From the Still Point

FIRST READING ISAIAH 7:10-16

¹⁰Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz, saying, ¹¹Ask a sign of the LORD your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. ¹²But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the LORD to the test. ¹³Then Isaiah said: “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? ¹⁴Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel. ¹⁵He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. ¹⁶For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.

PSALM PSALM 80:1-7, 17-19

¹   Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel, 
          you who lead Joseph like a flock! 
     You who are enthroned upon the cherubim, shine forth 
²        before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh. 
     Stir up your might, 
          and come to save us!

³   Restore us, O God; 
          let your face shine, that we may be saved.

⁴   O LORD God of hosts, 
          how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers? 
⁵   You have fed them with the bread of tears, 
          and given them tears to drink in full measure. 
⁶   You make us the scorn of our neighbors; 
          our enemies laugh among themselves.

⁷   Restore us, O God of hosts; 
          let your face shine, that we may be saved.

¹⁷   But let your hand be upon the one at your right hand, 
          the one whom you made strong for yourself. 
¹⁸   Then we will never turn back from you; 
          give us life, and we will call on your name.

¹⁹   Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; 
          let your face shine, that we may be saved.

GOSPEL MATTHEW 1:18-25

¹⁸Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. ²⁰But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” ²²All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 
²³  “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, 
          and they shall name him Emmanuel,” 
which means, “God is with us.” ²⁴When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, ²⁵but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

Have a confession to make. I love Christmas.

I love Christmas lights. I love Christmas music, Christmas carols and Christmas songs. I love Christmas food and Christmas presents, and Christmas cookies, and I even love Christmas sweaters.

I am not crazy about Christmas ties, and I’ll tell you why. The first Christmas Eve service I did at my last church was going very well, until about halfway into my sermon, when I heard a metallic, “Do doo do do do dodo,” coming from the choir. I turned around to see one choir member furiously beating his chest while that noise continued. It turned out he had a Christmas tie that played Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and somehow it started to go off in the service, and he did not know how to stop it. So choir members, we doing a tie-check on Christmas Eve. No musical ties.

But what I love most about Christmas is the atmosphere. Christmas is a time of good will, of “Peace on earth, good will to all.” It is a time for families. It is the time of the year when we, the human race, at least pretend we don’t all hate one another and we try to get along. It’s about Ebenezer Scrooge bringing the turkey to Bob Cratchet, and making sure Tiny Tim gets his operation. It’s the Grinch learning that Christmas is not about presents. It’s the outcast reindeer becoming the hero of the hour. It’s George Bailey understanding that he really is a rich man because he has friends.

And I have to admit that I love that stuff. I think it is the way we should act all the time.

But in fact the first Christmas was not a time of overt sentimentality. In fact that first Christmas must have been a terrible time for Mary and Joseph. We tend to think of them as the characters going to Bethlehem, Mary on the donkey, Joseph leading it, serenely making their way to the stable where Mary would serenely give birth to a baby who never cried.

But in fact the Gospel lesson tells us that was far from the case.

Christmas starts like this: a young woman goes to her fiancé and tells him she is pregnant with someone else’s baby. We start with two people, Mary who suddenly and very surprisingly discovers she is pregnant, and Joseph who discovers his bride to be is having a baby, and it is not his. Now in that time, when a man was betrothed to a woman, she had pretty much become his property. And betrothals could last a fairly long time, up to a couple of years, depending on the age of the bride. Deals with the bride’s parents were made, often goods were exchanged, and it was not unusual for the woman to then move into the parent’s house of her new fiancé.

Now by our standards this might sound awful but back then, if the bride to be were pregnant with another man’s baby, well, that would be like buying a house today, only to find that another family had already moved in, and you had to share the house with them.

By today’s standards it could be devastating for a man to realize his bride-to-be was having another man’s baby.  But in the first century, it was much worse.

Joseph could have caused a big stir. He could have publically shamed Mary and her parents. Mary, from that day on, would be an outcast. Her parents would be expected to disown her for the shame she brought on her family. In some places, she might even be stoned as an adulterer.

This is how the Christmas story starts—with scandal, an apparent deception, and danger. This sounds more like the beginnings of a nightmare than a sweet story about a Mother and Child. And the even the way Matthew tells it, he does not pull any punches. He wants you to feel the drama. ¹⁸Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.

We are so used to the story, that we miss some of the impact. At least Luke sets up the story by first telling us the story of Zachariah and Elizabeth, and then the angel’s visit to Mary, but Matthew just jumps in with an unmarried pregnant woman and her fiancé. Imagine reading that for the first time. And don’t make the mistake that these were superstitious people who believe in things like a virgin birth at the drop of a hat. People in the first century knew where babies came from, and they would be just as skeptical of this story as we would be today. Matthew wants to throw you in the thick of it, right at the beginning.

Of course, when God does something new, it often starts with the unbelievable. It often starts with people in dire circumstances. In this case we have an unmarried teen age mother, and you want me to believe what? Of course God’s work at Christmas is bigger than just a tale between a woman and her betrothed. Next week we will see just what kind of world Jesus was born into. I’ll give you a sneak peak. When King Herod finds out that a possible rival to him might have been born in Bethlehem, he just has all the children below the age of two killed in that city. That is the reality of the world of Mary and Joseph.

We are a far cry, even from Grinches and Ebenezer Scrooges here. Compared to King Herod, Scrooge was a sweet old man.

This is the way the son of God comes into the world, and this is the world he comes into. He is born surrounded by scandal, into a world where he can be torn from his mother’s arms and murdered at the whim of paranoid king.

But let’s move on in the story: ¹⁹Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 

Now to our modern ears, that might sound a little harsh, but he could have taken her to the town square and demanded she be stoned to death. He could have publically humiliated her and her family, and caused to her be an outcast for the rest of her life. But he didn’t. Joseph was a righteous man. That meant, he was a kind man. He did not want Mary to be executed. He did not even want her to suffer public disgrace. When it says he was going to dismiss her quietly, that probably meant he was doing to do something to take care of her and her baby. Oh, he was not about to marry her. That would be a public disgrace. But he did not want to see her hurt.

God found fertile soil for the seeds of his new kingdom in Joseph. Luke tells us about Mary’s reaction, but Matthew shows us the heart of Joseph, and both are important to this story. Both Mary and Joseph must bear Jesus into the world, each in their own way. Each has a different task, and each has a hard task. Mary has to bear this miraculous child, and Joseph’s job is bear the Christ child by accepting the scandalous work of God.

People are going to talk about Joseph. They are going to whisper behind his back. They are going to laugh at him. They are going to call him a fool for believing that cockamamie story Mary gave him about the Spirit of God coming on her. They may even question his devotion to God, because he is harboring that sinful woman in his house. She committed adultery, and he just took her in as if she were pure as the driven snow.

Joseph could identify with the Psalmist this morning:

⁶   You make us the scorn of our neighbors; 

          our enemies laugh among themselves.

The writer Anne Lamott tells of her conversion to Christianity, and she says that the hardest part of following Jesus was the fear that people would laugh at her. She ran with a fast crowd in San Francisco, a crowd of artists and intellectuals, all with liberal sensibilities, and as she began to realize she had an interest in Jesus, she was afraid of letting her friends find out. She was afraid they would laugh at her.

“No one’s a Christian these days, except for that loony right-wing crowd.”

“Please don’t tell me you take all that religious mumbo-jumbo seriously. After all this is the 21^st century!”

“Excuse me, you cannot stay out late on Saturday because you have to go to CHURCH in the morning?”

But she begin to feel that Jesus was being born in her. She began to feel the presence of Jesus in her life, in small ways at first, but that presence began to grow in her, like the baby grew in Mary’s womb.

She was not alone in that. St. Augustine felt the exact same way. He was an intellectual and a philosopher and felt that becoming a Christian would be intellectual suicide—not to mention a very bad career move. But he too began to feel Jesus being born in him.

Have you ever been in a place where you felt your faith was an embarrassment? Have you ever been in a position where you had to bear your faith in an awkward way? I have, and I am a minister. Two of the churches I served were right next to universities.  I remember having a discusson with a graduate student in psychology once, I don’t remember how we met, but we talking about different psychological theories, and he asked what I did for a living, and I said I was a minister, and he just looked blankly at me and said, “But you seem like such a smart fellow! How can you believe all that folderol?” And I realized that from that point on, simply because I was a minister, he had no more interest in our conversation.

We live in one of the largest unchurched areas in the country. The Pacific Northwest had fewer people who attend church than any other region in the country.

And yet, here we are called to bear Jesus. And I believe we called to bear Jesus the way that Joseph was—with a righteousness that is surrounded by kindness. The real scandal of Christianity is not believing in unscientific things like the virgin birth, or the inspiration of the Bible. The real scandal is believing in love and hope. When we dare to believe that God love us, that is when we find Christ being born within us. When we dare to believe in a hope that can take us into a fulfilling future, that is when we find God’s love being born in us.

I don’t have a problem believing that Matthew or Luke got it right when they were talking about Jesus’ birth. And it does not bother me that some people have a hard time accepting that. And to be honest, what you believe about Mary’s sex life is not as important as believing in the love and hope represented by the virgin birth.

When I was a chaplain, I spent every Christmas morning in the hospital, sitting with patients who literally drank themselves to death on Christmas Eve. I never did that on New Years’ day, but Christmas, that was the hard one.

These people were alone, and they could identify with the Psalmist:

⁵   You have fed them with the bread of tears,
and given them tears to drink in full measure. 

We are supposed to feel all happy and cheerful, and experience the Joy Of Christmas, Peace On Earth, and all that, sometimes it is just hard to do that. I remember the first few Christmas’s after my parent’s divorce. They were hard times.

Some of you will be having a rough Christmas this year. Some of you will not be with the people you want to be with on Christmas. Either they live elsewhere, or perhaps they have passed on. And it will be a hard Christmas. Some of you have issues in your life that will make it a hard Christmas. The money is tight, and you like to spread the Christmas cheer, but there is not enough cheer to go around. Some people will be unemployed this Christmas. Christmas can be hard.

You know what a virgin birth looks like today? It is when God looks at the rocky terrain of a heart, when God sees the infertility of a soul, and yet still choses that Christ be born in that person. It is when God looks into the heart of an Anne Lamont, a bulimic, alcoholic who would not know a healthy relationship if it bit her in the nose, and yet God still choses to be born in her. It is when God looks at the heart of Augustine, a cold-hearted, intellectual philosopher who could get his sex life under control and who treated women like objects, and yet God chooses to be born in him.

It is when God looks into the rocky terrain of my heart, into the infertility of my soul, and yet still choses to be born in me.

O holy Child of Bethlehem

Descend to us, we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born to us today

Yesterday was my birthday, which means I have ridden this rock around the sun 56 times. That means something, although I am not sure what. I guess that longevity counts for something, although in our our culture it is more a drawback than an advantage. But there is something about the sheer accumulation of years, that is like the accumulation of miles. The length means something, but only as much as you put into it.

I once met someone who said they spent six weeks in Europe. I asked if they had been to some of my favorite haunts, and they could not remember where they went. They vaguely remembered Paris and Rome, because those were Important Places, but almost nothing in between. The miles meant almost nothing. I say almost because they did indicate a least a willingness to travel, but then, for all I know, her husband just dragged her along.

The same is true of time. I was sitting in the office of one of my mentors, Jim Watson, when the phone rang. During the conservation I heard Jim say, “That’s not true. He does not have nine years of experience, he has three years three times.” He was being asked for a job reference for a pastor, who had claimed he had nine years of experience. In fact he had served three different churches, each for three years, and according to Jim, he just replicated the three years. He did the same things, made the same mistakes, and even gave a lot of the same sermons.

I have fifty-six years of experience in life, although I wonder how much that equals in Real Years, years that I actually learned something. I want to think that I have mostly progressed. I am not the same person I was five years ago, much less a year ago. Fifty-six years means something. I have learned something over time, and I guess we’ll find out how much as this blog progresses.

Happy trip around the sun!

It was either Wallace Stegner or Wendell Berry who taught me that all novels are either about movement or place. On the Road or Huckleberry Finn are the classic movement novels, while Faulkner and James may be the standard for novels of place. Kerouac takes us cross country and Twain takes us down river, but Faulkner rarely takes us out of Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. (Most southern novelist write about place, while most western novelists take us on the road.)

I have spent much of my life on the road–three cross country trips (two by bus), six weeks in Italy and Malta. trips to Russia. Haiti Peru and Guatemala, not to mention a whole year in Europe, while studying in Germany. I have driven from North Carolina to Alaska, and as I write this I am on a 2,700 mile journey from Alaska to Oregon.

When you are on the road, the only constant is you. Everything else changes. The scenery changes hour to hour, the food changes meal to meal, the people change like the flow of river. I can see why people think they can find their true selves on the road, because everything else is stripped away. on this trip my “raft” is small jeep, the Redhead my only companion, and everything outside of that is in constant flux.

On the other hand our little cocoon is winding its way downriver to a place we will call “home,” a place we hope to stay for a long time, a place that will be constant and familiar, a place that does not change very much. The problem with finding yourself on the road is that assumes the self is autonomous, and not connected to context. Mann ist was Mann isst, is not as true as Man ist wo man ist. We are where we are. I am one person on the road, and another person when I am at home (where ever home happens to be at the time).

The road refines our autonomy, and place refines our connectedness. On the road I am defined by what I leave behind. I came, I saw, I left. At home I am defined by what I treasure and hold near and dear. I travel to build experiences I can only keep in my memory. But when I become connected to a place, I build a sustainable life.

In some ways living in Alaska was like being on one long road trip. I did become connected to the place in some ways, but on the whole it was too awesome, too majestic and to frightening for a sustained connection. Alaska would overcome me, and I would lose myself in its largess. I want a place where I can be at home. Alaska is a transitory place. People come and go, and in the end you learn not to form deep relationships, because people leave all the time. (I am in the processing of leaving right now, and I cannot count how many people I have said goodbye to in the last 18 years.)

Perhaps the point of this blog is to find the Still Point. I have been on the move for too long. I am ready to settle down. I have settled down with the Redhead, I am ready to settle down with a congregation and I think I can settle down with my spiritual life.

It’s time to come home.

One of the best things I have done lately is to get back in the habit of morning devotionals. I get up at 5:30 before everyone else, and read the Morning Office in the Book of Common Prayer. I read a Psalm or two, the daily lectionary and then pray for various people. This trip has kicked a hole in that habit though. I totally missed yesterday, and let a sore throat deter me this morning. I tried to do them in the car, and get as far as the General Confession before I was diverted by the beauty of the scenery that was continually offering itself to me.

Time for something different, I thought, so I read Psalm 19, then put the book down, and let God’s glory come at me though nature and music–the majesty of the mountains, rivers and lakes with musical accompaniment by Thelonius Monk. The music has been continually shifting from Monk, to the Dead and now the Allman Brothers, and the beauty has remained constant.

On the whole I am the sort of Christian who believes that nature is a fickle and often errant teacher. Yes, there is a strong sense of God’s glory in the mountains and valleys, the rivers and lakes, the cloudy or clear skies, but all this is surrounded by the illusion of distance. If I were dropped down in these mountains, I would probably be dead in a few days, if not by some wild, hungry animal, then by the cold, or my own ignorance of how to survive in the wild. As my eyes feast on my surroundings, I am reminded of the man who reached out to touch the Ark of the Covenant when it was brought back to Jerusalem. It tottered on its cart, and he put his hand up to steady it, and upon touching it, instantly died.

God’s glory is a fearsome thing. I can enjoy the views of the rugged Yukon because I am safe in the Jeep with the Redhead. But if I were in direct contact I would probably meet the same fate as that man who dared try to stabilize the Ark. The mountains offer little sustenance for humans, the water is freezing cold, and the clouds contain rain and snow, and even the valleys contain all sorts of death traps.

Yet here I am, in midst of the glory, safe from its fearfulness. I can enjoy it, just as I can enjoy the presence of God. I just have to make sure that I am not mislead by romantic notions of what it all really means. Nature is more than fodder for the next Sierra Club calendar, and God’s presence is more than a comforting touch.

Rilke was right. Angels and beauty are things of terror.

Not a bad devotional for today!

There are always roadblocks of one kind of or another. These last two summers I spent fuming at DOT (Motto: Doing Our Best to Make Summer Miserable for YOU!) because of the various roadblocks around town, or at the State of Alaska or the Feds for making my job impossible at PHH with all the Medicaid regulations that actually kept us from helping kinds.

Yesterday I encountered some very frustrating roadblocks. It started when we tried to pay the movers for moving our stuff to Oregon. The debit card was denied. It turns out they will not allow more than $1,000 a day, and even though I have more money in my account than I have had in decades, the bank would not honor the debit. So we called them, and explained, and it seemed that everything was ok, until dinner when the card was denied again. And also at the hotel. I went to get online, which you have to pay for at the Westmark in Canada, which took five tries because of security issues around the passwords, and finally did. Did I have an email from Spirit of Alaska or Visa? I could not tell, because Google shut down my email because I was accessing it from Canada. I had to log on and go through the futile exercise of proving my iPad was my iPad and my account was my account.

No email, so I tried calling Visa. It took five different numbers to finally find a human, who could only read from a script. All I got from her was, “I’m sorry” and then a different reiteration of the script. I asked to speak to her manager, because I am in the middle of Canada and if the banks are keeping me from my money, that could make this a pretty inconvenient trip! Oh, and if Visa called and left a message to report suspicious activity, I could not get it because my phone service is ATT and they do not cover Canada. It would cost an arm two legs just to check my messages.

I finally got a human who could only tell me they could not tell me anything.

I think it will all work out. I have a credit card, which I don’t want to use, but can. I can call my bank in Alaska when they open, and maybe I just hit my daily limit.

The funny thing is, all these roadblocks were set up by people who are trying to help me (with the exception of ATT). it’s one thing to stopped when someone is trying to stop you. It is quite another when you are stopped by people who are trying to help you.

Well intentioned roadblocks are the worst because it is hard to convince people who are trying to help you that they are really being a pain in the butt. C.S. Lewis said of someone, “She was the kind of person who lives for others, and you can the others by their haunted looks.”

When help or protection is an affliction we end up undoing our best efforts.

May I never be the type of pastor who has to impose my good will on others.

We are on the road,slowing winding our way down the Alcan. Leaving was a whirlwind of goodbyes. Friday night at the Big I, witgh people I did not expect to show up. Saturday night at Bobby’s with the usual suspects, then a decided non-clerical appearance at the Rocky Horror Picture Show, followed up on Sunday with a coffee we threw for Sen. Begich. Monday was my last day at work, and Monday night was spent getting ready for the movers on Tuesday.

So movers on Tuesday, and more good byes on Wednesday. Thursday morning I said good bye to Steven, and we pulled out Thursday afternoon around five, after saying good bye to Thomas, and making one last stop at Bobby’s.

We have just entered Canada officially! The Redhead is very excited. I feel more pensive. She is beyond ready to go, but i could have stayed a few more years. Were it not for the call awaiting me in Medford I would be happy to stay. But I do have this wonderful call, and so I am off and running.

It’s funny that I called this blog From the Still Point, but so far it is all about being on the move. That is the irony of my life, not just the blog.

John Calvin was dubious about nature providing any reliable clues about God. Of course Calvin never saw Alaska.

I have accepted the call to become the pastor at the First Presbyterian Church in Medford, Oregon, which entails a move from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Medford, a journey of 2764.43 miles. I am 91.27 percent totally excited about the move. The 8.73 precent has to do with packing and driving–well not driving, but the possibility of breaking down while driving.

I am actually looking forward to the drive with The Redhead. We do well on long trips like this, and we have plenty of books on tape, plenty of music, and we are looking forward to the time together before we hit the ground running in Medford.

Most of our stuff is already in storage thanks to the Landlord Who Shall Remain Nameless to Protect the Innocent. The movers come on Tuesday, and we get to pack whatever is left in either a Suburu or the Vanagon, whichever is running. (It is that “whichever is running” that bothers me. Currently the Vanagon is very, very sick, and needs auto ICU. The GP who has been caring for it is a bit stumped, and I think we need to bring in the pros.)

Today is supposed to be the build up to Hump Day, and so I better get humping.