Month: December 2018

12/23/18 4 Advent C, Luke 1: 39-55; ICCM; Songs of Blessing; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

Today we heard the prophetic blessing songs of Elizabeth and Mary as they share their outrageous pregnancy experiences together.

Who would you run to if you, like Mary, had exciting, unexpected, life-altering, potentially world-changing news?  Mary ran to Elizabeth, a cousin of sorts, a mentor-like figure at least a generation older than herself. In addition to providing a refuge and a comfort to Mary, Elizabeth functioned as a prophet who proclaimed a benediction, a blessing over Mary, over her child, and over Mary’s trusting faith.  The minute Elizabeth heard Mary’s voice she sings out, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!  As soon as I heard the sound of your greeting the child in my womb leaped for joy.  Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill God’s promises to her!”  Elizabeth foretells with joy that Mary will bring liberation in God’s name. 

Biblically speaking, blessing goes all the way back to the creation stories.  God created life and blessed it.  We see blessing in the stories of Abraham and Sarah with the establishment of their family in order to be a blessing to others.  Rebekah’s family blessed her as she left her homeland to marry Isaac. Jacob cheated his brother to get a blessing and later wrestled with the angel to be blessed again.  We can trace blessing throughout the scriptural stories, songs and prophecies.

There are two basic meanings of blessing in the scriptures.  Blessing can be a proclamation, a statement of goodness to or for another.  It can also be the condition that results from a right relationship with God.  God’s intention for all creation is to experience blessing:  wholeness, peace, and fulfillment. But of course, that blessed condition is broken by sin.  So, a blessing is a declaration of that inherent goodness. New life and forgiveness through Christ is the ultimate blessing.  We use the word so lightly in ordinary speech, count your blessings, we say.  But the material ease and happiness we enjoy from day to day are temporary.  Spiritual blessings available to us in Christ reach a different level. 

In Jewish households, at sundown on Friday nights, in celebration of the sabbath, parents embrace the custom of blessing their children.  There are many variations on how the blessing is made.  Often the bless-or places one or both hands on the child’s head and concludes with a blessing from scripture; “May God bless you and watch over you, may God’s face shine toward you and grant you peace.”  The parents might whisper a word of praise for something they have done or a word of encouragement or love, even a recognition of something good in their character or identity.  It is concluded with a hug or a kiss. 

When we bless someone, or are blessed by them, we honor our connection with them and with God.  We affirm God’s presence and intention for blessing among us.  The poet, Vaclav Havel, said it this way:  Speaking a word of blessing “is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced and it is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.”

Elizabeth’s announced God’s blessing for Mary, that she would live into God’s plan for her in the world.  It’s a powerful thing, to be blessed.

Who would you run to, if you, like Mary were overwhelmed by what was ahead of you?  I’ve had several older, wiser, mentor-like women in my life.  There’s Norma, and Barb, and Pam, women who have really seen me, deeply; women I trusted who knew my strengths and challenges and who encouraged and blessed me. They were each a refuge for me at a time when I needed it.

But, my big sister Betsy, has always been there for me.  She’s the one I’d run to. Betsy was here visiting two weeks ago. It was the first time in our adult lives that we’ve spent a whole week together without our parents or children there too. We walked and talked and laughed ‘til we cried and held our stomachs. It was a blessing for both of us. 

Betsy happened to be here on December 12^th, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  Having been raised Lutherans, neither of us knew much about the traditions associated with the day. Evidently on December 12^th ,1531 a poor young Indian named Juan Diego from Tepeyac, near Mexico City, experienced the presence of a woman who identified herself as the Mother of God and instructed the boy to get the bishop to build a church on the site of her appearance. She left an image of herself imprinted miraculously on his tilma, a poor-quality cactus-cloth. It is said that the tilma should have deteriorated within 20 years but shows no sign of decay after over almost 500 years.

I showed Betsy the cathedral on that day, with the hundreds of families making their procession to the booths set up around the outside of the building, small children dressed up in peasant attire for their annual holiday photos. I also showed her the backside of Icebox hill, just a few blocks from our apartment, where there is a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe as Mary is called in Mexico.

Even though Mary has never played a significant role in my faith development I enjoy walking past the shrine, looking at the blinking and flashing light display, the fresh flower arrangements, the many manger scenes complete with every imaginable figurine, and the recorded music that jingles into the December air, I wonder how the story from 1531 has shaped the lives and spirituality of the people of Mexico. Guadalupe is also called La Virgen Morena, the Brown Virgen and her image has been emblazoned on the banners of revolutionary groups throughout Mexico’s history. She appeared to a humble peasant boy, she looked like the indigenous people. She is experienced as a blessing for many.

For Roman Catholics, Mary functions as a go-between with sinners on earth and God in heaven. During the Middle Ages, as the church’s leadership became more and more distant from the people, Mary became important in the prayer lives of the common folk, as one who could empathize with their plight and mediate forgiveness.

In the councils of the Church through the centuries, Mary gradually gained supernatural qualities and Protestants see Roman Catholics as overemphasizing Mary’s role to the point that she is venerated almost on par with her son. We don’t have to worship Mary though to see her as a person of faith, called by God, struggling with the daily demands of her life.

Our gospel today shows us her startling role. For Luke, Mary is first a prophet. Every painting or statue or tilma I’ve ever seen of Mary shows her as quiet and passive. But Luke shows us a bold  singer of justice who has gone through all the classic steps of the call of prophets familiar in the Old Testament: God’s initial call, God’s task, prophet’s objection, God’s reassurance, prophet’s acceptance of call.

The angel called and commissioned Mary to her prophetic task in the annunciation: “Hail, favored one . . . you will conceive in your womb.” Like Isaiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah God sent a messenger to tell her that she has been chosen. It’s not a proposal, it’s a pronouncement.  The angel doesn’t say, “Your mission, Mary, should you choose to accept it.” The angel says to her, “And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.” Like other prophets, Mary is informed, not consulted, about what she is going to do.

The prophet always objects to the call by protesting their inadequacy or pointing to some factor that makes it impossible. Jeremiah said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” Moses said, “Lord, I am not a very good public speaker. Here am I, send Aaron.” So, it’s quite expected that Mary would object with the highly practical question: “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”

But, God never pays any attention to prophetic objections and says, “You’re right. There probably is someone better temperamentally suited for this and with a better resume. I’ll keep looking until I find them.”

Then comes the next step: God’s reassurance that God is committed to the prophet: God reassures the Old Testament prophets that the divine presence will abide with them in carrying out the call. The prophet’s job description is not to speak out of his (or her) own wisdom or eloquence, but to be a messenger for God, to do and speak what is commanded. In fulfilling this task, God promises to be with the prophet as deliverer. In Mary’s prophetic call, the angel Gabriel is the mouthpiece for this divine reassurance: “Nothing will be impossible with God”

Call, task, objection, reassurance, acceptance: these are the five stages of the prophet’s call. They may sound quite familiar to you from your knowledge of the Bible and its prophets. They may sound quite familiar to you from your knowledge of your own past and present struggles with God.

This Christmas season, we have much to learn from Mary and Elizabeth, the prophets.  Their individual tasks were unique to each of them but the prophetic call extends to us all. We, like them, and like all those named in the stories of our faith, are blessed, to be a blessing with the reassurance that God will carry us through.  Amen.

Christmas Eve 2018, ICCM ; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson 

Merry Christmas!  I’m so glad to see each and every one of you here.  We come each year to the manger, seeking what is true and holy and we open our hearts to the mystery of God in flesh. We sing timeless carols in the candlelight and then we track our way back into the messy world, centered somehow again by the most true and holy reality of all.

I brought just a select few of my favorite Christmas decorations to Mexico this year. I have the glass nativity set I received on my first Christmas as a pastor, one of the angels from my collection, and a candle holder of cut metal that shines a halo of light around the holy family. I also brought this ornament which has been displayed in our entryway this year. It reminds me of a plumb bob—you know the simple carpenter’s tool that measures a vertical line. To me this ornament says perfection, truth, clarity.

The plumb bob is a biblical image for the righteousness and justice of God against which we can measure our lives.  Amos 7: 9 says “behold I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people.”  And Isaiah 28: 17 says, “I will make justice the measuring line and righteousness the plumb bob.” 

Righteousness and Justice are concepts, principles, subject to interpretation and context.  The plumb bob on the other hand demonstrates the underlying and unchangeable laws of physics.  The bob will always hang plumb, just as water will always rest level.  They are tools that show us truth, dependably.

This definition of True has been right there in front of my eyes this year.  You see, there’s been construction in our building again this year, the building of balconies.  We’ve heard the pounding of hammers and seen the mixing of cement and the carrying of buckets of cement. I’ve been shaking my head in amazement over the ability of the workers, with such simple tools to create structures that are true, you know: plumb (perfectly vertical), level (perfectly horizontal) and square (two lines meeting at a 90 degree angle) at the same time.  Those mathematical and physical concepts show up in reality.

This holy night is something like that. In the crude and simple manger bed, the holy Christ Child lay.  The birth of Jesus presents us with a visible reality of the underlying and ever-present truth. Language can barely convey it.  The first chapter of Hebrews tries to capture it.  Christ is the exact imprint of God’s very being.  Paul tries in the first chapter of his letter to the Colossians: In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.  John’s gospel begins with that great poetry, In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God… The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory… full of grace and truth.  But words can only do so much.  And that’s the real beauty and power of this holy night.

The Christmas gospel call us in, right back to the center, to what is true, grounded in the mystery of reality itself.  When we think of the angels’ song, “Glory to God in the highest,” the shepherds visit to the lowly manger, the beautiful face of Mary with eyes all aglow as she beholds her Messiah child, and the invitation to come close to the holy this Christmas we can get back to the standard set for us, to the center of our created purpose, to keep our eyes fixed on the one who calls us to faith. 

This holy night invites us to realize that by varying degrees we have been out of plumb, off kilter.  One writer put it this way: “unless that which is above you controls that which is within you, then that which is around you will.” 

Last week ABC broadcast A Charlie Brown Christmas for the 53^rd year on prime time television. In a world where the latest greatest technology is outdated in a matter of months, and social media trends come and go in a matter of days, 53 years of anything becomes quite meaningful. I was four when the program first aired and I suppose I’ve seen the show a dozen times or more.  I’m guessing most of you have seen it too.  It’s really the only Christmas show I miss watching. 

I love that climactic scene where Linus responds to Charlie Brown’s question, “Doesn’t anyone know what Christmas is all about?” by boldly heading out to center stage, asking for “lights please” and then reciting the Christmas story from Luke’s gospel… Right in the middle of speaking, Linus drops the blanket.  

Charlie Brown is best known for his uniquely striped shirt, and Linus is most associated with his ever-present security blanket. Throughout the story of Peanuts, Lucy, Snoopy, Sally and others all work to no avail to separate Linus from his blanket. And even though his security blanket remains a major source of ridicule for the otherwise mature and thoughtful Linus, he simply refuses to give it up… until that particular moment in the Christmas story, when he simply drops it…

Three years ago, the last time I saw the show I noticed for the first time a little detail that I am now convinced was intentional.  At the specific moment when Linus drops the blanket he utters the words, “fear not”.   Looking at it now, it is pretty clear what Charles Schultz was saying, and it’s so simple it’s brilliant. 

The birth of Jesus separates us from our fears.

The birth of Jesus frees us from the habits we are unable (or unwilling) to break ourselves.

The birth of Jesus allows us to simply drop the false security we have been grasping so tightly and learn to trust and cling to Him instead.

The world of 2018 can be a scary place, and most of us find ourselves grasping to something temporal for security, whatever that thing may be. Essentially, 2018 is a world in which it is very difficult for us to “fear not.”

But in the midst of fear and insecurity, a simple cartoon image from 1965 can remind us to seek true peace and true security in the one place it has always been and can always still be found.

It’s what Christmas is all about.

Advent 3C, December 16, 2018; Luke 3: 7-18; Philippians 4: 4-7; Zephaniah 3: 14-20: Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; ICCM

Repenting, rejoicing, and giving are the themes for this Sunday. Zephaniah did speak words of comfort, but the people were in exile, refugees of an Old Testament kind. He said peace and modest prosperity would return but only after the proud and arrogant who flaunted their accomplishments and self-sufficiency against God were removed. The words of rejoicing were spoken to the poor. 

And Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians from prison, encouraging them to rejoice and to be generous to all.  Joy and generosity. Opening our hearts and lives to the peace of God which passes all understanding leaves no room for pettiness about possessions, control, and status which are the basis for most of our worries and tensions. 

And then we get John the Baptist blasting away out there in the stubble-covered desert, surrounded by tinder-dry brushwood and rocks calling the people a brood of vipers, where if a spark started a desert fire, the snakes would slither out of their crannies and hiding spots and flee in fear of the flames. 

The Jews thought of themselves as safe from judgment because of their status as the God’s chosen.  But John said no!  Reminiscent of last weeks words, this week we hear strong images:  fire chasing the snakes from their hiding holes; axes chopping down trees; and a flat, wooden, shovel-like tool tossing grain and grain dust into the air, sifting and separating the useless from the worthy.  Once again, we reminded that the love and the judgment of God go together.  God doesn’t allow us to be worthless but will instead purify us. For love’s sake God is relentlessly stern with everything in us that is self-centered. 

Rejoicing might be easier if John the Baptist’s words were not so very concrete.  Most of us, after all, have a lot of shirts, and money in the bank to buy more.  Six years ago, I preached on this text in another congregation.  I asked the people what would happen if those of us who had two cars rushed out to give one of them to family who needed one. I asked, “What would happen if those who have a second home were motivated by the Baptist’s words to find a homeless family who might be settled there?  Let your imaginations go wild…” I challenged.  “What would it be like to give away the clothes from our closets, the food in our cupboards and our freezers?  Would we find a peaceful simplicity and a full and true rejoicing?  According to John the Baptist, then we would be ready for the day of the Lord.”

I can’t tell you how stunned I was when the next week when a woman shared with me, privately, what she and her husband had done.  They owned a rental house in a small Minnesota town that was vacant.  A friend of her sister’s had lost her job and was living in a shelter in Minneapolis.  They moved her into their vacant house for the winter. And there was a different kind of joy that season.  It was a tempered joy—because the homeless woman’s challenges continued and the solutions were not easy—but there was joy. 

I read a story in the Christian Century Magazine this week by Austin Crenshaw Shelley. He wrote about growing up with his grandparents in a 500 square foot home in South Carolina. His grandpa reviewed all expenditures, except the grocery shopping which was entirely up to his grandma. Though they never went hungry, there was good reason to be frugal.

Every Saturday Austin went with his grandma into town and pushed their cart up and down the aisles while she carefully selected food in duplicate—two boxes of cereal, two jars of peanut butter, two bags of flour—until as he said, “our cart looked like an abstract rendering of Noah’s ark with its produce and nonperishable food items arranged two by two.”

Afterwards they drove straight to the town’s food bank, where his grandmother would donate exactly half of everything she’d just purchased. She bought his silence each week with a small candy bar, which was not immune to her rule: one chocolate treat for him, one for the food bank.

He remembered on one of these grocery trips, when he was eight or nine years old, he asked for a name-brand cereal he’d seen advertised. “We can’t afford that one,” she replied without looking up from her list. “We can if we don’t buy two of them,” he grumbled. Grandma met his eyes, put her list down so she could place her hands firmly on his shoulders. She measured her words carefully: “If we can’t afford two, we can’t afford one.”

Was their weekly grocery run a direct response to John the Baptist’s words? “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, whoever has food must do likewise.” Austin reflects: “Given my grandmother’s tendency to interpret scripture more literally than I, the odds are favorable that John’s exhortations laid an unavoidable claim on her heart—a claim that required her obedience through concrete action.”

It’s all too easy to rationalize the claim of the gospel on our lives. Like John the Baptist’s hearers who relied on God’s covenant with Abraham, we lean heavily on Jesus’ promises of forgiveness and grace, often ignoring our responsibility to love our neighbors. “What shall we do?” ask the crowds, tax collectors, and soldiers in this passage.  We try to wiggle our way out of those demands for ethical living by claiming a figurative reading of the text. Or we abstract the prophet’s words from the reality of our lives and the lives of others. We talk a good game. But most of us, myself included, buy a single box of the more expensive cereal.

The question at the heart of this text is not “What shall we believe?” It’s– “What shall we do?”  John’s response is clear. Repentance has to do with ethics, with action, with the Holy Spirit’s compelling us to be God’s hands and feet in the world—with attention to the needs of others rather than preoccupation with our own salvation.

Austin Crenshaw Shelly concludes his article with these words:  By the world’s measure, my understanding of John’s preaching is more nuanced than my grandmother’s. But no advanced degree in theology will ever come close to her faith. “What shall we do?” the people ask the prophet. Sometimes we like to pretend the answer is complicated. Sometimes it really is. But buying two bags of flour is a good start.

I think he’s right. God asks us to share what we have been given, not to share more than we have been given. This is something I know I need to relearn again and again.
 
Everything we have is a gift from God, even the gift of life. And these gifts have been given to us to use and then to give away. That’s how true rejoicing comes. John says that those who have two coats or more food than they need should give to those who have none.

Rejoice in the great goodness of our God, who uses peace and joy and love to win us. Let’s live in the light of that joy. ‘Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice!  Amen.