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. 

August 9 -- Even in the Heaviest of Storms (Pentecost 10A)

Grace to you and peace from Jesus the Christ who never stops coming to find us.  AMEN.

Let me set the scene.  We’re in Colorado.  Way up in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, about 13,000 ft.. Two days up from our trailhead, and about 15 or 20 miles from Rainbow Trail Lutheran Camp, our base out of which this whole adventure is organized and led.  Heather and I, and a small group of high schoolers from the last church I served, our 2 guides Cody and Savannah (who everyone called Savage), and 2 random Welsh Corgis that just started following us and living with us on the trail...and toward whom we had quickly given much affection.  (we had even named one Jeffrey and the other Oreo.)  

All nine of us packed under a small tarp, stretched out and hung from 4 trees, eating dinner.  And it’s raining.  Strike that: it’s pouring.  And we’re actually getting along ok in our rain gear sitting on trash bags, shoveling in pasta from our little metal sierra cups, which act as both bowl and mug.  We kept lowering the tarp to protect ourselves, as the wind was blowing the rain under our cover, I remember the tarp got so low that it pressed against my head so that I could feel the raindrops through the tarp tapping on my head.  Yet we’re still having a pretty good time!  Until it starts coming down even more...it was beyond pouring.
And suddenly, we see and feel the water rolling down the slight slope we’re on...it’s starting to wash us out, from under us!  Not just pounding down on the tarp above us, but now also under us!  And it’s all rushing to what we guys had dibs’ed/claimed as the most scenic place to put our tent, overlooking this beautiful mountain lake.  All this water is rolling toward the guys’ tent, which was our only hope of anything staying protected and dry.  And it’s getting dark, as if every drop of rain is like a tiny light switch in the sky turning off!  Uhhhh......

(*BTW, I spoke briefly when I first arrived about taking a trip like this with our high schoolers at Bethlehem.  Crickets.  I can’t imagine why :)  I’ll ask again.  *When I got back from that backpacking trip, people actually kept asking me how my “vacation” was...uhhh..  a) high schoolers [who were awesome, but still] and b) rain.)  

Anyway, all of this, of course, is a metaphor for life, right?  Trying to do everything we can to protect ourselves (tarp, rain gear), maybe making some hasty, greedy decisions to secure the best for me and mine (tent site), only to wind up learning that we probably should have been both more thoughtful and more careful, and that there are some things over which we absolutely have no power.

So when I read our texts for this Sunday, I couldn’t help but laugh — first reading about Elijah: “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord...now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting the mountains and breaking rocks in pieces.”  And then this Gospel text:  Jesus goes off by himself to pray, but it says, “the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them.”  Where are you in those stories?  Ever feel tossed and rocked in the boat?  Terrified.  Waterlogged.  Windblown.  Shaken and soaked from above and below?  [pause]

I’m not going to move on to the punchline just yet (which is Jesus).  Let’s just sit with this; let’s just sit in the downpour, in the storm.

You know one of the gifts of that backpacking trip, was having to sit in the downpour.  We worshiped that week also...at two different Lutheran churches in Colorado: one before the backpacking adventure, when we first arrived in Denver, and another one at the end of our adventure.  We prayed in those services for the poor and those who have no place to lay their heads both times, just like we do every week.  But after sitting in the rain a night or two, we heard that prayer very differently the second time.  Experiences like that make us feel small, mortal, helpless...and more compassionate.

Many of us are well aware of our mortality, but we sure do try to avoid reflecting on it in our culture...
We Christians find ourselves a death-denying culture.  

So to be battered by the waves, to sit in the downpour, to endure the storms — this is where we can only place ourselves in God’s arms.  Many know far too well, these days, what I’m talking about.

It’s important to note:  Elijah didn’t find God in the storm itself; neither did the disciples.  (Nature, as we know, is indifferent.)  Rather God shows up in the tiny places during the storm, the “sheer silence”.  Disciples thought they saw a ghost — that’s one translation of “phantasma” — also “a blurry vision.”  God does not always appear clear and booming and powerful like thunder.  Rather as a blurry vision amid the storm — a friend who reaches out, a sliver of light through the clouds, a warm drink from a stranger, a blanket or a sleeping bag that miraculously stayed dry...

You know, thinking back on it, that crazy, stormy night — now 6 years ago — was the most memorable and the most fun, of that whole trip!  

I didn’t finish telling you what happened: We were being so pelted (oh yeah, it was hailing too) that finally our guides after trying to direct us to clean up our dinner stuff and protect as much as we could finally just surrendered, and shouted “Run for your tents!  Let’s call it a night!”  (See, we would always have some kind of activity in the evening under stars that included devotions and songs and s’mores...)  Not that night.  We raced through rain and hail for our tents and jumped inside.  Would you believe that it was actually dry in there?  There was water literally rushing all around us, but those tents were so waterproof that I had my best night sleep of the whole trip!  I mean, that’s as miraculous as walking on water!  But we didn’t go to sleep right away.  It was only 6:30 (in July) when we ran for our tents.  That night we played card games, we still worshiped, and we laughed and laughed — guys in our tent, and we could hear the girls in theirs, laughing and laughing.  We were fine — thanks be to God — when you’re that close up against the elements, there’s no one else to thank for keeping us safe.  

Sisters and brothers in Christ, Jesus never wearies of coming out to look for us.  He even crosses the turbulent seas, walks through torrential downpours.  He even crosses death and the powers of hell to come find us, to reach out to us and to say, “Do not be afraid.  Have courage.  I am here.”  

Today, siblings in Christ, you are pulled up, you are rescued, you are saved from drowning.  Even in the storms, God has got us.

So let’s not be afraid anymore, as we live our lives.  

Let’s have the courage to get out of the boat, to get out of the “nave,” the ship, to get out of the nice, dry, safe church and into the choppy seas of this world!  That’s looks a little different these days, and I think we need to pray about what “getting out of the boat,” getting out of the “nave” means in this COVID world.  I definitely don’t mean literally venturing out there without masks and safe distance...that’s not what this text is about.  No, I think it’s got to do with how we take faithful risks with our words, our money, our time?  I’ll be honest with you: starting to say “Black Lives Matter” as a statement of faithfulness (as opposed to taking a political side...which is how it’s being treated culturally), feels like a certain out-of-the-boat risk, out of the nice, safe, dry church.  Continuing to give to our camps, as Heather and I have decided to do, with such an uncertain future, personally feels like a certain out-of-the-boat risk...what does Peter-style, risk-taking look like for you?  

How is Jesus inviting you out...to take a step of faith — like Peter — and be Christ’s voice in this pain-filled, sheltering children who have no place to call home, feeding the hungry who have no table around which to gather, nursing the sick, speaking out in the face of violence begetting more violence around the world...and in our own backyards.  Cruelty, pettiness, selfish ambition and greed.  Where is the Church’s voice in all this?  How we can just huddle in the nave (even virtually), terrified.  What does Jesus say as he’s reading our newspapers?  And what would Jesus do?  These are our downpours.  We are huddled under a tarp.  And Christ comes out to meet us in the midst of raging storm, to rescue us, to feed us, to call us out of the boat, and to make us whole.

Today, we are being pulled up, we are being rescued from our fears and saved from our sins.  Christ stops at nothing to wade into our humanity, into our downpours, into our sorrow, with a powerful word of peace and hope —“Do not be afraid, be of good heart, I am here” — and then a strong arm to lift us out.

Even in the heaviest of storms, God has got us, and God has got this whole world — it’s not ours to save, only ours to serve.  

 Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

October 27 -- Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Grace to you and peace from God who is with us.  AMEN.

I give thanks for this day.  And I give thanks that you are here with me to celebrate it.  This is the first day of the week, the only day we all come together.  And it does us well, in light of this Gospel text to stop and think about what we’re doing here together…and what we’re not doing.

What we’re trying not to do, as students of Jesus, is we’re trying not to be like the Pharisee.  Of all texts to wrap up our stewardship month.  I had to laugh when I read this.  I suppose we could look at this when we’re discerning how and what to pledge to the church in 2020, and justify ourselves by saying look at how Jesus paints the tither.  But I’m pretty sure that would be to miss the point. 

As we reflect and give thanks this morning at church, we don’t want to be like the Pharisee because the Pharisee had no genuine repentance and was full of pretentious piety.  (just look at the posture difference on your worship folder cover)  He might have gathered around the font with us at the beginning of the service, and said what we say: 

“We confess that we have failed to live as your disciples…”  But he wouldn’t have really meant it.  He would have secretly chuckled at the part that alludes to how “we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.”  “Well, I have,” he would have thought looking at all of us, “I’ve done a better job of loving my neighbors than all of these people.”  Then he’d start listing all the ways in his head—and they might very well be good ways:  maybe this past week the Pharisee called and went to visit some of our homebound members, not because the pastor was out of town, but just because that was the right thing to do.  Maybe this past week the Pharisee attended a fundraiser at Lamb Center here in Fairfax and gave all kinds of money to the organization that shelters the downtrodden.  

Maybe at work this week, the Pharisee noticed a colleague in the work room who looked unusually sad.  So instead of having lunch with his buddies, like he usually does, he made the sacrifice and went over to check-in with someone who really appreciated and needed the attention as they were going through a major period of grief in their life.  And then he would even call to mind his graciousness on the road, how he let several people cut in while he was merging onto the beltway and people were sneaking in after he had been waiting patiently in line.  

“Never even honked at them,” the Pharisee would secretly be patting himself on the back.  “Love my neighbors as myself?” “Check,” he thinks, “and frankly, I don’t know what I couldn’t have done this past week to do that!” 

(And none of this is verbalized, btw; on the surface, we all love the Pharisee because he’s such a generous, upstanding, kind citizen and member of the church.  No, this dialogue is only in his head and heart.)

Then he would have rolled his eyes as the rest of us confess that we have not been faithful stewards of God’s creation, and “we have feasted with friends and but ignored strangers.”  

“First of all,” he might think, “I’ve given all kinds of handouts to strangers this week, and when it comes to God’s creation, well I’ve recycled and more.  If it means giving a little to animal adoption agencies, check.  If it means picking up trash on the ground when I see it, well, every time I take a walk, I bring a trash bag and pick up trash.  And I drive a Prius.  Hard to see how this really applies to me...it reminds me how others around here need to do way more though”…says the Pharisee standing with us.  “Steward creation?  Done.  Share with the poor and needy?  Yep.”  Says the Pharisee. 

You know, it’s almost as the Pharisee has no need for God.

But we, like the tax collector, on the other hand, are much different.  [pause]  We, like the tax collector, stand around this baptismal font again today, and remember that we’re not as great as the Pharisee.  We, like the tax collector, take this morning to pause again and remember that we’re still coming up short when it comes to our work and our thoughts and our hearts.  We’re still standing in the need of prayer.  We, like the tax collector, have made many mistakes this past week.  We’ve had some unclean and unloving thoughts.  We’ve neglected the grieving among us, the lonely among us, the poor among us.  Haven’t been faithful stewards of the planet or the church or the poor.   

And even while God doesn’t smile at our brokenness, even while God’s heart is saddened by any of our reckless or selfish behaviors, even while a tear rolls down God’s cheek because of our carelessness toward others and the planet itself…God pulls us in this day.  God pulls us in together like a soft, warm mother with big arms—all of us here, even that Pharisee—and here God holds us for a bit.  Can we just let ourselves be held for a moment this morning?…because that’s what we’re doing here.

Now if you’re anything like me, you don’t want to accept and fluffy stuff.  Any love.  I caught myself this week dodging a compliment, which is a verbal form of being pulled in and loved.  I’ve got intimacy issues with God — I don’t always believe that I’m loved.  I believe that you are.  That’s easy for me to say.  But me?  Maybe you’re like me with this fluffy stuff?  We’re a tough, surviving people, and all this talk of mercy and love doesn’t always register.  I’m preaching to myself too: God pulls us in, sisters and brothers in Christ!  God pulls you in like a mother bear.  (a very Luther-an struggle)

I give thanks for this day, like I give thanks when I’m with family or friends I haven’t seen for a long time, and we’re just about to eat a meal but first we sing.  My family always used to sing around the dinner table, and often we’d sing: “Oh Lord, everybody’s home.”

I give thanks this day that “everybody’s home,” we’re all home, wrapped in the arms and held closely to the bosom of God.    (Psalm 84)

God pulls us in this morning in all our brokenness, in all our self-centeredness, in all our fear and anger and bitterness, in all our pain and sorrow, God pull us all in.  And in our humility at God’s awesome power, in our honesty about our own shortcomings, like the sinful-but-repentant tax-collector—we are exalted.  “Those who humble themselves will be exalted.”  

Acknowledging humbly that there’s still work to be done on us, our journey is not complete.  We’ve got more to meet and welcome, more to offer, more to serve, more to do, more to be.  But we know, us tax collectors (unlike the Pharisee), that even as our time is not yet finished, we know that God’s mercy washes us, refreshes us.  That’s what it means to be exalted.

In our genuine repentance, re-formation, we are watered, like the rain waters the forests and fields today, we are watered for faithfulness.  Gathered and sent.  Gathered and sent.  We go down justified, like the text says.  We go down from this place, from this temple, fed and nourished, watered and warm—ready to serve, ready to love.

The humble will be exalted and so we are…and we are held close, thanks be to God.  AMEN.

April 21 -- Resurrection of our Lord, Easter Sunday

Growing up in Houston TX, we always used to have a 2-week Spring Break: during Holy Week and this next week after, i.e. the first week of this 50-day Easter Season.  

Back then, for me, this schedule always made the first week of Spring Break really about church, at least later in the week and at night.  We’d go to all the services.  I would often go home scared after Maundy Thursday, even crying myself to sleep because they did such a good job at recreating the story for us, slamming the book, running out into the darkness, I remember pondering, even as a little boy, the ways that we all betray Jesus.  Made me cry.  And Good Friday was always somber, even at home, we were pretty quiet all day.  Mom would always relay the events to us like they were unfolding in real time.  About 9 o’clock, “This is when Jesus was taken before Pilate.”  At about 10 o’clock, “This is when Jesus was given the crown of thorns, and brought in front of the crowd.”  At about 11, “Ah, this is when they shouted ‘crucify him, crucify him!’...And now he’s started walking up the path.”  She rehearsed the events like a biblical scholar, even though later in life, I never found those times matching up...didn’t matter.  She was remembering the story.  She was putting that Passion story together for us.  

Saturday was a quiet day too.  Although, Saturday was when we started packing our suitcases...  

I always had trouble sleeping on Holy Saturday night.  I’d go to bed actually thinking about Jesus being raised from the dead— kind of confusing, creepy, as well as anticipatory and exciting.  We’d always be really exited about all the festivities of Easter morning.  Even more, to be honest, we’d go to bed excited and thinking about Easter Sunday afternoon, when we would be packing our little station wagon and driving out across East Texas, into Louisiana.  We aimed to get all the way to Biloxi, Mississippi on Easter Sunday night.  You see, we were going to Disney World for the rest of spring break — not every year, but those few years we headed for Disney were the best as a kid!  

What I’m thinking about this Easter morning is remembering.  When I would finally fall asleep on Holy Saturday, somehow in the haze and dreams of sleep I would forget what the next day had in store, even when I first work up on Easter Sunday!  All this good stuff -- honestly, between Easter at church and family and vacation, it couldn’t get any better -- and still I’d forget, for a moment, even when I’d wake up!  

Do you know that moment?  When you’re awake, but you haven’t yet come to?  When you haven’t yet remembered what’s in store for you today?  That moment can last a few seconds, like it did for me as a kid...and that moment can last for years:  [pause] 

How we can forget.  We can forget the stories that have brought us to this point.  We can forget the blessings that are right in front of us.  We can forget the relationships that mean the most to us, like we’re in some kind of haze.  We can forget the words that matter, and give life, because of all the words that try to drain us of life and joy.  We can forget the forgiveness, the grace, the peace, and the invitation that God plainly and lovingly has for us this Easter morning and always.  

If the opposite of forgetting is re-membering, then maybe we should call forgetting “dis-membering”.  Everything falls apart.  Isn’t that what seemed to happen in our Passion narrative of Holy Week?  Everything falls apart, everything is dis-membered.  [pause]  But then there’s moment, that light that sparks when we come to:  “Oh, yeah!!”

The disciples in our Easter story today were awake — they were out and about even, the women disciples namely were even up bright and early...but they hadn’t come to yet.  The women at the tomb had forgotten/dis-membered, the other 11 disciples had forgotten/dismembered, Peter himself was awake but dis-membered.  Easter...is the day and the season (50 days) of re-membering.  [Consider doing an activity of remembering during these 50 days of Easter — scrapbooking, or record some family stories, or review your bible stories (those are family stories too)… 

Remembering is Easter business, even more than eggs and baskets and bunnies, and dresses and ties! 

And it’s the angels call who us back to memory, and once again give us a new song.  Angels in Luke’s Gospel are always giving us a new song — Remember them at Christmas (“Glory to God in the highest…”)?

And today: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?  He is not here, but has risen.  Re-member how he told you?…”

Remember?  “Oh, yeah!!”  I love when our kids remember something right in front of us, because their eyes light up, and a smile grows across their face when they come to.   [And getting so jazzed, it’s always physical: shivering, jumping.]  “Oh, yeah!!” I’m sure that’s what happened to me too, when I woke up on those vacation, Easter mornings as a child.  “Oh, yeah!!”

This is what happens to us, when we respond, “Christ is risen indeed!  Alleluia.”  Our eyes light up, the smile creeps across our face.  “Oh, yeah!!”

Can’t you just see that happening to Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women who were with them?  “Oh, yeah!!!”  Excited!!  They ran out to tell the others.  Now, it didn’t take right away for the men [no comment].  They said it was an “idle tale”, a dream.  But eventually, I’m sure, it happened to them too.  “Oh, yeah!!” 

And can’t you just see it happen to Peter.  The smile didn’t go creeping on his face just yet:  with him, he ran back to the tomb and found the linen grave clothes thrown all over the floor.  And then he “came to”:  ”Oh, yeah!!!!”

Friends in Christ, Easter is about remembering.  Christ’s resurrection is about our being put back together by God.  The lightbulb goes on, and we are re-membered, as we remember.  (We are remembered by God, even as we forget.)  This is our God!  Conquering death so that we might be put back together.  Forgiving our sin, so that we may now turn and love one another, forgive each other in response.  This is our God!  Putting us back together.  Easter is about remembering.  So that we may go and tell our sisters and brothers who have forgotten, who have been forgotten; so that we may go to those places where dis-remembering has taken place.  [pause]  Where things have fallen apart, where lives are lost, and stories are lost, and joy is lost.  Christ rises from the grave so that stories can be told anew, lives can be restored, hearts can be put back together, and joy finds us forever more!

This grace and mercy, this new life is ours because of Christ Jesus.  The risen Christ is the spark that lights the fire of faith, the Easter fire that burns in our hearts and kindles our imaginations and our courage to go and be the disciples of Jesus for this new day.  The flame of love and welcome rises from this altar, waters of grace flow from this font, this book, this community.  We are the body of Christ.  

Christ is risen.  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!  “Oh, yeah!!”

Now don’t forget it.  AMEN.

April 14 -- Palm Sunday

Friends in Christ, nothing says “king” like the sight of old, tattered garments laying around in the street. I’m kidding.(These were not our most valuable things strewn before Jesus — I mean would you really throw your best jackets and coats on the ground, even here?  Neither would those in power in Jesus time. These were the blankets and shawls of the poorest and the most desperate.)  Nothing says “Hosanna” like Jesus getting dusty and dirty and riding in on a baby horse.  This is the scandal of the Gospel, friends! ...only to be outdone later this week when this same God of ours is hoisted up on a cross. 

Welcome to Holy Week.  Are you sure you want to do this?  Because this road becomes a bumpy road, if you take it.  Now, many, I imagine, choose to skip over Holy Week devotions and services on Thursday and Friday, and simply meet us on Easter morning, and that’s OK — everyone is welcome.  

But for those who take this journey to the cross, the road is rocky.  But in this road is redemption, new life, forgiveness, transformation, love, hope, and most of all peace — in a violent and chaotic and backstabbing world.  Jesus on this colt trots down the road of peace, and fulfills what the angels sang about to the shepherds long ago — peace on earth, good will to all.  “Blessed is the one who comes in the name YHWH.”

This entry into Jerusalem, this parade of and for Jesus which we remember — and even enact with our own, little procession — was a very dangerous and political demonstration.  (Anyone who doesn’t think Jesus was political better take a second look at these stories!)  Jesus knew exactly what he was doing — and when it comes to political protests and demonstrations, timing is everything.  

You see, every year, a couple times a year, Pontius Pilate — the mighty Roman governor of Judea — would come up from his home in Caesarea (about 50 mi. NW), the coastal Roman capital of the area, and into the city of Jerusalem...to govern, to remind people who’s in charge here.  Jews lived in occupied territory and they hated that — as I’m sure we would too.  Just the sight of the mighty Roman procession of Pilate and his entourage up on their mighty, war horses, would make their blood boil.  It would remind them more than ever of the oppression under which they lived.  But if any of them took a chance and tried to mock them — well, try throwing something at the imperial military procession — see what happens…

And this was the week that the Jews were to be celebrating Passover, and people were coming in from all over Judea to do so.  And so just like when Capitals and the Nationals both have games in DC at the same time: extra security is shipped in, to make sure nothing gets out of hand.   This happened whenever the Jews had a big festival, but especially the festival of Passover, because here — as you know — the Passover a celebration, a remembrance of their liberation from Egypt, it was all about freedom from oppression.  So certain groups of Jews — Zealots especially — were known to incite the Jewish crowds.  It was a really tense atmosphere during Passover.  Anything could happen and the Roman powers — under the command of Pontius Pilate — were going to make sure that it didn’t — or else...there would be blood.  This was “Pax Romana” (Peace of Rome), the great decree of Caesar, live and in the flesh! 

And Pilate and his military forces always came in, we know, through a gate on the western side of Jerusalem, the royal gate, the gate that leads right to their Roman luxurious capital city on the Mediterranean coast.  Easy access.

And Roman theology put military power and military leaders on such a pedestal as to elevate the experience of their triumphal entry to a religious event.  When Roman military leaders and governors like Pilate would come into town, always mounted on great, white war horses, the people would spread blankets on the ground and shout “God save the Emperor” or in Hebrew “Hosanna to the Emperor”, trumpets would play, historians even tell us that they would spray expensive perfume into the streets, so that the smell of victory, power and might was literally in the air.  And woe to any who would disrupt a demonstration and a parade — a worship service — like this!

(It’d like someone disrupting the National Anthem...try it...)

At the beginning of the Passover week, Pilate and his entourage rode into town (from the west) with all this respect and awe and fanfare.  

But there was another procession coming into town that day — another leader was entering through an opposite gate — this one on the eastern side of the city.  Jesus was coming in from Bethphage, where the Mount of Olives is located, just east of the Jerusalem walls.  Jesus’ timed this just right.  He knew Pilate was coming from the west, right about the same time.  So Jesus rides in — not on a war horse — but on a colt in Luke’s gospel.  And it all came off as a mockery of Rome.  Jesus interrupted the National Anthem.  And this Palm Sunday parade that we study and reflect upon this morning, and even enact, at the beginning of Holy Week, is a political demonstration that really mocks all the trust that the Romans have in their systems of war, of peace-by-force, of their mighty horses, and legions of troops, and of Rome’s distance from the people.  They’re not in touch!

It’s not “pax” at all — that Rome offers, if it’s peace through force.  And Jesus knows exactly what he’s doing.  

And so, the text goes on to say, that the people were stirred up.  It says the whole city was in turmoil.  Some of the Pharisees, it says, wanted to calm every body down: “Teacher order your disciples to stop,” but Jesus says, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”  The very earth would scream.  There’s no going back, in other words.  There’s no keeping status quo any longer.  Something has broken out, heaven has touched earth, and that’s frightening, and that’s promising.  

Holy Week is so rich with meaning...

Our God is not a contender for Pilate and Rome and their legions.  Even though I’m setting it up (and actually this the late, great Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan’s work) like a boxing match:  [Don King] “Coming in from the west..!  East...Let’s get ready to rumble!” No, Christ’s is a road of peace and justice, particularly in Luke’s Gospel.  Remember Jesu’; inauguration speech and before that, Mary’s song that we’ve been singing all through Lent, about the poor being filled and having good news brought to them?!  Christ is our peace.

But I wonder if there’s a part of us — I know there’s a part of me — that wants to see Jesus be the great contender to the powers of this world, taking Pilate down with a divine TKO.  Why do we have this appetite for violence and revenge?  That would certainly be tapping into the spirit of the crowds of that time too.  In fact, that’s exactly what the Jews wanted Jesus to do.  “Knock him out the box, Jesus!”  

But friends in Christ, Jesus contends against something much greater than a powerful and oppressive regime.  [pause]  Jesus contends against evil and sin, against “the devil and all his empty promises”, against hatred and violence, against war and oppression, against bigotry and ignorance, against selfishness and pride.  (Jesus contends against all the challenges that were before us through Lent -- bitterness, the struggle to forgive, staying awake and alert, participating always in the care and attention to the least, the lost, and the lowly.  How’d that go for you?  

I’m guessing — by virtue of the fact that you’re a human being — that you didn’t perfect the disciplines of Lent — prayer, fasting, almsgiving — maybe you even failed pretty miserably.  Yes, Lent teaches us again and again that we stand in the need of God’s grace.)  But Jesus comes to contend against these forces.  

[slowly]  Jesus — in his humble and yet powerful ride into town, mounted on a goofy, young colt — is contending against death itself.

Nothing says Emmanuel like Christ on a goofy, young colt.  

Nothing says God-is-with-us like this spectacle from the eastern gate of the city.  For God comes quietly alongside us and offers us peace amid all the chaos and fury.

The irony here is palpable — that Christ would take on powers much greater than Pilate and the authorities — seated on a baby horse, adorned later with thorns and lashings, and on Friday hanging from a cross.  But Christ comes into Jerusalem and into our hearts precisely for that purpose — to take on death itself...for our sake...to give us peace.  AMEN.  

March 17 -- Second Sunday in Lent

Friends in Christ, I’m going to blow your minds with what I’m about to say.  And I can say it with confidence because they’re not my words.  I’m not exactly sure who said this first, but it wasn’t me.  Are you ready?  “The devil is the need to defeat the other.”   [marinate]

Now let me just say right off the bat that I’m not talking about a little healthy competition on the playing field….whether it’s a board game, ice rink, or baseball diamond.  I love to win, to defeat the other, the opposition as much as anybody.  Nothing wrong with sport.  The Olympics and World Cups.  At it’s best, these are wonderful events that comes along every couple of years…intended (not perfect) in an admirable spirit of unity and global peace.  I’m not talking about defeating the other in sports and games.

I’m talking about the way we think, the way we see and relate to each other and the world.  “The devil is the need to defeat the other.”   

Friends in Christ, we have been saturated for 400 years, since the time of the Renaissance at least, with DUALISTIC  thinking.  

We have been taught to evaluate the world by sizing everything up to something else.  And we do it so much we don’t even realize it.  Is it good or bad, is it art or trash, is it holy or is it an abomination, is it brilliant or stupid, is it appropriate or inappropriate?  Dualistic thinking.  We compare so much: my kid’s grades are better or worse than yours, look at the size of my office compared to my high school buddy’s, check out my level of success, or my level of volunteer involvement compared with the one (or a whole church) who calls themselves “Christian” down the street.  Look at what percentage of my income I give.  Guess I’m better!  Or worse.  My level of education, my ability to climb the corporate ladder, make the right investment, to build a better kitchen cabinet, to teach a better lesson, to speak more eloquently, to look more beautiful.  “The devil is the need to defeat the other.”   

Do you know what that really is?  Our ego gets in there and then the devil--the need to defeat the other--goes to work!  Watch for it this week.  Our pride and our greed gets in there and we get attached, attached to stuff.    

Politics in our country: masters at dualistic thinking!

Oops…I just did dualistic thinking…there’s my judgment!  

   

If you’re listening to me, I bet your doing dualistic thinking on me, toward me…right now.  Can’t really help it.  You’re evaluating me:  “Do I like what he’s saying or not, do I like what he’s wearing or not, do I like his tone or his demeanor or not… And we do it throughout worship with our musicians, with our pray-ers, with our readers, with our kids, everyone’s always being evaluated.  Right?  It can be exhausting.  It can wear us down.   [pause] Can there be another way? 

Well our Gospel lesson today gives us some ideas, a glimpse of God, if you will—a glimpse of the one who is above the devil, above the need to defeat the other.  

God presides over us all:  As we bicker in this world and cut one another down, as our ego’s battle it out, as our pride leads us down destructive pathways, our God waits for us.  

Our Gospel lesson today gives us an invitation in this season of Lent to return again to the one who is above the traps, the chains, the blindfolds of dualistic thinking [pause].   

Our Gospel lesson today gives us a glimpse of God, and She’s in the image...of a chicken.  Now don’t go falling into the snares of dualism again, here: hear me out…  (not my words) 

Jesus, we hear in our Gospel today, is longing to gather all the broken world under his wing.  “Jerusalem, Jerusalem...” means so much more than just Jerusalem.  

This image is so powerful—not necessarily because we imagine God as mother chicken, but—because that makes us little chicks.  Our quibbles are like the peeps of little chicks, franticly running about, and Jesus longs to gather us under the warmth of his wing.  New mothers and all caregivers know something about the feel of picking up a frantic, crying child, and literally feeling that child’s body calm down in the embrace, literally feeling that child’s body go from a tensed up state of total agitation and fear…to sleep, with nothing more from the caregiver but physical contact and maybe a little song.  That’s God the mothering hen!  “Loving, mothering God, how might we come to know your presence and your contact in our frantic and fear-filled lives?”  Communion, baptism.

Another way is simply by breathing.  Slow down and breathe.  We need someone to tell us that, don’t we?  Jesus says that to us today:  Slow down and breathe.  

Take any tough issue: Poverty, abortion, war, sexuality and the church, immigration, traditional vs. contemporary music, welfare, health care, gun control — whatever issue gets your blood boiling.  Watch yourself fall into the dualistic traps of judgment, ego, pride, greed, attachment…scurrying around like little chicks.  It’s natural for us all to do that.  [pausing] 

Now watch out for the devil, i.e. the need to defeat the other.  [slowly] And start to breathe. 

One of the ancient Hebrew words for God is YaHWeH.  Our OT lesson today tells us that the Word of “YHWH” comes to Abram in a vision.  But the ancient Hebrews wouldn’t say YHWH, they wouldn’t even write out YHWH fully. They’d just use the just Hebrew consonants equivalent to Y-H-W-H.  

But they really didn’t have to say or write the word for God.  [pause]  YHWH, you see, is the word that requires the least amount of work for even your mouth.  In fact it requires no work for your lips.  Saying God’s name—that is, giving praise and realizing the presence of God in our world, in our lives, in our bodies (over all the dualistic quibbles and peeps of our existence)—is as simple as breathing.  [try it...]  

When we breathe the holy breath with which God has filled us, and through which God abides in us, our ego falls out of the way, the blindfold of our dualism—and all the pride and judgment and attachment that come with it—falls from our eyes.   And in our breathing , in our YHWHing, we start to see with the eyes of God.  Our bodies and souls calm, like a frantic baby being pulled to his mother’s breast.  

But we don’t just go to sleep.  In fact, the opposite.  

The clarity that comes in knowing that we are sheltered and warmed under God’s wing gives us the courage to act with the compassion, justice and peace of Christ — that is the wisdom and the love of God’s own self.  So being gathered under God’s wing actually engages us with the world, but now with clarity and vision, “filled it to the utmost with God” (Luther) in every breath.  And, with the very eyes of Christ, we return to all those difficult issues.  To our lives.  To the brokenness.

We breathe God—calm to our souls, release of our egos—and in so doing we return to the world with lives of service, hope, joy and love.  This is the gift of Lent.  

[Take some minutes to breathe.  Then a bedtime hymn.]

January 20 -- 2nd Sunday after Ephiphany

Our scripture reading today starts by saying “On the third day” — “On the third day there was a wedding in Cana.”  Let’s think about Third Day Events here.  I suppose John’s suggesting that the first two days occurred in Chapter 1 because we’re just starting Chapter 2.  But with John, there’s always more to it:  The Third Day is a connection here at the beginning of this book to the resurrection that takes place at the end of this book.  The Third Day is when life conquers death.

And we hear that this is the first of Jesus’ signs.  There are 7 signs of Jesus in John’s Gospel.  This is the first.  It’s like those puzzles that reveal a little bit at a time, or a spotlight that shines on just a little part of a greater whole.  Not until all the pieces, all the lights are shined will Jesus be fully revealed.  But this is the first!  And man, this one is exciting!  So god that we can call it a Third Day Event, a life-conquering-death event.

--

Unexpected extravagance is almost unacceptable for us.

Have you ever been lavished with goodness and you really have a hard time accepting it?  This is a tough text for us Lutherans...who don’t always act like Lutherans!  I mean, if we’re honest, we can be reluctant if not totally rejecting of the extravagant grace and abundance that is ours.  We tend more to just point to our theology, not dive into it.  “No, no, no,” we say humbly (and even selfless-ly, “You go ahead,” we think to ourselves, “make sure someone else gets the extravagance, the grace.  Not me.”  (I just heard someone say that this week, when offered a gracious gift.)  Sometimes being in a position of sacrificing, even suffering, is preferable to having extravagance heaped upon you.  If you’re resonating with this kind of struggle, this is the text for you!    

It’s kind of like struggling to let someone else pay for the whole meal at a restaurant, even if paying yourself could be a hardship.  I suspect a lot of this is going on right now with kindnesses being extended to government employees affected deeply by the shutdown.  

(Now, not everyone struggles with letting others pay.  Some are happy to let others pay for their food and drink...and this text is for you too...if that describes you).  

But how about you who always cover themselves — and take care of others too — so graciously and extravagantly?  Can you accept another covering you?   Grace, symbolized by wine here in this text, comes flowing in such ridiculous amounts of abundance here!

(150 gallons!  I personally translate wine images into beer: that’s 10 giant kegs!  1 keg at a wedding is too much! 10??!!!  It’s definitely not needed!) 

But here it is: Wine overflowing — this is our first glimpse of Jesus’ glory in John.  One scholar talked about this miracle as thing of “dissonance”*.  It’s not only a surprise, it’s actually a little disturbing.  There shouldn’t be that much wine, right?  That’s scandalous (which literally means a “stumbling block”)!  Exactly.  Paul says Christ is a stumbling block.  Some simply can’t get past certain things about grace to fully accept this God-with-us, this Word that becomes flesh and dwells among us!  It’s hard to hear, it’s dissonant, this much goodness.  NO!  “You’ve got to earn it, earn it,” our little Western, Protestant-work-ethic brains are crying out.  [pause] But there is this part of our hearts, maybe even our whole bodies, that is whispering (maybe shamefully), “Would be fun though…”

You see, John’s Gospel again and again challenges the mind, threatens and seeks to annihilate the shameful voices in our heads, the “you’ve gotta earn it”, [slowly] and instead draws us into extravagance!  That’s what grace really is.  It’s totally undeserved and overflowing, Third Day stuff.  We have a hard time with that.

—

OK, the six 20-30 gallon jars?  Let’s talk about that:  Everything is symbolic in John.  Six jars represent the old religion.  The old way of doing things, even the old way of celebrating.  They’re water jars for religious purification! Did you get that?  That’s like taking our holy things here in order to have a party?  

Can you imagine grabbing [this chalice] for a wedding party you’re going to on Saturday night?

Jesus is consecrating the new by using the old.  He’s taking the holy and using it for the everyday, and in that way making the everyday holy.  

For Jesus in John, everything becomes holy!  Everything becomes “a sacrament”!  Jesus is blowing up religious tradition, and by that I don’t mean destroying it: I mean more literally blowing up [wider and wider, bigger and bigger] — YES, this is holy, but so is this and this and this and this!

(“We’re already in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness.” Fr. Richard Rohr)

Walking your dog and picking up after her in the rain is sacramental.  Scrubbing the gunk off of the dinner plates as you listen to a music or talk with your high schooler is sacramental.   Going to the dentist and sharing your plans for the MLK holiday is sacramental.  Having a drink with a friend,  getting a massage, laughing together in a boardroom meeting, reading a bedtime story to a toddler, watching a game, flying to Atlanta, shopping for fruits and vegetables...you see?  It just goes on and on!  Everything is holy now!  And this doesn’t diminish the church sanctuary, it opens it up and makes it relevant and enfleshed!   Grace overflowing, pouring out 150 ridiculous gallons, more and more!

When you think about when you’ve most felt God’s presence in your life, which we have to ask ourselves often when studying the Gospel of John.  Don’t just think about the toughest of times — when you/your loved one was sick or death was at hand, but somehow you knew God’s deep, abiding, very real presence.  Don’t just think about the dark times when God was truly there for you.  Those are definitely true moments of God’s presence…

But today reminds us that God is with us in the absolute overflowing grace-filled, joy-filled, love-filled, laughter-filled, beer-and-wine-filled, food-filled, family-and-friends-filled, glorious-nature-filled highlights ... the very best that this life and this world has to offer, too.  Third Day Events!

I think of my brother and sister-in-law's wedding in Ireland in 2009.  That was a Third Day Event for me.  Family and friends — new and old —  gathered together in an area that seemed like the edge of the world.  For days (in the rain — didn’t matter) we too celebrated a wedding, toured around, sat by the fire, laughed and laughed, ate and drank, and danced and sang, and told stories and celebrated life and love, and joy and peace.

And when you experience those things, you want to share them with others.  You want others to have Third Day Events too, you long for everyone to be so blessed...you just can’t help yourself from feeling that way...That’s the power of a Third Day Event…

Let me conclude by calling our attention to Jesus’ mother:  We should follow her lead and approach Jesus pleading, “They have no wine.” In other words, we should come to Jesus and tell him what to do too: We pray for other people.  We don’t just hoard all this abundant, overflowing grace for ourselves.  We can’t!  We don’t just revel in Jesus’ presence and then go home, forgetting what we’ve experienced at the party.  That’s not a Third Day Event.  No, we accept this absolute wonder and joy, we swim in it -- laugh and eat and sing and drink and dance.  We party with Jesus, and we also, even during the party, like his mother, plead with Jesus for the sake of others: “They have no wine.”  Let’s try that now: let us pray...

“Loving God, give to others the grace that we have received so abundantly now.  Blow open the old ways that come up empty.  And fill us and this whole world with newness, with joy and mercy and unity and peace.  In Jesus’ name we pray.  AMEN.”

* New Interpreters Bible, “John”, Gail O’Day

Christmas Eve 2018

It’s hard to see in the driving rain.  

Why bother?  Giant drops fall from the sky and we can barely even open our eyes in the driving rain.  We duck our heads, pull our hoods, and look down at our wet-shoes-getting-wetter in the puddles.  And it’s tempting to just go back inside.  It’s hard to see in the driving rain.  

Hard to drive too:  Even when we’re covered and dry in the car, the roads are slick, the visibility is cut way down.  The wipers squeak irritatingly across the windshield, and we can’t even hear our own thoughts with the pounding of the driving rain all around.  “What if I get stranded, what if I start to slide?” we worry in the driving rain.  Then you have to get out when you get to wherever you’re going, and splash through a parking lot or down a sidewalk, risking a slip or a drop.  Who wants to drive in the driving rain?

I wonder if it was raining the night Jesus was born?  Maybe that’s why there was no room anywhere: everyone crammed into the inns.  Everyone in, except out in the stable.  I wonder if the stable creatures were wet, with that wet smell of animal smell?  I wonder if the shepherds had to duck for shelter from the driving rain while they watched their sheep.  We know it was a dry climate, but we also know that everything was different that night.  Maybe it was driving rain…

Rain has a way of getting us down.  Cloudy and cold.  Perhaps a good description of this whole season, this whole year, in many ways.  Even in our parties and songs and gifts and attempts at good cheer, the visibility can be pretty low.  We have no idea how things will turn out in 2019.  

The roads are slick.  

And the wipers of the raindrops—you know, all those people who just force the smile and positive thinking only—are like an irritating windshield wiper [eek, eek] helping for a moment, but almost in vain, as the huge drops come back as soon as the squeaking stops.  We duck our heads and look down at our wet-shoes-getting-wetter in the puddles of 2018.  And it’s tempting to just “go back in” — into ourselves, into our circles,  into our routines and habits, into our locked and familiar little worlds…because it’s hard to see in the driving rain.  

But if it was raining the night Mary and Joseph were sent out to the stable, the rain surely didn’t stop the Child from being born.  It didn’t stop the angels from singing, 

even if their wings were soaked, 

it didn’t stop the shepherds from hearing and going to the stable, even if their feet were freezing and their cloaks were heavy.  If it was raining, it didn’t even make the story!  [pause]

When it rains, you have to squint, you have to work to see.  And when you have to work you become stronger.  In the rain, your senses go on high alert so you don’t slip or slide or drop anything.  We hang onto our bags and our children extra tightly, we get off the phone and pay attention to the roads, we think ahead and wear extra layers.  When you have to work, you become stronger.

We’ll never know if the first Christmas came in the rain, but we know that Christmas 2018 comes in the rain.  Even if it stopped literally raining this week, the rain keeps falling, if we’re honest.  Even as we find peace in this place for a moment, the conflicts pour on around us.  Many homes are unsafe, many spouses are angry, many children are afraid.  Innocent blood washes down the gutters of our world, even this holy night.  Some of our own members and loved ones sit in lonely beds, wondering if they’ll live to see another Christmas on this earth.  Many families have wrung out the last of their savings on this “joyous” occasion, and are wondering how they’ll get through then next month.  The road is slippery, as the storms rage on, and it is hard to see in the driving rain.

--

But the hearers and the sharers of God’s unstoppable Good News are not deterred by their impaired sight in the driving rain:

We sing on, even if we can’t see so well, even if our wings are soaked.  We strain our ears to hear through all the noise, all the drip-drops of false advertising and merchandising and empty promises of “happiness”.  

“No,” we confess, “those things won’t weather the storm.”  

So we trudge, having heard the angel chorus.  We trudge.  through the muck and the mire, like the shepherds, from one strange, soppy spot to another: from a cold, dark pasture outside the fence, to the unseemly feeding trough of an ox.  Our garments, heavy with storm water and smelly with history.  This has not been an easy road.  We can barely find the stable, and can hardly believe what we’ve just heard, 

but we still go.  

--

So here we are in Bethlehem, the House of Bread, its meaning in Hebrew.  To think that we would find ourselves in this damp stable of Jesus, leaks in the roof, spots on the floor…the feeding trough of an ox. 

[pause] And still it is beautiful.  Still there is joy.  Still the flicker of a light shines in the darkness.  

For wrapped in scratchy bands, held close to his mother’s breast, is a child.  A new born child peaks through the pain!  

The cry of new birth, the glimpse of hope.  For from this child comes—not armed forces or smooth, political persuasions—but the redemption of our fallen world, the healing of our selfish hearts, the forgiveness or our broken deeds.  From this child comes the very peace of God.  From this little child, that we inch closer to see in a dripping stable, squinting through the darkness of our lives, comes the light of life...who calms every storm, who heals every ill, who releases every sin-locked captive, who breaths every peace, and grants every grace.  [pause]  Christ.  Is.  Here.

And when the storms finally pass and the sun finally stretches out across the piedmont to warm the earth and dry our tears, we will see – maybe not even in this life, but – we will see a glorious new growth.  The light green shoots across the fertile ground, the colorful blossoms, the rivers that flow, the trees that wave in the wind, the jagged edges smoothed, the friend and foe alike, gathered for stew over a common fire.  Weapons melted, condolences offered, laughter and wine, apologies accepted, songs and dances shared.  We shall see that the angels’ song is true: “Peace upon the earth, good will to all!”

It’s hard to see in the driving rain, but the storms will pass, for Christ has come.  For Christ is here.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.