Good Gift Giving

Sermon preached January 6, 2013

Texts: Matthew 2:1-12

Bad gifts. [Power Point slide] It is just hard to pretend you like them. Maybe some of you are suffering with some bad gifts from this Christmas season – perhaps a holiday tie that wearing once a year is too much [PP], maybe an outfit your thoughtful partner bought you that just isn’t you [PP]. Among the list of underappreciated gifts might be a bad breath tester, or its companion an air freshening system for your home, diet cookbooks or self-help books (“How To Become a Better Spouse”), a Walgreens flu shot gift card, or a home drug testing kit given by a grandparent.
If you received any of these gifts, or if you spent more than an hour on December 26 returning gifts, this sermon, entitled “good gift giving,” might seem particularly untimely to you. But on this Sunday when we read about wise men from the East coming to visit the child Jesus, I want to talk briefly about good gifts and about giving. I want to talk about them by contrasting central characters in the story of the Magi, the wise men.
Let me put this discussion in its broadest context. Life is a gift. Max Ehrmann was a writer of the early twentieth century. He is not well-known or widely published, except that one of his “poems,” composed in 1927, has found its way onto greeting cards and posters for many years – Desiderata. I discovered it in high school. One line reads: “With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.” Life is a gift.
Mary Oliver is a well-known and well-published poet still writing. Her poem, “The Summer Day” ends:

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life.

Your one wild and precious life – life is a gift.
Life is a gift, and what we do with it matters. It is a lesson we have learned again powerfully as we have watched Julie’s mother die this week. We see two very different options for what we do with the gift of life in the story of Jesus birth from Matthew’s gospel. On the one hand we have Herod. Herod the Great reigned as King of Judea for over thirty years (37-4 BCE). His reign was marked by prosperity, by close collaboration with Rome, and by a ruthlessness in maintaining power. When he died, his sons continued to rule under Roman authority.
In the birth story of Jesus, Herod the Great, though Jewish, is more like the Pharaoh in the Exodus story. He is willing to eliminate perceived threats to his power and authority. He worries that there may be another to claim he is king of the Jews – Herod’s title. He wants to deceive wise men from the East, and later engages in a mass killing to get rid of any pretenders to his throne. Herod finds the meaning of his life in maintaining his power and position. Life may be a gift, but it is a gift best enjoyed only when one has unrivaled power and prestige.
On the other hand we have the wise men from the East. Life is a gift best enjoyed when one follows dreams, adventure, stars rising in the night sky. The wise men give of themselves. They pay attention. They take time to follow a dream, a star. When they encounter a special child they offer gifts from their treasure chests – gold, frankincense and myrrh. Gold, that always seems useful. The child could invest it in a trust fund – First Hebrew Bank/Roman Empire. Frankincense might be classified as a bad gift, unless you wanted to burn some incense in the nursery. Even if you did, this was an expensive way to go. Myrrh, too was an expensive item used more for perfumes than anything else, but also used medicinally. Maybe another not so great gift for a child.
While the specific gifts given may not have been that wonderful, and I am being tongue-in-cheek here, these wise men were wise in their use of the gift of life. They understood good gift giving and how to make the best and most of the gift of life. We receive and appreciate the gift of life best when we learn how to give, how to share, and in our giving and sharing help others enjoy the gift of life.
There is a financial side to this for us all. I am not mentioning this because we still need funds for our 2012 budget. We did o.k. at year’s end. I mention it because it is a part of our spiritual lives. We receive and appreciate the gift of life best when we learn how to give, how to share, and in our giving and sharing help others enjoy the gift of life.
More important than the financial side of this is to understand that the greatest gift we can give is our time, our attention, our energy. Life is a gift, but it seems to diminish, shrivel when we cling too tightly. Life is a gift, and we understand that most profoundly when we live in such a way that we make our lives gifts to God and to others. The Wise Men understood this. Herod did not.
A farmer whose corn always took first prize at the state fair had the habit of sharing his best corn see with all his neighboring farmers. When he was asked why he would do such a thing, he said, “It is really a matter of self-interest. The wind picks up the pollen and carries it from field to field. If my neighbors grow poor corn, the cross-pollination lowers the quality of my own crop. I want them to plant only the very best.” (Anthony de Millo, The Heart of the Enlightened, 133). When we treat life as a gift, and share it as a gift, we are better able to receive it as a gift.
Denise Roy is a mother, a psychotherapist and a spiritual director. She writes about developing a spirituality while keeping all one’s other commitments, like commitments to being a mother. She has a delightful book entitled My Monastery is a Minivan. I know that I have shared this story from that book before, but want to share it again.
Roy tells the story of being in a store on a hot summer day, with her youngest daughter in a stroller. While in a discount department store, Roy overheard an assistant store manager being quite rude to a little Latino girl and her mother. Roy had seen the little girl take a long stick with a beautiful cloth butterfly on the end of it off the shelf and begin to twirl it around. “What a thing of beauty – to witness all of this aliveness right here in this otherwise drab and cluttered aisle” (135). The assistant store manager did not see things that way. She chided the little girl for playing with a toy before paying for it, and was rude to the girl’s mother besides. The store manager was called, and Roy offered the little girl’s mother help. She would be glad to tell the store manager how inappropriate the assistant manager was. Roy wanted this mother to know she was not alone, and she wanted that little girl to know that she was lovely and blessed. Reflecting on this incident, Roy writes: Right then, I knew that this is how we help God out: by telling one another in words and in touch that we are lovely and whole and worthy of blessing. If we do our job, then one day the magic will happen. We will all blossom, every one of us. Together we will emerge like butterflies, soaring and dancing in sunlight, our hearts shimmering with praise. (141)
Life is a gift. What we do with it matters. We can choose to hoard whatever we can get in our lives, to see life as a gift only when we are at the center, clinging to that position. We can choose to receive life graciously, give the gift of ourselves generously, and in our giving and sharing help others enjoy the gift of life, help others see their lives as lovely and blessed. This later way seems more the way of wisdom. It seems more the way of Jesus. When we follow it together we all blossom. We all soar and dance in the sunlight, our hearts shimmering with praise. Amen.

Getting Bigger

Sermon preached December 30, 2012

Texts: Luke 2:41-52

Are you expecting? That was our theme for Advent. To follow that up with “getting bigger” – well! If you are expecting to give birth to a child, you can expect to get bigger. These days, with the internet, one can be flooded with news, both significant and trivial. While looking for something else, I discovered the other day that the current director of the EPA will be resigning her post – before I heard it on the radio, or saw it on television, or read it in the newspaper. I also stumbled across this item, related to the theme of getting bigger. Apparently Jennifer Aniston is getting married soon and there was some speculation that she was expecting a baby. However, photographs of her in a bikini indicated that she was not getting bigger ending such speculation. Here, let me show you (“Photo deemed inappropriate for Sunday morning worship”).
Getting bigger. Let’s shift to another part of the body. An enlarged heart, or cardiomegaly, is a medical condition where the heart enlarges due to damage to the heart muscle. It is not a good thing.
If we view the heart as a metaphor, a symbol, for the human capacity to care, to engage with the world, to love, then an enlarged heart is our calling. Getting bigger is our task. “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor. Jesus, as portrayed in Luke’s gospel is special from the beginning. “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:11). Yet he is also someone who grows into his specialness. He pushes some limits along the way, but increases in wisdom along with years.
Getting bigger. Enlarging our hearts. Growth. These are our tasks. This is our calling as people of God, as followers of Jesus. In her book Called to Question: a spiritual memoir, Joan Chittister writes: Life either dwarfs us or grows us. There is no in-between. There is no standing still in the spiritual life. (225) Andrew Shanks, theologian and Anglican priest, writes: The truth that belongs to the poetry of faith is not exactly a matter of correctness. Far rather, it is the truth of a true challenge: to imagine more, to feel more, to think more – in short, to love more. And so to be inwardly changed. Changed in the sense of saved. (What is Truth?, 5)
Getting bigger. Enlarging our hearts. Growth. These are our tasks. This is our calling as people of God, as followers of Jesus.
Paradoxically, one of the ways we enlarge our hearts spiritually, grow spiritually, is by recapturing some of our youthful hopes, dreams, and passions. I have to admit, this idea struck me a little while back while listening to a Carole King song. It may seem odd to get spiritual advice from Carole King, but it was St. Augustine who once wrote: “every good and true Christian should understand that wherever he may find truth, it is his Lord’s” (On Christian Doctrine, 2.28.28, p. 54). So sometimes I find truth in popular culture, and I found it in the Carole King song, “Goin’ Back.”
The song is about the necessity of growing up, but of the value of taking some important things with us, goin’ back to get them if they get lost. I think I'm goin' back/
To the things I learned so well in my youth/ I think I'm returning to/ Those days when I was young enough to know the truth…. I can recall a time/ When I wasn't ashamed to reach out to a friend…. Carole King sums up some of her thoughts in singing:
Thinking young and growing older is no sin. She encourages her listeners:
A little bit of courage is all we lack/ So catch me if you can, I'm goin' back.


Goin' Back


I think about this dynamic in my own life. In my younger days, I wanted to help change the world. I wanted to develop myself. I saw the two as deeply connected. Growing older, I recognize how difficult change can be. We hear much too little about the common good in our political discussions. Religious language, which should be in the service of human growth, of compassion, of love, is often used to denigrate and divide, and, at its worst, to authorize suicide bombings and killings. Social change is difficult, and so is personal change. Inner issues don’t get resolved overnight. Old wounds can come back to bite. The temptation can be to forget youthful idealism and energy and dreams. Growing bigger, though, means reintegrating that energy and dreaming into our lives even now. Enlarging our hearts involves thinking young while growing older. Wisdom entails the courage to go back, when needed.
Jesus, in growing into his identity, continues to understand himself as a child of God, as someone at home in the household of God. Did he go back, from time to time to those days sitting with the teachers in the Temple, listening to them and asking questions?
Another way we enlarge our hearts spiritually is even more challenging and takes even more courage than being willing to go back. It is being open to suffering. It is learning to let our broken hearts be hearts broken open so that we grow in our capacities to imagine, to feel, to think, to love. Mary might be our model here more than the Jesus of this story.
When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety. Later: His mother treasured all these things in her heart. This was certainly not Mary’s first experience with pain. Giving birth is painful, even when there are shepherds telling stories of angels visiting them with good news about this baby. This would not be Mary’s last experience of pain. She was there when her son was crucified. Through it all, Mary treasured all these things in her heart. These experiences of pain and suffering seemed to enlarge Mary’s heart, making more room for profound thinking, deeper feeling, broader imagining, deeper loving.
In the Christmas issue of The New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd asked a friend of hers, Father Kevin O’Neil, to offer a meditation on Christmas in light of the tragic events at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut.
Father O’Neil said the killings in Newtown reminded him of a thirty year-old memory from his first few months in parish ministry. I was awakened during the night and called to Brigham and Women’s Hospital because a girl of 3 had died. The family was from Peru. My Spanish was passable at best. When I arrived, the little girl’s mother was holding her lifeless body and family members encircled her. They looked to me as I entered. Truth be told, it was the last place I wanted to be. To parents who had just lost their child, I didn’t have any words, in English or Spanish, that wouldn’t seem cheap, empty. But I stayed. I prayed. I sat with them until after sunrise, sometimes in silence, sometimes speaking, to let them know that they were not alone in their suffering and grief.
Opening himself to suffering enlarged Father O’Neil’s heart, expanded his mind. I believe differently than 30 years ago…. I really do believe that God enters the world through us…. We are human and mortal. We will suffer and die. But how we are with one another in that suffering and dying makes all the difference as to whether God’s presence is felt or not and whether we are comforted or not.
Through the years I have been with the hurting and the dying and the grieving. It is not always an easy place to be. I have been there as families have dealt with the death of parents or spouses or children. I have talked with heartbroken teenagers. I have seen broken relationships. I have witnessed grinding poverty. Through it all, my broken heart has often been a heart broken open so that I could grow in my capacities to imagine, to feel, to think, to love.
If opening ourselves to suffering enlarges our hearts spiritually, so too does opening ourselves to wonder. Jesus asked wonderful questions of the teachers in the temple. Mary “treasured all these things in her heart.” I think of the words of the writer Annie Dillard. Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist, there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous…. Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there. (Annie Dillard, The Annie Dillard Reader, 286,287)
I can attest to this, too. I open myself to wonder through words – poetry, fiction, philosophy, theology. I open myself to wonder through music. I open myself to wonder seeing beauty in the world. When I open myself to wonder, my heart grows, my mind expands, my capacities for feeling and thinking and loving and joy get bigger.
One writer who has helped expand my heart and mind in recent years is a man named Michael Eigen. Eigen is a psychoanalyst who writes a lot about spirituality. In one place Eigen writes: To grow psychic taste buds and digestive capacity in the face of suffering is our true evolutionary challenge (Feeling Matters, 3). In another place he writes: How to use our capacities, all of our capacities, is a great evolutionary challenge (Contact With the Depths, 52).
What Eigen calls evolutionary challenges I see as invitations from God for our lives. The invitation from God’s Spirit is to grow, is to develop, is to get bigger, is to have an enlarged heart and an expanded mind. The challenge from God’s Spirit is to imagine more, to feel more, to think more, to love more.
Mary “treasured all these things in her heart.”
“Jesus increased in wisdom and in years.”
Are we getting bigger? As one year ends and another begins, let’s hope so. Amen.

It's The End of the World As We Know It

Christmas Eve Sermon
Texts: Isaiah 9:2-7; Isaiah 11:1-9; Luke 2:1-20

It’s December 24 and we are still here. The world did not end a few days ago. Maybe the Mayans just got tired of making calendars out into the distant future. As I told the Tuesday morning Men’s Group awhile back, I didn’t think the potential end of the world would give me an excuse for not being ready for tonight’s worship services.
How many of your know REM? If you’re thinking it’s a kind of sleep, you are right, and I hope that my sermon helps you avoid it during the next few minutes. REM is also a band that began making music in the 1980s and just broke up about a year ago. One of their well-known songs is “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” I am not going to play it as I sometimes do, though I considered asking Tapestry/Bells if they might consider it. The song has never made a Christmas collection, to the best of my knowledge, but maybe it should
While the world may not have ended December 21 as some thought a Mayan prediction indicated it would, the message of Christmas is that it’s the end of the world as we know it. Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in their book The First Christmas write: “Advent and Christmas are about a new world” (240). Advent and Christmas are about a new world. It’s the end of the world as we know it.
But how can this be? The world we live in is quite familiar to us – sometimes frustratingly and disappointingly familiar. There are still too many people who go hungry in our world. There are too many people who have no permanent place to call home. There are still too many people struggling with addictions. There are too many broken relationships. There is too much loneliness, even in our ever-crowded world. The world is frustratingly familiar in its violence. There are too many tragedies.
My heart is heavy tonight as I think about families in Newtown, Connecticut whose sons and daughters, first graders, will not be there to celebrate Christmas this year. I can’t just bracket them off. And the world is disappointingly familiar in some of our anemic responses to this tragic event. We have heard bad theology as the event has been blamed on systematically removing God from schools (Mike Huckabee), as God not going where God is not wanted (Bryan Fischer), or God allowing judgment to fall on America (James Dobson). Those who produce movies and video games may want to blame inadequate mental health care and guns – certainly not violent images in our culture. Those who speak for the gun manufacturers want to blame movies and video games and inadequate mental health care, certainly not guns. And if mental health care is part of the issue, how many are willing to make sure we as a county pay for better mental health care? We might have written the scripts of the responses to Sandy Hook Elementary even before we heard them
The end of the world as we know it? A newer world?
Christmas says that this is not the way the world has to be. The world does not have to be a place of hunger, addiction, loneliness, brokenness, violence, bad theology and unimaginative thinking. Christmas is the birth of someone who will announce and live a different way, a way in keeping with the grain of the universe. We can be different. There are possibilities for healing and wholeness in our lives that we can just barely imagine. Our world can be different. There are possibilities for community and connection that we have only allowed on the edges of our dreams.
Christmas says that we can be different, that the world can be different because God is at work, because God draws near. A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him. (Isaiah 11). For a child has been born for us, a son given to us… and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9). Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. (Luke 2)
God draws near. God is at work, and this is the direction of God’s work, the direction the grain of the universe runs. Good news of great joy for all the people - glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace. (Luke 2) There shall be endless peace…. He will establish it with justice and with righteousness. (Isaiah 9). With righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth…. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adders den. They will not hurt or destroy. (Isaiah 11)
God draws near. God is at work, working toward a newer world where love wins, a newer world where, in the words of the Psalmist: steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other (85:10).
God draws near. Joan Chittister writes: I realize more and more every year, it is the spark of the divine in life that Christmas is meant to celebrate. It is fragile life, holy life, that Christmas hallows (Living Well, 147) Christmas tells us that God is with us, that the spark of the divine in life is always there and that it is always working even in our fragile and sometimes frustratingly familiar lives to make our lives and the world new. The God of the Christmas story is not a God who turns away or a God whose primary activity is horrendous judgment so that we might pay God more attention. The God of the Christ child celebrates the spark of the divine in life, a spark that seeks to ignite flames of hope and healing in our lives and in our world. The spark of the divine in life works not so much in the palatial palaces of power as in the quiet places, through small miracles, in tender moments and acts of kindness and gentleness. God is there in those moments of awe when beauty is seen and new life is celebrated.
The Christmas story is meant to speak to us, not only about the past, but about our lives. We know the story, but what happens when we try to tell the story with children?
A pastor was once recruited to play the role of Joseph in his congregation’s Christmas program when the child playing Joseph fell ill. Getting ready to tell the Christmas story with these children, a kindergartner arrived wearing a feathery white swan costume. The director of the children’s program expected the pastor to discourage the child from wearing the swan costume. Who ever heard of a swan in the manger? The pastor knelt down to the five-year-old and asked if she wouldn’t rather be a sheep or a donkey. “I’m a swan,” she said. The pastor patiently explained that there were no swans around the cradle of Jesus in the manger. The child looked at the pastor with a thoughtfully furrowed brow and said calmly, “Don’t you think swans love Jesus too?” (The Christian Century, November 28, 2012, p. 10) The pageant had a swan that year, and I have heard of raccoons and giraffes appearing in other pageants. In the world as we know it, there are no swans or giraffes or raccoons in the Christmas story. Things need to be neat and tidy and the way they always have been. But with the God of the Jesus of Christmas, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and all have a place, and I feel fine.
Leo Buscaglia was a teacher and writer whose favorite topics were love and learning. He loved his demonstrative Italian family and loved to tell stories about lessons he learned from them. As Christmas 1982 was drawing near, Buscaglia went to the hospital for his annual exam. It was Christmas break from teaching and it seemed like a good time to go. It was something to get out of the way before a wonderful family Christmas celebration filled with food and laugher. While at the doctor’s office for his exam, Buscaglia suffered a heart attack. “It occurred quickly, without warning, and was totally incapacitating.” Buscaglia would have to undergo an emergency quintuple by-pass operation.
Buscaglia’s family immediately decided that there would be no family Christmas celebration that year. Not without Leo. But Buscaglia knew all the planning that had gone into Christmas that year, and so he convinced them they needed to go on, and they pledged to do so.
Buscaglia’s surgery went well, and his family supported him lovingly. Within days I was moved into a private room in the cardiac ward. A constant parade of loved ones made their way to my bedside. Each person was bearing gifts, things they were certain I couldn’t live without: baked lasagna, homemade sausage, salami, mortadella, pureed chestnuts, cut flowers, potted plants, and my favorite holiday treat – ‘frittura dussa’, breaded cornmeal with lemon peel, fried in butter (Seven Stories of Christmas Love, 108-109) Buscaglia felt surrounded by love and care. I have no idea what the cardiologists thought about his diet!
He continues his story. When visitors leave and darkness falls in a hospital, an eerie ambiance comes over the place. It was during one of these periods, while walking silently and cautiously around the ward, that I became aware of my neighbors. Seeing them alone, in semidarkness, I had the sudden inspiration to share my good fortune. To the elderly woman in the room immediately next to mine I gave my blooming poinsettia and a healthy serving of my sister’s best egg custard. With the man down the hall who had (I’d been told) lost the will to live, I shared my largest array of cut flowers. I also delivered a portion of ‘frittura dussa,’ which I was certain would add a new spark and perhaps an eagerness to try some more. The succulent wonder of that ambrosia is of itself reason enough to live. In a few hours we all became fast friends, bound together by the same mystery of the shared moment. (109-110)
Reflecting on this experience, Buscaglia writes: I shall never forget that Christmas…. I still have years ahead of me for giving, sharing, caring, accepting, loving. I want to live this allotted time in a holiday spirit. What better way to live? (110)
In the world as we know it, hospitals are not sites for joyous celebrations and the creation of community. With the God of the Jesus of Christmas, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
In the world as we know it including a swan in a Christmas program or sharing custard and flowers are not considered significant. They don’t seem to be earth-shaking events. But with the God of the Jesus of Christmas, it is in these places of fragile life, holy life that the significant events happen. The world is changed as hearts are moved, softened, minds are sharpened and opened. It’s the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
Christmas reminds us that God draws near, that God is at work nudging, coaxing, inviting us toward a newer life, a newer world. God draws near and is at work in you and in me, in our fragile lives which can be holy lives. With Christmas, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and with the God of the Christ Child, I feel fine. I hope you do too. Merry Christmas. Amen.

Surprise

Sermon preached December 23, 2012
We also had a Cantata of Lessons and Songs this day

Texts: Luke 1:39-45

Are you expecting? That’s been our theme these past weeks of the Advent season. When families are expecting a child, whether it be by birth or by adoption, they spend time learning. They get stuff ready – they nest. We want to be well prepared for the arrival of new life in our midst. That’s a good thing.
Yet no matter how much we learn, no matter how much we prepare, no matter how much we nest, there will be surprises along the way. “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb.” No matter how ready we are, there will be those leaping moments of surprise.
The same holds true in our spiritual lives, in our journey with Jesus, in our journey with God. God’s Spirit surprises no matter how deep our prayer life, no matter how sophisticated our theology. If we journey with Jesus, we will be surprised. There will be leaps of joy within us.
I have been surprised this Advent by a video. A few days ago, I was sent a link to a video of an orchestral flash mob. A flash mob is a gathering of folks typically called together through social media, and they just show up in a place. This particular flash mob was better organized than that. It was the town square in the Spanish community of Sabadell. It began with a bass. A crowd begins to gather as the musician plays. Other musician join the “mob” slowly. The final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, his “Ode to Joy” was played and sung by this gathered group. Watching it brought joy, especially as I remembered that Beethoven was suffering profound hearing loss as he wrote this, his final symphony. The story is told that after he conducted it, he had to be turned around to see the applause of the audience, because he could not hear it, and seeing their appreciation, he wept. Surprise.

Ode to Joy

Last Sunday, we had a friend of our community, Hajii, come as he has come the past few years, to bring goods made by refugees, the sale of which supports refugees. Before he left, Hajii made a gift of this print to us. It is a picture of a community and he thought it a nice symbol for us all. Surprise.
This past Thursday, out of the blue a member of the congregation called. He said he had recently heard about Julie’s mother’s health issues. Julie’s mom is receiving in-home hospice care. He said he didn’t know that it would make a difference, but just wanted me to know he was thinking about me. Surprise, and I thought of all the other times in our years together I have been surprised by your love and care. Not surprised that you cared, just delighted by particular expressions of that care.
Are you expecting? Are you expecting to be surprised by the Spirit of God this Advent and Christmas? God is about the business of such surprise, of moments of leaping joy.
And here’s another surprise. I’m done.

Nesting

Sermon preached December 16, 2012

Texts: Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18

Are you expecting? That’s a delicate question and our Advent theme this year. When parents are expecting a child, they often learn about the process of giving birth and about what parenting might entail. The journey of faith, our journey together with the God we know in Jesus is meant to be a life-long journey of learning. God’s love may be unchanging – though I would argue that we need to be a bit careful with that assertion because God’s love responds to the circumstances in our lives and in the world, God’s love may be unchanging, but we change and the world we try to love with the love of God changes. What we learned in confirmation was important but it may not carry us far enough in a world where we can induce comas to keep young people alive and yet cannot finally prevent death from touching us all, in a world of instant communication yet persistent isolation and alienation, in a world where twice in one week a lone gunman opened fire on unsuspecting people, Friday on a group of school children. We need to keep learning and growing.
As I was discussing the Advent theme with the worship committee, I planned out three sub-themes to “Are you expecting” – learning, getting the right stuff together and surprise. When I was talking with Velda and Cynthia about the getting the right stuff together I elaborated – you know how parents buy cribs and highchairs and car seats and playpens and all that. Cynthia said, “You mean like nesting?”
Nesting. That was a new term for me. Nesting. It is kind of an old-fashioned term. I remember Jimmy Stewart in “It’s a Wonderful Life” asking his wife, played by Donna Reed – “You on the nest Mary?” If there is worse question to ask a woman of childbearing years than “Are you expecting?” – “You on the nest?” may be it!
But we do “nest” when we are expecting a baby. We buy all the necessary supplies – car seats, blankets, diapers, pack and play. And it does kind of remind you of bird’s building their nests – finding what they need to make a comfortable home for the newly arrived. When you see a bird’s nest, they are rather fascinating – carefully constructed, with an occasional odd item used. They want a safe and secure place for their newly hatched. We humans want a warm, safe and secure environment for our children coming into our lives.
Is there something here about the spiritual journey? Does it make sense to try and talk about our lives as places where God will come and feel welcome? What can we do to welcome God, to make in our lives a warm and welcoming place for this ever-arriving God? I want to say three things in response to this question.
First, we need to admit that there is something a little odd in talking about a God who arrives, who comes. We affirm, after all, a God who is ever present. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. (Psalm 139:7-10)
We affirm that there is no place we can go where God is not, yet the human experience of God is that God can seem absent. God’s presence can be elusive in our experience. Often we have such experiences when things happen in our lives and in our world that don’t fit well with our ideas about God. Where is God when science explains things we used to attribute to God? Where is God when a job is lost? Where is God when dreams turn into disappointments? Where is God when a child dies in infancy? Where is God when a mother is killed in a car accident? Where is God when children are shot and killed in a school? Where is God when a vibrant twenty-three year old is attacked by unknown organisms affecting her nervous system? Where is God when rape and torture become weapons in wars of liberation? Where is God when six million Jews are killed during the Holocaust?
We ask deep questions that have no easy answers. God seems distant or drifting. We experience what Christian mystics have called “the dark night of the soul.” Such dark night of the soul experiences are not the absence of God, but can signal a need for growth on our part. Gerald May: when habitual senses of God do disappear in the process of the dark night, it is surely because it is time for us to relinquish our attachment to them (The Dark Night of the Soul, 91).
God is not absent, but our experience of God’s distance may perhaps mean we need to tune into God differently. We need to reconstruct our nest for God’s presence in our lives. We can be more attentive to God’s presence. We can be more perceptive of God’s presence. This is the second point I want to make about nesting as a part of our spiritual journey.
Michael Eigen is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist whose writings I have discovered over the past couple of years. In a recent book, Eigen reflects on the experience of the biblical character Job. You remember that Job loses everything, and his friends try to help by offering their opinions about where God is in Job’s life. They seem focused on the idea that because Job’s life has gone south, he must have done something wrong. God finally shows up at the end of the book and tells Job’s friend they just got it wrong. God shows up and meets with Job, but never really answers Job’s questions about why all this stuff happened to him. God just shows up in a new way in Job’s life. Eigen: [God] simply shows himself…. Job is awed by the immensity of existence, the bare fact of being. God’s show of power blows a hole through him. Talking with his Creator brings unsuspected moments of illumination, new levels of intensity, realization…. Life would not be the same after his rock-bottom shake-up and meeting God face to face. (Contact With the Depths, 34, 35).
We can be more open to God’s presence. We can be more perceptive of God’s presence. We can be more attentive to God’s presence. We can do things in our lives that make them more open to God, a better nest for welcoming the Spirit.
So here’s my final point. Remember points one and two: (1) God is always present, but our experience of God is not always attuned to that presence; (2) we can be more perceptive of and attentive to God’s presence. Here’s three: We become more perceptive of God, more attentive to God through soul work, and an important part of soul work follows the Mobius principle. Clear as mud?!
Soul work is the nesting of our spiritual journey, the way we make our lives more open to the presence of God who is always present, ever-arriving. We often think of soul work as things like meditation, prayer, spiritual direction, depth therapy. They are important. Philippians 4 reminds us of the importance of prayer, especially prayers of joy. There is a wonderful insight here. We tend to more naturally pray when things are not going so well. Our prayers are simple: “Help!” When things are going well, prayer can find a back seat. Pray prayers of joy – prayers of “thanks” and “wow.”
Then there’s the Mobius principle part of soul work – good works are also soul work. The Mobius strip moves in and out. What is in our souls is expressed in our action, but our actions also shape our souls. Kurt Vonnegut, in one of his novels wrote: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be” (Mother Night, quoted in Timothy White Strangers to Ourselves, 203). Psychologist Timothy White writes: “the first step to changing our non-conscious inclinations is to change our behavior” (212).
So here’s John the Baptist, the paradigmatic figure for Advent. We have not forgotten about him. “Bear fruits worthy of repentance” (Luke 3:8). We sometimes think that first comes the repentance, then the works – the soul work of repentance expressing itself in living differently. What if, however, the actions are part of the repentance, the soul work? A new thing is on the horizon. Our understanding of God’s action and presence is changing. Repentance is the soul work we do to be more attentive to God’s presence. Part of that soul work is good works. Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise. Tax collectors – collect no more that the amount prescribed for you. Soldiers – do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages. (Luke 3:10-14, edited). By the way John was not against wage increases. Soldiers in John’s time added to their wages by taking money from common people.
Good works are also soul work, preparing us to be more attentive to God’s presence. We don’t do good to earn God’s love. God already loves. We do good in response to God’s love and to open ourselves more deeply. Our soul work benefits the world, another Mobius moment and right now our world needs our kindness and gentleness.
So how are you doing shaping a place for God? How are you doing in being more perceptive of God’s presence? How are you doing in being more attentive to God’s presence?
Advent is soul work time, including the soul work of good works. You on the nest?

Advent Reflection

Last Sunday was the children and youth Christmas program at our church. I did not preach, but earlier in the week I lead a communion service at a local senior care facility. Here is my reflection from that service.

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world.”
I don’t know about you, but it sounds a lot like the morning news programs. Hurricane Sandy certainly had roaring seas and waves. Fear and foreboding – fiscal cliff, the end of the Mayan calendar. Fear leaps at us from our radios, televisions, computers, and even our phones.
So in the midst of all this chaos and confusion, what does Jesus in this part of the Gospel According to Luke have to say? “Stand up and raise up you heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
It’s Advent, and Jesus is coming.
Jesus is coming, and I don’t mean that the world as we know it is going to end. I was kidding some men at my church yesterday, saying that even though some think the world will be ending December 21 (Mayan calendar), I can’t use that as an excuse not to work on my Christmas Eve sermon. Jesus is coming in ways that Jesus has been coming since he first came – on a quiet night, in the midst of the ordinary. Jesus may also be coming at some later time on a cloud with power and glory, but if that is the only coming of Jesus we concern ourselves with, we miss the meaning, the mystery, the magic of Advent. In Advent, we would do well to pay more attention to the quiet comings of God’s love, God’s grace in Jesus.
Joan Chittister is a nun and a prolific writer. She is also among my favorite authors. Joan’s early years were spent in an industrial town in Pennsylvania, the kind of place where “coal dirt belched from the chimneys of the large corrugated shop segments day and night.” It was a place where “house paints, whatever their original colors, turned an inevitable uniform gray” (Living Well, 146)
When she was about ten years old, Joan’s family moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, and Joan was captivated by it. The place vibrated life…. Trees and thick bushes in big yards and wild grasses in open lots and live flowers everywhere (147). Reflecting on this years later, Joan draws a lesson for Advent, for the coming of Jesus. The truth is that life is not only about living. Life is also, purely and simply, about life, about the holiness of creation, about God’s love incarnate in the world around us. And, interestingly enough, I realize more and more every year, it is the spark of the divine in life that Christmas is meant to celebrate. It is fragile life, holy life, that Christmas hallows, that Christmas calls us to recognize, that Christmas reminds us to bow down before as we go. (147)
It is Advent and Jesus is coming. Stand up, raise your heads.
Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also when you see these things taking place, you will know that the kingdom of God is near. (Luke 21:29-31). I am told that fig trees are rather unique. When there are no leaves, their bare spiky branches give the tree and appearance of being “utterly dead.” The budding leaves allow those paying attention to watch as sap returns to the tree, and it can be observed with particular clarity. (Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 120) It is as if the tree is moving from death to life. When places vibrate life, the kingdom of God is near. Jesus is present.
Mary Oliver is a favorite poet of mine. Her poem “Sometimes” (Red Bird) is divided into short sections, each a poem in itself.

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

This is like the perfect Advent poem. It is Advent and Jesus is coming. Raise your heads. Look around. Pay attention. Be astonished.
How might Jesus be trying to be born in you and around you this Advent What beauty is there to see? What kindness is extended toward you? What kindness are you extending toward others? Where is there a smile that shares God’s grace that it will be all right? Where is the gentle holding of the hand that shares the peace of Christ?
It is Advent and Jesus is coming. Raise your heads. Look. Pay attention. Be astonished. Amen.

Are You Expecting?

Sermon preached December 2, 2012

Play beginning of Buffalo Springfield, “Expecting To Fly”

Expecting To Fly


Now that’s a strange way to begin Advent. Were you expecting something else? Maybe you’ve come to expect the unexpected sometimes here?
Are you expecting? That is a question in which context is everything. If your postal delivery person asks it of you, it would be considered a courtesy. If you ask it of a woman of child-bearing years – well, don’t do that.
Of course, the typical context for “Are you expecting?” has to do with pregnancy. Are you expecting a child? One of the things parents do when they are expecting a child is that they learn. What is this going to mean? What should we be doing? The number of books for expectant parents is amazing. I did a little on-line research and one of the sites I found – pregnancy.baby-gaga had a list of forty great pregnancy books. Forty great pregnancy books! They listed them out by the forty weeks of pregnancy from week one: Taking Charge of Your Fertility, to week forty: Baby Signs. In between were such books as Frankly Pregnant, What’s Going On In There?, and The Expectant Father. Forty books!
Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also when you see these things taking place, you will know that the kingdom of God is near. (Luke 21:29-31)
I am told that fig trees are rather unique. When there are no leaves, their bare spiky branches give the tree an appearance of being “utterly dead.” The budding leaves allows those paying attention to watch as sap returns to the tree. It can be observed with particular clarity. (Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 120) It is as if the tree is moving from death to life.
This parable of the fig tree is a parable about learning. One of the things expectant parents tend to do is learn. They may not read forty books in forty weeks. They may not read much at all, but then they may learn from classes, or from parents about what it will mean to have this baby in their lives. Such learning happens most vigorously when a first child is expected, but it doesn’t end when more children come. What’s it going to be like when you have two babies in the home? One of the stories we tell at our household is the story of bringing Beth home from the hospital. David, our oldest, was about twenty-months old, and when we brought this little baby home to be part of our family, he sat there and cried. We were learning about having two infant children.
Expectant parents learn. Followers of Jesus, disciples of Jesus, learn. Our journey of faith is a journey of learning, or is intended to be anyway. We think parenting involves learning. Many professions require evidence of continued learning – CEUs. Why do we sometimes assume that our journey of faith is different? God’s love may be unchanging, but I would argue that it is only so in a particular way. God’s love may be unchanging, but our lives change. Our world changes. What love requires of us can change. Prayer can change. I think there is a difference in thinking about prayer disciplines in an age of almost constant communication in contrast to an age before radio, television, computers, the internet, and phones that are multi-media communication devices.
Our lives change. Our world changes. Do we expect, in the midst of all this change, God’s kingdom to break in? Do we expect, in the midst of all this change, God’s persistent, persuasive, loving presence to show up, to touch us, to move us? Taking my Bible and my faith seriously, God shows up. God’s love keeps on coming. That’s grace. And our response – look, watch, learn. Learn to see. Learn to hear. Learn to think in new ways. Learn to feel in new ways.
Kent Ira Groff is a writer and teacher about the Christian spiritual journey. He believes that one powerful image for this journey is the West African image of the Sankofa (project). Groff: Picture the primodern bird joyously dancing its way through life, feet forward, eyes backward, sideways, head forward again! Go back and fetch the essence of life…. Dance is the ideal metaphor for Sankofa and the final answer to the question, How shall we then live? “Dance then, wherever you may be!” Dance with all life’s opposites – the personal and the political, your disciplines and delights. (What Would I Believe if I Didn't Believe Anything: A Handbook for Spiritual Orphans, 183)

Like the parable of the fig tree, the parable of the Sankofa is a parable about our need to learn. That sense of the spiritual journey as a journey of on-going learning is also captured well in this short poem from Mary Oliver’s new book A Thousand Mornings.

“Three Things To Remember”

As long as you’re dancing, you can
break the rules.
Sometimes breaking the rules is just
extending the rules.

Sometimes there are no rules.

The poem takes rules seriously, seriously enough to know that sometimes rules need to be extended in new ways to new situation, and seriously enough to know that sometimes rules can become outdated – rules that enforced segregated lunch counters, or segregated marriages.
How do we live when dancing is required, required by a God whose love dances through the cosmos? We expect that love to be active. We learn where it may be found. We look. We pay attention. We trip over our own two feet sometimes and learn even from that.
Leo Buscaglia (1924-1998) wrote a rather famous book about love. In a later book, he shared this conversation: “Dr. Buscaglia, will you define love?” “Nooo! But if you follow me around I’ll try to live it.” (Living, Loving, Learning, 131)
The lesson of the fig tree is learn – learn to see, hear, think in new ways, feel in new ways. The related lesson of the Sankofa and of the poet is dance. The related lesson of Buscagli is love. The lesson of Jesus is all of these – learn, dance, love. What else would you expect? Blessed Advent.