Second Sunday in Lent Yr B Feb 28 2021

 

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Second Sunday in Lent Yr B Feb 28 2021

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16, Romans 4:13-25, Mark 8:31-38, Psalm 22:22-30

 

Jesus says, follow me. But if you do, there will be consequences. You will lose your life. Not much of a party invitation is it? What would that look like on a save the date card. That card for me would read, Kathleen Ann Monson, on August 21^st, 1957, you are invited to lose your life. Details to follow. You see, that’s the day I was baptized. How do I even know that you ask? I have my baptismal certificate framed on my wall, my ordination certificate is there as well, but the baptismal certificate is the most important to me, to us. That is the day I lost my life, to be reborn into the life of Jesus. And it is with this identity, a follower of Jesus in the way of love, that I live my life. All the rest is the details. 

 

In this story from Mark, there are some very important questions that are part of the details, that inform the way of love. Who do you say I am? Can you turn from all that demands your attention and follow me? Can you put aside your own selfish ambition? Can you lay down your life? As we wonder about the answers to these questions, we may find that Jesus calls us to some uncomfortable places, some borders and barriers that must be broken. 

 

We begin, as we began last time in Mark, with location. Location, location, location. We need to look at the physical location of the story, and where the story is in the larger narrative, it makes a difference. So Jesus and the disciples are in Caesarea Philippi, and that is way far away from Jerusalem, about 110 miles away, and remember, anyplace they go they go on foot. Jesus and the disciples were walking all over the place and they were nowhere near home. In this place, so far from home, Jesus asks, who do you say I am. Peter declares, you are the Messiah. Peter says, you are the one for whom we have been waiting, you are the one given to us by God. 

 

This declaration of who Jesus is, is made way out in the villages, a beautiful area and a center of Pagan activity.  Caesarea Philippi is home to the Temple of Pan. This is not a judgement about good and bad, only an illustration about how the location of this declaration that Peter, the Rock, makes, about who Jesus is, becomes an important part of the story. They are way out of their territory, deep in pagan lands, in the places they are not comfortable. What does it mean to confess Jesus as the messiah in this wilderness, in foreign lands? Jesus and his followers are the aliens here. Talk about losing your life! In this setting Peter affirms Jesus’ identity, you are the one for whom we have been waiting, you are the one given to us by God. 

 

So what does this all mean for us, in our setting, in our lives? Who do we say Jesus is when we are in the wilderness, when we are in front of the temple of pan? Who do we say Jesus is when we are with those who claim a Jesus who takes power rather than the one we know, the Jesus who empowers us in the way of Love. And, how do we respond to the demand to deny ourselves and take up our cross. You see, these two claims have everything to do with each other. 

 

I’ll tell you why. Peter’s claim that Jesus is the one for whom they have been waiting, becomes our reality that Jesus is God in the flesh, Jesus is God in the midst of humanity. Jesus, the one who travels to the wilderness, Jesus, the one who feeds thousands of people in the wilderness, Jesus the one who gives sight to the blind, this is the Jesus we follow in the way of love. Not a god who demands power and glory, but Jesus, who goes to the edges of the earth to bring those who are on the margins into the community of the beloved. Not a god who demands the sacrifice of a son, but God in Jesus, who asks the sacrifice of self. 

 

That is what Jesus is asking of us here. Jesus says, put aside your selfish ambition, give up your busy is better life, give up your need to be successful, your need to be liked, your need to please, your need to be perfect, put aside all that is killing you for the sake of love. Because love changes everything. 

 

And it is so hard. It is hard because it demands that we love ourselves. It is hard because once we love ourselves, and put aside all that is killing us, our eyes and hearts are opened to our own brokenness and vulnerability, and our eyes and hearts are opened to the brokenness we see around us. It is hard because it is scary. Fear is at the root of most of our inability to love. It is hard because we also must say, like Peter says, Jesus, you are the Love of God, and we must say it in difficult places, in uncomfortable places and conversations. We too must go to the margins, and break down the barriers that keep people from the love of God. We also must speak out loud, on behalf of ourselves and those whose voices are silenced, Jesus is the Love that wins.

 

What are the wild places that you go to speak the love of God? For some of us that may be hard family conversations. For me it’s when one of the people I love says something, or posts something on facebook that supports or defends an attitude that is not loving, but judging, racist, or misogynistic; it’s a wild place that I need to enter, not to take sides or to judge, but to have conversation about why that comment or that piece they post is not loving. 

 

Just remember, in the waters of baptism you have been set free to bear God’s love into all the wild places of your life. By your baptism you have been marked with oil and retraced with ashes as Christ’s own forever. You carry the light of Christ to illuminate all of the dark and wild places. You carry the cross of love in your pocket. You are created in God’s image. You are equipped, by your baptism in the community of saints and the cloud of witnesses, with Peter and all the others, to proclaim the love that wins. Thanks be to God. 

Third Sunday of Advent Yr A Dec 15 2019

Audio   Third Sunday of Advent Yr A Dec 15 2019

Isaiah 35:1-10, James 5:7-10, Matthew 11:2-11, Psalm 146:4-9

We come to the place, on this third Sunday of Advent, when God’s revelation is made fully real in Jesus. A new age is dawning. You and I live in the midst of this arc of God’s fulfillment. Remember, Advent is a gift whereby we live into the then, now, and not yet of God’s mercy and justice. We don’t know much really about what the completion of the arc may look like, but we have lots of ideas. We read throughout our sacred scripture what fulfillment, completion, end times, may look like. We see that completion depicted in artwork, and movies. And you know I see it in the world building of novels. We’ll get to that in just a bit, for now, let’s look at John and Jesus.

In Matthew’s gospel, John the baptizer, who is now in prison, sends messengers to Jesus, to determine for himself that this is in fact the Messiah, the one for whom they have been waiting. There is a question about that, because in John’s opinion, Jesus surely did not look or act like the Messiah.

The expectations for Messiah were that this one would come in power, and set up a new kingdom, restore Israel and throw out the Romans, and clean up the temple. And, to be fair, there were varying expectations of what this anointed one, in the line of David, would do or be. Would the Messiah be a warrior? or a man of peace? But you begin to see what is happening here, Jesus did not look like or act like the expected Messiah, and even John, who prepares the way, wonders if Jesus is really the one.

Jesus says about himself, “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” This is what Jesus is doing, and it doesn’t look anything like what was expected. It becomes clear that Jesus can’t win here. On one side he’s got the temple priests disappointed and even up in arms, that the claims that Jesus is Messiah are not very promising. And, those same people are afraid because everything he does and says incites the Roman officials.

But for those who have been brought low, those who will listen and follow, Jesus is the healer. Throughout Matthew’s story Jesus heals a leper, a paralytic, Jairus’s daughter and the woman hemorrhaging, gives sight to the blind man, casts out demons, returns a withered hand to health, and so much more. This is one who brings God’s healing and wholeness to God’s people, this is one who resists evil in the world.

Jesus, the Messiah, the anointed one, who doesn’t act anything like one in power, but instead, empowers the powerless. The baby, born in a barn, not the towers of power, will model another way. Poor people mattered to Jesus. Jesus is building a world that reverses generally accepted values by opposing evil. Jesus is God’s revelation, in all times and all places. With Jesus’ coming a new age has dawned.

I want to pick up our storytelling conversation and other world building with a story that I think many of you have read or seen. In the Hunger Games, Katniss is our unaware hero. The world that is built in this story exists in the ruins of a place once known as North America. It is the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. The people of District 12 are starving, the rations they get are inadequate and nearly not eatable. Katniss learned early from her father how to breach the fence that keeps them captive, and hunt with a bow and arrow, and collect greens and berries to supplement her family’s food.

Katniss is the tribute from District 12, the furthest outlying district as far as she knows. Katniss’ younger sister was actually the tribute chosen by chance, but Katniss put herself in the place of her sister, surely to die. The other tribute is Peeta, the son of the bread baker. Katniss is sure, that when she was younger, it was bread from his father’s bakery, purposefully burnt and thrown out in the trash that saved her and her family.

Katniss and Peeta are whisked away to the Capitol, to be shaped into the tributes that could garner support when tossed into the arena to battle to the death the tributes from the other districts. But Katniss begins to realize that to save herself, her real self, not just her life and Peeta’s, that she must resist the evilness of those who devise the game, and she must resist the power of the empire of Panem. This is the evil that dehumanizes, evil that is voyeuristic and that revels in the meanness of people. In the resistance, she and Peeta begin to shape a new world, a world in which the powerless are empowered, the hungry get fed. Katniss and Peeta inaugurate a new thing, a beginning that raises up the lowly and gives hope in a very dark world.

Our sacred stories that describe the arc of God’s love all the way from the incarnation, God in the flesh, Jesus, to all of the scenarios that imagine the end of times, apocalypse, always include resistance. The Book of Revelation, that which seems so scary to us, could rightly be called The Book of Resistance. It inspires the people for whom it was written to resist the evil that would oppress, the evil that would dehumanize, the evil that would try to convince us that death is the final word. But, death is not the final word, and we do not live in an ideal world. To be alive in Jesus is to face at every turn the destructive reality of violence, and to resist it, as Jesus does in life and on the cross. And to be alive in Jesus is to side with vulnerable children in defiance of adults who see them as expendable.

Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one. And the kingdom that God inaugurates in the birth, the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus is a kingdom in which love is the first cause. It is love that empowers human beings, you and me, to resist darkness. It is love that empowers us to feed one another with the bread of compassion, the bread of mercy, the bread that is broken for us.

We too are called to resistance. We are called to speak the truth of God’s love, God in the flesh, with our voices and our bodies. We are called to stand up on behalf of those who have no voice. It is not death that has the final word, it is new life, it is hope.

Resist during this Advent. Resist the rush, the chaos, the overspending, all that steals our sacredness. Resist being pulled into stress by what is happening around us. Resist the impulse to be overwhelmed by the harsh news we hear, resist turning your eyes down when the one who is hungry, tired, in prison looks you in the eye. Resist the darkness, let the light shine.

Feed the world, or at least your small part of it, with the bread of life. Feed the world with the love that comes to us in the quiet of this new birth. Amen.

4 Epiphany Yr C Feb 3 2019

Audio  4 Epiphany Yr C Feb 3 2019
Jeremiah 1:4-10, 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, Luke 4:21-30, Psalm 71:1-6

On a Saturday afternoon, when I was in elementary school, all of us would load up the yellow school buses, our moms and maybe our dads, and all the kids, would head downtown Minneapolis for the Shrine Circus. What an adventure, people squished together to get in, people squished together in their seats. The smell of cotton candy wafting through the air, hot dogs, and cracker jacks. All of those light up whirring toys tempting us, calling to us, and our moms saying no. At least my mom saying no. But it's the trapeze that I am imagining today. The men and women climbing all the way to the top of the big top, swinging the swings back and forth. One person on each swing, swinging back and forth. And then the flyer, hands clasped to the swinger, swings back and forth, until it's time to let go and fly. That's it, right there, flying through the air, exhilarating and frightening all at the same time. 

That's the place Jesus puts us. That's where this story puts us. It continues the story we began to hear last week, Jesus takes up the scroll in his neighborhood synagogue, the place he grew up, the place he crawled around on the floor as a kid, the place he played with his friends, the place he learned to read. His friends and his parent's friends in the synagogue were thinking, this is Joseph's son, isn't he a nice boy. And he knows his Bible so well. 

And then as Jesus is reading from the prophet Isaiah, he claims that he himself is in the line of the prophets. He is a prophet like Elija and Elisha. And just like that the story takes a dramatic shift. The story had always been told about events in the future, the messiah will come, the messiah will be a political event, and all of a sudden the tense changes from Messiah's fulfillment in the future, to now, this is happening now. It gets really tense. And it surely doesn't look anything like any of them had imagined. 

And that's where we are, like the trapeze flyer, we have left one swing behind, and have not yet grasped the other one. We live in this place of exhilaration and fright all at one time. We live in this presence that Jesus gives us. The past has been, the future is yet, and Jesus pulls us squarely into the present, and claims that God's love and grace are available to you right here and right now. Not only is it available to you, it is available to everyone, God's love knows no bounds.

And the reading from first Corinthians shows us what we are doing while we are flying. We are loving. And if we are not loving, we are falling. 

The good news though, might actually be about the net, the net that is always there under those flyers. Now, you may think the net is there to catch you when you miss the connection, and that is helpful. But I would suggest it's even more than that. I suggest the net is there to make us bold and courageous. Without the net we tend to be timid, and you can't be timid and fly, the net helps us to love boldly and courageously. The net helps us to let go and live the life of love that Jesus invites us to live, not in the past, not in the future, but right now. 

Love is patient and kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing but in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, Love wins. 

And the net reminds us there is a cost to flying, there is a cost to following Jesus. Because the Word of God is for all people including the poor and the oppressed, the outcast and the sinner, those we love and those we hate, you and me, the Word of God threatened and continues to threaten those who are in positions of power. Jesus tells stories that show God’s grace, available to all, not to just some. Like rain, God's grace falls touching all – Gentiles as well as Jews, insiders as well as outsiders. To speak and act in God’s name sets one apart, and sets one up for ridicule, sets one up to be thrown over the cliff.

And the net also reminds us that forgiveness is about living boldly and courageously. Loving, loving as first Corinthians encourages us to love, does not mean that we get it perfect or even right. But not loving, not even trying, is to not even live at all. We may miss our mark, but you can't miss if you don't fly, you can't miss if you don't Love. The net reminds us that when we miss, God's forgiveness and grace is there to catch us. 

When they realized what Jesus was saying, they got angry, is this not just Joseph's son? Who does he think he is? They led him to the cliff so that they could hurl him off. Now, in the movies what would be really exciting is the hero hurled off the cliff, and somehow he flies, or is rescued with a lot of special effects. But Jesus doesn't get rescued in a dramatic sort of way, instead, he passes through the midst of them and goes on his way. And that too is bold and courageous.

Jesus is in our midst, Jesus is fully and completely present with us. Jesus didn't get somehow whisked off the cliff, and Jesus doesn't get whisked off the cross. That's not the way the story goes. After some pain and suffering, Jesus dies on the cross. Pain and suffering are a part of living and loving. The new life that is offered goes through the cross, not around it, and Jesus is not magically whisked off of it or out of it. 

Nor are we. We might fall or fail when we are living and loving boldly and courageously, and as we hit the net there's nothing that guarantees that we don't get hurt, it may even kill us. But that's not the end of the story, because you and I know that Love wins.

The claim that Jesus makes, that God's kingdom is fulfilled in the present, in our presence, is transformational. We are partners with Jesus in kingdom building, and we have our roadmap in Corinthians, "And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love." And as partners with Jesus we love boldly and courageously. We remember that love is not a way we feel, but that love is what we do. It seems to me, in these days, loving boldly and courageously is hard work. But we've already acknowledged there's no guarantee for easy. This call is to live and do mercy, compassion, and justice. There is so much injustice happening in the world around us. God's love calls us to do it differently. And God's love helps us to fly. Let's fly together. Amen. 

5 Lent Yr B March 22 2015

Audio 3.22.2015

From the prophet Jeremiah we hear today, I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. What I hear in this passage is that God doesn’t give up. No matter how many times God's people turn away, God doesn't give up, love wins. 

First, let's recall the pattern of the sacred story. This story is told over and over in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible. God creates, God blesses the creation, and God promises always to be our God, creation turns away from God, and God calls us back. God reconciles creation, and restores the relationship. 

The part of the story we read this morning from the prophet Jeremiah, 

represents one of the many times people turned their backs on God and God reaches out again, as God had done many times, and continues to do today. God reached out to Moses and the people wandering in the wilderness, the people were whining and gripping, and God gave the “ten best ways” to Moses, and what did the people do? They worshipped the golden calf. Then, under Abraham, God promised many descendants, and what did the people do? They continued to worship the Canaanite gods.

The story in Jeremiah is prophecy, and Jeremiah is a prophet. We sometimes get a bit confused about what prophets are and what prophecy means. Prophets were men and women who were and are in relationship with God, and their jobs are to tell the people to return to God, to repent and turn around. Prophet does not mean one who predicts the future, and prophecy does not mean stories about the future. Prophets constantly remind people to return to God, because people are always finding someone or something to worship other than God. The stories of the prophets are not stories that tell the future. They are stories that show the dire consequences for behavior that takes God's people away from God.

In this story in Jeremiah, once again we hear God entering back into relationship with the people who keep turning away. Just think of it, all of these stories tell us that no matter what we do, no matter what we worship, God will call us back, God will not let us go, Love wins.

This time, it’s not commandments on stone, it’s not a promise of many descendants, but this time the law is written on their hearts, the law is written on our hearts. And what is the law that is written on our hearts?  In the other gospels, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, when the question about which law is the most important law is posed, Jesus responds from sacred scripture, scripture all good Jews know by heart, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and, Love your neighbor as yourself.

How is this law written on our hearts? There is a story that I have heard, 

that is attributed to Madeleine L’engle, my favorite author, I've told this one before.

A mom and a dad had a new baby, and one night after they put the baby to bed, their older child came to them and asked if he could go see his little brother. The mom and the dad being just a little fearful of the older child’s intentions, said that would be fine and one of them would go with him. 

The older child insisted that he go see his baby brother by himself, and his parents gave in. So the older child entered the bedroom of his baby brother and walked over to his crib. His parents, being very curious and somewhat fearful, eavesdropped at the door. In a soft whisper this is what they heard their older child say to his baby brother. Please, could you tell me what God is like, you just came from there, and I’ve been away so long I’m beginning to forget.

God’s law is written on our hearts, we tend to forget it. I think it is part of our humanity to love God with every fiber of our being, and to love our neighbor as well. It is in living that we begin to forget. Our children, who can be prophets too, remind us what love of God really is. When we pay attention, we observe that profound desire to love and worship God.  The sadness is that we learn a very different lesson. Our culture teaches a lie that love is appropriately placed in things and stuff, and that fulfilling our own needs and wants is more important than any God or any neighbor.

But the Good News is that once again God calls us back, and in an absolutely new way. The radical shift in the gospel of John is that God gives up all power to come into our world as one of us, so that we may return to God, so that we may be healed. The Glory of God is Jesus, and in Jesus, in living and loving and dying on the cross, the relationship between humanity and God is restored. But the story doesn’t end at the cross. The story goes through the cross to resurrection, because it is in death and resurrection that we become a people, a community, a body of Christ. And yet today, this 5th Sunday of Lent, we stand oh so close to that cross. 

We stand in the promise of the resurrection. We remember that after the pain and sadness of the cross comes the joy and new life in the resurrection, and we know that we are not there yet. We know that our journey today is in the hope that when that grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it will bear much fruit. That’s what the story in our scriptures tell us, that’s what we celebrate each time we come together here at this table.

We know that love of God and love of neighbor are not easy, in fact, love of God and love of neighbor can be very hard and painful indeed. There is much pain and sadness in our world, in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our lives. Pain and sadness are a part of living fully, pain and sadness are realities that we never choose for ourselves, but come part and parcel with the joy of living. We need to intentionally look for Jesus in our midst, we need to focus on God’s divine spark in others,  so that we can find God in our midst, so that the transformation that God promises, will be realized.

Another story. Again, I've told this story before, but I think it speaks so clearly to where we find ourselves. The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. As he agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery. The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. "I know how it is," he exclaimed. "The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore." So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other.

"It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years," the abbot said, "but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?" "No, I am sorry," the rabbi responded. "I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you." When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, "Well what did the rabbi say?" "He couldn't help," the abbot answered. "We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving --it was something cryptic—was that the Messiah is one of us. I don't know what he meant." In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi's words.

The Messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that's the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Elred gets crotchety at times. 

But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people's sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right. Often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred. But surely not Brother Phillip. 

Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn't mean me. He couldn't possibly have meant me. I'm just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God, not me. I couldn't be that much for You, could I? As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed the aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends. Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi's gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.

Sir, we wish to see Jesus. Through the life, death, and resurrection we can see Jesus, and the law is written on our hearts. Jesus is right here among us. Amen.

Christmas 2011

It is time. We have been staying awake, we have been preparing for the faithful one. Love bursts into our world and our lives. Love interrupts us. Love wins. Sing a new song, let the heavens and earth be glad! For the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. It is time to join our yes with Mary's yes. We can hardly contain our joy for this good news.


Incarnation. Inconceivable, incarnation. Unreasonable, inconceivable, incarnation. God with us, born in a barn, in the muck and the mess of the stable, to a young girl, not yet married to her betrothed, Joseph. The romance of the birth of this long awaited baby Jesus soon turns into the flight of his parents into Egypt, to escape the tyranny of the emperor. The stars in the heavens signaled his birth, showing the magi the way to find him, but they had to return to their home by another way, to protect the little one.


This birth means no more business as usual, signified by the events of that night and the circumstances of this birth. They were waiting for a King and all those kingly things, and here was a child born in a barn with shepherds in attendance. They were looking for the Messiah, the one who would rescue them, and they received a boy, who brought his father's message, Love one another, as you have been loved first. But this birth is not just about rehabilitation, it is about resurrection.


For us that means that even our lives, sometimes filled by regret and disappointment, sometimes colored by cynicism, sometimes fueled by revenge, are transformed by this birth. It means that God even comes into our deepest sadness and pain and bears it for us, so that we may begin again.


This is a scary proposition because we've invested a lot to keep our lives as they are, and it can be down right frightening to give up what we know. But that's what Advent has been all about, keep awake, prepare, be ready to give it all up to the love that is born in our hearts, our lives, our world. It is scary, and it's thrilling at the same time, because this promise speaks to a place deep down inside each of us that wants something more, something more than a better job or higher income, something more than a more comfortable home or enjoyable retirement. These things may all be good, but they don't satisfy for long. We desperately want a sense of meaning and purpose, we desire to believe that there is more to this life than meets the eye, we need to hold onto the hope that despite all appearances we are worthy of love. This birth is about that love, this birth shows us that Love wins, every time.


And so God comes into the muck and the mess that is this barn, and that is our lives, to speak quietly but firmly through the blood, sweat, and tears of the labor pains of a young mother, and cry of her infant that God is absolutely for us, joined to our ups and down, our hopes and fears, and committed to giving us not just more of the same, but something more. Christ comes, that is, not just to give us more of the life we know, but new and abundant life altogether. For in Christ we have the promise that God will not stop until each and all of us have been embraced and caught up in God's tremendous love and have heard the good news that "unto you this day is born a savior, Christ the Lord." No wonder we sing, "Let heaven and earth rejoice!"


This incarnation, this unreasonable, inconceivable, incarnation, this birth, is about this God who creates us, who loves us so very much, this God comes to be with us, delivered into our world 2000 years ago as a baby just like us, crashing into our world as the miracle of birth. This God comes to us as a still small voice that we may only be able to hear at the most desperate times in our lives, when we fall to our knees and give it all over. This God comes to us in the indescribable words of prayer. This God comes to us crying in the voice of those who continue to be hungry and thirsty. This God comes to us singing in the voice of the child. This God comes to us in the multitude of voices calling for reason as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. This God comes to us in the unfamiliar voice of the immigrant, looking for a better way. This God comes to us in the howling voice of the wind and the rain, redrawing the landscape of our lives. This God comes to us in the voice of the one who cries, remember me, when you come into your kingdom. This God comes to us when all will be fulfilled at the end of time.


This is the God who loves you so very much, unreasonably so, not because of what you've done or not done, not because of who you are or what you're worth. Not because of anything, other than you are a wonderfully and fearfully created child. And it is this love that wins, it is this love that transforms your heart, and your mind and your soul. It is this love that grows in you, that gives you reason to live fully and completely alive. It is this love that doesn't judge whether you have enough, are enough, or even give enough. Indeed, it is this love that makes dead people alive.


Love wins, Alleluia, to us a child is born. Come let us adore him, Alleluia!