Christmas Eve 2012

Joy to Be Shared Christmas Eve 2012 Some of you may be familiar with the name of Karl Barth. He was a Swiss theologian who died in 1968. He wrote, among other things, a thirteen volume series of books titled Church Dogmatics. He wrote hundreds of pages outlining great theological thought. It seems that late in his life, he was asked to give a lecture to a group of young seminary students at Chicago Divinity School. It was quite a lecture although he was already failing in health. At the close of the lecture, the president of the seminary said this to the students, “Dr. Barth is not well and while he would like to take your questions, he is unable to do so.” He then turned to Barth and said, “I would like to ask you just one question on behalf of all of us. Of all the theological insights you have ever had, which do you consider to be the greatest of them all?” What an amazing question for a man who had penned some of the most complicated explanations of theology ever written. Apparently, the students put their pens to paper, ready to record the answer. It is reported that Dr. Barth, closed his eyes for just a moment, and then replied, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” And, that was that. As I reflected on these profound words of Karl Barth, well-known to me through my childhood, I tried to grasp what those words really mean—Jesus loves me, this I know. Now I will admit to you that I have thought about this reflection for weeks—you know, it’s Christmas Eve, and all preachers know that their words should reflect the importance of this night. And, then, I came across this story of Dr. Barth and the seminarians and it knocked me to my knees. Forget all the lofty words, the deep theological insights—this is Christmas Eve and Jesus loves me—this is what I know and of this is what I should speak. Jesus, this tiny babe in a manger, loves us. Jesus, this man who walked and talked with the poorest of the poor and the sickest of the sick, loves us. Jesus, this man, both God and servant of God, loves us. Jesus, the Rock of Salvation, Wonderful Counselor, and Prince of Peace, loves us. US! Beckoning to us to come and see, the Light of God shows us the way. And we come, not as children, the passage of time knows better; but we come as children of God—each year, welcomed anew to deepen our relationship with all that is Holy in our lives and with the God, who created all things. We come to be forgiven and healed, comforted and made whole, embraced and filled with joy. And, so, together we go—these are some of my private musings with this tiny baby, loving teacher, servant God. I picture myself standing in front of Mary, gazing at the child. I remember to tell Mary that her baby is beautiful and she smiles. Then my eyes and my heart rest on him. My soul sings as Mary’s did just a few months before. And I know that I am blessed. I know that God has chosen me to love and to use in this world as a servant of Divine Love. God fills my heart with Joy and sets my feet to dancing to the rising of a heavenly song. I am aware on this night, like no other, that God has created me to be the person that I am—all that I am—and has guided me through all my life. It occurs to me that I am twice the age that Jesus was when he began his ministry on earth. And, here I am, still a beginner in this experience called life; but God calls me to learn more and more of the Sacred Truths of what it means to be God’s child. And, here in front of this baby, I begin anew, on the holiest of nights to seek and find the peace that surpasses all my understanding but is freely given in the light of this Holy Child. Tonight, I open my heart wider still to receive the grace that God longs to pour into my life. Tonight, I invite you to place yourselves in front of the manger, for I believe that God has Sacred Truths in store for every one of us. I invite you, to find a place of quiet even if only for a moment, to seek out what God has nestled in the manger along with this baby that is your gift from God tonight. This Christmas Eve may you find the song that shapes your souls and may you travel to Bethlehem and stand with lowly shepherds and proud new parents and see the child that was born for you. May you hear and feel God’s gracious and loving embrace of you and all that you are. May you know the blessed peace that comes from journeying to the silent place in your heart where God waits ready to speak your name and call you to joy. Tonight, all God’s people whisper, Amen and amen. And we are family tonight. I invite you to turn to those around you and say “Merry Christmas, Jesus loves you!” Joy to the World

THe One-of-a-Kind Glory 12-23-12

The Reading—Isaiah 2: 1-5 The Message Isaiah got regarding Judah and Jerusalem: There’s a day coming when the mountain of GOD’s House Will be The Mountain— solid, towering over all mountains. All nations will river toward it, people from all over set out for it. They’ll say, “Come, let’s climb GOD’s Mountain, go to the House of the God of Jacob. He’ll show us the way he works so we can live the way we’re made.” Zion’s the source of the revelation. GOD’s Message comes from Jerusalem. He’ll settle things fairly between nations. He’ll make things right between many peoples. They’ll turn their swords into shovels, their spears into hoes. No more will nation fight nation; they won’t play war anymore. Come, family of Jacob, let’s live in the light of GOD. The Middle Reading--from “How the Light Comes” by Jan Richardson I cannot tell you how the light comes. What I know is that it is more ancient than imagining. That it travels across an astounding expanse to reach us. That it loves searching out what is hidden, what is lost, What is forgotten, or in peril, or in pain. … I cannot tell you how the light comes, but that it does. That it will. That it works its way into the deepest dark that enfolds you, though it may seem long ages in coming or arrive in a shape you did not foresee. And so may we this day turn ourselves toward it. May we lift our faces to let it find us. May we bend our bodies to follow the arc it makes. May we open and open more and open still to the blessed light that comes. The Gospel—John 1:1-18 The Word was first, the Word present to God, God present to the Word. The Word was God, in readiness for God from day one. Everything was created through him; nothing—not one thing! came into being without him. What came into existence was Life, and the Life was Light to live by. The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness: the darkness couldn’t put it out. There once was a man, his name John, sent by God to point out the way to the Life-Light. He came to show everyone where to look, who to believe in. John was not himself the Light; he was there to show the way to the Light. The Life-Light was the real thing: Every person entering Life he brings into Light. He was in the world, the world was there through him, and yet the world didn’t even notice. He came to his own people, but they didn’t want him. But whoever did want him, who believed he was who he claimed and would do what he said, He made to be their true selves, their child-of-God selves. These are the God-begotten, not blood-begotten, not flesh-begotten, not sex-begotten. The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of- a-kind glory, like Parent, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish. John pointed him out and called, “This is the One! The One I told you was coming after me but in fact was ahead of me. He has always been ahead of me, has always had the first word.” We all live off his generous bounty, gift after gift after gift. We got the basics from Moses, and then this exuberant giving and receiving, this endless knowing and understanding—all this came through Jesus, the Messiah. No one has ever seen God, not so much as a glimpse. This one-of-a-kind God- Expression, who exists at the very heart of the Creator, has made God plain as day. The One-of-a-Kind Glory 12-23-12 God, Source of all Light and life, call us to sit up and watch for the coming of the Life-Light anew in our hearts. It’s almost Christmas, and we’re not sure we’re ready for all you have in store for us. Open our hearts wide that we may receive every blessing you for us. May the words of my mouth be inspired by your Holy Spirit and may our listening be an upturning of our faces to greet your light this day. Amen Do you know the first recorded words of Biblical history? I’ll give you a moment---“Let there be light!” That’s what God said upon seeing the creation of the world. And there was light! And we, the people of God, have been searching ever since for ways to experience that light which God called into being before life itself. You’d think it would be easy for us to understand—why look around “light” is everywhere. And, if the day is gray or night has fallen, we simply flip a switch and light abounds. And yet, we struggle and struggle and struggle some more to know how to make that same light alive in our spirits, our minds, and yes, even our bodies. Isaiah tells us that to live in the light is to live in the way we were made. Living in God’s light, in tune with the plans of our Creator, produces change in the world—right and fair relationships between all nations and peoples, swords changed into shovels and spears into hoes, war a thing of the past. Christ has come again at almost 2000 Christmases and, still, we fail to comprehend the radical righting of relationships when we live as God called us to be as people of the Light. The verses in the Gospel of John that were read today are called the Prologue. There are no pretty angels here, rugged shepherds or well-heeled sages—nothing to get in the way of understanding that which John would have us understand. Poet that John was—he speaks in words that call us to have to try hard to grasp their meaning. But grasp we must if we are to participate in this Life-Light that blazes out of the darkness in John’s interpretation of the coming of Jesus into the world. Jesus and God, intimately linked from the beginning of time, waiting for the right time to be revealed to the world. And when this divine Life-Light was revealed in the coming of Jesus to earth, it could not be extinguished. Building on the basics from Moses, Jesus gives us an in flesh expression of God that we can all understand. In fact, this Jesus has made God plain as day. Most of us may say today, “Really? God plain as day?” We’ve been asking a lot of questions in the last two weeks or so about where God is. Several of you asked me the question all preachers fear. “Why does God let things like that happen?” It doesn’t matter what the “that” is in the sentence, it’s all the same question. Who is this God, anyway? And, if omnipotent and all powerful, why did this (whatever the this may be) happen?” I’m going to give you an answer that is horribly unsatisfying and dangerously honest. “I don’t know.” But, I do know where God is in the seconds after the evil (wherever it is—in Connecticut, Tucson, the Pentagon, New York City or Uganda) is perpetrated. God is in the teachers who shielded children with their own bodies, God is in the first responders at every single scene where evil has played out its torturous renunciation of all things holy, God is in the words of the pastors called upon to preach in circumstances that no one can prepare for. God is in the songs of the Children’s Christmas pageants that continue to take place in every church determined to let God’s light shine for all to see, and God is in the prayers of the broken-hearted and desolate. The world comes dangerously close to extinguishing the Light in my opinion. Wars, wounded soldiers, murdered children, abused women and men, and people dying by the thousands of AIDS—a disease we should have been able to eradicate decades ago—all cause us to ask “why?” We, much like Mary, ponder all these things in our hearts as we watch the unfolding of the Christmas story again this year. But, John calls us back to reality—the Light shines in this darkness because the darkness has not overcome it. Everyone is invited to experience this one-of-a-kind glory. That’s a close as John gets to celestial beings or magical messages in dreams and visions. This glory is for all, that is, all who participate in this Reign of Light and Life. Here, we encounter more than a little resistance. How does this work, this experiencing of glory? Many of us will say, I can’t identify with this. My religion is practical, none of this mystical, soul-shifting stuff for me. Here’s where “Glory” gets a bad name. We convince ourselves that this interior, life-altering experience of God is just for monks, nuns, preachers or others who devote their lives to walking with God. Not so. If Jesus came to make God known for all of us, then we can truly understand God by looking to the incarnation of God. I believe that God intends for the experience of God’s presence to be universally available. But we must want it, we must want to experience God’s fullest fullness. Fr. Henri Nouwen describes it like this: “We must be attentive and interiorly alert. For some people the experience of the fullness of time comes in a spectacular way, as it did to St. Paul when he fell to the ground on his way to Damascus (Acts 9:3-4). But for some of us it comes like a murmuring sound or a gentle breeze touching our backs (1 Kings 19:13). God loves us all and wants us all to know this in a most personal way.” What does it mean for us to know that God loves us in a “personal way”? This, I think, is the crux of the Christmas story, at least for John. We know that, later in life, the teacher and prophet, Jesus, turned the world order upside down when he called the humble to the front of the line, the meek to rule the earth, and told the hungry that they would never be hungry again. Are these just stories? You must know, by now, that I would not have dedicated myself to the telling of mere stories over and over. No, I believe with everything in me, and I know that there are others here, too, who believe that the story of this Christ child can and will change our lives if we are fully open to hearing, digesting, pondering and interacting with the Divine in our inner, sacred lives. So when, we find ourselves craving something more this Christmas time, we are called by John to experience this glory for ourselves. Ah, this may be it—we have told the story so many times, or heard the story so many times, that it is something we rarely stop and take inside our hearts. We may plan, each time Advent or Christmas rolls around to spend more time in preparation for our encounter with Christ anew. But, rarely, do we actually manage to do so. And, so today, I call us to the quiet, to that sacred alone place where we can hear the call of God. It is in this quiet space, this open, humble space where God can be heard above all that clamors for our attention. And when, we are in the manger of our hearts, God is born again, clothed in humble clothes and worshipped by poor and probably dirty shepherds. Friend to our troubled hearts, this Baby calls to us in soft infant smiles and troubled infant tears. And we reach out to lift and love this baby into our hearts—those hearts made tender and whole by our encounter with this divine infant—this Light in the world. And we, in turn, will light the world for all to see. Marianne Williamson reminds us: “Christ is born into the world through each of us. As we open our hearts, he is born into the world. As we choose to forgive, he is born into the world. As we rise to the occasion, he is born into the world. As we make our hearts true conduits for love, and our minds true conduits for higher thoughts, then absolutely a divine birth takes place. Who we're capable of being emerges into the world…” And, so, today, we wait. We wait for the holiest of nights to unfold tomorrow. And, as we wait, God waits to show us all that we were planned to be. God loves us and has a plan for our lives—and that plan involves growing and becoming, recognizing and reclaiming. We are, in many cases, a wounded people, but God calls us to wholeness—a divine wholeness that comes in God’s time, filling us with the unmistakable knowledge that God shines the Light so that we would come to love ourselves, each other and the world with the passion and power of sacred servanthood to God. And to God we say, we are open to your calling, your words, and your silence. Perhaps this is what Mary, epitome of sacred servanthood, pondered as she encountered God in Jesus in the manger right where he lay. Amen and amen.

Blessed Among Women 12-9-12

The Reading— Isaiah 42: 1-8 “Here is my Servant, whom I uphold my chosen one, in whom I delight! I have endowed you with my Spirit that you may bring true justice to the nations. You do not cry out or raise your voice, or make yourself heard in the street. So gentle that you do not break a bruised reed, or quench a wavering flame, faithfull you will bring forth true justice. You will neigher waver nor be crushed until justice is established on earth, for the nations await your teaching! Thus says Yahweh, who created the heavens and spread them out, who gave shape to the earth and what it produces, who gave life to its peoples and spirit to its inhabitants. I, Yahweh, have called you to serve the cause of right; I have taken you by the hand, and I watch over you. I have appointed you to be a covenant people, a light to the nations: to open the eyes of the blind, to free captives from prison, and those who sit in darkness from the dungeon. I am Yahweh! This is my Name!” The Middle Reading--from Jan Richardson and is entitled Drawing Near. It is difficult to see it from here, I know, but trust me when I say this blessing is inscribed on the horizon. Is written on that far point you can hardly see. Is etched into a landscape whose contours you cannot know from here. All you know is that it calls you, draws you, pulls you toward what you have perceived only in pieces, in fragments that came to you in dreaming or in prayer. I cannot account for how, as you draw near, the blessing embedded in the horizon begins to blossom upon the soles of your feet, shimmers in your two hands. It is one of the mysteries of the road, how the blessing you have traveled toward, waited for, ached for suddenly appears as if it had been with you all this time, as if it simply needed to know how far you were willing to walk to find the lines that were traced upon you before the day that you were born. The Gospel Reading: Luke 1: 39-43 Within a few days Mary set out and hurried to the hill country to a town of Judah, where she entered Zechariah’s house and greeted Elizabeth. As soon as Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why am I so favored, that the mother of the Messiah should come to me? The moment your greeting reached my ears, the child in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who believed that what our God said to her would be accomplished!” Oh, I see you’re all here. She told me you would be. I’m Elizabeth. I want to tell you a story, several stories actually—it all took place a long time ago, but I want to tell you my story of miracles. It all started with my husband, Zechariah. A good man, my Zechariah—anyway, Zechariah was a priest. Out of thousands of priests it came to be Zechariah’s turn to go the Sanctuary to offer sacrifices and to pray. This is how he tells the story. While everyone waited expectantly outside, he went into the Sanctuary. There he saw an angel that told him several incredible things—my poor Zechariah, how he must have trembled in the sight of the angel. This angel told my dear husband that I would become pregnant and bear a child. Now, this, my chosen friends, was pretty hard to believe. We were too old to think about having children—why my body was already telling me that childbearing days were over and, quite frankly, we had given up. Zechariah was even older than I was, so I can imagine that Zechariah was more than doubtful. But the angel insisted and told him that I would bear a very special boy, one who would grow to be a very important man—the man who would announce the coming of the Messiah. The Messiah—the one we had waited for all those years. My poor Zechariah couldn’t believe his ears—in fact, he didn’t believe his ears and for that God struck him deaf and dumb. He came back out of the Sanctuary, but he couldn’t tell anyone what happened—even when he tried to draw pictures. Everyone knew he had been touched by God, they just didn’t know how. Zechariah came home and I comforted him and, well, then, and this causes me to blush, I became pregnant. I did, in fact, have a baby boy, and we named him “John” just as God insisted. Just at the time we named our baby, Zechariah could again speak. There he was, my Zechariah, who had been silenced during my pregnancy, praising God and telling all who would listen about his time with the angel, Gabriel, who had told him all that John would do. The announcer of the Messiah, my John was chosen to clear the way for the coming of the Messiah. But, in my excitement to tell you of my own child’s birth, I’ve gotten way ahead of myself. I know that you will forgive me, I waited so long to even have a child and that God would choose me to bear this special baby, filled me with such wonder and joy that it is very hard for me to stop talking about my John. So, please, be patient with me. My John was not the only miracle in my family that year. So let me tell you about Mary, and her son, Jesus. Mary was my cousin, sort of. I can’t remember exactly how we were related, but we were. She was much younger than I—much, much younger. She was only just starting the time when she could become pregnant when I was long done—trust me, long, long done. During the same time as I was pregnant with John, something very strange and wonderful happened to Mary and her husband-to-be, Joseph. Mary, why she couldn’t have been more than 14 or 15 at the time, was promised to Joseph. Joseph was a kind man, and I was thrilled for her that she was so fortunate as to be engaged to such a wonderful man. Now, there is something you need to understand—when you were engaged, it is the same thing as being married in our law. And then—the real miracle happened. I tell it to you the way Mary told it to me, so young and trusting she was. Mary said that the Angel Gabriel, I suppose the same one as visited my Zechariah, came to see her. He told her some very strange things indeed. He told her that she was one of God’s favored ones. She was scared, poor little thing, and who wouldn’t be—some angel appearing out of nowhere. She said the angel told her not to be afraid, and that God was going to use her to bear the child who was the Messiah—the Messiah, she said she couldn’t believe her ears. But Mary, was a smart one, she knew just how babies come to be, if you know what I mean. So she says that she worked up her courage and asked the angel how this was going to happen, since she and Joseph were not married. But the angel goes right on and says that the Holy Spirit would enter her and she would become pregnant with God’s son. Now, I’ve got to stop this story right now and ask you, what would you have done? 14 or 15—knowing that being pregnant before she married Joseph would cost her everything, everything, Joseph, her family, everything. But Mary kept listening and then the angel told her about me and Zechariah and the baby I was carrying at the time. The angel said, “with God, nothing is impossible”. Well, I was living proof of that, you know, so she couldn’t argue with that. And then, it seems that this sweet young child surrendered to the will of God, and told the angel that she would do exactly what God told her to do. I’m so proud of my little cousin-of sorts, what a brave young woman she became in those few moments. At least I had Zechariah, she didn’t know if she had anyone. Did you know that she could have been disowned by her family or even killed for her so-called Holy pregnancy? It was all up to Joseph to decide her fate. So, she came to see me. I wasn’t going out anymore, as I was pretty big, that John was a big baby, don’t you know. But, wait, I forgot to tell you about Joseph. Joseph was a good man, but couldn’t bear the thought of having a wife made pregnant by someone else. But he wanted to spare her public disgrace—he was working on what to do when he got his own visit from an angel. After that, he was a changed man and he agreed to marry Mary anyway and raise her baby as his own. So, through the door she comes. I am rising slowly, seems as if I was doing everything slowly those days. As she entered the room, that baby inside me started doing flip-flops. And, I knew immediately that something very special was happening. I told Mary that I knew the baby she was carrying was God’s son. I felt so blessed to be in her presence, like a great white light was pouring peace into the room. I couldn’t tell where the light was coming from but it flooded over us both as I just stood and gazed at her. In my heart, I wanted her to truly know how honored I felt to be in her presence, it was as if I encountered God in a completely new way. I told her that she and her baby were blessed. I told her that I could barely believe that I was standing in the presence of the mother of God. I told her that my baby knew, too—that he recognized that her baby was the Son of God. It so amazed me that this mere child was carrying the earthly incarnation of God. I wish I could help you understand—to you the coming of Jesus is nothing new—happens every year, so I hear. But, not in my time, our people had waited hundreds of years for this baby—this baby who now filled Mary’s belly as she stood in front of me. As I was trying to take this all in, Mary sang the most beautiful song. Let me see if I can remember most of the words. My soul belongs to God. My spirit is full of the joy of God. God cared for me, a woman of no importance— Until now. Now, I am blessed and all will know of God’s work in me. I am humbled, even to say the Name of God is a holy act. Those who know God intimately believe in this sacred love— And not just at this moment but for all time. Every generation who walks this God-created earth know of God And of God’s acts of power and might. God disarms those who are proud and think they know it all— Confuses them in their hearts and minds. God, our Creator, fills all the hungry people--those who are Hungry for food and those who are hungry for God. But those who feel no need for God because they think they are Rich have been sent away. God remembers the promise to Israel—the promise to always be Our God. The mercy and love that flows from that promise Are for all of us, now and forever. And, then she was just Mary again, but somehow different, always changed, never the same. She stayed with me right up to the time of John’s birth—it was such a joy to have her with me during those months and watch her grow into a beautiful young woman, called to be the Mother of God. Well, you know the rest of the story, I guess. You certainly don’t need me to tell it to you. I wanted to tell you my story, though, to tell you of the miracles that I saw, that I experienced, that I know to be true. Most of all, I wanted to tell you what it felt like to be in the presence of God, even before that baby who would change everything was born. I felt so humbled and yet so lifted up at the same time. This God, the God of our forefathers and foremothers, of Abraham and Sarah—this same God had visited me and filled me with a divine sense of the grace and love of God, and my life was never the same. Is that what happens for you, I wonder—this time, each year. Do your hearts open so that you can feel the presence of God in your heart, in your mind, in your body and spirit? I wish for you, what I had—an encounter with God that changes you for now and forever. My time with you is over, but I pray for you this day. And so, as I leave you, I say, amen and amen.