SPEAKER_02: Good morning, everybody.
SPEAKER_02: My name is Sean Steele, and I am the new associate rector here at St.
SPEAKER_02: Thomas.
SPEAKER_02: I'm super excited to be here and worship with you this morning.
SPEAKER_02: Father Mike is on a well-deserved vacation, I believe, in Puerto Rico.
SPEAKER_02: And so might be watching online, knowing Mike.
SPEAKER_02: So hi Mike.
SPEAKER_02: Let's all maybe wave the Mike.
SPEAKER_02: Hi, Mike.
SPEAKER_02: You'll notice a few different things this morning.
SPEAKER_02: We had a baptism this morning.
SPEAKER_02: We did one bulletin.
SPEAKER_02: We'll talk about that a little bit.
SPEAKER_02: But so there's a baptismal service here, but we're not going to do the whole baptismal service unless anybody wants to get baptized.
SPEAKER_02: Would anybody like to get baptized?
SPEAKER_02: No?
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: Well, we can do it if you decide when we get there.
SPEAKER_02: But uh when it gets to prayers of the people, I'll go ahead and direct those out of the prayer book.
SPEAKER_02: And then also for the Eucharistic prayer, that'll be in the prayer book as well.
SPEAKER_02: And so you'll also notice that there's no music this morning.
SPEAKER_02: We do not have an organist this morning.
SPEAKER_02: And so Mike said, Hey, do you want to sing a cappella?
SPEAKER_02: And I said, No.
SPEAKER_02: I in fact do not want to lead a cappella.
SPEAKER_02: Mike would, he because pull out his guitar, but you'll find I'm not Mike.
SPEAKER_02: Sad to say, you can't uh clone him, although we want to.
SPEAKER_02: Um so we're just gonna have a nice uh service with no music this morning, and it's gonna be beautiful.
SPEAKER_02: And so I invite you to join me, either in the prayer book or the bulletin, um, as we begin or continue.
SPEAKER_02: Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: There is one body and one spirit.
SPEAKER_02: One Lord, one faith, one baptism.
SPEAKER_02: Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires know, and from you no secrets are hid.
SPEAKER_02: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, and we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: The Lord be with you.
SPEAKER_02: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_02: Eternal Father, you gave to your incarnate Son the holy name of Jesus to be the sign of our salvation.
SPEAKER_02: Plant in every heart, we pray, the love of Him who is the Savior of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God in glory everlasting.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Please be seated for the lessons.
SPEAKER_00: The lesson is a reading from 1 Kings.
SPEAKER_00: Now Solomon, son of Bathsheba, said, The Majesty of the Heavens said that God would dwell in thick darkness.
SPEAKER_00: I have built an exalted house for you, a place for you to dwell for all time.
SPEAKER_00: Yet truly will God indeed dwell upon the earth?
SPEAKER_00: The heavens and heavens beyond the heavens cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built.
SPEAKER_00: Incline toward the prayer of your slave, this supplication.
SPEAKER_00: Holy one of old, my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your slave prays on you today, that your eyes may be opened toward this house, night and day, toward the place of which you said, My name shall be there, that you may heed the prayer that your slave prays toward this place.
SPEAKER_00: Hear the supplication of your slave and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place, hear in your dwelling place the heavens, hear and forgive.
SPEAKER_00: And also as for a foreigner who is not of your people, Israel, and comes from a distant land because of your name, for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm.
SPEAKER_00: When a foreigner comes and prays toward this house, hear then in the heavens your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and revere you, as do your people Israel, and so that they may know that your name has been invoked upon this house that I have built.
SPEAKER_00: The word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Why do you look with envy, many peaked mountains, as the mountain that God desired for her abode?
SPEAKER_00: God's chariot core is ten thousand doubled and doubled again.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed be she who bears us up day by day.
SPEAKER_00: Our God is the God of salvation.
SPEAKER_00: They see your processions, God.
SPEAKER_00: Before go singers, after musicians follow.
SPEAKER_00: And great congregations bless God.
SPEAKER_00: There is Rachel born Benjamin, the little one, ruling, then the sons of the royal women of Judah in their crowd.
SPEAKER_00: Let tribute be brought out of Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: Sing to God, dominions of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: To the one who rides in the heavens beyond the heavens from before time.
SPEAKER_00: Ascribe power to God.
SPEAKER_01: Now the angel carried me away in the spirit to a great high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem, coming down from the heavens and from God.
SPEAKER_01: I saw no temple in the city, for the sovereign God, but the Almighty with the Lamb is its temple, and the city has no use of sun or moon to shine in it.
SPEAKER_01: For the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the lamb, and the nations will walk by its light, and the queens and the kings of the earth that will bring the glory into it, and its gates will not be shut by day, and there will be no night there, but women, children, and men that will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.
SPEAKER_01: Now there shall not enter in it anything unclean or anyone who does what is detestable or untrue, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life by the Word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Now the parents of Jesus went yearly to Jerusalem for the festival of Passover, and when he was twelve years old, they went up as customary for the festival.
SPEAKER_02: And when the day of the festivals were completed, they returned while the boy Jesus stayed in Jerusalem, and his parents did not know it.
SPEAKER_02: Thinking he was in the group of travelers, they went a day's journey.
SPEAKER_02: And then they started to look for him among their kin and those who knew him.
SPEAKER_02: And when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him.
SPEAKER_02: Then after three days passed, they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions, and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.
SPEAKER_02: Then when his parents saw him, they were shocked, and his mother said to him, Child, why have you treated us thus?
SPEAKER_02: Look, your father and I have been tormented in searching for you.
SPEAKER_02: Then Jesus said to them, Why were you searching for me?
SPEAKER_02: Did you not know that I must be in the house of my Abba?
SPEAKER_02: And they did not understand the thing he said to them.
SPEAKER_02: And then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was subject to them.
SPEAKER_02: And his mother treasured all these things in her heart.
SPEAKER_02: This is the gospel of the Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_02: Man, what a cool day, huh?
SPEAKER_02: Real special day for me, being that now this is my first official Sunday being here preaching as the new associate rector.
SPEAKER_02: I'm looking forward to getting to be a part of this community and getting to know everybody.
SPEAKER_02: When I came before, you know, I wasn't sure.
SPEAKER_02: We were just coming and visiting, so it's really different and it's really special.
SPEAKER_02: So I want to thank you all for showing up.
SPEAKER_02: I know it's a Sunday after Christmas, and you probably had a moment this morning where you thought, we just went on Wednesday or Tuesday night.
SPEAKER_02: Do we really have to go again?
SPEAKER_02: And so thanks for showing up.
SPEAKER_02: I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_02: It's actually a really cool day.
SPEAKER_02: And it's a really cool day because this morning I got to do a baptism.
SPEAKER_02: We baptized Elizabeth, this sweet, sweet baby who just smiled the entire time, which is rare.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the entire time.
SPEAKER_02: The water, the prism, the buzzer, everything, just smiling.
SPEAKER_02: It was beautiful.
SPEAKER_02: Really, it was wonderful.
SPEAKER_02: And the reason it is because having a baptism right now, in this season, is a pretty rare thing.
SPEAKER_02: It's pretty incredible.
SPEAKER_02: And why it's special is because, well, I had a spiritual director once, this guy named Pittman McGeehee.
SPEAKER_02: Some of you may have heard of him or known him.
SPEAKER_02: He was the dean of the cathedral for a long time, so some of you Episcopalians who've been here for a while may have heard that name.
SPEAKER_02: So Pittman had this real deep voice.
SPEAKER_02: He talked very slowly.
SPEAKER_02: He said, you know, Sean, all of Christianity can be summed up in two stories and two symbols.
SPEAKER_02: Because that's all we can really carry with us on the journey.
SPEAKER_02: So you just gotta, you just gotta carry two stories and two symbols.
SPEAKER_02: And so he would go on to say that pretty much about any worldview or narrative or something.
SPEAKER_02: You need two stories and two symbols.
SPEAKER_02: And so what are the great stories of Christianity?
SPEAKER_02: What are the two core stories?
SPEAKER_02: We're in the midst of one.
SPEAKER_02: What is it?
SPEAKER_02: Christmas! Yeah, Christmas.
SPEAKER_02: It's a story of believing in the God who is with us.
SPEAKER_02: You know, we said in that opening prayer, we are we gave the name of Jesus for salvation.
SPEAKER_02: The name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: I said, what's Jesus' name?
SPEAKER_02: And you will call him Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_02: Which means God with us.
SPEAKER_02: So we talk a lot about what God did for us, and some of you may have come from traditions that are really interested in what God did for us.
SPEAKER_02: But the name that was given to us for salvation is God with us.
SPEAKER_02: So on Christmas, we celebrate the reality of the incarnation, the God who is not far off, but the God who is near.
SPEAKER_02: The God who shows up in unexpected places and times and the messiness of life, and the blood, and the sweat of the manger, and the uncomfortable reality of that story and that treble.
SPEAKER_02: God is birthed constantly in relationship with us in new and unexpected ways.
SPEAKER_02: That when we pray to God, we don't make sacrifices to a God who is far off hoping to hear, but a God who is in the midst of us, right next to us, experiencing the full reality of our life.
SPEAKER_02: That's a core story that we have to celebrate.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_02: And what's the next story?
SPEAKER_02: Easter.
SPEAKER_02: Easter's the other big story, right?
SPEAKER_02: And this is the one that we celebrate every Sunday, and every Sunday is a little Easter here.
SPEAKER_02: That this is the pastoral mystery of death and resurrection.
SPEAKER_02: The idea that the requirement for resurrection is death.
SPEAKER_02: And that as Christians, we embrace the full reality of death because it's not a sign of failure.
SPEAKER_02: That the deaths of our lives are the moment that God breaks in and makes something new.
SPEAKER_02: Now, sometimes it takes a while.
SPEAKER_02: It takes a while for that new thing.
SPEAKER_02: And it can be scary and lonely.
SPEAKER_02: But that's why we have community to remind us.
SPEAKER_02: And that's why we celebrate it every Sunday.
SPEAKER_02: If you're in the midst of that unknowing of Saturday, if you've gone through the death of some experience of life, the new thing is coming.
SPEAKER_02: God is not abandoning.
SPEAKER_02: Remember, God of Emmanuel, God who is with us.
SPEAKER_02: So we have these two great stories that we tell over and over again, and then we sort of organize our life, the time before we celebrate those stories, the time after those stories, the time in between those stories.
SPEAKER_02: So we have these two great stories that are the center of our faith.
SPEAKER_02: So what are the two symbols?
SPEAKER_02: So I sort of gave one of them away.
SPEAKER_02: Baptism.
SPEAKER_02: So the first great symbol that we carry with us is the water of baptism.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_02: Because baptism represents grace, the gift of God's love, unearned, unmerited, the permission to never wonder whether we're worthy of love and belonging again, that you don't have to earn your value that God loves you hard stop, that you're gonna have experiences every day and in your life where you feel like you're a failure, that you're not good enough, that nobody loves you, that you're not a good parent, that you're not a good friend, right, that you're not good at your job, that you're a disappointment to your parents.
SPEAKER_02: You're gonna have experiences of your own brokenness, but at the end of the day, God loves you.
SPEAKER_02: And so we do this ritual, this washing ritual, to remind us that we want to have these experiences where despite all of our imperfections, we know that at our core we're made in the image of God.
SPEAKER_02: That grace, right, means you cannot do anything to lose God's love.
SPEAKER_02: That's why we baptize babies, friends, and I love it.
SPEAKER_02: You might have people that sort of come and say, well, you've got to be of a certain age and fully understand what you're getting yourself into to be baptized.
SPEAKER_02: Who understands what they're getting into when they're baptized?
SPEAKER_01: Nobody.
SPEAKER_02: Now, don't get me wrong.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, like, I think every adult, every person should like take their position in the church as an adult.
SPEAKER_02: That's called confirmation.
SPEAKER_02: We have a ritual for that.
SPEAKER_02: But grace, I mean, what is more graceful than looking at a helpless two-month-old infant that can do nothing but receive and just say, hey, but God loves you.
SPEAKER_02: There's nothing that you can do for the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_02: I want to remind you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit that you are loved.
SPEAKER_02: Hard stop.
SPEAKER_02: Baptism.
SPEAKER_02: And what's the second symbol?
SPEAKER_02: We have the water.
SPEAKER_02: What's the second symbol?
SPEAKER_02: Cross, cross is close, that's one of them.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe cross is a symbolic thing.
SPEAKER_02: That came a little bit later on, but no, it is one.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we wear the crosses.
SPEAKER_02: That is true, which I think is kind of strange, right?
SPEAKER_02: We wear symbols of capital punishment around our neck, which I think is also kind of interesting.
SPEAKER_02: Like, we're not afraid of the oppression of empire.
SPEAKER_02: We're like, hey, look, you know, we're not scared of what you can do to us, right?
SPEAKER_02: But a little bit more ancient than that, we do it every Sunday.
SPEAKER_02: Eucharist, the chalice, the Eucharist.
SPEAKER_02: The eating together.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_02: So the second great symbol is the Eucharist, and we do this every Sunday, right?
SPEAKER_02: We come here and we gather around God's table, and we're reminded that we're all family.
SPEAKER_02: That despite our differences and our different perspectives and our different ideologies and the way that we look at the world and our different traumas, whatever it is, we gather around God's table as a family, and God feeds us.
SPEAKER_02: Because families eat together.
SPEAKER_02: Now, some of you just got done eating with your families at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and you're like, you know what?
SPEAKER_02: I can wait another year.
SPEAKER_02: We can go ahead and wait 11 more months before we but they still eat together, right?
SPEAKER_02: Because the table reminds us that God's love and the reality of this transcends everything.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: That's why we eat every Sunday.
SPEAKER_02: God feeds us with God's own very self, which is kind of cool, right?
SPEAKER_02: So we have this great story.
SPEAKER_02: We have two stories, we have two symbols that are sort of the core, and at baptism this morning, we got them all.
SPEAKER_02: Normally, you get one, two, or three.
SPEAKER_02: But when you do a baptism in the Christmas season, in the Emmanuel season, we got the Christmas story, we got the Paschal story every Sunday, that's for the Eucharist, it's a little Easter every Sunday at the table, right?
SPEAKER_02: We got baptism with water, we got the chalice, the symbol of family.
SPEAKER_02: It was really cool.
SPEAKER_02: What a great way for me to start.
SPEAKER_02: I thought, yeah, this is great.
SPEAKER_02: This is everything, all together in one.
SPEAKER_02: Why I want to be a priest?
SPEAKER_02: This is a great story.
SPEAKER_02: But then I thought, well, I should probably say something about the scripture readings.
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe some of you want that, maybe you don't.
SPEAKER_02: But I've got to, because I'm looking at this family and I'm looking at the congregation who made the vow earlier this morning to sort of support the baptized child, because that's pretty cool that we do that, right?
SPEAKER_02: That we all make a vow at the baptismal service to support the kid.
SPEAKER_02: I think that's cool.
SPEAKER_02: So I'm looking at the scripture readings and I'm thinking, so what?
SPEAKER_02: So we've got this great story.
SPEAKER_02: We're coming here to be reminded of it.
SPEAKER_02: We have this unique opportunity with the stories and the symbols, it's all there.
SPEAKER_02: So what?
SPEAKER_02: And so I started looking at the at the story, thinking, there's some really good stuff here, but it's weird.
SPEAKER_02: It's a weird story.
SPEAKER_02: So we don't get a lot of stories of Jesus and his adolescence.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: There's probably some good reason for that.
SPEAKER_02: Adolescence is kind of a tough time.
SPEAKER_02: Anybody remember that?
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus in middle school.
SPEAKER_02: That was fun.
SPEAKER_02: So then we get this one.
SPEAKER_02: This is it.
SPEAKER_02: This is the story.
SPEAKER_02: This is the one story we get of Jesus in his adolescence.
SPEAKER_02: There's not another story of scripture.
SPEAKER_02: Now, there are some in what are called non-canonical texts, like stories of scriptures that were written a couple hundred years later about Jesus like resuscitating frogs and stuff.
SPEAKER_02: It's true.
SPEAKER_02: Look it up, it's interesting.
SPEAKER_02: But they didn't make it in the story.
SPEAKER_02: There's only one story about Jesus' adolescence that we hold in scripture, in sacred scripture in the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: And it's this.
SPEAKER_02: And it's a weird story.
SPEAKER_02: So Jesus comes from a very devout Jewish family.
SPEAKER_02: They go every year to Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_02: It's a four-day travel, right?
SPEAKER_02: All the way down from Nazareth.
SPEAKER_02: Then they do the sacrifices and the paschal sacrifices, they make their offerings, they experience their sort of uh their paschal service, a Passover.
SPEAKER_02: And then they travel back.
SPEAKER_02: And they did this in caravans.
SPEAKER_02: And that made sense because it was a big trip, and you wanted to have family with you, and everybody had to do it, so why not go together and safety and things like that, and just being in community.
SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, your first thought might be how did Mary and Joseph lose Jesus for a day?
SPEAKER_02: What parent in their right mind could lose their kid for a day?
SPEAKER_02: I'm the only one who wondered that when they read this, like, how did you lose your kid for a day?
SPEAKER_02: Like, really?
SPEAKER_02: Well, because you're walking.
SPEAKER_02: It's a long time.
SPEAKER_02: But at that time they separated women and children from men, and they traveled and things like that.
SPEAKER_02: You took different roles, and Jesus was at the adolescent period where he could spend time in both camps, right?
SPEAKER_02: So he could be with the women, he could be with the men, uh, something, you know, you would go with your aunts and uncles, this big family thing.
SPEAKER_02: So it wasn't uncommon for you know parents to assume, oh, well, little Jesus is with somebody else.
SPEAKER_02: But at dinner time, that's when families come together.
SPEAKER_02: So it got to be dinner time, and they're like, You got Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: No, you got Jesus, no, where's Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: Uh uh, we've lost Jesus, where's Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: And so it was at dinner time when you would.
SPEAKER_02: Come back, they realized Jesus was gone.
SPEAKER_02: And so it's like, uh-oh, what do you do?
SPEAKER_02: So his parents had to hike all the way back, right?
SPEAKER_02: Another day, and then it said spent three more days or two more days, are we going to look at it, looking for Jesus throughout all of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_02: They didn't have cell phones, they didn't have pagers, right?
SPEAKER_02: I mean, they are frantically looking for Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't that they had no good reason to be worried.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you could get kidnapped.
SPEAKER_02: Something could have happened.
SPEAKER_02: It was an un, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02: Like there was lots of dangers and threats in different places.
SPEAKER_02: And this was their child.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is this is Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: This is their kid.
SPEAKER_02: And so they get back and they finally find him, and he is in the, he's in the temple, and he's sitting with the rabbis, and he's listening, and he's talking, and he's asking questions, and he's giving answers.
SPEAKER_02: And so they did this kind of Socratic thing where you would ask these really profound questions.
SPEAKER_02: Like, that's what rabbis would do.
SPEAKER_02: So Jesus was not only listening, but he was offering really good questions, and says that people were amazed and astounded.
SPEAKER_02: And then his mom came up frantically and was like, Jesus, didn't you know that like what you've done to us?
SPEAKER_02: Where have you been?
SPEAKER_02: And he responded like a teenager would, right?
SPEAKER_02: Duh.
SPEAKER_02: Did you be here?
SPEAKER_02: Duh.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, come on, didn't you know I'd be here?
SPEAKER_02: That's how I read it.
SPEAKER_02: Somebody else might read it differently, but like, duh, dad, duh mom, I'm you know, doing what I do.
SPEAKER_02: Haven't you been watching me?
SPEAKER_02: And so then, of course, she's like, but you really worried us.
SPEAKER_02: You tormented my soul.
SPEAKER_02: And then so then it says Jesus went home with them and he was obedient.
SPEAKER_02: He was a good kid, because, you know, you know, we gotta maintain that he was perfect, and so he was a good kid.
SPEAKER_02: Um, and then it says Mary, in our translation, treasured this in her heart.
SPEAKER_02: We'll talk about that later.
SPEAKER_02: Treasured this in her heart.
SPEAKER_02: And so this is the story.
SPEAKER_02: So what's here?
SPEAKER_02: Who cares?
SPEAKER_02: Interesting story, only story of Jesus' adolescence.
SPEAKER_02: And I started thinking, why would we care on this special day of baptism as we leave this place?
SPEAKER_02: And started thinking that as people of a community who take seriously this covenant to our children, shouldn't we be role modeling the faith in our life?
SPEAKER_02: I mean, shouldn't our lives be more than just, did I follow my moral path today?
SPEAKER_02: Are you happy with me, Santa Claus God?
SPEAKER_02: Did I make the ledger good and bad?
SPEAKER_02: Shouldn't our life be about role modeling for the people around us what does it mean to live a faith-filled life following this God in the world?
SPEAKER_02: Imperfectly, but especially for our kids, because I think faith is caught as much as it is taught.
SPEAKER_02: So, how do we role model for this new baby Elizabeth and for our kids what it means to be people following this risen Lord of the world according to this story?
SPEAKER_02: Well, the first thing that came up was this idea of seeking.
SPEAKER_02: That you see that seeking as a theme in here.
SPEAKER_02: Mary and Joseph were seeking God.
SPEAKER_02: It's kind of interesting metaphorically.
SPEAKER_02: They were seeking Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: They went on a journey that was harrowing and filled with questions and movement.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus was seeking God, seeking God in the temple, seeking God in worship.
SPEAKER_02: So it seems to me that the first thing that we want to role model is that the God that we we worship and believe in is one that desires to be sought.
SPEAKER_02: And as much as I love just receiving, I when we come up to communion, I don't we don't snatch the communion.
SPEAKER_02: We don't snatch it, we receive it.
SPEAKER_02: We put our hands on it and we receive it because we receive God's love.
SPEAKER_02: It's unmerited, right?
SPEAKER_02: So we receive, but there's this other piece of can we sometimes I think we can just fall into people that are just receiving all the time.
SPEAKER_02: And forget our ability to seek, our ability to orient our lives, to try to be in relationship with God.
SPEAKER_02: So the first thing is, is as Christians, how are we seeking that relationship?
SPEAKER_02: How are we looking?
SPEAKER_02: What are we doing in our life?
SPEAKER_02: And then the second piece I think is interesting that you see in this is a listening.
SPEAKER_02: It says that Jesus listened in the temple, and they listened to him.
SPEAKER_02: And clearly Mary and Joseph were listening to the people around him, figuring out where he might have been, seeking other people, where looking for my son, listening to the clues, listening to the reality of where he could be.
SPEAKER_02: So if we're going to seek, we should take time to listen.
SPEAKER_02: And how are we role modeling and listening in our life?
SPEAKER_02: What does that mean for me?
SPEAKER_02: What does that mean for you?
SPEAKER_02: The next piece, there's four of them, is this idea of being in awe.
SPEAKER_02: Now this is fascinating.
SPEAKER_02: Being stunned.
SPEAKER_02: And what I like about this in the story is you have two different types of being in awe.
SPEAKER_02: You have the seeking and the listening, and then you have two different experiences.
SPEAKER_02: The first Greek word in there, I'm not going to pronounce it, but there's a Greek word, and it basically means overwhelmed by sort of majesty and kind of dumbfounded, and that was incredible.
unknown: Wow.
SPEAKER_02: And that's where it's talking about the people listening to Jesus in the temple.
SPEAKER_02: They were listening and they were sort of struck and dumbfounded by the answers.
SPEAKER_02: They were sort of dumbfounded by the grace and the beauty of the world.
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's critical.
SPEAKER_02: That we go out in the world and we see God and we listen and we have to open ourselves up to be struck by God's beauty and movement.
SPEAKER_02: And then the next word is the one talking about Mary.
SPEAKER_02: And it's a similar word where it means shocked or in awe, but it's like overwhelmed by anxiety, which I like.
SPEAKER_02: So Mary is also dumbfounded and sort of in awe and shocked, but it's not the beautiful, peaceful, serene, isn't everything good?
SPEAKER_02: It's being overwhelmed by sort of her inability to control things, her lack of control in a world, right, that seems to be sort of filled with danger and threat and anxiety, overwhelmed by her smallness in the midst of that and her inability to control things.
SPEAKER_02: So she was confronted with that all of that reality and shocked.
SPEAKER_02: And I will tell you, the Christians have been proclaiming this and talking about this for a very long time.
SPEAKER_02: That this is part and parcel of the listening, the seeking, and the listening is you will get knocked over by the beauty and majesty of God, and you will also get knocked over by your own smallness and inability to control things.
SPEAKER_02: So both of those are in the story.
SPEAKER_02: And then the last bit, which I think is interesting, is the pondering.
SPEAKER_02: Now, you know, the translation that we have here.
SPEAKER_02: So Mary, Mary in Advent is a pondering Mary, right?
SPEAKER_02: When angel Gabriel shows up and announces at the Annunciation, it says she's pondered in these things in her heart.
SPEAKER_02: Well, the Greek word for that, right, actually means like a really reflective pondering and loving, and there's this like wrought with gratitude, right, and peacefulness and serenity again.
SPEAKER_02: And then the translation for this one is treasured, which I think is a horrible translation.
SPEAKER_02: Because the Greek word, I mean, okay, for those of you who are parents or little ones that are loved, is this the experience that you're treasuring in your heart as a place?
SPEAKER_02: I will tell you, I've had experiences like this where I've been wrought and overwhelmed with anxiety and panicked and the threats and the dangers and things like that.
SPEAKER_02: You can't find your kid for three days.
SPEAKER_02: Is this one later on where you're thinking, gosh, that was such a good time?
SPEAKER_02: God, that was wonderful.
SPEAKER_02: Here, Joseph, come here.
SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about this again.
SPEAKER_02: Remember how wonderful that was?
SPEAKER_02: It was so good.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was great.
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: We say treasured.
SPEAKER_02: No, the word is actually, it is a pondering word, but it's more like an anxious perseverating in your mind.
SPEAKER_02: So those of you who do that at nights, welcome to your own holiness sometimes.
SPEAKER_02: But there was an anxious perseverating, right?
SPEAKER_02: Wondering.
SPEAKER_02: But it was, the way that the Greek word works is it would have been an intentional relationship with God.
SPEAKER_02: So both times, Mary would have brought both the serenity and the peace and the beauty, but also the anxiety and the frustration and the anger, right?
SPEAKER_02: She brought both of them to her prayer life.
SPEAKER_02: So she brought those back full circle in relationship.
SPEAKER_02: So what we see is the pattern here is this seeking, right, this listening, this opening ourselves up to be dumbfounded by both the beauty and the tragedy of life and God's movement, and then an intentional bringing that back, right, in relationship of prayer to God.
SPEAKER_02: Reflecting, pondering, whatever that is.
SPEAKER_02: That's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_02: That's the pattern that we have here.
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's a pattern worth emulating when we leave.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've got this great story.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've got this story filled with God's love and presence and grace and family.
SPEAKER_02: And then there's also the pain and the tragedy.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we don't turn away from the cross, right?
SPEAKER_02: We confront the hard parts of life, right?
SPEAKER_02: But the pattern is that we seek and we listen.
SPEAKER_02: So some of you might be Mary Oliver fan.
SPEAKER_02: She's this great poet, and she said, you know, rules for life, right?
SPEAKER_02: Show up, be amazed, and talk about it, right?
SPEAKER_02: She's, I think, living.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, but it's similar.
SPEAKER_02: As Christians, we go out in the world and we intentionally orient our life around this story, around these four things and more.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_02: And then we listen because we expect God to show up, the God of Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_02: And we open ourselves up to sort of be in awe and be dumpstruck by what that reality is, both good and bad, beauty and pain.
SPEAKER_02: And then we bring that back and we ponder and we wonder and we allow that to transform us.
SPEAKER_02: And we do that over and over again.
SPEAKER_02: So I want to celebrate that today.
SPEAKER_02: I want to celebrate our story.
SPEAKER_02: I want to celebrate the God of Emmanuel, the God that is with us, all the beautiful parts.
SPEAKER_02: And then I want to remind us that we have a part to play in as we go out there.
SPEAKER_02: And that we have agency to orient our life, right?
SPEAKER_02: For each other's sake.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_02: Because we're a community.
SPEAKER_02: We are that family.
SPEAKER_02: That's what we mean with the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_02: And we role model that with each other.
SPEAKER_02: We role model that for our youth and for the babies yet to grow up.
SPEAKER_02: That's what we hold together.
SPEAKER_02: So I'm grateful for that, and I'm grateful to get to talk about that this morning with y'all.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
unknown: Amen.