Tuesday, December 21, 2010
December 19, 2010 - 4th Sunday in Advent
Christmas is a tricky time.
On the one hand, we have the twinkling of Christmas lights, the fresh smell of Christmas trees (or pine-scented candles that help us pretend we have a real tree), the sweetness of Christmas cookies, the anticipation of being with loved ones, far and near, the sounds of the seasonal music that we love (even if we are quite sick of it by the time Christmas comes and goes). We have all of these things, the sights and scents and sounds of Christmas, that evoke warmth and joy and contentment. Aaahhh.
But other hand, this time of year rarely lives up to the hype that comes with it. The Christmas season is built up, created out of our memories, our fantasies, colored with our nostalgia of Christmases past seeping into Christmas present. We have a sense of what Christmas is supposed to be like – even if we know that is almost never is whatever we think about what it is supposed to be. Think about the song White Christmas: "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know..."
There's a wistfulness to that song, an underlying longing that we all can recognize and relate to, a desire of our lives today to match up with the lives we used to know, Christmas the way we used to know; our lives the way we used to know.
At this time of year especially, we feel the pangs of discontent, that twinge of sadness a bit more intensely, tied up in our desire for peace and harmony – in our world, our families, our inner lives. We find ourselves wishing that the puzzle pieces of our lives would fall back into place. And we feel it even more keenly at this time of year when maybe life isn't working out quite as we had planned, when the dreams we dreamed once upon a time haven't come true; as we face the reality that they might never come true...
It's something Joseph would have related to. We meet him this morning in Matthew's gospel, and he has come to a turning point in his life. He had planned out his life in one direction, and suddenly, he finds that he's on a different trajectory, headed places he never would have imagined, through situations he never thought about facing. We don't know all that much about Joseph. He never speaks a word in the Bible; he just has a silent, supporting role, but we can guess that he was much like any other person, that he was looking forward to starting a new life with his betrothed, Mary. It's easy to imagine that he was excited about bringing her to live with him as his wife, and anticipating what their life together would bring - a home, a family, a career. Faithful, righteous Joseph, who doesn't quite know what to do when Mary turns up pregnant, and Joseph knows for a fact that this baby ain't his! So now what? Which way to turn? As he stands here at the crossroads, realizing that his plans and hopes and dreams will never come to fruition, when he recognizes life as it was will never again be like the life he used to know...
It's a tough place to be. But it's just then that something amazing happens! God sends a messenger, an angel to Joseph while he's asleep & dreaming. The angel comes to Joseph in his confusion and sorrow over what might have been and says, “Do not be afraid...” Have you ever noticed that angels always say that whenever they show up? “Do not be afraid...”
“Do not be afraid...” because while this may not have been your plan, it's part of God's plan. “Do not be afraid...” because even though it may seem like your world the way you wanted it to be is ending, God is making a new beginning. “Do not be afraid...” because the Holy Spirit is working in Mary and through you to bring a savior into the world, the one you will name Jesus, which means, “God saves.”
“Do not be afraid...” because in this baby who will be born is the fulfillment of all that God has been doing since the dawn of time to heal humankind, to make it whole. In this child, creation will be restored, and all of those longings, those brief glimpses you get once in a while about how life really could be, of how the world really should be – in Jesus, they will be made a reality, because in him, you will see that God is with us.
In the middle of the turmoil of his life, God sent an angel with this message - “Do not be afraid – God is with us,” and this indeed was good news for Joseph, not just now when he has found out his fiancée is pregnant, but it's good news for all the days that lie ahead – because even once Joseph marries Mary, even once Jesus is born, it won't all be smooth sailing for him and his family. The road ahead holds its own drama and danger – shepherds intruding in the middle of the night to see his new son, wise men bearing unexpected gifts, a hurried escape into the foreign land of Egypt, fleeing from the jealous wrath of King Herod. It will be years before Joseph's life will settle down and look even remotely like the life he used to know. But through it all, Joseph can cling to the words of the angel: “Do not be afraid...” - God is with us.
These words are good news for us too, as we face the uncertainties of our own world, as we stand here this Christmas season, looking behind to what we thought our lives would be and ahead to the reality of what our lives will be. Good news because whatever it is that we are facing – financial difficulties, health problems, faltering relationships, old aches and fresh wounds – whatever burdens you carry with you this morning, the angel says to us along with Joseph – God is with us. God is with us in this child once born, the one who lived and died and rose again; God made human, dwelling among us, filled with grace and mercy and love, sent to reassure us over and over again that no matter what we face in this life, we are never, ever alone. We are cared for and tended by Jesus, who saves, by Emmanuel, God-with-us.
This is amazing good news – and this is our story to tell. It is the gift we bring to a hurting, questioning world this season, a world that is longing for some good news. God sent Joseph an angel, a messenger. Through the words of scripture, God speaks to us with that same message – Do not be afraid, I am with you. And now God sends us forth as messengers too. May our mouths be filled with the words of angels this Christmas season and always: Do not be afraid. God is with us.
Amen.
December 12, 2010 - 3rd Sunday in Advent
When I was a kid growing up out in the country of rural Pennsylvania, my parents taught me a very important lesson about crossing the street, 1 most of you probably heard growing up too. When you get ready to cross the road, before you do anything else, you stop, look, and listen. Stop, of course, so you wouldn't rush out into on-coming traffic; look - both ways- so you could see if there was a car coming either direction; and listen - very important where I lived- I told you we lived just past the crest of a hill, and you couldn't see what was coming from the one direction, so you had to pay attention to hear if something was coming. (People flew up & down our road, even though the speed limit was technically 45 miles an hour)
Stop, Look, and Listen - 3 things you had to do to make sure you knew if something was coming or not.
Stop, Look, and Listen - a good reminder of what is happening in today's gospel lesson, and how important it is if we're going to know that something's coming.
See, John the baptizer was stopped. When we first met him here in Matthew's gospel, just last week, John was out in the wilderness, and he was on the move. He was on fire, alive with energy and urgency, summoning people to prepare the way of the Lord, to repent for the kingdom of heaven was near. John was a man of action, baptizing sinners in the Jordan, the symbol of a new life, a fresh start. Back then, John was eager, excited, impatient for the one who would come after him, the one who would come with an ax in one hand, and a winnowing fork in the other, ready to cut down any dead, fruitless wood and burn up any chaff with unquenchable fire.
But that was then, and this is now, and now John is stopped. Literally - he's been arrested. Thrown in prison. Closed in by the walls around him. Nowhere to go, nothing to do. Nothing but time to think. To wonder. To question. To doubt. See, he's heard what Jesus has been doing - and there's nothing in the rumors about Jesus chopping down worthless trees, nothing about separating the righteous from the unrighteous. John had had great expectations for this one who was coming after him, but Jesus doesn't seem to fit the bill. He's nothing like what John thought he would be. Jesus' ministry is more about planting, not chopping down, more about welcoming and including that separating out. John expected him to come with the blazing fire of judgment in his eyes, yet Jesus seems more interested in healing, restoring, loving. And didn't Isaiah talk somewhere else about the Lord's anointed proclaiming liberty to the captives and release to the prisoner? (yep, that's in chapter 61 & Jesus claimed it for himself in Luke when he read it in the temple). And yet here John still sits in jail. So he sends his followers out with this question, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?"
Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? Maybe John's question finds an echo in our lives, in our experiences. Maybe we find ourselves stopped with him this morning, this Advent season, caught in our own little prisons of stress or busyness or anxiety. Backed into a corner by the burdens we carry with us. Caged by our cares and concerns. That cancer diagnosis. The strain of caring for a loved one whose health is failing. That job you lost months ago with no sign of another on the horizon. Your child who you know you raised to know better, but who can't seem to do better & just makes one bad decision after another. That addiction you can't conquer. The relationship that once held so much love and joy and now seems on the verge of imploding. And in the midst of all of these things, with responsibilities and deadlines and to-do lists, we may come to a stop, filled with questions about this one we follow, asking with John, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Are you the real deal or not? Because if you are, Jesus, why aren't you doing anything? Why haven't you fixed it yet? What are you waiting for? Can I really count on you, or is it time that I looked elsewhere for help? Serious questions for this time of year, when we like to pretend that life should be about lighter matters - cookies and shopping and celebrations... yet this shadow remains.
But it's okay, if we find ourselves stopped in the hubbub of the season - because it is only when we stop that we can really look and listen - to see what Jesus is doing and hear his words to us.
It's what Jesus said to John's disciples - Go and tell John what you hear and see. Listen. Look. See what's happening right before your eyes! “...the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” John had one set of expectations about how the Messiah would change the world, but Jesus has his own plan. Jesus doesn't come with eyes blazing, full of anger and wrath. He comes bringing love and hope and the promise of wholeness. The change he brings starts not at the global level, it starts one-on-one. It's not about temporal power, he's not coming to take over the world. This is about eternal transformation. When Jesus comes into the world, people are changed. They are healed. They are set free. One by one. It's got a ripple effect. One life touches another and another and another, spreading from person to person. It may be slow and gradual; it may be almost instantaneous, like those videos on YouTube that go viral & before you know it everyone's seen it & who can say why... But when Jesus comes, that's the evidence that he's come, that he's the One: people are changed – and changed people change the world.
See, Jesus doesn't always come in the ways that we expect. (He usually doesn't do what we expect, actually!) But that doesn't mean he's not at work in the world. Stop. Look. Listen. Where do we see him and hear him? He's there whenever and wherever lives are being changed, whenever and wherever people are given a chance to start again. Jesus is there in the countless food pantries and soup kitchens that feed the hungry. He's there in the Salvation Army bell ringer, collecting money for those who are struggling. He's there in the respite care provider and the live-in companion aide. Jesus is even here in this place, living in you, in us, reaching out to help someone in need through the Giving Tree or Christmas-at-Sea. He's here in the Word and the Water and the Wine, giving himself to us so that we might give ourselves to others. Because Jesus has brought light into our darkness, hope into the situations that hold us down. He has changed us. And as changed people, we are set free to change the world with the love and hope and healing we ourselves have known. So this week, stop, look, and listen for Jesus. Look with new eyes. Listen with new ears to see what Jesus is doing in your life and in the world. And when you see him and hear him, do what Jesus told John's disciples to do: go and tell someone else. Because that's how it works: one person sharing the good news with another – and you may be the one God will use to let them know that in Jesus, there is hope. In Jesus they can be set free.
Thanks be to God!
Amen.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
December 5, 2010 - 2nd Sunday of Advent
One of my favorite books from when I was a kid was The Monster at the End of this Book, starring Lovable, Furry Old Grover. It's a fun book – Grover talks to you the whole way through. You open it up to the 1st page, and Grover, it seems, has seen the title. And poor old Grover is in a panic – because there's a monster at the end of this book, and there's no way that Grover wants to meet that monster. So he spends the whole book trying to convince you, the reader, not to keep going. He pleads, he cajoles, and when that doesn't work, Grover tries to keep you from getting to the end of the book by setting up obstacles: he ties the pages together, he builds a brick wall – hoping you won't be strong enough to turn the pages, because every page brings the end of the book nearer, and there is a monster at the end of this book!
We come to this second Sunday of Advent, and as we always do (there's a pattern to these Sundays of Advent every year) – we hear John the Baptizer out in the wilderness, crying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near!... Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” But we're a lot like Grover. Because when we hear what John has to say to the Pharisees and Sadducees, how the one who is coming after John the Baptizer will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire, how he comes with a winnowing fork in his hand to clear the threshing floor and burn the chaff with unquenchable fire, we get nervous. We get afraid. We get anxious. Like Grover, we're pretty sure we don't want to meet what waits for us as the end of this book. So we hear the call to prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight, but instead, we set up obstacles & road blocks. Instead of clearing the way so that Jesus can come to us more quickly, we do whatever we can to slow him down. It reminds me of this past spring, when Andy & I were driving around Oceanside after that big wind and rain storm. You remember that – the one that knocked out the power and blew down trees and made a big mess. We were there a day or 2 after the storm, doing some errands, and for whatever reason, we thought it would be easier or faster to go down side streets, rather than fighting traffic on Long Beach Road – but every way we wanted to go was blocked off. We wanted to turn right – we had to turn left. We wanted to go straight, we had to turn. All because of downed trees and barricades. No one had prepared a way for us; our paths were not straight – and it took us forever to get where we were going.
And I was wondering how often we do that to Jesus, however unintentionally. We fill our lives with the roadblocks of busy-ness, detours for distractions, sinkholes of sin. The closer Jesus gets to the monster at end of this book, the more we try to stop him, afraid we will be destroyed by what he finds there.
It's hard for us to face ourselves a lot of the time, to admit where we have gone astray, to confess our sins in the presence of God and of one another. It's not something we do very often, if at all. Sure, we do the confession of sins ever week at the beginning of worship. But it's a pretty generic thing - “Most merciful God, we confess that we are captive to sin, and cannot free ourselves. We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed; by what we have done, and by what we have left undone... (ELW)” And it's good to confess together – but we never really put any specific sins into words – we don't name particular thoughts, words, or deeds. We don't confess exactly what it is that we have done or left undone, at least not out loud, not so anyone else can hear. I was trying to imagine what that scene in the river would have looked like – if the crowds coming to confess got to whisper their sins for John's hearing alone, or if they had to stand there in the river and name their sins for all to hear. Either way, it's a scary thought – because to name them out loud makes it more real. It forces us to take responsibility, to consider what it would really look like to actually repent, to change our lives, to let Jesus go ahead and separate the wheat from the chaff of our lives.
Confessing our sins is never easy. Repenting and preparing the way of the Lord go hand in hand, and so it's no wonder that we set up roadblocks. As hard as that can be, as frightened as we are about what we'll find at the end of our book, no matter how hard we try to keep Jesus away, the good news is that Jesus always finds a way to get to us. Nothing we do can keep him from coming to us – not to burn us up, but to save us from ourselves, to transform us. The Message translation of the Bible puts it this way: The main character in this drama—compared to him I'm a mere stagehand—will ignite the kingdom life within you, a fire within you, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out. He's going to clean house—make a clean sweep of your lives.”
That's what Jesus comes to do – to give us kingdom life, to stir up the Holy Spirit. And what a relief when he does, when we remember the water of our baptism pouring over us, cleaning us, washing our sins away, bringing new life within us, a fresh start, a chance to begin again - so that we don't have to be afraid of what the end of the book holds. Because at the end of the story, there is only Jesus, and he comes to set us free. Thanks be to God. Amen.
November 28, 2010 - 1st Sunday of Advent
Get Ready – Jesus is Coming
Advent 1 – November 28, 2010
“Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming,” Jesus says. “Be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” Keep awake – be ready. Important words to hear as we enter this new church year, as we begin Advent – a season of waiting and watching and getting ready for Christ to come – not as he did a long time ago in a manger far, far away, but as our triumphant King returning to judge the world. Keep awake; be ready! Important words, because it's easy to get sleepy, to start nodding off, to get distracted when you've been waiting, to forget what you are supposed to be getting ready for.
Jesus gives the disciples these examples of normal, everyday people caught up in the normal, everyday routines of their lives, just doing what everyone does. He points to the days of Noah, when people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. He tells of 2 men working in the field, 2 women grinding meal together– nothing special about them. There's a home owner, caught off guard by the thief who breaks into his house.
Jesus tells the disciples these as cautionary tales – not because anyone is doing anything inherently wrong. There's nothing bad or evil about eating and drinking, marrying or working. You can't exactly blame the owner of the house for not knowing the thief's schedule. No, Jesus tells these stories to remind the disciples of how easy it is to fall asleep, to lose focus, to get so caught up in the things of this world that they lose sight of what is eternal. For those first disciples, and for the early church who first read these words from Matthew's gospel, the temptation was to forget who and what they were waiting for, and how they were supposed to live in the meantime, and if they did that, it would be a good bet that they would not be ready when Jesus came. So Jesus tells them these stories to warn them too, because when Jesus comes again, there won't be a warning. (Bus story – Aunt's house vs. our house – have to be outside, ready & waiting - can't see the bus coming from where I lived; now chance to scurry around at the last minute.) Jesus will come unexpectedly, unpredictably. There won't be a chance to get ready at the last minute, so they need to stay alert, they need to prepare for whenever Jesus will arrive.
On this first Sunday of Advent, Jesus' words come calling to us too, calling to us across the centuries: “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming... be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” How easy it is for us to fall asleep, and not just because of the tryptophan from all that Thanksgiving turkey. No, Jesus is talking about our spiritual sleepiness, the temptation we face in our busy lives, with our busy schedules, to forget that there is something – Someone!- beyond our day-to-day lives; something – Someone!- more important than our to-do lists. Even in this season when so much of the world & our lives remind us that Christmas is coming, it's easy to prepare for Christmas and forget about getting ready for Christ. With everything else there is for us to remember, it can be easy to forget who & what we're waiting for, or that we're even supposed to be waiting and watching at all. We forget to be on the lookout for Jesus coming into our world, here and now, forget that we're supposed to be ready whenever he comes.
So, knowing that tendency toward forgetfulness, the 1st Sunday of each Advent brings us one of these gospel stories that startles us out of that spiritual sleepiness with their mysterious talk of the end of time, that splash of cold water, chosen to jolt us awake. Here in Matthew's gospel, tales of floods & people being taken & left behind, and thieves breaking in in the night – none of them the most comforting images, but they get our attention. And we are blessed to get this reminder every year, to hear Christ's call to keep awake and be ready – because we need it! Ready or not, Jesus is coming, at an unexpected, unpredictable hour – but he is coming.
And that's good news, even though we can be scared by the underlying tone of judgment. For those first disciples in the early church, living in the midst of struggle and persecution, the promise that Jesus was coming, however unexpectedly, to judge the world and set it right was a promise filled with hope. It was a promise that God had not abandoned them, that God had not forgotten them or their world. It was a promise that God didn't enter the world once as a baby and then leave forever, but that the same Jesus would come again. It is a promise of presence. And knowing this changed everything. It filled them with anticipation, even as they went about their normal lives, as they ate and worked and married and slept. It gave them eyes to look for the extraordinary presence of God in the midst of their ordinary routines. That is what it means to keep awake, to be ready – it is to be on the lookout, to seek what Christ is already doing in the world & to join in, even as they wait for him to fulfill the promise to come again.
Jesus is coming. It is a promise for us too – and an invitation – an invitation to reorient our lives – to center them around the Coming One. And this is one way to think of what it might look like to keep awake and be ready. Waiting for Jesus' return is kind of like having a baby. Kind of, because you have a better idea of when a baby will arrive – even if you don't know the day or the hour, you know that you have about 40 weeks to prepare. And that's what you do. Andy and I spent all sorts of time getting ready – painting the room, buying & putting together furniture, picking out car seats and strollers and high chairs and toys and books and all of the many many things these tiny creatures need. We went to breastfeeding class and childbirth preparation classes. We toured the hospital – not the hospital we ended up delivering at, but still... We went to the doctor on an ever-increasing basis, we picked out names, we read the books so we would know what to expect while we were expecting. We tried to get ready at work – the closer I got to my due date, the more things I had to arrange for my time away – coverage pastors, and making sure our congregational leaders knew who to call & when, the last flurry of visits before maternity leave. And in the midst of all that, life still went on... we went to work as usual, did the laundry, shopped for groceries, did the dishes, took care of our dog and cats. Just because I was pregnant didn't mean that I sat around and only did pregnant woman things.
We can take a lesson from that. Waiting for Jesus is a lot like waiting for a baby... because it's an active waiting. There are things to be done, ways that we can be getting ready, ways that we can be a part of what Jesus is already up to in the world by reaching out to the world around us, we can keep that focus. Keeping awake and being ready doesn't mean that we have to go sit on a mountain somewhere to pray and watch the clouds and just basically suspend our normal lives. Being ready means being faithful to what God has already called us, in the places God has called us to, in our different roles – as parents and children, spouses or singletons or widows or widowers, students, workers, friends, neighbors – but to put Jesus at the heart of your life, to follow through on that commitment we talked about last week – the one where Jesus comes to have first place in everything. And we do it all with expectation, with urgency – we know the due date is getting closer; any day could be the day. As we wait for Jesus we know that any day could be the day that we meet him finally face to face. And that will not be an end, but instead, a new beginning. It could even be today. May we be ready to meet him with joy and anticipation, whenever he may come.
Amen.
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