Proper 8, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / 1 Comment

Listen to the sermon here.

The word freedom means many different things to many different people in our culture.  Lately there has been a lot of conversation about Stewart Brand’s 1984 speech in which he declared that “information wants to be free”.  (In the same paragraph he said that information also wants to be expensive, but that part of the quote has disappeared in our public discourse.)  People are ruminating on whether that sentence means that information is inexpensive, whether information wants to roam without limitations, whether it wants to be politically free.  For twenty-five years we’ve been debating what Brand meant and that is just one use of the word free!  Freedom also has powerful political connotations.  We are the land of the free, we let freedom ring, when we’re mad at France we call our fried potatoes freedom fries.

For us, freedom means we don’t have a King, that we rule ourselves.  But it also means we can do whatever we want and we resent when government interferes with our bodies, our guns, our money.  Freedom evokes summer vacations and the backseats of cars and long stretches of highway.  And sometimes our use of the word freedom makes no sense at all. This week Fox and Friends, a morning cable news show, was doing a Fourth of July food special and they had representatives from the restaurant Hooters there and the news anchor said, “Nothings spells freedom like a Hooters meal.”

In today’s world, and in the ancient world, the word freedom meant many different things to different people.  The apostle Paul knew he had to be careful when he used the word in his letter to the Galatians.

Paul and the Galatians go way back.  Paul started the churches in Galatia and knows them well.  He writes this letter to them out of frustration.  He has heard that since he’s left, some teachers have come to the churches and instructed their members that they must be circumcised and follow more of the Jewish law in order to be Christians.

The letter to the Galatians is argument against circumcision and the need for Christians to follow the Jewish law.  Paul is arguing that following Christ means one no longer has to follow every detail of the Jewish law, because Christ fulfilled the law himself.  However, you can imagine the reaction if one of our modern politician’s platform was to abolish our laws entirely.

We would be upset!  As much as we may talk about freedom in our country, if suddenly murder or theft or brutality was legal, we would be seriously unhappy.  We know that laws are necessary to reign in our wild, jealous, angry, selfish impulses.

In the same way, Paul is predicting his audience’s objections.  Paul knows that the Galatians are afraid if they abolish the law, that people will just run wild!  If there is no law, what is to stop people from adultery and murder and generally bad behavior?

When you are free, it means you used to be bound to something.  In our country’s case, that was English rule.  In the Galatians case, it means the Jewish law.  But Paul explains that in the freedom from Jewish law, they are now bound to something else—each other.  Paul says, “For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.”

The thing that will keep the Galatians in check is their love for one another.  When a person acts out of love for the other, he or she will refrain from doing harmful things.  Paul reminds the Galatians that the law can be summed up as “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

In this new freedom, Paul calls them to live in that spirit of love, rather than gratifying everything their bodies might want.   Paul does not want them to be slaves to the Jewish law any more, but he also doesn’t want them to be slaves to their bodies either.  Following the spirit is the third option.

So, what does it mean for us to be free.  Are we slaves to each other in love, or are we yoked to something else?

Somewhere in the last week I read or heard a story about a woman from a Middle Eastern culture who came to the west for the first time and was shopping.  Now we in the West might look at a woman in a head scarf or hijab and feel real pity for the oppression she is under.  We might long to show her the freedom women in the west experience.  This particular Middle Eastern woman was not used to shopping by sizes.  In her home country, she had a relationship with a dressmaker who would make things just for her.  So, she had no idea what size she was.  The shop she was in was pretty fancy and when she asked the shopkeeper for help, the shopkeeper sneered that they did not have sizes that would fit her.  She said that women should be a size six or smaller and if they were not, the store did not carry their size.  At that moment, the woman from the Middle East had an insight.  Western women were just as oppressed as Middle Eastern women—just by a different power.  Western women were oppressed by the cultural pressures to be thin and attractive.  Never before had this woman worried about her shape or her weight.  She had always been at home in her body, but in an instant she saw herself as unworthy and ugly.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that story.  I don’t consider myself enslaved by our culture’s idea of beauty, but I spend well over a thousand dollars every year on haircuts, make up, whitening toothpaste, pedicures, new clothes.  And every morning I spent at least twenty minutes putting on make up, blow drying my hair, straightening it, making sure I’m wearing earrings and clothes that match.  I think sometimes we can be so entrenched in our culture, that we don’t even realize we’re at some level enslaved by it.  I’m certainly not going to experiment with freedom by not grooming myself any more.

We are all bound to things that are not God.  We may be bound to dysfunctional families, our work, expectations that others have for us, expectations that we have for ourselves.  We may be bound to more ominous things: abusive relationships, drugs, alcohol, adulterous sex, power, money.  Trying to extricate ourselves from all these binding things so we can live in the freedom of Christ can be tricky.

Thankfully, Paul gives us markers to look for to see if we’re living into our freedom by following the Spirit.  These markers are a gift from God that are given out of God’s grace. They are the fruits of the Spirit’s work in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Everyone knows someone they think of as a saint.  Some person who is just so kind, it’s almost hard to believe.  Well that person often can be described as having several—if not all—of the characteristics described above.  We are all eligible to receive those gifts—and it starts with choosing the freedom Christ offers us from whatever it is we are bound to.  Christ has the power to unshackle us from whatever we are enslaved to, but then, of course, we are bound to him and bound to one another.

And that may be too threatening for some people.  Being bound to Christ and to other Christians can be challenging.  Real, deep relationships take enormous effort.  Learning to love your neighbor as yourself is no picnic.  Especially when your neighbor is a big pain in the neck.  But that kind of intimacy and conflict and reconciliation are the kind of experiences that start shaping us as people of patience and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control.

The messy, human, holy relationships of Christians loving God and loving each other is freedom, even if that freedom feels more like a hot church on a Sunday morning than something more ecstatic and fitting the word “freedom”.  But freedom is as much an internal shift as a set of external circumstances.  A single, unattached, independently wealthy man who rides his motorcycle along the shore of northern California, may not experience nearly the freedom of a little old lady in a nursing home who has said her morning prayers faithfully for 80 years and knows with all certainty that she belongs to God.

For true freedom comes when are bound—bound to God, bound to love, bound to one another.

Amen.

Proper 7, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Listen to the sermon here.

I spent the summer I turned 21 in India, as a short term summer missionary with a group called Youth with a Mission. I had many interesting experiences, but the most disturbing was when our group was meeting some religious leaders in a slum in Bho Pal.  An older man pointed out a young girl—I would guess she was about eight years old—and told us that she was possessed by a demon and they were going to do an exorcism later that day.

Now at the time, I was coming out of a conservative American religious tradition that used the language of demons and angels periodically, but no one I knew had ever claimed to know someone who was possessed.

I was too young and inexperienced to say much of anything or to ask any questions, so I stood there, dumbfounded.

When I became an Episcopalian, I expected the language of demonic possession to fade into the background of our religious discourse.  And mostly, of course, it has.  But every few years, someone will come by a church of a friend, convinced they are possessed and ask for an exorcism.  Even I have been asked to bless a home the owners were convinced had some evil presence in it.

So, I frankly, don’t know what to think about demon possession.  I would like to think that it is outdated imagery based on a pre-scientific understanding of mental illness and epilepsy.  We all know how frightening it can be when a loved one disappears right in front of us, because suddenly they are overcome with symptoms of depression or schizophrenia or addiction.  We know how frightening it is when WE disappear to ourselves for the same reasons.  The experience of mental illness can certainly feel like one has been overcome by an outside malevolent power. But maybe there is another, more spiritual category in which we can be overcome.  We may never know for sure.  What we do know for sure is that Jesus demonstrated his power over the unknown by healing the man from Gerasene.

Whatever our understanding of what was plaguing the man from Gerasene, his story is a poignant one.  His choices were to live in community, but be shackled; or live freely, but alone.  The man keeps breaking through his shackles and is forced out of community, so wanders alone through the tombs.

When Jesus heals him, in an instant the man from Gerasene is brought from brokenness to wholeness; from solitude into community.

The eighth and ninth chapters of Luke show Jesus demonstrating his power over and over again.  He calms a storm, he heals the man from Gerasene, he heals a woman who has been bleeding for years, and he brings a young girl back to life.  Jesus could have continued doing tricks with the weather to show his power.  He could have caused tornadoes to come and whisk the Pharisees away when they bothered him.  He could have made double rainbows appear every time he made a speaking appearance.  Instead, Jesus uses his power over and over again to heal people.  He reaches out to people that are ill in ways that estrange them from their communities—the man from Gerasene who could not be in community because of his strange behavior, the woman who had a uterine condition that was considered unclean, the young girl who had already passed beyond all community into death.  He reaches out to those who are beyond community and heals them, bringing them back in the fold.

Jesus shows us God’s character through these healings.  When we are in relationship with God, God is at work in us moving us from brokenness to wholeness, from isolation into community.  Whether we have miscarriages that we feel like we cannot talk about publicly, or cancers in places we’d rather not name, mental illnesses that leave us not feeling ourselves, God moves toward us, never away from us.

Our illnesses do not separate us from God, even if we feel like they separate us from our families and friends.

Last week, I received a really nice letter from a woman who had come to one of our Wednesday healing services.  She was a visitor to the congregation going through chemotherapy.  We said healing prayers for her and in the letter, she said for her the service was an experience of both spiritual and physical healing and that she has recently been given a clean bill of health from her doctor.

Now, I have to admit, I was totally shocked by her letter!  I am so used to the church’s ritual of healing prayer, that I can forget that healing prayer can have real power.  But quietly, every Sunday, our prayer team prays in the Lady Chapel for those who need healing, and every Wednesday we pray and have Eucharist together.

The power in healing prayer is not the priest’s power or the congregation’s power, the power of healing prayer is the same power that Jesus demonstrated when he reached out to the man from Gerasene.  The power of healing prayer is that same power that reaches out to us when we are feeling our most vulnerable and afraid and alone.  Through healing prayer, God reaches out to us and begins to make us whole again, begins to draw us out of solitude, into community.

Even if healing prayer does not instantly heal our illnesses, the act of praying when we are ill or afraid or alone reminds us that God’s power is stronger even than the power of illness and death.  In children’s worship we occasionally sing the song,

God is bigger than the boogeyman.
He is bigger than Godzilla or the monsters on TV.
God is bigger than the boogeyman,
and he’s watching out for you and me.

The song is meant to comfort children who are afraid of what might be lurking under the bed or in the closet, but we grownups have our own set of fears that keep us up at night, and we, too need to be reminded that God is on our side and that he has great power.

Princeton can be a town of great isolation and great loneliness.  And I know in many of your lives you are going through difficult times.  I see God at work in Trinity moving people out of isolation and fear into community and love and I encourage you to reach out to one another and to be part of the healing work that God is doing in this place.

For Jesus is not done with his healing, he is still at work right here, right now, in our lives, exorcising the demons of our fear, loneliness, disease, anxiety, depression—all those things that weigh on our hearts and souls.

Thanks be to God.

Trinity Sunday, Year C, 2010

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Have you seen the movie Wall-E?  While the protagonist of the movie is an adorable trash compacting robot, what I found really interesting was its depiction of humanity.  In the movie, humans have evolved in such a way as to spare them any suffering.  They float around in chairs, so they don’t have to walk.  They stare at screens instead of engaging in risky human interaction.  When they are hungry or thirsty, robots hurriedly bring them refreshment.

We are not quite there in our society yet, but there is a lot of money made every year on products trying to make life a little less painful.  We make luxury cars with surround sound satellite radio so commuting is comfortable.  We make diet pills and elaborate exercise machines so we can lose weight without making too many sacrifices.  We make lightweight electronic books, so we don’t have to schlep around ten pounds of novels when we’re on vacation.

We are incredibly lucky to live in a society where we can protect ourselves from an enormous amount of suffering—we have running water and indoor toilets; our doctors are trained in hygiene and anesthesia; our police, fire brigades and EMTS protect us without bribes.

And yet, even with all of our advances we can never protect ourselves fully from suffering.  Our hearts will still be broken.  Our loved ones will still die, some years before they should. Our bodies will still betray us.  Suffering is a fundamental part of what it means to be human.

Now, if I were marketing a religion, I would make sure that part of the package would be a promise of relief from suffering.  I would tell my followers that if they just followed my God, they would receive an easy life, filled with pleasure.  Paul, however (and that’s St. Paul, not our rector), does not seem to be working with a PR consultant.

In the letter to the Romans, Paul acknowledges what all of us know.  Suffering is part of life and a part of faith.  None of us can escape suffering, no matter how much we try to pad our life with luxuries.  Paul captures this beautifully in the 8th chapter of Romans, writing:

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

This image of all of us, along with all of Creation, leaning forward, groaning, waiting for God really captures the human experience.  When something awful happens:  a child’s death, long term unemployment, hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil about to destroy miles of coastline, there is nothing we can do, but groan our prayers and hope for redemption.

But, Paul’s view of suffering is not entirely negative.

Whenever my sister and I grumbled about doing something that annoyed us, my father would tell us, “You’ll build character!”  At first Paul’s stair step argument in Romans 5 can feel a little bit like a parent telling us to grin and bear our suffering.

Paul writes that we can boast in our suffering and that our suffering will lead to endurance, which will lead to character, which will end in hope.

We all know that suffering does not necessarily produce that outcome.  We all know people for whom suffering has done nothing but embitter them.  So, when we read this text, we may read it cautiously.  We may hold it at arms’ length and think to ourselves, “Oh yeah, Paul?  Prove it.”

We are helped when we understand the context in which Paul is writing.  Paul has been telling the Romans how no one is righteous.  No one can keep the law.  No one can earn righteousness before God.  Paul goes on to explain that through Jesus ‘ willing sacrifice, we are granted righteousness before God.  That righteousness is given to us as pure gift.

In our passage today, Paul is explaining what that gift gives us.  The gift reconciles us to God, giving us peace with our Creator.  We use this passage on Trinity Sunday, because Paul goes on to say that the Holy Spirit pours God’s love in our hearts.  So, the Father sends the Son, who sacrifices himself so we can be at peace with God.  He in turn sends the Holy Spirit, who fills us with God’s love.

So, transformation of suffering into hope is part of this gift, too.  Paul is probably talking about eschatalogical suffering here—suffering having to do with the end of times—since Paul thought Jesus’ return was immanent.  But really, we are all moving toward the Kingdom of God, and we all experience suffering on the way, so I think it is fair to say that our suffering can be included in this conversation.

What’s important to note here is that this transformation of suffering into hope is not something that the sufferer does.  Paul’s whole point is that that God’s gift to us is pure gift—and is not something we can earn.  We can place ourselves before God and pray that our suffering might be transformed into endurance, character and hope.  But we should never use this passage as a weapon against ourselves or anyone else who might be stuck in grief or pain or suffering of any kind.  This passage should never be used to nag or berate.  Instead, this passage offers us a beacon of hope.

Paul’s words offer us hope that our tears and pain may deepen and broaden our compassion, rather than harden our hearts.  His words offer us hope that our crises may make us into more mature, thoughtful people.  His words offer us hope that we might yet be transformed into people of hope—people who so in touch with God’s presence, that our hearts feel deep peace.

We don’t need to be like the characters in Wall-E, completely protected from pain.

Paul’s words give us courage to face the world honestly.  They give us courage to step out of our padded luxury cars, put down our laptops, turn off our televisions.  Paul’s words give us courage to face our broken hearts and bodies head on, knowing that God can transform our suffering into something that betters us.

In my last parish, I had a friend who was in her 80s.  She had a series of health scares, including an episode of congestive heart failure that was completely terrifying to her.  She called me in the midst of all of her struggles and asked if I could come see her.  When I went to visit her, I expected to hear about her pain, her fears, maybe her loneliness.  Instead, she told me, “Sarah, I want to talk with you, because my pain has made me think about all the people in pain around the world.  I want to use this as an opportunity to pray for those people.”

That moment has been one of the most profound of my entire life, because she exemplified what Paul is talking about in his letter to the Romans.  God gave her the grace to experience her suffering as a broadening, deepening experience.  Instead of feeling sorry for herself, she found a way to reach out to the world and care for them through her prayers.  The love of God flowed through her and out to those for whom she prayed.

And whether we are people who feel that kind of hope, or not, Paul is right when he says that God’s hope will not disappoint us.  Because the gift of Jesus’ sacrifice, the gift of God’s love poured out by the Holy Spirit, is our gift, even in our deepest suffering.  Even at our terrified, grief stricken, self-absorbed worst.  Even when we feel not one iota of character or endurance or hope, God’s love pours out for us.  And that love will not disappoint us.

Amen.

Easter 5, Year C, 2010

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Listen to the sermon here.

Yes, the Peter we read about today in our passage from Acts, is the same impetuous disciple who denied Jesus three times after his death.  In The Acts of the Apostles, we get to see Peter—and the other Apostles—grow up.  Peter begins functioning as the head of the church.

At this time, the church consisted primarily of disciples who found Jesus through the Jewish tradition. In fact, later in the 11th chapter of Acts, the author states the group was not referred to as Christians until a year after the events we read about today.

So, part of being an early follower of Jesus, was living a holy Jewish life.  That meant living faithfully to the Jewish law, including its dietary restrictions and becoming circumcised in order to become part of the community.

Peter has a vision that flies in the face of Peter’s understanding of holiness.  The vision is so shocking that we hear it twice in Acts—the first time when Peter is actually experiencing the vision and then this time when he is recounting his vision to the crowd in Judea.

To us, the vision is not that shocking.  Four footed animals, beast of prey, reptiles, birds—what’s so horrible about a day at the zoo?  But the animals Peter saw were all animals Jewish people were forbidden to eat.  We don’t have those kind of cultural restrictions on food or much else, really, so it can be hard to relate to Peter’s deep feelings of disgust.  But God is telling him in this vision to take up all these horrible, forbidden foods and eat them.  When Peter protests and says “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.”  God says to him, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

Peter is receiving a life changing, world changing message, but he does not understand its full meaning quite yet.

When Peter wakes up from his vision, he gets a visitor, a Gentile named Cornelius.  Cornelius was an Italian Centurion who was a very godly person.  He gave money to charity regularly, he prayed every day, but he was still a Gentile.  Cornelius was instructed in a dream to go meet Peter.  When Cornelius showed up at his door, Peter suddenly fully understood his dream.

While God might be changing some dietary rules, what God really intends to communicate to Peter is that he is changing the rules about who is welcomed into God’s family.  No longer does someone have to be Jewish or become Jewish.  God’s chosen people are no longer members of one particular family, but the whole of humanity.

This is wonderful news, of course, but not to everyone.  The text helpfully points out that the circumcised believers in Judea criticized Jesus and questioned him about why he was spending time with uncircumcised people.  Their complaints echo the Pharisees complaints about Jesus, don’t they?  (If I were a man and had to get circumcised to join a religious tradition, I might be a little irritated with God’s new policy, too!)  When Peter explains God’s new vision for humanity, the circumcised Judeans are stunned into silence.  Even they cannot deny the weight of this good news.

God has been true to his vision—and God’s people now span over every continent, every race, and thousands of different languages.

And in the United States, which has embraced this same kind of pluralism, opening the doors to the stranger has been part of our religious tradition.  We have not always done this well.  Many a church still has the balcony where slaves sat when they were not allowed to sit next to their white masters.  Some churches still resist outsiders, especially if they are of other ethnicities.  But over all, Christians in this country, whether liberal or conservative, tend to believe that Jesus came for all people and that anyone who loves Jesus can become part of the family.

And this core belief is now putting religious leaders in Arizona in a moral bind.  In the immigration law recently passed in Arizona, there are two clauses that have the potential to affect churches.  The first is making it illegal to knowingly transport an illegal immigrant in a car.  The second is making it illegal to knowingly harbor an illegal immigrant.  Neither of these laws is directed at churches, specifically, but religious leaders are wondering if Christians could be prosecuted for driving a youth group that contained an illegal immigrant or whether feeding an illegal immigrant in a soup kitchen violates the law.

In the Unites States we are not often asked to choose between our faith and our country, because we are blessed to live in a country where laws generally support the principles of our faith.

However, when it comes to illegal immigration, Christians are forced to make a choice.  The United States has the right to make and enforce laws about who can and cannot come into this country.  Christians, however, come from a long tradition in which we are obligated to welcome and love the stranger, even if this comes in conflict with the law.

Catholic and Episcopal bishops in Arizona have made it clear that they will continue with soup kitchens and homeless shelters and youth group trips, without checking anyone’s papers.  They are making a choice to follow the Gospel, even if their government is not or cannot.

And we may think we are safely removed from the situation in Arizona, but did you know there are holding pens for detained immigrants right here in New Jersey?  My sister lives in New York and she is part of a ministry based out of Riverside Church that travels to Elizabeth, New Jersey on Saturday mornings to visit with non-criminal immigrants who have come to the United States seeking asylum from various countries.  Individuals are held in warehouses converted into detention centers with no access to the outdoors for months and occasionally years at a time until their cases are heard and decided.  And the warehouse in Elizabeth is only one of many throughout the United States.

Occasionally, my sister receives a jubilant phone call from someone who has been given permission to live in the United States, but more often people disappear and she does not know whether they have been deported or transferred to another facility.

These immigrants are not the ones that make the news.  These are immigrants from Somalia, Tibet, Columbia, Guinea, Senegal, India, Uzbekistan, Guatemala, Sri Lanka.  They are fleeing danger and oppression and seeking freedom in our country.  Instead they are caged.  The people of the Riverside Church have made a commitment to live out the full meaning of Peter’s vision—of seeking out the other, of offering love and humanity to people who have been denied both.

We may think of illegal immigrants as the lowest of the low in this country, but in God’s eyes they are his beloved children.  And if they are his children, that makes them our brothers and sisters.  And I know that to the good people of Trinity Church, I am preaching to the choir.  One of your greatest strengths as a church is the way you welcome the other.  But any of us, especially me, can be lulled into thinking that these kinds of laws and practices don’t have anything to do with our lives.

But God offers us the same challenge he offered Peter and asks us whether we can call profane a people he has made clean.  He asks us if we can accept a reality in which the church includes even those our culture sees as unclean.  He asks us to love our neighbor.

Amen.

Good Friday, Year C, 2010

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My favorite musical of all time is West Side Story.  I have watched the movie dozens of times and seen the play in the theater several times.  No matter how many times I watch it, though, I root for everything to turn out in the end.  I cross my fingers and hold my breath and think maybe this time Tony won’t kill Bernardo.  I think this time maybe Maria and Tony can hide safely away somewhere.  Maybe this time, Tony won’t die in Maria’s arms.

Of course, no matter how hard I wish for the outcome to change, West Side Story always ends the same way, with Maria’s heartbreaking speech as she holds the gun that killed her lover and with the Jets and the Sharks finally joining together carry away Tony’s body.

I experience a lot of the same feelings around Good Friday.  Maybe this time the Pharisees will listen to Jesus.  Maybe this time, Judas won’t betray him.  Maybe this time Pilate will actually take a stand and follow his instincts instead of caving to the desires of the crowd.

But both these stories always have the same ending.  Tony always dies because Laurents and Bernstein were following the plot of Romeo and Juliet.  And in a Shakespearean tragedy, things always end badly.

Our Good Friday story, though, is more than a story.  The Good Friday story was not written by an author to manipulate our emotions.  Jesus does not die because literary convention demands it.

Jesus’ death can seem inevitable, something that was always fated from the moment he started claiming to be God’s son.  All the circumstances line up that way.  He angers those in power, they create rhetoric around him, a friend betrays him, and then he ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Jesus can be seen as a victim, someone like Tony in West Side Story, who died unnecessarily, pathetically.

The only problem with this theory, is that the Jesus portrayed in The Gospel of John is anything but pathetic. Jesus knows that death is his destiny, and he walks toward it full of confidence that his death and resurrection are what is needed for humanity.  In John 16 he tells his disciples, “Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but he world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.”  Jesus gives his disciples a long final speech that sums up what is happening and gives them encouragement and hope for the future.  Immediately before his betrayal, Jesus prays a long prayer to God.  And this is not the cry for help in the garden of Gethsemane found in the synoptic gospels, this is a prayer full of confidence.  He prays that he may be glorified, but also prays for his disciples, that they might be sanctified and gain eternal life because of his actions.

Even though these disciples will betray and deny Jesus, they are at the front of his mind, and seem to be his primary concern.  Even on the cross, Jesus seems in control, making sure his mother is taken care of before he takes his final breath.

Jesus was not the victim of fate.  Jesus was in charge of his destiny.  Jesus actively made the choice to sacrifice himself for us.

He chose to die so that we could be redeemed by God.  He chose to die so we could be free to be in relationship with his Father.  He chose to die so we could receive the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Comforter.

Before he died, Jesus left us instructions.  In chapter 14 of The Gospel of John, Jesus is telling his disciples about the coming of the Holy Spirit and he says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”  So, if we want to honor his death we choose to take seriously those commandments to love God and our neighbors.  Because when Jesus redeems us for our sins, he doesn’t just send us on our way.  Once Jesus redeems us for our sins, we belong to him.

And when we belong to Jesus, we are expected to act a certain way.  And in our culture, which is so quick to judge and pit people against each other, there is no more radical act, no better way, for us to show our commitment to Christ than by loving God and loving our neighbor.  We can give each other the benefit of the doubt, we can engage in thoughtful conversation rather than screaming argument, we can reach out to the unloved, we can cross bridges of culture and understanding.  We can show to the world that we serve one who loves all of humanity—people of all colors, cultures and political perspectives—by loving one another.

We have those instructions from Christ, but even following Christ’s clear instructions cannot make us fully grasp Good Friday.  Christ’s sacrifice, given freely, is astonishing.  Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf leaves us in stunned silence.  There is a reason we keep silent vigil between Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.  Any other response is inadequate.

Amen.

Palm Sunday, Year C, 2010

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We have just read the entire Passion of our Lord.  But I want us to take a step back to Palm Sunday, to find ourselves with Jesus and the disciples, outside of Jerusalem, awaiting the final chapter of Jesus’ earthly ministry.

We are reading through the Gospel of Luke this year, and the Palm Sunday reading is a little different from the readings in Mark and Matthew. There are no palms, actually.  No hosannas, either.  And the crowd that cheers Jesus on is not the crowd of locals that will soon shout “Crucify!”, but a large group of Jesus’ own disciples.

These disciples have been with Jesus along his journey, they have heard him speak of Jerusalem and of his own death over and over again, and yet they are still caught up in the moment, caught up in the memory of all the wonderful things they have seen Jesus do.  Together, they praise God in one voice, shouting

“Blessed is the king
who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven,
and glory in the highest heaven!”

The disciples love Jesus, and are glad that God sent Jesus to them, but you get the sense here that they are still wrapped up in the idea of Jesus as an earthly king who is going to rise up against the Romans and bring the Jewish people back to political power.

Jesus does not rebuke them, or try to finesse their expectations.  He knows that even if they have the details wrong, their impulse to praise God is a good impulse.

The disciples are going to go through a huge emotional and spiritual journey.  They are going to experience the death of their friend and king and have to reframe their entire experience with Jesus.  They are going to have to grieve the loss of what they thought would be, and experience the wonder of the risen Jesus on their own terms.

And, to me, at least, there is something really beautiful about Jesus allowing them to have their joy and their hope, even if the joy and hope is misdirected.  In fact, Jesus tells the Pharisees that if his followers did not praise him stones would cry out in their place.

Praising God, as Martha Stewart might say, is a good thing.  Jesus trusts himself enough, and trusts his Father enough, to know that Jesus’ death and resurrection will speak for themselves.  Jesus does not have to persuade or convince his disciples with words.  The very act of his resurrection will be enough to make them understand that Jesus’ kingship was never about earthly power, but about changing spiritual reality. For now, it is enough that his followers praise him and his Father.  Their praise does not have to express a perfectly formed and correct theological thought.

We, too, get wrapped up in hoping Jesus will do things for us in this world.  I’ve known people who swore God provided them parking spaces.  We all know sports teams, actors, and musicians who credit their award winning performances to God.  (My husband swears some of those shots Butler made Thursday night in the NCAA tournament had to be helped by the Holy Spirit.) People certainly said their prayers one way or the other during the last election and during last week’s Health Care Reform vote.  Those prayers may have been meaningful or superficial; they may reflect gratitude for something God has no interest in whatsoever! But the impulse to praise God, the impulse to give God credit for our successes is a good one.

When we praise God, we point to something true about God.  We point to God as creator, provider, caretaker, redeemer, savior.  And the more we praise God, the more we will come to realize that our praise of God can come independent of our personal circumstances.  The reality of God’s faithfulness is the reality of the resurrection.  God offers us new life whether we are getting parking spots or not, whether our sports team wins or not, whether our political party is in power or not.  Jesus’ death and resurrection apply to our lives no matter how rich or how poor we are, no matter how happy or sad we are. The good news of Jesus’ resurrection is so important to our souls that it transcends any other circumstances in our lives.

So, this Holy Week, we invite you to join us as we follow Jesus’ story in Jerusalem.  We invite you to experience the last supper, Jesus’ death, and Jesus’ glorious resurrection.  And we trust that whatever is going on in your life, the good news of God’s resurrection will make you want to praise God, too.

Lent 4, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

Jesus drove the Pharisees and the scribes CRAZY.

The author of the Gospel of Luke does a wonderful job of portraying the way the Pharisees and scribes followed Jesus around, unable to tear their eyes away from what they thought was a theological train wreck.  They have spent years of their lives following every rule, gaining knowledge of every bit of law and scripture, and gaining power step by logical step.  And then Jesus, a carpenter, strolls on the scene and immediately starts captivating his followers with his powerful words about God’s love.  I picture the Pharisees and scribes a little bit like principal Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I picture them so unsettled that they get a little obsessed, a little unhinged, but they just cannot stop themselves from following Jesus around and getting even more agitated.

What the Pharisees and scribes REALLY can’t stand, what just drives them batty, is who Jesus invites over for dinner.  They cannot reconcile why a man who claims to speak for God would hang out with tax collectors and “sinners”.

Jesus takes pity, or a jab, at the Pharisees and scribes and he explains his behavior using three parables:  the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and the parable of the Prodigal Son.

In the parable of the Prodigal Son, a young man approaches his father and asks for his share of the inheritance.  And while this is a greedy question, it is also an incredibly hurtful question.  The young man is implying that his father is worth more to him dead than alive.  The young man is rejecting the relationship with his own family so he can go party in the big city.  And although the father must have been devastated by this betrayal, the father complies with the son’s wishes, and gives him his share of the estate.

Like many a young man before or since, the prodigal son blows through his money, much sooner than he expects and is soon reduced to working on a farm, envying the slop the pigs enjoy.

He soon comes to his senses and decides to go home, eat crow, and hope his father takes him back.

We all know what happens next of course. Before the young man can get a word out of his mouth, his father is running out of the house, throwing his arms around his son and welcoming him back into the fold.  The prodigal son makes his repentant speech, but his words are just icing on the cake for the man’s father.

And just this story alone would be lovely.  The image of a heavenly father welcoming us rebellious children back home with open arms speaks deeply to us about how much God loves us, even when we make mistakes.

But Jesus’ parable has a wrinkle.  And the wrinkle is the older brother.  The older brother who has always been faithful to his father.  The older brother who took on more work when his good-for-nothing sibling took off to the big city.  The older brother who did not have any extra money, who never got to go to the big city, who never went to a party.

When this older brother comes home from the fields, smells the celebratory fatted calf cooking, and realizes his brother is safely home, he is furious.  He complains to his father that he has never had so much as a celebratory goat cooked for him despite his years of faithful service and now his dissolute brother gets an entire fatted calf?  He’s so mad he even accuses his brother of using his father’s to sleep with prostitutes, a claim that is made nowhere else in the text.  Older brother is NOT HAPPY.

The father pleads with the older brother, reassures him that all the father’s property will still go to him, and invites him to join the celebration.

We never find out what the older brother decides to do.  Jesus leaves the Pharisees and scribes hanging, leaves us hanging.

Instead of mocking or rejecting the Pharisees and scribes, Jesus is offering them the same invitation the father offers the older son.  You are still welcome here.  Jesus may be hanging out with tax collectors and sinners, but the Pharisees and scribes are still welcomed at the table.   Jesus’ may be changing the game, and showing how God includes those on the margins, but that does not mean that God is shoving out the establishment.  The question is whether the establishment wants to join the party!

There is never a scene in the Gospels where the Pharisees and scribes look at one another and say, “Let’s take a risk!  Let’s join this Jesus and see where he leads us!”  Until the very end, they resist his invitation of a new way of being in relationship with God.  They are so tied to the rules and regulations and the old way of doing things, that they cannot join the party, even though they have an open invitation.

Whether we like it or not, those of us in the Episcopal Church, for the most part ARE the establishment.  We have money and power and hundreds of years of liturgical tradition to which we cling.  There is great value in all that tradition, but the danger remains that we will cling to the past and refuse an invitation to new life that Jesus puts in front of us.

Paul and I have been to several conferences and meetings of Episcopalians lately and we’ve noticed a disturbing trend.  More than once we have heard people make speeches during which they lament the demise of the Episcopal Church.  These particular priests were a generation older than we are, and my understanding is that they were lamenting the Episcopal church of the 1950s, when the church was rich both in numbers and in finances.

I have to tell you, I think these speakers have completely missed the mark.

I may be biased, but I fell in love with the Episcopal Church in 1999, when it was already “declining” according to some perspectives.  The Episcopal Church of the 1950s was probably great.  I bet members wore really snappy hats and that children had more time to be involved in church life and that people tithed a bigger percentage of their income.  But from my perspective, the Episcopal Church of this decade is much more exciting, much more like one of Jesus’ dinner parties, than the church of yore.

I love the Episcopal Church.  I love the traditions, the fancy words, the music, the liturgy.  But what I love most about the church is its welcome.  In this new, modern Episcopal church people of different races are allowed to worship together, gay members do not have to hide their sexuality, and as a youngish woman, I get the honor of being your priest!  None of that would have been possible sixty years ago.  I love the Episcopal church because we’re allowed to ask theological questions that would have made the hairs on the back of the Pharisees necks stand up!  I love the Episcopal Church because we’re allowed to read about the Gnostic gospels or world religions without someone offering to pray for our souls.  I love the Episcopal Church because to us, worshiping God is more than just having a bunch of “correct” answers.  We are invited to enter into mystery, together.

So, when I hear people lament the end of the Episcopal Church I want to tell them they are missing the party!  We may not be as powerful politically or financially as we once were, but who cares?  Being a Christian is not about power, it’s about being a disciple of Jesus Christ.  And I can think of no better place to be a disciple of Jesus than at the party the Episcopal Church is throwing right now.

And I hope we are inviting everyone to that party, the outcasts and the establishment; the Prodigal sons and their judgmental older brothers; those who are mourning what our church once was and those who are just discovering us.

Amen.

Lent 1, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

When I am feeling run down, I like to lapse into fantasies about destination spas.  Whether we’re talking about Canyon Ranch in Tucson or Mii Amo in Sedona, I day dream about their cloud soft bedding, private sunning decks,  hot stone massages.  (I think less about the healthy eating and the rigorous exercise, of course.)  The idea of getting away, of taking a break, of being taken care of, seduces me into wanting to leave my life for awhile.  I just know if I had a week or two at one of these magical places that promise physical, spiritual and emotional healing, that I would emerge renewed, peaceful, a better version of myself.

Man, am I ever lucky that as a Christian, I get a built in retreat every year!  And guess what?  You do, too!

Now, our retreat does not have pools bubbling with warm spring water, or gourmet meals for fewer than 350 calories.  But our retreat is free and it lasts a whopping forty days.

When you think about Lent, you might think about fish on Fridays and giving up something decadent for a few weeks.  But, Jesus’ temptation during his time in the wilderness invites us to experience Lent in a new and deeper way.  And a Lent experienced this way, might just leave us feeling more spiritually refreshed than any destination spa.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ time in the Wilderness comes immediately after his baptism.  Before he goes out to preach and heal and perform miracles, he is led by the Holy Spirit to this time of testing.

The devil tempts Jesus in three ways.

First, he tempts Jesus, who is famished after fasting for forty days, to make bread.

Second, he offers Jesus all the political power in the world.

Third, he tempts Jesus to throw himself off of the temple in Jerusalem in order to prove that angels would protect him.

And while Jesus’ retreat in the wilderness was not a pleasant one—I do not think Canyon Ranch offers any sort of devil temptation treatment—his time in the desert prepared him for the rest of his ministry.

Jesus did not stop facing temptation once he left the desert.  Luke 4:13 reads, “[the devil] departed from him until an opportune time.”  Throughout his ministry, I’m sure Jesus was tempted to rely on his special gifts rather than relying on his Father.  I’m sure he was tempted to use his follower’s adoration as a way to pump up his own ego, rather than pointing people to his Father.  Jesus’ time in the desert made sure he faced these temptations in a dramatic way so that he would know how to handle himself when they came up in his day to day ministry.

We are faced with the exact same temptations.  Lent gives us an opportunity to face them head on, without flinching.

The devil may not tempt us to make our own bread out of the air, but all of us are tempted to rely on our own resources, to forget that God provides everything that is.  All of us face anxiety about how we are going to provide for ourselves.

The devil may not make us an offer to rule all the countries in the world, but all of us are faced with opportunities to abuse power.  Many of you are in positions of enormous power.  If you are a professor or a PhD student, are you treating your students fairly?  Are you jockeying for power within your department?  If you’re a person with employees, do you treat them with respect and dignity?  If you’re a parent are you taking your responsibilities seriously?  If you write or blog or Facebook, do you think carefully before criticizing someone publicly?

The devil may not tempt us to jump off the bell tower at Trinity to see if angels will come and save us, but all of us are tempted to let God or others bail us out on occasion.  Do you get in your car without putting on a seatbelt?  Do you occasionally cheat on your taxes a little bit, assuming you won’t get caught?  Do you drink a little too often, do you smoke?

This Lent, you have the opportunity to ask yourself these questions.  Really reflecting on these temptations will have a much bigger impact on your spiritual life then giving up chocolate for six weeks.  As Christians we are called not just to show up to church on Sundays, but to live a life of discipleship.  We are called to follow Jesus, even when that leads us into the desert.  Even when that leads us into an unflinching examination of our own lives.

Again, here are the questions to ask yourself.

  1. Where in your life are you not trusting God to provide for you?
  2. Where in your life are you abusing the power God has given you?
  3. Where in your life are you taking unnecessary risks because you think God or others will rescue you?

When you ask yourself these questions you are communing with Jesus in the desert.  Just imagine, Jesus asked himself the exact same questions and struggled with the same temptations we do.  We worship a God who understands our experience, who knows what it is like to struggle to live a holy and ethical life.

We honor that compassionate God by taking our lives seriously, by taking Lent seriously.

Lent may not come with mints on our pillows, horseback rides and free yoga classes, but living a holy, reflective Lent can change our lives and give us the perspective we need to face temptations in our lives the rest of the year.

Amen.

Epiphany 2, Year C, 2010

/ Sarah / Leave a comment

My husband and I planned our own wedding.  We wanted the wedding to be a low-key, fun affair, but it turns out that planning low-key, fun affairs for 130 guests requires an enormous amount of effort.

I traveled to vendor after vendor, choosing tents and lights and tables and chairs and table cloths and forks.  I did not think I was the kind of bride who cared about such things, but suddenly I had very strong feelings about whether the ribbons that were wrapped around the bridesmaid’s bouquet were white or pink.  It’s even possible to say that I got a little. . .controlling.  We may or may not have had several, extremely complex spreadsheets in which we recorded every detail of our planning.

We were able to control a lot about our wedding.  We were able to choose Memphis-style barbeque for the reception, complemented by Whole Foods vegetarian side dishes.  We were able to choose Whiskey Rebellion, the band that played bluegrass covers of such classics as “Cheek to Cheek” and “Sweet Child of Mine.”  By the generous offer of a friend, we were even able to choose an incredibly beautiful outdoor location for the reception that overlooked the rolling hills of Albemarle County, Virginia.

While there was a lot we could control, there was one thing that worried me.  The one thing I had no control over:  the weather.  I looked at almanacs.  I found the special wedding planner part of The Weather Channel’s website, I followed the weather as close as humanly possible.  Having an outdoor reception, I was afraid of two things:  heat and rain.

Well, sure enough, June 8th, 2007, was the hottest June 8th on record in Greenwood, Virginia, with the thermometer breaking 100 degrees.  As I was getting dressed in the air conditioned parish hall, I kept asking my bridesmaids, “It’s really hot outside, right?”  And bless their hearts, they just bold faced lied to me.  They even ran a perimeter of defense around me.  If anyone came into the parish hall, they immediately intercepted them saying, “Do NOT discuss the heat!”

It was so hot, that when you look at our formal wedding photographs, even though Matt and I are madly in love with each other, we’re holding each other with about six inches of space between us. Taking pictures, we noticed thick clouds rolling in, and sure enough, as we stepped into the car to take us to the reception, the skies opened up and huge drops of rain started to fall and the sky started to crack with thunder and lightning.  My worst fears were coming true.

The author of the Gospel of John doesn’t mention the weather at the wedding at Cana of Galilee, but the bride at was probably none too pleased that at her wedding, the wine ran out way earlier than they had planned.  In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ miracle at the wedding is the first public act of his ministry.  He and his disciples are invited to this wedding, as is his mother.  Mary somehow overhears the drama about the wine shortage and decides that this would be a good time for her son to actually do something about those special God-powers of his.  And while the grumpy interaction between Jesus and Mary is really fun to read, it does not explain why this story, of all possible stories of Jesus before his public ministry, was chosen to be included in the Gospel.

The jars Jesus has the servants fill up with water are jars that held water for purification.  You might remember that Jesus was berated by Pharisees because he did not make his disciples wash their hands with special purification water before they ate.  Well, here, Jesus makes a similar statement by transforming all the purification water into delicious, quality wine.  Jesus boldly flouts the Pharisaical rules and traditions around purity.

Imagine if you were visiting someone at Princeton hospital and you stopped by one of the many Purell stations, gave it a squeeze, and realized your hand was full of sticky crushed grapes, not hand sanitizer.  Imagine if when the acolytes ritually washed the celebrant’s hands here at Trinity, instead of water, out poured a nice Bordeaux.

Water and wine serve very different purposes.  Water is for keeping clean, keeping pure, keeping respectable.  Wine is for sensual enjoyment.  Wine is for celebration. And, of course, wine evokes the image of the last supper.

Jesus’ actions solved the problem of the breach of hospitality, but they also reveal an enormous amount about Jesus’ priorities.  Jesus’ business is to redefine the relationship between God and human beings.  No longer will it be necessary to perform complicated rituals, dictated by those in power, before one can have access to God.  Jesus’ business is to show the radical, abundant love that God has for us.

The poet, Richard Wilbur, wrote a poem as a wedding toast for his daughter based on this text that gets at this idea of abundant love. The first three stanzas read:

St. John tells how, at Cana’s wedding-feast
The water-pots poured wine in such amount
That by his sober count
There were a hundred gallons at the least.

It made no earthly sense, unless to show
How whatsoever love elects to bless
Brims to sweet excess
That can without depletion overflow

Which is to say that what love sees is true;
That the world’s fullness is not made but found,
Life hungers to abound
And pour its plenty out for you.[1]

This is the hardest lesson for me to learn about God and probably why I preach about it so much!  Believing that the love of God is abundant and overflowing can be difficult to remember as we learn about the massive destruction of parts of Haiti.  Believing in God’s provision can be difficult when a person is looking for work, with no leads in sight.   I find it much easier to believe in a God who punishes us for our bad behavior, who wants us to live tightly controlled, pious lives.  But over and over again, Jesus tells us that is not what God desires.  God desires to be in a loving relationship with us.  God’s love pours out—for the people of Haiti, for those in our country who are out of work, for us, wherever we are on our journey.  We may not always be able to feel that love, but it is there, for us.

And while it is a shallow illustration, the weather at my wedding remains a metaphor for me, about God’s love.

The night of the wedding, after the rain stopped pouring from the sky and the lighting stopped threatening people’s safety and the electricity stopped flickering, the temperature dropped twenty degrees, the clouds parted, and the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen blazed across the sky.

The wedding pictures we treasure that day are not the stiff formal ones, but are photos taken during that half hour before the sun went down.  There is one of us against the red and purple sky and countless photos of people softly illuminated, gazing the sunset with wonder.  Without the heat, without the rain, we never would have had that gorgeous sunset.

No planning on my part could have created that moment.  Just as I could not control the awful heat and violent storm, I could not control the beauty that followed.  The sunset was pure gift.

I highly doubt that God was so personally invested in my wedding that he manipulated the skies for us, but for me the sunset is a metaphor for the radical, abundant, surprising blessings that God pours out for us throughout our lives, often out of the darkest places.

We could not have stopped the economic crisis.  No amount of control on our parts could have stopped the earthquake that has ravaged Haiti.  But I guarantee you, that even in the middle of despair and epic suffering, God is at work, redeeming that which seemed irredeemable, saving that which seemed unsalvageable, and pouring his abundant love out, even for the seemingly unloved.

And so, I return to Wilbur’s poem:

Which is to say that what love sees is true;
That the world’s fullness is not made but found,
Life hungers to abound
And pour its plenty out for you.

Amen.

[1] Wilbur, Richard, Collected Poems:  1943-2004, Harcourt Inc.:  New York, 2004, p. 136.

Advent 3, Year C, 2009

/ Sarah / 1 Comment

Rejoice in the Lord Always!  You brood of vipers! Let your gentleness be known to everyone.  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Do not worry about anything.  The chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

Our Epistle and Gospel readings are having a strange conversation today, aren’t they?

On one hand, we have the Apostle Paul telling the Philippians to relax, rejoice, not to worry! On the other hand, we have John the Baptist screaming “You brood of vipers!” at the crowds of ordinary people following him around. Nothing says Christmas Spirit like a bearded man in a hair shirt screaming insults at you!

At first glance, these readings may appear to have nothing to say to one another.  But, when we dig a little deeper, we can see that they are really dealing with the tensions and the hopes of living in a world in which the Kingdom of God is not fully manifested.

Our culture tells us the season leading up to Christmas is a fun, happy, kitchy time of the year to decorate wildly, eat foods we wouldn’t otherwise allow ourselves, and shop for gifts to demonstrate our love for others.  But we all know that Christmas is more complicated than that.  Christmas can also be filled with longing, regret, and grief.  Even the first Christmas story, THE Christmas story, had its own ambiguities.

The birth of Christ came out of great pain, pain that goes well beyond any discomfort Mary might have experienced, or the humiliation of being born in a stable.  Christ came into the world in God’s radical attempt to save humanity from the pain of its own brokenness.  People had longed to be saved from the war and heartbreak and frailty of the human condition as long as they had a concept for God.  Without that pain and alienation, there would have been no need for the birth of Christ in the first place.

The crowds that followed John around hungered for connection to God.  They longed to be liberated from cycles of brokenness in their lives.  Why else would they follow this strange locust-eating man around the wilderness? But that kind of liberation, that kind of connection to God, has a cost.

Prophets throughout the Scriptures have had the job of shaking humanity by the scruff of the neck and John the Baptist is no different. Inertia is a powerful force in the lives of human beings, and John’s job is to disrupt the lives of his followers so they can break free of that inertia and prepare themselves to receive the incredibly good news of God’s incarnation.

John the Baptist’s first words are harsh.  He calls the crowd vipers and tells them they cannot rely on their identity as descendents of Abraham to be saved.  He’s alerting the crowd that they will not be able to encounter God without experiencing some kind of change.  His words are so strong that his crowd is left very worried about what advice might follow.

Will John the Baptist ask them to sacrifice everything in their lives to encounter God?  Will they have to live extremely ascetic existences?  Will they have to join John as he wanders through the wilderness eating honey-dipped locusts?

John’s audience is alert, holding their collective breath, ready to hear John’s advice.

John’s advice is comically simple.   John tells a tax collector not to steal money.  He tells a soldier not to extort money.  He tells others in the crowd to share their cloaks if they meet someone who is cold.

John the Baptist doesn’t tell the soldier that he needs to leave the military.  He doesn’t tell the tax collector he needs to resign from his post.  He does not demand that these employees of the Roman state abandon their professional lives and their ties to the Roman government.  John the Baptist makes it clear that Jesus is coming for all people, wherever they are.  The members of the crowd surrounding John the Baptist are challenged to get their ethical houses in order, but they aren’t asked to abandon their lives.

So, although John the Baptist probably smelled funny and was definitely rude, he brought good news about the Kingdom of God to his followers.  Jesus’ coming into the world was not just for priests and rabbis and scribes.  Jesus’ coming was for all humanity-tax collectors and soldiers and every day people.  This news is joyful.  And this is where our Gospel and Epistle readings intersect.

When the Apostle Paul tells the community of Philippi to rejoice, he’s not chirping empty-headed platitudes.  Paul has been through hell.  He has been traveling for years, been ship wrecked, and now is arrested and in prison.  The people of Philippi are on edge because Christians at the time were a persecuted people.  They are afraid because their faith puts them in danger. Paul is speaking of a joy, and gratitude, and a sense of peace that is not bound by circumstances.  Paul is speaking of joy, and gratitude, and peace that come hand in hand with the kind of challenges and pain life brings us.

The joy of Advent is not an empty-headed happiness because we get to eat more sugar cookies than usual.  The joy of Advent is a joy that acknowledges the pain of our broken world while still rejoicing in the wonder of Christ coming into the world for even the most humble person.

The joy of Advent invites us to believe God will show up in our lives even when we are at our worst or experiencing our deepest pain.

In my last parish, the adult son of a parishioner died unexpectedly and suddenly. The funeral was very sad and very beautiful.  The family chose a Celtic service and hundreds of white candles illuminated the sanctuary.  After the funeral, several people came up to me and mentioned how moved they were by the hope in the mother’s eyes as she went to communion.  She was not happy, she was hopeful.  She grieved the death of her son, but she had confidence that somehow God was still with her and still with her son.  Even though her world had shattered, she had the expectation that one day she and her son would be reunited in the Kingdom of God, one day she would feel Christ’s peace.

Life is full of pain and disappointment, even in the happiest lives.  Christ reaches out to us, even in the midst of that pain.  Even when we’ve been betrayed or lost our jobs or have a child we cannot reach, Christ extends himself to us, just as he did 2000 years ago.

You do not have to leave your job or your marriage or this town to experience the joy of the incarnation.  You don’t have to go on pilgrimage or pray for a week straight or fast for a month for Jesus to find you.  Jesus calls each of us, wherever we are.  He calls us to prepare ourselves, but always in ways that are accessible to us.  As counterintuitive as it may seem, the God who created the entire Universe wants to be in relationship with us.  God wants to be in relationship with the brood of vipers right here in this room.

And because God reached through time and space to bring Christ to us, and because Christ continually reaches out to us, inviting us into relationship with his Father and our Creator, we join the Apostle Paul and we rejoice in the Lord, we pray with thanksgiving, and we welcome the Peace of Christ into our hearts.

Amen.