Blue Christmas - Grief that Was, Is, and Is to Come

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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I want to start by sharing a video with you – it’s short and sweet, just 4 minutes – about grief, from someone who has done some serious thinking about and living with it in just the last four years. Her name is Nora McInerny and I’ll let her tell you what you need to know…

For what it’s worth, there is more to this Ted Talk – another 10 minutes, or so, to be exact – if you want to look her up on your own. She also has a podcast called, “Terrible, Thanks for Asking,” which seems interesting enough, if you’re curious. But this caught my attention a couple of weeks ago and I think it’s so much of what brings us here tonight.

When we started having these “Blue Christmas” worship services 10 years or so ago, they were new to me – and kind of a new thing in this neck of the woods, as far as I could tell at the time. And what started – in my mind – as a special kind of service, meant to serve a small, niche of a target audience – has become, in my mind, something I believe is – or should be – for anyone and everyone – because grief is or will be for every one of us at some time or another, if it hasn’t crossed our path just yet.

And I believe it is a hard and holy and faithful practice to own our grief, the way Nora McInerny describes it. Whatever it is that brings us here – or whatever griefs that find us in this life – the death of loved ones (or the fear of losing ones we love), the loss of jobs, the troubles of our children, the struggles of addiction, the fighting in our families, the ending of relationships, whatever it may be – these events mark us, indelibly. These events and experiences make us and reshape us as people in the world and as children of God. And it’s silly, if not delusional, to pretend or to believe or to behave otherwise.

So, my hope for tonight is never to prevent grief, or to fix grief, or to pretend that struggle and sadness are not part of life in this world or part of our life in this season. In fact, tonight is about precisely the opposite. It’s about naming just exactly for what and why God showed up, in Jesus, in the first place. Jesus wasn’t born just for the fun of it – for the sake of celebration and joy and mistletoe and silent nights, remember.

Jesus was born for such a time as this – as much as anything else. Jesus was born for the sake of the lost and lowly, for the sake of the grieving and struggling, for the sick and lonely, for the dark and despairing. And tonight is about remembering the truth of that and the hope there is in that truth. And it’s about letting our faith – and our friends who share it – surround us in ways that we trust together, and hope together, and endure together. And, if you’re not sure you have it in you to trust or hope or endure or believe at every turn these days, tonight is about letting someone else trust for you, or hope for you, or endure for and with and alongside you, if that will help.

Because, if we’re honest, this season is about multi-tasking with more than just the shopping lists and the food prep and the visits with family and whatever else keeps us so busy. This season is also, very much about multi-tasking our emotions.

It’s about holding our grief and our fear and our struggles in one hand, even while the world around us is trying to hand us cookies and smiles and celebrations and all kinds of wonderful reasons for very real joy. Like so many shopping bags, though, it can be hard to carry it all at once. But we can do it – we are called to do it – together. God doesn’t ask us to set aside or to set aside or to move on from our grief in order to hold onto all the other stuff, too. God gives us Jesus whose coming reminds that we can move forward with it, with hope for something more to come.

I like how Nora McInerny talks about how she catches herself referring to her deceased husband in the present-tense at times; how she used to feel guilty or, at least, self-conscious about that – until she noticed that everybody does it. And how she realized that that’s because the loved-ones we’ve lost – or whatever struggles and sadnesses shape us, in this life – are very much a part of who we are and who we continue to be, as they should.

And it made me think of how often – especially at this time of the year, in these Advent days of waiting and hoping and longing for the coming of Christ’s birth – I like to refer to Jesus as “the one who was, and who is, and who is to come.” That phrase always reminds me about the nature of the God we’re waiting for in Jesus: a God who indeed was, and who is, and who, indeed, is to come.

Just like whatever grief we carry with us tonight was… and is… and is to come?  So is Jesus.

Just like our struggles were and are and are yet to be … so is Jesus.

Just like our sadness, our brokenness, our loneliness; just like our fear, our loss, and our despair; just like all of it was and is and is to come … so is Jesus.

And God comes, in Jesus, not to deny it; not to make it easy at every turn; not to call us away from what grieves or hurts or scares us most. But Jesus comes to call us forward with it, so that it – and we – might be transformed by the grace of God; grace which always was and always is and is always on the way.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Marks of Discipleship: GIVE of Time and Abilities

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 of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath 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 ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore 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.”

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John the Baptist, crying out there in the wilderness, shows up a lot in these Advent days every year. He’s the one God uses to get our attention – not just because he dresses funny, eats strange things and lives on the margins – but because he was calling people to repent of their sins and to prepare the way for Jesus; to get ready, to get baptized, to get right with themselves and to get right with God so they could receive and experience and participate most fully in what God was about to do through Jesus.

And I don’t want to dismiss the importance of what most preachers will preach about this morning when John the Baptist shows up, again, on the Second Sunday of Advent – all of that hard, holy stuff about preparing the way, making the paths straight for Jesus, and repenting and turning to God, searching for God, and all the rest, matters. It’s why we’re so deliberate about making our confession in worship these days and receiving our forgiveness, too.

But, because we’re into this Marks of Discipleship series – and because we’re called to consider what it means to “GIVE of our time and abilities for the sake of God’s kingdom,” I want to talk about the notion that John the Baptist – letting his freak flag fly out there in the wilderness – really was, apparently, an odd duck in a long line of strange birds and unlikely souls God has used over time to bear the Kingdom and it’s Good News for the sake of the world.

And like John, each and every one of us is called to make a way for this King and for this Kingdom that’s coming. The high and the holy and the lost and the lowly, just the same – each of us is called to the proverbial river and invited to walk around in the waters of our baptism with a gift and a knack and a talent and a purpose and a passion – I hope – for however we can use God’s blessing in and God’s calling on our life to make a way for grace and love and mercy and peace to live and move and breathe among us, for the sake of the world. Each of us has a little John the Baptist in us, somewhere.

But if there’s anything I’ve learned from people over the years about what keeps us from following Jesus or doing God’s will or serving the world by way of our gifts and abilities, two things seem to be true and almost universal. First of all, none of us feel completely qualified or compelled to do “too much.” If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard some version of the phrase, “I’ll be glad to help – with this project or with that task – but I don’t want to lead,” I would have a lot of dollars. (You know who you are. And I’ve said it myself, so I’m not just throwing stones, here.) And the other thing that’s true for most – if not all – of us is that there’s never enough time, or we’re never sure it’s the right time, to say “yes” to what God may be calling us to do with ourselves, for the sake of the kingdom.

So, sadly, too much of the time, we so “no.” Or we don’t say anything. We decline the offer, we don’t accept the invitation, we put off the opportunity, we leave our freak flags packed away in the closet, and we pretend we aren’t qualified or that someone else is more qualified or has more time or more talent or more, whatever.

And when John the Baptist lets the Pharisees and the Sadducees have it, down by the river in this morning’s Gospel… when he calls them a “brood of vipers and says, “God is able, from these stones, to raise up children to Abraham,” I think he’s saying something to the effect of, “God is going to do, what God is going to do, people. God is going to bring this Kingdom to pass. God is on the way, in Jesus, and you are welcome to get on board and let it change you; and be part of the action; get in on the fun; do something for the good of the cause – or not.”

God is going to God, if you will. And God is going to find people to prepare the way… to bear good fruit… to do God’s bidding… “God is able – even from a pile of stones – to fulfill God’s plan of redemption for all creation.”

And God has done it before… raised up children, I mean, to accomplish God’s will in and for the sake of the world.

And since we’re talking about Advent and getting ready for Christmas… and hopefully pondering and praying, now, about how we, ourselves, might help to prepare a way…. Just look at who and what God raised up in preparation for Jesus to show up that first time around. In those long, last days before Jesus’ birth, God was busy raising up stones and lifting up people and gifting all sorts of souls to work for the good of the cause.

God raised up a stone in Mary, who had every reason to say “no,” young, unmarried, peasant-girl that she was. But what looked like strikes against her were actually qualifications in the eyes of our God: poor, humble, meek, and weak (in the eyes of the world, anyway), Mary was just exactly the right stone to grow, carry, nurse and nurture the One who would learn from her about how to live, to thrive as, and to care for the poor, humble, meek, and weak in the world around him.

And God raised up another stone, too, in Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin and John the Baptist’s mother. Elizabeth was a companion and mentor for Mary in the early days of her pregnancy – an encourager, a confidante, a sister from another mister, someone too old to be having children, but pregnant by the grace of God, and someone with whom Mary could share this journey toward motherhood; a listening ear and faithful friend; a believer who believed what Mary told her and who confirmed what God was up to in their lives.

And God raised up another stone in Joseph, of course, who had to be suspicious about all of this, but who became more than just a step-dad, but a dad who stepped up, as the saying goes; who owned his role as Mary’s betrothed and as Jesus’ father when he could just as easily – and with righteous indignation and all the support of his people – walked away from it all and started over without the hassle.

And God raised up other stones, too: that innkeeper who had space and the gift of hospitality to share it; the shepherds who heard the Good News, had the faith, and went out of their way to confirm it; the wisemen, too, who had wisdom and used it and who had financial resources and shared them.

You get the point, right? Maybe you have the gift of companionship and encouragement, like Elizabeth did. Maybe you have the capacity for hospitality like the innkeeper or the ability to listen like the shepherds or financial resources, like the wisemen. Maybe you’re a stone of another kind altogether.

Each of us has a gift to give… each of us has more time and more ability than we need once we let the grace of God have its way with us… each of us is a stone God will raise up for the good of the cause – much to our surprise a lot of the time – for the blessing of the world and for the sake of the kingdom that was, that is and that is on the way.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.