Sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas

The readings for this day can be found here.

Today is sometimes called “Low Sunday.” I bet you can all figure out why without any help with me. But the Gospel readings for both “Low Sundays” – this one after Christmas and the other one after Easter, are extraordinary. At Easter it’s good ole “doubting” Thomas in that Upper Room, and today it’s the prologue to John’s Gospel. So I am grateful to those of you who are here. I try to make everyone feel welcome on Christmas and Easter, even if those are the two Sundays a year we see them. But the work of Christmas begins when the dust settles.

The heart of this day’s liturgy is that prologue, a summary of the doctrine of the Incarnation—literally the Latin for “en-flesh-ment.” Luke gives us the Child, the manger, the angels, the shepherds, the swaddling cloths, and all the rest. Matthew gives us the wise guys from the east; we’ll get to them next Sunday. They tell us what happened. But it’s left to John to put it into philosophical language and tell us why. What does it all mean?

What it means, he says, is that God has dwelt among us in the person of Jesus Christ. He reveals for us the image of God, very God of very God. So that we are no longer left to speculate about what God is like, but rather can consider a person: who he was, what he said, how he behaved. To look at how he lived, and what he taught, and how he died and rose again. It is that simple, and that difficult. It takes a lifetime, really; but that is it in a nutshell.

Any sermon preached on this day needs to begin there.

• The Word has become flesh in Jesus Christ.
• The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
• We have beheld his glory, as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

But why does that matter to you and to me, especially since it happened so long ago, and we are here, now, today?

I am struck by a phrase in today’s Old Testament reading, from the prophet Isaiah. As he looks toward the future, toward Messiah, he doesn’t yet know of Jesus. But he does know of God’s promises. And he says that when that time comes:

…you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give…and you shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

He is speaking about Jerusalem, but I think he is also speaking about the citizens of Jerusalem, and of the whole Kingdom of God. Ultimately he is speaking to, and about, us.

Why on earth do we need a new name?  I think the answer is that some of the old ones we carry with us diminish us and keep us from becoming what God intends for us to become. In the Eastern branch of Christianity—among the orthodox of various flavors (Greek, Armenian, Russian)—the Incarnation is summarized in this way: God became human, that humans might become divine. To our post-Reformation ears that may sound almost scandalous, and maybe even a little bit “new agey.” But it is actually a teaching of the Church Fathers which insists that we are changed by the Incarnation, that we are restored and made a new creation, and a holy people after God’s own heart.

Yet we carry around with us, all of us, so many old names. Names perhaps from the schoolyard, perhaps even from the homes we grew up in. “Stupid.” “Fat.” “Ugly.” You know the names, I’m sure. There are others too vulgar to say aloud in a church or for that matter in a locker room.  

And probably if we stopped for a minute you could add the ones that most hurt you, the ones that you carry around inside of you even if on the outside you’ve long since moved past them. You may have become a beautiful swan at fifteen, but if you were called “ugly duckling” at twelve it may very well be a name you are still trying to let go of…

Let it all go today on this fifth day of Christmas. At Baptism each and every one of us has received the new name that Isaiah promises us. As the priest pours water over us we are called “beloved child of God.” As the sign of the cross marks our heads in oil we are claimed as a royal priesthood, kings and queens who are esteemed of God, partners with God in mission. As St. Paul tells the Galatians we are adopted as children, and as heirs of God.

Not only is that our “new name” but it is our true name. Beloved child of God. Royal priest. Servant of Christ. Holy people.  Those are the names we are called—each of us—names we are called to live into as this New Year unfolds. Let go of those old names in order to embrace the new ones. It won’t be a smooth process that can be graphed as steadily upward. But that’s the direction we are called to move in, even if we do so by “fits and starts.” That’s who we really are, who we truly are; those are the names given to us by the One who knows us best.

That may sound to some like an “I’m ok/you’re ok” message, but it’s not exactly that. It’s an invitation to broken people who have experienced good and bad along the way in life’s journey to become more fully who God means for us to be, to become who we truly are. Living into that reality is a journey and sometimes even a struggle. It’s not permission for stasis but an invitation to be healed and made new.

And that, Charlie Brown, is the meaning of Christmas. It’s why the Word has become flesh. It is why God has dwelt among us. It’s what the angels and the shepherds and all the rest were trying to get us to see. How we respond to that good news is up to us. But we don’t need to do it alone. We walk together by God’s grace, one step at a time.

Crying Baby Jesus: A Christmas Eve Sermon

Like many of you here tonight in person and on-line, I grew up singing “Away in a Manger.” And I pretty much assumed that the angels must have taught those very words and that very tune to the shepherds that night out in the fields and that Christians around the world have been singing it ever since, for like two-thousand years. After all, if you look it up in The Hymnal to see who wrote it, it says that this is a “traditional carol.”

Ah, tradition. Often what it means in church circles is quite precise: it means “how I remember things being done in the church I grew up in from the time I was about six until I went off to college.” Those memories leave a mark. Those are formative years. But we don’t always remember precisely what happened, what we remember is what our brains remember. And sometimes, especially around Christmas, nostalgia takes over.  Are you with me, St. Michael’s?

 “Away in a Manger” was actually written in the late nineteenth century—1885 to be precise—in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where it was published by a Lutheran Church Sunday School in a collection called Little Children's Book for Schools and Families. While that’s a while ago, it’s still only decades ago. Put it this way, when this parish was founded no one had yet heard of “Away in a Manger.”  In that original collection it was set to a tune called "St. Kilda,” a favorite tune of the Puritans, but not the one we all know from The Hymnal 1982, where it is set to a tune called Cradle Song. 

You may be wondering where I’m going with all of this, but stay with me, please. I have been singing that carol for as long as I can remember: in church, in nursing homes, out in the streets of Hawley, Pennsylvania as a child caroling. And because of that I knew this: that when the cattle were lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus—come on everyone, you all know it—what does little Lord Jesus do, or rather not do? No crying he makes! That must be in the Bible, right? (It is not!)

My oldest son sang for four years with the University Choir at Harvard. Imagine my shock when one year, Hathy and I attended Lessons and Carols at Memorial Church, and the choir sang a “traditional” Flemish carol with these words:
 

There is a young and gentle maiden,
With a charm so full of grace.
Look! See how she cradles the Christ Child,
As the tears flow down his face
There is Jesus Christ a -weeping,
While his vigil they are keeping.
     Hush, hush, hush, dear child, do not weep,
     Cease your crying, now go to sleep.

Wait, what?  Baby Jesus cried?! Says who? Colicky baby Jesus? Really?

Yet this image of crying baby Jesus has haunted me ever since then. There is Jesus Christ a-weeping…hush, hush, hush dear child, do not weep. Cease your crying, now go to sleep.

Even if the Bible doesn’t address this question, that carol invites us to re-examine “the tradition.” Less than two weeks ago we sang “Once In Royal David’s City” at Lessons and Carols. The fourth verse of that great hymn goes like this:

For he is our life-long pattern; daily when on earth he grew…now listen up, St. Michael’s! …he was tempted, scorned, rejected, tears and smiles like us he knew. Thus he feels for all our sadness and he shares in all our gladness.

Some of you may remember way back to All Saints Sunday when I shared with you that my Baptist grandmother taught me and her other grandchildren to memorize Bible verses and I always gravitated toward John 11:18 because it was short: Jesus wept.

Now I know that verse is set in a different context, when all-grown-up Jesus is standing at the grave of his friend Lazarus.  But here is the thing: Jesus did grow up. And Jesus did weep. And if he was like us in every way, save sin, then he didn’t wait until he was a grown man to shed his first tears. Like every child he surely cried to let Mary know that he was hungry and when he needed Joseph to rock him to sleep and tell him everything was going to be ok. He surely did cry when his swaddling clothes were wet and he needed them changed. And sometimes he cried just to cry and his parents could not figure out why and there was no Dr. Spock or Dr. Brazelton to consult. Hush, now, don’t cry little one; go to sleep. 

Are you still with me, St. Michael’s? Some of you may be thinking – how did we end up with this guy as interim and doesn’t he know that tonight we sing joy to the world? What a Debbie Downer! OK, but here’s the thing, my friends: joy and grief often go hand in hand. We don’t need to pick just one. December brings with it a lot of sadness and regret and old losses. This holy night carries a lot with it and it’s not all visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads. Crying baby Jesus matters to me, and to us, because tonight we celebrate not a theological idea but the reality that the Word has become flesh to dwell among us. We have beheld his glory. Of course, Jesus cried! Babies cry. Adults do, too, sometimes. Sometimes when we are very sad and sometimes when we are very happy. Crying baby Jesus takes us to the heart of the mystery of the Incarnation and to the good news of this holy night: that God really is with us. God who, in Jesus, knew both tears and smiles and who, even now, feels all our sadness and shares in all our gladness. Immanuel. 

A friend of mine reminded me recently of an acronym I’d known but forgotten: VUCA. It stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. I know I’m in Navy territory, but VUCA came out of the Army War College in 1987, and I wonder if it’s even more true today than it was nearly four decades ago. We live in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. I bet no one here on this holy night disputes this. Yet, especially at Christmas, some part of all of us yearns for settled and certain and simple and clear, like when we were kids and baby Jesus never cried and all was calm and bright!

But I submit to you that being born on the edges of the Roman empire in the first century was also about being born into a world that was volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. In those days, a decree went out from the emperor that all the world should be registered…

But I have good news of a great joy to share with you tonight, St. Michael’s: God is with us in the midst of all the volatility and uncertain and complexity and ambiguity of this world and of our lives. God is with us when all is not calm and bright, as well as when it is. And that changes everything.

The two great moments in the life of Jesus that take us to the heart of what his life was about are celebrated in the two great festivals of the liturgical year: Christmas and Easter. The two great icons of the birth and death of Jesus are both with his mother: the child born in Bethlehem and at his death outside of Jerusalem, the pieta. If these two images reveal anything at all to us about the nature of the incarnate God, the suffering God, the God willing to be vulnerable it is simply this: God so loved the world. Not that God so loved Christians more than Jews or Muslims or agnostics or atheists. God so loved the world, the whole world. No exceptions. Love came down at Christmas. And we see it in the face of this baby.

God gave up power and control to live and die among us to be with us and for us. In his living and in his dying, Jesus shows us how to live more generous and compassionate lives. He feels all our sadness and all of our gladness.

Look! See how Mary cradles the Christ Child, as the tears flow down his face. There is Jesus Christ a -weeping, while his vigil they are keeping. 

Jesus most assuredly wept and weeps on this holy night with all who are grieving. He weeps with us who are carrying heavy burdens. He weeps with the people in war zones around the world, including Palestine and the Ukraine and so many other places near and far. If you ask the question “where is God?” in relationship to the grief and pain that you or someone you love may be feeling tonight then there is only one answer to that question: look to crying baby Jesus. It is the God we see in the face of this child that calls us to live life more abundantly. The God who is revealed to the shepherds and to us on this holy night is a God who weeps when we weep. And, in due time, will wipe away all of our tears.

The good news of this night is that we are not left comfortless. We are called as followers of Jesus to sow joy where there is sadness, to sow love where there is hatred, to sow faith where there is doubt; to sow hope where there is despair. That is what these weeks of Advent leading us to this holy night have been about: recalling us to the work God has given us to do in Christ’s name. In four words that is about hope and peace and love and joy. Those four words call us back to our purpose. We exist as the Body of Christ, at the corner of Church and Hope, to help the world to trust that hope and peace and joy and love are real. We exist in a VUCA world to bear witness to the presence of God and to insist that love came down at Christmas.

We gather here on this holy night and throughout the year to be re-membered and to listen for God’s calling to us to share the work that God has given us each in our own way: to say “yes” to God by letting this same mind of Christ be in us, until every tear is wiped away. Even the tears of baby Jesus.

There are babies crying, even now, in our world and in our neighborhood. May we see in them the face of Jesus, the newborn king: the crying baby Jesus who yearns for us to become instruments of God’s peace.

Merry Christmas!

Love: A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent

Today is all about Mary, and it’s all about LOVE. We light the fourth candle and we are almost there. To start, an excerpt from Denise Levertov’s incredible poem, “The Annunciation,” which I commend 

This was the moment no one speaks of,

when she could still refuse.

             A breath unbreathed,

                                Spirit,

                                          suspended,

                                                            waiting.

She did not cry, ‘I cannot. I am not worthy,’

Nor, ‘I have not the strength.’

She did not submit with gritted teeth,

                                                       raging, coerced.

Bravest of all humans,

                                  consent illumined her.

The room filled with its light,

the lily glowed in it,

                               and the iridescent wings.

Consent,

                    courage unparalleled,

       opened her utterly.

On this fourth Sunday of Advent, we remember Mary’s “courage unparalleled,” her “yes” to God.

There’s something about Mary, for sure. The Song she sings in this moment—the Magnificat—is about what is possible for all human beings, female and male, young and old—with God’s help. About what is possible for this tired world that God yearns to make new. What is possible is LOVE.

Her soul magnifies the Lord. Think about what that means. I think it means something like, with God we can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. I think it means that when we do a little thing in the name of Christ it ripples out to change the world, magnified to the nth degree! It turns out that Mary’s song is really a riff on an old song: Hannah’s Song. (That song can be found in I Samuel 2:1-10.) In other words, even as Mary says yes to a new world, she draws strength from the past. There is wisdom in that truth for us. St. Michael’s. The Church isn’t a museum – rigid traditionalism. But as we remain open to the Holy Spirit we, like Mary, draw wisdom and strength from the past in order to birth a new future.

Mary prefigures Pentecost, the day when the Holy Spirit breaks down all walls that divide. For the Holy Spirit there is never “them” and “us” - only us, from every tribe and language and people and nation. Only beloved children of God. Mary models for us what it might mean to let the Holy Spirit blow through our lives and make us new in spite of the dominant culture’s expectations. She knew, as Hannah knew, that God cares about justice and cares especially for the poor. She knew that the deck is stacked and that in this world kids attending inner-city schools do not have the same opportunities that kids going to private schools or affluent suburban schools do.  

God loves all the little children of the world. Really. You can take that to the bank. All means all whether those kids are black or brown or white. Whether they are male or female or trans or non-binary. Whether they have all kinds of opportunities or all kinds of challenges.

But let’s be clear: the God we meet in the Bible, because that God loves all the little children of the world, wants the playing field to be more level than it is. And so somebody has to take the side of the underdog. This is what the liberation theologians mean when they speak of God’s preferential option for the poor and I think Mary is doing liberation theology in the Magnificat. When she riffs on Hannah’s Song, she stands in a long line of Biblical prophets, male and female, who know this. God knocks the proud and arrogant and powerful down a few pegs and brings the lowly up a few pegs and fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty, not because God hates the rich, but because God really does love the poor, the anawim: God’s little ones.

In this dog-eat-dog world the anawim need God on their side because the privileged generally do pretty well taking care of themselves. Mary will teach her child, Jesus, to love the least among us as God loves them, and as she loves them. She will teach him how to read the prophets so that when his public ministry begins his first words will sound a lot like the song we heard his mother singing today. Remember, when he quotes from the prophet Isaiah in the synagogue:

¹⁶ When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷ and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
            because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to set free those who are oppressed,
¹⁹ to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

²⁰ And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹ Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 

Jesus learned that from his mother. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. His soul, too, proclaims the greatness of God because his values and his theology were shaped by his mother.

So it’s right to see in Mary and Jesus the love between a mother and her child – that’s real and whether or not we are parents or grandparents we’ve seen what that looks like and maybe even experienced it. It’s real. But Mary’s love is not limited to Jesus. Just as God so loved the world – the whole world, Mary also says yes to that vision.

Mary is called by God through the very same pattern that we find throughout the Old Testament whenever God needs to have a job done: from Abraham to Moses to Samuel to Isaiah with his “unclean lips.” The angel says, “I’ve got a job for you.” Like those who have gone before her, she is initially fearful and confused. “How can all this be?” she asks. The angel insists that it can be, because with God all things are possible.

And that’s when Mary sings: I am fully open to the will of God for my life! Like all call narratives, including the calls that come to us in our own lives, Mary has a choice. She chooses “courage unparalleled.” Like all of those called by God, Mary is free to say, “get lost angel!”  She freely chooses to say: Here I am! Send me! In so doing, she is the first and model disciple of Jesus. She is bold and courageous and strong in this moment, and not this one only. She will have to be bold and courageous and strong to raise a son like the one she raises. And she will have be bold and courageous and strong when her son walks the Via Delarosa some thirty years later, as her heart is pierced and her son dies on a cross. Mary has to bury her child, something no parent should ever have to do. But she had courage unparalleled.

So let's be clear: there is nothing passive about Mary. And while she may not have a starring role in the Bible, her role is crucial in the deeper, wider, tradition. Those of you raised as Roman Catholics may know her better than those of us raised in more Protestant traditions but we should all be clear that Mary’s “yes” to God is bigger than our theologies about Mary. She is Christ-bearer, which is precisely the ministry to which you and I are called: to make room in ourselves for Christ to be born; so that the Word continues to be made flesh in this world.  

What makes this possible? Love. Plain and simple. For nine years we heard our previous presiding bishop, Michael Curry, speak of the way of love. I’ll remind you of his legacy on this fourth Sunday of Advent. From day one he proclaimed to anyone who would listen that we, the Episcopal branch of the Jesus’ movement, are out to change the world from the nightmare it is for so many into the dream God has for us all.

Now is our time to go. To go into the world, let the world know that there is a God who loves us, a God who will not let us go, and that that love can set us all free.

 Amen? Amen!

An authentic, courageous life of faith is not without its questions, struggles, uncertainties and fears. But with God, all things are possible. God comes to us, as to Mary, not because we are perfect, but because we are willing to open our lives to the radical transformation that the Spirit offers. May Christ be made manifest—and even magnified—through us, for the sake of this broken world that God is making new again.

Joy: A Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent

Today we light the third candle, the rose one. When Katherine Jefforts-Schori was our Presiding Bishop she liked to jokingly ask, “why is the third candle pink?” To which she’d respond, “just in case it’s a girl!”

In fact, although I think that’s pretty funny, we light the rose candle because today is Gaudete Sunday and Gaudete is the Latin word for rejoice. Today we start rejoicing for the One who is coming into the world to bring…what is it again? Oh yeah, joy to the world. As we heard from St. Paul this morning:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

In John 15:11, Jesus says: “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” In the sacristy of this church (that’s the room where the altar guild does their work) there is a print with one of my very favorite sayings from one of the early church fathers, Irenaeus of Lyons. It says this: “the glory of God is the human person fully alive.” I think that joy is a key ingredient in being fully alive.

So what is joy, exactly? Barbara Brown Taylor describes the experience of joy as “almost irreverent.” She writes:

Joy has never had very much to do with what is going on in the world at the time. This is what makes it different from happiness, or pleasure, or fun. All those depend on positive conditions… The only condition for joy is the presence of God… which means that it can erupt in a depressed economy, in the middle of a war, or in an intensive care waiting room… it is a gift…

She’s right, you know. But it sounds so counter-cultural in a culture where we think we can buy happiness which suggests that happiness is some kind of commodity. But happiness is always conditional. We have happy and sad days, and sometimes even weeks or seasons. December can bring out the sadness and unresolved grief even among the most fortunate among us. I found when I was last a parish priest that inevitably I’d have more funerals in December than any other month of the year. And even when people die at another time of year, the holidays can be especially hard. You all know this. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. The point is that no one can be happy all the time.

The only condition for joy, though, is the presence of God. We can feel joy even on the most difficult of days. We don’t need to wait for December 24 to recall that the truest name for Jesus is Immanuel: God with us. Through thick and thin. So if God is present, there is joy.

Do you all remember Debbie Downer from the old SNL skits? One of my favorites is when the family is all gathered at Disney World and the server says that the special of the day is steak and eggs with a Mickey waffle. Debbie says: “ever since they found mad-cow disease in the US. I’m not taking any chances. It can live in your body for years before it ravages your brain.” (Wha, wha…)

Most of us know a Debbie Downer in our lives. And maybe some days we are even like her. Maybe it’s their personality or maybe it’s because of old wounds and sometimes it’s because of a chemical imbalance and they deserve our compassion, not our judgement. But they can wear you down when they need for you to be as unhappy as they are and that isn’t good for building up the Body of Christ.

On the other end of the spectrum are the perennially cheery, quick to find something happy even in the worst of circumstances. Maybe too quick, because we also need space in our lives for grieving. If you are having a really hard day the last thing we need to hear is to cheer up, don’t worry…

But joy is different. Joy isn’t contingent on whether or not the sun is shining. So Jesus tells his friends, which includes us: I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. That is what the good news does in our lives as it takes hold. The only condition needed for joy is the presence of God, even when the world around us is a mess. It is a gift. It helps form disciples of Jesus who are fully alive and this pleases God.

Now I have a question for you to reflect on. How do we cultivate joy in our own lives and in our homes and in this congregation. Let the world be for now, but how can we make it so that we leave Church each week feeling more joyful and less troubled? I often use the phrase, borrowed from the late Bishop of Newark, Bishop Spong, of the “church alumni association.” Recently here in Bristol I heard almost these same words from a local shopkeeper. I had my collar on and I told the person where I work and they said, “oh, I’m an alum of St. Michael’s. My parents used to take me there as a child, when Canon Tildsley was there…”

Why do people leave the Church? In my experience there are two main reasons generally speaking: conflict or boredom. Conflict burns hot sometimes. We get disappointed or hurt or angry about something or someone whom it seems doesn’t behave like a “real” Christian; and we may well have a legitimate gripe. Boredom runs cool to cold; we just feel we’ve gotten all we need from a place as a kid and now we can move on, the same way we move on from senior year of high school. We’ve graduated…

But the Church at its best is in the business of forming disciples and that’s a lifelong process. I’m preaching to the choir I know, by the way. You are all here on a December morning when there are other places you could be. In the midst of a busy month you’ve made it a priority to be here. There may be lots of reasons. You may connect with my preaching or not. You may like the music or not. You may feel the presence of the risen Christ at the Eucharist or not. But somehow I hope that most weeks through these invitations and just by being in the presence of other people who are seeking and serving Christ, you feel a little more hopeful, a little more peaceful, a little more joyful. And even though we have to wait until next week to light the fourth candle, a little more loving as well.

So how do we cultivate practices here at St. Michael’s that lead to people toward full and abundant life, people who embrace joy even when facing sorrow? In my experience, authenticity and laughter are prerequisites. We have to be real, not fake. And our humor isn’t meant to be caustic or hurtful, but it does mean we hold things lightly, I think.

This is part of what I want for St. Michael’s in this season and beyond and I am praying for you all. I am so grateful for the staff here who held things together from the time Canon Michael left until I arrived. Loretta and Alexander and Steve and Betty are all amazing people and as the new kid I am so grateful for their care in doing their work. And you know, I hope, that the vestry has been working hard as well. And now the vestry continues to deepen our commitment to serve Christ and get ready for what will come next. The vestry covenant is more than aspirational; it’s an extension of the Baptismal Covenant. It’s about how we treat each other, how we disagree, how we stay open and curious. In all of this I rejoice.

David Whyte has said that joy is practiced generosity. I take that to mean that we can always find something to be thankful for, and thankfulness cultivates gratitude and gratitude is the path to abundant joy. And joy is a part of what it means to be fully alive and aware of God’s presence in our lives. No. Matter. What.

No matter what life brings, stay in the Spirit. Is that hard? Yes, some days. But we can do hard things, friends. With God all things are possible.

O come, O come, Emmanuel. Rejoice. Rejoice. Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel. O Bristol, too.

Peace: A Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent

The word for today is PEACE. Like HOPE it is a very good advent word. (To preview coming attractions, JOY and LOVE are the two left!)

But let me confess before we go any further – of these four candles, this one is for me the most difficult to preach on. I can speak from experience about hope, and joy, and love – even if I also have days when those seem in short supply. But peace? I don’t mean just a ceasefire, or the absence of war. The peace that passes all understanding? The shalom that the Bible speaks of to mean completeness and well-being and right relationships: this seems more elusive to me in a nation that feels so bitterly divided. There is no shalom without justice. And so we pray here for the shalom/salaam of Jerusalem, and for peace in Ukraine, and for peace around our tables – at home and in this congregation.

Peace speaks to our deepest yearnings, I think. Yet it seems to be in short supply. Even so, this month we are preparing our hearts and minds and souls for the coming of the Prince of Peace, the one who comes to bring peace on earth and goodwill to all people.

The Biblical prophets dare to speak of a time when swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. In his farewell address to this nation in 1961, President Eisenhower sounded like the Biblical prophets when he warned of the dangers of the military industrial complex and the opportunity for a lasting peace dividend.  That promise is our hope for the world and yet we live in the meantime – in the meantime of unsettledness and dis-ease, of wars and rumors of wars. I wonder if the four weeks of Advent are a kind of glimpse into what the journey of faith is all about. Hopeful expectation. Active waiting. Participation in God’s dream for this world. There is nothing passive about Advent or about the Christian journey: it’s always an invitation to participate, to become followers of Jesus, to do the work God has given us to do. It’s impossible for you or I or even a president or a secretary of state to make peace. But all of us can choose, daily, to embrace the ways that lead to peace rather than pouring gasoline on the fire. In my experience this requires and enormous amount of energy and commitment – which is why I find hope and joy and love easier to preach on than peace. We are so used to might being used for wrong but let’s be clear, even might used for right isn’t the path to peace. Jesus models another way to understand power as the one who falls on his knees with a towel and basin and washes feet. Servanthood ministry – non-violent action, turning the other cheek are all practices Jesus teaches us to work for peace. Shalom. We light this candle today as an act of resistance.

God’s shalom is about way more than a “cease-fire.” It’s about healing and gratitude and hospitality; about a willingness to share and a table set with fine wines and a feast for everyone. It’s about a community where trust is a given, and where walls that once divided are broken down.

Sometimes people say to me that the Old Testament is hard to read because it is so violent. There is a great deal of truth in that statement and there is violence there because that’s part of the struggle in the middle east and around the world. But there’s another way to look at it–a way that makes it so near and dear to me in fact. The Old Testament (and I believe the New Testament as well!) refuse to be “pie-in-the-sky.” They refuse to live in a dream world. They dare to look squarely at what really is. The Old Testament especially does not avoid geo-political realities, but although more subtle in the New Testament it’s there too: the challenge of living under Roman imperial power whose violence degrades and hurts God’s people. (And we are all God’s people!) We heard hints of it today:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 

 And we’ll hear it again on Christmas Eve: in those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus…

We have always lived in a world with leaders we sometimes respect and sometimes fear. The prophets are honest about what is. But they also refuse to settle for the status quo of thinking that is what will always be. They dare to dream of the dawn of a new day, of a time when God really is the ruler of heaven and earth, a time when justice and peace go hand in hand.

And so Malachi, a near-contemporary of Ezra and Nehemiah, can speak in his context (sometime after the people have come home from Babylon after the Exile) of a day when the people really will be made holy and righteous. He can look beyond the struggles of daily life to a time when the Covenant will be fulfilled. It is difficult for us to hear his words without hearing the music of George Frederick Handel in our heads. For he is like a refiner’s fire…

I’ve always appreciated the song, “Let there be peace on earth...” not just for the memories it evokes from my childhood, and not just because it’s an easily singable tune, but because of the next clause: “and let it begin with me.”

I think that is a very Biblical prayer. We ask God for peace on earth. But in the very next breath we need to listen long enough to hear God’s consistent call for a response from us.  In the end it is not the politicians and the generals who will bring about peace on earth. It’s people like Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and fishermen, and tax-collectors, and teachers and people like you and me who are meant to pray not only “let there be peace on earth,” but also “let it begin with me.”

Each and every one of us are called to be “preparers of the way” this Advent season. Each of us are called to be instruments of peace. “Let there be peace on earth.” And let it begin here, and now on this Second Sunday of Advent. To find our way into that peace that passes all understanding, we need to be able to be still, and quiet. Which is no easy task in December, in a consumer society. But with God, all things are possible! What might we need to let go of in order to find a sense of that peace that Christ offers us in this season of Advent?

I don’t know how we can ever be instruments of God’s peace if we are out of tune and conflicted in our own hearts. It has to begin with us. Advent is so counter-cultural – the month when we are feeling pulled toward freneticism is the very time when we insist, “slow down, you move too fast…” We are invited to take time to reflect this month and to see that as a part of our preparations. We are invited to keep first things first.

As we continue to find our way through this season of transition at St. Michael’s I hope you all took time to read the vestry covenant of behavior. I think that is a very important call to each of us, not just those currently serving on vestry. People feel drawn to a community where there is hope and peace and joy and love. Wherever there are two or three gathered together, there will always be differences and disagreements, sometimes even passionate conflict. But that represents an opportunity, actually. It offers us an invitation to do the work of healing and reconciliation we are called to. It asks us to create a community where the Church is a laboratory that is helping us to learn how to ask for forgiveness when we wrong someone and to offer forgiveness when it will open the door to a new possibility. This is a place where we are, with God's help. learning to grow into the full stature of Christ, Jesus is the light of the world, who shines in the darkness. But we, as the Church, as His followers, are called to do the same: to be the Light of the world. ,

I’m absolutely convinced that most disagreements are not zero-sum games, and that many of our worst disagreements get to that point because of bad communication or mis-communication or no communication. And that this is true in intimate relationships as it is in global politics. So what might it look like for peace on earth to truly begin with us, and then begin to ripple across generational lines and gender lines and different political views, as we come together to learn how to be one in Christ?

What happens when we take seriously our calling to be “preparers of the way” and therefore allow the peace that Christ pours into our hearts to extend to one another, to soften our hard edges, to make us better communicators and more open to healing, and to forgiveness, and grace?

I think what happens is that peace starts to become palpable. People feel drawn into the love of God even more deeply and ministries are energized. We become, through the gift of community, ever more “the Body of Christ.” And as that happens, we learn what it means to be salt, and light, and yeast for the sake of this broken world. When we leave this place to take our place in this community as citizens we don’t leave our core values behind. We take them with us to be little lights shining in the dark.

This may all sound a little naïve and I get that but as we continue to get to know each other, I hope you will realize that I’m not naïve about very much. It’s hard work to be followers of Jesus and as I said when I began, I am fully aware that peace is a challenge. We won’t always get it right. But we try, one day at a time. And when we do fail we ask for forgiveness from God and one another and we begin again. And again. And again.

Keep praying for one another, and especially pray for those who get under your skin and who may even be taking up residence in your head rent free. Let there be peace on earth indeed! But let it begin with us, with each and every one of us. And let it extend to our families–so that between now and Christmas we find ways to reconcile and to be reconciled if there is strife in our extended families. And as we practice forgiveness and love at home, let it extend beyond those walls. If we can do just that much we will make this a holy Advent and the adventure of faith will continue to unfold in God’s own time.

St. Nicholas of Myra

Today is the feast day of Nicholas of Myra—Saint Nicholas. He was a real person: a fourth-century bishop of the Church who may have attended the Council of Nicaea (from whence we get the Nicene Creed.) He is remembered as the patron saint of seafarers, sailors, and children. 

Little is known that can be clearly distinguished from the many legends about his life, but one thing we are fairly certain we know is that he was tortured and imprisoned for his faith during the reign of Emperor Diocletian. His memory and example was brought to this country by Dutch colonists in New York, who called him Santa Claus.

For my money, Miraslov Volf, who is the Director of  the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and Professor at Yale Divinity School, is one of the most creative theologians of our time. He wrote an extraordinary book a decade or so ago entitled Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. 

Volf makes an important distinction between God and our images of god. (Paul Tillich was making the same distinction many years ago when he spoke about “the God beyond God.”) That is to say there is this God who is beyond all of our knowing—“I AM” who encountered Moses at the burning bush but would not give a name—the God we can only glimpse and never control. And then there are the images we make—some of them iconic and some of them graven—but all of them limited and therefore always needing to be critiqued.  

Two common (but according to Volf false) images of god are god the negotiator and god the Santa Claus. Sometimes we imagine god as the one with whom we can play “let’s make a deal:” god, if you do this for me then I will do that. And conversely, if I do this for you then I want you do that for me.  Even our prayers (especially our prayers!) can become a means to an end: we want what lies behind door number one or curtain number two. If God will make my child better then we will go to church every Sunday. Promise. Alternatively, we run to the god of consumerist materialism to sit on his lap: the god who knows when we’ve been bad or good, so we better be good, for goodness’ sake! The god who gives everything and yet demands nothing. We go to this god with our shopping lists: insisting that we have discerned not only what we want but what we need.

I don’t want to caricature these images, and Volf doesn’t either. But they permeate American Christianity. And Volf challenges both images as idolatrous, insisting that the God of the Bible is first and foremost a Giver. He insists that the God of authentic Christian faith is the God who has created us and the world in love. But unlike Santa Claus-god, the Giving God’s gifts require a response in us, because God takes us seriously. God’s gifts, Volf writes, oblige us to a “posture of receptivity.” And once we have received God’s gifts, that marks not an end but a beginning. As we move toward gratitude we move also toward a willingness to respond in kind and to act in a similar way in the world. And so his title: it is not only God, but we ourselves who are called to “giving and forgiving” in a culture stripped of grace.  

I think we need to reclaim the Bishop of Myra as a saint of the Church. The problem for us is that "Santa Claus" has been co-opted to the point where the guy at the mall and coming down the chimneys bears little resemblance to the Bishop of Myra, who knew the cost of discipleship and whose generosity most definitely grew out of his encounter with the Giver of all things, the Maker of heaven and earth. So I think that old St. Nick needs a good press agent, and needs to be reclaimed by the Church. This blog aims to do that...

By this we know that we abide in Christ, and that Christ abides in us: because he has given us of his Spirit. Even in Advent, even as we prepare for the birth of the holy child, we remember that in his birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, Jesus has sent the Holy Spirit to be with us. We have been given gifts—each of us—to do the work of ministry. Some we already recognize and claim and use. Some we are only beginning to claim, or even identify. And still others have been buried deep within us and remain unacknowledged. These, too, need to be unearthed and discovered like pearls in a field so they can be claimed and used for the sake of God’s reign.

This season of Advent puts in front of us an opportunity to once again encounter the God who truly is beyond God—the God beyond all of our doctrines (even the Creed passed at Nicaea!) all of our images, and all of our language. It gives us an opportunity to be still in the presence of this God who refuses to be used by us or domesticated by us or co-opted by us: this God who is the Giver of all things.

My prayer is that this Advent season we might each encounter this living God anew, the One who so loves the world that he sends Jesus into it in order that we might have life and have it abundantly. And that in a couple of weeks we might recognize the Gift that comes to us wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. When we do, I pray that we might receive the Gift with gratitude and then respond with our lives. Or as Christine Rosetti put it:

What can I give him, poor as I am? 
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb 
If I were a wise man, I would do my part. 
Yet what can I give him, give my heart.

 

Hope: A Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent

Our word for today is Hope. On this first Sunday of Advent and of a new liturgical year (and as it turns out this very first day of December) we have lit the first Advent Candle on our Advent wreath to mark the beginning of our Christmas preparations and to remind ourselves that we are a people of Hope. Quite literally, we are a people gathered at the corner of Church and Hope. You can’t make this stuff up!

I want to offer you a visual reminder of something important. I’d like to ask that we turn the lights off, for just a moment. And let our eyes adjust. It’s not the same as if it was midnight here but even on a Sunday morning, I want you to notice what it’s like without electric lights. (lights out!)

 I commend to you a book by Gil Rendle, a church consultant who has written an important book called Quietly Courageous: Leading the Church in a Changing World. At the end of that book, Rendle shares this story about a young boy who lived on a farm. He was instructed by his mother to go out on a pitch-dark night to make sure the barn door was closed and locked. He left through the back door but immediately returned, telling his mom it was too dark. She handed him a flashlight and told him to try again but again he came back pretty quickly. He said the flashlight was too weak and he couldn’t see the barn. His mother said, “you don’t need to see the barn…you just need to walk to the end of the light.”

The Scriptures tell us that a people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. The Scriptures tell us that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. What I want you to notice is that it only takes a little bit of light to help us walk in the dark. I know that it’s harder and harder to drive at night as we get older, at least that is my experience. But we don’t need to drive anywhere we just need to walk – one step at a time. It's harder to read in the dark or see the words in the Hymnal. I get that. But for now, for just a moment longer, let’s just take in what is here. We are here. God is here. And the lights shine in the darkness of this holy space – and more importantly still, in the world.

That’s hope. It’s a word sometimes cheapened by everyday usage. We may hope that the Patriots win a game, or we hope that it isn’t raining when we take our vacation next summer. But hope is a bigger word in our vocabulary of faith than that.

“Faith, Hope, and Love,” at least according to St. Paul...seem to be the big three. Love may well be “the greatest of these” but the implication is that the three are somehow connected. I’ve always thought that the journey begins with faith, which isn’t about saying a creed, or about memorizing a catechism, but about trust and more specifically about well-placed (rather than mis-placed) trust. Faith leads us to hope. And hope gives us the courage and the vulnerability and the strength to love God and our neighbor.

Hope is an Advent word–the first word that carries us toward the celebration of our Lord’s birth, and sets the tone for these next four weeks. I often turn, when I am thinking about words, to Frederick Buechner. He writes, in “Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC” -

For Christians, hope is ultimately hope in Christ. The hope that he really is what for centuries we have been claiming he is. The hope that despite the fact that sin and death still rule the world, he somehow conquered them. The hope that in him and through him all of us stand a chance of somehow conquering them too. The hope that at some unforeseeable time and in some unimaginable way he will return with healing in his wings.

Jeremiah was a prophet of the Babylonian exile. He had a very difficult ministry, called to prepare the people while all seemed to be going well for the Babylonian exile. I’ve come to make a connection between our world and the world of the Old Testament between 586 and 911. (Alright, full disclosure – Walter Brueggemann and others smarter than I am have made this connection, but I fully embrace it!)

9/11 you all get immediately, even if you were a child then or not even born. 586 BCE was the year that the Babylonian Army marched into Jerusalem and destroyed the temple, which led to a period of grief, and despair, and exile in a foreign land. It is a number that marks the end of something, with a future yet to be determined. Jeremiah’s calling was to prepare people who didn’t want to face up to that for what was coming, before it was clear to the pundits what was unfolding.

Imagine our modern prophets in the U.S., as those people who through the 1980s and 1990s tried to warn us that we were on the wrong path in so many ways, that the ferment in the Middle East was not going to go away until there was peace with justice there. We are preparing not just our hearts but our homes, our church, our world for the coming of the prince of peace. There cannot be peace on earth until is begins with us, and surely it needs to include not just followers of Jesus but our Jewish and Muslim cousins as well. Pray today and always for the peace of Jerusalem.

Jeremiah had difficult words to speak in a time before people were ready to hear them. But late in that book–late in that “scroll”–there is this tiny little text of hope, this fragment really of just a few sentences that looks beyond the difficult days to the dawn of a new day.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: "The Lord is our righteousness."

The days are surely coming…all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well, as Dame Julian put it. That’s hope. Learning to see well enough in the darkness to keep on keeping on. All Jeremiah gives us is a dead branch. A stump – out of which a new shoot will come. It’s not a lot to go on, friends! But it’s enough. In fact, I suggest to you that that is the only way any of us get through difficult days, is to know that even if it will be a long haul, that a new day will eventually dawn. I think if we can ponder that reality we begin to get a grasp of what hope is really all about. The image of a “stump of Jesse” that gives way to a “new branch of David.”

I’m sure you’ve all tried to keep maple trees from consuming some piece of property by cutting them off at the trunk, only to come back in the spring and find a new shoot coming up out of the old trunk. That happens, as I understand it, because the root system already there makes new life come about more quickly, even though at ground level it appears that life has been cut off.

Stay with that, because that can guide you through this often frenetic month. Ponder for a moment what that means not only in the Bible, but for the spiritual life. For our real lives. Advent is such a time, a time to contemplate new beginnings and new possibilities. It’s a season of hope.

Jesse is King David’s father. What this metaphor suggests is that even though it appears that the Davidic dynasty comes to an end–that it is only a stump, from that stump new growth will appear. For us as Christians that is language we cannot help but to connect to Jesus, the Son of David who is our hope and our salvation.

And so Advent begins with talk about endings, about the end of the world we know. But don’t be deceived. The Christian paradox is that we begin here because we know that God is doing a new thing. God is birthing a new creation–new heavens, and a new earth, a branch of David out of the old stump of Jesse. For us, every ending is but a transition to a new beginning. That’s what we say at funerals, when a loved one dies, that life is changed, not ended. That our dying leads to new life. So, to, with our families, when old patterns die, and new ones begin to emerge. So, too, in congregations and in the world in which we live, and in this town of Bristol. Signs of endings, all around us. But not the end. Rather, a new beginning.

That doesn’t mean we won’t grieve the loss of what we once knew and loved. I have often said that it’s not really change that people fear, it’s grief. It’s loss of what is known, in exchange for what is not yet known. But we do it because of hope. Hope isn’t naivete, or blind cockeyed optimism. Hope isn’t the power of positive thinking. Rather, hope is the conviction that sin and death never get the last word. It is the conviction that love is stronger than hate, that truth is stronger than lies, that trust is stronger than fear. 

Hope is the knowledge that God is in the healing business, and that health is God’s plan for us–personally, socially, and cosmically. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best thing, Andy Dufrane tells Red in The Shawshank Redemption. Indeed. If we face a choice every day to get busy living or get busy dying, then it seems to me that the key to living is hope.

Hathy and I have had the privilege this week of having our son, Graham, and our daughter-in-law, Cara, with us in Worcester for Thanksgiving. We put our Christmas tree up and put the lights on it. (Please don't report me to the liturgical police!) Watching our one-year old grandson, Julian, watching and noticing and being captivated by those little lights is a beautiful thing to see, and an inspiration. The light of Christ has come into the world. That Light continues to shine in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it. 

Today we begin a new liturgical year together, and we light this first Advent candle to remind ourselves and each other that we are a people of hope, and to remind ourselves and signify to the world that we will not let our worst fears dictate our behaviors. We choose to act and live and move and have our being from that place of hope. We just need to keep on walking to the end of the light. Eventually that will lead us to a barn in Bethlehem. Stay tuned.

The Banality of Evil, Part III

So, how do we conspire against evil? How do we actively resist? In this three-part series (Part I can be found here and Part II can be found here) I have tried to "set the table" for this post by reviewing the notion of the banality of evil. I'm more a preacher than a theologian and most of my posts here are sermons. But these thoughts have been nagging at me - and trying to write it out is helpful to me; maybe a few readers too. 

Along the way I mentioned a previous series of posts on The Book of Revelation and on Walter Wink. In one of those posts, I quoted Wink as writing these words: 

The Church has many functions, not all related to the Powers. With reference to the Powers, however, its task as we have seen is to unmask their idolatrous pretensions, to identify their dehumanizing values, to strip from them the mantle of respectability, and to disenthrall their victims. It is uniquely equipped to help people unmask and die to the Powers. (emphasis mine, page 164)

He goes on to talk about homelessness and how we tackle this problem. 

No social struggle can hope to be effective if it only changes structured arrangements without altering their spirituality. All our letter writing, petitioning, political and community organizing, demonstrating, civil disobedience, prayers and fasting move to this end: to recall the Powers to the humanizing purposes of God revealed in Jesus. We are not commissioned to create a new society; indeed we are scarcely competent to do so. What the Church can do best, though it does so all too seldom, is to delegitimate an unjust system and to create a spiritual counterclimate. We may lack the wisdom to determine how homelessness can be solved; and our attempts as churches to feed, clothe, and house the homeless may only obscure the true causes of homelessness and fill us with false self-righteousness. But what we can do is create an insistent demand that homelessness be eradicated. We are not "building the Kingdom" as an earlier generation liked to put it. We simply lack the power to force the Powers to change. We faithfully do what we can with no illusions about our prospects for direct impact. We merely prepare the ground and sow, the seed grows itself, night and day, until the harvest. (Mark 4:26-29) And God will - this is our most profound conviction - bring the harvest. (page 165)

We humbly plant seeds. We don't "fix" the problem of evil like it's a widget. No technical fix will work on this ultimate adaptive challenge, the human condition. But we can name, unmask, and engage the powers. This is what Jesus did all the time in his ministry and we are called to follow him on this path. 

Perhaps the best example I know of from human history of resisting the power of evil came from the people of Le Chambon, France during the Second World War.  I want to focus here on the pastor of that congregation, Pastor Andre Tocme. I wrote about him in this post from 2017. For anyone who doesn't click on that hyperlink, read this much at least: 

When people insisted, after the war, that the people of Chambon had done something "good" they refused to accept praise. They insisted that they were simply doing what had to be done. "Who else could help them? Things had to be done and we were there to help, that is all!"

If you read any connections from this three-part series with the times we are living in right now, then thank you for being an astute and careful reader. But in truth the current context simply clarifies some things I've been thinking about in a lifetime of pastoral ministry. I was raising these same questions in a series of blog posts here during my sabbatical in 2017. But as often happens, I got back to work - back to the daily routine. One nice thing about blogging is that there is a record though and I realize that some of the biggest questions are ones that I circle back to over the course of my ordained life. As Eliot put it, we shall not cease from exploration... [and] we do sometimes find ourselves where we began and recognizing it for the first time. 

I'm now back in a parish, in time when our nation and world are facing incredible challenges. I don't think it's helpful to call a person evil, no matter how badly they behave. It's simplistic and unhelpful. It often leaves us paralyzed. I've tried to uncover some truths here and likely I haven't gotten it all right because these are difficult questions. But I've come back to the notion that the Church matters, and right now the Church has to figure out how to resist evil or what Walter Wink called, "the domination system." We have to figure out how to name, unmask and resist those powers that destroy the creatures of God and steal human dignity. 

Perhaps the counter to the banality of evil is the banality of good, or something like that. It's not flashy. The people of Chambon refused to accept praise because they "were just doing what had to be done." So it is with us. I like that Wink quote as well - the Church is not equipped to even begin to solve the problem of homelessness. But we can and must move beyond charity. We insist on human dignity, no matter what. 

We are called to be faithful, not necessarily successful. We are called to trust God but in the meantime to act in good faith, trusting that our small deeds can ripple out and ultimately change this world. The arc of the moral universe is indeed long (long long) but it does bend toward justice. We are called to live like we actually believe that to be true.