Home - Part 2

 

Luke 2:41-52     

I have some clear memories of losing a child in the mall or the grocery store or the park – you name it. I don’t really think I am especially careless. It’s the children. Unless you tie them on a string or lock them in a room with you, it’s really hard to keep track of children. Because children are careless. Young children are careless about wandering off because they don’t yet understand the consequences – that they may not find their way back. They don’t understand the possibility of being separated from the ones who care for them. Children are so careless about getting themselves lost.

My sister Katie was especially careless, always wandering after anything that caught her eye. My mother once lost Katie in the mall and frantically ran around looking for her. Eventually she found her way to a department store security office. My mother was tired and terrified, and there was Katie happily sitting between the security officers, smiling, eating candy. Katie said, Mama, why did you lose me?

My mother didn’t appreciate the question.

Perhaps some children are just too “at home” in the world for their own safety. Sadly, children need to unlearn that feeling of being at home wherever they are and learn about the dangers around them. We don’t like to do it, but because we love them, we teach them about these things.

I wonder if Mary had taught Jesus about these things before that trip to Jerusalem. I assume she did – she was a mother.

These pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the festivals were a big deal. Crowded, exciting, and potentially dangerous – you would want to keep a close eye on the children.

But the journey to Jerusalem would not be one you would be taking alone. There would be large groups of people, friends, neighbors, and family members all traveling together in a caravan.

On their way back home, Mary thought Jesus was with some cousins or playmates somewhere in the caravan. Maybe he said to her, I’m going to hang out with Jacob, and Mary said, that’s fine.

And then at the end of the day, he was nowhere to be found.

Mary and Joseph had no choice but to travel back to Jerusalem and look for their child.

Jerusalem was a big city, crowded with travelers – Jews from all over the diaspora who had come for the festival of the Passover. For three days they searched, without success. It must have been terrifying for Joseph and Mary. For three days they imagined the very worst they could imagine.

Then they went to the temple. On the third day.

It would seem that this was the last place they expected him to be. I guess that’s reasonable. If I were looking for my child, I wouldn’t immediately think, “They must be at church.” But when they finally arrived at the temple, there they saw him, sitting amongst the rabbis, enjoying a theological discussion.

Mary called out his name. He looked up and saw her. And he said, “Why didn’t you know I would be here? Did you not know that I had to be at my father’s house?”

Why did you lose me, Mama?

And so we have another chapter in Mary’s life full of gathering up the mysteries, holding them and pondering them in her heart.

It would be much later before she would begin to really understand it, but perhaps eventually Mary would know that it was all about where Jesus was at home. Where he belonged. And it is really about the very same thing for each one of us.

We began this conversation on Christmas Eve, about our notions of home – what it means to us to be at home. And the ways in which we may find our home in Jesus.

The idea of home is very much a matter of identity. The scriptures tell us where someone is from to tell us about a person’s identity. Matthew tells us that Joseph is from the house of David and this is important for us to know. It tells us something about who he is. He belongs to the tribe of Judah, to the house of David.

For us, too, if we say we are at home in a certain environment, we are saying something about who we are. To what and whom we belong.

Throughout this season we have used the image of making a house for the holy. We have been thinking about the church being that house, making room enough for everyone. But it is not too far a stretch to say that we ourselves, our bodies, are designed to make a house for the holy, to bring what is holy into this world. We are made in God’s image and therefore designed to carry something of the goodness of God into the world – Just as Jesus carried the goodness of God in his body, when he came to dwell with us.

If we say that our faith, our identity as Christians, is simply to claim Jesus as our personal Savior, is to get only part of it. If we say to invite Jesus into our heart is the all of it, we are missing some essential parts. Because when we let Jesus into our hearts, we are letting the holiness of God in, inviting this holiness to flourish so that we might become a force for God’s goodness in the world.

The boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. He went to the temple, maybe because he was homesick. He left his Father in heaven, his home with the holy trinity, separated himself for our sake. He carried this holiness in his body to show us God’s love toward us.

To find our true home, maybe we can do the same.

May each of us carry the holy in our bodies to show the world God’s loving intentions for all.

Photo by Max Goncharov on Unsplash 

Home - Part 1

 

John 1:1-14        

If you go into a busy, crowded place this time of the year, you are likely to hear one word buzzing through the air: home. People asking each other, “Are you going home for Christmas?” “Will you be home for the holidays?” “Are your kids all coming home?”

Home. Home. Home. The word seems to be everywhere. Everyone talking about home.

Every year at this time, we think about home, we want to be home. We associate home with Christmas.

Yet, in a time when our ability to travel anywhere is severely hindered by a pandemic, going home is hard. In a time when gathering with others is subject, always, to our best understanding of a changing situation, changing rules, tests and vaccinations; when our efforts to gather together and be home are fraught with anxiety on top of all the usual emotions; we ask ourselves what does it mean to be at home?

We have learned to think of home, being with our family, in different ways. We do facetime and skype calls so we can see one another, we hold zoom meetings with our kids so we can, in some manner, be all together.

We have stood outside windows, looking at our loved ones through the glass. Or drive-by gatherings, waving and blowing kisses through the car window.

Still, we long for home, whatever and whoever that means for us. We long for the places where we know everybody and are known by everybody. We long for the familiarity and comfort, the shared history. As Dorothy said, there is no place like home. This has always been true.

I am sure Mary thought so, as she struggled to get her body into a comfortable position on the floor of a stable. I know she would have preferred to be at home to deliver her firstborn child – surrounded by the women who knew and loved her and could midwife her and her child to safety. Maybe Mary looked at Joseph with tears filling her eyes and said, “I just want to go home.”

Home for Christmas.

Everyone longs for home, especially at Christmas. And when we think of home, we may be thinking of a time and place that was golden in our lives, with the people who have been dear to us, at a time that was happy for us. In some sense, home is not someplace we can return to, because it is a memory.

Still, we long for home. Home may be something your heart yearns for your whole life long.

And as I was writing these thoughts down, the song, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” began playing on the radio.

But tonight we hear these words: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God – and the Word was God.” Christ, the Word; his true home was with God, for, as the gospel says, he was God.

He came down to earth, took on bone and flesh and blood and became truly human. He gave up all the comfort and security of home to be with us, to become one of us. God let him go – God’s beloved Son – and gave him to us. They were separated one from another, severed from each other, all for the sake of the world God loves. Father and Son, both gave up the joy, the delight, of being together, so that the world might know him.

The Word became flesh and lived among us, so that he might become light for all of us. He gave up his home, became homeless in the world for the sake of the world. He came to a place that was not his home, a place where he was unknown; he came to us that we might know him, full of grace and truth. And, perhaps, in a way, to become our home.

Sometimes we have to rethink the notion of home. Sometimes a pandemic comes along and forces us to make adjustments for the sake of love and life. Sometimes it becomes necessary to sacrifice something for the sake of something truly good.

Our Lord Jesus was not home for Christmas. But in another sense, he carried pieces of home with him here – the knowing, the caring, the loving. He carried “home” in his body, to bring a little bit of that home to us.  

To use a phrase that has becoming familiar to us this Advent season, he became a house for the holy here on earth. Inviting each one of us to abide with him.

May you have the blessings of home this season, wherever you are.

May you enter into the presence of the Christ child, God with us, knowing him in his grace and truth.

May you abide in a house for the holy, and become, in yourself, a house for the holy, making room for hope, peace, joy and love.

Photo by Shot by Cerqueira on Unsplash

Advent 4: A Room for Love

Micah 5:2-5a

Luke 1: 39-55

About 15 years ago there was a woman driving home from work in Chicago and, driving through an underpass, she saw a vision of the virgin Mary on the wall. And thus was born Our Lady of the Underpass, a place of pilgrimage, where the faithful bring flowers and candles to a little altar they have set up. In the underpass.

Have you ever driven in Chicago? The thought of supplicants kneeling before the shrine while traffic whizzes by, inches away from their bodies - terrifying.

Yet, it’s a reminder that the image of Mary is extremely powerful for the church, particularly the Roman Catholic church. She is venerated because she was chosen by God to bear God’s son in her body. She is called, in Greek, Theotokos, which means God-bearer. She is holiest among women because she was chosen to be the vessel of God’s work of salvation in the world.

In the Catholic Church Mary is called the Queen of Heaven. She is believed to have been conceived without sin – the immaculate conception – which is what made her a perfect vessel for God. She is said, at the end of her life, to have been assumed, body and soul, into heaven. Meaning that she did not die.

None of these things are part of protestant doctrine, though. There are no biblical texts that support the ideas of Mary’s immaculate conception or assumption into heaven. Protestants say Mary was a human being, like all other human beings. She was not without sin, as none of us are without sin. Mary was an ordinary human being.

Yet Mary was special because she was chosen by God in this particular way. But also because Mary said yes. And I think it quite likely that this was a singular quality.

I wonder how many times the angel Gabriel visited some promising candidate, opened his mouth to say, “Do not be afraid,” only to be cut off by shrieks, and the young woman fleeing in terror? How many times might Gabriel have visited a young woman, made his pitch, and get only hedging replies, like “I’m going to have to ask my parents?”

How many times might Gabriel have approached a young woman and heard a flat-out no? Not interested. Too busy.

Mary is Mary, Theotokos, because she said yes. According to Luke, her response was, “Let it be with me, according to your word.”

Mary was more than just a passive vessel, more than a womb. Mary had agency. And her first act of agency was to say yes.

After she said yes, Mary took a trip. She needed to get her head around all of this. She was about to become a mother under some unusual circumstances. She would soon become an object of public scrutiny and judgment. Mary had a lot to think about, much to ponder in her heart.

Going to her cousin Elizabeth was probably a way to take care of herself. Mary was counting on finding there a safe place to begin to absorb her new worldview and adapt for her new life ahead. And that is just what she did find with Elizabeth.

Elizabeth did not judge her. Elizabeth did not question her. Elizabeth looked at Mary standing in the door and did something very significant: she broke out in song.

Songs in the Bible are important parts of the text. They are not diversions in any sense of the word – the song is usually the main point. Songs tell the story about God’s powerful deeds; it is the song that carries the message down through the ages.

It is often a woman who sings these songs. Think of Miriam, the prophet, who sang praises to God who led her people to freedom…Deborah, the judge, who sang of God’s power that gave them victory over their enemy…think of Jephthah’s daughter, she sang when her father returned home from victorious battle. Think of Hannah, who praised God who gave her a son; Judith, who defeated the powerful enemy of Israel. Each woman sings in praise of God.

Each woman sang about the victory over a powerful enemy – an enemy that enslaved them or threatened their very existence. Armies of Egypt, Canaan, Assyria. For Hannah the enemy was infertility that crushed her spirit. In each case, a woman sang out praises to God who delivered her and her people, giving them an unlikely victory.

And when she sings, she sings with her whole body – she dances, she shakes her tambourine, beats her drum; the baby in her womb leaps and dances with her. She sings with her heart, her voice, her body.

Elizabeth sings when she sees Mary; her whole body carries the song – a song that comes through her by the power of the Holy Spirit. She sings in praise of God: You are blessed, Mary; you have been blessed, you are being blessed by the Lord God almighty.

And in that instant, through Elizabeth’s song, Mary receives the care and support she needs. She is affirmed, she is recognized, as one who has been blessed by God. That thing you said yes to, Mary, this is good. If you harbored any doubts, Mary, if you are afraid, know that this thing is good. You are blessed, and blessed is she who believes.

And Mary then breaks out in a song of her own. A song of praise and witness to God’s mighty power and grace. In the songs women sing in the Bible, they recount God’s powerful deeds, but in Mary’s song we hear not only of the amazing things God has done in the past, in her song we hear a powerful promise: God shows mercy to everyone, from one generation to the next. He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered those with arrogant thoughts and proud inclinations. He has pulled down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty-handed.

Mary is singing for herself and for all of us, for all generations, to tell the world the good news about God. She sings about God’s righteousness. She sings of how God delivers the oppressed and the enslaved, the ones who are being crushed by powerful forces.

During our months of quarantine early in the pandemic, when we livestreamed evening prayer each day; Mary’s song was a part of our prayer – each day.

Every Christmas morning in our house, after all the shiny wrapping paper has been torn away, after all the gifts have been admired, we sit down at the table and make Mary’s song our prayer. Because it is Mary’s song that shines forth the glory of God. It is powerful in its promise.

But maybe not for everyone.

I have heard that when they first began translating the Bible into the common languages, in the Reformation period, they did not translate Mary’s song. It would be too offensive to kings – to read “he has brought down the powerful from their thrones!” The prudent translators thought it better to leave it in Latin and hope the kings didn’t understand it.

I have also read that in the 1970’s, the government of Argentina banned the public recitation of Mary’s song, the Magnificat. This seemed necessary to them because of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, those mothers who put their bodies on the line to protest a government that made their children disappear. The Mothers of the Plaza had made Mary’s song their manifesto.

In the 1980’s, the Guatemala government did the same thing – for the same reason.

I have heard that when the British ruled in the East Indies, they removed the Magnificat from its place in evening prayer. We don’t have to wonder why. Wherever powerful ones oppress the powerless, Mary sings for the oppressed.

When families flee war or persecution at home, seeking refuge at our borders, Mary sings for the refugees.

When congress chooses to give the military budget 25 billion dollars more than what was requested, while at the same time they let the child tax credit expire because it costs too much, a credit that has lifted millions of children out of poverty, Mary sings for the children and their parents.

Mary was never a passive vessel. Mary said yes to the angel and stepped into a life of unimaginable dimensions. She made room in her body for love to be born. Mary sang a song with her body that her son would grow up to live. He would carry this song in his own body; he would preach and teach this song. And die for this song.

Mary might not have been immaculately conceived. She might not be the queen of heaven. But Mary is worthy of our love and devotion. Mary made a house for the holy, a room for love.

A love that is stronger than all the forces of the world.

Photo: Salt Stain Mary, by Daniel X. O'Neil

Advent 3: Enough

Isaiah 12: 2-6

Luke 3: 7-18

The moment you have been waiting for all year: John the Baptist, the cranky prophet, here to tell us it’s the end of the world as we know it. Cheers.

I don’t often think about the end of the world. Hardly ever by choice. But when I do think about it, I start to think about what I would miss. Do you ever think about those things?

I would miss a good seafood dinner and a nice wine to go with it. I would miss the taste of good chocolate. There are so many good tastes I would miss.

I would miss the sound of music. Not necessarily the Julie Andrews movie, although that’s nice, but just hearing music, making music. Playing quiet instrumental music on the speakers while I work, listening to Norah Jones sing while I cook dinner, singing hymns on Sunday. I would miss evenings with family, sharing our favorite music with one another. Life is always better with music. I would miss it.

I would miss the swimming pool in the summer; jumping into the water and cooling off, then getting out and feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin – that is such a good feeling.

I would miss good books so much – a good book by the fire in the winter, a good book beside the pool in the summer. A good book in my bag at all times just in case I get a few moments to read.

I would miss these things and so much more. Laughter, hugs. There are so many ways life is beautiful in this world. It’s sad to think about losing so much beauty. But you heard it. John said it. The ax is at the root of the trees, ready to cut them down and throw them into the fire. The end is near.

There is a cartoon where the long-bearded prophet is standing on a city street holding his sign that says, The End Is Near. A man approaches him and asks, “Can you be more specific?”

That is essentially what people always want to know: what exactly does this mean? This is pretty much what the people around John the Baptist wanted to know. They all came forward and asked John, “What then should we do?” The tax collectors asked, “What should we do?” The soldiers asked, “What about us? what should we do?” How then shall we live?

How should we live when the ax is at the root of the tree, ready to cut it down? When the fire is ready to consume the husks from the threshing room floor? How are we to understand the words of the prophet and how should we respond? What should we do? How shall we live?

The one is coming who will seek out the trees not bearing fruit, who will sift the wheat from the weeds. The end of the world as we know it.

Maybe you have seen some of those apocalyptic movies. In which there has been a nuclear holocaust, or the earth has been ravaged by pollution, or drought, or global climate change – some epic disaster has occurred. And all that is left is grey. There is no color in the world anymore, no music. There is no warm sunshine and green meadows and bubbling springs of clear water. There is only violence. There is hunger and sickness and people do not trust one another. Sometimes there are zombies. In the movies, we see this: a world where evil has won. This is the world we could have, they say, if …

In a sense, John the Baptist is warning us about this very thing. He is saying, “If you keep on doing what you are doing, if you keep going in the direction you seem to be going, then this is what will happen.

But in another sense, John is saying, “Listen: This is your chance. Look and see who is coming.”

The one who is coming, who is more powerful than any of us. The one who will lift up the good and burn away the bad. He is coming, and bringing the end of the world as we know it –

Where justice is neglected; where if you know how to work the system you win – this world is ending.

Where billionaires live side by side with starving children – this world is ending.

Where people just don’t care about others who are suffering, where we don’t know who our neighbors are – this world is ending.

Imagine a world that is like a village, where everyone matters. Would we let people go hungry in our little village if we have more than enough in our pantry? Would we let the people of our village abuse one another? Would we let people suffer alone with no one to care for them or love them in our little village?

To imagine this world is to share John’s vision: a world in which everyone is content, everyone is cared for, everyone has enough. If we can imagine this, then we know the good news.

A world where there is color, where the Lord has prepared a feast for all people, as the prophet Isaiah says – a feast of rich foods, of choice wines well aged. Where there will be no tears, no disgrace. A world where music shall ring out from all of creation. With the end of the world as we know it there is good news – a world full of beauty.

May it be so.

May we share the vision.

And so may we live.

Photo: Here is the world. Isn't it beautiful? https://www.pexels.com/@pixabay

Advent 2: A Place at the Table

Baruch 5: 1-5

Philippians 1:3-11

When I was a child, we lived in a crowded house. I had three sisters, and my grandmother lived with us for much of my childhood, as well. And there was about a year when we had someone else living with us too. My mother brought a young woman into our home who was struggling with grief. I was too young to understand the circumstances; I just knew that Marie was broken, fragile. Still, she was a beloved big sister to me and my sisters.

I remember, too, gaggles of young Filipina women in our house. Back in the 1960s the U.S. opened immigration and many nurses came into the country from the Philippines, to meet the need at the time. The hospital where my mother worked hired a lot of them. When my mother looked at these nurses she saw girls who were lonely for their families and living in a strange land; she drew them into our family.

My mother didn’t seem to mind a crowded house. Actually, she seemed to love it. It gave her joy to open her house and her heart to others, even when she didn’t have much – and most of the time she didn’t have much. My parents always struggled. But this never closed my mother’s heart.

She gave of herself completely. She worked long days, then would sometimes go back into the hospital on her day off to visit a patient she knew was lonely. 

She always seemed remarkable to the rest of us, even more so because of how little she had. Compared to others, my mother had little to give, yet she gave so much. I always wondered why that seemed paradoxical.

But I read something recently that made me think about this. There is a kind of hospitality that goes beyond the conventional type. There is the usual kind of hospitality, such as having the family over for Sunday dinner. But this unusual sort involves reaching out to the people way out at the margins and drawing them in.

Those who practice such radical hospitality are usually ones who, themselves, feel like outsiders in some way. They are the ones who know what it is to be at the margins, who know what it feels like to be the last, the lost, or the least. And I know that certain experiences in my mother’s life put her in that category.

It seems like it takes an experience of loss to learn real compassion for others. That, somehow, we have to get really near to the edge of the cliff to understand what truly matters. When we have plenty, when everything seems manageable, our priorities can become all kinds of messed up. We think: If I can’t have that purse, that car, that boat, that whatever it is, I will just die. It is almost as though we have tightly gripped that shiny object even before it is in our hand, and to not acquire it feels like loss. The loss of something that is not even ours.

I know this personally: the more I have, the more comfortable I become with comfort, the more I feel it is actually my right. The more entitled I feel. And so it strikes me then as bewildering to read Paul’s letter to the Philippians and hear him speak about joy. Because Paul was writing this letter from a prison cell.

For people who have never been behind prison walls, it is mystifying. How could he possibly be overflowing with joy, as his letter shows him to be?

During his many years of traveling around the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ, of discipling new believers and guiding new churches, Paul had the task, again and again, of teaching these new believers how to live into their faith; teaching these new churches how to be the church. It was a monumental task. But Paul was a patient and gifted teacher.

In the case of the Philippians, what we know from this letter is that they learned that Paul was imprisoned and they were deeply concerned for his welfare. They loved Paul and it hurt them to imagine his suffering. So they sent one of their own to him with provisions. Paul was, of course, grateful for what they did. But the focus of his concern was somewhere else.

Paul, in his letter, instructed the church at Philippi to keep their eye on what truly matters. He told them his current situation was not something that really mattered. Not that he liked being in prison, but he knew that God was accomplishing wonderful works through the church in spite of his circumstances – or maybe even because of his current circumstances. We recall that Paul is the one who wrote in another letter that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose. That might even include, Paul thought, his imprisonment.

I imagine it is possible that spending time in a prison cell could be an opportunity for a person to re-evaluate what really and truly matters. But there are also plenty of other experiences we might have that could do the same.

Have you ever had an experience that taught you about what really and truly matters?

What are the things that really matter to you?

For my mother it was not being alone. Knowing that you were someone of value. She fed people. She sheltered people – and probably not so much because they were hungry or homeless, but more because they were alone. She needed them to know that there was someone who loved them. and there was always a place at the table for them.

Paul believed God was able to do extraordinary things through the church. Paul knew that the gospel of Jesus has the power to transform people, to shift our vision so that we can see what really matters.

As Paul says to the Philippians, we are not there yet; we are a work in progress. But I hope we are always on our way to seeing that all of God’s children really matter. I hope we see that the stuff we spend a lot of time and money and worry on are insignificant when measured against the well-being of one another. I hope we see that in God’s realm there is a place at the table for everyone.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Advent 1: Making Room

Jeremiah33:14-16     

Advent always gets here before I am ready for it. No matter how good my intentions, I am never quite prepared; I am surprised by the arrival of Advent, wishing time would slow down. But if the season of Advent is about making time and space to get ourselves ready, then maybe that’s as it should be. Maybe I don’t need to get ready to begin getting ready.

However it may be, here we are…at this special time…Advent 2021. And like it does every year, Advent takes us as we are – where we each are personally, where we are as a congregation, where we are in the world.

And where we are in the world is still kind of a hard place. We have been in this COVID season way too long for us to keep it in the forefront of our minds – and yet, even while not in the center of our consciousness, it is always lurking around the edges. Because it is always still here.

During this season, we may long for other times. We may long for the Advent and Christmas of our youth…or even just 2019. O, for a simpler time, a mask-free time. Yet, strange as it may be, here is where we are; now is the time we are in, so let us open our eyes and see where God has placed us.

There are three words that I have heard used to describe this time we are living in: uncertainty, exhaustion, and isolation.

Perhaps we should say that every age is full of uncertainty, and that would be true. None of us has access to a crystal ball telling us just what the future will bring. But these past two years have been a more uncertain time than usual, I think. And as time has gone on, and the pandemic has worn on – we surely thought it would be over and gone by now. Yet, here we are facing another winter, watching cases spike once more, reading about the new omicron variant, and realizing that there will be several more months of uncertainty ahead of us.

And all this uncertainty makes us exhausted. Just how long can we balance on the knife’s edge? We are tired of the constant watchfulness, tired of the constant adjustments.

And even while we are all experiencing essentially the same thing, there is isolation. Ever since the pandemic began in early 2020, it has changed the way we look at other people. Now we keep our distance. We shield our faces with masks. Now we are more likely to shop from home, work at home, even have doctor visits from home. We isolate. There is less community, and more a sense that each one of us is on our own.

Uncertainty. Exhaustion. Isolation. I don’t know if times like these make it easier or harder to hear the Old Testament prophets come crashing our season of comfort and joy.

We can tell that even back in the 6^th century BCE they didn’t want to hear the prophet Jeremiah. Like most of the prophets, he was not welcome. He was full of doom and gloom, bad news. But the thing we should recognize is that the people who mostly didn’t want to hear Jeremiah were the kings. Because Jeremiah spoke truth to power.

Kings always like to put their own spin on everything that is happening. That’s the way of powerful people, they don’t want to acknowledge bad news and they certainly don’t like anyone broadcasting the negative impact of their policies. But this is what Jeremiah was doing. Jeremiah saw the failures of their kingdom; he saw the inevitable fall of Jerusalem, and he refused to close his eyes to it.

Jeremiah was called by God to listen and carry God’s message to the kings and the people of the land, a message that was hard to hear. There was so much that had gone wrong in Judah and Israel. Under the leadership of their kings, the people had abandoned the teachings of God. They had wandered off to try their luck with other deities. They had forgotten God’s law and drifted away to address other priorities.

To be fair, I am sure these were hard times in the kingdom. They had been pressured on all sides by adversaries who were greater and stronger than they were. They endured tremendous economic hardships. And then they did what nations often do – they turned inward.

The people got the message: we are each on our own. Of course, what happened then was predictable: the stronger ones survived while the weaker ones suffered.

Now, this is ancient history, I know that. But if we keep our eyes and our hearts open, as God asks us to do, we cannot help but see how this works in our own time as well. During the pandemic the strongest survived, more than survived, actually. Those with the most resources adjusted quite nicely. We adapted. We registered our Zoom accounts, we upgraded our home computers. We even built new rooms in our houses so everyone can have their private workspace. And for some reason, our retirement accounts grew by leaps and bounds. Our hardships were offset, you might say, by certain benefits.

But those with the least, those who were the weakest, grew even weaker. They did not have jobs they could work at home. For many of the most vulnerable, when the pandemic came, they no longer had jobs at all. Their children were sent home with inadequate heating, inadequate food, inadequate educational materials. Their schools were ill equipped to make the needed adjustments the pandemic demanded.

Well more than 2,000 years after Jeremiah, the problems remain the same: somehow, the ones who have the most are empowered by crisis to gain even more. And the ones who have the least, lose even more. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is another way – God’s way of righteousness.

When we see that word, righteousness, in the holy scriptures, we should understand just what it means. The Old Testament often speaks about God’s righteousness, and the word suggests things like God’s salvation, God’s deliverance, God’s vindication. We see it frequently in the Psalms, where the psalmists lament the ways they have suffered wrongs, and look toward God’s righteousness to save them. God’s righteousness is a thing that gives us hope.

God is righteous, and we may understand that to mean that God can be relied on to deliver us from affliction, from evil of all manner, from the suffering we may bring upon ourselves as well as our suffering at the hands of others. God will deliver us from the careless treatment of the ones in power, the ones with the power to take away from us and leave us desolate.

Here is good news: God is righteous; but the scriptures don’t leave it there. They also speak of righteous nations and righteous persons. And these righteous ones are those who put their trust in God’s vindication, who live as ones who believe in bringing down the powerful, lifting up the lowly, and filling the hungry with good things, as Mary sings in her hymn of praise. They believe that every valley shall be filled, every mountain made low, the crooked made straight and the rough ways made smooth, that all flesh shall see the salvation of the Lord – as John the Baptist proclaimed, quoting the Hebrew Scriptures . The righteous ones are those who believe in God’s plan, step forward, and say, “Sign me up.”

Jeremiah was one, and he had so much to say about the way things were. Jeremiah spoke up and said things that the king found so unpleasant and inconvenient, he tried to silence him. The king couldn’t see that through this hard news, Jeremiah pointed the way to hope. Today we hear him say these words: “The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill my gracious promise with the people of Israel and Judah. In those days and at that time, I will raise up a righteous branch from David’s line, who will do what is just and right in the land.”

We know the one, don’t we? From a tree that had fallen so long before, God raised up a righteous branch – Jesus of Nazareth. And through Israel will be the salvation of the world.

As we await his coming, we might ask ourselves how we ought to prepare. How does one prepare for the one called The Lord Is Our Righteousness?

Our theme during this Advent season turns our focus to the familiar story of Jesus’ birth. The well-loved story of the family who had no place to stay, so they bedded down with the animals. A baby who had no crib so they laid him in a manger. This is a story about making room for the ones who are in need.

During these next few weeks, as we prepare ourselves for Jesus, we will consider the ways we make room, and the ways God might be calling us to make more room, for what is holy. As the prophet Micah said, to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

Following the one who is called The Lord Is Our Righteousness. How are we being called to open the door wider?

May the light of hope shine in our hearts, in our lives, and in our church.

Photo by Pratik Gupta from Pexels

Freedom

Genesis 2:4-7,15-18,21-25, 3:1-8  

Several years ago, I saw a film about Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple.  He was a fascinating person, a bit of an enigma.  What was it about Jobs that made him so successful? He was not especially kind or likeable.  He was not a gifted programmer, like his partner Wozniak.  He was not a businessman.  What was he? What was his genius?  He was a creator.

There is one scene in the movie where he obsesses about the dimensions of his new computer, the Next.  It was a black cube, but apparently the dimensions had to be off just a fraction of an inch for the human eye to perceive it as a cube.  The production staff got it wrong, and Steve was not satisfied with the results.  He actually had a million other problems more urgent than this, but this was the one he obsessed about.

It had something to do with his vision about what people want.  He knew that if he created things that were good for something – that is, useful – and a delight to the eyes – that is, beautiful – people would desire them.  Covet them.  Lust after them.  He was right, wasn’t he?

The trick was just to get the price at a manageable level, something attainable.  If Apple computers were a lot more expensive than other computers, it was just too great a hurdle for most people, as badly as they might want it.  But when they found the sweet spot, that price which was a little higher than the others, but justifiable to the consumer, the sales would come rolling in. 

We are irrational beings, but we are rational too.  We want what we want, and then we want to justify our wants.

That’s the story of Adam and Eve and the fruit. 

Here they are in this beautiful, perfect garden.  They have everything they need to be content.  They have all the food they need, they have every variety of plant and animal, and they have each other.  They are free to eat, sleep, play, work – whatever they want whenever they want.  And they have a close, intimate relationship with God, their creator.  What more could they want?

Well, it turns out there is something more, and it’s right in the middle of the garden.

They didn’t seem to pay it much attention in the beginning.  They had what they needed; they were content.  The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was there, but it was not to be touched.  End of story. 

But then here comes the serpent with that nasty thought: Here is something nice that you don’t have.  You want it, don’t you?   It’s tasty, it’s beautiful, and it will make you smart.  This fruit from “the tree of knowledge of good and evil” is pretty great stuff.  Why shouldn’t you have it? 

It took a minimal amount of arm-twisting for Eve and Adam to find justification for taking the one thing that had been forbidden.  Unfortunately for us all, it was kind of a deal-breaker. 

We turn to the story of Adam and Eve in the garden again and again to try to understand what went wrong and why.  Granted, it’s not a factual account of creation.  It’s not history.  It’s a story – one that has much to teach, but today I want to look at what it says to us about freedom. 

The story of Adam and Eve is a story of two people created for freedom – within the bounds of the garden.  This garden, where God has dominion, provides for all their needs.  In this context, Adam and Eve are free of want, free of fear, free of pain.  They are free to love and free to enjoy. 

But the moment they shift their focus from what they have to what they do not have, their freedom doesn’t seem like enough.  Suddenly, they are bored with every other fruit in the garden.  Suddenly, life is unfair because there is something they need, something they have to have, something everyone else has so why can’t they have it too.  Well, maybe not that last part, since there wasn’t anybody else around back then.  But we all know what this feels like – to covet something.

It’s very hard for us to distinguish our wants from our needs; this is something we learn at a very young age.  I remember once having a little boy explain to me the difference between a want and a need; all the while I was imagining his mother teaching him that very lesson in the supermarket checkout line, the valley of temptation for all boys and girls.

We’re not good at knowing the difference, and we spend a lot of time fretting about what we have and what we don’t have, being anxious about having enough.  And when we are anxious about what we have or don’t have, we have lost our sense of gratitude.

When we have lost our sense of gratitude, when we have succumbed to the belief in scarcity, that we don’t have enough, it is because of one thing: we have forgotten who is the Lord of our lives. 

To whom does this all belong?  To God.  To quote Madeleine L’Engle, “Time is God’s.  We are God’s.  Creation is God’s.” Everything we have is a gift from God.  From that perspective, why ever not be grateful?

I’m not a doctor or a therapist, but I can tell you this: Gratitude is an antidote to anxiety.  Do you remember, a couple of years ago, when we practiced a month of gratitude? We kept daily gratitude journals, where we practiced writing down three things every day for which we were grateful.  Before we started, I heard from some of you that you doubted you would be able to come up with even one thing every day, let alone three things.  Soon we discovered how easy it was.  For many of us, this one little practice improved our lives: the daily practice of gratitude.

Perhaps Adam and Eve simply forgot that the garden of creation was God’s.  That they were part of God’s creation, and as such, cared for and loved by their creator.  What they definitely were not, were the masters of the garden.  If they only could have remembered this important truth, they would have danced through the garden day after day, enjoying the colors, the scents, the tastes and the music surrounding them.  This would have been their worship.

A wise man, Abraham Joshua Heschel, said that you are sure to lose your ability to truly worship when you start to take things for granted.  He said, “Indifference to the sublime wonder of being is the root of sin.”   

The sin that enslaves us – this is what Jesus told us.  But Jesus also told us that he came to set us free again.  God made this good creation – and that includes us.  God made us free for love and joy; for the peace that passes understanding, for contentment.

We will always do battle with sin.  We will always be susceptible to the fear of scarcity over the trust in God’s providence. This fear will prevent us from giving the way our hearts really want to give. Our fears and false beliefs will hold us captive.  But the truth will make us free, once again, free.

We are free to know the Lord.  And we are free to enjoy the Lord – like the first words we say in the Westminster Catechism: that our purpose is to love God and enjoy God forever. We are free to enjoy all that God provides for us, and free to share. As Jesus said to his disciples as he sent them out, “Freely you have received; now freely give.”

Ask yourself this question: What are the impediments, the fears, that hold you back? 

Give these to Jesus, the one who makes us free … again.

Photo: Churchart.com