Wednesday of the First Week After the
Epiphany
Gospel
Mark 1:4-11
And it happened: John the Baptizer appeared in the wild,
proclaiming a baptism of repentance into the forgiveness of sins, and people
from the whole Judean country and all the people of
And John was being clothed with camel’s hair with a
leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And he was proclaiming,
“The one who is stronger than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop
down and untie the thong of his sandals. I baptized you with water, but he will
baptize you with a holy spirit.”
And it happened: Jesus from
Homily
This weekend
we had our first-ever (and, I am now able to say, first annual) Pasta & Pizza With the Pastors, to thank our many
worship assistants and ushers. The crowd was AMAZING. It just kept growing. First there were twenty. Then we had
thirty. Then on Saturday morning I got a phone call from Pastor Mary telling me
we were climbing into the sixties and we had to start planning more food. Food
was an amazing draw. That same weekend we celebrated The Baptism of Our Lord
and baptized little Tyler John Criscuolo at the
At the
Children’s Sermon on Sunday I invited the kids to look into the font, and there
was this perfect moment when I picked up Christopher Criscuolo so he could see
inside and he threw both arms up as if to say, huh? What am I supposed to see?
He couldn’t have done better if we had scripted it. There was nothing to it.
It’s a metal bowl. All we would put in it later was tap water. The food we
shared later was not much more. It was primarily bread and tomato products, but
it drew us by the dozens. The food we eat here in Holy Communion is even
simpler. It’s allegedly bread (and I must say, our hosts here taste a lot
better than many I have eaten) and it’s served with wine or juice. That’s a
quick and easy meal. Water, bread, & wine are basic. We consume them
without even thinking about it. They are about as ordinary as you can get. Food
and water draw every living thing to them, and all life depends upon them.
Friends of
Christ, God is something that basic, that ordinary, that essential. Just as we
need food and water to live we need God to live. Just as we eat and drink food
and water we eat and drink God. Just as food and water draw every living thing
to them God draws every living thing to God. God is our food and drink. God is
our sustainer. Friends of Christ food and drink have drawn us here this
morning. The body and blood of Christ have drawn us here. The Word has drawn us
here. The waters of baptism in which we each swim have drawn us here. The
coffee and tea and donuts and grapes in the overheated kitchen have drawn us
here! They have drawn us here because God, our source of life and our food, is
in them and in the community in which we share them.
Friends of
Christ, God is in the basics so that we may know that God is with us. We can
eat the bread and drink the wine, and God is with us. We can hear the Word and
God is with us. We can crowd around the kitchen table and God is with us. We
can leave this place when this Holy Communion ends and God is with us. God
takes the water, the bread and the wine, things that are ordinary, and makes
them into things that are extraordinary: the promise of forgiveness, the
assurance of the resurrection, the abiding presence of God with us in the body
and blood of Christ. In everything we do—in anything
we do—God takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. As we go about our day
today and perform whatever tasks await us, no matter how great or small, God is
making those things extraordinary and God is with us. Let’s share in the feast.
Amen