December 25, 2016 Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.  All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. 

While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, 

“Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” 

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, 

 “Glory to God in the highest heaven, 

          and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

***

On Christmas Eve, in years past, I had worn heathered red, celebratory like snow on holly. Other years, formal black, long sleeved, t-length and turtleneck, as if the birth of Christ translated into a black-tie affair. There was too, my grandmother’s wool Pendleton shift, which made my mom look up and smile, as if three generations were present, as if our New York and Texas lineage came full circle, to Eastern Oregon and it’s Woolen Mills, in the censes of a seventy-year-old dress returned to its homeland. Yet, last Christmas, getting ready alone at the parsonage, I put on purple silk, the color of waiting, it was still Advent in my heart. 

Dutifully, as if getting ready for a date, I did my hair and makeup, with the sinking feeling I would be stood up. Still, I imagined they would be there. That I would walk into the warm, sepia-ed sanctuary, and there my family would sit: My dad, ever-professorial, in his corduroy slacks and elbow-patched-suit-coat, his thin-framed glasses at the crook of his nose. My mom in black pants, a rich-red sweater and heirloom earnings - the oft plain-little-librarian - giddy for the occasion - the pride of her daughter preaching Christmas Eve. And finally, my sister beside them, beautiful and shy, always wearing something exquisite, original, yet understated, be it tactile fabric, a well placed sparkle, or a cascading braid flowing down decadent hair, a balance of being perfectly executed without drawing attention, but for the glimpse of a hesitant smile giving her away. All three of them, ever recognizable, ever predictable, as family is. I prayed maybe they would be there, as they had always been. For wasn’t that the way every Christmas story ever ended, the wreathed front door opens, and with suitcase in hand and snow on jacket, the belated beloved enters and shaking off boots - calls out - and there is warmth, there is family, there is rejoicing on Christmas Eve.

I drove the quiet streets to church, my eyes brimming tears mirrored by brooding low grey snow clouds - both full and waiting for release. 

Once in the Pastor’s Study, I pulled off my black suede party heels and opening the closet, exchanged them, sliding on well worn working flats. I hooked the zipper of my long black robe, and, like a pall, covered my purple dress with the garment of my calling. Finally, reaching for a stole, to round my neck, I marked the liturgical change from Advent’s waiting-purple, to Christmas’ celebratory-white. This vestment, clergy’s only adorning, and with it’s singular ceremony, I placed the white stole over my head, a ritual anointing - ‘You child, will bring Christmas to the people, even if it is still Advent in your heart.’ I sighed too deep for words, yet as reverently as an intercessory prayer.

The sanctuary was full, and bright, and warm, with people’s relatives and neighbors crowded together, adults in black and gold, flannel and velvet, little girls in green Christmas dresses with stain sashes and little boys in red button-downs all tucked in - as familiar as a uniform, as predictable as family. I quickly scanned for what I already knew. They were not there. They were not going to be there. This was my first Christmas alone, and still, sigh, I was called to bear a message of good news and great joy. 

My closest friends knew. There in the pew had come Mary Stevenson and her three teenagers, standing in for my family. Likewise, it was they to whom my eyes traveled during the first congregational hymn, O Little Town of Bethlehem. In that brief moment, when the song of the congregation upheld the liturgy, I let go enough to meet Mary’s daughter’s gaze. From halfway back in the pews, she knew me well enough to see through the veil of my station, to my emotion’s reflection in the lyrics,“The hopes and fears of all the years, are met in thee tonight.” And with that nakedness, a single tear crested. Looking away, from her, and the chorus, I fragilely wiped its wet flake away. I could not forever hold back my grey clouds; and outside snow began to dust. Upon leaving, Mary’s son, who had been less than excited for worship, told his mom, “I didn’t know why we were going, now I know why we went.” It wasn’t for the message, nor for the carols, or the candlelight, but, “we went for Katy,” he said. 

I held out through the shaking of hands and watched the sanctuary quickly empty out into the now snowy, snowy night. Where headlights in the white speckled darkness led families home, to be with one another, and I too would later go to be with a friend’s family, to read to her kids in my biggest accent, “The Texas Night Before Christmas,” and they would greet me the next morning, Alex, in his squeaky voice, “Merry Christmas, Katy!” It, and wrapping paper swords, would warm my heart for distracted moments, but that Christmas was still an Advent to get through, snow through which to trudge. I had wanted something to come, in the snow, in the singing, in the candles, in the children, but instead, I lived out in the fields and watched my flock by night.

I was their shepherd, and this was my wilderness, of sanctuary fold, chancel hill and pulpit lookout. I was their shepherd, called to count them, each one, to find their familiar and foreign faces amid the pews, and call them by name. I was their shepherd leading them to green pastures and still waters on whose moonlight was reflected in countless silent nights, holy nights, where all was calm, all was bright. I was their shepherd, preparing a living offering and an alter, on which to lay down our praise in Gloria, Gloria, in excelsis deos. I was their shepherd and what a grand calling, to be out in the field, caring for such wonders as these, who yearly fill the pews in woolen splendor, all of us grazing under the stars of royal beauty bright. It was a grand calling, to be amongst such as these, good and tender sheep. But, though surrounded by their softest blankets there was still a chill in being so invisibly alone. Such it was, when all the world went to be registered, I and my fellow shepherds, remained uncounted.

I turned off the narthex lights, locked the heavy wooden doors, and through the darkness climbed the stairs to the Pastor’s Study, to doff my black robe, and shed my adorning white stole like a flower upon the grave, as I too now knew what so many I counseled had already, what was to be alone, on Christmas. Though no one else was inside the building, I reached behind me and closed the study door, and in that final solitude, when the fever of Christmas was over, and the busy world was hushed, and my work was done, - sigh- I breathed my last. My body hunched as if shoveling snow, my tears too wet to lift, and outside my study window winter’s white quickened to a blur. 

Then, suddenly, something loud crashed against the glass. -SCREAM- My shepherd’s instinct rifled out its reactions, "What was that, who’s out there, are the side doors locked, I am alone,” and not without sarcasm, “of course I am alone.” Accustomed to drama in the darkness, I froze in the sound’s startled silence, a Shepherd listening acutely for anything that would move. 

PAUSE 

What I heard, was laughing, which, after a moment, I realized was familiar, as was the ball of snow sliding down my window. I scoffed, sarcasm turned in, smile turned up. A snowball.

Still disoriented, but aware enough to be embarrassed, I walked to the window. Peering out, the snow seemed to cease and through cloven skies I saw an angel of the Lord. My best friend Lizzy stood before me, bundled up, with knit hat and warm jacket framing pink cheeks, cheeks whose smile said, “Do not be afraid, for I am bringing you good news of great joy.”

She and her family, out for a winter’s walk, had seen my lamp still burning far off in the felid, “Why is Katy there so late on Christmas Eve?” Why have not the shepherds come into town? And so over pastures of powder they came to the place I was. Those common heavenly hosts, came to the darkened church, to the silence after the carols were over, and to the solitude of being alone in the wilderness of my work, and to that place, they brought Christmas. 

And isn’t this how every Christmas story ever ends, how the first Christmas story ended, and maybe, how your Christmas story ends. That after we have lost all hope and gone to bed, counted our sheep and locked the sanctuary doors, then in quiet of the night, when loneliness is at its greatest, and we have settled in under the covers of our heartbreaks, the empty spaces left by loved ones now gone, the memories of the places we'd rather be called home, or those we’d wish had come called family or friends, or the field where the work calls us on Christmas Eve, to these places, where we are, to these shepherds who we are, to all people, Christmas has come. May we be startled, by the sound, of an opening door, Glorias of angels in the sky, and the crash of a snowball against the window.

Stepping back, I looked at the snowball, and in it’s opaque clump and melting silage, I recognized the transformation of my own tears - that water, which I released in sorrow had been returned in joy. It was as if Lizzy packed the flakes of my sobbing, all tight in a frozen ball, and with the glories of the skies, reminded me that this is a night for all people, for you my sheep, but also for me too. 

“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to all people.”

December 4, 2016 Matthew 3:1-12

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 

“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 

This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, 

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 

‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” 

Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist,

 and his food was locusts and wild honey. 

Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, 

and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, 

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 

Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, 

‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; 

for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 

Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; 

every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 

“I baptize you with water for repentance, 

but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; 

I am not worthy to carry his sandals. 

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; 

but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” 

***

I like to imagine this scripture, and as crazy as it is, with John the Baptist, out in the wilderness, dressed in camel’s hair, eating locusts and wild honey, baptizing some and reprimanding others, “you brood of vipers,” its not the wildness that interests me most, but the intimacy of the touch of baptism between two opposing sides.

It is hard for me to imagine John and the Pharisees and Sadducees coming together like that. John first yelling at the them, “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” It’s a legitimate question. Is this powerful ruling class of people there merely to take stake of the land and the Jordan River running through it and observe its erratic occupant John hiding their bets on his understand of God verse their own. Or have they come to experience his message for themselves and be transformed? The text doesn’t say, but we can tell that the sides were drawn long before this stand off. The Pharisees and Sadducees and John the Baptist each come with a history that precedes them. The Pharisees and Sadducees are known for abusing power in law and in the church for generations and John the Baptist, is known for disrupting that power from the prophesy of his birth, which recalled, 

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 

‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” 

Each side is known John and the Pharisees and Sadducees, and it is with this historic understanding that they come to the river Jordan. 

I imagine it like the protests at Standing Rock. In these too a history known. The Native Americans whose Thanksgiving holiday is marked with the memory of a people who turned against them. Native Americans whose generosity at that first meal, was meet with greed which later became Manifest Destiny. Native Americans who once knew a country without boarders and called it their home, with sacred sites and hunting grounds and water unbound, and the circle of life in balance, now come to the borders of their small Standing Rock Reservation, where they have been exiled in their own country, as treaty after treaty was broken because a signature meant their word. 

Specifically, “the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is a successor to the Great Sioux Nation, a party to the two Treaties of Fort Laramie in 1851 and 1868 which promised the land to the tribe forever. The reservation established in the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie included extensive lands that would be crossed by the proposed pipeline. The Tribe has a strong historical and cultural connection to such land. Despite the promises made in the two Fort Laramie treaties, in 1877 and again in 1889, Congress betrayed the treaty parties by passing statutes that took major portions of this land away from the Sioux. In the modern area, the Tribe suffered yet another loss of lands, this time in connection with the same Oahe dam and Reservoir created without the tribe’s consent. 

Since July, “the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe (“Tribe”) has brought forth it’s official complaint to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in connection with federal actions relating to the Dakota Access Pipeline (“DAPL”), a 1,168-mile-long crude oil pipeline running from North Dakota to Illinois. One violating 1889’s Clean Water Act (“CWA”) and Rivers and Harbors Act (“RHA”) as DAPL crosses hundreds if not thousands of federally regulated rivers, streams, and wetlands along its route. One such authorization allows DAPL to construct the pipeline underneath Lake Oahe, approximately half a mile upstream of the Tribe’s reservation. Others authorize the DAPL to discharge into waters of the United States at multiple locations in the Tribe’s ancestral lands.

Likewise, the Tribe seeks to uphold the National Historic Preservation Act (“NHPA”) which requires that, prior to issuance of a federal permit or license, federal agencies shall take into consideration the effects of that “undertaking” on historic properties and ensure that the tribe is notified and is given time to object and for the issue to be resolved.” By law, “Until this process is complete, the action in question cannot go forward.”

All action was supposed to come to a halt, but instead we have two armies battling in North Dakota. It began as bulldozers and peaceful prayerful protesters and has escalated to rubber bullets, fire hoses pushing protesters back in freezing temps, with dogs unleashed on the Native Americans by military and mercenary police. But if that doesn’t seem unjust, if the Native Americans isn’t the side with which you side, what strikes me most is that the little white and more wealthy town of Bismark, beside the reservation, which was on the pipeline’s original course, also protested about the pipeline and the route was changed because of a potential threat to Bismarck’s water supply. 

If the we lay the scripture over the newspaper, our Pharisees and Sadducees come from Bismark, and places like it, they are not it’s common people, but it’s authorities, it’s ones in control of the law and the land, and they have come out to the wilderness, to the water, to the river, to the reservation, to the boarder, to those in exile, to see what the fuss is over, what might usurp their power by putting peace before progress. They are standing at the line. And John yells, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” 

But if you notice, while condemning them, John also welcomes them. He includes them by saying they are fleeing, rather than standing their ground. It is as if the Standing Rock Souix have said the pilgrims once again, “I see you are fleeing, what has brought you here.” It’s a different trajectory, a Christian one of welcome, of inviting in, of sharing a cornucopia of resources.  And the authorities have a choice, they can join or stand against. 

John continues, “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.”” John knows, that the history of power is on their side and for generations the authorities, the Pharisees and Sadducees have deemed God is on their side because of it. But John reminds them from whom power comes, it comes from God, which is not won or earned, it is grace. Grace God has given to all, and Grace John extends to them. 

And something must have happened, because, we hear John say, “I baptize you with water for repentance.” I don’t know how Pharisees and Sadducees got to that place in John’s arm’s in the Jordan. I don’t if all at once they all got in, and the entered the stream, or if one by one they defected and joined the other side, walking toward John and his followers. But somehow, theses opposing sides, of oppressor and oppressed, are now upside down, the oppressed holding the oppressor, John holding the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Native Americans holding the authorities, and dipping them in the water, baptizing them proclaiming repentance. That in that water freezing fire hoses have turned into living streams of life. This water which was in contention is now the connection. 

John says, “one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; 

I am not worthy to carry his sandals. 

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor

 and will gather his wheat into the granary; 

but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

And I think if water and John the Baptist can do this, what might Jesus and the Holy Spirit do with fire. Might it look like a land without borders, where sacred and historic sites are revered, and we find ourselves a country not of the pilgrim’s progress, but of the First People’s welcome, a welcome grander than John the Baptist, a welcome so humbling that we are not worthy to carry it’s moccasins.