There is difficulty within faith, there are struggles on our faith journeys. We may even run from our faith, but the constancy of God’s love remains.

What Jesus is warning us away from is ensuring that our prayer is not performative, that we do not render our clothes and beat our chests calling to God without action, without belief. And to do so, we need discipline and not performance.

We need to judge rightly our misdeeds and atone for them; ask God for forgiveness so that we might realize God’s love with a clear heart and clear mind.

These ashes, symbolic perhaps, still mean more than the flailing of a hypocrite wishing to be seen.

Perhaps we will never witness such beauty for ourselves. Perhaps that is our reality.

Perhaps though in our imaginings and perhaps in our faith and perhaps in moments of absolute harmony where things are just so, morning light filtered through a lace curtain creating designs and imagery dancing in a breeze, a moment we wish to keep in stasis forever, we can understand the awe those disciples must have felt.

From that suffering, from those bad feelings felt, comes change when we turn and remain focused on the one who brings the soothing thoughts of spring, the one who looked through death and received his resurrected son in the heavenly kingdom to which we all aspire.

This is not hope or folly. This is not wait and see. This is immediacy.

In this moment, in all your life that is off, in tears and in loneliness and in silence and in persecutions, you are blessed.

So, this is where we encounter the both/and of St. Teresa’s poem for we should both act as Jesus did, we should serve as Christ’s hands and feet in the world, and (AND) understand that we are not Jesus.

We are limited by our humanness without divinity while at the same time we experience the boundless unlimitedness provided to us through our faith in Jesus.

I like to think that we celebrate the baptism of our Lord for the special thing it is on its own as a celebration of God’s humanness coming to be with us and to be washed with us and share in our righteousness.

I hope too we celebrate this baptism as a connection, a direct connection between not just God and us, but with Christ as well.

We are but the shepherds receiving the good news, we are but the shepherds passing on the good news to others for we have found salvation.

For the Lord saves us all.

On this morning, in this chilly air and under bright skies, Jesus is born of Bethlehem. In John’s version we do not hear of Jesus’ birth, his time as an infant. Instead, we are given the gift of knowing Jesus has been with us all along.

Jesus was born within community. Not to be found in a barn at the end of some lonely street, Jesus was born close to a family’s love.

That is important.

For Jesus is born this night and in this hour; he is born within the very hearths and homes of our hearts.

By shifting and adjusting our expectations of how life should be to reacting to what life truly is, we are listening to God’s call. I will tell you, it was not always easy, in trying new things there is trepidation at the unknown and sadness as well. Sadness that I just didn’t seem to fit into those places I worked at, but so much hope. Hope that this next place would be the right fit, the place where I belonged. And in that hopefulness was the clarity to, at least in retrospect, try on what God was asking me to do.

How wonderful to listen to God’s call!

That child’s careful walk to and through the attic, bringing the proper amount of light to retrieve those baubles and trinkets, unwrapping the porcelain, unwinding the light string, those were acts of preparation.

And those are acts we can carry over into our own lives, adult versions of a child’s hand laying out snow made of foam and polyester.

Friends, we prepare by entering into the attics of our hearts and minds in prayer and meditation, unwinding that which ails us, shining light upon all that is good in our lives and giving thanks, thanks to God, thanks to each other, we are grateful for love.

And you look at the crowd around you, you see the tax collectors, the soldiers, the cops, the nurses, the business people, your neighbors and you see them as they are, your siblings in all things, your partners who can help you build a better world a world that can escape the winnowing fork, the fires to come, for you will all be building a community of peace and transformation.

For yours is a love of action and feeding and clothing and actively loving those who might be hard to love and realizing you are a part of that love to.

You are a part of everything.

Perhaps it is not yet a Paradise realized through our human eyes, but when we look through the lens of Christ’s hope for all of us, through the salvation offered, we can understand the possibility of such a thing.

Paradise is here.

Today.

My times at church back then were more about anticipation and recollection than they were about being present before God. I would sit there in the pew, placed between my parents and brother and I would look so holy.

Looking front, eyes wide open, staring at whatever I was supposed to be staring at, the priest with his big arms during Eucharist was especially iconic.

But ask me what was said, and I am not exactly sure I would answer correctly.

He looked good. Strong. His silver white hair was perfect, he was tanned from the Jersey shore. He lost his limp acquired years ago when a back surgery did not quite go right.

He put up his hand, stoic at first he smiled.

“I didn’t realize how much I missed you,” I replied.

That is my confession. That is my blind spot. Sometimes, I am prideful. Jesus is preaching humility. And I need to remember to humble myself before God.

Jesus, be merciful to me, a sinner!

If I find myself in this story, let me be the one who finds mercy through humility.

If my faith was but the size of a mustard seed, I could do great things. For my faith would be in great things. It is not that the seed will grow and transform and root, it is the seed itself.

You hold.

I hold.

We hold the amount of faith we need, just the right amount, to change the world. Our faith does not have to be terribly large, for what we have faith in is infinitely big.

How do we worship God in community now that so much has changed? Well, that’s where hope begins.

We can lament and lament only a dying church. Or we can find hope in a dynamic church.