Christmas is for Us

Christmas 2015
John 1:1-18

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.  –John 1:3-5 describing Jesus, the Word made Flesh.

For a number of years, I didn’t look forward to Christmas very much.  In 1996, my dad died very suddenly a few days before Christmas.  In December of 1997, I developed blood clots in both my lungs and nearly died.  In December of 1998, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.  As we entered the Christmas season in 1999, my nine year old daughter asked, “is it my turn to get real sick this year?”   In the years that followed, the coming of December 1 always brought me a sense of dread and grief.  I put on a happy face, and went through the motions, but related more to the Grinch and Scrooge than to the shepherds kneeling reverently at the manger.

Christmas can be a difficult time for many people.   Grief, loneliness, family problems, unemployment or underemployment and a host of other issues can cloud the holiday season with sadness and depression.  The Christmas lights, merry music, parties, shopping frenzy and good cheer can grate.   Something deep down tells us that the joy of Christmas is not for us.

But, in fact, when you strip the holiday season down to it’s core – the birth of the savior of the world – you find that Christmas is exactly for people like us.  It is for everyone who has ever faced the holiday season with feelings of dread.

Jesus, the Word made Flesh, was born precisely because the world is a broken and difficult place.   Jesus was born to take on all the hatred, all the sadness, all the violence, all the terror, all the pain and hurt and depression…  and nail it to a cross… in order to prove, to prove for all time, that God’s love is stronger than all the horror the world can muster.  Jesus rose again on the third day to demonstrate for the whole world that life is stronger than death.

Christmas means nothing without Easter.   Once I began to see the Risen Lord wrapped in the swaddling clothes Christmas began to make sense to me again.  Now, when I kneel with the shepherds by the manger, I see the One who gave my dad new life, the One who healed me and my wife, and the One who walked with my daughter through her childhood fears.  The One who walks with us still.  And for that, I can only sing  Joy to the World!

Have a blessed Advent and Christmas,

Bishop Mike

This will be Bishop Mike’s last “On The Way” for 2015.  See you all in January!

Generosity and Justice

Advent 2

Luke 3:7-18

Several years ago, on a Spring Break trip with my college students, we drove through the wine country of Washington State on our way home.  In addition to the many varieties of grapes (I couldn’t tell one from the other) there were also apple orchards and cherry trees and others we couldn’t identify.  You can tell what kind of tree it is by the kind of fruit it produces.  Even a novice like me can tell the difference between a grapevine and an apple tree!

John the Baptist tells the crowds that they should “Bear fruits worthy of repentance.” (3:8)  But, what kind of fruits do followers of Jesus produce?  Certainly not the fruits of judgement, fear, anger, hatred, self-centeredness or self-preservation.   Instead, John the Baptist instructs the crowds who followed him to produce fruits of generosity and justice…  and Jesus taught the very same thing.

John tells the crowds that they need to share their coats and their food with those who have none.  Jesus teaches the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6).  Toward the end of Matthew, Jesus instructs us to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit those in prison because in doing so we are doing it to him (Matthew 25:35-36).  Jesus, like John teaches that we should be generous with all that God has placed in our hands. 

When faith takes root and grows it changes us.  It produces fruit.  It has to.

John instructs the tax collectors and soldiers among the crowd to be just in carrying out their work even though both groups were well known for being anything but just.  John makes it clear that we should use our power, our position, our wealth, or our privilege to act justly and work for justice in our unjust and broken world.  Jesus works for justice when he welcomes outcasts, eats with tax collectors, sinners and prostitutes, heals on the Sabbath, and drives the money changers from the Temple.  He teaches his followers to follow suit. 

When faith takes root and it changes us.  It produces fruit.  It has to.

Following in the way of Jesus, Christians have, through the centuries to the present day, produced the fruits of generosity and justice in small, personal ways, and huge, public ways.  Christians have welcomed refugees, started hospitals, schools and childcare centers, built bridges of peace and understanding between peoples, provided hospitality for travelers, and cared for the sick and dying in the name of Jesus Christ.  In our time, we need to, once again, step up, reach out,  bear fruit and prove that love truly is greater than hate, forgiveness more powerful than revenge, and God’s grace is more powerful than death itself.   Now, as always, those are the very fruits this broken world desperately needs.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Clearing the Path

Advent 2

Luke 3:1-6

When we moved into our current home, I could hardly get into the study because of all the boxes piled up inside.  I shoved some boxes around to make a path, but, I knew something more needed to be done.  Some of those boxes hadn’t been opened for ten years!  The tape was yellow, the boxes marked and remarked from one, two, three, four moves.  It was ridiculous.  I felt guilty for dragging them around for so long.  I vowed that, this time, I would open every box and get rid of a lot of the useless stuff they contained.

Sometimes, our faith life can look a lot like my study.  So many things can get in the way of our discipleship, and our ability to grow deeper in our relationship with God.  I recently had a conversation with a group of church leaders about how worship attendance patterns have changed in recent decades.  There are so many other things clambering for our attention on Sunday mornings.  In our mobile world, we are often out of town visiting friends and relatives, or  away for work or tending to other responsibilities.  Apart from Sunday, our personal faith lives can get cluttered up too.  It’s hard, very hard, to carve out time to spend with God in prayer, to attend to the reading of scripture and reflect on God’s presence, power and blessing in our daily lives with our busy personal schedules.   As people of faith, we know we should do these things…  we feel guilty when we don’t…  and sometimes we simply give up and trust that God will understand (and I think God does.)

But, what we really need is John the Baptist.  We need someone to call us out.  We need someone to help clear a path.  We need someone to help us hear God’s voice in the midst of all the busy-ness, and the guilt and the powerlessness we feel to do anything about it.   Repentance is about doing just that.  It’s about clearing a path in our lives back to God.  It is about opening the boxes and cleaning out the useless stuff that we keep dragging around with us.  But, it is not something we can do on our own. 

That’s where the Holy Spirit comes in.  The Spirit is God at work in our lives constantly calling us back and giving us the ability to respond to that call.   The Spirit, though, is not just some vague ephemeral vaporous presence.  It is not the “Force”.    The Spirit works through the concrete stuff of life.  (Isn’t that the way God always works?)  The Spirit works through the community of faith – which is one of the reasons we need a community of faith.  The Spirit works through spiritual directors, mentors, elders and others who have gone before us down the path of life and faith.   The Spirit works through the John the Baptists that God sends into our lives to prepare the way for Jesus so that Jesus’ Way can take root and grow even in the midst of our cluttered and busy lives.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Falling Temples

Pentecost 25

Mark 13:1-8

Church buildings can be a real problem.  All too often, I have seen them get in the way of mission.  Now, I am not opposed to church buildings.  Over the years, I have been involved in a number of capital campaigns to restore, refurbish, repair and expand them.  I think having a concrete, visible place (with clear signage and a welcoming design) for a faith community to gather can provide a ministry with a certain level of recognition and identity in the larger community and provide a tool to be used for mission and ministry.  It certainly can make the ministry easier to find.  But, buildings can also become idols.  They can become more important to us than the ministry they were built to house.  The building can come to define the ministry more than the ministry itself.  Mortgages, leaky roofs, maintenance costs and other building expenses can cripple a congregation financially.  When maintaining the building becomes a higher priority than maintaining the ministry…  church buildings can be a real problem.

Then, Jesus asked, “Do you see these great buildings?  Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”  (v. 2)

No religious tradition has ever been more defined by a building than ancient Judaism and its Temple.  And yet, after it was razed to the ground by Titus in 70 AD, Judaism not only persisted, but flourished.  When our church building burned to the ground in Wayne, NE in 1994 AD, we discovered an identity as a faith community that went much deeper than the charred bricks and mortar.  Some of the fastest growing congregations I have visited in Tanzania gather for worship under the trees.

1 Peter 2:5 puts it this way, “…like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house…”  and again, in 2:6,  “For it stands in scripture: ‘See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.’”  As a church, we need to get past the idea that the goal of being a church is to fill our buildings so we can maintain them, and build bigger ones.  The goal of being a church is to build disciples upon the cornerstone, which is Christ, and then to send them out into the world to live their daily lives in service and in witness to God’s love and compassion.  If the building gets in the way of doing that…  then, as hard as that may be, perhaps it is time to let it go.

Peace,

Bishop Mike