Merry Un-Christmas

In Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice the math behind the un-Birthday. We only have one Birthday, but 364 possible un-Birthdays. Statistically you will do much better with the un-Birthdays.

The same math will hold true for Christmas. There are a lot more days that aren't Christmas than are. I'm not advocating that we should decorate the house, eat turkey (or our feast of choice) and exchange gifts every day, but the bedrock essentials of Christmas are there for the celebrating every day that we wake up.

Christmas highlights what God wants to give us each and every day; Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. Why wait until December 25th to enjoy these gifts? Why not bask in love on March 23, or live in joy on July 2?

When the last turkey sandwich is consumed, the tree relegated to its box and the decorations packed away for another year, the most important stuff will stay with us. God came to us, so that we could return to God. Today, tomorrow and tomorrow.

Have a blessed Christmas, and a very merry un-Christmas.

This whole Christmas thing

Every year about this time as the stores begin their onslaught of Christmas sales and people make their sacrifices to the gods of consumerism. Each year it becomes easier too. Once we had to actually go to the bank and take out money. Now we can simply swipe a card and, if the stress hasn't made us forget the PIN, we're done. Laden down with our bounty of stuff we head home to wrap the gifts, decorate the house and snarl at anybody with the temerity to disturb our celebration of peace and joy.

At the same time the "Put Christ back in Christmas" people come out in all their forms urging the world to remember that this whole thing is about a baby born in a manger whose name is Jesus. They are right. It is Jesus' birth we are celebrating. Without him we wouldn't have Christmas.

We would, however, probably still have some huge consumerist binge, but it would be called Solstice or Saturnalia, or some other catchy phrase. It's just that since the empire took over Christianity we have had a hard time separating ourselves as Christians from ourselves as inhabitants of a world that really doesn't believe the same things that we do.

I'm all for putting Christ back into Christmas, in my own personal life and in the life of the church which I serve. But can I really expect the Wal-mart employee who is not Christian to put Christ into their Christmas? While it is absolutely essential for people of faith to celebrate with faith, it is also necessary to recognize that we no longer rule the world. We are a minority.

I am not going to stop wishing people a Merry Christmas, because that would mean that people of other faiths and other celebrations would also have to stop. I will not stop reading the Christmas story in church and in my home, but I am not going to demand that Frosty and Rudolph be replace by the Little Drummer Boy and the Littlest Angel as specials on TV.

I truly believe that Christians were never meant to be the majority. We are supposed to the people on the edges who call out for justice and peace. If we become too strident about things that don't directly effect the Gospel, then we won't be listened to when it is really important.

So go ahead, put Christ back in Christmas, but put him back in Valentine's and St. Patrick's Easter and Canada Day or July 4. In fact put him back into every day you live - and that peace and joy we celebrate at Christmas may just last through the entire year.

Even through Christmas.

The end of the world as we know it.

Jesus is with his disciples in the temple and they admire the beauty of the temple. Jesus responds with the apocalyptic vision of the temple's destruction and the overturning of the world.

We are a people who aren't fond of the apocalyptic, leaving aside zombie movies. We like to think of our world continuing into the future much the same as it always has. This is why we have so much trouble with the idea of global warming. We hear the science and even see some of the effects, but it is so hard to think of giving up the second car, or no buying the tomatoes from the other side of the world, because it is what we are used to. We don't have the committment to act out of our intelectual knowledge of change.

On the other hand there are the people who say "Why bother?" If the world is going to end soon anyways, in 2012 or maybe 2013, or maybe it was last year and we slept through it. Why change? Why not continue to use plastic everything even if it is destroying the world we live in? Why not burn gas as fast as we can afford it? After all we don't really need the Gulf of Mexico, or the Arctic, or any part of Alberta outside the cities or ski resorts. Not if we don't live there.

But I figure it's like this: God gave us responsibility for this world. I expect we are going to be held to that. At some point we will need to answer for the fact that at the same time we are poisoning great swathes of creation, we are also concentrating wealth in ever bigger piles while people in the rest of the world starve, drown or die of preventable diseases. Those that aren't being killed in wars because they happen to live in countries that have something the insatiable appetite of the rich desires.

Poverty isn't going to be defeated by sending miniscule amounts of our wealth to other places to buy us some time free of guilt. It will be defeated by people who are willing to make major sytemic change in their own lives and in their communities.

So what does this have to do with the end of the world? If God is going to come and create a new heaven and a new earth, she is going to want to make sure that took proper care of the old one. Like a parent who lets their teen drive their old car. Destroying the car, either in a catastrophic wreck or by slowly accumulating dings, scratches and ignoring the warning lights will not convince your father that you should be allowed to drive the Rolls.

So whether we expect the world to end or not, whether we expect God to step in or not, we live in this world now and we'd better start taking care of it. After all that is where Jesus ends up in his talk with his disciples.

Between Memory and Hope

This Sunday is the one before Rememberance Day. While trying to make sense of readings that talk about the end of the world, we stop and remember the wars that mar our history and the people who fought because they felt they were called to defend the world from evil.

It is all too easy to look back and apply the complexity of Afghanistan and Iraq to the World Wars; to let our desire for peace outweigh our need to remember and thank those who served. The sad fact is that there was barely a pause after the "War to end all wars". We human beings, poor foolish mortals that we are, seem destined to claw and tear at ourselves while we justify ourselves with the rhetoric of necessity.

The people of Israel had been carried away into captivity, but now they were back. They were a pitiful remnant of themselves, trying to rebuild a temple for God, while their own people mocked their efforts. They were the defeated, the losers. They had been sent home, not in victory, but in pity. Where was God?

God saves that she is there, waiting. God doesn't demand victory, power, glory, but rather humility, patience, trust.

The other readings talk about the end of the world or life after death, but they too suggest that God's priorities are not ours. The end won't be anything like we expect it to be

I received a pamphlet from a group prophecying a great new revival of the church. This would be a church that would get it right this time, that really would follow God's will. I found it a little sad that they were able to brush off the efforts of all who've gone before. But they are living in the hope of God's pouring out of his Spirit. I imagine that they feel a great deal like the Israelites struggling to build a temple that they knew would be nothing like the old temple of their glory days.

On Remembranc Day we need to balance ourselves between our memory of the wounds of the past, and yes, the imagined glory of our victory in the World Wars, and the hope of a peace that will extend past the bounds of nationality to take in the entire world.

It's hard to be humble

Remember that old song "It's hard to be humble"? It's true, though not for the reasons the song had. The truth is that humility comes from standing on a razor's edge of self-consciousness and selflessness.

In the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector from this week's lectionary Jesus introduces us to two people through their prayers. The Pharisee's prayer is a congratulating God on doing such a good job of creating him. It is hardly a prayer of humility! On the other hand, the tax collector simply asks for mercy. Both prayers arise from the person's conscious view of themselves. The one as the epitome of righteousness, the other as a sinner.

This is where self-consciousness is important. Just how good are we? We may put on a good show, but do we really live as God would have us? How often do we compare ourselves somewhat smugly with those who don't, in our eyes, do as well as we do? When we are truthful with ourselves we are more like the tax collector than the pharisee.

Yet oddly, we can, if we stay in that place, form a perverse pride in how bad we are. We look around and are sure that no one is as great a sinner as we are. While it is true that we are hopeless sinners, so is everyone else!

This is where the selflessness comes in. After we confess our sin we are to turn away from ourselves and focus on God. Repentance doesn't do us much good if we turn in a full circle to end up facing the same old direction. Focusing on God instead of our self means that we are facing a new way and our feet are on a new road. As long as we focus on God and not on ourselves we keep our way straight.

Inevitably we look up one day and congratulate ourselves on being so good and the whole cycle starts again.

It really is hard to be humble.

Our God is a Stubborn God

I officiated at a funeral last week in which the adjective that most described the person we were celebrated was "stubborn". It was never said in a pejorative sense, but the family and others were very clear. This man was stubborn.

That got me thinking. There are a lot of stubborn people in the Bible. People who argue with God, who run away, who do their own thing in spite of anything that God might say. But that didn't take me far enough. I ended up talking about God's stubbornness.

After all we are talking about a person who kept on trying to make things with Israel work for centuries. God sends judges and prophets to shout, cry, whisper her love for the people. Always he is there waiting for them to turn around and finally see.

Then there is Jesus who surrounds himself with twelve men who just don't get what this whole dominion of God thing is about. He preaches, heals, tells stories, he even explains in words of one syllable and they still don't understand. Does he give up? Not a chance.

Then there is my own experience of God. Every time I tried to make a career anywhere else but in God's service I was patiently, but inevitably dragged back into the church. God out stubborned me (and that's a miracle in itself).

Paul talks about how God doesn't want anyone to be lost. Our God is a stubborn God. Stubborn in love. No matter how far we wander God stubbornly refuses to give up on us.

There is a reason we call God the rock of our salvation. He is as stubborn as a rock.

Money, faith and evil.

I got busy last week and didn't get the chance to talk about money in my blog. In one of the articles I read about the Lazarus and the Rich Man there was a challenge about how many times we preach about money without asking for it.

I decided I would take up the challenge. My take off line was Uncle Ben's line from Spiderman. "With great power comes great responsibility." By just changing one word in that line I had the theme of my sermon. "With great wealth comes great responsibility" We are, by any measure, a wealthy people. I talked about how we share, save and spend our money reveals our faith.

I hadn't really thought about it, but this week's readings take that notion of faith and responsibility a step further. The Hebrew Scriptures lament injustice and pain in the world. They lay the responsibility for that at God's feet, and God doesn't turn away from that. It isn't that God wills evil, but yet evil comes and God allows it. Yet we are told to wait and serve.

The Gospel reading talks about faith and waiting in service. So this week's sermon will be about a faith that is patient, but also a faith that serves. Our faith may not move mountains, but it will move us, and sometimes I think that is the greater task. While there is evil in the world it will find patient people of faith serving justice and waiting on God.

He did what?

The Gospel reading this week is a challenge to preachers everywhere. In Luke 16 Jesus tells the story of a dishonest manager who is about to be fired for his mismanagement of his wealthy boss's money. To stave off starvation because he is just not up for ditch digging or pan handling he goes to some of the people who owe his boss money and tell them to cut their bills. The boss commends the manager for his shrewdness.

The implication of the parable is that Jesus approves of the manager giving away his boss's money. The good guy is a bad guy in this story! What are we going to do with this?

I would start by saying that we shouldn't just avoid the story. The more a Bible reading makes us cringe, the more important it is that we look at it seriously and see what it is teaching us.

Who do we identify with? Probably the rich boss whose money is being given away. We take money so very seriously in our society, we can't help but get upset when it appears to be misappropriated. But what if the rich boss is God? What if we are the dishonest managers who have been living it up on our boss's tab? We've been putting a lot of money into ourselves - nice buildings, professional ministers who take care of us first. We've been using God's gifts to make our lives comfortable.

Now God is saying, "That's not what I had in mind." After all the church was created as a vehicle to spread God's mission of justice and peace. It can only justify its existence as long as the Gospel is being preached. So now we're in for it. God is going to heave us out on our ears and find someone else to spread that Gospel.

What do we do? We start giving away God's stuff. You know, the love, joy, peace, the forgiveness of sins, the keys to the kingdom, the invitation to the banquet. All the stuff that we've been keeping inside the church to keep it safe. Let's give it all away. Let's tell people that their debt to God has been canceled. We could even give away some of that stuff we've accumulated in God's name!

I think God would approve.

The joy of being lost.

One of the things that I like about traveling to new places is the possibility of getting lost and discovering new and perhaps wonderful places to explore. Yet the truth is that I am not really lost. I can always backtrack, consult a map or even ask directions. It may take me a while but I will get where I am going.

The kind of lostness described in the first two parables of the fifteenth chapter of Luke is of a different nature neither the sheep nor the coin have any ability to find themselves. The only way for them to be found is for someone to seek for them. We all have stories of people looking for lost things, my favourite personal story involves a diamond necklace and a landfill.

Yet I don't think that these parables are really about looking for what we value. Everybody will look for something that has value it is just common sense.

What strikes me in reading these stories this week is the sense that the apparent value of the things being sought is far out shadowed by the effort put into finding them. The entire focus of shepherd and woman becomes finding the lost.

The parables state that this is how God seeks for us, with total focus and abandon. The Good News is not just that God is looking for us, but that God values us which such fierceness and depth of love. It is as if for the time we are lost we are the only thing that matters to God.

To paraphrase Paul, should I lose myself so that God may seek me? By no means, yet to awaken myself to my present lostness will open my life to the infinite grace of God and the joy of being found.

Family Idol

I remember getting in terrible trouble while running a Bible study. I suggested that our culture had made an idol of the family. In many of our country's discussions of morals and relationships the family is held up as the essential unit of our society. We want to protect the family at all costs. It is amazing how many things can be frowned upon on the basis of protecting the family.

This isn't to say that the family isn't important. God created families to raise children and prepare them for the responsibilities of living faithfully in the world. Ironically stories of well adjusted families are scarce in scriptures. Truthfully we don't do much better. Though we have got better at acknowledging the damage that families can do to each other, we don't do much about creating healthy families.

What got me most in trouble was the idea that God asks us to put God above our family. In this Sunday's Gospel: Luke 14:25-33 Jesus challenges his listeners by saying they need to hate their families to follow him. Reading sermons and commentaries on this saying you will find that a lot of people try to explain away the word hate. We want to preserve the sanctity of the family, even when it appears that God is challenging it.

I would suggest that a lot of people hate their families, not all of them teenagers. People who look back on their lives as children and blame their parents for everything that is wrong with them. I have had to mediate between children as they argued around their mother's death bed.

Once we take away the family's sacred position and place it in it proper relationship to God. Things become clearer. Families are just as corrupted by our brokenness as any other relationship. To follow Jesus we need to be willing to leave behind all the things that we want to blame our failure on.

To really follow God leaves no space for other idols. We must give all our life to God. Paradoxically dedicated ourselves fully to God means that we will live more as more loving people in our other relationships, including those of our family. We are freed to see clearly, speak the truth in love and offer both confession and forgiveness.

I believe the only true way to save our families is to realize that they are NOT sacred. The only holiness in our relationships comes from God's love flowing through us, not from the nature of the relationship itself.

Jesus - the dinner guest from h...

The reading this week is about Jesus being invited to dinner. I find that a lot of people like to question the pharisee's motivation in inviting Jesus, but I think that's a red herring. If we can make the pharisees the bad guys in the story then what Jesus says to the pharisees doesn't really apply to us. We, after all, are the good guys. We follow Jesus. We do all the right things.

Yeah, right.

The truth is that the pharisees, like us are a mixed bunch. Some days they were close to getting it, other days they were way off. Pretty much like us.

So Jesus shows up for dinner and starts saying the kind of thing that make hosts cringe and swear they are never throwing another dinner party. He talks about place. Not physical place as much as social place. How important are we? Do other people think we're as important as we think we are? I think that Jesus saw at that party, as he would see at any of our gatherings, the kind of jostling for place that both reassures and terrifies us.

What if people don't like me? What if they do? Can I keep it up?

What Jesus is suggesting is not just a face saving strategy. Taking the lower seat may result in me being left in the lower seat - humiliating. I'm not worth as much as I thought I was. Rather what I hear him suggesting is that I am fighting for a seat at the wrong table. This isn't about my place in the worldly hierarchy of popularity and power. It is about my relationship with God.

If I measure myself against God, of course I am going to take the lowest seat. That's all I deserve, if I even deserve that. What God does is move me up to the head table, not because I belong there, but because God wants me there. The comments about the guest list are another hint. None of those people can reciprocate with anything but love, just as I can't give God anything but my love.

So the parable lifts me out of my concern for place in this world by assuring me that I have a place in God's world. Once I'm freed of that, I am freed to serve without fear of damaging my place in society. The only place that matters is my place with God.

Preaching the text.

I am trying an experiment and posting a bit about my thoughts on the text for the week. It won't necessarily be what I preach about, but that's OK. Preaching for me is part of an ongoing dialogue. It is like sitting in a coffee shop with God and a few friends kicking around ideas about what this life is about anyway. Most often the conversation flows sensibly, but every once in a while I find myself wondering what on earth I'm talking about and how did I get here? Funny things is that those are usually my most effective sermons.