January 29, 2012
Inner Authority
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

The people in the synagogue were astounded at Jesus’ teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. And in a dramatic demonstration of this authority, an unclean spirit recognized Jesus as the Holy One of God, and upon Jesus’ command, came out of the man he had been tormenting.

What a scene. Can you imagine? No wonder the people were amazed, asking one another who this Galilean might be. They were accustomed to a different kind of authority, like that of the scribes. That kind of authority is more about position and power, but Jesus’ authority came from within; it was given by God. He had an unmistakable and irresistible strength of spirit.

Have you ever known someone with this kind of inner authority? Someone who didn’t have to demand your trust, because they commanded it? Perhaps it was a parent, or a grandparent. One of those people in my life was Nettie, who was the imposing nanny, cook, and housekeeper in my mother’s home when she was growing up. Throughout my childhood and teenage years, Nettie still lived with my grandmother. I would visit in her bedroom so that we could listen to the San Francisco Giants on the radio, hoping that Willie Mays would hit another home run.

Nettie was a person not to be trifled with. I don’t remember her ever raising her voice. She didn’t have to. She had wise, kindly eyes that didn’t miss a thing. When she spoke, which wasn’t often, you listened. As a child I wouldn’t have known why I listened - it wasn’t fear - but looking back on it, I know it was because she had depth and wisdom, and because she loved.

Sometimes I encounter a stranger, just in passing, who carries this kind of authority. It can be a child or a waiter in a restaurant. It’s in the eyes, the posture. In my office, I have a photograph of Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen teacher. The picture was taken 40 years ago, but he looks alive, radiating clarity, strength, humility, wisdom, and compassion. Now there’s a person I would listen to. That’s what Jesus must have been like. That’s what astounded people when he taught. That’s why the unclean spirit recognized him as the Holy One of God.

In people that I have known who exhibit this kind of inner authority, in the gospel story we just heard, there are two qualities that are always present. First, a paradox: even though this authority is confident, it is humble, because it is born out of self-emptying. Second, it is always used in the service of others.

What do I mean by self-emptying? Most of the time when we consider growing in one way or another, we think of adding something to ourselves. We work out at the gym to build muscle. We invest money to increase our net worth, or at least we used to. Similarly, some people approach their spiritual life this way.

They think that by reading books, learning prayer techniques, attending classes or retreats, they will add spiritual stuff as an enhancement to their existing life. But the life of faith is really more about subtraction than addition. The whole point is to remove, by God’s grace, whatever is standing between us and God - our insistence that life be the way we want it to be, our fear of the future, our resentments, and our unwillingness to trust. Spirituality is a process of dying to the false self, so that the true self, or God’s life within us, can rise up, unencumbered.

So the more we offer to God our obstacles to faith and love, and the more we focus on God’s presence instead of our problems and desires, the more we become an empty vehicle for the Spirit. Spirituality is about subtraction, not addition.

When we experience this self-emptying, we can have confidence, but it is not the self-confidence of pride, which is always insecure, puffed-up. Instead, we have confidence in God. We are secure in the knowledge that as we continue to self-empty, God will continue to rise up, ever with us, supporting us, supporting everything, bringing good out of every situation. That, I think, is the paradoxically humble power of spiritual authority that Jesus carried, that people like Archbishop Desmond Tutu carry. It is irresistible, because it not about them.

And unlike mere power, which is used in the service of self, spiritual authority is always used in the service of others, in the service of the greater good. If we’re involved in the spiritual process of dying to the false self, there is simply less baggage to get in the way of whatever might be needed in order to serve others. And so we can be open, available, ready to respond to whomever or whatever God places in our path.

These days, the word “spirituality” has been overused by those who merely hope to have a nice experience for themselves. In our aggressively consumerist culture, it is no surprise that spirituality has become objectified, a personal product to attain and enjoy for oneself: peace of mind, happiness and joy. And it ends there. This is simply narcissism in a spiritual guise.

Jesus wasn’t connected with God so he could feel holy. He was connected with God in order to serve. One day, God placed in his path a man who had been tormented by a demon. And because Jesus was centered in God rather than in his own ego-centric needs, he turned to him, had compassion, and healed. It was a natural, spontaneous act.

And so genuine spiritual authority is paradoxical: it is humble and self-emptying, yet confident in God’s presence and power. And it always manifests itself in service to others; that is its nature when we are out of the way.

Today we will have our Annual Parish Meeting. We will read and hear reports from a wide variety of leaders and ministries that we do. You will be amazed at the scope of dedication and good works - on behalf of children and youth, in the beautification of this house of worship, behind the scenes making sure the whole place is clean and orderly and sufficiently financed, feeding the hungry and visiting the sick, caring for the divorced or the grieving, offering high-quality classes, retreats, concerts, and art shows, and much more that never gets reported - like those who serve at the funerals of people they didn’t even know.

If you step back and look at this from a distance, it is quite impressive. St. Michael’s is known around our city, our diocese, even nationally among Episcopalians, as a place of real depth of spirit. We carry some spiritual authority. Because of this, people notice, listen to, and trust us.

But just like individuals who have spiritual authority, it isn’t about us. Whatever confidence we might feel is not self-confidence - “aren’t we wonderful.” It is confidence in the Spirit, who moves through us. Together, we continually learn how to empty ourselves towards God, to die to our false selves, to our agendas and fears. We make it about God, not ourselves. And in doing so, God’s life rises up through this community. And that life manifests, naturally, in service towards others.

I am grateful to be a part of such a place. I pray that we will continue to walk this paradoxical path of self-emptying and spiritual power, and I expect that this path will lead us into acts of even greater service in the year ahead.

Switchbacks on the Trail:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

“Immediately” “Immediately they left their nets and followed him.” I find that hard to believe. People with lives to lead, families to care for, obligations to fulfill just up and leave it all behind. How can that be? How can Andrew and Simon and James and John just chuck it all? Whatever would possess them to do such a thing—without even giving it a moment’s thought?

That word “immediately”—that’s my stumbling block. And I know I’m not alone in this. Others struggle with that word as well. It sends folks scrambling. Some folks focus on the lives the disciples leave behind. You know that argument—the life of a Galilean fisherman was so difficult, so tenuous that of course the disciples rushed to embrace a different way of living, a different way of looking at the world. Perhaps. Others suggest that this story isn’t about those fishermen at all. The way that argument goes, this is a story about God acting in people’s lives, a story about four men’s “yes” to God. Maybe so.

There are some biblical historians who suggest that this is not even a case of an immediate “yes” to God. These folks say that Jesus and those fishermen knew each other rather well. The way the argument goes, Jesus had spent a lifetime hanging around the Sea of Galilee. He knew Andrew and Simon and James and John. They knew him. And they knew they could trust him. So when he said, “Follow me” and they followed, it wasn’t really immediate at all. It had been a long time in the making. A decision growing from a relationship with the one offering the invitation. That happens, doesn’t it.

Each of these approaches to the disciples’ quick “yes” to Jesus has some merit. But still that word “Immediately” jumps out. It draws our attention to the moment, to the beginning of the story of Jesus and those fishermen, and it keeps us from seeing all that follows. Discipleship—it’s not a moment; it’s a way of life. A way of life growing out of a relationship with God. A way of life for Andrew and Simon and James and John, and a way of life for you and me and us together as well. A way of life and a lifetime along the Way.

Whenever I read about Andrew and Simon and James and John dropping their nets, I find myself focusing on the call and that first response and I forget all that follows. The challenges, the doubts, the confusion. Disciples bickering with one another. Followers struggling to make sense of the parables Jesus tells. And then the moments when anyone standing nearby can see God at work in the disciples—God through them casting out demons, curing the sick, serving the hungry; God through them teaching another way of living and being in the world. The moments of sheer terror and the moments of awe that come with a life of discipleship.

“Immediately”—it can lead folks to believe that discipleship is straight line way of life, a continual and steady progression into a deeper and deeper relationship with God. That’s not been my experience of discipleship. And I’m sure I’m not alone in this fits and starts discipleship that seems to mark my life. You see it Andrew and Simon and James and John and the others too. Andrew disappears from the scene. James and John squabble about being at God’s right hand. Simon—we know him as Peter—ends up denying Jesus. At the end they all flee. And then they return to the work of their discipleship. All switchbacks on the trail.

And still I wonder—I wonder if there’s not something to that word “immediately”. That gut-level first response the disciples make. I wonder if we take it not as a one-time-only kind of thing but as a response we make again and again to God’s oft-repeated invitation to come along, to follow on the way.

“Follow me,” Jesus says to us today and every day. This he says to us as individuals and to us gathered here as the Body of Christ. What will be our first response? Where will it take us? The answer’s in the living—the living of our discipleship.

January 22, 2012
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor
Discerning and responding to God’s call

The last few weeks we’ve hearing quite a bit about God calling people. Jesus baptized and called into his mission; Jonah; Jesus’ new disciples; Samuel, called in the night. And another call in the night, for Martin Luther King to persevere when things were the darkest. Call is clearly a major theme of this season of Epiphany.

But what is this business of “call,” anyway? Because it is not like most of us hear God’s voice come completely out of the blue: Brian, you are now to become an astronaut! Mary, go to Cairo tomorrow, and open a shoe repair shop!

More likely, God’s call is a lengthy process, which asks of us patience and discernment. It often begins with dissatisfaction, an itch. A job just doesn’t feel right, or we know that we’re not living in a way that is healthy or centered in God. We have to experience this dissatisfaction for awhile, getting to the root of it: what is the problem here? What needs to change?

Then begins a time of praying, listening, waiting for the Spirit to call us forward. What is it we need? A new approach to prayer, a change of vocation, a shift in our relationship with our spouse? What feels compelling, attractive, perhaps scary, but right? We have to rely on our intuition, and dare to imagine.

In time, we may have a gut feeling, an intuition about how the Spirit may be leading us. Then, if we are brave, we respond to the call; we get up and go where we are led. God gives us a vision of possibilities, but then it is up to us to get up and walk into the unknown. This takes faith, trust, that God will give us the means to do what God calls us to do.

Through all of this, we cannot go it alone. We need friends, family, fellow pilgrims on the journey. Some form of community is essential, if we are ever to get to clarity. We need people to discern with us, to whom we can express our dissatisfaction, our dreams, our fear of change. Others give us a reality check; they tell us things we hadn’t thought of; they mirror back to us what they hear and see in us.

This is essentially what many of you did last year in the ReImagine process, through the Season of Listening and the group meetings. You shared your passions and dreams, and what your “Yes” to the Spirit might be. You did that in community. Out of that, some of you offered new ministries to this community.

I don’t know if you’re aware of our parish Discernment Guild. They have served as this discerning community for some dozen of our members over the last few years. As needed, they form a small group around a person who is seeking God’s direction in their life. Over a period of months they listen deeply, and pray together. Discernment for some has to do with the possibility of ordination. For others, it has to do with other big transitions and new directions. In February, our Discernment Guild will lead the Sunday adult education hour, helping us all deepen our skills in personal discernment.

Everything I have described so far has been about discerning God’s call as individuals. We ask “How is God moving in my life, and how can I contribute more authentically to this faith community, to the world around me? What is my ‘Yes’ to the Spirit?” There’s nothing wrong with discerning about one’s individual life - in fact, we need to do more of it.

But there is another way in which community plays into discerning God’s call. It is when we listen together for a corporate sense of the Spirit’s leading for all of us. What would God have us do as a nation, as the Episcopal Church, as a parish, or as a family? This kind of corporate discernment involves listening, wondering, sometimes arguing, and waiting patiently together.

We’re not so good at this. Perhaps this is because it is more difficult to do it with others than alone. You bring other people, and their sense of the Spirit, their agendas they may be bringing into the mix - not that you or I have any agendas, mind you, only those others - and, well, we’ve got some sorting out to do. But that’s no reason not to do it.

We’ve got a golden opportunity to practice this, coming up this year. Next week at Annual Meeting, you’ll be hearing about how we’re taking a new team approach to ministry. We have a clergy team that is planning and coordinating ministry together. They, in turn, are forming teams of lay leaders in the broad areas of ministry they look after. These teams will listen to the Spirit, in order to discern the directions in ministry we, as a parish, are called to take together.

Another opportunity to do corporate discernment may be about to sprout, at least I hope it will. Last Sunday, one of our Vestry members planted a seed. We were in the midst of strategizing how to get through our budget shortfall, as we have been for two months now. He found himself a little itchy, a little dissatisfied.

So he gently but firmly pointed out the danger of becoming, in our worry, too inwardly-focused, too self-absorbed. He brought to mind how so many of God’s people in that big world out there have a lot of urgent needs. Despite whatever restrictions we feel, we have enormous resources, and we are able to do far more than we are currently doing to serve the most vulnerable of God’s children. We will continue this conversation with the new Vestry, especially on our retreat in March, and I hope that his itch will spread like a virus to others.

What our Vestry member brought up has an old-fashioned word that is being reclaimed by a new generation of young Christians today: mission. Mission is not just some evangelical outpost in a jungle somewhere, or a week of house-building in Mexico. Mission is when we, as a church, commit ourselves to join in God’s work of healing this broken world. Mission is not only charity; it is working to re-shape society so that it is more aligned with God’s intention for it. Mission is when we intentionally live out the commitment we make every time we say “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Young adults in the Emerging Church movement are, in fact, are talking about being a mission-driven Church. Think about that for a minute. What would it look like if all our decisions - about staff, budgets, buildings, education, ordination, worship, everything - were driven by and subject to the highest priority of mission, of healing this world and building God’s kingdom here on earth? What would the church have to be doing to be publicly known primarily for this?

So this year, we are entering a season of listening together how the Spirit might be leadings us into new ministries that benefit one another, and mission that benefits the world around us.

None of this is easy. To listen for God’s call, whether for our individual life or for our parish, we must be very patient and discerning, and open to the support and questions of others. Then to respond to God’s call, we must act courageously, without having any guarantee about the outcome, or even knowing how it will be worked out along the way.

We’re never done with this process, for we are a verb, not a noun. If we are alive, we are always in a process of becoming more. Even today, God is trying to get our attention, to invite us to be bigger, freer, more loving and of greater service to God’s world.

Sermon I Samuel 3:1-20
St. Michael and All Angels
January 15, 2012

What is it about nighttime? Things we manage to avoid in daylight come to life and demand our attention. We hear noises. We see shadows. We encounter our fears face to face. We find ourselves on edge. We go through periods of time where we lie awake night after night at the same hour. We don’t see this as a gift; instead we are annoyed by the inconvenience. We drink tea or milk, we visualize peaceful things, and if we get desperate enough we count sheep hoping we will go back to sleep. But what if it is the only time God can get through to us? Years ago I heard a sermon suggest that God wakes us up night after night to spend time with us, but we just get up and go to the bathroom and go back to bed.

We fill our days with appointments, lists, and electronics. At the end of the day, we come home to more electronics – television, computers, phones. Is there any space for God to connect with us? When I stand in line at the bank or grocery store, I look around at folks buried in their phones, not wanting to miss the latest facebook post. Our culture is fixated with connecting electronically every waking hour to the point that we are worn out and we don’t have the energy to receive God.

We are three weeks away from the miraculous story of God coming in the form of a child to bring hope and healing to our world. All the remnants of Christmas have been put away for another year when we are confronted again with God coming to us through a child. Hannah longs for a child. She prays for a child and bargains with God. She promises to give the child back to God if she is fortunate enough to get pregnant. Hannah becomes pregnant and as soon as her son Samuel is weaned, she returns him to God. She takes him to Eli the priest along with a bull, some flour and wine. She leaves Samuel and gifts at the temple and she prays…

My heart exults in the Lord;
My strength is exalted in my God…
There is no Holy One like the Lord,
No one besides you;
There is no Rock like our God…
Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,
But those who were hungry are fat with spoil…
The Lord makes poor and makes rich;
He brings low, he also exalts.
He raises up the poor from the dust;
He lifts the needy from the ash heap,
To make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor… (from I Samuel 2:1-10)

Does this song sound familiar?? Mary discovered that God was sending a child in what seemed like impossible circumstances and she too sang a song of God turning the world upside down to bring justice and hope.

This raises all kinds of questions for me. Where is God found today? Are we listening to our children? We tend to wait for the wisdom of grown ups when we are dealing with the important issues. But God keeps choosing the young ones to lead in difficult situations. We need to pay attention to God’s way of doing things. One of the best parts of my day is sitting down at the dinner table with my family. I learn to see the world differently as I listen to Max and Maya offer their viewpoint.

Samuel’s story continues. He grows up serving in the temple with Eli as his mentor. One evening Samuel is awakened from a deep sleep to the sound of his name. Thinking Eli is calling him, Samuel runs to see what Eli wants. This happens three times. Eli can no longer see, but he has spent his life listening for God. It is Eli who realizes what is happening and instructs Samuel to wait for God to call him again. We are told that God’s word was rare in those days and visions were not widespread. Samuel has grown up in the temple, but he needs Eli’s help to discern God’s call. Barbara Brown Taylor says “there’s more to knowing God than being in church.” (Mixed Blessings, p. 15) It takes both Samuel’s youthful attentiveness and Eli’s wisdom to bring God’s call into being.

We tell ourselves that this faith thing is a solo enterprise when in fact we are created for relationship. We discover God together. It may look like we did it alone, but if we look back we may recognize how many people paved the way for us, how many surrounded us as we encountered God, and how many are waiting to take the next steps of our journey with us. God comes to us in community.

It is a sad commentary that no one expected to find God in the temple. It may be that no one wanted to find God in the temple. God tends to shake things up. Humans like to think of church as the place where things are predictable. Those of us in more liturgical traditions can assume that we will say the creed and after the peace comes communion. We may forget that God comes to us in our familiar liturgy. Several years ago, I read a sermon called “The Dangers of Going to Church”. The author told about waiting in the airport while a four year old demolished a good portion of the area by turning over trash cans, stepping on an ice cream cone and tracking it all over the seats. His helpless, terrified parents sat by and watched the devastation. Just in the nick of time, their flight was called. The boy’s father leaned over to the mother and said, “Dear, perhaps we ought to consider taking Thomas to Sunday School; maybe that would help.”

Ah. So church is where we come to be tamed, civilized, subdued? I’m not buying that. There was nothing easy about God’s message for Samuel. Here is a twelve-year-old boy given the message of destruction as a result of Eli’s sons’ corrupt leadership. Encounters with God take us beyond places of ease and often make us uncomfortable.

I’ve been thinking about Martin Luther King, Jr. this week. One day in seminary, I turned in class to discover that I was sitting next to Bernice, his youngest daughter. I wondered what it was like for Bernice to grow up with a father whose call cost him his life. Martin didn’t want to be a civil rights leader. He wanted to have a quiet life as a professor. Through a strange turn of events, he found himself in the forefront of the Montgomery bus boycott. He came home late one night, tired, frightened. The phone rang. An angry voice on the other end said, “We’re gonna get you!” He stood in his kitchen frozen with fear. Then he heard a voice, “Martin, you do what’s right. You stand up for justice. You be my drum major for righteousness. I’ll be with you.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. listened to God and the world is forever changed because of that. God comes to us in the night and calls us to the difficult work of transformation. God promises to be with us. All of this is scary, but I look around at each of you and realize that I am not in this alone. We are in it together.

God is in our midst. The Psalm reminds us that God knows each of us intimately. We cannot escape God’s love and care no matter where we are or what situation we find ourselves.

When you are lying awake in the middle of the night, remember that God is with you. The reading from Samuel says that the “lamp of God had not yet gone out”. It may seem that God is far away some days, but God is carefully weaving our lives together and preparing us to be disciples. This isn’t about who we are or what we know. It’s about how open we are to God who shapes us into a people of love and hope. It is happening as we sit here this morning. It is happening when we doze off in front of the tv. It is happening when we are awake in the middle of the night believing that we should be asleep.

God is not finished with you or me. God is not finished with St. Michael’s. We are embarking on an adventure together and God calls each of us by name to be part of the new thing God is doing.

January 8, 2012
The Baptism of Our Lord
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Today we begin the season of Epiphany. This season starts with the baptism of Jesus, and ends with his transfiguration on the mountaintop. It is obviously one story, because the beginning and the end are in direct parallel.

When he is baptized, a voice from heaven speaks to Jesus - You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. Later, at the transfiguration, when Jesus is gloriously changed into a being of light, the same voice says the same thing, this time to the disciples - This is my Son, the Beloved.

So the Epiphany season tells a story about Jesus’ self-understanding, and later, the disciples’ understanding, of who he is: God’s beloved, God’s own offspring. This is the foundation of all his teaching, healing, and working of miracles: he does what he does because knows who he is.

During this season, in between the beginning of this story and its fulfillment, we shall see Jesus calling disciples into that same self-understanding. They go out to heal, feed, teach, and love, because they now know who they are. And through the disciples’ ministry, the people then begin to understand that they, too, are beloved children of God.

So God extends the divine life into Jesus, Jesus extends it into his disciples, and the disciples extend it into the people. It is all one ever-expanding circle.

The Western Christian tradition, however, has largely ignored this message over the centuries. It has drawn back the circle of divine life, and limited it to Jesus alone. We have been told that he alone is the Son, and that we are sinners through and through, cut off from God. But if we attach ourselves to Jesus, he will take us by the hand, and grant us admission to the divine life.

In this version of the Christian story, we’re like unfashionable slobs standing in line at the most exclusive nightclub in town, with no hope of getting past the bouncer, until some supermodel comes along and sweeps us in the door along with her.

The Eastern Church, on the other hand, has always understood that the divine life is an ever-expanding circle. They speak of theosis, of being “deified,” and rely upon a number of New Testament texts which point to this.

In John, Jesus prays for his disciples: As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us...The glory that you have given me I have given them. Paul speaks of being baptized into Christ, and that It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Paul has been deified. He goes on to say that We have the mind of Christ, that we will grow into the full stature of Christ, in whom the fulness of divinity dwells. He tells us that corporately, We are the body of Christ. And Peter, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, wrote that We are participants in the divine nature.

This is what we celebrate in baptism. In the waters of baptism, we accept our identity as participants in the divine nature, and we commit to a holy life, so that through us, others may also know themselves as part of God’s ever-expanding circle.

Now I suspect that you may not always feel glorious. You may not always feel deified. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. It only means that you don’t always feel what is true. So how can we claim this identity? How can it become a living reality for us, and not just a nice idea?

We learn through experience. And the experience that is relevant here is what sometimes happens in prayer, among people you love, in worship and friendship with one another here, through spiritual reading, in nature, in any situation in which you have known God’s presence. Those are the times when we know that all of life is an expression of God’s holiness, including us.

However we seek this experience, whenever we intentionally put ourselves in the kinds of situations where we might remember this, we are doing what is known as spiritual practice. I don’t care whether what you do is formal prayer or not. What matters is that we are intentional about it. For those who knock, the door will be opened.

As you experience this from time to time, I want to encourage you to believe in it. Have confidence in who you really are - you are already connected with God. You are beloved, just as you are, a manifestation of God’s life. It is your true nature. You don’t have to strive to get there; you’re already fully there.

And every time you do some form of spiritual grounding, you reinforce your awareness of who you are. You touch base with reality, and over time, like Jesus, like the disciples, this deepest reality becomes the foundation of your daily life. Because you know who you are, as you go about your business, as you interact with others, you are more likely to love, to heal, to be patient, grateful, and self-giving.

We are certainly not perfect. We sin, we become unhappy and self-centered, and we cause harm. But this is only the small self, the part of us that can be put in perspective, the part that can, over time, become weaker, losing its grip over us. Place your trust instead in your true nature. You were assured of this nature at baptism, when a voice from heaven said to you,You are my beloved; with you I am well-pleased.

I also want to encourage you to have the very same confidence in the community of faith. We are not just an ecclesiastical institution. We are the Body of Christ, an embodiment of the divine life. You can experience this if you just look around with the eyes of faith.

We are not a perfect community. But together, every day, we express God’s own love and holiness to one another, to perfect strangers who come across our doorstep. God is manifested when we celebrate the sacraments, when we share our struggles with one another and encourage one another in faith, when we serve and pray for others. Together we invoke the saints and angels and the glory of God in this holy place of worship. We truly are, as Jesus said, the light of the world.

When we have confidence in who we are, when we reinforce this experience through spiritual practice, alone or together, it changes us. We live as if we are an extension of the divine life. We act as if this is true. As St. Paul said in a letter to the Colossians:

If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is...Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God...As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience...Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body.

We are God’s beloved, whose divine life extends through us, through our community, in an ever-widening circle, touching others who need it as much as we do. And then they, by the grace of God, also know themselves to be a part of this vast theosis, this redemption of the world, where all things are being brought to their fulfillment.

Today, you will be invited to take a small stone from the baptismal font, and carry it with you in the weeks ahead. Use it as a touchstone, to remember who you are, who we are, and the life to which we are called. Have confidence. For we are the light of the world.

Beloved:
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

We were sitting at a table in Starbucks. My friend had just come from his wife’s—our good friend’s—hospital bedside. For two weeks, he had been at her side watching her slip away, catching sleep when he could. But that day was different. He had a calmness about him I hadn’t seen before. We talked about the horror he’d been through and how he was coping with it all. In retrospect, I suspect he knew that she was dying. But he didn’t mention that. What he talked about was how he was getting through those horrendous days. That’s where his story joins the story we just heard.

You see, my friend had this deep sense of peace about him, a calm, a fixed point in the storm that was his life in that moment. My friend kept coming back to how he felt grounded in and held by God. I think that’s what happens when you know deep in your bones you’re beloved of God. Everything else seems to fall away. It’s freeing.

Look what happens to Jesus when the heavens are ripped apart and God whispers to him, “You are my son. My beloved. With you I am well pleased.” He’s driven out to the wilderness, tempted by Satan, ministered to by angels. He’s ridiculed by family and rejected by neighbors. Powerful insiders taunt him and plot against him. At the end, even his own disciples flee from him.

And yet Jesus keeps his focus on the work before him—healing the sick, feeding the hungry, giving sight to the blind and proclaiming the good news that God’s reign is at hand. Jesus knows he’s beloved of God and that makes all the difference in the world. He doesn’t have to worry about earning that love or somehow disappointing the One who loves him or falling short in one way or another. He’s loved before he even begins his work. He is; therefore, he is beloved.

That’s true for Jesus and that’s true for me and you. We are; therefore, we are beloved.
I wonder what it would be like if we lived from that place of belovedness. Would we, like my friend, develop a deep peace? Would we, like Jesus, focus on our mission and our ministry?

I wonder if knowing that we are beloved of God just as we are would make it easier for us to delight in ourselves. Do you think we could get a kick out of just being us?

And I wonder how seeing one another as beloved of God would change how we treat one another. Would we be more tender? More patient? More attentive?

How would our expectations of and interactions with one another change if we kept in mind that God is well pleased with us before we do or say a single thing? Would we be more accepting of one another? Would we find it easier to delight in each other? Would we be more likely to show compassion?

One of my seminary friends tells the story of a classmate—a person she found particularly annoying. When she found out she would be rooming with this woman for two weeks, she wondered how she would ever survive. Finally, she turned to a particularly sweet priest who had served a difficult parish for a long time. She asked him how he put up with the difficult ones. He told her, “Whenever I look out at my congregation, I see the beloved children of God.” The way my friend tells it, that shift in perspective made all the difference in the world.

Beloved of God. That’s true of me, that’s true of you and that’s true of all God’s children. How do we live with this knowledge?

In a few moments, we will reaffirm our baptismal vows. They are our response to the love God showers on us. As part of this reaffirmation, I invite you to stop by the baptismal font after receiving communion. Pick up one of the pebbles. Hold it your hand. Let it remind you of God’s love for you. Let it remind you that you are beloved of God. How will you live with this knowledge?

Now the silence. Now the peace. Now the time for pondering. Now. Now. Now.

The baby sleeping. The shepherds long departed. Finally a moment for Mary to catch her breath. Finally a chance to let it all sink in. That strange encounter with the angel Gabriel. A holy child born to her barely out of childhood herself? Surely she must have wondered. The baby growing in her womb—evidence to support the angel’s strange claim. And yet I bet she still had her doubts and fears. Her rushed trip to old Elizabeth. The welcome she received there and the amazing song that sprang up from deep within her heart. Joseph welcoming her into his household, keeping his promise even though she came to him pregnant with a baby not of his making. Who could ever make sense of all of this?

The long trip to Bethlehem. Each step she took the baby shifting in her womb. His weight almost too much for her to bear. The fruitless search for a place to spend the night. Collapsing in a corner of a stable. The labor pains. The baby and his cries. Shepherds rushing in. Their wild tale of angels’ songs, a baby born in Bethlehem, a savior for the world. No wonder she treasured their words. No wonder she pondered them in her heart. The shepherds’ words confirmed what God had promised at the get-go.

I love this story—this story of a young girl caught up in something much bigger than herself; this story of God seeking out someone so far from the centers of power to bear and birth God into the world; this story of a baby born in Bethlehem, of shepherds and angels and a manger for a crib. This deep layering of a young girl’s encounter with God.

It's a story. A lovely story. A part of our story. But still a story. It’s not history. There’s no supporting evidence. We don't really know about any of it. And yet I think this story points to some important truths about God and us and God and us together.

For there it is—God coming into the world through the womb of teenager pregnant and unmarried. God born in a stable far from the centers of power. God, child of a couple turned out in the cold. God made known in the most unlikely of people and places.

Mary, the God bearer and God birther, in fits and starts coming to an understanding of God’s role in all of this—sometimes stunned, sometimes taken aback, sometimes more than a little afraid of what is going on in her and through her.

Isn’t that the way of it? Isn’t that the nature of our oh-so-human dance with God? A surprise encounter, a dawning awareness, the pain and fear and wondering that accompany birthings of God in us and our birthings of God? Maybe even some distancing and backing off. Understanding deepening in fits and starts. And then a deep centeredness in God and the peace that comes from groundedness in God. The peace that comes through pondering—pondering the arc of God’s love in our lives and in our world.

In the silence and the quiet of this day, we join with Mary turning over the treasures in our hearts. Taking them out, one by one, bringing to mind the role they played and play today in our on-going life with God. The fat times and the lean ones. The barren places where God somehow broke in. The lush fields and green valleys of our lives. The times of hopes fulfilled. The times of fears relieved and unrelieved. The angels in our midst declaring God’s glory. Shepherds leaving their fields confirming for us the deep truths of our lives. Through it all the thread of God’s life and love in our lives.

Now’s the time for pondering. Now. Now. Now.

Christmas Eve 2011
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

This morning I was driving around doing some last-minute errands and on the radio was a program of Christmas music from around the world. As I listened to it, images of this night came to mind for me, from wildly different times and places. And yet as diverse as these gatherings were, I could feel a common wonder, light, and peace that is at the heart of every one of them. Close your eyes for a moment, and imagine with me what is going on this night, what has gone on for nearly 2,000 years.

In a small village in New England, carolers in the snow, going from house to house. In a 17th-century pueblo plaza, hundreds of native dancers and drummers, with Spanish soldiers looking on by the light of bonfires. Chanting monks in a dark, incense-filled monastery on Mount Athos, overlooking the moonlit Aegean Sea. Troops hunkered down in a foxhole with a single candle, singing Silent Night. In Shakespeare’s London, thousands filling a Gothic cathedral, with choir and orchestra leading the hymns. Children of every age, being put to bed and wondering if they’ll ever get to sleep. Dinners in your homes, my childhood home, with beloved family members who flew in for the holiday.

In all of these imagined scenes, no matter what the people who celebrate think they are celebrating, no matter what time or culture, no matter what family drama or social unrest is going on at the same time, there is a kind of undercurrent, suffusing it from within. This undercurrent has a singular, universal quality to it. It is always characterized by wonder, humility, generosity, and a quiet joy. Somehow, the spirit of Christmas survives Christmas.

Where does this spirit come from? Anthropologists might point to cultural traditions, but I think it comes from the source, and the spirit of this source has flowed through the ages ever since. Nearly 2,000 years ago, people perceived a miracle in the birth and life of Jesus - God took on a human life and dwelt among us.

Shepherds and kings, innkeepers and animals beheld the holy child, the new star in the sky, the heavenly chorus, the bright angel reflecting the glory of the Lord. Let heaven and nature sing, for God has taken on a human life and dwells among us.

Think of those fortunate women and men in 1st-century Palestine who knew Jesus. Through his miracles, his blessed words, and in his holy presence, they saw God, right before their eyes. With him, they had entered the kingdom of God. Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; hail the incarnate Deity!

But the glory of God dwelt among them in a very human life. Jesus’ disciples knew him as such - eating, drinking, attending parties. He wept over the loss of a friend. He knew well the brokenness of family life, saying that there is sometimes a sword that divides mother from daughter, brother from sister. He felt hunger and anguish, friendship and love, and came to a tragic, violent death.

It was difficult for the early Christians to reconcile the two ways they knew Jesus. How could he be both divine and human? And so they debated this question for 300 years. Such a thing is hard to understand until we realize that they were actually struggling not so much about Jesus, but about themselves. The question really was “How can I be both human and divine?” “How can you?”

Now you may not spend your days pondering such things, but I think we all struggle with it, whether we know it or not. As we walk in a snowfall, we sense the glory of God and feel a deep peace, and then wonder why we tend to worry so. We sometimes love without reason, just out of the goodness of our heart, without any expectation of love returning to us, and then later, we find ourselves small and cranky again. We see a person like Mother Teresa of Calcutta - we know how joyful and wise she could be, and yet in her journals published after her death, we see that she was, at times, as full of doubt and darkness as anyone.

And when we look at the world we’re living in, we see the natural goodness of so many people around us, and the selfless heroism and kindness that people do every day - evidence of God’s light among us. But we also see cruelty, greed, and mean-spiritedness. As a people, we are both divine and human. What do we do with this paradox?

One option is to spend our lives trying to perfect ourselves. We fret over our faults, striving to eliminate them one by one, so that we will never again be mean, never again unhappy. Applying this to the world, we imagine that we can perfect it, too, through this or that political or economic solution. In essence, we try to get rid of our humanity in order to enjoy our divinity.

Another approach is to resign ourselves to being a spiritual couch potato. “Sainthood is for those touched by an angel - and I certainly know I’m not one of those.” Or how about this: “The world is a mess and always will be; how can there be an all-powerful God?” And so we try to get rid of divinity and resign ourselves to mere humanity.

But neither works. If we have any moral or spiritual sensitivity, we are aware of both. We shift and sometimes lurch between them. And there is no resolution, no point of perfect balance. This can be very frustrating, until we find a way of putting both in perspective.

Many forms of prayer and meditation help us with this. In silence, we’re aware of the thoughts, worries, and emotional dramas that arise out of our small, very human, mind. But we then we let them pass, turning to rest in the peace of God. Both remain, but we know where to place our trust. Over time, this becomes our way of dealing with life’s difficulties - we put passing phenomena in perspective, turning to the divine dimension, where our true life is found.

You may not be a meditator, but I would guess that you are sometimes able to do this in other ways. It might be in the woods or the desert, or when you listen to music. It may happen when you walk in through these doors, leaving behind your worldly concerns and opening your heart in worship. It may have come to you in a time of great suffering, when you were forced to release your grip on things that you could not control or change, and placed your trust in the One who is much larger than your troubles.

Humanity and divinity both remain. In fact, they are interwoven, inseparable. The ups and downs of human life will always be with us. But so is the love and the light of God.It is a matter of where we place our attention, our trust, every day. That’s the walk of faith.

For me, this is the source of the spirit of this night that courses through the centuries - that God took on a human life, and dwelt among us. God still dwells among us. Humanity is infused with divinity. I believe we all carry this secret deep within us. It is what gives this night its warmth and wonder, and brings us to humility and love.

Tonight we gaze at the manger, the straw and the ordinary infant, and see the glory of God, right here in this human life. We also remember what this infant became - an earthy carpenter from a small Galilean town, in whom his friends saw God. But the real question is, when you go home tonight, in your own kitchen, in your own mirror, will you see God there, as well?

Sermon Luke 1:47-55

One of the problems with the Christmas story is that we have heard it so many times that we know how it turns out. It is hard to capture the initial shock. As the familiar words are read, it is easy to tune them out because we know what comes next. It is sad that a story as profound as this one becomes ho-hum. Our ability to take it all in stride is strange to people of other faiths. NPR ran a segment several years ago with some Muslims wondering why Christians celebrate Christmas by opening gifts under a tree. Why don’t we observe Christmas by saying a prayer or going to church? Many years ago British writer Dorothy Sayers rebuked Christians by saying, “You have the greatest news on earth—the incarnation of God in human life—and you treat it as an insignificant news item fit for page 14 of the chronicle of daily events.” (Homiletics 1999, p.59)

Perhaps we need to be reminded that this is no ordinary story we are dealing with—it is a story of God turning creation upside down. We know Mary went along with the angel, but do we remember that she had a choice? Frederick Buechner gives us a glimpse into the weight of this choice as he describes the angel Gabriel:
“’You mustn’t be afraid, Mary,’ he said. As he said it, he only hoped she wouldn’t notice that beneath the great, golden wings he himself was trembling with fear to think that the whole future of creation now hung on the answer of a girl.” (Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who p. 44)

Do you realize that God placed the future of the world into the hands of someone we don’t think is old enough to drive? It is enough to make us question God’s judgment. How could God stake so much on a young girl? It’s crazy until you look around and see who God is counting on today.

Mary agrees to take her place in God’s plan and the next thing we know she is on a journey to visit her cousin Elizabeth who has just experienced an amazing, unexpected pregnancy herself. We don’t know what Mary was thinking. We miss all the fear, the questions that ask why me and “are you kidding?” She must have been overwhelmed beyond belief, but we don’t hear about that in scripture. She arrives at Elizabeth’s home and rather than comparing notes on pregnancy, morning sickness, preparing the nursery, or wondering how it will all work out, Elizabeth greets her with a blessing. The scripture we heard this morning is Mary’s response. She sings. Does that strike you as strange? She is poor, pregnant, and unmarried. She sings a song of freedom on behalf of all who are poor. Her song says that God will make a way where there is no way. The song seems to come from deep within her. It is as if she can do nothing else.

Mary sings in the midst of uncertainty with only the words of an angel—a promise to keep her going. It reminds me of the traditional Shaker Hymn:
My life goes on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentation,
I hear the sweet, though far-off hymn
That hails a new creation.

Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear its music ringing,
It sounds an echo in my soul.
How can I keep from singing?

We call Mary’s song Magnificat. It is a powerful song that begins by acknowledging the blessing and quickly turns to what God’s coming will mean for all people. If you are an editor or an English scholar, you may want to look more carefully at her words. She’s gotten her tenses mixed up. The angel has just spoken, the baby is not yet born and yet she sings as if the poor have already been lifted up and the hungry fed. Barbara Brown Taylor says “prophets almost never get their verb tenses straight, because part of their gift is being able to see the world as God sees it.” (Home by Another Way, p. 18)
Prophets aren’t concerned with distinctions between things that have happened and things that have not yet happened. They are content to allow the mystery to unfold. She praises God for what God has done as an expression of confidence. Her song is a profound declaration of praise and trust in God’s promise. Can you imagine? This is not a sweet lullaby like Away in a Manger; it is a radical song like “We Shall Overcome”. Music is powerful—it brings hope to the most hopeless of situations, it reminds us of God’s amazing acts of redemption and salvation, it proclaims freedom in the midst of oppression. Remember the spirituals from those enduring slavery? What about Paul and Silas who sang from prison until an earthquake shook the foundations, opened the doors, and unfastened the chains of the prisoners? (Acts 16:16-34)

Several years ago, the government of Pretoria banned the lighting of candles and singing of Christmas carols in Soweto. When asked why by the press, the spokesperson replied, “You know how emotional black women are. Christmas carols have an emotional effect on them.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec. 27, 1985) You let a poor Jewish woman like Mary or a black mother in Soweto sing, and you better hang on because you don’t know where it might lead.

My friend Jan Richardson wrote a beautiful book called Night Visions and in her book, she describes Mary’s song:
“Mary knows in her soul, in her womb, that radical hope is found at the boundary where the outrageous gives way to the possible…Mary knows that some things are so outrageous that sometimes we have to talk about them as if they have already happened in order to believe that they could ever come about…Hope starts small, even as a seed in the womb, but it feeds on outrageous possibilities.” (pp. 56-57)

This story is not ordinary. It is as radical as they come. The overthrow of the powerful has not come through the mounting up of the weak in rebellion, but through the coming of God in the weakness of a child. (New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX, p. 55) Many years ago, I saw a plaque that said, “When God wants something great done in this world, God doesn’t send an army…God sends a baby and then waits.” How do we respond to a God like that? It is just too much. The profound truth of this story should have us shaking in our pews—God entrusted a child to us. God sent a baby to bring freedom to those who are oppressed, to feed those who are hungry, to bring justice to our world. A baby?! That’s it? There are no words for a God like this. What can we do, but sing?

While though the tempest loudly roars,
I hear the truth, it liveth.
And though the darkness ‘round me close,
Songs in the night it giveth.

No storm can shake my inmost calm,
While to that rock I’m clinging.
Since love is lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?

Music is the song of our souls. It tells our stories. It shapes us and gives expression to our deepest longings, to our praise, to our pain, to our joy; to our awe at this amazing mystery we call God. We can work hard to explain the virgin birth. We can attempt to take away all the mystery, but there are pieces of the story that are beyond explanation. There are pieces of the story that can only be sung. It is through music that we teach the faith to our children. Throughout our lives, music marks significant events.

My earliest church memory is singing in the children’s cantata 100% Chance of Rain! When I was in college, I was in a program that profoundly shaped my identity as a person and as a minister. Our theme song was “We are going; heaven knows where we are going. We’ll know we’re there. We will get there; heaven knows how we will get there. We know we will.” After I finished seminary in Atlanta, I hoped to move west where I could complete the ordination process in a church that was open to all people. While in a worship service on a retreat, we sang “Here I am Lord, is it I Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go Lord, if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart.” I knew it was time to move. A week later, the way opened and soon I moved to Oregon where I was ordained.

Singing is essential to our faith. We sing when we want to express the inexpressible. We sing before we know what the outcome will be. “All Mary has is her unreasonable willingness to believe that God who has chosen her will be part of whatever happens next—and that, apparently, is enough to make her burst into song. She does not wait to see how things will turn out first. She sings ahead of time, and all the angels with her.” (Home by Another Way, p. 18) God has done great things for us. God has blessed us mightily. We know how this part of the story comes out, but there is more to come. All we can do is wait, and sing while we wait:

I lift my eyes, the cloud grows thin;
I see the blue above it;
And day by day this pathway smooths,
Since I first learned to love it.

The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,
A fountain ever springing;
All things are mine since I am Christ’s—
How can I keep from singing?

Sing it again, Mary. Sing to us of your God. Sing on, Mary; sing on, until your song becomes ours. Sing, until the entire world hears you and makes your song its own.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Bibliography

Buechner, Frederick. Peculiar Treasures: A Biblical Who’s Who. New York:
HarperCollins, 1979.

Culpepper, R. Alan. New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX. Nashville: Abingdon
Press, 1995.

Richardson, Jan. Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and
Christmas. Cleveland: United Church Press, 1998.

Taylor, Barbara Brown. Home By Another Way. Boston: Cowley, 1999.

*How Can I Keep From Singing? Author unknown. Attributed to Robert Lowry.

In Her Wake:
A sermon on the Feast of Guadalupe preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

There she is—La Virgen de la Guadalupe, Mother of the Americas. There she is, standing in front of the sun and on top of the moon. There she is—a black band around her waist signifying that she is about to give birth. There she is—surrounded by flowers, accompanied with music. “Flor y cantu,” I think they say.

Whenever I see her image, I’m reminded of the day I walked in her wake. At the time, I didn’t really get what was going on. I was just taken up in the moment. Thousands and thousands of people crowded between the buildings lining Market Street in San Francisco. Chants of “Si! Se Puede!” echoing through the crowd. Helping my friend Eddie hold up his banner of Guadalupe. People waving from second story windows, pointing to the banner and smiling. Others coming up to the banner, kissing their fingers and then touching the image of Guadalupe. A crowd of people—brown and black and white—marching in her wake. There, standing out amidst all the signs and banners, the image of Guadalupe still drawing people in. Still giving people hope; still giving people life.

What is her lure? What draws folks to her? For some, like Juan Diego, it’s the way she sees him and the dignity she offers him. Imagine it! A poor peasant, an Indian, a native, one scorned by the rich and powerful, chosen to be her trusted messenger. She sees him as he is—a beloved and beautiful child of God—and she trusts him to carry her message to the seat of power. For others it’s the hope she offers—hope of a new beginning, hope of a new life. Still others turn to her for comfort and compassion knowing that they are held in her loving embrace.

It’s not only Juan Diego who is changed by this encounter with Guadalupe. The bishop is changed as well. Imagine the times he walked past Juan Diego—not even seeing him or dismissing him with a wave of a hand. The indifference, the arrogance the bishop showed. Yet he, too, is changed. Remember his words after he sees the image on the cloak and the flowers falling to the ground. He bends down and kisses the ground and prays to the Virgin for forgiveness “for not believing her will, her heart and her word.”

That’s what draws me to Guadalupe—the gifts she offers both to Juan Diego and to the bishop. To one the gift of dignity and affirmation; to the other the opportunity to repent and to join in the building of a place where all are welcome and all are loved and all are raised up to new life. What I love about the story of Guadalupe is that all are changed and that no one goes away empty.

What is our path when we walk in her wake? Yours and mine and ours together. What is our path? Perhaps it is to join in the birth of something new, a new creation, a new people—people who come together across traditions to worship God and to experience God’s deep love for her children. Perhaps it is to work together to build a place where all are welcome, all are known and all are valued for who they are. Perhaps it is to live each day confident that no matter what else comes our way we can be sure of one thing—that we are deeply loved by God. That’s no small thing. That’s the kind of knowledge that can change a world.

The protestant theologian Maxwell Johnson tells the story of the December day when a Latino pizza man came to his house. It was Advent and on his front door, Johnson had draped a banner of Guadalupe. As he was leaving, that young delivery man nodded to the banner and said, “It’s beautiful.” Then he added, “She’s my mom.”1 Mom—the one who gives us birth, the one who gives us life, the one who ushers us into a new world—the world Christ calls us to, the world of the reign of God.

1Maxwell Johnson, American Magnificat: Protestants on Mary of Guadalupe, p. 3.

December 11, 2011
The Feast of the Virgin of Guadalupe
The Rev. Brian C. Taylor

Today we join with millions throughout the Americas who honor Our Lady of Guadalupe. You know her - she appears everywhere: on cars, store signs, decals, and tattoos. Our image of her is on the outside wall of our parish hall, made of tile in Puebla, Mexico.

You probably know the basics of her story. Only 10 years after the conquest of the Aztecs, she appeared miraculously to a native convert whose Christian name was Juan Diego. She sent him to tell the bishop that a temple should be built in her honor. The bishop didn’t believe Juan Diego until he returned with a cloak full of roses - impossible because it was December - and an image of the Virgin imprinted on Juan’s cloak.

Skeptics question this story, of course. They say the Spanish made it up in order to further their conquest, by appropriating an Aztec goddess and making her Catholic. Who knows, maybe they’re right. But to the millions who have been devoted to her for these 480 years, she has come to mean far more than conquest.

For some, she is the feminine face of God, offering motherly divine love. It is said that she told Juan Diego that her temple would be a place where she would offer all [her] compassion, help and protection to the people. At times this motherly love has otherwise been difficult to find in a church that has been male-dominated, demanding, even cruel. The kindness and mercy that Our Lady of Guadalupe brought were in short supply, and so God - or the people - had to create her.

To a lesser degree, you could say the same about our church today. We’re still fairly male-dominated. That’s why we need new rites such as Enriching our Worship, with phrases like these:

You laid the foundations of the world and enclosed the sea when it burst out from the womb; You brought forth all creatures of the earth and gave breath to humankind.

As a mother cares for her children, you would not forget us. Time and again you called us to live in the fullness of your love.

For others, the Virgin of Guadalupe is a sign that miracles do happen, and they can happen for us, too. She appeared miraculously. She healed Juan Diego’s father. Inexplicably, the image on the cloak has not deteriorated in nearly 5 centuries, despite extreme changes in temperature and humidity, candle smoke, the kisses and touches of thousands of devotees, and a bomb thrown at it by an anarchist. Some inspectors claim that in her eyes, one can see the inverted image of Juan Diego, as if in a camera lens.

I know that there’s a lot of wacky stuff out there about miracles: television quacks who close their eyes, extend their hands, and claim to be healing someone of lung cancer who is watching the show as he sits alone in a hotel room in Des Moines.

But I also know that perfectly sane human beings can experience visions and miracles. Weird stuff does happen. Anything is possible if respected physicists can talk about the possibility of the world we live in being a projected hologram of things existing on the spherical skin of a distant black hole...(I’m not making this up!)

We are rationalist fools if we don’t recognize that the world is a mystical place. So who’s to say that a young Jewish woman from 1st-century Israel couldn’t appear in a parallel time and place? And who’s to say that something supernatural couldn’t appear to help you in your life?

But there is another meaning to the Virgin of Guadalupe, perhaps the most radical one of all. She came as a mestizo, a brown-skinned, mixed-race person. She appeared to a poor Aztec and spoke his language, Nahuatl.
She imprinted her image on a rough-woven cloak made from cactus. In the Virgin of Guadalupe, God was identifying with the poor.

More significantly, she didn’t appear to the Spanish bishop in his opulent residence. By sending a campesino with the roses, she was getting in the face of the bishop. Hey, Prince of the Church! You think my son was kidding when he said that the last would be first and the first - namely you - would be last? Blessed are the poor, you schmuck!

And so the Virgin of Guadalupe became the property of the people. For in her, God had become one of them. The skeptical bishop couldn’t suppress her, and neither could the Vatican, once they got wind of a movement that had taken on a life of its own. She continues to be fiercely held by the people, and they don’t really care whether some worry that they are idolatrous. They know she is Emmanuel, “God with us.”

This is the message that the liberation theologians so controversially taught in the 1970’s: God’s preferential option for the poor. Now this doesn’t mean that God loves poor people more than the rich, only that the most vulnerable hold a special place in the heart of God.

They hold a special place in the hearts of those who love God, too. After all, we are God’s children, made in God’s image. And so if we are in touch with our Creator, we will naturally care, as God does, for those who are mentally ill, for children and the frail elderly, for the homeless and addicted, for the depressed and lonely, for those without access to medical care or education. We are made to be like the Virgin of Guadalupe, offering our compassion, help and protection to the people.

If we have no soft spot in our heart for the most vulnerable, if we do nothing to help them in their weakness, we do not have within us the Spirit of the One who does. And it may be time to get reconnected with that Spirit.

One good way to do that is to reconnect with our own poverty, our own vulnerability. It was the gospel of Matthew that changed Luke’s Blessed are the poor to Blessed are the poor in spirit, and those two words brought in all of us. As the Buddha said, Life is suffering. B.B. King put it in his own way: Everybody’s had the blues.

You may have an persistent medical condition or feel stuck in a deadening job. You may struggle with alcohol, depression, or an unhappy relationship with your partner or child. You may feel a creeping angst now and then, wondering what’s the point. Whatever it is, we all have some kind of poverty of spirit.

We can make the mistake of seeing our vulnerability as the enemy, something to be gotten rid of, fixed, or transcended. Why, I’d be happy if only...

But what if that is one of the primary places where God tends to appear? In your poverty? We certainly meet God in gratitude and satisfaction, but we sometimes overlook how accessible God can be when we are empty. It is in these times that dependence upon God can become a matter of survival - when we know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves.

In this place we surrender; we give up on the exhausting effort to make ourselves full and rich. We humbly accept our emptiness. Not wishing or pleading anymore for something particular to happen - because we’ve already asked too many times, and it hasn’t - we nevertheless remain open, trusting. Not expecting a specific outcome, we dare to remain expectant. Something will shift. Something or someone will come. We say to ourselves I don’t have to do this alone. And we don’t.

The Virgin of Guadalupe came to the Aztecs in their defeat. And she comes to us in our defeat, our poverty of spirit, offering to us, as she did in 1531 to all the Americas, God’s compassion, help, and protection.

This is the spirit of Advent. For in this season that moves inevitably towards the darkness of the solstice, we watch for the coming of the light. And God’s light appears in the darkness, not instead of it. It will appear in our poverty of spirit, if we will but pray, watch, and wait.

Advent 2B
Mark 1:1-8, Isaiah 40:1-11, 2 Peter 3:8-14

John the Baptist joins us each year on the second Sunday of Advent to beckon us more deeply into this journey toward Christ’s birth. It is clear that he never learned how to win friends and influence people. He has a habit of calling people a brood of vipers which makes it tempting to ignore John and light another candle on the wreath. We are never quite sure what to do with this wild person with a strange sense of fashion and very undiscriminating taste buds. In Mark we encounter a kinder, gentler John. He is still calling people to repent and confess, but he isn’t calling them names.

None of us would suggest that repentance and confession are crowd pleasers, and yet people are coming from all over the countryside to hear him. Clearly, John is tapping into some deep longing in people. Somehow in the quiet, darkness of the season, we begin to encounter some of the deep longings we carry within us. I appreciate the invitation in Advent to grow deep. I am always eager to enter the season in a way that is meaningful, hoping that I will be ready for Christ to come into my life in a powerful new way.

But I noticed something different this year as I sat with these texts. First, I imagined the people gathering to hear John’s message. It reminded me a bit of us gathering for worship each week. We need individual spiritual practices to sustain us and help us grow, but we were created to be a body and to share this journey with one another. The people came together and they came from all over the place. I wonder if they were empowered and encouraged by the community. Maybe the message about repentance and confession was intended for them as a body rather than just their individual sins.

Isaiah was speaking to the people of Israel who had lost so much – their homes, their city, their security. He brought wisdom and hope to them collectively. Hope was rooted in God’s goodness and it would bring healing to all. “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all people shall see it together.” (Isaiah 40:5)

Did you hear the words from 2nd Peter “The Lord is…patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” The good news isn’t for a few individuals, but for all. Who we are in the waiting impacts others.

It really isn’t news to anybody that Christmas isn’t about us. People are more generous this time of year. But what if Advent isn’t meant to be a private experience? What if we are called to prepare for Christ’s coming as a body rather than just giving more attention to our individual prayer practices?

I am struck by the message in all three of these passages that we are all in this together.
How do we wait collectively for Christ to come in our midst? How do we tap into our communal longing for incarnation? I am not suggesting that we can clearly articulate our yearning as a community of faith as much as I am inviting us to come together and make room for Christ to be born among us.

The Called Back to the Well Living Water program finished this week. You may know that Living Water is a spiritual deepening program for congregations and part of its richness is in the way relationships are built between people from different churches in the community. The Disciples, Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Episcopalians openly shared their lives over the last year and as they did so, they realized that together they are the body of Christ that Paul talks about in Corinthians. When one congregation suffered, all suffered. When one rejoiced, all rejoiced. Out of that sharing, a wonderful community was born.

We simply cannot call ourselves Christian and live as if others don’t matter. All of us are connected (whether we realize it or not). Do we know how the churches in our neighborhood are doing? What about the folks in the other services here each Sunday? Are we aware of the people who are sharing our pews? A real community is tuned in to one another and feels the impact of our shared life together.

Here we are in Advent once again and we are called to make room for Christ to be born among us. How do we do that? It seems to me that we come together as the early church community did. We pray, we care for those in need, we come to the table Christ has set for us and then we go forth to feed others. I believe we glimpse it every time we share our lives together.

One of the most beautiful things I saw this week was the food pantry in action on Tuesday morning. A large group of volunteers came together and worked in tandem to make food available for the community. There was a wonderful spirit in the group and I was very impressed at all they offered in terms of food and hospitality. Before they began serving people, Bill Hoezel prayed that they would see Christ in each person they met and it seems to me that they did. Part of the beauty for me was seeing how many people it took to pull off this ministry and how happy people were to be serving together. The people coming to get food seemed to feel that warmth and kindness.

Each week, we come to the table to receive sustenance at the hand of a God whose generosity is shocking over and over again. As we walk away from the table and out of the sanctuary, I begin wondering about how we will feed the world. I know that the food was not intended for us alone, but for all and it is our job to make sure everyone receives goodness from God’s gracious hand.

Fred Craddock tells about going to the University of Winnipeg in Canada to give two lectures in October one year. “As we left the lecture hall after the first lecture, it was beginning to spit a little snow. I was surprised, and my host was surprised because he had written, “It’s too early for the cold weather, but you might bring a little windbreaker, a little light jacket.”

The next morning when I got up, two or three feet of snow pressed against the door. The phone rang, and my host said, “We’re all surprised by this. In fact, I can’t come and get you to take you to the breakfast, the lecture this morning has been cancelled, and the airport is closed. If you can make your way down the block and around the corner, there is a little depot, a bus depot, and it has a café. I’m sorry.” I said, “I’ll get around. I put on that little light jacket; it was nothing. I got my little cap and put it on; it didn’t even help me in the room. I went into the bathroom and unrolled long sheets of toilet paper and made a nest in the cap so that it would protect my head against that icy wind.

I went outside, shivering. The wind was cold, the snow was deep. I slid and bumped and finally made it around the corner into the bus station. Every stranded traveler in western Canada was in there, strangers to each other and to me, pressing and pushing and loud. I finally found a place to sit, and after a lengthy time a man in a greasy apron came over and said, “What’ll you have?” I said, “May I see a menu?” He said, “What do you want a menu for? We have soup.” I said, “What kind of soup do you have?” And he said, “Soup. You want some soup?” I said, “That was what I was going to order – soup.”

He brought the soup, and I put the spoon to it – Yuck! It was the awfulest. It was kind of gray looking; it was so bad I couldn’t eat it, but I sat there and put my hands around it. It was warm, and so I sat there with my head down, my head wrapped in toilet paper, bemoaning my outcast state with the horrible soup. But it was warm, so I clutched it and stayed bent over my soup stove.

The door opened again. The wind was icy, and somebody yelled, “Close the door!” In came this woman clutching her little coat. She found a place, not far from me. The greasy apron came and asked, “What do you want?” She said, “A glass of water.” He brought her a glass of water, took out his tablet and said, “Now what’ll you have?” She said, “Just the water.” He said, “You have to order, lady.” “Well, I just want a glass of water.” “Look. I have customers that pay – what do you think this is, a church or something? Now what do you want?” She said, “Just a glass of water and some time to get warm.”

“Look, there are people that are paying here. If you’re not going to order, you’ve got to leave!” And he got real loud about it, so that everyone there could hear him.

So she got up to leave. And almost as if rehearsed, everyone in that café got up and headed to the door. If she was going to have to leave, they were as well. And the man in the greasy apron saw this happening and blurted out, “All right, all right, she can stay.” Everyone sat down, and he brought her a bowl of soup.

I said to the person sitting there by me, I said, “Who is she?” He said, “I’ve never seen her before.” The place grew quiet, but I heard the sipping of that awful soup. I said, “I’m going to try that soup again.” I put my spoon to the soup – you know, it was not bad soup. Everybody was eating this soup. I started eating the soup, and it was pretty good soup. I have no idea what kind of soup it was. I don’t know what was in it, but I do recall when I was eating it, it tasted a little bit like bread and wine. Just a little bit like bread and wine.” (from the book Craddock Stories by Fred Craddock, Chalice Press, 2001 pp. 83-84)

In this season, we prepare ourselves for the one who comes among us. We do this as Christ’s body because we know that the gift of Christ was not intended for us alone. The invitation is for us as a body to make room so that Christ may be born in us and together we may bring healing and hope to the whole world.