Putting our Hearts in Lent

 Ash Wednesday - 2-17-21

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

In “the before times,” I feel most of my pastor colleagues – and myself included – often started our Ash Wednesday sermons with some version of “I’m not ready for Lent!” But this year feels different. Because the original lockdown from Covid-19 happened during the season of Lent last year, we joked at first that we were just in one long Lent until we could come back together again. In fact, some proposed delaying Easter (for just a few weeks) to be celebrated when we could all be “back.” How naïve that feels now, almost one year later.

Ash Wednesday is truly one of the “Last big things we did together in the before times.” Everything else from here on out, we will have done before in lockdown. Thank goodness for the gifts of previous experience! But almost one year later, it certainly does feel as though we have had a year of Lent. So, this year, I’m not ready to start a season we really never left. 

But ready or not, Lent happens. Just like life. Like Lent, life arrives like an unwelcome guest. Our lives have been interrupted when we become marked by death, grief, and pain. When we are suddenly not the person we were before, but aren’t yet the person we will become. And this is a very uncomfortable place to be.

This has been the human story from the very beginning, as we heard from the story of Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden. After they had eaten from the fruit of the tree, they were no longer the same. God asked them a lot of questions about what happened – “Where are you? Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree? What is it that you have done?” And, instead of exploring these questions, our first parents chose to blame one another… the snake… God… anyone but themselves for their own actions.

In one of her songs, Sara Bareilles describes the scene in Eden from Eve’s perspective: “Walking in the garden was a serpent-shaped heart and he told” her a lie about God: “What is broken cannot show,” and “less than beautiful is worse than unholy.” She did not trust that God had created her good, just as she was. Like for our first parents, it’s hard for us to see ourselves as God sees us. It’s hard to image that God actually does love us for who we are.

I’m guessing, if you are human and have lived on this planet for more than a few seconds, your heart is not pristine red, shiny, or intact like the decorations for valentine’s day just a few days ago. Of course, we all know that love and other feelings don’t originate with this blood-pumping muscle in our chests. But we CAN feel so full of love our hearts feel as though they might burst. Our hearts can ache with compassion and empathy, or with longing or loneliness. Our hearts can sting from being hurt. Our hearts can get bruised. Our hearts can even get broken.

We have a saying that we “put our hearts into” things that we care deeply about. Some of these things seem innocent enough – family, friends, country, our jobs, living a comfortable life, freedom. But, as Jesus says about what happens to these treasures after a while … these things we think we should love above all else WILL fail us. Our homes and our cars, our careers, our health, all the stuff we bought online out of boredom…. They will let us down.

We are human. We love what is bad for us – and I’m not talking about chocolate or giving up sugar for Lent. I’m talking about how we hang on to what feels comfortable and normal. And how trying to go back to these things is one of the reasons we are still here, almost one year later. We love what is comfortable, familiar, and convenient, because – let’s face it! Change is hard! Altering our behavior is hard! Even when – ESPCIALLY WHEN – it would be for the best.

We’re not in Eden anymore (as if we ever were) but we are definitely in a strange and unfamiliar place. Our efforts to ignore this wilderness only prolong our time here, until we cannot keep it out any longer, and this reminder knocks us off our feet. Like Ash Wednesday, the start of our 40 days in the season we call Lent.

Ready or not, Ash Wednesday is the time to take stock of our dusty, sore hearts. And we often find what we don’t want to find. We find our sinful and broken actions have left scars on our hearts, and left scars in the lives of others. We find we are lost in a wilderness we don’t want to be in.

But we are not left in our dusty, heartsick state. We are not abandoned to the wilderness surrounded by our comfortless treasures. Our damaged hearts are not cast aside and thrown away, like unwanted valentines on February 15th. We can show our broken selves to God and know that Love will find us there. God renews our hearts, minds, souls, our whole being. The good, the bad, the ugly, the parts that feel unlovable and unworthy. All of it. All of us. No matter how long it takes. 

And so, we wear the sign of the cross in ashes on the outside to remind ourselves of the work that God is enacting on the INSIDE Of us. The confessing our sins. The accepting and embracing of our brokenness and trauma. Acknowledging and processing the ways that we have been marked by death and loss in the last year. Beginning the slow and painful process of the transformation of our dusty and broken hearts into ones that are healed and whole…. All so that we might be better able to love the other dusty and hurting hearts out there in our lives and in the rest of the world.  To love one another with our whole hearts… with hearts that are broken AND beautiful. 

We know that will likely take more than forty days. It might take more than a year. It will likely take our entire lives. But together, trusting in Jesus, we will get through this Lent-within-Lent, hearts intact and ready to love, beautiful broken bits and all. Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

The First Actual Disciple

 2-7-21

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

During this time of “Coronatide Winter,” I’ve noticed so many things being turned into Hashtag Challenges. Some are fun – go look up #TargetDressChallenge, you won’t regret it! But some are also serious.

I’ve seen my pastor friends doing the #danglingerringchallenge, which I assumed was for fun – until I heard the story behind it. Turns out, last year an African American woman pastor in the Methodist church named Chenda Innis Lee was repeatedly harassed by one of her members for wearing dangling earrings during their Zoom worship, and that member wrote multiple letters saying that her choice was “too distracting.”

As women in public ministry, myself and my female colleagues over and over again have been forced to defend our calls to other people. All women I know have experienced inappropriate comments about how much we weigh, how we do our hair, the clothes we wear, how young we look. I personally have been mansplained, stalked, harassed, and called names online and in real life. Our calls are belittled when the culture automatically assumes that the ONLY acceptable pronoun for “pastor” is “he.”

The words we use are very important. The Gospel of Mark isn’t wordy, but Mark knows what he’s doing. He’s painting for us a picture of Jesus who is a man of both words AND action. Jesus chooses his words carefully. He means what he says and leads by example. And when he calls us to follow, he expects us to do the same.

It's actually a little amusing to me that we are STILL in the first chapter of Mark, but there is so much going on here – healing one person, then healing a lot of people, then Jesus needs some down time. Then Jesus preaching and heals some more. But it all began with one person – the mother of Simon’s wife. I think it’s pretty cool that they told Jesus about her fever right away, and that Jesus got right to it and healed her.

And then she got up and began to make everybody some sandwiches… oh wait, what? That’s NOT cool! The feminist in me rankles a bit at first to her response to the gift of new life…. as she seems to repeat the broken systems in place in her old life.

But maybe, just maybe…. Simon’s mother-in-law does something in chapter 1 that none of the other disciples get around to doing in ALL of the chapters of Mark. She was the first disciple of Jesus who actually behaves like one.

This woman was healed and restored, to respond out of her gratitude as a mode of true discipleship, following in Jesus’ (Future) footsteps. Though Simon, Andrew, James, and John were CALLED first, SHE is first to live out her call. SHE, who was not even given a name in Mark’s Gospel. SHE is the one who shows us the way – opening her home and her doorstep to be the staging ground for the healing of an entire city in need.

She was the first woman in Mark, who followed Jesus, as arguable the first diaconal minister, and she certainly would not be the last.

Jesus is on the move, and these women keeps pace with him, more so than their male counterparts. Women ministered to Jesus and even stood vigil at the cross. Women were the first to witness the empty tomb on Easter morning. Women like Priscilla, Tabitha, Junia, and a pretty cool one from Greece named Lydia, and also many, many others worked solo or side by side with their male counterparts to help be midwives at the birth of God’s kingdom here on earth.

Female bodies are sacred, blessed, chosen to for this holy work, when the rest of the world, even in the church, would rather not acknowledge this, or even recognize all the ways we harm one another by not honoring this call from God comes to all kinds of bodies.

Jesus came to earth in a body. Jesus healed bodies – cast demons from them, restored them to health – and also fed them. …. And by the way, he also took care of his body with rest… all still within the first chapter in the Gospel of Mark. Not a bad beginning.

Unfortunate for us, we still seem to be at the very beginning of working on this particular justice issue. It is 2021, and little girls can grow up to be anything they want to be, including pastors, right? We sometimes forget that there are still denominations that call themselves Lutheran who do recognize women’s ordination. 18% of the member churches in theLutheran World Federation do not ordain women, and many ELCA churches still balk and calling a female pastor. In so doing, they are denying and rejecting vital organs in the Body of Christ.

While the rest of the society values only certain types of bodies are worthy, Jesus continues to insist that all bodies are loved and worthy of being seen as holy – bodies of all abilities, ages, colors, genders, sizes, and health levels. And all bodies deserve healing, rest, and care. In fact, Jesus put his own body on the line to get this point across. And God thought all bodies – including your body - are so important, that he raised Jesus up… in a bodily resurrection. Probably the best offering in the #resurrectionchallenge

Whether you wear dangling earrings – or not – you are loved and you are called. Whether you need to step back and make space for rest or are ready to lean in and eager for the work that is to come, you are still loved and you are called. And as we remember that God loves, creates, and calls all bodies to this work, we can create space for all the different ways that we all can follow Jesus. Thanks be to God, amen.

 

"Who is Worthy?"

Wednesday evening prayer - Narrative Lectionary 

2-3-10 “Who is Worthy?”

Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight oh lord, our rock and our salvation, amen.

The centurion – a Roman citizen and military leader - is pretty close to the top of the food chain in Jesus’s time. Toward the bottom were all the people that the Romans had conquered, including Jesus’s people. So here we have this powerful man who answered to very few, ask for healing on behalf of his slave. He might have heard something about Jesus, since Jesus had been to Capernaum before, healing and cast out demons on his previous trip. He could easily have commanded or threatened Jesus. Instead, he asks the Jewish elders to intercede with on his behalf.

Presumably, the elders thought this centurion was a worthy candidate for Jesus because of he seemed like a “good guy.” It makes sense, since proximity to power is the next best thing to having power yourself.

But we know that that’s not how Jesus rolls. Jesus judges the worth of people from an entirely different criteria than that of the rest of the world. Because to Jesus – and to God – all people have worth.

I really like a quote from the show Doctor Who when he says, “In 900 years of time and space, I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important.” Afterall, not unlike Jesus, Dr. Who prefers to hang out with “normal” everyday people, and brings those people on their many adventures. Also, must like Dr. Who, Jesus seems to show up exactly at the right place at the right time, as he did for the widow who Jesus encountered next.

Imagine for a moment that you are the woman in this story. Though your husband has died and can no longer provide for you, you were fortunate enough to have had a son who survived to adulthood. It would have been his job to take you in and support you, since insurance policies, pensions, 401(k)s, social security, and Medicare did not exist. Now imagine you are instead attending the funeral of your only son, knowing also that now you are destitute.

When Jesus saw the widow’s grief, his heart went out to this woman who had lost everything. She was the complete opposite in every way to the centurion commander. And yet, she was very much the same in Jesus’s eyes.

Man, woman. Powerful, powerless. Member of the occupying army, part of the population being oppressed. And yet, both have worth, and Jesus helps both. Jesus healed the centurion’s servant long-distance. Then, in the next town over, Jesus got up close and personal, interrupting a young man’s funeral in order to make it unnecessary.  

I think Doctor Who (and Jesus) is right. You are important. But some people are treated by others as “worthless” - worth less than other people. We may not have slaves and centurions in this time and place, but we have questions of worth of our own to ask ourselves if we are paying attention.

Which kind of people have you seen that are treated as having more worth than others? We are seeing the answer play out every single day – some gets paid less for doing the same job. Some have access to getting the vaccine are not the same as those being hardest hit by Covid-19. Those who break the law for different reasons getting different bail amounts and being treated differently in our criminal justice system. While these things continue, we all suffer.

We need one another, because it is only together, we are whole. Together we are complete. Together we are the children of God. Together we are worthy, because it is God, not the world, who has given us our worth, and no one is not important. Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

 

The Call we Walk

 

Sermon 1-24 – 21

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

I grew up on a dairy farm in rural Wisconsin, where my sibling and I learned from a very early age to pay attention to where we walked. In fact, on the door to the barn hung a funny sign that warned, “Don’t follow in my footsteps – I think I stepped in something!” You know exactly what I’m talking about. If you are walking around a farm for any length of time, most likely you will get SOMETHING on your shoes. It goes with the territory.

No unlike farm life, fishing life gets messy too. Jesus was not strolling along a pristine beach dotted with tiki bars. I imagine, fresh from his baptism, he strode along that beach with purpose – dodging some fish guts here and there, weaving his way through the bustle of business, on a mission: to confirm the members of his administration’s inner circle. The moment was at hand: John the Baptist had been arrested, and Jesus needed a “few good men.”

Simon, Andrew, James, and John were certainly not theologians, great communicators, knowledgeable, powerful, wealthy, or even literate. After all, where did Jesus find them?... At the wharf, slogging through a day’s work at the family business.

But if it were not for these ordinary, flawed, people, WE would not be here, listening to Mark tell the story of Jesus to us now. WE are here because of everyone who mentored us in the faith before us fished for people…. Who fished for people… who fished for people… who eventually caught US. … so that we may be CALLED by Jesus to follow him too, and fish for people ourselves. No bait and fishing pole required!

In the Jesus administration, it doesn't matter what school we attended or how much money we make or what our children amount to. We don’t have to fill out an application showing how many committees we've served, how many years we've faithfully taught Sunday school, been in youth group, or sang in the choir, though these are all worthwhile things. To be called by Jesus, to work in his administration, you only need one thing on your resume: being a child of God. Which, by the way, you already are, by virtue of your baptism.

Whether you are young like Samuel, stubborn like Jonah, eloquent like Paul, thoughtful like Mary, brave like Moses and Miriam, faithful like Mary Magdalene, eager like Peter, curious like Philip…. We are all ages, genders, backgrounds, abilities….  And Jesus has a place for you here…  among his students. And he has called you for a reason…. to follow him and learn how to fish for people.

Well, a more accurate translation of what Jesus says here is actually “I will make you BECOME fishers for people.” We aren’t instantly good at it. It’s still hard, especially at first, and we of course can’t get good at it unless we PRACTICE. This doesn’t mean get out the boat and the fishing tackle, obviously. But are there skills, interests, talents, relationships, motivations, and passions that we already possess that we can use, to share our faith and help connect people to the Kingdom of God?

If we are truly to follow in the footsteps of Jesus though, I think that we must walk exactly where Jesus walked, even it takes us to places and to people we perhaps would rather not go to, and step into thing we would rather not step in. Jesus walked with people who were on the margins, who were neck deep in dealing with the muck of the world… forging relationships…. Treating all people with dignity and respect. 

This will probably mean getting a little messy, stepping into places that might leave a mark on us, slogging through some muck with people, entering into the mess of what it means to be human with one another. After all, this is exactly what Jesus did – stepped into the mess with us.

Jesus walked where we walked, so that we may walk with others who are in desperate need of a companion right now. This is the walk which we are called to. We walk without stopping until we all get to Justice, Mercy, and Freedom. Even if we step in things like Fear, Misunderstanding, Rejection, and the Unknown. We follow in Jesus footsteps, and we have to be willing to go where that takes us, even if we don’t feel ready or prepared to go there. 

We aren’t sure what we may be facing. Poet Laurate Amanda Gorman shared this week, “…We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter…“

Much like the disciples could not have known what they would face as they dropped their nets to follow Jesus. It turns out they stepped into … some very big footprints. Theirs was a big job, and it wasn’t easy, and they failed many times. We face a difficult hour too, in more ways than we can even name.

We may not feel up to the task, but as we heed the call of Jesus, we pray. We pray along with the Reverend Dr. William Barber II as he preached Thursday – we ask our Lord to “Grant us wisdom for the facing of this hour until love and justice are never rejected” …  because we know that God will provide for us.

As we heed Jesus’ call, we pray for the wisdom and courage necessary to keep walking “until the poor are lifted, the sick are healed, children are protected, and civil rights and human rights never neglected” because with us, God abides with us.

As we heed the call of Jesus, we will keep walking in the light of God, and we aren’t going to stop, until we arrive at Justice.

The time is now. The kingdom is at hand. We are ready Get your boots on, let’s go. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Having Jesus-Vision

 Sermon 1-17-21 “Having Jesus-Vision”

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

In every place I have ever lived, one thing has remained the same: there are always “those places.”

You know exactly what I’m talking about. No one in New Jersey goes to Trenton or Camden if they can help it. In Pennsylvania, I can’t tell you the number of people who would tell me “Oh yeah, I used to live in Philly…. Until it ‘changed’. It’s SO different now.” Growing up in Wisconsin even, Milwaukee was talked about in a similar way – one of those places that surely “nothing good happens.”

There were certainly “those places” in Jesus’s time as well. Like Trenton and Princeton, the town where Jesus is from – Nazareth – is so close to the town Nathaniel is from. And yet, they were obviously worlds apart. Nathaniel clearly sneers at the thought of anything good coming from Milwaukee, I mean… Trenton…. I mean… Nazareth. And yet somehow, his friend Phillip is undaunted: Come and See! He insists, even though he has only known Jesus for like 5 seconds. Miracle of miracles, Nathaniel puts aside his preconceived notions about Nazareth, and follows Phillip to Jesus. And boy was he surprised! 

We are currently in the season after Epiphany, at time in cycle of the church year where we focus on all the ways that God reveals Godself in our lives, in the past, in the present, and in the future. It’s when we usually hear the parts of the Bible that tell us how Jesus started his ministry and called the first disciples… like snarky Nathaniel.

Up until that moment, Nathaniel was a man who was SURE that he knew how God operates. He saw the world as many of us do – God uses some people but not others, God is present some places, but not others. But Jesus sees a different way. Jesus saw something in Nathaniel – Jesus saw him for who he truly is – beloved child of God.  

This might sound like a small thing – but is it revolutionary, then and now. The kind of love has the power to save us from the depths of shame and crippling despair, and the power to make us very, very angry. Just a few chapters later in the Gospel of John, Jesus says the line he is most famous for: “For God so loved the world that God gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” To see the world through the vision of Jesus is to see a world where all people have value. And…. THIS is still an extremely controversial message. It was back THEN, it was during the Civil Rights movement… and it STILL makes people angry even now.

Back when I drove a lot more, occasionally I would get wrapped up listening to NPR shows, like “This American Life.” A man shared how when his daughter turned 4, she became very interested in WHY we celebrate Christmas. With some simple but exemplary evangelism, he got his daughter a children’s bible, and they began to read it together (well done!). They talked about how Jesus was a preacher, and he spread the message that God loves everyone.

Not long after, they drove past a church with a HUGE cross in their front yard… which the girl of course asked about. Her father admitted that they had not gotten to the ending, and to his credit, was both honest and age appropriate about telling her about how Jesus was executed by the oppressive Roman government because of his message.

Fast forward a few weeks later to MLK day weekend, and he took his daughter out to lunch on her day off from school. She saw a picture of MLK in a newspaper, and of course asked who it was. When he said Dr. King was a preacher, and she got excited and asked, “For Jesus”? Yes, he explained, and Dr. King also taught that you should treat everyone the same no matter what. For a moment, the girl was silent in thought. Then, she looked up at her dad, and asked him, “Did they kill him too?”

The ironic thing is that the show this aired on was called “Kid logic: Stories of kids … arriving at perfectly wrong conclusions” …. But this kid got it EXACTLY RIGHT! This 4-year-old totally SAW the way the world works in a way that most adults miss, or refuse to see.

The season of Epiphany is about seeing things in a new way. On this weekend we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we remember that he had Jesus Vision. And, like Jesus, he not only saw injustice, he also called it out. Dr. King went to “those places” like Birmingham and Montgomery, to name the sin of racism for what it is – evil. And he called out his fellow (white) pastor colleagues for their lukewarm support. They wondered why Dr. King would go to Birmingham, which prompted him to write in his famous letter while he sat in a jail cell: “I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

I have said at one time or another something to the effect of “I don’t see color” or “I’m colorblind.” This statement seems innocent enough. But I have since learned that this idea erases and dismisses the real experiences and struggles of people of color. This is also why saying things like “Just be kind to one another” is not enough, because no amount of “kind acts” on the part of individuals will answer for the 400+ years of racist history we must wrestle with if we are indeed serious about healing and unity. We must name the evil if we are to cast it out on Jesus’ name. And as we can see… we have our work cut out for us.

Can anything good come from …. Any of this? We don’t know it yet. We can’t see it yet… at least not with our own eyes. Nathaniel took a chance on what he did see, he took the risk of being wrong… and Jesus told him – you are going to see greater things than these. And he did. As a follower of Jesus, Nathaniel saw water turned into wine, people being healed of their illnesses, the hungry being fed, and the dead being raised.

Can anything good come from… any of this? This weekend, our Bishop, Leila Ortiz shared this message: “This is not the first time that the church has been in the midst of utter chaos, destruction, and crisis. Through it all, and in every age….  God has not and will not abandon God’s beloved.” That means, God loves and will not abandon all the Nazareths, the Birminghams, the Milwaukees or the Trentons of the world. And God will not abandon US. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Special Delivery

 

Sermon 1-3-21

Grace and peace to you from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Hey it’s 2021! We made it! This year, more than most, we have we been looking forward to starting something new - though I think our “new years resolutions” might look a bit different than normal – like “move to the other side of the room,” “put on something besides sweatpants” and “less screen time.”

Beginnings give us hope. Maybe it’s the reason we return over an over again to hear our favorite stories, with their recognizable first lines: “Once upon a time” and “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” “It was a dark and stormy night.”

What about this one? “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”

And so, began the greatest story of all time, a story could not be contained on just one book or just one lifetime. It is a story that starts at the very beginning and tells of a God who created a world that was good and full of life, and God wanted to share it with us. Even though we tend to mess things up. Again, and again and again. So God decided to begin a new chapter to the story. And this one also began with “in the beginning.”

In an example of divinely sanctioned plagiarism, this is how the gospel of John chooses to tell us the Christmas story. There are no angels or shepherds or censuses or managers or even Mary and Joseph, or even a birth. Instead, John takes us back to the dawn of time, to tell Jesus’ origin story like a dramatic crane shot that zooms out and out and out until you can see all of creation: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”

And so, God’s word became flesh and living among us. The Word made a home with us. The Word landed in your neighborhood and moved in next door. The Word arrived at a new address - A living, breathing, Christmas card – with a message of love from our maker, arriving just in time in just the right place.

Having just moved myself, I feel like learning a new address, navigating mail forwarding, and getting your mail right is always an adventure – especially this year! And then there is always having to deal with getting mail addressed to some of the previous inhabitants.

When I lived in NJ, I got Christmas cards two years in a row from one particular family I didn’t know. Both times, the card had my correct address, but the recipients were Moe, Marc, and Justin, with no last name. Did Moe, Marc, and Justin forget to update their friends and family about their new living situation? Or did they not want to be found? I’ll never know. I just felt sad that, for two years in a row, I returned the cards with my own personal, though not very Christmas-y, message added: return to sender.

Our address, when written correctly and kept up to date, tells others where we call home. It’s an amazing system we use to receive everything from Christmas cards to ads to Amazon packages safely in a timely manner – at least, most of the time. And when we move, we usually leave a forwarding address to point the way to where we can now be found, which is exactly what I did when I recently moved from Pennsylvania to Virginia.

Certainly, the words that I read a moment ago from the Gospel of John is more beautifully written than the loveliest hallmark card. It is the first line of the most amazing story ever told. But it seems to me that it is also an address - not only an address of a physical location, but also an address in the span of cosmic time. This is not an address you could punch into your GPS and find the most direct route. This is an address that takes you back to the very beginning, to the Source, to where everything started. 

It was through words that God spoke our world into being at the very beginning. “Let there be light,” were God’s first words into the darkness. And there was light. And it was good. Then God really got going: “Let there be water and land and plants and animals and the moon and the sun and people!” And God saw that the world that had been created was VERY good, very good indeed. And the Word of God has been on the move ever since. 

God didn’t stop speaking after the universe was formed. Through human history God has been communicating to us, through ordinary people called to speak extraordinary words: through Abraham, Moses, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Samuel, Elijah and Elisha, John the Baptist, and countless more, …. All like letters from God delivered through the mouths of so many who have gone before us. Though sometimes the message didn’t always get through as intended.

But in these days and in these times, God speaks to us by a Son, born in a particular place and in a particular time, giftwrapped for us in rags. We celebrate that the Word didn’t just pop in for a quick visit. The Word didn’t plan an overnight trip just to see how things are going. The Word didn’t have to be up early in the morning beat the traffic home.

On Christmas Day, over a week ago, we celebrate when God moved to a new permanent address. The Word became flesh and lived among us. The Word set up shop and decided to stay.

The tracking number of this very special gift was first revealed to a poor, young, small-town girl in Nazareth. Gabriel informed her that a “shipping label has been created by the Holy Spirit; it is currently en route to womb.” Mary shared the good news with her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist, who confirmed that the package was on its way. Then, Mary and Joseph faced their own shipping challenges as they made their way to Bethlehem. When they rested with the animals, they thought they had been rerouted or even gone off course, but were exactly where they needed to be.

The shepherds found him first, at 100 Manger Way, Nowhere’s Ville. It was not very hard to find since they had gotten their directions from the finest heavenly host GPS: “to you is born this day in the city of David a savior, who is the messiah, the Lord.” These shepherds, poor and nomadic themselves, were surprised to see that the Word of God packs light. No carry-ons or checked luggage, no U-Hauls or moving vans for Jesus. They found just a wrinkled little baby resting in an animal feeding trough.

Some thirty years later, John the Baptist came on the scene, assuring the world that the Word of God had indeed moved into their very midst. Some people thought that John himself was the one who they were looking for, but John assured them he was just the delivery man. Any confusion was finally cleared up at Jesus’ baptism, when a voice came from heaven said – “you are my son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Quite the delivery confirmation.

And for three more years, the word of God walked and talked, taught and healed and fed, and proclaimed his message of the kingdom of God, until, like a gift we don’t understand, the world tossed him aside for something else they liked better. God gave us the greatest and most wondrous gift imaginable, a perfect reflection of Godself.

What we didn’t count on was that this love was going to mess up our ideas about God and love itself. So, after all this work on God’s part, and on the part of all the prophets, in delivering this gift, we often act as though we want to send the gift back. We would rather say search for the gift recipe and write on the box “Return to Sender. This is not really what we wanted. You must have the wrong address.” 

But God has already spoken. The delivery was already made, and there is no going back what that was before. A new beginning arrived, and it is very good indeed! In the year one AND in the year 2021. Thanks be to God, amen.

 

 

 

Searching for Jesus

 Wednesday 12-30-20

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Have you ever noticed that the rest of the world seems to forget about Christmas by about… 5 pm Christmas Day? All the decorations come down – and depressingly, the Valentine’s day candy is already out in the stores! Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the sheep, and even baby Jesus in the manger go back in the box to wait for next year… why we twiddle our thumbs and wonder how to pass this weird time between Christmas and New Year’s.

I mean, what IS time right now anyway? Jesus has gone from being a baby to 12 years old in a matter of days! Not quite a child but not yet grown up – and definitely too young to be wandering off by himself. Can you imagine what Mary and Joseph must have been feeling when they realized that they had left their son behind in Jerusalem? This is before text messaging, GPS, or the Amber Alert. To them, Jesus was truly lost, maybe even forever. 

Jerusalem is a huge city to get lost in – Mary and Joseph spent three whole days searching for him, probably panicking the whole time. When they found him in the temple, can you image the relief that flooded through them as they realized that he was safe? Joy and anger mixed together filled Mary as she admonished her son – “How dare you do that to us?!? We were so worried!” 

But Jesus’ answer blew them all away. “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know that I would be in my Father’s house?” 

Driving up and down the freeway back and forth between Pennsylvania and Virginia these last few months, one billboard in particular caught my eye – It says “Concerned? JESUS (in all caps) can be trusted.” This makes me want to ask – can he though? He sneaks away from his parents as a tween and he grows up to cause trouble as an adult. And, it seems as though we constantly have to “find” him! Has anyone ever asked you if you’ve “found Jesus?” This makes searching for Jesus seem like a world-wide game of “Where’s Waldo.” It doesn’t seem fair - Can Jesus be trusted when he seems to constantly wander off, and is always in need of being “found”?

Even worse, it seems like when we need Jesus the most, when we desperately need comfort and hope, that’s when he seems the farthest away. Where IS Jesus during a year like 2020, not to mention during all the regular times our hearts get broken, such as the death of a loved one or news of an illness or layoff or other trouble? Where IS Jesus when life gets tough?

A ball of light will drop and the world calls it the New Year. We make resolutions and later break them. We make plans and have visions of the future that don’t always turn out as we expect them to. As my favorite evening prayer puts it – we are called to ventures we don’t know the ending to, paths yet to be trod, and we don’t know where we’re going.

But no matter where the dawning of 2021 finds you, whether on the main road you imagined, off the beaten path, seemingly lost on a detour, stuck in a rut or in the ditch, dawn will come and the light of risen Christ will shine upon you.

At Christmas we celebrate the arrival of Jesus, the of hope in our lives. He isn’t hiding, like in a game of hide-and-seek, behind the couch with the dust bunnies. He didn’t jump out the tomb that resurrection morning, never to be seen again. He wants us to find him. That is the exact reason why Jesus clothed himself in love so that we would recognize him, by becoming a human being – a tiny helpless baby – to live a life of love, finally ending in a loving act of sacrifice. 

How better to show us God’s love than to become one of us and to tell us in the flesh, to be born “in the usual way”? How better to show us that we are children of God than to meet us face to face, in all our smiles and tears, in our joys and sadness, in our hopes and fears. There was no better way to wrap us up in love than to come as a present, wrapped like one of us.  This love has been in front of us the whole time, wrapped in the form of a baby, almost completely unnoticed.

This gift of love that he has given us, in coming as one of us, surprised humanity so much that we didn’t see it for what it was. God gave to us everything– life and love and freedom and hope and peace - before we even knew that we needed it.

While we are searching so hard something to give us peace and hope in a troubled world, Jesus find us and holds us tight. We too become all wrapped up in the amazing and all-encompassing love of God, not just during the Christmas season, but on every day of our lives. So then let everything we do, be it singing carols or getting ready for a new year, be done in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus, who finds us when WE are lost.  Amen.