Category: Just part of the journey home

Again?

I don’t know where to start. Part of me has hoped beyond hope that somehow we would have found a solution to the problem of mass shootings in the United States. I’m wrong. And I am pretty well convinced that I will remain wrong until the most profitable field in medicine is Mental Health.

Oh…don’t get me wrong. I do not blame ALL shootings on people with mental health issues. Nah. That’s not what I mean. I just mean that until mental health becomes a priority for us in the United States – and let’s be honest, the only real priorities in the United States are profitable priorities – then we will not even be able to carry on the conversations that we really need to have in order to fix this problem.

We just are not sane enough.

Why do I say that, you ask? Well, it happened in 1999 in Columbine and all of our thoughts and prayers and energy went into changing nothing. It happened in 2012 in Newton and all of our thoughts, prayers, energy, and ranting on social media went forward to change nothing. It happened in 2018 at Stoneman Douglas High School and all of our thoughts, prayers, speeches, energy, and ranting/raving on social media went forward to change nothing. Does doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results sound sane to you?

We are not sane enough to have conversations about people killing people that lead to changes in laws that will protect life because our minds are clouded by the insanity that our rights may somehow be trampled. We are not sane enough to have conversations about people killing children because we are so entrenched in our own “belief systems” that we cannot even hear someone else without making them into a villain

We are not sane enough. And until we make mental wellness the most profitable branch of medicine – Nothing. Will. Change.

Am I speaking in hyperbole, being just a bit sarcastic, or attempting to be prophetic? I don’t know yet. But after this next batch of sad, needless funerals take place, if nothing changes, AGAIN, then we will all know.

So, today, I did what I do when I am forced to think about 19 dead elementary school children and their families and community trying to comes to grips with the loss. I prayed. And I worked on my own mental health, because we must all be a little bit insane since this is still happening.

I also share with you the prayer that I have prayed all day in hopes it will bring you to a point of lamenting both the violence and the lack of mental health we face as a society. Enjoy the song. Cry if you can.

Mary Pondered

Luke 2:1-20

It never fails. Really. People say that the only things you can count on in this world are death and taxes – but that’s just not true.

You can also count on people showing up for Christmas Eve worship.

Now before you get your stockings in a twist, I am not talking about people who show up just for Christmas Eve services. I have no complaint about that at all. No, what I am saying is that there is something about gathering on Christmas Eve that is attractive to people.

Maybe it is the candlelight, and we are all moths drawn to the flame.

Maybe it is the songs – both carols and solos – that we are all waiting to hear.

Perhaps it is just being together, as a family and as a community of faith that drives us to want to be here on Christmas Eve.

I can assure you of this, if I had to pick one worship service to attend every year – if for some reason I could only go to one service of worship – it would be this one.

So, believe me…I am incredibly happy that every single person is here tonight and was thrilled with everyone that I got to see at the earlier service as well.

Yet there is something about worshiping at 11 pm on Christmas Eve that just works for me. (Some think that it is because my family has a tradition of going to Waffle House® in between the early and late services that motivates me. But trust me, it is more than that. Really.)

I think it has something to do with wanting to recreate the experience of that first holy night so long ago. Yes, in a very truthful way we moved our main Christmas worship to Christmas eve a century or so ago because we wanted to give Christmas Day to families and friends. But at the same time, I think we wanted to try and recreate a holy night. We hope for some sort of star to shine bright for us or for the words of an angel to ring in our ears. Or maybe it is because during this hour when our energy is really starting to run low, we know that we are open to experiencing God in some new and powerful way.

So, we come. Expectant as the shepherds, we come.

And maybe that is the real reason you can always count on people to come to Christmas Eve services: they know that they have been invited not just by a church, but by the Creator of the Universe.

Shepherds were invited to the birth of Jesus and shepherds were about as low on the totem pole of human creation that existed at the time. So why can’t we show up to celebrate as well, regardless of how we see ourselves or others see us. I think that is perfectly good theology. The Creator does want you here.

Angels were there as well, and if you don’t feel like one of the ruffians that shepherds were in those days, perhaps you feel at least a little closer to the angels – not angelic – but at least someone willing to serve God as you can, following Jesus, doing your best. So why shouldn’t you feel invited by the Creator? I think that is perfectly good theology as well. The Creator does want you here.

Even preachers have a precedent for attendance from the first Nativity – well, at least according to some. Mary rode a donkey to Bethlehem, and we all know that a donkey is just another name for a, well, you know. So even preachers, or anyone we think a little less of in this world because of their obstinance or difference in opinion from us, have a standing invite to this service. I think that is perfectly good theology. The Creator does want me and you to be here.

But maybe we are here tonight because we know just how important this night is in the scheme of things. We realize that on this night long ago God chose to become Human, which started the move towards the cross and the resurrection. Those set loose the power for everything to be reversed for us so that we humans could be filled with the presence of God. Some would call it the circle of life…I like to think of it as the circle of re-birth. We celebrate a birth because we know that somehow this helps leads to our rebirth.

So, because we know how important this night is, we want to be here. We want to say we added something to our celebration of holly and Hallmark, presents and matching pajamas, lights and libations.

So, we go where people have always gone.

Church. On Christmas Eve.

I think a lot of us do show up because we think we know what this is all about. We think we understand the babe in the manger as Lord of Creation. We think we understand the shepherds, the angels, the guy who married a woman already pregnant, and we think we even understand Mary. We think we get all these things.

It is God’s coming to earth – of course I am going to be here to celebrate that! Easy – peasy – God is among us, let’s worship and have good cheer! Our world certainly needs that.

But right there at that moment is where we all rub up against this story in the wrong way. We are told in such a way that you cannot make sense saying that you “understand it all.” One of the last verses we heard in that story was, “But Mary kept these things and pondered them in her heart.”

Folks, I have done my fair share of pondering – which means simply that we think about things that are puzzling to us – and some of you may even claim that I do far too much of my pondering out loud, from the pulpit. The truth is, pondering requires less than full understanding. If you fully understand, there is no need to ponder.

And Mary pondered. The one who knew more about what was going on that night than any other human or animal or angel present found herself surrounded with a baby given by God, a husband who loved her when he could have left her for dead, a birth in a strange town and a strange place, a bunch of lower class shepherds showing up to ogle her first born, talk of angel proclamations – something which with she had personal experience.

All these things – and Mary pondered them.

I believe that the greatest thing the church offers as we come together to worship on Christmas Eve is the opportunity to experience mystery! We can’t completely explain being fully human/fully divine. We can’t truly describe virgin birth, angelic hosts, shepherds who become proclaimers. We can’t explain new stars in the sky and anything else about this holy night.

However, we can invite you to the mystery of it all. We can aid in experiencing the mystery that goes beyond all mysteries. God and humanity created in One. You cannot explain that. But you can ponder the mystery of it.

And if you can ponder it, then perhaps you will decide to also follow that mystery. You can follow like the shepherds did. You can follow the mystery you ponder of the God/Human along whatever path you are walking.

Just don’t try to own the explanation of it.

Let it own you…so you too can have the peace that this holy night brings.

Amen.

Prayer

On the sidewalk, he talked to many people

                But they were not to be seen.

As he approached me, I wondered,

                Does my “here” exist for him?

But he spoke to me as to those other –

so I am real,

I guess.

And the King of Austria introduced himself

To me

And me to his own cloud of witnesses.

People who were there for him if not for anyone else.

He talked to me and to them in turns.

                Seeking help and advice and counsel from us all.

At times I could not keep up, but as time went on

                It was no longer strange, or weird, or uncomfortable

                Instead, it was what it was:

Prayer.

                I’ve been asked to explain it, teach it even.

                                But had I ever really lived like someone whose whole life was prayer?

                I held the door open a little longer than usual as he/they left

                Just to be certain they all went with him.

                But when the curtain, the door closed

                                Between us

                                It might just have been that

                                                One or two

                                Stuck around

                Just waiting for me to pray.

An Incarnational Moment

Because there is one loaf, we , who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf. The bread which we break is a sharing in the body of Christ. (United Methodist Hymnal, Word and Table Service 1, page 13)

Some of my favorite memories from my teenage years were those where I spent an entire day and night reading a book. My clearest memories of these nights involve books written by Stephen King. Once I started them, I was compelled to get to the end even if it meant spending a sleepless night and garnering my parents wrath the next day. There was either something so scary that it had to be resolved or my imagination was so taken by the narrative that I had to finish in order to rest. Either way, I would give in to the compulsion to read.

There are a lot of things on my “to do” list for today. I had hoped to finish and record my Sunday sermon this afternoon. (Not going to happen.) I still have some work to do to prepare for a Zoom Bible Study this evening. (Will definitely happen somehow.) We are recording parts of the Sunday service today so I can edit them tomorrow. (That’s scheduled…so it should happen.) And yes, I still have hopes of doing some recorded mid-week meditation for the people of First Church. (This one is still unknown.)

Some may say that I don’t know how to prioritize, and that may be the case. However, over the past couple of weeks I have had so many conversations about Communion and the “Pandemic Virtual Church Time” we are now immersed in, and I have read some thought provoking articles about the topic, that I find myself compelled to put some words down as well. Priorities or not, I’m at a point of compulsion here.

If you didn’t watch the video that I posted last week of a conversation Rev. Jennifer Williams and I had, I would recommend it as background for this. She’s an incredibly insightful pastor. I also cannot recommend enough a blog post by Rev. Hannah Bonner found here. Rev. Bonner references several other pieces that have been done about the subject of Holy Communion in this time, and if you like, read those as well. She treats them fairly from my perspective. She also gives a much deeper sense to the social justice aspects of Holy Communion than I have experience in giving.

An observation that I have taken from both the conversations and the reading is that parts of the Church have, from time to time, taken respites or fasts from celebrating Holy Communion. Sometimes for a season of discernment. Sometimes from the necessity of having someone available to serve. And sometimes, like right now, when we cannot possibly partake of the Sacrament in person without risking the spread of a disease. Granted, the disagreements about what Communion means – and whether you should even capitalize it – are as varied as the regularity it is celebrated, even within the same denomination.

One thing I can say for certain about the Sacrament – it must be a mystery because we sure as hell can’t figure it out.

Yet, despite the mystery and the problems we have right now with snow in May, murder hornets, COVID19, and the general failure of nerve among our national leaders, I am, as the pastor of a real community of faith wrestling to figure out how to lead as the one who presides over the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

With all the wrestling I have been doing in heart and mind, I finally came to the place where I have found peace about what I am going to do. During worship – both while we remain apart and until we can safely partake of the Sacrament again – I am going to set the Table with both bread and juice. It will be there as a reminder to us of the moment in which we live. It is not a moment where I believe we are “giving up” or “fasting” or “hoarding” (for those who are performing virtual communion). For me, it is a token of the Incarnational Moment for the community of faith to be the Body of Christ, broken and shared.

When I had this thought of it being an incarnational moment, I thought, “Cool! I’ve come up with something new!”

Alas.

I was beaten to this centuries ago by none other than my own favorite crazy Dane, Soren Kierkegaard. Although he is not speaking about Communion, per se, the idea of an incarnational moment seems to have originated with him as he wrestled with some of the Pauline letters. He writes:

The moment is that ambiguity in which time and eternity touch each other, and with this the concept of temporality is posited, whereby time constantly intersects eternity and eternity constantly pervades time.

and

A moment as such is unique. To be sure, it is short and temporal, as the moment is; it is passing, as the moment is, past, as the moment is in the next moment, and yet it is decisive, and yet it is filled with the eternal. A moment such as this must have a special name. Let us call it: the fullness of time. (Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin, ed. Reider Thomte and Albert B. Anderson (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980), 89ff)

I believe that we as a Body have arrived at an Incarnational Moment – where past, present, and future have come together – so that in that confrontation with the elements we are allowed the honor to live out the brokeness of both loaf and body because we cannot partake of the Sacrament that embodies them for us. In the absence of the Sacrament, we are confronted even more plainly with becoming that Sacrament. We need to be confronted by the broken loaf and be that incarnate body for the world as we safely find ways to both be the church and someday(?) gather in someway(?) to celebrate that which we have been living out. But only in the fullness of time. (And right here, I call on us to define that “world” as my colleague Rev. Bonner does with a full understanding of who is not at the Table with us.)

Well, that compulsion is done. It’s not the most scholarly assessment, but hey, that’s not my way. I’ve put some thoughts out there, folks, and you are welcome to comment. I’m just on the journey home and would love to have your company.