Lately, where I work, I’ve been on a project that hasn’t been going so well. Actually, it’s not going all that badly, but we seem to have a need to get a lot of people together and pick at the topic of how things are. So what’s happened is that a big group sits together, every day at 4:00, and talks about “the problem.” We sit in a room where someone always closes the door; and there are windows into the hallway with those little venetian blinds, and they’re always shut. I’m not sure if it’s so we’re not distracted by what’s outside, or so that people can’t look in…
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Picture for a moment a wild campaign party in a hotel ballroom on the night the polls close. Red, white and blue balloons, confetti, crowds of people waving signs, loud upbeat music, wild cheering every time the TV cameras cut live to the scene. But then gradually, the mood changes as the numbers come in, and those wildly high expectations begin to fade quickly. A concession speech from the would-be hero, and a little cheering, a few tears maybe, but after a few last drinks the crowd begins to trickle away, and the next morning we’re left with nothing but an empty ballroom with the depressing signs of celebration scattered…
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In our day, and maybe, they say, since the good old days of Victorian England, the Christmas season has been all about being home. You know the imagery: with the fire ablaze in the living room, children gathered around, and everybody home for the holidays, right where they should be. But it’s striking sometimes to look at how different that image of family is from the stories we’ve heard over the past five weeks of Advent and Christmas about Jesus’s family, his parents, his cousin John the Baptist, all the people in Luke’s wonderful narrative of Christ’s birth and childhood. One of those differences that we can pay some attention…
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This feast of the Holy Family that we celebrate today is here, they tell us, so that we can consider how our lives as families can be inspired by the Holy Family. As we all know, this is an intimidating prospect. I was struck on Christmas Eve, when we were singing that old favorite, “Away in a Manger,” by the line in one verse referring to the baby Jesus that says “no crying he makes.” Now this is a pretty high standard for babies, at least in this parish, perhaps as much of a miracle as anything else that happens in the Christmas story, and sometimes we’re tempted to apply…
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No matter how many times we hear this story, something in it grips us. We know how it ends, we know it is a tragedy, but something in us wants to hear it anyway, the familiar details of how Pilate was too cowardly to follow his better instincts, and all the sad details of this death that was so avoidable. The reason why this story draws us in like few other stories isn’t always clear to us, but then, suddenly, unexpectedly, after years of hearing it, we find out why. We see someone we love, suffering for days or weeks from a painful final illness, or someone dying too young…
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This year I have heard more people talk about Jesus’ death than I can ever remember, even people I previously couldn’t imagine giving much thought to Jesus at all. This familiar story of his trial and death still touches people so deeply, because more than any other part of Jesus’ life, we know the world works just this way. Random events, political jockeying, all seemingly preventable, all unreasonable, but no one can stop it. What happened to Jesus could happen to anyone. So many words to explain why this story moves us. And yet I heard one set of words that seemed wrong to me. I read in a local…
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Before this, everything was clear. God was God. People knew where to look to find God. It was a world of stark contrasts. The way you knew God was on your side was that you prospered in life, lived long and healthy, were free from oppression, got what you deserved. Your enemy, on the other hand, was vanquished. When this happened, it was a sign that God was present. When it didn’t, it was a sign that God’s favor had been withdrawn from you, until a time when it might suit God to relent — or perhaps, it just meant that God for some reason no longer cared. Think of…
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We could be forgiven if we come here today completely confused about what kind of a God we really have. Who would have expected, one year ago, that we would now be looking back on a year of wars that are called holy, a year of suicide bombings and murder in the name of religion, a year when our church itself has proven, if it needed proving, that it is not the holder of all truth and good judgment. So much suffering. So little reason for it. No clear way to end it. So many people thinking God is on their side. We think that God must have turned away,…
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We know this story so well, that it has a life of its own, event follows event with a sense of inevitability, we know what’s coming next at every point. Over time, it seems to us that it couldn’t have been any other way. But Jesus’s death was the most avoidable death imaginable. At every turning point in this story, there’s an opportunity for Jesus to escape his crucifixion. He could have avoided Jerusalem entirely. He could have snuck through one of the legal loopholes that Pilate seemed, at some level, to want to offer him. He could have laid low for a year or two until things settled down.…
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I’m sure the last thing might think you want right now, after nine long scripture readings, would be yet more salvation history laid out for you. But we should be honest, and say that deep down, there’s a part of the story we do still want to hear. Jesus’ resurrection comes nearly at the end of the scriptures we have, but now here we are two thousand years later, in a very different world, and the missing reading we want to hear now is, what will happen to us, what’s the end of the story? We know the resurrection is the end of our story, too, but frankly, our imaginations…