A Vision of the Holy
Transfiguration Sunday
When I preached here last August I began the message with a question:
Why do we bother with church?
I went on to suggest that the better question might be, “Why does God want us to bother with church?” Because we might have all kinds of extraneous reasons for showing up here.
So, why does God want us to bother with church?
Well, here’s what I said last summer:
To help us align our stories with God’s story.
God wants us to align our story with their story.
Our faith, our confidence, our trust, is that God’s story, the story that God is living out through all of creation, is directed toward the fulfillment of love. God’s story is directed toward the fulfillment of love. And our intention should be to be a part of that.
We are invited into the faith/confidence/trust that God is continually at work cajoling, seducing, nudging all that is – including us – toward a culmination of divine love. We are bothering with church to more closely live out our stories as a part of that larger story of how divine love plays out in our world.
Today is Transfiguration Sunday. The Sunday that each year immediately precedes our observance of Lent, which, of course, is the 40 days that lead up to Easter.
In the gospel lesson we read an account of that event in which Jesus went up on the mountain with Peter, James, and John.
Jesus was transformed.
Shone like the sun.
Moses and Elijah appeared with him.
They heard the very voice of God saying of Jesus: This is my dearly loved child, with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him.
Fell on their faces, filled with awe. This was a revelation about the true nature of Jesus that was absolutely stunning.
That mountaintop experience is, in part, a vision of hope that will carry us, Jesus, and the three disciples through Lent’s valley of Jesus’ humiliation, suffering, and death.
Then we arrive at Easter with a renewed understanding of Jesus’ glory, tempered by our realization that that glory is shot through and through with that same humiliation, suffering, and death.
Life, death, abundant life. That is the threefold pattern of God’s story into which we are aligning. The Transfiguration is a foreshadowing – or better fore-spotlighting – of the abundant life.
As we move to the lesson from the 2nd Letter of Peter, I’d like us to note that as Peter is recounting the event of the transfiguration, he is emphasizing that this is not him simply passing on something he was told about. It was something he experienced, not some cleverly designed myth.
And now shift to us. For us the Transfiguration is something we have been told about. It is not a cleverly designed myth. But it is not something we have experienced.
So, finally, here’s the question for this morning: are we to simply rely on Peter’s experience of the holy and Peter’s testimony about it, or are we here to help each other cultivate our own capacity to encounter the holy?
Here’s my answer:
We are invited to be awakened and to experience/encounter the holy in our midst. To be awakened and assured that we are being drawn into the alignment of our stories with God’s story.
How does our life together awaken us to the power and reality and shining of God’s presence in our midst? How are we awakened into the abundant life of being aligned with God’s story?
Perhaps the first and most important step is to take it as a given that the presence of God is already with us and all around us. The love and mystery of the cosmos is always in the midst of us. The secret is to open our hearts to it.
When we show up here, let’s take our very showing up as an acknowledgment of, and a commitment to, the reality of God’s presence. Not in a far-off heaven, or in the experience of biblical characters, but as a reality in our lives.
Perhaps it is easier in this setting to pay attention to doing it, but the larger truth is that it is always available.
James Finley, a psychologist and teacher at the Center for Action & Contemplation, writes:
Jesus taught that we are completely drenched through and through with God’s love. In the parable of the prodigal son, in his miracles of healing, in his love for everyone he encountered, Jesus’ message rang out to one and all: a divine benevolence gives itself to you whole and complete in and as your very life. Your incremental degrees of awareness of this mystery are stages of realizing what is from all eternity the brimming-over fullness of your true and everlasting life.
That reality is always everywhere. The gap, if there is one – is our attention. We are being invited in each moment to pay attention so that its reality will rise in our hearts. When that reality arises in our hearts we become aware that we are standing on holy ground. Holy people on holy ground.
One of the ways that our participation in church helps us align our stories with God’s story is the way of prayer. Prayer, of course, has many forms and many styles. There are many varieties of prayer. But what they all have in common is an opening of the heart to God. When we pray, we are opening our hearts to God and whenever we open our hearts to God, we are at prayer.
Whatever we do with our hearts open to God is prayer.
So let us cultivate our capacity to be able to have prayerful conversations, prayerful interactions, and prayerful postures toward one another: conversations, interactions, postures that take place with open hearts and an intentional awareness of God’s presence. These prayerful encounters hold the space, open the space, for the Spirit to flow freely. Listening, speaking, and doing with hearts open to the presence of God.
Let me boldly say and hear this boldly as well:
You are holy. You are God’s temple. God lives in you.
The truth of this is not a conditional statement that if we’re good enough we will be holy. We are holy, because we were created in the image of God. Our very being makes us a participant in God’s being and goodness. And that makes us holy. Like it or not.
This place – Fairport UMC – is a place to be conscious/aware of our own and one another’s holiness. That’s what we’re living into together.
And we, here, together, are being invited to recognize ourselves, this place, this community, as an embassy of God, a sanctuary, a safe place. Not safe from disagreement, not safe from offense even, but safe for the love and mercy of God to do what it needs to do among us and through us to weave reconciliation when relationships fray or when we go astray.
So this is not about perfection or purity. It is, instead, about becoming a place where we can open our hearts without fear. A space for the Spirit to nurture us into healing and wholeness and more fully and joyfully aligned with God’s story.
And we – in this time and place in this small corner of the world, become an instance and an entry point of the Spirit. A place where we can dare to open our hearts to encounter God and to help one another experience God, encounter God in one another.
Encounter God in one another. Encounter God in one another. How might we do that.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you turn to the person next to you and look deeply into each other’s eyes. That would just be weird. Some of you might even decide that you needed to go out and see if you left your headlights on.
Instead, you might look somewhat surreptitiously, maybe even out of the corner of your eye. In some random moment here (or anywhere) glance at another person, but expectantly. Assume that there is a holy mystery in that person and see that person with reverence and compassion.
In his book, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton tells of a revelation in downtown Louisville. As a monk living isolated in a monastery he had imagined a great gulf between himself and people living in the secular world. He writes of a day he was running errands for the monastery in Lousville,
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being [human], a member of a race in which God [‘s own self] became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
Merton went on to write:
“…it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time.”
Now maybe it’s too great a leap for us to look at everyone that way. Maybe we could start small and close to home and begin to do that here with one another and with those we encounter in our daily lives. Perhaps that might be a worthwhile Lenten intention.
Let us help one another practice opening our hearts to experience God everywhere in every moment. To live in the awareness of God’s awesome presence in one another and in all the world.
Peter says in our Bible reading this morning:
We have a most reliable prophetic word, and you would do well to pay attention to it, just as you would to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
The words and stories that we hear from the Bible are lamps to pay attention to – until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our own hearts. Until we become more practiced at recognizing the reality of God in ourselves and those around us.
So we are not about crafty myths. We are here to open our minds and hearts, Allow space. Hold space. Open space for the Spirit. Patience and gentleness and compassion are the important ingredients so that an atmosphere of trust emerges and we can have the courage to open our hearts to one another into ever closer alignment with God’s story.
Let us be a church that cultivates our capacity for prayerful conversations, prayerful interactions, and prayerful postures toward one another. These conversations, interactions, and postures hold the space, open the space, clear the space for the Spirit. And then the Spirit opens us to witness with our own eyes, the reality of God in each other and all the world.
Witness with our own eyes, the reality of God in the midst of us.
And then may we have confidence that God says to us, just as he said to Jesus in the hearing of Peter centuries ago:
This is – you are – my dearly beloved child, with whom I am well pleased.
Receive that word in trust, for it is in our trust of that word of blessing that holiness gains its fullness in us and in this place.
It is in that presence and vision of holiness that our stories are aligned with God’s story.
We are on holy ground. Here and everywhere. Whether we believe it or not. So we might as well believe it. And live it.
What Does the Lord Require of You?
When the Methodist Movement began in the mid-eighteenth century, it grew pretty quickly. I’ve mentioned before that the early Methodists didn’t start churches, but began by starting class meetings and societies. Small, local groups of Methodists would gather to pray, study, eat, fast, and perform works of mercy together. They were intentionally small, so that each person knew each person, and so that no one could fall through the cracks. When someone was absent from a class meeting, the class leader would follow up with them, making sure that nothing was wrong. Or, perhaps more accurately, making sure that something was wrong, as there was a limited number of unexcused absences that you could accrue before getting kicked out. Members met at least weekly, and would check in on one another throughout the week. It was at these meetings that the leader would get up and start by asking everyone “how is it with your soul today” and “what sins have you committed this week?” Not as a means of public shaming, but to hold one another accountable in love. It was a way of being the church that was built on trust, on intimacy, and on mutual accountability. It was a way of being the church that coupled personal spiritual growth with social action, and that stated unapologetically that one cannot walk as Christ walked if one is going to walk alone.
This way of being, this means of living out the faith which is a gift from God, was effective. These classes grew and grew and kept growing. The original model was for classes to split once they reached a certain size. If a class grew larger than about a dozen, it was supposed to break into two smaller groups. Methodist class members were still expected to attend worship in a Church of England parish, so that they could receive the sacraments and engage in worship and practice the liturgy. Over time, though, this whole splitting thing got less popular, and classes began to grow and grow until they had enough people and resources to buy or build a building and start their own “church,” in the sense that we would imagine a church. That’s why you can still find Methodist churches clustered together, so there’s one every five or ten miles in some rural areas, and at one point the bigger cities had a church in just about every neighborhood. This model of intimate accountability morphed into lively, top-down Sunday School systems with superintendents and professional teachers. Pastors, associate pastors, and lay ministers began to replace lay people as leaders of classes and communities. Public worship became the sole focus of many of these churches, and that intimate accountability, that lay-led operation, began to fade. It still exists, and don’t get me wrong, here at Fairport it can get difficult to keep track of how many small groups and classes we have going at any given time. But, by and large, we’ve become disconnected and less accountable.
We could get into all the reasons for that disconnection, both within the church and outside of it. I’m just waiting for a lectionary text to come up that would give me a good excuse to talk about the rise of car-centric infrastructure and the decline of Mainline Protestant denominations. It’s not just a COVID thing, it’s not just a social media thing or a smartphone thing. There has been a decline in our intentional means of organizing ourselves for the work to which God has called us, and is currently calling us. Did you know that that’s what liturgy means? It means the “work of the people.” Liturgy, the parts of the worship service that we participate in each week, that is the work of the people. I try to use plenty of liturgy so that you all have a lot of work to do. Each Sunday, we all get together and do work. All of us, not just those who get paid to be here. But this work ought not be confined to Sunday morning, and I know for many here, that work is not confined to Sunday morning. The work of gathering in community, the work of holding one another accountable in love, the work of practicing our faith in ways that are meaningful to us, the work of practicing mercy and building a more just world—that is our liturgy. That is the work of the people. Led not by me alone, nor by a few. Led by those in this community who hear God’s call to carry out that work, and to hold others accountable to sharing in that call, sharing in that labor.
This is the message issued by the prophet Micah. The prophet Micah, who we heard this morning pass along a summons—not to follow Jesus, but to show up to court. We see in this passage the prophet Micah challenging the people of Israel to present their case before God, so that God can argue Their case as well. God’s question for the people? Why aren’t you doing the work to which I have called you? Why aren’t you doing the things that I have asked you to do, the things that you know good and well that I expect from you, that you ought to be doing? And the response of the people? They ask God to repeat the assignment. And God does, phrasing it nice and simple so that no one can misunderstand: Do Justice, Love Kindness, Walk Humbly With God. This is the work of the people. Not only to do the things that we associate with worship in the traditional sense, but to carry out the work of the people. This is our call. This is God holding us accountable through the prophet. How will we respond? Will we do the work? Will we hold one another to it, in love? This is who we are, this is at the core of our DNA as a community of faith. We gather. We care for one another. We do the work, and we make sure that others join us on the way. Through our Sunday School, through our Beyond These Walls and Sunday Dinner Ministries, through Adult Forum and Amplify the Light and Tuesday Small Group and UWF and UMM. We are called to be a community that gathers, that cares for one another, that does the work and holds one another accountable in love. May we do so, this day and all days. Amen.
We Are Called
One of the things you get pretty good at when going through the ordination process in the United Methodist Church is talking about your call to ministry. I’m not yet ordained, but so far in the process I’ve had numerous committees and boards and District Superintendents and mentors ask me to tell the story of my call to ministry. What had happened to me or in my life that would make me want to walk this path on purpose? When I was first starting the process, I remember being very self-conscious about my story. There was no singular event, no dramatic moment when I heard a voice or felt a hand on my shoulder. Peers of mine, and colleagues, could point to a moment when they knew they were called. In my struggle to tell my own story at first, one of my mentors through the candidacy process gave me some language to describe how I had been called. She referred to it as a “journey of a thousand yeses.” It was saying “yes” when asked to teach Sunday School and classes for adults. It was saying “yes” when asked to read and then preach at various churches. It was saying “yes” again and again and again, until I realized that each question was a recognition of my call by someone else, and that each “yes” was me affirming that call for myself.
For the second week in a row now, we’re hearing an account of Jesus starting his ministry and calling the first of his disciples. It’s a funny quirk of the lectionary that we get basically the same story two weeks in a row. Two different versions of how the first disciples of Jesus came to start following him. Last week, we heard about the disciples who left John and began to follow Jesus, not waiting to be invited, but stepping out on their own to see if that call might lead them somewhere. This week, these disciples were asked, or rather, told to follow. They were told to leave behind the steady work that they knew, to abandon the family business and, really, the family as well. They were told to leave their homes, their houses, and to become homeless as they followed the itinerant preacher who had so far only preached one sermon: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” They were invited, and they said “yes.” This week, that call came from Christ. But last week, if we remember, it is John who tells his followers about Jesus, at which point they respond by following. And then it is those first disciples who go and call the next disciples, who say “yes.” When we are called, it’s not always the voice of Christ that does the calling. But it is the work that we share with Christ that draws us in—the work of healing, of sharing the Good News of God’s preference for the poor, of working for justice, of practicing love in community. For each of us who has responded to some sort of call, for those of us who are actively responding to that call, or who are discerning, it is important to remember that the voice of the one who ultimately calls to us can come from many places, and can speak through many people. And so we must listen.
One of the things I find most interesting about this version of the calling of the disciples is that it’s not just the story of Peter, Andrew, James, and John being called to ministry. It’s also the story of Jesus being called. This passage comes just after Jesus has spent his time in the wilderness being interviewed by the adversary. Maybe that’s his period of discernment, his probationary period. As he emerges from this time in the wilderness, he hears the news that John has been arrested, which we know is because of John’s ministry and his explicit preaching against the actions of those in power. We are told that this arrest is what prompted Jesus to go to Galilee, to leave his hometown of Nazareth and to start preaching and healing and building community. He heard God calling to him, not in spite of the news, not in spite of the terror that he had heard about or that he had surely witnessed. He heard God calling to him through the news, through the news of a prophet who had been arrested, and who would later be executed. Jesus’ call to ministry was a response not only to his gifts, not only to the things that might be done through him. It was a response to the times in which he was living. His call to the work of justice, the work of gathering and organizing his community so that they might be more resilient, so that they might care for one another through the wars and the killings and the oppression that raged on then, as it does now. He listened to the news of what had happened to his cousin, to the one who had baptized him and recognized the Spirit at work within him—and rather than retreating, Jesus embraced the work to which he was called. He embraced the work that, as the Rev. Dr. Katie Geneva Canon would say, his soul must have.
So, listen for where you are being called. Whether your call lies within the church or outside of it, whether you hear the voice of God ringing in your ears or simply the cries of those whose neighbors are being shot in the streets—listen. And listen not only for where you are being called, but see in one another the ways in which God is calling out to each of us. Ask, invite one another to do things that you wouldn’t normally do, that you’ve never done before, or that you haven’t done in a long time. Feed the hungry. Heal the sick. Build strong communities that truly care for one another. Raise your voice for the marginalized, the oppressed, the weak. Do not be deterred by what you see on the news, in the world, in your communities. Allow yourself to be moved by it. Allow your heart to be broken. Because the voice of the one who calls to us speaks through the crack in our breaking hearts. Hear that call. Say yes. And call others. The Kingdom of heaven has come near. In this place, in this time, we are called to reveal the kingdom in our midst. How will you say yes? How will we say yes together? It’s not a question of whether we will. We must. May it be so. Amen.
Laboring in Vain
I may have mentioned a few times now that I was born in Schenectady, and that I grew up around the Capital Region. The history of Methodism in that part of New York State is long and fascinating. There were Methodist preachers in the City of Albany about the same time that Methodists were starting to get organized in New York City, in the mid-1760s. The person leading that effort was a British army officer named Captain Thomas Webb, a lay preacher who was a devout Methodist and who preached many of the first Methodist sermons in the American colonies, from Upstate New York down to Delaware. While Methodism eventually took off to some extent out in the Albany area, it was slow-going. When Freeborn Garrettson, an early Methodist leader, first started to try and put together societies of Methodists in Albany, he was met with resistance and wrote in his journal that the people of Albany are rude and apathetic and don’t care much for religion. People still say that about Albany, and I just think that that adds to the charm. Eventually, though, Garrettson and a few others got things rolling, and by 1791 the First Methodist Society of Albany was officially organized—and they even had their own building. As the society continued to grow, other Methodist churches branched off of this First church, taking root in neighborhoods as the city grew both geographically and in population. The growth of these city churches continued, until just after World War II, when all the affluent and middle class white people moved out to the suburbs.
By the late 1940s, First Methodist was in quite a bind. Their neighborhood, once populated by middle-class, Protestant white families, was seeing a demographic shift as more Black families and more immigrant Catholic families moved in. So the trustees got together and decided two things: first, that it wouldn’t do them much good to try and do outreach with the catholics, and second, that they most certainly did not want to integrate their church. And so they decided to start a mission out of First Methodist, which would have its own pastor and building. They received funding to hire a pastor—a second career pastor who started out as an attorney and a social worker. Rev. Angelo Mongiore had a passion for working directly with the impoverished families in the church’s neighborhood, and especially with the youth. As uncomfortable as the leaders of First Methodist were getting with the shrinking distance between them and their neighbors, they kept the mission going. Then, in July of 1961, the Methodist appointment system kicked in and a new pastor was appointed to serve the mission: Rev. Randy Nugent, a 26-year-old African American pastor. For many at First Methodist, that was the last straw. Those who remained staunchly opposed to integration left the church. Despite the labors of Rev. Nugent, the members of First Methodist voted just two years later to merge with another Methodist Church in a more affluent neighborhood nearby. That church, Trinity United Methodist Church, was closed last Spring by a vote of the Annual Conference. In a sort of sad irony, the only Methodists left in the City of Albany are members of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a predominantly Black denomination.
This story of how the United Methodist Church in Albany met its demise irritates me to no end. Here was a church that held its own bigotry at bay while it tried something new, something that could have been truly transformative and a real source of grace in its community, and they let it all fall apart in the end because they just couldn’t hold it back any longer. Here was a pastor who had responded to a call to step into a setting that was openly hostile towards him, so that he might make a positive impact in a community of people whose backs are against the wall. And all his labors seem to have been in vain, after all.
Most weeks, I have a pretty good sense of what the sermon is going to be early on. The manuscript comes together later in the week, but I almost always have a sense of what the message is. This week, though, I kept coming up short. My news feed was overflowing with stories of the heinous violence committed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, both in public and in detention facilities. With stories of the cuts to healthcare funding, of courts ruling on whether a handful of transgender women can participate in sports, of conquering yet another nation. It’s easy to get overwhelmed, to get swept away in the volume of evil in the world. Where do we begin? Why bother? I understand that feeling. I’ve been struggling to sift through the news this week and find signs of hope amidst it all. Even in the protests, even in the floods of people standing up against these terrible acts of violence, all their labor seems to be in vain. And even those who feel this divine call, who feel this unshakable urge to respond to the harm being carried out in the world can find it easy to do as Isaiah does and say “enough, God. Nothing’s working. I’m done.” But then there’s God, that pesky God, who doesn’t back down. God, who still puts that call on our hearts, even as we struggle to see the good it will do. The God who sees us through the eyes of Christ, who sees our hopes and longings for a transformed world, and who pulls us along.
Call it cliche, but I think I want to share a quote that came across my feed this week from Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Junior. It comes from a sermon he preached just a few months before he was murdered, and was shared by the Reverend Beth Quick, a colleague of mine and a PhD student at Drew Theological School. The quote goes “And I say to you this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and so precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren't fit to live. You may be 38 years old as I happen to be, and one day some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause—and you refuse to do it because you are afraid; you refuse to do it because you want to live longer; you're afraid that you will lose your job, or you're afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity or you're afraid that somebody will stab you or shoot at you or bomb your house, and so you refuse to take the stand. Well you may go on and live until you are 90, but you're just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90! And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. You died when you refused to stand up for right, you died when you refused to stand up for truth, you died when you refused to stand up for justice.”
Even in the midst of the chaos, even in the midst of the lack of tangible progress, even when all our labors seem to be in vain, still God is calling us to cast aside that fear, that doubt. God is calling us to reject the sting of Death, to embrace the hope that we build together, as we seek to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves. As we seek to build that Beloved Community that Dr King preached about. The community where justice reigns, where the evils of poverty, racism, and militarism cease to exist. May we hold onto this call with all that we are, with all the resurrection hope that we can muster. May we continue to hear God calling out to us, dragging us back to the unfinished work, even when all we see is vanity. May we hold each other to this, in the love that seeks justice. May it be so. Amen.
Wade in the Water
In July of 2023, I went camping in the Adirondacks with my dad and my siblings. We went to a state camp ground near Tupper Lake, called Fish Creek. We left Albany on Sunday afternoon, and it was beautiful. Clear blue skies, not too much traffic. We stopped on the way up and got a Sunday New York Times to read once we got there. And we had the perfect site, too. It was right by the water, with a good spot to launch the canoes. It was windy, but other than that it was perfect weather to begin our couple nights camping. This wasn’t our first rodeo, so we knew to check the weather beforehand so that we could prepare. There was some rain in the forecast, but it didn’t seem like anything we couldn’t handle. So, we spent that Sunday afternoon just hanging out. My dad and siblings took the boats out while I stayed back and read the paper. It was a perfectly normal day camping in the Adirondacks. We set up our tents, tarps, and rain flys when it was still nice out, and when it started to sprinkle we retreated to our tents and called it a night. None of us knew just how much it was going to rain until the next morning. You never quite forget the feeling of waking up in a puddle of cold rainwater. Our sleeping bags and pillows were soaked through, our campsite was flooded. As it turned out, we had started our trip at the beginning of what would later be known as the Great Vermont Flood of 2023. While the rain and flooding certainly dampened the rest of our time at Fish Creek, what we experienced was nothing compared to other parts of New York and Vermont.
Eleven people died in the flooding. Over two billion dollars in damage was caused, as roads and bridges were swept away. Homes, churches, businesses, entire towns left flooded and wrecked. Our waterlogged tents paled in comparison to what the towns around us were experiencing. When disasters such as these occur, disasters that are still labeled by some as “natural,” it can be tempting to place the blame on the water for the death and destruction. After all, it was the water that swept over the roads, the water that fell from the sky and caused brooks and rivers to rise, the water that caused damage to buildings and created the conditions for human harm. But it is us humans that create the conditions that exacerbate these storms, and make them more and more common. We poison the waters that we drink, that we and all of Creation depend on for our very survival. We continue to use and abuse the non-human Creation that we have labelled as “resources” for our own gain, disregarding our own dependence on the rest of Creation—and disregarding the inherent dignity of our non-human kin. But what responsibility do we have to the non-human Creation? Is it simply self-serving to say that we ought to care for the rest of Creation or risk our own peril? Why is it so easy for us to forget that the witness of our ancestors of faith has long included non-human Creation?
From the flood and the birds who acted as messengers of new life, to the big fish that would not allow Jonah to run from where God was calling him. From the parting of the Red Sea as the Israelites stumbled towards liberation, to the life-restoring water that sprang forth even from rock. Rocks who, according to Christ, would continue to cry out for liberation, even if every human tongue was stilled. We humans love to center ourselves in the story of salvation, in the story of liberation. But we have never been the center. Even our messiah is a lamb, a mother hen, a vine with many branches.
Just a few weeks ago, on the fourth Sunday of Advent, I baptized a child for the first time. Afterwards, during the children’s message, I described baptism as a covenant made among the individual being baptized, God, and the Church. It is a covenant to grow together, to provide care, to teach, and to learn. It is a covenant to resist evil, and to live as God calls us to live, to walk as Christ walked before us. But we forget that this covenant also included the water. The liquid contained in the bowl and pitcher isn’t just a prop. This living water is a part of the covenant, to be bound by the same water, to reject the mindset of singularity and individualism, and to remember that we are all linked. Each of us, as people, but also the rest of Creation that can’t always speak for itself. The water is there not only to remind us of John’s practice of baptizing in the Jordan, not only as a reminder of the idea of baptism as a cleansing ritual, but also as a representative, an ecumenical witness from our non-human neighbors reminding us that God created them, too, that God speaks through them, too, and that we are to care for them, just as we are called to care for one another.
As we prepare this morning to remember the covenant that we made at our baptism, or that was made for us, or that we confirmed when we joined the church, may we embrace all of our covenant. May we embrace the call and the commitment we have made to one another, to be more than just an individual person. May we embrace the call to work together, to breathe together, to co-labor and con-spire as members of the body of Christ. And may we hold onto the precious water that seals this covenant, the water that nourishes our bodies, that flows through all of Creation. The water we must cherish now more than ever.
And so, siblings in Christ, remember that through the sacrament of baptism we are initiated into Christ’s body, the Church, we are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation, and we are given new birth through water and the Spirit. All of this is God’s gift, offered to us without price. Through the reaffirmation of our faith, we renew the covenant declared at our baptism, acknowledge what God is doing for, with, and through us, and affirm our commitment to Christ’s holy Church.
We remember this gift of water that has woven its way through Creation since before we humans came into the picture. We remember this gift of life, the living waters that flow through our bodies, that nourish our food and craft the rocks and mountains. We give thanks for this life-sustaining source of renewal, the bearer of new life. From the River Jordan to the Rio Grande, from the shores of the Galilee to the coast of the Mediterranean, all those seeking new life, seeking safety, and seeking wholeness come to the water, longing to be made whole. Forgive us, oh God of the waters, and convict us. Guide us to live our solidarity with the waters you placed on this earth, to see them not as mere resources to be exploited, but as a part of who we are. Remind us that as the water flourishes, so, too, do we all. May we live out this gratitude, and allow it to move our hearts to action.
And now, on behalf of the whole Church, I ask you: Do you renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin? (I do) Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves? (I do)Do you confess Jesus Christ as your Savior, put your whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as your Lord, in union with the Church which Christ has opened to people of all ages, nations, and races? (I do) According to the grace given to you, will you remain faithful members of Christ's holy Church and serve as Christ's representatives in the world? (I will) Let us remember our baptism.
Home By Another Road
One of the benefits of growing up in a particular setting is that you tend to have a pretty good grasp of the ins and outs of that time and place. For those who grew up Methodist, or in Methodist churches, the Covenant Prayer that I read this morning may have sounded familiar. Or it might not have. While Methodist services can vary drastically from place to place, hopefully there are some things that feel familiar. And surely there are rituals and general feelings that resonate across Christian traditions, things that aren’t unique to the United Methodist Church. Although, that can also be a trap, like how the eucharistic liturgy that they use in Catholic Mass is almost the same as our liturgy but not quite. So the first time I went to Mass with my fiancee, Anna, who grew up Catholic, the priest started the Great Thanksgiving by saying, “The Lord be with you,” and the congregation responded with “And with your spirit.” And I thought, ok, a little different but I think I know how this goes. And the priest said, “Lift up your hearts,” which was met with “we lift them up to the Lord.” And I thought, alright, I definitely know how this goes. So when the priest came back with, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” I hit him with the most confident “It is right to give our thanks and praise” while everyone around me shared in the “It is right and just” line. To be fair, that’s what we Methodists used to say, too, so really we’re the odd ones. But either way, it was a good lesson for me in cultural humility.
There are parts of other cultures that aren’t always as accessible as a mostly common communion liturgy. I’ve lived in Western New York for just over six months now, and I’m still not really any closer to understanding the Wegmans hype. And that’s ok. We can’t expect those from other places to have the same relationship with rituals, stores, or stories that we have had opportunities to encounter our entire lives. Which is why it’s understandable when these non-Jewish astrologers arrive at the court of a Jewish ruler having read the wrong Jewish prophecy. They arrive reflecting the words of the prophet Isaiah, the words that we heard read this morning, about the gathering of the nation back and the increase of wealth. This is a prophecy about the restoration of the Jewish people following their exile to Babylon. This section of the Book of Isaiah was written after the Jewish people had returned from their exile, and sought to convey a message of hope for some sort of renewal following the traumatic experience of having their most important city, Jerusalem, levelled. The author of this portion of the prophecy was envisioning a time when Jerusalem would be rebuilt to its former glory, when its population would bounce back and the economy would see investment from all sorts of outside backers. People from all over the world would go to Jerusalem to spend their money, and the city would be as big, as powerful, and as wealthy as it had been before—and more so.
The magi, the central figures in today’s gospel reading, observed the signs of the times, signs they took to reveal the birth of a Jewish messiah, and read those signs through the lens of the restoration of power. That’s what makes sense. Even for outsiders, it only makes sense that the one who is prophesied to lead a people group out of oppression and into a new kingdom would seek to restore the political and economic prestige of the most important city for that people group. There were many insiders, many of the Jewish people, who would have agreed that this was the leader they were waiting for: the one who would restore the wealth and power they had once known. That’s what made sense, that was their idea of success and security. And today, this remains the prevailing vision we cast for ourselves of wealth and prosperity. We seek out leaders and rulers who are strong, who preach guarantees of the return of the old economy, the old patterns of influence. We rest in the comfort of hoping for a turn around, a shift in the ways things have been. Even when the same old patterns of despair come creeping into the corners of our vision. Even when the rulers who make these promises turn around and invade other nations, violating sovereignty and risking escalation. Even when the economic leaders seek to build wealth on shaky ground, risking economic collapse.
The magi arrive on the scene having travelled this road, the road of Isaiah 60. The road of power and might, the road of wealth and economic restoration, the road of traditional, institutional, normal power. But this is not the road they will take back home. The road they first travelled, the one that led them to Herod, to the imperial puppet, to the one profiting from the occupation of his own people, to the seat of political and religious power—that road did not lead them to the Christ child. Because the Christ child doesn’t live on that road. Instead, they had to reorient themselves, looking not to the leader described in Isaiah, but to the one pictured in Micah chapter 5.
“But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel. And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth, and he shall be the one of peace.”
This is the road down which they find the messiah. The road that leads to Bethlehem, a city nine miles from Jerusalem. Bethlehem was not a capital city in any sense. It is not where the king or governor ruled from, not where the high priest prayed, not where the markets were most bustling. Not the home of the scholarly elites or the wealthiest merchants. It was average, plain, somewhat rural. It was a city in the same way that places like Batavia and Canandaigua are technically cities. No shade on Batavia and Canandaigua, I’m sure they are lovely places and have a lot going for them. But they’re not the kinds of places where multitudes of camels would be found carrying heaps of gold and expensive incense. The road that the prophet Micah maps out for us takes us away from all that. It takes us away from the center—the center of power, the center of wealth, the center of religion. And it leads us towards the margins, towards the people and places where power is not. This is the road travelled by the shepherds, the outcasts barely getting by, and by the magi, the foreigners seeking an encounter with the messiah for reasons honestly unknown.
This is the road we are called to travel. This is the road on which we will encounter the Christ, as we seek to match our step with his. It’s a wide road—not wide so as to accommodate another lane of traffic or more street parking. But wide enough for all of us to travel together, finding strength, finding community, and finding hope along the way. As this season of Christmas comes to an end, as we continue down this road once more, of telling the story of the way that Christ walked, let this be our call: to travel home by another road. Not by the road of power, that bars the stranger and the poor. Not the road of kings and elites and pulpits and princes. Let us travel home together down the road of the shepherd, the one who feeds the flock, distributing justice and leading in peace. Let us travel this road, finding our home along the way, not in the center of it all, but at the margins. This is the work of Christmas. May it begin. Amen.
Amidst Forces of Empire
Some of you know that I spent my junior year of college in Madrid. Over the course of that year, many of you asked my parents some version of “How’s Kathryn’s time in Spain?” To which they replied, honestly, “Kathryn’s having a good time, but it’s hard too.”
I don’t think a lot of people studying abroad use “hard” to describe their time, but living in another country for any significant length of time is hard.
I spoke Spanish the majority of my time abroad, and it was hard. And yet I purposefully chose a full immersion program. Many immigrants and refugees living in a new country don’t have that choice, and some come with less knowledge of the local language than I did.
I had to get a student visa before going abroad, which was a frustrating process. Even more difficult was applying for a foreigner identity card while in Spain. Even with the help of my program, in the best of circumstances, dealing with government bureaucracy in a foreign language is overwhelming. Going through a process like that without extensive support – like many immigrants and refugees do – would be exponentially harder.
During my time abroad I lived in an unfamiliar place, in a different culture. It was hard for me to live in a city, in a different climate, with cultural norms I didn’t always understand, and that was even with a comfortable home and a host family to help guide me. I also knew that I would move back to the United States at the end of the school year. Many immigrants and refugees may not have any of these privileges as they adjust to living in a new place.
Today’s gospel reading doesn’t tell us the specifics of Jesus’ family’s experience as refugees in Egypt, but I imagine it was hard. For one thing, they left Israel because of a threat to their child. But what’s interesting about this Bible passage is that in a book with almost no details about Jesus’ childhood, eleven verses are devoted to telling the story of how Jesus became a refugee. This is a story that resonates not only with Jewish history throughout the Hebrew Bible but also with many other people groups who have their own histories of immigration. It’s hard to see how Christianity could be used to justify acts of racism, xenophobia, or colonialism by those in power when Jesus himself lived as a refugee because of the threat of state sanctioned violence against him.
Jesus’ refugee experience ends well. It would have been an untimely end to the gospels, after all, if he had successfully been murdered by Herod in his childhood or if he had died from violence while in a foreign land. And yet, even as Jesus’ family successfully flees persecution, Herod kills every other child under 2 in Bethlehem. We don’t see the large-scale destruction that must have resulted. Instead, we get a deeply personal image of Rachel crying out in grief for her children.
This is a deeply troubling text. It certainly doesn’t feel to me like God is present. How could God have let this kind of destruction happen? In fact, it crossed my mind as I read the text that it feels a little like God fled to Egypt alongside his son.
I don’t have answers to the discomfort this text brings. I actually think finding a way to explain the discomfort away would be a mistake. The response to a story of this nature, whether a biblical story from long ago or a news story in our world today, should not be a detached “oh, that’s sad.” The passage itself gives us this image of Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be consoled. That’s a perfectly normal response to tragedy, one that doesn’t – and perhaps can’t – happen in a world with overexposure to horrific news stories on top of personal loss.
Setting aside the question of God’s presence, I think we can all agree that this destruction was Herod’s fault. God may be a force for justice in the world, but unjust rulers have always existed in spite of God. In Herod’s case, he appears to be so afraid of any threat to his power that he’s willing to kill not just Jesus but any and all other children as well. Just a few verses before our gospel reading this morning is the story of the magi, in which Herod learns that a child has been born King of the Jews, one who will be worshiped. He’s not happy about it. Perhaps he knows that Jesus will grow up to disrupt the status quo – in fact, he already has by being born to a teenage, unwed mother. Perhaps Herod’s afraid of any dissent to his rule. Perhaps he’s terrified of what Rome will do if they find out about this so-called King of the Jews. Whatever the reason, he targets a whole group of people for fear of any challenge to his power.
This is, unfortunately, a story that has been repeated throughout history.
Enslaved African Americans were punished for speaking their native languages and for learning to read because slave holders feared a rebellion.
Native American boarding schools were established to forcefully assimilate Native American children into white norms, including many abusive practices to stop Native children from practicing their culture or speaking their language.This attempt to undermine Native American sovereignty and wipe out diversity continued into recent history, with the last federally funded residential school for Native Americans in the United States closing in 1996.
In 1964, Black Rochestarians protesting discrimination were met with police dogs, police gunfire, and, eventually, close to a thousand National Guardsmen. Restoring peace through violence was more important to white leaders than meeting demands for justice, although some change did eventually result from the protest.
In the early 20th century, Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans were deported regardless of citizenship status in the southwestern U.S. after being blamed for the Great Depression.
This sounds remarkably similar to the arrests, detentions, and deportations regardless of citizenship status that has been happening in the United States recently as ICE and Border Patrol target people of color out of fear and prejudice.
Transgender Americans are currently being targeted because some in power fear that any challenge to the gender binary might cause the whole patriarchy to collapse. The United States ranks third in the world for transgender people who have been violently killed, and LGBTQ+ young people are 4x more likely to attempt suicide than their peers, with even higher rates for transgender and nonbinary youth, due to the discrimination they face.
When I thought about this gospel story and the similar persecution that has taken place across history by unjust rulers, I began to wonder about the lectionary pairing. I don't know about you, but this gospel text doesn't feel like a praise God kind of theme like we see in today’s text from Isaiah. However, when I read the verses around the lectionary excerpt, I was left with even more questions about why the lectionary is excerpted the way it is. Because as it turns out, these verses of praise come in the context of praising God for wiping out the Israelites' adversaries. That image of a God who enacts justice through vengeance doesn’t sit better with me than a God who leads his son to safety while Herod kills every child in Bethlehem.
But this lectionary pairing should make us pause. It’s such a stark pairing of praise and destruction that it makes me think it could only be purposeful. When we consider that both texts are in the context of destruction, it seems logical to conclude that perhaps the lectionary pairing is a warning about praising God for destruction. After all, those only concerned with Jesus’ safety might see this gospel story as a happily ever after and praise God for his role in saving Jesus from Herod’s destruction. But although the circumstances are different than in Isaiah, should we really be praising God if it means we’re complicit in or even glorifying violence?
Rachel’s response to destruction in our gospel text is very different. Out in Scripture, a collection of LGBTQ+ inclusive lectionary commentary by scholars and pastors compiled by the Human Rights Campaign, highlights the importance of her weeping, noting how it can resist oppression and call the community to action. Certainly, I think we should be grieving, calling attention to injustice, refusing to be easily consoled. But especially for those of us who aren’t directly affected by discrimination, unjust policy, and targeted attacks, I think we need to take it a step further with action.
I have often felt, especially this year, like I don't know what to do. I've been grappling with history, grappling with the present, and wondering how to act for justice. I imagine that many of you are also wondering what you can do.
For those of you who don't know, I'm getting my masters to teach English for Speakers of Other Languages, meaning I'm learning how to work with immigrants and refugees. I'm also an LGBTQ+ young person. I want to use what I'm learning in my classes and my personal experience as a starting point to offer a few suggestions.
Protesting, calling representatives, advocating for more just policy, and voting are all important action steps. For some of us, it might be easier to learn a language or brush up on one we learned when we were younger. This can help disrupt racist English-only views that devalue other languages and their speakers. For those of you who are not language people, you might take the time to learn about local and national histories of racism and resistance, histories that many of us never learned in school. As a starting place, Shane Weigand, a SUNY Geneseo professor, has a one hour YouTube video on Racist Policy and Resistance in Rochester, New York. Or maybe you could show the LGBTQ+ people in your life that they are loved by practicing inclusive language, using their pronouns correctly, sharing your own pronouns, and challenging anti-LGBTQ+ remarks.
If all of these action steps seem like overwhelming places to start, remember that there are already organizations taking action for justice that you can support by donating or volunteering. One way to support immigrants and refugees here in Fairport is through Learning Links, an organization that offers free tutoring for K-12 students, including many students who are low-income and some who are learning English. They also offer English and citizenship classes for adults. I can speak from experience when I say that tutoring with them is fun and rewarding, but if that’s not your thing, there’s other ways to support Learning Links, including school supply drives.
The Asbury First Community Outreach Center in the city of Rochester is another local ministry that offers hot meals, medical care, showers, laundry, computer access, a storehouse of clothes and home goods, and more to those who need them. I volunteered with the breakfast ministry at Asbury First UMC before their community outreach center opened and it was clear that those who came really appreciated getting a hot meal. They are largely volunteer run, and they also have a list of needs on their website, making it easy to donate to support their work.
No one needs to – or should – do everything. But any action towards justice, no matter how small, is better than nothing. Maybe you can’t stop Herod’s raging, but saving a child is still one more child saved. And if every person in this congregation took one action, imagine the change we could make together.
Whatever we do, we must not ignore the injustice around us while praising God. We must stop and see the destruction, grieve for those harmed, and declare that there is still work to be done in the name of justice.
May we engage in that work, in God’s name. Amen.
God With Us
Christmas Eve
Throughout most of the year, I’m a lectionary preacher, and that means that I would typically only end up preaching from the same text one every three years. But Christmas Eve just has to be different. And by different, I mean that it has to be the same each year. Which means trying to place the same story in the midst of a world that, year after year, does not seem to grasp the message of hope, peace, joy, and love that we year, year after year. How do we reconcile this idea that God, in God’s infinite compassion and love for us mortals, came to dwell among us—even as wars continue to claim the lives of children. Even as the very children that Christ tells us are closer to God have their lives upended by a violent immigration system. Even as the children born today are made to reckon with the devastation wrought by climate change, economic uncertainty, and a growing disregard for others. This is the world that seeks to welcome, once again, the Christ child, the Prince of Peace, the messiah in our midst.
Much was the same in Jesus’ time. Jesus’ people were enduring a brutal occupation. They were held captive by the Roman authorities, subject to the economic, cultural, and military domination of an imperial government. They were not a free people, and so they longed for freedom. There were those who looked for the coming of the messiah, of God’s chosen one. There were those who expected a military leader, a warlord who could challenge the power of Rome. Some cried out for an uprising, for an armed overthrow of the Roman authorities in the occupied territories. Out of the desperation of the people grew a desperate desire to see a restoration of their autonomy. And, of course, the prophet Isaiah famously wrote about nation taking up sword against nation, about the people arming themselves with farm implements, and God’s vision for a never-ending war, right?
Of course not. The vision that the prophet relays is one that doesn’t make sense. It’s an end to the wars that are meant to set us free and keep us free. It’s an end to the human mindset that we can achieve a positive end by violent means. It’s an assertion that love will only prevail, that justice will only prevail, when faced with the unarmed truth. The truth that each of us needs to eat. The truth that each of us carries inherent worth as bearers of the image of God, of the Imago Dei. The truth that God’s vision for us is that of the Good Life, lived in the community of the City of God. Truths that are embodied in the infant in the manger—truths that we can see echoing outward in the lives of each child we encounter. And truth doesn’t come much more unarmed than in an infant, who must depend fully on others in order to survive.
This is the truth that Mary sings about in her Magnificat, when she proclaims that her soul magnifies the Lord, the Lord who fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty. The Lord who stands with the poor, with the vulnerable, with the weak, with the brokenhearted. The one born into the roughest of conditions, into this impoverished, unconventional family doing their best to get by in a world not fit for their survival. This is the child whom we are to trust will lead us to freedom. Not with swords and great armies that guarantee victory by some human definition.
As we commence this Christmas season, may we be called to see the Christ child in the face of each child born to that same poverty. May we hear the call to see Christ in the children on food stamps, in the migrant children torn from the arms of their parents. In the queer and trans children, who struggle each day for the right to be seen. Each of these is the Christ Child, born again and again into this hurting and broken world. May we hear this call this night, to cherish this love. Amen.
Love Will Not Fail
You’ve got to hand it to Matthew: next to the birth narrative that Luke gives us, this one is pretty succinct. Matthew starts by giving us a list of some of Jesus’ ancestors, shows us this brief interaction between Joseph and this angel, and then boom—there’s a baby. Just like how it happens in real life. The version of Jesus’ birth that we see in Matthew doesn’t really stand out. Unlike Luke’s account, Matthew’s doesn’t really make for good pageant material—there are no shepherds and no angels singing, there’s no pilgrimage to Bethlehem, no census. There’s no song of praise from Mary, no prophecy from Zechariah. Matthew’s version doesn’t match the brevity of John’s “In the beginning was the Word” and “the Word made flesh” riddles that begin his account of Jesus’ life. Of course, Matthew has more to say about Jesus’ birth than good ole Mark, who doesn’t have time for all that baby nonsense and just says, “so there was this guy, Jesus, who’s a fully-grown adult and always has been.” But when compared to the whole drawn-out tale that Luke gives us, the one that we break out every year on Christmas Eve because it makes the best story, Matthew’s version is underwhelming. And what’s more, Matthew went out of his way to tell us about the fact that Jesus was born, only to write Mary out of most of the story. We don’t see an interaction between Mary and an angel, we don’t hear any of Mary’s thoughts or words, and we don’t even really see Mary as a character in this story—especially not an active one.
Indeed, Mary isn’t really seen to be doing much of the acting in this account. The text doesn’t even say that she tells Joseph that she’s pregnant, only that she was “found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit.” I’m not even really sure what that means exactly. I’m not sure how you could intuit or infer or find evidence that someone had become pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Surely that knowledge has to come from testimony, right? Does Mary know in this account how she got pregnant? Joseph clearly doesn’t know, or didn’t believe Mary when she told him, if she did. Joseph is the only one we see in this account who is visited by a divine messenger, the only one who is seen trying to decide what to do next. Obviously, because Joseph is described as a righteous man, deciding what to do next means following the law, and that would mean leaving Mary. The correct action for Joseph, the righteous thing for him to do from a socio-cultural and legal standpoint, is to distance himself from the woman who must surely have committed adultery. We’re told that Joseph has resolved to do this. He has made up his mind to follow the law, to consider the engagement void, and move on with his life. I suppose we’re supposed to admire the fact that he decided not to make a big deal about it, even though Mary would have had to reckon with being a single mother whom everyone would know had once been engaged to Joseph. Maybe he was more conflict-averse than righteous.
While centering the role of Joseph might make those of us who love the vocal and empowered version of Mary uncomfortable or even angry, I do think that there is some value in this account of Jesus’ birth. And I do think that there is assurance in this passage that love will not fail. To see this value and know this assurance, we need to begin by challenging the characterization of Joseph in this passage. Even if Joseph, and the writer of Matthew’s gospel, characterize Joseph’s planned actions as “righteous,” there is no getting around the fact that they are, ultimately, self-serving. Joseph doesn’t want the embarrassment of marrying an alleged adulteress, doesn’t want the burden of raising someone else’s child, and doesn’t want the legal question of whether or not he should go through with marrying Mary. Joseph is acting out of a desire to conform, to save face. He’s making it all about him. That’s his initial response, his reflex, and also the course of action he settles on after considering his options for a little while. There’s no sign that Joseph seeks to uncover the truth about Mary’s situation, or that he talks things over with her before making his decision. His decision which, again, benefits him more than it benefits Mary. Do we know for sure that Joseph didn’t wrestle with this decision, that he didn’t lie awake at night wondering and praying about what he should do, how he could handle this situation in a way that would be acceptable to both him and Mary? No. But, even if he did, he still settles on a solution that results in less hassle for him, and more burden on Mary.
Before anyone thinks that I just have it out for Joseph, his motivation is called out by the angel in his dream, who tells him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife. Joseph is afraid. Afraid of the consequences, afraid of the public perception, afraid of what his family and friends might think. He’s afraid, perhaps, to go against tradition and the law. These fears should all sound familiar, not only because they may resonate with many of us today, but because they are themes that echo throughout the ministry of Jesus. Jesus is constantly challenging social customs and the ways in which the law is understood. He challenges readings of the Sabbath that put strict obedience above ensuring that rest can actually be practiced, even by those whose labor is exploited. He talks to single women alone, and to those deemed untouchable due to their gender, ethnicity, illness, or disability. He calls disciples to follow him, leaving behind their livelihoods and their families. He strikes down our concepts of family and neighbor, defining each not by geographic or genetic proximity, but by lived relationships. Not by legal status, but by love. Love, which is the measure of all that Jesus teaches. Love, which is the lens through which we are to examine the law and how we move through the world.
Joseph’s call, through this dream of his, is to reject fear and embrace love. It is to be a part of the birthing of love into the world, a part of raising that love to fulfill the call that is placed on the life of this love incarnate. His call is to cast off the fear that leads him to wonder “what will they think of me…of us?” His call is to measure what is right not by the law or by social convention, but by love. This, too, is our call. When we see queer love threatened by laws and by violence, God’s unfailing love demands that we abandon our fear and stand with those who are threatened. When the love of migrants and refugees is threatened by ICE and by the violence wrought by white supremacists and Christian nationalists, God’s unfailing love demands that we abandon our fear of the other and stand with those who are vulnerable. Whenever love is forgotten, neglected, made to feel underserved, seen as an abomination—God’s unfailing love calls us not to be afraid, but to walk in solidarity with those left hated and hopeless by the world. Our call is Joseph’s. Not to make it all about us, not to simply do what’s easiest or most beneficial for ourselves, not to make decisions out of fear—but to be compelled by the love that does not measure worth by our social standing, and that sacrifices what’s normal for what is right. Love that supplies support, that holds hands and breathes through the pain. Love that is God’s solidarity with the suffering made known.
As we come to the end of our Advent journey, remember that it is still Advent. Even as we hear stories of the birth of the Christchild, we are still preparing for his arrival. So let us prepare, and let us heed this call, to cast aside our fears and embrace the love that comes down at Christmas. Let us live this love, each day, as those who seek to walk as Christ walked before us. Amen.
Joy Will Not Fail
In early March of 2025, Palestinian-American organizer, refugee, and Columbia University graduate student, Mahmoud Khalil, was detained by ICE at his home in New York City. There was no warrant, only an order from the State Department that called for the revocation of Khalil’s legal status and his deportation from the United States. Khalil was taken not to the nearby ICE facility in New Jersey, where his wife, Abdalla, would begin searching for him, but to a detention facility in Louisiana. He was detained for three months before being released. While he was detained, Khalil missed the birth of his son, a reality he would describe as a profound heartbreak. Khalil was taken from his family and locked away for months, not for having caused harm to anyone else, but for disruptively taking the stance against the violence carried out in Gaza. In July of 2025, Khalil was invited to a comedy show by comedian Ramy Youssef. At the end of the performance, after having laughed and enjoyed himself despite all he had been through, Khalil was invited up on stage. From there he shared a phrase that did not originate from him, but has been shared widely across the internet and beyond: “joy is an act of resistance.”
This is the week of Advent when we talk about joy, in the midst of a season which focuses on joy. In case anyone was in danger of forgetting that this season is all about joy, we have a large reminder off to my left. We go to parties, give and receive gifts, eat way too many cookies, listen to cheerful songs about babies and just how quiet and peaceful newborns are. We’re supposed to feel joy, we’re supposed to feel happy. Our children are home. We get to visit our grandchildren. The semester is finally over, and we have a few weeks to rest. And what better way of encapsulating that sense of joy that comes with the season than Mary’s song of praise. She has found out that she is going to bear a child who is supposed to be a leader of his people, she has just gone and visited her relative, Elizabeth, who is carrying her own child who will be a leader among his people. As the two of them are sharing their excitement, they just can’t contain their joy and suddenly…Mary starts to sing. And of course she starts singing about how cute and quiet babies are, right? No. She sings about how God has brought down the powerful and raised up the lowly. She sings about how God has filled the hungry poor and sent the rich away with nothing. She sings a song not about counting her own blessings, not talking about how grateful she is to have what she needs and to be alive and living in such a great empire. Not about her nuclear family or having some idyllic life. She sings a song about a total reversal of the world she has always known, the world as those in power insist it needs to be. She sings a song about the kingdom of God.
Back in July, there was a piece on NPR’s program Code Switch about this idea of joy as resistance. One of the NPR staff people, Leah Donnella, who self-identifies as a curmudgeon, keeps expressing her skepticism about this idea. She can see how joy can be a means of resistance for people like Mahmoud Khalil, queer folks at Pride events or nightclubs, or immigrants who dance to music from their homelands despite the reality that doing so could turn them into targets for deportation. But surely there must be a line somewhere. Surely not all joy can be considered resistance. Is it resistance to any system of inequality for any of us to find joy in a decadent meal now and then or in a family vacation? Donnella comes across in this interview as little more than a contrarian, which of course I can relate to, but the question that she puts forward is an important one: whose joy is resistance? Our joy is resistance, I would say. Anything we do to not fall into despair, anything we do to remain true to who we are and to what God is calling us. But I think the most profoundly resistant joy is found in people like Mary, the people with their backs against the wall. The deepest joy, that resists the despair that drowns out all other hope, that cuts through the mourning and misery that occupy each moment of each day. Joy that cannot be contained in the lungs of an unwed teenager who has just found out that she is part of the story of salvation that God is telling. The story that sweeps past the wealthy and the powerful, and rests incarnate in the bodies of the poor and the occupied.
Mary’s joy is not simply an attitude that she puts on. For us to truly understand how meaningful her joy is, we have to think about where and when Mary is. She’s a young woman, still unmarried, part of a peripheral people living in a land occupied by one of the most powerful empires the world has seen. She is nobody. Her people have tried and failed to rise up and overthrow the Romans. She would have known city streets and highways adorned with Roman soldiers keeping an eye out for rebels who looked like her. And then there’s her betrothed. Joseph, the worker, who had steady pay but no evidence of titles. They were poor, working class, occupied—nothing. Even so, Mary sings her song of joy, her song of hope. She sings a song of a God at work in the world, whose solidarity lies not with those in power, but with the oppressed. She calls on the psalms of her people, referencing God’s faithfulness in words that would have been passed down from generation to generation. She’s taking part in a culture that was controlled, that was demonized by those in power. She shares this joy with her foremothers, but most importantly, she shares this joy with Elizabeth. Because part of how joy becomes resistance is through sharing it with others. The writer Audre Lorde once said that “The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers.” Mary does not keep her joy to herself—she shares it. She builds that bridge between her and her co-conspirator.
To display joy, and to share joy with another, especially as a part of an occupied people, is to resist hopelessness. It’s to resist despair. The sharing of our joy becomes a magnifier of God’s promised reign, of the coming of the kin-dom. To express our joy, to cling to it with all that we have, and to share it with others, is to proclaim that the powers of this world have no power over us, for our joy is in the revolutionary world we see through God’s eyes. So listen to the joy of the poor. Make space for those who are most in danger to find and share their joy. Find the things that bring you joy—and share those things.
Our call is to embody this joy. Our call is to magnify this joy by our very souls. By the way we live and the way we die, we are called to practice joy, to practice this alternative way of being. In practicing joy, the profound joy that causes our very selves to vibrate, we do so deliberately. Practicing joy, refusing to let joy fail even in the face of mourning and misery, is a sign that nothing can take away our joy. In the midst of a world that crushes hopes, that disturbs peace, and that delights in taking away our joy, sharing in joy together is how we endure. Sharing in our joy together, building bridges between us and our neighbors, is how we carry on through difficult times. It’s how we resist losing ourselves and our communities. So embrace the joy of the season! Embrace the joy that arises from hearing the Good News of the world that is about to turn. Embrace the joys of the everyday—the music, the dancing, the art, the games, the family and friends. And share this joy with one another. Not so that we will never be sad, not because we’re not allowed to grieve or lament. But so that no one is allowed to fall too deeply into their despair. Joy will not fail. Not if we don’t let it. May it be so. Amen.