Relentless - Blue Christmas

John 1:1-5, 10-14, 16-18

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

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“Relentless” is the word that kept coming to mind – about these days and as I wondered about tonight. “Relentless” because the list and litany of things that I know are weighing on some of you … and on me … and that I thought might bring us here for worship, just kept piling up and piling on in recent days. Of course there’s the news – the wars and rumors of wars, the natural disasters and pending storms, the politics, the politics, and the politics. I’m going to let that all of that “news” stuff speak for itself.

Mostly it’s been the dying, though. So much dying. People losing parents and friends and family and children, even – sometimes after long, lingering sickness and disease. Sometimes quickly, though not unexpectedly. Sometimes in surprising, shocking, unsettling ways – surrounded by circumstances no one could have seen coming. Of course the grief of death shows up in particularly painful ways at this time of year, whether it happened last week or a lifetime ago.

But it’s not just that dying that’s relentless these days. There is the struggle of parenting that’s overwhelming for some, I know. There are kids struggling with what it means to be a kid – or to become an adult – in this world. There are people whose jobs have been on the line – and some who’ve lost what they were counting on in that regard. There are sick and aging parents and friends. There are failing marriages. There are broken relationships of all kinds that would, could, should be something so much more and better and different than they’ve turned out to be.

There are burdens of anxiety and mental illness too numerous and nebulous to name or itemize but that somehow have a very real weight and heft to them, nonetheless.

There are people carrying secrets too hard and too heavy to carry on their own or to say out loud from here.

And I’m sorry/not sorry for those of you with whom I’ve already shared this little video. It added something to our Bethel Bible Study class a couple of weeks ago where I used it to talk theology … and about the nature of God.

Then it came up again in our Stephen Ministry discussion last week where I used it, thinking clinically, about how we deal with each other in caring relationships.

And when something like this won’t leave my mind – or keeps popping up in relevant, meaningful, surprising ways – I feel like I’m supposed to take notice and pay more attention and maybe keep learning from whatever it might be.

So I want to share it with those of you who haven’t seen it – and again with those of you who have – and wonder about it, together, in light of whatever brings us here, for a service like this, at Christmas.

All you need to know about the video is that it’s Brene Brown’s voice you’re hearing. (If you’ve never heard of Brene Brown, she’s a professor, author, podcaster and social worker.) And someone has taken one of her lectures and turned it into a cartoon for some extra effect and added meaning.

So much of the truth about Christmas – which so often gets lost in the mix of everything we’ve done to the “most wonderful time of the year” – so much of the TRUTH about Christmas is acknowledgement of the fact that life in this world is relentless. And the story of our faith never suggests otherwise. God never suggests otherwise. In fact, a friend of mine once said that the Bible itself – the story of our faith in Scripture – reads like some kind of trauma response narrative when you think about it.

From Adam and Eve, to Cain and Abel, to the Tower of Babel, the Exodus from slavery in Egypt, the exile in Babylon, through to the life, crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus, our faith’s story is one tragedy after another tragedy after another, after another, after another when you think about it – some cosmic in scope and scale, some more personal and close to home.

Whatever the case, even Scripture is a reminder that life in this world is relentless – even for people of faith, maybe especially for people of faith – who have their hearts and minds and lives attuned to the music of someone and of something greater than ourselves.

But the other hard truth is, faith doesn’t and will not take away our grief in one fell swoop – nor should it. Faith can’t reverse our deepest darkest thoughts, all on its own, all of the time. Faith won’t fix your anxiety or ease your depression, if you can muster whatever “enough” of that sort of faith is supposed to look like. Faith won’t keep your problems at bay or make your life easier at every turn.

No matter what some preach, teach or post on social media – or have tried to make you believe in one way or another – loving God and having faith is not a prescription against suffering or struggle.

But the promise of Christmas – and the point of that little video about empathy, for my money – is a reminder about the kind of God we’re dealing with, in Jesus. It’s not a God like so many other false gods (drugs, alcohol, self-reliance, our own boot-straps, our own best intentions, our own busy schedules, or whatever else we use to fix ourselves);

The promise of Christmas is not about a god or gods who stand up there and out there, far and away from what hurts us most…offering us a sandwich or a simple solution or a sweet supplication to fix whatever is the matter…

The promise of Christmas is not of a God who doesn’t – who has not – lived and experienced and felt just exactly what we live and experience and feel as a people…

Ours is a God who shows up in the midst of whatever mess we find ourselves and sits with us there and shows us that it is endurable, doable, and able to be overcome…

Ours is a God who shows up in ways as tangible as one of these prayer shawls you are invited to take and wrap yourself in when you leave here tonight…

Ours is a God who comes down as surely as this bread and wine that we’ll eat, drink, taste, smell and share in a moment…

Ours is a God who is sitting next to you now, in this worship, in the presence of someone who has struggled and suffered, too; who is struggling and suffering, beside you even now…

Ours is a God who is even more relentless – more patient and persistent and vulnerable – than whatever brings us here and that we’ll carry with us even after we leave.

Our is a God who comes down, in Jesus, to remind us that there is grace and love and mercy and hope, embodied and emboldened in the world around us, by faithful, loving, kind people and pastors and parents; friends and family and strangers, even.

So, I hope some of you came here tonight selfishly looking and longing for something … even if you aren’t sure what it could be.

I hope others of you came here tonight – whether you knew it or not – looking and longing to enter into this sacred space, to simply sit with and be alongside the others …

I hope each of us sees our potential to be both of these things at any given moment in the days to come…

And I hope we see it all as a picture of the promise and great hope of Christmas – that wild, miraculous notion of the Word and ways of God, making the vulnerable, loving choice to become flesh and to live among us;

…the love of God putting on skin and bones – not just in the person of Jesus, born in a manger long, long ago – but alive and well in God’s children, people just like you and me;

…the love of God born to give and to receive the kind of grace, mercy and peace that is ours because we are God’s – for each other and for the sake of the world into which he comes...

…sharing love, hope and connection that promises the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting – on this side of heaven and the next.

Amen. Merry Christmas.

John the Baptist and Scary Santa

Matthew 11:2-11

When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?” Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: “What did you go into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ Truly I tell you, among those born of women, no one else has arisen greater than John the Baptist; and yet, the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

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I came across this picture on Lisa Fox’s Facebook feed this week. It turned out to be pretty good fodder and inspiration about what we see and hear – and have often heard about – today’s Gospel story and John the Baptist. The girls are six or seven years older now, than they were in this picture, but they’re still not big enough kick my butt. And I got grandma’s permission to show you all, so I’ll send the girls her way if they get mad.

And, just to spread the wealth, I dug up one of my own. These two are big enough to kick my butt, these days, but I decided to take my chances with forgiveness rather than permission in their case.

What’s true for so many kids – as it was for me a million years ago – is that strangers in red suits are scary. And, these pictures along with a couple of conversations I had this week, had me thinking differently about what’s going on with John the Baptist and Jesus in this morning’s Gospel. [Sreen]

Most of us have heard of “Doubting Thomas,” right? …the disciple who, after the resurrection, wouldn’t believe – couldn’t believe – Jesus had been raised from the dead until he could see for himself the holes in his hands and touch the scars on his sides?

Well, today, we hear about a different kind of doubter in John the Baptist. John the Baptist, the one who came before Jesus to pave the way… John the Baptist, the one who last week baptized with water and promised that one was coming, in Jesus, who would baptize with fire and the Holy Spirit… John the Baptist, the one who sits in prison in this morning’s gospel because he’s been so outspoken and so faithful about his calling to prepare the world for Jesus…

This week, we hear even John the Baptist had some doubts – or at least some questions – or at least wondered a bit – about who this Jesus really was, and if he was all he seemed cracked up to be.

But, John’s doubts and questions aren’t that much of a surprise when you consider all that he’d been expecting. He’d been associating Jesus’ coming with a terrible day of judgment. John had been preaching and promising things like “Holy Spirits”,” “winnowing forks,” “threshing floors” and “unquenchable fires,” remember.

John seems to have envisioned a Messiah of wrath who would make sinners pay, and pay dearly, for their sins. And the picture John the Baptist paints, is a coming reign of God that seems filled with a sense of terror and fear and judgement and doom.

And there’s a lot of that still around us in the world.

I had a conversation with some pastors, just the other day, who were bemoaning some children’s sermons they’d heard that taught kids to behave, or else; to be good, or else; to have faith, or else. Basically, sermons that sounded like they were more about Santa Claus than about Jesus.

And I was talking with a new friend this week, too, about his different experiences in different churches. And we were lamenting how so many – too many Christian communities of faith – seem to stake their identity and find their purpose based on who they keep out. Of course, there’s the LGBTQ+ factor. And there are still as many churches as not who refuse to allow women in the pulpit or outsiders at the communion table. And, I don’t remember all of the details, but my new friend told me about a woman he knew who wasn’t welcome in her family’s church because she’d been divorced a couple of times and had too many children with too many different dads. (I know, in my head that places like this exist, but it still surprises and saddens me to hear real-life examples of it.)

Anyway, this kind of doom, gloom, shame and separation … this sort of judgment and wrath and UN-grace … still rules so much of what the world hears about expects when they consider God’s coming in Jesus – just like it did for John the Baptist.

So, it’s no wonder more people – in our families, in our neighborhoods and in our world – will search for more meaning, comfort and hope in these days of Christmas in the trees and the trimmings and in the presents and the parties of the season. It’s no wonder that there are more people who will spend Christmas Eve waiting for Santa, than there will be people preparing Jesus. It’s no wonder there are more of God’s children wringing their hands over what may or may not show up under the Christmas tree, instead of celebrating what has already come – and will come again – in Jesus Christ.

And I’m frustrated and dismayed and sad about that, but I don't blame any one of them any more than I blame the children who are scared of meeting Santa at the mall.

We tell little kids that Santa is always watching … that they better not pout or cry … that they better be good for goodness’ sake … or else the strange, hairy man who lives up north … is going to hold it against them. And then we sit them on his lap – or on the lap of an imposter – and try to convince them that he’s jolly and good, sweet, nice and safe.

It all seems very much – too much – like what too many do – and maybe even what John the Baptist was doing with Jesus back in the day. Be good, or else. Behave, or else. Repent, or else. Remember all of those “winnowing forks,” “threshing floors” and “unquenchable fires” as part of his invitation to baptism? I would have run the other way, myself, I’m sure of it.

And I think, even though Jesus loves John the Baptist and holds him in very high regard, it’s why his command for John and his followers this morning is something altogether different. And I believe it’s our command, too. Jesus says, simply, “go and tell what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

In other words, “look at the good, lovely, gracious things I’ve been up to. Look at the forgiveness I’ve offered. Look at the healing I’ve accomplished. Look at the sinners I’ve loved. Look at the outsiders I’ve welcomed. Look at the hope I’ve delivered.”

If people could really see more and actually hear more of the good news of God’s activity among us – and if we, in the Church, would work more at embodying that story – they might know more of what God has done and means to do for them, just the same.

It makes me wonder if the way I live makes people really want to come and hear the story from me. I like to keep asking myself how our preaching and teaching at Cross of Grace can open doors so that people will want to come in and find out what’s so “good” about the news we share. I want to live like my Messiah – our Messiah – is one of good news for the poor, one who heals sick people, one who accepts and forgives those who we – or the world – would rather reject. I want to live and love the world in a way that will make people want to accept, rather than run away screaming from, the face of Jesus.

And I think if people can see it through me, and through you, too, then they'll be a lot more likely to want to come up close and meet this Jesus and sit on the lap of God’s grace and be part of the worship and learning and service we celebrate and share here week after week.

And that’s where our call comes in these waning days of Advent. The rest of the world, like John the Baptist, needs to know and to see and to feel more of what it is we wait for and hope in when it comes to Jesus Christ.

People need to see, by our actions, that we’re waiting for the one who calls people to give away their time and their hard work and their money – because we get to, not because we have to – to grow churches, to give gifts to kids that otherwise wouldn’t have any, and to provide food and clothes to people who otherwise would have none of it.

People need to know that our eyes have been opened to the truth about ourselves and about our God – that by the power of faith in God’s grace, prejudice and bigotry and discrimination of any kind have no place in our midst.

People need to hear, from our lips, how God’s promise of forgiveness and eternal life brings us out from under the crippling burdens of this world to walk with faith and to face each new day with hope, no matter what it holds.

People need to meet, in us, a Jesus who speaks of peace to a world at war, who offers food for those who are hungry, comfort for the hurting, homecoming for the lost, love for the lonely, and a wide welcome with no strings attached.

John seems to have expected something entirely different than what God delivered in Jesus Christ – or at least his words and ways weren’t as gracious as the hope he proclaimed. I believe too many in our world expect something entirely different, too, too much of the time – if they expect anything at all – in what God has offered in Jesus Christ. Our call is to take away the mystery and the misconception of that … to show and to tell our friends, families and neighbors what merciful, loving, life-giving things God has done, that God is doing, and that God will do, through the grace born for the sake of the world at Christmas.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.