December 16, 2001

St. Matthew 11.2-15

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What do we come out see in this season? Beautiful lights on beautiful houses – preferably in red, white, and blue with USA outlined on the roof? Do we come out to see what’s on sale in the department stores and malls? Do we come out for the beautiful music and all the fine pageantry? Do we come out in this season to see the big tree with Santa’s house in its middle? Well we’ve certainly been seeing it – in Cherry Creek North, the "seasonal" lights have been up since Halloween. The muzak in coffee houses, restaurants, elevators, and grocery stores has been softly and innocuously playing Christmas songs for at least a month now. And what have we seen and what have we heard? Is this what the season is all about? Or are we waiting for something more?

I realized this past week that September 11 still weighs heavily on my heart. As I was getting ready to come to work last Tuesday, the Today Show was on in the background. I don’t know what caught my attention exactly, but the next thing I knew I was listening to President Bush speaking – talking about the day being the three-month anniversary of what is, to most of us, still unbelievable. And the next thing I knew I was down on my knees, sobbing in a way that I haven’t for years and years. Why, I wondered and wonder still, was I crying – aren’t we supposed to be over it – aren’t we supposed to be getting back to normal? Why aren’t the colored lights, the decorations, the music working their magical effects?

My mom forwarded me an e-mail this past week. It’s titled, "25 ways we’re different this Christmas." Some of it is sort of sappy – but some – well, you decide.

• Last Christmas we were placing wreaths on the doors of our homes; this Christmas we are placing wreaths on the graves of our heroes.
• Last Christmas we were letting our children play with toy guns; this Christmas we are teaching them that guns are not toys.
• Last Christmas we were thinking how good it would feel to be affluent; this Christmas we are thinking how good it feels to be alive. Last Christmas we were counting our money; this Christmas we are counting our blessings.
• Last Christmas we were lighting candles to decorate; this Christmas we are lighting candles to commemorate.
• Last Christmas we were trying not to let annoying relatives and friends get the best of us; this Christmas we are trying to give the best of ourselves to them.
• Last Christmas we were getting on one another’s nerves; this Christmas we are getting on our knees.
• Last Christmas we were giving thanks for gifts from stores; this Christmas we are giving thanks for gifts from God. Last Christmas we valued things that were costly; this Christmas we value things that are holy.
• Last Christmas "peace on earth" was something we prayed for on Sunday mornings; now it is something we pray for every day.
• Last Christmas we were sharing/spreading/listening to gossip; this Christmas we are sharing/spreading/listening to the Gospel.

Why does it take a something like September 11, and the memories of a something that seemed and still seems more like a scene from a disaster movie than reality, for us to look beneath and beyond the superficial levels of our annual celebration of God come to earth for us? Why do we seek the kingdom of heaven and pray for an end to injustice, violence, and death only in time of national disaster?

This past Friday, the rest of the staff and I were getting ready to go out to lunch to celebrate a birthday. A man came to the door seeking help – nothing unusual. Too many days that happens hourly. I went out to talk to him. He wasn’t drunk. He wasn’t high. He didn’t want money. He didn’t have a long story designed to soften me up for some big pitch. He got right to the point. He pointed to his tennis shoes. They were full of holes and his toes were poking out all over the place. Then he showed me the bottom of his right shoe – it was worn through, and so was the think sock that came between the cold streets and the soles of his feet. He wanted to know if we had any shoes. "My feet are a size 13," he said. "I’ve been to places that have free shoes and clothes, but there’s nothing my size." I sympathized with him, told him we didn’t have anything. He smiled a slightly disappointed smile, put his hand out, shook mine, blessed me, and went on his way. And I’ve been haunted ever since. Here was one of the least of Christ’s kinfolk right in my midst but I couldn’t see. Here was a sign of the reign of him who was, who is, and who is to come. But I could not hear. I was in a hurry to go out to lunch.

I was reflecting with one of you this past week about how I wasn’t yet over my feelings from September 11, and you said to me, more or less, that each and every day, everywhere around us there is pain and tragedy that goes unnoticed, needs that go unmet, cries that go unheard. Why must there be a media spectacle for us to contemplate what Christ among us might really mean? Everyday on this earth more people die of starvation than died on September 11. – and most of them are little children. Everyday, the poor and the homeless, the lonely, the lost, the unloved walk past the doors of this place right here. Each and every day, lives are forever ruined by domestic violence, drunk driving, addiction, mental and physical illness. Each day, maybe in our own apartment building or condominium complex, our own block, our own neighborhood, someone grieves the absence of a loved one, or the absence of love, or the absence of serenity. Ground zero is not in New York. Ground zero is everywhere around us wherever we live; ground zero is everyday and in every place.

Do you wish to see Messiah? Do you wish to see the one who is greater than John the Baptist? Look around you. Look at those who walk these city streets. Look for the least, the last, the lowly, the lonely, the unloved. There you will see the face of Christ. Do you long for the true meaning of the kingdom of heaven among us? Listen to the thousands of stories out there every day. Read the papers. Find out about the grim realities that the majority of this world’s population faces each day.

The signs of the Messiah’s advent, birth, and coming again will not appear with candles and carols, presents and pretty wrappings Not this year. But then again, not any year. This year is no different than any other year. Nor in any year are the signs of Christ’s advent, the signs of Christ’s final reign limited to a season on the calendar. What then do we come out to see in this Advent and in this Christmas, in this year or in any year, this day or any day? Some pretty snow covered decorations softly swaying in the wind? Beautiful lights on beautiful trees?

Hear Christ’s words, not mine: Wherever and whenever you see the hungry fed, wherever and whenever you see the poor receive justice, wherever and whenever you see the lonely comforted, whenever and wherever you see those who look for a decent pair of shoes being taken care of – there you will see the signs of Messiah’s advent, birth, and coming again. Whenever the least are served as if they were the greatest, there you will find what you seek in this season, there you will find what you seek in this life.

Do we wish to see Messiah who was, who is, and who is to come? Come to the table then, for here our eyes will be opened so that we will see what surrounds us each and every day. Come to the table, receive Christ, the one who knows no season, no time, no place. Come, that the signs of Christ’s Advent, birth, and coming again may be seen also among us.

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Second Sunday in Advent

December 9 2001

Isaiah 11.1-10; Psalm 72; Romans 15.4-13; St. Matthew 3.1-12

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Obsession. Obsession is more than just an overpriced Calvin Klein cologne featured in utterly weird advertisements and commercials. An obsession, according to my American Heritage Dictionary is an irresistible, often unreasonable idea or emotion; an obsession is something that you just can help thinking about over and over and over again.

Edward Hicks was an American commercial artist, born in 1780 whose daytime job was painting store signs and decorating the sides of stage coaches. In 1820, when he was forty years old, Hicks became absolutely obsessed by one idea that he painted over and over and over again – well over 100 times until he died 29 years later. Though some of the details vary in these oil on canvas paintings, the theme and composition remain constant time and time again. Somewhere in the foreground, children can be seen playing with wild animals. Often a small child pats the head of a lion or some other wild cat. Another child puts her hand into the hole of a poisonous snake. And lions, who don’t eat straw graze on green grass alongside cattle or oxen. Wolves, who are especially fond of eating lamb chops, albeit without mint jelly, lie gently curled around little lambs in a protective embrace.

In the background of Hicks’ paintings is another scene. A European settler, most likely William Penn, has come ashore from his ship, along with some fellow European settlers and is being greeted by a group of Native Americans. They’re holding a piece of paper, the peace treaty that was signed between the Europeans and the Natives after Penn arrived on these shores in 1682. And all are illuminated by a beautiful sunrise in the background, a symbol of hope for the arrival of a new day.

Hicks has been accused of being an optimist who was obsessed with the idea that the still young United States embodied a new beginning for the world – that here in this new land with a new form of government, people would finally come together in a spirit of peace and harmony to solve the problems that had so divided the rest of the world. He is accused of being obsessed with the belief that the United States could and would become that Holy Mountain where people would no longer hurt or destroy one another.

There is, however, another way to read Edward Hicks’ obsessive retelling of the Isaiah text we hear this morning. Hicks was more than a painter of pictures – he was also a Quaker, and Quakers knew all too well that in this world, both in the old world of Europe and the new world of the Americas, gentleness and peacefulness more often than not get the short end of the deal. Quakers knew too well that turning the other cheek most often results in getting your block knocked off – that is, if all goes well, and you don’t just plain get killed. If anything Quakers, it might be said, are obsessed with the idea that the true light that shines in the darkness cannot come from any nation or government or person, but from God alone.

With Isaiah the prophet, it can be argued that Edward Hicks was far too fully aware of the ways of this world where, in fact, wolves do eat lambs, where people of any and every age, if they go sticking their hands near a snake are going to get bit. Hicks doubtless knew that a wild cat will almost always attack a small animal and tear its throat apart. After all, that’s dinner. The strong devour the weak; that’s how things work. We all know that. And Edward Hicks undoubtedly knew that the treaty William Penn had signed with the Indians in 1682 had been hopelessly broken. He lived in a country and in a time when Indians were regarded as savages to be gotten rid of. He lived in a country whose economic system was dependent, in large measure, upon slave labor – or in the absence of slaves, upon the newest wave of immigrants – Chinese or Italian or Irish -- could be used and abused in a way perhaps more cost efficient even than slaves – at least the immigrants thought they were working of their own free will.

Whether we call it freedom, human nature, or invent some other word, it was, it is, and it will always be a dog eat dog, kill or be killed, eat or be eaten world. It’s only natural, we say, to want to get ahead of the rest. We all want to be the best, the biggest, the richest, the strongest – both individually and collectively. We are proud of being the richest and strongest nation. We are well pleased that we are the envy of the world – or at least of that part of the world that we call civilized.

Edward Hicks, like the prophet Isaiah, is indeed obsessed, but not by some optimistic idea that we have here on this shore the makings of the peaceable kingdom. The Isaiah text, which Hicks knew from his studies of scripture, is all too aware of the so-called real world in which every tribe and nation are constantly at each other’s throat and where the poor are bought and sold without regard for justice.

Each Sunday, almost without exception, we begin with the rite of confession and forgiveness. We acknowledge together that if we say we have no sin, the truth is not in us. We say that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. I suppose we can hear these words as being terribly pessimistic – and while they definitely do not reflect Norman Vincent Peale’s power of positive thinking – they can also be heard as hope filled words.

When we say we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves, we are repenting – and to repent means to turn around – to turn away from one thing to face that which is in another direction. When we repent we are turning away from saying that our hope is in ourselves and our so-called humanity, in our human systems and institutions; we are acknowledging that hope lies in another direction, outside of ourselves, in something that is beyond us. When we acknowledge that something we call "sin," we’re saying that left to our own devices and our own best instincts we do and always will make a mess and total snafu out of everything we touch. But when we turn around, we aren’t turning toward just any old thing – we’re not turning to new age philosophy, we aren’t turning toward enlightenment rationality, and goodness knows we’re not turning toward our technological age – we are turning instead to the voice of hope that in creation sounded forth the ever-expanding universe from out an invisible sub-atomic particle, we are turning toward a voice of hope that sounded forth in the crying of an infant once upon a time in Bethlehem ever while it fueled the star factories of the farthest reaches of the cosmos. We are turning toward a hope that calls us beyond our living and beyond our dying into that future which lies beyond the forces of what we call instinct and human nature. We are turning toward a hope that has obsessed those whom we call prophets, saints, and poets, the hope that obsessed a Quaker sign painter; we are turning toward a hope that is often better sung than said, toward a hope that hides itself in bread and wine, a hope that manifests itself in the little child who leads us still.

On this Second Sunday of Advent, may that hope, that obsession enter your ears, may you take the very essence of that hope into your mouth – and may that obsessive hope explode inside you and create anew in every atom of your being that finished creation where the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, where the fierce no longer devour the small, where the little ones are forever safe, where enemies shall learn to love, where the hope of peace shall be fulfilled.

Even so, Lord Jesus stir up your power and come, quickly come.

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December 2, 2001

Isaiah 2:1-5
Romans 15:4-13
Matthew 26:36-44

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In days to come . . . they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

These words have an intensely different meaning today than they did a mere twelve weeks ago – at least for us in this country where our privilege has kept us insulated and isolated from the incessant wars that are the lot of far too many. How quickly everything changes. And on this first day of Advent, I find myself already wondering: will there be a Christmas truce, somewhere, anywhere on this sad planet? For one day will the weapons of war be laid down to honor the birth of the One whom we call the Christ, the Savior of the Nations, the One whom Muslims too revere as one of the five great prophets of Allah?

I vaguely remember, somewhere back in my brain, of hearing about Christmas truces made during the Vietnam War. I don’t remember if those truces held or not – but I do remember, hoping and praying back then in those dark, northern Minnesota days and nights of Advent that for one night and day on the other side of the world the napalm wouldn’t burn, the bombs wouldn’t burst, the rifles wouldn’t crack and there would be a silent night, a holy night.

A few weeks ago I was talking to an elderly friend. "I think it is time for me to leave this old world," she said. "I grew up in the first war; then there was the second war, then Korea, then Vietnam, then that Gulf War, and now this. I’ve seen too much. And I had thought this new century might be different from the one I spent my life in." And she shook her head in sorrow and silent tears found their way through the furrows of her aged skin.

When I was a professor at Regis University, no matter what course I was teaching, I found a reason – more often than not a far-fetched reason – to show the film "A Midnight Clear." I can’t say it’s my favorite film, but it is a film that tells the old, old story. "A Midnight Clear" is set during December 1944. A small US Army intelligence platoon, comprised almost totally of teenagers, is sent on a pointless, dangerous reconnaissance expedition to a farmhouse within a few kilometres of the German front. All of them are deeply afraid and sure that they are doomed. A few days pass and they discover a small band of German soldiers, children and old men. The American soldiers retreat to the abandoned farmhouse they have occupied. The increase their guard. And then on a midnight clear, the midnight of Christmas, one of the guards hears something. Voices – singing – "O Tannenbaum" comes across a clearing from in the woods. The US soldier make their way to the trenches they’ve dug in the snow. And then one foolhardy or faith-filled one (there is often no difference) begins singing "Adeste, fideles, laeti triumphantes, venite, venite, in Bethlehem." And German voices and American voices finish the ancient song. Guns are laid down and for two groups of soldiers the war ceases as wine and bread, beans and cheese are shared. But Christmas ends, as Christmases on this shadowed planet always do; the winds of war change directions and their separate peace is shattered. In spite of the carnage that follows, the film is not without hope. In order to make their way out from behind German lines, the surviving soldiers lovingly, tenderly bathe their dead. comrade. And they drain the blood from the still form of a young man who had hoped one day to be a priest, and with his blood they paint a large cross on white canvas – the peaceful sign of the Red Cross, their only hope of safe passage, and they drape it across the top of their jeep as they make their way to safety.

Today we stand at the beginning of yet another Church year, of yet another Advent. Advent, the season when we prepare ourselves to hear again the story of Christ’s birth two-thousand-and-one plus years ago in a town this year nearly vacant because yet another generation has learned too little else than hatred and war. But if this Advent is only a preparation for celebrating something that happened those many, many years ago in Bethlehem, we of all people are most to be pitied.

Though Advent is surely a time to prepare to celebrate Christmas, 2001, Advent is a time not only to look forward in hope, but to live in a present hope now – to live now in an absurd and foolhardy hope of a day when all history will come to its end, when the wicked insanities of this world’s ways are ended. The blue of our Advent paraments and priestly vestments are a sign of that hope. The blue signifies the color of the sky right before the sun breaks over the horizon. This magnificent blue proclaims that the night is nearly over, the darkness nearly ended and that soon, very soon the dawn from on high shall break upon us. That day, however, might very well not be in the lifetime of any of us here. About that day and hour no one knows, only God.

Now – God is eternal. And "eternal" means outside the boundaries of time. When we say that God is eternal, we are saying that God exists beyond all time. In God, the future already is. The end of history has already come. In God, all things have been accomplished. And now I tell you a mystery: in Matthew’s gospel this morning we hear that just as in the story of Noah, the flood swept some suddenly away, for you, the baptized of God, in the floodwaters of Holy Baptism, you have already been taken, and the feast that knows no end is here even this day.

For you, the baptized of God, the end of all history has already broken in, it is written, and it is finished. And though it is yet dark on this shore, for you the light has already dawned. As children of light, you now walk in the light. Here, now live in that light that shines in the darkness, and know now, not any darkness of the past not any darkness of the present, nor any future darkness can comprehend or overcome that light. And together, as we await that day when there shall be no more darkness, let us live our hope exuberantly, abundantly; let us without fear show forth our hope in every word and in every deed because that day is already dawning when they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; that day is already dawning when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when neither shall they learn war any more!

Even so, Lord Jesus, quickly come.