"Our Advent Joy" given Dec. 17, 2017

 This morning our Advent candle is pink. Today is the Sunday of the Church year historically known as "Gaudette" Sunday. The name comes from the Latin word for "Rejoice". It's kind of a shame that the Liturgical color for Advent is the same as for Lent. That gives the impression that Advent is something of a dour, solemn season. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth.

The four Sundays of Advent should be a time of rising excitement, happy expectation and prayerful preparation for the celebration of the coming of Christ. This expectancy is well symbolized by the lighting of one additional Advent candle each Sunday, until the wreath is a glowing circle of light beside the altar.

The liturgy, prayers, music and readings for the Third Sunday of Advent have traditionally called Christians to prepare for the coming of the Christ child into the world with celebration. "Sing and shout for joy" proclaimed the OT prophet Zephaniah. "Rejoice in the Lord always. The Lord is near" exclaimed the Apostle Paul. "Draw water from the wellsprings of joy" cried the prophet Isaiah. "Good Christian Friends, Rejoice with heart and soul and voice." we've been singing.

If rejoicing is what today is all about though, what's that old killjoy John the Baptist doing in this morning's Gospel reading. Where did he come from, with his long hair and untrimmed beard and his camel-skin jockey shorts? We know all about John.

He was the original end-of-the-world-nutcase Christian. "Repent of your sins, you brood of vipers!" he called. "Come be washed in the river of your disgusting, revolting hypocrisy and secret lusts and sleazy desires and slimy back- stabbing behavior." He nagged.

"Don't think you can be saved by just coming here and making a public show of your baptism. Repent of the evil within you. Change your sinful ways. Don't think yourself superior to your pagan neighbors because of your Hebrew ancestry. Why God can make better descendants of Abraham and Sarah out of these rocks than you are." John thundered. "You're all going to hell in a bucket!"

And standing there, as big as life, preaching on the banks of the Jordan, John might have pointed to the opposite shore. Perhaps there was a grove of fruit trees planted there. Maybe a crew of workers were cutting down the trees that had not brought forth fruit that season. If so, the crowd might have been able to hear the sound of their axes.

"God will judge you by your fruits. See, the ax is already laid to the base of the tree." And then the Baptist pointed to the smoke rising behind the workers, where the twisted and marred branches were being burnt. "See the smoke! The bonfires are already lit! Repent and produce the fruits of righteousness or be cast into eternal flames!" He thundered.

Talk about a party-pooper! Who wants to hear all that? What has hell and damnation preaching got to do with Advent? What has all that talk of sin and repentance got to do with our joyful expectation of the birth of the Baby in the Manger? Nothing! Or does it? Could it be that repentance and rejoicing are part of the same movement in our lives? Could it be that repentance and rejoicing are more than that--that they are actually opposite sides of the same coin?

Maybe that sounds strange. But on the other hand, maybe we haven't looked at either one of these concepts closely enough. We tend to associate repentance with giving up our treasured personal indulgences, with painful self-discipline, with sacrificial giving, with living some sort of ultra-straight-laced, phoney, goody-two-shoes, prissy, hypocritical life-style. None of that sounds particularly pleasant, much less joyful. We tend to think of repentance as giving up things that we like to do, in order to do things that others tell us we ought to do.

Although we may not consciously recognize it, what most of us hope to do is beat the system. Whether we admit it or not, we take the thief on the cross as our model. We intend to go on judging ourselves, and our secret, and our not-so-secret sins for as long as we possibly can.

We call that "sowing our wild oats". Then, when the kids are old enough to be impressionable, or when we figure we're too old to enjoy our vices anymore, we'll give them up. We call that "settling down". And eventually, we figure we'll become a church-goer so that we can squeeze our way into heaven at the last moment with a minimum of effort and self-sacrifice.

This morning's readings, if we look at them with care, lay out for us a very different sequence of events in the life of the spirit. First, we sensed with surprise the presence of God in our lives. That Divine presence fills us with awe and joy. And in response, totally of our own free choice, we feel an almost overpowering outbreak of unselfishness in our lives.

To our surprise, we find that the expectations of other people, or of the church, have nothing to do with our response. A sense of duty or guilt has nothing to do with it, either. Even commandments or Bible passages, or social conscience, or outright pity have nothing to do with our response. It doesn't come from outside us. It comes from inside us.

We choose, we yearn, we want with all our hearts to freely and openly respond to the grace that has been given to us, with generosity and love.

We want to turn our lives around. We want to begin living in new directions. How else can we respond to a God who actively seeks us in the midst of our world? How else can we respond to a God whose deepest desire is to draw us nearer, ever nearer in joy? When you and I have known that touch, felt that Divine Presence, our only possible response is joy. And then the repentance, the self-giving, the discipline, the service just happens, growing forth from our joy.

God doesn't have to tell us at that moment to change our lives. Nobody has to tell a tax collector he'd feel less like a louse if he stopped skimming off the top and gouging his already overburdened clients. Nobody has to tell soldiers they's be more comfortable with their spit-and-polish attitude if they didn't use it as a another weapon against the weak and the oppressed. Nobody has to tell you, or me that we'd like ourselves better if we respected the way in which we were conducting our own lives.

We're all aware that we feel better about our own selves after doing something concrete to feed the hungry, or shelter the homeless, or simply help out a friend in a jam. We're all aware of how good it feels to give someone truly needy the shirt off our back. We'd all like to be like that. Our God simply reminds us that the truest joy, the deepest satisfaction, the peace that passes understanding are all tied to a loving and generous heart.

Unfortunately, we're as tentative about rejoicing as we are about repenting. We can't handle that pure, unadulterated, 200 proof stuff. We're afraid of joy. We've traded the possibility of the joy of God's presence for what we call worldly security. Open-ness, joy, generosity go against our careful, tidy, thrifty, tiny little souls. We forget that another word for thrifty is mean. We forget that another word for careful is afraid.

We tell ourselves, take it easy. Don't get involved. Look before you leap. Don't get emotional. Look out for tomorrow. Don't give it away or there won't be enough for you if you ever really need it. Don't let yourself feel too much or get out of control.

We've bought a bill of goods from somewhere or the other that tells us that religion is supposed to be private, and quiet, and internal, and prudent and basically confined to Sunday mornings. We feel awkward applauding in church, or laughing too loud, or witnessing in front of the congregation. Because "we don't do that in our church."

There’s the story of the out of town brother who came to visit a very prestigious, high toned church—he walked on double thick Persian carpeting in the sanctuary, gorgeous stained glass windows, the organist playing Bach, and the ushers wearing tailcoats. During the sermon, the out of town fellow, suddenly let out with an “Amen! Preach!”. Before he knew it, the ushers had closed in on him, and were escorting out the Sanctuary.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“We don’t shout ‘amen’ during the sermon” answered one of the ushers.”

“But I’ve got the spirit!” the guy protested.

“Yeah well, you didn’t get it here!”

Our very real religious feelings and yearnings have been straight- jacketed. We fear or mistrust genuine expressions of the presence of God in our heart-- like joy and hope. We think those are private emotions. We don't want to express them in worship. But the truth is, those feelings are more than private.

They are meant to be shared. They die unless they are shared. They grow when they are shared. We hunger for them in our deepest hearts. Yet we stifle and control and bury that ache for warmth inside us until it becomes spiritual heartburn.

And by then, we've squeezed God out. By then, we've forgotten that our faith, our God is about nothing more than simply sharing and giving and loving and caring. Joy? Love? Peace? Hope? We act as if we think those sort of feelings have nothing to do with how we should be living our lives in the world.

Frankly our values are warped. We'll pump a friend for their most pressing emotional trials, for all the ins and outs of their relationship with their spouse. But we wouldn't think of embarrassing them by offering financial assistance. We'll support capital punishment and oppose a woman's right to control her own reproductive system. We'll blather on about the most intimate details of our sex lives before we'll share our spiritual journeys. Our society encourages us to turn to the bottle, or to the lotto, or to illicit relationships, or to pop psychology, or just to wallow in our own private misery, rather than turn to God.

Our values are warped. We're too tentative about joy. Even our good deeds have an awkward air about them. It's as if they were being done out of duty, rather than naturally, freely, out of love. Too often we say without words, "Look how good I am to be doing this, even though I'm not very comfortable doing it. Ain't I a saint!" Too often, we spoil even our most successful efforts by a cloying, self-conscious self-righteousness that, to our surprise, sours our joy.

But there is One who is the source of true integrity, true joy in doing good. There is One who can free us of such creaking stops and starts. We forget that. And so we force God to prod us, to wheedle us, even to fool us with worldly lessons and circumstances and coincidences that are not really what they seem. There is One who is actively struggling to get into our lives, with joy and hope and peace.

It takes great faith to repent. It takes great faith to admit that our so-called spiritual life is empty and shallow. It takes great faith to come with honesty before the God who is steadier than we are in sustaining joy. It takes great faith to admit that it is God who has the generous heart, and that our own hearts are empty.

And sooner or later the judgment, the word of that old sourpuss John the Baptist comes to us again.

"You children of snakes! Produce the fruit which shows your repentance."

And sooner or later the word of the Apostle comes to us, calling us, begging us in God's name to unbend our hearts and our lives and get on the bandwagon, to loosen up and let go, and let God in.

"Rejoice... again I say rejoice... Be anxious about nothing, but in everything let your requests be known to God by thankful prayer and petition. Finally, sisters and brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, what- ever is of good report-- if anything is excellent or praise-worthy-- think about such things, live out such things.. and the peace of God will be with you." Amen.

Mahalia Jackson - I Wonder, As I Wander

Sister Rosetta Tharpe - Up Above My Head

"Waiting in Hope" given 12/10/2017

 Mark begins his Gospel by boldly proclaiming, "Good News about Jesus Christ." But immediately after that opening fanfare, we meet, not Jesus, but his cousin, John the Baptizer. In fact, all of the Gospels begin their stories of Jesus by first telling the reader about John.

It's as if they were trying to say "You can't hear Jesus unless you first hear John". It's as if they were trying to say, "In order to comprehend Jesus' message in full, you need to put it in context." Jesus' words had antecedents. The Bible doesn't say so, but Jesus might easily have spent some time sitting at John's feet. Jesus might easily have learned how to preach the Good News by hearing John speak it before him.

John burst onto the scene, creating new excitement and drawing the people of Judah and Jerusalem out to the banks of the river Jordan. John preached to them the message of repentance, calling upon them to confess their sins and receive baptism and forgiveness.

John is the beginning, the forerunner, the introduction if you will, to the Good News. It is he who prepares Israel for the one to come, who he admits will be mightier than he. And the Gospel accounts make it clear that John's popularity and influence had a direct impact on the political and religious leaders of the land, as well as on the common people.

How can we account for that? Some of it may have been simple curiosity--a taste for the novel and the bizarre. The Baptizer was indeed like some crazy prophet out of the Old Testament. He came from nowhere, from out of the wilderness. His hair was uncombed, he wore uncured animal skins for clothes, his nails and beard were untrimmed, and worst of all , his body probably smelled of grime and sweat and honey and the insects that made up his diet.

But when he preached, it was like the prophet Elijah had returned. He spoke the plain, unvarnished truth. It could not have been particularly comfortable, or easy to hear. But it was the truth. John's sermons brought a message of sin, of the need for immediate response, of impending doom. And he did not spare the religious authorities, or the prosperous merchants, or even the royal court from his condemnation.

"Repent you sinners! Turn your lives around, you corrupt politicians! Prepare the way of the Lord, before it's too late! The ax is laid to the root of the tree! You priests and Pharisees call yourselves children of Abraham. Phooey! Abraham can get better descendants from the stones on the ground than from you. I baptize you with water, but there is one coming who will baptize you with fire. His winnowing fork is in hand to clean out the threshing floor, to gather the wheat into his granary and sweep the chaff into the fire!"

And this is the message that the Gospels call "good news"! Scripture accounts tell us that the people flocked to hear John! They trotted out into the wilderness to hear this strange preacher. And when they arrived, he confronted them with an ax, stones, a winnowing fork, and fire. Why would anyone go very far-- much less out into the desert to hear that?

Why? Because the ax, the winnowing fork, children from stones, the refiners fire, are all images of change! Weird old John had a simple message. It was a message that everyone wanted to hear, yet nobody wanted to hear. "Prepare the way of the Lord. Make a highway in the wilderness!" Repent!" The Baptizer's message to them, and to us was, "You can change!"

That's what "repentance" means-- turn around-- change. That's why Herod had John killed. Those at the very top of the heap never really want change--they're perfectly happy with the status quo.

Perhaps you've heard the story of the 100 year old man. A reporter came from the paper to interview him and get a picture.

"Grandpa, you've seen a lot of changes in your day, haven't you?"

“Yep! And I been agin’ every durned one of ‘em!”

Some people always feel they have an investment in the way things are. But the multitudes-- the common people who came opt to hear John did not. And the majority of us today-- even though we may be part of the status quo-- are not always totally content with it.

It's a rare person who's totally happy with every dimension of their life. If pressed, we all would admit that we'd like to be better people, or enjoy more fulfilling relationships, or feel closer to God, or just simply lead better lives. So, if we're prepared to believe in it, the possibility of change can sound like good news to us.

Most counselors and therapists assume that people rarely change in significant ways. Oh, with enough work, some troubled folks learn to cope. But fundamental, immediate, drastic personality change is rare. The wise counselor aims instead for slow progress, minor changes in behavior, gradual growth.

And most of us, I think accept that idea. We content ourselves with "one day at a time", or "day by day, I'm getting better and better". And all things considered, we figure that's pretty good. Pick up the paper, turn on the news and what do we see? The same old sad, tragic stories. Change? "Maybe a little, but Naw! People never really basically change."

And yet, occasionally, every once in a while, there will be a voice. A word, an image, a call, a moment sent from God will grab us by the ears or turn us on our heads and radically re-orient us. Very, very occasionally our lives get turned around, and we begin to live in new directions.

The ax cuts a straight path through the wilderness of our lives. From nothing but stones dipped into the muddy water of the Jordan, children are born. The chaff of sin and self is burned away so that good wheat is left. Dirty, ugly lumps of ore are refined and refined and refined, until nothing but pure gold is left.

Before there can be change, there must be the possibility, the promise of change. That was what John preached. "Prepare the way!" He spoke to the religious establishment, to the cultured and the refined, to the common people, the soldiers, the sinners. He announced the advent of God. He proclaimed the possibility change. And that is good news.

In the disastrous world in which he lived, John dared to preach hope-- the possibility of change to both those caught in, and those who were the cause of all the disaster! In a nation occupied by foreign armies, John preached fairness and mercy to the soldiers, and forbearance and hope to the occupied. In a land under the heel of repressive religious leaders, John preached the coming of God's Reign of mercy and justice. To a people trapped in poverty and oppression, John preached charity and integrity.

He told them they were not bound by the evil ways of the world in which they lived. He taught them of the power within to change their lives the power among them to change their world, and the power beyond them lending strength to persevere, to overcome, to transcend and transform their world. The Baptizer offered them hope and promised them life--life lived in a new direction, lived if new ways-- new life. "Prepare the way!"

Granted, change can also be scary. Bad as things can be, often something inside us wants to hold back, not believe in possibility. Something inside us fears to face the unfamiliar. Something inside us would rather live with the insecurity and discomfort we know, than risk what we don't know. Something inside us says, "Maybe a little, but Naw! People never really basically change."

I recall the story of the young pastor on his first hospital call. Frankly, his parishioner didn't look to be doing too well. She lay there in the hospital bed, hooked up to the IVs and the oxygen, gasping for every breath.

"Would you like me to pray for you?" He asked. She nodded yes. "What would you like me to pray?"

"Pray that God will heal me, and restore me to perfect health." The pastor gulped and prayed something along the lines of, "Dear God, if it be thy will, send a miracle and restore this sister to health. However, let us accept thy will, so that whether she receives her health or not, she will rest secure, knowing you are still close to her."

Immediately, the old lady's eyes flashed open. She sat up, pulled the IVs out, threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. She stretched her arms, turned to the astonished preacher and announced,

"I feel better. I think that God has healed me!" With that, she turned on her heels and walked out of the room and down the hall to the nurse’s station, wearing her hospital gown and shouting out at the top of her lungs,

"Hallelujah! It's a miracle! I'm healed!"

The startled young preacher didn't say a word. He picked up his coat, staggered out, went down the stairs, out the front door of the hospital and into the parking lot. He got into his car, and looked up.

"Don't you ever do that to me again!"

Are we really ready for God to enter our lives and change us? We must believe. We must hope. We must keep our hearts and lives open to all the possibility that surrounds us. We must be prepared.

Election Week Cold Open - SNL

"Stay Awake! Wait!" given Dec. 3

 He was born in a stable, over two thousand years ago. For all the centuries before that, men and women, youth and elders had been waiting for Him, hoping for Him, praying for His coming, watching for Him. They really had no idea of who, or what exactly it was that they awaited so eagerly, watched for so diligently. But they waited. They watched. They hoped.

The history of humanity before His coming is a history of blood and pain and yearning-- reaching, searching, wondering-- for peace, for meaning, for justice, for purpose, for a reason, to touch and be touched by the Ultimate Reality that undergirds Creation. Before His coming, and ever since, we cannot name a people anywhere on this planet, who haven't reached out for somebody, for someone, for something beyond themselves-- to worship.

Before He came-- it was all fruitless. The Creator sent prophets and teachers and lawgivers, and holy men and women-- trying to reach us. But we ignored or killed them, or misinterpreted them. Worse, sometimes we put them on a pedestal and tried to worship the messenger instead of the message. Finally the Holy One decided that in order for us to get the message right, God would have to come to us in person. And so that is what our Maker did.

In the man Jesus of Nazareth, our God somehow mysteriously came among us. How? We don't really know. Does it matter?

In Jesus' life, God showed us the perfect model for our lives. In Jesus ' teachings, God gave us a glimpse of the Divine Will for us, for the world, for all of creation. In Jesus' healings and feedings and acts of compassion, God showed us that we are supposed to be about the business of healing and feeding and caring for one another.

In Jesus' willingness to die for us on the cross, God showed us the ultimate act of love-- even in the face of rejection. In Jesus' resurrection, God broke the boundaries of human existence and gave us the promise of new and abundant life-- in the world to come and in the world here and now.

Now, two thousand years later, we are waiting. We wait for the Christ to be born again in the past, the present, and the future. We wait throughout the season of Advent to celebrate His past birth in a manger. We wait for Him, invite Him to be born in our hearts, that He might remake us into new and forgiven people-- His people in the world today. We wait for His future rebirth into this world and the coming of His eternal Realm of Shalom-- of, Justice and Mercy, as He promised.

We are waiting, we are hoping, we are watching. Every child hanging a stocking or putting out an empty shoe on Christmas Eve is an expression of that hoping, that watching, that waiting.

"It doesn't matter," we tell the children, "if your house doesn't have a fireplace. You can put up your stocking on a wall, or on the tree, or on the door to your bedroom."

And when the child does that, it becomes a sign of the everlasting hope within,that gifts will come down upon us from above. It becomes a sign of humanity's dream that all peoples hopes and desires and wishes and needs will one day be fulfilled. The child is only looking for an American Girl doll, or a transformer robot. But we Christians, we adults, we human beings are hoping for so much more.

Christ was born two thousand and seventeen years ago--give or take thirty years. But humanity's desires have yet to be fully realized. There are hundreds of million people starving in Africa-- the same continent that Jesus knew as a refugee child. They look to the skies everyday-- watching, waiting, hoping for some relief-- some corn, or beans, or rice or oil. To the hungry, how else can the grace of God come except as food?

Jesus was born two thousand years ago. But for far too many people in this world, it is as if nothing at all happened on that night so long ago. In the cities and towns of our world, hundreds of thousands wander the streets right now, searching just as Jesus' parents did, for shelter. Those not as lucky as Mary and Joseph will sleep in the street—perhaps even heve their babies there.. Others will bed down in shelters, in missions, on church gym floors. To the homeless, how else can the grace of God come except as shelter?

Jesus Christ was born about two thousand years ago. But there is less peace in the sky than when the angels sung that night. Despite the end of the Cold War, with the “war on terror the night skies are still filled with warplanes. In our land, and in lands far away, missles still point at enemies new and old. Bombs, chemical weapons, land mines, guns and bayonets still threaten, not only new born babes in Bethlehem, but all of us. To all of us, how else can the grace of God come except in the promise of Christ's coming Reign of peace and plenty and justice?

Jesus seems to be far away-- like the householder in the Gospel for this morning, who left for a far off country. It's true that He warned His disciples and friends that He would be returning to the Heavenly Parent. But hadn't He also promised that He would come back? Hadn't He graced His followers with the abiding and empowering presence of His own Holy Spirit? And hadn't He entrusted them-- and us-- with tasks to perform?

"If you love me, feed my sheep." He said.

Hadn't He literally entrusted His mission, His life's work into the hands of His earthly Body—the church? Hadn't He entrusted His home-- this world-- to those who followed Him, who called themselves by His name? Hadn't they understood-- don't we understand that we have been equip and called to continue that ministry-- to feed the hungry, to satisfy the thirsty, to clothe the naked, to heal the sick, to visit the imprisoned, and organize the oppressed? To theneecy, how else can the grace of God come except through theministry of God's own people?

Hadn't He told them-- and us-- to watch? Didn't He promise that He would be back soon-- hoping to not find us, His church, asleep? And truth be told, isn't that what we are-- asleep in a world that needs to be reawakened? To the needy, how else can God's grace appear except in the witness of Christ's church?

Didn't He tell us not to be anxious or fret about the exact day and hour of His return? Didn't He admit that not even He knew the day and hour? Didn't He make it clear that far more important than all the speculation about when, was our call to watch and wait now, to be faithful doorkeepers, to keep His house safe from violence and war-- pure from the grime of sin and separation between people-- unpolluted by the trash of greed and self-serving and exploitation of human being by human being?

"Therefore, keep awake," Jesus says, "for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cock- crow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: keep awake" The word is Gregoreite, the same word Jesus uses in the Garden of Gethsemane when he begs Peter, James, and John to stay awake and pray with him. “Gregoreite!:” He says, “Stay awake! Stay conscious! As hard as it is, as long as it takes, please don't go to sleep on me!”

It's been a long time since He first came. It's been almost as long since He left, promising to return. And we've been watching and waiting for such a long time. I suspect many of us don't really expect that He ever will literally come back to this world---at least not in our lifetimes.

But the truth is, Jesus Christ comes into this world all the time. He's not really distant at all. He enters into your life and my life all the time. He calls us to acts of charity and compassion and love and mission all the time. He seeks to come into your heart and mine all the time.

He offers us here, at His table, renewed strength for the many challenges you and I must face. In the Bread and the Cup, He brings to us renewed hope for our lives, renewed purpose for the tasks of discipleship, renewed love in His presence.

Sisters and brothers, let us prepare ourselves to celebrate the feast of His birth. Let us invite Him to be reborn in our own hearts and lives. Let us come to His Table and be reminded that He will indeed return once more, to our world. Let us watch. Let us hope. Let us wait.