The First Sunday after the Epiphany-The Rev Melanie Lemburg
The Very Rev. Melanie D. Lemburg
The First Sunday
after the Epiphany-Year C
January 12, 2025
I’m not someone who regularly watches
the news. I get most of my updates from
daily emails from NPR with the headlines, and that’s almost more than I can
stand. But this week, I’ve been paying
more attention than usual because of the wildfires in California. It started early in the week when a seminary
classmate of mine who is now the bishop of Arizona and is from California shared
the news about how the Diocese of Los Angeles had lost St. Mark's, Altadena, the
rectories of St. Matthew's, Pacific Palisades, and many homes of church members
to the fires. And I’ve watched the stories
about how so many people are evacuating and still some choose to stay, wetting
down their rooves to try to prevent losing their homes. It makes me wonder what people are thinking
who choose to stay and face down a wildfire.
It reminded me of the stories I heard
along the MS Gulf Coast after I served there after Hurricane Katrina—about parishioners
who live a block back from the water who would always stay and ride out the
storms. They’d never had any problems
before. But Katrina was different,
pushing a wall of water so many miles inland.
As the waters rose throughout the day, my parishioners moved from the
ground floor to the second floor, and then finally from the second floor into
their attic. As they watched the waters
continue to rise from the tiny attic window, the wife called her best friend
and told her, “The water’s still rising, and I don’t think we’re going to make
it. Whatever you do, don’t let them play
Amazing Grace at my funeral.”[i]
Two of our readings for today give glimpses
of God’s providence over the elements.
Psalm 29 is a reminder of God’s creative power, how God speaks creation
into being and how the Holy Spirit moves over the water at creation. It is a song of reassurance and thanksgiving from
the voice of an individual that when they go through the fires and floods of
life, God’s providence has been faithful and that God continues to give to God’s
people strength and the blessing of peace.
In the reading from Isaiah, we see the
voice of God speaking to God’s people through the writer of Isaiah as the people
have been taken into captivity in Babylon.
Removed from their homes, their temple destroyed (and probably many of
their homes, too), the people are captives in enemy territory for anywhere from
50 to 70 years. In this passage from
Isaiah, God reassures God’s people that in the midst of this crisis, God has
not abandoned them. God continues to be
with them as they walk through fire, as they face floods and rivers. God promises that they will not be
overwhelmed and that God finds them precious in God’s sight.
In both of these passages, we see
glimpses of chaos that God’s people are swept up in, and we receive assurance
that God controls the uncontrollable. God
promises that we, too, shall not be overwhelmed, and that God is enthroned over
the metaphoric floods of our lives.[ii]
It is a part of the human condition that
we all will, at some point or another, face fires and floods in our lives. They may not be literal, but all of us face things
that are beyond our control. Can you
think back over your life and identify past floods that you have encountered,
and how God showed up in those? What
does the flood feel like in your life today?
How might you envision God enthroned over that flood? How can God help you from feeling
overwhelmed?
It’s really easy to judge the people who
are wetting their rooves to try to save their homes from the wildfires or the
people who stayed during Katrina and ended up stranded in their attics facing
possible drowning there. But when we think back about our own floods
and fires in our lives, we can see how certain decisions we made put us in a
similar place. No one willingly chooses
to be stuck in their attic facing drowning in the midst of a flood. But so often, that’s exactly where our
decisions and our choices put us. Perhaps
it is because so often in the face of our floods and fires, we try to be like
God; we try to exert our control over forces that are just too big for us, and
this is part of how we get overwhelmed.
So, maybe you’re thinking, “well, that’s
just great, Melanie. But what’s the
alternative? Are we just supposed to lie
down and die in the face of the diagnosis or the family member who is trapped
and looking to us for help? The job
loss, the broken relationship, or the death of those close to us? What, then, should we do? We know we are supposed to trust God, but
what does that actually look like?”
And to that I say, I hear you! Every day, my faith journey is an exercise in
questioning what areas are mine to influence and control and what is best left
to God. I promise you, I haven’t figured
it out yet. But here’s something that
has helped me this week.
Retired Bishop Stephen Charleston posts
daily on social media, and here’s what he posted this past Wednesday that spoke
to me: “We live in a time of extremes.
Extreme weather, extreme events, extreme anxiety. These are forces that
we cannot control. Therefore, control is not what we seek. We concentrate
instead on keeping our balance. We adapt. We adjust. We remain flexible, riding
over the impact as best we can, staying close to one another, being alert for
chances to help. When reality turns hard, we become like water.”[iii]
What does that mean—in the face of
floods and fires and forces we cannot control--to become like water? Water is fluid; it can be both gentle and
powerful. It can cool and refresh, and
it can also reorder and reshape. What does
it mean to become like water in the face of whatever flood or fire you may find
yourself in?
My parishioners who were trapped in
their attic during Katrina made it out.
They faced the complete destruction of their home and the world around
them, but they survived. And they
rebuilt their home. Three years after
their brush with death, we blessed their newly rebuilt home, during Epiphany-tide,
the season of light.
“We live in a time of extremes. Extreme weather, extreme events, extreme
anxiety. These are forces that we cannot control. Therefore, control is not
what we seek. We concentrate instead on keeping our balance. We adapt. We
adjust. We remain flexible, riding over the impact as best we can, staying
close to one another, being alert for chances to help. When reality turns hard,
we become like water.”
[i] This
is the story of Maria Watson and Julius Ward who were parishioners of mine at
St. Peter’s by-the-Sea in Gulfport, MS.
Maria called her friend, Joy Jennings, who was also a parishioner.
[ii] This
idea is from Khalia J. Williams as share din Everyday Connections…
[iii]
January 9, 2025 https://www.facebook.com/bishopstevencharleston
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