December 24, 2018 Sermon

            One of my favorite lines from A Charlie Brown Christmas is when Linus tells Charlie Brown that he is the only person he knows, “who can take a wonderful season like Christmas and turn it into a problem.”  Unfortunately I don’t think that it is only Charlie Brown who has turned Christmas into a problem, much of the rest of society has also done a pretty good job of it.   For example in 2017 the average person in the United States was $1,054 in debt from Christmas expenses.  And as of a few days ago 15% of Americans were still paying off the debt that had acquired from that Christmas of 2017.  Now if debt is not your of a good problem then let’s turn to the annual “Christmas offends me” sweepstakes, where someone or group get a case of the vapors over a public Christmas Tree or Crèche lawn decoration.  Interestingly, this year the sweepstakes seem to have been won by a Canadian named Ben Isitt who is a Councilor in Victoria, British Columbia.  He took such deep offense at a poinsettia, which appeared on his desk, that he demanded all lights that received public funding be taken down in the city.  And while it certainly saddens me that we Americans have now lost our competitive advantage in our ability to be offended there are also more existential and real issues that come with Christmas, like those who are lonely or sad because Christmas reminds them of what they are without.  And I don’t want to make light of this but simply point out that many of us seem to have of our own volition or because of circumstances taken a wonderful season like Christmas and turned it into a problem.  But here is the good news; if you follow the traditional Christian Calendar there is still time to be like Ernest and save Christmas, because the season really does not even start until tomorrow.  So on this night as we move into the season of Christmas let’s think for a minute about how it can look when removed from what has become known as the Christmas Season.

            One of the things that some people are surprised to learn when they begin to read the Bible, outside of how much it quotes the Book of Common Prayer, is that only two of the Gospels contain the Christmas story – Matthew and Luke with Luke being the most complete.  Mark’s Gospel jumps right into John the Baptist and John’s Gospel while having some figurative language about the word becoming flesh, offers no mangers or shepherds or trips to Bethlehem.  And the question for many who have been raised in an era where Christmas is the preeminent Christian holiday is why would the Gospels not have given more ink to the birth narrative.  Obviously they are not around for me to ask but I can speculate that to the Gospel writers, being born was not seen as a monumental achievement or essential to the faith.  In other words, Christianity did not come into existence because Jesus was born but because of what happened later (if you don’t know what that is come back at Easter and I will explain).  A similar epistemological phenomenon happens with the commemoration of saint’s days.  Traditionally saints are not celebrated on the day of their birth but rather on the day of their death because that is the day that they were born into eternal life.  Birthdays were not big with early Christians partly because of this and partly because it had pagan trappings to it (i.e. the Romans liked birthday parties).

            Now I assume by this point I am coming off as being somewhat dismissive of Christmas but that is not my intent.  Rather what I want to point out is that by Christmas having become the only Christian holiday about which anyone pays attention, it now has to do things that it was never meant to do.  The pressure that we have created for not only this day but for ourselves as well can also be too much to bear.  We have to find the perfect presents, send out beautiful Christmas card pictures where we look fantastic but not too staged.  We must bake cookies, decorate our yards, our trees our houses, attend numerous parties and remember who can be greeted with Merry Christmas and who gets a generic happy holidays.  The other day the Wall Street Journal ran a humorous and sort of tragic article about the tyranny that the Elf on the Shelf has unleashed in this age of instagram and pinterist.  I don’t want to go too deep into it but suffice it to say if your elf is not involved in a snowball fight with Barbie and Ken when your child wakes up then you just are not doing your job as a parent. 

            So here is my proposal and one that we can even keep secret from the people that believe the Christmas season ends at the stroke of midnight tomorrow night; Let’s spend the twelve days of Christmas in contemplation of a simpler and smaller Christian holiday.  By simpler and smaller I do not mean that it is somehow diminished, I simply mean that we celebrate Christmas for what it is, not as the summation of all Christian holidays. 

            Today the angels appear to the shepherds and say, "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."  It all sounds pretty grandiose until we remember that shepherds were very low on the social strata and that Bethlehem, the city of Christ’s birth, was a mediocre town in the backwater of the Roman Empire.  Something like if Jesus were born in Peoria.  C.S. Lewis writing in an introduction to J.B. Phillips translation of the New Testament said, “The Incarnation itself ought to shock us. Divine humility decreed that God should become a baby at a peasant-woman’s breast, and later an arrested field-preacher in the hands of the Roman police….The Incarnation is in that sense, an irreverent doctrine: Christianity, in that sense, an incurably irreverent religion.”  Modern Christmas has either crowded out Jesus or added so many flourishes that we can miss the humble quietness of the whole thing.  But all of that will end tomorrow night and we can have our own Christmas.  A Christmas that will focus on the divine humility about which Lewis speaks.  A Christmas that does not look to the showy or boisterous, but to a peasant woman and the son to whom she gave birth.  We can make it a time to look to those in society and in our own lives who are often pushed to the margins, even by the Church.  The people who may not fit in to a well choreographed and staged Christmas.  Take some time to love all even those who are not celebrated or exalted. 

The incarnation itself is, if you remove the angels, a rather small affair.  Some very minor people in the low rent district of the Roman Empire have had to take time out of their schedule to comply with a government tax-raising scheme.  And it is while doing their best not to raise the ire of the Roman Empire that Mary gives birth to the Son of God.  God entered the world in very ordinary circumstances, by entering into the lives of ordinary people being inconvenienced by the government.  It is kind of like if God came to us while in line at the DMV.  But this is the place where God showed up and is how it should be truly celebrated.  We should show others the revelation of God in those ordinary and mundane places where most of life is lived. 

Everyone living in this country knows that Christians are celebrating the birth of Jesus, what they may not know or see is the love of God expressed in this action.  So in these twelve days of Christmas that are now commencing let us show people the love of God, not by saying it but by doing it.  The same love that God expressed by Christ coming to a sinful and unworthy people.  We are called to love not just the worthy and wonderful, but all people, even the people that are a real pain. 

            So this can be our secret Christmas.  Not the one of inflatable snowmen and crushing debt, but one where we extend grace, hospitality and love to our neighbors and to strangers.  This is where we act as God did on this night.  We too can enter into mundane circumstances and show forth the love of God.  Declaring as the multitude of angels do tonight, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

December 9, 2018 Sermon

            One of the things that happens or at least should happen as we grow older is we realize there are very few choices in life that do not have both positive and negative effects.  The things we do that are in one sense good can be in another sense bad or at least less than desirable.  In economics this is known as a trade off.  If you want the technical definition, it is a situational decision that involves diminishing or losing one quality, quantity or property of a set or design in return for gains in other aspects.  In practical terms this means to gain something we must lose something.  So, for example, if I decide I want to buy a new pair of pants the money that I spend on the pants will not be available to spend elsewhere, like giving it to someone in need.  In such a transaction we weigh the desirability of the new pair of pants against the desirability to help a poor person.  Now I do not bring this up to make everyone feel guilty for owning pants, I bring it up to point out that getting one thing may require losing something else. 

And this discussion of economic trade offs brings us naturally to John the Baptist, who incidentally did not own pants, but according to Mark’s Gospel, was clothed with camel’s hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey.  Which would probably not get him on Vanity Fair’s best-dressed list.  But back to what John did.  John comes and using the words of the Prophet Isaiah says the following about the coming of Jesus, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'"  It sounds pretty nice, we are going to see the salvation of God by preparing the way of the Lord, making paths straight and smoothing out the rough places.  Handel even set it to some bouncy Baroque music.  But this niceness only lasts until we start to think about what is required to make a path straight and a rough place smooth.  We are so used to paved roads and freeways these days that it may be difficult.  But producing such things requires a fair amount of brute force.  To make a path straight you have to go through a landscape that does not necessarily want a pathway, let alone one that is straight.  Pathways require cutting trees, removing rocks and boulders, bulldozing hills and so on.  Similarly to making a straight path, smoothing out something, which is rough, takes a similar amount of brute force by forcefully removing of a lot of things that are not smooth.  You can’t make a path straight or a rough place smooth through happy thoughts are asking a tree to politely move.  It is rough and difficult work.  Which leads us naturally to the question of what does this image mean on a more personal level, because I am pretty sure that John was not talking about a New Deal work project when he spoke these sentences.  Rather he meant them as a personal and societal call, a figurative smoothing out and straightening.  And so what exactly does this mean that we are supposed to do?

         Before going on I need to say that there is always a temptation, especially in sermons to have runaway metaphors.  That is we professional sermonators will go on way too long and try to connect every dot when in reality it was meant to simply be a literary device.  So I don’t want to try and equate rough places and crooked pathways with something specific within us but rather want to talk about those harsh things we may encounter that can lead to change in ourselves which are, at the same time, painful and difficult.  In the movie the Shadowlands, which is about C.S. Lewis, the character of Lewis says this, “I suggest to you that it is because God loves us that he makes us the gift of suffering. Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world .You see we are like blocks of stone out of which the sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of his chisel which hurt us so much are what makes us perfect.”  As best I can tell the real C.S. Lewis never said this, but it is in the spirit of something he might say.  So let’s think about this in the sense of the economic trade off that I started the sermon with.  In this case we want something, that is we want to be perfected so that we can see the salvation of God.  But there is a tradeoff in order to see this salvation we will have to deal with what Lewis calls the chisel blows. 

I certainly realize that such an understanding is probably not the most popular, for we live in a time that does not like tradeoffs.  We want to have our cake and eat it too, as it were.  Even though I have really never quite understood this expression – I mean is there another reason that you would want to have cake besides eating it – perhaps make it into a lawn decoration, but back to my point.  Trade-offs are not terribly popular.  Decisions, if the advertising industry is to be believed, are not supposed to have consequences.  We would like to be perfect without any difficulty.  If you don’t believe me just look at fad diets, which promise things like “eat all the chimichangas you want and lose forty pounds a week.”  But deep down we know such promises are not true.  And just like real life, Christianity does not deliver a pain free, wonderful existence.  Christianity as a consumer choice should not tell you that our journey towards God will be without incident of difficulty.  But is that a reason to avoid the call of John the Baptist?  Is it right for us to ask why would we sign up for Christianity if it involves blows of the chisel?  Perhaps if we frame it like this it might not be but I would argue that this is framing things in the wrong way.  Because the fact of the matter is that blows of the chisel are going to come and the question is not how can we avoid them but rather how do we use those to perfect ourselves, to make our paths straight, because no one escapes this world unscathed.

         This past week we lost our 41st president George H.W. Bush (who, as you know was a good Episcopalian).  He was a man who by all accounts lived a charmed life.  He was born into a wealthy family, attended all of the right schools and eventually ascended to the highest office in the land.  However, when reading about his life you saw that even someone of his status did not escape this world without a few chisel blows.  He lost his daughter Robin to leukemia when she was just three years old.  The loss of a child is something no one should have to suffer.  And we know that this loss that stuck with him to the end.  He is reported to have said on the day he died that he would now get to see her again. 

No matter who we are we are going to encounter things that are less than pleasant.  The character of C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands argued that this came from God.  And I know some people do not like such a view and honestly I am not sure we have to go this far.  Certainly, if we want to see the difficulties of this life as God testing us we can, but we also can see them as the work of Satan or we can simply see them as just a collection of random events.  What matters in all of this is how those events shape us.  How do we use those events to make the rough places smooth and the crooked paths straight?  Shakespeare said, “Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.”  We can go through life and suffer wrongs and difficulties and learn nothing or we can embrace them, using them to smooth off the rough places, to make the crooked places straight so that at the end we are turned into something, which is beautiful and wonderful.  It will be then and only then that we may be God’s forevermore.

December 2, 2018 Sermon

         There is generally agreement that there is something deep inside of us that tells us what is right and what is wrong.  It is sometimes called our moral compass or our conscious, but whatever its name there are times when it tells us that all is not right with this world in which we live.  Now some of time this is just whining, like when we complain that our soy milk latte appears to have one and a half shots of vanilla when we had specifically requested that there be only one.  But there is a layer of this unease that exists beyond the spoiled part of us that likes to whine about more selfish things.  We look around and see things like war, famine and just about anything that happens in North Korea and realize there is something broken in humanity.  But it is not just in these large instances, we also see it in things like divorce, neglected children and individuals who don't speak to each other because of differences in political opinions.  All of this points to the fact that there is brokenness on this earth.  But to get into some eighth grade level philosophy, what this awareness of the broken nature of this world means is that we must also know or have an understanding of that which is not broken. That is in order for us to know something is not right we need to have some sort of vision of what is right.  We need a criterion by which to judge much of what we see around us as being somehow not quite right.  And I would argue that looking to what is right and thereby understanding what is wrong is at its most basic what Advent is about.  Advent is an inventorying of that which is wrong coupled with the longing for something to come and make it right.  For this is the season of preparation for Christ’s coming, both historically and for a second time.  In that preparation, we are to also look at those things in the world and in ourselves that are not ready for that return.  The things that are not quite right that need some improving if they are really going to be ready for Christ’s coming.

         One of the problems with our modern Christmas, and I realize that you pretty much get this rant every year so bear with me, but one of the problems is that it skips the preparation and jumps right into the lawn decorations, Christmas specials and the nonstop playing of Santa Baby.  It makes it seem like we have already prepared.  Modern Christmas is the everyone gets a trophy holiday of the modern era.  There is no need to get ready because a few sparkly lights and some lawn reindeer will paper over all of the fact that all is not well.  Modern Christmas believes that if it yells loud enough we can somehow be prepared the moment we wash the last dirty dish from our Thanksgiving celebration. 

         This year in the week leading up to Thanksgiving I noticed a number of articles by people saying that Thanksgiving was their favorite holiday.  People had various reasons, but the common thread among these articles was that Thanksgiving was the last holiday that was still celebrated the way it was intended.  You gathered with friends and loved ones, ate a meal together and gave thanks for all of the blessings of this life.  And while I know Advent is not a holiday, I think the lack of the buffer that it provides in its current incarnation is what makes a lot of people grumpy about Christmas; because there is just too much Christmas.  With Thanksgiving coming as early as it did we are going to have 33 uninterrupted days of the “Christmas Season.”  I mean on the Friday immediately following Thanksgiving I flipped on the TV and they were already playing The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, even though, as I just said it would be over 30 days before there would be an actual Christmas to steal.  It would have been easier for him to have stolen St. Nicholas Day or Pearl Harbor Day, they were much closer.  So anyway I think my rant is about over, but the reason I continue to do it is because it is really important to have an Advent.  It has been said that those who do not know how to fast also do not know how to feast.  In a similar way I feel that if we are not prepared for the coming of Jesus much of the specialness of Christmas will be lost. 

         And this may be sounding like you must eat your vegetables before you get any dessert and maybe it is in a way, but eating vegetables is important and does not have to be a dreadful experience.  It is just a different experience from that of ice cream.  Taking time to reflect on things within ourselves that are not ready for the coming of Christ can seem like self-flagellation or it can look like going to the gym and getting in shape, not necessarily easy but very needed.  For when we think of our life the easy thing to do is to sit on the couch, eating Hungry Man Dinners and squirting whip cream directly into our mouths.  But ultimately such a sedentary lifestyle leads to all sorts of problems.  According to the World Health Organization, “Sedentary lifestyles increase all causes of mortality, double the risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and obesity, and increase the risks of colon cancer, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, lipid disorders, depression and anxiety.”  And while none of us want disordered lipids, contrast this with an active lifestyle which according to the Mayo Clinic, “Controls weight, combats health conditions and diseases, improves mood, boosts energy and promotes better sleep.”  Exercise and physical activity may be the more difficult choice up front but they ultimately lead to a happier and more fulfilling life.  In the same way if we take some time before the blare of non-stop Christmas to examine ourselves and ask what in us is not bringing glory to God, it may be a little rough at first, like the first day back at the gym, but it ultimately leads to a more fulfilling life.  And it is not just that, but it is also a life that will be filled with greater joy at the coming of Christ. 

I will end with a story that I may have told before.In around 371 BC, the Greek writer Xenophon wrote what is often called The Choice of Hercules. You all remember Hercules - he was strong and chopped off the heads of the Hydra but the basics of Xenophon’s story are this: Hercules when he was younger was approached by two women one represented virtue and the other vice.Vice speaks first and speaking to Hercules tells him, “I will Lead you into the possession of pleasure, and out of the reach of pain, and remove you from all the noise and disquietude of business. The affairs of either peace or war, shall have no power to disturb you. Your whole employment shall be to make your life easy, and to entertain every sense with its proper gratifications. Sumptuous tables, beds of roses, clouds of perfumes, concerts of music, crowds of beauties, are all in readiness to receive you.”Virtue by contrast makes a much different speech saying, “I will be open and sincere with you, and must lay down this, as an established truth, that there is nothing truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labor. The gods have set a price upon every real and noble pleasure. If you would gain the favor of the Deity, you must be at the pains of worshiping him: if the friendship of good men, you must study to oblige them: if you would be honored by your country, you must take care to serve it. In short, if you would be eminent in war or peace, you must become master of all the qualifications that can make you so.”She concludes by saying, “my followers are favored by the gods, beloved by their acquaintance, esteemed by their country, and after the close of their labors, honored by posterity.”Hercules chooses the more difficult path because he realizes that it is the only path to growth and betterment and that the most worthy and noble things in life come at a cost.May we take time to go through the work of Advent so that we may be God’s both now and forevermore.