Home Alone...ish....

December 30, 2018

I don’t know first-hand but I can tell through my own parents and my friends who are parents…parenting isn’t easy.    My pastor friends who are parents tell me that the two paths (pastoring and parenting) are somewhat similar, with somewhat similar fears and pressures:  the pressure of saying the right thing, doing the right thing, being the shepherd the people need and the Lord expects…so I think I can take that perspective, along with the experiences of being an uncle to the world’s greatest nephew, and get a window into parenthood. 

Then I thought about Mary and Joseph in this morning’s Gospel lection.  We find them traveling, as they did every year, to the Temple in Jerusalem for the Hebrew Observance of the Passover.  Here, thousands of Israelites would offer their sacrifice of offering in accordance of the law.  So Joseph, Mary, with their whole, extended family, and friends, and neighbors, would pack up the family truckster (either a camel or a donkey) and make the 93 mile pilgrimage from Nazareth to Jerusalem, on foot (31 hours). 

This particular pilgrimage took place 12 years after the birth of Jesus.  The Passover has concluded, and the family are on their way back home.  We don’t know how it happened…maybe it was a hunch, maybe it was routine reconciliation, but it was discovered that Jesus was not in the band of travelers.  They continued traveling while they searched through the travel party for Jesus – and the group was so large that it took a full day to move through everyone to come to the realization:  They lost Jesus.

And here’s where the pressure part comes in.  It’s hard enough to be a parent.  Can you imagine being the Mother of Jesus?  Or Joseph – the earthly father of Christ?  This child…the savior of the world.  The Word made Flesh.  God’s only son…and we see today that they lost him.  I don’t imagine the events unfolding would have been filled with pleasantries.  I’m sure there was a fair amount “I thought you had him”…”he was with you last time I saw him”…what was so important that you lost our son over”….you get the picture.

So they turn around, and travel back toward Jerusalem.  The pressure mounting, and building.  For 3 days.  So now we’re at least 4 days into loosing Jesus.  I can’t imagine what was going through their head at this point.  I’m sure it was a lot of doom and gloom stuff...combined with “we lost the Son of God”.  We misplaced the Word made Flesh.  We overlooked taking care of the “I am”.  What happens now?  What’s protocol here?    

But, to their relief, they found him.  In the temple.  I could think of a thousand places to look for a lost child…toy store, ice cream parlor, bakery, park, playground…church wouldn’t place real high on that list.  But that’s where they found Jesus…at the Temple.  He was sitting among the Temple leaders and teachers, “talking shop”.  They were discussing religion, and theology, and things that stump the most educated of people…and he was leaving them in amazement with his answers!

His mother and earthly father spot him and run to him.  We see what they ask him “why did you do this – we have been worried sick looking for you – we turned our whole caravan around to come back and find you”. 

Jesus responded “why were you looking for me?  I’m at my father’s house.  Where else would I have been?”  And we see that they understood this just about as well as we do…which is not much at all.  But we do get that feel good “Home Alone” ending when we’re told that everything turned out OK.  Jesus and his family returned to Nazareth, and Jesus was obedient to his parents.  His mother cherished every word he spoke, and he continued to grow and mature in both years and wisdom.

Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year C

December 23, 2018

While having lunch with a friend this past week, the popular Christmas song, “Mary Did You Know” came over the speaker, and my friend proceeded to decompensate in a way that I didn’t expect, exclaiming:  YES - SHE KNEW!!! 

After pleading with her to simmer down, I started thinking about Mary.  And the more I thought, the more I was wrought with the many misconceptions we have about Mary.  Which posed the question head on into my path:  did Mary really know?  What did she know?  How much did she know?  Could she understand what she knew?  

This time of year is dominated by so many things…trees, lights, presents, food, family, drama, aggravation, sadness, depression, expectations…we are over stimulated, over emotional, and just plain over IT; but we are always so good to remind each other that Jesus is the reason for the season.  And yes…he is.  But he’s not the only person of this season.  There are so, so many who are so often overlooked…like Mary. 

To be the mother of God in flesh, we don’t know a whole lot about her…and after the ascension of Christ, she’s no longer mentioned in the Bible. 

There are so many non-canonized historical texts of the Church’s history penned by historians of ancient times…and I grew up being taught that if we had needed those texts then God would have put them in the Bible.  Well, personal Dogma aside, these texts do mention Mary’s life after the ascension of Christ.  

Mary was between 60 and 65 years old when her life ended; where she lived, and where and how her life ended is heavily disputed, as is her “final disposition”.  By some accounts, Mary never died, but was assumed, or taken while alive, into heaven in the same fashion as Enoch and Elijah.   Others claim that she did indeed die, and 3 days later was resurrected and taken to heaven.  Other accounts state that she was buried in a tomb near the Garden of Gethsemane and that was the end of it.  For me personally, I don’t wonder as much about where or how she met her end, or her disposition; I have other questions, more “human aspect” questions:  did her mourning ever end? 

I want us to go back, 15 to 20 years in Mary’s life, to what we call Good Friday (I prefer the term Holy Friday).  We don’t know where Mary was the night before…when Jesus broke bread with his Disciples, washed their feet, then was betrayed, and arrested in the garden.  But, we know she was present for what came next.

In my younger years, I experienced the death of friends, and even at a young age witnessed the impact that event had on their parents.  Now as an adult, I have friends, who are parents, who have lost children, and I don’t think that’s a pain you ever really recover from.  If you lose a spouse you’re widowed, and if you lose a parent you’re orphaned; and as gut wrenching as both those things are, we don’t have a word for losing a child.  I think it’s the ultimate extreme in pain you can suffer as a parent.  Or at least I thought that before really studying Mary.  Mary didn’t just endure and survive the death of her child, her first born.  She witnessed and stood helpless as he was tied up and whipped with straps of leather imbedded with shards of metal that ripped the flesh from her child’s body.  She watched as he screamed out in pain that none of us can imagine.  She watched as they kicked, beat, spit on and mocked her son.  As painful as it was, I don’t imagine she could look away; and like anyone who is a mom will tell you, she felt every bit of it.  She followed him while he walked up the hill to the place called Golgotha, the weight of the instrument of torture and death he was forced to carry crushing him.  She watched as they nailed her child to the cross, and hoisted him up to hang.  It’s important to note, here, that we in our minds imagine the cross being tall, and if you wanted to see you would have to careen your neck upward; in actuality, Christ would have only been 1, maybe 2 feet off the ground.  He would have been in reach.  So as his mom stood at the base of his cross, she would have been able to touch him, and perhaps even reach his face and head.  She would have been able not only to see…but to smell, and hear, both with great clarity, and her son would have been able to hear her.  What would they have said to each other?  What would have been Mary’s final words to her Son before he died?  I don’t have children, so I can’t begin to understand the bond from parent to child, and I’ll take that a step further:  the bond between mother and child, and then from mother to son.  That’s a special relationship.  If it were me, I wouldn’t want my mother there.  I’d beg for someone to get her out of there.  I wouldn’t want her to see what was happening.  That being said, I also know my mother wouldn’t leave…and I don’t think any mother would.  

From here I want us to back up 33 years…past the ministry of Jesus, past the experience in the temple when he was 12, past all of the unaccounted for years, to that night.  That Silent Night.  Which, is ironic, actually.  I’ve been in the room for many, many births…none of them were silent, beautiful, or even inspiring.  The very first one scared me to death, and it’s been a while, but I don’t ever remember them getting much better.  And everything I experienced was in a hospital, with a hospital bed, climate control and running water and anesthesia…so the thought that all is calm, all is bright during the birth of Christ is highly unlikely.  Am I right? 

Mary and Joseph had just traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem; which per Google Maps is 97 miles, or 2 hours in a car, or 33 hours on foot.  33 hours…walking.  And we like the images we see of Joseph, leading the donkey on which Mary was riding…but odds are, that camel was loaded down with their belongings and the things they needed, meaning Mary probably walked  as well.  97 miles, 9 months pregnant.

They arrive in Bethlehem.  They find an inn.  It was full.  They were offered a stable.  They took it.

This inn would have been more of a boarding house situation…transient temporary housing, bare bones.  And the stable, that would have been more of a parking garage for the camels that came with the travelers. 

Filthy, exhausted, stinky…they settled in to their lodging.  We don’t know how long they were there before Mary started feeling those unfamiliar labor pains.  Would she have known what was going on?  Would Joseph had known to go get help?  Who would they even call on?  Would the townsfolk hear her screams and come running?  And remember that they weren’t in that familiar hospital bed and climate controlled birthing suite that you and I are used to…they’re in a camel parking garage.  It smelled awful, they were surrounded by, well, camels, and camel food, and it would have been just awful.  And Mary delivers her first born son in all this mess, through all that pain, in spite of the circumstances around her.  They wrapped him in strips and scraps of cloth, and placed him in a feeding trough to sleep and for safe keeping.  

And if we go back, one more time, 9 months from what we celebrate annually as Christmas, encountering this morning’s scriptures and The Canticle of the Magnificant, or Mary’s Song, to the future bride to a man named Joseph, who is visited by an Angel of God one night, who tells her the honor and favor she has found with God.  That she…this ordinary small town young girl, has been chosen, to carry a son…the Son of the Most High.  The King of Kings, Lord of Lords.  His name will be Jesus, for he is the Son of God.

I won’t begin to imagine what went through her mind.  

We don’t see that the angel Gabriel exposed Mary to the future.  There’s no evidence that she was ever made privy to what was to come.  What we do see is a girl, with faith that could move mountains, who trusted with every fiber of her being, believing the words thy will be done when they rolled off her tongue.  Knowing that, it indeed would, be ok. 

Thanks be to God.

Second Sunday of Advent, Year C

We all have that friend…loud, opinionated, brutally honest and proud of it…the one we have to plead with not to offend other people when going into a crowd…the one we excuse with “that’s just how they are”. 

Well, in old testament times, that’s what the prophets were like.  We think of prophesy as foretelling the future, and that was part of it – the other part was maintaining the covenant with God.  These prophets were people who were painfully honest, and called it as they saw it. 

Prophets weren’t popular people.  Prophets point out shortcomings.  They highlight flaws, air family secrets.  They love to point things out, and we don’t like that.  I definitely don’t like that.

I like to hide my flaws.  I think we all do.  We have this image we want people to see of us, and we do everything within our power to construct and maintain this image, which means we hide stuff.  Stuff that embarrasses us.  Stuff that isn’t pretty.  We hide our warts, and lumps, and bumps, and we do all sorts of crazy things that support this “image” of us…this elaborate façade we want people to perceive….

And then comes this “friend” who pokes holes at this thin and delicate shell, exposing who we really to others, and even worse, forcing us to see our true selves.  In his day, I think this “friend” was John the Baptist.

John, the only child born to an aged Zechariah and Elizabeth.  Cousin to Jesus.  We learned all about him as children in our Sunday school lessons.  In my mind, he’s a skinny, lanky fellow…probably of average height.  And in appearance, he seems to have a whole lot of crazy going on.  He’s dirty, hair and beard unkempt, he’s clothed in camel hair, with a leather belt, and he eats locust and wild honey, kind of like a cave man, living in the wilderness of Judea.  He was counter-cultural, for both his time and ours. 

John got his name as The Baptizer for obvious reasons – he baptized.  Ritual washings were already a part of Jewish culture at that time…but they weren’t married to the concept of redemption.  John put these things together when he baptized as a sign to show that the people were changing their hearts and lives and wanted God to forgive their sins. 

And we like to picture John, in the beautiful waters of the River Jordan, in a white robe, dunking people in white robes, but that’s not exactly how it went.  The Jordan River is muddy…and nasty.  And the people getting baptized would have been covered in this muck and mud. 

And John did things people didn’t like…he didn’t preach feel good sermons.  We see in the text to come that he called the crowd gathered to hear him preach a “pit of vipers”.  He warned that trees that produce bad fruit will be chopped down and thrown into the fire…a good old fashioned “turn before you burn” sermon.  He encouraged honesty, and benevolence.

But the biggest thing John did, was prepare the way for Christ, just as Isaiah foretold so many years ago.  He prepared for the coming of God’s salvation.  For the one who would baptize with the Holy Spirit.  The hope that is to come. 

So the text about making the paths and roads straight, and filling in the valleys, and the mountains made low…I think that goes back to those hiding places.  I think we make our own path of life curved.  We keep our roads erratic.  We create hiding places in the valleys.  We hide things from ourselves, we hide things from others, and at times I think we even try to hide things from God.  And when we’re reminded that before God all hearts are open and all secrets are known, we sink down a little further in our shame and embarrassment.  We think of God through the only lens we know – the human one.  We know that there are certain things about us that if others knew, we would be met with judgement, disgust, harsh words and persecution.  God does, indeed, see all; and still loves us.  He sees through the façade and constructed image.  He sees around the corners and down into the valleys.  He sees, and still he sent a savior for you and for me.  A savior who would rescue us from those awful things in the bends of our path and the valleys along the way.  We were sent peace to quench the chaos that is our life.  Thanks be to God.