A Whole Christmas

Luke 2:1-14

In those days a decree went out from Emperor 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 for them in the inn.

In that 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!”

Christmas for me includes a Swedish Julbord... a Christmas table with Köttbullar, potatismos, gravlax, three kinds of herring, salads, limpa bread… the works! Christmas as it should be! Christmas as it has always been! Well… except for the part of it that’s not like it’s always been. You see, my Swedish mom grew up with a Julbord which included lutefisk. Lutefisk is salt cod rehydrated with a lye solution in a giant, smelly tub in the basement. After that, the water is changed over and over and over for several more days until the lye is gone. In the end you’re left with a jellied, jiggling, mostly flavorless mass to be boiled and served with a white sauce. When my mom makes a Julbord, it NEVER includes lutefisk because, to quote my Swedish mom, in her native language... “It’s nasty!”

Christmas is rightly about tradition! Mine includes a Julbord. Yours might have a feast of seven fishes or maybe tamales or stollen or pierogis! Whatever beloved traditions you have from the past SHOULD continue! If Christmas Eve means hearing and remembering the Christmas Gospel story once again, that should continue!  If it means a candlelit worship with carols and a choir in a little stone church in Sheffield, who am I to say that’s wrong!? In my opinion, you’d be hard pressed to get it much more right!

So those traditions (minus the lutefisk) ARE important. They ARE good. They are, I would say, even HOLY! They are exactly one amazingly beautiful HALF of a WHOLE Christmas. Now, don’t get me wrong. They aren’t the “wrong” half by any means! They are one wonderful, priceless, beautiful half and I’m not giving up my herring, candlelight, or little stone Sheffield church for anything and you shouldn’t give up your traditions either! But as good and priceless and holy as that half is… it’s still only HALF of a WHOLE Christmas and the last thing I want for you tonight, is for you to leave here this evening with only HALF a Christmas!

That first half of Christmas lovingly turns our heads to see the past. In that direction we see the Christ child born in a manger… the shepherds out in their fields and the hosts of heaven singing! That half helps us look back and see again God’s gift of unconditional love and inclusion given in the person of Jesus 2000 years ago to all of creation. That half sings the carols, hangs the stockings, and helps us see that our own family members, long since gone, are still standing behind us from throughout the ages, reminding us always that we are each the product of a love passed down through countless generations. Looking back is the first beautiful, precious and holy half of Christmas.

Just as that first half of Christmas gently and lovingly turns us to look to the past to see all that God has done, the other half of Christmas just as lovingly turns our heads so we might look to the future and see hope for the days to come. When we are turned in the direction of what is to come, Christmas helps us to see that the same loving God who was there in Bethlehem, is still present with us now and will be into the days to come as well. This other half of Christmas shows us that God continues to shine light into the dark places of our lives. This other half of Christmas allows us to see, even though the world says it’s impossible, that God is even now bringing each of us the gift of JOY! The kind of joy that comes with “enough”… enough to eat, enough shelter, enough dignity, enough justice, enough purpose and enough meaning for our lives and for all people. In this other half of Christmas we begin to hear the new song that God has written for each of us.  A song we can sing into the darkness... a song with the power to give hope to the hopeless! In this half of Christmas we see that God is not only back then, but here now… pulling for us and pulling ON us with a strong and unflinching love… nudging, coaxing, and maybe sometimes, even being a little bit tricksy with us, in order to keep us walking and growing toward the new creation God knows each of us are meant be!

My wish for you this Christmas Eve is for a WHOLE Christmas! A Christmas that includes  the beauty of the past where we hear again the ancient story of Emmanuel… God with us and enjoy the foods and traditions passed down in love by our families. And also a Christmas  that allows you to see a path toward abundant life reaching out into the future… a path of REALLY LIVING life and not just trudging through it day after day. A path of light, not darkness. A path of kindness, not greed. A path of compassion, generosity and love… not a path of fear, anger or hate. A path of hope and not worry. A path of community, lifting one another up, not tearing one another down.  A path for all people.  A path with every step lit with the love of God. My wish for you this Christmas Eve is that you might embrace a WHOLE Christmas this year, and live into the love, hope and fullness of that Christmas light all year long.  Amen.

Will You Dare?

Isaiah 35:1-10

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.”

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God’s people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

Matthew 11:2-11

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 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.”

As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Will you dare, like Isaiah, to take the risk, and really see the endlessness of the wilderness, the dry land, and the desert that surrounds you? It’s not just about dry dirt. It’s about a people clawing their way through a horrible, dusty, dry existence without the waters of love, compassion, and grace that are needed to grow this life into something full of meaning, purpose and joy. Will you dare, like John the Baptist, to look out and really see the world as it genuinely is? He saw his personal imprisonment as nothing compared to the world full of people imprisoned, bound, and captive to sin, injustice and an enormous tyranny, from which any rational mind would tell you it is absolutely impossible to break free.

Will you dare, in the spirit of Isaiah and John, to open the front door of our church and see our world as it really is?  Not look through our beautiful, protective stained glass lenses, but look through the door with unobstructed, brutal, clarity? Don’t answer too quickly! Because there is SO much out there, on the other side of those beautiful angels, that, when you dare to look, it will overwhelm you like a fire hose, no matter how well braced you think you are. It will knock you to the ground, even if you dare to only crack the door! Even a quick peek will certainly bowl you over!

Those prophets, Isaiah and John the Baptist, they are calling us to dare. Not because they want us to burn like we would in the desert or feel helpless like we would in chains, or be knocked to the floor breathless at our front door by the relentless flood of news about the injustice in our world. And make no mistake, the injustice out there IS like a firehose on the other side of that front door! Racism is rampant. Pumping gas at the Big-Y up by the turnpike on Saturday, someone coming off the pike took the time to roll down their window and yell a racial slur at the people pumping gas next t0 me. Our climate is in crisis. You can not rent an apartment anywhere in our country making minimum wage. 700,000 people are under threat of being removed from Food Stamps and a million kids risk losing free school lunch with the same rule change. Adults and children fleeing violence and horrors in their own countries are dying from our intentional neglect in places we refuse to call concentration camps AND as of December 1, which was the 335th day of the year, there have been 385 mass shootings in our country.

Those prophets are calling us to dare! But not so that we will be burned, trapped, or knocked on our backsides, but because they KNOW… they know there is life… real life… abundant life for ALL of creation on the other side of the injustice and horror that lies in wait at our door. Beyond that door, they KNOW there is a world where people are given sight. Not just physically healed of blindness but healed of their inability to see God at work in their lives. Beyond that door is a life where the lame walk. Not just physically able to use their legs but healed of their fear of going out into the world and living more deeply into the abundant life God has created for them to live! Beyond the injustice that claws at our door, lepers are made clean. Not just skin deep, but down deep in the places where people hear they are unfit, unwelcome, and unclean. Beyond the terror, the deaf hear.  Not just ears opened, but minds opened as well to truly understand that God IS at work in our world! Beyond that door the dead are raised. Not just from physical death but from the death of believing they live outside of God’s loving embrace!

And finally but most importantly, beyond that door and through the gauntlet of injustice, desert, terror, prison and fire hose which all lie in wait... beyond all that, the poor have Good News brought to them. And that Good News is that the terrible world lying in wait at that door is even NOW being so radically transformed that soon you won’t be able to recognize it! That desert? It’s being transformed into a lush river valley. Trembling hands are being made firm and feeble knees are being made strong.  THAT’s the level of transformation that God has set loose on this world beyond that door!

THAT is why Isaiah and John the Baptist DARE us… DARE US… to bravely open that door and risk taking the full force of the world’s injustice squarely in our chests and being knocked to our butts. They dare us… dare us… to see the world not through the rose colored lens of our church’s stained glass, but they dare us to see the world just as it is, in its rawest and most honest truth. Isaiah and John the Baptist DARE you… DARE us to open that door in spite of the terrifying noise the world is making outside, because they KNOW... they know... that through the terrible truths of the unimaginable injustice in our world, God is in this moment reaching out to us through all of that to right all that is wrong and redeem all that is so broken. Isaiah and John want us to KNOW, as they knew, that God’s mighty hand is even now, sweeping aside the terror that claws at our door and the injustice that scorches like a desert. Even now God is reaching through our most barren deserts, breaking every last link of binding chain and draining the relentless fire hoses of this life to bring us... us and all of creation... to the everlasting joy and gladness and it is the Christ child who shows us how to meet God at the door.  May we dare to open it and see.  Amen.

Our God of Ax and Shoot

Isaiah 11:1-10

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins. The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

Who Paul Bunyon-ed the Israel-tree and made it into a Jesse-stump? Well, you don’t need Scooby-Doo to solve that mystery. Just look back a couple of verses and you’ll see the one lopping off branches with terrifying power and bringing down the majestic tree of Israel is  the Lord of Hosts! It was God who went full “Lizzie Borden” on God’s chosen people, leaving them at the end of Chapter 10, a lifeless, hopeless stump!

What is it that led God to take up the ax? Well, God has always insisted that God’s creation run with a radical form of economic justice. God wanted (and still wants) God’s people to make the world work so that everyone has enough… enough to eat, enough shelter, enough dignity, enough respect, enough purpose, enough security. The people of Israel had done the exact opposite. To borrow from another prophet; they weren’t doing justice, they weren’t loving kindness and they certainly weren’t walking humbly with their Lord! They were making the poor, poorer and the rich, richer and THAT’s what led God to cut them down into a lifeless, hopeless, stump.

Cutting down an entire people into a lifeless, hopeless stump is admittedly pretty harsh and because of that I think we often try to tame this ax-wielding God. We say, “that’s the Old Testament God and I’d like the New Testament God instead, if you please.” But here’s the thing… there’s not two gods! The same God who demanded justice for creation then, is the same God who is demanding justice for creation now! We have that same God who still has a radical bias for the poor, the marginalized, the weak and the sick. We still have the same God who doesn’t think feeding the hungry should come with conditions. We still have that same God who doesn’t think being poor should be a death sentence. And BECAUSE we still have that same, justice obsessed, ax-wielding God, WE WOULD DO WELL to look around and not ignore these lessons from the prophets as just relics of a bygone “Old Testament God.”

That ax-wielding God?  That IS the God we have! BUT that is not ALL there is to the God we have. The same God that takes up the ax and makes a stump out of the wicked, ALSO IMMEDIATELY calls out to those same chopped-down, stump-people… waves them over and insists they look and marvel and notice the tiny, little shoot… the sign of hope, growing right in the middle of their very own hopeless, lifeless, stump-like lives. Now, you might think that lifeless stumps aren’t much to work with and that’s true for all but the Spirit of the Lord. You see, the Spirit of the Lord is the same Spirit who blew over the formless void before day was even separated from night. So, for the Spirit of the Lord, both a stump and a formless void are material out of which hope can spring!

Those two characters of God, held TOGETHER, make up the fullness of the God we have to this day. We just can’t take the God of the ax and siphon that part off of the God who grows shoots of hope! Our God IS and WILL BE, both! A justice insisting, ax wielding God AND a hope giving, shoot growing God… bound together… inseparably.  And because OUR God is NOT content with the wicked taking advantage of the poor, nor is OUR God content with the meek waiting for their reward in the sweet by and by, our God INSISTS we care for those who live on the edges of this life right now. Which is why our God will NOT leave you and me unchanged.  No matter how badly we fear change and fight and flail against it, our God WILL take an ax to us if that’s the only thing that will move us out of systems of injustice, chopping us down, if need be, to a lifeless, hopeless STUMP!

AND… YET… that same God… our God… will also grow in us a new beginning.  No matter how much we’ve been cut down… no matter if every bit of our stumpiness is our own dang fault. Our God WILL and DOES stay with us, no matter how little and lifeless a stump we have become! Our God WILL and DOES work in us.  Even if we have given up on God... EVEN if there is NO stump left of us and all that remains of us is a formless void! Our God CAN and WILL send the Spirit of the Lord to work with whatever there is to work with, to grow a new shoot in us, and bring new life out of the most hopeless and lifeless sort of place.

As followers of this God of BOTH ax AND shoot, you and I are called, to neither wield the ax, nor grow the shoot, but to NOTICE how our ONE God… the God of both ax AND shoot… the God of counsel and might, has not left us alone to confront the injustice of this world all by ourselves. Instead, God is even now, sprouting and growing a new creation and when we notice what God is doing in us and around us... it is in that noticing that we will find hope! Then out of that hope we are called to walk, in what will be our inevitable, stumbling, human way, carrying our tiny piece of this world toward God’s vision of a creation so radically changed that the hungry are fed, wolves lie down with the lambs, the poor are cared for, bears eat grass, the meek are lifted up and children play with snakes. Our calling is to notice and trust that the God of BOTH ax and shoot, is at work in this world and in each and every one of us, and in that work, find the hope and encouragement we need for our own journey, walking our way toward the realization, otherwise known as the Advent of the Kingdom of God. Amen.