Falling in love

Luke 2:1-20

I’ve seen a lot of birth announcements on Facebook recently.

In the old days – you know, a decade or two ago – when the baby was born you called people, using the telephone.  Grandparents, siblings, dear friends: the new baby’s family circle, got the call, and printed announcements or word of mouth took over from there. 

Today, within hours of the baby’s birth, family, dear friends, and perhaps hundreds of near strangers are informed of the baby’s arrival, stats, name, and first photos online.  An extraordinary number of unrelated people now share that intimate access to the birth day, including folks you didn’t even eat lunch with in high school. 

But it’s oddly similar to that moment two thousand years ago when the sky around Bethlehem suddenly rang with the angelic birth announcement.

To an unrelated group of shepherds minding their own business, the sudden and prodigal news of a baby’s birth, stats, name and general appearance were even less expected than a former colleague’s hospital photos. 

But the joy was real, and in this case the news was meant precisely for the hundreds, then millions of near-strangers who would eventually learn the baby’s story.

That’s the thing about Christmas.  The thing that’s oddly contemporary in a wireless, internet-connected world.  The news is for EVERYONE.  

This miracle of God, born human, living among us, is remarkably public and undiscriminating.

It’s because that baby, born in a stable, announced by angels, is our all-access pass to God.  Near-strangers, the ones who don’t even appear on the Christmas card list, that’s who gets intimate access to God, tonight.

In Luke’s story and in Matthew’s, the people who come to see this baby, to witness and celebrate the birth, are precisely the people we would never imagine in our own family nativity stories.

There are shepherds – the first century Palestinian equivalent of day laborers, widely regarded as unreliable and socially marginal. 

And there are magi. Foreigners.  They hang out with governors and kings (also not the folks who usually come to visit the baby in the hospital) but they probably had accents and funny clothes.

That scene around the manger is full of people who don’t belong there: the infant asleep in a feed trough, a mother and father far from home.  Animals.  Laborers.  Foreigners.  

That picture is God’s announcement to us that in Jesus, everything changes.  This infant is God’s gift to us of unrestricted welcome and access.

God, born human, is wide open to the unlikely, to those who seem undeserving, to strangers, to you and me, reaching out our hands to hold a baby.

For the last couple of months, Brian and Ruth Ann Pfohl brought their foster baby Easton to church, and I watched as he passed from arm to arm, cradled by people he’d barely met.  Like the infant Jesus, Easton was on loan to us, and like Jesus his love and nurture came from strangers, adoptive parents, and unexpected friends. 

Like the infant Jesus, Easton simply let us fall in love.

Other parents of this congregation have told me about watching their child pass from arm to arm, in worship and at coffee hour, held and loved by friends and near-strangers in a mutual and unplanned act of trust.

Holding a baby is an act of radical intimacy. 

And here, especially tonight, you don’t have to be a parent to hold the baby, to nurture growth and love with the ordinary physical support of your arms and body. 

You don’t have to be a family member, or even a close friend, to fall in love, to have grace and compassion kindled in your heart by the weight of an infant in your arms.

God is born – in an unlocked, temporary stable, open to all and sundry – so that you and I can never lose that intimate, nurturing, radical access to God. God is born an ordinary, extraordinary, human infant so that you and I, strangers to the family but beloved of God, can fall in love tonight. 

And over and over again.

The Christmas miracle of birth and angel news is a miracle of invitation.  You and I are invited to family intimacy with God, tonight and forever.

Of course, intimacy isn’t easy.

Once they get inside our hearts, babies grow and change and take us to unexpected places, demanding that our hearts grow with them.   It’s the same with anyone we relate to in love.  Intimacy erodes our defenses against grace and joy as well as grief and pain. 

So vulnerability is part of Christmas.  

At this season our dependence on one another for hope and happiness is more obvious than usual – around the table, under the tree, in a mall or in a candlelit church – when the world insists on brightness and cheer.

And that, too, is why God is an infant, tonight, surrounded by strangers.   A baby’s fragile body depends on the constant support of others for nourishment, cleanness, and even warmth, and God invites us to offer that care. 

Tonight, God the baby is vulnerable to us, open to the pain and the delights of human relationship.  From this time forward, every human hope and pain, every fear and every joy, is felt by God.

Once we fall in love with a baby, we belong to that baby for life.  

Through sleepless nights, new discoveries, bruised knees and hearts, abundant growth, the care and joy never end.

And that, too, is why God is born in a stable, announced with exuberant joy to strangers in the field, and visited by foreigners.  God the infant invites us to open our arms because tonight no one, no one at all, is left out of that invitation, that love, that belonging, because it doesn’t end in that stable. 

This miracle is meant to go on and on.

Day in and day out, the Christmas miracle of birth and love keeps hold of us.

Tonight, there is this infant, God made flesh, so that the unlikely, those who seem undeserving, strangers -- you and I -- can fall in love with God.

Because once we fall in love, the miracle claims our days and nights, our hearts and hopes,

and filled and surrounded by love, we belong to God for always.

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve 2010 

Listen to the Sauerkraut

Deuteronomy 26:1-11

Every Thanksgiving meal is a story.

Or lots of stories.

On the Thanksgiving table of my childhood there was always a dish of sauerkraut.
It was Silver Fleece canned sauerkraut, and it wasn’t the most delicious thing on the table – at least to my taste! – but it was there every year.
That particular sauerkraut was there because my grandmother’s mother’s family had come from Germany. And that family had brought to their new American Thanksgiving table a piece of who they were, and where they had come from, every year until, in our generation, it simply wouldn’t have been Thanksgiving without that particular fragrant dish of pickled cabbage.

There are other stories at other tables.
Stories about cranberry sauce almost left on the kitchen counter in another state, and rescued at great peril of rush hour traffic. Stories about recipes, passed from mother, to daughter, to son; stories disastrous dishes of Thanksgivings past, and about why it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without that particular dish.

Funny stories, loving stories, a few sad stories. Stories that shape our lives, and reflect our relationships.

Close your eyes for a minute, and see the dinner table in your imagination.
Where do those foods come from? Why are they right for this meal? Who is in the stories that sit on your table today?

Of course, there are probably some things on your table because of “Tradition” and not because of someone specific, and those dishes tell a community story.
A story that starts with the one we learned in elementary school: about hungry, hard-working Pilgrims and generous Indians making friends and making peace over a harvest feast.
That story goes on, integrating stories of new immigrants. Hungry Poles, or Irish, or Italians, and a new generation of “natives” to teach the harvest feast. Hard working Chinese, and Mexicans, and a new kind of “Indians,” and another new generation of natives to pass the tradition on. And each new generation makes the story its own.

Like all the stories on our tables, the national story of Thanksgiving is a story about who we are, and where we come from.
And it’s a story about coming home.

So is the story that Moses teaches the people of Israel to tell on a similar occasion. When you bring your harvest to the altar, you tell a story:
A wandering Aramean was my ancestor….we went to Egypt as a stranger, and became many; we were oppressed, and cried for relief; God brought us out of Egypt into an abundant land.
And that’s where this food came from.

These stories are our salvation history:
the story of who we are as the story of whose we are, and why.
On days like today, we’re more aware than usual that we belong to our ancestors, for better or worse. We belong to what happened to our families. And we belong to God, who brings us home.
And that’s where this food has come from.

The stories aren’t usually perfect. To claim a shiftless Aramean as your father wasn’t something to be especially proud of, and it is hard to remember slavery, even – or especially – after you’ve been set free.

But the messy bits – from turkey disasters to broken relationships to slavery – all the sins and the griefs belong in our stories, along with the healing and joy.
The messy bits, just like the joyful bits, are our salvation story, because they are who and where we were when God called us to be God’s own. Even the messy bits that happen every year, and get cleaned up at every Thanksgiving meal.

When we hear the stories – at the altar or on the table – and remember who and whose we are, and why: That’s what makes it a holy meal.

That’s what we do here this morning. We gather around a table, and tell the story of our salvation to make holy the meal we share, and to make holy the community that shares it.

Just like it’s what we do later today: gather, tell, and eat. And eat some more.

So listen to the prayers,
and listen to the sauerkraut.
Listen to the turkey, and the yams (or the sweet potatoes) the dressing (or the stuffing), and all the other dishes on the table.

Listen for the stories, sad or funny, loudly repeated or quietly heard,
the stories that remind us of how we belong to our family, and our community, and our God.
About who we are, and whose we are,
and about coming home.

Listen especially today, but not only today
and when you hear each story, say Thank You.

Thank you.
Amen.

Living in The End

Isaiah 65:17-25,  2 Thessalonians 3:6-13, Luke 21:5-19

There’s just something about the end of the world that makes it come up over and over again. Every summer, it seems, there’s at least one “blockbuster” end-of-the world disaster movie.  And every November, in the church’s cycle of scripture, there’s at least one end-of-the-world gospel story. Like, for example, today.  It’s one the special-effects crews would have a field day with.

The scene starts with the beauty and marvel of the Temple in Jerusalem – wonderful workmanship, and gorgeous decoration.  But swiftly the emphasis shifts to destruction and calamity: not a stone of the building will be left on another; earthquakes and wars and insurrections and lawlessness and….  well, you’ve probably seen one of those movies.

Last week, Frank Samela called me to announce that certain parts of our very own buildings were auditioning for disaster: crumbling concrete, and a part of the rectory foundation ready for stone to slip from on top of stone.

Of course, the first question I asked him was, “When will this be?  Should I be packing up the office?”

And Frank explained: Teams of workmen spent this last week tuckpointing at the rectory and repairing concrete in our driveway and stairs.  (Yes, it is safe for you to move normally around the building)

When I asked, Frank didn’t tell me when; he told me what we were going to do about it.

And, in that, he’s more like Jesus than he probably realizes.

Everyone’s natural reaction to hearing Jesus announce that the Temple will be torn stone from stone is to ask When??

And Jesus never answers when.  Instead, he describes what to do: how we are to respond to God, no matter when:

Do not follow false teachers.

Do not be terrified.

Make up your minds to testify to God, in the midst of disaster. 

But don’t prepare your testimony in advance, because it is Jesus who will show you what to say.

Waiting for the end is not just for pessimists with a basement full of canned goods.  It's the everyday task of Christian living.  And there are better and worse ways to do it - we heard today Paul's worries about the Thessalonians' method of waiting: apparently another teacher has told them that in a world near the end, they should party like it's 1999.  So he reminds them of the way Jesus teaches us to live:

Be faithful.

Be confident.

Above all be witnesses for God and the gospel, not by eloquence, but by listening for Christ.

Now, if you’re like most of the people I’ve been talking to lately, you don’t really have time for the world to end this November.

We’re busy.

But over the last couple thousand years of Christian life, it’s become clear that the end of the world comes in more than one way.

There are little apocalypses that surround us now.

Cancer.  Job loss. Broken relationships in our families. Wars and earthquakes. Little apocalypses that end not the earth, but certainly life as we know it.  Challenges that become disasters if they lead us to forget either who we are, or whose we are.

And neither Jesus, nor the economic pundits, nor the doctors, nor anyone else can tell us when they’ll come. But Jesus does, always, tell us what to do, and how to respond.

Be faithful.

Be confident in God.

and be ready to be witnesses for Christ.

Jesus doesn’t promise us the resources to survive unscathed,

but instead the resources to proclaim the gospel, to shine with God’s good news in the midst of the world’s biggest mess.

And whether the end of the world comes all at once, or in local apocalypses, over and over, you and I are who God chooses to testify to God’s good news.

I have been listening lately to the words of the gospel that Jesus has given to this particular community – to Calvary, in the middle of all the little apocalypses of illness and loss – and this is what I have heard:

In the heart of our identity is the good news of God’s compassion. 

We are never more Calvary than when we are feeding and visiting one another in times of struggle. 

Never more ourselves than when we pour out compassion in the form of mosquito nets to combat malaria, or school uniforms to help lift girls and boys out of chronic poverty.

Those actions are what Jesus gives us to say to a world that loses hope.

And God has given us two very powerful words that come up over and over again at Calvary: Thank you.

I hear Thanks-Giving in Vestry meetings, ordinary conversations, and Sunday School classes.  Thanks to one another, and thanks to God for the abundance of God’s gifts, and for hearing our prayer. In fact, we’re building our budget for next year not on “here’s what we need,” but on “thank you very much!”

Those two words are what Jesus gives us to say to a world driven by fear and need.

And, at Calvary, we also know something about joy.

In prayer and in scripture, we are reminded that the time of God’s coming in final judgment is not just about earthquakes and disaster.  It is also about healing and peace.

We are reminded of that today in the vision of the prophet Isaiah: God’s promise to create earth and heaven new, to vanish the burdens of error and violence and grief and greed that have scarred our relationships with God, with one another, and with all creation, and to renew God’s people in health and blessing, and especially joy.

When I hear that vision – even more than when I hear about earthquakes and crumbling stones – I can’t help but ask “when?”

How soon, God, will that new creation come?

But the answer is the same: not a timetable, but a guide.

Be faithful.

Be confident in God.

And above all, be ready to be a witness for God’s good news.

In the new creation, the token of that good news is our joy. 

The radiant joy that God has in us shines through us, as God’s invitation to all the world.

In world ending disaster, in little, life-changing apocalypses, and in paradise, God calls on us as witnesses:  Faithful, confident, and above all, hearing and sharing the good news that Jesus gives us, radiating joy.

We practice that here at Calvary, so that whenever the end of the world comes, in disaster or in new creation, we are already doing what God calls us to do.

God’s witnesses, 

by compassion, and gratitude, and joy;

now, and whenever.  

Amen.