True Light

 John 1:1-18

A week or two ago, I picked up the last string of white Christmas lights on the shelf at Target, and spent an hour or so rigging a way to hang them in my street-facing window downstairs. 

I’ve never been especially enthusiastic about hanging Christmas lights before, but this year I really felt the need to put up lights that other people could see; a need to reach out in the dark evenings and mornings with a little light of seasonal cheer.

And judging by the scarcity of holiday lights available online and in stores, I’m not the only one.

The light shines in the darkness, John says, and the darkness did not overcome it.

That’s the promise of Christmas, that the light of God can come into any dark place, and cannot be extinguished. 

Not just any light, though. The “true light”. The light that gives life.

You and I, here at the end of 2020, probably have a very different relationship with light and darkness than John did. 

A different experience of darkness and light than John’s first hearers, or most of humanity for 1500 years or so after John wrote those words.

Because we live in a world of artificial light, and have to go far out of our way to find serious darkness – wilderness camping, mostly. Occasionally, though, we might find ourselves in a place where the stars are extraordinarily visible, but can’t help you place your feet, or tell if the person next to you has moved. A place and time where the darkness feels deep, textured, and strong.

Instead, you and I are immersed, most of our days and nights, in a flood of artificial light: streetlights, house lights, TV and phone and computer screens. We live in a world where, most of the time, natural darkness can’t even gain a foothold and light seems to be at our beck and call. 
There’s so much light it’s actually hard to see, sometimes. 

The power of light and darkness is different for us now, but we can still understand the one thing about darkness that’s most important to John. 

It’s not that darkness by itself is bad. Or that light itself is good.

It’s just that, in the darkness, without light, you can’t see.
And for John, seeing is believing.

Now, John doesn’t care whether we “see” with bifocals on our nose, or braille on our fingertips, or average eyeballs.  What John cares about is that we have the direct experience of God that Jesus brings, the experience of our “eyes being opened”, of the reality of God being revealed directly to our senses.

John uses “seeing” and “sight” to describe that experience of the closeness, the realness of God, which transforms our sense of the world around us, so that we perceive the glory of God here and now, well up with living water, and notice miracles and love in what used to be ordinary.

That closeness of Jesus in our senses transforms our sense of self so that we can never again experience ourselves as alone, or disconnected, but rather as one with each other, part of God’s heart.

“Seeing” God among us, in us, moving into our neighborhood, is believing: living a life that is full of the joy, forgiveness, service, love, and abiding peace that Jesus lived and shared.

That’s what John means, that the light came to give us power to become children of God. That experiencing God in the midst of this world transforms us so that our connection to God can never be broken, cut, or shaken.

That’s why God comes into the world.
The baby comes, the fully human Jesus comes, to put a face on God, make it easier for us to imagine the realness, the concrete presence of God.  The eternal light comes, the true light, to help us “see”: to show all of our senses the evidence of God at work in the world.

To show us love and miracles in Christmas gifts and masks and vaccines and lights in the window. To show us the best of ourselves and of our co-workers, family, neighbors, and even politicians, in spite of all the frustrations and errors and irritations and general sins of everyday life.  To show us joy when the world around us insists on anxiety; trust when the world shouts doubt; possibilities and power when the world insists on zero-sum answers.

The noisy light we live with here and now can obscure the true light just as much as darkness can.

But just like darkness, artificial or noisy light cannot overcome the true light.

Instead, the true light gives life; life abundant, vibrant, and unstoppable, in the midst of strong darkness or bright noise.

In a Zoom meeting, where the artificial light shows the shadows under your eyes or the mess on your desk, the true light shows the life-giving human connection that can be built in spite of distance and distraction.

When stress or fear, conflict or pain, darken our lives, the true light keeps shining love into us, until we perceive it and can respond. 

When the noisy light of news and entertainment, of alerts and stories, show a world of urgency and competition, the true light shows the solid foundation of trust and peace that God builds for us in the midst of it all.

When boredom, indifference, and distraction close our eyes to both human need and human capability, the true light keeps showing us compassion and wonder, strength and hope, woven into every human life, and every human question.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. … And to all who received him, he gave power to become children of God…who believed in his name.

Not Normal

Luke 2:1-20

It’s not the same, is it?
Christmas church at a distance is just…odd.

Family isn’t gathered as usual, or we’re gathered with lots of new precautions and stresses. We’re missing folks around the table and tree – and some of us are actually seeing more family on Zoom than we would with usual holiday travel.
Parties, shopping, decorating, caroling are all changed because of job losses and social distancing. The Christmas rituals of celebration and love are just different this year. 

For some of us, it just doesn’t quite feel like Christmas. 

For some of us, it’s actually better this way. 

Either way, we don’t need to pretend it’s the same.

Because disruptions, change, difference, and the disorientation that comes from all of that, is exactly where Christmas starts.

Nothing was usual in Bethlehem, after all, in that particular season and year we remember today.

They weren’t in the middle of a pandemic, staying home and separate out of care for one another. They had a global tax census forcing people to leave home, travel across the country, and crowd together where there’s not enough room. Mary and Joseph are out of their element, in a makeshift guestroom – maybe with more extended family around them than ever before – and now holding a brand-new infant: an adorable, unpredictable bundle of disruption and change. 

Everything’s just as different in first-century Bethlehem as it is in twenty-twenty New Jersey. Nobody’s ready for what’s happening, we’re all off balance, and – right in the middle of that – God shows up!  In a manger.

I wonder if that detail about the manger – which Luke repeats three times in telling the story of Jesus’ birth – is meant to be a signal about the disruption, the change, the not-the-way-it’s-supposed-to-be-ness of God’s coming.  Putting a baby in a feed box draws our attention to just how not-like-we-planned it this whole arrival is.

And if that’s the case, then everything that is wrong with Christmas this year is actually right.

Maybe we’re really not supposed to be prepared for how God really comes.

Maybe things aren’t supposed to be “normal’.

That’s great news. Let’s be honest, we’re never going to be really prepared for the coming of God, no matter how predictable things are.  So thank God we don’t have to “get back to normal” to receive and share all the blessings of Christmas; to experience the peace or joy or hope or love we long for.

Maybe the disruption of our habits, our homes, our workdays, our relationships is something that creates a perfect space for God to be born, to become one with us, to be with us.  

I don’t think that God needs us off-balance and uncomfortable to get in to our lives. I do think that when things change, when traditions aren’t the same, it gets our attention and helps us notice God at work. So we’re more ready to see and feel God’s real, physical presence – in a manger of all places! (Or whatever our 2020 version of ridiculous substitute for a baby bed or a heavenly throne would be.)

So, today, as we remember the story of God slipping into a feed box in a crowded hill town, changing everything, look around at your life. Look around your Christmas that isn’t what you’re used to, the things you’re not prepared for, and think about how that might be showing you where God is turning up in your life; or what God is up to, here and now.

After all, in this whole year of worshipping together in so many different places – out of sync with the people who’d ordinarily be in the next pew – new spaces have become sacred, time has become holy in new ways.

Bible study and classes, prayer and worship, visits and friendships are traveling through the electrons and data-packets of the internet this year, as Emmanuel, God-with-us, moves into our disrupted spaces and lives. Required registration has made worship more intentional for some; live-streaming has made it more serendipitous for others. 

This building has become a place to launch prayer into the world, instead of a destination for prayer. 

God-with-us is establishing our homes, our neighborhoods, and even the wilderness of the internet as holy and sacred, filled with power and love and the complete presence of God.

Where else has God become noticeable in the disruptions in your life?

I’ve noticed that the disruptions of our face-to-face life have made phone calls – ordinary, just-voice phone calls – special, holy, and life-giving for me this year. There’s something sacred, a presence of God, in recognizing a voice, seeing you with my ears, whether we are talking about grief or joy or money or the weather.

The changes and disruptions of this year have reconnected many of us to God’s creation. People take up birdwatching from an isolated room; others get rooted in the earth by digging into our gardens. Many of us have been tuning our lives to the demands of walks and kibble and playtime as animal shelters empty and God’s creatures move into more of our homes. 

Disruptive protests have reminded us to notice the face of God in the black lives cut short by violence and neglect. Those disruptions have prompted conversations in boardrooms and legislatures and kitchens and driveways about we can use changes in our habits and assumptions, our brands and behavior and budgets, to help free ourselves and others from a history of oppression and separation.

The economic challenges of the pandemic have revealed the breadth and depth of generosity in this congregation.  Long-distance friendships are getting closer when physical connections are interrupted. The disruption of our offices and schools has made fuzzy slippers into reasonable work wear (okay, that one’s a stretch for the presence of God, but it’s a blessing anyway!)

We do need to grieve what we have lost – people who have died, illnesses that break our hearts, jobs needed that have vanished, work we loved that has changed, opportunities we can’t claim again.  But where the change is painful, when the disruption hurts, where we grieve: that’s exactly – exactly – where Christmas comes most profoundly, where Christmas matters most.

Not in the normal, the predictable, the safe, the well-planned times and places of our lives, but in the manger, in the ways we never would have done this before.

Into the middle of everything not-normal, Luke tells us, comes the entire, all-powerful, presence of God, lying in a feed box, bringing healing into the brokenness, love into the cracks, peace into the changes. 

Love takes advantage of the disruptions, the change, the unpredictability, to show up in places we weren’t looking for love.  Love, lying in a feed box, comes in and settles down with our discomfort; makes a home in our imbalance and impatience; moves in to the mess we’re mixed up in, and embraces it all. 

And that’s how the joy, the peace, the hope of Christmas come to us. Not from perfect timing, polished rituals, unbreakable traditions. 

Joy bursts upon us from love welling up in the mess. 

Peace takes hold of our hearts from love rolling with all the change. 

Hope grows from love that takes up our tired frustration or lonely grief and says: yes, this is real, but this is not the end, this is not all, there is so much more. 

There are angels singing, even now.

The miracle of Christmas doesn’t come in spite of the fact that there’s no crib, and no room. The miracle comes because there’s no crib, and no room: so a baby in a feed box catches hold of our attention, makes us fall in love, and loves us into the joy and peace, the generosity and hope, the holiness of God with us, the sacredness of this unplanned, strange and wonderful now.

Set Aside

John 1:6-8, 19-28

I’ve noticed recently that we’re starting to crack, many of us, under the losses and stresses of this year.

Not all of us. Some of us cracked long ago, and papered over, and moved on – maybe repeatedly. Some of us are genuinely doing better than we expected. 

But I’m noticing just how much traditions and transitions, expectations and exhaustion, are rolling together right now with the ongoing strains and challenges of this pandemic, pushing many of us to become what we never wanted to be – and just can’t.

Extroverts, living like introverts.

Parents having to be teachers; teachers having to become tech wizards.

Actual tech wizards having to be in multiple places at once like Harry Potter wizards….

Pastors and principals and HR departments having to become disease transmission experts; actual medical experts having to become pastors and family to the ill and dying.

And so much more.

So many of us, in this pandemic – and in the economic, social, and political dangers of this year – find ourselves with identities and responsibilities we didn’t choose, or prepare for.

And into the middle of all this today this walks John: calmly, clearly and persistently – maybe forcefully –saying No.

I am not the Messiah.

I am not Elijah.

I am not the prophet who leads the people.

It starts before John ever opens his mouth. The narrator introduces John by pointing out explicitly that “he himself was not the light.”

The first thing we know about John is who and what he is not. John’s introduction is all about clearing away the clutter of expectations, so that we can see not what we expect to see, but instead what John does, and most of all, who John points to: God, coming into the world.

Every year (every non-pandemic year!) I attend a conference of clergy leaders in the Episcopal Church. And at each gathering, the first thing we do as we come together is to spend about half an hour talking to one another about what we have to leave behind to focus on the work at hand.
What do we have to set aside, say no to for a while, to be fully present in this sacred time and space?

We talk to each other then about roof repairs and budget revisions, about soccer schedules and worship changes, cable companies, loose teeth, sometimes about a loved one’s cancer treatment or impending childbirth – all the things we can’t affect for a day or two, from a conference center with limited wifi.
And by naming them, recognizing their claim on our hearts and minds, recognizing the truth that these things are out of our control right now, we let go of their hold on our attention, and help one another to be focused on, and open to, the holiness of the here and now.

John’s introduction does the same thing. He proactively, deliberately cuts loose the identities and expectations that keep him or us from being fully present to his mission: to announce the coming of God.

You and I may need to be doing exactly that, right now. It’s the primary task of Advent, of preparation for God’s coming: to clear our hearts and minds to focus on, and be open to, God coming into our here and now.

So what do you have to leave behind, this year, to be fully present to Christ?

What do you have to clear away, what do you have to set aside – for a time at least – so that you can focus on the coming of God?

If that question triggers a racing to-do list in your head right now that has the force of an oncoming train, you’re not alone. Standing here in the middle of December – a difficult December, in a year that constantly demands attention for new dangers, tasks, tragedies, and precautions – and asking you – and myself – what we’re going to stop, set aside, and leave behind feels like a ridiculous thing.

But it may be the most important thing.

Even in the best years – and especially in this year – hundreds or thousands of things grab at our attention.

And naming them, recognizing their claim on our hearts and minds, and acknowledging the truth that they are out of our control right now, can help us let go of their hold on our attention, and help us be focused on and open to the coming of God into the here and now.

I can’t ask you to gather round and talk to one another right now, but I can ask you to think about this now:

What are the things on your to-do list that you cannot do, but are holding your attention away from the quiet coming of Christ?

What are the anxieties that clamor for your time, the responsibilities demanding effort, the expectations and information that snag your heart? What are the things limiting the time and attention you have to focus on the powerful and immediate presence of God, bursting in to the world?

And I can ask you to make some time today to talk to someone else: to name those things, acknowledge their value, recognize the limits of our control, and help one another to set them aside awhile to focus on the coming of Christ. 

Because sometimes, we have to say No in order to say Yes.

John said no, repeatedly, to identities that defined what people could expect of him:

I am not the Messiah, not Elijah, not the prophet, not the One.

So that when he does say yes, he can clearly claim an identity that points to our expectation of God.

“I am the voice in the wilderness, calling out the arrival of God.” Yes.

Every time John says yes, says, “I am….” he says “yes, behold, here is God.”

You and I may need to say no not only to tasks and worries that grab for our attention, but to identities and expectations that others have for us, so that we can say yes to the work of God.

I am not a miracle maker, but Jesus is.

I am not the host, the leader, the comforter for all situations, but Christ is, and Christ is coming.

I am not responsible for salvation, but God is. And God is coming, soon, here, now, always.

The “no” that makes space for God can be very freeing in a fragile and difficult time, full of challenges we cannot overcome alone. The no that leads to yes is how we open our lives to let God take up the burdens we cannot carry, and receive our own much lighter share in God’s work of healing and transforming the world.

John came – two thousand years ago, and again today – to help us clear away everything that stands between us and the coming of Christ, God vibrantly among us both then and there and here and now.

So what do you and I have to set aside, or set free, to join John in that joyful focus, that healing clarity, where we are completely, constantly aware of the insistent, powerful, glorious coming of God into our world and hearts and lives?

The Long Watch

 Mark 13:24-37, Isaiah 64:1-9 (1 Corinthians 1:3-9)

I’ve often been puzzled by Isaiah’s appeal for disruption that we hear today:  “Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and descend, that the mountains would shake.”

We’re entering the season of Advent, which will lead us again, as it does every year, to heavens that sing with angels, and the gentle miraculous peace of a sleeping infant, the incarnation of love. 

How desperate must you be to want God to come with fire and trembling fear and earthquake, instead?

And then I realized I might understand a part of that, after all. Because recently I’ve gotten a little nostalgic for March.

Yes, surprisingly nostalgic for those first scary and disruptive days of this pandemic in our country, when life as we knew it came to a screeching halt.

I’m not nostalgic for the fear for our health care workers, family, and friends, or the toilet paper shortages, or the rising case loads (we’ve got that back already, anyway). 

It’s the shared sense of urgency of those days, the need to care for one another: the calls to check in on those who were alone; the rallying to raise funds and support for workers and industries knocked out by the shutdowns, the pizzas delivered to hospital emergency rooms and EMT stations.

March was terrifying – and it carried an urgency of compassion and care, sacrifice and support. The love of God was manifest in hundreds of ways, thousands of individual actions.

But humans aren’t good at sustaining that urgent compassion, that immediacy. Ten months of disruption and anxiety grind into us, fostering resentment and exhaustion. Disasters that drag on weigh down our souls, sacrifice and support erode our hearts when problems build instead of resolving.

We’re tired. It’s harder and harder to pay attention, to leap into caring for strangers, to look – and keep looking – for God at work.

And that’s exactly what Jesus is talking about when he tells his disciples to stay alert, to watch the signs.

The darkening of the sun and moon, the falling stars he mentions are going to be just one more in a long cascade of disaster and distress, he tells us. Destruction of the city. Wars and rumors of war. Global upheaval. Famines and earthquakes. Family betrayals, the direct and personal trials of our faith, false prophets, and devastating loss. By the time the sun darkens we’ll be so exhausted from putting one foot in front of another, making it day to day, that the falling stars may not even register, much less the gloriously terrifying arrival of the Son of Man.

That’s why Jesus has to remind us, order us, insist to us: stay alert. 

Somehow, Jesus’ friends, his followers, you and I, have to watch through all these disasters, all the turbulence and loss, to see and respond to the particular upheavals that are the signs of the coming of God.

As this pandemic keeps climbing and winter is coming, after a summer of fire and hurricane and partisan strife, Jesus is telling you and me right now to wake up, watch closely, stay alert for the newly-disruptive signs that God is powerfully at hand.

It’s a tall order, a big ask. And I’m sure Jesus knows that.

He promises the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our trials, the gathering of God’s beloved into glory. Paul promises us that Christ will strengthen us all the way through.
We – you and I – are commanded to keep watch, but we do not do it alone.

And the disruption of our everyday may actually help us, even if it’s also wearing us out.

In my conversations with family and friends, and some of you, this last week, I kept hearing people say that the changes enforced by this pandemic have helped many of us sense what’s most important in the ways we celebrate love through the holidays. 

In the same way, we can let the ongoing disruptions of our lives renew our sense of urgency – not fear, but the immediate importance of compassion and care for one another.  

God’s presence pours into our world in our acts of care. 

This year that might be a phone call to someone you can’t be with, or a month of rigorous quarantine so you can be somewhere. It might be gifts and food delivered to overworked nurses and first responders, acts of generous sympathy when our colleagues’ work - or our own - is disrupted again and again, or pouring time and money into keeping a roof over a stranger’s head and food on anyone’s table.

We can let the fact that so much must be different this year keep us alert to the action of God. Instead of seeking substitutes for things and actions that will get us close to “normal”, we can make choices to make our traditions different – more like the coming kingdom of God. 

If we can’t browse the stores for a perfect gift, perhaps we can shop for hope, reconciliation, justice and transformation – the hallmarks of the reign of Christ. We won’t all do that the same way – sometimes it’s about the particular gift we buy; sometimes it’s about doing that shopping with a lit candle and persistent prayer, instead of crowds and lists.

When we can’t gather in big parties for celebration, perhaps we can seek out new ways to celebrate love and sacrifice and faithfulness – the traditions of the kingdom of God. One of us might write that celebration into cards and thank you notes; another might create an online festival that many more can share. 

In any year, but even more in this year, our Advent practices should be whatever helps us to notice and invest in the kingdom of God: a world of reconciliation, hope, trust, and transformation that begins here and now.

The forced changes of this pandemic, one friend told me, can even relieve us of burdens we’ve carried for years. 

We simply can’t get everything “right” or perfect the way tradition insists. We can’t be in many places, so we really can't try to be in many places at the same time.

That may, in fact, be one of the signs of the coming of God. 

When things change in such a way that we can’t rely on ourselves no matter how hard we try, when we are forced into letting go and trusting God instead of ourselves, that’s a sign of God’s powerful nearness breaking in, disrupting and transforming the habits of our lives, whether we wished it or not.

Lillian Daniel, a preacher and writer, reflects that when the world around us is busy, keeping us sleepless, being awake to God may actually be restful for us. 

I am learning that the more we watch for God, the more we actually see and feel God healing and transforming and renewing the world, humanity, and ourselves. The more we see and feel that, the easier it is to trust our own burdens of pain and frustration to God, let those burdens fall from our backs, and rest in God.  

The more we watch for God’s love and compassion, the more we feel it in our hearts. And then the easier it is to both care for others, and receive that care ourselves.

I believe that’s what Jesus wants for his disciples, for his friends and followers facing a generation of disruption and disaster. That refueling with the fierce and powerful love of God that comes from watching for God’s presence. 

I believe that’s what Jesus wants for his disciples, for you and me this year and always. That he commands us to keep alert for God’s signs, because in doing so, we will rest and be renewed in the compassion and justice, reconciliation and hope, strength and trust that come from the nearness of God, breaking in to disrupt our lives for good.

Commitment

 Joshua 24:1-3, 14-25; Matthew 25:1-13

Did anybody else find yourself anxious, impatient, or exhausted, this past week?

As the waiting and the vote counting went on and on. And on. And…well, we fell asleep waiting for Nevada, and Pennsylvania, and others, more than once.

Waiting for a bridegroom to come and waiting for a President to be elected are different, but it’s pretty easy for me – and maybe for you – to feel a connection this morning to the women with their lamps in Jesus’ story: waiting, and waiting, and waiting….. 

Matthew’s community – like other early Christians – would have recognized that feeling, too. They were waiting, of course, for Jesus to come back. Soon, he said, right? 

And, like us, many of them were anxious about the results. What will happen to the world? Will my family and friends be okay? 

It’s hard to live in waiting, whether it’s about an election, a pandemic, a transition in your family or career, or anything else. Yet Jesus insists that suspense and uncertainty are part of the coming of the kingdom of heaven; part of the fulfillment of God’s plan and promise, so we’d better be prepared for just that, and fuel up.

Long waiting would have been familiar to the people of Israel, too. Waiting through a long generation of wanderings in the wilderness, and more generations of oppression in Egypt, waiting and working to claim a home in a new land God had led them to.

All that long, uncertain waiting is in the background of the story we heard today, when Joshua gathers the people to celebrate a moment of celebration, remembering what God has done to create a people, and bring them to a new home, to a place of both refuge and abundance.

In that celebration, Joshua invites – no, challenges – the people to “serve the Lord,” to worship God above all else, and honestly and faithfully follow God’s commandments.

“Of course we will! God’s done a lot for us, we’re God’s!” the people respond. 

That’s not enough, though. Joshua presses them, because this is a big commitment: You can’t serve God unless you’re absolutely not going to turn away; not going to give up when the going gets tough or you get a seemingly better offer. 

Our choice to serve God starts in gratitude and celebration, but even more it’s about what we want to do, and who we want to be, whatever the future holds.

The people of Israel say yes again, they commit to God and affirm it with a promise to hold themselves accountable and a formal covenant ceremony.

That’s like what we do today, when we mark Consecration Sunday on the church’s calendar. We make and renew our commitment to God in gratitude that God has sought us out, chooses us, protects us, brings us into relationships of love, and works with and through us to create a place where we can thrive in God’s promise. 

We’re individually at different places in that story, we experience it in different ways, but as we worship together today, we are all part of that story of God’s good gifts to us.

Like the people of Israel, we make our commitments to God today out of gratitude, and also to affirm what we want to do, and who we want to be, in everything the future brings. 

Beyond the church, we regularly make commitments to help us do what is essential to our values, but might not do automatically: like sustainability pledges to reduce our use of the earth’s resources. 

\We make promises and commitments to help us actually carry out the actions that make us into who we want to be – the Girl Scout promise spells out ways to help me be a person who lives for others; a commitment to serve meals at a soup kitchen might have helped make you into a person who regularly shows up and cares for our neighbors.

That’s why I make a financial commitment to the church, too. In the packet of Consecration Sunday materials we sent out, I told you the story of how I was first inspired to work toward tithing because I wanted to be more like a priest whose faith and love I admired.  These days, I make a financial commitment that will stretch me, just a little, every year, because I want my weekly budget to be a way to keep my attention fixed on God: what God is up to in my life and yours, the love God is inviting me to share.

And over the years that commitment has indeed helped me depend on God with deeper trust, not just about money, but in all of life. I hope that has made me more like the saints I admire.

Making a commitment that stretches me also makes me stretch my vision, and look more actively for what God is doing among us, at Trinity. So I see things I might have overlooked: not just our worship – together even in separation – and the food that comes into and goes out of Leslie’s pantry, but also a friendship that formed from the need to check on one another when the coronavirus first separated us; people who’ve never been through our doors, but feel connected to God through our online worship; and teachers who move heaven and earth to help their students connect to God and one another in spite of Zoom fatigue and COVID distance.

And every time I write my pledge check, I’m reminded of the gratitude for all God has already done that led me to make this commitment in the first place.  

Keeping this commitment to God has become an anchor to hope and love and a sense of God’s commitment to us – to me – that carries me through ordinary days and the extraordinary really-no-one-asked-for-any-of-this stresses of 2020. 

This isn’t just about money, of course. The same thing happens with other commitments we make to God’s work. Like being fully present in worship, even when it’s not easy to be here every Sunday, or to open my prayer book every morning. 

Keeping that commitment makes it easier for me to experience God’s commitment to showing up for us, for me. There have been days and long months of my life when the only evidence I had that God was listening was the fact that I had somehow showed up to pray one more day in spite of doubt and depression.

And a commitment to love my neighbor keeps pulling me into conversations and places where God is creating miracles, love, and abundant life – often places I just don’t want to go: hospital emergency rooms, political arguments, city streets, even some glittering parties.
For you, those places might be different – like finance meetings or homeless shelters – but we all need a nudge or commitment to get us out of our safe zone to meet God in new places and ways.

I believe that Joshua challenges the people of Israel to make their commitment to serve God not once, but three times in a row, because a strong and unbreakable commitment will prepare them for a future where there will be times of anxious stress, times where God seems distant or absent, and where the abundance that God has given us may not feel like enough. There may also be times when we’re too comfortable to get excited about serving God. Occasionally, in those times of both comfort and stress, our commitment to God is the only evidence we - or others - have of God’s presence. 

And that’s how it fuels us for the waiting, for the periods when there’s no active evidence God’s looking out for us. When the virus goes on and on and gets worse; when electoral suspense drags, or the results aren’t what we hoped for, and public divisions get worse, our commitment can protect us from giving up. A commitment can anchor us when we are lonely, or hungry for change, thirsty for justice and compassion, or far from home. 

It also protects us against losing touch with God when we’re perfectly satisfied with life, and don’t feel any need, and don’t look for God at work, day to day.

Our commitment to God is the oil we need to keep our lamps lit when the waiting runs long, and longer still. It’s the fuel that makes us ready to meet the celebration when God arrives in our midst. The day by day keeping of our commitments to God’s work and purpose, the promises that help us carry out God’s love for the world, these are the fuel that lights the way, for us and for others, into the joy and fulfillment as God’s kingdom comes.

Stretch Goals

Matthew 24:34-46

Do you remember the “WWJD” fad of the 1990s when those four letters suddenly appeared on everything? There were t-shirts, hats, socks, pens, teddy bears…. and mostly bracelets.  Sports stars and celebrities wore WWJD bracelets, and so did teens all over the country.

Committed Christians and vague theists alike wore – and asked – the question: “What Would Jesus Do?”

And today, we hear the answer, because the Pharisees also want to know: Jesus, what’s the most important commandment to do?

Jesus doesn’t hesitate: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself. Everything else depends on this.

What Jesus would do, it seems – what Jesus would have us do, too – is to love God. Which we cannot do without loving those whom God loves. Our neighbors – all God’s people. 

And Jesus isn’t talking about love as a feeling, but love as concrete, practical action. 

Like showing up and being fully present. That matters in marriage and in church and in kids’ soccer games. 

Speaking up for who you love, or what you love. Or staying silent to make space for who and what you love. That matters in friendships and faith and “water-cooler” conversations and official meetings. 

Putting muscle and time and investment into what matters – that’s love in gardens and the messy details of surgical recovery and in buildings that house family and create community.

We know that’s love, because we can feel the lack of love when someone doesn’t show up for, speak up for, or invest in us.

And we know it’s love because when we show up and speak up and invest in our spouses, children, siblings, parents, friends, it not only expresses, but increases our love for one another.

And Jesus describes love as behavior that comes with benchmarks, just like all those business consultants tell you about making your goals practical. Love God with all of your heart, your soul, and your mind. It’s a 100% benchmark.  And love your neighbor as yourself. That’s a measurement we carry everywhere we go: our selves.

Jesus’s great commandments are practical, measurable, and simple.

But not always easy.

To love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind; to love our neighbors as ourselves – these are stretch goals even for the saints. Many of the figures of faith that we look up to – from Paul to Mother Teresa and hundreds in between – have documented their sense of how far they still have to go in the love of God and neighbor.  So it’s reasonable for you and me to expect ourselves to have to stretch and grow, all our lives long.

The life of faith is not what happens when we have achieved 100% love of God and neighbor, it’s what happens as we practice, as we stretch, toward those goals. The life of faith, the keeping of the commandments, is always the stretching toward that all-encompassing love. 

That’s the whole story of spiritual growth that we’ve been talking about since we began the Renewal Works process nearly two years ago – an ongoing story of steps and exercises and reaching out a little further: small actions, things we do that shape us into the love of God, given and received and shared.

The Consecration Sunday approach to stewardship that we have been following for a few years is one of those exercises that helps us grow toward loving God with all we are, and experiencing God’s all-encompassing love for us. It’s about always taking one more step in our relationship with God, not standing still. Some of us will be stretched, each year, at the same amount of giving we chose before; some of us need to choose a new number – higher or sometimes lower – that reflects what it means to stretch toward God’s love among the changes in our world and selves. In every case, it’s a matter of making our giving decisions be about what will help us show up, speak up, and invest in the love of God. 

The same thing applies to all the other things we do, the other actions that help us grow in the love of God and neighbor. For some of us, donating money or canned goods to a feeding program is a stretch that helps us learn to love our neighbors. Others – or the same us, at a different time – will need to stretch into cooking for a feeding program or helping write new laws that make it harder for folks working full time to go hungry, putting muscle and time into practicing God-love.  For others – or at other times – we need to stretch by sitting down at the table for the soup kitchen meal as equals, loving our neighbors by the kind of showing up and listening that help us experience our neighbors as ourselves, with no distinction between us. 

Those same patterns of practicing and stretching, of love showing up, speaking up, and digging in apply to our prayer life, too. Is it a stretch to show up for a little more Bible reading every day? To speak up and ask someone else about their faith; to step back and listen carefully? Or is your stretch toward the all-encompassing love of God about putting muscle into what you’ve been praying for?

And the great commandments don’t stop there. They apply to our lives in things that may seem to have little to do with our faith.

The direction to love God one hundred percent and our neighbors as ourselves can be applied practically to help us make decisions about questions as different as whether to travel for Thanksgiving or to open a new business. 

The standards of love of God and neighbor can help us untangle knots as tight and messy as the partisan divisions of our country. When we’re focused on the love of God there’s a lot of common ground on which to love the neighbors whose votes and voices challenge our own. 
Applied one challenge at a time, the all-encompassing love of God and all God’s people can manage the frustrations and fears of this ongoing pandemic.

To love God and neighbor with all of our selves will always stretch us. 

It is not easy, but it is essential.

And we do not do it alone. 

By chance or by design, when we pray the Collect for this Sunday – the prayer of the day for the Episcopal Church – we ask God to make us love these commandments. We turn to God to fill us with the love, desire and longing to do as God directs; we rely on God to create in us the love of God’s commandments which brings us to the fulfillment of all God’s promises. 

The love we are commanded to share is not something we create ourselves. It is rooted in and grown from God’s love and care for us.

Love God. Love God’s people. Everything else depends on this.
Simple and stretching. Practical and essential.

We live our way into the love of God and God’s people, action by action, day by day, because first and always, we have been loved by God.