Resetting an Open Holiday Table

as posted on the Reconciling Ministries Network blog

Family legend tells that the year after my parents separated, my mom faced the prospect of her first Thanksgiving alone. She accepted an invitation to the home of a friend, and my family and I have been spending alternating Thanksgiving holidays with them ever since, adding spouses and children and new traditions along the way, changing the location but keeping the love and laughter that I have always associated with my favorite holiday.

My nuclear family system is undergoing tremendous and unanticipated change. Change of the sadness and separation variety. With my two children spending the holiday break with their father, Thanksgiving represented for me my first long stretch away from my kids since the new visitation rotation started, my first holiday separated from the joys of my life, and my first Thanksgiving without a delightful, warm, amply-set table, packed to capacity with mismatched flatware and ringing with the noise of little people’s laughter.

Your basic hell.

Invitations to each of my parents’ houses did little to ease that pain; the thought of being surrounded by family—but not the family I missed—stung deeply. When I imagined myself with the rest of the guest list, as literally every other person who would be at each gathering spent the holiday with at least one of their children, there was no way I could imagine keeping turkey and stuffing in my belly.

Sometimes, family isn’t the place we can be. Or should be. Or is healthy or safe for us to be.

Sometimes, when family feels broken, what is really happening is a breaking open.

Fortunately, I know and love a lot of people who have a much more expansive concept of family. I’m part of this crazy connection of Methodists, and reconciling ones at that. I called a friend, who called a friend, and I ended up with a much more inclusive, broadly defined family celebration than the typical Thanksgiving crowd: four reconciling United Methodists, some good cooking (duck, not turkey), some shared laughter and song (okay only two of us sang), and a supportive space for tears, joy, and rejuvenation.

If that sort of feast isn’t a foretaste of the inbreaking of the kin-dom, I don’t know what is.

My expectation of the holiday stretch from Thanksgiving through the New Year isn’t born out of magazines and Martha Stewart, and doesn’t need to be picture-perfect. It does, however, include a strong focus on connection and love and family, and I’m experiencing what so many already know: that family is defined by who we love and cherish, the people with whom we set (and clear) the table, the ones who welcome our grief and our celebration.

In the Thanksgiving episode of the NBC show “The New Normal,” the main characters define for themselves a difference between relatives and family. While the former might represent obligation and dysfunction, places of pain or alienation, the latter are the ones with whom we choose to surround ourselves, the people who make a holiday special and sacred. I found mine, and it’s a vast and diverse family, some of whom are even related to me.

This season, may your places of brokenness be places of breaking open, and may your gatherings be filled with love and laughter and the deep joy of chosen family.

Link love

Here is an column about the #DreamUMC movement I wrote for UM Reporter.

I’m still working on a summary of last week’s chat– hopefully by the end of the day, and Jeremy is hard at work on the break down of work/interest groups. Stay tuned to the facebook page and twitter account!

Diary of a Delegate: TwitterSermon

I had a very strange experience last night. I preached a sermon on Twitter. It had been a very hard day (more on that another time) and I had left the voting area (called the bar– not a social establishment for beverage!), and sat for a time with some friends, members of the GLBTQ and ally community. The music began, and a joyful liturgical dance that moved me deeply, but I felt such a disconnect because my friends and loved ones were cut off from the worship, both by the voting area, and by some of the votes we had taken.

Members of the Common Witness Coalition, as I was writing, the “church”– the broken, internally and externally wounded, frightened church– I was thinking of was not the UMC. It was the Coalition. My word is for us in our pain.

I wavered on the edge, and I began to write:

Having a hard time crossing back into the (voting) bar. #NoBarriersInWorship #gc2012 #GC12love

Okay that prayer changed my mind. Maybe I can worship now. #gc2012 #GC12love #NoBarriersInWorship

I’m having a really tough time with this service. It’s profoundly powerful #NoBarriersInWorship #gc2012 #GC12love

Precisely because of its power I feel the disconnect. #NoBarriersInWorship #gc2012 #GC12love

(we sang the wonderful song “You Are Mine,” which includes the lyric “I will call your name, embracing all your pain, stand up, now walk and live.” and the refrain “I love you and you are mine.”)

How many people want to hear us say “I love you and you are mine”? So much pain to embrace. #NoBarriersInWorship #gc2012 #GC12love

That’s right folks. I’m preaching on twitter. Deal with it. #NoBarriersInWorship #gc2012 #GC12love

The music this evening has reminded us of our boundless love of God & God’s boundless love of us. #gc2012 #GC12love #twittersermon

Would that our love of one another were as boundless, moving us to shout, clap, leap, or sigh and weep. #gc2012 #GC12love #twittersermon

I didn’t preach this week. I’ve got a sermon inside aching to be born, and I’m 1500 miles from my pulpit. #gc2012 #twittersermon #GC12love

(we heard the story of Jesus asleep in the boat as the disciples cried out in fear at the wind and waves, until Jesus awoke– Lord, save us! We are perishing!– and rebuked the storm)

We are indeed perishing. Not as a church or institution- not important. We’re perishing as a beloved community. #gc2012 #twittersermon

We are perishing because we do not adequately love each other, trust each other. #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

Huddled in our broken, leaky boat, we are terrified. Jesus sleeps on. #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

And we think Jesus is sleeping because he doesn’t care. So we yell louder in our fear and distrust. #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

Hey Jesus! Don’t you see that we are dying over here? Don’t you care? Save us! #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

(I’m having a Pentecost moment. There’s another sermon in this room, and I hear it too) #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012 (The preacher in the room was preaching a sermon that was sort of in conversation with what I was writing, sort of source material, and sort of separate)

Afraid, and seemingly alone, we forget that Jesus hasn’t abandoned us, he’s in the boat with us. #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

He’s sleeping, not because he doesn’t care, but because he & he alone is not afraid. He is not perishing. #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

When we shake him awake, begging him to save us, he utters a word not of power but of peace. #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

He doesn’t tell us who is right. He doesn’t make a theological claim. He invites peace. #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

Beloved, we are not at peace. We are in the midst of the tempest. A storm of our own making. #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

Our distrust, discord, and disconnect roil around us. Our brokenness threatens to pull us under. #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

(can’t stop now) #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

Christ, save us! Do you not see that we are perishing? #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

Peace. Peace be with you. Peace be among you. peace be between you. #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

May we love & trust God as much as Jesus does, at peace in the leaky, storm tossed boat. #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

(I received and replied to another tweet: “@KVG_DC: @pastorbecca Thank you for captioning that wonderful sermon…” lol not captioning brother. #twittersermon is my own words.)

May we love & trust one another as much as we love and trust Christ. Leaping, clapping, sighing, weeping. #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

Amen. #twittersermon #GC12love #gc2012

I feel lighter & better. I have never done anything like that. I’d say I don’t know how it happened, but… #twittersermon #spirit #gc2012

 

More link love

Thanks, UM Reporter, for reposting my reflections on the death penalty.

(here’s my original post, and one that’s specific to the UMC).

I love Jesus, but I kinda like religion too

A lot of folks on facebook have been posting links to this video, where political science graduate and non-profit worker Jefferson Bethke seeks to “highlight the difference between Jesus and false religion” (text of video description). Mr. Bethke is a self-proclaimed healed pornography addict, and attends the Federal Way campus of Mars Hill Church (dot com) in Washington. For those keeping track at home, that’s the mega church pastored by Mark Driscoll (as opposed to Mars Hill Bible Church [dot org] in Michigan, pastored by Rob Bell– man, did that confuse me for a while). I won’t try to articulate my concerns about pastor Driscoll, but will refer you to the excellent critique of his particular brand of (in my mind, masochistic) Christianity by Rachel Held Evans here and here.

Jefferson Bethke’s YouTube video has some merits and some pitfalls in my mind, and so I’m torn when I see it on facebook on my friends’ feed or as a recommended link by The Christian Left. Here are my thoughts on religion and Jesus and this particular video.

Pros:

The video is thought-provoking and invites reflection and discussion. Case in point. Anything that encourages us to think about our faith instead of blindly following gets bonus points in my book.

The video challenges certain assumptions about religion and Christianity, which I think is helpful. For example, Bethke says that being a Christian and a Republican are not the same thing (nor are being a Christian and a Democrat!), and that we should be freed by Christ, not enslaved by what he calls “behavioral modification” through the rules and chores that he sees as religion. I think breaking free of the rule-based way of thinking about religion is important.

The speaker insists that Jesus doesn’t support self-righteousness. I agree, although I’m not totally sold that the video succeeds in demonstrating that.

The video clearly separates Jesus from religion with what I see as a beautiful distinction (if phrased in gendered language that makes me gag) “Religion is man (sic) searching for God; Christianity is God searching for man.” Further, the words separate religion, which Bethke says he hates, from the church, which he says he loves, and that makes for good reflection as well. I fully agree with leaving behind some or all of institutional religion to follow Jesus, if that is what is needed.

We are asked “Would your church let Jesus in?” Not a new question, but an important one.

Finally, there are some beautiful words, phrases, and ideas here. I like “Religion says ‘do’; Jesus says ‘done’.” But my favorite:

If grace is water, then the church should be an ocean. It’s not a museum for good people; it’s a hospital for the broken.

Preach.

Cons:

I’m not sure what the speaker thinks religion is. He distinguishes it from “Christianity” as well as from Jesus, says he hates it, calls it an infection, and blames it for wars. But I’m not entirely sure what he means by “religion.” I suspect he may mean “institution,” but it’s not clear. I would define the broad concept of religion as a set of beliefs about the Divine (theology) and a particular way of living out beliefs (praxis), held in common by 2 or more people in a given place and time.

The video then blames this ambiguous concept of religion for war and attacks it for failing to feed the poor. Since religion, as I define it, is a series of beliefs and practices, it doesn’t really *do* or fail to do anything. Rather, religious people carry out actions and explain them using their theology and praxis. Religious people have gone on crusades and committed genocide, slavery, and rampant discrimination, claiming religion as their motivator. Religious people have also preached civil rights, resisted apartheid, lived among lepers, and given all their wealth to the poor, claiming their religion as their motivation. Maybe this is a little like saying guns don’t kill people, but I see religion as a tool, an implement, and in the wrong hands, yes, a weapon. It’s what we do with it that matters.

Bethke also decries religion for being a human invention. While I like the above-mentioned distinction that religion is humanity’s search for God while Christ is God’s search for us, it is presented as if this is a bad thing. We cannot simply receive God’s searching for us separate from our human responses. Yes, religion, church, prayers, worship songs, cathedrals, ministry programs, global institutionalized church, and YouTube videos are all human-made. And they are imperfect. What else would they be? The fallible, broken, human construct of religion is humanity’s response to and search for God. We’re still working on it and we don’t get it right, but we’re in it together with one another and with the Holy. We might show *that* a little grace, too. We never know how the God of the Universe might be able to use even the broken vessels of the church, her people, and each individual person of faith. I hear God’s good at that.

Having rejected and resented “religion,” Bethke replaces religion with something else that looks a lot like… religion. He replaces it with a series of beliefs about the Divine and implies a way of living out some of those beliefs in practice.

Furthermore, I don’t like the theology he presents in place of “religion.” It’s very strong on substitutionary atonement (the belief that Jesus took on our sin and bled and died and did we mention the blood? for us– you can read some of my reactions to this theology here). It’s also very dominated by masculine, hierarchical, and violent language. I get squeamish about blood dripping down Jesus’ face and him dangling on a cross thinking of me. Just not my thing. It may move us away from adherence based on fear to adherence based on guilt, but I’m not sure that’s a drastic improvement.

Finally, rejecting religion undermines the important function of accountability it serves. The video itself suggests some good theology and some bad, and the praxis is largely unknown or perhaps irrelevant. In the context of a “church” or dare we say a “religion,” there are other believers present against whose wisdom we check our theology and praxis. If my relationship with Jesus teaches me to hate gay people or club baby seals, who is to correct me if “religion” is vile and my personal interpretation is all that matters? Rather, the institution of religion, for all its faults, serves as a clearing house, a sounding board, a discernment group. Call it what you like, but it keeps the crazies at bay. When corrupted, yes, it mistakes the prophets for the fanatics (because there are fine lines already), and Jesus is crucified. But when it tries to let God work, it can also lift up the Desmond Tutus and the Mother Teresas, and it can resist the false prophets of Fred Phelps and his ilk. All of us individually searching for God are bound to make mistakes. In the grouped-together theology and practice of religion, our mistakes can indeed be amplified and multiplied, and more to our shame. But the good that we do, the times that we reject discrimination and violence, the voices we lift for the outcast and oppressed, the compassion we extend in word and deed– these can also be amplified and multiplied and tested, empowered, and equipped.

In Summary:

I applaud the video for raising questions and provoking discussions, for challenging outdated assumptions about religion and for lifting important, beautiful, inspirational concepts about what the love and grace of God are like. I support the sentiment of serving Jesus, even where that breaks from the institutionalized church (perhaps especially there!). I agree with the critique against what the video’s text description calls false religion. I hate false religion, too. But I remain unconvinced that the theology and (lack of) praxis lifted up here in place of such false religion are better, or a place that I would feel comfortable, and I believe the demonization and rejection of religion as a whole is throwing the baby (possibly the baby Jesus) out with the bath water. Instead, I would affirm the rejection of false religion, and the call to make the church and individuals therein more faithful to the true ministry of Christ. Let us swim in the ocean of grace.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for my blog. How nice of them (and how interesting to read!).

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 16,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Love, Personhood, and Abuse in Twilight

Reading this excellent reflection on the Twilight: Breaking Dawn 1 movie got me all riled up again about why I dislike Twilight, and since it wasn’t posted on this blog, I re-post for your reading enjoyment my August 2009 review of the Twilight series as compared with the Harry Potter series (medium-grade spoilers for both ensue).

Overall, I am hugely unimpressed with the Twilight saga, and baffled that it is so often compared to Harry Potter. This seems to me the way my parents were baffled when The New Kids on the Block were compared to the Beatles. Sensation-causing boy band? yes. Legend reshaping music for all time? not so much. Did Stephanie Meyer and her saga make a splash in the YA fantasy genre? yes. Was her work creative, well-written, or life-changing? no.

Say what you will, doubters, but JK Rowling created a world unlike any other, with talents and vocabulary– and sports even– unlike anything we’d ever imagined. Her characters, although she sold some of them short (like Snape, and Sirius and Remus), were multifaceted and identifiable. In her world, girls found role models in strong and heroic women– Hermione’s brilliance and courage which never made her unattractive, Ginny’s determination, Luna’s originality, Molly’s maternal force-of-nature, McGonagall’s wisdom, Tonks’– yeah, I dunno about her; I don’t really like Tonks (she’s a little– Bella– to me, plus, she stole her cousin’s man). Boys found role models, too, in Harry, of course, but also in the just-as-idolized cast of secondary male heroes: Ron’s loyalty which never–okay, once–wavered, Neville’s bravery that takes you by surprise at first, Remus and Sirius in their father-stand-in roles, Dumbledore’s brilliant and humorous mentoring, Snape’s redeemability that people somehow doubted, Fred and George’s humor and levity and loss of innocence.

Rowling’s message, ultimately, is in the triumph of love of friends and family and romance and the world around you, over the forces of evil and death, no matter how dire. She wrote of love that leads to sacrifice, redemption, and transformation, and she consistently taught that the heroes are not always the people we expect, not always the strong or the beautiful or the famous, but sometimes also the Nevilles and Lunas and Hagrids and Snapes of the world. Her message, when summed up and placed in the hands of children, is something like this: be yourself, because there is beauty and strength in that; follow your heart, love with all you’ve got, and you can overcome the horrible things that are sometimes part of this otherwise beautiful, magical world.

Stephanie Meyer also believes in the power of love. But she believes in love between two people, and only two people, and for all time two people. Everyone has to find their mate, their perfect pair, and then that sets everything right. In fact, this is so important, that she makes it literally impossible for any of the main characters to *not* be in love with someone. The Cullen family is not complete until Edward has his Bella, and Carlisle was willing to go to great lengths in his younger days to try to accomplish this. The werewolves not only fall in love, but *imprint* so totally that they are not *capable* of choice beyond that imprint. This is what Meyer thinks love is– not a choice, not an effort, not a journey. It is a moment when you imprint– really, are Bella and Edward any different than the werewolves in this?– when you see the object of your forever affection, and you are hooked. Object is a good word there. Stripping love of the choice, the work, the journey, also strips the individuals in love of their personhood. They are objects to each other. They do not grow, they do not change. They are frozen in time. They are crystalline, shatterproof, hard and flawless, like diamonds. They are to be admired, by one another, for eternity. This seems pointless to me. I don’t quite know what it is, but I don’t think it’s love.

In their perfection, they are interesting. Regular humans, you see, particularly the girl humans like Bella, are uninteresting. Bella has no redeeming qualities, no strength, no beauty, no confidence, no talent whatsoever in her mortal life. Only Edward sees value and beauty in her, mostly in the way she smells. She defines herself by the males around her: by Charlie, Jacob, and Edward, and toward the end of that existence, by the child she carries who is Edward’s. As an immortal, Bella is strong, beautiful, and possesses a talent that mystifies and impresses. She is also totally defined by her role as a wife and a mother. An object. This is so contrary to say, ordinary, shy little Neville, finding the courage to stand up to his friends in the first Harry Potter book, and to stand up to his enemies, most dramatically, by the fifth. That change in Neville is maturity, growth, something the young reader can aspire to. The change in Bella is wrought by Edward– by his presence as much as his venom– and either way, to me reinforces that she is weak and uninteresting until he comes into her life, that the strength she finds has nothing to do with her own self, but with the conditions and the creatures around her.

I read the Twilight books, as I read so many things, to see what all the fuss was about, and to see if I would recommend them to my child, and to my friends’ and congregants’ children. I don’t get the fuss, and don’t recommend the books because I don’t find them well-written or interesting. But that’s not the extent of my criticism. I recommend *not* reading the saga, because I think it teaches young women particularly (who are the target demographic) a negative message, ingrained in our culture, and in no need of reinforcement. I think it teaches that girls are dull, powerless, and without talent, that the only thing to which they can aspire is to be loved by a man (or more), and to be worthy of his affection and somehow hold on to him forever. It teaches that love finds its pinnacle in romantic love, which is about perfection and pairing off (at the climax of the last book, Bella observes people expressing love and farewell in the face of almost certain death. What does she see? couples kissing. even though there are friends and parents and siblings and children, the love that people cling to is *only* the romantic love). It teaches that while love may conquer the evils of the world, it also conquers you, stripping you of choice, of change, of self. Ultimately, then, love is not love, but another form of control, another way to define and be defined by the people around us, a thing to freeze in time rather than journey with. A far more demonic message, if you ask me, than any terror a horde of vampires could concoct.

Inspiration and Hope: Why I am part of MFSA

I am part of the Methodist Federation for Social Action because it both inspires me and gives me hope. For me, MFSA lifts up the greatest strengths and addresses the greatest areas of weakness in my denomination.

One of the biggest things that drew me to The United Methodist Church as a college student was the denomination’s commitment to mission work that equips and empowers, and never uses assistance as a bait-and-switch conversion tool (read more about the UMC’s values with respect to relief work here). So many times, I hear people who are skeptical about organized religion say things like, “Christians talk a good game, but they don’t actually try to live like Jesus.” I believe that the UMC and MFSA stand in counterpoint to this view. Although not an official board or body of the UMC, for me MFSA has functioned as the heart and soul of our denomination, inspiring us to continually seek peace and people’s rights, to address systems of poverty, promote progressive initiatives, and work for justice in our own church. Foremost for me, I appreciate a strong witness for pacifism, as I believe that organized religion has too often been used to sound the drums of war.

MFSA inspires me by holding my denomination to a high standard in seeking peace and justice, which I understand to be at the heart of the Reign of God as Jesus proclaimed it. That witness calls the UMC to be the best representation of Christ’s body that we can be.

And yet, we are far from perfect.

Like any human institution, my beloved denomination struggles to be a faithful witness to the vast and encompassing love of God. We fall short in our pacifism; we do not stand strongly enough in defense of the natural world, which we have been told to care for; we botch our inclusivity. We have not fully broken free of– let alone repented of– the racism and Anglo-North-American privilege that saturates so much of our movement. We cut couples off from the blessing of the church and deny the call of God to ministry in persons based on sexual orientation. And we spend so much time arguing about these things– particularly the last– that we neglect our call to be Christian community and extend the love of Christ to the world for its (and our!) transformation.

There are days when that list of shortcomings makes me want to give up.

But for the witness of MFSA, which reminds me that I am not alone. I am not the only one who wants to see a stronger pacifist stance. I am not the only one who weeps when I have to tell a couple I can’t marry them.

I am not the only one who believes that we cannot tend souls without tending bodies, and we cannot preach a just and inclusive Reign of God unless we work for a just and inclusive human society.

MFSA gives me hope by naming the places where The United Methodist Church needs to become more Christlike, and building community to lovingly call us to that work. None of us needs to carry the weight of our brokenness alone, nor shoulder the burden of our need for healing as a denomination.

And that’s why I’m part of the Methodist Federation for Social Action. Why are you?

poem for a hate group leader

Fred, Fred.

One day it’ll happen.

I don’t know when or how, but then none of us ever do.

Perhaps you’ll be blessed enough to die of old age. Or maybe disease will consume you, or the poison you spew take an inward toll. Or maybe, tragically, a grief-stricken family member at a funeral-turned-protest will snap, will become, only for a moment, half the monster you are.

I don’t hope for it. I don’t pray for it. I have lost loved ones, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, even you and your family, even though none of us can escape it.

But it comes to us all.

And on that day, when sorrow grips the Phelps household, when those who love you– if there are people in your circle still capable of such an emotion– gather to remember your life, to lift up whatever it is that you have accomplished and given to the world between and despite the hatred that consumed you, I have a single hope.

I hope thousands come to the funeral, and stand at a distance of three hundred feet or more.

And I hope they bring candles.

And flowers.

I hope they carry signs with messages of forgiveness, and hope, and prayer for comfort and healing.

I hope they shower upon your family every human decency, every kindness, every ounce of compassion you have tried to deny so many grieving families.

And I hope you are able to see, from whatever place a twisted soul like yours might call repose, or might call torment. I hope their compassion touches you beyond the grave, and you see how unlike you we have all remained, that you may know how very much you failed, how very much

you will always fail.

—

I do not disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision that hate speech is still protected as free speech. I support, on a civic level, the right of all people to espouse and articulate their views.

I refuse to accept, however, that hate speech is morally acceptable, is merely speech, or is without poisonous and violent ramification both for the targets of the vitriol and for those who spew it. I refuse to combat it with my own hatred, although that is often the most difficult choice I make. I will not let hatred use me as a conduit, and I will not let it go silently unanswered and unchallenged.

And I will never allow it to win.

Sermon notes: “Average Joe”

Due to a major technological glitch, all of my sermons from the month of December were deleted. Bummer; some of them were pretty good. But my favorite was the one from Advent 4 about Joseph, which was also tied to my Christmas Eve sermon. Since I promised a friend I would not lose my sermon notes, and then promptly did, here is my best recreation of my thoughts this Advent and Christmas.

Average Joe

(Sermon notes from December 19 and 24, 2010 – Matthew 1:18-25)

God is trying to tell us something scandalous in the Christmas story, but we don’t want to listen.

We carry on about how there’s a “war” against Christmas, but the truth is that we, the observers of Christmas, have sanitized it more than anyone else. We have stripped it of a huge portion of its meaning. We love to hear about the angels in their majesty and miracle. We love to talk about the wise men, or kings as we call them, and their expensive gifts and their expansive travels. We love to carry on about Mary, and gloss over her youth, her poverty, her status as a woman who might have been cast aside by her community, and focus instead on the miracle in her, God’s work in her, virginal, without sin herself.

We spend far less time on the shepherds– smelly, common types. And Joseph. Poor Joseph. We hardly ever mention him.

Joseph seems like a good enough guy, and by the time he comes into our story– only briefly, mentioned only once more in the Gospels after his son’s birth– he has very limited options. In Joseph’s time, a couple would be engaged for a period, and there was a formal ceremony for that, but the couple would not live together or be intimate until after the marriage was finalized and they had prepared a home to move into. But during this time, Joseph learns that Mary is pregnant. Clearly, he doesn’t totally buy her cover story; “the Holy Spirit,” yeah, right. But he loves this woman. And she tells him that she is pregnant, and so he has a couple of options. He can claim the child is his. This will mean that anyone who can do some simple math will figure out that Joseph is not a virtuous man, that he has violated the covenant of the engagement, and taken advantage of his fiancee’s trust prior to their marriage. He can denounce Mary, declare that she has been unfaithful to him and call off the marriage. If his does this, she will be shunned by her community, possibly disowned by her family to avoid deeper disgrace, and could be put to death. He loves her and doesn’t want to see this happen, but neither does he want to smear his own good name for something he has not done. So he chooses a third way, and decides to “divorce her quietly,” so she can go off into the country somewhere and have her baby quietly, and he can get on with his life.

But, the Gospel tells us, just as he’s decided to do this, and angel appears to him in a dream and tells him, “Do not be afraid…” Gotta love it when angels say that; it lets you know something really frightening is coming. But Joseph listens.

“Be not afraid,” the angel says. Take Mary as your wife.

Don’t be afraid of what people will say. Don’t fear for your reputation.

Don’t be afraid that she has been unfaithful to you; trust in what she is telling you.

Don’t be afraid– most importantly, most amazingly– don’t be afraid of what all this might mean, that the son you will raise is God’s own son, that you will be responsible for his childhood, his understanding of “father,” of “daddy,” the name he will use to address his Father in heaven, too.

And Joseph, inexplicably, miraculously, Joseph says yes. Like Mary– aren’t they perfect for each other!– he says yes to God.

He takes the angel’s word. He casts aside his fear. He marries his fiancee. When her child is born, he names him. I was reminded that in the Judean culture of the time, for a man to name a child is to claim him as his own. In claiming him as his own, he adopts him into the lineage of the Davidic line. You see, the people of Israel were waiting for a Messiah who would be a king in the tradition and line of David, and Jesus gets that through Joseph. Mary’s yes to God allows Jesus to be Lord; Joseph’s yes allows him to be King. Mary allows him to be God; Joseph allows him to be human.

And here’s the thing: Joseph isn’t special. He’s just an ordinary guy, your average Joe. He’s an ordinary guy who does an extraordinary thing. He is no different than you or I.

Which brings us to the scandal inside of Christmas.

The scandal is that the Christmas story isn’t only, I would argue, isn’t even primarily, the story of God performing a great miracle. It isn’t only, or primarily, the story of how God can bend the laws of nature, break into the world despite the world, reveal God’s self in the miraculous, the supernatural. The Christmas story is the story of God working in the ordinary, the plain, the simple: Asking a simple man to give up fear and reputation and distrust so he can say yes to God’s presence. Growing and taking shape in a poverty-stricken teenager, and then being born through nothing more, and certainly nothing less splendid than the miracle of human birth. Announcing this birth, this entry into the world, to the smelly, uncouth shepherds on the ordinary hilltop, trying their best to stay awake in the dark and mind-numbing boredom of their night shift.

The scandal is that God appears to us, as to the shepherds, in the ordinary moments of our lives, to the ordinary people in the world. The scandal is that God breaks in not despite us ordinary, average people, but through us. God calls to us and tells us not to be afraid. God asks us to say yes, yes to letting Christ be born in us and into the life of the world.

But to do this, we have to cast our fear aside. we have to be willing, as ordinary people, to do extraordinary things. Like good old average Joseph, we have to be not afraid– not afraid of what people think and say and do, not afraid of being a fool or at least a fool for love, not afraid of taking on the crushing responsibility of nurturing the Christ-child, letting God grow in our lives, our families, our world.

Where do you need to say yes to God this Christmas? Where do you need to seek God on the ordinary hilltops of your everyday life? What angels must you heed? What fear must you cast out so Christ may be born in you today?

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray; cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell; o come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!

Amen.

(O Little Child of Bethlehem, stanza 4)