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The Same Story

12/27/2020

Christmas 1

Isaiah 61:10-62:3
Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7
John 1:1-18

Let us pray: Almighty God, you have made yourself known in your Son, Jesus. In his birth you have restored the dignity of human nature. In your love, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, let us share in his divine life – just as he shared our humanity. As we hear and reflect on your word this day, help us to respond with believing hearts and to put our faith into practice. We ask in his name. Amen.

Have you ever noticed that when you get together with your family and start telling stories about when you were growing up, or what happened years ago, the same events sound very different as different people tell the story? Depending on who’s describing it, the guy who used to live across the street was a scrooge or a saint. Moving from one town to another was either a disaster, a wonderful escape, or a thing indifferent, hardly noticed. Same event, different folks in the family, different point of view, radically different ways of telling the same story.
Consider the wonderful poetry of those first 18 verses of John’s Gospel we just heard. This is the Christmas story, the third time the Bible tells it. It is the same story we may have heard on Christmas Eve—the story of the manger and the shepherds and the angels—and it’s the same story Matthew tells in his gospel—with Joseph’s dreams, the wise men and the flight to Egypt. But the point of view is different, and John’s Gospel sounds strange to ears more accustomed to crowded inns and angel choirs. That’s because different folks in the family are telling the same story.

You see, Luke, who wrote the familiar story of Christmas Eve, was a bit of an historian. He was very concerned with getting the dates and rulers right, and with locating everything in time and space. Also, he may have been a gentile convert, and he was very concerned about the role of people who, like him, were considered outsiders. So, Luke is more concerned with shepherds—who were social outcasts—than about kings. And Luke focuses on the perspective of Mary—a radical move since women were even lower on the social ladder than shepherds.

Matthew is more traditional. He was certainly a Jew and may have been a scribe. He was very concerned with making it clear that Jesus fulfilled all of the Old Testament prophecies as Messiah, King of Jews. So, shepherds didn’t interest him as much as the royal wise men, and he paid a lot of attention to the flight to Egypt because of the parallel between the Exodus led by Moses and Jesus’ own return from Egypt to Israel. Also, the more traditional Matthew tells the story of Jesus’ birth from Joseph’s point of view.

Then there was John. John may well have read Matthew and Luke and, if so, he assumes that we have, too. But John is a theologian and a mystic. So, he isn’t concerned with historical details. Instead, he writes of the meaning of Jesus’ birth, and he writes from his theology, and from the holy imagination of his prayers. But he is still telling the same story—all three are talking about the same birth—all three are saying the same thing.

John begins the story earlier—he reminds us that Christmas really begins where Genesis begins—in the beginning, with God in creation. So, using language evocative of the first verses of Genesis, John begins by talking about the beginning, and about the Word of God. “The Word” here is God in action, God creating, God revealing himself. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. Then he tells the Christmas story—in nine words (in the Greek and English). “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” He who was with God in creation, the one who is God revealing himself to humanity—this one became a person, became flesh—as completely human as you and I. Not God with a people-suit disguise on; not a really good person who God rewarded and made special; not a super angel God created early and saved up for Bethlehem.

But a person, who was the Word—who was God’s own self. (A chip off the old block.) Soaring words for the most down-to-earth thing that ever happened. But it’s still the Christmas story, still the story Matthew and Luke tell—the story of the birth of Jesus.

In addition to telling the same story, Matthew, Luke, and John also share one special way of telling it—there is one image, one symbol, and only one, that they all use to talk about that birth in Bethlehem. (Can you think of what it is?)

They all talk about light—the light of the star, the light that shone around the shepherds, the true light that enlightens everyone. They all continue Isaiah’s vision of light shining on those who live in darkness. Where Christ is, people who understand talk about light. They have to—there is no better image of what is going on. The light shines in the darkness—John proclaims. And somehow, we understand this and we understand that this truth cannot be better expressed in any other words.

In large part, we understand this because we know about darkness—we know what it is like to live in and with darkness. Remember what it’s like to try to walk through an unfamiliar place when it’s really dark—or to wake up confused in the middle of the night in someone else’s house, trying to get somewhere? We know what it’s like when we don’t know where things are, and we don’t know what we have just bumped into, or whether we’re going to get where we want to go, or if the next step will be OK or if we will break something and make a mess. We know how easy it is to go in circles in the dark and to get turned around and to stub a toe and get angry and hit whatever is handy.

And we know what it is like to live like that in broad daylight.

What John and Luke and Matthew all say about Christmas is that a light begins to shine—suddenly, quietly, but with absolute certainty. And by that light, we can begin to see. By that light, we can begin to see who we are and who we are created to be. For it is in the person of Jesus that what it means to be fully a human being is finally made clear. In him, we see that our lives are made whole as we surrender them in love and service; in him, we see that really being alive means risking everything for—and because of—the love of God and the Kingdom of God. In him we see that hope need never be abandoned—never—and that we contain possibilities beyond our imagining.

Also, by that light that has come into the world, we begin to see God clearly for the first time. “No one has ever seen God,” John reminds us. But God is made known to us in Jesus. So, everything we thought about God, everything we had figured out, everything that we were sure we knew about God—all of this is put to the test in Jesus. Who God is, in relationship to us, is fully revealed in Jesus. Not in one saying or one parable or one miracle—but in all of him: in his life, ministry, death, and resurrection. Through all of these together, we finally have the light to see God.

The light of Christ, the Word made flesh, comes among us at Christmas—and we celebrate its coming into the world. God had revealed himself and his love to us in Christ. That first Christmas, the stable stank but the light shone—and it continues to shine. It continues to allow us to see—and to show a world living in darkness what we have seen. For by that light we have been given power to become children of God—and to take our places with the light. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

We know there is much darkness in our world but we need to remember the good news. There is light in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it.

Let us pray: Our Father and our God penetrate our hearts with your eternal gladness and light. Let us face suffering, darkness, and discouragement with hope and cheerfulness, knowing they are pathways to your glory. Fill us with peace and rejoicing in your many blessings. Give us deep abiding faith and hope because of Christ, in whom we pray. Amen.

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In The Flesh

12/25/2020

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Christmas Day
Isaiah 62:6-12
Titus 3:4-7
Luke 2:1-20

Let us pray: Almighty God, we praise you for entering into the world you have made so you can draw us near to you. We give thanks that, you have come in great humility as the baby Jesus in the manger, you also have made him to be the Messiah, the Christ, for the salvation of the world. Thank you for your love and grace in the birth of Christ. Amen.

Luke’s nativity story is familiar to most of us, whether we know it or not. That famous account of Jesus’ birth that we hear, year-in and year-out, begins with those ever-so recognizable lines, “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered…” You know where this one’s going right from the very beginning.
Christians don’t memorize much scripture anymore. Smartphone in hand, any one of us can command verse after verse with a few swipes of our thumb. Come to think of it, nobody memorizes much of anything at all anymore. Yet even today, the children in the Christmas pageant commit themselves to those words that seem to rain down from heaven: “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”
We also heard a very short reading from the letter to Titus which we usually pay little attention to:
“When the goodness and loving-kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
Even though these words from Titus might not be quite as memorable as some others, they are surely just as applicable as we gather not only to observe the nativity but to celebrate the Incarnation.
You see, Christmas is just as much about giving birth to a firstborn son and wrapping him in bands of cloth and laying him in a manger as it is about the grace of God appearing, bringing salvation to all. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin, one in the very same.

At Christmas, God’s grace appears like never before: in the flesh. By coming in the flesh, God is making sure we understand how very close to us the holy presence really is. God not only wants us to see that presence, God invites us to feel it—in the flesh! And so that is precisely where grace appears.
Through the miracle of the Incarnation, God did away with the silly notion that we are mere drones slogging our way toward some heavenly home, slowly but surely trudging through the earthly muck and mire. By becoming flesh in this world, God sanctifies our flesh, making it possible for us to be agents of God’s grace – right here on earth. In other words, eternal life starts now. You don’t have to wait to get to heaven to live in God’s kingdom.
Ever since God appeared in a flesh like ours, and lived a life like ours, humanity and divinity have been inextricably linked. I know it’s hard to believe. The paradox of this great mystery is certainly worth considering, but on this holy day, we do not worship in order to ponder exactly how the Incarnation is possible. We come to worship to renew our commitment to living in the world as if it is true.
“A child has been born for us, a son given to us.”
“The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.”
“This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”
None of this means that the world is perfect. If you weren’t already convinced, 2020 should have taken care of that. If ever any year was filled with earthly muck and mire, it was this one. So much so, in fact, that not all Christians—not even some of the most privileged Episcopalians—will be able to worship together today, to pass the peace, to break the bread. A year ago, we could never have imagined the number of lives that would be lost or hearts that would be broken.
Jesus doesn’t guarantee that the world will be perfect, but he does supply the grace that we need in order to live like we ought to live. The author of the letter to Titus reminds us that it is this grace that teaches us how to live a life that is self-controlled, upright, and godly. Will this be a faultless life? No. A flawless life? No. A totally unspoiled life? Absolutely not! But it will be a life in which we can respond following the example of the one who appeared to us in flesh.
Because God became flesh and dwelt among us, each and every one of us, our bodies, our lives, our selves, are conformed to God during the good times and the bad. In the manger baby, God sanctifies all that we experience, even our suffering.
Perhaps at this point, it’s best to get specific.
The life that God’s grace makes possible for us is not a life in which we go around blaming gay people for hurricanes or rioters for wildfires. It is not a world in which COVID-19 can simply be chalked up to God’s wrath upon all those people who are different from us. The life that God’s grace makes possible for us is a life in which we, as Christians, operate from a place of compassion and love. It is a life in which we recognize the turmoil and the tragedy, the trauma, and the deep grief of the world and simply ask how we can help.
“What do you need? Where can I meet you? Stay right there. I’m on the way!” The world cries out for a response rooted in the grace of God’s appearing. Not, “What did you do to deserve this?” More like, “Given these circumstances, where do we go from here? How do we walk forward together?”
That is grace in the flesh, dear friends. That is what the world needs. That is what God offers us in Jesus: the grace of gifts given, not gifts earned; grace that comes to us in our own image and inspires us to live the Christmas life. Amen.

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Let It Be!

12/20/2020

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Advent 4
2 Samuel 7:1-11,16
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38
Let us pray: Come, Lord Jesus. Fill our minds with your word, fill our hearts with your love, and fill our lives with your light. Come, Lord Jesus, we pray. Amen.

"Mary said, 'I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be done to me as you say.'"
When Gabriel announced to Mary that she would give birth to a son she was troubled, and perplexed. She said, “How can this be?” This was not in her plans for her future with her betrothed husband Joseph. But Gabriel told her that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and she would conceive and the child to be born would be holy. And Mary responded, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”
She said, “Let it be.” One of the greatest Beatles hits was the song “Let it Be.” Some of the words are:
“When I find myself in times of trouble,
Mother Mary comes to me,
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness,
She is standing right in front of me,
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.”
Let it be. But, how difficult it is for us to let it be. When we can’t find a rational explanation for something unplanned it haunts us. We want things to be as WE plan them and want them to turn out.
How frequently do we lose sleep at night, worry, pace, fuss and fume about problems that we probably can’t solve? We want things to be as we want. We become obsessed with answers and explanations only to become totally overwhelmed and anxious over things we can’t fix.
To let it be means to let God be God. To let go of the need to figure everything out, or the need to have a rational explanation for everything that happens. Sometimes we just have to resolve that things are the way they are for reasons beyond our control or our knowledge.
I’d like to share a story with you written by Robert Fulghum, in his book titled Uh-Oh.
“It was the summer of 1959. At the Feather River Inn in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of northern California. A resort environment. And I, just out of college, have a job that combines being the night desk clerk in the lodge and helping out with the horse-wrangling at the stables. The owner/manager is Italian-Swiss, with European notions about conditions of employment. He and I do not get along. I think he’s a fascist who wants peasant employees who know their place, and he thinks I’m a good example of how democracy can be carried too far. I’m twenty-two and pretty free with my opinions, and he’s fifty-two and has a few opinions of his own.
One week the employees were served the same thing for lunch every single day. Two wieners, a mound of sauerkraut, and stale rolls. To compound insult with injury, the cost of meals was deducted from our pay. I was outraged.
On Friday night of that week, I was at my desk clerk job around 11 p.m., and the night auditor had just come on duty. I went to the kitchen to get a snack and saw a note to the chef to the effect that wieners and sauerkraut are on the employee menu for two more days.
That tears it. I quit! For lack of a better audience, I unloaded on the night auditor, Sigmund Wollman. I declared that I have had it up to here; that I am going to go get a plate of wieners and sauerkraut and go and wake up the owner and throw it on him. I am sick and tired of this crap and nobody is going to make me eat wieners and sauerkraut for a whole week and make me pay for it, and who does he think he is anyhow, and how can life be sustained on wieners and sauerkraut, and this is un-American, and I don’t like wieners and sauerkraut enough to even eat it one day, and the whole hotel stinks anyhow, and the horses are all nags, and the guests are idiots and I’m packing my bags and heading for Montana where they never even heard of wieners and sauerkraut and wouldn’t even feed that stuff to the pigs.
Something like that. I raved on this way for about twenty minutes, and needn’t repeat it all here. You get the drift. My monologue was delivered at the top of my lungs, punctuated with blows on the front desk with a fly-swatter, the kicking of chairs and much profanity. As I pitched my fit, Sigmund Wollman, the night auditor, sat quietly on his stool, smoking a cigarette, watching me with sorrowful eyes.
Put a bloodhound in a suit and tie and you have Sigmund Wollman. He’s got a good reason to look sorrowful. Survivor of Auschwitz. Three years. German Jew. Thin, coughed a lot. He liked being alone at the night job—it gave him peace and quiet, time to read and even more, he could go into the kitchen and have a snack whenever he wanted to—all the wieners and sauerkraut he wanted. To him a feast. More than that, there’s nobody around to tell him what to do. In Auschwitz he probably dreamed of such a time.
“Fulchum, are you finished?”“No, why?”“Lissen, Fulchum. Lissen me, lissen me. You know what’s wrong with you? It’s not wieners and kraut and it’s not the boss and it’s not the chef and it’s not this job.”
“So, what’s wrong with me?”“Fulchum, you tink you know everyting, but you don’t know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. “If you break your neck—if you have noting to eat—if your house is on fire—then you got a problem. Everyting else is inconvenience. Life IS inconvenient. Life IS lumpy.
“Learn to separate the inconveniences from the real problems. You will live longer. And will not annoy people like me so much. Good night.”
In a gesture combining dismissal and blessing, he waved me off to bed. He concludes by writing, “Seldom in my life have I been hit between the eyes with truth so hard. “For thirty years now in times of stress and strain, when something has me backed against the wall and I’m ready to do something really stupid with my anger, a sorrowful face appears in my mind and asks: “Fulchum. Problem or inconvenience?”
For Mary I’m sure this was a significant inconvenience. Why was Mary able to say “let it be?” First, she had a deep, abiding faith. She trusted in the wisdom of God and therefore could submit to God’s plan. How often do we find our personal agendas in direct competition with what God would have us do? Mary and Joseph probably hoped to have a happy marriage in the quiet little village of Nazareth. God, however, had different plans for them.
That’s the way it works with God. Just when we think we have our lives going along smoothly—not great—not bad—God shakes us up with a call. The difficulty is perhaps that we are often willing, even anxious, to settle for less than what God offers us. We are offered God, and want the world instead. Sometimes it takes a drastic event to prepare us to accept God’s offer.
To say, “Let it be,” means to resolve that because of circumstances beyond our control, things are going to be different than we may have anticipated. That could be a shift in our priorities. It could mean we will be embarking on new adventures. Or, it might mean our life has many surprises in store for us in the future.
God doesn’t choose the way we would. God chooses worldly weakness to proclaim divine power. That’s the reason Mary was chosen and the reason we have been chosen. An unknown teenager in an unknown, out-of-the-way place.
We share Mary’s vocation. She was chosen to bear the Savior. In our baptism, we have been appointed to do the same, to bring Christ to the world, to be Christ for the world. Mary gave Jesus a body, so do I, so do you. God has chosen us to be bearers of Christ for the world.
Perhaps we each need to ask this question. “What does God want me to do with my life and am I giving God a chance to work through me?” What is it that you can’t let go of, or, what is it you can’t say, “Let it be” to? To say, “let it be,” really means to say, “yes” to God.
The story of Mary is our story, too. Or, can be. The key is in our response. The whole story of Christmas depended upon one woman’s willingness to say, “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me as you say.” Are we willing to say the same?
When you are in there getting knocked around, bruised and bloodied, and you have a chance to drop out, you drop out! That’s what Robert Fulghum wanted to do. And so do I. And that's healthy psychologists tell us. The healthy person doesn't enjoy suffering. He wants to get out of it. He wants to resolve it. He wants to move the situation to something comfortable. That is why it is so difficult to identify with the Biblical Theme of voluntarily accepting the bruising and the bleeding. When we see how Jesus volunteered and accepted suffering and humiliation and death on our behalf, we discover there is no hiding place, no escape hatch, no way to get out from under, for those who want to be His disciples.
As we celebrate our final Sunday before Christmas, Mary’s willingness to say “yes” to God’s call is an example and a challenge to each of us. Am I as ready as she to say, “Yes!” to God’s call to bring Christ into the world? Am I as ready as she was to risk what doing the will of God might mean in my day-to-day life? If I can follow Mary’s example, then my life will be Christmas for my brothers and sisters, the birth of Christ in unlikely places and circumstances of the world.
We have no choice about experiencing the many interruptions of life. They come simply out of the grace of God. Your only choice is deciding if you will embrace them, allowing them to mold you into someone who looks a lot more like Jesus Christ.
Like Mary and Joseph, say "Yes" to the interruption. Don't resist it. Look for the creativity of the Holy Spirit within it. And say, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word."

Let us Pray: O Lord, let it be to us according to your word – even when that word frightens us. Even when it is not the word we were expecting. I pray that we may be people who continue to trust in your word despite the inconveniences—the impossibilities and improbabilities we may think we see. Grant that like Mary we may be willing and humble servants. We ask all things through Christ Jesus, the Babe of Bethlehem, and the one who is both our brother and our Lord. Amen.

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