"Give More. Worship Fully." - Matthew 2:1-3, 8-11

Matthew 2:1-3, 8-11

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking,'Where is the child who was been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.' When King Herod heard this, he was frightened and all Jerusalem with him. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, 'God and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word sot hat I may also go and pay him homage.' When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

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Well, Pastor Aaron and I decided before we got into this Advent Conspiracy series that, since we only have three mid-week services, we’d focus on three of the four themes – “Spend Less,” “Give More,” and “Love All”. We thought we’d forego the other theme, “Worship Fully,” by virtue of the fact that we live that out by gathering for so much worship these days – on Sundays and midweek Wednesdays and for special services, like Blue Christmas and Christmas Eve. We worship pretty fully around here from one year to the next, during Advent.

But Pastor Aaron did such a good job last Wednesday encouraging us to “Spend Less,” and he also gave us some good ideas about ways to “Give More,” which was to be my topic for tonight. So I wondered what else there was left to say about that that would be new or different or better for tonight. So as I stewed about all of this over the course of the past week, I noticed something that changed my plan.

Because I was spinning these themes around in my head – “Give More.” And “Worship Fully.”  “Give More.” “Worship Fully.”  What if we “Give more worshipfully?” Get it? What would happen if we approached the whole gift-giving enterprise and exercise of Christmas, from a place of worship – whether we’re preparing gifts for our first-born child or for our great Aunt Betsy; whether buying for our best friend or for our children’s school bus driver; whether we’re shopping for our spouse or for that silly secret-Santa gift we have to get for the office Christmas party?

What if, in all of it, we could “give more worshipfully,” like the wise men, those magi, who came looking for Jesus; following a star; bearing gifts; longing to pay the king homage in a holy, humble, worship-filled way, so many years ago? What if our Christmas – and all of its gift-giving – looked more like that?

See, those wise men came presenting gifts, not as a birthday surprise for the baby Jesus. Not as a baby shower. Not as uncles-so-and-so trying to out-do one another with the latest, greatest thing from the Toys-R-Us catalog. They came bearing gifts because they were looking to find a King. And back in the day, when you entered into the presence of a King, you were expected to bring a gift – out of respect; out of reverence; perhaps with some measure of gratitude and humility.

So, if we think about what Christmas morning looks like in most of our homes, it may look like a birthday party. We may even acknowledge that it’s Jesus’ big day somehow. But when was the last child’s birthday party you went to where everyone got a gift except for the birthday boy? And isn’t that what most of our living rooms look like on Christmas morning? The gifts get piled up and passed around, but how many of us have a pile of presents for Jesus?

Okay, maybe there’s a way to wrap some gifts up for Jesus – and that would be a really great lesson and tradition to begin, perhaps – but that’s not exactly what I’m getting at. I think we can still give gifts AND I think we can give wisely and faithfully and with Jesus at the center of what we offer. I mean there are ways to do good and to share grace in our giving. There really are ways to “give more worshipfully” – to include Jesus in the mix – and I think some of this can be as practical and as holy as we’re willing to let it be.

There are companies like TOMS with what they call their “One for One” business model.  Buy a pair of shoes from TOMS and someone in need, somewhere else in the world, gets a pair of shoes themselves. They do it with eyeware, too. Buy a pair of sunglasses from TOMS and they’ll help restore the sight of someone in need, somewhere on the planet. You get cool shades and someone else gets to see? How great and holy is that? And they’ve just gotten into the coffee business, too, so every bag of coffee you by from TOMS Roasting Company, provides a week’s worth of clean drinking water for someone in need. That’s GIVING WORSHIPFULLY, if you ask me, and it’s a way to include Jesus on your shopping list. (Shop at TOMS here.)

Of course, there are ways to do that closer to home, too. Give the Fair Trade coffee, tea and chocolate we sell here because it helps farmers and families make a living they wouldn’t otherwise be able to sustain.  (Learn more about Lutheran World Relief and their Fair Trade project.) Take a tag from the tree in the entry and get it back here by next week so someone who might not otherwise be able to, will have a better kind of Christmas this time around. Whatever offering you leave on these Wednesday nights we’ll use to throw the party we’re planning for foster families from Hancock County next Friday.

There are lots of ways to do this – to keep Jesus on, or to add Jesus to our Christmas shopping list, I mean – so that we’re not celebrating his birthday without including him in the fun.

Here’s one more.  What if we did some math and tithed our Christmas gift-giving and meal-preparing budgets in order to do something for Jesus?

Statistics are all over the map about this, of course, but I saw that, a couple of years ago, the average parent spent $271 per child on Christmas gifts. That same year, 1 in 10 families spent $500 per child on Christmas gifts. That may or may not surprise you. That may or may not be a reality in your house. I’m not judging it either way, necessarily. But it did make me wonder, if those are the numbers for parents, what in the world must the numbers look like for all of you offspring-spoiling grandparents out there?! (You know who you are!) And what difference could a tithe of that kind of money do for the sake of Jesus in the world?

What if we totaled up all the money we will spend this Christmas and gave 10% of it back to God somehow? It sounds so practical, but it’s holy, too, don’t you think? Hard, perhaps. A whole new way of doing Christmas for many of us. But holy, for sure. A mere 10% for the guest of honor? It sort of seems like a no-brainer.

And I don’t mind suggesting you could check out the new, updated “Wish List” I put together just for the occasion. (It’s full of things we could use around here for the sake of our ministry.) Or know that we could use your “Christmas tithe” for the ministry of our General Fund. Or you could sponsor a kid in Fondwa, Haiti. (You can do that through Family Health Ministries or by talking to Pastor Mark.) Or help to re-stock our food pantry, after a busy holiday season.

And what if we really did wrap those gifts and put them under the tree? And what if we really did open them before or after we open up all the other loot and booty that's ours on Christmas morning – just for a little perspective?

The bottom line here is that if we “Give More Worshipfully,” we might do Christmas differently. We may spend more. It may mean we’ll spend less. I don’t know what it might mean for you or your family. But I believe it will help us to spend what is right. I have to believe we’ll spend less on things that don’t matter all that much in the long run. I think we’ll buy more wisely. I imagine we’ll invest in things and in people and in places that make our giving more meaningful – for us and for those we love.

And I believe that if worship is at the heart of how and what we give at Christmas, we’ll honor God, like those wise men did so long ago. And, ultimately then, God’s grace will be revealed to us and through us and for the world in ways that really are what Christmas – and the coming of Jesus – are supposed to be all about.

Amen

"Season's Greetings" - Mark 13:24-37

Mark 13:24-37

“But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will no longer give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.  Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory.  Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.  So also, when you see these things taking place, you will know that he is near, at the very gates.  Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.  Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will not pass away.

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.  Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.  It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.  Therefore, keep awake – for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.  And what I say to you I say to all: keep awake.”

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I don’t know what else there really is still to say about Ferguson, Missouri, or young Michael Brown, or Officer Darren Wilson, or that grand jury that decided there would be no trial, or those riots that followed the grand jury’s big announcement, or the protests that followed the riots – all around the country last week. I mean, I don’t know what else to say because so much has already been said, or blogged, or tweeted, or editorialized from every side and every angle and every position on the issues and circumstances that surround all the things that have taken place there in these days. A lot of me feels ill-equipped or under-qualified or complicit, even, somehow in too much of it, that I’ve just been listening and watching and waiting and stewing about when some sense will be made of it all.

But, I think it’s too significant a thing, such an important moment – another in a long line of significant, important moments in our national, cultural history – that we can’t not say something about it… on Sunday morning… as people who follow Jesus. But again, I just don’t know what or what else there is left to say.

And I’m tired of this conversation, to be honest. I feel like we’ve been down this road before and through this mess already and we just keep slogging through the same old sinfulness – no matter who’s side we think we’re on. White people who just don’t get it. Black people who just don’t get it. White people who are blind to – or dead-set on denying – our privileged place in this country. Black and brown people who are left feeling like the only way to be heard is through riots and retaliation.

There is clearly so much more to be learned from each other. There is clearly so much progress to be made. There is obviously so much yet to be done – and undone – when it comes to making things right in this country where race relations and racial equality and racial justice are concerned, for each other and for our kids. But the conversation – and everything that goes along with it – makes me tired, because I feel like we’ve been having it – to no avail – for so damn long already.

Because you know as well as I do that Ferguson, Missouri, is just another in a long line of the same old, same old. Ferguson is just this generation’s Rodney King verdict. And the list is as long as our willingness and ability to pay attention to it, really.

Trayvon Martin was killed just two years ago.

Jordan Davis, the boy who got shot in an SUV full of his friends by a middle-aged computer programmer because their music was too loud, was just two years ago, too.

James Byrd (you may not remember the name, but you'll remember the story) was dragged for miles behind a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas, until he was decapitated and died. That was in 1998.

The Central Park 5 – that group of teenagers who were wrongfully accused and convicted and sentenced to prison for a crime they didn’t commit – that all started in 1989.

Medgar Evers, the 37 year-old civil rights leader was assassinated in 1963.

And Emmett Till was the 14 year-old boy who was murdered and mutilated for supposedly flirting with a white woman, back in 1955.

And these are just the names who come to mind because they make the news and who get written about in the history books. There are so many more – too many more. And God knows it.

So, I’m tired – and I don’t have much to complain about, as a white man in New Palestine, Indiana, after all. And I’m at a loss for words that are equal to the challenge of addressing it all. But they say a picture is worth a thousand of words, right?

So, I suspect you saw pictures like these, as part of the television coverage of all that’s been happening in Ferguson, Missouri, this week. And I hope it made you wonder. “Season’s Greetings,” indeed.

I heard someone call it ironic. Some might think it crude or irreverent or just another example of how ignorant or naive we can be about all of this – that such injustice or anger or arrogance or ugliness or whatever can take place, literally, under the banner that proclaims “Season’s Greetings” of Christmas.

But it makes me think about how we need, so much, for this Jesus to come. We need, so desperately, still…still…still, for this Jesus to show up among us. We need, in so many ways to let this Jesus into our midst so that we can stop talking and tweeting and taking sides; so that we can stop pointing fingers and running for cover; so that we can stop throwing stones and starting fires. So that we can turn swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks… (Isaiah 2:4) So that the wolf will live with the lamb, so the leopard will lie down with the kid, so that the cow and the bear will graze together, and so all of that other crazy, peaceful stuff the prophet, Isaiah, promised just might come to pass. (Isaiah 11:6ff)

We need this Jesus to be revealed, again, because – no matter on which side of this we find ourselves – this Jesus has a word of judgment, a word of challenge, a word of forgiveness, and a word of hope to speak into our heart of hearts about it all. And I wonder if most of us – red or yellow, black or white, right or wrong – aren’t really caught up somewhere in the middle. And I think Jesus has a word – I think Jesus is a Word – for us there, just the same.

So, this Gospel from Mark – with all of its cryptic language about the coming of the Son of Man and about how we’ll see the signs but that we shouldn’t pretend we’ll know the day or the hour of his appearance – just makes me want him to get here.

I want Jesus to get here and stand in the middle of all of this. I want Jesus to get here and make us see him in the other.

I want Jesus to get here – and the Good News that comes with him – to help those of us on one side recognize that Jesus, himself, probably looked a lot more like Michael Brown than like Darren Wilson, in more ways than just the color of his skin. I want Jesus to get here – and the Good News that comes with him – to help those of us on the other side see the poverty of wisdom, the sad lack of compassion, and the ignorance of fear that leads to this perceived injustice.

We need God among us so we can see – really see – the other. We need Jesus in our midst so we can listen – really listen – to the cries of the other side. We need God with us so that we can see humility lived; love practiced; forgiveness offered; justice realized. We need the Good News of Jesus to born anew so that grace and hope might be born again for us all.

And this is why we wait – still. This is why we light our candles and why we pray our prayers. It’s why we embrace the darkness of these days. It’s why we confess and repent and listen. And it’s why – I hope – we make room for something different in our lives and in this world, as we know it, going forward.

Because the only Word that’s up to the challenge of our sinfulness and struggle is the Word that comes to us in Jesus. God’s Word, not mine. God’s Word, not yours. God’s Word, that was in the beginning; God’s Word that brings life and light for all people; God’s Word that shines in the darkness and that will not be overcome; God’s Word, made flesh… alive among us… full of grace and truth.

Amen.  Come, Lord Jesus.