Wrapped in Bands of Cloth

Scripture Lessons: Isaiah 9: 2-7 and Luke 2: 1-14 Sermon Title: Wrapped in Bands of Cloth Preached on December 24, 2021 I’ve been captivated lately, by an article I read in The Atlantic magazine by a self-described, “grumpy old man.” It’s titled: the Most Beloved Christmas Specials Are (Almost) All Terrible. Do you agree with that statement? The author is especially critical of those Rankin/Bass stop-motion Claymation stories. He describes the most well-known, Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer, like this: “It has pleasant songs and touching moments, if you like that sort of thing. It’s also terrible.” Now, you might ask, “If not Rudolf or Frosty the Snowman, what should we be watching?” According to the author of this article, Tom Nichols, “Once you clear away all [the] detritus, there are two greats that should be the mainstay of your Christmas watching, and you already know what they are: How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and A Charlie Brown Christmas.” I was especially impressed with his explanation for why A Charlie Brown Christmas. Our author says, for one thing, A Charlie Brown Christmas is only 26 minutes long, but most of all, in this classic, when Charlie Brown gives up on understanding the meaning of Christmas, Linus takes center stage, asks for a spotlight, and humbly recites the announcement of the birth of Jesus from the Gospel of Luke as if it’s a perfectly normal thing for a small child to know by heart. “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” he says, and he’s right. So tonight, we focus on the baby. The one who is wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger, for while there is much to think about: Presents to wrap, food to cook, pandemics to worry over, conversations with your uncle to avoid, this baby, like all babies, demands our attention. That’s what babies do to people. Think about that trick play GEICO commercial where the football players pretend that the football is a baby and the defensive lineman start playing peekaboo. This is true of most all of us. We will do anything for a baby. I’ll be headed out to lunch when our preschool kids are getting picked up by their parents. These kids are two and three-and four-year-olds. If one calls me by name, especially this little girl named Kate Callahan, it doesn’t matter how late I’m running, I just stop in my tracks to listen to her. Likewise, a baby named Anna Leigh lives across the street from our house. If her parents are pushing her down the driveway in her stroller, she’ll literally stop traffic. Why? Because she’s precious, that’s why. And everyone wants to make her smile. Therefore, in this divided time, fraught with anxiety and fear, tonight, this worship service calls us to what Christmas is all about. And what is Christmas all about? A baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. In this passage from the Gospel of Luke, everybody surrounds him. You can imagine the shepherds trying to make him laugh. The angels, those celestial beings, hovering over him to touch his cheeks. This is the effect babies have. If wearing a mask in the grocery store made all the babies smile, no one would mind wearing them. If showing a proof of vaccination made them laugh, you’d have to pay people not to get their shots, rather than the other way around. Which points to the problem. That when the government makes us, no one wants to. And that’s where the Christmas story begins. With an Emperor who ordered his subjects around. All had to go to their own towns to be registered, for the emperor wanted to know how many people he had. Joseph went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem of Judea. Surely his wife said, “but I’m pregnant,” then Joseph feeling helpless and frustrated, grumbled something at her, and wandered outside to check on the donkey, for this feeling of being helpless in the face of government bureaucracy is one of the worst feelings that a person can feel. What Joseph felt as he was forced to uproot his family and travel like that surely felt something like living during a global pandemic, when the virus dictates what to wear and how to be. Last Christmas we were even kept from going where we wanted to go. People have had enough of it. Of course, we have. For we all have a very low tolerance for our lives being disrupted unless our lives are being disrupted by a baby. Have you ever thought about how much babies and emperors have in common? Babies drop things off their highchairs. Why? To display their power, for no matter how often they drop it, we just keep picking it up. \ Now think about Joseph. Joseph went from being told where to go by an emperor to picking up, again and again, the pacifier of an infant. He’s lost all sense of agency. However, no matter how much babies require, babies make their parents into better people than they were, because they save us from being so self-centered. They upend our plans left and right, but they also reprioritize our lives in the best way. Babies refine us and remind us again that what we were on the way to, whatever it was, isn’t nearly so important as loving them, which makes us better people and brings us joy. So, both make us do things we wouldn’t choose to do. Babies and emperors have that in common, yet they’re different, and I learned about that difference again just a few days ago. County Commissioner, Keli Gambrell, who sits in our balcony every Sunday with her family at the 8:30 service called. She told me that SafePath Children’s Advocates had received dozens of donated bikes for the foster kids in their care. They had more bikes than kids. She wanted to know if I knew of any kids who needed one of their extra bikes. Now this was the week before Christmas that Keli called me. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but most pastors are busy the week before Christmas, so there was a part of me that didn’t want another thing to do, yet, nudged by an angel I called Tim Hammond, who has a pick-up truck, and we made two trips and lined up 16 bikes right outside our church doors. Now there are 16 kids with a bike to ride on, but to make it happen, to be a part of this wonderful Christmas miracle, Tim and I had to put aside whatever else we thought was the most important thing. I had to walk away from what I thought I was supposed to do, to do what I needed to do. And now I’m here to tell you that there is an important difference between going to Bethlehem because the emperor ordered you and going to Bethlehem because you get to see the Christ child. Do you know that difference? My friends, Jesus is born unto us, and he demands our attention. He calls us to stop what we’re doing. His law of love is a call to change our ways, for just as the shepherds had to come out of the fields and the angels had to come down from heaven, we must stop in our tracks to come and see. Now this is a change. We don’t like change, so remember that his call to us is so different from the demand of an emperor. Do you know the difference? I know some people only made it here tonight because the emperor made them. I don’t know what her name is in her house, but I can imagine that she said: “No one touches the scotch until after the service.” Still, tonight is not an obligation kind of night. Why? Because Jesus didn’t come out of obligation but out of love. That’s the point. If you leave the love out of Christmas, what have you got? I hope you have plenty of egg nogg if you have a Christmas full of obligation. That’s the lesson of the other Christmas special that the old grouch, Tom Nichols of The Atlantic magazine approves of, for the Grinch can try to steal Christmas, only once he’s bagged up the trees, the presents, the decorations, and the food, he reveals what no one can ever take away. He removes the distraction to get to the heart of the matter: the baby wrapped in bands of cloth. The gift of love from God on high. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords, who comes to us bringing faith, hope, and love that all our tears would turn to laughter and our despair to joy. That’s what tonight is about my friends. A child who was: Born at the instant The church bells chime And the whole world whispering Born at the right time. That’s what Paul Simon sang, and this child comes to us, unafraid of our brokenness. To love us despite it. So, love him. Kneel at the manger. See him smile. Hear him laugh. And enjoy your family. Be kind to your mother. Hug your children tight. Love your neighbor as yourself. Go out of your way to do what is right. Forgive. Be kind. Care. Not because you must, but because when we love one another, we honor the one who first loved us, and came to us as a child wrapped in bands of cloth. May his light shine bright in you. Amen.

Love

Scripture Lessons: Micah 5: 2-5a and Luke 1: 39-45 Sermon Title: Love Preached on December 19, 2021 The Bible is full of unlikely friendships. This time of year, we often remember the way the Prophet Isaiah described the coming Kingdom, and he described it this way: The wolf shall live with the lamb, The leopard shall lie down with the kid, The calf and the lion and the fatling together… One prominent theologian once said, “now, the lamb probably won’t get much sleep that first night with the wolf by her side,” but just as in this prophecy, the Bible is full of unlikely friendship and the power of God is often on display through relationships that bridge the divisions in our natural world or human society. Thinking of another unlikely friendship, many a daughter in-law struggling with a house full of her husband’s family might be shocked to hear that when Ruth had the chance to get away from Naomi, she didn’t take it, but the Bible is full of relationships that defy our habits and expectations. Consider the disciples. Several were fishermen. Were they happy fishermen? I’ve never met a happy fisherman. Were they like the crabby old renegade fisherman who hunted down Jaws? He didn’t seem very easy to get along with. Then one was a tax collector. Everyone hated tax collectors. Another was a zealot and zealots hated most everyone, so how did this group made up of fishermen, tax collectors, a zealot, and the son of God get along? I don’t know, but the Bible is full of unlikely friendships. So is life. I’ve been reading about Aunt Fanny’s Cabin with considerable interest. What will happen to that old building in Smyrna? Some look at it and remember a restaurant with really good food, and we might say that the combination of good southern food they served and the bric-a-brac they nailed to the wall made it the precursor to Po’ Folks and Cracker Barrell. You could see it that way. You could also see it as a restaurant who preserved antebellum racism for out of towners to come and see. What I’ve just learned from reading about Aunt Fanny’s Cabin in the Marietta Daily Journal as well as the Atlanta Journal Constitution is that the name points to an unlikely friendship between two women: Isoline Campbell, who named the place after Fanny Williams, longtime servant of the Campbell family. I feel sure that Campbell intended the name of this restaurant to be an honor for Williams, but here’s the rub: in her spare time when she wasn’t feeding the Campbell family, Fanny Williams was a civil rights activist who spoke out passionately against the KKK and helped raise money to build the state’s first all-Black hospital in Marietta, and the restaurant reduced her to just another mamy in a head wrap. Have you ever had a “friendship” that reduced you like that? Have you ever been in a relationship where you ended up feeling less than? That happens in the world. Sometimes relationships in the world wind up with one person getting rich and the other getting used. And like the world, the Bible is full of unlikely friendships, only when God is at work, the individual is lifted by the power of love. The Bible is full of unlikely friendships in which two people from different worlds are transformed for they see each other. That’s what’s happening in today’s Gospel Lesson from Luke. Two women from different worlds offer to each other something sacred in what was surely the most unusual time of their lives. On the one hand is Mary. She’s too young, she’s pregnant, she’s unmarried, she’s powerless, and she’s all alone in the world. We’ve been watching a TV series called MAID on Netflix. It’s a series about a young mother who’s trying to make it all on her own. She seems to have no idea what she’s going to do, and yet she possesses this relentless determination to provide for her daughter no matter the obstacles. A lot of people want to help her, but no one seems to understand her. If only she’d had an Elizabeth. Mary and Elizabeth are not alike. While Mary is too young, Elizabeth is too old. She’s been married for years but after getting her hopes up for a baby year after year has given up and sold the bassinette and the stroller in a yard sale or something. She’s the wife of a priest, so she has means, as well as respect and power. Unlike Mary, there’s a community around Elizabeth, but who really can understand the woman who will surely get mistaken for the grandmother every time she drops her son off at preschool? So, she is unlike Mary in a sense, while she is just like Mary in the since that she is also all alone. Who can understand what it’s like to be them? Who really gets it? Their husbands? I don’t think so. That’s why this passage from the Gospel of Luke is so beautiful. The power of God brings them together and they see each other. They form a friendship. When they see each other, the baby didn’t just kick but leapt in the womb, and Elizabeth, nudged by the Holy Spirit, exclaims with a loud cry, “Blessed are you, Mary, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” Do you know how good that must have felt to Mary? I imagine it was something like how it feels for a bride to tell her sister she’s engaged. Or how it feels for a young mother to be hugged by her mother. Men give each other high-fives sometimes, but women touch each other’s souls, don’t they? Of course, I’ve had friendships that made a difference. I remember graduating seminary and searching for a church who wanted me to be their pastor. I started to feel like none of them did. Now, plenty of people told me that everything would work out. Have faith. But it was when my professor, Dr. Erskine Clarke told me the same thing everyone else had been telling me that I really felt the words. When he encouraged me I cried, because I knew he really meant it. I knew his words weren’t just words. This is the beauty of friendship. A friendship that makes you feel understood and valued. A relationship that builds you up. Do you have a friend like that? Mary did. And when she felt Elizabeth’s love, she sang: My soul magnifies the Lord, And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, For he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed. For the Mighty One has done great things for me, And holy is his name. We call that song the Magnificat. It’s even more well-known than Mary did you know. But have you ever before noticed that Mary doesn’t sing after the angel tells her that she’ll bear a child or when she feels a stirring in her womb? No, Mary only sings when she’s safe in Elizabeth’s arms. Why? Because there is good news that we won’t let sink in until we tell someone who will understand. There is brokenness we can’t release from our hearts until we know it’s safe to let it out. That’s the power of friendship. That’s the power of love. And today, we must give thanks to God for Elizabeth, because she is the friend who helped Mary, not just make it through, but rejoice, to see for herself that she was not who those judgmental old bitties back in the village said she was. No! She was “blessed among women” for she was making possible the most unlikely friendship of all. More unlikely than an older woman befriending a young woman in the Gospel of Luke is the Son of God coming down to earth from heaven to us mortals. A book I’ve been reading that Carol Thomas gave me was written by a theologian named Robert Farrar Capon. In it he writes that God coming down to earth in Jesus Christ to us is as unlikely a pairing as a ballerina being friends with an oyster… and we’re not the ballerina in this metaphor. No, but what this relationship does: Is lifts us up from the seafloor of sin and death to the heights of heaven. It frees us to live beyond our shells or wounds or circumstance. It makes us, not snot on the half-shell or whatever else disgusting you’ve called an oyster, but heirs to the Kingdom of God. Therefore, the Apostle Paul says, “we are more than conquerors.” How? “Through him who loved us.” For God’s love, like real love, like true friendship, transforms us and transforms the world. Therefore, Mary sang of how God’s powerful love of us is enough to Scatter the proud Bring down the powerful Lift up the lowly Fill the hungry with good things And send the rich away empty Because those who know they are loved by God are unstoppable. Those who know they are worthy of something more cannot be conquered. A people who walks in the light can stand up against any power, even the power of death. Remembering Christ who came to earth, dwelling among us, let us do for each other what God has done for each of us, that they may know we are Christians by our love. Amen.

Joy

Scripture Lessons: Zephaniah 3: 14-20 and Luke 3: 7-18 Sermon Title: Joy Preached on December 12, 2021 There he was at the river Jordan, and first he calls the whole crowd a “brood of vipers.” Not many pastors would think it wise to begin the sermon that way, but that’s what John the Baptist does. Then, the crowds asked him, “if that’s who we are, what should we do?” John the Baptist cuts right to the chase and speaking again in this 21st Century from the ancient Scriptures, this morning to us he says, “Be careful about wanting more. It’s dangerous! It can lead you to do questionable things and wanting more can keep you from being satisfied with what you have already.” That’s timely advice, right? Most every child I know has a list that keeps getting longer. I can understand that. They got a catalogue from Target back in October. They circled what they wanted. That’s a fun thing to do, but this habit gets dangerous when our children grow up into adults who still think that things will make them happy. Or, who grow up into adults who feel that enormous pressure to provide more for their family than they had, then work to fulfill their every want and desire, and are tempted to cut corners or even ignore their moral compass to get them what they think they want. This is the Christmas trap: relentless want. We see something in each other’s faces this time of year as we all fall into it. Behind every Christmas card smile is this looming anxiety. Mixed in with every Christmas cookie is a wonder if it’s good enough. We shop and order and wrap, while worrying: “did we get the right thing? Will this make him happy?” My friends, today, to us and to our children, John the Baptist says: “Enough already.” Is this how Jesus would want us to celebrate his birthday? Did the Prince of Peace come to fill us with anxiety? Of course not, so stop it. Consider what you have. Be careful about wanting more. Don’t ask Santa for another coat. Go in your closest and if you’re lucky enough to have two, then give one away. Don’t work so hard for more money. If you have $1,000 in your bank account than you’re better off than most people in this country. And stop thinking about what else you want, especially if how you’re going to get it is questionable. This is a good message from John the Baptist, because it’s a message we all need to hear. Like everyone else in the 21st century, we live and breathe in a consumer culture. People are encouraged to covet what their neighbors have. We’re pushed to want more and more. More is supposed to be better, but where does wanting more get us? Well, if we can’t get it under control, it robs us of our joy. Then, as Christians who are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must ask, where does our “more” come from? Last Sunday the newspaper covered a story of modern-day slavery. Did you see it? Migrant workers were encouraged to move to Georgia to harvest onions, only their work visas were held by the management, so they couldn’t leave. They were living behind a barbed wire fence and were being paid pennies a day. Two died on the job. There was little to no access to food or safe drinking water, and it was happening in our state, not 150 years ago, but just last week. Then, maybe you’ve heard about our boycott of the winter Olympics in Beijing. Have you? If you google “slavery in China,” you’ll read headlines, asking, “did an enslaved person make your smart phone?” for according to authorities on the subject, right now 3.8 million people are living in conditions of modern slavery in China. “Enough already,” John the Baptist said. Then the people asked him what they should do. To the crowds he said, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” To the tax collectors he said, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed to you.” To the soldiers he said, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation and be satisfied with you wages.” To the consumers he said, “Don’t make getting a good deal on something matter more to you than the welfare of the people who made it.” Don’t allow your desire to have trump your commitment to decency. Especially, if you have enough already. It’s like a story I heard once that Dr. Fred Craddock told. Dr. Craddock is one of the truly great preachers. He taught at Candler School of Theology on the campus of Emory University, then went to live up in Ellijay, but he used to like to eat at the Waffle House. He said, “The Waffle House is a good place to go get a BLT. You have to take a shower after, but it’s a good place to get a BLT.” Well, once he was at the Waffle House. Waitress came up and he ordered a cup of coffee. Dr. Craddock asked for cream, and she patted down her apron and said, “I can never find anything in this capricious apron.” “Capricious?” Dr. Craddock repeated. Then she threw out six creamers on the table. He took two and pushed the four back toward the waitress, but she pushed them back towards him, saying, “Better to have and not need than need and not have.” Thinking to himself, “first capricious and now this,” he asked, “Well, are you a waitress or a philosopher?” Then he said, “But best is to take what you need and give the rest away.” Enough already. Do we not have more than we need? And what is our thirst for more cheap plastic stuff and bright shiny technology pushing us towards? Is our desire making us indifferent to the welfare of our neighbor? Is our desire making us blind to what God has given? And what has God given? A Son. So, slow down for a minute, and listen to God’s promise from Zephaniah one more time: I will save the lame. I will gather the outcast. I will bring you home. And will change your shame into praise, for joy is within your reach if you would just let go with all your desiring of stuff and enjoy the people around you. For even if you forget the almond paste in your Christmas cookies, Or notice that your husband has something in his teeth for your Christmas card picture, Even if you, like my Uncle Al did years ago, forget to take out the bag of giblets before you bake your turkey, and even if a dog named Snot is hacking on a bone under the table during your Christmas dinner, what makes Christmas Christmas isn’t the perfect table or even the perfect meal, but the people sitting at the table with you. However, what John the Baptist is pointing out is that sometimes we push those people away with our desire. No one was inviting the tax collectors over for dinner. Do you know why? Because they were shaking down their neighbors, calling it taxes but lining their pockets. And no one was happy to see the soldiers coming because they abused their power. Likewise, how hard is it to give mom a hug when she seems to care more about what the people who will be receiving the Christmas card will think of her than how the people in the picture feel? And how hard it is to rejoice with dad when he can’t stop stressing about getting the lights to twinkle on the tree? My friends, the perfect Christmas will always remain out of our reach because we’re not capable of perfect. That’s how we know it’s not required: because it’s not possible. However, joy is right within our reach if we would just give up all our reaching. We must let go of our desire for the perfect Christmas to embrace the people we’re celebrating Christmas with. Don’t reach t for more, for if you have enough, more won’t make you happy, gratitude will. Don’t compare yourself to your neighbor, for comparison is the thief of joy. Stop worrying over how everything looks. Relax into the joy of this season and focus on the gift that’s being given to you. For born unto us, the High King of Heaven who gathers the outcast shepherds to the manger and spends his whole life welcoming strangers into the family of faith. So, sing aloud, O daughter Zion, shout, O Israel! Rejoice with all your heart, for the Lord, your God is in your midst. And he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love. The King is coming. The Lord of all is in our midst. Gather some people to celebrate his birth with you, and if you let that be enough, joy will live in your heart always. Amen.