Fishin' n' 'Ketchin'

Jesus said, “Follow me and I will have you fishing for people.”

A stranger in a small town happens upon a little boy fishing at a local pond.  “Any good fishin’ ‘round here?” the stranger askes.  “Some,” the boy replies.  “What do you catch?” the stranger askes.  “Nothing,” answers the boy.  “But I thought you said there was some good fishing around here,” says the puzzled stranger.  The boy looks up at him and says, “Mister, there’s a big difference between fishin’ and ‘ketchin’!”

I grew up in an era when everybody went to church.  Our church was so full it had two different Sunday School hours, each with a class for every individual age and grade.  Our youth group teemed with young people – it was nothing to have 50 kids or more at any particular meeting.  If you wanted to attend the 11:00 service on Christmas Eve you needed to be there by 10:00.  I can’t say the church of my childhood did a lot of ‘ketchin’ because it did not do much ‘fishin’.  Back in the day it just seemed the fish jumped into the boat.  Like I said, everybody went to church. 

That began to change toward the end of the 1970’s, at least in the church where I grew up.  Attendance at youth group meetings was half of what it had been.  The early Sunday School hour was nixed.  Empty spaces in the pews began to appear at holiday services.

The numbers for the Episcopal Church are not pretty.  We had nearly 3 million members when I was ordained in 1987.  Our denomination was already in decline at that time, having lost some 400,000 members from our peak years in the mid-sixties.  Membership in the Episcopal Church today stands at 1.7 million, a 44% drop.  People argue about the reasons for this – liberal policies, cultural changes, my preaching.  The truth is, when you decline by nearly half all these reasons and more contribute.    

I hope you have taken the opportunity to look at the Bishop’s Search Profile on our diocesan website.  It is very well done and informative on many different levels.  Here is one thing I learned from it: parishes in our diocese can be grouped into three areas – those that are growing, those maintaining, and those declining.  16 parishes report they are growing, while 15 state they are maintaining.  72 parishes in our diocese report they are in decline.  That is a staggering number! 

For the record, we at St. Paul’s are one of the fifteen holding our own.  Our average Sunday attendance in 2007, the year you called me to be your rector was 92.6.  It rose to 102.3 the next year, which is the high level mark during my time with you.  The low level came in 2017 when our average attendance was 79.2.  While my health had its ups and downs last year, at least our attendance was up – 86.6 people on a typical Sunday. 

Fishin’ and ketchin’ 

It is not that the Episcopal Church is broken while all the others are thriving.  The hopeful(?) truth is we are losing members at a rate significantly less than most other denominations.  Our society as a whole is turning away from regular participation in organized religion.  Only 20% report they attend a church service at least once a month.  Just 6% of all churches are growing.  Every year 1,000 new churches are launched, which may seem like a lot, but 38,000 are needed just to keep pace our country’s population growth.  Every year 4,000 churches close their doors.

Yes, there are a few “bigger is better” churches that attract hundreds and even thousands of people to their services.  The reasons for their success are as varied as the reasons for the decline of other churches, but the jury on their sustainability is still out.  One of my sisters attends what used to be the largest church in the Akron area.  While it has successfully planted sister congregations in growing suburbs, its original inner-city location is in significant decline.  The average age of its membership is older than ours and its future is anything but assured.

John and Wanda Rector and I spent the last two days in Williamsburg attending our annual diocesan council.  Our featured speakers told us about a British church movement called “Fresh Expressions”, which are new and diverse efforts to reach “dones” and “nones” – those who have been a part of a church, but left and those who have never been a part of a church.  We were told 50-60% of today’s population may never set foot inside a church, not even once. 

I listened intently and took copious notes, hoping to find the answer for parishes like ours.  As an aside, in the two evenings we were in Williamsburg, the Rectors and I enjoyed filling in crossword puzzles.  Of the two – figuring out the future of the church and figuring out the answer to obscure clues, crosswords turned out to be the easier puzzle by far!

Actually, the good news is this effort making headway, breathing new life into near-dormant English churches, is not all that much different from what we do here at St. Paul’s.  Fresh Expressions encourages people to pursue their dream while inviting others to join them.  It may or may not be held within the walls of a church building.  Its focus may be personal growth, service to others, spiritual enrichment, or just about anything.  Fresh Expressions looks a lot like a quilters’ group, reading sessions with therapy dogs, summer meal programs, a small group bible study, a hiking club, and a host of other initiatives we have right here in our parish.  Not all Fresh Expressions last forever.  But each is a way for people to come together and at some level sense God is in their midst. 

When Jesus asked a small group of fishermen to head back out on the waters to cast their nets, he was talking to a group of grizzled veterans adept at what they did.  They had been fishing all night, but had nothing to show for it.  The ‘ketchin’ had eluded them.  Still, at Jesus’ behest, they were willing to give it another try.  I like how in the other miraculous catch story Jesus calls from the shore and encourages the same frustrated fishermen to cast their nets on the other side of the boat.  Somehow, doing the same thing they had always done, but doing it in a new way, allowed them to accomplish what they had been unsuccessful in doing.  It is a potent image for the church and for our parish in this time.  It reminds us ultimately Jesus is the one who finds the fish.  We must be willing to keep doing what we do well, but perhaps do it in a new way. 

Fishin’ and ‘ketchin’. 

By my count, over the course of the last seven days nearly 500 people came into our building.  For every person who attended Sunday worship six people came here for another reason.  By any measure, this means we are doing a lot of fishin’.  Some day, some of these people may become regular worshippers and financial contributors.  Many may not.  But we have set our sights on something much bigger than membership stats and operating budgets.  In and through this place we want folks to know and experience God’s love for all people made known in Jesus Christ.  We want them to know this so deeply that they are strengthened to make God’s love known in and through them. 

I am not discouraged by the church’s present nor by the prospects of its future.  Our future may not look like what we see around us today and it most certainly will not look like the church of my childhood, at least not any time soon.  But bigger does not always mean better and bigger does not necessarily imply more faithful.  I dare say more people at St. Paul’s are involved each week in a hands-on effort to express God’s love than ever were at the much larger church I grew up in.  And I don’t know that 500 people ever came through its doors on a typical week because it saw itself as more of a Sunday country club than a missionary outpost.

The image of the church as fishing for people is still a good one, but if it was the only one all we used in order to determine if we are doing our job all we would need to do is count the people and tally the money.  Using these metrics alone, we would fall on our knees and confess our ineptitude.  The truth is we are casting our nets, perhaps more so than ever.  Another image Jesus uses for the church is light.  “You are the light of the world.”  Jesus said, “You don’t hide a light.  You put it on a stand so it can give light to the whole house.”  Does St. Paul’s radiate with God’s love for the world?  Absolutely.  Do we shine this light only behind our closed doors once the worship service has started?  Absolutely not!  Will our light draw more fish into our boat?  Only time will tell.  Will God’s mission in this world be thwarted?  Never.  Will St. Paul’s have a place in God’s mission?  As long as we to be a part of it. 

We don't Believe in You!

I am better at it now than I used to be, but early on after I was ordained I found it unnerving to preach when someone I grew up with was in the congregation.  A sister, my mother, other relatives, a childhood friend… if I made eye contact from the pulpit with one of these people I felt like the king when he realized his new clothes were non-existent.  They see me as more than who I am, they see me as who I was.  And what I was – like all of us – was a kid who thought like a child, acted like a child, reasoned like a child, and pretty much did little to hint at the adult I would become one day. 

One of my childhood pals has grown up to be a very successful and accomplished OBGYN in the Akron area.  Years ago he delivered the children of another one of longtime friends.  Remembering how we used to play together, I once asked the father, “Wasn’t it strange having Cliff as the doctor who delivered your wife’s babies?”  “Not really,” my friend answered.  Lets just say he has more ability to live the present than I do. 

My college floormates kept up a newsletter for several years after graduation.  Writing about our new careers was very popular.  An electrical engineer employed by the military noted he could not say much about his work other than it was his job to make sure if a person used a remote control to open a garage door the device did not launch a nuclear missile from a silo in a field a mile away.  It never occurred to me such a thing might happen and even more unnerving… a guy I goofed around with in college was tasked with making sure it didn’t.

I wonder what Billy Gates’ 1^st Grade teacher thought of his future held.  As they played house did Nancy Pelosi’s four-year-old friends ever imagine one day she we preside over the House of Representatives?  Did Michael Curry’s siblings see in him a person who would preach at the wedding of a prince with all the world watching?

A part of me sympathizes with the old guard of Nazareth we read about in today’s Gospel lesson.  For nearly twenty-five years Jesus lived among them as he grew from a boy into a man.  Through it all it appears he did little to distinguish himself.  There is some biblical evidence he was intelligent and spiritually insightful at a young age, but to be sure he gave no indication he could be a future king in the ilk of David.

I learned two things about Jesus’ hometown when I visited the Holy Land last September.  First, it was not large 2,000 years ago, a village of only about fifty houses.  What Jesus did every day as a child was known by all.  They might have accepted him as an adequate carpenter, but seeing him as the fulfillment of an important passage of Scripture would have been a stretch. 

And second, I learned the village is situated at the crest of a very step and rocky hill several hundred feet above the Jordon plain.  When the people he was raised among determine to throw Jesus off what the text calls “the brow of a hill”, this is not Jack and Jill falling down a gently sloping, grass-covered hill (as I had imagined).  Had the synagogue members succeeded, Jesus would have come to a different kind of bloody end with every bone in his body crushed on rocks below.

Today’s reading is about more than the self-doubt I used to experience preaching to family and friends.  It is more than an inability to shift from what I knew of a person when he was a child to what he is capable of as an adult.  It is the deepest kind of rejection imaginable.  It is people saying, “We knew you then, we see you now, and we do not believe in you!”

We do not believe in you.  I suspect none of us has ever been told this so bluntly, but surely, at one time or another, each of you has been brought down a peg or two by a doubter.  And the longer a person has known you the more rungs in the ladder you have to climb to rise above the limitations he or she has for you. 

Thea Easterby describes herself as a blogger who is passionate about growing and helping others do the same.  In one post she writes about why people may not believe in you, no matter what your dream might be.  First, she writes, after learning about what you hope to do, they may react negatively simply because they do not get it.  In most cases, our grandmothers and great-grandmothers who aspired to be anything more than a homemaker met with strong resistance.  Striving for anything beyond the status quo gets the same reaction today it did then.

Next, Easterby observes people will not believe in you if they think you don’t have the skills or personality to succeed.  It seems to me, the people most likely to underestimate you are those who have just met you and those who have known you the longest.  One group doesn’t know you and what you are capable of doing, while the other thinks it knows everything about you.

And finally, there are people who will discourage you because they don’t want you to succeed.  Perhaps they are afraid of change or worry about how it will affect them if you ‘make it’ or maybe they are jealous or only live to say “I told you so”.  Maybe they failed to achieve their dreams in life and knowingly or unknowingly do not want to see you achieve what they did not or could not.

Jesicca Wildfire is a writer who describes herself as being a “twisted professor and cheerleader of the apocalypse.”  She notes how, when given an award or some form of recognition, most people thank their loved ones and those who have helped them along the way.  But she holds we owe a debt of gratitude to those who lit a fire in us because they never thought we would amount to anything.  She writes, “The first person to do that [for me] was my kindergarten teacher, Miss. Grimm.  She told my parents I’d probably wind up as a stripper or worse.”  Can you imagine!

While people like this motivated Wildfire to work hard to achieve her goals, she states she had to learn how to give up the fantasy of throwing her success back in their faces.  “I’d like nothing better than to show up at my old elementary school and do a striptease for Miss. Grimm, then flash my doctoral diploma and say, ‘psyche!’  But she probably doesn’t remember me at all.” 

The truth of my experience is I have never known a successful person whose main motivation was to get over on his detractors.  Those who achieve do so because they believe in their vision and they believe in themselves.  Their vision is never something as little as to be bigger than their critics.  Jesus did not go around the region of Galilee doing miracles to show up the people of his hometown.  He did what he did because he believed in a vision he called the Kingdom of God.

I believe God plants a dream in every soul.  This dream is what we refer to as a calling.  It is not just priests who are called by God.  One of my childhood buddies was called to be an OB.  The father of the children he deliverd is a talented graphic illustrator highly regarded in his field.  Still another prevents a doomsday scenario every time I change the channel on my TV. 

“We don’t believe in you.”  Jesus would go on to many crushing experiences – Judas’ betrayal, Peter’s denial, Thomas’ doubts – but I wonder if this first rejection may just have been the most difficult of them all precisely because it is first and it comes from those who go back with him all the way to the beginning.  But Jesus learns how to shake off the dust on his sandals, as we all must do, because his dream, his vision, his purpose, his mission, his calling is too important to abandon to the doubters and skeptics. 

What is your calling?  Are you pursuing it or have you allowed your detractors to cause you to forsake it?  And what about others in your life, especially your children, grandchildren, and young people you know?  How do you encourage them to discern their calling?  In what ways do you guide and support them as they pursue it?  How do you discourage and hold them back?  In what ways are you saying, “I believe in you”?

A Message of Hope

An elderly woman is planning to celebrate her 90^th birthday, but due to constraints, none of her three children will be able to join her for the big occasion.  All three have done well in life and each plans to give her a lavish gift.  The first child sends tickets for a month-long cruise in the Mediterranean.  The second has a local car dealer deliver a brand new Mercedes complete with a chauffeur (she is 90 after all!).  The third, remembering how mother used to love to read the bible before her eyesight went bad, buys her a truly remarkable parrot, trained for 12 years by a cloistered monk to recite the Holy Scriptures word for word from beginning to end.  There is nothing else in the world like it.  As you might imagine, it costs the youngest a fortune, but no amount of money is too much compared to a mother’s joy.  A couple of months after her birthday the children are able to be together with their mother.  She shows them beautiful pictures of her cruise and thanks her first child for making it possible.  She tells the second how much she enjoys being driven around town in her stylish, comfortable new car.  And she says to the third, “Thank you so much for the chicken.  It was delicious!”

The Prayer Book’s Outline of Faith uses a question and answer format to articulate what we Episcopalians believe.  One question asks, “Why do we call the Holy Scriptures the Word of God?”  The answer, “We call them the Word of God because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible.” 

An interesting thing happens when a group of Christians comes together and opens the bible.  God speaks.  Or at least godly conversation ensues.  We find our talk is infused with something that otherwise would not be present.  As we listen to its words and yield to its authority we find ourselves hopeful and challenged, healed and stricken, guided and confused.  In short, reading Scripture changes us.  You cannot listen to Scripture and engage in conversation about it and remain the same.  That is how it is now and that is how it was two millennia ago.

Today we read of Jesus returning to his boyhood hometown and attending worship in the synagogue where he grew up.  He is given the honor of selecting a reading from Scripture and speaking on it.  He asks for a scroll containing the words of the great prophet Isaiah who proclaimed a message of hope at a very dark time.  Jesus unrolls the scroll, searches for a specific passage, locates it, and then reads these ancient words:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor. 

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, 

  to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

The original context is not lost on those present.  Isaiah spoke during a time of exile to a people who were oppressed, who had never even set foot on their ancestral land.  Isaiah proclaims this bleak period is about to end.  “I am here to tell you a new day is about to dawn.” 

Isaiah’s was a bold message because nothing about the time looked hopeful.  God’s people had settled into their lives in Babylon and while they did without much, over the years they had learned how to make due.  But Babylonian power was beginning to wane and Persian invaders from the north were ceasing territory at an alarming rate.  The handwriting was on the wall.  The people in exile were living in a city about to be overrun by another force who would subject them to who knows what.

While most anticipated this development with dread, Isaiah saw in it something different.  He saw the hand of God at work in the Persian army because Cyrus, its leader, had an established policy of letting exiles return to their homeland.  This, in fact, is what happens.  The exiles receive permission to return to the holy city of Jerusalem where they repair the broken walls and gates (securing the city) and rebuild the Temple (this work of restoration is the setting for today’s first reading). 

Everyone in the Nazareth synagogue hearing Isaiah’s words almost five centuries later associates what Jesus is reading with these events.  And each person present must ponder his current misfortune with the plight of those to whom Isaiah preached.  The people of Nazareth are subject to the occupying Roman army.  They are forced into servitude and taxed into poverty.  They witness their sacred traditions being defiled and their cultural identity being dismantled.  They long to be delivered.

Jesus knows the longings of their hearts and he knows the heart of God, who desires for all people to live free and to flourish.  And this passionate desire at the very core of God’s love burns in the heart of Jesus.  The way Luke writes his Gospel, today’s reading serves as the inaugural event of Jesus’ public ministry.  The passage he chooses to read functions as a statement of his mission.  Everything Jesus will do from this point forward will serve a singular agenda.  It will proclaim and demonstrate that God is acting now to make all wrongs right.

It is a hopeful message and initially it is well received by those who have witnessed Jesus grow from child to adult.  The only problem is they do not know what they need in order to be set free.  They do not realize that a change in their outer circumstances needs to be accompanied by an inner transformation.

I just finished reading J.D. Vance’s book Hillbilly Eulogy.  He describes his life growing up in a small Ohio town in an extremely dysfunctional family whose roots are in Appalachian Kentucky.  Vance is one of the few people from his background to overcome the odds against those from poverty and brokenness.  But even though he goes on to serve in the marines, graduate from The Ohio State University, earn a law degree from Yale, and go on to a successful career and a happy marriage, he writes eloquently about the way his childhood experiences marred the achievements of his adult years. 

He had to unlearn all the old responses to chaos and violence.  He had to confront his own sense of identity, which was forged in the conflicted environment of a loving family system that broke down time after time.  He knew how to be a hillbilly (which Vance points out is not without its blessings and benefits), but he had to learn the ways and rules of a very different world in order to make something different of his life.  Although Vance was exceeding everyone’s wildest dreams for him – his outer world – he could not be free until he made sense of his inner world by confronting what held him back and embracing what was worth keeping.

This is the kind of work Jesus sets out to do through his ministry.  He knows how the years of oppression have damaged the soul and diminished the spirit.  He knows how sin and suffering have left a mark on each and every person he encounters.  And he knows God’s favor will not rule in a person’s outer world if it does not reside in a person’s inner world. 

It was true then.  It is true now.  It is a hopeful truth.  And it is a hard truth.  You cannot be whole until you are healed from the inside out.  Winning the lottery will not fix you.  Earning a degree from a prestigious Ivy League school is not a magic elixir.  Not to pick on a particular politician because most of them pedal the same promise, but you cannot make America great again through public policy alone.  For any of these things to make a difference, something has to be different about you.  Not about your circumstances.  The difference has to be in your essence. 

As I say, this is a hard truth.  Next week’s gospel reading is a continuation of today’s and it will bear this out.  But it is a hopeful truth because inner transformation is the work God wants to do.  God’s very words, “You are my child.  I love you”, lay a foundation for something new.  Jesus’ every action and every word demonstrate God’s love for you.  And the Spirit’s work and moving is a force you can invite or discourage.  The choice is yours. 

The reason Jesus chose the passage from Isaiah to read to the people of his hometown has not changed all these years later.  He saw in it a message of hope and a message of challenge, a call to celebrate and a call to change.  The word of God remains living and active.  God still speaks through it and not one of us is ever quite the same when we hear it.

The Annual Address

Turning water into wine is the quintessential Epiphany story because it is the first miracle (John calls it a ‘sign’) Jesus performs and as such begins to show us who he is.  It may just be Jesus’ best known miracle.  Even as biblical illiteracy grows in our society, most people seem to know about this one because jokes based on it run rapid.

Case in point:  A nun is driving down the road when her car runs out of gas.  She walks to a nearby gas station and asks to borrow a container so she can buy enough gas to get her car started.  The attendant apologizes profusely, saying the station’s only gas can is out on loan.  All he has for her to use is a hospital bedpan.  She fills it with gas, walks back to her car, and proceeds to pour the contents of the bedpan into the gas tank.  Just then two men happen to pass by.  One turns to the other and says, “I know the bible says Jesus turned water into wine, but if that car starts I am converting to Catholicism.”      

Turning water into wine also may be Jesus’ most curious miracle in that, unlike healings and feeding the masses, it seems to serve no real immediate purpose other than to save a bride’s family from embarrassment.  At a deeper level, it signals Jesus’ intent in life to transform the ordinary into the exceptional, to convert lack into abundance, to replace anxiety with celebration, and to turn mourning into dancing.  As such, it is a wonderful way to begin to pivot the liturgical year from stories about Jesus’ beginning to stories about his actions and purpose.

It also provides a wonderful backdrop for reflection on the occasion of today’s Annual Meeting.  Our parish is a place where God consistently takes what we have and uses it to provide what we need.  We are truly blessed in that as a parish we lack for nothing.  We have everything we need and more to offer thanks to God on a weekly basis, to care for one another through life’s ups and downs, and to offer witness in our community and throughout our world to God’s compassion for the entire human family and all of creation.

We hear St. Paul state this morning something we recognize as true in our parish family… “there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit.”  Take a moment to ponder the assortment of gifts utilized here on a weekly basis.  We have singers and people who love to be with children and teens.  We have folks who care about linens and beauty, about organization and spontaneity, about hospitality and about safety.  We have people who give an extraordinary amount of money while demanding nothing extra in return and we have people who give an extraordinary amount of time without concern for recognition.  On mornings such as today, a handful of people gather before the sun rises to prepare a breakfast for all.  Other Sundays someone brings some kind of food to share.  We have ringers and readers, ushers and servers, greeters and door-lockers.  Dr. Seuss would have a field day writing about our parish!  While we always can use more, the joyous truth is we lack for nothing.

Now, you my counter that every church has the same variety of gifts we have here… and you might be right.  But I have never been around a parish where people offer more and complain less than here at St. Paul’s.  We value one another and appreciate what each person has to offer.  We have a common respect and appreciation for one another that is anything but common in today’s society. 

St. Paul’s has been blessed over the course of the last year to be led by two wonderful wardens – Bill Peachy and Dan Jones.  Bill began his service noting he has done just about everything else in the parish (and, I might add, in our community) other than serving as a warden so he figured it was time for him to do that.  Dan writes in the Annual Report he has put his whole heart into keeping St. Paul’s a beautiful place, utilizing gifts and skills he has developed throughout his life.  Bill and Dan are wonderful examples of the kind of ministry so many of us offer.  We sense a responsibility and obligation to a place that means so much to us.  We sense how our God-given gifts and talents can be put to service to keep God’s house up and running and witnessing to God’s love.  We owe Bill and Dan a debt of thanks, not only for what they have done, but also for what they represent in our common life.

I am grateful to our parish staff and deeply honored to serve with them.  Al joined us in December 2007, just a few months after I was hired.  While his puns may be old and stale, his ministry and music remains fresh and joyous.  He continues to lead and encourage our choirs in ways that bring out the best of their gifts.  He does the same with our congregational singing.  And for all his talent, Al is an amazingly easy to person to work with.  He is a delight who adds immeasurably to our common life.

Cindy’s work here reminds me I am terrible at enforcing her job description.  It is not that I can’t get her to do her job, it is that I can’t keep her from doing everything else.  She pours her heart and soul into this place.  She takes care of everything, finds ways to save money, peruses innovation, cheerfully greets every visitor to the office, and lends a helping hand in ways we don’t ask or require.  I am exceedingly grateful for Cindy’s help this fall while my health waxed and waned.  I never once worried the church was not in good hands.

Juel, Christa, and Julia continue to offer loving, thoughtful ministry to our children and young people.  I am grateful to Sarah Blake for all she contributes, to Debbie Askew, Kitty Quillin, and Lee Cross for helping with St. Paul’s Youth Group, to Macey Olenjack for leading our confirmation class, and to Joby Webb and Wanda Rector who guide our acolytes.  I am pleased our children have such wonderful examples of Christian living working with them.

I am grateful to Miko for all she does for St. Paul’s, especially her work as our Sexton.  Every Sunday morning when I walk into the sanctuary it radiates with her love and care for this place. 

Over the years of my time serving as your rector I have been delighted with the make-up of our Vestry, which has been comprised of long-time members and people new to our community.  This pattern continues with today’s election of Jan Gates, Chris Johns, Bob Leonard, and Dee Sage.  Our parish leaders help us to see new possibilities while remaining true to our identity and tradition.  Many of you have served on the Vestry and know firsthand it is a ministry of service, giving, and guidance.

I will be interested to see where we are in three years when we gather as a parish, in part, to thank today’s class of 2021 for their time on the Vestry.  Will the wine have run out of this place?  Or will water already present but unnoticed be transformed into something life-giving and energizing for our parish?  If the next three years are anything like the last three than there will be leaks in the roof to fix, finances will be tight, but adequate, and a bear or two will roam through the parking lot.  And, if the next three years are at all like the last than new faces will adorn our congregation, new ideas and initiatives will fuel new avenues for ministry and adventure, and a spirit of joy and goodwill will permeate everything we do in and through this place. 

I look forward to being with you on that day and being a part of all that happens between now and then.  I look forward to all that God has in store for us.  I even look forward to Al’s next pun (but don’t let him know!).

God's Love Incarnate

A pastor makes an announcement at the beginning of the Christmas Eve service saying there will be a meeting of the church board immediately following worship.  Once the service ends the church’s leadership gathers in a room to confer about what surely is a critical matter.  To everyone’s surprise a visitor, a complete stranger to the church, joins them.  The minister addresses him in a kindly fashion, saying, “My friend, do you understand this is a meeting of the church board?”  The visitor responds without hesitation, “Well sir, after your sermon I am as bored as I have ever been!” 

We gather tonight to celebrate an event so significant our culture has divided human history into what happened before it and what happened after. 

Since the dawn of humanity we have been wondering how we got here.  The Judeo-Christian tradition holds a Higher Being has created all things, including us.  We believe this Being, whom we call ‘God’, can be known in part through the creation God has brought into existence.  Creation reveals God is intelligent, the architect of wonder and beauty.  There is a majesty in the orderliness of creation and a mystery to its random chaos.  Both speak to God’s nature.  Because God made it, all creation belongs to God.  We believe God tasks us with the care and keep of this world.      

A specific group of people – the Hebrews – encounter God through historical events.  God sides with them to deliver them from bondage and oppression when they are enslaved in Egypt.  God promises to be with them to guide and protect them.  God reveals to them a code of commandments for spiritual and moral living.  This people comes to believe God blesses them when the obey and punishes them when they disobey.

Over time, a series of prophets begins to understand God in new ways.  First, they say obedience is not concerned just with outward behavior.  It must originate in the heart.  And second, they realize the punishment they endure as a people far outweighs anything they have done wrong.  They come to understand God is ‘long-suffering’ – a word which means God’s compassion never fails, never flags, never ends, no matter what we do.  We may turn away from God but God never turns away from us.

And while this is a vast oversimplification, in a nutshell it describes everything humanity learned about God prior to the birth of a baby boy in an obscure little middle-eastern town called Bethlehem.  We knew a lot about God and about God’s will for us before then, but what we knew was not nearly complete.  For us to have as full a knowledge as possible, God had to become one of us.  God had to take on human flesh so that human flesh could comprehend God’s very nature.

What we did not and could not understand before, a boy happened upon by mistake one year during his school’s annual Christmas play.  This particular year the students performed a program called “Christmas Love.”  They were all dressed in festive holiday sweaters and hats, complete with mittens and boots and everything else you associate with this time of year.  Each student held a big cardboard poster with a huge letter on it.  Collectively, the signs spelled out CHRISTMAS LOVE. 

The first child spoke up: “C is for Children.”  The second child said, “H is for Happy.”  And so it went.  There was only one problem and it was obvious for everyone to see, except the child holding the M.  Unbeknown to this child, he held his sign upside down and what should have been a M was now a W.  The children who could see it could not contain their snickering and try as they might the teachers could not get them to stop. 

When it came to his turn, the little boy raised his sign, which now read W, and said, “M is for magic.”  This elicited howls of laughter and the little boy turned bright red with embarrassment, not understanding what he had done.  But when all the children were finished and all the cards were held high, a bright smile came over every face in the audience.  The display intended to spell “CHRISTMAS LOVE” now unintentionally read “CHRIST WAS LOVE”.

To read the story of Jesus is to hear the story of God incarnate, of love in action.  Jesus lives his life reaching out to the last, the lost, and the least.  He demonstrates God’s wisdom by teaching the simple, God’s compassion by healing the sick, and God’s mercy by forgiving the sinner.  He invites the prominent and the powerless to join him in doing the work of God’s Kingdom.  And in the end, he gives his very life to expose and defeat the powers of death and darkness.  The only way any of this is aspect of God’s person to be knowable if for God to take on human flesh and show us what the divine nature looks like lived out in our world.  Short of this, we can only guess at what it might be.  Short of this, we cannot even begin to imagine how much God loves us.

Most of you know I have had an interesting couple of months this fall.  I have been to the emergency room four times, urgent care once, and hospitalized on three different occasions (including a stint in the ICU at Norfolk General); all in an attempt to deal with my blood, which seems to like to clump together and clog up my vessels.  One of my nephews (who serves as an army medic) encouraged me to enjoy my stay while I was at, what he called, “a very expensive, low-amenity, all-inclusive”.  Well, that is one way to put a positive spin on my experience.

I have to tell you what I went through has changed me in ways I still don’t fully understand.  It wasn’t that I stared death in the face and survived, because that wasn’t my experience at all.  I was deeply affected by what the prayer book so eloquently describes as “the loving care that surrounds us on every side.”  Beginning with the doctors, nurses, and hospital staff, to family and friends and colleagues, to all of you, I not only knew I was loved, I felt it in a very profound way. 

Don’t get me wrong, before all of this I was not hanging my head low wondering why no one cared about me.  I have always felt very appreciated and valued.  But this experience made it real.  Love and compassion made itself present to me in flesh and blood.  It would have been easier for doctors to text a message with the results of my latest test along with a link I could click on for further information, but no, each came to my room to explain what he or she had learned and patiently answered my questions.  The nurses and staff could not have been kinder or more compassionate.  And your love and concern for me was written on your faces and ringing in your voices in a way I will never forget.  Love incarnate changes us.  It has changed me.

I never really understand those bible-thumping churches where the preacher holds up the ‘good book’ and bellows God loves us so much he sent us this love letter.  It seems to me the Scriptures, while holy and sacred and indispensable to our faith, are still at least one step removed from the love made flesh in Jesus.  They point beyond themselves to something much more profound.  As one person put it, “Action is always superior to speech in the Gospels, which is why the Word became flesh and not newsprint” or, we might add, just a book.  Tonight we celebrate God’s love made present and known in human flesh, through Jesus Christ. 

Tonight we also invite God’s love to dwell in our flesh that we might shine with God’s light.  Nothing is more valuable in this world, nothing more precious, and nothing more necessary.

There is a story of a five-year-old girl who is over-the-top excited to give her parents a very special gift at Christmas.  She is so excited she wants to keep the gift a secret.  She insists her parents set her up with a box, wrapping paper, a bow, ribbon, scissors, and tape and then leave her be.  She is adamant neither can see her special gift until Christmas morning.  Well, it may not have been the prettiest wrapped present ever, but all things considered the little girl does a decent job.  When she is finished she places it under the Christmas tree and checks it several times a day.  With each visit the girl becomes more and more excited and the parents more and more curious. 

What has she put in the box for them completely apart from their knowledge or doing?  As Christmas gets closer and closer and their daughter gets more and more excited about the gift, the parents’ suspense and curiosity grows and grows.  Each night, it takes all their power not to sneak a peek after their daughter has gone to bed.

Finally, Christmas morning comes and presents are opened.  As if to heighten her parents’ pain, the little girl insists her gift to them be opened last.  Wrapping after wrapping gives way to one present after another until finally there is only one left.  With a joy her little body can barely contain the girl hands her gift to her parents.  They hold it.  It does not appear to have any weight to it at all.  They shake the box, but there is no sound, no movement inside. 

Slowly they open it and are startled to find the box is completely empty.  They are absolutely puzzled until their daughter jumps in their laps, wraps her arms around them, and excitedly proclaims, “I blew kisses into it until it was completely full of my love for you and then I wrapped it very carefully so none got away!”

Tonight we remember and celebrate how we do not know God’s love is until it is made incarnate.  We did not know how much God loves us until God came to be with us to show us.  We never know how much we are loved until we experience that love made real through the lives and actions of others.  And we never love the world until we let God’s love shine through us.

A Real Charlie Brown Christmas

Perhaps there is no better source to seek for inspiration at a service like this than the future scholar and theologian Charlie Brown.  One day in mid-December he confides to a friend something deeply troubling:

I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus.  Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy.  I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.  I just don’t understand Christmas, I guess.  I like getting presents and sending cards and decorating trees and all that, but I’m still not happy. 

Charlie Brown sighs a deep sigh and says, “I always end up feeling depressed.”  Linus, who has been listening patiently, reflects for a moment and says, “Charlie Brown you’re the only person I know who can take a wonderful season like Christmas and turn it into a problem.”

I suspect most of us here tonight know exactly what Charlie Brown means when he says not withstanding all the joyous things associated with this time of year he still does not feel happy.  And I also suspect most of us fears if we reveal how we really are feeling people will react exactly the way Linus does.  Not only might there be something wrong with us, but we stand to ruin the fun for everyone else.

But allow me to suggest something different.  I think we are the normal ones.  We are the ones who are in touch with our deepest feelings and are courageous enough to be here tonight to affirm them as being a legitimate part of who we are.

Dr. Milo Thornberry, a Methodist pastor and active blogger until his death last year, identifies six reasons people encounter depression during the holidays.  First, this is a time of tremendous stress for many people.  Preparations for Christmas and wrapping up details at the end of the year places heavy burdens on us.  Like the song says, it’s the most wonderful time of the year, but it is also the most demanding.  More than one person has muttered, “I’ll be glad when this is all over.”

Second, fatigue.  Increased demands lead to decreased rest and exercise.  We get worn down and worn out and all too often come down with something as a result.  Being tired and being depressed go hand-in-hand.

Third, family-related issues.  You can spend all year avoiding that certain someone in your family who grates at every nerve and fiber of your being, but you cannot escape them at Christmas.  The only thing worse than dealing with this person or persons is the anticipation of dealing with them. 

Next, many of us experience a tremendous sense of loneliness at this time of year.  We may not be able physically to get home to the place where loved ones will gather.  For some of us there is no ‘home’ to go to.  I remember after my marriage ended walking my dog on cold December nights passing home after home lit up inside and out for Christmas.  More than once I could see a party inside, which did nothing but fuel my sense of loneliness. 

Then we have to deal with unrealistic expectations.  How can Christmas live up to all the hype, especially if we grade it based on, oh, let’s say getting a brand new Lexus with a big red bow the size of a large dog house on top.  The truth is, none of us gets the picture-perfect Christmas we imagine.  And while Thornberry doesn’t mention it directly, Christmas can be a very difficult time for people who don’t have the money to spend of gifts, decorations, and lavish meals.  It can be especially depressing for those who can’t afford Christmas, but go ahead and shop to the limit charging everything to credit cards they can’t pay off.

Finally, the reduced sunlight at this time of year is itself enough to bring on a case of the blues.  Seasonal Affective Disorder is very real and we are programed at some deep level to retreat into an emotional hibernation from now until at least April.

While Thornberry includes it under loneliness, I think grieving the loss of loved ones deserves its own place on this list and it should probably be at the top.  You cannot celebrate Christmas present without remembering Christmases past.  Our memory of Christmases past always includes loved ones who will not be with us this year.  Period.  And the more recent the loss the more acute the pain.  Period.  Period. 

So, given all of this – stress, fatigue, family issues, loneliness, unrealistic expectations, reduced sunlight, and grief – who do you know who does not have a reason to be at least a little down as Christmas approaches?  Let me say it again, we are the ones who are in touch with our deepest feelings and are courageous enough to be here tonight to affirm them as being a legitimate part of who we are.

I saw in the Suffolk News-Herald that Oakland Christian Church in Chuckatuck is having a Longest Night service tomorrow.  The paper praised the service as necessary and even included an editorial thanking the church for offering it and commending it to the community.  I am pleased it received this recognition and am heartened to have confirmation we are doing something important here tonight. 

This is now the second year we have held this service.  As I have said in the announcements leading up to tonight, last year we found how giving our sadness its due frees us up to lay it aside in order to experience more fully the joy of Christmas. 

In a psychological sense, we are refusing to turn to disassociation as a copying mechanism.  Through disassociation, we bury certain “undesirable” feelings in an effort to pretend they do not exist and forget the experiences causing them to pretend they never happened.  But what we suppress has a way of finding a way to express itself… and it usually it’s expression is neither appropriate or pleasant.  Depression manifests itself in many different and damaging ways.  The best way around it is through it, by affirming our own limitations and the limitations of this season as well as remembering all those we love but see no longer.

In a spiritual sense, we come here to affirm God treats tenderly the bruised reed and the dimly burning wick (Isa. 42:3).  This is a safe place to allow our vulnerabilities to surface.  This is a remarkable place because here we find God’s hope and help and healing. 

Christmas began two centuries not with cards being sent in the mail, not with decorations covering every surface of your house (indoors and out), not with wrapped presents piled under an artificial evergreen, not with non-stop parties at the office, school, and homes of friends, and not with a sumptuous meal served on fine china bathed in candlelight spread a warm glow of love on all our gathered family (with no one missing!).  Christmas began in a meager setting that served to highlight a singular truth – God loves us and loves us enough to come and be with us.  God loves us where we are, as we are.  And because God loves us where and as we are God loves our sadness and our pain.  God loves our loneliness and our sense of loss.  God loves our fatigue and our disappointment.  God knows this is a part of who we are and God loves it about us. 

Let God hold and keep you in these places.  Know that they are not to be hidden, shunned, or shamed.  And as you let God love all these things about you, may you begin to feel anew all of God’s love for all that is you, including that which gives light and joy and happiness and fulfillment and purpose and meaning and goodness.  May you sense all of this more powerfully this Christmas even as you embrace what it is that makes you blue.  After all, there is more than a little bit of Charlie Brown in each of us.