Sermon for Sunday, January 12, 2025 || Epiphany 1C || Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

For this sermon, I’m going to do something a little different this morning. Today is my 42nd birthday, and if you’re even half the size nerd that I am, you know that the number 42 is a special one. In the strange and whimsical science fiction series The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the number 42 is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. This answer was determined by the superest supercomputer that ever existed, but when the computer spit out the answer “42” no one could agree as to the content of the question that would result in such an answer. So now they had to figure out the question. The subtext of this very silly premise is that we (1) cannot outsource our own seeking and (2) we must never stop learning and growing.

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So, with the sage whimsy of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reflected in my current age, I thought this morning I would share with you forty-two things I have learned over the course of my life. Admittedly, I’m half the age of some of you, but I hope you agree that 42 is old enough to have gained at least limited wisdom. So, what follows are forty-two loosely ordered things I have learned in my 42 years. I hope at least one of them speaks to you today.

1. I’ll start with a set of learnings that links most to our Gospel reading this morning. Jesus has yet to speak a word in the story, and yet God calls him the beloved. This teaches me that nothing we do can earn us the identity of God’s beloved. Nothing we do can take away our identity as God’s beloved. Rather, belovedness by God is the source of our identity.
2. If we are God’s beloved, then so is everyone else. Living this truth embraces the dignity of all people and allows us to live the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves.
3. Love is not simply the emotion of affection; love is the desire to be woven together and the commitment to do the weaving.
4. Speaking of commitment, the resurrection of Jesus shows that God will go to any length to remain in relationship with us; nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.¹
5. Indeed, everything in creation can be described as a relationship because creation springs from the perfect relationship within and among God’s own self. This is true of atoms balanced in a molecule, of starlings flocking, of humans coming together, and of heavenly bodies spinning their gravitational dance.
6. This is a great mystery. The mystery of God cannot be grasped, but it can be embraced.
7. Embracing this mystery is an act of faith. Faith is not something you have; faith is something you do. In other words, Faith is not the ingredients of a recipe, but the act of cooking.
8. Humility is not the denial of our gifts and talents. Humility is the proper attribution of our gifts to God and to the communities that formed us.
9. The best way to give thanks to God for our gifts is to use them in God’s service.
10. Be specific in your praise and thanksgiving. Don’t just thank God for flowers; thank God for the specific shade of buttery yellow on this one petal of a single early spring daffodil. And know that God delights in such creative particularity.
11. Worship is the act of bending towards God like a flower turning to the sun or like someone leaning in for a kiss.
12. God has made us for God’s self, and our hearts are restless until we find rest in God.²

That’s the first twelve of 42 things I’ve learned in my life. And I’m still learning them every day. I’m also learning how to take care of myself.

13. Life is seasonal, and it’s okay to let things go when they are no longer lifegiving. 
14. Rest is not a break from God’s mission; rest is part of God’s mission.
15. We are not robots who “recharge our batteries”; we are humans who refresh, revitalize, and reconnect.
16. We have imagination because we are made in the image of our creative God.
17. Everyone is creative in one way or another; nurture your creative soul to open yourself up more fully to God’s “directing creativity.”³
18. More mundanely, it’s really lifegiving to separate your work and personal email accounts.
19. Find a way to exercise that you enjoy and that does not harm your body; then you might actually do it.
20. Drink enough water. Most of us walk around in a state of perpetual dehydration.
21. Asking for help is not a sign of failure or weakness. Asking for help means giving someone else an opportunity to use their gifts.

Okay, we’re halfway there. I’m also still learning a lot about how to care for people individually and as a wider community.

22. People grieve in many different ways, and funerals bring out the whole gamut of emotions in people.
23. When you visit someone in the hospital, you are not bringing God with you; you are bearing witness to God already present in the room.⁴
24. People want to help, but often they just don’t know how. It’s okay to ask for what you need.
25. Sometimes the most helpful thing is simple presence. The ministry of presence offers comfort when the other person can’t put their needs into words.
26. When someone comes to you with a problem, ask them if they are looking for comfort or solutions. This allows you to offer a truly caring response.
27. You never truly know what is going on in the internal life of another person. This is why compassion and empathy are so important.
28. Beware of both intent and impact. Intent is what you mean, impact is how you are perceived.⁵
29. Leadership is less about the content of decisions and more about the process used in decision-making.⁶
30. The church’s social witness must embrace both charity and justice: justice because charity alone allows unjust systems to remain, and charity because justice takes too long to allow people in need to fall through the cracks.
31. It’s easier to believe a simple lie than confront a complex truth.
32. Proximity is the greatest expander of worldview; by coming alongside those who endure oppression and hardship, we learn how to change the world for the better.⁷
33. Power comes in three varieties: power over, which is oppressive; power with, which builds a community’s capacity; and empowerment, which realigns decision-making to those most effected by a problem.
34. The best way to build power with people is to share stories one on one, encouraging relationships of trust and solidarity.

Phew. 34 down. Less than ten to go, at least for my first 42 years. The rest of these are little more of a grab bag.

35. In college, take professors not classes. Find that one professor you can really learn from and take every class of theirs you can.
36. An offside offense in soccer, the result of which is an indirect free kick for the defending team, occurs when an attacking player, not in their own half of the field, influences the play after having been standing closer to the goalline than both the ball and the second to last defender at the moment the ball is played by a teammate.
37. Bigger is not always better: we don’t wear the biggest shoes; we wear the ones that fit our feet.⁸
38. Bravado is a sign of insecurity. If you don’t know something, it’s okay to say you don’t know it.
39. Emotions are messengers; they tell us what’s going on in our bodies and how we are responding to various stimuli.
40. “Kind” is the best thing to want to be when you grow up.
41. Prayer is more about listening than speaking. Silence is not an absence of noise, but a presence all its own.
42. Last of all: “Be curious, not judgmental.”⁹

As long as we’re alive, be it five more years or 42 more, we have the chance to keep learning and growing and sharing the love of God with all we meet.

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1. Romans 8:38-39 ↩︎
2. St. Augustine, The Confessions. ↩︎
3. This phrase from theologian Paul Tillich. ↩︎
4. My dear friend Ruby taught me this, and I wrote about it in my book Letters from Ruby. ↩︎
5. I learned this through the work of Visions, Inc. ↩︎
6. This too. ↩︎
7. I learned this from the work of Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative and the author of Just Mercy. ↩︎
8. I learned this from Patrick Rothfuss’s excellent fantasy novel The Name of the Wind. ↩︎
9. This is Walt Whitman, but I, like everyone else, heard it on Ted Lasso. ↩︎