“Indeed these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning.”

So, many years ago now...over two decades ago, I guess...before my coffeshop days...I was the President and CEO of Chattanooga CARES AIDS Resource Center and Clinic. My job was pretty tough. I had to maintain proper funding for this multi-million dollar organization – writing grants, doing fundraisers, constantly hitting up the wealthy and politically connected for donations.

So years ago, back in Chattanooga, a jazz bar opened up on Main Street right across from the best Guatemalan restaurant I've ever eaten at. And on Tuesday nights, a bunch of us would pile into the Taqueria Antigua Guatemala for some burritos and a beer then high-tail it over to Durty Nelly's where some of the best regional jazz could be heard for almost free.

So, you have often heard me preach of the time that Fr. Brooks and I spent traveling around Israel. That time in the Holy Land will always inform my life and preaching. But today I want to talk about another Holy Land – Memphis.

In seminary I had this one professor who was a stickler for her own rules. One of those rules was that if she gave you a length for your paper, you had better never, ever go over that length. If you did, she would simply throw the extra pages away and write at the bottom of what was left, “Paper ends abruptly.”

So, we are nearing the end of Lent, the end of this penitential season. And as always, it's been rough. Lent always is a little rough. We dwell in passages of suffering and cleansing and dying. And maybe we try to take them a little easy, thinking that these passages are reminding us that we maybe need to look to our own lives and cut back on our carbs, lose a little weight, maybe go to the gym, cleanse ourselves of caffeine or alcohol or red meat or chocolate. Maybe we need to get rid of all those things that are dragging us down, maybe get the Spring cleaning started early.

So, the Children of God have been wandering in the Wilderness for quite some time. Led by Moses, they have escaped slavery in Egypt, crossed through the middle of the Red Sea, been led to Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, seen miracle after miracle. They have been in the very presence of God.

Now, I know growing up near the buckle of the Bible Belt, I know my experience of churchy stuff is a little different. That’s the part of the world where, when you meet someone new, they ask you three questions: “what’s your name? who are your people? and what church do you go to?”

So, when I was a kid, growing up in Chattanooga, I couldn't help but be aware of the Civil War. So many battles were fought there because Chattanooga was one of the central rail hubs in the south, opening up the west to the Mississippi and the south to Atlanta, South Carolina, and the ports of Florida and the Caribbean.

So, here we are, five weeks into Epiphany, and we are still on the first chapter of Mark's gospel. And if you sit down and read the whole chapter at once, you can figure out why Jesus was sneaking out before dawn in order to have time and space to pray. You know the story, if you've been paying attention.

So, Jesus is fresh off his wilderness experience. His baptism by John is still fresh. He's managed to pick himself up a few disciples, and here they are strolling through the still, Saturday streets of Capernaum as they head off to synagogue where Jesus is going to try his hand at teaching.

When I was a kid, my great aunt Mildred owned a cabin on the lake with her friend, Polly. I loved visiting them because I could spend all day, sitting on the dock, fishing. I remember one time, not much was going on, then, bam! I’d hooked a mighty catfish and had it within feet of the slippery bank when my cane pole snapped clean in half, and that monster disappeared back into the troubled waters.

So, this is a weird time of the year for me. It always has been. As a kid, I was coming up during the time when the commercialism of the holidays was really taking off. Holidays would start when “It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” came on TV, leading to Halloween. Then right on its heels was Thanksgiving which was sort of pre-Christmas because the family would get together, but without the presents. After that, the whole thing kicked into overdrive. Lawn ornaments went up everywhere. There were trips downtown to see the department store windows with live-action characters from the North Pole. Rudolph and the Grinch were on TV. Then back again with the family, this time for real because they brought gifts. Then the big day, Christmas Day, with all the presents, and the annual French Toast casserole.

Well, here we are again. Folks, family, festivities, waiting for things to begin, waiting for them to be over. Smiling and loving and sharing joy and love and we sum it up every year when we turn to each other and substitute a simple “hello” with a much anticipated “Merry Christmas!” So, let me be the first: Merry Christmas!

So, I am not an artist or painter, and I don't have a great deal of understanding of colors and perspective and all those things that make art...well, art. I was just getting out of college when paintings began to hold any sort of interest. And even then it was by accident.

So, true fact – I wish John the Baptist were either more fleshed out in the Gospels, or absent all together. I mean, here we have Gospels all about Jesus, and just when we settle in to read about him, John pops up, yelling, waving his arms around, eating locusts, and generally being a wild man out in the wilderness. But the crux of the matter is, I want to know what motivates John. What caused him to take this turn in his life? Did he and Jesus hang out as cousins? What's the backstory?

          So, here we are at the beginning of the church year, and I always love that line from Isaiah.  It’s so fitting.  And fits right in with today’s Gospel reading.  Both are loud and ponderous, filled with omens and warnings.

So, we are getting closer to the end of Matthew, and as a result, closer to the end of Jesus' life here on Earth. And he's trying so desperately to knock a little sense into his disciples and followers. How are they going to carry on without him? He wants them to know that it's going to be hard. . . but at the same time, it's going to be ok. They will have his example; they will have each other; they will have God's spirit. It's going to be ok. But they can't just sit and wait. There's work to be done.

I think of my granddaddy every year as we approach All Saints' Day because that's the day he died. Oh, by now his name joins a whole host of others who have marked and made me who I am, but he is the one who inevitably comes to mind first. He'll have been gone around forty year now.

So, y'all know I have occasional bouts of sciatica. Most of the time it is the result of me being stupid. Lifting more than I should or twisting wrong. And every time I do these things, I think to myself, this is going to end up with back pain. But I do it anyway and sure enough...