Preaching and Teaching

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
December 28, 2008

Text: Luke 2:22-40

This is a season of rituals. Christians light Christmas trees and pull out carols we sing only at this time of year. Jews light Hanukkah candles and recite their ancient prayers which begin, “Ba-ruch A-tah Ado-nai E-lo-he-nu Me-lech Ha-olam, Blessed are You, Lord our God.” Christian families pull out cherished tree decorations and creches. We prepare special food dishes in careful ways that feel very ritualistic.

In the week ahead, we will go through different, secular rituals surrounding the arrival of a New Year. Some of us will stay up late to watch the ball fall in Times Square; some will lift a glass of champagne; almost all of us will make resolutions sure to melt away before any snow does.

As a people, we are going through a national ritual that most of the world wishes it could experience—an orderly transfer of executive power. The ritual involves secret meetings followed by leaks; names floated, names actually nominated; a break for the incoming President before he begins four years of intense public service; and finally the actual inauguration. As a long-time Washingtonian, it is my seventh time having the privilege of watching this particular political ritual. It never loses its magic.

Rituals are an inescapable, irreplaceable part of life. We use them to mark important days on this good earth. We have rituals for births and baptisms, weddings and graduations, job promotions and retirements.

The rituals related to these precious passages remind us that we are about something very special. A ritual illuminates the moment both as eternal in its coming as well as fleeting in its presence.

Rituals reveal that we are not in a rut but rather in a divinely created cycle. We travel from January 1^st to December 31^st, only to find ourselves at January 1^st again. We travel from birth to death with a family member only to experience birth of another family member. We finish and graduate from school only to find ourselves starting out in a job. Rituals remind us that life is not a linear journey. Life is a sojourn through God’s sacred time and space, a sojourn with its own unique signposts, signposts we call ritual moments.

As we engage in rituals, we feel surrounded by all those who have performed these rites before us. This past week my sisters and I laughed about our parents, aunts and uncles, boyfriends and girlfriends, teachers and employers from the past. As we did so, these presences from Christmases past briefly came to life in our midst.

Such is the power of a ritual day such as Christmas or New Year, a ritual event such as a baptism or burial. Having been repeated over and over again, in their repetitious yet soothing sameness, rituals lift us to a different, transcendent plane. We enter a sacred realm where everything that was, is and ever-will-be morph together.

Given my interpretation of the meaning of rituals, you will understand why this progressive pastor who loves to change the church and world, shake things up, and turn over institutional apple carts, why I also love rituals. Actually, my love of rituals shouldn’t surprise you all that much. There is a reason I have been here at Western for twenty-five years. I think the best way to change things is to have some things stay the same. The ritualistic rhythms of this congregation ground me in ways few other things can.

In a world that changes whether or not we want it to change, we need an underlying sense of stability. Rituals provide that sense of stability and continuity.

Perhaps rarely in my lifetime have we more needed a sense of stability. For the amount of change around us feels overwhelming right now, doesn’t it? It doesn’t feel comforting. It feels threatening—people losing jobs and homes, established businesses collapsing, college days threatened by a lack of funds. It is an unsettled and unsettling time.

However as we sing carols on Christmas Eve, we remember that people came together here at Western to sing carols in a Civil War and World Wars, through recessions and depressions, surrounded by births and deaths. It is the ritual, not the carols themselves, that soothes our soul. During a tumultuous time, the ritual reminds us that, indeed, there will be a time again when there is peace on earth or, at a minimum, peace in our own little worlds. During a peaceful time, rituals remind us how blessed we are to have a peace that didn’t exist on some Christmas past.

The Gospel lesson this morning tells of a ritual in first century Judaism. The practice is rooted in ritualistic understandings of cleanliness and uncleanliness. Anthropological sociologists supply all kinds of historical insight into why things were declared clean and unclean. But as we observe in the Gospel lesson this morning, these practices led to very humiliating consequences for those declared unclean.

Going back to its nomadic roots, the Law of Moses declared the menstrual period a time of uncleanliness for women, causing women to spend part of every month segregated from men. In like manner, after a woman gave birth, she was considered unclean for forty days. On the fortieth day, she went to the Temple to make a sin offering and be declared clean in God’s presence.

The beauty of childbirth was thus mixed with a sense of shame for the woman. She had done nothing less crucial than give birth to life. But following the joy of seeing her new baby, she had to live as an unclean person in her household and community. I know of no other way to describe this practice than horrifying sexism. Women were forced to feel shame for the most natural and wonderful events in their lives.

It is on the fortieth day of her ritual uncleanliness that we find Mary in this morning’s Gospel lesson. She was going to the Temple to be purified. Being a poor woman, she couldn’t bring the required sacrifice of a lamb. So instead, she brought pairs of turtle doves and pigeons as her offering.

If you have never heard this part of the story, it is probably because most preachers don’t like to introduce the stark sexism of ancient cultures into the Christmas story. Indeed, most preachers don’t want to introduce the stark sexism of the modern church into Christianity’s contemporary story. But it is part of the story. We will never eliminate sexism from the present and future if we don’t own our past.

Concurrent with Mary’s purification, another ancient ritual of Judaism took place. Jesus was presented in the Temple to fulfill the requirement that every first-born be presented to God. The Law of Moses said that the first-born of every family belonged to God. This usually meant the child would become a priest. But the child could be redeemed from God, bought back from God, with an offering. So it was two rituals that brought Mary, Joseph and their baby to the Temple.

It appears that Joseph and Mary taught Jesus their respect for rituals. For as a young adult, we see him observing many of the rituals of his time, undergoing baptism, participating in the life of the synagogue and its rituals. Of course, prior to his death, he went through the Passover rituals. Indeed, he took the Passover meal and transformed it into the centerpiece ritual of his followers—what we call the sacrament of Holy Communion.

However, Jesus also knew the way rituals can be manipulated and distorted in the hands of human beings. Maybe, his critiques of rituals can be traced back to the ritual of purification his mother had to undergo. With his sense of justice and keen awareness of the equality of women, surely he must have rejected the symbolism of his mother having to undergo purification for giving birth to him.

We know he challenged his culture’s concepts of cleanliness, rejecting the idea that a woman, leper or mentally ill person was unclean. As an adult, he returned to the Temple, turning over tables of the money changers who exchanged secular for ritual currency. He called into question the ritual of observing the Sabbath, asking, “Is the Sabbath not made for humanity rather than humanity for the Sabbath?”

As followers of Jesus, we too must adopt a critical eye toward the rituals of the church and society. Ironically, many of them remain rooted in bizarre definitions of cleanliness and uncleanliness. For example, it seems to me that opposition to the ordination of LGBT folks is a vestige of the ritual uncleanliness stuff. Some think these good folks are unworthy of ordination. They say, “Oh, gays and lesbians can live on the margins of our church, just not in the leadership of our church. Their practices make them unfit/unclean.” In the past, this is what has been said about lepers, women and slaves. We will not minister in Christ’s image until LGBT Presbyterians are ordained and installed as leaders in our congregations just as they are here at Western.

Another example: as a nation, we treat the homeless as unclean. For decades, whether the ruling faction be liberals or conservatives, Democrats or Republicans, one thing has been consistent: the homeless are treated as unclean. Politically, they are untouchables.

In every election, we are told that we have to concentrate on rebuilding the financial system, stimulating business and insuring the well-being of the middle class. As a result, a discussion of how to end poverty never takes place. It always gets bumped from the agenda. There is always a more pressing issue.

This week two people who eat breakfast at our Miriam’s Kitchen died, both of whom have worshiped with us from time to time. One, Shelby, died of what the coroner will call “natural causes.” In reality, she died from a lifetime of being ignored by our health and mental health system. Tortured by inner voices, she lived on the streets until the streets took their inevitable toll on her. In one of the tragic ironies that govern the lives of the poor, the social work team at Miriam’s had recently arranged for her to have her own apartment.

The second person to die was Yoshin, a gentle, sweet Japanese man. He was murdered in the alley between this church and Potomac Plaza next door. Some suspect his death is related to a significant number of homeless men who have been beaten in the past few months.

To most, the deaths of these two children of God will go unnoticed because we have pushed these folks to the margins of our society—where they can’t touch us, we can’t touch them; where they live in a bizarrely parallel universe to the one in which you and I live—wearing clothes, eating food we discard. No matter how long it takes, we will not rest until they are cared for as the special members of our human family they are.

There are other rituals in our society that need to be challenged: the blood ritual of capital punishment, the ritual of owning as many guns as we can afford, the ritual of drug and alcohol abuse, the ritual of ignoring the best qualified person in favor of the best connected person.

So rituals, like almost everything else in life, can be sacred or sinful; liberating or oppressive. They can draw us closer to God or draw us closer to things God tells us to avoid. But good or bad, rituals are a fundamental part of the human experience.

In this ritual moment in which one year dies and another is born, in which hopes for 2008 disappear and hopes for 2009 emerge, may each of us take a bit of time this week to reflect on the rituals that govern our lives.

Each of us is moving from birth to death and beyond. May we mark the journey well. As we do so, we bring the past, present and future together in ritual moments.

Let us pray: God of our lives, as we travel, you travel with us. Where we go, you go. In the year ahead, may it be said of us that where you go, we go. When we feel lost, help us to feel at home. When we are lonely, help us to feel surrounded by your love. When we are confused, shine a light of clarity in the darkness. And may the New Year be filled with growing peace and justice for all your children. We pray this in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
December 21, 2008

Text: Luke 1:26-38

When I read Scripture, I study the nature of interpersonal relationships as well as the motives and internal tensions operating within the psyches of the biblical characters. From the relationships and emotions of these amazing characters, a very relevant Word of God emerges for us in our time and place. For while the world has changed dramatically over the past two thousand years, human beings haven’t.

Today, increasingly, we process our hopes and fears on Facebook, blogs and email. But while technology has changed how we communicate, the content of our communications remains much the same. We wrestle with pretty much the same issues that faced Sarah and Abraham, Mary and Joseph.

Last week, I talked a bit about what was going on in Joseph’s head and heart when he learned of Mary’s pregnancy. I have never viewed Joseph as the sharpest tool in the shed, as they say. But I do think he was a person of great decency.

As a good person, he was surely torn between his love for Mary and his disappointment that Mary was pregnant outside their relationship. As can happen, his disappointment and anger triumphed over his love. A wounded Joseph decided to split from Mary. Fortunately, Joseph’s divinely inspired dream explained Mary’s pregnancy and saved him from making the biggest mistake of his life.

The birth narratives reveal Mary as having her own internal conflicts. Today, we call them questions of self-worth. Mary questioned whether or not she was up to the job of mothering the Messiah. She said to herself, “I can’t do this. I am not worthy.” Such humble questioning is precisely why she was God’s choice to give birth to and raise Jesus.

Would that more of us might possess Mary’s humility. Our town, in particular, is filled with individuals who have leapt at an opportunity, even though they may not have had the requisite skills, experience or intelligence to do the task. Lacking the humility to pass on a job everyone said they should take (”Are you out of your mind, take the job!”), they take a job they aren’t ready to do and end up damaging their careers as well as others. Had they waited a bit, practiced and honed their craft for a while longer, matured on a personal level, they might have become enduring bright shining stars rather than momentary shooting stars. Maybe all they needed to do was wait for a job that was a better fit for who they are and what they can do.

However, humility and patience are in short supply in the annals of human history and rare indeed in this city of strivers. We continually over-estimate our own abilities even as we under-estimate the abilities of others. For this proclivity, we pay a terrible price.

But not Mary. When the angel came to Mary, she did not leap at the chance to mother the Messiah. The angel had to talk her into the job. Luke says Mary was “much perplexed” by the angel’s description of her as the “favored one.” No doubt, she saw herself as a fundamentally good person. But mother of the Messiah, the parent of God’s Anointed One? “Surely,” she thought, “God must have sent the angel to the wrong address.”

Given her position in life, Mary’s response seems appropriate. After all, what about Mary’s life constituted being favored by God? Yes, she had grown up in a good family and fallen in love with a nice guy. But she lived in an occupied nation whose local ruler, Herod, was known for his despotic and bloody ways. The economy was almost non-existent. Most people lived at or below the subsistence level. So what in Mary’s life could have led her to believe that she held most favored status in the eyes of God?

As Mary wondered how she was favored, the angel clarified things with a shocking revelation: Mary was about to become pregnant with the Messiah. At that point, Mary’s feelings of confusion turned to utter disbelief. “How can this be?” she replied to the angel. Obviously, her doubts were rooted in her virginity. The angel was suggesting a biological impossibility. But the angel would have nothing to do with Mary’s doubts about herself or the pregnancy. “With God, nothing is impossible,” said the angel adamantly.

Suddenly, it hit Mary. This wasn’t about her. It was about God. She didn’t have to be perfect. God is perfect. She didn’t need to do anything. She only needed to be obedient and follow where she was being led.

So with a sublime combination of humility and pride, Mary said firmly, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” In heaven, God nodded knowingly and thought, “I knew she was the right one.”

Key to understanding Mary’s approach to life are the words: “Let it be with me according to your word.” It is critical as well to understanding how you and I can live faithful lives.

Having embraced her place in God’s plan, being chosen by God didn’t go to Mary’s head. Instead, she said to God, “OK God, I am yours. What is next? What should I do? You tell me.” Mary was determined to follow where God was leading her.

Unlike Mary, many of us try to force things to happen. We want a particular relationship to work, to get a special job, to achieve a certain type of comfortable lifestyle. To do so, we start pushing and shoving life around in an effort to make it occur.

To our own detriment, sometimes we succeed. We momentarily force life to conform to our wishes. We get what we want. But then life begins its slow, subversive erosion of the ground upon which we stand. It is not ground God created for us; it is ground we created for ourselves. Sometimes the situation we have worked hard to manufacture erodes quickly. Sometimes it takes decades. But erode it does, until things collapse.

In the church, I have watched numerous clergy colleagues hotly pursue a particular job for which they were borderline qualified. When they got the job, a few were able to pull it off. However, more often than not, it turned out to be a disaster.

When the United States engaged in two wars at the same time in Afghanistan and Iraq, it reflected a lack of humility as much as anything else. Who did we think we were? The Soviet Empire failed in Afghanistan. The British Empire failed in Iraq. But we, the American Empire, were going to succeed in both—simultaneously. It wasn’t bad judgement. It was raw, unmitigated arrogance.

What is too often missing in our lives is Mary’s sense of “let it be with me according to your word.” We don’t possess Mary’s understanding of the power of servanthood. Mary knew that she could do more serving God than she could trying to push and shove life in a particular direction.

Let me pause for an important caveat. As a preacher, I have been taught so much by those who listen to the sermons. You hear things I didn’t intend to say but did say. Other times, you don’t hear things I thought I said but didn’t say clearly enough.

Several times when I first started preaching on the subject of servanthood, women heard something I didn’t intend to say but did say. They complained, “John, we don’t need to be encouraged to be passive servants. That is what men have been telling women forever. We need to be encouraged to understand our own God-given power and use it.” I couldn’t agree more.

This feminist critique of servanthood, as often taught in the church, has caused me to challenge the connection of servanthood with passivity. In Western society, the two have been linked with very negative results, especially for women. We associate aggressive assertiveness with getting things done. We associate being a servant with giving up our own personal hopes and dreams.

Mary and others in the bible teach us a very different understanding of servanthood. The biblical notion of servanthood is empowering, not dis-empowering. It causes us to be active, not passive, participants in life. It enables us to become major actors, not stage hands, in God’s redemptive drama.

As exemplified by God’s servant Mary, a faithful life is achieved not by obsessively pushing our personal agenda. It is realized by serving God’s agenda. As we serve God, we become change agents, shaping and directing human history.

Following this approach to life, we urge younger generations, as they consider career directions, to put their lives at the service of God. Because as they do so, nothing will be impossible for them.

In this nation, historically, this message has been framed within the context of public service. It is a message we need to reclaim and revive. The hope for our future lies in our ability to convince more and more young people to commit themselves to serve the public as school teachers and social workers, government civil servants and public defenders.

We also serve the public in the business world. All we have to do is look at the Madoff scandal or the lack of vision in the auto industry to realize how important it is to have people in the business community who view their work as serving rather than exploiting the public.

Whether in the profit, government or non-profit worlds, the key to having a healthy, holy career is a focus on service. When we view ourselves as servants, serving God, our neighbors, the environment, our perspective changes. We aren’t talking to ourselves, wondering, “How will this advance my career?” Instead, we are saying to God, “”Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

When we embrace service to God, we, like Mary, come to affirm what the angel told Mary: “With God, nothing is impossible.” As a community, we are able to feed hundreds of homeless people daily for 25 years at Miriam’s Kitchen. Who would have thought that possible twenty five years ago? As a congregation, we are able to rebuild a city church that everyone else had given up for dead. As individuals, we are able to overcome our own personal insecurities and inabilities so we can do amazing things. As a nation, we are able to overcome a profound legacy of racism in this country and elect an African American as President. The list goes on. When serving God, nothing is impossible.

If we want to live in an ordinary world with its ordinary expectations and predictable outcomes. So be it. But if we want to live in the extraordinary world Mary embraced, if we want to heed God’s call to live in a world filled with outrageous possibilities and spectacular outcomes, then we need to “let it be.”

Let us pray: Gracious God, we seek to serve you, not passively, not by taking a seat in the back of life’s bus. No, we seek to serve you by stepping up and being used by you as change agents. In this special season, help us to look to you for the direction of our lives. As we do, may it be with us according to your Word. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, D.C.
December 14, 2008

Text: Matthew 1:18-25

Over Thanksgiving, our grand kids were here. Notice, I don’t even mention my son and daughter-in-law. They are now totally secondary. Their job in life is to deliver the grand kids to Phyllis and me and, after we are exhausted, take them home.

One afternoon, we took the kids to Olney Theater’s presentation of the musical Peter Pan. As you might imagine, the place was jammed with little kids. As someone who usually goes to the somber, still world of the Shakespeare Theater, the crowd amused me because throughout the show there was a low roar of background noise from kids.

As you know, at one point as Tinker Bell almost dies, Peter Pan looks at the audience and says, “You have to believe. It is the only thing that will save Tinker Bell. Clap your hands and say, ‘I believe.’” Before anybody could say anything, a little girl in the row right behind us bellowed out, “But I don’t believe!!!” Peter Pan kind of froze, there was a moment of silence and then a few of us adults started yelling, “We believe. We believe.” In seconds, the kids joined in.

It was a sublime moment. An older generation urging the youngest generation to believe. What could be better?

So it is here at church. We are helping our children believe a rather unbelievable story. The Christmas Pageant is part of this process. It helps our children learn and believe a story filled with the supernatural and extraordinary. A Virgin birth. Angels singing and a star in the sky. A baby we call the Messiah. Pretty incredible stuff, if you ask me. But with the help of adults, it becomes believable for our children, indeed, a foundation rock upon which they can build their lives.

Like the Pageant, teaching Sunday school to our kids is incredibly important. Sunday after Sunday, our teachers shepherd children to faith in God. At times, it is a daunting task. They teach the kids about a senior citizen named Sarah having a baby, the Red Sea parting, a blind man regaining his sight, a tax collector regaining his self-esteem, a zealous Pharisee falling off a horse and standing up a committed Christian. They share stories with the kids about women fighting for equal rights, Dr. King having a dream for the nation, the homeless being fed in our basement. Some people fear teaching Sunday school. Truth be told, we should fear missing out on such an amazing experience.

Of all the things we do as adults, nothing is more important than teaching the younger generation to believe—in God, in themselves, in one another. Personally, I have a hard time picking which of those three is most important or challenging.

Without a faith in a providential God who guides history, it is hard to believe that life is fair. There are too many greedy executives ripping off unsuspecting people; too many tyrants starving their own people; too many politicians corrupted by power and money.

Without a faith in ourselves, it is hard to believe in much of anything. We are too busy dealing with our own insecurities, phobias and neuroses to be effective disciples.

Without a faith in others, it is hard to believe that the world is a trustworthy place. And if we can’t trust others, we will never be trustworthy ourselves.

So teaching the younger generation to believe is one of the key responsibilities older generations bear, especially in times such as these. Because economic hard times hit kids as well as adults. As family budgets get crunched, some of our kids may be taken out of private schools and sent to public schools. Nothing catastrophic in that unless you are the little kid whose world is her/his school. Some of our youth won’t get all the material things to which they have grown accustomed. Again, nothing necessarily wrong with that except it is a huge change. To counter the shocks that will come to our children, we need to build and reinforce their ability to believe in themselves, others and God.

All of which leads me to conclude that what we face today, as a nation and world, is not an economic crisis but a crisis of faith. Many of us have lost faith in ourselves. Legion are the numbers of people who believed in themselves a year ago but now doubt themselves. “How could I have left my retirement funds in that high growth mutual fund? How could I have thought that I would never be laid off? How could I have believed the mortgage broker when he said I could afford this home? What was I thinking?”

We have also, most definitely, lost faith in one another. When we hear credit has dried up, what that really means in lay terms is quite simple: we don’t trust one another enough to lend another person our money. When business leaders come to Congress with plans for a bailout and are turned away, we have basic distrust in them and their promises. When our organization tells us not to worry, “there won’t be any downsizing,” we start working on our resumes. We don’t trust one another right now.

But while we have lost faith in ourselves and others, I’m not convinced this crisis of faith has led to a parallel loss of faith in God. Indeed, it may be having precisely the opposite effect.

When we place too much trust in ourselves and others, we usually do so at the expense of a faith and reliance on God. We start thinking we don’t need God. We grow convinced that we can handle life on our own.

However, when times get tough, that self-reliance illusion/bubble is popped as surely as the stock or real estate market bubbles are popped. Life slaps us down saying, “You fools. You can’t do it alone. You never could. You never will.” And suddenly, we feverishly start looking around for help.

At every point in human history, when humanity panics and starts looking around for a lifeline, we have always found God standing there. With an understanding smile on God’s face, God says, “Looking for me? I knew you would—sooner or later. Let’s see what we can do together.”

So my guess is that we are on the verge of, not a Great Depression, but yet another Great Spiritual Awakening. I say another because these awakenings appear regularly in the annals of human history. As surely as there are economic cycles, there are spiritual cycles. Not surprisingly, they usually run counter to one another: when the economy goes down, our faith in God goes up. No longer able to fend for ourselves, we look to the One who can help us muster what we need to rebuild our lives and the world.

In a time of spiritual seeking and renewal, what better role models than Mary and Joseph? Last week, Carol said we Protestants have downplayed the role of Mary. Carol was being nice. As I interpret it, the Reformation systematically eliminated or devalued all the major female role models from the Christian tradition. The reformers did away with saints, some of whom were women. They did away with nuns, women who held substantial power and property in the church. They did away with any veneration of Mary. As great as the Reformation was on some issues, it was also a misogynistic purge. But I digress (that was a rant, wasn’t it?).

As we deal with times of trial and tribulation ,Mary and Joseph are amazing role models for us. Since when we first meet them they weren’t married, we can assume that their relationship was still new enough to be somewhat insecure. We have all been there.

In those early days of a romantic relationship, we are trying to figure out whether we can trust the other person with our hearts, our most profound hopes and fears. Can we expose our weaknesses to this person we know but don’t really know? Mary and Joseph had worked through these fundamental trust issues to the point of becoming engaged. And then Mary came up pregnant.

Joseph couldn’t handle it. He flat out couldn’t handle it. The fragile bond of trust evaporated between these two young people. Joseph decided not to create a scene. He would divorce his fiancé quietly but quickly.

Having made his decision, he went to sleep and had a dream (I’ve always wondered why anyone back then slept. Too often, it resulted in a dream that changed their lives dramatically.). In his dream, Joseph learned that Mary’s pregnancy was a key part of God’s plan to redeem the world. He and Mary were to parent the Messiah.

Joseph awoke a changed man. He no longer disbelieved Mary’s story about being faithful to him. Instead, he celebrated her faithfulness to God.

To get from an apparent illegitimate pregnancy to Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph had to believe the unbelievable. Mary had to believe that she, a humble peasant youth, was about to become the mother of God. Joseph had to believe that Mary, rather than being unfaithful, had been chosen by God for one of the most special roles in all of history. Choosing to believe the unbelievable, they became central actors in the greatest story ever told.

Having faith is rarely about believing the believable. Anybody can do that. Having faith is about believing in what seems unrealistic, illogical and unlikely.

When the stock market is on a nine-year rise, it is easy to believe that stocks are a good investment. It takes faith and solid analysis to believe companies are good investments today. When a relationship is going well, it is easy to believe in love. But when love is going through a rough patch, well, then faith and hard work are required. When the world seems to be telling us that we are worthless or, at least, worth less than we thought, it requires faith to continue to believe in ourselves. When we are spiritually connected, faith in God is a Sunday walk in the park. When we feeling disconnected from God, the Garden of Eden turns into a desert and only faith can undergird our struggling faith.

When baby Jesus wouldn’t stop crying in the middle of the night, it took faith for Mary and Joseph to believe that this child was the Messiah (When I last checked Isaiah, there weren’t any prophecies about a crying Messiah!). When Jesus started to take the house apart as a two year old, they needed faith to believe Jesus would, one day, heal the sick. When their son was crucified on a cross, it was only faith that kept them from turning on the God who had filled them with them with such wonderful hopes for their child.

Mary and Joseph continued to believe in themselves even when others dismissed them as mere peasants from Nazareth. They continued to believe in others even as Herod sought out to kill their newborn baby. They continued to believe in God, even as things didn’t work out the way they had envisioned them. May we do the same and teach our children the same.

Let us pray: Gracious God, you come to us in surprising ways, asking us to do surprising things. To respond, we need faith—faith in you, faith in ourselves, faith in one another. May such a faith grow within us during this sacred season of Advent and Christmas. Amen.

Pastor, Western Presbyterian Church
Washington, DC
December 6, 2008

Text: Luke 1:46-56

Several years ago, when I was serving another congregation, I went to see Margery in the hospital. Going to see her was part of my weekly routine. I always went, even though, I admit to you now, that I dreaded it.

I tried to appreciate our time together, but whenever I was around her, she was putting me down for something. I was spending too much money, and I didn’t take care of my daughter, and I was always wearing the wrong clothes.

She was in her late seventies, a matriarch of the congregation, and the other members of the church listened carefully to Margery and respected her deeply. They told me that she was so critical because I was a woman. She never wanted a female pastor, and the fact that I was a young woman made it much worse. I had replaced a much older man, an interim who was well past retirement, and she resented the fact that I took away her dear friend.

But, you know, in the church, sometimes it doesn’t really matter if you like someone or not. It doesn’t even matter if they like you. Sometimes you just need to be with them.

It was one of those mornings for me. I went to see Margery in the hospital, right after the doctor had visited her. He came to tell her that the cancer that they were hoping to contain had just spread all over her body, and to many of her vital organs. She did not have much longer; she was going to die.

I was the first one to see her after she heard the news. So, I read the Psalms with her. We prayed together. When I said amen, Margery could barely talk, so she said, “Carol, can I tell you something?”

“Sure Margery, What is it?”

“Come closer so you can hear me,” she motioned with one weak hand.

I sat on the edge of her hospital bed and put my ear next to her mouth. Her voice suddenly came back strong as she said, “Couldn’t you have found some pearls to wear with that outfit? That sweater looks terrible on you. You know I hate it when you wear black. The neckline is so plain. Just get a drop pearl necklace, really. They don’t cost that much money.”

The next time I went to visit her, she was in a different hospital, telling me about a run-in that she had with her nurse. They fought, and she was replaying the abusive conversation with all of her intensity. And as I listened, something began to swell up inside of me.

I told Margery that I needed to leave, and when I exited the room, I turned the corner and began to run. My head was tingling with heat, and I couldn’t wait to get out of the hospital. When I broke out of the doors, I met the winter air with gratitude. Then I went into my car and breathed deeply for several minutes.

I had always read that people had a fight or flight instinct, but I had never experienced it before that moment.

I used to think that I was not a fearful person at all. In fact, I could not name one thing, situation, or person that I was afraid of. Yet, at that moment, I became inexplicably afraid of a 78-year-old woman who was dying of cancer.

Suddenly, I could identify so many things that made me afraid. I feared the death of loved ones, especially the death of my grandmother, who was sick at that time. I feared that I would have to make tough decisions about my father’s declining health, decisions that he would not agree with and fight against. And I realized that I had a whole variety of fears there all along. I just didn’t know what that particular sensation was, and I had no idea how to face them. I had assumed that having courage was the same thing as pretending like your fears don’t exist.

Now, I can identify my fears pretty easily, and I can often detect them in others.

Bill Tancer, the author of Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why it Matters writes that when people search for the “fear of–” on the Internet, the most common searches are for flying, heights, clowns, intimacy, death, rejection, people, snakes, success, and driving.

It’s the second week in Advent, when we gather together with pregnant longing, waiting for the coming of Christ. We are looking back at the birth of Jesus and looking forward to the reign of God—the hope that someday the lion will lie down with the lamb, and we will beat our spears into pruning hooks. We have that beautiful promise of peace, and so it seems odd that I would want to focus on fear. But, I decided to preach about fear this week, because you can almost smell it in the air these days.

We heard the gruesome stories coming out of India. A group of tourists were in a posh hotel, eating dinner in Mumbai, when a gunman entered. Quickly, a small girl was shot. That young body that was so full of life, swimming in the pool hours before, was suddenly lifeless. If they could shoot a child like that, they would kill anyone. The guests jumped under the table, trying not to breathe.

Three days of fear followed as 188 people were killed and hundreds were injured. Many were also held as hostages. It was the work of terrorists, and a reminder of just how unsafe and unbalanced our world is.

It was strange to eat our Thanksgiving meals and watch as a vast and beautiful city went under siege, so quickly. And it makes us realize just how powerful the weapon of fear can be.

We don’t have to go across the globe to feel fear though. There is fear here as well. Immediately, people began to remind us that the same thing could happen in any city in the U.S.

And then, there is the fact that we don’t know what’s going to happen with the markets and with increasing job loss. Things are quite tenuous. Since our economy is often based on a two-income family, our mortgages are often structured so that if one person loses his or her job, everything crumbles. We might get by with unemployment, our savings, and our credit cards for a little while, but it won’t be long before families begin to lose their homes. In the last decade, we have seen the number of middle-class families filing for bankruptcy spike, and things have only gotten worse in the last year.

Of course, an unstable economy can ignite fear in all of us: college students who have student loans to pay off and are looking for jobs, singles who try to manage this two-income economy on one income, people who are ready for retirement who are watching their savings shrink and retirement benefits cut. Consultants, retail workers, and those who are paid on commission have suddenly come up dry. Our economy is so reliant on luxury items and services that people can easily cut out of their budgets, so we wonder what the economic landscape is going to look like in the coming years.

I look at our country and realize that places like Miriam’s Kitchen and Calvary Women’s Services have difficulty providing services when everyone is full and happy. And so I wonder what will happen with this downturn. Will everyone become more generous? What are we going to do with the threadbare safety net in our country? As the economy shifts, as we lose jobs–and begin to dream up new ones–will we learn to be caring with one another? Will we learn to look after one another?

There is a lot of fear.

And the story of Advent is one of fear, I think. We don’t often imagine it that way, but if we stop to think about Mary’s situation, it must have been terrifying. She was young, unmarried, and pregnant with a child that was not her fiancé’s. Under the laws, she could have been stoned. So, she was hiding for her life, first staying with Elizabeth, and then Joseph hid her.

Then, there was the threat of the king, who heard about a messiah being born, and in order to protect his power, he began killing baby boys. And the wise men who came to visit, were working with the king, until they refused to be in collusion with him. I can’t think of anything more terrifying than being a new mother, in the midst of so many life-threatening circumstances.

And yet, when she met Elizabeth, and she felt that sudden pang in her tummy, the fear was suddenly replaced by mercy, and she began to cry out:

God has lifted up the lowly,

Filled the hungry with good things.

The Protestant Church has not always given Mary her due. We have been worried about her deification, reacting against the idea that Mary might be worshiped or regarded on the same level as God. And yet, it’s Mary’s hope that I cling to in this fearful time. It is the words of this young, pregnant woman, with everything working against her, who faces the terror and the fear and still acknowledges that, “God has lifted up the lowly and filled the hungry with good things.”

As we gather around the table together, as we lift up the bread and the cup, and proclaim that Christ will come again, I cannot help but remember how Mary lifted the body and the blood of Christ, how she held him in her arms, in his new life. Somehow as she held him, she knew that he was the Christ the son of the living God.

And so we wait with longing next to Mary. No longer content to pretend that our fears do not reside within us; but rather, acknowledging them, and in the midst of them realizing that God somehow extends mercy to those who fear. As we gather together, we remember that God, can pick up our frail and anxious lives and God will hold us. Keep us. And fill us with good things.

To the glory of God, our Creator,
God, our Liberator,
and God, our Sustainer. Amen.

Seminary Intern
Western Presbyterian Church
November 30, 2008
Text: Mark 13: 24-37 

“Beware, keep alert, keep awake”. What strange words these seem to be as we move from Thanksgiving into Christmas. There was a time when I needed to heed these very words. You see, my sons and I began our Christmas preparations on the first Sunday in Advent. Like this year, it often fell on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. So, on the afternoon of that Sunday we would go out to a tree farm and cut our own Christmas tree. We would bring it home, decorate it and begin to talk about the meaning of Christmas.

The year that my sons were seven and five, the week-end had been a very wet one. By Sunday afternoon the sun had come out so off we went, dressed in our rain gear. The tree we brought home was quite wet so I told Deven and Rajan that we could not put the lights on the tree until the next morning. I explained that we would get up a few minutes early to do this before going to school. The rest of the decorating would be finished that night.

Monday morning arrived, I set the kitchen timer for thirty minutes and we began to string lights on the tree. I neglected to be alert until I noticed that most of the tree was covered with ornaments, as well as lights. Rajan, my 5 year old, had been changing the timer. We had 20 minutes to get dressed and leave for the 30 minute drive to school. Needless to say we were not too well dressed and breakfast was eaten in the car. I was not alert to the passing of time but was caught-up in the fun of decorating the Christmas Tree.

How easy it is to be caught-up … . Caught-up in what? The list is endless. There are the global, national, regional and local economic and social justice problems. There is the stress of preparations for the holidays. There are our own personal situations such as the loss of loved ones, illness, worries over children, worries over aging parents, worries about a lost job or other economic struggles.

And scripture does challenge us to keep awake, to beware, to keep alert! It is enough to cause one to say stop, let me off of the hamster wheel of pain. Advent is a time when we prepare for the coming of the Christ Child. So what does the coming of the Christ child have to do with the darkness of the world?

This makes Advent a strange season, an in-between time. We look back to Christmas and the birth in Bethlehem and we look forward to the crucifixion and resurrection. The darkness is both the darkness of our current situation and the darkness of the crucifixion. And the darkness is illuminated by the birth of the baby in Bethlehem who is God in our world and the darkness is illuminated by the resurrection hope of Easter.

Advent is a time of preparation. Yes, we prepare for the holiday celebrations and gift giving. This is a wonderful time of family traditions. For many it is also a painful time. We prepare to celebrate and we prepare to welcome Christ into our lives. And we prepare to mourn. Mental health professionals remind us that this holiday time is a time of increased depression and even suicide. Some of us mourn loved ones who cannot be with us.  Some of us mourn lost jobs or lost financial security. Some of us mourn lost physical capabilities.

We also prepare to look over our lives. Have we really welcomed the Christ child? Do we welcome the radical call to discipleship which is the message of Jesus?  Part of our preparation must be a time of reflection. How are we preparing to receive the message of the baby whose birth we celebrate?

Preparing for Christmas is a reminder to keep alert, beware, keep awake. We must remain alert to what God is doing in our world. We must remain alert to what we need to do in order to be part of God’s work in the world. We must remain alert to spiritual preparation for this greatest of gifts.

Advent really is, then, a time of hope. It is good, in the busyness of the seasonal preparations to pause and reflect on what it means to contemplate both the coming of the Christ child and the Second coming of the Christ. The story of the coming of the Christ child is familiar and will be told again in the next few weeks. Mark 13 gives us a way to think about the coming of the End, of the reality of the coming of the Kingdom of God for all of God’s creation. As Mark points out, we do not know when that time will come.

The author of the Gospel of Mark was writing during a time of both social and political turmoil. The policies of the Roman Empire had caused significant social upheaval for those living in Judea. The message of Jesus, a call for social justice, was a challenge to the policies of the Roman Empire.  It is a message for us today. It is a message which challenges imperialism in all times and in all places. When imperialistic policies feel oppressive there needs to be a different message. This portion of Mark’s Gospel is that message of hope for the people of the first century CE, and for us. It reminds us that God is with us, that God is at work in the world even when we are not sure of that possibility.

How often do we use the phrase, “the end of the world”? It will be the end of the world if I don’t get that job, that college acceptance, that refund check. The current world situation might feel like the end of the world. Jesus speaks of a more cosmic end of the world, with stars falling from heaven. Jesus also uses the parables of the fig tree and the watchful servants to help us see what we need to do. Instead of allowing ourselves to be paralyzed  by the difficulties around us, we are called to be alert, to keep awake, to be aware of God at work among us.

Because we can look both forward and backward we know that Jesus is, in fact, Emmanuel, God with us. God, the creator, is God the Christ child, is God the reconciler,

is the God of both Christmas and Easter. We know that God is working among us. We do not know when God’s plan will come to its ultimate conclusion, when God’s kingdom will be a present day reality.

In the mean time, in this in-between-time we wait and are alert to the possibilities. We pause in the busyness of the season to contemplate the work of God in the world, not in some distant time and place but right here, right now. We see God at work when ever we take the time to do so. We surely experienced God’s work in the world in the baptism of Ian Francis this morning. We must be alert to the possibility of seeing God in the beauty of this sanctuary and in the homelessness we confront as we leave this building, knowing that Miriam’s will be open in the morning. We must also be alert to how we can help bring about God’s work in the world. Where are we called to do so? We must remain alert to see both what we need to do and where we need to be.

As we wait for Christ to come we know that Christ will come again. Living in this in-between time is especially difficult for Americans in the 21^st century. We have instant everything. Perhaps that is, itself, a sign. Is that compression of time what Mark is talking about? Or is the “instant” everything a warning, a wake-up call to be alert to how this draws us away from close conversation, from deeper relationships? My son, Rajan, in changing the timer made sure we did not have an “instant” decorating event.

Into the darkness, the between time, the end time, God is with us. This is God the creator, God who called creation Good and God who is faithful. God is with us in the

darkness and in the chaos of our lives. God is with us when the darkness is of our own creating, or when darkness comes in the form of war, sickness, and storm. There is hope in the darkness. We must keep awake to see where God is present in the darkness. As we prepare to celebrate Christmas we prepare for the entry of God into the darkness of Imperial Rome and into the darkness of our world today, and into the darkness of our individual lives.

God came to us as a baby, God came to us in the crucifixion and God over came that darkness by means of the Resurrection. And so the darkness need not paralyze us. The baby we prepare to greet is the Son of God, who showed us what the Kingdom of God will look like and who will come again to make that Kingdom of God a reality for us. We are called to bring about the Kingdom of God during this between time by making the Kingdom of God a reality in our own time.

So, as we prepare for the coming of the Christ Child, we must not be asleep due to the pressure of the darkness. We must pause in the midst of the holiday preparations, pause in the midst of darkness and be alert to the awesome possibility of hope, so that we welcome Emmanuel, God with us. Keep awake to welcome God into the darkness; to welcome the creator God who makes all things possible. AMEN.