Tag: Mystery

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.

Mystery – Joy and Sadness

coffee mugI walked into the United Methodist Church building where I have served as pastor for the past three years. It was quiet. Of course, it should have been quiet. It was “Conference Sunday” and everyone knew that the pastor was away and there were no evening activities scheduled.

It was a wonderful Annual Conference session. I watched my daughter Erin become a delegate to General Conference in 2016. I took a bit of pride in that – but I thanked God, the one I knew had really blessed her with the gifts that led to that moment. I am just blessed to be her father.

I attended wonderful worship sessions and business sessions that for the most part were filled with holy conversation. Yes, there was a moment or two when people forgot to respect their sisters and brothers as they spoke. There was a particularly painful moment when one of our youth tried to share her faith in the Bible and our need to at least attempt to hear those sacred words the way she hears them. But many good Christians forgot to listen as Christ would and mumbled angrily as she spoke. Lesser things have created great prophets, so I will continue to pray for this brave young woman.

I participated in a service of anointing on Saturday night that reminded me once again just how broken we as Christians really are in this world. We need the Balm of Gilead. We need the healing presence of Christ. We. Need. So. Much.

I wept during the ordination service as I watched five wonderful pastors be ordained. For the past three years I had the honor and the joy of sharing in a covenant group with these five and one more who decided to wait a year for ordination examination. I don’t know why I wept – it was a mixture a joy, hope, and fear – but I do know that a perfectly good stole became a handkerchief for my snotty nose.

I listened with quite a bit of joy on the way home as my youngest daughter quizzed me on parliamentary procedure, rules, and the United Methodist Discipline. Our drive from Conference took more than two hours, but there wasn’t a quiet moment. I was a bit gleeful that she shares some of my love for these tricky little procedures that give us order.

There was a whole lot of joy this week.

And then…after we had been home a little while, my wife and I walked into the “Conference Sunday” quiet church. We gathered a box and she set about taking her personal things out of her office at the church.

On Friday, our Conference debated and passed a petition to General Conference that would change our Discipline to prohibit any member of a pastor’s household from holding a financial office in the church. This was passed in a hope of providing protection to pastors and their spouses of even the “appearance of impropriety.” Yes, I know that this legislation has a long road to make it into our Discipline, but I also listened closely to the voices that were shared during the debate. The voices in support were loud and clear and the favorable vote stated that our Conference did not want our pastor’s and spouses open to this “appearance of impropriety.”

On the other hand, First UMC Princeton had worked so hard to make this a safe place for my spouse to use her gifts. (And she is so very gifted at what she does!) She never touched money – only offering envelopes that had been checked by two (or more) non-related persons and the amounts included written on them. She balanced the counters work with the deposit slips they gave her. She printed out electronic checks after receiving vouchers from authorized persons. She would call check signers – none of these persons were counters – to come and check the validity of the vouchers and sign the checks. She would balance the books and print reports as we needed them. And then, every month, yet another person would come in and audit those books and accounts. First UMC put in processes that kept this gifted woman safe from accusation. But nothing can protect her from “appearances”.

Appearances, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder.

It wasn’t as quiet when we left the church that evening. There were tears. There was sadness. There was the rattling of coffee mugs and a bowl she often used to fix oatmeal for lunch.

This is all part of the mystery I have grown to know as Christ’s Church: It will build you up and it will pull the rug out of from under your feet.

I am just thankful, that underneath it all, under the mountain top experiences and under the roughly tugged rugs there is a God who is greater than even the Church we make in his name. I know God loves this Church, because God loves me, an imperfect person in an equally imperfect group of people.

I go on because I choose to behold this: Jesus loves me. Jesus loves you. Jesus loves us.

Peace…

Family Celebrations

In our home, we have a little saying when one of us begins to weep or cry at a movie or some other event like church. We simply say, “It’s a mystery!” rather than try to figure out exactly what triggered the joy or sorrow of the tears. Well, it was a mystery for me all evening…

I stood among the many people holding candles and sang the hymn that so many churches do on Christmas Eve – “Silent night, holy night” – and I thought about the six wonderful months I have had serving the people of First UMC, Princeton. They welcomed me better than the Christ child was welcomed into the world. They cared for me better than the shepherds in Jesus day would ever experience. And they listened, really listened as I led them to celebrate a Different Kind of Christmas by joining Jesus in the battle against malaria. When my daughter got up and began singing “O Holy Night,” I knew the night was almost complete – the singing of “Silent Night” and the twinkling of the candles allowed me to remember the love, the care and the service given by a community of faith.

The Saturday after Christmas found me spending time with twenty one of my family members in the Fellowship Hall of our church. My Dad got up to say a few words and my brothers and I all nervously laughed, not knowing how long this would take or just what might come out. But then he said, “Thank you. That is all.” And he sat back down. We were celebrating the fifty years that my parents had been married but from the stories being shared, I think we were just celebrating! There was laughter…there were crying, fussy grandchildren (yep…mine) and there was food. The only thing missing…perhaps the singing of “O Holy Night” would have rounded it out for me.

“I don’t know how things were going in there, but people were hanging around in the Gathering Space for along time talking to one another.”

It was a report that I really hadn’t expected. The coffee and the sweet rolls were in the sanctuary and people had come and gone for a couple of hours as groups – sometimes families, sometimes a mix of people – served one another in our version of the Moravian lovefeast. Hugs broke out easily when the eating was over. So, why was I surprised that the fellowship, the unity, the “agape” we shared in the sanctuary spilled over into the Gathering Space and probably even home.

Now that I think it about, only one thing was missing that night as well…”O Holy Night.”

Nah, it wasn’t a “mystery” for just one evening, it has been one mystery after another for a while!  Thank God!