"Old Dogs and New Tricks" - Epiphany 3B

The Conversion of Saint Paul

Acts 9:1-22

Saint Mark 1:14–20

All of us have heard the old bromides: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”  “A leopard can’t change his spots.” Or, as Tamara Cohen wrote in the book The Mistress’s Revenge: “People don't change. They dig their heels into the shifting sand and cling on for dear life.”1

Change of any kind can make us uncomfortable.  And so we resist by  weeping  over the goodness of imaginary yesterdays. We find  things to blame for the flow of events we wanted to stop and could not. We blame God, our partners, government, books, fanciful combinations of unnamed individuals, and sometimes even the voices in our own heads that tell us that the “good-old days” were far better than whatever is now or whatever  will be.

I know some friends for whom high school was the pinnacle of their lives to which nothing can be compared.  Talk to them for even a moment and the conversation will return to the glories of those days.  The band sounded better than the Chicago Symphony, the choir sounded better than the one at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, and the football team could have beaten the Bears.  (Oh wait! The part about beating the Bears is probably true.)

Any awareness of being awkward, or having bad skin, or feeling out of place, or struggling with your identity has been expunged in favour of sanitized memories.

People go back because change is hard.  It requires work, effort, and most of all an openness to a new and better tomorrow.  

Certainly the guys who got up and went to work on their father’s boat one morning did not expect their lives to change.

They were fisherman. In their day the opportunity for change was non-existent and upward mobility was unheard of. 

Fishing was a family trade: you fished if your father fished, and your sons fished if you fished. Frankly ... you did not have the opportunity to explore other possibilities for your life. You were born into your job and seen only as a unit of production rather than as a person.  The fact that these fishermen had probably always known they would be fishermen ... allowing them to earn just enough money to scrape by but never enough money to even imagine getting ahead.2

Change was not on the horizon until, out of the blue, Jesus shows up with a direct invitation.  He didn’t say “Hey!  Nice boats!  Maybe I’ll come and visit you again next week.”  He said “Come and follow me and I will give you a whole new life.”

The amazing thing for me is that they took him up on the offer.  They spontaneously changed jobs.  They left their nets un-mended, the fish they had just caught uncleaned, and their father with only the highered hands to help. 

Who knows why they did this?  Nobody does.

We can only imagine the reaction of their wives and children when they didn’t show up for dinner that night and their family’s even more surprised reaction when they heard that their husbands and fathers went traipsing off after some person that nobody even knew.

Further, it was a job change and a lifestyle change that didn’t happen in the middle of the night but in the middle of the day.

Who does this?  I wouldn’t and I bet you wouldn’t either.  We’d investigate.  We’d run a background check on this Jesus character. We’d ask for references. 

It is far more likely that before we changed our lives and lifestyles we would be far more like Saul of Tarsus. 

It didn’t look like any kind of change would be in the cards for him because he was absolutely certain about who he was and what he was about.

The disciple’s faith before they met Jesus was never mentioned. Saul’s faith was so central to his life and he was so dedicated to it that he decided that any challenge was a threat.  For some change is not only difficult it is threaten­ing.

Saul of Tarsus, Paul to us, for some reason viewed the followers of Jesus as a cause for real alarm.  I have never been able to figure this out except for Saul’s zealotry as a defender of the faith.  Followers of “the Way”, as the  early Christians were known, were few and number and certainly not as big of a menace to the peace and stability of his faith as was Roman rule under which he lived.  Still he wants to bring them bound and gagged to Jerusalem. 

Paul ... was Church Persecutor Number One. He was busy, on his way to Damascus, with letters from high officials, determined to stamp out all of this Jesus nonsense once and for all. And Paul was stopped in his tracks by a blinding light from heaven. He heard a voice calling his name. The risen Christ stood before him.

Paul didn’t know whether what happened to him, in his Damascus Road encounter with Christ, was birth or death. It felt like both at the same time. For him, meeting Christ was a new beginning, but it was also a dramatic ending. Much of his past was over. A very different future awaited him.3

That’s what happens when change comes.  Change always brings with it a very different future.

For the disciples Jesus was calling them to a bigger life than the fishing business could every offer.  Now they were going to be in the people business!  They are going to be able to see, first hand, how God would have us treat other people.  They would see a healing touch offered to those who needed it.  They would see outcasts welcomed, bound­aries crossed, sinners and tax-collectors becoming a part of God’s kingdom before the righteous and religious. 

Maybe it was the faith in action part of Jesus’ message that bothered Saul so much because he was the ultimate insider – righteous and religious beyond measure.

For Saul the change was so great that not only his attitude was changed but so was his name.  The old man really had passed away because the Christ whom he had persecuted opened his blinded eyes and made him into a new man. 

Things happen when change comes into our lives especially if Christ is the catalyst for that change. 

Marianne Williamson put it this way:

When you ask God into your life, you think God is going to come into your psychic house, look around, and see that you just need a new floor or better furniture, and that everything needs just a little cleaning ‑‑ and so you go along for the first six months thinking how nice life is now that God is there. Then you look out the window one day and you see that there’s a wrecking ball outside. It turns out that God actually thinks your whole foundation is shot and you’re going to have to start over from scratch."4

That’s what happened to the disciples and Saint Paul.  They had to start all over from scratch but they weren’t going to have to do it on their own.  Christ was with them and his presence would prove to make all the difference.

We’ve faced a lot of changes in our lives in the past couple of weeks and in the last year. 

We once again were able to witness what we have come to fondly call “the peaceful transfer of power” making some feel sad, others ecstatic, and all of us relieved.

We were also reminded that just one year ago last Thursday the first case of the Carona virus was diagnosed in the United States.  This would irretrievably change the lives of the families of over 400,000 thousand Americans, (more than were lost during all of World War II) who were left to mourn their loved ones.

Compared to that the rest of us we were merely inconvenienced.

Through all of these changes we affirmed that Christ was with us.  In every new day he was there.  On the dark days and the bright days, on the happy days and the sad days, Christ was there.  And his promise is that he will be there in all the days ahead.

And, if we let him he’ll change us into the persons he wants us to be.  He’ll teach us, like he taught the disciples and Saint Paul, that “you can teach us old dogs new tricks” and maybe even go so far as “changing our spots.”

---

1. Tamar Cohen, The Mistress's Revenge (Leicester: Charnwood, 2012).   

2.  Shannon Johnson Kershner, “The Tragedy of Zebedee,” Sunday Worship (January 21, 2018).

3. William H Willimon, “Do You Have the Time,” Pulpit Resource 49, no. 1: pp. 12‑15.

4.  Marianne Williamson, Tears to Triumph: the Spiritual Journey from Suffering to Enlightenment (New York, NY: HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2016).

"The Power of Words" - Epiphany 2B

 1 Samuel 3:1–20

Saint John 1:43–51

If we have learned or had to relearn anything in the past few weeks it is that words are very powerful instruments.  They have the power to hurt and the power to heal or, as Scripture tells us in Proverbs: “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”1

We have been drowning in a cesspool of harsh words that have stirred up the anger of people who turned into mobs that have stormed through our streets and eventually breached the halls of Congress. For many, listening to the same words over and over again can make them do terrible things. 

It was said once by a very evil man, Joseph Goebbels: “If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.“2

That is what we watched happen last week.  The lie about the election that was tested by recount after recount, court case after court case, was  told so often that some people believed it and heard it as a call to arms. No matter the evidence to the contrary, no matter the facts, the lie was believed and people descended upon the nation’s capital to take back their country.

People who were probably furious with sports figures and others who knelt during the national anthem took the same flag the anthem honoured to smash windows in the Capital Building.  “Law and Order” insurrectionists used it to club policemen.  

The flag of the Confederacy which on July 11, 1864 came no closer than six miles of the Capital building when, under the leadership Jubal Early “the balding, foulmouthed, tobacco-chewing, prophet-bearded” Lieutenant General of the Army of Robert E. Lee was on the verge of becoming a legend.  “He was going to take Washington City—its Treasury, its arsenals, its Capitol building, maybe even its President.”3

Yet we saw a man with no sense of this history proudly march that same symbol of division through the halls of congress in an attempt to overthrow what he was told, and so believed, was a rigged election.  An extremist did what a southern general could not.

Others believing one lie perpetrated others.  There was “a long-haired, long-bearded man wearing a black ‘Camp Auschwitz’ T-shirt emblazoned with a skull and crossbones, and under it the phrase ‘work brings freedom.’”

Another image, more subtle but no less incendiary, is of a different man whose T-shirt was emblazoned with the inscription “6MWE” above yellow symbols of Italian Fascism. “6MWE” is an acronym common among the far right standing for “6 Million Wasn’t Enough.” It refers to the Jews exterminated during the Nazi Holocaust and hints at the desire of the wearer to increase that number still further.4

 It was all happening because of a lie that was told over and over again until people not only believed it but acted on their misguided beliefs.

What resulted was mob violence that must be condemned on any and every level.  As As Ton Breven, co-founder of the website RealClearPolitics wrote: “Mobs are fueled by passions that arise out of a sense of grievance, and modern elected leaders from both parties and the media have spent years stoking those passions, not lowering them.”

Brevan then reminded his readers of what young Abraham Lincoln said in January of 1838 “condemning a series of vigilante attacks that had recently taken place across the young republic.”  Lincoln said prophetically:  “Whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands ... depend on it, this government cannot last.”5

So we stand with knots in our stomach, fearing the worse and waiting for a kind word, a soft word, than will if not turn away our wrath but, at least, turn down the temperature of our rhetoric.

Amid all the clamour it is hard to hear the voice of the Lord.  In that way not much has changed from that night when the high priest Eli and the young Samuel dozed in the temple.

Israel was a mess.  Eli was getting too old to lead and his sons were wicked.  The two boys were priests dedicated because of their lineage to serve the Lord but they had turned their vocation into a way of serving themselves.  They were skimming offerings off of the temple treasury and, in general acting like common day reprobates.  Eli had spoken to them but his kind, fatherly advice had not caused them to mend their ways.  If those in charge of things are corrupt the voice of the LORD goes silent or, at least, may not even be heard.

Does this sound like our day?  Some leaders are corrupt.  They are gorging at the public trough and doing anything they can to stay in power. No wise council is smarter than they are. They are without a  moral compass.  But that doesn’t mean that all of us are like this or have to be like this.

“The lamp had not gone out.” God was still speaking then, God is still speaking now. “I am about to do a thing at which the ears of everyone that hears it will tingle.”

Both Samuel, the youth, and Eli, the elder, dare to listen, though the content of God’s speech to each is quite different. The boy receives God’s promise of a bright future; the old priest hears a word of devastating judgment.6

It would have been nice if the God of the Covenant had chosen to break silence for a more cheerful message. But Samuel hears what he hears, and repeats it faithfully. Eli understands that God will do what God will do. Things will change. And the people who have endured his misdeeds will be helped.

This is a difficult story. The wrongs done to the {people will be made right} but at a high cost to Eli and his sons. And it reminds us of one thing: God remains free to speak and to act in ways we do not expect.

We need to hear this today, amid a long winter of a stubborn pandemic, food insecurity, and power politics turning us into competing audiences divided by mutual suspicion and hostility. Our best efforts and intentions can feel so futile.

God's unexpected word to Samuel shows us that even our world is not frozen in its patterns of conflict and suffering.7

There is a better way and that way comes to us in the same person who came to those disciples and invited them to follow him.

When they followed him he became their north star, their guide and guidepost that showed them what no politician ever could or would – that life is not about what is in it for you or me.  He showed them that life is not about getting what we think we deserve.  It is not even about hanging on to the highest office in the land if that price comes at the peace and security of the nation you are called to serve and yes, of your very soul.

All of us who have been claimed by Christ and who have claimed him in return are his disciples.   We are called to be like Nathaniel and put aside our preconceived notions and our prejudices.  

“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” he asked when hearing the name of Jesus’ hometown and widen our vision of the world so that it doesn’t include just people like us, or people from our tribe, or people from our party but all of God’s children.

When we do that we just might hear our Lord say of us – in one of my favourite lines of all of scripture. ““Here is truly {a person} in whom there is no deceit!”

And if we do, if all who call on Christ’s name do just that, the promise of Jesus to his first disciples will be made real and the world will see greater, better things than what is currently happening.  

If we follow Jesus, really and truly follow Jesus, the word of the LORD spoken to Samuel will come true in our land.  “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears about it tingle.”

May the word of God, the words of truth, go out through  “every Middlesex village and farm” so that everyone’s ears who hears those words tingle.  Tingle, not with hate but with kindness and peace.

_________

1. Proverbs 15:1. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

2. Martin Svoboda, “Joseph Goebbels Quote #1789432,” Quotepark.com, accessed January 15, 2021, https://quotepark.com/quotes/1789432 joseph goebbels if you repeat a lie often enough people will beli/.

3. Thomas A. Lewis, “When Washington, D.C. Came Close to Being Conquered by the Confederacy,” Smithsonian.com (Smithsonian Institution, July 1, 1988), https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when washington dc came close to being conquered by the confederacy 180951994/.

4. Jonathan D. Sarna, “A Scholar of American Anti Semitism Explains the Hate Symbols Present during the US Capitol Riot,” The Conversation, January 9, 2021, https://theconversation.com/a scholar of american anti semitism explains the hate symbols present during the us capitol riot 152883.

5. Tom Bevan and Carl M. Cannon, “Abe Lincoln's Warning About the Perils of Mob Rule,” RealClearPolitics, January 13, 2021, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/01/13/condemn_the_mob_in_all_its_forms_145025.html?mc_cid=e9ea99bddf&mc_eid=aa27ec4b19.

6. William H Willimon, “Difficult Conversations,” Pulpit Resource 49, no. 1 (January/February/March, 2021): p. 9` 11.

7. Benjamin Dueholm, “A Scarce and Precious Word,” Day 1. Weekly Broadcast (Day1.com), accessed January 16, 2021, https://day1.org/weekly broadcast/5ff3518d6615fb2a57000010/ben dueholm a scarce and precious word.

8. Saint John 1:46. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

"The Christmas Star" - Epiphany 2021

Saint Matthew 2:1-11

On December 20th of last year the planets Jupiter and Saturn came so close together that they appeared to be one bright shining star. 

According to the website, Astronomy:

It’s the closest the two planets have appeared together in about 800 years, and won’t occur again until 2080.  

Most great conjunctions are not particularly notable. But occasionally, like this year, Jupiter and Saturn cross paths so close to each other that they can be barely distinguishable to the naked eye. Or sometimes the two planets cross paths when they are opposite the Sun, so their apparent retrograde motion results in a triple conjunction, as was the case in 7 BCE.1

That is the reason that  conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 2020 was named “The Christmas Star.” It reminded the faithful and even the sceptics of the famous star of Bethlehem that the three beloved characters in today’s gospel followed.

We love them because they are exotic and a little neurotic. Who leaves hearth and home to go searching for a new king on the basis of the appearance of a star?

Still we love them so much we have given them names – Casper, Melchior, and Balthazar.  We have given them a place of origin – the Orient or far east – seen throughout most of history as a place of mystery and majesty.  And we have made them essential characters in any worthwhile church Christmas pageant.  Churches hang stars in the sanctuary and Christmas trees have to have a star someplace on them if not at the very top because of these guys.

Yet despite the legends that surround them, in their own time they may not have been well thought of at all.  

They were not so much respectable "wise men" or "kings" but horoscope fanatics -- a practice condemned by Jewish standards. The Magi would thus represent, to the early Jewish reader, the epitome of Gentile idolatry and religious hocus-pocus -- dabblers in chicken gizzards, forever trotting off here or there in search of some key to the future. 

We might compare them to people in fortune-teller booths, or people on the "psychic hotline" or other "occupations" that fore-tell the future by stars, tea leaves, and Tarot cards.2

Yet they saw something in the sky and they followed it.  Something that was, for them, as hard to do as seeing any stars at all in the neighbourhood in which I live.

The magazine Time Out Chicago reported that, according to the experts at the Adler Planetarium, one “should be able to spot the conjunction low in the southwest sky after sunset—just make sure that you have a clear, unobstructed view of the horizon.”3

Yet they saw something in the sky and they followed it.  Something that was, for them, as hard to do as seeing any stars at all in the neighbourhood in which I live.

Good luck with that!  It may be better here in Aurora but in the city of Chicago if you look in any direction the chances are your view of the Christmas star or any star will be overshadows by a street light, or an ally light, (Yes, we light our alleys in Chicago) or the light from your neighbour’s back yard.

It’s hard to see the Christmas star in Chicago just as it may have been hard for us to see any light shining through the darkness on the day the church has set aside to celebrate the revealing of out Lord to the nations.

Last Wednesday, January 6 there were over 4,000 deaths attributable to the Covid virus in the United States and over 250,000 new cases.  Those statistics alone would have been enough to block out any light that might have shown from the Christmas star.

But then our attention was refocused once again to our television screens where we watched our Nation’s Capital come under siege by a bunch of armed thugs who while chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” with their lips while showing by the flags they carried and the caps they wore that their allegiance was to only one person.  

He is, in the words of Utah Senator Mitt Romney, “a selfish man” with injured pride” who incited an “insurrection.”  Then the man who knew what it was like to loose a presidential election himself said, “The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. That is the burden, and the duty, of leadership.4

 Some leaders govern by fear, intimidation and lies.  The man the magi faced was such a leader.  

Herod too was the stuff of legend.  We know a lot about him and his kind and his cruelty was legendary.  “He not only murdered most of his good friends, but even his beloved wife, and three of his own sons.” He was such a threat to every one and so disliked that to ensure mourning at his funeral, “Herod wanted his soldiers to kill notable political prisoners upon the news of his death.  His goal was expressed thus: ‘So shall all Judea and every household weep for me, whether they wish it or not.”5

He was one evil man and when he became afraid all of Jerusalem did so too.  Can you imagine that?  Herod, with all the might of Imperial Rome behind him became afraid of a child not yet two years old. 

Fear can do terrible things to you.  Even if you have a moral compass it can make you lash out at your enemies and try to destroy them by either word or deed.  That is exactly the kind of leader Herod was.  

He also was a congenital liar.  He treats truth like a second home only living there occasionally.  This time, however, his lie is so transparent, so insincere, that even these storefront psychics can see through it.  They hear him say, “search for this little child with the utmost care. And when you have found him come back and tell me—so that I may go and worship him too.”6 And they know it is a lie.  They see through this seemingly powerful man like a cheap suit.

He is unable to worship anything else but himself.  He is unable to care for anything or anybody else but himself. All Herod and his kind care about is keeping their political power at all costs.  They are their own gods answerable, they believe, to nothing or nobody.

Still the visitors from the east follow the star.  Through clouds and lies, twists and turns, they follow.  And once they have found the one they had been looking for they return to their own country by a different route.

We stand with them today and will have to journey with them for the next few days, and months, and then for the rest of our lives with same faith and courage they had.  We need to travel a different road from some of our leaders and their seditious followers.

Now we know that to put our faith in some earthly leaders is folly.  To trust some is pure foolishness.  And to believe their words is dangerous.

We know there is another way.  Amid the gloom and doom, the tumult and despair of the past few days we have been lead to follow another leader whose ways are always justice and peace. 

Like the magi we have found the one, been touched by the one, who came among us to rule not with power of might but the power of love.

In the days ahead follow his way, hold on to his promises, and the Christmas star will shine upon you.

____________

1. Daryl Janzen, “The 'Christmas Star' Appears Again: Jupiter and Saturn Align in the Great Conjunction',” Astronomy.com, December 21, 2020, https://astronomy.com/news/2020/12/the-christmas-star-appears-again-jupiter-and-saturn-align-in-the-great-conjunction-on-dec-21-2020.

2. Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 2.1-12 Epiphany of Our Lord- Year A,” Matthew 2.1-12, accessed January 8, 2021, http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt2x1.htm.

3. Zach Long, “You Might Spot the 'Christmas Star' above Chicago Tonight,” Time Out Chicago (Time Out, December 22, 2020), https://www.timeout.com/chicago/news/you-might-be-able-to-spot-the-christmas-star-above-chicago-tonight-122120.

4. Ian Schwartz, “Romney: ‘The Best Way We Can Show Respect For The Voters Who Are Upset Is By Telling Them The Truth,’” RealClearPolitics, January 6, 2021, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/01/06/romney_the_best_way_we_can_show_respect_for_the_voters_who_are_upset_is_by_telling_them_the_truth.html.

5. Brian Stoffregen, “Matthew 2.13-23 1st Sunday after Christmas- Year A.” Matthew 2.13-23. Accessed January 4, 2020. http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt2x13.htm.

6. Saint Matthew 2:7-8. (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS=J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1995).

"Visited" - Christmas 2B

 Saint John 1:1-18

About this time every year Christmas seems to have run its course. The radio station that has been playing Christmas music non-stop since the beginning of November is back to its regular play-list.  Gaps seem to be appearing in our neighbour’s strings of lights.  Some of our friends have long since forgotten to plug-in their lawn inflatables leaving the Santas and the Snoopys looking as flat as pancakes.

Yet the church is right in the middle of its Christmas celebration. As a matter of fact we are on the tenth of the twelve days of Christmas.  It’s time to look under your tree for those “Lord’s a Leaping!” 

Most of us have moved on from our Christmas celebrations which, for many, were as flat as one of those lawn inflatables.  Many of us are already done with New Year’s too hoping only that 2021 is better than 2020.  It has to be!

And we are never more mindful than on the next couple of Sundays that the “church always seems to be in a different time zone, providing both a challenge and an opportunity to slow down, ponder, give thanks.”1

To begin our pondering of the “meaning of the birth of Christ we could have no better guide than the poetry of John I.”2

John doesn’t bother with Mary or Joseph, Shepherds or Angels, there isn’t even a baby Jesus in his account.  He is dealing with the cosmic Christ; the one who has come to redeem the whole world.

What the evangelist is trying to tell us is that

The Word, the eternal Word of God – God from God, Light of Light, the One who set the stars in the courses at creation and flung the planets into being – this God has “become flesh” and moved in with us.3

 Or, as Dr. Eugene Peterson paraphrased it in The Message. “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”4

In Jesus we find that “God does not remain aloof, distant and detached. God dares to risk entry into Creation, into history, into the darkness of our earthly existence.”5

In Jesus, no less than God is coming among us.  This is a moment so unique that only a very special world can help us understand it.  We get stuck translating into any language how this works so we use the words “the only begotten” but the Greek word is superbly helpful.  It is monogenes.

Even the Gospel writer probably didn’t understand the fullness of its meaning as well as we can.  Mono, of course means, one and “genes”, we know better than Saint John what those are.  Genes are the stuff that makes us unique.  Genes makes me me and you you.  They come from our parents. 

Do you get the beauty of this?  Jesus is of the God gene pool.  He and the Father have the same genes!  

To put it more simply you have heard people say: “She looks just like her mom.” Or, “He is a spitting image of his dad.”  We say that because they have the same gene pool.  So it is with Jesus.  He is of the same gene pool, he is monogenes, with God, the Father.

As cool as that is it still may leave us wondering why somebody with that kind of background and breeding would want to move into our neighbourhood.  This is regentrification at his very best!  Why would God choose to do this?

In 1957 J.B. Phillips, writer and Bible translator, wrote a short story entitled “The Visited Planet.”  Phillips imagined a tour of the universe by two angels, one as old as creation, and the other newly formed amidst the host of heaven.  The older angel showed off wonder upon wonder, the birthing fields of stars, nebulae thousands of light years across, distances and depths beyond imagining.  At length, as the attention of the young angel began to flag, they entered a back lot of the Milky Way, the galaxy that includes our sun.

As the two of them drew close to our star, and its circling planets, the senior angel pointed to a small and rather insignificant sphere turning very slowly on its axis.  It looked dull as a dirty tennis ball to the little angel whose mind was filled with the size and glory of all he had seen previously.

“I want you to watch that one particularly,” said the senior angel, pointing with his finger.

“Well, it looks very small and rather dirty to me,” said the little angel.  “What’s special about that one?”

“That,” replied the senior solemnly, “is the Visited Planet.”

“Visited?” said the little one.  “You don’t mean visited by...”

“Indeed I do.  That ball, which I have no doubt looks to you small and insignificant and perhaps not over-clean, has been visited by our young Prince of Glory.”  And at these words he bowed his head reverently.

“But how?” queried the younger one.  “Do you mean that our great and glorious Prince, with all these wonders and splendors of His Creation, and millions more that I ‘m sure I haven’t seen yet, went down in Person to this fifth-rate little ball?  Why should He do a thing like that?”

“It isn’t for us,” said his senior a little stiffly, “to question His ‘whys,’ except that I must point out to you that He is not impressed by size and numbers as you seem to be.  But that He really went I know, and all of us in Heaven who know anything know that.  As to why He became one of them...how else do you suppose He could visit them?”

The little angel’s face wrinkled in disgust.

“Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that He stooped so low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?”

“I do, and I don’t think He would like you to call them ‘creeping crawling creatures’ in that tone of voice.  For, strange as it may seem to us, He loves them.

Phillips concluded his story with these words: “The little angel looked blank.  Such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension.”6

It is almost beyond ours too.  That God would not only visit us but move into our neighbourhood to stay with us.

While such thoughts may be beyond our comprehension for the present all we need to do is open our hearts and minds and accept that the visit did occur and all because God loves us.  

It’s amazing I know but it’s the story of Christmas. As the carols fade and the decorations come down may you keep Christmas in your hearts all through the coming year knowing that you are loved.

___________

1. Julie Peeples, “John 1:1-18. Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the Word,” Connections. A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): pp. 149-151.

2. William H Willimon, “The Beginning,” Pulpit Resource 49, no. 1 (2021): pp. 3-5.

3. William H Willimon, “God Gets Local,” Pulpit Resource 33, no. 4 (2005): pp. 61-63.

4. Saint John 1:14. (MSG) [MSG=The Message]

5. Willimon, loc. cit.

6. J. B. Phillips, “The Angel's Point of View (or 'The Visited Planet'),” Grace and Truth, March 25, 2014, https://graceandtruth.me/2014/03/25/the-angels-point-of-view-or-the-visited-planet/.

"Touched by Joy" - Christmas 1B

Saint Luke 2:22-40

Whenever I go into a home where I know the couple to be grandparents I always look for one picture.  It never fails, try it. Somewhere on the mantle or framed on a wall there is a picture of one of the grandparents holding one of their grandchildren while the other looks on and smiles.

Sometimes, when there are more than three generations present I can find a picture of a great-grandparent holding the baby.

You can see this at baptisms when the pictures are being take and the baby is passed around the relatives like a football at Northwestern or Ohio State game.  Maybe this is because as Mary Ann Evans who, because of the times in which she lived, is better known as George Eliot observed, “We older human beings feel a certain awe in the presence of a little child, such as we feel before some quiet majesty or beauty in earth or sky.”1

There is a strong sense of this in today’s gospel where

“Seemingly by chance, Mary and Joseph bumped into an old man named Simeon, and then a woman named Anna who had been a widow for decades. The aged inevitably turn and gaze at an infant, as if the chances to glimpse such precious beauty are numbered.”2

 It leaves one to wonder what that picture would have looked like.

In only there had been a photographer there that day! Imagine a close up: Simeon’s hands, gnarled with arthritis, age spots, boney fingers gently cradling the infant’s head; eyes meeting; smile unfolding across the wise elder’s face – a beautiful exchange under any circumstances, made even more wonderous because of those involved and the Spirit’s presence guiding them all.

This is a picture of generations coming together. “Past, present, and future meet in one intimate, brief moment in the temple.”3

Anna and Simeon had been waiting for this moment for a very long time.  We don’t know how old Simeon is but Anna is one of the few people in the New Testament who has her age mentioned in exact years, she’s 84. 

They have been hanging around the temple in what must have seemed to them a perpetual waiting room.  There must have been moments in their lives when they thought they couldn’t wait any longer. 

It has to be a little like it is for us as we wait for our group to be named so that we can get the vaccine.  Tell us where we need to go and what time to be there!  The Doctor’s office? Walgreen’s? CVS? The sushi counter at the 7/11? Tell us where we need to be and we’ll be there.  

Frustrating as this whole waiting business is for us Anna and Simeon didn’t have the faintest notion about who to see, where to go, or what to do.  So they waited in the temple and prayed.

Until a couple walked in, Mary and Joseph, just fulfilling the law.  It is then that Simeon and Anna “see things about the baby that perhaps even the baby’s parents ... can’t see. By the grace of God, they publically, hopefully testify about tomorrow. Those with many years behind them are able to perceptively see all the way into the distant future.”4

What they see is a mixed bag.  This child will upset the apple cart of those who thought they had it all together.  This child will grow up to be a man who does not roll over in the face of those who think they are the absolute authority over everything and everybody.  This tenacity may bring him to the point where it costs him his life and breaks his mother’s heart.

Yet, the two prophets continue, those who allow themselves to be touched be him will know a peace that carries them to the end of their days.

An unfortunate consequence of the first line of Simeon’s chant: “Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, According to Your word...”5  is that we have made it into his swan song.  We have used it – I have used it – as if it were sung with his dying breath.

That is sometimes why it is sung when the casket is recessed down the aisle at the conclusion of a funeral sermon.  Pastor McGuire and I always used to do that with his lush baritone lofting over the congregation like a sad saxophone.  It was beautiful.  It was meaningful.  It was touching. 

But what if those weren’t the last notes Simeon and Anna ever sung? What if it was not of not only about an end to their waiting but a song about new beginnings?  What if they marched out of the temple arm and arm, into the streets singing that they their eyes had seen their salvation and the light for all people?

Perhaps they shared a song of joy, pure joy.

Perhaps, as we stand on the verge of a new year after one that has been very bad indeed we too can glimpse some joy.  It won’t be a joy of our own devising.

It is a joy that comes when prayers have been heard and answered, when hope is fulfilled, and dreams are made reality. It is a joy that can only come as a gift of God, not something of our making. Joy comes to us as a baby, a child given to us, with our face. God with us. God come to stand beside us and be for us.6

 That is the picture we have before us in the faces of Simeon and Anna looking at the baby as his parents watch in wonder.  

It’s a great picture to have in our hearts. “For now,” with all that we have been through this year, “it is good to pause and admire the picture Luke offers, and, like Simeon and Anna, to give God our praise.”7

Don’t you think?

__________

1. Shirley Isherwood, Chris Molan, and George Eliot, Silas Marner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

2. James D Howell, “What Can We Say? December 27 1st of Christmas” James Howell's Weekly Preaching Notations (blog) (Myers Park United Methodist Church, July 1, 2020), http://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/.

3. Julie Peeples, “Luke 2:22-40. Commentary 2: Connecting the Reading with the World,” Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2020): pp. 131-133.

4. William H Willamon, “Two Old Prophets and a Baby,” Pulpit Resource 48, no. 4 (2020): pp. 39-41.

5. Saint Luke 2:29. (NKJV) [NKJV=The New King James Version]

6. William H Willamon, “The Fullness of Time,” Pulpit Resource 30, no. 4 (2002): pp. 59-61.

7. Peepers, loc.cit.

"Home" - Christmas Eve 2020

 

Saint Luke 2:1-20

Without a doubt Christmas of 2020 is unlike any other we have experienced in our lives because those of us who are used to being at church are at home.

Every other Christmas we’ve had to decide what time we would have to get the family together so that we could get to church.  Would we go to the earlier service and have dinner afterward or would we go to the late service and risk falling asleep during the sermon.  Now it doesn’t matter because you’re at home.  You can fall asleep during the sermon and I will never know.  And all you have to do to remedy the situation is to hit the rewind button.

More amazingly even your pastor is at home!

Like many of you I can’t remember a Christmas Eve where I wasn’t rushing back and forth to church.  Being an acolyte at one service, singing in the choir for another, sometimes doing both. It was glorious!

I’m sure you had the same experience.  Some of you have been churching on Christmas Eve longer than I have been alive and, believe me friends, that is a very long time because I am old.  But this year things are different – you’re at home and so am I. 

It’s unlike any Christmas we have ever experienced because we’ve decided to “follow the Fauci,” as Shepard Smith says, listen to the scientists and the cooler heads and much as we would love to be together to stay at home.

That is quite unlike the first Christmas where, The Rev’d Calum MacLeud, who is the Dean of Saint Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh, observed nobody seemed to be at home.

He said in a sermon once:

Travel‑weary Joseph and heavily pregnant Mary journey away from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem, the ancestral town of Joseph. Indeed, not only are they not at home, but they don’t even find proper shelter for the birth of the child.

The angels aren’t home either. They’re on the move from heaven—which I guess is their home—to earth to say and sing of the great good news, to share it with the shepherds that they might them­selves share it with others; the angels are jour­neying, coming to earth, to what the theologian Philip Yancy calls “the visited planet.”

Shepherds—they’re not at home. Of course they’re not even in their usual place in the fields, ulti­mately. They, too, have to make the journey from the fields where they are keeping their sheep to find the baby in the stable after being scared out of their wits by this encounter with the heavenly messengers; they take their own journey.

And, of course, in Matthew’s Gospel, those myste­rious magi, the wise men—they’re on the road away from home, being led by the star to find the new promised king. T.S. Eliot imagines these magi as grumbling in just the worst time of year for a journey and such a long journey, the ways deep, the weather sharp, the very dead of winter. Indeed we might say that the magi’s grumbling in that poem “The Journey of the Magi” could be true of any of those involved in the story except perhaps Herod and his advisors. They were very much at home.

And I believe that all this activity and movement and journeying is occasioned because not even God is at home on Christmas. God, maker of heaven and earth, creator of all that is, God whose nature and name is love is also on a journey at Christmas. God is journeying on Christmas to

where you and I are.1

That why people who we never see the rest of the year come to church at Christmas and Easter.  On Christmas they come to hear that they are not alone.  On Easter they come to hear that this life is not all there is.

You and I understand that we need to come to the place more often than a couple of times a year to be reminded that God’s great love for us is personal and makes a difference.

Those are messages we long to hear but they are not messages that are easy to hear.  Sometimes we have to strain to hear them like one man did in one of my favourite Christmas stories.  It was written so long ago that it appeared in The Chicago Tribune Magazine section which disappeared in 2009.

It is called “Jerry’s Last Fare” and was written by James F. Garner as a Christmas present for his wife.

It’s about a cab driver, working late on Christmas Eve, who decides to pick up one last passenger before calling it a night.

As luck would have it the guy wanted to go to the airport but first he had a request.  He wanted to pass through Lincoln Park Zoo.  Jerry was not pleased for he had promised his wife that he would be home for midnight Mass and now he was going to miss it.  

To make matters worse his passenger wanted to stop and get out for a moment or two at the entrance to the Zoo.  Jerry had never been robbed but he knew enough not to get out of his cab at the gate of a deserted zoo close to mid­night.

“There is something I always wanted to try,” the man began with a sparkle in his eye.  “There is an old legend about what happens to the animals on Christmas Eve.  Have you heard it?”

Way back in his memory Jerry thought he had so, before he realized what he was doing, he was out of his cab and standing in the snow.  His passenger reminded him of the legend that the only witnesses to Jesus’ birth were animals that gathered around the manger. What they saw was so miraculous that the animals were blessed with the power of speech.

“So on every Christmas Eve,” [said Jerry’s passen­ger,] “if you listen very hard, you can hear the animals talk again.

So they stood and they listened.  They listened for a very long time until Jerry finally said, “I don’t hear them.”

 

“Listen very hard,” the man said quietly.

 

Jerry did, and replied, “Nothing.”

“No not nothing Jerry.  There’s the silence.  Listen to the silence.  You can’t hear the animals or any people, you can’t hear the cars.  Think of the thousands of people who live within a half-mile of where we are standing right now.  You can’t hear a single one.”

 

Jerry paused to let his imagination take him around that half-mile, then further, around the city, across the black lake to the shores of Indiana and Michigan.  He smiled, “It sounds like the whole world is asleep.”

 

“Asleep?” asked the fare.

“No, not asleep.” [Said Jerry.] “You’re right.  It’s like everyone is wide awake and holding their breath.”

 

“That’s the sound of hope, Jerry.  It’s Christmas Eve, when the Savior of the world was born, but no one is praying, not in the words they think of as prayer.  Just hoping with their hearts at ease and their eyes filled with wonder.”

 

“So Christmas Eve is the time when animals talk and the people shut up.” Jerry said with a chuckle.  “It sure is a beautiful sound.”

Maybe tonight as the only journey you make is in your very own home. Maybe tonight as you wend your way from your computer to your bedroom  you’ll hear the sound of the God of love creping in beside you, bringing healing and hope.

If you do, even for just a second, it sure will be a beautiful sound.

And maybe the sound of that silence will only be broken by your memory of the words and tune of the hymn as “The world in solemn stillness lay, To hear the angels sing.”

Happy Christmas.

________

1. Calum I MacLeod, “Christmas Eve Worship,” Christmas Eve Worship at The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago (December 24, 2012).

"Wait for It!" - Advent 3B

 

Saint John 1:6-8, 19-28

Seasoned preachers should know better.  Pastors who have been in the business for years and have large, tall steeple churches in the centre of town should know not to challenge members – especially young members - of their congregation.

So it comes as a surprise that one of my favourite preachers, Dr. James D. Howell, whom you have heard me refer to often, one Sunday in Advent inadvertently laid down a dare to a member of his church in Charlotte, North Carolina when he said in a sermon that he had never seen a John the Baptist Christmas Card and he doubted that he ever would.

When he arrived back in his office after the 11 o’clock worship this was waiting for him on his desk.

Yes, the good pastor was holding in his hand the first ever John the Baptist Christmas Card.  Look again and you will see that the person who drew it was really paying attention.

Not only is “Repent Ye!” written in bold letters across the top but the card has everything.  John’s hair a mess.  He is dressed in the obligatory leather belt - referred to as a girdle in the picture, and camel’s hair raiment and, for good measure, there is a plate of locust and wild honey at his feet.  The picture is clearly labelled as being located in the wilderness of Judea but there is one more thing.  Let’s take a closer look. 

To the artist those squiggly lines emanating from John’s arm pits may signify that even though he spent a great deal of time in the River Jordan what he really needed was a good, solid bath.

This is the picture that Matthew, Mark and Luke drew of John.  All three cover the repentance angle of the story but Matthew and Luke remember John getting very personal with the religious leaders who ventured forth into the wilderness to find out who or what was causing such a commotion among the people.  They remember him saying something like:

“Brood of snakes! What do you think you’re doing slithering down here to the river? Do you think a little water on your snakeskins is going to make any difference? It’s your life that must change, not your skin! And don’t think you can pull rank by claiming Abraham as father. Being a descendant of Abraham is neither here nor there. Descendants of Abraham are a dime a dozen. What counts is your life. Is it green and blossoming? Because if it’s deadwood, it goes on the fire.”1

With a message like this it is very likely that Dr. Howell is in possession of the one and only John the Baptist Christmas Card.

The picture of John the Baptist we have before us in today’s Gospel is “mellower  and more evasive. There is no fire and brimstone spewing forth this Sunday, no calls for repentance and wilderness travel.”2

Sill the posse of the highly religious come out to see him with one question on their minds:

“Who do you think you are, anyway?” “Well,” he laughed. “I’m not the Messiah, if that’s what you’re thinking.” “So, who are you then?” they sneered. “Elijah?” “Nope.” “The Prophet?” “Uh-uh.” “Well, who are you then? Give us some kind of answer.” “Okay. You can tell your friends that I’m the one Isaiah was talking about, the voice crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord!’” “But why are you baptizing then, if you’re not the Messiah, or Elijah, or the Prophet?” “Look, fellahs,” John said, running out of patience, “I baptize with water!”3

That’s it!  That’s all John had. Water and the Word.  That is where we all started our journey of faith with water and the Word.  Then somebody did for us what John did for his people.

When the people emerged from the water John didn’t just pat them on the head and say “Now you’re all clean be on your way!  And try not to get so dirty next time.”  He pointed them to something and said, “Wait for it!  Wait for it!”

It’s like the punch line to a joke that we can all see coming a mile away.  It’s like the moment in a movie when you know what is going to happen before it does - maybe because you’ve seen it before - and you turn to your partner next to you and say, “Wait for it!  Wait for it!”

It doesn’t take much to see two confirmation students outside of Dr. Howell’s office.  He enters, takes off his robe, and rummages around on his desk.  “Wait for it!  Wait for it!”  One student says to the other.  The card is found. The pastor doesn’t just smile he laughs out loud and maybe just claps his hands together in joy.  

He calls for his staff to come from their offices.  “Hey gang!” he yells.  “Come quick!  You gotta see this!” And he passes the card around the room.  It’s the moment of joy the artist has been waiting for.”

John’s “Wait for it!” is what Advent is all about.  This year the waiting is going to be particularly difficult.  The wise among us will wait on those large gatherings with family and friends.  We’ll have to wait for the traditional Norman Rockwell holiday to come this year.  We’ll have to wait to see the people we love who are separated from us by time and distance. We’ll have to wait.

John the Baptist reminds that we wait in hope.

Christian hope looks at the world around us and acknowledges that things are very bleak.  We don’t pretend that loss of life, or health, or confidence, or mobility, or the ability to gather is something to be taken lightly.  This year its hard to bury our heads in yule tide cheer.

This year our hope is more like the candles on the Advent wreath which every week grow a little bit brighter, and a little bit brighter, and a little bit brighter every Sunday straining against the darkness.  We light our candles and wait.

The best news I can give you this day is the reminder that the one are waiting for is already here.  Christ has come!  He is already with us!  We are only celebrating the commemoration of his birth.  He has never been away!

Through all the turmoil of 2020 he has been here.  Through every difficulty that we have faced he has been here.  Through isolation, and fear and frustration Christ has been... “wait for it” ... “wait for it” ... with us.

That’s the news that John the Baptist announced and it is a news that we know to be true.  

That witness alone is enough to merit John the Baptist at least one mention on a card, Christmas, or Advent, or otherwise.  Don’t you think?

____________

1. St. Matthew 3:7-10. (MESSAGE) [Message=The Message]

2. William H Willamon, “Waiting for the Light,” Pulpit Resource 33, no. Fall (2005): pp. 53-56.

3. James Sommerville, “Stronger Stuff,” A Sermon For Every Sunday (A Sermon for Every Sunday, December 8, 2020), https://asermonforeverysunday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Jim-Somerville-Advent-3B.pdf.