First Sunday after Christmas, Year C

Luke 2:41-52

Bryan Cones

So, what do you suppose Mary and Joseph were feeling in those three—that’s three—days that led up to finally finding their son and our dear Lord and not-so-considerate Savior hanging out in the Temple impressing all those religious scholars with his answers? Not having children of my own, it’s a feeling I can only imagine, but my guess it’s something along the lines of the absolute worst combination of feelings in the world: terror, guilt, anger at yourself for letting him out of sight, worry. Surely there are others, and none of them good.

Now imagine the feeling of finding him—finally—and discovering that, well, he wasn’t exactly lost at all. He’d actually taken it upon himself to abscond and follow his interests to the Temple, where he was probably enjoying himself impressing all those teachers.

Which leads me to my main question: Exactly how many deep breaths did Mary have to take before she asked her almost serene question: “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” Great anxiety, eh. So, how many breaths—like 1,000 or something. Honestly, I think my response would have been something more like, “Listen, kid, Son of God or not, as long as you live under my roof… You’re grounded until you are 30!”

To be fair, perhaps we could put ourselves in Jesus’ place and, if we are older, try to remember as best we can what it was like to be an adolescent: just coming to understand ourselves as different from our parents, maybe already discovering what makes us tick, and maybe wondering if our parents were really interested in knowing what we wanted— and feeling sometimes like they weren’t, really.

Maybe we have even said something like: “Where did you think I’d be? If you’d been paying attention to me you’d know where I was.” And for Jesus, that meant his Father’s house. Looks like the holiday family drama we both read about and perhaps experience has a long pedigree, all the way back to Passover in the year 12-ish—even God’s human family is not immune!

And this, by the way, is the family that is often referred to as the “holy” family: In fact, in the Roman Catholic Church, today is actually called the “feast of the Holy Family.” And guess what: This is the gospel reading they are hearing today, too: The story of a “holy” family full of hurt feelings and misunderstanding, frantic parents who don’t quite get it and teens with independent streaks and sharp tongues. Does that sound familiar to any other families here? If so, it turns out we are all in fine company.

In addition to perhaps making us all feel a bit better about the quirks and even difficult misunderstandings in our own families, I wonder too if this story doesn’t invite us to come back for a minute to the combination of the words “holy” and “family.” If we ever we are tempted to imagine a family that’s always together for dinner (with phones put away), never forgets to say grace, and works out all their issues with good, healthy conversation about our feelings and apologies all around, this story is an encouraging reminder that a holy family is a bit more complicated.

If we take this story seriously as an expression of God’s word, in fact, there is apparently no conflict between family holiness and the inevitable misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and thoughtlessness that are part and parcel of life together. Those rough patches are not only par for the course, they are also moments of grace, opportunities to discover and embrace, gingerly perhaps, God’s presence and action within us and between us.

This God of ours, after all, never seems to limit the divine self only to moments when everyone is being nice and following the rules. If the 12-year-old Jesus is any indication, not to mention the rest of his life, the contrary is true.

All of which point to some suggestions for us as we live together in our own holy families, the first of which is to give ourselves a little grace: God is not asking us to be perfect families— whatever on earth that could mean— but holy ones, open to God in all of life’s moments, and trusting that God is present even when we aren’t at our best. And when we inevitably aren’t, our two main characters, Mary and Jesus, point to a couple of ways we might hang in there together.

First, Mary, who, as the story goes, after her 1,000 deep breaths, was able to make room for curiosity about her son in the midst of what was surely a whirling mixture of relief, anger, and disbelief. Through it all she was able to ask him what was going on in a way that affirmed her love for him and was really honest about how his behavior made her feel. And she was even able to treasure all of it in her heart.

And then there was Jesus, who despite his initial declaration, got back in line and “was obedient” to his parents—recognizing perhaps that he could be true to himself and to his calling while still taking the feelings and needs of his parents into consideration. And he grew in wisdom and grace, too.

Curiosity and consideration—not a bad prescription for negotiating the more difficult moments of family life, and maybe not always guaranteed to help. But when they do, they could also open us a bit more to the ways God might be speaking to us in those situations, and so help take a few more baby steps into the combination of “holy” and “family” God is creating us to be. 

December 25: Christmas Day

Isaiah 52:7-10, John 1:1-14

Bryan Cones

“How beautiful on the mountain are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation.” Feet? Why the feet?

Today’s first reading always makes me raise a curious eyebrow about these “beautiful feet” that have been traversing the mountains, but then I started thinking about a friend of mine who gave birth to her second child a couple of weeks ago. The child’s name is Junia—and when I saw her feet—those beautiful, brand new infant feet—the prophet’s message made a bit more sense to me: Junia’s newborn feet brought good news indeed to her parents: a safe delivery, a new beginning, and blessing from God on the family that was just beginning.

And those feet are the exact kind we are celebrating today: Newborn feet, in particular the newborn feet of the one the gospel of John calls the “Word of God,” sent to bring peace, good news, and salvation. We shouldn’t let that title fool us though: In this case the messenger and the message are one. This Word of God is not in the first place a book or a doctrine or a system of belief, but a person, a baby, born in an inconvenient and uncomfortable place, to a family and a people living in an uncomfortable and dangerous time. And the beautiful feet born in Bethlehem today will eventually take a long and difficult path to Jerusalem, where today’s story both ends and has a new beginning.

But today, though, today we get to stay with these newborn feet, and the heart of the message embodied in this messenger: “to all who received him, who believed in his name,” says John’s gospel this morning, “he gave power to become children of God.” That is to say, it’s not just these beautiful infant feet we celebrate this morning, but a new vision of all our beautiful feet—infant and not—and what this messenger says about them and about us: It’s not just the newborn Son of God we celebrate this Christmas; it’s also the new birth as God’s children he brings to all of us. And with him we become both messenger and message, the signs in the world of the peace and good news and salvation God desires for the world every day of the year.

God’s little messenger invites us to expand our imaginations about what this one birth means for the rest of us, those of us granted the power to become God’s children through our faith in him. I suspect that like the story of Jesus, that journey as God’s children only begins in our birth, and our beautiful feet bear us and God’s message in us through all the moments of life—good, bad, and otherwise.

And it’s in those moments, all of them, that we grow in our understanding of what it means to live as God’s children, as those whose beautiful feet follow in the footsteps of Christ. And those feet grow and change in character on the road, and we with them, on our way to experiencing the fullness of this Christmas mystery in our own lives and journey. These feet of ours bear us, sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively, all the way to the end.

Which puts me in mind of another pair of beautiful feet: those of my grandmother, Jean, who died not two years ago after almost 101 years. My last memory of her was her walking into her bedroom for the last time. It was her bare feet that I noticed carrying her still, aided by the walker she also relied on. Those beautiful feet were the sacrament of her long journey, with all its ups and downs, and they were bearing her finally to the bed where she would begin her next journey into the mystery we celebrate this morning, when what is human joins finally and fully the divine source that made us.

Jesus, Junia, Jean—all moments in the mystery of the Word-made-flesh we give thanks for today, along with our own share in the life of the messenger born this day in Bethlehem.

December 24, Christmas Eve

Kristin White

On Monday the fourth of September, 1989, a group of people gathered at St. Nikolai Church in Leipzieg, East Germany.[1] They had attended the church’s prayer service for peace, led by their pastor, Christian Fuhrer. They didn’t go home right afterwards. Instead, the people stood outside their church, in the square. And they sang.

The following Monday, they did it again. And the next. The people gathered, and they prayed, and then they stood outside and sang.

And again, they gathered the following Monday. People brought signs calling for democracy and justice, calling for Germany to be one country again. They held their signs, and they stood outside that great church where Bach’s Passion had first resonated. And they sang.

Each week their numbers grew. By Monday, October 9, just a month after the first gathering in the square, 70,000 people stood outside St. Nikolai Church in Leipzieg. The following Monday, October 16,there were 120,000 people praying and singing in that square, calling for Germany once again to be one. As it all unfolded, people in other towns gathered and began to sing in their own church squares.

The following Monday, October 23, 1989, more than 320,000 people – half of all the people living in the city of Leipzieg – gathered in the square outside St. Nikolai Church. And they sang.

Seventeen days later, on November 9, a Thursday, the Berlin Wall came down.

After it was all over, a journalist asked one of the commanders of the East German Secret Police why they had not silenced the St. Nikolai protests in the same way that they had silenced so many other protests against the government. The commander’s response to that journalist? “We had no contingency plan for song.”

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Tonight we celebrate the feast of the birth that brings our salvation. And all the people involved seem unlikely choices for that holy moment: the unexplainably pregnant teenage girl with her fiancé from Nazareth, and that girl’s elderly thought-to-be-barren-but-now-actually-pregnant cousin with a mysteriously mute husband. And a bunch of gobsmacked shepherds in a field. And a group of pagan stargazers, now scaring the king with their camels and their fancy presents, out searching for a newborn king to adore.

It’s impossible, scholars would tell you, and have, and will. It’s impossible that God came into this world in this way among those people in that place and did what God did and departed for a time and promises to make good on the return. It’s blessedly impossible.

And that’s what God does. “God uses the unlikely to incarnate the impossible.”[2] God comes to us as we are, choosing to be with us, not waiting until everything is in order or even until God is bidden.

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I want to preach tonight in a way that makes sense of the year since we last gathered in this place to celebrate the birth of our salvation. I want to find an artful and honest but not-too-simple word of hope that will hold it all together, one that gives meaning and coherence and inspires trust and shows a path.

I want to shine light toward the day when we can go to a movie premiere without suspicion of others walking into the theater with us, toward the day when our children don’t have to learn how to hide themselves in their classrooms as part of a regular drill. I want to preach about how and when we really do find a cure, and the people we love don’t get hurt, about a day when we can see the earth heal from the damage that we have done. I want to reveal the hope of a time when people don’t have to take refuge on other shores, when fathers and mothers do not lose children to the waves. The sermon I want to preach is a sermon that points us toward a moment when the rhetoric of terror and isolation ceases to dominate our media because that rhetoric no longer finds traction among the people, toward a time when black lives matter every bit as much as every other life that doesn’t need to have that phrase attached.

As challenged as I am personally by a marked lack of a sense of direction, I want the road map toward that day. Because I want to share it here, with you. That’s the sermon I want to be able to preach as we gather to celebrate the feast of the birth of our salvation.

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What I can tell you is that there was a decree from Caesar that everybody had to be registered. And Joseph went to Bethlehem because he was from the family of David, and Mary went with him because they were engaged. And she was going to have a baby. And while they were away the time came for that baby to be born. So she wrapped him in cloth and laid him in a manger because there was no room for their family anyplace else. And there were shepherds, and an angel, and I can tell you those shepherds were terrified. And so that angel said what angels say: “Don’t be afraid – good news, great joy.” And then there was a whole host of angels, singing to the glory of God. And the shepherds went to see that baby for themselves and the people were amazed. And Mary treasured it all in her heart.

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What I can tell you is that it doesn’t make sense, and it can’t, and it won’t. It’s unlikely, that these would be the people and that would be the place and this would be the time. It seems impossible, that this would be the way God is born into the world God created, and God loves.

But that’s what God does. God uses the unlikely to incarnate the impossible.[3]

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And I don’t have the road map for how we get from here to a time when the polar ice caps stop melting at a compound rate. I don’t know when the shooting will finally stop. I wish I could show the steps to reconciliation among all the people. And I want the cure for everybody.

But that’s not the sermon I have to preach this Christmas.

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What I can tell you instead is that a baby was born, to parents who had to take refuge in a stranger’s kindness. And an angel showed up in front of some terrified shepherds and said that thing that angels say: “Don’t be afraid.” And then a whole bunch of angels appeared, and they sang. And Mary treasured it all.

The sermon that I have to preach this Christmas Eve is that God shows up. That is what God does. God shows up – for us and with us – in the unlikely and in the impossible.

God comes to us as we are, choosing to be with us, not waiting until everything is in order, not even waiting to be bidden.

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The sermon that I have to preach this Christmas Eve is that a wall separated Germany from itself for what had been a lifetime for many. And people were shot for trying to cross from one side of that wall to another. And it must have seemed unlikely that anything the people tried would actually work. It must have seemed impossible that it all could ever change.

On Monday, September 4, 1989, people gathered at St. Nikolai Church in Leipzieg. They prayed for peace with their pastor. And when the service was over, those people didn’t go home.

They stood outside. And they sang.

[1] Thanks to David Lose for this story, which resonates throughout: http://www.davidlose.net/2015/12/advent-4-c-singing-as-an-act-of-resistance/.

[2] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/12/sermon-on-pirates-in-the-nativity-and/

[3] ibi

December 20, Fourth Sunday of Advent

Luke 1:39-45

Bryan Cones

It has always seemed a bit humorous or ironic to me that today’s gospel happens to the be the one that closes our Advent season. Though Advent began with the Big Bangs of the promise of the Second Coming of Jesus to set the world aright, and a series of announcements from the Hebrew prophets about how the God of Israel was going to destroy the enemies of the people and usher in a new age of peace and glory, and even tales of a sharp-tongued desert prophet, John the Baptist, telling off all those religious know-it-alls and Roman bad guys, we end on a quiet note: Two women, both unusually and untimely pregnant, in private, probably wondering together what it is all about.

Welcome to Christmas, or almost, and welcome to a vision of the God who we, at least, believe is coming into the world. Despite the seeming promise of early Advent, in which God invades from on high, trouncing the opposition with a glorious campaign, the God who actually shows up appears in the most insignificant of places, in the company of two more or less powerless people—two women, one older and “barren,” one a teenager, both at the bottom end of the political and economic ladder, who despite their joy and praise today, will give birth to sons who both end their lives where they began them—at the bottom of that same ladder, still waiting for the God of Micah in the first reading to show up and set the world aright.

Kind of an odd way to get ready for Christmas—but perhaps the exact right way for the God we seek, the one who is the subject of our praise and thanksgiving. This is not the God of the powers that dominate the world, who promise to attack, invade, and carpet bomb their way to world as it should be. On the contrary, rather than appear as a top-down invading force, this God of ours appears at the bottom, to transform the world-as-it-is from the bottom up, beginning with those who suffer most from the way things are. This is the God we welcome at Christmas.

I suppose we might wish for a more robust sort of deity, one who takes on and defeats the powers that be—though maybe that God would look a bit too much like the harsh, dehumanizing forces already at work in this world. Perhaps, on the other hand, the bottom-up God is the one we have always longed for, the one who shows up when, like Mary and Elizabeth, we find ourselves holding the short end of the stick—pregnant in the wrong place or at the wrong time, part of a religion or cultural group misunderstood or even rejected and oppressed, or even a member of the gender who most often gets left holding the bag. Or maybe we just fell and hit our heads really hard, and find ourselves at the mercy of people we don’t really know.

It turns out that this God of ours not only shows up in those moments, to those people, to us at our weakest and most vulnerable, but even more that’s exactly when this God of ours is most fully present, most fully revealed, and most ready to bring forth the kingdom of mercy, healing, love, and peace we are so hoping for. This is the God of power in weakness, the God—as we Christians tell the story anyway—born in a barn, to a family on the run, with nothing to his name: that’s when the angels start announcing the Savior’s birth and the next moment of what God has intended all along. How appropriate that our first liturgy on Thursday night, then, will be led not so much by those of us in our high churchy finery, but the by the children and youth, who remain most closely connected to the way God comes into the world in Bethlehem.

Which leaves us, or me at least, with something of a conundrum: How to celebrate such a birth at Christmas? Where might we find the Christ child today, knowing full well that what most of the rest of the world is celebrating is only the top frothy layer of the greatest story we’ve ever told. Perhaps we might begin by remembering in ourselves that in our own moments of weakness, dependence, even oppression, that not only have we not lost God’s favor and love in those most difficult moments, but even more that God is laboring within us more than ever in those times to draw forth the grace and mercy that saves the world, and us along with it.

And as we cast our eyes beyond ourselves, as we do in this season, perhaps they may fall with love, even wonder and worship, upon the Elizabeths and Marys and Josephs and Jesuses who still wander this world today— forgotten, oppressed, suffering— and in whom God is surely calling us to come and adore the divine presence coming into the world through them.

In that way we may partner with God, both for them and for us, to bring forth the world as God intends it. Such a Christmas might add a new “M” word to our holiday vocabulary— making in more “meaningful” perhaps—yet in my own heart and I hope in yours, too, it would probably also be merrier than we could ever imagine. 

December 13, Third Sunday of Advent

Luke 3:7-18

Kristin White

That “brood of vipers” piece really gets all the attention in this gospel, doesn’t it? Truly. Once you heard it, did you really hear anything else that John the Baptist said?

This is a finger-shaking kind of a text, from a finger-shaking kind of a prophet. And I have to say that in my life as a daughter, a student, and a priest, I don’t tend to learn best by people shaking their finger at me. And I have to say that in my life as a mother, a teacher, and a priest, finger-shaking (from the pulpit or anywhere else) doesn’t tend to work all that well.

It’s too bad that this is how the passage begins, because we’re probably many of us inclined to stop listening. But if we can get past it, and instead find a way to step into this message, there’s rich learning here to find.

First, notice that the crowds are coming to John – not out of curiosity, or to provoke, or be entertained…they’re not looking for him to do a party trick. The people in the crowds are coming to him because they want to be baptized. They want to follow the same God that John follows. And John’s response to them, after that first part about the vipers, is the question: “Who told you to flee from the wrath that is to come?” Who told you to run away from the hard parts? He says. And there’s a disconnect here, because it seems to me that this crowd isn’t running away. They’re coming toward him, toward the water, toward the faith that they don’t really even know about yet. “Bear fruit that is worthy of repentance,” he says, and then more scary finger-shaking stuff about children from stones and the ax at the root and the tree in the fire.

But the people stay put. They don’t run away, at least not from this wrath as it comes, as he calls them names. The people in these crowds don’t leave when John the Baptist tells them the frightening things that will happen if they don’t do what God wants them to do. Instead, they ask him: “Well, what should we do?”

And this is where it gets interesting. Because, given all the rhetoric from a finger-shaking prophet up to this point, I would envision his response being some call to seemingly impossible feats of strength and discipline in which people prove themselves worthy to belong among a very faithful, likely very small, group of followers. “Go run up that mountain barefoot over all the sharp rocks,” I could imagine John saying. Or “give away all your food and everything else you own and then leave everything familiar,” I could imagine (someone else will say something that sounds like that in passages still to come…). I expect John to tell the people to do hard things, to prove they really mean it. And then maybe a little bit more about vipers and an ax and some fire. And a little more finger-shaking, just to underscore it all.

But John doesn’t say any of that. “Do you have two coats?” he asks. “Give one of them to somebody who doesn’t have any coats at all.” “Do you have more food than you need for dinner tonight? Give some of that food to someone who is hungry.” And when the tax collectors come to him, Jewish people whose job it is to take money from other Jews and give it to the Romans who are living in their land, John doesn’t tell those tax collectors to quit their jobs. He says that they should do that work justly. And the same thing is true with the soldiers. He doesn’t tell them to lay down their swords and leave, only not to use their power to threaten or steal.

So step back with me, and look at this story again. People come to John to be baptized. He says some things that might cause us to stop listening, and interlaced in that are a couple of really important pieces: don’t run away from the things that are difficult; do works that bear good fruit. And when the people ask what those good works are, he names things that every single one of us is capable of doing: share your extra coat with someone who is cold, give food you don’t need to people who are hungry. Don’t cheat. Don’t bully. Don’t steal. Be satisfied with what is fair.

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A few years ago I read a book called Switch. It was written by Chip and Dan Heath, two brothers who spent time researching change and the processes that work most often leading to healthy and lasting change. Not surprisingly, finger-shaking was not a common attribute for positive change. What did surprise me, though, was that complex solutions were not high on the list, either.

We live in a time when problems are so complex and convoluted, so long-developed over time that only a similarly complex and long-developed solution to whatever it is would seem to make sense. Poverty. Terrorism. Hunger. Gun violence. Bigotry. These are big problems. And if I’m listening to them with an ear to what I expect John the Baptist to say, the solution to any part of any one of those seems like it would need to involve difficulty, and suffering, and lots and lots of syllables.

The thing is, though, that the findings of this book were that the simple solutions were the solutions that took – simple…not always easy. And they came, not from white papers and conferences with panels of titled experts, but from people close to the issue, people who talked to each other.

It makes me wonder, once we get past his finger-shaking brood-of-vipers business, what the words of John the Baptist might have to offer us today, right here:

·      Don’t run away from situations that are difficult

·      Do the kind of work that bears good fruit…things like:

o   Giving your extra coat away to a person who’s cold

o   Feeding hungry people with the food you don’t need

o   Being just in your dealings

o   Not using your authority to intimidate or hurt people

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The problems we face into as a society, as a world, in this moment, are problems on a grand scale. And maybe it’s easier to shake our finger at the magnitude and enormity of it all, and then turn and flee from the wrath it brings. After all, we have plenty of coats. We have more food than we need for just today. We have jobs and roles that afford us a certain power and recognition and, seemingly, security.

But I wonder, in the simplicity that lies at the heart of this gospel, what might happen on an individual scale if we did what John compelled the people in that crowd to do. I wonder what might happen, if we all did those very simple, very do-able things. And I wonder what the outcome might be, if we did them on a grand scale – by church and community and country.

It sounds maybe too simple, and I don’t mean to underplay the significance of the problems of this world. But when I think about the most frightening things that I see on the news every day, what seems absent to me is a human response. Fractiousness and isolation have taken too much hold. And on a large scale and on a small scale, people are hungry. They’re cold. On a large scale and on a small scale, people have been bullied, and stolen from, and made to be afraid.

And a scary-looking, locust-eating, hairshirt-wearing prophet shakes his finger, and tells us to repent of all that. He tells us to turn ourselves from turning away in the ways our own fear might cause us to. He’s preparing us, for a day when the valleys will be exalted and the hills will be brought low, and a pathway carved out in the desert. He’s preparing us to prepare the way of the Lord. John reminds us that we have enough to share, that we have enough to live with decency and justice, and that we have enough to extend those gifts to others who deserve and should have them, but don’t – and probably won’t – until we learn to share what we have. He’s preparing us again and still, together with the people in those crowds, for baptism.

“I baptize you with water,” John says. “But one who is mightier than I is coming.”

December 6: Second Sunday of Advent, Year C

Baruch 5:1-9; Luke 3:1-6

Bryan Cones

What’s in a name? Or more specifically—what’s in your name? What does it mean to you?

I remember as a kid hoping that my name might mean something: I was disappointed that I didn’t have a good saint’s name or family name, some hero for me to emulate, so I looked up “Bryan” and discovered that it was Irish-ish, and it meant something like “high” or “noble.” I wondered if my name meant that’s was what I was supposed to be, or if my parents had chosen for me it because of its meaning, because that’s what they hoped for me.

I’ve often wondered if parents choose names for their children that way, as blessings or even prophecies: for example if Margaret and Chris named their daughter Grace so that she would always know that she is God’s gift, or if Martha Jacobson’s parents knew that she would be as hospitable as her biblical namesake. Or did her name make her that way?

My partner David keeps a list of people from the news whose names seem oddly connected to what they do: there’s David Dollar, an economist at the World Bank; Tito Beveredge, who is the head of a liquor company; or one of my favorites is the Rev. Robin Hood, who is an activist on behalf of the poor in Chicago. Maybe best of all is Art Goodtimes, a proponent of recreational marijuana in Colorado.

That’s actually a pretty biblical way of looking at names: Abram gets a new name when God makes a covenant with him, and so does Sarai, his wife; Jacob becomes known as “Israel,” “one who wrestles with God,” and becomes the father of the nation.

Today’s reading from the prophet Baruch promises a new name for the people upon their return from exile: “Righteous Peace, Godly Glory.” Elsewhere prophets announce other beautiful names for the people: Isaiah promises that those who do justice will be called, “Repairer of the Breach” and “Restorer of Streets to Live in.” These names reflect the particular callings of those who bear them: One of the unique privileges of the people of Israel then and now is to bear into the world the name of the God revealed at Sinai, to be the living witnesses of the relationship between God and Israel revealed in the Torah and in the history of God with the people.

That’s true in the Christian story as well: As we approach Christmas, we remember that the two figures whose births we recall both have their names given to them by the angel Gabriel: Jesus means “God saves,” and John, “gift of God.” Both of them get titles to signify their ministry: baptizer for John, and Jesus “the Christ,” or anointed. Jesus, too, plays the name game: Simon he renames “Peter” or “Rocky,” the rugged foundation of the new community of faith.

So what’s in a name? What’s in your name? What does it mean to you? If God called you to service as a prophet or apostle, what name might God give you? Or are we not important enough for a special name of our own?

Those of us who have been baptized actually did get a special name like that, part of it is all our own, unique to us, and part of it we all share. Along with our given names—David or Paul or Beatrice or Emma—came a title, a new last name of sorts. We are all named “of Christ”: Amy of Christ, Bruce of Christ, Rene of Christ. Each of us is a unique and unrepeatable part of the body of Christ, each of us with a calling of our own within it. In our baptism God has charged each of us with bringing into the world our own dimension of the mystery of Christ, to allow our own unique gifts to bring forth the healing or the peace or the justice or the kindness or the wisdom of Christ, each in our own unrepeatable way.

One of the “comings” of Christ we are preparing for this Advent is the revelation of Christ that appears in each of us and in this church, the mystery of Christ that can only come into the world in us. And this is the place and people where we, as a body, nurture each other into bringing forth the fullness of Christ in this place, in this moment, as the body that is this church.

Which brings us to the troubles of this week, which we can’t ignore, or to the troubles of any week, or to any of the sufferings of the world: Just as it was and is Israel’s vocation to bear the glory and peace and righteousness and mercy of the God of Israel into the world, so it is our Christian calling and privilege to bear Christ into this world, as God’s response to the brokenness and pain, God’s answer to what Margaret Duval two weeks ago in her preaching about stewardship powerfully named the “casual violence” that plagues us, violence that erupts in so many tragic and calculated ways.

Each of us has the capacity to bring into the world in our own unique way, as our own unique selves, a part of the body of Christ through which God desires to save the world. And it is up to each of us to listen for and discover the very concrete ways we might reveal that presence of Christ: in our family lives, in our workplaces, among our friends, and in the marketplace, so that those around us can experience the healing and love of God in Christ as an antidote to the violence that surrounds us and as an invitation to something new and altogether different.

So what’s in a name? What’s in your name? How will you reveal the mystery of Christ this Advent to a world in need of what only you can bring? 

November 29, First Sunday of Advent

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Luke 21:25-36

Bryan Cones

Preaching teachers have long told their students that a good homily is prepared with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper (or its current digital manifestation) in the other. And that’s often good advice, except when the contents of both tend toward grim: In the news almost constant word of violence and unrest, and in the gospel dire predictions about the upheaval that comes before the end of the world.

Today’s gospel is not unlike the one we heard just two weeks ago from the gospel of Mark, with its “prediction” of the certain destruction of Jerusalem, which had already come to pass. This Sunday it is Luke reflecting on the same event, maybe 15 or 20 years after Mark, and still no Jesus riding to the rescue. As a regular preacher, I’m starting feel like a broken record, or, for those of you unfamiliar with records, a corrupted MP3 file.

Reading from both sources, gospel and news of the world, it might be easy to get a little discouraged—maybe a lot discouraged, or even overwhelmed by all the bad news. Maybe we are tempted to lose hope. Perhaps our feelings start to reflect our seasonal color, and we might all get a case of the Advent blues.

But if we look a little more closely at today’s passages, we might find a treatment for our Advent seasonal affective disorder, some words of hope to keep us going. The first comes from the prophet Jeremiah, who promises that “the days are surely coming” when God will fulfill the promise to Israel: a righteous king from the house of David, who will bring Jerusalem peace and safety. Now Jeremiah is no Pollyanna prophet: His promise comes just as Jerusalem is about to fall to Babylon and things are about to get a lot worse for the people. Nevertheless, God’s faithfulness is unshakeable, Jeremiah says, and this defeat will not be the last word.

Luke, too, though promising signs in the heavens and catastrophe on earth, counsels not despair or fear, but courage and watchfulness: “Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” God’s reign of justice and peace is coming, Jesus says, as surely as the leaves on the fig tree sprout as summer nears. God has already won the victory. Our task is to keep watch for the certain Advent of Christ, not in great signs or catastrophes, but in the slow unfolding of God’s own natural time.

Now with so much bad news in the world keeping us distracted, it may take some effort to see those leaves unfurling. But I wonder if at the edges of the world’s troubles, we may catch a glimpse of the Advent we long for. I can think of two icons that I have been praying with this past year that have given me hope.

The first was a photograph some time around the Ferguson protests: a young African American boy, maybe 10, tears in his eyes, his arms flung around a white police officer in riot gear, and the officer returning the embrace. I have no idea what the story of that photo is, but in my imagination they were resisting the story of anger and fear that everyone else was telling, creating a little picture of God’s reign, however brief.

The second came a few weeks ago here in Wilmette at Village Hall, after two and a half hours of very angry “testimony” about a possible affordable housing development. The meeting was tense with fear and an undercurrent of racism. I was so angry myself that I couldn’t even speak, much less contribute anything helpful. And at the very end of all that, a person I can only describe as a gentleman, in every sense of that word, stood up and spoke kindly and honestly, and tried to acknowledge everyone’s fears, and suggest to us that maybe it wasn’t as bad as all that. And though, as one of only two African Americans in the room, he had every reason to be as angry as so many other people were, he was considerate and thoughtful, and for me painted a picture of a different direction we all might take.

I don’t know about you, but I could use some more of those icons, more pictures of hope to carry with me this Advent. I’d even like to take part in painting a picture like that. So this Advent, I have a proposal, a treatment for the Advent blues: I’d like to suggest we ask God for more icons like these. Here’s how I am going to do it, and maybe you can join me if it seems good to you, or maybe you can think of another way that works for you.

Every morning I am going to ask God to show me just where Christ is coming into the world, to help me see the images that are surely all around me of how God’s reign of peace and love and justice is coming just as surely as the leaves of spring. And all day long I am going to try to be watchful and alert, with my head raised in the certainty of God’s presence, whether listening to the radio, or talking with my coworkers or friends, or online or on Facebook, or walking down the street. And in the evening I am going to try to reflect on my day and mark those places where I saw Christ’s advent, and then thank God, and ask for an opportunity to be helpful, so that I can help God paint an alternative picture of the world as it might be.

And if we all do this together, I’d also like to propose that we share what we see with each other, at home or at church, so that like those ancient Israelites, and those first hearers of Luke’s gospel, and Paul’s Christians in Thessalonica, we might find our hearts strengthened as we await the sure and certain springtime of our God. 

Thanksgiving Day

Deuteronomy 8:7-18, Luke 17:11-19

Bryan Cones

Last Sunday as I was leaving church, I got a text from my partner, David—three exclamation points. When I opened the text there was a picture, of this, a small brown egg. But not just any brown egg: It was the first egg from our most recent flock of hens, and with it comes the promise of going outside every day, and finding two or three or four or even five eggs from the hens who live in our backyard. And the wonder of finding yet another egg never gets old.

I could say that about our whole backyard “farm” as we like to call it: Four raised vegetable beds, a berry patch, and an extra bit of dirt where David, hilariously, grows a patch of corn. And from it we get every year hundreds of onions and carrots, piles of peas and green beans, and so many raspberries and blueberries that our freezer is full and we haven’t bought a jar of jam in two years. Even now the last greens of fall are still alive under a plastic tunnel. And did I mention tomatoes and butternut squash?

The harvest is so ridiculously abundant that we end up giving tons away. When we went on our camping trip this summer, I asked my neighbor, a former coworker and now parishioner, to please come and take anything she wanted, because so much would go to waste. And she did—loads of beans and tomatoes. And because it was even too much for her family, she pickled green beans and tomatoes, which she then gave back us to enjoy—what earth had given deliciously transformed by the work of her human hands and human mind.

That little postage stamp of a city backyard has become for me an image of what we are celebrating today on Thanksgiving: the ridiculous abundance of creation that has the capacity not only to feed us, all of us, but also preaches a better sermon about the capacity of God to give than the one you are hearing right now. And what a marvelous image of God’s self-giving, what we call “grace” in the Christian tradition. A Franciscan friend once preached about God’s relentless giving in the image of a fruit tree, of a God so eager to give us good things that creation is constantly pushing it out toward us, starting in the roots of an apple tree to squeeze out an apple on the other end, and not just one apple, but bushels and bushels on a single tree.

And then there is energy that powers it all, the light from the sun, which a spiritual director I once heard likened to the grace of God: a relentless engine of light and energy going in every direction. And just a small portion of that solar power falls on our planet moves the air into wind and weather, the heat of which draws up water to create rain, and the light of which is the foundation of the life that feeds us. God’s hunger to give is all around us, and above us, underneath us, in my case, in my back yard, even coming out the back end of a chicken. And lest we think that all of this is just for our benefit, the psalmist reminds us that God’s generosity is meant for every created thing.

So what is our response? What acts of thanksgiving might we take part in today? Obviously we could begin by acknowledging this great gift with our heartfelt thanks, like Leper No. 10 in today’s gospel, apparently the only one who recognized the source of his healing. Perhaps he could be our patron saint today, opening our eyes to the many riches God is pouring out upon us, right in front of us.

Perhaps we might also see God’s generosity as an invitation to partner with God in magnifying and transforming the gift. As our first reader Bill Doughty pointed out to me yesterday, and as he proclaimed today in that first reading, living in the Promised Land required human effort too, copper to mine, and crops to plant and harvest, grapes to ferment into wine—it wasn’t all just lying there. I would be a bad partner indeed if I didn’t acknowledge that the abundance of my backyard farm has a great deal to do with the gardener, David, who sees his work in the dirt as part of his partnership with the Holy One who planted that first garden in Eden. And those pickled green beans didn’t come that way on the plant: No, that was the result of Meghan’s partnership with what earth has given, now remade by human hands.

And then there is the “giving” part of Thanksgiving: While it may be obvious that the blessings of God flow without measure on all the earth, like the sunshine itself, it is equally obvious that these gifts aren’t shared in such measure. Our partnership with God is not just in magnifying the good things of creation, but in seeing that these gifts make their way in just measure to all for whom God intends them. And I’d propose that’s not just for the sake of justice, though that would be reason enough, but also that we may share with God the joy and pleasure of seeing how these gifts are transformed by those who receive them. In that way, perhaps, we may participate in the givingness that is the very nature of God, and so enjoy with God the wonder of beholding the full flourishing of all that God has made.