Our Needs and God’s Desires

December 20, 2009
Micah 5:2-51; Luke 1:39-55
Let’s hear some good news for a change! Oh, to be sure, the news of these days continues to be mostly bleak: wars rage; politicians argue; major issues loom undecided and seemingly undecideable.
But let’s hear some good news!
Maybe it’s the time of year, but I’ve been attuned to good news this past week. Did you hear the story of the 83-year-old woman who, just a few weeks ago, took her first solo flight after having decided, at age 80, that she wanted to take up something to keep her mind active. Some folks choose cross-word puzzles; she decided to learn to fly. Nothing particularly profound in that story, but simply joy is always worth sharing.
Or did you see, from the other end of life and far more profound, the story in the Post on Thursday morning about the 20-year-old woman who just found the two people who, when they were high school kids, had found her, a 12-hour-old baby abandoned on a suburban stoop? The kids – now in their mid 30s – had never forgotten that moment, and long wondered what had become of the baby. They were both overjoyed to hear from her after all these years, and are planning a reunion which the man called, “the best Christmas present” he’s ever received.
It’s always nice to hear a bit of good news.
So listen for a word from God in this news that is so good it moves a young girl in decidedly difficult circumstances to sing praises to her God:

“In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord."
And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

Mary’s soul cries out to God who is doing great things in her!
I love the readings for this morning. We are reminded in Micah and in Luke that God chooses what is lowly to make manifest what is great; God chooses what is weak to incarnate what is most powerful; God chooses the least of these to share the best of news.
Through Micah, God says, “I’m going to work through one of the little clans, one of the unimportant backwaters of the empire, to speak a word of liberation.” Through Mary, God says, “I’m going to work through a poor, unmarried teenage mother from the suburbs of Jerusalem, to bring good news to the poor of the entire earth.”
And, of course, the story doesn’t end there. Jesus chooses the most ragtag group of disciples upon which to build a movement of good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, liberation to the captives. Then God chooses Paul, the young movement’s harshest critic, to become its greatest apostle.
But the story doesn’t end there, either. Think of those whom God has called to bring good news to the poor, the marginalized, the outcast of history: a rather funny looking little Indian man to liberate his people and bring down an empire; an African-American preacher to bring down a century of Jim Crow laws and turn a nation’s self-image upside down; a middle-aged camera store owner to lead a movement the opened the nation’s closets and set a people free.
And all of these folks – back to Micah and Mary and Paul and on through Gandhi and King and Milk – are just the famous ones; the ones whose names are known. For each of them, there are millions who labored and who labor on in obscurity.
Maybe they are a pair of teen-aged friends who find a baby and figure out what to do to give an abandoned child a chance at life. Maybe it’s simply being able to find new life and new purpose as you age. Maybe it’s being a faithful member of a community such as ours and working to feed the hungry, house the homeless, liberate the captives, end the wars, empower the powerless, proclaim good news to the poor, and preach the good news that God so loves the world as to address and embrace it on our own level – if not on our own terms.
And that, in and of itself, is the good news! God does not address us on our own terms, because our terms are terms of distance when God desires intimacy, disbelief when God desires trust, disobedience when God desires discipleship. Moreover, we operate on patterns of domination where God desires cooperation, hierarchy where God desires relationship, and empire where God desires community.
It is clearly good news that God so loves us as to gather us in as a mother hen does her chicks, and it is just as clearly great good news that God does not offer us our own terms but rather challenges us – through the manger and the cross – to embrace new terms.
As Peg suggested so powerfully last Sunday, Christ confronts us on terms that are not always the most comfortable for us: the beggar at the door, the drug addict in the family, the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and abandoned on a stoop, the unemployed teenager on the street corner who might just be a savior.
And Christ calls us to respond. If we have two coats, then give one away. If we have more than enough food, then feed those who are hungry. If we stumble up someone in need, don’t turn away – turn to help. If we have more money than we need, share it with those who do not have all that they need.
In this season, in particular, separating out what we need from what we desire is profoundly difficult. Or, not so much. I was Christmas shopping last week over at Potomac Yard. There’s a Porsche dealer on the corner of Glebe and Rt. 1. Every time I sit at that light I ask myself, “Now, do I need the red one or do I need the black one?”
Confusing or conflating need and desire leads us into strange places – like the kid who ate his homework because the teacher told him that he needed to do the work and, anyway, it was a piece of cake.
I really do not need most of the things that have ever been on my Christmas lists. I know this because my life is rich and full already, and I don’t have many of the things on my list. Food, clothing and shelter are not on the list, unless you include chocolate, cashmere, and a beach house.
The story that touches us in this season – the manger, the young couple, the unexpected baby – this story knows the difference between need and desire, and the story reveals what we really need.
Of course the wise men get it all wrong. We do not need the gold – and we don’t even know what frankincense and myrrh are.
God confounds the wisdom of the world with this good news. And through this good news God’s desires are revealed as our deepest needs. Intimacy, trust, discipleship. Cooperation, relationship, community. God’s desires. Our needs.
What we need, beyond food, clothing and shelter, is connection and meaning. We need to be loved just as we need to be fed. We need to be loved just as we need to be sheltered. We need to be loved just as we need to be protected from the wind and the rain. And we need to love just as we need to breathe. That fundamental human need – love – is at the heart of all that God desires.
Mary understood, far beyond her years, that such love can turn the world around. She heard, with her heart if not her ears, good news in this unexpected pregnancy. She trusted, beyond her fears, that such love could be for her because it is not the exclusive property of those who possess the world’s treasure and think that thus their needs are met.
Mary’s song underscores the difference between needs and desires, and in her life they meet. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in her singular desire to magnify the Lord. In her desire, our needs are met.
That is the gift that awaits us and for which we are always preparing in our Advent lives. The question of Advent is really quite simple, then: When you meet the Christ child – on a stoop, at the manger – will you open your heart?
Amen.

The Message

December 13, 2009
The Rev. Peg True
Zephaniah 3:14-20; Luke 3:7-18; (Luke 1:1-24)
We just heard and saw the story of John’s birth, and what fits this season better than such a new beginning? Today we will consider the story of John, known to us as John the Baptist, who was born a special child. An angel predicted his birth to a mother beyond child bearing age. Sound familiar? The same was true of Isaac born to Sarah and Abraham centuries before. So we know John was chosen from the start.
He was six months older than his cousin, Jesus, and his mother, Elizabeth, was the relative that Mary searched out when she found she was pregnant as a young teenager. So the lives of John and Jesus were intertwined from the beginning.
We don’t hear about John again until he is a man living in the wilderness. Then he is called to preach. And he did – preach. He knew how to get people’s attention. Listen to Luke Ch.3:7-18:
John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?’” He said to them, ”Do not extort money from anyone by threats, and be satisfied with your wages.”
As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
So with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.
John the Baptist preached good news to the people – a gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins – in preparation for the Messiah, the one who was and is and is to come. It is like the message of Zephaniah that we heard, a message of salvation and joy, of a time when every evil will be abolished and God’s righteousness will be established. He talks about what happens when we truly live life with God here among us, with us, in us, a time of great peace - even if he began by calling the crowd a brood of vipers!
John’s message was one that was direct and simple – what you have been no longer matters. It’s what you are from now on that counts. It does not matter if you have been a solid person, a child of Abraham – your past goodness will not save you now. It does not matter if you have been a scoundrel – your past sinfulness will not bar you from salvation now. Actions tell who are people of God not bloodlines – children of Abraham are not automatically included – others not automatically excluded.
Repent now you who are both good and bad – and receive the harvest of God. Repent – turn around – refocus, reorient your life, acknowledging God’s goodness and your need – and the salvation of the Holy Spirit will be yours.
This kind of message always stirs people up – all but the hardest of heart – but then we are left with the question, like those who listened to John, we ask, “What then shall we do?” There is nothing to grasp, nothing to do with the phrase - repent and turn around. We can look inward and decide what we need to change but that is only half of turning around – actions are the other half.
Last week when David was talking about turning our lives around I immediately personalized looking inward, the first part of repentance, to my Niece. As some of you know Maria died the end of October, probably from drugs – the autopsy results aren’t back yet. She was 42, an adopted child whose birth mother was an alcoholic. Maria had Fetal Alcohol Effect, meaning she never understood the possible effects of her decisions. Cause and effect just weren’t there. She was influenced by drugs for over 20 years and managed to leave them behind twice – turned her life around. Both times were in extensive rehab programs. I don’t believe she ever really felt God’s presence in her life, or if so, it was brief – she could not maintain the actions necessary to really turn herself around. That’s what all our lives are like – except we don’t so obviously harm ourselves and others – As we work again and again to turn ourselves around we know we have God among us as we try to sustain our efforts to do as John asks.
John’s ethical injunctions to the crowd are notable in their modesty and their clarity – share what you have – play fair in your dealings with others – and don’t use your power unjustly. It is interesting that tax collectors, who were sinners by definition, and soldiers who were almost all gentiles were included as ones who could respond to the Gospel with true repentance, and change their lives in accord with their salvation. Everyone was included in John’s challenge.
But however modest John’s suggestions are – they certainly are not easy – sharing what we have with those who have nothing is not just doling out some money now and then. It means living simply enough, one coat instead of two, so that those who have none will be covered. Do you have two coats? Who here does not?
It’s hard to keep standards of simplicity in a society which considers number and quality of possessions a primary indictor of success. It’s hard to be aware that there is need around us and keep life simple as we make shopping lists, look online and in the mall for the latest and best to bestow on our friends and relatives. We are now deep into the bustle and rush of Christmas 2009, won’t writing a check be enough? Apparently not – it must be a lifelong commitment.
It is also hard to play fair, not cheat when we get a chance – especially if we won’t get caught. This is not just money but words, painting ourselves just a little better than we are – claiming a little more for ourselves than is our due. We’ve seen two extreme national examples of publicity seeking going to extremes this fall – the balloon incident in Co and the State Dinner crashing several weeks ago. It’s hard to be content with what we have – to be fair in our dealings with others – even when people aren’t watching – to help others get their fair share even if it means giving up the lion’s share for ourselves. It is difficult to give up our pride and power and, under God, to hold ourselves equal with our sisters and brothers – equal in our salvation. But this is what the message of the gospel is all about.
I had the equality of all brought home to me by a scruffy man who rang the doorbell early one Sunday morning at my church in downtown Baltimore. There were a lot of street people in that part of the city. It was a man who said he’d just gotten out of the hospital two blocks away and was diabetic and needed money for insulin. He showed me his card and prescriptions. My first inclination was to say no – but then I thought – what if he was telling the truth and my actions put him back in the hospital or worse. So I told him I’d walk to the drug store with him and buy him insulin if his card was legitimate. We walked down the street together and when we got to the Drug Store the druggist knew him and gave him insulin, I bought it. I learned that morning that that ragged man was equal to me in the sight of God – he helped me realize that I could do God’s work but must fight against society’s stigma of other people and my own erroneous perceptions.
The coming of Jesus means we are called to change out lives – John – that wild man from the wilderness who was reported to wear a camel hair coat and eat honey and locusts, asked those who came to hear him to play fair, take no more than is ones due, give to those without and begin today. This challenges the standards of the world. William Sloane Coffin says in all in two sentences, “We don’t have to be ‘successful,’ only valuable. We don’t have to make money, only a difference, and particularly in the lives society counts least and puts last.”
We are involved with AFAC, helping feed some people that society puts last. When food is given to those who are hungry all sorts of questions arise, questions that are insulting and degrading – Are they really hungry? Are they truly in need? Are they legal? Do they deserve our care? Are they lazy? In the standard of the gospel giving is the thing and hunger is its own justification. It is the standard of the world that judges those who are poor, homeless, hungry or sick.
Honesty and fairness - sharing and kindness, love and justice when lived out daily, challenge the principalities and power of the world – and they may react with anger and oppression and violence.
John was shut up in prison by Herod and later beheaded – an ominous precursor of Jesus’ fate. Goodness is always opposed by evil – and the good news is always met with ridicule or hostility in the world and even in ourselves. What then shall we do?
When we do as we are called we cannot expect reward in the world – but a life of goodness is its own reward – for it reflects the glory of the one who came to be with us, among us and in us. This is our challenge for Advent as we wait and make ready – this is the challenge of our lives – God walking with us as we turn around.
May it be so. Amen

Prepare the Way

Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 3:1-6
December 9
We all know this passage – prepare the way! We are all familiar with the phrases from Isaiah that Luke quotes here: “make the way straight, every valley will be exalted, make the way smooth.” Prepare the way.
So I want to ask this morning, what “way” do we mean? Which way?
It would be easy, timely, and even quite defensible to preach this morning about the way of nonviolence as we prepare to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, the nonviolent Jesus.
But such a gesture strikes me this morning as, in fact, too easy, and if there is one thing that we should be quite clear about it is this: the way of Jesus is not easy – ever. Even as we prepare ourselves to travel again to the manger, we must know that the way of Jesus is, ultimately, the way of the cross. Thus the way of Jesus is a way of transformation.
So if we are, these days, to be about the business of preparing the way of the Lord, then we are to be about preparing a way of transformation – of our lives and of the life of the world.
This, then, is no simple matter. It is not gumdrops and tinsel and packages, boxes and bows, no matter how much we might try to domesticate it and subsume it to market ideology or consumer culture.
Rather, this is, as Bonhoeffer knew, about the great turning around of all things. Bonhoeffer knew that there are two places that the mighty and powerful fear to go: to the manger and to the cross. As we prepare the way of the Lord, we are preparing ourselves to go directly into the midst of those places that the mighty and powerful fear to go.
I am neither particularly brave nor particularly risk averse – an odd and perhaps contradictory combination. So as I considered the places that I fear to go I thought first of places that I don’t particularly fear – caves, the tops of tall buildings, planes, the Beltway at rush hour, the woods, youth group road trips, roller coasters, zip lines, climbing walls, whitewater.
None of that strikes me as particularly brave – with the possible exception of youth group trips. The rest of it falls in the category of things I will do for fun.
But when I consider the places I do fear to go, well an interesting list quickly arises: jail cells; hospital rooms; sites of familial confrontations.
Like the manger and the cross, the places I fear to tread all have something to do with a fundamental fear of going too deep.
Sure, there is a certain innate unpleasantness to each of these places. For example, I simply do not like the smell of hospitals. Jail cells are not much better, and there is the threat to freedom that comes along with them as well. And, who, really, walks willingly into family confrontations?
But there is something deeper at stake in the fear of going into such places, and it is the same thing that is at stake at the manger and at the cross.
Hospital rooms are places of transformation. They may be places of great healing, but they are first and foremost, places of sickness and the fear that comes along with serious illness or injury. Jail cells are also places of transformation, and while there may be some hope of redemption in their midst, they are primarily places of the fear that comes with surrendering freedom and control. Family conflict? Again, they are sites of transformation – or, at least, of the possibility of transformation, and the fear that comes with emotional vulnerability.
As I considered my own list of places I fear to tread, I recognized quickly that what they hold in common is the possibility of transformation – and, more pointedly, transformations that I do not control.
That is what we open ourselves up to when we gather at the manger, or the cross.
When we go into the places where we fear to tread, and when we look within ourselves to find what it is that we are so afraid of, then we have begun to prepare the way of transformation.
These are places and moments of stepping into the refiner’s fire, of submitting to the harsh cleansing of the fuller. They are not easy, not comfortable, and most of the time we do our best to avoid them.
I have limited experience with jail cells, though I have been on both sides of the door, as it were. About 10 years ago, I found myself serving, for several months, as the designated spiritual advisor to a man who had committed a rampage killing, gunning down five people.
Sitting with this man, listening to his story, was a strange and fascinating experience that culminated for me when one of our final visits was actually face to face without the intervening glass and with no one else in the room with us. I was talking with him that afternoon – and I can vividly recall looking beyond him into the common room of the wing he was housed in and making sure that the guard there could see us through the window. As I was listening to him talk about jail life, his upcoming trial, his parents and his psychiatrists, I was struck by the ordinariness of his story, by the many touchstones of commonality between us – Presbyterian kids, raised in suburban households, college and grad-school educations. There but for fortune – in this case, paranoid schizophrenia and hallucinations and resistance to medications, among other things – there but for fortune could go you or me.
Coming face to face with that realization drives one to one’s knees in gratitude, and in repentance. For, as Bonhoeffer recognized, there is something about drawing close to the manger that brings us to the realization that God loves our worst enemies – and also those among us who do the most awful things – just as much as God loves us.
Therefore, we are called to extend mercy far beyond what is comfortable or acceptable or reasonable or safe, because we are called to come face to face with ourselves, and to recognize that which is of God in every other one we encounter – even the mass murderer who may, for a while, occupy the same room with you, or, even the same pew with you. For this is the way of Jesus – and such is the way we are called to prepare. No one ever said that the way would be easy; and no one ever promised that work of preparation would be welcomed with open arms and garlands and huzzas.
I was the on-call chaplain at the hospital about this time of year – Advent – a dozen years or so back. I was paged to surgical ICU, and told at the nurses’ station that a post-operative heart patient had coded and was not going to survive. Her family – husband and three grown sons – were in that little room where they send you when they think they are probably going to have to deliver bad news.
I knocked on the door. When it opened I introduced myself as the chaplain, and one of the sons immediately said, “we don’t need no stinkin’ chaplain.”
I’m sure that dozens of come-back lines ran through my mind; fortunately I said simply, “if you change your mind, I’ll be right outside.”
A moment later, the father came out, made the unnecessary apology and asked me to join them. We talked for a while and prayed together. They were Pentecostals, so the praying was quite an experience for a decent, orderly Presbyterian.
It turned out that the son who did not need a chaplain, was a Desert Storm vet with, well, a lot of anger-management issues, and he was taking out the anger stage of grieving on a poor nurse who happened to be in the room when the mother had coded. He all but accused her of murdering his mother, and his brothers and their father – in the midst of their own shock and sadness – were caught up in the stress of family conflict.
I’m not sure how long we were together in that small room, the five of us, awaiting the final word that we all knew was coming. We probably spoke together and prayed together for more than a half hour before the nurses called me out to speak briefly with the surgeon and we went in together so that he could break the news.
More tears were shed; more angry words spoken; and then, more prayers. I asked a nurse if the family could see the woman’s body and say goodbye, and we were led into the room. We prayed again, and I stepped to the doorway to leave them alone, and as I did, they joined hands around the hospital bed and sang the most mournful, poignant, hope-filled version of Silent Night that I have ever heard.
When they finished, the angry son stepped over to me and asked me if I would find the nurse at whom he had directed so much anger. I said that I would, but I wondered fearfully what he was going to do or say.
She was at the nurses’ station and I asked her if she was willing to speak with him, knowing full well how much venom had been spit in her direction. She said “yes,” with no hesitation, and we walked back to the family. All of this happened in one unit, so there was never much distance between anyone, and I think the entire nursing staff was paused in their work to watch and see what was about to happen.
The son looked her in the eye and said, “I am sorry. Will you forgive me?”
In the midst of bearing a most difficult cross, “will you forgive me?”
At the cross, at the manger, the places where we fear to tread in our strength, where our egos do not want to be for they are no longer in control.
But a way has been made there for us to come in our weakness, in our most vulnerable moments, to find grace and mercy, forgiveness and love.
John came preaching repentance, because he knew that such coming clean is a necessary first step in preparing our hearts, our lives, our world for the way of Christ. But he also came quoting Isaiah, because he knew that while the way is not easy, there is a balm along the way, there is mercy along the way, there is hope along the way.
So this Advent season, where are the places you fear to tread? What transformations await you?
Prepare the way.
For there is, even now, a voice that cries out: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'
Amen.

These are the days

November 29, 2009
Jeremiah 33:14-16; Luke 21:25-36
These are days you’ll remember
Never before and never since, I promise
Will the whole world be warm as this
And as you feel it,
You’ll know it’s true
That you are blessed and lucky
It’s true that you
Are touched by something
That will grow and bloom in you

These are days that you’ll remember
When May is rushing over you
With desire to be part of the miracles
You see in every hour
You’ll know it’s true
That you are blessed and lucky
It’s true that you are touched
By something that will grow and bloom in you

These are days
These are the days you might fill
With laughter until you break
These days you might feel
A shaft of light
Make its way across your face
And when you do
Then you’ll know how it was meant to be
See the signs and know their meaning
It's true
Then you’ll know how it was meant to be
Hear the signs and know they’re speaking
To you, to you

Among the problems I have with our fundamentalist sisters and brothers is their tendency to read apocalyptic literature as literal, historical prophecy. That doesn’t really help. You wind up with things like the movie 2012 – it just doesn’t get you anywhere unless you are the film maker. Apocalyptic literature, at least in the Bible, is intended to be a word of hope, and certainly those passages that we read this morning are filled with hope if we understand the promise within them.
But I find that flat-footed interpretation of such strange texts are less helpful than more artistic impressions. Now I do not pretend that Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs had Advent in mind when they wrote and recorded “These Are Days,” but the song still strikes me as an anthem appropriate to the season, for the signs and wonders the Biblical writers point toward are for you, and they are full of laughter and of light shining across your face.
Sometimes a song or a poem or a painting or a gesture or a tradition or a ritual can speak volumes more than even the best-chosen words. So, this morning, as we consider the promise implied in these ancient texts, as we light a single candle – to remind us, to prepare us, to curse the darkness – and as we gather at this table, remember: these are the days, our days, our moment to live in God’s time and to experience and receive some small part of the promise that a shaft of light will make its way across your face – that a light will and does shine still in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.
Let that let dwell in you these days of waiting and preparing, of longing and listening, of hope and wonder.
These are the days that we have been given. Let us rejoice and be glad in them. Let us do our part to make them days of justice and of peace. Let us do our part to remember the promises of God, and to live into them with faith, hope and love.
And let us begin these days in the breaking of bread.