12-20-16 - No Place to Rest

Have any other two sentences generated so much drama for so many centuries?

“While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”

That’s it, all Luke says. But because he mentions an inn with a no-vacancy sign, every Christmas pageant has to include an innkeeper, and every nativity drama a race against the clock by a desperate couple frantically seeking a place to have a baby, who is going to pop out any minute now…

Maybe Mary and Joseph had been in Bethlehem for a while before her contractions started. Maybe they camped out somewhere, needing shelter only when the baby arrived. Maybe the place in the house where the livestock were kept was the warmest, and that’s why they put the infant Jesus in the manger filled with straw. Maybe they wrapped him in cloths because onesies hadn’t been invented yet.

We know so little, yet we make so much of these few words. Because it’s a great story, all of it. The homeless couple, the rough shepherds, the glorious angels, the friendly beasts… and in the midst of all of it, the incarnate son of God. You couldn’t make up a story this good.

Do the details matter? Maybe not – but there’s richness in them. It is significant that Jesus spent his first night on earth in a feed trough in a stable. It reminds us that he did not come to make his home in this world. He did not seek the comforts that keep so many of us holding on to more than we need while others go without. Though the Gospels suggest he lived a regular home-based life once he and his parents settled back in Nazareth after a period of exile in Egypt, after he began his ministry he stayed on the move. “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” He almost didn’t have one to start with either.

Jesus is never recorded as leading anyone into a building – he led his followers out. I believe that out of the building is still where most of our church ministry is to be lived. We church folk have got it pretty backward in the 21st century. We’ve imposed onto our churches the assumption that home is where the heart is. It’s not the only place.

Last week at St. Columba's, we held a short memorial service with our “Water Ministry” guests to remember those who died homeless in our community in the past year. The congregation included many volunteers as well as many who live on the streets. I remembered that Jesus spent his first nights not at “home,” but camping out in temporary lodging, sharing space with animals, in a city his parents were visiting. What we call homelessness was his first reality. The company of the marginalized was his first community.

Maybe we need to pay more honor to the life going on outside our homes. Though there is dysfunction and injustice in it, let’s be sure we don’t miss the life in people whose lives aren't in a mold we consider normal. I’m not saying we shouldn’t eliminate homelessness; we should, we must, and God willing we will. I’m suggesting that as we do, we might draw nearer to those who find themselves homeless, because in doing so we may just draw closer to Jesus.

12-19-16 - Waiting on the Baby

Advent IV is past and gone – onward to Christmas! As I write this, my first batch of Christmas cookies is cooling. Soon and very soon…

"So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born…"

It gets real for me when I set up the crèche. Each year, I place the figures the same way in the stable, the angels at the same angles on the gold lame cloth that represents the glory of the Lord (that “shone round about them…”). The wise men are still far off on the top shelf of the bookcase, the shepherds abiding in the fields, the stable cat is at the base of the hayloft. This year I set a welcome mat at the edge, though Mary and Joseph received no welcome.

And there they are, Joseph standing with a staff, Mary kneeling, gazing at an empty manger, waiting… waiting… waiting for the moment when it all changes, when new life brings an end to the old. Mary and Joseph would never be able to go back to what they’d known. No new parents can – and these two were going to face more change than most.

What are you waiting for in your life this week? Perhaps it’s related to Christmas, perhaps not.
What new life are you praying for?
And what are you hoping will never go away?

New life is always coming at us, sometimes taking up the space of something we rather liked, or had grown comfortable with. Is there something yearning to take up space in your life, space you’re willing to create by letting something else go?

On Christmas Eve, when I get home from church, I will fetch the baby out of the little wicker trunk in the back of the stable (hey, Mary had to have some luggage…) and place him in the manger. Jesus always shows up, eventually. Sometimes we just have to let him out of the stuff we carry around…

12-16-16 - Change of Plans

Those who have grown up with the Christian tradition have long since accepted the implausible impossibles at the heart of our Christmas story. We either accept them as “gospel truth,” or as privileged narratives given authority by centuries of holy use, or at least as a great story. Do we even blink anymore at hearing that a young girl might become pregnant “by the Holy Spirit,” and be supported by a man who had every reason to be quit of her but stayed because an angel told him to?

It has become so ingrained as “that’s how the story goes,” it can be hard to experience the wonder and fear such events might evoke. A few weeks ago I was inspired by a crazy “What if….” What if God had decided that Joseph would bear the son of God? I mean, if we’re talking about the God for whom nothing is impossible, why not go there? I wrote this up as a somewhat playful short sermon drama (let me know if you want to read it…); I wanted to ratchet up the sense of dislocation this story should elicit in us.

Joseph and Mary experienced a radical change of plans. Their future looked all set – they were engaged, would soon be married; Joseph had a good living as a carpenter, Mary was young and healthy. The plan looked good.

Except God had a different plan – a way, way bigger plan. A plan that required an unbelievable amount of faith, to believe in something that could not possibly be proven in any empirical way. A plan that demanded an inconceivable amount of courage, to defend a “conceiving” that looked an awful lot like sin and betrayal. A plan that would bring some joy, yes, and also a great deal of heartache and uncertainty.

What plans of yours have been disrupted – by God, or by the choices of others, or by circumstances beyond your control?
Have you grieved those lost plans?  It’s worth naming them, if only to better let them go.
How creative and resilient were you in adapting to the new circumstances? Have you adjusted yet?
What is your prayer in response to your plan changes? Where do you sense the Holy Spirit’s involvement in your life? Can you glimpse a bigger plan in what has happened? Name it.

Looking back, sometimes we can see blessing in what came about instead of our plans. We see this in It’s a Wonderful Life, as George Bailey discovers that his continually laying aside his life plans made him not a failure, but a blessing to countless people, including himself. It is considered a holiday film because of its Christmas climax – but it also echoes the challenges facing Mary and Joseph in our nativity story.

I surely hope they were blessed by the new trajectory of their lives as they embraced God’s plan. I firmly believe that the world has been blessed by them. I have been.

Here's how their conversation with the angel might have gone...

GABRIEL

Look, I know this is not what you were expecting. And I can’t promise that it’s all going to be easy from here on out. This plan of God’s – it’s complicated, and it’s not all happy endings along the way… though hang on for the real ending. That’s a doozy. You’re going to face adversity and hardship and challenge—

JOSEPH

Keep going, pal – you’re really selling it!

GABRIEL

But I think you’re also going to find you’re right at the heart of God’s greatest gift to the world. God is all-powerful, yet God cannot set this story in motion without both of you. It’s going to take tremendous faith, but I assure you, it’s a heck of a story.

MARY

Do we have a choice? Looks like this pregnancy is already well underway.

GABRIEL

You have a choice in how you respond… Will you walk into the story? Will you exercise your faith? Will you hold each other when one of you starts to doubt? Will you let love be your answer?

12-15-16 - Trust and Obey

“When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him…”

Joseph was a paragon of virtue, it would appear, a man who did what God commanded even though it exposed him to shame and ridicule – and ultimately danger, once the implications of being step-father to God’s son became apparent. Yet Joseph excelled at obeying.

I’m not fond of the word “obedience.” There is a hymn I've never liked, for I believe it captures all the legalistic religiosity I spend much energy countering:
“Trust and obey, for there’s no other way /to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” 

“Yes, there is!” I want to shout. “There is the way of grace and acceptance and doing good on the power of the Spirit, not on our own!” As one whose faith came alive under a steady stream of preaching about the grace of God, and who is keenly aware of the limits of willpower, I prefer to stress the unconditional love of God that we receive despite our failure to obey. Obedience is so closely linked in my mind to legalism, I react negatively, despite my general compliance.

And yet, here is Joseph, reminding me of the power that can be unleashed when we simply obey. Joseph’s obedience may have been a product of a self-disciplined nature. Or maybe it resulted from the very clear and powerful, supernatural encounter he had in his dream with an angel of the Lord – reinforced, no doubt, by Mary’s tale of her own angelic encounter. We might find ourselves more inclined toward obeying and following God's guidance if we can be more in touch with our own divine encounters. They may not be as dramatic as Joseph’s, but they are real.

So... when did you last sense the Spirit of God nudging you or instructing you in some way? When did you last sense the presence of God around you? Or see evidence of God’s handiwork in your life or in the world?

If you can’t think of anything… there might be a prayer in that, asking God to help you become more aware, or to open your own heart a little wider to what is happening in the unseen realm of spirit.

It is hard to trust, let alone obey, a total stranger. If we keep God at arm’s length or at a polite distance, it's harder to discern the leaps of faith we are invited to take – or jump. God may never ask us to take a leap like Joseph did… Then again, God does invite us, like Joseph, to nurture the Christ-life in ourselves and in others, every day of the year.

We don’t have to escort a pregnant woman to Bethlehem… we just have to get ourselves there, and trust God to walk with us no matter what comes.

12-14-16 - God With Us

Matthew the Gospel writer is big on linking events he is telling about to things foretold by Hebrew prophets. After all, he was writing the Good News for a predominantly Jewish audience, many of whom needed convincing about this Jesus movement.

So, after he tells us about Joseph’s dream, in which an angel instructs Joseph to go forward with his marriage to Mary, “for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit,” Matthew adds, “All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’”

Emmanu-el. That’s a big claim in one name: God with us. Not "God far away," not "God too holy to be approached" – God with us. That’s the heart of our whole deal as Christians.

“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us...” (John 1:14)
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and God will dwell with them.’” (Revelation 21:3)

It is a radical thing to say God is with us. It means we can’t say we’ve been abandoned, no matter how alone we might feel. It means we can’t place God at an unreachable distance from ourselves or our world. In Christ, we have been granted entrée to the throne of God, “For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:17)

Does it change our perception on the challenges we face in life, knowing that God is with us? Think about the things you feel are insurmountable, or the places you feel powerless (plenty of those these days…). Now bring those up in prayer, in the context of God’s “with-us-ness.” How does it feel to pray to God with you? To pray with God, not to God. We often pray to God-far-away. Jesus is God-with-us.

Can we start to take advantage of the proximity and access that is ours as members of the household of God and citizens of the realm of God? Maybe play with places in your imagination where you might go to talk with Jesus in prayer. “The Word is very near you – on your lips and in your heart,” Paul tells us in Romans 10:8, quoting Deuteronomy. What's the good of all this access if we don't use it?

Emmanu-el has drawn near to us in love.
God is with us, always.
We can go away; God will not.

How will you live today, owning that truth deep in your being? How will you share that gift?

12-13-16 - Field of Dreams

One of my favorite “faith movies” of all time is Field of Dreams. I saw it 11 times in a year – in theatres. It tells the story of an Iowa farmer named Ray Kinsella who hears a whispered voice telling him to plow under a fruitful field of corn and build a ball park. This is economic and agricultural madness, and yet he is convinced of the voice’s reality. Equally nutty instructions follow, leading to the impossible reality that Shoeless Joe Jackson and other baseball greats of yore, now dead, start coming through the corn to play on the field and interact with Ray and his family.

Ray’s wife supports him following these instructions – but it’s hard. Is he losing his mind? At a crucial point, when she’s ready to give up, they both have the same dream one night, giving them the confirmation they need to stay on this seemingly insane course and follow where it leads.

Joseph of Nazareth had a LOT of dreams. Like his namesake, the Joseph of the woven cloak and jealous brothers, the New Testament Joseph received regular angelic communications through his dreams. Unlike the Joseph of Torah, however, whose dreams were symbolic and required interpretation, Joseph of Nazareth gets clear instructions, “Do this,” “Go there,” “Don’t go there,” “Okay, it’s safe now…”

In Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth, the angels just show up directly to people like Zechariah, Mary, the shepherds, unmediated by REM sleep and human processes. They’re just there – “Look out! Be not afraid!” The writer of Matthew either heard different stories, or maybe thought Luke was embellishing things, for in his telling the angels speak only through dreams. And in Matthew, it is Joseph who receives the divine message that in Luke is delivered to Mary.

After Joseph learns of Mary’s premature pregnancy, and resolves to divorce her quietly,
“…an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’”

Have you ever had a “God dream?”
What message did you discern? Did you act on it?

In what ways do you sense the Holy Spirit communicates with you? In prayer directly? Through events and coincidences? By a strong sense or urge to do or say something that bears good fruit? Through meditating on the Word of God? I have a friend who gets pop song lyrics in her head – always with a message that suggests answers or guidance.

I believe the Holy One is often messaging us. As we tune our receivers, we begin to discern those messages more often. And when we do, we check that our interpretation is consistent with what we read in Scripture, not contrary. We can also seek confirmation from others in our community of faith. If the Spirit suggests you do something radical, the Spirit will give someone else confirmation for you.

In Field of Dreams, as in our nativity story, the instructions in dreams leads, ultimately, to love, to reunion and reconciliation and restoration. Which is where all God dreams ultimately lead… Joseph’s, and mine, and yours.

12-12-16 - Stepping Up

Ah, at last we get to the story, the story we tell and re-tell about the angels and the shepherds and the sweet young woman great with child and... Oh, wait, not quite that story. Angels, yes, but only in dreams. No shepherds or inn-keepers in Matthew’s pageant. In fact, he barely works Mary in, naming her only as Jesus’ mother and Joseph’s betrothed. This is Joseph’s story, as Matthew tells it:

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.

Interestingly, Matthew does not refer to Joseph as Jesus’ father – in fact, he tips the “messianic secret” in the first line. Mary is introduced as mother and fiancée, but all the action here is with Joseph – his challenges, his choices.

We are told he is a righteous man, and we can see how gentle is his response, to dissolve the betrothal in quiet so as to protect Mary from legal liability as an adulteress. Then an angel intervenes in a dream, giving him the rundown that, in Luke, Mary hears directly from the angel Gabriel.

And Joseph decides to obey this dream message, probably despite his own misgivings and the derision of the people close to him. He does so honorably, and endures Mary's pregnancy without marital gratification – all the while preparing to welcome and raise a first-born whom he knows is not his biological child. In today’s idiom we might say, “Joseph totally steps up. Dude.” (Randy Travis tells his story – and The Whole Story – in Raise Him Up.)

Today I invite you to think about who in your life has stepped up for you, above and beyond their “duty?” Relatives, teachers, colleagues, friends…. Let your gratitude fill you – and if they’re still around to be thanked, thank them again.

And then think about who or what you are being called to nurture into strong, healthy growth. Who are you helping to “raise up?” What are you helping to build? I trust you realize this is God’s work, work God invites us to participate in. The results are not up to us, but sometimes the work won't happen if we don't agree to do it.

God asked Joseph to participate in a critical role in the plan of salvation that we claim as Christians. It was not an easy “yes,” any easier than Mary’s was. But Joseph said yes – and so helped to raise us up in the Life of God.