Peace and Goodwill to All

Christmas Eve 2016

Luke 2:1-20

(Or watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzfGFntn_vI )

            In preparing for tonight’s service, and in light of all that’s gone on this year, I found myself pondering that phrase, “peace on earth and goodwill to men.” It’s a pretty familiar phrase, and we’re used to singing it in Christmas carols like the one we just sang, “It Came upon a Midnight Clear.” So, I went back to the Bible to find the exact context and see who says it. Anyone know? It’s the angels, when they come to tell the shepherds in the fields about the birth of Jesus. Except, I couldn’t find it in the first Bible I looked in. I couldn’t find it in the second one, or even the third. I got an idea and looked in the old King James Bible, and there it was. After the angel tells the shepherds, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord…,”[1] then “suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!’”[2] So, it’s not really “peace on earth and goodwill to men,” it’s “peace and goodwill toward men.” And it’s not in hardly any other Bible translation. The reason for this is the problem with the King James Bible as a whole. While it has beautiful poetry, and was quite an achievement of its time as one of the first English Bibles, one of its sources is not as original as other Bible sources. One of its sources is the Latin Vulgate Bible, which dates to the late 3^rd century, and so a lot of the King James Bible is a translation from that Bible, instead of original manuscripts. The Vulgate Bible was also a masterpiece in its time and the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church for over a thousand years, from about 400 A.D. until the 1500’s when the Protestant Reformation occurred and then the Catholic Counter-Reformation, as they tried to address some of the problems raised by the Protestant detractors. Church history aside, the Vulgate is not the earliest translation of the Bible, and there are earlier texts in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, and our other modern Bible translations are based on those earlier manuscripts instead. So, to make a long story short, that’s why the phrase “goodwill to men” is not in most Bibles; it was in the Latin Vulgate, but not in other, earlier manuscripts. I hope I didn’t bore you with all that history!

            Bottom line is that most translations only say, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”[3] Most translations leave out that “goodwill to men” or “goodwill to all” part, and for good reason. Yet it seems that goodwill toward our fellow person has also been forgotten lately. I’ve heard multiple times that our country has not been this divided since 1968. 1968 was the year Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. It’s the year that hostilities increased in the war in Vietnam and locally we had the Catonsville Nine, burning their draft cards to protest the war. Tensions were high then, and tensions are high again, fifty years later. 2016 has not been a good year for many of us. We’ve lost loved ones, experienced new diseases, were scared we were going to lose more loved ones, and went through a traumatic election cycle in which some of our relationships with loved ones were irrevocably changed. We have had a lot going on, and it has not made us a better people. Not many of the large events have inspired us or encouraged us to have goodwill toward our fellow person. Instead, I think we’ve become meaner to each other. I’ve witnessed not one, but two separate incidents on Pulaski Highway where people actually got out of their cars to confront each other in the midst of road rage. The social climate has changed. We’ve lost our goodwill toward men. We’re more likely to be suspicious, to not trust, to not give someone the benefit of the doubt, to not presume someone innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. We’ve lost our goodwill toward our neighbor, toward our co-worker, toward our spouse, our children, …maybe kept it toward our grandchildren J We’ve lost our goodwill toward our fellow driver and toward the person next to us in line at the store. A friend of mine was actually thanked the other day at Wal-Mart for saying “excuse me.” The fact that politeness was so alien to this person that she felt the need to thank my friend, speaks volumes about where we are as a society.

            Now, we can’t change others; we can only change ourselves. So, make it a point this Christmas season and in 2017 to use your good manners that I know all y’all were taught. Say please and thank you and excuse me. Let others go first. Let a car out in front of you when lanes merge or a side street joins a main thoroughfare. Let go of grudges. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Did you know that the first Christmas of World War I, in 1914, there was an unofficial Christmas truce? On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, French, German, and British soldiers from both sides left opposing trenches on the Western front and met up in no man’s land in the middle with no weapons, no harsh words, just gifts and food to exchange. Some soldiers even played soccer together and others sang Christmas carols. Now, after Christmas, the war resumed, and by Christmas of 1915, hostilities were so intensified that both sides were too bitter and too entrenched to do it again. Brothers and sisters, friends, let’s not get to that point, where we can’t break bread and sing and play with people who are on opposite sides from us. Let’s declare a Christmas Truce, not just for these twelve days of Christmas, but to last throughout the coming year, and beyond that, too.

            There’s a Christmas song that John Denver sings, that I know from my all-time favorite Christmas album, John Denver and the Muppets, but he’s sung it elsewhere, too. 

It’s called “The Christmas Wish.”[4]

I don't know if you believe in Christmas,

or if you have presents underneath the Christmas tree.

But if you believe in love, that will be more than enough

for you to come and celebrate with me.

For I have held the precious gift that love brings

even though I've never saw a Christmas star.

But I know there is a light, I have felt it burn inside,

and I can see it shining from afar.

Christmas is a time to come together, a time to put all differences aside.

And I reach out my hand to the family of man

to share the joy I feel at Christmas time.

For the truth that binds us all together, I would like to say a simple prayer.

That at this special time, you will have true peace of mind

and love to last throughout the coming year.

And if you believe in love, that will be more than enough

for peace to last throughout the coming year.

And peace on earth will last throughout the year.

            We need help for that to happen. We need someone called the Prince of Peace in order to have real, lasting peace. We need something as radical and absurd as a tiny baby to save us from ourselves and from each other. Emmanuel means God with us. God, in this tiny, newborn baby, with us. Keeping God’s promise to never leave us or forsake us. Keeping God’s promise to remember us and redeem us. Keeping God’s promise to save us. Keeping God’s promise that evil and suffering and death and miscommunication and betrayal do not have the last word. Keeping God’s Word that God had the first word and will have the last word.

            Theologian and Bishop N.T. Wright once wrote that “what Jesus was up to… was not saving souls for a disembodied eternity but rescuing people from the corruption and decay of the way the world presently is so that they could enjoy, already in the present, that renewal of creation which is God’s ultimate purpose – and so that they could thus become colleagues and partners in that large project.”[5] Joining God in God’s work is precisely this. Enjoying now the renewal of creation, the renewal we see at Christmastime, “a time to come together and put all differences aside,” to reach out our hand to our fellow person, to have goodwill toward them once again. We’ve forgotten it, but it is time to again to have peace in our hearts and goodwill in our thoughts and actions to “the family of man,” the family of God, our brothers and sisters, each and every person, whether they are like you or not, whether they voted for the same person as you or not, whether they are the same religion as you or not. It’s time. For this Christ was born. Thanks be to God. Amen.

---

[1] Luke 2:10-11

[2] Luke 2:13-14

[3] Luke 2:14, NRSV

[4] http://www.metrolyrics.com/the-christmas-wish-lyrics-john-denver.html

[5] Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro, p. 72

If You Knew

4th Sunday of Advent

December 18, 2016

Canticle of Mary; Matthew 1:18-25

“If you knew.” It’s a fun game we humans like to play. Would you want to be 17 again? If I knew then what I know now. Would you do something wild and daring again? If I knew ahead of time what would happen. If you knew the end at the beginning, would you still go through it? If it has a good ending, of course! If it has a bad ending? There’s always been a young adult novel sub genre of tragic endings, which you know are coming. When I was growing up, the author Lurlene McDaniel wrote a lot of those types of stories. Tragic heroines who are coming of age and who have the odds stacked against them because of disease or some other tragic occurrence. The latest most popular one is “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green; it was also made into a movie a couple years ago. It’s a classic love story of boy meets girl, with a twist. Both boy and girl have terminal cancer. Both are only teenagers. While reading the book, I kept wondering which one was going to die first, and I won’t spoil it for you and tell you. Love is always a risk; even more so when the one you love is expected to die. Is it still worth it?

My husband and I recently saw a movie where the woman knows that she will have a daughter who will die as a teenager. In the movie, she only just meets the man with whom she’ll have this child. At the end, the man finds out that she knew all along, and says she shouldn’t have chosen to have the child, anyway. Is it worth it? 15 years of joy and love, for a sad ending, and grieving that will never completely go away. The man thought it wasn’t worth it. The woman thought it was. If you knew ahead of time… what would you choose? Would the good times and love outweigh the bad ending? This woman thought so. And Mary thought so, too.

One of the Christmas songs we heard last Sunday in the Cantata is “Mary, Did You Know?” This song has been catching a lot of flack on social media by my clergy colleagues this year. Because if you think about it, knowing what we know of the nativity story, what the angel tells Mary, and Mary’s response, with beautiful Magnificat, or Canticle of Mary, yes, she knew what was coming. She knew there would be great joy and great heartache. She knew her son was the Savior of the world; and she knew the authorities and others would hate him for it. She knew. And her response to the angel was still, “May it be with me as you have said.” She still chose to go through with it. She may not have known crucifixion and resurrection. But she knew there would be good news to those who are oppressed, and she knew that the oppressors would resist that. She knew there would be miracles, and she knew there would be doubters. She knew there would be salvation, and she knew there would be a cost for that salvation. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and pastor, wrote a book on the cost of discipleship, and cheap grace and costly grace. He knew there is a cost for following Jesus. And if we act and live as always and accept things without thinking them through, then we cheapen the grace that Christ offers us. Bonhoeffer knew, and paid the price with his life, dying in a German concentration camp in 1945 because he dared to speak out against the Nazi regime.

If you knew the end at the beginning, would you still do it? It makes the risk a little more calculated, and if you’re like me, then you like that. I am only a “moderate risk taker.” I like to know as much as possible about what I’m getting into. And yet, that is the Christian life. That is this season of Advent. We knew when we lit the first Advent candle that we’d be lighting all four of them plus a Christ candle in the middle on Christmas Eve. During this season of preparation, we’ve known what’s coming. I suppose Advent is an easier season to go through than others. We know the end is a baby. We do know what’s coming. This isn’t a hypothetical question for us. We know the end. And not just the end of the season of Advent, but also the end that Mary knew. We know what is coming. We know there will be Epiphany and Jesus’ baptism and the beginning of his ministry at the wedding in Cana and the calling of the first disciples. We know there will also be heartache and rejection and that this spring we will walk through Lent again, journey with Jesus to the cross, and, thank God, not just there but to the other side of the cross, to Easter morning. We know new life is coming. We know that in the end, God wins. WE DO KNOW THE END. Trial and tribulation, yes. Brokenness and a change more radical than we’ve ever known, yes. Yet as Christians, we also know the end of the story. We have the blessed assurance that God is in control and in control of history. We know what will happen at the end of our individual story and the end of the story of the church. God takes us all up to heaven. There will be a new heaven and a new earth and no more crying or weeping anymore. We know the end of the story.

We know the end of our story. We know the end of the story of this little baby who’s about to be born. We go through the story with him every year, the highs and the lows, the good times and the bad. We go through the story with him every year in light of the end, in light of the salvation of the world. We know what’s coming, on Christmas Day, on Palm Sunday, on Good Friday, on Easter Sunday, on Pentecost. And we keep doing it again, because we are people of the story, people of the Book. And this Book, this story, is the one that defines our lives, that illumines our lives, that tells us how then we should live. We live expectant, like Mary, ready and waiting. We live accepting the nearly unbelievable, like Joseph, when we’re really not sure how God is going to make this happen. We live, knowing that while salvation is freely offered, there is a cost to accepting it, because it means we’re not going to be like the world. Our first day of Christmas is Christmas Day, not December 13th. The 12th day of Christmas is Epiphany, not December 25th.  We live differently because we follow this little baby who was born in a barn, because we know the end at the beginning.

For us, there is no hypothetical “if you knew the end, would you do something differently?” We do know the end, and so we do live differently. We don’t live in fear. We don’t live worried about what might happen tomorrow, or even what might happen today. We know God’s got it under control. And so we live generously, looking out for each other and for the poor. When my four year old asked last week why we were going to sing Christmas songs to a church member in a nursing home, my mom answered her, “Because Jesus tells us to visit the sick.” There really isn’t much more to say than that. We visit the sick and those in prison. We feed the hungry and give clothes to those without them. We work with organizations like Streets of Hope to provide hope to the homeless. We do live differently, because we do know. And we know that in a week, we will again celebrate the birth of a little baby boy, the one who saves us all. Thanks be to God!

Thank You to My Sister Clergywomen Who Went Before

(Written December 5, 2016)

Today I went to the clergywomen's luncheon. I was told it might be cliquish. I've heard of young clergywomen being harassed and hazed by older clergywomen (the rationale being that because they had it so tough, they have to make it tough on us). But today's lunch wasn't like that. Older clergywomen wanted to know about me. They were interested in me. And, for the first time, I was grateful for the trail they blazed.

I think I'd always taken it for granted. Growing up in the 1980's and 1990's, of course women could be preachers, too. I'd never appreciated just how recent that was. The church we went to the longest (in the place we lived the longest, 1986-1993) had a female priest (I grew up in the Episcopal Church). So, I normalized it.

The Methodist Church granted full clergy rights to women in 1956. The first woman appointed District Superintendent was in 1967 and the first woman elected Bishop was in 1980.

Only in the first of my three appointments was I the first woman (and I was only the third pastor overall, and the first white - it was a Hispanic church). Now, the church I served as an associate pastor has never had a female senior pastor. And where I serve now, I'm the second woman at one church and the third woman at the other church. The stained glass ceiling was already broken. I'm serving under my second female Bishop (out of four Bishops total). Out of six District Superintendents, half have been women as well. Yet half of all Bishops are not female, nor have I seen a Cabinet that is half women.

I don't think I ever appreciated just how new female pastors are, or what it would have been like to go to seminary in the 1970's or 1980's. It's not that long ago. Thank you, sister clergywomen, for blazing the trail and going before.

Changed Lives

2^nd Sunday of Advent

December 4, 2016

Matthew 3:1-12

(Watch here for the full version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a41k-1nRDW8 )

2^nd Sunday of Advent – John the Baptist Sunday

John the Baptist – Elisabeth and Zachariah’s son; lived in wilderness, dressed in camel’s hair, ate locusts & wild honey

His job – prepare people for Jesus – thru baptism and preaching repentance

Repentance = turn back to God

v. 2:

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

“Turn away from your sins because the Kingdom of heaven is near!” (GNT)

“Change your hearts and lives!” (CEB)

v. 8

“Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” (NRSV)

“Do those things that will show that you have turned from your sins.” (GNT)

“Produce fruit that shows you have changed your hearts and lives.” (CEB)

1.     Sometimes our lives are changed for us –

a.     TJ’s life changed after having 2 strokes in late June

b.     My story with rheumatoid arthritis – Everything changed for me: contact case, shoes, clothes, hair, food, car, where I lived, my profession; then as a result of moving: got married, changed my name, permanent address, who I lived with, got a dog

2.     Sometimes we decide to change, which changes our lives – weight loss program; decide to get married, have a baby, move; John’s calling people to make this type of conscious decision to get ready for Jesus

3.     Either way, there’s always evidence (fruit) of the change (people know something’s different) – whether visible changes or simply how you carry yourself, your attitude, how you treat others, how you spend your time & your $