“Just Love, Just Trust, Just God”
I love pizza! I love movies. We love to quilt! Love is a many splendored thing. We love our dogs and cats. We love our children and husbands and wives. We love our grandchildren and our parents and grandparents. We use it to describe many kinds of relationships truly marked by real affection and real connection, but that feel very different from one another. The word love means so many things that it has come to mean very little on a daily basis.

Last week was the traditional theme for the fourth Sunday in Advent—Love. The fourth candle is lit for love. And each Christian can say, however they believe it, that God sent Jesus because God loves us—and because God loves the world. Yet the love of which we speak on this final Sunday before Christmas means so much more than any of the loves that I’ve mentioned. It is the love of God for all the world. It is the love that inspired and encouraged Jesus’ life of mission and his willingness to live that mission until his inevitable death on the cross. Yet God didn’t just start loving through Jesus, God has loved the world since creation—and we have scriptural witness to reveal that to us.

God has loved men and women who obeyed God’s will for their lives. Many were men and women who were living examples of how God desire humanity to live. Yet God also loved men and women who lived lives that were often in defiance of God’s will for them . . . they were disobedient, disrespectful and downright naughty. But God’s love for them never wavered—God was angry and God disciplined, but God never stopped loving.

David led quite a life. He spent his youth warring against Saul. He proved his triumph by taking Saul’s wives and concubines. He took Saul’s daughter as his wife, though they had no feelings for one another. Despite his friendship with Saul’s son, Jonathan, he fought Saul and his family until Saul and his family were destroyed or under his power. He stole Bathsheba’s honor and her husband Uriah’s life. He then enjoyed in the peace that eventually filled his governance. David, in my opinion, didn’t merit much from God. He flaunted God’s blessing and the leading of God’s spirit. And though he was thrilled with his accomplishments and God’s actions in his life, he didn’t always understand how to live within God’s will.

And God continued to bless him according to biblical witness. In 2 Samuel, we read that David would not be allowed to build God a temple, but that God would bless David’s lineage with everlasting rule. It hardly seems right. Why and how has David earned this honor? I have no idea.

Yet God stayed in his life, blessing and accompanying him. God stayed with him despite his lack of merit. God loved him through it all and called him to account when necessary. “16Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure for ever before me; your throne shall be established for ever.”

God’s love is just. God doesn’t love because we earn it. God doesn’t stop loving us because we have defied God—God loves humanity by equal measure because it is God’s nature to love humanity. We are God’s very image in some nonphysical, maybe spiritual, definitely mysterious way. God has covenanted; God has eternally promised, it seems, to love us individually and as a whole forever. I say that because there is no other way of understanding God’s continued and continuing attempts to draw us into relationship from the beginning of time until all of our tomorrows.

The story of David exemplifies how much we often don’t deserve the love that God offers and how much God continues to love in spite of the lives we lead. We often imagine David to be the young gentle shepherd boy, caring for his flock; but the story of his life contains very little of the young shepherd and much more of the warrior, womanizer and emotionally immature king who misused his power. He may have been the leader that Israel needed at the time and he seemed to be God’s choice, but for the life of me, I can’t understand it.

If God’s love for each one of us can be seen in this light, we might begin to understand how God’s love is given before we deserve it and even if we don’t. God’s love exists in eternity. . . God’s love exists beyond understanding or logic.

Yet the story of David’s eternal lineage is told this morning to introduce Gabriel’s annunciation of the birth of Jesus . . . a story about a baby who became the man whose life, we have come to understand, was lived completely within God’s will for him. It introduces us to Luke’s description of Jesus’ mother. Mary was a young woman in the backwater village of Nazareth, in the backwater Roman district of Galilee. She was engaged to a man named Joseph, who we are told was of the family of David.

Before their official wedding feast, while their formal betrothal stood, Mary received the news that she would have a baby—a son who would be the Messiah that the people of Israel had awaited ever since the line of David had been corrupted by exile and almost disappeared from any hope of sovereign rule.

Her response to the word that Yahweh God would be their sovereign through the person of her son, according to Luke, provoked her to lift her voice in poetry—and possibly in song. Her words reveal hope, not for her own participation, but for the salvation of all people.
I'm bursting with God-news;
I'm dancing the song of my Savior God.
God took one good look at me, and look what happened—
I'm the most [blessed]* woman on earth!
What God has done will never be forgotten,
the God whose very name is holy, set apart from all others.
His mercy flows in wave after wave
on those who are in awe before him.
He bared his arm and showed his strength,
scattered the bluffing braggarts.
He knocked tyrants off their high horses,
pulled victims out of the mud.
The starving poor sat down to a banquet;
the callous rich were left out in the cold.
He embraced his chosen child, Israel;
he remembered and piled on the mercies, piled them high.
It's exactly what he promised,
beginning with Abraham and right up to now.
The love of God, revealed through the annunciation to Mary and fulfilled in the birth of Jesus Christ, is not about being soft and fluffy about love. It’s not so much about the swaddled infant in the manger whose birth we will celebrate this week—the love of God revealed in Mary’s song of celebration and triumph is just love. It is a love that makes all things equal. It is a love that says that ill-gotten gains, no matter how well justified will be taken and poverty, no matter how well rationalized will be eliminated. Israel—representative of all humanity—was to be the recipient of mercy and the bearer of that mercy into the entire world. The promise God made to all of Abraham’s descendents, physical, spiritual, and in all other ways, would to be made real.

Love, just love, is the agent that God uses to make real the promises that God has made. Love, just love, is the tool that God has chosen to create the world that God has envisioned for us all. Love, just love, is the person that God has given to rescue the world from the pit into which we often stumble and fall. Love, just love, is the redemption we need to see ourselves through the eyes with which God, who loves us, sees us each day and each moment.

Justice isn’t an easy thing for humanity to accomplish alone. We often get caught up in merit as the basis for justice. In my reading of scripture, God doesn’t always take merit into consideration when loving humanity. We often get justice and punishment all mixed up in our minds—justice devoid of love simply means vengeance. Justice does imply discipline—loving parents and others in authority must love to discipline others well—as the love of God characterizes God’s discipline.

Just love isn’t just love—it isn’t desire for particular material things or affection for some kind of object or person. It isn’t even always the affection we feel for those to whom we are attached, though that should be there, too. Just love is only possible when God guides us—just love is made available to us, for us and with us as we step out into the way of life that God offered Mary. Mary was given the opportunity to carry love into the world in the particular way that God chose for her. Let us listen to God’s call of annunciation in our own lives and carry love within us—giving birth to love, to just love, as we walk, talk and live in this community, in this time—and in this world, now and every more. Amen.

Isaiah 9:2-7
Luke 2:1-20
“Reaping the Harvest”
Throughout Advent, our season of preparation for the coming of Christ, we have been adding to the banner you see hanging over the communion table. Last Sunday, if we’d held our worship service, you would have heard the story of how hope, peace and joy come to fulfillment when love enters the equation. Each Sunday of Advent and each addition to the banner built upon the others to form a complete picture. The banner began with an empty hillside and pale seedlings waiting for their growth. We watched as crops appeared and the banner became more alive with color and action. The message was delivered and life began to appear, the sun, the crops and the Holy Spirit graced the scene. And finally a woman and child, cultivating the soil appeared last Sunday in the resulting incarnation of God’s presence. The season of Advent began with the hope, as it always does, that awaits this night of celebration and awaits the culmination of Jesus Christ living within us and dwelling in the world. Let us hear the story of the woman who prepares the soil for sowing and reaping as we contemplate the presence of God in Christ within us and within this world we share.

Whack, whack, whack… oh, how hot the sun.
Whack, whack, whack… oh, how still the air.
Whack, whack whack… oh, how hard the ground.
See how dry… how cracked.

The gardener slowly stood up and, tucking a loose hair into her scarf, she wiped the sweat from her brow with a callused hand. Shifting the bundle on her back, she bent down again and, with her hoe, went back to tilling the hard, hard ground.

Whack, whack, whack… whack, whack, whack.

Oh, what was the use? Would the hard crust of the earth ever break open? Hard ground made her think of hard times and, in that same moment, she thought of a song prayer her people sang: Listen, O shepherd of Israel, you who lead our people like a flock of sheep, who sits upon a throne of angels.

The gardener looked at the ground once again and ran her hands over it. As she did this she thought of how her people’s lives were like this rough ground.

She peered up at the sky and she said to herself, “Shine forth before your people, stir up your might and come to save us! Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.”

The gardener cleared away some stones and tugged at a small vine and another line from a song came into her head. She said it aloud, “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.”

The gardener sighed as she looked at the vine in her hand. Oh, how it was like her own family, her own people, trying to live and grow in God’s way but finding it harder and harder to do. The vine needed protection from people stepping on it and a way for the fruit to grow and not be eaten by wild animals. Her people needed protection too. “Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved,” she prayed.

Sighing the gardener sat down and brought the bundle around into her lap. Why, it wasn’t just any bundle as she pulled back the covers to see her baby, sleeping peacefully. The tiny hands, bunched under his chin, the soft curly hair and the tiny gurgling sounds made her smile. She brushed the baby’s cheek with the vine and his bright eyes opened. When his little face split into a great big smile, she smiled too.

The child reached out and tried to grab her nose in his hand, and instead pulled the vine from her tight grip. And she remembered… she remembered when she was pregnant, waiting, waiting for her child to be born… she remembered thinking it would never come… she remembered being both excited and scared… she remembered imagining what her child would look like, how it would grow… all the surprises and possibilities… how the child’s coming would reshape everything!

And through the wondering and waiting, hoping, dreaming, and praying, and hardship this child’s birth had indeed changed her world. And gazing into her little child’s forever eyes she took its hand in hers and prayed, “God, let your hand be upon our hands so we can be strong for you. We will never turn back. We will call on your name.”

Gently the gardener planted the vine back into the earth and mounded it up to protect its stem and she started to see the possibilities for her garden. She would remove the stones and twigs, maybe build a wall with them. Perhaps others in her village could help to get water here and still others could help with fertilizer.

Then the gardener kissed her the child as she swung it up onto her back. The child giggled with glee. She felt stronger somehow as she continued to hum, “Let your face shine…”

And in the light of the sun, mother and child toiled and tilled and dug and furrowed, planted and plucked determined to fashion a green and growing place for one and all. Let us pray the words of the psalmist.
PSALM 80:8–18
The Gardener Goes Away
You grew this garden yourself, God
You tilled the soil and pulled the weeds
You planted the seeds and watered it
It became a place of beauty.
The sweet scent of lilacs filled the air;
Blue lupins stood tall,
And shy pansies turned bright faces to the sun.
Why did you stop caring, God?
Kids from the playground trample your tulips,
Commuters use it as a shortcut,
Dogs dig up your flower beds,
Fires smolder in heaps of windblown refuse,
And seedlings wilt for lack of water.
Come back, God,
Come back and take care of us again.
Restore your garden to its rightful glory.
Take control over this chaos,
And we will gladly live under your green thumb forever.

We celebrate the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ within us—celebrating all that Christ is—our hope, our peace, our joy, our love and the very life we live.
In the name of God, incarnate among us, dwelling with us always. Amen.

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Psalm 126
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8, 19-28

“Wearing Joy on Your Sleeve”

I had a huge conversation this week with my colleagues; we were talking about encountering God, having experiences of God in daily life. I shared my experiences with them. I grew up in church, I sat behind my mother from the time I was 3 weeks old listening and learning. I never knew the experience of suddenly being aware of the presence of God in my life. It took a lot of years before I could look back and see how God had transformed my life because it was so gradual. I know that there are many who have a similar experience. I also know that some folks have had moments of extreme and instantaneous transformation that they can describe in great detail.

And I have heard those kind of experiences from you . . . some of you have described or alluded to those kinds of things. Miraculous transformations, internally or externally, have marked your life of faith. And I have heard about lives of calm continuous faith and serenity not marked by any great transformation, just a simple life of trust and walking through life with God.

And all of these experiences are legitimate and authentic experiences of having God in one’s life. It’s just that sometimes as human beings we don’t really notice anything unless we are exposed to its utter opposite. It is easier to know we are sad if we’ve been ecstatic recently. We might be more likely to recognize joy if it felt in contrast to despair, but we can be joyful without hitting bottom or lying in the gutter. And yet, even if we have hit bottom with despair that doesn’t mean that God has been distant, only that we have had a different journey to God than other folks might have had.

Yet joy never exists in perfection—not in this world. There is a Jewish custom that says you should always leave a corner or some part of your house unfinished as a reminder that all is temporary. Nothing that we create will last an eternity—only God creates eternally and most of that which we experience in God’s creation is also temporary. It may last millions of years, but it is temporary. History and story move on—only God remains constant and continually working toward God’s vision for all creation.

I’ve been blessed enough in the last few months to get some great leaps and bounds toward my own personal vision of joy in my life. Since Carl has come into my life, I feel incredibly blessed and full of joy. Yet I also know that this is just a part of all the dreams that I have. . . and Carl knows that, too. And Carl still has dreams to be fulfilled. In the midst of these moments of time, we are full of joy. Joy is happiness mixed with reality and the anticipation of more yet to come. All is not perfect and never will be, but joy is in me.

And there are wonderful things happening all around us. . . the cycles of nature continue on, renewing the world through the seasons. Flowers and trees will bud next spring because the damp, dark, cold winter has given them respite—a time of dormancy when new growth is developed and readied to sprout. Animals of all kinds may enter a time of slowing down when they are given a chance to rest until the coming seasons of reproduction. Some mammals even give birth through the winter so that when the young are ready to eat solid food, there is solid food available in spring.

Joy isn’t about whether or not human institutions that we have come to rely upon are thriving—that’s a false confidence—joy is about God’s creation continuing to produce and bring forth the life and wholeness that God originated at the outset of the universe. Joy means rejoicing as we see the cycles of life roll on toward God’s intentions. We may not see the culmination of the vision, but there is joy in the process toward which we are focused.

In Isaiah 61.11 we read,
“11For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up,so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.”

We all experience the presence of God as God has decided to be made manifest in our lives. We experience the presence of God as we ourselves are built to recognize God. In my conversation with my friends this week, I heard that how we are built makes a difference in how we feel the joy that God gives—it even makes a difference in our recognition of that joy.

In the desert, plants and flowers shoot up out of the ground very quickly in the spring—or the wet season. They don’t wait around to see if the rain will continue, because it doesn’t. Life in the desert takes advantage of the blessing as it falls from the sky. Their growth cycle may be days long from sprout to maturity.

Yet in more temperate climates, plants may take years to mature before they produce fruit. Fruit trees may need a year or more to make much fruit. Even a crop like wheat has varieties that need the winter freezes to mature. Moving here to Illinois made this difference more prominent in my mind. I was used to seeing green wheat in the fields all winter—some with cattle grazing on it. Here I see fields of corn stubble covered with bird—waiting spring planting. And corn is one of those almost instantaneous plants. In less than 60 days, it will grow 2-3 feet, at least that’s what I’ve seen.

How does the righteousness and praise spring up before all nations? Like the earth growing crops and the garden growing food. . . either really quickly with results to be seen immediately or really slowly as they take time to mature and be made real in the lives of people among the nations in the world. The presence and praise of God might spring up quickly in those who are prepared somehow to receive it. . . the presence and praise of God might take a little longer in those whose lives have more obstacles. Or it might be a simple carpet of pasture flowers in one life while the righteousness and justice God brings might be a mighty oak in another person or community

I often get the feeling that the contradictions of scripture express the counterpoint of God’s dance within the history of humanity. God doesn’t feel the same to everyone. The joy God brings to each situation might sometimes bring laughter and in other times or other people bring tears. Yet the joy is still there, even in the realization that life is incomplete, imperfect and yet to be fulfilled. Life is always yet to be and yet we are called to live in what is the now.

We are called to rejoice in today. In the present manifestation of God’s dream for the world, we can praise God.

Psalm 126 sings with happiness and joy when God accomplished good things among the people of Israel—by reestablishing Jerusalem after exile. The psalmist sang,
1When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,* we were like those who dream. 2Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy;then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’ 3The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced.
Yet when they returned, we read in the histories of Ezra and Nehemiah, things weren’t all cherries and cream. They came back to Jerusalem and had to rebuild their homes, the city, the temple and they had to reestablish their knowledge of God’s work in the lives of their ancestors. The history of that people had to be pieced together from very little written evidence and lots of oral history. The priestly lines knew some things and wrote them down. The prophets knew other things and wrote those down. The people knew other things and told their stories which were eventually written down in places. The gathered the knowledge they had of their past and made a future out of it. Some of the past had been idealized and other parts misunderstood, yet it was their story as it existed for them.

They rejoiced in the story of God’s presence in the lives of their ancestors and in God’s repeated fulfillment of God’s promises in their lives.

Joy to Isaiah meant that all those who were under the boot of oppression whether physical, mental, emotion or political would be freed and given the opportunity to experience liberation. Joy in the psalmist’s eyes meant the remembrance of the great things of the past and the hope that great things would continue into the future for God’s people and with God’s action.

And the people of God express the joy they have experienced—they sing out their joy with great feeling, even if it is quiet, it can be genuine. Not everyone is a great singer, but everyone can sing with great feeling. The people of God have expressed their joy by working on the mission that God has given. Rebuilding and restoring Jerusalem was the joy of the people of Isaiah and of this psalm. Standing up and expressing the joy that Christ brought to their lives was the story of the people of the early church. In Thessalonica, Paul saw joy and prayer, continuous acknowledgment and celebration as a mark of their faith in all that God had done through Jesus. “16Rejoice always, 17pray without ceasing, 18give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

And when Jesus came into the world, there were witnesses to the joy that his presence brought, John the baptizer was a witness in the fourth gospel. Mary was a joyous witness in Luke’s gospel as her approaching pregnancy was announced to her. Mary and Joseph both welcomed Jesus into their lives with joy in Matthew and Mark celebrated Jesus’ action with quiet determination. Mark gospel isn’t poetic like Luke or a wordsmith like John, but it expresses the joy that the community felt inn that story.

When we wear our joy on our sleeve, we all find our own style . . . some of our differences are dependent on who we are deep inside—those things we cannot change. Some may express joy in the contentment of life—sharing what they have quietly and without fanfare. Some may have exuberant passion and shout their joy from the highest pinnacle—communicating with many at a time, which is great if the person doesn’t become the message. Most of us remain somewhere in between depending on who we are and how we were raised. Yet we are all called to bring attention to the joy that God has given us in some way.

Live joy each day so that others may ask for the secret to your contentment. Live joy each day so that God will be glorified in what you do. Live joy each day so that people will not wonder if God is in you life—they will know.

In the name of God, hope, peace and joy. Amen.

Isaiah 40:1-11
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

“It’s Now and Forever”

When the season of Advent arrives, we are thrust deeply into preparing for the Christmas holiday. We may think of baby Jesus along with the presents, the tree, the children and the dinners and parties, but Advent prepares us for more than the celebration of Jesus’ birth.

In the words of the prophet Isaiah, we hear,
A voice cries out:‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low;the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’[1]
We prepare the way for God’s own self in our lives, in our communities, in the lives we lead and the decisions we make. We open the way for God, leveling our objections to participation in God’s way. We lift up the potholes that we have allowed to form and smooth out our fear, trusting that God will not lead us wrongly. We may have to risk something, but we can believe in God’s desire for us and for all of creation.

The words of the prophet that we read in Isaiah 40 were written as the people of Judah were returning from exile—their long day and night, 60 years of it, were coming to an end. God was coming to lead them home.

The words of the prophet show us that despite the despair that the people of Israel felt as they entered exile—even as they began to return—God accompanied them like a nurturing shepherd. That God was leading them back, carrying the vulnerable and carefully leading them all. That God’s glory would be revealing in their return and that God’s promise is that “all people will see it together.”

The promise of God was extended to the people of that time and place as they returned home. They were led back safely as if in the arms of God through the actions and leadership of that time and place. They also were led into an unknown future as their newly returning nation met the obstacles that faced them: a ruin of a city and temple, the remnants of a population left behind by those taken into exile and forgotten religious traditions and stories.

The nation had been set back several generations by their experiences and they would continue to be oppressed again and again for several generations. The promise was fulfilled and would continue to be over and over again and in many places and ways.

You see, the promise of God isn’t limited by geography or time. The promise of God happens over and over again. When people gain and lose themselves through their own choices or by the choice of others and are renewed, the promise of God is made manifest.

The New Testament describes how God’s action in the life and actions of humanity were renewed yet again through the life of Jesus Christ.

As Advent began last—beginning the Christian year, we began reading the gospel of Mark. It’s the beginning of year B and today we hear the first words of the second gospel. Mark doesn’t describe Jesus’ birth, but starts with Jesus’ ministry, “The beginning of the good news* of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.* As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,*‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,* who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight” ’[2]

The gospel was written to communicate how God worked through and in Jesus to lead God’s people once again. And as we read this gospel through the next year, we’ll hear stories of how the way of God was made clear in the life of Jesus, son of Man and Son of God. Through the reading of this gospel and other scriptures, we also have the chance to renew and rededicate ourselves.

The gospel of Jesus Christ as it revealed God’s action in and through the actions of humanity was fulfilled in Jesus himself and continues to be fulfilled as we live out the ministry of the gospel in our time and place.

The good news continues each day and place where righteousness and justice are lived out in the lives of those who need it. The good news is now and forever, yesterday, today and for always—we are simply called to step into the story and live the gospel now and forever.

To the glory of God; comforter, savior, and peace. Amen.

[1] Isaiah 40:3-5
[2] Mark 1:1-3