That First Christmas

Poolesville Presbyterian Church
12.25.11; Rev. David Williams 


 Scripture Lesson:  Luke 2:1-20 

 Why did that passage sound so familiar? 

It’s like...we heard it only yesterday...

 The repetition and retelling of things is an important part of how we both identify ourselves and structure how we approach both our present and our future.  We are storytelling creatures, our lives woven from a tapestry of tales that stretch back as far as our memory allows. My own memory can be a bit on the spotty side.  I am not entirely sure, for example, what I had for breakfast one week ago today.  The further back I go, the more scattered that remembrance becomes. 

How far back do you recall?  How many Christmases?  As the years go on, going back to your first Christmas gets harder, as more and more memories get layered upon it.   Rewinding back through the forty two Christmas mornings I’ve experienced, I think I can get back to one sometime in the early nineteen seventies.  I was four, or maybe five, and living in East Africa.  That memory is a fragmented thing now, cobbled together from textures and scents and still-frames, as frayed and well-worn as a Christmas tree decoration you made when you were a child.

 I remember getting up early on that Christmas morning, before the sun rose.  I can remember five year old me sneaking silent down the hall like a tiny footy-pajama ninja, to steal a look at the Christmas tree downstairs in the great room of our house in Nairobi.   It was still there, sparkling with tinsel, its big fat hot incandescent colored lights off so as not to set the tree and the house on fire.  Under it lay presents, not the vast impossible piles of today, but enough.    After that peek, I can remember sitting in my room and waiting for my parents to awake, and inexplicably passing the time attempting to read an obscure Victorian novel called Tom Brown’s School Days.  

 I’m not entirely sure about the accuracy of that last memory.

Of that Christmas, I remember one gift, a large toy Jaguar.  E-Type, I think.  I can remember the smoothness of the plastic, hard and chitinous and light-beetley-green.  It was battery-powered, and had lights that lit up.  It would go forward, honking and flashing, until it crashed into an object.  That object could be a wall, a door, or, ideally, my younger brother.  It would then turn to the left, and, honking and flashing, continue on to it’s next destination.  It honked and flashed pretty much continuously for half a day, before the six primitive C cell batteries that powered it punked out.   

As I recall, that was the last time it worked, much to the great relief of my parents, who somehow managed to never quite get around to replacing those batteries.

At this time of year, those echoes of Christmases Past whisper like the first of Scrooge’s ghosts in our ears, padding around our subconscious in their footy pajamas, shaping and forming us as stories do. That is the purpose of story, after all.   That’s the reason for the retelling of that very first Christmas story, spun to us year after year out of Luke’s Gospel.  

In last week’s sermon, I talked a little bit about the purposes of Greco-Roman storytelling, about how rich it was with human detail.   The reason to tell the stories that had come before was not just to absorb historical factoids so’s you could do well on standardized testing.   It was to participate in those stories.   They were meant to form and shape the reality of the listener, to draw them in to the telling. Luke does precisely that in his retelling of the story of how the birth of Jesus came about.  

He begins before the beginning, spinning a story of an older couple who’d wanted to have a child but could not.   His story of Zechariah and Elizabeth is full of the scent of incense in the temple, of human yearning and doubt, all suffused with joy and hope and promise. As Mary meets Elizabeth, the story tells of infants stirring joyfully in the womb, and as filled with song as an episode of Glee, as both Mary and then Zechariah burst into celebratory songs in response to the unexpected good news they’ve received. 

And then, of course, there is the story we have just heard, again.   It’s a tale of a long journey to Bethlehem.  There’s an overbooked Bethlehem Ramada, a stable full of the stench and warmth of animals and birth, angels and shepherds and a new mother pondering what all this might mean.

Strikingly, what Luke’s narrative lacks is any fear, any sense of tension and dysfunction or sorrow.   We don’t hear about Herod and his plans and plots. We don’t hear about wise men steering clear on their way out of town.  We don’t hear about the fears of a young man whose fiance has conceived, a conception that could doom her to death or a lifetime of isolation.  Matthew’s story gives us that.    But this time of year, when the time comes for the telling, we tell Luke.   And Luke’s story is relentlessly, defiantly joyous. 

Those other realities may be there, but in choosing to emphasize the most gracious elements of the season, Luke is making an interpretive point.  These stories are fundamentally about hope and joy, and their retelling should serve that purpose. We retell this story every year for a reason, the same reason we retell the history of our selves in our minds.  The grace and the joy of this season is intended to define our lives together, and in doing so, define who we know ourselves to be.   This sacred story is what some scholars of the sacred would describe as an anamnesis, the fancy-pantsy academic way of speaking of a remembering that defines the present.   It is a narrative that has the power to transform, one that is both ours and greater than us.  

As Professor Herbert Anderson and Father Edward Foley put it in their book Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals, taking these ancient stories as part of our own story is a “weaving together of the human and the divine,” which “enables us to hear own own stories retold with clarity and new possibility.  And when our own stories are retold, our lives are transformed in the telling.”  (p.7) Hearing this rich and glorious tale, we’re asked to see ourselves as participating in it, and that can require a little effort.  

There may be other echoes in this season, other stories that are not so joyous.  As we move through the years, those less joyful stories can also build up, and take on lives of their own.   Just as stories of hope and promise work within us to define us, so too can stories of brokenness and sorrow and  anger.

But the truth of it is that we can choose between them.  Instead of becoming ensnared by those less-pleasant echoes, we can instead embrace that joy in the same way that Luke embraces that joy.  Instead of letting them define us, we can let our lives tell another story, defined by joy. So here as we are gathered, hearing that story of the first Christmas again, let it sink in just a little bit.  Let it define and sustain you.  Let the message of birth and good news and new life be your story for this morning and this season. 

Merry Christmas!  Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.

In The Fields

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

12.24.11; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson:  Luke 2:1-20

We’re just about through Christmas party time.  Or, perhaps, “Holiday Party time.”  Or ChristmaKwanzakah party time.  It’s so hard to tell these days.

If you’re just one of the masses, one of the regular folk, then your parties are friends and family and co-workers.  You get together, you sing songs, you decorate trees, and you share in the warmth of the season.  There’s the social warmth of each other’s fellowship, and better yet, the insulating warmth of all those additional fat cells that we get from endless bouts of eggnog and hot chocolate and fruitcake.   It’s cheaper than buying a new coat, or so I tell myself.  Given that the smart way to keep warm in winter is wearing layers, I figure it shouldn’t matter if some of those layers just happen to be under the surface of my skin.  

But for those who follow the society pages, the professional party people, the friends and family festivities of the common folks are not enough.   In a town where influence is everything, and connections often trump competence, you are only as important as the people who populate your smartphone contact list.   Getting those people to show up to your parties is a competitive contact sport, one that shows your place in the status race.

If you don’t have an ambassador or someone from a consulate at your party, you’re just not important.   If you don’t have someone from the city council at your party, you’re just not important.  If you don’t have the Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of the Department of Cheesedoodle Assessment at your party, you’re just not important.

If powerful people arrive at your doorstep, take a half-sip of eggnog, and then scurry off thirteen minutes and twelve seconds later to the next of the sixteen parties they’re going to that evening, then it’s a sign of your influence and your connections.   I mean, golly, what’s the point of a party if you can’t name-drop afterwards?   

Our familiar reading from the story of Luke this evening begins with a little bit of name-dropping.   As the story of the birth of Christ begins, we hear a litany of the most influential muckity-mucks in the ancient world.   

Luke drops the name of the Roman governor of the province of Syria, Publius Sulpicius Quirinius.  He was a well connected but profoundly unpopular Roman politician, and not just because his name made him sound like a particularly obnoxious Slytherin.  He was one of those “connected people,” someone in the inner circle of power who had the favor of the Imperial Family.  He was elected consul in Rome in the year 12 BCE, which was the highest elective office in the Empire.    He was given the office of governor of Syria as a reward for being so reliably supportive of the Emperor.   He was generally disliked by the people, as his marriage to a well known Roman socialite very publicly ended in a series of lawsuits in which he accused her of poisoning him.   If there’d been a “Real Housewives of the Province of Judea” back then, he’d have been on it.  Whichever way, he was famous and powerful.

We hear about Caesar Augustus, whose reign over Rome made him arguably the most influential and powerful of the Roman Emperors.   

Truth be told, he’s the guy who built the Roman Empire.  This was a guy with clout.  He wasn’t just called Caesar Augustus, after all.  He had title after title after title.   He was the Pontifex Maximus, the high priest of Rome.  He was the Pater Patrie, the father of his country.  He was the Princeps, the citizen above all other citizens.  He had the resume of all resumes, and was the ne plus ultra of potential party guests.  

But neither of these two gets an invite to the party.   He’s just mentioned for the same reason that Quirinius is mentioned.   Luke, being the good historian that he was, needed to tell us roughly when this whole thing happened.   He’s just saying:  Remember when that guy was around?  And that other guy?  Well, while you were paying attention to them, something really important happened then that you might have missed.

So who is important to Luke as he tells this story?  Who are the ones worthy to receive the news about the Christ child?  Are they the leaders and the ruling class of society?  No.   Are they the religious leaders, the rabbis and the priests and the desert ascetics?  Nope.   It’s the shepherds.

Now for us, shepherds might seem like honest, down to earth folk.  We conjure up images from Christmas pageants past, of kids in repurposed bathrobes, of bucolic rolling fields speckled with fluffy sheeplings.  But in the ancient world, shepherds weren’t considered worth bothering with.  They were the dregs of the dregs, inhabiting the lowest possible rung on the first century social ladder.

They were lower than telemarketers.  Lower than spammers.  They were at about the same level as lobbyists, only they smelled slightly more like sheep.  Slightly.

Yet according to Luke, when the skies over Nazareth lit up like a Spielberg Special Effects Spectacular, who got to see it?   Shepherds.  When an invitation was extended to visit the bedside of the Christ Child, who got invited to be there?  Shepherds.  

By sending this message to the ones gathered in the fields, God shows us who is invited, and who is valued.  

In verse 14, the traditional and beautiful King James Version has the angels proclaiming:  “Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men.”   But if you go back and read what was originally written in Luke, the last part of that beautiful passage is more accurately translated as on earth “peace to those he favors.”   This is a proclamation of peace and joy for those in whom--here’s another way to say it---”for those in whom God delights.”

So who are those people?  In whom does God delight?   Not the ones with social influence or power.  Credentials, titles, and any other form of earthly status mean nothing to God.    God leaves the places of power, and goes out into the fields to find those for whom Jesus is actually good news.  They are the lowly.  The poor.  The weak.  The meek.  

Christ is there, a gift and a promise, waiting for those who are rejected, who are broken, who are lost.  Christ is there, a gift for those who find themselves outside of the circles of power, out beyond, out in the fields.

To those fields, the invitation has been sent.  The party has been prepared.  It’s a humble little gathering, to which we are all invited.   

Let’s accept that with rejoicing.  Let it be so, for you and for me,  AMEN.

Mechanics

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

12.18.11; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson:  Luke 1:26-38

There are certain things that I just don’t totally understand.   

This is a hard thing for a man to admit.   We males are absolutely marvelous at speaking as if we completely and totally understand everything around us, even if we don’t have a clue what we’re talking about.  There are several handy techniques we use to do this.

There’s the Self Confidence technique.  If you’re utterly self-confident, then you can look at your wife’s dying laptop and, after staring at that error code, you scratch your chin and nod serenely.   Then, say something like “I’m pretty sure the problem is the carburetor.”    

Then there’s the Jargon Shotgun technique.  Here, the male of the species just strings together a few randomly assorted technical-sounding words they know about something and fire away.  “It may be that the level 4 DDRAM flash cache interface with the flux capacitor has become corrupted.”   Here, it helps to remember which words you got while reading a Best Buy ad, and which words came from the movie Back to the Future.     She did watch that movie with you, you know.  

Then again, after a while folks do catch on, so if there’s something you don’t totally grasp, it’s better to admit it.   There are plenty of things like that.  Occasionally, there are things that we won’t get...and that we’ll particularly not get if we’re focused on figuring out exactly how they happen.

Take falling in love, for instance.   If you approach love in terms of neurophysiology, you might assume that you know what love is.   If you study the reaction of the human brain to love, neural imaging reveals that when an individual is shown an image of the one they love, there is unusual activity in the right caudate nucleus and right ventral tegmental area.  These brain locations produce large amounts of dopamine when active, which generates a range of somatic effects.

But if you think that is the best way to explain what love is, then you’re not getting it.   

Then there’s the approach that developmental psychologists take in assessing the smiles of babies.  Extensive analyses of the role of the smile as a social signal in pre-verbal infants do often indicate the varying roles that differing physiological affects play in establishing the dynamics of interpersonal connection.  But if you use sentences like that last one in describing the tiny little person that just cooed sparklingly at you, then you’re missing something.

There are some things that we just can’t quite get, and the harder we grasp, the less sense they’ll make to us.

The story from today’s passage in Luke’s Gospel can be a perplexing one.   It’s part of Luke’s prolonged narrative of the birth and childhood of Jesus, which is unique to this story of Jesus.  Unlike Mark’s Gospel, which dispenses with anything prior to the adulthood of Jesus, and John’s Gospel, which begins with the beginning of all things, Luke gives us lengthy and detailed personal accounts of significant events in the early life of Jesus.

Luke’s Gospel was, after all, crafted as a history, and history in the ancient world was not dry and mechanical.  It was, first and foremost, story.  It was retelling for the purposes of understanding, but also for deepening a sense of connection with the story being told.  Greco Roman histories were rich with personal details and narrative flourishes.

The story we’re connecting with is that of Mary, and the arrival of the angel Gabriel, who announces to her that she will bear a child, a son.   He will be Son of the Most High.  He will rest on the throne of his ancestor David.  He will reign over the house of Jacob, and his kingdom there will be no end.

Mary doesn’t really get past that first part.   I’m going to have a WHAT?    She is, as the New Revised Standard Version puts it, “perplexed.”   How can this possibly be the case?   Her response to the angel, as recorded in Luke’s Greek, sounds like this:  Puus estai touto, epei andra ou ginuuskuu.  Translated literally, that comes out as, “How will be this, since a man I know not?”  

That makes Mary sound a bit like Yoda, but I won’t attempt the voice. 

The mechanics of this announcement, as she understands it, are impossible.   Even though Family Life Education in the Galilee County Public Schools was probably not all that detailed, she still struggled with how such a thing could be so.  It flew in the face of her understanding of the world.

As, I think, it does for many who hear the story of the Annunciation today.  We know a great deal about the mechanics of human reproduction, far more than our ancient forebears.   We grasp the way in which the genetic material of two parents recombines to form a new and remarkably unique person.  We’ve gone deep into the wondrously created complexity of DNA, and the ways in which the twenty-three pairs of human chromosomes function.

From that understanding, it’s easy to become entangled in the mechanics of the story.   Is Mary’s DNA suddenly recombining with Divine DNA?  Is there a Y Chromosome in the Divine DNA?   We want to get into the process.  We want to understand the mechanism.   And if we take that path as our primary way of getting what is being talked about here, we find ourselves unable to enter the story, unable to process it, unable to enter into it.  If mechanics are the mechanism by which engage with the story Luke tells us, then we’re not going to be able to rejoice in it.   

The underlying purpose of the story we’re hearing is to establish that the new life that arises in Mary’s womb is, through some impossible happenstance, a life set aside for significance.   It is to be a holy life, one defined by a fundamental relationship to the Holy Spirit and the Creator of all things, one marked by the power to change and transform both people and nations.  It is a life that is filled with God’s creative intent to change things, for any willing to pay attention and listen.

Even that statement is a challenge.   How can it be that this child, born in a backwater province of a long dead empire, can be of any relevance to the world?   This child, born under uncertain circumstances, to a powerless and un-noteworthy family, who had neither status nor wealth nor fame.  How can this life, this single life, be of any significance to the direction and purpose of humanity?

And yet, here we are.  Two millennia later, across oceans unknown, in a nation that had not yet come to be in Mary’s time, in a language that didn’t even exist in Mary’s time, telling the story of deep hope and promise we find in that child.  

Had the angel told Mary about today, right now, us here, I think she’d have been equally “perplexed.”  As should we be.

There are certain things that are impossible to understand.   They tend to be the most important things, the things that we do not grasp, but that fill and transform us.   Perplexed though she was, Mary’s answer was to present herself, and to be present in that story.   “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your Word.”

Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.

Good News

Sermon Title:  Good News
Poolesville Presbyterian Church
12.11.11; Rev. David Williams


Scripture Lesson:  Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11


It’s always good to be bit wary about things that seem to be good news.   


When you get that eager call from someone representing a lottery that you didn’t enter, that may not be good news.  When that email announces to you that you’ve won a brand new iPad 2, yours the moment you go to the claims website and enter your mailing address, full name, mother’s maiden name, and the last nine digits of your social security number, that may not be good news.


Unless you do it, in which case it’s probably good news for someone who isn’t you.


Because sometimes, the thing that purports to be something wonderful is, in fact, not quite what it seems to be.


Do that mental rewind, for instance, to conversations people were having about home prices six or seven years ago.  I can recall, myself, listening to folks at social gatherings talking excitedly back in 2004 and 2005 about just how much equity they were building in their home.  I can recall, myself, as the market value of our own home soared, ten, twenty, fifty, ninety percent.  I can also remember thinking at the time that every uptick in the market meant that houses were that much farther out of reach from families like our own.   It was good news for us, sure.  But with salaries stagnant, it wasn’t so good for anyone who didn’t yet own a home.   It still isn’t good news.


Then there’s the whole excitement we hear in the voices of business newscasters if the Dow Jones Industrial Average goes up on any given day.  If the Dow rises, everything is awesome!  Here, I’m a bit uncertain.  If the Dow rises, what does that mean?  It means that the average cost to buy stock in 30 major corporations has gone up.  That’s pretty much it.  So if the Dow goes up 3% in a day, that’s great news.  If the average price of a gallon of gas goes up 3% in a day, would that also be good news?   And those Dow points really just measure the cost of a stock in United States dollars, and the value of the dollar is as much a constant in the same way that Oprah Winfrey’s weight is a constant.  It goes down.  It goes up.  Meaning if you do something like print several trillion more dollars into the economy as part of a stimulus package, stock prices will automatically go up, as will the price of everything else.


It would be tempting not to think so much sometimes, I guess.  But if you’re going to know the difference between what is good for those in need, and what is only good for those who have power, well, then you do have to pay attention to those things.


From the Book of Isaiah today we hear a message about good news, news that is actually good.   As I mentioned in last week’s sermon, there was more than just one writer of Isaiah.  Most Bible scholars worth their salt see the Book of Isaiah divided up into three clear sections, each of which has its own particular focus.   Last week we heard about sections one and two.


Today’s section comes from what is known as Third Isaiah, which was written and preached perhaps 510-515 years before Christ by a prophet who followed the tradition of Isaiah.   Unlike First Isaiah, its visions and proclamations do not describe a Hebrew people comfortably ensconced in Jerusalem and the temple, as do the first thirty-nine chapters.  Unlike Second Isaiah, they do not assume that the Jewish people are shattered in the Babylonian exile, like chapters forty through fifty-five. The context of the last ten chapters is clear: the Hebrew people are back in their land.   Yay!  Good news, right?


They’d been given the opportunity to rebuild is their whole culture, after it was almost wiped from the face of the earth in by Babylonian Empire. After Babylon was defeated by Persia, the Hebrew people were encouraged by Cyrus of Persia to return to their ancestral lands. They were filled with hope at the prospect of return.  All they’d have to do is set up shop again, and all would be well.


The people returned thinking that things were going to be easy, and things were the farthest thing from easy. Life upon their return was hardscrabble, a struggle from day to day. The bricks that had been smashed from the walls of Jerusalem did not leap up on their own and autonomously reassemble themselves into Zion Gardens Condos and Suites.


It was hard. It seemed hopeless. People began to despair.  Worse yet, they began to prey upon one another.  Those who fell out on the margins of the society...the poor, the foreign, the different, well...things did not go so well for them.


But the word from God that Isaiah proclaimed defied that despair, and challenged that oppression. It was a word of intense hope, a word that comes directly from the prophet’s sense of being anointed with the Spirit of the Living God. It’s a word of intense confidence in the power of God to work through his people to bring about restoration.


For the oppressed and the brokenhearted who had returned to the land, the prophet did not say everything was cheery.  He affirmed the devastation that they were experiencing and the ruins in which they found themselves. Yet in the face of their suffering...and in some way because of their suffering...the prophet declares that God’s love for justice and covenant presence will make his people an instrument with which he will rebuild the brokenness of their land.


It’s a word that they needed to hear, and a word without which their hearts would have been too broken to continue. It’s also a word that many of us need to hear right now, as many of us look fearfully out at the continuing chaos and confusion of our economy.


The great wave of bank failures may have ended, but we hardly live in stable or certain times.  Families are still struggling with foreclosure and job loss, and retirees are still reading their investment reports and bank statements with trembling hands, it is easy for us to fall into the same kind of despair that seems to have afflicted those Hebrews upon their return. With the media humming with hysteria, it’s easy to give in. We feel an uncertainty that can paralyze us, allowing us to turn from the task of rebuilding. We become overwhelmed. We hunker down.


In his reaffirmation of God’s essential justice and care for his people, the prophet is telling those who despaired that no matter what happens, God will show grace to a covenant people. If we’re willing to accept that grace, and to practice it, those places of ruin will be rebuilt. 


This is an important message, right here in Advent.  Why in Advent?  Well, because if Advent means arriving, or beginning, then it’s worth noting that this text has an important place in setting out the purpose of Jesus.   That place can be found in Luke’s Gospel, in chapter 4, verses 16 through 19, where Jesus begins the teaching phase of his time among us by sitting down in the synagogue and reading from this exact passage in Isaiah.


Through the prophet, and through the one whose arrival establishes the purpose for our celebration of this season, we are reminded that the purpose of our faith is to provide that assurance of God’s intent to bring about news that is actually, truly, and completely good for those who are most in need of it.


Meaning, if we’re bearing glad tidings of great joy, we need to remember first and foremost those who are in need of such tidings.   If we are in such a place, because of brokenness of body and spirit, or of relationship, or of health, or of finance, we need to hear this simple assertion:  the One who created the Universe is there for us.  The intent  for everything that is is justice, and it will come, as surely as spring follows winter.  


If we find ourself in that place in life where we can speak or act to bring about healing, or peace, or joy, then need to hear this as our call.   Like Isaiah, we are called to press through the stress and selfishness of the season.  As we give, we can remember to extend that giving to those who have deep need.   As we act, we can take moments out of our lives to be a presence, offering a hand up to those for whom this season is a time of trial.  


If the Spirit of the Lord is upon us, as surely it must be in this season, that that is the Good News we’ve been called to hear, and sent to share.  


Let it be so, for you and for me,  AMEN.

The Leveling

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

12.04.11; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lessons:  Isaiah 40:1-11; (Mark 1:1-8)

Over the past few months, I’ve been exploring the hills and the valleys of the Occupy DC and Occupy K Street movements.

I’ve read articles about their demonstrations in both print and online media.  I’ve wandered through their encampments.  I’ve followed them on Twitter.  It’s hard not to be sympathetic to their cause, to their idealism, to their yearning for justice in all things.  They want equality in society, and for our culture to cast aside the radical polarization of wealth that is threatening the integrity of our republic.  But I’ve not gotten involved, not really, for a variety of reasons.

First off, while I’m not a fan of injustice, I don’t really like cold-weather camping, particularly if given the option of either a) sleeping out on hard frost-bitten ground or b) curling up in my own cozy bed under several layers of down and flannel.  

Mmmm.  Flannel.  I will always err on the side of flannel.  I get that from the hobbit side of my family, I guess.   

Second, I’m not sure I could handle the odd bureaucracy.  Whenever you get a bunch of anarchists and leftists together, the first thing they do  is create the most impossibly well-meaning and convoluted ways to make decisions.   Back in October, when I visited their camp, I observed their decision-making in action.  A group of earnest people dressed like extras in Les Mis sat in a circle, talking intently amongst themselves.   To express their approval or disapproval of a particular idea, they would either do jazz hands up for yes, or jazz hands down for no.   

I’m reasonably sure that wasn’t how the organizers of the Montgomery Bus Boycott or the First Continental Congress got things done.  I just don’t know about a revolution that involves jazz hands.

Third, I have the unfortunate tendency to remember history.   Movements calling for more equity and the righting of economic imbalance have risen up throughout the story of humankind.  This week, I read the jazz-hands-approved manifesto of Occupy DC, which calls for an end to all self-serving, exploitative, and oppressive systems.   Then, I read another manifesto.  You can never read enough manifestos.   This was one I remembered from my graduate education, a little something subtly entitled An Arrow Against Tyranny.  

This second one dates back from England in 1646, and was written by a man by the name of Richard Overton.   He was part of a leaderless movement called “The Levelers.”  Anyone remember this little movement from history class?  They got their name because they’d tear down the fences that kept peasants out of the fields of the wealthy and powerful landholders.   The movement was concerned with equity and justice, demanding that all men...and it was men back then...be treated equally.     It’s interesting stuff, because some of the language lays the foundation for our own nations’ founding documents.  Listen, for example, to this quote from Overton:

No man has power over my rights and liberties, and I over no man's.  [...]  For by natural birth all men are equally and alike born to like propriety, liberty and freedom; and as we are delivered of God by the hand of nature into this world, every one with a natural, innate freedom and propriety — as it were writ in the table of every man's heart, never to be obliterated — even so are we to live, everyone equally and alike to enjoy his birthright and privilege; even all whereof God by nature has made him free.

Sentences were longer back then.  Despite the centuries separating them, the similarity between the Levelers and Occupy is clear.  Then again, later in the essay Overton spends a bunch of time demanding the overthrow of what he calls, and I quote, the “...barbarous, inhuman, blood-thirsty desires and endeavors of the Presbyterian clergy.”   

I don’t like that part very much.

The yearning for things to be made right and returned to balance is a powerful one, whether it’s right now, four hundred years ago, or twenty-five hundred years ago.   It was without question the point of the message conveyed in the section from the book of the prophet Isaiah that you heard this morning, a section echoed in the reading from Mark’s Gospel.   

This portion of Isaiah is the very beginning of what is often called “Second Isaiah,” meaning that it was most likely not written by the same individual who composed chapters 1 through 39 of the Book of Isaiah.  It was, most likely, written by a disciple of Isaiah, one who fully understood the essence of his teachings, and was equally connected to the One who spoke through them both.

That first section describes and relates to the kingdom of Judah in the eighth century before Christ.  It is full of challenge, challenge directed particularly against the wealthy and powerful in Jerusalem.  This section, on the other hand, speaks to a completely different context.  Running from chapter 40 through to chapter 55, it is primarily about reconciliation, grace, and restoration, and appears to be speaking to an Israelite audience living in Babylonian exile nearly two hundred years later.

This was a people who had been utterly shattered.   Unlike the proud and the powerful who lived in Jerusalem and gathered in the wealth of the nation, this was a people who had been torn from their land and forced into slavery.  They had watched as their holy city had been destroyed.  They had watched as their temple, the holiest of holies, the place where they communed with God on earth, they had watched as it had been razed and looted.  Everything they were as a people had been taken.  They were nothing.  They were deep, deep, deep into that valley of loss and sorrow.

At this point, the One who spoke through the prophet no longer spoke words of judgment.  Where the first thirty nine chapters speak in some pretty harsh language, what we hear beginning in chapter 40 is God’s commitment to restoration and reconciliation.  In the face of the suffering experienced by the people, the words that the prophet had to share with them were not rebuke, not condemnation, not mocking and rejection.  Instead, the message of God to them was one of comfort and hope. 

The reminder to this shattered people was that the suffering of the now was as impermanent as the grass and the flower of the field.  More importantly, the prophet announces a time of transformation and restoration.  In verses three through five, the people who have wandered in a wilderness of loss and sorrow are assured that the desolation they are feeling will not be permanent.

The rough times, those deep and impassable valleys, those imposing, unclimbable mountains, they’ll be leveled out.  That wilderness will be overcome.   In its place, we hear that a way will be prepared for the justice, glory, and comfort of the Creator.

It was, in that time, a word of truthful encouragement that the enslaved people of Judah desperately needed to hear.   In our own time, in this Advent time, it’s a word that we equally need to hear.

These weeks prior to Christmas are, after all, that point in the year when we should be making the effort to make the way straight for our Creator.

Within culture, that means actually paying attention to the ways that our society casts up impediments to the reconciling mercy and comfort of our Maker.  In this season of preparation, it’s important not to allow cynicism about the sputtering struggle for justice throughout history to keep us from being aware of our Maker’s intent for us.   Though we’ve made rough going of the story of ourselves as a species, casting up soaring heights of avarice and power, and doubly deep valleys of need and oppression, we’re reminded that this is not our purpose.  We’re called to act, recognizing that though perfect balance just isn't possible, giving in to cynicism is doubly unacceptable

That’s going to mean making space in our lives to work directly against the oppression that comes from hunger and want, and making space in our identity as citizens of a democracy to speak...and vote...in ways that reflect our commitment to being a nation in balance.  Ours is a nation founded on ideals, ideals that at one time seemed as pie-in-the-sky as those offered up by Occupy or the Levelers.  If we are to be the just and gracious nation we were intended to be, then we need to live into that ideal.

Individually, that means reinforcing those places within ourselves the help us be about the work of Christ’s love and justice.  Our psyches are, if we’re honest with ourselves, all too frequently rough and ragged wildernesses.  Though that bright and gracious way exists within each of us, we often do not make ourselves that level way.   We let ourselves live in deep valleys of depression, anxiety, and self-recrimination.   We cast up great mountains of anger and pride.

In this advent time, work to find that gracious level place that has been placed within all of us.   There is that path within us, no matter where we find ourselves in our journey through this life.  

Prepare it.  Make it straight.

Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.

Staying Awake

Poolesville Presbyerian Church

11.27.11; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson:  Mark 13:24-37

Over the last week, I've been seriously slacking off.   I have, despite the whole world's efforts to the contrary, managed to totally neglect my duties as an American shopper.

For the past several weeks, the busy busy people of America’s marketing and advertising industries have been spooling up for the most important shopping day of the year.  Every retailer we’ve ever done business with has been filling our email inbox with excited announcements, and our snail-mail box is a cascading cornucopia of catalogs.   Banner ads are splashed across every web page.  Our newspaper arrived on Wednesday bearing an advertising supplement insert that weighed more than most butterball turkeys.   Employees of retail outlets across the region are putting in long, long hours, working through the small hours of the morning.

And even in the face of all that herculean effort, I just can’t seem to get myself motivated.  I can’t  seem to managed to get out there and shop during this long four-day vacation, which business media outlet CNBC described as “Black Friday Weekend.”   That’s what this is, right?  “Black Friday Weekend?”      

Instead of camping outside of Best Buy in the hopes of getting a half-price flat-panel TV, I spent Thursday afternoon eating tofurkey and stuffing and gravy in a room full of family.  Instead of being encouraged to line up under the illuminated Toys R Us sign for a super, super deal on the latest Call of Duty game, my children were preparing music and impromptu comedy routines to entertain the adults.   Instead of rushing out from the family gathering to hit the anchor stores at Tysons, my family went home and curled up on the sofa and watched a movie.  A Norwegian movie, with subtitles, a clear sign that our credentials as American consumers are deeply in question.

When we’re called up before the Committee on UnAmerican Consumer Activities, that’s the question that’s going to get us in trouble.  “Are you now, or have you ever been, a watcher of Norwegian films with subtitles?”  Couple that with the tofurkey, and I could be in some serious trouble.

And then we went to sleep, while the lines snaking around the stores hadn’t even been let in yet.   

Oh, there was a chance to redeem myself on Black Friday, that day of all shopping days.  It was a banner day, by all reports, fully six point six percent better than last year.  I don't know if that does the next decimal place to six point six six, but if it does, that opens a can of worms we just don't want to mess with this morning.

I could have gotten up early.  I could have rushed out to hit the second wave.  But no.  I was too lazy.  Too self-indulgent.  Instead, I woke up at about seven-thirty.  I walked the dog.  I had some coffee.   I read the paper, the whole paper.  Our entire Friday morning vanished in a warm haze, a morning when we could have been productively consuming.   And then, because it was a distractingly beautiful day, we all went for a five-mile roundtrip walk to go get lunch.   We.  Weren’t.  Even.  Consuming.  Gas.  Then I came home and took a nice little nap.

Lazy, lazy, lazy.   Every moment counts, and we’ve got to stay awake and on the ball.  That’s the point Jesus is trying to make in this morning’s passage from Matthew, although I’m pretty sure his completely different spin on it wouldn’t pass muster before the Committee on UnAmerican Consumer Activities.

This text comes to us from a portion of Mark that is often called the “little apocalypse.”   The “little apocalypse” runs for most of chapter 13 of Mark’s Gospel, and contains much familiar imagery.  It’s a description of the destruction of the temple and the catastrophic collapse of society, followed by the fulfillment of the messianic age.

There are wars and rumors of wars.  There are earthquakes, trials and tribulations, cats and dogs, living together, the whole shebang.  At the conclusion of the sequence of events, we hear, in verse 26, that there will be the arrival of the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.

It’s pretty much the essence of what we visualize when we visualize the apocalypse.  There are a couple of elements, however, that make this a bit different from the typical end-times schpiel.  

First, most apocalypses follow a particular format.  In the Book of Revelation, the apocalyptic chapter twelve of the book of Daniel, and a variety of apocalypses that didn’t make it into the Bible, there is usually 1) a bizarre vision being presented from God; 2) an angelic intermediary to interpret the strange visions, and 3) a clear judgment of bad folks.   We don’t see those elements here.

Second, and more significantly, this “little apocalypse” strongly implies that the events that are unfolding are not in the future, or even imminent, but in process.   In verse 30, Jesus seems to clearly indicate that everything that he’s talking about will occur within the lifetimes of “this generation,” reiterating a commitment that he also made earlier in Mark 9:1, where we heard that “there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.”   It’s a bit of a fuddler, frankly.

The world didn’t appear to come to an end in the first century, nor are there, to my knowledge, some 2,000 year old Judeans kicking around anywhere.  How are we supposed to read this, then?

It helps to remember that much of what Jesus declares in chapter 13 of Mark’s Gospel did occur.  Within the lives of most of his listeners, Judea had been completely destroyed by the Roman Empire. The city of Jerusalem fell, destroyed in the year 70 by the combined assault of three Roman legions. The second temple was razed, and Israel as a nation was shattered for nearly 2,000 years.

Yet though that “suffering” which is described earlier in the chapter and is referred to in verse 24 seem certain to have happened within a generation of Christ’s saying it, the passage does go further. Jesus suggests strongly that somehow Christ’s Reign may be something that the disciples will experience...and yet it clearly hasn’t happened yet. The Son of Man descending? Has he? Angels gathering the elect?  They can’t have. Can they?

It is that tension between the fulfillment of the Reign of God and the anticipation of it’s arrival that is why this passage gets served up on the first Sunday of Advent. What Jesus is saying is not to be understood as being true only for the generation that heard him first. The reality he is describing isn’t something that occurs at one moment in time, or at one place. The arrival of God’s Kingdom does not belong to one particular generation...it belongs to all of them. 

It’s not a reality that happens at one moment, and then passes on. As Christ says, though Heaven and Earth will pass away, my words will not pass away.   That call to stay awake, then, has direct implications for how we are to live our lives in the now.

Are we structuring our lives so that we’re clearly prioritizing those things...in the right now, the this-instant...that mean our existence reflects our Maker’s purpose?   Attentiveness and giving priority to those actions that best mirror the gracious intent of the Gospel is absolutely essential.   It reinforces the necessity of considering how and in what way our actions mirror our reason for being, and how the ways we choose to focus both our minds and the precious time we’ve been given reflect the Reign of God.

That, I think, is the biggest challenge facing us in the festivals of consumption our culture encourages.  We like the shiny shiny things we’re offered, and that fleeting hit of Splenda sweetness that comes from getting a new thing.  

But the “new” things we cram in the backs of our ‘utes, big boxes coming home from big boxes, well, they’re not really new.  They lack the ability to change us in any way that matters.   Well, perhaps that’s not true.  They do reduce our patience, increase our hunger for possessions, and distract us from both injustice and the glories of creation around us.  The choice we’re given--between shopping and shabbas, between time in line and time to catch our breath and find connection with loved ones--is a real one.   Attending to the life that Christ seeks for all of us needs to guide our every moment.

We do not know, after all, when that hour will come.  Is it next year?  Is it next week?  Is it tomorrow?   Is it one forty five this afternoon?   Is it now?  Was it yesterday?  Was it Friday?

We are called to live as if those all were true.   We are called to stay awake.   Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.

Greyscale

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

11.20.11;  Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson:  Matthew 25:31-46

Before we begin...I have a confession to make.  

I am, and have always been, a gamer.  I like gaming, and by “gaming” I don’t mean someone who participates in the “gaming” industry, that peculiar institution that involves you giving someone money so that you can experience the thrill of losing money, over and over and over again. I never did understand the appeal in that kind of game.  It used to be called “gambling,” of course, before they decided to hide the “B” and the “L,” because I suppose they thought doing so would hide away the fact that it’s BL.  

No, I play video games.  I have since I was a young lad, and that first Atari 2600 arrived one Christmas after a sustained campaign of cajoling and whimpering.  It filled my fallow tween hours with Combat, and Centipede, and PacMan, and Star Raiders.  I once played Space Invaders for such a prolonged period that when I went to sleep that night, I found that when I closed my eyes, I could still see the game cranking away.  That was strange, but stranger still, I found I could control it.  Must have inadvertently downloaded it, I guess.

Whichever way, that Atari was the latest and greatest technological advancement, providing cutting edge entertainment through the raw processing power of its four kilobyte chip.  Given that a Word Document that contains only the number 4 and the letter K is 15 kilobytes, things have clearly come a ways since then.

Having gamed for over three decades, across several dozen different platforms, I’ve watched the medium evolve.  One of the most striking changes in the last few years is the introduction of systems of ethics and morality into the virtual world in which you’re gaming.   The first game to do this well arrived about a decade ago.  It was called Fable, and you played a young man growing up in a place called Albion.  How you grew up, however, depended on you.  As a child, you could help others, run errands, find lost cats, and stop bullies from hurting other children.  Or, if you so chose, you could steal things, intimidate other children into obeying you and giving you stuff, and punt chickens down the street.  That last one was rather tempting, particularly given that the game kept track of your chicken-kicking skills.

As you grew into adulthood in the game, those choices continued.  You could choose to be kind and giving and noble, in which case everyone would be overjoyed to see you, villagers would applaud your arrival, and you’d eventually start glowing just a little bit, as a trail of butterflies and small tweeting birds followed you.  Alternately, you could be cruel and selfish and vicious, in which case you’d grow horns, people would cower or flee in terror at your arrival, and the only things flying around you would be biting flies and lobbyists.

It was interesting, because it meant that the way in which you acted had a direct influence on the way in which the game played.  This went well beyond just shooting something and having it blow up, or jumping over something.   The dynamics of the world changed, depending on your ethical choices.

But those choices were almost entirely binary.  There was the good path.  There was the bad path.  Everything was nice and neat and clear, without confusion, without greyscale.  There’s good, and there’s evil, and there’s a nice little gauge at the upper left of the screen that lets you know how you’re doing.

But in non-virtual life?  Well, life out here in the meatspace world tends to be a bit more challenging.  Once you get out of a realm created in binary, things stop being binary.

That’s one of the biggest challenges, I think, in trying to wrap our heads around the story that Jesus tells in Matthew’s Gospel today.   This particular story is unique to Matthew.  None of the other three Gospels contain it.  It is also the only place in any of the Gospels where Jesus explicitly describes what will happen at the conclusion of all things.  When Jesus speaks of the Reign of God, he almost always does so using poetry, metaphor, and storytelling.  These are forms of teaching that require us to use our insights and imagination, and that don’t lend themselves to being taken literally. 

Here in the final story of a sequence of stories that have brought us to the end of Jesus’s teachings in Matthew, though, he steps away from that approach.  This is not a parable, a story told to speak to a meaning beyond the story.  It is not an allegory, in which every thing in the story acts as a symbolic stand-in for some other thing.  It’s just a description, a recounting...or, I suppose, a “precounting”...of how things are going to wrap up.

It’s a pretty classic image, with the Son of Man on the throne of glory, surrounded by angels and suffused in the sort of light you typically see in a Steven Spielberg film.   This is the big cosmic Sorting Hat moment, when the lives of every single human being from every single nation are measured against the only standard that counts.

It appears, as we read it, to be something of a binary process.  The good go on the right hand, in the sheep line.  The not-good?  They go in the goat line.   The sheep are the righteous, the goats, the unrighteous.  

Figuring out the difference should be a simple thing.  All the Son of Man needs to do is check whether you’re a member in good standing in the Presbyterian Church (USA), right?  Oh, and whether you’ve gotten your generous pledge in for the next year.  

But when all those nervous Methodists and Episcopalians and Buddhists get to the front of the line, we find that the judgment call is measured by standards that are somewhat different from those we might otherwise expect.

For all of the really amazing amount of energy Christians have spent arguing about theological and doctrinal issues over the last 2,000 years, there’s no doctrinal multiple choice test administered.  There is also no reference, much to the befuddlement of many followers of Jesus, to whether or not you’ve been a church going Christian or accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

Instead, the measure is feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting those who are sick or imprisoned.  Done it?  Then you’re set.  Somehow managed not to get around to it?  Then things aren’t looking so good for you.

It’s a pretty simple measure, but one that we might, upon some reflection, struggle with a bit.  How does that work? 

Have we done things that are good?   Have we cared for those in need, and given a kind word to those who were lost or hurting?  I’m pretty sure we’ve all done that here and there, more or less.

But life is typically not as straightforward as the drop-down conversation menu in a game, in which you can either give a hungry man some bread or kick him.   

There are times we give of ourselves, but not fully.  There are times we are good, but not wholly.  We might give, but feel a tinge of resentment.  We might pull away, failing to give as much as we could.   We might be meeting one need, but failing to meet another.  That’s the reality in which we live.   How does this vision of how things are measured connect with our deeply greyscale reality?

Here, I think it’s worth keeping a couple of things in mind.

First, that our world is most often not black and white is not an excuse for inaction or paralysis.  Jesus presents us with a living or dying edge, that place in ourselves where we are daily, moment by moment, given the choice to live out grace or live out selfishness.   That choice is not a binary one, an either/or, a one or a zero.  We don’t live in two dimensional space, after all.  

But we are day by day, hour by hour, given the freedom to move closer towards being that soul that we were created to be.   We are given to grow deeper in grace, richer in patience, freer with mercy.  We can speak a kind word about that soul, instead of a bitter one.  We can take a moment for silence, to listen for God, to hear the other.   And we can choose to use our energies, our life, in ways that bring more light into the world.  That is true wherever we are.  

Second, while our lives may be painted in a shade of grey,  we have a grasp of what is expected of us, wherever we find ourselves in our own development as spiritual and ethical persons.   We know what is expected of us.  We are shown, with clarity, that we are to deepen our commitment to love, mercy, justice, and grace.  That is true for churches, which need to take the care of others...the last, the least, the lost...as a significant and visible priority.  That is true for ourselves as individuals, as well.  Wherever we are, we know how to lean more deeply into that reality.   And in doing so, reality itself is changed, as is our relationship to it.  

That’s a meaningful goal.  It’s the goal of the Reign of Christ.  This life is not, after all, a game.  Live it, and inherit that grace that He intended for all of us.   Let it be so, for you and for me,  AMEN.