09 January 2010

Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12

I don’t know about you, but one of my favorite television shows of all time is The Golden Girls.  In fact, I watched an episode this morning before coming to early service. I would especially like it when either Rose Nyland or Sophia Petrillo would tell a story.  As I read the Gospel for today a memory of mine was called to mind and I found myself hearing Sophia saying: “Picture this… the Jordan River… January 10, 1993… crowds of people gathered at the bank of the river, some walking down a ramp to enter the water to be baptized, some for the first time, others as kind of a spiritual souvenir of their vacation, a parking lot full of tourist busses, a gift shop filled with tourists anxious to buy Holy Land souvenirs like bottles of water from the Jordan River (which I strongly suspect were filled at a tap somewhere in Jerusalem).  Picture Pastor Lohmann rolling up his pant legs to wade into the water to fill up a couple of empty bottles with river water (thus assuring it was 100% legitimate Jordan River water!)…”

8 January 2011

Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

Hebrews 13.2

Matthew 28.1-8

Go, said the angel to the Holy Women at the tomb, go quickly and tell: “Jesus whom you seek is raised from the dead and he is going ahead of you to Galilee, and there you will see him.” Galilee – short for Galil ha-goyim – the region of the pagans. Though once part of the Northern Kingdom of the Hebrew people, the Galilee had over the centuries been repeatedly overrun by waves of conquering people and was by the time of Jesus a place considered unclean not only by the religious elite in Jerusalem but by the Roman occupation forces as well. Galil ha-goyim was a breeding ground for insurrection against the Empire and a place labeled by Everybody who was Anybody as a degraded and degrading abomination – Galilee was, you might say, a larger version of certain sections of the East Colfax and Capitol Hill neighborhoods.

2 January 2010

Isaiah 60:1-6
Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12

Christmas pageants and manger scenes can be a good thing, and I have great memories of the Christmas story being presented right here in the chancel of St. Paul on the Feast of the Epiphany – complete with real-live sheep, goats, a donkey, some chickens – doing just what comes naturally whenever and wherever they please – lots of absorbent straw, and children dressed as Mary, Joseph, angels, shepherds, wise men, and at least once – I remember – a real live baby lying in a manger – noisily.

24 December 2010

Isaiah 9:2-7
Psalm 96
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-20

It all began for us on an ordinary night as we were watching our sheep in a grassy field outside Bethlehem.  The sky was clear and the cold stars were plentiful. At first I thought I was hearing just the enthusiasm of crickets on the make, but then – something like thunder or the roar of a lion, and next the sounds of a mob of laughing children all clanging tiny finger cymbals – and then the ululations of scores and scores of dancing girls with bells tied ‘round ankles and wrists and braided into their long hair. I thought there was something wrong inside my head – but I looked, and the others, they were clearly bothered as well and their heads were all cocked sideways like dogs do when trying to identify a far off sound. Yes, the others were all hearing something strange. But the dogs themselves, unalarmed – and their faces with that look they get when someone massages behind their ears in just the right way – and their mouths open in big smiles – dogs do smile, you know. But our faces – brows pulled tight together, our eyes wide, our mouths open and our breath coming short and quick.