Praise in the Mourning

Luke 19:28-40

 Yesterday we had a funeral, for our beloved Jen. And shortly afterwards, our dear Dennis died.  Oh friends, it feels like too much to bear.  Death feels so close, so terrible.  And here we are on Palm Sunday reenacting this joyous moment when Jesus is cheered as a savior, and king. And it feels a little disjoined to celebrate, almost like pretending.  

But even though nobody else knew it, Jesus went into this parade knowing he would die. So there is something here today for us.
 
Luke helps us out here.  In Luke’s telling of this story, there are not even palm branches, and the crowd is not shouting. There may be onlookers watching and thinking the whole thing is bizarre, and some joining in by laying out cloaks, observing curiously, so this is the Jesus I have been hearing about.  But the noise is coming from Jesus’ own followers, disciples and others who had heard his teachings, experienced his miracles, followed his message, were going through the streets and gathering on along the edges to join in their voices, testifying to who they have heard and experienced Jesus to be.  They were sharing about their experience of God’s faithfulness in their lives through their encounter with Christ.  
 
And there is not even Hosanna! In Luke.  Instead, Luke puts into the mouths of Jesus’ followers the words sung out at Christ’s birth by angels to a hillside full of stunned shepherds, “Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord, Glory to God in the Highest heaven!”  Luke reminds us that this whole story begins in upset expectations and God’s weird way of saving us. God comes in weakness and vulnerability, determined to share this life from the inside, rather than rescue us out of it. 
 
God’s way is so not about saving us from suffering, that a few days after this palm parade scene, Jesus, so freaked out and shaken up about what’s coming that he’s sweating blood, prays his own prayer asking God, begging God, to be saved from suffering and spared death. Then, from the cross as he is dying, Jesus accuses God of forsaking him.  And in that moment, the experience of godforsakenness gets plunged right into the heart of God. 
 
We need a savior.  We don’t need our own notions of success and safety reinforced, our own sense of good and bad legitimated. We don’t need salvation as a good idea to believe in.  And we don’t need Jesus as a fine example, or a wise teacher, or an inspiration for revolution. We are too far gone for all that. We need a complete overhaul, the death of death itself.
We need evil and sin eradicated from us. We need to be broken free from death’s rule, to be cleansed, to be released from sin’s grip on our minds and hearts, freed from the terror of dying that keeps us from risking and loving and hoping and living. 
 
Death is too great, too destructive. It’s all around us and inside us. Sin has polluted everything, and there is no escaping it.  And to be clear – what I mean by sin is serving death – estrangement from God and each other, denying our own humanity and degrading others’ humanity, violating the fundamental belonging and order of creation by behaving as though we are not made in God’s image, and God is not God.
 
Death gets played out in everyday unkindnesses and horrific atrocities. Even right now as we are sitting here, people not unlike you and me, are slaughtering other people, believing lies so completely that they stop seeing the people in front of them as people, beyond even enemy or threat, turning them into nonentities, nothings, obstacles.  And in the process these people are succumbing to evil beyond imagination, losing their own humanity as well. 
 
But it doesn’t even have to be that extreme. We take away each other’s humanity all the time and turn each other into objects – objects of derision and scorn, or objects of idolization, objects of our pity, or objects of our own self-betterment. Objects blocking our way. We crucify each other and ourselves in little ways all the time. We blame and punish, cut off relationship and hold onto resentment.  We love imperfectly and hurt those we love.  We so easily and so frequently forget our identity as beloved children of God who irrevocably belong to God and to all others. We trade that precious reality away for ease or peace of mind, for the illusion of contentment or safety, for getting more done in our day.  
 
And God knows this. God listens past our strategies for salvation to the need at the very heart of us - for healing and wholeness, for reconciliation and forgiveness, for things to be made right, for death not to win, for life to prevail, which is what God is all about. The Holy Spirit hears our pain and our longing, and intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.  
 
God has come, God is saving the world, these are fact and there is nothing more worthy of recognition and praise than this.  So even though the cheering followers had their own ideas of what was happening, nevertheless and accidentally, they joined the song of heavenly angels and the rejoicing earth itself, announcing the good news of great joy for all the world. The enormity and significance of what is about to happen will not go unspoken. If human beings didn’t do it, the rocks themselves would have cried out.  
But it means God-with-us is going to die.  Death is part of God’s story now, just like it is each of ours.  And all these things we bear: sorrow, shame, regret, hopelessness, despair, impossibility – these are God’s story now and God bears them all the way into death. With us. For us.  As far as the east is from the west so far have you separated our sins from us…
 
So we are invited today to praise God.  Praising God reminds us what is really real. It grounds us in the truth. When we simply lift our heads and acknowledge God in our midst, share with each other how we are experiencing God-with-us, let wonder and awe overtake us so that we are moved to lay down our coats, and raise our voices in gratitude, hope and longing to our God, it returns us to what is true. God is with us, is right in our midst, holding our pain, and redeeming this world from within.  
 
We are a congregation in mourning.  That’s who we are right now.  That makes us awake, more open, more aware of the world’s pain, more attuned to the suffering of others. It also makes us a little raw and tender, in need of gentleness and care, more rest than we think we might need, extra space to grieve and adjust.  But here is where Jesus meets us. In our suffering, in other’s suffering, in godforsakenness.
 
Next week is Easter, and we will celebrate that that death does not get the final word.  We will rejoice in resurrection– even while we are all dying, and grieving death, we will proclaim that in Jesus Christ, death is not the end.  So together we will continue to ask God for healing and hope, with all the honesty and longing of our hearts, and we will share joy and wonder defiantly and without hesitation, as we await the salvation of our God. 

Amen.
 

Where Jesus Is

 

Mark 9:2-9

It’s so cold out there that one of our church families froze clothing into statues in their yard, and someone in my facebook feed froze an egg half cracked open, balanced in the air on a frozen puddle of egg white on the sidewalk like a pedestal. It’s so cold you can hammer a nail into wood with a frozen banana, and throw boiling water in the air to make a puff of cloud that doesn't fall back down.  Maybe those are the ways to celebrate what has come to be called The Transfiguration, because words can’t do it justice.
 
Jesus knew words couldn’t work here. He tells them not to talk about this moment till after he’s risen from the dead, when they’ll recognize that the laws of physics, and life and death, and time and space don’t always apply, and it will be fun to recall that one time on the mountain when Jesus all glowey and the mvps of the faith were back from the dead chatting him up.  
Still, they whispered to each other all the way back down the mountain, “What does he mean by risen from the dead?” 
Because, whattity what??
 
So maybe next year on Transfiguration Sunday we’ll just listen to ethereal music, or watch amazing colors, or contemplate some unfathomable intricacy of nature or boundless mystery of space instead of turning to words to try to understand what’s happening here. 
 
But perhaps the gift of this scene –for us today but for the disciples there on the mountain and for Jesus himself – is the mystery of it. The inexplicableness of the encounter.   
 
Peter at least has his wits about him enough to recognize that whatever this is, it’s important, so he jumps in with a strategy, Let’s just stay here never leave; we’ll make each of you a dwelling.  But he’s quickly shushed by an almighty cloud, and by the words of the gospel writer apologizing for him – he didn’t know what he was saying, you guys, because they all were terrified.
 
This captures it all! Peter thought. The glory of Jesus revealed! Here is where we should stay. Here is where the truth is, the way is, the life is. Right here. 
 
But the moments of mystery and wonder are not where Jesus remains.  As soon as they get back down the mountain they are confronted by the utterly anguished father of a child tormented by illness and demons, whom their prayers couldn’t heal. And in Matthew, Mark and Luke, these two scenes come back to back, like a boxed set, like they belong together: the mountaintop glory and the valley despair.  You can’t have the one without the other. 

Who is Jesus? Both of these. We see him revealed in the limitlessness of the inexplicable mystery and wonder on top of the mountain AND in the heartbreaking barriers of impossibility below. Both are where Jesus is, and both are part of the disciples’ experience of following him. 
 
Jesus says to the boy’s dad, “How long has he been like this?” And he invites the father to tell his story of pain, to speak of the affliction his son has experienced his whole life. How long have you suffered? And Jesus listens and receives him. Then he heals the boy, and blesses the father, and calls the disciples again to follow.
 
The voice on the mountain said, This is my son, the beloved, the embodiment of my love, listen to him. The same voice said at his baptism, This is my son the beloved, in whom I delight. Then immediately Jesus was sent into the wilderness where he was tempted to use his power to protect and save himself, tempted to get the recognition he deserves. Hungry, tired, weak and emotionally spent, he was tempted to claim and stay in the glory. But instead, he chose to claim and dwell in his humanity and weakness. And there is where God’s angels were able to minister to him, and restore his strength. And he was sent to minister from that place of being met by God in his weakness and need. 
 
Why can’t we just live up on the mountain in touch with the transcendence all the time? Peter thought, What else matters when there is this? 
 
And yet, there is also that. And Jesus came for that, not for this. Jesus came for the broken children and the anguished fathers and the temptations we all face. 
We swing between the mountains and the valleys, the transcendent glimpses that there is something more, tastes of joy or terror, moments where we feel absolutely alert and awake to the deeper, where words don’t make sense and can’t contain it, and the complications, temptations, stuckness, brokenness, sorrow, desperation, impossibility.
 
The world the needs redeeming; we need ministering to. And while the inexplicable glimpses of glory feed us, God’s redemption ultimately doesn’t come through these mysterious, unexplainable moments of transcendence.  It comes through the transcendent one taking on our humanity and letting what breaks us break him too. It comes when Jesus dies, just like every one of us and all those we have loved and will love will die. It comes when Jesus goes through death and comes out the other side and death no longer has the power to define or determine reality, and the glory and the brokenness come together in the person of the risen Christ.  
 
And so much of life is lived not even purely on the mountains or in the valleys or even in the wild swings between, but in the midst, the both/and – where in the midst of the sorrow we have a flash of joy, in the midst of the tension, a feeling of letting go, in the midst of fear, a moment of trust and absolute love. And very often we don’t have words for these glimpses of glory; they are not experiences that make clear, logical sense.
 
So we are asked to live in the paradox. Always. In the tension and the honesty of it –that the complications and temptations and divisions and weakness are real and they feel insurmountable. But also that we are held in a reality that transcends all the limits and boundaries of this world and calls us to something deeper, and wider, and eternal, that holds us all together in love. Both are true at the same time. Just like Jesus was both fully God and fully human. 
 
We exist inside the constraints of this world in all our messy, broken, impossible situations, but also inside a bigger story of love so powerful it transcends all limits of space and time. We live in the paradox of the piercing division in our families, communities and country, and also connection and belonging so deep we are joined not only with those around us but also with those gone before and those to come.
  
Our faith exists in tension, the paradox that runs deeper than logic.  
So we watch for the glimpses of beyond while we live utterly here.
 
Can we entrust ourselves to the one who embodies absolute love and walks this earth as the great paradox of God’s unlimited otherness and also persistent nearness?  The father of the boy trapped in seizures says it best, I believe, help my unbelief. I trust, help my untrusting heart. 
 
Jesus will soon say again to Peter, James and John, “Come with me” and they’ll follow him to the garden, where he will pray with so much fear and intensity that he sweats blood, begging God not to have to face death. I can’t help but think these three needed thismoment to get them through that moment.  But maybe so did Jesus.  Unspeakable glory and wonder exist alongside unspeakable horror and suffering.  Jesus takes on our horror to bring us into his glory.
 
There is one command in this text: Listen to him. Listen to Jesus. And sure, you could go back and read the things in the bible that he said and let those in. That would be a lovely way to listen to him.  See who Jesus is, what he says, what he does, let that speak to you. 
 
But also, just listen. Maybe we can cultivate a posture of openness to Jesus. In his humanity, in his divinity, in his risenness and presence with us even now. 
 
Jesus, help us listen to you.  

You who were tempted and afraid, who cried and died, you who sits at the right hand of God far above all powers, through whom the whole earth had its life spoken into being. You who listen and receive the whole of us and our stories when you set us free and bring us healing. 
 
We’re tired, Jesus. We’re despairing. We’re divided and in pain. We’re struggling. Some of us are sick. Some of us are angry. Some of us are lost, or hopeless, or afraid.  
 
Help us listen to you. We want to see you and what you are doing. We want to live guided by your love—nothing less, nothing else. 
 
So help us to follow you where you lead, and seek you where dwell – right alongside one another in our weakness and our need – where you minister to us as we minister to each other. There is the way, the truth and the life, there you are.  

And from time to time, to help us through the valleys, please give us the mountaintop moments of mystery and wonder too. Thank you.  

Amen.

The Context of Our Lives

Ephesians 1:15-23

This is a hard week, friends -- Thanksgiving without most of what we think of Thanksgiving as being, in the midst of a frightening surge of covid and tightening of restrictions. More loss. More hard conversations. More boundary-setting. More disappointment. More loneliness. More grief. More frustration.  More unknown.  

We are weary. That weariness is real and everyone is feeling it. Nobody is doing fine.  None of us is feeling great.
 
But when we we come together, like this, over zoom, when the body of Christ gathers, we are putting ourselves in back in context.  We are again being whose and who we are.  We are placing ourselves to receive the blessings God always has for us. 
 
We come here with our hearts open – our broken hearts and our weary hearts and our grateful hearts and our determined hearts—and the prayers of those gone before are prayed over us even now.  In the timelessness of God, Paul and all the saints, including those we’ve personally known and loved and let go from this life, are gathered here with us, and they’re rooting for us, just as we are rooting for each other and longing that each other be well.  We are part of this community of saints that bridges time and space, transcends continents and centuries, and we’re all in this together.  This is hard to fathom, but it's true.
 
So imagine, dear ones, that Saint Paul has us in mind, that he is even now, face to face with the Divine, thanking God for us, and praying for us that we might recognize God at work, see who God is and what God is up to in this world.  I know about you, dear sisters and brothers gathering as Lake Nokomis Church. I’ve seen your trust that Jesus is right here with you as you are with and for each other, the way you seek to live in love and courage, and I celebrate you and never stop thanking God for you. 
 
And he’s asking God to open the eyes of our hearts to know without a doubt the hope to which God has called us, that we could see and know what is a truly good life, deep and sure, despite any circumstances or struggles, that we might recognize and receive the boundless love and abundant life right here in front of us. 
 
I want to know that hope, I want to see God right here in the world and feel the gift of my life. I want to receive that life however it comes to me, and especially when things feel hard, when grief and gratitude are right here side by side in us like they are right now and will be throughout this week and the holiday season.  
 
Paul says that God’s power, beyond our comprehension or ability to measure is here for us who trust God. I don’t know what that means, to be honest, my heart and head can’t begin to take that in.  I don’t believe it means we get out of pain or escape our mortality, since God chose not to avoid the limitations and discomfort of being human but to come right into it with us.  But he says that the power of God, power beyond measure is available to us right here, in the midst of everything we might be facing right now.  It's this power that helps us to trust.

This power that raised Jesus from the dead, this power that assures us that beyond any president or dictator or regime, greater than any virus or crisis, is the One who was there when the world was spoken into being, who came in vulnerable weakness to share with us every single thing we endure on this earth as human beings, all the senseless suffering and also every breathless moment of joy too great for words to express, who died our death and took death and separation into the heart of God, where it was healed so that even death itself is not to be feared.  This is the power that holds us. This is the love that claims us.  This is the reality in which we belong.  This is the context of our lives.

And just to help the point hit home, Paul goes at great lengths to say that this One who embodies our complete belonging to God reigns, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. There is simply no one and nothing greater.

And then he says that we are Christ’s body, we are the fullness of him who fills all in all. You and I, us!, in our little lives, our ordinary bumbling lives, together, side by side, suffering and laughing with one another, determined to see God in the world, committed to joining Christ in loving the world: the fullness of the one who cannot be contained lives in us.

So you guys, I know we are going to get through this. This part, and the part that comes after. We are going to get through it. We will let ourselves feel it – both the grief and the gratitude, we will let it break our hearts open so we can embrace more of this life that is so generously given to us. We wont be afraid to celebrate, and we wont be afraid to mourn, and we’ll even be so bold as to do both at once when the situation calls for it, as it seems to right now. 

And we won’t just get through - because God will use even this, this extraordinary, unfathomable muddle of year, to bring us deeper into hope, wider into love, to bring healing and hope into this world that needs it so badly. God will use these experiences in this time to open our hearts to see the big picture that we are made for and called to, to help us welcome this ridiculous, bighearted, painful and glorious life that we are given to share with each other in this the world.  

Wisdom, revelation, fullness, hope… I receive that prayer, brother Paul! I welcome that blessing!

the day of not

Daily Devotion - April 11

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays) while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

HOLY SATURDAY

Today is Holy Saturday. Other traditions do better with this day than ours - we kind of act like it's a day to shop and prep for Easter. We are not sure what to do with a dramatic pause in the action, so we fill it up.  But Holy Saturday is a sacred, strange, pause of a day.

Jesus is dead. All hope has died with him. All his disciples believed in, all they gave up for him, all they were trusting would come to pass - it's done.  The revolution is over, it all came to naught.

If we want to get theological about it, we might say today that God is dead. The Son has died. The Spirit that is the energy of the Father to the Son ceases to exist without the Son. The Father cannot be the Father without the Son. The Trinity is shattered. Death has penetrated the heart of God.

But whether you want to get that deep or not, Holy Saturday is for when the story has ENDED and nothing new has begun. It's a vacuum, a hole, a day of emptiness.

We have a unique opportunity this year, like none we have ever had or may ever have again, to really sink into Holy Saturday.
Let's see what God might do with us today.


THE DAY AFTER THE WORST DAY  

"It is finished."

It simply does not get worse than yesterday.
The world has ended.

And then there was evening and there was morning.
The second day. 
Today is the day after the worst day of all.

Yesterday happened.
We are stripped of illusions now.
We have stared evil in the eyes,
and it has won.
It's ok to lay down and
curl in on yourself
for a little while.
It's ok not to be vigilant today.

Today is the day
of not knowing and not doing.
It's ok not to know.
It's ok to just be.

This is a day for silent shock and hushed sorrow.
It's a day for heaviness, and slowness,
and not talking too much, or too loudly.
This is a day to tread tenderly on the earth,
to respect the pain that each one bears,
to be gentle with yourself,
and cautious with each other.
To eat simply and sleep hungrily,
and leave the lights and your shoes off.

It's a day to stop
reacting and acting,
and let the shock sink
into our bones,
stores shuttered, freeways empty,
death running rampant,
the people
entombed at home.

Did you know, that
between
the Friday and the Sunday
came a Sabbath day?

The greatest drama
of all creation and eternity
pauses
for the day of remembering
God is God and we are not,
in a most inconvenient
and even ironic,
place
in the story.

It stops
at the absence of God
from the earth;
the death of it all;
the day after the worst day.

And it stays here a bit.
Sometimes sabbath is for keening.

After the worst day of all
comes
the day of nothing left to lose.

So rest
in the gaping hole of today.
It's ok to pause here; (God did).
It cannot swallow you whole.
It's ok to stop
and not look ahead.


(Kara Root)


CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps, tonight before we go to bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we might pause, reflect, and pray in this way, and so join our hearts:

Set a timer, and sit, silent and still, for three minutes.
Amen.

Liturgies of Life and Death

“IN LIFE AND IN DEATH, WE BELONG TO GOD…” 

We are called to share life with each other, so on a Wednesday evening a few weeks ago and one year and three days after we laid hands on Marty and commissioned him to a ministry of dying, we anointed Marty once again, and told him his baptism will soon be complete. 

The sanctuary gradually filled up with church members, Marty’s family and his “bar friends,” most of whom sat together on one side of the sanctuary, like it was a wedding. I told the crowd we were here to tell stories, to celebrate Marty’s life and assert our presence with him as he moved closer to his death, and to affirm that in life and in death, he belongs to God.

And then service opened with his favorite song, What a wonderful world, and as our musician sang out in a clear, sweet voice, I felt the lump in my chest work its way up to my face and I began to cry. I looked at the rows of bar friends across from me also crying - these strangers, church members and me, this whole room full of people, brought together by our love for Marty and our fear that we were maybe not going to make it through this thing.  

But I’ve learned that something incredible happens in these experiences of confronting life and death and sticking with the discomfort. It’s excruciating, but it only lasts a moment. Once we go through the death moment together we come out the other side a little bit invincible, a little bit able to face whatever all this is with joy and gratitude and sadness and love and most astounding of all, without fear.  

So we all stuck with it and stayed put, crying into our kleenex and not leaving.  And just as it has each time in a moment like this (like in Joanne’s service years ago), we made it through to the other side.

I rose to walked to the podium. I pointed out table near the door with the pile of markers and signs that said, “Marty is…” and the clothesline strung across the front of the sanctuary, reaching from one side of the room to the other, and I said,  “As Marty prepares to join the cloud of witnesses, we here today get to witness to him his impact on our lives.  Each one of us who wishes to share, will take turns holding up our sign and answering the question, “Marty is…” and then sharing whatever story or memory of Marty that we wish.”

And I went first, “Marty is… surprising.” I told people one of my favorite moments of the whole year was hearing Marty’s life story, and then I invited people to raise their hands if they had: Scuba-dived the wrecks in the Great Lakes? Been a well-known astrologer? Been Buddhist? (I got a couple hands there), Wikkin?  Been a private detective?  Trained as an acupuncturist?  Lived for a couple of years in Columbia? Every time, Marty’s hand went up, and I watched people laugh in delight as this man we all love claimed his wild and wonderful life, his mystery and hidden depth, before our eyes. 

Then, person after person stood and came to the center and shared.  And I watched his bar friends, some of whom were decidedly not church people, and his church friends, some of whom were decidedly not bar people, bound together in our love for Marty, opened up in our view of him, deepened in our gratitude for him, and witnessing to the incredible impact of a single life that ripples through us and beyond. 

Marty is… Kind. Brave. Gentle. A gift. A friend. Hopeful. Loving. Welcoming. 

Children shared. Friends from kindergarten shared. People who hadn't planned to share shared.  We glimpsed into seasons of his life before many of us knew him - Marty the hippy, Marty the one they were sure was an FBI agent, Marty who loves espresso martinis and holds the bartender accountable to making a good one.  Marty who told me long ago that he believes we are here to take care of each other, and who is teaching us in this moment how to do that by letting us take care of him. 

                 

I preached to this group, but mostly to Marty. A short message. 

Do not be afraid. 

Life and love are where you come from and they are where you are going. 

We will walk with you to the point where you go on alone.  And you go on with Christ.  

You have shaped us all so much; our lives, our world, has forever been altered by your presence.  

You have embodied your life message well.  

We love you.  

And we gathered around him - those of us who are praying people - and laid our hands on him and prayed for him.  And then we all left the sanctuary and filled the Gathering Room where Marty’s favorite foods awaited us: Lasagna, salad, garlic bread from Buca, with dozens of cherry pies and apple cobblers made by friends lining the counter.  

The room was filled with laughter and ease, warmth and care, gentle conversation surrounding us all like music.  Many of Marty's friends came up to me to thank me and to tell me they were pondering other stories, or they had ideas for ways to bless him, or they were so thankful for this special evening.  The subtext of it all was, We are his people and we’re in this together now.

The days are getting harder. Moments are more frightening, more poignant, more sad, more awake. 

And still, he said to me this week, "I said I would share it with you, and I intend to keep my promise."

And we said we'd walk this road with you, Marty, and we intend to keep our promise too.

Thank you for letting us share this journey with you, Marty.

Thank you.

The Lord is Come! (Aka, God's non-compliance)

To use this as a take-home service for Christmas Day, follow the red.

Isaiah 9:2-7 

Luke 2:1-20, Matthew 1:18-25

John 1:1-5

I have a stupid tree this year. It looked so great at the lot, the guy held it up and it was glorious and full, the perfect tree. We debated between two, and finally chose this one for being even more perfect than the other one.

But we got it home, and it turns out it doesn’t sit right in the tree stand. It has this thick branch too low down but hacking it off would leave a huge bald spot on the bottom so we left it on. And it was too tall, so we had to saw off the tip of the top with a meat knife and jam the star on the sticky, prickly nubs.  The lights just didn’t go on well; they are clumped in some parts and missing in others, and a few days after its arrival it became the setting of an epic stuffed animal battle so there are bent branches and still the occasional stuffed dog or hamster forgotten deep in the branches. But even if all these things were fixed, it turns out that the trunk itself has a weird bend in it, so it leans dramatically to the side no matter how much time we spend rearranging it, and we’ve spent far too much time rearranging it.

Usually this time of year I love getting up in the early morning and turning on the tree. I will sit by the fireplace, the room lit by the tree’s soft glow, and feel peaceful and hopeful.  This year I wake up and sit with my coffee glaring at this belligerent mess, brazenly slouching against my wall like it’s trying to pick a fight. I wanted to love this tree, even ironically, but I can’t muster anything but irritation for it.  It is not cooperating with my plans.

Apparently I expect Christmas to make me feel cozy, sentimental and serene. But to be honest, I’m not sure Christmas can take the pressure this year. And my tree leans defiantly in my constant sightline as an irksome reminder that things are not quite right.

Today people are going to sit around not quite perfect trees, eating not quite perfect food, opening not quite perfect gifts, having not quite perfect conversations.  And between the joyful moments of laughter and connection, for lots of reasons, lots of people will also be feeling mixed up, anxious, and sad, and then they’ll chide themselves for not being in “the Christmas spirit,” even though the weather isn’t really in the Christmas spirit either.

Christmas is not cooperating with our plans for it.

But guess what? Neither does the first Christmas, actually. 

And neither does God, almost never, in fact.

So let’s step out of a shallow dependence on holiday cheer, and into a different story, one that has very little to do with a jolly version of Christmas contentment -  God’s story of deep darkness pierced by unquenchable light, of expectations thwarted and salvation glimpsed, of love born into in a tense and weary world.

Read Isaiah 9:2-7 

Read "When the World was Dark"

Write on a bit of paper, Where do I want God to come in?  Collect and set aside.

(Read Luke 1:26-38)

We all belong to God, and we all belong to each other. This isn’t trite and shallow: a plea to “just be nice,” or a campaign slogan lying in a muddy puddle under people’s departing feet.

It is the very lifeblood of it all. 

And it looks like this: Mary, Don’t be afraid; You belong to God.  So does the whole world and everyone in it.  Because this is so, God is coming to share life with us, to set us free from everything that tells us otherwise.  And you, Mary, are going to be part of this.  Don’t worry about how it will happen; it will break every rule, because God loves to do impossible things. And because belonging to God means we belong to each other, you wont be alone  - even now, in fact, your impossibly old and undeniably pregnant relative is part of this too.

(Read Matthew 1:18-25)

And then there is Regular Joseph with his regular life, comfortably stretched out before him, predictable and planned, now suddenly shattered.  She is not mine after all, and I am not to be hers. Dear, brokenhearted Joseph, resolving to quietly, in the least harmful way, sever ties, pick up the pieces and start over. 

Don’t be afraid, Joseph. Don’t be afraid to belong to her. God is coming share life with us, to set us free from everything that divides us from God and each other. And you, Joseph, are going to be part of this. God will come as a helpless baby in need of belonging, and you are to love him as your own son.

(Read Luke 2:1-7)

A hugely pregnant Mary and a stressed out, worried Joseph make the trek to Bethlehem, one little, inconsequential family among the masses, traveling under orders of a powerful empire that dominates the people’s lives.  But when God’s celestial army assembles, instead of wiping out the oppressive enemy in the blink of an eye, it forms a giant choir, and belts out God’s persistent, undermining promise of peace on the whole earth to all who belong to God and each other, into the stunned and terrified faces of simple shepherds in a nowhere place. Don’t be afraid, the angels will joyfully holler. You are going to be part of this too! Go and see!

God doesn’t play by the same rules as you and I do. The world wants strength; God comes in weakness. The world values status and power, God chooses the ordinary and unnoticed.  The world praises shiny and slick, God prefers broken and real.  God chose to come in scandal and shame instead of honor and admiration.

Nobody in the Christmas story got to keep their armor. Their illusions about where their strength or purpose or value or identity come from have to die, because really belonging to each other means that all that separates me from God and from others has to die in me. It means all that buries my true self and yours, all that makes me feel like I have to earn my esteem or defend my worth, and all my reliance on things in the world to guarantee me security and stability, that dies.  It all gets taken away to make way for the real. Zechariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, Magi, all of them get reduced to their simple humanity before they are brought into the Kingdom of God with the words, Now Don’t be afraid!

(Read Luke 2:8-20)

A different story is unfolding, even now, within and through your life, this life, this world. In this reality, everything seems upside down; shepherds become preachers and virgins are mothers, and in a dark and smelly stable, with no doctor or place for them in the inn, the God of the universe lays aside invincibility to be born as a defenseless human baby.

  

The Kingdom of God is here, grown up Jesus will later say, It’s right here. Among us, within us, between us. Hidden and backwards, it comes in weakness, asking us to let go of all that we use to protect ourselves from our most basic humanity and divide us from each other. God’s Kingdom is seen when we step out of our strength and stand with someone else in their brokenness. When we name our own brokenness and need and let someone stand with us. That’s where Jesus already is, already has been, always will be. That’s where we can feel that primal and permanent belonging, to God and to each other, that we were made for and are returning to.

Sometimes we call it love.  And nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Darkness is real, but Love is the deepest reality and the final word.

(Take out the papers you wrote at the beginning. Read them one at a time, For each one, say, "God is with us in this."  Or, "Into ______ God has come.  Response: God is with us.")

Right into the very mess of it, God comes. 

Into a tense and weary world braced for worse, God comes, thwarting expectations and upsetting plans, threatening power with undermining peace, and piercing the darkness with unquenchable light. 

This is the story you belong to. 

Now, don’t be afraid.

Amen.