Dear Georgia,
Today in our worship, after the water that baptized you fell on your precious head, we heard about the wise men who went to see another precious baby. We heard about how they came from some other land in the east because they had seen a star in the sky that was fit only for a king. Wondering, waiting, intrigued and inspired they left on a journey to find the precious life the star announced.
We don't really know from where they came or what their lives were like, but something pulled them away from their homes, their friends, their families to travel far away in search of the unknown. They must have REALLY NEEDED to find something. They must have longed so deeply for the king whose gifts they bore. They must have longed so intensely that they knew it would be true. They must have had hope.
Hope is a word we can toss around pretty casually. Sometimes I say I hope my favorite TV show isn't a rerun tonight. Other times we hope our football team will win. But real hope is something completely different. It's more than a wish; it's an action. REAL hope is longing for something promised so much that you're willing to act on it even before you have seen it come true. REAL hope is following a star to find a king.
Real hope is baptizing a precious child. What a blessing it is to start this new year with your baptism, Georgia! By your birth we can be sure that God has not given up on the world. God has chosen to continue to bring new life among us. You are a symbol of God's promise to each of us. You are a sign of God's covenant, God's promise to nurture and redeem life, not destroy it. You are a sign of the new hope for the future that God has made possible in the world. There is still hope for tomorrow.
That's why we baptized you. It was our way of following a star. We long for what God has promised, that one day every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. We long for what God has promised, that God's promises are for us and for our children and for our children's children. We long to be called children of the light. We long to be welcomed into God's loving arms even when we have turned away and squandered the lives we have been so graciously given. We long for a loving king, a gentle shepherd, a compassionate teacher who draws us in, guides us, and teaches us in the way we should go. We long to be adopted into the family of God with Christ our brother.
Your baptism put our longing into action, Georgia. Your baptism was our bold declaration that we believe what Scripture says about God's promises are true. We told you and we told the world that you belong to God, that even before you can respond in faith, God has chosen you to be a princess in the divine kingdom, to inherit the grace and riches of God. God has chosen you to be God's child. Your baptism was a celebration of our hope, our holy longing to be a part of what we know is true even if we can't always see it clearly right now. Your baptism was your public entrance into people of God and the demonstration of our hope for you and for the world.
We hope for you, Georgia, that you will experience God's love. We hope for you, Georgia, that you will feel accepted in Christ's church. We hope for you that you will find delight in God's grace, that you will praise Christ's glory, that you will be led by the Spirit to serve others in the world. We hope for you that you will trust in God's mercy, know God's forgiveness, and share God's love in your life. We baptized you because we long for the day when you will know this is true, and we are promising to do everything we can to make that day come soon.
Georgia, we baptized you because we love you. We all promised to show you that love by sharing that which is the most precious gift we have, our faith. Your parents promised; your godparents promised. This entire church promised for ourselves and for any other church you may know in all your days. We all promised that we will put our longing into action, we will teach you about God and share the love of Christ with you.
Today we followed a star. Today we stepped out in faith on the promises of God, and we claimed those promises for you. Someday you will have the chance to follow your own stars, to act on your own longing to know and to be known, to love and to be loved by God. As you journey toward that day, our prayers and our love and our support are with you. That is what we promised.
In Christ's holy name,
Your Church
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Friday, December 24, 2010
A Humble Start
Matthew 1:1-17
Even the most stable family Christmas celebration has the potential to call to mind a Dickens’ novel, and I don’t mean A Christmas Carol. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Let’s be honest. Family is LOVELY, but family is hard. The people who are closest to you, who can bring you the greatest joy and comfort and solace, are also the people who can bring you the greatest frustration or sadness or despair. Family is LOVELY, but family is hard. Family is messy, and in the truth of that statement is another case of “nothing is new under the sun.”
Jesus’ genealogy testifies to the fact that family is messy; it reads like a modern soap opera. It has its high points for sure. There are the early patriarchs of the faith, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Toward the middle we here about the family of God’s chosen first king over Israel, David with his father Jesse and his son, the wise king Solomon. Later in the generations are men with names like Zadok, meaning “righteous,” and Eliakim, meaning “the one who God will raise up.” It was the best of times!
But also tucked in there among the great heroes of the faith, it was the worst of times. Jesus’ family tree isn’t always one that a king would want publicized. In fact, it’s surprising that Matthew would even bother with the genealogy at all with some of the stories that turn up in the list. Jesus’ family isn’t squeaky clean. Whose is? In Jesus’ ancestors there are affairs and abuse, marriages to women from “the wrong side of the tracks” and marriages based on lies and trickery. Yet even still Matthew chose to write it right here at the beginning of the telling of the Jesus’ birth, and maybe even more confusingly, I chose to read it right here on Christmas Eve.
Unlike Luke’s nativity story, which is probably more familiar, there isn’t an obvious dramatic flair in Matthew’s telling. Luke has an older barren woman conceiving her first child; her husband a righteous prophet doesn’t believe the news and is struck mute until the baby, another important prophet, is born. Then on the other end of the spectrum a young girl, betrothed but not married also conceives a child. She sings her heart and God’s out with inexplicable joy. There’s a journey, a birth, a whole heavenly host of angels.
Luke has all this, but Matthew starts his book a completely different way. Without heralding angels or a worldwide census, he gives us a little family history. He isn’t first concerned with Jesus’ worldwide impact in his telling of the birth; instead he sets out to tell a family story. So to begin his nativity story, Matthew tells us from where Jesus comes. He tells us what Jesus was getting into. Jesus didn’t come into a perfect family, as if the perfect family even exists. But by laying out all his family secrets, by airing out his familial dirty laundry, Matthew shows us exactly what Jesus does. He does what the angel says his name declares - -Jesus saves.
Jesus saves. The Messiah, the chosen one of God, comes into the world shrouded in secrecy and confusion, mystery and shame. He humbly comes into the world born as a baby into a family full of all the stuff that families are full of, and from within this family, the human family, Jesus saves us all. He gives life to the lifeless. He rescues those in danger. He redeems the most scandalous stories of Scripture by coming directly out of them.
Very few of us, I’m guessing, have lives that are picture perfect. Very few of us, I’m guessing, can say that everything is going exactly the way we had hoped and dreamed and planned. Life just tends not to work that way. Sickness gets in the way, tragedy gets in the way. The economy gets in the way; broken relationships get in the way. And even if right now it seems like things are going smoothly, and if that’s the case fully enjoy it and live into it, but even if right now it seems like things are going smoothly, Jesus’ family tree reminds us that there are the best of times and the worst of times. Yet into all of these times, Jesus comes.
Jesus comes right into the middle of our very messy lives. Jesus is born right in the middle of our celebrations and our scandals, our prosperity and our pain. Jesus is born right in the middle of it all in order to bring God’s love and God’s grace to us right where and when we need it. Jesus is born right in the middle of a messy messy family situation, but his birth is God’s sign and God’s promise the be present in and redeem the messiest of them all.
This is the promise of Christmas. No matter how confusing and painful our lives may be, or on the other end of the spectrum no matter how joyful and ecstatic we are feeling, we are never outside the reach of God in Jesus our Christ, Jesus who was born to save us. He took on the human condition, even to the smallest detail of birth as a humble, helpless child, and in becoming one of us he has redeemed all of us. For this we give our humble thanks and praise. Amen.
Even the most stable family Christmas celebration has the potential to call to mind a Dickens’ novel, and I don’t mean A Christmas Carol. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Let’s be honest. Family is LOVELY, but family is hard. The people who are closest to you, who can bring you the greatest joy and comfort and solace, are also the people who can bring you the greatest frustration or sadness or despair. Family is LOVELY, but family is hard. Family is messy, and in the truth of that statement is another case of “nothing is new under the sun.”
Jesus’ genealogy testifies to the fact that family is messy; it reads like a modern soap opera. It has its high points for sure. There are the early patriarchs of the faith, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Toward the middle we here about the family of God’s chosen first king over Israel, David with his father Jesse and his son, the wise king Solomon. Later in the generations are men with names like Zadok, meaning “righteous,” and Eliakim, meaning “the one who God will raise up.” It was the best of times!
But also tucked in there among the great heroes of the faith, it was the worst of times. Jesus’ family tree isn’t always one that a king would want publicized. In fact, it’s surprising that Matthew would even bother with the genealogy at all with some of the stories that turn up in the list. Jesus’ family isn’t squeaky clean. Whose is? In Jesus’ ancestors there are affairs and abuse, marriages to women from “the wrong side of the tracks” and marriages based on lies and trickery. Yet even still Matthew chose to write it right here at the beginning of the telling of the Jesus’ birth, and maybe even more confusingly, I chose to read it right here on Christmas Eve.
Unlike Luke’s nativity story, which is probably more familiar, there isn’t an obvious dramatic flair in Matthew’s telling. Luke has an older barren woman conceiving her first child; her husband a righteous prophet doesn’t believe the news and is struck mute until the baby, another important prophet, is born. Then on the other end of the spectrum a young girl, betrothed but not married also conceives a child. She sings her heart and God’s out with inexplicable joy. There’s a journey, a birth, a whole heavenly host of angels.
Luke has all this, but Matthew starts his book a completely different way. Without heralding angels or a worldwide census, he gives us a little family history. He isn’t first concerned with Jesus’ worldwide impact in his telling of the birth; instead he sets out to tell a family story. So to begin his nativity story, Matthew tells us from where Jesus comes. He tells us what Jesus was getting into. Jesus didn’t come into a perfect family, as if the perfect family even exists. But by laying out all his family secrets, by airing out his familial dirty laundry, Matthew shows us exactly what Jesus does. He does what the angel says his name declares - -Jesus saves.
Jesus saves. The Messiah, the chosen one of God, comes into the world shrouded in secrecy and confusion, mystery and shame. He humbly comes into the world born as a baby into a family full of all the stuff that families are full of, and from within this family, the human family, Jesus saves us all. He gives life to the lifeless. He rescues those in danger. He redeems the most scandalous stories of Scripture by coming directly out of them.
Very few of us, I’m guessing, have lives that are picture perfect. Very few of us, I’m guessing, can say that everything is going exactly the way we had hoped and dreamed and planned. Life just tends not to work that way. Sickness gets in the way, tragedy gets in the way. The economy gets in the way; broken relationships get in the way. And even if right now it seems like things are going smoothly, and if that’s the case fully enjoy it and live into it, but even if right now it seems like things are going smoothly, Jesus’ family tree reminds us that there are the best of times and the worst of times. Yet into all of these times, Jesus comes.
Jesus comes right into the middle of our very messy lives. Jesus is born right in the middle of our celebrations and our scandals, our prosperity and our pain. Jesus is born right in the middle of it all in order to bring God’s love and God’s grace to us right where and when we need it. Jesus is born right in the middle of a messy messy family situation, but his birth is God’s sign and God’s promise the be present in and redeem the messiest of them all.
This is the promise of Christmas. No matter how confusing and painful our lives may be, or on the other end of the spectrum no matter how joyful and ecstatic we are feeling, we are never outside the reach of God in Jesus our Christ, Jesus who was born to save us. He took on the human condition, even to the smallest detail of birth as a humble, helpless child, and in becoming one of us he has redeemed all of us. For this we give our humble thanks and praise. Amen.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
A Social Network Christmas
This video has been a little bit of EVERYWHERE the last few days, and I finally bothered to click on it and watch. The techie-minded among us will like it most. Enjoy!!
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