"I Am Not."

John 1:6-8, 19-28

December 17, 2017

I.

Before we encounter Jesus, who is the great I Am, Emmanuel, God-with-us, we are in all 4 gospels faced with his forerunner, John the Baptizer.  In todays reading he says, or has said about him, 4 times that he is not the One.  This tells me that before we can recognize the One who is, we have to encounter the one who is not.  Before we can participate in Jesus’ life, we have to admit in our own hearts that there is a sense in which we are not.

After the narrator explains in the Prologue that John is not the light, John himself answers “I am not” twice when he is interrogated by the officials from Jerusalem.  When he finally does talk about Jesus, John affirms his own subordination.  “I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.”

Jesus will make the same point in different words in his ministry.  He will talk about losing yourself, losing your life, losing your soul.  He is saying that before you can receive what he has to give, you have to let go of everything you already have… or think you have.  Before Jesus covers us with his I Am, we have to recognize and relinquish everything we are not.  We have to be able to say with John, every time we imagine or someone suggests that we are something great, something amazing, something good, that we are not.  Not only are we not those things.  We aren’t anything.  We don’t strictly exist, beyond our physical nature as water and a handful of minerals — and we’re barely even conscious of that.  Everything else about us is imaginary.  Everything by which we normally think and approve of about who we are is self-serving lies we have fed ourselves.

John is saying we can’t be filled with the Truth until we are empty of our own lies; we can’t follow the Way until we stop running the wrong way; we can’t participate in resurrection Life until we realize how dead we are.

When the representatives of the religious authorities traipse inconveniently out to the desert to find out who John is and what he is doing, they give him several appealing options: the Messiah?  The return of the great prophet Elijah?  The fabled, unnamed prophet-who-is-to-come from Deuteronomy 18?  Any one of which would be a really cool thing to be.  But to each one John says “Nope!”

When they finally in exasperation say, “Well, who are you then?  What should we tell the bosses in Jerusalem who sent us to find out who you are?” John says, in effect, “I am nobody.  I am the nobody who only points to Somebody Else.  I am just a voice telling people to get ready because Somebody is coming.  I am the sign telling you what is ahead.  No one gets to the Father except through him; and no one gets to him except through me.  Which is to say, no one gets to Somebody without going through Nobody.  You can’t get to I Am without passing through I Am Not.”

II.

This ritual that John has of dunking people in the Jordan River is a symbolic washing away of everything you are, everything clinging to you and stuck to you.  It is even a symbolic dying as you go down into the river, leading to rising again as you are raised back out of it, into the sunlight, dripping and shining and new.  It washes away your old self.

The Jerusalem delegation, which we now discover is really from the Pharisees, the party that would be the main competition for the Christians for at least a century or so, doesn’t get it.  They say, “Wait, what?  Why are you baptizing, again?  If you’re not the Messiah, Elijah, or the Prophet?

And John says, “You’re asking about me again.  It’s not about me.  I am nobody.  I’m just saying that the Lord is coming.  Indeed, he’s already here standing right next to you!  He is in your midst and you don’t see him!  After me, he’s coming into view.  I am nobody.  I am not worthy even to untie his shoes.  But if you become nobody like me, instead of well-dressed, important, privileged, titled priestly-scribey types, maybe even you will see him.”

I love that, where he says “among you stands one whom you do not know.”  If we read the gospel carefully we realize that Jesus’ baptism has already happened and he is himself standing there with everyone else listening to this conversation between John and the officials.  The One Who Is to Come is right there and nobody is recognizing him!  Only Mr. Nobody, John, knows who he is.  We who are hearing the gospel don’t even know.  But he’s already here.  He’s already with us.  He’s “coming” in the sense of Someone coming into view who is really here all along.

It’s like the more transparent we become the more Jesus becomes visible to us and even in us.  John will later say about Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”  The more we decrease, the more he increases.  The more we become nothing, the more he becomes everything.

The hotshot somebodies from Jerusalem don’t see Jesus for who he is, even though he is standing there among them.  Somebodies just don’t get it.  The problem with somebodies is that they block the light and leave people in their shadow.  They create darkness.  It’s all about them.  They’re opaque.

Even in the church where we’re supposed to know better, we’ve forgotten, over the last 2000 years, that we need to decrease so Jesus can increase.  Not that we haven’t decreased on a lot of other more quantitative scales over the last 50 years.  And maybe that’s a disguised blessing.  Maybe our decreasing is God’s way of preparing us for the Light to increase in us.  Maybe if we embrace our own institutional shrinkage, invisibility, and transparency, we will be more effective at pointing beyond ourselves to Somebody Else.  Maybe people will see through us more, and see Jesus.  

And that Somebody Else is not someone sitting up in the sky; not someone who will finally appear at the end of time, or who we will get to see when we’re dead.  No.  John is referring to someone who is standing among us, whom we too often just don’t know, and therefore cannot see.  

If we don’t recognize God’s living presence among us in each other, or even in ourselves… if we don’t recognize God’s presence in other people, especially the poorest and powerless, then we’re not seeing God at all.  The gospel has earlier told us that “the Word” of God, “became flesh and dwelled among us.”  So we’ve been warned where exactly to look for God: here; “among us.”  

III.

If we do become invisible nobodies, if we do focus on “I am not,” if we do lose ourselves, then we can begin to see the truth of God’s presence in Jesus Christ all around, among, and within us.  If we let go of everything that separates us from God, we will start to see God’s presence emerging everywhere.

That presence will look like the vision of the prophet Isaiah we just heard about in our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures.  Jesus himself quotes from this vision when he defines his own mission, in Luke 4.  It is an active presence in which we participate.  And it has to do with reversal.  God’s Kingdom is a kind of “oppositeland,” in which we realize that the-world-as-we-know-it is all wrong.  

In the world as God intends it, it is the nobodies who become Somebody.  It is the empty who are filled.  It is the losers who gain.  The powerless are lifted up and empowered.  Prisoners are released, the broken are bound up, the mourning are comforted, and the ruined and destroyed places are rebuilt.  The debts of debtors are canceled and remitted.

And the gospel community that Jesus Christ establishes is supposed to be the place where this begins to happen.  John the Baptizer kicks it off with his ritual and ethic of self-emptying; then Jesus comes into view, with his good news of what we have to be ready to receive from God.  John says we have to be empty vessels; Jesus says the empty vessels will be filled with life.  Then he gives his own life, the very life of God, to us.  He gives us God’s Spirit, the breath of the Creator.  He gives us his Body and Blood in the Sacrament.

All who see us will have no choice but to acknowledge and admit that we are a people whom the Lord has blessed.  People will see the joy.  People will see the unity.  People will see that we who were once blind can now see, and that we who were once bound are now free, and that we who were once mourning are now dancing.  That’s how it’s supposed to work.  The church is a place where nobodies become Somebody, proclaiming by our example to the world that this is God’s intention for everyone.  Not only is it God’s intention, it is the way things really are, deep down.  It is the Truth.  We simply witness to the Truth.  We merely live the Way God intends for everyone to live: in generosity, humility, honesty, equality, justice, peace, and joy.

IV.

As we enter this last week of the Advent season, we need to realize that we are not waiting for God to come into the world in Jesus.  That happened 2000 years ago.  Indeed, there is a sense in which that happened at the creation when God’s Word was embedded in everything simply by being spoken into being by God.  God is already here, folks, among us, and within us.  John talks about One who already stands among us whom we don’t know.

Advent is not about waiting for God to do something.  Advent is about our learning to see and participate in what God has already done, and is always doing.  What we are waiting for is for something to happen in us, something that lets go of our self-importance, self-righteousness, and self-centeredness, something that allows the screen to fall in our hearts so we can see God’s Presence.  We pretend for a few weeks that the manger is empty to remind us of how empty we have to make ourselves, if God in Christ is going to come into view.

For Christ’s Nativity is not so much God breaking into our world, as it is the breaking down of our barriers, enabling us to participate in the Way, the Truth, and the Life, who is always present.

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Mark's Mashup.

Mark 1:1-8

December 10, 2017

I.

These days there are things called “mashups.”  A mashup is when someone — usually a musician or artist, or a web developer — takes material from at least two different sources, and blends them together to make a new thing.  The new product thus has continuity with the former contexts, but in combining them speaks to the present in a new way.  

Mark begins his gospel with a mashup.  He brings together material from two places.  Indeed, this is not a gentle blending so much as a smashing collision, especially since he is using one of the sources deeply ironically and critically.

We see it in the first line of the gospel.  What he is mashing up is on the one hand the biblical tradition of his people, and on the other hand the imperial terminology of the power that has conquered his people: Rome.  He starts out with “the beginning,” which reminds us of the creation story in Genesis.  We understand that this story will be about a new beginning that fulfills the promise in that first beginning.  Mark uses another word from Hebrew Scripture: “Messiah” or “Christ,” which means Anointed One.  This underscores this message of fulfillment.  

Then he uses a word taken directly from imperial propaganda: “gospel” or “good news.”  People were used to receiving “gospels” which were official communications from the government that Roman armies had won another stunning victory.  So originally a gospel had a vicious, cutting effect.  In proclaiming another military triumph, it also said to the people receiving it, “You lose.  Again.  Get used to it.”  The other Roman term that shows up here is “Son of God,” which was one of the self-serving titles the emperor gave to himself.

The Hebrew terms in this mashup are triumphantly fulfilled; Mark uses the Roman terms ironically to contradict their original function.  Indeed, he steals them and applies them to a figure and movement which is essentially and comprehensively the opposite of what Rome was about.  He is using Rome’s words against them.  

So in the first line of his book, Mark is asserting what Christianity is really about, which is the point of his story.  The message of the Hebrew Scriptures that begins with the creation of everything is about to be fulfilled by the coming of the promised Anointed One or Messiah.  His coming is real good news, not the fake, cynical, evil so-called “good news” issued by the Empire.   He is going to be the real Son of God, not so-called “Son of God” in Rome whose main business is murder, lies, theft, exploitation, terror, and conquest.  The real good news is that Rome is going down; and that everything the emperor tried to kill, the real Son of God will bring about: blessing, justice, equality, healing, and peace.

And his name is Jesus.  From the first line of the gospel we see that this is a story in which the losers win, and the winners lose.  That’s what Jesus will embody in the next 16 chapters.  In the power differentials that strangle our world: God is always with the powerless and always against the powerful.  

II.

The next few lines of the gospel build on this basic affirmation by reminding us of the Hebrew tradition, and the prophets who foretell the coming of this Messiah, this real Son of God.  The focus here is on two things: the wilderness and the way.

Wilderness is the opposite of the urban centers and the rural towns around them.  It is the opposite of civilization.  Wilderness is marginal, hard, wild, dry, difficult, unprofitable country.  Wilderness is also where we go to meet God.  When God liberates the people from slavery in Egypt, God leads them first into the wilderness, the desert of Sinai.  That is where the people meet God and receive God’s laws.  That is where God instructs them to build the tabernacle of God’s Presence.  The desert is God’s first temple.   

Elijah and other prophets work in the wilderness.  They lift up this experience of the people with God in the desert as the epitome of holiness and blessing.  Jesus himself will go into the wilderness right after his baptism and it is there that his calling in confirmed in his temptation by the devil.  In all Christian history monastics have mostly fled into the wilderness to face themselves and at the same time encounter God.

Wilderness or desert is a place of lack.  It is a place of hunger and thirst, of extremity.  It is a marginal and peripheral place, a place without apparent value to the establishment, it is undomesticated, out of control, a lawless, lonely wasteland.

That’s why it is God’s place.  Things like value, control, and law are determined and imposed by the ego-centric powers that run the world and civilization.  Just as we cannot see the stars when we are in places that are polluted with artificial lights, so we cannot see God until we get away from the places where the artificial and arbitrary culture of those who rule society prevail.         

The prophets show us the way to receive God.  The early church called itself “The Way.”  Discipleship is always an entire way of life.  We do not receive God by our own initiative, creativity, industriousness, or accomplishment.  We receive God by emptying ourselves of everything else.  The Way is not just to actually go out into the literal desert; it is to become the desert in the sense of embracing our own marginality and releasing ourselves of our own self-importance.  Discipleship is about letting go and letting God.

God is going to come into the places the have been cleared out, uncluttered, made straight, flattened out, emptied, and opened up.  Where distractions and blockages have been removed.  God comes into silence.

III.

Mark now introduces us to someone who embodies the preparation and the readiness for the Messiah, the Son of God.  His name is John, and he appears out in the desert.  He specifically reminds us of Elijah, the original subversive prophet of the Hebrew tradition.  

John is what we call an ascetic.  He lives a life of self-denial and simplicity in the wilderness.  He lives off the grid, separate from urban, civilized connections and conveniences.  He lives a deliberately marginalized, eccentric, vulnerable, insecure life, radically dependent on God.

We cannot receive Jesus without adequate preparation.  Later, in chapter 4, Jesus will talk about different kinds of soil and how they do or don’t nurture the planted seed.  By that he will mean that not every person can receive his message in such a way that they will be changed and saved by it.  John shows us the character of the good soil, the person prepared to receive and feed the seed of the Word, the good news.  And he shows us what we need to do to become that good soil ourselves.  

This is important because Christianity is full of people who nevertheless don’t really know or follow Jesus.  Part of the reason for this is that they never prepare themselves to receive him.  In the same way that we cannot learn a new language without drilling the grammar and vocabulary, or we cannot play a musical instrument without learning technique and scales, or we cannot play a sport without learning the rules and training, so we cannot receive Jesus without being prepared by the spiritual disciplines we learn from John.  Without preparation we remain in one of the categories of unproductive “soil” that Jesus will mention.

John’s spiritual practice is focused on a particular ritual.  In this ritual he immerses people in the Jordan River as a sign of their repentance.  Baptism is the recognition of a person’s changed heart and behavior, and an expression of their desire for God to save them from a disordered, destructive, doomed existence.  It is an expression of hope in the One John says is coming who is more powerful than he, who will immerse people in God’s Holy Spirit, thus giving them a new life reconciled to God.

  

In other words, John is saying that to be prepared to receive Jesus is a matter of realizing that your current existence is not working, and taking steps to change your way of thinking and acting away from selfishness and violence.  It means separating yourself from the conventional means of support, and living in constant expectation of God’s coming into your life in Jesus Christ.  It means turning away from our old habits, traditions, values, views, and loyalties, and turning to Jesus.  Unless we do this, we’re not going to recognize him.  Unless we do this, we cannot follow him.  

IV.  

Baptism only happens once to each of us, but this preparation process doesn’t end.  The church has adopted this annual four-week period we call Advent as a time to remember our need for preparation.  Usually we waste it in sentimentality and consumerism, because it happens to coincide with, and be thoroughly overwhelmed by, a huge secular commercial festival, which prepares us for something else.

But Advent is not about a particular time of year.  It is about being ready.  It is about being prepared for God to come into our lives.  Even those who are far along on the way of discipleship occasionally need a reminder.  We all need to stay good soil.  Jesus leaves his disciples with the admonition to keep awake!  Because he knows that the best of us can still slide back into unconsciousness, where our readiness atrophies, and our muscle-memory for discipleship falters.  Even Miles Davis still had to practice his scales.  

So we still need to remember John’s message and example.  We still need to engage in disciplines of repentance, removing the clutter and the obstructions, and turning again to the One Who Comes, Jesus the Messiah, the real Son of God.

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"Keep Awake!"

Mark 13:24-37

December 3, 2017

I.

“Keep awake,” says Jesus.  That is the spiritual attitude that Jesus’ followers have to maintain.  In the little parable he tells here, the slaves placed in charge of the household are his disciples.  He’s talking about and to us.  When he says to keep awake, he means that we have to remain in touch with God’s reality, the truth he is and shows us.  We have to stay conscious of what is really going on around us.  We have to remain in him, even when everything around us seems to be falling apart.  

On the one hand, this means we continue to engage with what is true and good in our life, as revealed in him.  On the other hand, it also means becoming aware of how far short we fall, and how far the world has to go to be like him.  Perhaps we should use the old railroad warning — Stop, Look, and Listen!  We are to watch, wait, and anticipate the coming of God into our lives… yet at the same time we also have to recognize how messed up the world is.  Because becoming joyfully aware of God’s goodness and truth means also becoming bitterly aware of our evil and falsehood.  

Most of us are conscious of neither God’s truth nor our own falsehood.  We sleepwalk through existence protected by a thick foam of ego-centric rationalizations, self-serving narratives, long, distracting to-do lists, and just plain denial.  I am in that category myself, most of the time.  Staying awake is hard.  It is often positively painful.  We don’t want to do it.  It is way easier and more comfortable to stay blissfully asleep.

St. Columba used to advise his monks on Iona to pray “until tears come.”   His point I think is that if you’re not weeping, if you’re not overcome with the kind of grief and sorrow that Jesus blesses in the Beatitudes, if you’re not heartbroken about the way the world is and your complicity in it, you’re just not paying attention.  You’re not awake.  You’re still anesthetized against the pain of others, which is to say, the pain of Jesus, the Son of Man, on the cross.  You’re still snoozing in the self-serving delusion that everything is just fine.  It is the complacent, somnolent disease of the privileged.

“Stay awake” means don’t lose sight of the coming Kingdom of God.  But that also means recognizing and admitting the injustices and atrocities, iniquities and inequities, violence and depravity that characterizes our existence.  

Jesus’ call to us to stay awake looks ahead to the Garden of Gethsemane in the next chapter of Marks’ gospel, when Jesus is praying, grieved even to death.  He begs his closest disciples to stay awake and pray with him… but they can’t.  He is just about to be arrested.  He’s just about to be hauled before the court and  condemned.  He will be dead in like 12 hours!  And Peter, James, and John are snoozing.  “Whatever, man, I’m wiped.”  They don’t get it.

Staying awake is painful because it challenges our comfort and convenience; it undercuts our self-image. It assaults our hopes and dreams for ourselves.  It questions our habitual scapegoating of other people, blaming them for our problems letting them be the focus of our anger or fear.  If we stay awake we realize that everything we have depended on, everything we have been giving our allegiance to, everything we admire and desire, is wrong.  It is all godless nonsense.  None of it has done anything but evil and violence in the world.  It is all corrupt and false.  

II.

Jesus talks about how, at his coming, the “sun, moon, and stars” will be darkened and fall.  The sun, moon, and stars in this case are not the heavenly bodies created by God for our benefit and declared very good in the beginning.  I don’t think we’ve ever even seen those in their reality.  

No, Jesus is talking about the projected false gods upon whom the religious, political, and economic elite depend for legitimacy.  They represent the principalities and powers that organize and control this benighted and illusory world.  They are the self-serving, self-aggrandizing ideas that we hold in our minds about how great we are, and how much better we are than those other people.  

Today they are similarly the leaders, ideologies, institutions, media, and other dominant forces that generate the gravity that holds society-as-we-know-it together.  We still talk about famous and powerful people as “stars.”  We are subject to a superstructure of lies designed so that the very few at the top maintain and increase their wealth and power, at the expense of everyone else.

Jesus says that at the appearance of the truth, which is “the Son of Man coming in clouds,” these counterfeit lights are darkened, shaken, and brought down as the illusion they are.  These stars always fall, as we have even seen in the past few weeks with the revelations about sexual misconduct on the part of several powerful men.  In the real power of Christ’s light, the artificial sun, moon, and stars, the heroes around whom our history moves, always shrivel, darken, and weaken.  For he, Jesus Christ, is the true light that enlightens everyone, coming into the world.  And he outshines everything else.

Jesus is the One who is crucified and risen.  He is the One who comes.  As Son of Man he identifies with us in our mortality and our suffering, emptying himself to the point of a humiliating death on a cross.  At the same time he identifies with our true humanity, our immense potential as beings made in God’s Image.  

The Lord says he comes “with clouds.”  In Scripture, clouds do not block the light so much as reflect, and radiate, and shine with it.  In coming with clouds we understand that the Lord represents and manifests the all-inclusive height of heaven and the manifestation of the eternal and true Light from God.  The Son of Man gathers and attracts from the whole expanse of creation those who are awake and conscious enough to see him.  He calls together a community of wakefulness and perception.

This community sees him and lives in the power of his heavenly light.  We see him as the One who is lifted up; the One who is identified by his wounds; the One who pours out his life-blood for the life of the whole world.  As opposed to the abstractions of the invented gods of sun, moon, and stars, Jesus is real.  Jesus is flesh and blood, in which we participate in this Sacrament today.  We are the ones he gathers from the four winds and the ends of the creation.  We are the ones in whom people see the descent of the Son of Man, as by his power we establish communities of peace and justice, forgiveness and love.  We are the bright cloud of witnesses reflecting his light into the world.

III.

The centerpiece of Jesus’ teaching here has to do with the example of the fig tree.  “As soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves,” he says, “you know that summer is near.  So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates.”  The things he sees taking place are told in this whole chapter of apocalyptic preaching in which Jesus identifies the dissolution, breakdown, collapse, and shattering of the reign of evil in the world.

Back in chapter 11 he curses a fig tree, which stood for the outwardly and apparently prosperous, but actually barren and fruitless, religion of the establishment tradition.  Then he continues up the hill where he forcibly throws the commercial interests out of the Temple, prefiguring its total demolition 40 years later.

If that fig tree means the end of the old religion, now the same image of a fig tree points to the emergence of something new.  It means the time of the revealing of the Son of Man has come.  The gospel turns immediately to the story of Jesus’ last couple of days.  The leafy fig tree means the time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is near, and will shortly be revealed on the cross where the alienation between God and humanity, between God and creation itself, is resolved and reconciled.    

Being awake means being able to see what is going on.  It means being able to read the signs of the times that we may be oblivious to otherwise.  To some, certain events only mean that evil is settling in permanently.  It looks like an inexorable downward spiral of destruction to which the only rational response is to stockpile food and weapons.  The Messiah is murdered.  It appears to be the victory of death, oppression, injustice, and wrong.

But in reality this means just the opposite.  “Truly I tell you,” says Jesus, “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”  That which the world thinks is the end, is really the beginning.  The apparent triumph of death is actually the uprising of new life.  Jesus’ ignominious, humiliating defeat, is in truth the ultimate and comprehensive victory.

Jesus himself is nothing if not a change-agent.  He is not a reformer in the sense of working within the system to make things a little better through compromise and negotiation.  He says the whole system is doomed.  “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down,” he declares.  

In the end, we can’t live both in this world and in the Kingdom of God any more than we can have both God and wealth.  It’s an either/or proposition.  We have to choose.  Each one of us has to choose.  And the choice is sometimes very stark.  Do we want to be successful?  Or do we want to be faithful and true?  Do we want to look good?  Or do we want to be good?  Do we want to go back to the way things were?  Or do we want to move into the way things will be?

IV.

Can we stay awake for this?  Can we take up the cross of identification with Jesus, and therefore with the suffering losers of the world, and therefore with the God who self-empties to become flesh to dwell among us?

What if the situation of the church today, characterized by losses across the board, is really God clearing a space for something new and amazing to happen?  What it all means that Jesus himself is at the very gates?

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The Eve of the Nativity of the Lord + Candlelight Communion

The Eve of the Nativity of the Lord

December 24, 2017

An empty wooden manger waits at the front of the Sanctuary.

Prelude:

Gathering Song: “Of the Father’s Love Begotten” 309/108

Words of Welcome

Lighting the Christ Candle

Call to Worship

People will come from east and west

   and from north and south,

   and will eat in the Kingdom of God.

Indeed, some who are last will be first,

   and some who are first will be last. Luke 13:29-30

We are celebrating the feast of the Eternal Birth 

   which God has borne 

   and never ceases to bear in all eternity... 

But if it does not also happen in us, what good is it? 

   Everything depends on this, 

   that it should take place in each of us.

As we listen again to the story of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem,

   may he be born as well in our own hearts.

May the Light of God’s life shine in our darkness!

*Processional: “Once in Royal David’s City” 49/140

The choir processes into the Sanctuary.

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. 

Luke 2:1-3

This story begins with an imperial edict.  

   The strong man in Rome thought he was in charge.  

   He gave orders to soldiers and bureaucrats, 

   who carried out his will.

Little did he know.

The future emerges not from the wealthy and powerful, 

   not from the armed and affluent, 

   not from the bullies and the buyers.

   not from the connected and the confident. 

But from the rest of us: 

   the homeless, the refugees, the victims, 

   the poor, the broken, the outcast, and the lost.

Little did he know.

“The people who walked in darkness

   have seen a great light;

   those who lived in a land of deep darkness— 

   on them light has shined.”   Isaiah 9:2

May the Light of God shine this night

   into the controlled and restricted darkness of our world.

May the Light of God shine this night.

Song: “In the Bleak Midwinter” 36/144

Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, 

to the city of David called Bethlehem, 

because he was descended from the house and family of David.

Luke 2:4

Bethlehem.  The name means, “house of bread,” in Hebrew.

“I am the Bread of Life.

   Whoever comes to me will never be hungry,

   and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” John 6:35

“I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  

   Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; 

   the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” John 6:51

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” John 1:14

Song: “O Little Town of Bethlehem” 44/121

He went to be registered with Mary, 

to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.

Luke 2:5 

Mary is the young woman to whom God’s Messenger comes, saying:

“Greetings, favored one!  

   The Lord is with you!” Luke 1:28

When the messenger shares with her the good,

   but very disturbing, news, 

   that she will bring the Son of God into the world, she says:

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; 

   let it be with me according to your word.” Luke 1:38

May it be with all of us 

   according to the saving, liberating, healing Word of the Lord.

May God’s saving presence be born in us.

May we not fear the reactions of those who do not see what God is doing.

May God’s saving presence be born in us.

May we live in joyful expectation, as goodness grows within us.

May God’s saving presence be born in us.

*Song:  “See Amid the Winter’s Snow” 51/——

While they were there, 

the time came for her to deliver her child. 

And she gave birth to her firstborn son 

and wrapped him in bands of cloth, 

and laid him in a manger, 

because there was no place for them in the inn.

Luke 2:6-7

Song: 

During the song, a girl/young woman carries a loaf of bread wrapped in white cloth and places it in the manger.

To add insult to injury,

he is born in a barn,

laid in a feed-trough for animals.

He is unnoticed and unwelcomed by humans, at first.

He feels our vulnerability,

   the cold air, the hunger, the utter dependence.

He breathes the aromas of life in a barn.

He tastes the milk of human nourishment.

He hears the sounds of animals and wind,

   and his parents’ tired, hopeful, relieved words,

   soft and low.

He feels the texture of cloth and straw, and cold air on new skin.

He sees in the dim light the glistening face of his mother.

All this he takes on,

   draping over himself to inhabit like a tent,

   from which to know the world…

Even though it is he through whom God creates the world,

   breathing it into being at the beginning,

   saying, “Let there be!”

   and, “It is very good!” From Genesis 1:1-31

For a child has been born for us,

   a son given to us;

authority rests upon his shoulders;

   and he is named

Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,

   Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 

His authority shall grow continually,

   and there shall be endless peace

for the throne of David and his kingdom.

   He will establish and uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

   from this time onwards and for evermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. Isaiah 9:6-7

Song: “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” 32/119

During the song, a child processes with the Christ Candle, placing it on the Communion Table.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, 

keeping watch over their flock by night.

Luke 2:8 

Shepherds on the night shift,

   workers in the field,

   shivering in the star-light,

   imagining a better life,

   wanting to go home.

   Forgotten, invisible, taken-for-granted;

   doing a job no one else wanted.

We give thanks for the servers and the watchers, 

   the caregivers and the waiters;

   the stockers and the loaders,

   the cashiers and the clerks,

   the drivers and the cleaners,

   the mechanics and the secretaries.

We give thanks for those who prepare the soil,

   plant the seeds, watch over the plants as they grow, 

   then harvest and process the produce. 

We give thanks for those who care for animals,

   and for the animals, who give us many benefits.

On those same hills a boy named David also watched over sheep.

   He was God’s unlikely chosen king.

Now God’s new unlikely chosen king,

   a descendant of David by adoption,

   is born in the same town:

   the Bread of Life emerges from Bethlehem, 

   which means “House of Bread”.

*Song: “Angels We Have Heard on High” 23/113

We carry the loaf of bread from the manger to the Table.

Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, 

and the glory of the Lord shone around them, 

and they were terrified. 

But the angel said to them, 

“Do not be afraid; 

for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy 

for all the people: 

to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, 

who is the Messiah, the Lord. 

This will be a sign for you: 

you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth 

and lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was with the angel 

a multitude of the heavenly host, 

praising God and saying, 

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,

   and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

Luke 2:9-14

Song:  “Before the World Began” (Full hymn included below)  

When the angels had left them 

and gone into heaven, 

the shepherds said to one another, 

“Let us go now to Bethlehem 

and see this thing that has taken place, 

which the Lord has made known to us.”

So they went with haste 

and found Mary and Joseph, 

and the child lying in the manger. 

When they saw this, 

they made known what had been told them about this child; 

and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. 

But Mary treasured all these words 

and pondered them in her heart. 

The shepherds returned, 

glorifying and praising God 

for all they had heard and seen, 

as it had been told them.

Luke 2:15-20

Song: “Love Has Come” ——/110 

God of grace and wonder:

   may our leaders be gentler,

   and our hospitality far warmer,

   than what we offered you

   on that night long ago,

   coming into our world.

Open our hearts and our homes

   to the refugees, the undocumented, and the homeless today.

   May we remember that we were aliens too,

   whom you welcomed into the household of peace.

By your grace and your Spirit

   let us inhabit the good creation,

   under your order of peace, justice, and liberation.

Remove our fear

   that sours into violence.

Remove our hatred 

   that closes our hearts to the cries of others.

Remove our resentment

   that darkly dwells on what we think we have lost.

Turn our faces to your Light,

   shining in the face of Jesus,

   revealing to us the truth, goodness, beauty, and grace

   you have poured so generously into our hearts.

Let us see him in the face of everyone.

   Amen.

  

Offering

The Earth and everything on it,

the world and all its people,

they all belong to God.   Psalm 24:1

Offertory Music: 

*Song: “O Come, All Ye Faithful” (verse 1) 41/133 

A young disciple processes with the pitcher of juice.

Thanksgiving

On the night when Jesus was born,

   in Bethlehem, the House of Bread,

   his parents prayed and the angels sang,

   and the shepherds came to visit him.

On the night before he gave his life 

   for the life of the world,

   the Lord Jesus took bread.

On the night when he was born,

   the Creator became a creature,

   the Infinite was placed in a manger, 

   the Word became flesh,

   the Spirit became matter,

   Wisdom came into time, 

   and the Presence became present.

He gave thanks to God,

   and broke the bread,

   and gave it to his disciples, saying:

   “This is my body, given for you;

   do this in remembrance of me.”

The celebrant breaks the bread in two pieces.

On the night when he was born,

   humanity was raised to heaven,

   people were united to God,

   the Creator emerged within creation,

   sinners were saved,

   the lost were found,

   the blind were given their sight,

   the lame were empowered,

   the captives were freed,

   debts were remitted,

   and the dead received life.

He took the cup, saying:

   “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

   Whenever you drink it, 

   do this in remembrance of me.”

The celebrant fills the cup.

On the night when he was born,

   the light began to shine

   on those who lived in a land of deep darkness.

“The light shines in the darkness

   and the darkness did not overcome it.” John 1:5

Receive the Body of Christ!

   Taste the fountain of immortality!

   Alleluia!  Alleluia!  Alleluia!

The logistics of communion distribution will have to be worked out relative to considerations of space and the number of participants.

Communion Music: 

Candlelighting Ceremony

We light our candles from the Christ Candles.

Please be careful….

*Song: “Silent Night, Holy Night” 60/122

In the beginning was the Word, 

and the Word was with God, 

and the Word was God. 

He was in the beginning with God. 

All things came into being through him, 

and without him not one thing came into being. 

What has come into being in him was life, 

and the life was the light of all people. 

The light shines in the darkness, 

and the darkness did not overcome it.

 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, 

full of grace and truth. 

From John 1:1-14

*Recessional Song: “Go, Tell It on the Mountain!” 29/136

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