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December 7, 2003
John Auer, Pastor
Scripture
Malachi 3:1-2, Luke 1:68-79, Luke 16:19-31
"Never Too Late! To Put the ‘l’ Back in ‘Word’"
Dear God, you promise to come to our door and knock and to come
again into our lives and our life together. We thank you for the
renewed beauty of the doors to this sanctuary. We thank you for
providing the trees and the greens to decorate church and
sanctuary with signs of the life that endures for us in all the
earth. Bless our celebrations of this season, and all those who
will come to join with us in them. In the name of the One who is
coming, now and again, amen.
If you want to hear preaching next week, you have to come at 8 am. If
you want to have fun, come at 10! For the Christmas pageant! If you want
my advice, come for both. And for study/action group in between!
Christmas is not just for kids. Maybe it is for the young of heart. More
so it is for those who hold the young in their hearts. The measure of
full maturity is to see the future of the whole world in the face of
every child. To prepare our hearts for Christmas is to watch and to
wait, to look and to long for the good of a world at least seven
generations into the future. According to Sr. Joan Chittister,
"Christmas brings us all back to the crib of life to start over . .
. full of hope that this time, finally, we can learn what it takes to
live well, grow to full stature of soul and spirit, get it right."
"Christmas is not for children," she says. "It is for
those who refuse to give up and grow old, for those to whom life comes
newly and with purpose each and every day, for those who can let
yesterday go so that life can be full of new possibility always, for
those who are agitated with newness, whatever their age. Life is for the
living, for those in whom Christmas is a feast without finish . . .
"
Are we willing to start, willing for others to start over again? To
keep going, and growing, older but never too old, till we, till
somebody, gets it right? Not to give up but to let go of what is gone
anyway, and, agitated with newness, -- agitated with newness! -- live
Christmas, live life, as a feast without finish -- amen?!
It is never too late, never too late, to put the Christ back in
Christmas, the Advent back in adventure, and the "word," the
word of love, back into the" world." I treasure the saying,
attributed to lifelong peace activist A. J. Muste. ( http://www.ajmuste.org ) When asked if he really thought
his efforts could change the world, Muste replied, "I’m just
trying to see that the world does not change me!" Of course, that
is not true. The world, especially the pain, the suffering, the
violence, the war of the world, were changing Muste all the time. But in
this Advent/Christmas season we know what he means. It is so hard to
keep the world’s way of doing Christmas from changing us! No matter
how tempted we are to give up on this world, as if we were just passing
through – and we are! – yet and still, even now, this moment, God so
loves the world as to be sending God’s very own child again, that the
world might be saved, again!
That’s why we need the company of such older and wiser ones on this
journey. Last week we heard about Simeon. The Holy Spirit tells him he
will not die until he sees the Lord’s Messiah. Simeon holds Jesus in
the temple when Jesus is eight days old, as if he were holding the
future of Israel and all the world in his arms. Then Simeon has the
grace to say, now let me depart in peace. Let me make way for a new
generation. We think on this day with great love and respect for the
fast-fading number of veterans of Pearl Harbor, including some in our
own midst. We thank you again for your courage and valor in our behalf.
In many ways you have been the "greatest generation," as you
have been called.
Yet we are as touched by the pain, the suffering, the violence, the
war of our world today. We come to hear the same courage for peace in
such voices and lives as those of Muste, who went to jail against that
war, and of Jeanette Rankin ( http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blbio_jeannette_rankin.htm
), whose story we just heard in our Thursday night group, first woman
elected to Congress, who voted, alone, against that war. We realize
greatness has not necessarily meant goodness, for us or for our world.
Like Simeon, we pray for the grace to depart in peace, to make way for a
new generation. Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, promised as the
first prophet to speak in Israel for hundreds of years, is struck dumb
by the Holy Spirit because he does not believe Elizabeth and he can be
given the gift of new life in their older years.
People around them assume their child will inherit the name of his
father. But Elizabeth gives John a name that never has been in the
family before! And Zechariah finds grace to agree and give way to a new
generation. For John will not look to and long for the past but for the
future! A future so new, so different, so challenging, so demanding, as
to require complete change of heart. For John will preach no cheap
Christmas grace but baptism and repentance, whole change of life and
direction, for the forgiveness of sins! John will not rail against
enemies and those who hate us outside of ourselves, but against our own
failure to seek and to do the things that make for God’s justice and
God’s peace!
Specifically, John will call for a Jubilee! For preparing a way,
making a path, for the One who is coming! Filling valleys, lowering
mountains and hills, smoothing and straightening -- in short, leveling
all playing fields! Making new life equally available and accessible for
all of God’s children, and specially for those who are youngest and
oldest, weakest and poorest, -- those who live nearest the earth. Just
imagine this morning what John’s preaching of promises means to them!
And to such a one as Lazarus in this gospel story, the only glimpse
Jesus gives of an "after life." John calls for a closing of
this galloping, goring gap between rich and poor, in our culture and in
our world, because it means we are starting to live by whole separate
systems and structures, as if in whole different worlds.
We do not even see, do not even notice one another any more, much
less do we recognize and acknowledge, greet and even name one another
any more. Lazarus, who is the only person Jesus gives a name in all of
his stories, lies begging at the door of this rich man, who has no name,
every day of his life. The rich man never even knows that Lazarus is
there! Much less that he has a name! I want to lift up by name two
heroines of our experience, Carol Gaddy and Freddie Black, who offered
to integrate one congregation we served, not only by color but also by
class. They knew that there would be persons to greet them on Sunday
morning who would walk by without even seeing them on Monday morning.
Yet they resolved to hang in there for the good of the whole. Now the
rich man in agony looks upon Lazarus in comfort for an eternity!
Sisters and brothers, the grace of Christmas may be free, but it ain’t
easy! It ain’t cheap. And we cannot find it at Wal-Mart. To those of
us at any age who would be servants of new life for God’s justice and
peace in the church and in the world, our United Methodist Bishops’
Letter, Community With Children and the Poor ( http://www.wfn.org/2003/01/msg00160.html
), which
we are still reading together, 9 am Sunday mornings in the Fellowship
Hall, -- It is never too late to join us! -- issue this call to
Christmas living as giving:
Pray that God will provide opportunities for us to form
relationships with those who are economically poor. Pray that God
will make our congregation a place where people of all ages and
economic levels are welcomed and valued as God’s children. Pray
that God will continue to open our eyes, so that we may see beyond
our own community. Pray that God will give us courage to speak for
those who do not have a voice in the places of power.
Let each of us seek out intentional opportunities to be in
relationships with those who are economically poor, particularly
children who are in poverty. Let us engage a homeless person on
the street in regular conversation, participate in a ministry to
visit those in prison, volunteer to help with an after-school
tutoring program. While short-term activities have their place, it
takes time to develop deep and meaningful relationships. An
ongoing relationship with someone who experiences life from a
different economic context will enrich both of our lives.
There is a subtle but essential difference between doing good
to someone and doing good with someone. Relationships are
multi-directional. Both parties bring gifts to the relationship
that when combined are greater than the sum of the individual
parts.
Is that not what we hope this season of watching and waiting, looking
and longing for Jesus again is all about? The honoring of relationships
as the most precious gifts of our lives? The celebrating of both the
giving and the receiving that go into any lasting, committed
relationship? Recognizing, acknowledging, greeting, and naming all of
the parts, all of the phases of our relationships – for better, for
worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health? Relationships
cannot be bought or sold. Relationships cannot be bullied or rushed.
Relationships take all kinds of time, and all kinds of times, the bitter
with the sweet. Henri Nouwen points out all these whom we meet early in
Luke’s gospel – Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, Simeon and
Anna – who join us on our Advent journey – are people, like all of
Israel, whose souls wait on the Lord.
"The secret of waiting," Nouwen observes, "is the
faith that the seed has been planted, that something has begun. Active
waiting means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that
something is happening where we are and that we want to be present to
it! A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who
believes that this moment is the moment." Brothers and
sisters, Christmas coming calls us to see, and to say, this moment is the
moment for us! We bloom where we are planted! Even in December. Let us
stay where we are, and live! Let us live where we are, and give! Give
thanks! For the seeds planted in us, between us, among us, around us.
Thanks for the grain, thanks for the grape. Thanks for the Lord we
await, the Lord who is with us already. Amen.
John Auer, Pastor
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