December 8, 2024: Passion

Scripture: Luke 3:1-6

3 In the fifteenth year of the rule of the emperor Tiberius—when Pontius Pilate was governor over Judea and Herod was ruler over Galilee, his brother Philip was ruler over Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was ruler over Abilene, 2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas—God’s word came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 John went throughout the region of the Jordan River, calling for people to be baptized to show that they were changing their hearts and lives and wanted God to forgive their sins. 4 This is just as it was written in the scroll of the words of Isaiah the prophet,

A voice crying out in the wilderness:
    “Prepare the way for the Lord;
        make his paths straight.

5 

Every valley will be filled,
    and every mountain and hill will be leveled.
The crooked will be made straight
    and the rough places made smooth.

6 

All humanity will see God’s salvation.”

The Summer before my fifth grade year, my family and I took a vacation to the Bahamas.  As a kid, I was very interested in sharks, so, when my dad told me that on this trip, we were going to go snorkeling with a school of sharks, I was thrilled.  On the appointed day, our boat took us out into the middle of the sea.  The boat stopped, and then carefully, we slipped into the water.  Around us, a group of black tip reef sharks were circling, and we floated in their midst, keeping still to avoid agitating them.  These sharks hunt mostly at night, and it was the middle of the day, so the chances of anything bad happening were close to zero.  Even so, I remember a moment when, as we were floating there, my dad suddenly grabbed me and pulled me several feet to a new position.  When we finally got out of the water–without incident–I asked him why he’d done that, and he said to me “I thought one of the sharks was coming after you.”  

That, in my opinion, is what a good dad–and indeed a good parent–does.  At least one part of being a good parent is knowing when to step back, and when to jump in to support and protect your child.  The same is true, I would think, with a good God.  In our passage for today, we meet John the Baptist, proclaiming a message of repentance and forgiveness.  As he does so, John walks along the Jordan River, tracing with each step the line separating Israel’s least faithful, and most faithful periods.  To John’s west lay the land once ruled by David and Solomon, to his east, land that had once been wilderness.  In John’s west, the Israelites had found a home, and lost their way.  They settled the land, grew powerful and wealthy, rejected God, exploited the poor, descended into civil war, and, eventually, were conquered.  To John’s east lay the wilderness through which the Israelites had once wandered after escaping slavery in Egypt.  Then, the Israelites had been a people with nothing.  They had no homes, little wealth, little power, and no other option but to depend completely on God.  Like a good parent, God had fed them and protected them.  And now, as men of blood like Lysanias and Philip, Caiaphas and Annas, Herod, and Pilate ruled over God’s people, John, a man of the wilderness, saw signs of change.  Signs that God was preparing to enter into the world, and set things right, once again.    

And yet, what precisely this means continues to surprise us.  In 1994, American artist Judy Collins released a song called “Song for Sarajevo,” a song written to commemorate the suffering of the people of the capital city of what was then Bosnia, which was, at the time, the center of a savage war between Bosnia and Serbia.  As a child growing up in the 90s, my earliest memory of Christmas is sitting in our living room as light glanced off of the ornaments on our tree and my parents rotated Christmas CDs through our stereo, listening spellbound to this song.  The song did not call for one side to win the war.  It called war itself “An evil bird that never comes to rest, feeding on the dreams of all the children.”  And it challenged those of us who listened to it not with warnings and foreboding, but questions: “When you close your eyes, do you dream of peace?  Do you dream of flowers on the hill?  Do you dream you see your mother smiling?  When you close your eyes, do you dream of peace?”  

To answer yes to these questions is to accept the Gospel’s vision of the future God is building.  When John sees God returning to the world, it is not to fight on behalf of Israel, nor the people who would later become disciples, nor even the Church.  And John does not raise up an army of anti-Herods, or call the people listening to him to take up arms in a crusade of liberation.  He calls upon his listeners to repent.  To turn their hearts east, across the Jordan and back into the wilderness.  To once again depend passionately upon the God who has promised to make level every mountain and to fill every valley, to make the crooked ways straight and the rough places smooth, that it might not just be Israel, or the disciples, or the Church, but all humanity that sees God’s salvation.  

And even then, even after we have accepted this, God continues to surprise us.  As I’ve gotten older, my relationship with my dad has changed.  As a small child, I depended on my dad to keep me safe. At 32, I now have a deeper appreciation for how hard it is to be an adult, and how much he and my mom sacrificed to raise my brother and I.  Conversely, when my dad and I talk these days, and the subject turns towards some question of theology, or some piece of being a pastor, I have noticed how much he clearly wants to learn.  To be clear, my dad has always been interested in my interests, and I will always count on him for advice.  But now, instead of relying on hierarchy to order our relationship, we are able to learn from each other, support each other, and walk with each other on this journey we call life.  

And what else does Christmas mean, if not the transformation of our relationship with God into something like this?  When God comes to be with us, God does not do so as a conquering warrior on a chariot of fire.  Power cannot overcome the powerful.  Only surrender can do that.  To level every mountain and fill every valley, God will set aside God’s own power.  To make straight our crooked ways, God will walk them with us.  To make smooth our rough places, God will make these places God’s home on Earth.  And to bring salvation to us, God will come to us on Christmas Day.   Through Jesus Christ, God will choose relationship over hierarchy, compassion over structure, and presence over power.  God will know us.  God will be one of us.  God will save us all.  And every knee will bow and tongue confess that the Lord of all Creation is the baby in the manger.  May our passion be for this God.  May we follow John the Baptist into the wilderness, and find there the Child who will finally bring peace to earth.  Amen.  

December 22, 2024: Promise

Scripture: Luke 1:26-45 (CEB)

26 When Elizabeth was six months pregnant, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a city in Galilee, 27 to a virgin who was engaged to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David’s house. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 When the angel came to her, he said, “Rejoice, favored one! The Lord is with you!” 29 She was confused by these words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 The angel said, “Don’t be afraid, Mary. God is honoring you. 31 Look! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great and he will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of David his father. 33 He will rule over Jacob’s house forever, and there will be no end to his kingdom.”

34 Then Mary said to the angel, “How will this happen since I haven’t had sexual relations with a man?”

35 The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come over you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the one who is to be born will be holy. He will be called God’s Son. 36 Look, even in her old age, your relative Elizabeth has conceived a son. This woman who was labeled ‘unable to conceive’ is now six months pregnant. 37 Nothing is impossible for God.”

38 Then Mary said, “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be with me just as you have said.” Then the angel left her.

39 Mary got up and hurried to a city in the Judean highlands. 40 She entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 With a loud voice she blurted out, “God has blessed you above all women, and he has blessed the child you carry. 43 Why do I have this honor, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 As soon as I heard your greeting, the baby in my womb jumped for joy. 45 Happy is she who believed that the Lord would fulfill the promises he made to her.”

The Word of God for the People of God

Thanks be to God!

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.  You are speaking truth to power, you are laying down our swords.  Replanting every vineyard till a brand new wine is poured.  Your peace will make us one.” 

These words, written by musician Audrey Assad, have been stuck in my head all week.  They’re part of her song “Your Peace Will Make Us One,” a powerful reimagining of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Assad continues, referring to God as she sings “I’ve seen you in our home fires burning with a quiet light.  You are mothering and feeding in the wee hours of the night.  Your gentle love is patient, you will never fade or tire.  Your peace will make us one.”

For me, these words are a reminder that the appearance God’s power takes in our lives and in our world is often not what we expect.  Likewise, there is an unexpected quality about our passage for today, and our passage’s central character.  Historically in the Church, Mary has been an object of devotion, described over the ages as pure, as sinless, as someone who never gave in to, or even experienced, the temptations of natural human existence.  Which is another way of saying that Mary has been put in a corner, and treated not as a person, but as a symbol of what a historically male group of theologians and clergy think a woman should be.  

That portrait is not in keeping with the image of Mary we encounter today.  Today, we look on as Mary receives a visit from the angel Gabriel, itself a subversive act of God.  Living when she did, Mary was victimized by patriarchy and empire, but today, we see an angel come to Mary directly, turning her into a first century Moses, an intermediary through whom God will act in the world.  God’s power will be displayed through Mary, but what this display looks like will be different than at earlier points in scripture.  This time, God will come into the world as a baby called Jesus, and in her body, Mary will nourish and nurture God through pregnancy, through childbirth and childhood, all the way through adulthood, one sleepless night, at a time.  

To meet Mary as she truly is might make some of us just a bit uncomfortable.  In our passage for today, we see Mary consent to play the role God is asking her to play.  Undiscussed is the reality that, in Ancient Rome, between one and fifty and one and forty women died in childbirth.  Undiscussed also is the reality that the son she will raise, the son she will treasure with all her heart, will be born into the world as a second class citizen, a man outside of the imperial bargain made between Rome, Herod, and the Temple.   For Mary to embrace her role in the story that God is now writing is not some display of meek piety, but an act of unbelievable courage.  Today, we need to be careful with how we use her example.  Because as Mary lived under patriarchy and empire, so has her memory often been used as a tool by the Church to reinforce patriarchy and empire.  The reality – that Mary was not a passive vessel of meek piety, but a real person who courageously chose to join God in defying the powerful men of her day – has often been more convenient for the powers and principalities of our day to ignore.  As Mary emerged from outside the bounds of traditional authority, so today should her example inspire us to challenge traditional authority ourselves, to cast off our own biases and assumptions, and watch the margins for signs that God is entering the world in unexpected ways once again.  

Yesterday, I was having lunch with a couple of friends, one of whom recently had a child.  And as we were talking, and as my friend was describing her experience of motherhood, she shared with me that so close is the connection between a mother and her newborn, that babies don’t identify themselves as separate from their moms until they are about three years old.  Watching my friend, whom I have known since our freshman year of high school, hold her newborn, and listening while we talked, as her baby coo’d gently in her arms, I sensed that this feeling of connection went both ways.  That in some subliminal way, my friend and her daughter both considered the other not a separate being, but another half of a common whole.

This is what God creates through Mary.  Mary who would risk motherhood, Mary who, by her courage, shows us God’s real power.  Mary who reminds us that God’s power reveals itself not in great displays of destruction, but in moments of healing, in which we become closer to God and one another.  In our broken world, God’s power is the power not just to enter the world in unexpected ways, but to create bonds of uncommon power between unlikely partners who, together, were created in God’s image.  This is how God relates to us, and the proof is in the baby Mary holds in her body.  Like Mary, that baby will struggle against an empire.  Like Mary, that baby will be victimized by an empire.  Like Mary, that baby will respond to that empire with acts of love, offering forgiveness, even upon the cross.  Every step of the way, that baby will prove that God is with us, no matter what.  And as Mary held that baby in her body, so will that baby by his own body and blood nurture the coming reality in whichb=j  all our empires are dismantled, and each one of us is free, because God’s peace has made us one.  

The story of Mary is subversive.  And in its subversiveness, it reminds us that God’s power does not work how we expect it to.   God is entering the world in unexpected ways, challenging us to connect with unexpected people, and bringing into being an unexpected vision of reality in which we are bound to God and each other with ties of faith, hope, and love that cannot be broken.  This is the promise of Advent.  May we claim that promise in faith, rejoice together in the world that God is building, and praise God saying “Your peace will make us one.”    “Glory Glory Alleluia, Glory Glory Alleluia, Glory Glory Alleluia, your peace will make us one.”  Amen.  

This final paragraph references Assad’s song some more

December 24, 2024: Joy

Scripture: Luke 2:1-20 (CEB)

2 In those days Caesar Augustus declared that everyone throughout the empire should be enrolled in the tax lists. 2 This first enrollment occurred when Quirinius governed Syria. 3 Everyone went to their own cities to be enrolled. 4 Since Joseph belonged to David’s house and family line, he went up from the city of Nazareth in Galilee to David’s city, called Bethlehem, in Judea. 5 He went to be enrolled together with Mary, who was promised to him in marriage and who was pregnant. 6 While they were there, the time came for Mary to have her baby. 7 She gave birth to her firstborn child, a son, wrapped him snugly, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the guestroom.

8 Nearby shepherds were living in the fields, guarding their sheep at night. 9 The Lord’s angel stood before them, the Lord’s glory shone around them, and they were terrified.

10 The angel said, “Don’t be afraid! Look! I bring good news to you—wonderful, joyous news for all people. 11 Your savior is born today in David’s city. He is Christ the Lord. 12 This is a sign for you: you will find a newborn baby wrapped snugly and lying in a manger.” 13 Suddenly a great assembly of the heavenly forces was with the angel praising God. They said, 14 “Glory to God in heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.”

15 When the angels returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go right now to Bethlehem and see what’s happened. Let’s confirm what the Lord has revealed to us.” 16 They went quickly and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. 17 When they saw this, they reported what they had been told about this child. 18 Everyone who heard it was amazed at what the shepherds told them. 19 Mary committed these things to memory and considered them carefully. 20 The shepherds returned home, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. Everything happened just as they had been told.

The word of God for the People of God

Thanks be to God!

In some ways, the story of Christmas, seems to begin the way all great stories do: with a letter from the IRS.  “In those days Caesar Augustus declared that everyone throughout the empire should be enrolled in the tax lists.”  And so, from Rome, to the shores of the English Channel and the Rhine in the North, to the banks of the Nile in the South and the Atlantic Ocean in the West and the Euphrates in the East, people interrupted their lives to register, in the name of empire.  

In some ways, the story of Christmas begins as a story of anonymity, of a pregnant woman and her husband traveling along a road to his hometown.  Today, the route between Bethlehem and Nazereth is 94 miles long.  Imagine making that journey while pregnant, on foot, or on the back of a draft animal.  Of course, this is nothing compared to the 2,525 mile route between Bethlehem and Rome.  And yet, from his palace on the Tiber, the emperor Augustus pens an order, and thousands of miles away, Mary and Joseph must respond to that order.  Augustus, the overlord of millions, the leader of the most dangerous and successful military in the world, would have no reason to care about the feelings and thoughts of a pair of people, getting on with their lives, thousands of miles away.  To Augustus, Bethlehem and Nazareth were backwaters, little, forgotten places not worthy of attention.  And so, the plight of Mary and Joseph went unnoticed, fading into the dark anonymity of human history.  

That’s how things were then.  And looking at our world today, it’s remarkable how little has changed.  Today, we are wealthier, and more powerful, than any society in human history.  And yet somehow, we are more distant as well.  We have sent astronauts to the moon, but struggle to connect with our neighbors.  We can have packages delivered to us in a matter of hours with the single click of a button, but our obligations keep us from getting lunch with a friend.  We can see people suffering on the news, but can neither stop this suffering in real time, nor agree on how to fix its underlying cause.  In this age of interconnectedness, we are further apart than we have ever been, plunging into the dark grasp of anonymity, loneliness, and resentment.  

The story of Christmas only seems to start in Rome.  In reality, the story of Christmas begins much earlier.  It begins in a garden that may or may not have existed, in a moment when a paradise was destroyed.  It begins with the isolation of humanity from God, and it continues as the logical consequences of that isolation are worked out.  As we drifted from the God who gave us life, we tried to secure our basic needs in other ways.  We changed.  We hurt each other, and were hurt by each other, and we hurt ourselves too.  And we woke up one day, and realized that the darkness was all around us, closing in, drawing tighter, drawing deeper, consuming and suffocating and destroying.  And in the darkness, we realized that we were lost.  

On January 2, 2018, I was skiing with my family up in Vermont.  I was with my brother, and we’re both pretty competitive people, so we pushed it all day, trying to get a bit faster on each run, on a day when the temperature was nine below zero.  On our last run, my luck finally ran out.  Trying to make a turn at high speed on a day when the snow was frozen into ice, I slipped, fell, and slid into the side of a tree at at least 15 miles an hour.  The first thing I noticed after hitting the tree was that I couldn’t move.  The second thing I noticed was that I was alone.  The third thing I noticed is that when you can’t move, nine below zero is pretty cold.  And as I started trying to figure out what to do, in the back of my mind, some rather unsettling questions and doubts started to creep in.  

And then, as I was lying there, a man skied over to me.  He told me that seen me fall, that he’d called the ski patrol, and that they would be there soon.  He took his skis off, sat down, and invited me to rest against his back, so that I could take the pressure off my leg.  In a few minutes, the ski patrol arrived, loaded me onto a toboggan, and skied me down the mountain towards the waiting ambulance, which took me to the hospital, where the doctors and nurses stabilized me.  A few days later, one of the ski patrollers came to visit me, and as he and I were talking, I asked about the name of the man who had come to my rescue.  And sitting there, the ski patroller looked at me like I was crazy.  He had no idea who I was talking about.  He could not remember his name, and listening to him talk, I got the sense he didn’t even remember someone else was there.  

I have no idea who that man was, or why, just when I needed him, he happened to be there.  But when I contemplate the darkness of our world, his example reminds me that even in our times of deepest darkness, light still breaks through.  Because the story of Christmas does not end as it begins.  It ends with joyful shouting and angels singing and awe in the presence of the One who created us, and who has come to be with us once again.  It ends with the power and violence and anonymity of empire challenged by the power of relationship, empathy, and compassion.  It ends with a father, and a mother, and resting in a manger, a baby boy, called Jesus Christ.  The story of Christmas is the story of a Savior, who meets each of us on the frigid mountain of our own lives, who rolls back the darkness, brings heaven and earth together, and declares once and for all time, that we are never, ever, ever alone.  “Joy to the World, the Lord is come, let Earth receive our King.” Hallelujah, God is with us.  Christ is here.  Amen.