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Weekly Sermons from Dan – December 4, 2011

“Walking Through a Dilemma: Joseph & Bethlehem”

Matthew 1:18-24

There are some journeys that are not just awkward or uncomfortable, but they are soul-numbing. And some journeys are life changing. Some journeys are like the trip to the teenager’s room to confront her with the pot you found while gathering the laundry off her bedroom floor.  Or it might be the trip some of you have taken to the hospital in the middle of the night to say your final goodbye to a loved one who had just breathed their last.  For some of you, it might be the short journey from the clinic’s reception area to your own car, when - after hearing the news - you begin to mark your life as “before and after cancer.” 

In the gospel lesson today, Joseph is taking a similar journey.  Look closely on this road. His head is down, his feet are dragging, and it’s going to take him twice as long to walk the normal hour and one half back to Bethlehem from Mary’s cousin Elizabeth’s house.  This is the worst day of Joseph’s life; he has just heard the news; his betrothed, his Mary, is pregnant. And whom do you think everyone is going to point to, unless he says something first? It’s either him or her.  If he tells everyone he’s not the father, he will subject Mary to being an outcast, at the very least, or perhaps even stoned to death. Should he tell everyone and save his own family from the humiliation of having an illegitimate heir? Or should he take on the shame with Mary and ask his family to do the same?  There are some things in this story, which are hidden, that make Joseph a most conflicted man.

How do you handle hard news, conflicting agendas in your life?  What do you do when life challenges you with a moment that you never imagined could happen to you?  When the phone rings in the middle of the night and it’s the police sergeant, how do you pull your heart out of your stomach and take the first step out of the house?  How do you respond when you are handed the pink slip? When it is your life, your career, your hope that hangs in the balance, how do you put one foot in front of the other and make it through the day, to the car or, in Joseph’s case, down the road?

Like many others, I have spent much of my life running away from disappointing, challenging, life-numbing situations.  I was once talking to a very good friend about the memory of the night that my father was taken out of our home by ambulance.  I was nine years old, and all I remember about that night is running as hard as I could, as fast as I could, back and forth from the kitchen to the living room. In a panic, I ran, shouting at the top of my lungs, “What is going on? What is going on? What is going on?” In some ways, each moment of fear or disappointment that I have known in life became a trigger to remember and, for me, to re-live that moment internally, even though I may have found different ways and means to express it externally.  The fear, the panic, the absolute loss of control and the desire to avoid these experiences ruled my life for a very long time.

I wonder what Joseph did in the moment when he first heard the news.  If you ask me, there is a pause in the gospel writers’ rhythm.  I believe there are many pauses like this in our scriptures -pregnant pauses in which something in life reaches up from our depths and impregnates or brings flesh to the writing and is breathed into these inspired words. These moments provide us with a portal to enter the humanness of this story.  In this pause, this space between the words on the page, I can feel Joseph’s hurt and anger.  Perhaps this anger, like most of the anger I have known, has its source less in his pride and the humiliation of it all and more in the disappointment of a betrayed hope, a now forlorn love, and the weight of an unknown, different and unexpected life ahead.  

Have you ever needed a pause in your life? Have you ever needed five or maybe ten seconds of space, to take a moment of stress or crisis in, before you respond?  There have been times when I wished that time could stand still while I take in the shock of it all.  I have known times when my world, my emotional foundation and my spiritual well being, were shaken. In the panic of that instant, in the hurt and pain, and whatever else it is that runs deep within our humanness, I reacted with such strong and immediate force –  that I surprised even myself with the cruelty of my words, the fire of my passion, the pure white heat of my anger. 

Like others, some of these times I can predict, even anticipate and thus prepare for.  But there are other times, and this story for Joseph is one of those, there are other times when all the triggers connected to your past are pulled, and in an instant, and you can only react and pray that the rest of the world will experience the pause which is needed, because it has already passed you.

I have known more than one of these moments in my life.   Years ago, I was talking on the phone with someone I knew, and I knew it would be a difficult conversation. They said a phrase that in two words changed my world, my life.  “You need;” these words required much more than the noun and the verb imply. In the moment I heard, “you need…….” I was again that nine year-old, and in my adult body, I began running around once again, screaming and yelling, “What is going on?  What is going on? What is going on?” 

After that horrible day, which was one of the most stressful, challenging, demanding days both spiritually and emotionally of my life, something happened.  It took weeks, months really, but somehow – perhaps through the angelic presences of Katie, my wife, the support of great friends or maybe the nature of time and my own untapped strength –I began to see how this process had become, even in its unfairness and injustice, an opportunity to experience something of God in my life.  It was a very faint whisper of a promise, but somehow I heard it. I heard the promise that there would be time, room, a pause in which I could discover a direction, a different outcome, a different life than the one my initial reaction envisioned. And once I heard that promise, that whisper – long before anything in that mess was satisfied – I was different. I was, for one of the first times in my life, composed in the middle of a most challenging time.  My hunger for justice was satisfied; my thirst for anger was quenched. 

I bristle and stiffen when I hear the scripture that tells us that all things work for good for those who are looking to God.  This particular time I am talking about is not one in which I believe that God tested me, or that I’m grateful for having lived through.  Life tests us enough without God becoming something of an eternal proctor.  There is enough for me to be grateful for in my life, without including this most disturbing experience as one that I can look back on and be thankful.  But this I did learn.  We can never really run away from the challenge of a life-altering moment, we can only choose how we will face it.  Somehow when faced with what others said, “I needed,” I eventually did not choose to keep screaming in panic “What is going on?”  but instead –  I found myself pausing - taking moments, a few minutes sometimes even days to observe and respond to what was going on inside me, instead of hoping to control what was going on outside of my control with fear and anxiousness. And you must just believe me, it was only as I walked that most difficult path that I heard a faith whisper that has changed my life, changed how I approach difficult conversations, stressful moments and the crises of my life.

It is in a dream that Joseph hears, what I believe, is a similar faint whisper.   When Joseph felt at his lowest, in the moment as this pregnant pause is passing, Joseph must choose what to do.  He dreams – he has a vision of sorts.  God sends Joseph a message on this most difficult road.  When he cannot get to sleep because of his racing thoughts, when his feet can no longer pace around his cot, when exhaustion finally overcomes his wandering mind, he hears a word that sounds something like a right direction. The angel says, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

It is out of this dream, this vision, that Joseph moves beyond the pregnant pause of his distress and finds the courage and grace to make a decision that saves Mary’s life, provides the child with a sense of legitimacy and is for Joseph the right thing to do.  Joseph is righteous, virtuous, and honorable not because he is somehow obedient or because he outsmarts everyone, not because he finds a way to have the girl and his pride too, but because he chooses, in the midst of a desperate moment, to pause and find a way to be gracious. 

Weekly Sermons from Dan – December 11, 2011

Cantata - No Sermon

Weekly Sermons from Dan – December 18, 2011

The Journeys We Want to Avoid:

From Nazareth to Bethlehem
Luke 2:1-7

I put the keys in the ignition of our 1987 Chrysler Minivan with the wood paneling, and the engine turned over.  How many times have you done something that seems like the same thing? And I don’t mean the just starting your minivan.  I mean, we all get up every morning to go to work.  Sometimes we fly out of the house running late for an appointment or a meeting or to pick up a kid somewhere.  Or maybe we are standing around, and we decide that it’s as good a time as any to go to Target. We put the key in the ignition and the car in gear. It’s just another day, just another errand.  But then there are other days, as we press the key forward, we know that the next time we do this, just before we start the trip back home, our lives will, in one way or another, be different.

It was this kind of day for me as I put the van in drive and started out to face the morning traffic on Snelling Avenue. I was headed for Highway 36.  I’d driven this route for years.  I knew every bump in the road, every place a patrol care was waiting.  But on this day it felt anything but routine; it felt overwhelming, ominous, almost frightening.

I wonder if Mary and Joseph had the same kind of feelings when Joseph put the bridle on the donkey and pulled the beast over to Mary so she could climb on.  They knew where they were going, at least Joseph did. They were going to his ancestral home, his family homestead.  And just like today, with those of us who no longer live where our families are from, we still know how to get home.  It is a familiar journey for Joseph, and maybe for Mary, but it is not a journey they wanted to take.

Have you ever traveled on a familiar journey? It may be the long trip back home that some of you are preparing to take this week or maybe even just your commute to work or a trip to the mall. As you are on your way, do you pick out signs along the way? Maybe you passed a small town that was once your arch rivals in basketball.  Or maybe it was the intersection where you spaced out one day and went right through a red light and were just plain lucky no one was coming.  Have you ever come to that place in the road where your life once meant one thing and today it means another?

That is just how I felt turning off Highway 36 at Rice St.  Usually when I took Rice Street this way, it meant a trip to the best sporting goods store in the north metro area, a place called Stiechens.  I’d go into Stiechens to try on the $300 baseball gloves or to see if anything on the clearance rack fit me.   I’ll never forget this; it was to Stiechens that I bolted out of the house at about 9:30 at night with my three and one-half year old son in tow; the very night the Twins won the 1987 American League Pennant.  Stiechens, I knew, would have tee shirts like the ones they were wearing in the Dome.  We got three of them.  But today was very different.  I had turned on Rice Street to meet with a room full of people, one of which had, shall we say, “a few problems with me.”   I didn’t want to be going to our hostess, Helen’s house because I knew the memory of what was about to happen would replace the memory I already had of turning off of Highway 36  & Rice. It was a memory that made me smile.  But there I was on Rice Street, passing Stiechens, on my way to Helen’s house.

There are journeys we all take that we don’t want to be on. It’s hard to believe that Joseph and Mary wanted to be on the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  It would have taken several days, even with a donkey. The places they would have had to go through were a field trip of the history of Israel. There would have been one monument after another of this battle and that defeat, memories of this prophet and another broken promise. Taking the journey to Bethlehem would have been full of the memories of defeat and oppression, faith and hope, tragedies and secrets.

I pulled over into a parking lot of a city park just before I got to Helen’s house.  I wanted to catch my breath, which is as good a way as any of saying that felt I needed to pray.  I needed to catch a different breath than the short shallow ones I was breathing. I catch my breath a lot while driving. I seldom listen to the radio, and, in the days before cell phones, I looked forward to the times in the car as times of being alone.  So, I’m sitting in this parking lot thinking, catching my breath, praying out loud and wondering what good is going to come out of this.  I’d asked for this meeting. I asked that this person who had, “a few problems with me,” to meet with me and a few others at Helen’s and answer the question, “What have I done to offend you?”  I had planned to just listen, take notes and, no matter what, try to hear what sensitivity in this person I had set off to such an extent that we, who were once friends even allies, were now – not.

I’m sitting in the van, and I take out a note of encouragement that Katie had written me, reminding me that no matter what happened she would be waiting when I got back home.  I remember at the time, for a moment, I wanted to run back into something like her arms, but there are some journeys, even some journeys you don’t want to be on, where there is no turning back. So I pulled out of the parking lot and into Helen’s driveway instead.

The plan was to listen to this person and then repeat back what she had said as closely as I could.  Afterward, she would let me know if I had heard her correctly. I was then to ask forgiveness for what I perceived I had done to contribute to this mess. Instead of standing up for my side of the story, I was being asked to listen to another side of the story.  This was the journey I did not want to take.  I did not want to be on this journey, not so much because I was anxious about what I might have done, but because of how it might ask me to be different

Mary and Joseph, in the scripture today, are on the part of their journey they did not want to be on.  If you are Mary, who wants to be surrounded by strangers giving birth?  And if you’re Joseph, who wants to be surrounded by family with something you would rather hide?  Both of them – even our world for that matter – would be different than they were before.  For them, Mary would be carrying a baby and Joseph would be a father. 

For me my journey meant facing something new within myself that I wasn’t sure I wanted to carry.   So I listened to all the “problems.”  It was so hard to just listen, hard not to go on the offensive, hard to try to allow another to express themselves when what they were saying cut me to the core. And yet, as I listened, what I heard was someone who just wanted me to listen, someone who wanted to be heard.  I asked forgiveness for not being attentive.  My protagonist did the same. We had some Spritz cookies, and before we left, we tried to catch our breath by holding hands and asking Helen our hostess to pray.

When I got back in my minivan, I waited a few moments in the cold before I turned the key.  I waited, just as Mary and Joseph are still waiting this Advent.  And in that moment, I took one of the deepest breaths I’ve ever taken in my life.  But here is the thing. It wasn’t that deep breath of “Whewwwww, that is over,” or the white knuckle prayer of thanks which goes, “Thank God, we made it.”  It was a breath of fresh air, a breath of new life. 

You see I didn’t know it at the time but – and you must just believe me here – I was not the same person on the way home as the one who had set out for Helen’s house.  My life began slowly to change that day. I began to be less fearful of difficult conversations with people who had problems with me. I began to see conflict with others in my life, not always as something that was cutting me to the core, but sometimes it was something that was telling me something about someone else, myself and our world.  Beginning on that day, some power that is beyond me, some holy sacred presences sprouted to life within me, and it began to provide a pathway to redeem the fear, anger and defensiveness that has always seemed to rule my life.

It is from this day that I have gained the courage to begin the spiritual, emotional and sometimes physical journeys I do not want to take.  It is from this day that I have come to believe that there is a power waiting to be born in each one of us. It is a power that can find a way to redeem even the most challenging, controlling and frightening disorders that are at the core of who we have become.

Weekly Sermons from Dan – December 25, 2011

“The Rhythm of Christmas”

Luke 2

When I was a little boy – like most little boys and girls I knew – I just could not wait for Christmas.  My mother seemed to understand the great anticipation. In fact, I think she encouraged it because she would not let us get out of bed until four a.m.  And then we were allowed to open only one present right away.  We had to wait for her father and mother, my grandparents, to get there before we could open all of our presents.

I remember the year I got a bike, a black Schwinn Stingray.  Mom couldn’t wrap it so it was obviously the one present I could have before Grandpa and Grandma arrived.  That year, I was the one who called them up on the phone.  Grandpa was a dairy farmer so I’m not sure if I woke him up.  I said, “We’re up, we’re up” and hung up. Then I ran out of the house into the back yard to watch for them. You see, my grandparents lived just down the street, and the streets in my hometown were nothing like a city street. At six years old, I could almost throw a baseball from my yard to their yard.  So I could see them coming out of the house. 

I still see my grandparents through the eyes of a six year-old. They were ancient. In 1962 they would have been 62 years old, which, as I say that, suddenly does not sound so ancient.  They took what seemed like forever.  As they got closer, they seemed to slow down.  It was torture. Their steps were so deliberate, methodical, and almost thoughtful.  I began to wonder if they even knew that it was Christmas.

Have you ever felt like that six year-old at Christmas watching and waiting for his grandparents to get down the street and into the house so you can open presents?  I mean, so what that it’s four o’clock in the morning!  It’s Christmas!  Aren’t things supposed to move at a different pace?  Isn’t a part of Christmas day supposed to be lived in a different way?  Isn’t there a different rhythm to the day on Christmas day? Isn’t Christmas supposed to be filled with the same sort of “can’t hold it in excitement” and the glorious wonder of children?

A couple of years ago I was driving to church on Christmas day. It was another year when Christmas day fell on a Sunday. I was leaving early because, well, I like to get to church early, even on Christmas day.  It was very odd that morning; there was absolutely no traffic.  There were no cars in any of the parking places, no cars at the mall. There are always cars at the mall.  There was an eerie quiet. I could hear my tires on the road. And then, when I went to merge onto the highway – nobody, nothing. I took the chance that the State Highway Patrol was also on break and sailed down the road.  Usually, even on Sunday mornings, that stretch of road was crowded and difficult.  But on that Christmas day, it was my own personal highway.

It sure felt different pulling into the parking lot that day. Without the traffic, the hustle and bustle and the white noise that is a part of just being out in the city, I felt, well – peaceful, calm, tranquil, even heavenly.  It was almost as if I was still standing with my candle and the last note of “Silent Night” lingering in my chest.

Did any of you have a similar experience coming here today?  Is there a different rhythm on Christmas day, Christmas day when it’s on a Sunday?  If you breathe in carefully, maybe you can still smell the candles. If you shut your eyes, but not for too long, maybe you can still see where you were sitting last night. The stores are closed today; you are probably going to have to look to find a gas station that is open. I don’t know but my guess is that you will be lucky to find a Caribou or a Starbucks that’s open. (If you do, let me know.)  Sometimes before the presents or maybe after the presents there are a few moments when from out of all the hubbub, we experience an even deeper sense of peace or serenity or whatever it is that feels quiet or at least quiets us.

There are different rhythms to experiencing Christmas day, to experiencing Christmas day on a Sunday. Maybe taking a look at what we are thinking and feeling today through the different rhythms we find in the scriptures, can help us tomorrow or even the day after tomorrow to keep the power of this day growing within us, and then take it back out to our different worlds.  To go back to the sheep, like the shepherds; to heaven, like the angels; and to home, like the wise men.

The story of Jesus’ birth in Luke has a very different rhythm than the one in Matthew and both are very, very different from the one in the gospel of John.  In Matthew it seems a bit rushed, there are places to go, important people to come and see the child, equally important things for Mary and Joseph to do right away. There is a rush to Christmas in Matthew.  

Luke slows things down a little but there is still the suspense of finding a place to have the baby, the angels, the details of wrapping him, the manger, and then the moment for Mary to keep these things in her heart.

John slows things down to a holy halt.  The first chapter of John is a poem or a hymn that is, in its simplicity and beauty, an overture of the life of Christ. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of Grace and Truth.”

I am more naturally someone who is drawn to the rhythm of the story from Luke which we read today. There is something like a sense of urgency and importance, especially for the shepherds at first.  They respond with the excitement that comes from doing something you really want to do or being a part of something very important in life.  But once they arrive on the scene, there is calmness and a quiet heavenliness to the story. Luke’s gospel, in more ways than the others, matches the rhythm of most days of my life. 

I guess you could say I’m more like my grandpa these days, but there is still a little of the six year-old in me.  Like the shepherds, like the kid who has to wait until grandpa finally makes it across the street to open presents, I want to get on with my life. I want to get to the exciting, engaging, appealing parts of my life. This is the time of year when I think about the trips I’d like to go on, the things at church that are just plain fun and full of whatever it is that we hope will happen in our community.  Like a lot of people, I’m energized at Christmas to be the person God created me to become.

Then Christmas Eve hits, and I become that old man savoring the moment, trying to take it all in, and recognizing there simply are not that many chances in this world anymore to hear a deeper, holy, sacred word from whatever it is that is beyond us.  Today, at least for a few more minutes, maybe even hours for some of us, life slows down. As the frantic pace to which we are accustomed is altered and we can hear a word of grace, we can glimpse the hope God has instilled within us.

Now I know this is not everybody.  There are many of us who are more in rhythm with Matthew, who, once we get going in the spirit of this season, want to keep going. How about another party, another cookie exchange, another night at someone’s house? We want to be down at PROP helping stock the food shelf, or over at Simpson helping to give shelter and food to those who are homeless. Today is, for some of us, a jumping off point to action.  As we leave the candles, we hear the clarion call of the angels to follow God’s calling into the world. We can’t wait to sing, “Go tell it on the Mountain.”

Still others of us want to go even deeper into the meditative moment that is upon us.  Like John we want to linger in these moments of quiet and reflection. We want to stock pile the warmth and inward inspiration because we know that all too quickly the world in which we live will return and words like the “word became flesh and dwelt among us,” will be lost in the hustle and bustle of bills to be paid and lives to be lived.

Perhaps the word in all of this is that there is no one right rhythm to Christmas.  Not even the gospels agree on that, and neither is it required of us.  And yet one of the messages of Christmas that the gospels all agree on is that this child, whose birth we celebrate, has come for all of us –  whatever the rhythm of our lives.  Not only is there room for all of us by this manger but there is also a need for all of us. 

Fred Buechner writes:  Pray for him and see if he comes, in ways that only you will recognize. He says to follow him, to walk as he did into the world’s darkness, to throw yourself away as he threw himself away for love, for the dark world. And he says that if you follow him, you will end up on some kind of cross, but that beyond that cross and even on your cross you will also find your heart’s desire, the peace that passes all understanding.

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