Sermon – Luke 2.1-14, CE, YB, December 24, 2017

Tags

chaos, Christmas Eve, church, God, holy, Holy Family, Jesus, life, love, manger, peace, silent, story, worship

Sometimes arriving at the manger on Christmas Eve feels a bit like just barely sliding into home plate.  When little ones are around, you have scurried about, making sure their tights and bowties are on, while trying to squeeze in one last family picture while everyone still looks nice.  By now, you have probably served or been served a meal, purchased and wrapped gifts, prepped or cooked food for tomorrow, sent out cards, decorated the house, and run countless errands.  And none of that includes the four hundred things that will be done in the next twenty-four hours.  Arriving here and semi-put together is a minor victory, with the promise of a peaceful, beautiful hour of worship, before preparing for the chaos to resume tomorrow.

The unfortunate thing is that the story of tonight is not all that much less chaotic.  Though we sing songs like Silent Night or Away in a Manger, or though we exchange cards with pastoral, peaceful settings, nothing about that night is silent.  And I am pretty sure the little Lord Jesus makes lots of cries.  The chaos of the holy family is not unlike the chaos in which we sometimes find ourselves.  Remembering how scandalous Mary’s pregnancy and relationship with Joseph are, the chaos continues as Emperor Augustus sends out a decree that forces a very pregnant, uncomfortable Mary away from her hometown to the crowded city of Bethlehem.  Before they can secure housing, Mary goes into labor.  Not only is she dealing with the drama of delivering a child for the first time ever, she is delivering without so much as the comfort of a home.  And then, just as they are trying to figure out nursing, and soothing, and the fear and wonder of parenting, along come some rowdy, likely filthy, shepherds, who have also not had a silent night.  In fact, they have heard the terrifying chorus of the heavenly host and been told a most preposterous story – so much so, they gather up their livestock and come to see.

With all the chaos of our own lives, and with all the mayhem of that holy night, why do we do it?  Why do we come to church at all?  Maybe we come to church on this night specifically because on this night, more than perhaps any night ever, we find the wonderful revelation that God can take the messy chaos of life and make our mess holy.  You see, as much as we love tonight’s beautiful story, what happens this night is beyond the chaos of registrations, no vacancies, angelic revelations, and messy encounters with strangers.  In order to understand the enormity of what is happening tonight, we broaden our scope.  Tonight’s event – the nativity of our Lord –  is the culmination of a much larger story.  The story started when there was no earth or humankind, when God formed the earth from the formless void.  When we first sinned against God and were cast out of the garden, to when we kept sinning and God flooded the world, to our deliverance from the hands of pharaoh and our arrival in the promised land, to our sinful desires for a king that led to the eventual confiscation of our land.  We are a people who have been oppressed so many times and rescued so many times we can barely count.  And in that rollercoaster of a relationship with our God, as we failed time and again, God, who never gives up and never cedes love, does something unheard of:  takes on human flesh, comes to us in the form of a vulnerable child, with the plan of redeeming us forever and granting us eternal life.

Maybe we come to church tonight because tonight is about God’s unending, undying, unfailing, uncompromising love for us.  Despite centuries of chaos, disobedience, and failures, God shows up tonight in a mighty way.  Despite the chaos of the times and of this night, God shows up among the outcast.  Despite the chaos of our own times, in our seeming inability to tend to those most outcast, God comes once more to redeem us.  We come to church tonight because we long to grasp the enormity of God’s love for us, the extents to which God will go for us, and the hope which only God can give to us.

But the news is even better than that.  I do not believe the beauty of tonight is in trying to find a holy moment, where God’s love speaks to us in an otherwise chaotic life.  In fact, you might not find that moment tonight because despite the fact that you were physically able to get here, your mind may still be somewhere else.  The good news is that is okay.  The deep, lasting peace of this night is not found in a single church service (though I must say, the service certainly helps).  The deep, lasting peace we are looking for comes from the reality that we do not find God’s love and peace in spite of the chaos of life.  Tonight teaches us that God hallows the chaos of life.

Based on our standards, God should have placed this precious child – the God incarnate – in the wealthiest, most well-guarded palace, where a person of great wealth could have given the baby everything the baby needed.  A person of power could have protected the child, brought honor to the child, raised the child up to assume the power of a Messiah.  If we had something so precious, we certainly would have worked to find the best of what we have to protect that preciousness.  And yet, God takes on flesh in an unmarried, inconsequential woman of little means.  God takes on flesh amidst the common people, being born in the lowliest of estates.  God takes on flesh and announces the news not to kings and rulers, but to shepherds – those disregarded by society as being of little import.  From the very beginning, the extraordinary thing God does is done in the midst of the ordinary – worse yet, among the marginalized and outcast.

God takes the mess of life:  our divisions, our stratifications by class, gender, and race, our subjugation of the poor, our inability to refrain from sin, our messes and chaos – and God makes our mess holy.  God sanctifies our chaos, reminding us that in the midst of chaos, God is present.   In the midst of chaos, God is doing a new thing through us.  In the midst of chaos, God is love and makes us agents of love.  I cannot promise that the chaos will not try to overtake you when you walk out the church door tonight.  But just like you will find small glimpses tonight of the overwhelming love God has for you, you can find God present in the chaos of life too.  God is continually breaking through, birthing in you Christ’s light and love, using you to make room in the world for the Christ child, using you to announce good news of great joy for all people.  If that doesn’t break though the chaos, I don’t know what will!  Amen.

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Homily – Luke 2.-8-20, Blue Christmas, December 21, 2016

Tags

Blue Christmas, Christmas, happy, Holy Family, homily, honest, hope, imperfection, perfect, perfection, real, vulnerable

I can still picture the perfect Christmas in my head.  My cousins were all there, along with my aunts, uncles, and grandparents.  The kids’ table was the coveted spot for dinner – even some the adults offered to make the “sacrifice” of not sitting at the adult table in order to join the kids.  After a dinner with the lamb and asparagus casserole my grandfather always cooked, the cousins challenged the aunts and uncles to a football game in the yard.  I scored a touchdown, which if you know me, was a minor miracle.  It was a perfectly beautiful, chilly day, and I remember being happy.

Of course, I was too young to know what was actually happening.  Marriages were hanging on by a string, and only one would survive.  Anxiety was hidden beneath the surface at the kids’ table as one family member barked at us for various offenses.  At least one family member was struggling with her sexuality.  Cousins would later be caught in the middle of nasty divorces, meaning I would not see them for several years.  Jobs would be lost, and identity would be questioned in the midst of unemployment.  American politics would infect family politics.  Even my own immediate family was heading for all sorts of tumult.

For a long time, I mourned the loss of that perfect Christmas.  I saw other families seeming to hold their Christmases together without effort.  I watched commercials that reminded me more of how things used to be rather than how they were.  I would receive annual Christmas cards and letters from seemingly perfect friends that made me feel like I did not measure up.  Even the pictures of the Holy Family seemed to capture a peace and contentment that I would never have.

But slowly, over the years, the old Biblical narrative seemed to unravel.  Knowing how hard marriage is, I could finally imagine how tense things must have been between Joseph and Mary.  Knowing how hard pregnancy is, I could finally imagine how miserable Mary must have been by the time they arrived in Bethlehem.  Knowing how brutal the Roman rulers were, I could imagine how dehumanizing going back to your hometown to be enrolled in the census must have been.  Knowing that not one family member, friend, or business would take in the Holy Family, leaving them in the most humiliating of situations, I could imagine how panicked and lonely the first-time mom, Mary, must have felt, even in her exhaustion.  Knowing how filthy shepherds usually were, and how Mary and Joseph just wanted a little peace, I could imagine how overwhelmed the Holy Family felt.  Though we like nativity sets, cards, and pageants that depict the Holy Family’s experience as heavenly perfection, the scripture tells a different story.

One of my favorite paintings of Mary is a painting that depicts her, just after birth, splayed, half-dressed, on a rustic bed, with women hovering in the dark background, tending to baby Jesus.[i]  There’s something very real and raw about that painting – the animals and baby are all there, but none of it seems perfect.  That’s what I love about this service too.  We too are tired, overwhelmed, and feeling vulnerable.  We too are lost without our loved ones this year.  We too are terrified of the ambiguity of life, and the sense that we are not in control.  But unlike everywhere else we live and work, this gathering tonight says we do not have to hide; we do not have to stuff our vulnerabilities and weaknesses in a box; we do not need to try to find perfection.

Tonight we are simply invited to be real, vulnerable, and honest about the imperfection of our lives, of ourselves, and of this time of year.  And though some artists might want you to believe that the Holy Family puts forth some sort of perfection standard, if anything, the Holy Family is right there with us.  Sitting among smelly animals and shepherds, settling into itchy hay and drafty stables, and wrapping their child in scraps of simple cloths, the Holy Family invites us into an imperfect Christmas.  Only when we enter fully enter into the imperfection of our Christmases are we able to allow the perfection of Christ to light a small flame of hope in our hearts.  May that light be kindled or stoked tonight, and may that light of hope grow ever strong in the days, weeks, and years to come.

[i] Paul Gauguin, “Te Tamari No Atua (Nativity), 1896,” as found at http://www.jesus-story.net/painting_birth_christ.htm on December 20, 2016.

Sermon – Luke 2.22-40, Feast of the Presentation, YA, February 2, 2014

Tags

Anna, church, community, differences, diversity, Holy Family, home, incarnational, Jesus, presentation, Sermon, Simeon

Throughout my time in parishes, I have been reminded again and again how different the varied groups are in church.  In one parish I served, the Twenties and Thirties group was struggling because the events that appealed to the single Twenties and Thirties members were not as appealing or convenient for the married Twenties and Thirties members – let alone the ones with children.  At another parish where I served, I remember trying to plan an event for a diverse group of families.  I suggested a particular time of day, keeping in mind the bedtime needs for our new infant.  After much debate, one of the other staff reminded me that families with older children do not need to start bedtime nearly as early as our family did.  I served in one parish that had Holy Eucharist on a weekday at 6:30 am, followed by Bible Study from 7:00 – 8:00 am.  As a sleep-deprived parent of a young child, the arrangement was hideous for me; but for those who worked in the City and needed to be there by 9:00, or for seniors who were up and fed well before 6:30 am, the timing was perfect.  And almost every parish I have been a part of has had youth lock-ins.  It is a special adult who is willing to supervise youth overnight, knowing that they may get little to no sleep, may need to navigate the energy and sexuality of teens, and are willing to be pretty silly and playful when they otherwise would like to be snuggling into a warm, comfortable bed for the night.

That is the funny thing about churches.  Though we all arrive on Sunday on time, relatively speaking, to do the same thing together, we all enter those doors with vast differences.  There are the basic differences – gender, age, marital status, and phase of life.  There are the personality differences – introverts or extroverts; morning or night people; spiritually expressive or quiet and contemplative.  And then there is what we bring in the door with us on any particular day.  Perhaps you just barely managed to dress and wrangle kids into the car to get them here today, probably running out of time to do much tending to yourself to get ready for church.  Perhaps you woke up with aches and pains today, but willed yourself to come anyway.  Perhaps you had a fight with a loved one recently, or even with a fellow parishioner, and you are not even sure if you are in the right mindset for church.  When we take into account all those widely diverse features of any particular gathered group, we begin to see how amazing the idea is that we even gather together at all.

I see a similar dynamic on the day that the holy family went to the temple for purification.  Mary needed to offer sacrifice in thanksgiving for a safe childbirth and sacrifice needed to be offered for Jesus as the firstborn son of the family.[i]  The family has already been through a great ordeal these past 40 days.  They managed to make their way to Bethlehem, had an eventful birth experience in a stable, had strange shepherd visitors, and are now back home.  I imagine at 40 days old, Jesus is still not sleeping through the night, Mary and Joseph are still figuring out this first-time parenting thing, and we can tell from their sacrifice of two turtledoves or young pigeons that the young couple is still struggling financially.[ii]  That this family made it to the temple for this traditional religious experience is a minor miracle.  We all know couples who have been in that stage of life at one point or another.

Meanwhile, we have Simeon.  He is a bit up in age, and has been waiting for a long time for the fulfillment of a promise.  The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not see death until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.  That means that Simeon has spent a lot of time at the temple, just waiting for that long-anticipated day.  We know that Simeon is righteous and devout, and that the presence of the Holy Spirit is strong in him.  He is a man wise beyond his years, who has been taught to look for just the right thing.  We also know that he is a man of song.  When he finally sees Jesus, he breaks into a song of praise that is now known worldwide, sung at Evensongs and said at Compline or after Eucharists.  We know too that he is not afraid to tell the cold, hard truth, as he warns Mary what hardship is to come her way through her relationship with her son.  We all know a gentleman or two from church who both show forth a Spirit-filled life, yet is never afraid to speak truth – no matter how stinging that truth might be.

Finally, we meet Anna.  Anna is in her eighties.  She has been a widow for about sixty of those years, so we know she has had a rough life.  We also know that she spends every waking hour at the temple, worshiping, praying, and fasting.  Her whole life is centered on being in the temple.  We also learn that Anna is a talker.  When she sees Jesus for the first time, not only does she praise God, but she also talks about the child to anyone who will listen.  Surely we have met that older church gossip, who is always full of church news.

So we have this beautiful scene set before us:  the frazzled young family, struggling both physically and financially to just get by; the wise, righteous older man who is filled with the Spirit, but holds nothing back – not even if maybe he should; and the older prophet whose whole life is at the temple, and who has no problem catching people up on temple news.  In truth the scene is a bit comical.  Though the scene is meant to be another Epiphanytide manifestation of the identity of Jesus Christ, the scene is almost absurd in reality.

As I pondered this scene this week, I could not help to think about our community of faith, and how absurd we probably seem to outsiders.  We have all sorts of parents with children of various ages – many of whom have confessed their own frazzled lives to me on Sundays.  We have teens who struggled to get out of bed to come to church, but who are listening and will ask really hard questions from time to time.  We have empty-nesters who are so overjoyed to have a new lease on life that they are equally likely to be found at some exciting location as they are to be found at church.  We have retirees who are deeply spiritual, who will also give you a piece of their mind.  We have members who love when the guitar team plays and members who avoid church when the guitar team plays.  We have members who will come to every Holy Week service, and other members who are lucky to make it to church on Easter Sunday.

If you look at our wide diversity, you might wonder how in the world we all call the same community home; and yet we all do, and most of us cannot imagine life without this community.  That is the joy of church.  Though that older member might take you to task on something, you also know that they often speak with the love of someone who knows you can take it and you need to hear it.  Though there are Sundays when families feel like the behavior of their children has made their worship experience a complete bust, there are members around you who only get a glimpse of joy that week by being near your child and getting to know their beautiful personalities.  Though that church gossip might frustrate you at times, she is also the same one who has been praying for you and brought you a meal when you were sick.

That is what I love about the text this Sunday and the reality of Church.  Both the text and Church are extremely incarnational – they show us the depths of our messiness, but the beauty that can only emerge from that messiness.  Both show us how no matter how wacky the people are, God shows up, and reveals joy, hope, and grace.  Both show us that no matter how challenging our community might be at times, at its best, our faith community shows us how to better love God, love ourselves, and love our neighbors.  No matter what stage of life we are in, what personality we bring to the table, or what hurdles we overcame to get here today, we need each other because God needs and uses each of us.  For that messy, challenging, incarnate community of faith, I am forever grateful.  That is the good news we celebrate today, and the good news that we invite all our messy, challenging, incarnate friends into as well.  Amen.

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[i] Lauren F. Winner, “Simeon’s Faithful Proclamation,” December 26, 2011, as found at http://thq.wearesparkhouse.org/yearb/christmas1gospel-2/ on January 29, 2014.

[ii] William R. Herzog, II, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B., Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 167.

Sermon – John 1.1-18, C1, YA, December 29, 2013

Tags

Christmas, God, Holy Family, Jesus, John, Mary, miracle, prologue, Rembrandt, scripture

A couple of days after Christmas, the all-Christmas-music radio stations have switched back to their normal formats.  At local stores, the Christmas rack of cards had been transformed to a rack of Valentine’s Day cards.  In our neighborhoods and among our friends and family, we have switched our greeting from, “Merry Christmas!” to, “Happy New Year!”  The world has moved on from Christmas, and yet, the Church is still dwelling in Christmastide – in fact we celebrate not just one day, but the famous twelve days of Christmas.  Our celebrations continue until those wise men arrive on the 6^th, when we transition to Epiphanytide.  Today, after stories of shepherd, angels, and the holy family, we find ourselves not wondering what is next, but instead still pondering what has just happened.

For a reflection on what happens in Jesus’ birth, what better text than John’s prologue?  John takes us out of the stable, and invites us not to just consider the miracle of that holy night, but to consider the miracle of a God who takes on human flesh for us.  And so, instead of telling us about the earthly beginning of Jesus’ life, John takes us all the way back to the beginning of all things – that creative moment when the Word and God are together, making all life come into being.  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  The words sound beautiful, and John’s text is rich with meaning and interpretation.  But John’s words are also a little circuitous, repetitive, and a bit difficult to understand without reading them multiple times over.  The familiarity and beauty of the words may be soothing, but the meaning of those words sometimes eludes us.

As I sat pondering these words this week, I found myself drawn again to Rembrandt’s painting, “Holy Family,”[i]  In the foreground of the painting, Mary, who is bathed in light, has a well-worn book, perhaps scriptures, lying on her lap, held in place by one hand, as though she has been reading the book intently.  Her face, however is turned away from the weathered book, as her other hand lifts a blanket that is covering a cradle, revealing a sleeping, contented Jesus.  Behind Mary and Jesus, in much fainter light, Joseph is standing over a piece of wood that he is intently planing.  Meanwhile, in the top left corner of the painting, young cherubim are hovering around the scene with outstretched arms.

What I like so much about the painting is that Mary gives us a clue about how we are to understand John’s beautiful, but convoluted words today.  First, I am intrigued by the way Mary clutches her well-worn book.  In looking at her book’s worn edges, I am reminded of the Bible I used for my Education for Ministry class several years ago.  In EFM, you spend two years reading through the Old and New Testaments.  I remember how my homework for the class instructed me to highlight certain passages in different colors so I could track the different contributors to a text.  I remember writing notes in the margins of passages that stood out, held particular meaning, or raised questions.  I remember certain pages being soiled by the meal I tried to cram in while finishing my assigned reading for a particular session.  That Bible looked like a Bible someone actually lived with as opposed to the clean, commemorative ones I have on many of my shelves.

That is the way I imagine Mary treating her worn book.  As the one who ponders things in her heart, I imagine Mary also ponders scripture in her heart.  I imagine she pours over the texts as she looks for words to explain her experiences with Jesus or as she simply longs for words to describe her feelings toward the God who had done something so tremendous in her life.  As Mary seeks to understand the Word made flesh, perhaps she returns again and again to the words of scripture, trying to discern their meaning.  And given that she is a faithful Jew, she probably also does that pouring over scripture with her faith community, as they seek to always hear God’s word for the people.  Her community probably turns back to that creation narrative over and over again.  Her community probably turns back to the Law of Moses over and over again.  Her community probably turns back to the prophets over and over again.

Given her longing for scriptural insight, Mary likely would have appreciated John’s text today, even though John’s gospel was not written until about 60 years after Jesus’ death.  She would have already known the stories of Luke and Matthew because they are her story.  But our text by John today is an attempt to help all of us understand the magnificence of what happens when God takes on human flesh.  In fact, if Mary had been reading John, I imagine that the last line we hear is what draws her attention away from her well-worn book to look at the Christ Child himself in Rembrandt’s painting.  John writes, “No one has ever seen God.  It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.”

Perhaps this text is why Rembrandt depicts Mary’s eyes wandering back to that cradle, her hand pulling back the blanket, and her mind not just worrying like any mother does over an infant, but her mind also worrying about what God is doing in this child of hers.  She wants to do more than read the words on the paper – she wants to read the Word, with a capital “W,” in her life.  She wants to gaze at the Word made flesh, who shines light into that dimly lit room and into the world.  She wants to not only know the Law of Moses, but to know the grace and truth that comes directly from the Word incarnate.

What Rembrandt depicts in his painting is perhaps where we find our invitation from John’s gospel lesson today.  In order to understand John’s language, we too are invited to create our own dialogue between the Word of Scriptures and the Word made flesh.  Studying both Holy Scripture and the Holy Child is how we come to understand challenging texts like John’s gospel.  For some of us, that invitation may seem as muddy as John’s gospel.  But what Mary does in Rembrandt’s painting is available for us today too.  We can “develop a richer, fuller faith by tending both to the Word through words and to the Word made flesh, the Christ who is with us in the sacraments, with us in prayer, with us in our church, with us in our friends, with us in the stranger, and with us in creation, since ‘all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.’”[ii]

For those of you still wondering what this life pattern still looks like, consider the ways in which we already live into this balance.  When we reach into our pockets a little deeper for those families in our neighborhood who are just struggling to put gas in the car and food on the table, honoring the holy in one another, we then turn back to Holy Scripture that tell us to care for the poor.  When we care for one another in this community, sharing our deepest pains and struggles, we then turn to back to Holy Scripture as we struggle to find words to verbalize our understanding of God in that pain and struggle.  When we come to this table, and consume the body of Christ in the bread, we then turn to Holy Scripture to understand what the Word became flesh means.  We gather today as a community of faith, both clutching the Word in Holy Scripture, and clutching Word in the Christ Child, knowing that we can never fully understand one without the other.  Amen.

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[i] C. 1645.

[ii] Thomas H. Troeger, “Homliletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A., Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 193.