For Us

Luke 2:1-20

I’ve had a number of conversations this past week or so about Grinchiness. Which I think can be defined as Christmas-related-irritability, a sort of anti-holiday spirit.

Not that most of the friends and colleagues with whom I’ve had those conversations have any desire to go steal the presents and food and trees from their neighbors, in imitation of Dr. Seuss’s original Grinch, but many people I know have – like the Grinch – found some of the traditions and culture of Christmas to be more irritating than soothing this year.

It’s hardly surprising that we’re stressed, many of us, this year, trying to figure out how much “normal” we can have, navigate the constantly changing understanding of what’s “safe” and what’s “too risky” Or just get through the constant change in plans and the disruptions and disappointments that go along with it. 

Who’s felt a bit of that, in the last couple weeks?

Now, some of us are finding that a bit of “holiday spirit” carries us along with the flow, and soothes the irritations. And some of us are finding it just impossible to catch the “holiday spirit” we long for – the sense of joy, or connection, or peace, or beloved-ness or belonging-ness; that essential “magic of Christmas”.

Just about everyone I’ve talked to is longing for that intangible and important feeling, this year. If we have it, we want more of it. If we can’t reach it, the longing just gets more powerful.

We need our hearts soothed and filled. We need that sense of connection, belonging, and joy. We need balm for our souls, this year especially.

I’ll bet there were plenty of people in Bethlehem a couple thousand years ago who needed balm for their souls. People who needed awe and glory, a deep sense of connection to God and to one another. People who especially needed peace, and goodwill to all.

And that’s exactly what happened, in this story we tell on this day, every year.

Awe and glory burst into the lives of certain shepherds, in their field on the outskirts of town. A deep, radical connection to God was wrapped in “bands of cloth”; pulled people into the full holiness of God’s presence while asleep in an animal’s feed tray. Unimaginable love and mind-bending eternity took up residence in the hearts of two parents who never planned it this way.

And it was all news of peace and goodwill to fill the whole world, we’re told. 

I have no doubt that every single character in this story needed that peace and good will, wonder and love, just as much as you and I do, this year.  We tell this story to remind ourselves that they received it, that God’s glory can and does come right to us, in the most awkward and unlikely places and experiences. This story is a promise, whether we feel the fulfillment today or not. 

Which makes me wonder, sometimes, about the people who aren’t named in this story. What about the scribe, the tentmaker, the baker, the launderer, in Bethlehem? Or the shepherds in the other fields around other hill towns? What about the potter or the builder’s apprentice or the Temple priest in Jerusalem, who didn’t have that vibrant, unmistakable experience of glory and wonder, who didn’t hold and touch the universe-filling love of God wrapped in bits of blanket and hay? What about the people who were there, more or less, and didn’t experience the spirit of that moment?

Or the people who heard this story from the shepherds, the next day or the next week, and were amazed, but incredulous – who heard the story but didn’t feel like it changed much of anything. 

Are there people in that original Christmas, in Luke’s story, who see other people having a transformative divine experience, and feel…disconnected?
People who are right there, ready to take part, and still find Christmas doesn’t quite happen, doesn’t feel real?

I suspect there are.

They don’t get named in the story, but they are there.

And they may be the most important part of the story, in fact.

Because fundamentally Christmas is really for the people Christmas doesn’t happen to.

The birth of God in a fragile human infant body, the infinite, powerful love made touchable in soft, messy human flesh, is as much or more for the people who never actually touched that flesh – like you and me – as it is for Joseph who parented that infant into maturity, and for Mary who carried that flesh in her flesh.

And the terrifyingly glorious force of angels gathered in one pasture, the shattering wonder and praise poured into the night – well, the messenger of God explicitly says to the few shepherds right there that this news is for all people, that this is for the joy and peace and goodwill of all the earth.  It’s happening to those “certain” shepherds; it’s explicitly for those of us who weren’t there.

And you and I, thousands of years and miles away from that event of overwhelming presence and glory and power and joy, longing for a real experience of Christmas? We’re who this happens for. Even, or maybe especially, in those years and moments when joy and love and wonder aren’t happening to us, or in us.
Doesn’t matter if I can feel it, doesn’t matter if you have a sense of fulfillment and peace today or if you’re feeling hollow or disconnected, or…grinchy.

It’s happening for you, this focused push of God’s fierce love and heaven’s eternal wonder into our messy, distracting, difficult world.

The candles and the carols, the feasts and the traditions, the stories and the occasional blessed stillness, are for you. For me.

To fill us up with joy and peace, with love and belonging in the presence of God that we missed so long ago in Bethlehem. AND to build all that love and peace, connection and joy into the world around us, to surround and hold us when we cannot experience it for ourselves.

To wrap God’s love around you when you don’t feel “Christmassy”; to protect your heart with God’s own power; to heal your spirit with God’s mercy when you simply cannot feel the wonder and joy you long for.  Other people around us, like the angels and shepherds so long ago in Bethlehem, sing and tell, listen and look, to keep the presence of God fresh around us, Christmas after Christmas, and all the year around.

And you and I, in turn, do our singing, and telling, and listening for others, like those angels and the shepherds long ago. 

Tonight, maybe it’s your turn to feel every bit of the awe and glory and connection and joy. Revel in it; soak it in! You do that not for yourself alone, but for those around us, so that God’s love and power is anchored in you for the people around us. 
And if tonight, it’s not your turn to feel it, well, your singing and prayer, your hearing and watching, are still for the whole world, still anchoring that grace and wonder for everyone who needs it most.

For the original Grinch, even.

Who heard the carols of his neighbors, like the shepherds heard the angel chorus, and whose heart finally grew “three sizes that day.” 

And as the tightness of his heart is finally released that Christmas, the Grinch shares his joy for others. And maybe, even, for us.

Not "Once Upon a Time"

 Luke 3:1-6

“Once upon a time…”

it’s how lots of good stories start. Stories that teach us, that warm our hearts.

But that’s not how Luke starts a story.

No, Luke starts with names and dates:

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas,…

This didn’t happen once upon a time, Luke is saying, it happened at a very particular time, in a very particular context. In a year and place when Rome ruled the known world; when the country was governed by specific foreign appointees who levied heavy taxes, and even the Temple, the house of God, was managed by men appointed by the emperor.  

In that particular setting, the word of God came to the wilderness. To this particular man called John.

Luke is setting us up for a different kind of expectation than “once upon a time”.  This isn’t a story to warm our hearts, it’s a news report that affects our lives. 

With two thousand years of distance, the details of this story may sound more mythical than journalistic to you and me.  And many of Luke’s early readers might have heard the phrases that echo the launch of Ezekiel and other prophets centuries in their own past and thought “yeah, the word of the Lord… it’s a nice metaphor, but that doesn’t really happen these days.”

But Luke wants his readers – wants us – to step away from the comfort of myth and recognize this coming of the word of God, as something that genuinely happens in our world, in our reality. As part of the history we live through that you’re as likely to see on the evening news as a local fire or flood, the latest Covid variant or Supreme Court case, or the launch of a space telescope. As likely to feel as today’s weather, as likely to respond to as an urgent email or call from your boss.

It’s real, this coming of God. Something that’s going to impact our lives, our neighborhood, our government. Something we in fact need to prepare for.  

Prepare for with the leveling of mountains and valleys; the actual re-shaping of the earth around us, no less. 

Luke’s quote about mountains and valleys from the prophet Isaiah may not help us feel like this is happening to us.  You and I are very much out of the habit of expecting the earth to move under our feet. It’s not usual for us to expect that God will actually reshape the earth while we watch. 

(We’re more used to the smoothing of the rough and the straightening of the crooked and the finding of ways through mountains and bridging of valleys taking years and years of orange cones blocking off lanes of highways – not to mention half a decade of wrangling to get to an infrastructure bill to pay for all that!) 

So Luke anchors us in the calendars and politics that should feel real, so that we’re ready to pay attention to – and actively be part of – the equally real removal of barriers between us and God.

Some of those barriers are less tangible than mountains, but can seem just as insurmountable.

Like the constant pressure of busy-ness and expectations many of us experience, that makes it feel like there’s just no time to be still in the presence of God – or makes it hard to let God claim some of the time on our calendars.

Others might be trapped in uncrossable valleys of isolation because of illness or painful relationships or limits on travel or technology, unable to reach and spend time with the people who help us most naturally experience God’s presence.

Others find that complacency – comfort with the way things are, even when we don’t like the way things are – traps us in detours and byways, needing help to straighten out our path to the closeness with God we deeply desire.

Still others are surrounded by the rough, treacherous, terrain of the modern conditions of poverty or prejudice. Wondering – honestly not knowing – if you’re going to be able to feed your family dinner this week can cut you off from the sense of God’s abundance, just as surely as getting lost in the desert for years did to the people of Israel.  

Losing your home to the financial effects of one unfortunate medical expense can disrupt your connection with God just as brutally as when half of Israel was hauled off to exile in Babylon, and cut off from their Temple. 

But God is determined to remove those barriers – the order to fill the valleys and level the hills and make level ground that we heard from the prophet Baruch today is God’s preparation to bring those Babylonian exiles home, removing all the barriers that cut them off from God.

Those are the kind of barriers, too, that Episcopal Community Services of New Jersey is created to help remove – the barriers of contemporary life that isolate us from one another and from God. 

Across the diocese, today, congregations have been asked to help launch this work of ECS, a project and network that our bishop has called us to build in order to build connections across this diocese of New Jersey. 

Connections among those who are working to relieve the pain of hunger, homelessness, violence, and oppression that can make God feel distant. Connections to unite our voices and actions to help reshape the world – to remove the barriers of unjust laws, abuses of power, or harmful structures and habits of society that keep many of us from thriving and all of us from truly experiencing the presence of Christ in all our neighbors. And connections to provide immediate financial grants to ministries working right now to heal and feed, house and help neighbors in immediate need to bring us all closer to God’s abundance in the world.  

(you’ll hear more about that in a few minutes from Linda Carson)

You and I, at Trinity, are also already involved in several kinds of work to remove those barriers of immediate need – led by our Outreach committee and by dedicated staff and volunteers to feed hungry people and bring joy to people who struggle. 

Many among us – including the racial reconciliation group – are working to learn how to help remove the mountains of habit and culture that separate people from one another today.

Others – including pastoral care volunteers – are working to bridge the valleys of isolation, illness, and loneliness that can make us feel exiled in our own homes.

All of this, so that God’s way to our hearts is wide open, and so that – whatever terrain we find ourselves in – we can see our way straight home to the heart of God. 

Because this coming of God that John’s calling out to us about today isn’t a once upon a time story. It’s a news report of something that has happened, will happen, is happening in the same messy, practical, political, noisy reality that you and I wake up to every day.

John’s out in the wilderness, right now – whether that wilderness is the noisy internet or the cell phone dead spots; the noise of partisan wrangling or the silence of exhausted indifference – in that wilderness, right now, John’s talking to real people, you and me, about the urgent, practical coming of God. And how the real, insurmountable barriers you and I and our neighbors experience must be flattened and removed, because God absolutely won’t be kept out of our real lives. And God won’t let us be kept away from our home in the heart of God.

Not once upon a time,

but in the second year of the Covid pandemic, when Phil Murphy was governor of New Jersey, and the legislatures were re-districting, and Jerome Powell was Chair of the Fed, and Facebook was trying to become Meta,

the word of the Lord comes to the people of Trinity in Moorestown: prepare the way for all barriers to fall – and for your own return to the heart of God, for real, here and now.