"To Hell with this, I'm gonna live!"

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets
January 21, 2024
3^rd after Epiphany, Year B
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Psalm 62:6-14
Mark 1:14-20 

“To Hell with this, I’m gonna live!”

One of my favorite movies is Serenity, which y’all’ve heard me talk about before. It’s a sci-fi film, many centuries in the future, with a rather sinister galactic government over all the planets and the good guys, a crew of 8 people living on a space freighter, doing various legal and not quite legal jobs. On the ship, you have the captain and others, including the ship’s mechanic, Kaylee, and the ship’s doctor, Simon. Kaylee has had a crush on Simon since they met, and it has gone unrequited for a long time.

So, at one point in the movie, the whole crew is about to be attacked by a hoard of vicious creatures, and things are not looking good for our plucky band of heroes. The captain and a couple of good fighters look like they have things pretty well handled, but everyone else, including Kaylee and Simon…they don’t really have a clue what they’re doing. Assuming they are all going to die, Simon finally professes his love for Kaylee. At that moment, she goes from terrified and fumbling with her weapon to cocking her gun and saying, “To Hell with this! I’m gonna live!”

In Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth, Paul wrote, assuming that they weren’t all about to die, but that their lives were about to be drastically changed by the second coming of Jesus. Like many in the early church, Paul seems to have believed that Jesus would be coming again within their lifetimes. So, he was telling the church to act accordingly, as though the present form of the world was passing away. Paul was obviously not entirely accurate with that belief, as we see the world is still turning as it was back in the first century.

His advice to the church, however, was still sound. Far from giving up on everything, throwing up their hands and saying, “Well, I guess nothing much matters anymore,” Paul’s message was a little bit more of Kaylee’s “To Hell with this! I’m gonna live!”

Whether Jesus’ return and the fullness of God’s kingdom comes today, or in another couple thousand years, or even further off than that, the Kingdom of God has still come near, and so we get to live. The Kingdom of God is all around us, alive and well in thousands and millions of ways, all the time, every day.  God’s kingdom is alive and well even in things as simple as marriage and relationships, in joy and sorrow, in buying stuff, and in regular old dealings with the world.

Paul was writing about these things as though the world were about to end, and so he said, for those who had wives to live as though they had none. I can think that might mean, “don’t have kids” because, why would you if the world was about to end. There are all kinds of ways that if you were married, you could live as though you weren’t, some of those probably more helpful than others.

Thinking of marriage as it has been in some times and places, we can think of ancient times and of wives as not being owned by their husbands but there being a bit of a possessive aspect to that relationship. In that sense, it seems like Paul was saying, “Husbands, you can let go of your wives a little bit, rather than holding them as possessions. You can be equals as it is in God’s kingdom, equals without being given in marriage, as it is in the resurrection.”

The same seems true of the rest of Paul’s advice on how to live. Hold on lightly to possessions. They won’t go with you when this life is over, and we have to spend time in our lives working in order to get the money to buy possessions, so we’re literally spending our lives to get possessions. Paul raises a good question, then. How much of your life do you really want to give up in acquiring stuff?

Those who are mourning and rejoicing, Paul said, be as though you were not. Ok, we can’t just not be sad or not be joyful, nor would it be helpful to, but we can, again, hold on lightly to those times of mourning and rejoicing. Times of rejoicing will come to an end, and it’s ok when they do. We continue on, and there is still much beauty in life, even in times when we’re not particularly rejoicing. Times of mourning too, don’t have to last forever. We can after a time of sorrow, give that person or dream that we’ve lost over to God, and we let person go, let that dream go, let that life that we had go.

There is still plenty of life after mourning and sorrow when we are open to receiving it.

Hold on lightly. Even though The End may not come right away, it could come at any moment, and an end may also come at any moment. So, hold on lovingly but lightly. Holdin on with a tight grip is living in fear: fear of losing, anger at having lost, attacking any who seem like a threat. To that tight gripped, fearful life, Paul is teaching us to say, “To Hell with this; I’m gonna live!”

The end or an end may come at any time, so hold on lightly. By holding on lightly, we get to love people without possessing them.

By holding on lightly, we get to possess our things but with an open hand.

By holding on lightly, we get to open our hands to receive the beauty of the world and people around us.

Receiving the beauty of the world and people around us, and holding on lightly, we get to receive both joy and sorrow and not hold on to them forever, because there’s far too much living to do to be stuck fearfully clinging to people and stuff and even life itself.

There’s far too much life to live to waste time clinging to things in fear.

We’ve got a baptism today, and “To Hell with this, I’m gonna live,” is not exactly in the baptismal covenant, but it probably should be. What do we say at the beginning? I renounce Satan and all spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God. I renounce all evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. I renounce all sinful desires which draw me from the love of God. Then, I turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as my savior. I put my whole trust in his grace and love. I promise to follow and obey him as my Lord.

If that’s not saying, “To Hell with this, I’m gonna live,” I don’t know what is.

We’re declaring in our baptism that we’re gonna live. We’re declaring that we’re going to hold on lightly to the world around us and seek to love, rather than possess. We’re declaring that we’re going to mess up and that we’re even going to hold on to those screw ups lightly. Then, when we do mess up, we’re declaring that we’re going to ask God’s help to turn around again, to open up our hands, to let go of what we’re possessing and to receive from God the beauty of this life once again.

That’s the life of Baptism, the Way of Jesus, the life of the kingdom of God, for the kingdom of God is all around us, all the time. It may be tomorrow, or centuries, or millennia from now before Jesus comes and fully brings about God kingdom. However long or short it is, in the meantime, we get to live. However imperfectly it may be, we get to live God’s kingdom in our lives right now. Rather than wasting time clinging to fear, we get to open our hands and live. 

Love Is Our Identity

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets
January 7, 2024
1^st after Epiphany, Year B
Genesis 1:1-5
Psalm 29
Mark 1:4-11

Yesterday was the Epiphany, the day when we celebrate the coming of the Magi to visit Jesus. We call it the Epiphany because it was an “Aha” moment. These gentiles had somehow heard that Jesus had been born. They’d somehow heard that Jesus was to be king of the Jews. They visited with Jesus, with Mary and Joseph, and they bowed down before Jesus. The “Aha” moment was the first revelation of Jesus to the gentiles. Decades before Jesus began his ministry, these gentile Magi came to see that there was something special about this child named Jesus.

Now, today, on this first Sunday after the Epiphany, we have another “Aha” moment with Jesus’ baptism. Right after he was baptized, the heavens were opened, God’s voice called Jesus his beloved Son, and the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus like a dove. This was a revealing Jesus’ identity, of who Jesus was and is.

Last Sunday we heard about Jesus’ identity, that his identity was revealed in John’s gospel as the Word of God, which is God. Jesus’ identity is God who became human to live as one of us. By becoming human, God connected with us completely in every aspect of our lives. We are one with God, even when we hurt ourselves and one another. Even when we disconnect from one another and from God, God has already joined Godself to that disconnection, so nothing can separate us from God, not even our sin.

That’s called Incarnational Atonement. Our salvation is our unity with God, and that unity has come in Jesus.

Part of Jesus’ unity with us was that he was baptized by John. John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and Jesus joined with all of the people coming out to be baptized. The “Aha” moment in Jesus’ baptism is hearing that Jesus’ is God’s beloved Son. Now, when Jesus was baptized, he was already God’s son. As we know from John’s gospel, Jesus was God from before all time and forever. So, his baptism by John the Baptist didn’t make him God’s beloved son. Jesus’ baptism revealed him as God’s beloved Son.

One question is, to whom was that revelation made? Who exactly got the “Aha” moment? Did Jesus? Did he already know who he was? People were coming to John confessing their sins. Did Jesus do the same? Did he think he needed a baptism of repentance for forgiveness? Did he know that he was the one whom John was proclaiming? Perhaps Jesus’ identity as God was revealed to him as well. He was, after all, human, having to learn and grow as he went.

So, maybe Jesus’ identity was revealed even to Jesus. We’re not exactly sure, but we are fairly sure that no one else knew that Jesus was God, and we know that because almost nothing was mentioned about his life between his birth and his baptism. For about 30 years, Jesus was just some carpenter’s kids from the sparrow-fart town of Nazareth. He was a nobody, just a regular bloke. It’s as this nobody, regular bloke that God chose to unite with us.  

For us, then, being united to God doesn’t take anyone special. No fancy collar or clothes, no degrees, no training, no particular holiness. Being united to God simply takes being. In the Incarnation, Jesus has united all of us to God for the simple fact that we are people.

As Jesus’ identity was revealed in Baptism, so is our identity revealed in Baptism. At the end of each baptism, we say, “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” That sentence reveals a truth that was already there. Just as Jesus’ baptism gave an “Aha” moment, revealing who Jesus is, so do our baptisms give an “Aha” moment, revealing who we are.

We are one with Christ. We are one with God. We are God’s beloved children. In baptism, we are revealed as Christ’s own forever. We already are Christ’s own. We always have been. Baptism reveals that truth.

Looking at some more of what Baptism reveals about us, think on our Genesis reading. “In the beginning… God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good.” Everything God made is good, and everything God made is made in the light.

Now, again, from John’s gospel, we know that Jesus is the Word of God which spoke creation into existence. Also, in the Word of God “was life, and the life was the light of all people.” The very life of God, which is light for all people, is the life in which we were made. We were made in the life and light of God, and we were made in God’s image. We have the life and light of God within us, as part of us.

That too is revealed in our baptism. We are part of the life and light of God. So is everyone around us, all part of the life and light of God. Whether baptized or not, all of us are part of the life and light of God. Baptism reveals that truth of our identity.

Remembering from 1 John that “God is love,” we see another part of our identity revealed in Baptism. Julian of Norwich wrote, “Everything exists through the love of God,” and “With creation we started but the love with which he created us was in Him from the very beginning and in this love is our beginning.” (Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich)

Love is our identity, as is being God’s beloved children, as is our unity with God. There’s nothing special we need to do or be to make this identity happen. Just as Jesus’ identity was revealed to him in his baptism, so is our identity revealed to us in our baptisms.

We are made of the love of God, and love is our identity. There needn’t be anything special about us for this to be true. In his earthly life, Jesus was just a regular bloke, so as regular folks ourselves, we are part of the light and life of God. We are fully one with God because God became human, uniting Godself to us. In that unity with God, we find our identity, God’s beloved children, all of us and everyone we’ll ever meet, God’s beloved children.