danger that if we spend all of our time and energy turning over tables, we’ll never get around to sharing the feast of abundant life around the bigger and better table that God jealousy wants for us.  

In the name of the Father, and of the  ☩  Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 

Midweek Lent, 2024 ☩ Love One Another ☩ Week 2: Confess Your Sins to One Another

Vicar Lauren Mildahl
Texts: James 5:13-18, Luke 18:10-14

God’s beloved, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Jewish sage Hillel the Elder was once challenged to explain the whole Torah – but to do it so simply that he would do it in the amount of time that he could balance on one foot. And his famous response was: “That which is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary; go and learn.” (You couldn’t tell but I did that one foot!)

In much the same way, a good amount of the New Testament, especially the Epistles, can be summed up in three words: Love One Another. 

The rest is commentary.  And today we hear some rather challenging “commentary” on loving one another from the Epistle of James: confess your sins to one another. 

Now, I think it is clear from the passage that James isn’t really talking about confessing your sin to someone you have wronged, though it is important and very challenging to come face to face with someone you have hurt, to confess and to ask forgiveness, to make amends and repair the relationship.  That is a vitally important practice and also something we are commanded to do in scripture.

But that doesn’t seem to be what this passage is about.  The instruction to “confess your sins to one another,” doesn’t come in the context of repairing a specific relationship. It comes in the context of care for the entire community. Particularly caring for those that might be absent from the community. 

“Are any among you suffering?” James asks. “Are any among you sick?” Who are the vulnerable among you? 

Who is isolated from the community? 

Sickness can be terribly isolating – I think all of us remember that from the pandemic well enough. But even when a complete lockdown and medical quarantine isn’t necessary, sickness still keeps you away from family and friends, from work or school or church, from the life-giving connections with other people.  Suffering, too; sometimes that is the worst part of suffering, being unable to share it.  Maybe because you don’t want to be a burden, or maybe because you resent the people that don’t suffer or who don’t understand your suffering. Suffering, like sickness, is isolating.  

And so is sin. Lying, stealing, injuring, exploiting, envying, hating, hoarding–every way we are hurting one another, depriving one another, ignoring one another, and severing our connections with one another–it isolates us.  And even if you aren’t the person I’m directly hurting, if you catch me lying to someone else, will you trust me?  If I hate a different kind of person, but not you, will you want me around?  Breaking one relationship is pretty much bound to break another. Until all that’s left is isolation.

James sees the dangers of isolation, whether it’s caused by suffering, sickness, or sin. 

And his remedy to address the isolation of the vulnerable is to lean even more into radical vulnerability. To recreate community by inviting others into our weaknesses.  If you are sick, James says, call the elders so they can pray over you and anoint you.  If you are struggling with a sin, confess it to someone else and let others pray for you. And it struck me that this advice is not actually so much about how to love one another, but how to allow yourself to be loved.  Shine a spotlight on your weaknesses and invite others to love you through them.  

And, I’ll have to admit, that sounds terrifying.  

It sounds about a million times easier to pray for someone else than to be prayed for. To visit the sick, rather than be visited. To be the one loving rather than to be the one opening myself up to be loved by speaking up. The Psalmist wrote that “While I held my tongue, my bones withered away,” but speaking of my sins and my weaknesses and my failings–exposing my wounds and everything I am least proud of–that doesn’t seem very good for my bones either! The cure is worse than the disease.  

And it can be. I’ve heard horror stories of spiritually abusive spaces and traumatizing practices in the name of encouraging people to “confess their sins to one another.” I’m not asking you to relive your traumas or just dump them on other people. There is wisdom and discernment involved in seeking the right kind of care in the right kind of structure – like a support group or a prayer partner. I want to name that. 

And another way I think we can often go wrong is by leaving out the crucial part of the puzzle: it’s not a one-sided thing. Confess your sins to one another. Pray for one another.  Each and every one to another. 

Because radical vulnerability – that only works with radical mutuality. 

I confess to you. You confess to me. We confess to one another.  We hold one another. 

What really stands out to me in the parable that Jesus tells in Luke is that these two men, the Pharisee and the tax collector, is that they are both standing in the Temple by themselves.  They aren’t praying in community. They aren’t praying for one another. They are both isolated. The Pharisee is isolated by the sin of his pride: “Thank God I’m not like those people.”  And the tax collector by his guilt: “God be merciful to me, a sinner!”

And the last verse (as it is usually translated), leaves them in opposition: “I tell you, this man [that is, the tax collector] went down to his home justified rather than the other…” They are still apart, still isolated.  

But the commentator Amy-Jill Levine offers a different reading. She focuses on one of the prepositions “para” – from which we get our English word “parallel.” She writes: “That pesky Greek preposition para…can mean ‘rather than;’ it can also mean ‘because of’…or ‘set side by side’. Its primary connotation is not one of antagonism (‘rather’) but one of juxtaposition (‘next to’).” 

And I find a glimmer of hope hidden in that little word.  What if they went down to their homes side by side?  What if we imagine the end of that parable instead treated with James’ remedy of radical vulnerability and mutuality?  

The Pharisee, admitting his struggles to the tax collector, confessing how hard it was to keep company with people who just don’t really seem to be trying to live very good lives. 

The tax collector, praying for the Pharisee, and confessing in turn his pretty severe violations of the community – how he was collaborating with and benefiting from the systemic oppression of the Roman occupiers and exploiting his neighbors. 

And back to the Pharisee, responding in love, praying for the person he most despised. 

What if they had walked home in parallel, arm in arm, no longer isolated? And what if that is precisely what Jesus had in mind?  What the God who loves and cares for each and every one of us, who made us for each other, wants for us? 

That’s the flourishing and abundant life possible in the Spirit, when we love and we let ourselves be loved.  

The confession in itself isn’t the remedy, prayer alone isn’t the remedy: it’s the access to divine life in community. That can heal us.

But it’s a hard thing I’m asking today.  It takes an incredible amount of bravery! Especially to be the first one to step into radical vulnerability.  I certainly don’t want to go first. I don’t want to tell you about my weaknesses. I don’t want to tell you about where I am struggling.  I don’t want to tell you my failures.  

This is as much as I can confess: that my fear of being vulnerable is what makes me vulnerable and keeps me isolated.

And now that I’ve confessed that it’s not up to you to fix it. Confessing to one another is not about getting or giving advice or validation or sympathy – though those things might be helpful.  But the real point is that when we confess to one another, when we practice radical vulnerability and radical mutuality, we insist to one another that we are all part of this community.  And we refuse to let suffering or sickness or sin pull anyone away into isolation. So that we can walk home side by side.

No one has to go first if we all go together.  

Love one another, beloved.  And be vulnerable enough to let yourself be loved.  The rest is commentary.

In the name of the Father, and of the  ☩  Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 

Lent isn’t only a time to wrestle with our demons and the devil out in the world, but also a time to encounter spiritual good and to be served by angels. 

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
The First Sunday in Lent, year B 
Texts: Mark 1:9-15, Genesis 9:8-17 

God’s beloved children, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We start in the wilderness. 

Like every year in our lectionary, the first Sunday of Lent begins in the wilderness, with the “Temptation of Jesus.”  Mark’s account is by far the shortest and it leaves out almost all of the details that we hear in the other synoptic gospels.  But, still, as we begin our forty days of this liturgical season, we hear again of Jesus and his forty days in the wilderness, with the devil and the wild beasts.

This reading and this season of Lent invite us to turn our attention to our own wildernesses: those areas of our own lives where we might be feeling a little lost.   Where we are face to face with the spiritual evil that hurts us or tempts us. Where the wild beasts within our hearts still roam.   It can be a scary place to go.  Spiritual practices can help – giving something up or taking something on, and it helps that we are going together.  But still, it’s hard. 

Which is, I suppose, what I love about Lent.  I like that it’s hard. 

The Rite of Confession that we are including in our liturgy this season is hard.  It’s hard to name my faults, my own faults, my own most grievous faults.  But, you know, when the water is a bit too hot and the scrub brush is a little too stiff and the soap is a little bit too harsh, that’s when I feel the cleanest.  There are blessings – perspective and clarity – out in the wilderness.  Perhaps that’s why the Spirit drove Jesus there. 

But I can also fall for the trap that, I think, our lectionary falls into.

In the other years, when we hear this story, we only hear about the wilderness.  We hear the fuller account of the Devil and the specific temptations offered to Jesus and it means we begin our Lenten season, narrowly focused on this cosmic boxing match.  We can fixate so much on the blow by blow, and Jesus’ one-two knockout at the bell – until that’s what Lent becomes too: a struggle, a contest, a wrestling match where there must be a winner and a loser. The conflict with spiritual evil becomes the entire focus – and it seems like a close match.  

And so the stakes are raised and, with them, guilt.  

Shoot! I forgot and ate that chocolate bar I was supposed to be fasting from.  
Shoot! I wanted to pray twice a day, but I was too busy.  
Dang it! I was going to resist the devil today, but I was just too tired.  

I guess spiritual evil wins this time. It can feel hopeless.  Like losing.  

But the nice thing about Mark’s account, because it is so short, is that we actually get to hear it in context. 

And when we do that, we see that spiritual evil is completely outnumbered by spiritual good!  Because I lied to you.  We don’t actually start in the wilderness. 

We actually begin in the water.  

This year, we begin with Jesus’ baptism, and with the voice from heaven – spiritual good – speaking with a parent’s pride: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”   The Holy Spirit descends like a dove – spiritual good flying into the world.  Angels come to Jesus’ aid – spiritual good helping and providing. And it ends with the proclamation of spiritual good drawing near – the reign of God – the good news – the gospel. 

The water, the voice, the dove, the angels, and the gospel – by my count there is five times more spiritual good in this short passage than there is spiritual evil! 

And, realizing that can change how we view Lent. 

What if it isn’t just a time to wrestle with our demons and the devil out in the world – but also time to be drenched with spiritual good and to be served by angels?! 

Like a lot of modern people, I find it a little hard to talk about angels and demons.  I certainly believe in spiritual activity – good and evil.  But, for me, most everything that angels are said to do, I understand as part of how the Holy Spirit is active in the world.  Protecting, speaking, healing, helping – those are all comfortably within the realm of the third person of the Trinity for me. 

I guess, in my theology, I just don’t need angels? Is one way of putting it.

And I’ve never thought about Lent as an opportunity to meet an angel. 

But who am I to dictate how the Holy Spirit will accomplish her deeds? If she wants to use angels, she will use angels!  Because it is undeniable that for the people of the Bible, and for a lot of people today, angels are a major part of their experience of Christian life.  I heard some beautiful stories this week about encounters with angels from some of you in this congregation. And I expect that if we polled this room we’d hear many more. 

And just because I’ve never seen anything that I would describe as angel, I certainly know about close calls, near accidents, and help that arrived just when I needed it.  I know about words of comfort and encouragement, calling me a beloved child just when I was at my lowest.  I know about the energy of creativity, the hope of restoration, the bliss of intimacy, and the call of justice.  I know what has been good for my spirit. I know spiritual good. So, I guess, I do know about angels.  

And I know about rainbows. 

After every storm, spiritual good materializes.  Painted in the sky for us, we see the reminder of the first covenant God ever made with creation.  A reminder made of arching colors, that God has promised to stick it out with us no matter what.  Even when we face the pounding rain and raging wind of spiritual evil. Even when it seems hopeless. When we need the reminder the most. 

Rainbows appear after storms.  And angels arrive in the wilderness. 

Spiritual good is all around us.   

There’s a gentleman who has visited our church recently, who might be here today, who sits in the back. And one Sunday as he sat among the choir members waiting to process, he looked at me with rapture and said “I’m surrounded by angels!”

At first I thought, “Aww, that’s nice, but no, we’re just people.” 

But maybe he was onto something.  Because when we join the dance of the Trinity, when we walk in the way of God, when love draws us to one another, spiritual good flows through us. We join the ranks of angels – protecting, speaking, healing, helping, we become angels for each other.  You all are surrounded by angels. The ones you cannot see and the ones you can. 

You are surrounded by spiritual good. Five to one, it’s no contest.

And through your Lenten spiritual practices, whatever they are – through fasting and prayer, through volunteering and giving, through silence and singing, through deep intentional tending of your own personal wilderness and through your angelic service in love to those around you – spiritual good grows even more.  

The wilderness is still there. But as we face it together this Lent, remember that you are soaked in the same spiritual good that drenched Jesus in our text today. 

Like Jesus, you carry your baptism with you into the wilderness – for those of you who are baptized.  And if you aren’t baptized, you can be!  Lent was traditionally a time of preparation for baptism on Easter, we’d love to accompany you on that journey.  

And, like Jesus, all of you carry the assurance that you are also God’s child, that God loves you and speaks with parental pride about you! And God is well pleased!

The Holy Spirit flies to you, and keeps you under her wings.

The gospel is proclaimed by you and for you: Jesus, God-With-Us, has been to the wilderness and will be there with you every step of the way. 

And angels surround you.   

In the name of the Father, of the  ☩  Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 

God transcends holy purity to enter into impurity in blood and flesh, sharing even the hard and gross experiences of life with us.

Vicar Lauren Mildahl 
The Presentation of our Lord
Texts: Hebrews 2:14-18, Luke 2:22-40 

Beloved saints, grace to you and peace in the name of the Father, and of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It’s hard being trapped in these bodies.

Even in the best of times, when everything is working like it should, these bodies of ours still require so much care, and they still produce so many various fluids and waste. Even when we are perfectly healthy, living in a body is, just a little bit, gross.

That’s what I was thinking about this week as I was imagining this scene in the temple. Imagining the moment when Simeon took the baby Jesus in his arms, I was reminded of the times I held my newborn nieces and nephews. And how cute and tiny and perfect they were – but also how their tiny baby bodies were kind of gross sometimes. Every parent I know has a horror story that ends with the line, “and that’s how we learned that you always need to bring two sets of spare clothes.”

Snot and spit up and overflowing diapers-that’s what being around a baby is like.

Perpetual messiness, briefly interrupted by rare moments of cleanliness. And so who’s to say that while Simeon was singing the Nunc Dimittis, Jesus wasn’t leaving some kind of fluid on him? Like babies do. Because he was. A real alive baby, experiencing the reality of living in a baby body.

And I think that’s pretty amazing! God alive as a baby! Tiny and vulnerable and smelly and alive – just like we are!

And this was clearly an important point for the writer of Hebrews as well.

Our text today begins in the middle of a theological argument centered around Jesus’ divinity and Jesus’ humanity – trying to answer the question that Christ-followers have been grappling with since the days when the New Testament was still being written: Why did God become human?

The Preacher in Hebrews answers: “Since, therefore, the children [that is humans – creatures – you and me] – since therefore the children share flesh and blood, [Jesus] himself likewise shared the same things…to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect.”

To free us and to help us and to reconnect us with God – Jesus shared our flesh and blood.

Actually, in the Greek, it’s the other way around. It says “haimatos kai sarkos” – “blood and flesh.”

It probably shouldn’t make that much of a difference.  Every English translation I could find switched the two around because it makes perfect sense to use the familiar English idiom “flesh and blood.” But I almost wish the translators would leave it in the original order: blood and flesh.

Blood and flesh feels so much visceral, more connected to the earthy stuff of our bodies. The liquids and the solids that make up these meat sacks. Jesus doesn’t just share our “flesh and blood” because we have some kind of kinship in a nice, sanitized, metaphorical way.

Jesus shares our blood and flesh – our experience of life from within our biological containers.

So that he could share in our experiences about everything we undergo in life – every joy and pleasure and satisfaction and every craving and pain and ache and excretion of our bodies. Everything! Even the things that are a little bit gross. The things that are literally called “unclean” in the Torah.

God becoming blood and flesh meant that Jesus, like everyone else, was “unclean,” ritually impure, most of the time.

Purity, for Jews, doesn’t mean a state of sinlessness.

It doesn’t really have anything to do with sin – it has to do with living! Any time you come in contact with the fluids and the stuff of living, because of menstruation or because of ejaculation or because of childbirth or because of burying a corpse¹ – all these things of blood and flesh – which are perfectly normal and perfectly good and healthy – are unclean as well.

The idea of maintaining a permanent state of ritual purity is laughable. It isn’t supposed to even be possible for creatures who are blood and flesh. For Jews like Jesus, permanent purity was only achievable for God, who didn’t experience the viscera of life, or for angels, spiritual beings who didn’t experience embodied earthiness.

Because that’s what holiness is: that set-apartness that transcends reality and materiality.

God’s holiness lies in the fact God isn’t a being, God is Being-Itself.² The creative force of all existence, permeating all existence, and somehow also the things that doesn’t exist – so completely and utterly incomprehensible to us because we are small and finite and contained.  And how could we ever approach divinity with our limited senses and leaking orifices?

We can’t. Holiness isn’t our natural state. And this is what the rituals of purification practiced by Jews for centuries are for. And if you remember, this is half of the reason that the family went to the temple that day: “When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses.” Most scholars assume that Luke was talking about a purification ritual that was required after childbirth. Childbirth is one of the most bloody and fleshy experiences a person can have – an experience so human, so creaturely, so alive, so good, but so different from the intangible, ineffable, disembodied holiness of God. The rituals of purification helped connect the two, helped tend to the joys and sorrows of living and dying, helped unite the physical and the spiritual, helped each person see beyond their blood and flesh container to glimpse the transcendent holiness of God. 

And it is in the temple that day – after going through the ritual practices of purification – that Simeon and Anna recognize the Messiah. Salvation is revealed and the veil is lifted – and what they see is that God has chosen impurity. God has chosen the uncleanness and the grossness of blood and flesh. God has entered into life.

So that Simeon holds in his arms, not God – holy and unknowable, but God – tangible and accessible. God, transcending divine purity itself to become an unclean baby boy.

This is the paradox at the heart of our faith.

The paradox of the kind of love that leads purity to embrace impurity. That depth of love that leads God to share our human body. And this is the paradox that we celebrate every Eucharist when we proclaim with singing God is Holy, Holy, Holy and then immediately turn around and hold up the bread and say the words of Jesus “This is my body.” This is my blood and flesh, eat it so you don’t forget how my love drew me to you – every single part of you. Even the parts of your life that are hard and gross – you are good – you are beloved.

You are saints – holy ones.

You are fleshy containers not just of humanity, but of divinity as well. Catching glimpses of God’s transcendent perspective through Christ. So that your experience of life, though mediated through your blood and flesh, is not limited by it.  Because in Christ you experience life that transcends the limits of your body. In Christ you are free from the fear of death. You are free to embrace the goodness of the grossness of created life, and free to welcome death as a friend. So that like, Simeon, you can sing, “Lord you may now dismiss your servant in peace.” You are free, through the love of Christ, Jesus our brother in blood and flesh.

You are free.

In the name of the Father, of the ☩ Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

^{1. This list is adapted from Amy-Jill Levine and Ben Witherington’s commentary on the Gospel of Luke, 2018, pg 64.} 

^{2. This section relies heavily on the works of Paul Tillich, especially Systematic Theology: Volume 1, 1951.}