The text of today’s appointed gospel lesson, in Greek and in English, begins with the second person plural pronoun, you—or in my childhood in Virginia with a Georgia grandmother, you-all. If February 2, the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple, had not taken precedence over the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, we would have heard the beginning of what we call the Sermon on the Mount.[1]

When I was 6 years old, soon after the birth of my sister, I went with my mother to the local parish, The Church of Our Merciful Saviour, where the rector read the office, The Churching of Women. I think she was required to undergo it to resume service on the Altar Guild. In 1954, women were permitted behind the altar rail only to clean it. That liturgy was rooted in the reason Mary is going to the temple today. The Churching of Women assumed that childbirth, among other things, made women ritually unclean, and they had to have a special ceremony to become clean and be readmitted to the church. Fortunately, this liturgy does not occur in the current BCP. Giving birth and any number of other conditions do not make women ritually unclean. But they did in the first century and as recently as my childhood.

In July 1985, after two years in Dallas, I moved to my second job in the church as curate for the then-new rector of Saint Luke’s Church, Baton Rouge, and later bishop of Louisiana, Charles Jenkins. In the large parish in Dallas, I was one of five priests, in Baton Rouge, one of three. More Sunday preaching came my way. That fall, I bought the first of a series of short books—collections of articles—written for clergy and adult education, by Father Raymond Brown, for many years a professor at Union Theological Seminary here in the city. He died in 1998 and was widely regarded as the leading American Roman Catholic New Testament scholar of his generation. The small paperback book was: An Adult Christ at Christmas: Essays on the Three Biblical Christmas Stories.[1] These essays were based on one of Brown’s major works, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.[2] Brown’s approach in these articles helped make preaching on the gospel come alive for me.

Jesus is still in the wilderness, where the devil had tempted him, when he learns that John the Baptist has been arrested. So he leaves the wilderness and returns to Galilee, where he had grown up in Nazareth. The Greek verb here translated as “arrested” can also be a gentle one, meaning “give, deliver, entrust.”[1] But in a judicial context it means “handed over to the authorities.”[2] It’s the word behind our English translations of what Judas Iscariot did—he betrayed Jesus.[3] It’s the word used when the chief priests and the elders decide to send him to Pilate.[4] If I’ve counted correctly, it’s used 31 times in Matthew and always carries a sense that something is wrong, dangerous. As I often am, I gained this insight from Dr. Mark Davis’ scripture blog, “Left Behind and Loving It.” [5]

Some of you share with me fond memories of George Blackmore Handy, to use his full name. He was born in 1918. He died on May 9, 2012. He was ninety-three years old; in less than a month, he would have been ninety-four.

This glorious season of Epiphany opens us up to new opportunities for God’s love. We look once again at places where the Spirit flowed, focusing on times when God’s approval of earthly events brought light to the world.

The Magi—the Wise Men—do not arrive in Bethlehem until this evening, when we observe the Eve of the Epiphany. But for this morning, our lectionary has borrowed from our Roman Catholic friends what they call “The Feast of the Holy Family”—the story of the flight of Joseph, Mary, and the child to Egypt and their return after the death of Herod.[1] What is left out by our friends, and officially by us, is the heart of Matthew’s story. But we heard the omission: the three verses that tell of the killing of the young boy children in Bethlehem, a terrible story by itself, but made more terrible by the evil afflicted on Jews by Christians and others through the millennia.

I wrote in the newsletter for this week that I was surprised to learn that, in 1965, religion was already being excluded from television programming. So when Charles Schultz was invited to write A Charlie Brown Christmas, he chose to write it in such a way that no one could cut out the scene where Charlie asks, “Isn’t there anyone who understands what Christmas is all about?” and Linus responds by reciting from memory Luke’s story of the angels visiting the shepherds and announcing to them Jesus’ birth. Then Linus says to Charlie, “That’s what Christmas is all about.” CBS did not like the show with its religious content, but they had made a commitment to its sponsor, Coca-Cola. Coke got it right.[1]

Sixteen days and one hundred-fifty years ago, the first services in the first Church of St. Mary the Virgin, on the other side of what was then Long Acre Square, at 228 West Forty-fifth Street, were celebrated. Our present church home opened sixteen days and one-hundred twenty-five years ago. This evening we gather for the one hundred fiftieth celebration of Christmas at Saint Mary’s.

If you are a regular churchgoer, the lessons that we heard tonight are not unfamiliar. The first lesson is one of four songs from what scholars call Second Isaiah, chapters 40 through 55 of Isaiah—the first 39 chapters are known as “First Isaiah” and there’s a “Third Isaiah,” too: chapters 56 through 66—three books, or should I say, three scrolls in one. First Isaiah is dated to the period before the exile from Jerusalem, the second to the period of exile in Babylon, and the third to the period of restoration under the Persians.[1] Tonight’s Old Testament lesson, again, the first of these four songs, is known as the Song of the Suffering Servant. It’s heard every year at the Eucharist on the First Sunday after the Epiphany: The Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

My niece Emily is eight years old and perhaps her greatest passion, at this point in her young life, is gymnastics. She’s been at it for several years now and has been getting better and better, steadily progressing, day-by-day, week-by-week, as she puts more and more time in at the gym. And, then, this past spring she made it all the way to the States in New Jersey, competing against girls who, for the most part, were older than her. She was on this steady trajectory forward until she had a bit of a setback.

Luke gives us the story of John the Baptist’s annunciation to John’s father Zechariah[1] and the story of Mary’s visit to John’s mother Elizabeth when both women are with child.[2] We don’t hear anything else in Luke, or in any of the other gospels, about John the Baptist until he is an adult, in the wilderness, preaching and baptizing.

Last Sunday, the Feast of Christ the King, as preacher I had a choice of gospel lessons. I chose to preach on Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem in Luke. I’m sure everyone who heard me knew the rest of that story. In Lent this year, I figured out—after all these years—that the Parable of the Prodigal Son doesn’t stand alone—it’s the concluding story of Jesus speaking to a group of Pharisees. The group is judging Jesus about being among sinners and eating with them. Jesus then speaks first of a lost sheep, then of a lost coin, finally of a lost child.[1] So since the end of March, when I look at a gospel lesson, I try to make sure that the appointed lesson doesn’t obscure the evangelist’s purpose in retelling a story about Jesus. So this morning I’m going to begin where today’s gospel lesson begins.

There are two gospel passages that may be read on this last Sunday of the church year when on most Sundays the gospel lesson is from Luke. The passage we did not hear is the short narrative from Luke’s account of the crucifixion in which two wrongdoers, who were crucified with Jesus, speak to him. One of the two, the only person in Luke to address the Lord by his personal name, which means, “Savior” or “He will save,”[1] and also “The Lord has saved,”[2] is the wrongdoer who says, to the other who has mocked Jesus, “We are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.”[3] Turning to Jesus, this man says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”[4] Jesus responds, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”[5]

When I met Carol Selle, I was in graduate school at the University of Chicago. Carol was Mrs. Selle to me at that time, the close friend of another remarkable woman I had the privilege to know, Elizabeth—Betsey—Bobrinskoy. Her son Charlie and his wife Mary Anne and two of their sons are here. After seminary, ordination, and work in Dallas and Baton Rouge, in 1988 I became rector of a parish in Michigan City, Indiana—on Lake Michigan, on the border of the State of Michigan—not far from Carol and Richard Selle’s house in the amazing lakeshore dunes on the southern and western shores of Lake Michigan.

Luke does not give us a day-by-day chronology of Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem. He tells us only that Jesus was teaching daily. He does not follow Mark and Matthew where Jesus goes out every evening to the Mount of Olives. Today’s gospel lesson is part of a long passage that is Jesus’ last public teaching. The passage begins with the words, “One day, as Jesus was teaching in the temple.” Luke follows Mark, as does Matthew, with what comes next. There are questions to Jesus about the source of his authority. Then come the story where the owner of a vineyard sends his “beloved son” to collect the rent that is due, but whom the tenants kill; the famous question and answer about paying taxes to Caesar; and last Sunday’s gospel about a widow who, in turn, was married to her first husband’s six brothers.

At the Solemn Mass this morning, I was one of the ministers of the cup. I’m used to people trying to turn the cup a little when they take it from me, but this person turned the cup almost 180 degrees before drinking. The person was Caucasian, receiving after a person of color. For whatever reason, I think the person of color saw what happened. I’ve never seen this “chalice-turner” before. I’m not sure I would have spoken to her about it. But it made me sad. Then I began to wonder how I may turn from other people in my own way. Before I got to singing the wonderful postcommunion hymn, Come, thou fount of every blessing, the General Confession from 1928 Morning Prayer was racing through my mind. Some of you probably still know it by heart:

Jesus is on the road to Jericho and Jerusalem. In Mark, there’s a man who kneels and asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” When he tells Jesus he has observed the law from his youth, Mark says, “Jesus looking upon him loved him.” Jesus tells the man to sell all that he has and to give the money to the poor. Jesus assures him he will have treasure in heaven, and says, “Come, follow me.” But the man stands and walks away.

I often look at the late Massey Shepherd’s commentary on the 1928 Prayer Book, published in 1950, when I want to know about the traditional readings associated with Sundays and major feast days. For All Saints’ Day, Massey begins with the possibility of a commemoration of “All Martyrs” from the third century; he says there’s more evidence for these commemorations in the fourth century. For the record, his work is confirmed by more recent scholarship. In addition, Massey wrote these words about this feast, “Sometime between 607 and 610 Pope Boniface IV obtained permission to take over the famous Pantheon in Rome (which had been closed since the fifth century)”—over a hundred years—“for Christian worship.” Under Boniface, the Pantheon was dedicated to St. Mary and All Martyrs on May 13 in the same year. It’s worth noting for us as Anglicans that among the earliest evidence for a November 1 celebration of All Saints is from late eighth-century England.

Here at Saint Mary’s our life is shaped and ordered by a calendar. In a few weeks, the season of Advent will begin, and we will know it. The look and feel of this place will be transformed. The colors of the vestments will change, the flowers will go away, the music will be different, and we’ll hear words from the Bible that we know very well. And there is a paradox about all that: the sacred calendar by which we live is about change. Each day, week, and season is different. Sometimes the differences are subtle, sometimes they are dramatic. Advent gives way to Christmas and we are glad of it. We rejoice in the change. But, still, those seasonal changes are predictable and familiar, and that familiarity can be very reassuring. We look forward to our favorite Advent hymns. The figures for the Christmas crèche come out of storage—and there they are! We are glad to see them again. We are familiar with their details, right down to the color of that one Wise Man’s shoe and the camel’s weird smile. And there is comfort in all that. Life inevitably brings change, and so it makes sense to look for stability. It makes sense to reach out and embrace the lovely things that stay the same.