I am Here, and Here I Stand

Christmas Day, Year A

John 1:1-14

Almighty God, you have given your only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and to be born this day of a pure virgin: Grant that we, who have been born again and made your children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit; through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom with you and the same Spirit be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

My father, who worked for NASA, used to show me wonderful pictures of the earth that had been taken from space. The amazing thing about these pictures is that you can really see night divided from day: Darkness reigns over certain slivers of the earth, while in the same picture, daylight covers other parts. In the daylight, most of the continents look alike, with the exception of places where huge brown deserts or tall, snow-capped mountains catch your eye. But strangely enough, even in the darkness of night, human history and society have marked the earth. You can see the prosperous, crowded metropolitan areas as they blaze forth in thousands of tiny points of light. In other areas, poverty or harsh topography leave large swaths of the earth in darkness. The east coast of the United States shines and sparkles from Boston down to Washington DC, for example, but Africa and the heart of the Australian continent disappear into the night. In a glance, these pictures from space show us a living, panoramic view of life on earth, as day turns to night and night to day, and as human civilization, for better and for worse, blinks forth its powerful presence to the stars. You can’t look at these pictures without wanting to find your hometown, to find yourself in the broad scheme of things, in the patterns of light and darkness that crisscross the globe. You are compelled to murmur with amazement, “I am here, in this tiny dot, surrounded by all of this vastness, this darkness and this light. I am here.”

          The Prologue to John’s Gospel that we read this morning is kind of like these NASA photos. It is a huge panorama--a beautiful, awe-inspiring, sweeping vision, filled with darkness and light, with powers seen and unseen. Yet instead of showing geography, instead of telling the story merely of the land and seas and their inhabitants, John’s prologue is a sweeping panorama of salvation history. Instead of a space shuttle snapping photographs from its orbit around the globe, St. John the eagle swoops over time itself, from Creation to the present, creating a poetic image filled with God and God’s relationship to humankind.

John begins, like Genesis, with creation. Clearly echoing Genesis, John shows us the creation of light and life through God’s Word. God speaks all things into being, and even the darkness of sin isn’t able to overcome the goodness of God’s light in creation. As John Calvin puts it, just as human words written on the page are the engraved marks of our thoughts, God’s Word in Christ is also that by which God declares Himself, creating and making Himself known to us.

After establishing the active role of Christ in creation, John describes what happened when Christ came down into the world. Like the Holy God who accompanied the people of Israel in a tent throughout their wanderings in the desert, God has again “pitched his tent” in the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth, in order to dwell with his people. Why does God choose to dwell among us, when we don’t even recognize him? Because of his enduring love, says John. God is so filled with love, filled to overflowing with that special saving mixture of grace and truth, that this love rains abundantly down upon us, as gift. In the humanity of Jesus, God and the world are reconciled in an embrace.

The beautiful panorama is thus spread before us. Patterns of light and darkness, love and separation, abound, as time is unfurled before our eyes. It is John’s hope that, as we picture the images that he shows us with his words, we too will want to find ourselves in this huge panorama.

 “But to all those who did accept him he empowered to become God’s children,” John writes at the very center of his poem, “That is, those who believe in his name.”

“It’s time to find your hometown on the map,” John says here. “Where do you stand? Are you a child of God? Or do you stand in darkness? Will you believe?” For John, “to believe” in Christ isn’t for us to assent passively to certain doctrines about him and then to continue to live our life as we always have. Since the unthinkable has happened—the eternal God has been made flesh and entered into history—there has been an eruption of something radically new into the world, something totally foreign to our human reality. In order to take part in this new reality, in order to join in this new, eternal life, we must open our arms to the Word that is given to us. It is available to everyone who believes, a gift spread out clearly before us all like a satellite photo. We have been given a map of the Incarnation, and we are invited to decide where we stand in response to what we see.

In our daily lives, are we that tiny dot of light, shining in the darkness, reflecting upwards and outwards the Love that God pours out upon creation? Or do we hide under a dark, protective shield, blocking the rays of God’s love and casting shadows across the landscape? Can the poetic words that we hear today become an invitation as compelling as a map from the space shuttle? An invitation to do more than just to watch history swirling around us. An invitation to search, to be astonished, and to cast aside everything that blocks the grace-filled Light of Christ, born in us this day.

Patience at Christmastime--seriously?!

Advent 3, Year A

Isaiah 35:1-10; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11; Canticle 15 

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

 

I may be showing my inner orneriness here, but our reading today from James gets on my nerves. “Be patient,” he intones in a preachy way. “Don’t grumble.” “Just suffer quietly.” When I hear this text, I think of my teenage sister getting up in my face and singing, “You better watch out, you better not cry,” every time I got upset about something before Christmas. That was the last thing that this four-year-old wanted to hear in the midst of a tragedy or a temper tantrum. “You better not pout, I’m telling you why … Santa Claus is coming to town.”  

I don’t know about you, but if I’m feeling impatient, it sure doesn’t help to hear some pious Bible verse asking me to be quiet about it.

You children know how hard it is to be patient right before Christmas, don’t you? One year, I couldn’t wait to get an expensive Madame Alexander doll in a pink organza ball gown. Another year, I just knew that I could find the cure for cancer as soon as I got a real, working microscope set. Another year, my hopes rested on that stylish outfit from the fancy catalogue—the one that would make my crush finally notice that I was alive. I was so impatient for these exciting gifts that I would prowl around the house, peeking in closets and under beds, rattling the packages under the tree and trying to lift up the pieces of tape without tearing the wrapping paper. The days seemed so long until Christmas morning, the waiting a torture.

And then, of course, Christmas morning would come in all of its glory, and my impatience would fade into disappointment. It wasn’t long before I put fingernail polish “make up” on the Madame Alexander doll and marred her beautiful face forever. The microscope set showed water bubbles under the slide covers, instead of bacteria. And the boys still wouldn’t talk to me, even when I wore my fancy dress. “Is that all there is?” I would wonder with a sigh, my arms full of toys, and my eyes filled once again with impatience for something new.

“Are you the one,” the imprisoned John asks Jesus, “or are we to wait for another?” His question is full of thinly-veiled impatience. I can imagine the wild and impetuous John the Baptizer in prison, his camel’s hair robe in tatters and his long hair sticking out in all directions. His strident preacher’s voice has turned to dark, silent introspection. His head is down on his shaking knees, and his once-pointing fingers hang limp at his sides. He had set out to bring his people closer to the saving God of the swirling desert sands. He was impatient for the dawning of a better age, an age of freedom from sin and from oppression. And yet, here he is in prison—captive to the whims of a self-absorbed ruler and his greedy courtiers.  Where is cousin Jesus, in whom John has placed so much hope? Why isn’t he doing anything about King Herod? Why doesn’t he use his power now, before it is too late? What is he waiting for?

John knows the well-known words of the prophet Isaiah that we hear today. He can picture the prophecy in all of its glory, so near and yet so far. He can imagine the desert in bloom, the wide and holy highway that will funnel us all safely into God’s loving arms, the burning desert sands turned into pools of cool, clean water, the end of sickness and suffering, the end of despotic government, everlasting joy and singing for the people of Israel. Like us, how John must long for the freedom of God’s reign. He must yearn for the light of God’s countenance to shine in the darkness. Is it enough just to urge him to be patient? How do we find real meaning as we wait in our captivity?

Unlike James with his platitudes, Jesus doesn’t fuss at John’s impatient question. When the imprisoned John sends his followers out to track down Jesus and to ask him what is going on, Jesus doesn’t say, “John, old cousin, get a grip. How dare you question the Son of God!” Jesus doesn’t explain everything, either. He doesn’t give a theology lecture on the problem of evil or on theories of salvation. He doesn’t give John a blueprint of what will happen in the crucifixion and resurrection. Jesus simply lists the healing acts that others have observed in his presence—healing acts just like the ones that John remembers from that image in Isaiah. Jesus is carrying out his ministry one small reversal at a time, and no one will see it until the power of death itself has been reversed.

It’s the same with Mary’s Song. The Magnificat doesn’t take on a preachy attitude. It doesn’t even start with greatness. It doesn’t recite the lofty history of Israel or recount the grand miracle of creation. It begins with one woman’s amazement that God has come to her, a poor Jewish peasant girl from the Galilee. Mary knows that her life has been nothing special. Mary begins with her own experience, with her own experience of transformation from emptiness to fullness of life: from girl to mother, from milking goats and hauling water to speaking with angels, from shivering in the cold to being wrapped in the loving-kindness of God, from lowly peasant to Mother of God.

Slowly, as she speaks, her words shift from her own situation to the experience of her people, from her own transformation to all of the times in Israel’s history that God has lifted oppression, fed the hungry, punished the unjust, or raised up the poor. As Mary shares with her cousin Elizabeth, it’s as if her words get away from her, radiating out across time, gaining power and strength and meaning until the words themselves seem to cause the transformations of which she speaks:

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, * and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, * and the rich he has sent away empty. He has come to the help of his servant Israel, * for he has remembered his promise of mercy.

          Meaning comes to Mary slowly—in a long history of insignificant people and strange divine acts—and bursts forth in a slow crescendo as she remembers. Just because we don’t realize what is going on until after the transformation occurs, that doesn’t mean that God was not in what we perceive as insignificant beginnings. Mary shows us that real meaning grows out of our own amazement, that it must be discovered in reflection, in talking about our story with others, and that it is true when it grows beyond anything that we can control.

Think about it: When we are impatient for change, doesn’t God come to us in small particularities, like a narrow shaft of light into a dark room? Doesn’t God comfort you in the love of a fellow human being who is as unique and irreplaceable in this world as their own fingerprint? Isn’t God revealed in a certain landscape, when the sun happens to come through the clouds in a certain way that might never happen again were you to visit that place hundreds and hundreds of times? Doesn’t God speak to you in a certain translation of a certain verse of scripture, read at a certain time of day? Doesn’t God come to you when the voices of the choir come together to touch your heart in just a certain way, in just a certain moment? God comes to us in the particular. It is when we share those particular experiences with others, when we incorporate them with our own story and the story of our community, the meaning behind our waiting becomes clearer—and then often blows us away.

          As we wait in our own dark prisons this Advent—prisons of fear, or illness, or dread, or loneliness, or powerlessness, or poverty, or privilege, or even just in our prisons of impatience--it helps to follow Mary’s lead and to let the particular accumulate in our hearts. As I think about my childhood Christmases, all of my curious, impatient snooping for the object of my desire was much more helpful than my sister’s nagging piety. God doesn’t want us to wait in fear. God wants us to be out gathering bits and pieces of light: Shaking the status quo, trying to peel back whatever covers the truth, poking into dark corners, opening closets, rooting for God without ceasing, mapping out the Way. So this Advent, I challenge us to go on a hunt: Gather the heartfelt smile at the food pantry; the bit of childlike wonder; the quick prayer at the Advent wreath; the song on the radio that fills just the right empty hole in your heart; the flash of memory that sustains. Testify to transformation, no matter how slow, no matter how lowly, and offer your testimony up to God and to your neighbor. But be careful, you might just find the Gift that God is hiding for you, and it will shake your world to its foundations.

How to follow Jesus when it all falls apart: a "family sermon" for a difficult week

Proper 28, Year C

Isaiah 65:17-25;
Isaiah 12
Luke 21:5-19

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

        This will be easier for the children than for the adults, but I’d like for you remember a time when you had just finished building a fantastic Lego spaceship or a super-high tower of blocks. Picture for me how fine it looked. Remember how proud you felt putting on the final piece… How you wanted to keep your amazing construction there in the middle of the living room floor for everyone to admire for at least, say, ten years? And then a younger sibling or a neighbor’s baby came toddling in from the kitchen, a determined gleam in his eye. He zoomed straight over to your construction and before you could stop him, just as you were hollering “no …..!!!!” at the top of your lungs, his little hands lunged at the blocks, and the whole beautiful thing broke into tiny pieces. Remember for a minute how angry you felt at the little menace who had just destroyed your finest work. Remember the despair that you felt as you saw your dream spaceship reduced to cosmic dust in an instant. Maybe you jumped up and chased after your little sister, hoping to give her a good whack for what she did. Or maybe you just collapsed on the floor in a pile of sobs. Or maybe you ran with the speed of righteous indignation over to your mom or dad so that they would make everything right again.

“Why didn’t you at least TELL me that he was up from his nap, so that I could be ready for him?” you might have yelled.

          Even as adults, we know what it feels like to have our hard work, or our security, or our dreams, smashed before our eyes, seemingly without warning. Jesus’ disciples know, as they look with pride and love at their beautiful Temple, at the trustworthy place where they know that God can always be found, and try to comprehend Jesus’ words about its doom. Luke’s readers know, as they struggle to survive in a land occupied by the very Empire that has indeed already reduced both Jerusalem and the Temple to rubble. Isaiah’s readers know, as they return home and try to rebuild a life together in a country that had been totally wiped out by foreign powers. They know the sinking feeling of devastation, the numbness of displacement. They cringe to hear their Lord tell them that their comfortable lives and comfortable certainties can be ripped apart just as suddenly as if a two-year-old smashed them to smithereens, without warning.

As parents, we can’t promise our children that unpredictable toddlers won’t destroy their Lego creations. We can’t stop the ocean tides from rising inexorably to wash away their beloved sandcastles. But what do we do when our precious children come running to us, wailing and in despair? We take them in our arms. We wipe their tears. We kiss them gently on their damp foreheads. We encourage them to get back out there and build again. Maybe we even help them build. We comfort and console them.

          To comfort, in Hebrew, carries the image of removing a burden so that a person can breathe freely again.[1] That’s what we need, isn’t it, in order to keep on going, to endure? We need the loving kindness that will lift the crushing burden, so that we can breathe again.

          God yearns to give us that love, to lift the yoke and lighten our deadening load. So curl up today in God’s lap. Close your eyes, and with Isaiah, imagine God wiping the sweat of suffering from your brow, removing the sound of weeping from your ears. Imagine that there’s no need to feel the world on your shoulders anymore. Everyone has enough food to eat and a good place to live. No one is taken advantage of by another. All races and peoples can create, and thrive, and build without fear of loss. No one can hurt and no one can destroy. As our Presiding Bishop likes to say-- such a world is God’s dream for us.

          This comforting image, this wonderful new creation that God offers us isn’t just some “pie in the sky by and by” thing, either. No, we can see glimpses of the joy that streams from God’s dream every day, if only we are looking in the right places. Two years ago, I was a deputy at our Episcopal Church General Convention in Salt Lake City. For me, church business meetings are not the place where I expect to find abundant joy! But see it, I did, just like in our reading from Isaiah. On the evening before the Supreme Court decision on marriage, we were engaged, once again, in small-group discussions of same-sex marriage, and there was a lot of dark fear still lurking in the corners. The fear was expressed in hand-wringing “what-ifs”: what if we made the wrong choice; what if we were jumping the gun; what if the church didn’t survive. We sounded a lot like the disciples trying to pry out of Jesus knowledge of when the Temple was coming down. Faces were drawn, and voices were tense, and it was indeed hard to breathe.

The next day, however, after news of the Supreme Court decision filtered through the crowd, the fear seemed to have vanished into thin air. As people heard the news, there were extra smiles in the hallways, more clever repartee in the House of Deputies, and more voices singing during worship than I noticed earlier that week. Those who had stood in drooping solemnity during the past days’ Eucharist started clapping along to an impromptu, “We are Marching in the Light of God.” Young adults, grey-haired bishops, and collared clergy started dancing down the aisles, all waving their arms like a bunch of Pentecostals on fire. The funny thing was, the show of emotion didn’t seem forced or staged. There was none of that, “Oh-look-at-us-we-are-Episcopalians-but-we-know-how-to-be-cool-too” air that often accompanies mandatory innovation in worship. It was all authentic. In the hallways, I didn’t notice any of the self-congratulatory back-slapping that can accompany a political victory, either. It was just pure joy, an exhaling of breath held in too long. A burden removed. All of a sudden, we caught a glimpse of the freedom that God dreams for us, the freedom to soar, the freedom to love.

 Jesus can’t promise us that our beloved institutions, our churches, our government, our securities won’t ever face change or plunge us into adversity. He can’t promise us that there won’t be upheaval. But he shows us—in his own life and suffering—how to flourish in the midst of that upheaval, how to find life in the midst of death. He shows us--as he forgives the leaders who have sent him to die on the cross. He shows us--as he reaches out to the criminal outcast hanging beside him and offers him immediate grace and salvation. He shows us--as he hands his spirit over to God even as he takes his last breath.[2] He shows us—as he rises from the dead, guaranteeing that God’s way of self-giving love will always defeat worldly power and violent oppression.

At our Diocesan Convention this weekend, Bishop Terry reminded us that people are going to be coming to our churches looking for this Jesus, looking for his grace, looking for his forgiveness, looking for his abundant life. And do you know what they are going to find, he asked us? They are going to find us.[3] You and me. That’s how Jesus set it up. We are his witnesses here on earth. Empowered by God, it’s up to us to build lives that testify to his love, both with the blocks of word and deed, both inside and outside of the walls of our churches.

Martin Smith told us this summer at Sewanee about a little boy who kept trying to give a high five to his parents in church after every prayer. They thought that it was cute, if a bit strange. It was only later that his parents found out that he thought that they were all ending their prayers with the words, “I’m in,” instead of with “Amen!” Today, Jesus is asking us if we are willing to risk building a tower of love out of the very blocks of our lives, even though it will get knocked down. And then to rebuild it, over and over, for as long as it takes. To work to inch closer and closer to Isaiah’s vision of a just world for all of God's people. To remove the burdens from our neighbors' shoulders so that all might truly breathe again.  If you are willing, turn to the person in the pew next to you on both sides, give them your best high five, and say, “Amen/ I’m in.”

Image from piecesbypolly.com.

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[1] Ruthanna Hooke, found in Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 4, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010,) 298.

[2] John Shea, The Spiritual Wisdom of the Gospels for Christian Preachers and Teachers: Year C (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2006), 215.

[3] From the November 11, 2016 diocesan convention homily by the Rt. Rev. Terry White, Christ Church Cathedral in Louisville, Kentucky, who borrowed the image from a sermon by the Rt. Rev. Jake Owensby.