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A Kingly Christmas

12/26/2017

A long time ago, there ruled in Persia a wise and good king. He loved his people. He wanted to know how they lived. He wanted to know about their hardships. Often, he dressed in the clothes of a working man or a beggar, and went to the homes of the poor. No one whom he visited thought that he was their ruler. One time he visited a very poor man who lived in a cellar. He ate the coarse food the poor man ate. He spoke cheerful, kind words to him. Then he left. Later he visited the poor man again and disclosed his identity by saying, “I am your king!” The king thought the man would surely ask for some gift or favor, but he didn’t. Instead he said, “You left your palace and your glory to visit me in this dark, dreary place. You ate the course food I ate. You brought gladness to my heart! To others you have given your rich gifts. To me you have given yourself!”

This story of the wise and good king echoes another familiar story. Doesn’t it? It reflects the story we are reading today about another good and wise heavenly King who loves his people. A king who sheds all glory in order to find the most intimate, the most loving way to connect to and save the created. Us.

The stories surrounding the birth of Jesus teach us about the power and nature of love. The word “love” is not contained in any of the passages we read today about Jesus’ birth. Yet the fingerprints of love blanket all the scriptures we hear today. We experience love as Almighty, the greatest power in the universe, who takes on the frailty and vulnerability of a baby. We experience love as the limitless One who acquires the limitations of incarnation of a certain historical era, adapts to a particular gender, to a body shape and skin tone, eye color and language of a first century, middle-eastern Jew. We encounter love in Emmanuel, God-with-us, Jesus, who carves a life-path filled with teaching, healing, eating and drinking, walking dusty roads, confronting evil and sin, all for us.

Our stories today underscore insights about love for us to contemplate. We perceive how God invites Mary to be Jesus’ mother – Love doesn’t demand or force its way on another. Love invites. Mary in turn in gives her confident response, “be it done to me according to your will.” A teenager, on the cusp of womanhood, trusts and turns risk-taker for Love. She faces ostracization, even death, for this great leap of love. We see love working in Joseph, Mary’s betrothed. Joseph is initially perturbed by her pregnancy – for he is not the father. Joseph, because of love, despite his sense of betrayal, doesn’t seek to humiliate Mary or see harm come her way. He seeks to divorce her quietly. Love seeks to protect, not harm. Because of Joseph’s kindness, Love reaches Joseph through his dreams, and he obeys. He takes Mary as his wife, saving her and the unborn Jesus. Love can seem irrational, improbable, contradictory, but in the end, it is an invitation to enter the unknown. Mary and Joseph share this holy conundrum together – and today with us.

As we observe in our story, love doesn’t mean life will be cushy. Mary and Joseph experience the hardship of traveling to Bethlehem in the last month of pregnancy. They end up in a stable because there is no room in the inn – unthinkable in a culture that valued hospitality. This divine baby is born without the comfort of home and extended kin. He is born without even comfortable surroundings of the local inn. Love chooses what most consider an indignity – in a stable with first witnesses as animals, and a feeding trough for a bed. Smelly shepherds, considered unclean and kept at arm’s length in ancient Israel, are the first guests to answer the angels’ song. Next foreigners, suspicious gentiles from the East, who have sacrificed months of travel, are the next recorded guests. Finally, if all this weren’t enough upheaval, this small family ends up fleeing to Egypt. They are made refugees because of the death-threats of King Herod. Love chooses hardship, love chooses the unchosen, because that is love’s nature, to lift up the broken and rejected.

This is not the kind of love story we are used to. We are used to centuries of sanitized readings of our lessons today, so sentimentalized we often lose the edginess of each verse of the original text. Love risks. Love sacrifices. Love suffers. Love takes leaps of faith. Love doesn’t care what others think. Loves seeks the unloved, the discarded, the lost, those pushed aside.

God’s love turns human conventions on its head. Instead of condemning the poor as dregs of the earth, Love seeks to dine with them. Instead of looking out for its own, Love stretches itself utterly to embrace the needs of others. This is the journey love takes: this is the journey Mary and Joseph, and Jesus takes. Love is not a commodity to be hoarded. Love doesn’t play it safe. As the saying goes, Love isn’t love until it is given away. The miracle is the more we give away, the more we have.

Christmas would have us love like a king: A king-child who reminds us:
Most kings are usually born in a palace, but this king was born in a stable.
While most kings spent all their time building up riches of gold, silver and jewels, this king owned nothing at all.
While most kings surrounded themselves with servants, he chose to be a servant.
Jesus hung out with a bunch of smelly fishermen, tax-collectors the poor and sinners, instead of the aristocracy
They put a crown made of thorns on this head, they poked him with sharp sticks and made fun of Him.
No, instead of being the Backward King, He is the Forever King
Instead of robes and jewels he wore a cloak and tunic.
He was powerful but also powerless
Instead of using great armies and weapons, his only weapon was love

As we finish our lessons this morning, let our hearts reawaken to the love inked in every line. We, so loved, are chosen, we are chosen -- by God to continue the story of the Good and wise King. Of our savior-child-King. For once upon a time, perhaps a day like today, an angel asks, and a savior is born in the feeding trough of our hearts. And the miracle will be that we become God’s love letter written to the world in our actions, through the very words we chose to speak. Let the sacred story of the good and wise savior-king continue in us this Christmas Eve.

A blessed, love-filled Christmas to all!

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Joy to the World!

12/18/2017

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Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11 , John 1:6-8, 19-28
UCBR, December 17, 2017, “Joy to the World!”       Many of you know my love for words and language. I delight to come across a new word and to savor its meaning. One of my favorite pages that pops up on my Facebook feed is “Grandiloquent Word of the Day,” which offers an obscure word for every day of the year. Words like: honeyfuggle (to entice with flattery). Quoikerwodger (to pull the strings of an old-fashioned wooden toy – also a politician controlled by someone else. Or Plisky (a practical joke). Or for those who detest all things to do with zombies, ambulonecrophobia (AM-bew-low-NEK-row-FOW-be-ya (fear of the walking dead)!
This week, A jewel of a word caught my eye: macarism. Macarism. It means to find pleasure in being the source of another’s joy. How appropriate is it that this word enters into our vocabulary today, the third Sunday of Advent. The Advent day that asks us to reflect on joy to prepare properly for Christmas. Our task today is to discover and claim the ability to be macarists – people who find pleasure in being a source of joy for others.
Joy is an attribute of God; a gift God’s bestows on us. Advent draws our heart to God, to a God who derives pleasure in being the source of our joy. A God who takes pleasure in finding joy in all God’s creatures and all of God’s creation.
     We know from the study of the scriptures God offers us a daily dose of joy. The Psalmist declares “This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it! (Psa 118:24).” The prophet Nehemiah reminds us that “the joy of the Lord is our strength” (Neh. 8:10).
     The imprisoned apostle Paul, wrote in chains to the early Christians, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” Phil 4:4). Despite the trials we face, the burdens we bear, the quoikerwodgering in the nations of the world, joy is our spiritual mandate. Joy is our strength.
We find joy in the gospels, especially in the in the details about John the Baptizer’s life – an intense man, someone we don’t necessary at first blush thin as joyful. Yet he was. He inspired joy in many. Remember when the Angel Gabriel declared this prophecy about John, “he will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth.” It is the unborn child John who leaps with joy in his mother’s womb when Mary, the mother of Jesus, enters the home of Mary’s kin, Elizabeth and Zachariah. At the end of his career, as Jesus began his public ministry, with prison and death around the corner, John’s disciples began to complain about Jesus. His disciples left John to follow Jesus. John didn’t care. John dismisses this at once, explaining, “the friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.   He must become greater, I must become less.”
John’s is a life overflowing with joy. Joy announced at his birth. Joy filled him as he faced death. John had a joy that enabled him to live boldly and speak truth to power. The clarity of his purpose, the singularity and purity of his thought, the consistency of his actions, produced joy. John is macarism at its finest.
        The prophet Isaiah along with John, are examples of people who denounce sin, expresses anger against hypocrisy, and stand for, like Jesus, for righteousness, justice, righteousness. Their example inspires joy. Joy is there because they rooted their lives in a joyful God. So, Joy it exists whether we accept it or not. The poet Robert Louis Stevenson encouraged: “Find out where joy resides, and give it a voice far beyond singing. For to miss the Joy is to miss all.”
On this day of Advent Joy, the lives of John and Isaiah are lifted up for us to ponder. Too often those who preach repentance or who stand for justice have a hard time experiencing real joy in their lives. Anger at the cruelties and inequalities we see can dampen our spirits. The task of confronting sin and oppression takes a toll. The statistics are staggering. The work is endless. Hope seems a long way off. Without the cultivation of joy, the work can become unbearable and we can turn bitter. Joy comes from being in relationship with God who makes us whole (not perfect, whole) and holy. Joy makes our witness irresistible. Most of us gravitate towards truly joyful people – the macarists of the world, who are people connected to joy in all circumstances of life. The 20th century evangelist Bill Sunday, preached, “If you have no joy there’s a leak in your Christianity somewhere.”
        Joy is the spiritual habit that beckons us, especially as we commit ourselves to righteousness and justice. It is not surprising that Jesus, when he began his public ministry, deliberately selected excerpts from passage from Isaiah that Scott read for us today that integrates joy, justice and macarism. Consider once more a few of the lines from Isaiah:
The spirit of the Lord God is upon me-
..to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; … for everlasting joy shall be theirs.
By choosing this significant, prophetic text from Isaiah, Jesus points out that everlasting Joy is our companion in a life that seeks to bring comfort, that restores health and wholeness, that uplifts the poor and the hurt, a life that exults in God. Joy is our natural state, unmarred by sin. Joy is our birthright. At our spiritual center we are macarists – we find pleasure in being a source of joy to others.
Advent joy would restore us as it points us to Jesus, because Jesus is Joy incarnate. Recall what the angels proclaim the night of Jesus’s birth: “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people…. A Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”
Advent also reminds us how Jesus, at the end of his life, right before his crucifixion, reassures his disciples, “I have said these things to you so that my JOY may be in you, and that your JOY may be complete” (John 15:11). Jesus, like John, led a life overflowing with joy. Jesus, imbued with the Holy Spirit, was a card-carrying macarist. He lived to bring joy and wholeness to others. Giving and sharing setting an example joy, expressed every day, no matter the circumstances. We find in Jesus our invitation to glorify God in our calling to marcarism.
Listen to this story of how abiding, overflowing joy works.
One day, a countryman knocked hard on a monastery door. When the monk tending the gates opened up, he was given a magnificent bunch of grapes. – Brother, these are the finest my vineyard has produced. I’ve come to bear them as a gift.
– Thank you! I will take them to the Abbot immediately, he’ll be delighted with this offering. – No! I brought them for you. For whenever I knock on the door, it is you opens it. When I needed help because the crop was destroyed by drought, you gave me a piece of bread and a cup of wine every day.
The monk held the grapes and spent the entire morning admiring it. And decided to deliver the gift to the Abbot, who had always encouraged him with words of wisdom.
The Abbot was very pleased with the grapes, but he recalled that there was a sick brother in the monastery, and thought: “I’ll give him the grapes. Who knows, they may bring some joy to his life.” And that is what he did. But the grapes didn’t stay in the sick monk’s room for long, for he reflected: “The cook has looked after me for so long, feeding me only the best meals. I’m sure he will enjoy these.”
The cook was amazed at the beauty of the grapes. So perfect that no one would appreciate them more than the sexton; many at the monastery considered him a holy man, he would be best qualified to value this marvel of nature.
The sexton, in turn, gave the grapes as a gift to the youngest novice, that he might understand that the work of God is in the smallest details of Creation. When the novice received them, he remembered the first time he came to the monastery, and of the person who had opened the gates for him; it was that gesture which allowed him to be among this community of people who knew how to value the wonders of life.
And so, just before nightfall, he took the grapes to the monk at the gates.
– Eat and enjoy them – he said. – For you spend most of your time alone here, and these grapes will make you very happy.
The monk understood that the gift had been truly destined for him, and relished each of the grapes, before falling into a pleasant sleep. Thus the circle was closed; the circle of happiness and joy, which always shines brightly around generous people.
What is the new yet ancient word that will sustain us this season? What word shall speak to us? That the spirit of the Lord is upon us? Like all holy people, we will rejoice in God? That we are people who continue to cry out in the wilderness? Rejoice always? To pray without ceasing? To give thanks in all circumstances? That we are knit into the circle of happiness and joy? That giving is a conduit of joy?
This week, let joy be the word that speaks to us. Let macarism take hold of us. In this way, we become joy to the world. Thanks be to God.

http://1stpres.com/wp-content/uploads/122413-The-Carols-of-Xmas-Joy-to-the-World.pdf
https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/mega-christmas-joy-mark-opperman-sermon-on-christmas-196661?page=3

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Voices of Peace

12/13/2017

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Isaiah 40: 1-11; Mark 1: 1-8

Yesterday as I drove home from the Sanctuary decorating event, I encountered one of my favorite sights: the vision of the trees and ground coated in untouched new-fallen snow. Despite the hassles that snow can bring, I still feel moved to peace and tranquility that a snowfall brings. As corny as this sounds, I think of the symbolism of snowflakes in this holy season: they remind of what religious writers describe: That the exquisite uniqueness of each snowflake -- so intricate and small -- reminds us that Christ sees the individuality of each and every person. God calls every creature each by our own name. Does not the prophet say, “Fear not for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name.” As snowflakes blanket the world in white the scriptures again declare that “though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.”

Unfortunately, there is nothing peaceful or tranquil about the use of the term snowflake. Back in the 1860s, a “snowflake” was a person who opposed to the abolition of slavery—the implication being that such people valued white people over black people. Lately the term “snowflake” has transformed into another slang insult. It is used against young people who came of age in the generation of the 2010s — which considers them as weak and vulnerable as a speck of snow. They are known as the “snowflake generation.” Furthermore, the right wing of our country now frequently calls liberals and progressives “snowflakes” as a put-down. They insinuate that such people are delicate, fragile, sensitive and melt at the moment heat is applied. I will never think of my beloved image of a snowflake entirely like I used to. Even snowflakes have become politicized.

However, today is the Advent Sunday of peace. Our readings this morning lead us further to images of creation to give us another under-utilized image of peace: the peace and comfort discovered as every mountain and hill is brought low. The peace of every valley filled. The peace of every crooked path made straight.

These mountains and valleys exist in our hearts. The mountains and valleys exist in the collective heart of humanity. Each of us has a life of highs and lows. Each of us know the gulf created by mountains of pride or greed. We also know the valleys of depression and defeat. Furthermore, we find ourselves in a huge global gap between human predators of all stripes and shapes and the preyed-upon. Between the higher-ups and the lower downs. The haves and have nots. The hawks and the doves. The self-styled strong and the snowflakes.

   Consider just this one huge gap between mountains and valleys in our world:

The top three wealthiest people control the combined wealth of more than half the U.S. population. That’s three people own more than 160 million.

The six members of the Walton family, creators of the retail chain Wal-Mart – cradle Presbyterians - has more wealth than 42% of American families combined.

The richest 80 persons on the planet have the same wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people.

Wealth is not necessarily bad. The issue is that the extent of one’s wealth should not condemn others to homelessness, illness, and suffering. Advent reminds us there cannot be peace when humanity allows a minority in live lavishly on the mountains and the majority are consigned to valleys of woe. The prophets Isaiah and John call us to the holy task of peace, to bring down the mountains and hills, to raise the valleys. To make the crooked way straight. Mary the mother-prophet of Jesus, in her great song that proclaims the holy leveling of God in Christ: “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly (Luke 1:52).”

Peace is the spiritual tool to bring down those mountains. To raise up the valleys. To straighten what’s been made crooked. This of how peace permeates our Christian life.
When we say, “Peace be with you” in the passing of the peace, aren’t we actually saying, “May you live well?” When the carol extols us to “sleep in heavenly peace” don’t we pray for respite that has conquered the mountains of worry or strife? When we wish for the “Peace on earth” that the Christmas angels proclaim, don’t we confess a world free of conflict and war?

Wait, there is more. Don’t the scriptures teach us that this is just the tip of the iceberg? Peace envisions a better world for everyone. We recall that the Hebrew root of peace means "to be complete" or "to be sound." Peace proclaims that it is God’s desire that all people get to live in a state of wholeness, health, safety, tranquility, prosperity, rest, harmony; free from agitation or discord, a state of calm without anxiety or stress. That’s how we bring down the mountains. That’s how we raise the valleys.
The New Testament adds another layer to this. Peace in the gospels can also imply, "to join or bind together something which has been separated or divided." That is why Jesus is called the Prince of Peace, or as Paul says, “he is our peace (Ephesians 2:14).” Jesus before his death could’ve blessed his disciples with anything, but he told them “Peace I leave unto you, my peace I give you (John 14:27).”

Through the peace that Jesus leaves us, we come to understand that peace on earth is much more than the dismantling of nuclear weapons and cessation of war. It means building up and binding up the broken. It means promoting reconciliation, creating goodwill and friendship where there once were enemies. Jesus underscores the importance of pursing peace when he teaches in his beatitudes, “blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God (Matt. 5:9).” The task of peace is to bring wholeness to earth. Bring low those mountains, raise those valleys. Jane Adams, the first woman to receive a Nobel Peace Prize, described it well: “True Peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of Justice.”

        We saw the work of peace ignited this past week. On Monday December 4, two leading prophet-ministers in our country, the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II from South Carolina, and the Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, of the New York City Presbytery, restarted a new movement. The new Poor People’s Campaign, A Call for Moral Revival. Created 50 years to the day that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King began the initial Poor People’s Campaign, these two ministers launched this campaign after witnessing the mountains and valleys of our country. They heard from mothers whose children died because their states refused Medicaid expansion. They heard from homeless families whose encampments have been attacked by the police and militia groups. They visited the border wall and met with families ripped apart by unjust immigration policies.

This is the work of God’s peace. To bring down the mountains. To fill in the valleys. To make straight the crooked paths. In our individual hearts and heart of humanity. Listen to the following story.

“Tell me the weight of a snowflake,” a sparrow asked a wild dove.
“It is nothing,” was the answer.
“In that case, I must tell you a marvelous story,” the sparrow said.
“I sat on the branch of a fir, close to its trunk, when it began to snow. Since I did not have anything better to do, I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the 3,741,953rd dropped onto the branch, nothing more than nothing, as you say-the branch broke off.”
Having said that, the sparrow flew away.
The dove, since Noah’s time an authority on the matter, thought about the story for a while, and finally said to herself, “Perhaps there is only one person’s voice lacking for peace to come to the world.”
You know what? I may sound silly, but I reclaim the power of the snowflake. The power to wear down the mountain. The power to fill the valley. The power in unity to straighten the path. The power together to break the branch.
The power to bring wholeness and safety. The power to bring tranquility and rest. To bring peace of newly-fallen snow. And when those mountains are finally worn down, when the valleys are finally filled, when the branch has finally broken and the path straightened, may we know peace on earth.
Peace in every heart.
Thanks be to God.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/economic-inequality-it-s-far-worse-than-you-think/
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/07/5-facts-about-economic-inequality/
http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/19/world/wealth-inequality/index.html
Read more: Are You in the Top One Percent of the World? | Investopedia https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp#ixzz50bPBYFMW

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Alert to Hope

12/6/2017

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Isaiah 64:1-9,1 Cor. 1:3-9, Mark 13:24-37

  Today as we begin the season of Advent - the four weeks of spiritual preparation before Christmas - I am reminded of a pastor colleague I once knew who shared the story of reviewing the themes of the Advent candles to his church’s children. He asked, “Who can tell me what the four candles in the Advent wreath represent?” A 7-year old quickly piped up, ‘There’s love, joy, peace… and… and…” At this point another child excitedly broke in, “I know! Peace and quiet!”
Advent is anything but quiet! Hope, the great theme lifted up for reflection this first week, is also anything but quiet.
Our Advent gospel reading from Mark opens with images of a darkened sun, stars falling from heaven, the heavens being shaken, with the Son of Man descending with the clouds with great glory and power, sending out his angels to gather the elect from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. It seems strange that in the first week of Advent we are called to reflect on a passage that describe the end of times. We are reminded that Jesus’ second return echoes the chaos of the time when Jesus first came to earth. A time composed of nearly five centuries of foreign oppression, corruption in the Temple leadership, topped off with the evil deeds of a King Herod.
This passage from Mark today is positively tame compared to what comes right before it: which warns of: “wars and rumors of wars, nation rising against nation, and kingdom against kingdom… earthquakes in various places; famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.” Mark 14: 7-8
       What does hope have to do with such terrifying images? Where do we find hope in our present times – which appears similar to the oppressive actions our brothers and sisters in the faith encountered in the first century?
     We enter Advent with the weight of the unfinished business of centuries and we called to find hope. Hope is the feeling of expectation or desire for something to happen. It is to yearn for something. A hope for healing and restoration. A Hope for better times. A hope for the gospel values to triumph. We are told there are no hopeless situations, said author Clare Booth Luce. Just people who have lost hope. Advent is our time to recover hope.
          To nurture hope-- our advent task for this week-- Jesus says – Be Alert! See the signs of difficulty around you as a call to hope. As people of faith in Jesus, we see the blossoming of the fig tree as a portent that spring is near, so the signs of the time call us not to despair but to action. It’s an opportunity to persevere in faith. Hope, grounded in the present, orients us toward the future – it motivates us to positive action. Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible.
          Advent challenges us not to withdraw from the world in some commercial frenzy, but to share in the yearning of those who are struggling and suffering, for that in breaking of God’s love and justice into our hurting world. Thus, the first tool we are to grasp in this journey is hope. Hope in something more than what money can buy. For all the beauty of the season, we are to first adorn ourselves with hope.
          Many people see signs of the end times in the world today, as the early Christians saw in their hurting world. There are wars and rumors of wars. Earthquakes and famines. Neighbor turning against neighbor. Violence and sickness and sadness. Death and despair. Financial ruin and marital strife. Some would even passively sit back and let the apocalyptic drama unfold. This is not hope. For centuries people have felt they were living through the end times, because humankind has never been able to eradicate injustice. Advent seeks to call us out of passivity and apathy with the experience of hope.
          Each of us is called to practice hope. To not let the world’s woes crush us. We struggle with hope because, just in looking back of this year 2017, with one month left to go, listen to what we have lived through:
-The destruction caused by Hurricane Maria, Irma and Harvey
-And powerful earthquakes in Mexico, Iran and Iraq
-Monsoon flooding in Bangladesh, flooding in Sierra Leone, China, Zimbabwe, Peru, South Asia and Sri Lanka,
-Mudslides and landslides in Colombia in the Congo
-Avalanches in Afghanistan & Pakistan
-Deadly wildfires on the West Coast
-Terrorist attacks in Damascus, Aleppo, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Egypt, Syria, Manhattan. ---   Domestic mass shootings in Las Vegas, and Texas
Wait there’s more:
Grave Humanitarian crisis:
-of human trafficking,
- the starvation and drought in east Africa (the worst since WWII)
-increase in the number of refuge and migrant deaths,
-ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims,
-our own crisis on the Homefront against immigrants, the resurfacing of white supremacists, battle for healthcare, and now unfair tax legislation that favors and pits the rich against the poor.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, isn’t it? We can be here all day naming terrible things that have haunted us.
          So here we are. Living in our own form of apocalypse – where suffering has gone on too long and nothing changes. Where we face compassion fatigue. Yet the hope of Jesus inspires us, in the midst of the evil and chaos, not to give up. To be that single candle in the darkness. That change is possible. That God has forever and always will actively intervenes in our world – in our hearts -- to bring forth divine justice. Be alert, Jesus says. Raise your heads. I’ll show you how it’s done, he tells us. Hope is ignited, Hope is proved, in the absence of what we long for. Listen to what some great men who have fought the good fight have told us about hope:
     Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said in the midst of a lifetime of oppression, “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
     Rev. Desmond Tutu, said in the midst of fighting apartheid, “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
Former President Barak Obama said, in the face of economic turmoil and national troubles, “I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting."          Let us be certain that hope is not a passive experience. It is not quiet! Hope is proactive, subversive and stubborn.
          So, Advent hope points us to Bethlehem. Hope reminds us that Jesus was not born in happy times but in the midst of centuries of foreign occupation. He was born in a stable because there was not enough hospitality, because there was no room in the inn. Jesus and his family had to flee and become refugees in Egypt, because of King Herod’s murderous threats. Jesus embodied hope, not just in the manger, but nailed to the cross – yet hope endured. Jesus brings the gift of hope for our weary souls, and helps us to stand and be alert with hope, in face of all that lies before us.
          Hope today reminds that like Jesus, we are not to settle for peace and quiet. In Advent, we are called to rediscover hope – we are anointed to be hope bearers. With our hearts alert to hope, we lift up our heads and see all that is there, despite of the darkness. So let infinite hope to give us courage to keep on moving forward share the saving love of God in our yearning world. Thanks be to God!

http://oldhighststephens.com/hoping-with-hope-a-sermon-for-advent-sunday/

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"Final Exams"

12/1/2017

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Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24, Matthew 25:31-46
For those who have or know youth in High School or young adults in College or post-graduate studies, the season of final semester exams is looming. Final projects or papers are soon due as quickly as you can say “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer.” The weeks before Christmas are spent not trimming the tree or baking holiday cookies but cramming in intense study sessions dreaming not of a White Christmas but of straight A’s.

I remember a time when I was in seminary. A renowned professor noticed how the number of students who went to the chapel to pray peaked during study week. One evening in the dining hall she saw fit to comment. She said in all her time she noted that that the power of prayer to influence performance on an exam had an inverse relationship to the proximity of the test. Her advice? Pray early, and make study your prayer.

I heard recently this following observation: if college students were in charge of creation, that after five and one-half days of rest the studying would begin at 11pm on the sixth day!

Our gospel lesson from Matthew today appears to be the final exam of a student’s heart. Jesus not only gives the questions that will appear on our final test on Judgement Day, but he gives the answers as well.   Feed the hungry. Give drink to the thirsty. Visit the sick and imprisoned. Clothe the naked. Welcome the stranger.

It gets better than that. Not only do we have the answers ahead of time, but Jesus gives a test that anyone, yes, anyone, could pass.   Jesus does not say, “cure all illnesses.” “Eliminate prisons.” Provide clean water to everyone.” While these are worthy and just pursuits, Jesus keeps the final exam basic. Within everyone’s reach. Visit. Feed. Clothe. Welcome. What could be easier than that?

What is amazing then, with a test so basic and within anyone’s grasp, why do we have 62,351 homeless persons in our City? Why do approximately 30 percent of New York City’s children live in poverty? Why is it in a land of plenty that the number of soup kitchen and food pantry recipients have sky-rocketed? How could 800,00 young people be at risk of deportation, while 50,000 Haitians face deportation as well? How is it that one child every two minutes dies somewhere in the world because of unsanitary water? Why are the sick and imprisoned so often left alone and friendless?

There’s not a stitch of doctrine in Jesus’s mandate. There’s not even a bible content quiz. Jesus is so self-effacing he puts the welfare of others above any claim to be worshiped as Christ the King, the feast day the church has us observe today. Instead, Jesus just says serve the least of these; like he did. What we do for them, we do for Jesus.

With an exam like this, soup kitchens and shelters should be turning away volunteers. Citizens should be holding public officials accountable to make housing and food services a priority. Homeland security should be construed in terms of every person’s right to food and shelter. Policies welcoming the undocumented, asylum seekers, and those fleeing war and conflict would be welcome with open arms.

Jesus’s exam echoes our lesson from Ezekiel. This passage sounds as if it were a contemporary blog posting, instead of being penned by a sixth century B.C. priest in exile from his homeland, and who has observed the destruction of his people. In this passage God lays down the conditions for which God passes judgment on the rich and powerful leadership who caused the people to be driven from Israel to captivity in foreign lands. God passes judgment against the powerful sheep that push the weaker sheep around. Against those sheep who trample and destroy the pasture. The sheep who muddy the drinking water and who have driven and scattered the weaker sheep from their homes.

Last week there was a news story about example of acing the exam. Kate McClure was driving on I-95 in New Jersey when she ran out of gas. She began to walk to the next exit. A homeless man named Johnny Bobbitt saw McClure, and advised her to get back into her care and lock it. He promised that he would help. Bobbitt spent his last $20 getting her some gas. He came back with the gas and saw McClure safely on her way.
But that’s not the end of the story. McClure couldn’t get Bobbitt out of her mind. She returned with food, gift cards and got to know Bobbitt. He was a former marine firefighter and paramedic, had problems and drugs and money, then a job fell through, he lost his paperwork, before he knew it he fell through the cracks and was on the street. One night became two, and before he knew it, he was homeless for a year
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Still McClure wanted to do more. So, she and her partner set up a GoFundMe page and explained Bobbitt’s predicament. The story hit the papers and over the past two weeks $300,000 dollars have been raised to help Bobbitt back on his feet. This past Thanksgiving Bobbitt was in a motel, thanks to McClure.

This is an example of what the extraordinary power of what one person can do. Even someone with a troubled past, in dire straits, can make a difference. Giving and caring is catching, and can have ramifications we can’t even anticipate. As American Business executive at Apple, Inc, Tim Cook puts it: “be the pebble in the pond that creates the ripple for change.”

We can be a part of this change. This Tuesday is called “Giving Tuesday.” It follows “Cyber Monday” and before that was “Small Business Saturday,” and the day before that was “Black Friday” which actually started usually in the evening of Thanksgiving. People have gotten into fist fights, road rage, into shoving and shouting matches, all over saving a few dollars on material items and gifts for the holidays. It’s tragic that “Giving Tuesday” is placed at the end, after sales and shopping have brought out the worst in people, and after people are spent out. Giving has become an afterthought. This demonstrates the distortion of values: giving should go first, to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, to welcome the stranger and visit the sick and imprisoned.
Think of what a different perspective we would have if Black Friday was Giving Friday. What if people lined up in the early hours near their closest food pantry, or prison? What if we spent six hours visiting the sick instead of store hopping? We have a way to go to ace Jesus’s final exam.

The good news however is that we can prep ourselves, we can ace the exam. Let’s not wait until the final hours of the holiday to take this exam. Let us make giving a daily habit of the Advent and Christmas season.   Where will we line up to give?

Let us memorize the answers to the final exam Jesus that has reviewed with us today. Feed the hungry. Give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger. Visit the sick and imprisoned. Let this be one exam we pass with flying colors, to the glory of our Sovereign Lord. Amen.

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