MOVIN' ON UP

December 23, 2012

Advent 4 LOVE

Micah 5:2-5a

Luke 1:38-45

(prayer)

George and Weezie Jefferson were Archie and Edith Bunker’s neighbours in Queens NY.  As George’s dry cleaning business grew and expanded and he knew enough financial success to move to the Upper East Side in Manhattan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHDwRECFL8M

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Sometimes it’s nice to see someone achieve a “rags to riches” story for themselves.  For those of us growing up in the seventies, the Norman Lear sitcoms: All in the Family, The Jeffersons and Maude were ground-breaking social commentary in a time when the racial civil rights and women’s movements were gaining momentum in North America.

People of both genders and all skin colours were beginning to have better chances to compete with the rest of society (i.e. white males).

I am always amazed that when equality comes up as an issue in a culture that it surprises people.  Weren’t we all made the same way?  Aren’t we all stardust?  People of faith, are we not all children of the same God?

There was a time when I was caught up in that.  I saw differences as uncertain, foreign, perhaps scary. I don’t know when I “got it” (I was fairly young), but once that moment in clarity hit me, I knew that I would forever be a fan and advocate of the ones who struggle to simply measure up and have their fair shot at an equal life.  It became gospel for me.

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When I watch sporting events (unless I have a strong allegiance to a particular side: which only occasionally I do), I tend to root for the underdog.  I like a close game – that seems the most fair, sporting way for sports to be.
I love Crash Davis' line in Bull Durham: Throw more ground balls; it's more democartic.

And I really do love it when the team (or person) who was not supposed to succeed based on all of the pre-game stats and best guesses, surprises the prognosticators and just offers an amazing performance.

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Bethlehem was an underdog.  More on that tomorrow night.

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And so was Mary:  a young, unmarried and pregnant woman.  That thrust her into a huge disadvantage.

I wonder how many of you have seen the December issue of the United Church Observer.

There is an article about Bernadette Dumas and her experience with a United Church outreach ministry in Burnaby, BC in 1969.  Bernadette was from Australia when her family brought her to Canada.  To friends and family downunder, it was a six month family vacation; in reality, Bernadette took up residence in the United Church Home for Girls – because, at 19, she was an unwed mother-to-be.  She stayed long enough to have her baby and sign off on the adoption before heading back to Australia.

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Our Bibles are sadly sparse on details of Mary’s life.  We have just a hint or two.  As soon as Mary discovers she is pregnant, “in haste” she goes all the way from Nazareth to the Judean hills to spend time with her elderly relative, Elizabeth.  Earlier in chapter one, it had noted that Elizabeth (although post-menopausal) was pregnant too and had secluded herself.

It almost sounds like there was an informal home for women with unplanned pregnancies up in the hills east of Jerusalem.

Again, the biblical narrative is sparse, but no matter what we might suspect was the family reaction, or what opinions and judging taunts might have come their way from others, Mary and Elizabeth were excited about this time in their lives and prospect of becoming mothers.

As we read, the story goes that even Elizabeth’s fetus was excited about Mary’s child-to-be.

Luke’s gospel tells us that, while staying at Elizabeth’s, Mary sang a song founded in her deep faith:

⁴⁶…‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, ⁴⁸for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. ⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. ⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. ⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, ⁵⁵according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.’

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Mary (and Elizabeth and Elizabeth’s baby) knew that Mary’s child would be a unique and special blessing to the world.  From the life of a young, small town girl would come the very embodiment of God’s love and compassion.  

Again, the underdog is destined for greatness.

Let us pray:

Help us to see your love in both the humble and mighty places of our lives.  Amen.

#361VU  “Small Things Count”

FIRST IN LINE

December 16, 2012

Advent 3 JOY

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Philippians 4:4-8

(prayer)

Sometimes, I am amazed at how the cycle of the Christian Liturgical Year often seems, coincidentally, to line up with today's life and world events.  This Sunday (the third Sunday of Advent) just nine days before Christmas, focuses on "joy": Zephaniah said rejoice and exult with all your heart, Paul wrote rejoice in the Lord always, again, I say rejoice.

Some days, it just seems to fit perfectly.
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Today is not one of those days.

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It is hard to feel a true sense of joy after what happened in Newtown, Connecticut two days ago.  I have been feeling sad ... and angry ... and my joy is buried deep in these days.

I am outraged that the gun culture is so ingrained that a philosophical right to have a gun (or guns of every size and capacity) supersedes the possibility of students and teachers to enjoy a day at school safety; and that this constitutionally guaranteed right superseded the opportunity for a disturbed, ill young man to live in a gun-free home.  Even living north of the 49^th where that right is not a right but a carefully controlled, earned-privilege (and where there were 52 gun murders in 2011 compared to 10,728 in the States), I am outraged for the soul-wrenching plight of my friends and neighbours to the south.

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Anger is part of my response, but it pales compared to the sadness.

You know, there is never a 'good' time to be thrust into sadness and grief, but for those for whom the festival of Christmas is a big celebration, this may be the worst time of year to have to grieve.

I have found myself imagining Connecticut families having presents under their trees for their children who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

What do you do with those presents in these days before Christmas? 
Do you remove them?  Put that sad reminder out of eyesight.
Do you leave them there?  Unable to do it yet, or as a memorial or as symbol of the innocent joy they knew.
And what will you do with the gifts on December 26th and the days that follow?  Keep them, give them away, donate them, throw them away.

I know that feeling.  Thirty years ago this coming Wednesday, my father passed away suddenly (I was 19). His funeral was on Dec 22^nd and we had people over to the house after the memorial service. 

Someone quite innocently was just making chit-chat to us kids and commented on the large gift under the tree “oh, somebody’s getting a big one” – of course – not knowing it was for my dad.  It was a neatly wrapped small brown suitcase. 

My dad was only 51, but he had been forced into semi-retirement because of severe heart disease.  But he maintained a few clients and still made the odd trip out of town for work or pleasure (aka golf or horseracing).  This suitcase would be the perfect size for him.

I don’t remember talking with anyone in the day’s after my dad’s death about what to do with his presents under the tree.  It wasn’t even on my radar.  But after everyone left that day, because of that innocent comment, my mom needed to take away all of my dad’s presents.  I look back on that and now realize that (for her) it had to have been an act of bitter, joy-voided finality that shouted that he was gone.

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I used that suitcase for almost three decades until the zipper went on it this past spring.  Now it is gone too.

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Is there room for joy in these times?

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When I heard about the shooting on Friday, I happened to be out doing some Christmas shopping.  The stores were full, the lines were long.  And I was numbly going through the motions.

At one store, I overheard a woman loudly talking to a store employee in an electronics department because they were sold out of the item that she was looking for.  Someone had gotten to it before her.  To listen to her, the world was falling apart.

It made me think of something we all are deeply away of: the craziness of holiday shopping.  And how, for some people, it can be so all-consuming, and yet... how small and petty it seems when the ‘really important things in life’ are thrust into our front of our consciousness.

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It is a sadly repeated activity that seems to get worse every year – people waiting in lines for pre-Christmas deals.  The US’s Black Friday (the scarily-named shopping day after Thanksgiving) started a day early this year and 2012’s Cyber Monday broke all records. 

In Canada, we have long since stopped expecting to have to wait until after Christmas for Boxing Day sales. 

By in large, people despise the lines, but they desire where the lines lead. 

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It is a common lament in church circles at this time of year that the meaning of Christmas is lost and the reason for the season are shoved to the back of the line. 

If you were at the St. David’s Women’s Christmas Party two weeks ago, you would have seen the video for Becky Kelly’s holiday-themed song where she asks, “Where’s the Line to See Jesus?” I’ll post a link with this sermon on the church’s website. 

Okay, the song is really cheesy, but in the midst all the line-worthy-deals, it does ask us: where is our sense of perspective for what is truly important.

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Even if we are unable to set aside the tragedy of the last few days, we can still ask: where is the awe that might just cause us to sing and rejoice at the wonder of the Divine within our midst? 

In the midst of tragedy, in the midst of the season’s distractions, how do we bring Joy to the front of the line?

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That question was on my mind as I was trying to figure out what to say during this message time today.  Even before Friday’s events, I had planned on asking that rhetorical question today:  how do we bring joy to the front of the line.  But as of yesterday, the question seemed a lot harder to answer.

The two scripture passages (which I had picked weeks ago) had those encouraging lines about rejoicing.  But they seemed a bit hollow.

I had to look closely again at the readings provided by the Lectionary for this particular day in the three year, repeated cycle of bible lessons for Sunday Church.  How could I authentically speak about Joy… today?

As I read and re-read, it struck me that the circumstances surrounding both writings were not filled with great calm and joy.  There was a fair bit of worry and anxiety for both Paul and Zephaniah, who were each in the midst of dealing with some significant levels of loss.

The first chapter of Paul’s letter contains words of his own stubborn joy in spite of being under house arrest and facing a possible death sentence: 1:¹⁸Yes, and I will continue to rejoice ... ²⁰...Christ will be exalted now as always in my body, whether by life or by death.

Zephaniah (like his contemporary Jeremiah) spoke to the people of Judah during the time immediately before the Babylonian conquest. 

Hope was hard to come by; the writing was on the wall.  Jerusalem may survive for a short time (while its supplies held out) but eventually all of Judah (including the capital) would fall.  Everyone knew that.  The people knew it.  Jeremiah knew it.  Zephaniah knew it.

How is it that Zephaniah could tell people of Jerusalem and Judah to sing... and rejoice... and exult with all their hearts?

How could Paul be in such a good mood given what he was facing?

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There are times when ‘joy’ is hard to find in the moment. 

And yet... a message coming to us in today’s scriptures is that... ‘joy...shall...come’.  We sang that earlier:

Joy shall come

even to the wilderness. 

And the parched land shall then

know great gladness.

As the rose,

shall deserts blossom.

Deserts, like a garden, blossom!

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Zephaniah tells the Judeans, “Do not fear”; Paul tells the Philippians, “Do not worry”.  The situations the people were in could easily justify fear and worry, but the prophet and the apostle say that, with God, they are not alone – and that this fact has an effect on fear and worry.  Yahweh, your God, is in your midst (Zeph 3:¹⁷); The peace of God, which surpassed all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:⁷).

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The truth is:

Joy doesn’t always naturally make its way to the front of the line.  And believe me (as a guy who gets down with sadness and grief every advent) we need more than the call to just ‘don’t worry, be happy”. 

When you are feeling depressed, one of the least helpful responses is to be told, “c’mon cheer up, it’s Christmas”.

A superficial reading of today’s passages might sound like that: “rejoice always – c’mon cheer up”. 

We need something deeper: and I do believe that, in their contexts, these passages do have that depth of meaning. 

They tell us that we need to KNOW that God is with us – sad with us, angry with us and yet with a heart so open, so peaceful that we might find it impossible to understand the ability God has to comfort us.

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When joy is not coming naturally, we may not be able to force it to the front of the line, but we must not let its light be extinguished.

That candle needs to burn today.  It needs to burn because of my dad; it need to burn because of Edna’s husband, it needs to burn because of the victims and the shooter in Connecticut. 

You have a reason that it needs to burn!

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To have hope...

and to know peace...

we need to believe that

   Joy shall come.

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And that belief can be strengthened by allowing ourselves to experience that God is with us now (front and centre), even if the joy is still a ways off.

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Let us pray:

As we sing songs of the season, O God – songs of hope, peace, and love – we hear you echoing the joy that is part of it all. Help us to know the joy of your presence especially when joy is hard for us to feel.  Amen.

“O hush the noise and

cease your strife

to hear the angels sing.”

#44VU “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”

NEW AGAIN

December 9, 2012

Advent 2 Peace

Malachi 3:1-4

Luke 3:1-4

(prayer)

An 81 year old parishioner in Spain wished to serve her church by taking it upon herself to restore a 19th century fresco of Jesus which had been damaged by years of neglect and moisture. By all reports, she did this with the best of intentions. Not everyone likes her ‘new Jesus’ created out of an act of faithful service.

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At this time of year, we are sharing old stories. For some John the Baptist might be a new story, but for others, you’ve heard it before ... maybe many, many times.

But let us admit that each time we hear the stories of Advent, it is in a new context.

Advent is a time of preparation (for Christmas).  Are we prepared for the reality that the impact of our sacred stories HAVE to be slightly different each time the story is told in a new time and place?

If we believe that our scriptures are dynamic, they are alive for us, they must have new things to show us.

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John the Baptist spoke to people of his time about the need to renew one’s faith – and he also pointed to new and exciting times to come. Let us be prepared to accept the old stories as new for this time and context and let us be watchful for what is to come.

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To hear today’s scriptures new again, we do ourselves well to go back first.

Malachi is the last book of the Old Testament.  He is a Judean prophet from what can be described as the Persian period of Hebrew history.

The people of Judah were exiled into Babylon.  After about 75 years, Cyrus, the king of Persia (think modern Iran) decreed that the Hebrews could return to their homeland.  Malachi speaks to people who are in the midst of a national and religious restoration.  Malachi probably lived and labored during the times of Ezra and Nehemiah.  Part of the context of Malachi was that it was the time of the reconstruction of the Temple.

During the Babylonian exile, the first Temple was looted and laid in ruins.  It was a time of deep theological soul-searching for the people.

The most sacred part of the Temple was the room called the Holy of Holies: it was where the Ark of the Covenant was kept (the ornate box constructed to contain the remnants of the original tablets of the Ten Commandments); the High Priest only entered the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement – to perform special rituals and offer special prayers seeking forgiveness for the people.

In this reconstructed Temple during Malachi’s time, the Ark of the Covenant was gone (likely looted by the Babylonians as implied in the non-Biblical book of 1^st Esdras (1:⁵⁴), although there are traditions that the Ark was secretly taken out of Jerusalem and safely ended up in Africa).  Either way, the 2^nd Temple’s Holy of Holies would be missing a significant holy relic.

In a tangible way, tradition held that the actual presence of God dwelled within the Holy of Holies.  In fact, during the exile, the prophet Ezekiel had a vision that the spirit of God left the ruins of the Temple and promises to be with the people in Babylon (Ezekiel 11).

The prophet Malachi speaks about a messenger of God, who will prepare the people for the return of the presence of God to the reconstructed Temple:  the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to [the] temple.

The messenger’s message is to be prepared for God is near and soon to be known in a new way.

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Move ahead 500 years and our faith story encounters another messenger – John, the son of a Temple priest, Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, whom the Gospel of Luke describes as an older cousin of Mary, the mother of Jesus.  He grew up in the Judean hills east of Jerusalem. 

As an adult, John was viewed as a person with something important to say.  Word spread that what he had to say was enlivening people’s faith.  He preached a baptism of repentance.  John set up camp near the Jordan River and invited people to repent from their sins and to turn back to God in a spirit of loving forgiveness.  
The Jordan River was significant in that it is the place of entry back into the promised land in the time of Moses and Joshua.  It was like going back to the beginning.  Going through the waters of the Jordan would have also be the act of return for the exiles from Babylon - the ones whom Malachi was speaking to.
In a way, John’s baptism was his own version of Yom Kippur: a promise that God forgives and that the people are destined to be ‘right with God’.  To go back; to restore a balance that (for any number of reasons) has been lost.

If we had read on in Luke chapter three, we would have heard John quoted as saying ¹⁶John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with^* the Holy Spirit and fire.

Sounds a bit familiar, eh?

John and Malachi are separated by five centuries, but they both spoke a message that God would soon be known in a new way – for the returned exiles, it would be through a renewal of Temple life, something that was only known in the stories of the elders.  For John, God would be known in a tangible way through the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

The author of Luke borrowed words of another ancient prophet (who was a exile contemporary of Ezekiel) to describe John when the text says... ⁴...The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. ⁵Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; ⁶and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

The words meant something different to the exiles than what Luke describes.  To the people living as forced refugees in Babylon, the wilderness was the barrier between exile and home.  The voice cries out that the impassible wilderness will be made into a highway, a straight path, for God’s people to journey home.  It was figurative language but it spoke of a God who would not be barred from the people no matter what obstacles lay in the way.

For Luke, John is in calling people into the wilderness, where they would be prepared to be able to straighten out their lives as far as their faith was concerned.

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The messengers of God in these scriptures for today are inviting us to allow the Holy into our midst and to be profoundly affected by that experience.

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Can we hear that message here and now?  Does it have meaning and purpose for us where our lives are right now?

Are these scriptures able to be ‘new again’ for us?

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John calls on the people to examine their lives. What garners people’s energy and focus?  Where does their faith fit into the mix?  John invited them to reorient their lives.  The word repent (in English comes through old French from a Latin word (poenitire) that means to make sorry.  In the Greek of the New Testament “metanoia” (metanoiaV) means to be beyond one’s mind or perhaps an after-understanding: we might say a ‘second thought’.

We can assume that John the Baptist spoke to the crowds in Aramaic or Hebrew.  In the Old Testament, we can find two words that convey the meaning of repentance: שוב shuv (to return: cf. Malachi 2^:6True instruction was in his mouth, and no wrong was found on his lips. He walked with me in integrity and uprightness, and he turned many from iniquity.) and נחם niHam (to cause relief: cf. Isaiah 51^:3For the Lord will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places.)

Most often, I find this multiplicity of understandings helpful in engaging what ‘repentance’ is all about.

ÿ   To return (shuv).

ÿ   To re-think (metanoia).

ÿ   To bring relief/comfort (naHam).

ÿ   To construct sorry (poenitire): more active than simply being sorry.

So to repent is a bit of all these things ... it is a recognition that we are mistaken, that we want to make things better, so we turn around, we re-think and we do the work necessary for us to be relieved of the discomfort.

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John called the people by the Jordan to re-think the place of God in their lives.

We can hear that call as well.

It is only 16 days before Christmas.  Are you ready?

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I’m curious how you heard that question: are you ready?  Did you hear it as a shopping list question or a faith-mindset question?

What is in your way of being ready to welcome the Christ Child in 2012?

What does it mean to prepare the way for Jesus in 2012?

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Are you ready to repent of the selfishness and consumerism that this time of year can bread within many of us?

Can we be more concerned with a generosity of compassion than a generosity of ‘stuff’?

Are we ready to cleanse ourselves of the baggage of the festival and to honour the sacredness?

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Forgiveness is part of God’s nature. Dying and rising anew is part of our story.  We can choose the path of holiness (as we sang before when the children were leaving for Sunday School).

Like Yom Kippur, re-righting ourselves on the path of faithfulness is an ongoing process – God’s love and forgiveness is steadfast and eternal, our experience of that is a choice.

From time to time, we all benefit from the prophets’ voices that call us to know God.

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Like the familiar parts of our Bible that we hear each advent and Christmas, we can know the comfort and relief of God’s loving forgiveness over and over again in our lives.  And each time, the blessing is new...again.

Let us pray:

God, we turn to you to find the peace that we need.  Open our ears to the calls to turn our lives back to you.  Amen.

#55VU  “In the Bleak Mid-Winter”

DAYS TO COME

December 2, 2012

Advent 1 Hope

Jeremiah 33:14-16

Luke 21:25-36

(prayer)

One of the first scriptural voices we hear in this year’s advent season is that of the prophet Jeremiah.  He lived in Judah – in the early 7^th century BCE.

The world power of the day was Babylon (think modern Iraq in the lands made fertile by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers). 

A century earlier, it had been the Assyrians (think Syria and Afghanistan).  During the Assyrian Empire’s expansion, the northern Hebrew Kingdom of Israel had been overrun.  It has lost its autonomy: lost to history. 

It bears noting that some three hundred plus years before Jeremiah’s time, in the early years of Israel as a Kingdom, all of the twelve tribes were united under one king.  First Saul, then David and then (David’s son) Solomon.  David’s reign brought the nation’s greatest unity and expansion.  David had built the city of Jerusalem (on the outskirts of his home town of Bethlehem) as a new capital city and a permanent home for the Tabernacle of worship.  Solomon made the Tabernacle even more settled and permanent, by building a temple of stone to replace the tent-structures that have served as the place of worship since the time of Moses.

But (it is fair to say that) the solidifying of Jerusalem in Judah as the centre of power and worship upset people from the northern tribes, who themselves revered the holy sites of Shechem, Bethel and the lands where Jacob lived. After Solomon’s death, a power struggle among his successors led to the ten tribes of the north seceding from the ‘united kingdom’.  The capital of the north became Samaria. 

From that time on, the history of Hebrew leadership recorded in the books of Kings and Chronicles list separate lines of rulers for the south (called Judah) and the north (called Israel).  That is (of course) until 721BCE, when the Assyrians ended the line of kings in the north by capturing Samaria.

During the age of the Assyrian empire, Judah (the southern Hebrew Kingdom) maintains its political autonomy – and so its history of kings carries on beyond the fall of Samaria.

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So, today, we read from the book of the prophet, Jeremiah, of Jerusalem in Judea as the Babylonian empire was expanding west.  Much of the outlying lands were already under Babylonian control.  Those that could had taken refuge behind the walls of Jerusalem, hoping to wait out the invasion.  Babylon (on the other hand) had the capital blockaded and felt it was only a matter of time before the city would fall to their control.

It was a bleak time for the Judeans.  Much of Jeremiah’s writings lectured the people on their unfaithfulness – inviting them to consider their current predicament as a sign of God’s judgment against them.

But Jeremiah was not all doom and gloom:  ¹⁴The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ¹⁵In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. ¹⁶In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety.

¹⁴The days are surely coming, says the Lord.  [Yes, they are coming.  And don’t call me Shirley.]

Jeremiah was not only pointing to a short term hope that Babylon would not control the lands of Judah (which he did believe), but the longer term hope that there would be even a wider restoration: a return to the glory days of King David.

Interesting enough, Jeremiah did not just speak of hope – he acted in hope.  As we can read one chapter earlier in chapter 32, Jeremiah had just shown ultimate faith in God in the face of a seemingly hopeless situation. As the bottom has fallen out of the Judean real estate market – and even as Jeremiah has been under arrest in the palace of the king of Judah – he has just bought a piece of land, trusting that, as God has assured him, nothing is “too hard” for God.  God’s promise was that...

 33:¹²Thus says the Lord of hosts: In this place that is waste, without people or animals, and in all its towns there shall again be pasture for shepherds resting their flocks. ¹³In the towns of the hill country, of the Shephelah, and of the Negeb, in the land of Benjamin, the places around Jerusalem, and in the towns of Judah, flocks shall again pass under the hands of the one who counts them, says the Lord.

Jeremiah had seen the fortunes of Judah rise and fall over the course of three turbulent generations of rulers. During those three generations the little kingdom of Judah had been tossed back and forth both socially and politically. It had felt the strong arm of the Assyrian Empire pulled it away from its religious roots and then been turned in the opposite direction by a king who reinstated the Hebrew faith. In the context of today’s reading, Judah now heard the knocking at the door of a new Babylonian threat that would eventually reshape the land and its people yet again. Jeremiah lived to see the destruction of Jerusalem, the Babylonian exile, and the end of the kingdom of Judah. 

//

And in the end, he still preached hope!

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I am sure that many of us still have paper calendars. It can still be an exciting ritual each month to flip the page. Yesterday was December 1^st.  What did the page flip show you?

We have an Edmonton Humane Society calendar at my house:  a new sleepy kitten (wearing a Santa hat) appeared yesterday.  In my church office, I have the Canadian Church Calendar (which our church sells only $5 by the way), the December picture is of a couple of advent-themed stained glass windows from Gower Street United Church in St. John’s NL.

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We are fortunate to live in the shadow of the knowledge of those who have determined the months and dates of the year for us.

In times gone by, people looked to the sky for the signs of the times: the movement of the stars, moon and sun were observed and catalogued and the patterns became predictable.  They observed the growth of plants and the migration of animals and understood the hidden truths about the seasons of time.

Few us of have the knowledge to do this completely for our self, so we trust the publishers of calendars and authors of websites.

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As our Luke reading today reminds us – the movement of the heavenly objects and world events also spoke to the ancient people in prophetic ways.  They looked for signs of God in the sky and on earth.

Let’s be honest, for the most part. The signs that Jesus tells his followers to be on the lookout for, are too common to be able to point to any particular time – sadly, natural disasters, severe weather events and human conflict seem to point to almost any moment in time.  I suppose if they did see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” that would be unique, but Jesus says that would be an event after the other ones they were supposed to notice as well.

I suppose that – at the very least – we can take from the Luke passage that Jesus is saying that God is at work in the world around us; and (as an act of faith) that we do well to take notice of this.

Signs from God are often in the eyes of the beholder.  Have you ever seen ‘a sign’ that you were sure was from God?  What made you sure that it was from God?

My mind has been racing on this subject ever since I sent and saw the movie “The Life of Pi” last Wednesday (went by myself while Patti was at work).  I got home from the theatre and immediately ordered the ebook on my tablet and started reading the novel (I know, it’s the wrong order from a purist point of view, but that seems to be my pattern in recent years).  On Friday, I dragged Patti to see the movie (again), so I had someone to talk about it with.

Anyway, my point is that the story of ‘The Life of Pi’ in the movie (and in the book which I polished off last evening) is also filled with events and circumstances that could be taken as ‘signs from God’.

As Jesus said, we are to be alert.  I guess the question we can be asking is ... How can we notice God if we do not look for God, occasionally?

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If we believe that God has created and is creating – that God is part of our lives and the world that surrounds us – does it not also follow that we can evolve to be able to see signs of the divine in our midst?

I imagine that this belief can also motivate us to live in a certain, faith-focused way.  Does the knowledge of God-in-our-midst affect how we choose to live in this world?

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Christmas is 23 days away.  Many people will be planning special events to mark the day:  meals, time with family and friends, generosity and gratitude.

Christmas Day events seldom just happen – they take preparation and planning.  Cooks will take stock of their pantries and make note of what is needed.  The generous will plan gifts they may give – to friends and strangers – out of a sense that the connections we make between us are perhaps even more important than our own wants of the moment.

We can look at these next 23 days as just another three weeks on the calendar or we can hope that this time has special meaning for us. 

Advent may be a time of waiting, but the word is a noun of promise and anticipation – ‘coming’.  What may come our way in the days to come?

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If like the Christmas cook, we were to take stock of our faith (individually) and the mission and ministry of our church, what do we have that is available to us now and what else do we need?

How will we deal with those needs: change the menu?  Find ways to make the hope real?

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It is four Sundays before Christmas and we eagerly anticipate the coming of Jesus, as the child in the manger.

What will be in store in your life in these days to come?

What is tugging at your soul?

What enlivens you? Scares you?

Where is your hope?

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Sit with these questions. 

Live and move through these questions.

Know that there is light on the path we travel and there is the hope that this light will grow even brighter.

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May we see God along the way.

Let us pray...

God of hope, lead us as we travel once again the holy road to Bethlehem. When the journey wearies us, we are thankful for your unfailing presence, wisdom and encouragement. Give us courage and comfort, confidence and challenge on the way. Amen.

***Offerings***

THE TRUTH ABOUT CONTROL

November 25, 2012

Pentecost Last

2^nd Samuel 23:^1-7

Revelation 1:^4-8

John 18:^33-37

(prayer)

It has become one of the classic Jack Nicholson lines:

“You can’t handle the truth!”

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Jack Nicholson, portraying Col. Nathan R. Jessop, in the 1992 Rob Reiner film, “A Few Good Men” famously said that line to the young defense lawyer, Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) who had just proclaimed: “I want the truth!”

"You can't handle the truth!"

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The prefect of the Roman province of Judea during the reign of Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, wanted the truth about Jesus and those kingship rumors swirling around him:  ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’

A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was what Pilate hoped for, and Jesus did say, ‘My kingdom is not from this world.’ which sounds pretty much like a 'yes'.

‘So you are a king?’

‘You say that I am a king ... I came into the world, to testify to the truth.’

‘What is truth?’

Jesus’ simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ wasn’t so simple.

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Pilate knew about kings, and caesars, and governors.  If Jesus was claiming to be a king, Pilate had an image in his head about what that would be like.

But Jesus messes things up, buy avoiding a discussion about the 'title' and instead talked about his role: ‘my kingdom is not of this world ... I came into the world, to testify to the truth.’

Now the debate can begin, because truth is almost always based on opinion and interpretation rather than on objective experience and facts.

Even mathematical and scientific inalienable truths are only true because they have been observed to be true long enough until most people accept it without having proofed it themselves.  We know almost universally accept that, with-respect-to right triangles, a2+b2=c2.

Of course certain other scientific observations are not true for everyone: the Flat Earth Society still exists (although it has less than 500 members); the age of the universe and development and origin of life on earth are still debated.

What any given person holds as true is relative to how they interpret their experiences and what they are willing to take by faith (faith being what one is willing to believe in the absence [or sometimes in spite] of evidence).

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Pilate is the highest authority in the room - he expects to have the last word.  Pilate has control of the situation.  His truth will reign supreme!

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But the truth is that the governor, who represents the greatest empire on earth and controls the seat of power in Judea, has come face-to-face with a simple peasant who refuses to be controlled. 

And Pilate had no idea what to do.

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The problem was... the governor was not ready for the truth that Jesus had to tell – Jesus' truth was ... what Pilate believed about power and authority were not always true.  How can you be 'in control' if your subjects aren't subjugated?

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Pilate represented an empire whose foundation is military might, whose reality is power, whose leader (Caesar) is a god.  He wasn't ready for Jesus' alternative vision: the vision of a different realm, one which is grounded in seeming powerlessness, whose leader is a servant.

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The irony in all of this is that 'truth' is only true in certain situations. 

Almost every time I preach on this conversation between Jesus and Pilate, I quote Andrew Lloyd Webbers' lyrics from Jesus Christ Superstar: the Pilate character sings "What is truth?  Is truth unchanging laws?  We both have truths.  Are mine the same as yours?"

Truth is based on one's interpretation of experience and what we are willing to take on faith.

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We can see that at play in the other two readings for today.  As King David reached the end of his life, his life experiences taught him some truths about his life and his relationship with God.  And as John of Patmos wrote to young churches on the edge of this new faith expression called Christianity, they were encouraged to hold to the truth of their strengths, to know the truth of their potential.

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Experience and faith build our guiding truths.

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When Jesus was asked by Pilate if he was a king, the response was 'my kingdom is not of this world.'  We hear that with our post-easter ears, with the kind of language that is in the Revelation passage:  Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

That kind of phrasiology comes into the church's lexicon through the experience of the resurrection and sixty years of church development since Pilate interrogated Jesus leading up to John's time.

But during the time described in our gospel lesson, Jesus as "ruler of the kings of the earth" was not true yet ... certainly not for Pilate, and likely not even for any of Jesus' followers who were cowering in the shadows outside of Pilate's house.

Jesus' authority was not based on political or military power.  Jesus had disciples and followers because of his powerful words and actions.  Jesus was an inspiration to people of all classes of society - he lived the promise of the love of God and he inspired hope in others.

Some did hope that Jesus was the embodiment of the ancient promise of a messiah from God.  Messiah is a regal word - it means 'annointed' - a reference to the coronation rituals of the kings of Israel's past.  That is the rumor that reached Pilate's ears.  But in the one direct Biblical reference to Jesus being the Messiah (cf. Mark 8:29ff as well in Mt and Lk), Jesus rejects that notion, speaking more about sacrifice and suffering-for-a-cause than sitting on a throne.

In the gospel of John, just a day before the account of Jesus before Pilate (cf. John 13), Jesus washes his disciples' feet as a practical parable about servant leadership.  He encourages those who have been served to go out and serve others.

For Jesus, this is much closer to the truth than what Pilate thinks about Jesus alleged kingship.

It is true that Jesus' realm is not of this world.  At least not the world Pilate knew - the world which is seduced by power and greed - at the expense of true equality and honest servanthood.

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We have just witnessed an election in the US where the truth about the equality of all voters was an underlying issue: and the efforts of some in power to effectively treat some voters as less equal than others (i.e. the ones less likely to support the ones wielding this power).

Coincidently, last night, I went and saw the movie Lincoln.  It was interesting to watch what was seen as true by the different factions as the US House of Representatives of 1865 as they debated the abolition of slavery.  It's like they were living in different worlds.

"My kingdom is not of this world."

Or in other words, "My kingdom is not of your world, Govenor Pilate."

The simple truth is that Jesus and Pilate lived in different worlds (or more accurately, they have different world views – that’s why they can’t agree on the nature of power and authority.

I suspect that most of us can agree with the truth of that statement.

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The question for us today is ...

Can we handle the truth about the kind of servant-based power that Jesus’ truth proclaims?

What does it mean for us to ascribe power and authority, not by might or office, but by the value of words and actions?

I think we do that (generally) on small scales – that is how we choose our friends, our mentors, our mates:  we appreciate (and long to build relationships with) those whose words and actions impress and inspire us.

Why is it so hard to do that on the larger scales, of national politics – of international relations?

As Christians, who should be inspired by Jesus open circle, where the outcast and the sinner, join the women and the children and men as welcomed people of a God of everlasting, unconditional love, why do we still placidly accept the inequality that is promoted by leaders around this globe.

In two weeks, you will be given the opportunity to add your voice of support to specific struggles for human rights, as our Inreach-Outreach Committee provides for us materials from Amnesty International’s Write4Rights Campaign.

That’s a positive step to move into Jesus’ worldview.

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Witnessing to the truth of God’s reign of justice and love will upset and unsettle those whose power is based in greed and might.  We are invited to trust in God’s presence always (as King David was able to see at the end of his life).  We are invited to be inspired by the hope of the young Christian churches who were reminded that the Risen Christ is eternal – beginning and end – Alpha and Omega – A and Z – who is and who was and who is to come, THE almighty.
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In the circle of God's love, where the served go out and serve, we may just find our most basic truth!

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Thanks be to God, let us pray:

God of our lives, in your truth the marginalized are role models, the voiceless sing words of hope and the powerless gain strength.  May we work for this world of peace and harmony so that we may know the wonder and beauty of your realm.  Amen.

#210VU  “Christus Paradox”