Saturday, December 28, 2013

A Holly Jolly Christmas?

In a Sunday school class, during a study of the book of Genesis, a member asked, “Why are we reading this?  These people are so messed up! Why are they even in the Bible?”  And, while it is true that the families in the book of Genesis are incredibly dysfunctional, their stories are important.  If the Bible was full of families with no issues, who had perfect lives, I’m not sure what we would have to relate to.  
And as I looked at the text for this Sunday, Matthew’s account of the mass murder of the male infants of Bethlehem, my first thought was to pull a Monty Python and shout, “Run Away! Run Away!”  Because why would we include a text like this in the days right after Christmas?  Maybe you’re wondering why in the world we’re dealing with this text, what place this text has in the Bible, or what it has to do with our Celebration of Christmas?  Aren’t we in the most wonderful time of the year, after all?
Of course there are plenty of theological reasons for this particular text: Matthew’s purpose of portraying Jesus as the “New Moses” hence the flight to Egypt and the calling forth from Egypt; Jesus is the new and final lawgiver says one scholar.  Jesus, like Moses, will be at odds with the political powers of his time; Moses at odds with Pharaoh, Jesus at odds with both Herod (father and son) and representatives of Caesar.  There is the meaning behind power striking out at perceived threats to that power, which is why Herod kills all the male children who might be the one boy born under the star.  Jesus’ birth isn’t received as Good News by everyone.  There are plenty of academic and theological reasons for us to have this text in front of us, but they don’t really deal with why this is an important reading shortly after Christmas.
So, why then did I not run screaming from this text?  I did not run screaming because there are plenty of folks who are in places of pain during the holidays.  For some of us, the holidays are simply reminders of what used to be, but isn’t any more, and that’s just plain painful.  Celebration is difficult if not downright impossible for those who are working through divorce, for those who are celebrating their first Christmas without a loved one, for those who are facing financial burdens or loss of a job during a time when so much emphasis is placed on buying the perfect gift (after all, every kiss begins with Kay, unless of course he went to Jerad).
There is a growing recognition among congregations that some folks struggle in the season between Thanksgiving and the beginning of the New Year. As a way of recognizing and responding to this struggle, a variety of “Longest Night” or “Blue Christmas” services have been offered.
Taylor Burton-Edwards, director of worship resources for the General Board of Discipleship of the United Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee, said the movement has picked up steam in recent years — perhaps due in part to the economic downturn.
“Part of it is a recognition that both the culture and even the church, at this time of year, can tend to completely overlook suffering,” Burton-Edwards said. “Everybody is supposed to be cheery and happy and all of that, and yet that isn’t the case for some people.”*
This text that reminds us that it is okay to not be okay during the Christmas season.
“There is nothing sentimental about Matthew’s ‘Christmas story,’ however. It is set in the turbulence and terror of a violent history. Tyrants kill children, and families flee in the middle of the night…Matthew dares to see things as they are and still affirm that God is working, even in the worst that we can do.”**
The Christmas story is not about undefeated happiness entering our world.  The Christmas story is about God becoming wrapped in the fragile flesh that we ourselves are wrapped in and embodying, literally, the identity of Emmanuel.  And Emmanuel is God with us—in everything, in every moment.
Mike Yaconelli, was a pastor and minister to youth for forty-two years before losing his life in a traffic accident ten years ago.  He is the author of one of my favorite books, Messy Spirituality.  He says:
“Spirituality is not a formula; it is not a test. It is a relationship. Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spirituality is not about perfection; it is about connection. The way of the spiritual life begins where we are now in the mess of our lives. Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we let go of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God’s being present in the mess of our unfixedness. (emphasis mine).”***
As challenging as it may be for us to hear texts like this one from Matthew’s gospel on the heels of our candlelight celebrations of the birth of Jesus, this is an important text for us to hear, because the real gift of Christmas isn’t happiness or a Mr Clean Magic Eraser for all of our life’s pain and suffering—the gift of Christmas is not Our Best Life Now with perfect hair, perfect teeth, or perfect lives—the gift of Christmas is Emmanuel, God with us.
One church I served used to have a live Nativity in the days leading up to Christmas.  A member of the community would let us use her live animals, and members of the congregation would dress us as characters to create tableaus of the nativity.  One year, as I knelt there in the parking lot in the hay, dressed as a shepherd visiting the young adults dressed as Joseph and Mary, the wind was blowing and I was cold; I was painfully cold.  And then the goat in the stable began trying to eat Mary’s hair, and the donkey started biting at the wood of the stables back wall.  The blessed pastoral scene was falling to pieces as I knelt there.  I could see Mary losing patience with goat, the slapping of wood as the donkey pulled against the back wall over and over and over again was making us all crazy.  And that’s when it hit me…

Christmas is not perfect pastoral moments, sanitized Precious Moments figurines, Christmas is the nearness of God in seasons of messiness, in seasons of pain.  What makes this the ‘most wonderful time of the year’ is not our happiness in life that goes according to plan, but the presence and nearness of God as we hold our life in our hands and say, this is not what I had planned.

* http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/12/25/world/churches-offer-blue-christmas-for-those-in-need/
** R.Alan Culpepper, “Exegetical Perspective” of Matthew 2:13-23, Feasting on the Word Year A, Volume 1: Advent through Transfiguration.
*** Michael Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality. Zondervan, 2002, 2007.  22. 

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Advent 3A: Are You For Real?

The phone call went something like this: “She’s a nice girl,” I said. “She says we’re soul mates.”  “You’re not soul mates,” said my friend. “Are you sure?” “Yes, I’m sure.”   A couple of years later, another phone call with my friend: “She dumped me,” I said. “I thought she was the one…I was fairly certain she was the one.”  By the way, this one, that I thought was the one, isn’t the one who said she was my soul mate.  The friend I was talking to, the one I was pouring my heart out to,  turns out she was The One.
There had been a long line of would be Messiahs, revolutionaries, and prophets before Jesus, the most famous and perhaps the most disheartening was Judas the Galilean.  Most of them preached liberation from Rome and the coming Kingdom of God (as a political and ethnic reality); all of them ended up imprisoned or dead.  The people were crying out for their soul mate to arrive; they were looking for The One who would finally set things right, but in each case they walked away thinking, “I thought he was the One…I was almost certain he was the One.”  And so John and his disciples look to Jesus as possibly being the One, but his actual signs look different from the signs they want, so they wrestle with these questions and bring them to Jesus: “Is he the One?” “Are you the One…the One we’ve been waiting for? The One we’ve been expecting? Or do we keep waiting?”  
And if you think about it, most of the people walking into churches these days are asking the same questions.  In the pluralistic world we live in, people are looking to have their questions answered.  Is Jesus The One?  As much as I am not a fan of the idea of a religious marketplace, we have to come to terms with the reality that people are looking for something that works as much as they are for something that feels right.  In the years I’ve spent leading congregations, so much of how we spend our time is marketing one congregation against another or one style of worship against another…and what we’re missing are the questions, the deep and searching questions, that people are bringing with them—even if they’ve been in the church for years—some of you probably have them today.  So many people are wondering if Jesus is the One that is worth giving up everything for, if he’s the one they’ve been waiting for.
Sometimes the questions about Jesus really being who he says don’t occur until a crisis, though.  When John sends the questions--something has changed.  Something has changed between the baptism of Jesus and now, when John begins asking questions.  Now John is in prison.  As one pastor says, “It’s easy to believe in God int he bright sunlight when all is joyful and free, but let the iron doors of difficulty slam shut, and doubt is there in the darkness. ‘Are you for real, Jesus?’ ‘Can religion matter in my case, in my condition, with my concerns, or has it reached the end of its usefulness?’”
I was talking with someone this week who said to me, “I wish I could believe in religion or God because then, at least, there would be something stable in my life.”  
These questions are real.  And, sometimes, these questions are a matter of life and death, a matter of clinging to hope rather than giving in to despair.
When the disciples of John come, asking those questions, listen to what Jesus has to say to John’s disciples.  “What do you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them.”  Jesus invites John’s disciples, and us, to look at the way he is touching and changing lives, especially the lives of those who are on the margins.  Look for the proof; listen for the testimony of those who have been made whole.
My Christmas hope, my prayer, is that Jesus will be better reflected in my life each day in the coming year, that he will be more visible in your lives in the year to come.  My hope, my prayer, is that through the Church, Jesus will open more eyes, set free people who are paralyzed by guilt, shame, fear and sin, that more of the “poor” (in material, and in spirit) will experience good news.
Because, really, what do we come to Advent and Christmas hoping to see?  Do we come so we can stand at the manger and think, “Aww, look at the beautiful baby…so cute…so precious…”  Or do we come looking for the God who has come to proclaim that we are free, we are beloved, we, who were once no people, are now royalty.  
Listen to the words of the prophet Isaiah one more time…the words that Jesus is referring to when he talks to the disciples of John:
1 The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus 2 it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it, the majesty of Carmel and Sharon. They shall see the glory of the Lord, the majesty of our God. 
3 Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. 4 Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you." 
5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; 6 then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7 the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes. 
8 A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God's people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray. 9 No lion shall be there, nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it; they shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall walk there. 10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
This message from Isaiah, that Jesus says he embodies, that I know he does! This is a message for the hurting and for the broken.  This is a message for people who are weary from carrying heavy burdens, for a people whose feet are blistered from burning sand and rough wilderness wanderings.  
The proof is in the pudding, as they say.  And the proof of Jesus being the one, is that those who have met him, and have allowed themselves to be known by him, they are free. Free to love and to be loved. Free to forgive and be forgiven.  We leap like a deer and our voices go up with shouts and songs of joy.  And not only is the proof in us—it’s in the ones we help get to freedom, in the ones we help to sing songs of joy, whose blistered feet we tend, whose parched thirst we allow to be quenched.  
Again, my hope, my prayer is that in the Church and through the Church, Jesus will open more eyes, heal more lives, may this be our prayer together. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.