Xmas

Xmas
a message, by David B. Weber, November 25, 2012

 

John 13:34-35   “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
This command was made by Jesus on the night before his arrest, the day before his trial and crucifixion. His disciples were gathered with him in the Upper Room. A bit earlier he had demonstrated to them the radical notion that Love was not only a noun, but a verb. He did that by washing their feet- the lowest task that could be imagined by anyone at the time.

Now, he had begun to tell them specifically about what would be happening in the coming hours. He knew the game was on. He knew there was a conspirator in their midst. He knew the end was soon coming.

These are last hour instructions, the summation of everything the disciples have heard Jesus say during the last 2-3 years. “Remember me” he has said over and over as he served them their Last Supper together. Remember what you have seen and what you have heard; go and do likewise.

“Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

“If you love one another..everyone will know you are my disciples.”

The Way behind Jesus, the path upon which he invited, and invites, his disciples to follow him, is simple: Love God, and love your neighbor.

It is so simple, but it is also dangerous. It takes a great deal of self-denial and humility. It takes a willingness to give time, give resources, and give that which seems most elusive at times- hope. It takes courage.

That “substance” of being disciple has been redefined by those who, and I will say it straight out: The substance of being a disciple has been replaced, redefined, and reworked by those who want to be disciples but do not have the courage.

They do not have the courage to wash feet- to do the dirty, humiliating, hands-on work that Jesus demonstrated was necessary again and again.

They do not have the courage to see the person in need, pick him up from the ditch, pay for his care, then offer the caretaker more when he returns nor stand between a woman in trouble and hypocritical bullies ready to throw rocks.

And we are about to see what has become a yearly onslaught by those tip-toeing, fearful wannabe disciples, as the Xmas season begins. We are about to see the difficult substance of being a follower of Jesus denigrated,  as the form of Being Christian- the words about being a Christian- are lifted up as

The. Most. Important. Thing.

Form over Substance.

An easy, outward and very visible example: The use of the X in the word “Xmas.”  I remember my aunts fussing about this one Xmas decades ago, and it was something which I then took on as a personal crusade, even as a kid. It seemed dishonoring of Christ, to replace him with an X.

But then, years later, I learned that following Christ was not about words, or form, it was about doing, and being, and following. Here’s what else I learned:
X is the Greek letter Chi. It is the first letter of the word “Christ.” It began to be used early on by those hundreds of stenographers who laboriously copied the manuscripts of Matthew, Mark, Luke John, Paul, and many others of the early church fathers.

X was also rumored to mark the meeting places in the Roman catacombs where believers and followers of The Way would gather. These were largely illiterate folks, remember. With every X they scratched on the wall of a catacomb they were honoring their Savior, as they were when they would trace Xs in the dirt with their feet when meeting others along Roman roads. Oddly, every time I write the Chi- the X- I feel like I am in a tiny way honoring those many, many illiterate peasants and others, who moved Christ through those first centuries with their stories, their presence, their deeds, and their gatherings together in times which demanded real and raw courage.

X was such a commonly used name for Christ that Constantine, in the year 325, the year he proclaimed the Roman Empire to be the Holy Roman Empire, took the Chi, added a Rho- C,R- and made it into a symbol on his soldier’s shields and flags. An unfortunate day in Christian history, perhaps, but not one which meant to dishonor the Christ at all! Later, in the 1500s, X enjoyed something of a revival when movable type began to be used- the Gutenberg and other presses, you know? Since every single letter of a document or page had to be carved out of wood or fashioned from rock or metal, it became desirable for printers, whenever possible, to shorten words, a kind of printed shorthand. There are many instances, for instance of the The Lord’s prayer and other familiar texts being printed without vowels to save tremendous labor.

How is X-M-A-S pronounced? It has always been pronounced “Christmas.” “Christmas” itself is a slightly shortened version of “Christ’s Mass”- Mass, a worship service.

X is not dishonoring. It is traditional. It does not make Christ any less holy than do the letters C H R I S T, which are also merely symbols that are used to communicate the person and office of Jesus the Christ.

But this is only one tiny however obvious element of faith that those who celebrate form over substance will quibble with. Words- the proper use of words seems to reign supreme in the religion of many. It is, after all, so much easier to talk about words, than it is to allow oneself to be transformed by the Word made flesh, and lying in a feed trough in a stable. It is so much easier to talk about how much you love Jesus than it is to do something, anything, sacrificially to help a neighbor in need.

 “The War on Christmas” is another headline and argument that is evidence of the superficiality of the religion of many. “Merry Christmas” versus “Happy Holidays” becomes the significant theological and spiritual benchmark as people seek to measure the “Christianity” of others.

Two years ago, a major Dallas Church established the Grinchalert. com website where people could tattle on various businesses that weren’t using the right words, the right holy-sounding words in the conduct of their business. Consumers could write into the site and express their outrage or pleasure over how they had been spoken to or how they felt while doing business. They could label their experiences as “Naughty” or “nice.”

 I quote from the Dallas Morning News: “The comments come from not only Texas but nationwide. A resident in Tulsa commented that the city voted to change the name of its Christmas parade to Holiday Parade of Lights. So Tulsa's on the naughty list.

So are Sears and K-Mart in Grand Junction, Colo., because employees say "Happy Holidays" and not "Merry Christmas" when selling Christmas trees.
Target made both the naughty and nice lists. One shopper disliked the lack of items with religious references to Christmas. [Naughty] But another shopper from Appleton, Wis., commented that Target displayed large "Merry Christmas" signs above the checkout lines.” [Nice]

Unquote. Oh my.

“Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”

One might ask, “Where’s the love?” in such a website, such an outward, silly, potentially unfair, and distracting endeavor? And it’s a good question. My answer is that there is no love at all to be found, except for the veneer thin love of right-sounding words.

OK, so what  is the substance of Xmas, then? If substance is far far far more important than form, what is the meaning, the substance, of Xmas?

The substance of Xmas is the same substance that should fill every day- Thanksgiving, The fourth of July, Labor Day, the first, second, and 83^rd days of summer, Election Day, and our birthdays- all of them. The substance is the human manifestation of the divine, a manifestation which Jesus revealed, then went on to further reveal could be manifested in each person who followed him. 

 He was born a baby, not an angel. He grew up as a child, a child who had some inkling of his Father’s business, as he said, but as a child who played, laughed, depended on his parents, became an adult, and learned. Just like the rest of us. He had a job, observed all the outward forms of his Jewish faith- Bar Mitzvah, Sabbath prayers, Passover- and then, one day, after hearing the preaching of his cousin John the Baptist, woke up.

He awakened to his Christ-ness, his role, his full humanity and his full divinity. He fought that role in the wilderness, but overcame the very real opportunity he had to retreat into the easy and popular choices available to him. Instead, he moved into the world, for the world.

As the Apostle Paul would later write, day by day he took on the form of a servant, eventually becoming that highest form of a servant- one who washes feet- one who puts all others ahead of himself, one who would go so far as to serve a meal to his betrayers. And then beyond.

Beyond.

He called others to follow him, and frustrating as it must have been, he allowed them- his disciples- to keep following him even as they continually fell back into their own cultural biases of pride seeking, judgment, discrimination, and jealousy.

He reached through his own barriers of prejudice toward those who were unwanted, unlovable, and unknown to all but his father. He said, “Love God” and then showed those disciples how to do that by loving your neighbor in the same breath.

He scorned those who were obsessed with form: “You whitewashed tombs,”  he called them, “so beautiful on the outside, but full of dead men’s bones on the inside.” But he loved them anyway, even the ones who would try him, condemn him, nail him, stab him, taunt him, and be glad when he was finally dead so they could go home.

He died in perfect and ultimate servanthood.

That’s the substance.

X marks the spot. X is the mark on each of his disciples, imperfect though they and we are. X is our call to celebrate, not denigrate. X is our call to include, not separate. X is our reason for being, all the time. Not just for this season or any season.

So, Happy Holidays! And..

Merry Xmas.

 

 

The Womb of God

One of my favorite biblical authors is Abraham Heschel who, in 1962, wrote the definitive book on the prophets, called The Prophets. He described the time period around 400-500 B.C. when some of the great Old Testament prophets had begun to write and speak in alarming, revolutionary, and largely unlistened-to ways (I’m going to paraphrase just a little, because his words can be difficult at times):

Heschel wrote of that time- “Religion had declined not because it had been successfully argued against, but because it had become irrelevant, dull, oppressive, uninteresting. When faith is replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crises of today are ignored because of the remembered splendor of the past; when faith becomes an inherited heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority and rules rather than the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.”

Part of my personality- my vision of the world, the universe, God, and all things and beings contained therein- is summarized in that statement. I listen to and read other preachers, so many other Christian teachers and thinkers, and I end up feeling lonely sometimes, embarrassed even because what I see and believe seems so different from what I hear being proclaimed as God’s Truth, God’s Word by almost everyone else, including many of my own denominational colleagues. And that sometimes leads to a kind of situational depression on my part. I wonder if I am wrong, and if I am even being fair in sharing some of my deepest insights and doubts and wonderings with you because they so often seem to run counter to what is considered orthodox and traditional in Christian thinking and doctrine.

That is this preacher’s burden. Robbie, primarily, and some others of you catch the brunt of that odd depression from time to time, maybe too often. But I hope all of you also hear and feel- underlying that confusion and what is a very real sadness at times- I hope you also hear a real hopefulness on my part. I don’t believe Jesus intended to lead us in circles around and around in 2000 year old cultural realities and perceptions. In fact, I think that following Jesus is God’s way of leading all people, in all times, out of the Bronze Age that religion had irrelevantly, dully, oppressively, and uninterestingly become stuck in, and into an always-being-made-new Creation.

~~

I sit by the ocean watching the waves in early morning moonlight and think about these things. I walk beside the evening’s incoming tide, watching the records of that Creation in the scampering of sandpipers and the 200 million year old ballet of pelicans. I stand on Carolinian sand dunes blown into existence by winds which blew across the continents of Africa and South America long before there was a human present to scratch boundaries of ownership across them. Around me are pairs of ragged claws, as T.S. Eliot called them, crabs scuttling in and out of their ancient habitats, in and out of holes dug among the tangle of vines, the cacti, the wildflowers, and the swaying salt marsh grasses.

One morning, as I am making what is for me a jaw-dropping discovery that the horizon is not a perfectly straight line, but a series of barely discernible ups and downs of tidal risings and forming waves, like letters, words, and sentences- a kind of oceanic story being written in circles around the globe, and on that morning that story is punctuated a mile offshore with two large spouts of water. A whale.

That same morning, a little later, dolphins- 3 of them- appear near my son and daughter and others, ten yards away, jumping from the water in perfect, almost friendly formation. Then, later that same day, two sharks- small ones- appear just beside the shore, gulping the small fish caught in a temporary lagoon caused by receding tides. Those who are swimming leave the water quickly, but are unable to stop watching this scene, an unchanging scene, a wild and eternal scene older even than the time of dinosaurs.

I watch episodes like these shoulder-deep in the water, or from my sandy seat atop a dune, or hunkered down beside the water’s edges where waves born in the meeting of Caribbean currents and sub-Saharan winds are wetting my feet as my toes curl into the million and millions of tiny worn shards of ancient shellfish, now grains of sand. Other shells lie all around me, saltwater shelters abandoned by ten thousands of mollusks and crabs, shells which one day, wave after wave after wave away, will also be pummeled into the granular debris of other beaches, other shores.

I am caught up again and again in the transcendence of moments and minutes, of time and eternities. All that is around me on this shore- on any shore, and on beyond these shores to the mountains far behind me and the plains and rivers and lakes and fields beyond; all that is around me, beside and behind me, over me and under me, from the verdant green of every flower, to the forests of trees beyond them in the Great Smoky mountains, from those creatures in the seas which are too small to be seen, to sharks and whales, to crabs and the pelicans, the gulls and sandpipers, to each and every animal that burrows, flies, swims, crawls, slithers, or hunkers down near the waves watching it all- all of it, all of them, emerged in their primary, first forms from the ocean. Life- all life- has been born in these salty wet depths. All life has surged upward and outward and forward from this womb of God, this birthplace of an always new Creation.

Above me, and I cannot look elsewhere now, the morning sun is rising between scattered gray, yellow, and white clouds moving from east to west in massive air currents I cannot feel, but only see. Clouds formed by the endless evaporation of water from the ocean’s surface in response to the 10 billion year old sun’s invitation to rise toward its light and warmth. Clouds which, when laden with the many tons of hydrogen and oxygen atoms formed into molecules of water, attracting each other, joining together and spilling in heavier-than-air raindrops on the lands over which they pass. Gentle spring rains or summertime deluges, the ocean pours through them onto lands beyond, where the grasses absorb them and grow. And then the oceans are eaten in their now green and leafy incarnations by cows. And dairy farmers gather the now milky white drops of the ocean together into pasteurization vats and stainless steel tank trucks, some of which, not far away, will be made into ice cream.

Lick the ice cream and savor the ocean’s journey onto your lips. Taste the ocean’s always new and endless Creation on your tongue. We are a part of it. It is a part of us. The boundaries of difference among living things are blurred and obscured by the commonalities of our origins. Our own saltwatery blood pulses in rhythms begun by the oceans and the moon in gravitational, tidal dances, and I am overcome, again. I put my earphones on and listen to the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah” as I watch and wonder in gratitude and humility and I raise my arms in the same form in which I earlier saw the whale’s spouts, and I listen, and I try to sing, because I must. I must.

It goes like this

The fourth, the fifth

The minor fall, the major lift

The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

When I come back up to the house and onto the porch my son and his girlfriend are sitting there drinking coffee and Joshua asks me, with a tinge of worry, I can tell- “Daddy, what in the heck were you doing down there?” (I didn’t think anybody would be out of bed yet!) “What in the heck were you doing down there with your arms in the air?”

And I tell him, “Becoming sane.”

~~

Psalm 24:

1 The earth is the LORD's, and the fullness thereof, and all who live in it;

2 for he founded it upon the seas
and established it upon the waters.

I need those words. I need those words to wash over the curse of my own jabbering ego; I need those words to clean and scour the false priorities I schedule for myself constantly. I need those words, in waves crashing against my pride, I need those words to remind me that, at the bottom of everything I am nothing, but that me and you and every living thing are a part of the whole of everything. We are the intricately, intimately related parts of the earth’s fullness thereof. And we are loved very, very, very, very, very, very, very much.

Matthew 5 from ‘the Message’, verse 3: "You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule.

4"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you.

5"You're blessed when you're content with just who you are—no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought.

6"You're blessed when you've worked up a good appetite for God. He's food and drink in the best meal you'll ever eat.

7"You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for.

8"You're blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.

Here’s the truth the ocean was drowning me in that morning, and during those days there. Here’s what I can see so much more clearly now- what Jesus is able to lead me, and all of us toward, if we are following him.

Continuing in Matthew 5, verse 13: "David, Let me tell you why you are here. (No, my name is not really there. But there’s a white space there- insert your own name in it!) David, let me tell you why you are here. (Do it, let Jesus talk to you here) David, ___, ___, ___, ___, ___, let me tell you why you are here. You're here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You've lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.

Verses14-16: "Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.

So, I cannot be quiet. I dare not be quiet. If I feel the saltwater kiss of God on my lips, what else can I do but share that caress in these ways available to me, with you? I must continue to shout that I can learn almost as much about God from a wildflower field as I can from the first chapter of John. I must admit without embarrassment that I learn as much about the active presence of Jesus in a roomful of sentenced-to-life convicts as I do from the letters of Paul.

And I must stop being ashamed or otherwise discombobulated, when I tell you or others, or even admit to myself that an hour beside the ocean, lost in the eternal mysteries of blue-green waters tinged with golden sunlight, is better than any sermon, any day. Even this one.

So, on a gray Friday morning a week ago, August 15, the day after Sarah and Travis’ wedding, I got up, almost as usual before everyone else, walked down the catwalk across the dunes, sat on the last step, and wrote what follows. I didn’t know then if I would ever share it with anyone. Having read these words of Jesus just now, though, I know that I must:

Abba, Father..

Through the smallness of my words, I cannot explain to anyone, least of all to myself, who or what you are.

Through the inadequacies of language and grammar, whatever I write leaves so much unwritten that it might be better to tear this blank page into a thousand pieces, lift them to the wind and, as they are blown across the beach say “There, there is God.”

But if I don’t write something, right now, I might cease to breathe.

I know that Genesis says humans were created in the image of God, but I think we have done a much better job of recreating God in our own image. I would rather watch the image of God I see in these pelicans, or in these scampering sandpipers, than think about the image of God which fueled the hundreds of slave ships which crossed these waters in front of me.

My heart soars as I watch the image of God in this rising sun, and know what the ancient biblical writers could not have known: that this is one of a trillion sun-stars, and a fairly minor sized one at that. I see God better in the golden explosion of these early morning, sun-reflecting clouds better- infinitely better- than I do when I read the church-blessed history of the “godly” men who came to these shores 400 years ago with ships full of guns, germs, and plans to baptize and bless the “savages” who had lived here 6000 years on land they called “Father” near the waters they called “Mother.”

My heart aches as I think about the Japanese trawlers chasing down with high powered, 21^st century harpoons the whale I saw yesterday, because a Japanese god wants whale oil burning in his temples. And my heart breaks when I think of the creature-killing weapons-testing happening beneath these waters because an American god says “My country, right or wrong, my country.”

It is the man-created images of God which infect my soul, not this billions year old image in front of me! The truest maps of creation are written on the backs of these seabirds, and in the God-writ words on the horizon. I can taste God here in the spray of saltwater. I can hear God in the symphonies of the sun and moon and the harmonies of the ceaseless waves. I can see God in paths of crabs and the nests of sea turtles. And I can touch God here, simply by lifting my hands.

Hallelujah!

No Beginnings, No Endings: God

John 1: 1-5 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”

The Greek word which was translated as The Word in this well-known passage from the gospel of John is Logos: In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God. The Greeks understood Logos to be the underlying grid, the foundations from which everything came into being. They did not know about or understand specifically what those foundations were- there were no Periodic Charts of the Elements in existence yet; Einstein’s theories of gravity and relationship in the universe were still 3000 years away. So they used a general term for the God, or gods- the forces behind everything, that caused everything to be.

John gave the Logos, the Word, a name. He identified Jesus as the underlying everything, the foundation of all that was, is, and will be: “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” And he then, even more specifically, identified what it was that had come into being through Jesus- Life! “And Life was the Light of all people.”

Nothing that John has just written about Jesus would have contradicted a single Greek notion about Logos. In this way, John was cleverly associating Jesus, a brand new person who was being introduced to the world, with Logos, an ancient concept already understood by most of the Mediterranean world.

Logos is eternal. Light is always moving outward. And Life goes on. Jesus, John says, is all of those things: an eternal Light, who is the author and sustainer of Life.

Today is the next to the last day of 2007- December 30, 2007: two days before January 1, 2008. A calendar year is ending as a new calendar is about to begin. Today is last Sunday of 2007. Next Sunday will be the first Sunday of 2008. It is now 11:40 a.m. Almost noon- the end of morning, the beginning of the afternoon- halfway through the day.

Let’s do something here for a little while. Let’s put aside all of these artificial, humanly- designed ways of chopping up time into comprehensible little chunks and try for a little while to think, not about time, but about eternity. Let’s try- and that’s all we can do- but let’s try to think not about beginnings and endings, but about the Logos, the Word of God, Light, and Life.

Here’s where we start:

*tear up a 2008 calendar*

*smash a watch*

There are no more days, minutes, months, hours, years, seconds, or even eras or decades. There is Light and there is Life. And there is God, before and after all of it. What we have thought of as beginning has always been. And what we think will be ending, will always be.

Now, before you think I have lost my mind in abstract thinking, let me read to you one of my favorite verses in the New Testament, from Revelation 22, verses 1 and 2. An angel shows John a vision of what Life- God life, eternal Life- is really like. And it is not about calendars and minute hands. Here’s what John sees:

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Life is like water in a river, flowing from the throne of God through the very center of the city. We can name a river, we can even draw it on a map, but we can never see the same river twice. A river is always changing. The water moving in front of us is not the same water that moved by us yesterday or even two seconds ago. Sneeze, focus again, and there is yet another new river to behold, and there, there, there another and another and another. Even the banks of the river are slowly, all the time, changing. Maps of rivers always need redrawn; banks wash away, the river changes course, lakes are formed, and silt from upriver creates new obstacles and courses.

No one looks at a river today and feels sad because it is not the same water that was there yesterday. In fact, something wonderful is happening that should cause us from feeling anything but sad. Much of the water that ran by us yesterday in the river is now gathering about us in the form of clouds- evaporated water. Somewhere downwind, that evaporated river water will be heavy enough to begin to fall down from the sky and it will rain on a field, where dairy cows will eat the grass the rain is absorbed into. The cows will produce milk. The milk will be hauled to the creamery and some of it will be made into ice cream.

We can stand by the river today, in other words, and enjoy the rivers of yesterday on our tongues. Vanilla, strawberry, butter pecan- the yesterday river is still alive, not only giving us Life, but enhancing our Life.

Where did the ice cream begin? In fact, it has always been. Ever since the crashing of hydrogen clouds 13 billion years ago against the hot gases of a dying star, the water has always been present. And whether it is an ocean, a river, a cloud, rain, grass, milk, or ice cream, it always will be.

As we are part of that river of life, flowing from the throne room of God, we can also see ourselves- or, at least, begin to see ourselves- in an eternal context too. Our lives are no more static than the river itself. Who we are today is not at all who we were yesterday. I look at a picture of myself when I was 16 years old: is that me? In calendar language, in the language of social security numbers and permanent records- that’s me, yes. But I look at this and see only part of who I am today. There are eight more years of school, a wife; three kids who wear carry part of my heart around with them all the time. There are sad years in there that I don’t even want to think about, but have to. There have been about 5000 times of laughing so hard I could barely breathe! I’ve lived in 13 different homes, in 8 different towns in 2 other states since then. I’ve cried over the deaths of people I’ve loved that I didn’t even know then, back then when death was still so abstract and far away as to seem impossible. I have voted for both George McGovern and for Ronald Reagan. There were years in there where I despised the very idea of God, and I’m just about ready to finish off paying for 10 years of seminary debt caused by falling in with love God. Am I looking at me in this picture? Or am I looking at someone who is still swimming, and will be swimming for eternity, in the river of life?

And it’s a river, a blessed river without beginning and without end, that we are all a part of. It flows from God and runs directly under the Tree of Life..that’s what John saw! A tree that bears twelve seasons of fruit..life-giving sustenance, fruit to nourish the body and the soul, food to feed the mind and the heart. We are being produced, made better and better by this tree, this tree of life that grows over the river of God. A tree, the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations..

What could this tree of Life be that John is seeing? What is it, who is it, that produces fruit that both nourishes and heals? Who is it, that told his disciples he was the yesterday, today, and forever, and would never leave them or forsake them and who went ahead of them to prepare a room for them in his father’s home, and who is the only beginning and the only end of all things?

It is the tree that gives Light, and the Light that gives Life. It is Jesus, the author, and the finisher of our faith. He is the colors in which we are being painted; he is the music which allows us to sing. His are the leaves which flow in the river with us, into the bays, into the oceans of the world..we are his and he is ours..

Therefore, what I am saying this morning is this: The calendars and wristwatches of our lives are not what our lives are about. We are not a mere series of actions leading to some future event. We are here now, in these moments, part of an ever-changing, always different river of Life. The leaves that are dropping around us from the Tree of Life are not the same leaves that fell yesterday, or the same ones that will fall tomorrow. The messages of God for us right now should not be missed because we are focused on appointment next week, or an anniversary next year. The colors and sounds of today are unique, blessed, and special. This part of the river will never be the same again. Jesus was..is..the Logos, the Word that brought Light and Life to the world. As followers of Jesus, as those passing this moment beneath his Tree of life, we are a part now, too, of the beginnings of everything from this minute forward. Each of us, no more, no less than anyone else, or anything else, are parts- vital parts of the Great Story of this day which will remain forever as chapters in the Great Stories of eternity.

We are part of the flow that began in the throneroom of God, and which now flows into the unending reaches of the universe. The Tree of Life gives us comfort and shade, and the leaves of the Tree of Life give us meaning. All of them are important. And everything from this moment onward is dependent on our being awake to them.

e.e. cummings, one of the great American poets of the last century, is a part of those leaves dropping around each of us right now. I think these words about God are as important as John’s. Catch hold of them, right now, as we pass by in this part of God’s river:

i am a little church (no great cathedral)

i am a little church(no great cathedral) far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities -i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest, i am not sorry when sun and rain make april my life is the life of the reaper and the sower; my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving (finding and losing and laughing and crying)children whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness around me surges a miracle of unceasing birth and glory and death and resurrection: over my sleeping self float flaming symbols of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains i am a little church(far from the frantic world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature -i do not worry if longer nights grow longest; i am not sorry when silence becomes singing winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to merciful Him Whose only now is forever: standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence (welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness) Amen (With thanks to e.e.cummings and Thich Nhat Hahn)

Christmas Eve, 2007

We step into Christmas Eve with some trepidation. It’s kind of a time machine in which many of the Christmas times of the past are telescoped into the present and we are looking backwards as often on a day like this as much as we are looking around and forward.

For some this year, there is the question of what to do with that empty chair at the table- the one where he always sat, or from where she said the grace last year. For others, it may feel to them like they’re peeping toms, standing on their tiptoes looking through the windows of others at how they hoped life might have been, but never really was. And for some there is the difficult wondering that never stops but which seems to peak especially sharply this time of year: Where is she now? Is he happy? Do they remember me? Is everything OK there?

Our thoughts return home on Christmas Eve, and for many that’s a blessing but for many it is only a vague and fuzzy concept that derives more from the The Walton’s Christmas Special or a Hallmark television drama, than from warm recollections of their own. They might remember how good the pie was at Aunt Nettie’s house, but then there was the drive home that night and that terrible fight in the kitchen that seemed to go on and on.

The money is being squeezed to the choking point, and some are sitting here right now remembering the one thing they meant to do and did not get done or the two or three things, and you don’t have to be sitting to feel that kind of pressure, either. You can be standing right here and feel it, too.

Outside of here, far away in geographical distances but about a half inch away emotionally for some, there are wars and rumors of wars. We all have triangle folded flags poking at our fears or our memories and we’ll just have to put off thinking about that lab report, or that grade report, or the job performance review, and the letter from the IRS, the VA, and the mortgage company..tomorrow, or the next day.

Time telescopes from the past to the present and it feels like tomorrow may never be as bright as we want it to be or remember it being.

None of us faces this dilemma, this tension, alone however. We all share it: the tallest among us, the shortest among us; male, female, the nationality, the race, even the economic condition doesn’t really matter. We are all in the same little boat, crossing an ocean of life that is sometimes stormy, sometimes downright frightening. We are making our ways the best ways we can, the best ways we know how, but there is, with all humans, the deep feeling that there must be, has to be, something more.

There is something else we want, something we share with every other person, every other living being. Rumi, the 13^th century poet, called it “The Kiss”- the Kiss we want:

There is some kiss we want with

our whole lives, the touch of

spirit on the body. Seawater

begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately

it needs some wild darling!

The Kiss we want..like a mother’s kiss that will fix it where we hurt ourselves. But more.

Like the touch of someone we love..the assurance that we are not alone. But more.

Like the embrace of father, who tells us everything will be all right. But more, even more than that.

The kiss we want, I believe, is precisely the reason we have gathered together this evening. No matter how we came here, as families, as individuals, because Mom said you had to be here or because there is no other place you could imagine being on Christmas Eve.. what we have gathered here for this night is to remember and receive, again, the Kiss we want, the kiss we have longed for, the kiss of God on all humanity.

That is who Jesus is. That is precisely the reason, I maintain, for his birth. There are theological, philosophical, and historical explanations for Jesus, God’s Word made flesh and dwelling among us..thousands of books full of those commentaries, definitions, and explanations. We can study them for a lifetime!

Or, we can accept the Kiss. Jesus- the Kiss of God for all of humanity- past, present, and future. And Jesus, the Kiss of God on the cheek of each person here as well. That’s what this baby was.

Jesus was the affirmation of what God said when he formed the world and said, “That’s good.”

Kiss. It still is.

Jesus was the assurance from God that we are not alone, never alone.

Kiss. He is with us now.

Jesus was God’s whisper, the whisper of a Daddy, that everything will, really will, be all right.

Kiss. It is what we have longed for. It is what we want.

God’s gift for all of humanity, for me, for you, was not an esoteric text. It was not a sacred relic to be worn around the neck or a place to make a pilgrimage to. It was not faraway, difficult to grasp, or hard to understand. It wasn’t a set of rules, there was nothing to memorize or agonize over.

God’s gift was a touch, his flesh to our own. His love co-mingled with ours in the manger of a new creation. His trust that we would embrace his son as he had embraced us.

“Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

A sign to the shepherds, to you, to me, to everyone who would look past themselves and into the face of God himself- one of us. A sign for all the world of peace that is possible, joy that is real, and hope that is always present. A sign of Light, understanding and trust, first in the darkness of a stable, but radiating outward through time into the dark corners of our own fears.

A sign to the shepherds, to you, to me..the kiss that we want. The kiss we have longed for.

“Unto us a son is born, unto us a child is given.”

Lean down now, against the soft cheek of a baby, lean down now and receive the kiss of our Savior.

Let us pray:

Into our lives, God, you have been born. Into our hearts, Father, you have been given. On this night that we remember the gift of yourself to a world that needs you, we acknowledge and are thankful for your love for us, for each of us. May others experience through us, the manger of new beginnings. May we, too, be ready always to share the kiss we have been given, with all of Creation.

(with thanks to Rumi, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Walter Bruegemann)

The Journey

Matthew 1: A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:
2Abraham was the father of Isaac,
Isaac the father of Jacob,
Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,
3Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar,
Perez the father of Hezron,
Hezron the father of Ram,
4Ram the father of Amminadab,
Amminadab the father of Nahshon,
Nahshon the father of Salmon,
5Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,
Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,
Obed the father of Jesse,
6and Jesse the father of King David.
David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah's wife,
7Solomon the father of Rehoboam,
Rehoboam the father of Abijah….

Blah blah blah blah blah…

It is not wrong, I don’t think, to maybe expect the story the story of Jesus Christ, son of God, savior of the world, to start off with just a little bit more of a bang, is it? These are the first words of the New Testament, and as dull as they may at first glance be, they are important. Because they are about a journey through time that will, 28 generations after Solomon, begin to converge in a whole series of journeys across time and geography- journeys that include the chapters of our own lives right here, right now.

The genealogy I just read covered 14 generations, from Abraham through Solomon- about 700 years. Another 14 generations would take the genealogy of Jesus into the time of Israel’s captivity in Babylon. And then another 14 generations later, a total now of almost 2500 years from the time of Abraham, the birth of Jesus would happen. It was 2500 years of Jewish history in the making, and it’s been 2000 years of world history in the remembering. How well, or how not well we’ve done our part- the remembering- is what we’ll talk about today.

But first, buried within that seemingly dull list of names, there were four surprises, planted there by Matthew like warning flags to tell his readers that what they would be reading was going to be a very unusual story. Normally, a Jewish genealogy was about one thing- the line of patriarchs- the honorable and pious men who passed on their legacy- I guess- in spite of all the women in the way.

Now, the surprises placed in this family tree, however, were exactly that- women! Something had happened in the mind of some very Jewish, culturally patriarchical men like Matthew, that had caused them to open their eyes wider than they had even been before. Something had caused Matthew to acknowledge the personhood, the importance of women at a time when that just wasn’t done. There was no reason to, after all! Women weren’t men, and the thinking of the time, men were what mattered. Men, and the number of donkeys they owned.

So when Matthew sneaks the names of Tamar and Rahab, prostitutes, and Ruth, a conniver, and Bathsheba, a woman who took baths on her roof in full view of King David..when Matthew makes sure the reader knows that Jesus has these women’s blood pulsing through his veins, Matthew is saying, without shouting it, that everything, as it has been known, was being turned upside down.

The doors to a relationship with God, being a co-creator with God in the Kingdom of God, had just been opened a whole lot wider than they had ever been before.

When he’s done with that blockbuster of a genealogy, then, Matthew begins to show us exactly how upside down things were about to become.

Verse 18: This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 19Because Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

20But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."

Verse 24: When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.

Another journey; a nine month physical and emotional journey for two, then three people. Two obscure young people, related to King David to be sure, but just as related all kinds of others through time as well: two obscure young people who would have lived their lives in continuing obscurity had they not taken the necessary, government ordered journey to Jerusalem, then arrived at that place where they could look down at the baby in front of them and say, “Jesus.”

Then another journey, the first of untold thousands of geographical journeys that have been undertaken throughout history because that couple in time, and because of that baby in a manger:

Chapter 2, verse1: After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi^[a] from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east^[b] and have come to worship him."

When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ^[c] was to be born. "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied.
Verse 7: Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him."

After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east^[e] went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. 12And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

The wise men ended up taking another route home. They followed a star, they journeyed, they found the child, they worshipped, and they knew they could not return home the way they’d come.

There are those times when we too, like the Magi, encounter the Living Christ, in the flesh, unencumbered by the rules and doctrines of other humans. While we were at Capstone (fictitious name, as are almost all names to follow) in the Metroplex- and I’m going to bring up one of the best series of memories that I know Robbie and Mike and Christy and I have of our time there- I hope I can begin to describe it adequately for everyone- while we were there, there were two group homes that were a regular part of the congregation. One was a group of 8 men, and the other was a mixed group of men and women, all profoundly mentally and/or physically challenged.

When we combined the two churches there- ------- and St. ----’s- to form Capstone, we brought the 2 groups from the smaller ------- to St.----’s. You may remember that I told you the Superintendent assigned me to ------- because, he said, they were all lovable misfits, and that I would fit right in. I don’t know what the thinking was when I was assigned to here- whatever it was, I’m glad it happened. But I digress, as happens..

The group homes had been to three other churches in the area in their journey to find a Sunday morning place of worship for these special people. “Our doors aren’t wide enough for the wheelchairs,” they were told, or “We’re afraid the noisiness of these people would be upsetting, and our cry room isn’t large enough to hold all of them.” All kinds of reasons why these children of God would not be welcome, until they came to ---------- one Sunday morning, and the “misfit” who was greeting people at the door said, “Why not?”

It was a glorious relationship. The group homes would always arrive late. It didn’t matter, no matter where we were in the service, the greeter would come in and announce, “they’re here” and 8 wheelchair helpers- little kids, choir members, even some of the older people who had trouble walking themselves, would get up and go outside to help them in. They became a part of fellowship meals- some needed to be fed- and there was even a special confirmation class for some of them, so they would full-fledged members of the United Methodist Church.

Why was all this effort made? You’ll see in a minute. Because the journey of these group homes became the journey of a church.

When -------, and it’s people moved to the larger, less mis-fitting, St.----’s, there were some problems over our friends. One suggestion, made early on, was that the church would take out the two back pews so they could all sit together in the back of the church. In one of the only times anyone there saw me red-faced and shaking with anger, this misfit preacher said, “No.” And from that point on, most of them, wheelchairs, walkers, noise, and all, sat right up front.

Angie, one of the wheelchair women, could talk to me from there during the sermons, and sometimes did, loudly. It was cool with me, because I knew she was listening. Billy, a 65 yr old man with Cerebral Palsy, would sit beside Sadie, a 70 y/o with CP from the other group home, in their wheelchairs, and hold hands. Armando, an Hispanic Down’s Syndrome man, didn’t want to sit in front. He would wander, sitting wherever he wanted to and singing loudly, often with his hymnal upside down. Becky was a black woman, about 40, with the mind and smile of a 6 y/o. And Vera loved what you are hearing this morning. When Mike and Christy and the other musicians we had there would play, Becky would begin to dance in her wheelchair, and sometimes begin to shout with shouts with of pure joy that could not be contained. As much as I love Mike and Christy, Becky’s music was even greater than theirs.

In the beginning, the St.---- folks didn’t know what to make of the least of these in their midst. Within months, they were planning birthday and Christmas parties at the homes, one woman would go there every week to do nails and schmooze, we did a Bible study there for awhile, and the church would go caroling there every Christmas. Some of the young people there- teenagers- on Communion Day would help me serve the bread and cup. That meant putting those things into the mouths of some of them, then staying there with a napkin. But they did it..I always had volunteers.

St. ----’s, like -------- before, had met, in a manger, the helpless, dependent child of God- children of God-and had had the very best in themselves brought forth. Like Becky’s laughter and shouting, they could not contain the love within them. Like the wise men, they would never be able to go back home the same way they’d come. None of us could.

The importance of the Nativity event for those who encountered the baby Jesus, was not the destination, it was the journey there. And the journey from there.

Our encounters with the Living Christ can be every bit as radically transforming as it was for the Magi and, as Luke will tell us, the shepherds. They met the child Jesus, and his family, who pulled from them not only their worship, but their transformation into new creatures. They knew nothing about the 33 years to follow; they knew only this day, this child, these angels, that star..and that was enough for them to change their journeys. That was enough for the story to begin to be told to the world.

No matter who we are, or what we bring with us when we come here, the same- exactly the same opportunity exists for us as existed for the wise men, and for the shepherds, and for the people at St.----’s. Come here, go anywhere, with open eyes, open hearts, and you’ll see tear-filled eyes, and broken hearts. Don’t look away. Give your gifts. Here’s my ear, it’s connected to my heart; it’s the best thing I can give you. I don’t have any frankincense and gold, and I don’t even know what myrrh is, but here’s my presence, here’s my hand, here’s my love.

Be open, be still, be silent, and look around. Let your heart lead you like a star toward that man or woman, boy or girl, to those persons who are desperate for that calmness you have to give, that brightness you have to share. Allow the angelic chorus that sings to you from the blue of a noon day sky, from the color of springtime wildflowers, or from the moonlight of a crystal clear star-filled night, let those things fill your journeys toward the Christ child, so tender and mild.

We are the disciples of heavenly peace.

Imperfect as we may feel, as unworthy as we may think we are, we are the agents of love’s pure light, we are the re-presenters of redeeming grace.

We are the ones who proclaim with our lives that Christ the Savior is born, that Christ the Savior is born.

The Invitation

We begin the joyous season of Advent, those party-filled, gift-laden four weeks before Christmas Day, with what is perhaps the saddest Psalm of all, number 137. Written at a time when the Hebrew people had been displaced from the land they loved, and facing a future that they knew nothing about and had no control over, they had lost all hope.

Psalm 137

1 Beside the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept
as we thought of Jerusalem.^[a]
2 We put away our harps,
hanging them on the branches of poplar trees.
3 For our captors demanded a song from us.
Our tormentors insisted on a joyful hymn:
“Sing us one of those songs of Jerusalem!”
4 But how can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a pagan land?

Over the next several weeks, there will be songs to sing- “Joy to the World!”- but sometimes, for some persons, those songs will feel tormenting, too. You might feel as if those songs of joy and hope and promise are being demanded of you at a time when you simply have run out of anything to sing.

I talk about the difficulties of the Christmas season each year. And if you don’t know why I do that, then some year, you will. Because for every year that passes in our lives, the opportunities for that empty place in the middle of our souls- that hole in the blanket of our memories- that place has a chance to grow larger. And at Christmas time and other special times of the years, the edges of that hole feel like they’re on fire.

My son’s girlfriend writes an on-line column (mybrotherisdead.blogspot.com) which I know several of you are regular readers of, too. She began her blog in late July after the tragic accidental death of her brother Kyle earlier that month, and as one means of coping with his death. Here’s something Miranda wrote in late September, as she was already anticipating the difficulties of Christmas this year:

“Usually, Kyle and I fly in from our respective schools and do Christmas Eve at my mom's and Christmas Day at my dad's. It's a casual affair - we're not a religious family and only slightly interested in ceremony. We usually end up trimming a tree, we stuff stockings that we may not hang, we exchange presents geared much more to necessity than luxury. Nothing spectacular. We may dress up to go to my dad's, but only because mom insists each year that she doesn't have any pictures of us, and with a photographer for a father, for heaven’s sake! It's pretty laid back. We like it that way.

“Which makes it a little surprising that, when I think about Christmas this year, I get shaky. Now, here, sitting at work in September, thinking about a holiday that I'm at best indifferent to and at worst annoyed by , I want to cry. The reasons are obvious, I guess. In LA, we stay with my mom in her two bedroom condo and having no one to fight with over the second bedroom, no one to fight with over the car, no one to gossip with about my parents, no one to drive with to my dad's Christmas Day is more lonely a feeling than I knew existed.”

The reason those of us who read her like her, is because of Miranda’s complete honesty in her writing. “Christmas Day is more lonely a feeling than I knew existed.” A lot of us feel that way some of the time. And many people feel that way all the time- it’s not just the first year of a person’s absence that hurts, or a child’s being away from home, in Iraq, at school, or even in their own home away from yours with their own new family. Those Christmas times when everything seemed to be- in memory- the way things should always be, can rear their heads over the present day manger scenes and holiday decorations in sad, lonely, and regretful ways.

As I stand right here, I can see a woman who for 15 years, arranged the Christmas celebration at her church. She arranged for 10 or 12 different music groups to come and perform for 2 hours, with a meal following. It was a solid month of planning. She baked decorated Xmas cookies by the dozens for her sons, took them for trips all over the place during Xmas vacation to see relatives, decorated the whole house for the family reunion Xmas night, and sent out about 500 Xmas cards, but this year she will have no idea it’s Christmas until she sees the tree on that day.

We’ve all got those wonderful but potentially crippling, depressing memories, and we’ve got to figure out what to do with them so they don’t define us in such a way that they cause us to miss this year, this day, these moments.

One of the things I say often at funerals is this: “The sadness of this day is the result of joys we shared during many yesterdays.” And while those words don’t lessen the sadness, they do help some people begin to put their sadness into a context of movement through time. Those people and times we miss, would not be missed if they had not been such a vital part of who we are right now. While we are alive, they are alive, in us and through us.

Everything about the people we might be acutely missing the physical or emotional presence of this year, everything about them continues moving through time, through us. You are great grandma’s gift to your children across time; Miranda is Kyle’s continuing presence to ever larger numbers of people, who are getting to know him through her. She’ll have no one to fight with this year over the second bedroom, but now there are 103 people here in this Texas church who have been touched by Kyle.

And if you like me at all, don’t forget that I am a continuing expression of the one “the one who brung me.” Who she was, is a big part of who I am, and not just physically. Your loved ones, because I love you, live in on me, too, and in each person who has received the gift of them, through you.

We are waves on the ocean for a little while; we are the water of the ocean for eternity. Everything we may regret not being able to see this Christmas season, or any time of the year- all of those people and events that brought us yesterday’s joys, are still in us. We can build the walls of our sadness so high that those joys become dammed up within us, or we can set them free, to wash over others. We’ve got the gifts of yesterday to give away today.

Miranda is helping untold numbers of people around the world cope, through her writing about her brother, with physical death. Kyle becomes a living gift to those people.

I can gripe and moan, even cry that I will never ever see again one of those incredibly decorated Christmas cookies. Or I can continue to give away her cookies in all the forms that cookies can take. Those cookies are not my cookies, they are our cookies, and they are living gifts of hers to whoever receives them.

To those people who sat by the rivers of Babylon and wept over the Jerusalem they had known, and believed they would never be a part of again, God sent a messenger. Isaiah had a message from the God of his understanding and that message, in its simplicity, was this:

You can continue sitting there in your sadness, and in your regrets. You can do that. God will neither stop you nor punish you for doing so. But you also have an invitation from God, to stand in a new place for a little while, and see the world as God sees it- as a continuing river of Life.

As Christians, we call some of the prophecies of Isaiah, messianic prophecies- 300 years before the birth of Jesus, they seemed to point toward Jesus. For certain, however, to everyone who heard them, and hears them, they are words of hope, words of a new perspective on the past, words of Light in a world that may seem very, very dark. He spoke for God:

Isaiah 55

1 “Is anyone thirsty?
Come and drink—
even if you have no money!
Come, take your choice of wine or milk—
it’s all free!
2 Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength?
Why pay for food that does you no good?
Listen to me, and you will eat what is good.
You will enjoy the finest food.

3 “Come to me with your ears wide open.
Listen, and you will find life.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you.
I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to King David.
4 See how I used him to display my power among the peoples.
I made him a leader among the nations.
5 You also will command nations you do not know,
and peoples unknown to you will come running to obey,
because I, the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, have made you glorious.”

What had belonged to King David 300 years before was exactly what still belonged to those people sitting by the rivers of Babylon. Wrap up those gifts of David in new wrapping paper, and pass them on, God said. Which is exactly what they did. Where once they had sat in fear and sadness by the rivers, they now began gathering together their knowledge about God, and the memories of their lives in Jerusalem. The gathered together the remembered psalms and proverbs. They collected the pieces of prophecies circulating among their people orally and on scrolls. They began writing down, and cataloging the great stories of Ruth, of Job, of Esther, King David, and King Solomon.

Out of their sitting sadness, the people stood up and handed on to eternity the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament. They would always feel sadness over the past they had known, but they turned that past- the joys of yesterday- into hope and promise for the future. They didn’t let the joy they had known become dammed up in their hearts and die. They passed it on. Out of their sadness, they became glorious.

In the Advent stories we will be hearing, and in the stories of Jesus we know, we will see the same kind difficult circumstances faced by the Jews, and by every human being who has ever lived on the earth- we will those difficult circumstances transformed by hope for the future.

Mary, pregnant out of wedlock. Joseph, a proud man, having to buy Mary’s story. Mary, Joseph, and the baby- homeless, being pursued by a murderer. Jesus, homeless again, accused of being a criminal, dying on a cross. The disciples, without a leader, accused themselves of criminality. Every chapter of the gospels contains stories that could have given rise to life-ending, dead-end stories of regret, depression, and overwhelming sadness. Every one of those chapters could have been the last chapter.

But every one of those chapters also contains Light. The Light of the Word made flesh and dwelling among, as a human- just like us! In every one of those chapters we can hear God saying to them, and now to us, It’s OK to sit there by the rivers and not be able to sing. It’s OK, really. You can be as sad as you want to be. But come, stand over here for a minute, because I’ve got something for you to see!

Look, Mary, I know this wasn’t part of your plans, but I’ve got bigger and better plans.

Look, Joseph, I know her story sounds preposterous, but I need you!

Look, shepherds, despite the hard and crummy lives you’ve led so far, I’ve got something for you to see that will be good news for all people.

Look, wise men, even though you’re disobeying your king, look up in the sky- there’s a star to follow that will take you to where that king back east can never take you!

Look, sick woman whose been bleeding for twelve years, he’s right there, go touch him!

Look, Mary and Martha, look at the tomb they laid your brother Lazarus in three days ago.

Look, Mary Magdalene, look past your sadness into the eyes of the gardener standing beside you.

Look, disciples, look who’s coming down the road.

Look, sons and daughters of mine, God says, look at the gifts- the heaps of joyful gifts you have received from those loved ones of the past- look at them and then see who needs them.

Those memories, those joys of the past that cause the sadness of this season- those memories, those loves, they are gifts now- your shared gifts- to be passed on. They are no more dead and gone than Jesus is dead and gone. As Jesus is here among us, so is every grandmother, aunt, child, wife, husband, and friend you have ever loved. So is Kyle, so is the woman I once knew so well. They are right here (heart), you feel them, you know them, every day, every hour. Just like Jesus, the world needs to know them. The world is waiting for them.

“Fear not,” Jesus said, “for I am with you always.”

Thank God, there are always new places to stand , and old and precious gifts to share with new people.