The kind of people who participate

Jean-Marie Pirot (aka Arcabas) The angel of the Lord speaks to Joseph in a Dream

 Matthew 1:18-25

His fiancé is pregnant with someone else’s baby. Joseph’s been made to look a fool. A righteous man, we’re told, with an impressive pedigree, Joseph seems a worthy candidate to parent the Messiah. And let’s be clear. God could’ve easily waited a few months until Mary and Joseph were properly married and saved everyone a lot of trouble.
 
Instead, God puts Joseph in a moral quandary. Heartbroken and betrayed, good guy Joseph will do the right thing – he’ll dismiss Mary quietly, cause as little embarrassment for her as possible, while preserving his own dignity and honor. 
 
Have you noticed how none of our ancestors in faith are ideal applicants for the job descriptions they end up filling?  And the ones who start out looking promising, like Joseph, end up losing something, or everything, for their role.
 
But if our biblical siblings appeared beyond reproach, we might think it was their inherent goodness that qualified them to participate in God’s plans. We might believe God prefers exemplary, upright, heroic types that make God look good.  
And if that were true, then we might presume that humanity is a graded on a scale, and one’s place in God’s good graces can be earned or lost. We might strive instead of rest, compare instead of cooperate, worry more about the virtue of our own souls than the well-being of others, and be tempted to take on God’s role by assuming it’s our job to fix what’s broken in the world. 
 
So, because the way of God is not about us and what we do but about who God is and what God is up to, the cast of characters that populate our scriptures and the great cloud of witnesses watching over us is necessarily comprised mostly of misfits, screw-ups, and the impossibly unqualified – like overlooked youngest sons and ignored foreign women and those with barren, ancient or virgin wombs, incapacitating stutters and colorful rap sheets, all of whom find in their brokenness a new identity as participants with God in healing and redeeming the world. 
 
Gone is Joseph the upstanding, competent, ethical exemplar who holds the reins of his life. This little crisis has ended that guy.  His good-person-ness torn away, Joseph will receive instead the grace of God who claims us nevertheless. When he awakens from his dream, he will be Joseph, misunderstood and misjudged, unable to control his own life or narrative, but claimed by grace, guided by love, brave to trust, and faithful—right up against his doubt, close to his fears, ready to accept what God is giving him and follow where God is leading him.  Joseph will agree to appear to be something that he is not – this child’s father, but he will claim him nevertheless, and in so doing, he will become his father after all.  
 
And so Joseph trades what was for what will be; he will anticipate the future of God by accepting his role in it now.  And Joseph will live a life characterized by grace unearned and forgiveness unmerited, where everybody belongs and nobody is dismissed, quietly or otherwise. 
 
The savior of the world belongs to us all, and first, Joseph, he will belong to you. The angel whispers in his dream. So do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. Love her. Name the child Jesus. Love him.  
 
And the child Joseph will raise will not become an upstanding, good citizen, respected in society and honored in the community, upholding his father’s good name and bolstering the commendable, but a vagabond and a subversive, who dines with sinners, prostitutes and outcasts, confronts corruption and evil, and refuses to totalize or dismiss anyone.  He will be a Savior who rests, and trusts, and lives fully connected to God and to every other human.  And Jesus will open up to us all a reality of redemption, forgiveness and freedom, everlasting belonging that will set the world free.
 
Dear little Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church: for 100 years now, people have been gathering on this spot in the name and presence of Christ, to worship God together, to seek the way of Jesus and be guided by the Holy Spirit, to pray and sing, and listen and respond. To grieve and to celebrate. To raise each other’s kids in love, and bury each other’s loved ones with gentleness. To pour love into the community and welcome in the world’s pain and joy. To learn and to change alongside one another, to mess up and practicing forgiving, to reach out and practice receiving, to take the baton from those gone before and pass it on to those who come next. 

And so for 100 years this little congregation has had our own rotating cast of unlikely characters, misfits and oddballs, flawed people living broken, honest and real lives, trusting right up against our doubt, watching for the in-breaking of God around us, sharing the presence of Christ by being with and for others, faithfully accepting what God is giving us and following where God is leading us.  
That is something to celebrate.
 
Today we lit an Advent Candle for Peace. So this week, we will be watching for, praying for, and living toward peace. The Hebrew word for Peace, Shalom, means “fullness” or “completion.”  So when people greet one another or say goodbye, with Shalom, what they are really saying is, “May you be completed.”  Whenever we join in God’s bringing wholeness and fullness for others, whenever our words or actions say, “May you be completed,” we are making peace. We can literally share in the substance of God’s life, here and now.  We can contribute to others’ fullness, fullness in the world around us, and fullness between us.  We can trade what is for what will be. 

But only if we have our ideas about what it means to live a good life torn away, and receive instead the grace of God who claims us nevertheless.  

God’s love comes to and through imperfect people in ordinary ways, and we are drawn in by God’s mercy and grace, to receive the love of God without qualifications or preconditions. God plunges into this world in the person of Christ Jesus, and by the Spirit pours grace and love through us that feels like courage to forgive, and willingness to listen, and an inclination toward wonder, joy, gratitude and generosity.

 This savior ruins people for respectable, mind-your-own-business living, and pulls us head over heels into a life of trusting, and resting, and hoping, that practices our unbreakable belonging to God and each other, and join in the healing and shalom that God is always bringing into the world. So, like those gone before us, both our predecessors here, and all the faithful from every place and time, we too anticipate the future of God by accepting our role in it now.  
Amen.
 

Present and Thankful

 "Rejoice" is a pretty churchy, peppy word. When you google “rejoice” you mostly get silhouette images of people with their arms raised to the sky against a sunset or mountain backdrop. If you were an alien doing research on our planet you would think that rejoice meant walking around at dusk with your hands up.  But we Christians know it means just feeling enthusiastically cheerful and thankful all the time, with the hands of our hearts raised in permanent gratefulness. Just kidding. Paul wrote this in prison. Sitting on a filthy floor in chains is the image you don’t see when you google “rejoice!”   

I’m not going to lie, I have my own photo of my 23 year old self silhouetted against a spectacular Fijian sunset with my arms raised.  But even so, when the Sunday school poster or Christian bookmark tells me to Rejoice! I recoil.  I don’t like being told what to do or how to feel.  And that’s pretty much how this verse has been used.  When this passage says, “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.” I can remember the exact place I was sitting in my cousins’ living room, when my aunt walked in, turned off whatever spicy scene was on the TV, and quoted that verse at us.
 
Being told to rejoice, be thankful, have gratitude, focus your mind on what’s true, can feel like some kind of Miss Manners advice, Christian behavior modification, or politeness training.  
Apologize for hitting your brother. 
Tell your sister you forgive her.  
Count your blessings.
Say Thank you to Grandma for the present.  
Leave a generous tip.
Rejoice and give thanks to God always.
 
And it’s too bad. Because while things like apologies, confessions and gratitude can be coerced or disingenuous, they are also some of the most authentic and important stuff of relationships. When we genuinely apologize, or truthfully confess, or say Thank you and actually mean it, we are at our most honest, present, vulnerable and aware. We are living our humanity and interconnectedness. We are receiving the gift of this life, the gift of the other person, and the gift of our own living and breathing self.
 
God made the world good. Goodness is all around us, even in the midst of what’s bad, and gratitude invites us to notice.  To rejoice in the good doesn't deny the evil or the brokenness, it doesn’t ignore struggle or suffering. Giving thanks acknowledge the goodness that is also, always here, because in Christ God is always here. Gratitude stills and quiets us us to pay attention with wonder and reverence, and then points that awe right to its source. And so gratitude is one of the shortcuts out of the way of fear and back to the way of God, whereas cheerfulness, platitudes and politeness are not.
 
When Paul writes “rejoice always!” from his prison cell, he is not giving the Philippians an attitude pep talk or a lesson in etiquette. He’s touching something really deep that can’t be captured on the front of a greeting card and can’t be crushed by chains or hardship either.
 
At all times, rejoice in union with God, Paul says. The Lord is here. Don’t be anxious about anything, but let God know everything that is on your heart, with both longing and thanksgiving, tell God know what you need. And God’s peace, which defeats all human logic and comprehension, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
 
That’s something. 
 
Gratitude is powerful. And it is prayer -whether we acknowledge it or not. When thanksgiving rises up within us, we are enacting our connection to God, even if we aren’t aware in the moment that’s what we’re doing, even if we are not believers in God. We are praying. To be grateful we must be present. We are constantly departing the present moment by actively regretting the past or persistently anticipating future. Gratitude overrides this. In the moment of gratefulness we are present in the very presence of God who is always here with us. And that is prayer.
 
The truth is, while we need reminders sometimes, and structure too, we don’t actually have to work that hard at feeling thankful.  Because we’re hardwired for this. Gratitude is a basic human need, a natural human and deeply spiritual response that arises, unprompted, when we are paying attention.

And Paul gives us a way to pay attention.  
Whatever is good, he says, whatever is true and just and honorable and pure, think on these things.  What we look for, we will find. If we look for division and hate, injustice and pain, we will find it. It is there. We spend a lot of time and energy practicing looking for what’s wrong.  
 
And if we look for hope and love and sacrifice and generosity we will find it. Because that’s here too.  If we live open to delight and wonder, beauty and awe, that is what we will receive.  Even in the midst of what is broken, redemption is breaking forth.  We can practice looking for life.
 
Someday time will be wiped away, and we will exist in the suspended joy of being alive, of being in God’s full presence and being wholly, truly, fully alive.  Gratitude lets us see the kingdom of God now.  When we pause in gratitude, we live in a moment out of time. We get a sample-sized taste, a foreshadowing of God’s future, a future that comes not from the present but from the promise. Instead of a future filled with the consequences of past choices or the impossibilities of human limitations, gratefulness dips us into the future beyond time, when what remains is the eternal moment of gratitude.
 
We don’t come together in worship to be polite to God, we come to be reoriented again to the Kingdom of God breaking into this world. We are not here to get a lesson on saying thank you, or pressure about how grateful we should all be.  We come to be awakened to what’s real – to be reminded of our belonging to God and each other because we are practicing it together and that will help us practice when we are apart.
 
So today, instead of any more discussing gratitude, we are going to experience it. This is not going to be a dress rehearsal for the “What are you thankful for?” conversations around the table on Thursday.  (Though, it may help). We are going to practice paying attention to what is good and true and beautiful and wonderful. We are going to let ourselves be present, in this moment, with God.
 
Reader - you are invited to do this practice we did in worship. Set aside 10 minutes. Grab a pen and paper. You won't regret it.

A PRACTICE OF GRATITUDE
For the next few minutes, you are invited to simply be present here, and be willing to notice. Read each phrase and you're invited to write down the first things that come to mind. Don’t edit or force or direct – just let whatever wants to come spill out.
 
Begin with a moment of silence. 
 
In this moment, in this place, with these people, I am thankful for…
When I think of the people I call mine, I am thankful for… 
When I consider the connections I have in the world, friends, neighbors, coworkers, I am thankful for…
When I think of my body, I am thankful for…
When I reflect on my life in the past few months, I am thankful for… 
When I think of things this year that have been painful or challenging, I am thankful for…
When I think of this world, I am thankful for…
When I think of God, I am thankful for…

Is there a category you wished would’ve been mentioned? Something that you felt gratitude for during this time? Take a moment now to jot down anything else you would like to express thanks for…
 
Now read back over your list. 
 Let yourself feel what you’ve written down.  
Let yourself receive the gratitude. 
 

Amen.