CHRISTMAS EVE

You all know the Christmas story, especially as Luke tells it. We usually hear it every year. So I’m not going to talk about it tonight, at least not directly.

Last week as I was beginning to ponder what I might say tonight, I was still trying to process all the images and speeches I’d heard during the mourning for Nelson Mandela. One of the things I heard that struck me was, “We’ll never see the likes of Nelson Mandela again.” The other went something like, “With all the babies being born in the world today, I can’t help but wonder if one of them will be the next Nelson Mandela.”

As my husband and I were talking, we came to the conclusion that there were at least two other great leaders of the 20th Century: Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. And that set me thinking more about what they had in common or not, why they were the first ones I thought of instead of, for instance, Winston Churchill. Well, Churchill was a great war leader, the sort you’d want to have once you are in a war, but the other three were great leaders who chose NOT to use violence to solve their problems. Non –violence is not a new idea, but has seldom been put into practice, especially on a large scale like they did.

It’s all rather amazing – a Hindu from India, a black Christian preacher from the American south, and a black man from a tribe in South Africa who became a Methodist, but was most probably a follower of his tribal religion all his life.

So think for a moment about what they had in common:

• They worked for justice, particularly on behalf of an oppressed group of people.
• They used non-violent opposition and civil disobedience to demand change.
• They spoke the truth to power.
• They wanted economic and political justice as well as social justice.
• They seemed unafraid of the consequences of their actions.
• They largely refused the rewards of fame.
• Two of the three even granted women full equality.
• They willingly went to jail, endured slurs, insults, physical punishment and even death.
• They refused to take revenge, even when they had the chance to do so and personal reasons to want to.

Does this remind you of anyone else????? Doesn’t it sound like Jesus? And we must not forget the thousands of other people who did the same, whose names we may not know, but who stood with these leaders in their fight for justice.

Many of you can remember the TV news from the Sixties. Martin Luther King didn’t walk the bridge to Selma alone. There was a whole crowd who followed and stood their ground when confronted by fire hoses and dogs ordered to attack them. And they weren’t all black people or all poor people or all clergy people.

When Gandhi died, Nehru said “the light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere.” And what is it that we celebrate tonight but the return of the light to the world, the light of Christ, which is also the return of hope, isn’t it? – hope for the world to become better, kinder, safer.

Gandhi said, “I do not want to leave a sect after me. I have simply tried in my own way to apply the eternal truths to our daily lives and problems. . .truth and non-violence are as old as the hills.” I don’t think Jesus wanted to leave a sect after him either. He wanted to show us the truth and teach us to live in a new way.

Isn’t it amazing that only two out of these three men were assassinated? And only one was killed as a young man. Given the amount of violence we see around us, it seems miraculous that two of these men lived into old age. Jesus didn’t last nearly as long, but then he lived in an Empire that used violence most casually. Still given the times and the situation, how amazing is it that the Christian church arose out of his short life?

There have been saints and martyrs in every generation, so let me ask again, how many potential Gandhi’s, King’s, or Mandela’s are born each year – or decade – or century? After all, there’s never been any scarcity of oppressed people for them to lead! I wonder how many of them just don’t make it to adulthood?

If we feel that we are unable to change the conditions that hold people in oppression, especially in other countries, are there things we can do to make sure more children around the globe survive to adulthood? Of course. But we should always keep in mind what Martin Luther King said. “True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

As we celebrate the birth of Jesus this Christmas Day and thank God for his life among us, let us also be mindful of the possibilities of other great teachers, other potential saviors of their people, being born among us. They are not divine, but they are children of God like us and their presence among us reinforces the lessons that Jesus taught:

• Love God
• Love your neighbor
• Love your enemy
• Do not seek vengeance
• Do no violence

And let us also pray for such children that they may live long enough to fulfill their potential and become beacons of light, whether to their families, their communities, their nations or to the entire world. This world needs more leaders like this. We need their example, their passion for justice, their humility and their courage. We need to see how real people in trying circumstances can use the lessons Jesus taught to create significant change in the world.

The baby Jesus, born 2000 year ago in a manger, did not destroy the Roman Empire nor drive them out of the Hebrew homeland. Instead he taught his disciples how to live in a new way and to spread that message for and wide. That message, as understood by Gandhi, MLK, and Mandela, empowered them to set their respective people free without resorting to violence.

This realization, coming as it did in the midst of Advent darkness, in a world of what seems to be continual strife, and in a week when I was down with a dreadful cold, did feel like a light breaking forth. It gives me such great hope for the future. If the 20th Century, which brought us nearly continual war, the atom bomb, and the Holocaust, could also bring us three great leaders who exemplified in so many ways what Jesus taught, then truly there is hope and light will continue to shine in our world.

Go forth tonight and be part of that light in the world. Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly, knowing that God goes with you, always. And if you listen closely, you may hear him whispering to you, “Do not be afraid; for see, I’m bringing you good news of great joy for all people.” AMEN

Advent 4, A
Isaiah 7: 10-16
Matthew 1:18-25

Mary and Joseph.

Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Blessed Mother, Refuge of Sinners, Star of the Sea, Mystical Rose, Cause of our Joy, Queen of Heaven.

And Joseph. Husband of Blessed Mary. Never, not one single time, do we hear of Mary as Joseph’s wife – he is always Mary’s husband. Joseph is the role you want in the Christmas pageant when you want to participate, but not the the extent of actually wanting to, well, speak. We don’t have words for Joseph. Biblically, he is voiceless. The embodiment of ordinary. Joseph is a normal, well-meaning man, minding his own business, enjoying the modest ambition of making his quiet living with carpentry, marrying, having children, and raising them to be good, hard-working, devout people as well. To that end, he learned his craft, then become engaged to Mary. At that point Mary seemed pretty ordinary as well – a young, Jewish girl waiting for her life to really begin – all the superlatives came later.

Have you ever noticed that the reading says Mary and Joseph were “engaged”, but goes on to describe him as her husband? It turns out that “engaged” is an inadequate translation – it doesn’t give us quite the right idea. To modern day Americans, engaged suggests an informal arrangement, something that can be broken off at the request of either party. Marriage etiquette worked differently back then.

Getting married occurred in two steps. The first was in Hebrew “kiddushin” – the betrothal. Arranged by the groom and the bride’s parents, it committed the couple one to another, although the woman continued to live in her parents‘ home. While the relationship had not been finalized at this point, it was already considered a marriage, and breaking the relationship required a formal divorce. Any relations outside the agreement (at least by the female) constituted adultery, an offense punishable by death. The second step, “nissu’in” might take place as much as a year later – when the families feasted and celebrated and the husband finally took his bride to his own home. Mary’s now famous pregnancy became known between kiddushin and nissu’in. Now, Joseph almost certainly didn’t have a working knowledge of reproductive biology. He wouldn’t have known a fallopian tube from an appendix in form or function. He nonetheless knew perfectly well where babies came from, and was quite certain that this one didn’t come from him.

Being a perfectly ordinary man, if perhaps a bit kinder and more understanding than most, he made a perfectly ordinary assumption that someone other than himself had created this child. Forgivably, he assumed that someone was a mortal, living, breathing being complete with heart and bones and skin. He resolved on the kindest course of action he could devise, and still remain within his ordinary, everyday, time honored code of righteousness. A quiet, private divorce. It would leave Mary with an illegitimate child, unprotected, but at least she would not be publicly shamed, and even more generously, would not be stoned to death.

Then average, normal, run of the mill Joseph’s normal run of the mill life took a turn for the extraordinary. Not so much because he had this weird dream. Everybody has weird dreams. Rather because he allowed his heart to open to the truth within that dream – he managed to comprehend the influence of the Holy in his life, and act on it- against all customs, all conventional wisdom, against his own self interest. Not all of us could do the same from within our predictable, ordinary lives.

There was a TV show in the late 90’s called Evening Shade. I never saw it, but heard an interesting dialog from it. The two young children of the main character were sitting together talking before bed one night. The boy asks his sister, “Do you ever feel lonely and scared?” She answers, “Well, sometimes; but then I remember what they say in Sunday School, about how God is always with us and I feel better.” The boy thought a few minutes – then he said, “Yeah, well, that praying stuff is all right I guess; but sometimes you just need somebody with some skin on them.” (Reference thanks to Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton)

Ahaz got that. Ahaz was not an ordinary man. Ahaz was a king. Ahaz was a king between a rock and a hard place. Pressed on one side by an impending invasion from a coalition of forces, and on the other by the mega-empire of Assyria, he was offered comfort in is distress by God – a sign, any sign. He had already made his political bed, however, throwing in with someone with skin on, joining forces with the Assyrian empire – a power he could touch and feel and comprehend. With false piety, he declined a sign.

Are we far behind? God. God can appear such a far away concept. Everywhere, everything, all knowing, all encompassing. Faced with the infinite, with the source of all being, do you every feel lonely and scared? Forgiveness seems abstract, life everlasting remote, prayer a breath in the wind. We turn to something with some skin on – to human rules and roles, to human protection, to human security, to the safety of our ordinary lives. According to John Ortberg (God is Closer Than You Think) “The central promise in the Bible is not ‘I will forgive you,’ although of course that promise is there. It is not the promise of life after death, although we are offered that as well. The most frequent promise in the Bible is ‘I will be with you.’ ”

(Mary) shall conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.” God with skin on.

Christmas is coming. Coming soon. Are you ready? Are you ready for Christmas? I’m not asking if your tree is decorated, or your shopping done, or your house ready for the relatives, or the presents wrapped. (I would fail the readiness test on all of those counts, by the way) The Christ child comes. We sing. We worship. We celebrate. God-with-us calls us to more. We are called from within our ordinariness, to abandon our illusion of safety, to become someone-with-skin-on through whom Christ can shine through for lost, the lonely, the frightened, the hungry.

Kind ordinary Joseph left his fear behind and reached out with love to raise the son he did not father. Can we not reach out in love to all God’s people? W.H. Auden prayed,

Mary and Joseph
Blessed Woman.
Excellent Man,
Redeem for the dull the
Average Way,
That common ungifted
Natures may
Believe that their normal
Vision can
Walk to perfection.

We have just passed the shortest day of the year. The nights are long and the days are short. May the light of Christ shine in our hearts and shine through our lives. Amen.

(Thanks to Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton for concept of “God with skin on”)

ADVENT 3, A

Isaiah 35:1-10

Matthew 11:2-11

Have you ever had very high, or very specific expectations about a person or about an event, and then were so disappointed when the reality didn’t match those expectations? Think about it for a moment. How much was your experience of the reality shaped by your expectations? In other words, did your expectations ruin your experience?

Today’s Gospel is all about expectations, specifically John the Baptist’s expectations of Jesus. John is in jail while Jesus is carrying out his ministry in Galilee. John hears what he’s doing and begins to have doubts. That’s why he sends one of his followers to Jesus to ask, “Are you the promised Messiah or not?”

As he is wont to do, Jesus does not answer directly, but instead says, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” Clearly this is meant to suggest the passage from Isaiah that we also heard this morning and with which John would have been familiar.

How could John possibly be disappointed in Jesus, who is doing such amazing things? Well, it does depend, doesn’t it, on what John’s expectations were. So let’s step back a moment and look at what John has said to indicate those expectations.

We all know that John tells people to repent of their sins and to be baptized. Just keep in mind that this is a call to return to the path of righteousness and the rules of Jewish purity. He also says in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, that the one who comes after him will baptize them with the Holy Spirit and with fire. In Matthew and Luke he also says, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

And also this: “Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cue down and thrown into the fire.”

John expects Jesus to preach repentance, to preach judgment, and to baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Clearly this wasn’t happening. In fact, quite the opposite — Jesus was eating with sinners, he wasn’t baptizing at all, and he occasionally said questionable things like, “but I say love your enemies.”

So John wonders if he made a mistake. By answering as he does Jesus tries to show him that his mistake was in his expectations rather than in his naming Jesus as the one so long awaited. In other words, John’s preconceived notions of what the Messiah would do were causing him confusion and doubt.

In considering this situation with John, I was reminded of the problems in the early church around the question of the 2nd Coming. The first generation or two were certain it would happen in their lifetimes. The next two generations had to try to tap dance around the assertions of the first two because they clearly had been wrong.

And now consider the state of Christianity today. Some preachers and televangelists are still beating the drum for the 2nd Coming happening any day now. Jesus will return and permanently fix all the wicked people. Because these folks have such expectations, they see the signs wherever they look.

Other churches draw circles around themselves in order to insure and protect their “purity” so as to be safe if it does come, and still others are focused instead on carrying out the mission of Jesus in this world. This last is clearly where Holy Trinity and the Episcopal Church stand today. And in fact, I’ve seldom heard much about the “End Times” in Episcopal Churches. And while I have known a few Episcopal priests who preached hellfire and damnation, it is certainly not the norm.

Here’s how I look at it. The Bible predicts a 2nd Coming, when Jesus will return to reign on earth, but is hasn’t happened so far and we can’t know, as Jesus himself told us, the time or the hour when it will happen. The Bible promises us a life after death, but there’s no way to know what that will actually be like. So why worry or argue about it?

What we do know is that Jesus taught us how we should live our lives, here and now. It only makes sense to focus on that and trust in God to take care of the rest of it. Will there be judgment or will there be reconciliation and grace? Take your pick, but since we can’t know for sure, focus on what we do know.

For one, we know that if we create expectations about things that we can’t verify, we are bound to be disappointed. More importantly, all that blather about such things distracts us from things we can know and do. Our focus must be on what Jesus expects of us rather than on what we expect of Jesus.

And what does Jesus expect of us? To go out into the world and do as he did: feed the hungry, proclaim good news to the poor, restore sight to the blind, restore prisoners to their families and communities, and so on. We are to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. The rest we have to leave to God and must assume that God will manage it all, so that we don’t have to.

Our concern is this world, not the next. Our question is not “When will Jesus come again?” Instead our question is “How can we help to bring the Kingdom of God into reality?” “How can we transform ourselves and our communities into a beloved community?” “How can we become God’s people in this place and time?”

These are the questions asked by the early church that was founded and grew in a culture that was not friendly to it. We are essentially in the same situation and that’s why the church at large is talking so much about being a “missional” church. It’s much easier to do mission when we quit worrying about numbers, when we quit worrying about the size of our Sunday School or how many new members have joined, or how many babies we’ve baptized.

Let’s not set up false expectations for ourselves, but instead do what we in fact know how to do – go out into the world to do what we can, leaving the rest to God, go out into the world to make it a better place for everyone, and go out into the world rejoicing! AMEN

ADVENT 2, A

12/8/13

(taken from my sermon on Advent 2 C in 1997)

This season of the year often turns me into a Scrooge muttering, “Bah Humbug!” much more often than I’d like. Beyond the gross commercialization of Christmas, there are two major issues I grumble about each year.

One of them is beginning the Christmas season on or before Thanksgiving. Advent gets lost altogether. I prefer to finish my gift shopping before the decorations and that awful Muzac fill the stores. Otherwise I’m sick of it all, even my favorite carols, by the time Christmas arrives. I try to put up my tree less than a week before Christmas and then sit there and ooh and ahh. I keep my decorations up at least until Epiphany. I try to ignore all the outside lights that people seem to put up on Thanksgiving weekend, at least until the week of Christmas. Without the dark and quiet reflective time of Advent, Christmas seems to loose its meaning for me.

For this, the second Sunday in Advent, the Gospel lesson tells us about the coming of John the Baptist. John says, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Then he quotes from Isaiah: "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

What does this mean, really? At the literal level the words paint a picture of a road-building project, sort of clearing a grand avenue through the wilderness so the Lord who is coming may walk comfortably and grandly among his people. It echos the triumphal processions often used by the Greeks and Romans to honor a conquering general.

But what has that to do with us and with this 21st Century celebration of Advent? I think that clearing a path through the wilderness is a concrete metaphor for the internal task we are meant to complete during this season. The wilderness we must tame and straighten out is the wilderness inside ourselves.

Now, when our backyard gardens are resting beneath the snow, is the time to cultivate our inner gardens, to smooth out the hills and valleys and prepare the soul so that God can reach us and work in us and through us. This is the time to look at ourselves, at our spiritual lives and our lifestyles, and to ask what is there that blocks us from living fully, from being the servant God calls us to be. Advent is the the time to re-consider our lives and to remove the clutter so that God can re-enter and take his proper place at the very center.

If you’re like me, you have a secret garden tucked away where you’ve tried to lock away the dark parts of yourself — the rage, pettiness, jealousy, envy, — whatever demons, that in spite of locks and walls, still rise up unbidden from time to time. They cannot be contained by walls or locks, so you must open the door and take down the walls, exposing your own darkness to the light of recognition and forgiveness. God know you and loves you in spite of that darkness, so do not try to hide it, either from God or from yourself. This is how we make a path for God through the wilderness of our being and prepare for the return of the great light.

The second aspect of the secular Christmas celebration that irks me no end is the gooey, sentimentality in which the Christmas story is so often wrapped for public consumption. It’s easy to get sucked into this — who doesn’t get sort of ooh, ahh gee whiz about a new baby? And it’s hared to say Bah Humbug! to the Christmas specials that are so full of sweetness and light.

The problem with sentimentality is that it creates rather momentary emotions that do not really change people. You may get the message but miss the meaning. In looking up John’s quote from Isaiah, I think I found an antidote for our inclination to sentimentality. These words follow soon after the passage he quoted.

A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?” All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower faces, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever. . .

He will feed his flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep.

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?

Who has directed the spirit of the Lord, or as his counselor has instructed him? Whom did he consult for his enlightenment, and who taught him the path of justice? Who taught him knowledge and showed him the way of understanding? . . .

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.

Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted, but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary they shall walk and not faint.

THIS is the God for whom we wait. Do not be fooled or misled by the sweet helpless baby to be born in Bethlehem. The God who comes into the world is the God of creation, the God of power, and the God of grace and love. This God inspires the deepest awe. So prepare yourselves — and make a way for God to be reborn in you this Christmas. AMEN

Advent 1, AIsaiah 2:1-5
Romans 13:11-14
Matthew 24:36-44

(Sit and let the time stretch out.) Waiting…. We’re just… It’s not entirely comfortable, is it?……Waiting, I mean…..It’ll be well…well….just waiting….We wait.

“Not everyone can wait.” says Dietrich Bonhoeffer. It is uncomfortable. It is foreign. “Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten,” Mr. Bonhoeffer says. “It wants to break open the ripe fruit when it has hardly finished planting the shoot.”

We wait. We wait because it is Advent. The tender shoot of Christ, Emmanuel is just planted – we are not yet ready. The stores may be ready. The sales are set, the glitter and glitz is arrayed to best advantage in its conspicuous abundance . The turkey leftovers are put away, the stuffing stuffed down, the pumpkin pie a fast fading memory.

We wait. We wait because we are Christians, and for us this is the beginning. We are in Advent. This is the beginning season. The season of waiting. The still season. The season of darkness. The night before the dawn. The season of hope not yet fulfilled.

The impatience of the age notwithstanding, I always loved Advent. It seemed to me a refuge from the bustle, the frenetic frenzy, the flashing clamorous glitz that is our modern preparation for Christmas. The darkness of Advent was close and soft and velvet, embracing the soft glow of the candles we light, one at a time, week by week. The waiting, a time of rest, of gentle spiritual slumber.

Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord… Mountain climbing. Mountain climbing! This does not sound restful. Earnest Hemingway once said, “I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?” I have a great deal of empathy for Mr. Hemingway in this regard. Naps are truly my friend.

In Advent God wrests our attention, if only briefly, away from the shopping, the cooking, the decorating, the parties, the million and one to do’s that can never quite be finished. Can He not grant us the gentle sanctuary of Advent’s sweet repose?

Wake up! You know what time it is! Now is the moment to awake from sleep. Waiting is not comfortable. God has no intention of making us comfortable. God’s intention is rather to make us wake up and live. “Not everyone can wait,” said Dietrich Bonhoffer. “The only ones who can wait are people who carry restlessness around with them.” And according to Paul Tillich, “God is present in the force that makes us restless.” God means to be present in our lives NOW. “We must,” opined Henry David Thoreau, “We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.”

“For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near” Paul and his followers anticipated the coming of the Son of Man imminently. They would have been less surprised to turn around and see Christ, arrayed in all His heavenly glory in their own backyard than they were to see their generation dying before that happened. It was years after Paul had been martyred and virtually all the people who actually knew Jesus had died, that the people who knew people who knew Jesus began to think to themselves, hmmm, maybe it would be a good idea to write some of this stuff down. More than 20 centuries later, what do these words, so carefully preserved, mean to us?

Is Jesus really saying that we shouldn’t eat, shouldn’t drink, shouldn’t marry? These are the worst accusations he hurls at Noah’s ill-fated cohort, “they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark”.

Jesus was, of course, quite right about thief thing. If you convince me that a thief is going to show up between 1 and 4am a week from next Thursday and if that thief is even half as punctual as the cable repair person, said thief will meet with an unpleasant welcome, and I will give you my heartfelt thanks. If, however, you tell me that a thief will absolutely, definitely come to plunder my home eventually, just sometime, my thanks may not be so ready. Now I have to decide – do I stay awake with my baseball bat and my can of pepper spray for the next 25 years, or do I sleep and hope you’re wrong?

Either Jesus was carefully building a fellowship consisting of untold centuries of dehydrated, starving, horny insomniacs, or he meant rather to cultivate in his followers an awareness, a vigilance, an urgency to live each day for God.

Noah’s neighbors failed to open their eyes to God’s condemnation of their selfish ways in Noah’s conspicuous activity. Our neighbors, quirky as they might be, are unlikely to take up driveway space to construct massive floating menageries in the name of God. Perhaps we can nonetheless open our eyes to the evils of injustice, of hunger, of violence against God’s people.

We cannot be certain (as this reading reinforces) – We cannot be certain, but experience thus far suggests that Jesus won’t physically come sweeping in our door with choirs of angels singing and trumpets blazing. Perhaps we can nonetheless discern His presence here and now – in the bread we break together in community, in a smile from a stranger, in the faces of the lost, the lonely, the tired, the abused.

Many of you know C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series, (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and so on) Children across several generations travel to the magical, mystical land of Narnia, with its talking animals and sentient plants. Divine presence is represented by a Lion. Good and evil wage their eternal struggle. C.S.Lewis describes this Advent scene. “Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music. Then there came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children’s bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: “Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”

In the still night of Advent we restlessly wait, we hope, we prepare. We prepare not for the birth of the Christ child in the world, but for the birth and rebirth of Christ in our hearts, in our lives. We prepare to be the eyes, the feet, the hands of Christ.
Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world – Teresa of Avilla

Mark Salzman asks in Lying Awake, “Am I really a person who lives by faith? God can surely tell the difference between someone who walks in darkness and someone who walks with her eyes shut. Which am I?”

PROPER 29 C

Jeriemiah 23:1-6

Luke 23:33-43

Today is the last Sunday of the church year, traditionally called Christ the King Sunday. I have to confess that for some years I’ve had a bad attitude about this Sunday and have managed to preach on it only once before, and that without mentioning that it’s called Christ the King.

It was teaching or attempting to teach Sunday School on this day that caused me to vow I’d never teach Sunday School again and to rant about the woeful state of our Sunday School materials. First we had to teach the children what a king is. Then we made crowns and swords, which quickly devolved into endless sword fights, without time to ever reference the point of the lesson. ARGGGGG

So I’ll ask you, what do you think of when you hear Christ the King? What are kings like? What do they do? How do they act? Clearly kings are leaders. They are the head honchos of their countries. As an Episcopalian, the first king I think of is Henry the VIII, that paragon of family values, who beheaded two of his wives and divorced two others, but also created our Anglican church by breaking with Rome.

The point is that the kings we know of from history, even the good ones, are generally not so good. They mostly rule by force; in other words, they are warrior kings. They are seldom paragons of virtue in their personal lives either. Since most kings have to rely on their ministers or their nobles to run the kingdom, justice is seldom available to the lower levels of society. The empire of Rome, ruled by the Emperor is just larger and therefore more suspect than a smaller Kingdom.

The point of course, is that Christ the King is a different kind of king. The Jeremiah reading makes this clear. When Jeremiah talks about the bad shepherds scattering the flock he is talking about the kings of Judah and Israel, who have not taken care of the people. The people of Israel have already been scattered and ones of Judah will soon go to exile in Babylon. Their kings had become more interested in their own wealth and power than in the welfare of their people.

“ ‘Woe to the kings who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!’ says the Lord. . . ‘I will raise up kings over them who will shepherd them and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing,’ says the Lord.” Jeremiah goes on to promise that this new king will deal wisely and execute justice and righteousness in the land.

This is the Biblical definition of a good leader, of a good King. Paired with this reading is the Lukan story of the crucifixion of Jesus. Jesus is so clearly portrayed here as NOT a warrior king, but rather a martyr king. And the martyr king, who goes to his death for the sake of his people, although not often found in our history books, does have some very ancient precedents, ones that would have been known in Jesus’s time.

There are two strands of this that I’m aware of. The first is from the time of Goddess worship, prevalent in the early Mediterranean world. In that culture, the high priestess and the Queen where often the same person. Every year a new king was chosen, a high honor. After he mated with the queen he was killed as a sacrifice to the gods of fertility to ensure good crops in the coming year.

The second strand came with the incursion of the Indo-Europeans who moved into the Mediterranean world bringing a male God who ruled from the mountain tops. With them they brought the ideal of a male king who ruled his people, but who, in bad times of crop failure or other severe threat, would sacrifice himself to appease the gods and save the people. In very ancient times the kings of Athens had been known to fling themselves off the Acropolis to save their people in this way.

This is the sort of king we have in Christ. Moreover, this king is non-violent, NOT a warrior. I would guess that explains why so many people could not accept Jesus as the Messiah, because they were expecting a warrior king more like David. He did not set his people free from the Romans in the manner that they anticipated.

The Kingdom that Jesus preached throughout his ministry was a potential and present kingdom in this world, but unlike any before or since. It is not created through violence. It is not maintained through coercion. Everyone in this Kingdom is of equal value and everyone has enough. Therefore justice for all is a reality and there is no reason to be afraid.

Jesus did not fight the Romans in the way most people expected the Messiah to fight. He opposed the Romans and the Jewish leaders who cooperated with them, using very little but his words and his non-violent action. He knew they would have to get rid of him, but he did not turn away. He willingly gave himself to that martyr’s death as part of his attempt to show us the way he wants us to live. And without that death we would not have Easter or Pentecost.

So Jesus gives us a very different picture of what it means to be a good leader, a good King, a good Shepherd. He shows us how a good king pours out his life for others, puts his own needs behind the needs of his people. It’s hard to consider this without asking ourselves what kind of leaders we have or what kind of leaders we want?

Not that we expect our leaders to fling themselves off the capitol dome to appease God – – – but it would be nice to see them working for the common good rather than their own power or wealth, wouldn’t it? Don’t we deserve leaders who work for the good of all our citizens, not just the men, not just for the white folks, not just for the wealthy, etc. but for all the people.

Sometimes it occurs to me that I’d like to send Steve Schaitberger to Washington to ask the Senate and the House, “What part of all don’t you understand?” I’d like to see them working together to do the work of government, which is to govern in the best interest of ALL the people. There are people like this in government, but not nearly enough of them!

There are several versions of a cartoon floating around in which a person berates God, asking him why he allows poverty and war and injustice in the world. And God replies, “I was about to ask you the same question!”

Considering this week’s lessons and listening to the news of this past week, brings me to sum up the lessons in a paraphrase of a past president. “Ask not what God can do for us. Ask instead what we can do for God.” One of the things we can do for God and for the Kingdom is to vote and work for leaders who care for all the people, as Jesus cared for them. AMEN.

ALL SAINTS

Daniel 7:1-3, 13-18 Ephesians 1:11-23 Luke 6:20-31

What in the world do these readings have to do with All Saints Day? I’ve stewed over it all week. Then I listened to a podcast from Working Preacher.org and Eureka! The light bulbs came on. Let me see if I can connect the dots for you.

As you know, Daniel is an apocalyptic book, meaning that it was written to give hope to people who were suffering. It is written in a kind of code so that the people being persecuted can understand it, but the powers that be think it’s just gibberish. It usually contains dreams and visions.

Daniel was written around 167-164 BC when the Hebrews were suffering persecution under Antiochus Epiphanes, who had desecrated the temple. Today we heard about Daniel’s vision of the “four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts came up out of the sea. . .’.

The four beasts represent imperial kingdoms. They are shown in sub-human form, awful creatures that destroy the peace, the planet, and create the poor.

Unfortunately, the lectionary left off two critical verses for understanding Daniels vision, verses 13 and 14, which say:

“As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.

In the King James Version of the Bible, it says, “I saw one like a son of Man. . .” And you know that this is a term often applied to Jesus. The central point is that this “one like a human being” stands in opposition to the imperial powers and in the end will win dominion over all people. Remember the unarmed Chinese student who blocked the way of a tank in Taeinimin Square? That is the ultimate image in our day of one human being standing up to the power of empire. Jesus did so in his time; picture him driving the money changers out of the temple.

Now consider the explanation given to Daniel in his vision. The interpreter says, “As for these great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth. But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom for ever.”

Aha! Could these holy ones be the saints of God? Isn’t the central message of Jesus about the Kingdom of God? That it’s coming, that it’s here, and all those parables trying to explain what it is like. If we look at all of those, it’s clear that the Kingdom of God is not like the imperial kingdoms. In fact it’s pretty much the opposite.

In the reading from Ephesians Paul speaks of an inheritance that we have obtained in Christ, through our baptism. He echoes the passage from Daniel too. “God put his power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at this right hand in the heavenly paces, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.”

We’ve been hearing week after week from Luke that Jesus is turning the structures of imperial hierarchy upside down. The great General Naaman will be humbled. The humble shall be exalted. Lazarus, the poor man will live with his ancestors, while the rich man burns in eternal fire.

And now in Luke’s version of the beatitudes that we heard today, there’s more of the same. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God, but woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” God is filling his kingdom with the poor, the marginalized, the beggars, the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the lowest levels of society and warning the upper levels to beware of their fate. Warning, but not excluding.

This reading ends with Jesus telling the crowd how people should behave in the Kingdom of God: “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. . . Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

It seems to me that the signs of the Kingdom of God are peace, love, generosity, forgiveness, and non-violence. All of these are the results of the behaviors that Jesus calls for. This Kingdom stands in opposition to all imperial powers and keeps alive in each generation the possibility of forming a beloved community. We are the inheritors of this Kingdom, passed on to us by the saints who have gone before us.

As members of a Total Ministry church, we know that each of us is a minister, that all of us have gifts for doing ministry, and that indeed we are all saints. And I trust that we are all aware of the great cloud of saints who have preceded us, some of whom are famous, but most of whom were just folks like us.

Among the earliest hunter-gatherers, including both Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals, one of the most important people in the band was the person who carried the fire. When the group prepared to move, the fire-carrier would use an animal horn to scoop up an ember from the communal fire to carry it carefully on their trek to their next campsite, where it would be used to light the next communal fire.

Think of the fire as the Kingdom of God, that each generation is entrusted to carry forward, keeping it alive and well, embodying the Kingdom in their lives and communities, expanding the Kingdom in good times, nurturing it through bad times. That is essentially what the saints of God have done throughout history. Now it is our turn to carry the fire, to protect it in harsh weather, and to light the new fire at each resting place.

Thank God, we don’t have to be perfect to carry the fire. Like the rich young man, I still can’t give everything I have to the poor, but I can give generously; I can stand with the poor; I can vote for the poor by voting for candidates who care more about the common good than about lining pockets; I can say no to violence and work to promote understanding between people of different cultures.

There are these and a hundred other ways we all work to bring the kingdom into being: visiting the sick and shut-in, staffing the clothes closet and community café, being kind to one another, including everyone in our circle. And so we continue the work of the saints in the communion of saints, and then pass the fire to those who come after us.

That’s what we celebrate on All Saints Day. AMEN

PROPER 25, C

Luke 18:9-14

Four weeks ago we heard the parable of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus. Two weeks ago we heard the parable of the ten lepers, nine of whom couldn’t be bothered to say “Thank you!” And also the story of the arrogant General named Naaman. So when I first read today’s lesson, I thought immediately of Yogi Berra

Proper 24, C

Genesis 32:22-31
Luke 18:1-8

“It’s snowing! It’s snowing! Mumma, it’s finally winter!” However you feel about that white stuff; whatever your personal conviction about the proportion of the year that should be spent garnering our enthusiasm for our iceboxiness – you cannot resist the kids’ innocence, their enthusiasm. They ooze with LIFE.

This, the third Sunday in October is designated the National Observance of Children’s Sabbath. 2013 marks the 22nd annual observation of the event. This year it dovetails with the Episcopal Church in Minnesota’s missional emphasis on children. You may have noticed the information in your bulletins – some statistics about child poverty, and the effects of gun violence on children. Coming up in a little bit, you will notice some changes in the liturgy to focus on this observance. Sponsored by the Children’s Defense Fund and supported by Catholic Charities U.S.A., the Islamic Society of North America, the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., the National Assembly of Bahá’ís in the U.S., the Sikh Council on Religion and Education, the Union for Reform Judaism, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, and more than 200 other religious organizations and denominations, the “National Observance of Children’s Sabbaths Celebration is a way for faith communities to celebrate children as sacred gifts of the Divine, and provides the opportunity for houses of worship to renew and live out their moral responsibility to care, protect and advocate for all children.” (Children’s Defense Fund website) Every year, they choose a different emphasis. This year the title is “Beating Swords Into Plowshares: Ending the Violence of Guns and Child Poverty.”

The events at Sandy Hook school not even a year ago put gun violence against children front and center in the national news. It is seared into our consciousness. Since that time there have been at least 15 more school shootings. And, of course, school shootings represent a very small proportion of the gun violence perpetrated against children. In the last year, almost 2,700 children were killed by guns. And poverty? Among Industrialized Nations the United States Ranks worst in relative child poverty. 16,134,000 children in the US live in poverty. That is 21.9% of our children. 7,252,000 or 9.8% of our children live in extreme poverty. Closer to home 194,260 (15.4%) of MN’s children live in poverty – 81,165 (6.4%) of them in severe poverty. They do not know where their next meal will be coming from, or indeed if there will be a next meal. That says nothing of the poverty, the devastation, the starvation of children world-wide.

The numbers are staggering. We are talking about the gun related death of a child at a rate of one every 3 1/4 hours. We are talking about the living death that is extreme poverty annihilating the childhood, the innocence, often the very promise of the most vulnerable among us over and over and over. What does a person do? What can a person do? Where is God?

There’s an old saying, “Sometimes I would like to ask God why He allows poverty, suffering, and injustice when He could do something about it. But I’m afraid He would ask me the same question.” (anonymous).

The Children’s Defense Fund is one of the premier child advocacy groups in this country. What is their suggestion for what we do about this national catastrophe? Pray. Roman Catholics and Episcopalians and other Protestants and Muslims and Jews and Bahá’ís and all the rest – join together in prayer in the National Observance of the Children’s Sabbath. Pray.

I can think of more than a couple of people skeptical about this approach, maybe a few in this room. Tragedies of violence, tragedies of injustice, tragedies of paralyzing economic disparity afflict millions of the children of this country. Mouthing prayers to a silent God in the face of such immense need seems inefficient at best, futile at worst. And so it is. If that is all that it is.

Suzanne Guthrie writes, “When despair has obliterated ordinary prayer; when the psalms fail and all words are stupid and meaningless, the mantle of loneliness surrounding me becomes a mantle of dark and wordless love. This darkness reveals the paradox of prayer: in the absence of God, all there is, is God.” We are people of God. Prayer is our relationship with God. It makes us who we are. Henri Nouwen points out, “Prayer is the center of the Christian life. It is the only necessary thing. It is living with God in the here and now.”

God invites us, like Jacob, to wrestle with our faith, to wrestle with God, to demand God’s blessing, to demand God’s attention. One commentator notes that in this, Israel’s story of its relationship with God, “Israel defines itself as a people who refuses to let go of God. They tell us that they will fight with God to demand that Yahweh bless them. They are a people who are willing to be changed, even damaged in that exchange, because they know that attaining that blessing is worth the sacrifice. They are not a people of passive faith.” (Corrine Carvalho, Working Preacher)

“Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” In his illustration of the need to pray, Jesus describes a widow, the most vulnerable of persons in 1st century Palestine. A widow in that time, in that place was a non-person without rights, without protection. Yet this particular non-person demands to be recognized, demands her rights, demands protection. She speaks against indifference in the form of the unjust judge. And she does it again. And again. And again. And the world changes.

We make the mistake of viewing prayer as merely something that we say, or words that we read – duty fulfilled. Rabbi Abraham Heschel once said, about participating in a Civil Rights march with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “I felt as through my feet were praying.” We pray with our mouths and brains, yes. We also pray with our hearts, with our hands, with our feet, with our lives. We pray when we challenge the indifferent political machine. We pray when we teach a child to garden, or can, or cook. We pray when we give to or work with the Clothes Closet. We pray when we offer a child a chance to give a Christmas gift to their parent – one they earn, but could never pay for.

The Reverend Billy Graham is quoted as saying, “The most eloquent prayer is the prayer through hands that heal and bless. The highest form of worship is the worship of unselfish Christian service. The greatest form of praise is the sound of consecrated feet seeking out the lost and helpless.”

Let us pray today for the children. Let us pray today, and tomorrow and the next day. Let us pray with our minds and our hearts and our hands and our feet and our wallets and our letters and our time and our lives. AMEN.

PROPER 23,C

2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15 Luke17:11-19

Don’t you just love this story of Naaman in the Old Testament? Here he is, the commander of the army of the Arameans, who have defeated Israel in battle, a powerful man who has the ear of the king of Aram. Just one small glitch, he is suffering from leprosy.

Through a servant of his wife’s, he hears of a prophet of Israel who lives in Samaria, who, she claims, can cure him. What I love is the scene when he arrives at the home of Elisha. There is Naaman, accompanied by many horses, men, and chariots, literally sitting on his high horse. And what does Elisha do? He sends a messenger out, who tells Naaman to go wash 7 times in the Jordan to be cured.

Well, the nerve of that prophet! Doesn’t he know who is at his door? The high and mighty Naaman is insulted by the servant. He rants, “I thought that for ME he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!”

Here is the very picture of arrogance and entitlement. Naaman has been in power so long that he expects to be treated differently than mere mortals. So he goes off in a rage. Only later, when his servants suggest that since the requirements of the cure are simple, perhaps he should try them. He does, and he is cured. Then he returns to the prophet, humbled. Notice that now he comes and stands before Elisha, like an equal. He says, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.”

We all know arrogance and can see it in all too many people, but do we know humility when we see it? I’m not talking about what I call fake humility, which looks a lot like fake piety. “Oh me, I’m not worthy. Take pity on this lowly sinner,” etc. True humility is much more than this.

At our team meeting last week the team watched “The Life of Pi.” At one point in his long journey across the Pacific in a lifeboat with a wild tiger for company, Pi finally humbles himself, saying something like, “OK God, I give up. We’re dying here and it’s up to you to save us or not.”

This authentic surrender to God is real humility. This is the essence of the AA program, surrendering your life to your higher power, and those who cannot do this, usually cannot stay sober. Humility seems to be the starting point of faith.

Luke uses the story of the ten lepers to show us another aspect of faith. When Jesus healed the ten lepers, they go on their way to show themselves to the priests. On the way, their leprosy disappears. Now they were all cured, but only one of them saw God’s hand in the healing. He turned back to praise God and to thank Jesus. He takes the time to express his gratitude and in return Jesus says to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.”

The Greek word translated as “well” also carries the implication of “whole” and also “saved.” Your faith has made you whole/has saved you. Yet we haven’t heard anything here about this man’s faith, in the way we usually understand that word.

Do you remember just recently when the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith? I believe these two stories go a long way towards cluing us in on how to do that. I think that practicing humility and practicing gratitude in conscious ways will in fact increase our faith.

How do we practice humility? Well, we do it when we say the Lord’s prayer, right? “Thy will be done – on earth as in heaven.” Think about it. Mean it when you say it. When you pray for your needs or those of others, tack on, “but thy will, not mine, be done.

How do we practice gratitude? Here’s your assignment for this week: Pay attention to what goes on around you. Once a day, morning or evening, ask yourself what did you see, hear, taste,feel or experience during the day for which you are grateful? Where did you see, sense or encounter the Holy Spirit in the world? Then give thanks to God for it. At the end of the 7 days, assess how you feel. Has this practice changed anything? It’s a simple thing and would be easy to continue. . .

There’s another aspect to these two stories. Both are stories about physical cure, but they also point to something more, real healing. To heal is to bring to wholeness. Naaman was cured of leprosy, but he was also healed of his arrogance. The ten lepers where cured of their leprosy, but only one, the one who expressed his gratitude was healed, made well.

Ten days ago I had cataract surgery on my right eye. So I was intrigued when one of the commentators I read this week said the following:

“Here’s one description of the church that’s stuck with me for nearly two decades: the church is the place where we perform weekly cataract surgery.

For this reason I think one of the primary functions of Sunday worship is to clarify our vision. To remind us that this is God’s beloved world. To point us to God’s ongoing activity in the world. To announce to us that God loves us and that God loves our neighbor just as much. . .

And that’s where the cataract surgery comes in. Anyone actively engaged in this world can’t help but have his or her vision made a little foggy. There is so much pain, and doubt, and hardship that it can be difficult to sustain faith in a loving God. Further, the challenges that confront us in loving our neighbor and striving for a more just and peaceful world are daunting. . .

The readings and sermon, the prayers and songs, that constitute our weekly worship serve to remove the film that clouds our ability to see God at work in the world. . .So week in and week out we come to church to have our vision clarified, our eyesight restored, so that we might return to the world looking for God out ahead of us, knowing that by the end of the week our vision will once again be cloudy and that cataract surgery awaits us again on Sunday.

Worship, from this point of view, is the opportunity for us to come to church that we might perceive, like the tenth leper in this week’s gospel, how God has restored us and, seeing, give God thanks and praise.” (David Lose, Working Preacher.org)

Consciously practicing humility and gratitude may help to keep your vision clear, but if not, come back next week for more cataract surgery. I’m having my other eye done this Wednesday, and know that my eyesight will be greatly improved. I pray that the same may be said for the eyes of my soul and yours too. AMEN