The Ending of Innocence

The sanctuary—on this fourth day of Christmas--now looks a little worse for wear—while it was all spruced up for Advent and Christmas Eve, the poinsettias are beginning to wilt and the Christmas tree is beginning to let go of its pine needles. Wax from the Christmas Even candlelight service is still on the pews and carpet. The truth is, we feel that way, too. The anticipation of Christmas, the glory of Christmas Eve, and the excitement of Christmas Day has worn us down a bit.

It is interesting to read what happens from one chapter to the next in the Gospel of Matthew. Chapter one ends with a brief telling of Jesus’ birth. And then chapter two begins with the Wise Men from the East following the star to find Jesus, their journey interrupted by Herod who is so threatened by Jesus that he wants to know where he is located so he can have him killed. He enlists the aid of the Wise Men, but they betray him and don’t tell him where Jesus is to be found. Herod, in his rage, orders all boys under the age of two to be murdered, hoping that the act will include the killing of Jesus. But Joseph has been warned of Herod’s plans by an angel, and flees the violence by escaping to Egypt. While Jesus is spared, Matthew reminds us, it was as Jeremiah foretold:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
    wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
    she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

Each year, I am startled by this violence, coming so close to the celebration of Jesus’ birth. How could we be proclaiming, “Joy to the world” and then read this text? Scholars call this reading the Slaughter of the Innocents. Perhaps, it should also be named the Ending of Innocence.

How tempting is it, to stay at the manger scene. Even though Jesus was born in a lowly stable, there was a host of characters to welcome him and to sing the wonders of his birth. We still sing about the holy night, of how he laid his sweet head in a manger, of how this cattle stall became a throne of glory. It is tempting to stay cooing at this child, to hold on to an innocent and naïve hope that all is right with the world. But just like the slaughter of the innocents, reality creeps in. All is NOT right in the world. There is violence and hatred and division. Some homes resemble battlefields, with broken and wounded lives. Individuals are weighed down by the unholy trinity of oppression, greed and injustice. The angels’ song of peace on earth has been drowned out by the discord found in our world.

Perhaps we need to have our innocence ended, so we can see the world’s brokenness for what it is and, as the Body of Christ, continue to bring love, healing, hope, justice and wholeness in the broken places of our world and lives.

Perhaps we need to see clearly where the hungry still wait for food, where children seek safe refuge, where those in prisons or those who are sick still wait for hope, where the oppressed are yearning for liberation. Until we dare to look honestly and critically at all the corners of our communities, there will continue to be wailing and loud lamentation.

It is time, my friends, to arise from the manger, shake off the dust, and roll up our sleeves. Truly, as Howard Thurman once said, the work of Christmas has begin.

THE PEOPLE WHO WALKED IN DARKNESS...

All this past week I found myself returning to the Hebrew scriptures, to the prophet Isaiah’s words, “The people who walked in darkness…” and I realize that he is talking about more than the longest night of the year, but a dark night of the soul that is filled with feelings of paralyzing hopelessness, with no escape.

The people who walked in darkness…

This week, the political fault lines of our nation were drawn as starkly as the theological divisions of our denomination. It feels as if we are without a moral compass as we make sense of right and wrong, of justice and injustice, of respect and accountability. How do we hold these things in tension and find right action and right relationships?

The people who walked in darkness…

This is also a difficult season personally for so many. We become acutely aware of the loss we have experienced. Death of loved ones, the alienation and rejection of family, our personal failures that we carry, causes us to wander in a darkness which can’t be pushed back by Christmas lights.

The people who walked in darkness…

Thank God Isaiah doesn’t leave us hanging in the darkness of despair. He says: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light…for those who lived in a land of deep shadows—LIGHT! Sunbursts of light!

I need to be reminded of this promise this Christmas. Even when we are in the darkest and longest night, the promise of a sunrise will never fail. When things feel most helpless, we will find a strength that we didn’t know was there. When we are feeling most hopeless, there will be an inbreaking of love when we least expect it.

This is what Christmas is all about. God didn’t come when all was right with the world, but in spite of all that was wrong. God showed up to say, “I’m not going to leave you in darkness and despair.”

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Isaiah foretells the birth of Jesus:

“For a child has been born—for us! the gift of a son—for us! He’ll take over the running of the world. His names will be: Amazing Counselor, Strong God, Eternal One, Prince of Wholeness. His ruling authority will grow, and there’ll be no limits to the wholeness he brings.” (Isaiah 9, The Message)

When this truth breaks into our lives, we are filled with a joy that gets us through the darkest days and nights of despair and hopelessness. I am reminded once again that God doesn’t come into the nice, clean, safe, sanitized places of our lives but chooses to meet us in the stench and filth and hazardous conditions of our world. Came into the world as vulnerable as we come, as a baby, to love and be loved, to offer us a wholeness we can’t even imagine.

Seize joy this Christmas. Cling to it as if your life depends upon it, because it does. When the world feels so overwhelming remember: We are the people who walk in darkness, who will see a great light. We will see the star shining in the sky. We will hear the angel voices, singing their songs of peace on earth. And we will experience the birth of love into our lives and into our world yet again.

Joy to the world, my friends. Joy to the world.

MARY, ENGAGING IN GOD'S REVOLUTIONARY ACTION

This is the Sunday where the pink candle of the Advent wreath is traditionally lit. You might wonder why the third week’s candle is pink when the others are purple (or blue). True confession: for many years I thought that the pink candle stood for Mary (wow, that blue/pink gender theme really does get ingrained, doesn’t it?). In fact, it is pink because the third week of Advent is known as Gaudete Sunday, which means joy and marks that Advent is more than half over.


But I want to come back to Mary. 


How is it that God chose Mary, a teenager from a town of no importance, to bear God’s-Love-Made-Visible into the world? What does this say about who Mary was? What does this say about who God is?


My nativity sets (for there are many!) all depict Mary in such serene forms, arms either extended matronly towards the baby Jesus, or folded across her chest as if still trying to take in the miraculous event. But the Magnificat Mary sings in the first chapter of Luke shows another side of Mary. It is the song of one who is not a passive performer in God’s saving work but an active participant. Mary sings boldly of God’s revolutionary actions and her role in it: 

My soul lifts up the Lord! My spirit celebrates God, my Liberator!
For though I’m God’s humble servant,  God has noticed me.
Now and forever, I will be considered blessed by all generations.
For the Mighty One has done great things for me; holy is God’s name!
From generation to generation, God’s lovingkindness endures for those who revere God.

God’s arm has accomplished mighty deeds.  The proud in mind and heart, God has sent away in disarray.
The rulers from their high positions of power, God has brought down low.

And those who were humble and lowly, God has elevated with dignity.        

The rich—God has dismissed with nothing in their hands.
To Israel, God’s servant,  God has given help,
As promised to our ancestors,  remembering Abraham and his descendants in mercy forever.  (Luke 1: 46-55—The Voice)

Three decades after this song is sung, Jesus overturns tables in the Temple. But here, with this song, Mary tells of a God who is also overturning tables of power and privilege, of wealth, pride and ego. These are not the values that make for a rich, full, and holy life. The life God invites us to is marked by humility, service, dignity, and lovingkindness. In order to help us receive this life and enter it more fully, God becomes Emmanuel—God With Us. Through Jesus, God shows us what makes for a whole and holy life.

During this Advent season, what are ways God might be turning over the tables in your life? What values might God be asking you to give up because instead of promoting individual and communal well-being, they are divisive and cause dis-ease? As you prepare your heart and our world to once again receive the Christ Child, are you willing to follow closely as he

grows from a demanding baby in a manger to a demanding leader, who has spoken to those on a Galilean seashore and to generations hence, “Come, follow me”?

The Warm Up Act

I am in Helena, Montana this weekend for the ordination and consecration of the Episcopal Bishop of Montana. The congregation of St Paul’s UMC hosted the service, providing great hospitality for our Episcopal kin. This morning, when I got on the hotel elevator, I realized Kenny G was on the elevator with me! I did a quick google search to make sure it was him—sure enough it was! What was missing from the concert listing was who the warm-up act was.

Warm-up acts are interesting—they play second fiddle (so to speak!) to the people you really have come to see. Most of the time, they don’t have name recognition. But they did get a crowd ready for the main act. Warm-up acts have a very important role to play, as they help get people realy to enjoy the show, and then they fade out of the picture.

Every year in Advent, we set aside one Sunday to remember the ministry of John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin. John had his own unique role and mission. As I consider John in relation to Jesus, I realize that John was the warm-up act. John prepared the way, and then fades away, yielding, as he said he would, to Jesus, the main act.

John could only take people so far.  He led people to the point of departure from the old life, but could not help them enter into the new.  His warm up act included a baptism of water, a cleansing of the past in which a person was made ready for a fuller, richer word to come, the abundant life brought by Jesus Christ.

He told the people, “The real action comes next: the star in this drama, to whom I’m a mere stagehand, will change your life. I’m baptizing you here in the river, turning your old life in for a kin-dom life.  His baptism—a holy baptism by the Holy Spirit—will change you from the inside out.” (Matthew 3:11-12. The Message)

John isn’t preparing people to coo over a baby lying in a manger or cuddle a child. John is preparing his followers to encounter a man who will transform their living, and ultimately, their dying. Jesus, as the main act, will care and comfort us in our brokenness, and confront and challenge us in our sinfulness. People through the centuries have encountered his words, his life, his spirit, this wonderful counselor, this mighty God, this everlasting One, this Prince of Peace, and their lives have been changed forever.

They have felt something being born within them, a spark of hope, a flame of love, a passion for justice, a desire for wholeness, that is truer and purer than anything they have ever known before.  Ever since he came into the world, there have been “countless different kinds of people who in countless different kinds of ways have been filled with his spirit, who have been grasped by him, caught up into his life, who have found themselves in deep and private ways healed and transformed by their relationships with him, so much so that they have had no choice but to share this Good News with others…that in this man is the power of God to bring light into the shadows of our lives, to make us whole, to give a new kind of life to anybody who turns toward him in faith, even to people like you and me.” (Frederick Buechner)

The warm-up act is just about over. Have you been able to clear you life of the past, so that Jesus might come and enter in, be born in you, transforming your life so completely your future will look nothing like your past?  May we welcome Destiny’s Child onto the stage of our lives and hearts and discover the power this One possesses to change us forever.