Innkeeper Christmas

Luke 2:1-20

Did you ever wonder about the innkeeper?

He – or, perhaps she – doesn’t actually appear in the gospel text at all.  The innkeeper is just implied, in that passing note that “there was no place for them in the inn.”

But some innkeeper must have existed.  Probably more than one, in Bethlehem.  Someone had to take care of customers that busy year, and hang up the “no vacancy” sign. And someone had to invite Mary and Joseph into that stable, whether it was a big barn at a large inn, or a little lean-to tucked up at the side of a house where some enterprising person rented out rooms to travelers.

So there must have been an innkeeper.

A silent player, but a necessary one, in the story that brings us all here tonight, the story of one particular baby’s birth, some two thousand years ago, in Bethlehem.

The innkeeper is a bit part, but sometimes that’s the kind of Christmas we have.

Sometimes that’s how we ourselves relate to God, almost accidentally, almost invisible, but still part of the miracle.

Some Christmases glow with the brilliant, holy light of a sky full of angels singing glory, and live in our memory as brilliant times of good news, amazing love, and glorious surprise. 

Sometimes that happens on schedule in late December – or sometimes it’s an unexpected eruption of God into your ordinary daily life.

But sometimes the wonder, the surprise, the sense of holiness just don’t seem to show up.  There are Christmases when Jesus’ birth or the family celebration are just another part of daily work – busy, sometimes frantic, and all about other people’s wants and needs.

Those are the innkeeper Christmases.

Those are the times when the holy seems to happen somewhere behind you, or off at the edge of your peripheral vision, and you’re not even sure it’s there at all.

God is sneaky that way.

That’s how Jesus is born, honestly, when nobody is looking.

Even now, God is more likely to slip quietly in to our homes, our work, our lives, in unremarkable times and places, than to arrive with fanfare and trumpets, or available on schedule, like Santa at the mall.

So the story of Christmas reminds us to look for God’s hidden treasures.

Earlier this month, a friend told me a story about her grandson’s Christmas wish.  He’s a seven year old who has been attending a religious school in his neighborhood, and all he wanted for Christmas this year was an icon.

An image of God, painted with prayer, meant to help focus your prayers. “I can’t pray without an icon,” said the seven-year old.

Well, that right there is enough to melt any professional religious person’s heart.

But the story doesn’t stop there.

Because the moment Sandi heard this, she knew just where to get one.  “I pulled it out of my hall closet,” she said, “dusted it off, wrapped it up and sent it off.”

Sandi had had Jesus in her closet, all along.

It was an icon she’d bought at a church fundraiser some time ago, because no one else was interested. Generous, but the icon didn’t fit her own prayer life, so it was put away, out of sight.

Until her seven year old grandson asked for help with his prayers,

asked for something to help him get closer to God,

and Jesus was suddenly visible, and welcome, and wrapped up in Christmas glory.

That’s an innkeeper Christmas.

The discovery that tucked away in the hall closets, garages, sheds and barns of our home and of our lives are miracles. Discovering that you have been entrusted, completely unaware, with the gift that brings God close and visible into the world,

for one seven year old,

or for generation after generation across the globe.

Sandi’s closet.  The innkeeper’s stable.

Your life and mine are full of hidden treasures, the real presence of God, entrusted to us whether we know it or not.

It may come as family stories, worn thin by repetition or barely remembered, that live in the dark storage of your memory, but someday are light and revelation to a new generation, or a forgetful cousin.

Or moments of generosity - a helping hand you’ve offered in an office or along the street, quickly forgotten, that gives God an entry into someone else’s life.

There are accidents and obligations that put you in the path of love, forgiveness, and startling grace.  Unused talents that meet an unexpected need.

What’s in your closet?
Do you know?

God does.

God’s gifts, even God’s self, so often slip into a corner of a closet or a barn, easy to overlook, until a longing to be closer to God brings those gifts to light.

It’s possible, of course, that no Bethlehem innkeeper ever realized what happened that long ago night. Possible the busy proprietor or housewife sent Joseph and his family quickly on their way without ever “oohing” over the baby, or recognizing grace.

But I don’t think so.

I believe that in the middle of the hard work and the busy time, that innkeeper did notice the excited shepherds crowding the stable, saw the subtle signs of glory in a crumpled infant’s face, and recognized that he had been God’s silent partner in a world-changing miracle.

I believe that because I know that God delights in being with us.

God born into a common stable, stirring up busy shepherds, eating at our tables, comforting us in trouble and grief, celebrating with us, sitting, waiting, walking, breathing with us, touchable and close.

God delights in being with us, and so God would not have left the innkeeper out of the miracle.

God doesn’t want to let you or me miss the miracle, either.

So tonight, this Christmas, let your heart melt for the wonder of a baby asleep in the hay, but keep your eyes and ears open for the miracles that God has entrusted to you. Miracles of God’s desire to be close to us.

Because they are there.

God might be in your garage tonight. 

God might be in your closet, or in the dusty corners of your heart, sneaking into the world, coming closer to you, and me, and all God’s beloved children, just waiting for our longing to be close to God to bring that hidden treasure to light.

Remember the innkeeper, and the baby in the stable, and believe in miracles, because miracles are what God entrusts to you and me at Christmas, here and now.

And miracles sneak in to the most ordinary of days, just waiting to be brought to light.

Merry Christmas!

This is Not the End

Luke 21:5-19

Every year, in the middle of November, there’s a sudden eruption of chaos and doom in our worship; and if that doesn’t sound familiar right this minute, that’s because you didn’t think that today’s gospel reading is about you.

Wars and insurrections, Jesus says.  Nation against nation, earthquake, famine, plague, portents, persecutions….

I’ll admit, it doesn’t sound that much like what’s going on in Lombard this week, but there’s never been a November that I can recall when there weren’t wars or insurrections or famines, plagues, persecutions and devastating natural disasters in the news, even if it’s not the local news.

This year it’s the heartbreaking devastation in the Philippines – and of course the ongoing insurrections and “cold” wars, resurgent plagues around the world, hunger in our own streets…

To some of us, this might all seem far away, but the first followers of Jesus, the first hearers and readers of Luke’s gospel would have been immediately familiar with the devastation Jesus talks about.  Luke’s gospel first circulated shortly after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple predicted in this story.  Early Christians knew people who’d been arrested for their weird new faith – imprisoned, questioned, mocked, abused – and some betrayed to that pain by family and friends.  They knew what it was like to have the world crumble around them.

Which is why it’s important to hear Jesus’ recommendations and assurance threaded through this devastation:

This is not the end.

Do not over prepare. I will direct you.

I will support you. Your soul will survive.

That is SO important.

Because the devastation left in the Philippines; the shock and world-bending loss of people and homes and security and normal really feels like the end when you’re in the middle of it.

And those little apocalypses do happen to us, too:

A fire destroys your home.  Your mother dies.  Your spouse announces the end of your marriage.  The doctor says “cancer.” 

The world is full of little apocalypses – those experiences of betrayal, death, destruction, fear and loss that never make the evening news but still change everything.

Sometimes it brings out the best – moments of grace and love and hope.

But there’s still a space when it feels like – when it really is – the end of the world.

That’s when Jesus’ words today are the words we need:

This is not the end.

Do not try to do it by yourself.

I will support you. Your soul will survive.

It can sometimes be hard to hear those words. 

Because if we don’t need them, they touch us lightly.

If we do need them, it’s because they are so hard to truly believe.

But they are gospel; good news. And we need to practice these truths in the times when the devastation seems far away if they will ever matter to us when we need them most.

Last weekend, I was at a diocesan “Thrive” meeting with Jan Bruesch, Hester Bury, and Carla Castle.  And the guest speaker at that event invited us to learn to dance.

Not what you might have expected at a congregational vitality seminar.  But we did.

And after a few minutes of practice at leading and following, the speaker invited half of us to close our eyes.

Close my eyes, and let someone else lead me through a crowded room, full of moving bodies??? (And unexpected floor-mounted electrical outlets?!)  You could feel heart rates and physical tension going up – just a bit.

But we tried it.

And as the exercises in leading and following got more complicated, more and more of us found ourselves closing our eyes even when we were invited to keep them open.

When you close your eyes, someone reported, it’s easier to follow.

You stop trying to manage where you’re going.  It’s immensely easier to let your body do the right thing, so much easier to focus.

And when you surrender that control, when you surrender to the lead, even walking around the room starts to really feel like dancing.

I never expected to be talking about surrender at a congregational vitality seminar.

I never expected to be talking about surrender with a professor of leadership from Northwestern University’s business school.

But there we stood, in an empty room in the diocesan center, hands raised in the air to speak of how helpful it had been to surrender control, to close our eyes, to trust our bodies and ourselves to casual acquaintances.

We stood and listened to a business professor talk about surrendering to call, to God, and the gospel lived and spoke among us.

And that, my friends, is how we practice for the end of the world.

You practice focus, and surrender.

Close your eyes, and listen again to what Jesus says about devastation today:
This is not the end.

Do not try to do it by yourself.

I will support you. Your soul will survive.

Keep your eyes closed, and remember what those little apocalypses are like.

A fire destroys your home.  Your spouse dies.  Your parents announce the end of their marriage.  The doctor says “cancer.” 

The hurricane comes, or the earthquake, or the plague, and the devastation is beyond anything you’d imagined.

Listen – with your eyes closed! – as Jesus says to you:

This is not the end.

Do not try to do it by yourself.

I will support you. Your soul will survive.

It’s hard to keep your eyes closed, isn’t it? Even sitting still in church.

But keep them closed if you can, for just a bit longer.

This is the tiniest leading edge of an Advent practice,

a form of prayer,

spiritual training camp.

Jesus calls us to practice this focus and surrender so that we are ready to hear, and trust, and follow when we need God most.

Try it this week. (Not when you’re driving!) 

But if you have a boring meeting, put the smartphone or the busywork down, close your eyes, and surrender to the conversation.

If you can, close your eyes, and let your child lead you around your house.

Turn off the TV, the radio, the computer, the stove; sit down and take the hand of someone you love. Close your eyes and surrender to the conversation, surrender to the relationship, with all its complexities, joy and pain.

Block off 30 solid minutes.  Turn off the distractions, shut your eyes, and pray: offer God your plans for the afternoon, for your career, dinner – whatever you happen to be thinking about – and surrender those plans to God, wholeheartedly, even if it’s only for thirty minutes.

Memorize the simple assurance that Jesus offers today:
This is not the end.

Do not try to do it by yourself.

I will support you. Your soul will survive.

Learn that by heart, and close your eyes, as often as you can, to listen to those words with your whole heart and mind and soul.

Because the apocalypse comes.

Sometimes all around you; sometimes far off on the evening news, sometimes in your own heart.

And Jesus invites us to practice now for the only thing that matters then:

This is not the end.

Do not try to do it by yourself.

I will support you. Your soul will survive.

Amen.

Whose Wife?

Luke 20: 27-38

This story isn’t about marriage. It isn’t really about death, either.

But it sure sounds like it’s about both of those.

The Sadducees come to Jesus with a deliberately ridiculous story:

A woman marries a man; he dies.  His six brothers, all taking seriously the biblical injunction to raise up children for their dead brother, each marry her, then die, in turn.

While you and I might stop to wonder about just what goes through the woman’s mind at these weddings – and what the youngest brothers were thinking by the time it was their turn! – the Sadducees have their own concern:

Whose wife will she be in the resurrection????? (Hmmm?)

The Sadducees want Jesus to say it’s ridiculous, and dismiss the resurrection because it’s inherently illogical, or impossible.  Or they want him to try to solve the problem until the logical impossibilities prove that same point.

But, as usual when you try to trap Jesus, he pops out somewhere unexpected: Marriage is a matter for this life, he says.  In the resurrection, there’s no marriage.

And while the Sadducees are trying to sort out that blanket statement, Jesus goes on to something that sounds quite different:

In the resurrection, no one dies.

(okay, yes, that’s what we hoped, here),

And, he says, resurrection is demonstrated when Moses encounters a burning bush, which introduces itself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

(huh? I remember that, but what’s that got to do with resurrection?)

So, Jesus concludes,  God is God not of the dead, but of the living, who are all alive to God.

You all followed that, right?

So you can explain it to me?

Yes, the logic in this story is a hot mess.  And Jesus’ explanation might sound even more confusing than that poor woman with seven dead husbands. But that confusion makes sense in its own way, I think, because nothing on earth – or beyond earth – is less logical than resurrection.  Nothing is less bound by predictable logic than heaven.  And the one thing that’s sure to get us into difficulties when we start to ponder life after death is trying to pin down the practical details.

I heard in the Bible there will be golden streets, harps and singing. But what if I don’t like singing? 

Will I see my loved ones? How, and when? 

Will we have the same body?   

Or will it be the body I always wanted to have?  With wings????

And it hardly stops there.

Which is why Jesus’ answer is probably the only answer, after all:

God is God of the living, not of the dead.

And if it sounds as though he’s saying there’s no such thing as life after death, well, it’s actually the opposite:

Life with God – right now, right here, and life eternal – life is a matter of relationships, not rules. Even, and maybe especially, if the rules in question have come from God.

Jesus points out that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive to God long generations, centuries, after their deaths. That’s relationship for you.

So relationship with God is eternal life.

Relationship trumps the rules of nature. 

And therefore, even more certainly, relationship trumps biblical or cultural rules about marriage – or nationality, or baptism or anything else you want to offer.

That’s not a promise of a comfortable heaven.  It’s not an explanation of resurrection.

Instead it’s a simple, fundamental truth: Relationship trumps rules. With God; now and always.

And, oh, how that matters.

On Monday I talked with my Aunt Ellen, as she recovered from the funeral of my Uncle Wayne and began the long, slow “now what?” stage of life and grief.  And I learned that she’d been haunted recently by this thing about no marriage in heaven.  We trust Jesus, she and I, but….!

Will Ellen and Wayne be married in heaven?

What would you have said?

If you said yes, your heart and your gut have given you the same actual answer that Jesus gave the Sadducees: Relationship is what matters most.

The “union [of two persons] in heart, body, and mind,” to quote the Book of Common Prayer, is the core of the sacrament of marriage.  It is, above all, a sacrament of relationship, though legislatures and courts and churches may argue about the rules until the day of resurrection itself.

Which is what Jesus meant, when he pointed out that there’s no marrying in heaven. In heaven, the tax benefits and legal distinctions – ancient or modern – of marriage are gone and irrelevant, but the union of hearts and souls – with God, and with one another – can’t be broken that easily by death.

Think about the relationships you know; the relationships you have:  marriages, family bonds, even friendships. Think about the depth and strength those relationships give us.  Think about your relationship with God.

Think about that, and I know you will share my own certainty that Ellen and Wayne are married in God’s eyes, and in their souls and hearts.  Now in spite of death, and in heaven and resurrection, and all else that might come to pass.

Because relationship trumps rules.

Every time – with God, with Wayne and Ellen, you and me.

It’s true right here and now, just as much as beyond death.  And it’s true for good and for ill. Rules won’t save us when a relationship goes sour, with God or with one another.  Which is a good reason to invest in our relationships. Because Jesus insists that relationships are the truth that gives us life.  Life right now, and life eternal.

So this story isn’t about death, or about marriage.

Not the Sadducees story or Ellen’s story, in the end, though both sure sound like they are.

This story, these stories, are about relationship. About heart and body and soul, and most of all, about the life-giving power of relationship with one another, and with God.