The Light of Wonder

 Sermon for the 3rd Sunday after the Epiphany, January 25, 2026:  Matthew 4:12-23.  Not preached due to cancellation of service due to weather.

    While I was at St. Thomas’, Bath, I mostly taught Sunday School. I used a method of teaching that I had been exposed to in years past called “Godly Play.”

           The method is quite simple. Tell a biblical story (and I mean tell it, not read it) using props and ask children to wonder about it.  When you came to the end of the story, you ask a series of questions, that all begin with two words “I wonder . . .”

           For example, in this story of Jesus calling disciples, you might ask, “I wonder what it was about these four men that inspired Jesus to call them?”  They are always open-ended questions.  The children would respond with whatever came to mind.  And then they would further respond with some craft or drawing or writing, however they felt led.

           The point is, “I wonder …” was the heart of that method.  Wondering about God, wondering about Jesus, wondering about the Holy Spirit, wondering about our own lives.”

           It tell you this because I think this is another important way in which we are called to be a light to the world.  I spoke about unconditional love two Sundays ago, and kindness last Sunday.  Today it is wonder.

           We are people who before the mystery of life, before the mystery of God, stand in wonder.  Now it’s important to understand that wonder, if it is to have anything to do with God, and with being a light, is an experience.

           In Godly Play the wonder questions were ways to coax children into the experience of the disciples, or into the experience of any character in the Bible.

           In an essay about the future of the church, my teacher Elizabeth Johnson (who I quoted last week also), says

 At the heart of it all, what does Christianity proclaim?  It announces the good news that the reality of God surrounds us with forgiving, abounding kindness in the midst of our darkness, injustice, sin, and death. All the doctrines and rituals aim to unpack this basic wonder.[1]

           After this sermon we will recite the Nicene Creed as we do every Sunday.  The trouble with the Creed is that it seems to be an intellectual exercise. It seems as if we are saying, “There are the things you have to believe in order to be a good Christian.”

           But what if that is not what the Creed is about at all.  The clue of a different way of understanding the creed is to be found in the word “creed” itself.  “Creed,” comes from the Latin word credo, the first word of the creed in Latin.  The Latin word credo Comes from the Latin word cardia, “heart.”  Credo literally means to set one’s heart on something.

           This means that the Creed should never be divorced from the experiences that are behind it.  When in the creed we say, for instance, that Jesus Christ is “God from God, Light from Light,” we say that because we experience Jesus as God and as Light.

           And that experience has more to do with wondering than anything else.

           It is our gift to the world that we learn to stand before the world in wonder.  It means that we not only respect and stand in wonder before the mystery of God, we respect and stand in wonder before the mystery of life itself.

           This is the way of Jesus.  If you read the sermon on the mount, chapters five through seven of Matthew’s Gospel, you will hear Jesus pushing in this direction.  It is why he says at the beginning of chapter seven, “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged.”

           He’s talking about a fundamental stance toward the world.  You can stand before life and be driven by judgment or you can stand before the world and be driven by wonder.

           Do we still have to make choices in life that amount to judgment? Yes, of course, and Jesus certainly knew that.  But judgment with wonder as its underlying principal is completely different from just straight-up judgment, whose underlying principal is whatever prejudices we carry around.

           We are told that Jesus went about proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  The kingdom of heaven that has come near is the kingdom of wonder, wonder that if truly engaged will cause us to repent of our self-centeredness, repent of our tendency to judge between ourselves and others, allowing ourselves to act not with kindness but with indifference, suspicion, and even hatred.

           The kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of wonder. It is the kingdom of kindness. It is the kingdom of unconditional love.  It is, as we will sing in a few minutes, the kingdom of peace.

           Embracing and experiencing these things is what makes us followers of Jesus, what makes us a light to the world around us.

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[1] Elizabeth A Johnson, "Patterns of Faith in a Questioning Time, in Abounding in Kindness: Writings for the People of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Boons, 2015, p. 4.

We Need a Revolution of Kindness

 Sermon preached at Church of the Redeemer, Addison, on the 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany, January 18, 2026:  Isaiah 49:1-7

          So here we have Isaiah telling us the same thing he told us last week:

 I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

           Looking at the Isaiah passage for this morning, I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before in this text. It begins with the servant’s understanding of his or her calling.  But, the servant admits that she is exhausted:

 I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.

           I don’t know about you, but those words resonate in my soul right now.  Part of the problem of being called to be light in the world is that it is fairly dark out there, and the darkness seems to be on the rise.  And what can my little light do in the face of all the craziness of the world?

           Yet I feel called to do something.  We’ve been through plenty of times when we disagreed with the powers that be, whatever their political stripe.  This feels much more urgent.

           If I—If we—are going to shine our light, I think first we must get clear about its source, and its source is not us.  The servant makes this clear after his confession of exhaustion. And yet, he says

 Surely my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God.

           So what is the source of the light? Or, perhaps more bluntly, What is the light?

           One of my teachers, Elizabeth Johnson, writes something very helpful to assist us in answering this question.

 Woven through the saving history recounted in the Scriptures, one startling theme emerges.  This the peculiar way the God of Israel has of siding with vulnerable persons considered of no account.  Freeing slaves from Egypt; protecting the widow and orphan; making known through the prophets that divine glory is revealed only when justice is done; making known through Jesus that the last will be first in the kingdom of God; raising that crucified victim of state violence from the dead; this is not the way the powerful Creator of the world might be expected to act. But to ignore this is to be ill-informed about the God of the Bible.[1]

           As servants of God, we have a biblical mandate to show compassion and loving kindness to those being trampled on in our world.  This is not a call to tell about the light, this is a call to be the light.  This is the call from the prophet Micah that we will hear in a couple weeks:  “Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.”

           I’m struck by the word “kindness” there.  I think the darkness all around us these days is due to a commitment not to be kind.  Kindness is thought to be a sign of weakness.  Only strength will lead to greatness, and there is only room in this world for one country of strength, us.

           That flies in the face of that great thread of loving kindness and mercy in the Bible.  What we need is a revolution of kindness.

           There is the phrase, popular some years ago, “Practice random acts of kindness.”  I don’t agree, but my trouble is not with the word “kindness,” it is with the word “random.”  “Be kind” should be the air we breathe and the goal of our every act.

           That feels like an impossible task.  And it is impossible, at least on our own. We need God, and we need each other for any of us to achieve this commitment to kindness. We have to also say, with the servant, “yet my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God.”

           Our only hope in this time of darkness is God.  That can be confusing since all around us people are citing God as the course of their worldview.  And because of this confusion, people are turning away from any faith in God.  Less than half of the country are now regular church goers and the number is plummeting.

           But we cannot pay much attention to that.  The numbers game is a distraction.  As soon as our energy gets taken by anxiety over how to get more bodies in the pews, we are lost.  Does Jesus want more followers?  Yes, he does.  But the secret of Jesus is that you only get more followers by following.

           So let us be about that.  Let us be the light of God’s loving kindness. Let us join Jesus in his revolution of kindness.

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[1] Elizabeth Johnson, “Hearts on Fire,” in Abounding in Kindness:  Writings for the People of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), p. 302.

Becoming Living Stones

 Sermon preached at Evensong, 2nd Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2025, celebrating the 165th Anniversary of the Dedication of the Church of the Redeemer:  Psalm 46, 1 Peter 2:1-5, 9-10

165 years. That’s 8,580 Sundays.  Week by week, 8,580 times, the people of God who worship in the tradition of The Episcopal Church have gathered in faith to give thanks and pray, and to be given strength and courage to go into the world “to love and serve the Lord,” “in the Name of Christ,” and “in the power of the Spirit” by serving those whom God calls neighbors and friends.

Take that in for a moment. Savor it. Feel these walls soaked with prayer and thanksgiving, the faith and hope of many generations.

Yet, this moment is not about nostalgia.  It is about remembering, but in sacramental traditions like ours, remembering is never solely about the past.  When Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me,” he was asking us to do more than not forget him.  He was asking us to acknowledge his presence in the moment of remembering, and to allow that encounter with the past, in the present moment, to send us into the future.

So, an anniversary like this one is not an exercise in nostalgia. It is not only a celebration of the past.  It is a celebration of the future for the people of God in this place.

But do we dare talk about the future? Do we dare imagine a future for this place and the people who gather here? Do we not have to be honest about how uncertain the future is for a congregation like this one?  Do we not have to fear that this place will one day—sooner rather than later—become something other than a place to worship?

Yes, of course we have to be honest about the present moment. We have to acknowledge our anxiety, our fear.  But we also have to say, with the writer of Psalm 46,

The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold.

And with that expression of faith, we can dare to hope and continue to serve as if the future is not a threat but a possibility.

The apostle Peter gives us an image that helps put some flesh on the bones of this hope. He says

Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

“Like living stones.”  There is nothing more dead than a stone.  Yet we heard Jesus use this same image on Palm Sunday. As Jesus enters Jerusalem, the crowd is shouting, “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!” Some of the Pharisees ask Jesus to make them stop.  They sense—quite correctly—that this proclamation is dangerous.  Jesus replies,

I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.

For many in the world, the church seems very much like a stone—stuck in an existence it cannot change. Its stone—its buildings—however beautiful, increasingly vacant, lifeless, “for sale,” to be re-purposed for something more useful.  If it is living, it seems stuck in time, obsessed about itself and its own survival, uncertainty and anxiety the only signs of life.

How to turn this around? How to become living stones, that shout out the goodness and greatness of God in spite of what looks like a time of despair?

It’s a two step process, at least Psalm 46 would have it so.  Step One:

Be still then and know that I am God.

We cannot break out of the cycle of anxiety and self-obsession without learning to be quiet. We can only hear God if we shut up.  The writer of the psalm asks us to have faith; “The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our stronghold.”  But then she is wise enough to say that this faith requires that we be quiet and listen.  “Be still then, and know that I am God.”

We can only gain confidence about the future, church, if we believe that God is still speaking to us, and if we take the time to listen.

Step one:  be still.  Step two:  trust.  Assuming we are listening, we can only put into practice what we are hearing when we trust who God is. Again, Psalm 46,

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear …

If we are to be living stones, it will be because we trust the God who is our refuge and strength, and when we embrace that trust (to paraphrase St Augustine) we become the one we trust.

Whatever the particularities of God’s call to this place or any other, it will be a matter of becoming the one we trust.  If God is our refuge and strength, then we must become a refuge, a place where strength and courage to love and serve the Lord and his people is given.

I am reminded of a traditional Dutch hymn (not in our hymnal), that begins

What is this place where we are meeting?

Only a house, the earth its floor,

Walls and a roof, sheltering people,

Windows for light, an open door.

Yet it becomes a body that lives

When we are gathered here

And know our God is near.

Our prayer this evening is that this building may continue to house a people who know their God is near, a people who listen and are willing to trust that God is still with us, and to become the one they trust, a refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Trust

 Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany (Year C): Jeremiah 17:5-10; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26

If there is a word of the day this morning it seems to be “trust.”

 We prayed at the beginning of the service, “O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you . . .”

 We heard Jeremiah, declare, “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord.”

 Paul says to us, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.”  Faith and trust are at least “kissing cousins,” if not identical twins.

 And Jesus in Luke’s Gospel declares a future reversal for those who are poor or hungry or who weep now.  He offers no proof.  The statements call for faith, trust.

  My bishop most of the time I was in the Diocese of Washington was a man named Ronald Haines. He liked to challenge people to tell the Biblical story in ten minutes or less.

One way of doing that would be:

 God creates humankind and asks, “Will you trust me?”

 Humankind says in word, “Yes.”

 Humankind says in deed, “No.”

 So God asks humankind, whom he has created, “Will you trust me?”

 Humankind says in word, “Yes.”

 Humankind says in deed, “No.”

 This goes on and on, until at the biblical story’s end—at our end—there is just the question from the God who created us,

“I love you. I forgive you. Will you trust me?”

 And we are asked yet again to answer with our whole being.

 The Bible is not naive in telling this story, however.  It knows that neither the question nor the answer are simple. God’s question about trust, is never asked on a sunny day.  The question is always asked on Good Friday. It is always asked in the time of trial.  The Bible knows it is only worth asking then.

 So the answer to the question only matters in the time of trial, in the time of choosing, when one is tempted to put one’s trust in self alone or nothing at all.

 The Bible is not naive.  It knows full well our world of despair and mistrust.  “Trust no one.”  “In the end you can only trust yourself.”  “Look out for number one.”

  The Bible is not naive.  It knows that there is much supporting evidence for this worldview.  We live in a world that breeds despair and mistrust, where despair and mistrust appear to be perfectly reasonable, even necessary, responses.

 But, the Bible says, this world of despair and mistrust is not the world of God’s creation. It is the world of our own creation, and our response of mistrust and despair only serve to make it worse, to give strength to the whirlpool of life that threatens to suck us down.

 The Bible offers us life lived not on our own terms but God’s.  The only way to get from Good Friday, where the world around us seems to be stuck, to Easter Day, which seems an impossible fantasy, is to entrust ourselves and our world to God.

    Again, the Bible is not naive.  It knows the difficulty in this.  It knows how mysterious this God is whose story it tells.  She is the enigma of all enigmas.  He is the slipperiest of all eels.  Where to look for this God in whom we are to put our trust?  How to know this God in whom we are to put our trust?

 The Bible tells us in its story over and over and over again: we look for God in all the wrong places. We resist with all our might the answer the Bible gives. Where to look for this God in whom we are to put our trust?  We assume—because we were taught as children that God could do anything—God was the most powerful being in the world—and nobody told us this didn’t mean God was “superman.” We assume that God is to be found in the place of power.

But the Bible tells us God is to be looked for in the place of weakness—the cradle in the manger outside the inn and the cross on the hill outside the city. And it is only when we look for God in these places that the power of God to transform Good Friday to Easter Day is unleashed.

 To find God on Good Friday means to completely let go of self-dependence.  This is a tough one, especially for those of us who enjoy a measure of success in this world.  (We are all tempted to exempt ourselves from this but we should not.  If you own more than one coat, Jesus said, you are in a position of success and should be ready to get rid of it).

 To let go completely of self-dependence is a cultural heresy—anathema to everything we have been taught.  And yet if we do not do this, we shall never know God who can make new life, we shall ever be stuck on Good Friday trying to save ourselves, trying to create our own new life, and breeding more mistrust and more despair when we inevitably fail.

  We have a saying, “I’m at my wits end.”  It is a cry of enormous anxiety, marking the brink of despair.  It is the place we will avoid going at all costs, but it is the place we are most likely to meet God.  It is only when our own “wit” is ended that we can embrace and be embraced by the God who saves.

 “O God the strength of all who put their trust in you . . .”

 Nice words, whose implications are staggering.  The trust results in strength—p power—but not our own, God’s.

 We are addicted to our own strength--especially we of economic privilege--we are absolutely addicted to it.  It is why Jesus says, “Woe,” to us.  He knows that our withdrawal from our addiction will not be pleasant—it will shake us to our foundations, rattle us as much as any withdrawal from any drug.

 When Jesus says “Woe to you who are privileged now . . .” he’s talking about the “DT’s” he knows we’ll have to go through when we’re finally forced to let go of our own privilege, our own strength, when we get to the day when, as they say, “you can't take it with you.”  It will not be pretty.

 Is Jesus saying we would be better off being slaves, or poor, hungry, weeping, oppressed, marginalized, desperate?

 In a way, yes.  Not because that is what God wants for us—what God wants for us is to embrace the truth that we have been given a creation where there is enough—even an abundance—for everybody.  But we choose to believe in scarcity instead, and so choose to live in fear and dependence on our own ability to get enough for ourselves and so play games of power and privilege and relegate God to a nice old grandfather in the sky who is pleased when we behave ourselves.

 Jesus is saying those who have nothing in this world are lucky—blessed—because they already have no choice but to trust in God.  But those of us who live in the luxury of trusting in ourselves, we will face a terrible day when we can’t do that anymore—and it’s going to hurt like hell.

 But the good news is that God will still be there for us.  We will still be able to choose to trust completely.

 But why not start now?  Why not prepare? Why not experiment living in the trust of God?  It begins with a prayer and an act we do all the time but perhaps don’t fully grasp the significance of it.

 The prayer is, “God, I cannot feed myself.  I am desperately hungry and no matter how much I feed myself my spirit is restless and sometimes starving.”

 The act is to get out of the pew and open our hands and, in words from the Prayer Book, “Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on [God] in your heart with thanksgiving.”

Of Signs and Seeing in Troubled Times

 Sermon preached at Church of the Redeemer, Addison, January 19, the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany:  John 2:1-11

Grant that your people, illumined by your word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory….

Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory…

The Collect of the Day gives us a lofty goal:  “that we might shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory.”  It reminds us of Jesus saying from the Sermon on the Mount:  “Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”  It reminds me also of a saying, “Saints are people the light shines through.”

The Gospel reading this morning tells us there are two prior steps we must take before we can be a light for others.  First, we must learn to look for the signs.  And second, we must learn to see through them.

John calls what happens at the wedding in Cana as “the first of Jesus’ signs.”  John does not talk about miracles, he talks about signs.  There are seven of them in John’s Gospel.  Seven things Jesus does that reveal who he truly is.

So how do we do the first step, look for a sign from God?

The Collect we prayed points us in a particular direction. We are said to be “illumined by your word and Sacraments.”  The Sacraments are a kind of rehearsal for how to look for signs from God.

What is the definition of a Sacrament?  The Prayer Book says they are “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace.”  What does that tell us? Two things, I think.

First, signs from God occur mostly in the ordinary stuff of life. And second, signs can be seen through to see the grace of God.

That means that we don’t spend all our time looking for signs from God in the other than ordinary, or the unexplainable.  Finding God in the unexplainable, and especially using the unexplainable to figure out who God is and how he works is often called “the God of the gaps.”  The impulse is to look at what cannot be explained—the gaps in our understanding—and say, “I’ve found God.”

I don’t want to say that we cannot find God in the gaps, but I do want to say that it is rare to do so.  God likes to speak to us in the ordinary.  Hence Jesus first sign in John’s Gospel takes place at a wedding and involves water and wine.  Yes, how Jesus turns water into wine is unexplainable, but “how” is not the main point of the story.

The main point of the story is to prepare us to look for God’s signs in the ordinary stuff of life, and to be able to see through those signs to the reality of Jesus and his revelation of God.

And that’s the second step. Step one, how or where do we look? Second step, having looked, how do we see?  Or probably better, what do we look for?

Back to the definition of a sacrament:  we look for grace, or any of those things we know we can rely on God for:  mercy, forgiveness, hope, love.

We look through something and see God.  Now that’ s not as easy as it sounds, because—and here’s the tricky part—what God wants to show us is often unexpected, a surprise.  Such a surprise might delight us, but it might also bring us up short, or, at first, disappoint us or even anger us.

Later in John’s Gospel comes the famous line, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”  Some have added a phrase: “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”

We can’t look only for things we agree with or that are some fulfillment of a desire we have.  If we do this, usually sooner rather than later, the God we worship will look a great deal like ourselves.

Look for God in the ordinary, expect to see, often, what you do not expect to see (or, perhaps, do not want to see).

This has many ramifications for daily living.  I’ll point out one given the change we are about to experience with the inauguration of President Trump.

That people are deeply divided is a given these days.  That one side of that divide feels completely empowered by now is obvious, and many of us will find ourselves on the margins, politically and socially.

The tendency—whichever side your on—will be to increase what we have been doing for the last decade, and that is to seek the safety of like-minded people.  A certain amount of that is only natural.

But we can’t let ourselves do that all the time.  We must keep practicing on of the tenets of the baptismal covenant we renewed last week:  “I will seek and serve Christ in all persons loving my neighbor as myself.”

There’s a flip side to that work:  we must give opportunities for others to see Christ in us, a product of letting our life shine.

That is what gay and lesbian people did in The Episcopal Church.  When the majority of people wanted us to go away, we decided to stay.  And not just stay, we determined to tell our stories so that other people could see our ordinary lives.  And see God at work in them.  We did it so well that in the early nineties that one of the organizations that was against us being fully in the church issued a warning to all its members:  do not let them tell their stories.

Some folks in our community think they have one a great battle and are poised to win the war against a whole bunch of people they think are destroying the real American way of life, and the Christian religion.  Out job is to find ways to keep in relationship with them and not be quiet about who we are and the things we hold dear.  As I have always said as an openly gay priest, “They’re going to have to work hard not to like me or at least respect me.”

Now this means that we have to look for Christ in those who disagree with us also, and expect that there are ways that we need to change.

The only way I see to survive the next four years is to keep looking for and seeing God at work in others, and making ourselves available to be looked at and seen.  We have to trust God that he will be present in those attempts to see and be seen, because it is in the signs that he is known, as we practice each Sunday. 

Going Down Into the Dirty Water

 Sermon preached at Church of the Redeemer, Addison, on the First Sunday after Epiphany, celebrating the Baptism of Jesus:  Isaiah 43:1-7, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

There is one little detail in Luke’s telling of the story of Jesus’ Baptism that makes a huge difference to understanding not only Jesus’ mission, but our own.  Luke writes,

Now when all the people were baptized . . .

Full stop.  Artistic representations of Jesus’ baptism almost always have John and Jesus alone in the water. What was going on was between the two of them.  Matthew even has John arguing with Jesus that this baptism should be the other way around.

Luke paints a different picture.  Jesus is there with the crowds.  If there was a line of people waiting for their turn, Jesus was among them.  Jesus in line.  Not seeking anything special, just what everyone else was getting.

Now, you may say, yes, but it seems to indicate he was last in line.  And you’re right that is implied, but I don’t think it changes my image. If anything it enhances it.  The River must have been quite churned up by the time Jesus got in the water.  So my image is that he went down into the dirty water with everybody else.

Down in the dirty water with everyone else.  Luke’s Jesus, right from the beginning, is in complete solidarity with us. And, as a last way of emphasizing this, it is implied that everyone with ears to hear could here the voice announcing God’s beloved.  In Matthew and Mark only Jesus hears the voice.

Down in the dirty water and a voice that speaks to anyone who can hear.

In many ways this is how I have come to understand and try to practice priesthood.

All my thirty-five ordained years, like most clergy, I have been asked, “How did you know you were being called?”  I’ve never had a great story of an epiphany. Something like, “I was in a special place and I heard a special voice.”  No, my answer has always been, “I just did.”  I know, very unsatisfying.

After 35 years I don’t consider it to be an important question anymore if it ever was.  The important question for me is what am I called to do with this extraordinary gift I’ve been given?

And the answer is not to be anything special.  The answer is to, like Jesus, go down into the dirty water like everyone else and listen with everyone else for the voice of acceptance, the voice of grace, the voice of love.

If I can do or say something to facilitate your stepping into that water and listening for that voice, well, that’s what I try to do. It’s why clergy are given authority to say particular words—of acceptance, of forgiveness, of offering, and of blessing.  If you want to call the ability to do those things a ”power,” well, that’s fine.  But any power given to me is all grace.

Don’t get me wrong. I love being a priest. As bad at it as I am sometimes, it is such an extraordinary gift and has become to me something like breathing.  It has been a different gift at different times in my life.  Right now it is a gift to be here with you, and also with my staff and the animals at the Shelter. I’m no less a priest there than I am here, except there I more or less keep that thought to myself.

And it’s a bit more than that. I love to be a priest of the God of mercy and grace and love.  And to be the one who gets to remind you over and over again just how loved you are—despite all the trouble life brings.

And even in that I am nothing special, because you—even you—are called in word and deed to proclaim the good news of God in Christ, the good news being said by the prophet Isaiah this morning:

Because you are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you…do not fear, for I am with you..you who are called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.

That’s not some perfect person God is talking to.  It’s you and I, down in the dirty water, the voice we need to hear.

The Christmas Surprise

 Sermon preached at Church of the Redeemer, Addison on Christmas Eve: Luke 2:1-20

I have been stuck on the word “surprise” this Advent.  It first occurred to me preparing for the Advent classes we did this year. We pondered three questions from hymns in those sessions.

It was the first question that brought up the word “surprise.”  The question is 

Can it mean that in our endings, new beginnings you create?

    Pondering that question, I asked myself, “Are you willing to be surprised by God?”  Can the story of Jesus birth that we have heard so many times, offer any surprise?

I know it’s not a very theological word, surprise. It never appears in our Prayer Book, and only once in the entirety of the Bible.  But here it is, stuck in my brain, and so I’m going to try and to make some meaning out of it for us.

And to do so I am drawn to those shepherds.  To say that they were surprised in the middle of the night by a host of angels is a vast understatement.  They must have thought, if they could think beyond their fear, “Hold up! Wait a minute! We think you have the wrong address!’

But the angels didn’t have the wrong address.  They were right where God wanted them to be, with shepherds in the hills “watching their flock by night.”

Now some say that the shepherds’ appearance in the story is to remind us of King David, the shepherd king, into whose house Jesus is born.  Maybe, but shepherds were a long way from the great David.

And the long way had been a prolonged decline.  Shepherds were among the lowest in esteem by Jesus’ day.  The religious authorities considered them “outside the law,” which is to mean that there was no way for them to become “clean.”  One consequence was that they were considered totally unreliable witnesses.  They were thought to be inherently dishonest.

Now there’s a surprise.  God chooses as his first revelation of his newborn son, witnesses that most people—especially the civil and religious authorities—were hard-wired not to believe.

In my imagination I see them wandering into town, sheep in tow—they couldn’t leave them in the hills alone.  That they were “in haste” only makes the scene more comical.  I imagine regular citizens rushing to their homes, slamming the doors behind them. It must have seemed as if Bethlehem was being invaded by people whom no one wanted to be there.

Normally the shepherds would have been afraid to wander into town, especially accompanied by their sheep. But they had just been told the good news that they didn’t have to be afraid anymore, and they believed it.

There are many ways to be surprised by the Christmas story, but here is perhaps the biggest:

We don’t have to be afraid anymore.

Throughout history and religious traditions, God, however conceived, was characterize by one thing:  fear.  You should be afraid of God.  It is still true for so many religious types, even Christians.  In college I hung around evangelical students for a time, and the one thing they were clear about:  you cannot tell people the good news before you tell them the bad news.  You’re going to hell unless you get right with God.

That is not what is happening in this story.  The good news is proclaimed and the first word out of everyone’s month is, “Do not be afraid.”  Forget the bad news.

If God ever did want to be feared, that ended this night.  Why else come as a baby?  There is no fear in the manger scene, only love.

And that is where I end up with my word surprise.  It is not something new to my way of thinking, but I am surprised by it over and over again.

One last thing:  The angels cried out,

Glory to God in the highest heave, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!

Do not be fooled by the words “those whom he favors.”  Do not make of them some exclusivist club, people who know how to get themselves in good with God.  Think of the ones who were the first to get this message.

And be surprised that those whom God favors turns out to be you and me and everyone else.

This is the Christmas surprise:  We do not need to be afraid of God anymore.