Christmas Eve 2019

Christmas Eve 2019 Yesterday, when I was driving back and forth to the grocery store, I noticed a new political sign on Ferguson Ave. Have you seen it? It says, “Jesus 2020: Because only Jesus can save this nation.” (Let me interrupt this sermon for a Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about this phenomenon of the Jesus 2020 signs; I even googled it to see what it’s all about but couldn’t find much of anything beyond a Twitter hashtag. So, please, don’t hear me endorsing any particular candidate for any future elections. But also, know, that I’m not one to waste a good sermon illustration, so there you go. ) As I was driving home, I wondered about the person who placed the sign there. I wondered what he or she hoped to accomplish. I wondered what that sign even means: “Jesus 2020: Because only Jesus can save this nation.” And I wondered what if that were to come to pass, what that would even look like. (Something tells me that we probably wouldn’t actually like the look of things if Jesus became president. I know most of the time Jesus’s priorities are not always my own priorities, and I suspect I would be as uncomfortable as the good religious people in Jesus’s day were if he were to return and rule here and now.) But even with all my wild wonderings about that random road sign, I get it; don’t you? Because there’s at least a little part of me that wants Jesus to come and save us from ourselves. And this is not a new longing. “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.” During a time of great political unrest, Isaiah names this longing for the people of Israel. They are a land deeply divided, at great risk from their political opponents which will eventually result in their homeland being overthrown and many of them being taken into captivity in a foreign land. Isaiah has let them know that it is Israel’s unfaithfulness to God that has gotten them to this point, and yet, they still long for God to step in and save them from themselves in the form of a righteous ruler from David’s line. In the time of Jesus’s birth, Israel finds itself once again in trouble. This time they are occupied by a foreign power, the Roman Empire. They are in the process of being counted in the great bureaucratic machine that is the Roman Census. They long for God to break into the world and to save them, to restore them to independence. And God does break in-in the form of a helpless child born to two ordinary parents. This birth is announced by angelic messengers to an unsavory lot of shepherds—an untrustworthy bunch if you can ever find one and certainly not a group you would trust with an important, world-changing message. The angels tell the shepherds: “Do not be afraid; for see-- I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” And this child who is born in this most ordinary and unlikely place is the full reconciliation of God’s divinity and our humanity—both fully human and fully divine. He shows the world that God’s realm is not made up of the powerful but of the lowly; that God’s passion is not for the mighty but for the down-trodden. He shows us that God doesn’t swoop in to save us from the messes that we have created, like a brave knight rescuing the princess from the tower. Rather, God joins us in the mess and stays there with us shining the light of God’s countenance in the dark for us to help us find the way. Whether we are immersed in the muck of our own bad decisions or misfortunes or whether we are throwing up our hands at the unprecedented division and deep distress of our nation, it is tempting to long for “Jesus 2020”. Jesus, take the wheel, we need you to come in and save us. But this night shows us that is not how God works. That is not who Jesus is. Jesus is God with us, always and forever. This Savior has already been born to us, on this day thousands of years ago. And through the grace of God, Jesus shows us the way and invites us to join him in being agents of God’s mercy, forgiveness, and reconciliation in our own lives, in the lives of our families, in the life of our nation, and in this needy and heart-broken world. God is with us. And God has given us everything we need through the gift of Jesus Christ, the Savior of all creation. That is the truth and the glory of this night. In closing, I’ll leave you with a poem by the theologian, poet, and mystic Howard Thurman that talks about the work of Christmas to which our Savior calls us this day and every day. The Work of Christmas by Howard Thurman When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flock, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among others, To make music in the heart.

Advent 4A 2019

Advent 4A_2019 December 22, 2019 Our gospel reading for today is Matthew’s version of the nativity story. Unlike Luke, Matthew tells the story from Joseph’s perspective, and Matthew uses a series of 4 dreams to reveal information about Jesus’s birth and to assist in his safety. Our reading for today starts with heartbreak, with what seems like broken promises between and man and woman, with a man who is struggling to “do the right thing” without causing unnecessary harm. Joseph’s expectations of his upcoming marriage to Mary are completely upended, and he is left trying to figure out the most faithful way forward in the midst of the scandal of the incarnation. Then, an angel comes to Joseph in a dream and tells him to not be afraid to take Mary as his wife. (What fear in Joseph is the angel countering, do you think? Fear of what people will think? Fear of further heartbreak or betrayal?) The angels tells Joseph that the child that Mary carries is in fact the child of God, and the angel gives Joseph instructions on how to name the child, which through this naming, Joseph is adopting the child as his own. When Joseph awakes, he does exactly what the angel has told him to do. I am struck this week by the fact that this portion of Matthew’s gospel uses the word for genesis two different times (although our NRSV translation doesn’t reflect this). Matthew is connecting the birth of Jesus with God’s creation of all that there is- as is reflected in Genesis; and Matthew is showing that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s long-standing promise to God’s people. I am mindful of how often creation comes out of chaos; how new life comes out of heartbreak. I think about the times in my life when I have stood at a crossroads between where I wanted to go and where God was calling me to go. So much of this life and the heartaches we bear come because we are unwilling to relinquish our own dreams in order to embrace the dream of God which we are being invited to participate in. I think about the times in my life when I have been truly heartbroken; in those times, I am often more receptive to God’s invitation to join in God’s dream than I am at other times when I feel like everything is going smoothly. I wonder if this is how Joseph felt, too? I think about the alertness of Joseph-his willingness to be open to signs and messengers from God in both the ordinary and in the extra-ordinary. I think about the courage of Joseph—the courage to say yes, to participate in the dream of God; the courage to love after heartbreak and disappointment. Every one of us is invited to participate in the dream of God. In the days leading up to the celebration of the birth of God with us, I invite you to reflect on the times in your life when you accepted God’s invitation to participate in the dream of God (and, if you are really courageous, to reflect on the times that you didn’t). I invite you to keep your eyes wide open to look for signs and the ways that God continues to invite you to participate in the dream of God. And I invite you to be courageous in your love, even after heartbreak and disappointment.

Blue Christmas 2019

Blue Christmas 2019 The Feast of St. Thomas December 21, 2019 One of my friends shared a lovely story on social media this past week about the German writer Franz Kafka. “When he was 40, the renowned Bohemian novelist and short story writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, was strolling through Steglitz Park in Berlin, when he chanced upon a young girl crying her eyes out because she had lost her favorite doll. She and Kafka looked for the doll without success. Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would look again. The next day, when they still had not found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter "written" by the doll that said, ‘Please do not cry. I have gone on a trip to see the world. I'm going to write to you about my adventures.’ Thus began a story that continued to the end of Kafka’s life. When they would meet, Kafka read aloud his carefully composed letters of adventures and conversations about the beloved doll, which the girl found enchanting. Finally, Kafka read her a letter of the story that brought the doll back to Berlin, and he then gave her a doll he had purchased. ‘This does not look like my doll at all,’ she said. Kafka handed her another letter that explained, ‘My trips, they have changed me.’ The girl hugged the new doll and took it home with her. A year later, Kafka died. Many years later, the now grown-up girl found a letter tucked into an unnoticed crevice in the doll. The tiny letter, signed by Kafka, said, ‘Everything you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.’ It may seem strange to combine this Blue Christmas service with the Feast Day of St. Thomas, which is today and from which our readings come, but that story about Kafka, I think, gets to the heart of both. In the gospel reading, we see Thomas, who was away when the rest of the disciples had a visit from the resurrected Jesus. They all were huddled together in a locked room, afraid and grief-striken. We don’t know what Thomas was doing to not be there, but the very fact that he wasn’t there suggests that he wasn’t so afraid to be out and about. Perhaps he was doing what many of us have done in times of grief—he was trying to keep calm and carry on. Like Kafka’s doll, both Jesus and Thomas have been changed by Jesus’s death, by the love and the loss that came with that. But fearless Thomas is not afraid to ask Jesus for what he needs to be on the same page with the other disciples as a full participant in the astonishing event that is Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. On this night, may we be like Thomas, not afraid to ask God for what we need—to live our lives faithfully, to fully participate in the astonishing event that is Jesus’ resurrection from the dead—the ultimate result of what it means for us in the birth of Emmanuel: God with us. May we who have tasted heartbreak remember the truth of Jesus’s nativity which can never escape the shadow of the cross: ‘Everything you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.’

Advent 3A_2019

Advent 3A_2019 December 15, 2019 “Advent is a season of waiting,” she said to me. “What are you waiting for?” What are you waiting for? Anyone else, I would have just made something up, maybe even made a joke about it, but since she was my spiritual director, I told her the truth. Sadly I responded, “I’ve been too busy to wait. But I’m hopeful there is still time yet to wait, and I’ll be thinking about what I am waiting for.” What are you waiting for? We see John the Baptist in greatly reduced circumstances just in the course of a week. Last week, he was loose in the wilderness, preaching about repentance and calling the religious authorities who came out to see him a “brood of vipers.” Now, we see him imprisoned after having angered the wrong person, and he sends a single question back to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Many other commentators have read John’s question as one of uncertainty and doubt, but this year, it struck me that maybe there is another interpretation. What if John’s question comes, not from a place of anxiety but a place of curiosity? What if John’s question reflects that he is comfortable waiting for as long as it takes because he trusts that the Kingdom of God will be brought to fulfillment; he knows that his job, his only job at this point, is to wait and see? What would it look like for us if we trusted whole-heartedly that the Kingdom of God would be fulfilled, not through any work of our own but through the grace of the Holy Spirit and through the person of Jesus Christ? How would our waiting be different? Would it change what we are waiting for? I had a conversation with a friend of mine the other night. She was telling me about a season of discernment that she finds herself in pertaining to her work and her family needs. “What are you waiting for?” I asked her. And she responded that she did not know. I then told her about one of my touchstones of discernment, a print my mom had gotten me years ago on a trip out west. It’s a drawing and poem by an artist named Brian Andreas, and the title is “Waiting for signs.” “I used to wait for a sign, she said, before I did anything. Then one night I had a dream & an angel in black tights came to me & said, you can start any time now, & then I asked is this a sign? & the angel started laughing & I woke up. Now, I think the whole world is filled with signs, but if there’s no laughter, I know they’re not for me....” I’m going to invite us to sit in silence for a bit today. During that time, if you feel anxious or agitated, I invite you to pay attention to your breath, and to ponder: What are you waiting for? Where is the laughter in your life in this season of expectation and waiting?

Funeral Homily_Rita Lewis

Rita Lewis funeral homily December 9, 2019 Rita Lewis was a force to be reckoned with. She was a devoted daughter, sister, wife, mother, and grandmother, and she loved fiercely. She was someone who you would want on your side, because she was tenacious. Her sister Liz called her “the little bulldog” because she would not rest until things were taken care of. And in Rita’s petite 5 foot 1 inch frame dwelled the heart of a lion. She was courageous, undaunted by life’s circumstances. When her husband died, Rita was only 49 years old, and her children were college age. Wes and Brooke remember that time as being remarkable because their mother didn’t just keep things going; she helped them thrive in a very difficult time in all their lives. Rita also survived a kidney transplant here in recent years, and she not only recovered from that but was very intentional in how she took care of herself, so that she also thrived after that challenge. Rita had a diverse career. (She liked to remind her family that she was voted best all-around in her high school.) She was a music teacher, a “real estate agent in 3 states,” and a small business owner, having owned Lauren’s Hallmark Shop here in Savannah for many years. One of my favorite stories about Rita is of the time when she was at the shop, and she discovered a man stealing. When he ran out into the mall with the stolen item, Rita chased him all the way onto the CAT bus where she retrieved the item and returned it to the store. Rita was also incredibly thoughtful, empathetic, and kind. When her brother in law, Rusty, was activated in Desert Storm, Rita sent him a box of blank holiday cards for him and his colleagues so they could send them home to their wives and families for holidays. I knew Rita best through her work on the pastoral care team here at the church. We most often communicate via email, and just before Thanksgiving, Rita emailed the group to let us know that she had sent Thanksgiving cards to many of our church members on the prayer list. Rita was deeply faithful. She and Bud had a strong marriage that has served as an example for their children and given them something to aspire to. She was a long-time member of a regular bible study, and a long-time member of this church; and she believed firmly in the power of prayer. She would pray for people, and then she would follow up and ask for updates on them, so she could continue to pray for them in ways that they needed. Rita’s death was sudden and shocking, and such a large presence in the lives of those of us who loved her will be deeply missed. She died doing what she loved: Christmas shopping for people that she loved. And we hold fast to our faith that in her death, Rita was lifted up in the arms of Jesus, who was her “friend and not a stranger,” and that he has taken her to his heavenly dwelling place, where he has prepared a place for her. And so we grieve her loss here in this life with us, but we do not sorrow as those without hope. We gather today to remember the hope of our faith: that death is not the end, but a change; that through Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, God has proven once and for all that God’s love is stronger than absolutely anything-even death. We’ll see Rita again, and together we will all feast again at God’s table and dance together in God’s heavenly kingdom. We give thanks for Rita: for her courage and for her kindness. And we’ll all live a little bit more kindly and a little bit more bravely for having known her.

Advent 2A_2019

Advent 2A_2019 December 8, 2019 In a sermon I gave several months ago, I shared a story with y’all about a plant someone had given me—a bromeliad, to be exact. Do y’all remember this? It came in this little glass container, and I watered it sporadically until one day, I picked it up to water it, and to my horror, the whole top of the plant came off in my hand! (I am accustomed to killing plants, although since coming here, I’ve managed to “turn over a new leaf,.” But this was a new low, even for me!) After church and my show and tell during the sermon with my poor bromeliad, our resident plant doctor, Selina, offered to take it to her plant hospital and to try to coax it back to life. Several weeks later, she broke the news to me gently—the bromeliad was beyond any saving. Her diagnosis was that the container it had been planted in had actually killed it. It was too small, too contained, without enough air or drainage. She kindly brought me a new plant that requires very little attention or water to keep it alive and some specific handwritten instructions to assist me. Time passed, and one day Selina found me after church and said, “You’re not going to believe this! I dumped the dirt out of your old bromeliad into my yard, and now, there’s a bromeliad growing there! I’ve put it in a pot and will bring it to you next week!” The reading from Isaiah for today begins with the words, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,/ and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” The passage goes on to talk about the peaceable kingdom that will be ushered in by God through this new kind of king. It’s all about Israel’s future hope: what it means to hope even when the future seems uncertain. And it is all about the connections between justice and peace. Because at this point in Israel’s history, things are really bad. The once united kingdom has been divided into two; the king of the southern kingdom has sold out the northern kingdom to their mutual enemies, and the northern kingdom has fallen. The people in the southern kingdom, including Isaiah, know that it’s only a matter of time until they, too, are conqured. So they long for a new kind of king who will hold justice and peace together, a king who will be God’s agent in ushering in the peaceable kingdom where enemies, predators and prey will all lie down together and be at peace. For Isaiah, he is looking at something that seems dead or dying, and he is hoping that new life will yet spring up from it. This is not an unfounded hope. It is, in fact, the hope of our calling as Christians. It can be true for society, and it can be true for own lives as well. As another writer puts it, “According to Isaiah, the transformation from a culture of fear to a world at peace begins with a stump. Out of something that appears finished, lifeless, left-behind, comes the sign of new life—a green sprig. This is how hope gets its start-it emerges as a tiny tendril in an unexpected place.”i Much like my now resurrected bromeliad-which went from being a pile of dirt in Selina’s yard to a newly re-potted plant in my office (where plants go to die!). I became curious about this bromeliad resurrection, so I’ve been doing some research. Apparently, there is a saying in the northern counties of England where something is described as being “wick.” This basically means that it is alive or lively. In the classic book The Secret Garden, Dickon teaches Mary how to determine if something is “wick”—meaning that it looks to be dead on the outside, but then when you prune it or cut deeper, you can see that there is still life and growth there. (There’s even a whole song about this in the musical version of The Secret Garden). “Bear fruit worthy of repentance” John the Baptist tells his listeners. What if, for us, that involved reflection during Advent about what containers our lives may have outgrown that may be slowly killing us? What if it meant a closer examination of the stumps of our lives—those places that appear to be dead—to look for possible signs of new life there? What if it meant examining our old, dead dreams and seeing them in the light of God’s hope, looking for ways that God may be resurrecting them, recreating them, to help us become agents of God’s peace and justice in this world that desperately needs signs of hope and new life? What if it means looking for signs that something is wick when it appears to be lifeless, dead, useless? Your invitation this week is to look for shoots that grow out of stumps, things that you once thought were dead which may exhibit signs of life. iFrom Feasting of the Word for the Isaiah passage for this week. I don’t have the book with me to cite author and page. Sorry!