All Things Seen and Unseen

Poor Thomas gets such a bad rap for being a doubter, for being a sceptic, for not having the faith to believe when all around him are believing. We remember Thomas for his doubt. It’s kind of comforting for the rest of us to think “Thank God I’m not like Thomas, I haven’t seen but I believe!” But why do we believe? Belief has bad press at the moment—people do weird things because they believe in something too much.
We remember how Thomas doubted: “Unless I see the marks, unless I touch the wounds, I will not believe.” But Thomas had a better line a few chapters before. Remember when Jesus was breaking it to his disciples that he was going to risk travelling to see Martha and Mary and Lazarus, even though the authorities were trying to find a way of getting rid of him. Then, even as all the other disciples are grumbling and afraid and doubtful, Thomas is the one who grasps the true meaning of what Jesus is about to do. Jesus is going to bring life to Lazarus but Thomas understands that Jesus is also starting the journey that will end in tears and blood and his own death. Thomas believes and says, forthrightly, “Let’s go with him and die with him.”
Thomas is the faithful one: he knows who Jesus is, and what Jesus has to do. And he has no doubt that he wants to be there too, with him.
What does it take for someone to be willing to die for their belief? What does it take for someone to be willing to give up their lives for their friends?
The 39 who took their own lives in San Diego were willing? Do we want to be like them?
Thomas wanted to be like Jesus even if it meant losing his life. Was Thomas a fanatic like them? What’s the difference?
The difference can only be love. Thomas believed in a person not a cause, not a theory. And he believed because he knew that person, Jesus, intimately, had seen him close up for years, knew they way he lived, knew the way he smiled, knew what got him angry, what made him sad, what gave him joy.
On that first Sunday the Risen Jesus came to his friends and gave them peace and shared his joy. He breathed on them, in person, warm, human breath. It’s ironic that Thomas, the one who wanted to be wherever Jesus was, wasn’t there—he missed out. (See what happens when you don’t go to church on a Sunday!)
So for a whole week Thomas is in limbo. The other’s are telling him to trust them. They offer him second-hand belief—hand-me-down faith. “Thomas! Can’t you just believe because we do? Can’t you trust us? But Thomas’s faith has been in Jesus not his friends, no matter how much he loves them, no matter how much he trusts them. He followed Jesus, not them. He wanted to be with Jesus, not them. Then this morning, this second Sunday, Jesus is again glad to be among his friends breathing peace. His first thought is for Thomas, Thomas who has been waiting for him. He knows what Thomas needs. It’s not evidence he needs to bring him belief, not argument, but a person, a person he knows. Jesus there, for him, in the flesh, marked by the signs of his love. And when he sees, when he touches, he can’t contain himself, he blurts out, “my Lord and my God.” Strange, isn’t it, that this first claim of divinity should be from the mouth of a doubter. Strange, too, that Thomas should recognise God by God’s own wounds? …
None of us can sidestep Thomas’s experience. None of us become real believers, real disciples, without seeing Jesus, without touching him. Our faith can’t be second-hand. We don’t find our deepest faith through other people. We start there. But at some time in our lives that just isn’t enough and then only meeting Jesus himself will do.
In a moment we will baptize ____________ and welcome her into this community of disciples and friends of Jesus. She’s too young to believe for herself right now. That’s why we call on her parents and godparents, and upon this whole community, to carry her in faith until she can. Right now she trusts in Jesus because we do. One day she’ll have to meet Jesus himself and be able to say with Thomas, “my Lord and my God!”

“Try to rest, Mary,” she’s been saying to me since it happened. “Try to rest—your only making it harder for yourself.” She means well—a mother now with no son, trying to be so strong for the daughters she taken under her wing. “If you don’t sleep, Magdalene, you’ll do yourself a damage.” But how can I sleep? How can I sleep with him dead, with hope dead, with all I longed for dead. What is there to sleep for? What is there to wake for?
He was life to me. He was breath and breathing. He was sight and seeing. He was the blood that beat in my veins. He was my food and my drink. I’ve loved him since his first smile, since he first whispered my name. … Enough! There has to be a limit. She’s right—I have to go on. Have to stop these tears and sit still. But I can’t.
I can’t sit still. I can’t wait for morning. I’ve got to do something. Curfew be damned! I’m going out. I’ve got to breathe. I’ve got to be near to him—even now…
That’s better! Just to be moving! In this velvet darkness. With those same stars shining—who’d have thought they still could… Oh, to be doing something at last! … I know there’ll be guards. I know it’s a risk. But anything’s better than pacing those sleepless walls, crying those dry tears. … Anyway, he always liked to take a risk. Used to say his Father had taken a big risk on him so why shouldn’t he be a little daring. A little daring! Raising the dead! Marching on Jerusalem! Turning the Temple upside down! And even when they’d arrested him—even standing there in front of the Governor—he risked defying them—wouldn’t play their games.
Risked too much it seems. We followed him … and watched … and waited. Waited for his risk to pay off. Waited for him to play his trump card. Waiting for the happy ending. Surely he hadn’t risked everything without a safety net? He had to have a way out. I believed that. I trusted that. Trusted him—even right up until the nails were going in … and the screaming started. Then I woke up. He’d gambled and lost. He’d risked everything and there wasn’t a safety net. All he’d said; wasted. All he’d done; a fraud. All he’d told me about myself; lies. All he’d made me hope for; just dying dreams. Oh, yes, I woke up then when he cried out. I haven’t slept since. … I may never …
O my God, did I say I was awake? I didn’t know what awake was until I heard a voice through my tears, say “Mary,” say my name—give me back my name. I didn’t know I was dead until he gave me back my life! … When I saw the tomb empty I fell apart. I could feel the empty tomb inside me. I wailed and ran and fetched the others and then froze there … while all the time the day slowly dawned.
I watched them go in. I watched them go away, arguing. They didn’t think to take me. I’d be there now but for a hand on my shoulder. A half-familiar hand. And a voice whispering my name. And a face with a smile I knew—knew but could hardly believe. Frozen, I was: I could do nothing, could say nothing. Could I believe my eyes, my ears, my skin? Wouldn’t it just be wishful thinking to hold again what’s been snatched from you? Wouldn’t the others be right about me—not enough sleep and too much hysteria? But still he—he who I didn’t dare name—still he smiled. And the smile was so gentle. And his eyes so eager that I believe. That I not embrace all the anxious inner voices alleging madness, preferring fear.
He spoke my name again. “Mary!” I lifted my hand to nearly touch him. But what if he weren’t real? What if I had to lose him all over again? What would be left of Mary, then? Again my name: “Mary?” Was I so important to him that he would come back to me like this and risk my running away? Was he so much to me that I would risk believing my eyes, believing all that inside me wanted to speak his name and kiss his poor, ruined hands?
Was I going to believe in life or death? Mine to choose. Mine to risk. … I met his urgent eyes. “Jesus,” I said.

I’m Andrew, Peter’s brother. We’ve met, remember? I’m with Jesus. I like to tell people that I was the first one to know him. You remember? I used to be with John, the Baptizer, until he sent us looking for someone greater, remember, someone to finally set things to rights, settle with our Roman friends once and for all. It was three years ago I almost ran into him—Jesus—on the street and stammered some stupid question about where he lived. He must have thought me a right fool. But he just smiled and took me along with him. Did we talk that afternoon?! And not only then. I’ve stayed with him these three years, three long, dusty, confusing years. I’ve wondered, sometimes. Would I have stayed if I’d known what was going to happen? I don’t know. But first-disciples have a responsibility— an example to set for the others. And until this afternoon I’ve always thought I understood him.

Mmm… this afternoon. We’re all dead beat. Him as well. We’ve been too long on the road. Too long hiding from every prying eye that might turn us over to our own priests, of all people. Since the incident with Lazarus we’ve had a price on our heads—at least on his—and it’s taking its toll. He’s been so quiet since then. Not like him — who always has a story to tell. Quiet. Brooding. … Troubled. I sat with him in those days after we ran from Bethany. Sat with him as he stared out into the desert haze. Just there, at his side, as a good first disciple should be. And knew this was make or break—his last choice—his last chance at glory. Lazarus had been the last straw. And the rumors were of a deal between our people and theirs to get rid of him, make an example of him. But we knew we had the popular support, we knew that he only had to say the word and the people would rise up behind him and kick out the Romans army and all! I knew, at any rate. I told him as he sat there “this is the time, this is your hour.” Everyone knew it too. The word was buzzing around the countryside—”What do you think? Will he come? Will he come to Jerusalem for the Passover?”

I told him it’s now or never. “You may as well walk away, go back home, if you don’t do it now, if you don’t march on Jerusalem, now.” “It’s do or die.” That got him to look. To turn away from the desert’s shimmering heat and give me one of those looks of his that made me shiver. What did I say? …

But yesterday I got my wish. We turned our faces to Jerusalem—the whole bunch of us—and trudged back to Bethany. To Martha and Mary and Lazarus again. What a meal! What a party! He seemed his old self again that night—laughing and dancing. So alive. Until Mary brought out her precious scented oil and poured it all over him. “For my burial,” he said with tears in his eyes. The glorious smell was everywhere. Made your eyes water. O, but Judas was furious at the waste!

The party mood was back this morning—hangovers or not—as we saddled him up and prepared to show Jerusalem a thing or two. And how the crowds came out scenting change in the air—shouting, screaming, singing. Though I wish we’d have got him a proper horse and not the weedy thing he insisted on. Still the effect was electric, glorious. Now they’d see. Now something had to begin.

I was right and wrong it turned out when some of my folks from Bethsaida turned up—all dressed up for the festival and wanting a closer look at Jesus. “We want to see him too,” they said, “Don’t hog all the glory Andrew.”

So I took them inside to the room we’d rented, all proud to be his disciple—his first disciple—and there he was, head in hands, with tears running down his nose … and dripping on the floor. He looked at me and once more I shivered. “You were right Andrew: the hour has come. Now you’ll see the glory you wanted.” I couldn’t stop shivering but he kept on, “If I love my life so much I’ve already lost it but if I lose it I might find it again. Like a grain of wheat, unless it falls and dies it’s nothing but a grain but if it dies—if it dies Andrew— well then think of the harvest! There’s glory for you!”

I couldn’t answer him—couldn’t look at him. I’ve been wrong all these three years. Wrong about him. Wrong about glory. Wrong about myself. But right too. I pushed him into this. … Which is why I’m staying. I am the first disciple after all. I have a responsibility. And I have to see him through to the end, I have to know how he can do this, and maybe, if I stay, I’ll get a glimpse of this glory.

What’s worse than being ill? … being ill at night! You’re huddled there, sweating and shivering and aching. You feel like death—in fact you half wish that death would at least get it over with—you feel like death and there in the middle of it all you find yourself wishing the light would come, wishing day was here, wishing night would end. We’d rather be ill by daylight. But why? The ache’s the same. The fever, the shakes, the same. But somehow having them in the light seems different. Easier to bear? Less isolated? Somehow we feel safer when day dawns. So we long for the shades to brighten and night to give way to day.

That’s one experience—when the ache is physical—but I imagine we all also know a parallel longing for the dark. When the ache is emotional, the misery mental, when life seems too much like a pathless wood, when the day is grey inside and clouded. Why, then, we can long for dark to fall and cover us, for light to fade and hide us from other peoples’ joys and our own pretence, for the day just to be over so we can sleep and forget.

If we are honest we have known the attractions of darkness just as we have felt the longing for light. And in both—at the end of our tether—we have cried out in pain and need and rage: Help me God I am beyond helping myself! Save me, I cannot save myself!

Salvation, liberation, healing, justice, eternal life, a new creation. Early and often has the human race cried out in pain and need and rage. Early and often, says the Chronicler, has God sent messengers of freedom and salvation.

We all want salvation. We all want liberation. For ourselves and for others. But it seems the price of freedom has been too much for us to pay, the weight of glory too much to bear. For we are still crying out and still lying in the dark pleading for light and still waiting in the twilight for the dark to hide us. Even though we have heard the gospel’s ringing promise that salvation has been given. “God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Son that whoever believes in him may not die but may have eternal life.” So says John: the light has come into the world once and for all; a light shining in the darkness which the darkness cannot extinguish. A sign of healing lifted up for all to see so that all might believe in God’s love and be saved. But John also knows there’s a catch: Jesus saves, yes, but Jesus reveals. The light of the world that casts shadows, separates light from dark. Where there had been tones of gray there is now sharp contrast. God sent the Son into the world to save it but his coming has been a judgement—literally a crisis. And the crisis is this: before, in the twilight, our options were hidden but now the light shines and the shadows are clear. The world now has fewer options. “Maybe” will no longer do as an answer. Only “yes” or “no.” Which is it going to be: the light or the dark? Since Jesus came there is no evading the choice. A choice that ought to be easy, thinks John.

But it hasn’t been. This is John’s scandal. This is what John can barely believe. That the light has come into the world and yet the world has loved darkness better. How can it be that when salvation is on offer—free, gratis, and for nothing—how can it have been so rejected? He came to his own but his own would not receive him. The light came but we tried to extinguish him. How could we do it? Why is the choice so hard?

There’s a Lenten question for us! If we so want salvation, healing, freedom, why do we so prefer to be lost, to be sick, to be bound? Why do we so prefer to lose, to sicken, to bind? As Lent carries us closer to the drama of Holy Week it must bring us, too, to a crisis. What are we afraid of? What are we hiding? What keeps us out of the light? It’s not as if we had to be perfect—my God, that’s why we need salvation in the first place—we just need to be willing to come out of hiding and to let the light shine on us with all our complex mixture of good and bad, of strength and weakness, of vice and virtue. On pain and need and rage. We just need to be willing to be who we are. To let the light reveal our wholeness so that we might love ourselves the way that God loves us.

It’s all a question of knowing where we are going. The first two readings set it up very clearly—in Lent we are heading once more to the Baptismal waters of Easter—but, to paraphrase Eliot, do we go all that way for a birth or a death? … It’s all a question of knowing where we are going.

A friend of mine worked for these past few years with refugees in East Africa—displaced, hungry, shattered people. Even among outcasts there are outcasts, the weakest of the weak—in particular the HIV positive who with little care and minimal medication quickly develop full-blown AIDS. And there in East Africa AIDS it isn’t a rarity, isn’t confined to any one portion of the community, AIDS is everywhere. Yet, for all it is common, its fear dissolves communities as it works the complete isolation of its sufferers. Even what little they have, what little they have been able to keep, is stripped from them as gradually they are edged out of the meagre comforts of the community. Figuratively, and then literally, pushed to the edge and beyond until they are driven into the desert to die alone and un-mourned. Only the kindness of strangers—people like my friend—stands between them and a forgotten death. Hands that will touch, and lift up and carry them back, out of the desert’s dryness, into the oasis of human care, to know life again before they must leave it.

Such a different desert from the one where Jesus, drenched still from the Jordan, is driven by the spirit. Despite the accusation and the testing this desert is for Jesus a place of life, a place of wild but ministering spirits, a place of calling. There, like the great prophets before him, like Moses and Elijah, he is nourished, cared for, and grows to new life, so that he can walk from the desert’s womb and storm Galilee with his message of urgent life: “Spring is here. Something new is here. God is here. Change! Believe the good news!”

Two very different experiences of desert. Womb or tomb? A holy place or a horror? It’s all a question of knowing where we are going. The spirit of life drives Jesus into the desert to be born again. The spirit of death drives the refugee into the desert to dwindle and die.

Entering Lent, we have to ask where we are being driven, and—more—which spirits are doing the driving. Mark paints a picture of Jesus in constant dialogue with angels and demons, companioned by spirits who attract him or repel him, care for him or plot his downfall. He is on first-name terms with darkness. He is fed at the hand of angels. Our difference from Jesus is not that he is a-swim in a sea of spirits and we are not but, rather, that he can tell them apart while we struggle even to feel their influence.

But recognising their influence, and telling them apart, is the key. Who is leading me into Lent? Friend or foe? If I know that I know whether to go hopefully into the desert or to kick and scream and cry out for rescue.

These are the Lenten questions. They are prior to questions of what we will do for Lent. Of what we will give up. Of what we will take up. Of fasting, charity, and prayer. The first question is “Who wants us to do any of this?” Which spirits guide us? Do we go all that way for a birth or a death? … It is all a question of knowing where we are going.

Why do we come here on Ash Wednesday? Why do we come now in greater numbers than on Easter? Why do we inconvenience our work day just to get a blackened brow that will embarrass us and confuse our colleagues? It’s not obligation that brings us—there is none. It may be custom, or habit, or maybe a touch of superstition. But it goes much deeper than that.

I think it goes beneath the surface of success in our lives. It reaches wholeness—that mixture of good and bad, success and failure, hope and fear—that belong to us all. It’s a sign of the cross we leave here with today. A sign of the life and death of one man long ago whose living and dying changed the world. Not the way we’d like to change it maybe. Not very successfully, not very efficiently, not in blaze of light, and not once and for all. The change that Jesus made was messy, dirty, bought at the price of hardship and blood—and it is unfinished. But it is not forgotten. Ash Wednesday intrudes on the daily-ness of our living to remind us of deep and sometimes dark realities. It makes a mark on our washed and shaved and made-up faces—a mark of death and a promise of unlikely life.

2000 years ago someone loved life enough to die for it. 2000 years later we love life enough to never forget his death. By carrying his cross on our blackened faces we refuse to forget him. And we refuse to forget ourselves, our whole selves, with our light and our dark, our ash and our fire, our dirt and our green growth.

Ash Wednesday ought to be a relief to us. The secret is out—plastered on our foreheads. We are not perfect. We are not all we would like to be. But what we are is enough. What we are is enough for God. Someone has loved us enough to die for us. The sign of the cross we accept today is a sign of our willingness to love—to love and to do whatever it takes to continue what he started.

Stories, like ours, can reveal our own selves to us. Stories draw us in. Stories awaken in us a sense of who we are and what we desire. They tell us what is changing in us. That’s why we read the scriptures at Mass and not the catechism: because we want to be changed.

That’s the question. Now the puzzle. One of the things I find most mysterious about Mark’s gospel is the way that Jesus is always described as preaching the good news. Like today: “he went into their synagogues preaching the good news and expelling demons.” The puzzle is that Mark never tells us what Jesus says. Matthew goes on endlessly about Jesus’ sermons and teaching but Mark never says a word. All you hear is how wonderful Jesus’ preaching is, how he teaches with authority, how even demons are struck dumb by him. But not a word of what he says. … At least not directly. Instead we get stories about what Jesus does. The story is the good news. And typically, for Mark, these stories are brief, hasty little dramas.

I want to lift up one of these dramas for our attention: the story of Simon’s mother-in-law. It seems simple: Jesus goes to the house of some of his disciples; the woman of the house is ill in bed; Jesus is told; he takes her hand and helps her up and she starts to wait on them.

What’s the story all about? Is it a simple healing story? Is it a moral tale about domestic hospitality? Mark’s stories may be brief but he chooses his words carefully and two in particular are important here. First is the word he uses to describe her healing. Our version says “Jesus grasped her hand and helped her up.” But the original says “he raised her up” and uses the same word that will later be used for Jesus’ resurrection. This is not just a healing story but a story of someone whose sickness is the sickness of every life before Jesus is a part of it; someone who meets Jesus and experiences the power of the resurrection.

The second interesting word is the one Mark chooses to describe how she responds. Our version says, “she waited on them,” but Mark uses the word dieikonei, from which we get the word deacon. It meant both service at table and Christian ministry. Simon’s mother-in-law has an experience of resurrection and immediately behaves like a deacon, becomes involved in service and ministry. And the whole story takes place in the home of some disciples, which is exactly the kind of place in which Mark’s Christian community met on a Sunday afternoon to worship, to share stories, and to minister to each other.

When Mark’s people listened to the story of the mother-in-law’s tale there would have been nods of understanding and recognition. Because her story is not just her own—it’s mine and it’s yours. We have each been lost in sickness of soul. We have each been grasped by Jesus and raised up by the power of the resurrection to new life. We have each immediately turned to our brothers and sisters and ministered to them.

At least, Mark can’t imagine any other way of being a Christian. In his day to enter the house where the disciples gathered meant to risk losing one’s livelihood, one’s respect, and even one’s life. And yet they did. They took the risk because they had been resurrected with Jesus and just had to gather and serve each other, minister to each other. That’s our challenge as Renew begins again, our challenge as Lent begins this week. Have we let Jesus take us by the hand? Have we experienced a real resurrection in our lives? And, perhaps most importantly, has that made us into ministers; disciples; servants of the word?

We have a chance in this time of renewal to pray for a deeper Yes to each of those questions. And in a moment we’ll begin with a rite of anointing in which we’ll both pray for whatever healing we need and be ministers of that healing to each other.

In recent weeks we’ve been wondering what it’s like when God comes among us as a human being: as a tiny child at Christmas, as an adult now in these weeks of Ordinary Time.

It’s a great gift given to us to meet the maker of the universe dwindled to infancy, vulnerable and frail. But Jesus is a gift that calls for a response on our part. Last week we heard John’s story of how the first disciples responded to Jesus by seeking him out and spending time with him, just hanging out. They became disciples slowly and gently as Jesus answered a mystery in them.

The Jesus who appears today in Mark’s gospel is not the same. He is all mystery and challenge. This Jesus walks in from the desert with startling words: “This is the time of fulfillment: the reign of God is at hand.” This Jesus makes blunt demands upon his hearers: “Reform your lives and believe the good news.” And the surprising thing is that he gets the response he seeks. Simon and Andrew abandon their livelihood and immediately get up and become his followers. James and John abandon their family and become part of his company. No discussion here. No afternoons slowly getting to know him. There is something about Jesus, as Mark portrays him, that lets him demand a total and instant response and get it.

What could this something be? What could persuade someone to get up and leave everything and just go off with a stranger? What did Simon and Andrew and James and John see him in? … Hard to say exactly but each must have seen in Jesus something that could change their lives completely. And not sometime, not soon, but now, right now.

I think Mark is asking us the same question. What would it take, when I’m busy in my job, to get me to walk out and leave all security behind to go off with Jesus? … What would he have to be like, to so capture your heart, that when you’re sitting at home with your family you would abandon them to walk away with him? … What could be so attractive and compelling about Jesus that we, right now, would walk out of mass just to be with him—penniless, friendless, homeless—and be about his business?

Tough questions! Maybe we can’t imagine responding like that. But that’s what Mark is asking us to do: imagine. Who would Jesus have to be, for you to leave everything for him—and gladly? That’s Mark’s question to us. He wants us to imagine a Jesus so attractive, so appealing, so compelling, … so rewarding, that we would give ourselves completely to him and his cause. Can you do that? Imagine. Can you let such an attractive Jesus walk into your imagination and draw a response from you?

This year epiphany pursues us. In these weeks each gospel speaks about the way God is discovered in our lives. Today the epiphany takes the form of an awkward encounter. In an unexpected question: “What are you looking for?” In a question given instead of an answer: “Where do you stay?” In an answer that itself is a question: “Come and see.”

You can’t make anything of this prickly conversation without letting yourself get inside it. From the outside it’s just words. Just noise. Just some story of dead people, long dead people. But from the inside it’s alive—it’s epiphany. So step inside with me for a moment or two. Join those two travellers on the road, step inside their skins, and feel what it’s like to be walking the dusty roads, trailing after someone you hardly know, on some fool’s errand, for someone else. Following this guy, trying not to be seen, because, for the life of you, you don’t know what you are supposed to do if he spots you. How long have you been trailing him? Too long perhaps and the midday heat is annoying you and the thirst is annoying you but you don’t want to risk losing him to stop. And then in your daydreaming you almost run into him. He’s stopped. He’s right in front of you, staring right at you. And, scared out of your skin, you are trying to put together some apology or explanation, when he smiles a little and, never taking his eyes off yours, says “What are you looking for?” What are you looking for? What can you say? You start to say something lame but you are still caught by his gaze and you realise you don’t want to lie to him. So what are you looking for? What are you searching for? For a good cool drink? For a place to sit down? For peace and quiet? Oh, for some sense to life, and some security from debt, some safety from disease, some hope for tomorrow, some love to give and receive. What are you looking for? What are you really looking for? For peace on earth? For an end to death and dying? You don’t know! Too small or too big those desires; too easy or too risky. You don’t know what you are looking for but you know you want something, you know the voice that wakes you in the night—in the hour of the wolf—and whispers your name and won’t let you sleep as you chase in circles the fears and the hopes of twilight. You know you are searching—and searching for words to express the search—but all that comes out in the end is “Where do you stay?”

It seems to be a good answer because his smile broadens and his eyes cloud as he goes inside to search for an answer worthy of your question. You’ve surprised him. Where does he stay? Where does he call home? Where are his roots and his sanctuary? He too is drawn deeper. Where does he find the sap for his vine, the blood for his body, the breath for his spirit? Who does he belong to? He’s quiet for a long time—as long as you took to answer his question—and then he reaches out his hand to take yours and says, “Come and see.” And you do. And both your lives are never the same again.

“Look,” says John the Baptist, “there’s the Lamb of God.” A promise of great revelation, of great epiphany, of great mystery. But the revelation comes on a street corner. The epiphany shines in the obscurity of a restless, searching heart. The mystery unfolds in a late afternoon of conversation. Look where we find God—where God finds us. Look how the kingdom comes, look how we become disciples, look how God comes among us. In a human voice, in a human yearning, in the touch of a human hand.

But are we looking for Jesus? Are we ready for him? And, above all, are we willing for our lives to never be the same again?

Thirty years have flashed by in a week. Thirty years framed by two great epiphanies. Between the howling baby adored by shepherds and scientists and the silent figure coming to John at the Jordan—between them there is a lifetime of mystery. Somehow that helpless, demanding, fragile, noisy, tiny baby becomes a kid under his mother’s feet, becomes an adolescent under his own, finds friends and loses some, learns life and discovers death, earns a living, negotiates respect, plays and prays and laughs and cries, falls in love, drinks and dances, gets lost, gets hurt, watches things grow, stands by helpless as others wither, smells the bread baked, sees the vine ripen, hears the desert wind of his people, tastes the bitter tang of illness, feels the lash of Roman tongues (and worse), buries a father, worries over a mother, looks up in awe at starry skies, gazes in shame at poverty and neglect and … wonders why he can’t settle, why—happy as he is—he is restless.

Wonders why the words of Isaiah echo inside him the way they do, like his own words, “To open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.” O God, if not now, when? If not us, who? “I Adonai have called you for the victory of justice, I have grasped you by the hand. I have formed you, and set you as a covenant for the nations.” Burning words, aching hopes. “How much longer must we wait Adonai before you show your glory? Will you not rend the skies in two and show yourself as of old?” If not now, when? If not me, who?

Thirty years. Thirty ordinary, hidden years. About to end.

We’ll never know what finally moves him to get up and leave Nazareth one morning and walk all this way to be standing alone before John—waist deep in water. Some call—told in Torah, whispered in his heart, encountered in community—something gets him here. Something draws him to this preposterous prophet. Something that can no longer be ignored. Something no longer private. Something demanding a public action.

So he hands himself over, to God, to John, to the waters of the Jordan. “Let it be to me as you have said.” And he holds his breath.

Something dies here and something is born. Everything begins here.

When he rises from the water and gasps back his life everything is changed. The sky has been torn in two and suddenly the Spirit is upon him in epiphany after epiphany. Isaiah’s words are ringing all around him. “You are my child, my beloved, my cherished one.” And he knows something. He is, for a moment, settled. For an instant, the restlessness is gone and all makes sense. For a moment. And no one notices as the spirit drives him dripping into the desert to make him restless once again. Restless and hungry and wanting only one thing: epiphany—that the people who dwell in darkness might see a great light.

For ourselves it has been a week of epiphanies. A week to grieve and a week to be proud. Something has ended and something has begun. We saw our strength this week as a community and we did Jim proud as we sent him on his way. He worked so hard to make us a community. He worked so hard to get us to live out our own baptismal ministry. Jim’s passing marks a beginning we have already made, here, together. Three unlikely communities, one in baptism, becoming one in service. We are Jim’s legacy. Something has ended but something has begun. Something that calls to us, something we can only begin to recognise, something unfinished, something new. Something we need to pause and dwell upon and let the spirit shape among us. Because this is a moment of epiphany, this is a moment of passage. If not now, when? If not us, who?