rich’s blog

…was born today @ 12:09. She’s a wee one: 5 lbs, 12 oz., 19 inches long.

She’s beautiful, healthy, and seems to be cut from the same cloth as her mother.

And so we rejoice.

So, I’ve updated the collected Revelation Series to your right, there. Here’s the rub: formatting’s off. Ah well.

But I want to say this: Thus far in Revelation, my favorite teaching is the most recent–the Part II of Revelation 17 & 18. Check it out or let me know what you think. rh  (first draft of this note said 16 & 17; I meant 17 & 18.  my bad.)

If you’re interested…

A Christmas Message: 2009

Introduction:
We are on the other side of Christmas Day, now. Advent is over, and we are thrust back out into real time. I hope so much that we don’t forget that Jesus is coming.

Although we are, of course, in Christmastime. We’re in the 12 days of Christmas, the days between Christmas Day and Epiphany, a Christian holiday celebrated on January 6th. Epiphany means “appearance!” and it often marks the arrival of the Wise Men and Jesus’ appearance to the Gentiles.

So this is Christmastime! In some places in the world the church does nothing but celebrate from Christmas Day until Epiphany. We go shopping. So. Six of one…

Worry:
I have a little bit of worry that anything I say today will not be nearly have as much impact as I know it could; actually I’m sure of it. Because today we’re talking about Christmas–and Christmas is a big deal, and I worry that somehow, instead of being changed by the dense, central realities of what we’re getting so near to, we’ll just sort of chip our teeth on them.

So if that does happen, it’s me. And I would ask that all of us, somehow–in the midst of dogs and guinea pigs and pregnancy–wait. Projected there. In the midst of the stuff of life, whether it’s shopping or quiet rest, whatever it is–I hope that we might take at least a second to think about what it means to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Let’s pray together:

Prayer:
Father: We thank you for Christmas. We want you to know that we think your son is really great. And we’re glad that we’ve been invited to this party. Let it be that our lives are as impacted by Jesus’ birth and its meaning as much as they should be. Keep me from misleading us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Introduction:
We could talk about a lot of things in a Christmas message. What a hassle it is to find out from angels you’re pregnant, but you’ve never had sex. We could dig into the texts that were read to us, and talk about the ins and outs of biblical prophecy, we could compare and contrast the differing Christmas story emphases that Luke and Matthew bring out in their books about Jesus. We could talk about the meaning of Jesus’ name.

But…we’re not really going to talk about any of that stuff!

We’re going to talk about our problems. It’s church, right? Isn’t that what we do? See, we have problem. It’s a little problem. We tend to do something with Christmas which isn’t so great.

We tend to overlook it; not maybe as an event, right–I couldn’t get away with saying that. Christmas is a big event, there’s you know, trees and boxes and candy and stuff. It’s an event!

But we don’t really think for very long about its meaning; the implications of Christmas and Jesus’ birth. By and large, we’re sort of “Jesus is born! And he died for our sins.” And not only do we skip some stuff like his life, or his resurrection, but really his birth becomes something that had to happen only so that he could die for our sins.

It’s Own Implications:
But it shouldn’t be that way. The Birth of Jesus has its own implications; it’s own meaning for our lives. And that’s what I want us to think about a bit this morning: The implication of calling Jesus “Immanuel,” which means “God with us.” The implications of what’s called the incarnation–a great theological word, fancy, you know: like wine in a box, or mini sausage appetizers.

We’ll talk about incarnation more in a second.

Why?
But why, right? Why Why should Jesus’ birth have any impact on our lives.

We’ve talked over and over on our Sundays about the way that those people who’ve decided to believe the things Jesus says, to follow Jesus, they need to really learn how to pattern their lives, behaviors, actions, after Jesus’ life. We’re to become like Jesus.

What’s true of Jesus should be true of his followers. Christians claim Jesus’ resurrection as their own, they expect to come back to life after dying someday.

And we claim the benefits of Jesus’ death–a restored relationship with God–even if we don’t always do the best job of taking up death itself as part of what it means to be a Christian. It’s just hard to pattern our lives after Jesus’ life–voluntary slavery, making choices that cost us greatly in every way so that others might be blessed, not retaliating with anger when we’re attacked–but that this is the life Jesus calls his followers to.

As Christians, Jesus’ life and death and resurrection become not just metaphors for how we are supposed to live, but really, paradigms, patterns, that we are supposed to follow. We’re asked to discover what it means to model Jesus in every way.

Always On My Mind:
And so this is always on my mind around Christmas: if we as Christians are supposed to live out Jesus’ life, and take up Jesus’ death, and expect Jesus resurrection all as our own, what about his birth?

Are we also supposed to embody–embody–Jesus’ birth?

I’ll pause there, because it really makes no sense, does it? I’m saying that somehow Christians are supposed to be like Jesus in every way, and experience the full spectrum of Jesus’ life–including his birth.

And my first response, after seeing a lot of birthing videos lately–is gross. And your first response might be the same, you know: Rich, that’s gross, and your weird, and I think we need a new pastor.

Of course, if you’re thinking that, it’s not a new sort of attitude. In one of the stories about Jesus, he tells a guy that the man has to be born again if he wants to follow Jesus, and the guy responds as if Jesus is loony-tunes. “You can’t be born again. A little too big for the womb.”

And Jesus keeps talking, and we see that he’s using this birth metaphor as a way to talk about the realities of what it means to begin to trust him, and begin to follow him.

Jesus himself uses a metaphor related to his own birth–one that was brought about by the Holy Spirit–and tells this guy, and those of us who listen in, that in deciding to side with him, we have to have the same sort of Holy Spirit birth thing, a sort of re-birth while we’re still living.

But what I think we do, is that we leave behind, then, Jesus’ birth and it’s implications for our lives of faith, after we’ve started following him, and never look back at Christmas to see how it should daily affect our lives.

But we don’t need to just drop this great metaphor at the door after we’ve decided to follow Jesus. Part of what it means to make our life like Jesus’ own, to become more like Jesus all the time, means that we should somehow also own Jesus’ birth, and daily be impacted by it, just as much as we are impacted daily by the way he lived, by his death, and will be impacted by his resurrection after we’ve died.

Jesus’ birth presents a sort of pattern or paradigm for Christians that we have to incorporate into our lives of faith.

This is important for everything else I say this morning. You don’t have to buy it, but do you see what I’m presenting: The idea that Jesus’ birth presents a sort of pattern or paradigm for Christians that we have to incorporate into our lives of faith.

You don’t have to buy this, but hold it in your minds for me, alright: pretend for a few minutes with me. All I’m doing right now is proposing this as an interesting idea, (which I happen to believe).

The question of course, if we at least pretend for a second to accept the idea that Jesus’ birth must be important to us personally, daily, and must impact and shape our faith, as much as his death and resurrection should daily and personally impact and shape and inform our faith–how do we apply that, right?

Check Yourself!
Well, let’s check ourselves for a second, because I haven’t really talked about Jesus’ birth at all yet, have I? If we’re going to apply anything, we should know what it is we’re trying to apply, right? Is that fair?

What are we trying to apply?

Jesus’ birth. The one named Immanuel. The incarnation of God.

Incarnation
The Incarnation is a difficult thing to talk about. Let me just be clear; it has nothing to do with delicious instant breakfast. Kidding. But it’s easier to make jokes than be serious with this thing, because it’s just such a big, weird, beautiful idea.

Incarnation as a notion means to take on flesh. Simple enough, right. It’s the idea that being, and personality, and personal agency can exist without a body–without joints and muscle and heart–and then this active conscious personality takes on skin and bones and joints and eyes–the disembodied becomes embodied, that which is without teeth and a mouth gets one and begins to breathe and sleep and dream. That’s incarnation. Becoming enfleshed.

The Incarnation
When we talk about “The Incarnation,” we are talking about God doing this. It’s a bit trickier though, because there’s really two categories as far as existence goes, right: the creator, and the created.

God and that which ain’t God, no matter how much our siblings or parents or spouses think they are God; they’re not. And when we talk about “The Incarnation,” we are talking about God, the creator, deciding to take on the life of something created–our life–to take up the experience of humanity, with all it’s troubles and terrors and highs and lows and its certain death.

And there is no simple way to explain that. But we don’t need to explain it, in order to be affected by it, to become something greater as a result of it. (Which is good, since thousands of people have tried to articulate it in way more detail than we just did).

Immanuel:
One thing is for sure though: we can’t talk about “The Incarnation,” without talking about Immanuel–that name which means “God with us.”

Immanuel was a promise made to Israel long before the first Christmas, before Jesus’ birthday. A promise that God who loved them would be with his people; really be with his people, after it seemed as though he’d been gone a long while–and he would care for them, and do right by them, and bring justice and peace and hope into the world, when it felt like those things had been gone for a long time.

But the bible reminds us that “Hope deferred–put off–makes the heart sick.” And by the time Jesus was born, this was an old promise, and Israel’s heart was sick, was tired of waiting.

I don’t know if we can relate to that.

But Israel longed for the day when God would be with them again, because it had been a while, and they had faced some horrible things as a people. And in Jesus, Immanuel and Incarnation mixed and met.

God came to be with his people in a way nobody could have really expected; he became one of Israel, a person.

We are told by the biblical writers that Jesus is Immanuel because we need to know that in this One, this Jesus, God finally made good on old promises. And healing was put in motion for those who were heartsick.

Here’s the rub:
Here’s the rub: God revealed in the incarnation, in Jesus as Immanuel, a pattern of engagement with the world. God entered into our experience of reality. The creator chose to enter into and take part of creation. All because of love for creation, love for humanity. And surprising wonderful things happened as a result of this, but the very fact that it happened is itself surprising and wonderful too: God with us and God as us–a person, alive, and breathing and here.

This–this entering into another’s experience of reality–this is what we have to apply as Christians; this is the principle of The incarnation; that it is worthwhile and good to perceive and experience reality as others perceive it. And as Christians, we believe that this is exactly what God did in The Incarnation; that God became human so that humanity might be totally and fully experienced by God, and in the end, brought back to God–known and loved and cared for.

So what?
So what, though, right? I mean. How do we apply that sort of truth. It’s nice to say, “choose to experience the reality of another person,” but that doesn’t translate well into what might happens this afternoon, does it?

I think there are sort of three things that we’ve got to think about when it comes to the whole application thing. Its sort of like juggling and walking forward at the same time, though: these aren’t steps one, two, three, you know? But three things to attend to while we make forward steps.

Notice our lives:
First of all, I think we’ve got to notice our lives. We’ve got to pay attention to ourselves: We’ve got to really start trying to pay attention to ourselves. Learn what it means to be us.

For God to become human, God had to first really be aware of what it meant to be God. The creator of everything didn’t, you know, slip and fall into humanity, into creation: God knew what it meant to be God well before humans knew what it meant to be human.

We need to be honest and aware of what it means to be ourselves and what it means to be human–admitting to ourselves and each other that life is hard and full of troubles, but sometimes so wonderful. That we can forget in 3 minutes the greatest pains of our lives, or live with them so that they cripple us.

So I think that this is an important juggling thing, ball or whatever; noticing ourselves and then beginning to attend to the things we should really deal with. “I do that!?” “I have those prejudices?!” “I smell that way!?” This takes some self-reflection and it takes some courage, but honestly, it mostly just takes some effort.

Notice our lives:
Invite Others In:

As we see who we are, how we act, we’ve got to invite others in. This is a risk. It’s not simple. There’s no path to vulnerability. But if we’ve noticed and accepted how screwed up we are, how broken we can be, how demanding and opinionated and stubborn we can be–

and at the same time how funny, and how nice and kind sometimes, how hopeful and filled with longing– (everyone I’ve ever met, has this sort of human cocktail going on, you know.)

Then we can begin to see that honestly, other people might be more like us than we want to admit. And not only that, but we can begin to try and believe a great truth, though its a rare truth:

that everyone we meet has something to offer us.

That in spite of how much alike we all are–with our questions about meaning in life, and our deep insecurities, and our great secret dreams–we are still unique, and it may very well be the person who sees life just a little differently from us that has some great bit of wisdom by which we can become more of the person God desires us to be.

So we toss this ball in the air too, and juggle it, and try in little tiny ways and then bigger and bigger ways to share who we are with others.

And then the last bit, I think, which is the real goal, the big hope. You know, juggling two balls is–well, let’s be honest. It’s just not as impressive as three.

Christmas juggling, that’s what we’re talking about.

The third thing.

Notice Our Lives:
Invite Others In:
We Enter In:

We decide to believe that others are important. That the way people experience what it means to live is worthwhile. That in some little way, we ourselves decide to enter into their world, choose to believe that others lives and their hopes and dreams are really important.

And I think it’s a miracle when we are able to do that. When we are able to look with compassion upon another, and decide that it’s worth entering into their experience of reality, insofar as we’re able, which is for us only ever imperfectly. (Remember we’re not God; we are only trying to mimic Jesus, empowered by God’s Spirit and love and mercy.)

That is the beginning of everything for the Christian; the beginning of love, the beginning of redemption, the beginning of realizing hope, the beginning of meeting needs. It was the beginning of Jesus; God with us, enfleshed.

Until we take the step to enter into another persons’ experience of reality, we really better not move forward. Sometimes this is called forming a relationship; sometimes, before the practice is ripe and mature it means simply noticing what another person is going through and dealing with.

Summary thus far
I’m asking that we begin to notice our own lives, take stock in our perceptions and discover what it means to be us. Begin to explore the questions: Who are we? And as we do it, we invite others into our experience of reality. While we’re doing that, inviting others in, I’m asking that we might take the steps to enter into the realities of others; to come alongside them and begin to experience life as they experience it, with their hurts, and their troubles.

But how do we cash this out, right? This is big stuff. How do we take it home with us and apply this idea that we need to live out the incarnation–God’s decision to experience reality as we experience it–by choosing to experience the reality of others through coming alongside them–sort of love in action.

Immediate Application:
We can start remembering lost chances.

A few of us have had people over; some of us still do–and we’re the lucky ones, because our chances don’t have to be lost ones. But family has visited. Our kids might be back home from wherever they’ve been, our parents and siblings have been around.

We’ve entered into each other’s spaces, each others’ realities. It might be as simple as having to do “shoes off at the door,” because that’s the rule where we’ve been. We might have had to watch 5 hours of home movies that only one person likes, because that one person needs to watch those home movies. Maybe we’ve cooked ham and turkey, because these ones won’t eat turkey and those ones won’t eat ham, and what’s their problem, anyway. Don’t the realize…

sorry.

But we’ve been interacting with people, sharing space and accommodating needs, some of us still are and some us are just thankful it’s over.

But I’m not talking about tolerating each other. That’s a weak, lesser cousin of what I’m talking about. It’s about coming alongside the home movie lover and asking, “Why?” “Why is it so important?”

Learning what you can gain from him or her, and loving the fact that they love it so much–even though you will not watch them until next Christmas.

Incarnation is about learning why Ham? Why Turkey? And valuing the people who stand behind the preferences. It’s about appreciating sock feet even when you’d rather have your shoes on.

It’s about taking the extra effort to care about the concerns of the person who you can come alongside. This isn’t sentimental sort of “Oh, babies dressed like fruit are so cute!” if your aunt loves fruit-babies. It’s a “You value this, and I’m discovering how to value you, and appreciate this stuff because it’s important to you. And so it’s important to me.”

God took on human flesh out of love. And it may be easier to enter into the cares and concerns and troubles and trials of other people if we love them–actually, I’m sure it is–but sometimes its the case that we weak people discover our love for others only after we’ve come alongside them.

Carolyn is pregnant. And her experience as a pregnant woman is something that I can’t replicate, right? It’d be a horror movie, or a terrible comedy with Arnold Schwarzenegger. But I can come to her and say “Love, tell me what you are feeling, share with me how you are, your troubles and joys, and tell me what you need.” I can try to enter into her experience of pregnancy as deeply as I can, so that I can be a blessing to her and be a bumbling, messed up sort of “God with her” as much as I’m able

We are faced all the time with chances at Incarnation; let’s not lose them.

A Final Warning:
But I should say a warning: In coming alongside another, doing what we can to experience reality as they experienced it, like God did for us, it will mean in the end, that part of us is changed.

After the incarnation, after the resurrection, for the first time ever, God who is Spirit had flesh. Jesus is still alive somewhere, the Bible tells us about a lot of great things he’s doing. This whole season of the church year has been about preparing for his return. But, you know, dry skin and lost eyelashes, and gas, maybe and all the stuff of being human–the pleasures and realities of having a body–are now part of what it means to be God, too.

It was so important to know what it’s like to really live in our human neighborhood, that God decided skin & bones could be a part of God’s neighborhood forever. Whatever it’s like today when the Holy Spirit, and God the Father, and Jesus come together, Jesus is there with joints and hair.

Changed Forever:
If we take up this principle, this call, really, in our lives of faith, it’s going to mean that as we come into contact with others, and enter into their realities, some part of ourselves will be changed forever.

Because our eyes will be opened; we’ll begin to see life, the world the way others do, and we’ll gain the chance to reflect on what it means to live for Jesus, to trust in Jesus, while navigating through all these experiences all these people–family and strangers and friends whom we’ve grown to love–have.

And we know that this is worth the risk, because it was a risk God took–and we know that we can do it, because God is still with us, Immanuel is still here, whenever the church shows up. It’s a pretty cool thing.

So go home, and finally ask your dad what’s the deal with the suspenders, you know: ask your kid, why is it you have that sticker on your bumper, ask your spouse what he or she loves about that thing they are just so into: and begin to take up the experiences of those around you, work to perceive the world as they perceive it. And become changed. And become like Jesus.

Prayer:
Father. We are so thankful that you know what it means to be a person. We are surrounded by people, Lord: by others–strangers to us in so many ways. Give us the strength to enter alongside others and enter into their lives, their experiences of reality. Thank you that you did this for us.

I pray that we can know what it’s like to be the one who is a stranger to us, and that we can come to love them as you love us, and somehow point them to the peace that you’ve brought us into.

Protect us, King; love us as only someone who knows us fully can. And grant us peace. In the name of the one who is with us, always, Jesus–amen.

This story from Marketplace talks about the way we apply different behavioral norms to free things than we do with costly things.  It touches on the notion of “commons,” and seems to me to offer an interesting jumping-off point for a discussion about how God’s work through Jesus is presented.  (Or: any “social” justice issue at all.)