The Reverend Melanie Dickson Lemburg
The Eve of Christ’s Nativity—Year A
December 24, 2010
“The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.”
The darkness hangs
Like a shroud over the world.
In its depth and its silence
It numbs and paralyzes
Oppresses and subdues.
Until suddenly
The messengers of God appear
In the darkness
With a blinding, brilliant light
Throwing us ordinary mortals
Into chaos and fear.
“Do not be afraid!” they proclaim.
We bring you good news and joy—
Your savior is born this night,
And you will call him
“God with us.”
And even the stars sing with them in their glory.
And then we have a choice to make,
To stay in the dark
Which is no longer quite so comfortable for us
Now that we have been blinded
By light
And had a taste
Of glory.
Or to listen to these small stirrings of hope
In our hearts
And to search out and to seek
The source of the joy
The source of the glory
The source of the light.
And wonder of wonders,
We find it this night,
As they told us we would,
This baby who is
God with us,
This baby come with glory
Falling all around him,
Dripping of glory as if
The stars themselves had bathed him…
This baby who is
The reality of
God’s love for us,
The proof of God’s zeal,
The fruit of God’s desire
For us—
And the fulfillment of our deepest longings:
(To be loved and to love—
to be made lovely and to have our every day ordinary lives bathed in glory…)
Into the darkness and chaos of our lives
Comes a God who is wild and free
A God who does new things
A God whose love and zeal for us
Whose pursuit of us leads to
God becoming human, becoming vulnerable.
Such is the magnitude of God’s zeal
Such is the glory of God’s love…
And on this night we realize that
God’s love is a vulnerable love,
As vulnerable as a new born child.
As vulnerable as all love is vulnerable.
But even yet we cling to darkness….
As we see the Love of God
Swaddled and lying in straw.
And we are invited to choose Light.
We cling to darkness
As we see the Love of God
Hanging and dying
Arms open to embrace the world.
And we are invited to choose Light.
We cling to darkness
As we see an empty tomb.
And in the absence of light, in the silence of God
We hear the echo that
Love, this vulnerable love,
Is stronger than death.
And we are invited to choose Light.
As we see on this night
Our God with us,
Who leaps in joy
So that neither cross nor cradle
Can contain him,
Whose mystery bursts forth
From his bed and from his tomb
The mystery of birth, of life, and even death
(For even at his birth, his future is present)
The mystery of the power of his love
That shatters even the darkness of death…
We are being offered the light of the world, the one light that can truly lighten our darkness
And it is in this
That our hope is born.
From this night forward,
May we never be content to
Dwell again in the dark,
May our new hope spill over into everything
That we are
And that we do,
May we dance and sing with the stars and the angels,
Allowing our joy to shine forth,
And may we forever live
In this one moment,
On this one night,
When all of our deepest longings
Have been fulfilled.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
First Sunday after Epiphany--baptismal letter
A letter to Alexandria Marie Denley upon the occasion of her baptism.
Dear Alex,
Today is an important and exciting day in your life and in your life of faith. Today you are baptized into Christ’s body which means that you will be a new creation, a new Alex. You will have new brothers and sisters in this church and in all baptized people who promise to walk with you and to help you in this new journey. You will make promises about how you will try to live your life, modeling your actions, your choices, your words upon the teachings of Jesus, who taught that we must love everyone, be kind to everyone, and especially help those who are poor, elderly, and sick. You will teach us things, and we will teach you things, and we will all be better off because we are in this thing together.
You have already taught me something, and I want to share it with you and these people here today. When we met a few weeks ago to talk about your baptism, there was a lot going on around us. I was distracted, you were probably a little restless, your parents were distracted because you were restless. We were there meeting together because it was important, because it was what we were supposed to be doing, because it was something that we had promised to do…a part of our responsibility, a part of our duty.
But do you remember what happened toward the end of our time together? It is something that I will never forget! I asked you if you wanted to hear the story about Jesus, this story into which you are being baptized this day, and you said yes.
I told you the story—how he was born, how he was baptized and proclaimed as God’s beloved son, how he lived his life: preaching, teaching, healing; how he showed people the way to God and taught us that it’s important to love each other and to help each other. I told you how he had a group of friends and they would eat together, and I told you about the special meal, their last meal that they had the night before Jesus died, and about how we remember and share in that meal together every Sunday.
And then I told you about how he died, nailed to a cross, and I will never forget how so very still you became, looking at me with big, round eyes.
I told you how his friends were so very heartbroken, and they buried him, rolling a big, heavy stone in front of the opening of his tomb. And then they came back later to do the burial rites, and guess what they found! The stone had been moved, the tomb was empty, and there was a messenger there who told his friends, “He is not here! He is risen!”
“ ‘He is risen?’” You said. “What on earth does that mean?”
That’s exactly what they said! I told you. It means that God’s love is stronger than anything, even death, and that we can live our lives in the freedom that gives us, that even when we die, it is not the end, but just another part of our journey back to God. And I finished the story, telling you how Jesus was there with them again until he was taken up to heaven and how he sent the Holy Spirit, to whisper in their hearts, to be present with them and to help them. And they spent the rest of their lives telling people the amazing thing that had happened to them, and that is what we are supposed to do too.
Do you remember how the four of us sat there in silence for several minutes, in wonder of the holiness of what we had experienced together?
That time with you taught me and helped me to remember that sometimes when we offer love because it is what we are supposed to do, because it is our duty, our responsibility as Christians, what we have promised to do in our baptism, then God takes that duty, that love that we offer, and God transforms it—like the bread and the wine—so that it becomes so much richer, fuller, broader, greater than a love that is born from duty. It becomes a brush with Mystery; pure grace; it becomes one brief glimpse of the face of God.
And so this day, when you make your baptismal vows, your promises to God, and on every day in the future when you renew them, may you remember that you are God’s beloved child, and you are marked as Christ’s own forever. May you remember that you need not be afraid of anything because God’s love is stronger than anything, even death. May you remember that you have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, which will help you pray and will whisper in your heart and help you know what to do and even give you strength and courage. May you remember, during those times in your life, when darkness weighs upon you like a tomb, that the light of Christ, our Savior who is the light of the world, shines within you and will light your way in the dark.
May you remember that every time that you lift your shining face to God with your hands outstretched to receive the bread and the wine, that you are being fed the body and blood of Jesus who loves you, so you may go out into the world to share that love with others. May you delight in doing your duty, and may the God who loves you as God’s own child transform your duty into a love through which you see the face of God.
Your sister in Christ,
Melanie+
Dear Alex,
Today is an important and exciting day in your life and in your life of faith. Today you are baptized into Christ’s body which means that you will be a new creation, a new Alex. You will have new brothers and sisters in this church and in all baptized people who promise to walk with you and to help you in this new journey. You will make promises about how you will try to live your life, modeling your actions, your choices, your words upon the teachings of Jesus, who taught that we must love everyone, be kind to everyone, and especially help those who are poor, elderly, and sick. You will teach us things, and we will teach you things, and we will all be better off because we are in this thing together.
You have already taught me something, and I want to share it with you and these people here today. When we met a few weeks ago to talk about your baptism, there was a lot going on around us. I was distracted, you were probably a little restless, your parents were distracted because you were restless. We were there meeting together because it was important, because it was what we were supposed to be doing, because it was something that we had promised to do…a part of our responsibility, a part of our duty.
But do you remember what happened toward the end of our time together? It is something that I will never forget! I asked you if you wanted to hear the story about Jesus, this story into which you are being baptized this day, and you said yes.
I told you the story—how he was born, how he was baptized and proclaimed as God’s beloved son, how he lived his life: preaching, teaching, healing; how he showed people the way to God and taught us that it’s important to love each other and to help each other. I told you how he had a group of friends and they would eat together, and I told you about the special meal, their last meal that they had the night before Jesus died, and about how we remember and share in that meal together every Sunday.
And then I told you about how he died, nailed to a cross, and I will never forget how so very still you became, looking at me with big, round eyes.
I told you how his friends were so very heartbroken, and they buried him, rolling a big, heavy stone in front of the opening of his tomb. And then they came back later to do the burial rites, and guess what they found! The stone had been moved, the tomb was empty, and there was a messenger there who told his friends, “He is not here! He is risen!”
“ ‘He is risen?’” You said. “What on earth does that mean?”
That’s exactly what they said! I told you. It means that God’s love is stronger than anything, even death, and that we can live our lives in the freedom that gives us, that even when we die, it is not the end, but just another part of our journey back to God. And I finished the story, telling you how Jesus was there with them again until he was taken up to heaven and how he sent the Holy Spirit, to whisper in their hearts, to be present with them and to help them. And they spent the rest of their lives telling people the amazing thing that had happened to them, and that is what we are supposed to do too.
Do you remember how the four of us sat there in silence for several minutes, in wonder of the holiness of what we had experienced together?
That time with you taught me and helped me to remember that sometimes when we offer love because it is what we are supposed to do, because it is our duty, our responsibility as Christians, what we have promised to do in our baptism, then God takes that duty, that love that we offer, and God transforms it—like the bread and the wine—so that it becomes so much richer, fuller, broader, greater than a love that is born from duty. It becomes a brush with Mystery; pure grace; it becomes one brief glimpse of the face of God.
And so this day, when you make your baptismal vows, your promises to God, and on every day in the future when you renew them, may you remember that you are God’s beloved child, and you are marked as Christ’s own forever. May you remember that you need not be afraid of anything because God’s love is stronger than anything, even death. May you remember that you have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, which will help you pray and will whisper in your heart and help you know what to do and even give you strength and courage. May you remember, during those times in your life, when darkness weighs upon you like a tomb, that the light of Christ, our Savior who is the light of the world, shines within you and will light your way in the dark.
May you remember that every time that you lift your shining face to God with your hands outstretched to receive the bread and the wine, that you are being fed the body and blood of Jesus who loves you, so you may go out into the world to share that love with others. May you delight in doing your duty, and may the God who loves you as God’s own child transform your duty into a love through which you see the face of God.
Your sister in Christ,
Melanie+
First Sunday after Epiphany--early service sermon
First Sunday after the Epiphany Year A
January 9, 2011
This past week, I spent some time with a fellow priest talking about the challenges of Jesus’s call to love which echoes again and again throughout the gospels. She was lamenting the challenge of loving and being loving when that warm, fuzzy loving feeling just isn’t there. As the week went by, I thought more and more about that conversation. How do we love people when they aren’t being particularly lovable?
I thought about my own life, and particularly about what motherhood has taught me about love. Many times in life, I act in a loving manner because that is what I have vowed and promised to do—in my baptism vows, in my marriage vows, in my ordination vows. There are many times in life when I love other people only because of these vows; I love out of duty.
Sometimes the only way we can love is out of sheer duty. And sometimes when we offer love and acts of love out of this sense of duty, God takes that duty that we offer, and God transforms it—like the bread and the wine—so that it becomes so much richer, fuller, broader, greater than a love that is born from duty. And it becomes a brush with Mystery; pure grace; it becomes one brief glimpse of the face of God.
A few weeks ago, I had an appointment at the church one evening with a 10 year old and her parents. The parents wanted the child to be baptized, and I was doing her baptismal instruction to prepare all of them for her baptism (which is actually taking place later this morning). I will confess that I had some trouble being there that night. My childcare had fallen through and both my kids were at the church with me, pretty much unsupervised and running around with the other kids who were at the church that night. I was more than a little distracted.
But I was there because it was what I was supposed to do, what I had promised to do. The 10 year old had been restless and a little fidgety during our time together, and her parents were embarrassed and distracted by her restlessness, and I was searching for a way to make this a meaningful engaging experience for her. So finally, I asked her if she wanted to hear the story of Jesus, and she agreed.
I told her the story—how he was born, how he lived his life, preaching, teaching, healing; how he showed people the way to God and taught us that it’s important to love each other and help each other. I told her of how he had a group of friends who went around with him and how they would eat together, how they ate together one last time the night before he died and how we remember that special meal and share in it every Sunday with communion.
And then I told her about how he died, nailed to a cross, and she became so very still with big round eyes. I told her how his friends were so very heartbroken, and they took him and buried him, rolling a big, heavy stone in front of the opening of his tomb, and then they came back a few days later to do the burial rites, and guess what they found! The stone had been moved, the tomb was empty, and a messenger was there who told them, “He is not here! He is risen!”
“’He is risen?’” She said. “What on earth does that mean?”
That’s exactly what they said! I told her. It means that God’s love is stronger than anything, even death, and that we are invited to share in that gift and live our lives with freedom because we know that we will be with God when we die. And I finished the story, telling her that Jesus was again with them until he was taken up to heaven and he sent the Holy Spirit to whisper in their hearts and be present with them to help them. And they spent the rest of their lives telling people about the amazing thing that happened. And that is what we are supposed to do too.
When I finished, the four of us sat there in silence for a few minutes, stunned by the holiness of what we had just experienced together.
Sometimes when we offer love, even out of a sense of duty, God takes that love and transforms it, filling it to overflowing with God’s presence.
On this day, when you renew your own baptismal vows, may you remember this duty out of which love may flow. May you remember that you have been baptized and named as God’s beloved child, and that you are called to act accordingly. May you find delight in doing your duty, and may God who loves you as God’s own child transform your duty into a love in which you see the face of God.
January 9, 2011
This past week, I spent some time with a fellow priest talking about the challenges of Jesus’s call to love which echoes again and again throughout the gospels. She was lamenting the challenge of loving and being loving when that warm, fuzzy loving feeling just isn’t there. As the week went by, I thought more and more about that conversation. How do we love people when they aren’t being particularly lovable?
I thought about my own life, and particularly about what motherhood has taught me about love. Many times in life, I act in a loving manner because that is what I have vowed and promised to do—in my baptism vows, in my marriage vows, in my ordination vows. There are many times in life when I love other people only because of these vows; I love out of duty.
Sometimes the only way we can love is out of sheer duty. And sometimes when we offer love and acts of love out of this sense of duty, God takes that duty that we offer, and God transforms it—like the bread and the wine—so that it becomes so much richer, fuller, broader, greater than a love that is born from duty. And it becomes a brush with Mystery; pure grace; it becomes one brief glimpse of the face of God.
A few weeks ago, I had an appointment at the church one evening with a 10 year old and her parents. The parents wanted the child to be baptized, and I was doing her baptismal instruction to prepare all of them for her baptism (which is actually taking place later this morning). I will confess that I had some trouble being there that night. My childcare had fallen through and both my kids were at the church with me, pretty much unsupervised and running around with the other kids who were at the church that night. I was more than a little distracted.
But I was there because it was what I was supposed to do, what I had promised to do. The 10 year old had been restless and a little fidgety during our time together, and her parents were embarrassed and distracted by her restlessness, and I was searching for a way to make this a meaningful engaging experience for her. So finally, I asked her if she wanted to hear the story of Jesus, and she agreed.
I told her the story—how he was born, how he lived his life, preaching, teaching, healing; how he showed people the way to God and taught us that it’s important to love each other and help each other. I told her of how he had a group of friends who went around with him and how they would eat together, how they ate together one last time the night before he died and how we remember that special meal and share in it every Sunday with communion.
And then I told her about how he died, nailed to a cross, and she became so very still with big round eyes. I told her how his friends were so very heartbroken, and they took him and buried him, rolling a big, heavy stone in front of the opening of his tomb, and then they came back a few days later to do the burial rites, and guess what they found! The stone had been moved, the tomb was empty, and a messenger was there who told them, “He is not here! He is risen!”
“’He is risen?’” She said. “What on earth does that mean?”
That’s exactly what they said! I told her. It means that God’s love is stronger than anything, even death, and that we are invited to share in that gift and live our lives with freedom because we know that we will be with God when we die. And I finished the story, telling her that Jesus was again with them until he was taken up to heaven and he sent the Holy Spirit to whisper in their hearts and be present with them to help them. And they spent the rest of their lives telling people about the amazing thing that happened. And that is what we are supposed to do too.
When I finished, the four of us sat there in silence for a few minutes, stunned by the holiness of what we had just experienced together.
Sometimes when we offer love, even out of a sense of duty, God takes that love and transforms it, filling it to overflowing with God’s presence.
On this day, when you renew your own baptismal vows, may you remember this duty out of which love may flow. May you remember that you have been baptized and named as God’s beloved child, and that you are called to act accordingly. May you find delight in doing your duty, and may God who loves you as God’s own child transform your duty into a love in which you see the face of God.
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