Bertie Berenger. AKA the man Born Blind

He needs a name.  This man born blind, he needs a name. There are plenty of people in the Gospels with no name and plenty of women with the same name.  Given the commonness of the name Jesus in that era, we should give thanks that the text isn’t full of Jesus’.  So many of the recipients of wonders are named by their imperfections: the paralytic man, the hemorrhaging woman. Their namelessness makes them more universal, but less three dimensional. Our man born blind, I want him to have a name.

I want to give him a B name, his name as we know it is the man born blind. Maybe Bennett, which means blessed.  Or Bohdi which means awakened.  Berenger means brave as a bear, and that certainly suits him.  Bertie is the name of one of my favorite fictional characters, and it means wise and graceful. Bertie Berenger.  Wise, Graceful, and Brave like a Bear.

Bertie is said to be a man, so by cultural standards of the time, he is at least 13. It is hard for me to imagine a person born blind who hasn’t been educated and accommodated.  Imagine all the people you know, with all their inborn imperfections, imagine their gifts tossed aside.  In some ancient and modern cultures, illness is a mark of sinfulness.  A system where shame is used to control who has power and who does not.  Bertie would have been automatically unclean from birth, never formally taught, not welcome in synagogue or temple.  He is clearly smart because while he may not have sight he has big ears to hear.  On the outskirts all his life, he has learned enough to rebut and challenge the authorities after his awakening.  It is amazing what the people we never notice know about us.

Maybe he had heard about this Jesus of Nazareth.  The wonders he had done and the welcome that he taught and practiced. This Jesus who every time he shows up at the Temple there is some type of hub bub.  We don’t know why Bertie begs outside the Temple, maybe he was hopeful, maybe he was curious.  Maybe that was the spot where the charity was better. Even with the shaming his birth creates, Bertie Berenger’s family is still in the picture.  There his parents are, passing the buck, willing to be silenced,  saying ‘go ask him’.  Bertie was known to be theirs and I imagine he still lives with them.

One of the characteristics of ancient Judaism that stands out in the simmering cultural soup of the Roman Empire was its celebration of life. We tell of our origins with the Lord chanting ‘it is good’, it is good.  With God breathing the spirit into dark earth and bringing life to life.  We hear of how we are to be fruitful and how our top priority is to care for the least.  Most other realms of the Empire had a different take. A family was a burden and children were necessary but considered germ ridden vermin.  An imperfect child, any disability, such as being born blind was a waste of time and effort.  Bertie, grown and blind and still a part of his family, would have been radically unusual in the rest of the Hellenistic world.  

It is a sabbath day when we meet Jesus today, and he had just left the Temple under threats of violence. Did he see Bertie, walk up to him, did he whisper hello, my name is Jesus, I have come to set God’s people free.  May I help you see?  He goes to this man directly in front of the temple with authorities and Pharisees right there.  Like stealing a cookie in front of your parent. Not only does Jesus work a wonder, he also makes clay.  Clay that recalls the primordial making of God, clay that fractures boundaries because making is one of the categories of things not done on the sabbath. The bold challenge to the authorities is unmistakeable.Two flimsy walls were broken and a man is healed like nothing anyone had ever seen and the powers that be are fraught.

Bertie's witness progresses steadily through the story, living a metaphor where enlightenment is about more than what is seen or unseen, it is going from the burdens of darkness to recognizing and praising and joining the saving works of God in Jesus.  This highlights a very different understanding of how Jesus saves than what we sometimes see. In John’s gospel rescue from sin and brokenness is the fact of Jesus life, even more so than his tragic death. God’s light and word were born in the human life of Jesus of Nazareth.  Jesus’ presence was full of God’s grace and truth and when we let our life be defined by this light,  we are brought out of the dark and the chaos. Bertie’s words clearly outline this central idea to his interrogators.  He says, from the beginning of time there has never been anything like this - THIS IS IT!  Jesus is a creation restart.  When we are oriented to the Son, we see. When we turn toward any other vision of reality, we are in the dark.

We must be careful with passages such as these where the Pharisees can be paper bag villains and the Jewish authorities more defined by their tradition than their role. By the time the author of John is writing there is a charged and fraught atmosphere amongst family and friends who are all Jewish.After the temple was destroyed in 70 there was drastic reshuffling that after a few hundred years defines the Judaisms we know today.At the time there were multiple sects and streams and groups, including the Christ followers.  The differences are not unlike some of the struggles amongst we who share the title Christian today. Important and consequential disagreements about who we are to be and how we are saved. This is true with our Anglican siblings, and it is true with our ecumenical friends and most obviously our fundamentalist cousins.  You may be familiar with authors Rachel Held Evans and Brian McLaren. They are both raised in more evangelical and fundamentalist traditions, and they are both people who over time became more ‘progressive’ Christians.  Two people who do bring light and voice to a compassionate faith in Jesus that many very much need to hear.  And they are two people who are responded to with volumes of hateful vitriol by folks some of whom are from their root communities, who are challenged by their testimony.  You don’t have to know those authors to know of an example, there are plenty of other examples of folks who play on the same team not getting along.  

However, the plain text reading of passages such as this where the ‘Jews’ are the terrible other have caused millennia of sin and massacre, and in the name of Jesus we cannot fall victim to it again. This Anglican and Episcopal tradition rarely makes straightforward directives,  but here we do.  In our interfaith relationships, especially with other ‘people of the book’ such as Jews and Muslims, any form of anti-Semitism and anti-Islamism is turning away from the Triune God and embracing the darkness. In today's gospel sin isn’t so much about things done and left undone, but about something broader and more relational.Here sin is the un-response to Jesus, it is the turning away, the refusal to hear, the blindness of not trusting the endlessness of the peaceful welcome of the Holy Lord , Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Bertie Berenger, the man born blind,  is one of my absolute favorite people of the New Testament.It really goes back to those two lines, those brave and wise and somewhat smart-aleky lines: You keep asking questions, do you want to be his disciples? Never from the beginning has there been anything like this, and your don’t know who he is? Are you kidding me??  I really like Bertie, I identify with Bertie when he says these things. However, I also connect with more of this story.  I was raised in the church, in the Episcopal church, required every Sunday unless I was ill. But I was blind to it.  I didn’t dislike it, it just didn’t connect. 

This episode of the man born blind is a story of conversion, and it has all the parts of mine. Acknowledging a moment of grace, asking questions to find out more, going from saying I don’t know who Jesus is but I am drawn to him, to proclaiming he is our friend and shepherd and savior.  I have been every character in this gospel text today: the religious authority deciding what is in and what is out, the caregiver replying to a difficult moment with I don’t know, when I did, the disciples asking provocative questions, and perhaps at my best moments the healing light of Christ.  Who have you been?  Over and over again, I visit these personas, twisting into the dark and being loved back into the light. Turning, turning till we come round right.

Bertie Berenger.  Where he is, we are to be also.  We are to be with him in his trust, in his response of commitment to the way of Christ.  We are to be with him in his response to the forces of darkness and silencing. The man born blind. Bertie Berenger.  Wise and graceful. Brave as a bear.  His smart response sees us clearly. Do you want to become Jesus’ disciples too?

Will you pray with me.. 

You are the God who unleashes well-being 
You are the Savior who lights the Way. 
May we see; 
may we love; 
may we follow. 
Amen.

Lent 4 A RCL 
March 26, 2017
St. Paul's Walla Walla

Prayer expanded from Walter Bruggemann Lent Book.

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Slaying Inner Devils: Promise, Problem, Talking Snakes and the One Girl Who Might Help

Many years ago, it was the first Sunday of Lent in Children’s chapel.  I had not gotten two sentences into the gospel story before I was interrupted.  Miss Jane.  She said it with all the scandal a five-year-old can muster. Miss Jane. We don't say that word here. They say that word at my grandma’s church. They say that word at grandma’s church a lot.  But we don’t say that word here at OUR church. Maybe you can guess which word she was referring to. There it is today in the Gospel, and the litany and the collect.  He who apparently we don’t name, face to face with Jesus.

The young girl was right. I want to skip over it.  Speak of accusers, the dark side of the force. Why does my heart race when I try to say those phonemes in a serious manner? Why is there this twinge of fear that I am summoning Beetlejuice or Rumplestiltskin.  The feeling that if I say it, it will know where I am. Like Voldemort.   Monsters of greediness are stealing God’s gift of satisfaction, giants are stacking up bones of cynicism in gruesome walls, beasts of anti neighbor-li-ness they are in front of us, growling at us, threatening us on the journey back to God’s garden.  Evilness of every variety is telling us who to despise and where to hurl the blame.  Casting a spell of weakness in our hearts and assaulting our ears with absurdity. I know that evil is real and it seems to loom big and dark and frustrated all around us.  Yet she was right. I don’t say those names.

 

In the original Hebrew, satan, is a verb which evolves into a noun, a name. The Hebrew verb means to “obstruct or oppose.” In the era when Jesus lived there were folktales, not Scripture mind you, fantasy stories about angelic beings in the heavenly courts and the one who challenges God's sovereignty. This challenger is the Satan, the devil, The Oppose-r.   

In our lesson today Jesus goes into the wilderness to fast after his baptism and at the end of the 40 days is greeted by this Tempter, this devil.  Their debate looks very much like ancient rabbinical academic duels, where instead of wands or swords the weapon is scripture.  This devil dares Jesus to accept the way things work in this world, you are here man, go ahead, give into the seduction, embrace the circus, the sideshow, the easy way out.  Come on Jesus, everybody does it.  The Tempter, whatever he looked like, whatever form he took, he stands before Jesus and proposes to the incarnate Son of God that now is all there is, so take care of yourself, all by yourself.  Me me me is the tune of the world Jesus.  God’s holy commands are to much, to judgy, to heavy.  

Which really is the same brokenness that sprouts in the Garden of Eden. The fracture wasn’t birds and the bees or the advent of death. This gorgeous and monstrously misused text doesn’t say any of those things. What it does explore is how we are the glory of creation, and tragically, also the problem of creation. This story asks everyday questions, such as why are we troubled and shameful and anxious? And the answer is because we do not hear God’s shepherding as good news.

The serpent isn’t some alien demoness come to destroy paradise. The serpent COULD BE the monster inside of us, the part that wants things easy, undemanding and self-serving.  Some of you might know that one of my favorite shows ever is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  A sometimes campy and absolutely theological drama about one teenage girl with mighty superpowers called to fight demons and hold back the gates of hell while getting on with school and life.  It has one core idea that might help us find our way into the Good News of our texts today.

The entire premise of the show is to take the notion of ‘battling our demons’ in a literal way. The show pulls the truth out of the metaphor and gives it muscle, sight and speech and fur and teeth.  What if we tell a story where we take our inner wrestling with brokenness and temptation and we put it outside where we can work together to slay it?  A talking snake is a pretty good sign that this story isn’t something we should be foolish enough to take literally, but smart enough to take seriously.

What if the serpent is an outer expression of the inner argument between right and wrong, between trust and independence?  What if the snake is our craftiness given flesh and eyes and teeth? 
What if this devil is Jesus’ inner argument between divine graciousness and human selfishness?
What would your Vindictive demon look like? How about the Apathy monster? Or your Lying beast, what is its shape and patterns?  And critically: what needs to happen to send it back to dust?

This fallen angel, this crafty serpent, these may be creatures you have run into. However, I will share that I have not, and I suspect many of you share that. Who I have met is Jesus, I have found him beside me in the deserts of loneliness I have found him in communities that sustain each other. He is my good shepherd who seeks to lead me away from my wolves of disasterizing and perfectionism. He leads us to the strength to heal the unacceptable, the inner demons and the outer terrors. When we turn and follow Jesus’ commands, Good News will emerge before us, behind us, and perhaps surprisingly, within us.

Author and Professor of Religion Stephen Prothero says that every religion says two things.  There is something wrong, and here’s how to fix it. Big categories of religion - like Islam or Jainism - they do that, and so do traditions like Methodist or Orthodoxy, and so do streams of theology like Calvinist or Womanist. That little girl, her grandma's church, I don’t know for sure, but I suspect they might say that the world is broken by utter depravity and is healed by solitary commitment to Jesus.  And it seems to bring healing and solace for many people.  Yet it isn’t the way we would say it, or why Jesus matters to me.  When I say we I mean the Episcopal Church and the many of the ecumenical traditions we share so much with.  Here is what I do say. The world was made good and beloved and holy. And the world is fractured by our not trusting God or each other and turning away from both.  This is healed by reversing that.  We fix it by hearing the call of Christ to follow him, to live together what he taught and following him in how he leads us now.  

We are both the promise and the problem of Creation. We are broken in sin by the things that could make us incredible, but instead we choose the disturbing and mixed up mass of other powers instead.  Eden and our loss of it isn’t about a place a long long time ago.  It is about the current state of our lives and our world, and it is about daring to trust that God can make us whole within ourselves and in every neighborhood.  Maybe we are still in the Garden, but the monsters and demons and devils that occupy us won’t let us experience it.

The summons of Lent could be a question.  How will we confront our horrible and crafty demons? How will they be lamented and how will they fall?  When we say we trust that God created all that is, when we say that we trust in the love of Christ for all that is, we embrace the promise that our deceptions and exclusionary temptations can be slain like monsters in a garden or a graveyard.  When we say we believe in God the Father almighty, we are standing in a promise, upheld by the Holy one against the forces of demons and devils and  Satan and darkness. Can stand up, will stand up.  God calls us to be with the One, as one. In Eden, again.

Will you pray with me by repeating after me.

Gentle us Holy One into an unclenched moment, a letting go of shriveling anxieties. That surrounded by the garden, and following Christ’s call, we may be found by wholeness,  and filled with the grace that is you.  Amen.

Lent 1, RCL-A

St. Paul's Episcopal Church

Walla Walla, Washington

March 5, 2017

And sorry folks, forgot to click 'record'.

And yes, finally, a Buffy sermon on a Sunday morning.

Prayer adapted from Ted Loder.

Stay Salty! Sailboats and Shared Tables

Perhaps you have seen the image, the background is a shimmering aqua blue, across which is written an invitation in paint brush strokes of white. It calls out and says to ‘stay salty.’  Seeing that invitation I am cast back in time to memories of weeks on a sailboat. I remember being literally salty, and my memory can just pick up the creaking of the boat and feel the sea spray against my cheeks. All these years later I can summon the sensation of warmth on my back, and I can hear my unkempt hair blowing around in the wind.  

‘Stay salty’ makes me think of fictional pirates, the pirates of movies and novels who live freely, truthfully, and bravely.  People unbound by convention or responsibility or cold weather.  Stay salty sounds like living the life that Jimmy Buffett songs suggest, out on the sea for adventure, tiki drinks and veggie burgers in paradise. ‘Stay salty’ feels like heaven right now.  

It is a bit strange that salt did not find itself with a prominent place as a sacrament in Christian practice. Salt had a prevalent place in ancient Jewish rituals in both home and temple. These rituals were focused on fidelity and sacrifice, two important themes for the early Jesus movement.  Plus salt does seems rather magical. The way that it changes the suspension strength of water: and we float.  The way when you put a few grains on a hot dish it spreads all the way through. Salt which preserves meat without refrigeration; and also melts ice to make paths safer. Like grain and wine and water and oil, salt is a basic necessity for life. And like light and water, there would not be life on earth without it. It courses through our veins and rests in our tissues. Salt flows out of us in our sweat and in our tears. Salt is everyday and ever present; of priceless value but also dangerous if not well used.

Salt is in our sacramental practices, but it is subtle.  Salt is in the baking of bread, and in some traditions in the waters of baptism. Just enough to taste a hint of the Sea of Reeds, to recall the sensation of deliverance from slavery to liberty, not enough to overwhelm.  Taste memory is crucial: it is survival memory. Taste isn’t just an idea or a pleasure, it is the difference between life and death.  In our primordial days we relied on taste to help us choose between safe and dangerous. We used the memory of taste to relocate the place where we found food in the past.

On shore, but you get the picture.  Action Sail 1989.

The gospel of Matthew evokes the senses of survival memory. The way the text is shaped and shared expects a community of disciples taking it in deeply, like re-membering Jesus is what they need to survive.  We, like Matthews community, are people who break bread, in Jesus’ time the equivalent expression was to ‘share salt’. Food is still our ritual of bonding, the practice in which we are bound to our companions in deep and lifegiving ways.  Most of us experience holiness not in outrageous drama but in experiences as common as passing the salt. The laughter of a child, in the smack of kisses and the sounds of sobs.  Moments of fear, flickers of serenity. Or when we forgive someone who has broken our heart.  

Most people don’t seem to experience God only in moments that are labeled as spiritual or religious. Sometimes we, we who are the chefs and cooks of the religious, sometimes we do manage to invite the holy to happen.  Most of the time however, we are just hopeful hosts and prayerful waiters.  In my experience, most of the holy moments in a religious place like this are actually very earthy, very human. They are salty moments.  

I am tired of the snow and the cold and am leaning into my salty memories and ocean daydreams.  I am also anxious and feeling lost in what seems to be the utter failure of compassion and commitment to the common good. In this sea of disorientation Jesus steers me and whispers, stay salty.   I am here with you Jesus says, I am here in the everyday strangeness  of being bound to neighbors that you cannot fix or leave behind or ignore. Following Jesus as Lord is choosing a vulnerable God, choosing one who chooses our substance, as dissolvable and crushable as it is. The call to embrace Christ crucified isn’t about inflicting pain but a call to surrender ever more of our lives to the mystery of God. The mystery of our union in Christ  is no less of a mystery because it is revealed in things no more complicated than grain and wine, water, oil and salt.  I cannot explain how and why these moments taste and feel of divine grace, I only know that they do.

Maybe salt is a metaphor for the divine in that salt is everywhere whether we notice it or not.  And that this world and its creatures are ceaselessly held by God from the salty depths of the earth through the salty streams of our tears.  Nothing in Jesus’ teaching is not also what he lives.  Sacrifice, loyalty, correction, compassion.  He says take the lower seat, and he does.  He tells us to welcome the orphan, the outcast and the stranger, and he does. So what can we know from Jesus life, death and resurrection about what it means to be salt, to stay salty?  What can we know about what this community should taste like by saying that we should be salt?

Salt once dissolved is uncontainable. That delightful pineapple that made my eyes light up, I went back, got more and gave it to friends.  That addictively good cold brew coffee, I arranged our San Francisco mission trip schedule around it, and we stood in a long line and bonded while we waited to receive it. That sandwich that could only have been made with the deepest magics, the shop burned down a decade ago, but I am still talking about that sandwich.  Salt does not need to talk about itself, but disciples like us could be better at sharing out loud the flavors of faith that rescue us. Learning to be salty may be learning to share those everyday memories where we knew we were held by Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Learning to be salty may be living out loud the holy transformation we taste.

Matthew’s Gospel expects that we are informed and imaginative and devoted and active lovers of God.  It expects us to be gourmets of the Good News. Collectors and sharers and practitioners of the Jesus movement. None of us are refined salt, yet each of us are raw salts, mixed with the minerals of our lives and the sea things of our hearts: and this is what gives us our unique flavor. God’s reign isn’t known by its purity but by its ever-present-ness. God’s reign is known by its unconventionality, by our boundness to each other and how it tastes uncommonly free.  Eugene Peterson puts it this way in his paraphrase of this gospel:

“Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth.  If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness?”  

Jesus never teaches us to be a way that the doesn’t live out himself.  Jesus was salt for the well-being of the world.  Jesus calls to us saying STAY SALTY.  My salty might be a bit more sassy than your salty, but I need your salty at the table too.  Will you wonder with me by taking a small rock of salt with you at the end of the service.  Perhaps tasting it and wondering.  And will you wonder with me now, how we can be who he says we are saying:

We are here to be salt-seasoning,

we are here to bring out

the God-flavors of this earth.

Amen.

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Walla Walla, Washington

February 5, 2017
RCL A  5 Epiphany

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Intergenerational Mission Reflections..3 Years Later

It has been three and a half years with four Christmases since I last was on a mission in the Navajoland diocese.  Over five summers I led an intergenerational mission trip to Oljeto, Utah/Arizona where we offered VBS at St. Mary's in the Moonlight.  It wasn't something I set out to do as much as it was part of my profile while at the Cathedral in Albuquerque.  Blessedly I had friends and colleagues who had led this adventure before, although from a different congregation.

I haven't thought about it a whole lot, while at the same time the many weeks there hover in my memories and sometimes in my sermons.  I miss the long drives for a milkshake and the simplicity of the ministry (ok.. it is complicated to coordinate, but the on the ground part was beautifully freeform).  While trips like these are full of possible political and missional arguments, the mission was what it was and I believe it was primarily a blessing. We fed folks many sandwiches; we became closer in heart and fidelity; we had beautiful conversations and grew in mysterious ways.

This video is my powerpoint from a workshop I gave in 2011, sort of in the middle of the years of when I led this mission trip.  I did go back and manipulate the photos of the Navajo children to make them less recognizable.  I also added a couple of photos of participants from later years.   Most of the photos are from the sight-seeing part of the trips, which I promise is not all we did.  In the years following that presentation I did push a heftier literacy zone in our VBS work.  The slides are both big picture about intergenerational mission and specific to our Navajoland setting.

A couple of specifics about this Intergenerational Mission:

• Our home congregation was within driving distance (6 hours if you kept at it).  We rented vehicles large enough to transport children around the reservation, so we had plenty of room for our team.  
• 6-12th grade youth were invited to come on the mission trip without their families; so to college-age friends and of course adults. However, most youth were there with either a relative or godparent.  
• The intergenerational-ity wasn't just among congregants.  At different points, my Mother and two God daughters were on the trip, and others brought nephews and their parents.  Our smallest crew was about 12 people, our largest was 21; the age span was certainly anywhere from 4 to 80(?).  
• Most of the time everyone stayed in the house at the church, which at the time was set up a bit like a hostel.  A few summers we also had participants staying at the Gouldings campground a few miles away.  

What made it work was space, time and prayer. 

• The property at this mission site is both fenced and large.  There was more than enough room to run around and get space, while the house was just big enough to fit everyone comfortably.
• I do not believe there is a single icebreaker or initiative game or study that can teach Christian community like actually living into it.  Cooking and getting ready for each day; making each day's mission work; playing games and errand 'adventures.'  Each year was the time for me when a large church lived like a family.  We can overdo that complicated image, but in its ideal it is transformative.
• Daily prayer time and check in made an important difference.  Who are we and what do we do...work of proclamation, work of feeding and care.  Gathering and telling our story.   

Looking back the greatest challenge came in the sticking points of generations; and those of related life experiences.  Adults who were not commonly around children only had their memories of childhood in another era to judge the behavior of our youngest participants. We talked about it and grew into it, but it was a challenge.  If I were to be in a mission like this again I would spend a bit of time on generational differences.  I love the book 'Sticking Points' for digging in on assumptions and expectations within intergenerational work settings (like the church).   

I am not sure what else folks would want to know about how-to-do family/intergenerational ministry.  However, I would be glad to lend a consultative ear!

WHOA: The Holy Pretzel Sing-A-Long Epiphany Pageant

'You really should write this up', says the kind mentor.  Which is an invitation to share more than just the text.  The weight of this project is certainly in the texts, however I suppose the same texts could be offered and not strike a chord.  Yet it is in the text that this post must begin.  

The text below requires a guide.  The plain text is my offering, spoken by myself.  The italic texts are hymn verses, this being a sing-a-long experience.  Hymns from the Episcopal supplemental hymnal, Wonder Love and Praise, are noted with a W; those from the 1982 Hymnal are noted with an H.  The information about each piece is in the link.  As for the underlined text, these are biblical readings from the lessons for Epiphany.  These are spoken by others, yet without our normal liturgical end caps.  The entire pageant fills the liturgy of the word from the opening prayer through the call to peace.  To learn more just keep reading past the text of the pageant.  Videos of bits and pieces are at the bottom!

*******

When you look up at the night sky, do you know that ages of time are pouring down on us in waves of ancient light? Then as now, the night sky calls to us with the hum of things known and unknown, enchanting realities and so much still to be discovered.  The heavens are a reflection of us, all the mysteries of our hearts and the enormousness of our possibilities.

 As newborn stars were stirred to song when all things came to be.  As Miriam and Moses sang when Israel was set free, so music bursts unbidden forth when God-filled hearts rejoice, to waken awe and gratitude and give mute faith a voice.   W788 v1. 

 Before the beginning began, the holy Trinity was.  This eternal dance of God, Christ and Holy Spirit is the rhythm of all that is.    In God is light and life and the darkness cannot extinguish the bold song of this light. 

Arise! Shine! Your light has come; the Lord’s glory has shone upon you.   Though darkness covers the earth and gloom the nations, the Lord will shine upon you; God’s glory will appear over you.   Nations will come to your light and kings to your dawning radiance.  Lift up your eyes and look all around:  they are all gathered; they have come to you.  Your sons will come from far away, and your daughters on caregivers’ hips.  Then you will see and be radiant; your heart will tremble and open wide, because the sea’s abundance will be turned over to you;  Isaiah 60 1-5a

The nature of darkness is not always a generous one, it can bring us rest, but it can also lead to desperation and panic.  We experience light breaking through the darkness, but what would it mean for darkness to hear the light?  Does such a hope arise from the one who was born for us, the very image and likeness of God’s graceful pattern?  

In psalms that raise the singer’s sense to universal truths, in prophet’s dark-toned oracle or hymn of three brave youths; the song of faith and praise endured through those God called to be a chosen people bearing light for all the world to see.  w788 v2

Perhaps you have heard this sacred story, of how in the fullness of time the love of God, the word of God was born.  The startling days when somehow, God became one with you and me, in a brave new way.   Angels came to Joseph, and to Mary, and hummed in their hearts, be not afraid.  The one who laid the earth’s foundation, he is coming to lead us into his reign.

Let the king bring justice to people who are poor; let him save the children of those who are needy, but let him crush oppressors!   Let the king lives as long as the sun, as long as the moon, generation to generation.   Let him fall like rain upon fresh-cut grass, like showers that water the earth.  Let the righteous flourish throughout their lives, and let peace prosper until the moon is no more.   Psalm 72.4-7

This holy family was on the road when Jesus was born, chased to Bethlehem by the anxieties of empire.  Joseph and Mary had traveled to be counted and taxed just like many many others, and found not a room to spare.  So it was that the king who will bring justice to the people, the prince who will live as long as the sun, was born in a lowly stable. 

Displaced peasants in an unusual family, they must have been weary but it does not say they were frightened.  They must have been hassled but it does not say they were afraid. Somehow it did happen that lowly shepherds were stirred to meet this holy family and greet this newborn Prince of Peace. 

Peace before us, peace behind us, peace under our feet. Peace within us, peace over us let all around us be peace.    W 791 v1

The text doesn’t tell us that the shepherds brought their sheep.  The scriptures do not list the animals who shared that stable.  Which is just fine because, well, that part about what creatures were there is really about us, we who live two millennia later and all the people in between. We who have jobs like shepherds that are demanding and smelly and messy and then get heaped with criticism.  We who are precious sheep with our warm wool and who follow the herd, and we who are difficult to motivate or move around.  We who are nervous and generous chickens, or maybe a donkey who carries an immense load.  It is so much more about us that there could have been a cranky rabbit, or even a dancing bear.  The story we are invited into isn’t so much a pastoral fable, it is much more an image of a peaceable kingdom.

Put peace into each other’s hands and like a treasure hold it.  Protect it like a candle flame with tenderness enfold it.   W790 v1

Regardless of artists desire to bring the Magi to the stable, we can only imagine what happened next.  Joseph’s family was from the city of Bethlehem.  If you heard your cousin was in town with a newborn, what would you do?  Scripture tells us that they found themselves in a house, in a home.  Jesus, Mary and Joseph were given the treasures of shelter, food and water.

How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given! So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.  No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin, where meek souls will receive him still the dear Christ enters in.  H79 v3

 Months, weeks, some scholars might even say years, anyways, some amount of time passed before there were worldly visitors.  We call them wise ones, prophets, sages, maybe they were minor kings.  We know not how many wise ones, we know not their status or education or even hometowns.  Did their observations occur independently or together?  Did they just meet by chance on the road? Whoever they were, wherever they came from they knew by a glimmer in the heavens and the writings of prophets that the new King was to be born. 

Sages, leave your contemplations; brighter visions beam afar; seek the great Desire of nations ye have seen his natal star; come and worship, come and worship, worship Christ the newborn King.  H93 v3

When seeking the new ruler, you might start at the palace.  So these sages went to visit Herod the King.  A man for whom history offers few kind words.  A man who was clearly afraid, always afraid and frequently terrible.  He met this inquisitive band with leading questions, and our wise friends knew something was wrong. 

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the territory of Judea during the rule of King Herod, magi came from the east to Jerusalem. They asked, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We’ve seen his star in the east, and we’ve come to honor him.”   When King Herod heard this, he was troubled, and everyone in Jerusalem was troubled with him. He gathered all the chief priests and the legal experts and asked them where the Christ was to be born.  They said, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is what the prophet wrote: You, Bethlehem, land of Judah, by no means are you least among the rulers of Judah, because from you will come one who governs, who will shepherd my people Israel.”

Then Herod secretly called for the magi and found out from them the time when the star had first appeared. He sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search carefully for the child. When you’ve found him, report to me so that I too may go and honor him.”    When they heard the king, they went; and look, the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stood over the place where the child was.  When they saw the star, they were filled with joy. They entered the house and saw the child with Mary his mother. Falling to their knees, they honored him. Then they opened their treasure chests and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.                               Matthew 2.1-11

So bring him incense, gold and myrrh,  Come, peasant, king, to own him; the King of kings salvation brings,  let loving hearts enthrone him.  This, this is Christ the King,   whom shepherds guard and angels sing; haste, haste to bring him laud,  the babe, the son of Mary.  H115

Epiphany could be translated as ‘whoa’!  Have you ever been startled by finding exactly what you were looking for, but it not being anything like what you planned to find?  Being quite wise, these sage friends, they listened to their hearts and their dreams of WHOA, and after having found the family of Jesus, and offering their gifts, the wise ones went home by another way. 

In Christ there is no East or West, in him no South or North, but one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth.   H529 v1

Much of Jesus early life isn’t recorded, yet we know this family fled from Herod’s terror.  Wherever the Holy Family were, there were no royal guards to protect them.  Any child fleeing conflict, every person who crosses our threshold, is just as he was.  Precious and vulnerable.   Every day has the melody of Epiphany, to move our bodies and warm our cold hearts.  So too every day has the harmonies of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and Easter.  You cannot look at our wreaths and not at the same time look at the stations of the cross.  We who are well-educated sages, professors, or even minor royalty of our own domains, we need to tell this story one more time before the memories of the season fade and while the songs of the season no longer overwhelm us.  After the wrappings have been recycled we are called to move out from the crèche and into a demanding world that isn’t always cute and cuddly. 

You who are tough mothers and loyal partners and feisty children and generous neighbors, our duty began when we saw a star and felt a flutter that made us say WHOA.  The movement is to welcome the stranger, to seek wisdom and be open to WHOA.  The journey is to build bridges of trust and dare to try something holy and new. WHOA.  In him we are the treasures, we are wise ones and angels and families that Christ calls; we are the wise ones called to dare greatly and follow the star into his eternal reign.   WHOA!

Put Christ into each other’s hands, he is love’s deepest measure; In love make peace, give peace a chance and share it like a treasure.  W790 v5

*****

The cast is intergenerational with many ages participating; of particular importance are that Joseph is played by the father of the baby girl who is playing Jesus.  Actually, her whole family was in the cast: Mom was the Angel Gabriel and brother a shepherd.  Second, we move around the sanctuary as it is offered.  I began alone and gathered a crowd as we went.  No one has lines to memorize, they can act it up if they want, or just wear a costume and follow along.  The true stars of this pageant are the Wise Ones, and they spend the first half of the pageant wandering around the sanctuary looking for this newborn King.  My daydream is that we would have the oldest who are able and the youngest in the cadre; but I have more reasonable expectations than that.  As it is the cast includes new folks and teens who don't really recall another congregation and at least one angel who grew up here.  Who tells the holy story?  We all do.  

Which is part of why it is a sing-a-long pageant.  This congregation is musically inclined, and the clearest way to invite all ages to participate in more than eyes and ears is to give them a part.  In this pageant/homily it is the songs.  Some of the verses are seasonal, most however, are not.  There is a vast amount of Epiphanal theology in our hymnary.  One could fill a whole day with just hymn texts and make a whole Epiphany homily:  we are celebrating Jesus' royalty, or the awe of wonder that the incarnation demands, or the treasures of hope, or the surrounding reality of lives in violent times.  Music is one of the places we fuss the most because it leaves such an impression on our faith.  Faith isnt just emotional or rational; so too is music and singing.  When we sing together for a moment we are all bound to each other and the hopes and fears of the folks who wrote songs and then those who raised those hymns up and published them.  Singing is certainly language, but it is almost in a category all its own, beyond verbal and nonverbal communication.  

Alice Parker told Krista Tippett in an On Being episode that song is the most elemental level of human communication beginning with the hums of parent to infant.  She says that singing "it’s the great international, inter-everything language because it’s dealing with our inner emotional life. It’s as if singing is the language of the emotions. And it’s our intuitive life as opposed to our rational life."  The Christmas stories are strange and mysterious and full of contradictions, and it may be that only music and singing brings us into an acceptable encounter with this messiness.  

There are ways in which this whole holy pretzel intergenerational sing along design is a physical enactment of what happens in the liturgical and homiletic interaction all the time.  The heart of the sharing of readings is multiple voices coming from multiple places; being a community is just this.  The Epiphanal gospel was read from the gold-tone book, but it came to the traveling crew with the wise ones and their gifts.  It was read with the whole cast gathered around.  This is actually what we are trying to do with our Gospel processions, but some of our pagentry can run right over the nonverbal inspiration.  

Anyways, whether it is the liturgical parts or the preaching parts, this event looks like we are: some folks take a while to join the flow, others are wandering on the edges.  Some folks jump in with their whole bodies, trying on the costume you suggest; others sit and take it all in.  This approach makes this truth more evident, and also perhaps more acceptable.  There we are: all our different responses in the same space seeking the divine.  Once again, Ms. Parker says it brilliantly this way. "Wherever they are, if you get them on a song, you can establish a kind of group feeling that is really — well, it’s exemplified at its most marvelous after a perfectly wonderful concert when the last note is sound, and you get that silence in the room, which is a silence of completion, which is opposite from an anticipatory silence. But it just means that everyone — it’s as if all of our inner ions have been scheduled to be moving in the same direction at the same time."

In many ways this pageant style is an expression of the way my mind works.  Songs mix with texts and move around.  This is the third incarnation of this style of Epiphany pageant; it grew out of my creative response to the assets of this community.  It changes a little bit each year; the music selections and the reflections.  How could we offer the same text this year as last year?  I have such a clearer picture of the crisis and the call to action right now than I did a year ago.  A year ago this congregation was still in the early phases of a difficult leadership transition; this year they are leaning into a wise-one-like search for their next settled Rector.  

The rest of the explanation of why I offer this singsong and everybody can have a role and get all your steps version of liturgical drama, the apologetic is in the text.  The critters are only critters as we are critters, they are metaphors.  This story is portrayed as awesome and cute, but much like Noah and the Great flood, it is far more startling and demanding than most children's animated fare.  So too are all of us on this wild journey of faith to the heart of God.  We call the sanctuary the nave, which essentially means heart or center (like your navel).  This is a punctuated expression of what we do all the time.  Even the more theologically educated among the congregation are still searching and wondering and trying to follow in dangerous times.  A core principle of the Godly Play method is that young people grow in their knowing God by manipulating and working with the stories and practices of the Christian people.  There isn't much evidence to suggest that this isn't true for our whole lives.  We grow in faith by leaping into the 'costumes' and moving around in it right now where we live.  WHOA.

Not a Pinata Pinata: A More Equitable Game

The problem with a piñata is that either the first child breaks the thing wide open or it takes forever.  The latter happened at my sister's wedding - round after round of children twacking that Dalek and it was not breaking one bit.  This scenario is slightly better than the first one, because there is great pleasure in being given permision to try and break something with a bat.  However if you have lined up, and gotten all excited about this activity and the first or second child manages to break the piñata, everyone else is left with quite the empty feeling.  

The party planning industry has come up with an inbetween zone, where each person pulls a string.  Which while more equitable and less violent, is in its own way somewhere between lame and creepy.  Pinterest boards offer punch cup games.  These are homemade versions of an old Price is Right game.  Cups attatched to a box with openings covered in paper. This has that thrill of breaking something, and the chance for all to have the break something feeling.  However I must admit to my weariness at the suggestions of DIY that take much more time than what most people I know have to give.  

Those Pinterest boards did offer a suggestion that involved a string with balloons, where toys and candy were inside the balloons on a string.  Enough balloons to break  for all partiers and some effort to get to the toys, but who wants to put stuff into tiny balloon openings all day!  And the sound of a balloon popping isn't my favorite anyways.  

Instead I used small colorful paper bags.  
Then I folded these bags over and stapled them to my thin rope. 
 Very easy, very low effort, very colorful.  

We then followed the typical piñata game rules as each child had the chance to hit not one but two bags.  The guests watched intently, ooooing and ahhing and cheering with each hit.  Some bags busted quickly, and some took several hits.  Nevertheless candy and toys went flying,and it was safely explosive.  

The one lesson learned is DON'T PUT HARD CANDY IN THE BAGS.  The paper is thin and the thwaking is hard!  The softer the better for the games and candy.  

12 Days of Christmas Invitational: #4 Audible

Everybody knows not to make a huge pre-Christmas to-do list.  Yet I did just that.  I think this series of 12 ways for 12 days of Christmas invitational shall only make it to six posts, but so be it.  This day is another audio option: four suggestions for audio books.  Each of these is short, divided by 12 the longest would require 24 minutes a day during the season of Christmas that follows Christmas day.  Why audio books?  Because we can listen while we do other things, and because some of us may come more alive when we listen than when we read.  These are transportable and a simple addition to a holy life that seeks to grow the light of Christ.

It has been a season of prophets and angels speaking to God's people,
an invitation in many forms and many ways, repeating the refrain and calling us back to our essential nature as God's people.We are called to remind one another what we are here for: to open our doors, to offer compassion, to be hearts of healing presence.  In this Christmas season of anxiety, the wisdom of the ages and the divine imperative is a quiet persistent recalling of each other back to the beginning.  

Here are four short audio books that are a chance to listen again to what we are called to be.  All the links go to Audible, however, they may be available from your local library or other downloadable sources.  

12 Minutes a Day

Being Christian by Rowan Williams

An amazingly inspiring and comprehendible little book by one of the finest theologians of our era. We read this as a congregation a year or so ago, and I know it set in because none of the copies have come back.  Plant seeds of inspiration and insight into your practice through 12 minutes a day with the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. 

"the new humanity that is created around Jesus is not a humanity that is always going to be successful and in control of things, but a humanity that can reach out its hand from the depths of chaos, to be touched by the hand of God." 
— Rowan Williams (Being Christian)

15 Minutes a Day

Leadership and the New Science by Margaret Wheatley

Crossing the supposed divides between science, business, psychology and theology (the theology is implicit) her work seeks fresh ways to address the anxiety and chaos that frightens us.  Dive into new analogies and understandings of who we are and who we could be with consultant, speaker and co-founder and President of The Berkana Institute Margaret Wheatley.

"In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions." 
— Margaret J. Wheatley

22 Minutes a Day

To Bless the Space Between Us by John o'Donohue

Fresh words for prayer and contemplation is a gift that many of us need these days. This book is a collection of poems and meditations and perhaps even prayers on a wide array of life's encounters.   Poet, priest and 'Hegelian' philosopher John o'Donohue invites us to become more awake to the power of blessing we already possess.  

"As silence smiles on the other side of what's said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.

As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.

May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of god.”

― John O'Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

24 Minutes a Day

The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown

If you have not read her books or heard her talks, you are missing out on a life-changing perspective. A sociologist who stumbled through research and a 'spiritual-breakdown' to bring to the surface crucial topics of shame, vulnerability, and whole-hearted living.  Following a season thick with perfectionism, try the gift of imperfection with writer, storyteller and researcher Brene Brown.  Whose first name has a thing over the last e, but since I don't even know what to call that thing, I don't know how to make the keyboard type it.  This is also a text that we read as a congregation and I haven't gotten any copies back.  

"Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light." 
— Brené Brown

So what are some short audio books that you would suggest for 12 days of audio inspiration?