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Awe and Anxiety.

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PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

That truth has been inscribed into our heart and into the heart of every human being, there to be read and reverenced, thanks be to you, O God.

That there are ways of seeing and sensitivities of knowing hidden deep in the palace of the soul, waiting to be discovered, ready to be set free, thanks be to you.

Open our senses to wisdom’s inner promptings that we may give voice to what we hear in our soul and be changed for the healing of the world, that we may listen for truth in every living soul and be changed for the well-being of the world.

– John Philip Newell. 

Old Testament Readings                  

Isaiah 6:1-13

A Vision of God in the Temple

6 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty, and the hem of his robe filled the temple. 2 Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 And one called to another and said,

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”

4 The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. 5 And I said, “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 The seraph touched my mouth with it and said, “Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.” 8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I; send me!”

New Testament Readings     

Luke 5:1-11

Jesus Calls the First Disciples

5 Once while Jesus was standing beside the Lake of Gennesaret and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, 2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. 3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. 4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” 6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to burst. 7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’s knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” 9 For he and all who were with him were astounded at the catch of fish that they had taken, 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” 11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

It’s scout Sunday, so I always try to think of some adventurous sport for this sermon!  So, I thought of fishing!  

I grew up fishing with my dad.  I have to admit, I wasn’t good at it and didn’t particularly enjoy it.  I think it was because it was something my dad loved, and really wanted me to love it…but, I just didn’t.  It seems like a lot of times growing up, I had passions for some things like adventures in hiking mountains or sports, where as my dad had other passions such as fishing, carpentry, and classical music.  

As I grew older, I had some deep friendships with folks who were great fisherman.  I began to realize that fishing can be a fun exercise.  It’s peaceful, strategic, and there is an art to it.  I have been amazed at some of my friends with a gift for fishing.  They simply know where to put their lines in the water, and the patience and talent to lure fish onto their hooks!

I think it turned when I went to Alaska several years ago. We went to visit friends and to explore some of the beauty of Alaska.   Our friends were also avid fisherman.  So, every other day we went salmon fishing in some gorgeous place.  One day may be fishing off the coast of Valdez in a boat, the next maybe in a remote glacier lake casting towards the sunrise over snow capped mountains.  I still wasn’t that great of fisherman, but even there I caught enough fish to fill a huge box of salmon steaks to ship home!  

There was a gradual change within me towards fishing…a conversion if you will!

Our gospel lesson this morning finds Jesus right after the story where Jesus was preaching in his hometown of Nazareth and the folks wanted throw him off a cliff that we read last week.  He is at a lake and there are so many people crowding around him to hear him that he gets into a boat and pulls out on the water so he can speak.

When he’s done, he tells Simon, later to known as Peter, to throw down their nets again in deep water.  

Peter protests, he was a good fisherman.  

They grew up around it, it gave them fellowship, a source of income, and they were good at it.  

They had fished all night.  They knew the right places, they had the right technique, they had the correct bait to attract fish, yet, they caught nothing.  All night, nothing.  

I’m sure they are thinking, how would that help?  We know these waters, we know how to fish…moving our nets a few feel won’t do anything.  Yet, they had fished all night with no results.  They were doing what they always did which got them something in times past, but nothing on this day.

So, they take a risk, trust this guy on the beach, and throw their nets out again.  What happens?  They trusted, had some faith, and they caught more fish than ever before!  

Friends, this passage can speak to us in our personal lives and in lives together as .  There may be things that we’ve done for a long time in our lives that simply are not working anymore, we become anxious, we need a fresh perspective, maybe we need to put our nets somewhere else.  We all need to have a deeper trust in the Divine.  We certainly need to slow down, and listen to the voice of God calling us to put our nets out again.  

And, fishers of humans?  That simply means that we are called to connect, to love, and to build genuine friendships…but it starts with trusting ourselves, others, and God’s prompting.    

As we do this, we will find ourselves in the midst of conversion.  Conversion is a lifelong process.  The Benedictine monks got it, they would pray for Stability, Obedience, and Conversion daily.  

I believe in this process of change and growth.  Think about the story of Paul’s conversion.  It was dramatic, on the road to Damascus, a blinding light, and the voice of Jesus.  It was also dramatic when you consider that Paul persecuted Christians, killed them, separated families, instilled fear in the early church.  Yet, love penetrates even the most darkest of places when we come before the light of God’s presence and hear the voice of Jesus calling us towards the other side of the boat, out of what we’ve become used to, and into the wide open spaces of God’s expansive love.  It was awe inspiring for him, I’m sure. 

This church, our lives, we are in the midst of conversion.  All of us, myself included, are moving towards new chapters in our lives.  That can cause some anxiety, change always does.  And, it also comes with a sense of awe as we move forward.  That is good news for me, for us, and for all of those around us.  

We talked about “flow” last week, that change will happen no matter what.  

That flow is present in this “sacred act” of our sacraments, our relationships.  Sometimes that flow is messy, it overruns the dams and the banks of our lives that we have built.  And, that’s OK, actually, it’s good as it reminds us that God’s love flows as it will…in and through, all around us.  May we live in that flow with God and with one another.  

Messy Presence.

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PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

Awaken to the mystery of being here and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to follow its path.
Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.
May anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.
Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.
Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.

by John O’Donohue

               

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

1If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and 

the greatest of these is love.

Richard Rohr says this – Divine revelation was not God disclosing ideas about God but God actually disclosing God’s Self. Scripture and religion became not mere doctrines or moralisms for me, but love-making, a mutual exchange of being and intimacy. The marvelous anthology of books and letters called the Bible is for the sake of a love affair between God and the soul and corporately between God and history.

I believe that we can only safely read Scripture—which is a dangerous book in the wrong hands—if we are somehow sharing in the divine gaze of love. A life of prayer helps us develop a third eye that can read between the lines and find the golden thread which is moving toward inclusivity, mercy, and justice. A hardened heart, a predisposition to judgment, a fear of God, any need to win or prove ourselves right will corrupt and distort the most inspired and inspiring of Scriptures—just as they pollute every human conversation and relationship. Hateful people will find hateful verses to confirm their obsession with death. Loving people will find loving verses to call them into an even greater love of life. And both kinds of verses are in the Bible!

Luke 4:21-30

21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 23 He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” 24 And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. 25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many lepers[a] in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

Our gospel lesson this am takes up where we left off last week.  Jesus has just finished reading the prophetic words of Isaiah, of taking care of the oppressed, release for the captives, and that God’s kingdom is for everyone.  

He then goes on to say that “today, the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing!”  Essentially that the biblical concept of the canceling of debts, of honoring relationships, of going after the marginalized and including them in community, those folks who have not had the same experiences or privilege in life that maybe many of us have had…that we are all called to be together as one people.  Big words, even bigger statement from Jesus at the end.

Now, we then notice that folks are amazed at his words.  The words of Jesus make them feel good that their hometown boy has done well.  They synagogue seats are filled, people are looking around, kind of proud.  

Jesus has given a great performance with elegant words and gave the people there some hope.  Probably a good day for most preachers.

But, then Jesus doesn’t stop…he keeps on speaking and quotes a proverb, “doctor, heal yourself”.  Jesus had probably also heard that folks in his hometown had some criticisms…had some things to say about Jesus.  They also had heard about the miracles that Jesus did in Capernaum and wanted to be “wowed” as well with some miracles.  Yet, Jesus is saying, you who criticize, gossip, or manipulate to get a desired outcome or affirmation from outside of yourself, start with yourself first…ask yourself the questions about your motives, your agenda…don’t look to blame or scapegoat others, but ask yourself how can I be cured, healed.  Miracles can only happen if people are willing to own their own predicament and want to change themselves first.  

It’s been my experience that you can’t enter into a relationship and try to change that person.  You can’t be concerned about winning an argument or being right, you have to focus on working together and mutual understanding and humility in order to move forward.  And, it’s good to look at your Self…and give yourself grace and curiosity to go deeper…that’s the pathway to authenticity, compassion, and real connection.

That’s true in every relationship, especially in a church, family, friendship, and neighborhood.  

I believe that Jesus is communicating something good for his hearers that day, develop personal and corporate agency.  When I say “agency”, I mean the ability to have responsibility and awareness of your abilities and confidence to be the person you’ve always wanted to be deep down, the person God created you to be.  I also found this quote on agency:

In social science, agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. 

Jesus doesn’t end there either, he keeps on stirring the point.  He quotes a time in Israel’s history when there was a great famine that lasted for three years.  Israel suffered greatly.  Jesus references this to the hardness of the hearts of the people of Israel.  They were stuck in their ways of doing things, in their pride and habits.  When God raised up prophets from them, they didn’t listen and Jesus even says that a prophet in his own hometown isn’t heeded or listened to. 

So, what does God do?  God simply goes outside of Israel and continues God’s work.  God blesses and works through a Syrian and a widow…a foreigner and someone who didn’t have a spouse.  God wants to find persons willing to step into growth, into their own agency.  

There is a flow in all of this that will eventually lead us towards agency…the book, Leadership and the New Science by Dr. Margaret Wheatley, is a classic organizational book using Quantum physics as a science that informs organizational behavior.  In the opening it talks about the movement of atoms, neutrons, etc.  They are all chaotic, yet there is eventually a sense of order and movement…relationship if you will.  You can’t stop them from being in relationship and creating something.  The author describes it as being like a river.  It starts with a drop, then a stream, then a river and even an ocean.  When the water flows, over time it shapes and reshapes things, but it continues to flow and create something.  You can put up a roadblock, try to cut it off, but you can’t.  Something is formed and reformed.  It actually moves from chaos to community, which is our goal, as Martin Luther King said, to live in community rather than chaos.

It’s the same with Israel in Jesus’ time, and it’s the same with the church today.  God’s work is flowing.  That flow is happening all around us in relationship, in our churches and especially in our neighborhoods where our churches have been placed.  God is going to bless our neighborhoods and our congregation and build up our agency if you will.  We, the church, can either have agency and figure out where the flow is taking us and get behind God’s work and even encourage it, or we can try to go against the flow, or even simply stand on the banks and let if flow.  Those are our three options, only one leads to life.  

So, Jesus is saying to those gathered that day, that life passed by Israel and the good news of release and freedom was still being proclaimed though.  They could get on board or miss out on on God’s blessing, God’s flow…in their lives and in the life of Israel…  

What happened next was a huge shift in the mood of the congregation.  They had gathered hoping to feel good about themselves, but when they heard Jesus’ words, their anxiety and fear came out in the form of rage and, instead of having agency, instead of leaning into an awareness of their own presence and healing themselves, they wanted to scapegoat Jesus and throw him off the cliff!  Talk about chaos and a messy situation!

Now, as I mentioned last week, I’ve had some good sermons and some bad sermons in my 30+ years of ministry, but I’ve never had anyone push me towards a cliff after one of them!  

Jesus, somehow though, doesn’t give into the rage, doesn’t feel despair, but trusts in his words, his own agency, his true Self, and moves through the crowd and leaves unharmed through the crowd somehow to continue his ministry of love and reconciliation for all people.  Which, is encouraging to me as I continue on my journey in this season of so much anxiety in culture…and in my life…finding that deeper presence emerging…that can seem messy at times, and the flow can take lots of twists and turns, but God is in the mess when I have “eyes to see and ears to hear” and willing to let go and live in that flow.  

Friends, for now, this passage can be an encouragement to us to move towards God’s kingdom of radically inclusive love for ourselves and others and to grow in our agency.  As we move towards being a church marked by God’s love for ourselves, others, and God.  As we own our own wounds and history and move towards healing and a new future, that we can become the Church God calls us to be.  There will be some who won’t understand, won’t listen, and simply do not want God’s Presence in their lives, God’s fullness.  They may rather stay where they are because it seems comfortable.  Yet, God’s love will continue to flow, forming new things in us and in our church. 

That flow is present in this “sacred act” of our sacraments, our relationships.  Sometimes that flow is messy, it overruns the dams and the banks of our lives that we have built.  And, that’s OK, actually, it’s good as it reminds us that God’s love flows as it will…in and through, all around us.  

 A friend of mine, Brian McLaren, reminded a group of us a while ago that the word sacrament simply means a “sacred moment”.  Our whole lives are sacred moments, not just communion and baptism, may we live into the flow, the mess, and be present with ourselves, others, and God.  

Release.

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PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

“Oh Beloved,
take me.
Liberate my soul.
Fill me with your love and
release me from the two worlds. 
If I set my heart on anything but you
let fire burn me from inside.

Oh Beloved,
take away what I want.
Take away what I do.
Take away what I need.
Take away everything
that takes me from you”

― Rumi

God asks only that you get out of God’s way and let God be God in you. 

—Meister Eckhart, sermon on 1 John 4:9   

Luke 4:14-21 

“Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. 16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” 

I remember receiving some good news.  I used to work REI, we sold things like hiking and climbing gear.  I started to work there while I worked as a youth director at a Presbyterian Church in Atlanta to make extra money.  Of course, I think I spent more on gear there than I made!

One day, while working at REI, Debbie contacted me to tell me some news that I didn’t quite know how to respond as it was early in our marriage…about a year in…she was about a month or so pregnant with our daughter Debbie.  

At first I was stunned, then happy, then I had to sit down and let it sink in…I couldn’t go back to work, I couldn’t focus, it was overwhelming…it had to sink in that I was going to be a father!  It wasn’t what I expected.  Yet, when the reality of this news sank in, it was truly good news…and I still am amazed to watch my daughter grow into adulthood and my son, Brennan, as well.

Our gospel lesson from the lectionary this morning is another story about unexpected Good News being birthed and released in the Bible.  

Jesus had just returned from being tempted by the devil for several days in the desert.  He resisted the temptation to become powerful or relevant by the world’s measure and stayed true to who he was.  Which, says a lot to us today as we strive for worldly wealth and relevance, God says that he has something better for us if we remember our identity lies in being the body of Christ and live in self, others, and God awareness.  

As was Jesus’ custom, he preached in the synagogue.  Yet, this was different, Jesus was teaching in his hometown.  The folks gathered that day had heard great things about Jesus.  They had heard about the miracles he had performed and the words he had spoken, as well as the large crowds that were following him.  

Jesus was handed a scroll with the words of Isaiah.  Jesus knew what he wanted to read and began to read the prophecy about the Messiah.  There is an emphasis in this passage of “me”, three times in verses 18 and 19 alone.  In other words, Jesus is quoting this passage, saying that this prophecy is about him.  

Jesus even makes this dramatic, yet subtle and very powerful statement at the end of this particular passage that we are looking at today.  He rolls up the scroll, hands it back to the attendant, and sits down.  At first glance, that may seem odd, but in Jewish custom during that time, you would stand to read Scripture, then sit down to teach.  Jesus was doing just that.  But, when he starts to teach, he begins with the statement:  “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”  Jesus is saying, I am the fulfillment of God’s promise that God would be our God and we would be his people.  God present with us and dwells within and all around us.

The Greek word in this passage for proclaiming good news is one word.  It is also where we get the world “evangelize”.  Now, in our polarizing times, that word “evangelize” triggers a lot within folks…we think of sharing a belief or a dogma, or we go to the word “evangelical”, which, in our context today, means more to folks as a political stance than a religious one…and often, that word as defined by our current culture today, does not line up with the teachings or example of Jesus.  If it’s good news, it has to be good news for ALL people, not just a self-chosen few…it has to be good news to the marginalized as well as those in power, if they are willing to let go and be released from the bondage of their self-made image.

Yet, Jesus was saying that had come to proclaim good news to the poor and release to all of those held captive.  Who are the poor?  Well, it certainly means those who are economically poor, but poor has a deeper meaning in this context as it does throughout Scripture.  The “Poor” are folks who live marginalized lives either that they have brought on to themselves by living in a system that excludes others and benefits them or those that have been marginalized by that system.  And, in so doing, not able to live in their made in the image of God selves.  

Jesus was saying, if you feel marginalized in any way, then I have come to restore you in relationship with your Self, with others and with God.  I have come to show you how to live into your “true self”, the person you’ve always wanted to be…and that the power, and the courage, to live that way has always been inside of you.  If you are poor or have ever felt marginalized or left out, if you have ever felt like you were on the outside looking in, then you know what it’s like to be in a desperate place, a place that is miserable…a place where you are hungering for good news of being included.

On a mission trip to the inner city with students and adult leaders from a previous church, Northminster, I experienced this first hand.  Many thought that homelessness was a choice, especially in the wealthiest country that the world has ever known.  For some, it is, but for many, it wasn’t.  Our pre-conceived ideas, even our prejudices were confronted.  We found out that the homeless in this country have a higher percentage of high school degrees, and even college degrees, than the general public that have homes. 

Jesus goes on to say in this morning’s text that he has come to proclaim freedom to the prisoners, recovery of sight to the blind, and to set the prisoners, the captives free, released!  He was proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.  He was saying in effect, God is on the side of humanity, all of humanity!  When you look at the life of Jesus, he backed this up.  What does he do with the prostitute, but forgives her and restores her to community.  What about the tax collector, the leper, the blind?  He forgives them and heals them, and always restores them to community with others and with God.  Not only does Jesus do that for them, but he does it for us. 

Friends, the church is called to be the body of Christ and to participate in Christ’s engagement in the world.  We are called to live out and do what Jesus is proclaiming in this passage.

Identifying with Christ can be messy and uncomfortable.  When you look at the rest of this chapter in Luke 4, you see that the meaning of Jesus’ words didn’t bring a whole lot of good feelings in the crowd that was gathered.  The crowd wanted Jesus to tell them that they were favored, they wanted him to affirm their “way of life”, they wanted to see some of the miracles that he had performed in other places.  They were looking for a performance and not the community that Jesus was envisioning and Scripture and prophesied.  They wanted their version of “good news” to be good for them only.  They got frustrated and wanted to scapegoat Jesus and looked for ways to cause him harm.  Yet, Jesus’ message and life still went out and continues to this day working in and on us.  Jesus says that in order for news to be good, it has to be good for everyone.  Friends, may we be the body of Christ, bearing news that is truly good to a lost and lonely world.  We have been given the power to proclaim release to all of those held captive to a narrative of bondage to someone or something as we model the light, the love of Christ.   In so doing, not only will the world see hope and experience release, but we will as well.  

Extravagant.

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PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

In the gift of this new day, in the gift of the present moment, in the gift of time and eternity intertwined, let us be grateful, let us be attentive, let us be open to what has never happened before, in the gift of this new day, in the gift of the present moment, in the gift of time and eternity intertwined. 

– John Philip Newell

Gospel Lesson

John 2:1-11

Jesus Changes Water Into Wine

2 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

4 “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”

5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.

8 Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”

They did so, 9 and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside10 and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

11 What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

I have had the privilege over the years of officiating weddings…and participating as a witness to them!  It’s been fun to see how folks want to go all out to celebrate these moments!  And, it’s good to have so many parties associated with them.  It is a moment that folks need and want to celebrate relationships of all sorts!  

I love the gospel story because it is about family, community, and something new.  Jesus is at a wedding, enjoying himself with his friends and family, the disciples and his mom comes up with this problem.  The wedding has run out of wine…which is a huge “faux pas” in those days and an immense embarrassment.  Jesus’ mom wants Jesus to do something about it.  Jesus responds by saying “woman”, which may sound odd to us today, but the actual word translated is more of a term of respect and intimacy.  Jesus, who by this time is 30 years old, then says something like “oh Mom are you serious?” (in a very loving way I’m sure!).  Mary, Jesus’ mother sees something in her son that is special, she knows he is able to do something about this.  Jesus, then does something amazing.  Jesus takes ordinary water, water used to clean dirty feet (you see, in that part of the world it was pretty dusty and when you went into someone’s house, you cleaned your feet and hands pretty good), and turned into wine…what’s more, he turned it into the best wine that anyone at that party had ever tasted!  

At that point, people had been drinking a lot.  Like for days…as weddings back then were not a one day affair but a week long deal.  Usually, the best wine came out first, then after folks had a lot to drink, they’d bring out the cheap stuff.  But, the master of ceremonies tasted the best wine and remarked about the generosity of the bridegroom.  

Why did Jesus change the water to wine?  To show that there is something new going on in the world.  In a world that is crazy and where we often feel like ordinary water, or maybe even dirty toe jam water, as we walk through life and get dirty and grimy, there is hope.  When we recognize the Christ Presence in Jesus and that this Presence resides within us, God can take the ordinary or dirty water of our lives and turn it into the best wine ever tasted!  Jesus is saying in this story that he is the “visible image of the invisible God” at it says in Colossians.  Jesus is also saying that everyone is special in this story.  

I think that the family in this wedding party probably ran out of wine because they didn’t have a whole lot of money…so, when Jesus turned the water into wine, he turned SIX whole jars, HUGE jars into wine…more wine than they could have drunk.  Jesus not only transformed the water into wine and wants to transform our lives, Jesus blessed the whole wedding party beyond measure and wants to show you some amazing blessings and adventures in life.  One thing about Jesus, he exhibits and demonstrates that God is  extravagant in God’s pursuit and love for us and for the community.  These were friends, family, members of Jesus’ family and neighbors.  The author of John is making a statement by having Jesus’ first public miracle happen at a wedding.  God is interested in overwhelming us with God’s love in practical, and even unpractical, and unforeseen ways…and this God is interested in blessing all of us, not just a few.  God’s good news, God’s presence isn’t for just a few, it’s for everyone.

This passage has also been said to give witness to the passing of the old law based on rules, regulations, and works to the new demonstration of God’s presence with humanity.  One of grace, personal love, and on God’s works on our behalf not our own.  

Just like Jesus wants us to experience the blessing of friendship with God and others in order to live lives into something beautiful, new wine, God wants us to have a change of heart of on our religion, how we live our faith, our very lives.  Julian of Norwich says this about faith, it means:  “trust that we are in God and God whom we do not see is in us.”

In our faith, in our way of not just showing up at church, but being church, we so often settle for the way things have always been.  We want to know what to expect and to control things.  We want a predictable faith, a predictable religion, a predictable God.   In so doing, we often make decisions and act upon those decisions that are comfortable and do not depict a faith in God, or even ourselves…leaving us feeling like grimy, dirty, used up foot washing toe jam water.   It’s a religion that does us no good.  And that’s a religion that we simply don’t need….and many people have come to the same conclusion and walk away from their faith.

Yet, we then come to something unpredictable, like a wedding, or a funeral, or an action that someone does for us, and we see God’s goodness breaking in.  And, deep down, we behold the extravagance of God, the delight of God.  Again, Julian of Norwich says this:  “to behold God in all things is to live in complete joy.”

Again, Jesus fills 6 barrels.  That’s a lot of wine.  Jesus didn’t want folks to feel like they didn’t have enough.  He also didn’t want them to simply seal up those barrels and not share…he poured them out for the entire wedding party!

We are loved and are called to love ourselves, others, and God with extravagance…to pour out the good wine of God’s faith in us, God’s love for us, God’s religion or binding to us, to all in our neighborhood…and, in so doing, we’ll find ourselves experiencing a lived life of the greatest celebration we could ever imagine!

Baptized.

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PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

Deep peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the gentle night to you.
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you.
Deep peace of Christ,
of Christ the light of the world to you.
Deep peace of Christ to you.

– Gaelic Blessing

New Testament Readings

Acts 8:14-17

14 Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. 15 The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit 16 (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). 17 Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

Luke 3:15-17,Luke 3:21-22

15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16 John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

The Baptism of Jesus

21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Sermon:

I’ve shared this story before.  But it seems pretty important in this season, as I’ve been thinking a lot about Robbie Waddles.  When I was 8 years old, my best friend, Rob was baptized.  When I saw him get baptized, I thought that was pretty cool.  I love Robbie, still do.  We did literally everything together growing up.  He died at age 46, probably suicide…which is sad, because he was an amazing human…English professor, musician, athlete…and he believed in me.  Growing up, if Robbie did it, I was going to do it. 

So, I asked my parents if I could be baptized.  We set-up a meeting with our Baptist pastor, we talked about it, I got real excited…and the next Sunday, I was immersed in this huge tank that was in our Sanctuary behind our choir. 

I did not want to wait, I wanted to get in and get it done.  

I don’t remember much about my conversation with our Baptist preacher.  I just remember that it was something that my best friend did and he was glad…and it sure did make my parents happy.  

In our reformed PCUSA understanding of Baptism, we believe it to be a sign of God’s faithfulness to us.  It has much more to do with God’s actions on our behalf through Jesus than our actions.  It is also a seal that God puts on us…God’s “signature” if you will.  And, it eventually took the place of circumcision as a sign of one’s trust in God…am much less painful sign I’d say!  Baptism marks us as a people living in community with God.  God seals us to God’s self.  We may not always live that way, but in effect, God is saying that he won’t give up on us and that he believes in us.

As Jesus comes up from the water in today’s Gospel, there is a voice from heaven, God’s voice that has these amazing lines from our gospel lesson this am.  “This is my son, the beloved, with whom I’m well pleased”.

Jesus is God in the flesh, the flesh part means that Jesus represents all of us to God and God is represents to all of us through Jesus. In our Trinitarian understanding, God is three persons that are of the same substance birthed out of the Godhead.  They mutually indwell in each other’s being in such a tight community, even sharing the same essence, so much so that they are one God and speak as one.  Jesus is unique in that he is divine, yet also human.  We share the same essence as Jesus, therefore we can also say that we are human with divinity at our core…especially as image bearers of God…  It’s wild, but what it means for us today is that when God looks at us, God sees Jesus and the words of this passage are also addressed to us.  God is well pleased with us!  We are God’s beloved.

James Torrance, one of the great Scottish Torrance brothers who were writers, theologians, philosophers, and pastors says this about Jesus’ baptism: 

“When he [Jesus] saw the people going down to the river to be baptized by John, confessing their sins, submitting to the verdict of guilty (which is repentance), Jesus said to John, ‘baptize me!  I will submit to the verdict of guilty for them!’  He identified himself with sinners, the he might take their place…”

Jesus’ baptism is for all of humanity.  

This action by Jesus demonstrates the whole of Jesus’ birth, life, death, and even resurrection.  Jesus came to give us life.  We often forget that we are God’s beloved…actually, we are God’s heart.  And, when we look deep into our selves, our true selves, we find God waiting for us there.  

Baptism signifies a death of our old selves, the old self that lives in its pathologies and old ways of thinking, when we are put under the water.  When we come up, we are reminded that God has cleansed us and lives within us and is emerging always out of our deepest selves.  Meister Eckhart says that “God is within, but we are without”.  

Jesus wants us to move towards a new way of thinking, a new way of living, a rebirth of God within that moves from the inside out…this new life as signified by baptism

This rebirth is in constant motion.  Since Jesus is God, Jesus is the Christ and we are the body of Christ, Jesus’ actions are sealed forever with us, just as we are sealed with Jesus.  At 57 years of age, I am again realizing deeply what it means to be present to God and others.  The great Catholic writer, Thomas Merton says:  

“Our reality, our true self, is hidden in what appears to us to be nothingness….We can rise above this unreality and recover our hidden reality….God Himself begins to live in me not only as my Creator but as my other and true self.”

God, the Creator, wants you to know that life, real life, is happening through God’s constant actions in and around you as you empty yourself and allow God to be rebirthed within.  There is new life, this rebirth, as signified in baptism!  God is doing a new thing as the writer in Isaiah says:

18 Do not remember the former things,

    or consider the things of old.

19 I am about to do a new thing;

    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

Jesus has brought a new thing and wants us to live reconciled and reset lives as we enter into new reality that is fully present with each other.  You, and our community, have been baptized in Christ.  The old life has gone, and a new reality is upon us.  May we stop waiting and live in the birthing of God’s Presence within us, around us, and follow God’s movement towards all of humanity in the streets and neighborhood around us.

Word.

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PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

In out-of-the-way places of the heart, Where your thoughts never think to wander, 

This beginning has been quietly forming, 

Waiting until you were ready to emerge. For a long time it has watched your desire, Feeling the emptiness growing inside you, 

Though your destination is not yet clear You can trust the promise of this opening; 

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning That is at one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; Soon you will home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

– John O’Donohue 

John 1:(1-9); 10-18 (NRSV)

The Word Became Flesh

[1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life,and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.]

10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son,who is close to the Father’s heart,who has made him known.

In the middle of winter, it can seem like things are bleak.  The days are shorter, it’s cold and cloudy, (although it has not been cold again this winter…on the contrary, very warm…strange new weather patterns my friends…)  the sun doesn’t seem to shine as much.  Plus, in Cincinnati, we seem to get a lot of “in-between” weather.  Doesn’t really snow a lot, but still cold and wet.  We long for spring!  

In our lives this past year, we may have experienced things that have been bleak, dark, and we may have felt like we are in an “in-between place”, or a s threshold space, as well.  We may have been sensing that a change is necessary, we have longed for the warmth of hope, just as we may have longed for the hope of warm sunshine in the spring after a long winter.  Our days get shorter, we experience darkness as we move through the changing seasons.

The changing of seasons is a good metaphor for our worshipping community called Westwood First Presbyterian.  At times this past year, it has felt like it has been a place of searching and change.  As a collective group of persons, it seems like we have been in an “in-between” place even as we co-create new things and move forward.  We may fill like we are on our way towards something, but we are still incomplete, not fully there.  We have wanted to change and grow in new directions, we’ve had a new pastor, we’ve been working on what it means to be a “community engaged” church, we are experiencing new relationships coming into the building even as we go out into the neighborhood, and we have embarked on a mystical journey together towards a deeper understanding of God’s revelation inside and all around us.  All of this is good, we are moving towards something, people inside the church and outside have remarked that there’s something different at Westwood First (and they like it!!!), and even different in our own lives, but we are still in between and not yet fully where we are called to be…at a threshold.

The very definition of the “darkness” means to be in a state of dark, it is an abstract noun.  Yet, it does not mean that one is “dark”, just living in a state of darkness.  That “state” or existence can be changed.  

Try an experiment this week.  Go into a dark room.  Pause for a moment, take in the darkness, look into it.  Then turn on a light and notice the difference.  Notice the change.

Our identity as Jesus followers gives us hope for in the midst of darkness and change, Jesus says this in Matthew 4:16 quoting from Isaiah.  

the people who sat in darkness

    have seen a great light,

and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death

    light has dawned.”

Sitting in darkness can really be disorienting.  We feel lost, yet the darkness does point us toward a need for light.  We actually need both.  Light and darkness, and the threshold times in between light and dark.  It is in those times that something new is created.  It is interesting to me that the word, “word”, or “logos” in Greek, in our gospel lesson this morning actually translates as “creative energy”.  

In darkness, we cannot see others around us as we should.   We stumble around often in relationships and because we are not able to see, we experience a break in relationship from folks because of something we’ve done or said, or something that was done or said to us.  Or we simply grow apart over time.  We often sit in darkness and darkness often leads to brokenness which can feel like living in the shadow of death.  And, in the brokenness, new things emerge, or are able to emerge and to cause creativity and growth.  

None of us are competent or good enough to get through this life deal without experiencing darkness, lostness, or brokenness.  The difference is how much light we want shining on our lives to expose us in our darkness.  

Author, poet, philosopher, Parker Palmer, in his book,  Let Your Life Speak, talks about depression and darkness.  He states that we need to embrace our wholeness as persons in those dark moments, our shadows, look into them, and use them as times of understanding who we are, our true selves as Thomas Merton, the great catholic philosopher and mystic might say.  

Friends, like a thief in the night, we can let darkness overwhelm us, but that is not our identity, that is not our true selves, we may live in darkness, but there is a light in the depth of that darkness…and this great light has entered the world and our lives…actually, this great light has been in us all along…made in God’s image means that God put God’s self in us from the beginning…”in the beginning was the word, and the word…”. 

Jesus, the light of the world, entered into the neighborhood of our lives, became flesh and bone just like us.  God  makes God’s dwelling, with us!!!  In us!!!  All around us!  Jesus is a visible expression of that divine expression that encompasses us and invites us to the work of awareness to live into…

Jesus came to reveal to us what it means to live in the fullness of who we are called to be in our truest selves.  We have received grace upon grace, we are given new opportunity to reinvent ourselves, to experience rebirth even in the midst of the in-between times.  The light of Jesus is here, we may not always like what we see, it may cause us to ask deep questions, but the light does transform us and can bring us into places of beauty in our lives in our neighborhood, work, and even in our church!  

This light was the word made flesh, Jesus, who invites us into this sacred moment where we can catch glimpses of his glory and experience fullness with others and with God…and we too can shine as sons and daughters of God as the “word” is made flesh in us and makes it’s dwelling in us…  

Treasure.

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PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

Celebration is an attentive and gracious joy of presence. When you celebrate, you are taking time to recognize, to open your eyes and behold in your life the quiet miracles and gifts that seek no attention; yet each day they nourish, shelter, and animate your life. The art of belonging in, with, and to yourself is what gives life and light to your presence; it brings a radiance to your countenance and a poise to your carriage. When your heart is content, your life can always find the path inwards to this deep stillness in you. 

– John O’Donohue 

Luke 2:41-52 

41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. 43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. 44 Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and 

friends. 45 When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for
him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 When his parentssaw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.”49 He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”50 But they did not understand what he said to them. 51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. 

52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years,and in divine and human favor. 

The setting for this mornings’ gospel is a pilgrimage that Jesus makes with his parents and a whole host of others to Jerusalem to celebrate passover. It was a huge festival that every pious Jewish family would want to make.

It’s important to note that the authors up to this point in Luke have made Mary and Joseph the center of the story, Jesus doesn’t do anything without them. However, in this narrative, Jesus begins to take center stage. 

It’s also interesting to note that the authors give Jesus’ age. He’s 12. He is in the process of entering adulthood and this story is meant to mark a place of growth for Jesus. He’s making a statement. 

But, before that statement, we have the dramatic emotional experience that some of us as parents have gone through. Realizing you don’t know where your kids are. Now, I haven’t forgotten where my kids are for a complete day, but I have had a few moments in places like Central Park in NYC, King’s Island, or Disneyland where I’ve turned around for a brief moment and couldn’t find my kids…that sense of urgency in finding them brings up all sorts of feelings that we parents fear. 

Part of that emotion is out of a sense of wanting to protect our kids, but also the thought of losing them, of losing the relational connection, is overwhelming. That’s true not only with kids, but with anyone that we have a relationship with.

So, Mary and Joseph have left Jerusalem, they’ve been gone for a day before they realize that Jesus isn’t with them. Now, before you judge them as parents, remember that this is a different culture. Unlike today, Mary and Joseph are a part of a large clan of relatives. They all share a sense of responsibility for each other and for their kids. So, it would be natural for Mary and Joseph to assume that Jesus was being taken care of, and that when their clan left, that someone would have Jesus. 

But, that wasn’t the case here. They had left Jesus. When they went back to Jerusalem to find them, they searched for him for 3 days! Could you imagine the panic and the angst of his parents, missing someone they loved? 

After three days, they went to the temple. I’m not sure what led them there, maybe it was a sense of needing to go and seek spiritual comfort at the temple, or maybe they heard that Jesus may be there, who knows. But, when they got there, they found Jesus in the middle of religious scholars, listening, asking questions, being curious…it says that even the teachers at the Temple were amazed at his answers, his maturity, and understanding. 

Who knows what Jesus was talking about that day, but my bet is that it had a lot to do with God’s love being summed up by how much God loves us and calls us to love others…of a God who created us out of relationship, for relationship…a God who gives us community with one another, with God’s self, and with the world around us. Jesus was listening not only to the teachers, but also to God’s Spirit revealing to him where community can be made present. 

When Mary, as any mother would, asked Jesus why he put her through this…why the anguish of wondering where he was, Jesus responds, “why were you searching for me, you should have known I’d be in the one place where I can intimately experience relationship with others and with God.” 

Jesus refers to being in his Father’s house. We can get caught up in the masculine reference to God, but the Israelites used Father in a relational sense, it has much more to do with attempting to describe God in intimate, relational terms than subscribing to God masculine qualities, and, by the way, there are just as many examples in scripture of God being reference in the feminine and with feminine qualities. Language sometimes fails us in giving testimony to our experience. 

God is closer than any parent, God is within us and outside of us, God is “other”, we are not God, yet God reveals to us who were created to be, saved to be, and sustained to become.  

Jesus is experiencing God’s joy, God’s Presence, God’s love in the temple. 

It seems like Mary, like many parents, was not able to “see” or  “hear” her son in this moment…but, she paused, listened…and saw and heard him in that moment.  Mary doesn’t continue to scold him, she doesn’t understand all that Jesus is saying, yet she knows that her child is authentically experiencing God. She sees Jesus.  It says that she treasures these experiences in her heart. Treasure is a great word, it’s something of immense value. In other places in the new testament, there is the parable of giving up all that you have to find the hidden treasure, it also says that where your treasure is, there is your heart. 

Friends, this is a hard one…harder than we thing.  Where is your treasure?  Do the work of finding your heart…not others hearts, but start with yours!  

Mary’s treasure was in her son, the relationship they had, Jesus also treasured his mother, he didn’t intend to cause her anxiety, but he was also growing in his understanding of God’s love for humanity. God’s desire for us to experience love for God, for others, and for ourselves. God’s summary of the entire law, of the 10 commandments, into loving relationship. 

It’s fitting that we have this gospel lesson after Christmas, the coming of Christ bringing to us the promise of God’s loving presence…now, we are called to grow in our understanding of that Love by following Jesus’ example. In Luke 2:52, we have the only reference to Jesus’ life before his public ministry.  It says that Jesus grew in his teenage years up until age 30 in wisdom and in God’s and others favor. 

Jesus was marked with God’s favor as he grew in wisdom (which is, by the way, a feminine word)…Jesus represents all of humanity, therefore we are also favored by God. May we treasure these stories about Jesus, may we understand that our treasure lies in deep, abiding, and even curious love for others and for God…may we seek and see God in all that we meet and may we find ourselves in the Father’s house, which is the temple, which is the body of Christ, our bodies even, understood to be placed in the world and encompassing all of humanity.

Friends, may we experience God’s love as we practice loving the world around us with wisdom and living in God’s favor. 

Shine.

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PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

Oh God of peace, you fill our hearts with hope at every Christmastide, for we remember again that this is the world that you have loved. May that hope, peace and joy fill our hearts, this night. Amen.
― Celtic Prayer

Christmas Eve 2024.  What a year we’ve had…and now moving into a time of more change for me and for us together at Westwood First Presbyterian Church!  My goodness!  I know that for me, this year has been a time of tremendous growth, and I believe for this congregation as well.  We are experiencing deep growth coming out of a year of birth pains in our previsions years.  As we come to the end of 2024, I love that we read this passage on xmas eve.  Really, we read this same passage almost every Christmas Eve.  It’s traditional, it’s the Christmas story…and it’s the promise of new birth coming to us in the darkest of nights, the darkest of days. 

My dad would read this passage every Christmas Eve…from the King James Version no less.  He went to church every Sunday, was a church leader, but this was the only time I really ever remember him reading Scripture.  Yet, he did.  One thing about my dad, he was pretty consistent!

Luke 2:1-20 

The Birth of Jesus

2 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 All went to their own towns to be registered. 4 Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. 5 He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

The Shepherds and the Angels

8 In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: 11 to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

14 

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,

    and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

15 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.” 16 So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. 17 When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

This year, many of us have had to ponder on a deeper level what Christmas is about, it’s about something new being birthed…in us and in the world around us.  Childbirth isn’t easy, it’s painful…yet, what do we call babies after they’ve arrived?  “Little bundles of Joy”.  Possibility, mystery, love, struggle, suffering, growth, and presence are all wrapped up into babies.

Babies grow into adulthood through the throes of life.  Our faith does as well.  Sometimes we have to remember that things are formed in dark places, like the womb.  Faith also is birthed in darkness.  And, faith is not about certainty…it is simply trusting, deeply, that you are not alone in this world…that there is a God who resides within you and all around you that is with you…a God who entered humanity, became human, in the form of Jesus.  

December 25 was decided by the early church, really many of our Celtic ancestors, because it is close to the annual winter solstice.  It was actually a pre-Christian celebration, and our Christian ancestors borrowed a lot from those ancestors because it simply made sense with the story of the incarnation of Christ, the enfleshing of the divine in the world…which is a story that is also incarnated, birthed within us.   

The winter solstice is also known as the “longest night”.  It is the day of the year where it’s darkest the longest.  It is to remind us of the darkness of life that we all experience.  And also that there is hope, because after the longest night, when it is the most dark, the light shines forth, dawn comes…and we can see what was birthed in the night more clearly.  

Friends, the reality is that the church has so often preached a message of hope, of joy, of peace, of love, of triumph…without the darkness that we see around and in us, without struggle…but that’s simply not life is it?  There’s more to the story.  We have to have both…light and dark…struggle and growth go hand it in hand.  God is saying to us on the symbolism of this night…to look into the darkness in order to see a candle, a flame, of love…of promise, of hope, of relationship, of incarnation…

Tonight, may we remember the darkness of Christmas night, there is a great stirring, a movements towards something new that brings joy, hope, peace, and love.  There are shepherds seeing and hearing miraculous news while dutifully minding their flocks.  There are wise men and women seeking knowledge and growth.  

The passage that we read tonight is full of subversive beauty!  Caesar Augustus, the Roman emperor was the head of a political cult that set him up to be divine, a savior, the lord, one who claimed to not have any failings, in his ego, Caesar was a winner at all costs…and he lived in imperial power exacting a census that was a sign of his authority and ability to collect taxes and contribute to the wealth of Rome, and especially his own wealth.  Yet, Jesus comes to us impoverished, on the run, and in a dirty stable.  His coming is announced to a group of outsiders, literally, shepherds and not some great proclamation to the entire empire, this proclamation came from the heavens to a few shepherds and wise men and women so that it can be carried to and for all of creation.  Amazing!

Into that dark night, a baby is born.  Emmanuel or “God with us”!  Jesus, Emmanuel, born to us, humanity.  God, entrusting God’s self to us, in darkness, and to a couple of teenagers who were still trying to figure things out!  God, who gives hospitality and relationship receives hospitality and relationship.  God being birthed into the world by a teenager!  

Into the night, a small light came on to the scene of history that grew to a blazing fire illuminating hope, peace, grace, friendship to ALL!

One of our Christian mystics from the 1400’s, Meister Eckhart, says this:  “The light is satisfied only in the innermost place, where no one dwells. It is within you even deeper than you are in yourself. It is the ground of simple silence that is motionless in itself. Yet from its stillness, all things move and all things receive their life, that they may live in accordance with this reason and be conformed to it within themselves.”

We have opportunity after opportunity to meet God in the deepest darkness of our lives, in the stillness of the night metaphorically, this night and every night…really every moment.  May we lean into the darkest places, the deepest innermost place of our lives, into the dark night of our souls as another mystic from the middle ages, John of the Cross would say, and grow into people of a radiance, a shining forth, as we wait for the morning light!  

But, we have to wait at times and even be still.  The shepherds, wise men and women (there is speculation is that the magi were actually all women) and even Mary and Joseph, had to wait…to let things emerge.  Friends, as Westwood First is birthing new life, as we, together, embark into a new chapter, may we too allow yourselves to wait on God’s timing that is shedding light at just the right time.  My goodness, we have some amazing stories being written and told in this season.  As we allow yourselves to embrace what the night brings, there is a light shining and leading us into a future.  A future that is emerging right before us where there are possibilities. 

So friends, into the darkest nights of our lives as Christ is born again in us and around us…may we proclaim and rejoice in this king, this savior, this lord, friend, this ever deepening Presence being born in us with the world!  And, in this looking in, may we experience the birth of Christ that is happening within us, all of the time.  

As we go into the night, hear some more words from Meister Eckhart:  

“This birth which takes place unceasingly in eternity is the very same birth which has taken place within human nature.” 

May the joy of the promise of new birth, the story of Christmas, be with you every day, every moment of your life.  Amen and Merry Christmas!

Love.

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PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

Love is the only light that can truly read the secret signature of the other person’s individuality and soul. Love alone is literate in the world of origin; it can decipher identity and destiny.”

“I would love to live like a river flows,
carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”
― John O’Donohue

Luke 1:39-55 


Mary Visits Elizabeth 

39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill
country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would bea fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” 

Mary’s Song of Praise 46 And Marysaid, 

“My soul magnifies the Lord,
 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
 

48  for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
 
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
 

49  for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
 
and holy is his name.
 

50  His mercy is for those who fear him
 
from generation to generation.
 

51  He has shown strength with his arm;
 
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
 

52  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
 
and lifted up the lowly;
 

53  he has filled the hungry with good things,
 
and sent the rich away empty.

54  He has helped his servant Israel,
 in remembrance of his mercy,
 

55  according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
 to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” 

Sermon:                                               

Today is the 4th Sunday of Advent, the Love Sunday! 

Love is an interesting word. It gets tossed around quite a bit in our culture.
I also found this description online: 

Love is unconditional affection with no limits or conditions: completely loving someone. It’s when you trust the other with your life and when you would do anything for each other. You hide nothing of yourself and can tell the other anything because you know they accept you just the way you are and vice versa. 

Regardless of how love is defined, it’s safe to say that love has lots of meanings to different people. I would say, at its core, that love is a deeply relational term that has a meaning of commitment, loyalty, joy, faith, compassion, grace, honesty, and deep affection.

This Sunday is often called the Sunday of birth, and also the waking of the church. That fits, because joy, hope, and peace, are a part of love and “love gives birth to new things”, it also awakens us to new realities. 

It’s fitting that we just had a great discussion on the medieval German mystic, Meister Eckhart, at the Westside Abbey.  It was a great discussion with Dr. Adam Clark, and we talked about God constantly giving birth.  Meister Eckhart even said this, “what good is it if Christ was born 1400 years ago but not being born daily within me?”  More on that later!

In our gospel passage today, we see this kind of love expressed in many ways. Mary, a soon to be teenage mom, is pregnant with Jesus. She takes a journey to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, who is much older, and is also pregnant with John. She is much further along than Mary. 

Mary is also from a working class family, she doesn’t have much status in society. Elizabeth, on the other hand, is married to a priest and she comes from a priestly line. She has standing in society. 

Yet, that didn’t matter. They have a close relationship that transcends societal barriers and Mary goes to visit her. 

The authors of Luke are not trying to give out facts, they are telling a story of promise and deliverance for all who are enslaved to something, which is everyone. They make a point to say this is a journey, just like the Israelites were on a journey in the wilderness. This deliverance is a process that takes time, but something good is being birthed in us in the journey. Both of these women have been promised that they’d be blessed with pregnancies, although both pregnancies have difficulties: one has the stigma of being a teenaged mom who isn’t married yet, the other is an older woman well past her child- bearing years. Yet, they trust God and God’s love as birthing something new is never easy.

Mary goes, she is moved to action, she takes a journey to Elizabeth, out of relationship, out of love, and a need for comforting each other in what could be a difficult, albeit hopeful and joyful time. This passage is conveying to its readers that God makes promises to us, dreams big dreams for us, yet those dreams involve risk and may bring some anxiety…and seem complicated. Yet, God has given us God’s self, and God’s self, at God’s core, is about a crazy love for all of us, we can move through life with purpose and peace even in complicated, anxious times. 

When Mary greets Elizabeth, the words we read of greetings, multiple greetings, indicates an excitement, a joy, to be together. They are bond together. They can’t wait to see each other. There is an emotional response from both of them, as well as from Elizabeth’s womb. The baby John leaps! 

John, while still in his mother’s womb, senses Jesus, and leaps for joy…and for love! 

The love that John experiences is carried to him through the Spirit of God that embodies love. God’s Spirit fills all spaces and is present whether we recognize it or not. This love can be experienced through friendships, moments of great importance, during hard times when we feel like giving up yet something holds us together, through simple things like sunsets, music, or a small gesture of kindness. This love permeates everything and always wins! And, it’s for everyone! 

I found it interesting as I prepared this message reading and often seeing people that claim to be followers of Jesus, the very expression of God’s love for humanity and creation, talking about excluding others of different faiths, skin color, nationalities, etc.., even advocating for violence, denying safety for others, gossiping about folks, saying incredibly offensive statements, and encouraging division. 

Friends, if someone makes a statement that does not emanate from a deep love for another, it isn’t a Christian statement. 

We have come to this Advent season to celebrate the coming of Christmas, the coming of God into humanity as a human. We come to celebrate a God who keeps promises of being with and of loving us radically and unconditionally. As my late friend Brennan Manning would say, “God loves you just as you are, not as you should be, because you never will be as you should be.” This is the kind of message that should permeate our thoughts about ourselves and others. This is the kind of message that people should be hearing from Jesus followers, and experiencing! 

We should be telling others, as well as ourselves, that NOTHING can separate us from God’s Love as it says in the book of Romans. Nothing. This love is like a stream that keeps on flowing. It carries things, moves things, shapes things, fills every nook, and is relentless. This love changes us, just as streams grow into rivers and rivers flow into oceans…it is unstoppable. We can even nail that love to a tree, try to kill it, yet even death can’t overcome God’s love…it keeps moving! 

And this love keeps on creating and birthing new things.  It is a dynamic flow that cannot be stopped.  

New Year’s follows Christmas. Change happens as love is birthed into us and the world around us. 

Friends, may the Love of Christ cause us to leap with joy. May we be awakened to God’s delight and God’s Spirit washing over us and be reminded of God’s faithful and loving birthing relationship with and within us. 

Messenger.

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PRAYER FOR ILLUMINATION

That truth has been inscribed into our heart and into the heart of every human being, there to be Thanks be to you, O God, for the strong arm

of those who have given us shelter in our life,

who loved us from the womb and carried us as children, who guarded us like watchful angels and wept when we were in pain.

Thanks be to you for the men and women whose passion for the poor is undying, whose prayer for the oppressed is tender, whose defence of the wronged is fierce.

Grant us the strength to cry for justice, to be patient for peace, to be angry for love.

Grant us the grace of a strong soul, O God, grant us the grace to be strong.

~ John Philip Newell, A Celtic Psalter.

Philippians 3:1-11

Paul’s Prayer for the Philippians

3 I thank my God for every remembrance of you, 4 always in every one of my prayers for all of you, praying with joy 5 for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. 7 It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because I hold you in my heart, for all of you are my partners in God’s grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the tender affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight 10 to help you to determine what really matters, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, 11 having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.

Luke 1:68-79 

68  “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. 69  He has raised up a mighty saviorfor us in the house of his servant David, 70  as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.71 72 Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, 73 the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,to grant us 74 that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, 75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. 76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
 77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.
 78 By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break uponus, 79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” 

Luke 3:1-6


The Proclamation of John the Baptist 

3 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was rulerof Galilee, and his brother Philip rulerof the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias rulerof Abilene,2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4 as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, 

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
 ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
 and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; 6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’” 

How do we receive messages these days? What are some examples of messengers? 

As I read these passages in Luke, the word messenger came out loud and clear. 

There are stories of messengers throughout history, especially when they bring good news. However, things may not turn out great for those messengers. 

One of the most famous messengers was the Greek courier, Philippides. There was a great battle between the Persians and the Greeks. Philippides had run a message to the Spartans for help with the Athenians. He ran for a couple of days apparently. His last run was from the city of Marathon to Athens. When he arrived at Athens, the Greeks were eager to hear the outcome of the battle, Philippides had good news and exclaimed, “Joy! We won.”, then legend has it, he fell over and died. 

But, Philippides did have good news to share and ran long, hard, and with much pain to share it. 

Our gospel lesson this morning is all about a messenger who has come to share truly good news. 

Our first passage in Luke comes right after Mary’s song where she talks in beautiful ways about God’s promise of a Savior, of the Messiah, the deliverer coming to the world through her. A song where she reminds us that God does keep God’s promises. 

In our text, it is Zechariah’s turn to give us a song. Zechariah is high priest and he and his wife Elizabeth were well past their years for childbirth. When Zechariah heard that he was finally going to be a dad, he didn’t believe it…so, the angel delivering the news said that he wouldn’t be able to talk because of his stubbornness in not believing. It says that he was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied. 

In the Old Testament, when someone is said to be filled with the Spirit, that means, sit up, wake up, and listen. Zachariah has a lot of respect, he’s older, he had gone through a lot in life, he had given up on being a dad, yet through it all, he was faithful. He may have been shut up by God for a time, but I think even that was a gift from God. God was not through with Zachariah, even though he had lived a long life, God was saying to him, YOU, even in your advanced age, have a purpose that will change the world! Zachariah had time to sit, be still, and listen to the rhythm’s of his heart and hear God’s whisper in his life. 

He was ready to share. When his mouth was loosened, praise and wisdom followed. As well as reminders. Zachariah tells us that God is powerful by using the symbol of a horn. In antiquity, the horn was a symbol of power. It made a loud noise and help, or deliverance, would follow. If you had a horn, you had powerful friends. God was bringing salvation, was making things right. 

Zachariah is also sharing that God has made a covenant with humanity. That God would rescue us, would show mercy, and that our hope is coming. 

He then says that his son, John, will be the messenger. That John would come and prepare the way…and would shine a light for those living in darkness and guide us towards peace. John would bring good news of God’s entering humanity, of restoring right relationships, God would keep his covenant and make God’s loyalty and love to humanity known through John’s cousin, Jesus. God was not only living in community with us through Spirit, but would also physically live with us. The uncreated entering creation. 

Humanity often lives in darkness, we bump about not knowing where we are going. We break things, cause damage to ourselves and others, even destroy one another. Yet, God says that we were created for so much more, for mercy, forgiveness, and for relationship. And, to serve others and God without fear as it says in verse 74. 

Jesus would guide us towards the way of peaceful living with one another. 

And, John does just that. In our second Luke passage that was read at the beginning of the service today, John speaks to the crowds who come to him, some curious, some ready to change, all wanting something more. John rails against the religious, political, and social structures of the day. It’s no accident that Luke mentions the year, and the different leaders of the day. Luke is reminding his readers the setting in which John gives his message. John is standing in the public arena calling all towards repentance, to change towards a new life signified in baptism…the old life is gone, a new life has come. 

John is one crying in the wilderness, reminding his readers of the wilderness that they were in when they left Egypt…it seemed like it may take a while, they wandered around, but in God’s time, they were delivered out of the wilderness and into something more. 

Not all may have experienced this…some died in the wilderness. But, we have to realize that God is committed to the whole picture, all of humanity. With God, no one is lost, even if they are on different parts of the Journey. John is telling us that Jesus is coming to us now to show us and remind us that the Kingdom of God, of heaven, God’s Presence is here, now, and will be with us forever. 

Friends, just like the marathon runner, we may be tired, we may be worn out, we may want to give up. But, we’ve got good news, we have a God who is calling us to live differently, to change, to repent and live in forgiveness of our stuff and the stuff of others, to let go of the past and live into a new future even as we practice a new Presence, and to have peace…real peace.  Peace in scripture is not the absence of conflict, but a deeper sense of faith that we can live into.  We may not know the future, we may have a lot of uncertainty, but we also are all connected to one another and a divine flow of God’s love that calls us into.  Friends, we are never too old, we never have it all figured out, but if we are willing to donate trust beyond circumstance to one another and to God, just as God demonstrated through Jesus, we can come out of the wilderness and into the promise, the hope of salvation and into the abundance of life, the deep peace that passes understanding, that God promises!