Jesus healing touch in the Lord's Supper: Sermon thoughts on Mark 1: 29-39

My paper for our weekly pericope study meeting now meeting at Augustana Lutheran in Hickory.

The story of the healing of Peter’s mother -in-law ( suffering from a  fever) comes right on the heals of last Sunday’s story of the casting out of the unclean spirit form the man in the synagogue. There the action is large and dramatic. A demon cries and confronts and challenges Jesus. His vaguely threatening jab ( “I know who you are”) is answered by the even stronger word of Jesus. Christ’s command, his word, his teaching with authority triumphs over the forces of Satan. It is a battle of two voices, God’s and Satan’s.

In this scene however the foe which confronts Jesus is much smaller, more on a familiar and recognizable scale. A fever.  A mother-in-law. We see sickness everyday, families in a house are well-known to all of us. The disciples tell Jesus about her and he comes and takes her by the hand, lifts her up and the fever leaves her. She then begins to minster to Jesus and the apostles who are lodged there.

The contrast with the previous story is great. Here the lesson seems to be that while the drama of the incarnation and atonement , the arrival of God in human flesh to work redemption, is cosmic in its scope (as the previous story told us) it is also individual and small, pertaining to each one and to each one’s sins and sorrows and  troubles. If Christ defeats the powers and principalities of this world, he also defeats the enemies hiding in the living room and the aches and pains that threaten a humble follower.

There is also a contrast in the method by which Jesus heals. In the previous story, the attention was all on the word of Jesus, his teaching, his voice. Here the attention is on his hands, his flesh.  (There is a contrast also, by the way, between Mark and Luke on this point. Luke has this story being very similar to the unclean spirit in the synagogue;  Jesus rebukes the fever and the fever departs.) Jesus heals Peter’s mother –in-law by taking her by the hand and lifting her up. The effect is as at once powerful and gentle. There is no rebuking, no speaking at all. The power resides in his touch, in his hand, in his body, in the flesh which the Word made flesh. While the instrument of healing differs between voice and touch, the one doing the healing remains the same. Christ can speak and what he says must be and he can also extend his saving power though his own body and blood.

There are (at least !) a couple of sermonic themes here. First is directing the hearers to find themselves in the person of Peter’s mother-in-law. Not many of us have been demon possessed (though surely under his influence and temptation and attack) but we have been all been sick, all had a fever, all been laid up in bed. Sickness which is small, troubles which harass, are nonetheless the object of God’s saving power in Christ, To put it more colloquially, no problem is too small for God. No sin is too small for God. The incarnation reaches human nature as a whole and every individual as a single created person in the image of God.

The second sermonic avenue worth exploring is the cross and eucharist. If Jesus rebuking the demon and teaching with authority pointed to the Word of the Gospel among us, the preached and written Word, then todays story points to the power of his flesh. The power, first of all, of the that flesh which by its passion crushes the hold of Satan and death. The gentle touch of Jesus and his lifting up Peter’s mother- in-law suggests his condescension to our sick and sinful and dying flesh and his lifting us up to eternal life through his resurrection. On the cross he burns with ever fever that has ever been, every cancer, every adultery, every lie, every sin. Yet he grabs us and does not let go until he has raised us up from our bed to stand with Him in his glory.

This same flesh which touched Peter’s mother-in-law and bled on the cross reaches to us in the Sacrament. The Lord’s Supper is the healing touch of Jesus among us. If His voice rebukes our sin and creates ex nihilo forgiveness, he also grabs us and lifts us up into his own glorious life by his body and blood given to us. He has not left us bereft of any aspect of his ministry. We do not have less than Simon’s mother in law. We have more. He gives us his very body and blood, God incarnate, for us to eat and drink. If his mere touch chased away a fever then we can know that the forgiveness of our sin is a sure and certain joy delivered by His sacrament.  

A final bit of information which is very interesting is the final comment that Mark makes about the effect of the healing : She began to serve them. All three Synoptics include the phrase δινκονει meaning to serve or minster.  Jesus heals and she begins to work. He has risen her up in order that she might ( in the words of Luther’s Catechism ) be his own live under him in his kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness innocence and blessedness.  In other words Jesus heals her nad what results is that she returns to her daily vocation of serving her household. Having been healed and her faith strengthened, her faith shows itself in her daily life and service that God has placed her in.

So it is for us in the Supper and the Divine service. We take Christ’s body ad blood and are not transported to some “spiritual” experience beyond our physical realm, but we are placed smack down in our jobs, families, houses and schools. One of the post communion collects mention that the purpose of the sacrament is “faith toward you and fervent love toward one another”.  Peters mother in law dsiplays that fervent love which results from reception of the Lord’s healing touch. The connection between the Lord’s supper and daily life is in the flesh and blood reality of both Christ and us. Christ gives his very body and blood which we receive with our very bodies, which bodies having been hallowed by the touch of the Word made flesh, go about their tasks with thanksgiving and strength. 

The forgettery of Jesus' dead human mind

For if  the world could have been saved by bookkeeping, it would have been saved by Moses, not Jesus. The law was just fine. And God gave it a good thousand years or so to see if anyone could pass a test like that. But when nobody did ~- when it became perfectly clear that there was no one who was righteous, not even one" (Rom. 3:10; Ps. 14:1-3), that "both Jews and Gentiles alike were all under the power of sin" (Rom. 3:9). God gave up on salvation by the books. He cancelled everybody's records in the death of Jesus and rewarded us all, equally and fully ~ with a new creation in the resurrection of the dead.

The only way to solve the problem of evil is for God to do what in fact he did: to take it out of the world by taking it into himself - down into the forgettery of Jesus' dead human mind - and to close the books on it forever. That way, the kingdom of heaven is for everybody; hell is reserved only for the idiots who insist on keeping nonexistent records in their heads." 

Robert Farrar Capon,,Kingdom, grace, judgment: paradox, outrage, and vindication in the parables,  p. 396.

(Thanks, Pastor Mietzner on Facebook)

Buildings Falling Down #4

Murrays Mill Road, Catawba, NC.

A mighty, active, restless busy thing

Faith is also a very mighty, active, busy thing which at once renews a man, gives him a second birth, and introduces him to a new manner and way of life, so that it is impossible for him not to do good without ceasing. For as naturally as a tree bears fruit, good works follow faith.

Luther, WA 10.3.285 cited in David Scaer, Law and Gospel and the Means of Grace. 81.

Those at religious workplaces afraid for loss of pensions

From the Christian Century


Sue Fritz tended to the sick for more than two decades as a nurse at St. Peter's University Hospital. 

By the time she left for another job in 1999, she was vested in the hospital's federally insured pension program -- confident her earned pension of $20,000 or more a year would be there for her when she eventually retired. 

That confidence was shattered last November when Fritz and 4,700 others vested in St. Peter's pension system received letters from the hospital saying it had changed its pension plan. 

Because of its religious affiliation, St. Peter's was able to switch to a "church plan," effectively exempting it from the safeguards of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), the 1974 federal law that governs pension plans. 

One of the ERISA safeguards is the requirement that companies pay insurance premiums on employee pensions -- essentially insuring that the money will be there. 

St. Peter's has verbally promised it would continue to pay for insurance, but without federal safeguards or written guarantees, employees are nervous that without pension insurance, if St. Peter's goes under, their pensions will likely disappear with it. 

"I don't think they have any intention of protecting us," said Fritz, 63, who now works at another hospital. "I'm very afraid for all of us." 

Tens of thousands of current and former employees at scores of religiously affiliated institutions across the country face the same fear, as nonprofits increasingly seek refuge in "church" pension plans to escape onerous financial obligations, according to Eric Loi, an attorney at the Washington-based Pension Rights Center. 

When companies with traditional plans fail, he said, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. provides nearly all payments to which retirees are entitled, but there is a maximum monthly ceiling. While there are limits on the monthly payments to retirees, the corporation pays 85 to 90 percent of all benefits due to retirees, Loi said. 

St. Peter's employees and retirees are not the first to feel blindsided by a sudden change in pension plans. According to Loi, a switch in 2004 at the now closed Hospital Center in Orange, N.J., sparked litigation that led to changes at the Internal Revenue Service. 

For more than 20 years, the Hospital Center paid insurance for its pension plan. But in 1998, when it was taken over by Cathedral Health Service, the pension plan was switched to a "church plan," Loi said. 

At the time, federal regulations did not require institutions to inform employees of a switch; the change was not made known until it came out at a 2003 staff meeting about the hospital's dire financial problems, Loi and others said. 

Mary Rich, a former vice president of patient services at the hospital, vividly remembers a nurse at the meeting asking if the pension was protected. 

"There was a lot of shuffling of feet and saying, 'We'll have to get back to you,' and mention of a church plan," said Rich, who now works in the health care field in southern New Jersey. 

When the hospital closed in 2004, employees discovered the pension was both underfunded and uninsured, Loi said. In 2007, the Pension Rights Center helped former Hospital Center employees file suit against, among others, the hospital, the Archdiocese of Newark, and the IRS for allowing the hospital pension to become a church plan. 

Loi estimates there is only enough money in the fund to pay former employees for three to five years. 

In response, the IRS initiated a nationwide moratorium on nonprofit and religiously affiliated institutions declaring their pension programs to be "church plans." 

But that moratorium was lifted in September when the IRS declared a nonprofit company or agency simply needed to notify all pension plan participants that it was seeking a church plan designation, Loi said. 

St. Peter's current and former employees received their notification last November. 

St. Peter's spokesman, Phil Hartman, said there is no reason for employees to be concerned. He said the hospital's pension system is a church plan and all safeguards are in place, and the hospital is following nearly every ERISA regulation, including providing insurance. 

"We continue to follow those guidelines," he said. "We are looking for ways to insure above and beyond the protections of (the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.)" 

Employees at other agencies across the country received notices late last year as well, informing them of pension system changes. Workers at some of these agencies are fighting the switch. In fact, said Loi, Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, D.C., withdrew its plan after protests from its employees. 

Last year, a Minnesota judge tossed out most of a lawsuit filed by retirees of a Lutheran publishing house, Augsburg Fortress, after it terminated its pension plan on Dec. 31, 2009 when it ran out of money. 

The judge ruled that Augsburg Fortress' plan was a "church plan" and not subject to ERISA guidelines on minimum funding; retirees sued to get the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to honor the pension promises. 

Augsburg Fortress pensioners are now trying to reclaim the $40 million they say they are owed under state breach-of-contract laws. 

Charles Schulz's Peanuts and Despair

I love this blog. 3eanuts

Charles Schulz's Peanuts comics often conceal the existential despair of their world with a closing joke at the characters' expense. With the last panel omitted, despair pervades all.

Ephraim Woodie and the Henpecked Husbands

"I met old Satan walking down the lane and I hit him in the head with a walking cane." 

Song is Chased Old Satan. Band is Ephraim Woodie and the Henpecked Husbands. It consited of three Woodie Brothers, Clay Reed, and Edison Nuckolls. It was recorded sometime between 1927 and 1931 in or near Ashe County, North Carolina. This is taken from a collection called Music from the Lost Provinces, available from Old Hat Records at http://www.oldhatrecords.com/cd1001.html .

I want this CD!

On the intersection of technology and tradition

Rogue Ringtone Halts a Maestro ....The final movement of Mahler's Ninth Symphony is a slow rumination on mortality, with quiet sections played by strings alone.

During the New York Philharmonic's performance Tuesday night, it was interrupted by an iPhone.

The jarring ringtone—the device's "Marimba" sound, which simulates the mallet instrument—intruded in the middle of the movement, emanating from the first row at Avery Fisher Hall.

When the phone wasn't immediately hushed, audience members shook their heads. It continued to chime, and music director Alan Gilbert turned his head sharply to the left, signaling his displeasure.

Minutes passed. Each time the orchestra reached a quiet section, the phone could be heard above the hushed, reverent notes.

Finally, Mr. Gilbert could take no more: He stopped the orchestra. Read the rest here. 

Big-time college sports = modern tribal religion

Big-time sports have become a modern tribal religion for college students. There are sacred symbols (team logos), a high priest (Coach K) and shared rituals (chants and face painting). 


From : How Big-Time Sports Ate College Life

I do not always pray

I do not always pray, nor do I always meditate on the law of the Lord and struggle continually with sin, death and the devil; but I put on my clothes, I sleep, I play with the children, eat, drink, etc. If all these things are done in faith, they are approved by God's judgment as having been done rightly.

Martin Luther, Commentary on Genesis, AE, Volume 6, 180.

Buildings falling down 3

Highway 70 between Catawba and Claremont. January 5, 2012

At least John and Yoko did it to end war

Pastor and wife preach married sex with 24-hour 'bed-in'

This is for real, not a satire. 

And then one wonders why the church is not taken seriously?

To encourage members of his congregation and others to take part in what he calls a “sexperiment,” Dallas pastor Ed Young and his wife Lisa began staging a "bed-in" on Friday morning, laying in a bed on the roof of their Texas church for 24 hours.

They say they want to illustrate that sex begins in heaven.

“It’s time to put the bed back in church and God back in the bed because God is the one that thought sex up," says Ed Young, senior pastor of Fellowship Church.

Why the Hosanna-Tabor case is important ... by the guy who argued the case

Why the Tabor case is important by the guy who argued the case ... Douglas Laycock, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Virginia, who represented Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in the case the Supreme Court decided Wednesday.

Here is his conclusion:

Both the rules for selecting ministers, and the evaluation of ministers in individual cases, are decisions for the nation’s religious organizations – not the government. That is the welcome meaning of Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision.

Here is his whole piece:

(CNN) - Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision holding that ministers cannot sue their churches for employment discrimination was a huge win for religious liberty. It was unanimous, it was sweeping and it was unqualified.

This decision was about separation of church and state in its most fundamental sense. Churches do not run the government, select government leaders, or set criteria for choosing government leaders.

And government does not run the churches, select religious leaders, or set criteria for choosing religious leaders. The Court unanimously reaffirmed that principle on Wednesday.

Cheryl Perich was a commissioned minister at the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School in Redford, Michigan. She taught religion every day; she led prayers and devotional exercises every day; she planned and led chapel services.

She also taught the rest of the fourth-grade curriculum. She was required to complete eight college-level theology courses; she was “called” to her office by a vote of the congregation; and she was commissioned as a “Minister of Religion.”

When she got sick, Hosanna-Tabor carried her at full pay and full benefits for seven months. This was a terrible hardship in a church and school with seven teachers, 84 students and deep financial problems.

In its effort to preserve a job for Perich to return to, the school put three grades in one classroom for a whole semester. It went far beyond the requirements of law in its efforts to accommodate her disability.

Finally, at the semester break, the school reluctantly decided it had to replace her. When she provoked a confrontation at the school and threatened to sue the church, the congregation rescinded her call, for insubordination and for violating one of the church doctrines she was supposed to teach and model.

There was a well developed church grievance process that she could have used, run by the denomination, with hearing officers independent of the local church.

And there was longstanding church teaching that disputes over ministry must be resolved in that process, by Lutherans who understood the church and its faith, and not by the civil courts.

The details of this employment dispute were not the issue in the Supreme Court. Rather, the issue was who decides.

If ministers were allowed to sue for employment discrimination, judges and juries would wind up deciding who is a good minister, worthy of retention, and who is not. These cases end with a jury deciding whether the employer had a good enough reason to justify its decision.

In Perich’s case, a jury would have decided whether she was fit for Lutheran ministry even after she defied Lutheran teaching.

The Supreme Court unanimously said that ministers cannot sue their churches for employment discrimination. It defined “ministers” broadly, to include priests and rabbis and imams and persons with mixed religious and secular duties.

And it said that the church need not explain its decision, because the reasons are none of the court’s business. The selection and retention of ministers is entirely the responsibility of the churches.

Some churches will exercise this authority wisely; some may not. Denominations and associations of churches would do well to establish grievance procedures that really work, like the one that Cheryl Perich failed to use.

But whatever the ratio of wise decisions to bad decisions, it is far better for the American tradition of religious liberty for the selection of ministers to be entrusted to the churches those ministers serve.

Wednesday’s decision also protects the right of churches to define the qualifications of their clergy. Some churches have requirements that are forbidden to secular employers.

Catholics, Orthodox Jews, and some Protestant denominations do not ordain women. Catholics require celibacy, violating laws on marital status discrimination in many states. Some denominations refuse to ordain sexually active gays and lesbians, violating sexual orientation laws in many states.

There are no exceptions written into the discrimination laws to protect these longstanding religious practices. They have been protected only by the constitutional rule that the Court reaffirmed Wednesday – that ministers cannot sue their churches for employment discrimination.

Of course, some members of these faiths would like to change these rules. But who is eligible for ordination is a theological issue to be fought out within each religious tradition, not an issue to be decided by courts or legislatures.

It would be absurd for courts to order an end to Catholic celibacy rules, or to entertain a class action alleging that women are underrepresented in the clergy of some denomination that ordains women but has not ordained as many women as men. The legal rule that prevents such lawsuits is the ministerial exception that the Supreme Court reaffirmed Wednesday.

Both the rules for selecting ministers, and the evaluation of ministers in individual cases, are decisions for the nation’s religious organizations – not the government. That is the welcome meaning of Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision.

If you've got it all together, you don't need to go

"I remember, you know, you go to these parties on Saturday night and people would say, about 8:00 on Sunday morning "Whoa, I have to go - I gotta get to church!" People would say, "Why do you want to go to church, all those hypocrites." And I say, "Look, why do I want to stay here with all you hypocrites?"


I never knew why going to church made you a hypocrite. They'd say because you go to church and you're all "Holy, Holy, Holy" for two or three hours, and then you go home and sin. I'd say "exactly!" For two or three hours you're doing pretty good! Maybe the problem isn't that you go to church, maybe the problem is that you go home! I never understood why going to church made you a hypocrite either, because nobody goes to church because they're perfect. If you've got it all together, you don't need to go. You can go jogging with all the other perfect people on Sunday morning 


Every time you go to church, you're confessing again to yourself, to your family, to the people you pass on the way there, to the people who will greet you there, that you don't have it all together. And that you need their support. You need their direction. You need some accountability, you need some help."


From grasshoppers dreaming

Marines attacking Rome, Churchill's drinking, Pastor Con Man, Old food

Marines attacking Rome,

Churchill was not a beer man,

a Con man turned pastor turned Con man

What happens to old food: “We put enough preservatives in our food to embalm an elephant"

Singing, shooting, praying, drinking

A review of "Satan Is Real: The Ballad of the Louvin Brothers", a bio of the Louvin Brothers, a great country gospel duet. They led a wild life but put out some of the greatest country and gospel tunes ever. Harmonies from out of this world. 

Here is taste of their wonderful sound:

The joys of English Pronunication

The joys of English Pronunciation

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

I want this map

The Greatest Paper Map of the United States You’ll Ever See

39.99, laminated, or 12.95 folded.

Epiphany: mission statement of the Church

As the season of Epiphany approaches, I thought I would share this article from January 2011 Forum Letter.


Epiphany: mission statement of the Church
By Paul Gregory Alms

No word is used more often in church circles these days than mission. It has 
picked up a plural over the centuries (missions) and morphed recently into an adjective 
(missional). Almost every congregation is expected to have a mission statement. In some quarters there is talk of little else besides mission in all its forms. This emphasis is a salutary one and has borne much positive fruit in the Christian community over the past few decades. 

The word mission derives from the Latin missio, sending, and it touches on the heart of the Gospel testimony that the Father sent his Son to the world for salvation and that same Christ sent the apostles (the word apostle itself is derived from the Greek word for .to send,. apostellein) and the church into the world to preach the Gospel to sinners. Missio Dei sums up much, if not everything, about the church's vocation in the world. 

But these days talk of mission often proceeds as if Christians have never really practiced mission before the advent of the church growth movement or since the church woke up and discovered itself in a .new mission paradigm. with the surrounding culture having been drained of its putative Christian content. Most writing and speaking on this subject sounds as if the church is creating mission out of nothing every few years. Everything is thought to be new: a new situation, a new strategy, new goals, new results. 

"Doing mission" nothing new 

This is wrong-headed on several counts. The church has been "doing missions" (as we say these days) ever since the church began, and it has never stopped. Pagan Europe was converted to the faith well before Donald McGravan. The push to develop mission strategies ex nihilo every few years turns the church into a scatterbrain, hurrying this way and that way with no apparent purpose. Such scurrying ignores the Christians who have gone before. Surely our situation is not so bizarrely new that there is no continuity at all between us and our forebears. We are not the first saints who meet a large number of unbelieving people around us. The church of the past has wisdom to share. The church is not born with a missional blank slate every generation. 

In fact, the church has already written the greatest mission statement ever and dropped it in our lap. It is the Epiphany season of the church year. The church has never been unaware of the need for reflection on the centrifugal nature of its life. It devoted an entire season out of only six to precisely this topic. The season of Epiphany proclaims the great mission texts of the New Testament: the evangelization of the Magi, the testimony of the Father at the baptism of Jesus, the missionary tours of Jesus and the apostles. The season's structure, its texts, hymns and color, gives a vital template for the church.s mission. The Epiphany season was missional before there was such a word. 

God made flesh 

The season's progression from Magi to Baptism of Jesus to the preaching of Jesus himself to the Transfiguration is itself a mission blueprint. The story of the Magi places the Son of God in his Incarnation at the very center of the church's proclamation. What the church calls sinners to is not some vague goodness or love. It is the enfleshed God himself. The real presence on earth of the Creator, his presence in the tangible body of one born of a woman, is the miracle at the heart of the church. The Magi do not come to worship an idea or a philosophy; they bow down before a human being, God in flesh made manifest. 

The connection between the Magi and the church today is at the altar, in the real presence of Christ now in the Eucharist. The mission of the church is not one focused on numbers or growth or any other quantifiable goal. It is to lead people to, and keep them in communion with, the life-giving and death-defeating flesh of Jesus. That contact comes in its highest and most profound way in the sacrament of Christ.s Body and Blood. As the Magi knelt in humble and awe-filled faith, so the church fulfills her mission by bringing her children, large and small, to the sacramental manger, to kneel and worship and receive that same Christ. 

If Epiphany shows us the Incarnation and Eucharist as the center of the church's life and mission, it also shows us Baptism as the foundation of that life. The first Sunday after the Epiphany takes us to the waters of the Jordan where we recall the Advent preaching of the Baptizer. To those far off, those who had, in sorrow over sin, forsaken the borders of the promised land, John sternly preached repentance. In the season of Epiphany the accusing finger of John is replaced by the saving voice of the Father which points no longer to the sins of those 
wishing to draw near but to the dripping wet figure of his Son leading the way into the water. Mission preaching leads to the font. 

Beyond the Jordan 

The place of this reading at the beginning of the Epiphany season and the status of the river Jordan as a border between the wilderness and the place of God.s presence in the temple and in the land of promise makes this text significant for the theology of mission. Entry into the church takes on a specific shape. It is wet and it is filled with the figure of the God/man who is the substitute for sinners. Not having crossed the border, not having been buried in the Jordan with Jesus, people remain foreigners. 

In pursuit of her mission, the church is sometimes tempted to devise her own strategies in trying to engage the culture in a fresh way. Such improvisation may be warranted or useful, but it must never be at the cost of losing sight of what is eternal in the New Testament proclamation itself. The season of Epiphany in its structure and readings reminds us of this. Those whom the mission calls to join Christ and his church are on the other side of the Jordan. We ourselves by our sins and selfishness find ourselves on the wrong shore of that heavenly stream. Baptism must always be the underpinning sacrament, the life-giving flood offering new birth, the ocean of forgiveness which Christ calls us forever to swim. Mission paradigms, strategies for evangelizing the world or the neighborhood, that do not lead to and through the water of Baptism risk losing connection to him who began his ministry in that very water. 

Catechetical green 

The liturgical color of the season of Epiphany is green. This humdrum fact takes on some weight when one looks at the season from a missiological perspective. The season of Epiphany teaches us that mission is a long-viewed, patient activity of the church. It involves growth and maturity in the Gospel. It leads the church on a tour with Jesus around Galilee to hear him preach and to witness his mighty acts. The church's mission aims at heaven. We are in it for the long haul. The church is dressed, in other words, in green, catechetical green. We are not in the business of growing dandelions, blowing the seeds of the gospel to the winds and then hoping for a bunch of fast growing but ephemeral flowers that bloom and then disappear. 

No, the church is more like a forester who, seeing a burned-out section of forest, begins planting seedlings, tending, watering, planning for and envisioning a vast forest of towering trees. Such Christians have roots that stretch deep into the scriptural, sacramental, Gospel foundation of earth and soil so that no storm may damage them. The church's mission is to nourish Christians on the words of Christ, season after season, so that they 
may reach his fullness. 

Seeing Christ as he is 

This eschatological point of view asserts itself clearly in the grand finale of the Epiphany season: the Transfiguration. Here the Magi scene repeats itself, transposed to a heavenly, eternal key. Once more God in flesh is at the center and surrounded by worshiping mortals. But now it is no longer the travelers from the east but the glorified saints of old and the trembling church militant that stand around Christ. And the saints see Christ as he is: filled with divine light, the promise of the manger now fulfilled. This is the goal of the Epiphany season, to manifest Christ to all for the sake of salvation and worship and praise, the purpose for which we 
were created. 

Epiphany and the mission of the church are one at this point. The church.s mission is to bring sinners to the beatific vision of Christ. The mission of the church is pointed squarely at the divine light that overshadowed that ancient mountain. The Transfiguration shows us how important the work we do in the church really is. We are not simply tallying numbers or building a .successful. enterprise. Christ is leading us up Mount Tabor, leading us up Calvary, leading to the Mount of the Ascension, leading us to that eternal moment of worship. 

The Epiphany season is the church's mission statement. And as anyone knows who has been through agonizing sessions trying to craft a perfect congregational mission statement, every word and phrase and sentence ends up being of great consequence. So it is with the mission of the church. Epiphany sets out the vision with tremendous care, each part honed by the Spirit-led experience of centuries, crafted by countless bishops, pastors and saints. We do well to listen carefully, to pray and worship fervently during this season. Our mission to this dying world can only be strengthened as we shape our own lives in the light of God in flesh made manifest. 

Paul Gregory Alms is pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church (LCMS), Catawba, NC.