12 January 14 “Miraculous Baptism” Matthew 3:13-17

12 January 14              “Miraculous Baptism”                     Matthew 3:13-17

   There is a push and pull in the beginning of Matthew’s gospel this morning.  Jesus has come from Galilee to be baptized by John. But, John says to Jesus, “No way I am going to baptize you, you need to be baptizing me.” Then Jesus pushes back. “Come on John, give in, you have to baptize me. It is the only way for all righteousness to be fulfilled.”

 We may find ourselves taking John’s side in this argument. After all, this is Jesus, and John knew him to be the promised messiah, the savior of the world. How could John be the one baptizing the savior of the world? Jesus is the one anointed by God to bring about the kingdom of God. Jesus will solve all the problems in our lives and of this world and, with John, we are more than ready for that to happen.

Christmas has passed, the New Year has come, and we are still in a state of shock and recovery. From our pocketbooks, to our waist line, to our need to just get our house and our lives back in order, and into some semblance of normalcy and peace. Please let Jesus come and take over.

 Jesus has come and Jesus is Lord and John wants to hand his life over to Jesus as do we. But Jesus has another idea. He wants to hand his life to John and to us. Can’t Jesus tell we are exhausted?

 Perhaps that is the point.  Charles Allen sees Jesus saying to John, “I have come, not in wrath, not with magical solutions to your problems, or the worlds problems, but to put my very life in your hands, to plunge my very self into your hopes, and into your fears, and into your life celebrations.” And into your exhaustion.

 The good news for us this Sunday of the Baptism of the Lord is that Jesus gets his way. We are joined in a common life with the living Lord, Jesus, our Christ. That common life with Jesus took on new meaning when God  baptized us into Jesus’ life and brought into ours the Holy Spirit. In the ebb and flow of life, the highs and the lows, the good and the bad, the joy filled and the sad, we are occupied.

 As Augustine wrote, in Jesus, Lady Wisdom came to a place where she already was, to become not only our home, but our way home.

 Our way home. God is present in us and it is time we immerse our lives into God’s. All of it. Hopes, fears, celebrations, and exhaustions. That immersion wraps us in Jesus’ love, a love we can then give away. Given away so that others may know joy, hope, God’s grace and peace. We need not get bogged down worrying about the past or fretting about the future or being in recovery. God is interested in us as we are, not as we would prefer to be.

 Thomas Kelly has written, “Between the relinquished past and the un-trodden future stands this holy Now, whose bulk has swelled to cosmic size, for within the Now is the dwelling place of God.”

  Richard Hooker adds, “It pleased Christ in mercy to account himself incomplete and maimed without us.”

  John did not hesitate when he saw Jesus standing ready to be baptized. “I need to be baptized by you,” he said. Jesus did not hesitate either. He knew what we needed more than anything was John’s help, “Let it be so now, that you baptize me, for it is necessary that we do it this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

 It is Jesus intention that we understand that only through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension can we be faithful to Gods right will or way for us to live in the Kingdom of God. Otherwise, we live solely in this place and time without a savior.

 We know the implications of living on our own. To whom will we turn when we feel lost, forgotten, needing healing and love? To whom will we turn for the confession of our sins? To whom will we turn for forgiveness and for salvation? Truthfully, we need to be saved from our human condition.

 True to his calling, John was obedient. When Jesus had been baptized, just as he came out of the water, the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove to rest in him. Then that voice from heaven, “This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

 Seminary professors caution to never try and interpret scripture in isolation of facts. Many of you know, or have heard me say before, doves do not descend and flutter down. Doves swoop, and they are fast. They do not just hover and lightly descend. They can dive like a hawk.  With this image in mind one professor speculates that Jesus just might have been the Holy Spirits prey!

 This certainly changes the way we look at Jesus’ baptism! He was not descended upon gently. He was targeted for baptism by the Holy Spirit, and so are we.

 If we get a bit sluggish about being with God, well, God puts us in the path of this swooping Holy Spirit. You see God has chosen us for great things. True, we are not called to be the savior of the world. But, equally true, God has something great in store for each of us. We are here to love one another, to care for those needing our care. To show the world who Christ is. To glorify God and be pleasing to God.

  The model for surprise is before us. Jesus needed John, and Jesus needs you and me. We are made in the image of God, and whether we want it or not, God created us and God loves us and God’s greatest desire is that we be the example of God’s grace to the world, that we live our entire lives with God. Not on our terms, but on God’s terms.

  A powerful story about God’s terms bears repeating. You may remember the story. It is from Steven Vryhof.  He says, “One Sunday morning, years ago, I entered a Lutheran church in a small village on the coast of Sweden. Perhaps because of the early hour, or the lure of a beautiful summer morning, or the effects of state-run Lutheranism, there were only fourteen congregants gathered. The minister was a slender, blonde lad who had to be fresh out of seminary. I struggled with the Swedish hymns and the Lutheran tendency to stand to pray and sit to sing, the opposite of what I was used to. I joined the others at the front railing for communion, taking the bread and the wine, then returned to my seat.

 While the minister, his back to us, was putting away the elements, a parishioner, a middle-aged woman, returned to the front, this time pushing an old woman, presumably her mother, in a wheelchair. She was here for communion.

 There was an awkward minute as we all waited for the minister to notice the two waiting at the railing. He finally did turn, realized the situation, and proceeded to retrieve the elements. He carefully administered the bite of bread and the sip of wine to the old woman. Then he paused, and I held my breath, because I knew what was going to happen next. The young minister looked at the old woman, physically a wreck of a human being, and he said to her the most important words that one human being can say to another human being. The minister locked his eyes to hers and said, “Our Lord Jesus Christ, whose body and blood you have received, preserve your soul unto everlasting life.”

  At that precise moment, the bells of the church started pealing, ringing and resonating and resounding and reverberating through the church and through me, making the hair on the back of my head stand up. Heaven touched earth and it seemed that Our Lord Jesus Christ himself was saying, “Yes, I will do that!” I will preserve your soul unto everlasting life!

 Then the Father and the Spirit joined the Son, and using words given to Julian of Norwich, the Triune God proclaimed loudly over the ringing of the bells, “I may make all things well and I can make all things well, and I shall make all things well, and I will make all things well, and you will see yourself that every kind of thing in your life will be well!”.

Our souls have been preserved by God unto everlasting life. Our lives have been targeted, we are the Holy Spirit’s prey. We can, with the assurance of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, submit to the inevitable, we are indeed in a state of recovery this morning, but not from Christmas past.

 We are in a state of recovery from ourselves. Yet, we have the assurance that in his baptism Jesus, who was himself sinless, did have sin, ours. He was baptized, washing away our sin. He was crucified, washing away our sin. He was raised from the dead and ascended unto heaven taking us with him. Because we are forever loved, forgiven and saved.

 This New Year, this Sunday of the baptism of the Lord, Jesus pulls us from our lonely recovery efforts to assure us he will always be here with us, to care for us, and to help us, and to love us.

 Heaven now touches earth and Jesus whispers to us, “Yes, I will do that!”

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

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“Home A New Way” Matthew 2:1-12 Jill Boyd

“Home A New Way” Year A, Second Sunday after Christmas Text: Matthew 2:1-12 January 5, 2014 Genesis Presbyterian Church It was Epiphany of last year -- the day we Christians celebrate the revelation of Jesus Christ to the world. It’s the time in our church year when we read about the Magi who follow a star in order to discover and worship the long-awaited Christ child. It’s a time to remember God’s self-revelation through the very human person of Jesus Christ and then marvel once again at how the divine manifests its self. It was Epiphany, and my morning devotional suggested that I read this passage “as if for the first time” and then reflect upon what it would mean to follow the star despite MY fears… what gifts I might bring…and what would it mean FOR ME to go home a new way... I laughed out loud as I read the suggestion and thought to myself, "Isn't that what I've been doing the past three years?!!?" You see, like the magi who set out in search of the Christ child, I too have been on a bit of a journey… When it began, my husband, David, and I were living in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri. He’d been working at the same company for more than 20 years, and it was a place where colleagues felt more like family members than coworkers. Throughout his various roles, he walked with others through the rhythms of their work life, and for most of those years he was very content. So was I! We had a nice home, a church family I loved to learn from and worship with, and neighbors around us who provided me with ministry opportunities on a regular basis. We had a safe, somewhat predictable routine, and to be perfectly honest with you -- we liked it that way. But God started tugging at our hearts and hinting that we were to leave our home and journey to a new place – seminary – both of us! David and I discussed the matter with people we trusted, and we prayed and talked about it with one another. We also enrolled in a couple of classes at a local seminary to test our calls, and we applied to the seminary in Austin that we ultimately hoped to attend. When we learned we were not only accepted here, but awarded scholarships to cover the cost of tuition and some of our other expenses, we were faced with the moment of truth… Were we really going to go? Or were we going to stay in our comfortable suburban lives and continue in our usual routine? I think the fact that I am standing before you (preaching!) makes it clear what our decision was, but let me spell it out for you… At the age of 52, my husband quit his job, we sold our house and got rid of many of our possessions, and we moved from St. Louis, Missouri to Austin, Texas to attend seminary full time. Like the Magi in our passage, we followed God’s lead, and in so doing, we embarked upon a journey that changed the course of our lives forever. It’s a journey that’s still in process, and we have as many unknowns connected to it today as we did when it began several years ago. In many ways, we are not unlike the Magi in our passage today, for there are many unknowns related to them and their journey as well. Who are these men? What is it that makes them wise? And where did that star come from? Was it really just some astrological phenomenon we ought to be able to explain away with science and reason? I’m not going to spend time trying to answer such questions. Folks have been trying to do that for centuries, but the bottom line is: We don’t know. It’s ALL speculation. And at the end of the day, we’re left in the dark when these are the kinds of answers we seek. But if we can keep ourselves from becoming distracted by such matters, it’s the darkness itself that enables us to focus our attention on the light. It’s the light that draws us toward it and into it, as we seek what it has to reveal. It’s the star that alerts the wise men of the arrival of the Christ child, and it’s the light that guides them so that they can come to meet him face to face. It’s the same spark that ignites all of our journeys, including those that take us far away from a familiar place, yet in a direction toward something brilliant and life changing… Our text tells us that the wise men are so overwhelmed with joy upon seeing the child that they immediately kneel down to pay homage and offer him the finest gifts they have... They are overwhelmed…they are overjoyed…and they respond immediately, first with reverence and respect, and then by offering the finest gifts they have… I believe their reaction offers us a clue as to why they eventually go home a different way. From the moment they come into Christ’s presence, they are changed -- once they encounter him, they realize nothing can ever be the same again. I think the wise men go home a different way because they themselves are different. They have seen Christ face to face and a “business as usual” approach won’t work anymore because Jesus is anything but usual. Jesus is the fulfillment of the long-awaited promise of a Messiah who has come to change the world. That Messiah has arrived, and when he is encountered, nothing will ever be same. As unlikely as it sounds, this all reminds me of a 1980’s comedy entitled Planes, Trains and Automobiles, starring Steve Martin and the late John Candy. One of its main characters is Neil Page, who is a happily married man just trying to get home to his family. It’s two days before Thanksgiving -- he’s been out-of-town on business -- and his flight home gets delayed. Hours later, he boards another plane, and he winds up sitting next to a jovial but obnoxious salesman by the name of Del Griffith. Del is also on a journey, though his is one we learn about gradually as the movie goes along. Their initial flight is detoured because of bad weather, and the mismatched duo is forced to combine their efforts in order to make their way back home by whatever means necessary. As you can imagine, it is not an uneventful journey! In addition to cancelled flights, trains break down, rental cars are sold out, a “rent-a wreck” burns up on the highway, and the two strangers have to spend the night together in a seedy hotel room that only has one bathroom and one bed. Del seems to take the challenges in stride, but Neil is miserable about it all. He is willing to do whatever it takes, however, if it will get him home to his family by Thanksgiving. For most of their journey, he is so focused on his own situation that he’s not the least bit concerned about Del and his life. And over the course of time, we learn that Del is a very lonely man... He doesn’t have a home to return to… his wife has died… and he hasn’t been successful as a salesman… When Neil finally wakes up to this reality, he responds to Del with compassion, and he invites him to his home to share Thanksgiving with him and his family. The final scene of the movie shows the two men carrying Del’s massive trunk up the sidewalk together, with one of them on each side of it, sharing the burdensome load. When they step into the warm and well-lit house, Neil’s wife and children scurry to greet him, and then he introduces them to his new friend, Del. Neil Page comes home, but he gets there by taking a far different path than he had expected, and when he arrives, he is a changed man. He has a whole new appreciation for the home and family he’s been determined to get to because his journey with Del has touched him in deep and profound ways. What Neil experiences in his journey with Del is not unlike what the wise men experience in their journey and encounter with Christ. And that’s not unlike what we experience in our life journeys, either. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this passage begins and ends with the wise men traveling. At the onset, they are going in search of the Christ child. When it concludes, they have found him and they are going home a different way. We only know these men as a journeying people, and their journeys are centered in their relationship with Christ. That’s who we are as well. We, too, are foreigners in a strange land, moving in Christ’s direction as we strive to follow God’s lead. Sometimes we sense that presence and heed that call, and sometimes we go about our lives in very different directions. But once we’ve seen the light of Christ, we cannot ignore what it reveals, and a time comes for each of us to respond. But responding to God’s call doesn’t always require leaving our homes or our communities. It doesn’t mean going to seminary or even serving in church leadership. Sometimes it means cooking a casserole for a bereaved family member and then delivering it to him in person along with a hug. Sometimes responding to God’s call means driving a cancer patient to chemotherapy and then tucking a warm blanket around her for the car ride home. Sometimes responding to God’s call means simply staying faithful through a life of prayer and worship. As Christians, responding to God’s call means trusting God to guide us toward something new. One contemporary theologian puts it this way: “it is about Jesus, it’s about being his disciple, it’s about falling in love with God, and having the courage to let that kind of devotion actually change your life...” Choosing to follow the star is a decision to follow God, and when we do that we sometimes find ourselves in new and unchartered territory. That’s where we all are now. We have journeyed together through this Advent and Christmas season, and we have encountered the Christ child. Now that we’ve seen him, we too must choose our road ahead. As we stand at the threshold of another new year, we have the opportunity to commit ourselves for the first time, or to recommit ourselves yet again. We can choose to live in the darkness or we can choose to follow the star and to marvel at where it leads. As we journey forward in to this new year of unknowns, I invite you to read this epiphany passage again. Read it “as if for the first time” and then reflect upon what it means to follow the star despite YOUR fears… what gifts YOU have to offer Christ…and what it means for YOU to go home a new and different way... AMEN.

08 December 13 “Repent” Matthew 3:1-12

08 December 13 “Repent” Matthew 3:1-12 Last Sunday we were admonished to “Stay Awake.” This morning we are to “Repent,” and “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” Someone is trying really hard to help us this Advent season. I realized the other day the change coming about at our house as we sat to plan for the holidays. With family coming, cleaning came up. We could not seem to get beyond the need to make sure the house was clean. Then I thought, what an appropriate way to jump-start our Advent preparation. What if Jesus were to be a guest in our homes? What would we need to clean before he came? Then things sort-of spiraled out of control. If Jesus were to be a visitor where we work, what would we want to be sure we fix up before the visit? If Jesus were to come to a special called family gathering, who would we invite and what sort of celebration would we prepare? If Jesus called and asked if he could come by and sit on the porch with just you, what would your talk about? We are not always the easiest folk to be around. And Jesus, well, Jesus knows us all to well. Jesus’ coming may create so much anxiety we RSVP and decline the invitation. I suppose we can try to decline the invitation. But Jesus is persistent. Here he is extending another invitation this morning. Now, before we begin to suspect these are last minute unexpected invitations we must not forget, this is an invitation from God. There is nothing last minute about God and regardless of the timing, these invitations should excite us. And perhaps we are. Especially when we remember this invite is not for us to come to a place for an event or even to have someone come to our house. This is an invitation to come to a person, to a baby, the baby Jesus. He is the only one who will be our salvation, our Christ, our Messiah. This reason for the season does not surprise us. The fact that the Holy Spirit has worked up an invitation for you and me, well, that surprises us. But, do we really expect anything less from God? God often surprises us with Gods radically different way to see life. This case is no different. The Holy Spirit has promised to arrive into our lives bearing the Christ Child. Surprise! So let’s not be distracted by the world’s booming noise this time of the year. The one saying buy me, you deserve it, go ahead, it is a small price to pay for such deep and abiding pleasure. Let’s not be distracted and miss the critical call from the word in our heart, with scripture and the Holy Spirit saying, come to Jesus, get ready, be prepared, the day is nearing, stay awake, make straight the path. Vast differences are evident in how we respond to our distractions. The ones out there may draw us in to consumer consumption hell. The sort with dire consequences. For we may run out of money and have more presents to buy. To debt we will go. Unless we make Black Friday or Cyber Monday our particular savior that is. The others, in here, may draw us also into hell. Hell of another sort. The sort with equally dire consequences. For we might not pay attention to Advent and miss our savior, lose our soul, and be perpetually lost. Unless, that is, we consider a radically different way to make it through this Advent time to move our body, mind, and soul closer to God. Consider again that invitation I mentioned earlier. One of our own making. A different approach to our usual Christmas preparation, for sure. Consider we seriously were to invite Jesus to our home to share a meal, and visit, and exchange gifts. Consider you were bold enough to invite Jesus to bring you to a time freed from each day’s urgency. Or, can we not let go of our need to clean, and fix, and prepare our external world at the expense of our internal spiritual world? If Jesus were to be a guest in our lives what would it take to not run screaming into the night and instead be comfortably sitting on the couch ready, eyeing the front walk, so we can be there at the door when he knocks? If Jesus were to be a visitor where we work could we be calm, letting our past work speak for itself. If Jesus were to come to a special called family meeting, would we be at peace and celebrate our deep sense of love for one another. If Jesus called and asked if he could come by and sit with us on the porch, would we anticipate his great gift of grace in humble thankfulness and let the gentle porch swing direct the conversation. Or will we sit in our new gentleness and all of a sudden be so distracted the old panic returns and we start thinking, in the presence of God, have I been naughty or nice. It is true! We cannot help ourselves. So we look for ways out. Ways to decline the invitation to move closer to God. But wait. Advent leads to Christmas and it is the baby Jesus who is coming. Oh, thank goodness, the adult Jesus, the one who teaches the right way to live and then judges how we do on the exam is not coming to our house yet. It is the baby Jesus. Why he is still in diapers. What could he ask? “In those days, John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’” There is a crowd of folk who come to see John. Some are there to see him because of his severe reputation. He dresses odd, eats strange things, and does the most curious ritual he calls baptism. Others have come for serious reasons. They struggle with their life. They are not happy the way the world has treated them. They are looking for change, for the hope for a better life. John’s message does not disappoint either group. It is a message for everyone, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.” Part of his truth telling is that God is coming to lead the Jews safely home from their captivity. For that journey, they must prepare themselves. They must prepare also the way of the Lord. By God’s grace, and God’s power they were to change their minds and hearts. They were to make an easy path, not for themselves, but for God. They were to make the way easy for God to enter their lives. They were to make life straight where their living had become crooked. This is the small print on the bottom of our invitation. We begin to make a way possible for right living by first confessing our sins. Then we join John at the River. Without confession there can be no baptism. Romans teaches baptism is a visible sign and seal of God’s invisible grace. Baptism is the beginning point for a true conversion of an inward change outwardly expressed in our way of living that glorifies God and moves us closer to God. The people who came to John, there in the wilderness of their lives, were not the kind of folk who gave up on God. Why should folks with no hope of knowing God come to John? If life has no chance for such hope there really is nothing to look forward to, no reason to get close to the River Jordan. What happens there makes no difference. The people who came to John were not folk who see their life as being perfect. Folk who see their life as being perfect do not come to John for baptism either. Why should they? Life has been perfect. Why mess things up being dunked in a river. What for? John warns these brood of vipers that their comfortable little life is on the way out. A new world, a very different world, the Kingdom of God, is going to come! He is placing a critical choice before them and before us. Have we given up on hope for anything in our lives that would be good? Have we become senile and hardened our hearts and refuse to change one thing in our lives? Are we afraid to invite Jesus into our lives? Or, are we longing to make the pilgrimage to the Jordan. Are we expecting and hopeful that hearing God’s voice through John, or perhaps our favorite scripture, or perhaps our own lives, we are hearing a call for a new life, a fresh start. Be alert then this Advent time as we prepare to accept this life changing invitation to the birth of this baby, Jesus. Be alert to the hope he brings that can be seen all around us. Be alert to where you might see proof of a visible sign and seal of God’s invisible grace in yourself, your loved ones, even strangers. Be alert to see the presence of the holy in the wilderness of the neighborhood park, seeing the diversity there as part of one glorious thread of God’s good creation. Be alert to see the presence of the holy in the wilderness of a shopping trip. I cannot believe I just said that. Jesus, what have I done. Or more appropriately, what have you done. When we dare see the mass of shoppers as one continuous life force of preparation for invisible grace we may have a glimpse of baptism’s sacrament. If our hope is to prepare the way for God’s coming consider living differently in the presence of the holy at work, in school, or at home. See there not right or wrong, good or bad, joy or disappointment, fair or unfair, but a common spirit that moves in the ordinary fabric of our everyday lives. See a spirit that works at sorting out, even in the sometimes murky interior of the human heart, where and how God invites us into the fullness of our being as a Christian. Be alert, dear ones, to these movements in life as part of the way we prepare for the coming of the Christ child and our life of faithful discipleship. God is so very proud of us. God’s love for us is never tarnished. With our eyes now open to the presence of the holy and our most cherished invitation of the year, we see God’s love a little more clearly and we take up our burden and prepare the way and it does not matter much if the house looks clean or not. What matters is the impact on the lives of those around us. For there is life giving hope just a few days away, and his name is Jesus. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen 120813.gpc

01 December 07 “The Nearness of Now” Matthew 24:36-44

It is usually the title that catches my eye. This week it was, “12 Ways to Take Back Christmas, Save Money, & Stay Sane” by Roger Wolsey. This is a piece to take seriously, I thought. Taking back Christmas, saving money and staying sane. What could I lose, except possibly a little time. So, I clicked in. Wolsey began, “I’ve made my peace with seeing Christmas decorations in stores well before Thanksgiving. I’m down with the pagan influences on the holiday. I’m cool with hanging greens, decorating with holly and ivy, lighting yule logs, and setting up Christmas trees. I’m hip to honoring the winter solstice.” He pretty much covered it all and seemed sensible and pragmatic. We just as well be at peace, down with, cool with, and hip to what surrounds our sensibility and is unlikely to go away anyway. This time of the year helps. We get a little rain, it gets a bit cooler. So we are easily drawn to holidays remembered, times when tradition carried over from generation to generation. These days we do things differently, but we still have our nostalgic moments. What Wolsey does not accept or accommodate is the “stressful madness and rush to “be ready for Christmas.” It is particularly irksome to him that some insist on making it all a contest. This is not the season to brag about all the gifts being bought, wrapped, and delivered by December 25th – as if that is the reason for the season. As if that is what this Advent time of preparation is for. One of his Facebook friends posted a status update that proudly reported, “Happy to have all of my Christmas shopping completed.” The posting was on November 22. Then came a flood of comments. Folk were either in competition – noting they too have most or all of their shopping done, or they were shamed by those braggarts with their own over-reactive confession they are “nowhere near ready and need to get busy shopping to be ‘ready’ for the big day.” Anxiety and frenzy and competitive shopping. Oh, what a delight we have become. Into this torrent these strange scriptures of Advent come. They are strange because of what is happening in the incarnation. God becoming human in Jesus, is strange and new. “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers,” says Paul to the church at Rome. God is coming near to us, this strange “Son of Man’ who comes life a thief in the night, according to Matthew. How are we to think and react to such strange newness? Wolsey points out, it was not until several centuries into Christian history that the birth of Jesus became something for Christians to celebrate. Starting in 336 A.D. celebrating the great joy of Jesus’ resurrection at Easter had always been the big event. For the longest Christmas was a rather low-key time without much hoopla, let alone anxiety. When a holiday marking Jesus’ birth was created the focus was on Advent – the five weeks leading up to Christmas. Advent is a time of “waiting” and is sort of a “winter Lent.” Christmas was originally a time of fasting and prayer reaching its triumphant birthing in a twelve day holiday of breaking the fast and feasting that ends the day before Epiphany. In 1823 when Clement C. Moore wrote his famous poem for children, “A visit from St. Nicholas” things began to shift. You may remember the poem. “Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse . . . ” But, we should not fixate on the night before or the day of Christmas. Christmas is not a one day holiday. There are twelve days of Christmas and there is no Godly reason for any of us to have our shopping done before those twelve days have come and gone! Jesus, it seems, was probably born in the spring anyway. The coming of the Son of Man, according to Matthew, will be like the story of Noah and the flood. Those who are not awake, those who are unprepared, they will not hear the good news; they will not know Jesus is coming. We, however, are aware. We have heard the good news, we know Jesus is coming. Yet, each year, we allow ourselves to be distracted. Before all hope is lost, Jesus redirects us, again, to “keep awake.” This is critical; we are to keep awake for we do not know on what day our Lord is coming. Always be ready, Jesus says, the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. As we are sucked in to the holiday craziness and join the chorus saying how we are nowhere near ready for Christmas we come to church and find yet another thing we have forgotten to do. How do we ever add “keep awake” to an already impossible “to do” list? How do you ever check something like that off? Once checked off, our task is usually forgotten. Keeping awake for Jesus, watching for God’s presence, is not something we should forget. It is like remembering to take a breath every moment of the day and night. We might check it off, but we do not want it to go away. What then are we to do? This is Advent and the calendar says Jesus’ birth is in 25 days. I know, we can move “keep awake” to our worry list. There is always something on that list. Some things have been there for decades. Setting “keep awake” aside from our to-do list will free us to rejoin the rush to finish whatever we must finish before Christmas. I wonder though, are our mania and our worry in any way coming from a place of faith? I think not. Perhaps a better approach to “keeping awake” is to be hard-wired for Jesus. To be hard-wired for Jesus would be strange and new and have him be as automatic in our lives as our breathing, or our need to eat and sleep. If we truly immerse ourselves in and savor Advent in this new way we would always be prepared, so when Jesus comes we will not only be awake, we will be ready. What if we top our list with an Advent reminder to take some time to go inward and think about our life and our God. Just to think about God glorifies God. This Advent time is our time to slow down, to not allow our getting ready for Christmas to replace giving life to Christ. The coming of our Messiah and the intentional celebration of the amazing gift of Jesus’ life in ours requires our participation. Jesus will not be here without us. We are necessary for God’s participation in our world. God cannot be God without us. Brother Lawrence knows of this strange and new way to be Advent ready. He suggests, “God does not lay a great burden on us, (God only asks for) a little thinking of God, a little adoration, sometimes to pray for grace, sometimes to offer God your sorrows, sometimes to thank God for the good things God does. Lift up your heart to God even at meals and when you are in company. The least little remembrance will always be acceptable to God. You do not have to be loud. God is nearer to us than we think. You do not have to be in church all the time in order to be with God. We can make a chapel in our heart, where we can withdraw from time to time and converse with God in meekness, humility, and love. Everyone has the capacity for such intimate conversation with God, some more, some less. God knows what we can do. Get started. Maybe God is just waiting for one strong resolution on your part. Have courage.” We do not stop living when we make a chapel in our heart. Remember, in Matthew’s gospel, two were in the field, working. Two were grinding meal together. Life and work did not stop for contemplation and wandering in the wilderness. We go on living, knowing God’s desire is for us to know Jesus and to love him and celebrate him as the very fabric of life. God desires we recognize his thread, Jesus, as being God’s grace and be ready with hope when God’s Kingdom comes. In the 1980’s, before Vaclav Havel became president of Czechoslovakia, when his country was ruled by the communists, he wrote: “Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it’s a dimension of the soul . . . Hope in this deep and powerful sense is . . . an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed . . . It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually to try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do here and now.” It may be we feel our conditions are hopeless. But Havel says we are to hope for something simply because it is good. Not because it stands a chance to succeed. This is the sort of hope which gives us the strength to live and keep going and see God’s coming as an enabling of that hope. The hope from God is a hope that realizes even though time is short and times are tough, Jesus is coming. Jesus is coming into our lives to be our savior, to be our savior from the darkest of nights. That is a very good hope. It is a lifesaving hope. It is salvation nearer to us now than ever before. It is God coming near to us because God has great plans for our lives. Our duty is to be ready by realizing God is with us in the simplest of our day- to-day. To be awake is to see and feel and engage with God in those moments and receive God’s grace and peace. That, dear ones, is our Advent hope. It is not a great burden, it begins with a little prayer, a little pause for thanksgiving, a little courage, and fills us with such a profound calm we fear nothing. For what can frighten us when we are with God? Not a bad way to take back Christmas, save money, and stay sane. A twelve day party isn’t so bad either. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen 120113.gpc

25 November 07 “A Newfound Friend” Luke 23:33-43

First, let’s find our bearings this cold, wet, and dreary morning. Today is Christ the King Sunday and I wear white, representing holiness and celebration. Appropriate as we dedicate our pledge cards for the 2014 budget. Oh yes, 2014 is just around the corner. Thursday is Thanksgiving, of course, and then Black Friday. Advent begins next Sunday and we are four and one half weeks away from Christmas.

I know, I know. In finding these bearings there may be a touch of apprehension, a nudge of anxiety, a morsel leading to full on pre-holiday panic. So, we come to church for a moment’s peace, a bit of good news to stem the tide as our lists of things to do creeps, or leaps, to page two. As getting ready smothers us with more than we can possibly do.

Then the gospel is read and our shoulders droop, our countenance slumps, our peace becomes panic. Jesus is crucified. This isn’t passion week! Jesus is crucified and we are consumed with getting ready for the holidays. Our getting ready has now taken on a hopelessness we had not expected. Perhaps we should set the white stole aside.

Or, could it be that is exactly the point? Could it be there is something more important than the holidays, something more important that we need to get ready for? Should we set the list of today’s priorities aside, just set it aside for a bit, and listen again to Luke? Because this just may be the most important time of the year for us.

Might this time be the threshold to preparing ourselves for both the obvious and the not so obvious, where we might grow, strengthen and explore the boundaries of the soul.

For the obvious, it is too late if we are not in a “get ready” mode. Do you know someone who is a seasoned midnight madness shopper? Jumped through Advent to Christmas and the tree is up, perhaps more than one. The stores still have turkeys for Thursday you know. Macy’s in New York has dusted the floats for their parade, and, yes, Santa will be there. The movie, “Miracle on 34th Street” proves that!

The painfulness of the obvious is, it is too late to turn back now and hope we catch up later. The costs are adding up. Not just financially, in other ways as well.

We obviously have much to lose if, as Suzanne Guthrie has written, we skip over our “season of longing, deep chance, and dark anticipation. Without Advent, without the soul’s journey in tandem with Mary and Joseph, will we even notice the Divine interrupting our ordinary life? How will we discern that gentle star rising upon the horizon obscured by premature holiday glitter? If we do not enter deeply into Advent, how shallow will our transformation journey be toward Galilee, Jerusalem, the cross, the empty tomb, Emmaus and “the ends of the earth”?

We either prepare for God’s grace, or, like the unprepared bridesmaids, we will have lamps, lives, empty of the essential fuel needed for our eternal truth, Jesus Christ.

Could this be our calm before the storm to take that hard necessary look and do an about face, preparing ourselves for life with Jesus in ways not so obvious. Could it be something is hidden. Could it be that woven into the fabric of the costs this time of the year generates with our efforts, physical and emotional, to please the world, God has provided a balance we have missed?

We worry about getting together, but we feel God’s grace when we do. We worry about old wounds being reopened, then we find again the love that has been lost by our separation. We worry about the house being clean, the food coming out right with enough for everyone, then we find our bodies full and our souls enriched.

Then, perhaps more importantly, and this creeps in at a deeper level each year, there is the cost to our hearts. We miss more folks who are not going to be here with us. We will never be ready or prepared for that truth. How can we?

Jesus is as prepared as any human can be for this time in his life, for the place and the gathering of people where he was crucified. But he too struggled with the possibilities of separation from loved ones, even crying out that God might spare him from this time. Yet, Jesus is obedient. He is forever praising God and praying God’s will be done. Hidden there in the presences of the cross is his faithfulness balanced with love.

In our story, it was a crowd of people who crucified Jesus. His crucifixion was not the act of any one person. There were many that day. They cast lots to divide his clothing, they stood by watching, doing nothing to prevent his suffering. They scoffed at him and mocked him.

Though loved by many, Jesus was about to die. He was about to be taken forever from them. We are never ready for the raw pain of that truth. How could we ever be?

But Jesus knew the way. He knew the way to prepare for ultimate and utter despair. It is a way that may not be so obvious. By first being faithful, then living every day with love in our actions, not for ourselves, but for others, we ground ourselves in the only way possible. For Jesus is that way, that truth, that life.

But the hardness cannot be avoided. In his final human act, his death, Jesus paid a great cost. He lost everything. His life, his family, his friends, his life’s calling. Lost, gone forever. His lesson is our lesson. We will lose it all too. We will lose the “I” that is “me.” And we are weak and afraid.

“One of the criminals who hung there kept deriding Jesus and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we have indeed been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

The other prayed, “Jesus, remember me.”

Holidays are filled with memories. Good and bad, joyous and sad, we remember them all. This time of the year draws those memories back from their slumber to rekindle and re-flame and stir us again. Jesus remembers them too.

He remembers the group of people, the “they” who persecuted him. He remembers his family and friends who were there that day. He even remembers the two criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Jesus remembers them all.

He remembers them all and he died for them all. And he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do now know what they are doing.” And miracle of all miracles, they were all forgiven. Every one of them, forgiven. How do we get ready for these amazing truths? How do we get ready for “Advent’s call to simplicity, poverty of spirit, and conversion”? We get ready by doing the one thing that will always save us from ourselves and our anxiety.

In humility and with honesty, we ask Jesus to remember us. We fall on our knees, we bare our soul and we pray, “Jesus, remember me. Though I am not worthy, remember me, and help me. Help me pledge my life to you and help me prepare my soul for your coming again into my life.”
When we ask Jesus to remember us we are assured time and time again, Jesus does remember us. And even more amazing, time and time again, Jesus loves us to forgiveness, each and every one of us, even when we do not know what we have done.
Isn’t it the truth? We do not have a clue what we are doing trying to live a relatively decent life. Trying to live faithfully what we believe God would have us do. Truly we are like those others Jesus prayed for, we do not know what we have done.
Yet, Jesus knows us, and Jesus forgives us. Again. Because Jesus remembers us. He remembers us from our being prepared in our mother’s womb to our first day on earth and until this very moment. He remembers us and he loves us warts and all.
So we do the best we can. Life will not wait for us. So, we plan for the holidays and for life. We make ready for today and tomorrow and the days to come.
In our faithful desire we carve out a moment to glorify God with what we say and do. We strengthen our soul forgiving those needing forgiveness. We push the boundaries of our soul, and emotion, remembering those needing remembering. We fill our spiritual hunger by loving those needing love.
We do these things in the fog of our existence knowing we are seen and remembered and reside in the arms of the powerful truth of who Jesus Christ is; our God.
“Jesus has no greater friend that the most desperate person who asks to be remembered, to be given one more chance at grace, at forgiveness and salvation. Jesus came into the world to save such a person, a person just like you and me.”
Perhaps Julian of Norwich said it best, God “did not say: You will not be troubled, you will not be belabored, and you will not be disquieted: but (God did say), you will not be overcome. God wants us to pay attention to these words, and always to be strong in faithful trust, in well-being and in woe, for God loves and delights in us, and so God wishes us to love God and delight in God and trust greatly in God, and (then) all will be well.”
He is our Jesus, and all is well. He is the one who replies to our plea for remembrance, “Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen 112413.gpc

17 November 13 “Newness”

  It is rare to find someone who has lived in the same place their entire life. Sure, there are those who hold on to the old place. We still own the land and small house my grandfather built before my dad was born. But often the best we can do is hold that place in our memories. Memories make it easier to go back, if just for a moment.

  Mostly we ramble and move about settling in wherever we find convenience or circumstance takes us. Even when it is not our “dream” place, we make due. We find comfort in our things, setting up house the way we do, making friends, figuring out the way to the store, and church of course. We settle in and make home, home.

 Jesus seems to flip those feelings on their head this morning. Forget about settling in; forget about being content with the familiar and comforting. No, Jesus quickly moves us away from feeling grounded in the familiar and comforting. His story creates, quite honestly, a new level of discomfort in our familiar and settled place when we admit to what Jesus is promising. No matter where our life finds us, our familiar comfort has a very short future.

 During Jesus’ time, the center of religious life in Jerusalem was around the temple. It was vast, it was beautiful, and it was a familiar and comforting space for all who came there. Quoting from Isaiah, Jesus reminded everyone the temple is first and foremost to be their house of worship. The temple was to be that bedrock place where his followers should never worry about what it was for and its place in their familiar and comforting life.

 As our reading shows, those with Jesus understood this teaching. Indeed, the Temple was their place to worship. They revered it as they admired its physical nature, its stature. They were impressed by how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God.

  But, Jesus warned them, as he warns us, about being too closely attached to physical space or adornments, be they in temples holy or secular. Jesus’ prophecy is that they will all end. He says, “As for these things that you see, the day will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

 These first century folk understood about life and death, about how quickly the familiar can be taken away. Life for them was harsh. So, they did not argue with Jesus when he claimed that the world as they knew it would end. They accepted his teaching and asked the obvious question. When will it happen? How much longer do we have?

  Jesus’ answer was not so direct. He knew how vulnerable we can be to earthly influences and end-of-time predictions. Even in our time, we hear the prognosticators say “This is it, this is the end.” Thankfully, I suppose, we have always woken to worry another day. The truth is, the crisis in our lives have created a sense of doom about the future. All too often we have good reason to worry like we do.

  In a way, it may be easier to follow along with the doomsday prophets and their promise of a way out. If we will just listen to them, do what they say, turn our life over to them, and our money, we will be alright. They promise.

 But, Jesus warns us about short cuts. We are to beware, to not be lead astray by those who come into our lives and say, “I am the one.” I am the one with the truth about your life and future. I promise, I am the one, “The time is near.” So, come and follow me, for your time is running out.

 How often have we nodded in agreement when the futurists or political pundits predict a sure fired economic, or political, or personal end to life as we know it? Can we not count on the elections of the future to be like those of the past predicting doom and gloom if we do not vote a certain way?

 To be truthful, we are almost always disappointed with any attempts to correct the present or the future, aren’t we? Whether through our own efforts or those of others, we are left with some things that worked better and some things that were a bust. I suspect it is the unpredictable that catches us unaware. The time is near and our time is running out. We must surely do something or all heck will break loose.

 The theologian John Howard Yoder said the church needs to help people take a “minority perspective” about life. A majority perspective assumes that by power, wealth, organizing, or hard work we can get things to turn out the way we want. A minority perspective, on the other hand, never makes those assumptions.

 A minority perspective church seeks to embody and be witness to the way of Jesus, without embracing worldly powers, or wealth, or influence. A minority perspective church uses imagination and learns to survive over the long haul.

 Yoder says, “In Christendom, both optimism and despair are correlated with the direct reading of how it is going for us in the rising and falling of power structures.” But the minority perspective community learns to hope even when things seem to be going badly – “not only because we have heard promises from beyond the system, but also because we have learned that sometime our pessimistic reading for the present are shadowed too much by taking some setback too seriously.”

  There is a story about a visit a pastor had with a man as they sat on his patio looking out on a small lake surrounded by new and attractive town homes. The pastor commented about the beauty of the setting and asked the man how he had decided to move to this new place.

  He replied, “I didn’t. I was forced to move here. The highway department planned a highway that cut right through our farm, land that I inherited from my parents. Of course, he said, I never farmed the land. But I sure enjoyed living there. When he heard that the state was going to condemn the property, he was sick. He thought it was the end of everything. This land had been the only place he had lived his entire life.

 But then he and his wife moved by the lake. As he thought about it, he said, “Frankly, it was the best thing that ever happened to us. He and his wife loved it there.

 As he though a moment more, he said, “It is kind of sad that you have to be forced by the State Highway Department to do what you did not have the courage to do on your own. I thought they had just killed me. As it turns out, they gave me a whole new life.”

  Within this man’s new understanding we find the meaning of our gospel message from Luke. There is amazing grace and eternal hope for us when we have the courage to live with a new confidence about our endings and beginnings with God. We find the good news of the gospel this morning in the sure message that our God is a God alive in us and our lives. Our God is a God who brings life out of death, who creates new worlds out of old chaos, fear and trembling.

 In Luke’s truth, Jesus comforts us, “Do not be terrified, even though we will be thrust into this world where our worries may overwhelm us.” Not a hair on our head will perish. By our endurance we will gain our souls.

 A few years back I attended a symposium on the German theologian Karl Barth. One of the speakers reminded us that the word of God automatically places us in a state of crisis when we accept it. When we submit to God’s holy command, all heck breaks loose.

 It began when Jesus asked us repeatedly, “Do you love me?” Do you love me? Is it not the case that once we say yes our life is never the same, and there is no turning back. Do we love Jesus and are we prepared for the crisis that will come in our lives when we do?

 Jesus says, “As for these things that you see, the day will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

  “Do you love me?” Jesus asks. If so, create a crisis in your life and feed my sheep.

 The depth of our experience of God’s grace will mirror the depth of the experience of our sin, our pain, our suffering, even our cries to God for help. God responds to the depth of our despair with the power of God’s grace.

 Do you love me, Jesus asks? If so, create a crisis in your life, come and follow me.

 Jesus tells us, “You will be betrayed even by relatives and friends…you will be hated by all because of my name. But, not a hair on your head will perish.” Our God, as it turns out, will lead us to a new life.

 Do you love me, Jesus asks? With our answer, our halting, and trembling, yes, God calls us to be a servant to his son, Jesus Christ, our Messiah. A full time servant, living the full cost of receiving God’s grace as we join God’s prophetic work in the world. Bringing hope and health and calm in the midst of chaos and crisis. Bringing grace through Christ’s peace and our life as God’s servant. This, dear ones, is a new and frightening life!

 Each of us has been assured, temples will fall; there will be suffering and death. Yet, God will not fall. God will bring new beginnings, a new age to come. So, we let go of our familiar comfort and give a great sigh of relief. The State Highway department does not force the end of anything.

 But, loving Jesus does. Loving Jesus forces the end of everything. Yet, loving Jesus also brings about our final move and our new life. The beginning of everything that really matters to our life and to the world. The beginning of our prophetic hope, hope in our present and eternal life in the Kingdom of God, filled with God’s grace and God’s love.

   Loving Jesus brings us to God’s kingdom, where not a hair of our heads will perish. Where by Gods goodness and our endurance, we will gain our eternal souls, as we live in the power of our living God.

 Do you love him? I don’t know. But I do know he loves you terribly and with everything he has ever lived for, he prays you love him in return.

 

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

03 November 13 “Jesus Saves” Luke 19:1-10

03 November 13                             “Jesus Saves”      Luke 19:1-10

In Flannery O’ Conner’s first novel, “Wise Blood,” Ms. O’ Conner presents a host of characters seeking salvation. Not once do they realize they have to first let go of themselves. Hazel Motes, a man with a woman’s first name and the hero of the story, is caught up in an unending struggle against his own innate desperate faith. Naming men Hazel is just one of the ways O’Conner insures tragic events in her novels.

 Hazel falls under the spell of a “blind” street preacher names Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Lilly Sabbath. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Hazel founds “The Church of God without Christ.” Even so, he is still side tracked in his efforts to lose God

 He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with “wise blood,” who leads him to a mummified holy child, and whose crazy maneuvers become an inseparable part of Hazel’s delusion filled human struggles.

 O’Conner and her characters portray life as a constant struggle with redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blinding’s, and wisdom longed for and lost. To make her point, she parodies our human obsession with seemingly important things in our desire for redemption. As one example, she pokes fun at us about our obsession with cars. Well, some of us seem obsessed with cars. Early in the book, Hazel assures himself that, “Nobody with a good car needs to be justified.” He proudly proclaims this street truth while using the hood of his car as a pulpit for his “Church Without Christ” ministry. Salvation does not come easily to the street proud.

   O’Conner is dark and her characters are dark. She reveals the rawness of the human character while exploring how precarious our life is. So precarious, we stand on the edge of the abyss of our human conditions and cannot avoid its pull.

 From Luke, Zacchaeus’ story is also about the human pull to the abyss and our desperate attempts for salvation. Unlike O’Conner, he shows us the sure way from that abyss of despair to the firmness of hope and the changed life that avoids the all too common “Church Without Christ.”

 Zacchaeus’ story contains a simple, yet powerful truth. Our salvation comes in the life changing presence of Jesus Christ. Our salvation is not rooted in our life goals, our stuff, our station in life, how we present ourselves to the worldly powers, or our self-redemption efforts. No, our salvation, our justification is not in powers or principalities. It is in a person, Jesus of Nazareth.

 Zacchaeus’ only desire is to try to see who Jesus was.  But, the crowd stands in his way. So he ran ahead, climbed a sycamore tree. He was desperate to see him. But, Jesus sees Zacchaeus first. In that instant, with desire in his heart for Jesus, with Jesus looking his way, during that surprising moment of human connection, Zacchaeus is saved. He is pulled from his dark abyss. Jesus tells him, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house. I would have tried to rush home to at least tidy up.

 But, Zacchaeus never makes it home to straighten his life. He hurried down from his tree and was happy to just be with Jesus. He did not need to worry about worldly things. He was happy to simply, yet powerfully, welcome Jesus into his life as a friend,  and as a loved one.

 The most amazing news, Zacchaeus’ attempt to improve his human condition did not begin with Zacchaeus. It began with God. We may not realize God has been pursuing us all along. We may think we come to some place in our life and decide to follow Jesus. No, it began with God.

  It is first God’s desire that we be in relationship with God. It is Jesus’ seeking us with his gifts of grace and love that saves us. This is the good news God wants to share. Especially this All Saints morning as we remember loss and sadness.

 Our salvation comes in the loving, life changing presence of Jesus Christ. It is a presence that is with us in Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit in our baptism. It is a presence that comes to us through the nourishing and forgiving bread and cup of this communion table.

 Yet, scripture challenges us with the notion that our salvation is not yet complete. We live in a life filled with the abyss of our human condition, sin and ultimately death. We live in a world where the powers of evil invade our lives without mercy. We realize, like ourselves, Zacchaeus had not been a model citizen. Too often he had yielded to the temptations of his position. All that changes when he realizes Jesus has always been in his heart.

 The truth is, when Jesus fills our hearts with his grace and love we are forever changed.  We become more Christ like, I believe.

 Zacchaeus does more than promise to stop his evil ways. He offers to correct his past wrongs and he offers to live differently in the future. He tells Jesus how he intends to change his life.

 Notice that Zacchaeus initiates this response. He is seen by Jesus, but Jesus does not tell him what to do. Zacchaeus has a free will. But, having a free will does not give us the freedom to do whatever we want to do. No, we have a free will so we will do what is right.

 By searching our hearts, we know what to do with our life. By listening to our inner voice, we correct past wrongs. By following Christ’s voice, we  live our lives peacefully and purposefully in service to God and one another.

     There are many ways we can live this new way. Jesus modeled them for us.  One way is to see our relationship with the poor and outcast in society differently. Searching our hearts, hearts filled with God’s love and grace, it is possible for us to see all people in a new way, in a new relationship as sisters and brothers with Christ.

 Another way is to see our relationship with our family differently. Listening to the inner voice of God we recognize our family and friends as God’s chosen who are just as forgiven, just as loved, and just as needy, and nurtured as we are ourselves.

 Another  way is to see our relationship with the peoples of the world differently. Be they from another country, or culture, or religion, or point of view. Following Christ’s voice, we hear the common voice of humanity. Brothers and sisters of the same loving God, be they Democrat, Republican, Tea Party, Muslim, Jew, Gay, or straight.

 Truthfully, our seeking God may begin with a longing that is like no other. It may begin with an experience that opens our eyes in ways we had never seen before. It may begin with our surprising surrender that creates an even more surprising connection  between ourselves and God.

I recently read of such a connection with a young man named Ben Breedlove.  The article began, “Ben died three times in December 2011. The last time, on Christmas day, he did not wake up.” Ben was an 18 year old senior at Westlake High School  with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. The condition causes the heart muscle to thicken. When Ben was 4 he had a seizure. He had recently asked his mom, “How do we know if we get to go to heaven?” His mother says, “Right there in the car, Ben prayed telling God he wanted to go to heaven one day.” Ben did not die during the seizure, but it was the first time he saw a white light above him that no one else could see. He said he knew it was an angel.

 On December 6, 2011 Ben fainted at school, and his heart stopped. That is when Ben says he went to the waiting room of heaven. He knew he was dying. He later wrote it was the same bright light he had seen when he was 4. “I couldn’t stop smiling,” he said, “I then looked at myself in the mirror. I was proud of myself, of my entire life, everything I had done. It was the best feeling.” He made a video about the experience and said “I wish I never woke up.”

 Ben later talked about his experience with his sister, Ally. He said he wanted to go back to that peaceful place. He told her he thought God let him see the white room so he would not be afraid of dying. “And so I would know that heaven is worth it.”

 Ben died again December 17, but a bystander did CPR and Ben revived.  After this visit to heaven Ben prayed: “God, I pray that my family wouldn’t be sad or scared for me anymore, because I’m not sad or scared. I pray that they would have the same peace I have. And I’m okay with whatever God decides.”

 Christmas day around 4:45 p.m. Ben collapsed for the final time. The dark abyss of his human condition had become his hoped for bright abyss of heaven.

 How often in scripture do we read of Jesus telling us to surrender our lives to him? We surrender it to something, why not to him? How often are we told to leave everything in this life and come and follow Jesus to be his disciple where we will know his grace and his promise of eternal salvation? Often enough to realize his way is the true way to love more deeply, give more freely, and be grace filled with a life of unending joy. Unending joy, even when hearing about Ben and remembering our dear ones this day of remembrance.

 Like Zacchaeus, and Ben, and those faithful servants now gone, we seek a peace that is greater than this world knows. A peace where hating and hurting will no longer be. Zacchaeus sought his peace by climbing a tree, we seek ours with the mind and emotion numbing clutter of our lives. We are all seeking something greater than what the pains justify in our lives.

 Then Jesus shows up. Casually walking in our direction with eyes locked on us. He sees us, the one he has always desired, he reaches out to us, calls our name and brings us out of our tree. He comes up that tree wherever  the height or depth of our lost-ness has taken us, to save us.

  For Jesus climbed onto his own final tree, the cross. He sought us there, to speak our name to God, so we will forever be loved, forgiven and saved.

 We are to no longer be sad or scared for we have been found in a peace, a white light, a brightened abyss, where we will not stop smiling, where we will be proud of our lives.

 That peace is Jesus Christ and with him we move beyond the questions of this world and into a life greater than our own, that of the Kingdom of God. Living always to the will and glory of God.

 The poet and author Christian Wiman explains it this way:

“My God my bright abyss

into which all my longing will not go

once more I come to the edge of all I know

and I believing nothing believe in this.”

My God, my bright abyss.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen

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