At the family service earlier this evening, there was no Joseph.

There were no sheep or shepherds or angel choir.

At the rehearsal last Sunday for our childrens’ Godly Play liturgy, all we had were three lectors, three Wise Women, a cow, a donkey, and Mary. Only these nine creatures were present to prepare for the proclamation of the birth of Christ.

Earlier this evening, a young girl named JoJo joined us as the Angel of the Lord, but the overall cast got smaller, because many of our youngest members couldn’t make it. (They are far from alone.)

We sorely missed them, but in a way, here at the end of 2021, this is perfect. This tiny cast of characters around the manger—this is our Good News on this night. Our younger members are telling us something.

May we have ears to hear.

“What, then, should we do?”

This is an excellent question.

But notice who’s asking it. That’s excellent too: not just the general crowd, but specifically the tax collectors and soldiers, the people who prop up the unjust economy of the empire. They’re all asking John the Baptizer, “What, then, should we do?”

And John’s answers — they’re also excellent, if ordinary-sounding and straightforward: share food; be ethical with money; build a just society. A just society: not only you and I being just, but all of us joining with countless others to lift up everyone, and remake the whole land as a peaceable dominion, with God’s help.

This is all to the good.

It feels like God is present in cozy places, lovely locations, sweet forest glades of serenity and contentment. I have old photos of our dogs napping on the sumptuous couch, rolled into perfect, tidy cinnamon rolls, tails tucked, eyes fast shut. Surely God is there. I sometimes rest beautifully myself, snug under heavy blankets in a room that is just a little too cold, and I feel delicious sleep returning for an extra hour and a half of rest in the still, solemn hours around a winter sunrise. Surely God is there. We ask God for moments like these. We plead to God for healing, peace, comfort, support.

I am planning a staff retreat for mid-January, but it was originally going to be in Advent, and in my first notions about what we would do, I thought maybe we would talk about what we long for most deeply, Advent being (among other things) a season of longing. So I then asked myself, “What do you really long for?” And the answer came: I long for six straight weeks of normal, even boring, church life and personal life, everyone doing fine, everyone coming and going without event or trouble, everyone yawning a little more than usual, and basically nothing happening. A little bird hops by my office window. And then we enjoy six more weeks of the same thing, after that. Surely God would be there!

(God would be everywhere in that loveliness, but especially in the bird.)

The normal state of the world is catastrophic.

Everything is falling apart: this is the way it is, and the way it so often is. This is how it was in the beginning when the Spirit of God hovered over the roiling chaos and God began speaking creation into existence. This is how it was in the time of Jesus of Nazareth. This is how it is now.

In times gone by, our destructive species shattered temples and flattened cities. Some eras of human history, like the Renaissance or the Enlightenment, seem to be times when everything comes back together. But even then, suffering and injustice persisted. And now, humanity is bitterly divided, and we seem to be at real risk of bringing about the destruction of the entire biosphere.

Everything is going to work out in the End.

Everyone is going to come together at the End.

Lazarus greets his stunned and overjoyed sisters, but the skeptical and cynical onlookers will eventually be brought back into the circle, too.

Jesus is raised from the dead, and he soon greets not only his friends, but his adversaries too, even those who condemned and killed him. He will bring them all back by the End.

The Communion of Saints will gather on God’s mountain. We will all be together. If you like, you can let the theologians—the doctors of the church, as they’ve been called—work out things like “paraeschatological opportunity for baptism,” the idea that before all is said and done, every human soul will be invited to stream through the gates of pearl, as today’s opening hymn sings it. If you’re worried about the finer points of that, you are welcome to join the conversation! But for now, know this:

Everything is going to work out in the End.

One evening in the spring of 2013, I did not want to be recognized. It was May 13, the first day that I chose not to drink alcohol. I decided later that afternoon that I wanted to go to an AA meeting, and I knew there was a Monday night meeting at the church where I was assigned as a deacon. I drove down to the church, found a parking place, and began to walk toward the building. Almost immediately I saw someone I knew, walking into the building. I texted a friend. “Do I really want to go to this meeting?” I asked my friend. “It’s been three seconds and I’ve already seen someone I know!”

I decided to go in, which proved to be a sound choice. I found a place near the back, on the left side. The room was thoroughly familiar: I had led formation events in that room; I had sung in a little choir for Sunday afternoon worship in that room; I had spent dozens of coffee hours in that room. But now I was there for another reason.

Jesus Christ is a loser.

This sounds deeply offensive in the ears of our dominant culture. When I say it, I want to rush ahead and assure you that I don’t really mean it. But it is true: Jesus Christ is a loser.

He came not to triumph over the forces of empire, but to be crushed by them.

He came not to save us from those who trample the poor and kill the innocent, but to be trampled and killed by them himself.

He did not come to win 270 electoral votes; or “own” our enemies with a devastating defeat that shames them; or safeguard anything of material value for us. He came to lose.

Imagine: the plane is going down. You have a minute or two left, and then you will be gone.

What matters most to you? What do you want to do with the seconds you have left? Will you call someone? Will you pray? If so, for what will you pray? That you will be saved? (Saved from what?) Maybe you will pray that God will receive you at the point of death; or that it will happen quickly and painlessly; or that your loved ones might know, or do, or receive, something…

As you continue to grip your airplane seat, you realize that others are going down with you: if you choose, you could interact with one or more of them. If you engage them, what will you say? What will you do?

I am sure that something you are not thinking about in this terrifying crisis is your many earthly possessions.

Let’s talk about hellfire.

Nobody really wants to, I’m almost sure of it. At best, “hellfire” is a dated, cartoonish notion from yesteryear. Or it’s the kind of thing people think of in a ho-hum, thoughtless way. “Go to hell,” you might say to someone, but you’re not really being serious, or literal.

But at worst, “hellfire” is abusive and traumatic. I have a friend who grew up in a part of the country that provided his childhood imagination with plenty of religious material to feel scared about, even terrified about. Even now, in midlife, he can feel haunted by the horrible, inhumane warning that if he does the wrong thing, or if he thinks the wrong thing, he will be sent to hell when he dies. And hell is a furnace of eternal hellfire.

A friend, priest, and mentor of mine once said, “I will tell you what draws me to Christianity.” She said this while leading a confirmation class that Andrew and I were taking, in 2005, the year we were confirmed as Episcopalians. “I will tell you what draws me to Christianity,” she said. “At the center of Christianity, right at the center, is a dead innocent.”

I will never forget this. She is so right, so dead-on, so undeniably correct about this. You and I may love Christianity for many reasons. We may love Anglican/Episcopal Christianity in particular for our gorgeous prayers, our lovely Nativity carols, our open-minded embrace of disagreement and creative tension, our global appeal as a profoundly inclusive, thoughtful, and innovative Communion. These are all good things. But we must never forget that at the very center of our faith is a dead innocent.

If you are angry, I hear you. If you are enraged, I understand. There are many reasons to feel anger right now.

Maybe you are angry on behalf of young women (many of them still girls) in Texas who are in excruciating, catastrophic crisis.

Maybe you are furious with people who resist, or flatly reject, the coronavirus vaccines. There are stories of frontline healthcare workers who remain uncertain whether they want the vaccine: maybe that confuses you, in addition to angering you. There are different levels of resistance to the vaccine, from understandable wariness about the FDA’s slow approval process, to fierce defiance of the whole thing as a hoax, or a liberal plot.

Here’s something fun we could do. Let’s list the things we don’t like about Christianity.

I’ll go first.

I don’t like how elusive and indirect and mystifying Christianity is, right at the very center. Our savior dies and rises again: Yes. I believe this and I proclaim “alleluia” year by year when we preach this Good News to one another. But I have so many questions. He could eat in their presence, but also move through walls. He invited Thomas to touch him, but told Mary Magdalene not to touch him. And Thomas ended up not touching him. Or did he touch him after all? The text doesn’t say. Come on now.

To watch a video of this sermon, click here.

Twenty-four years ago this summer, a film opened in theaters that featured a hero who gave his all to save humanity, even offering himself up to be eaten alive.

The hero’s name is, simply, the letter K. He is played by Tommy Lee Jones. K is one of the Men in Black, a secret organization that monitors and controls alien life on this planet. K and his partner J go to the Flushing Meadows Corona Park, in Queens, where, naturally, an alien cockroach several times the size of a human being is attempting to steal a tiny galaxy, encased in a cat’s collar medallion. The cockroach wants to exploit the galaxy’s subatomic energy, you see, in an evil plot to commit genocide. It’s just the usual kind of thing that happens to the Men in Black, on a Tuesday.

Shall we go and sit under the broom tree?

If we do choose to sit together under the broom tree, we will be in good company.

We will find Elijah there, as we just heard. Elijah has given up hope. There is a price on his head, and he is fleeing in fear. In his flight from danger into the wilderness (where, if anything, there is even more danger), he forgets the truly awesome experience he recently had, when God passed by, extremely close by, in the sound of sheer silence. He forgets that God gloriously helped him in a political triumph. Exhausted, harried, at his wit’s end, Elijah crumples to his knees and sits down under the broom tree.

To watch this sermon along with the service, click here.

God as Bread.

I can see it.

Bread is crusty. It can have sharp edges, especially when the baker slices it down the middle before putting it in the oven, or makes a cross cut for our Thanksgiving bread we share here week by week. I eat the top crust of crusty bread last, because it is crunchy and chewy, both, and I always save the best for last. God is … crusty? Yes. And sharp. God is not just soft and tender. And God is, in all times and places, the best, and God endures at the last.

“Jesus said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.”

Grace Church feels full right now.

We are full of activities. We are reopening. We are starting new faith formation projects, including a new group for women, and more for people of all ages in the fall. (And the fall approaches!) Our men’s group is meeting in person soon. We are hosting a play produced by our own Olivia Vessenes. There are several memorial services coming up. I officiated a wedding a couple days ago, and took a call about another one as I was on the way there. People are coming to church to clean, organize things, tend the gardens, fill our space with life again.

But we also are full of feelings.

In 1986, at the age of 16, I was a busboy and a dishwasher at a steakhouse in the village of Mendota, Minnesota. I still remember the radio blaring in the restaurant kitchen, with songs like “I’m Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves.

Since then, in Episcopal churches, I’ve continued to work as a busboy and a dishwasher, many, many times.

I want to begin with a poem by Robert Frost.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

“So Eden sank to grief.” Today we step into Eden and watch as God walks at the time of the evening breeze, and confronts the human ones. God asks them God’s eternal question for all human beings: “Where are you?” Now, surely God knows where we are. But God knows that we do not know where we are. Like Eve, the mother of all human beings, we know we want wisdom. We know we want enlightenment. We know we want answers. Adam wants these things too, though he cowers in silence while the serpent shows Eve one path to wisdom. A problematic path — a terrible path! — but a path to wisdom nonetheless.

It’s a bad news / good news thing.

The bad news: times are not just hard; they’re terrible. Whole nations face existential catastrophe in the face of climate change. Countless millions of people are being caught up in global patterns of migration, and political resistance and violence confront them on nearly every shore. The U.S. is undergoing a long-delayed and much-needed, but searingly painful, reckoning with racism and systems of oppression. We are enduring a long era of partisan rancor that threatens democracy at a time when we need it the most, and authoritarianism is on the rise worldwide. India is experiencing what can most accurately be called a holocaust as the coronavirus rages through the subcontinent, and there is a long list of nations that may not get adequately vaccinated before 2023. Life expectancy is leveling off, and for the first time in generations, younger citizens in this country do not expect to enjoy standards of living as good as—let alone better than—their parents.

I’d like to share three short illustrations of friendship, for our reflection.

I will begin by reciting a poem from the nineteen-eighties. It is actually a verse of lyrics from a song. If you recognize this song, well, that might say something about your age, but please know that I am also old enough to be deeply familiar with this shard of folk wisdom. Here’s the poem:

Thank you for being a friend,
traveled down a road and back again.
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a confidante.
And if you threw a party,
and invited everyone you knew,
you would see the biggest gift would be from me,
and the card attached would say,
“Thank you for being a friend.”