In the Bleak Midwinter and Warm Summer

I confess that when I heard, from the warmth of Santo Domingo, about Albertville getting 3-4 inches of snow, I was a little sad that I had missed a White Christmas. But I also understood the decision to cancel the worship service last Sunday. Folks in this area aren’t used to dealing with this much snow. And it wasn’t safe to drive last Sunday.

It was quite different where I was with Laura and John on Christmas evening, walking along the strand across from our hotel, meringue music all around, families flying kites, and the sun setting over the Caribbean. There was loud passion joy, and warmth all around. It was truly a celebration of God entering into the joys of flesh and bone. And of course, the celebration of Isabella Henderson's Baptism made our time in the bonito Dominican Republic even more special.

Still, like to think of our Lord and Savior being born “In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, long ago.” Of course, it wasn’t snowing on that first Christmas in ancient Judea. But neither was it 70-80 degrees either, like it was in the Dominican Republic.

Carols like “In the Bleak Midwinter,” may seem slow and even sad to some. To me, there is peace in those solemn notes and words. Those notes and words invite us to be quiet and reflect on what it means for God to be with us in all our work and all our thoughts and all our feelings.

The peace of God that exceeds all understanding brings harmony to all the motions of our lives; joy and sorrow become one beautiful note with God’s spirit singing through us. The peace of God that exceeds all understanding brings tranquility when we realize that all things, in time, work together for good for those who love God.

Wherever we are, in snowy Albertville and sunny Santo Domingo, in the summers and winters of our lives, God is with us in heart and flesh. May you find the peace of God in your hearts, wherever you are.

The Feast of the Incarnation

“But Mary held on to all of these words, and reflected upon them deeply, with all her heart and mind.” (Luke 2:19)

And so we come to the end of this “Advent Conspiracy.” That was the name of the adult education program we worked through in November, in the hope that we could make our Advent truly a preparation for Christmas, and not get sucked into that “Christmas” season that begins on “Black Friday,” in which it almost becomes one’s patriotic duty to spend more than we have on presents and parties. Here at Christ Church, we kept Advent as that season in which we prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight. We fed some 40 families with beans and rice and other fixings for their Christmas dinner. Today we delivered over 150 meals to shut-ins. I personally delivered two space heaters to a mother of five, with a newborn, living in a trailer.

As wonderful works as those were, as peaceful as our Advent suppers and devotions were, I can’t help but wonder if, in asking all this of you, the Church also added to your endless to-do list. The Church tries to create times and spaces for us to reconnect with the Spirit that leads you here. But do those opportunities risk becoming just one more thing you have to do? How do we actually find the time to reflect on what the Spirit might be saying to us on this Holy Night?

Was anyone more exhausted that first Christmas night than she endured the long trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem: who endured the stress of not knowing where she would undergo childbirth? And yet, Jesus’ mother “held on to all of these words, and reflected upon them deeply, with all her heart and mind.” Let Jesus’ mother be your consolation, and guide into that deeper Christmas which is only beginning tonight.

As Mary holds on to all the words she hears about her son, she begins a lifetime of reflection and learning. It will take her that long to fully understand all of these words. Along the way, there will be other words: harder words than those she has already heard --

--Her 12-year old son reacting to her astonishment that he would wander off from them in Jerusalem for three days with the shoulder-shrugging reply, “Didn’t you know that I would be in my father’s house?”

--Jesus’ mother and brothers trying to reach her son through the crowds. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you.” But her son replied, “My mother and brothers are those who listen to God’s word and do it.”

Did Mary ever get it? Did her years of reflection give her any purpose and peace? Yes they did, for in Luke’s sequel, at the beginning of Acts, we read that Mary was there with the 120 others who were the first witnesses of her risen son.

And so Mary holds on to all the words she has heard so far about this baby, and begins this night her lifetime of reflection upon words that raise as many questions as answers. God promised King David that his descendants, one after the other, would rule over God’s kingdom forever. How can my son reign over Israel forever? How can I have a son without having sexual relations with my husband? What does it mean to call him the Son of God? How will any of this be possible if I am stoned to death on an accusation of adultery? Why should my newborn son the future king be laid in the trough where the animals feed? Why are the first courtiers to this future king one of the most dishonest groups of people in society, shepherds? Why did God’s angels appear to them first?

And so have the questions, and answers, and more questions, continued for 2,000 years. It would take nearly three centuries before Christians fully agreed that Jesus Christ is “of one Being with God.” And today we ask questions. How does Jesus reign as a king in this world of economic uncertainty, poverty, war and the threat of terror? How does God forgive us through his son Jesus Christ when we remain stuck in those sins that cling to our mind and flesh? How do we find the time to connect with the Spirit of this living God when I can’t find the time to connect with my own family?

But because Jesus Christ is fully God, and fully human, God knows the same uncertainties of life in this uncertain world. Because Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human, God knows what it is to be tired, in desperate need of rest. Because Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human, God knows what it is to fail at one’s mission, to be rejected, and to die. Because Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human, God’s patience with us in our questioning is infinite, and his joy at the answers we find is boundless.

In the name of the Church, therefore, I invite you to a Christmastide of reflection. Twelve days free of Christmas advertising, parties and present wrapping. You don’t need to do anymore to celebrate this holy season. Let Jesus’ mother be your guide. Hold on to the words you hear this night. Reflect on them. Ask the questions that they raise. See what answers you hear in our worship this Sunday, and the next. Soon enough, the season of Epiphany will be upon us, that time when we see Jesus begin his proclamation of Good News. Then will come the season of Lent, that time of preparation, and self-emptying, so that the risen Christ may enter our hearts. Soon enough, we the Church will need to think about the answers we have to give to the people of Sand Mountain.

But for this night, and the next 12, just hold all of these words in your heart and mind. And the Son of God will be born again in your hearts, just as he was born of Mary. Let the newborn Christ child hold you as close to him as you hold him to yourselves.

Questioning Thomas

The image to the right is a crucifix on the mount of Saint Thomas, whose feast day is today, December 21st. The crucifix is located near where Thomas was martyred, in the town of Madras, on the coast of the Indian Ocean, in India.

There was a Christian community in that part of India long before the Europeans came to India. And they testify that it was Thomas himself who first brought the Good News to them, and was martyred there. Well, someone brought them the Gospel. And as early as the 2nd century, there was a Western tradition that Thomas had traveled as far as India. So, I believe this.

That’s one reason that “Doubting Thomas” should really be called “Questioning Thomas.” A 1st century Jews living in Palestine could not have exactly been paralyzed by doubt and wandered as far away from home as the Indian Ocean coastline. Thomas certainly was a questioner:

Jesus said, “When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. And you know the way to where I am going.” “No, we don't know, Lord,” Thomas said. “We have no idea where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” (John 14:3-6).

Thomas asked the hard questions. Jesus responds, but not by directly answering his question (Note that Jesus doesn’t say where He is going). He invites Thomas to join Him on the way. And that way is a way of questions and answers, which lead to more questions and more answers. Thomas continued on that Way, to a place where he surely entertained questions from a Hindu culture that he could never have anticipated. But truly, the Holy Spirit that Jesus promised to the apostles gave him the answers he needed.

Pray for us, Thomas, that we may ask, and entertain the questions that lead us to the right answers, not all at once, but on the True Way.

Signs: 4th Sunday of Advent

“God only knows, God makes his plan / The information’s unavailable to the mortal man / We work at our jobs, collect our pay / Believe we’re gliding down the highway when in fact we’re slip sliding away.” The simple truth is that none of us knows what is going to happen to us one second from this moment: one minute from this moment, one hour, one day, one year. We don’t even know if we’ll be here one year from now. And yet, here we are, because we believe that, in truth, God has a plan, for each of us and for our church. What we want, more than anything, is a sign that we are following God’s plan. Our life is a search for signs.

Sometimes, we want a sign that will tell us what decision to make. More often, what we really want is a sign to confirm the decision we’ve already made. What Holy Scripture tells us today is that sometimes the surest sign that a sign is from God is that it contradicts our decisions. But we’ll all settle for any sign that we are not alone. God's signs will not always promise us success on our terms. But a true sign of God assures that indeed we are not alone; and that whatever befalls us, God's salvation is a part of our plan, in ways we can't imagine but are no less assured through Him who was born, who died and is risen.

King Ahaz was the descendent of King David, whose kingdom God had promised him would last forever. Ahaz was afraid that the kingdoms surrounding Judah would depose him and put someone more to their liking. But Ahaz didn’t trust the God who had made that promise. He said he didn’t want a sign from God. But that was because he knew the sign would contradict his decision to make alliances with other kingdoms who worshiped many gods whose wrath had to be appeased by human sacrifices. Ahaz would sacrifice his own son by fire to appease the foreign gods of those kingdoms. So through Isaiah’s words, God delivers a crystal clear sign: another son – Immanuel, “God-is-with-us” – to replace the one Ahaz sacrifices. That is a sign of contradiction.

Ahaz’s descendant, Joseph the heir to King David, receives a sign. It too seems to be a sign of contradiction: a child not of his blood, nor of David’s blood. But with the dream comes a deeper understanding of God’s plan for him. God did not promise your ancestor David that his kingdom would last forever just for the benefit of his descendents. When you name him before the priest, he will be your legal son. He will be a son of David in the eyes of the law of Moses. And when you name him “Jesus” – “God saves” – you will be fulfilling my plan to save all people from the sin that separates them from God and from each other.

When you and he and his mother Mary suffer the ostracism that comes from the “suspicious” circumstances of his birth, he will know what it is to be outcast, to be isolated. And this child will know in his heart that his Father’s plan for him is reconciliation. This is the sign that God gives Joseph: a scandalous pregnancy that will stretch Joseph’s understanding of who the chosen people of God really are.

I wonder what kind of sign from God we are looking for. A sign of confirmation: a sign of assurance? What if the sign that God is giving some of us is a sign of contradiction, trying to tell us as lovingly as possible, “You’re going the wrong way”? What if the sign is one of promise, but not in the way that we expect? What kind of sign do we want God to give us? More importantly, why do we want that sign? Do we need a sign to make us feel secure, or comfortable? If the Bible tells us anything today, it is that God’s signs are more likely to make us feel insecure and uncomfortable.

But if we let them, God’s signs will also assure us. They will assure us, of God’s loving presence with us in our darkest times, and that whatever befalls us today, we are not slip sliding away, but are being saved from whatever would isolate us in fear and hopelessness. For the virgin is with child. And that helpless child, whose life is dependent on Almighty God, is Almighty God with us. And through His dependence, and through His trust, He will save us.

Advent IV: The (very) Rough Draft

Courtesy of wordle.net, here's a rough draft of Sunday's sermon

3rd Sunday of Advent

Remember the job seeking manual by Richard Bolles, What Color is Your Parachute? If you do remember, Bolles doesn’t give you tips on the perfect resume, or the best answers to interview questions. Bolles advises job seekers to figure what kind of work makes them the happiest. And when you look for that which drives you out of bed in the morning, and pursue it, then the right job will eventually come your way.

In fact, Bolles, an Episcopalian, has recently added a little religious advice lately, quoting from Frederick Buechner who wrote: “The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done....The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness [passion] and the world's deep hunger [need] meet.”

Others have simplified that statement to the effect that one's vocation in life is to find that place where your individual passion meets a genuine need in the world. In that sense, there is no difference between a greeter at Walmart, a ditchdigger, or a prophet. As Christians, and as human beings, that is what we all want for the work we do, whether in the church or in the world outside the Church.

John the Baptist, who we heard from last week, certainly was not lacking in passion: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come…Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; and every tree that does not bear good fruit is thrown into the fire…But one who is more powerful than I is coming…He will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:7-12)

What was John's passion? From where would his gladness come? It would come when the people of Israel were once and for all righteous under the Law of Moses. John's gladness would be realized when the people of Israel were vindicated against their Roman oppressors and the puppet kings like Herod who only ruled over the Jews because Rome put them there.

And for standing against King Herod, John was in prison. He baptized Jesus. He pointed to Him as the one more powerful than he. But today, we read in chapter 11 that “John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing.” What had he heard about the Man who would throw the fruitless trees and chaff into the fire? He partied with the chaff, the tax collectors and sinners. He had even healed the servant of a Roman centurion, and said that this agent of the Roman Empire had shown more faith than anyone in Israel. This didn’t sound like the Messiah John was talking about last Sunday.

And so, John sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John has longed for righteousness. He has longed for vindication. But Jesus now asks him to go deeper. Jesus asks John to look for a deeper gladness in his heart, and a deeper hunger than vindication and punishment: “Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

To take offense; or in Greek, skandalizo, to be scandalized. From his deep dark cell, John certainly desired vindication. But Jesus is about reconciliation; and his judgment brings repentance and forgiveness, not wrath and punishment. And John was in danger of being scandalized because the Messiah was not satisfying what he thought was his deepest hunger. What neither John, nor any of Jesus’ disciples understood at this point was how much Jesus longed for reconciliation. And His longing, His deep hunger, would lead Him to the same place that John was in: a dark prison, awaiting the inevitable execution.

What do we most long for? Do we long for preservation, the way it was, the way we were? Do we long for something new and different, new people, new experiences? Do we long for vindication and justice? What do we do when those longings seem to go on and on unfulfilled? Perhaps then we can finally say to God, "Let Your longing for me be fulfilled."

We can either try to fill our own hunger and fail; or we can let the world's deep hunger into our hearts so that it becomes our deep hunger as well. After all our failures, all our disappointments, and all the ways in which we die to this world, there remains Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed of God. He remains for He has died and has risen. And in this season of Advent, or coming; He is always coming to us, longing for us to not be scandalized by Him. He is always ready to be born again in hearts that are open to the world's deep hunger; and in feeding that hunger find their own to be fed as well.

Hidden Gospel

"Hidden Gospel" is a good way of summarizing what this season of Advent is all about. We know that Christ is "coming" (in Latin, adventus). But for Episcopalians and other liturgical Christians, Jesus does not actually come until December 25th. The Good News (or Gospel) is that Jesus Christ will be reborn in each of our hearts. But in this season of coming, that Gospel is hidden and waiting to burst forth.

But in another way, I suspect that the world we live in today, and the other 364 days of the year, is full of this hidden Gospel –

-- Hidden beneath the constant demands of work and family that make it a struggle, even for professed Christians, just to show up on Sunday, and to support our common ministry and mission the rest of the week:

-- Hidden beneath the fears, anxieties and griefs that would suck all our hopes into the abyss:

-- Hidden by the increasing suspicion of any claims to know the truth, and any authority demanding obedience of that truth.

So, to find this hidden Good News in our increasingly secular culture may include looking in places other than the Bible or Church. One hidden place for me is the singer/songwriter John Mayer, best known for the song Waiting on the World to Change. The song I’m thinking of today is simply entitled Say. Just three letters, but how hard it can be to actually do what the word means:



Take all of your wasted honor
Every little past frustration
Take all of your so-called problems,
Better put 'em in quotations
Say what you need to say

Walking like a one man army
Fighting with the shadows in your head
Living out the same old moment
Knowing you'd be better off instead,
If you could only
Say what you need to say

Have no fear for giving in
Have no fear for giving over
You'd better know that in the end
It’s better to say too much
Than never say what you need to say again

Even if your hands are shaking
And your faith is broken
Even as the eyes are closing
Do it with a heart wide open
Say what you need to say

Where is the Gospel here? “My dear Corinthian friends, our mouth and our heart are wide open to you. Our feelings for you are unrestrained; any restraint is on your part. In return (May I speak to you as my children?), open wide your hearts.” (2nd Cor. 6:11-13). What Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, Mayer is, probably without knowing it, interpreting in his own time.

In his correspondence with the Corinthians, Paul was affectionate, annoyed, and downright angry at various points in the two New Testament letters we have received. But through all his emotions, he was open-hearted and open-mouthed. That was the only way he could carry out the “message of reconciliation” that God had given him and the Corinthians in Christ. “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, with God urging you through us: Be reconciled to God!” (2 Cor. 5:18-20).

And that message has been entrusted to us: “What is the mission of the Church? The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” (Book of Common Prayer, p.855). Is it easy? Hardly. Are there risks? Paul and John Mayer can certainly testify to that. But in the “Gospel according to John Mayer,” “It’s better to say too much than never to say what you need to say again.” So, “Even as the eyes are closing, Do it with a heart wide open.”

May the coming Christ begin to fill our hearts so much that we can’t help but burst forth our truth, trusting that all our truths will be reconciled. Happy Advent.