God in the Neighborhood

John 1:1-18

It takes Luke around two thousand words and Matthew around a thousand to tell the story that John tells today in two short phrases:

And the Word became flesh, and lived among us.

It’s one of the few times John’s story of Jesus seems concise, or simple, but those two phrases are also among the most powerful, everything-changing words in scripture or history:

Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν

The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.

Other translations say the Word, made flesh, pitched a tent among us, made a home with us, or moved into the neighborhood.

It’s bizarre – we’re supposed to notice how bizarre – that the almighty, all-creating, unlimitable God not only becomes flesh and blood, but moves into the neighborhood, moves in with intent to stay, to live the way we do, with the same sort of daily chores, and food, and headaches.

It’s bizarre. And it gets more bizarre when you and I, two millennia later, think about how our timeless, eternal God seems to choose one particular moment and place in the whole scope of human history to save all history.

It’s so bizarre that, over the years, any number of Christians haven’t believed it at all. There’s a lot of theological ink spilled over what’s called either “the Scandal of the Incarnation” – the absurdity of the idea that God who is all powerful would become limited, human, and mortal – or “the scandal of particularity” – the ridiculousness of the idea that God who has all eternity at God’s disposal would hang our salvation on one moment and person in history.

Lots of Christians over the centuries have have believed that this isn’t the way it worked after all. That it made more sense if God wasn’t really human – just looked human, dressed up as us to help open communications, but didn’t really suffer the liabilities of hunger and thirst and itches and sore hips and mortality and sweat and dirt. Or that our salvation doesn’t really have as much to do with Jesus of Nazareth being fully God, as with God’s general good intentions toward humanity.

But the Word became flesh, real flesh, the same flesh you feel when you pinch your arm, catalog your aches and pains, or smell at the end of a hard workout. The Word became flesh, and moved into our neighborhood. Close to us, just like us, the whole fullness of God, glory and power and grace and truth, living next door.

In spite of how bizarre it would seem if we hadn’t been telling each other this story for the last two thousand years, in spite of how bizarre it is still to imagine that God would move into our particular neighborhood – would pay property taxes, cram all the glory of God into a three-bedroom split-level or the MEND apartments right across our parking lot – still God absolutely moves into the neighborhood, bringing everything God is and has and could be into the suddenly crowded boundaries of our flesh and time and space.

This isn’t a vacation home for God. This isn’t camping during a mission trip. When the Word becomes flesh and makes a home here, God doesn’t leave anything of God’s self behind. God doesn’t leave behind enough of the grace and truth and light and glory and power to fit in to human limits. Instead the whole fullness of God becomes flesh just like yours and moves in among us.

And if God does that, if God moves wholly and completely into our neighborhood, our embodiedness, our sense of home and our personal space, then I think God means for us to do the same.

I think God wants us to bring the fullness of ourselves to God’s neighborhood: to bring every bit of your habits, my limits, our messiness, the bits of ourselves we don’t much like, into God’s neighborhood:

Into the holiest spaces we know.

Into our prayer, into our church.

Into our identity as brothers and sisters of Jesus, as children of God.

I suspect many of us have parts of ourselves, experiences or habits or history, that we’d like to leave behind when we come to God, or that we think we have to leave behind before we can be good enough to come to God.

But God brought all of God’s self into our limited flesh and our ordinary neighborhood,

and so we can – and must – bring our whole selves – our broken bits and saggy bits, ambition and dreams, flaws and failures and foolishness, our powerful potential, our self-doubt and occasional stupidity and shame – into God’s holiness, into our life as children of God.

This is the time of year when the news and culture focus on what we want to leave behind. We make resolutions about shedding excess weight, bad habits, debt or regrets. But this is also the time of year when we are reminded that God leaves nothing behind when becoming us, moving in among us, and God isn’t willing to wait for us to pack and discard our baggage before we come close to God.

God moves in among us before we’re ready, and expects the same of us: that we move close to God before we’re perfect and prepared.

What would it mean to you – in the light of God’s Incarnation, on the threshold of a new calendar year – what would it mean to you to bring everything of yourself right close into the presence of God?

To BE God’s own, God’s child, as close to God as Jesus, with every flaw and failure and secret hope and silly habit you’ve struggled to leave behind – not hidden from God or from you, simply part of you, close to all the fullness of God.

I suspect that our flaws and failures would hold us more gently, that our excess baggage would be lighter, that self-doubt and over-confidence would both become gentler on us and on our neighbors, that our potential and its risks would be less scary, that bad habits would be easier to break.

Because moving our whole selves, the fullness of our human limits and potential, into God’s glory, isn’t about reveling in our failures, or clinging to our sin, but about refusing ever to hide from God what God alone can redeem, and love, and transform.

That’s what God does for us, when God becomes flesh, and what we are called to do in our own flesh and God’s neighborhood, this time of year, and always.

John phrases this truth as simply as he can, so that we can hear, and believe, and act.

To all who received him, who committed their trust to him, he gave power to become children of God.

Because the Word became flesh and made a home among us, and we have seen his glory, the full glory of God, full of grace and truth. From God’s fullness we have received, grace upon grace. 

Powerless

Luke 2:1-20

It all starts with a new tax plan, or, in the more modern translations, with a census that possibly had something to do with tax planning. In either case, a government idea that causes disruption and inconvenience.

It’s an exercise in power, and in powerlessness, as Joseph and Mary pack up for a two or three day journey and an indefinite stay in a distant, crowded town.

Luke starts the story of Jesus’ birth with Jesus’ family, infesting them with angels and divine messages. Luke makes sure we know this coming child is special. Long before we get to Bethlehem, we’re excited about the miracle about to be delivered, about the good news springing to life in this little holy family.

But then  Luke interrupts the joyful build up to birth, and abruptly re-sets the scene: In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all should be registered.

An imperial decree comes down; secular history and politics, the government of Quirinius and the might of Augustus sweep over this family’s story. The wonder and momentousness of birth become almost incidental, a secondary aspect of the story of how Joseph and Mary are swept to Bethlehem by the overwhelming force of government decree. The child is born in passing, and tucked into a feed box because everything is too crowded and busy for his bed to matter.

Even when divine glory bursts back into the story – when the skies outside of town fill with angels and heavenly host, glory and peace – the only people who know about it are shepherds. 

In the days of Augustus or Quirinius shepherds are basically afterthought people. Outside the town, not in the loop, necessary to village life, yes, but not entirely trusted or accepted as part of “us.” People no one who matters is really going to listen to, no matter how enthusiastically they tell the amazing story of the angels and the Son of God sleeping in a manger.

I think Luke tells the story this way to make sure we can’t miss the INsignificance of this most significant, miraculous birth.

Because it matters to us – it mattered then and it matters now – it matters to us that God came into the world not in power and might, not ready to kick butt and take names, but as a purely powerless infant, blown around by the forces of worldly power, crowded in a corner, greeted by angels invisible to most, and particularly noticed only by those that no one else would notice.

It matters that God came to us in vulnerability instead of power, because that changes everything we know about God, and that is how God comes among us still.

I don’t know about you, but I have felt helpless a lot these last few months:
watching friends and family struggle with debilitating illnesses that can’t be cured, knowing that no words of mine can truly comfort in the face of sudden and unexpected death, the intermittent alarms that we’re a few rash words and another test or two away from nuclear devastation, waves of uncertainty and anxiety rushing in and out of our own government, hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires… more hurricanes and more fires.

My heart aches, and I hate – hate, hate, hate – feeling powerless. I pray:   constantly, fervently - and sometimes, I admit, hopelessly - for salvation: for healing and help, for the overturning of broken systems, and for miracles of God’s strength and power.

And we don’t get that. 

Instead, today, two thousand years ago, we get a baby. A baby tossed around the world by the whims of government, a baby who is the essence of helplessness and insignificance, in spite of the angels lighting up the sky.

We get a baby: God made vulnerable, helpless flesh, because God has tried for years, decades, millennia, to transform the hearts and lives of God’s people, of the world, with all the power and command at God’s disposal, and having tried everything else, God takes the drastic step of becoming utterly, openly, vulnerable to us. Helpless and dependent and – suddenly – so very very very close to us. As close as skin to skin.

When God turns away from might and persuasion, from trying to bring us all into righteousness and safety and peace with almighty power, it could look like giving up. It could look like nothing works. But instead, choosing vulnerability is the most radical, deeply-invested act of love. Because we can’t love without vulnerability.

Love means opening ourselves to someone else’s power to hurt me; the vulnerability of bleeding when a loved one is cut. We can’t love without depending on the other for some part of our happiness, health, and well being; we can’t be loved unless someone else is willing to depend on us in that same way.

And babies, helpless infants, with the vulnerability of their tiny bodies, trigger an answering vulnerability in us. Infants trigger that openness that creates the space for love like nothing else on earth.

And tonight – two thousand years ago and tonight – God chooses that vulnerability with us. 

I don’t want it to make sense that helplessness can save us, or heal us, 

or change the world.

I pray for power when I want to change things, not powerlessness – don’t you?

But when God – all powerful, almighty God –  chooses vulnerability among us, it’s just possible that that helplessness can change the world; that that infant vulnerability can turn our own vulnerability into strength.

When I am frustrated by my inability to help and heal in the face of tragedy or debilitating illness, knowing the vulnerability God chose helps me stay in the helplessness, stay in the discomfort as long as it takes to be there so a friend or loved one is not alone.

And the helpless baby Jesus keeps my friends close to me when there is nothing they can do to help, and makes life-giving strength out of simple presence.

When I am anxious and afraid, feeling unable to protect myself and those I love from a world with nukes and fires and hurricanes, and jerks who drive cars onto sidewalks or shoot up concerts and churches, God the helpless infant comes among us with radical trust.  Trust in us, messed up as we may seem.

God comes with a baby’s trust: trust I can’t help but respond to with my own trust: trust in God, and in you, that we will get through this together, even if we get hurt.

Then I feel able to act, again. To do the little things I can do, whether or not they will be enough, and through those little actions, change the world just that much for the better.

When I feel cut off from hope by news and politics, the baby surrounded by shepherds – by outsiders – reminds me that we don’t see miracles when we’re in the center of things, confident in our own power and place. No, we have to know, to feel, our own powerlessness to see and receive impossible gifts we could never achieve for ourselves. 

And when we do perceive miracles, hope sparks again: hope that gives life, and fuels love.

This Christmas, tonight, two thousand years ago, God answers our prayers not with power, but with vulnerability, because that is the the greatest act of love.

And love is how we are saved, one heart at a time, one Christmas at a time, until God’s vulnerable love for us fills the world with trust, and hope, and miracles.

Season of Expectation

John 1:6-8, 19-28

John is not the Messiah.

John is not Elijah; he is not the prophet.; he is not the light. Almost everything we hear and know today about John is about what – or who – he is not.

John enters the story of Jesus surrounded by waves of expectation, and he denies every one of them: Expectations that the messenger of God would be the long-awaited prophet; expectations that Elijah would return; expectations that the Messiah, the anointed one, would be a political figure, a recognizable religious figure…. expectations, most of all, that God – and the messenger of God – would make sense, and fit the world as we understand it.

John isn’t getting any of this Major Religious Figure stuff right. But when all that expectation is cleared away, when he knows and we know what he is not, then what he is becomes crystal clear:

He’s a witness. 

His purpose is to testify, to be the one sent from God to bear witness to the light.

He’s here to tell us the story we can’t hear without him, to point to the one among us whom we don’t yet see, to do nothing more or less than point to the light, with all that he is, until we see it too.

John comes – at least one Sunday morning a year in church, and unexpectedly at other times in our lives – to bust up our expectations, because our expectations can keep us from seeing what God is actually doing: bringing salvation in apparent weakness rather than strength, making peace through upheaval and discomfort, or giving life in ways that feel like death.

We’re deep in the season of expectations now, in mid-December. We know the signs of the coming of Christ, the signs of the coming of God, that have become familiar, even predictable: Lighted candles, words from the prophets, early darkness, lighted houses, a season of giving, love and joy flowing through the mailbox as Christmas cards, special foods, angel wings in the parish hall, music on the radio….

We know all these as signs that God is coming, we know how these signs point to the miracle of the baby in the manger. We know what to expect of God, at Christmas. And we know what’s expected of us, and what we expect of ourselves to make this “the most wonderful time of the year,” or to make way for the coming of awe and wonder.

Expectations of hosting, baking, performing, applauding, giving, receiving, shopping, praying…
We are surrounded by the expectation of joy, and kindness, and smiles and love. 

Those expectations can sometimes lift your heart when there’s no particular reason for happiness, make you stronger and more loving than you think you can be. Or they can tear at your heart if you’re grieving or lonely or in pain, or weigh on your heart if you’re just busy, or not in the mood, and can’t meet that expectation of easy hope and celebration.

And maybe we’re not supposed to. After all, God is all about defying our expectations. Maybe it’s time - in this Advent, expectant season - to defy or let go of those expectations all over again.

Many of you know the Charlie Brown Christmas story, and you’ll remember that from the very beginning of the story, Charlie has a problem with Christmas expectations.

“There must be something wrong with me, Linus,” he says. “Christmas is coming but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”  

Christmas isn’t meeting Charlie’s expectations; and it seems Charlie isn’t meeting Christmas’s expectations – or his own. He’s not getting cards; he can’t discover the meaning of Christmas, and he really can’t manage to direct the Christmas play, after Lucy talks him into trying.

And after failing at all those expectations, his friends send him out to get their Christmas tree - perhaps here’s one expectation he can meet. One more opportunity to make the story work, to meet the expectations of the season.

Go get a beautiful one, they tell him: aluminum, shiny, strong, festive…maybe pink. Let’s get a tree that can’t fail, they imply.

And then in the Christmas tree lot, surrounded by big, beautiful, perfect and pink trees – the kind he was sent to get – Charlie finally has a moment of clarity. He stands in front of a weedy, bare, embarrassingly small and sorry tree, and he knows this is the right tree.

So he brings it back to his friends, disappointing all their expectations again. And he tells them about the beauty and rightness of the tree, of how this is the tree they are looking for, to complete the Christmas play, the Christmas spirit.

And they don’t see it.

But Charlie – pushed and pulled by unmet expectations – manages to hang on to his truth, to keep seeing and proclaiming the beauty and purpose of his weedy little tree, even when he has to admit he can’t make it work on his own, and the tree seems to break.

But then - finally - the other kids come along, and take a chance that Charlie has been right. They decorate the tree, and suddenly it is revealed to Charlie, and to the audience, to the world, in all its beauty. Suddenly the tree is revealed, whole and glorious, as the window, the doorway to the true meaning of Christmas, to the truth.

When we meet John today, in the story of Jesus, he knows what he is not. Not the Messiah, or Elijah, or the light itself. And because he knows what he is not, John knows who he is: a witness, one sent by God to show the light.

When we meet Charlie Brown in his Christmas story, he spends a lot time trying to be what he’s not: in the Christmas spirit, the director of a play, popular with his friends, in the know about Christmas…

But eventually, he stops trying to be all those things he’s not, and becomes who and what he actually is: a witness. The one who sees and proclaims the beauty and purpose of the tree. He sees what others cannot see, and spends the second half of the show testifying, failing everyone’s expectations still, but witnessing to the beauty, until finally, with all that expectation broken down, all the other kids see it too, and seeing it, reveal it to the world.

This Advent, this December, this season of expectation, let’s be Charlie.

Let’s be John.

Let’s let go of what we are not – of all the expectations that keep us from being who we are, and from seeing what God is doing now.  Let’s be witnesses for the beauty that isn’t being seen, the truth already among us that hasn’t yet been spoken, the love that lives among us unnoticed.

Be John.

Be Charlie.

Until the glory of the Lord is revealed to all.

Making Advent

Isaiah 64:1-9 , Mark 13:24-37

Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…to make your name known…so that the nations might tremble at your presence!

Have you ever felt that strongly about the coming of God?

I suspect you have, whether you’re thinking about it right now or not. Longing – hoping – waiting – praying for the coming of God, for the moment when all wrongs are righted, everything is made clear, the bad guys get what’s coming to them and the good get their reward – has been a lifelong habit of God’s people for not just generations, but millennia. 2500 years ago, Isaiah was neither the first nor the last of God’s people and prophets to express this powerful longing for the coming of God.

The ultimate coming of God, the big and final one, is not likely to be easy or quiet. Isaiah talks of wildfires and quaking mountains. Jesus tells his disciples about the falling of the stars and the end of sunlight – the collapse of eternal and life-giving universal constants.

But still, we’re supposed to want this. To long for it, as the prophets and disciples did.

And in fact, most of us probably do want this, whether we think about it this way or not. 

Does your heart yearn for a time without wars around the globe; without the threat of violence breaking out nearer to home?
Do you wish – casually or fervently – that we weren’t divided by the evening news, religious differences, economic status, or the strange imaginary lines we call race?

Do you want to love your unlovable neighbor,

want to know that you’re doing what’s right, without a daily struggle of compromise and discomfort,

want final proof that the bad guys don’t win?

Then yes, you – like the rest of God’s people through the long centuries – are waiting, hoping, longing for the coming of God.

And maybe you – like me – have given up any practical expectation that it’s coming in your lifetime. Maybe heaven is like that, we think, but here…? Next month, this week, even a decade or two – seems wildly unrealistic. It’s not something you expect to have to plan Christmas dinner around, is it?

And yet Jesus said it’s happening soon. So soon that we have to stay awake for it. (I can barely stay awake for the end of a night game). It’s coming any minute, but no one – not even Jesus – can say when.

It’s exhausting to try to wait like that. To stay constantly fully alert when we don’t know when - or quite what  - we’re waiting for. Human bodies aren’t built to maintain that fever pitch of anticipation that has us pacing at the door, or glues your nose to the window, eager to spot the first sign before anyone else.

But we’re supposed to. Still, we’re supposed to – all these years and centuries after Jesus said that. And waiting at that pitch all the time can turn it into anxious habit that dulls our awareness instead of keeping us alert. 

So instead, we Advent.

We put this season on our calendars, three or four weeks as the days get shorter every fall. We create a season to wake ourselves up to the longing within us, the longing and waiting of the earth itself, for the coming of God.

Advent is our way of bending God’s time to our time – of borrowing from eternity those moments right before God comes, when the air crackles and sparkles with anticipation, to wake us up in the dull here and now. Every year, we borrow that  expectancy from some unpredictable place in God’s calendar to a predictable place in our annual calendar, so that we can train our hearts in eager patience and keep them ready for that moment when God at last bends our time to God’s time in that final, disturbing, glorious, arrival.

In the church, we practice this bending of time by the scripture we read – scripture that challenges us to expect the King of Kings when we see the familiar baby in the stable; scripture that’s meant to stir up the quiet, rarely-conscious longings within us. We practice expectation by lighting candles one by one on a wreath that promises completion within a few short weeks. We practice expectancy in prayer and song.

And we do all this, of course, while the world outside our doors is practicing an expectancy of another sort; one filled with shopping and baking and chores and travel and the universally known deadline of December 25.

Every year I’m torn. Every year my December sense of anticipation is caught between the anxious rushing and deadline responsibility and sugary delight of the Christmas shopping season, and the lively patience, radical openness, humility and peace of Advent waiting, Advent expectation.  I can’t seem to settle to one or the other.

So every year, I’m grateful when someone, somewhere, reminds me: Even though it’s true that the secular Christmas rush can obliterate Advent, it doesn’t have to. In fact, it can nourish Advent in us.

The December assumption of universal generosity and love is just what the world needs to practice so that we’re ready for the absolute presence of God. Our job - as Advent people - is to immerse our hearts in that generosity even when the lines are long and the traffic is bad. Our job is to hold on to, to demonstrate and share, the traditions and choices that help create eager patience, open-hearted love, humility and peace in our own spirits in the midst of the busy world around us.

I find choosing Christmas gifts overwhelming with both anxiety and delight. I love to get it right - and I really really want to get it right (without, of course, overspending my budget), and so… without knowing it, I start to listen differently. I pay close attention to what I know about people’s delights and passions and fears and hopes. And I think Jesus would love it if I did that year-round – if we all did that daily. That attention to the other is the heart of God – and this is a time of year when the secular world teaches us to practice it.

Maybe you love to bake, or worry about baking at this time of year. The delicate timing or finicky precision of traditional cookies could be a chance to immerse yourself in expectancy and gentleness. 

If you are the person who loves - or worries about - Christmas cards this time of year, that’s an opportunity to get wrapped up in the web of relationship and connection that Jesus loves. An opportunity, in other words, to practice love, practice receiving as well as giving it – right in the midst of the hunt for addresses and the calculation of postal deadlines.

If you love decorating, or if decorating makes you anxious, maybe God is helping you to see the signals of eternity in the scent and sight of pine – or in the endless knot the tree lights got tangled into! Maybe God is helping you to notice the ways we put hope, generosity, and love into shapes and things, and place them around our homes to create an atmosphere of patience and expectancy that nourishes the soul.

This year, let’s let the Christmas rush remind us of our deeper longing for the coming of God - not on December 25, but for always, and in all ways. Let’s have Advent even more at home, at work, in the mall and the grocery than in church; let’s immerse ourselves in the bending of God’s time to our time, so that we are ready not just for the wonder of the baby in the stable, but for the sudden eruption of God in all power and glory into our ordinary time, and the waking of our hearts for eternity.