Sermon Christmas Eve 2019:Go Home and Be Loved

Christmas: Go Home and Be Loved

Let us begin by giving God thanks – the simplest prayer of all is “thank you” -- that we have gathered again this year to celebrate the birth of Christ.  In churches around the world this night – from the smallest village in West Africa, to the ancient Christian communities in South India, to our own companion parish in Cuba – we too gather to sing, to pray, and to reclaim this feast day and remember its fuller meaning in our lives.   The Christmas equation is clear and eternal: Jesus, Emmanuel = God with us. 

There is an expression tossed around that goes like this: “Go big or go home.”  Politicians are keen to use it after being recently elected with a desire to do great things. Coaches have been known to refer to when they make a gusty call: fourth down and two yards to go.  It can encourage someone to be extravagant, to do whatever you are doing to its fullest. (urbandictionary.com) How about for preachers? On Christmas Eve?  Go big or go home?  Those are my choices?   I’m not so sure the expression works. 

First, it would be fair to say that the staff here at Christ Church spend a good deal of time trying to understand and respond to the changing world around us – especially how it impacts how we do church.   Sunday mornings are no longer our exclusive domain, as any parent of school age children in the Exeter area knows that far too well.  We are using new technology and platforms to communicate our programs and mission – sending out email blasts and posting pictures and events on social media.  Just this past Fall we used an online survey to gather information about how we might deepen our faith and grow spirituality – comparing our results with churches around the country.  Pretty interesting stuff.

Yet, if our impulse is to innovate to keep up with changing times lest we fall behind, much of that comes to a hard stop when it comes to Christmas.  For me, this night, this season, is not about trying something new and different, better or faster -- it is less about innovation and more about preservation.  Tradition looms large.  We change very little in the service each year.  The carols and hymns we sing are the ones we almost always sing.  It is not so much about “go big or go home,” but finding a way to allow the story to be told and speak its own truth.

What I hope we do tonight is to give ourselves a collective time out and pause to listen again.  In the words of the great theologian Taylor Swift: “You need to calm down, you're being too loud, you need to just stop.”   We can, for a moment, resist rushing into the future long enough to hear again this ancient story about a holy family and their journey to Bethlehem.  We can try to place ourselves in that story and rediscover how a baby born in a simple stable shows us something about the God in whom we believe or want to know more deeply. 

We need to calm down, get quiet and stop.

I treasure a poem by John Shea entitled Sharon’s Christmas Prayer.  There is a copy of the poem in the bulletin should you want a copy.

She was five,

Sure of the facts,

And recited them

With slow solemnity

Convinced ever word

was revelation.

She said

they were so poor

they had only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

to eat

and they went a long way from home

without getting lost. The lady rode

a donkey, the man walked, and the baby

was inside the lady.

They had to stay in a stable

with an ox and an ass (hee-hee)

but the Three Rich Men found them

because a star lited the roof

Shepherds came and you could

Pet the sheep but not feed them.

Then the baby was borned.

And do you know who he was?

Her quarter eyes inflated

To silver dollars.

The baby was God.

And she jumped in the air

whirled round, dove into the sofa

and buried her head under the cushion

which is the only proper response

to the Good News of the Incarnation.

 (John Shea, fromThe Hour of the Unexpected)

Why I am drawn to this poem so?

For one, who does not love hearing stories of truth seen through the real and imagined lives of children?   Children can often see things, at times, more clearly.  They can speak with an unguarded honesty – that yes sometimes it can get awkward. 

What is the truth that the child sees?  She sees that Joseph, Mary and the unborn Jesus were a long way from home but never lost.  

We are used to hearing and using the metaphor that “life is journey.”  I say it often.  “He’s on a journey, it’s OK.  She will figure it out in time.”  It would be little more than a tired cliché if it were not so true.   Yet there are moments, sometimes years, when being on a journey can feel as if we are wandering around and not making the progress we want. It can feel as if we have not yet arrived to wherever it is we had wanted to go. It can feel that we have lost our way.

Remember that the story of the faith for Jews, Christians and Muslims begins with another holy family, Abraham and Sarah, who set out on a journey far away from their home country and because God told them to go.  It continued with Moses, guiding his people 40 years through the wilderness before they would reach the Promised Land.  In the last days of his life on earth, Jesus left his home in Galilee and set his face towards Jerusalem.  The Apostle Paul walked and sailed far and wide to tell everyone who would listen how God is a God of the living – how he went from being a persecutor of Christians to the most tireless ambassador of the new emerging faith.   Each one of use here tonight is on a journey.  Sometimes lonely, sometimes joyful, often ordinary and still remarkable.  

With God’s help, and some cooperation on our part, we can find a place in our lives where even if we ever wander far away – like the prodigal son who squandered away all he had been given by his father – that God allows us time and space we rediscover who we are and whose we are.  It is never too soon or too late. We are given moments to see what is truly important in our lives.

The child in the poem said they – the lady, the man and the baby – were poor.  Only PB&J sandwiches to eat on the journey.  They were poor, which probably meant in her eyes they had very little.  

It is risky business to over-idealize those the Bible refers to as poor.   What we can learn is a different response from the “go big or go home” culture that dominates.  We can learn what is enough—and what is simply too much, wasteful and excessive. 

“Give us this day our daily bread” we pray in the Lord’s Prayer.   Give us what we need for today and an open heart to share with others. May we desire and work for a most just world. 

The baby Jesus we see at Christmas grows up, and in the few brief years of his public ministry spends much of his time teaching, healing and reaching out to those on the margins and edges.  What the Gospel reveals is that the journey to know and experience the fullness of God is most likely found working our way from the outside-in, from the last to the first, and from the bottom up.   A stable in Bethlehem, an animal feeding trough for a bed, was good enough for God. 

The Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians: “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4:8

If not “Go big or go home”? I need something to offer, this is Christmas Eve after all!

I’ll keep the “go” part.  How about… “Go deeper.”   Go beyond scratching the surface of the mystery that we celebrate this night.  Set aside more time for silence and simple prayer. 

“Go farther” out to the edges of our inner circles and see who might need a helping hand, some encouragement, or someone to listen. 

“Go back” and revisit those parts or moments of your lives that have never fully healed and see how God plants seeds of forgiveness.

“Go to places that might mean we will have to face our greatest fears – remembering what the risen Christ promised those who would follow him: “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

“Go into the darkness” of our world and bring the light of Christ.

As I close, unlike the child in the poem I cited tonight, we may not jump up in the air, whirl around, dive into the sofa and bury our heads under the cushion.

Our response to the Good News of the Incarnation can be simply this:  to go home tonight and fall asleep knowing and remembering that God is love.  And that you are loved, held, forgiven, and watched over by the One who caused a baby to born to show us the face of the God of hope. 

And that is enough. 

Christmas Eve, 2019

The Rev. Mark Pendleton

Christ Church, Exeter 

Gathering in Brazil

Over the last four years I have had the opportunity to join an annual gathering hosted by Trinity Church Wall Street in various locations in Latin American and the Caribbean: Panama, Jamaica, Colombia and on October 24, 2019 in Curitiba, Brazil.  Curitiba is a city of some 2 million in the south of that vast country. 

The gatherings have grown over four years -- from 40 to 200 participants.  This year the focus was on identifying and equipping emerging leaders.  

What is so fascinating about these gatherings is the immense diversity within the Anglican Communion.  The Church of England, then the Episcopal Church in the U.S., helped spread the Anglican ethos around the hemisphere.  We were afforded simultaneous translations in three languages: English, Portuguese and Spanish.  Brazil, having the largest African diaspora population in the world, has a culture to contrast with a large Afro populations in the West Indies and Central America.  From Uruguay to Mexico to the Bahamas, we all found the Anglican way to be a way to root and feed us in our walk with Christ. 

In many of these countries, except in the West Indies, the Anglican/Episcopal church is very small.  They often live and work alongside the poorest of the population.  They live as the earliest Christians lived -- on the margins of society.  

Clearly there is a younger generation that is ready and able to assume new leadership.  It is always a gentle challenge of how to encourage more senior bishops to retire and give way to younger leaders in countries where the pension system is not as secure as in our Episcopal Church.  

There were presentations on best practices -- how to prepare for ordination in a digital world, how women are finding their voice and position in the church in new ways.

The days were packed.  Presentations were many.  But of all the learning I found was more important were the personal relationships made and deepened across regions.  Learning about the youth work in Chiapas, Mexico, or the way that a Jamaican parish is healing and dealing with grief through a creative spiritual writing project, or how a new Brazilian bishop in the Amazon is speaking out against the rapid deforestation taking place in her vast region.   

Anglicans to be sure are not united by doctrine nor hierarchy.   Bishop Tutu says that we are Anglicans because we meet.  I could not agree more.

Icon written by the Rev. Luiz Cuelo -- Mary and Child of the Amazon

Update

Greetings all:

I realize that I have not updated this blog, beyond some sermon postings, for some time.

I'm finding these days that much of what I would like to say can be found in the sermons that I preach.

As we enter the month of October, I am beginning to make plans for my 3-month sabbatical leave that begins January 1st.  Leslie and I will be spending 5 weeks in Oaxaca Mexico and then I will be traveling to Jerusalem for a study course in March.

For those wanting to see what I've been preaching on and about, visit christchurchexeter.org

Mark+

Sermon July 14, 2019:The Parable of the Good Samaritan/Hamas Member. What?!

Crisis Medicine.com

The Parable of the Good Samaritan/Hamas Member. What?!

The Lord God shows the prophet Amos a way to measure what is right and true. The Lord said, “Amos, what do you see?” And Amos said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel.” Amos 7

A plumb line then and now is a painter’s and carpenter’s tool – a cord with a weight attached to one end that uses gravity to find right angels and to determine horizontal and vertical lines.  It shows the most direct line from the top to the bottom and keeps things, so to speak, plumb.  Buildings will crumble if the walls are not built level.  The plumb line is steady and predictable and set the standard. 

Amos and his plumb line made him an unwelcome visitor to the north where he cried out warnings that things were not what they appeared.   By any metric, there was great wealth and power, but something was looming on the horizon.  Amos warned, a mighty nation would come and wipe it all away.  And that was their fate.

A plumb line is a good image with which to jump into the very well-known parable of the Good Samaritan.  Among the many questions it raises: how do we as individuals and as a larger society measure up to what God desires?  Do we forget or ignore from time to time what is right because we are worried, consumed with consuming, or simply afraid to do anything different?   What are we to do with those who are in the ditches of life -- left alone to struggle and even perish.

This week I turned again to a gem of a book given to me by a member of the parish called “Short Stories by Jesus” by the Jewish schooler Amy-Jill Levine.  Hers is an outsider’s take on this familiar Christian parable. 

She begins by questioning the term “good Samaritan” itself and suggests that we should hear it more as an offensive term as it would have been heard to a Jew in Jesus’ day than a complement. The same way as today it would more offensive than not to say that someone is good Mexican, a good Arab, a good Muslim – as opposed to all the other Mexicans, Arabs and Muslims in the world.   She suggests that over the centuries the story has been domesticated in our desire to see the idealized Christian as being, well, a good Samaritan – someone willing to do anything for a stranger. 

Levine reminds her readers that Biblical Samaria is today’s West Bank, the Occupied Territory in Palestine or Greater Israel.  So, an updated version of the story would sound like this: “An Israeli Jew is on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho today and is attached by thieves, beaten, stripped, robbed and left half-dead in a ditch.  (pg. 115).  Two people who should have stopped to help him passed by: a Jewish medic from the Israel Defense Force, and second, a member of the local mission network of the Presbyterian Church. But the person who took compassion and shows the Israeli Jew mercy is a Palestinian Muslim who is a member of Hamas -- Hamas being the organization that anticipates Israel’s destruction.  Levine gives a new name to the familiar story: the parable of the Good Hamas Member.    Does she have our attention now?

There have traditionally been many excuses given for why the priest and the Levite passed by the wounded traveler.   Both priests and Levites did not do anything exceptional or holy to become who they were: it was a title and a role given to them by their birth.   Many have commented that for them to approach a dying or dead person would have made them ritually unclean – which had to the reason they could not stop.  But they were heading down from Jerusalem, not up -- meaning that they were walking away from any religious duties they may have had.   The point being is that excuses of why not to do something that is so basic to the fabric of faith – loving God and showing love towards one’s neighbor was not a new or radical concept – just does not measure up.  It does not pass, shall we say, the plumb line test. 

What we know of Biblical history is that if during Jesus’ time Jews and Samaritans kept their distance, at one point centuries before they were the same people.  One branch of the family went one way and the other went another way.   Families do that.   Nations and religions do that. Jews, Christians and Muslims all trace back to Abraham, but the branches of the families split over time and hostilities, persecutions and prejudice often settled for too long.   Over time family members and kin can, without even knowing why or how, become enemies. 

Levine in her book describes the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  It was an 18-mile path that descended 2,500 feel above sea level to Jericho’s 825 feet below.  The Romans finally paved the road in the decades after Jesus’ death, but that was only to facilitate their destruction of Jerusalem.  Everyone who heard the original story knew that road was dangerous.  But it was road that some could not avoid.

The parable’s punch lays in the surprise that the one who had compassion, the Samaritan did what was required and expected of someone who took love of God and neighbor to heart. 

Who then is our neighbor?  The one who breaks down barriers. The one who was not afraid to get their hands dirty.  Who puts themselves out there. The one who shows mercy.

If God set God’s plumb line in the midst of our lives and our society right now, how might we measure up to this challenging story? 

What I see is that too many get bogged down with labeling the one at the side of the road left for half dead – when he goes unnamed in the parable.

A few weekends ago Leslie and I spent the weekend in Philadelphia and walking back from a restaurant to our hotel near the convention center we saw countless homeless people sleeping through the heat and, right in front of us, shooting needles into their arms.  I hadn’t been that close so such open drug use since the 80’s in the South Bronx where I did my field work in seminary.  Did I stop right there and try to stop them or check them into rehab – no, but that isn’t my full point.  I think I was more stunned than anything. And yet I looked at those in front of me with great sadness, rather than blame.  I wondered where and how they began their journeys.   What went wrong?  Who may have wronged them? What made them turn to this life and how many times did they try to change? Could they turn their lives around through a program or outreach?

I read today’s parable to three groups of immigrant detainees at the jail in Dover yesterday when we shared Holy Eucharist.  I asked them a question many of them could answer easily.  I asked: what was the road that brought you here? What was it like leaving El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala heading north?  To the young man from Angola, I wondered how far he had come to flee.  To the three Roma women from different parts of Europe – often called Gypsies in a different era – who would ever help them be reunited with their families?  

For those of us whose road to get where we are today was not marked by murder, abuse, gangs, wars and poverty, the temptation might be to spiritualize this parable and see the Good Samaritan as the perfect Christian or ultimate do-gooder.  And maybe we should take a look again at those dangerous roads and consider ways to make them safer for our neighbors. 

This past week we shared some resources in the weekly email that goes out to try to shed some light on what our church is doing at the border.  As summer heats up and as we are able to enjoy days at the beach and mountains – the gifts of the beautiful place we live – I hope we keep our eyes and ears open to what is happening.

I believe that the conditions at our southern border where asylum seekers are being housed in what has been widely reported as deplorable conditions are a test to our common humanity.  The jail in Dover is Shangri-La in comparison.    It is easy to be overwhelmed into not knowing what to do. It is hard these days to even trust what is true.  – I get that.  It is rational to want better laws, and we almost got some a few years ago in Congress.  What is harder for me in listening again to today’s parable is to cast all blame on the travelers who departed on what they knew would be a hard road.  It is shaky moral ground, in my view, to blame parents without knowing the literal hell they are leaving behind.  Let us resist the bait of blaming the ones at the side of the road for needing help.

We may not be able to attend vigils or maybe writing letters to legislators is not our thing.  But when and if the conversation comes up at work, the barbershop, or over dinner with friends, I hope that what stays with us is what Jesus pushed that lawyer to see.  That the enemies and the scapegoats and strawmen we were raised to believe will come after us, may in a moment of mutual need and caring, show us that the cycle of fear and death can be broken.  (idea of breaking cycle taken from Levine, page 112).  

It’s never too late to take out God’s plumb line to see if the kind of world we are building is on solid moral ground.    Would we measure up in acts of mercy and compassion? 

July 14, 2019

Christ Church, Exeter

The Rev. Mark B. Pendleton

Pentecost 4, Year C