More thoughts from ground level

See this as a PDF
 

Wouldn’t you agree that Christmas Eve holds the top spot as the most magical night of the year? I say that in part because it is filled with stories that weave together reality with possibility. On Christmas Eve Clara dreams about her nutcracker coming to life and protecting her from the Rat King. On Christmas Eve Clarence, angel 2^nd Class, leads George Bailey through a Bedford Falls he doesn’t recognize. It’s the night, a fourth Century bishop still travels the globe. It’s the night, Ebeneezer Scrooge is taken on a tour of his own sad life. It’s the night the Polar Express stops in front of a boy’s house and he climbs on board to travel to the North Pole, of course!

Christmas Eve is also a night full of the real moments of life mixed with possibility. A child looks at real wrapping paper and tape and ribbon and imagines the possibilities of what might be inside. A parent looks at a real box full of bike parts and imagines it’s possible that they’re all supposed to fit together. A soldier calls home from the reality of Iraq and imagines a day when it’s possible for her family to be together again. A family is spending their second Christmas in a real FEMA trailer in Gulf Port, Mississippi and imagines the possibility that they would have house again.

The power of this night is that reality and possibility come together, and that means it is a might bound up in hope. Such is the story of the birth of Jesus, a story that defines the hope of this night. Recently, I read a story in the news about a story of hope from the other side of the world. It came from modern-city of Bethlehem. I visited that city in 1999. I remember it as a friendly city. There was an open square that was full of commerce. I stopped into a café for a cup of coffee and visited with the people inside as best as I could. They were very welcoming and excited that I was there. The square was near the Church of the Nativity. Tourists filled the square buying postcards, olive wood carvings, pictures, and Bibles. The Church of the Nativity is built over the traditional place where Jesus was born. People can walk down the stairs into the lower level of the church and a grotto marks the supposed place of Jesus birth. I was there in March, but that didn’t stop the group I was with from singing a stanza of O Little Town of Bethlehem and Away in a Manger. That probably happens all year long. Well, perhaps not so much anymore. Let me go back to that article I read.

The article told of Bethlehem city employees who are decorating the main street for Christmas this year. The main street is called Star Street. There hasn’t much money to pay city employees or provide basic services in Bethlehem in recent months, and so you might imagine that Christmas decorations are low on the city’s priorities. That is, until an offer was made to donate the decorations this year. The donation came from gifts from the city’s Muslims. Muslims make up a majority of the residents of Bethlehem and they gave the funds to help decorate the city for Christmas. Lights even this night run down Star Street through the square and all the way to the Church of the Nativity. Two city employees, one a Christian and one a Muslim, have been working on this for the past several days.

To me that is an example of the way reality and possibility meet on Christmas Eve. In a world so divided along religious lines, here is an example of Muslims and Christians working together to do something that serves a greater purpose. Neighbors are helping neighbors in a way that transcends and still honors religious identity.This article goes on to note that actually there won’t be many tourists this year to see these donated lights. Most of the tourists who come to Bethlehem will ride a bus in for the day and many will leave before dark. There reasons for this are many and complicated, but simply put, it means there will be plenty of room in the Inn this year. Actually, for several years now tourism in Bethlehem has been on the decline. When we sing, Silent Night, the phrase, All is calm, all is bright, sounds comforting for a newborn baby, but this year in Bethlehem, all is calm all is bright means so few people will be visiting the city of Jesus’ birth with its Christmas lights.I know there are other endeavors more important than putting up Christmas lights on a city street, especially if it’s a street that not many people will see, but I see something significant here. Do you? I see the wonder of this holy night still present in this great city. I see the reality of a deeply divided world meeting the possibility looking beyond those divisions.Once again Bethlehem offers the world a sign of hope, a shining star showing the way for all humanity. That way is made visible when neighbors—Christians and Muslims—work side by side. On this holy night, we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the truest hope to come from that city. We celebrate the night true peace arrived on earth. It arrived as helpless infant and had to be cared for and nurtured. Maybe peace is like that. It starts out small and needs much care.

Signs of peace are also small at first. They have to be nurtured and practiced and protected. From Bethlehem comes the reminder that it has to start first among neighbors. That sounds like something Jesus said as an adult.The surprise of Bethlehem is that once again it shows us what happens when reality and possibility come together on this holy night. A light shines again in Bethlehem. On this night it is the light of neighbors committed to a greater good. Like the Magi, let us be guided by its brightness. It shines as a witness to the birthplace of true peace. I challenge you this night to be among those who work to share this good news of great joy for all the people. And thanks be to God. Amen.

See this as a PDF

So far in this Advent season, we’ve heard three prophets bring us a call to come near, and now that we have reached Christmas Eve, a final call comes from the prophet Micah. He call us to come near what we have been waiting for. We’ve been waiting for news of a birth and each prophet along this Advent way has told us something about the one whose birth we are about to celebrate.

Isaiah brought us a call to come near the hopeful sign that a future of peace is now secure because of the birth of the Messiah. Swords become plowshare in this future peace and harvests replace invasion. We are called to refashion the personal swords we carry and wield into plowshares that cultivate relationships.

Next came Malachi, who called us to come near and prepare to encounter peace in the birth of the Messiah. Not only is a future peace secure, each of is called to be open to receiving that peace for our lives right now. Jesus reveals what that peace looks like. He shows us how to treated others, how to look to God. As we pattern our lives after Jesus, in the words of Malachi, our lives become an offering of righteousness to God.

Next came Zephaniah who called us to come near what really matters in life. What really matters? We do. For God gathers us together and says to each one of us, “You belong to me.” Do not forget this message, Zephaniah writes, and your hands grow week with fear. Do not forget this message, he writes, and let fear govern what you do in life.

Now the prophet Micah calls us to come near He calls us to come near what we have been waiting for: the birth of the one who now defines who we are and how we see the world around us.

Each of these prophets painted pictures with words. Micah tells us of a woman in labor in a village in Judea. The baby, he writes, will be like the great king David, a great shepherd of Israel. Micah announced that a new ruler is on the way, who will shall stand and feed his flock. Ancient Israel found great meaning in using shepherding language to talk about their kings. As you know, David, their greatest king, was a shepherd before he was ever king. This ruler will shall stand and feed his flock. Someone wrote that “stand” here has the meaning of enduring the test of time. The ways of this ruler will stand the test of time, and such are the ways of Christ. They are durable ways (Calvin). They are not like the ways of so much else in this world: fashionable for a season and then discarded. The ways of Christ are the ways God intends for all humanity. Our Church Constitution puts it like this: The church is the provisional demonstration (the dress rehearsal) for what God intends for all humanity.

Micah writes that this ruler will feed his flock in the strength of the Lord. People will come together under his care and be safe. He will be the one of peace. Our ears hear Micah painting a picture of Jesus. In this final hour of Advent, Micah calls to us to come near Jesus, the one we have been waiting for, the one who will stand on the earth, the shepherd the people, the one who came into this world wrapped in a womb before he was wrapped in swaddling clothes.

Luke tells of the moment when two cousins, Mary and Elizabeth, visited together. Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist, came near Mary, pregnant with Jesus, and Elizabeth’s baby kicked. Three decades later, those two babies would meet as adults at the river Jordan. Again John would jump when he saw Jesus coming toward him. To those who were gathered together he said, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

Even before John was born, he illustrates that something happens to us when we come near Jesus Christ. Is that your experience?A pastor stands at a hospital bed and prays for a patient to be physically healed by the one who has come near. A person who can’t attend church because the chemo has weakened her immunity physically aches because she is away from the Body of Christ, her church. A person becomes emotional when he holds a candle and sings, Silent Night. A person walks forward at the end of a service to follow a different path. Like John in the womb, how do you kick against your surroundings because God as come near? For you are different because of this.

The question remains whether we are transformed enough that it spills over into the rest of our lives, that it spills over from Sunday into Monday? Have you ever received a gift that you knew took hours of careful work to make, the kind of gift that someone put a lot of themselves into? If you’ve received this kind of a gift, or are about to, then you know that somehow saying “Thank you” isn’t enough. When that’s happened to me, I want to show my gratitude.

Our Christian experience of God is like that. The grace we receive because God has come near to us in Jesus Christ is too life-transforming, too great, to simply say thank you and then move on. Saying thank you is certainly right and we should thank God for coming near. But we are challenged to do something beyond that. That “something more” is that we are called to live our lives differently now because God has come near.

Today we finish our journey to Christmas. Along the way, we’ve heard ancient prophets call us to come near. We’ve also read a poem by George Herbert which has helped illustrate those ancient prophetic calls. I want to turn to this poem one final time and look the over all flow of the poem. Thank you for listening to this poem, along the way, both spoken and sung. After working with this poem, I realize how seldom our modern American culture reads poetry, and this is not an easy poem to read.

Do you see in this poem, the flow from one stanza to the next? In the first stanza there is an invitation to begin a life of faith following the one who is the way the truth and the life. In the second stanza Herbert writes about what one finds by accepting this invitation: a feast, a mending of one’s own life and the relationships of life, a strength that comes from Christ at work in you. In the third stanza Herbert writes about how a person is transformed by following Christ. What makes us joyful, how we our love God and our neighbor, the contentment of our hearts are all transformed now.

As Advent gives way to Christmas we celebrate that the one we have been waiting for arrived as a vulnerable baby. Aren’t we, however, really the ones who are vulnerable? For if we are willing to answer Micah’s call to come near the one we have been waiting for, to come near the one in the manger, then we must be vulnerable and open to being transformed forever by that encounter. Four candles now light the way. And thanks be to God. Amen.

See this as a PDF

This is the third part of an Advent sermon series that explores a call from ancient prophets. That call is for us to come near and find meaning in ancient words. Isaiah brought us a call to come near the hopeful sign of a future peace in which swords of war are refashioned into plowshares. We show the world what that future peace looks like right now as we turn the personal swords we carry into plowshares. Malachi brought us a call to come near and prepare to encounter peace. That peace is Jesus himself who arrived by humble birth and came to change our hearts, so we can share the love of God with others as our truest offering of righteousness. Jesus himself, the prince of peace, shows us what this true love is.               

This week we hear from the prophet Zephaniah who calls us to come near what really matters. What really matters in this life is to trust with your heart and know with your mind that you belong to God, who, in the words of Zephaniah gathers the outcast. We were all outcasts once, and now, because of Jesus Christ, we have been gathered in and God has announced to us, “You belong to me.”

Do you ever forget that message of belonging? Imagine our lives are like a buffet and what really matters, that message of belonging, is placed alongside of much that may be nice, fun, entertaining, helpful, interesting, moving, and even attractive. And then, since we’re humans, we go through this buffet and only take what looks good. Isn’t that first rule of a buffet? Only take what looks good? And sometimes, by comparison, what really matters isn’t always as flashy or well-packaged or fame-producing as the other stuff and so we take the other stuff. Pretty soon our plates are full and we have missed what really matters.

After waiting days for some sign that her husband and the other two climbers were okay the wife of one of the climbers missing on Mount Hood said last Friday that she knows exactly what she wants for Christmas this year: their safe return. Nothing else matters to her right now. That crisis has given her a sense of clarity about what is important for her and what isn’t important by comparison.After I heard her say that, I have to admit that my plate is often full of much that isn’t all that important. What about yours? What’s on your plate right now that isn’t all that is keeping you from living out what really matters?On this 3^rd Sunday of Advent we hear the promise of God to us, which is that “you belong and God gathers the outcasts.” Zephaniah paints a picture of God bringing people together after a time of war and focusing again on what is really important for them. He paints a picture of God in the midst of the people of Judah. To the people of ancient Judah Zephaniah issues call to worship. Sing aloud, he says. Rejoice, he says, for now we know real and true joy: that God undertakes the care of his people (cf. Calvin’s Commentary on Zephaniah, p.301).

We believe that the circle of God’s people is a wider circle than Zephaniah understood it. Zephaniah understood it to be a gathering of Judeans, but because of Jesus we believe that circle a gathering of people from all over the world. Zephaniah understood it to be a gathering of specific descendants of Abraham, but because of Jesus we believe that circle also includes many beyond that family tree. Today the circle is wider, and Zephaniah’s call to that wide circle is still the same. It’s a call to rejoice at what God has done for humanity: gathering us together and bringing us home. Zephaniah even writes that God himself will sing over this gathering.In Philippians Paul also writes that we should rejoice at what God has done. He writes that we should rejoice because in Jesus we have received a peace that guards our heart and our minds. I like that image Paul paints: peace standing guard over our hearts and minds. Is it a peace that comes from knowing that God has gathered us from afar?

Someone wrote that peace stands guard like a sentry to make sure our hearts and minds are safe. Safe from what? Paul writes to the Philippians, safe from worry. Peace guards us from worry. The peace God sends means we don’t have to worry our way through life, but can use our hearts and our minds for other endeavors.

On the Sermon on the Mount Jesus told the crowd, who among you can add a single span to your life by worrying? But of course, we still worry. Paul’s counsel is to let worry take the shape of prayer to the one in our midst, to the one who gathers us together and says to us, you belong. But of course, we still worry.A child worries about her father in Iraq. Three women worry about their husbands on Mount Hood. A church family worries its people who fight cancer or are recovering from an accident. Of course, we still worry.

Zephaniah offers a similar counsel. He writes, do not fear. Do not let your hands grow weak. Does worrying make your hands weak? What worry is making your hands too weak to fold them together in prayer? What worry is making your hands too weak to use your gifts for the work of the church? What worry is making your hands too weak to keep off your plate all that stuff in life that doesn’t really matter?

I have been using a poem by George Herbert in this season. Herbert was an English poet from the seventeenth century. He wrote a poem entitled, The Call. In the final stanza of, The Call, Herbert brings three images together: joy, love, heart. Listen to this final stanza. Come, my Joy, my Love, my heart: Such a joy, as none can move: Such a love and none can part: Such a heart, as joyes in love. Herbert, like Old Testament prophets, paints images with words. Does this final stanza sound like a prayer to you? The one praying is seeking from God real joy, love, and a change of heart. Do you imagine someone offering this prayer in a place of worry? Do you imagine someone offering this prayer at a time when their hands are weak with worry?

Do you pray for joy? Do you pray for a heart that seeks love over resentment and anger and bitterness and apathy or anything else? God’s answer to that prayer is new life. It’s the new life of one born in a manger, who came to bring joy to the world, who came to show us true love, who came to change our hearts and minds. Today, we have been called to come near what really matters in life. Answer that call and let us journey together. Three candles now light the way. Thanks be to God. Amen.