Sermon, First Sunday after Christmas, January 2, 2022, "The pandemic as a portal"

  C Christmas 2 Pilg 2021

                                               John 1:10-18

                                               January 2, 2022 

           In this socially distanced time, maybe your Christmas, like mine, was a procession of videos or Facetime calls from young relatives.  With all the glee of a prison inmate, these forced confessions, or, I mean, expressions of gratitude, come to us with the gift prominently on display presumably so that “A” we know the gift did truly arrive and “B” the young person remembers what they are thanking us for.  I imagine that when the communication to us is over, Aunt Beth’s gift is moved in front of the youngster and the process is repeated. 

           We may not get to see the joy of Kian or Eli opening their gifts, but I do appreciate my sisters and brother pushing their kids to do one of the not so glamorous but necessary rituals of Christmas.  Our children should learn and practice gratitude—even when it feels like they are being tied to a chair to do so. 

           Unfortunately, our family also experienced some of the hard lessons of pandemic.  A number of our family members made the trip to Florida, even went to Disney World, and somehow, in the mix, my brother, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my niece all tested positive for Co-Vid.  My mom actually ended up in the emergency room but probably due to her vaccination status was fortunate to only end up with a deep cough and fatigue.  The Omicron variant is humbling even the fully vaccinated and boosted. 

           As we walk into another surge in this pandemic, I was reminded this week of the article written by the great Indian writer, Arundhati Roy, who observed in April 2020 that the pandemic was hitting some of the richest nations in the world the hardest, namely the United States.  The language we were using to offset the pandemic, the language of war, was not working out for us.  We would be prepared if our frontline workers had needed stockpiles of guns and bombs, fighter jets and submarines.  We did not have the language nor the resources ready for care and healing.  We did not have the resources or the language in place for care and healing.  We didn’t seem to know how to requisition that. 

Roy went on to write,

 

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.^[1]

 

The pandemic is a portal—a choice between two worlds.  The pandemic required and requires that we see all of us in this together.  The old way pretended that we could build a wall, circle the wagons, or a gated community around ourselves and escape the horrors of the world.  A new world needs to be imagined.

           Our Scripture verse today is a foreshadowing of Holy Week when Jesus stands in front of Pontius Pilate, interrogated by Pilate, the local representative of the Roman Empire.  Jesus responds to Pilate by saying, “My empire is not of this world. If my empire were of this world, my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Judeans; but as it is, my kingdom or empire is not of this world.”^[2]  The Greek word translated as “world” is kosmos and it is used in the first chapter of John when the writer seeks to define Jesus by saying, “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, and yet the world did not know him.”

           That word, kosmos, is used over and over again in Biblical books influenced by what is called “Johannine theology.”  Johannine theology is found as today, in the gospel of John, but also in 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Revelation.   Most classic translations interpret the word kosmos as “world” which has led to some unhealthy theology throughout the ages. Christian tradition has sometimes used that classic translation to bend away from embodiment and bend toward denial of the body, away from the physical world toward more of a concern for heaven and the afterlife.  

But the late, great Biblical scholar, Walter Wink transformed the meaning of Johannine theology by recognizing that the more apt translation for the word kosmos was "Domination System."  In Jesus's context, Wink might even agree with me that "Roman Empire" could be another good translation.  Jesus tells us not to be of the Domination System or the Empire.  Do not practice its ways or be like it.  

           Jesus always tells his disciples to not be of the Domination System or Roman Empire.  Jesus is always telling the disciples within Johannine theology that we are born into the kosmos but we are not to participate in the ways or trade of the kosmos.

Jesus, before Pilate, in that Holy Week Scripture, is not saying, my kingdom or Empire is not of this earthly world, or is in heaven.  Jesus is saying that his kingdom or Empire is not the violence and death, oppression and slavery of the Roman Empire.  Jesus is not being otherworldly.  He is being anti-establishment.  The same is true in the passage before us today.  Jesus was in the Domination System, born into it, yet the Domination System did not know him. 

           We remain in the season of Christmas—a time when the entrance of Christ into the world highlights how God’s order and way of doing things engages, confronts, and collides with Rome’s order and way of doing things.  Too often, what I feel in the pull of a cultural Christmas, is to be more like the materialism and violence of Rome than the countercultural values of God born in Christ.   That cultural narrative is so strong, so powerful.  So strong and and so powerful that often I hear the Christian church touting the way Rome did things based on militarism, violence, domination, numbers, and commercialism.   The Christian church then, without reference to who Jesus said he was or what he did, names those things Jesus and Christ and God to ordain a focus on militarism, violence, domination, numbers, and commercialism. 

And I’m drawn to that cultural Christmas—the flash and buzz of it as I scurried around trying to make sure I had an expensive enough present for nieces, nephews, daughter, sons, and spouse. 

           Sometimes, even outside Christianity, there are echoes of doing things a different way.  Maybe you’ve heard of one of those echoes.

 

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?^[3]

 

Did it?  Does it?  Do the boring and mundane values of gratitude, mutual healing, care, the sharing of bread, love for God’s good earth, kindness, hospitality, and non-violence mean a little bit more –even when we might have to push our kids to make the video just to say another boring thank you?

           The pandemic is a portal.  It not only has told us who we are but given us permission to imagine a different way of doing things, another world.  I was reminded this past week how different that world might be when I read this short and simple message from faith leader, Carlos A. Rodriguez, that reminded me of values that were about my family, my wider community, and who we are to be in this moment in time, praying for a new kosmos.  Rodriguez wrote: 

 

Someone is alive this week because you wore a mask last month.

Someone is healthy today because you followed the guidelines and kept your distance.

Someone is not hospitalized right now because you got boosted already.

Thank you for your kindness!

Keep loving.

 

            I pray, dear friends, that your Christmas is one filled with the values of a kosmos that means a little bit more.  We were born into a Domination System as Christ was.  God, in Christ, especially during this season, calls us to imagine a whole new way of doing things.  May we all have the courage to fight for it.  Amen. 

---

^[1] Arundhati Roy, “The pandemic is a portal,” Financial Times, April 3, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca. 

^[2] John 18:36

^[3] Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!  (New York:  Random House, 1957). 

Christmas Eve, December 24, 2018, "Ugh! Another Christmas Eve Sermon"

C Christmas Eve BFC 2018

Luke 2

December 24, 2018

Menorah Processional

For the last four years I have asked people from our own community of faith to share their experience of the Christmas menorah, that series of events that happened 25 years ago in Billings, Montana.  Last year, I asked my good friend and colleague, retired rabbi, Uri Barnea to share his thoughts.  I thought, maybe in my fifth year at this church I might share my history.  Because Tracy and I had decided that we needed to be in the search for a church and Tracy asked me, “What kind of church are you looking for?”  I told her that I felt like my time slowly interpreting the gospel was over for me and that I needed a church who wanted to be part of a movement.  She asked again, “So what kind of church?”  I said, “You know, like the one that became Jewish to bring life and love to its community, the one with the menorahs.  I went to UCC Opportunities, and lo and behold, Billings First Congregational Church had just come open. 

I am honored and grateful to be pastor at this church.  Because I think that is the great challenge in every age for Christians.  How do we express our solidarity so well?  How do we convey ourselves to be in the same bunker so “in” that we are identified with a vulnerable community, vulnerable people? 

During the search process, it was the one Aaron Blakeslee, a person I now know as an incredible person of faith and a community leader, who asked me what I would do with that menorah story.  I said I would repeat it . . . annually.  Activist, scholar, and Civil Rights leader Angela Davis recently said, “So, even though I know the world always appears to be so chaotic, and sometimes we can’t see a way out, but I think the work that we have to do is to guarantee that we pass down a legacy to the next group, the next generation. And that’s our only hope for achieving change.”

She expressed great hope with what she sees in the world.  Who would guess that there would be this amazing Trans movement 20 years ago?  Indeed.  Davis talked about how when she was in prison, charged with three murders, it was the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, who tried to put up her bail money.  But she was out of the country and could not.  It was a white farmer from California who put up his farm for collateral so that Angela Davis did not have to face the death penalty.  Angela Davis talked about the future, she said, “And then there are all of those freedom ideas that I can’t even imagine. But I know that in the future they will emerge. And so, I’m excited. It’s actually—you know, it’s not that bad to be old. It isn’t, as long as you maintain that kind of perspective and vision that allows you to feel connected to both those who are younger and those who are older, those who came before us and those who will come after us many generations into the future.”

It is Christmas where God expresses solidarity with us, says that we are not alone, even though our plight might be as unwed, pregnant immigrant women, shepherds bitterly cold in their field by night, or a newly born child who wonders if he will be separated from his parents as the Holy Family flees violence.  Christmas calls us to once again see Christ not only among the Jewish Jesus but in all those people who are dear to God’s heart.  Let us begin by remembering our story. 

Sermon

Ugh.  Christmas sermons are the worst, aren’t they?  I mean, many of you got dragged along to this service because someone in the family wants that romantic notion of Christmas Eve, and, boring of all boring, it also includes church, right?  Not only that but waiting at home, many of you have presents to open, some of you have presents to wrap.  Or you know you have good food, comfort food, sweet food, just waiting for you.  You’re biding your time, playing along, want this to be over now.

Maybe you don’t have any of that and you’re just here because maybe there is some Christmas magic you are hoping for in a year that has been hard.  Life has been difficult.  And you are just weary hoping that God holds out something good for you. 

How am I supposed to preach into that:  some of you hoping for that warm, romantic Christmas, chestnuts roasting on a fire, favorite carols that need to be sung, presents and food waiting, and others of you hoping for something revelatory?  And to do that with Biblical stories that are strongly political, overtly challenging, and really not all that romantic when it comes right down to it?  Couldn’t there be something in there about the details of how an angel unfurls their wings?  Instead, some scholars have translated the heavenly host as God’s army showing up.   Conflict!  I know my clergy colleagues quake with fear at the dreaded Christmas Eve sermon.  Ugh.  Ugh.  Ugh.

How have people done it all these years?  You would think, in the oldest part of the United Church of Christ, New England, where United Church of Christ churches are a dime a dozen, they would have worked it out, right? Every month Tracy and I, pastors at the United Church of Christ in North Hampton, would get together with about ten colleagues who were probably in a 15-mile radius of historical Exeter, New Hampshire.  We would meet with the other clergy in the Rockingham Association.

          Exeter is probably best known as the home of Phillips-Exeter High School, one of the most prodigious private high school in the United States, where the famous attorney and statesperson, Daniel Webster matriculated.  Webster was considered one of the United States’ early great orators, serving in the legislature, arguing cases before the United States Supreme Court, and holding the post of the United States Secretary of State.   He is forever enshrined in Stephen Vincent Benet’s book, The Devil and Daniel Webster, where all of his rhetorical skill is employed against the Prince of Darkness. 

          The fictional Daniel Webster was asked to defend Jabez Stone, a farmer, who had sold his soul to the devil, after years and years of misfortune.  Webster argues, “Mr. Stone is an American citizen, and no American citizen may be forced into the service of a foreign prince.  We fought England for that in [18]12, and we’ll fight all hell for it again!”  After the case is argued, Webster kicks the Devil out of the house, and it is said the Devil never did come back to New Hampshire.  Yeah, see!  Daniel Webster would know what to preach.

          The founding of the church in Exeter happened some 375 years ago and the building we met in as clergy was built some 226 years ago.   I sometimes marvel to think places like the United Church of Christ in Exeter, those all white, soaring edifices, with grizzled and loving congregants, have that much history.    Certainly, in that place, they had worked out what to preach on Christmas Eve!  Right?  Please?

Every month we met in the lap of United States history, taking turns in presenting a program that we, as clergy, would then roundly discuss.  In keeping with stereotypical New England Christianity, our group was strongly intellectual, rather staid and stodgy at times, with a few eccentric clergy to round out the group.

          I chose to lead the group during the month of December.  What I decided to do was update the Christmas story, tell it with local and national political figures, Jesus being born in a McDonald’s parking lot just inside the ne’er-do-well community of Seabrooke, New Hampshire.  I was pleased that most of the participants in the discussion believed I had made good choices to update the story.  Some asked if they could use the story for their congregation.  Others agreed that they would be too worried about the reaction in their congregation.  To begin the discussion I then asked, “What do you plan for liturgy and sermon on Christmas Eve?”

          You would have thought I ran an electric current through the group.  The person serving refreshments stopped to say, “Wait a minute.  Don’t say anything till I come back with my notebook.”  Others laughed nervously and said, “I am interested in what you all are going to do.” 

          We discussed how difficult it is to preach on Christmas Eve with radical Scripture passages and huge expectations from the congregation about receiving something as warm and loving as the hot chocolate and fuzzy sweater they will receive right after the service or the very next morning.  The discussion moved from wanting permission to preach something courageous on Christmas Eve to wanting permission to preach a warm and loving sermon that did not push too many buttons.  I remember us all walking away from the discussion keenly aware of the challenges we faced with Christmas Eve.

          In those days it so happened that a decree was issued by President Donald Trump that a census be taken so that all the world might be enrolled in free trade.  This census was taken when Steve Bullock was governor of Montana and just after wildfires had devoured Paradise, Hurricane Florence slammed into the Carolinas, and an Indonesian tsunami claimed over 200 lives.  Everyone had to travel to their family home so that they could be counted and controlled.  So Joe went from California back to Colstrip where his father had once worked in the mines, because their family was upside down on their mortgage in California and finally had to declare bankruptcy.  He was engaged to marry Mary, and she was already pregnant. 

          While they were passing through Billings, she gave birth to her son at the back of the gas station near The Hub, because neither one of them had health insurance.  She laid him in a coat in the back of the car. 

          Now working at the Grand Avenue Shopping Center were three teenagers and a senior who were told by someone buying toothpaste at The Dollar Tree that they could hear a baby crying in a gas station parking lot.  They became terrified.  But the person buying toothpaste said to them, “Don’t be afraid:  today, in downtown Billings, a Savior is born to you—he is the Anointed, the Lord.  And this will be a sign for you:  you will find a baby lying in a coat in the back seat of a car.”

          So why is it that we fear making Scripture real for our lives?  I think I understand why my colleagues were so fearful, but were they right?  Is the pretty picture of Christmas so important that to spell it out in real life will leave you disappointed on Christmas Eve?

          I hope not.  My hope is that some of you came here tonight wanting to hear ancient stories which contain some radical truths which will not let you go—truths about how God works through a people who live in Roman Exile, a pregnant peasant woman from Nazareth who exists outside the system, shepherds (one of the most despised professions in the ancient world) who are sore afraid of God’s messengers and worry that they are in their spot because God is against them.

          My hope is you came here tonight believing against all belief that if God chooses to work in these places, God just might have working in the places in our lives where we experience shame, and being outcast, and beat down, and afraid.  This passionate, compassionate God is working things out for people who want to make pilgrimage and discover children found lying on coats in the back seat of a car in downtown Billings.  Bring the hot chocolate and the fuzzy sweater.

          Pip Wilson, long time worker with the inner-city poor at the YMCA in Romford, England, wrote an appropriate Christmas Prayer for this evening.   It goes like this:

Let us ask God for a good Christmas:

that no powerful nation

should tax the poor

or uproot them;

that no unmarried mother

should be put away in disgrace;

that no door will be shut

on those that need to find it open;

that shepherds and sheep and all of nature

need not be afraid;

that walls, barbed wire and angry soldiers

may not be found in Bethlehem;

that we will stop building walls

to keep people in and keep people out

that wise men and wise women 

might appear in Wales, in Scotland, in Ireland, in England,

in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Syria and in our street;

that children can be safe in schools around the world

that guns and weapons of war may not be seen as toys

that children may be preserved

from those who would abuse them;

that this Christmas,

you may become a manger

and your home a stable

and the rumour become a reality

that The Divine has come among us.

And this we pray in Jesus’ name

AMEN[1]

You may be surprised to know that he wrote that in 2012, six years ago.  But some stories, really good stories, repeat.  I do not believe the Christmas story was meant to be held just in Bethlehem.  The story is told and retold because it continues to be played out in every age, in every place, and in the sacred stories which are the lives of all of you gathered here in this congregation this evening.

I also hope there are regular members of this congregation who see in the Christmas story the call God continues to place before us as a people.  The apostle Paul calls us the Body of Christ.  As such, we are to be the ones who share our bread, bring healing with our presence, and speak words of courage and joy into the silent night. 

          We must remember a Christ who is born in a stable, not broadcast by media conglomerates, but takes as evangelists shepherds abiding in fields, and is worshipped not by the kings and rulers of his own country but by people who risk it all by making a pilgrimage.   And these evangelists trust that God can be found in the most unlikely places.

          That is the challenge today, in the most historic places and the most a-historic places, where time stops and begins again.  If we are to see the night sky breaking into a glorious dawn, we must make our way once again to places where prophets speak words of hope in exile, priests and pastors lead our feet into the way of peace, and peasant women sing of God’s liberating love.  It is finally a time to remember our story and say that small-minded morality plays that decide who is right and who is wrong, who is in and who is out, who is a better nation and people and who is worse all fall away when blessed with a story of an unwed pregnant refugee mother, shepherds abiding in fields, and a people suffering in the oppression and occupation of the Roman Exile is our story on this blessed evening.  The length and breadth and width of God’s love is too large.

          This is the oldest community of faith in the State of Montana, where therefore, this story has been told more than any other place in the State.   May this sanctuary become a manger, and Billings First Congregational Church become a stable, and the rumor become a reality, that Christ is born among us, and God once again believes in us enough to express solidarity with our work in the world.  Amen.

---

[1] http://www.pipwilson.com/2012/12/christmas-prayer-2012-and-for-all-time.html

C Christmas Eve BFC 2015

December 24, 2015

In each age, it would appear, God appears as Divine Judge who, not unlike Santa Claus, is keeping a list and checking it twice.  Though I had wonderfully loving parents who never time taught me to fear God, a wonderfully loving pastor who taught and modeled love and compassion, what came through to me about God was a cultural message that had me riddled with anxiety, fearful of what God might do to me if I messed up my adolescent life.  And boy did I mess up my adolescent life at times.   Somehow I got the message that God was necessarily obsessed with my shortcomings, my failures, and my inadequacies.  So down the line, so I thought, as I got older and more mature in my faith (somebody should share with me when that maturity might happen) I could shore all those failings up, and I would be presentable to the Almighty and my faith would blossom.  But until that time, I best keep a safe distance. 

I prayed for angel visitations . . . but not so scary ones. 

My job in Junior High was to make sure all the offering envelopes, pencils, and hymnals were straightened and in full supply in every pew at Christian Union Church.  And I dreaded the idea that God might come to me while I was all alone in the darkened sanctuary.  I would hum a little.  I kept a watchful eye on the eternal flame candle located just above the altar and dedicated to the life of Mr. Malone.  I liked Mr. Malone.  They dedicated the football field to him in my hometown, and he would take me to Illini games, so I always hoped Mr. Malone might put in a good word for me, something like, “He’s basically a good kid.  Just a little clumsy with about everything.”  But I was afraid that some angel might show up and ask something of me, something I thought impossible like, “Hail, Mike, O troubled teenager.  I am here to tell you that God wants a relationship with you once you clean yourself of every sexual impure thought, once you become the student your mother wants you to be, once you become the athlete your father wants you to be, once you lose every depressed thought that addles your brain, and once you balance all of those out!”  Certainly then, once I got my act together like that, the angel would appear.   

Because I still had that superstitious faith which thought that, until I believed myself good enough, God did not have my best interests at heart.  I really did not get the message, laced throughout the Christmas story, that angels were indeed appearing to people who, themselves, would not be good enough by the world’s standards.  Maybe it was not so much whether I thought myself good.  Maybe it was because I wasn’t so sure about the goodness of God.

In the New Testament, angels appear infrequently, announcing the birth of Christ and sharing the good news of his resurrection.  We have so “Christianized” the arrival of angels as these gentle and resplendent creatures that we sometimes forget their arrival is greeted with terror and fear.  People wonder, “What does God want of us?  Is it a good thing that God has come to us?”  For there is a sense that angels are protectors and conveyors of God’s holiness, transcendence, and mystical otherness.[1]  The appearance of angels conveys that something is going on two somethings deeper than what we might see or hear, know or understand. 

One could look at how angels are understood in Jewish story and mythology and see them as constant messengers, portents of evil.  Angels forewarn God’s wrath, announce disaster, alert the faithful of oncoming persecution.  The popularity of angels with the faithful rises and falls, usually increasing in times of war, persecution, and natural disaster.[2]  In this context, we might better understand why angels are greeted with terror and fear in both the birth and resurrection stories.  Have these angels come, frightened shepherds must wonder, to tell us of approaching doom?  Does God intend good for us?

In the progressive Christian tradition we might understand angels as manifestations of God forever seeking to connect with humankind and God while yet seeking to remain apart, transcendent, and other.   Or we might know of people who have truly had experiences of angel visitation and so it all makes sense to us.  But it would seem the love of angels and the portrayal of them in our day and age has made them readily accessible and visions of tender beauty.  God is good but in a picture postcard, milquetoast kind of way.  In this picture postcard are pastoral scenes of freshly fallen snow with the cherubic faces of angels reaching down into the world to spread peace, goodwill, and perfectly tuned harmonies.

This picture, this image of heavenly beings seems to be in contrast with Scripture.  Angels are not so easily domesticated.  The literal meaning of the angel Gabriel’s name in Hebrew is, “God is my warrior.”[3]  In Hebrew Scripture and in the Gospel of Luke, Gabriel is the angel who shows up to interpret the difficult times ahead and God’s role in those difficult times, those times of great evil.[4]  And it says that when the angels appeared to the shepherds, the angels showed up as “a whole troop of the heavenly army praising God.”[5] So . . . before we invoke the presence of angels, we would do well to make sure that we want that kind of power showing up in our manger scenes, garages, or in the back alley of downtown Billings.

I believe what those Scriptures are meant to convey is that in the face of incredible earthly power stacked against those who might seek transformation, God brings the requisite strength and power behind the scenes to complete the transformation.  “Do not fear!” Yes, we might say, the angels want to make it clear that they are not seeking to bring harm to pregnant peasant women or lowly shepherds, but the story is also trying to say that God brings the requisite power and fortification to complete the transformation of the earth.   It is a hard time, a difficult time, perhaps even an evil time, filled with suffering and violence, but God will not leave the earth alone.  The music sounds more like a bruised and battered Hank Williams tune, a bittersweet melody that conveys both pain and resilience, not naïve or unaware of what is going on in the world. 

The other time angels appear in the Bible is when the earthly messenger of God is on their last leg, exhausted from the struggle, and the angels show up to minister to them.  Once again, the story says, do not believe that God sits back on a throne as the faithful slog it out in their struggles.  Rather, God is actively connecting heaven with earth.  God comes.

When that whole troop of army angels shows up to affirm the message of the child born in Bethlehem, they sing, “Glory to God; in the highest heaven; and on earth peace; among those of God’s favor.”  This is parallel poetic discourse indicating that glory to God is found when human peace is found on earth.  One does not happen without the other.  Not either but both or neither.[6]  Human peace and God’s glory are two sides of the same coin.

This is the good news we celebrate on this and every Christmas Eve.  These broad, sweeping stories show us where God’s face turns and where the heart of God is invested.  God’s is not wringing hands over the minutiae of our shortcomings, failures, and inadequacies.  This story is told in every age so that we might know Gabriel still comes to lowly peasants and refugee women interpreting the times and speaking of a day when every mountain shall be made low and every valley shall be lifted up and every crooked path be made straight.  This story is told in every age so that we might know the power of God’s army still comes and is amassed on behalf of poor, pregnant refugee women, those who have no land and forced to migrate, those without capital and tending to someone else’s sheep.  This story is told in every age so that we might not confuse Rome’s violent, dominating, imperial peace with God’s peace that comes fully and transcendently into the world.  The story is told in every age so that, finally, humankind might show God’s favor by joining hands with God to build the peace which will bring God glory.

Tonight we will sit in the darkness, the deep womb of it, knowing that it is night in many places in the world.   As with the gospel story, we do not romance that violence, suffering, and pain.  We do not minimize it.  But it can be a hopeless world without stories that let us know that God comes.  God comes and seeks to make heaven on earth.  And so we light these candles as a form of resistance.  The night remains.  But the light, the light shall not be overcome. 

The great African-American poet, Howard Thurman wrote:

I will light Candles this Christmas,

Candles of joy despite all the sadness,

Candles of hope where despair keeps watch,

Candles of courage for fears ever present,

Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days,

Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens,

Candles of love to inspire all my living,

Candles that will burn all year long.[7]

Gabriel still comes.  An army of angels still come.  In gritty, long-suffering, bruised goodness, God still comes.  And the first thing they say is, “Do not be afraid.”  And God’s hand is extended.  And so we leave our shortcomings, failures, and inadequacies to join hands with God to build peace with our Jewish sisters and brothers, with our Muslim sisters and brothers and thereby give God glory.  And the Christmas story once told at a time of terror and violence is once again told at night, candles are lit, and the night does not overcome it. 

And what we should hear is that God’s goodness is such that the small light we hold is enough.  You are enough. What God wants, what God most strongly desires, are people willing to look into each other’s eyes and say, “Don’t be afraid”, and begin the journey of God’s peace in a violent and war-torn world.   We affirm that night is here.  But we also affirm that in every age, Gabriel comes. A whole host of angels come.  God comes.  And as certainly as the night is long, the transformation of the earth is taking place, and dawn . . . dawn comes.  Amen.

---

[1] Isaiah 6?  Are these winged creatures an allusion to angels?

[2] “Monster,” Millenium, October 17, 1997.  Transcript found here:  http://millennium-thisiswhoweare.net/cmeacg/episode_transcript.php?mlm_code=204.

[3] Richard A. Horsley, The Liberation of Christmas:  The Infancy Narratives in Social Context (New York:  Crossroad, 1989), p. 24.

[4] See the book of Daniel, Chapters 8 and 9.

[5]Luke 2:13;  Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, The Five Gospels:  What Did Jesus Really Say?  The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (San Francisco:  HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), p. 274.

[6] John Dominic Crossan, “The Challenge of Christmas,” HuffPost Religion, December 12, 2011.

[7] Howard Thurman, “Candles for Christmas,” Meditations of the Heart (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1953), pp. 152-153.

Sermon, Second Sunday of Christmas, January 4, 2015

B Christmas 2 BFC 2014

Sirach24:1-12

January 4, 2015

        In his book, Don’t Think of an Elephant, University of California at Berkley linguistic professor, George Lakoff, describes what happens when he begins his 101 class with an exercise for his students.  He challenges his students to not think of an elephant.  Whatever you do, do not think of an elephant!

Lakoff knows, of course, with that frame, that students will immediately go to visual images of floppy ears and a large trunk, perhaps even a visual picture of Disney’s Dumbo.  Lakoff created a frame—an elephant.  The frame acts like a language box for the students’ thoughts and imaginations.  As Lakoff defines it, “Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world.”[1]  For example, once I say the phrase “tax relief”, taxes themselves become a negative and onerous responsibility not a way to support public schools, pay our public servants, or support infrastructure.  Using the word “relief” with taxes, reminds us that we need some respite from taxes.

Once a frame is created, Lakoff asserts, we basically create the parameters for thought, discourse, and imagination.  “Reframing is changing the way the public sees the world. It is changing what counts as common sense. Because language activates frames, new language is required for new frames. Thinking differently requires speaking differently.”[2]  

Framing is about using language that not only evokes your worldview and makes clear your values.  Framing and reframing leave us entrenched in an old way of thinking and being or help our heart follow our head into a new reality.

          So it is in our faith as well.  Once we create a frame for faith in prayer and devotion, we set about thinking of God and faith and life within that frame.  I might tell you to draw a visual picture of God.  Imagine God and, in so doing, imagine the gifts God wants to give to you.   And many of you, though you would resist and know it not to be true, would picture a grandfatherly-like figure in a white robe, and a long white beard.  These days, based on the frames we have been given, God might look more like Dumbledore or Gandalf.  Those images then dictate how we see ourselves, each other, and our world.  Though we might not agree with that worldview, because we employ a well-worn frame, this visual picture of God works on us. 

Gordon Hempton, who refers to himself as an audio ecologist, shares that he likes to challenge assumptions.  One of the major assumptions out there is that scientists, who have studied human hearing, have believed for a long time that our ears evolved to hear the human voice.  Intuitively, it sounds right.  Sounds natural.  Would not human ears be attuned to hear the timbre and meter of the human voice?  But if that were true, Hempton argues, we would be the only species on the planet that evolved so separate and apart from the rest of nature.  

          So Hempton investigated.  Is our ear specifically atuned to other human voices?  What he found is that human nature has a bandwidth of super-sensitive hearing.  Most of human speech falls well below that level.  There is a sound that is a perfect match for the bandwidth of super-sensitive human hearing.  What can we hear for miles and miles, ever so faintly?  Does anybody know?  Birdsong.  Birdsong is the perfect match.  “Birdsong,” Hempton said, “is the primary indicator of habitats prosperous to humans.”[3]  It is once again those kinds of truths that remind us that our God loves diversity.  And to ignore God’s love and passion for diversity is to miss out on the beauty and joy that God intends for us. 

          What Hempton found in his life’s work is that humankind was created and evolved to go outside its own melodies and rhythms to find a life that thrives and prospers.  What if God looks more like nature than like us?  What if beauty and joy and thriving are gifted to us outside frames we might have created?  Just waiting to be found?

          Wow, where did we miss out on all of that?  How did faith become so much about rules and regs and hanging on to this stoicism for dear life such that we wring all the beauty and joy out of faith?  Whether we be conservative, middle of the road, or progressive, this time of year sometimes seems to be all about starting anew with resolutions that will make us more dour or stodgy or blechy vanilla than we were the previous year.  Blecchy vanilla, it is making its way into the English lexicon.  You just wait. 

We look with uncertainty
beyond the old choices for
clear-cut answers
to a softer, more permeable aliveness
which is every moment
at the brink of death;
for something new is being born in us
if we but let it.
We stand at a new doorway,
awaiting that which comes…
daring to be human creatures,
vulnerable to the beauty of existence.
Learning to love.[4]

          In that poem by Anne Hillman, hear the joy of not knowing, the risk of transformation, the call to love wildly, and the adventure of learning something new as a Christian pilgrim beginning a new year.  Rather than resolutions, these are the points of discernment to which God is calling us for a new year.  Spiritual teacher, Parker Palmer, reflects Hillman’s poem with these questions for 2015.  Ask yourself:

• How can I let go of my need for fixed answers in favor of aliveness?
• What is my next challenge in daring to be human?
• How can I open myself to the beauty of nature and human nature?
• Who or what do I need to learn to love next? And next? And next?
• What is the new creation that wants to be born in and through me?[5]

         

But here’s the thing.  We come here together in worship today because we say that God is involved.  And too often we think we can experience the joy of not knowing, the risk of transformation, the call to love wildly, and the adventure of learning something new without having our understanding and knowledge of God, the frame in which we have long placed God, reframed or radically changed.  How can we be more fully alive and spiritually growing and keep the understandings of God we have had since we were a small child?

 I remember being on a mission trip and looking in the night sky to see a moon so full and bright, like a moon I had never seen before.  In that moment, I knew that I needed a new image or frame for God that was different than one I had ever had before.  I became certain that God held me and was tracking me and I became aware of gifts that God was holding out to me that I could not possibly have known before.  And I am sure, just sure, that God smiled, She smiled, well aware that I had grown.  From that point forward, I could never go back to the smaller god I had known before.

  As Janet Schaffran and Pat Kozak state in their book, More Than Words, “An image of God held at the age of five that remains largely unchanged at the age of forty reveals very little about a God of infinite love and response.  It does, however, reveal something tragic about that individual’s lack of growth and inability to experience and reflect upon God’s action in his or her own life.”[6]

          Some time ago, Tracy shared with me a matrix she learned in seminary.  That matrix created an X and Y axis with the Trinitarian names for God (traditionally, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”) above the horizontal line and the corresponding names we call the world around us and we call ourselves in relation to God below the horizontal line.  Changes above the horizontal line required corresponding changes below the horizontal line.  For example, if God is Father then we are God’s children.  If God is loving Creator above the line then below the line might be the “wonderful world” sung about before the Christmas Eve service.  What we call and name God reflects upon what we call and name ourselves and our world.   In the same way, what we call and name ourselves and our world, corresponds with what we then call and name God.  If we are the diverse strands of community woven together, then God is the Holy Spirit who calls us together, the Divine Weaver, the One who in weft and warp makes of us one garment.

          In the work I have done as a spiritual director and teacher, one of the first things I ask people to do is to pick two images or metaphors of God.  The first image I ask people to select is a name for God they have used historically, the image or metaphor of God they learned in childhood, most probably an image of comfort and security.  The second image or metaphor I ask them to select is one of aspiration, an image or metaphor for God to which they feel God is leading them or calling them.  Not surprisingly, almost universally, the image of comfort and security people choose has been some version of “Father.”  The images of aspiration, the image or frame to which God is leading or calling us, on the other hand, in my experience, end up being very diverse. 

          So think on these things.  In this new year, to what image or metaphor of God are you being led or called?  For it may be that in knowing God differently and in diversity, we begin to discern the answer to Parker Palmer’s questions.  What image or metaphor of God would move you out of your comfortable life to one that is alive and what is that life?  (God as Walking Partner, Befriender of the Friendless, or God of Struggle) Out of that image or metaphor, how are you being challenged by God to be more fully human?  (Maybe a God who is Mystery, Daring One, or Breath of the Cosmos) What new beauty in humanity or the created world does the image or metaphor of God open you up to?  (Giver of Gifts, Keeper of Promises, or Flower of My Heart) With this new image or metaphor of God, what new people or place are you now called to love next?  (Immigrant God, Resilient and Homeless Youth) And then next?  (God of My Enemies, Sister to My Soul) And with this new image or metaphor of God, what is now being born in you?  How will you be transformed by it over the course of the year?  (Perhaps God acting as Midwife, Birth Mother, Risk Taker.)

          As Schaffran and Kozak relate, (quote) “[T]he development of positive, life-giving images is vital for adult faith.  This use of the imagination involves openness to being influenced by something or someone outside of ourselves in order to learn life’s meaning, depth, and possibilities.  We will be creating new images of God.  In the process, we are changed.  We grow.  We respond to a God who is revealed in a marvelous variety of ways.  Through these new images of God we find ourselves challenged to live, to love, and to act justly.”[7] (end quote)

          These names, frames, images, and metaphors for God orient us in the universe.  And, too often, what we do not realize, is that when we learn new details of the mystery and breadth of God, gifts we did not know were possible begin to emerge.  The world becomes bigger and brighter.  God’s love expands in ways we could not have thought possible.  We do not think of God as just an elephant.  We become aware that not only a human voice, but a bird’s song may be calling us to a place where we experience prosperous health and life we could not have otherwise imagined possible. 

          Today we read a Scripture passage that is one of the passages the author of the Gospel of John probably referenced to write the 1^st Chapter of John.  In the beginning was the Word or Wisdom, and Wisdom, the Divine Architect, the One who seems to be both creature and divine at the beginning of all creation, is definitively female. 

More than any other issue that gets me in trouble in churches is when I use a metaphor or image for God that is profoundly female. 

In my last church, I preached what I thought to be a liturgically beautiful sermon.  God was a Grandmother who left a light on in every section of the house, hoping we would come home.  When we did not, God, as Grandmother, put on her best winter coat and tightened her scarf to go out into the wind and snow to find us.  Someone in the church was so alarmed at this female image, that he campaigned for equal time when a more conservative voice might offer neglected male images to offset one Sunday when I used a female reference.  Every Sunday praying  “Our Father.” Many Sundays hearing about Mike’s failed attempts at baseball excellence.  And he was alarmed by one Sunday when I referenced God as Grandmother.  Are we really that afraid of our own growth that we think God needs to be defended by circling the wagons and battening down the hatches of our souls?

          It would seem that one of the reasons we or others who have left the church might experience faith as “blecchy vanilla” much too often is that we consistently make choices for our own lives and our lives together that rhyme with comfort rather than risk.  Perhaps we are entangled in frames that are about what we learned and recited as creed with no thought given to growth, that do not open us to the many gifts and joys and energy God intends for us. 

          In the Scripture read, not unlike an ode to Celtic spirituality, we learn that Wisdom came forth from the mouth of the Most High and covered the earth like a mist.  She was co-creating the earth and all of its foundations with God at the beginning of time.  What would it mean if we saw the activity of God not intervening in some miraculous events once in a grand while, but like a mist that pervaded all of creation, reflecting and refracting the goodness of God throughout—that the flower petal was a result of the tender finger of God outstretched to us in beauty, that the buffalo might be a sign and symbol God intended for our sustenance and well-being, that you, in all your diverse physical flaws might be known to God as beautiful and treasured . . . as you are? 

I had a colleague in seminary who would say with frequency, “If we knew God as a poor, pregnant refugee woman, we would indeed know why God loves so much.”  What might happen in our lives if we learned that God suffered and struggled in love such that the image or frame we called forward was tender and kind in mercy because God knew what it was to need tenderness and kindness and mercy so desperately?

          What is that image of aspiration, that metaphor, that name for God to which you are being called or led?  Maybe it is not something you know for certain but something that allows you to unravel with life’s questions.  Perhaps it is like the great poet, Rainer Marie Rilke wrote in 1903, counseling a young friend:

I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear Sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not seek now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.[8] 

God is not an elephant and cannot solely be defined by the frame of Father.  We would do best, to live into the joy and the adventure and risk of a new year by listening for the almost imperceptible sound of a birdsong that might lead us to a new place where we might grow and prosper and live into life’s answers.  God has far more intended for us than we could imagine.  Ah, but we have to imagine outside the childhood frames and boxes that a living faith outgrows so that we might receive the new and extravagant gifts God intends for us.  Amen. 

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[1] George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant:  Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (White River Junction, Vermont:  Chelsea Publishing, 2004), p. xv.

[2] Ibid.

[3] “Interview with Gordon Hempton,” On Being with Krista Tippett, December 25, 2014.  http://onbeing.org/program/gordon-hempton-the-last-quiet-places-silence-and-the-presence-of-everything/transcript/7149#main_content. 

[4]Anne Hillman, “Life Prayer,” A Pilgrim’s Journey to the Great Better http://heartsteps.org/2014/life-prayer-2/.

[5] Parker Palmer, “Five Questions for Crossing the Threshhold,” On Being with Krista Tippett, December 31, 2014, http://onbeing.org/blog/five-questions-for-crossing-the-threshold/7167.

[6] Janet Schaffran and Pat Kozak, More Than Words:  Prayer and Ritual for Inclusive Communities  (Oak Park, IL:  Meyer Stone Books, 1986), p. 12.

[7] Ibid, p. 13.

[8] Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, Worpswede, near Belgium, July 16, 1903.  http://www.carrothers.com/rilke4.htm