Sermons

February 1. 2026

Are We There Yet? Thoughts on the Leaderless Revolution

I have lately been watching Ken Burns documentaries: The American Revolution, The Roosevelts, Benjamin Franklin, America and the Holocaust.  They are wonderfully made excursions into our history.  And what has really struck me is how our beloved America was built on hubris, wasteful indifference, blood-lust, greed, and self-interest just as much as it was built on courage, self-sacrifice, compassion, and foresight.  And all it takes is a look at the evening news to realize that the same dichotomy still defines us.  And all it takes is an honest look into our own souls and personal histories to see it, at least to some degree, in ourselves.

There is a great lesson buried somewhere in that.  In order to ferret out that lesson, I’ve taken the unusual step this morning of choosing two gospel readings, and both from the gospel of Matthew.

I begin with the reading from Matthew five, the Sermon on the Mount.  That passage provides a series of answers to the question every parent is familiar with.  The family is in the car going to grandma’s, or to the zoo, or on a vacation, and inevitably, from the back seat comes the plaintive cry, “Are we there yet?”  For the fourteenth time the weary parent conjures an image of how many miles still lie ahead and somehow musters the patience to simply say, “No. Not yet.”

So too with the journey that you and I are on – the journey of humanity from who we once were to who we will be.  We are anxious to see ourselves as the highest and finest within the created order.  Each nation, each religion, each culture views itself as the embodiment of the best of humanity.  It only takes a proud moment in an Olympic hockey game to get a crowd of Americans chanting, “We’re number one!”  But to quote the patient parent behind the wheel, “No.  We’re not there yet.”

What Jesus offers us in this beginning of a sermon he preached from a hillside is an elegant glimpse of where we are going.  Throughout these words that we call the Beatitudes, he uses the future tense to describe what awaits those who are blessed: those who mourn will be comforted; the meek will inherit the earth; those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled; the merciful will receive mercy; the pure in heart will see God; the peacemakers will be called children of God.

Clearly this is not a description of us, or of how things are now.  The “poor in spirit,” Jesus said, will possess the kingdom of heaven.  Our kingdoms are not possessed by the poor in spirit.  Many of our political leaders seem to possess a poverty of imagination, a poverty of intellect, a poverty of ideas, a poverty of character.  But none of them can be accused of a poverty of spirit.  Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world indeed if those who were poor in spirit, those who were meek and humble, the peacemakers, the merciful, pure in heart, who hunger and thirst for righteousness were those who were entrusted with our kingdoms.  But, no, we’re not there yet.

Jesus spoke of the destination of this journey we’re on and said, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”  Wouldn’t it truly be a revolution in human experience if the meek took possession of the earth?  In our world, it’s the strong and belligerent, the savvy and aggressive who hold title to the planet’s resources.  It seems the worst blunder a nation can make in this age of competition for oil, wealth, and military power is to appear weak.  After all, as we keep hearing on the nightly news, if we are to stand up against evil, we must demonstrate to our enemies that we’re ready to throw our weight around.  A “world power” or an international corporation cannot be meek – at least not according to our present standards.

But you and I live by much the same code.  A basic operational principle in our society is: “don’t let others see your weaknesses; they might take advantage of you.”  We men are particularly inclined to believe that we remain in control by demonstrating our strength and superiority.  One of the quickest ways to become disenfranchised in the corporate world, so we believe, is to appear – well – “meek.”  What a truly extraordinary thing it would be if the meek among us held the reins of power.  No, we’re not there yet.

Jesus said that those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, and whom people revile, and against whom folks falsely utter all kinds of evil will find that their reward is great.  That’s clearly not a description of the world we live in.  One of the worst, most painful things is to have people “reviling” you, slandering you, falsely accusing you of terrible things.  Who among us would not rise up in rage, and quietly come to pieces behind closed doors in the face of such an onslaught.  Wouldn’t it be amazing if those who were slandered and persecuted on account of their convictions or their appearance, instead of being shunned and humiliated or even shot down in the street were greatly rewarded?  No, we’re not there yet.

In the beatitudes, Jesus sets before us a vision of where, by the grace of the good Lord, we are headed.  He describes a world that’s upside-down from the one we live in – a world where the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, the meek, the peacemakers are running the show.  I must say, it’s a stunningly compelling vision.  Our job, as I see it, is to keep that vision before us so that we have a clear sense of where we are going, and so that we can be confident we’re on the right road. There’s an image of perfection that lies in the great beyond for which human beings can strive.

In our second reading from the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, Jesus puts a much finer point on it.  He takes the basic theme of the sermon on the mount and makes it explicit.  Striving for that perfect goal, doesn’t mean being better, grander, more laudable than everyone else.  In other words, it doesn’t mean being venerated as a “saint.”  It means, well, being a servant.  He says, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”  In other words, he’s leveling the playing field; “the mountains brought low and the valleys lifted up” sort of thing.  We all get thrown in together.

Carne Ross in his book, The Leaderless Revolution, refers to the world in which we live as “ . . . a vastly interconnected age, where billions of people are interacting constantly, a wholly unprecedented phenomenon which we are only beginning to understand.”¹  The subtitle of his book is: How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change Politics in the Twenty-first Century.  I’d like to raise a hand in support of Mr. Ross’s contention.  No we’re not there yet, but I believe humanity is moving. albeit in fits and starts, toward a true leveling of the playing field.  The widening gap between the fabulously wealthy and the rest of us notwithstanding, the elite rule of power, wealth, and position is living on borrowed time.  It reminds me of the story of the tower of Babel.  When people all spoke one language there seemed to be nothing beyond the grasp of the masses.  It was only when they could no longer communicate with one another that such phenomenal, broad-based facility broke down.  In this age of global interconnectedness human beings are recapturing the genius of Babel.  We are in the process of discovering how alike we are even as we bump up against our differences, and the playing field is, I believe, eventually going to be dramatically leveled.

So I have a suggestion or two for all of us.  First of all, don’t opt out.  This journey we’re on is terribly important, and we can’t get anywhere if we don’t show up.  So be engaged with the world around, and involved in its directions and choices.

Secondly, when we have a decision to make, a direction to take, let’s not simply make it instinctively, as we are most inclined to do, thinking about what you or I personally like the most, or what will benefit us the most.  Instead, let’s make it on the basis of how likely it is to move all of us further down the road toward the destination that Jesus describes.  Admittedly, it may often seem that the choices we face are so far removed from anything resembling the vision of Jesus or the kingdom of heaven that it’s hard to see any connection at all.  But, in truth, every small decision made, every choice between alternatives, every step taken, is a small step in one direction or another.  We need to make sure that direction is as close the destination as possible.  Each one of us is a member of the great human family, and of the body of Christ.  So, our lives are a small but not insignificant contribution to the whole journey of humanity, and so we must act not on the basis of narrow self-interest, but on the basis of grander visions and larger dreams, like that put before us in today’s remarkable words of Jesus.

No, we’re not there yet.  But one choice at a time, one step at a time, one small decision at a time, we will, with the Lord’s help, move further down the road.  And in some day yet to be seen, we just may, by that eternal grace, get there.

¹ Carne Ross. The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change Politics in the Twenty-first Century, Simon & Schuster, 2012, p.6.

January 25, 2026

Hey, You!

A couple of years ago Dadgie and I took advantage of the low mortgage interest rates and refinanced our home loan.  It turned out to be a good move, but the process was mind-bending.  I cannot begin to tell you how many forms we had to try to comprehend, fill out, sign, and get to the lender.  It was a stack measured not in pages but in inches.  In order to accept us they needed to know virtually everything about us: all of our present and past loans, our credit history, our income, our tax statements for the last couple of years, and on, and on.  They were concerned, of course, that they could be taking a risk on us – that we wouldn’t be able to pay off the loan, or that we might disappear, I suppose.  All of that came flooding back to me when I read this story from Matthew about Jesus calling his disciples.  I think I’ve always been a bit amazed at the spontaneous response of these men who dropped their nets immediately and took off after him.  But this time something else hit me.  There is absolutely no indication in this passage that Jesus had known any of these men, or that he knew anything about them.  I suppose it’s possible that he did, but the story doesn’t suggest it.  I have this image in my head of Jesus seeing some men out fishing, and calling out to them, “Hey, you!  Come be my disciple; share my life and my ministry; let my own credibility and the success or failure of all my future plans rest with you!”  That’s the picture that twisted my mind in a knot and caused me to remember all those forms we had to fill out and sign to refinance our mortgage.

“Hey, you!”  Jesus didn’t know whether any of these guys had any brains, or creativity, or political or social prowess.  For all he knew they could be complete losers.  They might have no clue what he would be doing or saying or how to deal with people they encountered.  And, truth be known, it turns out they really didn’t have a clue.  Jesus was always trying to explain to them what he was talking about, and most of the time they didn’t quite get it even after the explanation.  But somehow, these regular guys, these fishermen, became the bearers of his message and the founders of the Church of Jesus Christ.

“Hey, you!”  Jesus would have no idea about the financial situation of these men, other than to assume that since they were fishermen they were probably not very well-heeled.  That runs contrary to any consultant’s advice about starting a new venture.  The first thing you do is line up financial backers.  You put the people with the deepest pockets on your board or in your inner financial campaign circle.  They are going to provide you with the biggest initial boost to your plans.  Jesus grabbed some fishermen who immediately gave up their jobs.  Not a very auspicious beginning.  But, roaming around the countryside with him – no income, no guaranteed lodgings, no budget – they managed to start something that changed the world.

“Hey, you!”  Were any of these guys devout Jews?  Did they know any of the Hebrew Scriptures?  Were they regular attendees at Temple?  How in the world would Jesus know?  In fact, this was all taking place in (as scripture says) “Galilee of the Gentiles,” or, as Isaiah puts it in the passage that Luke is quoting, “Galilee of the nations.”  What that phrase refers to is the remarkable racial, religious, and cultural diversity of this region.  The majority of its population was, in fact, Gentile.  So, who were these men out in their fishing boats?  Were they men of faith, any kind of faith?  Could they pass the litmus test for proper beliefs and doctrine?  They were just some guys out fishing.  And yet, they became bearers of the gospel.  What did they have in common, other than being fishermen?  They all said “yes.”

“Hey, you!”  That knocks my socks off.

And what does it have to say to us?  For one thing I believe it’s a cautionary tale about putting too many hurdles in front of people.  The institution of the church, by and large, has for generations been among the most stridently exclusive clubs in human experience.  I think that’s one of the reasons we have, to our embarrassment, so many branches of Christianity and Protestant denominations.  Each little group of believers sets up their criteria for participation and fellowship.  And those who refuse to adhere to their list of beliefs and practices are excluded, and those who disagree are “disfellowshipped.”  You may have noticed that when we share in communion on the first Sunday of each month I make some sort of statement about the inclusiveness of our table – that everyone is invited, regardless of membership, baptism, belief or disbelief.  I say that because I think it’s a disgrace to put any sort of barrier between a person and this table of grace.  Dadgie and I had a professor in seminary who wrote a paper that was only partly tongue-in-cheek advocating communion for dogs.  He was going to the extreme to make the point of the need for utter and boundless inclusion at the Lord’s table.  Maybe I should introduce our communion service each week by simply saying, “Hey, you!”

Secondly, from the way Jesus called his disciples, I think we can learn something about pride.  It is remarkably arrogant to believe that one has the intellect, the moral standing, the wisdom, the acumen, the grasp of infinite variables to stand in judgment of another person.  I have to admit, when Dadgie and I were answering all those questions and filling out all those forms for our mortgage refi, there was a part of me that wanted to say to the bank’s representative, “Just who do you people think you are?”  But I didn’t.  After all, it’s their money, and I’m the beggar.  But for any of us to assume we know better than another person, that we have a clearer sense of right and wrong, or a firmer grasp of truth, strikes me as akin to idolatry.  It’s placing one’s own mind up on a sacred pedestal.  It’s assuming for one’s self something of the omniscience of the divine creator.  Jesus made no prejudgments; he just saw the fishermen and said, “Hey, you!”

And finally, and perhaps most importantly, when Jesus grabbed these guys at random to follow him, he gave us a powerful example of trust.  It is an astonishing, spendthrift kind of trust, throwing caution to the wind (or in this case to the waves).  How unlike us he is!  You and I won’t make a move without weighing the options, considering all the ramifications, permutations, and combinations, testing the waters, getting our ducks in a row.  I generally don’t buy anything without first checking out Consumer Reports.  And we all carry that caution over to our relationships.  We feel people out carefully before we trust them; we check out their positions and test their motives.  This has gone to an extreme in this electronic age where now young people don’t go out to a movie without Googling their date in advance.

This morning, after worship and our luncheon, we will be gathering for our annual meeting.  Among the business before us will be the election of church officers and board members.  We have folks who work on our behalf to find people in our midst to fill those roles, and we are very grateful to them.  Sometimes church folks worry about whether a certain individual is right for a board or an office.  But if we followed the example of Jesus we might just as well fill our positions by saying to any person in the congregation, or I daresay any person walking down the street, “Hey, you!”

I remember in a previous pastorate, we had a board of deacons with no chair.  No one on the board considered himself or herself up to the role of chairing the board of deacons.  Finally, in desperation, two women who each felt wholly inadequate agreed to co-chair, thinking if they split the job maybe neither could fail too miserably.  They worked at it, learned and led.  In the end they wound up being two of the best deacons chairs I’ve ever seen in a church (incidentally, our current deacons chair, Joanne, has also done a terrific job).

I think there resides somewhere deep within each human soul great potential.  I believe that, if folks trust that potential and it is tapped, remarkable things can happen.  I’m convinced that it is the very image of God in which we were created (the imago dei) spoken of in Genesis that burns within our hearts and creates that potential.  And I think Jesus had such unwavering confidence in that divine spark in each human breast that he knew something amazing could emerge out of a fairly random collection of people.  So he saw some fishermen at work and said, “Hey, you!”

You may not consider yourself capable of taking on a responsibility that you are unaccustomed to.  You may have questions about someone else and their competence to handle a given role.  You may feel that a certain collection of people is woefully inadequate to the task set before them.  My advice to you is: chill out.  You may have no idea what can happen when you, or another person, or a group of people find that inner spark ignited and the result far exceeds the sum of the parts or any prior expectations.

We could take a clue from Jesus and the remarkable way he went about setting up his “A-team.”  “Hey, you!”  What a concept!  I’m impressed by, and deeply committed to, this church’s tradition of openness, of humility, and trust, and I pray that as we set out together to find our way forward, we will do so believing in ourselves, believing in one another, and believing in those around us – even those we’ve never met – ones to whom we might extend an invitation: “Hey, you!”

January 18, 2026

“The Mystery Hidden for Ages”

Well, strap yourselves in.  I have a message today that would get me thrown out of most churches (I thank the Lord, incidentally, that I’m here with all of you, because I don’t think you’ll expel me for this).  Here it is: Christianity is not the one and only true religion.  In fact, I believe all religions have a comparable claim to truth.

Some folks from a Baptist convention I attended a number of years ago would disagree intensely.  I heard a speech at that convention in which the elevation of “inclusiveness” to a supreme virtue was railed against.  The speaker said that those who promote “inclusiveness” are sending us on a whole new direction that is the antithesis of the Gospel.  According to him, the message of Christ was not one of inclusion, but exclusion.  I’ll never forget him saying, to the applause and affirming smiles of many in the crowd, that Jesus drew firm lines between the saved and the unsaved, the righteous and the sinners.  And it was our job to make sure we didn’t blur that line, but continued to cast out the evil-doers from our midst.

His take on the gospel is not new.  In fact, it’s pretty standard fare not only in Christianity but in most world religions.  One cynical but disturbingly accurate take on the institution of religion is that it’s all about preserving and promoting its beliefs and moral codes by excluding those who don’t adhere to them, thereby elevating to a special status its own adherents.  Christianity, through the centuries, has maintained those high walls, identifying itself largely by those it excludes.  Much the same could be said of Judaism as well as Islam.

But the reason I can make such an outrageous claim as I have this morning is that I’m in pretty good company.  In the passage you heard read this morning from Ephesians, the Apostle Paul, in one sudden, broad gesture, simply swept away the long-standing division between Jews and Gentiles.  He said in very plain language, “. . . the Gentiles have become fellow heirs, members of the same body, and sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.”  It is interesting to pay close attention to these words, and specifically to what Paul did not say.  He did not say that the Gentiles remain outside of the grace of God because they don’t follow the laws and commandments of sacred scripture contained in the books of Moses and the prophets.  He did not say that the Gentiles have been given a new way – God’s true and righteous path – and therefore have left the Jews behind to follow their old, godless myths.  He did not say that the Jews and Gentiles had both better shape up and learn a whole new set of religious doctrines or they’ll all miss out on God’s salvation.  No, astonishingly, he called the Gentiles and Jews “fellow heirs, members of the same body.” Contrary to what you may hear at any given Baptist convention, Christianity was founded as a religion of inclusiveness.

Paul knew full well what he was doing.  He knew that he was speaking heresy, and that his words were so far beyond everyone’s concept of “religion” that he may as well have been speaking Swahili.  It’s clear that Paul knew just how revolutionary all this was, because he explained it in such grandiose terms.  He called it an ageless “mystery,” and said, “In former generations this mystery was not made known to humankind, as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.”  He referred to it as a “plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things; so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.”

This is the mystery: that in Christ we discover an unexpected intention for us. It is not exclusiveness but inclusiveness; it is not a high wall constructed to protect the pure from the ungodly, it is an expansive embrace of our brothers and sisters whose names and faces we have forgotten in our haste to divide the sheep from the goats.  The mystery of Christ is that, in him, religion is counterintuitive.

That’s the same counterintuitive message that Martin Luther King, Jr. preached in Birmingham and Selma and Memphis, the message he thundered down from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  He preached it in churches, he preached it on television, he preached it from jail houses.  He preached it until it got him shot.  They could kill the man, but no one can kill the message.

The trend among many people of faith in our time is toward the closing of ranks, perhaps because people feel insecure or threatened by the future, I don’t know.  But we’ve seen the consequences of this tendency in its most extreme, defining all those who are outside the circle of salvation as infidels, and waging holy war on them with righteous passion.  In its more genteel form, this kind of religion quietly sanctions discrimination, and subtly promotes intolerance and hatred.

And the “outsiders,” the “unrighteous ones” are readily identified.  For liberals, it’s conservatives; for Christians it’s Muslims; for Jews it’s Palestinians; for Protestants, Catholics; for straights, gays; for Arabs, Americans; and on it goes.  If our purpose in religious practice is to draw ever more circles around ourselves to define the infidels, we will have no shortage of targets.  Doing so doesn’t open up an enlightened new path through the world, it’s simply following the oldest and most common of human tendencies.

If the Lord is disclosing to us through scripture a whole new way of being human, a spiritual life that transforms our baser and meaner motives, then Paul must be right.  The path of faith must not be the way that comes most naturally to us, the way of judgement, condemnation and separation.  A more challenging way is revealed to us: that we are one as children of the Lord of All, and that we are to reach out to one another, find and secure the ties that bind us together.

This is not as easy as it seems.  It means facing the most basic and instinctive kinds of judgements and negative feelings that each of us has inside.  I know for a fact how difficult that is.  My blood has a low boiling point when it comes to dealing with certain kinds of folks.  My biggest hangup is trying to connect on a human level with Christian fundamentalists (as you might have guessed from time to time).  I have been in more heated theological discussions that have elevated my heart rate than I care to confess.  And when the passions start to flare, the most natural thing in the world is to conclude that the other person is somehow simply “blinded” to the truth by some form of ignorance, voodoo, or brainwashing that makes them, at least for the purposes of the argument, a little less human.

You see, my challenge is rather complicated.  If I believe in inclusiveness, how am I supposed to treat those who promote exclusiveness – exclude them?  Seems rather inconsistent, doesn’t it?  What I have to keep working on is this: when I start to lock horns with someone, I need to find a way to listen, and if I ultimately disagree, to do so with the gentle respect and humility that acknowledges our common share in the heritage of eternal truth.  I’m still a pretty good distance from being able to do that.  But Paul points me in the right direction.  And I suggest he’s pointing all of us in that direction.

So, if we truly opened ourselves to learning from others, what might we discover?  I’d like to suggest just a few of the things I believe we could learn from other religions if we were open to doing so.

Judaism is centered around a powerfully beautiful elevation of the individual and the family.  There are rabbis and synagogues and rites and services of worship, but in many respects, the focus of Jewish life is not the worshiping community so much as the family and the individual within it.  There are prayers, rituals, important lessons that are taught around the family dining table, and there are solemn spiritual and ethical expectations of each person that are learned from an early age and carried through each day’s activities.  We could learn something from them about “decentralizing” our faith, taking it out of our Sunday sanctuaries and making it live in our homes and lives.

Buddhism emphasizes the oneness of all of creation, and the inner peace and depth of understanding that one can attain by letting go of the superficial anxieties that consume us and living deeply into that oneness of the universe.  We could learn from them something about the surpassing value of a deep life of prayer and meditation, and how lives can be transformed one at a time by such a process of awakening.

Islam is an all-encompassing system of religious belief and practice.  Muslim adherents take very seriously their spiritual and ethical responsibilities.  Their lives are centered on the worship and praise of Allah with repeated daily prayers, and the “five pillars” of the faith are at the foundation of their lives.  We could learn from them about not having such a casual, “I’ll show up on Sunday morning if I feel like it,” “take-it-or-leave-it” approach to the almighty Lord of this universe.

Yes there are extremists.  There are Christian extremists who gun down abortion doctors in cold blood, Jewish extremists who want to keep taking Palestinian land and squeezing them into an ever tinier pressure cooker, and Muslim extremists who want to blow up airliners.  But unless the great majority of us in all religions who love the Lord and love one another can start learning from each other, we may be headed down a very dark road indeed.

What social or political body, what ideological niche, what cultural or religious group do you most readily cast into the outer circle, disregard, and even dehumanize a little?  You will find the task of discovering common bonds with those people as fellow children of promise to be your greatest challenge.  And I would submit that it is also the place in your life where the transforming power of the Spirit is most likely to be at work.

So, does our religion open us to certain beliefs, does it offer us ethical and theological norms?  Of course.  But is it the primary purpose of our faith to separate ourselves from one another because of our adherence to those beliefs and norms?  I would submit that it is just the opposite.  All over this world, we are sisters and brothers, because we are all inheritors of the Divine promise of creation.  One of the central purposes of our faith is to help us cut through the “theological twaddle” and sift through the nonsense so that we can comprehend that truth more fully, and so that, as Paul says, “the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known.”  And that is a “mystery hidden for ages.”

January 11, 2026

New Things

Why are we here?

Why do you and I come to this place?

What are we looking for?

What are we finding?

If the truth be known, we are probably here for a lot of different reasons.  Some are here searching for meaning, for a connection with the transcendent and eternal.  Some are here out of force of habit – it’s where they’ve always been.  Some are here because they have friends here, and this is a good place to feel connected and share experiences.  Some are here because it’s a place to play a different role than anywhere else – to be a leader for a change, or to be a follower for a change.  There are probably a dozen other reasons.  But I would like to challenge you to consider that maybe we’re intended to be here primarily to participate in a genuine community of faith that helps us encounter the holy, and find some kind of connection to the Almighty Lord of Hosts, and in that encounter to be redeemed, re-inspired, and renewed in order to be agents of transformation.

And now I have the hardest question yet: do you think that’s happening?  Is it happening for you – for us as a congregation?  Are we finding deep and meaningful community here?  Are we finding sustaining faith?  Are we finding that Lord Almighty?  Are we being refreshed and re-created?  Are we being re-motivated to engage the world around us with the love of Christ and the hope of the gospel?

I rather guess that if those questions were asked of any group of believers at any time in history in any given place, the answers might be quite mixed.  And I suspect the answers might be quite mixed in this place at this time.  Why?  Because you and I and all of the good, church-going people have a pernicious tendency to worship the wrong things.  We fall in love with rituals; we cling to traditions; we sanctify institutions; we deify conventions of behavior, and canonize rules of order.  It’s not just you; it’s not just me; it’s a basic part of being human.  But it gets in the way of our ability to discover the Divine Spirit who refuses to dwell in the gilded boxes of our traditions, but moves through human experience like a mighty wind disrupting our agendas.

I think that’s why Jesus associated himself with the radical known as John the Baptist.  John was doing something new.  He was taking people down to the river and dunking them in the water in an act of repentance.  Nobody had ever heard of anyone doing such a thing.  There was a Jewish ritual of purification that involved water, but it was nothing like this.  John was doing a new thing.  And he’s the guy Jesus chose to begin his ministry with.  It was John’s innovation – his strange baptism – that Jesus chose to inaugurate his divine work.  But then, everything about Jesus’ ministry was brand new.  He butchered one sacred cow after another.  He drove the money changers from the Temple, attacking a time-honored tradition.  He and his disciples worked on the Sabbath.  He forgave people their sins.  In many respects, he redefined the practice of religion in his time.  Do you suppose that he did so in order to establish a new set of sacred traditions and rituals for people to cling to?  I don’t think so.  It’s my bet he did so to try to get across to us that it is those very traditions and rituals that get in the way of an authentic engagement with both the Lord of Hosts and the world.

The prophet Isaiah reported the word of the Lord: “my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to idols.  See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare.”  Isaiah relates these words almost matter-of-factly, but these “new things” that seem to be the habit of eternity often stick in our craws.  Personally, I’m very comfortable with the way things are.  I find it very easy to do the same things each morning, each week, and each year.  It somehow makes life more predictable.  I have a bowl of Grapenuts three mornings a week for breakfast. On Wednesdays and Saturdays I have two eggs with Canadian bacon and toast.  On Mondays and Thursdays I have blueberry waffles.  And that’s just the beginning of the list of my personal rituals.  And I also like my religion to be like an old slipper, you’ve worn it a thousand times, you know it fits, and you don’t even have to think about it.

But the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the Spirit of the Lord keep getting in the way of my comfort.  I find that the words of Jesus and the themes of scripture keep calling me to embrace new things.  But the tricky part of this is that there are innovations going on around us all the time, and it’s somehow up to us to figure out which are the new things of divine intention, and what are the transient fads.  I remember a wedding I performed probably forty years ago.  Somehow, I let the couple talk me into doing the wedding they planned as a seventeenth century costume affair.  It was held in the open air on the grounds of an old mansion that was something of a castle.  The bride and groom and all the attendants wore period costumes, and there were lute players, etc.  You get the idea.  After the ceremony everyone gathered on the grounds while the court jester made the rounds passing out matchbooks with the names of the bride and groom on them.  I took mine and stuffed it in my pocket.  A little later someone asked me if I had looked at the favors we received.  I said, “You mean the matchbooks?”  He said, “Yeah, take a look.”  So I fished it out of my pocket and opened it.  Inside was a condom.  They were passing out condoms to their guests.  I don’t know if they expected this idea to catch on, or if they were just trying to be different and outrageous.  But my point is that not everything that’s new is necessarily divinely inspired.

So how do we know what are the Lord’s new things and what constitute the fleeting popularity of those who are trying to be outrageous?  For a little light on the question I turn to that great theologian, Abraham Lincoln.  I’ve lately been watching the Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War and Lincoln.  He said, “The will of God prevails.  In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God.  Both may be, and one must be, wrong.  God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.  In the present civil war, it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party . . . and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect his purpose.  I am almost ready to say that this is probably true . . . that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet.”¹  Lincoln was grappling with the same question as us.  How do we know if what we are trying to give birth to in any moment is on the side of the angels?  It seems he finally came to the conclusion that it’s hard to know, but that we as a people have within us the best tools that are available to make the determination, so one simply has to put a marker down and try to effect the change you believe in.

And the ultimate test comes after the smoke clears – sometimes long after.  One only can see clearly the tracks of divinity by looking back at the outcomes of history.  Lincoln seemed to acknowledge that as well.  He said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It will become all one thing or all the other.  Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it . . . or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States . . . .”²  Well, you and I have seen “the glory of the coming of the Lord, he [has trampled] out the vintage where the grapes of wrath [were] stored.”  This nation did become one thing, and not this nation alone; legal slavery has been virtually abolished from the face of the earth.

What does all this mean for you and me?  It means that we have been given our marching orders.  We are not offered the comfort of withdrawing into stale routines, and we are not afforded the luxury of deciding it’s too complicated – too hard to know what the right path is.  This church has been struggling to know the way forward.  What is the Spirit of the Lord urging us into next?  Clearly there are challenges aplenty for us.  But whatever the path forward, the church must be a vehicle for trying to discern the new things the Lord is doing, and trying to embody that change.

There are new things that need to be given life in our time.  What are they?  Let us as a church strive together to keep seeking the leading of the Spirit and may we have the courage to follow.  We will be holding our annual meeting in two weeks.  I urge every able-bodied member to attend and participate.  Who knows, maybe if we are bold enough to relate our dreams, share our visions, and hear each other’s hopes, we just might see the tracks of the Lord walking through our midst and leading us to a new place – we just might find a common and compelling vision that begins to feel like the guidance of the Spirit.  We just might be blessed enough to discern the new things that the Lord is about to do among us.

     ¹1 Abraham Lincoln, “Meditation on divine will”, September 1862, in Letters and Addresses of Abraham Lincoln,  H.W. Bell, 1903, p. 257.

     ²2  From Abraham Lincoln’s acceptance speech, given on June 16, 1858, after accepting the Illinois Republican Party’s nomination for U.S. Senator.

January 4, 2026

Dancing Women and Fat Priests?

The title of my sermon this morning springs quite naturally from my own reaction to reading the lectionary passage from Jeremiah.  The prophet – or someone writing in his name – was describing the return of the people of Israel from their exile in foreign lands to their home, and I read, “Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry.  I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.  I will give the priests their fill of fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my bounty, says the Lord.”  And I thought, “Dancing women and fat priests?  Really?”  One look at the Holy Land today makes this passage sound even more absurd.  In fact, a glance around the world at the dawn of 2026 puts the kibosh on most thoughts of dancing and celebrating the bounty of Divine goodness.  In many ways, it’s an ugly reality that this new year has been born into: the kind of violence and carelessness that I spoke of last week.

Reflecting back on things like school shootings and global conflict, I was put in mind of an horrific short story by Flannery O’Connor titled, A Good Man Is Hard to Find.  It’s a very disturbing tale of a family that is murdered by an outlaw and his buddies while on a trip to Florida.  The leader of the three murderers is called “The Misfit”.  And before he shoots the grandmother of this family, he has a conversation with her about Jesus.  “Jesus thown everything off balance,” he says.  “It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn’t committed any crime and they could prove I had committed one because they had the papers on me.”  He goes on to explain that it’s a good thing to have a signature of your own so you can sign papers and prove you’re not as bad as the authorities claim.  “‘I call myself The Misfit,’ he said, ‘because I can’t make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment. . . . Does it seem right to you, lady, that one is punished a heap and another ain’t punished at all?’”¹  The Misfit shares all of this philosophy with the grandmother shortly before putting threes slugs in her chest.  As I said, it’s a very disturbing story.  But, in many respects, The Misfit is a creation of the grandmother.  Out of her own needs and errors, she has led the family to this place, she started a chain of events that led them to run off the road in their car, and she stands and waves her arms to stop the approaching vehicle which turns out to be occupied by the murderers.  Just before he shoots her, she looks into his eyes and says, “Why you’re one of my babies.  You’re one of my own children!”  In short, it seems that The Misfit represents all that this woman has done wrong in her life, and it all comes round to destroy her and those she loves.  This is the sad tale that we read in the newspapers every morning.  Life is full of error and misdirection, and the world is a very unforgiving place. By the way, I’m told that when a reader complained that this story had left a bad taste in her mouth, O’Connor replied that she hadn’t intended she should eat it.

So if this is how the world works, where does Jeremiah get off telling the children of Israel that they will exchange their sorrow for gladness, their women will dance, and their priests will get fat?  What’s more, where does John get off telling us that the eternal Word, existing from the beginning of creation was life that was the light of all people and enlightens everyone, and that the Word became flesh and from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace?

Here’s my thesis: As we stand on the threshold of another year of conflict and trial, it is very important to come face to face with evil – to know fully just how cruel and unfair life can be.  But it’s equally important to recognize that the newspapers report the news, and the definition of news is that which is exceptional.  The fact that a gunman takes lives indiscriminately is reported because it’s not what happens every day, everywhere, and it does not take into account the billions of human interactions going on around the world at the same time that involve compassion and generosity, or that reflect the nobility of being human.  Every experience, every interaction, every act represents a decision – a choice.  And that choice is always between greed and generosity, between carelessness and compassion, between good and evil, if you will.

There’s a wonderful book called Sustainable Happiness.  It’s a collection of essays from Yes! Magazine about, well, happiness and how living simply and living well can make a difference in one’s life and in the world.  In one essay, Jeremy Adam Smith admonishes us to Choose Gratitude and relates how doing so can change one’s life for the better.  He lists important ways to nurture gratitude, including recognizing the reality of death and loss (which makes one more appreciative of life), taking time to “smell the roses”, recognizing that the good things in life are gifts not birthrights, being grateful to people (not to things), and expressing that gratitude in very specific and to the point ways (like thanking one’s spouse for making pancakes or giving hugs when needed).  But then he writes, “Let’s get real!  Pancakes, massages, hugs?  Most of these examples are easy.

“But here’s who the really tough-minded grateful person thanks: the boyfriend who dumped her, the homeless person who asked for change, the boss who laid him off.

“We’re graduating from basic to advanced gratitude,” he writes, “so pay attention.”  Then he quotes a Doctor Robert Emmons: “‘It’s easy to feel grateful for the good things.  No one “feels” grateful that he or she has lost a job or a home or good health or has taken a devastating hit on his or her retirement portfolio.’”

“In such moments, he says, gratitude becomes a critical cognitive process – a way of thinking about the world that can help us turn disaster into a stepping stone.  If we are willing and able to look, he argues, we can find a reason to feel grateful even to people who have harmed us.  We can thank that boyfriend for being brave enough to end a relationship that wasn’t working; the homeless person for reminding us of our advantages and vulnerability; the boss for forcing us to face a new challenge.”

Smith says that “Processing experiences through the gratitude lens doesn’t mean masking pain with ‘superficial happiology’.”  He points instead to the power it puts in our hands – the power to change our minds and therefore our lives.²

By the way, this book goes on to offer some valuable insights about things like restorative justice and community based sustainable living.  Those are also some very promising ways to find happiness, for ourselves and for our world.  It’s worth a look.

Jeremiah was a prophet and John was an apostle, but in a very real sense, both were preachers.  It’s the responsibility of the preacher to tell the good news, and there is good news to tell, even in a time when the children of Israel were exiled in foreign lands, even when the first century fledgling church was wrestling with opposition, rivalry and heresy, and even in a day when the nightly news is hard to watch.

I came across some good news just the other day in a post from the UCC.  In the year 2025 forty churches became newly Open and Affirming.  Across the denomination now there are nearly 1,950 Open and Affirming churches nationwide, each with a public covenant of welcome and affirmation.

Here is the good news, and it is the keynote for the year ahead: do not allow yourself to be consumed by the darkness, because there is always, always, always light.  Keep looking for the light.  When you see it, it may be enough to make you dance, or even fat and happy.

¹ Flanner y O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977. P.  21.

² Jeremy Adam Smith, Choose Gratitude, from Sustainable Happiness, Berrett-Koehler, 2014, p. 85.

December 28, 2025

Ha‘olam

There are a lot of reasons many of us will be glad to say goodbye to 2025.  Among them is that it’s been difficult to watch the news without closing our eyes and releasing a sigh that is both an exclamation and a prayer: “God, have mercy.”  Among the atrocities we have been horrified to hear of: a man who gunned down several people at Brown University last week, killing two and injuring nine others. There have been 30 deadlier shootings in the U.S. this year, including one at a high school homecoming celebration in Leland, Mississippi that left seven dead.  And it’s not just in our country.  Just two weeks ago today two gunmen killed at least 15 people and injuring 42 others at a Hanukkah gathering at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.

In Matthew’s account of the visitation of the Magi, we read that, “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under.”  That verse has a deep and sickening resonance in these days.  Herod would make a fine figure to grace our evening news.  And when we read in the same account that Mary and Joseph fled the country and became refugees in Egypt to save the life of their child, it is a story ripped from yesterday’s headlines. Today, we also see people fleeing their countries in fear or hopelessness, and so often being turned away, sent back to danger or even torture . . . “No room in the inn.”

There certainly seems to be a timelessness to the irrational shedding of blood, and the heartless dismissal of refugees.  When the author of the words we read this morning from Ecclesiastes said that, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” and, “He has made everything suitable for its time,” it’s hard to believe that includes a time for such inhumanity and lack of compassion.

We embark upon the year 2026 like refugees from the past.  Terrorism, war, natural disaster have changed our world.  The homeland of security, the ordered world in which we once lived, has been washed away, and we find ourselves wandering through a strange land of traumas and questions.  The beginning of the year is a good time for hard questions.  It’s a time when the world itself seems to stop spinning for a moment while we catch our collective breath and look back to where we have come from, and then ahead to where we are going.  So, here’s a question to ponder while we sit on the doorstep of 2026: what in the world are we doing here, and what is the Lord Almighty doing?  I would not be brash enough to attempt an answer in fifteen minutes on this Sunday morning, but I’d like to start turning the gears in my head and think out loud about it, if it’s OK with you.

These verses from Ecclesiastes are a great place to start.  They’re transcendent words that don’t try to sell you anything; they just open up a little hole in reality and take a peek inside.  By far, the most fascinating of all the words here is this one in verse 11: “He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put ha‘olam into their minds . . .”  That’s the Hebrew word in the original texts: ha‘olam.  Here’s what I like about that word.  All of the best Biblical scholars of our age can’t agree on just what it means.  That’s the kind of thing that sends chills up my spine.  I love it when God turns out to be smarter than William Hertzog.  The New Revised Standard Version, from which we read this morning, translates this single word as a phrase: “a sense of past and future.”  Any time you find a single Hebrew word translated into a nebulous phrase like that, you can bet it’s a lulu of a translation problem.  That’s clearly one of the choices, though.  And it’s certainly an appropriate one for us as we approach January first.  We can’t begin to tackle the nagging questions that rise up in us like a raging sea without a “sense of the past and future.”

The past is the source of both our fears and our hopes.  We have borne witness to grief, catastrophe, brutality, and callousness. and we know just how hard and cruel the world can be.  But we have also seen the triumph of the human spirit, the victory of courage over difficulty, and the shining example of those who have passed in majesty before us like tall ships, showing the way through dark waters.  All too often, I think, we fall into either despairing over the traumas of our age, or idealizing our past and thinking of ourselves as the chosen ones.  It is terribly important, as we sit here pondering our place in the scheme of things, to look back, and in our looking back to never succumb to the tyranny of selective vision.  We must see the dangers in order to prepare ourselves, we must see the evil in order to battle against it in our own hearts, and we must also see the beauty in order to lift it up and celebrate it.  Perhaps that’s the genius of “For everything there is a season . . .”  It reminds us that it’s all there, and all has to be accounted for.

But we also need a sense of the future.  We need to consider our own, personal futures (Lord knows, I need that), and we need to reflect on the future of this great enterprise we’re part of – the Divine human experiment, if you will.  Indeed, it is our concern for the future, the future that our children and our children’s children will inherit, that offers hope in the most hopeless of circumstances.  In Richard Attenborough’s famous film, Gandhi is on a hunger-strike to stop the violence between Hindus and Muslims. A Hindu rioter comes up to Gandhi and throws a piece of bread at him saying, “Eat!  I am going to hell – but not with your death on my soul.”  To which Gandhi replies, “Only God decides who goes to hell.”  The rioter then explains how he killed a little Muslim boy by smashing his skull against a wall after the Muslims killed his own little boy.  Gandhi tells the man, “I know a way out of hell.  Find . . . a little boy . . . and raise him as your own.  Only be sure that he’s a Muslim, and that you raise him as one.”  The story is telling.  It reminds us that the only way to redeem our own futures is to put in our hearts the love that is born of a sense of the eternal future.  Maybe that’s the power of another translation of this word, ha‘olam.  It’s sometimes rendered as eternity.  If the Lord places eternity in our hearts, then we each have the chance in any moment to see the whole “world in a grain of sand,” or the whole future in the eyes of a child.

But my favorite word used to translate ha‘olam is world.  God has placed the world in our hearts.  Therein lies the greatest hope for us.  The world has been put in our hearts.  I take that to mean that when a hurricane swept across Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba a couple of months ago, we were compelled to close our eyes and breathe a prayer that swelled up from our own broken hearts.  And more, we were moved to open our treasure chests and to reach out with whatever hands we have to people whose spirits were dashed against the rocks.  People all over the world have poured resources into relief efforts for war refugees and when disaster has struck.  Untold tens of millions of dollars have poured in from people like you and me everywhere.  And members of this church have donated generously to our local food banks and to domestic and global relief efforts through our contributions to the UCC.

God has put the world in our hearts, and that’s a wonderful thing.  All too frequently, we forget that it’s there.  It’s so easy to think of international conflicts as too big and too complicated for us to do anything about, and therefore to care much about, or to consider people of other nations and religions as so vastly different from us that we have no common bond with them.  But those are illusory thoughts, and when the bombs drop, or the ocean rages, or the heavens crash against our brothers and sisters across the globe, or people come to our land with hope in their hearts we realize it.

Ecclesiastes says God has ordained that “there is a time for every matter under heaven,” and “has made everything suitable in its time.”  How do we square that with the heartless work of earthquakes and storms?  How do we square that with a world seemingly bent on mutual destruction?  How do we square that with the personal traumas of dreams deferred and hearts broken too early?  And how do we find our own place in the world, or comprehend the Lord’s place in it?

Well, as for the Lord’s place, apparently that’s intended to remain something of a mystery.  Ecclesiastes says that we “cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”  I guess, for whatever reason, that’s just the way it’s supposed to be.  Where is the Lord of Heaven and Earth?  I believe that Lord is, at a minimum, with the poor, in a tent camp with a Syrian refugee family, on the South Side of Chicago with a mother grieving for her son cut down in the streets.  That mother’s tears are ancient.  In response to Herod’s slaughter of the little ones, Matthew quotes the prophet Jeremiah:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,

wailing and loud lamentation,

Rachel weeping for her children;

she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

Rachel eternally weeps for her children, and that’s where you can expect to find Emmanuel, God with us.

And as for our place in the ageless story?  Well, the Lord has put ha‘olam into our hearts and minds.  And that gives us at least a good starting place for figuring out where we fit in the whole thing.  We have the past to serve as a guide.  Let us never forget its lessons, or fail to treasure its wonders.  We have the future to give us hope.  Let us never falter in our determination to help our children find a way out of the hell that might otherwise be left to them.  And, wonder of all, we have the world placed in our hearts.  Let us never let go of it.

December 21, 2025

Bit-Players in the Nativity #4 – The Innkeeper

During these Sundays, I have been examining those characters in the nativity drama with only small parts (bit-players, Hollywood calls them).  In fact, the parts for the characters we are speaking about are so small that they are never even mentioned in the Bible.  The most famous of these unmentioned bit-players, of course, is the innkeeper.

We have always given him a part in Christmas pageants because since the Bible says, “there was no room for them in the inn,” we assume there must have been an innkeeper to convey the sad message – this being long before the neon “no vacancy” signs warned motorists to just keep driving.

“No room,” we imagine him saying to the young couple.  Hogwash!  Of course there was room – or, at least there would have been, if this couple had been prominent citizens, emissaries of the King, or traveling with papers from the Emperor.  Almost 500 years ago, Martin Luther, commenting on the second chapter of Luke, referred to Mary and Joseph as “the lowest and most despised, and [those who] must make way for everyone until they are shoved into a stable to make common lodging and table with the cattle.”  He writes that the people at the inn “did not recognize what God was doing in the stable.  With all their eating, drinking, and finery, God left them empty, and his comfort and treasure was hidden from them.”

So, the image is timeless.  And it speaks even today.  You and I have also been the ones living it up with food and drink and music, never suspecting that the knock at the door, the embarrassing and untimely intrusion, the interruption from the inappropriate one out back in the stable, might be the gentle voice of the Lord seeking room in our world, in our lives, in our schedules.

We understand the innkeeper perhaps better than we do this extraordinary couple who followed a Divine promise to the stable in Bethlehem.  We are not given to pursuing visions and hearing angel voices.  We have no room in our busy lives for such nonsense.

It’s a simple matter of arithmetic.  A job, a family, a house to keep up, bills to pay, friends to visit, meetings to go to, all add up.  And there’s simply no room in the schedule for anything else, certainly not for “extras,” or “non-productive” things like meditation, reading the Bible, getting together with others for reflection and spiritual growth, paying attention to the world around you and listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit.  Those are the last things you and I generally will take time out of our busy lives for.  In short, if angels were to visit us with “good tidings of a great joy,” would anyone be listening?  And if the world were pregnant with hope and meaning, might we consign its birthing to the barn because we’re too busy trying to have fun?

We might ask ourselves, you and I: with all the terribly important things that fill our lives, what might we be missing out on?

And this question: if the Holy Lord’s own pregnant promise were standing in front of us, knocking on our door, would we recognize it?

Divine disclosure is often obscure.  It seems at times like the Lord of Life is playing a rather cruel joke on us, concealing wisdom in that which seems foolish, hiding strength in that which appears weak, disguising divinity in the clothes of a pauper.  Here’s the dilemma at the heart of the incarnation: If Jesus identifies himself with the poor, the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the strangers, the sick, the prisoners, how in the world are we supposed to tell them apart, the Messiah and the dead-beats?  It’s as if we’re supposed to have a hard time identifying the divine; maybe such a hard time that we’re forced to look for it everywhere.

I’m sure we’ve all heard the spiritual, and we know its truth: “Sweet little Jesus-boy, they didn’t know who you was.”  But we still don’t – we who are the innkeepers of the world.  If the Divine Miracle came knocking on our front door, how would we recognize it?  There are a few clues in this Christmas story.  Most significantly, it seems clear that the Word of Truth is not sent to us in packages that we expect.  The Messiah comes not as a distinguished guest with an impressive entourage, but as a pregnant girl looking for a place to sleep.  So look for the Divine promise where you would least expect to find it.  For one thing, look for it in the arguments of the person you can’t stand.  If the current national political frenzy tells us anything, I hope it is this: opposing points of view can be based on high principles held passionately.  It is rarely the case that one of them is totally right and the other totally wrong.  Perhaps what we need are leaders who can stop shouting at each other long enough to listen, and to craft a reasoned, principled, and compassionate way forward.  And perhaps each of us might benefit from realizing that high principles held passionately are sometimes just another way of trying to win.  So, don’t get so caught up in talking with your own circle of friends that you slam the door on a differing idea when it knocks.  You never know, it just might be the voice of Eternity.

Look for the divine in the lowly and the outcast.  Don’t expect eternal truth to come in a nicely crafted sound-bite on the evening news, but look for it in the eyes of the old woman you walk past in the nursing home.  If Christ were to walk among us, he is more likely to be found among the poor folks from the other side of the tracks, or those made homeless by government ineptitude, than among the politicians and power brokers of our land.  Look for him in the backwater towns and the third world countries.

Has Jesus come knocking on our doors this Christmas Season?  If so, how have we received him?  By filling our lives with the busy-ness of living, avoiding the deeper spiritual and social issues, devoting ourselves more to the trappings of the season than to the One who comes looking for room in our hearts, taking up our time with all the other honored guests in our house of priorities?

Will we fail to recognize the presence of Christ in the poorly dressed person with a foul odor, the friend with a need to share, the emotionally disabled person who is disregarded?  Will we dismiss the divine wisdom in the person who disagrees with us, slamming the door on them and contenting ourselves with the company of our like-minded friends?  Will we do our best to keep people “in their places,” only tolerating those who are different “so long as they keep quiet and stay out back with the cows?”  When Christ knocks on the door of our hearts, will our answer be, “Sorry, no room?”

Archie Showen shared a marvelous story that’s one of my favorites.  It’s about a little child, a handicapped child, who wanted to have a lead role in the Christmas pageant.  “He longed to be Joseph,” Showen writes, “but that part was awarded to the teacher’s pet.  He would have been satisfied to have been one of the wise men, but these parts went to the rich kids who could dress in their exquisite bathrobes and look like kings.  He was even rejected as a shepherd – no one could imagine a shepherd on crutches.  The part remaining was his – the inn-keeper.  His little heart ached as he dreaded having to reject the Christ-child.  When the night for the play arrived, the room was packed.  The curtain was pulled and the play began with Joseph’s knock on the door of the inn.  His big moment had arrived and he could stand it no longer.  With all his might he flung open the door of the inn and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘Come in!  I’ve been expecting you!’  The audience roared and a thunderous applause broke out.  His acceptance of Christ ended the play and everyone remarked that it was the best Christmas they had ever seen.”

Maybe it’s time we rewrote the story.  Maybe this coming year we should put candles in the windows of the Bethlehem inn as a sign of welcome and keep an eye out for the holy family.  Not knowing who they are, maybe we should just welcome everyone, and sleep in the barn ourselves if need be.  Maybe when a disheveled couple approach looking for help we should throw open the doors of the inn and say, “Come in!  I’ve been expecting you!”

The attempt to do so is very old, and etched into our very traditions.  The way we celebrate Christmas is patterned after an ancient Roman festival that honored just such a revolutionary idea.  We landed on December 25th for Christmas, you know, because (according to the mythologist, Thomas Bulfinch) early Christians seized upon the Roman festival of Saturnalia as a good time to celebrate the birth of Christ.  Bulfinch writes, “. . .the feast of Saturnalia was held every year in the winter season.  Then all public business was suspended, declaration of war and criminal executions were postponed, friends made presents to one another, and the slaves were indulged with great liberties.  A feast was given to them where they sat at table, while their masters served them, to show the natural equality . . . and that all things belonged equally to all . . . .”

So, we stand in a good tradition with this December celebration.  And we’re still trying to live up to a very high ideal: to break down the barriers between us and give birth to peace and equality, to change the story of Bethlehem and say there is room for Christ – always room.

December 14, 2025

Bit-Players in the Nativity: #3 – The Shepherd Boy

Seventy-four years ago, NBC-TV presented the first opera written for television.  Menotti’s “Amal and the Night Visitors” became a Christmas classic.  In this opera for children, Amahl, who was once a shepherd boy is now disabled and can walk only with a crutch.  He and his mother are visited by three kings who are on their way see the miracle child that was born in Bethlehem.  In the course of their interactions, Amahl is miraculously healed and leaves with the kings to see the Holy child and take him his crutch as a gift since he no longer needs it.  But this wonderful opera is only one in a long string of images, hunches, songs, legends and notions about the question: where were the children when Jesus was born?  We instinctively assume that there must have been children somehow connected to the story of the manger in Bethlehem.  Maybe it’s because Christmas has always seemed to be such a joyous and consuming time for children.  Whatever the reason, we do want to put at least one child in the manger scene — other than the one in the manger, that is.

Usually, it’s a little shepherd boy.  And usually, our focus is on what gift he might give to the holy infant.  There is something fitting about that.  Because children, I think, have a special issue around the notion of giving.  We all hear at this time of year about children’s fixation on “getting.”  We know they want the latest action figure, or video game, or music CD, or interactive toy, but do we ever stop to think about how they struggle with the concept of giving?  It all has to do with self-image, you know.  The child who doesn’t think he or she has much to offer doesn’t take the notion of giving very seriously.  The child who doesn’t feel capable of giving something that will be truly treasured can be too embarrassed to take the gesture to heart.

Garrison Keillor said that Christmas is “a holiday fraught with peril.”¹ The whole “gift giving” and “gift getting” ritual is full of land mines.  He says that a Christmas gift often tells us very little about who we are.  But it tells us a great deal about who some other person thinks we are, or wants us to be.  It’s no wonder children are often overwhelmed by the task of selecting a gift for someone.

But something beautiful happens in all our Christmas legends about the little shepherd, or drummer boy, or boy king.  The child always fails to come up with what he considers an adequate gift, and so ends up, even unintentionally, giving something of himself.  And, wonder of all wonders, it turns out to be just the right thing to bring a smile to the holy countenance.

I think there has to be a child in the manger story because children have something to teach all of us about giving, and about receiving.  In the end, a child will scribble a few lines on a piece of construction paper with a crayon, fold over one end and stick a staple in it or a sticker on it, glue a couple of cotton balls on for a snowman, and scratch the words “I love you” in the corner with a pencil.  And somehow, of all the treasures under the tree, it’s the gift that brings a tear to the corner of a parent’s eye.  And a child receives gifts unrestrainedly, with wonder and unbridled enthusiasm, tearing into the wrappings, and looking for that which is to be theirs.

This can be “a sign unto us” – to keep us from giving out of a sense of duty or the burden of obligation, and from receiving with embarrassment or only half a heart.  This is critically important because giving of ourselves, and receiving the blessings of grace lie at the very heart of our faith.  And a half a heart is not nearly enough.

No, there’s no little shepherd boy in the Biblical account of the nativity, no earnest child with a drum.  But there should be.  Among those shepherds on the hillside who were swept up in the wonder of a mysterious light and swore they heard the beating of angels’ wings there must have a been a boy.  And if not, then the men who heard it must have been transformed into children themselves, tearing full bore down the hill toward the sleepy little town, frightened, awed, expectant, jubilant.

Christmas is for children.  Because at this time of year every one of us is, at some level and with any luck, reduced to the wide-eyed, awe-struck, hopeful, little ones who Jesus said we must be in order to enter the kingdom.  Every one of us comes to the Christ-child, uncertain, hopeful, bringing only what we have.  Every one of us figuratively puts on a bathrobe and a paper crown, or cuddles a toy lamb, and in trepidation and wonder shuffles up to the manger.

Dadgie and I had a habit of smiling and even sharing a loving chuckle whenever we saw a little one in the grocery store or on the street.  We frequently saw a parade of little ones walking in downtown Athol connected by each holding on to some kind of chord — out, it seems with their teachers on an exploration of the town.  Whenever we saw them, we couldn’t help smiling and laughing.  It warmed and brightened our day.  Just the other day in the grocery store, we encountered a mother with a little one in her shopping cart. I smiled and waved, and the child smiled back.  I asked the mother what isle you find those on.  Children give us a gift.  It is a gift of the soul – a gift of self.  They give us their smiles, their voices, and their abounding, joyous presence.  Day in and day out, they give us more than hope, they give us confidence about the future.  When you see them, give them an eager grin, and a warm “hello.”

Yes, I think there must have been a child at the manger.  Maybe even one with a drum:

Baby Jesus, pa rum pum pum pum,

I am a poor boy too, pa rum pum pum pum.

I have no gift to bring, pa rum pum pum pum,

that’s fit to give the King, pa rum pum pum pum,

rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

shall I play for you, pa rum pum pum pum,

On my drum?

Mary nodded, pa rum pum pum pum,

the ox and lamb kept time, pa rum pum pum pum.

I played my drum for Him, pa rum pum pum pum,

I played my best for Him, pa rum pum pum pum,

rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

then He smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum,

me and my drum.

¹ Garrison Keillor, A Prairie Home Companion, date unknown.

December 7, 2025

Bit-Players at the Nativity: #2 – The Donkey

Have you ever stopped to consider the foolishness of what we Christians proclaim at this time of year?  According to just about every standard and norm for rational, differentiated thought in our culture, you and I ought to be locked up in the psych unit for all this – the Christmas wreaths and candles and manger scene.  We have this story to tell at this time of year about how the almighty Lord of the Universe, the creator of the far-flung heavens, the perfect Idea whose Word gave birth to life itself, took on flesh and bones in the person of a newborn baby brought forth in a smelly cow-feeder in the back alley of a one-horse town on the outskirts of nowhere.

To a modern, scientific mind, the thought of the Almighty being manifest in human form is hard enough to swallow, but the clincher is the cow dung.  That’s what was there after all, in the stable where the manger was.  You don’t have an animal feeder to lay a baby in, you know, without the end product being present as well.

The cow dung is a problem because healthy, skeptical, twenty-first century Americans have come to know a little something about power, and how it works.  We know about power ties, and power lunches, and power shirts, and that 80% of success is appearances.  We know that the most powerful person in the world is supposed to be the President of the United States, and that one of the best ways to become President is to have the most flags behind you when you speak on television.  We know about dressing for success, and driving the right kind of car, and we know about smelling right!  If you’re going to be a person of power, you have to smell right!  There’s an entire shopping isle at the grocery store dedicated to colognes, under-arm deodorants, tropical fragrance shampoos, and scented hair sprays.  And there’s another whole isle devoted to nice smelling soaps, room deodorizers, and pine-scented toilet products.  So, if we know anything, we know that the Lord Almighty, Ruler of heaven and earth, wanting to impress upon humanity the breadth of divine power, would expressly not come into this world in a cow barn, with you-know-what lying all around.  It’s preposterous.

But that’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.  J. Barrie Shepherd calls it “the mystery and manure of Christmas.”  By all accounts, you see, there had to be animals there.

So, continuing with this Advent pulpit series, in which I am focusing on some of the unmentioned characters — the bit-players — at the nativity, I’m focusing today on the donkey.  Now, we don’t know for sure that there was a donkey at the manger; it’s not mentioned in the scriptural accounts, but we can assume that, Mary, being nine months pregnant, would have had to ride on a donkey to make the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, so the animal must have been tied up nearby.  Besides, we have rarely seen a creche without a donkey.

I never spent much time around donkeys, but when I was boy in Iowa, I sure spent some time around farm animals.  And in my limited experience, I can say that the beasts we house and feed to provide milk, and meat, and animal power are not the gentle, lovely creatures we see resting in the straw of our manger scenes.  They’re big, and coarse, and nasty and smelly, and generally not very intelligent.  So, the answer to the question, “what was the donkey thinking as he looked upon the holy child in the manger?” is, “he wasn’t thinking a blessed thing.”

Perhaps the more important question is, “What was the Lord Almighty thinking in choosing to break forth into the world in a cow-stall with a donkey looking on?”  I would not claim to know the mind of, or speak for the Almighty, but I do think there are clues in scripture.  We find this advice in the second chapter of Philippians, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself . . .”  Or, in 1 Corinthians, we find, “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.”

In other words, maybe we don’t really know as much about power as we think we do.  Maybe the donkey was not only a bit-player — a beast of burden that just happened to be tied up nearby.  Maybe the donkey was one of the chief parts in this drama of “mystery and manure.”  Maybe it was intended that there be animals, and the smellier the better.

It’s almost as if the Lord were putting that unmistakable barnyard smell right in our faces, and making a point with it.  It’s almost as if we were supposed to be shocked, and the very moment of greatest wonder at the miracle of divine intervention was used to send an entirely earthly and profoundly important message to us.  It’s almost as if all the things we consider “beneath us” were chosen in order to mock our high-minded, squeaky clean, “I’m too sexy for my shirt,” bloated self-image.  It’s almost as if we were being told something about real power, that contrary to everything we have learned, power has almost nothing to do with appearances, or with odors.  True power – divine, eternal power – has nothing to do with what kind of tie you wear, what kind of car you drive, how many votes you can tally or dollars you can collect, how many bombs you can drop, how righteous are your positions, or how cogent your arguments.  It may be that, in the baby lying in the straw with the donkey looking on, we are being told that there is a kind of power that we don’t even understand, let alone have mastery of, a power that operates within the context of the human condition, but transcends human culture and convention, a power that is accessible, but can never be grasped, a power never earned or won, but only conferred as a gift.

I have always had a feeling – a hunch, I suppose – that there is a Divine partiality to animals.  I don’t know if it’s true, but to me, it fits.  Maybe that’s because I suspect the Lord knows something about existence that we don’t, something that puts us on a lot more equal footing with the animals than we’re generally comfortable acknowledging.

Anyway, I can’t help believing that the birth of Jesus had something to do with the order of things in the cosmos.  It had to do with priorities and values that are the same throughout the universe, and that incorporate all of God’s creation.  It had to do with the disclosure of the primary force at the heart of being, the mystery and power of Love.

That love – the kind of love that breaks through convention and goes to the heart of being – much to our consternation, is often best and most powerfully revealed among the people and in the circumstances that run most counter to our prideful assumptions about status and power and decency and culture.

Nancy Dahlberg told her personal story of being overtaken by that kind of love.¹  She and her husband and two small children spent Christmas Day driving between two cities on the West Coast.  It was a long trip, but the only way they could visit their families in the limited time they had.  They stopped for lunch at a kind of two-bit diner in a two-bit town, not the greatest place for Christmas dinner.  But even in her road-weariness, Nancy was aware of deep feelings of gratitude as she looked around the diner.  She was probably the most fortunate person in that whole depressing place.

As they waited to order, she saw her one-year-old son Erik’s face light up in excitement.  He began to wiggle all around in his high chair, and squealed with delight his baby version of his favorite new words, “Hi, there.”  He pounded his fat baby fists on the metal tray, giggling with joy so that everyone in the diner heard and looked.

His mother turned to see the object of his delight, and I quote:

“I saw a tattered rag of a coat, obviously bought by someone else eons ago, dirty, greasy, and worn, baggy pants, both they and the zipper at half-mast over a spindly body, toes that poked out of would-be shoes, a shirt that had ring-around-the-collar all over, and a face like none other, with gums as bare as Erik’s, hair uncombed, unwashed, whiskers too short to be a beard, but way, way beyond a shadow.  I was too far away to smell him, but I knew he smelled, and his hands were waving in the air.  ‘Hi there, baby.  Hi there, big boy.  I see ya, Buster.’

The exchange went on: “‘Do you know patty cake?  Atta boy.  Do you know peek-a-boo?  Hey look!  He knows peek-a-boo!’”

Nancy and her husband tried to eat in dismay and embarrassment as the old bum, a drunk and a disturbance, shouted across the room and created an awful scene with Erik’s ecstatic cooperation.  In despair they moved Erik’s chair so he could not see the man, but the baby’s howls just made things worse.

The parents gulped their food, grabbed the check, and Nancy carried Erik toward the exit, the old man’s chair right in her pathway.  As she got close to him, Erik leaned from her arms, and try as she did, she could not avoid the man’s eyes imploring her to let him hold the baby.  She didn’t really have a choice.  Again, I quote:

“. . . Erik propelled himself from my arms to the man . . . Erik, in an act of total trust, love and submission, laid his small head on the man’s ragged shoulder.  The man’s eyes closed and I saw tears hover on his lashes.  His aged hands, full of grime and apparent pain, gently, so gently cradled my baby’s bottom and stroked his back.

“No two beings have ever loved so deeply for so short a time.  I stood awestruck,” she wrote, “as the man rocked and cradled Erik in his arms, and then his eyes opened and set squarely on mine.  He said in a firm, commanding voice, ‘You take care of this baby.’  He pried Erik from his chest, unwillingly, as if in pain. I held my arms open to receive my son and again the gentleman addressed me, ‘God bless you, ma’am.  You’ve given me my Christmas . . .’”

The greatest power in the universe is the kind of love that is knit into the fabric of existence.  It is a kind of love that resides so deeply in the core of being that it transcends everything we associate with cultural standards and norms.  Real power is not found in pride, position, or possessions.  Real power is found, as Jesus demonstrated, in common cause and a common bond with all people regardless of station in life.  Real power is found, as Jesus demonstrated, in self-sacrificing love.  The heart of that love was given birth on a chilly night to an unmarried woman, in the back-waters of Palestine, and in a cow-feeder.

So, in my estimation, there had to be a donkey.  And it had to be a stubborn, smelly, slightly bedraggled beast, road weary and leaving plenty of mementoes around on the floor of the stable – one of those creatures that makes us wince, and that God adores.

¹ The American Baptist Magazine (Date unknown).

November 30, 2025

Bit-Players at the Nativity: #1 – The Census Taker

This year, during Advent, I’ve decided to take a look with you at some of the characters in the story of Christ’s birth who are out of the spotlight – “bit-players,” if you will, in the drama of the Nativity. The characters that I intend to examine in these weeks have such unassuming roles that they are, in fact, not even mentioned in the Bible. Their existence is at best inferred, or in some cases just a flight of fancy.
Now, to begin with, I don’t want to spoil anyone’s Christmas, but I feel a responsibility to point out a problem with Luke’s account of the Birth of Jesus. The story begins, “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.” Here’s the problem: Caesar Augustus ruled from 27 B.C. to 14 A.D. There is no evidence during this time of any census being taken of, as Luke says, “all the world” (which would have meant the entire Roman Empire). It is curious that the “first registration . . . taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria,” in Luke’s words, was a local census taken in A.D. 6 or 7 for the purpose of imposing a tax on the people – one, incidentally, that led to rioting in the streets. Additionally, Luke tells us earlier in the book that John the Baptist, and therefore Jesus also, were born during the reign of Herod the Great in Judea. The problem being that Quirinius was never governor during the reign of Herod, who died in 4 B.C.
But, all that having been said, let’s forgive Luke his little historical inaccuracies, and for convenience’s sake, think of this as the tax census taken by Quirinius in 6 A.D. Indeed, what matters about the story is not its fidelity to historical facts but its fidelity to timeless meaning. In that spirit, I’d like for us to consider for a time the role of that unnamed person in the account who was, on the day in question, simply going about his job, setting up shop to take the census.
When a road-weary man with the slightly harried look of an expectant father appeared before him and announced, “Joseph of Nazareth, in Galilee,” how could he have known who this was? How could he have known that standing there at his registration table was a central figure in perhaps the greatest drama in human history? Inscribing the name, and the names of his family in the role, I suspect our census taker glanced out the window at the sun to see how late in the day it was getting, and how much longer he would have to endure this tedious tallying, and the ceaseless stream of people, each one starting to look exactly like that last.
“Next,” he said with the indifferent air of one who sees no further than the tip of his pen. And that was that. A difficult journey with a bride nine months pregnant to a town with no vacancies. And not so much as a “How do you do?” Just a cold question, and a curt, “Next.”
It’s hard to blame the census taker. He’s so much like us. Life is, after all, mostly about getting by, doing our job, meeting our responsibilities, getting dinner ready, or any of the thousand things with which we fill our days – or, at least, it seems to us that’s what life is about. And how much time do we spend looking out the window, or glancing at our watch, wishing away the present moment, looking for something different, anticipating whatever on our agenda might be the next experience of any real interest?
There is a common malady loose in our world. It is the persistent desire to be someone we are not, to be somewhere or some-when we are not. We suffer from this disease frequently at Christmas time. I don’t know about you, but I find the burden of all the preparations for this holiday to be about as tedious as, say, writing down an endless list of names of people standing in line for a census. The gifts I have yet to think of, let alone buy, the notes and cards to be written – when am I going to find time to do those? To a large degree, I find myself just looking forward to getting it all over with, so all this won’t be hanging over my head any more. The radio and television tell us we are supposed to be happy and busy little shoppers, out there doing our best to keep the engine of the economy going, but instead I find myself with head down looking at the list of those for whom I need to buy gifts, and wanting to check another off so I can say, “Next.” Won’t it be nice when it’s January, and all this is over for another year? How’s that for a fine attitude about Christmas from a preacher?
In my better moments I know this is not what Christmas is all about. But I have to say the piped in “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” in the shopping malls, and the four page holiday ads in the newspaper do seem to conspire to keep me from maintaining a good perspective on the season.
I think that what I need is to watch A Christmas Carol for the fifty sixth time. I think there is a certain Zen in the reborn Scrooge that is particularly important in this season. Integral to Scrooge’s Christmas morning transformation is his newly acquired ability to see deeply and appreciatively into every moment and everything that’s happening around him. He can’t get enough of each precious encounter, each treasured sight or sound or smell. He’s filled with joy at every little thing that comes his way. No longer is his face buried in the ledger, dispassionately waiting for the next opportunity to make a nickel. Now he is always looking, always laughing, always taking in and savoring the sweet moments of life with which he is blessed.
That’s what I need a heavy helping of this Christmas. I need someone to slap me in the face and say, pick up your head and look at the face of the person standing in front of you, look at the last leaf from the old oak tree floating to the ground, look at the list of names of people you are privileged to care about and to whom you want to express your love by remembering them at Christmas time. That’s what I need.
I think it’s what that census taker needed too. I don’t know if he ever found it. I’d like to think maybe he did. I like to imagine him finishing his day’s work and heading back to his room, head down, eyes weary, when suddenly, as he passes near the inn, he hears an odd sound – the cry of a baby, coming from out back, from the stables. I like to imagine him picking his head up, and turning aside to investigate, approaching the stable, and seeing something wondrous – a newborn baby, a common, lower-class family having a baby in a cow stall. I like to think of him picking his head up and looking into the face of the father, a warm, strong face, and recognizing him as a man who’d been at his census table earlier in the day. I like to think that he had something of an epiphany in that moment, that he suddenly knew that every star in the sky was announcing good tidings of great joy, every manger was filled with abundant new life, every face was an image of the face of God.
I love the sentiment of that great philosopher, John Lenin, who wrote, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” You and I have a lot of options this Christmas season: we can drag ourselves through the ordeal for yet another year, wishing away our moments, waiting for an easier time; we can occupy our minds with big plans and preparations for grand celebrations; we can bury our faces in the ledger, or the newspaper, or the report the boss is expecting tomorrow – the Good Lord of this Universe, I suspect, will be busy delivering a baby.