Isaiah 52, 7-10 + Psalm + Hebrews 1, 1-6 + Luke

It was a little church on Christmas Eve. The tradition in that country parish had gone on for two, maybe three generations. Parents and grandparents were seated. Joseph and Mary and all the charaters were in place and ready. They did their parts with seriousness and commitiment, looking as pious as they possibly could. And then it was time for the Shepherds to enter.

Dressed in flannel bathrobes and towels for head gear, they proceeded to the altar steps where Mary and Joseph looked earnestly at the straw which contained a single naked light bulb that was playing the part of the glowing newborn Jesus.

With his back to the congretation, one of the shepherds said to the person playing Joseph in a very loud whisper for all the cast to hear, “Well, Joe, when you gonna pass out cigars?”

The solmen spell was not simply broken by his remark, it was exploded. Mary and Joseph’s cover was completely destroyed as it became impossible to hold back the laughter. The chief angel, standing on a chair behind them was the worst of all. She shook so hard in laughter that she fell off her chair and took the curtained back drop and all the rest of the props down with her. She just kept rolling around on the floor because she was laughing so hard. The whole set was a shambles.

But you know what? The only thing that did not go to pieces was that light bulb in the manger…..it never stopped shining.

When you leave this church today all I want you to remember is that light . It never stops shining. No matter how things may fall apart, no matter how bady things may go, the Light shines. In a Connecticut town, in the war-torn Bethlehem of today, in the midst of the greatest family and personal pain,  and in any life that doesn’t go as planned the light shines.

We know that because the story of that shining light is Luke’s Gospel which some who know it best call a “Love Story.”

This is the night when the great Love Letter of God begins. The night when our paths cross with God’s. It is the night when God and humanity were joined like a bride and groom. This is the night when each of you ought to recall the moment when you first met the love of your life and imagine once again what it was like, because this is the night of our first best meeting with the God who has desired us from the very beginning. I would even suggest that had it not been for this night when love was born you would never have love to give or love to receive. This night is not really about the birth of Jesus Christ. This night is about the birth of love itself. Were it not for the first Christmas, we might never have know the intensity of the love that God has for us which stirs and awakens our love for each other.

True love like this accepts the beloved for who they  really are. God chooses to love us because we are God’s human creation. Like Joseph and Mary, we have nothing to recommend ourselves nor do we have any claim on God’s love other than that we are God’s own creation.  So we can’t do anything to earn God’s love. It is already there because God made us.

This is the first love story that gets told again in your own love. Like all love stories there is that first meeting, then infatuation, pursuit, risk and finally relationship and commitment. It’s all there in Luke’s Gospel, in flesh and blood, or shall we say here, in body and blood, in the Loving Word made Flesh. Mary and Joseph, far from home, strangers without a bed, a peasant mother giving birth in unsanitary and substandard housing….. no fanfare, no royal delegation….visited by the lowest of the low; dirty, outcast sheperds doing the work no one else wanted to do. This is where we find the Christ of God, the anointed one intersecting wtih humanity! It is our first and best meeting with the God who has desired us from the very beginning of creation.

We tell the story again tonight to remember and remind each other that no matter what, the Light will not go out. It is there in our Easter Candle. It is there in the hearts of all who at Baptism have been enlightened by Christ. It is there when all the great plans we have made tumble down in laughter or in tears. It is a light we pass on to each other and to our children. It is light full of promise and hope. It is a light that can keep us off the rocks of sin and from sinking into the depths. It is light that warms and leads; a light whose reflection lets us see the tender loving face of our God reflected in the faces of those around us.

Keep shining my friends. Peace be with you.

December 23, 2012

Micah 5, 1-4 + Psam 80 + Hebrews 10, 5-10 + Luke 1, 39-45

We end this season just about as we began: waiting. We are waiting now to hear once again the story we know so well: Mary with child, Joseph with dreams, Elizabeth humbled, Zachariah silent, angels in full chorus, inns that are occupied, and animals looking on. The story holds up for us a model of community strong and courageous, frightened and awed, waiting for Messiah to come.

Mary waits for birth. Joseph waits for divine permission. Elizabeth waits for John. Zachariah waits for voice. The angels wait to sing. Good people, godly people walking in darkness wait for the light to come.

Waiting as I said at the beginning of this season is simply something we do not do well, especially in our culture. At all costs we try to avoid it. So, can’t wait for payday? Take out a payday loan. Can’t take time for a meal? Grab an energy drink, especially one loaded with caffeine. We text so we don’t have to talk, tweet so we don’t have to explain too much. We shop on line to avoid stores and parking, engaging  people or having a conversation with the stranger in the line. Waiting in our culture is a disease!

But the story we will tell again soon is a story of waiting The prophet Micah had a vision years before Jesus came on the scene. He saw an alternative future, one where righteousness and goodness would prevail. He saw a good leader who would shepherd the people with compassion and hope. He imagined a man of peace. We are like Micah, dreaming and waiting, hopeful and expectant, faithful and grounded. The restlessness that we feel, the ongoing search for meaningful lives….. it is all about waiting for something grander that what is.

We are waiting for Christ, the fulfillment of all time to rescue us from the chaos of our messy lives. We are waiting for the Christ-light to draw back the curtain of darkness and for a baby to become a man, and for the man to rise from a tomb. The Christmas story makes no sense, and it is little more than a feel-good, no-involvement celebration which only invites us to look and be entertained always leaving us to feel that something is lacking come December 26th.

We may not be spectators of the Christmas story. We must even be more than the ones who tell the story unless it has become our story; unless we know what it means to to told there is no room, to wonder “How can this be?” in the face of some unexpected change of plans in our lives. Unless we know what it means for our soul to magnify the Lord, or to wonder how it is that the Lord should visit us? We are still spectators waiting for what? another Christmas?

The truth is, there is only one Christmas, one time when the Word of God takes flesh in us, a Bethlehem kind of people. The story we tell today is impossible historically. A fourteen year old Jewish virgin making a four day trip by herself is unbelievable and beyond reality. Luke’s gospel is theology, not history. This wonderful imatinative story gives Mary an occasion to sing her great hymn. It gives John the Baptist his first opportunity to recognize the superiority of Jesus. It all suggests, as Luke intends that something big is about to happen, but not in Bethlehem. It will happen in Jerusalem, in Norman, Oklahoma, in anyplace where people like Elizabth and Mary open themselves to the will of God and are willing to serve the will of God in obedience.

There is something greater than this, and it is about to happen. I love the balance of Luke’s Gospel images. At the end of Luke’s Gospel, disciples in Emmaus rush back to Jerusalem to be with those who have shared their experience of the Lord.  Their they ponder what it all means and how their lives suddenly have meaning and purose. Now there is for them a mission. At the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, two women who have experienced the Lord come together to share their experience and ponder what it all means and how their lives suddenly have meaning and purpose. Now there is for them a mission.

Here we are pondering again what it all means and hopefully how our lives have meaning and purpose, because for those of us who know and live, remember and retell the story there is a mission. Those people in Emmaus and Jerusalem, in Bethlehm and in the Hill Country of Judea, as well as in Norman, Oklahoma have a mission and their lives have a purpose and there is reason to rejoice and jump for joy for not only has a child been born to us; that child has risen from the tomb with the promise and as evidence that we shall do the same. That is worth the wait.

December 16, 2012

Zephaniah 3, 14-18 + Isaiah 12, 2-6 + Philippians 4, 4-7 + Luke 3, 10-18

Luke’s central character emerges today and takes “center stage” so to speak. His message is loud and clear. His character is uncompromising and unmistakable. His diet and wardrobe make it obvious that this is a prophetic figure not to be dismissed easily. He will not go away, quite down, nor be ignored. Herod knew that only too well.

As artists often use strong contrasts of light and darkness or contrasting colors to draw one eye to the subject of a painting, writers will sometimes strongly contrast characters to tease the reader into the story. Luke is such a writer. John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth could not be in greater contrast. It isn’t that one is right and one is wrong, that one is bad or one is good; it is simply that they are very different in personality and in message, in expectation and in hope. It seems to me they have the same message, but simply different ways to present it.

John shouts. Jesus speaks gently. John threatens. Jesus persuades. John expects wrath. Jesus expects mercy. It is no wonder that there is no hint in any of the Gospels that they were friends. There is some sence that perhaps for awhile Jesus was a disciple of John, but after his thrity day retreat in John’s territory, the desert, Jesus emerges on his own. There is also no reason to think that John became a disciple of Jesus. John sent his disciples to Jesus with questions that reveal how puzzeled he was that this “Lamb or God”, the Messianic figure was so unlike what he expected. He must have wondered while sitting in Herod’s jail where the fire had gone, the wrath, the power, the force. John never thought of himself as the messiah. John wanted fire!

What he got, and what we got was Jesus: one who baptizes with the Spirit, whose fire is the passion of love more than the heat of anger. This Spirit revealed in the Messiah, this Spirit that burned within the Messiah was the fire of mercy and justice not wrath and revenge. This Spirit is not a contradiciton of John’s expectation, but a refinement and a revelation that there is a power greater than wrath, and motive more appealing and effective than fear. It is Love.

John used the images and language of some of the prophets before him, and we must guard against being too literal, becasue the words are biblical and nuanced. The “wrath” John speaks of need not interpreted as “anger”; but is better understood in terms of God as “passion”: the deep, lasting, personal desire that burns in ones very being. The “cleansing” John speaks of is really about a purification which can mean a gentle washing just as easily as violent purgation.

Both Jesus and John reveal to us a God who is passionate for us, and wants us to be free, and pure, clean, and holy. This is a God revealed through His Son that waits, and longs for us to hear the Word spoken by his Word Made Flesh.

When we begin to understand and listen, like those who gathered around John is there is more than just curiosity, we ought to begin to asking: “What Shall we Do?” If it is the desperate question of frightened people, it’s too late to ask and too late to care. If, however, it is a question that comes from love then the Spirit of Baptism has begun to burn in us.  The image of a merciful God  that comes to us in Jesus cannot allow us to live complacent and shallow lives believing that God will wave the merciful hand and ignore all that has been done or all we have failed to do. The justice of this God will will expect an accounting and look for repentance and conversion which both Jesus and John called for. The mercy of God waits for us to finally ask the question: “What shall I do?” John gives the only answer that matters: “Do the work of Justice.” And what will that look like we might ask, and there begins a life of conversion and shortly thereafter will come peace.