Vigil with the Word: Year C, Second Sunday after Epiphany

The texts for the Second Sunday after Epiphany are:

John 2:1-11
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm 36:5-10

My commentary on these texts focuses on the Psalm and on the Epistle.

John 2:1-11

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’ His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

This is the first miracle attributed to Jesus in John’s Gospel. I think a lot about miracles. Patients ask me to pray for miracles.  Sometimes I bear witness to miracles. But a lot of the time, I bear witness to unfulfilled prayers for miracles. And sometimes, I wish I could order up a miracle.

I care for pediatric patients in one of the hospitals where I work.  I got to know a patient who will likely not make it into the double digits. It seems so miraculously unfair. This vibrant soul, who is precocious and hilarious and gentle, needs a miracle. But this little patient will most likely not see a miracle.

And this hurts. I wish I could order up a miracle like Jesus ordered up wine for this wedding. There’s very little comfort in saying, “God is with you.” I wrestle with faith and what God is up to in so much pain. But in all my frantic grasping, one of the few things I can hold onto is, “God does stuff.”  God makes something out of nothing. I don’t know how it works, but God does stuff. In the form of water into wine and in the form of joy in ICUs, despite all evidence to the contrary.  God does stuff.

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says ‘Let Jesus be cursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.

 Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

I spend a lot of time working with patients experiencing cognitive decline.  Who flicker in and out of awareness.  Whose spirits are still whole, but whose minds are fragmented into memories of now, then, and never.

To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Every once in awhile, I see a flicker of vibrant spirit and of the beautiful soul that exists behind the wall of the dementia. The gifts bestowed by the Holy Spirit that are still there. I visited a patient recently who was a pianist. Who was in the grip of dementia, frantically pacing the halls searching for the world, and would sit down at the piano and play a perfectly executed minuet or sonata in between laps. The river of music trickling down the hall of the memory care unit, bringing beauty into such a dark place.

All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.

Our elders with dementia, tucked away in euphemistically named “gardens” and “villas” and “neighborhoods” for their own protection and the protection of our sensibilities, have abundant gifts of the Spirit.  The mystery of what the Holy Spirit is up to never ceases to amaze me. And sometimes inspires me to sit down at the piano and play a minuet myself.

Psalm 36:5-10

Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. 
Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
 your judgments are like the great deep;
   you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.


How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings. 
They feast on the abundance of your house,
and you give them drink from the river of your delights. 
For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light.


O continue your steadfast love to those who know you,
and your salvation to the upright of heart!

I get the honor of seeing steadfast love in action all the time.  Of adult children who care for their aging parents in living rooms. Of nurses and aides who wipe foreheads and offer water tenderly. Of elderly parents who sit at the bedsides of their middle aged children. Of people who show up day after day in love.

Human love is imperfect, but it is beautiful. And I think it is God’s steadfast love that helps us love one another. This psalm is one of praise, but I think it is also one of pleading with God to continue to show up. Of begging in the dark of night, “Continue your steadfast love!” Because caretaking is love all jumbled up with pain.

A son asks me, “Does it mean I love him less if I resent him sometimes?”

A daughter weeps, “I wish sometimes she would just die in her sleep, and then I don’t have to worry about her anymore.”

In your light we see light. All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

I pray a lot for deep peace and rest. For families and patients to know the deep comfort that can only be found in the divine, because comfort on this side of heaven can be so fleeting. 

Lord, shelter your beloved under your wings. Help them take refuge from the burden of loving.  Love them steadfastly.

Pastoral Care reflections on the Revised Common Lectionary

As part of a discipline for myself with integrating the roster of Word and Sacrament with my role of chaplain, I plan to start publishing weekly reflections on the lectionary.

As a chaplain, I am a vessel for holding sacred stories.  I am present in some of the most holy and painful spaces of life and death.  These dance beautifully with the sacred stories of scripture.

I feel like I need a better title for this endeavor, so I am open to suggestions. I am feeling like "Vigil and the Word" or "Vigil with the Word" might fit.   So, stay tuned while I try to figure this out.

A brief cliff notes version of what the Lectionary is appears in this post, a series I wrote a couple years ago.  

Liturgy series part V: Sermon

Preaching on Epiphany at HFASS,
January 2013.  With the Abelkis clan.

Apologies that I am a day late with this post.  I have been working on producing a sermon for tonight at my congregation, Humble Walk Lutheran Church.

Preaching is one of the most misrepresented parts of the liturgy.  I think we often view it merely as a preacher standing behind a massive stone pulpit and issuing pedantic edicts to us in some sort of holier-than-thou persona.  If that is all that preaching is all about, why wouldn't we have a huge distaste for it?!

Preachers are portrayed in popular culture as buttoned up men who preach fire and brimstone judgment of others.  This rests on at least two problematic assumptions.  First, there are many different types of people who are called to be ministers of Word and Sacrament (in other words, pastors).  My denomination ordains women, LGBTQ persons, and so on.  Next, that it is the preacher's role to be above judgment and to tell others what God thinks of them.  This could also not be further from the truth.

My own understanding of what it means to be a preacher has been profoundly shaped by Gordon Lathrop's book, The Pastor: a Spirituality.  In this book, Lathrop discusses the pastor as being a broken symbol that points ever more closely to God as seen in Christ on the Cross.  The pastor is just as broken as all others.  Another formative piece for me is the Lutheran understanding of the priesthood of all believers.  This underscores that as a result of our baptism, we are all charged with preaching and carrying out the Gospel.  Some of us are set aside to preach and preside, but never set above.

The sermon is the point in the liturgy where the scriptures interact with the world.  Today as I prepare to preach on the Good Samaritan text, I am finding myself being ripped apart by the news of the Zimmerman verdict.  "Who is our neighbor?"  Stay tuned, there will be a blog post about this.

There are all sorts of methods for producing a sermon. Probably as many different methods as there are preachers.  I thought I would share my method.

1. Determine what text I will be preaching on (sometimes determined by the lectionary, sometimes selected based on a theme, sometimes picked for me by the pulpit supply congregation, etc.)

2. Read that text in a couple different translations and in my Greek-English interlinear Bible.

3. Begin mulling over the text.  I ask questions of it.  Pray about it.  Talk about it with a ton of people. Sometimes I crowd source my sermon questions on social media.

4. Go to text study.  A text study is a group of pastors, church leaders or other interested folks who study the texts with the intent of preaching them.  We talk about the implications of the text for our contexts and I draw on the wisdom of others.

5. Sometimes I consult commentaries and other resources.  Sometimes I don't.  One of my favorites is The Hardest Question, which reflects on the most difficult parts of the text.  I sometimes consult Working Preacher and usually look over The Text This Week.  I sometimes will do a google image search for images to pique my thought process.  I participate in the blogging discussion at RevGalBlogPals to engage with others about the sermonating process.

6. I usually begin my sermon with my own description of the text.  I refer to this as "opening up the text."  As I do this, I find that there are different things that stick out to me and I see things in a new way.

7. I sit quietly and wait for words to come.  Sometimes they do and I start writing.  Sometimes they don't, so instead I go for a walk or do some chores around the house to make space to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying.

8. I generally end up writing two or three drafts of a sermon.  It always feel inadequate. But I choose to trust that the Holy Spirit will make something out of my words.

9. I pray a silent prayer that God would have my words be what they would be.  Then I preach.

10. I set aside all of my feelings about the way I preached the sermon and let it be.


Here are a few things that I hold true about preaching:

a. Preaching is a dynamic art.  A sermon is something that occurs for a specific community at a specific time.  Those same circumstances will never be replicated again.  This is why I do not believe in recycling sermons in their entirety.

b. Preaching is not a one-way communication, from preacher to congregation. Rather it is a continuation of a conversation that has occurred all week about the text.  The preacher is speaking to a specific community, and they should see themselves in the sermon.  The essence of the Gospel is "for you."

c. Sermons tie together the text with the times.  You cannot ignore what is going on in yourself, your community, and the world.  Keep one eye on the scriptures and one eye on the newspapers, as the old quote goes.  Or more accurately in my case, one eye on the twitter feed.

d. There are many ways to preach. It is not just someone standing behind a pulpit.  You can engage in conversational small groups, you can act out the scriptures, you can do a literal crowd sourcing sermon during the service.  The possibilities are endless.

Jesus watching over my Greek translations

Up next:
Part VI: Prayers of the People

Liturgy Series Part IV: Reading the Scriptures

A. Hanson, Luther Seminary.  2013

The next portion of the liturgy is the Word portion. In this portion of the liturgy, we hear the scriptures and hear the word preached in a sermon.  We then proclaim that word with the hymn of the day, confess our faith with one of the creeds, offer prayers of intercession, and finally share the peace with one another.

We read from the Bible each week as part of our liturgy.

There are many different translations of the Bible into English from its original language of Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament).  My favorite translation is the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and is also the most widely accepted for academic study.  

The Old Testament (more correctly called the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible) includes three parts: 

The Torah: First five books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy)

The Nevi'im: Prophetic books. There are major and minor prophets

The Ketuvim: The writings (miscellaneous collection of books including Psalms, Song of Songs, etc).  

The New Testament includes four Gospels.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke are considered to be the Synoptic Gospels because they have many similar stories and tell the story of Jesus.  John's Gospel also tells the story of Jesus, but does so in a way that has a higher Christology (which means that Jesus is said to be the Son of God, God incarnate, etc).  The Book of Acts is the second part of Luke's Gospel and was written by the same author or group.  The remaining books in the New Testament are letters written by Paul and other early Christian leaders to specific Christian communities.  

The Bible is best viewed as a library of individual books instead of one cohesive whole.  This library is called a canon and represents the books that are generally agreed upon to be authentic.  There are also non-canonical books, called the Apocrypha, that are used in some traditions, but have some more disputed origins.  

The readings from scripture each week include a First Reading (usually from the Old Testament), a Psalm that is chanted or sung, a Second Reading (also called an Epistle and from the New Testament) and a Gospel reading from one of the four Gospels.  

There are several ways to select readings for a given Sunday.  The ELCA usually uses what is known as the Revised Common Lectionary.  This is a three-year plan for reading scripture and focuses on a different synoptic Gospel each year.  Year A is Matthew, Year B is Mark, and Year C is Luke (which is what we are in presently).  Readings from the Gospel of John are used in the seasons of Christmas, Lent, and Easter.   The lectionary attempts to tell the story of our Christian faith in a way that corresponds with the church year. 

There is a downside to using this lectionary because the readings appear to be fragmented and there are huge chunks of the Bible that never appear in lectionary texts.  In an attempt to tell a more cohesive story, two professors from Luther Seminary, Rolf Jacobsen and Craig Koester, have developed the narrative lectionary, a relatively recent invention.  This is a four year lectionary cycle that covers the sweep of the Biblical story from Creation through Paul's letters to the early Christian church.  The aim behind the narrative lectionary is to help tell our story as people of God.  

Additionally, congregations can select their own readings to correspond to a sermon series or theme for the congregation.  The preacher will build their sermon off of one or more of the readings.  

Part V: Sermon