Christmas Eve, Nativity of our Lord, Year A

Earlier this year, two octogenarians, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, collaborated to publish a book titled Book of Joy. These religious and world leaders discuss the personal and national struggles they have faced in their lives and point, like the star shining over Bethlehem, to the sustaining presence of joy in their lives.

Hopefully, we can all recall cherished and joy-filled memories from our own lives, and I would wager that the joy we carry from those memories is probably not focused on the beauty of the setting, or the presentation of rich gifts or food, but in the people who shared those moments with us.

What is joyful about the announcement of an engagement, the expectation of a child, or the anticipation of a homecoming is the promise that each holds for new or renewed relationship with one whom we love and who loves us. Our joy is tied to the promise embodied in them.

In Luke’s Christmas story, the angel says to the shepherds: “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.”

In the rest of his narrative, Luke places the birth of Jesus in a historical context but the details about the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth are not as important as the person who was born on that night more than two thousand years ago.

As the pastoral letter to Titus is most simply translated, on that first Christmas, “the grace of God appeared.” The grace of God appeared in the vulnerable birth of a powerless child, in the darkness of night, without birth announcements or balloons and without pageantry or fuss.

The promise of the Christmas story is that our persistent and loving God shows up in the most unexpected people and places, and seeks us out. Holiness first appears as an infant, to a thirteen year old young woman and her husband. Then it appears as a light that shines in the darkness to guide the shepherds toward God that they would become witnesses to God’s work unfolding in their midst.

This Christmas, where might we witness God’s work first-hand?

I think it might look like two families pitching in to help each other when one of the dads is in the hospital. It might look like people whose faces are lined with grief because they are missing loved ones tonight.

But it might also look like a teenager giving her Christmas gifts to a woman who wouldn’t have had any, and a young woman receiving Christmas cards from strangers and being reminded that nothing separates us from God’s perfect love.

We witness God’s grace-soaked, saving work in small and ordinary ways and in the extraordinary gift of His Son Jesus Christ, born this night.

This Christmas, may we know joy in the promise that God brings into the world in His Son Jesus., to save us from sin and darkness and lead us in new life and hope.

Let us pray:[i]
May the God of grace increase our joy.
May Christ Jesus be born as Savior within each one of us.
And may the Spirit, the Wonderful Counselor,
make the good news known to us and through us.
Amen.

[i] Laughing Bird Liturgy, http://laughingbird.net/WeeklyArchives.html, accessed 12/24/2016.

Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A

When my mother was expecting me, there were several discussions about what I would be called. My father’s mother, who died before I was two months old, apparently was often asked about her choice of baby names. She stubbornly and repeatedly answered that I should be called “Aloysius.” Now, she said this with relative certainty that my parents wouldn’t burden me with the Latin name for a “famed warrior” and, sure enough, when I was born, I was, thankfully, not named “Aloysius.”

Today’s Gospel gives us the story of the birth of the baby Jesus as it’s told by Matthew. It’s brief and without the shepherds or multitude of angels we will meet on Christmas Eve. In today’s reading, we hear only that Mary is expecting a child and it is not Joseph’s, circumstances that would have earned Mary a stoning according to Jewish law.

In this Gospel reading we hear the story of Joseph, and an angel’s assurance that this is the work of God’s Holy Spirit. The angel of the Lord recalls part of the story from Isaiah that we heard in the first reading. Joseph, a righteous — obedient and faithful — Jew, would have known it already:

King Ahaz of the southern kingdom of Judah was being threatened by an alliance between Syria and the northern kingdom of Israel and considering entering a dangerous alliance with the Assyrians to secure his own kingdom. The prophet Isaiah spoke to Ahaz, promising that the trouble he was facing would be so short-lived, that an expectant woman would bear a child, and before that child was even two years old, God will have prevailed on behalf of Judah.

In the same way, the angel urges Joseph to trust in God’s presence and activity, and remain with Mary. And, thankfully, while Ahaz took matters into his own hands and forged a disastrous union, Joseph followed the angel’s instructions and trusted God.

So, instead of the stoning or desertion of Mary that could have become the story, we hear what the beloved child shall be called.

Joseph and Mary remained faithful and, when the infant arrived, as his earthly father, Joseph named him “Jesus.”

The name Jesus is the Greek form of the name Joshua, or Yeshua, derived from the Hebrew yasha‛ for “he saves.” This infant is the one, anointed by God, to save God’s people from their sins.

The other name Matthew gives Jesus is “Emmanuel.” That name, which means “God with us” only appears here in the New Testament, but the theme of God’s presence echoes throughout Matthew’s Gospel. In Matthew’s words, we hear Jesus say “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (18:20) and his promise at the Gospel’s conclusion, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (28:20)[i]

Every time we celebrate Holy Communion, we remember that Jesus does the saving work of freeing us from our sin, giving us victory over the grave, and giving us new life through his body and blood.

But, for each of us, Jesus also is Emmanuel: God’s abiding presence in our lives and circumstances who “makes safe the way that leads on high” and “disperses the gloomy clouds of night.” [ii]

The story of Joseph and Mary promises us that when our lives are characterized more by discord or upheaval,
or our hopes or expectations have been turned upside down or toppled completely,
God is still with us, working through real people with real challenges,
to not merely provide band-aids to patch up a bruised and hurting world,
but to transform our lives and communities.

The question we ask this last Sunday in Advent before the Nativity, is “How will we live today knowing that our Savior, God-is-with-us, now?” Like Ahaz and Joseph, we are urged to patiently wait, trusting that we will be victorious because God is with us.

When we recognize God’s Spirit where it appears in our lives, we learn to depend more fully on God’s promises to us, freeing us to take greater risks that God’s vision for the world will come true.

Let us pray…[iii]
Good and gracious God,
Come into our world as Emmanuel.
Come into our world and banish fear.
Come into our world and banish darkness.
Amen.

[i] Brian Stoffregen Exegetical Notes, Advent 4A
[ii] Lyrics, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”, translated by John Mason Neale (1851)
[iii] Faith Lens, http://blogs.elca.org/faithlens/

Third Sunday of Advent, Year A

In today’s Gospel, John the Baptizer is no longer in the wilderness preparing the way for Jesus. He is in prison. Like England’s King Henry the 8th who split from Rome because the pope refused to grant him a divorce, Herod couldn’t tolerate John’s criticism of his affair with his brother’s wife, so he locked him up. And from the isolation of his cold cell, John sent a message to Jesus, 

“Are you the one who is to come?”

You can hear his uncertainty; he knew the prophets had promised a Messiah, a Savior, someone who would stand against empire and oppression.

“John doubted because he expected uproar and instead Jesus brought embrace.”[i] In our text, Jesus answers John and then he addresses the crowds who remain with him, asking them,
“What then did you go out to see?”

It is a question for us, too. What did you come out to see?

Did you come out to see the garland and wreaths, the ribbons and bows? They are beautiful but they are not Jesus.

Did you come out to hear the organ and carols? The music is beautiful but it is not the Gospel.

They are but symbols, that with the stories we are telling throughout our worship today, point to Jesus, the miraculous incarnation of God’s love who comes and lives among us. They help us behold the joy and wonder that the shepherds, Joseph and Mary knew on the first Christmas.

And that’s important because without them, it is too easy to fall into patterns of living, and even worshiping, that are wonder-less, and we fail to see what is right in front of us.

Almost ten years ago, a street performer played his violin at a Washington D.C. Metro stop. The overwhelming majority of the more than a thousand morning commuters were too busy to stop. A few did, briefly, and some of those threw a couple of bills into the violin case of the street performer. No big deal, just an ordinary day on the Metro.

Except it wasn't an ordinary day. The violinist wasn't just another musician; he was Joshua Bell, one of the world's finest concert violinists, playing his multi-million dollar Stradivarius. Three days earlier he had filled Boston's Symphony Hall with people paying $100 a seat to hear him play similar pieces. 

The Washington Post videotaped the reactions of commuters, and afterwards, the Post asked a simple question:

Have we been trained to recognize beauty outside the contexts we expect to encounter beauty? Or, to put it another way, can we recognize great music anywhere outside of a concert hall?[ii]

Like busy commuters rushing to keep to their timetables, too often, we rush past the wonder that God brings into our lives.

We only look for God’s presence in the places that have been named sacred, like our sanctuaries and cathedrals.

But Jesus says, “Look around!”

“The blind [have received] their sight,
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed,
the deaf hear, the dead are raised,
and the poor have good news brought to them.” (Matthew 11:5 NRSV)

Maybe Jesus isn’t who we imagined… After all, he doesn’t stay a baby in swaddling clothes laying in a manger. He grows up and argues for the poor and broken, the sick and the dying, and he invites sinners to his table.

Jesus reminds us that our everyday lives can be sacred. Here the beautiful stained glass windows illuminate the stories of our biblical narrative, but when we leave here, the light of the world, in Jesus Christ, illuminates our lives.

Can we behold God’s presence when we aren’t surrounded by the greenery and Christmons, and the echo of “Joy to the World” fades from our memory?

Sometimes, it is hard. You may be imprisoned by physical frailty or illness, by grief, by depression or anxiety. You may be wandering in a spiritual wilderness. Then, as it was for John, it will be hard to behold God’s promises or holy presence. But the promise here is that God is with you, and lifts you up, just as Jesus did for John.

My Advent hope for every one of us is that we will be freed from our imprisonment and learn to behold the examples of God at work every day, not only on Sundays.

Because I am certain that God is present in the schools and colleges where you teach; in the classrooms, locker rooms and ball fields where you study and compete; in the offices and plants where you work. God is present in our fallow gardens, in our restaurants and libraries, in our apartment buildings and neighborhoods. 

So, “Look around: God is making good on God’s promises. And thanks be to God for that.”[iii]

Let us pray…[iv]
O God for whom we wait,
help us to be patient as we wait for the hope you bring.
Keep our eyes open to see the good things you are already doing.
Strengthen us to be strong for others,
and to ask others for help while we wait.
Bring your light and healing into every corner of creation.
In Jesus’ name we pray.
Amen.

---

[i] Simon Hansford. https://talbragar.net/2016/12/08/not-quite-what-we-imagine/

[ii] David Lose. “Do you hear what I hear?” Working Preacher. http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=1567

[iii] Faith Lens, December 11, http://blogs.elca.org/faithlens/

[iv] ibid

Second Sunday of Advent, Year A

Reading the prophets’ words this morning, images from the headlines tumbled through my mind:

Across the South Mountains, at Party Rock and now in Gatlinburg, the earth has been scorched by fires. It is, for the people living amid the embers, impossible to imagine what’s next.

In North Dakota, First Nations’ people are in their fourth month of protesting against the completion of a pipeline that threatens their water supply and sacred lands. Tensions have escalated, national guardsmen and water cannons have been deployed, and, as yet, there’s no resolution. It is difficult to see a way forward.

And here in the Carolinas, the announcement of no charges in the officer-involved shooting in Charlotte, the progress of the North Charleston police officer’s trial, and the beginning of jury selection in the trial of the Charleston shooter stubbornly force us to face the racial tensions that persist in our communities. Remembering our history and considering our present makes it challenging to envision a different and more peaceable future.

And those are just the headlines. Violence in nature, and in relationships, and in systems wreck lives. In our congregation(s) and neighborhoods, each of us probably can name at least one more place where hostility, enmity, or even death, has stripped us bare and left us low.

These are the very days the prophet Isaiah is addressing.

Confident that God is already working in the ashes and doing something new, Isaiah invites us to imagine impossible possibilities. Where we see only decay and detritus, Isaiah summons us to hope and expectation.

Here, Isaiah reclaims the covenant promises known during David’s reign, turns over our assumptions — what we think we know about how the world works — and invites us to wrap our minds,
and our lives,
around a new vision.

Whether it is in the war-torn kingdoms of ancient Israel and Judah, the charred landscapes of western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee, on the snow-covered plains of the Dakotas, in the damaged trust of a community,
or in the wilderness of our very own pews,
God is reshaping us and our world.

More accustomed to seeing wolves in cartoons and lions and leopards in zoos, our modern ears don’t necessarily hear the audacity of the prophets’ words when he casts a vision where lion and calf, wolf and lamb, leopard and kid will lie down together.

But in ancient Israel, and in early Christianity, nature wasn’t peaceable or tranquil. There were predators and prey.

Centuries later, the animosity is captured in Aesop’s fable of a scorpion and a frog who meet on a riverbank:

The scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."

The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"

And the scorpion replies: "It’s my nature..."

The wild was something to be protected against and to be brought under dominion and submission.[i]

Isaiah challenges us to see something else in the wildness besides chaos, to hold together the ways in which the world is both fragile and majestic, terrifying and tenacious.

Up until now, our perception has been shallow and our vision has been faulty, marred by the brokenness around us, but now,
the prophet reminds us we are equipped for righteousness — our response to God — by faith, what Martin Luther described as “a living, creative, active and powerful thing.”[ii]

I believe that God is directing us to be as vulnerable as these creatures, willing to trust God more than we trust our human natures, to risk ourselves — our security or comfort, our sense of control and power — to make room for what God is doing now, at this time, in these days.

So the question this Advent is, “What might it look like for you, or for [y]our congregation, to respond to God’s direction? To recognize God’s movement and follow?” Where can we confess our surprise that God enters into our lives and takes on all of our fears and skepticism, all of our cynicism and pragmatism, and turns the world upside down, again?

Because that is what God has done throughout history, in the wilds of Israel, and again in Jerusalem at the cross. God’s nature has triumphed over our own, God’s love has stripped away our arrogance and superiority, and raised us up with Christ to new life, filled with impossible possibilities.

Let us pray…
Holy God,
You came to us in your child, Jesus
— the new branch growing from the stump of Jesse’s line —
and baptized us with Holy Spirit and fire.
Though he was killed, you raised him to life,
and clothed him in righteousness and faithfulness
so that as his reign dawns,
justice may sprout on the earth,
peace outlast the moon,
and the knowledge of your wonderful grace
wash over the earth as the waters cover the sea.
Fill us with joy and peace in believing;
that the Holy Spirit empower us and fill us with hope.[iii]
Amen.

[i] Walter Brueggemann. Isaiah.
[ii] "An Introduction to St. Paul's Letter to the Romans," Luther's German Bible of 1522.
[iii] Adapted from Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources, www.laughingbird.net/