Sunday, December 18, 2016

Advent 4 - A

A SIGN

Introduction

I cannot tell you how many times in my life I have looked for a sign. Some little signal from God to let me know that everything was going to be all right... I have prayed, I have hoped, I have bargained... I have even decided that the sign was there....

Sometimes I make it a 50/50 split with God. “Ok, God, if I drive around the corner and there is a tree still with leaves on it, I am going to take that as a sign that you want me to do this...”

Part of me knows full well that I am talking to myself – that a sign from God would not be leaves left on a tree randomly by the side of the road just when I wanted there to be leaves. I am talking to myself and justifying my decision.

But O for a sign. Some divine answer written across the sky in giant gold letters saying – THIS IS WHAT GOD WANTS YOU TO DO! - I think there are times we all wish the answer was a little clearer, a little more obvious, a little more black and white.

Times when we knew what was the right thing to do.

We have been preparing for Christmas throughout the weeks of Advent by talking about ancient prophesies and bits of wisdom that people were hoping for with the Messiah. We even got nine months out and talked about what Mary was hoping this birth would be.

Well – lets move a little closer now to the due date. Lets advance to the point where Mary is showing, obviously, that she is pregnant – and let’s take a moment to consider this all from a different angle – that of the fiance. I am pretty sure Joseph was looking for a sign. He wanted God to tell him what to do...

Because let’s face it. This was a tough situation. He had not slept with Mary, she was claiming no one ever did, the family and crowds were talking, Mary’s life was on the line, maybe his too... at the very least their reputation was on the line...

The easiest thing and best thing for him would be to cast her out, let her take her own chances, forget about this and move on. After all, it was probably an arranged marriage, it was not really about love yet. He probably hardly knew this girl.

What is the right thing to do for his family? For his reputation? For his carpentry business? Or for that matter, how did he feel about all this?
This is part of the Christmas story too...

With the Kids

- cards and feelings – getting in touch with who we are and what we feel about the season...

Wrestling with the Texts

Have you ever seen a family coping with some stressful situation that seems beyond your own ability? Like a child getting cancer, or a child being born blind, or the death of a ten year old in a tragic car crash...

Almost every time I meet these people my first response is always to say, wow... they are coping with things with such grace, they are being so strong, look at how much love that family has for each other even when things are tough...

I see it every day in other relationships as well. Students looking out for each other, adults struggling with their aging parents, sickness and death taking one spouse... and for the most part what I see is that we are way stronger than we think.

Still....

The other side is true as well. Perhaps, sadly, even more true. We see marriages end, we see kids estranged from parents, we see abused runaways on the street. We see mental illness lead to drug addiction and prison. Just as often as I see people being strong, I see people being broken.

And I know there is a there but for the grace of God moment in all of this.
I have been broken. I have given up. I know what it feels like.

...

Ok, so I want you to see this as very human, I want you to understand that we are made of strong stuff but that any one of us could find ourselves broken by the weight of the world.
Now, look again at Joseph. He is not rich, he does not live in a city where there are hundreds of prospects, he does not come from a high society family, and yet, miracle of miracles, he gets engaged, to a young, seemingly happy and bright women. Her parents have the dowry, it is perfect.

Then she becomes pregnant.

Pregnant because she sleeps around? Pregnant because a Roman soldier raped her? There really is no good possibility here. Think about how a rape victim is treated today. Think about what society thinks of High School students who get pregnant. Think about the rumours when a wife gets pregnant after a man has a vasectomy.

Imagine how bad it was 2000 years ago? There were no women's rights, there were no divorce laws. This was a society where if a man says out loud three times that he is divorced, then he is. A woman is property. A woman exists to serve the man and bear him offspring. Which, by the way, in the thinking of the day do not even contain DNA of the woman – just little versions of the man growing up to carry on the name.

By law Mary must be put to death. By custom Joseph needed to move on and forget about this marriage. By the thoughts going on in the average persons head he needs to get angry and leave her. Why should he raise another mans son? Why should he be with an immoral and untrustworthy woman. Who, by the way, is probably a lair or insane ... saying she has never had sex...

But... we are told... and angel appears to Joseph. He has a vision. This child is going to grow up to change the world.

One night, one vision, one moment in time.... and Joseph marries his young bride and raises this child from another father as his son.

What we often gloss over in these stories is that so many amazing things had to happen for this to work out, including picking just the right step father for Jesus. A man who would believe the ramblings of a crazy young girl and show love and compassion despite all wisdom and tradition telling him not to. A man who would listen to the voice of the angel in his vision and see the possibility that perhaps Mary was telling the truth.

Conclusion

An angel talking to you at night is a pretty convincing sign from God. You could take the story to be telling us that. But I actually do not think that is true.

Scrooge saw a ghost talking to him and managed to convince himself, for a minute or two, that it was only some bad food he ate the night before playing havoc with his thinking.

And we have all done that. Dismissed the sign as being a coincidence. Dismissed the vision as being a dream. Seen someone smile at us and thought to ourselves they really cannot be smiling at us. Had someone tell us they thought we could do it, and known in our heart that we could not.

Joseph could have woken up and forgot about the night before. He could have dismissed it as a dream of wishful thinking. He could have said that God is not real anyway or else why would I be in this situation. He could have done a million things to convince himself to put her away quietly, he even could have put her to death himself. It was within the law.

But he didn’t.

What Joseph did was look in his heart and realize that this person needed the love of God more than anyone in that moment, and he had it within himself to give it.

There are signs around us all day. God is speaking to you right now. And most of us have the ability to hear, if we just accept that life is never black and white and we move into the mystery of Christmas. God did the unexpected and it changed the world. Joseph did the unexpected and it changed the world.


So go out and do the unexpected. It just might change the world.

Monday, December 12, 2016

Advent 2-A

The Peaceable Kingdom

Introduction

Peace, peace... peace... something hard to define, something hard to achieve, something we all long for... peace is something that seems to be desperately missing from our world, and curiously, I imagine it is hard to find in our personal lives around now too with all of Christmas weighing down on us in one way or another.
So what is it exactly that we long for? What do we mean when we talk about peace? The obvious answer is that it is the absence of violence... but when you stop and think about that for a second, we need to ask another question... what is violence...
It may sound like I am going to go all high brow on you and start to talk about philosophical ideas and theological faith responses... but what I am thinking about it actually far more mundane and practical.
I know a couple who just decided this week to end their marriage. Ali has an ex parishioner who is just a young and troubled man whose mother just died of a heart attack. The malls are so crowded that you cannot hear yourself think while you walk around them. Rush hour in this city... My daughter Rachael had the stomach flu. I could not sleep Friday night.... all of this is violence, is it not?
The noise, the busyness, the pain of life all hurts us. It is painful. And we wish we had a break from it. We wish we had peace, just for a moment...
Peace is also one of those things prophets foretold and Jesus came to offer... The Prince of Peace he became known as, the one who would usher in the prophecies of Old.
And so we gather and worship and wait.... but while we wait, we will take this opportunity to think about how to bring Peace into our lives.

Time for the Young at Heart

God's Dream - Nelson Mandela

Of Prophets and Presents

 I have always thought that in order to have true peace the world would have to be a different place - I started this whole ministry thing with the naive hope of changing the world... I guess I was a vey Old Testament prophet sort of guy in terms of my ministry.
The prophets believed people could change. You hear it all the time in the Old Testament; they preached, often fire and brimstone, trying to convince people that they should change… that the world would be a better place if only they could see that they were not living their lives like God wanted them to live.
Some times forget that this was a very practical and political world. Israel was a place where warfare and chaos reigned. When the prophets hoped for changed, when they preached about peace - it was not an abstract thought... how about people stop fighting... how about people grow enough food... how about we learn to conserve water in a drought.... stop focusing on the wrong things and focus on how to make life better.... that would be peace.
And maybe God would send someone to help us get on with it... someone like Elijah... someone like Moses... someone who would be a leader and help us change....
Sometimes we forget that this is the meaning of Christmas.... We have built up such nostalgia and sense of tradition that we think the holly and the ivy, the Christmas lights and turkey smells, the family and love is what it is all about.
Jesus born in a stable and gifts from unexpected sources. Stars and cattle lowing...
But that is not what it was about. Sometimes we forget that only two of the four gospels talk about the whole ‘birth – manger – shepherds in the fields’ part of the story… Only half of the writers thought it important to start with what we pretty much think is the core message of Christmas…
There is something that all four gospels to agree on, however, There is a concrete part that they all agree began the ministry of Jesus... and that is John the Baptist. "Christmas" ... the whole "Messiah" thing... It all starts with a political protestor. So as we consider peace in our time, let's start where he starts.
let’s start with the political and social situation of Jesus. Jesus was born into an awful world, filled with awful rulers… They were governed by the largest Empire ever known, an Empire that was already crumbling with decay and corruption. The Emperor Caesar is corrupt, so is the local governor, so is the Jewish king, and finally, so is the High Priest of God’s very own temple. Every single person of power seems corrupt.
And so God's spirit begins to work in that usual and unexpected way... a nobody appears on the scene... the son of a small time priest named Zechariah. And this man, John, becomes convinced that people need to change, that the prophets were right, that we are off track
So he is all about making the paths straight, all about preparing the way… and his message is one of repentance; of turning your life around and focusing on the things of God. Really, he thought it would be that simple… if we stopped thinking about the ways of the world and started thinking about the ways of God, everything would get better.
Do you know what I have observed in my 23 years of ministry? It is very hard to change the world! No, really.... It is almost impossible to change the world. I have come to see that there is a mathematical formula about change. Changing the minds of four billion people is impossible. Changing the minds of a million people is almost impossible. Changing the minds of a thousand people is impossibly hard. Changing the minds of 100 people is unlikely. Changing the mind of a person is possible.
Perhaps these prophetic dreams of peace were aiming too high?

The Imagination of a Messiah

Some people say John Lennon, from the Beatles, was a prophet. That he was one of those voices that God has spoken through to try and bring us a message about how the world should be.
It was 36 years ago, or will be four days, that John was killed… His song “Imagine” is actually a pretty good Advent Hymn when you think about it. In case you have not heard it this is the chorus...
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one”
The verses have other sentiments about getting rid of the things that divide us, about no more countries or religion, no more politics or greed. It actually sounds really good, and it is really no different a message than when Isaiah and the other prophets were getting at with the whole lion will lie down with the lamb and we will all be at peace; or that someday God will come and restore the justice of the people….
Prophets had hope, they had a sense that the future was one in which peace reigned; and they believed that this was true because of the fact that there was a better way to live.
But what they needed was something Jesus knew all about... the one on one. Jesus did not minister to institutions or even churches. He talked to people. Mostly one at a time and where he met them.
He knew that to change the world you change it one person at a time. Just like Lennon said, I am going to do something differently... I hope you join me... and someday we will see the world begin to change.
This is how we build the peaceable Kingdom Isaiah spoke of and John preached about. This is how we find the peace we all long for, even if it begins with small changes..
So, two weeks into Advent and I am suggesting that we need to have Hope, and seek Peace. I am not telling you how to do it, some days I know that for my own life, and some days I have no idea….
But still, I believe that life is a journey in which we grow and learn and seek to be a better person.

As we approach Christmas, and think about the voices from our prophetic past, I think that they may have been on to something….

Advent 3 - A

Mother Mary 

Introduction

I guess I am on a Beatles kick for some reason, each Sunday puts me in mind of another song... this week it was Let it Be... and particularly the part which goes:

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom
Let it be

And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom
Let it be

What is it about Mary that captures the attention of so many? Perhaps it is that she was so ordinary, and thrust into circumstances that seem so amazingly and mysteriously more than ordinary.

Imagine this unwed and too young mother of Jesus. Whom Angels spoke to and Joseph forgave. Who, if the story is right, accepted her fate and her position with grace and dignity.

This is not life as most of us experience it. It must have been incredibly hard.... her life must have been filled with emotions - fear, pain, even anger... I wonder if part of what we like and admire about Mary is that even in the midst of that she also found joy.

When Mary finds that she is pregnant she goes off to see her already pregnant cousin Elizabeth... perhaps for advice, perhaps to exchange stories, perhaps just to get some rest and let the men folk go off and be men folk.

And what they discover together is that they are happy to be mothers. And that they are happy that God has plans for their children.

Those plans involve helping to make the world a better place, and as we shall see it is totally in line with Gods promises as well as totally in keeping with what has taken place after their births.


The white Gifts

The tradition of White Gift Sunday has its roots in a small Methodist church in Ohio in 1904. What began as a humble way to reflect on the love and devotion of the giver and not the value of the gift has grown into today’s white gift services in many churches across several denominations. The story is told that a minister’s wife initiated the idea to solve the problem of inequity of gifts given at the Sunday school Christmas party. Instead of focusing on receiving gifts, the focus shifted to bringing gifts to Jesus that could in turn be shared with people around the world who did not have much. All the gifts would come wrapped in plain white paper, so that no one would know which was an expensive gift and which was a more modest one. No one would feel ashamed of their gift and everyone would share in the joy of giving to others.

Wrestling with the Texts

The Beatles believed that Mary would come and bring them wisdom. They are not alone in this. Monks worshiped her, poor peasants built shrines to her. Mary is at the heart of the emotional connection we all have for God.

Maybe because she is a mother, and a woman, and those qualities are rare in the Bible and yet important for most people. We all understand what it is to be a parent, and we all know what a perfect mother would be.... whether we are one, or even if we did not have one.

A mother is protective, a mother is fierce, a mother loves unconditionally, a mother has high hopes for her children. A mother gives beyond measure and yet, does it with a smile. Well, our perfect mother would do this.

And again, for many people Mary took on these feminine characteristics of God. Mary was the compassionate one, Mary was the caring one, Mary was the wise one... and became venerated so much that there have been times when the Catholic Church tried to ban praying to Mary - people were praying more to Mary than to God....

As the Beatles reiterate, it is Mary who is standing beside them in times of darkness.... and she is speaking words of wisdom.

So what were the words of Wisdom Mary had to offer in the first place? Surprisingly there were very few of them captured, or imagined, by the folks that wrote the story of Jesus... But there is one place, one poem, one song, that got included.

My soul Magnifies the Lord, sang Mary when the pregnancy became real and the baby kicked for the first time...

And then, like any mother, she goes on to speak of the hope she has for her child.... of the way God will be at work through Jesus. There are some wonderfully high hopes I this song, the powerful being overthrown, the proud being humbled, the starving get food and the rich go away empty handed.

Again, we are talking about a vision of the Kingdom of God ... of what it "could" be like if we finally listen to the wisdom and compassion of God. It sets Jesus up with a huge and impossible seeming task; a lot of pressure on an unborn baby....

But you have to see how this set the stage. This really was the expectation that people had of the Messiah, this really is what people were praying for.

Mary was overcome with Joy because God was finally answering her prayers.... not only her prayers, but everyone's prayers. Could it be that the hope Mary feels is part of the reason that so many people look to her for guidance?

Conclusion

And when the broken hearted people
Living in the world agree,
There will be an answer, let it be

And though the night is cloudy,
There is still a light that shines on me,
Shine until tomorrow, Let it be...

Whisper words of wisdom.... Let it be...

Who knew the Beatles were so into Christmas? Well, okay, that is a stretch... but they were religious in their own way and they were part of the movement of people who believed at the world could become a better place.

And they saw in Mary, the same as we can, a person who sees the joy of life, who sees the simplicity of faith, and who is there to offer us wisdom....

As we approach Christmas we do so with a sense of joy that allows us to see the goodness of the world around us, even as we know there is pain and sorrow. There is so much joy and love, so much hope and peace.... let's celebrate that this year.... knowing that we are helping to birth Gods love into the world once more.