As he walked along, Jesus saw a man who had been blind from birth.

In the very first sentence of this gospel passage, Jesus sees a man. He sees him. No one else in the story sees him, not really. If they noticed him at all, they saw nothing but just another blind beggar thrusting out his hand at the city gate, prompting them to avert their eyes and put him out of mind. We know this because as soon as he was healed, no longer blind, no one seems to recognize him as the same person.

For a moment, the dialogue gets pretty comical. Is this the blind guy? He can’t be the blind guy—his eyes are fine. But he looks kind of like the guy. But he can’t be the guy! They keep talking about him like this, as if he weren’t even there, until finally he cries out, “Hey! I am the guy!”

esus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

“So there was this person,” St. John the Evangelist tells us, “named Nicodemus, who was a Pharisee, a ruler of the Jews.” And with that single sentence we learn a lot about good ol’ Nick. He’s smart and religious, and, after he utters his own first statement, we learn that he’s also faithful and inquiring about the things of God. He’s taken by what he’s heard about Jesus. But he’s also hedging a bit. He comes to talk to Jesus, yes, but he grabs an appointment after night has fallen. He doesn’t choose to meet Jesus at the local coffee shop mid-afternoon. Not a chance. He comes quietly, in the shadows, to a clandestine place to suss all this out, to see who Jesus really is.

“Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” We’re not told who this “we” is in his sentence. Potentially Nicodemus is using the “royal we” that some leaders do, or maybe he just means those who have seen the miraculous works of Jesus—those signs like turning water into wine—and taken an interest in following him. Certainly he’s not referring to the Pharisees as a whole who already have some issues with Jesus. But he is seeing himself as part of a larger group, a collection of people who are wondering about Jesus.

Welcome to Lent. We started this season on Wednesday, gathering in this space to be reminded of our mortality with ashes smudged on our foreheads, and being invited to a time of shedding distractions, introspection, prayer, and repentance. Today we leaned into that call to prayer by starting our worship with the Great Litany, a prayer that (at least in broad strokes) prays for just about everything. We have come to the threshold of Lent and taken our first step through.

Similarly, in our Gospel this morning, Jesus has come to the threshold of his public ministry and is about to step through. Just before we pick up the story, Jesus was baptized. He submitted himself to this human experience and was claimed as God’s child “with whom I am well pleased.” It’s a powerful moment for Jesus, and from that place of strength, made sure in his identity as God’s son, Jesus follows the spirit out to the wilderness to be tempted.

Have y’all spent much time with the book of Joel? It’s a short book, just three chapters long. It might take you seven minutes to read it if you’re doing just a little more than skimming. The prophet tells of war and economic and ecological ruin – and ecological ruin means famine. These are dark and urgent times. Something must change, and it must change soon.

An interesting detail in the study of Joel is that it cannot be conclusively dated. There are no references to kings or a clear lineage of the prophet, so there are centuries in which it could be dated. Part of what that means is that there is a certain timelessness to this text. Warfare and violence, economic uncertainty, and food insecurity are near constant presences in this world across the ages, even into today.

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Reverend Nat inviting me to participate in St. Peter’s Day of Remembrance Eucharist. When I opened the message, I was surprised to find myself moved to tears, tears that I thought had dried up years ago. Why the tears, I wondered, and why the surprise? I had long assumed I was finished grieving the incarceration of Japanese Americans, but this month I learned that grief has a way of resurfacing, especially when our history remained unspoken for so long, tucked into family silences and passing references.

Growing up, I didn’t spend much time in Seattle, even though my Issei grandparents lived here, my father grew up here. Perhaps that distance insulated me, perhaps not. My family’s lives were forever changed on this day some eighty-four years ago, eighty-five years, yet it was a story not told to my generation when we were young. My grandmother would speak about “camp”, mentioning people or experiences as if recalling a childhood summer. Only later did I realize that “camp” was not a place of recreation, but a place of forced removal and incarceration.

Friends, it is good to be with you today. My name is Christi Chapman, and I am the Canon to the Ordinary for the Diocese of Olympia. Bishop LaBelle and Nat and I have had conversations this week, and the Bishop asked if I would be with you today, as you begin your leave-taking with Nat, so please know that you are in our prayers and in our hearts in this tender time.

So I’ve only explored caves a handful of times. The last time was more than 30 years ago, but memories of that trip remain burned in my head as if it happened yesterday. That day my husband and I visited a cave that was not far from his parents’ house. It was a well-known spot and one that many amateur spelunkers liked to visit. The day that we went, we were surprised, and yes, a little relieved, to discover that we would have the cavern to ourselves that day. So after grabbing a flashlight and donning our jackets, we made our way into the earth. And within minutes, the only visible light that we could see came from my husband’s flashlight. For nearly an hour, that sole source of light was the only thing that lit the way, as we scrambled over boulders and squeezed ourselves into increasingly …

 One of my favorite annual experiences in seminary was the Easter vigil. It starts, as Easter vigils tend to do, by gathering outside of the church and lighting the paschal fire. These are often sizeable fires, but in Sewanee the dean of the school of theology is also a captain in the volunteer fire department, and a handful of the seminarians also serve as firefighters. You know that people who know how to put out fires are also experts at building giant fires. These flames would leap ten, maybe even twelve feet in the air, burning so hot it was uncomfortable to be within six feet of the flames.

This wild flame would then be used to light the paschal candle, and from that candle all the small candles we each carry would be lit as we processed into All Saints Chapel. Those small, tame candles, born of the wild paschal fire, would then be the only light, but indeed enough light, in the chapel as we recalled the story of God’s salvation history.

I’ve been thinking about flames a lot this week, and not only because of the low snowpack out on the Olympics. I’ve been thinking about flames not least because my gallows humor coping mechanism was entirely engaged by a picture of a cross stitch I saw online. The image was some neatly done bits of flame framing the phrase, “I was told there would be handbaskets.”

Over the last week, I have been seeing post after post on social media and article after article in news apps quoting people on the ground who confess their shock at seeing people being asked for “papers” to prove their citizenship.

Each confession goes something like, “I never thought I would see the day when someone would be asked to show their papers - not here, not in this country.”

Over and over again, people keep referencing Nazi Germany as the point of comparison - that what is happening now in places like Minnesota and Maine are on parallel with the actions and intentions of the Gestapo in the 1930s and 40s. How quick we are to forget the history of our own nation, the stories of the marginalized and oppressed right here within our borders: stories from indigenous communities whose children were ripped away from their families and communities and sent to boarder schools where they were violently forced to assimilate. Stories from black folk who bear the collective trauma of enslavement, Jim Crow laws, segregation, disproportionate police brutality and incarceration.

On January 7, Renee Good, a 37-year old mother of three, was fatally shot by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. In the days since, people have gathered in prayer and protest across the nation. People in Minneapolis are organizing to be legal observers to raids and confrontations, to protect neighbors, schools, and houses of worship. Earlier this week at a vigil held in Concord New Hampshire, Episcopal Bishop Rob Hirschfeld spoke to those gathered about the “cruelty, the injustice, and the horror…unleashed in the city of Minneapolis.” He warned them that in this moment, it is likely that we are entering a “new era of martyrdom,” when many will be called on to make a stand, putting “our bodies…between the powers of the world and the most vulnerable.” Bishop Hirschfeld later clarified in an interview, after his words went viral, that he was not encouraging people to go out looking for death or inciting violence, but that the “signs of the times” that he read in what’s happening in our world today suggest that injury and death are a possibility if we follow Jesus in the business of standing up for the disinherited.

Earlier this week, we began our celebration of Epiphany. In my sermon on Tuesday night, I was explaining how the feast of the Epiphany traditionally encompasses two moments in Jesus’ life: the appearance of the wise men from the East at Jesus’ home and Jesus’ baptism. Anglican tradition, and the Gospels appointed for worship, place the emphasis of the actual feast day, January 6th, on the appearance of the wise men, and the first Sunday after the Epiphany is when we are meant to center Jesus’ baptism and perhaps highlight the Trinity because this is one of the clearest examples of the Trinity in the Gospels.

 But one of the core themes I highlighted Tuesday evening has become even more important to remember as the week continued to unfold: You do not have to be from the right group to know and be known by God. You do not have to be an insider to belong to God. You do not have to be an insider to be worthy of life. The wise men were outsiders who would have been looked upon with suspicion by the Jewish community at best, and at worst dismissed and excluded as idol worshipers.

I imagine you might be wondering what we’re doing here tonight. What are we doing gathered together, this small but mighty crowd, on a rainy Tuesday evening, pulling together a full Sunday morning expression of worship? Why are we not cozy at home?

Tonight, twelve days after Christmas, we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany. We will then observe the season of Epiphany until Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. The history of this feast day is a little complicated, and it serves to mark different events in the western and eastern traditions of Christianity. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, this is the day that they remember the Baptism of our Lord, which represents the institution of baptism and the revelation of the Trinity. God the Father claims Jesus the Son through an act of the Holy Spirit. That’s a pretty big deal.

In many Western traditions, however, Epiphany is when the church remembers the arrival of the magi, the wise men from the East to bring gifts and worship Jesus, when Jesus was made known to the gentiles.

Nearly two months ago, I shared in a sermon a quote attributed to Karl Barth, a 20th-century theologian, and contemporary of Dietrich Boenhoeffer. He said, the people of God ought not consider themselves a religious society concerned only with certain themes, but should remember that they are in the world and therefore need both the Bible and the Newspaper. On the one hand, Barth is insisting that Christians are called to be faithful readers of Scripture, to allow the words of our Bible to penetrate our souls and open us to the truth of God. On the other hand, he is also insisting that as we do so, we cannot bury our heads in the sand and ignore what is happening in the world around us. For Barth, Scripture is the lens through which we are called to critically engage with the news of the world’s happenings and the interpretive framework through which to understand our place in them.

Christmas is a time of tradition – traditions we keep and traditions we make. When I was growing up, one of our family traditions was watching some version of Charles Dickons’ classic, “A Christmas Carol.” It is a story of profound redemption and transformation. A story of how one man is brought face to face with the stories of his past that shaped who he became, the stories of his present that tugged on his heart strings and opened space for empathy to grow, and the story of his future in which his own mortality shatters his self-perception and false sense of security. The visitations he received from the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future were intrusive and disruptive, drawing him into a web of time that blurred the lines between the life he had lived and the life that he could still live. At the heart of this story lies the conviction that hope is never lost, that faith in love being born anew is never misplaced.

            The prophets of ancient Israel held a similar conviction. Dispersed and traumatized through military conquest and exile, the people of ancient Israel were confronted by stories of their past, their present, and their future. The prophets were masters at reading the signs of the times, of seeing in the nation’s present circumstances the root causes of past actions and inactions, naming in the present a reality that challenged the privileged and comforted the disinherited, and pointing to a future guaranteed by divine promise and faithfulness. This conviction lived on in the hearts and words of our Gospel writers, whose hope was bolstered by the prophetic visions of the past and provided an interpretive framework for understanding what they saw unfold in the person of Jesus and the implications for his life and the witness he bore in his ministry.

Growing up, I was the only one of my friends who actually liked my name. McKenzi Jo Roberson, shortened to Kenzi when I was a kid because it was two less letters to write in what felt like a long name and cheekily remaining as Kenzi when I learned for a school project that the traditional Scottish family name MacKenzie means “descendant of wise leader,” so just Kenzi would mean my name was wise leader. I even liked my name so well that when I went through my phase of wanting to be an author and needed a pen name I settled on Jo MacKenzie.

Names are important. Across many cultures of folklore, you do not want to give your name to magical beings, because giving them your name is giving them immeasurable power over you. Names create the reality we live in, both giving shape to people and places and such, and names making meaning of it all. Names are relational, something given and something received. They hold stories and memories as well as hopes and dreams.

The words of judgement in Matthew are quite striking. I can see it so clearly, the feet of the judge firmly planted on the ground, the axe in their hand sharp and glinting in the sun, ready to swing the moment they notice the lack of good fruit. And when I hear of the fire I think of the Epiphany bonfires my grad school would throw, where people would bring their Christmas trees to Golden Gardens and burn them in the fire rings. Those trees would burn, the flames reaching fifteen feet high. It was a fearsome thing, Lord knows I wasn’t going to be the one to start those fires. And to imagine a fire like that but unquenchable? I couldn’t tell you if I start sweating from the anxiety or the imagined heat.