the fifth sunday in lent, year b

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John 12:20-36

So, have you ever bought anything as seen on tv? A Salad Shooter? OxyClean? Don’t try to pretend that you’ve never been tempted to buy Debbie Meyer Green Bags. Or a Big City Slider Station? Can’t you just hear that Bill Mays guy YELLING at you about how YOUR LIFE WILL IMPROVE and YOUR KIDS WILL BE SO HAPPY if you buy a Big City Slider Station so you can make the perfect little, tiny burger JUST LIKE AT THE RESTAURANTS. And IF YOU ORDER RIGHT NOW you can get a Big City Slider Station cookbook FOR FREE. All this can be yours for 19.99. Plus shipping and handling.

We are easily seduced by the urgency of advertising.

Buy it NOW
or ELSE
it won’t be OFFERED
to YOU
AGAIN.

It’s very American of us, isn't it? To be pulled into the fast-paced urgency of NOW and YES and MUST so that we can get SOME before SUPPLIES run out. I make jokes about Billy Mays and the As Seen On TV phenomenon, because it strikes me that it is who we are at our most ridiculous. It exploits our manic frantic need for a quick fix.

We are suckers for a promise, aren’t we? A promise that if we do this we will get that. If we buy this our lives will be easier. If we do this we will be more productive, efficient, happy. We’ll be beautiful. We’ll be rich. It’s all of this stuff, right?

Our culture tells us that the more we have the better we are, and, as a result we can’t get enough of all this stuff that we don’t need.

The current state of the economy isn’t helping, is it?
Everyday it is practically crammed down our throats that supplies are running out.
We’re in the middle of that manic frantic that tells us that there isn’t enough.
We’re losing our jobs. Money is running out. It seems that our natural inclination is to stretch and reach for whatever we can get a hold of.
Whether or not it’s good for us. Whether or not we need it.
Something, anything is better than nothing, and even though we don’t have nothing yet, we’re being told that any day now we’ll find our satchels hollow and our wallets empty. Everything’s gonna run out and nothing is precisely all we’ll have.

* * * * * * * *
Today’s Gospel lesson from the 12th chapter of John brings us to a time when Jesus’ ministry is just itching to go global. It’s not like in the first century they had airplanes or the internet or digital billboards in the sky, so launching a maybe-powerhouse like Jesus much past walking distance was kinda out of the question. But, at the same time, never underestimate the power of the mouth—word of Jesus and his healing and compassion spread like wildfire.

So. It should come as no surprise that just as his life was approaching crescendo, people from other places started showing up. Today, it’s the Greeks. They make a cameo in today’s gospel—they want to see this Jesus guy.

They started the game of telephone. “Hey, Philip. We wanna see Jesus.” Philip went to Andrew, “Hey, Andrew. The Greek people wanna see Jesus.” Then Andrew was like, “Well, come with me!” And together they said, “Dude, Jesus. The Greeks want to see you now.”

“Well, actually...” Jesus said. “They don’t have to see me, because the hour has come. Everyone’s about to know me. God will be glorified.”

…In today’s gospel text it’s not made entirely clear, but we know the story. We know that soon and very soon, Jesus is going to be glorified on the cross. It’s ironic that John uses the word glorified, because there’s no glory in the suffering whippings and beatings and crucifixion. But it is God’s Glory on the cross that draws us into the radical love of God. Our God who is present to all people at all times in the midst of their recession and pain, suffering and grief.

It’s beginning, folks. Until now, this kind of love was limited to a very specific region of the world.
That Grecian Cameo is an important clue for us. They play a symbolic role in today’s Gospel, because they came from a far away land to see Jesus. They show us that the love of Jesus Christ spreads beyond Judea, Samaria, and Galilee—the land he walked. Turns out that today is the day that we find that Jesus Christ’s availability is universal. His love is open to us all the time, no matter what, no limited time offer.

“The hour has come for Jesus to be glorified.”

The time has come for Jesus to be available outside the limits of his land,
through his death and resurrection,
he’s available everywhere,
all the time, to all persons.
Jesus even says that he’s about to be lifted up
so that all people will be drawn to him. All, all, all.

Rich, poor.
Black, white, yellow, red.
Friendless, needy.
Privileged, impoverished.
Educated and stuck-in-a-rut.
Prostitute and slave, doctor and lawyer.
Gay and straight.
Male and female.
Grown ups and school children.

Jesus Christ + The Cross = God’s Glory = Unconditional, Unimaginable, Unfathomable, 100%, No Doubt Everlasting Life & Love for Every Human Being No Matter What.

Of course there’s a weakness with God’s Great Love Equation. It’s the human being part. All, all, all people get to know God’s Love now, but all all all of us are too distracted and scared to accept it. The promise of God’s Glory doesn’t necessarily result in convenience. We might not be more beautiful or more rich. We might not be smarter or better. In fact, being Loved By God 100% doesn’t mean we won’t suffer in this life. Quite the opposite. What God’s love DOES do, however, is meet up where we are. At all times, and in all places, God is With Us. God’s Name Glorified might not be as handy as a salad shooter; it might not give us the immediate results of Oxyclean. But I tell you what:

God’s Love for us—God’s Name Glorified—is sufficient. It’s all we need.
Stained and miserable, God Loves You Anyway.
Depressed and mournful. God loves You anyway.
Doubtful, cynical? God loves you anyway.

And the Good News is that that this stuff is available in abundance. It never runs out, it never gets old. It’s not a limited time offer. No gimmicks. No smoke and mirrors.

No one—no one!—gets to be exempt from the love of God’s Glory. Everyone gets salvation. Everyone gets salvation. No matter what.

And you don’t have to look far at all to find the Glory. You don’t have to look any further than the people sitting to your left, to your right, before you and behind you. God’s Glory is alive and active in every one of us. God created us out of Love so that we might be able to see the face of God Glorified in each other.

I know one thing for sure and it is that the power of human relationships is strong and resilient force. And I believe that the number one way to know God’s Love is to Be In Love With One Another. To reach out, through thick and through thin, to stick together, to not isolate, but move toward community. Toward relationship.

You don’t need the stuff they sell on the tv. You don’t need your fancy handbags or good grades. You don’t need trophies, medals, honors or degrees. To know God’s Glory, you just need each other.

Your families, your friends, your neighbors. You are what God’s Glory looks like.

And it’s a beautiful sight.

christmas eve, oh-eight.

Luke 2:1-20
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The truth is that the service project with the junior highers was finished an hour earlier than I’d anticipated. I was in a pickle that every youth minister can relate to—how to kill time in a way that doesn’t necessarily involve one hundred rounds of foursquare (at best), a wrestling match, or mindless, reckless running down the halls under the guise of “hide & go seek.”

“Circle up!” I said. Eyes rolled.

We sat and I passed out note cards and my box of markers, and I just started asking fill-in-the-blank questions. I wasn’t sure yet what we’d do with the answers, but I figured I’d cross that bridge when we came to it…

“My favorite time of day is...” “I am happy when...” “I am sad when...”
And then I upped the ante: “I feel close to God ….”

“I feel close to God in church…
…when I pray
...when I visit my grandparents.”
…when I fail a test.”
…when I get hurt.”
…when I’m upset.”
…when I hear bad news.”
…when I’m in trouble.”
…when someone dies.”
…when everything around me is bad.”
“I feel close to God in the dark.”

I’m not sure what, if anything, I was expecting. But I do know that I was, as always with teenagers, surprised and delighted. They tapped into one of the great, beautiful paradoxes of our faith—that we believe that God is so good, so good, so good—AND—we believe that when things are so bad, so bad, so bad, that’s when we know that God’s shown up.

Over two thousand years ago, God showed up.

So, this Caesar Augustus guy decided to do a census. His power had gone straight to his head (it happens), and he wanted to know just how many peeps there were in the region so he could know just how much money he could collect that year in taxes.

This was a world ruled by the Roman Empire—5% of the people owned 95% of the land and resources. So, this census, frankly, was just rotten. An abuse of power.

You know the story—Luke tells it beautifully. Joseph is a good, honorable, very poor man. He’s not going to avoid the census, but he’s also not going to leave his pregnant girlfriend behind. So they saddle up on a donkey, and to Bethlehem they go. They don’t have anything. They are the poorest of the poor. But they care for each other. And for the miracle growing inside of her.

Well, of course they get 45 miles down the road—only half way there—when her water breaks. They veer off over there, a couple miles out of the way, where they know they’ve seen an inn before, but there’s no room (and even if there had been a room, there’s no guarantee they could afford it anyway). So, the keep going—almost there—when the wind picks up and it blows open a barn door just ahead. Shelter.

God shows up.

It was in that shelter—a dirty barn with dirty animals, hay for pillows, and stagnant water for relief—that Jesus Christ is born.

God shows up.

As a baby—a human baby—God shows up with nothing to speak of other than a couple teenagers—his mom and her very poor carpenter fiancé.

In a world where the rich were really, really rich and really, really comfortable, and relatively speaking really, really healthy, God Showed Up In A Barn. Not a palace. Not a castle. Not a house. Not even a rural inn. A barn.

The New Order Has Arrived. And it doesn’t look anything like The Current Establishment.
The New Way, God’s Way shows up in the dark.
The New Way, God’s Way shows up among the poor and oppressed.
The New Way, God’s Way, the New Order meets us in the darkness.

This is Good News Indeed. God Showed Up among the Least of Us. The world has never seen anything like this before—power to the powerless.


+ + + + + +

It’s been one heck of a year, hasn’t it?

Terrorism hasn’t stopped. Remember what happened in India just last month?
We’re still at war.
Tornado season yielded nearly 60 deaths in the southern region of this country.
Gas prices are better now, but holy moley, that was a rough four months.
That tropical storm in Myanmar back in May killed over 133,000 people.
Hurricanes Gustav, Hanna, and Ike killed hundreds and hundreds.
And then. September. Lehman Brothers filed bankruptcy, and we knew we were in trouble, didn’t we?

This economic crisis is touching every single one of us.

Yeah, it’s no secret that we aren’t exactly living in The Best of Times. Even Buckhead, Georgia feels a hit, and we’re scared. Words like “bailout” and “recession” are common vernacular these days. Pfft. What a drag.

Never mind everything else.
Who have you grieved this year?
What are your losses?
How much of you is in the dark?


But there is Hope. Hope with a capital H.

Turns out that God’s All Time Favorites are those who are down and out. Eternal success isn’t measured in stocks or property, land or money. Eternal Life is something we all get, no matter what. And the people who know that best, the ones God is closest to, are the ones without. Obviously. Look where he was born.

The birth of Jesus Christ is Good News because in it lies our ultimate security. Hope that no matter how bad things get, we know that God showed up first in the dark.

I am not about to stand before you today to tell you that Everything Is Going To Be Okay. I am here to say that Everything IS Okay.

No matter what you’re going through.
No matter how hard it is.
No matter how thick the darkness.
You Are Okay.

And the darker it gets, the more likely you are to be present to God who—as it turns out—has been there the whole time.

Those middle schoolers that day, sitting in the circle. They hit God’s Great Truth out of the park...

The Truth is that God Loves You more than you could ever ask or imagine. Maybe you’re uncertain about that. Maybe you can’t feel it. But I have proof:

God Still Speaks. Maybe not audibly, like a voice from the heavens or a visitation by an angel—though I’m certainly not going to put it past God to appear to any of us in any way at any time. But tonight—right now—in the midst of the mystery and wonder of God’s Coming—God is speaking to through this most miraculous story. God is speaking in the story of a baby, born in a barn, who was sent to bring peace and comfort to our very affliction.

The story of God Born In A Barn has transcended time and it now gets to be ours.

Tonight. God has Shown Up for us. The Hope is tangible when we’re open and ready. And I believe we are. It’s been a long, cold Advent. We’ve waited with the patience and stillness of Mary. And now, tonight, God Has Come. And everything is Okay. God is with us—no matter what—and we couldn’t be better.

Can you feel the grip of baby’s hand around your finger? Is there anything better than that? “I’m here,” God is saying. “I’m not letting go.”


Sleep in heavenly peace.



+

proper 21, year a

Gospel Text: Matthew 21:23-32
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When I was in the fourth grade I got a C in Mrs. Cheek’s Social Studies class. Now, to be fair, I’d had a nasty flu and was out of school for, like, two weeks. I’d fallen behind, and, as a result, earned my first C.

I knew it was coming for at least a week, but denial is a powerful force even for an 8-year-old. I can still feel the surprise drop in my stomach from the first sight of the grade. It was like a gaping wound on the carbon paper. The C was written in blue ink and perfectly centered in the box labeled “Social Studies”. Mrs. Cheek’s handwriting was beautiful—I’d been trying to mimic it for months—it was a font that’d I’d practice on the surface of all my folders. And that practice came in handy when—with a steady hand and an identical blue ink pen—I changed the grade. It wasn’t hard. I simply rounded out the corners of the C and added a line at it’s left side. Done. I went from “average” to “above average.” Just like that.

My parents totally fell for it. Of course they did. It was perfect. I got away with it, and was set. Everything’s gonna be alright.

Only, not so much.

I hardly slept for three solid weeks, and when I did it was restless and fraught with nightmares about getting caught. Finally, one night well after bedtime, I crept downstairs to where my parents were watching late night television, and I fessed up. I told the whole pathetic truth.

My parents listened carefully as I confessed my shame, my secret, my lie. It was late, and after I ran out of words and tears (I was terribly dramatic), I was unbearably exhausted. My father picked me up and carried me to bed where I slept like a baby. Seriously, it was the best sleep I’ve ever had. It was so good that now—22 years later—I can still remember the feeling I had when I woke up. I felt light and peaceful. Rest.

That morning, my parents told me that they loved me very much, that I was forgiven, that I needed to eat some breakfast and go to school. They decided not to punish me—it was clear that I punished myself enough. But I did have to come clean with Mrs. Cheek. They knew I could be brave enough to do it.

And, just like that, I was free.

At the age of 8, I started learning something very, very important—something I’m still sorting out: That no matter how shameful and painful and sinful and secretive it is, the truth will always, always set us free.

And the truth is that we’re all miserably flawed. We do things so full of shame and regret and pain that when it comes to confession, there’s not enough time in the world rattle off our sins, our grievances. Our secrets and our pain stretch out for miles. It's the way of the human condition.

And we coil up the miles and miles of our pain and sin. We wind it up tight and shove it into our souls like a tapeworm. In the still, small hours when we tap into our still, small voice, we can feel it, eating away at our lives. But most of the time, we hold our chins high and carry on.

Because we live in a society that honors bucking up. Chin up, move on. No time to be vulnerable. No time to come face to face with our flaws. Be put together. Be precise. Commit to as many things as you possibly can. Look busy. Be busy. And be really, really good at it. Get the highest grades. Go to the best colleges. Be on the faddiest of the fad diets. You must be gorgeous. Have gorgeous, well-behaved, perfect children. Have the best looking yard in the neighborhood. Nothing shall be out of place. Drive the right car. Marry the right person. Get it together, people. Strive for perfection.

(It is not possible. Is it?)

“Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him.”

This Gospel lesson messes with our sensibilities. It’s calling us to a New Order where rotten people get into heaven first. It’s the prostitutes and the tax collectors who get to meet God. That hardly seems fair. After all, we’re trying really hard over here!

But listen carefully—the prostitutes and the tax collectors that Jesus is talking about aren’t run-of-the-mill sinners. They’re believers. The bought it. They got what John the Baptist was doing. They wanted it. They saw forgiveness, believed it was possible, and they wanted to be forgiven more than they wanted their lifestyle. They needed healing, forgiveness, and wholeness, just like we do, but they were not afraid to admit it.

It hurts to come face-to-face with all the wrongs we’ve done to each other and to ourselves. And we find ourselves in the back of the baptism-slash-forgiveness-slash-atonement-healing line, wearing the plastic-nose-and-fake-mustache glasses, hoping that God won’t recognize us when we confess. But God always does. And God will wait. God will wait for us to take off our masks and own our grief.

It’s so hard to be so vulnerable. I hate nothing more than feeling as though I’ve let someone down. I hate messing up. I hate what it feels like when I realize that I've wronged someone else--or even myself. It’s easier, it seems, to just pretend like it’s not there. To put my grief and my shame in a box on a shelf and leave it there. I've got a lot to lose. There's a long way to fall.

Maybe it seems easy for the prostitutes and the tax collectors…They don’t have much to lose, right? Everyone already hates them. But me? Us? We can’t be that bad. If we admit our sins we’re no better than they are, right?

Precisely.

The Good News is that we aren’t any better than anyone else. We stink. And God loves us anyway. And there is nothing in the whole world that compares to this kind of love. The kind of love that sees us as exactly who we are—warts and sin and shame—and loves us anyway. The kind of love that will blow secrets into oblivion. The kind of love that reveals the truth and forgives us over and over again…we’re forgiven a million times over for the things we have done, the things we have yet to do, and the things we’ve left undone.

The Good News is that—as hard as it may be—there is power in telling the truth. It’s got the force of a title wave and it will propel you to the front of the line. You’ll be in interesting company—honest people, truth tellers are a rarity—the new company you keep might seem a little bizarre. But it’s good. It’s the Truth. It’s the Kingdom. And, let me tell ya, you’ll sleep like an 8-year-old set free from the bonds of tiny secret, put to bed by her father, and forgiven for no other reason than the Love that Passes All Understanding.

Thanks be to God.