Emmanuel

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

December 24, 2017

Christmas Eve

          A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, such as New Jersey in the 1960’s, one of the highlights of our year was the viewing of “The Wizard of Oz.”  Unlike our current media situation where we can watch whatever we want, whenever we want, many of us remember a time when movies like “The Wizard of Oz,” “The Sound of Music,” and “Cinderella” were shown on television once a year.  If we missed that viewing, we had to wait another whole year before we would have the opportunity again.  So the anticipation leading up to the special night was huge.  Plans were made around the viewing and time stopped to allow us to enter another world for a couple of hours.  This was a world with ruby red slippers and monkeys who could fly, good witches and bad witches, and friends like a lion with no courage, a tin man with no heart, and a scarecrow with no brain.  Every year we would shriek with fear at the flying monkeys, and laugh with delight when the wicked witch said “I’m melting….” as if we had never seen the movie before.  We were transported for a time out of our own mundane world into another world where the unexpected was normal.

          Christmas Eve feels very similar.   The anticipation and build up to Christmas is full of plans of one sort or another that often begin as soon as the Thanksgiving turkey cools, or sooner.  We look forward to escaping our ordinary world for a brief time, to dwell in a world where an angel speaks to shepherds, the glory of the Lord is visible, and the night skies are lit up with the song of the heavenly hosts.  For an hour here today/tonight, we are transported to a magical place where a baby is born who will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.  Our ordinary lives will be waiting for us after Christmas, but for this moment, time stands still in the wonder of the Christmas story (the beauty of the music, and the mystery of the candles).

          On Christmas Eve, however, as much as we may feel transported to a magical place where extraordinary things happen, the truth is that on Christmas Eve, God is transported into the midst of our every day ordinary lives.  Mary and Joseph were going about an ordinary, if highly inconvenient task, and registering for the census.  The two were engaged, and Mary was expecting a baby, who would hopefully wait to arrive until the two returned home. But, as often happens, the baby chose a less than convenient time to be born.  Getting a room in Bethlehem when so many people were traveling for the census would be about like getting a last minute room in Minneapolis for the Super Bowl.  So, Jesus was born in an inconvenient place at an inconvenient time, to two worn out and probably stressed out parents who were hoping for some sleep when they placed Jesus in the manger.

          What looked to be a fairly ordinary birth was transformed by the announcement of the angel, which began with the words “Do not be afraid,” and continued by telling the shepherds of “a savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”  Then the whole heavens burst into song and the shepherds left their flocks and went with haste to Bethlehem to tell the new family and everyone else about the message of the angel.  And Mary treasured their words and pondered them in her heart.

          Rather than transport us for a moment to a magical place that exists only in our imaginations, Christmas Eve is our yearly reminder that in the baby Jesus, God enters our lives.  God chooses to interrupt our everyday ordinary lives not to take us somewhere else, but to live among us, making our ordinary lives holy.  Is God’s interruption always convenient?  Ask Mary and Joseph.  Does God’s interruption sometimes surprise and startle us?  Ask the shepherds.  Does God’s interruption sometimes cause us to break into songs of praise?  Ask the angels.   The presence of God in our lives does not always make life easy or transport us out of the difficult times.  But when God chose to become human in the person of Jesus, God chose to make the ordinary holy.

          If all the Christmas story did was to transport us out of our own world for a couple of hours, or a few days, then set us back down again, we would have gained a respite from the ordinary, perhaps, but then the impact of Christmas would be over.  Instead, the Christmas story reminds us that God became human as the infant Jesus in order to enter the story of each of us, and take the joys, sorrows, gifts and challenges of our lives and make them holy-not necessarily good or painless or easy, but holy.  When the angel says to the shepherds “Do not be afraid,” the angel is not issuing platitudes.  We can trust the angel and live life unafraid because, in Jesus, God entered our lives in a unique way and promises to be Emmanuel, God with us always. 

                                                                                Amen.

Prepare What?

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

December 17, 2017 (8am only)

                                                     3 Advent B

The Christmas I was five years old, all of our relatives on both my mother’s and my father’s side came to our house for Christmas.  We are not a large family, as my mother was an only child and my father had just one brother, but all together there were 17 or 18 of us, spanning four generations.  A great deal of preparation was required, mostly on my mother’s part.  There were many days worth of meals to prepare, the house to decorate, gifts to purchase, and family dynamics to navigate, to say nothing of finding places for everyone to sleep. One of the most memorable pieces of preparation was the purchase of our first dishwasher, an appliance that Don and I later inherited and lasted until our first born wanted to see if he could get the blue crayons clean.  Much time and effort went into preparing for what we called the “Big Christmas” and in the end, the holiday went off without a hitch.  Meals were enjoyed, gifts given and received, and family dynamics were successfully negotiated thanks in large part to good preparation.

For years I have preached, taught, and written about Advent as such a period of preparation.  Advent is the gift of time when we prepare not so much our homes, but our hearts, for the coming of the Christ Child.  I have long suggested that Advent is a time to be as intentional about our spiritual preparation for Jesus’ birth as we are about our decorating, shopping, and cooking.  When we cook, shop, decorate, and plan well for our Christmas celebrations, they typically go well.    When we prepare our hearts well for Christmas with worship, prayer, scripture reading and study, we are more able to welcome the Christ child in our midst.

Today’s readings catch me by surprise.  They tell me that I am only partially correct in my understanding of Advent as a time to prepare ourselves for the birth of Christ.  Both the prophet Isaiah and the man sent from God whose name was John tell us that there is more to Advent than getting ourselves ready for Jesus.

Isaiah has been sent by God to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners.  Isaiah is writing to a people in distress.  The Hebrew people have been released from captivity in Babylon to a different kind of captivity back at home in the Promised Land...a captivity in which they cannot earn a living, their temple is in ruins, they have lost everything of value and there appears to be no hope for a better future.  But Isaiah is not bringing good news just so the people feel better about their dismal situation.  Isaiah is bringing them comfort so that they can build up the ancient ruins, raise up the former devastations, and repair the ruined cities.  Isaiah is bringing the people hope so that they can then get about the business of restoration.  And when that happens, their descendants will be known among the nations, and their offspring among all people.  All who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.  In other words, Isaiah preaches comfort, so that the people can rise up and rebuild that which was lost, and God’s glory will be seen through out the world.

In the gospel reading, we are told that John came to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  John is the one sent to point the way toward Jesus.  Unlike last week’s gospel lesson from Mark, where the focus was on John as the one who baptized for the repentance of sins, in this gospel, baptism is peripheral to John’s real mission.  When the priests and Levites ask John who he is, John only answers in the negative: he is not the Messiah, not Elijah, not the prophet.  John’s whole identity was to be the one who pointed the people to someone else, who directed the people to the light of the world, the Word made flesh.  

The piece of the Advent message that I can easily miss is that Advent is a time to be intentional about preparing not just ourselves, but the world around us for the coming of the Christ Child.  Neither Isaiah nor John call us this morning to prepare the world by threatening hell-fire and damnation if people do not believe.  That is certainly not the missing piece of the Advent message.  Isaiah calls us to bind up the broken-hearted, comfort those who mourn, to provide a mantle of praise for a faint spirit, so that God’s glory may be displayed.  Isaiah calls us to work to rebuild the ruins and repair the devastation we see around us, so that the world around us will see the work of God.  Likewise, John calls to use Advent to testify to the Light.  Testify is not a typical Episcopalian word, but what John means is that Advent is a time to use our lives so that others may see the light of Christ in the world around them.  In Advent, and all year actually, our work is to point to the Light in our midst, bringing hope to the world around us. The apostle Paul calls us to rejoice always, pray constantly, and give thanks in all circumstances so that our lives point to the Word made flesh among us.  Certainly a people that can rejoice always and give thanks in all circumstances point to the glory of God.

Perhaps, in the end, Advent calls us to live as a people whose lives point toward the light of Christ.  If we heed the call of Isaiah to bring good news to the oppressed, the command of Paul to rejoice always and give thanks in all circumstances, and the witness of John to testify to the light, I believe that both our hearts and our world will be better prepared for the arrival of the Christ Child in our midst. 

Amen.

Obstacles

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

December 10, 2017

                                                      Advent 2B

From the time I was a little girl, the mountains of Western North Carolina have been one of my favorite places on earth.  My grandparents had a summer home in the mountains when I was young, and moved there permanently once they retired.  Close to three decades worth of Thanksgivings were spent there, along with visits in spring and summer, and Don’s first teaching position was at a university nearby.  Regardless of the season, the mountains are breathtakingly beautiful.  In the mid-winter, the mountains are laced with snow, which looks pure and clean at least from the distance.  In the spring, when the leaves return, the mountains are bursting with new life.  In the summer, when the rest of the world is hot and humid, the mountains are cool and the nights are so quiet you can almost reach out and touch the stars above you or hear the train pass through the valley below.  And in the fall, the leaves turn brilliant red and it looks as if the mountains are on fire with color. The season does not matter.  The mountains always bear witness to the glory of God.

Because I am so in love with these mountains, I find Isaiah’s words this morning quite baffling.  Why would God want every high mountain to be made low and every valley filled up?  Does God really want all creation to be flat like Kansas?  Why would God have made the mountains in the first place if they were going to need to be leveled?  And why do we hear these words on the second Sunday of Advent?        

One inevitable sight when we drove through the mountains was the car pulled off to the side with a flat tire, a steaming engine, no gas, or worse.  I am reminded that the trip through the mountains is not always easy and that the mountains I love so much are obstacles for other people with less reliable means of transportation.  Certainly, this was true in the time of Isaiah.  There were no SUV’s or even under slightly underpowered minivans to carry people through the mountains.  All a person had was his or her own two feet and maybe an animal or two to take themselves and all their belongings through the mountains.  Mountains and valleys were huge obstacles that made both travel difficult and dangerous, as well as taking far longer than to travel the same distance on flat land. In the mountains, especially on foot, it is often impossible to see where you are going until you get there. The dream that someday the glory of God will be revealed, and all people will see God’s glory together was at best a only a dream and at worst a cruel joke unless the obstacles were removed and the land was leveled.  And who could do that but God? 

Every year on the second Sunday of Advent as we move toward our glorious celebration of the birth of Jesus, we hit an obstacle of a different sort as we come upon John the Baptist.  We are waiting for the glory of God to be revealed on Christmas Eve, and we hear the words of Isaiah: “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”  In Mark’s gospel, from which we hear this morning, the quote does not continue and tell us that the valleys shall be filled and the mountains made low as happens in Luke’s gospel.  But we do hear “Prepare the way.  Make the paths straight.”  And, in order for the paths to be made straight, the valleys must be filled and the mountains made low.

So, John the Baptist goes out into the wilderness to prepare the way and make the paths straight.  John does two things out in the wilderness.  First, John proclaims a baptism for the repentance of sins.  People from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem came out into the wilderness to be baptized by this oddly dressed, locust eating wild man.  Secondly, John makes a promise to the people.  “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”  How does a baptism for the repentance of sins and a promise that someone greater is coming prepare the way and make the paths straight?

When John calls us to repent, John is causing us to turn from the obstacles that divide us from each other and God.  In 2017, those obstacles may not be literal mountains and valleys and they may not be obstacles of our own making, although we may be complicit in allowing the obstacles to exist.  What are the obstacles that need to be overcome so that all flesh might see the salvation of God?  We know from recent months that there are all kinds of mountains that divide us, whether mountains of racism, or sexism, or elitism, or homophobia or any of the many other attempts to divide us from each other.  Then there are our own valleys of disappointment, hurt and frustration, or the valley of despair in which people live when they know no good news.  There is the mountain over which people struggle simply to feed their children and the valley of poverty out of which it is almost impossible to climb.  John the Baptist calls us to identify these obstacles and to work to eliminate them. 

John the Baptist does not say this work will be easy nor does he say there will be results overnight.  But he does tell us that we cannot do this work of removing obstacles unless we name the obstacles and commit to tear them down, which is repentance.  The Good News is that we do not have to do this work alone.  John told those who gathered at the Jordan River that there is one who coming after him will baptize with the Holy Spirit.  The baby we await during Advent is that one, and has sent the Holy Spirit to live within and among us so that we never work alone.  In fact, the work of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was tearing down the obstacles that divide people from each other and God so that all flesh can see the glory of God.  John the Baptist calls us to nothing other than Jesus’ work so that the glory of God can be seen and known, both when Jesus comes wrapped in bands of cloth and placed in a manger, and always.  

                                                                                         Amen.

Are We There Yet?

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

December 3, 2107

1 Advent B

When I was a child, Thanksgiving began the season perhaps most accurately called "Are we there yet?"  The season of "Are we there yet?" was not Advent, since we had never heard of Advent, and yet had some things in common with the holy season we begin today.  The season of "Are we there yet" was certainly a season of preparation.  Preparation for Christmas at our house began in earnest on the day after Thanksgiving and for my brother, sister, and I, mostly involved making lists of all the things we wanted for Christmas.  There was some decorating involved and a lot of cooking and cleaning as we prepared for relatives and friends to arrive.  This is where I learned that real preparation for Christmas involves butter, pure vanilla, and good chocolate.

Secondly, the season of "Are we there yet?" was a season of anticipation.  In the case of "Are we there yet,” our anticipation began as soon as the Thanksgiving turkey was cold and usually peaked with a meltdown or two by December 1.  We would have done anything to make Christmas come right this minute.  The season of "Are we there yet" was a season of restless counting of days-my mother savoring every day we were still in school before the holidays and we children counting the days until we were out of school and could spend all our time anticipating Christmas.

          Finally, the season of "Are we there yet?" became a season of patience.  After an early meltdown or two, we children figured out how to wait.  Some things in life just cannot be forced to come more quickly and we could be miserable for the remaining three weeks until Christmas or we could try to be patient.  Miserable got old fast and did not make the time pass any more quickly.  So, we figured out better things to do with our time.

          As we begin the season of Advent today, we are called to a season of anticipation, preparation, and patience even if those activities look somewhat different in Advent than in the season of "Are we there yet?"  But whatever our practice of Advent might be, however we might understand anticipation, preparation, and patience to get us ready for the birth of the Christ child, we probably came to church this morning expecting to hear something a little more Christmassy from Scripture.  This morning we hear nothing about a baby, nothing about angels or shepherds or even prophecy about the birth of the messiah.  What we get instead is a lament from the Hebrew people calling God to come down here right now and do something, words of encouragement from Paul about the last times, and a grim description of Jesus' return.  How on earth are these readings supposed to help us begin our Advent journey?

          What our readings have to do with Advent is that they all call us to God's version of anticipation, preparation, and patience.  In the reading from Isaiah, the people have returned to the Promised Land from their exile in Babylon. Rather than finding a land of milk and honey waiting for them, they found a land that was uninhabitable and a people who were devastated.  The people know their complicity in their problems.  They admit that they have sinned and made God angry.  But they also know that they are nothing but damp clay without God.  The people are anticipating God’s action because they remember that God has acted on their behalf in the past.  In a world where genocide, gun violence, scandals, and natural and human made disasters seem rampant, I can easily make the same lament to God.  Get down here and do something!  Now!  And I am reminded of the prophetic voices that call us to prepare for the action of God by living as the people God created us to be-not acting as damp, unformed clay in the face of injustice but being the vessels God created us to be.  Scripture calls us to anticipate God’s action by living as the people God calls us to be, now.

Paul, unlike Isaiah or Jesus, tells the people that they are prepared for Jesus’ return-that the grace of God given to them in Christ Jesus has given them the strength and the spiritual gifts they need to be ready when Jesus returns. Paul lives in deep anticipation of the day when Jesus returns and he encourages the Christians in Corinth to do likewise.  If we live like Jesus will return any moment, faithfully rather than passively, then our lives will make the world look a little more like the world Jesus came to redeem.

 Just as the Hebrew people were experiencing fearsome times in the reading from Isaiah, the faithful to whom Mark was written were also experiencing fearsome times.  Jesus' followers were being handed over to councils.  Families were divided.  People were being put to death.  God  needed to come down and do something. Now.  On the one hand, Jesus’ words this morning seem to tell us that when things finally get bad enough, Jesus will return.  But on the other hand, Jesus’ words also promise that, in the midst of suffering, Jesus is near.  The people can anticipate a time when there will be no more terror and trials, when God will act and Jesus will gather them up.  But Jesus also calls them to prepare for that time by watching for the ways in which Jesus is near now.   

          Are we there yet?  The answer is yes, and no.  The promise of Advent and the promise of Scripture is that God will act, both now and in the future.    God calls us to anticipate God's action by longing for that action so deeply that we will do anything to make that action a reality.  God calls us to prepare with such deliberation that God's presence is real to those around us. Now.  And God calls us to be patient, but not passive.  God will act in God's good time, but in the meantime, God acts through us.  We are not formless lumps of damp clay, but the vessels of justice and peace God created us to be. Advent calls us to keep alert and be part of what God is doing in our midst now, so we and the world around us will recognize God’s action in the future.

                                                                   Amen.