for my home church December newsletter...

Christmas Day -- John 1:1-18

In Christmas, and in this place, the Word who was in the beginning with God, through whom all that has life has come into being, has turned life inside-out from the belly-button, come through the cosmic umbilical cord, and entered this very creation which was first birthed from God’s very Self. - It's a brand new day, a new creation beginning, a new start for all of us.

But it’s not because holiday cheer has been haunting us since before Halloween. Not because we have our houses in order, the right turkey or ham in the oven at home, the proper gifts in right proportion chosen and wrapped just right under the perfect tree. We do NOT get a new start at Christmas because of new stuff, new toys, new holiday traditions, vain or feeble promises to make this Christmas so much better than the last.

We get a new start at Christmas because of the Word becoming flesh. The creator becoming incarnate among us. The fact of the matter is, brothers and sisters, we are born anew today, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

We may not get everything on our Christmas list this year, but Jesus does, and Jesus only has one thing on his birthday list: us. It sounds sappy, but why else would an omnipotent God go to all the trouble of coming into this world that doesn’t even recognize him?

We’ve only been on this earth a short while, compared to the history of creation. Certainly we’ve managed to mess up quite a lot in even a handful of decades, and yet from God’s fullness we all have received, grace upon grace. And the grace keeps coming. The Incarnate Word refuses to leave us alone. It doesn’t matter if our houses are clean, if our lights are bright, if our trees are decorated and we have shopped until we dropped. It doesn’t matter if we can or can not get along with that family member for one more minute, Christmas is here, God is breaking into our reality, all things came into being through the Word, and without Him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in Him was life, and the life was the light of all people. And we have seen His glory, the glory as of a Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth. Covered in blood, sweat, and tears, for our sake, on a cross in Jerusalem. That’s what God’s grace and truth and glory look like. Receive what is being given, let down your Christmas guard and welcome a Savior who knows your pain, tiredness, loss, and joys, who knew you before you even had a belly-button.

Jesus did not enter our world in the flesh so that we could bury ourselves under pressure to put up a good front for the holidays. Jesus came to shine light into our dark places, to be light with us in our hidden, frightening, sad and melancholy nooks and crannies.

We are born of God this day, not of the will of flesh or of people. We are born anew also this day as children of God, beloved, human people, as human as Christ was, born so many years ago.

Today is the birthday of a new creation! Merry Christmas!

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Sunday Sacramentals

I did not expect anything of my trip north to grocery shop today. This morning I woke up remembering my promise to a guy in Ohio, that I would look for a particular panhandler at the Jackson RedLine/BlueLine stop, to say hello from the guy in Ohio and get an update on his life. I've been trying since summer to run into this guy at the L station. Still haven't run into him. But he was on my mind when I left to grocery shop at Trader Joe's this morning.

Strangely enough, halfway to my destination I had a sudden urge to get off at Roosevelt, to get a cheap haircut at the HairCuttery. Watching myself preach in these videos they take shouldn't lead me to such action, but the thought crossed my mind, and I haven't taken a random wandering day in awhile, so I got off at Roosevelt and walked upstairs into the amazing sunlight - November in Chicago! go figure, it was 70 degrees outside - and down the block to HairCuttery.

Once inside, I met a wonderfully friendly HairCuttery hair cutter ;) and she gave me a shampoo and we started up to talking. What do I do? she asked me. I'm training to be a Lutheran Pastor! I proclaimed. Don't know why I'm usually quiet about it, but I usually am, and today I unusually wasn't, and she, my hair cutter, was tickled I was so tickled to be preparing for this work. Which got us to talking quite freely about lots of things. She asked if most of my classmates were very spiritual people, and I told her about my classmate who is a bouncer and she laughed. She told me about how proud her son makes her. She talked about when she used to go to church with her friends as a kid and now that she's working on Sundays she'd like a Saturday service to worship at. I started telling her about this Bible study I heard about, something along the lines of troublemakers in the Bible, and she wanted to know what I meant about 'troublemakers.' So I mentioned Elijah, and Moses, and she was so excited to tell me about Moses! Her son's storybook Bible has made a lot more sense to her lately than the translation and readings she had been more familiar with. The rest of my haircut we talked about Moses causing trouble, or maybe it was God who started the trouble.

Then, outside, back on the L, on to the stop to meet the man who knows a guy in Ohio, only I couldn't meet him where the Red and Blue come together at Jackson, because the Blue Line was under construction. So I sat awhile at the L stop, about five to seven trains passed, and I listened to Tony playing guitar and harmonica like he's been doing for 20 years. We got to singing together. Eric Clapton, Jack Johnson, classics and new rock and he serenaded me off with 'Goodnight, Sweetheart" when I caught the next train.

Up in the light and air again, I decided not to wait for this walk light and followed that one instead, to a street that led me to a parking lot where there was a fantastic art supply store. Behind this amazing source for pastels and oil paints and colored papers for every purpose and medium, I stumbled upon the Chicago rowing association. The most beautiful scene, with the stores facing away, of an old rusty bridge over the river, at just that time of day when the sun glints off the water like gold, and a handful of swimming geese scattered like seed just upstream of the bridge.

I had been worried about sleeping through church this morning, but God brought Church to me, reminding me of baptism and deliverance, allowing me to sing with a new-found brother, reminding me of possibilities for creation out of not much, bringing me safely home at the end of the day's journey where I could share a meal with neighbors and friends in a weekly Sunday night ritual potluck. My entire day has been a worship service in community and silent intercession. God is good.

thoughts on the 'widow's mite'

I am a huge fan of the way the Crossings community sets up their ponderings on a text, and so, as I scratch my head about the second sermon I'm to preach in class this term, I ponder in imitation of their classic 'Diagnosis/Prognosis' style. Or, my amateur imitation of such:

Mark 12:38-44

As he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

Focus statement: God fills the hungry (we are all hungry)

Title: Hungry for power, power for the hungry.

External Problem : Hungry for power

It’s pretty obvious this widow was giving her life away to a broken institution. The very same religious leaders Jesus warns his disciples about devouring widows’ houses are the ones benefiting from this collection put into the treasury. Not only them, but the great building of the temple, which the disciples admire soon after this encounter, will not stand long, despite the gifts and prayers of the faithful poor and those leading from those best seats in the synagogue. Surely if she is a woman of faith she knows it will not last, she’s donating to a lost cause, isn’t she? With leaders who pray for show and waltz around in Prada, how could this system possibly continue to exist? Why did she bother to invest her entire living in the corrupt, hypocritical mess of religious process?

Internal Problem: Power = value

Maybe what she was giving her tuppence into something greater. OR, rather, maybe she was giving her tuppence out of something greater. These scribes who devoured her house, who liked to walk around in long robes and be greeted with respect and have the best seats… they and their cruelty were not what the widow was giving her living to. Their misuse of position, their abuse of power, was not the way they were called to live. But under such pressure to perform, having turned religion into an economic security blanket, the scribes had traded their faith for social status and a temple which could not stand forever. The widow, of low estate and no position, being eaten alive, as it were, by the scribes even as she supports them, is not condemned but praised by Jesus. Maybe she gives with the idea of what should be, or could be, or might be, if only… The scribes make a big show, hiding their insecurities behind public displays of power, while the widow, in the security of her faith, displays a quiet power.

Eternal Problem :  Starving to Death

The scribes’ hunger for power leads them to eternal death, and the widow’s lack of means might well kill her on earth. An extreme imbalance of power is killing everyone involved, and, try as they might, the religious leaders are stuck on the fickle, external praise of mass media for their career evaluations while the widow goes hungry and the fundamental laws of God (love God, love your neighbor) go unheeded. It’s either hell on earth or hell soon after.

Eternal Solution : Death to Starving

It’s in the middle of these hells that Jesus joins us. Rather than using his power as Son of God to smite the scribes and give their riches to the widow, he lays down his power to take up a cross, fulfilling for us those fundamental laws of God (love God, love your neighbor) so completely that heaven breaks loose on earth.

Internal Solution : Value = Power

Now that the laws of God are filled by God in Christ, the world order is flipped inside out. Widows and scribes are on equal footing, rich and poor, educated and street-wise, Seminex-ers and generation X-ers, male and female, Nordstrom’s and Goodwill, prosperity preachers and poor Lutheran seminarians. No longer separated by external signs of position, wealth, status, or respectability, everyone’s dignity is restored equally because of Jesus’ power, made perfect in weakness. All of our poverties lose their hold on us. Every single way we fall short becomes fruitful ground for Grace to take hold and build something far more lasting than any temple built with hands. Jesus fills our hunger for value, our thirst for making our lives mean something, with himself.

External Solution : Power for the Hungry

Great shows of power come in small and quiet packages. Heaven breaking loose on earth looks far less glamorous and far more like passing a note of encouragement, sharing a lunch, offering a minute to stay with someone after they get bad news, speaking a simple prayer for someone, mowing the lawn, washing the windows with care, pushing a child on a swing. Whether it comes to us or comes through us, Grace is abounding all around us in moments of poverty and richness, overflowing lack and scarce abundance. The widow gave her living away to a broken institution, but Jesus gave his life away for a broken world, for the widows and the scribes, for you and for me, for what is and what has been and what might yet be, if only the whole world were to know its shared dignity. And until that day when each and every sort of hunger will be filled, Jesus pours his life into us, knowing we can not stand on our own forever, or even for a day, but that we stand in his love more mightily than any temple reconstructed a million times could do.

people are beautiful

Rita Mae was my example today. She sat on the corner near the Unitarian Church and rolled herself a cigarette, reminding me that 'you have to take the bitter with the sweet.' In her 50's, making a living by panhandling in a neighborhood already crowded with open, asking palms and paper cups, she wrapped her greying hair in a green floral handkerchief, soft from many washings, and told me about her bad relationships, but that she liked herself now just as she was. We talked about her love for antiques, the way the synagogue and mosque took such good care of her, and the miracle of faith in God. Despite my assignment to initiate 'one-on-ones' for a seminary class, Rita was the one who brought up the subject of faith, witnessing to how God had brought her through so much of the bitter in her life, and how amazing it is that folks believe in God. She seemed to know most of the pastors in the area, and was saying hello to them as they walked past. In a Bible she had opened on her lap, she read to me "Immanuel, that means God with us" and then put the Bible away, as though that word were enough for the day.

Simply put, Immanuel. That is indeed enough.