January 18, 2004

Second Sunday after Epiphany

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Look Out Below

     Things can happen, great things can happen when we look up to the heavens.

     In 1954, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. received his PhD and was called to become the new pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery Alabama.  A third generation preacher who grew up in a Christian home, Dr. King certainly knew about looking up to the heavens for inspiration.  But until December 1955, he did not fully realize the great plan God had for his life.  Up to that point, Dr. King was just going about the business of leading his flock like any good pastor would, but then something happened that changed everything.  That day, December 1, 1955, Mrs. Rosa Parks, an African-American seamstress riding the bus home from work, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger.

     This incident inspired Dr. King and other community leaders to action.  They felt the time had come for protest.  They asked for a city-wide non-violent boycott of the bus company.  It lasted for 381 days, until at last the United States Supreme Court declared Alabama’s bus segregation laws illegal.  It was a great success and Dr. King had shown that peaceful protest could bring about real change.  The American civil rights movement was born and The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was now a man on a mission out to change the world.

     Many centuries before Dr. King, another basically unknown preacher stepped from relative obscurity into the center of social upheaval and change.  Jesus stepped out of the water of the Jordan River, looked up to the heavens and a dove descended and a voice spoke: “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.”  At that very moment, Jesus’ life began anew. 

     We know that up until his baptism, Jesus lived a mostly unremarkable life.  We know this because there is practically no one mention of him up to that point.  There were, of course, the two accounts of his miraculous birth (Matthew and Luke) and also Luke’s story about his visiting the temple when he was twelve years old, but that‘s it.  There are almost thirty years of silence.

     Do you think Jesus prayed during that time?  Do you think he looked to the heavens for inspiration?  Of course he did.  But on this particular day he saw what he did not see before.  This day it all became clear.  “Look out below“, for this day the dove was coming down and everything changed in Jesus‘ life.  Thirty years passed and no one hade bothered to make a note of it until this day.  Now everything Jesus said and did was charged with significance.  He was a man on a mission out to change the world.  

     Some scholars believe the day of Jesus’ baptism was the day he became the Christ, the Savior.  Interesting thought.  Certainly, this was the day his ministry really took off.  This story of his baptism and the beginning of his ministry was so important to the people of the first century that it is the first story all four Gospel writers chose to tell. 

     Perhaps this was because the story strikes a chord with anyone who has looked up to the heavens, maybe for a really long time, maybe for many years, waiting for that moment, waiting for that inspiration to come, that great mission to begin.  I don’t know how old the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was, but Jesus was about thirty years old.  It can take thirty years, or fifty, or eighty.  We may need to live a lot before we’re at the right place in our lives, at the right moment for the inspiration to come, for the great mission God has planned for us to be fully realized.  We may need to experience some things first, some blessed things, some tragic things until we are ready, until the time is right.

“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,” says the psalmist in Psalm 130, “and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.”

     And are we not all looking for the dawn?  Do we not all seek that great inspiration from above, that descending dove, that sense of calling, that great purpose, that great mission?  Wait for it.  Watch for it.  Keep looking up and let life and your faith bring you to that place, that moment that is right. 

     This can take some discipline and patience and Lord knows, we aren‘t very good at either of these things.  We live in a gotta-have-it now society of immediate gratification.  We expect everything in an instant, but God doesn’t work that way.  God isn’t working on our watch.  God knows we need to discover that the Almighty is not at our beck and call.  God is not a switch we flip to get the current going and the lights on and we may need to sit in the dark a long time to figure that out.  It might take thirty years…or more.  But if we’ll listen, really listen and wait and watch, the dawn will come.  Not everyone sees it because a lot of people sleep or work right through it.  Only those who watch, see.  Only those who listen, hear.

     I understand that a former pastor, the Rev. Alan Hermansader, used to say we need to listen for the ‘noodges’, the little nudges of the Holy Spirit.  They may come as the first small spark of an idea, a simple opportunity, the almost undetectable soft breath of the Spirit, but they come most assuredly, they come to all who have ears to hear as Jesus would say.  They come to all who listen, really listen and wait and watch for the dawn, for the dove.

     Last Sunday, a truly remarkable thing happened - our furnace froze up!  I stepped into the sanctuary when I opened up the church and it was thirty degrees in here.  Perhaps we could have set up folding chairs and worshipped in the Fellowship Hall instead, but as we found out this past Thursday evening at choir rehearsal, getting the hall comfortably warm on such a cold day may not have been possible. 

     Friends in need are friends indeed they say, so your moderator and I thought we should call our friends up the street.  Rev. Lee Ireland and the people of Second Congregational Church warmly welcomed us into their warm sanctuary. 

     Thrown together at the last minute, it turned out to be a wonderful service where music, prayer and praise blended together, two congregations worshipping as one.  And when their men’s room pipes froze and burst and Phil and Matt ran to the rescue, we got to be their friends indeed when they were in need.  Fellowship time lasted forty-five minutes and all the coffee they made and all the goodies Louisa carried up from our kitchen were gobbled up.  Later, I stayed to advise their Confirmation class in their first boat-building session.

     Now, was that a big “noodge” or what?  Are we listening now, watching, waiting?  Is a dove descending?  Is God calling us to some great mission even after all these years?

     I guess the best way to find out is to keep looking up and watching for that dawn and believing God has great things in store for this church, great things in store for each of us.