Sermons

The Rev. Joseph Farnes

Second Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C

All Saints, Boise

In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ public ministry doesn’t begin with healing the sick, casting out unclean spirits, or feeding the multitudes; it begins with wine at a wedding. John’s Gospel tells the story of Jesus in a very different way than the other three Gospels.

And it’s not even the “right” time. Jesus’ mother turns to her son at the wedding to tell him that the wine has run out. The married couple will be starting off their married life on the wrong foot; running out of food or wine at the party is a bad omen indeed! But Jesus asks, “So what? What does that mean to you or to me? My hour has not yet come.”

But Jesus’ mother doesn’t even respond to that. She turns to the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.” It is a comedic moment! It’s not the “right” time. Jesus’ mother doesn’t even argue back with him. She just puts him in an awkward spot. Just as the hosts are under social pressure to provide food and wine to their guests, now Jesus is under social pressure driven by his mother to do something to fix it.

And so he does something. Much like the feeding miracles, there’s no show, no hocus pocus or alakazam. He just tells the servants to fill the water jars, then take some to the steward, and its wine. Not just wine, but really good wine.

Jesus does this wonderful miracle, an almost silly miracle. Wine for a party? That’s the first miracle, according to John.

But notice how the miracle happens: it’s the work of a community. Jesus’ mom brings his attention to the problem, and she tells the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to. The servants fill up the water jars, and take some to the steward. The steward tastes it and evaluates the quality of the wine. Jesus is involved at each step: listening to his mom, even if not excited about it; directing the servants in what to do; turning the water into wine. Other people are part of the miracle.

Our lives as Christians are like the miracle at the wedding of Cana. We’re coworkers with Jesus, and we’re coworkers with one another.

We bring the needs of the world to Jesus. We pray for those in pain, for the oppressed, for the marginalized, for all God’s creatures, for the church and the nations of Earth. And instead of arguing with Jesus about doing something, then we start the ball rolling. Like Jesus’ mother, we tell Jesus and then we start working. We start organizing a solution even if we don’t have it all planned out. Jesus’ mother wasn’t exactly sure what would happen or how it would happen, but that Jesus would help make something happen was sure, and the servants needed to be ready.

And this miracle at the wedding in Cana is a miracle we keep living out. We take turns – praying, getting things organized, doing the work – and along the way the miracle happens.

We know that people need to be fed – and our monthly Community Meal and Food Truck do that, and our ongoing collection for the St Vincent de Paul food pantry does that, too. We don’t wait around for Jesus to make it happen. We do what we can. And then we turn to our elected leaders to ask why people are hungry when we live in a land of abundance.

We know that people are longing for wisdom for living – and we have spiritual formation for all ages. Our young’uns go off to Sunday School, some of our youth help teach (and learn), we gather for Bible study, we engage in deep questions, we reflect on the words of the Bible. And then we keep the conversation going. We’re not waiting for the right person to tell us what it all means so we never have to think again – it’s a living relationship with Jesus that we’re after. Might you be called to help lead a conversation to help us grow in the love of God?

We know that people are longing for community and friendship. We gather for worship, and we have snacks afterward. The coffee hour hosts set up coffee and snacks, and we’re grateful for a reason to hang out together. Might you be called to make coffee and bring in some snacks for our fellowship, might you be called to sit with someone and make sure they’re included in the conversation? We pray for a vibrant, inclusive community – but we also have our role in making that happen, a very important role in inviting, serving, hosting, including others. What might you be called to do to make that happen?

Everyone in the Gospel story has a different part to play at any given moment. Hence why St Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians about all the different gifts. There are a variety of gifts and callings that we are called into for any given moment. Gifts of wisdom, gifts of encouragement, gifts of teaching, gifts of fellowship and the gifts of being able to make a pot of coffee. We bring something to the ongoing miracle-work of Jesus Christ in this world. We aren’t called to do everything. The Gospel story we hear today isn’t Jesus noticing the wine’s run out, drawing all the water, getting everything set up, taking the new wine to the steward. Jesus’ first miracle isn’t a “one-man show” – nor is it a one-person show for us. We can work toward meeting the needs of the world our little part at a time.

We know that the needs of the world are immense. At the global scale, we have the disparity of wealth that keeps growing and the ongoing destruction of our planet’s ecological balance. At the national scale, we have that deepening divide between those who hoard up wealth and those who don’t have enough to thrive in this land of plenty, and we have a growing, gnawing sense of despair about whether anything good will happen for everyone again. And at our state and local levels, we see the ongoing crises of underemployment, under compensation, and underfunded education…and the crisis that leaders seem to want to do anything BUT deal with those.

We pray for all these needs, day in and day out. We bring them to Christ for his healing power, his generous heart, his miracle-working love. And then we get the ball rolling. We get it moving. What are you called to do to get the ball rolling for the next miracle of Christ? What are you called to do to get the miracle moving along? What will you do to be part of the miracle? Amen.

The Rev. Joseph Farnes

First Sunday after the Epiphany / Baptism of Christ, Year C

All Saints, Boise

While it’s been a few years since the Boise foothills have been on fire, we here are no strangers to the threats of fire. Year after year, as the heat of summer climbs to yet another terrible record, the air gets thick with hazy smoke from fires to the west, dying the blue sky a shade of brownish-orange and making it harder to breathe. We watched last summer as beloved parts of Idaho north of us and toward Redfish Lake were eaten up by hungry flames. We watched as Eastern Oregon saw acre after acre consumed by wildfires. And this week we watched as Southern California was hit by wildfires fueled by the intense Santa Ana winds.

And here we have this Sunday’s reading from Isaiah: “when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”

What do we do with it?

Whenever tragedy strikes, whenever something outside of human control cuts through a community, there are always folks who want to attribute blame. Some say that the tragedy is God’s punishment for something, and they point to the many verses in the Bible that do just that. It’s always a convenient interpretation, though; it just so happens that the people suffering are people they hate already.

And on the flip side – those who suffer may find themselves rightly asking, “where is God?” as they look around at the devastation. They look and wonder why this could happen, where is God in the midst of it. If God was punishing, then why them – were they guilty, or caught in the crossfire, collateral damage? In human war, innocents and civilians are supposed to be protected from the ravages of war, though so often that rule is violated by ruling the civilians “guilty” anyway; is God just as heartless and undiscerning as so many political and military leaders?

This question haunts humanity. What are we, and why do we suffer so?

No wonder the Bible does not speak with one voice. Justice demands the guilty be punished – and yet the guilty go free, and the innocent suffer injustices. We see holy, virtuous people oppressed, cut down, martyred. We see wickedness elevated and honored with riches and glory.

And, in all of it, we want to understand. We want to understand why.

And no answer will really satisfy. Whenever we sit down and decree this is why there is suffering, we’re left with so little room for our heartache and pain. “It’s just the way it is,” or “it must be God’s will,” or “it’s all for the best” or any other multitude of platitudes do not make room for the painful and bloody experience of suffering. Human suffering, human pain is not a mathematical equation that, once solved, will make all of the pain go away. That’s just not how it works, nor should we want it to work; how many people have been “comforted” by well-meaning friends that there must have been a reason why? (This would be the plot of the book of Job in the Bible, by the way)

So what do we do? We turn to Jesus on the cross, and we remember his baptism.

On the cross, Jesus suffers unbearable pain in his body and the unbearable pain of feeling abandoned in his spirit. He cries out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” the words of Psalm 22 on his lips. Jesus, our Lord and Savior, fully human and fully divine – he suffers the pain of abandonment. Abandoned by friends – feeling abandoned by God the Father. On the cross, it is right for us to see our pain and suffering embraced here – Jesus feels our pain with us in real time. Flames, sickness, despair, fear – all that we suffer is gathered in the body of Christ on the cross.

And who is he, this Jesus Christ? He is the Beloved. His identity at baptism is not negated or destroyed in his suffering. He is the Beloved. He comes up out of the waters and is greeted with that everlasting pronouncement: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Jesus shares in our suffering; we share in his Belovedness. He suffers just as we suffer; we are beloved just as he is beloved.

It is not nice, neat, tidy. It does not settle our suffering into a nice, orderly system of thinking. But what it does do is put us squarely into the personhood of Jesus Christ. Our suffering and our belovedness, his suffering and his belovedness, knit and woven and baptized and crucified together.

As he takes on our suffering, we take on his belovedness. A living, beating, broken heart looking with tenderness and mercy out from the heights of the cross; a joyous, unshakeable eternal dignity as we are lifted up out of the waters of baptism, greeted with delight by the voice of our God.

The belovedness keeps our suffering from hardening us into stone or from withering away in despair. To be beloved is to be alive, to be living flesh, living heart, living spirit. To be alive like Jesus Christ. And if we are alive as Jesus Christ, then we do the works he does. We heal the sick. We bring good news to the poor and the imprisoned. We speak truth where there is falsehood and despair. The Gospel life is belovedness in action – a belovedness that does not give up while suffering, a belovedness that does not stop at the cross, a belovedness that is not consumed or destroyed by any fiery trial. Amen. 

The Rev. Joseph Farnes

All Saints, Boise

Second Sunday after Christmas

            Merry Christmas! Happy 12th Day of Christmas!

            In the Gospel reading for today, we read about Jesus’ time in the Temple when he was a young teenager. It’s brief – he stays behind and asks all sorts of questions and engages in conversations with the wise, and his parents don’t realize he’s not in the caravan of travelers going home with them; they trusted that the community had tabs on him just as well. It’s a sacred trust. So when they realize he isn’t with them, Mary and Joseph return to Jerusalem to find him. It’s a strange little interaction; Jesus says “Well of course I’d be in my Father’s house” but then he also returns home with them and behaves, and he grows in wisdom and years. Young Teenager Jesus is both a human teenager and divine. The story threads the needle – Jesus is both human and divine.

            But still, so much speculation about the childhood and youth of Jesus! We get Baby Jesus on Christmas Day, then we get child Jesus and youth Jesus as we steam toward Epiphany… and then by the Sunday after the Epiphany we’re already at Jesus at 30 years old, when he’s baptized by John and begins his public ministry. Early Christians, much like us, wonder about those “hidden years.”

            If you take a peek into the earliest centuries of Christianity, you’d stumble upon a bunch of texts called “Gospels” that didn’t find wide enough acceptance to be included in the collection of texts we now call the New Testament. We cannot know for exact certain why certain texts were included or excluded. The whole process was not clear cut; we get different lists of “canonical” or accepted New Testament texts from different early church leaders, but over time the list was winnowed down to what we have. Perhaps it was a “less is more” approach. There were a lot of texts floating around – and some of them were a little outlandish and overwrought, and some of them were dangerously hateful toward the body, or antagonistic toward anyone who wasn’t smart enough to comprehend complicated philosophy, or they might have injected worse forms of antisemitism into the Bible.

            And so that means that some of the infancy and childhood stories of Jesus are left out, too. There were stories floating around about Jesus’ childhood and the “hidden years” of his young adult life, but maybe those stories would have ended up pushing away and suppressing Jesus’ humanity entirely. 

            One of the most challenging of these early church texts is the Infancy Gospel of Thomas – not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas, which is more of a list of sayings. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas tells the story of Jesus’ childhood, and let me tell you it is not pleasant reading. In its attempt to show that Jesus was fully divine from birth, the stories it tells makes Jesus look like a holy terror. The Jesus we know in the canonical Gospels where he refuses to condemn and hate those who crucify him is not what we get in that Infancy Gospel of Thomas; the writer of the Infancy Gospel apparently thought that child Jesus would use his powers to strike down a kid who bumped him or a kid who messed up a pond Jesus was making. Zap!

            The Infancy Gospel of Thomas twists our understanding of divine and human and showcases the worst of each, not the best. What does that story tell us about God and humanity? That Infancy Gospel of Thomas suggests that God and humanity are ultimately short-tempered, angry, pompous, eager to abuse power, wanting vengeance and punishment, desiring to show power over others … that’s the depiction of the divine and human in that text. I’m glad the Church saw through that text and said, “That’s not the Jesus we know – we’re not including this story.” The Church knows that Jesus is the best of our humanity and the fullness of God, and the Church recognized that this story did not tell the truth about Jesus.

            But so then what is the image we get in the Gospel of Luke that we read today, this short story about Jesus and the Temple?

            Jesus – devoted to faith and conversation, a wisdom of great depth, confidence, a knowledge of who He is and what He is called to do. Jesus – a human being who does not denigrate others, who doesn’t lash out at Mary and Joseph. Jesus – whose eyes could see both Heaven and Earth, to see God His Father and also see His parents, and love them, and listen to them, to keep his ears and heart open to what he could learn from them.

            The Gospel of Luke story helps us to see the goodness of God and the goodness of humanity. Devoted, curious, open, steadfast, courageous, listening, growing, connected in communion and community. This short story in the Gospel of Luke tells wonderful truth about Jesus. It may be strange, it may leave us wanting more details, but it also tells us enough. Do we want to be kind and courageous, do we want to be devoted and curious, do we want to be connected to others, do we want to grow in wisdom and grace?            

With this little story, we’re invited to grow more like Jesus, the real Jesus, the Jesus we saw born on Christmas. This is the Jesus we know, this is the Jesus we love, this is the Jesus who loves us. Let’s grow up to be like him. Amen.

Christmas 1, Year C, 2024

Isaiah 61:10 – 62:3; I will greatly rejoice in the Lord;
Psalm 147: How good it is to sing praises to our God!
Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7; we are no longer slaves, but children and heirs;
John 1:1-18; In the beginning was the Word;

I recently read “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride. It is the story of a diverse community in Pottstown, PA in the 1920’s and 1930’s. The neighborhood is called Chicken Hill and is mostly Black and Jewish. The story centers around the Jewish couple, Moshe and Chona, who own the grocery store and a local theatre. Chona runs the store which serves everyone in the neighborhood, regardless of race or religion. In the story Chona has a memory of walking hand in hand as a child, with her father, and reciting the Bar’ukh She’amar. It is a common prayer in Jewish Liturgy:  translated as “Blessed be the one who spoke the world into being”.  It is a phrase that refers to God, specifically praising the act of creation where, simply by God’s spoken word, the universe was brought into existence.

The phrase directly aligns with Psalm 33:9, which says “For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.” That verse in Psalm 33 is a summary of the first chapter of the Genesis creation account. Repeatedly in that chapter, is the formula, “And God said, . . . and it was so.” God spoke this world into being. He said “let there be” heaven and earth, let there be light and darkness, let there be oceans and dry land, let there be vegetation, living creatures, and human beings. God spoke and everything changed.

And God continues to speak into his creation. Isn’t that why we continue to show up here, to hear the word of God, in scripture, and in prayer? God reveals so much to us, when we pay attention. God reveals something in that very creation which God spoke into being. With this latest atmospheric river we are experiencing, how many of you have heard God tell you to start building an ark?

God speaks to us in all that is beautiful, in song, in art, in the written word, in Creation. Growing up in the Episcopal Church, as children we sang:

“All Things Bright and Beautiful
All creatures great and small
All things wise and wonderful
The Lord God made them all”

God also reveals something in that still, small voice we hear with our heart, in our soul, in our gut. Isn’t that why we set aside time with God in silence, during the day, in prayer and meditation? For some it is an audible voice, for most of us it is not. I have not heard with my ears God speaking to me. I have not experienced God in a burning bush. And yet I know God speaks to me through the Holy Spirit; again, when I pay attention.

“In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being. What has come into Him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming unto the world.”

We read about John the Baptizer during Advent, in the Sunday Lectionary. On the Second Sunday of Advent, we read from the Gospel according to Luke, “…the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah, in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

On the third Sunday of Advent, we continued with the story of John speaking to the crowd that came to be baptized: “You brood of vipers!” And with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. You would have to get past the “brood of vipers part”, to hear good news. John knew his calling, sent from God as a witness to testify to the light, proclaim a baptism of repentance, proclaim good news.

John was not the light, but testified to the light. He was not the way, but prepared the way, pointed the way to God. And when the people questioned whether he might be the Messiah, he made it clear to them, “One who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals.” John could have tried to gain some glory for himself. He certainly gained notoriety, and not in a positive way. And John had his own followers. But always, always he pointed away from himself, toward Jesus, the Messiah.

And I think that is also our calling, when we share the Good News of Christ with others, it is not about us. We do not say, “Follow me”, believe what we believe, worship the way we worship. I think God calls us to share the Good News with others, so that they may find the Way to which God calls them. And as followers of Christ, we all share the Way, even though we may walk different paths.

Jesus is the Word spoken by God. Jesus made God available to us. Because of Him, we become children of God. Merry Christmas! The Rev. Robin Finch+

The Rev. Joseph Farnes

Longest Night Service

At Redeemer Lutheran, Boise

 “Mary”

          My name is Mary. To be the mother of the Messiah is an impossible task. To say yes to an angel, knowing full-well that things are never easy for the ones God chooses. God wants a world of justice, love, and peace – and the world strongly resists those. The world proclaims that this world of God is impossible. Where there is God’s justice, then where would profitability and wealth be? Where there is God’s love, then where would contempt and power be? Where there is God’s peace, then where would hatred and falsehood be? The world seems to cling too much to profit and power and falsehood to welcome the kingdom of God.

          And so I still said yes to the Angel Gabriel when he announced that God had chosen me to be the mother of Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Lord. If the world rejects justice, love, and peace, then surely the world would reject my son, too.

          And I was right.

          The world too busy to let a woman give birth in safety – and so my baby was born and placed in a manger.

          King Herod was so wrathful that we had to flee to Egypt as refugees – turning for safety to the land where my ancestors had been enslaved by the Pharaoh because my homeland was trying to kill my child.

          Returning and watching my young child grow up into a teacher, a sage, a prophet, a healer and wonder-worker – and knowing that soon the world would work to snuff out his light.

          And it did.

          Betrayed by a disciple, denied by his friends, convicted by council, and condemned by the governor to be crucified. And so I followed him, my baby, to his final breath.

          I was there at his first breath, and I was there at his last. Mothers aren’t supposed to suffer such grief. But I had an inkling, once the angel spoke. I had a feeling. And when that sage approached me in the Temple – that this child I held in my arms would cause upheaval and make the truth to be told – and that a sword would pierce my own soul, too. He wasn’t telling me something I didn’t already feel.

          If you have grief, sit next to me. I, too, know the long shadow of grief. If you have no one whose heart is broken over your suffering, sit next to me – I’ll be your mother, and my heart will break over your suffering.          

I said yes to be the mother of the Messiah – and I’ll say yes to you, too.