December 27 -- Put a Fork in Me~It's On! (Christmas 1B)

 Grace to you and peace this Christmas season from God who comes to us in peace, Amen.

Friends, maybe it’s been a while...or never...that you’ve gotten to hear what comes immediately after our famous Christmas story in the gospel of Luke.  There’s even more to Chapter 2!  In the very next verses, baby Jesus is a being taken up to the temple, as was the tradition.  A sacrifice is made in thanksgiving for a newborn healthy child.  (Any healthy babies born this year in your family or in your circle?  Helpful, I think, to be reminded again that the very first move of God’s faithful people, immediately after to a birth, is to sacrifice something.  To let go of something that’s important, to give something significant...as a show of joy and thanksgiving.  The first move, the first verses following.)

This was the custom then, an essential component to the rite of purification of a baby boy.  

And while they were there, they bumped into two old church mice.  One of my favorite preachers and bible scholars the Rev. Dr. Thomas Long said that Anna and Simeon are like “Old Testament characters who lived long enough to make it into the New Testament.”  

...They’re still there, God bless ‘em.
—

I see two things happening in this text today:
The first is the “sigh of relief”.

Maybe you just experienced a “sigh of relief”...
It can come late on Christmas Day:  All the presents have been opened, the sugar high is turning into a happy low, maybe a mild food coma setting in, wrapping paper still all over the floor, dishes still stacked in the sink — not time for that yet.  No, first a happy sigh of relief, sinking down into your favorite chair.  Feet up.  Maybe you hear children outside playing with their new toys.  Laughing.  Stories.  Maybe a tear of joy has just been wiped.  After seeing family or laughing with friends on a video call.  Exhaustion is certainly a big part of this:  after all the preparations, all the hard work up to this point, all the anxiety and fear, at last, the moment of exhale, the sigh of relief.   The satisfied “ahhh” as you take it all in, like praying ‘thank you’ with your whole body.  My best friend likes to say in those happy moments, feet up, beer in his hand: “Put a fork in me.  I’m done.”

Not everybody has gotten that this year, but I hope you have or will soon.  And today, at least, maybe you can imagine it:  the first thing happening here is Simeon and Anna with that joyful sigh of relief.

“My eyes have seen it at last,” Simeon rejoices and says, “Put a fork in me.  I’m done.”  

After all these years of waiting for fulfillment, longing (Luke says) for the consolation of Israel.  For decades he and the widow Anna had been singing in the minor key: “O come, o come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel.”  So had their parents and grandparents.  Centuries of pain and hoping for this day.  It’s been a long Advent season for them.  And now at last he can sing and sigh with major relief: “Joy to the world the Lord is come, let the whole planet receive her king!”  His heart is prepared, plenty of room...YES!  

If you had a good Christmas Day sigh of relief, you’ve had a glimpse of Anna and Simeon’s great exhale.  “Ahhhh…”

And by the way, this is holy activity.  The Holy Spirit rested, Luke says, on these two old church mice.  And their joy, their praise and celebration, their sigh of relief is sacred.  

So is putting your feet up, friends, and giving thanks for all the good things.  It’s not something to feel guilty about or hide, as we can be tempted to do.  Sabbath is one of the 10 Commandments!  Brené Brown had a great podcast back in October about “Burnout and How to Complete the Stress Cycle.” Burnout is happening because we’re not completing the stress cycle, the biological import of the exhale.  It is literally — in some cases — shedding the stress.  There is salvation in the sigh of relief!  We can’t just jump from one stress to the next without shedding, exhaling, and for God’s people, that purification includes giving, letting go, sacrificing, offering, going up to the temple...and singing.  Sabbath peace and joy is what Simeon & Anna teach us!

And that’s just the first part:

The second thing that I see happening in this text — after the period of joyful exhale, the sacred sigh of relief — next, comes the gearing up for ministry.  That is, the honest acknowledgement that there is always more work to do, and that road is a rocky, narrow trail.  

Go back to the Christmas Day living room scene: there’s stuff to clean up.  There’s stuff to put together.  There’s stuff to put on, and there’s stuff to put away.  There are gifts that that we now get to put to good use or let go of: That’s faithful!  And what a joy there too!  

How will we steward the blessings that we celebrate and give thanks for this season?  

And, like Simeon says, remember that tough times are still before us: “This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed, so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed — [even you!] a sword will pierce your own soul...”

The road of the Christian is a long one.  And it’s a grounded one, an earthy one.  We rest AND we get up...and pick up and clean up and carry up and lift up and speak up.  We do the work too.  We face the truth about the world and about ourselves.  A sword shall pierce our own soul too.  This child of peace, will cut  away your false coverings, slice into our lives and expose our hearts to being hurt.  

Following this Jesus, we will be hurt.  You know this already.  [pause]

And yet, this is the Christian journey.  This is the walk with Jesus.  [I used to wear a Cubs hat in sermons and preach about suffering and faith...]  The Christian journey can be like waiting for your team to win it all.  And what do we do in the meantime?  We keep cheering.  We remain faithful.  We keep going...  


Up to the temple, into the peace that passes all human understanding, and then back down the mountain into the world, and back up again.  From the safety and sabbath of the living room, to the open-heart riskiness in the world, and back again.  Exhale, inhale.

The One who the prophets foretold has arrived.  Let us worship him.  And then let us follow him down, and then let us worship him again.  Back and forth.  Inhaling, exhaling.  Christmas into the new year.  God with us always.  Salvation has come.  Emmanuel.  This day and forever.  AMEN. 

December 24 -- Verticle Nativity (Christmas Eve 2020)

“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given…”

Friends, grace to you and peace this Christmas Eve,

Grace is what we need right now, isn’t it?
And Peace...not peace that the world talks about, but when Christians say “grace and peace,” that’s God stuff.  That’s God’s deep and abiding peace, that resides far beneath the surface...

Some years ago I got to go to Rome in January to study and visit Early Christian sites.  It was thanks to Dad, who’s got a good friend Jim, who’s also a pastor and a passionate scholar on the 1st Century Early Church in Rome.  Jim is always leading trips to Rome, and Dad was always inviting me to join them.  And 5 years ago, I finally did!  The trip was amazing; I’d love to go back someday, I hope you all can go there someday too…(btw, ok to mourn even at Christmas time)  

Anyway, I bring my Rome adventure up again this good evening because Rome in January is absolutely filled with nativity scenes.  

The great Francis of Assisi is credited with the Christmas nativity, assembling manger scenes — whether it’s in-home or in-church, indoor or outdoor, realistic or creative, live or little figurines — any and all...so that children, in particular, could better learn and understand the Christmas story.  

And how true it is!  It’s the classic object lesson!  I wonder how many of you might have had/have a special nativity scene that you got to arrange or watch each year grow in the weeks of Advent.  I know that was formative for me growing up, and something I always looked forward to.  I remember on Christmas Eve the tradition at home of bringing out all the baby Jesus’ that had been hidden all through Advent.  And in church, on Christmas Eve, it was a special honor to begin the service each year with a child in the congregation carrying the precious figurine of the baby Jesus up the aisle and placing it ever so reverently into the manger.  I seem to remember this clink as the porcelain Jesus touched the porcelain manger.  After 4 weeks of joyful Advent waiting, the first true bell of Christmas!  

Anyway back to my trip to Rome in 2015:  There were nativities everywhere, called “presepe”, harkening me back to my childhood joys...and also offering new insights...  

One church that was actually physically connected to the “domus” where we were staying, had this wonderful, dimly lit room off of the sanctuary, and it was just filled with nativity sets, presepi, probably 2 dozen different displays spread around the room, with some choral Christmas music playing from a small speaker.  Open to the public around the clock to enjoy—great for those of us with jet-lag.

They were all such intricate arrangements, way more characters than just the stars of the Christmas pageant!  Figurines were camped out and hidden all through these complex landscapes and creative designs, like vast model train sets:  Grottos and tunnels and tiny lights and flowing water...just tickling the imagination.  

You had to walk around each display in order to see everything.  And often, it was a bit of a challenge to find Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus in the midst of it all.  I think that was intentional.

And some displays were multi-leveled.  

One I remember in particular, told a very clear story to me.  Three levels.  The top level had these armored Roman guards up above, on the top level, standing among white Roman columns; some Roman senator-types lounged on steps around a real fountain bubbling and trickling into a tiny opening…

Then your eye follows the trickle down to the middle level where regular folks are living, it’s a home scene, and a merchant with a cart, and a children playing in the street.  You explore the happy moments and then wonder, wait, where are they?  

The water keeps trickling down to the lowest level and finally you see a tiny baby, a humbly dressed Mary and Joseph, some young shepherds, both male and female, all huddled over the animal feed box.  You had to squint a little bit to see them because there wan’t much lighting down there.  I think had to turn on the flashlight on my phone, but there they were:  

God’s deep and abiding grace and peace, that resides far beneath the surface, levels below the power and glory of the day, even below the beauty and happiness of the neighborhood scenes.

I was so struck by this — clearly: years later...and this year 2020...I’m remembering it — I think in part, because I tend to imagine that holy night, this holy text in Luke 2 on a horizontal plain.  You know, the more characters there are, the wider the frame [nativity in the narthex that took up half the room].  But this was the opposite, it was vertical and narrow, multi-leveled.  Jesus, who the angels above sing about, is born down below:  God’s deep and abiding peace resides far beneath the levels of power and glory, even quaint happiness.  
Friends: that’s way more in line with the Gospel of Luke...the vertical nativity.

Who are the Roman soldiers pressing down on you?  Enforcing peace, more in a “shut up and take it” approach (Pax Romana) leagues away from that divine peace of God, found stories below.  What are the Roman columns in your life, in our world? — the structures that prop up and maintain the status quo, but leave so many buried...buried in debt, or sorrow, or fear?  Hidden at the bottom?  Who are the lounging senators in your life?  Comfortable and jovial, polite, eloquent and smart (in a way), but in their privileged comfort totally oblivious to what’s below, to where the water trickles?  

Jesus loves all of them too, by the way.  Maybe that’s you?  This is land of senators and soldiers, after all.  Jesus comes to be with all of them, with all of us...if we’re feeling pretty comfortable too.  But friends, in Luke’s vertical nativity story, this Jesus comes from the lowest places.  That’s where he sleeps, swaddled and silent.

And the everyday folks in the middle level?  Not rich, not poor, the neighborhoods, the children playing, the marketplace cranking on, the schools and shops and churches, the very real fears and illnesses of the middle level.  Addiction and abuse.  Adultery and anxiety.  Everywhere the water flows.  Jesus gets in there too:
Jesus sits in the homes, eats at the tables, kneels at the bedsides.  And always centers the children.  But comes from beneath.  Born below.  Sleeping on straw.

And made known first to shepherds.  The nightshift.

Friends, [silently] this is our God.  

So deeply imbedded in the underbelly, the gutters below.    Where there’s hardly a drop left.  See, that lower level, is  not just a romanticized Christmas poverty, beautiful in its simplicity: no, it’s dirty down there, it’s bars and brothels, it’s black lives that have endured bloody beatings and bully sticks.  It’s the edges, the places people go when they have no hope, or are where they never had a choice, born by a dumpster, in the stench of an alley, and trying to climb out.  Many of us might have to squint a bit to find this Jesus.  But follow the trickle down.

And be assured that he’s there, that he has arrived, that today is born in the city of David, the nowhere shepherd outpost of Bethlehem…
    That’s where the Shepherd of the World is born!  
The one who guides us to green pastures, and cool waters, where everyone has enough, where healing and redemption abound, where the crooked road is made accessible to all, and the sword of empire and brutality is bent into a gardening tool to plant and feed hungry people.  Where evil and death is conquered at the last, and where forgiveness of sin and new life grows like a tiny sprig from a stump.  This one from below changes everything.  

“Change shall he bring/chains shall he break...his law is love and his gospel is peace…”

This one from the scandalous under-belly spends his ministry in body on earth making level the scenes: turning the vertical into the horizontal!  Flipping the display on its head, rearranging the whole thing, molding a new landscape, where the mighty and glorious are brought down, and the downtrodden are lifted up.  (That was his mother’s song.)  And all may see it together!  (That was Isaiah’s song.)  Jesus sets the characters, even the planets in their places.  And everyone is gathered at the center, in the middle, and included — everyone fed, everyone housed, everyone clothed, and treated with dignity and inoculated with hope and new life.  Including you.

This is our God, from below, with us now.  Changing the entire scene, and offering anew that deep grace and peace...this holy night and always.

[sing] “And you, beneath life’s crushing load,
whose forms are bending low,
who toil along the climbing way
with painful steps and slow:
look now for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing;
oh rest beside the weary road
and hear the angels sing.” 

Amen.

May 24 -- Angels Sidling Up & Ascension from Below (Easter 7A)

He is risen!  … Alleluias abound.  We are Easter people with signs of the resurrection all around us and around this world.  Christ is deeply present in our pain and in our joy.  In our hope and in our sorrow.  Christ breathes through us, Christ breathes us, he’s so close…

So what’s Jesus doing ascending into heaven, as we read today?  Why’s he leaving us?  Why’s that closeness shrinking and shrinking as he lifts up into the clouds?  I thought he’s always promised to stay with us.
Oh well, let’s just wait.
I’m sure he’ll be back.  [looking up]
Will you wait with me?
It’s very Christian to wait, together…
And we’re getting pretty used to waiting these days…

This may have been how those disciples long ago felt to:  Can you imagine the joy that they had just experienced on reuniting with their friend?  Forget for a moment all the theological implications of Jesus’ resurrection—these men and women had their friend, their son, their brother, their favorite teacher back!

But just as soon as he’s back in the flesh—walking with them down their roads, fishing in their waters, sitting around their tables—he’s gone again…this time up into heaven.
So they’ll wait.

The text says, “While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them.”

Jesus hadn’t even been gone for but a few moments—and they could probably still see him way up there, like when a little one accidentally lets go of a helium balloon and we all watch it drifting up and up, sometimes there’s some crying when that happens—and angelic strangers are sidling up next to them!

Jesus was never even gone completely and angels are already sidling up!

How we too may be caught staring at the heavens.  How nice it is to “gaze up,” to enjoy the serenity, the dreaminess—even the fun of tracking a drifting hot air balloon Jesus, somewhere up there.

OK maybe not literally, do we gaze up at the sky.  We’re busy, productive types here.  But what is your drifting Jesus balloon that you’re gaze up at wistfully?

Paying off the house?  Retiring in fine style?  Keeping the kids perfectly safe and sound?  Finishing the backyard?  Just getting to heaven?  Getting out of this shut-down, getting back to church, getting back to “normal,” getting back something or someone we’ve lost...

All nice things, to be sure; pretty normal really, all those desires.

But Jesus doesn’t operate in the realm of “pretty normal really”!  Jesus doesn’t just leave us gazing up.  And he doesn’t drop us a ladder from on high either, affirming our longings and blissful dreams, so that we can leave all this behind.
Instead Jesus sends angels, sidling up, to snap us out of our gazes [“suddenly”], and to position us for ministry in this world, in this world.  These angels locate us.
   
When we stare at the sky, we see no one else.  I wouldn’t even know if you were here or if you left, if just kept staring at the sky.  I probably wouldn’t care.

But when I’m snapped out of my gazing up, I see you, I see us, I see this world out the windows and doors.
And this is just Luke’s version.   (The author of Acts is the author of Luke.)  In Matthew’s version there is no ascension story, Jesus in fact never does leave.  Jesus says, “Lo, I am with you always.”

Meme on FB this week:  “Today we celebrate Ascension.  To those who wonder what it’s about: It’s the day when Jesus started to work from home.”
Whether its angels or Jesus himself, we have our focal point re-adjusted again today.  From gazing at the sky to seeing our siblings, seeing the world, and seeing all those angels right before us, right with us.  Angels sidling up.

And then starts an interesting progression: One of the great things I love about this text in Acts is this progression that Jesus offers:  “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria [cross that border], and to the ends of the earth.”

Heather and I had a friend who once said — she was a bit of a guru when it came to house projects, and I was complaining to her about being overwhelmed with stuff (thinking of her advice these days) — she said, just take one thing, one room, one part of the yard at a time.  “Don’t try to stay on top of it all, or you’ll drive yourself crazy.”  Her advice reminds me of “Jerusalem, Samaria and the ends of the earth.”  The progression is daunting, but when we take each step intentionally, lovingly, faithfully, when we are located by the angels myself, then we do everything we can in this time and place.  Not gazing out or up, taking a breath, one day at a time.  The angels are already sidling up next to you.

We are called to be witnesses, friends in Christ, witnesses...
1) to Jerusalem – those who are hurting right here at Bethlehem, in Fairfax, in Northern Virginia...but Jesus doesn’t let us off the hook at that...
2) we are called to be witnesses to Judea and Samaria too – that is, both in our country and across our borders – those who are hurting in the District, in Maryland and West Virginia, in Florida and Michigan and Puerto Rico, and then cross our national borders: in Mexico and Canada and Cuba.
3) And then, we are called to be witnesses to the ends of the earth.

WE are called to be witnesses, given the Spirit of Truth, the Word of God, word of life!
And we’re not alone in this work.  You’re not alone.

My theology professor (of sainted memory, on this Memorial Day Weekend).  Vitor was soldier of the Gospel.  He would get so passionate about this text, and point out the literal words of vs. 11: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?  This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go…”  In other words, his theological read of this, is that Jesus will come from beneath:  if he’s coming in the same way we saw him go, then if you want to see Jesus from now on, you will see him in solidarity with the below, with the downtrodden people, the marginalized people, the hopeless and cynical and lost and addicted and oppressed people, the victims of violence and grieving who are remembering this Memorial weekend…

You will see him come the same way the same vector you witnessed him go.  And not just rising from people: You will see Jesus ascend back to us from the bosom of the devastated earth.  Jesus ascends from the polluted streams, and chopped down rainforests, and the elephant graveyards, all the species who have been lost on account of greed and selfishness.  Jesus ascends to us.

And goes with us as we witness, for Christ gives us that same ascension Spirit which both enlivens us, gives us the courage and strength we need to go forth, and it binds us together.  We are never offering our hands to Christ’s work alone.  Even if the whole Christian church around the world dwindles, dwindles, dwindles there will always be two or three gathering, reading Scripture, sharing the meal, and being sent out in Christ’s name!  You are not alone.  We are bound together, bound together, nourished and then sent out.

I love that at the end of this text, after this amazing experience of ascension and angels, from gazing to seeing, from dreaming to scheming—after it all, the disciples returned to Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s walk from where they experienced all this.  They don’t go out from the hillside of the Ascension:  first they gather. And they start this whole mission into the world in prayer.  “They devoted themselves in prayer.”

How often we charge into our tasks before devoting ourselves in prayer.  (prayer before voting at assembly, prayer before council meetings...vs. not)

“They devoted themselves in prayer.”

Friends in Christ, that’s a picture of a Sunday morning!  A Sabbath day’s walk.  Devoting ourselves in prayer.

Luther: “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.”

Pausing for a moment to give thanks that God is both up there and right here, at the very same time.  Lifting our hands in a gesture of thanksgiving, that this world is not ours to rescue, but only ours to serve.  Un-gripping our hands in a gesture of openness of heart and mind, for God to take us once again this day, and make us one, mold us into a people with eyes set not on the cluster of clouds and a one-track dream, but on the cluster of sisters and brothers across the street, and across the “interwebs,” and across the borders — and a one-track Gospel message of GRACIOUS LOVE.

We are gathered, we are baptized, we are fed at this manger, and now we are sent.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

April 26 -- Third Sunday of Easter

Friends in Christ, grace to you and peace from Jesus, who comes to us, and walks with us today and always. Amen.

Well, I spent some time this week following the advice I’ve learned and shared frequently in my ministry...but haven’t always followed myself, to be honest.

I’m often saying, especially in terrible times, when you don’t have the words — when we don’t have the words — we fall back then on the holy words of the church:  The ancient prayers of the faithful, the lyrics of the hymns God’s people have been singing for decades and even centuries, the litanies and greetings and call-and-responses that have carried us through.  You know, like:  “The Lord be with you, and also with you; Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed; God is good, all the time.  All the time, God is good.”  And of course, when we don’t have words, we fall back on the holy words of Scripture.

And this has been another tough week.  This week we learned of Doug's death, one of our own members.  Doug just joined the congregation in January.  He died from the many complications associated with Alzheimer’s.  And like so many in this terrible season of pandemic, Cecelia wasn’t able to be with him physically at the end.  Patty's mother Dorothy died too...also not related to the virus, but the whole situation is plagued by this physical distancing.  Patty’s a member of Bethlehem and has been walking a long journey with her mother (and father) in their declining health.  Please pray for Cecelia and her family, and Patty and her family, especially her father in this time of deep grief.

These are just two situations where words are hard to find.  There are thousands more, and especially in these days.  And how we can be rendered wordless.  Preachers, whose job it is to share words!
Feeling dry.  Feeling at a loss.  Feeling choked up.    
—
Did you know the Road to Emmaus is a windy, down hill?  Down hill walking can be a gift, on one hand, I know.  But it’s also hard on the knees for one thing, and for symbolic purposes, I think the imagery is loaded:
the disciples are spiraling downward.

They don’t have the words.  They’re getting (or already are) overwhelmed with sadness and bad news.  They had hoped, they had hoped, they had hoped…
—
So anyway, back to me :)  I decided to follow the advice I’ve shared before, but don’t always follow so well:  I fell back into the story, this Road to Emmaus text specifically.  I’ve preached on this text many times.  I’ve read it and riffed on it many more, you’d think there would be something for me to say, but I was coming up wordless this week.  Spiraling down, like the disciples in the wake and waves of the news and our people, our family members, our friends, and all those we don’t know who are suffering right now.  So much pain out there, so much pain in here [heart].

So one night this week — how does one fall back into the text — I lit a candle, poured myself a little scotch, and just started hand writing out this long Gospel text from Luke.

(BTW, if that sounds at all like a life-giving activity, I strongly encourage you to do the same with this or any of our lessons from Scripture.  Don’t do it if it feels like mindless punishment, writing on a blackboard the same thing over and over.)

There is just something that happens, when we fall back.  When we go back to the text.  When we dive deeper than a quick read.  True confessions: there are some Sundays, in my preparations that I only read over the text once or twice.  Just to get it in my head, [rushed] “Oh yeah, Road to Emmaus.  I know this.”  Maybe you long-time Christians do the same when familiar texts come up: “Here we go again, with the Easter story, I know this already…”

We don’t always and deeply “dwell” in the Word, do we?  I admit that I don’t.  There’s bills to pay, people to call, kids to feed, Zoom meetings to make, and on…and especially in a period of descending chaos.
—
Well, here’s what jumped out at me in my writing out Luke 24: 13-35, in my attempt at dwelling:

There is this interesting dynamic in the movement (or lack) of the two disciples vs. Jesus.  The only movement the disciples are doing is yes, downward, to Emmaus.  But what I noticed was also a certain paralysis.  There’s that moment at the beginning when the disciples stood still, looking sad.  That struck me.  It’s like they were stuck, in their pain and their grief.  In their despair, the draining of hope.

The only direction they could go was down, seven miles down.  Paralysis means a loss — literally a loosening — of power and ability from performing regular functions.   Sound familiar?

People beating themselves up for not being able to perform regular functions these days, or confused why they can’t “take advantage of all this down time”?  Why’s our house in disarray when we’re in it so much?  Why can’t I get to those projects or make those phone calls or update those records or whatever?  Why am I wanting to curl up and pull the covers over my head?  Paralysis?  A loosening of power to do regular stuff?

How we had hoped too, we’d be back by now, recovering soon, up and at ‘em...thought Jesus would redeem Israel...

And then, even after the seven mile walk with the risen Lord, opening the scriptures to them, journeying with all along the downward path, they were still stuck that evening.  Crashing for the night.  Closing up shop.  Maybe a little light was shed that day by this stranger with them, but sundowners, they’re lost, confused, scared — paralyzed — all over again.

Jesus was ready to go on, on the other hand.  Always moving.  (Theme in Luke.)  Jesus is the opposite of paralysis.  The contrast is stark.  It’s procession vs. paralysis in this text.  Jesus is always in procession.  This text begins with Jesus moving too.  Action verbs like “coming close” and “walking along,” and  then he’s ready to keep going even at the end of the day, even through the night.

And here’s the goldmine, friends in Christ:  At the bottom of the hill, Emmaus, when the day is done, the disciples ask Jesus to stay with them in their paralysis — in their stuck-ness, in their fear, and absence of hope, in their sorrow and in their confusion and anxiety about what the future holds.  They plead with him, it’s like the only energy or strength they have left, the only pull they have.  They urged him, the text says.
“So he went in to stay with them.”

Precisely when we’ve got nothing, Christ comes through the door and stays with us.  Precisely when we’re at the bottom, out of answers, out of words, out of hope, out of joy, out of peace, out of faith, that’s exactly when Jesus stops the procession for the moment and stays with us.

And then, in the breaking of the bread, their eyes, our eyes are opened.  In the physical being together and physical eating together, and physical praying at table together and I’ll just add the physical singing together — how I miss you all and our being together in body!

In the breaking of the bread, their eyes, our eyes are opened!

Suddenly they realize, wait a minute!  Wasn’t he with us all along.  Through all our paralysis, through every step of our decline to Emmaus.  When we crashed?  When we couldn’t go on?  He was there all along, opening the scriptures, walking beside, never leaving!

And right in that moment, he vanishes, and they’re OK with that.  I’ve always loved that.  You might think they ought to crash all over again, right?!  As if they are losing Jesus all over again!  But it’s the remembering that powers them, that fuels them.  “Were not our hearts burning…”  It’s this re-visioning that doesn’t just lift their spirits:
It sends them “that same HOUR” all the way back to Jerusalem!  The text says, the moment they recognized him, that night at table, they got up and went all the back, up the hill to Jerusalem!

That’s Christ resurrection procession, as opposed to despairing paralysis.  That’s what Christ does for us too, friends!

Christ is with us, in every step we take, in every crash we make, through all our confusion, and fear, and anxiety and heartache.  Christ is with us.  Christ is with you, and so…

Our paralysis is cleared too.  Even through the night of pain and pandemic, the loss of words, even death itself, even 7 miles down, through Christ, we can now, you can now process up hills...to go and tell the others — to share our bread, to love our neighbors, and to descend with them like Christ descended with us.
This is most certainly true.  Alleluia.  AMEN.

April 12 -- Resurrection of our Lord (Easter Sunday)

They came looking, and he wasn’t there.  They’re told to go to Galilee...and the risen Jesus meets them, meets us, en route!

Grace to you and peace this Easter morning from our risen Jesus Christ who rocks the earth, appears before us en route, whose feet we grab onto, who we worship and praise, right where we are, with both great fear and joy, who raises us with him, and tells us to go to Galilee!  AMEN.

What’s this business in the text with Galilee on Easter morning?  Where is Galilee?  Jesus says I’ll meet you in Galilee. Galilee was the region (not a city or town) the area (like NoVa or the DMV or SoCal or the Hill Country or the Blue Ridge or up North or down South) it’s where Jesus and all the disciples were “from”.  Galilee is where Jesus came up, where he called the disciples, where he preached the sermon on the mount, where he fished, where he ate, and rested, and healed, and worked and played….Galilee was where they were all from...

Mary and Mary were looking for his body, dead in the tomb, but Jesus was alive and well and headed to the Galilee.
—
What’s your Galilee?  Where are you from?

I don’t mean, necessarily, the town of your birth or your childhood.  That would mean Houston is my Galilee (or the fjords of Norway).  I mean more like the region of mind and heart where you’re from, where you work, where you eat, where you sleep and fish and make friends...
Where do you live?

Where’d you come from?  Go back there.  Go back to that region of mind and landscape of heart.  Go back to that place.  Be there...because...“There,” the angel says, “you will see Jesus.”  Go back to where you came from...

Go back to your basement office, back to your Zoom meetings, back to the baking tray, back to driver’s seat, back to that project you were working on, back to the keyboard, back to the yard work, back to the news headlines, back to caring for your children and parents, back to retirement, back to school; go back to where you came from.  Only now, Easter people, you will see Jesus there!  Right there in your home, right there where you’re from.

I think we’ve all come from a place of great sorrow, frustration, even incredible pain lately.  Maybe you’re coming from boredom these endless quarantine days.  Maybe you’re coming from a place of being overwhelmed.  Stress takes its toll on the body: for some, more stress than ever.
—
This Easter Gospel ironically sends us back there.  The resurrection doesn’t just take all the bad stuff away.  Remember: Galilee isn’t all peaceful rolling hills; there’s lots of sorrow, grief and pain back there in Galilee!  Had some friends visit Galilee a few years ago: there’s blood shed in those valleys.  It’s a place drenched in sorrow.  But go back there, the angel says.  Don’t run from it.  Don’t ignore it or push your grief or frustration away, or bury it, or keep it locked up in the tombs of your hearts and souls.  Go back there.  Only now...[slowly] you’ll see Jesus there.  “That’s what he promised. Remember?” the angel says.

Maybe you’ve come here today from a place of loneliness…
or worry about the future or regret about the past or overwhelming anger.  Sisters and brothers, friends in Christ, Jesus has already gone ahead of us to those Galilees, and will meet us there!  So you can go back there now too.  We no longer have to hide from those things that bring us down, even those things that drive us into the grave!
Because Christ is alive, because Christ has conquered death and the grave, now we can even go there, face our Galilees, and find Christ right in the midst of them!

Those brave women in the story (interesting — that the men in the story froze, they became like dead men, scared to death) but the women followed the angel’s directions, even though they were scared too — says they were filled first with great fear and then joy.  In other words, they were humble, honest (Lent) and hopeful.  Humbly and honestly, filled with both fear and joy, go to your Galilee.

Let’s not be like the men in this story — frozen, scared to death — let’s be like the women: humble, honest and hopeful.

We go now from this Easter morning — this first sun rising of 50 days of Easter mornings, 7 weeks of the Easter season, friends! — with both fear and joy, humbly, honestly, hopefully.

Only now when you go to Galilee, you will also see Jesus there.  Jesus right in the midst of the pain, Jesus right in the midst of our worry, Jesus right in the midst of our regret or our anger.  Jesus right in the midst of what we thought was total isolation, even death.  Because of the resurrection, because he shakes the cosmos, rocks the earth and rises from the tomb, because he lives eternal, because “thine is the glory, risen conquering Son” and he has promised never to leave us, we never have to “go there” [pause] to “Galilee” alone.

The resurrection doesn’t promise a painless, sorrow-less happily ever after, just rainbows and Easter egg candy all the day long, all our earthly lives long.  No, what the resurrection of Jesus Christ means is that we never have to go through all that alone...even and especially death itself.

And we never have to consider ourselves unloved or unforgivable ever again.
—
Let’s go share that Good News with our lives!  The angel and Jesus don’t just tell the women to go to Galilee: they both add another command: “go...and tell”!  How about we share this Good News too, not just make it our little secret (shhh...Jesus Christ is risen, and we never have to go it alone again, but don’t tell anyone.)  No, our lives now tell the story — that Jesus through his life, death and resurrection gives us, all of us, forgiveness without end, love and hope with out boundaries, mercy overflowing, peace beyond all human understanding, life abundant and joy...even and especially now, amid a global pandemic, pain and fear and sorrow all around, death on our doorstep perhaps now more than ever — and still we sing:

“Al-le-luya, Christ is arisen! Bright is the dawning of the Lord’s day: (love v3) Gather disciples in the *evening* suddenly Christ your Lord appears: ‘Look it is I, your wounded Savior. Peace be with you and do not fear.”

—


Parker Palmer in his book Let Your Life Speak has a chapter entitled “Back to the World” where he talks about leadership not as egocentric and immodest, loud out front, self-serving leadership but rather...leadership = being who God has made you to be.  He says: “If it is true that we are made for community, then leadership is everyone’s vocation...even I,” he writes, “a person unfit to be president of anything...have come to understand that for better or worse, I lead by word and deed simply because I am here doing what I do.  If you are also here, doing what you do, then you also exercise leadership.”  Let your life speak.

Go back to Galilee...and tell everyone “Christ is risen” with your life, with your words and deeds, with your being who God has made you to be.  How would you specifically say with your life, with your doing what you do, that “Christ is risen indeed”?

Go to Galilee, the angel says. There you’ll see Jesus, and, hey, tell others with your life.
—
And then the surprise (it gets even better!): OK, we’re go back, got it, be who God made us, got it.  They hadn’t even started that long journey, and as they’re just starting on their way, as they are en route, Jesus meets them already and says, “Greetings!”

And the women worship him.  (That’s what we’re doing this morning.)  Here in this place Jesus is finding us en route, on our way back to our Galilees!

I want to ask you to write about and talk at the dinner table or post your answer to this question (take some time with it this week, this new, 7-week season of Easter)

“Where in your Galilee did you see the risen Christ today?”
Write that somewhere in your house.  Answer that every day.
Where did Jesus interrupt you en route?...and say ‘Greetings!’

Friends, with both fear and joy, I proclaim to you that Jesus is with us, through thick and thin.  It’s interesting: only in Luke’s Gospel does Jesus ascend at the end, up into the clouds.  All the other Gospels, Jesus never leaves the earth...Jesus stays right here.  And today in Matthew, Jesus keeps his feet planted firmly on the ground, and specifically in “Galilee”.  I love that scene of the women grabbing his feet and worshiping him, worshipping Jesus, grabbing onto to his firmly earth-planted feet, not lifting up into the clouds, and no longer elevated and nailed to a cross, Jesus is down here with them, us, you.

And sisters and brothers, friends in Christ, Jesus has also gone ahead of us, not ahead, up, up into the clouds, but ahead, across the land into the Galilees of our every day lives.
The Gospel gets local.  Jesus who is named Emmanuel, which means God-with-us at the very beginning of the Gospel of Matthew, stays true to his name in the very last chapter, where he says, in Galilee, “Lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.”

Christ is alive, and the the only place he’s going now is right back into our realities, right back into our everyday lives, right back to Galilee.  Alleluia!  Amen.

March 29 -- Fifth Sunday in Lent

Grace to you and peace from Jesus Christ, who raises the dead. Amen.

What strikes me about this text this time around — we’ve seen this before and there’s so much here — but what strikes me now, is that Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life” not at the end, after Lazarus is all raised and showered and fresh and alive, but when death is stinking and things are at their worst.  

There’s a scene right at the beginning of the next chapter where Jesus is actually sitting at a banquet table with Lazarus and Mary and Martha.  Everyone’s together, food is being served, wine is being poured.  You can easily imagine the good smells and the hearty laughter at the table one chapter past this point.  But that’s not where Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life...everyone who lives in me will never die.”  Jesus says this, at exactly the moment when Lazarus is stone cold dead, 4-stinkin’-days-dead in the tomb, when Martha comes at him in bitterness and blame: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.”  (And of course, beneath the anger is always sadness and fear.)  

Friends in Christ, Jesus isn’t just with us in the banquet times — the parties, and the family feasts, and the full sanctuaries — Jesus is with us through it all.  Jesus doesn’t say “I am the resurrection and the life” at the sun-shiny glorious end: he says it right smack in the cloudy-cold-muddy middle.

And we’re in the middle now.  In the cloudy-cold-muddy middle.  Deep in the muddy valley.  Shadows and fears all around.  Slogging through our days.  Anxious and angry.  Sad and afraid.    

We’re right smack in the middle of it, these days.  In this unprecedented season of Lent, this quarantine, this Covid-19 nightmare.  We’ll never forget this time.  But, friends, we have a God who is here with us, in it.

—

And this God, this one Jesus Christ does several things with us, in the cloudy-cold-muddy middle: First of all, Jesus weeps.  

What is that about?!  Especially in the Gospel of John!?  

If you’ve been listening to my interpretations of John’s Gospel over the months, I continually find Jesus to be completely in control, cool and calm.  He loves everyone, but I haven’t seen him lose it before.  After all, Jesus is all divine.  There’s no question about that, according to John.  All these signs, all these miracles (last week: blind man...feeding 5000, walks on water) all these signs all point to his divinity.   

So what’s he cryin’ about!?  He has the power to raise Lazarus! 

If any of us had the power to raise the dead, if I had the power to raise the dead, I’d show up to your house after the  death of your loved one, and I’d be like, “Step aside everyone!  Check this out!”  I don’t think tears would be my issue.  If we had dead-raising powers, we might be serious and stoic, maybe for dramatic effect, but we’d know we had a miracle up our sleeve.  I’m being trite.  Here’s my point:

Jesus, on the other hand, weeps!  Ponder that this week, this long season of quarantine.  I think one could write a doctoral dissertation on this shortest verse in all of Scripture, especially because it’s John’s Gospel, where Jesus is all in control and calm.  I don’t have the answer as to what that’s all about, but I will say:  Jesus weeping points to Divinity also.  

This is not counted as one of the 7 signs, but I think it should be: What kind of a God cries?!  

Ours does.  Tears say, “I’m with you.”  Ever been with a friend when you were really hurting, who didn’t have an answer or any wise words, but just started crying with you?  I’ve never felt so heard, so understood, so accompanied, so embraced.  

Did you see these clips of Hoda on the “TODAY Show”?  Always so professional, so scripted and in control.  This week...after talking with Drew Brees how kindness is also contagious and both saying “We love you” to each other...she just lost it.

And that’s just a tiny glimpse of our God, who so deeply and completely hears, understands, accompanies and loves us.  Maybe that’s what those tears were about...

Christ is here, right smack in the middle of our pain, of our sorrow, of our fear, of our losses, of our anxieties and of our tears.  All this happens — not after the raising and unbinding — but before it, when things really, literally stink!  God is there, present, loving, weeping.  Never felt so embraced.

—

And then, the final sign — the raising of Lazarus is the final sign of the Gospel of John.  The whole second half of the book of John is the Passion narrative.  So this is it, and what a finale this is to (what’s been called) the Book of Signs, the first half of John’s Gospel!

Hearken back to the first sign, when Jesus turned the water to wine back in Chapter 2 of John:  Mary, who was there then and is here at the tomb of Lazarus as well (and will be at the cross), said back at the wedding, “Do whatever he tells you.”  Do you remember that?  She said this to the servants:  “Do whatever he tells you.”  

As Jesus’ seven signs unfold through John’s narrative, Jesus is always giving a command, telling his “sheep” to do something:

whether it’s “fill the jars with water,” or “take up your mat and walk,” or “gather whatever food is left over,” “go wash in the pool of Sent”...and today, “Lazarus, come out!...Unbind him and let him go!”  

Let’s heed Mary’s advice: “Do whatever Jesus tells you.”  Why?  Because when we do what Jesus tells us to do, good things happen…that is, God’s glory is revealed.  When we listen, when we trust, then we see and walk and eat and rise from the dead...and finally understand.

We’re all sheep of the Good Shepherd, remember?  And sometimes we go astray.  And God’s gonna love us and forgive us even when we fail miserably at listening, trusting, seeing and understanding Jesus (that’s the trust of Luke’s Gospel: God’s gonna hold us no matter what)…

But our life becomes abundant when we follow Mary’s advice, and “do whatever Christ tells us to do.”  Today:  Come out!

— 

Not only has Jesus given sight to the blind, health to the sick, food to the hungry, and brought a crazy-good party to the wedding feast in Cana...and to all our feasts and party days over the years, right?!  (In these isolating days, I hope you’re doing some good reflecting and giving thanks for all the blessings of family and community during these days when we’re cut off from that.  I’m going through a lot of pictures and videos of good times.)  Not only has Christ done all this, given us all this, he even raises the dead!

He even brings us through our valleys, through our losses, through our pain, definitely through our tears, through death itself, and gives us life, and life abundant...not just ventilator life, but family and friends and laughter and banquet tables.

This life is ours even now, even in the mud — not just at the Great Feast That is To Come — this “resurrection and life” is ours right now, right smack in the middle.  Right here in our valley of the shadow of death, the Shepherd is with us.  

Now that’s something worth celebrating!  That’s not just a silver lining:  That’s the center.  That’s the center of our gathering.  That’s the center of our faith.  That’s the center of our hope.  That’s the rock in a weary land.  That’s the cross.  

This life abundant, this abiding Jesus, this raising of the dead, this coming out, this rock in a weary land is yours today, 

and through this valley.

and always.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

January 19 -- Second Sunday after Epiphany

Didn’t we just read about Jesus Baptism in Matthew last week?  Yeah—actually named the entire Sunday last week after it, colored the altar in gold, lit the Christ candle, splashed the kids at the font, read a special prayer...remember?

So why are we reading about it again in John today?!
It’s the year of Matthew after all!  (You guys aren’t feeling my frustration ;)

Friends in Christ, here’s what we need to know about John’s Gospel:  it’s the brightest and highest of all.  It’s too shiny and glorious to have an entire year of John.  We would go blind.  We have to take it in small doses, inserting it from time to time into our 3-year cycle of Matthew, Mark and Luke.  Fascinating book I’m reading* and loving right now looks at the four gospel as a journey of transformation, where Matthew is about facing change, next Mark is about the suffering that comes when we face that change, then John comes third on the journey, and is that moment of coming into glory, clarity and joy.  (Luke-Acts finally is about going back with that clarity of justice, with that joy to the world, it’s the road back to our communities.)  But John is the apex, the mountain top experience.  The bright, shining star.  The epiphany.  Martin Luther called John’s Gospel the eagle because “it soars above the rest”.  It’s too much.  You can’t eat caviar and drink the best campaign every day...

But we’ve got John today! And Christ’s baptism and the calling of his first disciples is so important...
that in case you had any question about who that was who got baptized last week in Matthew, John’s gonna clear it up for us today: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  John the Baptist doesn’t even splash water of Jesus, all he does is point at him and sings a hymn.

My NT professor (she came and preached here at my installation) Dr. Audrey West says in her commentary on this text, "’It is not about me.’ That is the message whenever people in the Fourth Gospel ask John the Baptist who he is.”   In the Gospel of John, I think John the Baptist would be more appropriately called John the Pointer.

And here the radiance that’s almost too bright (just going to slip it in here).  It’s like coming out of a dark cave into a clear, snowy winter’s day:  this Jesus, walking along, is not not just God’s son.  Jesus is God!  Love divine, all loves excelling.  Come down to be among us, to save us and this whole world, to forgive us and this whole world, to love us and this whole world unconditionally!  We have to squint and protect our eyes from that much brilliance.

Baptism is central to the Christian journey.  We have to look at it again today, in John’s telling: even more radiance.  “Lamb of God who takes away sin, who conquers death and the devil, who shines like the sun.”  What a text for our long nights, right?  For any of our seasons of pain and loss and hopelessness.  What a text for this moment.  It’s like January is the season of baptism.  We watched last week talking about Eastern Orthodox, I showed a video in adult ed of Russian Orthodox Christians dunking into icy lake in January to celebrate these texts of Jesus’ baptism, and remember their own baptisms.  Yeah, this is the season of baptism... showered with gifts by the magi, showered with water last week, showered with glory and brilliance and praise from John today.

So what?  What does Jesus’ baptism in John have to do with us?   So what?  What does this have to do with me?

On one hand, nothing.  On the other, everything.

But let’s start with nothing.  On one hand, Jesus baptism has nothing to do with you.  That’s the whole point.

That’s the point Dr. West is making:  For once in your life, in other words, get over yourselves!  

It’s not about you!  (Or me. I hope you know I’m preaching to myself here too.)  John points away from himself and away from everyone else.  Simple.  It’s about Jesus.  Simple.  And yet so profound in our selfie culture, right?  Social media is a great indicator…just scroll through.  If an alien landed here and started scrolling through our Facebook feeds...what a self-focused culture.  Guilty — I take and share selfies all the time:  “Look at me...and whoever else can fit in the frame.”

In a way, this second week of Jesus’ baptism is a second chance to shift the focus away from us.  Often the angle on Jesus’ baptism is: Jesus was baptized therefore you, you, you...You are loved, you too are named child of God, you too are called and sent out — all great and true, but...

...Let’s just bask in the point, today.  The pointing of John the Pointer.  Let’s just worship God — not ourselves — for a minute here this morning.  (“worship”, again, from the OE worth-ship, i.e. what’s worthy of our sacrifices).  We do worship ourselves.  Make sacrifices for ourselves most of the time, if we’re honest, right?  As Mother Teresa said, we draw our circles, our frames, our definitions of family, too tightly.  Me and whoever else can fit in my frame.  We make sacrifices only for that inside, small group.  (By the way, on the other hand, this was one of the most radical things about those early Christian communities: they were way ahead of the curve on drawing wider and wider circles, opening up bigger and bigger, in another era where circles were super tight.)

Today, let’s bask in the point.  The pointing of John the Pointer.

On one hand, this has absolutely nothing to do with us, for a change.  This is about God’s glory and grace shining through.  There’s nothing we can do about it...except give thanks and praise...like John did…more than once.  “Behold the Lamb of God,” he proclaimed one day and the next.  That’s why we sing it over and over, every Sunday at Communion “Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world”: to remind ourselves, for one thing — it’s not about me.  (story - Adam’s plane ride: “Well, I believe in myself.”
—
And then on the other hand...when we stop and worship God.  When we look at what John the Pointer is pointing at.  Gaze as the majesty of the the Savior of the world, the forgiver of all our sin, the conquerer of death itself, the very brilliance of God...when we stop and really see this, everything changes.  And suddenly everything is about us.  Everything that the radiance of God in Christ shines upon is our concern.  Every person, every creature, every landscape, every beat of our own heart and of our neighbor’s heart — humans and beyond — all of it is our concern.  All of it is about us.

And Jesus invites us with Andrew and Simon Peter to “come and see”.  On one hand, it’s not about us, and on the other, it’s all about us and the whole cosmos.  Jesus cracks us out of our rusty old frames, and presents us again this day in 2020 a new vision.  An expansive embrace.  A fuller mission.   A cosmic joy.  A more glorious union.  In this broken, sinful, self-centered, cruel, sick and twisted world...this. is. our. call. from Jesus.  today.  We are a part of this radical grace and glory.  “Come and see,” the rabbi says.  So, let’s go.
AMEN.

* Heart and Mind: the Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation, A.J. Shaia, Quadatos, 2019.

December 24 -- Christmas Eve 2019

Henry Ward Beecher wrote: “Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry [one] above others for [their] own solitary glory. [One] is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of [their] own.”  

I got that — not from being a student of Henry Ward Beecher — but from the book and the movie Wonder, which has enthusiastically made the rounds in our household, a few years ago, and watched it together again this past year.  And what a Christmas message it is!  (Check out Wonder in these Twelve Days of Christmas, if you haven’t already.  It’s a way to really get into the ‘incarnation celebration’ we have before us.)

“Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry [one] above others for [their] own solitary glory. [One] is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of [their] own.”

Grace to you and peace from Jesus who comes to us this holy night in peace.  AMEN.

It is perhaps the hardest thing in the world, dealing with a bully.  I’m thinking more about bullies these days, have encountered the story Wonder...but also reflecting on our lives and our world...  

I’ve had a few experiences myself, one in high school that I’ll never forget.  The visceral feelings come back even now, just thinking about it: heart racing, sweat beading down, ready for anything and nothing at the same time — not sure if our stand-off was going to end in fists swinging, and blood dripping, or what.  He was way bigger and stronger than I was, had this threatening smirk, big ol’ biceps, veins sticking out…But he was making fun of a friend of mine in the weight room, and something in me kind of snapped.  And I couldn’t take it anymore and stay quiet.  I mouthed off back at him.    

And probably, fortunately it ended the way it should have, anti-climactically, with a coach breaking up our heated stare-down.  But I didn’t sleep well that night, and I fretted about that bully for a long time after, even while nothing ever happened again.  

Bullies are tough, on one hand:  They can really eat you up, physically for sure, but I think the other wounds they inflict can last even longer:  They can embarrass you, get others laughing at you too.  They can make you cry just with their quick words, or a mean picture that they draw.  And how bullies can go to town on social media...  Here’s probably the worst: bullies can even make you turn on yourself — start to cut yourself down, make you laugh along with everyone...at yourself.  

--

If you’ve never been bullied, praise God.  

But the Christmas story is for anyone who’s been bullied.  

I recently asked my kids once how they deal with bullies and bad dreams in these tough times...and one of the things Katie said was “stay calm and let an angel help you.”  (Maybe that coach was the angel, in my case: kept things from getting worse?)  This Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke is for anyone who’s been bullied, anyone who’s been haunted by cruelty. 

The shepherds in the field were pretty beat up, bullied, haunted by a cruel world — hearts pounding with anxiety about how they’d get their next meal, paycheck, or rent paid.  Ready for anything and nothing at the same time.  Shepherding was not an easy life.  They were on the edges.  They were nobodies.  But an angel came, and they stayed calm, and they let that angel help.  

Micah — when I asked him once how he deals with bullies — said that both laughing and singing helps.  (few years ago)  He also said, “Remember and give thanks for your family.”  

Do you see all these components in our Christmas celebration here at church this evening...as we gather, and try to stay calm, even as stresses creep in all the time, even as bullies can haunt? As we pause to reflect on the multitude of angels who have come to our aid over the years?  Friends, family members, coaches, mentors, spiritual guides, rainbows, dogs, authors and actors, teachers, nurses — so many angels.  As we gather at the manger of the one “whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own”?  Jesus the Christ.   In this holy place, under perhaps stressful conditions, laughing and singing help, and we give thanks for our family of faith too.  

God’s strength is not made manifest in the big-bully muscles of world leaders or cool-kid group ringleaders, not in the mean words or the name-calling, not in threatening smirks or frightening stare-downs, and certainly not in fists flying.  No, God’s divine power is instead made manifest this holy night... in a baby.  In peace.  (I got to hold a little baby again on Sunday for a baptism!  Couldn’t imagine anything farther from a bully.)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out: “God is in the manger!”  

How do you feel about that?  In this season we also reflect on John’s Gospel, where we find and confess this Jesus is God, not just God’s son.  One God, three persons.  God is in the manger.  

The word becomes flesh and dwells among us!  This almighty God has humbled, shrunk, all the way down to become the child of a poor refugee couple, born in the middle of nowhere in the middle of nowhere!  A stable, a manger.  Revealed first to bullied and scared shepherds.  

This God in the manger is strength that “carries up hearts”.  Christ.  Is.  Born.  To you.  For you.  In you.

Let’s laugh, let’s sing, let’s let angels help us, let’s stay calm and kind, and let’s share this Good News with everyone:  God carries up, lifts up our hearts, for God is here today.  

Will you pray with me:

He came down

to earth from heaven

who is God and Lord of all.

And his shelter was a stable

and his cradle was a stall

with the poor and mean and lowly

lived on earth our Savior holy.

AMEN.

November 10 -- Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

Well, we are coming into the ‘season of questions’:  questions around the Thanksgiving table, questions around the Christmas dinner table.  Many times those questions are lovingly asked, as family and friends re-unite and catch-up and check in:  “Well, can you tell us about life in the big city?  How are classes going? What new projects are you working on?”  

You know when you get asked a genuine question, how the asker truly wants to learn and hear more because they care about you and are genuinely interested in you, and what you have to say.  Open-heated questions.  

And then there are other questions...questions that are not bolstered with a backdrop of support or any clear intention of loving curiosity and concern or excitement.  These are mean-hearted questions.

Have you ever been asked a mean-hearted question? — Questions that are meant to “catch” you or point out some shortcoming?  Questions that are really just meant to embarrass you, even as they might be skillfully worded to make the asker look totally innocent, even well-intentioned?  Sometimes ridiculous scenarios are created just to see how you’ll react or respond.  Again, questions that are just trying to make you look bad.  I’m afraid these kinds of questions can show up during the holidays too, during this season of questions, and throughout the year as well.

They could even be the exact same examples I just gave...but the tone is so different.  “So tell us about life in the big city.”  (clear disdain for a location or choice you made to move away)  “How are classes going?” (knowing full well that you’re not in school at the moment, unlike other siblings) “What new projects are you working on?” (hinting at some past failures or a pattern of jumping from thing to think without finishing) 

Some questions, friends in Christ, are just cruel.

Ahhh, pay attention to questions these days, and in this quickly-approaching holiday season.  (And pray for God always to be on your/our lips and in your/our heart, as you/we both ask questions and respond in the coming days.)

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Jesus, once again, is experiencing the latter forms of questions here in our text — the kinds meant to embarrass and “catch”.  And certainly a ridiculous scenario (even to ancient ears).  You can almost hear the cruelty to the Sadducees’ tone.  

But Christ, once again, uses their mean-heartedness to teach us a lesson about God and offer a vision of justice and peace.  Often the asker of the cruel question has no desire to learn, and I wonder if the Sadducees never learned from Jesus’ response.  But we we get to.  Two thousand years later!  We get to look with fresh eyes and consider Christ’s response.

“Whose wife will the woman be?” they asked.

And Jesus responds with a vision of heaven: In God, that is, in heaven, a woman will not be passed down like an object, from brother to brother.  In God, everyone is valued fully — the text says, they “will become like angels”.  In God, no one is cast aside or passed along crudely.  In God, mean-heartedness and cruelty is no more.  Tears and pain are no more.  In God, dying is no more.  Jesus gives us a glimpse of heaven.  Can you imagine?  I hope that you can!  And that these strange ideas in this text today might even give us direction and instruction for how we live now.  What would it look like to lift others up like angels?!  (And let our selves be seen too...as angels?!)  That’s the image in Luke here!  Do you see yourself as an angel?

Are we capable of seeing and treating each other as angels?  

Each person that walks into this church this next week, can we welcome them as angels?  What if you envision each person who comes into your business or classroom, or sits at the cafe table next to you or waits at the stoplight across from you...as an angel?!  Not just someone to be passed by, passed down, passed over, like the widow in the Sadducees scenario.   But angels.  

(Maybe their example is not that ridiculous, after all, when we think about how carelessly we can overlook one another because we’re always in such a hurry, or suspicious, or actually somewhere deep down believe we’re better than someone else, that they’re not worthy of angelic dignity...)

This text is a wake-up call, friends in Christ.  To see our neighbors, to see strangers in our midst, to see family members and community partners … not just as fellow human beings … but as angels!  Talk about resurrection!  Christ lives (“I know that my redeemer lives”) and so do we...and not just as mere humans but, in Christ, we live as angels, like angels, for one another and for this hurting planet!

Friends, we can glimpse, we can live into a bit-o-heaven even here and even now, even in these mean-hearted days! Our God is a God of life and is calling us to open our eyes and our hearts even now.  This new life is ours, and it’s not just for after we leave this earth!  

Our God is a God of the living, a God of “the now”.  And this God has come near to be with us...in wine and water and wheat and wherever God wants to show up!  This community, this congregational meeting today, this neighborhood, this city, even about this Capitol Beltway!  

This God of the living has chosen to come along side us, and so we start living anew today — Open-hearted.  Interested and caring.  Noticing others, slowing down to appreciate the angels all around us!  This is our call.  

This is grace again, showered down on you and on me.  Thanks be to God.  Christ will come...and Christ is here now.  AMEN.

November 3 -- All Saints Sunday

Got a voice mail message from my friend Edgar the other day:  “Dan, how you doin’ buddy.  Been a long time.  Things are good here.  You know: [chuckle] ‘first world’ baby.  I got first world problems...” He goes on...

But I’ve been chuckling and thinking about his message this week.  And I think about it today as we revisit and are reshaped by this beautiful Zacchaeus story about Christ’s transformative forgiveness and self-invitation.  I think it helps to start all that from Edgar’s angle: “first world”.  In other words, it helps to start by realizing that we’re up in the tree too, with Zacchaeus.  First world problems: can’t get a nice enough view.

I remember when we did some painting at our house in California some years back.  I’m thinking about giving the pastor’s study here at church an accent wall of color too.  I can’t think of a better example of first-world problems.  I mean we stressed out about this, maybe you have been before too — “What if we buy the paint we think we like, but don’t once it’s up on the wall?”  That’s a first world problem!  [I imagine we can argue why the color of our walls is so important.]  But c’mon...first world, baby.

We’re up there with Zacchaeus, friends, looking down on the rest.  Maybe we haven’t intentionally defrauded anyone quite like that dirty, little tax-collector Zaccaeus, but we’re all broken sinners.  And those of us in the first world have certainly squandered more than our fair share of resources over and against our neighbors, sometimes totally unknowingly.  (I remember when I learned what my carbon footprint was, just in eating a hamburger, much less driving a car or flying in an airplane.)  We’ve all defrauded or cut ourselves off from the rest (pretending not to see or just not caring).  Who would have thought that ‘falling short’ (of the glory of God) meant ‘climbing high’?  But we’ve got a perfect visual of that today: Zack up there in the tree.  (Picture from Nats parade.)  

And not only are we separated and isolated from other parts of the world, friends, we’re separated from each other.  And we know we need each other, we know we’re meant to be together, but still we want to climb that tree.   So we’ve tried to get both — we’ve invented the internet and Facebook so that we can have it all — the glorious tree house up high and the ‘connection’ too.  But of course that’s not a real connection; that’s not sharing a meal at home together.  What a difference.  (You should write an essay this week about the difference between spending an evening alone on Facebook (ok) vs. spending an evening at a dinner party with your favorite people.)

It’s an ok good view from up here, in the tree.  That is, until Jesus comes walking into town, stops at the foot of our tree...[pause] and then our view gets even better...

Sisters and brothers in Christ, God didn’t create us to live up above the rest, or apart from one another.  Isolated.  God made us for community — both in our neighborhoods and across our globe.  Community is at the heart of this passage.  Zacchaeus is being restored to the community, and that restoration of community is at the heart of his salvation:  “Salvation has come to this house today.”  Even with all our defrauding one another and grumbling about each other, we are meant to be together.  God made us for community.  God made us for each other.  And that’s at the heart of salvation.  Salvation is not just for you to get across the finish line, forgetting all the rest; no, salvation looks like a dinner party!

Sisters and brothers in Christ, Jesus walks up to our trees this day, looks up at us, and calls us down too.  Each of us.  We can all get caught up there…not just because of our first-world problems, but because of our human problems: our pride, our self-centeredness, and our fear.  We can retreat up the tree and want to live out our days up there, but Jesus walks up to our tree and says, “Come down.”  In fact he says, “Hurry and come down.”  What are you doing up there?  What are you doing locked up there apart from the neighborhood?  What are you doing walking on other peoples’ backs?  Come down from there.”  Jesus gently calls us down.  Not with a lecture about wealth and poverty, and money, or a guilt trip about our first-world problems, but with another surprise: the self-invite.

Biblically-sanctioned intrusion (just for when you feel like you might be barging in on a friend.)  “I’m coming to your house today,” Jesus says.  Didn’t see that one coming.  Like later in John’s Gospel — “Do you have anything to eat?” — our Lord lovingly intrudes and, in so doing, empowers, even the most unlikely of characters — the tax man!  Even you...even me.

All of us, called out, called down, called back to the earth.

This story is amazing because, notice the order here: Jesus didn’t offer forgiveness and salvation and then Zacchaeus came down and invited Jesus over to celebrate.  First, Jesus just invites himself over, tells him to come down.  First there’s the intrusion.  And then Zacchaeus makes this incredible statement -- “Half my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor.  And anyone I’ve defrauded, I’ll pay back 4x as much”!!!  Jesus didn’t ask for any of that, but Zacchaeus just couldn’t help himself.  He had been flung by God’s grace out of that tree...and just went crashing into a new life of radical generosity.  And that’s when Jesus says, “Salvation has come to this house.”  Zacchaeus has been restored to the community.  He’s come back to the earth.

Maybe there should be a St. Zacchaeus Lutheran church!  (I’m always thinking about church names.)  Why don’t we have that?  Because Zacchaeus was one of those turn-around saints.  In some ways that’s way more inspiring than all the saints who were always willing to share what they had in radically generous ways!  Zacchaeus let himself be flipped, cold-turkey, from incredibly stingy and conniving to radically merciful and generous.  St. Zacchaeus.
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Jesus is so bold, sisters and brothers in Christ, that he invites himself into our homes!  I don’t know about you, but my home’s a mess right now (especially in the middle of Oct-Nov busyness, my study’s a mess right now here at church).  The last person I’d want to invite over is Jesus.  But we don’t get to invite him, he invites himself.

This is where I don’t understand the language of some of our siblings in Christ, who say, “All you have to do is invite Jesus into your heart.”  No, he invites himself, ready or not!!

And as a result, everything changes!  It’s grace, it’s God’s arrival, that turns our lives around, not guilt or shame about our first-world lifestyles.  It’s love and relationship that changes our ways, not lectures about our self-centeredness and isolationism.  Do you see?  It’s grace, it’s love that brings us down — back to the community, to share all that we have.

Salvation, friends in Christ, comes to your house this All Saints Day...as the bread and the wine intrude, as the rain waters of our baptisms cause us to slip right out of the trees of our self-congratulatory exploits and carry us back into the muddy village.  Back to the table.

It was a bird’s eye view of Jesus.
But now, thanks be to God, we’re sharing a meal with him.  Now we’re across the table from Christ and therefore from each other.  Now everything changes.   AMEN.

October 13 -- Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Grace to you and peace…from God who creates us, from Jesus who has mercy and heals us, and from the Holy Spirit who challenges us, and moves among us now.  AMEN.

ON THE WAY TO JERUSALEM…our gospel passage starts out…Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem.  But then he encounters a group – and pay attention to directionality in scripture – was the group on the way to Jerusalem too?  Probably not.  The movement of the people in this story makes a cross!  This directionality (where people we going) – has always been a part of our experience.  People making crosses—coming this way, going that…

We make crosses all the time today, as we encounter one another, as we encounter difference.   Every intersection is a cross.  Just think how many crosses you’ve made this past week…

It’s true physically, of course, and on other levels as well.  Making crosses all the time, in our conversations and our actions, making crosses across the earth…Jesus makes a cross, in our text today, with 10 lepers, and with us — a cross of healing, salvation (from the Latin for healing).  Jesus makes a cross of peace.

Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem, and he encounters this group of lepers, who keep their distance but, knowing who he is—“Jesus, Master,” they say—they cry out to Jesus to have mercy on them.

Interesting – they don’t ask to be healed, even though that’s what we all assume they want.  Interesting their words are simply—well, the same words we say at the beginning of every service.  When we encounter the living God, “Kyrie (Master), eleison…”

And Jesus immediately sends them to the priest.  He doesn’t invite them along his way to Jerusalem.  He simply sends them to a priest.  I imagine, that they were invited to keep moving in the same direction.  Almost like they just asked someone for directions.  Jesus give them some directions, some instructions.  “Go and show yourself to the priests.” And they do:  they’re desperate, they’ll do anything to be rid of this state of rejection anywhere they go.

And AS they go, having encountered the healing presence of the Living Christ, “they were made clean”!  [keep telling the story…only one comes back…]  Only “the tithe”, only one tenth, came back.

Did this one who came back…did his directionality merge with Jesus’ directionality?  Jesus invites him to get up and go “his” way, but did “his” way become Jesus’ way?  Did he go a new direction from that day on?   [+ the directionality in this story when we “cross” ourselves, ending in the center]

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Friends in Christ, Jesus has mercy on us too, showers, showers “our ways” with mercy.  “I’m going this way, God!” and yet, Christ still chooses to shower that way that we seem to think is ours, with mercy, love and forgiveness:  WE are made clean too.

When we cross paths with the salvific power of Christ (every Sunday!)...when the healing power of Jesus crosses over us, everything can change.  Everyone receives mercy, but like the one tenth leper, our directionality can even get “dialed in” with God’s directionality, as we come back to the center, as we come back and give thanks.  The healing is much larger and more mysterious than simply the sores going away!  Jesus took the sores away from everyone, everyone gets mercy, but only one was “made well”, only one was made whole, only one was faithful.  [+ going back]

Many in the world have been made free of sores — free of major physical illnesses, free of oppression, free of blatant injustice and discrimination on the level of a leper, free of financial hardship, and social alienation.  Maybe you fit into that?  “I’ve got it pretty good.”  

Think of all those people, many of us fit into that category: how we too can seem (on the world’s surface) to be in a good place — plenty or at least enough material goods, and security and even happiness:  and yet are we whole?  We’re all clean, but are we “well”?  Has our faith made us well, has our joyful thanksgiving made us well?  How we can give God the credit for our being in such a prosperous state, much like how I’m sure the other nine went and told everyone who performed that miracle…“God blessed me, God freed me of my disease, God gave me all this!” they will tell others.  The sores are gone, but are they healed, made whole, are they well?  

You see, the wholeness, the healing, the full salvus that God offers us is wrapped up in this directionality idea.  When our directionality is re-calibrated, and joyful thanksgiving turns us back to the center where we fall at Christ’s feet, dialing into God’s movement, maybe even heading now with Jesus to Jerusalem — then we’re really in for the good stuff.   The wholeness.  That doesn’t always mean fun stuff, but in that sacrifice, in that giving praise, in that offering, that tenth, in that devotion to the one who cures us from our dis-ease, in that morphing of our directionality, because of our encounter with the Living God, our faith makes us well…[get this!]...for our faith becomes the very faith of Christ!  (Our newly installed Bishop Leila Ortiz said yesterday, there’s such a difference between knowing about Jesus and knowing Jesus...she diagnoses the church’s condition this way, impacting our programs and our budgets and our staffing and our structures...)  When Christ crosses our paths, knowing Jesus, everything changes.

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Finally, I have to say this as we study, “Honoring our Neighbor’s Faith” — Notice how Jesus treats those of another faith and culture, the Samaritans: he treats them with love and longing, not with contempt or condemnation.  Theologian and pastor Barbara Brown Taylor talks about this passage as the quintessential story for doing inter-faith dialogue.  For those who would not join Jesus on the journey, Jesus doesn’t spew hatred and curses on them.  With Jesus in Scripture, it’s always a peaceful crossing, albeit a crossing of love and longing.  If Jesus gets ever gets angry in Scripture, it’s always with his own people, for their lack of faithfulness.  There’s absolutely no biblical evidence that Jesus hated people of other faiths.  Some theologians even read this passage as Jesus regarding another’s faith as being salvific in its own way!  Go your way, your faith (whatever that faith is—Buddhist, Hindu, Islam, Christian) has saved you.   

However we read this, we must pick up Jesus’ reverence and love for those who are different.  I mean, he takes their sores away!  All of the lepers, all of the foreigners.

In the end, aren’t we all?  Aren’t we all lepers, outsiders, beggars as Luther said on his deathbed?  Aren’t we all foreigners?  Foreign, alienated from God’s path, because of our sinfulness and self-centeredness?  Aren’t we all coming to Jesus, begging for mercy, crying out for wholeness?  

And sisters and brother in Christ, in the end Jesus does offer us healing, offer us life.  We are changed and forever changed in our encounter with the living Christ.  We encounter the living Christ in this place, in the healing waters of baptism, in the life-givng meal of Holy Communion, in the  laying on of hands in our prayers for healing today, in this community that we share with one in our eating & drinking Christ together, in our singing and praying, in our caring for one another and our side-by-side reaching out beyond ourselves.  Jesus loves us and longs for us in whatever our directionality was, and today Jesus invites into his directionality.  

Friends, having been made clean today, may that trust and faith to journey now with Christ be yours, this day and into eternity.  AMEN.