"Where is the Love?"

GOSPEL READING                     Matthew 1: 18-25                                  

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. ²⁰But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’ ²²All this took place to fulfil what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ²³ ‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel’, which means, ‘God is with us.’ ²⁴When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, ²⁵but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son;  and he named him Jesus.

What if all you knew about Jesus’s birth story was contained in the seven verses we’ve just read?  If you could forget details and impressions you absorbed from the Gospel of Luke’s account and from Christmas carols and from Charlie Brown’s Christmas special, what would you understand about Jesus’s birth? Try to recall the essentials of Matthew’s nativity story:

·       Mary is pregnant by the Holy Spirit—not by Joseph, to whom she’s engaged.

·       Joseph, the protagonist in this story, decides to call off the engagement, but as discretely as possible.

·       Joseph then dreams an angel tells him to marry Mary and name the child Jesus.

·       The angel provides a proof text from Isaiah about the birth of a child who was to be named Emmanuel.

·       The child is born and Joseph names him Jesus.

What’s missing from this Christmas story?  No angel announcing Mary will have a baby and be called blessed. No rejoicing Mary who visits the also-pregnant Elizabeth. No window into Mary’s perspective.  No decree from Caesar Augustus. No journey to Bethlehem. No manger and swaddling clothes.  No shepherd and sheep. No joyful choir of angels.  Certainly there was not yet any theologizing about the meaning of Mary’s virginity, no dogma about her immaculate conception (which was not formalized until 1854), no doctrine on incarnation. Except for Joseph’s genealogy listed just before this first story in Matthew, we know nothing else about Joseph or Mary.

But I’ll tell you what’s also missing: any mention of love. On this Sunday when we light the Advent candle of love, I come to this story and ask: If you erase from memory that Hallmark greeting card image of Joseph gazing protectively upon Mary and the babe and of Mary adoring her infant—where’s the love in this stark story?

Don’t let other stories and your own cultural assumptions color your reading.  Go back to read Matthew 1: 18-25.  Where is the love?  Do you hear any declaration of love?  See any show of affection? Note any hint of glad anticipation of a beloved child’s birth?

I’ll tell you what I DO see. I see a good man and a woman with few options. Since the Torah commands a woman unfaithful to her betrothed (as Mary seems) to be stoned to death (Deut. 22:13-21), I see two very vulnerable people risking society’s disapproval (at the very least) to discern the right response to the loving Spirit’s prompting.  And the choice they make is NOT what was prescribed by scripture.  They are not necessarily “in love,” our notion of romantic love being foreign to their culture.  But the power of human vulnerability gives me reason to imagine their mutual vulnerability made it possible for them to develop a caring, compassionate relationship.

Let me connect the dots from vulnerability to love—but in a modern context.  

To do so I’m going to borrow heavily from the research of professor Brene Brown, the author of Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the way we Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.[i]  Her research has led her to this fundamental realization: our willingness to become vulnerable allows us to live more authentically, wholeheartedly, and lovingly. Vulnerability may look like weakness but in fact requires courage. Our willingness to be vulnerable defies society’s shaming mechanisms.  Our willingness to be uncomfortably vulnerable means we can see ourselves as worthy even though we make mistakes. Vulnerability is at the heart of self-knowledge and meaningful human experiences.  Brown says that, ironically, our imperfection is the human commonality that can CONNECT us.  But the imperfection we need to see in someone else is the last thing we’re willing to reveal about ourselves.

What does vulnerability look like in your life?  When have you made yourself vulnerable lately? When have you let down your guard and put yourself in a position where your weakness or failings could be exposed?

Let me be careful to say what I don’t mean.  Living vulnerably does not mean living apologetically or slavishly.  Nor does it mean you intentionally subject yourself to experiences that are harmful. It means being so confident of your worthiness and belovedness that you can make mistakes and not beat yourself up about them.  It means you take risks but know that you have a self that is bigger than any particular relationship or achievement.

It’s easy to recognize how vulnerable Mary is, but I love the way our songbook directs us to sing the Magnificat attributed to Mary “confidently.” An unmarried pregnant girl would have ordinarily been evicted by her father and rejected by  the man to whom she’d been betrothed--or worse, stoned in front of her father’s house, according to Deuteronomic law (Deut. 22: 13-21).  Mary was also living in a time when ANY pregnancy put the mother’s life at risk.  That expectant mother is the poster child of first century vulnerability.  Yet we are to imagine her singing confidently.  Vulnerability is a positive quality—not a negative absence.

Joseph is also vulnerable to great shame in a shame-based culture.  Before they began living together, the girl became pregnant.  Her (presumed) sin accrues to him—unless he denounces her.  And when, at the Spirit’s prompting, Joseph decides to defy tradition and marry the girl who’s pregnant by another, what suspicions will forever haunt their relationship? But he takes the kind of risk that only a self-possessed man can take.

 

Certainly the baby is vulnerable.  Even though we know he survived the risky birth, even though he may have escaped with few emotional scars from the scandal of his birth, we know that baby became the very picture of vulnerability on his dying day, hanging naked in a shameful public execution.

And what about you? You have known vulnerability when you walked into dangerous territory or  risked hurt or embarrassment, when you let your guard down and took a chance, when you faced straight into disapproval or failure, when you explored tough questions or tried something new.

It’s hard to be vulnerable. It’s safer to strengthen our walls and double our defenses, especially at this season of the year.  If you’re dreading dear old Aunt Ida’s perennial question about why you’re not married--or if the grief of a lost loved one makes you feel newly raw and ragged at Christmas--or if a friend has disappointed you, then you might be tempted to do what Joseph initially planned.  You might follow the script.  You might do or say what’s expected, what will impress, what will keep others happy.  You might work very hard not to seem the fool. You might protect your feelings. And you might keep up those defenses with alcohol. Or comfort food.  Or a shopping spree. Or an infidelity. Or tiny deceptions that one by one become eventually a phony life story.

On the other hand, you might choose vulnerability. Which means to be fully human.  And know both the risks and rewards of love.  You might ponder why you’ve erected your wall in the first place and have the courage to start tearing it down.

Certainly there are times when you need to guard your heart and rest your weary mind.  And be concerned about what others think.

But willingness to be embarrassed is freeing.  Ability to receive criticism and not convert that to shame is liberating. Experiencing failure without labeling YOURSELF as a failure both requires and leads to spiritual maturity.  Being open to something scary makes possible new thoughts and new relationships. 

It is especially the effect of vulnerability on relationships that interests me in today’s story.  I’ve tried to remove the lenses of Romanticism in reading Matthew’s nativity story in order to read it for what it plainly says. I don’t assume that the betrothal between Mary and Joseph was anything but a pragmatic arrangement, and Joseph’s eventually merciful solution to their dilemma was anything but the determination of a merciful man inspired by the Spirit of God.  I don’t think we can know if Joseph loved Mary and the baby then or later with anything like the affection WE associate with familial love.  We can’t wrench Mary and Joseph from a highly patriarchal culture in which women related more closely to their sons than their husbands. And we certainly can’t give this story a happily ever after ending when in the very next chapter King Herod is going to order the child’s death and the new family will flee to Egypt.  And the baby, as we know from the larger story, will die a short lifetime later on a torturous cross.

Yet the makings of love and hope are here in all this vulnerability. Perhaps its fruition is found in the baby who would later say, in this same Gospel, that the greatest of all commandments is to love. 

At the risk of implying first century characters inhabited the same psychological world as we, I’ve used Mary and Joseph’s unknowable relationship to talk about our relationships. Brene Brown’s argues that when women and men are willing to be brokenheartedly vulnerable, they can experience meaningful relationships and live wholeheartedly.  Did you catch that irony?  Willingness to be brokenhearted teaches us to love wholeheartedly.

Songwriter Leonard Cohen sings: “And love is not a victory march.  It’s a cold and it’s a broken halleluiah.” 

Go to the Gospel of Luke for the angels trilling “Glory to God in the highest!” 

Go to the Gospel of Matthew for a throbbing song that is a broken halleluiah, the exposed heartbeat of love.

To love another is to let down the drawbridge leading to your protected heart and invite that person in knowing how badly you can now be hurt by this one. 

To tie your fate to one in betrothal . . . is dangerous.

To birth a child . . . means you have lost all control and now this little one holds your whole world in her tiny hands. 

To create deep friendship . . . requires great risk as you surrender pretenses with no “money back” guarantee.

“And love is not a victory march. It’s a cold and it’s a broken halleluiah.”

Think back over the past week and call to mind something you did or experienced that allowed you to feel vulnerable.  How did you handle it?

Perhaps you called an old friend you’d sort of neglected and you didn’t make up an elaborate excuse for the neglect.

You loved a child enough to let make her own mistake and then loved her through the consequences.

You confessed that you failed at something without telling yourself you were a failure.

You said “I love you” first.

You listened to someone else’s story of screwing up in a way that communicated that your love was not contingent on their perfection.

You spoke out against an injustice without vilifying the opposition and held open the possibility of common ground.

You experienced emotional pain without numbing that pain with your go-to anesthesia.

You listened to an angel voice and did an unpopular but compassionate act.

And in your vulnerability you started down the path toward love.

---

[i] Brown, Brene.  Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.        

See also this interview with Krista Tippett for “On Being.” http://www.onbeing.org/program/brene-brown-on-vulnerability/4928   

See also her Ted Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

Picture of Peace, Story of Strife

 HEBREW BIBLE READING                   Isaiah 11: 6-9                         

⁶The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. ⁷The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall

eat straw like the ox. ⁸The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. ⁹They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

GOSPEL READING                           Matthew 3: 1-12                               

¹In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ²“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” ³This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” ⁴Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, ⁶and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁷But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸Bear fruit worthy of repentance. ⁹Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. ¹⁰Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. ¹¹“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹²His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

I’d been wondering how I was going to pull together the lectionary texts for today. Could Isaiah’s idyllic vision of peace coexist with the story of the fire-breathing John the Baptist and his scorched earth Gospel?  Then Nelson Mandela died. And we have been remembering the extraordinary self-sacrifice, courage, and forbearance of the insurrectionist prisoner who became the reconciling president. Advent’s gift of peace now seems as if it has been wrapped this year by Mandela. His dream for South Africa reminds me of Isaiah’s utopian vision of a place where wolves and lambs live in side-by-side equality.   

Yet today’s lectionary examples of Christ’s peace include not only the idealized image of the peaceable kingdom but also the edgy portrait of the irritating freedom fighter, John the Baptist, forerunner of Jesus and, as it turns out, a figure not unlike a South African prophet who lived 2000 years later.  Like the New Testament prophet, Mandela also challenged imperialists who’d invaded his ancestor’s land and who imprisoned him.  Like the John the Baptizer, Mandela came from the backwoods to speak truth to power and paid a heavy price for doing so. John would pay with his life; Mandela with 27 years of deprivation and hard labor in prison. 

 

I won’t stretch the analogy too far.  I can’t imagine roughneck John ever displaying the grace and statesmanship of South Africa’s first black president.  But one of the many eulogizers warned this week that “in the desire to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s life — an iconic figure who triumphed over South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime — it’s tempting to homogenize his views into something everyone can support. This is not, however, an accurate representation of the man. Mandela was a political activist and agitator. He did not shy away from controversy and he did not seek — or obtain — universal approval. Before and after his release from prison, he embraced an unabashedly progressive and provocative platform. As one commentator shared shortly after the announcement of the freedom fighter’s death, 'Mandela will never, ever be your minstrel. Over the next few days you will try so, so hard to make him something he was not, and you will fail. You will try to smooth him, to sandblast him, to take away his Malcolm X. You will try to hide his anger from view.’” (http://thinkprogress.org/home/2013/12/06/3030781/nelson-mandela-believed-people-wont-talk/). 

I think the range of Advent scriptures today is a safeguard against erasing the hard lines in Mandela’s portrait and in the Gospel message.  Although you and I live in a culture that equates Christ’s call to peace with being inoffensive, we forget that John the Baptist rudely paved the way for Jesus by calling his audience “a brood of vipers.” We forget that change never happens without conflict.  We were raised, most of us, by good ol’ Southern mamas who taught us to be polite, but there’s not a single word about good manners in the Bible.  We were cautioned to “be sweet”—especially in church.  But church might be the last place where we need to be “sweet” and may be the very place we need to be stirred to anger.  Following Jesus is always a nonviolent way, but that way is often confrontational and seldom popular. That’s because true peace can never be achieved without justice.

What’s true in societies is also true for individuals: peaceful personal relationships are rooted in equality and compassion. A relationship may seem peaceful in the absence of overt strife, but peace bought at the expense of another’s dignity or rights is the pretense of peace. True peace in a society is not the mere absence of revolt. True peace in a faith community is not a veneer of niceness.  True peace in a home is not made by suppressing some voices.

The following poem reminds us of a patriarchal family from a previous generation which only appeared to be harmonious because no one dared challenge the patriarch.  But “peace” at the cost of fairness is just coercion.  It’s the familial equivalent of the phony Pax Romana of Jesus’s day that used military might to tamp down unrest simmering among the Galilean peasants. 

“Ducks at Peace” by Hal Sirowitz

(http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2013%2F11%2F23)

I'd like to take my family to the lake,
Father said, so they can see how well
the animal & fish kingdoms get along.
You hardly ever see ducks fighting.
If they do, it's done in private.
We should follow their example,
& not air out our dirty laundry in public.
That was what I told your mother
at the restaurant, that she should
save her complaints for when we
get home. She said she had already
complained there. She was hoping
she'd get better results if she changed locations. 

It may not feel polite to complain or call the powerful “a brood of vipers” a la John the Baptist. But sometimes complaint is the only option for those who are not at the seat of power.  

  

Today’s discordant combination of scriptures complicates our understanding of Christ’s peace.  Some folks pretend that the Bible speaks with one consistent voice throughout and have to do some pretty complicated mental tricks to harmonize conflicting scriptures and force all those passages into a unified interpretation.  Others recognize contradictions in scripture and eventually toss out the Bible.  I’m suggesting we appreciate the Bible’s disparate voices and honor the diversity of thought but ignore or speak against parts of scripture that seem exclusionary or violent.  Sometimes the simplest way to use scripture for peaceful means is to acknowledge that we may be misreading some part of the Bible—or conclude some voices in the Bible may be wrong about something.

Nelson Mandela’s life is one that deserves our admiration. After 27 years of unjust imprisonment and cruel treatment, he refused to remain bitter and instead cultivated a spirit of peace in his own life.  He invited his former jailers to his inauguration as president of a country where he previously had been unable to vote. But peace came not because he remained politely quiet or stifled his people’s cries or accepted his lot in life but because he instead exposed inequity and dreamed of justice. And peace came not because he lived a perfect life but because peace is often born out of messiness. 

We can benefit from his example without having to approve every choice he made.  We can listen to the voice of John the Baptist without having to adopt his violent imagery for God. We can aspire to be imperfect peacemakers, too.  If we wait for perfect solutions or bide our time until we’re perfect people, the violence of the wolves and lions and vipers will escalate and we may never be able to show them how to follow the lead of a little child . . . or an ex-prisoner convicted of treason . . . or a crazy dude in camel-hair clothes insulting the folks who request baptism. 

We start our peacemaking with three simple steps:

1.   Listen especially well to those who are NOT in power.

2.   Speak and act only after you have found in your heart genuine compassion for those with whom you may disagree.

3.   Trust that change is possible. We had to light the candle of HOPE before we were able to let in the light of PEACE.  I hold out hope that if we don’t blow ourselves up first, our descendants’ descendants’ descendants may one day live Isaiah’s dream of peace. With one kind word and one courageous act at a time, we are changing.

PRAYER: Spirit of Peace, we yearn for a world pulsing with justice and truth, a world in which we all sit down together at the Open Table and share equally and speak only words of love. AMEN

Simply Waiting and Hoping

Text: Isaiah 2: 2-5

            In days to come the mountain of God’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. ³Many peoples shall come and say,  “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that God may teach us God’s ways and that we may walk in God’s paths.”  For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. ⁴God shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. ⁵O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!

“Come, let us walk in the light of God!"

Having recently made my first pilgrimage to the UCC’s equivalent of Mecca—our humble headquarters in Cleveland, Ohio—I was amused by yesterday’s UCC online devotional reading (http://www.ucc.org/feed-your-spirit/daily-devotional/pilgrimage.html). The writer,Quinn Caldwell, wondered half-seriously if maybe there should be a destination to which members of the United Church of Christ make a pilgrimage, a sacred place where all in our denomination journey at least once. If we could choose or create such a place, where would it be? he asked and then added, “And before you jump to a certain very obvious initial thought, say the following out loud to yourself to see if you can do it with a straight face: 'Jerusalem. Mecca.  The Ganges.  Cleveland.'" You gotta love a denomination with self-deprecating humor.

Most of the pilgrimages Christians make these days are virtual ones through scripture and imaginative prayer. We begin our hopeful Advent journey with Isaiah’s dream of the pilgrimage all humanity will one day make.  Of course, Isaiah set his hopeful dream on top of his holy mountain, Zion.  But he was visionary enough to imagine a time when ALL people would figuratively journey toward peace. His invitation to us is:

“Come, let us walk in the light of God!” 

Like those in Isaiah’s vision, we make our way to the House of God that transcends the schisms we create. Notice in today’s text that God’s house will be established on top of the highest mountain and all kinds of folks—people from all nations—will “stream” up to it (Isaiah 2:2).  While literal streams flow down a mountain, this stream of humanity is unusual. With great effort, it flows up, seeking God. We, too, are the kind of people who defy the usual way of doing things, who go against the flow.  Some of us today have traveled upstream to this particular house of God (we no longer believe there’s one literal high holy place where God resides) and we’ve done so with considerable effort.  Some of us arrived here after moving against the gravitational pull of more comfortable houses of worship that uphold popular cultural values we might question.  Some of us have made our way to this house of God despite unpleasant memories of Church Past.  Some of us have resisted the urge to rest at home after a stressful week.  For some of us it has been an uphill effort just to get dressed and find transportation to this house of God.

Isaiah said that after we arrive at the house of the God of Jacob, God will teach us to walk in God’s ways.  The spears of sharp words and violent theology and hurtful habits must be converted into tools that produce sustenance (Isaiah 2:4), and we’ll unlearn war. Note that it’s not enough to put down our spears. We also must convert them into implements for the common good.  We must not simply dispense with violence; we must work to feed the hungry, two mutually exclusive commitments, according to Isaiah and according to a UN report attesting to a sharp increase in malnutrition among children in war-torn countries. Here in the house of God I try to work for peace in my heart and my world with you at my side. 

“Come, let us walk in the light of God!"

But before we walk, we wait.  Sometimes the thing to do in this place is simply to be still, to be quiet.  Waiting doesn’t preclude action but it should precede it.  Our Quaker sisters and brothers regularly practice a kind of worshipful waiting I admire.  They gather and wait, and wait, and speak only when they have received enough light from God. What would it be like if we gathered one Sunday and simply sat in God’s presence and waited for the coming of the light?  What dreams might we dream together and how might our community be changed as a result?  Individuals and faith communities need to hit the pause button at times, not stalled by apathy or fear, but waiting in expectation that new light will show us the next steps forward.

“Come, let us walk in the light of God!"

I am surely biased, but I suspect preachers who are mothers have a slight advantage in the pulpit during Advent.  After all, Advent is pregnant with themes of, well, pregnancy, of waiting expectantly, hopefully.  Unfortunately, in the personal story I’m about to share, I can’t present myself as the exemplar of expectant waiting.

Two months before our daughter was born, George and I traveled from West Texas, where we then lived, to visit my parents here in Mobile. We’d arrived late one night, tired from our long drive, and had left our suitcases sprawled open on the floor between the foot of the bed and one wall of the guest room.  When George, who was sleeping on the far side of the bed, got up in the middle of the night, he had to crawl over me to get out of bed.  I apparently slept through that.  When he came back into the bedroom, he was going to have to crawl over me again to get back to his side.  I did not sleep through that.  I could blame what happened next on our soon-to-be born daughter--or on a profusion of pregnancy hormones--or on the fact that I felt disoriented in a strange and unlit room.  Here’s what happened.  While I slept, the baby apparently kicked, hard, at the same time George reentered the room.  Still mostly asleep, I interpreted that internal kick as someone hitting me and at that moment noticed some man’s shadow looming over me.  I reacted, defending myself against this presumed intruder.  I kicked, flailed, and screamed.  Immediately, my poor husband was covering my screaming mouth, and in the next split second I was alert enough to know who he was –and what he feared:  my father used to sleep with a loaded pistol in his nightstand.  Immediately, George and I huddled together in terror with the sheets up to our chins like guilty children, wondering if my Daddy would barge into the dark room to rescue me, shooting the presumed intruder first and asking questions later.  We waited in the dark.  We waited.  We whispered to one another, “Should we yell out that everything’s OK?”  We strained to hear any approaching footsteps.  After a few minutes passed, we knew we were safe.  But we did have some explaining to do the next morning. 

I confess that, at other times instead of waiting for more light, I have reacted with the lesser-evolved reptilian part of my brain; I have rushed in when I should have held back or stood still or centered myself in God’s peace.  In the darkness of this anxious world, I have mistaken a loved one for an enemy. In times of change when the new world is not fully in place but the old ways are surely ending, it’s easy to panic or suspect evil intentions. Of course, we should not naively assume no one means us harm. Nor should we put our emotional health at risk by absorbing belligerence. But sometimes the best and simplest response in uncertain times is to wait and watch, to watch and hope. 

Hope is always the starting place for the coming of God into our lives and our world, because hoping allows us to receive the new and the good.  We will never see the good if we are not expecting it. 

“Come, let us walk in the light of God!"

I love the story of a rabbi who once asked his students, "How can a person tell when the night has ended and the new day is beginning?" After thinking for a moment, one student replied, "It is when there is enough light to see an animal in the distance and be able to tell if it is a sheep or a goat." Another student ventured, "It is when there is enough light to see a tree, and tell if it is a fig or an oak tree."

The old rabbi gently said, "No. It is when you can see another person coming towards you and recognize that person as your sister or brother. For if you cannot recognize in another's face the face of your brother or sister, the darkness has not yet begun to lift, and the light has not yet come.”  

“Come, let us walk in the light of God!"

While I am hopeful about an emerging Christianity, others see the new face of Christianity advancing ominously toward them.  Science and other world religions are already having a profound impact on how we worship and what we believe—and these changes frighten some.  Affirming attitudes toward LGBT people and the ordination of female clergy trouble many Christians. Some church leaders critique American capitalism and militarism and that discomforts other Christians. Some Christians are approaching other Christians in the darkness of changing times—and hailing one another as brothers and sisters—but are not being recognized as such. 

Christianity is complicated, but living in Christian hope is a fairly simple practice. Not easy. But simple. Our hope is not based on creedal statements.  Our hope is not contingent on proving that every word in the Bible is historically and scientifically factual.  Our hope is not determined by doctrine or clerical authorities.  Our hope is not tied to a list of statements to which we assent or language we police.  Our hope is that Ultimate Reality—call it “God”—is good, and Christians see that goodness best in Christ Jesus—his life and death and life again.  We have hope that love trumps hate, and that death has no ultimate hold on us. Jesus walked this hopeful way ahead of us. We don’t have to figure it out on our own.  We don’t have to figure it out at all—because we never will.  But we can glimpse what God might be dreaming up for us—as Isaiah did in describing peoples from all times and places converging together and streaming up a mountain as they beat their weapons into farm equipment. We inhabit this vision without dissecting it into literal pieces or projecting it onto some historical timeline. 

Hope is harder than we think—but simpler, too.  Hoping is not about creating a wish list and expecting the Santa God to fulfill it.  Hoping is an orientation to the future and a willingness to move forward into that future.

And Christian hope is long-range.  Our DVD series “Painting the Stars” says that science concurs with Christianity’s assumption that the future bends toward hope. Evolution teaches us to take the long view.  Human history doesn’t always show progress.  Cosmological history, however, does disclose a universe making connections and creating life.  Death, deadends, and disconnections abound, but life and love prevail.

Reinhold Niebuhr, perhaps America’s preeminent Protestant theologian of the 20^th century and a UCC minister, emphasized the role of hope in this way:  “Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we are saved by hope. . . . Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.”

If your highest hopes could be achieved in your life time and by you alone, you might be wishing instead of hoping. The work that gives us deep hope is also the work we must do in community. May you hope for more than something that will fit in a Christmas stocking.  Hope is simple. But hope is only realized over time and within a loving community.

“Come, let us walk TOGETHER in the light of God!"