Epiphany in Three Parts

 

John 2:1-11

Psalm 104:14-16

1/9/22

               The 6^th of January is the actual day set aside for the celebration of Epiphany.  That is the official end of the Christmas season or the 12 days of Christmas.  Do you remember what Epiphany actually means?  According to several different dictionaries, here are the definitions:

·        the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi (Matthew 2:1–12).

• the festival commemorating the Epiphany on January 6.
• a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being.
• a moment of sudden revelation or insight.

In the church, however, we recognize that Epiphany actually has three parts.  We say that the “manifestation of God” is revealed in these three parts.  The first part then is when the Magi show us that Christ was made manifest not only to the Israelites, but to all people.  They themselves were not Israelites and yet they were witnesses to Christ’s coming.  The second part is the Baptism of Christ in which God proclaims Jesus as God’s son.  And the third is what is described in the gospel of John as Jesus’ first miracle which we read about today – turning water into wine.  All three of these, together, are the epiphany because all three of these are thought to manifest or reveal who Jesus is.  But I find the lectionary texts for today to be extremely interesting because today is “Baptism of the Lord” Sunday and yet we are not hearing about the baptism.  Instead, we are remembering the turning of the water into wine.  We will come back to this in a minute.

               Looking at this passage, this story of Jesus turning the water into wine, there is so much here inviting reflection.  What does it mean, for example, that Jesus’ first miracle was one of celebration?  His first miracle was not of healing someone, or raising someone from the dead (like Lazarus).  It wasn’t raising someone out of oppression, or restoring a person back into their community. It wasn’t feeding people.  Jesus’ first miracle wasn’t about doing anything NECESSARY, or liberating, or holistic.  Or rather, it wasn’t doing anything that most of us consider necessary.  But the very fact that this was his first miracle, one of enhancing celebration, adding to the celebration of a wedding, of commitments made and the community gathering, has a great deal to say to us about what God values about humanity.  The miracle was one of extreme abundance and abundance in the form of joy, of good things, of life, of happiness, of celebration.  Remember that the amount we are talking about here of water turned into wine was about 40 gallons.  This isn’t a small amount: this is a huge, overabundant amount.  And the point here?  We aren’t meant to simply survive this life.  We aren’t meant to simply grow through and from this life.  We are meant to celebrate it, and to celebrate it abundantly.  Remember, Jesus came eating and drinking.  As one commentator said, “God does not want our religion to be too holy to be happy in.” (Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year C, Volume 1: Advent through Transfiguration.)

               I’m reminded of a praise song called Thrive.  The lyrics:

Here in this worn and weary land
Where many a dream has died
Like a tree planted by the water
We never will run dry
So living water flowing through
God, we thirst for more of You
Fill our hearts and flood our souls with one desire
Just to know You and to make You known
We lift Your name on high
Shine like the sun, make darkness run and hide
We know we were made for so much more than ordinary lives
It's time for us to more than just survive
We were made to thrive

…

Joy unspeakable, faith unsinkable

Love unstoppable, anything is possible

We know we were made for so much more than ordinary lives.

It’s time for us to more than just survive

We were made to thrive!

               This is a wonderful story about God’s abundance, and love for us to have that abundance, to celebrate, to live.

               But there are things here to struggle with as well. Commentator, Carol Lakey Hess said this, “It may seem like a travesty to turn a narrative about divine abundance into a trial of God, and yet it is passages like this one about divine extravagance that make God's absence in the face of poverty, suffering, and evil stand out. How do we reconcile a story of potent generosity with a world of tremendous need? If God is both generous and able, then apparently God continues to express Jesus' attitude: what is that to me?  Because we trust that God wants abundance (plentiful wine and lavish food are common symbols of God's grace in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament), we follow in the footsteps of the mother of Jesus by prodding God for divine compassion and generosity….. Theologians who grapple with theodicy, justifying God's goodness in face of suffering and evil, come to various conclusions. Some say that it is not yet God's hour; others say God relies on human compassion to do the will of God.  Still others dare to argue that God continues to need the heirs of Jesus' mother to go on prodding divine generosity…. This troubling text invites us to trust so much in God's generosity and abundance that we, like the perceptive mother of Jesus, nudge God with our observation: they have no wine.”  

What does all of that mean?  Perhaps it is a daring proposition to utter, but Jesus makes it clear that we are called to be partners with God in making this life the extravagant abundance that God is all about.  We are called to be part of it beginning with simply asking for God’s abundance to come here, to come now, as Mary did with Jesus, and as we do through our prayers.    

But that is truly only the first step.  We are also called to be part of co-creating that abundance for all people through our actions.  Carol Lakey Hess continued by saying this, “In Toni Morrison's masterpiece Beloved, a white mountain girl named Amy Denver aids pregnant Sethe as she escapes slavery. Seeing Sethe's bloody back torn from the whip and astonished by the degree of her mutilation, Amy utters, "Come here Jesus… Wonder what God had in mind."  John 2, however, reveals what God has in mind—abundance, and the mother of Jesus nudges us to ask what God had in mind—during slavery, the genocide of Native peoples, the Holocaust. And Amy Denver does here what the mother of Jesus does in John 2—she poses the question and nudges the Divine.”  But I would add that she didn’t just ask God for intervention.  She stood on the strength of God to intervene herself, to stand up for injustice, to confront it, to change it, at least for the person right in front of her.  Mary asked for what she wanted: prodded, poked, demanded, stood up for it until it too was granted.  And again, that is what we are also called to do: to work for what we believe is right and just.  To work for all people to have the abundance that God has created for all of us to share.

            I think about some of the big times when people in this very room have done that.  And you have.  Despite the energy and time that it cost you, people in this room have taken on the care of someone else.  Many of you have taken people into your homes and cared for them, in some cases for just a night, in other cases for months and even years.  Some of you have spoken out against prejudiced comments and injustices.  You have given of your time, resources, talents to be part of helping others.  You pray, and you act.  And in doing both, you bring abundance and you celebrate abundance.  When we make feasts for the people of Winters Nights, we are bringing and celebrating abundance.  When we raise money for Monument Crisis Center or Hope Solutions, we are providing abundance.  When we provide tutoring for Hope Solutions, we are celebrating the abundance of our time, our resources.  When we help provide clean laundry and food, we are providing and celebrating abundance. 

            On this Baptism of the Lord Sunday, we remember that Jesus was called and blessed in his baptism and that we too are called and blessed in our baptisms.  We remember that just as Jesus prayed and acted, we are called to do the same.  So why would we be listening to the story of the water into wine on this day?  Because that story of abundance is deeply connected and tied to the story of Jesus’ call.  It is a sign that at the heart of Jesus’ ministry, of Jesus’ call is the promise of abundance, of life, of good things, of celebration.  And it is a reminder that as we, too, are called in our baptisms, we too are to be bearers of abundance to a world struggling to feel it has enough, is enough, will be more than enough, will be enough to celebrate.   

As we are bearers of this message and light, we recognize that we have two parts to that bearing and both are necessary – the praying and the doing.  Through both, Jesus continues to be revealed.  And God’s work continues to be done.  And through both, we bear abundance.  Jesus was enough.  The world has enough.  And YOU are enough.  The sooner you believe that, the sooner you will be able at act as the bearer of abundance that you are.  Thanks be to God for abundance, for calling, and for the ability to step into that abundance with hope, joy and promise.  Amen. 

God Celebrated

                                Luke 15:1-32

       Once again here we have an extended passage of verses we don’t usually hear together.  And yet, these verses all go together very well.  They are all stories of the lost being found, and the found being celebrated.  The sheep that was lost was sought after, found, and celebrated as it was returned to the flock.  The coin that was lost was sought, was found and was celebrated after being found.  And the son who was lost, came to his senses, returned and was celebrated. 

            Can you think of things that you’ve lost that have really mattered to you?  A small thing, perhaps like a necklace or letter that meant something to you, or a big thing, perhaps, like a house that you had to move away from or a car that was in an accident.  Maybe it’s not a thing that you’ve lost but a situation: maybe a job, or a relationship.  Maybe what you’ve lost is a cultural thing: days when children could play outside and visit their neighborhood friends without their parents helicoptering over them, the times when only one adult in a family had to have a job.  Some of the hardest loses I think are the losses we experience when a deeply held belief is overturned: a belief that the world was a certain way, or the belief that God was a certain way.  When those kinds of things are confronted and overturned, it can be incredibly painful, incredibly hard.  Sometimes, we feel grief, or nostalgia for the past, and can’t identify what it is that is lost.  We feel this nebulous, “I want things to be the way they were before!” without being able to really name what it is we feel we’ve lost.  Sometimes those memories of the past are also incomplete or missing things.  For example, that yearning for a time when only one adult per family had to work is also missing the fact that when women wanted to work or had goals or aspirations, they weren’t allowed to fulfill them.  Those times when kids could play freely with neighborhood kids were not actually safer times, just times when we were less aware of the dangers that kids were exposed to and the traumas that our children experienced.  I think for myself, there finally came a realization that my nostalgia for the past was often more about knowing how that past turned out… it turned into today, after all.  Whereas I don’t know how today will turn out – I don’t know if I’ll survive this day, or if my children will, or if there will even be a survivable world left for any potential grandchildren.  And so, I crave what seems like a simpler time, when in fact it was only “simpler” because I didn’t know as much, wasn’t aware of the problems to the same extent, and again, they ended in today, so I know that I survived it.  But regardless, there is a sense of loss, a depth of grief, even when I can look at it in the face and challenge it for what it was, that grief is there.  And sometimes it is unbearable.

            In the face of that, what would you do to search for that which you’ve lost?  What would you sacrifice to fill that space of grief, to find that which you valued once more?  I think about Carol Weir, who would not let go of Ben when he was kidnapped in Lebanon, but who did everything in her power, talking to our government, raising awareness, fighting for the release of her husband.  She gave up her comfort, her solitude, her anonymity, to stand up, to fight, to get her husband home.  I think of the mother’s who began MADD.  They found a world that was unsafe for children when a drunk driver killed their sons, their loved ones.  And while they could not get their sons back, they could fight with everything in them to make sure other mothers did not suffer that same loss.

            Did others always approve of what these women that I’ve named did?  No.  Carol got a lot of pushback and even hatred coming her way.  But she would not give up fighting for her lost sheep, her lost coin of great value.  MADD mothers also had pushback, but they, too kept fighting for what they had lost: their sons, those they loved.

            All three of the gospel parables for today are a response Jesus tells us as he confronts a situation in which the pharisees and legal experts were grumbling against Jesus for spending his time with “sinners and tax collectors”.  They were questioning why Jesus was spending time with people everyone had designated as “bad.”  He was welcoming and eating with these “bad” people.  In contrast to many people’s belief that some people are “bad” and some people are “good”, Jesus does not see it that way.  Instead, he describes some people as found, and some people as lost.  The lost people, those he is choosing to spend time with, are valuable to God, as he describes in these stories.  They are a lost sheep of the flock, they are a lost coin of great value, they are a child of God.  And Jesus is not content to just discount them as “bad”.  He wants them saved, he wants them healed, he wants them FOUND. 

            And I would say this is a challenge for all of us.  It is a challenge for us to remember that there aren’t “bad” people, there are only lost people.  And how are we to interact with lost people, the same way that Jesus did – we are to try to find them, to seek them, to help them.

           Who are those people for you?  Who are the people you don’t want to be around, individuals or groups of people you don’t want to be associated with?  Who are those for you?  Do you struggle then, when you see people you want to respect hanging out with those “bad” people that you don’t approve of, that you’ve written off?  And to take it a step further, when you see your friends hanging out with people you don’t approve of, what do you think?  How do you feel?  If it’s someone you admire and respect and then you see them eating with and spending time with people you really detest, how do you feel?  Do you discount them?  Do you lose respect for them when you see them with “undesirables”?  Maybe it’s easier to think about this in terms of our kids.  What do we do and how do we feel when we think our kids or grandkids are hanging out with a “bad crowd.”  When it’s my kids, I have, historically, worried about them being corrupted.  I’ll own that.  I remember the time when I was really concerned about a friend Eldest had made.  I was concerned because I saw this friend making really bad choices: lying to her parents, hiding inappropriate “hookups”, trying drugs and other questionable substances.  She was running wild.  And I was concerned.  But in talking with Eldest about my concern with honesty and openness, Eldest said to me, “My friend needs someone to be here for her when her world crashes, as it will with all that she is doing.  She needs someone solid to be here and show her there is another way.  She needs me.  And I will stay friends with her through this, offering another model for how to be, even offering advice, if she asks for it, until she, too, has finally found her way home.”   Okay.  I still worried, but at the same time, I was also impressed.  She was doing exactly what Jesus said God would do in the stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin: she was searching deep into the heart of her friend for that lost soul, seeking her out, and helping her to come “home.”

       I want to point out that there is a big difference between the stories of the coin and sheep, on one hand, with the story of the prodigal son on the other.  In the stories of the sheep and the coin, both of these could not be found on their own.  Both were sought after, with intention, with commitment until they were found.  How do we expect to find the sheep if we don’t seek after it?  Do we just let those we feel we’ve lost “go”?  Do we give up on the one family member we can’t reach, can’t connect with, can’t “find” because we don’t agree, or don’t understand, or have “lost”? 

        I think that maybe the Pharisees and Legal Experts judged Jesus because they were, in fact, convicted by Jesus.  We are told by all scripture that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, that we are to love even those whom we don’t like, even those we hate.  And by love that means we are to care for them, to want their highest good, to be kind to them, even when that is not reciprocated.  They knew this.  But they weren’t living it out.  In contrast, Jesus was.  He did not see people as beyond redemption, beyond saving, beyond help.  He reached out to them, was kind to them and loved them.  He was doing what the Pharisees knew they should, just as Eldest was doing with her friend what I knew I should.  And that became judgement on their lips.  Jesus’ actions convicted them.  And instead of owning, they judged and condemned him.  

        The story of the prodigal son is a little different.  That son had a lot more agency.  That son had to return on his own.  The father in the story saw him coming back and ran out to usher him home, to bring him back completely into the fold, but the son had to make some steps first, some intention towards turning home.  And my guess is that the elder son in the prodigal story is the Pharisees and legal experts themselves.  They have became so bound by the written law that they have forgotten the spirit behind it: the call to care for and love one another.  They have become so lost, that when Jesus welcomes in the “lost” younger son, they just resent it, they want the father all to themselves, and all that is his, they have forgotten how to celebrate the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son returning.  They have forgotten that those Jesus is spending time with are also children of God.  They have forgotten that that lost younger brother is “this brother of YOURS”, not just “this son of the Father’s”.  Jesus never finishes the parable of the prodigal son.  We never know if the older son in fact does come into the house to celebrate with the son who has returned.  We don’t know because we are still waiting to see.   In the end, it will be up to them to decide to celebrate with the Father and the son the return home of the younger son, if they ever do.  In the meantime, he is missing a great party, as are they! 

         And that is the final point that I want to make through another story.  There is a wonderful video based on a children’s book.  The book and video are entitled Lost and Found by Oliver Jeffers.  I would love to be able to share them with you, but because of copyright issues I can’t do that through YouTube.  However, if you are interested, I have bought copies of both and would gladly share them another time.  In a rare exception, the video of this story is better than the book.      

        In the story, Lost and Found, a penguin walks into a little boy’s house.  The little boy is not thrilled about this.  And the penguin doesn’t seem to be leaving on his own, so he decides the penguin is lost and needs to get home.  He takes the penguin to the lost and found, but no one says they are missing a penguin.  Then he takes the penguin to the pet store, but then feels bad and doesn’t leave him.  He goes to the library to find out about where penguins come from and discovers they come from the South Pole, so he tries to put the penguin on a boat, but the boy's voice is small and the ship leaves without the penguin.  So, the boy builds a boat to take the penguin there himself.  As he is getting ready to go the narrator said, “And so the boy worked out an ambitious plan to get the visitor back to where he belonged.  But he never stopped for a moment to considered just what his visitor was doing there in the first place.”  They each “pack” a little bag, and they travel down to the South Pole, having adventures on the way, and in the end he finds a place with many, many penguins just like the one that has been with the boy.  He leaves him there and gets back in the boat to travel home.  But in the boat he finds that the penguin had left his suitcase.  When he opens it, he finds the only thing in this “box of treasures” was a picture the penguin had taken of himself and the boy: that this was what he valued.  The boy thought the penguin valued “home”, but what he found was that the penguin valued him, the boy.  And so he found, “that perhaps someone wasn’t lost… just lonely.  And maybe they weren’t the only one.”  After another little adventure, the boy and the penguin finally reconnect and go “home” together.  But the film ends with these words, “So, all began with someone lost and someone found.  Who is to say which was which? There was a boy and there was a penguin, strangers from opposite sides of the ocean.  And like the beginning of any friendship, theirs is a remarkable story indeed.”

            Perhaps, then, like the boy in the story, we will find, when we choose to spend time with those we consider “lost” , those from the opposite side of the ocean, that we too will ask, “who is to say who was lost and who was found”.  If it turns out that it was we, then, who were lost, and if we let ourselves be found, we can be guaranteed that God will celebrate with all the angels and heaven.  Amen.

All Saint's Day: Life and Death

Ezek. 37:1-14

John 11:1-45

The old time pastor was galloping down the road, rushing to get to church on time. Suddenly his horse stumbled and pitched him to the ground.  In the dirt with a broken leg, the pastor called out, “All you saints in Heaven, help me get up on my horse!”

Then, with superhuman effort, he leaped onto the horse’s back and fell off the other side.

Once again on the ground, he called to Heaven, “All right, just half of you this time!”

“Jesus wept.”  The shortest verse in the Bible.  “Jesus wept.”  What does it mean to you that Jesus wept?  What do you think about Jesus weeping?  

Today we celebrate All Saints Day, and while by “all saints,” we include ourselves (because “the saints” are all of those who are communing with God both during and after life), it tends to be a day when we honor, remember, celebrate, and grieve those who have gone on before us. We remember our loved ones who’ve died.  We celebrate the lives they led, and we remember that death is a temporary physical separation from those we’ve loved.  Death is a change in our relationship from one which is material, to one which is purely spiritual.  But while All Saints Day is a day to remember and celebrate, it is also appropriate that those memories would bring up some grief for us as well.  And All Saints Day is a day to honor those feelings as well, to remember that while we can rejoice in lives well lived, while we can celebrate the end of pain, while we can carry forward the legacies of those who led the way forward for us, while we can honor those who’ve passed by leading the best possible lives forward that we can, none the less, there is grief involved for each of us when a relationship changes from one of physical interaction to being simply one of remembering, celebrating, or speaking to our loved ones that have passed without tangible reassurance or promise of an answer.  That grief is a good thing.  It is a sign of the depth of the love we have for the other.  And it is a God-given experience: an opportunity to express the changes that happen within and without when someone we love has passed.

Sometimes people struggle to accept the grief they feel, thinking that in comparison to others, the loss they are experiencing is minor.  Or they feel they shouldn’t grieve as long as they do. Or we feel that we should just be thankful for what we do have and not mourn what we have lost.  I cannot tell you how often people say to me, “I shouldn’t feel this way.  I’ve been so lucky…”  But grieving is not unfaithful.  It is a recognition that we have loved and loved deeply.

“Kierkegaard said, ‘the most painful state of being is remembering the future… particularly the one you can never have.’ ”   I want to say that again, “The most painful state of being is remembering the future…particularly the one you can never have.”  In other words, the deepest grief comes when we realize that the future we envisioned for ourselves, for example, with another person, is no longer a possibility. 

Grief is an invitation to work that through.  When we are able to do that, then we can live lives that honor and celebrate those who have gone on before us.  When we try to stuff the grief, that is when we get into trouble.   

Many years ago, a parishioner died whose husband had spent the last thirty years caring for her.  It was his purpose and his focus in his life to care for her.  And when she died, her husband was left not only with the grief of losing his wife, but also with the feeling of having lost his purpose and his meaning in life.  He could not deal with the pain and he avoided

it by jumping into another relationship almost immediately, interestingly with someone who also needed a great deal of care.  He was remarried within six months of his wife’s death.  But while that whirl-wind romance put off his feelings of grief for awhile, it could not keep them away in the long run.  The result was that he then had to do his grieving within the context of a new marriage.  His new wife, not understanding grief, felt hurt by his pain over his wife who had passed.  She felt that he hadn’t let go or that he didn’t really love his new wife enough.  It made their relationship very difficult as he struggled both to live within his new relationship and to honor his old relationship through the honest and natural process of grieving.  In addition, the woman whom he married, as I mentioned, was also extremely needy and probably not someone he would ever have married had he taken the time to heal from his last relationship.  He jumped in to this relationship, he ran away from his grief into this relationship, not making the best choice for the long term.

That’s not to say that grief has to look the same for everyone or that there is one right way to grieve or even a right time line.  There isn’t one right way and grief looks different for everyone.  While grief specialist Kubler-Ross identifies as normal parts of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance, there is no prescribed order to these feelings and many experience them in different amounts, at different times, and in different ways, sometimes experiencing each of these stages multiple times and again in multiple ways, other times skipping one or more of these stages altogether.  Other grief specialists add “pain and guilt” into their lists of normal feelings associated with grief saying that even in cases in which a person could have done nothing differently, we feel guilty about things not done, about things that might have been done, things that should have been said.  But however one experiences grief, grief is a natural, normal process in life that we can’t avoid as human beings, as real honest people.

I remember a conversation I witnessed in which a parent was trying to protect their child from grief, keeping the loss of their grandmother from the child, not allowing the child to attend the memorial service, telling others not to mention the grandmother around the child, removing the child from any situation in which the grandmother’s name might be mentioned.  The mother thought she was doing what was best for her daughter.  But the daughter in her wisdom, as she grew a little older, finally told her mother, “I have to go through this. By forbidding me to grieve, you are taking away from me something that is extremely important and beautiful.  Please don’t take my grief away from me.”  Unlike her family, she understood the deeper truth that not going through the pain of grief was in some way denying her something important.  There is a gift in that grief.  There is a gift that is hard to see when we are in the midst of deep pain.  But the gift of grief is that it leaves us open and able to see things as they really are.  It leaves us able to move on, to heal, and to be ready for what God will bring in the future.  For Christians, the gift in the celebration of the Saints who have gone on before us is that we are invited once again into a deeper relationship with God, for God is with us in our grief, grieving with us as well.  And God is the God of resurrections, bringing new life out of every loss.  But again, we have to grieve, have to go through the death of the past in order to be open to the new life that God brings.

And that brings us back to today’s verse, “Jesus wept.”  It can feel difficult to understand this verse at some level because Jesus kept saying to all those around him both before and after Lazarus had died, that Lazarus would live.  Jesus knew that Lazarus was not really gone forever.  In light of that, what does it mean that before he raised Lazarus from the dead, that he wept for him?  How could his grief have been sincere when he knew his loss was not long lasting or real?

I belief Jesus’ grief was real.  I think that Jesus realized, and reminds us through his grief, that new life never looks the same as old life.  A resurrected person doesn’t look the same or act the same as a person who has never died.  We are changed by the losses we experience, the deaths we live through.  Roberta Bondi sums it up well in her book “Memories of God” with these words, “Even Jesus was resurrected with his wounds.”  Jesus, too, was not the same after his resurrection and he knew that Lazarus, too, would not be the same.  He grieved the Lazarus that died because the Lazarus who was raised would not be the same.  He would be different, he would be changed by his experience of death.

The reality is that it is hard for us to look at those wounds, the wounds of life, the wounds that have forced us into lives different from what we imagined.  It is hard to accept that even though new life has come, the old life is gone, really gone.  But it is.  Lazarus died.  He truly and actually died.  And while Jesus was able to bring new life to Lazarus, he first had to grieve for the life that had died, the life that was, the life that ended.  That, to me, is the message in that one very important Biblical passage, “Jesus wept.”  Jesus knows that we, too, must grieve for what was, grieve for what has past, for what is over, for what is done.  It is only through grieving and letting go of the past that we can really truly be open to the wonders of the present, to the gifts of the now, to seeing the new life around us.

Those two simple words, “Jesus wept” give us permission to not just live in the Easter celebration of new life, but to grieve the death that preceded it as well.  “Jesus wept” gives us permission to recognize that every change includes grief, and that it is okay to feel that even as we look towards new life.  Jesus wept.  And we can, too.

I want to end by reading you a poem by Washington Irving:

There is a sacredness in tears.

They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.

They speak more eloquently than 10,000 tongues.

They are the messengers of overwhelming grief,

of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.

            So today, I would like to invite you to come forward and put your pictures on the tables that are set up and name the Saints that have meant something to you.  If you would like, tell one good thing about that person.  If you did not bring a picture or a momento, I invite you still to come forward and say the name of someone whom you are remembering this day.  For this is our celebration of the Saints: all those who have blessed our lives, and continue to do so with our memories and celebrations of their lives.

Seven Gifts of the Spirit

Ezekiel 37:1-6

Revelation 5

            The play that our members performed this morning focused on seven gifts of the spirit.  While the play emphasizes that these are really Christ's gifts, I think they are also our gifts, though, as was pointed out, they look different than we might expect.   Riches, for example, as a gift from the Spirit, doesn’t look like material wealth, it looks like a wealth of spirit and a wealth of community, a wealth of faith, a wealth of trust, love, grace. 

            So while I do not believe that we should have faith based on what we hope we can gain from our faith, what we hope God will give us because we believe (that may be common theology, but it is bad theology by the way, to believe because that’s the way to manipulate God into giving you things…), I do think that Pentecost is a time to celebrate the gifts that God does give, not only to us as individuals, but to each community, to the Church as a whole, to the people. 

            We can celebrate that community is itself a gift, as are faith, the ability to love and grow, the ability to forgive, the ability to trust and to love.  These, too, are gifts of the Spirit.  We can celebrate friendships, connections, the ability to be grateful, appreciation, vision and understanding are also gifts of the Spirit.  We can celebrate that compassion, grace, insight, understanding, discernment and wisdom are also gifts of the Spirit.

            Today as we celebrate the birthday of the church, the gifts of the church, the gifts of the Spirit, we also recognize that one of the deep gifts we are given is our diversity.  On Pentecost, all voices were heard – but more, all voices, with their different languages, different cultures, different view points – all were understood.  One of the things I love about this is that people did not become something else.  They weren’t all speaking the same language, they were just understood speaking in their different languages.  We, as Pentecost people are invited to do the same – to hear and to understand one another, despite our differences.  That includes people of different ages, of different languages, cultures, different orientations and genders, and view points – we are invited to listen to their words and their ideas, and to take them seriously. 

Are there people that you have trouble understanding here?  If so, Pentecost is a great time to recommit to listening, hearing and loving one another. 

I think about one of the learning and listening experiences of our last church that actually had to do with Eldest joining the church.  When new people join the church, the session is required to “examine” them to make sure they are “fit for membership.”  Usually this just means that we ask them why they want to join and then bless that joining.  I think there is an assumption, probably based on our own experiences and our own ways of being in the world, that says that when someone joins the church, they don’t want to be pushed too hard, confronted, challenged or to feel threatened by our questions.  Eldest told me though, when she joined the church both here and first in Ohio, that she really wanted to be taken seriously enough that the interview, the examination for membership was real – not token.  Convincing the session, though, to listen and to understand that request took some work.  They had to hear in a different way in order to trust what she was saying and ask questions that had some depth in them.

I also think of a story I heard recently from a pastor who noticed one Sunday a couple women who had been fighting for years in the church huddled together in a corner, hugging and crying.  One had just lost her spouse, the other had lost a spouse years earlier.  They connected over something they both now shared that allowed them to hear and support each other despite their differences.

I served as organist/music director for a small church while attending seminary.  After I left, I received a call from the new music director who felt that the pastor's wife hated her.  Shortly following that phone call, I received a call from the pastor's wife saying she did not know what to do because everything she did was interpreted by the new music director as a slight.  While both had good intentions, while both wanted the relationship to work, both were struggling because they had trouble seeing, hearing and understanding each other.  With help from me and others, though, they were able to work through some of it to understand that they just communicated and expressed themselves differently.

           On Pentecost, we celebrate our diversity within the church.  We honor that by celebrating the gifts the Spirit gives us.  And we honor it by striving with those gifts of compassion and grace and forgiveness to really hear and understand one another.  

The Spiritual Discipline of Celebration

John 2:1-11
Luke 15

      Today we are looking at the spiritual discipline of celebration.  This one may be one of the hardest practices for us to recognize as a spiritual discipline.  How is it a discipline to celebrate, to laugh to party?  Aren’t disciplines supposed to be hard? 
       No.  As I said the first week we talked about this, the spiritual disciplines are ways to come closer to God.  That is their purpose.  If something is too hard it can be a distraction in itself.  That is the problem, often, with people who choose total austerity as a spiritual practice.  Just as our stuff can distract us from God, total lack of stuff can also distract us from God.  Hardships of any kind can claim our focus, and the purpose of the spiritual disciplines is to limit distractions from God, or to figure out ways to still focus on God through the distractions of our lives.  So then the question might be asked, isn’t celebration also a distraction from God?  When we are partying and celebrating and happy are we focused on God?  Well, it depends on how and why we are celebrating.  If our celebration is about God, and if we include God in our celebrations, they become invitations for joy with God, for dancing with God, for expressing gratitude to God for all that God has given us and continues to give us.  We hear today in the passages from John and Luke all the many times that God celebrates.  God celebrates when we are with God.  God celebrates when we return to God.  God celebrates when we find meaningful relationships (as in the wedding in Cana).  God celebrates when we find new life and when joy finds us.  God celebrates us.  And we, in turn are called to celebrate God. 
         Some may say that lent is the worst of all times to focus on celebration.  It is supposed to be a somber time of reflection and preparation for Jesus ultimate sacrifice.  We celebrate after lent.  But actually, the forty days of lent exclude Sundays.  If we included Sundays, lent would be 46 days.  But we don’t.  Sundays are supposed to be the days off from lent.  They are set aside to celebrate the resurrection, the return to life, the glory and wonder of a God who loves us so much that even death is overcome by that love.  Sunday is the day of celebration – of God’s love and resurrection and new life given to us each day.  So perhaps especially during lent we are called to set aside the seriousness of self-reflection, repentance and preparation on Sundays and simply to be and celebrate God’s love and grace this day.  And while there are some traditions that do away with celebratory words such as “alleluia” and even “Gloria” during lent, other don’t – reflecting that every Sunday is a celebration of resurrection and every Sunday is a time to remember that God created us, first and foremost, good, and that is worth celebrating.  I read an article recently in Presbyterian Outlook from a pastor who intentionally decided to keep using alleluias and glorias during lent as a way to remember that indeed, we are made good and that our time of self reflection is not about beating ourselves up, but encouraging us to grow into being the best we can be.  Sometimes the beating up behavior makes that harder.  It is easier, it is better to celebrate the good and from that place of celebration, rededicate ourselves to working towards being even better.
       It may seem odd to offer up ways to celebrate.  Surely we all know how to celebrate.  But I would say that if the typical traditional church service is any indication, we really don’t know how to celebrate God.  It’s like when a pastor stands up and says, “This is the day our God has made” and gets back a “let us be glad and rejoice in it” in a monotone, somber, distracted voice.  That is not rejoicing.  That is not celebrating.  Are the words we say simply words, detached from the rest of us?  Or are we called to genuinely celebrate with all of our being the amazing things that God has done and is done for us?  Celebration is an expression of true joy.  Celebration therefore involves all of who we are, our bodies, our minds, our spirits, our emotions.  It looks like gratitude, deep: heart- felt gratitude.  It looks like a joy that cannot be contained in a sitting, still, solemn body.  It should look the same way that we celebrate birthdays and weddings and graduations.  But it usually doesn’t, does it. 
       At my last church, we began a family oriented midweek service when almost all the kids in the church were quite young.  The kids would dance in the aisles during the songs, they would move around during the prayers. And I have to admit that I, too, struggled with this.  I felt like they needed to learn “proper church decorum” at some level, and so, while I did not scold the kids in church, I did tell my own kids after services that they really needed to not move around as much.  That was a mistake.  Worship should have been a joyous experience, a celebration.  Instead, we made it like another school day, inviting them to sit and listen.  They gave me the perfect example of true joy.  They truly embodied and demonstrated for me the celebration in each of those services of joy in their faith, in their community, in each other.  But I was uneasy because I, too, had ideas about what “church” should look like.  I was wrong.  And I encourage all of us, as we look at lent and these spiritual disciplines to think much more seriously about how we celebrate God as a spiritual discipline.
          Here, then, are some of the ways that I think we can celebrate God’s love and presence and resurrection:
1. Laugh often
2. Play
3. Attend and throw parties
4. Visit special places
5. Visit friends, old and new
6. Be generous with your time, talents and resources and celebrate that we have so much to share!
7. Dance
8. Sing or make music another way
9. Be silly
10. Notice the blessings around you and practice gratitude
11. Be excited about what is happening and what is coming
12. Let go of fear
13. Anticipate and look forward to events that are coming.
14. Appreciate nature and celebrate the seasons
15. Take time to really enjoy and savor the physical things in life: pay attention to what you are  eating or drinking and savor it.  When you walk, run, exercise in any way; pay attention to how your body feels and enjoy it.
16. Smile often
17. Use all of your senses in life: smell, taste, seeing, hearing, touching.

     I think the hardest time to celebrate is when something bad has happened, when there is a tragedy or a big loss.  I hear people who’ve lost a spouse or a child tell me that they feel guilty celebrating or even experiencing joy after they’ve lost a loved one.  I get that.  I understand that.  But I also know that it is the times of celebration that help pull us through those hard times. 
     When my family was going through its hardest time, I remember dancing, almost every morning, with my youngest child as she got ready for school. The other two kids would have left already, and it would just be my daughter and I getting ready for our day.  Sometimes we would hold hands and dance, sometimes I would pick her up and swing her around the room to some of our favorite music.  We did this, as I said, almost daily - as a way of surviving; of moving when it felt hard to even breathe; of saying, there is still love here and life and that is worth celebrating no matter what; as a way of remembering that joy was still accessible, even when happiness was elusive; as a way of saying, “God, we still experience you in life.  We still honor you with our actions.  We still choose to walk as the resurrection people, even when it feels like death is upon us.”  We did it as a way of being in and held by love for each other and for God in each moment.  We still do this sometimes, though not as often; frankly, not often enough.  The physical activity, the connection with loved ones, the laughter, the smiles, the joy – these things don’t make us forget what we have lost.  They are not sinful distractions from caring about what or who we have lost. Instead, they take the edge off, they renew our strength and energy so that we can get through the harder times, so that we can support each other going through hard times.  They remind us that what is important in life is not just the pain, not just the losses, but the people who continue to love us and surround us and care for us.  They remind us that God still wants good for us, joy, wholeness, peace, even when things are hard.  It is good to take breaks from our grief just as it is good to have a weekly break from our more serious Lenten practices.  It is good to take time to remember the joyful blessings that surround us - the beauty of the earth, the bounty of our food and friends, the smiles, hugs and love that come our way, the unexpected surprises of new friends or seeing old friends, the gifts that surround us daily.
We are so very blessed.  Celebration is a way to honor that.  To acknowledge it.  To express our gratitude to God.  And to say, as God said at the beginning and every day, “creation - it is good.”  Amen.

Being Ready for What God Brings Us

Micah 5:1-5

Luke 1:26-55

This morning we celebrate the fourth Sunday of Advent.  And today’s scriptures show us a study of contrasts.  In the Micah passage, we hear about Bethlehem.  The word “Bethlehem” means “house of food or bread.”  Interestingly, Ephrathah, the same place as Bethlehem, means “fruitlessness”.  So we have the contrast in Micah – the place where the ruler is to come, the place where Jesus is to be born, is both the place of food and the place missing food.  To put it in the context of our focus on Advent, it is the place where the bread of life is born, but it is the place that perhaps needs that bread of life most because of its lack or emptiness.  Which do the residents see?  Which do the people of Bethlehem of Ephrathah experience?  Do they see the fruitlessness, the struggles, the pain?  Or do they wait for and anticipate the Messiah who is to come? - the one who is born who is himself the bread of life, the one to feed us, and to free us from hunger of all kinds with his very being?

In today’s passage from Luke, we are also shown two women in great contrast with each other.  Elizabeth is old and, up to this point, considered barren, desperately wanting a son to legitimize her (because in that day, the only way for a woman to be “legitimate” was to birth a son).  Mary is very young, single and therefore would not be choosing to be pregnant.  We come to see and learn about both women in times that could be seen as either extremely difficult or extremely blessed.  Elizabeth, scorned by barrenness remained secluded for five months.  Mary, after the shame of unexpected and illegitimate pregnancy, stood to lose her legal and social rights as Joseph considered ending his betrothal to her. She could have been stoned to death, or simply left bereft, abandoned and without means. It is in the midst of this that they, too, have choices about what to see, and how to experience their lives. Do they focus on the scorn, on the scandals and rejections of their lives, on their fear because of their difficult situations?  Or do they wait and look and anticipate with celebration the uniqueness of their situations and God’s promised coming to each of them through the births of their sons?

This contrast, as we hear repeatedly throughout Advent, is much greater even than this.  God, we are told repeatedly, is a God who reverses the social order completely.  This, too, then becomes a great study in how God works through these contrasts.  The lowly are brought high, the high are brought low.  In the choice of both Mary and Elizabeth we see this as well.  To the religious faithful in that time, to the Pharisees, to those ensconced in the church life, it would have seemed absolutely scandalous that two women – one old and one very young; poor peasant women – would be God’s prophets in bringing in the Messiah.  This is again the radical, outrageous message of Christianity, of Christ, of Jesus, of the God that we come to know through Jesus.  Jesus shows us the God who raises up the oppressed and outcast into positions of leadership, into being God’s most highly honored and exalted people.  God chooses to work powerfully in and through the people who appear most powerless.

               When God shows up, everything that we know is challenged.  Everything that we held in priority is shaken up and different priorities arise.  When God shows up, it is God’s plans that take precedence, not ours.  And we find that the vulnerable are the ones who are made strong, the rejected are the ones whom God chooses, and the outcasts are central to the story.  As Mary herself says, “God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”  Mary prophesies, along with all the prophets to proceed her, the reversal of all we believe to be true about the world, about the ordering of society, about whom God most values, most cares for, most honors.  Mary sees herself in this as well.  Again in her own words we hear, “My soul magnifies the Lord,  and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of this servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me.” 

               And in this study of contrasts, Mary, too, had a choice about how to see her pregnancy.  She could have been devastated and felt imposed upon, recognizing and experiencing the hardship and risk to her already lowly position because of her vulnerable place.  But she didn’t.  Instead, she focused on the grace of God, on the gift of God’s amazing choice of her as mother of Jesus.  Her choice, in choosing to magnify the Lord, to celebrate with joy and singing and gratitude the amazing and unexpected gifts of God is not insignificant.  It gave strength to Jesus to be who he was, to become who he was becoming, to be the “I am” of God. 

How both Mary and Elizabeth chose to see their situations, how they chose to focus on God’s coming, celebrating the amazing gifts of their sons and what God was doing through their lives, these are not unimportant choices that Mary and Elizabeth make.  To quote Jann Cather Weaver, “(These two women) sought to live radically faithful lives in response to the call from their God.  Not unexpectedly, these women lived lives like those of their soon-to-be-born sons.  Do we think John and Jesus just “knew” how to live radically faithful lives?  How to be preachers?  How to be as eloquent as the Magnificat?  How to be healers?  John and Jesus knew how to live radically faithful lives because they were sons of two women who had faithfully faced a terrifying yet expectant reality.”  As they waited for their sons to be born, as they waited for their redemption, Mary and Elizabeth chose to be faithful despite society’s pressures.  They chose to celebrate the living and real presence of God in their lives.  They chose to wait with open eyes to see what God was doing next, which they knew would be amazing, wonderful and beyond anything they could expect.

               I talked a few weeks ago about my experience of waiting on mission trips. Each time that we have gone we spend more time than we could anticipate waiting.  We wait for the host church or host site to tell us what we need to do and where.  We wait for the “experts” to show up and tell us how we are supposed to accomplish whatever it is that we are doing.  We wait to get the materials we need to do the job.  We wait some more for new materials, or for the materials that didn’t work to be replaced by ones that do.  We wait for the time, the situation, the opportunity, the tools…all of these things - we spend an incredible amount of time waiting.  This is hard and frustrating for all of us.  We are there to work.  We have a job to do and we want to see it done.  It can be easy in those moments to focus again on the challenges and struggles.  We struggle not only to figure out how we can get the jobs done in the short time we have when we are encumbered by delays and waits and other challenges.  We also struggle at times to understand why we are there when we know things are so hard for the people we are struggling to help that it is hard to see how our little jobs can really make a substantial difference in their lives.  And we ask the harder questions: Why do we bother fixing the floor when the roof is leaking?  Why do we paint the walls when the building should frankly be torn down and replaced?  But as I mentioned before, the waiting was also an opportunity to talk to the people we were helping, whose homes we were fixing, and to talk to each other.  Through listening, through working together, through being together, we were given glimpses of God’s deep grace.  We heard each others’ stories and saw God at work in the lives of those who struggle so deeply.  We heard our own stories anew as we shared them with strangers.  We waited for God’s coming in different ways – sometimes through our own hands as we built and listened and created relationships.  And like Mary, we, each of us, experienced moments when we were touched by the awe of God having chosen us to be in that place at that time, helping God usher in and create something new as we were given the gift of being bearers of a bit of God’s grace to those individuals we met and served.  That choice on our part, too, was not unimportant.  When we chose to serve in joy, rather than focusing on the frustrations of the waiting, of the stumbling, of the jobs that just aren’t done 100% perfectly; our choice to see God’s hand and to look with eyes of gratitude and grace inspired others to do the same.  It inspired those we helped, too, to look more deeply at their lives and to see God’s hands at work.  It inspired them also to give back, to pass forward the gifts of God.  And our choice to look for God’s hands and feet kept us going through the times of waiting until we did have the things we need to build, to work, to be part of bringing in God’s realm in that little corner for that little bit of time.

One day a young man named Tim who had wild hair, wore a t-shirt with holes in it, and no shoes made his way into a very conservative, well-dressed church. He walked into the church with his messy appearance, a little late. Since the service had already started Tim walked down the aisle looking for a seat. It was Christmas time, so the church was completely packed and he couldn’t find a seat. By now, people were really looking a bit uncomfortable, but no one said anything. Tim got closer and closer and closer to the pulpit, and when he realized there were no seats, he just squatted down right on the carpet. By now the people were really uptight, and the tension in the air was thick. About this time, the minister realized that from way at the back of the church, a deacon was slowly making her way toward Tim. The deacon was in her eighties, had silver-gray hair, and a beautiful suit. A godly woman, very elegant, very dignified, very courtly. She walked with a cane and, as she started walking toward this boy, everyone was saying to themselves that you couldn't blame her for what she was going to do. How could you expect a woman of her age and of her background to understand some dirty young man, a kid really, sitting on the floor? It took a long time for the woman to reach the boy. The church was utterly silent except for the clicking of the woman's cane. All eyes were focused on her. You couldn’t even hear anyone breathing. The minister couldn’t preach the sermon until the deacon did what she had to do. And then they saw this elderly woman drop her cane on the floor.. With great difficulty, she lowered herself and sat down next to Tim in order to worship with him so he wouldn’t be alone. Everyone choked up with emotion... When the minister gained control, he finally said, 'What I'm about to preach, you will never remember. What you have just seen, you will never forget.'

               God does work in mysterious, wondrous ways.  As today we being the celebration of Christ’s coming to us, as a beautiful baby, but weak, innocent, helpless and poor, we don’t only celebrate but we also anticipate Christ’s coming anew, I pray that all of us might have Mary’s eyes to look with trust, and joy; with hope and celebration, with gratitude and faith for the amazing thing that God is doing next.  Thanks be to God!