Room

Luke 2:1-20

At the church that sponsored me for ordination, the traditional Christmas pageant featured a cranky innkeeper whose role was to slam shut doors and windows when Joseph and Mary came looking for a place to stay in Bethlehem, and to shout, several times, “No room!”

 

I flash back to that several times a year, when I’m feeling crowded in an elevator or building, when my schedule is too full for one more thing, I just can’t take one more bit of news, or one more person than I can handle needs my attention.

Inside of me there’s a ten-year-old slamming a prop door or window, shouting “No room!”

 

I don’t know if you’ve felt something like that recently, but this year it’s just seemed to me like there’s so many more things to pay attention to, so much to do to get ready for Christmas, and my schedule, my brain, my life are too full.

There’s just no room!

 

Of course, after the door slams, the pageant story goes right on, and the cranky innkeeper is persuaded to become a helpful innkeeper, who leads Mary and Joseph and their donkey to the stable and tries to make them comfortable.

And then, Luke tells us, Mary gave birth to Jesus “and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn”.

 

No room.

But God makes room.

In an animal’s feed tray, when necessary.

 

Luke front loads his story of Jesus’ birth with the crowded politics of the day – emperors and governors who have no room for any new leaders; a census that’s crowding every town and people’s schedules and lives. 

It’s a central feature of our Christmas story that there’s no room.

And that in the midst of all this, God makes room.

Makes room to be one of us, to be with us.

 

 

Every time I sit down at home to write a sermon, just when I’ve gotten launched and focused, my hands and laptop are abruptly or gradually re-arranged. In a minute, or sometimes five, there is an entire 12-pound cat in the space between the keyboard and my hands.

 

This is an ergonomically terrible way to write a sermon.

Laptops are not designed to have room for a cat.

I’ve pointed this out over and over, physically moved the cat, suggested that another place or time would be better for the cuddling and napping the cat is insisting on right now. Over and over I tell him there’s just no room right there, right now.

 

Every time – every time – the cat ignores this, and just…makes room.

Makes room for himself where there is no room.

 

It’s not just sermons. This particular cat absolutely, positively, WILL make room for himself in my personal space, no matter how critical the load I’m juggling or the document I’m typing, no matter how late I am running. 

This cat insists that no matter what I am doing, this is the time and the place to be close to me, pin me down with affection, or “help”.

It defies physics, sometimes. Sometimes it makes an utter mess of my schedule. 

But this cat makes room, no matter how little room there is.

 

And when he does, in spite of myself, I feel calmer. 

I feel a sense of peace sometimes. Of belonging sometimes. 

A sense of irritation often, but oddly mixed with a sense of generosity – as if everything else in my life has a little more room and flex to share now that the cat has made physical room where there was no room.

 

In spite of myself, I feel loved.

 

And I suspect something like that is going on in that manger, in that crowded hill town of Bethlehem, in the crowded business and politics of two thousand years ago, as Jesus makes room.

As God quietly, persistently, re-arranges a space and time where there’s no room for divine presence, and no room for a baby, to fit perfectly around both a newborn infant and the whole infinite power and presence of God.

 

Peace on earth, and goodwill, the angels announce in the fields outside of Bethlehem.

And perhaps, in spite of the crowds and the government business that leaves no room for wonder or anything else, there is a sense of peace, a softly-weighted calm, a little more sense of spacious generosity – of goodwill – sneaking into the bodies and hearts of the people of Bethlehem as Jesus makes room.

Perhaps, that night, this night, all the people feel – in spite of ourselves – more love.

More loving and more beloved, filled up with tender affection and that melting of our hearts that comes with the deep, personal trust of a sleeping infant.

 

Because Jesus made room.

 

Made room once upon a particular time, twenty centuries ago.

And over and over ever since, 

Christmas after Christmas,

ordinary day after ordinary day.

Makes room, in our own crowded, busy, messy world here and now.

 

Sometimes it happens like it did in those Christmas pageants I’ve enjoyed, where God touches the heart of an innkeeper – of one person – who finds compassion and generosity making room in their own heart, and who then makes room in the world for God.

 

I watch this happen a lot this time of year, when I see people like many of you, going to a crowded mall – or squeezing online shopping into your crowded calendar – in order to find the perfect Christmas gift for a child who otherwise wouldn’t have anything.  

Many times over any year, I watch one of my friends or colleagues listening to a story of heartbreak or need from a stranger, or from someone none of us really like, and offering sympathy or help.

And your compassion and generosity make room in my heart to feel God’s compassion and generosity toward you, and me – and then I discover unexpected room in my heart and schedule for compassion and generosity toward others.

 

Other times it happens like it must have been happening all around crowded Bethlehem long ago, as people scrunch up in a crowded house or at a crowded table to invite a traveler in.

Sometimes, God does this with friends or family who absolutely insist on dragging you to a party or event (or church service) you really did not have time for. And joy or love or wonder or peace make room in your calendar and your spirit in spite of everything.

 

Where there’s no room, 

when there’s no room,

Jesus makes room.

 

And that’s probably the best news I’ve heard all year.

Because so often I just don’t have room. Even when I really want to.

 

There are so many other things crowding our time and attention. 

Responsibilities at work and at home.

Public crisises of war, and politics, and a precarious climate, and inflation, and still Covid.

Private challenges in our work (or classes), our health, relationships, grocery budgets.

And of course Christmas: the baking and events and presents and packages and rehearsals and decorating and dinner….

 

So often it’s so easy to get distracted from God’s presence in our world. So often, for many of us, it can feel like there’s just no room to squeeze in the things that Jesus asks from us: prayer or worship or silence or service. No time for the time God wants to spend with me.

 

It’s such a relief, a gift, to be reminded that in spite of all of that, in the middle of all that, Jesus still makes room.

To be one of us.

To be with us.

With you, with me.

 

Rearranging our space and time with insistent affection, and presence, and love.

Squeezing the gentle weight of peace into our hearts, 

the spaciousness of generosity and compassion into our spirits,

the whole infinite power and presence of God into the world in the tiny space of a newborn child,

until we cannot escape the knowledge in every part of our hearts, bodies, calendars, or souls, that we are deeply and insistently loved.

 

Tonight, tomorrow, all day and all year, wherever we have no room for God, or for ourselves,

Jesus makes room.

Room for love.

Room for everything.

Jesus Sends Us Stories

Matthew 11:2-11

What are you waiting for?

What are you looking for as a sign that God’s promises are all being fulfilled?

What are you waiting for, before you drop everything else to throw yourself into the glory of God? What’s missing, that would allow you to go in 110% on following Jesus? 

 

Myself, I tend to be cautious about going all in on something – or believing it’s all ready – if there’s not a clear plan.
I spent years waiting for a step-by-step (or even clear first step) plan for following this weird idea that maybe I should be a priest. 

I’m still waiting for following Jesus to get clearer than all this constant nebulous discernment about what spiritual path I’m on, and whether to give this money to the food bank or the disabled veterans.

 

Maybe some of us are waiting for a break in all the responsibilities you’ve got to take care of: family, work, getting dinner on the table and the bills paid and the holiday organized. If that were cleared away… ?

And Jesus has always been there, God seems patient – the sense of urgency is missing.

 

Maybe you’d like some kind of proof, even just a little bit, that Jesus is personally interested in you, before you go all in. (I mean, there are all these stories in the gospels about Jesus getting in one individual’s face to say “follow me”, doing a spectacular miracle for one particular other person – why not me?) 

Or something that proves that God is making the world a better place, not just watching from some far detached place in the sky, before you’re convinced this is the moment of decision?

 

I don’t know exactly what you are waiting for. Honestly, I may not be sure what exactly I’m waiting for.

But many of us are waiting for something to change, to happen, before we commit our whole selves, whole hearts and lives, waking and sleeping, to following Jesus in all ways, proclaiming God’s kingdom already come.

 

Many of us, consciously or otherwise, may also be evaluating the options besides Jesus – in case there’s something else we should be waiting for. Checking out the possibilities that work or exercise or the right friends or the right hobby might offer fulfillment or healing or wholeness. Looking for our sense of purpose from sharing the right moral views with friends and family and the people we vote for.  

 

Many of us are, at one time or another, considering whether we couldn’t do better than Jesus for solving the needs and heartaches of our lives. 

 

Even the most religiously passionate of us are often waiting for some change, or sign, or choice, or something, before we commit completely and permanently to Jesus, dropping every other priority in our lives. 

 

Even John.

 

John who already spent most of his life getting us all ready for the real power of God to show up among us. John who already met Jesus while he was out baptizing, and knew then that he was the real thing, the real power of God.  Even John is waiting for something else.

And he’s not afraid to ask Jesus directly about it.

 

Look, are you the Messiah? The one we’ve really all been waiting for? 

Or not?
Is there someone, something, better coming along?

 

John’s waiting for an answer.

A direct answer, before he feels confident committing what’s left of his life to this particular person being The One he’s already spent his life preparing for.

 

And Jesus sends him stories.

Sends him people who’ve seen healings, who’ve seen lives restored, seen and heard oppressed people respond with joy to what Jesus has to say, to just talk about their experience.

 

It’s not like John never heard those stories about Jesus before, probably. 

So far, though, those stories haven’t been enough. They weren’t what John was looking for.

 

Maybe John was waiting for Jesus to overthrow either the foreign government, or the religious elite. Maybe John was looking for fire and brimstone – an epic moral confrontation between ultimate good and human evil.

Or maybe he was looking for a personal touch, a clear plan, a different urgency, or the relief of all his other responsibilities so that he could finally follow Jesus as The One whose coming he’d been waiting for. 

 

What he gets is the stories. Stories about what his friends have witnessed in physical healing and heart healing as Jesus moves around the countryside.

 

None of these stories are about what John was preaching and predicting; none are about John getting released from prison.

They are just are stories about renewal, insight, hope, and love, actually seen and heard by the tellers, as Jesus walks through the world.

We don’t know if this time it’s enough for John.

If it was the yes his heart needed.

Matthew never tells us.

 

But I think it might have been, after all.

It might even be enough for me.

 

When I’m getting wishful and wistful about God fulfilling promises, sometimes I get tempted to treat attendance at church as a sign of whether God is really coming. (I know better, but there’s that tempting feeling when the pews are full…)

And then it’s cold here. Or you’re busy on Sundays. And we’re out of the habit of being packed together in these pews. And I wonder if this is really what we’ve been waiting and working for – since Covid, since all our lives, really. Wonder if God’s really all that interested.

 

And then someone tells me a story about how good it was, how powerfully healing, to get to just talk to one other person casually at coffee hour again.

Another person tells me a story about how important the livestream service has been to them, still. That the church is present, that they have been to church, they are part of us, when they cannot physically get here on Sunday morning. 

 

And my heart says “yes.” 

Yes. 

This is what we are waiting and working for.

This is the kingdom of God coming among us – in the ways I wasn’t especially looking for. 

 

God’s purpose, God’s plan, are being fulfilled.

Just not the way I thought I was waiting for.

 

When I’m looking for what I am expecting God to do, 

I might be missing what God is actually up to.

 

When I look for what I want God to do – for things that make me more comfortable, or just more confident; when I look for Jesus to be making it easier for me to drop everything else – I might be missing the things that God wants to do to make all of us more trusting and generous, might be missing what Jesus wants to do to empower all of us to follow him, love him, be loved by him.

 

Then when I listen to the stories – stories about other people, healing and renewal that happens one trickle at a time – when I listen to the stories Jesus sends me, I might just be seeing God’s whole kingdom coming, all of it, in a place and time that doesn’t feel like enough, but is everything. 

And then my heart answers John’s question. 

My heart says, yes.

 

What stories is Jesus sending you? 

What story of healing, insight, joy, or love – happening on a small scale, to someone else – have you heard lately?

What if that is the invitation, or the proof, that you’ve been waiting for?

 

What story of renewal, generosity, or hope far away have you heard?
What if that story is the relief, or the urgency, or the opportunity that you’ve personally been waiting for? Not the way you thought it would look, not at all.

But actually what you need, somehow, to say yes to God’s coming into the world, into your heart, your life.  

 

And what story could you tell?
What little moment of insight or hope, healing or renewal, love or joy, glory and generosity have you seen that might be the story Jesus is sending to someone else? To someone waiting to know if God, if Jesus, really is what they’ve been waiting for. 

 

We all wonder, once or often, if this is it. 

If this is real. If this is God. If God is enough for what we’re waiting for.

 

And Jesus sends us stories.

 

Sends us not an answer, but stories of what God is up to.

And then waits, listens, to see if our hearts say, “Yes!”

Surprise!

Matthew 24:36-44

I’m not really a fan of surprises. 

Even when the actual thing that surprises me is good – a delightful present, an experience I truly enjoy, cookies – I just…don’t like feeling unprepared. 

(As a kid, I made lists for Santa Claus for a reason.)

 

Some of you may genuinely enjoy surprises, especially under the Christmas tree. I kind of envy you. 

But I know I’m not alone in preferring to know what’s coming, what’s going to happen.

Especially when it’s important.

 

Jesus’ early disciples definitely wanted to know about the important things coming their way – about the actual way, and the real time, that salvation would come.

And Jesus says no.

No; you can’t know that.

No one can know that.

I don’t even know that.

It’s a surprise!

 

(Oh, come on, Jesus. Can’t you at least leave us the illusion that you’ve got this planned and covered?!)

 

Okay. Deep breath.

Ultimate salvation – the return of the Messiah to settle all the things that are still a mess, to bring all of God’s peace, justice, glory and love into full reality among us – is going to be a surprise.

 

A good surprise (Right, Jesus??!)

But definitely a surprise.

Jesus tells his disciples, tells us, that it’s going to happen when we are busy doing something else. We’ll be in the middle of our ordinary days – up to our eyeballs in email or getting through the to-do list or driving somewhere – and it’ll just happen. Dramatic and disruptive and glorious and shocking. 

And whether that surprise is joyfully or catastrophically disruptive depends on how we prepare. How we are staying ready. 

 

Every year in the church, about this time, we start talking about “being ready”. It’s the theme of the season of Advent, the season of preparation for the coming of God. 

The coming of God we already know about, in the story handed down to us of a baby born in Bethlehem. And the coming we’re anticipating, the eventual glorious return of the Christ to complete and heal and resolve everything, once for all. 

It’s a lot of preparation, for the known and the unknown, all at once.

 

It’s also a time when the preparation and readiness demands of the world around us may be ramping up.  We’re supposed to be preparing for the celebrations of Christmas, to be ready with the perfect surprises of gifts for (and from) those we love – and to prepare for all the things we know will happen: travel or family gatherings or church pageants or work “holiday” events and year-end deadlines.

 

There’s a lot to be ready for.

Including, Jesus insists, the very real possibility that that final coming of God that ends our sense of time and changes everything could happen right now!

Surprise!

 

So be ready.

No one knows when. 

 

My shoulders – already a little tight from searching the internet for perfect Christmas surprises for my family – are twitching as I think about it.  Are you sure you couldn’t schedule this, Jesus? Really sure we have to be on watch now?

 

Because constant watchfulness – this knowing something could happen and being ready to respond all the time – consumes energy and attention, wears down your body and your spirit.

 

In many cases, it’s a trauma response, readiness and vigilance as a repeating echo of fear and loss and shock that spins constant adrenaline in a belated effort to keep yourself safe.

 

And that… well, that doesn’t actually sound like what Jesus would be teaching us to do.

In fact, he might be insisting it’s all going to come as a surprise so we don’t tie ourselves into knots of tense, protective awareness, all set to catch the moment before it catches us. 
So that we wait, we prepare, differently.

 

As he’s been telling his disciples how the unexpected and disruptive coming of God will unfold, I noticed he’s been warning us not to respond to all the alarms, to the misleading alerts, that are on their way. We are not to jump up and respond every time someone says “Here’s the Messiah! Go there! Come here!” The coming we are waiting for will be everywhere, and in all things – not something we have to race after or we’ll miss it.

 

You and I are to be fully in the moment and place where we are, and be ready for the fullness of God to come to us, to everything, to everywhere, completely.

In the moment and ready everywhere and anywhen, because the most unlikely times and places – the dentist’s office, the evening news – could be suddenly full of the glory and power and justice and love of God.

 

To be ready in this way means to be always doing what we want God to find us doing, to be always where we want God to meet us, to be actively expecting love, justice, glory, and healing any time, any moment, anywhere.

 

To be prepared, in this way, means to arrange our lives, hearts, and minds for transformation. To practice a readiness to accept love that shows up unexpectedly, to share and rejoice in love that comes to us in disruptive ways. To be ready, even waiting eagerly, for God to open our hearts unexpectedly to deep, powerful, generous connection with a stranger or an adversary. 

Or to someone so familiar we forget we could love them.

 

We’re to be ready for those surprise loves to turn our lives upside down, instead of trying to manage and limit the ways that we open our hearts so it doesn’t disrupt our lives. 

 

We’re to set up our everyday lives so that God’s justice and mercy flow through us and lift us when it floods over the world; so that we’re ready to forgive and be forgiven in ways that change the course of our lives – instead of bracing against change, against reconciliation with those we’ve hurt, as if it’s a tidal wave we can’t survive.

 

That kind of readiness means we are living receptive and open, in welcoming expectation of God’s glory, justice, love and presence every when and every where.

It’s the exact opposite of the hyper-vigilance that comes from, and anticipates, trauma and anxiety. 

 

That serene openness doesn’t come naturally when we’re talking about wars and earthquakes and meteors and social upheaval, as Jesus has been doing. 

Or at least, it doesn’t come naturally unless you already trust Jesus, already know you can fall unprotected into God’s disruptive justice and glory and find healing, strength, hope and love.

That trust that Jesus came to teach us all the first time.

 

That’s why we prepare, this coming month, to feel our hearts broken open with love and tender care for a baby awkwardly, disruptively, unexpectedly born in Bethlehem, trailing glory and power and healing into a world not at all ready and thoroughly surprised by it. 

 

Because preparing our hearts to love unexpectedly, to be washed in healing and glory we can’t see coming, is how we stop needing to know just when it’s going to happen. 

It’s how we prepare to love surprises.

 

And preparing our hearts to be changed at any moment by reconciliation and peace, 

learning to expect unpredictable wonders to show up in our everyday lives anywhere and everywhere, 

is how we live ready, live prepared for the always-surprising, disruptive, extraordinary wonder of the coming of the fullness of God.

You Will Survive

Luke 21:5-19

For a decade or two I’ve had a plan for the zombie apocalypse – or other catastrophic, civilization-destroying end of the world situation.

I have several friends who have well-developed survival skills and supplies, and think about disaster prep with some regularity. After listening carefully to their plans and advice, I developed my own.

 

In the case of Zombie Apocalypse, eat me first. 

While I still have some useful meat on my bones.

 

While my plan isn’t really an option for someone raising kids, or providing primary care for a loved one – or many others – I think it would work for me.

I am not a fan of roughing it, which there will be a lot of when the world ends.  And I’m not especially afraid of death – I know it’s not the end of the story. So in the collapse of civilization, I’d like my death to be useful to my community.

 

Mostly, I think this seems like a faithful plan – laying down my life for my friends, even. But this week, I’m starting to wonder if Jesus himself would agree that my “die early, serve the community” plan is the right one.

 

We just heard him predicting the end of civilization as his contemporaries know it. The end of the world as we know it. Earthquakes and wars and insurrections and famines and plagues and false leaders and disasters in the heavens. 

Everything – everything is going to be falling apart.

And the disaster won’t be just general, but personal, too. 

We – the folks Jesus is talking to – will personally experience arrest and betrayal and killings.

 

So “Do not be terrified,” he says. “Not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

 

Not a hair of your head – my head, your head – will perish.

 

What if we knew we were going to survive the end of the world?

 

What if all of civilization, and all the small essential parts of our personal assurance and safety are yanked away, and you knew we were going to survive.

Be here, right in the middle of all of it, all the way through, without losing a single hair. 

 

If not a hair of my head will perish, I … might have to re-think the “eat me first” plan. 

It won’t work.

I’m going to have to take in the whole disaster, the whole collapse, and keep going.

I mean, that’s more alarming than ever, in a lot of ways. I do not expect to like roughing it through the collapse of civilization, no matter how protected my hair and life and soul might be.

But it’s a little exhilarating, too.

 

And it’s full of possibilities.

Knowing the end of the world won’t kill you is like having a superpower. 

You could take on all the zombies in single combat certain that you’d come out alive (and with your brains still in their original container, uneaten).

 

I could protect other people.

I could try things that aren’t guaranteed to succeed.

I wouldn’t have to be afraid.

 

Instead of spending my time on airplanes wondering if my body would be identifiable in the event of a crash, if I knew I was going to survive, I could spend my flying-anxiety energy on imagining the opportunity to help other people – to be the voice of calm, reducing panic, reminding people of the stuff they didn’t listen to in the life-vest briefing, getting people to work together.

(Just imagining it now it feels so good to be able to help, to make a difference.)

 

Or, instead of getting stuck in slow existential fear for myself, my family, and our world when the news is full of stories about extreme weather, famines, and even wars fueled by climate change, I might be motivated to do even more than I think I can. Become more persistent in the little things and big ones.

Instead of feeling a guilty sense of relief that I probably won’t live to see the worst when we hear that the world of natural disasters is going to get much worse unless we change quite a lot, if I knew I was going to survive – live to the days when 100-year-olds are considered bare youths, as Isaiah prophesies – I know I’d have to be more passionate about the actions I can take. More interested in planning how to help others survive.

 

What about you?

 

Maybe I – maybe we – could approach the end of the world as we know it not as something to be avoided at all costs, but as an opportunity – a very uncomfortable one, but an opportunity still – to share our blessings. To count up the gifts we’re grateful for, and give away hope and peace and confidence and joy and calm and opportunity.

 

The world doesn’t end every day. Fortunately!

But every day you and I face anxieties, losses, fears: we experience little bits of the things that could add up to an end of the world.

The anxieties, losses, fears come from the news media; from fractures in our relationships with family members or friends; from disease; from screw-ups at work; from weather; from politics and the stock market and the price of gas – all the things that make us vulnerable, all the things that remind us that we can fail, and that the world can fail us.

 

So what if we knew that not only would we survive the end of the world, but that we – you specifically, me specifically – would survive the layoffs at the office, the collapse of the stock market or housing market, the flood or the fire or the loss of a spouse or an endless plane ride over the dark uncertain ocean?

What if you know you will survive this thing that you fear might break you? (Whatever that thing is for you.)

 

Would you use your protection to protect others? To carry a stranger with a broken leg down the staircase in a burning building? 

To buy a meal for someone else with the last dollar in your wallet? 

To keep speaking of hope and opportunity when everyone in the meeting is predicting disaster and recommending giving up? 

To make promises of generosity and love for the future even when the future looks threatening?  

To pray with joy and confidence and trust – or at least stubborn cranky persistence – in the times when it seems like God isn’t even listening? 

 

Those last two, at least, are what Jesus is telling us not just that we can do, but that we will do, because he will give us words and wisdom for all we need.

 

There’s a story that when asked about what he’d do if the world were going to end tomorrow, 

Martin Luther said “If tomorrow were the Judgment Day, today I would plant an apple tree.”

 

He’d plant the future. Tend fruit even for days that may not come. He’d plant hope, and patience, and care.

What about you?
If you know you’d survive the end of the world,

what would you plant? 

 

Do not be terrified, Jesus tells us. Not a hair of your head will perish. 

You will survive unbroken.

 

It’ll be every possible kind of uncomfortable or frightening or chaotic or intimidating or disruptive or just hard you can imagine, yes, but you won’t even lose a single hair.

 

And by your endurance – by committing to that apple tree of hope, and trust, and patience and love to be shared with others – by your showing up and not giving up, and trusting God for the rest- you will gain your soul. Gain the abundant life, the heart of God within you, that can never be extinguished, or lost, or end.

 

What Makes Saints Saints

Ephesians 1:11-23; Luke 6:20-31

I think Paul is trying to encourage us.

 

Paul (or whoever on Team Paul actually wrote the letter, we’re not sure) is writing “to the saints” – to all the people who’ve come together to live in the Christian faith. He doesn’t know what’s happening in their lives, exactly, but he knows that being able to trust God, experience God’s love and power, and hold our community together is important, and that it can be hard for many of us to do those things – in the Mediterranean nineteen centuries ago, or here and now.

 

So he’s reminding us that we already have God’s promises – the “inheritance” of faith and resurrection and belonging; the presence of the Holy Spirit. And he’s telling us there’s still more:

The power of God working actively for us; active, immediate sharing in God’s glory; our taking part in the same resurrection and heavenly destiny as Jesus are so close, he tells us. So certain. He’s just praying God shows us how certain.

(It’s the first century equivalent of sending a link to the tracking app or site that shows that our long awaited delivery is “On the Way.”)

 

He doesn’t know what’s going on exactly in our lives, in our community. But he wants us to feel what he feels from the knowledge that the absolute love and glory and power of God are there for us: He wants us to feel the joy and confidence and wholeness and deep powerful trust.

 

Because whatever is going on in our lives, better and worse, that joy Paul’s trying to describe in this letter – that abiding, insistent wholeness and trust – is exactly what God wants for us. And Paul insists we will, must, experience it.

 

I was reminded in two separate conversations this week of how long it took me to start to believe that God calls us – commands us – to that joyful wholeness, not to misery or burnout or overwork. That joy and fulfillment – exuberant and forceful or quiet and slow – is what makes saints saints. What makes us holy. 

 

So if you listen to Jesus today, and loving your enemies, “turning the other cheek”, and giving to everyone who asks sounds stressful, and threatening, and miserable, then the one thing I’m sure of is that God doesn’t expect you to do it in the way you’re currently imagining it would work. 

 

If something about putting that enemy-loving, inexhaustible giving, subversively gentle teaching into practice sounds unnerving and uncertain, but kind of exciting, kind of freeing and empowering, well….yes, that particular thing might be exactly what God’s calling you to do.

 

Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, Paul himself – none of these people gave up everything they had and took up work that would scare most of us to death because they expected to earn holiness from God by doing the hardest, most miserable work possible.  They sold all their possessions, emptied the stinkiest of bedpans, preached on street corners because that’s what made them whole, joyful, complete, and strong.

I’m sure each of them also had their moments of weariness and grief, of everything going wrong, too.

Holy doesn’t guarantee easy. 

Joy doesn’t mean ignoring or denying what’s hard for us, or what’s wrong in the world.

 

Because sometimes – maybe even often – the monstrous or irritating, boring or nasty or rotten experiences of the world happen right along with, right around, our joy in God, our wholeness and hope and renewal.  

But what Jesus taught and lived for us, what God dreams for us, what Paul is praying for us, is that our joy-giving sense of being connected with God persists through it all.  

And that persistent connection of joy is what makes saints saints. What makes us holy.

 

What makes it possible for one of us to do one more thing in our daily lives to nurture and protect the earth, when so many news reports suggest we’re in a lot of climate trouble and what you or I do won’t solve it. 

What makes it possible for another of us to re-build every single personal habit of shopping, working, sleeping, speaking in order to bring justice to people who’ve been oppressed for generations, even though it’s obvious one person will never make enough difference. 

What makes it possible to be generous to that particular family member or co-worker who absolutely always tries to push your buttons – and even see the image of God in them, God’s love for them. 

What makes it possible to find genuine, renewing, delight in giving – and giving even more – no matter how frequent the requests for our time, how uncomfortable the close encounter with poverty or need, or how annoying the pledge drive may be.

 

Holiness – wholeness and fulfillment and love and joy – acts at a lot of different magnitudes. Some holiness is as inescapable as an earthquake. Some holiness – in your friends, family, neighbors or self – you might not actually notice, unless you’re looking. 

 

Today’s the Sunday on the calendar every year when we pause to think about saints. About people who are particularly good models of living in the hope and faith and trust and joy of God. Who have enough extra of that fulfillment and wholeness and love and elation that others can experience it through them. 

 

And we pay attention to those saints because God doesn’t want that wholeness and love and elation and power to be reserved for just some of us.  God wants to kindle and plant that in all of us. 

 

Paul insists that God wants you and me to experience that joyful sense of being blessed: being beloved and gifted and hope-filled and overflowing with fulfillment and wonder at God’s presence. That sense of blessing is what helps us notice and use our God-given power to love and pray for our enemies, to return peace for violence and generosity for greed, as Jesus teaches. That’s what makes saints saints. That’s what makes us holy.

 

I want that. 

And I find it here: that sense of blessing, of belovedness, hope, wonder and fulfillment. 

I’ve been overwhelmed by that sense of love and wholeness as I listen to members of our congregation count up our blessings while we think about our annual giving. Filled up enough with that sense of wholeness recently that nothing the assorted malfunctioning office software and exhausting to-do list and election-anxiety-pushing news media can do can wipe out my joy, even though I’m just as annoyed by those things as ever.

 

And I want to invest in that. I want to give to joy, everywhere and every time I can. I can’t buy happiness, but I can spend joy – invest both money and heart in this community that nurtures and shares blessings and hope and love. So I try to spend more joy each year.

And it’s working for me, too. Every single dollar and dime and thousand I pledge and give to the celebration of our wholeness and the sharing of our blessings returns twice as much in joy.

 

Paul’s writing to encourage us today. Encourage us to be confident in that unbreakable fulfillment and joy – no matter who we are, or when, or what’s going on around us. He’s praying that for us; and I’m praying that for you, today. That “with the eyes of our hearts enlightened,” you and I will share with Paul the confident hope, the rich fellowship, the power to transform the world and our own hearts, the absolute wholeness and love and quiet, strong, exuberant joy day after day after day that makes saints saints. That makes us holy.

Now and always.