“The Original ‘Let’s Take Christ Out of Christmas’”.

     There has been a lot of blather these last few years, much of it coming from television and radio talk show hosts, complaining that they – the “they” being the ACLU, the “liberal media”, the forces of political correctness, etc. – that “they” have conspired to take Christ out of Christmas.  Those who, out of sensitivity to those who are Jewish, Muslim, pagan, or none of the above, say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”, are accused of secularizing the holiday, and even of victimizing Christians – although how a group that makes up over three-quarters of the U.S. population can be considered “victims” might be a bit of a stretch.

            In our reading for today, on the other hand, we get the original guy who really did want to take the Christ out of Christmas – King Herod. Herod had heard rumors that a child had been born who would be king, and the arrival of the magi from the east, telling him that they sought this child, was enough for Herod to commission the magi as his agents, charged with reporting back to him the location of this potential usurper. But the magi, having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, go home by another route. Herod, infuriated that the magi have thwarted his machinations, exercises the nuclear option, sending his henchmen to murder all children under the age of two in and around Bethlehem.

            But Joseph, having himself been warned in a dream about Herod’s murderous scheming, wakes Mary in the middle of the night, and together, with their newborn clutched close to her breast, flees across the border to Egypt.

            Herod wants to take the Christ out of Christmas, and people pay for his jealousy, his rage, his paranoia. Children die. Parents are bereft.

            I often have folk telling me that politics has no place in the church or in the life of faith. The first Christmas, however, is political to its very core, with a petty tyrant ready, willing and able to eliminate a potential rival, even if it meant the wholesale slaughter of infants.  Herod knows that there is room for only one king, and if this child is to be king, he cannot be.

            By telling us of Jesus’ start in life as a political refugee, Mathew is telling us in prose what John tells us in his gospel in poetry, that “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never put it out.” 

            So even as we abhor the violence in this account of the Holy Family fleeing to Egypt, we can see that at the heart of the narrative this is the Christmas story as well; that on Christmas, love was born into the world, and nothing, not even the power of earthly tyrants, can separate us from so strong a love.

            But while the Christmas story begins with this story of God’s all-powerful love, it does not end there.  While nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, we, like the shepherds and the magi and Mary and Joseph before us, cannot remain huddled around that manger forever, for he is no longer there. The Herods of this world still walk the earth, still hatch their murderous plots in modern palaces around the world, still scheme to profit off human misery, whether it be sex trafficking in Thailand and Los Angeles, or arms trade on the African continent, or drug peddling in our high schools and on the back streets of our towns. And too many Rachels still bewail their lost children, the children victimized by bullying and violence in their homes and neighborhoods, the grown children ensnared in cycles of spousal abuse, the young men and women fed into the meat grinder of constant warfare.

            Joseph had a dream, a message from God, that compelled him to get up and out in the middle of the night, that an innocent child might be protected.

            The question for us, even as we celebrate the joy of Christmas, is whether we, in the light of day, will remain huddled around an empty manger, or instead respond to God’s call to get up and go, and do our part, in our turn.

            Merry Christmas! Now get out of here.

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"Stairway to Heaven"

     I was chatting with a colleague the other day and he mentioned how amazed he is that for all the changes we have seen over the years in what makes for popular music – rock, soul, pop, new wave, reggae, ska, hip hop, and so on – the Christmas season always seems to be about the old nuggets. In secular culture, “White Christmas”, “Rudolph”, “All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth”, “Baby Its Cold Outside”, and the like; in church,  “Silent Night”, “O Come, All Ye Faithful”, “Away in the Manger”, “Joy to the World”, etc.

            He is right, of course. I think really good music has a way of sticking with us, even as styles and tastes change, and that this is particularly true of Christmas music.

            All of this being a somewhat roundabout way to get me onto another piece of music that has endured over the years, at least over the years since I was a teen, and which is perennially voted to be one of the top rock n’ roll songs of all time, Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” For those who do not know this rock anthem, it begins

“There’s a lady who’s sure

All that glitters is gold

And she’s buying a stairway to heaven.”

            Now why this has come to mind for me is that I sometimes think that this is something that many of us, maybe all of us, try to do, if only unconsciously. That although we might not try to buy a stairway to heaven, we try to find ways in which we might climb up and out of the ordinary life which we know day in and day out, that we might somehow transcend the commonplace and reach the mystical peaks.  And so in the season leading up to Christmas, we look forward to a time which somehow seems set apart from the rest of the year in a special way, a time of joy when we can be lifted up out of our dull, everyday, mundane existence, into a poetic world of mystery and wonder.

            We know just how to do this, certainly here in the church. Electric candles glow warmly in the windows of the Meeting House; beautiful, festive poinsettias adorn the sanctuary, spilling exuberantly up and out of the Deacon’s Pew below the pulpit; advent candles of purple, rose and white gaily sputter away above a wreath of green; hand bells ring out and pipe organ serenades; at the close of the service, the lights are dimmed and we each lift candles heavenward.

            Everything is orchestrated to lift us out of the ordinary.

            Silly us. Do we really think that we need to buy a stairway to heaven? This is the Christmas message, the meaning of the Incarnation – if a stairway to heaven was ever needed, it was designed, engineered, and  installed by the Master Architect some 2000 years ago. Not so hard-working, dedicated, faithful people might, with just the right combination of setting and music and prayer, scramble their way up to heaven. No, not that, but so that God might slide right down its banister into our common, ordinary world, bringing heaven to earth.

            God used that stairway, Luke tells us, to descend to a lowly stable in a nowhere town in a nothing corner of the mightiest empire the world had yet to see, to a man and a woman who were peasants far from home and who were soon to be refugees in an alien land. God used that stairway to become one of us, to take on our common lot, to walk among us, to teach us, to model a new way of being with each other, to heal us, to suffer with us, even to die for us.

            God used that stairway, John tells us, to become flesh and live among us, to bring the true light into the world, so that all who received him, all who believed in his name, might become children of God, and so find a new way to have life, and life abundant.

            Silly us. We don’t need to climb up and out of this world, this life, this muck and mire, to find God. This is the gift of Christmas to us all – that God so loves you that God has come to us to make the ordinary, extraordinary, so that we who cannot climb up to heaven, might have heaven come down to us.

            So Merry Christmas, indeed! Amen.

           

"Christmas Upside Down"

     Maybe the reason I like the movie so much is that it turns on its head my traditional understanding of how Christmas is supposed to be; it takes that Hallmark card version of the Christmas holiday, the one we all hope for, where all is calm and all is bright, and gives it a big kick right in the rear end. And not only that, in doing so I think it comes closer to the truth of what Christmas is really all about.

            The movie I am talking about dates from 1983, and has since becomes something of a Christmas season classic, right up there with “Miracle on 34^th Street”, “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and the like. Its name is “A Christmas Story.” For those who have not seen it, a quick summary: Set in a small town in the late 1940s, it is almost Christmas, and little Ralphie Parker, a 6^th grader at best, has his heart set on a Red Ryder 200-shot Carbine Action Range Model Air Rifle. When he tells his mom of this Christmas wish, with a gasp of horror she dismisses the idea, saying "You'll shoot your eye out" -- which is the same response every adult has to subsequent requests, including the Santa at the mall. While the main plot revolves around Ralphie’s hope of getting the air rifle, what makes the film really interesting is the way everything in the Parker family falls apart as they try to get ready for Christmas. Ralphie’s father wins an award, which turns out to be a gaudy table lamp in the form of a woman’s shapely leg, which Ralphie’s mother abhors and “accidently” breaks; the furnace keeps breaking down; the car gets a flat on the way to buy the Christmas tree; Ralphie says the “f-word” in front of his father with predictable consequences; the neighbor’s dogs rampage through the kitchen and eat the Christmas turkey; and the movie ends with the family celebrating Christmas at the only place open in town, a Chinese restaurant.

             Many of the Christmas cards we get each year proclaim “Peace”, which is fitting since we know Jesus as the Prince of Peace, but in “A Christmas Story”, Christmas comes in with anything but peace – instead, Christmas comes in with chaos and disruption, and the family’s settled, everyday life is turned upside down. Looking back on that time, the narrator, now an adult, says, “Oh, life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.”

            But isn’t that the real story of the first Christmas?

            Look at Joseph. Life was going quite smoothly, thank you very much. A young man making his way in the world, so much so that he was in position to get married and move out of the family house. A favorable match is made with an attractive local girl, and they are engaged to be married. He likely has found a house, made plans to make some improvements, is looking forward to the wedding night. And then his fiancée tells Joseph that she is carrying a child, a child that cannot be and is not his. He is, of course, devastated, but figures that he can salvage his situation by quietly breaking off the engagement and getting on with his life. But then God breaks in, a heavenly messenger comes to Joseph in a dream, telling him that the child was of the Holy Spirit, and that he ought not be afraid to take Mary as his wife.

            When Christmas comes to Joseph, it does not bring a sweetened, easier life – it brings disruption, it brings change, it turns his world upside down.

            When Christmas came to Mary, it does not make life easier, it makes it more complicated, more difficult, more challenging, it turns her world upside down.

            No wonder their reaction, when each are told by an angel of the impending birth, is one of fear.

            Six months later Jesus is born, not at a local hospital, not at their home, not at the parents’ home – but in far off Bethlehem, in a stable, among the farm animals, with a feedbox for a crib. And next thing you know the ICU turns into Grand Central station with the arrival of a gang of grubby shepherds and, hard on their heels, some suspicious looking characters from the East.

            In the Incarnation, in God becoming one of us, in taking on our human flesh and our common lot, God began to set things right with us, to fix what we so badly messed up and were unable to fix on our own.  But it seems that could not be done in a business-as-usual, all-is-calm-all-is-bright fashion – it took some serious disruption, some serious chaos, some serious I’m-going-to-turn-your-world-upside-down stuff. The gifts of God which we celebrate on the Sundays of Advent – hope, peace, joy, and love – they come through God’s disrupting intrusion.

            I sometimes wonder if we have Christmas all wrong.  At Christmas, we seem to want to go back, back to the good old days, back to the days of Currier and Ives prints of sleighs jingling their way through a quiet snowfall, back to remembered cozy times around the fireplace, back to the happiness of children attacking a pile of presents jumbled under a gaily decorated Christmas tree, back to an imagined healthy, happy, peaceful nuclear family sharing a feast together.

            And yet the original Christmas story at heart wants to break us of this addiction of imagining that safety and salvation lie in going back to some sort of mythic haven, in pretending that everything is really all calm and bright. The original Christmas story tells us that God’s salvation for us comes to disrupt our world and to call us to get up off our duffs and take our part in God’s sweeping, world-changing purposes. The original Christmas story tells us to not be afraid to say yes to God, to take on what the world might consider to be too risky, to stand up for someone in need, to bear love into the world.

            What would it mean if we allowed Christmas to turn our world upside down? 

What would it mean if it turned on its head our understanding of Christmas as a time to give in to the consumer culture which tells us to spend ourselves into debt for months so that we can buy others lots and lots of gifts, while at the same time we live in a culture awash in more stuff than we know what to do with?

At a time when much of the world suffers from lack of safe water and malnutrition, from diseases such as cholera and typhoid and typhus and intestinal parasites, while we on the other hand suffer from diseases of affluence like obesity and lung cancer and alcoholism and drug addiction, what would it mean if we let Christmas turn our world upside down?

Could we imagine saying to our loved ones, “This Christmas, one of my gifts to you is a contribution to the Heifer Project, so a family in Central America might have a flock of geese, or impoverished farmers in Arkansas might be helped to develop markets for locally grown food”?

Could you imagine, amidst all the giving that you will do, adding one more, a gift to your local church, to support its ministries in a time when we have a severe budget shortfall?

Can you imagine saying to your family, “Please honor me this year by giving a gift to charity in my name”?

What would it mean if we allowed Christmas to turn our world upside down, but not only in how we think about gift giving, but also in how we think about the ways in which God might be working in our lives?

What would it mean if, when disaster strikes, when we lose a spouse or an unforeseen illness strikes or that pink notice lands in your in-box at work or you have up and move from your single-family home to a retirement community or an assisted living facility, you could imagine that this disruption was not the end of the world, but the beginning of God’s new start in your life?  How often it is that, when our ordinary routine is upset, when our settled expectations of how life should be are upended, that our reaction is to say, “God, where are you?!” What we mean is, “God, why have you abandoned me?”  Maybe we have the right question, but the wrong assumption behind it, that God’s desire for our lives is that same as ours!  But what if we allowed Christmas to turn our world upside down, and could imagine that this disruption, this time of chaos, might be the birth pangs of something unexpected and wonderful?

This is Ralphie’s wisdom from “A Christmas Story”: “Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.”

            Friends, I believe the challenge for us is to imagine the Christmas story, the gospel Christmas story, as our story, and to imagine responding to it, in all its awesome and even fearful potential, in trust, as did Joseph, and in faith, as did Mary. Our challenge is to look at that disruption square in the face, and then say, as did Mary, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word”

Long ago, Christmas turned their world upside down. My prayer for you is that this year, you will let Christmas turn your world upside down as well.

The Traveling Village People

     The village people have gathered under Christmas trees just about every year since 1930 or so, first when my father was a young boy growing up in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, then in our family's  home in Ambler,  and now that he is gone, under our family tree here in Massachusetts.  There are farmers and farm animals, a barn, a church, houses and vintage automobiles, a park and a lake, a policeman and a minister, fancy society members and working men and women. All hand-painted lead, all lovingly wrapped in tissue and stored away once the pine needles turn brown and the New Year comes in, all brought out and placed under spreading boughs of green, encircled by Lionel locomotive and tender, boxcars and caboose.

     It was a big deal, I thought, when my father told me I was old enough to set the village up, and he turned this annual delight over to me. This year, it was my turn, and not without a considerable sense of, of what? -- loss, poignancy, satisfaction, wonder? -- I turned this tradition over to my two youngest children.

     

     How much we turn over to our children in the hope that they might carry it forward!  I suspect that more often than not we do this not overtly and with stated intention, it just happens as we live our lives side by side with them, as we model by what we do and say how we believe that life fully lived should be.  

     Maybe something to think about when we debate whether to go to that Christmas eve candlelight service....

     

“Addicted to Happiness”

(Based on Luke 1: 46-55)

      Today has been a special day for all of us here, and especially for Davey and Carrie, as we baptized into the Christian faith their daughter Mia.  And so my words today are for you, Mia, although it would be just fine if the rest of the congregation listens in as well.

            Mia, you are so blessed to have been born to your parents, and in this time, and in this great nation. And as you go through life, your parents are going to do everything in their power to not only keep you safe and provide for your needs, but also to make you happy. Trying to make you happy is something that they want to do, because they love you, but it is also something that seems to be wired into our DNA, and, more than that, it seems to be in the air that surrounds us. After all, you will grow to learn that the very Founders of this country believed that our inalienable rights include not only life and liberty, but also the pursuit of happiness.

            Mia, you will learn that there are many paths towards achieving happiness.  For instance, we know that material things can make us happy, and that is why we give presents of material things to those we love at Christmas time.  We find happiness through a neat toy or stuffed animal, through some fashionable clothes, through a large, flat-screen TV, or maybe through a new smart phone that can not only allow us to talk to others at great distances but also text, surf the web, send email, update Facebook status, take photographs, and even make double decaf iced frappacinnos on the go. (Okay, maybe not the frappacinnos, at least not yet!).

            But we also find that we can be made happy by enjoying a sporting event, such as a convincing blow-out by of the New York Jets by Tom Brady and the Patriots, or by going to a movie or watching Dancing with the Stars on the television.

            And when we cannot find happiness elsewhere or though other means, at times we can find happiness of a sort through alcohol or drugs.

            Mia, don’t get me wrong. I like to be happy. I like it when something I do seems to make others happy. But the truth is, you have been born into a world where we have become addicted to happiness.  And the reason that is something to be worried about, is that this addiction can rob you of the fullness of life we want for you, that Jesus came to give you, that God desires above all for you. Because happiness addiction can lead to sad lives.

            You see Mia, happiness is always dependent on circumstances, on externalities, on the situation one finds oneself in. Happiness is conditional, it depends on good health, on achievement, on what others think of us, on the material good we covet, on the experience we desire to have. Patriots fans were happy Monday night, Jets fans were sad – the difference was the outcome of a professional football contest. On Christmas morning, some kids will be happy, and some will be sad, and that may in part depend on whether Santa delivers the goods they hoped for. December 15 is the day high school students across the country will learn whether or not they got into the Early Decision college choice, and you can bet that is a day many will, depending on the contents of those letters, be happy or sad. Tomorrow morning, some folk will visit their doctor and get the test results back, and you know that, depending on what the x-ray or CT scan or blood results say, some will be happy, and some will be sad.

            Happiness depends on circumstances, but even when everything is going our way, happiness can still be not enough. Even with health, with security, with enough material goods to satisfy our desires, with everything that all totaled up should make for happiness, we can still fall prey to an emptiness, a sin-sickness, a wondering if there is anything more to life.

            So Mia, bottom line, we want you to be happy, but we also don’t want you to settle for mere happiness. What we want for you is joy.

            We want for you joy, because happiness is, at base, a mere echo of joy, bearing some of its marks, but just as an echo is a reflection of a human voice, happiness wears the mark of joy but cannot last. Joy, you see, is an inner quality that exists irrespective of external circumstances. As Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “The only condition for joy is the presence of God. Joy happens when God is present and people know it, which means that it can erupt in a depressed economy, in the middle of a war, in an intensive care waiting room.” (The Living Pulpit, Oct./Dec. 1996, p. 16).

            Look at Mary, in our reading for today. With little reason to be happy, joy erupts as she greets her cousin Elizabeth, as she embraces the idea that God has chosen to turn the world upside down, and that great newness was going to begin with her, but not end there, that it was going to start the ball rolling towards the day when no one will lord it over anyone else, when no one will feast while others starve, when no longer will there be the lowly, the oppressed, the marginalized.

            Happiness has nothing to do with denying one’s self, but joy is impossible without it. Happiness is about the pursuit of some thing; joy is about a depth of life that is all about serving and helping others. Jesus told those who would follow him, those who desired abundant life, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life from my sake will find it.” (Matt. 16:24-25)

            Joy doesn’t happen when we get what we want, and it usually has nothing to do with what we want. Mary certainly did not want to be an unwed mother, and Mary certainly did not want to be the one to birth God into this world, and endure whatever that might come to mean. And yet she came to rejoice.  And few among us want to grow old, and yet how many of us know folk who nevertheless exude joy, carrying with them a sparkle of delight in the blessings they have known and still known, and through that joy being a blessing to others, to family, to friends, and to the inevitable health care workers.

Joy happens when we finally figure out that God’s plans are so much better than our plans, that God has an uncanny way of opening doors when it seems all our paths are closed off to us, that even when it is clear as day that all our hopes are dead and buried, God will raise them, and us, to new life.

Mia, in the not too distant future, your parents will try to teach you this lesson by reading you a book, one which has come to be one of my favorites. It is called “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”, by Dr. Seuss. Its principal character, the Grinch, wrongly believes that Christmas is all about happiness, and he thinks he knows just how to ruin Christmas – he will make all the Whos down in Whoville sad by stealing all their Christmas presents and all the food for the Christmas feast. And yet Christmas comes all the same, and the Whos greet Christmas by joining hands and singing out in joy.

Mia, on this festive day of celebration, on this day when you have been washed by the cleansing, renewing waters of baptism, we wish you all the happiness in the world, and hope that your pursuit of happiness will be a successful one.

But more than that, we pray that you will always be open to being surprised by joy.

Halo Under My Desk

     Someone left a halo under my desk.

     A double strand of gleaming gold, accented with the occasional shimmering star, so ethereally light that one might imagine it not resting lightly on the crown of a head, but instead barely hovering over it.  Down among the lost pens, bent paper clips, and dust bunnies.

     Was it left by one of the little girls, all robed in white with impossible to adjust cardboard wings pinned to their backs, who starred in our church's live Nativity tableau Sunday evening?  Perhaps the halo was dropped when, after their duties were done, they ransacked my office for the chocolates cached in my desk.

     Or was it, perhaps more likely, left by the young man, a recovering alcoholic, who stopped into my study Monday afternoon to thank us for allowing a new AA chapter to use our facilities for their nightly meetings?

     I like to think so. I like to think that this halo was left by an innocent child who delighted in playing dress-up and was happy to help out the church and whose idea of mischief rose only to the level of sneaking treats from my desk (treats left there knowing full well what would happen!).  I like to think even more that this was a providential reminder of the grace that has helped a young man make a new start and find again a fullness of life; I like to think how hard-won each day of sobriety is for him, and for all who makes those nightly meetings.

     What I don't like to think about is how maybe this halo was not as much left by them, as for me.  That it is telling me that for all the professional discipleship that I am called to model, I might want to look again at how much a disciple I am personally, deep down inside.  I don't like to think about how I am not so innocent, and don't work so hard at it nearly as hard as do those folk at the nightly meetings.

     Someone left a halo under my desk.

     Have you looked under yours lately?

“A Vision of Peace – or Just an Illusion?”

The political situation in Jerusalem some 700 years before the birth of Jesus is bleak. The Assyrians are at the gates, the invaders are ravaging the countryside. The economy is in ruins. Corruption in government is the rule of the day; judges are routinely swayed by bribes, leaders are blinded by partisan propaganda. In short, the dynasty of King David, the son of Jesse, once considered to be the carrier of God’s goodness and faithfulness in the world, is a mere stump compared to its glorious past; the family tree has been decimated by enemies foreign and domestic. Despair and resignation reign.

            Onto this scene strides a prophet, Isaiah by name, announcing that despite all appearances, God has new plans for Jerusalem and for the world….(Isaiah 11:1-11)

            I sometimes think that we like to believe that we are the first people to pick up the Bible, read passages like this one from Isaiah, and say, “What a crock.”

            That we are the first ones to say, “Who can believe any of this stuff about a day when the lamb will lie down with the lion, when the government will really be about serving the people, not feathering its own nest, when people will no longer make war upon each other, when all people will know not fear but security.

            Because we know, and people have always known, that this vision of Isaiah’s of the peaceable kingdom is not a vision, it is an illusion, that it is just not natural, that it is against the order of nature that we learned about in science class.

            Theologian and preacher Walter Brueggemann echoes this almost universal inability to believe this sort of nonsense. He writes in his book, Peace, “Unheard of and unimaginable! All these images of unity sound to me so abnormal that they are not worth reflecting on.”

But then Brueggemann reconsiders.  He goes on, “But then I look again and notice something else. The poet means to say that in the new age, these are the normal things. And the effect of the poem is to expose the real abnormalities of life, which we have taken for granted. We have lived with things abnormal so long that we have gotten used to them and we think they are normal.”

            Isaiah’s contemporaries look around and what they see is a stump of the Dynasty of King David, and they can imagine nothing else, nothing greater. They know what is normal, and normal is corruption, normal is the strong oppressing the weaker, normal is the rich getting richer while the poor become increasingly impoverished, normal is monarchs pursuing war abroad to distract attention from problems at home.

            Isaiah tells them that they have been promised so much more, and that if they put on the eyeglasses that God so freely provides, they can see that what they have come to accept as normal is anything but.

            In this Advent season, our challenge is to hear these powerful words of promise for us, words we are tempted to dismiss as impossible, as not a vision of what will be but as a mere illusion.

            Like Isaiah’s contemporaries, we look around and see not a flourishing tree of life, but a mere stump, we see what we are told is normal, never mind that we have been promised so much better than this.

            The new normal is a relentless death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars approaching the longest armed conflicts we have ever been involved in, wars that last week we were told will extend until at least 2014; the new normal is an ever increasing gauntlet of security measures to board an airplane, now featuring full-body scans and pat downs; the new normal is seemingly endless corruption in our system of justice, as the scandals rocking the probation and sheriffs department once again evidence; the new normal is governmental restriction on benefits to the most in need, the threatened cutting off of unemployed benefits to two million American between now and Christmas, on the grounds that we cannot afford those benefits, while perversely we can afford tax cuts for those earning in excess of $250,000 per year; the new normal is politicians of all stripes putting private agenda ahead of common good.

            I think at times we are so used to getting beat down by all this stuff that we really start to believe that this is normal, that this is the way things are supposed to be and always will be, and that resistance is not only futile, it is foolish.

            But then we take another look at Isaiah’s vision, about the promise of a new creation, when the rightly governed world will be detoxified, where the world will be safe for our children, for the meek, for the most vulnerable, where those who rule will have the most important characteristic, the trait beyond compare, that any leaders could possess – the humility to know that they are not gods, and that they owe their allegiance to, and are responsible to, the one God who never ceases to defend the widow and the orphan, the weak and the poor.

            And then in this season of Advent we remember also the one who Israel longed for, but the one who came as well, the one who was full of power and yet brought us peace, the one who though filled with divine might was humble even so, the one who was a descendant of King David, a shoot from the stock of Jesse – the one named Jesus.  We remember the one who despite having all that power chose not to take on Rome’s legions, but instead humbly took the side of the poor, the marginalized, the sick, the oppressed, bringing healing, reconciliation, and new and abundant life. And we remember that his commitment to this impossible – so we say! – peaceable kingdom was such that it got him arrested, and tortured, and nailed to a cross, and how that was to be expected, was par for the course, was what everyone considered to be normal.

            And we remember that God took that old normal and stood it on its head, rolling away the stone from the tomb, raising Jesus to new life.

            Friends, in a world which tells us that what little we have is normal, and that to dream of or even expect anything more is just a crock, this is the Good News for us today, that God wills – and will one day bring about – justice and peace for this world, and for all its creatures. 

Angels Among Us

     This angel, my mother's favorite Christmas decoration, is also a music box, and she spins elegantly to "Silent Night."

     I sometimes think this is how we like our angels, beautiful, soothing, and fixed in place.

     A woman told me once that she believed in angels, and she even had proof, thrusting into my hands two old Polaroids. "The angel", she told me with a sage nod of the head, with trembling finger pointing towards what I took to be a reflection of the camera's flash off a mirror in the background.

          Angels I have encountered, both in the Bible and in my personal experience, have been neither so retiring or discreet, so undemanding or so ready to let us enjoy the status quo.

     In the Bible, angels are messengers, delivering messages from God to usually startled just-plain-folk.  Abram and Sarai, knowing that they are well past child-bearing age, entertain three desert visitors for dinner, and are shocked to discover that they had been visited by angels bearing news of a new beginning. Mary, whose hopes centered on her recent engagement to a man named Joseph, is blown away when an angel visits her and tells her that she has been made a partner in a divine plan to save her people.

     In my life, there was the Christian Education director who told me that she thought I should teach church school to 7th and 8th Graders, back at at time when I had no idea that I could attempt such a thing, and no inkling that this was anything I might ever want to do; there was the former missionary who stopped into worship at the church I served one Sunday and told us, in the time of prayer concerns, of the horrors of the civil war in Sri Lanka, which led to a mutually-enriching partnership between our church and a village church in that country; there was that obstinate Academic Dean at seminary who told me I had to take a course across the river at Harvard Div School (the horror!), which is where I ended up meeting an amazing theology student who joined me in the adventure of married life.  All this, for starters...

     Who are the angels in your life?  Looking back, where can you see that divine messengers have appeared on your doorstep, startling you with their news, calling you into something new?  Where are they today, and will you entertain them?
  

“Let Me Help You with That Holiday Stress”

           

             A popular song way back when I was a teen was titled “Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is”.

            I think a lot of us know what time it is right about now. It is a time when we have finished up our Thanksgiving celebrations, perhaps started our Christmas shopping, perhaps have pulled out the Christmas decorations or at least thought about doing so, perhaps have dug out the Christmas cookie recipes and holiday CDs, and perhaps have had more than a few of the first inklings of that good, old-fashioned holiday stress.

            But being the good Christian folk that we are, we know that it is time for more than just all that holiday stress. It is also time to remember the story of the baby who came into the world long ago, bringing with him the promise of hope, peace, joy and love. And so it is time to get out the crèche, put on a live Nativity scene, pull the Christmas stories off the shelf.

            And yet, the church has the persistent habit of reminding us that it is another time as well. It won’t let us set our clocks forward and jump ahead to Christmas, the anniversary of the birth of Jesus; it won’t let us rest comfortably in a romanticized way-back-when for all the coming four weeks. No, the church turns our attention to the future, and to the present and how we might live in it.

            We live in a time when people are searching for meaning, trying to understand their own lives, seeking to get in touch with their inner selves, but also searching for how their lives fit into the big picture, searching to find something larger than themselves in which to place their trust, their faith, and their hope.

            With all the busyness of our lives, with the way life has of just overwhelming us with all the day-to-day stuff, it can be easy to lose sight of this deep, inner longing. But it is still there.

            This is why the church season of Advent is such a beautiful time. A time that is about so much more than holiday stress.

On the one hand, Advent is a time when we tell the story of people who came before, who, like us, were waiting for the promises of God to be fulfilled, and who strove to live faithfully as they waited. Advent is a time to remember that we are not the first people to live in an in-between time. We sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”, about the longing of captive Israel for the coming of the Messiah, the one whose coming we remember on Christmas. We read from the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, telling the people to live in expectation of the branch of Jesse springing forth, of the day when a new covenant would be written not on stone or paper, but on the hearts of people. We listen again to the story of how Mary and Joseph anxiously awaited the arrival of the one they would name “Jesus”, meaning “He saves.”

     And on the other hand, Advent is a time when we remember and retell the promises of God to us. Promises not only of what, but also of when.

            First, the what.  Since the time of Jesus, Christians have believed that the death and resurrection of the one who was born in a manger had ushered in a new period, the new era of the reign of God. It was more than just a matter of the calendar, of BC and AD, it was a qualitatively different time, a time when salvation was possible in an unprecedented manner. The age of darkness was being replaced by the age of light; a new heaven and a new earth was on their way; the time was dawning when the fulfillment of God’s promises of a reign of peace and justice and abundance for all was just around the corner, and might arrive in its fullness at any time. Through Jesus, God had broken into the world and history and had begun to set things right. 

            So what does this "what” have to do with you, and with your life, and the meaning of your life? Everything, of course. Your life is not lived in a vacuum, just a marking of time between the two dates on your eventual headstone. You have a part to play in a great drama of redemption and recreation, you are one to whom God draws near to bring you home.

I sometimes think this is hard for us to own. Popular culture tells us that there is always “the Chosen One”, one person somehow destined to be the one with the great part to play in the drama of salvation. In the Star Wars series, Anakin Skywalker, otherwise known as Darth Vader, is “the Chosen One”; in the Harry Potter series, Harry is “the Chosen One”; in “The Matrix” trilogy, Neo is the “the Chosen One.” But Jesus tells us that we are each chosen, that God plays no favorites, that we all have starring roles in God on-going drama of salvation. 

            Second, the when. Jesus himself warns his followers not to obsess over the when, wasting their days in trying to decipher the signs of the times or portents in heaven. Instead, he urges them not to fall asleep, to be ready at all times, for the promised day could come at any time, “like a thief in the night”. And so Paul tells the Romans, in the reading for today, to stay awake as well, to get up before the dawn, to not get so caught up with the minutiae of what passes for all the stuff we think we have to get done that we fail to be alert for what God is doing among us. He writes, “But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-to-day obligations that you lose track of the time, and doze off. The night is over, dawn is about to break.”

            Stay awake, and wait, and watch. And, oh yes, realizing that the day is dawning, that it will come with the same certainty that the world keeps turning, live as if that day is already here – not living lives of excess, of bickering with one another, of nursing grievances, of seeking only our own, of using others for our own pleasure, of even running around frantically trying to get everything ready to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Jesus long ago.

            We think we know what time it is, but this is what the time really is.  Time to be ready to meet the living God just around the next bend, coming perhaps, as Jesus foretold, on a cloud in glory, but more likely in the guise of someone in need: a hungry person, a homeless person, someone who is sick or imprisoned, someone who is lost or alone.   

            So maybe this is one answer to that holiday stress – to remember what time it really is, and to embrace that time, and to joyfully make the most of it.

            Amen.

            Let us pray. Gracious God who came to us as a tiny baby long ago, remind us always that salvation is nearer to us now that when we became believers; that even now you come to us where we are, as we are, working to never leave us the same. As these days grow short, as our days grow shorter, awaken us to a new joy of life, that this day we might resolve once again to truly live. Amen.

THE UNINVITED GUESTS AT THE THANKSGIVING TABLE

     It is a familiar ritual, I would imagine, for almost all of us. A late November day, the sun low in the sky, perhaps eclipsed by scudding rain clouds; a few tenacious oak leaves cling to almost stripped bare branches, the smell of long-dormant home fireplaces alight once again wafting through the neighborhood. Inside, all is warm and snug, the extended family gathered together once again around the table, a turkey waiting to be carved, luscious red cranberry sauce, mounds of mashed potatoes, gravy, all the fixings. It is good to have the family together again, good to be around the table, good to give thanks for the blessings of the past year – the new baby, the marriage, the success at school, the victories in athletics. It took some work, but all are squeezed in around the table, there is room for no more. And there is happy conversation, and the kids are trying to be polite, and there is happy conversation, and the adults are trying to be polite. And then it is over and you are outside breathing the cool night air and ready to head home, and a huge part of you is thinking “what a nice time”, and a huge part of you is saying “Got through that one.”

            Because you remember the uninvited guests at the table. The ones that wouldn’t let you fully enjoy the celebrations, the ones that hovered at the edge of your consciousness even as you complimented Aunt May on her gravy, and asked Billy about hockey practice, and made sure not to talk politics because it always sends Uncle Frank around the bend. The uninvited guests that won’t be kept out, that crowd in and around the table. You know who they are: death, cancer, job loss, a feeling of failure, a sense of low-esteem, anger, bitterness, worries about terrorism and war. You don’t talk about them, not tonight, this is a happy time, for Pete’s sake,  its Thanksgiving. And maybe, you say to yourself, you are the only one who is aware of the presence of these uninvited guests.

            You likely have heard many a sermon on the importance of gratitude, of living a life of thanks, of giving thanks each day for the blessings of this life.. It is a valuable lesson – but I wonder if there is something more to the life of thanksgiving than giving thanks for the good stuff.  I wonder about those uninvited guests at the table – what would happen, do you suppose, if we were to acknowledge, not ignore them, if we were to welcome them, rather than pretend they weren’t there?

Experience tells us that there can, indeed, be a connection between lament and thanksgiving. For we know that those with the most in life, with a surplus of possessions and health and all the trappings of the good life, can be some of the least thankful among us. Often those with what we would consider to be much can lead bitter and discontented lives. Conversely, those who have suffered much can often have the keenest sense of gratitude. It is a paradox expressed by the one who can say, “Now that my house has burned down, I can see the moon rise.” It is the strange wisdom voiced by the cancer patient: “Having this disease has been a wake-up call to me, and now I find a fullness of life I never knew before, and I live each day for the gift that it is.”

            Maybe an image of would help. In Enterprise, Alabama, there is a statue its citizens erected in 1919. It is a classic Greek statue, a woman draped in Grecian clothing and holding in her upraised arms a certain object. It is not a torch, or a book, or a flag. It is a bug – a boll weevil.

            It seems that Enterprise used to be a commercially successful town with a one crop economy – cotton. When boll weevils found their way into the deep South in the early 1900s, the entire crop was wiped out. Facing economic ruin, the farmers had to try something else that was immune to the boll weevil, and most of them hit upon peanuts.

            The upshot was amazing – not only did the peanuts grow, but the farmers flourished like never before. And it was all because of the dreaded boll weevil. In gratitude the townsfolk erected what is perhaps the world’s only monument to a bug; it bears this inscription: “In profound appreciation of the boll weevil and what it has done as the herald of prosperity, this monument was erected by the citizens of Enterprise, Coffee County, Alabama, in the year of our Lord 1919.”

            Lament and thanksgiving, all bound up together.  Sorrow and joy, despair and hope, the family and the uninvited guests all welcome, together, around the table.

            We all have uninvited guests around the table. Pretending that they are not there just doesn’t work, it doesn’t even allow us that few hours of escape we had hoped for when we decided to put on the happy face for just this one day.

           Maybe this year, maybe tomorrow, maybe each day, we ought to try a new approach,. Maybe we ought to risk making room at the table for these uninvited guests, maybe even graciously welcoming them.  And if we did, perhaps we would find that they are not so scary after all; and if we did, then maybe we could truly open our hearts in thanksgiving to the One who promises to us, in all our brokeness, that we shall be healed; and if we did, maybe we could honestly say to ourselves and to each other, “Happy Thanksgiving”.

           

             

“Teach Us To Pray” -- a sermon

Text: Luke 11:-13

            I have always been taken aback by the disciple’s request here – teach us to pray. I mean, these disciples have been traveling around with Jesus for quite a long time; they have been observing him 24/7; they have seen him at prayer time and again; he has just come from a time of prayer. And still they ask, teach us to pray.

            So I take some heart from their request, figuring if they needed some instruction on prayer, maybe it is okay that I feel that I do, as well.  And let me tell you, I have always felt that I needed LOTS of instruction on prayer.  I think part of that is because I was raised in the Episcopal Church, and we always read from the Book of Common Prayer, and, for those who know the difference, the 1928 version! It is basically full of the most beautiful, well-crafted, formal prayers ever written in the English language. Lots of “thee”s, “ye”s, “beseeches”, and so on.  Pretty intimidating stuff, so much so that I grew up thinking that if I were to pray to God, the only acceptable prayer was in similar, flowery form, and I just knew that I was not up to it. 

            But looking back, I think my uncomfortableness with the techniques of prayer masked something deeper, and that would be an uncomfortableness with my relationship with God. Because prayer is, at heart, all about relationship, not form, not technique, not frequency, not any of that stuff. It is about relationship.

            Folk often have lots of questions about prayer. In my experience, perhaps the most common question people have about prayer is, “Does prayer work?” These days I tend to ask in response, “Does friendship work?”

            Folk usually draw back at that question, because they recognize that the assumption underlying the question – that our friendships are about success, about getting something out of them, about them working – is false. We are friends with someone not because we calculate that we will get something out of it, that it will work to our advantage. True friendship is all about the relationship, about sharing the same deep desires, about giving of ourselves, about being able to open our self up to another, and finding that the other does the same with us. The moment the relationship is about one getting something, it dies.  Now this is not to say that we don’t benefit from friendships – of course we do – but that is not the reason for them.

            So what if we thought of prayer in this way?  What if we moved away from imagining God as like some sort of cosmic vending machine in the sky, ready to mechanically dispense whatever goodies we wanted – health, wealth, freedom from challenges, a bed of roses, clear skin or whiter teeth -- if only we would insert the right number and kind of prayers? What if, instead, we thought of God as a confidant, a companion, someone who walks the long trail with us, someone who always has our best interests at heart and will go to any length for us?

            Perhaps you think this comparison of prayer to friendship to be a bit far-fetched. But it was not far-fetched to Jesus. In our reading for today, immediately after Jesus is asked to teach his disciples to pray, he begins, “Imagine what would happen if you went to a friend in the middle of the night….” He asks the disciples to imagine that they went to the home of a friend in the middle of the night, seeking nourishment for unexpected late-night guests. Even if friendship was not enough reason for them to get out of bed, surely they would do so because of the persistent knocking at the door. In the same way, Jesus says, your Father in heaven, who is a much better friend than you will ever be, will answer you when you pray.

            Which brings us back to the disciple’s request – teach us to pray.  Because what I only recently got was that the question here is not, “teach us how to pray.” A question  about technique. No, the request is “teach us to pray” – a question which goes to the need to work on the relationship. A question just as relevant for us, of course.

            So, thinking of prayer in this way, as working on the relationship, what would that mean for us? Jesus follows up by telling the disciples: ask, search, knock. Keep the conversation going. Persist. Make the effort, and hang in there. You may have heard the saying, “95% of life is showing up”, so show up. Show up, even if it seems that your conversation partner is failing to make an appearance, at least on your time table.

Prayer is, at base, about relationship, but it is also what is known as a “spiritual practice.” A practice is the act of rehearsing a behavior over and over, or engaging in an activity again and again, for the purpose of improving or mastering it, as in the phrase "practice makes perfect". So prayer is something we need to be intentional about, if we hope for our relationship with the one to whom we pray to flourish. I read of one person who put a little pink dot on the rear-view mirror of his car – and every time he was in the car, this dot would remind him to pray.  Some people set a time aside each day, perhaps to read a psalm, or to meditate. Others pray at mealtime, or before bed. Others make sure to come to worship on Sundays.

But still, what of technique? Is there a right way to pray? If we think of prayer as relationship, then we also realize that it is something we already know how to do. We know how to be in relationship with another, to talk to them, to share our hopes and fears and deepest needs, to ask for something, to say thanks for something, to even endure the silence when our friend might not find anything to say. We know how to pray.

            The disciples come to Jesus asking to be taught to pray, and Jesus responds not by giving them magical words to say, but by teaching them about the nature of the one to whom they pray. God is, Jesus assures us, a father and a friend, one who loves us and attends to our needs not because of our cajoling or because we have found the right words, but because that is God’s nature. Friends, God cannot help himself, he’s just a big softie who has a tender spot right here for each of you.  

So who here today is standin’ in need of prayer? I know am. How about you?

Live Strong

Me and Jamie

     Jamie was kind enough to pose for a picture with me and my new streamlined look.

     I am sure this is not news to anyone, but cancer sucks, and my hat's off to anyone who struggles with it.  I lost my mother, my father, my only uncle, and Sue, the mother of Katie and Julia and my first wife, all to cancer.

     But this is supposed to be a blog of spiritual reflections, so where is God in all this?

      Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his classic, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People", argues that we will never know WHY bad things happen, at least not in this life, so what we need to do is focus on the what, on what to do when bad things happen.     

     My experience of parting with my hair in honor of Jamie's upcoming last scheduled chemo treatment has brought home to me a parallel lesson, causing me to think about what we might be about when bad things are not happening to us or those close to us.  

     Things like living in gratitude for this day, and the opportunities and challenges it brings -- because some day it will be otherwise.  

     Things like opening our eyes to see that others, not so far from us, are dealing with those "bad things". 

     Things like trying to find ways to do something to help, if only (and I don't mean to minimize the importance of this), holding them up in prayer, or, if prayer is not your thing, in your thoughts.

     My hair will grow back; for Jamie, it will be a much longer process, and growing his hair back is just a small part of his road back to full health.  But in taking on this really rather insignificant act, I have somehow drawn spiritually closer not only to Jamie, but to all my loved ones who had their own struggles with this disease.  And I have also, in the shadow of that which too often leads to death, discovered new life.

     For all of that, I am thankful. 

     

In Solidarity with Jamie

Our avatars

In solidarity with, and in honor of, Jamie Bowe, a young man who is a member of the congregation I serve and who is having his FINAL treatment for brain and spinal cancer Sunday, I had a haircut today, and really got my money's worth. All gone.

Please join me in holding Jamie in your prayers or thoughts, as is your custom.