Sermon - December 30, 2012
JP Arrossa

On Christmas Eve, we heard the familiar story of Jesus’ birth from the Gospel of Luke. The manger, the star, and the shepherds. It is the story we all know and enjoy hearing. I think that if Luke were telling that story today, he would tell the story on the big screen. Big, bold, and full of imagination. Tonight
we hear a different perspective of that story from the Gospel of John. A beautiful story of Jesus - the Word. He simply states “And the Word became flesh and lived among us,...” The beginning of John’s gospel is poetic. It engages us.

Both are warm and comforting - beautifully describing this Christmas season. Describing this season of hope, joy, and peace. Yet somehow, with the events over the last few weeks, I cannot help but think is that feeling missing? It just seemed dimmer, as if some light had left the world. I think we can agree
that many families certainly felt this. Maybe even some of us.

This made me wonder about those parts of the story of the Nativity that often get overlooked. What about the inhospitable nature of the inn keeper? Surely he could have offered something more than just the manger. After all, the blessed Mary was in labor, and all he had to offer was the barn? What was it about them that made him seemingly unable or unwilling to help? Was it because they were poor? Did they look like immigrants or foreigners? Was he afraid to do more?

Next week we will hear from the Gospel of Matthew how Herod learns from the wise men about the birth of a King. This reading ends with a warning to the wise men not to return to Herod and they leave for their own country by another road. If we continue this reading of Matthew’s Gospel, we hear that Herod
learns that he was tricked by the wise men, he sends soldiers to Bethlehem to kill all the young children - out of fear that one of these would replace him as King - to become the King of the Jews. He kills children out of fear. Fear can be powerful emotion.

As we look at these two parts of the story, they certainly do not sound like Christmas. Even now we see stories that certainly do not sound like Christmas. Stories that have the emotion of fear as a part of them. Millions of children suffering from and dying of AIDS, war in Syria, hunger. What about the daily
coverage of the fiscal cliff and fears of what might or might not happen if we go over? What about our own fears? Don’t we also act out of fear? Now I know that fear can be a good thing. It can help ensure that we are being safe, or take the steps to be safe. What happens though when we do not act because we are afraid?

My thoughts of this made me wonder, how often does fear stop us from acting? How often does it stop us from helping someone? Is it because they look different? Too poor or too dirty? Do we become afraid or uncertain to help a friend with a problem, because it might take time or some personal involvement?
How many times do we see the use the fear of a group or event to advance one’s beliefs? Do we vote out of fear that something might be taken away from us? We see fear used to deny protections afforded by the law to others. Fear is used to prevent or limit programs that help others - just in the event that somebody not eligible might unfairly benefit.

This is a world in which darkness exists. My feeling of Christmas was being diminished.

As I worked on this a last week. Something caught my attention. It was a glimmer of light. I came across a story of a challenge. The challenge was set by Ann Curry, of NBC News. She said she felt helpless at what to do for those victims in Newtown. One of the blessings of social media is the ability to communicate to thousands in a matter of seconds. She tweeted a challenge, “Imagine if everyone could commit to doing one act of kindness for each precious life lost. An act of kindness big or small.” She ends her tweet, “Are you in?”

What followed were thousands of acts of kindness that people had done and shared. Each person committing to doing 26 random acts of kindness for strangers. A tweet from someone at an airport who had just received with a note and a $5 bill. The note said, “I’m doing 26 random acts of kindness in honor of the 26 victims of the Newton, CT shooting. Enjoy a cup of coffee or snack while you wait for your flight.”

Another, “Got out of my car in the rain and gave my umbrella away to a woman standing inside the door of the supermarket waiting to go out. She had a baby in a carrier and looked like she was dreading the rainy trek to her car.”

Acts of kindness like, buying someone’s coffee, paying extra money in parking meters for others, leaving gift cards for groceries in shopping carts, buying medicine for an elderly couple whose credit card was being declined, a 7-year old taking the allowance she has saved to buy 26 hams for a local food bank. Clearing snow off and from around cars in the neighborhood after getting a foot
of snow. Leaving a note of encouragement for a coworker. The list went on and on. It continues still. Many of these simple acts being left with a note stating that the act was done in memory of one of the victims of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, with their name and age. These were stories
and examples of acts of kindness coming everywhere from around the country and around the world.

It was overwhelming at what people were doing for someone else - for complete strangers. Often not even knowing who would be the one to benefit from their kindness. Just a note and maybe a challenge to pay it forward. A challenge to keep the kindness going on and on and on. People were not afraid of helping a stranger. People not afraid of taking the chance of getting involved.

“...The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” This was Christmas.

Fear and darkness will exist in our world. We cannot hide from it. We cannot ignore it. Remember the angel Gabriel’s message to Mary, and the beginning of the angel’s message being proclaimed to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid;” Christ has been born. The presence of God is among us. This led me reread those last few verses in the Christmas Eve gospel, “they made known what had been
told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Merry Christmas. This is a joyous season, but it is also a season for reflection and action. Like the blessed Mary, treasure the words, ponder on them in your heart, Reflect on your lives and on what this season means for each of you and what it means for world. Then like the shepherds go out to
glorify and praise God and live that meaning and share it with others.

Amen

Christ the King, Year C                      St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church

Luke 23:  33-43                                   Albuquerque, New Mexico

Psalm 46                                

Nov. 24, 2013

Where is God?

A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

Today as we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King our attention is drawn to a hill outside Jerusalem.  The hill known as Golgatha.  Three crosses stand on the hill.  Nailed to the crosses Jesus and two criminals.  Our memories fill in the gaps in the story.   The long walk to the Cross.  Disciples deserting.  Soldiers mocking. Jesus crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” We ask with him and those at his side, “Where is God?”

“Where is God?”  I wonder if that was the question the first criminal was asking when he said to Jesus, “Are you not the Messiah?  Save yourself and us!”(Luke 23:39)

“Where is God?”  That’s a question people often ask when they witness the insanity and injustice that sometimes seem to mark our world. 

It’s a question many of us ask in the dark times of our own lives.  In times of chaos.  In times of despair.  In times when the walls seem to be closing in on us.

Towards the end of my time at Sandia Prep, the school I worked at before leaving for seminary, a parent I knew well came up to me.  We talked about her sons; we laughed about old times; we talked about my leaving for seminary; and then she turned to me and said in the piercing direct way she had, “What I want to know, Susan, is where was God?”.... she then went through a series of events each more horrific than the one preceding it—each time asking, “Where was God?”  Hers was not an accusatory or argumentative question.  She was not debating the existence or non-existence of God.  She was a woman who had witnessed and experienced a great deal of pain both in her life and in the lives of others.  She was a woman with a keen sense of justice, a woman of deep empathy.  Hers was a genuine, plaintive question springing from the depth of human pain.

The writer and holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel tells of  another such question being asked.  The way Wiesel tells it, three concentration camp inmates had been caught trying to escape.  The SS rounded up all the people in the camp and brought them to the courtyard to watch the three—two older men and a young boy—hang to death.  The two older men died quickly.  The boy twisted in agony.  In the crowd a shout rang out, “Where is God?”

As the boy writhes in tortured pain, Elie Wiesel tells us the shout rings out again, “Where is God?”  Then Wiesel goes on to say, “And I heard a voice in myself answer:  ‘Where is God?  God is here.  God is hanging there on the gallows.’”[i]

Isn’t that the truth the second criminal knew? Sputtering for air, he chokes out through his pain:  “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”  That fellow on the cross knew the answer to the question “Where is God?”

God is here hanging from a cross, hands and feet nailed to the wood, gasping for air.

“Where is God?”  Walking the road to Golgotha, stumbling under the weight of his own cross.

Treated with contempt, mocked, scorned, shamed and degraded.

“Where is God?”  Where we would least expect God to be.

Here promising, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

TODAY.  What a bold promise.  There on the gallows, on the cross, Jesus promises the fellow hanging next to him that on that day they will be together in paradise. 

“Where is God?”  “God is here....”

So often folks think that pain and suffering is indicative of the absence of God.  Like my student’s parent, folks ask, “Where was God?”

And yet scripture is clear about the presence of God in the midst of human suffering.  God present with Hannah when Abraham and Sarah cast her out into the wilderness; God present with the people of Israel as they wander through the desert;  God present with Elijah coming to him in the silence;  God’s angels ministering to Jesus when he is cast out into the wilderness; and Jesus, the living God, there on the cross.

As the psalmist assures us,

            God is our refuge and strength/a very present help in trouble....
            Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved,
            and though the mountains be toppled into the depths of the sea;
            Though it’s waters rage and foam/ and though the mountains tremble at its tumult.
            The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold....

“Where is God?”        

Here in the midst of our suffering.  Here in the midst of our pain.  Here in the midst of injustice.
God is here—here in the chaos of our lives.
Here with kids being bullied.
Here when things don’t go as we had planned or hoped.
“Where is God?”  Here extending a hand to the addicted, an arm to the unsteady.
Here befriending a kid kicked out of the house.

God is here—with us.

Today, on this last Sunday before Advent—the day we celebrate as the Feast of Christ the King, we encounter not the triumphant king the hymns so often portray, not a king riding into Jerusalem amidst shouts of “Hosanna”, not a king clad in royal robes sitting on a throne, not a distant king moving troops from place to place, but a man stripped of all he has—clothing, friends, dignity—a man nailed to a cross, a man enduring the most painful and humiliating means of execution the Romans could come up with, a man extending a hand and a promise to a fellow sufferer.

“Where is God?”  There at the cross with the criminals.  There in the stable with Mary and Joseph and the lowly shepherds.   There with a woman being stoned for adultery.  There with children pushed aside.  There.   Reaching out to us from the Cross and coming to us in the stable.

“Where is God?”   Here with us.  Here with us in our suffering and in our suffering world.  Here with us in our longing for light in our darkness.

[i] Elie  Wiesel, Night, p. 75f.  Quoted by Choan-Seng Song in Third-Eye Theology, rev. ed.  p. 184.

Of Mothers and Mothers-to-Be
A Sermon Preached by the Rev. Susan Allison-Hatch

Two mothers-to-be meet at the door of a house in a small Judean town not far from Jerusalem.  One young, engaged but not yet married.  The other far past her prime child-bearing years.  Both know disgrace and, I suspect, despair. One knows the sadness that comes with a life not complete.  The other the fear having a child out of wedlock often brings.  She knows death by stoning or strangulation is often the fate of women in her condition.

But this week I’ve not been able to focus on those two mothers.  I’m hearing the haunting cries of other mothers—the mothers of Newtown and mothers everywhere who have lost children to violence, to drugs, to disease.  Mothers who live, like us, in a world turned upside down.  A world where children die of hunger.  A world of children swallowed up by war.  A world where children’s lives are cut short in so many different ways.

Mary and Elizabeth stand together on the threshold between despair and hope. They greet one another.  Mary, weary after her long walk from Nazareth in Galilee.  Elizabeth, now heavy with the weight of the child growing insider her.  At that very moment, the child moves in Elizabeth’s womb.  Taking Mary’s hand, Elizabeth places it on her quickening womb.  “Blessed are you and blessed is the fruit of your womb,” Elizabeth says to Mary.  Words—encouraging, healing words Mary needs to hear. No wonder Mary stays so long.  She’s found a place where she can carry her child unafraid.  At last, she dares to hope.  At last, she dares to dream.

What a dream she has.  What a hope she holds.

“All generations will call me blessed,” she responds to Elizabeth’s blessing—how bold, how brave.  

“For God is doing great things through me and the child I am bearing—God is turning the world right side up. ”  

That bold hope, that daring dream carry Mary through.  They carry her back, head held high, to Nazareth and to those who scorned her.  They carry her down the long road to Bethlehem. They carry her from the stable to the cross and to the empty tomb. That bold hope and that daring dream carry Mother Mary bold and strong through all the frustration, fear and joy that come with any child.  And in the end they carry her through her deep grief.

Ours is a world like the one Mary knew.  Ours is a world turned upside down.  Every day, every hour children die of hunger, violence, neglect, abuse. Ours is a country that registers cars but not guns; a country that regulates sugar calories in the foods schools serve our children but allows bullets to go unregulated and uncounted.  Ours is a country—a world—crying to be turned right side up.  Just ask the mothers among us.

And yet when we look at all there is to be done, when we see the enormity of  it all, it’s easy to feel defeated before we even start.  Where to begin?  What to do?  It seems too much.  But I wonder, does it need to be that daunting?  
A principal hears gunshots and heads out to protect the children in her charge.  A teacher hides her children—one child at a time—and then faces a gunman poised to shoot her.  Each doing what they can to turn a crazy world right side up.

It doesn’t have to be that dramatic.  Healing the world often happens one step, one act at a time.  Years ago, I heard a scholar talk about “the righteous ones”—Christians who hid Jews during World War Two.  Wanting to find out what set the righteous ones apart from those who collaborated with the Nazis, this scholar interviewed thousands of people.  The only difference he found was that the righteous ones did what they could when they could.  They used who they were and what they had in the moment to turn the world right side up one stone at a time.

You and I, we can’t right the world all at once.  And we can’t do it by ourselves.  Yet we long for a world in which children are cherished, nurtured and nourished.  Like the mothers of Newtown and mothers and fathers everywhere, we long for a world where our children can grow into the people God created them to be—beautiful, beloved and gifted children of God.  Like the mothers and fathers of Newtown and parents throughout our world, we grieve when lives are cut short, when lights are snuffed out.  Like Mary, we are fierce in our love for our children and the promise they bring.  Like Elizabeth, we stand with all the Mary’s in our world.  

We are Mary doing what we can to right things for our children and for our world.

We are Elizabeth, supporting one another as we work to turn our world right side up.

And we are the Body of Christ, turning things right side up when we can, “knowing that we are not obliged to complete the job but (that) we are obliged to continue it.”1  

We do so confident that light will shine in the darkness and that God will come to our broken world and we will be changed.  This is the core of the Christmas promise.  This is the core of our Christian hope.  In the twinkling of an eye we and the world in which we live shall be changed.  Thanks be to God.


----------------------
1 Richard W. Swanson, "The Magnificat and Crucifixion:  the Story of Mariam and her Son" in Currents in Theology and Mission 34: 2 (April 2007)

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

Who are you, Guadalupe?
Who are you to me?
And who are you to us?

Legend has you coming to the poor peasant Juan Diego.
Accompanied by heavenly song, 
You meet him on the desert mountain they call Tepeyac.
You call him, challenge him, and send him on a mission.

What a mission that is!
Sending a poor brown peasant 
   off to the halls of power
   off to the courts of those who persecute him
   off to the people hell-bent on obliviating all that he comes from, all that he is.

What were you thinking?
What were you hoping?

Legend has it, the Spanish bishop left Juan Diego cooling his heels all day long.
Legend has it that it wasn’t until long after dark that the bishop 
even deigned to see Juan Diego.
I can imagine the well-clothed, well-fed,
heavily perfumed courtiers 
snickering at Juan Diego
making him feel even more out of place, even more out of power.

Did he look around betraying his nervousness with quick jerks of his neck?
Did he spend the time shrinking down into a cloak of invisibility?
Or did he simply sit quietly in resignation and despair saying to himself,
“Nothing good can come of this.”

I can imagine the bishop receiving him with weariness and with dread.  
“Another blasted Indian begging for reprieve.”

I doubt Juan Diego was surprised when the bishop asked for proof.
After all—no European ever took the word of a poor native peasant.

What were you thinking, Morenita?
What were you hoping for that day?

No wonder Juan Diego gave you wide bearth when he passed your way again.

I would too.

Truth be told, you frighten me, Guadalupe.  Who knows what you might ask of me 
coming as you do in the squalor of my life.  
meeting me when I am most afraid.
greeting me by name in the moment of my deepest shame.

Who are you and who are you to me?
There are times when I wish that you would just let me be.

But that’s not in your nature--
you’re not made to let folks be.
not Juan Diego
not the bishop or his minions
not me
not us.
Guadalupe, you’re not made to let folks be.

You keep on hoping, Morenita, you keep on hoping.
And in your hope, you hallow.

That’s what you were up to that day at Tepeyac.  The work of Hallowing.

Hallowing a scruffy desert hill filling it with flowers and with song
hallowing an indian peasant making him a bearer of God’s word
even hallowing a bishop and the sycophants surrounding him 
that they might learn to love as they are loved.

That’s your work—the work of hallowing.
Hallowing the desolate places in our lives
Hallowing people others overlook
Hallowing the poor and the powerful
the strong and the weak
hallowing outsiders and insiders too.

I wonder, Guadalupe, is that the work you call us to—the work of hallowing?

Could that be your hope for us?

The Bible is full of hallowing—the hallowing of the lowly ones, the outsiders, the defeated and the despairing; the hallowing of people others overlook, the hallowing of the land and all that dwells therein  .  

Hear the prophet Baruch tell of God’s hallowing the people of Jerusalem—a people besieged, defeated, occupied.  A people who witnessed family and friends—husbands, wives, sons, daughters taken captive.  A people cut off from all that sustains.  A people not unlike Juan Diego and his people.  And yet the prophet Baruch says to them, 

Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on 
forever the beauty of the glory from God....For God will give you evermore
the name, “righteous Peace, Godly Glory.”  Baruch continues, “For God will lead Israel with joy, in the light of his glory, with the mercy and righteousness that come from him.

Hallowing—could that be God’s hope for us?  

Not long ago, a member of the congregation of St. Martin’s came up to me with an urgency I’d not seen in him before.  He rarely talks to me.  When he does, he always prefaces what he says with the words, “Sister, I don’t want to take up your time.”  But this day he was determined to have a word with me.  The conversation started abruptly.
“They trusted me,” he said as he opened up our conversation.  “They trusted me with money.”  “Can you believe it—they trusted me a homeless man with money!” 

Imagine it.  A little thing.  Probably not even a given a second thought.  Just a simple request.  “Can you hold this money for me?”  That’s the work of Hallowing.

Hallowing—it happens at the food pantry every single Tuesday.

Hallowing—it happens when folks listen deeply to one another.

    —It happens in the little things in life.

Hallowing—it happens when we see, respond and acknowledge God in the one and the world before us.

May the hallowing of God’s name echo through the universe.   Amen