A sermon for the 8th Sunday after Epiphany on Isaiah 49 & Matthew 6.
Just last week my brother-in-law, Josh, and his wife had their first child, a baby girl named Cyprus. It was upon her birth and filled with the excitement of those first breaths of fatherhood that Josh almost instantly ran out of the hospital and did what I assume every neophyte parent does: he went directly to the tattoo parlor. Josh has always been into tattoos and when he was married he got two bear claws (one for him and one for his wife), tattooed onto his left forearm. So last week when their daughter was born Josh went out the same day and had a smaller bear claw, trailing just after the first two prints, tattooed on his arm to represent his newborn daughter.
Here in California the constant thrum of the tattoo artist’s brush reverberates out the open doors of the ink shops on nearly every street. Tattoos, I have learned, are synonymous with SoCal. While I’ve never really been into tattoos [a position strengthened by a lifelong fear of needles], as I’ve begun to make my way in California, in the land of milk and honey and LA Ink, I’ve thought more and more about the possibility.
