December 25, 2011 at Saint Mark Catholic Church in Norman, OK

Isaiah 9: 1-6 + Psalm 96 + Titus 2: 11-14 + Luke 2:1-14

For generations without number, the words of Isaiah ring out with undying hope. “A people who walk in darkness have seen a great light.” and those words sustained a faithful hope and led to great joy.  And then almost suddenly during the reign of the most august, powerful, feared, and imperial of Rome’s emperors, a child was born whose birth renewed that hope and led to great joy.  A child;  poor, vulnerable, and homeless; a child who would in a short time so threaten that feared and powerful one that a reign of terror would sweep away all the first born sons, and soon lead to the destruction the great Temple of Jerusalem scattering those faithful to the promise into another age of darkness. In that darkness, another great voice, Paul writes simple yet wise instructions to a young, zealous disciple: “live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age as we await this blessed hope.”

Since those days, one cloud of darkness after another has swept across this earth. There have been times when the people in that darkness have themselves made it all the more dark. Wars and conquests, inquistions, revolutions, and reformations have swept across the face of this earth again killing children and the innocent, burning and desicrating temples, churches, synagogues, and mosques as one ideology after another maquarades as religion in pwerful conflicts abusing power and jealeous ambitions. So in a world that labors in great darkness, and to hearts that grow weary with disappointment and scandal, the story we tell on this day has the ability to sustain us with hope and expectation as Paul suggests to us through Titus.

This story is not to be heard with just our ears. If that is the case, it will be short and sentimental with hardly any power to sustain hope and stir up joy. This story must be heard with our hearts in the full knowledge of what this birth really means. The story we tell tonight cannot end in Bethlehem. It must lead us to Jerusalem. It cannot end with the visit of magi. It must lead us to Egypt and the story of slaughtered infants that casts all this in the shadow of Moses and a passover to freedom. Swadling clothes become a shroud. A wooden manger becomes a wooden cross. The baby becomes a man, a teacher, a healer, a prophet, a savior, a messiah. The story cannot, must not, and will not end in Bethlehem. If it does, we are hopeless indeed.

Best of all, this story is heard with our hearts because we are in the midst of it.  As long as there are young couples about to give birth to their first-born, the story is told again. As long as there are old couples like Zachary and Elizabeth living faithfully and growing old in love the story is told again. Look at the cast of characters. We’re all there: young couples, old couples, hard working outcasts who work day and night doing work no one else wants to do like those shepherds; people from other cultures and lands like the magi, powerful, abusive, violent enemies of peace; and refugees who flee to foreign lands to escape danger, poverty, and death. There are messengers of good news who sing of God’s glory, there are scholars who study the writings of the past and scientists who look out to the mysteries of the heavens. There are inn-keepers who make room for strangers, and even writers who record the stories. 

What draws all of us very different people together is a hope that rests upon a promise made long ago and repeated again and again by all the prophets.  It is first expressed in Genesis with Adam and Eve, Noah, Sarah and Abraham, and again with Moses. There is a promise in these stories which we tell again today. Yet, Christmas is not the fulfillmentntof that promise. The fulfillment comes at another dawn in springtime when this infant whose birth we celebrate today rises as a man from a tomb glorious in light and in life. This feast for people who live in the hope of that Easter day is the living promise that we are never alone. No matter where we are in life, no matter in what condition we find ourselves, no matter how far we might stray away or how unfaithful we are; God, the supreme lover, will pursue us in love for all eternity.

This is what old Zachaaria and Elizabeth began to experience in the birth of a promised one who would be a voice crying in the wilderness. This is what that young couple began to experience in a Bethlehem stable with the birth of one they were to call: Jesus. A promise was kept becasue fear and doubt never overcame their hope. Without disappointment, there was nothing left but Joy. So Paul’s old  advise to Titus still makes sense today no matter how things may threaten to disappoint our hope and quiet our joy: “live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age as we await this blessed hope.” For this is how those live who are children of God. Hope and Joy mark the difference between those who are lost in the darkness of night and those who are full of grace and truth.

It is not only the birth of Christ that we celebrate, but our own birth as children of God which is the source of our Joy and the reason for our hope. We cannot remain at the crib, amazing as it is. We must leave here filled with the light of Christ that shines in a gentle love of neighbor , a prophetic defence of those on the edge of society, and a joy shared by knowing that we are loved utterly and irrevocably by a God willing to empty himself that we might be filled with his Spirit and share his glory. In that faith, I wish you today a Happy  Birthday, for this is the day of our birth as well.

December 11, 2011 At Saint Mark Catholic Church in Norman. OK

Isaiah 61: 1-2,10-11 + Psalm is from Luke 1:46-50 + 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24 + John 1: 6-8, 19-28

For a long time I have thought that this incident in John’s Gospel was about John and some curious Pharisees, Priests, and Levites, but I have learned to think otherwise. John’s Gospel more than the other three is certainly no history. By the time this Gospel was put together, the other three were already in wide circulation with their bits and pieces and fragments of history, sayings, and miracle stories. John is a Gospel for today and everyday. What happens in John’s Gospel is still happening: the Word is becoming flesh, the light of the world is still among us, and there are those who testify to the light. Among them are the catechmens and candidates who have seen the light of faith and draw near to it sometimes to the shame of those of us who take it all for granted, and are so inconsistent and shallow in the witness of our lives and so shallow.

One sentence in this passage today leaps off the page and into our face with a challenge that is both intimidating and troubling. “…there is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.”  There is one among you whom you do not recognize! This Gospel is address to us. This Gospel is proclaimed today as it has been for generations for the sake of asking us and insisting that we look around and realize that we have not yet recognized the one among us! When we do, things are going to be different.

Christ Jesus, the anointed one is still among us, and John calls us to pay attention, to look around, to live with the understanding and the belief that Christ is among us, and perhaps to confess that we have not always recongnized that sacred presence. If this is true and if this Gospel shapes our belief, then our behaviors and attitudes toward one another can bear some scrutiny, and our easy dismissal of others, our disinterest in their plight, their needs and wants, even their human dignity betrays that fact that Christ goes unrecognized, and therefore what he brings and what his presence provides is incomplete.

This is a real issue here. Understanding this Gospel, getting deeper into these verses might raise some issues when it comes to our thinkng and behavior with regard to immigration, to those who live on welfare, to those of different ethnic origins, color, or religion. There is one among you whom  you do nor recognize! If this is so, we need to be careful. We need to be watchful, attenetive, and more open to how Christ presents himself to us. That one among us we don’t like, refuse to forgive, hold in contempt, refuse to acknowledge or take seriously may be the one! If we do not recongnize him, we might need to be a little more careful about how we treat everyone lest in our failure to recognize the ONE AMONG US and end up letting the one starve, or be deported, or go homeless and live with no jobless benefits just because we don’t think they deserve it.

Our preparation for Christmas might be a lot more well done if we ponder these words a bit carefully, for they Gospel words, they are God’s word spoken again today. “There is one among you whom you do not recognize.”

Let me tell you simple little story about a monastery that had falled on hard times. The monks did not talk with one another. No new young people were among them, and people had stopped coming to them for spiritual solace and direction. In the woods surrounding the moastery lived a rabbi in a small hut. On occasion the monks would see him walking in the woods as though he were in a trance, and they would say to each other: “The rabbi walks in the woods.”

The abbot of the monastery had done everything he could think of to improve the spirit in the monastery, but nothing made a difference. One day he saw the rabbi walking in the woods, so he decided to ask his advise. He alked up behind the rabbi. The rabbi turned, and when the abbot adn the rabbi faced one another, both began to weep. The sorrow of the situation affeect them both deeply. The abbot knew he did not have to explain the decline of the monastery, so he simply asked, “Can you give me some direction so the monastery will thrive again?”

The rabbi said: “One of you is the messiah.” Then he turned and continued his walk in the woods. The Abbot returned to the monastery. The monks had seen him talking with the rabbi, and they asked, “What did the rabbi say?” “”One of us is the Messiah”, the abbot said slowly. The monks began talking to one another. “One of us? Which one? It is Brother John or Andrew? Could it even be the Abbot?”

Slowly things began to change at the monastery. The monks began to look for the Missiah in each other and listen to each other’s words for the Messiah’s voice. Before long, younger monks joined, and people returned to the monastery for spirit comfort and direction.  End of the story.

Or is it?  What would it be like in this parish if we all began to wonder which one of us is the Messiah? If we began to really listen to each other listening for the voice of the Messiah? What would this city and this world be like, if we were waiting and looking and really expecting the Messiah to return, and allowed that John’s idea is right: there is one among us who is not recognized.

December 18, 2011 at Saint Mark Catholic Church in Norman, OK

2 Samuel 7: 1-5,8-12 + Psalm 89 + Romans 16: 25-27 + Luke 1: 26-38

In the first chapter of Saint John’s Gospel the future apostles are spreading the word about a man they are calling “teacher”, and some of them are getting their friends and some family members to join them after hearing John the Baptist’s testimony. Two of them named, Andrew and Peter are from Bethsaida, and a friend of theirs named Philip from the same town has become interested, and he goes out to find a friend of his named, Nathanael. When Philip says: “We have found the one Moses spokeof in the law, the prophets too – Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” Nathanial says: “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” John 1:46

This little comment in the formation of the apostolic community reveals something about the world into which the “teacher” was about to emerge and the people with which he would begin his mission in obedience to the Father. It was a world that worshiped power, a world that functioned and communicated in a network of infuence, control, and manipulation; where authority came not so much from what you did as who you were like scribes or pharasees, chief priests or elders.

So, the expectation for the one Moses spoke of was one of power and influence. How in the world could God hope to accomplish anything unless God looked for a man with some credentials, some back ground, some connections, some power? The one Moses spoke of was surely going to come from Rome or Athens or Damascus, or maybe even Egypt, but Nazareth? Impossible. Nathanial speaks for everyone. Not only was the world so taken by power and authority, people themselves judged others by how they spoke, their accents, how they dressed, by the friends they had and of course, by where they came from.

It is not difficult to understand this thinking because we still do it. The rich and the powerful, the influentian and the glamerous are still too often our hero images, and it is to that level of personalities that we still look for values, style, and too often leadership, at least in the sence that we often immitate them, and if that isn’t leaderhip, I don’t know what is. When someone comes along like Mother Teresa of Calcutta, we act surprised, and their fame startles us as though we should not expect anyone like a plain looking old lady to affect the lives of millions across generations!

In this was of thinking and this social context, we have to realize that not much has changed in the past two thousand years when it comes to human beings and their expectations. At the same time, not much has changed when it comes to God and how God chooses to work.

God could have chosen from all of creation the most beautiful, influential, and powerful woman. God could have looked into palaces or into the homes of great traders, high priests, and merchants; but no. God looked toward Nazareth. God looked at a virgin promised to another and to an elderly woman who had given up hope of ever being a mother. There is nothing that would recommend them for the role they would play in God’s plan. To me, it seems like the Gospel would have had more credibility and been more acceptable if John and Jesus had been born into well-established families with the means to help their sons impact the world with their messages; but no.In the new world order, the new creation, the beginning of which we are about to celebrate, expected and traditional values, old ways of doing things, and long established expectations are turned upside down, and the process of that has its theme song on Mary’ lips in Luke’s Gospel. For us this Christmas comes as a time to look again at our expectations not only of where Christ is to be found as I suggested with you last week, but more deeply and personally. Christ Jesus is not found among the powerful, influential celebrities of this age. God has not chosen them to reveal God’s plan for this creation. We cannot look to Washington, to New York City, London, Paris, or any of the great seats of power for our messianic hope. We will do better to look in the most unlikley places, perhaps rather than look around and look out, we might do well to simply look within. That is ultimately what God asked those first to do.