You probably know the scene that’s been made famous by so many paintings: Jesus is sitting on a rock, on a hillside, surrounded by a crowd, perhaps with the Sea of Galilee off in the distance. In most of the paintings, Jesus has one arm raised in the air, underscoring his words, or blessing the crowd.

Jesus’s words are full of encouragement.

But that’s not the sermon we heard this morning.

I’ve talked to a lot of people lately who are feeling anxious. Maybe you’re one of them. Headlines are scary, rumors are flying, and it’s hard to know what to do next. I wish I could tell you that God will fix everything, but that doesn’t seem to be God’s way. God will be with us through whatever comes, but the work is ours to do.

Today is the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, also known as the Feast of the Purification, also known as Candlemas. Also known as Groundhog Day. And yes, there is a connection. Sort of. More on that later.

The church is much more than just a beautiful building. The church is the body of Christ in the world. And we are members of that body, called each in our own way to do the work of God, to use our gifts, as St. Paul said, for the common good.

The opportunity to be a part of the mission of God in the world is itself a gift.

Jesus’s baptism is less about something that happened to him and more about what it tells us about who he is.

It’s less about water and more about the voice that came from heaven saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

It’s less about John the Baptist standing in a river and more about what Jesus came to do.

Jesus’s incarnation is about more than his birth. It’s about the whole of his life. Jesus was a refugee and an exile. He lived in a time of violence and tragedy. He was a child—a real, human child. He worried and sometimes angered his parents.

We probably all know the story of Christmas, the story we just heard from the Gospel of Luke. Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem, but can’t find a place to stay. Mary’s baby is born in a space normally reserved for animals, and she wraps him in bands of cloth and lays him in a manger. An angel announces the news of Jesus’s birth to shepherds watching their flocks in the fields by night. Later, wise men from the east follow a star and arrive with gifts appropriate to a royal baby—gold, frankincense, and myrrh—for a child born in a very non-royal setting.

It’s a familiar story, a story of shepherds and angels, of a journey and a new birth, of wise men and a star. It’s a story we all know.

The truth is that we’ve domesticated Mary. We’ve made her unthreatening. A pretty girl in blue. I suspect that we’ve done that because we don’t want to listen too closely to her song, and to her challenge.

“He has shown the strength of his arm, * he has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, * and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, * and the rich he has sent away empty.”

It's jarring. We go from “Rejoice and exult with all your heart!” to Repent, “you brood of vipers”!—all in the same Sunday.

But actually, I think that’s as it should be.

A few weeks ago, someone asked me what Advent was. It was a simple question about the church calendar, but my mind went in a dozen directions at once, and I’m pretty sure that the answer I came up with was almost completely useless. I’ve been thinking about the question ever since, though. What is Advent? And why did I find that question so hard to answer?

The church’s power should look like Jesus’s power. It should look like love. It should look like self-sacrifice. It should look like care for the stranger, the suffering, and the excluded.

We’re the church. We’re the body of Christ in the world. We ought to exercise power in the same way he did. Not by abdicating responsibility. Not by withdrawing from the world. But also not by force or compulsion. By care, by kindness, by courage. By love.

On this Feast of Christ the King, may we know our citizenship to be first and foremost in his kingdom. And may we follow with faith and courage in his way of love.

The year I graduated from high school, there was a lot of talk about the end of history. The Soviet Union had collapsed, all was right with the world (at least from a certain point of view), and it seemed certain that nothing interesting would ever happen again. At 18, the idea that history was over and done with once and for all really bothered me. I wanted to witness history, maybe even to be a part of it. The end of history sounded so very boring. I felt cheated of an adventure.

Let me just say, for the record: I was an idiot.

History is back in full swing—and it’s not nearly as much fun as I thought it would be.

“The communion of saints is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise.”

That’s a club we might just manage to be part of. “Saints with a lowercase s,” let’s call it.

I noticed something new in the psalm we read today. It’s a psalm of return, of exile’s end. It’s a song of celebration: “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, then were we like those who dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.”

But listen again to the last line: “Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.”

There’s a celebration of exile’s end there. But there’s also an instruction for how to act in times of sorrow, in times when exile is only just beginning. Those who went out weeping had much to weep about. But they didn’t go empty-handed. They carried with them seeds. They carried with them hope for the future. They carried seeds, and even in exile they planted and nurtured those seeds. And when finally they returned home, they brought back with them bundles of harvested grain.

The lessons we hear each Sunday follow a calendar that was set up years ago. Sometimes I love the lectionary. Sometimes I hate it. And then there are weeks like this, when I’m not sure whether the lectionary is a blessing or a curse.

Because, you see, we’re starting our annual stewardship campaign next week, and here Jesus is talking about camels and eyes of needles.