So many carols, so much special music, so little time for Christmas!
Let’s come back to the carols in July! The Christmas bag, even Santa’s
bag, can prove full of tricks and a mixed one. The papers the day after
Christmas broke our hearts with stories of earthquakes, mud slides,
plane wrecks, assassination attempts, shellings and bombings. Remember
how Simon and Garfunkel used to read the news of the day, specially from
Vietnam, over the strains of "Silent Night?" Pope John Paul II
preached Christmas, "Save us from the great evils which lacerate
humanity in this beginning of the third millennium. Save us from the
wars and the armed conflicts that devastate entire regions of the globe,
from the plague of terrorism and the many forms of violence that afflict
weak and helpless people."
Jim Strathdee’s "Christmas Poem" here, in response to
Howard Thurman, reminds us, even the full twelve days of Christmas are
just a beginning: To find the lost and lonely! To heal the broken with
love! Feed the hungry! Feel the whole of creation! Free prisoners! Help
the powerful care! Rebuild nations! See "God" in children
everywhere! Bring hope to all we say and do! Dance at the births of the
new, sing and play in the hearts of the old! In short, as the psalm
says, worship! Praise God! With all things and in all ways we can!
Thought! Feeling! Song! Prayer! Silence! Movement! Word! Table!
Christmas means, every good thing may be embodied! "God" is
incarnate everywhere!
We ask this morning, not so much, "Where’s the beef?",
though we could. But rather, "Where’s the peace?"! The
personal peace? The social, political, religious, economic public peace?
"What went wrong with the angels’ song?" Glory to God in the
highest! And on Earth peace! Our home devotional booklet for the season
asks, could it be that we have tried to split the angels’ song in two?
"We want peace in our hearts and peace in the world, but we don’t
want to give glory to God in the highest"? Truly, there can be no
peace without justice. But there also can be no peace without joy!
Justice and joy go together in Jesus the Jubilee! Jesus, Forgiveness,
new and fresh start for all!
Glory is God’s wages, we are told. "Glory is what God
deserves, what God is entitled to." Why do we not want to give God
rightful wages? Why don’t we give God the glory? Is it often,
"Because we seek glory for ourselves"? "So long as
nations seek glory for themselves, glory that properly belongs to God,
there will be no peace on Earth. About the best we’ll be able to hope
for is long intervals between wars!" "And we are not even
doing well at that. Could it be, we are still trying to grab all the
glory? All the credit? Not to mention all the power? In our
relationships? In our jobs? In our schools? In our congregations? Just
checking. No wonder there is no peace for us. Christmas is time for us
to kick-back and chill! Time for us all to let "God" be god in
our lives and our works.
We have to say, as often and in as many ways to everyone everywhere,
God can only be glorified by life, never by death. Never by death! Which
flies in the face of a lot of traditional theology. Jesus’ death has
been made to seem much more important to us than his life. Christmas
calls us to reclaim, not only how painfully Jesus dies, but how
gloriously, how fully, how freely, Jesus lives, from the very beginning!
Jesus lives, and lives again! For us, in us, with us, through us. The
Jesus of Christmas is not about life after but life before death! Life
before it’s too late for life! That is at least part of what death
means, -- It’s too late for life!
Our devotional booklet concludes, "What we need to do is glue
the angels’ song back together again. Seek peace, and we may never
find it. Seek God’s glory, and peace will find us!" It points
out, at the end of every musical piece written by J. S. Bach are the
letters S. D. G. Sola Deo Gloria – to God alone be the glory.
That is the pathway to peace! And to life! S. D. G.! Do you hear what I
hear? I hear the child Jesus this morning! "In my Father’s
house," he exclaims. Listening, asking questions, growing his own
identity! Often over against his own family and friends. For that is the
way that we grow, especially as children and youth. Life expectancy was
less than 50 in Jesus’ time, so at the age of 12, he is clearly a
typical adolescent! Testing himself, testing us, on his own.
I hear Jesus this morning calling out in every child, in all of the
children of this congregation, the children of this community, of this
city, the children of this nation and of this world. I hear how Jesus in
all his energies is so concentrated, so absorbed in all that goes on
around him. Jesus is not so easily distracted as we, not so much in need
of perpetual entertainment. Rather, he practices "innertainment,"
not only learning from others, but also discovering about himself! I
hear how much Jesus is completely "at home" in "God’s
House!"
Here, as this year slows down and another starts up, empty, is a
litany from the valuable supplemental materials to our Sunday School
curriculum for this morning. Each time we heard the word
"Welcome," please respond by saying aloud together, "This
is the house of God!" Got it? "If you are lost, here
is a place of refuge. Welcome, -- This is the house of God!"
"If you are wandering, here is a place of belonging. Welcome,
--" "If you are going around in circles, come and rest.
Welcome –" "Bring your stories, / bring your questions, /
bring your searches and your discoveries / and together we meet God / in
the very heart of it all. / Welcome, --" This is meant to be
completely hospitable space.
Dr. Martin Luther King, whose month begins this week, the month of
the dreamer in and with us, calls all of creation "God’s
House." He calls upon all of us to start living as intended,
extended family here! To start living at ease with the
Christmas/Epiphany gift of our own essential "greenness," our
own createdness. Live at ease with our own creatureliness among other
creatures, at ease with "All Creatures of Our God and King!"
For we are but one young species among so many, even now just growing,
like Jesus, "in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human
favor." We never stop getting these glimpses and glances, these
bits and pieces, in fits and starts, of whose we are, and of who we are
becoming!
Not only do we wonder, at Jesus here, how "one so young" as
he can already know with such certainty whose he is, and how he is
gifted and called. We will celebrate his baptism and our own two weeks
from today! We also wonder today how "ones so old" as we can
become so "uncertain," so unclear in our gifts and callings!
So many of us, in so many ways, at so many stages of life, find
ourselves searching and starting over again! Can I get a witness? Or is
it only I? Hey, give us a break! It’s OK! It’s Christmas! God is
"gifting" us, God is calling us, God is bearing and birthing
us again, -- even us, even here, even now.
In the spirit of this gospel story, let us imagine our congregation
on the way home from Jerusalem. How do we make sure we are not moving on
without noticing things our children and young people might be wanting,
might evening be trying, to offer? When I join in the Tongan-language
worship, I am always impressed with the clear responsibilities of the
youth and the pride they take in fulfilling them well. How might we help
ourselves to know if and when any of our young people are wandering and
getting lost? Do we know how to turn around to see where they are? How
they are doing? What they are wanting and needing?
The Christmas pageant two Sundays ago proved all over again how
wonderfully comfortable, and capable, how much "at home" our
children feel in this "House!" Thanks to Sharon! To Cristie!
To Linda and Ben! To Jackie! To young people who’ve gone before us!
Even to preachers! And specially to parents. How calm and inviting a
"baby Jesus" Todd Benjamin made with parents Christmas Eve.
How do we go in search of those who do get lost? For instance,
downtown and/ or homeless children and youth? Thanks to all who helped
serve meals on Christmas Day! All who brought gifts for the Angel Tree!
Contributed foods! Helped with IHN! A "Little Brother" came
caroling with us through the "Big Brother, Big Sister" program
– Talk with Dennis Harms! There’s a new program, with Children’s
Cabinet, I think, called "Safe Places," with signs out front
to show young persons may come in and make safe phone calls for help and
resources. Shall we see if we can become such a place? I am in need of
volunteers to make calls in behalf of the "homeless youth"
work group of the Reno Area Alliance for the Homeless, contacting
congregations to see what experiences, insights, suggestions, and needs
there might be in relating with homeless youth.
Where do we find our youth again when they are lost? And what do we
have to learn from them? Where are they asking their questions? Free and
encouraged to grow? I love the reputation of our youth group. As much as
we try to be clear what we offer our youth we do so as church, as United
Methodist Church, still we remain as open as we can be to all the forms
our journeys may take into life by faith, hope, and love. We are always
just beginning. So much is just being revealed. We have so far yet to
go. We never outgrow this Christmas need to worship, even in July, -- to
praise, to seek and to sing of God’s glory in all times and places,
all circumstances and conditions.
The angels’ song is never out of season. There is no joy like the
joy of starting again, of finding again, the Christ Child of God, the
children among and around us, the child lying deep within us. Even as we
identify with the terror of parents who realize children are lost, so we
share the unspeakable joy of moments when lost are found. Please help me
make this connection in song, a perfect carol for July. Turn first with
me to hymn number 346, "Joy to the World!" Let’s do the
first and last verses. Now turn with me to number 378. We’ll do the
first verse to the same tune, as one of my bishops taught me, only we’ll
sing as Dr. King does, not "that saved a wretch like me," but
"that saved and set me free!" Amen.
John Auer, Pastor
