Traveling Companions

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
December 20, 2015

4 Advent C

Two bizarre stories collide in our gospel lesson this morning.  First, Elizabeth and Zechariah are both righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments of God.  But Elizabeth is barren, and she and Zechariah are getting old.  Gabriel, an angel of the Lord, appears to Zechariah and tells Zechariah that Elizabeth will bear a son.  Zechariah does not believe the angel, so Zechariah's voice is taken away and he is told by the angel that he will not be able to speak again until the baby is born.  That baby is John the Baptist.

Secondly, Gabriel, one very busy angel, goes to visit Mary, who is engaged to Joseph, a descendant of the great King David.  Gabriel tells Mary that she will conceive and bear a child.  Mary is a bit perplexed by this, since she is a virgin, but she is satisfied by the angel's explanation that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and her child will be the Son of God.  Gabriel tells Mary that her relative Elizabeth has conceived a son in her old age, and is, in fact, 6 months pregnant.  And Mary says "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."  That is bizarre story number two.

Mary and Elizabeth are both on very strange journeys, not of their own choosing, begun by the announcement of an angel, and each involving an unlikely pregnancy.  One child, the angel tells Zechariah, will have the spirit and the power of Elijah to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.  The other child, the angel tells Mary, will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David and of his kingdom there will be no end.  Both women have every right to be a bit perplexed at this turn of events!

The two stories collide this morning, when Mary, having heard from the angel Gabriel, goes with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she and Elizabeth greet each other with great joy and with song.  We are told that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for 3 months, and then returned home.  After all the detail we are given about the greeting Elizabeth gives Mary, and Mary's great song of praise, the simple fact that Mary stays three months and goes home seems rather anticlimactic.

I wonder what Mary was thinking, as she left with haste and traveled through the Judean country side.  Some scholars speculate that she went in order to hide her pregnancy from her family at home.  If that were the case, one would think she would leave home for the last three months rather than the first three months.  Was she banished by her family, embarrassed by this unplanned pregnancy?  There is no evidence in the story that she was sent away, by either Joseph or her parents.  In fact, in Luke's gospel, we are not even told that Joseph knows of Mary's pregnancy at this point.  My guess, is that while Mary was open to God, and obedient, and willing to be the servant of the Lord, she was also a bit scared and confused.  An angel had appeared to her and told her that she would conceive and bear a son. The angel had mentioned that her relative Elizabeth had conceived a son in her old age, so perhaps Mary was thinking that she does not need to travel this strange journey alone.  She has a fellow traveler, whose journey will be alike, but different, who can travel with her and will help her see what God is doing through her.

The story of the visitation tells us more than that John the Baptist recognizes the Messiah while they are both still in their mother's wombs.  This story tells us that Mary, the mother of Jesus, chose not to travel her remarkable journey alone, and not to try to understand what God was doing through her, all by herself.  The story actually tells us that Mary has three traveling companions on this journey.  First, she has Elizabeth, a living breathing human being (as opposed to an angel), who is able to name what God is doing through Mary.  Only when Elizabeth recognizes Mary as the mother of her Lord does Mary rejoice.  Secondly, we are told that Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit who helped Elizabeth speak the truth to Mary.  And lastly, when Mary responds to Elizabeth's greeting, she does so by reaching into Scripture.  The song Mary sings is the same song Hannah sang in 1 Samuel to give thanks for the birth of her son, Samuel.  Scripture is also a companion on Mary's daunting journey.

Mary's story reminds us that we are not called to travel alone, either.  Alone, we cannot always make sense of what God is doing through us.  Alone, we may think we have heard the voice of an angel and wonder if we were dreaming when God calls us to do a new thing or takes us to a new place.  Alone, we may not yet be able to rejoice in God's action in our lives.  The story of the visitation reminds us that we have fellow travelers in each other, in the Holy Spirit, and in Scripture, no matter how bizarre or joyful or confusing the journey might be.  And the delicious twist to the story is that the one who teaches us that we need never travel alone, is the one who will give birth to the child named "Emmanuel," God with us.  Indeed, we never travel alone.

Amen.

Stones

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
December 13, 2015

3 Advent C

Some years ago, when my husband was at Kanuga, the Episcopal Conference Center in Western North Carolina, he brought me back some stones from a place called High Rocks, a lovely spot on a cliff that over looks the valley below.  High Rocks is just up the mountain from the house where my grandparents lived and where our family gathered every Thanksgiving for about 30 years. Each year after Thanksgiving dinner, we would hike up to High Rocks to walk off that second piece of pumpkin pie and enjoy the view. Countless other visits to our grandparents involved hikes to that magical spot where you can be eye level with the clouds and hear the sounds from the valley.  The stones Don brought me are just rocks.  They are not particularly beautiful, or polished, or even unique.  They are just rocks.  But the rocks come from a place that is near and dear to my heart, a place alive with stories of times I spent on that mountain with people I love, experiences of the presence of God that I cherish, and more memories than I can count.  The stones are alive for me, in their own special way, because of the stories they hold.

One of my favorite Bible passages comes near the end of Luke's gospel.  Jesus has entered into Jerusalem, riding on a colt, and the whole multitude of Jesus' disciples begin to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power they had seen.  Some of the Pharisees in the crowd say to Jesus "Teacher, order your disciples to stop!"  And Jesus replies "I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."   If the people are not moved to sing God's praise by the stories of God's deeds of power, then the stones will.

This morning, in one of the most memorable lines in Scripture, John the Baptist says to the crowds who have come out to be baptized by him in the wilderness "You brood of vipers.  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?"  Then he tells them to bear fruit worthy of repentance.  "Do not begin to say to yourselves ‘We have Abraham for our ancestor' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham."  Bearing good fruit is what is important, according to John the Baptist, not pedigree.  Those who do not bear good fruit will thrown into the fire.

When the crowds, the tax collectors, and the soldiers hear John's words of condemnation, they are moved to ask "What, then, shall we do?"  John's instructions are simple.  Share. Be fair. Do not be greedy.  This sounds more like "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" than how to avoid the unquenchable fire!  But the truth is that John is reminding the people of their very own story, for the Hebrew scriptures hold many admonitions to do those exact things.  The Hebrew story is about responding to the graciousness of God by being gracious to others, both friend and stranger.  That story is about remembering what it was like to be strangers in a foreign land, whether Egypt or Babylon, and treating people in a similar situation with kindness and hospitality.  What God asks of us in not complicated.  But if the people forget their story, and fail to act as children of God, then God will raise up stones to take their place.

At the end of John the Baptist's tirade, we are told that with these and many other exhortations, John the Baptist proclaimed good news to the people.  Which part of John the Baptist's rant qualifies as good news? The part where we are called a brood of vipers?  Or the part where the people are told that their status as children of Abraham is worthless if they do not bear good fruit?  Or the part about the unquenchable fire?

The words of the readings from Zephaniah, Isaiah, and Paul's letter to the Philippians help soften the blow from John's words this morning.  In the reading from Zephaniah, we hear "Sing aloud, O daughter Zion, shout, O Israel!  Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!  The Lord has taken away the judgements against you, he has turned away your enemies."  The reading brings hope to an exiled, despondent people.  Likewise, Isaiah claims God as "our "stronghold and sure defense" and calls the people to "Ring out your joy."  And the letter to the Philippians calls the people to rejoice in the Lord always, and let their gentleness be known to everyone.  These are the kinds of readings I want to hear in Advent, full of hope and promise as we await the birth of the Christ Child.  No where in my imagination do I find a baby Jesus with a winnowing fork in his hand!

However, the soaring words of Zephaniah and Isaiah come after the people have been severely chastised by the prophets for the way they treat widows and orphans, for their worship of other gods, and for the many ways they have broken God's commandments.  The people have forgotten their story and they have paid the penalty. Paul calls the Philippians to rejoice, but only after he gives them a tongue lashing for following false teachers and failing to get along with each other.   An often overlooked fact about Scripture is that the good news often goes hand in hand with judgement. Judgement is tempered with hope, and mercy is free but not cheap.   John the Baptist proclaims judgement against the people who have come out into the wilderness to be baptized, but he also offers them hope in his own gruff way.  He calls the people to repent, so repentance must be possible.  He tells them the truth-that they way they treat each other matters to God and they can do better.  He tells the people that the chaff will be burned, but the wheat will be gathered.  And there is one coming who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  No wonder the people were filled with expectation.  There is hope!

"So with many other exhortations, John the Baptist proclaimed good news to the people."  The message of John the Baptist is this: The good news demands something of us.  The birth of Christ requires a response from us.  That response is to remember our story, the story of our God who became human in the Christ Child, born to unwed parents who were away from their home with no place to stay, for whom the sky lit up and the angels sang, and who will give his life for the life of the world.  John tells us that simply waiting for the Christ child to arrive is not enough.  God can raise up stones to wait.  John calls us to use our lives to put flesh on the story of Jesus.

Amen.

Dress for Success

Charlotte Collins Reed
Christ Episcopal Church
December 6, 2015

2 Advent C

Years ago, when Don and I lived in Lexington, Kentucky, we lived across the street from a little boy named Greg, and his parents, Ann and Jim.  Greg was probably 6 or 7 years old, full of energy and imagination.  Every now and then, Don and I would look out our front window, and Greg would be out in his front yard, all dressed up as superman, or batman, or some other super hero, flying around his yard and working hard to save the world.  As we watched Greg scale tall buildings with a single bound, I learned that there is a fine line between pretending, and allowing oneself to be transformed into someone or something else, even if for a brief time.  Greg would tell you quickly that he was not pretending to be superman.  Greg was superman, just not all the time.  Which, of course, is very superman like. And I have to wonder if Greg wasn't just a little more confident and a little more sure of himself for the time he spent transformed into Superman.  Perhaps having worked to save the world on Saturday made first grade a little easier come Monday.

Our reading from Baruch this morning calls us to enter into a similar sort of behavior.  The book of Baruch is named for the prophet Jeremiah's scribe and set in the 6th century BCE at the time of the Babylonian exile.  God's chosen people had been removed from the Promised Land, the land burned, the temple destroyed, and they wondered how they could possibly worship God away from the land God had given them.  Into this situation, Baruch writes the words we hear this morning,  "Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory of God...For God will evermore give you the name ‘Righteous peace, Godly glory."  Then Baruch echos the words of Isaiah that we hear from John the Baptist in the gospel reading: "God has ordered that every high mountain and the everlasting hills be made low, and the valleys filled up to make level ground, so that Israel may walk safely in the glory of God."

Baruch is speaking words of hope to this exiled people, telling them to live like people who have been given the name "Righteous peace, Godly glory."  Stop with the self-pity and the negative thinking.  Live like people who believe God will lead them with joy, in the light of his glory, with the mercy and righteousness that come from God.  Baruch does not say this, but I imagine the scribe is thinking that if the people can live as people of deep hope, even in the midst of deep adversity, they will be transformed by that hope, and they will walk safely in the glory of God.

On the other hand, John the Baptist proclaims a baptism of repentance this morning.  He won't actually get around to calling us a brood of vipers until next Sunday.  This Sunday is a milder call to repent in order to prepare the way of the Lord.  We hear words similar to those of Baruch "Every valley shall be filled and every mountain shall be made low...and all flesh shall see the salvation of God."

Repentance.  When I think of repentance I usually think of things I need to stop doing.  But the word "repent" actually means to turn around, to change course, not just to stop doing something.  So, I wonder if the repentance John calls for actually looks like the change of behavior Baruch calls for.  What if repentance, preparing the way of the Lord, is actually about taking off the garment of sorrow and affliction, giving up whatever negative thoughts and self pity control us, and putting on the beauty of the glory from God?  What if repentance means living like God is leading us with joy, in the light of his glory, with the mercy and righteousness that comes from God?  And if we were to really live into the name "Righteous peace, Godly glory" what valley might be filled or what mountain might be made straight?

Neither Baruch nor John the Baptist are calling us to pretend that we are something we are not, or to pretend that problems which really do exist are not there.  Both are calling us to live like the people God calls us to be, whether we feel like that on any given day or not, and allow ourselves to be transformed from the outside in by our new behavior.  Baruch reminds us that we can't always control how we feel, but we can control how we act.  And if we act and engage the world as someone God calls "Righteous peace, Godly glory" what difference might that make in our own lives and the lives of those we encounter?

John the Baptist tells us to prepare the way of the Lord, to make his paths straight, not so that our own lives will be easier or better, or so that we will be more pleasant to live with, but so that all flesh shall see the salvation of God.  The salvation of God is not an abstract concept, something left to theologians to debate and explain to us.  The salvation of God is something we can see, and as Christians we believe that the salvation of God became visible in the person of Jesus.  Advent points us to the Christ Child and calls us to prepare the way of the Lord.  We can make the mountains impassable or we can put on the glory of God and make the rough ways smooth.  Advent calls us to put on the glory of God and prepare for the Christ child by living so that all flesh can see the salvation of God.

Amen.