Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Christmas Eve, 2019 - Joy, Protest and Resistance

Luke 1:26-33; Luke 2:1-7; Luke 2:8-20

When my great-grandmother was a little girl, she and her sister had to attend the funeral of some relative who had died. It was a very solemn affair, of course, over a hundred years ago, if you can imagine it. It was a time when children were seen and definitely not heard, and a funeral was a very serious thing. Dead serious.

Have you ever got the giggles at a funeral? Well, as the story goes, my great-grandmother and her sister got the giggles. Something to do with the old fancy top hats that were collapsible, and if you pressed hard on the top they got flat, but if you accidentally bumped them, they popped up. Well, one popped up at a most inopportune moment. And you can guess what happened. My great-grandmother and her sister started giggling. And trying to cover it up. And of course, the more you try to suppress a giggle, the worse it gets. And so there they were, the two of them, hunched over with their hands over their faces, shoulders shaking, I’m guessing tears streaming down their faces, as they tried not to laugh.

Only guess what everyone else thought. Everyone else thought they were crying. And so the adults around them patted them on the shoulder, told them not to cry, handed them handkerchiefs, and tried to comfort them. It didn’t make things better, it only made the giggling worse. In church. At a funeral.

What strikes me most is that, over a century later, what remains of that story is the laughter. Nobody in my family remembers exactly who it was that died, or under what circumstances. I presume my great-grandmother got away with it, because there’s no part of the story that talks about them being discovered. There’s only this inappropriate laughter. In the midst of what must surely have been a dark time, what we remember is the shared joy.

Tonight, in the midst of a dark time, we too are gathered to share joy, to rejoice with the angels, to lift up our voices, to fill our stomachs with rich food. It is a wonderful time, and yet I sometimes wonder if it’s not a little inappropriate––all this gathering to celebrate and feast when we know that there is so much pain and suffering in the world. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we kind of block out the world––I’m guessing most of us will make an effort not to check the news tonight or tomorrow. And for some people, that’s a needed break, while for others, it feels kind of odd.

After all, the whole point of Christmas is celebrating that God became incarnate––that God took on flesh in order to be part of the world––to be one of us. God came into the world to experience the darkness and the loneliness and the suffering that comes with being human. To enter into solidarity with the most oppressed and the most marginalized. And so for us to take a break from the world, as it were, by shutting it out and spending the time rejoicing with friends and family, seems not only the height of privilege––that we can actually shut it out when so many cannot––but the very antithesis of what we celebrate on Christmas Eve. It seems inappropriate.

Because there has been a lot of darkness in the world this year––depression and anxiety are on the rise, therapists are overbooked, sales of alcohol have increased (which is funny but also sad, since excessive drinking and drug-use are really attempts to self-treat undiagnosed mental illnesses). Domestic violence is still high, the number of overdoses from opioids are stunning. Our young people, the ones whose future is most at stake, are feeling increasingly alienated by the older generations. Protests around the world, and even here at home, are on the rise, as people struggle against increasing climate degradation, rising totalitarianism, and the reduction of everything and everyone to the almighty god of “the economy.” In the face of all of this, how dare we gather tonight and be joyful? It seems to me that grief, lament, concern for the year-to-come might be a more appropriate response.

But, “the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid ... I am bringing you good news of great joy ... to you (or for you) is born this day a Saviour.””

In the midst of the darkness two thousand years ago, also a time of oppression and marginalization, of looming disaster, of an Emperor who called himself divinely appointed and compared himself to the Son of God, God’s people were called to be joyful. Actually, it’s more that they were given a reason to be joyful. They were given a light. They were ruled by an Emperor who wanted all light to shine on Rome, which left Israel in darkness. Whose idea of peace was to kill anyone who disagreed. They were governed by King Herod who, though one of them, thought nothing of sacrificing them for his own ambition. And into that darkness, that fake peace, that grasping for power came a reason to be joyful. God born as a baby in Bethlehem. The light that would shine in their darkness, the true prince of peace who would bring life, not death. The Saviour who would sacrifice himself for them, not the other way around. Joy, when the earthly powers would have preferred them to despair, to give up, and to give in.

It turns out that joy in the midst of darkness is not inappropriate. Joy in the midst of darkness is protest. It is resistance. Joy in the darkness defies the very powers that have created the darkness because joy insists that there is something more. Joy tonight, and tomorrow, and in the year to come is a powerful claim that love-in-the-flesh is stronger than hate. It is a claim that, despite what the world says, life has the last word. That loving and trusting strangers, rather than shutting them out, is what makes the world a better place. Joy holds the line against the cynicism and bitterness that become suspicion and hatred. Joy actually melts those things away.

Because darkness does not have the last word. It does not even have the first word. The first and last word is light. Light from God, light in the darkness. Dare we even say laughter in the darkness?

Irrepressible laughter and mirth are manifestations of joy; the wiggles and giggles of a child who knows they are loved are a defiant rejection of the powers of darkness. Joy also manifests as shouts of triumph, the joy of justice served, of wrongs made right, like when the Berlin Wall fell, like when a dictator is overthrown, it is the feeling that fills our hearts when we hear trumpets playing Joy to the World. 

Joy can also be peaceful, serene, the feeling when we light the candles and sing Silent Night. This is the joy of the stars shining brightly in the middle of the night, the joy of holding a sleeping child, the calm in the midst of the storm.

Laughter, shouts, peace––all of these are a protest and a resistance to the darkness of the world. They are more than appropriate responses to what has happened this year and what we suspect is yet to come. They are a gift of God, to be received and shared, so that the darkness will not win.

And so, this evening, I invite you to enter into a few moments of joy, of shared joy with everyone here, to feel joy this day, to resist and to protest the darkness that would take over the world.

First, I invite you to close your eyes. If a phone rings, smile and let it ring. If you have to cough or sneeze, go ahead. We’ll all say bless you. And if you have little kids with you, don’t worry about shushing them, let them wiggle and giggle and talk, if they like. This joy is for everyone. And now, take a breath. A deep breath in, and exhale out all the darkness from this past year. Whether it is the darkness of the world, or something from your own personal situation, take another deep breath and breathe all that darkness out. It’s okay to let it go, there is no need to carry it in this moment. And one more breath to let go.

And now, if you haven’t hyperventilated yet, I invite you to breathe in the good news of this night. Christ is born for you. Breathe in the joy that the light continues to shine in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it. Breathe in the joy of wiggling and giggling children, irrepressible life in the face of death. Breathe in the joy that there is more to this world, because love has become flesh.
And finally, I invite you to one last deep breath, to commit this moment to memory, so that you can retrieve it tomorrow when things are at their most chaotic, or their loneliest. So that you can recall when you need it most in the year to come. 


God is in the world, the Saviour has come, the light shines in the darkness. May the Joy of Christ come into the world be yours, today and always. Thanks be to God.

Friday, December 20, 2019

December 20, 2019 - Blue Christmas Sermon

Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 27: Luke 2:22-32; John 1:1-5, 14

May the peace of the Lord be with you always.

When was the last time you cried in the dark? Maybe even being asked that question brings tears to your eyes. There is something about the dark, the literal dark, that brings our vulnerabilities to the fore, that causes the walls we usually keep up around our hearts to come down, that even loosens our tongues. We cry out, quietly or loudly, hoping no one hears us, and yet, hoping Someone does.

There’s actually a long tradition in the Bible of people crying out in the darkness. It’s called Lament, and it’s a persistent although often overlooked theme. We hear it in the prophets like Isaiah, in several psalms, and even in the story of Jesus on the cross––when he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 

In our story from the Gospel of Luke, I suspect such a cry is lingering in the back story of Simeon. Simeon, as we know, had lived a very long time, and God had promised him that he would not die until he saw the Messiah. As he got older, and then older still, as the years began to take their toll on his body, as he buried friends and family, how many times did Simeon return to the Temple, waiting for the arrival of the One anointed to rescue Israel from the cruelty of the Roman Empire? As the years, and decades passed, how often did Simeon lament, “How long, O God?” 

It is a cry that many of us here are familiar with. Maybe it’s even the reason you are here tonight. All the jolly cheer building up this time of year can intensify feelings of lament, leaving us wondering how long before we can feel the light in the darkness that is proclaimed so often right now. Wondering if anyone “out there” even hears us.

You know, names in the Bible are not just names, they have particular meanings. Simeon’s name, which he shares with one of the sons of Leah and Jacob, in the Book of Genesis, means “God hears.” God hears. Intertwined with thread of Lament throughout the Bible, we also have the thread that God hears. God heard the cries of Leah when Jacob didn’t love her. God heard the cries of those who walked in the land of darkness, during Isaiah’s time, when the Assyrian army was preparing to invade northern Israel. God heard the lament of Simeon as he waited out his days for the Messiah. God heard the cries of that Messiah on the cross. 

God hears your cries. Even in your darkness, when it seems as if everything is being swallowed up by the dark, God hears. God, who is everywhere, listens carefully to find those who are lonely, those who are bereaved, those who are sick. God pays attention to those who are on the outside looking in, to those whom the world ignores. God pays particular attention to those who feel like outsiders, to those who are weighed down by circumstances beyond their control. God hears them. God hears you.

God hears, and God responds. I say this because our Scripture is also clear on this point––that God does not just listen. God also responds. I know that sometimes all we need is a sympathetic ear, someone who can hear and share what we’re going through. But sometimes, we need more. Sometimes it’s not enough just to have someone sitting in the darkness with us, sometimes we actually need someone to bring us some light. We need someone to respond to our cries. Which God does. 

But a word of caution, or perhaps this is a word of comfort: God does not always respond the way we expect. What I mean is that God does not always respond in ways that are clear and evident to everyone. While yes, in the book of Isaiah the Assyrian Empire was overthrown and the people of Israel returned to the land, God does not always, even in the Bible, respond to lament in such obvious ways. 

Take, for example, Jesus’ birth. A baby born in the middle of the night, in a nowhere village, to an unremarkable couple, who were not noble Romans but lowly Judeans. This baby was born to a people ruled by a foreign Emperor, who handpicked not only their governor, but their high priests in Jerusalem, as well. Jesus was born much like any baby born in a village in China, or India, or El Salvador––to parents who no doubt loved him very much, but were not even so much as a blip on the radar of the earthly powers-that-be. If Jesus was the light shining in the darkness, it was the smallest light in the vastest darkness, nothing to compare to the light of Caesar Augustus, who styled himself as the Sun blazing in the sky. If Jesus was God’s response to the cries of people like Simeon, then it was a response that began in a very un-obvious way.

That Simeon recognized this tiny baby as the Messiah then, is a miracle in and of itself, possible only because, as the Gospel tells us, God’s Spirit led him to see it. Through the power of God Simeon came to know that this tiny baby, unassuming, unexceptional, was, actually, truly exceptional and truly the light of the entire world. Through the power of God, Simeon came to recognize that this baby was love sent into a loveless world, that this baby was the light sent into the darkness that the darkness would not overcome. Through the power of God Simeon saw that this baby would grow to become the one whose death––another darkness––would pave the way for new life for the world, a light that shines forever. It took the power of God to see these things because, on the day that Simeon encountered Jesus, he was not a blazing sun, or the light of a thousand candles. Not yet. He was still one small baby in a very big world.

And yet Jesus became God’s definitive and very visible response to the lament of God’s people. It would come to pass that millions, over the centuries, would come to see that this small baby was indeed the light of the world. But not quite yet.

Tonight, we are in that time of the not quite yet. We are in the time of Simeon, when God has heard our lament, and God is responding, but we are in need of God’s Spirit to point it out to us. But to be clear––God is always responding. God is always sending light into the darkness, even if it is in quiet, unassuming ways. Sometimes the light God sends is a soft light, a single flame rather than the blaze of the sun. In truth, this is the way God more often responds to our cries. We often refer to Jesus at this time of year as the son/sun of righteousness, but I wonder if we might also think of him as a single candle, flickering but undaunted, small but present, God’s response of steady and tender love.

Lament and response, two thousands years ago and today. God hears our laments, and this evening, God responds and sends you God’s Spirit through two means. The first is through the lighting of the candles when we sing Silent Night. As each small candle is lit, the Spirit of God reminds us of the birth in the darkness of that small unassuming baby who became light for the world. And as the small lights grow in number, we are shown how these small individual lights, how these small blessings of God, become brighter when brought together. God’s Spirit helps us to see how God’s light, given to each of you, as small as it might be, becomes light for those around you when you turn to share the flame with them. We see how the ‘not quite yet’ becomes ‘now.’

The second way in which God will respond to your lament tonight is through touch. I have no doubt that as Simeon held the baby in his arms, he felt healing. Holding babies will do that to you. We are created with bodies that are meant to be touched, whether through a handshake or a warm embrace. And so, a little bit later in the service, you will be invited to receive a laying on of hands, as a blessing to you in your darkness. And then––and this is different from the last few years––you will be invited to be a blessing to others, to be yourself an instrument of God’s Spirit––an incarnation of God’s response to someone else’s lament by laying your hands on the person next to you, and blessing them with the blessing you yourself will receive, as they, in turn, will do for the person beside them.

As we sit in darkness, as we cry out, know that God hears and God responds. God has done so in the past, and God does so even today. Not necessarily with a blazing light, but God does. In fact, as you share God’s light with others this evening, and as you share God’s love as you lay your hands on your neighbour and bless them, know that God is using you to be the small but very real light to someone else in their darkness, to be God’s response to their cries, as they are God’s response to yours. This is the glory of the Incarnation, this is the gift of Jesus, this is the light and love of God come into the world, in the past and also today. Thanks be to God. Amen.



Blessing: God bless you and keep you in the light of Christ. + Amen.

Sunday, December 08, 2019

Advent 2 - Hope vs Reality

Edward Hicks - Peaceable Kingdom.jpg
By Edward Hicks - National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C., online collection, Public Domain, Link



Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12

“The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together.” “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full to the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

The book of Isaiah is just poetry when it comes to visions of hope, isn’t it? This particular passage inspired the work of Edward Hicks, a Quaker minister, who painted at least sixty pieces like the one up there, all called Peaceable Kingdom. He was captivated by this idea of the promised peace; in fact, if you look at the background on the left side of the painting, you can see that he painted William Penn (the founder of the state of Pennsylvania and another Quaker) and Lenape chiefs establishing a peaceful treaty. In Hicks’ and Isaiah’s visions, God’s peace is two warring sides coming together, not in a violent conflict, but to live in harmony with one another.

Paul, in the letter to the Romans, has the same vision. “May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another,” he says. For Paul, the two sides that he wished would come together were the Jewish people to whom he still belonged, and the non-Jews––the Gentiles––in Rome. These were two groups that generally didn’t spend time together, didn’t each together, didn’t socialize together, except around the table of the Lord to worship God through Jesus Christ. And even then, there was lingering tension. Paul longed for a universal peace and harmony, which is why he quotes Isaiah. He yearned for a day when all the people––the Gentiles and the Jews––would all be one together, worshipping the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

What might Hicks paint today? Or what might Paul envision? Democrats and Republicans coming together to establish gun control? UCP and NDP working to pass bills together? Albertans and Ontarians having compassion and sympathy for one another? Or maybe Iran and the United States reestablishing a nuclear treaty, or Brexit and EU folks coming to an agreement?

Or maybe they might envision the harmony of humans and our environment. Maybe the Peaceable Kingdom would have people working with, rather than exploiting, the land. Maybe, and I know this is a hard one to swallow in Alberta, vegans and meat-industry people side-by-side. I’ll settle for Tesla drivers and Ford Escalade drivers letting each other in at merges.

It’s a beautiful vision, isn’t it? This image of worldwide peace and harmony, between peoples, and between people and the environment. It’s the light in the darkness that we desperately need right now. It’s our hope.

My question, though, is: do you believe in it? Do you have hope? 

I’m asking because these are difficult times. I mean, every era has its impending catastrophe that makes it hard to hope––Isaiah wrote when the Northern Kingdom of Israel was about to invaded by Assyria. Invasion means mass slaughter, starvation, sexual violence against women and children, disease. It means mass deportation––entire families scooped up and relocated far away from their ancestral homes. The end of the world for those experiencing it.

At different times throughout history, people have legitimately believed that their world, their way of life as they knew it, was about to be taken from them. The apostle Paul believed the end would come in his lifetime. So did Martin Luther. And so, when I say that these are difficult times, in a way, these times are no different than the rest.

And yet they are, because they affect us. They are personal. Whether the darkness looming on the horizon affects thousands, or just one, makes no difference. Elie Wiesel, the famous Holocaust survivor, once said that suffering expands to fill a person’s entire universe––whether that suffering is caused by a migraine or by a concentration camp, the grip of that suffering is still the same. The darkness before you might be individual––it may be the loss of someone beloved or waiting to hear whether or not you have a terminal disease. The darkness before you might affect your family or friends––there are people who are part of this church community who will be losing their jobs next year due to cuts. Or maybe the suffering you are experiencing is more global––maybe you are sensitive to the heart-rending increase in polarization and hate in this very country, or the global rise of fascism. Maybe you, like I, have read all of the ICPP scientists’ reports on the coming climate catastrophe, and despair that we seem completely unable or unwilling to respond. Big or small, when your way of life, the world as you know it, is about to end, the suffering is all equally real.

And so, I ask again, do you have hope? Because on the one hand we have these visions of hope, faithfully proclaimed throughout the centuries. And yet on the other hand, we have the actual experiences we are going through, some of which will literally change the entire world. We have hope and we have reality. 

Which puts us in a tough bind. It sometimes seems as though one can only be either hopeful or realistic. Either one can hope, and deny that things are as bad as they are, or one can accept the cold, hard facts and give up hope. The first response means living in denial, while the second response means living in despair. 

Sadly, neither is actually helpful, and both lead us away from following Christ. Despair, of course, means not trusting God’s promise of goodness to us. It’s easy to see how despair is neither an effective nor a faithful course of action. But neither is denial. You see, when we live only in hope, believing that God will somehow swoop in and make everything better, that our actions are besides the point, when we assert that God has a grand plan for all of us and we just keep doing what we’re doing and God will nevertheless work everything out, this is, yes, to put our hope in God as we are commanded to. When we live only in hope, we are loving the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind.

But, and this is really important, when we live only in hope, we are not loving our neighbour as ourselves. You see, Christ came into the world to call us to do both, to love the Lord our God, and to love our neighbour as ourself. And Christ, in fact, spent more time on the latter than the former. Christ fed those who were hungry, he healed those who were sick, he told us to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit those in prison. He did not––actually––say, Put all your hope in the Lord, believe everything is wonderful, and just pray. Instead, what he actually said was, the poor will always be with you, feed them. Hope and face reality. When you turn your face to the light of God, don’t turn your back on the very real presence of suffering and loss. 

To be realistic that there is darkness and hopeful that there is light that will not be overcome––this is the paradox of Advent. Jesus Christ said, the kingdom of heaven is coming and the poor will always be with you. And so how do we live in this paradox? How do we live in Advent? How do we live in these times?

I believe we do it by putting our hope in the Incarnation, which is to say, by putting our hope in the here and now, in the presence of God amongst and actually in people. The central message of Advent is first that God became incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth, that God came to bring hope to the people by becoming one of the people. God sought to change the world, to bring about the Peaceable Kingdom, by living and acting in this world. And the second half of that message is that God is not done. God’s desire to change the world by acting through and in it did not end when Jesus ascended into heaven. It wasn’t like God took a two-thousand year pause. God is still acting in the world, but through us.
And this is our hope as we face our reality. Our hope is that God works through us, that God gives us “the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord,” as Isaiah proclaims. Our hope comes from knowing that God works through us when we turn to one another, when we turn to those in need, when we spend our energy––our time, our resources, our money, our efforts––not in the belief that God will rescue us from on high, but in the belief that God has given us God’s own power to help one another. Our hope is that God works through us when we reach out to others and work to end their suffering.

We have actually seen it happen, even in our own lifetime. We have seen people, filled with hope and simultaneously facing reality, experience moments and flashes of the Peaceable Kingdom. The end of apartheid in South Africa. It happened because faithful people both accepted the reality of deep racism and trusted in the hope that God would bring peace. The fall of the Berlin Wall. Again, it happened because faithful people both accepted the reality that the people of East Germany were imprisoned in their city and were suffering and acted in the hope that God would bring harmony. I have seen it in faithful Christians who have accepted diagnoses of terminal cancer and gathered all their family and friends around them in those last weeks or days because they lived in the hope that God would unite them all in love. It was the acceptance of reality and the hope of God’s world to come that enabled all of these things to happen.

John the Baptist issued a call to repentance, to turn away from certain things. Perhaps today it is a call to repent from both denial and despair, to turn away from denying the realities of our world and from giving up hope entirely. Perhaps we are called to turn towards the Christian claim at this time of year that the light shines in the darkness because we acknowledge that there is a darkness. To know that we do not yet live in the Peaceable Kingdom and yet to continue to imagine it. We are called to be realistic and we are called to hope. We are called to act in and for the world, to know that God is in the world with us, and to see that as God calls us to turn towards one another, God works through us to turn hope into reality, so that the vision of God’s peace and harmony is made real. Thanks be to God. Amen.