Second Sunday of Christmas Sermon

Why is Matthew's story of the birth of Christ so different from Luke's? What do the reactions of the Wise Men and king Herod have to teach us about ourselves?

2 Christmas Sermon

Given at St. Alban's, Brentwood

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

January 4, 1998

Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

         Usually when the Christmas story is presented, the various traditions are so combined that we may be surprised to realize that the story in Luke and in Matthew are quite different, or at least describe different aspects of the story. And Gospels of Mark and John don’t mention anything about the birth of Jesus. Let’s just quickly review to give a context to today’s Gospel reading.

         In Luke we have the most extensive description of the birth story. It is in Luke that we hear of Elizabeth and the birth of John the Baptist. It is in Luke that the angel comes to Mary and tells her that she will conceive. It is also in Luke where Mary goes to visit Elizabeth and says that beautiful piece of poetry we call the Magnificat.  It is only in Luke that there is reference to the decree that all should be enrolled and the journey to Bethlehem of Joseph with Mary who was with child. It is in Luke that we hear of the lack of room in the inn and the child being laid in a manger. In Luke the birth is announced to the shepherds, and no one else. Eight days later they have the child circumcised and then they go up to Jerusalem for the purification rites after which they return to Galilee, to the city of Nazareth.

         In the Gospel according to Matthew we get a different picture. It begins with the genealogy of Joseph. It then just says that Mary was betrothed to Joseph and became pregnant (no angels announcing it to Mary). Joseph plans to divorce her, but an angel appeared to him in a dream and explained that it was a child of the Holy Spirit, so he marries her but doesn’t have relations with her. It then says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the days of Herod. There is no mention of traveling from Nazareth, in fact from Matthew’s description it would sound as if Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem before the birth. The birth is announced not to shepherds, but to wise men from the east via a star. (Luke doesn’t mention a star, yet the shepherds are usually shown with a star.) The wise men contact Herod about the prophesied location of the birth of the savior, and Herod decides to do away with the child. That’s where we get to the current reading where Joseph once again gets a message in a dream and goes to Egypt to protect the child and returns not to Bethlehem but to Nazareth, once again in response to a dream. It turns out that the only overlap in the two stories is that Jesus’ parents were Mary and Joseph, that Mary was a virgin, and that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

         Why should such different stories be told? Well certainly at the time of the writing of the gospels, 30 to 60 years after Jesus died, there were many stories passed on about him. Which of many stories the writers of the Gospels decided to include depended upon the emphasis that the writer wanted to make. They would also include those stories that were meaningful to them personally.

         So, today we have the story of Joseph, Mary and Jesus fleeing to Egypt and (although we skipped the description of it) the killing of all the male children under two years old in Bethlehem. Matthew presents two very different reactions to the birth of Christ. The wise men, who see a star, a glimmer of hope, and travel great distances to bring their gifts to the Christ child, and Herod, who reacts with fear and tries to destroy the savior of his people. Why would Matthew choose these two stories?

         One thing to remember about scripture is that it is written on multiple levels. On the one level it tells the direct story of events, on another level it is a parable, a representation of something deeper. It speaks on the concrete level and on the spiritual level. Let’s take a look at this stories form a spiritual level.

         We see here two responses to the coming of Christ. The coming of Christ, the birth of Christ, is not something that only happened 2000 years ago, it is also something that spiritually happens to us. The Christ, the savior, is born for us today, is potentially born in our hearts, in our beings. If we are like the wise men, we see a glimmer of light, a star in the east, a glimmer of hope, a spark of belief, that something wonderful is taking place. Inside us a spark of light is born, and if we are like the wise men, we follow that star and we respond with gratitude and gifts.

         But, often there is something within us more like Herod. Something within us that is afraid of the birth of the savior.

         Let’s take a deeper look at Herod. There is no historical evidence of the slaughter of the innocent children of Bethlehem, but there is agreement that it is the sort of thing that Herod would have been quite capable of. He was not descendent from the kings of Israel, but became king because he had helped the Roman’s when they took over the country. His claim to legitimacy was through his wife who was a descendent of the royal family. He was constantly afraid of losing his power, probably because he knew he didn’t legitimately deserve it, so he would brutally eliminate anyone who he thought would challenge his authority, including several of his children. When he heard of the birth of the predicted Messiah he was afraid of losing his power to this newborn “king”. Therefore, he tried to have him eliminated. The wise men brought gifts, welcoming the birth because of their wisdom; Herod brought death because of his fear.

         So, is there a part of us that is like Herod, a part of us that thinks it is in charge? A part of us that exerts a power and authority that is really not legitimate? Is there a part of us that is in truth a petty administrator but acts like it is a King? Is there a part of us that has been given some authority on day-to-day matters that has forgotten the real purpose behind that authority? I would say yes, that part of ourselves that has come to be called the ego.

         Our egos are necessary and important; they manage our activities and interaction with the world. They make decisions about what we will do when and how. They are the administrators of our psyches. They help us to survive. But they are not the king. They are there to serve our spiritual selves, yet our egos have forgotten that. When the Christ child is born in our hearts, when God’s love is born in us, the ego gets scared. When we begin to want to live our lives, not as our ego has learned to do in order to survive, but as our deeper, spiritual, loving essence wants us to, the ego gets scared. The Herod in us gets scared, and wants to destroy the potential new king.

         How do our egos respond? In many different and sometimes subtle ways.

         One way to think about it is that through Christ God is giving us a wonderful gift. The most wonderful of gifts - full, complete, and unconditional love. God stands there, with arms outstretched, offering this gift. How do we respond? “Oh, you shouldn’t have.” “I don’t deserve this.” “I couldn’t accept this from you.” “I am so unworthy.” “I don’t have anything to give you in return.”  or “What’s the catch?” “What do I have to do in exchange?” “Nobody gives this kind of gift without a hook.” “This couldn’t be for real.” All God wants to do is give us Love, but we are afraid to accept it. We are afraid to accept it because if we truly accepted that we are unconditionally loved by God, our whole sense of self, our whole way of being in the world, the whole game of our ego, would have to change. We would have to let go of guilt, of fear, of shame, of our poor self concepts, of our sense of ourselves as not enough, of not being lovable. And if we did that, the power of our ego would be eliminated. We would be free beings. Free and joyous beings. And that is terrifying. Terrifying to our egos.

         And so we ignore the gift, deny the very existence of the giver. We have doubt, our rational minds struggle against our personal experience. The Herod in us wants to destroy the gift of love.

         The real Herod did not understand that the kind of king that Jesus was would not interfere with his administrative duties. Jesus was not a king that would try to overthrow Herod. Jesus’ kingdom was very different than that. And the birth of God’s love within us does not want to eliminate the ego, we need our egos, rather it wants to transform it, have the ego become the instrument of spirit. And if we open to this we discover that we are more powerful then ever.

         If Herod had not been so insecure, if Herod had faith in his own abilities, if he had not developed a grandiose image of himself, he would have also been able to welcome the birth of the Christ. If we can love our egos, acknowledge their place in our lives, they may be more willing to welcome the birth of our spiritual selves, rather than try to destroy it.

         And if not, we have to take the Christ child to Egypt, to that country from which the chosen people came after going there in time of famine. We keep that sense of the spiritual, the divine, that spark of hope, that star burning within us in a safe place while we work on our egos. That is what all the spiritual practices are about, quieting our egos, putting them into place. All the prayers, the fasting, the meditation, the study, is to lead to the place where our egos as we knew them are dead, so that the spirit can return from Egypt and take its rightful place as the king of our lives.

         What is there within you that refuses the gift, that tries to eliminate that birth of the knowledge of just how deeply we are loved by God. Is it fear, guilt, shame, self-doubt, the need to know, the need for control, or that all pervasive sense of not being enough. Nurture the child of light within you, honor the fears of Herod, and accept the gift of love, the warm wonderful gift of God’s unconditional love, which is incarnated in the Christ child.

First Sunday after Christmas sermon

This sermon was given shortly after the movie 'The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe' had been released. In it there is a reflection on what it means to be always winter and never Christmas and how when Christmas does come it brings hope which is the beginning of the story that includes struggle and growth. 

Sermon

January 1, 2006

First Sunday after Christmas

The Rev. Valerie A. Valle, Ph.D.

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Brentwood

Imagine what it would be like to always be winter. Always winter, no spring, no summer, no autumn. Just winter all the time. Imagine what that would be like.

Now living in California that might not sound so bad, after all the hills are green in the winter, and if you grew up in the Midwest or east coast you know what a “real” winter can be like, with snow and sleet and ice and minus degree weather. But imagine even a California winter that never ended. Day after day after day of clouds and rain and grey sky. Think what it would be like if every day the sun came up late and set early. All the time having it get up the dark and have the sun set before you get home from work. Always winter. All the time. No change. Always winter with no hope of spring.

This probably sounds familiar for those of you who have seen the movie Narnia or read the book it is based on, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. For those of you who are not familiar with the story, let me give you a quick introduction.

In the story a family of children find themselves in a land called Narnia. When they arrive it is winter. Not a California winter, but a winter of cold and snow. They are told that in Narnia it is always winter and never Christmas.

Always winter and never Christmas! Can you imagine that! How horrible, especially for the children, and the child within each of us. Always winter but never Christmas! Somehow that resonates in each of us as something terrible.

But early in the narrative we are told, “Aslan is on the move.” Aslan is the true king of Narnia. He is described as the son of the Emperor Over the Sea. He is the spiritual foundation of Narnia. He is the Christ of that world. When the children hear that Aslan is on the move, even though they don’t yet know who he is, they feel a special thrill inside.

Once Aslan is on the move Christmas finally comes to Narnia. Christmas brings hope to the land. The trees begin to bloom, the ice melts, the sun comes out and the world warms. It is a time of joy. Light has come into a dark world. It brings hope to the beings of that world who have been enslaved by an evil witch.

But Christmas is not the end of the story; rather it represents the beginning of a journey and a struggle to overcome the forces of darkness. As the children travel this road and accept their part in the struggle they become stronger and discover who they really are.

We are in the season of Christmas. For most people Christmas day is an ending. It is the ending of a month of frantic activity. Presents are bought and wrapped. Cookies are baked. Houses are decorated. Cards are sent. Parties are attended. Carols are sung. People greet one another with “Merry Christmas” and talk about the spirit of the holidays. Finally the culmination of all this activity comes on December 25 with great celebrations. On December 26 the party is over. Everyone waits for Christmas next year.

But for us, for the church, Christmas day is just a beginning. For us the season of Christmas is the 12 days following Christmas, not the month before. Today we sing Christmas carols. Today we celebrate the incarnation of Christ. Today we assert that it is still Christmas, even though our neighbors have taken down their decorations this weekend. For us the season of Christmas lasts until Epiphany, January 6, 12 days after Christmas. That’s where the song The Twelve Days of Christmas comes from.

So, Christmas is a beginning just as it was a beginning for the beings of Narnia. It is a beacon of hope in a dreary world. It is a light in the darkness. It represents the beginning of the end of winter.

We have all known times in our lives that were filled with darkness, where it would seem that the darkness would overcome the light. We have known times that we could call the “winters” of our lives. Perhaps your life right now feels like you are caught in an endless winter. Our times of darkness may be due to illness, or grief, or broken relationships, or addiction, or job loss, or loneliness or just a feeling of darkness shrouding our days. Sometimes things can feel hopeless, as if this difficult time, this dark time, will go on forever.

Those are the times when we most need Christmas. Christmas is the hope for a world in darkness. Christmas is the hope for a person in darkness. In the Gospel today when Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple Simeon comes to them and says:

Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,

  According to your word;

For my eyes have seen your salvation,

  Which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

A light for revelation to the Gentiles

  And for glory to your people Israel.

For Simeon the encounter with Christ, even the baby in his mother’s arms, is a source of hope. He can now rest at peace knowing that salvation has come into the world. For us, the encounter with Christ is the coming of Christmas. Christmas is a celebration of God making Godself know through Christ – Emmanuel  - God with us.

That is the gift of Christmas, that God is with us. Just as Narnia began the healing process when Aslan came, so our lives begin the healing, transforming process when Christ comes to us. Christ brings hope and the promise that He walks with us.

But, as I said before, Christmas is a beginning, not an end. Remember that for the children in Narnia Christmas was the beginning of a struggle.

If you have struggled with addiction you may know that moment when you reached bottom, when you realized that you couldn’t continue living the life you were leading. Such a moment is a gift of grace; it is the coming of Christmas; it is a coming of hope into a winter of hopelessness. It is also the beginning of a long and often difficult journey toward health. But looking back one realizes how much one has grown through that journey. One realizes how much there was to learn about oneself. One realizes that they are stronger now then they were before the journey began, just as it was for the children in Narnia who could become strong and mature only by facing the struggle at hand.

For me, Christmas came this past August. Most of you know that I was quite ill this summer. Although it was summer, it felt like a dark and long winter. But in August I was graced to be introduced to a doctor who knew how to correctly diagnose and treat my illness. That was the beginning of hope. That was the answer to prayer. That was Christmas to me. It was not an end but a new beginning. It took time and hard work to heal, but in the process I learned a great deal about myself and in many ways became even stronger than before the journey began.

Now some of you may struggle with chronic diseases. Where is the hope there? But Christmas can come into the winter of chronic disease as well. It is that time, or times, when the Christ spirit visits you. When you are touched by something that brings you hope. The hope is not necessarily for physical healing, but a hope for spiritual healing. It brings a sense of peace, regardless of one’s circumstances, just like it brought peace to Simeon, an old man approaching death who is given hope by his encounter with the baby Jesus.

Are you ready to step out of your personal winter? Are you ready to begin an adventure that leads to spring and new life? It won’t be easy. There will be inner battles to fight, there will be difficulties to overcome, but there is also the opportunity to discover who you really are and to become wiser and stronger than you ever imagined. Are you ready? Do you want to start anew? Do you want the hope and joy that is possible? Are you ready to step out into the unknown and leave the endless darkness of winter behind?

Christmas comes into our lives when we open our hearts to receive Christ. It is that moment, or those moments, when we think there is no room in us, when we believe that our hearts have grown cold, yet a little sliver of light sneaks in. We may be talking with someone and we feel cared about and things do not look quite so dark. It may be when we have reached a state of utter darkness and we cry out for help because we realize that we have totally failed on our own, and a peace steals its way into our hearts. It may be when someone speaks to you of God, of hope, of new life. It may be when you see a sunrise and suddenly feel hope again. It may be when you are graced to find the right doctor to help you.

Like the sunrise that gradually brings light into the world, like the melting snow that reveals the plants ready to sprout, like the candle lit in a dark room, like the gentle movement of love in our hearts, Christmas changes everything.

In our culture we see today, the first of January, as the beginning of a new year. We make resolutions and plans for the coming year to be different. But we cannot make things different on our own. There is nothing different about today than yesterday except a number on a calendar.

No, the time of change, the time of hope, is not the New Year, but Christmas. It is the grace of Christmas, of Christ’s presence with us, and within us, that brings the hope that things will be different, that we are starting anew, that it will not always be winter.

May this New Year be one in which you carry Christmas in your heart all year long. May it be a time where the light of Christ fills you and gives you peace.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Sermon - 4 Advent B

Saying "Yes" to God is not an easy thing. Two thousand years ago Mary said "Yes." We honor her to this day because she is a model of total surrender to God.

Sermon

4 Advent B

Given at St. Alban’s Episcopal Church

12/22/96

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Luke 1:26-38

         What is it about Mary that so grabs our imaginations?  There is an article about her in this week’s TIME magazine that traces her ups and downs in popularity during the 2000 years since that fateful day when she said “yes” to God. What is there about this young woman, why is her story so powerful, so moving?

         I think people are touched because her story is the story of self-surrender, which is the highest form of discipleship. She personifies the ones who have offered themselves, their egos, their separateness, to God. She embodies what Jesus referred to as the “least of the kingdom,” the ones who humbly offer themselves to God.

         She was nobody special, trying to live a good normal life, and an angel appears announcing a miracle - she will give birth, even though she is a virgin. Now looking back on this we can call her blessed, but for her, what a difficult thing was being asked. She was betrothed to marry, if she got pregnant what would happen to that. Even worse, when the town’s people discovered that she conceived before marrying Joseph, she could be stoned. Surely she could expect to be excluded, looked down upon, whispered about. Who would want to go through that kind of experience? I certainly wouldn’t, would you? Yet, when she hears what the angel has to say, she consents. She says “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” In today’s English, she might have said, “Ok, whatever you want.”

         To be able to say, “OK God, whatever you want with my life,” is not an easy thing to do. How difficult it is for each of us. We all have plans, expectations, and images of ourselves. We don’t like it when God’s plans contradict our own. When we find we have lost a job for no fault of our own, do we get angry, get depressed, or can we say, “OK God, whatever you want.” Perhaps there is something else here for me to learn or do. Are we able to trust that the God who sends us difficult tasks, will also be the God that sees to it that our real needs are taken care of?

         Buckminster Fuller, the genius best known for his geodesic dome buildings, struggled with the meaning of life when he was in his twenties. Faced with unremitting failure and the need to support a wife and newborn child, he walked to the shores of Lake Michigan, determined to either find the meaning and purpose of his life, or, failing that, to drown himself that very day.

         After some hours of intense meditation, the realization came to him that the universe is the product of a higher mind that is striving to create order out of disorder. If there were ever to be such a things as a “meaningful life” surely it would be found in trying to serve this higher mind in any available capacity. And this is what he resolved to do. In other words he surrendered his life to God.

         His second realization was just as critical as the first; he realized that as long as he was doing his best to serve this calling, then the higher power would naturally reciprocate by supporting him in his earthly existence in whatever way it deemed necessary. His livelihood, in other words, was no longer his problem. By becoming wholly dependent upon God, he had become God’s charge. Buckminster Fuller never again undertook a project with the aim of earning money. And although he went through many periods where money was in short supply, the basic needs of himself and his family were always taken care of.

         “Ok, God, whatever you want.” To trust that if we surrender to God’s loving will for us, God will also take care of our needs. To really surrender - to really trust God. That is what Mary did. That is why she is so special to us, because we all in some way want to be able to surrender, want to be able to trust God, but we all find that difficult. To have a symbol of such surrender, in Mary, is one of the gifts she has given to all of us. To read Mary’s story reminds us of the power of surrender.

         When we let go of our fear (remember the angel says to Mary “Do not be afraid.”), when we let go of our need to feel that we are in control of our lives, our destinies, when we let go of anger when things don’t go the way we think they should, when we let go of our need to plan our futures, when we empty ourselves of our ego needs, then we become fertile ground in which God can implant the light of Christ, so that we may become pregnant with God’s love and birth Christ’s love into the world.

         Surrender, letting go, and trusting God. That’s what discipleship is all about. Surrender, letting go, and trusting God, that is what giving birth is all about. Surrender, letting go, and trusting God IS how we prepare for the birth of Christ, in our hearts, in our lives and in the world.

Christmas Sermon

I could not find any of the sermons I have given for the coming Sunday of Advent 3 B, so I am sharing with you a sermon I gave on Christmas in 1996. I know that many who will be preaching at one or more Christmas services are already searching for ideas.
If I were to give this sermon a title I would call it "Christmas - the best of times, the worst of times." It acknowledges that sometimes if you are having a rough time in life all the joy in others at Christmas can make your own pain worse.

Christmas 1996

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church

The Rev. Valerie A Hart

       We all are familiar this time of year with Charles Dickens classic story “A Christmas Carol.” But there is another story that he wrote, “A Tale of Two Cities” which begins with the memorable line. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

       “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Sometimes that statement seems to describe the Christmas season. It is the best of times because of all the joy we see in the faces of those we love, especially in the children. It is the best of times when families come together to enjoy each other, and old friends reach out to be in contact again. It is the best of times as we sing and talk of peace on earth, of love and of hope. But it is the worst of times if you are at a difficult time in your life. It is the worst of times if you are in grief over the death of a loved one or the end of a relationship. The holidays just seem to magnify the lose. It is the worst of times if you are alone, unable to be with family, when everyone else seems to be surrounded by love. It is the worst of times if you are struggling with addiction in yourself or someone you love. All the parties, all the celebrations, all the happy news, just puts a spotlight on your own pain. It is the worst of times if you are depressed, because at this time of year you are “supposed” to be happy.

       The Christmas season, it is the best of times it is the worst of times.

       For Mary and Joseph, it certainly was the best of times and the worst of times. It was the best of times because they were about to give birth to their first child. What a wonderful and joyous event. But it was the worst of times - that long difficult journey with Mary nine months pregnant, the frustration of having nowhere to stay, the loneliness of giving birth without her mother and friends to help, the humiliation of spending the night in a stable. Surely Mary and Joseph must have felt it was the worst of times, yet all that was overshadowed by the birth of a son, and it became the best of times.

       It was the worst of times for the shepherds. The days were short and the nights were long and cold. Being a shepherd was a low status job; it was hard, often lonely, work. That long night must have felt like the worst of times, until the angels appeared and everything was transformed.

       It was the worst of times for the people of Israel. They were under the fierce rule of Rome, they had no freedom, they were over taxed, and Herod, their own ruler was vicious and heartless. Things were dark in Israel - it was the worst of times.

       There had been other bad times for the Israelites. During the time that Isaiah wrote the first reading today, Israel was being attacked by several enemies and was ruled by a weak king who reached out to Assyria, a conquering empire, for help that would turn into destruction. Life was hard in Israel then, there seemed no hope, and their king was certainly not up to the needs of the time. In this “worst of times” Isaiah wrote of hope. Hope that the people who walked in darkness would see a great light. Hope that in this time of suffering there would be joy. Hope that God would send a great leader to reestablish God’s reign through David. Out of this “worst of times” would come the “best of times.”

         Isaiah’s message of hope, of people in darkness seeing a great light, is as relevant to us today as it was 27 hundred years ago. When it is the worst of times, when darkness seems to overshadow us, that is often when we are most receptive to the light, to the message of hope that is Christmas. Christ, the best of gifts, was born at night, in a stable, in the worst of situations. The good news was proclaimed first to shepherds, the least of those, the ones most in need of hearing the good news.

         Christmas is always associated with light, with the star in Bethlehem, with Christ being the light of the world. After all who is it that needs light, why it is those who are in darkness.

         When it is the worst of times it is the time we most need to remember the best of times. To remember Christ’s birth.

         But what is this light, this hope that is born into the world on Christmas? It is the assurance that God cares. John’s gospel expresses it most clearly “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” That is the Christmas message. God so loved the world. God so loved the world that God chose to be born as a child on earth. God so loved the world that God became one of us, walked with us, suffered with us, and sacrificed for us.

         What greater light could there be to dispel our darkness, than the knowledge that God loves us so much that God gave us the greatest of all gifts. In the darkness, in the stable, humbly, God gave of God’s very self to us. In the worst of times God gave the best of gifts - total, passionate, unconditional love.

         All we are asked is to receive this gift of love. To stop long enough in the busyness of our lives to receive the gift of God’s love. To let God love us. Sometimes we experience God’s love as a bright sun, filling us with light and love and joy. Sometimes it is but a glimmer in the darkness. A spark of hope in the hopelessness.

         That is the Christmas miracle - light in the darkness. The light of love in the darkness of our hearts. The hope, the promise that we are loved. The hope, the promise that even in our darkest times, especially in our darkest times, we are loved by God. Even in the worst of times, when we feel unloved and unlovable, we are passionately loved by God.

         The angel said, “Do not be afraid; for see-- I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people.” The good news is that God loves us, each of us, at both the best of times and the worst of times. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.” Born in stable, a great light for people who walked in darkness.

            

Advent 2 B - sermon

Imagine that you are driving, lost in the fog. Is it time to turn around?

2 Advent B

The Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

St. Alban’s Episcopal Church

Brentwood, CA

12/8/96

Mark 1:1-8

         Imagine that you’ve spent the evening at a friend’s house somewhere East of Byron. When you leave to come home you discover that it is a dark and foggy night, so you get in your car and drive along, carefully following those little yellow dots that show where the middle of the highway is. You have been driving for quite a while, and your spouse sitting next to you, is complaining that things don’t look right, shouldn’t there have been a turn back there, etc. You mutter back something about back seat drivers and continue on. Now you are making a little better time, because there is a car in front of you, at least there are those two red lights to follow. You know nothing of the person driving that car, or where they are headed, but at least there is someone to follow. Then, suddenly you see a strangely dressed man standing in the road holding a stop sign and waving and jumping up and down to get your attention. With hesitation, you stop and role the window down just a little. “Turn around! You are going the wrong way!” he says. You look confused. “Turn around! If you keep going this way you will hurt yourself or someone else,” he repeats. “But I’m being careful” you respond. “Turn around! The lights you are following belong to a drunk who could lead you off the road, who will lead you only to death!” he states with great drama. “Who are you and why should I trust you?” you ask. “Turn around” he keeps saying. Finally he brings out a bucket of water and pours it over your windshield. To your surprise, it is no longer foggy outside. What you had thought was fog, was really all the dirt on your own windshield. As you can see outside you realize that you are very far from home, you have no idea how many hours you were going the wrong direction, and it dawns on you that you are totally lost. You also notice that the car you were following is about to go off into a ditch. You turn to the man beside you to thank him and ask him how to get home. “Follow that one over there,” he says as he points to a light in the distance. As you pull away you ask your spouse “Who was that?” “Oh, I think he was a workman preparing the road, making the highway in this desert straight.”

         John the baptizer proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Repentance, what is repentance? The word is a translation of metanoia, a Greek word that means to know again in a new way, be transformed, to turn around. When someone calls for repentance they are telling you to turn around, to turn around because you are going in the wrong direction, to turn around so that you can see things in a new way. Baptism of repentance would be a baptism that provides one an opportunity to see things in a new way.

         How much of our lives we spend as if we were wandering lost in the fog. We have no sense of where we are going, we don’t see the dangers ahead, and sometimes we follow something or someone without knowing where it will lead. How many of us wake up one morning and begin to question what we are doing with our lives. We follow a path set before us, school, marriage, job, whatever, without thinking about whether it leads to where we really want to go. Perhaps we seek wealth, money for its own sake, without thinking about why we should be trying to get rich, and then we find, once we have some money, that we still feel empty inside. Perhaps it is power that you followed after. Perhaps it was the dream of your own home and that fantasy middle class life. Once you have achieved it, then what?

         Maybe you have a gone down a road of addiction to alcohol, or drugs and one day you woke up to realize that this road leads nowhere. Maybe you idealized someone and followed them until you found that you had lost your own sense of identity. Any time we make anything more important than God, more important than loving God and our neighbors, we are going in the wrong direction and sooner or latter will find ourselves lost and at a dead end.  When we discover we have gone the wrong way there is only one thing to do, turn around.  To repent, to turn around, means to acknowledge that we have been going the wrong way, to acknowledge that we have done things we shouldn’t have done and not done things we should have.  To repent of our sins means to open our eyes and acknowledge the mistakes we have made, to see ourselves in a new way, to acknowledge that we are lost, to turn around and to follow the one for whom John was preparing, to follow the true light that can lead us home.

         Advent is a season with two themes. The first is the joyful anticipation of the birth of Christ, the incarnation of our Lord. The second is the preparing for the second coming of Christ. Both involve a sense of preparation, of self study so that we are ready to receive the incredible grace that God bestowed upon the earth on the first Christmas. We need to prepare to be able to let in just how much God loves us. We need to be prepared to open our hearts and receive the gift of love that is the Christ child.

         How do we prepare? By opening our eyes and hearts, by washing away the dirt of our past that keeps us from seeing the truth, by repenting and letting ourselves be transformed, so that when we see the true light we are ready to follow Christ home.

1 Advent B - sermon

Stay awake, be prepared. In this sermon I change Jesus' parable to be of someone whose house is up for sale and needs to keep it clean because a potential buyer that might come by at any time. How would we feel if someone came unexpectedly to our home and we were not prepared?

1 Advent B

Transcribed from a sermon given

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

November 27, 2011

Mark 13:24-37

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

The little story or tiny parable that Jesus just tells at the end of this reading about the servant that is left in charge of the house as the master is away doesn’t really resonate with most of us. I know all of you pretty well and I don’t think any of you have servants at this point in your lives. And, as far as I know, none of you have served as a slave or a servant, so we don’t really have a good sense of the implications of this story. In Jesus’ time people understood about a rich household and how the servants or slaves would have authority. They knew that whoever was the door keeper would have authority over the whole house to keep it safe and be sure that everything ran smoothly. But that doesn’t resonate with us, so I thought I’d tell it in a slightly different way, something that some of us at least have had experience with - selling our houses.

Now imagine that you are putting your house up for sale. There is a lot of preparation to get ready for that. You know. You paint the things that you have always meant to paint. You fix the things that need to be fixed. And you get the carpet cleaned. You do all those little things. Then during the time when it is up for sale you need to keep it really clean all the time, because you never now when somebody is going to come to view it and see it. You hope that the real estate agents will call first so you can do a quick straightening up of the house, but there is no guarantee. And sometimes the amount of time you have isn’t very much. So imagine that you are trying to sell your house, and it has been on the market for a while so you have gotten a little relaxed about keeping it nice. Suddenly the doorbell rings and there is a man at the door who says, “Your house is in exactly the neighborhood I want to be in and exactly the style of house that I want. This is my only chance to see it, can I come and see it?” Suddenly you go through your mind and you realize there are dirty dishes in the sink, and you haven’t dusted in a couple days, and you meant to take the garbage out last night because it was already starting to smell a little bit then, and then in the bedroom, the stuff, the clothes that are sitting around, Oh my! “Well could you come back in a little bit?” “Well no, this is the only time I have to see the house.” Well needless to say you’ve lost your sale because the house doesn’t look or smell or feel like home for this person. You’ve lost the opportunity because you haven’t kept awake. You haven’t kept things in order.

Symbolically in literature or when interpreting dreams the house represents our bodies, ourselves, who we are. So when Jesus talks about keeping the house and keeping awake for the master to return he is reminding people of whose house it is. This body, this body was created by God. We didn’t make it. And whatever that is that says “me” and “I” is really just using this body. It is on loan. I am a servant of the master. Or as it is put in the Old Testament, “He is the potter, we are the pot.” So what we do in keeping our house represents ourselves.

If we were to say symbolically someone had a messy house then they might have a messy inner life. If they leave the garbage sitting around and it starts to smell that could represent those parts of ourselves that we haven’t dealt with. The old angers and resentments that are still sitting there and we have never cleaned out. Things we have never dealt with and after a while they just start to putrefy and they start to affect our whole being. These are the places where we haven’t asked for forgiveness or we haven’t forgiven. It is all those ways in which we are not paying attention, being awake.

This particular story comes right after Jesus was talking about the end time, which was a very common theme in the prophets in the couple of hundred years before Jesus. It was the idea that the world was unjust, that things were terrible and at some point God was going to come and wipe out things the way they were and bring back the glorious Kingdom of God. Because during that time the Israelites were pretty much always under the thumb of some empire, whether it was Syria or Rome or some other empire. Things were tough and they wanted things to change and they predicted there would be an end to the world as they knew it and a new life with God. So Jesus is referring to and uses the language of those prophets when he talks about the Son of Man coming on a cloud. So right after he is talking about the end time, he uses this image of being ready, of being prepared.

Now it wasn’t too long ago, less then a month or so, I don’t remember the exact date, when there was that pastor somewhere in the south that said he knew exactly when the end of time was going to come. And it didn’t, so he recalculated it and said it is coming at this other time. He must have missed this part of Mark. For a pastor to not have read that even Jesus and the angels don’t know when it is going to happen. I don’t know how he could think that he knew.

And I don’t know when it is going to happen or if it is going to happen or what it is going to be like, but I do know that each and every one of us will have a time when the world darkens, sun, moon, lamps, will give no light. We will no longer be able to see. We will no longer be able to hear. And everything will be different because each and every one of us at some point is going to die. And we don’t know whether we are going to die at the same time that everybody on earth dies, which would be the end time as it is described, or whether our death will just be the end of our relationship with this earth, but we all will have a time when we die.

We as Christians believe that at that point we are going to encounter Christ. What’s that going to be like? Well if you haven’t kept your house clean and you haven’t kept you house in order, what is it going to be like? Now there will be some of us, some people are graced with knowing they are about to die. They have an opportunity to reconcile with those people they have never reconciled with. They have had an opportunity to express their apologies, to receive forgiveness, to forgive others, to put their house in order. It is like the person coming to the door gives you a call a couple of hours ahead, so you can race around the house and clean everything up. Some people are given that grace. Some of us aren’t. Some of us may die in an automobile accident or a heart attack or a stroke with no knowledge ahead of time. No chance to clean up those lose ends. There will be the knock on the door and there we will have whatever it is we have.

Now if the person at the door is a stranger it is going to be pretty tough. But let’s suppose instead of that being a stranger that wanted to buy your house suppose in that story it was your mother. And your mother comes and knocks on your door and your house is a mess. Well, my mother is no longer alive, but I would be embarrassed, you know. I’d feel like I let her down. I wasn’t living up to what she wanted me to live up to. And she would probably give me that look, you know, every mother has a look. Each mother has a look that is some combination of “you’ve done it again,” and “I love you anyway.” We all know that look. And those of us that are mothers are really good at doing it as well. So if my house was a mess and my mother was at the door I might be embarrassed, I might feel bad, I might apologize, but I would know that she would still love me. There would be no question about that, assuming that I had kept a good relationship with my mother.

Or what if you have a really good friend and they drop by? A really good friend is that sort of person that can drop by and you don’t feel bad about the fact that you haven’t picked up the house because they have been there before. They have helped make some of the messes in your house. They know you, they know who you are and how you live, and they appreciate you for who you really are. And you are comfortable with them no matter what. You trust their love, no matter what.

And so when we die, and we encounter Christ, who will Christ be to you? Will Christ be a stranger that you feel judged by? Will Christ be a loving parent where you will feel sort of embarrassed at the life you have lived, but you know they are going to love you anyway? Or is Christ going to be a good friend who has been with you each day of your life and so at this point knows you completely. What will it be like?

St. Therese of Lesieux is known for writing about the “The Little Way.” She was very simple and profound nun. In one of her writings she includes a little prayer.

After earth’s exile I hope to go and enjoy you in the father land but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven I want to work for your love alone. In the evening of this life I shall appear before you with empty hands for I do not ask you Lord to count my works. All our justice is blemished in your eyes. I wish then to be clothed in your own justice, and to receive from your love the eternal possession of yourself.

Keep awake, prepare for the coming of Christ. But what really is going to matter at that moment is not what we have done or what we have left undone, what is going to matter is our relationship with the one who comes to greet us.

Christ the King - sermon

This week I am only able to post the first half of a sermon I gave on Christ the King Sunday in 2011. The recording of the sermon cut off about half way through. But you may still find the discussion of how is going to go to heaven interesting.

Christ the King

Last Pentecost

Transcribed from a sermon given

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

On November 20, 2011

By Rev. Valerie Hart

I’d like you to imagine that it is 200 years from now and you are a graduate student studying cultural anthropology. You have decided for your dissertation that you are going to look at the attitudes of Christians at the turn of the 21^st century, which is the beginning of the 21^st century, about heaven and hell. You wanted to know who they believed was going to heaven and who they believed was going to hell. Now you have all of the newspaper articles, you have copies of different TV shows and news shows; you even have access to some of the web sites. You use all these different resources to try and understand what were Christians thinking at the turn of the century.

What would you find? You’d find that there were a lot of people out there who thought they know who is going to heaven. Right? And you’d find different things. If you studied people who were into sacramental theology you would read that you had to be baptized to go to heaven. Or perhaps you had to get last rights from the Church to go to heaven. If you looked at the more fundamentalist side you would find they have all kinds of ideas of why you might go to heaven. Usually it would have to do with some kind of right belief. For example, that you have taken Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior. Or in order to get to haven you had to believe the way that that particular denomination believed. Of course then it depends upon how large the particular group is to determine how large heaven is. And then of course you would have the progressives who would say everybody is going to heaven, there’s going to be no judgment.

So that’s what the 21^st century says about heaven, but what about hell? I need to ask you for help on this one, or maybe we don’t need to say it out loud. Who’s going to hell? Who’s going to hell?

The people who aren’t baptized are going to hell? People who aren’t Christians? People who don’t take Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior? Or is it more about people who break one of the rules. We have quite a set of rules. There are so many rules and laws in scripture. Much more than just the Ten Commandments there are thousands of other rules and laws if you look through Leviticus.

How often have you heard people saying that X person is going to hell because they have broken one of the rules? If you look historically you’ll find that the rules that lead to hell change with the culture. In Europe a few centuries ago one of the things that would lead to going to hell was charging usury. That means charging interest on a loan. This was part of the reason that the banks became so associated with the Jewish people. Because,  “A good Christian didn’t charge interest.” Then of course in the twentieth century it was a lot about different kinds of sexual sin. In the early twentieth century adultery was it, but adultery has become so common now that if everyone who commits adultery is going to hell… A lot of people don’t want to bring that up anymore. Especially with the issue of Jesus saying that if you get divorced and remarried that’s adultery. So divorce is no longer a sure ticket to hell.

But there is always something. And we know what some of them are that you hear about today. Shortly after I started at St. Barnabas there was a guy who came in between the services and told me I was going to hell because a woman shouldn’t be preaching. So we all know this. You have seen the signs. We used to go to hockey games and there was a guy who would stand outside saying you are going to hell if, and you fill in the blank. And then it would have some scripture reading. He would stand in front of the hockey game. All I could think of was wondering if that somebody who is trying to turn people away from Christianity, because it certainly isn’t going to bring anybody in.

Yes, there are a lot of people that you’ll hear who say they know who is going to hell and that they know who is going to heaven.

Well here we have this gospel passage of Jesus, called the small apocalypse. It is one of the few times where Jesus talks about the end time and the coming of the king in glory. He describes the kind as dividing the sheep from the goats, reflecting back to that Ezekiel passage and other prophets that talk about the shepherd of Israel coming to gather the sheep together. Here the king has come at the end time and the sheep and the goats, all the animals that have been feeding together, are brought together and they are sorted out. And how are they sorted out? Well the sheep are the ones about which he said, “When I was hungry you fed me. When I was thirsty you gave me something to drink. When I was sick you visited me. When I was in prison you visited me.” In other words, you cared about me. Little small acts of kindness. Small acts of kindness that they didn’t even realize they were doing.

And what of the ones who go into the eternal damnation? Yes there is judgment her. (So those of us who would say there is no judgment have to deal with a passage like this as well). There is judgment, and the ones who are turned away from God are the ones about which the king says,  “I was hungry and you didn’t feed me, I was thirsty and you didn’t give me anything to drink. I was homeless and you didn’t give me a place to stay, I had no clothes and you didn’t clothe me.” In other words, you didn’t take care of me.

Both groups say, “When did we do that? I never saw you hungry or thirsty.” And then there is that very telling comment, “When you did it to the least of my family you did it to me.” On the other hand,  “if you didn’t do it to the least of my family you didn’t do it for me.” So Jesus is saying that this judgment is not based on correct belief, at least in this passage. It is not based on whether you are baptized or not, he never talked about that particularly. It’s not based on being part of a specific community. It is based on a loving heart. And it actually is based on one of the laws, at least one the ones that Jesus talks about. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Or in John’s Gospel love one another as I have loved you. It’s about relationship.

(This was the end of the recording and the second half of the sermon was not available.)

Proper 28 A - Sermon

This Sunday we read the parable of the talents. The question is not do we have talents to share. We all have been given talents. The question is what are you going to do with them?

Proper 28A

Transcribed from a sermon given

At St Barnabas Episcopal Church

By Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

November 13, 2011

Six billion. Six billion is a pretty big number. Six billion. That is the number of pieces of information in the human genome. There are that many pieces of information in our DNA and RNA, which is the source and blueprint for our physical bodies. That is a huge amount of information. Also realize that there can be variation in any one of those. Think of all the potential combinations and permutations of six billion pieces of information.

That means that each and every human being is unique. Nobody like you has ever been before and odds are there will never be anyone like you again. And it is not just our genome that determines who we are. Studies have shown that if a woman is under a lot of stress when she is pregnant that that will have effects on the child. Other studies have shown that whether you are the first born or the last born or middle born that changes who you are. And even if you have the genome to be tall, if you don’t get sufficient nutrition when you are growing up you will never grow to that height. So all these different variables, like whether your parents are under stress when you are a child or if they are able to love and care for you or not, all of these different things effect who you are, who you are right now.

And not just things you experienced as a child, but all of the experiences you have had, the wonderful honors and good thing that have happened to you, the struggles, the suffering, the losses, the mistakes all of that is part of what builds who you are right now. And you are unique. Every human being is unique - A unique creation of God. The question is, “What are we going to do with that?” What are we going to do with your uniqueness, the abilities, experiences, and opportunities that no one else has?

The Gospel reading for today is the parable of the ten talents, in which one person is given five, another two and another one. Now a talent back then was not what we use the word talent for today. The word talent, like in America’s Got Talent, or a talent show, that meaning for talent as some special gift that is unique and valued, that meaning came from this parable. The word talent in Jesus’ time was used to describe a source of money. A talent is a piece of silver, and scholars have looked tried to figure out how much a talent would have been worth and estimates vary from six thousand dollars to sixty thousand dollars. So, whatever it was, it was a lot of money. They weren’t given just a quarter; they were given a lot of money to take care of.

And the question is what are they going to do with it. Now the parables always represent other things, and parables can always be interpreted in many different ways. But parable is almost always interpreted as meaning that each one of us has been given by the master, by God, an abundance. Not just a little bit, we have been given and abundance of talent - each one of us.

Now some of us have beautiful voices and sing in the choir. Some of us have voices where we feel like a frog when we try to sing. But there may be some out there who have beautiful voices that aren’t quite sure whether they can actually sing and don’t really want to go out there and try. All of us have some kind of voice, so even if we sound like a frog when we sing our voice can still be beautiful when we tell someone that we love them. It is a gift we have.

There are some people who have an eye for beauty. You know, the kind of person where their clothes always look just right and when you go to their house it is decorated in a way that you never would have thought to decorate things, but it all goes together beautifully. Or perhaps they are an artist and they paint or they draw or they make quilts or they do other beautiful things. They have a talent, an eye for beauty. And some of us just kind of fumble along, doing the best we can, and never quite looking so elegant but we have eyes that we can see the beauty of the earth and we can appreciate the awesomeness of a tree. We can appreciate beauty.

Some of us have brilliant mathematical minds that can add and subtract and multiply and understand logarithms. And other of us are kind of like, “I need my calculator to add this up because I don’t know how to add.” But then there are other ones whose minds are great in terms of speaking. They can get up and they can talk and look like they are not nervous at all while others are shy and scared and just kind of freeze in front of people. It doesn’t matter. We all have different talents and they are all of equal importance.

Sometimes people say, “Well I don’t have any talent. I don’t have much to add.” I was at the symphony last night and it reminded me of a story. There was a rehearsal for the symphony going on and there was one part in this great gigantic symphony where everyone was playing. There were a timpani and a choir and every body was playing really loud so the piccolo player said to himself, “I don’t need to bother with this. Nobody is going to hear me over that.” He stopped playing for a moment. Immediately the conductor stopped everything and said,  “What happened to the piccolo?” You see that little tiny sound of the piccolo was what filled out the whole symphony. Even if you are sitting back in your seat and you don’t know about the piccolo, it is part of the overall sound. The conductor knew this. Sometimes we feel like that little piccolo that doesn’t make any difference, but it matters to the conductor. It matters to God.

Some of us are really good physically. We can go out and work in the garden, we can paint, we can build things, and we do stuff. And some of us have gotten to the point where getting out of bed in the morning and getting dressed is a major effort. We’ve long ago given up trying to work in the garden. But we have a gift in that we can’t get up. Because those people who like to help others need someone to help. Sometimes the greatest gift we give is a willingness to be helped, to be gracious about receiving, because how can others give if there is no one to receive?

We all have different talents, different abilities. In Paul’s letter that we read today he talks about using who we are to build up one another and to encourage one another. In other places Paul writes about spiritual gifts and about how we all have different spiritual gifts but we are one body. Here he is saying that we need to use what we have to encourage one another, to lift one another up.

There is a wonderful thing that has been going on in the Sunday School. It is that different people from the church have been sharing their talents with the children. One time someone goes over there and shows them how to paint watercolors. Her gift for painting is shared with the children and the children come out with a painting that they can feel proud of. And who knows one of those children may decide that they want to develop that gift - that talent. Another person shares wood working, another person quilting, all the different gifts that we have we can share with our children. We can share them with each other. We can lift up and empower each other.

Sometimes the most important gift that we have to share, the most important talent that we have to share, is our own journey, and our own struggles. Most of you have probably read or heard about Steve Jobs great commencement speech which was centered upon talking about his failures and how important his failures were. Sometimes the greatest gift we have to give, sometimes the talent that we have, is our experience. When my husband was in an accident and flat on his back and didn’t know if he was going to walk, he wanted to talk to somebody who had been there. It didn’t help for anybody else to say, “I know how you are feeling.” We didn’t. But there was a friend who had been through that, who did know.

Or when you come home from the doctor with that diagnosis of cancer, if there is someone else who can reach out to you and say, “I’ve been through chemo. It’s hard. You’ll survive. I’ll be there with you.” It makes all the difference in the world.

So sometimes the gift we have is our brokenness. Not necessarily something that we see as our strength. If you are familiar with the twelve step programs you know incredibly powerful work of the twelve steps, but just reading the twelve steps isn’t going to cure you, isn’t going to help. What is so important about twelve step programs is the other people. It is the other people who have messed up, and fallen down and are willing to share their own struggles and their own successes. The gift that they give is of having been on that journey.

We all have gifts and talents and things to offer to the world and to each other. The question is, “What are we going to do with them?” Let’s look at this parable, especially the one who received one talent and who buried it in the ground. The reason he did that is stated clearly. The reason he didn’t develop his talent is because he was afraid. Have you ever been afraid to express your talent? Afraid that if you sing people might make fun of you? Afraid that if you paint you won’t make something pretty? Afraid that if you reach out to that neighbor they won’t want to hear you? Afraid to share the gifts that you have for whatever reasons? There are a million reasons to be afraid. It is our fears that keep us from fully expressing ourselves. It is our fears that keep us from sharing the gift of who we are with others.

I invite you to look at yourself. What do you have to give, to help to build up the community, to help other people? And look at what you are afraid of and to trust that you don’t need to be afraid because Christ is with you.

Amen