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.

Wow. Things sure were different in biblical times.

From what today’s Gospel tells us, it sounds like there was a group of people who claimed to follow Jesus, but they did things a bit differently than another group of people who also claimed to follow Jesus. And then one of the groups tried to interfere with the other group.

Crazy, right? That would never happen today. Today, we’re all just one big happy family. Isn’t it great that we’re past all that?

We don’t have to do anything to earn God’s love. God’s love is certain, even before we ask.

But a life of faith is how we live in response to God’s love. And a life of faith has two parts: believing and acting.

The believing part is finding the courage to answer Jesus’s question for ourselves: “who do you say that I am?”

The acting part is choosing to follow him, whatever that choice might cost us.

What does that look like?

Jesus says it looks like denying yourself. It looks like taking up a cross. Losing your life for his sake and for the sake of the gospel.

That sounds difficult—but it also sounds exciting and important.

But I think one of the hardest things about a life of faith is that most of the time it isn’t so dramatic. Most of the time, it’s lived out in small ways, tiny gestures. A kind word. A glass of water. A moment of rudeness forgiven. A quiet prayer.

Sometimes when you read the Bible, it’s like God’s speaking directly to you. The message is clear, simple, straightforward. But sometimes it’s not so easy. You wrestle with the text. Its meaning and message remains a stubborn mystery.

The Bible isn’t a single book. It’s more of a library—a collection of texts written in three original languages, over more than a thousand years, in locations spanning well over a thousand miles.

We need to pay attention to that history—to that context—not to change the Bible’s meaning, but to understand it more clearly.

We love our traditions. I love our traditions.

But at least at first glance, Jesus’s words in today’s Gospel aren’t very complimentary about the traditions we hold so dear.

Jesus says that the tradition isn’t what matters. What matters is what’s in your heart.