The Man Born blind Lent 4 year A

4 Lent Year A 2017
March 26, 2017

    What an amazing story from today’s gospel.  As I read the story earlier in the week, I was struck by the amount of tension in the story.  On the one hand, there are the authorities who just cannot seem to believe that the blind man was healed.  They keep insisting that maybe he wasn’t really blind at all, that somehow the whole incident is made up, perhaps even made up to make them look bad, since anyone who believed that Jesus was the Messiah, would be kicked out of the synagogue.  I imagine that being kicked out of the synagogue was a big deal.  I doubt seriously there was another one nearby; it’s not like changing churches; the synagogue is a central place for worship, teaching and organizing the community; Not being allowed to participate in synagogue activities would mean being separated from the whole community, and likely result in being shunned.  I suspect that it was easy for the authorities to control people by holding their membership over their heads.  Community was necessary for survival, and everyone knew it.  If you were shunned by the community, then you were at their mercy.
    The man who was born blind is already dependent upon people for his survival; we know that he had to beg in order to live, and his unclean status probably affected his parents as well, which is why they were reluctant to defend him.  They and he were already marked as sinners, and I suspect they would do almost anything not to draw attention to themselves.  Well, as we know, especially in the gospel of John, Jesus is not all that subtle; and the closer he gets to his entry into Jerusalem, the less subtle he gets.  He not only heals the man of his blindness, but he does it on a sabbath.  Work was forbidden by sabbath law, which now makes Jesus into a bit of a criminal.  Now the man who is blind, his parents, AND Jesus are all sinners according to those in authority.  And who is going to question authority?  The man born blind has moved from the darkness of blindness into the light of being able to see; and his eyes, eyes that have never seen before, can see what those in authority can not see; he sees who Jesus really is, perhaps because his eyes are new; they are not hardened by seeing through lenses of greed or power; he has come from the lowest place, and so anything at this point is an improvement… and Jesus, who is the true authority, and the light of the world, has already said that the man’s blindness was not the result of sin, which is in direct conflict with what the authorities are fighting about…

And look at how much they fight.  More and more questions, more and more confusion, more and more denial of the truth… and the more it all goes on, the more eloquent the blind man becomes; listen to what he says:  “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”   He basically quotes the law to those who are the authorities, and they have nothing to say in return except that he is a sinner, which goes back to the original argument.

    And here’s an interesting point that I hadn’t thought about before; the man, when he was blind probably couldn’t be part of the synagogue worship… and now that he is healed, his belief in Jesus will likely still keep him from the worship of the synagogue, which as we have already seen, basically means he STILL isn’t part of the community now that he can see.  The authorities want him to give glory to God by admitting that Jesus is a sinner; and yet what truly gives glory to God is the fact that man is healed by Jesus…

    So much tension; so much insistence on being right by those in power… and it is clear, especially as we go deeper into John’s gospel that their power and their ability to see the truth diminishes as their fear increases.  And here, a man who was a blind beggar, who dared to believe that healing was possible even on the sabbath, now has more truth, more knowledge and is part of the greater community of disciples of Jesus.

    So much powerful imagery in this story, perhaps the most obvious being that of light overcoming the dark, weakness overcoming power, poverty overcoming privilege, innocence overcoming knowledge, humanity overcoming law.  One of the important parts of a healing story is the recognition of the sick person’s humanity; Jesus not only cares about this man, but he speaks to him directly, and he touches him, something that would not have happened without risk of being seen as ritually unclean.  And as he humanity is recognized, he in turn grows in his faith; he uses his new eyes to truly see in ways that others cannot because of their fear and greed.  The man had nothing to lose; and in his deep poverty and brokenness he experienced more than he bargained for.  He was truly healed in body, mind and spirit, despite the incredible controversy that rose up around him.

    Amazing things can happen for us when we bring our brokenness to Jesus; if we can be willing to suspend our dependency upon the idolatrous ways of the empire, if we can let our faith in God bring light into the dark places of our lives, then we too will be able to see things differently.  When the light of Christ illumines our path, there is no room for fear to take hold of us because we know who and what the truth is.  The blind man knew who he was in the eyes of the empire, and he chose to remain an outsider by believing Jesus was the Messiah, bringing him closer to God; those who thought they knew what the truth was, chose power and in choosing it, placed more distance between them and God.

    As we continue to journey with Jesus to Jerusalem, perhaps we too are being asked to suspend our belief in the empire.  When we choose the way of Christ, we are choosing to be made whole through brokenness, we are choosing light over dark, life over death.  Unlike the man born blind, we must work a bit harder to truly see, because we all have had a taste of power and privilege, which we cling to when we become afraid.  We all have something we must let go of to be made whole; are we ready to have faith? Are we ready to wash the mud from our eyes so that we might see him, and be guided more clearly?

   

2 Lent Year A

2 Lent Year A
March 12, 2017

    We believe in one God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth… We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God…

    You and I are going to recite these words together in a few minutes, and I know some of you are getting together and studying about this creed, known as the Nicene Creed on Sunday mornings.  This creed is the statement of our beliefs, our statement of faith.  The word Creed comes from the latin for believe; the sense of believing that we “do” when we recite the creed is not a superficial believing, but the kind of believing that for us gives us so much more than just information  It’s the kind of believing that we do at a very deep and personal level.  It’s the kind of believing that actually forms and shapes us.  The creed isn’t simply a statement of faith, but I would say it is also something that we pray, and as such it’s words are powerful and deeply meaningful.  We know that we cannot truly define who God the Father is, who Jesus is, or who the Spirit is; the Trinity defies all defining; but we have to do something; we have to have a way to talk about the Trinity, and particularly about Jesus.  It is an imperfect formula at best.  But it has served the church since the council of Nicea in 325 AD.  So, it’s a pretty important part of our worship and our teaching.

    Deep in my heart, I have always been glad that this creed, at least in the translation we use on Sundays starts “We Believe”.  For me, that helps take some of the pressure off.  I know that if I were to take a poll about what each of us actually thought some of these words meant, we would probably have as many different explanations as there are people sitting here.  And, honestly, that’s ok. 

    What do you think to yourself when we say, “We Believe”?  I have to admit, some days, I think, “I’m not so sure what I believe… “ I know others may be thinking the aren’t sure IF they believe… one of the reasons the WE is so powerful to me, is that on those days when maybe my own believing is a bit shaky… maybe I can be carried by YOUR believing.  We believe is one of the gifts of community.  Our faith is not just something that we do as individuals; it is something that we do and experience as a community; we depend upon each other to have support, ideas, and just to experience together in worship the grace that helps us to reconcile ourselves to God, to each other and to our neighbors…

    On Ash Wednesday, one of the things I talked about was vulnerability… that the ashes we received on our heads were perhaps a way for us to realize our own vulnerability as well as each others; perhaps ashes were a sign to us to be kinder, gentler, more loving with ourselves and with each other because God was certainly kind, gentle and loving, even when we didn’t feel it or perhaps deserve it…

    I read something this week that suggested that in order to believe one must be willing to be vulnerable…  God I hate being vulnerable.  But it rings true for me… .In order to believe, I must be willing to be vulnerable.  I began thinking about how I got to the Episcopal church.  My family was not a church going family.  We were superstitiously Catholic at best, like many ethnic families were in our neighborhood.  Toward the end of my Navy years, in my mid twenties, I experienced some pretty serious life altering events which led me to come to the conclusion that I should probably stop drinking and change how I was living my life.  I did the things that were absolutely necessary in order to get sober.  As I worked on myself and on my life, I realized that I needed something else.  It would take me a while to figure it out, but what I needed was Jesus… and just as much as I needed Jesus, I needed a community that would help me figure out my place in the kingdom, and would help me to learn and grow in relationship to them and to God.  I also had to figure out this whole vulnerability thing.  I had to let my community get to know me, but also, I had to be willing to give some things up in order to make room for belief in God, in Jesus and in the Spirit… in some ways, making room for Jesus was the hardest part.  I could sort of believe in a far off God that didn’t really give a hoot about my daily life; but… God so loved the world that He gave his only Son… oh boy.  This was different.  This was personal.  This was all about relationship and it was all about relationship with me… and like other loving relationships it was going to mean that I had to be vulnerable… in ways I didn’t really like; because now, God was getting personal and getting all up in my business with this whole Jesus thing.  In Jesus, there was a person to whom I could relate; a person whose story intersected with mine; a person who I came to learn went all the way to death in order to save me from it… and I learned how much God really loved; not something I really knew about as a kid….but God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son… gave his Son not to condemn, but to save the whole world…. The whole world… not just the parts that you or I like… but the whole world.  That’s a pretty big deal to say the least.  And for each of us to believe it, to act on it… we have to give up something of ourselves, we have to be vulnerable…

    Nicodemus wanted to believe… and he did believe some.  He was a good man trying to do the right thing… but he couldn’t quite let go of part of himself… I think in order to believe, we have to give up something of ourselves so that there is a place for God to be… and sometimes we get really caught up in protecting our inner selves so much that we forget that vulnerability isn’t bad… but it’s a pathway for us to get to know God, Jesus and the Spirit just a little more… Nicodemus was a smart man… and perhaps his smarts kept him from believing more; he couldn’t get past what he thought was SUPPOSED to be true, so that he could actually experience was was actually TRUE.  We are so much like him… the good news is that we don’t have to believe all at once, whatever that might mean, and we don’t have to believe all the same, and we can rest on each other’s believing when we aren’t quite up to it…  however, I hope that we are all willing to keep working at it; to keep trying to give up some of ourselves so that we can be vulnerable, so that in those tender and vulnerable places we might deepen our relationship with God’s perfect gift of Jesus who came so that we might be closer to God…. God so loved the world… how do we so love God?  What might we be asked to give up to make more room for Jesus?

   

7 Epiphany year A

7 Epiphany Year A
February 19, 2017

    Every time I read the lessons for this week, I found myself getting stuck at the Collect of the Day…”O Lord, you have taught us that without love, whatever we do is worth nothing….”  If I had to sum up all that I know about prayer, about Jesus, about worship… and if I only had one word to do it with, I think my word would be love…

    And today, scripture gives us a look into what the life lived in God’s love looks like.  Now, I have to say, that reading Leviticus is not an easy proposition… but… it is something that everyone should do at least once; it will help make some sense out of Jesus’ actions… but along with that, it is important for us as Christians to know the law, and to know how it has been lived out in the lives of God’s people.

    It’s easy for us to think “We have Jesus, we don’t need the law”.  Well… it’s not that simple, really.  Jesus himself says that he has come to fulfill the law, not to abolish it.  For us, what is important to understand about that, is that Jesus embodies the law; by that, I mean that Jesus has become the law in his very person…

    We all know those people who are living examples of something wonderful; people who by their very lives and nature bring to mind concepts that are bigger than themselves; icons, if you will; and there may be different icons for each of us; when I think about rock and roll music, my first thoughts are about the band U2… for others it’s the Beatles or the Rolling Stones; but we all have those symbols in our lives, icons that point to something bigger.

    Jesus is so much more than just an icon or a symbol… Jesus is the law in his life and in his body… He lives his life not just in accordance with the law, but does even what the law cannot do for us;  he shows us how to live the law in every aspect of our being…
   
    Whenever I hear a scripture passage begin… “You have heard that it was said”…. And continue, “But I say to you….” I get a little tense, because I know that Jesus is about to issue a serious challenge.  He is well aware of what the law says, and well aware of what we all find to be acceptable behavior… While loving our neighbor isn’t always easy, we know that it is something we are “supposed to do”.  Well… Jesus wants us to go an infinite number of steps further… that’s what happens when love becomes incarnate; that’s what it means to have love be the absolute driving force in our lives… it demands that we do things that go beyond what is expected.  When love becomes incarnate, when love takes on a human body, and God and humanity collide in that same body… things are likely to get pretty crazy… what’s acceptable by human standards, is not always acceptable by God’s standards… love means so much more than it does on a Valentine’s day card, as wonderful as that is… love, for those of us who are followers of Jesus, becomes a difficult thing; it becomes something that transcends our emotions and becomes something that we, like Jesus live out in our bodies and our spirits.  You and I are called to internalize, to embody God’s holy law so that everything we do is informed by the law… living the law is so much different than just adhering to the law… Like Jesus, we are to take the law into our being and act intentionally, not just in ways that society deems as proper, but in ways that God deems as proper.  That means that the law has infused us… all of us, so that our bodies, minds and spirits are one with the law…
    Love, seems to be, the way that Jesus embodies the law, and calls us to do likewise.  Love, is not simply about our emotions; it is about how we act even when it’s hard to do so.  Giving your cloak when you have already given your coat is hard to do...We may never get to be perfect as God is perfect…. Only God has that distinction, but our life’s work is to journey toward the goal; to go the extra mile, to love those who hate us, to not harbor evil thoughts about others… it’s difficult work;  It’s necessary work for the kingdom of God to spread.
   
    I received a package from amazon yesterday, and they apparently have been using some Valentine’s day themed boxes.  On the box it said, “Three words to describe love” with three lines I suppose that were for me to write three words that describe love.  Since I was in sermon mode, I said to myself, well, there are three words that we as Christians have to describe love… They are, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Love and law really aren’t different in the kingdom.  The law was given to us to help us know what God wanted from us… Jesus came in part, to give us a living example of what it meant to truly become the law, to have love be the driving factor for all our actions, and the Holy Spirit, also a gift of Love, helps us to live into the embodiment of the law that we have been called to.  The goal is to have others recognize the law embodied in us as love… a love that is often hard to live into; who wants to love those who persecute them?  But Jesus prayed even for them as he hung on the cross… ‘Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing….”  It’s the ultimate icon of love, and it shows us just how far reaching the law is.

    It is good for us to remember that the law is there for us to guide our actions; it’s also important to remember that Jesus himself, embodied the law and gave it a new and difficult interpretation.  I hope that each of us will figure out how to embody the law in our own lives.  Who do we need to love today?  How will be become icons of God’s holy law?

6 Epiphany 17 - Community

6 Epiphany Year A
February 12, 2017

What made you decide to come to this church?  To the Episcopal Church? To St. David’s?  Was it as simple as it was the closest church to where you live?  Was it because it was the church your family went to?  Was it because you knew something about the Episcopal Church and wanted to check out how Episcopalians practiced Christianity?

    When I became an Episcopalian, I was looking for community.  I was clear across the country from where I grew up; where I grew up, people went to the Catholic parish that was in their part of the neighborhood; for other denominations, there was usually only one parish for a large geographic area.  When I had more freedom to decide where I wanted to go to Church, I decided to check out the Episcopal church because it had much of what I was used to and loved about the church of my childhood, with some different expressions of how they lived that out… imperfectly, yes… but I longed for a community that put into practice what it believed to  be the gospel of Christ.  I wanted to be part of something that was bigger than itself; somewhere that my own gifts to the community would be discerned and utilized for the good of others.  I wanted to be loved and accepted; I didn’t want to live my life in isolation, where I had to depend on my own strengths to get me through; I wanted to be held accountable to a group of people who were in turn accountable to the community for what we did when we were together as well as when we were apart; mostly, I wanted to learn about Jesus and deepen my relationship with him.

    Community matters.  When we go to a church, believe there is a difference between going and truly belonging. The Episcopal church has all sorts of letters and things that formally acknowledge one’s membership, but it’s not the same as belonging.  Belonging, means we have a vested interest in what happens within the community…. It means that we care about other members… it means, that I will be vulnerable enough with you to allow you to have an effect on me…

    There is a lot in our readings today that speaks about how communities are to behave.  Paul spent much of his life and ministry traveling from one community to another, helping them to grow in faith in Jesus…

    The church in Corinth seems to be all about status rather than about the gospel, and Paul in no uncertain terms is done.   He lovingly but firmly tells them that it doesn’t matter who baptized them; that there is no status in a community where Jesus is at the center; they are there, no matter who they are, to do the work of the Kingdom; each of them are servants, equal to each other, working together for a common mission and purpose.    Concerns of the Kingdom are what should be driving them; not their personal ideas of fame or status.

    Jesus has his own things to say about community as well, and they are hard words to hear.  I have come to be grateful for Jesus’ sometimes harsh way of putting things… I can be more than a bit stubborn and don’t always hear things that are subtle… Jesus is not subtle here at all; we all know things like murder and adultery are against the commandments and can destroy communities and families; but Jesus makes an even harsher claim, that even our angry or lust filled thoughts can destroy a community just as much as blatant actions… and if we think about that, we know there is truth in it; we know when we are angry with another that it has an affect on how we act; it throws the whole working of the community off; others can begin to tell that something is “off”... even subtle behaviors can become overblown, sides are taken, and suddenly a community of loving support and hard kingdom work becomes stuck in it’s own frail humanity, and it’s ability to be the church is severely compromised….

    Let’s face it; the church is about people… buildings are nice… they can and are often necessary… but really, what makes us church is the relationships that we have with each other; those relationships are one of the ways that we get to know God… and the church, is different than what we encounter in the world.  What we see playing out in so many other aspects of our lives, is that it’s the individual that matters most… that we can do all that we need for ourselves… that individual pride and accomplishment is to be valued above all else.

    We know differently.  One of the things that we learn when we hear about Jesus’ dealings with people is that no one person is above another… community, the church, is made up of imperfect people, all of whom are trying to love their God as best as they can, and we all know that we don’t get it right some of the time… but in a community that is trying to live by Jesus’ commandments to love God and love our neighbor, sometimes we get to experience grace… sometimes, we get to help others, and sometimes, it’s me or it’s you that is vulnerable and needs the community to pray and act on our behalf… no one is above the other… no one is forgotten….

    Church is… and should be a corrective and a haven against what we are experiencing in other parts of our lives.  When I found the church… I found a place where people loved each other despite themselves some days;  I found a place where the things that separated us in the workplace didn’t have a chance to gain a foothold… I found a place where I met Jesus in the faces of others… and where I learned how to work for the kingdom rather than the empire…

Beloved, there is so much that would have us be pulled in ways that just don’t build up Christ’s church…. And I’m not talking about simple politeness here; some polite people are the worst community killers there are out there… you and I have been called to something different.  We have been called to live in radical truthfulness where we know that all of us are equal in God’s sight… and we are all equally fragile and broken too…  but as we say about our beloved St. David’s, we are small, but we are mighty… we are mighty when we act together as a community that is held together by remembering it is Jesus who is the center and reason for all that we do.  It’s not about us; it’s about him…  what we do and what we say matters; it has consequences on the health of the church… and it’s good for us to take stock of that every now and then to make sure we are acting in ways that are healthy and loving, rather than self serving…

    What made you come here?  Are those reasons still true today?  My prayer for us, is that we can together be the reason another comes, and the reason why we all stay.
   

5 Epiphany - Annie's story

5 Epiphany Year A
February 12, 2017

I have the privilege this past Thursday of hosting the monthly meeting of the Episcopal clergy in the region.   I really enjoy those meetings because it’s important for us to be together and to share in community.   It’s also great to hear the successes my colleagues are enjoying as well as sharing in our common frustrations.  While we were gathering and greeting each other, my friend Emily walked into our kitchen, and a few minutes later said, “Hey, Tracey, I know where this cross came from…”  She was referring to this crocheted cross which had been hanging outside the sacristy… “Oh yeah? Tell me about it” I said.  I admitted I knew nothing about the origins of the cross, and that I think it has been hanging on that hook the whole time I have been here.

    Emily told me that she had one just like it, as did the Deacon at St. Christopher’s.  Apparently, there are also a few at St. Mary’s Edmond.  There were crocheted by a woman named Annie.  She was a parishioner at St. Mary’s who was baptized there one Easter… Annie was mostly homeless and wandered around a bit, living with someone who was abusive to her and who sponged off of her meager Social Security.  She ended up in Midwest City for a while and gave our some of her crosses… she also sold other things she made to have extra money.  She went back to Edmond, and there was some work done to get her a real apartment.  As is often the case with folks like Annie, she ended up refusing, preferring her life on the streets.  I don’t know that anyone knows why… I also don’t know how one of her crosses made it here.  I assume she came here a few times somewhere in her journey to and from St. Mary’s.   She continued to be involved at St. Mary’s even when she was told that they couldn’t support her need for motel rooms.  Annie died suddenly while walking along in Edmond where lots of shopkeepers apparently knew her.  St. Mary’s claimed her body when no one else would and held a memorial service for her....

    Today we hear more of Jesus’ sermon on the mount… he tells his disciples that they are salt of the earth, the light of the world… What do you think of when you hear that someone is “salt of the earth”?  The people that Jesus was teaching that day would have been pretty simple people, fishermen and other folks who worked with their hands, people who probably lived difficult lives when the empire was around and making things difficult; but otherwise good, honest people who longed for a message of hope that would sustain them and those whom they loved…

Jesus certainly wanted to bring a message of hope to them… he also wanted them to BE a message of hope… they are salt… light… they are the ones who are to bring the light into a dark world…

And that is certainly our message too.  Discipleship is not about looking around at others and wondering who is going to do… discipleship is about doing, and doing joyfully.  Annie’s story in many ways is a tragic story and we can sit and talk all day long about her choices and wonder why she would refuse permanent, warm housing… But here’s the thing… it doesn’t matter… and it didn’t even matter when she was still alive.  Those were her choices which she made freely.  Her choices didn’t affect her discipleship.  She was a person who lived a hard life, harder than most of us will ever know for ourselves, at least I hope we never will… and yes… when we try to “help” someone into a better life, sometimes they make decisions that we wouldn’t make… but…

Annie loved the church… it was a place of love, acceptance and kindness. Probably something she didn’t get much of elsewhere.  And Annie, in her way, gave back.  She gave these crosses because it was something she could do to spread light… she knew how important the symbol was… she could crochet… so she used her talent and gifts to give back to the church and it’s people whom she cared about and who helped her to know Jesus… and in her doing so, I think she taught us about Jesus… her simple gifts were and are gifts of light.  I am pretty sure Annie knew the importance of the symbol of the cross as much as any of us do; and certainly, Annie was a broken and frail human being… but guess what… so are all of us; we are all broken in some way; we all have ways in which we make bad choices; none of us gets it right; and yet, even with all of that, Annie didn’t let it stop her from being light…

The sermon on the mount is serious business.  Matthew’s gospel assumes that Jesus is the messiah, the savior in whom the kingdom of God has been brought to earth… the kingdom is not some far of place of rewards when we die… certainly the kingdom’s fullness is only realized at the heavenly banquet… but… it starts here and now… and all of us who claim to be disciples have responsibilities to bring kingdom light into the world… no matter who we are, no matter how we are broken… we all must trust that Jesus is who he says he is, and that he has given us what we need to be light and salt to the world.  None of us will do it quite the same; Annie’s gifts were hers.  She used them because she knew that’s what disciples did.  She took sacred vows at her Easter baptism to be a disciple, and in the simple act of crocheting a cross, I think she succeeded.

You are the light of the world… some days maybe it’s not a very bright light, but it is light nonetheless; it is the light of Christ that we have each been given in our baptism… it is the light that we are to use to help spread the kingdom of God.  And perhaps, when we join our dim light with another’s the light will get even brighter.

There is much tension around us these days… no matter who we are, we are disciples called to bring light into the world; not just to people who agree with us or who look like us, but to everyone we encounter.   That’s how light works.  Our challenge is to figure out what gifts, what light Jesus is asking us to use; and then without fear to act in love to use that light...What gifts are we hiding because we think we are too broken to use them?  May we be the light we are being called to be…. Even a small glow can transform the darkness.  May we be transformed this day so that we might help transform the world around us...

Holy Name 2017

Feast of the Holy Name 2017

I had a roommate once who loved decorating for Christmas… but the day after Christmas, and I mean THE DAY after, she was tearing stuff down and stuffing it into boxes declaring that CHRISTMAS IS OVER!

You and I know that it isn’t quite over… while the rest of the world has moved on (there are valentine’s day displays up and even Cadbury Creme Easter eggs out already!) you and I are stopping to pause at the manger a little longer… Bethlehem calls to us to gaze upon the holy child just a little longer before we run off to do other things.

    On the 8th day after the birth of Jesus, his family does what families in that time and place did, and they named him… Seems a rather simple thing doesn’t it?  But the naming of a child is a holy thing.  I can remember when my former bishop baptized my son and asked us to “Name this child”... it was a holy moment of giving him an identity… and of formally placing him within our family and the greater community.

So it was even for Jesus.  His family performs the holy rituals of naming and circumcision, giving him the name that God has chosen for him and placing him officially within his family and community…

It seems simple, but it is part of the continuing story of God being made man, of God becoming incarnate, taking on human flesh for the sake of all of us for all time.  God, creator of heaven and earth, comes down from heaven and is born into the world as baby to a family of humble means… giving up the power of being God, and becoming human… all because of love.   It’s the kind of love that we get to experience all around us if we open our hearts and our eyes.  Because God chose to be born and named Jesus, not only is God part of humanity, but… you and I are now part of God.  Incarnation, the taking on of human flesh by God means that humanity is now all wrapped up in God… we are adopted as God’s own… we are made holy, taken up into God’s very life… even as God shares our life… and the thing is, is that life as you and I know, is messy… sometimes horribly so, sometimes endearingly so.  Maybe that’s why God chose such a humble human birth, to emphasize just how messy life is, and how much God loves it… yes beloved, God loves our life, and God loves it enough that God becomes part of all of it, the good, the awful and the stuff that’s in between and messy…

But that’s what it’s like being adopted by God… the magic, if you will, is in the ordinary, day to day stuff of life.   Jesus is named today, and the gift is that WE are the ones who are adopted and brought into the family, and like all families, there are amazing parts and the parts we don’t like to talk about; there are good days and bad days…. There are joys and triumphs and there are times of darkness… but we are all brought into the family of God… and we are all loved… and God has chosen us… all of us are part of the family now, not just the people we like either, but perhaps especially the people we don’t like… that’s what it means when God chooses to become human… it means ALL of humanity is adopted by God and all of humanity is made holy… hard to imagine when we go about our day isn’t it?  All means all… we don’t get to choose who is in and who out; because as we follow Jesus we know that those whom others have left out, are actually in… no borders, no walls, no proper manners or whatever else we might use to exclude someone… all are adopted into God’s life because God so loved the world that much…
For us it means loving those whom God also loves.  It means putting our prejudice aside and allowing God’s Holy Spirit to guide us in how we interact with God’s people… what if, when we interacted with someone who raised our internal hackles, we stopped and thought…. “They are God’s too… just as I am…”  We all know, if we looked deep inside us, that we aren’t really worthy of that much love… but it doesn’t matter because God loves foolishly and lavishly… maybe we can too… just because we are loved that much….

While society puts Christmas in a box and gets ready for the next big thing, trying to help us find happiness in a store display… you and I will linger in Bethlehem a little bit longer… the gift of Christmas is never really over for us... In a Sunday school curriculum that I used to teach to young children, it suggested that a Nativity set be in the room at all times for the children to handle and play with, because it was important for them to remember that God loved them so much that God became one of them… it helped the children realize that Jesus was close to them and loved them and experienced what they did… perhaps we might linger extra long today to remember that lesson as well….  Merry Christmas beloved.

Christmas eve 2016

Christmas Eve 2016

    “The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness--
on them light has shined.
You have multiplied the nation,
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as people exult when dividing plunder.
For the yoke of their burden,
and the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For all the boots of the tramping warriors
and all the garments rolled in blood
shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Tonight we hear beautiful words from the Prophet Isaiah that reach through time and space to greet us this night, and be fulfilled here and now… Our Advent wait is over dear church; the one for whom we have waited has come into the world… and God, in God’s infinite, and sometimes mind boggling wisdom has seen fit to come into the world as one of us; as a child…. We have been given the gift of a son, a holy child who shall change absolutely everything…  babies do that…. They change things… they change the way we sleep, the way we make priorities.  They change US… they change everything about who we are… and so this baby comes tonight to change things, to change absolutely everything… this baby comes as God in the flesh to cause a revolution… on a dark night, surrounded by animals… a king is born into the world; born into the messiness of our lives just as surely as he was born into the messiness of first century Palestine…  After all, there really isn’t a good time for a baby to come, is there?  There is always more that can be done to prepare; we always think if we had more time… maybe we could do it better at some other time and place… but it is not us who choose his coming…. God chooses it… and this is the perfect time, the best time, because it is God’s time, even though it appears as though God really doesn’t seem to have the timing thing down any better than any of the rest of us…. God’s timing was so bad, that there wasn’t anywhere for this humble little family to go… but yet, just like any other baby, this one comes, whether we are ready or not, making his way into a world that often will misunderstand him and his reasons for coming… and as always, when it is God’s time, it is perfect...

But tonight, despite what will one day come to him, tonight at least, there is peace… Hope and love and peace have been born in the flesh as this child.  The God of Love has given Godself in the form of a son… a child who needs to be fed and cared for… a child who will crave attention and love… kind of a crazy way to get a point across don’t you think?  God risked everything to be born this night… and whether we are ready or not, no matter what we think of the timing, he is here… and we need him; we need him as much as he needs us.  We desperately need to experience and live into the changes this child shall create in us… but they won’t be easy.  This baby, like all babies will demand these changes with every movement and sound he makes… tonight we turn our hearts into the hearts of people who want to give this baby everything… we will be wrapped around his little finger, and with any luck, we will do his bidding… it’s hard to imagine that this birth brings with it such change and such a peace revolution , but it does; this birth asks us to love when it seems impossible to do so… this baby asks us to put down our weapons, and work for peace with our neighbors and with our world; this baby asks us to put aside our fears so that we can do what is truly right, rather than what is safe… and that is how we care for this infant… by caring for others around us; by doing what is right rather than what is safe or expected… having a baby to care for means that everything is different… it means that we are different….

It is hard to prepare, even though we have been waiting… and now the preparations are over, the holy child is here… may we open our hearts to the child who has brought love and hope and peace into the world.  May we each be able to change and become the caregivers that God has asked us to be… tonight, may there be joy, hope, love and peace on God’s earth…

I leave you with the words of Ann Weems and her poem, “Holding”

The Day is here, and we made it to Bethlehem!  The time has come for kneeling and we’ve seen the Child!  There is singing in the stable and we want desperately to hold on to it… hold on to the Star and the Angels!  And the Spirit of Love!  How do we hold on to the Christmas spirit?  Why can’t every Day be Christmas?  The world mutters, “be realistic,” and sometimes we church people mutter too.  On our way back from Bethlehem sometimes we forget what we’ve been warned about in a dream:  to return another way.  Once we’ve seen the Child, we’re left holding hearts wherein angels dance and stars sing!  Once we’ve been to Bethlehem, every day is Christmas!  -- Ann Weems, “Holding” from  Kneeling in Bethlehem, poetry for Advent and Christmas.