Treasure

Luke 2:1-20

Are you feeling the wonder?

The awe and marvel of a sky full of angels?

The ordinary but overwhelming wonder of a tiny newborn, a perfect little human, with big eyes and amazing little curled fingers?

 

Or – if the story we just read isn’t sparking it for you – maybe you find, or have found, wonder and delight in the candles or music or memories or traditions swirling around us?

It is a time for wonder – for awe and miracle and love and hope.

Christmas is a call to immerse ourselves in all of that – to step outside the ordinary and revel in this moment of wonder.

 

Or maybe that’s not where you are right now. Maybe there’s a burden, a grief, an irritant, an anxiety – even boredom or indifference – that you’re feeling today, or often feel when the world or the church is demanding your wonder and awe. 

We don’t get the perfect Christmas moment automatically. 

But I suspect that many of us who aren’t soaking in the wonder of this moment kind of wish we were, or could be. That we want that holy Christmas space of love and wonder and peace even when we can’t get ourselves there. 

 

And it’s okay – maybe necessary – to let the wonder and love just wash around us when we aren’t feeling it ourselves. 

 

I suspect – I hope! – that Mary, and Joseph, had that wonder washing all around them so long ago in Bethlehem, as they looked at the tiny perfect human, so miraculously (and probably exhaustingly) part of their lives. I don’t know how much they felt the wonder, how real or distant the awe felt to them as they cared for the infant Jesus, or as they listened to the shepherds, but I know it washed around them.

 

In my imagination, as I read Luke’s story, I can feel a brisk gust of wonder sweeping into the room as the shepherds tumble in:
It’s real! Is it real? There! The child the angels sang! 

 

They share their story – the awe of their angel-infested fields; the marvel of having the angel’s words confirmed by the swaddling wraps and manger bed of the infant Jesus – and then sweep right out on their wave of wonder, shouting God’s praise and glory to anyone and everyone.

 

Leaving Mary, who “treasured all this news, and pondered it in her heart”.

 

When the angels’ wonder goes gusting off with the shepherds, while her child sleeps or eats or needs a change or fusses or snuggles – and grows past that miraculous moment of perfect infancy! – Mary is holding, keeping, treasuring the wonder. 

 

Not just for a few hours or days, I suspect, but month after month. Maybe year after year she treasures and considers, holds the wonder and reconnects with it in the midst of life going on.

 

Before ever Ebeneezer Scrooge promised to “keep Christmas in his heart all the year” – before there ever was a Christmas, even – Mary kept the wonder, the miracle, the awe, the love and hope, as treasure for the ordinary days when the infant isn’t small and perfect, when no angels appear, when no candles are lit; no carols or stories are shared.

 

And today, as you and I drop in to these moments of wonder, this story of awe and miracle, this hour or day of memory and marvel, peace and hope and love, we too have the opportunity to take up this treasure, to keep and ponder it in our hearts.

To keep it all the year. 

 

What part of this story from Bethlehem tugs at your heart today? 

A sky full of angels? A census? A joyful shepherd? A mother? A manger?

 

Or what moment, image, word or action from the celebrations of Christmas (in the church, in your home, or in the world) sparks wonder, joy, love, awe, or hope?

The face of someone you love? The lights on a tree? A gift you’ve received or given? A family ritual; the making of a special food?

 

That treasure that speaks to you today – or the wonder you most long for when you’re not feeling it among all the Christmas things – will you try, like Mary, to hold that in your heart all the year?

To bring it out, revisit and ponder it, in the middle of the busyness or drudgery or boredom or anxiety of the everyday?

 

When the trees and the lights come down from our homes; when the angels and the shepherds disappear from the stories and carols of the church, when the world’s news moves on from reindeer noses and giving research (thank you, NPR last week), to the woes of wars and the practicalities of daily life, we may really need a symbol, a tradition, a word or an action that can spark again the wonder or awe or love or joy we came looking for today.

 

I need – I suspect many of you also need – signs and habits that encourage me, us, to believe – to trust that God really does live with us all the year. That encourage me (us!) to embrace wonder, and miracle, and awe, and hope when the rest of the world isn’t singing carols and giving gifts.  

 

What if the same encouragement to live in the wonder that we find here today were part of our ordinary Mondays, our every afternoon, our February or August chores or challenges or rest?

 

Three years ago, a friend of mine held on to her Christmas tree, keeping it in the living room as the ordinary year went on. Pondering those lights and ornaments of hope and wonder in the midst of sun and heat and rain, on days of anger and weariness, of contentment or uncertainty or boredom. Through taxes and doctors’ appointments and work successes and daily frustrations, through roiling world news and politics, through pet care and family responsibilities. Keeping Christmas in her heart (and in her house) all the year.

 

New Testament scholar Amy-Jill Levine, reflecting on what Mary ponders in her heart, notes that the meaning of events and experiences often unfolds in a gradual way, as the memory of them interacts with what we learn and do and become over the years. 

I’ve noticed that in my own experience of the traditional Christmas cookies of my family.

As a child, I treasured the sugar rush, the specialness of once-a-year treats.
As a young adult, opening a package sent to my little apartment, the treasure of those cookies became the physical evidence of love and shared history.
Now – as the generations that brought me those cookies pass away – my own attempts to bake them are a treasure of memory, a sacrament of connection to people I “love, but see no longer”

(And through all of that, the cookies have stayed delicious. Little bites of wonder and joy in this moment.) 

 

Many of the images of the Christmas story, many of the carols and prayers and traditions we share, have changed and grown for me, too, connecting me in new ways to the wonder and awe of God among us. And maybe that’s been true for you, too. Maybe there’s a marvel you’ve treasured for many a year that grows with you.

And maybe there’s a new treasure you’ve found this Christmas. 

 

But if there’s not yet – do choose one. 

Or many.

And give it a try:

Choose a word or tradition, an experience or action, that tugs at your heart with wonder and awe and love and hope, that you can revisit week after week in the spring and the summer and the fall; in the office (the classroom), the kitchen or tollway or doctor’s office.

 

It probably won’t be perfect wonder all year through. It never is. (After all, it’s not always perfect on Christmas Day!)
I’d be surprised if it was even perfect for Mary. 

 

But when you, when I, choose to treasure these things, to keep a moment, an image, to ponder on those days when we need wonder the most – then the wonder, awe, love, or peace of this story, this day, our own personal Christmas marvels, can unfold again as your life grows around it, over weeks or years.

 

So let us treasure, and ponder, and hold on to wonder. Keep one marvel or miracle or love to store in your heart today, so that Christmas can keep your heart all the year. 

If We Didn't Notice

John 1:6-8, 19-28

There are shepherds and angels on the lawns of my neighborhood this month.

Angels and shepherds on the Christmas cards for sale in stores, in the carols we sing this month, in the pageant we are rehearsing at Trinity for Christmas Eve, announcing and testifying to the coming of Jesus – angels and shepherds all over the place, and not a single sign of John.

 

He’s just as colorful a character, and probably an even more powerful witness to the coming of the Messiah, but no glittery or glowing representations of John show up in our world as we remember the coming of God into the world two thousand years ago.

 

This is probably just fine with John. 

He is not the light. He is not the star of the show, and he knows it. And I think he likes it that way. When asked who he is, the very first thing he says is “I’m not the Messiah.” 

Not anybody else famous or important, he goes on to say.

I’m just a voice in the wilderness, he says. My only job is to get your attention so that you notice the coming of the Messiah. 

I’m the witness. 

 

He came to testify, to bear witness, so that no one mistakes or misses or doubts what God is doing.

 

The gospel of John (not attributed to the John we are talking about today) lays a lot of emphasis on the role of this John as a witness, as the one “testifying to the light”. Making sure that people know what is happening, as God comes into the world in the person of Jesus.

 

Which makes me wonder what would have happened (what might be happening) if Jesus had come unwitnessed, unannounced, unnoticed.

 

What if no one but his family cared when a baby was born in the town of Bethlehem long ago? That’s pretty normal, after all. Then what if John didn’t get anyone’s attention, and the miracles of healing that Jesus performed went unnoticed, attributed to luck, or herbal teas, or magic? 

What if Jesus taught his revolutionary news about God in his local synagogue, and everyone was just thinking about their shopping lists during the sermons?
And then what if Jesus dies, and no one pays enough attention to his tomb to notice the resurrection?

 

One thing I know is that if no one noticed, no one would have told the stories. We wouldn’t know it had happened. We wouldn’t have Christmas; we wouldn’t have church, and carols, and cards. We probably wouldn’t have Christians.

 

We would still have had an incarnation. Still have had God made flesh, walking the world among us, living and dying like us, and rising from the dead like no one ever before. 

But like a tree falling in the forest with no one to hear, does an unheard Messiah, an unnoticed incarnation of God, actually impact the world? Does it matter, if no one noticed it? 

 

The actual answer to that question is a little above my pay grade. But one thing I can know for certain is that John believes it’s important – no, essential – not only that God comes into the world, but that we notice, appreciate, and pay attention to this coming of God.

 

And, given the role John plays, I suspect that means it matters to God, too, that we notice. That we hear and see and feel the impact of God coming among us, God with us.

 

There’s very little danger that someone living in southern New Jersey in these days could miss the signs of celebration, the habits and activity of the remembrance of Jesus’ first coming, the revisiting of that incarnation so long ago and far away. 

On the radio, in stores, in media, on lawns, in schools, workplaces, government offices, it’s hard – nearly impossible – to miss the signs of celebration. 

 

But we could be in danger of missing what John is focused on, what John is testifying to so we don’t miss it – the actual presence and power and action of God, miraculous all those centuries ago; current and vivid and transformative now.

Many of us might easily miss our impractical encounters with awe, the miracles we weren’t looking for, the good news we find improbable or foolish.

 

It might even be the bustle and busyness of celebration and remembrance of God’s actions long ago that make us miss the actual presence of God, the nearness of God with us now and here. 

Or the demands for joy and activity can make us miss the real presence of the God who holds quiet and grief and loneliness and weariness – all the burdens of incarnation, as well as the joys – and makes it holy.

 

And…if no one notices the coming, the nearness, the presence, the action of God – does it make a sound? Does the real nearness of God matter, make a difference in the world now if we don’t notice, react, respond?

(Still above my pay grade.)

But – if we take John seriously – the need for John, pointing the way to God in a busy and indifferent wilderness all those years ago – there’s a good chance that you and I, here and now, also need to be “testifying to the light” – to be pointing to the coming of the Messiah – now, and here.

 

Which means, first, that we ourselves have to notice. To expect, and attend to, and respond to the signs of God’s nearness, and the experience of God’s power and presence in our own very busy and indifferent world. To look where John is pointing, to receive what he’s testifying to, so that we can point the way there for others.

 

And when we need to notice what God is showing us, when we need to show that to others, it’s also possible that the angels and the shepherds on the lawns and the cards, the celebratory trappings of Christmas remembered, the busy celebrations, can help. Help us notice the divine light still coming into the world, and bear witness to the realities of God’s presence with us now.

 

Some years, there’s one carol or another that tugs at my heart and soul, and makes real the beauty of God’s presence, or the longing that brings God nearer, or the joy of finding God’s love. This year, my heart keeps singing “It came upon the midnight clear” – with its consciousness of the “weary world” we live in, and the promise of peace for now and soon (as well as long ago and half a world away) making me notice the reality of God’s restorative, healing presence with us. 

Sometimes it’s the cards – glittery and full of love – or the gifts, or the gatherings, all forcing me to take note of the presence of God, the divine connections, in the people around me.

 

Often, though, it’s the light.

The lights in the windows and on rooftops and trees and anywhere else you can illuminate. Lights that signal celebration, and also, accidentally or on purpose, are a tiny little real shining bit of the light John wants us to notice in the world. The glowing presence of God in and on and around the everyday structures of our world. 

And when I tell someone else about the light – of how I see the glow of God’s presence in the twinkling, flashing electric strings and the seasonal candles – when I testify to the light, the nearness and reality of God become more vivid to me.

 

I notice. I see, and I hear. As again and again, God comes, and comes, and comes among us, powerful and real and near.

 

And I never want to know the answer to what happens if we didn’t notice God. 

Because I don’t want to consider missing this. I don’t want you to miss it either. John doesn’t want us to miss it. God doesn’t want us to miss it – this wonder and awe and miracle and love. 

 

So notice it.
With John.
With me.

With God.

God, with us.

Preparers

Mark 1:1-8

Everyone is doing it.

The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem.  City folk and country folk – everyone is going to John in the wilderness. 

 

And I wonder if they all know why.

I’m sure some of the folks had been looking for someone like John – someone to stir things up, or someone to help me change, or someone who can make my faith feel real again… But when everyone is doing something, well, a lot of us are just doing it because everyone else is. 

 

So off everyone goes, to see John. And then, intentionally or carried along by the crowd, to confess their sin and be dunked in the river. And to hear John preparing the way for God. For Jesus. 

 

I have a strong suspicion that many of these folks from Jerusalem and Judea were not, actually, looking for The Messiah. Not actively looking for a new relationship with God, or a new revelation from God. 

Just like many of us. 

 

And whatever they were looking for; whether they were looking for anything or not, they get John proclaiming Jesus. Preparing them (us) for Jesus. 

Plenty of people probably figured John, clothed and eating and preaching like one of the prophets of old, confessing and baptizing people, was enough New Revelation all by himself. 

But John isn’t enough for John.

If you meet him, if I meet him, his only interest is in preparing us for Jesus.
Preparing us to look for Jesus. The one coming after John.

To recognize Jesus. The one so much greater than John.

To respond to Jesus. The one who will immerse us in the Spirit of God.

 

I’ve been thinking, this week – as I’m in the middle of a busy season of not wanting anything new thanks very much – about how while sometimes the good news comes when we want it and are looking, sometimes – often, even – good news, God news, comes to us when we aren’t looking. When you or I don’t really want more news, more opportunities with God.

 

All it takes is a little curiosity.

Or a little going along with a friend.

Or being dragged along by the insistence of your parents, or your kids. 

Or even a little just showing up to do your job.

 

And John meets us.
Meets everyone – all Jerusalem and Judea; all of us – sooner or later and says:
“Get ready! He’s coming! The one more powerful than you’re looking for. The one who will change everything in your relationship with God.”

 

I wonder when that’s happened to you.

I wonder when someone has gotten you ready, prepared you, for a change, or renewal, in your relationship with God.

I wonder who your John is. 

Who it is who prepared you – intentionally or otherwise – to meet Jesus.

To look for, and recognize, and respond to Jesus. To God.

 

Because someone has – even a little bit, even unrecognizably. Someone, somewhere, has done at least a little preparing you for Jesus, getting you ready for an encounter with God or you wouldn’t be here.

Even if you are only here today because someone else insisted.

 

In gentle ways, ways I can’t pin down, I know that my parents, my Sunday School teachers, other members of my family have prepared me. Shared stories, or habits, or prayers with me that eventually help me look for Jesus, recognize God when God shows up. Not insistently, not demandingly, but gently, often accidentally, because it’s just what we do.
I’ll bet that’s true for many of you, also.

 

Think for a moment – who in your life has gently, naturally, shared prayer, or stories, or rituals with you that wind up helping you look for, or look to, God coming to be part of your life. 

 

Then - sometimes - the John in your life, the person preparing you for Jesus, was very explicit and intentional about it. Even a little “in your face” – very like the John portrayed in most of the Gospels. Someone who wants you to act now, change now, to look for, and recognize, and respond to Jesus - now.

 

I’ve got one friend who – if you display the least bit of curiosity about Jesus – will immediately set you up with an active, specific plan to get closer to Jesus – to expect, recognize, and respond to Jesus in your life, now. A friend who insists with joyous urgency that the one more powerful is coming – is near, is here – and insists that I want to be ready (no, readier than you are now; readier even than that) – for Jesus who keeps on coming. 

 

I have rolled my eyes at this friend so many times because my relationship with Jesus is fine already thank you very much. 

And yet…, spending time with this friend I’ve gotten so much better at recognizing and naming Jesus’ role in my life; I’ve gotten so much better at responding when God is doing something new with me, or around me. I’ve gotten so much readier to expect Jesus to show up, every day, any day. 

 

Another friend, years ago, was pretty insistent about recognizing and responding to Jesus in strangers, in those in need – starting feeding programs, welcoming outsiders, protecting the vulnerable – now. And she actively, insistently prepared me – and anyone else who came into her orbit – to do the same. Even though I wanted something very different from God at the time.

 

Think about who those people might have been in your life. 

Who has been explicit with you about a need to look for, and recognize Jesus – coming powerfully, coming closer – and prepared you to respond - now?

 

Maybe it happened when you were looking for God, needed God to do something new.  

More often, for many of us, it’s happened when we weren’t looking. 

But subtly and gradually, or insistently and urgently, someone has told you, prepared you: God is coming. God is near. And you want to be ready.

 

John doesn’t just want all Judea and Jerusalem to get ready for Jesus two thousand years ago.

I believe he wants – and God wants – you and me, all these years later, to be ready, too.

God has sent us preparers both subtle and strong, whether we were looking for them or not.

 

And maybe John, maybe God, wants you and me to prepare others, too.

To gently share with someone the stories, the prayers, the rituals, the meals and music and customs, that help you quietly look for, and recognize, and respond to the coming of Christ – at Christmas, or in the middle of a boring, ordinary week. To share those things because you love them, with someone you love.

 

Or, sometimes, to be bold and brave, and be the one to declare how much it matters, now, to get active and excited about the coming of Jesus, the nearness and power of God. To share a joyous urgency, an eager expectation, a confidence that you can be ready, I can be ready, we must be ready. 

 

Because whether we got here on purpose, or whether we just followed the crowd, you, and I, and all Judea and Jerusalem, and anyone in the world, can – must – expect, and welcome, and rejoice in the coming of God, powerful and urgent and awesome. Now. 

 

 

Habits of Readiness

Mark 13:24-37

This is entirely too long to stay awake.

 

It’s been very close to two thousand years of repeating Jesus’s, “I tell you, keep awake”, instructions now, and the longest record for a human going without sleep is 11 days.
Most of us would be hallucinating after just a few days, and certainly not be actually alert for world-changing happenings, or making good decisions about how to respond, after a mere 48 hours.

That’s assuming we hadn’t actually just physically collapsed and fallen asleep anyway before then.

 

Twenty centuries?  We can’t do it.

And, to be honest, I don’t really think we have to take Jesus literally in remembering these instructions.

But we absolutely have to take Jesus seriously.

 

And Jesus has given us some tools for that. There are a couple different kinds of watchfulness and alertness that Jesus describes today, as he tells us to stay ready for the coming of the Messiah in clouds, power, and glory. (Implied, not stated, is that this is the coming that will end the world as we know it, and probably include divine judgement on the good as well as the bad of human history and present.)

 

Jesus talks about the readiness of a household – possibly functioning more like a modern small business than your home, or mine – waiting for the boss to get back. Everyone in the place has work to get on with – work that keeps the place moving forward, prepares us for whatever comes next, whether the boss returns with a whole new business plan, or just to see how we’ve been doing with the one we’re already on.

 

Jesus also talks about our need to be watching for some signs in the natural world. He wants us to know how to expect, interpret, and understand a certain set of eclipses and starfalls that will follow a period of political and social upheaval. He wants his followers – us – to be ready to notice those things happening (instead of shrugging them off as world business as usual) and start looking for a new kind of divine intervention, even if the rest of the world doesn’t know what any of it means.  Sort of the way New Jersey folks know to move over to the right lane when you’re getting close to your destination on the left side of 73, while the uninitiated rest of the world stays to the left, and misses their moment. 

 

That kind of readiness doesn’t come from waiting until the signs appear, though. It comes from the learning and habits and practices of our whole lives. It comes from getting on with the work so that our work, our world, is ready, whether God shows up while we’re in church praying, or in traffic fretting, or at work or school, or the gas station, or in bed (asleep, even). 

 

The readiness Jesus is asking of us – of you and of me, his followers twenty centuries after he told us to “keep awake” – isn’t a caffeine-fueled eyes-peeled staring out the window. It’s about being always ready in a way that we can sustain for the long haul. 

 

We need practices, habits, that shape our hearts and minds and souls so that whenever the Messiah interrupts our regularly scheduled programming with clouds and power and glory and end of days, we can have the guest bed made and the snacks on hand, instead of shoving all the emotional and moral and spiritual debris of our lives under the bed at warp speed to tidy up our hearts and lives.

(Not that Jesus cares if your actual house is messy, I promise.)

 

And we do know, already, how to prepare for the unexpected.

I keep an ice-scraper in the footwell of my car from October through May (I grew up in Chicago). I’ll bet a lot of you keep jumper cables in the trunk all year round. How many of you have used them at least once?

 

We build routines of readiness for the unexpected into our communities, as well. 

Raise your hand if you’ve participated in at least one fire drill… 

So if this space were suddenly on fire, every one of you with your hands up would be prepared that the first thing you’re supposed to do is exit the building calmly, right?

 

We build routines of preparedness in our communities. We build habits of readiness into our daily personal lives. So we can – we must – build those habits and routines into our spiritual and emotional and moral lives as well. Routines of generosity, habits of spiritual housekeeping; habits of making peace, of healing hurts; routines of patience, of love, of sharing joy.

Because Jesus is coming back, and expects us to be ready – very ready – for overwhelming love and awe and justice and joy at a moment’s notice. 

Not scrambling to pull an all-nighter when this one turns out to be the eclipse that matters. 

 

Many of you have said to me that you want to be reading the Bible more, or praying more, or volunteering and serving others more. 

But I can’t do it yet. I can start when the kids are a little older, when I can start working fewer hours, when my spouse or friend is ready, when I finish this other project. (Or when Jesus comes back, and all the other stuff is swept away).

I’ve said much the same thing about myself to friends and colleagues.

 

It really can be hard to shift the lives we have at the moment to the lives we mean to have for Jesus’s coming. But Jesus is telling us – telling the first followers who expected that glorious final judgement to happen soon, and you and me, who have gotten used to the idea Jesus won’t be back in our lifetimes – that we can’t wait for any of that to start to happen before we start being the people we want to be when God is right at hand. People who are ready for God dramatically, surprisingly, appearing in our busy lives.

 

So maybe, this Advent season, as the calendars count us down to remembering Jesus’ first coming, we can try to form the habits of readiness for Jesus’ last coming. Practices and habits of preparedness we can build right into our busy lives, before we’re caught unaware on the wrong side of the road. 

 

A “generosity drill” – taking just a minute or three to look at what you carry out of the house and deciding what you could share or do from those resources if you met someone who needed help right this minute – can make you ready for an encounter with God in a vulnerable friend or stranger. (You could do the same kind of drill with what you have in your kitchen, or car, or closet.) 

 

Spending five minutes while you’re waiting at the doctor’s office looking up resources for prayer on your phone, or pulling a bible off the shelf and putting it on the kitchen table while you’re waiting for the repair tech to show up, or putting the Forward Day-by-Day reflection booklet from the back of the church into your pocket or purse, are like putting the jumper cables and ice scraper in the car – making you ready for an unexpected need to pray, or 15 unscheduled minutes when you could soak in the stories of God.

 

There are any number of ways that you and I can practice Advent – can practice making peace and sharing joy so we’re ready when the opportunity surprises us; can prep healing or patience or love for when we’ll need them suddenly. There are any number of habits and choices and ways of being ready, being prepared for the unexpected appearance of God.
And every one of those habits, any practice of being ready for God to interrupt us is a practice we need – in the season of Advent, in preparation for Christmas, and every time of year, every year, always. 

Because Jesus is coming.

Coming any minute.

Always.

Now.