Great Joy! (aka, Do not be afraid!)

Isaiah 9;2,6-7

Luke 2:1-20

Do not be afraid. That is the most often used phrase in the bible. Fear not! It’s what angels say every time they come to tell someone what God is up to. It’s what God tells the prophets, and tells the prophets to tell the people; it’s what Jesus says to his disciples, Don’t be afraid!

I suspect it’s the thing most often said when heaven meets earth because here on earth, it’s the thing we most need to hear.

From a human vantage point, there is a lot to fear—a lot that feels big, and scary. The world feels shaky and distressing right now.  Globally. Politically. Socially. Economically. Geo-thermally.  And that doesn’t even begin to touch the anxiety about what happens inside our own bodies, minds, hearts or homes.  Everywhere you look, it seems, there is something we could be afraid of.

And if we wanted to give in to the fear, it’s easy to do - it’s right here, tapping us on the shoulder, ready to whisper an ominous “boo” in our faces; and right now there are plenty of folks letting it in the door, pulling out a chair for it at the table, handing it the mic. 

And yet, whenever God breaks in, whenever the story of God is told in human language, the very first, and most frequent, words are, Do not be afraid!

We gather here tonight to hear again the story of God with us.  And it’s so human and haphazard, so messy and joyful, so irrational and unreasonable, it doesn’t seem like it would be a effective weapon against big, scary fear at all.

And yet, it turns out that this is the most formidable force of all. It turns out that hope, love and light joyfully and stubbornly refuse to let the darkness prevail.  God sees our scary darkness and raises us a baby, a poor, homeless, baby, born in an awkward pit stop on the road, to rookie parents in an ominous political time. From a human point of view, this is a ridiculously vulnerable and doubtful way to take on death and fear. And yet, this is how God puts his money where his mouth is on the whole Do not be afraid thing. God comes. As one of us – right into the mess of it. Right into the darkness. The fear. The shakiness and unknown.  Not to rescue us out, but to share this life with us.

God says, I will go there with you. I will bear it for you. You are not alone. Fear and darkness will not triumph. Love is the deepest reality and the final word. And here I am in person to bring it into being.

Do not be afraid! The angel tells a random bunch of baffled, ordinary shepherds. For see? I am bringing you good news of great joy! For all the people!  God is with us!  God is right here!

This week has been hard for me. The sadness, and the fear, have felt close by.  But there is something we’ve learned here together, and we keep on learning it, and at this point, I would bet everything I have and my very life on it, and it’s this:

When we stop, God meets us.

God is already here. Waiting for us to arrive in our own lives.

To pause the CNN stream with the reporter’s mouth wide open, to silence the ring and shut off the computer. To look up at the life you are in right now, the people you love right now.  To take a deep breath into your body and feel it reach all the way inside, and feel the whole entire exhale too.

God is here right now. That is never not true. 

And yesterday, right when I needed to hear it most, someone said to me:

You know what? When you look closer at fear, it diminishes. And when you look closer at hope, it increases! 

I want to look at closer at hope. I want us to watch for hope and dwell in love and let gratitude be where we make our home. I want joy to define us- irrepressible, in the midst of, nevertheless joy.  I want us to help each other remember.  To tell each other the truth.

So, sisters and brothers, here is the truth:

Horrible things happen.  There is more evil and pain and suffering than we can humanly bear.  And God sees and holds it all.  More than we ever could.

But there is also more love and peace and joy than we can even begin to fathom. And it’s everywhere. All the time. Even in the darkness and the suffering. It’s the fabric of reality, and the future toward which this whole thing is heading –the light has come, it’s permeating the whole world.

God is with us. This is the most true thing of all.

And despite having wireless, instant access to every piece of information, news story, and competing opinion about every troubling thing happening everywhere in any moment, as a human, mortal person, we are not supposed to bear the weight of all the hard and heavy things in all the world.

We are each called to live fully and joyfully this one, precious, life we’ve been given, to live in the light and let the light live through us.

Because the promise of Christmas is that God has come. In the flesh. God is here right now.  God’s light is breaking in, shining through, every place on earth, through ordinary people joining their simple, vulnerable, messy lives with the love of God-with-us, love that never stops coming in spite of, and into, everything. 

And we can actually see the God who came to be human alongside us, when we are human alongside each other.  We meet the Jesus who shares this life with us, when we share life with each other. When we carry each other’s sorrow and welcome each other’s joy, we encounter God with us, Jesus Christ, here, actually, tangibly, right now.

And so in simple, vulnerable, messy, and ordinary ways – paradoxically powerful ways like tears and laughter, hugs and arguments, listening, learning, and loving, grieving and giving, we are joyfully, defiantly, living toward the future when all fear will fade away and only love will remain. 

The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light. 

We are some of those people, you guys. That’s us.

So, beloved ones, Do not be afraid.  I am bringing you good news of great joy! For all the people! God is with us!  God is right here!

Let us rejoice!

Amen.

Witness of Wonder

These videos taken together make up Luke 1:5-25, 57-80.   From Alt Advent, by Jon Birch.

Luke 1:1-4 says,

"Since many people have already applied themselves to the task of compiling an account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, using what the original eyewitnesses and servants of the word handed down to us, I too, after having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, have decided to write a carefully ordered account for you, most honorable Theophilus, so that you may have confidence in the soundness of the instruction you have received."

In other words, Here is where the story of God coming to be with us begins, lover of God.

There once was this old priest in the hill country…

Zechariah.  He doesn’t show up on Christmas eve.  He barely makes an appearance every three years or so in our Advent texts.  You and I would most likely agree that he’s not really central to the story.

But Luke begins with him. Luke starts the whole story of Jesus, and salvation, and what it is that God is doing in the world, of God coming in, with an old priest in the hill country.

Even having seen his story today, we might still say, that’s nice and all, but clearly it could happen without him, he’s not really that important. He doesn’t even say or do anything through most of it, for crying out loud.

And yet, in his rounds of delivering messages from God, the angel Gabriel came to Zechariah first.

He seems marginal – but then we see they’re all marginal, really, a random Galilean carpenter, a young girl not yet married, rural shepherds in a field, foreign scholars far away.  This story is loaded with bit characters. Not a box office draw leading lady or man among them.

So why begin with him?  Zechariah’s life was humming along on a trajectory, fulfilling what purpose he understood and contributing in all the ways a life does, there was no indication of, or even great desire for, change.  He was a fairly unremarkable, decent human being and that was that.  Until God decided to invade the ordinary.  And Luke tells us: here is where it begins.

That’s not where everyone else starts the story of God coming in.

In fact, nobody else does. But neither do they start it the same way as each other.

Matthew begins with Jesus’ genealogy –all those so and so was the father of so and so, a lineage, a long line of people whose lives led to this moment, a heritage and pedigree and journey. Here is where it begins, says Matthew.

Mark begins with grown up John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness- Prepare the way of the Lord! For Mark the whole story starts with this invitation, this proclamation, Jesus is here, Jesus is coming, God is bringing something new! And he’s off and running, not even bothering to circle back at all to anything that happened in Jesus’ early years.

John begins a little farther back - at the very beginning of time and space itself. The vast cosmos and the spoken word that brings life into being. In the beginning was the word. And the word was with God and the word was God.

And Luke begins with Zechariah.  Many have endeavored to put together an orderly account, most excellent lover of God, so here is my attempt. And here is where it all begins.

There once was this old priest...

The strange stirrings, the opening of heaven and earth, the moment God started in motion the irreversible plan to come and be not just God but God with us, was when this priest of the hill country went to do his duty in the most holy sanctuary, and an angel intruded.

This week we spent some time at my preacher’s round up talking about the contrast between Zechariah’s response to the angel Gabriel’s pronouncement and Mary’s response a few months later – as in, he missed the mark and got shushed for it, but she got it right. But really, it’s not they who differ in these interactions but Gabriel the angel.  

Zechariah says, “How can this be, since I am old and my wife is barren?” Mary says, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”

And Gabriel explains to her how it will happen, and she responds with her, let it be to me according to your word. 

But Zechariah doesn’t get a chance to come around. He doesn’t get an explanation, or even a pause. Instead, he gets a grumpy angel retort, Excuse me! I am Gabriel! I stand at the foot of the throne of God and you question me?

You’re going to be unable to speak now, until the time of his birth.

And unlike Mary, or Joseph, even, Zechariah’s response to the whole thing becomes irrelevant.

God is doing this, and that is that.

This story leaves so much to wonder. It doesn’t explain much, doesn’t give whys or wherefores, It just tells a story: it all began this way…

What if Zechariah’s encounter with Gabriel prepares Gabriel for Mary’s own how can this be?  What if the angel is more ready to handle human questions with human understandings of the limitations of things, like time, and space, and age, and barrenness, and virginity, and impossibility.  Maybe it’s a little cherubic wake-up call to how differently human beings perceive what can or can’t happen than those beings who live in the presence and awareness of God at all times, who are used to the ways of God instead of the limits of human reality.

But my favorite part of this whole thing, the thing that keeps it most fascinating, and curious for me, is Zechariah’s long silence.

Why the silence?

  

Maybe silence was really what Zechariah needed throughout this experience, to come to some sort of trust.

Or what if, in fact, what the moment itself needed most was silence - a silent, observant witness to watch, and listen, and take in the enormity of this reality, when, for all those living in it normally, it might begin to feel normal.

Five months into his silence, five months of waking up each morning unable to talk and remembering immediately that something spectacular is afoot, and rolling over to see his elderly wife’s gradually swelling belly,

five months of going about town unable to answer the questioning glances, and the whispered rumors, the rumblings about what happened when God met him in the temple,

five months along in his quiet seclusion of prenatal privacy, alongside his pregnant, secluded wife, out of the blue Elizabeth’s young relative Mary blows into their lives.

And her arrival brings Elizabeth out of hiding, and brings Mary the solidarity and strength she needs to embrace this reality unfolding in her own body and through her own upended story.

And Zechariah the Silent opens his home to these astonishing things, and watches these women help each other into this reality with love and grace. He bears all these things inside himself, unable to speak of them, to contribute his opinion or observations, his conclusions or his questions.

Just watching and listening and holding it all with honor and awe.

This is how God being with us begins, Luke says.

This old priest from the hill country.

This blessed old man whose was given holy task of watching what God was doing. Shut up and pay attention. That’s your whole job.

God comes. It begins right here.

The beauty of Luke’s choice, and Matthew’s and John’s and Mark’s, to tell the story as they do, begin it where they do, is that we now know you could say that just about anywhere: Here is where it begins. 

A friend noted this week all the many people for whom it began:

“He is Risen!”

Who is risen?

Jesus of Nazareth!

Who is that?

Oh! Let me tell you about Jesus…

Or, those for whom God with us begins when he lays his hands on you and heals you, or looks up and meets you gaze and you feel seen, or you hear in the crowd his words of freedom and forgiveness for the first time and they penetrate your soul.

Or, it begins when you happen to glimpse your grandfather praying on his knees by his bedside. Or you gasp your first sight of the Grand Canyon at sunrise and the artist who designed them suddenly seems electrically nearby.  Or, you weep at the bedside of your departed mother and feel the presence of peace itself. Or it begins with the question your son asks that stops you in your tracks, or the kindness someone extends that softens your defiance. The story of God being with us begins wherever it is entered. 

It can be entered anywhere.

One word of observation, however, most often it does not begin in the strong center of town, the seat of power, the fortress of flawless success, most often it doesn’t start where a story is typically meant to be set.  God’s story is always on the outskirts working inward, on the margins, in the desert and the wilderness, the barren wombs, the youngest, overlooked sons, the slaves and the dreamers. In God’s infinite creativity and wisdom, God begins with children and old people, and people with speech impediments and murder raps, and strangers from a strange land wandering in unexpectedly. 

So it is not about being perfect and prepared, pre-certified saintly, or impressive in any way, it’s more often about being powerless or awkward, messy and a little confused but deeply human.

God does it how God does it.

This fourth Sunday of Advent is the week of love. 

It’s love that comes to us when we least expect it. Love that chooses us for no good reason. When we’re unprepared, humming along a trajectory, love inserts itself and invites us to wake up and see this person, these people around us, to give ourselves to them, and receive them into our own hearts making us wide open and new.

It’s love that binds us to God and to one another, that defines us, beautiful, precious, delight of my heart, and gives us that maddening view of others as well that keeps us from selfish isolation and forces us to engage the world, Precious, that one! Child of God, person alongside my person, worthy of honor and attention.

And that story begins all over the place.

You can enter it at any moment.

After nine months Elizabeth gives birth to John, and Zechariah is still standing by, witnessing the wonder, when the attention shifts to him, (and the neighbors and friends ridiculously motion to the man who can’t talk but can hear just fine), What do you say, Zechariah?

And when he answers on a tablet the same words Elizabeth had just spoken to them, “His name is John,” his gestation is complete and his silence breaks open. 

And all that has simmered inside him these nine months – seasoned with the faithfulness of God in his own long life and the history of God’s relationship with his people from the very beginning – gets stirred up by the Holy Spirit, and spills out of him.

And with utter joy and complete confidence he opens his mouth and proclaims,

‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,

   for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.

He has raised up a mighty savior for us

   in the house of his servant David,

as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,

that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.

Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,

   and has remembered his holy covenant,

the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,

   to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,

might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness

   before him all our days.

And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;

   for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,

to give knowledge of salvation to his people

   by the forgiveness of their sins.

By the tender mercy of our God,

   the dawn from on high will break upon us,

to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,

   to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

And now Zechariah the Silent becomes Zechariah, Parent to the Prophet of the Most High. Here is where it begins.

Depending on where you come from, and what you carry, and who’s doing the telling, the story of Jesus the Messiah, God with us, love alive and alongside, begins all over the place. 

It can be entered anywhere.

Today I kind of like beginning with dear Zechariah. With his silent witness, his holy task, his righteous Shut up and Pay attention.

That seems to me today like a pretty good place to begin.

Amen.

Where the light is

Oh, friends. 

More death. More violence. And our tender hearts can barely take it.  Anger, sadness, confusion, despair.  It’s all swirly and urgent and raw.

But I want to tell you a story.

Yesterday was Maisy's Baptism Day.  The anniversary of the moment eight years ago when she grabbed the pastor's lapel mic in both chubby hands and wailed into it with gusto while water was poured over her and the truth about her was declared: Beloved. Child of God. 

All day yesterday she wore this awareness like a gossamer garment - regal and peaceful, a secret happiness.  Beloved. Child of God.  Slipping from my car and marching into school, she kept this reality inside, curled around it to warm her throughout the day.

When she got home that afternoon, she found a gift dropped off by her godmother sometime during the day.  It was a tiny fairy garden in a clear, glass basket, complete with a smiling gnome, a red, spotted mushroom and a miniature black horse, with a string of colorful prayer flags stretched between living plants, all nestled on a bed of soft moss and beautifully polished rocks. The note on it said, Happy Baptism Day, Maisy!  

She stood silently gazing at it, and finally whispered, "Oh! I LOVE it."

Upstairs she went, and clearing her bedside table of all accumulated detritus, she made a special place in her room for her new fairy garden.

While I watched the news.  And freebased Facebook. And fretted and raged and grieved. Again. And in between, I made dinner and helped with homework. It was a busy night. Daddy was out of town. We ate pulled up to the counter on stools and standing around the kitchen. I kept checking in on the noise. I kept pressing on the bruise inside to feel the ache.

But then her voice broke through my stewing.  

“Mommy, what about my baptism candle?"

So we lit it.  

And then she asked, “What about the water?”

And she guided me to the little bowls and watched while I took one down and filled it.  Then she dipped in her finger and raised it to her forehead, and nodded for me to do the same, tracing the mark of our baptism, the cross on our foreheads which the ashes will make visible not too far away from now.  

“What about a prayer, Mommy?”  

And she stood in front of me, the glow of the candle falling on us, and placed both her hands in mine. With absolute peace and confidence, she raised her face toward me, closed her eyes, and waited.

Thank you, oh, thank you, God, for this precious child.  She belongs to you forever and ever.  Today we celebrate. Today we remember. No matter what, and always, we belong to your love. Amen.

Then she nodded, satisfied, turned and blew out her candle, and scampered off to another room.

I sat down at the kitchen counter, grabbed my phone and sent this text to my friend Jodi, 

There is light in this world. And it’s busting inside my chest right now and leaking out my eyeballs.

Here’s what I want to say: A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not, cannot, will not, ever, overcome it. Remember. 

So listen to the wisdom of my friend Meta, who said to us all last night, Don't spend too long in the rabbit hole tonight, friends. Call someone to say "I love you". Make weekend plans to be in community. Prepare brave kindness for a stranger tomorrow. Then go to bed. We still belong to each other for the sake of the good.

Yes. This.

What about you? Where are you seeing the light?