Staring Down the Barrel of Apocalypse

Micah 6:1-8

Hear what the Lord says:

  Rise, plead your case before the mountains,

  and let the hills hear your voice.

Hear, you mountains, the case of the Lord,

  and you enduring foundations of the earth,

 for the Lord has a case against his people,

  and he will contend with Israel.

“O my people, what have I done to you?

  In what have I wearied you? Answer me!

For I brought you up from the land of Egypt

  and redeemed you from the house of slavery,

 and I sent before you Moses,

  Aaron, and Miriam.

O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised,

  what Balaam son of Beor answered him,

 and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,

  that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”

“With what shall I come before the Lord

  and bow myself before God on high?

 Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,

  with calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,

  with ten thousands of rivers of oil?

 Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,

  the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

He has told you, O mortal, what is good,

  and what does the Lord require of you

 but to do justice and to love kindness

  and to walk humbly with your God?

How do we walk into an apocalypse?  That’s what the people asked Micah.  The Assyrian Army had destroyed the Northern Kingdom and they were next on the list.  But that’s not just an ancient question, is it?  It's the question we are asking too.  How do WE walk into an apocalypse?  How do we walk into the weeks to come, with our country led by a mad king and sadistic enablers, who kidnap foreign leaders, threatens to invade our allies, and picks fights with Canada… CANADA!?  How do we walk into this apocalypse where our neighbors are shot down in the street?  How do we walk into this apocalypse where the the words from Orwell’s 1984 have been ripped from the pages of fiction and glued into the pages of the news with our neighbors’ blood?  How are we to walk into this apocalypse where we are told just SAYING THE WORDS… “ICE is acting like the Gestapo and are kidnappers,” have “consequences” clearly meant to imply consequences like those suffered by Alex Pretti?  HOW are we to walk into this apocalypse?

Well… as it turns out… we’ve been told how.  It’s just that, staring down the barrel of an apocalypse… it’s as easy for US mere mortals to forget “how” as it was for the mere mortals in Micah’s day.  God has told us, O Forgetful When Frightened, Fatigued, and Frustrated Ones… God has told us what is good.  God has told us how to walk into this apocalypse and it requires no more than what we already possess.  We don’t need a calf, nor sheep, nor rivers of oil.  We don’t need enough votes for impeachment, nor do we need to shame others into action.  God has told us, O Forgetful When Frightened Ones, what actually IS required of us, and that is… to do justice... and to love kindness... and to walk humbly with our God.  

BUT, you scream!  (I scream a lot these days, so I’m guessing you do too.)  BUT, you scream!  They are trying to incite violence so they can implement the insurrection act.  Yes, they are.  They are kidnapping 5 year olds in blue bunny hats and using them as bait.  Yes, they are.  They are deporting children who are US citizens to countries in which they’ve never lived!  Yes, they are.  They are claiming the first, second, fourth, and fourteenth amendments for themselves alone and labeling others who claim those same rights, as Domestic Terrorists!  Yes.  Yes they are, and it is true… the vast, horrific, enormity of the apocalypse we are staring into can NOT be minimized nor poo-pooed away, and it can NOT be overstated.  ALL of that… is true.  

AND.  And.  and… as Rabbi Shapiro wrote in his Talmud/Micah mash up poem:  We are not to be “daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now.  We are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are we free to abandon it.” 

The apocalypse that is breaking down our nation’s front door seeks to wind us up and spit us out.  It plots to separate us from one another, turn us on our fellow allies.  This apocalypse is violently shoving us and our neighbors into a maniacal, political centrifuge that seeks to fling us violently apart from the things we value and the people we love.  

But hear this… it is a Word from the Lord… there is a place, even in the midst of the wildest, most frantic spinning of a centrifuge, where things come together rather than get flung apart.  It is the center.  It is there… in that center… there at the core of all things, there… in, with, and under the One in whom we live and move and have our being… there, in THAT Divine center… there at THAT Holy Core… that all of creation is grounded by roots so deep, so strong, and so vast, that every past apocalypse has inevitably run aground upon it, been left wrecked, and now lies in complete and utter ruin.  

There at that Holy Core… there in that Divine Center… is where justice lives, where kindness shines, where humility is found.  From that Divine center vulnerability, gentleness, empathy, peacemaking, and compassion grow and blossom and spread with unstoppable abandon across the heavens and around the earth.  There at that Holy Core, erupts endless volumes of compassion, steadfastness and resiliency.  At that Holy Core… In that Divine Center… my friends… is unbounded, unlimited, undaunted… LOVE.  Self giving, all powerful, apocalypse-ending LOVE.  Love has been the ruin of every past apocalypse and LOVE will be the ruin of this apocalypse which has been unceremoniously dumped on our national doorstep in these dark, dark days like a giant, flaming bag of shit!  

So how do we walk into tomorrow, staring down the barrel of an apocalypse?  We walk into it DOING JUSTICE…“Justice is what love looks like in public” Cornell West reminds us.  We walk into this apocalypse by LOVING KINDNESS…“Being kind whenever possible” and as the Dalai Lama reminds us, “it is always possible to be kind” and we walk into this apocalypse WALKING HUMBLY… “Walking in love as Christ loved us,” loving God and loving neighbor as Jesus showed us with his life.

How do we walk into tomorrow while staring down the barrel of this apocalypse?  We walk into tomorrow the Jesus WAY.  We walk doing justice.  Walk loving kindness.  Walk being humble.  Walk with the poor.  Walk with those who mourn.  Walk with the meek and those who long for justice.  Walk mercifully.  Walk without hatred or malice.  Walk building up and not tearing down.  We walk in a peace that passes all understanding.  

Your stride on this walk will be different than mine.  Be careful not to mistake a different stride for not walking at all.  For some are called to walk loudly, others quietly, still others in the shadows.  Walk the way YOU have been called to walk.  Don't let anyone tell you that you're doing it "wrong" because if you are walking forward… always forward… faithful to WHO and WHOSE you truly are… holding the hand of your neighbor on one side, and the hand of the divine on the other you simply can't do better than that!  Walk forward… always forward… hand in hand… drenched in apocalypse-wrecking love, and in our walking we will see this apocalypse (like all others before it) brought to complete and utter ruin.  Then… together… in Love… we will keep walking, hand in hand, into the abundant life that God created us all to live.  Amen.  

My Boyz... C+M+B

Matthew 2:1-12

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’” Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”

When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

Every year my boys… Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar… get completely and totally SLAMMED on Epiphany in a light hearted (or maybe not so light hearted) way!  They get trashed for… NUMBER 1.  Not asking for directions.  NUMBER 2.  Being late to the birth of Jesus.  NUMBER 3.  Bringing ridiculously impractical gifts, and NUMBER 4.  Being absolutely useless, completely unhelpful, totally out of touch, overwhelmingly pointless… MEN.  Which is why when we get to Epiphany every year the jokes come out about how Wise WOMEN would have asked for directions, got there on time, helped deliver the baby, brought diapers and other practical gifts, cleaned the stable, and if they had been Lutheran or Episcopalian… they would have made a casserole to boot!

It get it.  I really, really get it.  Men have dismissed wise women for, oh I don’t know, let’s say the last 300,000 years or so and because of that, the world has missed out on SO MUCH WISDOM that it just boggles the mind!  Just imagine where we would be as a species if we had NOT just poo-pooed literally HALF of the world’s brain power for three hundred millennia!  We’ve been doing the species-equivalent of punching ourselves in the face over and over and over again for 300,000 years… and we just…keep… doing it!  

Unfortunately there is the temptation out there that after 300,000 years of living under a self destructive, idiotic system of male superiority… after being excluded as a source of wisdom for millennia… after all of that injustice and rank stupidity… the temptation is out there to fix all of that by doing all those same things… just in the opposite direction.  To give men a taste of their own medicine.  To get even.  To seek retribution rather than reconciliation.  

I get the temptation… I really do… but I don’t think retribution is the way to get our species, or any of the organizations and institutions made up of people from our species (including the church) to move forward in this world.  We missed SO MUCH GOOD STUFF for SO LONG.  Is the answer really to intentionally miss out on the opposite set of good stuff just to get even?  I think we could do better by our whole species and by extension, do better by all of creation, if we used BOTH the ancient story of the Three Wise Men AND the modern joking/not-joking rebuttal about Three Wise Women to find a better way.   

The Wise Women, who were certainly present at this scene, although not recorded in the story, certainly brought specialized, practical, and powerful wisdom to the process of Mary’s labor, the moment of Jesus’ birth, and to a set of brand new parents.  They certainly brought practical gifts they knew every woman giving birth needed.  They brought wisdom and experience about the birthing process along with coaching, companionship, empathy, and yes, maybe even an ancient pre-cursor to the casserole.  What further wisdom did they bring?  We can only imagine, but female wisdom was certainly there and was absolutely critical to the successful and safe delivery of Jesus.  BUT, that doesn't mean that the Wise Men were absolutely useless, completely unhelpful, totally out of touch, or overwhelmingly pointless.  

The lesson to be learned here is that the presence of Wise Men does not preclude the existence of Wise Women.  NOR does the presence of Wise Women negate the Wisdom brought by Wise Men!  And those men DID bring wisdom! They were wise enough to notice a new star, that it was moving, and that it needed to be followed. They did actually stop for directions AND at that stop they had the wisdom to discern that Herod was not the friend he pretended to be AND they had the wisdom to stay out of the way and let the women experts handle the birth.  They also had the wisdom to bring small, easily transportable, readily marketable, high value gifts.  The sorts of gifts that would be exactly what a refugee family would need to pack up quickly, carry, and sell easily to finance a life in exile if an unhinged authoritarian dictator decided to slaughter every child under the age of two in Bethlehem and the surrounding suburbs! 

The ancient story got it wrong by ignoring, dismissing, and not recording the tremendous wisdom that was certainly brought to Mary’s side by Wise Women as she gave birth to Jesus.  But the modern joke also gets it wrong by dismissing and poking fun at the Wise Men, who in reality understood the intricate and complex dangers of the political situation into which Jesus was born and brought exactly what would be most useful at precisely the right time to facilitate the Holy Family’s escape to safety.    

The lesson for this Epiphany is that dismissing ANY GIFT of Wisdom that God has given to ANY part of creation is not only foolish, but it is also deadly, both to our species and to all of creation.  This world of ours needs every fraction, of every ounce of Wisdom that God has given us so that we might first, simply survive as a species, but then to achieve the real goal as well… which is to live abundantly.  Dismissing half the population’s wisdom just to shore up fragile egos is simply unsustainable!  As is mindless retribution just to get even for the stupidity of the past.  God has given us more than enough wisdom to solve every single problem that exists for all of humanity and all of creation.  May we, as a species accept God’s Wise Gifts with gratitude, and stop obsessing over the packaging in which that Wisdom comes to us!  Amen.

Christmas Light

Luke 2:1-14

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.  This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.  All went to their own towns to be registered.  Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.  He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.  While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.  And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in the guest room.

Now in that same region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.  Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:  to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

  “Glory to God in the highest heaven,

  and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

John 1:1-14

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

There are two ways the Bible tells the Christmas story.  The first way is the Luke way… the way I just read… the way Linus tells it on stage in A Charlie Brown Christmas… the way that gives you all characters you need to set up a Nativity Set or put on a Christmas Pageant.  It’s a top notch way to tell the story!

The other way to tell the same story is the John way.  It’s the mystical way.  I’ll read you the whole thing right before we sing Silent Night, but it’s the version that says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. AND… The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  Really good stuff, but honestly, not easy to make into Christmas Pageant or a Nativity Set.  Which is why the John way of telling this story is TYPICALLY NOT the “Christmas Eve go-to” version.  

But you know, the world these days isn’t exactly TYPICAL, and when the world isn’t exactly typical, the mystical can often connect us with a story more profoundly than if its told strictly as a narrative.  That’s true for me this year.  I find the Divine reassurance that light shines, even in the midst of overwhelming darkness, to be what I need more than shepherds this year.  I find that hearing the Divine insist that, all the darkness the world could ever muster, will never overcome the light… I find that mystical truth somehow transports that baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger, more deeply and more profoundly into my heart than just the narrative alone.  I ALSO find that in these times when the world is not exactly typical, that what is even better than HEARING that Divine light shines in the darkness and that darkness does not over come it… what’s better than just hearing it is seeing it with our own eyes, even in a very small ritualized way.  So… let’s see it. 

Catherine/Imelda… Bob/Don would you please?  (all lights and candles are extinguished) 

Now that its as dark as we can get it, I’m going to read something from the mystic Howard Thurman.  Here we go… 

I will light candles this Christmas.   

Candles of joy, despite all the sadness. 

Candles of hope where despair keeps watch.

Candles of courage where fear is ever present.

Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days. 

Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens. 

Candles of love to inspire all of my living.

Candles that will burn all the year long.

(Christ candle is lit with first line.  Candles for windows are lit with each following line.  Altar candles lit with final line)

It’s better isn’t it?  With the light?  Better with the light than in the in the darkness, isn't it?  Particularly better if you can allow this light to be for you, not just simple candle light, but a sign of the mystical light of Christ.  The light that brings forth love, compassion, peace, healing and hope.  

This is YOUR light.  That’s what the angels proclaimed, “Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy for all the people; for UNTO YOU is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  It is “UNTO YOU” that this Savior, this Christ, this LIGHT has come to shine in the darkness.  It is for YOU.  And with that light YOU TOO have now been empowered to “shine all the year long.”   

Would you who are sitting on the outside ends of each pew light your candle from one in the widow please, and light one another’s candles down the pew to the aisle?  

Now, as you do that, notice how sharing the light never leaves you with less light for yourself.  The light of Christ… the light of love, compassion, empathy, tenderness, joy, and hope… sharing those will also never leave you with less for yourself.    

Lets just take a moment now to sit in the light you’ve helped spread around us all.  (Pause significantly)  

See what the light of Christ has done to the darkness.  See what YOU’VE done by sharing that light with just one other person!  Friends and neighbors, THAT is Christmas!  You and I sharing the Light that the Divine first shared with us.  THAT is Christmas.  Sharing a light that shines in the darkness.  A Light which the darkness shall not, will not, CAN NOT over come!  The Light, the Christ, the Savior has been given to YOU, and you have been invited this Christmas to share that Light with others in the form of love, kindness, joy, compassion, grace and joy throughout the year to come.  As St. Francis said, “All the darkness of the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.” And together we have so much more light than just that of a single candle.   Amen.