December 25, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 9:1-6 + Titus 2:11-14 + Luke 2:1-20

This simple story, so familiar, yet always so fresh and so new is all about relationships.

The heart of this feast is not the divinity of Jesus. It is not about angels, shepherds, inns, and wise men. It is about God’s radical longing for us. Only those who have grieved the loss of their greatest love in life can understand. This feast is about an end to God’s grieving and longing for us. It celebrates God’s last, best, and final offer to heal what has been broken by sin, to restore the intimacy of that first garden relationshipand close the breach between the divine and the human, heaven and earth  In love with us with a love that we can barely dare to imagine, God places himself in our hands and in the hands of a troubled world. This is the heart of our wonder, the source of our Joy.

This birth is not just the birth of Christ that we celebrate, but our own birth as well.

Jesus was not born at the center of a holy world, but in a tiny remote nation occupied by a vastly more powerful Roman Empire. The population of that land lived under the threat of violence not only from the Roman troops, but from Jewish zealots seeking liberation willing to be terrorists to achieve it.

Our sense of the similarity of these facts with the condition of our world today makes the truth of this feast immediate. Not a lot has changed. There are still poor nations occupied by the powerful. There is still violence inflicted by troops and there are still zealots here and everywhere who madly resort to violence and terror to have their way and expel foreign troops in order to establish a political/religious empire of their own.

In the midst of it all, God still longs for us. We still celebrate Christmas and try to remember why while arguing over how to greet one another respectfully and be grateful for what we have rather than think about what we want.

The simple story we tell this day (night) is about relationships: what we mean to God,

what Joseph and Mary mean to one another, what Elizabeth means to Mary, what the birth of John means to Zachary, what we mean to one another. Our God is a God of Relationship: Father, Son, and Spirit, a God who not only loved this world into existence but also “so loved the world” as to become one with and in it.

If we are made in the image of this God, then we are a people of relationship who must resist every day anything that would isolate, separate, or exclude us from another.

We have, all of us, come from relationship and we are made for it. Nothing must disrupt nor diminish the importance of our relationships to one another: no ideology, no political system, no material stuff, no ambition, no job, no language should cloud or dim the vision of the human family that is so tenderly set before us with the story of Bethlehem.

This does not mean that we reject all things or refuse to grace our lives with beautiful

gifts or time-saving technology. These things can enhance the personal world and express our interior lives while bringing us together.

However, it does mean that we must spend as much time and effort on our interior lives and relationships as we do on the things we produce and consume so that these things do not take possession of us. And so, I give you a challenge today and propose a plan for the next seven days, the last seven days of this year. When we next gather and assemble in this holy place, we shall pass into another year of grace and life before God. Each night for the next seven, ponder the mystery, the joyful mysteries of your lives. Speak to friends and family members of the gift they are in your life. Let no one be taken for granted.

Then, when we next assemble in the name of the Lord, we will have refused to let go of Christmas, and what it means will have survived the trash pick-up and next month’s credit card statement. Because it’s about relationships and most of all about how God longs for us waits for us, and wants to feed us with His presence every day, every week, and every step of the way. This is the source of Christmas Joy. This is the heart of our wonder.

December 25, 2005 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 9: 1-6 + Titus 2: 11-13 + Luke 2: 1-14

December 24, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 9:1-6 + Titus 2:11-14 + Luke 2:1-20

……………..following the proclamation of the Gospel, the children between the first and third grades are called to the chair. This homily is spoken to the children standing around the presider’s chair.

I want to make sure that you heard and that you know the Gospel story our deacon just proclaimed tonight, because there are some parts of it that are very important for you. Listen again to this part of the story.

…..One of the older children who is prepared takes the gospel book and reads:

There were shepherds living in the fields near Bethlehem keeping watch over the flock during the night. The angel of the Lord appeared to them. The glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were very much afraid. The angel said to them: “you have nothing to fear! I come to proclaim good news to you — tidings of great joy to be shred by the whole people. this day in David’s city a savior has been born to you, the Messiah and Lord. Let this be a sign to you: in a manger you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes.”

So, in the first part of the Gospel story, the only ones who know who Jesus is and where to find him are the angels. The angels are very important. Without angels, no one would know one child from the next. Without angels, no one would know that the child born of Mary was the Savior and Son of God. Without angels, no one would know where to look. Probably without angels, the shepherds would never have thought to look in the manger.

I think God made angels to tell us three very important things: The first one is: God wants to be close to us. Very close.  God wants to get as close as possible. So close that he can laugh and cry, and be hurt and comforted, grow and learn, be born and die, just like we do. When you understand that message, then you will begin to wonder how you can be close to God. The second message is about where to find God. Where do you look is what it’s all about. You have to look in unlikely places – in places where you would never expect to find God. Not with the powerful full and the rich and famous, but with the weak and the powerless – with those who need protection, like a baby.

When you understand that message, then you will begin to take care of others who are helpless and left out of life. The third message is about family. When God wanted to come to us and there was no room anywhere, there was room in a family. We all come from families, and every family looks a little different, but every family is a sacred and holy place. When you understand that message, then you will begin to see your church as your family and the place where you family and your home learns about God, about forgiveness, about love, respect, and holiness.

Now these are the things that angels know about and these are the things that the angels came to tell us: God wants to be close and we must find every way possible to be close to God. God is found where ever there are people who need protection, and we must take care of others who are helpless. God makes family holy and in our family we are safe with God, learn to pray and grow to be holy. Now you know who Jesus is. You know where to find him, and you know the message, so in a sense, you are angels – you have a message to tell and people to lead, and I think God wants you to spread the news, show the way, and give glory to God.

Let’s go bless the place in the chapel that reminds us of the message. Here’s the Gift of God to us, the sign of God’s desire, found in an unlikely place, and born into a fragile and troubled family of love.

Process with a wrapped gift containing the image of the Christ child which the children will unwrap and place in the nativity scene.

December 18, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

2 Samuel 7:1-5,8-11,16 + Romans 16:2-27 + Luke 1:26-38

He was just a boy actually. The youngest with many siblings ahead of him. There was not much chance he would amount to anything. Being last in line, he did the job no one else wanted to do: tend the sheep. When the prophet came looking for the next king, the boy’s father did not even think of him. Only after parading all his sons in their finery boasting of their accomplishments and having them dismissed by the prophet did the father think of him out in the field.

She was just a young girl. She lived in Nazareth. People used to ask: “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” She was a woman in a man’s world.  She knew nothing of freedom or choice. Her life was set at the moment of her birth. She was told where to live and with whom, traded probably for some livestock, or maybe some lumber or furniture in a land at the edge of desert without trees. Their ancestral home was Bethlehem – the least and most insignificant of places.

David and Mary stand before us on Advent’s fourth Sunday this year. They are very much the same: unlikely candidates for anything great or significant. Yet, these are exactly the kind of people God seems to choose. Again and again, the biblical stories point to God’s preference for the simple, the humble, and the powerless. It is in the end, how God will ultimately and finally even reveal himself: simply, humbly, and as powerless as an infant.

Only those like David and Mary would find the message of the angel the least bit interesting or hopeful. “Nothing is impossible with God.” Those who believe they can do anything they want, who believe that if they can just make enough money or get the right job they can accomplish anything would find the message of the angel naïve and silly.

“So what?  they think. “When I make enough money, nothing will be impossible for me either.” We are in the middle of a generation of children who think this way

and believe it to be true.

We cannot hear the message of this gospel much less embrace its truth when we live in a “me first” culture. David and Mary were not “first”, and no one in their time would have considered them “winners” or likely candidates for greatness. Yet once they opened themselves to God, allowed the Providence of God to lead them, the testaments of scripture find no one greater. David towers above all the figures of the Old Testament, and against him everyone else is measured. Even in the New Testament, his name is mentioned more times than any other Old Testament figure. Mary is the ultimate disciple, the perfect example of one who follows Christ and bears witness to the message of redemption and holiness.

As one of the most significant moments in biblical history unfolds in today’s reading with the establishment of the covenant God makes with David, God also makes it clear that his preferred dwelling is not a temple, but a tent in the midst of people. That covenant made in Second Samuel is fulfilled in Luke’s first chapter, and the mystery of which Paul speaks in Romans today is precisely this: that God still prefers to dwell in the midst of people, not just by symbol and sign; but in flesh and blood.

“Nothing is impossible with God.” is the Gospel we proclaim this season. David knew it from the moment he stepped up to huge a Philistine with a sling shot. Mary knew it, and so did old Elizabeth who is her companion today. The two of them stand before us: the young one and the old one. This angel’s message is for everyone who may think they have been left behind, too young, too old, too poor, too dumb, too late in life, or too sinful. It is not so, proclaims this Good News. But we cannot think it’s all about us or ever indulge in the self-congratulating luxury of thinking we did anything at all on our own.

At the same time with a God who can accomplish all things, there will be no excuse for anything short of greatness, holiness, or goodness. The only thing that fouls up the plan of God is fear, and the first words out of the mouth of the messenger are: Fear Not.

Courage, that great virtue of a disciple is found not in the absence of fear, but in what we do in spite of it. The glory of Christmas came about by the willingness of an ordinary person to obey God’s claim on her life. God does not favor people because of any quality within them.  It is God’s nature to bestow God’s favor on the sinful, the weak, and undeserving.God grants favor to all who let the Gospel conceive new life in their hearts.

December 11, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 61:1-2 10-11 + 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24 + John 1:6-8,19-28

In the oldest piece of writing in the New Testament, Paul addresses the heart of Christian virtue: Rejoice, Pray, and Give Thanks. It is the Spirit of this Season, the plan of life for a disciple of Jesus. When you think about Paul’s life and all that happened to him, it wouldn’t be  hard to be surprised at his proposal. After all, he had been imprisoned more than once, ship wrecked, disappointed by the people he trusted and loved, mis-understood, beaten, and thrown out of the synagogue. You have to wonder: “What does he have to be joyful about?” Yet, that is exactly the way it is for anyone formed by the Gospel. What to some might seem naïve or a dangerous denial of reality is not so for those who embrace the fullness of the Gospel.

Joy is not an unrealistic goal or an elusive gift. It is not difficult to embrace and experience even in a world that is war-ravaged and contentious, full of trouble, danger, and sin. It is not only possible, it is essential. I have often wondered about this man, John the Baptist. The more I have thought about him, the more I have distrusted the image we inherit of him through the Gospels. I simply find it hard to imagine why people would be drawn to some shouting, angry, threatening, odd-looking desert dweller. It has begun to dawn on me that he may well have been a very joyful person. Perhaps not “happy” in the shallow sense of the word, but deeply confident, focused, and un-disturbed by threats or danger, or even by the powerful – Herod, whom he challenged because of his adulterous ways.

It has occurred to me that having the image of John the Baptist in the center of readings about Joy suggests something we may have overlooked in a first quick glance that may have judged him by his appearance. John and Paul are a lot like the Afro-American Christians in our nation’s history. They are and were people who seemed to have little to sing about: people who, because of prejudice and poverty had every reason to be silent and angry. Yet, they sing, and when they do, their joy is positively contagious. They do not sing to drive their cares away or to irrigate their sorrows or sublimate their fears. They sing for sheer joy because, despite the disappointments and difficulties of their daily existence,they knew they “had a title to a mansion on high” and the sure promise of sharing in eternity with God.

Their joy does not make sense of reality, it simply transcends it. Out of that tradition comes words of a “Spiritual” like these: “Why should I feel discouraged and why should shadows fall, and why should my heart feel lonely when Jesus is my portal, a constant friend is he. His eye is on the sparrow anad I know he watches me. I sing because I am happy. I sing because I am free. For his eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me.

John and Paul, Isaiah too for that matter were not strangers to suffering and all that life at it’s worse could throw at them. Yet, they stand before us as models of Joy: as people who did more than survive disappointment, heart-break, and trials. Rooted in faith, those who live by and within the spirit of the Gospel are confident and at peace because they know that God is faithful. God can be trusted. Isaiah comforted his beleaguered contemporaries that their rescue was at hand. Not because they deserved it, (because the evidence suggests they did not) but rather, because God keeps his promises. Paul never gave up, turned bitter, or lost his focus. No self-pity marks his life – because he centered himself and his life on Christ. John, even in prison, abandoned by his own family did not forget who he was, as what some might call, “The Best Man” at the wedding. Their belief is our belief. God watches me. Not like a judge, but like a loving parent. This belief enables Joy, and this Joy gives us a glimpse of glory. This Joy is the moment when all comes together; when the broken is made whole.

“Brothers and Sisters, Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing, and in every circumstance, give thanks. This is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.”

December 8, 2005 at Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Genesis 3:9-15 + Ephesians 1: 3,6,22-12 + Luke 1: 26-38

A mystic and poet from around the time of reformation asked a question

that bears repeating on this feast. “What does it profit me if Gabriel hails the Virgin

unless he brings to me the self-same tidings? It’s a question whose answer

moves us from spectator to participant in the mystery of the Incarnation which is just where we must be found.

We must, each of us, stand face to face with our own Angel Gabriel and wonder: “How can this be?” How can it be that God would find favor in us? How could be it that we might give our flesh for the Word of God to be present? How could it be that our gifts would be enough, our faith sufficient? How could the Light of the Word shine in the semi-darkness of our lives?

The answer would be the same:

“Nothing is impossible with God.”

We celebrate today what happens when someone in the fullness of grace risks saying “Yes” to God’s will. Paul teaches the Church at Ephesians and the Church of Norman that we too participate in the Divine mysteries. We have been adopted and become Holy and Blameless in God’s sight. Chosen and destined, we are part of the Divine plan and the Mission of Christ.

We cannot give meaning to the story of the virgin. We cannot tell it in faith nor remember it with hope if we stand before God’s will and say: “Not me.” We are told that she pondered that will as it unfolded for her, and it is what we must do as well, ponder the works of God, and keep them in our hearts. Then, as will happen someday, when the angel comes to us we will recognize our emptiness and remember Mary and say: “Here I am Lord, I come to do your will.” Then by the power of our “yes”, the Messiah will be born again in some remote corner of the world.

December 4, 2005 At Saint Mark Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 40: 1-5,9-11 + 2 Peter 3: 8-14 + Mark 1: 1-8

As each of the four gospels opens, we get a clue to the theme and the focus of that Gospel. Matthew opens with a genealogy that puts Abraham and David before us as a defining moment in history. Luke opens with assurances of “the truth” to be found in Jesus. John begins with a prologue expressing the divine incarnation with the Word Made Flesh. Mark, in his opening verses speaks of Elijah, quotes Second Isaiah, and describes John the Baptist in physical terms that leaves no doubt for those who recognize the characteristics that Elijah is back: that prophet who would lead and announce the return to the promised land.

That journey back to the Promised Land – back to the garden – back to the perfect and peaceful relationship with God has begun. Mark’s Gospel announces that this journey has begun, and that God is leading the way “Comfort” is the imperative that has broken the silence today. This weekend, “Comfort” is the first Word God has spoken in this assembly. It’s an offer for some that seems empty and foolish.

When you’re hungry or homeless, you can’t eat “comfort” or sleep in it. Yet comfort seems like something we should offer to others, and we are anxious to do so. But these words are not spoken to someone else. They are spoken here.

They are spoken to us, and they are hard to appreciate in this community. They are hard to appreciate when we are already comfortable in our lives. It’s curious and worth wondering about what happens when Comfort is proclaimed to the comfortable. It is worth wondering about what this means to a people who are not needing or hoping for comfort. It could suggest that comfort is being sought and found in something else. If so, there is danger here – and so the warning is raised. “Straighten up and look ahead.”

Pope John XXIII once wrote brilliantly about the coming of God’s reign. He claimed that when truth, charity, freedom and justice are lived, the reign of God is at hand. This journey we have been invited to begin is like every other journey we make. We have to move on from where we are. We have to choose what to take and what to leave behind. Mark would have us see life in this world as that journey. A journey that unsettles us, a journey that cannot be made with crooked ways, twists and turns. The comfortable may be reluctant to pack up and move on, and if so, they will be left behind with no place to go. If good Pope John is right, we can only make this journey successfully if we walk in the way of Truth. It is the truth about God’s love, the truth that because God has loved us all, we are all loveable. It is also the truth about sin, the truth that we are not captive and trapped in sinful ways, but graced and loved and forgiven; and we ought to live that way. If good Pope John is right, we can only make this journey successfully if we walk in the way of charity. This has nothing to do with good feelings, this kind of charity. It is not about the nice, but about the nasty. It is an embrace of the unlovely, the tiresome, and the bitter with patience and kindness. If good Pope John is right, we can only make this journey successfully if we walk in the way of freedom. Gospel freedom is always about choices, and often about a choice between the easy way and the right way. If good Pope John is right, we can only make this journey successfully if we walk in the way of justice.

Peter speaks of it in the second reading today: it’s about right relationships. It is the fourth dimension of God’s Kingdom: Justice. It is found and it rests upon dignity and respect. Poverty and helplessness are not found where God lives among His people. No one rests, and no one is comfortable when there is anyone with no share in the generous gifts of God’s creation. The Journey has already begun. We need to catch up and keep up.