Where Will You Spend the New Year

Luke 2:41-52
Now his parents went up to Jerusalem every year for the feast of the Passover. When he was twelve, they went up as was customary for the festival. When the time was complete, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Believing him to be in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey and then began to look for him among relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple seated in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and questioning them. All those who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.

Upon seeing him, they were astonished and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you done this to us? Look, your father and I have suffered great pain in searching for you.”

He said to them, “Why did you search for me? Didn’t you know that it was necessary for me to be in my father’s house?”

They did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and went to Nazareth and was subject to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and human beings.

When I was younger…so much younger (I’ve just had my birthday, can you tell?), I used to spend New Year’s Eve hidden away in my parent’s bedroom. For many years my folks would host a party on New Year’s Eve and it was an adult party. No kids allowed. So every year my sisters and I would be banished to the upstairs bedroom that had a television so that we could watch whatever movie and New Year’s celebration was on.

My mom tried to make it a special event. She let us have soda and whatever chips and dip they were serving downstairs. We were even allowed to come down at midnight when the ball dropped in Times Square. But we were no fools. We knew we were being shut out. However much fun we had upstairs, we just knew that the really important stuff was going on downstairs.

So it’s a traditional New Year’s Eve question for me: Where will I get to spend the New Year? Down where the important stuff is going on? Or far from the action, trying to pretend that nothing is really going on down there? That’s the question I want to ask with you today as we see this old year out and welcome in a new one. But I’m not really concerned at the moment with where you will be when the clock strikes 12 tonight. What I really want to wonder about is how and where we will spend the 525, 600 minutes that follow it.

When I was the director at the Wesley Foundation at UVA, for a long time we had a room with no furniture. It used to be the junk room with lots of stuff collected from years of use by college students. But then, shortly before I arrived, a group of students got together and cleared it out and put down blue carpet and painted the walls a light blue. For furnishings they threw in six blue pillows and a scented purple candle. They called it “The Blue Room.”

In the spring of 2000 we made that room the home for a small group we called Life 101. I had wanted to lead a small group that explored spiritual disciplines like prayer, fasting, journaling, communion, and acts of mercy. That was the framework for this group, but it became a whole lot more than that. Maybe you’ve discovered this if you’ve ever taken Disciple Bible Study or any sort of intensive small group study. Often the things you set out to study have a way of leading you into deeper questions.

That’s what happened in Life 101. At the end of each session I would introduce another spiritual discipline and then give everyone an assignment for the coming week. When we got back together our whole session would involve going around the circle to have everyone report back on how the week had been. Students would talk about their struggles with prayer or their joys in writing letters to significant people in their lives, but they would also talk about what it was like living on the UVA campus. They would talk about roommates who thought their participation in a religious group was pretty strange. They would talk about a friend who staggered in drunk for the umpteenth time that they were afraid had an alcohol problem. They would talk about relationships, schoolwork, and depression. They would talk about their families. It was a powerful group to be in.

But not all of them would have called themselves Christian. Most of them, yes. But I remember one student that I’ll call Sean. Sean grew up Christian and would claim that as his background, but he wasn’t sure what to call himself religiously. He had had a difficult life. Sean never talked a whole lot in Life 101. But he was always there. He was searching, and questioning, and though he didn’t claim any answers, he said that he kept coming because the questions we were exploring were the ones he needed to ask. Sean found a home in that small group and he made it a home for the other people in it who saw his searching as something holy.

I had a unique privilege as a campus minister. Before I went to Charlottesville I had served two churches that were continually asking, “Where are all the young people?” It’s a question churches everywhere are asking. Where are all the young people? A generation of church leaders is looking around and saying, “Where are the people who will take my place? Who’s going to be on the Trustees, the Church Council, the Pastor-Parish Relations Committee? Who’s going to pay the bills? Who’s going to come in and clean off the sidewalks on snowy winter mornings? Who’s going to mind the flower beds in the summer? We’re asking some of those questions here. Where are all those young people?”

That’s why I considered campus ministry a unique privilege, because I knew where they were and I get to work with them every day. Every day I got to work with students who are bright, energetic, talented, and caring. Every day I got to talk with them and see what they were interested in, read the Bible with them and hear what they saw in it, worship with them, and eat with them. And every day I saw students like Sean who sense that there is something about the Church that feels like home. Something important about the work it does. Something important about the hospitality it offers. Something important about the kind of questions it asks.

I’ve come to believe that it is NOT true that this generation of young adults has given up on the Church. It is NOT true that this generation doesn’t care about God and faith and morality. It is NOT true that this generation cares only about what they can buy or what they can own or what job they can occupy. This generation and many others in our society look at the Church, look at the United Methodist Church, look at Franktown Church and see something intriguing, something interesting, something inviting. They see this church and they say, “You know, some good things are happening over there. There’s a group of people who are involved in mission work, who support the arts, who believe in the power of prayer, who are active in leadership positions in the community, who care about children, who care about being decent, honest citizens—those folks over at Franktown are some really great folks. But these young people, these bright, active, energetic young adults are not yet ready to commit to this church. They’re not sure whether to put their trust or energy or time or resources into the church. They’re not sure why they should be a part of, much less a member of, this church because they’re wondering about one thing. And if we address this one thing they will perk up and listen, because they’re watching. They really are. The one thing they want to know is…What’s the big idea?

What’s the big idea, Franktown? I see that you’re doing some good and worthy things, but why? Why are you involved in the community? Why are you doing service work? Why do you work with children? Don’t schools do those things, too? Don’t Ruritans and Lions clubs do those things, too? What makes you different? What makes you unique? Why do you come to this place on Sunday mornings? Why do you sing these songs which sound so different from the songs I hear on the radio every day? Why do you pray? Why do you collect money to send all over the world? Why do you put up with a sermon? Why do you do these strange and wonderful things, people of Franktown Church? What’s the big idea?

You might be asking me the same question at this point. What is Alex up to? It’s Christmas. We should be talking about babies and shepherds and wise men still. Why now? Why today? What’s the big idea, Alex?

Well, Jesus is actually the big idea. The gospel lesson for today takes us right back to the only story we have from Jesus’ childhood. From his birth until his baptism as an adult the only episode from his life is this strange little tale that only Luke tells of his adventure in Jerusalem as a boy of twelve.

Luke tells us that Mary and Joseph made it a habit to travel from their home in Nazareth down to Jerusalem each year for the festival of the Passover. But they didn’t just hop into the family mini-van and toodle off on their own. Like many faithful Jews of the time they went in large groups of pilgrims, walking the long and difficult journey.

On trips like this it would be natural for children to travel with other children, with other members of the extended family. So it’s not a sign of parental neglect that Mary and Joseph went a whole day before they noticed that they hadn’t seen little Jesus running around since they left Jerusalem to go back home. They checked with their relatives, their friends – no sign of him. Then in horror they realize that they must have left him in Jerusalem.

So they hurry back to the city and after three days they finally find him, sitting in the Temple among the religious leaders, taking in every word, listening breathlessly, asking questions, and amazing them with his understanding.

His parents must have known that he was a unique child. With the angels and the shepherds and the other witnesses to his birth, how could they not have known? But Mary chastises him anyway, “Jesus, don’t you know we’ve been worried sick about you? We’ve been looking everywhere!”

Jesus responds, “Why did you have to look? Didn’t you know I would have to be in my father’s house?” It’s hard to look at your twelve-year-old son and understand that he has a life and a purpose and a destiny outside your family, even when you’ve been told that by Gabriel himself.

So they don’t understand. But we understand. Jesus had found his center and his purpose among the teachers in Jerusalem. He knew that the questions they were exploring were the most important questions of life. He was finding the meaning of his human existence in the interchange in the Temple. This was his home and his destiny. These questions were it.

Which is why I’m harping on the big idea. You see, in this story of the child Jesus we see an image of our own children and young people. Not that they have the same destiny and purpose as Jesus. No. Jesus was God and his story is unique. But like Jesus, who stayed put when he found the most essential stuff in the universe, when he found the big questions of life, our children and young people can be engaged by and often refuse to let go of the big questions that are the most important ones. They want to know. They REALLY want to know…what’s the big idea? Why bother with fluff when you want the real stuff? Why go through the motions of worship, fellowship dinners, and youth group if it’s not REALLY important? Why give your life to an institution that looks so much different from the things they’re being encouraged to want by advertisements, pop culture and political Pied Pipers? What is the big idea that drives this place, that drives our lives, that drives the universe? What is the big idea that makes what happens in here vital and alive and of ultimate importance? The thing that young people want to know from their elders is not how to adjust the thermostat for the Sunday School classrooms but why are we even in them in the first place! The thing they want to know is not where to find the acolyte’s matches but why we want to light the candles! The thing young people want to know from those of us who have professed our faith, joined the church, committed ourselves to Christ, pledged our loyalty with our prayers, our presence, our gifts and our service is: Why are you here?

Maybe we don’t know the answer to that question in words we’d be proud to share. But maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe we think it’s up to professional preachers to do that kind of explaining. But maybe that’s not how Christ intended the division of labor to be in the Church. Maybe we wonder ourselves why we are here. And maybe THAT’S what our young people need to here.

I learned from my years in campus ministry that young people DO care what their elders have to say. But I also learned that what they want to hear is often from a deeper level than I am usually comfortable to share. They took me back to questions I had put on a shelf or that I assumed were long settled in my mind. But what I uncovered in myself was the realization that most of those questions aren’t settled and none of them are irrelevant. I realize that the deepest, most basic questions of my life keep getting asked in new and different ways time after time after time. What is my purpose? What can I affirm about life? What is the end and goal of life? How can this world be transformed? Why does God make a difference? Who is this Jesus that I talk about? Who am I and where am I going and what shall I be when I get there?

Sean graduated right at the end of that spring semester almost seven years ago when we had that small group. He went on to work for an environmental group in Massachusetts and then went to restore houses in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. Then he traveled across Africa with his brother for six months. But about once a year he would stop by to see me. We would always go out to the local Mexican restaurant to catch up. He’s still searching for answers and he still thinks the Church is intriguing. And the role I play with him and with all the wonderful young people I worked with there and here is one of the most important roles I have ever played. I get to be an elder and a companion. I get to talk about why I’m a Christian and what I still wonder about. And I get to listen in wonder as a young life gets played out and worked out in God’s own time.

Now here’s where the New Year gets personal. There are also young people in your life. Maybe they’re children, maybe they’re grandchildren, maybe they’re people you work with, maybe they’re the children you’ll only meet if you put yourself in the places where they are. Maybe you are a young person and you can tell me if I’ve been right about this. But you’ve also got young people in your life and you can be an elder, too. It’s never too early to start. But what these young folks need to know from you is why you are the way you are, why you go to church, and what your big questions still are.

Like Jesus’ parents we are searching for our children. But maybe we’re searching in the wrong places. Maybe our young people are not to be found in filling out the slots on a nominations form. Maybe we’ll find them by going to the questions that got all of us here in the first place. They want to know what the big idea is. What are we going to say?

My dream is that we will spend this New Year together. All of us, young and old. My dream is that we will not settle for entertaining ourselves on the edges of what’s truly important. Don’t settle for eating cheese dip in front of the TV upstairs. Make sure that you’re downstairs where the action is, where the ball drops and where songs are sung and people kiss and dance and celebrate that God is still good and then ask themselves all over again what another year means. Let’s spend the New Year together in God’s presence.

Thanks be to God who came among us as a child, who told us that the kingdom of heaven is for those who will enter as a child, and who said that a little child shall lead them. Thanks be to God.

Obie's Magic Forest

"But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart."

Things started to go downhill for Obie Amato right after the family got home from the Christmas Eve service. Before he even had a chance to blow out his candle after the last hymn, his Mom was rushing them out the door. “We have to hurry and get home! I’ve got a ham in the oven.” All Obie had time to do was to wave to his friend, Greg, across the sanctuary and then run out the door.

At home it got worse. He and his sister, Meredith, both had presents to wrap and unfortunately they were presents for each other so they had to wrap in separate rooms, which meant that they couldn’t share the scissors or the tape and they had to keep running to the door of the room where the other person was yelling things like, “Aren’t you done with that tape yet?” and other things not quite so nice.

Obie’s dad, Obadiah, was in the living room pretending that there wasn’t going to be a Christmas the next day. He found a bowl game on the TV that he had never heard of – the US Air Bankruptcy Bowl. He didn’t know either of the two teams playing but even so he developed a rooting interest for North Dakota A&M and was soon cheering as passionately as if he were the school’s best alum.

It’s not an understatement to say that Obie’s dad is a bit of a fanatic about football. Whenever his team scored he would jump up and down and shout and clap. If there was a penalty for excessive celebration by a fan, Obadiah would get it. Now normally, that kind of tendency would just be endearing, but it was a problem this year because Obie’s mom, Missy Amato, had put the Christmas tree lights on a Clapper, one of those devices that cuts on and off by clapping your hands. Unfortunately it was on the same outlet with the TV so that every time Obadiah’s team would score, his celebration would knock off the Christmas tree lights and the TV. He would invariably miss the extra point and an argument would ensue with Missy and it was a very ugly scene.

Obie was nine years old and this was what Christmas always turned into: a beautiful service at church and then a scene of absolute bedlam back at the house. By the time everyone went to bed on Christmas Eve they were ready to sneak out to the fireplace and put coals in the stockings of everyone else in the family.

Obie reached the breaking point around 10:30. He was finishing up his last package when Meredith showed up at the door of the kitchen where he was working and said, “Get ready. He’s about to blow.”

“What do you mean?” Obie asked.

“North Dakota A&M is driving and they’re on the 2-yard-line. And Mom is fixing the light next to the star on the top of the tree.”

“Oh, no.” Just as he said it he heard his father clap his hands together and yell: “All right!! (pause) Missy! Haven’t we gotten the TV off the Clapper yet?!”

Then his mom said, “Obadiah Amato, I just about had that light positioned in the right place. Will you clap your hands and cut it back on?”

“I’m not clapping. Why don’t you?”

“Because I’ve got a string of lights in my hands and I’m standing on a rickety stool which you ought to be holding. You clap!”

“No, you!”

Obie wondered sometimes if his parents weren’t children themselves. He pulled on his sweatshirt and a baseball cap and walked outside. It was bound to be quieter out there.

It was. A light snow had begun to fall but there was still enough light from the bright three-quarter moon behind the clouds to let him see his way. Obie and his folks lived a ways out of town and most of their neighbors were farmers. Obie loved to play in the fields and create imaginary countries and forts. It was a wonderful refuge when things got rough at home, when no one understood him, when he was feeling out of sorts. In other words, at times like this. He headed off into the fields of Johnson Furloines farm.

His border collie, Juniper, soon caught up with him and the two of them were running through the snow-dusted fields. Obie knew just where he wanted to go. Up at the top of the next hill was a small forest and in that forest was a small cluster of rocks where he liked to sit and dream of what the world could be like. He needed that rock tonight. It wasn’t just that there was chaos in his house. The conflict was becoming constant and he worried about his family.

As he started up the hill he passed some holly bushes and a few straggly oak trees. The snow started to crunch under his feet as he stepped on frozen leaves. A few times he fell when he stepped through the frost to the mud beneath, but he didn’t care about muddy jeans. He was on an adventure.

Soon the crunching stopped as he entered a cluster of cedar trees. The snow hadn’t yet made it down to the ground from the branches above here. It was darker and quieter. He stopped and listened. The wind blew the tall trees so that they swayed and creaked softly, like some great ship out on the bay or a rocking cradle on an old wooden floor. He took a step and a large animal bolted out of the dark and away into the open field. It stopped briefly and looked back at him before leaping over the furrows. He had startled a deer.

He looked up ahead and saw his rock on the ridge of the hill. It was clearly visible in the dark and Obie though for a moment that it must have a spotlight on it because it seemed unnaturally bright. But he looked a little closer and realized that light came from overhead. The snow must have stopped because now there was moonlight streaming down through a small hole in the forest canopy.

The light made the small stand of trees seem magical. Everything looked different in the night and Obie was sure for a minute that he was in an enchanted forest. He expected elves and wood fairies to peek around the trunks of trees. But there was only the wind and the light and his rock, which also looked somehow different. As Obie walked closer he began to see in its shape and its shadows a familiar figure. It was the shape of Baby Jesus in the manger from the church program a few hours earlier. Obie was sure that’s what it was.

His mind began to perceive that something magical was going on. Somehow he had been transported back in time and he was seeing the manger from all those centuries ago. There was the Baby Jesus waiting for him at his favorite spot in the woods, the place where he most liked to be. So because it was dark and he was alone and because it was Christmas Eve and the forest was magic, Obie knelt down in front of the rock and said a prayer.

“Baby Jesus, I know you are a special child. I know you were loved by your parents and by the shepherds and the wise men that came to see you. I know you grew up and loved all the people you met and showed them how to live. I know you gave your life so that we could see how much you loved us. But sometimes, Baby Jesus, I have a hard time seeing that in my house. It’s hard being a kid. It’s hard when people don’t love each other. Could you show me that you’re still here? That you still care? That the world is still a magical place?”

Obie knelt there for a good few minutes, waiting. He stared at the rock in the bright white light of the moon. He felt the knees of his jeans getting soggy. He knew that his hands were raw and red and he was wishing he had some gloves. He was having a hard time feeling his toes.
Then he felt a warm blast of air on the back of his head. Someone was breathing on him. And he heard a gentle voice that was almost a whisper saying, “He’s still here and he still loves the whole world and you.”

Obie was frozen in place. He hadn’t heard anyone walking up behind him. Juniper, his dog, was standing over by the rock and hadn’t made any noise since they got there. But he could still feel the warm breath on the back of his neck. He decided to take a look. He turned around slowly and there in front of him was a cow. He was staring face to face with a cow. And behind her he could see a whole group of cows that had made their way across the field and into the forest.

Obie began to wonder if he had really heard the voice in his ear – the voice that said, “He’s still here and he still loves the whole world and you.” But then he remembered the legend that says that all the animals can talk at midnight on Christmas Eve so that they can tell the story what happened and what they saw in the manger in Bethlehem so long ago. He looked at the cow and said, “Did you…did you say that?”

The cow didn’t say anything but Obie thought for sure that the cow nodded her head “yes.” He looked over at the other cows and they were nodding as well.

There was no doubt. The forest was enchanted, and so was the world. Obie jumped up and said, “Thank you, Baby Jesus!” as loud as he could. He had to tell someone. Anyone. He ran back down the hill. Suddenly he didn’t care about the cold or the mud or the snow or anything. Behind him he could hear the cows mooing but after awhile he was almost certain he heard them singing a Christmas carol – “The Friendly Beasts” I think it was.

Obie was running so fast he outran Juniper back to the house. He threw open the door and ran inside. His dad and sister had gone to bed already. The only one up was his mom who was standing in front of the ceramic nativity set that they kept on the fireplace mantel. She looked up when she saw him come in and Obie thought it was strange because she didn’t get mad at him for going out without telling anybody and she didn’t get mad because he was only wearing an old sweatshirt and baseball cap and heavy, soggy jeans.

Then he noticed that she was holding the cow from the nativity scene and smiling. Obie said to his mom, “You heard it too, didn’t you?” She nodded her head and hugged. Then they both clapped their hands, the lights went off, and they went to bed to get ready for the coming day.

What’s the best thing Christmas can do? The best things Christmas can do is to remind us that Jesus is still here, that God has not abandoned us to the mess we make of our lives, and that love is still the most powerful force in the universe. The most powerful force in the universe and we see it revealed in a newborn baby. Thanks be to God.

Moving Mary to the Front of the Nativity Set

Luke 1:39-55
In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.
And Mary said,
"My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever." --NRSV

Sometimes I need a reminder to get my theology straightened out. I got one one day early on in my career as the campus minister at UVA. I was walking across the grounds there in Charlottesville with Joel, who was about five at the time. I got caught up in the beauty of the place and as we were walking towards Alderman Library I said, "Joel, do you know who created this university? It was Thomas Jefferson." He had already heard a lot about Thomas Jefferson in his young life, being the son of a UVa grad and of the Wesley Foundation director. He was quiet for a minute but then he said, "Yes, but God created everything else, right?" That was my reminder. Be careful what you teach!

I got another reminder once in a Mexican desert. It was early December and I was doing some scouting of mission projects for the Volunteers In Mission program in the state of Puebla, about 200 miles southeast of Mexico City. I was riding in the passenger seat of a Volkswagen Beetle with my knees up around my chin, choking on all the dust pouring in the windows. We were in the middle of nowhere, there was not a village to be seen, when we came upon a group of people marching up the road. There were about twenty people including men, women and children all in simple dress. They were carrying a placard with a picture of the Virgin of Guadeloupe, an image of the Virgin Mary which is the most revered in all of Mexico. The church member who was driving the VW Bug told me that they were pilgrims on their way to Mexico City to celebrate the feast day of the Virgin which is a national holiday in Mexico--Dec. 12. They were walking over 200 miles to be there, all because of this woman. I suddenly realized that the Virgin Mary, who is so often overlooked by Protestants as a "Catholic thing", was a figure that could make people walk through the deserts to see her. My theology was being adjusted again.

The Mary I grew up with in my Sunday School lessons in the Methodist Church was a very unsatisfying figure in a lot of ways. Unlike Moses, who argued with God, or Sarah, who laughed when God said she would have a child, Mary seemed incredibly passive to me. The angel Gabriel appears to her and informs her that she is about to become an unexpected expectant mother and after asking the obvious question of "How?" she merely says, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it happen as you say." Where is the struggle, Mary? Where is the "Wait a minute, Gabriel, you must have the wrong girl"? Aren't you going to say more to God to call into question this radical upsetting of the apple cart?

So for me and for most Protestants, Mary slipped quietly to the back of the manger scene, content to be shrouded in blue and shrouded in obscurity. We sympathized with her plight as a mother before her time in a culture where she would have been a scandal, but we really were more content to let her be an uncomplicated model of piety and a set piece in the Christmas pageant. Place her on the donkey under a brightly starlit sky, or in the manger where soft light falls on her face and the child she holds. Much more than that we can't bear and we don't have to, unless we read the Magnificat.

Which we just did, though you may not have recognized it by that name. In one of the most amazing pieces of poetry in the Bible, Mary moves from the back of the manger to the position of chief interpreter of the events of Christmas. Magnificat is the Latin word which begins this wonderful speech and it serves as a convenient title for a speech that is as joyful as it is revolutionary. When Mary speaks, no Sunday School lesson in the world can make her into a simple piety. She knows God didn't come into the world in Jesus just to give us characters to build TV Christmas specials around; she knew that God was coming to rattle our cages and shake the earth beneath our feet. She also knew that that was good news.

In the midst of the chaos of her pregnancy and the uncertainty of her situation, Mary finds the voice to say, "My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior." Like the Old Testament figure of Hannah before her, when Mary found that she was carrying a child of promise, it became a promise not only for her, but for her nation and for the poor. "God," she says, "is powerful and will remember the people of God. God will lift the lowly and level the lofty. God will feed the hungry and send the rich away empty-handed." This is scandalous stuff. Even today, maybe especially today, this is scandalous stuff. To say that God's coming is a threat to the established order in a world clinging to the stability that order ensures is scandalous stuff. To say that God's coming is a challenge to the rich in the richest nation on earth is pretty hard stuff to hear. Thank you, Mary, you may return to the back of the manger now.

But she won’t go there, because Mary has been visited by angels and she's got her finger on the pulse of the life God offers. What she is suddenly able to see is what prophets and John the Baptist and desert wanderers have always seen--that security is not always to be trusted and chaos is not always to be feared. Sometimes God can be found in the place where the world is turning upside down. Sometimes God is in the unexpected place waiting for us.

So here we are at the end of the pre-Christmas season. The shopping and the traffic and the stresses all stretch us and turn us and churn us until Christmas, if it comes, seems more like an achievement than a celebration. Yet even in the stress and strain something new is being born in us and it might even be called knowledge. It might even be called hope.

Beyond our immediate lives, though we don’t have much time to think about it because of the crush of the season, there is a world that is equally chaotic. We’re only vaguely aware that things are not going well and our leaders seem as lost as we are and the violent threats continue. A conference gathers in Tehran for people who deny that the Holocaust, the slaughter of millions of people by the Nazis, ever happened and the president of Iran says that Israel will be wiped out. It’s a threat. Bombings and kidnappings and torture continue in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere. We don’t want more chaos like that.

Then yesterday I read a news story about a poll in Great Britain. Britain is often called a post-Christian culture, along with much of Western Europe, because so few people attend church. But the new poll finds that Britons have not only left the churches, they now see them as a threat. A poll by the Guardian newspaper showed that 82% of people in the United Kingdom say they “see religion as a cause of division and tension between people.”[i] God is seen, not as the refuge in the face of violence and turmoil; God is the source of the problem. When we see the violent ways in which suicide bombers express their faith, that’s one thing. But there is a growing sense in this post-modern world that religion itself is threatening. “Why do these religious leaders stir people up with notions of eternal life and returning saviors? Why bother with such archaic notions that only rile people up?”

I bet you didn’t think of yourself as a revolutionary when you walked through the doors of the Church this morning. Not many of us see children dressed as bathrobe shepherds and young people singing Christmas carols at Heritage Hall and older people knitting prayer shawls and families lighting an Advent wreath and single people meeting for Bible Study as threats to the international order. When we take water from the fount and place it on an infant’s head to recognize her new life in Christ…when we take a loaf of bread and break it and bless a cup and share it we don’t think of these things as anything more than the somewhat unusual family traditions of the Christian people. But Mary knows that what God is doing is threatening. Those Britons who responded to the poll are right. What God is doing threatens a world that is addicted to war with the promise of peace. God threatens a world prone to poverty and injustice with a new order where those on the underside are moved to the top. God threatens a society where there are so many other labels for who we are – you are a consumer, a victim, a customer, a poor person, a rich person, a geek, a nerd, a drama queen – and challenges them all as inadequate to explain how God sees us. We are not any of those things because God knows us only as children of God.

A Mary who can help us to see the good news in the bad news is worth walking through the desert to see. A Mary who helps us see the world as God sees it is deserving of more than a veil of soft light and flowing blue robes. A Mary who leads the praises of a God who upsets the order and establishes change for the poor and the lowly is the Mary I see now that my theology has gotten adjusted.

And on the 12th of December, this year again, on a hillside on the northern edges of Mexico City, thousands of pilgrims ended their dusty journeys with a celebration of joy. They raised their placards and fell to their knees and glorified the God who saves--the God of Mary, the God of Jesus Christ, the God of you and me.

And henceforth, all generations shall call us blessed. Thanks be to God.

[i] Julian Glover & Alexandra Topping, “Religion does more harm than good – poll”, Guardian, 12/23/06.

Reasons to Be Ready

Malachi 3:1-4
"Look, I am sending my messenger who will clear the way before me. And suddenly Adonai will come to his temple, the one whom you seek; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, will surely come," says Yahweh, Lord of hosts.
But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and the lye of the launderer. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver. He will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to Yahweh as in the days of old and as in former years.

I have to tell you that I really struggled with the message this morning. I mean, did you hear the passage from Malachi that we read? Did you hear the words of John the Baptizer? They’re not exactly comforting images. Here we are only a little over two weeks from Christmas (don’t panic!) and we are in the midst of the Christmas preparation marathon and we would like to hear some words of hope and light and some soft music and be reminded of how comforting Christ’s coming is for a world that knows so much stress and sorrow.

But that’s not what we get today. Malachi says, “Yes, God is coming, but who can endure it? Who can stand when he appears? He will be like the refiner’s fire or caustic lye soap.” John the Baptist says, “Yes, the promised Messiah is coming, but you’ve got to get prepared. Mountains will have to be leveled and valleys be filled in. You will have to have a baptism of repentance. Don’t expect that this Messiah thing will be easy.”

So what can I say this morning that will sound like good news? What can I say that sounds like joy to the world or angels from the realms of glory? Where is the word we need to hear today?
Because if you are like me, you’re already feeling like you’re headed to tinsel tension, silver bells stress, and overmuch overload. You’re already feeling like you’ve eaten too much, wrapped too little, and complained too often. On the national front, our leaders seem helpless, our world seems disturbed, and our budget seems busted. And at church there’s this sense that something important is supposed to happen. The candles are lit. The crismons are on the tree. The carols are beginning to be sung. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, but we’re not entirely sure what that means. We want to feel the richness and the depth of the season – we want to be swept up in it, like we were as children…to know the magic and to believe as maybe we once did, that animals can talk on Christmas Eve, that up on the housetop there are reindeer paws, that a manger in Bethlehem cradles a king. We want to believe this. Surely the stars are brightly shining. Surely unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. Surely there is joy to be spoken to the world for a lord is come. But there are days, aren’t there? There are weeks, aren’t there? There are years, aren’t there?, when we wonder how Christ will come into this world that seems so closed off to God. When we wonder how we can hear good news.

So I read Malachi and I think – refiner’s fire…lye soap. There IS a message in here. God is trying to get our attention. There are reasons for us to be ready. There are things that need to be purified. There are things that need to be cleansed. Something’s gotta give and I believe it’s me.

After much struggle, I think this is the thing that I need to say today: something’s gotta give in order for us to be ready for Christmas and that is good news. Let’s look at that from two perspectives – one old and one new.

First, the old. We might wonder what meaning the Old Testament prophet Malachi has for us today. After all, he is talking about a messenger who would come to restore justice, to restore right worship, to open the way once more between God and the people of Israel. Malachi was talking to a people who had returned from exile and who were trying to reestablish a kingdom in the land of their ancestors. And they were doing a pretty poor job. They had strayed so far from God that they were confusing evil with good. They were questioning whether God still cared about how they lived and whether there were any consequences for not living right. It was a time long, long ago, and surely we don’t have those same problems today. But of course, we do. We also live in a time when evil is confused with good…when people question whether God cares about our ethical choices and whether there are any consequences for making bad choices. You know that’s true.

But Christians look back on this prophecy from Malachi and they wonder, “Why are things the same if the messenger that the prophet talks about has already come?” The messenger was the precursor, the Elijah figure, who would come to prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. Christians saw that figure in John the Baptizer, the one who came to prepare the way for the coming of the Christ. And in Jesus Christians see the one after whom nothing could be the same. When we beheld Jesus, we saw the God who had taken our form and lived our life and died our death and revealed to us what God was up to in the universe. We saw the end of all things, the purpose of all things, come to pass in our time, in a baby, in a manger, on the road, on the sea, in the boat, in the Temple, up a hill, and upon a cross, and through an empty tomb. Why is it then, after all of this, that we are still not any closer to being what God intends us to be? Why are we still waiting for Messiah to come?

What is different…what makes this time different…is that we have something new to do because we know the end of the story.

Now the new perspective. Once I worked as a youth director at church-related community center in West Dallas. West Dallas is the inner city and the inner city in Dallas has the same reputation as the inner city everywhere – it is the place where dreams go to die. And it certainly seemed well-deserved when I arrived there, full of optimism and a dangerous amount of theological education – two years at a United Methodist seminary!

I quickly became very discouraged with what I saw. West Dallas was severely divided. Our community center was located right near the dividing line. I could even name you the street. Vilbig. North of Vilbig, West Dallas was mostly black. South of Vilbig was mostly Hispanic. We were one of the few community centers that served both communities.

I coached basketball as part of my job there and I spent hours with my players. We got to know each other pretty well. Once I asked them what it was they wanted to be when they grew up. Just about every one of them said, “An NBA basketball player.” Thomas said that and he was probably going to have the height to do it. But Squirrel said that, too, and there was no way Squirrel was going to make it. He could do many things, but being an NBA star was not going to be one of them. I encouraged them to dream big, but I also tried to give them some other dreams, and other possibilities.

But a funny thing was happening to my own dreams. For the first time in my life, I was feeling like an absolute failure. The problems were so overwhelming and the resources so limited. Families were so broken and the despair so pervasive and the children so wounded and I was so different I might as well have been from another planet. I was also working in a situation without a whole lot of guidance. I had incredibly good people to work with but they were each so overloaded with their own stuff that I didn’t get much help. I was free to develop the program as I wanted, but that was exactly the problem – I was free…and alone.

I wasn’t alone forever, though. I struck up a friendship with a guy by the name of Juan Prieto. Juan worked for the Health Department at the time, but his great passion was to make West Dallas a better place. Juan had come from Colombia where he had experienced all the violence of the drug wars that were going on at the time. He knew the worst that life had to offer, but he was irrepressibly cheerful. Juan was the one who was given the thankless job of handing out flyers about a mandatory measles vaccination to every household on public assistance in the neighborhood. That must have been ten thousand houses. But he was so upbeat and he made it seem like such a party that he got us, youth workers from other agencies, to volunteer to do the job with him. It was like Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence. I still remember handing out all those flyers in some really rough neighborhoods and thinking that it was about the most fun I’d had in weeks.

The thing that made Juan so effective was his vision. He knew what West Dallas could be. He shared that vision with those around him and when he found companions for it, he moved us to action. The vision was not going to be realized without some changes and he was motivated to work for those changes, even when it meant a lot of work that seemed really hard to those on the outside.

Juan Prieto is still like that. Suzanne and I got to eat with him and his wife last February when we were back in Dallas. We reminisced about our adventures creating a Teen Advisory Council and starting a talent show and starting teen pregnancy prevention programs – things I would never have done had I not been dreaming with Juan about what could be. And Juan is still doing those things.

Why am I telling you this? Because the message is the same – when you know the end of the story, you have something new to do. I was absolutely stumped by that youth director job. Here I was trying to bring good news to the inner city and I couldn’t even hear God’s good news myself. But once I caught a vision of what God intended for West Dallas, a vision carried by Juan, I knew that there were new things to do, and we did them.

Christians talk a really good game at Christmas time. We make some really radical claims about what God is up to in the world. We make a huge fuss over the story of a baby in Bethlehem. We say that nothing could ever be the same after God came to us in Jesus.

But our words fall flat when we don’t claim that vision and change our lives as a result. My favorite question to ask in Bible Study is, “Well, if we take this passage seriously, what’s got to change?” The assumption built into that question, of course, is that we haven’t been taking the passage seriously and that there ought to be some consequence to our reading.

So ask that question of Malachi. Ask that question of John the Baptist. Ask that question of Christmas. If we take the coming of the Messiah seriously…if we take the message of repentance seriously…if we take the language of a refiner’s fire seriously…if we take Christmas to be more than just a wish-fulfillment fantasy, what’s got to change? Will we still pray for peace on earth and not work for its coming? Will we remember the poverty of the stable and not think about those whose poverty stunts their lives in our day? Will we sing about the gifts the magi brought to the child and withhold our own gifts to the work of God’s reign? Will we talk about love coming down at Christmas and continue to hate our neighbor? Will we let angels sing the heavenly chorus and not join in with praise of our own? Will we admire the shepherds’ immediate response to the angel’s call and explain away our own failures to do what we feel called to do?

This to me is the hard struggle of these passages we read today. It’s not that I don’t have the capacity to be what God wants me to be. It’s not that I am not able to be ready for the coming of Christ. Because Christ has already come and done what he did and promised to be with us to the end of the age, I know, on a certain level that I can do it – I can do all things through the one who strengthens me. But I often fail to be what I know that I can be. The things that I feel are my most persistent character flaws and personal weaknesses are things that I can address if I will only let go of the fear of change. Like the 5th century Saint Augustine I am a master at praying, “God, give me wholeness, but not yet.” I’m afraid to live without these chains I place upon myself. Something’s gotta give, and it’s me.

This Christmas, as I look around the world, I see very few people like my friend, Juan Prieto. This is a cynical age and we are prone to disillusionment and criticism. We find it far easier to find the flaws in the plans on offer than to offer up a vision that might cause us to actually risk something of ourselves, that might ask us to express our deepest longings, desires and passions for change. We would not go to the desert like John the Baptist. We would not dare to suggest that something within us needs to change. We are more than willing to wait on a savior as long it doesn’t require anything of us.

But this Messiah we wait on does require something. It’s not that we have to earn this salvation that Jesus brings. Don’t confuse this with a works righteousness argument. God’s grace goes before. It always goes before. But if we take God’s grace seriously, what will have to change in us? Something’s gotta give. And the process of getting ready is a continuing process of opening ourselves to God’s fire, letting it burn away the impurities within us, and moving us to action in this world.

I know I’ve used this quote before, but it says to me what needs to be said to a waiting people. Steven Long, a professor at Garrett Evangelical Seminary says, “Christians are people who put themselves in places they would not be if the gospel they believed were not true.” Christians are people who put themselves in places that they would not be if the gospel they believed were not true. Where do you need to put yourself? What’s the deep knowledge that you are hiding that needs to be expressed in your words and deeds? What do you need to confront that’s keeping you from God? Whom do you need to love?

Christmas is coming. The way must be prepared. Thanks be to God.

When Christmas Comes to the Unprepared

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
For what thanks can we render to God for you in return for the joy with which we rejoice before our God because of you? Night and day we pray deeply that we might see your face and supply whatever is lacking in your belief. Now may the very God who is our Father and our Lord Jesus make straight our path to you, and may the Lord intensify you and fill you to overflowing with love for each other and for all we are feeling for you. So may your hearts be established: faultless in dedication before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. Amen.

It’s the question that you have already begun to hear, no doubt. Now that Thanksgiving is past. Now that December has come. Now that the Advent wreath and the poinsettias have made their appearance in the sanctuary (with more to come tonight), the question is on everyone’s lips when we don’t know what else to say: Are you ready for Christmas?

What a horrible question to ask someone! I ask it myself from time to time, but when I think about it – what a horrible question! As if there isn’t enough anxiety in the air already, we go around asking each other if we are ready for Christmas when the number one thing we feel unsettled about in this season is whether or not we are prepared for the holiday. Of course, we’re not ready and if you tell me that you ARE ready for Christmas, well, that’s only going to make me more anxious. “He’s got it all done. Why can’t I have it all done?”

But Advent comes to ask us a different sort of question. When we talk about being ready for Christmas, we are usually talking about presents, decorations, travel plans, Christmas cards. But Jesus is not really concerned about any of those things. Advent is the season in which the church asks us to think about not are we prepared for the coming of the relatives, but are we prepared for the coming of a savior. I don’t bring this up because I want to add one more layer of anxiety onto our already overloaded holiday schedules. I bring it up because Advent is a gift – an early holiday gift – that can help us to be truly ready for Christmas and which has the potential to pull the anxiety rug out from under all those other concerns we have at this time of the year.

Now the readings of this first Sunday in the season may not seem to say that. When we read the gospel story from Luke this morning it sounded a little…well…dark and they may have caused you to begin worrying. Jesus is speaking to his followers in the last days before his crucifixion here and he tells them that things are going to be bad in the future. There will be signs in the heavens and signs on the earth. There will be upheavals and trials. And all of this will be the sign that Christ is returning to make all things right. It was to be good news for them because for a persecuted people, which they were going to be, the end of the way things are was the end of their suffering. But for those of us who are not persecuted for our faith, the end may seem less welcome.

In fact, for us, living twenty centuries after Jesus’ words to the disciples, we may even begin to doubt these words…to doubt the second coming of Christ…to doubt his advent into a troubled world. We may even not wish for it to come. I saw a bumper sticker once that said, “Jesus is coming. Look busy.” It was a humorous way to talk about a serious PR problem that the Second Coming has – We’re not sure we want it and we’re not sure how Jesus will treat us if he does return. That bumper sticker presents us with the image of Jesus as a grouchy school teacher or an unloved boss leaving the class or the workers to play but then coming back to punish them for misbehaving.

But we have another reading from the scriptures today and I want to listen to that one, too, because it gives us a much different sense of what this second advent of Christ is all about, something that may help us to be prepared for Christmas, which is about Christ’s first advent. Along the way I want to ask you to listen for three counterintuitive rules for Christmas preparation. You can call them Joyner’s Advent Advisories, if you like.

So let’s see what we have. Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonian Christians is probably the oldest letter we have in the New Testament. It was most likely written before all of Paul’s other letters and before the gospels even made their way to paper or papyrus. So what we have here is a glimpse of how the first Christian communities saw what they were doing and what it was they were called to do as they served God.

Thessonika was an influential city in Greece. It occupied a key spot on the major Roman road that cut across the north of Greece which meant that it was a crossroads town, a place where the currents of the world met. To be a Christian in this place meant to be a significant minority and a persecuted minority. Christians quickly became a threat to the status quo and to the empire. Their allegiance was to someone beyond the emperor. Their allegiance was to Jesus.

But despite their marginal status in the world, the Thessalonian Christians had a strong church and Paul loved them. Paul didn’t just establish a church in Thessalonika and go off and forget them. He wasn’t a “hit and run” apostle. He continued to have a very strong affection for them and his letter is laced with the joy he feels in knowing them. And above all he gives thanks to God for them.

Which brings me to my first Advent Advisory. If this passage gives us a lens to see what Christians ought to do as they await Christ’s coming again, the first thing we see is this emphasis on giving thanks. To update that a little bit, I would say, “The best light display is a candle.” Oh yes, I know a candle is about waiting and watching, but it’s also about thankfulness and an expression of hope in the God to whom we give thanks. You light a candle in a window to remember a loved one serving in the military far from home. You light a candle in the window to guide a friend to a safe haven. You light a candle in the advent wreath to give thanks for the joy we feel in this place in this season.

There’s a movie out right now called “Deck the Halls,” and the premise is that two neighbors get into an all-out war with each other to see who can put up the greatest light display in the neighborhood. I haven’t seen it but I imagine that they take it to ridiculous extremes and forget the real meaning of Christmas. I don’t know what the heartwarming ending looks like but I bet it doesn’t end with a candle.

There is a lot going on in this season and I love to see the lights on the houses and buildings. The Christmas specials on the television sometimes remind us of what’s important. Linus reciting the Christmas story on an empty stage in the Charlie Brown Christmas is still one of my favorite moments. But we need the story we hear here, too. We need to know that there is something different about the lights in the wreath. To walk into the church is like walking into an alternate reality. The world may not know that Jesus has come to save it and to turn it upside down and to redeem it, but we do know that. We do believe it. And we need to live in this world.

My second Advent Advisory? What the world needs now is love. Maybe Hal David and Burt Bacharach came up with that first, but I’m borrowing it. This is what Paul talks about, too. You may not have noticed it in the midst of the dark images in the readings, but laced throughout Paul’s letter is the language of love. He says that he is praying earnestly to see their faces again and that is born of his love for them. And his prayer for them is that they may be intensified and filled to overflowing with love for each other and for all. What are they supposed to do while they await Christ’s coming? Love!

Now this doesn’t mean sticky sentimentality. For a community that was being forced underground by oppression, there was no room for sentiment. The Thessalonians were not going around sending each other chocolates and Hallmark cards. The love the shared was born of deeply sharing each other’s lives and recognizing that Christ’s call was not just for them but for all the world, particularly the poor and outcast.

We live in a world which has largely ignored the power of love to transform things. We may be discovering the limits of the other kinds of power we possess, but we have surely forgotten how powerful love can be. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the other leaders of the nonviolent civil rights movement had to work very hard to keep this Christian truth at the forefront when they were working to overthrow the effects of racism and segregation in the South. There were a lot of folks who felt that the walls would never fall without violence and struggle. But there were folks, Jews and Christians, who believed that love has its own power and that overcoming segregation was good, not only for those being oppressed, but also for those who were dominant. So they trained diligently in how to live out love in a prophetic way. They were witnesses to a different order and a different kingdom and many of them drew their inspiration from the love they had known in Jesus Christ.

What are we doing to be witnesses to that kind of love in our community and our world? Are we reaching out to our neighbors in need? Are we speaking out and joining hands with our neighbors?

This week, our clergy group met again with guidance counselors in the Northampton School system. Karen and I were there representing our church. We began to make plans for another series of cottage meetings to bring together our community, across racial lines, to talk about how we help our students succeed and how we enlist them in leading our community when they graduate. We want them to know that we want our young people to consider coming back when they go away to become teachers. To come back and better the community with new businesses. To come back as people who can help us overcome the barriers that remain. That is a work of love.

Finally, my third Advent advisory, which also is drawn from Paul’s words: Jesus is coming every day. Jesus is coming every day. It’s not just at the end of history that we should expect Christ’s return. Christ is lord of every morning and the kingdom, so he says, is among us and at hand. So our lives need to be about the work of the kingdom every day, not just in special seasons of the year.

There are people who need to hear Christ’s good news every day. There are people who need to have their lives turned around every day. There are people suffering every day. There are people wondering what their purpose in this life is every day. There are people giving their lives over to idols and distractions and drunkenness and drugs and dissipation every day. There are people who doubt their worth and doubt that they are loved every day. There are people struggling to stay on the path every day. There are people whose relationships are foundering every day.

But there are people overcoming all of this every day. There are people who know that the kingdom will not be brought in by their efforts but who work for it anyway every day. There are people who know how much their lives have been transformed by love and who live out of that every day. There are people who find healing and hope in prayer every day. There are people who know that little children and surly teenagers and difficult parents all alike are children of God and are deserving of our thanks every day. You know what you call these people – Christians because they do all this knowing that Jesus Christ is coming every day.

If we live with this expectation – that the return of Christ is not just a story we trot out several times a year to increase our anxiety but a promise to be realized every day – then it changes everything. And it begs the question – what are you going to do this Christmas? How could it be different for you? How will you give thanks for this community and for the ways you have known Christ through it? What’s the candle of thanks you light? How will you love others in a visible way? Who is God calling you to love? What are the practices you can undertake to help you be ready for the day? In prayer and journaling, in meditation and meeting together with other Christians, in worship and devotion – how are you meeting the Jesus who comes to you each day?

Don’t have any anxiety about Christmas. It’s coming and will come whether you have every ornament on the tree or not. The challenge for you on this first Sunday of Advent is to open the gift that is this season and to see what it is challenging you to do to be prepared for the coming of Christ. Jesus is coming. Don’t look busy. Rejoice. Thanks be to God.