Gabriel's Song

This was my message for Christmas Eve. The text was Luke 2:1-20:

Within the nativity story, angels play a critical role and a familiar part of the story, if nothing else than the angels appearing to the shepherds in the fields as we just heard, and as Linus reminds us every year as being part of the story of the meaning of Christmas. But the angels in the fields are even more than just this moment. Jesus’ birth story actually begins with angelic announcements, and that’s actually the angel Gabriel. He first appears to Zechariah in the temple telling him that his wife Elizabeth will give birth in her old age, although we’re never told that age, but Zechariah doesn’t believe him. and Gabriel begins that message by telling Zechariah, not to be afraid. Gabriel then appears to Mary to tell her that she too will become pregnant, and again begins with the injunction do not to be afraid. An angel also appears to Joseph, although this time in a dream, and we’re not told whom this angel is, but again the message begins “do not be afraid.” And of course, as we’re talking about angels in the Christmas story we cannot forget angel second class, Clarence Odbody, in Frank Capra’s classic It’s a Wonderful Life.  I think my favorite portrayal of an angel is not in a Christmas story, but instead was done by John Travolta who portrayed that archangel Michael, in the movie of the same name.  A smoking, hard drinking, hard living, slob, with a rather colorful vocabulary.  Someone no one would ever believe was an angel if it weren’t for the two wings growing out of his back.  And you know that John Travolta is a really good actor when he, a scientologist, can play the leading messenger for God.

We actually don’t know very much about angels from the Bible.  Most of what people think about them, or think they know about them, comes from extra-biblical sources, some of them quite modern, and we could talk about them but then we’d have to end up talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.  But that is not to say that angels aren’t found in scripture because they are.  The first time we hear of an angel is after Adam and Eve are expelled from the Garden of Eden, the entrance is guarded by cherubim who has a flaming sword, think of it as the world’s first light saber.  The cherubim are winged creatures who act sort of as guardians, and if you remember Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark correctly, they are the images formed onto the top of the ark of the covenant.  Later we will also hear about seraphim, who are winged creatures said to be found guarding God’s seat inside the Temple in the Holy of Holies.  If I remember correctly, it’s the cherubim that hang from the ceiling and the seraphim that come up from the floor, or maybe it’s reversed, I can never remember which is which.  But while they are angelic like creatures, outside of the wings, these are not really angels as we typically understand them or think of them, or as they are found in the rest of scripture.

In the Fullness of Time

Here is my message for Blue Christmas. The text was Galatians 4:4-7:

When I lived in Santa Fe, this is pre-ministry years, one of the houses I lived in was on the southside of the city, with windows that covered the entire southside of the house, which meant it had fantastic views, but it was hard to heat in the winter and the birds hated it because they kept running into the windows. One time a bird hit the window so hard, I thought for sure he had broken his neck, but when I went out later to collect him, he wasn’t there. Turns out he wasn’t dead, just stunned. But, if you’ve ever seen a bird recover from hitting a window, there is a certain ritual that they all go through. First is they sort of fluff out their feathers and sit for a while a little drooped over. Then they’ll start to walk around, and shake out a foot, and then a wing, and then another foot, and then the other wing, and fluff up their feathers, and they keep doing that for a while. It sort of reconnects their mind with their bodies, and reminds them that they are a bird, and how to work everything, and how to be normal again. They don’t just get right up and fly again, it takes a while. They have to return to a new sense a normal. In fact, birding groups recommend that if you find a bird that’s been stunned and is not in a safe area to recover, to place it in a container where it can do this process, in a dark, warm space, which will help calm it down, and then leave it alone for two hours before checking on them again.

Gifts of Christmas: Emmanuel

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Isaiah 7:10-16:

There are lots of things for which religion is used, and one of them is to explain suffering, with the corresponding side of that of giving hope. And different religions give different answers, but there is one thing that separates Christianity from everyone else is the fact that we believe the answers are found not in ideas, but in a person, and that person is of course Jesus. Whom we also refer to, especially in this time of the year as Emmanuel, which means God with us. And so that is the final gift that we celebrate receiving from God through Christ. Just a quick recap, the first gift was reconciliation, that through Christ we are invited into right relationship with God and with each other. And the second gift was the freedom we receive through the Christ, of being freed from the slavery to sin and death, and into forgiveness and eternal life, but also the freedom to stop thinking about ourselves and instead to become servants to the world, just as Christ did. And that leaves us with the greatest gift which is that Christ himself is the Word made flesh, as the gospel of John says, also known as the incarnation. God come to dwell amongst us, our Emmanuel. And we first here of this from that passage we heard today from the prophet Isaiah.

Now it is from Isaiah that we get most, but not all, of the things that we take as telling of the coming of Christ, but let me just say that these are particularly Christian understandings. Within Judaism they were not necessarily viewed as messianic predictions. Especially for Isaiah, he was not prophesying about some time in the distant future, but about the here and now, and that is true for this passage. As Isaiah is talking about this young woman, it’s a woman that is actually there. There is lots of speculation about who she is, with guesses that she is Isaiah’s wife, or perhaps Ahaz’s wife, or another member of the royal court, but she could just be a pregnant woman walking by that Isaiah is using as an example. Because the whole point of this interchange is about trust. Ahaz, the king, doesn’t trust God, or at least he’s not showing that trust. God tells him to ask for a sign about what’s happening, to see a sign of reassurance, but Ahaz refuses, and also tries to wrap that refusal in religious language, sort of ironic.

Gifts of Christmas: Freedom

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Isaiah 11:1-10:

Gifts of Christmas: Reconciliation

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Isaiah 2:1-5:

After we completed looking at the fruit of the Spirit last week, someone astutely said to me that they were looking at the nine fruit and thinking then about the themes of Advent, which are hope, peace, joy and love. Three of those are fruit, but then they said that when we lose the others, or when we are separated from the Spirit so they aren’t working, then that’s where hope comes in. that’s where we need gone. As Paul says in his letter to the Romans, we don’t hope for what we see, we hope for what we don’t see, and so it is in this season of Advent as we heard in the candle lighting liturgy, Advent is a time of preparation. In some ways it’s like a little Lent, the season to prepare for the coming of Easter, only now we are preparing for the birth of Christ. An even that has already happened, and yet we also await the coming again of Christ, because the promises have not yet been completed. It’s an already and not quite yet event, and so we prepare. And as our act of preparation we are going to be thinking about and looking at gifts that God has given to us through Christ, which all, in many ways relate to that theme of hope, and we begin today with the gift of reconciliation.

That’s a theme that’s really important, especially in the New Testament, but it’s not one that we spend a lot of time thinking about or talking about. And yet it’s right there in one of the most famous pieces of scripture, John 3:16, in which we are told that Christ came not to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him. The whole world, not just parts of it, would be reconciled, brought back into proper relationship with God, trough Christ. And those who believe, will move out of the darkness and into the light of Christ. And that promise of reconciliation is already seen in the passage we heard from Isaiah, from whom most of our scripture readings are going to come from this Advent. Isaiah gives this vision of all the nations walking in the light of God, learning from God and following God’s paths, which leads to them turning their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Or we should hear that as turning their tools of war, into tools for feeding people. And then it continues that nation shall not raise up sword against nation, and neither shall they learn war any more. That’s the image that tends to be focused on because of our yearning for such a thing to happen, not having war anymore seems like a good thing, and we also have the same imagery given to us by the prophet Micah. And in hearing that we can definitely think that not engaging in war, would be an indication of reconciliation happening between nations, but there are some key things that lead to that reconciliation that we need to pay attention to, because it doesn’t happen by itself.

Thoughts on the End of Roe

This was a note I wrote to my congregation.

When we found out that Linda was pregnant at an “advanced maternal age,” which is doctor speak for being old, there were a number of things we were concerned about. The first is that ectopic pregnancies are much more common in older women, and it is a serious health risk. 10% of all deaths during pregnancy come from ectopic pregnancies, even though they are less than 2% of all pregnancies.

The second was the risk of miscarriage, which is greater than 40% in women over the age of 40, and greater than 80% in women over 45, which was her age range. This doesn’t take into account that it’s believed that half of all fertilized eggs are miscarried before the woman is even aware that she is pregnant. For those who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is somewhere between 10-15%. And for those who have experienced a miscarriage, or have walked that journey with someone, you know how devastating that can be. Therefore, we waited to tell people, including our daughters, that Linda was pregnant until the end of the first trimester because of this risk.

The third concern was the impact on Linda’s overall health. The pregnancies for our first two children were damaging to Linda’s body, and we were concerned that a third, more than a decade later, would be even worse.

The final concern, or at least the final for the sake of this message, was the risk of birth defects which are hugely elevated for those of “advanced maternal age.” The older a woman is, the more things can go wrong with the fetus, and many of those problems are not survivable. Fortunately, there are now tests for a lot of these, and we had the doctors test for as many things as they could so we knew what to expect.

All of these things meant that Linda and I had to have deep and detailed conversations about the what ifs, and what we would do, or were prepared to do. And I can say that aborting the fetus was one of the possible outcomes depending on the situation, which we had also discussed with our doctor on what those steps would be. I am really grateful that everything worked out and we have a beautiful, healthy and happy little girl, but that’s not always the case.

In my ministry I have known women who have had abortions for different reasons. The vast majority of them wanted to have a child, but the situation did not allow for that to happen. When we made our decisions about possibilities it was not easy, and I can tell you it was not easy for these women or their partners. And just based on simple statistics, the likelihood is that there are members of our congregation who have had an abortion, so please keep that in mind as you may be discussing this with others.

And I know that some will still want to judge them, and say “If I was in that position….” But the world doesn’t work like that. And even if it would be right for you, it does not mean that it is right for someone else. It would be great if the world was black and white, and every situation identical, but it’s not. The world is full of greys with difficult decisions to be made.

Because of that sense of greyness, I have always had great respect for the United Methodist Church’s position on abortion, which says, in part, “Our belief in the sanctity of unborn human life makes us reluctant to approve abortion. But we are equally bound to respect the sacredness of the life and well-being of the mother and the unborn child. We recognize tragic conflicts of life that may justify abortion, and in such cases we support the legal option of abortion under proper medical procedures by certified medical providers.” That is a position which I have supported.

The Council of Bishops released a statement in light of Friday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the church’s position and saying that the decision “denied the sacred worth of women” as well as noting that “the decision serves to create a further divide between persons of privilege who have the means to seek necessary health care and those who lack this privilege due to their current economic condition, their disproportionately affected lives, or the color of their skin.”

Of greater concern to me is that this decision will not decide the issue. The arguments and divisiveness will only get worse, and women’s lives will be at jeopardy. One state has already proposed banning abortions for ectopic pregnancies and women who have had miscarriages have already been arrested and prosecutions attempted before this decision. How is a woman to prove that her miscarriage was not naturally occurring? I know that many women are already removing menstruation tracking apps, or stopping their usage, for fear the information could be used against them.

What research has shown is that banning abortion does not stop the demand for abortion, it simply changes the where and how. However, what has been shown to reduce abortions is higher basic incomes, greater access to sex education and birth control (which are now also under threat), access to affordable or free childcare, as well as greater access to medical care, one of the biggest issues of which is cost.

We are a fairly well-off couple, with good insurance, and we are still paying medical bills, three years later, for the five days that Elizabeth spent in the NICU when she was born. Those bills only get worse for children with severe physical or mental impairments, and those needs and costs don’t go away as the children get older. We need to be concerned about children not just for their time in the womb, but also for when they are born and to be ready to support them and their parents.

I know that some of you may disagree with me, and that’s okay, and please note that what I am saying is the position of the UMC, not just a personal opinion. And the reality is that people’s opinions on abortion, as shown in polls, haven’t changed very much in the last 50 years, which is why it continues to be a divisive issue in the country and in our politics. And as I said, it’s going to get worse. There are already court cases being prepared by Jewish and Muslim groups to challenge this ruling on religious freedom grounds as their long-held belief is that life begins at birth. And the church’s historic position has been that life began at quickening, which is why the creedal statements used to say that Christ will come to judge “the quick and the dead” as it was believed that the quickening was the soul entering the body.

So, what I ask us all to do is to be in prayer and, as I said on Sunday, to model appropriate behavior with one another. We are all better when we are at the table together engaging in conversation and we don’t have to be disagreeable simply because we disagree.

Wesleyan Quadrilateral

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was John 16:12-15:

For the past five weeks we’ve been talking about what it is that we as Methodist’s believe, of some things that are unique to Methodism or to a Wesleyan perspective, coming from the founder of the Methodist movement John Wesley. We’ve talked about a Wesleyan understanding of grace, about person and social holiness, about our understanding of the sacraments, and last week about evangelism, and today we move onto how we read and interpret and understand scripture. Now there are many ways that we can approach scripture, and many different reasons for reading scripture, but if we are to take scripture seriously, then we have to be serious about how we take scripture, which has a definitely unique perspective when it comes to the tradition we have inherited from Wesley.

Now some people will often argue that they don’t interpret scripture, they just read it and understand what it has to say, or as the simplistic saying is “the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” Except it doesn’t really settle anything, because first of all the Bible is not like the Apple user’s agreement that we just scroll to the bottom and click “I agree.” And second is it’s impossible to read scripture without interpreting it, and that’s not even to deal with the reality that an interpretation itself is already being given to us because it’s being translated, which involves and enormous amount of decisions that have to be made that can convey one idea over another. But, we do the same. I will read scripture differently than you. I read it differently as a married man with children, then I would if I was single without children. I read it differently as a middle-class white American, then if I was poor in the developing world. I also read it differently than I did 20 years ago, and know that in 20 years it will also be different. It’s just natural to do these things, and we have to be cognizant of that so that we can know our default understandings and where we might be blind to some things. And we can also see different things depending on what it is that we are thinking and doing., and let me give you just one example.

Evangelical

Here is my message from Sunday. The passages were Acts 2:1-21 and Matthew 28:16-20. It was Pentecost Sunday:

In 1910 a series of pamphlets began to be published, focused out of the Presbyterian Church and Princeton Theological Seminary, it was entitled The Fundamentals, and sought, in their words to state “the fundamentals of Christianity.” Those who subscribed to the ideas being presented in these pamphlets began to be referred to as fundamentalists, which is where that term comes from. But, fairly recently, as these things go, as the term fundamentalist began to be applied to other groups, like fundamentalist Muslims, or those who subscribed to a very strict idea of a religion, with little to no wiggle room to believe other things, and the desire to blow things up to prove their rightness, Christian fundamentalists began to change how they referred to themselves, rejecting that term, and instead calling themselves evangelicals, which, in my opinion, has sort of corrupted that word, and the rest of the church really needs to try and reclaim it from simply meaning fundamentalist. Now it’s not that fundamentalists didn’t also have overlaps with evangelicalism, because they did, but evangelical had meant much more than what it tends to mean now.

And so when I say that the Methodist movement was part of the evangelical movement that doesn’t mean what we tend to think it means currently, instead it was about, much as we’ve talked about already when it comes to Methodist beliefs, about a lived religion that not only sought to make the believer’s life better, to bring about personal transformation, and then from a Methodist perspective to bring about a transformation of the world, but that also sought to spread that message to the world. Or as John Wesley would say, “to spread scriptural holiness across the whole land.” And so, as we already heard, Wesley said that there was no think as private religion, or only personal religion, that it had to be social, and that also entailed spreading and offering the good news to others, and that gets back to an original understanding of being evangelical.

Social Holiness

 Here is my message from Sunday. The text was Luke 10:25-37:

When people find out that I’m a minister I never know what to expect. Often people will project onto me whatever they think about the church, for good or for ill. Those on the right tend to instantly assume that I’m a fundamentalist, and those on the left tend to instantly assume I’m a fundamentalist. But it can lead to some interesting conversations, interesting being in all its connotations, although sometimes people don’t want to talk anymore once they know what I do. I was having a conversation once and when they found out I was a minister they then asked one of the inevitable follow-ups which is what denomination, which is part of the reason for this series on Methodism so that we can be able to say what it is that makes Methodism unique, which is not always the easiest thing, but his response was not what I expected.

He said “I grew up a Methodist, but I stopped going when they began to be interested in social justice issues,” and my response, which was definitely not what he expected, and maybe not as pastoral is it should have been was “really, you were around in 1908 because that’s when the Methodist Church published the Social Creed which laid out the church’s position on many social issues.” Although I didn’t say this part, the Social Creed called for, amongst other things, the end to child labor, safety standards for industrial workers, a six-day work week for everyone, and a living wage. Now my response to this gentleman certainly didn’t further the conversation, which was part of my hope, honestly, and it wasn’t actually fully accurate because the Methodist movements concern with social issues goes back much further than that. In fact, it goes all the way back to the beginning.

Personal Holiness

Here is my message from Sunday. The text was John 14:23-29 and 1 Peter 1:13-23:

On May 24, 1738, John Wesley recorded in his journal “in the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death." And thus, was what has become known as Wesley’s Aldersgate experience, where his heart was strangely warmed. And as we heard in the introduction to singing O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing, his brother Charles had had a similar experience three days before on May 21. I can’t imagine that there wasn’t just a little bit of jealousy on John’s part surrounding that reality. And so, as we remember that experience, and Charles’ on what has become known as Heritage Sunday in the United Methodist Church we continue in our series looking at beliefs that are unique to Methodism and move onto the idea of personal holiness.

Now personal holiness in and of itself is not very unique, but we do have some unique takes on it. And before we dive into those, it’s also important to give some context to the Aldersgate experience so that we can better understand what comes before, during and after that shapes Wesley’s thinking about personal holiness, conversion experiences as well as the acceptance of God’s salvation, or God’s saving grace given to everyone, including John himself, as well as you and I. Last week I talked about John and Charles coming to the Georgia colony in 1736, which didn’t end really well for either of them. On the boat trip over, they encountered a major storm and while the Wesley brothers, and others, were fearing for their lives, a group of Moravians, who were the first protestant church, coming into existence in Eastern Europe fifty years before Martin Luther. Who were on their way to the colonies for religious freedom, and rather than being terrified of the storm, they were instead praying and singing praises to God. This had quite an impact on John, and he began to wonder about his faith, and began to explore even more other religious movements beyond the church of England. But one of the things that the Moravians told him, as did the leaders of some other pietist movements, was that he needed to have a dateable conversion experience. That without that he was not a true Christian, and he was also told that unless he was absolutely filled with joy all the time that he also wasn’t a true Christian. Some of these groups were then ones that would deny him communion because they didn’t think him Christian enough to receive it. Johnj would write, as he was headed back the London, “I went to Georgia to convert the Indians,” a task at which he failed miserably, and then writes “but who shall convert me?”