1 Epiphany

The Baptism of Our Lord

 

January 11, 2026

 

Isaiah 42.1-9; Matthew 3.13-17

 

+Well, this past week was one of those weeks in which many of us thought: everything we feared is coming true.

 

It was an ugly week.

 

It was a violent week.

 

Renee Nichole Good’s death has hit all of us hard.

 

Well, all of us who care.

 

She is one of us.

 

We see ourselves in her.

 

This poet, mother, spouse.

 

This person who, like we try to do, stood up against a posse of deputized gang members.

 

And she paid the price for it.

 

Remember all those times I said I hope none of us become martyrs?

 

Well, that reality hit close to home for all of us with her murder.

 

It is important to remember what martyr actually means.

 

It means witness.

 

A witness to the truth.

 

A witness to what is right.

 

A witness against the forces of darkness that seem to prevail in our nation right now.

 

And the fact that so much of this is being perpetrated by so-called Christians is a double gut-punch for us who are striving to follow Jesus and do what we feel is our baptismal call in this world.

 

All of this is important to remember on this Sunday in which we commemorate the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan.

 

It is important for us to remember that when, in a few moments, we remember and renew our baptismal vows.

 

It is important to remember that when we are sprinkled with holy water in remembrance of the water of our own baptisms.

 

On Facebook yesterday, a Facebook friend of mine posted this:

 

JESUS DID NOT ENTER THE RIVER JORDAN SO YOU COULD USE HIS NAME TO COMMIT ATROCITIES.

 

Let’s repeat that again:

 

JESUS DID NOT ENTER THE RIVER JORDAN SO YOU COULD USE HIS NAME TO COMMIT ATROCITIES.

 

Our job as baptized followers of Jesus is not to commit—or condone—atrocities.

 

Our job is what:

 

To strive for justice and peace and to respect the worth and dignity of every person.

 

Well, let me tell you:

 

I am struggling to respect the worth and dignity of some people this morning.

 

But that’s our challenge.

 

And that’s what we must do.

 

Because if we don’t, we become THEM.

 

And that is not an option for us.

 

Our baptism is not, as you  have heard me say a million times, some sweet little christening event for us as Christians.

 

It is not a quaint little service of dedication we do.

 

For us Episcopalians, it a radical event in our lives as Christians.

 

Just as the Eucharist is a truly radical event in our lives, over and over again.

 

Baptism and the Eucharist are the events from which everything we do and believe flows.

 

They are the ground of being for our radical beliefs, for our activism and our standing up and speaking out.

 

In baptism, we are marked as Christ’s own.

 

For ever.

 

It is a bond that can never be broken.

 

We can try to break it as we please.

 

We can struggle under that bond.

 

We can squirm and resist it.

 

We can try to escape it.

 

But the simple fact is this: we can’t.

 

For ever is for ever.

 

And knowing that is not cause for us to simply sit back and bask in the glow of that knowledge.

 

To know that—to acknowledge that—is to then go out in the world and live out that commitment.

 

In the waters of our baptism, God spoke to us the words God spoke to Jesus in today’s Gospel reading.

 

In those waters, the words we heard in our reading from Isaiah were affirmed in us as well.

 

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
   my chosen, in whom my soul delights;

Those words are our words.

 

Those words were spoken to us by our God in those waters.

 

In those waters, we were all made equal to each other.

 

In those waters, the same water washed all of us—no matter who are.

 

In those waters, there are no class distinctions, no hatred, or discrimination or homophobia or sexism or war or violence.

 

In those waters, we are all equal to one another and we are all equally loved.

 

In a few moments, we will stand and renew the vows we made at baptism.

 

When we are done, I will sprinkle you with water.

 

The sprinkling of water, like all our signs and actions that we do in this church, is not some strange practice a few of us High Church-minded people do.

 

That water that comes to us this morning is a stark reminder of those waters in which we were washed at Baptism—those waters that made us who we are, those waters in which we all stand on equal ground, with no distinctions between us.

 

Here at St. Stephen’s, all of our ministry—every time we seek to serve Christ and further the Kingdom of God in our midst—is a continuation of the celebration of baptism.

 

Sometimes we lose sight of that.

 

Sometimes we forget what it is that motivates us and charges us to do that wonderful work.

 

Sometimes we forget that our ministry as baptized people is a ministry to stand up and speak out against injustice.

 

Our ministry is to echo those words from Isaiah God spoke to us at the beginning of our ministries:

 

I have put my spirit upon [you];
   [you] will bring forth justice to the nations. 
   [You] will faithfully bring forth justice. 
[You] will not grow faint or be crushed
   until [you have] established justice in the earth;

Those words speak to us anew this morning.

 

I know how frustrating it is right now.

 

I know we ae feeling faint.

 

I know we are feeling crushed.

 

But now is not the time.

 

It is time for us to bring forth justice, certainly to our nation.

 

It is time for us to establish justice in our world in which justice needs to be established.

 

Today, let us be renewed in our call to justice.

 

Today, on this first Sunday in Epiphany, it is time to stand up and speak our and to rail against the forces of darkness in our world.  

 

When we do, it is then that we live out our baptism.

 

It is then that we truly live our baptismal life.

 

Let us be emboldened by our baptism.

 

Let us truly live our faith in a God of justice by speaking out and pushing back.

 

Let us boldly live out our baptismal covenant in all that we do as Christians in seeking out, speaking out and doing all we can in love and compassion and justice.

 

JESUS DID NOT ENTER THE RIVER JORDAN SO YOU COULD USE HIS NAME TO COMMIT ATROCITIES.

 

Jesus entered those waters to show us the way forward.

 

Forward into a world in which justice will prevail,

 

That is what we are called to do.

 

Now.

 

And always.

 

 

Just as I was leaving for church this morning, Annette Morrow sent me this:

 

This is from Matt Moberg, Chaplain for the Minnesota Timberwolves:

 

If you’re a church posting

prayers for peace and unity today

while my city bleeds in the street,

miss me with that softness you only wear when it costs you nothing.

Don’t dress avoidance up as holiness.

Don’t call silence “peacemaking.”

Don’t light a candle and think it substitutes for showing up.

Tonight an ICE agent took a photo of me next to my car, looked me in the eye and told me, “We’ll be seeing you soon.”

Not metaphor.

Not hyperbole.

A threat dressed up in a badge and a paycheck.

Peace isn’t what you ask for

when the boot is already on someone’s neck.

Peace is what the powerful ask for

when they don’t want to be interrupted.

Unity isn’t neutral.

Unity that refuses to name violence

is just loyalty to the ones holding the weapons.

Stop using scripture like chloroform.

Stop calling your fear “wisdom.”

Stop pretending Jesus was crucified

because he preached good vibes and personal growth.

You don’t get to quote scripture like a lullaby

while injustice stays wide awake.

You don’t get to ask God to “heal the land”

if you won’t even look at the wound.

There is a kind of peace that only exists

because it refuses to tell the truth.

That peace is a lie.

And lies don’t grow anything worth saving.

The scriptures you love weren’t written to keep things calm. They were written to set things right.

And sometimes the most faithful thing you can do

is stop praying around the pain and start standing inside it.

If that makes you uncomfortable—good.

Growth always is.

  

Amen.

 

Epiphany

 

January 4, 2026

 Matthew 2.1-12

+ Every time I hear the story we heard in our Gospel reading for today, this story of these wise astrologers who traveled a great distance to Bethlehem, I have to say.

 It seems so fantastical, doesn’t it?

 It seems so other-worldly.

 Astrologers.

 Following a star.

 Who would do such a thing?

 It just seems so other-worldly.

 But then, so much of what we experience in scripture often seems other-worldly.

 So, here we are.

 Now, I know it might seem strange that I am talking about all of this today.  

 The Christ child and the Magi?

 It’s the beginning of January, after all.

 Christmas already feels long over.

 Most of us have put away our Christmas decorations.

 Trees came down quickly in the first few days after Christmas, the rest in the days immediately after New Years.

 (New Years seems like a long time ago too)

 Since we’ve been hearing about Christmas for months, we are maybe a little happy to see the Christmas season go away for another year by this time. 

 We’re ready to put those trappings aside and move on.

 The fact is: the Christmas season, for the Church, began on Christmas Eve and ended yesterday, on January 6.

 Tuesday will be the feast of the Epiphany, which we are commemorating today.

 Until Tuesday, it’s still Christmas officially.

 The greens are still up (at least until after the Eucharist today)

 But, I think Epiphany is important for us, and so we’re gonna talk about it today.

 And we’re still gonna Proclaim the Date of Easter, Bless the Chalk, mark the lintel and have 3 Kings Cake.

 So, what is the Epiphany really? 

 Well, the word itself—Epiphany—means “manifestation” or “appearing.”

 In this context, it means the manifestation of God’s Messiah among us. 

 God’s own anointed One, the Christ, God’s very Son, has appeared to us.

 And in the story that we hear this morning, it is the appearing of God not only to the Jews, but to the non-Jews, as well, to the Gentiles, which we find represented in the Magi—those mysterious astrologers from the East. 

 Epiphany is all about the manifestation of God in our midst. 

 All of us.

 Epiphany is a moment of realization. 

 In this feast we realize that God is truly among us—all of us, no matter our race or religion or our understanding of this event.

 Over the last month or so, we, as the Church, have gone through a variety of emotions. 

 Advent was a time of expectation. 

 We were waiting expectantly for God’s Messiah to come to us.

 Christmas was the time of awe. 

 God’s Messiah was among us and there was something good and wonderful about this fact.

 Epiphany, however, gets the rap for being sort of anti-climactic. 

 It is the time in which we settle down into the reality of what has come upon us. 

 We realize what has happened and we accept it and we live into it.

 A bit of the awe is still there. 

 A bit of wonder still lingers.

 In this morning’s Gospel, the Magi  are overcome with joy when they see the star stop over Bethlehem. 

 But, for the most part, despite the joy they felt, we are now moving ahead. 

 There are no more angels singing on high for us. 

 The miraculous star has begun to fade by this point. 

 The Magi  have presented their gifts and are now returning to home to Persia. 

 It is a time in which we feel contentment. 

 We feel comfortable in what has happened. 

 But, in a few weeks, this is all going to change again. 

 We will soon face the harsh reality of Ash Wednesday and Lent. 

 Now, I know it’s hard even to think about such things as we labor through the cold of January.

 As many of you who know; I really despise the month of January. It’s my least favorite month.

 But there is Ash Wednesday—just around the corner. In the middle of next month.

 The joys and beauty of the Christmas season will be replaced by ashes and sackcloth and, ultimately, by the Cross.

 But that’s all in the future. 

 Christmas is still kind of lingering in our thoughts today and, in this moment, we have this warm reality. 

 God’s love has appeared to us.

 God has sent us God’s love in the form of this divine child.  

 And for this moment—before the denial of our bodies in Lent, before the betrayal and torture of Holy Week, before the bloody and violent murder of Good Friday, we have in our midst, this Child.

 We have God’s love appearing to us, dwelling within the most innocent and most beautiful form of humanity possible. 

 It is the Child Jesus we delight in now.

 For now, we are able to look at this Child and see God’s amazing love in our midst.

 For now, in this moment, we are the Magi.

 We are the ones who, seeking God’s promise, have found it.

 We are the ones who, despite everything our rational minds have told us, have decided to follow that star of faith.

 We, like them, have stepped out into the unknown and have searched for what we have longed for.

 We are the ones who have traveled the long journeys of all our lives to come to this moment—to this time and place—and, here, we find Christ—God’s love made human—in our midst.

 We have followed stars and other strange signs, hoping to find some deeper meaning to our lives.

 We have trekked through the wastelands of our life, searching for God.

 But our Epiphany is the realization that God has appeared to us where we are—right here in our own midst.

 And this is what we can take away with us this morning—on this feast of the Epiphany.

 This is the consolation we can take with us as we head through these short, cold, snow-filled days toward Lent.

 No matter where we are—no matter who we are—God is here with us.

 God is with us in all that we do and every place we look.

 So, let us look for God.

 Let us embody God’s love.

 Let us be God’s Presence in this world.

 Let us see and recognize God in one another.

 And whenever we recognize God—that is our unending feast day of Epiphany.

  

 

 

 

 

 

1 Christmas/St. Stephen

 

December 28, 2025

 + This morning you’re probably looking around and seeing sort a mishmash of things.

 We’ve got both red and on the altar.

 We’re doing this because it is officially the First Sunday after Christmas.

 But we are also transferring the feast of our patron saint, St. Stephen to this day, as well

 We’re not doing it just to do it.

 There is always a method to our madness here.

 And we are doing it today for one big reason.

 This morning, we are officially kicking off our 70^th year of ministry at St. Stephen’s.

 And what better way to do that than to celebrate our patron saints?

 After all, what better patron saint could we have?  

 Besides St. Hildegard of Bingen that is…

 St. Stephen was a person who could look into the future, who held strongly to his Christian faith, who was loudly able to proclaim that faith and live that faith out by his very life. 

 Those first founders of our church were a smart bunch.

 They also were a prophetic bunch.

 Naming our church after St. Stephen was a smart thing.

 Of course, the reason they came to this name was because St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Casselton, ND had just closed in 1953.

 And we inherited much of their furnishings.

 But St. Stephen was a great saint for us to have as our patron.

 In the Orthodox and Roman traditions of the Church, the patron saint of a church is viewed as more than just a namesake.

 They are seen as special guardians of that congregation. 

 And so, it is especially wonderful to celebrate a saint like St. Stephen, who is our guardian and who is, no doubt, present among us this morning, with that whole communion of saints, who is always present with us at worship, along.

 St. Stephen, of course, was the proto-martyr of the Church

 “Proto” is the important word here.

 Proto means, essentially, first.

 He was the first martyr of the Church.

 He was the first one to die for his open proclamation of God’s Gospel of love.

 He also is considered a proto deacon in the church.

 He is a special patron saint of deacons—like Deacon John, and Deacon Suzanne, and myself sine I am still a deacon as well—and of all people who share a ministry of servitude to others.

 What better saint can we claim as our patron than St. Stephen?

 He was the first to do many things. 

 Just like we, as a congregation, have been the first in doing many things.

 St. Stephen, in his stance on a few issues, was not always popular obviously.

 There is a reason they dragged him out and stoned him.

 The great Archbishop Demond Tutu, who died on the feast of St. Stephen back in 2022, stood up and spoke out against injustice and racism and homophobia and all the things we at St, Stephen’s have stood up and spoken out against.

 Archbishop Tutu once said,

 "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."

 Well, we certainly have never been shy here at St. Stephen’s for speaking out against injustice in our own Church or in the world.

 And speaking out and making the stance we have in the past and the reaction we have received from others, let me tell you, I can feel for St. Stephen.

 So yes it’s appropriate that this congregation that has been the first to do many things, is named after St. Stephen.

 When we look back at our 70 year history, just think for a moment about all those people who came through the doors of this church.

 Think about how many of those people who have been hurt by the larger Church.

 Think about how many were frustrated with the Church.

 And more often than not, their relationship with God suffered for it. 

 But they came here searching.

 Searching for true religion.

 Searching for a welcoming, inclusive and open community.

 So what is this true religion? 

 I see the Episcopal Church, and specifically St. Stephen’s,  as making a real solid effort at true religion.

 For me, St. Stephen’s personifies in many ways, what true religion is.

 The Church should be like a dinner party to which everyone is invited. 

 And St. Stephen’s has always been the place that knows this one blunt fact: The only thing there is no room for in true religion is for those who cannot love each other.

 St. Stephen’s is a place very much like a family.

 We don’t always choose the people God has brought into our lives.

 They sometimes irritate us, or say things embarrass us, or do things with which we don’t agree.

 But we always—ALWAYS—have to love them.

 So what is true religion?

 True religion begins and ends with love.

 We must love one another as God loves us.

 True religion begins with the realization that, first and foremost, God loves each and every one of us. 

 When we can look at that person who drives us crazy and see in that person, someone God loves wholly and completely, then our relationship with that person changes.

 We too are compelled to love that person as well. 

 Even if we don’t want to.

 Love is the beginning and end of true religion. 

 Certainly, St. Stephen’s has always been a place of love. 

 Love has never been a stranger here.

 Love has been offered to God not only on this altar, but among the pews and in the undercroft and in the narthex and in the parking lot. 

 And most importantly in the lives of our members out in the larger world.

 That Love that God has commanded us to share has went out from here into all the world.

 We who are gathered here have been touched in one way or the other by the love that has emanated from this place and these people.

 We are the fortunate ones—the ones who have been transformed and changed by this love.

 We are the lucky ones who have—through our experiences at St. Stephen’s—been able to get a glimpse of true religion.

But our job now is not to cherish it and hold it close to our hearts.

Our job now is to turn around and to continue to share this love with others.

Our job is take this love and reflect it for everyone we see.

So, in a very real sense, we, at St. Stephen’s, are doing what that first St. Stephen did. 

We are striving to do what Archbishop Tutu did.

We have set the standard. 

We have embodied who and what both St. Stephen the Martyr and Desmond Tutu stood for.

Even when it was not popular.

Even when people felt it wasn’t time.

We have stood up again and again for what we have felt is our mission to accept all people in love.

We have journeyed out at times into uncharted territory.

And most importantly, we have, by our love, by our compassion, by our acceptance of all, been a reflection of what the Church—capital C—is truly capable of.

We do all we do as St. Stephen and Archbishop Tutu did it—with our eyes firmly set on God, with our lips singing and praying, with our head held high, with love in heart, even if stones and rocks are falling around us.

We do so affirmed in our many ministries.

This is where we are as we begin our 70^th year of ministry.

Those founders of our church would be amazed at what this congregation they envisioned in 1956 would one day be.

As we begin another year of ministry, let us do with gratitude to God and one another in our hearts.

Let us shake off the negativity and those nagging doubts that may plague us.

And let us, like St. Stephen, be strong and firm in our faith in God and our convictions of serving others in love.

And may our God—that source of all love, that author and giver of all good things—continue to bless us with love and goodness and strength.

May we continue to flourish and grow. 

May we continue to venture bravely forward in  all that we continue to do here among us and throughout the world. 

May we continue to be the prophets we are, heeding this voice of God, out here, in Fargo, North Dakota.

May we continue to heed the call of our God who continues to call us to do radical things, to speak boldly and to, always, always, love each other.

Amen.