The Word is how God touches Us and We touch God

+The Gospel for today is John’s Christmas story. I know, there’s not a donkey or a manger or a shepherd or a star in sight. There’s no Joseph, no Mary. No baby Jesus. No silent night, No Angels harking. None of that.
But just what is a Christmas story anyway? A Christmas story is a way for us to make sense of our faith. It’s a way to understand that Jesus is God and that God is Jesus.
See…right there it gets really confusing. Doesn’t it? God is Jesus Jesus is God….what?
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
It’s easier to understand than you may think. You see, in the beginning, when creation was, well, creating….Jesus was there. But not the Jesus we’ve come to know through the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, not the Jesus of Paul’s many letters…no the Jesus who was there was not the man who is God, it was instead the God who will become Jesus.
Jesus the Divine was there, not Jesus the Man.
Jesus the man came later, because Jesus the man is an instrument used by God to reach us.
 This is where that whole idea of “The Word” comes from. “The Word” is a translation of the Greek concept of Logos. Logos has been defined many ways but in our usage Logos is the discourse---the conversation-- between God and God’s creation. We can’t experience God because God isn’t an old white man sitting on a throne. God is Love, God is Light, God is Peace. God is energy. God is not a person. God is not physical, God is not material. So the Logos, the Word, is how God reaches out to God’s creation. Jesus is this Logos, Jesus is this Word.
Jesus is how God touches us and how we touch God. And isn’t that what Christmas is all about—God reaching out to us?
But, because it’s John’s Gospel, there’s still more to this story. You see not only is this Prelude of John a Christmas story, it’s also a Creation story. John writes:
All things came into being through The Word, and without The Word not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
The basic premise of creation stories is that in the beginning God created the light. The very first thing created out of the muck and the mess, the first thing created out of the deep was light.
And with this notion that light was created out of darkness comes one of the cornerstones of John’s theology—that God is the light and that not-God is darkness. It’s as basic as the good guys wearing white hats and the bad guys wearing black hats in those old tv westerns: Light is good. Dark is bad. Light is safe, dark is dangerous. Light is warm, dark is cold.
God is all that is good, “not God” is all that is not good. Jesus is God in the world….God is light, Jesus is in the world, so Jesus is the light of the world.
God is always battling the forces of darkness, because the primordial muck from which creation emanated is always trying to overtake the Good ness that is God.
This light stuff is where that other John, John the Baptist comes in. You see John –the Gospel writer, the evangelist NOT the Baptist---is trying to establish the basic Christian belief that Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus is God in the flesh, Jesus is the Light of the world, to his readers---primarily those philosophical Greeks and the stuck in the old ways Jews of the late first century world.
So John the gospel author introduces his readers to a herald of the light, a witness to the coming of the messiah--John the Baptist. We read:
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
And so, here we have a Christmas story all wrapped up in a Creation story, with a touch of Advent thrown in for good measure. This Gospel is trying, in 18 verses, to give us the whole ball of wax in one fell swoop:
God in all of God’s “godness” is intangible, unknowable to us basic humans, so God uses an instrument to reach us, an instrument to engage us in a relationship we can grasp. God does this by taking on flesh in the person of Jesus. Jesus comes to us seemingly as a man just a man, but soon we learn, along with him, that while he is a man he’s also much more. We learn that he is God who has taken on the human form in hopes that we, the regular old humans, will embrace the man and through that embrace, learn to love the God.
So John’s Christmas story doesn’t have a donkey or a manger or a shepherd or a star. His story doesn’t have a Joseph, or a Mary. There’s no baby born in a barn. No silent night, no Angels harking and heralding. Nope, John’s Christmas story has none of that. What it does have is, very simply, a God who wants nothing more than for us to Love one another just as that same God Loves us.
Now where have I heard that before?
Amen.

I Believe--Christmas 2012

I believe. Do you?
I believe that Jesus is God in the flesh, born of a peasant girl and her betrothed, Joseph.
I believe that this was an extraordinary birth in otherwise ordinary circumstances.
I believe that God chose to come among us in this way because God didn’t want to make a big splash.
 I believe God wanted to come to us in a whisper not a shout.
I believe God wanted to ease into living among us, as one of us.
And I believe we  needed to be eased into having God among us, in the flesh.
I believe this was not something to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly. I believe this needed to be entered into cautiously and with restraint.
I believe that God came quietly to live among us, because I believe God really really wanted to know just what it was like to be human.
I also believe that God’s birth in the person of Jesus Christ was so extraordinary in its ordinariness that creation just couldn’t hold back in the restraint God intended.
I believe that the birth of Jesus in that barn…was so glorious that the heaven’s opened up, angels descended and the stars shone extra brightly.
Just like every birth.
Yes I believe that the birth of Jesus was just like every other birth.
You don’t believe me do you?
You don’t think a heavenly host descends to earth singing the praises of a newborn savior each and every time a baby is born?
You mean that the birth of a baby each and every time isn’t a miracle?
You don’t think that the gift of a new life, no matter what the circumstances is an event deserving of awe and wonder?

Here’s what I know from my very limited study of biology but my extensive experience of walking the walk of pregnancy and birth with many friends family members and parishioners. And what I know from my experience of walking the walk of wanting to be pregnant but not being able to conceive. And walking the walk of getting pregnant but not being able to stay pregnant:
Every single pregnancy that leads to a live birth is a miracle.
So much can go wrong, so much does go wrong. Delivering a healthy happy baby is a miracle. Each and every time.
So while we may not think that the world erupts into a chorus of Joy to the World each and every time a baby is born then we just aren’t listening.
You see, Jesus being born to two ordinary people in a somewhat extraordinary circumstance is exactly how the Messiah, the Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God in the flesh needed to come to us.
Because the sacred isn’t only the gold and shiny, the neat and tidy, the all put together in colorful paper and ribbons.
The sacred isn’t only the glorious sunsets, it’s also the rain storms.
The sacred isn’t only the fabulous arias, it’s also the tinny tune of a tone deaf child
The sacred isn’t only on Christmas and Easter.
The sacred is every single day.
The sacred is Creation.
All of it.
The sacred is all that God has created, because all that God creates is beautiful, stunning and miraculous.
All that God creates is priceless
All that God creates is holy
And all that God creates is wonderful.
This is the wonder and the glory of this holy and blessed night: that God came to be among us in the skin and bones of humanity, in the dirt and dust of the wilderness, in the baying, baa-ing, mooing  and clucking of the donkeys, sheep, cows and chickens of that barn. That God came to be in the hearts and minds and souls of each and every one of us gathered here on this silent night.
I believe that God as Jesus Christ was born to Mary and Joseph and that this birth was revealed with a great heavenly host to shepherd’s tending their flock in a nearby field because God is in the ordinary and the mundane, as well as the extraordinary and the magnificent.
I believe that Jesus is born to Mary and Joseph each and every year so that maybe, just maybe, a few more people will come to believe that God loves us—US—so much God just can’t stay distant from us.
I believe in the miracle of Christmas, because I believe in the never-ending, all encompassing love of God, a God who needed, absolutely positively needed to be with us, skin and bones, dirt and dust, baying and mooing and baaing.
I believe in Christmas everyday of every year.
So Merry Christmas today, Merry Christmas Tomorrow, Merry Christmas every single day of your lives.
I believe. Do you?
 Amen.

Mary A Lifetime of God-Bearing Advent IV 2012

Mary is my hero.
Year in and year out, I am utterly blown away by the witness of Mary, the mother of Jesus, his first disciple, and the only person present at the birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus…Mary’s little boy.
I love Mary.  But not the Mary of adoration and mysticism. Not the “Holy Mother, ever blessed Virgin.” No, I love Mary, the young woman who was, by all accounts, a faithful servant, a good daughter and well…normal.
Mary was a simple young woman living an ordinary life when, suddenly, her life was turned on it’s ear after a visit from the angel Gabriel.
Now many of you know that I have a thing about angels. And not always good thing. I’m just not sure what to make of them.
First of all they have wings. And for those of you who were around a couple of summers ago when I had a bat in the Rectory you know that I am terrified…. completely and utterly terrified of sharing space with a winged creature. I have no issue with birds flying around outside, far above my head, but when anything larger than a mosquito starts flying around my house, near me? I freak out.
So right there, angels kind of bug me.
And then there’s that whole thing about what an angel is…not human, not divine, but somewhere in between…. Just what is an angel?
All that being said, I do appreciate the role of angels in the history of our faith…but those flapping wings? I prefer my angels to look less like the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz and more like Clarence from It’s a Wonderful Life. I am more comfortable with angels who look more like you and me and less like, well…angels….
So that’s why I’m pretty sure I would like Gabriel. I just have a sense that Gabriel would be a more regular type guy, regular enough that his initial appearance to Mary didn’t freak her out.
I envision Gabriel as fitting into the landscape of Mary’s world.
So when he appears at Mary’s door, or when he encounters her at the market or down by the river while she washed clothes or out back as she gathered pomegranates from the bushes, Mary is receptive to him.
Mary receives the message he gives her, outrageous and fantastic as it sounds. Mary receives the message. Mary accepts the message. And then Mary waits. And wonders. And ponders.
Yes Mary is my hero because she was receptive to receiving the Word of God through the angel Gabriel.
Mary’s also my hero because not only did she accept the Word of God through Gabriel she literally BORE the Word of God. Mary, the God-Bearer carried the incarnated God in her womb for nine months. The word of God grew within her until it could no longer be contained and it burst forth, changing the world. Forever.
And Mary’s my hero because after that birth she led the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, the Prince of Peace, the Messiah, her baby boy…through all the trials and tribulations of childhood.
She nursed him.
She weaned him.
She soothed him when he fell.
She encouraged him as he grew into his role, as he learned that he was, indeed
The Lord of Lords…. the Prince of Peace, the Messiah
And she was there when that role reached its necessary conclusion on that hilltop called Calvary, nailed to that tree.
Yes Mary bore the Word of God as her own flesh and blood and together with him she bore the slings and arrows, the jubilation and the joy of being God in the Flesh, Emmanuel.
But most of all, Mary is my hero because she said yes.
She is my hero because she was open to receiving God and when God asked, she said yes.
Would you? Would I?
How does God ask us to bear the Word of God? And when we are asked, do we say yes?
That’s our task during these days of incarnation, these days of a miracle birth in Bethlehem---to ask ourselves, how has God presented Godself to me? Has God come to us like Clarence?
Or like Gabriel?
Or has God come to us in the neighborhood child who could use a smile.
Or the elderly woman in the grocery store who cannot reach the top shelf?
Or the homeless and the hungry?
The destitute and the depressed?
The lost and the lonely?
Perhaps God has asked us to bear the Word of God while we stood in the voting booth, or while we decide where to spend our money, or when we know a friend or family member is in an abusive relationship.
Maybe God asks us to Bear God’s Word at all times. And in all places.
And maybe, maybe that’s the point of God coming to be among us in the first place…to show us, to teach us that bearing the Word of God is not a once in a lifetime thing, it’s a lifetime thing.
Mary is my hero because Mary’s life was spent, being the God-Bearer. In all that she was and in all that she did.
May we strive to do the same.
Amen.

A Litany for Sandytown

(Adapted from a poem written after the attacks in Oslo and published on July 24, 2011 by http://sarahtellsstories.blogspot.com)

God, there are lots of words we want to say to you,
lots of people we want to pray for with you,
places we want to give into your care.
Hear us as we pray,
Lord in your mercy, be with us all

Today we want to say things to you about Sandy Hook -
we want to say, Why?
What?
We want to say - No!
Lord in your mercy, be with us all

We pray with you for the people of Sandy Hook Elementary,
those who have died.
The children:
Charlotte Bacon,
Daniel Barden,
Olivia Engel,
Josephine Gay,
Ana M. Marquez-Greene,
Dylan Hockley,
Madeleine F. Hsu,
Catherine V. Hubbard,
Chase Kowalski,
       Jesse Lewis,
James Mattioli,
Grace McDonnell,
Emilie Parker,
Jack Pinto,
Noah Pozner,
Caroline Previdi,
Jessica Rekos,
Aveille Richman,
Benjamin Wheeler,
Allison N. Wyatt,
The adults:
Dawn Hochsprung,
Rachel Davino,
Anne Marie Murphy,
Lauren Rousseau,
Mary Sherlach,
Victoria Soto

The family and friends who have lost sisters, brothers,
children, parents, friends ...
the people of Connecticut whose hearts are breaking -
our hearts are breaking with them,
and we know your heart is breaking too.
Lord in your mercy, be with us all

We pray for the emergency services people finding the bodies
Informing the parents and families,
searching for understanding,
while protecting the living.
Lord in your mercy, be with us all

We pray for the person who did this terrible thing, Adam Lanza
for his troubled soul
and we pray for those who are investigating
may calmness and wisdom guide them.
Lord in your mercy, be with us all

We give to you what is your land,
The town of Newtown, the state of Connecticut, our country and our world
may you be known everywhere as peace and love.
may we not forget the children of Sandy Hook and the people of Newtown
in the weeks and months and years ahead, as they heal.
Lord in your mercy, be with us all


Closing Collect:

God of the broken-hearted,
God of the broken heart,
Receive our sighs
too deep for words.
In your time
by your grace
heal us.
In this meantime
hold us
as we weep.
Hold us and rock us
with the rhythm
of your own
grief-struck
quaking
body.
Amen

This is from http://spaciousfaith.com

Advent 2 Yr C 12/9/12 When a Prophet is Finished with us we are different.

+What a way to begin Advent---these readings aren’t the stuff of Christmas carols are they?
Last week Jesus told us to be prepare—that we must stand ready, ready for him to come, in the Second Advent, with great power and glory. It was a tough way to begin Advent, no angel visits to Mary, no sweet prose about a babe in a manger. Today the message doesn’t get any quieter, the image isn’t any sweeter. Today we hear from two prophets—Baruch, speaking to a generation of Babylonian exiles some 1400 years before the time of Jesus and John the Baptist, a   prophet of the first century, preparing the way for Christ. Baruch tells his generation to be ready, to stand up, dropping the dreary existence of captivity and prepare to be freed. John, in today’s gospel, promises release to all who follow him. Release from the despair of the wilderness, relief from the rigors of the Temple, and reprieve from the autocracy of the Empire. Repent, cries John, turn your life around, shed your old ways , for a new way is coming and it’s time to get ready.  Mountains will be laid low, valleys will be filled in and the rough road will be smoothed. According to our two prophets today—Baruch and John-- this shift into the new isn’t easy, it’s not painless.
Obviously, prophets do not come onto the scene quietly. They shake things up; they shout from the rooftops and set us on edge. A prophet doesn’t fit in. A prophet doesn’t tell us what we want to hear, a prophet tells us what we must hear. A prophet is often a pain in our rear. But after a prophet is through with us? Well after an encounter with a prophet, we don’t look at anything the same way.
After a prophet is through with us, we are different.
John didn’t come on the scene quietly, nor did he tell people what they wanted to hear. To many, I’m sure; John was a pain in the patoot! And he wasn’t even the main attraction!
 John the Baptist knew his place, John knew he was simply the opening act for the big show, he was the front man, the advance man for the Messiah. John’s job is to turn us around, to get us to leave the old behind so we can accept the completely new, the utterly different, the new life Christ will provide.  So John, this straggly looking, wild sounding peasant in the wilderness tells us: repent, turn your lives around, open yourself to the new way which is about to arrive.
John was a different breed of prophet, preparing the landscape for a new legacy, a different way—John was on the edge of something big and he was bound and determined to bring as many people with him as possible.
John the Baptist stood between two distinct periods in our Christian history— bridging the prophetic voice of the Hebrew scripture with the new voice to come in the person of Jesus Christ. He was a transitional figure with one eye firmly on the past and one eye firmly on the future. Some may have thought he was a prophet ahead of his time, others may have thought he was just plain nuts, but he knew, he knew he was the new Elijah, paving the way for God’s in-breaking into the world through Jesus Christ.
And he was going to make darn sure  that people would hear his message. A message of both promise and warning.
Promise that the Messiah was on his way and warning that we weren’t prepared!
John is telling us, John is begging us, John is challenging us, let go of the old ways. To drop all that weighs us down and with outstretched arms, lift our faces to the sky and accept the coming of the New World.
A new world full of God’s love.
Should be an easy message to sell, right? We’re all aware that life is more joyful when we allow God’s love to wash over us and guide us...so we should gladly and easily turn our lives around, shedding all that stands in our way, right?
But, of course that’s not what we do…we’re human and it’s human nature to resist change…even when it’s good for us!
Remarkably, even when we’re in a bad situation we have a tendency to stay put, to stick with the status quo. Not because we’re gluttons for punishment but because we’d  rather stick with a scenario we know than change to one we don’t.
The familiar, even when it isn’t good seems less risky than the unfamiliar.
 This is not new.
The people of the Exodus, the people of the Exile all wanted, at one time or another, to return to what they knew, even though it was bad for them, because what they knew was less risky than what they didn’t.
We’re no different.
But to fully receive the miracle in Bethlehem we must take this Advent time of preparation to lower our mountains, fill our valleys and straighten our own crooked roads.
We all have them—mountains of doubt, valleys of anxiety, roads crooked with worry. This is no way to welcome the Jesus, but those mountains, those valleys and those crooked roads can feel insurmountable making it impossible to shed it all and emerge ready to welcome the messiah.
But John the Baptist, in all his railing and ranting, in all his challenges and promises prepares us for this new way, he brings us across the divide from the old to the new. He invites us to emerge from the muddy waters of the Jordan changed, ready to receive God’s embrace of love.
A love born of Mary swaddled in rags, lying in a manger.
So our job this Advent season, amidst all the preparations of trees and gifts, amidst all our roads of worry, valleys of anxiety and mountains of doubt is to repent: to turn our lives from all that weighs us down, from all that distracts us and turn toward the east and with heads raised high and arms outstretched ready to accept the coming of the Lord.
The image isn’t quiet and the message isn’t sweet, but through Baruch and through John we’ll find ourselves in that barn on a silent night, awash in wonder and bowled over by awe.

Advent is a process for us. And for God.

Advent is more than a countdown to Christmas. It’s  more than a mini-Lent.
It’s more than shopping.
It’s about more than Christmas Carols 24/7 on the radio.
Advent is about the Past. Advent is about the Future. Advent is about the Present. It’s a season of looking behind, looking ahead and looking around.
Advent is:
expectant waiting. You know that kind of waiting we do when waiting for someone we love very much. It’s standing at the airport craning your neck to catch the first glimpse of your beloved. That’s expectant waiting.
Advent is hopeful anticipation. You know when you’re opening a present and you think you know what it is, you hope you know what it is….that’s hopeful anticipation.
Advent is cheerful preparation. It’s one thing to clean the house because it NEEDS to be cleaned. It’s a whole other thing to clean the house because you are getting ready for a grand meal, or a big party, or a family reunion. When we’re getting ready for something good, for a special guest? That’s cheerful preparation.
Yes, Advent is a whole lot all on it’s own because in Advent we expectantly wait, in hopeful anticipation, with cheerful preparation, for God to break into our lives. Big time .
You see, God taking on flesh and plopping smack dab into our lives is a REALLY BIG DEAL.
Because when God does this, when God becomes human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, EVERYTHING CHANGES--
Every moment, every place, every thing…..Jesus  changed everything when he came the first time, Jesus will change everything when he arrives the second time and today, on this first day of Advent 2012, Jesus is going to change everything again.
That is, if we let it. See that’s the wondrous and miraculous and stunning thing about the incarnation of God in Christ: it only turns our world inside out and upside down if we allow it to. It only changes everything if we welcome it, if we welcome God in the flesh into our hearts, our minds and our souls. Again and again and again.
That’s why we have a “church year,” why we go through the cycle of Jesus’ birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension each and every year. Because the redeeming work of God through Christ is a process. It is not an event.
It’s always evolving it’s not a one time thing.
It’s a dynamic, alive, “always revealing more” process of bringing Jesus’ message of Loving everyone, no exceptions to fruition. Advent is many things.
On the one hand Advent is about preparing us for the coming of the Christ child, but on the other hand, Advent is about us preparing to do all the work that is still unfinished. It’s about getting ready to do the work we’ve been given to do.
It’s not always easy work.
The world is a mess. Israel continues to arm itself to the max, seemingly goading someone, anyone to take them on.
The war in Afghanistan just won’t quit and the violence there continues to touch us all.
Our economy just can’t get into gear and climate change threatens our very planet.
On a more personal level I know that each and everyone of you has a whole host of worries and concerns on your plate. Job troubles, family issues, relationship problems, health concerns.
Life is challenging, life is scary, life is fragile.
We all deal with these issues differently—sometimes we deny them, sometimes we tackle them, sometimes we avoid them, sometimes we just plain worry about them.
But and here is where our readings for this morning (evening) come into play, it’s when everything seems to be at it’s worst, it’s when everything seems to be at it’s darkest, it’s when the “signs in the sun, the moon and the stars…cause people to faint from fear,” it’s when we can’t seem to find our way out of whatever mess we find ourselves in when, lo and behold, God appears.
Advent is about having hope. Advent is about having hope even when the days are dark and the world feels cold and the future seems precarious.
Advent is about trusting that the light will always follow the dark.
Advent is about knowing---deep down in our gut—knowing that a leaf will sprout from the righteous branch of David.
Advent is about remembering that God isn’t finished: not with us and not with the world.
Creation and redemption are not once and for all,
over and done with acts of God.
God created the world and keeps on actively creating it.
God in Christ acted to redeem the world and God in Christ keeps on actively redeeming it.
As Jeremiah says “. . . he will execute justice and righteousness in the land,” and until that is done,
God is not done.
So as we step into these four weeks of preparation, of waiting, of hoping we must prayerfully open ourselves up to this plain and certain fact: there is more to be done.
As long as God isn’t finished, neither are we. As long as the redeeming work of God through Christ is still working on this world, we must keep working here---in Buffalo New York, at the CGS and the COA---working to bring the light of Christ to all we encounter. Working to BE the light of Christ in this world. Working to make sure that we, in expectant waiting, in hopeful anticipation and in cheerful preparation remain the instruments of the Loving, Redeeming, and still working God who came to be among us over 2000 years ago.
Advent is a process for us and a process for God. You see, God becoming human only works if we accept God into our lives---wholly, fully and totally.
That’s what we’re getting ready for, my friends. We are getting ready to welcome, to accept and to embrace the best guest. Ever.
So let’s continue this journey. Not one of four short weeks but a journey for all time, ending when that righteous branch of David returns, joyously announcing that there is, once and for all and forever, Peace on Earth and Goodwill toward All.