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Called;  January 19, 2020; ICCM; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

I never met my husband’s grandfather, John Rautio.  But I’ve heard a lot about him. He lived to be over 100. He wore a shirt and tie to the dinner table every day of his life. He was married for the second time in his 80s after his first wife died.  He traveled to Mexico in his later years. By ethnicity he was a Finn.  By vocation he was a carpenter in Ely, MN.  What he was remembered for most was his sense of humor. 

In case you don’t know, Finnish humor is a bit of an acquired taste.  Evidently, he liked to say things like, Come again when you can’t stay so long, Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?  He was always ready to hire good helpers in his carpentry shop—especially young men with lots of experience, he would say with a wink.  His saying that’s in my mind today, though, has a certain ring of truth.  We are too soon old, and too late smart. He’s someone I would have liked to meet.  He wasn’t an important person by any of the world’s measures. But he left a legacy of a strong work ethic, a quirky sense of humor, a patient quiet presence, and a respectful demeanor.   

Gathering the wisdom we have accumulated in our lives to share with those who go on after us is one of the important tasks of the last part of life. If we can glean the smart part from the too soon old and too late smart and make sense of our experiences then we move from just smart to wise.  The life work of our last years also includes mending rifts or broken relationships. Another task is to grow closer to God, letting go of the strivings of the ego. 

Our lessons for today simply drip with the theme of God’s call and claim on life. We are meant for lives of purpose and intention.  God’s gifts are given to us for our own fulfilment yes, but also for the world’s good and for the glory of God. 

Listen again:  You are a polished arrow—you are not just a plain stick but you are made for a purpose.  You are a sharp sword—a thing of value and craftsmanship.  You are hidden away in the hand of God—to be used by God.  You are God’s servant, to give glory to God. You are a light to the nations.  You are my chosen.  You are called, sanctified saints, enriched in Christ, in speech and knowledge of every kind. You are strengthened, not lacking any spiritual gift. 

Our identity in Christ is not just hinted at or promised, it is not dependent on how much we do, on getting it right.  It’s right there—before we were born—all the way to the end.  The message is redundant, repeated over and over so we get it!  We are who we are. The trick is to live into that calling. 

Vocation is often a theme we think belongs to the young or those in mid-life.  What are we going to do with this one wild precious life?  Yet the questions of the third stage of life include those of purpose and calling too.  Those who are blessed to reach retirement and the elder part of life are also empowered. We are strengthened in Christ, we are purposeful instruments in the hand of God. 

Parker Palmer wrote an essay a few years ago, just before his 78^th birthday called, Withering into the Truth.  The title comes from a poem by William Butler Yeats.

Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun,
Now may I wither into the truth.

He started out by saying , When friends say they don’t know what to give me for my birthday, I always respond with the same tired old joke they’ve heard from me before, which causes them to sigh, roll their eyes, and change the subject. (Here’s a perk that comes with age: repeat yourself so often that folks think you’re getting dotty, when in fact you’re fending off unwanted conversations.)

Q: What do you give a man who has everything?

A: Penicillin.

Palmer says he doesn’t need gifts of a material nature.  Instead he offers his gleanings of wisdom about living nearly 8 decades as a gift for others.  He begins,

The Yeats poem at the head of this column names something I don’t want to forget. Actively embracing aging gives me a chance to move beyond “the lying days of my youth” and “wither into the truth” — if I resist the temptation to Botox my withering.

My youthful “lies” weren’t intentional. I just didn’t know enough about myself, the world, and the relation of the two to tell the truth. So, what I said on those subjects came from my ego, a notorious liar. Coming to terms with the soul-truth of who I am — of my complex and often confusing mix of darkness and light — has required my ego to shrivel up. Nothing shrivels a person better than age: that’s what all those wrinkles are about!

Whatever truthfulness I’ve achieved on this score comes not from a spiritual practice, but from having my ego so broken down and composted by life that eventually I had to yield and say, “OK, I get it. I’m way less than perfect.” I envy folks who come to personal truth via spiritual discipline: I call them “contemplatives by intention.” Me, I’m a contemplative by catastrophe.

To find our wisdom, to age well, involves letting our ego shrivel.  Interesting.  When we talk about our calling, our gifts, our vocation—we can easily move into the territory of the ego.  I can do this! I feel called to that.  The ego is an important driver for us in our working lives—pushing us on to achieve and accomplish. 

My dad was sharing with me on the phone this last week about a group he attends each week at his church called Caring and Sharing. He commented on how accomplished most of the men in the group were in their careers, doctors, lawyers, professors, CEO’s.  He said, “They’re PIPs, Previously Important People.” His gentle laugh spoke volumes. My dad himself accomplished all kinds of things in his working life.  But his legacy is his positive attitude, his supportive and gentle manner, his tender heart full of emotion, and his simple trusting faith. What really matters in the end but loving others, growing closer to God and meeting the needs around us?

St Augustine said we were here to love God and enjoy life.  Kurt Vonnegut believed we are here to be the eyes and conscience of God.  Karl Jung, standing on the silent African veldt at dawn, watching the drifting rivers of animals moving in their timeless way, wrote that we are here to bring consciousness to brute being. 

It’s so nice to be at a place in life when we don’t have to prove anything to anyone anymore.  We are free to love, to grow close to God and to serve those around us. There are so many needs.  Holly has tickets for the Hearts of Hospice Dance on February 15^th.  The tickets support the work of Hospice Mazatlan, a group that served over 160 families last year—160 families facing the death of a loved one with social services for family members, palliative care, counseling for the bereaved and so much more. 

Last Saturday I was at the Organic market buying a pot holder from the organization called Floreser.  It is a home for teenage girls who have been victims of abuse and violence. It is the only one of its kind in Sinaloa, and one of the few in the country. Its mission is to provide the girls with a place where they feel safe and can grow with their dignity intact. In Floreser, the girls continue with their studies, receive individual therapy, and are provided with outlets allowing them to develop to their full potential while living a healthy life full of possibilities. depends upon your continued help.

The woman selling the hand sewn items told me about her new-found purpose in life.  She volunteers at the home and wakes up each day knowing that her contributions are important. She saw a need, knew she had gifts to share, and was overwhelmed with feelings of the joy of service.  It just bubbled out of her.  Not an “important” person, but a gifted one, equipped and strengthened for service.

We find our purpose by looking around us to identify the greatest needs and how they fit with our skill set and our particular God-given gifts.  Vincent Van Gogh once said Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”  Even if you’re only here in Mazatlan for a few weeks or a month or two your input can make a difference and bring a better future for others.  It can make a difference in your own life too. 

Annie Dillard said, the way we spend our days is the way we spend our lives.  Jesus asked the disciples who came to follow him:  What are you looking for?  Come and See—he invited them.  We are invited likewise—come and see what God has planned for you.  Claim your identity as God’s chosen ones, strengthened and empowered for service, enriched in every way.  

Beloved; Matthew 3: 13-17; ICCM; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; 1/12/20

John and Jesus were cousins.  When Mary found out she was expecting a child she went to her relative Elizabeth who was pregnant with John.  In today’s gospel those babies are all grown up.  John has been out baptizing and preaching about the coming of someone greater than he who will fulfill the expectations of the prophets. 

I wonder what family stories the two of them grew up with. Did their mothers tell their sons about the dreams foretold their birth? Did they share the songs they had sung about them?  Did Joseph tell Jesus about his dream that told him to name him Jesus because he would save the people from their sins? 

Jesus embraced his own purpose and shaped the goals of all the others around him. Joseph’s life purpose had little to do with carpentry.  It was raising the child called Emmanuel–God with us, that gave his life meaning.  It was the same for Mary, of course.  John’s purpose had to do with Jesus too. He was out there in the Jordan wilderness, dressed in camel’s hair and leather, eating honey and chapulines—locusts.  John prepared the way for his cousin, by preaching change and calling people to repentance. 

When Jesus came to John it didn’t fit with John’s own identity—You should baptize me—he protested.  All his life John had heard that Jesus would be the more important one.  But notice what Jesus did—he said No—This is how it is!  John had a vital role to play too.  Jesus needed John’s service and he validated his cousin’s life work.  Then—the heaven’s opened for Jesus and Jesus saw the Spirit descending like a dove and landing on him.  A voice proclaimed, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased!”   What an impact that must have made on Jesus!  Through the Holy Spirit he was able to see his status as God’s child, the Beloved, with whom God is pleased! 

Our identity rests in God’s relentless tenderness for us. We, too, can define ourselves radically, as those beloved by God. That is our true self. Every other identity is illusion.  It’s not just Jesus who has a life purpose, or a proclaimed identity as God’s beloved child.

In John’s gospel Jesus prepares his disciples for his leaving, the night before his death by promising that God will send the Spirit to empower them to do his work.  Jesus says, Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and in fact, will do greater works than these! As the Father is in me so I am in you.  The Spirit of truth abides in you and will be in you! The Spirit will teach you everything.  Those are daunting worlds, until we claim them and live in them.  There is purpose in each of our lives, in each of our days. When we open ourselves to the Spirit’s presence we are led and empowered.  

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2: 9-10, God has prepared things for those who love him that no eye has seen, no ear has heard, or that haven’t crossed the mind of any human being. God has revealed these things to us through the Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, including the depth of God. This is huge!

I believe my life purpose is about serving the poor.  I’ve only spent 17 years of my working as a pastor, so far.  I was ordained when I was 29. Then 11 years later I left parish ministry. As a newly single mother, I knew deep in my heart, that my first purpose was to be the best mother I could be to my children who needed me more than ever.  I found other work for 12 years. I went from preaching about serving the poor—to serving the poor directly. 

For over 8 of those years I led a company that helped people with mental illness, chemical dependencies, lack of education, or criminal histories find work.  It was a secular agency—but I knew the work was ministry.  Our clients needed to find their purpose; identify their gifts, talents, and passions; and they needed to believe in their own agency, their own abilities and value.  One of the biggest challenges s had to do with self-image.  Many of them had internalized the messages they had heard- “You’ll never amount to anything. Who would hire you?  Why bother even trying—you don’t even have a high school education?  You’re going to be just like your father.” So many self-fulfilling prophecies stood like brick walls in their way. 

Changing what we believe about ourselves changes what we can do. To find success our clients needed to visualize themselves having already achieved bigger dreams than they had aspired to before.  It was totally amazing to see them find hope and reach toward new dreams.

We all carry lies in our souls that can become our truth and shape our reality.  Retirement can bring its own identity challenges.  We may think we are too old, too shy, too bold, too tired. Or we may believe we are not smart enough, not secure enough, not adequate in some way.    

Listen to the prophet’s Isaiah’s words: Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen , in whom my soul delights , in whom I have put my Spirit, who will bring forth justice… The prophet’s words were claimed by and for Jesus.  The spirit descended on him and he was empowered to serve, yes. But listen:

Thus says God, who created all things, who gives breathe to the people and spirit to those who walk on earth—I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you. I have given YOU as a covenant to the people… to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon! 

Those words are given for all who walk the earth, all you breathe!

Paul says the same thing- God gives various gifts. God’s purpose is to equip God’s people for the work of serving and building up until we ALL reach the unity of faith and knowledge of God’s Son.  God’s goal is for us to become mature adults, to be fully grown, measured by the standard of the fullness of Christ! Wow!

The purpose of being a Christian is not to go to church.  I heard someone quote Joyce Myers the other day. Evidently, she says that sitting in a garage doesn’t make you a car any more than sitting in church makes you a Christian. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m very glad to see each and every one of you here today.  I hope you invite a friend to come with you next week. I think coming to church is important.  But God’s purpose for us is to use our various gifts to equip people, to serve and build and mature until we grow into the fullness of Christ! 

We discover our purpose and direction through a connection with the Holy Spirit.  That’s what happened in our gospel today.  There in the Jordan the heavens opened, and Jesus saw the spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him.  He was open to more than he could ask for or imagine. He was touched by God’s claim on his life, he accepted the call and continued until he finished what he was sent to do.

We see this pattern not just in Jesus’ life but in the lives of nearly all the people in the biblical story.  Jacob wrestled with God on the riverbank.  In his dream there he climbed a ladder with God at the top.  The heavens opened, so to speak, and he heard God’s claim on his life.  The voice said, Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and I will bring you back, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. Jacob became Israel there.  With his new identity he pledged his life to God and through him God accomplished what was meant to be.

Moses, in his encounter with the divine before the burning bush, was called to lead a people out of slavery—of course he protested, Who am I?  What gifts do I have for such an audacious task?  But God’s claim was on him.  Moses had seen the greatest need around him, the bondage and destruction of a whole people.  And it happened, he led them to freedom.

Saul, a Jewish persecutor of the early Christians, received a calling on the road to Damascus.  The heavens opened, so to speak.  Saul became Paul the evangelist to the Gentiles.  In Galatians 1 he describes himself as an apostle who is not sent from human authority or commissioned through human agency, but sent through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead.”  How did he know?  He didn’t read it in the Bible or learn it in Seminary. He went to Jerusalem with Barnabas and Titus 14 years later, and because of a revelation, he found his mission.  He never met Jesus—it came through the Spirit’s working.

Steve and I had a chance to get to know Peter and Melinda Gebraad better last week over dinner one night.  They are the founders of Gems of Mazatlan, a Canadian charity that distributes tax deductible donations to 6 of the orphanages in Mazatlan, including the Salvation Army Children’s Home, whose residents sing here for us each year during Advent.  For Pete and Melinda the heavens opened, so to speak, when they met the SACH kids in 2014 and fell in love with them.  They weren’t looking for a life purpose, but they found one.  They never dreamed this would become their passion and give such meaning to life. 

Their careers allow them to work remotely and devote 6 months a year to improving the lives of children through stabilizing the facilities and systems in the various orphanages here.  They saw a need, identified how to meet the need, and used their own gifts to further the mission given to them.  Those three steps are vital to figuring out a life purpose. 

Pete works as a pyrotechnician, producing shows as big as the Olympics.  Pyrotechnics is not his mission.  But the skills and talents he used in that work, organizing, publicizing, recruiting, managing—are put to use, now, in the service of the orphans of Mazatlan.  Melinda works as an accountant—but that’s not her life mission.  She uses those skills though in the financial management of the charity they founded. 

I listed a website in the bulletin today: beyondbeaches.ca  It includes a directory of charities that are looking for volunteers.  If you’ve got time to give and the skills to fix things, or mow grass, or make sandwiches, or give rides, or hold the hand of a child who has to go the dentist for the first time—they can hook you up.  Who knows how the Spirit will work in your life.

The Spirit equips us for service and calls us to serve.  It’s through our God-given talents that we are built up into mature Christians, fully grown and measured by the standard of the fullness of Christ.  It doesn’t have to be showy or public.  There’s all kinds of quiet ministry and service going on too.

My prayer for each of you is the same as Paul’s prayer.  Now to the one who by the power at work within us, is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to that One—to God, be the glory in the church, now, and through all generations!

Open yourselves to the Spirit’s power. Let the heavens open and hear the words “Beloved” “Child of God” “The one with whom God is pleased.” Amen

ICCM; January 5, 2020; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; Epiphany

I’ve been thinking about two of Mary Oliver’s poems.  The first is called The Summer Day, it’s closing lines go like this:

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

What am I, what are you going to do with this one wild precious life?  At first it seems like a question for a young person setting out in life—choosing a career, establishing an identity, achieving goals. After all, we here have all done something with our life already.  We are a bunch of retired people living the dream.  We get to spend our winters in Mazatlan, savoring the sights and sounds of life here, the waves, the sunsets, the flowers, birds, and geckos and the colors and the music.  Most of us know how to be idle and blessed to stroll on the beach if not the fields.  But the question remains, What is it that each of us plans to do with the rest of this our one wild, precious life?

It is the first Sunday of a new year, and of a new decade. It’s a good time for a sort of assessment.  One of my extended family members just retired.  She has always been highly organized and goal oriented.  For years now she’s lived by the ideas outlined in the book Younger Next Year.  Throughout her very successful career she utilized the principles of Jim Collins’ book Good to Great, where he encourages leaders to figure out their Big Hairy Audacious Goals.  Now in retirement she’s using the Blue Zone principles to make her annual goals. 

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Blue Zones—researchers have found 5 places where people regularly live into their 100’s with good health.  The Mountainous highlands of inner Sardinia, A Greek Island that also has one of the world’s lowest rates of dementia, the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica, a Seventh Day Adventist community in Loma Linda, California, and Okinawa Japan.  I’ve looked at the 9 principles the researchers discovered that are common to these varied groups. 

1.They move naturally instead of joining gyms or running races.  2. They have a life plan. They know their purpose. This alone can add 7 years to your life.  3.  They have routines that shed stress including prayer, rituals, happy hour, or napping.  4.  They stop eating when they are 80% full and eat their bigger meal mid-day or in early evening and do not eat after that.  5. Their diets are mostly plant based.  6. Those who consume alcohol do so in small amounts, drinking with friends or family and with food. 7.They belong to a faith-based community. Attending services can add 4-14 years to your life. 8. They put their families first. 9 Finally they live in social circles that support healthy behaviors. 

That sounds like a great recipe for living the dream. Participating here in this worshiping community, knowing our purpose, prayer patterns, that’s 3 out of 9 blue zone practices right off the bat. Many of us move more naturally here than we do at home too—walking instead of driving.  Many of us are involved in some kind of service—at the Salvation Army Children’s Home, at the Quilting Shop, making sandwiches for the residents of the Dump, organizing Christmas hampers, giving rides to church, caring for our friends and neighbors, giving to the work of this Blue Church.   

I took a little test online related to the Blue Zones after hearing about her annual review and planning.  According to the test, I’ve got about 35 more years of this wild precious life to fill with purpose and meaning.  Wow!  That’s a lot of time.  Many of you have less time than that. But, as long as our hearts are beating, God has a purpose for our lives.  We are not here to Live The Dream in the usual sense of that phrase.  Retirement, as seen through faith, is not just about strolling on the beach, improving our golf score, or learning to paint—those are some of my favorite things to do, by the way, I’m not suggesting we quit those things.  The answer to the question of what we’re going to do with what remains of this one wild precious life will differ for each of us. 

I recently heard the inspiring life story of a centenarian named Dr. Leila Denmark.  She was born in 1898 in Portal Georgia.  She originally trained to be a teacher and only decided to attend medical school when her fiancé was posted overseas by the US State Department and no wives were allowed to accompany their spouses to that post. She was the only woman in her medical school graduating class in 1928.  She started treating children that year, evidently inviting each next patient to the examining room by saying, “Who’s the next little angel in my waiting room?” 

Denmark devoted a substantial amount of her professional time to charity and was an active member of a Baptist church, even while working at a hospital, baby clinic and in her own private practice.  So many of her patients were dying of Whooping Cough that she conducted research in the diagnosis and treatment of the disease, eventually creating the vaccine that protects us all.  She was an author, finishing her last book in the year 2002 at the age of 103, the same year she retired, because her eyesight was getting too weak for more involved tasks, such as examining children’s throats. Dr. Leila Denmark was one of the first doctors to suggest not smoking around children, and the importance of a healthy diet.  She died in 2012 at the age of 114 and 2 months.  In think she exemplified all 9 of the Blue Zone Principles. 

Now, I’m not suggesting that we all need to be like Dr. Denmark.  The story is told of Zusha, the great Chassidic master, who lay crying on his deathbed. His students asked him, “Rebbe, why are you so sad? After all the mitzvahs and good deeds you have done, you will surely get a great reward in heaven!”

“I’m afraid!” said Zusha. “Because when I get to heaven, I know God’s not going to ask me ‘Why weren’t you more like Moses?’ or ‘Why weren’t you more like King David?’ But I’m afraid that God will ask ‘Zusha, why weren’t you more like Zusha?’ And then what will I say?!”

Living God’s dream for us means identifying our individual life’s purpose, sharing in healthy community, and service to others.  Jeremiah 29: 11 says, For surely I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. 

In a minute we’ll be singing the words of a 1960’s folk song based on a Christmas poem by Howard Thurman, “I am the light of the world, you people come and follow me, if you follow and love you’ll learn the mystery of what you were meant to do and be.” John 20: 21 gives us the same message in Jesus’ words—As the Father has sent me, so I send you. 

We are not meant to retire to idleness.  Psalm 71: 17-21 explains it perfectly:

God you taught me when I was a child, and I am still proclaiming your marvels.

I am old, and now my hair is gray.  O God, do not forsake me; let me live to tell the next generation about your greatness and power, about your heavenly justice, O God.  You have done great things.  Who, O God is like you?  I have felt misery and hardship, but you will give me life again.  You will pull me up again from the depths of the earth, prolong my old age, and once more comfort me. 

I grew up with excellent role models.  About 10 years ago, my mother was voted into the City of Moorhead’s Hall of Fame.  In her acceptance speech she said, “I learned that all of us want to do well, but if we do not also do good in our community or in the world, then doing well will never be enough. I’ve learned how important it is to give back, especially for those of us who have been so richly blessed.” 

I started with a part of a poem by Mary Oliver.  I want to close with another, in When Death Comes she wrote:

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

Amen.

Dec 29, 2019; ICCM; Matthew 2: 13-25; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

It’s only 4 days after Christmas, that silent holy night where all is calm, and all is bright, with the holy infant, tender and mild, sleeping in heavenly peace.  Already we’re listening to a tale of violence, threats and a close escape to a foreign land.  Matthew uses journeys, prophecies and dreams to move the story along.  The gospel moves quickly from the genealogy of Jesus, to a brief mention that Jesus was born and named, to the visit of the wise men, and then to the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt in order to escape a mad king’s fearful rage. 

Herod practiced Judaism even if the religious elite of the day would not have considered him a Jew. He was elected by the Roman Senate in about 36 BC.  He claimed the title King of the Jews for himself even though he was just Rome’s lapdog. To mask his powerless puppet status, he went on a building binge of tombs, temples, fortresses and palaces… all supported by outrageous taxes that ground the common people into the dust. 

When the wise men appeared looking for a child born to be “king of the Jews” Herod’s fear and deceit kicked into high gear.  Herod used the wise men as pawns in a plot to eliminate this new king.  Then when realized that the magi have double crossed him, his instinct to preserve his power at all costs accelerated even more. He knew the approximate date of the child’s birth thanks to the magi’s calculations, and so he ordered the extermination of all children born “in and around Bethlehem.”  Given the size of Bethlehem and the birth rates and so forth, scholars think that about 20 toddlers would have been killed. 

Herod’s reputation for brutality was well known.  Even before the slaughter of the innocents, his vices had the makings of a grisly A&E mini-series. He murdered his wife Marianne, her mother Alexandra, his eldest son, and two other sons. 

Matthew draws his mostly Jewish audience’s attention to the striking parallel between the execution of the Holy Innocents by Herod and the male infants killed in the first Passover at the hands of Pharaoh the night before the Exodus.  Herod is presented as a new Pharaoh. Both rulers lashed out with great malice but also in vain. Both Pharaoh and Herod brought about devastating losses of life, yet both ultimately failed to prevent the birth of a powerful leader of Israel. Both Moses and Jesus were born under the threat of death; both were protected.

Matthew firmly placed Jesus’ story as part of a continuous history of the salvation of the Jews.  An angel appeared in a second dream to Joseph telling him to flee and head into exile. This geographical detour of the holy family as refugees in Egypt is shown as a fulfillment of a prophecy originally focused on the people of Israel. Matthew’s portrays Jesus as the embodiment of the people of Israel. He is the recipient, bearer, and fulfillment of the promises made to Israel by God.

Matthew doesn’t tell us anything about Jesus’ years lived in exile in Egypt. Instead, he quickly returns Jesus to his hometown, as promised once again by scripture.  Another angel appears to Joseph in a dream, announcing the death of Herod.  The coast is clear for the family to return home to Bethlehem of Judea.  Then, yet another dream warns him that Herod’s son, Archelaus, now rules in Judea.  So, the family makes its new home in Nazareth in Galilee. For the third time, Matthew points to a prophetic promise: “He will be called a Nazarene.”

Matthew reassures the readers that everything is transpiring according to God’s plan. In this gospel God directs the holy family at every juncture. And, even more important, every move they make has scriptural significance: Bethlehem in Mic. 5:2; Egypt in Hos. 11:1; Galilee in Isa. 9:1; and Nazareth in . . . well, actually, no one’s sure just where that reference to Nazareth is found, but Matthew thinks it must be in “the prophets” somewhere.

After leading the reader to believe that Jesus would be one before whom kings of the earth would either kneel or tremble, Matthew now reveals that Jesus is to be identified with helpless, and vulnerable people of this world. In time, this will include his followers, who, like him will be pursued from town to town.

The forced travels of Jesus and his family provide a powerful symbol for all the refugees and oppressed people of the earth. A terrible reality of life is that a great many people in many parts of the world are simply at the mercy of political tyrants or unpredictable forces of nature that determine where, when, how, and whether they will live. Our Gospel lesson for today, tells us that Jesus himself was one of these dispossessed ones. 

Potential doom looms over these early chapters of Matthew. Jesus’ welcome to the world is not all choirs of angels and awestruck shepherds.  It is also fear that this child would subvert the order of the world, that a mere child would weaken the powerful.

The arbitrariness of Herod would have been entirely familiar to ancient people living under Rome’s long imperial shadow. The narrative of these threats upon Jesus’ life bristles with authenticity –for such tyranny was well known to ancient peoples. Matthew’s trust in God’s providence emerges not from a simplistic expectation but from a faith that expects God to reign in a world where the dominance of the powerful seems unchangeable. 

Let’s look at it like this…The Gospels are not only concerned with spreading the joy of Jesus Christ (which I assure you they are). They are also given to us to explain the truth.  You and I all know that the truth is not always a pretty thing. Matthew is not worried about our holiday spirit as much as he is about showing us truth.  The sad truth is that tyrannical powers threaten the poor and powerless in every generation.  Syrians, Rohingans, Latin Americans, South Sudanese, the list is endless.

The whole point of Christmas is to give hope, even to tragedies like the Holy Innocents…..I’m going to say that again…. The whole point of Christmas is to give hope even to tragedies like this. It is to say to those suffering, in pain, “fear not, for I bring you tidings of great joy – a Savior is born!” When we start thinking in these terms it makes sense that we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Innocents in the Christmas Season. For we no longer have NO hope…We have a Savior. We have Jesus Christ…We now have hope! We now have nothing to fear!

The world is a hard place…. and like Herod it will try to silence the Good News of Jesus Christ. The harshness of this world will try to distract us and make us doubt. The world will bring each of us trouble and heartache. And certainly, we witness and work against oppression and injustice.  Each one of us carry heartache….Our own burdens. Our own anguish in our hearts….But now…We can “fear not”.

Rather than letting the harshness of this world turn us away from Jesus, let us rely on Christ as the Savior through all our suffering, brokenness and heartbreak. For the promise of his birth, now fulfilled, shows God’s faithfulness in all the promises of forgiveness.

Whatever tragedy you face, whatever cause for weeping and mourning, whatever great sadness or guilt or pain you bring here today…Or, will face tomorrow – find hope in Christ. Find forgiveness and blessing. Look forward in faith and trust in a God who always keeps promises… “Fear not”.

The Holy Innocents were among the first martyrs of the Church.  There have been many more. Jesus himself suffered a horrible and cruel death, later because of a different Herod.  The harsh reality, is if we separate the Incarnation from the Crucifixion, we don’t fully get Christmas…Or, Christianity for that matter.  Christ’s resurrection from suffering and death becomes our resurrection from the cold dark grave of despair… Jesus was delivered, and so are we.

May whatever heartache you carry, give way to Christmas joy, as you find hope and comfort in the Christ who was born for you. Who rose for you…And…Who is a present for you……………Fear Not!

ICCM; Christmas Eve 2019; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

Instead of opening Christmas cards and letters that come in the mail, here in Mexico we make do with emails or Facebook posts.  Once again, this year I received a greeting from my cousin.  She always manages to gather her whole extended family for a spectacular photo—the blond and blue-eyed family is dressed in coordinated outfits, hair tidy, smiles perfect.  Their accompanying greeting is filled with news of their trips and awards and achievements.  One might think it was a professionally produced advertisement.    

Jesus’ birth wasn’t picture perfect.  He was born into a shaky, uncertain family. Mary and Joseph were trembling that night, I’m sure, not thumping their matching sweater clad chests in a family photo.  They were just a young mother, yet unmarried, and her soon to be husband, trying to follow their calling.  Certainly, they were baffled, needy, making do in a stable find themselves holding the sweet little Jesus boy.  I doubt it looked anything like a Christmas card picture.  We don’t see the mess of childbirth, or the smell of the animals, or the fear and joy mingled together in those pretty manger scenes.

If your family isn’t picture perfect, that’s ok.  Neither was Jesus’ family.  But, in that humble family Jesus learned to be merciful, to love, to follow God’s call.  That’s what we get to do too.  We hurt each other, and then we forgive. We live in a messy world that is not picture perfect.

People did not know who Jesus was at his birth.  He was seen as one more baby born on the run, born into poverty and anonymity. Jesus was not given a place of honor but a place of leftovers.  There were no warm towels waiting to receive him, only the warm arms of a very tired mother and father. The world treated him with contempt and disdain. Jesus practiced what he preached—a gospel of God’s great kingdom reversal where the mighty are brought low and the low are lifted up and the outcast have special reserved seating at the banquet while the insiders have to move down a seat to make room for them at the table.

This great reversal sees men and women and children—all, not some—sees all, first and foremost, as children of God and are to be treated with the kind of care and dignity that that claim demands. A young woman is called to smuggle God’s salvation into the world.  Lowly, ordinary shepherds are the first ones visited by angel choruses with the good news. I am convinced that God would not have had it any other way but to be born into a leftover place and to a left-out people, knowing full well no one else knew what God was doing in that sweet little Jesus boy.

By being born as unwelcome and unknown, God was taking the daring risk of Great Love. God was proclaiming to us all that God loves us so much that God is not content to be without us. God was determined to show us God’s constant presence and love by getting down into the grit of our lives, down into the grime of our pain, down into the messiness and beauty of being a human being, a child of God, a baby—completely weak in power, completely vulnerable to the world.

As William Sloane Coffin once preached, “To break through our defenses, [God] arrives [in Jesus] utterly defenseless. Nothing but unguarded goodness in that manger” (William Sloane Coffin, “Power Comes to Its Full Strength in Weakness,” 25 December 1977). God knew exactly what God was doing at this moment of birth into a leftover place to a left-out people, even though no one else did.

Here in this congregation one of the traditions we look forward to is Carl Williams, this time with Keith Reid in support, singing Sweet Little Jesus Boy.  That song was written by Robert McGimsey in 1934, in the depth of the Great Depression.  He had attended a midnight Christmas Eve worship service in New York City and was walking past some private nightclubs on his way home.  He witnessed drunken people singing and shouting and swearing through the doorways and the poor huddled in corners and doorways for warmth.  His biography says he wrote his thoughts that formed the basis for this song on the back of an envelope: What a strange way to celebrate the most loving, influential person that ever lived.  We seem to have missed the whole significance of his birth.

So here we are, on this night to claim hope and sing for joy.  We do so because of the way God chose to be Immanuel, God-with-Us, a baby, born into poverty and anonymity, born into a world full of violence and fear, born completely vulnerable and totally unguarded—because this is the way God has chosen to make God’s love most fully known. The God who chose to come to be with us like that is a God who will never harm us. Any God who would choose to come be with us like that can only be a God full of more love and grace and mercy than we can ever imagine.

So yes, God knew exactly what God was doing at this moment of birth, what we call incarnation. Even if they didn’t know who the baby was. Even if we still don’t completely know who this Jesus is. God knows what God is doing. And that is more than enough.

Therefore on this night hear anew what the angels sang: “Be not afraid. For I bring you good news of a great joy for all the people. To you, for you—messy, beautiful, broken you—is born this day a Savior, who is the Messiah, who is God-with-Us, who is the Lord.” Sweet little Jesus Boy. God’s Love-Made-Flesh.  Amen.

Advent 4a; Dec 22, 2019; Matthew 1; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; ICCM

Today we heard Matthew’s version of the birth of Jesus. No donkey, no stable, no angels, no shepherds—just this business about the scandal of Mary’s untimely pregnancy.  But Matthew doesn’t start there—we jumped into Matthew’s gospel at verse 18.  The first 17 verses never get read in church on a Sunday morning- in fact they’re rarely read at all.  Those first 17 verses are the genealogical account of the ancestors of Jesus.  14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the Exile, and 14 more to the birth of Jesus.  Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, etc. etc. etc. At first it seems like a neat tidy package.  But, Matthew leaves out a bunch of the people listed in Samuel and Kings and his list of names is different from Luke’s list.  Clearly, Matthew is making a point in his choice of those 42 hard to pronounce names.  The truly unusual and risqué content that drives the whole point home of starting a gospel with what seems to be a boring old list of names, is Matthew’s inclusion of 4 women plus Mary in his list—five women whose lives were cloaked in scandal, referred to by one scholar as the shady ladies.

Matthew was written in about 85 AD for a particularly Jewish oriented community of Christians. Paul didn’t include anything about the birth of Jesus, neither did Mark.  Luke’s account is the one we normally hear that includes all those Christmas pageant characters and John who wrote later still starts his account with that metaphysical poetry about the Word of God, the Light and the Darkness, and the character of time.  Matthew grounds his story in the history of the Jewish people.  He starts with Abraham, through David, through kings and the exile, all the way to Joseph—and then, after all that, he says Joseph’s role is just husband of Mary. 

Matthew frames the story in scandal, Mary pregnant too early, Joseph’s pain and his decision to “put her away quietly.” A Jewish tradition gives meaning to that phrase and reveals more about the scandalous aspect of this story.  You see, in that culture, if a woman was raped in an urban setting and could not prove she had resisted the rape she would be put to death by stoning.  If she was raped in a rural area and couldn’t prove her resistance, then she could be “put away quietly.” The idea was that in a rural area she could scream her lungs out but there might not be anyone around for miles—so in that case she could be given the benefit of the doubt. Joseph’s dream offers an alternative explanation of Mary’s situation.  Matthew’s inclusion of four other women reinforces the point.

The first shady lady is Tamar.  Her story is in Genesis 38.  She is the daughter in law of Judah, Jacob’s son.  Tamar married Judah’s oldest son but he dies childless.  So, the next son of Judah is supposed to marry his widow—the second son is Onan.  If you want scandal—read his story for yourself. It’s too long for this sermon—He gets out of marrying Tamar.  The next son, Shela, is 5 years old and not yet a suitable spouse.  So, Judah sends Tamar home to her father’s house promising the marry her to Shela when he is of age. Tamar tries to put back the broken pieces of her life, cast off, without status.

Years later, Shela is grown and Judah’s wife dies. He has business in Tamar’s town. She sets a trap for him by dressing like a prostitute and sitting at the city gate. He sees her and once again revealing his character he decides to avail himself of her services.  They make a deal as he doesn’t have the payment with him. He gives her his signet ring and a couple pieces of clothing as a promise to pay. A few days later he sends a servant with the payment, but Tamar is no longer at the gate. The townspeople deny there has ever been a prostitute who sits there.  He tries to find her but can’t. He is worried about his reputation and decides to let her keep the things to avoid becoming a laughingstock. Three months go by and he hears his daughter in law is pregnant.  He is “wrathful” as the bible puts it.  He makes moves to burn her to death.  She sends the ring and clothing with a note—by the way, the father is the owner of these items. Judah repents and takes her into his own harem.  She produces twins. One is named Perez. Matthew tells us that it is through this incestuous and deceitful relationship that Jesus’ own lineage comes. 

What? How is this part of the Christmas story? But wait, there’s more… a few generations later the lineage flows through Rahab—she’s the prostitute that harbored Joshua’s spies in the battle of Jericho.  Then comes Ruth.  Ruth is the Moabite daughter-in-law of Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, who had fled Judah with their two sons in a time of famine. Having moved to Moab the two sons marry Moabite women.  All three men die there, leaving a Jewish mother and her 2 Moabite daughters-in-law.  One daughter-in-law returns to her Moabite family.  Ruth and Naomi survive by gleaning the fields.  Naomi knows the ways of the world and sees that the owner of the fields is Boaz, a distant kinsman of her Elimelech.  According to the same law that featured in Tamar’s story, Boaz could marry Ruth and care for them.  So, Naomi hatches a plan.  Ruth dresses her best and seeks out Boaz when he is drunk at a festival.  She gets under the blanket with passed-out Boaz.  In the old movies, the scene would fade out at this point and our imaginations could fill in what happened next.  Boaz, wakes up, sees what has happened and does the honorable thing. He marries her and through the sneaky seduction it all ends well.

Matthew moves on to the next shady lady, so shady we aren’t even told her name, just that she’s the wife of Uriah.  If you know your bible stories the way Matthew’s original audience did, you know the wife of Uriah is none other than Bathsheba who King David was smitten with.  He watches her bathing and summons her to the palace. She was in no position to deny the King.  She becomes pregnant and David engineers the death of her husband Uriah so Bathsheba can be added to his harem.  Conquest, adultery and murder in the lineage of Jesus.

Skipping the 17 verses of “begats” avoids the tricky questions.  But by the time Matthew opened his gospel with this genealogy there was already debate about the legitimacy of Jesus of Nazareth.  Joseph’s initial reaction of wanting to “put her away quietly” and send her back to her father’s house reveals that scandal.  Joseph’s dream gives him an alternative explanation.  Matthew draws our attention to the way God has worked before too.

God doesn’t work through moralistic actions. In fact, God can even take an immoral act and work through it to bring good. The line that produced Jesus can and does flow through incest, prostitution, seduction, adultery, and even murder without hindering God’s ability to work through human history to bring life and light to the world. 

 So often people use the bible as a book of judgment. They want to make it a severe kind of weapon with which they can organize and control the behavior of others. But the writer of Matthew says, “NO the message of God in Christ is a message of love. It’s a message of love that says, no matter what you have done, no matter who you have been, the love of God can transform any life and bring holiness out of any human distortion.

Jesus lived out that pattern.

No matter what they did to Jesus, he loved them.

No matter what they said to him, Jesus loved them.

He was denied and Jesus loved those who denied him.

He was betrayed and Jesus loved those who betrayed him.

He was tortured and he loved those who tortured him.

He was killed and he loved those who killed him.

How else can you say with a life, there is nothing any of you can ever do, there is nothing any of you can ever be that will finally separate you from the love of God that we meet in Christ Jesus.

Christmas is not primarily about miracles. The story of Christmas is about the love of God interacting with human life to create wholeness, extravagant love, and the courage to be everything that you are capable of being. It is the power of God in Christ that enables you to live and to love and to be. That’s what the Christmas story is all about. It’s told in a dramatically human fashion.

Even in the supposedly boring 17 verses of “begats” we find the key that unlocks the truth. The bible is a remarkable book. People destroy and distort the Bible whenever they treat it as if it is a literal document about history. It’s not. It is a magnificent portrait painted by Jewish artists who describe the impact of a God filled life named Jesus of Nazareth upon human history.  We are called to live fully, we are empowered to love, we are enabled to be all that you were created to be, and that’s the message of the baby born in Bethlehem, who himself came through a very checkered ancestry.

The love of God is never distorted by the means through which it flows.  And it can never finally be distorted even by the acts of those of us who claim to be Christ’s disciples.  Bethlehem means that the love of God has entered human life. And Christmas will be real when we understand that our job is to allow God’ presence to flow through us so that the love of God might be known among all the people that God has created and that God still loves.

Gift of Hope; 12.8.19; Rebecca Ellenson; ICCM

Have you heard the story about the identical twin boys? They were alike in every way but one. One was a hope-filled optimist who only ever saw the bright side of life. The other was a dark pessimist, who only ever saw the down-side in every situation.

The parents were so worried about the extremes of optimism and pessimism in their boys they took them to the Doctor. He suggested a plan. “On their next birthday give the pessimist a shiny new bike but give the optimist only a pile of manure.”

It seemed an extreme thing to do. After all the parents had always treated heir boys equally. But in this instance, they decided to try to Doctor’s advice. So, when the twins birthday came they gave the pessimist the most expensive, top of the line racing bike a child has ever owned. When he saw the bike his first words were, “I’ll probably crash and break my leg.”  To the hopeful son they gave a carefully wrapped box of manure. He opened it, looked puzzled for a moment, then ran outside screaming, “You can’t fool me! Where there’s this much manure, there’s just gotta be a pony around here somewhere!”

How do we look forward with hope when we find ourselves looking a pile of manure?  The prophet Jeremiah wrote in what was widely seen as the darkest of times.  The Southern kingdom of Israel had already been overtaken by the Assyrian empire’s army.  The Babylonians were gaining strength and threatening to overtake the Northern kingdom of Judah.  Jeremiah often sounded like the pessimistic twin in the story—but in Chapter 29 verse 11 he sang out like the hopeful twin, “For surely I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”  

Hope is more than optimism.  It is connected to faith and trust.  In Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1, we read, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  We hope because of the steadfastness of God, even when things seem as bad as they can be. 

I learned a lesson about hope the year a woman named Nancy died right before Christmas.  Her husband Antti told me about the day Nancy had been diagnosed with Leukemia.  They were distressed and still somewhat disbelieving as they drove home from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN.  He told me she turned to him and said, “Honey, we’ve got to look for the gifts in this.”  That

was her approach through the many years she lived with the disease.  She squeezed out of her diagnosis all that it had to teach her and those close to her. Nancy faced the disease through her faith and proved the truth of those words of Paul’s:

…we boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

The disease itself was not a gift, but Nancy found the gifts in it. I remember sitting with them in the hospital the week before she died.  She spoke in her quiet, gentle way about the blessings that came for her, and for Antti and for their family through the suffering.  She commented that many people were all too ready to seize control and deny their pain, and thereby miss the blessings to be found by going through suffering.  She pointed my attention to the two-edged character of life, to the mystery and majesty of it — to the gift to be found in the suffering. Most of the important things in life have that double-sided reality, including the gospel.  Real truth requires that we see the whole, both sides. 

Because of her depressed immune system Nancy was not able to attend a Sunday morning worship service.  So, three weeks before she died their family gathered on a Saturday for the baptism of her latest grandchild.  The sanctuary had been decorated with freshly cut pine trees. We glimpsed the mystery of life and death as we stomped our snowy boots around the baptismal font.  Nancy stood next to me as I dipped my hand into the water and washed the top of a tiny head and said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” 

I prayed the prayer whose words are taken from our Old Testament reading for today:  “God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we give you thanks for freeing your sons and daughters from the power of sin and for raising them up to a new life through this holy sacrament.  Pour out your Holy Spirit on this child, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord., the spirit of joy in your presence.”  And as I made the sign of the cross on his forehead, I spoke the child’s name and said the words, “child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ, forever.” 

As we stood there, next to the altar rail, we all knew another day was coming. I was thinking ahead to the words I would soon say when we began the funeral service for Nancy–

When we were baptized in Christ Jesus, we were baptized into his death.   We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live a new life.  For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

I was thinking about the sign of the cross I would make, not on her forehead, but on her casket, draped in the pall that symbolized the last leg on that baptismal journey, calling on those same promises of new life for Nancy and promises of comfort and hope for all of us who would remain. 

Today, on this second Sunday in Advent, we look forward in hope toward another mystery: the mystery of Christmas, the incarnation.  It is when we feel fear or grief or uncertainty that the prospect of hope is most needed. Grief and loss, fear and uncertainty, suffering and pain don’t take a break for the holidays. Christmas marks the beginning of a life that encountered suffering and hardship all along the way.  It is the beginning of a life that suffered pain and death.  Christmas is the beginning of Jesus’ walk through all of life with us, with all its stark realities.  This season gathers in all the sorrow we know and gives us a promise to hold on to. 

In every season we need the hopeful message of Christmas that God so loved the world that Jesus, God’s only son, was sent that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.  The coming of the Christ is about God being one of us, knowing loss, knowing sorrow, knowing health and failing health, knowing human weakness, knowing all of what it is to be human, even death.   The message of Christmas is that Christ came, as an infant, to live our lives, to grow with us, to serve us and love us and lead us. 

We are not promised lives of comfort and ease.  Even when it seems like we’ve opened a box of manure—there are gifts to be found.  Through steadfastness and the encouragement of the scriptures we may have hope and glorify God in all things.  Amen.

Maranatha! Peace.  Dec 1, 2019; ICCM; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

Road trips can be fun, or they can be terrible. When my daughter was 2 and my son was 7 their father and planned a camping trip to Yellowstone National Park.  We had great expectations. We left our dog, Penny, with the grandparents and set off.  It was a long journey, really long! Our youngest was in a car seat calling out her mournful lament, “I wanna go home!  I miss Penny!”  Mile after mile all across the Dakotas she hollered her refrain, “I wanna go home! I miss Penny!” Her brother made the best of it—alternately trying to keep her occupied, or turning his back to her and playing his Gameboy. I’m sure there were a few good moments, but it wasn’t what the journey we expected.

Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, is a journey of a sort. The path is set: we start with expectations, we are encouraged to keep awake and alert so we’re ready.  We have a vision set before us of what we might encounter. We have candles to light the way. And our experience depends on our readiness to encounter new things. Some of us might feel like a backseat passenger, dragged along by someone else when all we want is the security of home and the things we know and love.  Some of us, our Gospel text suggests, don’t even know there is a journey at all.  Those travelers are just doing their thing, too busy to pay attention, too focused on the tasks at hand to notice that there is any movement happening, that the keys are being jangled, that the car is pulling out.

The first goal on the Advent journey this year is Peace.  We are given a vision of peace in the text from Isaiah. In the days to come swords will be beaten into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, the nations will stream to God’s holy mountain and no one will be taught war anymore. The psalm tells the same story—pray for peace and draw near to God’s throne.  It is a vision of our world transformed into a place of peace.  Our gospel invites us to watch and wait for the coming of the Lord. 

The story goes that an elderly woman attended a conference featuring presenters from a wide spectrum of believers.  It was a new experience for her to venture out beyond her own congregation and denomination.  She was surprised by the diversity of Christian perspectives. One of the preachers suggested that the participants might try using a greeting that had been popular in the earliest days of Christianity.  People in the first century of the church expected Jesus to return any day. They used the Greek word Maranatha, the Lord is coming.  The woman embraced the suggestion.  She decided to live expectantly—to look for the Lord’s coming and try this new greeting.  So, the next morning she positioned herself at the entry to the breakfast area and enthusiastically greeted each person saying, Marijuana, brother.  Marijuana, sister.  She was close, I guess—at least phonetically speaking.  Marijuana isn’t Maranatha is it? 

The idea that the Lord is coming is interpreted in a variety of ways within the broad spectrum of Christian faith.  Some see our gospel text and a few other passages as predicting a scenario that would unfold 7 years before the second coming of Jesus and the final judgement. They see it as an event they call the rapture when some will be taken up to heaven and spared the tribulation: horrific suffering, wars and devastation for those left behind. 

Some of you may have read one of the Left Behind novels that were first published in the 1990s.  These fictional books are filled with a violent conflict between the tribulation force made up of the left behind who have repented, committing themselves to Jesus.  With military weapons the forces of the Antichrist clash in a battle of Armageddon with Jesus who is figured as an omnipotent warrior who defeats his opponents and condemns most people to eternal suffering in hell.  All 12 of these fictional masterpieces were on the New York Times bestseller list, selling more than 60 million copies.

The idea of a rapture is a modern invention that traces its origin to John Nelson Darby, a late 19^th century British evangelist.  His Scofield Reference Bible was first published in 1909 and divides world history into multiple dispensations climaxing in the rapture and second coming of Jesus.  When we zero in on a few isolated texts and create a fictional and elaborate scheme full of violent destruction we lose sight of the vision of Peace that dominates Christian teaching throughout most of history and most of the world.  If everything might end in the next 50 years, why work for peace?  Why protect the environment? Rapture theology doesn’t match the biblical Jesus who came as the prince of peace. Maranatha doesn’t mean marijuana, and it doesn’t mean Armageddon either. 

When we embark on this Advent journey we are invited to live expectantly.  This season begins not with fear but with peace: Christmas cards read, Peace on Earth. Our carols are filled with Peace, Peace, Peace, Sleep in Heavenly peace.  Today we lit the candle of peace.  We seek the peace of Christ that passes all understanding.  We strive for the vision where swords are beaten into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, where there is no more learning war, no more fighting, but walking in the light of the Lord! 

Advent invites us to draw close to Christ, to journey into peace, hope, joy, trust, and love.  We are invited to leave behind the excess and examine our hearts so that we can follow our Lord.  While the rest of the world is already full-swing into the Christmas season the season of Advent beckons us to travel a different path—to get ourselves ready for the peace that passes understanding.  We make a choice to journey together to the manger, to prepare our hearts to welcome Christ anew.  It’s a counter-cultural choice, this Advent journey.  We’ll resist the urge to sing Christmas carols just yet—while all the world is shopping and partying and splurging, the advent journey invites us to leave the safe and comfortable in search of something wonderful and new.

Advent is about listening for the vision of God’s intention for life, longing for something that is both here already and not yet fully realized.  God’s peace is greater than we can imagine on our own. The peace of Christ that passes all understanding is bigger than personal salvation.  Its goal is no less than the transformation of the whole word.  Far from removing us from the present concerns of this life, the season calls us to influence life here and now.  As expats we’re limited in what we can do here in Mexico to call for peacemaking in schools or governments or community priorities. In our own homelands we can take a stand on policy issues.  Here though, our options are more individual.  I love hearing about the volunteer work being done in orphanages, schools and shelters, with neighbors and organizations.  In two weeks the Salvation Army Children’s Home will be with us in worship.  That’s a peace-making opportunity. The Lord is Coming in those actions.  Maranatha.  The Lord shows us the way of peace and invites us on the journey.  Amen.

Dear friends, this is not just another Sunday, another Season, and another day. Are you ready to encounter Jesus? Are you ready for the unexpected to change your life, alter your plans, and disrupt your direction? Be still. Be aware. Be ready. God is good. Jesus is coming—again, and again, and again. Don’t miss a single opportunity of this present day.

Colossians 1: 11-20;  The Image of the Invisible God; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; 11.24.19; ICCM

On Friday night, over dinner at Angelina’s, someone asked me if I had always wanted to be a pastor.  Yes, I answered, even before I can remember apparently.  When I was a little girl our family sat in the front row where we could see what was going on, a tactic my mother employed to help my sister and me behave.  When I was ordained, Pastor Dennis Hanson told me his memories of me as a toddler.  He said he wasn’t surprised I had become a pastor and that I was the only person who ever blessed him back.  I guess it was my pattern to mirror the sign of the cross at the end of the service from my perch on my father’s lap. 

The mystical has always drawn me in.  I love the music and poetry of faith, the songs and verses and prayers that ring in my mind.  I’ve memorized many passages over time, without trying really, just by reading and studying.  The practices of prayer and meditation quiet and comfort my racing brain.  Visions of the unity of all things ground my being.  To be honest, I find it hard to imagine how others can live even one day without seeing holiness everywhere.  Oh, I’ve learned through my ministry that many people, even many church people haven’t developed a practice of prayer and study nor are they oriented to look for God’s expansive presence as I am.  I have to remind myself what a luxury I have had—what a privilege it has been to spend my working life digging deep into God’s word.

I was about 15 or so when I sought help from Pastor Dave Solberg, asking him to teach me how to pray.  He was an energetic teacher.  I learned many styles of prayer from him—simple daily practices reading the gospels contemplatively, lectio divina, centering prayer, meditation techniques including breathing prayers, mantras, praying the name of Jesus, and prayer journals.

This past week I remembered Pastor Solberg’s lessons when someone here shared with me their personal faith goal for this Mexican season:  to grow in hungering for the word.  That person quoted a part of the Book of Common Prayer written in 1662:  Blessed Lord, who hast caused all Holy Scripture to be written for our learning, grant that we may in such wise hear the Scriptures, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of eternal life which Thou has given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.  What a great joy it is for a pastor to hear that kind of intention!  Prayer matures into the practice of memory.  What an adventure it is to rest in God’s word.  I’m excited to watch the growth happen.

Some texts lend themselves to contemplation and recitation better than others.  Those passages lose something when we over analyze or dissect them too much. Like music, art and poetry, pieces like our lesson from Colossians today are meant to evoke, envelop, and express deep truth.

This past summer Steve and I were able to attend a Gordon Lightfoot concert.  We wound up sitting in the front row of the general seating with some of our best friends.  The highlight of the event was when the 81-year-old songwriter sang our song—Beautiful. My heart swelled. I was transported back in time to the day Steve first played the song for me, and also to our wedding day when a friend sang it for us.

That’s how love songs work—it’s not so much about the melody or the words—it’s about the meaning infused in the memories. We instinctively respond.  Their hyperbole and surplus of feeling create big sensations and speak the language of the heart.  Their words roll around in our minds on the notes of music.  They make their way into our souls.

Our reading from Colossians works that way too—it’s a love song to Christ from the early church.  It’s loaded with Christological poetry that lends itself to art and music.  All things hold together in him.  He is the image of the invisible God. In him, through him, for him all things are created, In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.  Those words live in me, they roll in my head like a melody.

When I was about 10 years old my parents acquired a wall-sized triptych, painted by the head of the art department at the Lutheran college my father worked at.  Its three panels stretch at least 8 feet wide and 6 feet high on a wall in the dining room.  Across the top are the words:  All things hold together in him.  The background is composed of the Christ, in the Byzantine format known as pantocrator, which means ruler of all creation.  He stands, crowned, robed in white, full-length and full-faced, holding the book of the gospels in his left hand and blessing with his right hand. The painting is filled with carpenters, doctors, children playing, students studying, artists painting, people of all races and ages and genders. 

We had customary places at the dinner table.  I ate all my meals looking at that depiction of our text for today.  Our text lives in me, I can see it when I close my eyes.  Listen to the words of our reading as paraphrased by the wonderful pastor poet Eugene Peterson in the translation known as the Message.

^15-18 We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.

^18-20 He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.

That’s poetry. 

I heard an interview with Eugene Peterson this summer on the National Public Radio show called On Being.  The radio host, Krista Tippet, had recorded the interview shortly before Pastor Peterson’s death.  He told about how the scriptures open up when we read them as poetry going so far as to say that we cannot understand most of the scriptures without a poetic and imaginative approach.  He said,

Poets tell us what our eyes, blurred with too much gawking and our ears, dulled with too much chatter miss around and within us.  Poets use words to drag us into the depth of reality itself.  Poetry grabs us by the jugular.  Far from being cosmetic language, it is intestinal. 

Eugene Peterson related a memory in that interview.  One time he went to visit a lonely woman. She was doing embroidery and explained to him that her life was limp.  She said it needed something like an embroidery hoop—you know, those two part round things that you stretch fabric between and snap them together.  As you stretch and then hold the material in place it all fits together.  He provided her with a copy of the psalms and invited her to let her mind stretch like fabric around the structure of the psalms, to see what happened to the pieces of her life when she zeroed in on one or two of them.

Pastor Peterson went on in the interview to explain his own practice of praying the psalms.  First thing in the morning he centered in for an hour or so of quiet and coffee.  He had selected 7 psalms that as he said, “covered the whole waterfront.” And he memorized them.  Sundays he worked with Psalm 92, a sabbath psalm.  One weekday was focused on Psalm 68, a collection of bits and pieces that fit together moving from fury and praise to isolation.  The parts are not logically connected but with imagination they do blend and flow. Psalm 18 is rich with metaphor and served as another day’s concentration point.  After reciting and resting in the psalm for the day he said he, “shut up.”  He breathed for 15-25 minutes, emptying himself as much as he could, ridding himself of the clutter.  The psalms offer us the full range of experience.  He said, “It’s easy to be honest before God with the hallelujahs, more difficult with the hurts, and nearly impossible to be honest with God in the dark emotions of our hates.”

The poets, mystics, psalmists, and song writers invite us into the wonder, the love, and the deep relationship with the Holy.  All things hold together in him.  He is the image of the invisible God. In him, through him, for him all things are created, In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. 

Today I want to leave you with another passage that rings with the majesty and mystery of God’s immeasurable presence.  It is a poetic prayer for believers written in Ephesians chapter 3:

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,^[a] 15 from whom every family^[b] in heaven and on earth takes its name. ¹⁶ I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, ¹⁷ and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. ¹⁸ I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

²⁰ Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

New Heavens and a New Earth; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; ICCM; November 17, 2019; Isaiah 65: 17-25 & Luke 21: 5-19

In both of our Scripture readings today, we see the people longing for the good old days—the times before destruction.  Both the prophet Isaiah’s words and Luke’s recalling of Jesus’ words were written in the context of destruction.  Both are messages of hope and promise in troubled times.  Both messages acknowledge the difficult nature of this world, it’s structures and governments even as they proclaim God’s enduring provision. 

Carly Simon’s song, Anticipation, has been running through my mind this week as I thought about our scripture readings.

We can never know about the days to come, But we think about them anyway
And I wonder if I’m really with you now. Or just chasin’ after some finer day

Anticipation, anticipation, Is makin’ me late, Is keepin’ me waitin’

And tomorrow we might not be together, I’m no prophet and I don’t know nature’s ways
So I’ll try and see into your eyes right now, And stay right here ’cause these are the good old days

And stay right here ’cause these are the good old days

The prophet Isaiah preached a word of hope to people living in anticipation, for them to stay right there, being glad and rejoicing in what God is creating. 

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth… be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight

Isaiah spoke to what was left of the former kingdom of Israel. Generations before, Babylon had conquered Israel and destroyed Jerusalem and its temple.  The people of Israel were marched off in captivity, having seen their land torn by war, their homes and place of worship demolished.  For over 70 year they lived as exiles, longing to return. They built up expectations.  Finally, Persian defeated Babylon.  Cyrus was the new emperor of all the known world and he allowed the people who had been born in captivity, the ones who had only heard stories of the good old days, to go “home.” 

Imagine the challenges they faced.  Where to begin!?  These people had never seen the place before. They had to start all over.  Current residents had filled up what had once been their land.  Where were those good old days?  Maybe, if we get a picture in our minds of Syria right now, it’s broken walls and ruined land, 13 million of its 22 million people displaced from their devastated land; maybe if we consider what it would be like for them two or three generations from now to return and try to rebuild; maybe if we do that, we can begin to hear Isaiah’s words with some degree of understanding. What would it be like to hear those hopeful words in that kind of a situation?  Words like this:

No more shall the sound of weeping be heard, or the cry of distress.  No more shall there be an infant that lives but a few days or an old person who does not live out a lifetime.  They shall build houses and inhabit them, they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit, they shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity.  Predators and prey will feed together. They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain! The prophet was speaking their language—he described an end to all they had ever known. He painted a word picture of peace, health, stability.  I am about to create new heavens and a new earth…Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating. 

Over the years they did rebuild, a bit.  But, their new temple wasn’t anything like the one built in the 10^th century BC by King Solomon and destroyed in 587 by the Babylonians.  The second temple was much smaller. And they didn’t have their own king again.  No, the Persian Empire gave way to the Greeks and then to the Romans.  It wasn’t until 500 years later, in 20 BC, that the Jews were finally able to update and expand the temple.  Through all that time their longing remained strong for a Messiah to restore the good old days.

Isaiah’s message pointed the people not backward, but to their own time. He wanted them to see the present and continuing activity of God’s creative work.  They longed for another time.  It’s only human to do so.  We spend so much of our lives wishing for another time. 

I used to listen to a radio show called Car Talk.  It was hosted by car mechanic brothers, Tom and Ray Magliozzi.  They called themselves Click and Clack, the Tappit brothers.  They answered car questions in their own funny style.  One day they talked about how we always want to live in another time.  They joked:

If you’re less than 10 years old, you’re so excited about aging that you think in fractions. “How old are you?” “I’m four and a half!” You’re never thirty-six and a half. You’re four and a half, going on five!

That’s the key.

You get into your teens, now they can’t hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.

“How old are you?” “I’m gonna be 16!” You could be 13, but hey, you’re gonna be 16!

And then the greatest day of your life… you become 21.

Even the words sound like a ceremony… YOU BECOME 21… YESSSS!!!

But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk. He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There’s no fun now, you’re just a sour dumpling. What’s wrong? What’s changed?

You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you’re PUSHING 40.

Whoa! Put on the brakes, it’s all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50… and your dreams are gone.

But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn’t think you would!

So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.

You’ve built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it’s a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime.

And it doesn’t end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; “I was JUST 92.”

Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. “I’m 100 and a half!”

Even though we can never know about the days to come, we think about them anyway.  We keep chasin’ after some finer day.  It’s hard to stay right here and see that these are the good old days, and these days are the only ones we really have.

Luke wrote our gospel reading today sometime after the temple that we were talking about in the Old Testament reading was destroyed yet again.  In 66 AD the Jews revolted under the Roman rule.  The Roman response was to level the temple.  Now, all that remains of that glorious structure is the Western Wall.  And the world is still fighting over the stones referenced in our gospel.

Worrying about the future is just as useless as longing for the past.  Many people see a dire prediction of awful things to come in texts like toady’s gospel reading.  But Luke’s portrayal of Jesus points us away from fretting about the things to come.  As Jesus said in another place, today has enough worries of its own. Like every other generation, we have our hands full.  Government corruption is universal, wars, natural disasters, fires and floods, disease, loss—these are constants in every time and place.  The human reaction is to long for the past or worry about the future, to throw up our hands in despair and bury our heads in the sand and hope against hope that it all turns out alright.

Both of these texts are really about good news. Isaiah acknowledges the current reality of his time and God is about to create new heavens and a new earth.  The people should be glad and rejoice forever in what God IS creating. Jesus isn’t preaching gloom and doom; Jesus is preaching reality. Jesus was not predicting some far-off day of ultimate battle; he was talking about the reality of life in Israel, which was an occupied country and had been buffeted about by war during its entire existence.

We are called to a life of endurance, patience and faith in the midst of a world that is often difficult and confusing. We are called to a faith that looks above and beyond our personal circumstances to the promise of God to hold us and keep us safe forever.

Robert Fulghum tells the story of a medieval stonecutter who was working on a Cathedral. An interested bystander saw the man working day after day carefully cutting and shaping and polishing one modest sized piece.  Finally the watcher said to the cutter “This stone must be very important.  Is it a part of the baptismal font?  Is it the base of the pulpit?  Is it the front of the altar?’

The cutter got up from his knees and wiped his hands and lead the man around the scaffolding and pointed out a very obscure corner of the building, “It goes there,” he said.  The onlooker was astounded, “Really, you’re working so hard on something nobody will see?” The stonecutter smiled and said, “God will see it.  We’re not building this cathedral for nobody; we’re building it for God.”

Both of our readings today are calls to faithful living, to endurance, to hanging in through tough times, to having faith in the God who has faith in us. It’s not about building a temple or a cathedral, but about building our life into a house for God, where Christ’s love motivates all actions, where we remember it’s about God and not about us.

And we then move into the world, carrying this ministry of building with us, building networks of connection in the world, networks that share God’s love with those who need it most, those stepped on by war, those persecuted by oppression, those rejected by society, those left wounded and bleeding outside, on the doorstep of life. 

We can never know about the days to come, But we think about them anyway, Are we just chasin’ after some finer day, living in anticipation, waitin’.  Or can we listen to God’s message and stay right here ’cause these are the good old days. 

We have a purpose—to live into the resurrection faith, and to work for the new heaven and new earth, where:

No more shall the sound of weeping be heard, or the cry of distress.  No more shall there be an infant that lives but a few days or an old person who does not live out a lifetime.  They shall build houses and inhabit them, they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit, they shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity.  Predators and prey will feed together. They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain!  Amen.