Ash Wednesday for Kids

As a parent, pre-priesthood, I struggled during Lent to find services that would introduce my young children to Lent without giving them nightmares.  But family-friendly services on Ash Wednesday and during Holy Week were hard to come by.  So when I started working at St. Aidan's, one of my favorite projects was creating services that would give children a taste of Lent in an age-appropriate way.  St. Aidan's family Ash Wednesday and Holy Week services have since become two of my favorite services of the year.  Here's a taste of Ash Wednesday...

We started outside. I had outlines of butterflies and crayons for kids to color if they wanted - symbols of Easter that we would be saying goodbye to during Lent but that would reappear on Easter (when we'll have them streaming overhead in church). Once the crowd had gathered, we burned a bunch of last year's palm branches to make our own ashes. The kids were entranced.

After saying a prayer, I introduced the idea of Ash Wednesday as the beginning of a journey to Easter. We handed out rhythmic instruments and John played guitar as we headed inside and up to the front of the church. I had a circular liturgical calendar there, and we talked about the 6 weeks of Lent and how people often give things up or take things on as they get ready to enter the mystery of Easter. The kids and their parents shared some of their Lenten practices. John led us in another song and we headed back to the font.

We heard a Bible reading about Jesus' baptism before he headed into the wilderness and talked about our own baptisms and the promises that we make, or have made on our behalf.  I demonstrated what a baptism might looked like and talked about how after the water, my favorite line of all is when we seal the newly baptized person with the blessed oil and say that they are "marked as Christ's own forever."  That same mark of the cross in oil is made again with ashes on Ash Wednesday.  The ashes are a reminder of our promises, and a reminder that we are Christ's own forever.  The kids are then invited to continue their journey on the labyrinth, where they can receive ashes at the center.

The kids love exploring the labyrinth.  When I put the cross on their foreheads, I tell them, "You are a beloved child of God."  My favorite moment came last year when one child ran excitedly to tell her mother, "Mommy, I'm a beloved child of God!  You are too, Mommy, come on!" and pulled her into the labyrinth.  I suspect that some of my colleagues would be aghast at how different this service is from the Episcopal Ash Wednesday service, but to be in that place with those kids so full of love and joy was truly to see God.

Half-empty, half-full, or C: None of the Above?

Lent 1, Year B
February 26, 2012
Genesis 8:8-17

Depending on what sort of person you are, you might create two different headlines from the story of Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood from Genesis. If you are a glass half-empty sort of person it would be something like “God Destroys World” and if you are a glass half-full sort of person it might be something like “God Gives World Another Chance.” But neither headline would be complete.

Read one way, this story of the flood is a horrendous one about evil and punishment. With only one family excepted, the entire population of the earth is evil and no good. A horde of animals along with this one family are holed up in a dark, smelly, crowded boat on what must have been a scary ride on a raging sea. Every other person and creature is drowned in the waters sent by an angry and punishing God. And then it finally ends and they are sent out to start all over again. To create houses, forage for food, forever reminded of this horrible catastrophe as they plod through the mud and muck and rubble of the flood.

But that tends not to be the way we read the story. All that disturbing stuff makes us uncomfortable and we’d generally prefer not to grapple with it. And so we gloss over it and make the story about doves and rainbows and paint it on our children’s nursery walls. That’s pretty much where the people that picked the verses for our lectionary this morning put us. They’ve left out the entire context of the story and bring us in just as everyone has safely disembarked from the ark to begin their new lives. Just as that rainbow makes its appearance.

Now please don’t get me wrong. I am not meaning to denigrate rainbows. The last time I saw a rainbow I was so startled and entranced that I practically ran my car off the road so I could take a picture of it on my cell phone. I love rainbows and everything ROY G. BIV just as much as my 8 year old daughter, and that’s saying a lot. But I think that a big part of what gives rainbows their beauty and magnificence is the dreary rain and gloomy sky and intimidating thunder and lightning that precedes them.

Sometimes you just can’t have the second half without the first half. The glass can only be half full if it is also half empty. Just like scientifically we can’t have rainbows appear in the sky without first having rain, with our story this morning the only way to get to the real meaning and truth of the rainbow is to first suffer through the flood.

To truly understand our reading for this morning we have to know the context, and it is not pretty. The world has taken a dastardly turn since its creation. Only 5 chapters before God begins plans for the flood, God created the earth and every living creature on it and declared it “very good.” But here we are, on measly page 6 of my Bible and already the Lord is “sorry that he had made humankind on the earth” and is “grieved to his heart.” Humanity has so completely devolved that God is ready to blot out all of creation.

Now just so you don’t think God was being spiteful and vengeful and poor humankind was just minding its own business and totally undeserving of God’s wrath, it might make you feel better to hear that we are told early on in this story that “the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth” and “every inclination of the thoughts of people’s hearts was only evil continually.” It’s probably worth noting that God’s two rules for Noah’s family after the flood were that they should not murder and they should not eat animals while still alive. If those two instructions were pretty much God’s first thoughts for this surviving human remnant, I’d agree that the world was not up to very good things.

And so God is sorry that he made humankind, bitterly grieved by the utter betrayal of the creatures he made. Only Noah has somehow remained uncorrupted and peaceful. And so God decides to destroy in order to recreate. To wipe the slate clean and begin pretty much anew.

But somewhere in the tempest of the waters and the booming of the thunder and the fearful cries of the survivors and the devastating results of this first holocaust, God changes. God makes a new promise, a new covenant with the creatures of the earth.

And it’s that moment that turns this story from being about evil and punishment to being about something else completely. That is the moment when our vision turns from half-empty to half-full.

God knows well that there is no hope for this post-flood world. God knows we can’t change, not for long anyway. Human beings are the same at the end of this story as they were at the beginning. One page later the people are already building the tower of Babel so they can reach the heavens and become like God. A few more pages and we get Jacob tricking Esau. Then there’s Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery in Egypt. Then the community of people freed from slavery in Egypt worshipping the golden calf. David lusting after Bathsheba and plotting her husband’s death.

It goes on and on. We disappoint God, we break God’s heart – over and over and over again. God knew it would be this way, and yet God entered this new covenant with creation -- God made a promise to never again seek to restore the creation through destruction. People haven’t changed, but God has. God chooses relationship over retribution. From now on, God’s restoration, God’s re-creation, happens through God’s love.

Now sometimes I find myself waiting for the “if.” God will be faithful if…. God will love me if…. God will invite me to come close if…. But there is no “if” in this story. There’s no “if” in our stories. God promises to be a faithful partner. Period.

This is the promise that echoes throughout the Bible. God promises no more flood to destroy the world to Noah, a family to Abraham and Sarah, a homeland to Jacob, the law to Moses, a son to Mary, the Holy Spirit to the disciples. But all of these boil down to the same thing. God will be our God and we will be God’s people. God will be in relationship with us. No matter what. The end of our story with God does not depend on us.

Sometimes when the Noah story comes up the follow-up questions involve a lot of wariness. If God promised not to ever again send a destructive flood, then what’s up with [insert your disaster here]? But that rainbow was never a promise of no more clouds, or no more rain, or even no more floods. I think most of us here this morning have had some experience of riding on that ark, tossing and turning in those violent waters. That rainbow didn’t mean that bad things wouldn’t happen to us. It meant that the bad things are not rooted in God’s ill will toward us. There will be darkness, but the darkness is not from God. The light and color that prevail over the darkness are what comes from God.

All in all, I think this ends up being a good story for the first Sunday of Lent. We hear a lot about sin during this season. For 6 weeks we’ll be surrounded by Church at its most penitential. You are dust, a worm and no man, says the Ash Wednesday liturgy. And the Great Litany this morning is chock full of all that. But Lent isn’t about us overcoming our sinfulness so that we can be close to God. We just can’t keep that up, as God realized after the Flood. But Lent can be a time to come closer to God by realizing how close God is to us. A time to acknowledge ourselves as belonging the God, a time to reach out and take hold of that beautiful promise of God. Because Lent leads to Easter, the cross leads to the resurrection, just as surely as the flood leads to the rainbow.

I’ll end with a fitting Native American proverb that God very kindly placed in my path yesterday at the Museum of the American Indian: “The soul would have no rainbow if the eye had no tears.” Amen.

Meeting Jesus While Out For Pizza

Epiphany 6, Year B

Mark 1:40-45
My husband and I are political junkies, so we’ve been watching the recent Republican debates and turmoil with great interest. There’s always somebody putting his foot in his mouth over something. One recent gaffe was when Mitt Romney asserted last week that he is “not concerned about the very poor" because they have an "ample safety net.” He added that if the net is “broken” he’d “fix it”, but that was too little too late for the firestorm that met him in response.

It is outrageous to be unconcerned about the very poor when 15% (or more than 46 million people in this country) are living in poverty, which means making less than $22,350 for a family of 4. Can you imagine living on that? It is outrageous to be unconcerned about the very poor when you take a stroll down the less attractive parts of Route 1 and see people carrying all their belongings in trash bags. The safety net” that Mitt relies on so heavily isn’t close to enough. More than a quarter of families living in poverty don’t have health insurance. One in six people in the U.S. experienced “food insecurity” last year, meaning that they didn’t have access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy lifestyle. Even if the safety net were air tight, it does very little to address the real causes underlying poverty.

And yet while I sit back and judge Mitt Romney for what he said, what am I doing that is so much better? Sure, I’m concerned about the very poor, I might donate a little time and a little money to help sometimes, I might argue for stronger safety nets, but I too find it easier to look at poverty from afar than get too close to it. Easier to talk about than to touch.

That hit home to me in an experience my family had last week at Ledo’s Pizza on Route 1. We were having our usual restaurant experience, which means trying our best to keep the kids’ squabbling to a minimum and to keep Maya from climbing on the table, when a voice behind us started getting louder and louder. About every other word was unsuitable to be repeated in this forum and Holden could see her taking swigs of Jim Beam from her purse. I was annoyed by her language in front of my kids and so turned around to try to catch her eye and suggest maybe she could keep it down a bit. Which is when she started directing the 4 letter words towards me along with a threat that if I looked her way again she might kill me. Which turned my annoyance into an odd mix of aggravation and anxiety. It wasn’t long before the waitress asked her to leave, and after a bit of a scene, she did. Soon my annoyance, aggravation and anxiety turned into something more like pity. I wondered what had happened in that woman’s life to make her behave like that, wondered if she was dealing with mental illness, if she had a job, if she had friends or family to support her.

Only later did I wonder what Jesus might have done in that situation. Jesus who demonstrates in our Gospel story this morning what real concern looks like in the Kingdom of Heaven.

A leper knelt before him and said, “If you choose, you can make me clean.”

Now let’s pause for just a minute and remember what leprosy meant in those days. Leprosy was a dread disease. Lepers were kept at a distance, barred from the religious community and declared unworthy of God. They were outsiders who depended completely on the charity of others. The book of Leviticus in the Old Testament spends two chapters teaching priests how to diagnose diseases of the skin, how to pronounce lepers ritually unclean, how to perform rites of purification should they be healed. From Leviticus Chapter 13: "The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry out, 'Unclean! Unclean!' As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp.” Lepers were shunned because their disease was contagious, but it was also more than that. It was their pain, their loneliness, their unspeakable fear that no one wanted to catch.

Had Jesus obeyed the religious rules of his time, he would have kept his distance from this man who knelt in front of him. He might have thrown food or a little money his way, but he certainly would not touch him. But that just wasn’t Jesus’ way.

Jesus, we are told, was “moved with pity.” But the original word used is actually much stronger than that. He didn’t just feel sorry for the man; he wasn’t just sad or concerned. He had a profoundly intense emotional response that propelled him into action. His compassion was so intense that he couldn’t help but act.

And so Jesus stretched out his hand and he touched the leper. The Greek word here is actually closer to “caress” – what happened here between the leper and Jesus was that intimate, that holy. And in that touch, that caress, Jesus shattered the boundaries of the proper social order. According to the religious law, Jesus was now unclean and had to keep separate from society; he forfeited his own place in society for the sake of this now-healed leper.

And yet Jesus’ action was entirely by his choice. The leper said that if Jesus chose, he could make him clean. And Jesus responded, “I do choose.” Jesus saw his pain, heard his cries and was moved with compassion to choose to touch him. Just as God sees our pain, hears our cries and is moved with compassion to choose us, to touch and love us. That creative and compassionate choice of God is what defines God’s relationship with us, from the creation to the incarnation to the cross and beyond. And it is what makes it possible for us to make that same choice towards others – to be moved just as intensely with compassion toward those around us – to reach out and touch the untouchable and love the unlovable.

Ours is not a faith that allows us to sit back content with feeling pity from a distance while keeping our hands clean. Our faith is supposed to move us with compassion, compel us to touch.

Of course, it can be a risky road to start down. In our story from Mark this morning, when Jesus heals this leper it changes things not just for the leper, who is now healed and acceptable and can reenter society and be reunited with his family, but also for Jesus. Now that the leper has broadcast the news of his healing, now that Jesus has defiled himself by touching the unclean, life becomes so intense that Jesus can no longer go into a town openly but has to stay out in the country. Both the leper and Jesus end up on a different path by the end of this story than they were on when it began. That might happen to us too, if we really allow our compassion to move us into action. We might be putting our well-laid plans and expectations into jeopardy, we might end up on a different road that we’d originally foreseen for ourselves.

There’s nothing easy about it.

Now, with that lady at the pizza place, I’m still not really sure what the right thing to do might have been. But I think it would have been defined by compassion, and choosing, and touch rather than by annoyance and aggravation and pity. And maybe recognizing that is at least a place to start.  Amen.

Nightwatch

This past weekend, we took a group of middle and high schoolers from St. Aidan's to New York City.  It was a quick trip - left Friday at noon and returned Saturday at 9 p.m.  But full of adventure.  We arrived in time for dinner and ate at a pizza place across from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.  I'm not sure if it was really the best pizza in the world, or if I was just starving and thrilled to have arrived safely.

After dinner, we checked into the Cathedral for its Nightwatch program, which is basically a lock-in.  There were about 80 youth from Connecticut, NY, Maryland, and Virginia, some Episcopal and some not.  They started us out with some ice-breakers.  (This is our group watching the Cowboys, Ninjas, Bears tournament -- lock rock, paper, scissors but more of a full-body experience.)

They had a great band of young and very talented musicians that led music for worship.  We started with a singing downstairs in the gym, where we would later spend the night.



(These girls in front are not from our group.  Being good Episcopalians, our youth never found themselves in the front row of anything.)

 They led us into the Cathedral with no light up there except candles and blasted us with the organ.  After hearing a pretty incredible organ demonstration (including an impromtu riff on Twinkle Twinkle and the Pink Panther theme), they put out a labyrinth and for about an hour our group rotated through it with meditative music in the background.  Most of our youth (maybe even all of them) hadn't walked a labyrinth before.  We have one at St. Aidan's, and I love it, but there's definitely a different feel when surrounded by a Cathedral in candlelight.

There was some free time after that, with lots of basketball playing in the gym below.  At about midnight, we gathered back up in the Cathedral for a midnight candlelight Eucharist.  I was the only Episcopal clergy there so got to celebrate, so now I can say I've celebrated communion at a Cathedral.

Lights went out in the gym at 1:30 a.m. and we slept pretty soundly until 7 a.m.  Breakfast, clean-up, and then a tour of the cathedral, which looked very different by day, with sunlight pouring through all those stained glass windowns.

(Can't remember who this was, but the kids were entranced with his bald marble head.)

We met the resident peacocks (not pictured), packed up our stuff, and headed out into the city.

We took a bus to Rockefeller Plaza so we could see the sights along the way, including Central Park.  We had some serious 30 Rock fans in the group.

We walked to Times Square (where we apparently just missed a flash mob) to people watch and of course make an obligatory visit to the M&M store.  Then by subway to Ground Zero where we walked through St. James Chapel to see memorabilia from that time and saw the new buildings going up.  I was filled with emotion in the Chapel and it was odd to think that the youth with us were just babies in 2001.  But how completely that experience has changed the world for them.

A great trip and a fabulous bunch of youth!

Jonah ... the Rest of the Story

Epiphany 3, Year B
January 22, 2012

In seminary, one of my good friends was always complaining about how the lectionary didn’t include enough of the great Old Testament stories. I hate to admit it, but I always thought it was much ado about nothing until I started preaching and thus really started paying attention.

We go through pretty much all of the Gospels in our 3 year cycle, and get plenty of time with the Epistles, but other than the Psalms we only get one Old Testament reading each week. Only one-in-three of our major readings are from the part of the Bible that is 3 times longer than the New Testament. So I guess it’s not surprising that our coverage of the Old Testament is reduced to snippets and sound bites. But today’s example, from the book of Jonah, is especially egregious.

The miniscule portion of Jonah that we get today is not enough to bother with. It makes both Jonah and God seem like boring and one-dimensional characters, when in reality they are anything but. God is patient and forgiving and has a sense of humor. Jonah is whiny and inept and self-righteous and utterly human. And so in the spirit of completeness and in-depth biblical education, I bring you this morning a dramatic reading of Jonah. (Don’t worry - it’s a short book!)

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah son of Amittai, saying,
God: Go at once to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.
But instead Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board, to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. The captain came and said to him,
Captain: What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.
The sailors said to one another,
Sailor: Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.
So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him,

Sailor: Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?

Jonah: I am a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.
Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him,
Sailor: What is this that you have done!
For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so. Then they said to him,

Captain: What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?
For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. Jonah said to them,
Jonah: Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.

Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. Then they cried out to the Lord,
Sailor & Captain: Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man's life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.
So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging. Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows. But the Lord provided a large fish to swallow up Jonah; and Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying,
Jonah: I called to the Lord out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; how shall I look again upon your holy temple?' The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the Lord!
Then the Lord spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land. The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying,
God: Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.
So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days' walk across. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out,
Jonah: Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!
And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth. When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh:
King: By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands! Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.
When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it. But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said,
Jonah: O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live!
God: Is it right for you to be angry?
Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said,
Jonah: It is better for me to die than to live!
God: Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?
Jonah: Yes, angry enough to die!
God: You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?
The (Expanded) Word of the Lord!  Thanks be to God!

And so with our deepened and improved understanding of Jonah, I now leave you with a few questions:

God had to ask Jonah more than once to go to Ninevah. Is there anywhere in your life where God been repeating a message or trying to get your attention?

Jonah not only didn’t listen to God, he turned and ran the other direction. Is there a time when you turned away from the path God wanted to you take?

From the belly of the fish, Jonah had an entirely different perspective on his life. Is there a time when you have been as low as you could imagine and were able to see your life differently?

Jonah was bitter when he saw God’s graciousness toward the people of Ninevah. Have you ever felt like someone did not deserve forgiveness?
What do you think would come next for Jonah following this story? What might come next for us, all of whom can probably identify some piece of ourselves in Jonah?

Amen.

Responding like the Shepherds

Christmas Eve, 2011
Luke 2:1-20

 This is an odd time of year. There is such an intense build up to Christmas – the stores marketing all the things we need to buy in order to prove our love to people, the pressure from our families to spend more time with them or from our kids to get them this or that, the barrage of holiday gatherings and events. Sometimes it feels like the world is screaming for our attention from so many directions that it’s easy to miss the miracle that we celebrate tonight.

I found myself more frustrated by the world’s hijacking of Christmas than usual this year. The newspaper has been my particular area of anguish lately. First it was the Macy’s ads that caught my eye – the ones telling us to “Believe” – but as far as I can tell, even Macy’s isn’t sure what we should believe in beyond spending money. Then the Bloomingdales’ full-page ads that assault us with their “Nifty Gifty” ideas, none of which cost less than $50. But it isn’t just the ads and the buying frenzy that give me heartburn. In the Kids’ Post this week there was an article summarizing the many holidays that are celebrated this time of year, including an Indian holiday called Diwali, Hanukkah, the Winter Solstice, Christmas and Kwanzaa (in that order). What bothered me wasn’t the inclusion of these other winter holidays, or even their seeming priority, but the way the Post characterized Christmas. I quote: “This important holiday in Christianity is now a major commercial holiday, too, with gifts and shopping and lots of Christmas lights. About 1,700 years ago, the Christian church chose to celebrate the birth of Jesus on December 25, which at the time was the date of the winter solstice. As those celebrations were focused on light, the tradition carried over to Christmas.” The birth of Jesus is mentioned in passing but only after gifts and shopping. And while Hanukkah rated a mention of the miracle of the oil lamps, in the Christmas blurb there is no shout-out to the miracle of Jesus’ birth or to the incarnation of God in that baby. It’s just a birthday celebration for Jesus with lots of shopping involved. Fabulous.

It’s a hard time of year to be still enough to let the Christmas story wash over us. To sink into the mystery and let it speak to us, wherever we find ourselves. And so tonight I offer you the Christmas gift of a journey with the shepherds. Let’s join them as they hear the glorious story of Christmas. And even better, maybe we can join in their response and turn the world’s celebration of Christmas upside down.

“In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.”

So here are the shepherds, out in the fields, minding their own business. Shepherds in Jesus’ time, as you might imagine, were dirty and smelly and poor. They were nobodies with nothing jobs, living outside polite society. When we meet them they aren’t up to much. Just trying hard to stay awake and protect their ovine charges from wolves and whatever other nasty things might come after them in the darkness.

Now imagine yourself out in the “fields” of your life, wherever that might be. Imagine yourself with whatever or whomever the “sheep” in your life are, the things or people that you spend your time with. Just like the shepherds, that’s where our stories so often begin. We are doing whatever it is we do; sometimes life is going along well and sometimes it is messy.

“Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.”

Wherever your “fields” and whatever your “sheep,” can you imagine just being in the midst of your normal, mundane life, and suddenly something like this happens? The shepherds weren’t just surprised or confused or a little anxious about the appearance of the holy messenger before them – they were terrified, petrified, or as Linus puts it so beautifully in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, they were “sore afraid.” Who among us would judge them for that? It would be a pretty shocking thing to have an angel appear before you unexpectedly. There’s no hint that the shepherds were particularly religious people or that they were seeking a God experience. And yet God jolts unexpectedly into their unassuming and anonymous lives, and sometimes into ours, and unsettles everything.

“But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid.” (Angels are always saying that, it seems, always reassuring people that they aren’t out of their minds.) And then the angel continued: “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!’”

God surrounds the shepherds them right where they are, smack dab in the mud and the muck. Ours isn’t a God-up-there, but a God-with-us. Suddenly these shepherds who must have felt so discounted by the religious people and practices of their time are literally surrounded by God, filled with God, shining with God’s glory. Just like for the shepherds, however less than ideal our circumstances may be, however far from home we find ourselves, however little our lives reflect the Christmas cards we send, our God comes among us right where we are.

“When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.”

These shepherds may not have been included in the ranks of the proper religious people; they may not have been able to recite scripture or have been familiar with any of the prophecies surrounding Jesus’ birth. But they immediately recognized the messengers as being from God. And they didn’t stop there, content with their spiritual encounter. They recognized the message as something requiring action from them. They didn’t sit and wonder endlessly about what the angels’ visit meant, or diddle and waffle about what to do next. They sensed God calling them and so they moved - and with haste, no less. Presumably they left behind the sheep in those fields as they ran toward Bethlehem, sensing somehow that what they were about to witness was worth more than their livelihood. We hear this story so often that it sounds more romantic and clean to us than it must have felt to the participants in the story. This baby with nowhere but a manger to lay its head, this seemingly ordinary and common child, was somehow the Savior of the world. I wonder if there are times and places where God might be coming among us and we don’t realize it? Or maybe we even sense it but we’re afraid to act?

“When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.”

The shepherds knew immediately that the story of their encounter with God was news was worth spreading. But what unlikely evangelists these shepherds were! These rough, worn, exhausted nobodies were the first to hear, the first to see, the first to tell of the birth of God-with-us. Over and over again, God surprises us by choosing the lowest of the low to spread the good news. The world around us may focus on the influential, the good-looking, and the wealthy. But not God. God jumps into the thick of humanity and emerges from the very bottom of the heap.

“The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.”

It’s interesting to imagine those shepherds heading straight back to their sheep, back to their grueling jobs and sleepless nights, back to their lives of being looked down upon by the rest of the world. In a way, nothing has changed – God didn’t lift them out of their messy lives into lives of contentment and ease. And yet somehow everything changed for them. They are filled with a whole new sense of purpose and joy; so completely brimming over that they can’t keep to themselves all they’ve experienced. The change for the shepherds, and very often for us, isn’t in where we find ourselves or in what is happening around us but in ourselves.

Tonight we finally encounter the mystery we have been preparing for throughout Advent. Wherever we are, in whatever particular field we may be living right now, the good news and mystery of Christmas is that God has come among us – thoroughly and finally and forever. Christmas isn’t just a birthday party for Jesus; it isn’t just the marking of an event in history. Tonight we remember what has already been accomplished by God in Jesus and the promise of its completion. An entirely new creation was born on Christmas Day. Even if it doesn’t always feel like it, the crater between God and humankind has been bridged. Whatever our fears may be, no matter how ordinary or how unlovable we may think we are, God includes us in His embrace; we are part of the Christmas mystery.  Amen.

The Mystery is All Around You

December 11, 2011
Advent 3, Year B
Isaiah 61:1-3

I know I mention the stories from our Godly Play Sunday School a lot in my sermons, but it really has been a great treasure trove of theology for me. Maybe it’s like that book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, where Robert Fulghum shows how kindergarten laid the foundation for everything that is essential for us as adults (sharing, working well with others, cleaning up our own mess, being patient, and my personal favorite “being aware of wonder”). Sometimes the simple but well told stories, and the quiet beautiful metaphors are just what I need to think about something that I feel like I already know in a new way.

So I’m going to share with you my newest favorite piece of theology from Godly Play by showing you something that the kids do each week of Advent.

During Advent, we are getting ready to enter the mystery of Christmas by lighting candles. Each week, we have a chance to become part of the story. The first candle is for the prophets. They tell us to “Stop. Watch. Pay attention. Something incredible is going to happen in Bethlehem.” The second candle is for the Holy Family – pregnant Mary and Joseph. We are going with them on their journey to Bethlehem. The third candle is for the shepherds. We are with them when they are frightened by that great light in the sky and hear the angels sing their tidings of good news. The fourth candle will be for the wise magi. Along with them, we will begin to follow that wild star in the sky as we make our way to see the mystery for ourselves. Each week, the light grows as we come just a little closer to Christmas, when finally we reach Bethlehem and meet the child who is the mystery we’ve been preparing ourselves for. And so each week, we stop and we enjoy the light.

But then comes the best part. (For me, anyway.) We end the story by “changing the light.” At first, you see, the light is all in one place. But then we can see the light change to be in every place. If you’re sitting up front, you can see the smoke swirling in circles, getting thinner and thinner, spreading out to fill up the whole room. Now you can’t see it anymore, but the light isn’t gone – it’s just changed. This room, the whole world, is full of the light of the prophets, the Holy family, the shepherds and the magi. Anywhere you go, you can come close to the light. No matter where you are, that mystery is all around you.

The mystery is all around you.
Maybe Advent is really a time to be more attentive to what has actually been there all along.

I’ve been reading Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle and just came to the part where she is talking about how artists in the moment of creation are actually in tune with that great mystery which lies underneath our comings and goings and busy-ness. She quotes George Eliot, who wrote: “If we had a keen vision of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of the roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

L’Engle thinks that children naturally seem to understand this better, and I think she’s right. We adults get so wrapped up in our to-do lists, so worried about doing things correctly, that we have trouble letting go enough to really listen and look for what is all around us.

Of course it isn’t just the children or the artists who are capable of this, and yet they can help us remember how to do it. Recently I’ve been taking my youngest daughter, Maya, to Art at the Center for a “young explorers” class. Kathryn Coneway, who owns and runs the studio, sets up balls of clay on the tables with things like popsicle sticks or thread spools for the kids to experiment with. And the long art tables are set with invitingly blank sheets of paper along with brushes and paint. (I get more excited that the kids when she hands around the sparkly silver paint that makes our creations shine.) And there are light tables with brilliant colored plexiglass to build and stack with. The class isn’t for me, supposedly, and yet it has become my happy place. I follow Maya around as she guides me from place to place, poking and prodding the clay, sweeping swirls of color onto the page, stacking up rainbows of plexiglass. She has no agenda, no expected result, nothing to prove to anyone. She is absolutely in the moment. And so am I. On Thursday mornings from 9:30 until 10:30, I am gradually rediscovering and reclaiming the creativity I rejoiced in before lines and rules and order started to prevail. At least for that one hour a week, I have a glimpse into the mystery that we are walking towards, or maybe running headlong towards, this Advent.

And during that hour, I feel like I can understand just a little better what Paul means when he tells the Thessalonians (and us) this morning to “rejoice always” and “pray without ceasing.” We tend to think of prayer as being about what we do in church or maybe silent meditation by candlelight, and that is prayer, of course; but this “pray without ceasing” business is much broader and more all-encompassing than that. There was a French monk named Brother Lawrence who wrote about how he found God’s presence even when he was surrounded by noise and clatter washing pots and pans in the monastery kitchen. Nothing is too mundane for God. I was in a Bible study once with a woman who shared how her early morning routine of grinding and making coffee was where she most reliably felt God’s presence. She said it was as if during those moments she was offering up her day to God and God was blessing whatever might lie ahead. I think it would be hard for us to find anything that couldn’t be turned into a place where we encounter the mystery of God if we slow down and make room for it.

And so, in this third week of Advent, as our pink candle assures us that we have turned the corner towards Christmas, I challenge you (and myself) to stop and pay attention. Not just to the incredible thing that is about to happen in Bethlehem, but to the seemingly un-incredible things that are happening all around you. Watch for the grass growing. Listen to the squirrel’s heart beating. Know yourself to be in the presence of the mystery that was, as is, and is to come.

Amen.