where everything else goes

His name was Al, I think, but I'm not sure. After so many years, the
memory of that night remains hazy.
 
It was Christmas Eve and I was a little boy of seven, maybe eight. In
those days one could, if one was so inclined, order a case of beer
from a liquor store and have it delivered to one's house. At least, in
New Jersey, one could do this.
 
My father had ordered a case of something or other. The beer delivery
guy showed up at the door. My dad invited him in and engaged him in
conversation, which was sort of unusual. We all spent quite a while
standing in the living room talking. Me in my little footie pajamas,
all excited for Santa's impending visit. Al in his coat talking about
this and that and the other thing with my mom and dad. My parents as
far as I knew had never met this Al fellow before but they seemed to
be getting along pretty well. After a while he left with much smiling
and good will and a pretty decent tip,. My father was and still is a
generous tipper. It was Christmas Eve after all and this is how it was
supposed to be.
 
This episode remained etched in my memory as a model of what Christmas
was all about. A stranger, previously unkown to us was welcomed into
our lives as if he had been a lifelong friend. It was a terrific
memory.
 
Until about two years ago when I brought it up as my parents and I
reminisced about Christmases past. I told them how I remembered this
one guy Al who delivered a case of beer on Christmas Eve and how they
chatted him up for what seemed like a long time and how pleasant that
was. My mom and dad looked at each other and started to laugh. My dad
said, "I remember that guy too. He must have had at least a few drinks
before he came here. He couldn't even stand up straight! We kept him
here as long as we could so he wouldn't have an accident!"
 
"Oh." I said as I watched the gauzy, glowing halo disappear from
around one of my favorite Christmas memories.
 
Now, I realize that isn't exactly a church friendly story and I
hesitated when deciding whether to share it with you. In the end I
decided, like my parents did, that it's better for you to hear the
truth. And the truth is that Christmas, like many other things,
usually doesn't measure up to our expectations. There's all that
anticipation and preparation and exhilaration that eventually gives
way very quickly to frustration and depression and exhaustion. The
gauzy glow of our Christmas hopes, for many of us, becomes the harsh
light of cold reality on December 26th.
 
On the 26th I had to wake up and go deliver mail. Many of you had to
get up and do something similar. "Be here all the earlier the next
morning!" said Ebenezer Scrooge to Bob Cratchit; this was obviously
before his encounter with the three Christmas Ghosts. And many of the
companies we serve are much like that pre-conversion Mr. Scrooge.
 
It doesn't take long for everything to go back to the way it was
before all the Christmas music started playing on your favorite radio
stations.
 
One year when I was home from college on winter break, my friend Bob
called up our local radio station, WPST in Trenton NJ on the day after
Christmas with a request. He wanted to hear the Bruce Springsteen
version of Santa Claus Is Coming to Town. The DJ picked up and Bob
said, "Hi I realize it's the day after Christmas but I'd just like to
hear Bruce Springsteen's Santa Claus Is Coming to Town just one more
time…"
 
"Christmas," said the DJ, "Is over."
 
"Yes, I know," said Bob, "But everybody loves that song and, you know,
it would just be nice to…"
 
"Christmas is over"
 
"I realize that but, c'mon can't you just play it one more time?"
 
"Christmas is over." And with that, there was a click, and then a dial tone.
 
Christmas is over. After the shepherds leave and the drummer boy picks
up his sticks and goes home, Mary and Joseph must begin thinking about
how they're going to face this new life that they never asked for.
When we see them next, they're at the temple in Jerusalem. It is
approximately 40 days after the miraculous and scandalous birth.
They've fulfilled their duty as citizens by enrolling in the census as
directed by Quirinius. Now they must fulfill their spiritual
obligation as Jews. Their ritual purification for Mary and the infant
Jesus. In the temple they offer a dove and two pigeons, the offering
of the lower class.
 
Christmas is over. Now Joseph and Mary are back to being simple cogs
in the political and also the religious machinery of the day. Even so,
they discharge their obligations faithfully. We already know that
Joseph was a righteous man, and Mary was told by a heavenly messenger
that she had found favor with God. God had done a good job choosing
parents for Jesus. It was guaranteed that the Lord of Life would grow
up in a house of righteousness.
 
In telling the story, Luke makes it clear that they did everything
required by the Law of Moses; they followed it to the letter. It was
most likely the way they had lived their entire lives to that point.
Luke is making sure that we know that Joseph and Mary demonstrated a
love for the Lord by adhering to His law. As the Psalmist writes…
 
"Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day!" This could
have been Joseph and Mary's song.
Yet for all their devotion, the Law never loved them back. The law of
Moses was no friend to them. Nor was it a friend to their Son Jesus,
who, as old Simeon warns Mary, would some thirty three years later, be
put to death for supposedly claiming to be superior to that law, and
equal to the God who issued it.
 
By the time of Jesus, the Law had become a monster, more a human
creation than a divine decree. As the adult Jesus himself will point
out to the Law's keepers, it had become a burden that was tied up and
put on the backs of ordinary people; it had become a stick used to
threaten anyone who wanted to approach God, and to beat anyone brave
enough to actually attempt such an approach.
 
Once, long before Joseph and Mary's time, it may have been that loving
the Law was like showing love for God. Or maybe Joseph and Mary just
thought it had been that way. Indeed, there memories of the law being
a pathway to God were a sentimentalized version of reality, sort of
like my memories of Al the beerman on Christmas Eve.
 
The truth is that faithful people could never get to God through
observance of the law. The law could never bring salvation. And the
Pharisees' burdensome interpretation of that law didn't make things
any easier. But until Joseph and Mary had a son and named him Jesus,
there was no other way.
 
The lovely third verse of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear puts it perfectly,
 
And ye beneath life's crushing load,/whose forms are bending low,/who
toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow,/look now! For
glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing./O rest beside the
weary road,/and hear the angels sing.
 
And here's the truly amazing thing about the Incarnation. In becoming
one of us, God also took on that crushing load. God, in coming into
the world himself, made himself subject to the very law that he had
given. He himself in the person of Jesus would eventually toil along
the climbing way up a hill called Calvary, a cross beam wedged between
his shoulders, with painful steps and slow.
 
God made himself subject to his own law and also to the laws of Nature
which he also created.
 
God sent Jesus into an ordinary body, into an ordinary family who did
what they were supposed to do. He grew up in the ordinary way in an
ordinary world. At Christmas, God walks right into the usual stuff.
 
So maybe it's a good thing that reality comes back to us so quickly
after so much Advent anticipation and Christmas celebration. Christ
was born for this! This ordinary world. To be with us in the every day
circumstances of our ordinary lives.
 
Yes, of course he makes a place for us to be with him for eternity,
but the beauty of Christmas is that God in Christ makes a link between
eternity and this moment now. Eternal life isn't reserved for after
our time on this spinning ball is done, if you are in Christ you are
experiencing your eternal life even now as the earthly portion of that
life continues. In the incarnation, God brings his saving power into
the most mundane aspects of our lives. He is with you in the cleaning
up of wrapping paper from the living room floor and in the hunt for
fresh batteries to replace those quickly dissipated by constant
playing with new toys. God is with you as you return to work. When the
world tries to re-apply the crushing load and make you bend low again,
God is still there. What the Law couldn't do because it had no
physical or spiritual presence, God in Christ did do. And he still
does it, even after the tree comes down and the in-laws leave and the
shiny gifts lose their luster.
 
Even after the silver bells are silent in the city and the shoppers
have rushed home with their treasures, as we wait for the part of the
promise that has not yet come, as time and nostalgia work their magic
on this year's memories, the presence of God in his world is not a
memory, it is present reality. And we who love him, hold him in our
hearts now and also wait for the rest of the Christmas promise: God
with us now and God with us always.
 
For lo! the days are hastening on/By prophet-bards foretold,/When with
the ever circling years/Comes round the age of gold;/When peace shall
over all the earthIts ancient splendors fling,/And the whole world
send back the song,/Which now the angels sing.
 
 
-- my vcard url:
http://getvcard.com/getvcard.asp?UID=WSsk3U7

I trusted Christ when I was in college and ever since then I've felt
guilty that the Christmas season has always been my favorite time of
year.
 
After all, we followers of Jesus are really Easter People. The
resurrection is what we're supposed to be all about. And as I'll
explain shortly, the weeks preceding Christmas are not supposed to be
a season of joyous anticipation. Yet, as true as that is, I've never
been able to shake a sense of excitement and anticipation and goodwill
that fills my heart and my head right around the day after
Thanksgiving.
 
The mother of a good friend of mine, her name is Gladys, was of the
same mindset as me. Gladys and her husband Bill lived just down the
street from my parents. After I graduated from business school but was
still living with my folks, I spent a lot of time at Gladys and Bill's
house. Since they lived so close I would often just walk over there
unannounced, which is what I did the evening after one particular
Thanksgiving. As soon as I entered the house, Bam! The odor of baking
cookies had me just about swooning with delight. The Christmas lights,
which were already hung, were the only lights burning in the house but
there were so many of them that there was enough light to read by…
read, that is, if it weren't for an Andy Williams Christmas record
that was playing loud enough to fill the whole house with "Sleigh
Ride"
 
I loved it. I walked into the kitchen with a big smile on my face and
Gladys said "Have a cookie!" I did.
 
Like Gladys, Christmas for me begins at the stroke of midnight on
Friday following Thanksgiving. Of course, compared to the rest of the
world, I start late. The Christmas retail season now begins before
Halloween. At the post office I've seen Christmas promotions on the
cover of certain catalogs before the first of September!
 
I see stuff like that and inwardly bark "That's horrible!" I'm above
all that. I can practice delayed gratification, waiting until the day
after Thanksgiving.
 
But, even when I wait until now to put up the lights, cut down a tree,
roast those chestnuts and dig out the Andy Williams, Frank Sinatra,
Tony Bennett and what have you… I'm still technically skipping the
season that precedes Christmas. The season we're in now is Advent, not
Christmas. And Advent is a very different thing than Christmas. So to
assuage my guilty feelings about starting the party too early, I think
it's wise for me to give some thought to what advent means.
 
Take a look at the lectionary scriptures for the four weeks of advent
when you have a chance. You'll find all the beautiful passages that we
like to hear during advent but you'll also find stuff like today's
scriptures, which are downright depressing!
 
The Old Testament reading that we heard is full of people fading like
leaves, taken away by their sins. The gospel passage begins with Jesus
talking about suffering and the sun going dark and the moon not giving
its light and stars falling from heaven…. Yuck! That's not Christmas!
What's up with that!?
 
We're supposed to be happy now, aren't we? It's time for the season of
peace on earth and goodwill toward men and so forth and so on.
 
But today's scriptures, and there are plenty more like them, make the
appearance of God sound like a day of terror and judgment. The wrath
of God is coming! The judgment of God is near!
 
How did these depressing scriptures get mixed in with the [*singing*]
ha-happiest season of all?
 
Well, traditionally Advent is set aside as a time of waiting, but not
necessarily of joyous anticipation. The Old Testament scriptures in
particular highlight that spirit of waiting. Isaiah wishes that God
would tear apart the sky and come down in person. His is the voice of
the exile, when the Israelites were captive in a foreign land. "Do not
remember our sin forever!" he pleads.
 
As we heard last week, the hope of a Messiah who would restore the
fortunes of Israel, as well as bring her people back to their
homeland, was born during their time of Exile. God spoke through the
prophets, promising to step into their crisis himself and save. With
that promise from the prophets, the nation waited. And waited. And
waited. The season of advent is supposed to serve as a reminder of
that patient waiting.
 
But it's hard for modern Christians to act like we're waiting. We
already know what happened. God made good on his promise to come in
person and redeem his people. It happened. Not quite in the way the
nation of Israel expected, but even so, God did keep his promise.
 
So how is it that we're expected to wait? I've started to think that
although Advent is about waiting, it may not be about us waiting on
God. I've begun to think that maybe Advent isn't even about us
remembering what it was like for Israel to wait on God.
 
These thoughts started rumbling around my head when I noticed some
things Jesus says about judgment. A good example is what he says in
Mark 13 which we just heard. In this chapter Jesus has been predicting
the destruction of the temple, saying that it will be torn down and
not one stone will be left upon another. Then he predicts wars and
nations rising against nation, famines and other disasters. He tells
his disciples that they will be handed over to governors and kings,
that they'll be beaten in the synagogues and brought to trial for
their testimony about Jesus. Even brothers will betray each other to
death.
 
But out of all of the predictions of destruction he makes in Mark
chapter 13, only one thing is what we would call today an act of God:
earthquakes. Every other item in the list is an evil done by human
beings to other human beings.
 
It's the same in the Isaiah passage. The reason for God's supposed
absence is the sin of God's people. "For you have hidden your face
from us, and have delivered us into the hand of OUR iniquity," writes
Isaiah.
 
The imagery that accompanies us into advent is of a people longing for
God to come and heal their self inflicted wounds. Pleading with God to
come and rescue them from their own selfish ways.
 
And of course, God did. He came and saved them from their sin. He
acted once and for all to save Israel and not only Israel but all of
those who were willing to trust in his grace from that point forward.
He saved us all from our sin. In Jesus, God took our sin and cast it
away from us and from him, as far as the east is from the west.
 
And that was it. End of waiting for God to act. The cross stands at
the hinge point of history as the moment when God pronounced his final
judgment on all the sin of all the people for all time. So what reason
is there for us to still be 'waiting' or even pretending to wait for
God to act? He's done it. It is accomplished. Our salvation is a fact,
not a hypothesis. Jesus himself said it on the cross, "It is
finished."
 
Advent is about waiting. But I'm beginning to think it's not about us
waiting for God. I'm thinking it may be the other way around.
 
I said I was having second thoughts about what God's judgment looks
like because Jesus, when he talks about judgment, is often referring
to the evil that human beings do to other human beings and not about
violence and wrath coming from the Lord. While the bible tells us
quite clearly that there will be a judgment when we die, it is also
quite clear that God has already done what was needed to save us from
that judgment.
 
We no longer have to wait. Because of the Cross we can just begin to
live in the light of God's grace. An important part of that is the
giving of grace to one another. So 2000 years after the cross, has
God's incredibly gracious act caused a slow but sure change in the way
we treat each other?
 
On one of my favorite days of the year, the day that I fired up the
Christmas playlist on my iPod, the day after Thanksgiving, the day
known in the US as Black Friday because that's when retailers hope to
finally begin earning a profit for the year, to get into the black
after 11 months in the red; on that day, shoppers everywhere queued up
well before dawn to buy Christmas gifts at fantastically low prices.
There were members of my family who were seriously contemplating going
to Kohls for their 4am opening. Maybe some of you hit the black Friday
sales too.
 
At a Wal-Mart on Long Island, impatient shoppers literally busted down
the doors at the stroke of 5am. A line of workers had been trying to
hold them off. One of them, a 34 year old store employee was overrun
by the stampeding feet of more than 200 people. He was trampled to
death. This was two days ago, folks, not 2000 years ago. We've come so
far as a species haven't we?
 
I was delivering the mail on black Friday. As I finished the first
part of the route and was coming out of one development en route to
another, someone in a minivan came speeding up behind me, just about
riding my bumper all the down the street. As I made my turn into the
next neighborhood, he gave me a long honk. I looked back at him just
in time to see him wave… well, it wasn't a wave exactly.
 
Peace on earth! Goodwill to men!
 
In Mumbai they're still mopping up after the latest terror attack.
Over in Iraq, it's just a question of which towns suffered attacks
today and how many people were killed.
 
Today in this nation, people will die because of the hatred or willful
neglect of other people. It's not a question of 'if', it's only a
question of who and where.
 
So maybe it's God who's waiting this advent.
 
Is it possible that a longsuffering, a patient God is looking at the
world he made and what we've done with it; that he's looking at all of
us and saying in a hopeful voice, "maybe this is the year that they'll
finally understand"?
 
Or maybe God's hope is less grand than that. Maybe God is hoping that
just a few of us will get it. That one or two people here and there
will offer to let Him into their lives in a whole new way. That as a
result of that renewed commitment to God; they will change both
inwardly and outwardly. They'll be different. They'll act different.
Maybe they'll leave the judgments aside since they themselves have
been saved from judgment. Maybe they'll start to see others through
eyes of faith, eyes of grace, eyes of love; God's eyes. Maybe a few
people here and there, just because it's what God is waiting for, will
break the chain of violence and hate, even though they're seen as
foolish and naïve for doing so. And maybe their witness will prove
contagious and bring about a small but similar change in their
neighbors or church friends or families.
 
Or maybe God's hope is simpler even than that. Maybe he's just waiting
on one. One person. Maybe he's just waiting on me.
 
Or maybe he's just waiting on you.
 
 
-- my vcard url:
http://getvcard.com/getvcard.asp?UID=WSsk3U7

I'm heading out of town for a few days with my lovely wife. We're
leaving tomorrow right after church. Can't wait!

Tonight I'll be having dinner with my district superintendent before
our church's annual charge conference.

Since I will not be here for dinner my wife will be making spinachy
spinach with spinach sauce.

Favorite Italian deli closed today (that's two strikes if you're
keeping count). Leftover hamburger and a coke for lunch, the first
meal of the day.

Watch me. Here I go.

My favorite coffee place is out of muffins and also out of jelly...
and who eats bagels without cream cheese AND jelly? I know I don't.