Episcopal Church of the Messiah

Worship Service Sermons

January 20, 2008

 Dr. Larry Budner

When I was learning how to do psychotherapy with children, going over my cases with a supervisor was like spending time with a prophet. I would describe my children’s play and the stories they’d tell, and my supervisor, never having met them, would tell me many things about their anxieties, their relations with their parents, and their wishes for the future. "How can you tell that?" I’d ask. "I can’t see what you can see." Patiently, the supervisor would show me that I was seeing everything I needed to see, but that I didn't understand its importance or context. Little by little, I learned not only to see, but to understand and then to take action to help.

John the Baptist is the one who helps us see clearly what is already in front of us, and he does this as a bridge between the ageless tradition and something new. "Look," he says, over and over again, "look, here is the Lamb of God." "Here is the Son of God." "Here is the one who takes away the sin of the world." "Here is the one on whom the Spirit has descended." "Look!" Obviously, many looked but didn’t see, because he has to say this to people over and over again.

Now, John doesn’t just say "look." Saying "look" means pointing out what is there. In order to help them see, he also has to say "remember." In his speeches, he is saying "remember" over and over again. Remember the reality of God and sin. Remember the promises of a coming redeemer. Remember the presence of the Holy Spirit and the power of water to purify. Remember all these things you learned in Scripture. If you remember, and then look where I’m pointing, you will see what I see.

And not only seeing! Once the disciples can see, they can take action. They can follow Jesus, accept his invitation to stay, and then help others learn to see what they themselves now see clearly. And so the Kingdom of God starts growing.

Now, what I would like you all to see, is that this Gospel is timeless and is happening in our midst continuously. Using our trusty Anglican three-legged stool, we can understand how this is so. First is our grounding and familiarity with Scripture, the first of the three legs. When we as a congregation make a commitment to read the Bible and become familiar with scripture, we are responding to the spirit of John in our midst saying "remember, remember; you need to know these stories to understand what is happening around you."

Next, in this congregation we tell each other, "look, look." Look at the goodness of God’s creation. Look at the reality of sin in our lives. Look at what happens to people when they spend time in prayer or in service to their neighbor. Look at signs of forgiveness between enemies and signs of new life in the people around us. Look at people experiencing God’s grace in their lives. Look at how you can use the Bible to understand these things. This is the second leg of the stool, the living tradition of the Church, mediating between past and present, taking us from "remember, remember" to "look, look."

Once we have remembered, looked, and learned to see, we act. We ourselves sit down, quiet ourselves, and spend time in prayer. We spend time with the poor. In doing this, we are leaving John’s side and tapping Jesus on the shoulder, saying, "Where do you live?" And Jesus gives the answers we know so well: "I live in your heart, when you let me in, and I live with the poor and suffering souls around you." We’ve heard him say this many times, but now we can see more clearly; this is the third leg, reason. Not cold analytical logic, but reason as deep understanding using our hearts and minds together.

This cycle never ends. In learning psychotherapy, even when I got good at understanding the behavior of my child patients, there were always deeper levels of communication to recognize. Once I got the hang of it, the more I spent time with kids, the more I understood them. In the same way, we’re always at John’s side, and he’s always telling us "remember, remember" and "look, look." And then we go and spend time with God with increasing intimacy and love.

That we can do this for each other, that we can be John the Baptist to each other and to newcomers and to our neighbors, is a big part of our calling at the Church of the Messiah. May we all help each other to remember who we are, to see who is in our midst, and to take action with love and compassion in fulfilling the mission we have chosen.

Amen.