I’m gonna start in a different way by letting this be the announcement where I tell you that I’m getting a new knee, that’s my Christmas present to myself.

After Christmas, I’ll get a new knee, and I’ll be gone the month of January. You’ll have other people filling in for me, but I actually bring that up because I think it applies to these scriptures. There is nothing like physical therapy to burst your illusion that you are in good shape,

I actually think that’s what these scriptures are meant to do. They are to burst our illusion that we are spiritually mature. They’re a reminder that we all have growth and the ability to grow if we’re just pushed a little bit. That’s the position that I wanna take from these scriptures.

The first one was Romans 15:4-6, and I read this with the John the Baptist piece from Matthew 3:1-12. And I’m not sure how these pieces fit together.

I thought the Romans text was really affirming and uplifting until I looked at it again, and it is still affirming and uplifting, but I broke it down. It talks about what God wants. The combination of his steady constant calling and the warm personal counsel in scripture to come to characterize us. Do you notice something about what that says? I mean, it is uplifting and affirming. It’s also future tense. It’s not now. So it’s not describing the people as they are.

It’s describing how the people can become, just like I can become stronger and ready for my surgery, we can become more mature in our faith. We can stretch and grow ourselves into a closer relationship with Jesus, God, the Spirit, or whatever word you wanna use. Even this Roman scripture, although I think I hear it in a better light, it’s still pushing us. Maybe it’s a gentle push.

Then we have this scripture from John the Baptist. I’m going to do part of a deep dive with you, and hopefully I don’t go too far down this well, and we don’t lose anybody in the process. But, I have struggled, not with the whole scripture, I’m fine with the character of John the Baptist. It’s a story we read about on the second Sunday of Advent every year. I don’t have an issue with who he is or what he does, but when he starts calling people brood of vipers and talking about cutting down trees and unquenchable fire, well, you know, that just makes me uncomfortable.

I figured I had to make peace with this scripture. I had to wrestle with it because that’s the thing about scripture. The scripture that makes us uncomfortable is probably the scripture we need to spend more time with because there’s something there that we didn’t see the first time, and what I’ve learned is that this is so full of symbolism.

It starts with the words “in those days.” Why that is important is because that’s what the prophets, Jeremiah and Joel, used to use in those days. It’s a reminder of the prophets. Then, in the days of the prophets, the people were not following God the way they were meant to. The role of the prophet is to bring the people back to God. So right away, we hear that John is gonna be a type of prophet. He’s gonna try to bring the people back into a relationship with God. Then we hear that it happens in the wilderness.

Do you remember the wilderness? Do you remember what happened in the wilderness? People are uncomfortable. We don’t like the wilderness. We don’t wanna go there because the wilderness invites us to grow. Because in the wilderness, that’s where God meets us. Not always in the ways that we expect, but in ways that ultimately help us, and even as uncomfortable as the wilderness is, God provides in the wilderness. Remember God providing water and manna. God is there. God is close in the wilderness. When we are feeling most uncomfortable, God is closest to us.

Then we get John’s clothing. This is one of the only times that we get someone’s outfit described to us in this detail. We hear exactly what he’s wearing and exactly what he’s eating. That’s not normal, but it connects us. It connects John with another particular prophet, and that is Elijah. Elijah also wore the skin of a camel and had a belt around his waist. So that is a clue. All of this, these are things that we just read, and we go right past because we don’t have that Jewish perspective that the first listeners had. They hear this described about John, and they’re like, oh, that’s like Elijah. This is the new Elijah. Again, a prophet is coming to help the people, saying that the kingdom of heaven is coming near and that God is about to do something big.

Are we paying attention? Last week it was Stay awake, and are you watching? Are you looking at what’s happening around you? Are you watching for what God is doing?

I think that’s a good question for us today because some of us may feel like we’re in a bit of a wilderness, but that means God is closer, and what is God doing in this time?

Do you remember the Jordan River? Do you know what the significance of the Jordan River is? Well, that was the river that Joshua brought the people out of the desert and into the Promised Land. So when you cross the Jordan, you were to encounter the promised land.

There’s a new land coming. No, not literally. This is all symbolic. There’s a new time coming. There’s a new way of living that is coming, and we are being invited into it, and then we get to the brood of vipers because it’s there. As much as I would like to take it out, I can’t. But the brood of vipers is the Pharisees and Sadducees. Do you remember who they are? They’re the religious leaders. They’re the ones who are saying, “That’s not how we do church. We do church like this. We always do this, and you have to do it this way.” They took the laws of Moses, but they also created some rules for people to follow. There’s a temple tax, but they charged 10% more, because they wanted to be paid too. They knew better, but they took advantage of the people. That’s why they were a brood of vipers. Because they didn’t really encourage people into relationships with God. They were too busy minding the rules.

I’ve heard them in preaching class, called a park bench that if you need to get off the trail, you can sit down here for a minute. So, here’s your park bench. Last night after I put the Christmas tree up and put the lights on it. I sent my son a text and said, “How does it look?” He lives across the street, and he could see it. He said it looks great. I said, “But I broke the rule. I put white lights up, and then it didn’t have enough. So I put a string of colored lights with the white lights.” Crazy, right? That teenage thing in me, it’s still there. And you know what he said back to me, “Mom, there are no rules.” I almost said, are you an anarchist?

But does it matter? And that was the point with the Pharisees. The Pharisees were making up insignificant rules that actually caused harm to people. When they charge them more than what the temple tax was meant to be, then that caused suffering. They were not helping the people. They were hurting their own people, and that’s why they got called a brute of vipers because they knew better, but that’s not what they did.

Then we get into the acts, and at that very end, we hear about how Jesus is coming with his winnowing fork to separate the wheat from the chaff, and the wheat’s gonna go in the granary, and the chaff is gonna go in the unquenchable fire.

That is an illusion that Matthew likes a lot. He is dualistic. You’re either in, or you’re out, and there’s nothing in between. For him, it’s the same dualism that he uses in Matthew 25, where he says there’s gonna be sheep who will go into the kingdom, and there will be goats, and do you remember where the goats go? Uncle Fire. Do you see how things are coming together? When we look at scripture like that, it just puts it all in a different perspective, at least for me.

It helped me to get to the point with this scripture that I wasn’t angry at Matthew for writing it this way anymore. It’s this idea that God has come. We’re in this time where God has already done all these wonderful things, and God is also still working and something more, something different, something else. is still calling to us.

Are we paying attention? Are we paying attention to the edges of society? Are we paying attention to those who are struggling?

This month for our inclusive church, we are looking at the people for whom Christmas is not the same, because there are people who are struggling.

They may be grieving the loss of a loved one, but they may also be grieving the loss of an income, an identity, a relationship at home at Christmas in particular, more than any other time of the year.

You may love your Hallmark movies, and they have a place as long as we lift up the people who aren’t living in a Hallmark movie so they don’t feel pushed out or like they don’t belong. Coming home to the family at Christmas may not be a great reconciliation and forgiveness. That’s not true for everybody.

So how do we make room for everybody? How do we say it’s okay not to be all excited about the season and all of the parties and festivities that our culture really says you have to participate in, and if you’re not, what’s wrong with you? You didn’t put a tree up this year? Instead of making that sound like a judgment, can we say, “Oh, you didn’t. How are you? Do you wanna talk?”

Listening to what’s going on in people’s lives, that’s our Compassion Team, and we’re starting a new thing in January where we’re gonna have regular sessions that you can just come in, check in, and find out about what’s going on in other people’s lives, too. Not from the gossipy kind of place, but just to hold them in your prayers. That’s the idea.

So I think John’s point is that we can be on the wrong side of the issue. We can be thinking about whether you put all white or colored lights on the tree, or we can be thinking about how many parties are on your calendar and how busy you are this season. Or we can just step back and take some quiet time to watch and see what God’s up to this year, because God is moving.

We can be better than what we were yesterday. We can be a better version of ourselves. All of us can experience that Spiritual stretching that comes with a little spiritual therapy from John. Or maybe to use a symbol from our contemporary culture, a little Ebenezer Scrooge, right? We can all have a reminder of who we have been and who we can be, and all we have a chance to change.

So at this time, stay awake because being awake is the resistance against the empire. Because John was resisting the empire at that time. He was outside, not dealing with them up close, but reminding people that there is another way of living. Slowly, day by day, we can take our souls through the exhaustion, complicity, or disengagement, and allow ourselves to be stretched.

Watch what is happening, see more clearly, speak more truthfully, and tend to and welcome those who are being pushed aside, frightened, or taken away. This is who we are called to be.

May it be so. Amen.

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 Has anybody told you that this is the first Sunday of Advent? Advent is all about watching and waiting.

The gospel reading, Matthew 24:36-44, this morning dealt with that topic almost exclusively. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like waiting and watching for whatever I’m waiting for. Makes the waiting even worse. I can still hear my grandmother from the kitchen while I was making dinner, “A watched pot never boils.” But what Jesus is saying in this passage runs in contrast to my perception of waiting. It isn’t watching a pot until it boils, or that will never boil. It isn’t twiddling my thumbs while I wait for my child to get ready for Sunday morning church. No, no, no, no. This waiting and watching is active.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in seminary about reading the Bible, it is to put scripture into its proper context. That can mean learning the historical context or using literary criticism to study the structure or rhetorical devices at play. It can mean checking out what surrounds a particular passage to track down the bigger picture of what the writer’s trying to communicate. In the case of this morning’s scripture, the sections before this passage seemed to follow along the theme of being ready, and the ones that follow, particularly in Matthew 25, seem to deal with what is done with the waiting time. This says something about verses 36 through 44 that might not be obvious when the passage is read in isolation. I think that it says that this passage is about being ready and being active while we’re waiting.

Dr. O Wesley Allen, Jr., of the working preacher, shares this view. He says, “Living faithfully in the already not yet of Christian discipleship does not mean that we can just rest in God’s grace. It means that God gives us all the more responsibility for doing God’s will on Earth as it is done in heaven.” And he says that this is a gift from God. We don’t have to be bored while we’re waiting.

Alan goes on to say, “Having already been transformed by the Christ event, the church is invited to participate in the transformation of the world, yet still in process. There are places where justice and equality have not yet been found. Places where hunger and thirst have not yet been alleviated. Places where school children die in senseless acts of violence. Places where the planet is not yet being treated with respect. These are the kinds of things that we are called to work on while we wait. This is what we do with our talents, how we steward the gifts that God has given us. And if we’re engaged in the work, chances are we won’t be caught sleeping.”

This Sunday, we lit a candle for hope. This year it seems more important than some others that we spend some time thinking about and looking at hope.

I’m not sure who said it, and I couldn’t track down the source of the quote, but it strikes me as true that it is often in the dark that the light shines its brightest.

Two weeks ago, I had the honor of preaching for a chapel service at the seminary. I was asked to share that particular week because Thursday, the 20th, was Transgender Day of Remembrance. I asked Pastor Kathryn if I could share with you a little from that sermon. A few weeks ago, I was confronted with a situation in which someone connected to Apostles had learned something about me that upset them and made them uncomfortable. They shared this with Pastor Kathryn, and she shared it with me, along with many other feelings that I had. When I learned of this, I was most concerned that this situation would negatively impact the congregation’s vote to become open and affirming.

I know this congregation has been working on this for quite some time, and I did not want to be the cause of its rejection. The world is a scary place right now for a lot of people. For some of us, I think it feels maybe a bit like what it felt like to be a Christian in the early days of the church. We are seen as a threat to the establishment. Our very existence is a rejection of everything the old guard has fought tooth and nail to maintain. We see on the news almost every day the disappearance of those who dare to dream of a better world and future for themselves and their families. We have watched as history has been scrubbed from sidewalks and libraries, though it seems new to some of us, as it is the first time we are seeing this with our own eyes.

To many of us, it is just more of the same. The LGBTQIA+ community has lived with violence and censorship for as long as anyone can remember. Every year on November 20th, we gather to remember specifically transgender lives who have been lost over the past few years. I have been involved in planning and leading such remembrance services. Last year, as part of an outdoor service, we lit candles and read the names of people who had lost their lives since the previous year. It was cold and windy, and the candles were having a lot of trouble staying lit without prompting. People began relighting candles from one another and moving close to closer to each other, to close the circle and block the wind. It was a beautiful demonstration of the power of community, and it gave many of us hope. Not only did the candles stay lit, but the light grew larger, and the bodies huddled close together provided warmth to all who were present.

I wanna share part of a song with you that I wrote about that experience, um, and that I shared recently in chapel.

“Live in harmony. Money is with both the rich and the poor. Don’t despise the outcast, or so journey be humble, meek, and gentle folk seek justice in an unjust world. It is good for whom? Mourn and those who have gone ahead. We must gather around the weaker ones and take up the banners of our dead. So gather around the flames and protect them. Though they may be small. And gently rise and softly call goodnight and hope be with you all. As the night grows dark and the winds blow wild, we cannot despair. Vulner one is free until all are free until justice rolls like a mighty way and sin. It fell into my mind that I should rise, and you should not. I’ll gently rise and softly call goodnight and hope be with you all. So gather around the flicking flames and protect them, though they may be small. And gently rise and softly call goodnight and hope be with you all. And gently rise and softly call goodnight and hope be with you.”

Two weeks ago, here in this church, you all lit a candle.

You declared your commitment to be an inclusive refuge, just like your mission statement says. Instead of watching for the pot to see if it would boil, you turned up the heat and got to work. Still watching. Still waiting, but actively joining in God’s work rather than twiddling your thumbs.

God is here. God is at work. God is still speaking in the already not yet. Are you listening? Are you watching? And will you join God in the work of waiting?

May it be so. Amen.

Sermon by Seminary Intern, Deklan Lewis

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I want to begin by celebrating our choice last week.

Last week, you had three large decisions, two of which were significant, and those were on the inclusive church covenant and on the sanctuary remodel project. You overwhelmingly chose to live, and that, my friends, is good news. You said that this “keeping the status quo” is not enough, that it matters that we welcome people. That it matters, even if we don’t understand. We can still love others. We can accept them as they are. We can listen to the things that they need and make accommodations, because they matter.

That is not a message shared in all churches. For a lot of people, their faith is literally the difference between whether they live another day or not. I can’t say that that is how my faith works. I’ve always had faith. I was raised in faith, and so I’m not sure that I’m at that point, but my faith is important to me, and I recognize that some feel like God is not for them. I guess that’s the point. I was always told that God loved me. There was never a time when I was told God didn’t love me, and that makes a big difference in who we are.

The Ephesians text for today, Ephesians 1:11-23, is about this love that God has for us.

The writer is taking this love that we call the blessing of the Jews. You know, the Jews had been the chosen ones, that’s said throughout the older Hebrew testament, in Jesus. This was opened up to those who were not Jewish, and that means us. We didn’t have to become Jewish and follow all the Jewish laws to become Christian. That in Christ we are.

In Roman law, “adopted” meant that you were entitled to everything. The same as one who is physically born, a family heir. An adopted person has all of the privileges and obligations of the family of origin, and so we are given the blessing to be called children of God. That is who we are. We get to claim that, and I hope you can feel that in your bodies. Because that’s an important message. It’s important to know that you belong.

That’s a part of belonging. Again, it’s a part of the love that is available to all without exception. Our problem is that for time and eternity humanity has tried to put restrictions on that and say everybody but these people or everybody but these people, we’ve always tried to make an other that for whom that does not apply.

That’s not the way God looks at it, I don’t think. Not that I know exactly what God thinks, but God and Jesus were very much about sharing God’s love with all people, and many of the religious authorities thought they were not part of or were outside of God’s love. Whether they had a physical ailment or a deformity or some kind of challenge, the religious authorities in Jesus’ day said, “not you. You are not welcome.” And Jesus said, “Yes, yes, you are.”

The good news about this is that we didn’t earn it. We don’t deserve this adoption, and we didn’t earn it. There’s nothing that would make us good enough to earn this. It is a gift freely given because of who God is, not because of who we are. The good news is that we will mess up, but that doesn’t mean that we are then outside of the family of God. God keeps us in that family no matter what, and maybe our greatest sin of all is that we think that who we are and what we have is because of us rather than God. We forget, or we lack gratitude. We forget to be grateful. We forget to come back to God as the source of all that is and will be.

We get into our minds that, “but look what all we have. Look what we’ve done.” No, it’s not about what we’ve done. It’s about what God is doing through us. Just to clarify, I just said about the fact that we chose life. I think we chose life because God was moving in your hearts to choose life. I don’t think it’s that all of a sudden we had this great, well, maybe it is because we had a great epiphany, but that epiphany was put there by God. Our responsibility, our choice is to then become our best selves because of God’s love, and this being part of God’s family, so that we can work to be grateful, generous, and kind to everyone.

The reality is that these woes in Luke 6:25-35 come to us all. None of us will escape life without some type of heartache or suffering.

This verse gives you the blessings first. But when I read it, I started with the woes. You’re probably thinking that was a really odd place to start, you’re right. It was a choice I made, but I made it because I think the “love our enemies” sounds different when we start with the woes.

The other thing I learned as I sat with this scripture is that it matters how we perceive God. How do we see God? Do we see God as this loving, encouraging, and comforting presence? Or do we see Him as the God of wrath?

After David and I were married if I would stub my toe or hurt myself somehow, because I am a little clumsy, I would be like, I’m sorry, God, I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry. I felt like God was getting me for stepping out of line. The hellfire and damnation God that was just waiting for me to step out of line and zap me. That’s the God I grew up with, and I’ve been working really hard for a long time to let go of that God, and I’ve done pretty well on some fronts. But when I read that woes text, I wanna read it with the hellfire and damnation voice.

But why does that matter? I think two truths come into play in this. Hurting people hurt others, and tone matters. I think David told me that all the time we’ve been married, tone matters, and it changes the scripture, doesn’t it? It’s very different if it’s God coming at you or if it is God saying with empathy and compassion, you might be full now, but you will be hungry. Life might be going well now, but there is pain in life. People die, our hearts break, and we have to be prepared for that. That’s very different.

I say all of that because it’s Thanksgiving week, and I don’t know what kind of Thanksgiving gatherings you might be going to, but you might be going to a gathering where there’s someone who’s hard to love.

I hear about how with everything that’s happening in our country, there are a lot of families that are divided and are struggling to sit together at a table. I want you to focus on this scripture, so even if a person that you’re gonna be with this week has a very different position from you, one that even is the opposite or worst case scenario, threatens who you are, then you have some choices of how to love that person. If we can be with that person, then let’s love them. By listening to them, let’s love them by asking, and by being curious and compassionate. Trying to understand what the fear is that they have, because that’s what drives that kind of behavior. Where is their fear?

If you can, do not argue, but if you can say something, make a heartfelt statement about what you see in the world, in our country, and in our community, just name it. “What I see is this … and it breaks my heart.” That kind of statement lands differently. It’s one of the reasons I’ve backed off from some of the groups that I’m in because there is anger and militaristic opposition, and I don’t think that’s it.

I think we are called to be different. I think that’s why the church grew from the beginning, because the disciples and the new Faithful Acts they lived differently. They lived in ways that they could love each other, and those with whom they disagreed, they could love when it made no sense to love; that’s a high calling. That’s not easy. I know that.

I certainly couldn’t have loved, still don’t, but I’m at peace with the person who was the oppressor and abuser in my life. I’ve made peace with them, but they’re dead, so I’m safe. I understand that that’s also part of this. This is not asking for any kind of submission to any abuse; some people make that argument, and I do not believe that. I do not believe that God or Jesus would call us into that. It is about the non-violent non-retaliatory methods and approach, like that which Bayard Rustin did with the Civil Rights movement.

I didn’t even know about Bayard Ruston until Declan introduced me. Everything was going against Bayard. He was African American and he was gay, so even the civil rights movement didn’t know what to do with him, which is why there’s not much written about him. It’s harder to find him among those who are the people we lift up.

As we move into Thanksgiving, I hope that you can look at your life and be grateful.

Make a list of the things for which you are grateful. Share them. Share that at your dinner tables. Help people get in that mindset of gratitude, realizing that it’s not us who accomplished it.

The leading causes of life really boil down to hope, gratitude, belonging, and choice. Those things are not always accessible or reasonable for people who are suffering from poverty, sorrow, hunger, or marginalization, but we are called to help them find that. We are called to help them see how they can have hope because of Jesus. That’s who we are called to be.

My Thanksgiving wish for you is that you can fully embody love and that you can perceive others through love or see them through the lens of love as Jesus sees them.

May it be so. Amen.

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