As many of you know, we have been thinking about the value of questions during this season of Lent, and our readings from the gospel of John each Sunday have raised a lot of them.  This week, I came across an article that invited us to be mindful of the kinds of questions we ask:  some questions help us to learn, to grow, and to find the new place where we belong.

Last week, I shared with you how our Gospel readings for the season of Lent offer us an opportunity to “listen in” on the questions that people ask Jesus, and the questions he asks of them.  “Our questions are our friends,” I reminded all of you, and they are Jesus’ friends too!

As we have moved through our first week in Lent, I have cherished the conversations I have had with many of you about this season.  Some of you have decades of memories that form the foundation of your Lenten journey, and others are experiencing the liturgical season of Lent for the first time.

Last night as I drove home from our evening Ash Wednesday service, I was listening to an interview on NPR's “Well Woman” show featuring three black women who had achieved remarkable success as entrepreneurs, even as they recognized the challenges they have faced in achieving balanced self-care. Anxiety, burnout, insecurity…all those things were hidden behind the veneer of being a “resilient, powerful leader.”

Like many of you, my heart is breaking for those who have lost their lives to the earthquake in Turkey and those who now struggle to survive in the rubble that remains. I grieve also for those who have lost their lives to war, gun violence, opioid addiction, and for those who suffer from hunger, economic insecurity, or any form of life-denying oppression. 

This week, as I spend a week away in California to be with my family, I have found a few quiet moments in the early morning to reflect on the meditations I receive in my inbox before everyone rises for the day – one of the benefits of the time difference.  I have been struck by two pieces written by poet/pastor Steve Garnass-Holmes,* who ponders the images of salt and light from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount that we will be hearing in church this Sunday.  

At our Annual Meeting last week, we celebrated all that we accomplished together this past year; and included among the highlights were the baptisms and weddings that brought families and friends in communion with one another after two years of pandemic. Preparing couples and young families for these sacred rites has been among the greatest honors of my ministry.

As I anticipate our Annual Meeting this morning and all that we have been called to be and do this past year, I have reflected upon the timeliness of the gospel story we are given for the day. It is Matthew’s version of the calling of Jesus’ first disciples, in which he tells them to “come, follow me.”

This morning we hear from the Gospel of John how Jesus launches his public ministry and calls his first disciples. And it begins with John the Baptist, who points Jesus out to the crowd at the Jordan River as the “Lamb of God.” Interestingly, even though John has just baptized Jesus and grew up knowing him as the son of his mother’s cousin, he continues, “I myself did not know him.”

Every year, on the first Sunday in Epiphany, we are given the story of Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan. This year, we read from the gospel of Matthew that as soon as Jesus was baptized by his cousin John, the skies open, the Spirit descends like a dove, and a voice from heaven says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

As I write, I am still basking in the afterglow of our Christmas services at St. John’s, and the joy that was shared by members of our congregation and choir, our family and friends, and the many visitors from our neighborhood and beyond who gathered to celebrate the birth of Christ. One of the advantages of officiating at a church service is that I have the best seat in the house when it comes to observing the faces of those who are seated in the pews, and there is nothing like the joy, love, and peace that radiates from them at Christmas. There are tears, too…expressing the full range of emotions that accompany this season.

Each year, on Christmas Eve, we read from the prophet Isaiah: 

The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness—

on them light has shined.

—from Isaiah 9:2–7

This past week during our Wednesday evening Advent program, the participants were invited to reflect upon some of the paradoxical blessings we’ve received in the most unexpected or unwelcome phases of our life journeys. As we looked back on the big stories of our lives, we came to realize that the disruptive and disturbing parts are quite often what make the stories memorable and even valuable to us.

As with many of you, the Christmas letters from friends and relatives are beginning to arrive in my mailbox (or inbox, since some are electronic). I always admire people who take the time to write these letters; I am not one of them and wish I were.