Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Luke 4:14-21;

 
We are going to begin today with a little quiz!
 
Can you guess the following mission statements to its company?
 
(Google): “To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
 
(Starbucks): “To inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.”
 
(Nike:) “To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world.”
 
And:

(CPC-Merrick)
Our church takes the word "community" in our name seriously.  We are a community of love, accepting and welcoming all to our church family, and centered in the teachings of Jesus Christ.  While we come from diverse backgrounds, we gather as a united family to joyfully worship God's amazing grace in praise and thanksgiving.
 
(FPC-Freeport)
Our mission is to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God” as we look towards a new heaven and a new earth (Micah 6:8)
 
Mission statements are de riguer for any self-respecting organization. Mission statements are meant to capture the essence of the organization’s vision in concrete ways.   The mission statement guides the organization to successful outcome that should be measurable. Google boosts of 5.6 billion searches a day. Starbucks prepares about 4 billion cups of joe and other exotic beverages a day. Nike sells 25 pairs of shoes a second.

To achieve the best possible outcomes in life, we need to have a purpose. With a purpose, a vision, we can then set goals, even if they are modest or day by day.  You had a goal to get to church today – or those watching remotely, to attend worship from home. One of my son’s goals is to get a degree in computer science, which he is chipping away at semester by semester.  My daughter wants to get a driver’s license.  So, she is studying the manual to get her learner’s permit. We tend to get more out of life when we set goals and work to achieve them. As Christians perhaps those goals might include reading  the Bible every day, reaching out and helping others.  Ultimately each of us is called to have a vision, and ideally create a mission statement for ourselves. To borrow from Nike, to bring inspiration to every person we meet. To share the good news in some way with those whose path we cross.  How many of us actually have a personal mission statement that we review on a regular basis? What would it be like to create one and live by that message?
 
In this week’s Gospel reading, we hear what we might call Jesus’ mission statement.  They are his first words in Luke.  The passage makes this scene very important to understanding who Jesus is and what he is up to.  It points us to not only Jesus’ future, but the future he has carved out for us in his ministry, death and resurrection. Jesus, accompanied only by the Holy Spirit, went to his hometown of Nazareth.  That tells us something about Jesus’ mission:  he intends to focus his concerns on the ordinary person, not the high and mighties of the world. 

Likewise, in our Hebrew scripture readings from Nehemiah, we see how the ordinary people, assembled in a rebuilt Jerusalem regain a mission, a purpose for themselves.  Nehemiah, the bureaucrat, governor and master planner, rebuilt the destroyed Temple and Jerusalem in the fifth century before Christ. At that time the city was in utter ruins. Through the hard work of Nehemiah, the city was rebuilt and repopulated. Finally, the temple was rededicated. The people rededicated themselves to God after the long captivity by foreign powers. During this inaugural ceremony, the priest Ezra read from the Law of Moses, all day, in the great square. The people heard the message, the mission of the covenant people, and the community was renewed. In this act of reclaiming their history, people wept. They had rediscovered their mission, their purpose. The people were exhorted to put away their tears; to rejoice once more. They were home. They were free.  There was hope. They were ready to start over.  They realized their had a vision, a mission a purpose. Proverbs 29:18 reminds us that “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but happy is the person who keeps the law.”  

So Jesus went to Nazareth, his hometown, the place that had quite a reputation as a bit of a dungheap of a town, if we are listen to the disciple Philip who said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:45). Yet is was in Nazareth Jesus begins, and he starts in the synagogue.  He got up to read words from the prophet Isaiah, chapter 61: 1-2: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. “Then he sat down.  He concluded with the briefest of commentary: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus states his mission. He and the mission are one.

Jesus built his mission statement, and the symbolism surrounding it, from a passage in Isaiah written to console the people still in captivity.  From this passage, Jesus states his mission, sets the agenda and the tone for what he would be doing in the next three years.   He would be about bringing good news to poor people. Proclaiming release to captives and recovery of sight to the blind. Letting the oppressed go free, and all about proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of jubilee, when property gets returned to people who have lost it, when debts are forgiven, and people are restored.

According to the book of Leviticus, the Year of Jubilee (Lev. 25:10), was set at every seven years and every fifty years, according to the Law of Moses.  In the time of Jubilee – God’s favor -- “no business as usual can be done…slaves must be given their freedom…families can return to lands lost in litigation…farmland and field get a Sabbath of rest, for there can be no planting or harvesting; debts are…cancelled.”  The Jubilee Year is to be a for-taste and celebration of the Kingdom of Heaven. Now there is little evidence that Jubilee was ever followed. It was too radical and just too hard -- Liberation, restoration, health cared for, jails unlocked, land returned: a time to start new.  Yet Jesus reclaimed that mission -- to embody the compassion and justice of God to everything but especially to the overlooked, downtrodden, forgotten people of the world.  God’s favor was key in Jesus’ ministry and his intent to establish community that would mirror the heavenly kingdom, to which we are heirs in Jesus’ name.  We are the flag-bearers of that jubilee.  That is Jesus’ mission statement…and ours.
​
Let us make 2022 a flagship year by putting into practice this mission statement.  Today we make Jesus’ mission statement our own. We will carry out the goals of jubilee: being good news bearers. Casting light were there is darkness. Freeing those who are bound by oppression in all its forms and sin.  May the spirit of Jubilee – God’s favor –be our purpose. May the joy of this mission be our strength, as we continue the journey in 2022, faithful until the mission of Jesus is fulfilled everywhere on earth. Amen.
        

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Isaiah 62:1-5; John 2:1-11

 
The miracle of changing the water into wine at the wedding feast of Cana has lent itself to more jokes than we can imagine.  A cartoon has been making its way through cyberspace that depicts stacks of bottles of wine, underneath is the caption: Jesus was here.  Also:   Jesus walks into a bar with his disciples and tells the bartender, “"Thirteen glasses of water, please!

        According to John, it is his first miracle of his public ministry.  Weddings were huge social events in the ancient world, just as they are now, but then they involved not just the immediate family and friends, but the entire village. In dreary, grueling, monotonous village life a wedding was a break from hardships of routine living.  So, there was an expectation that the family would provide appropriately for the guests who had come to celebrate this marriage. Accommodations along with the best food and drink the family could afford signified not only the importance of the event and but conveyed the value of hospitality, the highest code of conduct people lived by.  It was a matter of family honor to pull off what was often a week-long celebration. Families then as now saved for years, sold the prize cow, to afford a proper wedding.

But then an unthinkable emergency happened.  Somehow, at some point during the celebration, the wine ran out. An unheard-of miscalculation. A social catastrophe in the making.  Even today we could imagine the embarrassment of a modern wedding couple if the liquor suddenly ceased to flow at their reception. No more booze?  Let the wedding cake topple over, let the chicken be dried out, let the Let the DJ not show up, let the flower girls throw a tantrum, but friends, at a wedding, the wine must flow.  

It is not Jesus, but Mary, his mother who notices the predicament. Out of this sense of goodness for those who would face great shame in their community, shame from which they would not recover, she turned to her son, says, “They have no wine!”  Jesus is respectful but hesitant.   His hour has not come, Jesus says. How often we seek the right timing or wait for just the right moment to make a pronouncement or take a desired action.  Jesus, fortunately, realized like Dr. King once said, “the time is always right to do what is right.”  So, Jesus instructs the servants to fill the six huge stone water jars with water and take it to the chief steward. Upon tasting it, the steward declares it to be the best wine ever – the best saved for last.  

What an amazing sign this is for us: that God cares for us, cares that even there’s enough wine to celebrate. God provides goodness and abundance for all. Jesus wants all the guests to enjoy the goodness and the abundance of wine whether they are aware of how it got there or not. Few people knew the source of the wine, but everyone enjoyed its abundance—that’s how God’s grace and love and generosity work. Jesus shows us that God’s abundance is not earned—it is given; God’s grace is not paid for—it is freely offered; God’s love is not won—it is simply received. Do you know how much wine there is in six stone jars holding twenty to thirty gallons each it’s about 3,200 glasses! That’s the party of lifetime!

Mary took a stand against humiliation and for compassion, and this interchange between Mary and Jesus reflects the encouragement for action between Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.  By refusing to give up her seat on the bus on that ordinary day, December 5, 1955, in Montgomery, Parks set the stage for King’s entry into that civil rights moment. The wine of justice had run out.  Jesus, in raising up the prophet that Dr. King was, made sure that wine would flow again.

        Rosa Parks noted that there was no more wine of justice.  Dr. King was the relatively unknown but rising force at the Dexter Street Baptist Church, when he was called upon to head the Montgomery Improvement Association.  Under Dr. King’s leadership the historic Montgomery bus boycott, spurred on by Rosa Park’s action, which lasted 381 days, resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional.   Did Dr. King know his hour had arrived?  Surely, he had his qualms and indecisions.  But he responded to the situation brought forth by Rosa Parks, and others before her. 

“While Martin Luther King, Jr did not change water into wine, he did change a movement into the new wine of commitment.  Thousands gathered to hear him.   He led the sanitation workers strike in Memphis, TN.  King proclaimed to the educated of America that they needed to born again in mind and spirit to see the sin of racism and poverty.  Writing an unforgettable letter to white clergy in a Birmingham jail, King lifted up the dead daughters of Birmingham, killed in a bombing at 16th Street Baptist Church.  Yes, King lifted up a cup of living waters, transformed to the wine of justice and compassion and we drink from it still."

“From his studies and years of activism, Dr. King further developed the concept of the Beloved Community as a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. Citing King’s papers, in the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.”  Remember Dr. King’s famous words?

We must learn to live together as brothers(and sisters) or perish together as fools. . . .The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood.  MLK,Jr.“Strength to Love”]

Our celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks, and through them the civil rights movement shows us the signs of the wedding are everywhere.  They are there whenever we say no to oppression and yes to love and justice.  They are there when we are invited to take action to help others, and we say yes, even if we are not ready.   The signs are there whenever we take delight in what is right, good and just.     
So let us be the signs of wedding by forging the Beloved Community wherever God plants us.  Turn water into wine through our caring, our joy, our commitment to turn wrongs into rights, the tragedies and complications into celebration.   This way, the glory of God will be revealed, and God will take delight in us—and we as signs of the wedding feast – will be a delight to the world.
Amen.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/biteintheapple/cana-an-unexpected-time/
http://www.thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy#sthash.NQCtbq8q.dpuf
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/martinluth106169.html
https://www.soulstorywriter.net/177-mlk-day-through-the-lens-of-the-wedding-at-cana

Luke 3:15-18, 20-22, Isaiah 43:1-7
 
 
How many people received their 2022-star words this past week?  The Star words, as you know, are the randomly chosen word that is meant to be your spiritual word, or theme or idea to reflect upon, act upon and apply to your life in 2022.  I hope you refer to your word frequently and pray upon it often, seeing how God is speaking to you through this word.  I got the word accountability. Accountability. All week long I’ve been thinking about what being accountable or responsible for means, especially in regard to my walk with Jesus.  In addition, I have been wondering what accountability or being responsible applies to baptism, particularly the baptism of Jesus, which our gospel lesson highlights today.

The baptism of the Lord is one of the few events that made it into all four Gospels – a rare feat and a sign of how important this event is in the life of the early Christian church. The baptism of Jesus is the inauguration of Jesus into ministry. It was His coming out party - His grand opening, so to speak. It is Jesus being accountable to his mission of salvation.

It reminds me of the story of the curious teenage boy who stumbled upon a baptismal service one Sunday afternoon down by the river. It was down south, back in the day, and this kid walked right down into the water and stood next to the Preacher. The minister turned and noticed the youth and said, "Son, Are you ready to find Jesus?" The youth looked back and said, "Yes, Preacher. I sure am." The minister then dunked the kid under the water and pulled him right back up.

"Have you found Jesus?" the preacher asked. "No, I hav
en't!" said the boy. The preacher then dunked him under for a bit longer, brought him up and said, "Now, brother, have you found Jesus?" "No, I haven't Preacher." The preacher next held the teenager under for at least 30 seconds this time, brought him out of the water and said in a somewhat exasperated tone, "Friend, are you sure you haven't found Jesus yet?" The youth wiped his eyes gasping for breath and said to the preacher, ..."Naw preacher, are you sure this is where he fell in?!"

Unlike the words of that old preacher, Baptism isn't where you find Jesus. It’s the starting point of where we pledge to take responsibility for our walk of faith. Where we hold ourselves accountable to know Jesus. We hold ourselves accountable to help each other on the Christian path. It’s the sign of commitment to Jesus as Lord and Savior.

The Story about baptizing Jesus’ is intriguing because, depending on what you think about baptism, there doesn't seem to be any reason for Jesus to be baptized. John didn't just come up with this baptism idea on his own. It was already a symbolic ritual of desiring forgiveness and wanting to start fresh, a new life. John told the people to bear fruits worthy of repentance.  So, John baptized people for the forgiveness of their sins as a symbol to turn their lives around.  But Jesus didn’t need to turn his life around. Jesus was sinless. 

        Jesus didn’t have anything he needed to repent for. Yet Jesus deliberately sought out his cousin John and sought out baptism.  Jesus planned it intentionally. The distance from Galilee to the Jordan was at least a full day’s journey.  Anywhere from 30-60 miles.  It was a long walk for Jesus and required significant effort and determination.  Why was baptism so important to Jesus? What was he holding himself accountable for?

Nowadays, some people think Baptism as the formal entry point into the family of faith. How many of us were baptized as infants?  How about at a different age?  No matter what age you were baptized, it isn’t the event in and of itself that saves us.  Jesus does that. Most of us were baptized as infants, it is the most common way that Presbyterians and mainline Christians receive the sacrament. Baptism is a seal of the assurance of God’s love even before we have the ability to really do anything in return. And that’s it, baptism is a gift from God not for anything we have done or can do, but just because God chooses us, loves us and wants to spend all our lives with him.  That is what grace is all about.

The downside to infant baptism is of course that we can’t remember the event ourselves and appreciate its importance.  We need others to tell us what it was like. Surely the infant doesn’t feel any different. Yet it makes a difference for the rest of us who stand in its place, pledge our love and care as a congregation.  That has always been the most meaningful part of the baptismal service for me – when the congregation holds itself accountable for raising the infant in the faith, loving, caring and guiding the child so that he or she comes to know Jesus and the gospel as he or she matures.

For Jesus, baptism is a sign of taking on the mantel of discipleship. Remember the last commandment Jesus gave his followers as he ascended to heaven was, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).  Fasting, all night vigils, and exorcisms were all part and parcel of baptism in the early church.  Baptism was significant, and people often studied for months or years before being baptized. That’s what it meant to be a responsible follower of Jesus in the ancient world.

  But that doesn't answer the question, "Why was baptism so important to Jesus that he sought it out, and allowed himself to be baptized by John?"

        Jesus allowed himself to be baptized as a sign of responsibility to us and out of love for humanity.  The First letter of Peter 2:24 tells us that Jesus bore our sins “in” his body. John’s first letter declares that Jesus himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins—and not only our sins but the sins of all the world (1 John 2:2).  Instead of being repulsed by our sinfulness and failings, Jesus instead embraces us, and allows himself to become one with us., pledging to be the one accountable to God on our behalf.  One of the most powerful expressions of this is found in Philippians 2:6-8.  Which speaks of Jesus who, emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of humankind.  He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death -- even to death on a cross. Jesus’ baptism is a pledge to take on the cross on our behalf.
​
So, Jesus’ baptism was an immersion into humanity, a sign of solidarity and of love for us. Jesus holds himself accountable to God for us, much as we vow to be accountable to help those who are baptized in their journey to Jesus.  Let us remember with thanksgiving our baptismal vows this day. In remembering the waters of baptism, may we pledge ourselves responsible to help each other find Jesus in each and every day, and live out the promises of baptism to take upon ourselves the name of Jesus Christ, always remember Him, keep His commandments, and serve Him to the end, just as he serves us.  Amen
 
 
https://www.lifeway.com/en/articles/sermon-baptism-jesus-jordan-john-matthew-3
 

Psalm 72, Matthew 2:1-12
 
https://www.bobcornwall.com/2013/01/following-star-sermon-for-epiphany.html
 
One of the first songs most of us learned as children was this old English lullaby:


Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,  
Like a diamond in the sky.

It’s not a Christmas carol or even an Epiphany hymn, but the third stanza seems to fit today’s service:  


Then the traveler in the dark,
Thanks you for your tiny spark,
He could not see which way to go,  
If you did not twinkle so.
 
Light pollution makes it difficult to see the stars in the night, but if you get away from the metropolitan area, maybe go up into the mountains, you might get a sense of how the stars looked to the ancient world. That’s one of the things I miss from our upstate vacations with the kids every year; being able to look up at the night sky and see the endless blanket of stars every which we looked. Ancient travelers carefully plotted out the constellations and turned confidently to the stars for guidance.  Stars were the original GPS system of the ancient world, of a world actually not too long ago.

        According to Matthew, Magi – Zoroastrian priests from Persia -- followed a twinkling star to the house of Jesus, so they could honor him as king of the Jews.  As we bring the Christmas season to a close this week, we hear a story that invites us to look forward to new journeys upon which the Spirit of God will lead us in the coming months of the new year. 

 The message of Epiphany is this: The light of God is made manifest in Christ to the world, and as the body of Christ, the church, is called to be this light throughout the world. Jesus reminded us to not put our lamp under a bushel basket; instead put it on a lamp stand so that our light will “shine before people, so they can see the good things we do and praise our Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:15-16 CEB). Isaiah put it this way:  9:2 The people who walk in darkness Will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land, The light will shine on them” (Is. 9:2). Paul writes to us in his second letter to Corinthians 4:6 “For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”  It is the reassurance that in the darkest of times Jesus was born, and not even the darkness of sin can keep out the light of God in our lives.

       In Matthew’s story, a star shines brightly in the darkness of the night sky, “his star,” drawing the attention of the Magi, who recognize that this light in the sky is a sign that something important is occurring, and that they need to follow the sign to where it leads. Whatever it was, a flare up of a star or the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, this light was a rare occurrence and the Magi were skilled enough to pay attention.  They were faithful enough to take action and follow its trail. You may have heard the slogan: “wise men still seek him.”  It’s an invitation to us to join these people of wisdom in finding enlightenment at the feet of Christ.

   There are, of course, other characters in Matthew’s story besides Jesus and the Magi. There’s even a villain – Herod – an evil man who represents the darkness of the time into which Jesus was born. So, while it’s not surprising that when the Magi come looking for the “King of the Jews,” they first stopped at Herod’s palace, this wasn’t their final destination.  What they learn from Herod, however, is that the prophet Micah had spoken of a shepherd arising out of Bethlehem.  And so, they head out from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to find their promised king.  Of course, Herod, always concerned about his own power, had other designs in mind.  He wants to extinguish the light that has come into the world.

       The Magi, non-Jews, foreign scholars, recognize Jesus as the true king, but as we learn from the gospels, his kingdom is very different from that of Herod.  His is a kingdom of light rather than darkness; love instead of domination.  Instead of enslaving us, it sets us free. In fact, it’s the kind of kingdom described in the Beatitudes, where Jesus declares:   Blessed are the poor, the grieving, the meek, the ones who hunger after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted.  It’s no wonder that Herod tried to snuff out the realm of God at the beginning, even as Pilate tried to do the same later on.  Tragically Herod, trying to extinguish this light, had the baby boys under the age of two in Bethlehem – causing Mary and Joseph to flee with the child Jesus to Egypt. The message of Epiphany is clear – as the gospel of John declares: the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.     

 So, where do you see signs of God’s kingdom present in your life? What star shines even in the darkest places, leading you forward? Remember when the older President Bush spoke of “a thousand points of light?”  He was talking about voluntarism, but on this Epiphany Sunday, as we celebrate the coming of God’s light into the world, I think it’s an apt description of how we, having been enlightened by our encounter with the child born in Bethlehem, carry the light of God into the world.  

        So today, let us invite the light of the Jesus in our lives as we embark on 2022. What darkness are you struggling with? The darkness of sin holds us bound. The darkness of estranged relationships. The darkness of illness or death. The darkness of economic hardship. The darkness of conflict enveloping our families, our churches our neighborhoods.  The darkness is there, but the good news is that each of us has access to the light of God that twinkles in the night sky, that twinkles in the darkest moments of our life, guiding “us to thy perfect light.” 

        In a little while, we will be picking star words – a word to guide our spiritual journey throughout 2022. Keep the word you pick close to you throughout the year. Meditate on it daily. Find out what it might want you to learn about yourself, or your relationship with God or others. Let this word illumine your live, let it be a point of reference, as you travel the next 12 months of 2022.

May your Star word turn you to the Light of Jesus that God shines in our lives as we embark on a new year. Poet Amanda Gorman encourages us forward in her New Year’s Poem, “New Day’s Lyric,”

This hope is our door, our portal.
Even if we never get back to normal,
Someday we can venture beyond it,
To leave the known and take the first steps.
So let us not return to what was normal,
But reach toward what is next.
*
What was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren't aware, we're now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat.
 
Let us step forward together into the light of 2022 and may its star shine bright in all our days. Amen
https://www.bobcornwall.com/2013/01/following-star-sermon-for-epiphany.html
 
 

Isaiah 12:2-6; Luke 3: 7-18

Out of the mouth of babes! A friend of mine recently told me about a time she was at a birthday party for a four-year-old when one of the children apparently said something offensive about another child. Immediately, the other young guests uttered, “Oooooh!” expecting something dramatic to happen. Except, the girl who should have been offended, put her hand on her hip, pointed to the offender and said, “I’m not gonna let you steal my joy!” and continued to play.

Kudos to whoever taught her about resisting the urge to be offended and upset. What would happen if we all gave the devil and all the “joy robbers” that type of smack down? How different the atmosphere around us would be. Recording artist Rihanna agrees, saying, “the devil wants to steal your joy because joy is our strength…”  She is quoting straight from the bible: “The joy of the Lord is our strength” comes from the prophet Nehemiah (8:10), who addresses the people of Israel- exiles for forty years- as they face the prospect of rebuilding their life together. It’s easy to be pulled down and put others down when times are tough. But it is when times are tough that we especially have to guard against anything that threatens to sap our joy.

Joy is not the same as happiness. Happiness comes and goes but joy is a permanent well-spring rooted not in what is happening around us but rooted instead through God’s love, down in our hearts to stay, as the song goes.

So, joy is a God-given right at the heart of our relationship with Christ. Joy, like its sister gifts of hope and peace that we have been reflecting on in this Advent season, form the scaffold of faith that we proclaim when we come to the manger and worship the new-born Jesus on Christmas Eve. Just as peace is not defined by the absence of war, so, too, joy is in no way defined by the absence of pain or suffering. In Luke’s Gospel, the angels proclaim “tidings of great joy” to the shepherds, which would not only be for them—but for all people! (Luke 2:10-11). Yes, the shepherds were privileged to hear the good news and to see the newborn Christ child. Despite this, it did not remove them from their social position of being lowly shepherds, at the bottom of the social pecking order.

The beauty of Joy lies in the fact that those who have found it, display it even in the midst of dire circumstances. John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin who was the austere prophet from the desert, was a man of great joy. People flocked to him despite his strong message of repentance. People were to find joy through repentance and changing our lives for the better. John taught, if you have two coats, give one away. Some with food. Tax collectors should not exhort money, soldiers should seek bribes. In other words, joy is found in living an honest, heartfelt life, interacting in good faith with each other. Despite his success as a prophet, John was thrilled when Jesus appeared on the scene. John declared, “My joy is now full. He must increase and I must decrease.”

  Author Elizabeth Gilbert shares a moment when she experienced joy on a dismal night in the city. She writes: “Some years ago, I was stuck on a crosstown bus in New York City during rush hour. Traffic was barely moving. The bus was filled with cold, tired people who were deeply irritated with one another, with the world itself. Two men barked at each other about a shove that might or might not have been intentional. A pregnant woman got on, and nobody offered her a seat. Rage was in the air; no mercy would be found here.

But as the bus approached Seventh Avenue, the driver got on the intercom. “Folks," he said, "I know you have had a rough day and you are frustrated. I can’t do anything about the weather or traffic, but here is what I can do. As each one of you gets off the bus, I will reach out my hand to you. As you walk by, drop your troubles into the palm of my hand, okay? Don’t take your problems home to your families tonight, just leave them with me. My route goes right by the Hudson River, and when I drive by there later, I will open the window and throw your troubles in the water."

It was as if a spell had lifted. Everyone burst out laughing. Faces gleamed with surprised delight. People who had been pretending for the past hour not to notice each other’s existence were suddenly grinning at each other like, is this guy serious?  Oh, he was serious.

At the next stop, just as promised, the driver reached out his hand, palm up, and waited. One by one, all the exiting commuters placed their hand just above his and mimed the gesture of dropping something into his palm. Some people laughed as they did this, some teared up but everyone did it. The driver repeated the same lovely ritual at the next stop, too. And the next. All the way to the river.
We live in a hard world, my friends. Sometimes it is extra difficult to be a human being. Sometimes we have a bad day. Sometimes we have a bad day that lasts for several years. We struggle and fail. We lose jobs, money, friends, faith, and love. We witness horrible events unfolding in the news, and we become fearful and withdrawn. There are times when everything seems cloaked in darkness. We long for the light, we long for joy, but don’t know where to find it.

But what if you reached deep down and found the joy of the Lord, in whatever circumstances you face? Isn’t what this bus driver teaches us, that anyone can turn things around, at any moment. This guy wasn’t some big power player. He wasn’t a spiritual leader. He wasn’t some media-savvy influencer. He was a bus driver, one of society’s most invisible workers. But he possessed real power, real joy, and he used it beautifully for to change the lives of some weary, hassled commuters.

When life feels especially grim, or when I feel particularly powerless in the face of the world’s troubles, I think of this man and ask myself, what can I do, right now, to bring joy in this situation?  Of course, we can’t personally end all wars, or solve global warming, or transform vexing people into entirely different creatures. We definitely can’t control traffic. But we do have some influence on others we brush up against, even if we never speak or learn each other’s name.

"No matter who you are, or where you are, or how mundane or tough our situations may seem, I believe we can bring joy to the world. We don’t have to choose the worst interpretation of a scenario.  We can choose to walk away from a fight. Instead, of being joy-robbers, we can simply convey the joy that God gives through us. We can bring joy in a dark space. This the only way the world will ever be illuminated, one bright, joyful act at a time, all the way to the river."

Christina Rossetti, author of our closing hymn, “In the Bleak Midwinter” experienced long bouts of poor health when she wrote her Christmas poem.  In this carol we will shortly sing, we are reminded that The Incarnate One, the Light of the World, who brought warmth and joy into the most forlorn and dreary of sinful situations. Jesus, who infuses our hearts with joy, if we but let him. Amen
 

Malachi 3:1-4, Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:1-6

I remember the day as if it were yesterday. That day11 years ago. It was a Friday when an email from a congregant in my Queens church arrived late Friday morning. “I want you to know my family is safe…. My grandson, Bobby, attends an elementary school in that district but not Sandy Hook where this horrific shooting tragedy occurred.”

        Eleven years ago, on December 14, 2012, a 20-year-old gunman had just murdered his mother and killed a total of 27 people, 20 of them children, at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. Images of that carnage came back to me this week on the heels of  yet another school shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan this past Wednesday, killing four students, about the age the Sandy Hook kids would have been had they lived. Along with the memory of 10 killed at Santa Fe High School in 2018.  17 shot and killed at Margory Stoneman Douglas High School. Remember Columbine? Remember Las Vegas? Aurora? Virginia Tech. Last Wednesday a music director for 23 years at a Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, FL shot to death his wife, son and daughter for no apparent reason. Last Monday a 14-year-old was shot 18 times while waiting at a bus stop. Omicron, the latest mutant of COVID, has arrived on our shores threatening the fragile process we have been making. Inflation and other economic issues are creating a chronic sense of anxiety in people. That’s just scratching the tip of the surface of conflict and pain we are confronted with on a daily basis.

        How do we take it all in? How do we light the candle of peace within a context of violence, conflict and turmoil that plagues our world and our nation -- that exists even in our very churches? In our very hearts? One family in great anguish shared with me recently about the difficulty they had getting services for their teenaged son with an impulse control disorder. They had decent insurance. But there wasn’t an adolescent psychiatrist in network within a reasonable distance. When their son had to be hospitalized, this couple had to spend over an hour and ½ finding an in-network hospital in their region. They’re among of the lucky ones. So many lack the resources, the knowledge and the advocacy needed to get help, just like the homeless women we talked about last week. How do we create peace in the face of all these scenarios?

Let’s be clear, violence and injustice have been a constant in human history. Since the sin in the garden, greed, self-righteousness and hate have resided in the human heart. The Bible is a spiritual mirror that reflects and points back to us our yearnings, our sin as well as our virtues.  Cain kills Abel. The people rebel with the tower of Babel. Evil grows so profoundly that God sends a flood to cleanse the land. Jacob cheats Esau. Joseph’s brothers throw him down a well. The people of Israel are oppressed into slavery. Once freed, the people worship the golden calf. On and on God intervenes but the people chose the path of evil and idolatry instead. And that is just within the first five books of the bible!

So, we are tired. Tired of all the fighting. The hate. The prejudice. The divisions. The compulsion to sin. We want it all to stop. We want to be transformed at last by the birth of Jesus, by love and joy. And have peace at last. Heavenly peace. Peace in our hearts to get through the day. Peace in our world so we can truly care for each other, despite our differences.

These yearnings tug at us as we enter our second week of Advent – the week we are invited to reflect on peace. Peace is not merely the absence of conflict. We’re not merely thinking about peace in terms of no conflict, no fighting, no disharmony between peoples in the world. Ultimately, the vision that Scripture gives us of peace will include that. There is a day that is coming when all wars and all fighting will cease. But the absence of conflict alone is not peace.

Look at a graveyard. In a graveyard, there’s no conflict. There is peace but no life. We read on the gravestones, “Rest in peace,” but that’s not the biblical picture of peace. The biblical picture of peace is more like a garden than a graveyard. It’s a place where there is life, where there is flourishing, where there is bounty, where there is a fruitfulness in every conceivable way. That’s the biblical idea of peace. Growth. Reaching your potential. Different species of plants growing and prospering together. Biblical notions of peace come from Isaiah 11: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid…”  

Isaiah paints a picture that adversaries, people who are polar opposites learn to get together through the power of the Holy Spirit. We house the holy by embracing each other, with all our contrasts, variety of believes and convictions. God has brought us together, here in this church, in our particular families, the nations of the world not to lord it over each other, not to proclaim whose right or whose wrong, but to love each other. Love transcends differences. Friends, it is love that brings about peace.

Love not the same as liking. We don’t have to like each other – our temperaments vary and we may strongly disagree with each other’s beliefs and actions. But Jesus commands us to love each other. Love isn’t an emotion. It is the force of action, of will treat each other as God ordains, especially those we don’t care for. Remember Paul’s powerful words from 1Cor. 11:  Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. If we love as the Bible mandates us to, it makes us peace-makers, children of God as Jesus declares.

It will help us to recall what we know about Christmas: Jesus didn’t come when things were perfect and peaceful. Jesus was born in a time of foreign oppression. His mother could have been stoned if Joseph had not intervened. There was no room at the inn. Jesus was placed in a manger. King Herod ordered the baby boys in Bethlehem under the age of two to be slaughtered. Christmas was one big inconvenience. None of the pain and injustice stopped Jesus from being present with us.

 So, Jesus wants to come this very day to love us, and in doing so to bring his peace into our imperfect, fractured, conflicted hearts. Will we invite him, and house the holy? As we listen to our final carol, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” we are reminded this song was one of the first social-justice oriented hymn, written on the eve of the Civil War, the throes of a society by the Industrial Revolution, women beginning to fight for the right of the vote, among other challenges. In the midst of all we face, we sing, “peace on the earth, goodwill to all.”  Let this be our hearts deepest desire today.

So, this we week we need to make room for peace. Set aside our opinions. Set aside our judgments. Let us make room for each other. Especially those whom we may not be in agreement with. Let us seek each other’s welfare, in doing so may we discover the Peace of Jesus, which passes all understanding. Amen

Malachi 3:1-4, Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:1-6

I remember the day as if it were yesterday. That day11 years ago. It was a Friday when an email from a congregant in my Queens church arrived late Friday morning. “I want you to know my family is safe…. My grandson, Bobby, attends an elementary school in that district but not Sandy Hook where this horrific shooting tragedy occurred.”

        Eleven years ago, on December 14, 2012, a 20-year-old gunman had just murdered his mother and killed a total of 27 people, 20 of them children, at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. Images of that carnage came back to me this week on the heels of  yet another school shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan this past Wednesday, killing four students, about the age the Sandy Hook kids would have been had they lived. Along with the memory of 10 killed at Santa Fe High School in 2018.  17 shot and killed at Margory Stoneman Douglas High School. Remember Columbine? Remember Las Vegas? Aurora? Virginia Tech. Last Wednesday a music director for 23 years at a Presbyterian Church in Jacksonville, FL shot to death his wife, son and daughter for no apparent reason. Last Monday a 14-year-old was shot 18 times while waiting at a bus stop. Omicron, the latest mutant of COVID, has arrived on our shores threatening the fragile process we have been making. Inflation and other economic issues are creating a chronic sense of anxiety in people. That’s just scratching the tip of the surface of conflict and pain we are confronted with on a daily basis.

        How do we take it all in? How do we light the candle of peace within a context of violence, conflict and turmoil that plagues our world and our nation -- that exists even in our very churches? In our very hearts? One family in great anguish shared with me recently about the difficulty they had getting services for their teenaged son with an impulse control disorder. They had decent insurance. But there wasn’t an adolescent psychiatrist in network within a reasonable distance. When their son had to be hospitalized, this couple had to spend over an hour and ½ finding an in-network hospital in their region. They’re among of the lucky ones. So many lack the resources, the knowledge and the advocacy needed to get help, just like the homeless women we talked about last week. How do we create peace in the face of all these scenarios?

Let’s be clear, violence and injustice have been a constant in human history. Since the sin in the garden, greed, self-righteousness and hate have resided in the human heart. The Bible is a spiritual mirror that reflects and points back to us our yearnings, our sin as well as our virtues.  Cain kills Abel. The people rebel with the tower of Babel. Evil grows so profoundly that God sends a flood to cleanse the land. Jacob cheats Esau. Joseph’s brothers throw him down a well. The people of Israel are oppressed into slavery. Once freed, the people worship the golden calf. On and on God intervenes but the people chose the path of evil and idolatry instead. And that is just within the first five books of the bible!

So, we are tired. Tired of all the fighting. The hate. The prejudice. The divisions. The compulsion to sin. We want it all to stop. We want to be transformed at last by the birth of Jesus, by love and joy. And have peace at last. Heavenly peace. Peace in our hearts to get through the day. Peace in our world so we can truly care for each other, despite our differences.

These yearnings tug at us as we enter our second week of Advent – the week we are invited to reflect on peace. Peace is not merely the absence of conflict. We’re not merely thinking about peace in terms of no conflict, no fighting, no disharmony between peoples in the world. Ultimately, the vision that Scripture gives us of peace will include that. There is a day that is coming when all wars and all fighting will cease. But the absence of conflict alone is not peace.

Look at a graveyard. In a graveyard, there’s no conflict. There is peace but no life. We read on the gravestones, “Rest in peace,” but that’s not the biblical picture of peace. The biblical picture of peace is more like a garden than a graveyard. It’s a place where there is life, where there is flourishing, where there is bounty, where there is a fruitfulness in every conceivable way. That’s the biblical idea of peace. Growth. Reaching your potential. Different species of plants growing and prospering together. Biblical notions of peace come from Isaiah 11: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid…”  

Isaiah paints a picture that adversaries, people who are polar opposites learn to get together through the power of the Holy Spirit. We house the holy by embracing each other, with all our contrasts, variety of believes and convictions. God has brought us together, here in this church, in our particular families, the nations of the world not to lord it over each other, not to proclaim whose right or whose wrong, but to love each other. Love transcends differences. Friends, it is love that brings about peace.

Love not the same as liking. We don’t have to like each other – our temperaments vary and we may strongly disagree with each other’s beliefs and actions. But Jesus commands us to love each other. Love isn’t an emotion. It is the force of action, of will treat each other as God ordains, especially those we don’t care for. Remember Paul’s powerful words from 1Cor. 11:  Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. If we love as the Bible mandates us to, it makes us peace-makers, children of God as Jesus declares.

It will help us to recall what we know about Christmas: Jesus didn’t come when things were perfect and peaceful. Jesus was born in a time of foreign oppression. His mother could have been stoned if Joseph had not intervened. There was no room at the inn. Jesus was placed in a manger. King Herod ordered the baby boys in Bethlehem under the age of two to be slaughtered. Christmas was one big inconvenience. None of the pain and injustice stopped Jesus from being present with us.

 So, Jesus wants to come this very day to love us, and in doing so to bring his peace into our imperfect, fractured, conflicted hearts. Will we invite him, and house the holy? As we listen to our final carol, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” we are reminded this song was one of the first social-justice oriented hymn, written on the eve of the Civil War, the throes of a society by the Industrial Revolution, women beginning to fight for the right of the vote, among other challenges. In the midst of all we face, we sing, “peace on the earth, goodwill to all.”  Let this be our hearts deepest desire today.

So, this we week we need to make room for peace. Set aside our opinions. Set aside our judgments. Let us make room for each other. Especially those whom we may not be in agreement with. Let us seek each other’s welfare, in doing so may we discover the Peace of Jesus, which passes all understanding. Amen