Jesus: The Missing Years: Speaking to the Soul, December 30, 2021

Luke 2:41-52

The gospels aren’t very helpful when it comes to learning about who and what influenced Jesus growing up. We get a picture of a mother who sings out a song of resistance and justice just after she becomes pregnant, but that story is only found in Luke’s gospel.

The Scripture choices of the Revised Common Lectionary don’t help either. If your parish is observing the 2nd Sunday after Christmas, the RCL gives you THREE options for the gospel this year. When I first started using the RCL with a group, one of the attendees caustically remarked that the indecisiveness of the RCL kind of defeats the whole point of a lectionary. And I think she had a good point.

But one story that gets short shrift is one of the choices for this coming Sunday—the story of Jesus getting separated from his parents at age 12 because he lingers in the Temple in Jerusalem as they head back home. You might go for years without hearing this gospel—too many preachers are tempted to use the reading from Matthew, the one that anticipates the Epiphany visitation of the Magi.

It is only natural to wonder how Jesus grew up. Oh, there’s the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of St. Thomas, which presents stories about Jesus from ages 5-12. There’s an Arthurian legend that Jesus visited Great Britain as a 12-year-old with Joseph of Arimathea, mentioned by the poet William Blake in the poem, “And did those feet in ancient time,” also mentioned by Van Morrison in his song “Summertime in England.” One tradition has Jesus visiting India. The late songwriting legend John Prine wrote a song in 1991 called “Jesus: The Missing Years.” The folk singing sisters known as the Roches covered a song imagining Jesus married and working as a welder in the song “Jesus Shaves.” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints holds that Jesus visited America after his resurrection. Some of these stories are quite fanciful—but they endure because they feed a hunger for us to understand Jesus as a developing human being.

Yet, only this story of Jesus in Jerusalem appears in one of the four canonical gospels—one some people have no idea exists at all. I think it is important to sit with the story for a while. It presents a chance to see Jesus on the cusp of responsibility. Suddenly, we see Jesus as a 12-year-old—an age when children throughout most of history were on the verge of being considered adult in a world that had no concept of adolescence until the 20th century. This Sunday we get a chance to not only learn about “Jesus: The Missing Years.” We also get a story of “Jesus: The Missing.”

We also learn that Jesus was taken to Jerusalem for the Passover every year as a child, and that Joseph and Mary did not realize Jesus was not with them on the return road home until they had traveled a day’s journey. We learn that after returning to Jerusalem, they spent three days to find him. We also hear Jesus’s first words in Luke’s gospel—and they are in the form of answering a question with a question, as Jesus is going to do repeatedly in all the accounts of his earthly ministry of teaching.

When Joseph and Mary DO find him, sitting among the scholars and learning by questioning, Mary rebukes him for having driven his parents to worry and panic. Jesus answers in a nonplused way that they should have KNOWN he would be in God’s temple doing God’s business. Luke does not record how this answer went down with Mary—whether she subsided, or whether she further upbraided him for cheek. But it does say he returned home with them and was obedient—and that she “treasured these things in her heart”—exactly the reaction she had to the story of the shepherds when they visited the newborn child in Bethlehem. I can’t say that when I have lost a kid of mine for even fifteen minutes, I have “treasured” their explanations, to be honest.

At a deeper level, this story, much like the story of Jesus weeping over Lazarus after his death, places Jesus’s human and divine natures as close together as they can possibly be. If you’ve ever spent time around 12-year-olds—I spent 15 years teaching 7th grade—it’s completely believable that a 12-year-old can get swept up into an activity and forget about any other obligations he or she may have. Especially the precocious ones.

I also think we see a relatable, human side of Mary, who too often is depicted as either a bloodless doll or who too often becomes nameless, selfless, only viewed through the prism of whose mother she is. She is relieved, and she is frustrated—and rightly so. But in the end, relief wins out, and Jesus apparently determines to be more mindful from thenceforth.

But here is where we too can meet Mary and Joseph in our own lives. No matter how much devotion we may have as disciples, many of us have also had times when Jesus has seemed distant or lost to us—even Mother Teresa and St. John of the Cross spoke of searching for God without success, and they were in the “God business.” I am comforted by the fact that Jesus’s parents found him in the last place they expected—and yet, on retrospect, that place seems so obvious. When we feel distant from the comfort of Christ, we, like Mary and Joseph, can go to where he is out and about doing the work of God his Father. Teaching. Meeting people where they are. Healing. Welcoming. Loving. As an adult, Jesus himself reminded his followers in Matthew 25 that whenever we care for the prisoner, the sick, the hungry, we care for Jesus himself. That is when we BECOME like Jesus himself, which is of course the goal of all disciples who sit at the feet of their teachers. And that itself is the call that Jesus is ever making to us.

As the hymnist Cecil F. Alexander imagined in his hymn “Once in Royal David’s City:”

Jesus is our childhood’s pattern,
Day by day like us he grew.
He was little, weak and helpless,
Tears and smiles like us he knew.
Thus he feels for all our sadness,
And he shares in all our gladness.

Many of us when growing-up gave our parents a fright, and many of us have struggled as adults establishing our own identity independent of our families. This story encourages us to claim our own mission as God’s children and disciples of Jesus, to actually take up the call to do God’s work in the world around us. At the same time, we are all looking for Jesus, just like Mary and Joseph. Look for the helpers, the healers, the teachers, the reconcilers—and there you will find Jesus. And then like Mary, you may spend a lifetime wondering what it all means… which may be the surest path to wisdom, grace, and true discipleship.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on December 30, 2021.

Image: Jesus with the Doctors, stained glass window from Meaux Cathedral

The Reason for the Season: Sermon for Christmas Day

Welcome to the First Day of Christmas.

Just saying that is in some ways a countercultural declaration. But it’s true—much of the world around us believes that Christmas is over, even before the trashmen have picked up the discarded packaging from all the present from the curb and carried them off to a landfill. Stores are preparing for post-Christmas sales with deep discounts. Already, right now, people who just spent weeks putting up their tree and lighting up their house brighter than the alien spaceship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind will begin tearing everything down and boxing everything up before the Ghost of Thanksgiving turkey has even been made into turkey tetrazzini. The creches will be deconstructed faster than a traveling circus leaving town one step ahead of the law.

That’s why I give thanks that we belong to a tradition that insists that Christmas is a season. That insists that Christmas is just beginning. And even, if you will bear with me, suggests that Christmas lasts year-round.

It’s even right there in between the lines in our gospel – right after Mary was left pondering and the shepherds departed to rejoice and praise God and count how many sheep might have wandered off or gotten their horns stuck in a bramble bush in their absence.

It doesn’t make it into the lectionary, but Mary and Joseph and that little baby were still there. And that baby still needed to be tended, and fed, and burped, and changed, and swaddled, and rocked. Mary and Joseph don’t even know the Magi are on the way. But Jesus still needs tending, still needs to be cared for and adored and kept warm.

And that’s an important reminder for all of us. If we think that Christmas is just one day, we lose sight of the reason for the season.

No, Christmas is more than one day. It’s more than 12 days, despite what the song—and the liturgical calendar says. And Christmas is the celebration of the coming into the world of the One whom we call Wonderful Counselor, Our Savior and Redeemer,-- but, especially, we call him Love Incarnate “Love Came Down at Christmas,” or so claims the classic Christmas carol.

But love is meant to STAY at Christmas—and even beyond Christmas.

Sometimes we can get too busy in the hubbub of the season to remember that. We can get distracted wanting the shiny things, wanting everything to be perfect, putting all this pressure on ONE single day—one and a half days if you include Christmas eve night—that we forget what Christmas is all about.

Christmas is about love. Love not just for family and friends, but love as a companion and as a practice. Love as a way of life. Love, meant to show us the way to truly praise and give thanks to God for all our blessings. Love as worship and as testimony to who God is for all the world.

We often say Christmas lasts 12 days. But what do we do on day 13 to make Christmas a feast EVERY day?

I saw this meme on Facebook as I was posting a prayer the other day that suggests an answer, and it moved me. I added a few tweaks, but I wanted to share it with you. It’s a spin-off on 1stCorinthians 13.

I call it First Christmas-ians 13.

If I decorate my house perfectly with plaid bows, strands of twinkling lights and shiny balls,
but do not show love to my family and my neighbors,
I am just another decorator.

If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies,
preparing gourmet meals and arranging a beautifully adorned table at meal time,
but do not show love to my family and my neighbors,
I'm just another cook.

If I sit down at a magnificent table without thankfulness and love,
or forget the hungry in our midst,
I have forgotten the reason for the season.

If I have remembered to buy all the batteries of every kind,
including the rechargeable ones plugged in,
but forget to love,
I have no power.

If I work at a soup kitchen,
carol in the nursing home,
and give all that I have to charity,
but do not show love to my family and my neighbors,
it profits me nothing.

If I trim the tree with shimmering angels and crocheted snowflakes,
attend a myriad of holiday parties,
and sing in the choir's cantata,
but do not focus on those I love the most
and those who are or feel unloved in the world,
I have missed the point.


In other words…

Love sets the decorating aside to kiss the spouse or buy the hungry a meal.
Love is kind, though harried and tired.
Love awards points for effort when the heart is in the right place.
Love is thankful rather than grasping for more.
Love is patient when things go wrong, especially at Christmas.
Love recognizes and is present with those for whom Christmas is hard.
Love stops the cooking to hug a child or call an elderly friend.

Love recognizes that for some people,
Christmas is not a day off from work.

Love doesn't envy another’s home
   that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens
   or Christmas lights that can be seen from space.

Love doesn't yell at the kids to get out of the way or be silent,
   or expect them only to attend the children’s service,
   but is thankful that they are there to be in the way,
   for they represent life and hope and joy in their purest forms.
Love sees the face of Baby Jesus in every child,
   no matter how fussy, wet, hungry, hangry, or overtired.

Love admires the dad in flour-smeared jeans
   frantically assembling a present at three in the morning
   as much as if he were Anderson Cooper
   hosting the Christmas parade on TV
   in a Ralph Lauren Purple Label suit.
Love lets the Mom with the wailing toddler 

   trying to grab all the candy
   cut in front in the checkout line at the grocery store
   and tells her she is a rock star.

Love doesn't give only to those who are able to give in return,
   but rejoices in giving to those who can't.
Love doesn’t judge when it could hug.
Love wears a face mask around strangers
  and is willing to sacrifice comfort to prevent others becoming ill.

Love bears all things (except grudges),
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.
Love never fails.

Tinder-dry trees will fill the landfill,
video games will break,
single earrings will be lost,
big screen TVs will become obsolete,
leftovers will turn to green furry goo in the back of the fridge.

But the gift of love will endure--
and will endure the whole year ‘round.


Welcome Jesus. Welcome Christmas.

Let us live out our love always and every day, and let us share that love with each other, and the world.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am Christmas Day Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville MO.

Readings:

• Isaiah 62:6-12
• Titus 3:4-7
• Luke 2:(1-7)8-20
• Psalm 97

The Christmas Heart: Sermon for Christmas Eve

People always want to quibble.

They want to point out that so many things the gospel writers, even Luke, who claims in the first 4 verses of his gospel, he is writing “an orderly account” so that his audience “may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” And see, already, I have said something to quibble over, because the person writing probably was NOT named Luke, and may not have been the “Luke the Physician” who was a sometime companion to Paul, and may not even have been male.

Then there’s the argument over the dates—Jesus’s couldn’t have been born as late as 6 CE, and yet THAT is when Quirinius, the Roman governor of Syria, which included Israel, ordered a census. And the census didn’t require you to travel, because it was for purposes of taxation, and you KNOW the taxman always wants to know where you live to determine the tax you will pay. UNLESS, of course, Joseph owned property in the city of Bethlehem itself. Then he might have travelled to claim the city as his home, because the Romans reduced the taxes of urban dwellers up to 50%. And THAT possibility, my friends, shows just how much like all of us Joseph was—trying to get his tax bill reduced by hook or by crook. And by the way—there’s still five business days to get those last donations in the St. Martin’s so that you can take them off of this year’s taxes—don’t delay!

And then there’s the debate about the virgin birth (the word for virgin actually meant unmarried young woman). There’s even a charge that having shepherds come to the place where Jesus was born is meant to echo the births of great heroes in Roman legend, like Romulus, Oedipus, and Paris—to place Jesus alongside great, legendary leaders, despite the humble circumstances of his family, including his membership in a race of people who had been subjugated by Rome.

This is what happens when you let your head get in the way of hope. It keeps you stumbling in the darkness of hopelessness, as our reading from Isaiah reminded us from its very first words.

And it’s at this point that we have to ask ourselves what happens to people who let their heads throw up roadblocks to truths that they find uncomfortable—either uncomfortable because they are potentially bad, but also uncomfortable because they sound too good to be true. That’s a kind of uncomfortable truth, too. Just that phrase “too good to be true” smacks of past disappointments. No one, after all, wants to appear gullible, or naïve. No one wants to play the fool. So we close our hearts.

In our gospel today, the most amazing good news gets proclaimed in the most amazing ways. I mean, look at this cast of characters: emperors and potentates and angels and heavenly hosts! And look at the scenes: the bright lights of Bethlehem, hillsides shrouded in darkness, the dark skies being rent apart by blazes of iridescent light and the songs of angels more deafening and surreal than anything one would expect-- and I've been to a Journey concert. And look at all the traveling that takes place: from Joseph and Mary shlepping from Galilee to Bethlehem, and let me tell you, heavily pregnant women don’t even want to travel to the bathroom until they have to. Then there’s the angel descending from heaven to drop heavy pronouncements on the heads of stunned and frightened shepherds, shepherds who fight off lions, leopards, and jackals for a living, and so were not exactly prone to terror.

Disbelief, scoffing, delusion-- these are things that come from giving your head a lock over your heart. And if any of the main characters in our gospel today had led with their heads instead of their hearts, we would not be gathered here today. And let’s give our own hearts some credit for the fact that we ARE here, together, today.

What I am talking about goes beyond the calculations that have led some people to declare that they have a relationship with Jesus—those calculations, I mean, that runs along the lines of a wager, that goes something like this: “when I die, I don’t want to go to hell; to escape hell the preacher has said I have to say I believe in Jesus; therefore I will say I believe in Jesus to escape hell.” That’s one sad, fear-filled line of thinking, right there—death is never a good starting point for anything.

Jesus comes to us as an infant to remind us of that. Jesus does not become a vulnerable human baby to scare us about how we are going to die. Jesus becomes a vulnerable human baby to tell us and to SHOW us how to live—how to live a life full of wonder, full of hope, full of generosity, full of joy. Full of heart.

An open heart is a sign of bravery. After all, an open heart is, by definition, a vulnerable heart. It’s not irrational—after all, it ponders and wonders. But it starts from a point of generosity rather than fear or calculations of possible cost.

Maintaining an open heart is also one of the most dangerous and revolutionary stances you can take—and let us never forget that Jesus was a revolutionary, raised by his revolutionary mother Mary (and if you don’t believe me, listen to that Magnificat again carefully). Jesus wasn’t raised by a mother who said “Hm, let me think that over and get back to you” while she set up the mental abacus. Instead, he was raised by a mother who led with her heart, and who had the courage of ten strong men. She had courage, BECAUSE she had heart, and because she led with that heart when told she would do what seemed like impossible things.

There it is: right there after the shepherds have left most of their flock behind with a skeleton crew, after they’ve rushed into town and barged in on an exhausted couple with a fussy baby, barged in even without a casserole, even though they are complete strangers because they just have to see for themselves. And once they see for themselves, and then gotten finished unspooling their tale, what reaction do they get?

The gospel does not record or mention either Mary or Joseph responding verbally in any way to the story these strangers tell them—the same one the angel had told Mary, the same one Joseph had heard in his dream, What we hear as a response is this:

“Mary treasured all these words and stored them in her heart.”

Another translator put it this way: “Mary stored up all these things, trying in her heart to penetrate their significance.” Mary’s reaction does not come from her head but from her heart. Think about that. Then examine the possible truth and relatability of this statement in your own lives.

Where do you store the things most precious to you—the most precious memories of your past—the smells, sounds, taste and feel of a beautiful day, or a loved one’s laughter or caress or hand at the small of your back? Do you store that in your head? Or in your heart?

Close your eyes. Dig down inside yourself and think of something that made you happy, and feel how your heartbeat changes when you pull up that memory. How your heart becomes lighter when that memory rises up. That’s why we continue to tell the story of the birth and life of Jesus, too—to remind us to store up the gospel story in our hearts until they overflow, and in overflowing, break out into the lives of others. That is, after all, how you change the world.

That statement that Mary stored up these precious encounters in her heart is an invitation to all of us. Jesus has come into the world to find a home in our hearts—each and every one of us. To be our light in the darkness. To be our hope, which calls us to have faith in things we have not seen. But then-

Jesus calls us to let our hearts guide us—to live with Christmas hearts each and every day—hearts filled with wonder, hearts that are open to the possible rather than guarded and shut tight.

A Christmas heart is an open heart. Only when our hearts are open can they be filled. And not just filled, but filled to overflowing. So that we too can be the light of Christ for those who go through day by day without hope, without heart. To show us how to live—really live—with courage and dignity and compassion. So that we can be hope for others.

Amen.

Preached at the 7 pm Christmas Eve Choral Eucharist, December 24, 2021, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church.

Readings:

• Isaiah 9:2-7
• Titus 2:11-14
• Luke 2:1-14(15-20)
• Psalm 96

Sing Out, O Earth!: Speaking to the Soul for December 23, 2021

Psalm 96


Sing out, O Earth,
Bowl thrown on God’s wheel--
turning from your slumber like a drowsy child,
humming with joy as you spin beneath our feet
spinning like a top within a jetty of the Milky Way.

Sing out, O Earth:
Home of the martins swooping in arrow-flight,
perch of the kestrel and owl and waxwing
shelter of the rabbit, shyly scuttling through grasstufts.
You hold the whale within your cupped hands;
gratefully receiving each fallen leaf,
humus alive with industry and rebirth
(if we pondered it, would we ever tread so heedlessly?).

Sing out, O Earth—
Gathering yourself beneath the blanket of snow
with the promise of green ready to spring forth--
like a panther after its prey.
Sending winds to set the dogwood blossoms dancing,
bedecked with gaily waving blanket flowers and lupine
enticing the improbably aloft bumblebee

You carry us like a mother, gravid, arms slung
around the delicate body of her child.
Your shadow waxes full across the face of the Moon,
skimming like a raft through the velvet sea of night.

Sing out, O Earth!
and call us to join the harmony
major third, perfect fourth, minor fifth.
Let the springs murmur,
let the rivers unravel and spool out their tale,
let the oceans scrub your shores
leaving behind their tokens of sea-glass and shell
as they trace a path along your side.

Sing out, O Earth,
and join the chorus of constellations.
The trees of the wood shout “Alleluia” in joy,
while the rest of creation waits
in breathless hope and wonder--

The Star moves restlessly to illumine the scene
and the Magi jerk awake from their dreams
to set out for unknown lands;
the shepherds stir uneasily from their tower,
the young mother gasps as the pains begin.
Sing out with her, and receive the glad news--
The Prince of Peace approaches.

-- Leslie Scoopmire, December 2021.

A version of this poem was first published on Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on December 23, 2021.

Prayer 3243: On the Winter Solstice

Most Holy Wisdom,
we center our beings within you,
in gratitude,
in praise,
in openness:
teach us your truths
and lead us into your holy road.

Come into our hearts, O Light of Compassion,
as Earth rises from slumber
on this longest night of the year.
Let this be for us a time of dreaming
that we may align our spirits
with your vision of justice, O God of Mercy.

Let us gather our strength in anticipation
of rising from this long night
dedicated anew to your dream
of peace for all,
of a creation unified in praise and community,
of kinship celebrated and treasured.

May we turn our faces to a new dawn
and take up the lamps that You offer us, Lord Christ,
that we may offer light
to those who dwell in despair and darkness.

Spirit of the Living God,
alight on us as gently as a winter's dawn,
and set our hearts ablaze with love and thankfulness
as we lift up our prayers and intercessions before You,
who are beloved in your sight.

With humble hearts and steadfast lovingkindness, we pray.

Amen.

Two Prophets, Two Songs, One Revolution: Sermon for Advent 4C

The domesticity of this scene is striking. Women are the main characters, the bold actors, the righteous proclaimers of truths their menfolk either greeted with silence or shied away from, or both. As soon as Mary offers her assent to God via God’s heavenly messenger, Gabriel, she sprints to her kinswoman Elizabeth’s house.

Both of these women are bearing children whose very coming into existence could be fuel for gossip and scandal. Elizabeth’s pregnancy stands out because she has been childless so long that she undoubtedly had been written off as forgotten by God and forgotten by a society that prized a woman’s fertility as her main contribution. Mary’s pregnancy, once it becomes obvious, puts her at the risk of losing the only thing she had as a poor peasant girl, and that was her good name—even though that also was more the property of her father than a possession she herself could benefit from.

Elizabeth also has embraced a future that includes raising up a prophetic rebel who will sneer at the powerful and taunt the complacent with the vision of restored divine justice that makes a mockery of preference and privilege for those who deck themselves in finery and claim the best places and the softest garments.

And Mary herself? She is often portrayed in art as a twenty-something, fair-haired, cool and collected like Grace Kelly. Yet the truth is undoubtedly less comfortable. She is probably in her middle teens. She is poor, ragged, uneducated, powerless by society’s standards.

But Mary’s family is left unmentioned probably because they didn’t bear mentioning, day laborers from peasant stock living from hand to hand—the reason why Jesus’s prayer later asks God to provide the daily bread. She was betrothed to a probably much older man. This arrangement was made by her father, probably and decreed by a society that saw this alignment of circumstances as optimal by maximizing a bride’s child-bearing years with a man’s ability to be established and support a family. Her yes to that probably didn’t exist. She was probably told what would happen after her father and Joseph concluded negotiations.

But then along comes the messenger of God before her, which is the first stunning development in her role in this drama.

The next stunning developments come the minute the angel opens its mouth: First, the angel calls her “favored one,” and from everything she has probably experienced until this time in her life, that probably had not been an adjective she would have used to describe her circumstances. However, in the Greek, there is a pun here: the root for the word “greetings” also means “grace” or “favor.” And it states that right then she is perplexed. The angel points out the previously childless Elizabeth’s good fortune—and that her pregnancy is well advanced. The miracle part is made explicit—this has all been God’s doing. That’s good salesmanship, there, for the next step.

Then the angel puts before a proposal, and contrary to what some people still claim today, God never forces us to obedience or belief, not even through fear or threat of smiting or awe or might. There is ALWAYS a choice—that’s what having the free will as part of our inheritance from God is all about. So Mary gets a choice.

That means we can’t take for granted the cost of that choice. Her yes comes with staggering potential for her own destruction. Unmarried, but engaged to another man, her pregnancy will condemn her in the eyes of the world—and if it is known that the child is not Joseph’s, death by stoning. She could be thrown out by her parents, denounced by Joseph, and killed.

But there is one thing she DOES have in abundance—and that is trust. So she assents—and the scene makes her sound meek and mild like the carol says. “Let it be with me according to what you say,” she says, with eyes lowered, we think. Yet what if her reply is also asserting that her only master is God, not any of the other people who might think they control her destiny as a teenaged Jewish peasant girl in occupied Roman territory. Perhaps not so meek, after all.

The angel leaves, and she hotfoots it to her kinswoman Elizabeth’s house. And as Elizabeth sees her approaching, her child leaps inside her so hard it takes her breath away.

Elizabeth at this moment becomes not just the mother of a prophet, but a prophet herself: she knows Mary’s news even before a word is spoken. Elizabeth bursts into a brief song of triumph, speaking with awe about her younger relative that already shows the reversal in their hierarchical status. Elizabeth’s song has traditionally been mixed together with the words of Gabriel to Mary to create the opening to what is known to our Roman Catholic kindred as the “Ave Maria:”

“Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you,”
the angel intones, and Elizabeth expands and makes specific the observation:
“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.”

Two things arise here: first, Elizabeth’s husband Zechariah may be a priest, but his silencing has caused a reversal, for this is a priestly blessing if ever there was one. Elizabeth finishes her thought with saying WHY she knows Mary is blessed, even before Mary has had the chance to tell her story. And then she blesses her kinswoman with a blessing that lies underneath the text of the Hail Mary: “Blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by God.”

Mary is blessed and favored and filled with grace by her trust in God. Because trust is really what belief as a theological term means. It doesn’t mean simply intellectual assent. It means being able to lean in and upon the promises of God. That promise called grace—the idea, as Nadia Bolz-Weber says, that God has said yes to us first, always.

Elizabeth continues in astonishment and prophecy, for both she and her unborn child know that the Mother of God, and the savior she will bear, have drawn near, bringing also nearer the kingdom of God.

Two women, so different in age and status in life, are nonetheless bound together by their willingness to cling to God’s promises, both astonished and joyful at the changes that will present themselves in their lives. Both are willing to have their lives be completely upended and transfigured by faith that God’s promises will be fulfilled within them. They are transformed by anticipation of a re-ordering of justice based on trust in the tandem qualities of God’s strength and mercy in both their own lives and in the life of their community.

Mary responds to Elizabeth’s song with one of her own, and it is a song of Joy, yes—but more importantly of power and of revolution. And so we are reminded, again, what cannot be repeated enough, and that the Rev. Shug has been exploring with parishioners during our Sunday adult forum on spirituals the last several weeks: Singing is not just an act of joy. Singing itself is often an act of resistance.

The victory songs we hear in our readings today predict a re-ordering of life from human injustice to God’s justice, the approaching triumphant flourishing of shalom foretold in prophets such as Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Deborah. And the important part for us, the challenging and yet also good news for us is this: WE are the agents of that revolution. Wanna change the world? Pray, sing—then ACT.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit, God calls us to serve as slaves to the causes of justice and peace that was woven into the very fabric of creation itself, yet derailed by humanity’s omnipresent arrogance and willfulness. As the outbursts of joy coming from Elizabeth and Mary at their greeting make clear, the approaching Spirit calls us back to the beginning. As God sang creation into being, so too the response elicited by new life and new creation experienced by Elizabeth and Mary is a powerful exclamation of anticipation, hope, and fulfillment. These are hopes that we ourselves cling to in the times in which we struggle against despair and strife in our own lives, and in our own communities.

How often do we grope and grasp for some reassurance of God’s presence in our lives, and struggle to hold on to hope when the anxieties and pressures of life seem to crush in upon us? The life-giving presence of the Spirit as manifested in the visitation between Mary and Elizabeth reminds us that God’s power breaks loose in the most unexpected times and ways. In response to the in-breaking of God’s Spirit into these women’s lives, they are given a vision of a new triumph of peace; structures of injustice and weapons of war have been shattered; the hungry are satisfied and at peace; the oppressed are lifted up and exalted, while the oppressors are humbled and crumbled. In times of struggle, hopefulness itself is an act of rebellion and resistance. Those who have been empty, without hope, have been, and will be, filled.

Mary shows us the pattern for our own journey of faith. Mary responds with trust and power, but never surrender. With a crown of stars swirling around her head, she responds:

Let it be for me as you have said. And let me play my part in turning the world upside down, in resisting the powers of oppression and inhumanity.

Preached at the 505 on December 18 and at the 10:30 Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

• Micah 5:2-5a
• Hebrews 10:5-10
• Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)
• Canticle 15 (or 3)

Waiting Turned to Witness: Speaking to the Soul, December 16

When the Word became flesh,
it was the women
   who knew what expectation meant—
the circle begins as it ends
in the witness of women.

Zechariah heard but bent like a bitter reed, and
was reduced to scratching
out his son’s name in cowed obedience.
It was Elizabeth who bloomed
   as God’s pledge became her promise.
Years of waiting fell away in an instant.

Joseph dreamt,
absorbed the news of the holy
without a word. Mutely
he put his shoulder to the wheel,
   while his beloved wove her rebel song
like a garland. This choice was not his.

It was Mary
who answered Gabriel’s thunder with assent.
After pondering
   how this could be? nonetheless affirmed
“Let it be for me
as you have said,” knowing
the costs of sacred favor were immediate. Striding 

into the horizon torn wide
as full partner and God-bearer, Mary held
joy and pain in equipoise, resolute.
She hailed Elizabeth
   exulting, and together
   they were willing to inhabit
   what others called impossible:
the manifestation
of holy wisdom as wholly human,
vulnerable, radiating mercy.

Waiting turned to witness:
Sleepers awake!
God is among us
pulling down the thrones of injustice,
filling the bellies of the hungry
slaking those who thirst for hope.
Zechariah took notes
in another room, gratefully.

In time fulfilled, even as the stars danced close,
and strangers followed her song on the breeze,
Mary brought forth eternity
yawning and burrowing
   into his mother’s breast
at his longed-for arrival.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on December 16, 2021.

Copyright Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, 2021

Of Justice and Joy: Speaking to the Soul, December 9, 2021

Zephaniah 3:14-20

The season of Advent could be subtitled, “the season of the prophets.” On Advent 1 in year C, we read the selection from Jeremiah 33 predicting that a sprig will sprout from the stump of Jesse. A new king will be born from David’s line, given that Jesse was David’s father. On Advent 2, we read from either Baruch or Malachi. This third Sunday, we read the Song of Joy from the prophet Zephaniah. Then there is John the Baptist, with his “voice [as] one crying out in the wilderness,” pointing to the coming Messiah.

As we hear new warnings about the omicron variant and tension in the Ukraine, it feels as though this time of fear and anxiety may never end. Fear can be so debilitating, asa both God and the prophets know. Think of that oft-repeated admonition in scripture, “Do not fear,” spoken 55 times (NRSV), and, “Do not be afraid,” spoken 67 times. Note v. 16: “Do not fear,” spoken to Jerusalem. This passage was written during a time of oppression, death, destruction, and corruption. This is not simply talking about adding to our comfort, but calling its listeners from a very real valley of the shadow of death into life in God’s kingdom.

The book of Zephaniah, which provides the first reading this coming Sunday, was believed to have been written sometime before 640 BC, when King Josiah, who was the last great king of Israel, and the “finder” of the book of Deuteronomy, ascended to the throne. However, Zephaniah makes clear that in the years before Josiah, the people of Jerusalem are awash in corruption and oppression. The Book of Zephaniah focuses on a future day of judgment, although for us in the throes of Advent, the orientation is toward future salvation.

This section is subtitled, “A Song of Joy.” It follows a long series of warnings and threats of judgment and proclaims that now is time for a word of hope. The prophet has just expressed the expectation of God drawing all nations together and unifying them. Now, God will save a holy remnant. Echoing language in Psalm 23, the last part of v. 13, “Then they will pasture and lie down, and no one shall make them afraid.” All of this is to say promise that God is in the midst of us through the Incarnation of God’s Son, whose birth we await, that justice and peace may reign on the earth. A reminder we all need, especially now as the shadows lengthen both literally and figuratively—and a reminder that is reinforced and expanded in the First Song of Isaiah which is our canticle.

Even though most of us stand in a position of privilege and power relative not only to the people to whom Zephaniah was speaking, but relative to the vast majority of the world population, we can rejoice that God’s promise is for all of us—for all nations and all peoples. Combined with John’s proclamation that we hear in today’s Gospel, it is also a reminder to us to never stand on the side of the oppressor, even passively; do not just pray for those who are the victims of fear, terror, and depression, but to work alongside them and stand with them through our actions, not just our words or our prayers. We hear again, as we do repeatedly throughout scripture, that we never stand alone, and that at times of crisis our part is to not stand aside but stand for justice. Then truly the dawn from on high may break upon us.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on December 9, 2021. 

Turning in the Wildeness: Sermon for Advent 2C

The gospel reading for this Sunday begins with a list of VIPs—men of power and influence. Movers and shakers. Men whose every word could command fear, subservience, and obedience.

Yet we go astray if we let our attention get drawn to the limelight. We would make a mistake if we allowed our gaze to turn toward the representatives of the Establishment, the powerful. Instead, as we prepare for the Incarnation, we remember that it takes place in obscurity. And, in order to get there, we have to pull our attention from the glittering thrones of power to the wilderness—and tune our ears to a voice coming from that wilderness.

The word for wilderness translated from the Greek here is “Eremos”—eremoß (er’-ay-mos) was used 10 times in Luke’s gospel. It has the connotation of a place of desolation. It has been variously translated into English as “wilds,” “wilderness,” “deserted place,” “desolate place,” and “open pasture.” The broadness of its meaning is indicated by its definition in a Greek-English lexicon as describing places which are solitary, lonely, desolate, uninhabited. It also describes a flock abandoned by a shepherd as in 15:9 when used in the metaphor of the 99 sheep. Interestingly, it is also used when describing a woman neglected by her husband from whom the husband withholds himself.

The very first Christians tended to be urban dwellers—yet for those who came from Judaism, the wilderness bore strong memories from the Torah and the histories of their people. At the surface, the wilderness was a place of chaos, disorder, fear, tempting, deprivation. It’s a place where a person by themselves faces serious danger of starvation, or accident, or exposure to the elements.

The wilderness is not a place we modern folk normally choose for ourselves if we see it as a place of barrenness. As in almost everything in life, it all comes down to perspective. That stripping away of every extra extravagance can also be clarifying. Preparation is key, of course, and respect for the power of the land must be acknowledged. Focus only on yourself, and the wilderness is overwhelming. Focus on how you are interconnected with the unspoiled landscape that stretches before you, and the wilderness can be a place of insight, spiritual renewal, and physical renewal.

Wilderness also has a positive side. It is a place that one enters by cutting off one’s past in an attempt to make a fresh start, and one is utterly vulnerable. But vulnerability, which is the power of hope encouraging us to try, leaves you open for good things—new vocations, new relationships, new perspectives.

The wilderness is a place for solitude, which is usually positive; but it also a place of abandonment and loneliness. It is place that clarifies your thoughts and purifies your soul; but also it is a place that can overwhelm you with its dangers if you treat it callously or with disregard. It is a place where one is immediately and blatantly reminded of the providential care of God—which is necessary because it is a place where resources are slim to nonexistent otherwise. It is therefore a place that encourages trust in God and the deepening of relationship with the holy, the sacred, the sublime.

For those who encountered John and later Jesus, the wilderness also was God’s favored place from which to show God’s care and concern. It’s where God made a covenant with Abraham, where Jacob wrestled with God and became Israel, where manna fell from heaven and humans ate the bread of angels. The wilderness is a place where the people of Israel were formed as a people during their exodus from Egypt. It is a place of crying out—but also, it is a place of hope.

And we need that voice of hope. As we continue in year two of this pandemic, we certainly have been thrust into a wilderness experience of our own—a wilderness where we have been tested and tried, a wilderness where we have been challenged to finds an inner strength and resilience. Where we have been challenged to see through the particularly western sin that the only thing that matters is our own personal freedom. Instead, perhaps the voice of God crying out in this wilderness is a reminder that we are bound up together, and that we cannot spurn concern for those around us.

The events of this week draw our special attention to another way in which we have been thrust into a wilderness. I stand before you today wearing this orange stole created for Bishops United Against Gun Violence because we had been plunged yet again into a continuing national nightmare. 

Yet another school shooting in Michigan took the lives of four young people, wounded many others, either physically or spiritually, and this one seems particularly egregious in the way that, like in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, weapons whose main purpose is for killing human beings were knowingly provided to a young man who should never have been considered safe to have them, whose tendency toward violent thoughts and role-playing was already noted. Yet this young person not only received no intervention by his parents but was possibly enabled in his narcisstic, nihilistic belief that the only authority he answered to, even as a troubled adolescent, was himself.

The tragedy of the modern insistence on individualism is that it is a false idol, an idol of death and meaninglessness. Ultimately, it diminishes us and makes us feel vulnerable. It weakens, threatens, lashes out, and destroys. It makes everyone else around us a competitor for scarce resources, an enemy who is trying to deprive us of something if we don’t get there first. This viral pandemic continues because of the refusal of too many to look beyond the tiny circle of themselves and consider the impact of their actions upon others. The pandemic of gun violence continues for exactly the same reasons.

This wilderness of violence and nihilism is one of our own making. Can we hear the voice of one crying out a word from God from this wilderness? Can we hear it, acknowledge our need for turning around and choosing a different path? That is, after all, the meaning of repentance.

The words of Isaiah remind us that the wilderness, for all its barrenness, for all of its wild beasts, for all of its lack of comforts, is also a place where the horizons stretch on forever, after the mountains are levelled and the valleys are lifted. And once we experience that change of perspective, the view becomes so broad that “all flesh” can see God’s salvation.

God’s declaration comes out of the wilderness via John because that is where Israel was formed as a people and where the covenant with God was made and remade, again and again, through God’s steadfast grace and lovingkindness. Thus John’s proclamation is for repentance—a literal turning around to return to God.

The wilderness is a place for repentance, and we all like to think we have no need of that. But what if the path of repentance is also the path of liberation for all of us—liberation from the dangers that very much threaten each of us right now in our modern wildernesses?

Perhaps this pandemic—both the viral one and the one of gun violence-- is the voice of God crying out in the wilderness that the way of selfishness, the way of clutching our possessions to us rather than embracing those around us, the way of contempt for each other is the crooked path. Perhaps the voice of God crying out in the wilderness right now is a call for us to return to the value of community and compassion, to seek justice for those around us because ultimately that increases the security and contentment of all.

Perhaps the voice of God calling to us out of this continued pandemic of virus and violence is a reminder that we were not meant to be separate and exposed, but we are instead actually a part of something larger than ourselves. A reminder than the Jesus John prepares the way for commands us repeatedly not to grab everything we can for ourselves but to love one another.

Because the good news is that repentance is possible because God is faithful in ways we struggle to be. God’s love is enduring far beyond our own fickle attachments. God calls us to draw our attention from ourselves to each other and all creation as a precious gift to remind us that we are not only never alone but beloved and precious, even as we struggle, stumble and go astray. For it is only when we cast aside our delusions that we don’t depend on each other can we see the image of God in each other.

There is a voice calling to us in this wilderness—and it’s a voice that is calling us back from the brink into being brave enough and strong enough to become a people of faith and hope. To become a people the world desperately needs right now.

Hear the voice crying out in the wilderness, calling US to discipleship and witness against the forces of fear and death; calling US to make straight the Lord’s pathways— straight into our hearts, if we open them in faith. May we hear that voice, and turn to God in trust. And then begin to walk the straight path of liberation. Freedom is waiting to be born.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 and at the 10:30 Eucharist, online and in person, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

•  Malachi 3:1-4
• Philippians 1:3-11
• Luke 3:1-6
• Canticle 4 or 16

The Best Present is Being Present: Speaking to the Soul for December 2, 2021

One of my favorite movies is Forrest Gump. Besides being one of Tom Hanks’ greatest acting roles, it’s a beautiful story of how a common man—no, a man who might have been considered a throw-away man, due to his intellectual and physical challenges—ends up being involved in extraordinary events in the last half of the 20th century. But more than that, to me, it’s about the power of love, integrity, and loyalty to transform people’s lives. It’s his loyalty and compassion that elevates him from a common man to an extraordinary one. In everything Forrest does, he is fully present and focused, including in love and friendship.

Our gospel for this coming Sunday has a completely different start from Forrest’s story. Our gospel for the second Sunday of Advent starts with an illustrious list of names—powerful men, who were wealthy, connected, whether they were Romans or of Jewish descent. Interrupting this recounting of Who’s Who in Ancient Palestine comes a nobody—John, son of Zechariah—and even the fact that he was Zechariah’s son was improbable, for John had been born to Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth when both were considered to be far too old to be having babies.

And when his father, Zechariah, is told by the archangel Gabriel that there will be a baby boy coming to his wife and himself, Zechariah just can’t believe it. And even though if you know anything about scripture, you know that that is often the reception that angels get when they start announcing improbable births, for some reason Zechariah’s skepticism rubs Gabriel the wrong way, and so Zechariah becomes mute for the duration of his wife’s improbable pregnancy.

Once the baby was born, there was a lot of talk about what his name would be. It seemed like all their neighbors had an opinion. But Gabriel had already told Zechariah to name the baby John, and Zechariah was NOT about to anger Gabriel twice, so he wrote on a tablet that the baby’s name was John, which is what Elizabeth his wife had been saying all along. The second this was made clear, Zechariah’s ability to speak was restored, and he wasted no time in using his restored voice to praise God loudly and fervently.

Just like we heard from Hannah a few weeks ago, in response to her own improbable gift of a son, Zechariah sings a song of praise and justice to the Lord. His song, called the Benedictus to this day, is a song of salvation and jubilation, recounting how God is working in the world at each moment to restore it, to repair it, to sanctify it. It extols the savior God has given us even before that savior is born. And then it predicts that this little baby son he has been blessed to have is going to be the one to prepare the way for that longed-for savior. The gospel further makes this point, naming John as

A voice crying out in the wilderness….
Preparing the way of the Lord, and making his paths straight,
Leveling out any obstacle, whether mountain or valley, that might stand between the Messiah and the broadcasting his message of salvation.

How does John plan to prepare the way for Jesus to save us?

By calling God’s people to repentance to turning around their focus and priorities, not half-heartedly, but decisively. What the ancient Greeks called “metanoia--” a decisive changing not just of the mind but of the heart, so that we experience reality in a different way.

Being present—being alert and awake to what is going on around us right now—I am convinced is one of the great lessons of Advent. In a time when our identity and sense of self-worth is wrapped far too tightly around what we do or who we know, Advent reminds us that simply BEING is perhaps even more important. And Forrest Gump is a great example of that, too. Furthermore, Forrest demonstrates the effect that fidelity—that old fashioned word that means more than simply keeping promises-- have as the bedrock foundation of a person’s life.

It is this kind of preparation that Advent calls us to make. Starting inside of ourselves. Making what is crooked straight, setting what is turbulent at peace, and turn our focus so that it rests outside ourselves. Changing our emphasis from doing Christianity to being Christians within the same flesh and bones that God sanctified by sending his Son to be one of us.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on December 2, 2021.

Image: Icon of John the Baptist from the British Museum.