Snippet from Sunday - Christmas Means Love - December 23

This season is all about love. We could add the love we have for friends, the camaraderie we share with co-workers, the cookies we carry next door to neighbors, the warm handshakes and hugs and cards we give and receive after a church service.

As believers and followers of Jesus, we suspect that this strong holiday feeling of love must in some way spring from the birth of our Savior. But we’re left a bit puzzled when we have to explain exactly what the child born in Bethlehem has to do with young couples holding hands while they skate or pretty packages piled underneath a pine tree. How do we trace the connections down from the virgin mother and the angels and shepherds and wise men all the way to the joy we feel as we bake butter tarts and peppernuts and other Christmas sweets to share with loved ones?

Here’s the truth about love and Christmas: Jesus was born because of love and for love. Jesus was born because God loves us, and Jesus was born for the purpose of bringing God’s love to us. The good news of Christmastime doesn’t get any more simple than that. “God loved us and sent his Son” (Jn 3.16).

Every act of love in this season, and in every season, has the potential to echo or to reflect God’s greatest expression of love toward us. Sometimes our expressions of love mirror God’s love with a joyful holiness; sometimes what we think of love is barely a pale reflection, something in which we can recognize a trace resemblance to God’s love only with a lot of hard work and imagination. . .

What we often call love is a strange alloy. It’s part love--the kind of love God shows--and in large part something else. We mix in lust or fear or self-congratulatory pride. Sure, there are trace amounts of real love there, but mostly it’s our desire for possession or pleasure. There’s a bit of true love there, but it’s overshadowed by our fear of being alone, our fear that the other person will leave us. It’s polluted by how good we feel about ourselves for loving others so extravagantly.

What we need is some refining fire to purify our love. We need some North Star to set the compass of our love by.

(Check out the whole sermon after the jump . . .)

Reflections on a Christmas Pageant - December 16

Kids bring us together. The tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, leaves us all strongly aware of this. Yesterday our congregation joined with folks around the globe, believers and non-believers alike, in praying for comfort and peace, an end to such violence, for the families in Newtown.

I feel almost a duty to write about the horror of school shootings, the absolute horror of a shooting in an elementary school. This violence, with an altogether new terror and repulsion, tugs at a deep place in my heart. I remember walking my high school hallways in the days after Columbine. I cannot fully tell my own story without recounting how the televised news of that violence changed me.

But these stories and laments were in part displaced yesterday by the implacable church calendar: The Sunday School Christmas pageant was scheduled for yesterday morning. We had given the hour of our worship service to the kids to tell us the good news story of Jesus' birth.

Part of me sees a difficult irony in this. Kids sharing good news in the midst of so much tragic news about children. But hope often sounds difficult and ironic in our ears (no one foregrounds the interplay of hope and irony better than John the Evangelist). 

The kids of our congregation toddled in their homemade shepherd's costumes, some with stuffed lambs clutched in one hand. Mary and Joseph stood silent and wide-eyed before their grandparents and parents in the pews, uttering a barely audible "Oh, okay" when the angel delivered news of Jesus' impending birth. King (or, in our case, Queen) Herod gave directions to magi who were not quite on stage yet. 

In short, their Christmas program had all the dear details, the amateur earnestness, that fill adults' hearts with comfort and joy during this season. When we sang our closing hymn, "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus," I was certain those in the pews had heard good news as surely as if the angel Gabriel himself had appeared in our midst. Parents beamed, directors and stagehands laughed with relief, children jumped up and down in excitement as they received their Christmas treat bags from their Sunday School teachers.

I stood back and smiled. The kids had brought good news to us: "A savior is born to bring peace to all people."

But, Oh, that we lived in that peace now. Through Advent we've sang a simple song, "Come, Lord, and Bring Hope." Each verse substitutes a new word for hope: peace, joy, love, life. In some ways, our God has already answered our congregational prayer: Jesus has come, Jesus was born, Jesus lived and loved, healed and taught, Jesus submitted to death, Jesus has even risen once more to life! Like the more traditional Advent carol, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," our songs in this season are in no small part a re-enactment, a remembering of longings our God has already filled.

But as I watched the kids' program from the sound booth, I had the dark realization that we do not have more than twenty kids in our Sunday School program. Most of the kids are elementary-aged. Peace is still far from us. So are hope, joy, love, and life.

I gave my closing thoughts to the congregation after the program. Throughout the weeks and even months leading up to Advent, I've felt strong conviction that this worship service was one in which to be forthrightly evangelistic. I prepared my reflection early in the week, before any of us would or could have imagined such tragedy would occur so near to us. (You can read my thoughts posted below, if you'd like.)

I delivered my closing message as I'd prepared it, unsure how to speak on tragedy without robbing the kids of their joyous presentation. But I'm not confident that I made the right decision. Perhaps, I think, I should have spoken more directly to the tragic irony of proclaiming hope and peace in violent times. I'd value your input. 

Let us pray and act for peace.

(You can read the full text of what I said after the jump . . .)

Snippet from Sunday - December 9 - Roadblocks to Peace

Every year I look forward to unwrapping the simple wooden characters from their newspaper and reenacting the Christmas story with them. The angel will stand over an empty manger near the tree. Mary, Joseph, and a donkey will begin their long journey toward Bethlehem, probably on a bookshelf across the room. The shepherds will be watching their sheep on a windowsill, and the wise men will be off in another room, looking for their star. Step by step, all will make their way across the room toward the manger scene where the Christ Child will be born.

One figure whom I never find in nativity scenes is John the Baptist. True enough, John didn’t gather with Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds in that Bethlehem stable. But neither did the three kings, and still they always manage to make an appearance in our miniature re-creations.

Without fail, however, John shows up in our Scripture readings for Advent. All four Gospels--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--begin the story of Jesus’ life and ministry by telling us about this baptizing prophet who was sent to prepare the way for Jesus. Luke, who is our guide for this year’s Advent season, doubles the emphasis on John’s importance by telling John’s birth story alongside that of Jesus. We hear almost as much about Elizabeth, Zechariah, and their miracle baby John as we do about Mary, Joseph, and the truly miraculous birth of Jesus. We can’t read and hear all these stories without getting the feeling that there must be something important about John’s ministry of preparation for those of us who follow Jesus.

(Check out the whole sermon after the jump . . .)

A Snippet for the Seniors - December 3 - The Hopes and Fears of All the Years

Advent is the season of sermons for a working pastor. I mentioned that the local Mennonite Care Home welcomed me to bring a short message for their Christmas banquet. You can find the full text of that talk after the jump. Here's a snippet:

This afternoon I want us to think about how Mary’s baby boy is God’s answer to every one of our hopes and all of our fears.

Think about that. When we whisper to God in prayer those things we are secretly most afraid of or when we pray and tell God what we wish for so desperately, God’s answer is Jesus. Jesus, the baby in the manger; Jesus, the man on the cross; Jesus, the risen Lamb.

Jesus’ mother Mary had many reasons to be afraid. She was young and not yet married when an angel came to tell her that she would give birth to God’s Son. . . . 

When God speaks to us, we often feel unsure about what God’s message will mean for our lives. God spoke to Mary through the angel Gabriel. We often hear God’s voice through scripture or through hymns or Christian fellowship. God’s message meets in us all our fears and hopes. We don’t know if God’s message will calm our fears or if it will frustrate our hopes.

The folks at the Care Home were mostly born before 1930, mostly ethnically Mennonite, and mostly from of fairly conservative or even fundamentalist persuasion.

Normally I preach from my own remixed version the TNIV. I like that it errs on the side of gender inclusivity when translating, and I like that it speaks in a direct, understandable way. When it strays too far from the Hebrew or Greek, I take license to emend it.

But in light of my audience, I opted to quote the KJV. This is a contextualization issue, I think. I'm curious about your thoughts. I tweeted this question a week or two ago. But I'm still waiting for feedback.

(Check out the whole sermon after the jump . . .)

December 2 - A Link to Sunday - Guest Preacher :: Lift Up Your Heads

I spent this Sunday listening rather than speaking. Listening is a good way to hear God's message for us. True enough, I often am surprised to find God speaking to me while I'm trying to give God's message to the people from behind a pulpit (I bet you other pastors and preachers can vouch for that experience). But listening is so much better.

The whole congregation had the rich opportunity to hear my partner and companion reflect on the scripture readings for Advent I. These were some difficult texts: a section of the Little Apocalypse (Lk 21.25-36), a few short lines of Jeremiah, and Ps 25. She did beautifully.

You can read her sermon over on her blog, la fleur épuisée. I encourage you too. It's a valuable 

Here are two snippets from her thoughts. First her thesis statement:

The message I think the Spirit wants all of us to hear is this: the very act of expecting something transforms us; waiting with hope changes who we are in the meantime.

 And then my favorite paragraphs:

But Jesus says, “When these things--when these signs of a falling-to-pieces world--begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
Stand up, he says. Lift up your heads. Your redemption is drawing near.

Don’t cower in the basement or the bomb shelter; don’t fight for the last gallons of milk at the grocery store; don’t sit with your eyes glued to the TV, bemoaning the fate of civilization as we’ve known it. Do not fear. Do not worry. Stand and lift up your head: open your eyes with hope, because the kingdom of God is nearby. Watch for it, even now. Notice the signs of God’s commonwealth--sparks of justice and peace and kindness and abundance--even as you also see the anguish of this planet and its people.

 Check it the rest at her blog.

November 25 - Snippet from Memorial Sunday - A Reason to Grieve, A Reason to Hope"

This is what I want you to take with you in your heart when I’m done speaking this morning: The fact that Jesus is our king is both our reason to grieve the way things are and our one reason to hope that things will not always stay this way, to hope that they will be made right.

When Paul wrote to the home church in Thessaloniki, this was the truth he explained for them. As we heard in the passage read this morning, Paul was responding to the believers’ concern for people in their small congregation who had died or “fallen asleep” as Paul puts it. Those believers felt the same kind of grief, the same kind of loss we feel. In their tight-knit fellowship, they met constant reminders of those who were no longer with them: a mother or a son, a dear friend, perhaps a deacon or the kind older woman who prayed so diligently for the overtaxed young mothers. Whenever they gathered in one another’s homes, surely they saw the empty chair or space on the floor that sickness or accident or violence had left.

Paul had come to Thessaloniki in obedience to the command to go and make disciples of the crucified and risen Messiah. His message was one of resurrection. He preached that sickness and death were defeated when God came and gave his own life for ours. The believers took his message to heart, even in the face of persecution from Jewish and pagan neighbors. They would follow the King of Life.

But now, when death still broke in and terrorized them, abducting brothers or sister from their midst, what were they to make of it? Had the King of Life failed them? Was the resurrection a joke? Had Jesus changed anything?

Maybe we feel the same way. Maybe we should feel the same way. Our Savior lived and died to bring us life. It’s an outrage when death still afflicts us. It’s not right; it’s not what God wants for us. Something in our hearts or our heads should cry out, “God, this doesn’t make sense! Your Son came to bring us life, life abundantly. Why do we still get sick or get hurt or get old and die?”

(Check out the whole sermon after the jump . . .)

November 18 - Snippet from Sunday - The Heart of James

Friendship with the world is enmity with God (4.4). That is a bold statement. It’s the kind of statement that doesn’t leave much room for discussion. It casts everything as either black or white, good or bad. Either your God’s friend, or your the world’s friend.

This statement--“You can be God’s friend or the world’s, but not both”--is the heart of James’ letter. It’s the pulse that gives life to all his other instructions about what we do with our prejudice and our money and our tongues. If you surgically remove this pronouncement, James’ whole letter falls to the ground, lifeless.

And we might want to cut out this part of James’ letter. Frankly, it doesn’t sound friendly. Most of us want to get along with everybody, to be friends with everybody. Honestly, if one of our other friends gave us this kind of “It’s me or them” ultimatum, they might not be our friends for long. What gives God the right to inspire James to write this kind of demand? Why would God ask us to make this kind of choice?

(Check out the whole sermon after the jump. . .)