Christmas Stories

Scripture: Luke 2-16

For more than a month, we get ready for Christmas.  At church, we celebrate the ancient tradition of advent, which occupies so much of our time and attention that we call it a “season.”  We read biblical passages that anticipate the birth of Christ; we light candles; we decorate the sanctuary; we gather toys and gifts to donate to those who have fallen on hard times.

Outside of church, we engage in other sorts of rituals.  We unpack the nativity scene, the decorations, and the ornaments.  We put up the tree.  We cook and bake and devour vast amounts of food.  We labor to find just the right presents for just the right people.  We marinate in Christmas music that starts in November and that follows us ubiquitously into cars, malls, stores, elevators, restaurants, even restrooms.

In this connection, I’ve noticed that a number of contemporary Christmas songs ask a question that sounds something like this: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Christmas could last all year long?”  And I have to confess: I wonder.  After all, the way we do Christmas is pretty exhausting.  And I’m not sure how many of us would enthusiastically agree to spend the next fifty weeks doing the same things we have done for the last two—let alone at the same pace.

Also, this time of year can seem a little artificial.  It should have a special quality—and it does; it shouldn’t feel like the rest of the year—and it doesn’t; but, as Prince Hamlet said, “there’s the rub.”  After all, we spend most of our lives in the other eleven months of the year.  So there is always the risk that we may elevate this season to such a height—and accelerate it to such a frantic dash—that it will lose its relevance to how we actually spend the overwhelming majority of our time on planet earth.

I think that this is what makes Luke’s description of the events immediately preceding the birth of Jesus so instructive.  It doesn’t seem like a particularly inspiring collection of verses; to the contrary, it reads like a pretty bland recitation of relatively non-momentous facts.  It almost sounds like an entry in the “local news” sidebar of the Bethlehem Daily Tribune: “census brings Joseph home after long absence; ‘gee, it’s great to be back,’ he declares.”

Indeed, everything about the text reinforces its ordinariness.  The emperor issued a decree—that’s hardly surprising.  Decreeing things is what emperors do, and this one did a lot of it.  As you may recall, Augustus came into power after the assassination of Julius Caesar and during a period of political upheaval and military rule.  After defeating his rivals, Augustus restored the trappings of the republic, but historians tell us that in many respects he remained a dictator.  The most famous statue of Augustus—the Augustus of Prima Porta housed in the Vatican Museum—portrays him with his right arm raised commandingly, as if issuing just the sort of decree Luke describes.

Next we’re told that this particular decree required the registration of everyone who was under Roman rule.  Now, this passage has prompted a vigorous and unresolved debate among biblical scholars because little, if any, historical evidence confirms that such a census occurred during this period.  So, what’s going on here?  Was Luke thinking of the census that is mentioned in Acts 5:37 but confused about its date?  Was he giving us a nod toward Psalm 87, which seems to link the registering of people with the birth of the Messiah?  Was he doing a little stage management by offering an explanation as to how Jesus came to be born in Bethlehem, thereby fulfilling an ancient prophecy?

For today, let’s put those questions aside and shift our focus from why Luke tells us about the census to how Luke does so.  If you look carefully, you’ll notice that this passage is characterized by a severe economy of words and by no drama whatsoever.  This seems particularly striking because these verses are surrounded by drama.  Immediately before it, we get Mary’s beautiful magnificat (“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior”) and Zechariah’s spirit-driven prophecies about the birth of John (“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and redeemed his people”).  Immediately after these verses, we get angels appearing to shepherds and “a great company of the heavenly host singing ‘Glory to God in the highest.’”  Chapter 2 of Luke comes to us as an interruption in the midst of exaltation. 

The verses about the census are dry, low-key, and journalistic.  They probably have something to do with the government wanting to tax its citizens—a practice, as Ben Franklin observed, that is as inevitable and predictable as death.  Certainly, these verses don’t make particularly good fodder for hymns or Christmas carols or holiday pageants.  In his Messiah, Mr. Handel decided to skip this rather prosaic part of the story entirely.

And that leads us to the most surprising part of this very unsurprising first advent: Luke’s declaration that Joseph went to be registered with Mary, who was “expecting a child.”  Surely, this wins any contest of the greatest understatements in the history of the written word.  In fact, it may be that the only real competition comes in the next verse: “While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.” 

So, how does Luke describe the events immediately preceding the birth of Christ?  He portrays them as the stuff of everyday, ordinary life.

But what do we do in the days immediately preceding Christmas?  We labor—sometimes to the point of despair and dismay—to make them as special, as non-everyday, as extraordinary as we can.

Do you sense something of a disconnection here?

Now, permit me to say that I’m as fond of Christmas preparations as anyone I know: I love reading the familiar verses and singing the old carols; rediscovering the silly ornaments that Lisa and I have accumulated over the years; getting together with friends to celebrate the season; searching for gifts that will bring smiles to the faces I adore; smelling the fresh-cut Christmas tree as it warms in the living room and the sap starts to flow again.  I am no Grinch, even if I do wish that my heart was bigger, more accommodating, and open to greater levels of commitment and empathy and forgiveness than it seems currently able to sustain.

So please understand that I am not asking you to downplay Christmas or to ignore its obvious specialness.  I get all that.

No, to the contrary, I am inviting you—as I think Luke does—to see that Christmas also lives in all the simple, mundane, unspectacular weeks that will follow.

It lives in the midst of business as usual, where decrees are issued and taxes come due and people obey laws and couples become engaged and children enter this weary and restless old world.

It lives in the miracle and wonder and blessing that we celebrate on December 25^th —and also in the miracles and wonders and blessings that may cross our paths on all the days that follow. 

It lives in readiness and in celebration—and also in the midst of drudgery and in the uneven and uncertain path that we call work-a-day existence.

It lives when our hearts are filled with inexpressible joy—and also when we are burdened with unimaginable horror and sorrow over the headlines in the newspaper.

I think that the special genius of this passage in Luke is that it moves us past the idea of getting ready for Christmas and into the idea of getting ready for anything—because God may become stunningly present for us even in the highly improbable context of a governmental head-counting.

*    

I am sure that many of you have seen the photograph and the videos that went viral a couple of weeks ago on the Internet about New York Police Department Officer Larry DePrimo.  DePrimo was on patrol on 44^th Street in New York on a very cold night when he noticed an elderly man lying on the sidewalk.  The man had no socks or shoes, and DePrimo became concerned.  He ran into a nearby store and bought the man a pair of sturdy one-hundred dollar boots.  DePrimo knew that this was the kind and compassionate thing to do; what he did not know was that a tourist took a photograph of him doing it.  That picture was posted on Facebook; it promptly garnered hundreds of thousands of “likes”; DePrimo was identified; and the picture and the tale spread like wildfire.  Everyone agreed: it was a great Christmas-time story, and so it is.

But, of course, there are countless Christmas stories.  Many of them happen during the other eleven months of the year.  Many of them unfold over a number of years, or even decades, or even lifetimes.  All of them bring a ferocious light that presses back against the relentless darkness that always threatens to consume us, but that finally cannot, because God won’t have it.

Here are just a few of those stories, gleaned from a single website (the CNN 2012 Heroes page, if you're interested), after only about fifteen minutes of looking around on the Internet:

For the past two years, Dr. Benjamin Labrot has practiced medicine from the decks of a 76-foot-long refurbished ship called the Southern Wind, where he serves not only as the chief physician but often as captain, cook, and lab technician.  Sailing a nonstop circuit between Haiti, Honduras, and Panama, Dr. Labrot and a crew of volunteers have managed to provide critical services to about thirteen thousand people—many of whom had never before received any medical attention at all.  Dr. Labrot acknowledges the challenges and the rewards his work entails.  He says: “I had to postpone many aspects of my own personal life.  I don’t have a home.  I had to give up a lot.  But I gained everything.”  This Christmas story has been going on for two years, now—two years and counting.      

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world.  It has no social safety net.  This means that, when someone goes to prison, they have two choices: they can bring their children to prison with them; or they can leave their children to fend for themselves on the street.  Since 2005, 28-year-old Pushpa Basnet of Nepal has taken those children in.  This doesn’t require much of her.  She just has to feed, clothe, teach, and launder for the forty children who live with her; take them to visit their parents in prison; and help their parents learn a trade so they’re in a better position to be caregivers once they’re released.  This Christmas story has been going on for seven years.  And Pushpa Basnet is still a very young woman.

A common problem bedevils children who are diagnosed with certain types of cancer: the treatment severely compromises their immune systems.  As a result, the disease does not just steal their health—it steals their childhood, preventing them from such basic activities as playing with other kids.  Well, one day a woman named Nancy Zuch, whose daughter Morgan was battling cancer at the time, noticed something: the hospital where Morgan was receiving treatment allowed her to play with another child who was in the same condition.  Morgan went on to recover, and Nancy went on to found a preschool in her daughter’s name.  The Morgan Center is a cheerful, bright, colorful, and meticulously sanitized space—the only one like it in the world—where children who are fighting for their lives can gather together to do the stuff kids loves to do: sing; read stories; make arts and crafts projects; laugh; play.  This Christmas story has been going on for nine years … and it has a beautiful future.

Stan Brock, on the other hand, did not appear to have a particularly beautiful future when he was a teenager.  He dropped out of school at sixteen and found himself herding cattle for a living.  He barely scraped by, sometimes going for days without food or water.  Indeed, just about the only thing he could say for himself was that he was working hard and developing some amazing skills with a lasso.

And that’s where he was when a television show called Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom discovered him in the nineteen-sixties.  It turned out that the show needed someone who could lasso big and unfriendly animals—you can see a video of Stan wrangling with a buffalo on YouTube if you like—so they took him on.  His new role gave him security, a certain measure of fame, and the opportunity to travel the world.  But he never forgot where he came from: “I understand what it is like to be penniless, homeless, and uninsured,” he says.

So, after he learned how to fly an airplane, Stan offered to bring medical support to areas that otherwise wouldn’t receive it.  In 1985, he turned this avocation into a nonprofit organization called Remote Area Medical, which has involved more than 70,000 volunteers, has held over 600 medical clinics worldwide, and has helped more than half a million people.  Stan Brock sleeps in his company headquarters at a ramshackle old schoolhouse in Tennessee; he has no assets other than a bicycle and some tools; and he does not accept an income from the enterprise he runs.  “I guess I’m your basic indigent CEO,” he says.  This Christmas story has been chugging along for more than a quarter of a century.  And it ain’t over yet.

In each of these stories, a moment of clarity, insight, and inspiration came to someone.  Stan Brock realized the importance of medical care in remote areas after a horse kicked him in the head in the Amazon.  Nancy Zuch observed one fragile child playing with another and recognized the potential.  Pushpa Basnet saw innocent children going to prison—because that’s where their parents were—and concluded that this was an intolerable state of affairs.  Benjamin Labrot sat down and wept when he discovered that he could not carry all the medicine that his patients needed in his backpack—and he resolved to find a way to carry more.  Officer Larry DePrimo says that he was moved to buy that pair of boots after the homeless man for whom he had expressed concern looked him in the eye and said “God bless you.”

Maybe that’s how Christmas stories work for all of us.  We stumble across a blessing.  We realize we need to carry more.  We encounter an injustice that we cannot ignore.  We see a new way to bring people together.  We get kicked in the head.  And so we set out to write our own Christmas story—one that may start tomorrow or that may already be underway; one that may last for sixty minutes or sixty years; one that may begin its unfolding in any season, under any circumstances, at any moment, even in the most ordinary of moments—even at this very moment.

So, what moves you toward Bethlehem?

What gifts do you bring?

What causes you to raise your eyes and to look beyond the madness and the malevolence and the materialism of this world and to see—at long, long last to see—the faint but unmistakable glimmer of an irresistible star?

Amen.

On the Solid Rock

Scripture: Matthew 7:24-27

        From time to time, Jesus spoke in terms that were simple and direct.  Consider, for example: “[D]o not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.  Today’s trouble is enough for today.”  Of course, we may struggle to do as Jesus urges and to set our worries aside; but at least we understand what he was getting at.  He said it plainly. 

        Often, though, Jesus used language that was more indirect and subtle.  On these occasions, Jesus did not lay out explicit instructions about what to think or how to behave.  Instead, he invited his audience into a space—created by a question or a parable or the irony of their own hypocrisy—where he hoped they might consider things more deeply and see the truth on their own.

One of my favorite examples of this approach occurs in the story of the woman who was taken in adultery.  In confronting her accusers, Jesus might have said something ferociously straightforward, like: “Stop.  All of you are sinners, and therefore none of you is in any position to condemn this woman.  Go home.”  But he didn’t.  To the contrary, Jesus said that they could proceed to stone the woman to death if they liked—provided they could look within themselves and conclude they were without sin.  Of course, Jesus knew what they would find in their hearts; but he wanted them to discover it for themselves.

That brings us to today’s familiar—and deceptively simple—parable:  There once lived two men: one was wise, the other not so much.  The wise man built a house on rock.  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew, but his house stood firm.  The foolish man built his house on sand.  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew—and his house toppled over spectacularly.  Jesus explains: a person who hears the word and acts on it is like the wise man; a person who hears the word and ignores it is like the foolish man.  It doesn’t seem all that complicated; but I think it is.

By using a parable, Jesus is able to tell us something simply and directly.  Indeed, he even explains the parable for us, in case we missed the central point.  But his choice of the parable form is important, because it allows him also to tell us lots of things indirectly.

Consider, for example, this idea: a flood attacks a house from underneath; rain from above; and winds from the sides.  In other words, Jesus suggests that in the course of this life—and in the natural order of things—our little houses will be assailed from every possible direction.  Anyone care to argue with Jesus on this point?  I don’t. 

Or how about this: Jesus doesn’t tell us much about the houses the two men built.  We don’t know if they are similar or different; large or small; sparsely or handsomely furnished; two bedroom bungalows without enough room to swing a cat or fifty room mansions with enough room to swing a golf club.  Without saying so directly—indeed, without saying anything at all about the houses—Jesus signals that for purposes of this story—for purposes of this life—only one question matters: how good is the foundation?

But what I want you to notice about this parable today is how much Jesus leaves unsaid—directly or indirectly.  Perhaps most importantly, there are some important gaps (which we’ll discuss) in his description of what makes for a firm foundation.  And this is provocative because the question of how we build such a foundation is critical: it’s one that every person of faith needs to think through—as does every church, including this one. 

Jesus does give us a few clues in this text as to how we should proceed.  Let’s start here: Jesus notes the importance of hearing the word.  This suggests that we should make our church one that takes seriously the business of listening to, reading, and studying the scriptures.  Of course, we won’t all agree on what certain passages mean.  But, through study and discussion, we can work our way toward a collection of understandings that are thoughtful, responsible, defensible, respectful of reasoned disagreement, and consistent with the loving ministry of Jesus Christ—even if they are not entirely uniform.

Now, there’s a related point.  I suspect that most of us—maybe all of us—believe that the Bible is the most important and influential book in the history of the world.  Even those who disagree with that proposition, though, would probably concede that it is the most misquoted, misapplied, and misused of all books.  People have invoked biblical passages to defend and justify everything from slavery to genocide to torture to the oppression of women to the abuse of children.  It is an ugly history … and it isn’t over yet. 

In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, the character Antonio sums the problem up nicely when he observes that even “[t]he devil can cite scripture for his purpose.”  The devil can indeed, and in fact does so in the fourth chapter of Matthew.  (And, sometimes, when I happen across certain television and radio programs I think he’s still doing it.)   So this church—like all churches—needs a firm foundation in the scriptures not just because they will help guide our steps but because, in all candor, the scriptures need all the friends they can get.

You’ll notice, though, that Jesus suggests that hearing the word isn’t enough.  In this passage, Jesus doesn’t distinguish those who hear the word from those who don’t—the parable isn’t about how people don’t listen.  Rather, he distinguishes everyone who hears the word and acts on it from everyone who hears the word but doesn’t act.  In other words, our foundation cannot just consist of sacred words and faith; those are necessary, but not sufficient.  Our foundation must also consist of actions.

Now, you’ll remember that earlier I suggested that Jesus sometimes creates an open space in the text where we need to do a lot of the work ourselves.  I think that this is one of those spaces.  I believe that Jesus deliberately, intriguingly, and wisely leaves a blank here for us to fill in.  It is as though we say to Jesus “Okay, I get it; my foundation isn’t complete until I act on your word; so what should I do?”  And Jesus says back: “What have you got?”

Can you volunteer to help the homeless?  Do that.  Knit a prayer shawl?  Do that.  Teach children?  Do that.  Feed the hungry?  Do that.  Visit the sick?  Do that.  Make peace with an enemy?  Do that.  Fight injustice?  Do that.  Sing in the choir?  Do that.  Serve communion?  Do that.  Collect clothes for the needy?  Do that.  Write a check?  Do that.  In fact, if you can, write several of them, and be generous, because this business of trying to change the world is many things, but it ain’t cheap.

*

On this very day, thousands of people—including a number from this congregation—are running in the Detroit marathon.  I’ve run a few marathons, but I can’t recall how many because all of them have been, in one way or another, minor disasters so I have repressed most of my memories of them.  It took me a few tries to discover that if you’re a big-boned 200-pound German with a 17-and-a-half-inch neck you can do many things—but you aren’t built for speed.  Still, there is a story about one Detroit marathon that I recall and that has some bearing on what I’m saying here.

A number of years ago, my mother (who passed away earlier this year) went through a very difficult time.  She had begun a long and hard battle with Alzheimer’s disease.  She was packing up, leaving a house she had lived in and loved for decades, and moving to a facility where she could receive the necessary care and attention.  It was an immensely challenging period.

In the course of helping mom pack, we discovered a small pin that she had received many years ago when she graduated from nursing school.  It meant a lot to her, and it gave me an idea.  So I told my mother that I would be running a marathon in a couple of weeks and that, as a tribute to her courage and perseverance, I would carry her pin across the finish line.

So the big Sunday came and the first thirteen miles of the twenty-six mile run went fine.  But, then, at mile thirteen I pulled a calf muscle—severely.  My slow run turned into a trot, which turned into a sort of sideways hobble.  It wasn’t pretty.

Ironically, because of the way the course looped, at mile thirteen I was only a few blocks away from the finish line.  All I needed to do was hang a right, limp along a little, and quit.  The alternative was to go straight, follow the course out onto Belle Isle, and do the best I could for thirteen more miles.  I will be honest with you: if I had not made the promise to my mother, I would have quit.  But I did, and so I couldn’t.  I kept going.

Somewhere out on Belle Isle the pain and exhaustion got to me and my temper started to boil.  At just that moment, a police patrol car with two officers in it pulled up beside me and the window went down.  “Uh, sir,” a friendly face called out, “can we give you a ride back?”  I glared at him and growled: “No thanks.  I am going to cross the finish line if I have to crawl over it.  And, when I do, I’m going to spit on the damn thing.”  He smirked and said “Well, okay then” and the car dropped back out of my sight.

I finally worked my way off of Belle Isle and back to Jefferson and toward the finish line.  As I turned left to limp through the final hundred or so yards of the course, I glanced back behind me.  There was the police car.  I’d had two guardian angels and didn’t even know it.  Those guys had followed me around an island, over a bridge, and down a thoroughfare to make sure I was alright.  In short, they had seen someone who needed watching—and they did that.

*

  And that, my friends, is how you build a church with a firm foundation.  You welcome all who come—because all are called.  You give everyone a chance to study the word—because everyone needs to.  You help them figure out what they can do to help—because everyone has something to contribute.  Then you put them to work—every last one of them—in the name and for the glory of God—because we need every last one of them.  And then you love them and keep an eye on them—because now they’re not just in His flock, they’re in yours. 

Why am I so confident that this will work?  Because these are the construction plans followed by the Master Builder himself.  This is how Jesus himself laid a foundation that has lasted thousands of years.  This is how Jesus himself built a house that has survived floods and winds and rain—and even some inhabitants who have tried to destroy the house from inside of it.

So let me leave you with a few questions to ponder:

What can you add to the foundation?

What have you got?

What are you waiting for?

Amen. 

Why Church? Making A Difference in the World

Scripture: Matthew 5:14-16
      

        Over the years, lots of people have asked me why I go to church.  I have asked myself that question from time to time.  In both cases, the question is particularly awkward when the answer is that I had to come because I was the preacher.

       Of course, that may not be much of an answer.  After all, people do not need to come to church to be bored by me—I can bore you over dinner, at a baseball game, during a long car ride, or in any number of locations at the Chelsea Fair.  Attending church just allows you to be bored by me while you’re seated uncomfortably.

Indeed, it might seem as though there is very little we can do inside of church that we can’t do outside of it.  Outside of church, we can still sing, pray, worship, read the Bible, celebrate life, and praise God.  There are certain ceremonies and sacraments that are usually observed with the trappings of a church around us—like marriage, baptism, and the Lord’s supper—but most of us only receive communion once a month and, with any luck, we get married with even less frequency.

       This point holds true for our desire to do good in the world as well.  By mobilizing our energies and pooling our resources we are able to do things through the church that would be difficult or impossible to do individually.  Every year, this church touches the lives of thousands of people we don't even know by serving them breakfast on Saturday mornings, by feeding them through Faith in Action, by visiting them at homeless shelters, by sustaining them through donations to the United Methodist Committee on Relief, by providing them with Christmas presents as part of the "angel tree" program, and so on and so on.

But someone could argue that this isn’t a good enough answer to the question “Why church?”  After all, we could also do this sort of good in the world by contributing to and working with countless worthwhile secular organizations, like the American Red Cross, Oxfam, UNICEF, and Doctors Without Borders.  Indeed, if our goal were only to make that sort of difference in the world, then the question “Why church?” might seem very hard to answer.

Whenever this question comes up I am reminded of a story about the great Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki.  Suzuki wrote a famous book called Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind and over the years he attracted many students.  On one occasion, after an evening lecture, a man raised his hand and said: “You say that Zen is everywhere.  So why do we have to come to the Zen Center?”  “Zen is everywhere,” Suzuki replied.  “But, for you, Zen is right here.”  This morning, I want to suggest that, while possibilities for making a difference in the world are everywhere, for us they are right here.  This is true for at least four compelling reasons.

First: by making a difference in the world through the church we convey the message of God’s deep and abiding love to those who badly need to hear it.  Like all of you, I have been on the receiving end of many kind and generous gestures.  They are wonderful things, even when taken only as evidence of someone’s good and gracious heart.  But such acts are especially powerful when we sense that they reflect something else as well: that God is present in our lives, here and now; that we are loved beyond describing by a force beyond imagining; that we are never alone, never abandoned, never ever forgotten.

Second: by making a difference in the world through the church we glorify God.  This does not just mean that we give God the credit; it means that we give people a deeper and clearer sense of who we believe God actually is—something that matters immensely these days.  Please permit me for a moment to overcome my natural shyness and to be blunt.  If people see a church that is remote, disconnected, exclusive, judgmental, humorless, and joyous only in its sense of smug self-superiority—and, let’s be honest, people do see churches that are like that—then they will understandably conclude that this may be what God is like, or, at least, that this is what “church people” think God is like.  On the other hand, if people see a church that is involved, engaged, welcoming, inclusive, loving, forgiving, celebratory, and joyful, then they will conclude that this might be what God is like, or, at least, that we sure think so.

Third: by making a difference in the world through the church we unite the church.  We can and do disagree about all sorts of things: the kind of music that moves us; the proper structure of worship services; the best way to interpret the scriptures; how we should pray; etc., etc.  Major fissures develop in some churches over the color of the carpeting in the sanctuary.  But we can absolutely unite behind our efforts to fulfill the commands of Jesus that we serve others, that we love our neighbors as ourselves, that we feed the hungry, that we welcome strangers, that we clothe the needy, and that we visit the sick and downcast.  We can absolutely unite behind our desire to be a "Matthew 5:14 church," shining our light out into the dark corners of the world.

In fact, this turns out to be not only a powerful way to unite the church, but to help it grow.  In prior sermons, I have talked about Sara Miles, the author of the wonderful book Take This Bread.  As you may recall or otherwise know, in the year 2000 Sara Miles founded a food pantry at an Episcopal Church in San Francisco.  The endeavor grew and grew, until it now buys and gives away somewhere between nine to twelve tons of food each week.  And do you know where they give it away?  In the sanctuary.  As the pantry has grown, the volunteer base has grown right along with it, bringing countless people to church who might otherwise never have found their way inside. 

In this spirit, I want to issue a friendly challenge.  Perhaps you’re reluctant to invite people to join you at church because you’re unsure about where they stand on spiritual matters.  Or maybe you’ve extended such invitations without success.  Well, how about asking them to join you in volunteering to help with one of our church’s many service activities?  Sometimes this cuts through concerns and sensitivities that might otherwise exist.  I recall an instance many years ago, when I asked someone to join me on a Habitat for Humanity work day sponsored by the church I was then attending in Ann Arbor.  My friend said, “I don’t know.  I’m not sure whether I believe what the Methodists believe.”  I smiled at him and said, “For purposes of this Saturday, the Methodists believe that you should know how to hit a nail with a hammer.”

Finally, here’s a fourth reason: by making a difference in the world through the church we strengthen each other to do God’s work.  There are, of course, many ways that each of us takes sustenance from the community of this church.  In fact, it's quite an amazing and magical thing to watch: people walk through the front door as strangers and discover they have a community; they walk through the front door alone and discover that they have a family; they walk through the front door weighted down with burdens and the members of this congregation grab whatever they can of it ... and lift.  Perhaps the world is, as C.S. Lewis suggested, occupied territory--a battlefield of sorts.  Church, if we do it right, can say that this hill has been taken by angels.

But today I want to focus on one way church helps sustain us that might not yet have found its way into our hearts as fully as it should and that can help us prepare us to go out into the world and fight the good fight.  It is something we do every Sunday.  It is the passing of the peace.

For thousands of years, Christians have passed the peace from one to the other.  Of course, this has biblical roots in the way in which Jesus greeted his disciples, saying “Peace be with you.”  (Luke 24:36; John 20:19, 26)  But, from the beginning, these words became a sign—a coda among saintly troublemakers, if you will—exchanged between the followers of Christ before they got down to the daunting tasks at hand.  Thus, every letter of Paul—every letter—begins with an invocation of the peace of the Lord.

Think about that for a moment.  Here are the early disciples of Jesus.  They are in the distinct minority.  They are vilified.  They are persecuted.  They are seen as enemies of the Roman Empire—one of the most expansive and powerful empires in the history of the world.  They face insurmountable odds.  They understand that any day could bring them oppression, torture, or even death.  And how do they prepare for this?  They say to each other: “For the struggles of this day, in order to go out and face the world and make a difference in it, you will need the peace of Christ.  I pray that you might find it; I pray that you might feel it; I pray that you might share it with others.  Let it be with you.”

Let me be clear: I am not a passing-of-the-peace-party-pooper.  That people in this church pass the peace with joy and vigor and enthusiasm seems to me entirely appropriate.  But I think it is also appropriate—if not terribly important—to remind ourselves of what we are doing.  We are doing something with a storied and ancient history.  We are doing something profoundly holy.  We are helping each other get ready to do the Lord’s work wherever it needs doing—which, last time I checked, was everywhere.

So, for today, when the time for the benediction comes, we are going to pass the peace to one another—that’s why we didn’t do it earlier.  We will say those ancient words—“May the peace of Christ be with you,” “And also with you.”  And we won’t utter them out of habit or by way of saying hello or as a prelude to complimenting someone on their dress or their necktie or their new eyeglasses.  Instead, we will exchange these words because in that moment we will see each other for what we are: ordinary people, living differently because of the love of Christ, trying to help each other make a difference in a world that needs all the difference-makers it can find, and that can spare not a single one--especially you.

Amen.