n the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Now, we’re not told why for two whole years the minister-husband in this case didn’t recognize that this other woman was not his wife. Maybe he was so distracted by his duties on Sunday mornings that he just wasn’t taking a good look at the woman. Or maybe the man is very near-sighted. We’re also not told why Trudy Smith doesn’t like to go church, which is certainly an occupational hazard when you’re married to a minister! In any case, this story takes the cake in terms of strange and unexpected happenings in the church and religious news.

The story that was read as today’s First Lesson is a first century example of a totally unexpected, strange, and definitely outrageous happening in the religious news of that time. Who would have thought that Saul of Tarsus—later to be known as Paul—would end up being a passionate convert to Christianity! The very idea was absurd. Paul started out as a particularly staunch defender of the Jewish faith in its traditional form. He looked upon the followers of that radical rabbi from Nazareth as dangerous heretics. Paul went so far as to get himself deputized so that he could personally root them out, arrest them and throw them in jail. He wasn’t some cerebral traditionalist who just had strong opinions; Paul was man of action. He was going to clobber these Christians! And he did!

That is until the day he was entering Damascus to raid yet another enclave of these traitorous Jesus people. Suddenly there was a blinding light and Paul fell to the ground. He heard a voice—the Voice. And when it was over he had lost his vision and had to be led into town. For three days he was blind, as he thought and thought about what the Voice had said to him. When the three days were up, God sent the rather reluctant Ananias to minister to Paul. And ye gads!—the unthinkable happened! This vociferous hater of Christians had become one! For us it would be as if Billy Graham suddenly announced that he had become a Buddhist! Who would have thought?!

Seemingly Jesus wanted to put Paul’s skills to Christian use. Paul was an in-your-face kind of guy; he was fearless and didn’t back down. And that was exactly what was needed to take Jesus out to non-Jews. You and I might never have heard of Christianity, if it hadn’t been for Paul. The faith might have remained an obscure Jewish sect. But Paul took the faith out into the world—to non-Jews. And he worked hard; he exerted himself. He traveled all over the Eastern Mediterranean area, telling people the Good News about Jesus, organizing congregations, and, yes, sometimes getting beat up and thrown in jail for his efforts. But he didn’t back off.

Paul’s teaching about the faith is spelled out in a collection of his letters in the New Testament--his so-called "epistles." I don’t have the time in this sermon to deal with the entirety of his teaching—we’d be here until way in the afternoon and I’m sure that you don’t want that! But to deal with just one aspect—it’s found in the Second Lesson for today—from the reading out of his letter to the Ephesians. Not surprising for a gutsy guy like Paul, he urges us to be "strong in the Lord." And describes the armor worn by the Roman soldier—the breastplate, the belt, the shoes, the helmet—all symbolically representing aspects of the Christian life. At the end, Paul summarizes his point by saying: "Take…the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." Since our church bears the name of Paul, this statement has been carved in stone outside and above the main door of the church. There you will see an open book—the Bible--and with it a sword and the Latin motto, "Spiritus Gladius," which means "the sword of the Spirit." (See picture at the top of this page.) Throughout our lives we gather in churches to hear the word, to study it in the form of the Bible, and to celebrate its message. And when we go back out into the world, Paul says that the Word of God is our sword—our defense in the battles of life. It’s what encourages us from day to day and leads us to faith. Faith in what Jesus represents is there to help us every day. And that’s today’s message from that theological street-fighter known as Paul of Tarsus. Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The boy was asleep. His parents had brought him to the ancient holy place of Israel to serve as a care-giver and companion to an elderly priest named „Eli," who was feeble and blind. The boy was asleep inside the sanctuary. And he was awakened by a voice, calling "Samuel!" Thinking that Eli needed something, he ran to help him, but it wasn’t the old priest. Samuel went back to sleep, but again the voice called him, and again he ran to Eli to no avail. Finally, when this happened a third time, the elderly priest realized that Lord was calling the boy, and so he instructed him how to answer the call. And, of course, it was the Lord who was calling Samuel. His future calling was to become a great prophet and leader of Israel. Samuel was "called" literally and figuratively.

A man named Nathaniel was sitting under a fig tree, which was a sign of contentment in the Bible. In any case, a friend suddenly came running to Nathaniel very excited about having just met the Rabbi Jesus from Nazareth. That friend, named Philip, was just totally sure that Jesus was the long expected Messiah. But Nathaniel showed himself a cynic as he sarcastically exclaimed, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?!" You see, Jesus’ hometown wasn’t known for anything of significance. It was truly a "no-where’s-ville" in First Century Palestine. Finally, however, Nathaniel finally gave into Philip’s excitement and went to meet Jesus. And both men ended up being called into Jesus’ service as disciples. The watchword here is "called."

Today’s Gospel reading presents us with a scene that we encounter in one form or another every year at about this time. After celebrating Jesus’ birth on Christmas and Epiphany, and commemorating his baptism at the age of 30, we then look at the beginnings of his public ministry. And this involved the recruitment–the calling together--of a group of "disciples." That word means "students;" these are the people who learn from him the new way of understanding God. Later on, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, their title would change. Then they would be called "apostles"–that word means "those-who-are-sent-out." They would be his representatives in the world at large–their main role would be to continue his earthly ministry.

The New Testament says in various ways that all of us are Jesus’ disciples and apostles–all of us! We still learn from him, not just when we are children in Sunday school, though that is very important, but we can continue learning from him throughout our entire lives. Then, even while we’re still learning, we have the opportunity to be apostles–putting the Jesus’ teaching into practice in the world and in our lives.

Sometimes God’s call can lead us to activities we hadn’t planned on. A highly educated young pastor was serving the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, when a crisis erupted around the Jim Crow laws that had for so long aimed at keeping Black Americans "in their place." Martin Luther King Jr. stepped forward with a plan based on Christian principles to protest the wide spread racism that then existed. Little did he realize that this would lead to a dramatic change in his calling. Tomorrow we have a national holiday to honor Dr. King for using his God-given skills to engineer major social change in a non-violent way–something of exceeding importance for our country.

Beyond the obvious ways in which each of us can serve the cause of Jesus in the church and in the world, occasionally something new, something unanticipated, can crop up. And we are challenged to grow in faith and in action. "Samuel!," the voice calls. And the answer is: "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening..." Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Over the last two Sundays we got Jesus born, and now today we get him baptized—at the age of 30! But what did he do and what was his life like during the intervening three decades? We have just one tiny, little story of the 12 year old Jesus traveling with Mary and Joseph to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage. You can check it out in Luke, Chapter 2, verses 41 to 51. But otherwise, we don’t know anything about his growing up and early adulthood.

So the baptism of Jesus, at the age of 30, was definitely a pivotal experience—a crucial turning point. Suddenly he was engaged in a very active and public ministry—traveling around feeding the hungry, touching people’s lives with healing, and telling all who would listen about a profoundly new relationship with God. It was revolutionary stuff! And his baptism was the starting point for all of that.

Down through the subsequent long history of Christianity, baptism has remained the quintessential action by which a person is declared to be a member of Christ’s church and within the circle of faith. And so from its beginning the church has been baptizing, baptizing, and baptizing.

But, unfortunately, the unity of baptism has been broken up by all kinds of contentious differences of opinion. The prevailing opinion today is that a person can be baptized at any age, though the minority opinion says that for a person to be validly baptized, he or she has to be old enough to make his or her own decision. In the ancient church baptism was usually done by "immersion," that means that the person was dipped into a large amount of water—the word "baptize" comes from a Greek word that means to dip. Today the prevailing opinion is that the amount of water isn’t the important thing. Consequently, a small amount can be poured on the person or they can be totally immersed in the water. However, those who follow the Baptist tradition accept only baptism by immersion. Furthermore, to add to the confusion, some Christians call baptism a "sacrament"—meaning an action that celebrates God’s grace in our lives, while yet other Christians call baptism an "ordinance," meaning an action that Jesus "ordered" us to do.

As a result, we can be hard pressed to understand what baptism means for us—what with all of these competing opinions. But surely we can say that there is common ground in the idea that by being baptized each Christian takes on a role in the ongoing ministry represented by Christ and his church. Baptism is the beginning of our active ministry, and that can include many things, but especially important is participation in the church as the body of Christ, which can lead us to respond to the needs of the poor and the ill in our world, and above all it means that we are inherent bearers of the Good News about Jesus. Even the humblest of acts can be counted as part of the ministry into which we have been baptized–taking food to someone at the time of a death, reading Bible stories to small children, praying for those facing big challenges in life, and so forth.  With his baptism Jesus began his active ministry; with our baptisms we begin our role in the continuation of that ministry.   Amen

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Gold is too soft to use for tools and most other practical uses, so its value has always been in its appearance and durability. And, in the fact that it doesn’t corrode or tarnish. In fact, gold is impervious to nitric acid which is highly corrosive to most metals. Consequently, nitric acid has sometimes been used to test an item to see if it’s genuine gold. From that testing we get the expression, "the acid test."

The search for gold has had a strong effect on history. Christopher Columbus and other early adventurers explored North America with the original goal of finding gold. And think what happened in California in 1848 and in Alaska in 1898! The influx of gold seekers helped to populate those two United States territories.

And so we come to today’s story, when some exotic foreigners come to do homage to the "new born king of the Jews." Wise they might have been in other ways, but these magi were pretty much clueless in their initial attempt find this baby, because they show up on the doorstep of the royal palace in Jerusalem, inhabited by a monarch named, Herod, who was both paranoid and unscrupulous. Not a good development! But eventually the magi find their way to Bethlehem, where they finally find the child Jesus, and present their costly gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.