Month: December 2021

Let us pray– come into our hearts Lord Jesus, come in today, come in to stay.  Fill us with the wonder of your love.  Amen.

When my son was about 6 years old he asked me if God hides from us.  Then, without missing a beat he told me God must be like The Flash, a superhero from comic books who can zip from one place to another before you can see he’s gone.   

Understanding who God is or what God is like can be very hard.  Children know that and so does anyone else who has tried to explain God to a child.  Children learn that God can hear their prayers and the prayers of all other people at the same time. Children learn that God is with us all the time and with everyone else too.  Understanding God can be hard. 

It can seem like God is hiding from us even when we grow up.  But, because of Jesus we don’t’ not have to guess about God any more– God came out of hiding, so to speak.  We see who God is when we see Christ.  All we need to know about God is in Jesus.  That is something even a child can understand. 

When my daughter was about 6 years old she was sitting at the kitchen table coloring in an Advent/Christmas coloring book—because that’s what preacher’s kids do—sometimes.  She started to tell me about the picture.  She pointed to the manger and said, “That’s Jesus lying there.”  She pointed to the woman kneeling by the mange rand said, “That’s his mother Mary.”  Then she pointed to the man standing next to Mary and said, “That’s God.” 

I corrected her, “No, that’s Joseph.”

“But I thought God was Jesus’ father… If that’s not God then who is God?”

“Well, God isn’t a man like Joseph,” I said.  “God isn’t a person at all.”   I thought to myself, so much for all my training.  How do you explain God to a 6 year old.  I said something like, “God created everything and can’t be seen like Joseph could.  God is power and truth.”  I could see her puzzling over what I said.  I think I tried to explain saying something like, “The bible says that the Spirit of God is like the wind that blows where it wills…”

She interrupted me with a roll of her eyes and something like, “Well, that doesn’t make any sense at all!”

So I started over, once again.  “The bible also says that God shows us all we need to know about God in Jesus.” 

Relief and understanding came back into the conversation. “Yeah,” she said, “God sent Jesus to show us what God is like. That’s right.”

All we need to know about God can be found in Jesus.  Paul said it this way, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. He is the image of the invisible God.”  In Hebrews 1, v. 3 we find a similar verse—“He is the reflection of God’s glory and is the exact imprint of Gods very being.” Those are some of my favorite bible verses.  They direct me, like a child, back to Christ as all I really need to know about God. 

There is a wonder to this season that draws out the child in each of us and answers the longings and questions of us all.  Something about little babies captivates us all– from the toughest and oldest to the youngest and sweetest.  Toddlers who are just learning to talk learn “baby” as one of their first words.  New parents can watch their newborns for long stretches of time.  Respectable, dignified, reasonable adults become gibbering fools when their grandchildren are born.  Maybe it is the helpless dependence of children that captivates us.  Maybe it is the miracle of birth and life itself.  Add to all of that natural appreciation of babies the fact that in Jesus we have God the child and we have the childlike wonder of Christmas. 

Today’s gospel presents us with Jesus at the age of twelve. But, you’ll pardon me if, on the day after Christmas, I stick with the baby Jesus and the child in all of us for today. 

I recall my childhood memories of Christmas.  It seemed almost a magical time– a time when anything could happen.  I remember shopping with my mom and sister and wanting to linger in front of a particular store window in Fargo that had a display each year of moving dolls.  I remember thinking that they were real, and that they only lived at Christmas time.  There were special decorations brought out of wrapping and handled with care.  There were candles.  Christmas, too, was a season of secrets and surprises. 

Certainly, the traditions are not the main point of Christmas.  They are like the accompaniment to a melody.  The traditions can become like the squiggles of a doodle.  Everyone knows how to doodle, during a long boring class or meeting you start by making a shape, say a circle or a star, then you add other shapes around the original one, expanding and spreading all over the paper.  Before you know it you can’t see where you started, the simple beginning is swallowed up in adornment. 

Christmas too, started simply.  And because it is special, we have adorned our celebrations with countless wonderful decorations and traditions– shopping, presents, parties, trees, twinkling lights, stockings, carols, concerts, foods, candlelight  and so on.  We have to be careful not to lose sight of the simple truth from which it all began. 

You have not come here today for the beauty of the sanctuary as it is decorated for Christmas. You come here week after week, and year after year, to hear again the story of God come close to us in Jesus.  There is a hunger in our souls, a hunger we are often not even aware of, that draws us to hear the story of the Child born so that we may be free, united with God, and so that we may learn to love one another. 

Christmas is a time for all of us, no matter what our situation.  Within each of us is someone who needs love and comfort and security.  There is a child in each of us, no matter how old, who wants loving arms to rush into when we are hurt or sad or lonely.  Who doesn’t want a gift?  Not everyone has happy memories of Christmases.  Some come from non-beleiving homes, or from homes that were scarred by a host of problems.  Some people carry with them memories of significant losses that happened near Christmas time.  If we did not get the love we needed as children, or if we’re nogetting the love we need now it can be even more important to hear the message of Christmas.  No matter who else has let us down, no matter what hurts we carry, the message of Christmas is that God has come out of hiding and will never fail us. 

I heard Dr. Jim Nestingen, from Luther Seminary, tell a story once about a pastor he knew and respected named Edmund Smits.  Visitation to a psychiatric hospital was a regular part of Pastor Smit’s ministry.  One of the people he visited there was a woman in a catatonic state.  She did not have a physical reason to be paralyzed but she did not move and did not respond to any contact or communication.  This pastor went in to see her regularly, even though the staff did not think it would do any good.  He spoke to her and read to her and prayed with her.  Before he left her, he would repeat these words,  “No matter who else let you down, Jesus never will.”  He did this for 70 days straight.  Finally she responded.  The Christmas gospel can reach through even the toughest barriers.  God has come out of hiding.  In Jesus and his love we are shown just what God is like. 

The gospel is as simple as Christmas–simple enough for a child, for the child in each of us. For God so loved the world that a savior was born to an unknown couple in a faraway place. Jesus was born, like all the rest of us.  God took on our lives and transforms them. 

The Christ child comes to us, asking us to receive him as a child with wonder and awe and trust and to welcome others with grace and love, as we should welcome children.  This little child grew up to tell the people

Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.  Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.  Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. 

Let us pray.  Your little ones dear Lord are we, and come your lowly bed to see, enlighten every soul and mind, that we the way to you may find.  Oh draw us wholly to you Lord, and to us all your grace accord, true faith and love to us impart, that we may hold you in our heart.  Amen.

Dec 19, 2021; ICCM; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; The Visitation

Who is “your person?” You know, the one you turn to when you need to process an experience or share a concern?  If you’re married it may be your spouse, but it might not be too. A sibling or a parent perhaps, someone who “gets” you.  Maybe you’re even able to count more than one such confidant. As a raging extrovert I’ve never quite understood people who can process internally, …just saying.  If you’re like me, a person who hardly knows what she’s thinking until she’s talked about it out loud with someone, you are sure to have a variety of people to turn to. 

My mom was “my person”. When she was dying this summer, I wound up turning to my cousin Jean who had already travelled that difficult journey with her mom, my Aunt Carole. Jean is exactly 6 months younger than I am, but she’s always been an old soul.  She was born on her mother’s birthday, exactly 6 months, to the day, after I was born, on my mom’s birthday. Like me, Jean is the younger of two girls. Her mom was my mom’s big sister and they were so close.

Jean and I have spent our lives in parallel steps, from the weeks in our childhood when my sister and I went to their dairy farm and when she and her sister came to our lake home, to our weddings just a few months apart, to the last prayer she prayed with us around my mom’s beside the day mom died, Jean has always been there for me.

I’m not sure how I would have gotten through some of those days this year without her. I didn’t have to explain a thing, she just knew.  In recent decades we haven’t seen each other often, but that doesn’t matter. She was there for me when I lost my first pregnancy, when my first marriage ended.  We’ve prayed over our children together.  Some days, the first text I find on my phone in the morning is a prayer she’s written in her morning prayer practice lifting me up to God because I’ve been on her heart. I feel safe and loved and known in her care. I count that connection as a God given blessing of immeasurable worth.

Evidently Mary had a cousin like that too, Elizabeth.  Elizabeth was older to be sure, a generation older it seems, but the connection was strong. As soon as Mary learns of her daunting role, certainly before the angel’s message had fully sunk in even, she left with haste for the hill country, some 80 miles away to her cousin’s house. 

The text tells us that Elizabeth had been pondering her own impossible pregnancy for 6 months already. It was Elizabeth’s husband, Zechariah, that received the angel’s message about the role their son John would play, but he had been left mute all through his wife’s pregnancy.  The text tells us Elizabeth had been in seclusion for the first 5 months, until Mary’s visit. We’re left wondering which of these two mothers to be is more unlikely the aged childless one, or the young inexperienced maiden.  Mary greets Elizabeth and must have told her all about the angel’s visit for when Elizabeth hears the greeting, the child leaps for joy within her. 

Luke’s telling of these intertwined stories is full of prophetic words and the fulfillment of the hopes of centuries of waiting.  This interpreted history shows how and where God is acting to bring justice and salvation.  The stories ring with similarity to the well-known Jewish history of unexpected pregnancies, Hannah, Sarah, Hagar, and so many songs of praise reverberate in the telling of this song of Mary. 

The story of Mary’s visitation to Elizabeth is so familiar that we have come to expect hearing this story and may have lost the unlikelihood of it all.  Think about it—the Messiah’s coming is proclaimed not by the high priest or the rulers, not even by Zechariah who is mute, but by two marginalized pregnant women. 

As I read this text this year, I found myself imagining how it could play out in theater. With all these songs in Luke’s gospel it might be best portrayed as a musical, with cool special effects happening then the angel Gabriel appears.  Sometimes its good to let our imaginations fill in the blanks—Mary: young, poor, unwed, and filled with joy and willingness, Elizabeth, by all accounts too old to conceive—grey hair perhaps, suffering from ankles swollen from pregnancy and varicose veins too perhaps, Zechariah, normally full of words, like any clergyperson now strangely silenced, unable to preach, unable to man-splain. Personally, I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be unable to speak for 9 months! Maybe some of you don’t know that Brent has starred in many musicals back in Canada.  What would it be like for you to play that role?  Would that be fun Brent, to figure out how to express yourself only with facial expressions and gestures? You might be just the right age and character to be cast in that role.  Carol could play Elizabeth. She’s warm and hospitable, I know that from experience. She has welcomed my phone calls and visits this year, both back home in Wisconsin and here in Mazatlan. Like Mary, I’ve run to her to share my thoughts and feelings, finding a listening ear and a loving heart, I’m sure a young pregnant girl would find the same reception. To find the right demographic for Mary, we’d need to call on Daniel’s daughter Grace who’s been running our sound and video board.  Can you begin to see the ludicrousness of this text?  The coming of the Savior is in the hands of the most unlikely cast of characters imaginable and they keep breaking out it song, like in a musical. 

Back in medieval and early modern European times they put on plays, called it the Feast of Fools. As early as the 9^th century in Constantinople there is a record of such an event to portray God’s inclination to topple human power structures and raise up the downtrodden.  A young boy was cast as a mock Patriarch, the Eastern Church’s equivalent of a Pope, and this young boy, dressed as the highest ruling figure in the church was paraded through the city, now Istanbul, riding on an ass. 

These celebration days fell right after Christmas and acted out the reversals outlined in Mary’s song, the lofty torn down from their thrones and the humble lifted up, the rich sent away empty and the poor feasted and filled with good things.  They continued and became more farcical until the last known record of them in 1685 in a Franciscan church in Antibes.  Lay brothers and servants put on vestments inside out, held their books upside down, wore spectacles filled with orange peels instead of lenses and blew smelly incense in each other’s faces while chanting offkey and in gibberish.  There were cross-dressing, masking up as animals and other methods to mock the conventional pretentiousness of the church. 

Mary was willing to have her life turned upside down. Elizabeth too.  Don’t you wonder what they talked about and shared together during those three months as Elizabeth grew as big as a house and Mary started to feel her own child move inside her?  I think Mary found a welcome with “her person” and learned what she could expect as the time passed and the baby grew.  Was she there at the birth of John?  Did she in turn help Elizabeth deliver the child? 

Medieval theologian Meister Eckhart once asked, “What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the Son of God, 1,400 years ago, and I do not also give birth to the Son of God in my time and in my culture? We are all meant to be mothers of God.” 

I just love how earthy and fleshy this text really is.  When we spend the time filling in the backstory, the plot, the characters then we can see how preposterous this God of ours is.  This story is rooted in contrasts of age and class. We can make room in our lives to care for those we know and those we don’t to practice hospitality like Elizabeth did and attentiveness like Mary did.  In doing so we go beyond the politeness and sentimentality that so often crowds out the radical character of Jesus coming as the son of Mary. 

Mary heard the angel say she had found favor with God, that God was with her.  She wondered how it could be and heard that all things are possible. She responded with Let it be to me.  That’s quite a pattern that we can follow. 

Where and when have you found favor with God?  What were or are your questions? Who do you run to, to share your thoughts and find connection and community?  What are the times that God is working through you?  What is your role in the drama of God? What song will you sing?  How will you bear Christ into the world?

God comes to each of us, not in our moments of triumph and accomplishment as much as in the struggles we must overcome, the wrong turns we make and the closed doors we encounter. The people in our lives help us to understand how and when God is working through us. We find our role in relationship. It is as true for us as it was for Mary and Elizabeth and Zechariah: God is with us, all things are possible when we listen to God’s claim on us and respond as she did, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your Word.”

Worship has resumed for the English Speaking Congregation in Mazatlan at the Christian Congregational Church on Cinco de Mayo in El Centro. We are gathering cautiously, with safety measures because of the pandemic. You can watch our services on YouTube.

Here is the service for 12.12.21. The first portion of the service didn’t broadcast, evidently. The service starts in the middle of the gospel reading.

Second Sunday in Advent; Dec 5, 2021; ICCM; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

The Word of the Lord comes in many ways, through prophets, through scriptures, through music, through our loved ones. The United Church of Christ says it this way:  God is still Speaking! 

We heard the word of the Lord at through at least four prophets today, speaking to their own people in their own times about God’s coming: Baruch, Malachi, Zechariah and John.  Each told the people to get ready because God was about to do something amazing. It’s not just those four though. The Scriptures are, actually, quite repetitive, from Abraham and Sarah, through the Old Testament prophets, in the time between the old and new testaments, in the life of Jesus and the early church, and carrying on through the centuries of Christian life the Word of God speaks its repeating spiral of grace, on and on and on. 

We see it writ large over the centuries of history and writ small and personally, in our own life stories. Award winning author and social activist, L.R. Knost says it this way:  “Life is amazing.  And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again.  And in between the amazing and awful it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary.  That’s just living: heartbreaking, soul-healing, amazing, awful, ordinary life.  And it’s breathtakingly beautiful.”

Luke places his account of John’s prophecy firmly in history, starting with a string of historic references to power.  In the fifteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor in Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitus and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness. John, plain John who gave up his inherited place in the priesthood, stands in stark contrast to the powerful figures mentioned.  Gods shows up in plain sight—in the ordinary and specific lives of God’s ordinary people.

As you heard, we have two readings from Luke today, just a few verses apart in the gospel but describing events about 30 years apart in time.  Luke, again, places the story firmly in historyL In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah.  Luke sets the scene for us—contrasting the height of power—King Herod, with little old Zechariah. In grand biblical style, the angel Gabriel announces to the priest that his wife, Elizabeth, will bear a son who shall be named John and who will lead many to God.  But, Zechariah doesn’t believe it. They are an old, childless couple.  So, the pastor is left mute for the next many months, until after the baby’s birth.  That’s where we find Zechariah in today’s reading, on the baby’s naming day when Zechariah’s tongue is finally set free and he speaks his prophecy. 

Remember, Zechariah wasn’t anybody important.  He was just a priest in the hill country of Judea.  Yet, something amazing was happening in that little out of the way place, among those ordinary people.  Having had months of silence to think over what he learned and what it might mean—Zechariah’s song of hope still rings out across the centuries.  It was indeed an amazing time.

You my child shall be called the prophet of the most high, to go before the Lord to prepare the way, to give the people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

I wonder what we might discover about the Word of the Lord coming among us if we were struck mute for months at a time.  How would we see the world?  The angel came and told the priest what to expect.  His job was to shut up and listen, to Wake Up to God’s Presence. What if we approached our world that way?  What if we saw the people around us as gifts from God? 

Of course, Luke tells us about the birth of Jesus, too.  Again, he grounds the story with historical power figures.  The decree went out from none other than The Emperor Augustus.  It was while Quirinius was Governor of Syria.  There may have been powerful people in powerful places by the world’s standards, but, again, the real action was happening in the nowhere of Nazareth. 

Mighty powerful things were happening in the world around Malachi and Baruch, too.  The Word of the Lord came to them, two of the most obscure prophets.  Malachi wrote after the exile, about 430 BC.  His is the last book in the Old Testament.  Malachi is both a name and a word that means messenger or angel, the one who announces the coming of God.  He wrote at a time when the people had come back from Babylon but were still struggling.  They had rebuilt the temple, their homes and their lives– but it wasn’t amazing it was awful.  It was a time to hold on. He said the coming of God would be like the purifying fire of a smelter.  The prophet reminds them to hold on through the heartbreaking time. It was a specific word for a certain time through unknown Malachi. 

I’m guessing that many of you haven’t even heard of our other lesson today.  What is Baruch, you may ask? It’s one of the books of the Apocrypha, the books written in the 400-year span between the Old and the New Testament.  Those books were considered part of the scriptures until Martin Luther took objection to them in the 16^th Century.  Catholic and Orthodox Christians still include them.  God was still speaking then and is still speaking now—for those of us awake enough to listen.

During those 400 years the Persians, then the Greeks, then the Hasmoneans and finally the Romans took over the ancient world. No matter which part of that time Baruch was writing, the Israelites were a dominated people.  They were moved around by the world powers like pawns on a chess board. It was not an amazing time, and it may not have been an awful time either.  It may have been one of those mundane times.

I love the images the prophet Baruch uses to speak to the people.  He invites them to take off the sorrow and affliction they have been wearing like a garment and to, instead, put on forever the beauty of the glory from God, the robe of the righteousness that comes from God; the jeweled crown of the glory of the Everlasting, so God will be able to show their splendor everywhere.  They are to stand on the high point where Jerusalem sits and look out to the East and West and to see how God has and will repeatedly restore them.  No obstacle will be left to impede God’s actions—the high mountain and the everlasting hills will be made low and the valleys filled up, to make level ground, so that God’s people may walk safely in the glory of God.

Oh, it can be so easy to wear our sorrow or pain like a cloak, to drape our afflictions all over the rest of who we are.  When I’m feeling overwhelmed, when I grieve, it can feel like a heavy blanket dragging me down.  The prophet acknowledges the sorrow, the affliction and invites the mourner to take off that garment and put on the beauty of the glory of God, the robe of righteousness!

That clear word of God comes across the centuries right into our advent ears today—There has been sorrow and affliction.  Oh yes.  We have lost loved ones, we have experienced difficulties there have awful times when we’ve just had to hold on.  The season of Advent calls to prepare, to set aside, like Zechariah—to shut up and listen so that we can open our eyes to the opportunities in front of us each day to be a part of what God is doing here and now.  These prophetic voices call us to wake up!

This morning we heard an arrangement of a cantata by Bach, as our prelude. Wachet Auf is often translated Sleepers Awake!  It’s one of my favorite pieces.  Thank you Kirk, for your arrangement and performance of that piece today.  I thought it was particularly fitting for today, given our lessons and what I heard in them this week.  Bach composed the chorale cantata in 1731 based on a hymn by the same name written by Phillip Nicolai who was the pastor of a town called Unna, near the German city of Dortmund.

Think of it this way:  It was during the reign of Rudolf the II, the Holy Roman Emperor in 1598 when the word of the lord came to Phillip Nicolai. The pastor had just taken the job in 1598, when the town was hit with a terrible plague. By the end, almost half of Unna had succumbed. For Nicolai, whose parsonage overlooked the cemetery and who had to perform countless funerals, it must have felt like the apocalypse. It was an awful time—a time to just hold on.  Pastor Nicolai consoled himself by writing a collection of meditations to, “comfort other sufferers visited by the pestilence,” He called this collection his “Mirror of Joy,” a hopeful light shining in the midst of terrible darkness. And to round it off, he included two original hymns, one of which was Wachet Auf.

On top of the plague’s devastation, a Spanish military invasion came through the area, putting down the protestant movement that had grown up there.  The words of the hymn speak of a bright light coming in the middle of the night, and the first verse tells believers to wake up from their sleep and hold up their lamps. Rather than preparing for some new awful thing, the hymn is saying to be prepared for joy by sharing your light. Nicolai’s lamp was his faith and his hope for a brighter future, and Wachet Auf was his way of shining that lamp for his congregation.

That message of hope and joy, written in the middle of profound tragedy, made Wachet Auf a popular hymn among Lutherans and the formed the basis, over a century later, for Bach’s cantata. Bach starts his own melody first, dancing over the bassline. Then, he brings in Nicolai’s hymn as a slow, insistent counterpoint. The two melodies intertwine in a cross-century collaboration between an almost unknown pastor and one of the greatest composers of all time.  Its message is as universal as any of our prophetic texts today. We don’t know what will happen next, but we do know that we can and will get through it. What we can do now is be prepared, hold up our lamps, and bring light to each other’s lives.

So, hear the Word of the Lord: 

In the third year of the presidency of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, while Joe Biden was president of the United States and Justin Trudeau was in his 6^th year as prime minister of Canada, when Pope Francis was seated in Rome and the Rev. Elizabeth Eaton presided as Bishop over the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the word of the Lord came to Rebecca, daughter of Ed and Ann, and guest preacher for the English Speaking Congregation of the Christian Congregational church in Mazatlan, known as the Blue Church, located on the corner of Melchor Ocampo and Cinco de Mayo in El Centro.

We are invited to shut up and listen.  To Wake Up to the Word of the Lord in our ordinary lives, to welcome the coming of God among us.  Amen.