Advent - Year C -- 2018
Indexed by Date. Sermons for Advent Year C
Jeremiah 33: 14-16
Psalm 25
Luke 21: 25-36
On Monday I decided that I would take advantage of the break in the snowy weather and put up my Christmas lights and clean my gutter on the front of the house. As some of you know, my neighbour has a huge weeping willow! To my surprise there was very little to clean out of the gutter this year. As I climbed up and down the ladder to clip the lights on though, I noted that there was not much sign of life in my flower beds. And, the wee maple tree, on my side lawn, all 5 inches tall, has no leaves. The shrubs are all down to twigs but have a lot more of those twigs than this time last year. Psssss DON’T TELL THE DEER. Let them eat at Charlie and Sandra’s house!!!
Yet, I know that things are as they should be, and in the spring the twigs will bud and then produce leaves, I will have crocuses and daffodils and eventually tulips and hosta, and other perennials without any further intervention on my part. My forsythia will bloom and my privet hedge will leaf out and, I hope, begin to grow together. Despite obvious signs of climate change, things were as they should be in my garden in late November.
Welcome to Advent. Advent is a time of waiting, a time when we focus on the age old promises of God to bring light and hope to a world mired in despair and darkness. ((While our Northern Hemisphere assumptions about Advent happening as the days are becoming shorter and Christmas happening just after the days start to become longer, don’t work in places south of the Equator such as New Zealand and Australia, the images and associations work so well for us. They have to find different analogies for the ones that are so obvious to us. I don’t think the Aussies have ever considered moving Christmas to June!))
Right now in Nova Scotia, right now in Canada, right now in our part of the world, the signs of winter are all around us. Right now the weather forecast is important for our planning. How many cms of snow? How many mm of freezing rain? What is the wind chill? What will the roads be like? Did you get your snow tires on yet? We had better set storm dates for our important meetings. Right now it gets dark so early, and it will be even earlier by the 21st.
We have to live in the right now. It would not do for us humans to go to bed and hibernate till spring; at least I don’t recommend it.
I suspect that a lot of people outside of the church have never heard of Advent. I saw a chocolate Advent calendar advertised and it started on December 1; it’s obviously not the “church’s” advent. When people talked about “waiting” for Christmas in the recent past it was the hope that stores would “wait” till after Remembrance Day to put up their Christmas Decorations. Since then it’s as if Christmas was already here! Of course, the stores are trying to sell stuff for “the big day”. It’s Christmas shopping that puts stores into the black, they tell us. We find it impossible to wait for “the big day”. We know that 99.9% of Christmas parties and gatherings happen before Christmas! By the 26th and certainly the 27th we’re so tired we cant take it anymore. !
A lot of people in the church don’t like Advent because it makes US wait. When I was in theological school, for example, I was trained to NOT sing Christmas Carols till Christmas eve and then to sing them with gusto for 12 days! Since the school, like most universities, was closed for the most of the Christmas season, we did not celebrate Christmas in worship. We had an “Advent Service” in December, close to the end of term. There were certainly no Christmas Carols at the Advent Service!
Sometimes though, stuff you learn in school does not work in “church land” no matter how hard you try! So we WILL have Christmas Carols. BUT, I will still try to keep as much to the themes and purposes of Advent as possible.
What is Advent for anyway? Well Advent is the first season in the cycle of church life we call, “The Liturgical Year/Church Year”. It is followed by Christmas, then Epiphany, then the Epiphany Season, then Lent, then Easter, (which is 50 days, by the way), then Pentecost, then the season of Pentecost which is punctuated by the season of Creation, and then after some more Pentecost season we are back to Advent. It goes around and around like that, over and over again.
Advent 1 is like New Year’s Day. Advent is a season of 4 weeks which looks forward both to the new year that is dawning and to the rest of the future. Advent looks forward, not only to “baby Jesus” but also to the “fulfilment” of the promises of the “Prince of Peace”. On this first Sunday of Advent it is as if we receive FOUR invitations: to tell the truth, to yearn, to wait and to notice.
FIRST , the invitation to tell the truth. Advent is not for the faint-hearted. Advent requires that we wrestle wit the world “as it is” not the “world as we want it to be”.
Our passages for today talk about the “sad state of affairs,” yet they do so in the light of the hope offered by the Good News of God.
We are warned that there are no “quick fixes” and what will be required is a dedicated adherence to the call of God. Putting our heads in the sand and ignoring a problem rarely fixes anything.
The prophet Jeremiah was the embodiment of God’s hope in the midst of despairing conditions. He wrote his words of hope from a prison cell in a city under siege. He was also the prophet who made a public show of buying a piece of land, again in a war-torn country, as a sign of hope in the ultimate victory of his nation. We are told that this hope is like a healthy branch that springs from a tree stump. This branch is no mere “sucker” trying feebly for life, but one which will grow into a new and healthy tree in its own right; a tree of justice and righteousness. The Hebrew tradition had long believed that the role of the King, the role of the nation, was to protect those who could not protect themselves. The Hebrew tradition was not a “dog eat dog”, “survival of the fittest” one, but a way of life in which the success of the one was tied to the success of the many.
When we look at our world today we need to realize that the ravages of global warming, particularly the rise in sea levels, are hitting impoverished coastal people the hardest. There may be a high price for us to reduce our carbon emissions, for example, but the costs are already being paid by the poor island nations of the world. Part of the call of God is to take a broader look at the problems we face. It’s not about looking after ourselves first; it’s about the call to care for all of creation at the same time.
It would be nice if there was no poverty. It would be nice if the “peace on earth and good-will to all” we proclaim at Christmas was actually a reality wouldn’t it. Yes, as a people of faith we are called to “yearn” for the days when things are as they could be, if everyone just paid attention and lived lives of faithfulness.
So, the SECOND invitation is the one to yearn. This invitation is a call to truly believe that this dark ol’ world could be better. The call to yearn for God’s way is a call to truly believe that God’s vision at creation was of a better world and that this better world can come about. This world plagued by global warming and crushing poverty and violence is not the world as God created it. It is not the world God wills.
To those who have responded to the invitation to yearn is also given the will to do what has been thought impossible. 50 years ago this month the Apollo 8 crew blasted off from Cape Canaveral with the goal of leaving earth’s orbit, going around the moon and returning to earth with three living astronauts. Those of you who are older than I am will be able to remember the long series steps that went before this mission. It was a rocky road of triumph and tragedy; it was a road of “if at first you don’t succeed.”
In the 1960s the Apollo program was seen as a sign of hope, if not to a weary world, (there was a space race with the USSR, after all) to a weary nation coping with the war in Vietnam, the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and the feeling that the USA was coming apart at the seams. There was something about the sheer difficulty of the task at hand that captivated the public imagination in such a way that when this had been accomplished, people felt that anything was possible.
THIRD and probably most difficult is the invitation to wait. One of the things that is most difficult for small children at this time of year is the waiting. How many sleeps till “Santa” comes? By the time the 24th arrives the children are so wound up and the parents so exhausted that its hard to have the energy to enjoy the day.
It might help to say that we are not waiting for some mystical being who brings nice toys to good girls and boys. It might also help to say that we aren’t just waiting for the baby in the manger. We are waiting for the promises to come true that are implied and explicit in the goodness of creation.
This tired old world is not the way God wants it to be, yet it will not be re-born over night. This is not the Harry Potter universe; Dumbledore, the master of spells will not wave a magic wand and fix everything in an instant.
FOURTH is the invitation to notice. To be an Advent people we must also respond to the invitation to notice. All too often we go through life without paying enough attention. Have you ever set out to drive somewhere that you drive frequently and then got thinking about other things on your way when you realized all of a sudden that you were there! What about the exits and the traffic lights and the right and left turns required along the way? You must have made them because you are there, but ..........
We take a lot of things for granted. We take too many things for granted.
I spoke a few moments ago about the space mission that took place 50 years ago. Taking pictures of the earth wasn’t on their “to do” list. Thankfully, one of the astronauts fit it in. He took the time to notice the things humans had never seen before. One of the astronauts commented later that they should have “sent the poets” because only poetry could describe the immensity of what they were doing.
By now, we are so accustomed to pictures of earth from space that we sometimes fail to notice how special and beautiful this planet we call “home” actually is. Joni Mitchell sang,
Don't it always seem to go, That you don't know what you've got til its gone”
A classmate, living near Calgary, but originally from Newfoundland, stood on my doorstep in PEI, breathing deeply. It had been a long time since he had smelled salt air! I hadn’t really noticed.
We look at very beautiful things every day and we don’t notice. When I first turn on my string of lights, on my house, each bulb will symbolize the hope that Advent brings to us. One light, or even the whole string, is barely noticeable during the day but the difference they make in the dark cannot be overestimated. What a difference! We are called to notice the difference little lights can make.
The hymn, “A Candle is Burning,” begins, “A candle is burning, a flame warm and bright, a candle of hope in December’s dark night ....”
We are an Advent people. We don’t believe that the world as it exists has the last word!
Let us live as if we believe in the promise of light.
Amen.
Malachi 3: 1-4
Luke 1: 68-79
Luke 3: 1-6
In the 67th year of the reign of Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom, Canada and Her other Realms & Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith , and when the Rt. Hon Justin Trudeau was Prime Minister of Canada, the Hon. Stephen McNeil was Premier of Nova Scotia, Abraham Zebian was Warden of the Municipality of the District of West Hants, he Rt. Rev Richard Bott was Moderator of the United Church of Canada, the Rev Catherine MacDonald President of the Maritime Conference, the Rev Tom Woods the Chairperson of the Valley Presbytery (sorry, I could not find his real picture) and the Rev Beth Johnston, minister of the Hantsport Pastoral Charge, the Congregation of Avon United Church gathered for worship and heard a story from a long ago time.
As shorter way of nailing down this moment as precisely as possible, I could also have substituted what I said with “on December 9, 2018 the Congregation of Avon United Church gathered for worship and heard a story from a long ago time”. Having a calendar that does not depend upon particular political situations and is followed by almost everyone on the planet, makes things much simpler especially if you are a person who likes to remember dates.
Of course, it’s not the dates themselves that are important, but the events to which they become attached. September 10, 1939 was like any other day - the sun rose and set - but it was also the day the Governor General of Canada signed into law a declaration of War.
December 6, 1989 , was like any other day except that 14 women died because they dared to study engineering.
A friend told me recently of his experience of travelling by air on September 11, 2001. Who can forget that date? He obviously had quite a different trip than if he had been flying the day before. Air travel has not been the same since!
Biblical scholars tell us that the names in the beginning of the passage from Luke’s gospel were of people who were so “famous” that everyone expected that they would be famous forever. Now, all that most of us know about them is because of the one John was speaking of: Jesus of Nazareth. Their fame has been overshadowed by Jesus, a boy born to a poor family in a remote corner of the mighty Roman Empire. So ironic, isn’t it. Jesus importance has far surpassed that of these powerful people.
In high school I learned a poem called “Ozymandias” (by Percy B Shelley) and was quite taken by it.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
In just a few years we have seen statues topple - literally, as regimes and sensibilities change. Things which we once thought permanent have disappeared. Of course, this has been going on for as long as human civilization as the sands of time drift and hide things (as in the case of the Great Sphinx of Giza, which was once all but forgotten and buried in sand,) and changing politics (with the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein 2003 to the fall of Berlin wall in 1989).
We sometimes look at the “Bible times” as “long ago and much simpler,” but they were far from it. Living under Roam occupation was no walk in the park! Poverty and oppression was taken for granted unless you were a member of the privileged elites who had managed to work out a cosy deal with the Romans - but in exchange for part of their souls.
Into this context comes the good news of Jesus of Nazareth. I realize that the way we tell the story at this time of year can be a little confusing as we start with John’s proclamation (when his cousin Jesus was about 30), and THEN we go on to tell the story of Jesus’ birth.
The words of the prophet that John uses compare his ministry with the work of building or improving a road to make it easier for an important dignitary to go somewhere in style, and more easily.
We all know about road building and road improvement. When I was in elementary school they paved the road that went by my house. First, I think. they surveyed and then they tore down a few buildings which were in the way (Mrs Duck’s barn and a building my father owned which had once been a black smith’s shop were both bulldozed), then they levelled the road which involved taking dirt from a hill and a field which was above the road and carrying all that dirt to the road to make it higher. Meanwhile they had to deal with the nearby Winter River (we called it “The Creek”. They put a long culvert to serve as a bridge just underneath the one that was there (and dynamited the old one off the top when they were finished). (((By the way, setting off dynamite is fun when you are in grade 6. I think the work crew would get in real trouble today if they let a bunch of kids help them blow up a bridge!)))
With the twinning of the 101 near Windsor in the next few years, we will be seeing lots of examples of earth moving and highway straightening.
Building roads is work, and it requires both “know-how” and effort. You have to pay attention to both minute details and the “big picture”. I saw a picture on the internet one day of a bridge somewhere where something had gone wrong during construction. They started from each side but the spans were offset and could not be easily joined. I remember that when the Confederation Bridge was “connected” in November of 1996, there was no such problem!
Of course, ferries are still part of travelling from place to place in the Maritimes . I seem to recall that when the MV Confederation arrived in service on the PEI to Nova Scotia run it was discovered that one of the docks , build specially for that particular ferry, was the wrong size and had to be modified before it could be used! I guess the boat engineer and the dock engineer had a different measuring tape.
John the Baptizer styled himself as one of those who was doing the work to prepare the way for Jesus to begin his ministry among them.
The message for me is that this preparing for Jesus is not something that John did at a time in history and was then complete, but it is something we have to do in the here and now. When we style our spiritual lives after the “church year” we participate in a yearly cycle or preparing for the coming of Christ, over and over again.
We all know what often happens to “New Year’s Resolutions”; they don’t last long! Maybe we should have shorter years?
We all know about getting ready for Christmas. I talk to a lot of people about “getting ready for Christmas” and the conversation is often about what they are planning (or not) to give their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren this year. Having 5 children isn’t so bad, but then you add 25 grandchildren, and 50 great grandchildren can become pricey when it comes to gift giving! Then there are all those plans for hosting the family meal. More than one family borrows church tables - how else can you feed 15, 20, or more people. Some feel pressured to host because they are the only one with a house big enough. Someone tries to organize just who is bringing what to the meal? When will it be? For couples who are from different places, when will each set of grandparents be visited? Will they visit us?
By the way, in case you forgot, Christmas comes at the darkest time of year when we are just as likely to get dumped with freezing rain, or 30 cms of snow, or temperatures of -30 or ALL OF THE ABOVE within 24 hours! Staff parties, church functions, gatherings of other groups, and the requisite gift exchange. all crowd in there and we end up exhausted, cranky and not feeling a lot like Christmas long before it’s “over.”
The United Church has responded to the question. “What do I buy for someone who has everything they both want and need, at least of the things that I can afford to buy them?” with: you could consider NOT buying them anything!
We have a “Gifts with Vision” catalogue by which you can give a gift to honour your friends but give it to someone who can probably make better use of the effort. Many charities have such catalogues. A number of years ago one of my church families gave me a donation for our benevolent fund - the adults pooled the money they would use for the adult gift exchange and gave me for gifts for a family with children.
I remember when I was ordained the Maritime Conference UCW presented each of us with a card. Before I opened the card I thought, “wonderful, I can buy more books”, and I had some in mind. What I received instead was a card telling me they had given a gift to the Mission and Service Fund in all of our names. They did this every year as a way of expressing appreciation for our future leadership and supporting the work of the wider church. It reminded me of the important ministry to the wider church carried out by the UCW and how much I owed the church for their part in my education and training. Today is white gift Sunday and our white gifts will go to the Hantsport Food Bank.
But what about the rest of the year. Maybe its time to step back from what I saw referred to recently as, “the tinselld nostalgia” of Christmas and focus more on what it was Jesus came to do, and have us do, the other 11 ½ months of the year. Surely Jesus did not want us to go to the lengths we do to celebrate his birthday, even if it is a huge gift to a reputable charity, but then happily ignore his teachings the rest of the year.
Jesus did not come to support the status quo; few, if any, prophets did. Jesus came to call the people back to the vision of Creation that prophets had been speaking of for generations. The prophets did not call the people to work harder, to become wealthier and to drive the competition out of business with deeper pockets, but envisioned a world where the poor and vulnerable were cared for and people were valued not for what they could produce but for who they were: “a child of God”.
A lot of people who become suddenly unemployed or who retire have a hard time dealing with their self image - they are accustomed to seeing their own value in what they do, make or produce.
Yet, we value children for who they are, not just their potential - why not help create a society which values everyone. In the early church it was the widows and orphans who were the focus of the church’s outreach. Their society had shut them out and the church sought to close that gap.
We don’t live in the wilderness, nor in the past or future. We live in the here and now in Nova Scotia, Canada (or most of us do). We live in an era of heated debates over what to do, if anything, about climate change, poverty, previously ignored parts of our history, and the list goes on.
Advent is a time to connect our faith and our actions with the hope of the Gospel - NOT just the birth of baby Jesus but with the proclamation that Jesus came in order that all people would have life, and have it in abundance.
May we make this our new year’s resolution this Advent and for the next 51 weeks.
Ame
NO SERMON -
Micah 5: 2-5a
Luke 1: 47-53
Luke 1: 39-45
Long ago, when I was the age that teenage girls earn money babysitting, I babysit for a family that knew my oldest brother through selling Amway. The first time I babysat them in the evening, I was asked to make sure the boys said their prayers before bed. I asked if “Now I lay me down to sleep” and the “Lord’s Prayer” were ok and the parents said that they were. At bedtime though, the younger boy would have none of it. He was learning the “Hail Mary” in Catechism at the Catholic Church and insisted that we use that one. The look on his face when I told him that I did not know it, was priceless. To him, church was church, and all grownups had to know the “Hail Mary”! I was not off the hook. He quickly produced an illustrated version for small children. I learned it along with him.
Of course, the “Hail Mary” has its origin in several scripture passages, one of which was read today.
Here we are less than 48 hours from Christmas Day. All that’s left for us to do, as a church, is to come back tomorrow night to hear the story once again and to sing those carols once again. You’re ready for Christmas, right?
About the only thing I dislike about the NS CBC broadcasts are the tedious and seemingly endless Halifax traffic reports, both in the early morning and in later afternoon. “There is a broken down bus on Gottingen, take another route if you can.” “The construction on such and such a street it finished so you CAN take that one tonight.” “For those of you trying to get off the peninsula, the next phase of the ‘Big Lift’ is started so you cant take the MacDonald during these hours!” So, I guess, if you are listening to this while in traffic, breathe, breathe deeply; you know you won’t get through this green or the next either; something up ahead is slowing things down. Breathe deeply. Might as well let that car in! Breathe deeply.
Now, imagine being caught in a traffic snarl and looking over at a new apartment complex displaying a large sign: “If you lived here, you’d be home now.” I suspect that the sign may have enticed some people to move to that very apartment (or condo) complex or at least to move closer to the city. The majority just leave early, plan ahead, and know all the alternate routes.
I suspect we have all been on a car trip with a child who whines, “Are we there yet?” “How much further?” I often ask myself that! For example, I’d love to be able to get to my sister’s in an hour, but that ain’t gonna happen so I guess I just have to get used to the journey and enjoy the sights as much as safely possible.
As a child, I hate, hate, hated, waiting for Christmas and the days got longer the closer Christmas day came. Now an extra week, or even just a day or two would be really welcome - and not to fit in extra stuff, but just to get the stuff done I’ve already planned on doing.
Whether we like it or not, whether we are ready or not, we ARE almost there and Christmas will come in two days - it always December 25.
Friends of mine were expecting a baby. Like most people they probably had about 9 months warning. They knew, as we all do, that you need an approved car seat in which to transport your baby home from the hospital. Thy bought a seat all right, but when they were ready to go home with their new baby, the seat was still not “installed”. It happened to be my regular hospital visiting day and when I saw the mom, she was sitting in the lobby with the baby in the portable part of the seat and he was outside, in the pick-up zone trying to get the base “installed” in the car. It wasn’t as easy a job as he’d thought it would be.
Babies don’t wait until you get around to it. They arrive, ready or not. There’s a lot to do to get ready, especially for the first one. But, of course, the baby’s birth is just the beginning of a life-time of being a parent. Having a baby changes just about everything in a family, or it should! These changes are lasting.
Christmas is not, or rather should not, be just a one day event. It is part of our Christian year - our yearly cycle of expectation and fulfilment - Christmas should last all year.
Of course I am not advocating 365 days of eating and drinking ourselves silly and spending our way to bankruptcy. What I am advocating is taking the promise of new life seriously enough that we allow it to change our lives permanently.
If you look at the passages we read at this time of year, I mean , REALLY look at them - you see they are about world shattering change.
Peace on earth.
Good will to all people.
Living in security.
The proud being scattered; the lowly raised.
The hungry - eating their fill.
The usually well fed - going without.
The promise of greatness - being fulfilled.
The true joy of - a prophet with the audacity to proclaim these changes even before the one bringing them is born.
The reality is that we are often quite willing to settle for the greeting card Christmas. Our cards depict baby Jesus, shepherds, stables, wise men, angels and stars BUT IT’S ALL GONE BY JANUARY. Then all our decorations are packed away in tissue paper and bubble wrap for another 11 months. In some ways we like it like that. We couldn’t take any more than we have of Christmas! (The turkey and tinsel and gifts part, that is!)
What would happen though if we took the promises seriously; if we really and truly expected these promised things to happen.
One of the messages of Christmas is that this birth is miraculous, it is God’s doing. While that may be true, these promises certainly required human response. Mary had to say “yes” to the angel’s announcement. Mary (and Joseph) would not have had an easy row to hoe. Maybe that is why Luke tells us that she took off for the hills to see her relative. Surely, in the home of a priest there would be the possibility that the divine promise would be believed. Who could have imagined that the aged couple would have their own miracle baby on the way! The text tells us that even Elizabeth’s unborn child recognized that Mary was carrying the child of promise.
The promises of “peace on earth” will not come about by God erecting an enormous, invisible bullet-proof, missile-proof, biological weapons- proof shield between waring parties. (But we know what the promise of Christmas and the song, “Silent Night” did to a world at war in 1914, if only for a day). God is not a Dumbledore, “Master of Spells,” waving a magic wand so that not only does fighting stop but also true peace reins. And there are not, invisible to most, “house elves” to do it for us. Sorry if you’re not familiar with the Harry Potter series!
The promise of everyone being fed will not happen by 3 square meals a day appearing out of thin air on people’s doorsteps.
The atmosphere and inter-linked systems of that make up our weather will not heal themselves while we continue to assault them with more and more pollution.
The birth of Jesus is a call to embrace the good news of taking hold of God’s vision for the world. For generations prior to Jesus, God had raised up prophets to call people back into a relationship with the divine. After generation upon generation of this not working, we are told, Jesus was sent to bring about a new kind of relationship, written on the heart, not just on a piece of paper. When hearts change by the power of the Holy, people change and changed people can change the world.
Christmas can and should change us - its not that we can save the world through human effort but that through the power of the babe of Bethlehem, we can let God.
A long time ago I read a book by the then Moderator, to be perfectly formal, The Rt Rev Lois Wilson, (if I were to run into her today, I would call her Lois.) in which she reflected on her travels to various developing countries in the light of the gospel message. In this book she indicated that the text we call “the Magnificat” is banned in some places because it is too dangerous, The hope expressed in it is too concrete, too real. She surmised that the leaders are afraid that “if the people know what God wants, they will join God.” Too much hope is a dangerous thing! She was reflecting on the late 1970s Brazil, but when the British ruled India, the Magnificat was prohibited from being sung in churches. Similarly, during the "Dirty War" in Argentina, after the “mothers of disappeared” children put up posters with the words of the Magnificat, the military junta banned all public displays of the song. It’s better to keep religion all, “pie in the sky, by and by”!
But is it? Is that what we really believe?
Surely peace on earth and good will to all means something in the here and now. And surely, if it means something in the here and now if means something in January and February and the rest of the non-Christmas season.
Jan Richardson, wrote
The Messiah is coming! So make haste. Be blessed. And magnify the Lord. A Blessing Called Sanctuary You hardly knew how hungry you were to be gathered in, to receive the welcome that invited you to enter entirely— nothing of you found foreign or strange, nothing of your life that you were asked to leave behind or to carry in silence or in shame. Tentative steps became settling in, leaning into the blessing that enfolded you, taking your place in the circle that stunned you with its unimagined grace. You began to breathe again, to move without fear, to speak with abandon the words you carried in your bones, that echoed in your being. You learned to sing. But the deal with this blessing is that it will not leave you alone, will not let you linger in safety, in stasis. The time will come when this blessing will ask you to leave, not because it has tired of you but because it desires for you to become the sanctuary that you have found-- to speak your word into the world, to tell what you have heard with your own ears, seen with your own eyes, known in your own heart: that you are beloved, precious child of God, beautiful to behold, and you are welcome and more than welcome here.
May it be so this Christmas and every day.
Amen