The longest night.

    This is my reflection from our Longest Night service.  I am sharing as one who knows that sometimes we just don't feel like celebrating, sometimes the joy and lights are hard to take.  Christ arrived under difficult circumstances, Christ showed up amid the chaos and noise, the smell and the fear and that promise is no less ours today than it was then.  

Luke 1:26-38 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

The Birth of Jesus Foretold

²⁶ In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”^[a]29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰ The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. ³² He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. ³³ He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” ³⁴ Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”^[b] 35 The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born^[c] will be holy; he will be called Son of God. ³⁶ And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. ³⁷ For nothing will be impossible with God.” ³⁸ Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

For Nothing is impossible with God, even when we are left sitting alone, even when the angel’s presence is no longer sensed.

You can do this, whatever this is—you can do it.

Love from afar, pray, walk away, walk back in, no guilt or failure in that.

You can say no and then say yes or say yes and then no.

U turns are allowed, no 1 way roads, no left or right turns only.

You can take the high way or the long winding road.

You can cry and laugh, moan and scream.

With God all things are possible.

Be selfish, waste time, then take time to be fully human, fully cared for, fully loved, and then you can fully love.

When the sun sets --embrace the dark and embrace the offering of rest, set free the dusty troubles of the day that have clung to your clothes, rinse away the aroma of worry, the ache of unfinished business.

When the sun rises- stay in bed one minute longer, slowly release your arms and legs, release yourself to walking and doing. 

When you feel assaulted by all the day has to offer know that the sun will set, that dusk and dawn can be your friend and that with God all things are possible.

You can do this—even when you don’t want to.

No one wants to grieve, divorce, lose, lose friends, family, lose the sense of hope that comes with Christmas, no one chooses that.

With God all things are possible--even when we don't believe it.

Mary surely couldn’t quite believe it, couldn’t fully know, on a night like this we are a bit like Mary—we are the bearers of Christ, in our weaknesses, in our questions, in our being driven out, in the violence, in the noise, the chaos, in desperation and in love—we are a bit like Mary. 

Hear these words from Jan Richardson

"Blessed are you who bear light in unbearable times, 

who testify to its endurance amid the unendurable, 

who bear witness to its persistence 

when everything seems in shadow and grief.

Blessed are you in whom the light lives, 

in whom the brightness blazes-

Your heart a chapel, an altar, 

where in the deepest night can be seen a fire that shines forth in you 

in unaccountable faith, in stubborn hope,

 in love that illumines every broken thing it finds."

River Living

            Joni Mitchell sang “Wish I had a river so long I would teach my feet to fly.”

I was looking out over the Kennebec River the other day and I was blessed realizing that I have lived along this river for more than half my life.  When we first arrived in Richmond the river was often referred to with a sneer of disgust.  We taught our children the things we learned almost immediately upon our moving to town; the water is dirty-don’t swim in it, the water has a strong current-don’t swim in it, three (or was it two?) children drowned while living on Swan Island-don’t swim in it.

            The truth is that in spite of all the downsides of the river I grew to love it.  In the summer I loved taking the kids down to the sandy spots when the tide was out. In the fall I couldn’t wait for the leaves to fall so I could  I look out and see the sun ripple along the top of the moving water.  In the winter we would smelt (ice fish) and we would send our kids across the ice in “mud buckets” when the wind was just right. In the spring I could stand outside and listen to the ice snap, crackle and pop as the ice began to melt. 

            Almost 30 years ago we would be surprised as we watched an eagle fly over the river, seeming to fly along with the natural flow.  Today there are several eagle families living in the trees along the river, there is new life and it is thriving, we are no longer surprised by the spotting of eagles, we expect it.

People no longer sneer when they say “the Kennebec.”  Rather they refer to it with pride, they even built a bridge that provides a stunning view.  People fish and some even swim and many have no memory of the recovery it has experienced. 

Would I have believed it possible if someone said 30 years ago; “One day this river is going to be a beautiful source of life.”  Maybe, but I always loved it like it might.  Standing at the edge of the river one cannot see its beginning or its end, we live in the middle and we wonder.   When all common sense is yelling “Don’t swim in it”, stop and take in all the little signs of hope that could lead you to expecting new life.

Ezekiel 47:9
"It will come about that every living creature which swarms in every place where the river goes, will live. And there will be very many fish, for these waters go there and the others become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes.”

Pentecost!

In the midst of a celebration, the Holy Spirit showed up, and they understood each other.

On April 23^rd the United Methodist church turned 50 years old.  While the Wesley brothers were inspiration for the beginnings of the church in the mid 1700’s , while on a mission trip from the Church of England, the actual United Methodist Church was defined in 1968.  
The official celebration for the church is on Heritage Sunday, which we will celebrate on May20^th—Pentecost Sunday! We will celebrate the birthday of all that makes us unique as a United Methodist Church while we celebrate the big church—the conglomerate of a variety of voices and practices.  We might call this the church without walls.

Frederick Beuchner wrote:  “The visible church is all the people who get together from time to time in God's name. Anybody can find out who they are by going to church to look. The invisible church is all the people God uses for his hands and feet in this world. Nobody can find out who they are except God. Think of them as two circles. The optimist says they are concentric. The cynic says they don't even touch. The realist says they occasionally overlap.”

This is the perfect time to think about church, the church you first attended, the church you attend now and the church that was born at Pentecost.  What did Peter think would happen after that gathering?  Could the first home churches imagine that they would have organs and pews, hymnals and pulpits?  Did they ever imagine committees and reports?  Did John Wesley ever imagine that the horse would give way to a car, and that clergy would live in parsonages and walk next door for church?  Of course today there are many pastors who feel a bit like John as they travel and hour or more to church or as they care for two or more congregations.

  How close is the worship you partake in on Sunday to the worship you dream of?—Consider this your Pentecost dream, the one that comes with flames and fire and a dove blown in by the Holy Spirit.
As a church in the 21^st century we are constantly being challenged to be on alert for the rustling of the Spirit, to understand the foreign voices, to hear God’s call and to see ourselves as one unique part of something so much bigger than us—the hand clapping, feet stomping body of Christ.

Empty--inspired by an empty nest conversation.

Jan Richardson wrote: “You could not imagine that something so empty could fill you.”—Painted Prayerbook.

                Recently while quilting with a group of women, we began to talk about the empty nest.  We are a group of women at a variety of ages and with a variety of thoughts on the empty nest.  One of the women still has children at home and I know there are times when all think the grass is greener on the other side.  As we talked about the emotions behind our experiences we realized they all varied.  Some struggled with each child’s departure and others of us found it easier with each good-bye. 

                Our traditional response to Easter is “Christ is risen” followed by “He is risen indeed!”  Christ was with the disciples, with the Marys, with the people for a short time.  Like us often the good-bye in death includes returning to the burial site. When the women arrive to the tomb they find it empty.  They were not ready for good-byes, they were not ready to move on without him and they must have wondered how they could manage without Christ beside them.

 Would they recognize the best and be able to ignore the worst in each other without Christ telling some story for them figure out? Who would distract them from judgement?  Who would ask them to pray?  Who would have faith in THEM?

                I think of 20 years of “school years” parenting and would anyone know that about me at that time, about me as a parent?  Would anyone know I taught 3 teenagers to drive?  Would anyone know that my husband pitched more baseballs than I could ever count? 

The question of the empty nest might very well be—who will we be now without them?  Who will distract us from the stresses of work and home?  Who will we pray for in the wee hours of the night?  Who else would ever have as much faith in us as they did?

                Our nest has been “empty” for some time now but occasionally it is full of all our children, their partners and their children.  When we are all together the space is full.  Full of a vibrating energy, it is joyful, it is noisy and it is crowded.  As the flock slowly takes leave, one by one, I begin to breathe. 

                With each breath, with each lego and farm animal put away, with each lone toddler’s sock stuck in a cushion, I begin to feel.  It is with that one last flop on the couch that I look at that empty space and I am full.  I am full of memories, full of joy, full of worry as well.  The kind of fullness I feel in that emptiness feels too big for my heart almost—it is almost pain—full.

When the room is empty who will know us? 

 The stone is rolled away, the tomb is empty and like the disciples we might ask “Who are we now?”   We are Easter people, defined not by an empty tomb but by a risen Christ.

The wise will call us by name.

The name I was born into and grew into. The names I grew out of,

grew into and out of, so many ways to call me by my name.

Through their faithfulness, Abraham and Sarah gained a new name, a sign of their relationship with God, a sign of being the recipients of a promise to be carried out for all generations.

Names are important.  Names help us to address each other and to breach barriers.  

            Names are funny, we name our children after family members, after characters in books and movies, we name them to be unique or to be familiar, and sometimes we name them to honor someone we love or loved.  Simply put there is a lot of time spent naming our children, naming our pets as well as boats and cars and farms and …. you get the point we love to call things by name.

Sometimes a name last for only a short period of time.  When our son was born he was born early and his legs and arms were like little twigs.  My father held him in his hand and said “he is like a little chicken.”  He was called chicklet after that for a long time.  As a matter of fact, we rarely used his given name his first year, we called him chicken or chicklet. Eventually he grew up and out of this name.  Of course, he grew out of it before we did.

            Recently a new baby came into our lives, a very cute great-nephew who is has acquired the name “Goose”, he too may grow out of this name though his great-grandfather was a “Bull” for life so who knows!

These nicknames, these secondary names come from deep places of love, joy, comfort, security and playfulness.  They are the names that hold a thousand feelings welled up in hearts and they are quite often the words for what is impossible to name. These are names that say “You belong to us.”

           Abram and Sarai were fine names when they were part of their small community, but they were going to be the ancestors of nations, they were going to “parents” to a world of people and they were worthy of a name, a name chosen by God. Names born of stars and heavens, oceans and mountains, names to express hope for the world, “You and all who follow belong to me.”

There are names we have to be ready for, names that are placed upon us by choice or not, names we ear and names we grow into: parent, spouse, neighbor, friend, teacher, electrician, gardener, artist and musician. 

Just as God calls us by name, we call out to God by name.  Counselor, Healer, Father, Mother.  God calls out the name “Son” for Christ.  See him there---he is my Son.  We call Christ by name as well, teacher, Savior, Redeemer and he calls to us—disciples, followers, sister, brother.

It is tragic that this act of name calling, can be twisted and used to separate us, degrade and dismiss us. 

A few weeks ago, I shared that the schools were having a no name calling week. I think this is a wonderful idea but I began to wonder what if rather than avoiding name calling we took back name calling—what if we took name calling out of the hands of the bullies, out of the hands of the racists, out of the hands of the strangers.

What if we reminded each other of our names? Our names that hold hope for the future, names called out in love, and names that do not define us but rather acknowledge us as valuable.

There is a Chinese Proverb that says,

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.”

The wise will call us by name.

Dirt, Mud, Dust

“This is the day we freely say

We are scorched.

This is the hour we are marked

By what has made it through the burning.

…so let us be marked not for sorrow.

And let us be marked not for shame.

Let us be marked not for false humility or thinking we are less than

we are but for claiming what God can do

within the dust, within the dirt, within the stuff of which the world is made

and the stars that blaze in our bones and the galaxies that spiral inside the smudge we bear.”

Jan Richardson

            I like to get my hands dirty.  I like to move them in and out of the cold, wet soil of spring, the warm and often dusty dirt of summer and then finally in the fall the rich brown compost cluttered with the debris of harvest.  I wear gloves most times but only so others won’t judge my dirty nails.  I like everything about dirt. 

            God loved dirt, God loved getting stained from the soil of creation and God never gets tired of playing in the mud.  God’s breath is so far reaching that the dusts of Africa rest on my lashes as I squint my eyes at the one sun we share.

            Lent is a time to remember we come from the same dust and to that same dust we shall return. In the end the bed of my neighbor will look very much like mine—dirty.

 So how do we live in between the here and now?  How do we live in between the horrors of school shootings, of espionage and of our own need to separate ourselves from each other?  How do we live in between the breath of God, the Ruah, and our eventual rest in God? 

Our Wednesday evening prayers have been focused on Three Simple Rules: A Weslyan Way of Living by Rueben Job.  In 2007 the author wrote: “The path we are on has become so well worn that only a radical change can jar us out of the deep ruts of our dilemma.” 

John Wesley believed there was a way out of the rut with three simple rules:

Do No Harm

Do Good

Stay in Love with God

John Wesley knew there would always be times like these—times when we would forget our beginnings and ends come from a shared dust. 

1 John 4:11 “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”