Merry Christmas

Luke tells a powerful Christmas story. A breathtakingly simple yet surprisingly powerful story of a young girl giving birth to her first child, attended only by shepherds and stable animals but heralded by angels above. Here is a story that should not even have been noticed, let alone told again and again across millennium. After all, countless young girls gave birth that night and we remember none of them. Emperors and governors are much better subjects for dramatic narratives; unwed teenage mothers and their vulnerable babes are not. Yet Luke puts this simple little story right smack dab in the middle of the powers and principalities of the age to make a claim: The child born to this young mother will change the course of history, and the fates of leaders and common folk alike hang in the balance of his destiny.

The genius of Luke's story, of course, is that he portrays all this through the simple, sympathetic, and even everyday characters of a young mother and common shepherds. So that we are forced to wonder, if God can work in and through such ordinary characters, perhaps God can also work in and through us. Luke wants, I think, to make sure we realize that it is not just human flesh "in general" that God takes on in Christ; it is our flesh. And it is not simply history "in general" that God enters via this birth, it is our history and our very lives to which God is committed.

Here is the promise of Christmas in a nutshell. God deigns to dwell not with the high and mighty, but with the lowly, the unexpected, those considered "nothing" by this world. And here, amid the weakness and vulnerability of human birth, God makes God's intentions for humanity fully known. God is love, John writes, and here Luke portrays that love, as God takes human form, the infinite becomes finite, and that which is imperishable becomes perishable.

This story of long ago is not only about angels and shepherds, a mother and her newborn. It is also about us, all of us.

On a much lighter note!
I have received a few emails after my last sermon, commenting on my off the cuff comment that it seemed as if Mary was doing all the visiting and appearing.  The men not doing much, sitting around on their duffs watching bowl games.  Well, seems as if some people took to searching the world wide web and found all sorts of Jesus sightings...here is a you tube video that compiles a bunch of news reports about Jesus sightings. The piece is titled "Finally tonight...". It appears that Jesus sightings typically are the news piece right at the end of the news cast. Check it out.

Since we're on You Tube here's a modern look at the Christmas story that I love!

Sunday 12 19 10 Reflection

This last Sunday of Advent I wanted reflect on the feminine maternal dimension in our salvation story before we head of to Christmas and the story focus changes. Here are some of the reflections from my sermon. Please let me know your thoughts and reflections:

It was early in December, the year was 1531. It has been ten long years of suffering for the Aztec people since the Conquistador Cortez invaded Mexico.  Aztec civilization is in its death throes; more ravaged by epidemic disease brought by the Spanish than by their swords. Recent genetic studies on the skeletal remains of native peoples of the times have found that while many hundreds of thousands Aztecs were killed by violence, an even higher number, perhaps as high as 85%, died by disease.

We catch sight of one lone peasant walking along a road, he is going to visit his uncle who is dying from the Spanish plague. His name is Juan Diego, a recent convert to Christianity. Hearing beautiful music, he stops in his tracks and turns to see a young brown native maiden in shimmering robes who speaks to him in his own native Nahuatl tongue. Who are you? He asks. "Call me Little Girl, Young Daughter, Mother of my People", she says.

The young girl tells Juan Diego to go to the palace of the Archbishop of Mexico and to tell him that Mary the Mother of God wishes that a temple be built at Tepayac – the worship site for the indigenous mother GoddessTonantzin. From this church Mary will be able to give all her love to the inhabitants of the land ... to hear their lamentations and remedy their pain and suffering. After two unsuccessful attempts to convince the bishop of the vision, Juan Diego is sent by the maiden to find roses in wintertime in the desert where no roses could be found. Finally when again he is standing before the Bishop and his court, Juan Diego unfolds his shawl and impossibly beautiful roses fall to the ground and there in the cloak is the image of the Indian Maiden.

What do we make of such a story? If you were to ask the minister that I grew up under, at my little Presbyterian church on the West Side of San Antonio – he would, with great emotion, argue that the whole thing was an inside job. The Catholic Church unable to make headway with the pesky natives created a Mary that would speak to the people of the land-a dark skinned native Mary.

Even as a young boy I was a skeptic at heart, so his argument spoke to me, but when I ran with it and suggested that maybe the Jesus appearance to the disciples, after his death, was an inside job also…he gave me a swat on the behind and said, “Do you want me to tell your mother what you said?” The Catholic church at the time, seemed just as skeptical as my minister. Their response to this vision of Mary, ranged from condemnation to silence.

Whether vision or stratagem…history shows that the story spread among the people and around her image the Mexican people were able to reconstruct out of devastation and death a new identity, a new future.

But what is it’s importance for us today? Well…I think the story, however you come to it, continues to have a message for today.

Juan Diego comes to us with a message from the young maiden. Guadalupe is calling to us to build a very particular kind of church? For the church to be evangelized by Juan Diego, to hear the message of Little Girl, Young Daughter, Mother of my People, Juan Diego must help us overcome some significant barriers, which I am not sure we will ever do without the help of God.

First, the church must overcome our problems with God being revealed to us in the person of a woman. Part of this problem for Protestants/Presbyterians has been our rejection of Mary. Historically at the Reformation and after, our forefathers reacted to what they saw as the Catholic deification of Mary, in other words, placing Mary as part of the divine being.

But instead of minimizing her importance, the church completely ignored Mary, and feared any feminine reference to God in the Bible, to the extent that we have lost a part of our story that allows us to see God as revealed in the life of a woman. As we have journeyed through Advent, and heard again the stories:

Mary and the angel, accepting the call of God.

Mary and Elizabeth, two pregnant women finding their way.

Mary and Joseph, struggling with difficult decisions.

Mary and Joseph on their journey, with a baby on the way…

It is hard not to miss the feminine maternal dimension in the salvation that God has brought us. And I am not talking about the submissive, passive icon, the  perfect Mary that is often presented to us in paintings, sculpture and children’s books. Guadalupe beckons to us from the periphery calling us to recognize the divine image that exists in every woman and to overcome the sexism that so marginalizes women in both church and society still today.

In the young pregnant peasant girl we can see that God's salvation is tender like a mothers love, is fierce like a lover’s, and radical like a sister in the struggle.

But Juan Diego’s job is not done, he will also have to help the church respond to a God who is revealed to us as a person of color "La Morenita", the little brown one, the Indian.  Guadalupe challenges the historic racism of church and society and our constant temptation to make one cultural form the supreme expression of reality. 

For as Spain, France and England competed for the acquisition and development of this new American Empire the church debated whether these people of color, whether indigenous to the Americas or shipped in from Africa had souls, could even be called human. Of course they had to come to this conclusion in order to justify to themselves what they were prepared to do to get their land and to exploit their labor.

In 500 years of the history of the Americas, the church has yet to heal itself. God continues to call out to the church through the face of a woman of color, challenging us to find healing for our racism and reconciliation between the races. 

One more challenge to the church…and it comes in the face of her messenger, Juan Diego, the poorest peasant class of landless, exploited labor. She brought a message from the periphery, carried by the most humble peasant to the wealthiest, most powerful in the land, the bishop of Spain's richest empire. Mary calls the church to re-inhabit the periphery, the edges of society among the poor, the displaced, those considered to be non-persons.

You know, if I have any beef with Mary showing up 500 years ago or today, it’s not with the validity, we all have our points at which we just believe, but why does Mary seem to be doing all the work? Yes, Jesus shows up on a tortilla or a tree trunk every now and then…but that’s it! And what about Joseph…can’t they get him off his duff for a few minutes, away from the bowl games, to make a visit now and them. And what about Moses or Isaiah, Abraham and Paul...? No choirs of angles singing in the hill country anymore.

I don’t know if you’ve seen the news, but Mary has shown up again…on the side of an apartment complex in New Braunfels. No message yet, just the faint outline of her robe.

La Morenita continues to call out to the church of the rich, the powerful, to find our true identity with Jesus on the periphery, with her son Jesus on the margins, among the outcast, among the poor. She calls to us to build a church that  truly celebrates diversity. A church that listens to the poor. A church that speaks with a voice of compassion.

Where such a church lives, roses bloom in winter. 

Where such a church lives, the world is pregnant with possibilities.

Reflections on Mary and the Church

Here is a question to my last blog post, that instead of responding to in the previous blog, I would like to respond to here and continue the conversation hopefully into next week:

That makes me wonder. The Catholic church places great emphasis on Mary, even endowing her birth with "supernatural" qualities (eg the Immaculate Conception). We learn that a person born of a virgin birth means they hold great importance. As you have pointed out, women were a marginalized group for a very long time. Why is Mary so special for the Catholic church in particular? Are they more inclusive that Protestant churches that focus on Jesus, a male figure? I know it's not exactly related to the story, but it made me wonder... (Micaela)

Micaela,

Thank you for your question. I’m glad my wonderings have sparked a wonder in you.

I will answer your historical question concerning Protestants and Catholics next week. This week let’s look at your question concerning whether one denomination is more inclusive than another.

Sadly, trying to answer that question is like trying to argue whether McDonalds Super Sized Meal is better for your heart than Jack in the Boxes Up Sized version.

Look at the world we live in. Throughout the world, a quick survey will reveal that the more religiously oriented a nation is, the lower the status of women is in that country.

In Europe one can document a direct correlation between those countries where people still largely honor the Virgin Mary and the entrenched second-class status of women in those nations. In most religious systems women are regarded either as less than complete or as actually flawed human beings.

In the United States, during the struggle in the early part of the 20th century to amend the constitution to enable women to vote, the primary opposition came from the Christian Church, with the suffrage movement being condemned regularly from most Christian pulpits. The defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment in 1982 was brought about by the combination of religious forces together with a right wing Republican administration. And it’s worth noting that the impetus toward equality for women in the Christian West did not seriously begin until secularism's rise signaled the decline of religious power.

In the Islamic Middle-East (no not in Kansas) the impact of Shariah law says that girls can be married at the onset of puberty and that a man may divorce one of his multiple wives by simply saying: "I divorce you," in the presence of two male witnesses. The Taliban in Afghanistan acted out these laws with a terrifying severity producing a "Catch 22" situation for women in that women could not become doctors and no male doctor was allowed to treat Islamic women.

In China, where the principal religions were Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, binding the feet of girls and women developed in response to cultural pressure informed by religious rules. This practice kept women weak, out of power and under male domination.

In India, a land shaped primarily by Hinduism the religious custom for centuries called for the widow to throw herself on her husband's funeral pyre, since the loss of a husband was deemed to be tantamount to a proclamation of the surviving widow's worthlessness.

How did this universal human negativity toward women develop?

Why was it endorsed and thus blessed by almost every human religious system the world over? What is there about women in general and women's bodies in particular that appears to be so threatening to males that they have to employ religion to help in the process of female suppression?

No Micaela, honoring Mary has not made one part of the church more inclusive than another, I wish it were true. I wish there was a church that could honestly honor a feminine face for God and see it within every woman.

This Sunday's sermon will be a reflection on Mary and the feminine face of God.

Sunday 12 5 10 Reflection

This Second Sunday of Advent we looked at the story of Mary going to stay with Elizabeth. 

To make sure that Mary and Elizabeth have room to speak, Luke tells an earlier story where you find out that the priest in the house, Zechariah, is silenced. With Zechariah out of the way; we have the rare opportunity to hear from the women for a change. And what a change they dream of!

"In those days”, Luke writes. “Those days” are the first days of Mary's pregnancy - of the pregnancy of a young girl. of the pregnancy of a young and unmarried girl living in a small village where such a thing would bring untold shame - no, really not untold, because there would be frequently told gossip, that would shame her, her family, and her child for ever. In those days, Mary heads for the far away hills, fleeing the village gossip.

I wonder how Mary must have felt as she made that journey to Judea?

Was she filled with self-doubt, her hopes crushed by her own family? Did she question her own sanity? Maybe the angel was a dream, maybe her mind had played tricks on her.

Maybe she felt angry. How could they treat her this way, how could God let them treat her this way? She felt so alone.

And I’m not so sure seeing cousin Elizabeth was seen as good news to her. Elizabeth was also pregnant, yes, but instead of being shame filled, her shame ended the same way Mary's had begun. Would Elizabeth lecture her as her parents had, but with the added smugness of her righteous pregnancy? Or would her cousin just shake her head and pity her, like Joseph…doubting her story altogether  as if she were a foolish child?

But here is what Mary didn’t yet know, Elizabeth had her own troubles: Here she was expecting her first born later in life, her husband the victim of a stroke, unable to work his turn in the Temple. And now, her aunt was sending their pregnant teenage daughter down to her home so she could handle the shame, not to mention the normal challenges of pregnancy and birth.

Here two women meet at a point of crisis in both of their lives. Here two women meet sharing pregnancies plagued by questions of "How?" and "What now?" Here two women meet a little later when the angels have departed and the long wait has set in and they are on their own to muddle through somehow the meantime between promise and fulfillment.

Young and old, they have both had hard times with their families. I can imagine Elizabeth resenting having to take care of cousin Mary and husband Zechariah at this very time in her life when - at last! at last! - somebody ought to be pampering her.

Who needed this cloud over her joy? I can imagine them resenting each other,

and in their physical and emotional state, sometimes the anger boiling over with harsh words and short tempers.

But no, the moment she sees Mary, the first words out of Elizabeth’s mouth are a blessing, probably the first blessing Mary has heard since telling anybody she was pregnant: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?"

Can you imagine how Mary felt when she heard those words? All the anger, all the curses, all the confusion, all the shame fell away when she heard those first words: "Blessed are you, Mary!"

And I think here is the lesson for us this day. Never underestimate the power you have to bless people in God's name. Never refuse the opportunity to share God's renewing love with those the world wants to shame and condemn. Never miss the opportunity to offer encouragement to those whose hopes have been beaten down "a little later" by life.

And I think here is the lesson for us this day. Never underestimate the power you have to bless people in God's name. Never refuse the opportunity to share God's renewing love with those the world wants to shame and condemn. Never miss the opportunity to offer encouragement to those whose hopes have been beaten down "a little later" by life.

What we have here is a preview of the church, a model of what we do for one another.

We come here to renew our hope in God when life is beating us up. And in spite of our own struggles and sorrows, we can say to another, "Blessed are you!"  Here we wait, not in fear but with a sense of expectation. God is doing something among us.

New birth is about to come, God's new creation. We can see the first signs of it, feel it stirring within us. God will bring it to pass. It won't be long now.

And when the wait is long, and we get weary, our hopes dim, our dreams die, we are about ready to give up, somebody renews us with a blessing from God. This is when the church becomes the church, the body of Christ, the family of God. Not arrogance, but humility: this is church. We are not going to go through this alone. God has given us each other to reassure, to restore, to bless us as we wait for the day when God's promise will be fulfilled…This is church!

God has made us pregnant with the belief that justice and righteousness will prevail, that mercy and peace will win through, that love will overcome evil…This is church!!

God has given us the vision of a world where people aren't judged by the color of their skin or limited by the class into which they are born, determined by your sex or unwelcomed because of sexual orientation…

   where differences aren't solved by violence

            and children need not fear, or their parents fear for them,

          a world where every child has enough to eat,

             every youth has opportunity for education,

                and every adult can make some

                meaningful contribution to the common good.

God has made us pregnant with the possibilities, and so we hope, and so we trust, and so we love. 

Mary's song to end the story is compared by Robert Redman to "an aria in an opera or a duet in a musical," as it "stops the action of the Gospel in order to celebrate the greatness and covenant faithfulness of God." Yes, "God is great," Mary proclaims, but wonder of wonders and "equally important – and harder to believe for many in our day – God is good" (Feasting on the Word).

In their beautiful and instructive book, The First Christmas, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan call Mary's elegantly exuberant prayer, an "overture" to Luke's Gospel in which he sounds important themes that will appear again and again. In Luke's Gospel, the emphasis on women, the marginalized, and the Holy Spirit are all evident in the birth narratives, including the one we read this week. Mary, filled with the Holy Spirit, gives voice to those who are lowly, like the shepherds to whom the angels later announce the birth of Jesus.

Reflection on the Christmas Stories

Because this Advent we are following the story leading up to the birth of Jesus, The Wednesday Night Bible Study looked at the two stories used to compile that story. Yes two stories of the first Christmas. Just as Genesis offers two distinct stories of Creation, the Gospels give us two distinct stories of the first Christmas.

The two stories come from Matthew and Luke. Mark and John do not have Jesus birth stories. 

Because we most often hear the story as one compiled story of Christmas with specifics from one story winning out over the other, or just stuffing it all together into one story, we rarely realize the differences in the stories. 

Think of how you would tell the story of Christmas to friends or children, or how it is told during the yearly Christmas pageant or cantata. Now read the two Christmas stories found in Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2 and see what you have missed, or what parts of the stories haven’t seemed to make it into the mainstream storyline.

Here are some things you might notice:

Matthew tells a much shorter story, without the genealogy of Jesus the story is 31 verses long. Luke’s story is 132 verses long. Since most of us hear the whole Christmas story as a pageant, what would a Matthew only, or Luke only, Christmas pageant look like?

If we started with Matthew, the first scene would be the angel appearing to Joseph. Mary is already pregnant and Joseph is trying to figure out the best way to get out of the planned marriage. Notice that Joseph is the main character, Mary doesn’t speak and we are not told of any revelation that she receives from an angel (nor will we for the whole Matthew story).

There is no story of the birth in Matthew – just these words “He had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.” No swaddling clothes, no stable, no manger, no angels singing to shepherds…all of this is in Luke.

The most familiar parts of the Christmas story come from Luke: the decree that all be registered, the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, Jesus born in a manger, shepherds in the fields, angles singing.

If we started with Luke much of the pageant (43 verses) would be about Elizabeth, Zechariah and the birth of John the Baptist (there is no mention of this family in Matthew’s story).  and then the birth of Jesus.

Women play a prominent role in Luke’s story. Mary is the central character for much of the Luke story and Joseph is almost invisible, almost the complete opposite of the Matthew story.  Luke also adds another female character, Anna.

Matthew’s story is dark. After the quick reference to the birth we quickly move to the story of the the Magi and Herod, where after they bring gifts but are told not to go back to Herod. Joseph is told in a dream to leave quickly and move to Egypt before moving to Nazareth. Notice here, Matthew 2:19-23, that Joseph is planning on moving back home to Bethlehem, but only decides to move to Nazareth after hearing that Herod’s son is ruling in Bethlehem. So there is not travel story before the birth in Matthew, because the family was already living in Bethlehem.

Where Matthew’s story is dark, Luke’s is like an episode of Glee. Luke’s story contains 3 hymns (the Benedictus, the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis). And that’s not all, the angles sing their own little ditty to the sheperds in the field: “Glory to God in the highest and peace among those whom God favors!”

Lastly, Luke’s story keeps going. We have stories of Jesus circumcision when Jesus was 8 days old, and the only story of Jesus as a youth.

Next mid-week blog we will look more into these two unique stories and how we might understand them.

Sunday 11/28 Reflection

As I studied the scripture for Sunday, two reflections from others were the inspiration for my sermon.

The first was taken from Madeline L'Engle’s book, The Irrational Season:

This is the irrational season

When love blooms bright and wild;

Had Mary been filled with reason,

There'd have been no room for the child.

The reflection that a reasonable person would have said, “Thanks, but no thanks” to God was very intriguing to me. Are we often being called by God to act in our world and for all the right reasons say, “Sorry, this isn’t a good time”?

The second reflection, I noted in my previous blog was from a sermon by Meister Eckhart, a Christian mystic, theologian and preacher from the 13th century. In one of his Christmas sermons, Eckhart speaks of the virgin birth as something that happens within us. That is, the story of the virgin birth is the story of Christ being born within us through the union of the Spirit of God with our flesh. For one, like myself, who has difficulty with a strictly historical interpretion of the Christmas story; the story of Jesus' birth as not just in the past, but about an internal birth in us in the present, speaks to me. My prayer is that it will speak to you.

Here are some of my notes form my sermon.

How many of you like surprises?

I guess it depends on the surprise doesn’t it?

The Bible is full of God's…surprises, in hindsight we call them blessings, but more often than not, in the midst of it, I wonder how often we see God’s call as blessing.

Can you think of a single instance in the scripture when God's call comes at a convenient time or  fits easily into somebody's routine?

God’s call comes….

Change your ways!  Change your mind!  Change your plans!

///////////////////////////

God sends Abraham and Sarah into a strange land on a thin promise.

God meets ill-tempered, tongue-tied Moses out in the wilderness, makes him go back to the last place he wants to go to face the last person he wants to face with the last message he wants to stutter before the mighty Pharaoh.

God calls Ruth to leave her homeland to anoint as the greatest King, save one, Israel would ever have and makes an everlasting covenant with him.

God calls Jeremiah, who says, "Hey, I'm just a kid," but God says, "Hey, I can use kids, too."

Jesus shows the Pharisees that God loves prostitutes and tax collectors just as much as priests and Bible teachers, and calls a rugged crew of fishermen and marginalized women to be his closest followers.

The Spirit shows the apostles in Jerusalem that the gospel includes the Gentiles just as much as the Jews – and Samaritans, and women, and eunuchs, and even Roman prison guards!

God keeps making these disturbing, surprising calls which break the rules, change our minds,

and push us in new, unexpected directions.

Perhaps the most surprising, the most disturbing call in the Bible…comes to Mary.

Scholars tell us Mary would have been young, as young as twelve or fourteen years old when the angel appeared to her. Think of that! A child of a woman, from a poor priestly family. Her life already mapped out for her. With an arranged marriage, the custom of the day, soon she will leave her parents and move in with him.

Suddenly an angel is calling her name! With a surprise from God, that disturbs

everything she has planned, everything she has expected, all of her young Jewish girl dreams. She must rethink all her values…loyalties….commitments…ideals.

She has to tell her parents…her rabbi…Joseph! "How can this be?" Mary asks, as we ask when God calls us to something we didn't expect  or don't want to do, or worst of all, don't believe in.

Ruth Fox, a Benedictine nun, argues that too often we picture Mary as a perfectly manicured, wealthy European Renaissance woman, like all the paintings, and statues and Christmas cards. She says we need to picture her as a sturdy young Palestinian peasant, strong enough to walk the rugged hills of Galilee, carry heavy jars of water from the well, give birth in a barn.

  Or for those of you who have gone on one of the mission  trips to Nicaragua, think of her as a young girl walking miles for water or to school.

  Or think of those young girls in Kenya, that Mary Walker talked to us about last Sunday. Escaping from genital mutilation and forced early marriage.

Not the most likely candidate to bear the Son of God,                                                                                                 birthing the savior into the world?

Those young girls are just like Mary…only human.

Just like the thousands of other Jewish girls across the countryside at Mary’s time, nothing special, not a saint, not exceptionally gifted, not theologically trained, not wealthy, not powerful, not even noticed by the world, and yet - she, of all people, is called by God.

"How can this be?" Mary asks, and we must wonder the same thing…when God calls us to be the means by which the love of Christ is born into this world.

We are only human, after all. Men and women, partnered and single, young and old - ordinary people all, ordinary like the ordinary people God calls again and again and again in the Bible.

"How can this be?" Mary asks, and we ask the same when we think about the scandal of the incarnation, that God entered the world through the flesh of Mary in the flesh of Jesus. It is ridiculous. It is absurd. How can this be?

But this is what we believe.

God entered the world - and still enters the world - through ordinary flesh and blood.

What did the disciples say when Jesus started telling them about the cross?

"How can this be?" asked the hierarchy when Martin Luther said the church had become over-institutionalized and needed to recover grace and faith at the heart of the gospel.

And God is still making these strange calls in our own time.

"How can this be?" asked preachers and elders when women presented themselves for ordination.

"How can this be?" they asked when Martin Luther King said the church needed to be at the center of the civil rights movement.

"How can this be?" asks many, when others say that God's spirit has been poured equally on all of God’s people.

God's disturbing call keeps doing new things, coming into the world to spread the love around, move us one step closer to the dream God has for us all.

"How can this be?" Mary asks.

"How can this be?" Well, it cannot be, it will not be unless Mary says "yes."

God's call catches us by surprise, disturbs our plans, and changes everything.

We want to say, "You must have the wrong person. You can't use me."

We want to say, "Maybe later, when I'm ready, when I'm a better person, when I've finished what I want to do."

But God uses human instruments to accomplish the Divine purposes.

God uses ordinary flesh and blood, yours and mine, "earthen vessels," Paul calls them.

Think about it. What if Mary had said, "No? Not me."

Or: "Maybe later when I'm older."

But what did Mary say?

"Let it be to me according to your word."

The most outrageous…naïve…courageous words in the Bible and good news for all of us. "Let it be to me according to your word."

It doesn't make sense. It disturbs all her plans, begs for trouble.

But, as Madeline L'Engle writes,

This is the irrational season

When love blooms bright and wild;

Had Mary been filled with reason,

There'd have been no room for the child.

Advent I - Scripture for Sunday 11/28

This Advent season I will not use the lectionary readings for the year, instead I would like to focus on the story leading to Jesus’ birth. When following the lectionary, it isn’t until the 4^th Sunday of Advent that we begin to move into the story of Mary and Joseph. On the 4^th Sunday we typically hear that an angel appeared to Mary or to Joseph, and then a few days later we are celebrating the birth of the baby. This year we will begin the 1^st Sunday of Advent with the story of Mary and the Angel. The 2^nd Sunday of Advent we will delve into the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah. The 3^rd Sunday of Advent we will look at how Joseph dealt with the news of Mary’s pregnancy. And on the 4^th Sunday we will take the trip with Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.

My hope and prayer is that we will be able to hear a familiar story in new ways.

THE FIRST SUNDAY IN ADVENT

Luke 1:26-38 (NRSV)

²⁶ In the sixth month (of Elizabeth’s pregnancy) the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. ²⁸ And he came to her and said, "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you." ²⁹ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰ The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³² He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³ He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." ³⁴ Mary said to the angel, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" ³⁵ The angel said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. ³⁶ And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. ³⁷ For nothing will be impossible with God." ³⁸ Then Mary said, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word." Then the angel departed from her.

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by Permission. All rights reserved

Luke 1:26-38 (The Message)

²⁶ In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to the Galilean village of Nazareth ²⁷ to a virgin engaged to be married to a man descended from David. His name was Joseph, and the virgin's name, Mary. ²⁸ Upon entering, Gabriel greeted her: Good morning! You're beautiful with God's beauty, Beautiful inside and out! God be with you. ²⁹ She was thoroughly shaken, wondering what was behind a greeting like that. ³⁰ But the angel assured her, "Mary, you have nothing to fear. God has a surprise for you: ³¹ You will become pregnant and give birth to a son and call his name Jesus. ³² He will be great, be called 'Son of the Highest.' The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David; ³³ He will rule Jacob's house forever— no end, ever, to his kingdom." ³⁴ Mary said to the angel, "But how? I've never slept with a man." ³⁵ The angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Highest hover over you; Therefore, the child you bring to birth will be called Holy, Son of God.
³⁶ "And did you know that your cousin Elizabeth conceived a son, old as she is? Everyone called her barren, and here she is six months' pregnant! ³⁷ Nothing, you see, is impossible with God." ³⁸ And Mary said, Yes, I see it all now: I'm the Lord's maid, ready to serve. Let it be with me just as you say. Then the angel left her.

Scripture quotations from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

It may surprise some that I find it difficult to preach during the season of Advent/Christmas. While I find the stories engaging and full of contemporary issues, they are also full of difficulties. Two gospels, Mark and John, do not even offer a birth story and Luke and Matthew are quite different in their telling of the story. Are Mary and Joseph living in Nazareth or in Bethlehem…it depends on which story holds your attention? Genealogies are so important in the bible, so why is Jesus’ ancestry so different in Luke and Matthew? After Jesus’ birth is there a star and wise ones bringing the first Christmas presents or does the angel choir appear the shepherds, so that the shepherds bring milk and goat cheese to Mary.

It may be hard to believe, with all the Christmas shopping already happening, but for many centuries the birthday of Jesus was not a major celebration in the church. Holy Week and Easter are the founding festivals of the church. Christmas was a minor season in comparison.

There is also difficulty with the idea of a virgin birth and the biblical description of conception. We no longer see sex as impure or sinful. And, while we hear the story of Mary’s conception story through the warmth and peacefulness of Christmas, if that context is momentarily removed the story also has a frightening and terrifying side to it. David Ewart writes:

A young woman (as young as 12 or 13) is caught alone by a powerful male who says, "Don't be afraid, this won't hurt. You are going to be overpowered and become pregnant. I'll leave you. You'll have a baby out of wedlock. And no one will believe your story of how you got pregnant."

Preachers, especially powerful males, should be aware of the memory traces this story may stir up among their congregations.

What is also shocking about this story though, is that it is preserved and told as being the origins of the Holy One, our Jesus.

In Mary in the New Testament (Fortress, 1978) , in which collaborating Roman Catholic and Protestant scholars examine what the churches and the New Testament have said about Mary, the authors confess that neither Catholic nor Protestant tradition and practice have done Mary justice. The volume chases down a host of unbiblical doctrines, some all the way to the second century. Heresy-prone ascetics used the virgin birth to develop the illegitimate dogma that chastity is a higher calling than marriage. Yet the idea of Mary’s perpetual virginity became so popular that in the late fourth century the faithful greeted with horror two pro-marriage churchmen’s suggestion that it was biblically and historically justifiable to believe that, following Jesus’ birth, Mary had children by her husband just as any other wife would. An outraged Jerome, then the church’s leading biblical scholar, proposed that the brothers and sisters of Jesus mentioned in the Bible were really cousins. The simple, humble woman who gave birth in a barn would come to be hailed by one fifth-century writer as the one from whom came forth the divine power which created heaven and earth. "Mother of God," a title intended to stress Christ’s full humanity and divinity, came to be taken literally. Mary became a mother goddess.

Even with these difficulties I still find power in the story of Christmas. I like how Marcus Borg comes to the story:

I do not see the basis of the birth stories as history remembered. Yet I think these stories are true. To use familiar terminology, I see these stories as history metaphorized, that is, as metaphorical narratives. And the history that is being metaphorized is not the birth itself but the Jesus story as a whole. With beauty and power, these symbolic narratives express central early Christian convictions about the significance of Jesus…The truly important questions about the birth stories are not whether Jesus was born of a virgin, or whether there was an empire-wide census that took Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, or whether there was a special star leading wise men from the East. The important questions are, "Is Jesus the light of the world? Is he the true Lord? Is what happened in him 'of God'?" Answering these questions lays claim to our whole lives.

  
How do you come to the Christmas story?

I hope you will take the time to read the stories in Matthew and Luke and then send me your thoughts.
Like all good stories, this story speaks differently to each of us.

While studying for my sermon I came across this sermon by Meister Eckhart, a Christian mystic, theologian and preacher from the 13th century. In one of his Christmas sermons, Eckhart spoke of the virgin birth as something that happens within us. That is, the story of the virgin birth is the story of Christ being born within us through the union of the Spirit of God with our flesh. I think he is right; ultimately, the story of Jesus' birth is not just about the past, but about the internal birth in us in the present.

Sunday Reflection from New Orleans

It's been a while since I posted.
It was a busy week that ended with me and some members from our church (Rich Nelson, Lea Wentdlandt and Gail Barnhart) headed to New Orleans for a mission trip. We are joining other More Light Churches in what is being called Rainbow Corp. The group is staying at a makeshift village that was set up after Katrina, 5 years ago. There are over 30 individuals who have come to be part of Rainbow Corp. They hail from  Rochester, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Houston, Santa Fe and San Antonio!  We are having a great time, and for the most part have been working or sleeping...for the most part...it is NOLA. Here are some photos from Lea's phone, so she isn't in any of them.

I am not preaching this coming week. This is Consecration Sunday, when members bring their financial commitments to worship and we invite a guest preacher to bring the message. But because last week I preached on stewardship and this week will also be about stewardship, I will share some of my sermon and my rationale.

I had some questions rumbling around in my head as I reflected on stewarship:

1. To what are we called to be as the church?
2. What are we asking you to give to?
3. And are we living up to that calling?

I fear that too often we, the church, spend too much our time talking about paying the bills and fixing the organ, or the heater, or paying my salary that we never get around to the work of the church. Yes all these things are important to talk about, but if we spend all our time focused on these issues, we miss so much of our calling as the church.

I used G-3.0200 from our Book of Order as the focus of the sermon. Often times we think of the Book of Order as this boring book of rules and regulations, and it is, but the first four chapters are a beautiful description of the work of the people of God and the church, the body of Christ in the world.

Here are some excerpts from the sermon, let me know what you think...

G-3.0200    The Church of Jesus Christ is the provisional demonstration of what God intends for all of humanity.

As you head out of church today,

you will see the beauty of Madison Square park across the street with the dogs playing in the new dog park,

but you will also see homeless individuals with nowhere to go, you might even see a bed roll hidden behind our bushes.

Monday through Friday, people will come by the church needing help, and these are not homeless, these are the one’s on the edge.

A paycheck or a health problem away from the streets.

Most have already been to CAM and received the help given there…but it isn’t enough.

And so they travel from church to church adding up the small gifts to pay a CPS bill or a late rent.

These are the realities of being a downtown church.

All bus routes sooner or later come by our door and there are no gates at the end of the block.

The news tells us that the gap between the rich and poor in this nation resembles the Gilded Age, when robber barons amassed fortunes at the top and the poor struggled far below,

without the strong middle class that arose in the last century.

As the economy has spiraled down and unemployment has shot up,

we find that large national banks were not only doing very little to work with those in foreclosure, they were in fact speeding up the process. After making their money up front on the loans, which was their plan all along, the banks now make money when people default because the loan was insured. Then taking the property back, the only asset left.

As a nation, we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars on war and the cost of the destruction it brings,

and then we argue over whether we can afford health insurance or good schools for our children.

Perhaps it really isn't that difficult, then,

to imagine how things must have felt for the people of Jerusalem around 475 B.C.E.,

two generations after they returned from exile and tried to rebuild their devastated city.

They remembered the former glory of Jerusalem and its Temple, and they rebuilt

but the new version didn't quite measure up to the glory of Solomon's Temple.

Imagine the prophet Isaiah, walking through the rubble of the city.

Much of the city was still in ruin, including homes and markets,

and many people continued to suffer the effects of oppression and dislocation.

Hunger, thirst, illness and early death, sorrow and grief, economic injustice and political turmoil were the realities of the day. 

Post-exilic Israel was looking at rubble; so are we (The evening news from Afghanistan, Baghdad, or Haiti provides vivid images to help our imaginations.)

Israel may have felt overwhelmed and threatened by empires and forces they couldn't influence let alone control; we feel overwhelmed, too.

Israel may have worried about its children and lamented their deaths as well as the wasted lives of those who toil in vain; we worry and lament, too.

However, it's right in the midst of such despair-inducing circumstances that God speaks and moves

The prophet we call "Third Isaiah" wrote these beautiful words:

Isaiah 65:17-25
65:17 I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
65:18 But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.
65:19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.
65:20 No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
65:21 They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
65:22 They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
65:23 They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD-- and their descendants as well.
65:24 Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.
65:25 The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent--its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.

This world Isaiah describes may all sound like a beautiful dream, the dream of God, we might even say,

so let’s leave it to God to finish.

We’ll just stay safe in this beautiful church with this beautiful organ and choir and wait it out!

That’s what all this stewardship stuff is all about isn’t it?

Making sure we can ride out the storm.

Pay the bills. Keep the church electricity on.

The walls painted. The organ pumping. Pay my salary.

But building a new earth???

God surely doesn’t expect us to get involved in this crazy dream!?!  Does God?

Well, it’s a good question and a timely one.

Next week will be Consecration Sunday when we ask you to make your financial commitment to the work of this church…so what is the work of this church?

What do we promise you for your pledge? Two hymns of your choosing? A good parking space?

A short sermon on your birthday?

Well when Presbyterians have a question about church and how we order ourselves there is only one place to go….no not the Bible silly, we were there and didn’t like the answer, so what does our Book of Order say?

Here is how our Book of Order describes the work of the church, in G-3.0200:  The Church is called to be the provisional demonstration of what God intends for all of humanity.

In other words, this God dream is our calling. We are called to start working on this wonderful project of God—Isaiah 65.

 Part of that is what we do here in this space,

creating a place where people encounter God in each other, where we are schooled in God’s ways,

where we receive the countercultural antidote to the values of a culture which is increasingly materialistic and

self-centered, dividing us into isolated consuming units focused in on ourselves. 

 In The Architecture of Happiness Alain de Botton describes home in a way that well describes the church as our spiritual home:

It has provided not only physical but also psychological sanctuary. 

It has been a guardian of identity. 

Over the years, its owners have returned from periods away and, on looking around them, remembered who they were…. 

Although this house may lack solutions to a great many of its occupants’ ills, its rooms nevertheless give evidence of a happiness to which architecture has made its distinctive contribution.

God knows we haven’t always lived up to our ideals – there is no perfect church as there are no perfect people – but here and there and now and then we have embodied the presence of God for one another in a way that gives us “a foretaste of glory Divine,” as the old hymn sings.

So what we do here is important, but actually is secondary to our mission.

Forgetting this may be the greatest failure of the church. 

As one Christian missiologist put it, “They came to us seeking God, and we gave them church instead.” 

We should think of this temple more as our tool shed than the center of our work together, because the primary mission of the church is not what we receive here, but what we do out there, loving people in the name of Christ. 

People who have failed. 

People who are alone and unloved. 

People who are despised and rejected. 

People who have succeeded beyond their wildest imagination but feel desperate to fill their inner emptiness. 

People who are bound and exploited by systems that use their best gifts and give them nothing but money in return, if that. 

People who are wondering what their lives mean, and whether there isn’t some purpose greater than having the latest gizmos, the newest cars, and the latest fashions. 

People who want their lives to matter. 

People whose families have failed them. 

People who have no other family. 

People who think God is about hatred and judgement.  People who need to mature to that place where they are givers as well as takers in mutual, adult relationships. 

And our mission is to embody and extend the gospel further. 

But, because the church, in so many of its concrete manifestations, has excluded people from the love of God, how much more important is it that a church like ours, which seeks to live out the good news of including everyone, is out in the world. 

We have to go to them and love them where they live, in the name of Christ. 

Words like “outreach” and “evangelism” make us nervous because of the intrusive, exploitative behaviors which have been associated with them. 

But love is not intrusive.  Love does not exploit. 

That’s not what those words mean to us. 

Our mission is not to build up our church. 

Our mission is to ask what others need from us,

who needs us to be church to them, who needs the love of God and how can we provide it? 

And that mission is both personal and organizational,

who you are as an individual

and what we do as a community. 

Will Willimon received an angry call from an irate father one day while he was serving as Dean of Duke University Chapel. 

His daughter had been an active part of the chapel community in the Bible studies, service projects, mission trips, all the rest.

She had majored in engineering, was about to graduate magna cum laude with job offers to go anywhere she wanted.

But—because of Willimon’s influence, her father alleged, she had decided she was going to join the Peace Corps instead and spend two years in Haiti working in some impoverished village.

“This is all because of you!” he fumed at Willimon.

“I spent $250,000 on a Duke education. My daughter worked hard for four years and got good grades. And now thanks to you, she has this fool idea to go off and build latrines down in Haiti!” 

“Now just a minute!” Willimon snapped back.

“Don’t blame me!  You joined a church and you were the one who had her baptized! What did you expect when you did that?!” 

The man said, “Hey, we’re Presbyterians. We just thought it was a nice little ceremony.  We didn’t mean anything by it.”

To join yourself to the body of Christ at Madison Square is to know that you are included in the love of God, yes! 

But it also means you accept the mission to embody Christ in the world. 

Not just by the grace of being included,

but this mission of including others…you are saved from the meaningless existence of constant self-focus. 

You get a life that is abundant and valuable. 

You become part of the life the Christ in the world.

A steward of God’s love…justice…and peace.