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Homily – Luke 2.8-20, Blue Christmas, December 21, 2018

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

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One of the Christmas songs we do not sing tonight is “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”  Up until this year, I was mostly familiar with the first verse, which says, “Peace on the earth, good will to men,” and “The world in solemn stillness lay to hear the angels sing.”  Those words have always felt more like an aspiration than my reality.  I do not know about you, but the holidays are rarely a time of stillness and peace for me.

But this year, I stumbled on a verse of this song that is not in our hymnal.  The verse says, “And you, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low, who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow; look now, for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing; oh, rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing!”

One of the challenges about Christmas is that we can sometimes lose our place.  When we listen to the old carols, we either hear songs of peaceful silence or we hear songs of beautiful, glorious praise.  The same is true of our secular experiences of Christmas.  We are filled with retouched nostalgic memories, with songs that tell us we should be rockin’ around Christmas trees, or cozying up with loved ones.  But sometimes Christmas is none of those things.  Instead Christmas is a time when the gap between our reality and the projection of all the things we should be feeling grows ever wider.

I think that is why I was captivated by this extra verse of “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”  “And you, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low, who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow; look now, for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing; oh, rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing!”  Suddenly, the otherworldliness of the angels are there for us too.  Whether life feels like a crushing load, whether your daily toil is bringing you down, or whether you are just weary, the song invites us rest by the weary road – because the angels have a song for us too.

I used to serve at a church where Christmas was the pinnacle of events.  Families would wear evening gowns and tuxedos to church, they would send their servants to reserve rows of seats, and the coat rack was full of fur coats.  Christmas was another soiree in their perfectly formed lives, and church was host of their glamorous party.  But what always amused me about that experience was the contrast between their polished, perfect lives, and the rustic, imperfect story of the angels and shepherds.  I wondered if they understood the ironic contrast of their experience and scripture’s experience.  What did they know of being crushed beneath life’s load, the toil of taking painful, slow steps, and the weary road?

Not until many years later did I realize that the weariness of life can infect anyone.  Those in tuxedos and evening gowns were struggling with broken marriages, estranged family members, and the grief of death as much as someone gathered in a candlelit historic chapel.  Those whose servants went to reserve a seat in church were just as lonely, unfulfilled, and afraid as those who are servants.  Those whose fur coats lined the coat racks were experiencing a sense of failure, a lack of fulfillment, and a longing for meaning as much as someone slipping quietly into a service like tonight.  Weariness affects the donkey who carries a pregnant Mary; the shepherds who keep watch all night; the innkeeper who feels pulled in many directions with no vacancies to accommodate need; with Josephs who are on a path they did not choose, but who feel obligated to be faithful; and with Marys who say yes and hold hope, even though the dread of impending suffering is almost palpable.[i]

You see the angels came not to a perfect world, to a perfect people, delivering perfectly good news.  The angles came to a weary world, with weary people, delivering good news that would not dismiss our weariness, but relieve our weariness.  That is why I love this service so much.  I love our Blue Christmas service because Christmas is all about a wearied people, with a crushing load, with painful steps, welcoming a savior who gives us hope that we will not be weary forever, that God will walk our weary roads alongside us.

On this night, I share this blessing for all of us:  “May the world slow down enough this season for you to catch a glimpse of a star in the sky and a light on the horizon.  May the earth pause enough for you to catch the faint sound of a baby’s cry on the wind and the song of the angels through the trees.  May the slow time of Christmas night bring joy to you, and hope, and light, and more than anything else, rest to your waiting spirit.  All you, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low, who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow; look now, for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing; oh, rest beside the weary road and hear the angels sing!”[ii]  Amen.

[i] Melissa Bills, “All This Weary World,” December 18, 2018, as found at https://youngclergywomen.org/all-this-weary-world/ on December 18, 2018.

[ii] Bills.

On Cars and Change…

27 Wednesday Sep 2017

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Photo credit:  https://orlandoespinosa.wordpress.com/2015/12/09/to-everything/

This weekend we got a new car and traded in my old car.  My old car was fifteen years old and had almost 180,000 miles.  We would have kept the car longer, but there were too many expensive fixes to make repairing the car worth the car’s value.  Normally, people get pretty excited about a new car – all the old dents and scratches are gone, and in my case, I can now be certain I won’t be break down on the highway.  But mostly I have been a bit sad about having to get rid of the old car.  That car helped us get through three rounds of graduate school, four moves, multiple jobs, the birth of two children, and was only six months younger than our marriage.  The car survived endless road trips, commutes to work, and at one point was our shared car until we got a second car.  Although the car had started making me anxious with all its repair needs, I felt like I was saying goodbye to a good, faithful friend.

As I have been reflecting on that experience, I have been thinking my experience with my old and new car is similar to how we all experience change.  Most of us know that change in inevitable, and yet most of us do not like change.  Even if the thing we are changing from is good for us, we miss the old quirks, patterns, and sense of regularity.  And the further out of the familiar we get, the more epic the memory of what once was becomes.  This is often the point at which people begin to refer to the “good ol’ days,” or “the way things used to be.”  Whatever the new change is will rarely seem as good as the old standard.

I have been feeling that way about my new car.  Sure, it is more reliable, it has fewer things peeling, sagging, or just broken, and it is more sporty, shiny, and colorful.  But I am finding I am not yet sold.  The new car just does not feel like it fits yet.  Observing my feelings about my car has been especially helpful for me as I think about all the times I have introduced change at church.  Sure, whatever changes I have introduced are usually for the good, and most often, become the new “way we have always done it.”  But falling in love with the new change takes time.  It does not happen overnight.

Perhaps this may be a good way we can approach our relationship with God.  The Holy Spirit is God’s agent of change.  She is always whispering new ideas, blowing new people into our lives, and breathing life into our imaginations.  Listening to the movement of the Holy Spirit is exciting, fun, and invigorating.  But boldly following the Holy Spirit also needs to involve tending to the grief of letting go of the what the Spirit was doing before.  The writer of Ecclesiastes says, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”  I wonder what seasons are passing away in your life, and what new times are arriving for you.  My prayer for you is that you be able to appreciate the season you are in, let go of the seasons that have passed, and embrace the seasons that are yet to come.  I know the Holy Spirit is doing good things in you.  I cannot wait to walk with you in the twists and turns!

Homily – Isaiah 25.6-9, Cemetery Memorial Service, December 20, 2014

14 Wednesday Jan 2015

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Our Cemetery Memorial Service has become one of my favorite services of the year.  That may sound a little strange to you, but what I like about this service is the service’s honesty.  This time of year, there is a lot of dishonesty floating around:  the notion that buying things can make you happy, the assumption that everyone has abundant food this time of year, and even the idea that there is such a thing as the perfect family, the perfect Christmas, or the perfect life.  We see glossy ads, hear songs about loving, joyful Christmases, and watch movies that package Christmas with a pretty bow.  Though most of us know in the depths of our hearts that there is no such thing as a perfect Christmas experience, no one wants to talk about that reality.  We prefer that everyone stay in their lane, and put on a happy face.  Perhaps we have even convinced ourselves that we can “fake it ‘til we make it.”  In other words, if we say we are happy and that everything is perfect at Christmas, perhaps we and Christmas will become so.

But instead of buying into the Christmas hype, the Church tells another story today.  Simply by gathering us together as mourners, the Church acknowledges the pain and sadness that is often right below the surface at this time of year.  While others are decking the halls, rocking around the Christmas Tree, and having a holly, jolly Christmas, the Church invites us in, and encourages us to acknowledge the other part of Christmas – the part that is hard, sad, or empty.  We make space for grief, for honoring a loved one, and for acknowledging a sense of absence.  I have especially been grateful for that gift this year.  About a month ago, our family lost a grandfather.  He had lived a full, long life, and we know that he is at peace with the Lord.  But his absence is more obvious in the small parts of life.  Upon flying out for the funeral, my husband realized this would be the first time his grandfather would not meet him at the airport.  As we have prepared for holiday treats, we realized that our annual box of chocolates would not be arriving from him this year.  As we send out Christmas cards, I realized I would need one less card this year.  And those are just the things related to our family.  St. Margaret’s also lost a long-time parishioner this month – one who had been a major presence in our ministry here, whose bed I sat next to as we said prayers in his last days.  In addition to the grief of his family, our entire community is mourning the hole that he left.  Add into that grief the grief felt all over the world from violence, war, and hunger, and we come here today with much to offer up to God.

Of course, that is what I bring into this place today.  And each of you has your own story:  of wives, fathers, and daughters lost; of patriarchs in your family and of children whose lives were ended too soon; of lives well-lived and of lives barely lived at all.  To each of us, the Church says today that our mourning and our sadness are okay.  The Church creates this window of time where we can stop, be still, and know that God is with us.  The Church acknowledges the imperfect nature of this holiday, and celebrates anyway.

That is why I love the words we heard from the prophet Isaiah today.  The text says, “On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.  And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.  Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.”  What is so inviting about the words from Isaiah today is that they put our experiences in perspective.  Yes, our Christmas meals may not be utter perfection.  But God is preparing a feast for us that is more perfect than anything we could ever prepare ourselves.  Any darkness we feel now will be swallowed up by God.  Any tears we shed will be wiped away by our Lord.  Any sadness we feel at the dinner table will be eclipsed by the pure and holy joy we will find at God’s feast of rich food and well-aged wines.  Our loved ones are already enjoying that feast ahead of us.  Our joy is that we too are promised the opportunity to join them at the heavenly banquet when our time comes.

So this Christmas, give yourself permission to experience Christmas imperfectly.  Give yourself permission to be both joyful and sad.  Give yourself permission to lean into God when you need the strength to carry on.  And know, that maybe, just maybe, if you allow yourself to focus on the much grander feast that is to come and that already is for our loved ones, maybe you will find smiling a little easier.  Maybe you will find moments of joy that shine light into the darkness.  Maybe you will even find the ability to let yourself laugh and sing and to celebrate this imperfect holiday.  That is my wish for each of you.  That the blessing of this night will create a small, steady flame that warms and encourages you in the days and weeks to come.  Amen.