The Rev. Deacon Dr. Bette's homily from March 1, 2026, Christ Episcopal, Saint Joseph

 

Hello darkness, my old friend…

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

 I hope you can hear the music of Simon & Garfunkel in your head as I read those words. I certainly can, but… be grateful I’m not singing!

 

Today’s Gospel story puts me in mind of that song. Nicodemus has heard about Jesus and the things he is doing. Perhaps he has even seen Jesus in action, doing what the Gospel according to John calls “the signs”: converting water into wine, healing people, even raising them from the dead.

 

These signs of Jesus have planted the seeds of a vision in Nicodemus’ brain. He is compelled to go talk to the source, but he goes at night—under cover of his friend, darkness.

 

Why is darkness Nicodemus’ friend? He was a prominent Pharisee who saw something in Jesus, and his response—wanting to talk with Jesus—was very different from that of his colleagues—who throughout John’s Gospel become angrier and angrier, and more and more threatening, and soon plot to kill Jesus.

 

But there’s more darkness in this story than the physical darkness that hides Nicodemus’ visit to Jesus. Nicodemus lives in spiritual darkness. His feet are mired, his body entangled in things of the earth, specifically religious law. It’s all he knows. He is a teacher of the law!

 

And religious law, like civil law, is all about control and order and social identity and politics. It’s about who’s “in” and who’s “out,” who is an acceptable dinner companion and who not, whom your child is allowed to love and who not, who is “saved” and who not.

 

Nicodemus was about the letter of the law. Jesus was about the spirit of the law. And so it is not too surprising that when Jesus attempts to engage Nicodemus on the spiritual plane, it seems to fall on deaf ears. Jesus speaks of being “born” of the spirit; Nicodemus can’t get past physical birth.

 

They are like ships passing in the night. Or, better yet given my theme song today, like people who show up in verse 3 of Simon & Garfunkel’s song:

 

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

Here’s the thing. All too often humans confuse light and dark. How can that be? They are opposites! But we confuse them.

 In Nicodemus’ case, he thought his knowledge of the Law was the light. It gave him certitude. It shed light on things and helped him make judgements about what was right and what was wrong, who was in and who was out.

 And we’re so like that. We’re “law-abiding citizens” and we love having rules and laws and knowledge of them that enables us to navigate daily life confidently—which is good. Rules and conventions enable us to live life efficiently. To make decisions.

 But that light turns into darkness and clouds our vision. We also use it to label and categorize people, events, situations as “one of us” and “NOT one of us,” worthy of our help and attention, or NOT…, people we want to be interconnected with and communicate with and others we consider to be so unlike us as to have nothing in common, people we even view as slightly less than human.

 Nothing is more deadly to the process of learning than thinking we already know. Nothing shuts down inquiry more quickly than a “good answer.” Nothing deadens spiritual growth faster than worship that thoroughly reinforces and reaffirms your idea and image of God.

 The darkness of what we already know and believe stops us from seeing and following the movement of the Spirit. Jesus calls us to walk out of the darkness of knowing into the light of unknowing, of giving up our religious rules for the sake of love, compassion, empathy that knows no rules, that follows no rules. God does not follow our rules! We have so much to unlearn.

 And why is it so hard for us to do that? Because we make idols of what we know and the rules that worked for us, that helped us organize and manage our lives, that give us our identities and helped us be successful in earthly terms. And we should not forget those things and I am certainly not saying we should reject them or despise them.

 But we make idols of them and that is when they become darkness that enshrouds us and blinds us to seeing God in our neighbor and in all of God’s creation.

 

When we make idols of our rules and conventions and culture and social order and religion, we trust the rules and not the Holy Spirit of God!

 

Nicodemus clung to human religious knowing and theological certitudes, devoid of the wind of the Spirit. He was blind to the new thing God was doing before his very eyes: Jesus, the Son of Man who came to preach love as the fulfilment of the spirit of the law.

 

We do know that later, Nicodemus stood up for Jesus a bit when Jesus was being interrogated by the Sanhedrin. Later still, Nicodemus helps Joseph of Arimathea take Jesus down from the cross and lay him in a tomb. That gives me hope that eventually Nicodemus was able to experience himself as a beloved child of God.

 

How about us? Are we stuck in the dark of thinking our particular religious beliefs and practices are all there is to know about God? Our Holy Scripture and our interpretations of it the one and only truth? That our social and cultural ways are morally superior to everyone else’s? In other words, have we made an idol of our religion?

 

To follow Jesus is to relinquish knowing and certitude. It is to be open to the movement of the spirit. In the words of early 20^th Century poet Jessica Powers, The soul that walks where the wind of the Spirit blows turns like a weather-vane toward love. …To live with the Spirit of God is to be a lover.

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

(Year A, Lent 2, Genesis 12:1-4a; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17)

Services at Christ Episcopal, Saint Joseph for Jan 11 - Feb 1, 2026; Deacon Bette's Homily from Jan 4

 

Services Schedule:

Sunday Jan, 11, 10am Morning Prayer

Sunday Jan, 18, 10am, The Rev. Don Smith, Holy Eucharist, followed by annual meeting in Parish House

Sunday Jan 25, 10am, Morning Prayer

Sunday Feb 1, 10am, Morning Prayer with distribution of communion, Deacon Bette Kauffman

Deacon Bette's Homily given Jan 4th: 

What could possibly go wrong? (Matthew 2:1-12)

I’m pretty taken by the story of the wisemen. Epiphany is Tuesday and it’s one of

my fave holidays of the church year. I love 12 th Night parties and have thrown a

couple myself.

One of the things that fascinates me about the story is, how did those 3 guys

prepare for what must have been an insanely risky, unpredictable journey….

without so much as an accurate map of where they might be going!

I like to travel but I plan my travel pretty carefully. Contemporary technology

makes it so much easier. And more predictable. Neverthelss, I am at this moment

on my way home—after my time with you folks—at the end of a week-long

journey that was fun and rewarding, but that also threw several unexpected and

rather unpleasant, costly turns into my lap.

[Details of story not necessary, but basically, car trouble in Denham Springs, no

local part available; rented a car to continue on to Ocean Springs after visiting my

kids, but… put scratches on the rental car in OS… still driving the rental… must

return to DH this week to turn in rental and retrieve my car.]

When I think about the wisemen preparing for their journey, I envision them

poring over maps and charts and esoteric scrolls and struggling to understand

ancient predictions and cyphers and symbols. Then spending days gathering

supplies for a trek by camel from who knows where across deserts, mountains and

plains, encountering who knows what along the way… toward a single star in a

vast heaven of stars!

I tend to believe in studying and planning and testing theories. I love maps and

charts and telescopes—extensions of the human brain. Yet the journey of the wise

men was first and foremost a journey of faith.

Study, planning and preparation give an illusion of control, yet the wise men

embarked into the unknown, across uncharted territory, from one watering site to

another, encountering travelers of unknown origins and intentions along the way.

It took something other than wisdom to overcome fatigue, boredom and second

thoughts on such a journey. We call them wise men, but given the hazards of travel

in ancient times and the fact of a guiding star that must have been invisible in the

day time, how “wise” could they have been? Not very, if you ask me! It was a

journey of faith.

But here’s a startling thought: If it weren’t for the wise men, Christmas might

mean nothing to us!

Today we celebrate Epiphany. We have all heard many times that “epiphany”

means “to show forth” or “to bring to light” or “to manifest.”

Being a visual thinker myself, I just imagine what we all have seen in hundreds of

cartoons: a light bulb going on over someone’s head!

Today, the light bulb going on over our heads is an important step in our journey

from the manger to a more grown-up understanding of Incarnation.

In Matthew’s Gospel, that more grown-up understanding is represented by the wise

men from the east, who show up in Nazareth to worship the baby Jesus and give

him gifts.

Tradition has it.., and this is important because we actually know very little about

this event from an historical point of view. So, tradition has it that one of these

gentlemen was Asian, one African and one Caucasian, and that is how they are

depicted in countless artistic renditions of the story.

All Matthew tells us is that they were gentiles from “the East,” a general reference

to all those mysterious, far-off lands and peoples known primarily to Jews like

Matthew as “not Jews.” And that of course is central to their importance to us.

We Christians have a strong tendency to want to forget that Jesus was born, lived

and died a devout Jew, never once giving any indication he intended to or thought

he was starting a new religion.

Thankfully, Matthew, but only Matthew, for this story does not appear in the other

Gospels. Thankfully Matthew tells us with this story that Jesus is for us, too. And

not just for us, but also for all the peoples of the world, and equally so.

We tend to think the concept of “diversity” was invented in the 20 th Century as a

tool of “political correctness.” We would be wrong. Matthew and early Christians

wrote and interpreted these stories about Jesus were there way ahead of us.

Here’s another slightly shocking thing about this story. Matthew calls these guys

“wise men,” which we often translate to “kings,” as in the hymn, or “Magi,” as in

the story, but in fact a better translation might well be “nerd or “psychic”!

We know they were people who believed that the positions and alignments of stars

and planets at the moment of a person’s birth were important indicators of who that

person was and how they mattered. Today we call such people astrologers and they

write horoscopes for mass media!

Of course, today we also have astronomers—the academic and scientific

descendants of the wise men. But the distinction between astrology and astronomy

is pretty much a modern invention. Two thousand years ago, they were largely

indistinguishable.

My point is that the meaning of this story of the wise men is the meaning given by

humans struggling to express and explain the miracle that God loves us enough to

live and die with us. That’s Incarnation.

All of us need to learn what the wise men have to teach about daring to march into

unknown territory, outside of our social and cultural and religious comfort zones.

We need to learn from them to go the distance and keep the faith, beyond what is

“perfectly safe” and makes “perfect sense.”

On any given day, we can wake up in the morning and choose—even when we

don’t particularly feel like it and when the world seems devoid of goodness, not to

mention angels and dazzling light—to journey toward God that day.

And Jesus used his short time on earth to show us how. He was “the Incarnation.”

But let us not trap incarnation in history. Jesus showed us how to practice

incarnation, how to live the love that put him here.

And there’s only one way to do that, and that’s to spread it around—back to God

and our neighbors—all of our neighbors, without condition—as ourselves.

AMEN

December 2025 and January 2026 Service Schedule for Christ Episcopal Saint Joseph

Scheduled Services: 

Wednesday, December 17, 5pm, The Rev. Don Smith, Holy Eucharist

Sunday, December 21,10am, Morning Prayer

Wednesday, Christmas Eve, 2pm, The Rev. Don Smith, Holy Eucharist

Sunday, December 28, 10am, Morning Prayer

Sunday, January 4, 10am, Morning Prayer w/distribution of Communion, The Rev. Deacon Dr. Bette Kauffman

Sunday, January 11, 10am, Morning Prayer

Sunday, January 18,10am, The Rev. Don Smith, Holy Eucharist and Annual Meeting

Also, Don't forgots: We are collecting clean aluminum cans for recycling with Adrian and Ruben Metcalf. Aluminum is the most recyclable product. Please bring your clean aluminum cans (Friskies cat food cans are all aluminum like beverage cans) and place them in the storage bin outside our kitchen back door.

Update: Services Scheduled for Christ Episcopal, Saint Joseph, Dec 7 - Dec 28 2025

 UPDATE!

..Sunday, December 7, 10:30am at Methodist Church for Hanging of the Greens Service

..Sunday, December 14, 10am, Morning Prayer

..WEDNESDAY, December 17, 5pm The Rev. Don Smith, Holy Eucharist

..Sunday, December 21, 10am, Morning Prayer

..WEDNESDAY, CHRISTMAS EVE, December 24, 2pm, The Rev. Don Smith, Holy Eucharist

..Sunday, December 28, 10am, Morning Prayer

November 2025 Service Schedule for Christ Episcopal

 

Services for November 2025 are:

Sunday, November 9 at 10am--Morning Prayer

Sunday, November 16 at 10am--MP

Wednesday, November 19 at 5pm--with The Rev. Don Smith with Holy Eucharist

Sunday, November 23 at 10am--MP

Sunday, November 30 at 10am--MP with Distribution of Communion with The Rev. Dr. Deacon Bette Kauffman

Also: Remember to bring your clean aluminum beverage or all aluminum cat food cans (Friskies) in paper or plastic grocery bags to place in our storage bin outside by the Parish Kitchen back door. Andrian and Rueben Metcalf will recycle them. Why waste about $0.40-0.70 per pound of the most recyclable material we use almost every day. Keeps them out of the landfill and not along the side of the roads too.

All Saints' Sunday November 2, 2025

ALL SAINTS' SUNDAY 

Our Tradition at Christ Episcopal, Saint Joseph is to lift up the names of our loved ones who have died. We will continue this tradition Sunday, November 2, 2025, during our 10am service. Please send the names of your deceased loves ones to Brenda Funderburg at st.joecec@gmail.com or via telephone at 318-719-0566.

Christ Episcopal Recycling Aluminum Cans with the Metcalf Brothers

 

In their recent meeting, the Vestry approved placing a bin at our church for recycling aluminum cans. The cans will then be processed by Ruben and Adrian Metcalf. The bin is near the back door of the Parish Hall/Kitchen. If you are not recycling your aluminum drink cans or other all aluminum cans (like Friskies can cat food cans) please start now and bring them for Ruben and Adrian to recycle. PLEASE! CLEAN ALUMINUM CANS ONLY! It is easiest if you place the clean cans in paper or plastic grocery bags to be placed in the bin as shown in the photo above. No need to crush the cans. Adrian has a Bluetooth compatible, AI designed, voice-controlled crusher he likes to use. Well, he likes to crush them. All part of the master plan for us to REDUCE, REUSE and RECYCLE.  Let's make America Clean and Green Again!