The Birth of a Child Changes Everything (Christmas Eve 2014)

Homily:  Christmas Eve (9pm) 2014, St. Albans

Readings:  Isaiah 52.7-10; Ps 98; Heb 1.1-4, Jn 1.1-14

I have a friend, a clergy colleague who some years ago wanted to learn Biblical Greek.  So he took a course, here in Ottawa at St. Paul University.  His instructor didn’t use the usual method of lectures and textbooks and various exercises.  Instead, he sat down with his students, and they opened a Greek version of the New Testament.  They turned to the Gospel of John, and started working through the text that we just heard as our Gospel this evening. 

en archE En ho logos.  In the beginning was the Word.  

And as they worked through the first chapter of John, they reviewed the prepositions, and they learned the verb tenses, and they wrestled with the genitives and the declensions and the rest of the grammar.

And my colleague, an assertive, goal-oriented guy, you might even call him an alpha male, he worked hard, and he was pretty good at it, and he stuck with it for all those weeks, going through the first chapter of John word by word, verse by verse, until he came to verse 14:

kai ho logos sarx egeneto kai eskEnOsen en hEmin.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Creative Commons - Photo by Zuhair A. Al-Traifi on flickr

And my friend was moved to tears.

After weeks of wrestling with the Greek, with the big picture of God, the mysterious poetic language, the cosmic and universal significance of the Word and the light, verse 14 went, “Zap!”.  The word became flesh and dwelt among us.  No more big picture.  No more grand philosophy or theology.  A child is born.  There is nothing more concrete, nothing more specific.  Here’s the child that is born, this one, lying here in a manger beside Mary his mother.  And the birth of a child changes everything.

If you’ve ever had a child, or been there for the birth, you know that when a child is born, the world changes.  I remember the birth of my children, how can you ever forget.  In that moment, the world changes.  There was for me a sense of the miraculous, of awe, of wondering how can this be.  You experience feelings of love for this little baby that you never knew you were capable of.  I remember walking down the street of my neighbourhood on the day after my child was born, and the trees seemed taller and the birds sang louder, and there was a spring in my step and the whole experience felt surreal, like I had stepped into another time and place just beyond our everyday reality.  The birth of a child can do that to you.  Everything changes.

I have another friend who experienced this change, but in a very different way.  When she became pregnant, it was a difficult pregnancy, and there was a serious risk that neither she nor her unborn child would survive the birth.  And she was coming to term, she and her husband thought long and hard about this, and they met with the doctors and they came to an understanding.  If things went wrong, right up until the moment of birth, the doctors were to make my friend’s life their priority, even if it meant the death of their unborn child.  But the moment the child was born, the moment the baby had taken a first breath, the life of the child was to become the priority for the doctors, even if that meant the death of the mother.  And my friend remembers in the moment just after she had given birth looking up and seeing the child in the arms of her husband.  She remembered their decision and realized that it was now their child and no longer herself who was the priority.  And in that moment, her world changed.  The birth of a child changes everything.

God knows that the birth of a child is a life-changing experience for us.  Perhaps that’s why God came to be born as a child in our world.  He wanted to move us, to make us feel something.  Because with the incarnation, when the child is born, when the Word becomes flesh, it’s not just philosophy, it’s not just theology anymore!

I asked my friend, the one who studied Greek, why was it that he was moved to tears as he translated that verse all those years ago.  This is what he told me:

“All of a sudden I pictured this great, cosmic, mysterious God that I’d been wrestling with for weeks in my Greek translation, I pictured him as a baby, lying in a manger.  And he was so small and so vulnerable.  And his vulnerability touched my vulnerability, and the tears started to flow.”

The vulnerability of God as the Word become flesh speaks to our unspoken vulnerability.  Because we are, each one of us, vulnerable.  Oh sure, we try to hide it, we don’t talk about it very often, but much as we try to push it below the surface, we are vulnerable.  The world has reminded us of that this past year.  People like us taken hostage at a coffee shop.  Innocents dying at the hands of police.  Victims of ISIS, missing and murdered aboriginal women.  My stuff and your stuff.  We are vulnerable.  Our relationships remind us of that every year, for to be in relationship is to make yourself vulnerable to another, and the flip side of love and joy can be tears and heartbreak when things are rough.  No wonder we put up walls and hide our vulnerability deep inside.

But the irony, some might say the tragedy, of our human condition is that it is in our vulnerability that we’re at our best.  Our vulnerability is the birthplace of much that is good and beautiful in our lives.  It’s in our vulnerability that we are at our most compassionate and creative.  It’s our vulnerability that opens up the possibility of intimacy in our lives, that brings us into relationship with others, and that’s what we were made for.

Perhaps the most surprising thing for me about Christmas is that it teaches me that what is true for humans and our vulnerability is also true for God.

It’s when God is most vulnerable that God is at God’s best!

For generations people had seen God as powerful, distant, even wrathful, and they had often acted in that image.  And God said, this must change! 

And so God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, the almighty, the eternal, became powerless and vulnerable, born as child in Bethlehem.  And when that happens we are moved, and the world changes. The vulnerability of God speaks to our unspoken vulnerability, and we are given the greatest Christmas gift of all, the gift of intimacy with God.  This is how God chose to speak to us.  This is how God chose to be with us.  God became a child at Christmas so that we could become children of God. 

Because the birth of a child changes everything.

Amen.

When Time Stands Still (A Christmas Letter)

Christmas 2014.

Dear Friends,

The waiting is almost over!  I remember as a child I had this visceral sense of what it meant to wait for Christmas.  The anticipation, the expectation, the excitement, it was a whole body experience that literally had us bouncing up and down by the time Christmas morning actually arrived.  Now as a grown-up, that pre-Christmas time that we call Advent has changed somewhat.  So many things to do before the end of the calendar year!  So many errands to run before the guests arrive!  As a child the challenge was to get through the waiting.  As an adult my challenge is to make space for Christmas.

This fall we had a series called ‘Engaging the Questions’ at our St. Al’s@5 service.  Last night was our final question and it was this:  ‘Does God still show up in our world?’  It’s a question that makes all the difference.  Depending on how one answers, Christmas is either a great time of remembrance or a time of great anticipation.  And as often happens, that first question led to a second:  when God shows up, will you notice?

One of the things that gets in the way of noticing is that for many of us, time just seems to run faster and faster.  That’s one of the reasons we’ve been trying to slow things down a bit in Advent.  In fact, not only do we try to slow things down, but, at least in our Sunday worship in Advent, time runs backwards.  We start out with the end times, an anticipation of the future return of Christ.  Then we move back in time to John the Baptist, and then back even further to Mary and her encounter with Gabriel. 

At Christmas, with the birth of the child, time will start to move forward again.  But the hope is that just before time resumes its forward march, it will stop, if only for a moment.  It may be that moment just before we light the candles at our Christmas Eve Candlelight service.  It may be that moment when everyone is seated at table just before the meal begins.  But whenever and wherever it is that time stops for you this Christmas, I hope that in that space where the present touches the eternal, you will know that God is with us, now and always.

May God bless you with a wonderful and holy Christmas.

Grace and Peace,

Rev. Mark +

Christmas at St. Albans:

Dec 24 Christmas Eve, 5pm:  The Christmas Story and Eucharist (suitable for children)

Dec 24 Christmas Eve, 9pm:  Candlelight Eucharist

Dec 25 Christmas Morning, 10am:  Eucharist and Carols

Dec 28 First Sunday of Christmas, 10am (no 5pm service)

Jan 4 Epiphany, 10am and 5pm

Finding Your Voice (Advent 4, Dec 21 2014)

Homily:  Yr B Advent 4, Dec 21 2014, St. Albans

Readings:  2 Sam 7.1-11,16; Rom 16.25-27; Luke 1.26-38; Luke 1.46b-55

For thousands of years, Mary has been viewed as unique and special in our Christian tradition, and rightly so.  She is the Theotokos, the mother of God.  But we lose something if we put too much emphasis on the uniqueness of Mary.   Our loss is that we can fail to recognize that Mary’s story is also our story.  That what happened to Mary also happens to each one of us.  That the God who acted in Mary’s life continues to act in our lives today.  Now, it’s not that I’m expecting a rash of pregnancies to break out in this congregation.  But I do believe that, like Mary, each one of us is made for a purpose, and that God has sent, is sending and will send messengers to each one of us to call us to that purpose, just as the messenger (and that is what the word angel literally means), just as the messenger Gabriel was sent to Mary.  And when that happens, you and I will likely be just as confused and perplexed as Mary was.

Mary’s story, the gospel we heard today, provides us with an example of what it can look like to hear and then respond to God’s call.  So let’s take a closer look.  And to do that, we have to use our imagination.  I want you to place yourself in Mary’s shoes.  Actually, she was more likely to be barefoot.  Imagine yourself as a 13 year old girl, poor, living in a tiny rural village of maybe 150 people. Your parents have arranged for you to marry the 17 year old boy who lives in your village, in a few years, when you’re old enough.  You are living under military occupation, there’s a garrison of Roman soldiers stationed a few kilometers away.  They are dangerous, you’ve been taught to avoid them, to keep your head down.  

One day a male stranger approaches you, and to your surprise, and breaking with social custom, he speaks to you, and his words are strange:  “Greetings favoured one!  The Lord is with you”

How do you react?

Fear?  Suspicion?  Do you look around for help?  Get ready to run?  What questions are whizzing through your mind?  Who is this man?  Why is he talking to me?  Is he dangerous?

It seems that Mary is at least open to the possibility that the man who accosts her may indeed be a messenger from God, but that only raises more questions and more doubts.  Why would God even notice me?  Is this for real?  Can I trust what he is saying?  What have I done to earn God’s favour? 

Mary may have had all these thoughts and more, but she doesn’t say a word. She stays silent.  She gives no voice to the questions and doubts and fears that are running through her head.  She is perplexed, and afraid, and she ponders what sort of a greeting this might be.

And I suspect that’s how most of us respond when God sends his messengers to speak to us.  Are you talking to me?  Can I trust this?  Is this really a message from God?  The first time we get an inkling that God might be speaking to us, through a friend, a parent, a teacher, a movie, a work of art, a persistent thought, whatever form an angel might take, our first reaction, often, is to be perplexed. 

There is a member of our community who confided to me that she had sensed in the past few months that God was trying to tell her something.  And it was kind of freaking her out.

Mary was kind of freaked out.  Perplexed.  Or as another translation puts it, thoroughly shaken.  But she chooses not to run.  She stays engaged, she keeps listening.  And the messenger keeps talking.  He reassures her, “don’t be afraid, Mary”.  He repeats the thing that many of us have trouble believing, that she has found favour with God.  And then, he gives her a few details.

“You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.  He will be great!”

And as she listens, Mary starts to move in how she is responding to the messenger.  She had been silent, perplexed, shaken.  Now she is questioning, objecting, poking holes in the messenger’s story.  “How can this be, since I’ve never slept with a man?” She surely has other objections too, objections that go unvoiced in the text:  what will my parents say?  What will Joseph think?  Will the people in my village shun me?  Will they stone me for adultery?  How can this be?

If we stick with it, if we continue to listen and don’t run away from God’s call, we too will move from being perplexed to questioning and objecting.  In a curious way, that’s progress!  God wants us to be committed, to be fully in to whatever purposes God is calling us to, and asking our questions and voicing our objections is part of that process.  Mary objects:  “How can this be?”

And so the messenger continues.  He offers something of an explanation of how things will play out, how it is that she will conceive.  He offers her a sign of reassurance, the unexpected pregnancy of her older relative Elizabeth.  But, in the end, he acknowledges to Mary that really it all comes down to whether or not she trusts God.  For even though all this might look impossible, nothing will be impossible with God.  Gabriel offers Mary a leap of faith.  And she takes it.

“Here I am.  Let it be with me according to your word.”

Mary’s story can be our story too.  It is the story of what happens when God surprises us by showing up in our lives.  When God sends his messengers to call us to the purposes for which we were created.  When that happens, in all likelihood, we too will be confused and perplexed at first, but like Mary, if we stick with it, our response can move from being perplexed, to asking questions, to finally saying “Let it be.”

You know, many people will talk about how Mary’s story is miraculous.  And I agree.  But for me, what I find so miraculous about Mary’s story is that it all happens so darned fast.  Mary is able to move from being perplexed and pondering, to asking “How can this be?”, to affirming “Let it be”, all in a matter of 12 verses and one afternoon and one conversation.

I know that for me, and I suspect for many of us, the journey of how we respond to God’s call, the movement from being perplexed to “How can this be?” to “Let it be” is a journey of many chapters, not just 12 verses.  It’s a journey of many voices, not just one messenger.  It’s a journey not of one afternoon, but of a lifetime.  And there will be twists and turns along the way.

But at a certain point, like Mary, we find our voice.  Mary has been called to bear a child, yes, but she has also been called to be a prophet, one who speaks the word of God, who proclaims a word of hope, who names the things that must change in our world and who points to God as the agent of that change, past, present and future.  Once Gabriel has gone, Mary races to the home of her relative Elizabeth in a distant village.  Perhaps she wants to check out what the messenger had told her; perhaps she is escaping the scandal that would surely erupt in her hometown when her pregnancy becomes known.

Whatever the reason, when she encounters Elizabeth, she finds her voice, and she sings the song that we read together this morning, the one we know as Mary’s Song, or the Magnificat.  It is a radical song of protest.  It is a song sung by an oppressed people, people of faith, in defiance of the empire.  It is a prophetic song.

It is a song best imagined on the lips of a 13 year old girl, perhaps one of the girls who is being held hostage in Nigeria, or on the lips of a young refugee forced to flee her village in Iraq.  It is a song of defiance and revolution, of trust and of hope.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,

my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour; *

for he has looked with favour on his lowly servant.

From this day all generations will call me blessed: *

the Almighty has done great things for me,

and holy is his name.

He has mercy on those who fear him *

in every generation.

He has shown the strength of his arm, *

he has scattered the proud in their conceit.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, *

and has lifted up the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things, *

and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel, *

for he has remembered his promise of mercy,

the promise he made to our fathers, *

to Abraham and his children for ever.

God sent his messenger to Mary to call her to the purposes for which she was intended.  Mary, in her response moves from being perplexed, to questioning, to accepting, and in so doing she found her voice and she changed the world.

May we too find our voice in response to God’s call.

Amen.

Turtles, Pointing and Fluff (Advent 3, Dec 14 2014)

Homily:  Yr B Advent 3, Dec 14 2014, St. Albans

Readings:  Isaiah 61.1-4,8-11; Ps 126; 1Thess 5.16-24; Jn 1.6-8,29-29

A while ago, as part of my training for ordained ministry, I was fortunate enough to have an internship in the Seychelles Islands.  The Seychelles are a small group of islands way out in the middle of the Indian Ocean.  It’s a special place, and the ocean around the islands is teeming with life.  And among the amazing creatures that are found in the waters of the Seychelles are giant sea turtles.  And I wanted to see them.

One day while I was there, one of the locals took us out in his boat and it was a windy day, there were waves and whitecaps.  And as we were motoring along, our driver said to me all of a sudden, “Look a turtle!”  He was pointing, and I looked in the direction he was pointing, and all I saw was waves and water.  But he kept pointing, and he turned the boat in that direction, and sure enough, when we got close enough, and I mean almost right on top of it, I saw the turtle that he had spotted.  We watched it for a bit, then it went under, and we kept going.   A few minutes later it happened again.  “Look, a turtle!” cried the driver, and I looked and I saw nothing but miles of ocean flecked with whitecaps.  But he kept pointing, and I kept looking, and sure enough when we got close enough, I too could see the turtle.  And that happened over and over again.  By the end of our boat trip we’d seen many turtles, but I only saw them because of our driver who kept pointing at them and bringing us to see them.

Sometimes in order to see things, we need someone to point, someone to let us know where to look.

“There was a man sent from God whose name was John.  He came as a witness to testify to the light.  He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.”

This week in our gospel reading, we again encounter John.  Last week, we met John, as the baptizer, as the voice crying in the wilderness “prepare the way of the Lord”.  We saw John baptizing, we saw John preaching, we saw John gathering crowds and calling for repentance and just living.  But this week, in the fourth Gospel, we see John doing something else, something which is even more important.  We see John as the witness pointing to Jesus.

John came as a witness, as one who testifies, as one who points to Jesus.  He is the one who is able to see God's presence and action standing right in front of him in the person of Jesus.  He is the voice crying out, and that voice cries “Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me.  Look here he is, here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

John points to Jesus.  Artists throughout the ages have captured this.  In Rembrandt’s painting of John the Baptist, we see John pointing forward with outstretched arm, his whole body leaning towards Jesus, imploring people to turn and see him.

Matthias Grunewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece is even more explicit.  It shows John pointing to Jesus with an oversized index finger.  John points, he is a witness, the one who was sent to testify to the light.

Last Sunday we talked about the call that each one of us receives to “Prepare the way of the Lord” and I asked you to think about the ways that you and I can respond to that call.  We talked about Isaiah’s vision of going on a journey back home, and of removing the obstacles that stand in our way.  We talked about John’s proclamation of a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  We talked about the opportunities in our own lives for repentance and forgiveness, for removing obstacles and lifting burdens, for walking together on our journey home to God.  There are many things we can do to prepare the way of the Lord.

But the most important thing that we need to do is to point to Jesus.

You see, we’ve been invited to be active participants in what God is doing, and that is a great joy and a privilege.  But fundamentally we also have to recognize that God is the one who prepares the way, and our most important task is to bear witness to what God is doing, to testify to the light, and to point.  Just like John.

John points to Jesus.  We too are to point to Jesus.  I mean that in two senses.

First, we are to point to Jesus of Nazareth, the Word become flesh, who was born, lived, died and was raised again.  We are to tell his story, the story of how through him, God came to be with us, God was present in the world, and God acted in the world.

But we are also to point to God’s continuing presence and action in the world today.  To the way in which God acts in our lives, to how God continues to be Immanuel, God with us.  Jesus, who was raised, is still with us, inspiring us and teaching us and encouraging us through his Spirit, and we need to point to that.

Because unless we’re pointing, people won’t see.  I can tell you from experience, it’s hard to see turtles.  When I was in that boat in the Seychelles, all I could see was water until someone pointed to the turtles.  It’s a bit like that.

There are many people who don’t see God’s presence and action in their lives.  There are many times when we don’t see it either.  So when you do see it, point.  Articulate it for yourself.  Tell others about it.  Ponder it.  Witness.  Testify.

There is a lot of darkness in our world.  We talked about that two weeks ago.  One of the most important things that we can do for ourselves and for others when things are dark is to point to the light, the light that has come, the light that is coming, the light which shines in the darkness and will not be overcome by the darkness.  Notice it.  See it.  Point to it.

Opportunities abound.  What would happen, for example, if we were to re-imagine this season of Advent and Christmas as a time when we point to Jesus, to God’s presence in the world, to the light that comes into the darkness?

This is a time of year when we do a lot of stuff.  Try asking yourself this question:  how do all the things I do during this time of year point to Jesus?  How can I re-shape them to point to Jesus?  How can I re-imagine them as pointing to God’s presence and action in the world?

Let me try a few examples:

Many of us buy gifts for others at Christmas.  How can you use your gift buying to point to Jesus?  Do you tell people that the reason you give gifts at Christmas is as a way of remembering God’s greatest gift to us, the gift of Jesus to the world?  Does your gift buying witness to the fact that everything you have, your life, your time and your money is a gift from God, and that we are to use all these to do the things that God is calling us to do?  If we did want to point to Jesus with our gifts this Christmas, would that change the sort of gifts we buy and to whom we give them?

Another example:  many of us travel at Christmas.  When you travel, do you use this as a way of recalling the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem?  Do you use this to think about an even greater journey, the journey of God to be present with us in the form of the baby Jesus that first Christmas and in the form of God’s Holy Spirit who is with us this very moment?  How does your travel witness to what God has done for us?

One more:  we often gather for great meals around the table at Christmas.  Even now, some of you are planning, and buying turkeys and doing your baking.  How do our table gatherings point to Jesus?  Do we recall that Jesus made meals and celebrations a key component of his ministry?  Do we use our table gatherings to point to Jesus ministry to the poor and the outcast of society?  Do we practice the reconciliation and forgiveness that Jesus taught as we gather at the table?

The whole point of Advent and Christmas is to point to Jesus.  The rest is just fluff.  John got it right.  How are we doing?

Amen.

Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord (Advent 2, Dec 7 2014)

Homily:  Yr B Advent 2, Dec 7 2014, St. Albans

Readings:  Is 40.1-11; Ps 85.1-2,8-13; 1 Pet 3.8-15a; Mk 1.1-8

A few years ago I went to a production of the musical Godspell put on by the theatre program at Canterbury High School.  Godspell is the story of the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God, set as a musical theatre production.

We were in our seats, waiting for the show to begin, eagerly anticipating.  As we approached show time, the lights went off, the theatre darkened and a silence fell over the audience.  We all looked forward, straining our eyes towards the stage, trying to catch a glimpse of the actors, waiting for the story to begin.

And then, from behind us, unexpectedly, out of the darkness, out of the wilderness, a single voice rang out:

Prepare ye the way of the Lord.   Prepare ye the way of the Lord.

Over and over the voice cried out, slowly at first, but then with increasing urgency.  I have to tell you, it sent shivers down my spine.  And still, no one appeared on the stage.  And it soon dawned on me that the voice was crying out to us.  We were being called to be part of the story before the Jesus story even begins.  To prepare the way of the Lord.  To make his paths straight.

Mark’s gospel begins the same way.  The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God does not begin with Jesus.  The greatest story ever told begins with a voice crying out to you and me, “prepare the way of the Lord.”  Before the Jesus story even begins, we are called to be part of the story. 

What does it mean to prepare the way of the Lord?

We begin where Mark’s gospel begins, with the prophet Isaiah.  Isaiah’s people are living in exile, captives in Babylon, far from home, separated from their homeland by a vast desert wilderness.  They yearn to go home, but after 50 long years in exile, they have lost hope of ever seeing their homes again. And God says to the prophet Isaiah, “Comfort, O comfort my people.”  Tell them that they are going home.  Give them hope.  And he gives Isaiah a vision of a great highway through the wilderness, the way back home, straight through the desert, where every obstacle has been removed, the valleys shall be lifted up, the mountains made low and the rough places made smooth.  God is coming to lead his people back home, the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all will see it.  Prepare the way of the Lord!

And so to prepare the way of the Lord is to get ready to go on a journey, the journey of a lifetime, the way back home from exile.  How would you prepare to go on that journey?  What would you take with you, what would you leave behind?  What obstacles would you have to remove in order to get there?  What are the mountains in your life that would have to be made low, what are the valleys that need raising up, which are the rough places that are going to have to be smoothed out?

The greatest event in history is about to happen, the glory of the Lord is about to be revealed.  How are you going to get ready for that?  How do you prepare for the coming of God into your life?  Are you waiting?  Are you ready?  Are you watching?  Are you looking in the right direction?

We are on the verge of going home from exile, whatever and wherever our exile is.  For many in our world today, exile is still a geographic and political exile as it was for Isaiah’s people. But exile can take many forms.  For many there is spiritual exile.  Alienation.  Broken relationships.  Despair.  Estrangement from God.  Loss of faith, loss of purpose in life.  Our spiritual home is to be with God and to be with each other as God’s children, that’s what we were made for.  But too often, we are alone, in exile.  God is calling us home, God is coming to bring us home.  Prepare the way of the Lord.  Which way do we turn, what burdens must be removed so that we can begin the journey back home?

John, the baptizer, appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and the people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him.  Something new was about to happen, the story of how God is coming to bring his people home is about to begin, and John has been sent ahead of us to prepare the way.  And he does so through symbolic action.  John takes the people who have come out to the wilderness and plunges them into the river Jordan as they confess their sins, washing them clean, giving them a fresh start, immersing them in the story of God’s people, and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

Repentance is a turning around, a change in the direction of one’s life, a movement towards God.  God is about to do something new, about to enter human history in a totally unprecedented way, and you need to get ready, you need to be turned the right way ‘cause you don’t want to miss this.

Forgiveness is the lifting of a burden, the removal of whatever it is that is weighing you down, whatever it is that prevents you from seeing, whatever it is that creates estrangement in your relationships, whatever it is that keeps you from going on the journey that God is calling you on.  Prepare the way of the Lord.  All obstacles are to be removed, the mountains made low and the rough places smoothed.  Forgiveness starts to do that, it takes that weight off your shoulders so that once more we can raise our eyes and see God when he comes.

The greatest story ever told begins with a call to you and me to get ready, to prepare the way of the Lord.  Because this is our story.  We don't get to just sit back and watch how it all plays out.  It is our story, it is a sacred story and it is a story yet to be completed.  Today we hear the beginning of the gospel of Mark.  Over the course of the coming year, we will read all the way through Mark’s gospel, and when we get to the last word we will discover that there is no ending.  Because the story begins with us, and it continues with us and it isn’t finished yet.  This coming week, every single one of us will be given a hundred and one opportunities to contribute to the story, to write the next chapter, to keep it going, to keep it alive.  We will have opportunities to repent and we will have opportunities to forgive and be forgiven.  We will have opportunities to walk together on our journey.  This is the story of a God who is coming into our lives to bring us back home, and we are invited to be active participants.

Prepare ye the way of the Lord.

Amen.