Matthew 11:25-30

At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

There is a famous Buddhist story about a woman who loses a child. The story goes that when the grieving mother is unable to accept her son’s passing, she demands medicine from the doctor, who knows full well that nothing will cure the dead boy. The doctor sends the grieving mother to the Buddha, who tells her to go out and collect five white mustard seeds from households where no one has suffered. (Presumably, the mustard seeds would be used for some kind of medicine.)

So the woman goes door to door, from neighbor to neighbor, explaining that she needs medicine for her child. Many people offer to give her mustard seeds, but every time she asks the householder if they have lost someone close to them – [every time she inquires about their suffering] – the answer is always yes. Eventually she goes back to the Buddha, empty-handed.

“Have you brought me the mustard seeds?” he asks.

“No,” she tells him. “But now I understand there is no one who has not lost someone they love – there is no one who has never suffered – and I have laid my child to rest.”

None of what we’re up to tonight is about dismissing our struggles and our sufferings, simply because everyone suffers at some time or another. None of this is about measuring the weight of our burdens or the severity of our sadness by comparing our suffering to that of others. I feel like every year I need to explain that this whole Blue Christmas “thing” is not about wallowing in our grief or crying in our beer, simply for the sake of it.

All of this, for me this year, anyway, is about gathering together – because of and in spite of what hurts or scares or confuses us most – especially at a time like Christmas – and looking for seeds.

Like the Buddha did for that grieving mother, this opportunity for worship on “The Longest Night” doesn’t need to be any more or less than a chance to do something in the face of the suffering and struggle that is part of our lives and that surrounds us in this world. The Buddha never had any intention of curing or healing or resurrecting the woman’s child with any magic potion, made from the mustard seeds he knew she’d never collect. The Buddha knew she’d learn something by doing… by searching… by encountering others… by telling her story and by hearing about the sadness of others along the way.

Because it is worth gathering with friends and family, with neighbors and strangers, even, and acknowledging what God already knows:

That we are hurting and scared by the world where we live. Because of Aleppo and Berlin. Because of Russia and Iraq. Because of presidential elections and political divides. Because of Tennessee fires and racial tensions, the list is so long there’s no time to check it twice.

And there’s much more, much closer to home, too.

We are here because our family is falling apart at the seams – or at least it feels that way, at times.

We are here because marriages are failing.

We are here because we love people who are dying, or because we’ve lost one-too-many loved ones this past year.

We are here because we don’t have money to pay the bills like we’d prefer, let alone enough to make Christmas everything we wish it could be.

We are here because we struggle with addictions no one knows about but us.

We are here because the years are moving faster than we’d like and because we can’t seem to slow it all down enough to get things under control.

We are here because we’ve made bad choices and we’re not sure what the next decision should be.

We are here because it’s hard to be a mother or a father; a husband or a wife; a daughter or a son; a sister or a brother; a better friend… a better employee…a better whatever.

And I hope that while we gather – as we search for seeds, or solutions, or answers, or miracles, even – we notice, like the woman in the story learned, that we are not alone. Not only is it healing and helpful to see that others are struggling and searching right along with us, but I hope we are reminded that we – and the suffering and struggles of our lives – are precisely why God shows up in Jesus – in the first place.

Because all of that is about reminding us that our problems aren’t solved with seeds – or pills or potions; our struggles don’t disappear when we do the right thing; our suffering doesn’t end when we follow all the rules. God never promises us any of that.

What God does promise us – what God does is – to show up in the form of Jesus, this one we can look upon and recognize in the faces and in the faith of those around us. Like the woman who thought she was looking for seeds, but really found what she needed in the hearts and lives of her neighbors, God wants the same for us, when we go waiting and hoping and looking for Jesus, together, at Christmas.

God wants for us to find, in one another, some common ground; a familiar face; a comforting presence; willing partners for the journey; a knowing that brings comfort and peace and hope.

Which is what we’re meant to find in Jesus – Emmanuel – “God with us,” too: common ground, a familiar face, real presence, one who has walked the way already, one who knows what is done, what is left undone and everything in between.

So here, we can raise a voice – in song, in sorrow, or in prayer; we can raise a white flag in submission and trust; we can raise a fist in defiant rebellion; we can even raise a middle finger – if you know what I mean – to the struggles with which we are so tired of contending.

Whatever the case… tonight – and all of Christmas, really – is an invitation to open ourselves to the presence of God, made known through the company of one another, and to hand it all over – the good, the bad, and the ugly of our lives – until we are loved into submission, loved into forgiveness, loved into hope, loved into whatever else God promises to birth from the seeds of even our deepest despair.

Amen. Merry Christmas.

Matthew 3:1-12

In those days, John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one about whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight.’ Now, John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist and he ate locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all the people of Judea were going out to him, and all the along the region of the Jordan, to be baptized by John in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when John saw the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee the wrath that is to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor;’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees and every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing-fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

John the Baptist was a strange bird… an odd duck… out there in the wilderness, dressing weirdly, eating differently, baptizing some people, barking at others. A lot can be said about his words, and his ways, and his wardrobe, of course. But I’m always fascinated by how all of it made him standout as unique… as special… as chosen, perhaps… as someone worth listening to… as someone worth heeding, and following, and affording our attention.

Above all else, I think, John the Baptist – Jesus’ crazy cousin – was a Truth-Teller. He was the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, as the prophet predicted. He knew a thing or two about the reign of God and his life was all about preparing for the coming of that kingdom, by way of Jesus. John knew that, in Jesus – through his life and ministry and death and resurrection – God’s reign of love and justice and mercy and grace was about to break into the world and onto the scene in a way that it never had before. And John was on a mission to preach and teach and warn and welcome whoever he could about what that could mean for the world.

For what it’s worth, I’m not as scared of John the Baptist’s preaching as I used to be. I think he’s impassioned and he’s frustrated and he’s angry, even, about what he sees in the world around him, and all of that talk about axes and trees, threshing floors, chaff, and unquenchable fire is evidence of that. But, truth be told, each of us has something like the “chaff” of sin in our lives that’s worth repenting, worth changing, worth letting God burn away, if you will, by the refining fires of grace, if we’ll let that be.

So, while it may be tempting to write him off as some kind of crazy, carnival barker out there in the wilderness, John the Baptist is a model… a poster child… an example… for anyone with a Truth to tell; for anyone who prepares a path; for anyone who makes a way; for anyone crying out in the wilderness of injustice and sin and ugliness and despair.

So when I think of John the Baptist, then, I think about the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Mother Theresa - passionate, patient, hope-filled tellers of the Truth and doers of justice. And just this week, in honor of World AIDS Day, on Thursday, I learned about another lone voice in the wilderness I’d never heard of before. Her name is Ruth Coker Burks. (And I owe the meat of this story to an article I read, which was written by David Koon and first published in the Arkansas Times. You can read it in full here.)

Ruth Coker Burks found herself in the wilderness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 90s, in our country. In fact, she was so early on the scene that the then-mysterious affliction was still being called GRID, for “Gay-Related Immune Deficiency.” We’ve come a long way, baby!

The short version of a much longer, beautifully sad story, is that – in 1984 – while visiting a friend with cancer in an Arkansas hospital, she overheard nurses arguing about who would have to care for the patient in a room down the hall – a room with a big red bag covering the door. While the nurses argued and avoided it, Ruth Coker Burks snuck into the wilderness of that patient’s room to find a dying, skeleton of a man, who told her he just wanted to see his mother before he died.

When she told the nurses, they assured her his mother wasn’t coming, that he’d been in the hospital for six weeks, that no one had come – and that no one was coming. This pushed Burks even further into the wilderness of what was about to become her new life’s work – whether she knew it or not – because after getting her hands on the phone number of the dying young man’s mother, she found out the nurses were right. No one was coming.

The dying man’s mother told Burks her son was a sinner, that she didn’t know what was wrong with him, and that she didn’t care. His mother said she wouldn’t come and that her son was already dead to her, as far as she was concerned. And the icing on the cake? This mother didn’t even want to claim her son’s body after he died.

And she wasn’t alone, this mother. Ruth Coker Burks worked with over a 1,000 people dying of AIDS in those days and she says a mere handful of families refused to turn their backs on their loved ones. A mere handful of families cared enough to visit, or comfort, or memorialize or even collect the remains of their loved ones, after they had died.

“You brood of vipers!”

When Ruth Coker Burks returned to that dying man’s bedside, he was sick and deluded enough to mistake her for his mother. And she let him believe that, while she held his hand, bathed and consoled him, until he died 13 hours later.

“… prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”

Because of a strange, rather amusing, family history, Ruth Coker Burks had been promised the inheritance of a cemetery when she was a little girl – a half-acre portion of red dirt on a hill in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where her family had been buried since the late 1800s. There were something like 260 vacant, waiting plots there, and she had always wondered what she was going to do with a cemetery for an inheritance. “Who knew,” she wondered sarcastically, “there’d come a time when people didn’t want to bury their children?” “Who knew there’d come a time when people didn’t want to bury their children?”

But, “God is able, from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”

In a chipped cookie jar she got from a friend’s pottery store, then, Ruth buried that first man’s ashes, near her own father’s grave. And over the next few years, she would do the same thing for more than 40 souls, most of them gay men whose families refused to claim them. With a post-hole digger, her daughter’s help, more chipped cookie jars, and some prayers of her own, this lone voice, crying in the wilderness of her very own cemetery (in Hot Springs, Arkansas, for the love of Jesus!), and she prepared the way for some lonely, forgotten, but beloved children of God.

“Then the people of Jerusalem and all the people of Judea were going out … and all the along the region of the Jordan…”

Because after she cared for that first man, people started calling and asking for her help. “They just started coming,” she said. And according to her, “Word got out that there was this kind of wacko woman in Hot Springs who wasn’t afraid. They would tell them, ‘Just go to her. Don’t come to me. Here’s the name and number. Go.’ I was their hospice,” she said. “Their gay friends were their hospice. Their companions were their hospice.”

And that’s how she became the voice of one, crying out in the wilderness, not just in sadness and despair over the LACK of compassion and love and grace she witnessed from parents and families, but crying out in the wilderness WITH compassion and love and grace that too many were unable to muster. With the help of drag queens and gay clubs, she raised money for funeral costs and drug treatments, travel expenses and more. (I wonder if any of those drag queens dressed in camels’ hair, with leather belts around their waists…)

She prepared a way… she created a path… she proclaimed the kingdom…

Which is God’s call for each of us in John the Baptist – and through people like Ruth Coker Burks – these wackos in the wilderness. In these Advent days of waiting – and every day, really – our call is to get about the business of proclaiming and promising and practicing the radical acts of justice and love, mercy and grace we are also waiting on, and expecting from, and hoping for, at Christmas.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

(If you want to contribute to a memorial some are working to set up at the cemetery, you can add your two cents - or more - here. And/or visit GoFundMe.com and search "Ruth Coker Burks." You'll see there that some of the donated funds will also help Ruth with expenses she's incurred following a stroke.)

Blue Christmas – Matthew 11:25-30

"Wackos in the Wilderness" - Matthew 3:1-12