Epiphany A - Something Dark

Something dark happened yesterday. A shooter walked into a Safeway in Arizona and let loose a barrage of bullets that killed six people, including a federal judge, a former social worker turned Congressional aid, and a nine year old girl. The target of the shooting was Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Every week when we assemble in worship, someone in this room brings something dark with them. During prayers of the people, we pray for people going through divorces, people living with addiction, nations and peoples torn apart by strife and war. We pray for people living with cancer. We lift up the names of families living with tragedy upon tragedy: suicides, deaths, financial ruin. The world is not short of dark times.

January 6 was Epiphany. Twelve days after Christmas Day, the Church celebrates the arrival of the magi or the Wise Men at the house of Mary and Joseph where they bring gifts to the Christ-child. Herod, who was the King of the Jews, was frightened by the news that a new “king” may be born. He called the Magi to him and commanded them to collaborate with him in eliminating this threat. Just a few verses later (16-18), Herod, in an attempt to quell his competition, sends his men to kill all boys of Jesus’ approximate age. This passage is often called the Slaughter (or Massacre) of the Innocents.

This political setting is important if we are to grasp the truly amazing nature of Epiphany. We cannot hope to experience the power of the light, the power of the revelation, the faith of the Magi, or the love of Jesus’ parents without fully grasping the peril in which they find themselves. Unlike Luke’s Christmas story, which is filled with angels singing, shepherds proclaiming, and cloths swaddling, Matthew gives us a grim tale of Jesus’ birth. Matthew begins with 17 verses of family lineage and then a few short sentences of verbal contortion to show how Jesus could be both the son of the Holy Spirit and Joseph. Joseph then has a dream that tells him not to put Mary away from him even though she is pregnant and then the birth, as such, which goes like this: “24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.” That is the entire Christmas story. No inn. No wrapping him in swaddling clothes. No census. No manger. Stark and dark.

Into this walk the magi. The only thing we know about them is that they came from the east, they interacted with Herod, they brought gifts, and they fled. However, the lack of detail about them does not diminish the power of their witness. The story of the magi is filled with meaning: what they mean - what Epiphany itself means - is that by the power of God’s light the Word of God is revealed to all the world. Epiphany, the word, comes from the Greek word “epiphaneia,” which means “manifestation” or “revelation.” Epiphany is the celebration of God’s revelation or manifestation in Jesus the Christ to all the earth. God’s light splits the darkness of the world, and by its power, draws us near to the divine - even if we must walk through perilous places to get there, even if we must confront and be confronted by the powers and principalities of this life in dangerous and threatening ways. The magi, after giving Jesus their gifts, went home by another way, knowing that Herod sought them for no good end. Gregory the Great believed that this story meant that once we have come to know Jesus, we are forbidden to return the way we came to him. This story is about finding a new path in life - a path directed by God’s light, filled with God’s revelation, and known by our gifts.

God’s light does not ask for us to pretend that dark forces are not at work. The magi understood Herod’s nefarious intentions and responded to them. But, as the forces of this world try to keep us living in death and in fear, God’s light leads us by another way.

Whether one watches FOX News or MSNBC or listens to NPR, we are hearing spin on yesterday’s tragedy. This is tragedy upon tragedy. More than anything, what is happening in our public sphere causes me deep sorrow because in the midst of the darkness of our world, I see glimmers of God’s light at work in the world, desperately trying to lead us by another way. Is there not a less vilifying way to engage in public discourse? Is there not another way to discuss health care, immigration, abortion, taxation, trade agreements, government funding, homosexuality, and other difficult issues than to evoke mental images of Communism, Naziism, or Anarchy? Has the church no role in standing up and crying out for us to go by another way, and, by our own witness and example, show that God’s manifestation changes how we live in the world? People are hurting and our public discourse does nothing more than heap salt into wounds. We are not pursuing a common good. We are not lifting one another up in love and comfort. We are fighting like children, using grown up language and grown up tools. This is a dangerous combination.

Every day I receive articles - in magazines, online, and in periodicals - that talk about the demise of mainline Christian Protestantism. We live in a time and place that is suspicious about organized religion, that sees the hypocrisy in denominationalism, that shrinks away from choosing one “brand” of Christianity - or even religion - over another. But I know that the church is needed more than ever to bear witness to God’s manifestation among us. Our voice is needed to stand outside of partisan politics and to declare that there is another politics that claims our lives - God’s politics - and that this organization of public life relies upon personal and social holiness and leads to radical transformation. It is our holy and sacred duty to be strong in our Gospel proclamations and yet also humble, that we not fall into the hubris of believing we own this Gospel. We do not. It is something at work in our lives and in our congregations, changing us, leading us by God’s light onto paths down which we have not yet tread or mapped. This light leads us to confront governments that oppress and slaughter the innocents. It leads us to give the best of what we have and all that we are to the service of God’s holy and blessed word known and manifest in the weak and fragile bodies all around us. God’s light illumines our path and sends us into life by a different way, unable to return down the same path by which we came or even to remain the same people who first began our journey. The church is needed to be a place where soul conversation can rise above the partisan conversations that frame too much of our public discourse. The church is needed - the real church - the one that will repent when it is wrong, that seeks unity in God’s holy light, and that moves forward without apology to God’s holy dwelling place.

Something dark happened yesterday. And it will happen again. Today, tomorrow, and every day after that. But something light is also happening. And by this light, all the earth might be changed. We celebrate this light as we celebrate Epiphany, which begins a season filled with stories about call, transformation, and holy vocation. Walk this path with me. I would love to walk it with you. And, maybe at the end of it, we will wonder at God’s work in the world. Amen.

Christmas and START - Dreaming of Peace

The New Start Treaty is making progress toward a vote in the Senate, despite maneuverings among Republican leadership to grind the process to a stop. This treaty is necessary to maintain oversight over Russian and US nuclear arsenals. It steps in and takes over where the old Start treaty left off when it expired. And, it calls for reduction of nuclear warheads by both countries.

I remember as a child sitting in elementary school classes when we had bomb drills. I remember living in a town with a Strategic Air Command air base and listening to the regular sounding of the siren that would, perhaps, warn us of incoming missiles. These memories are part of me. In our world of increased terrorist threats and decreased personal liberty, I find the idea of the New Start Treaty very reassuring. In a country deeply divided by partisan politics, I find something uplifting that nine Republican senators have broken ranks with their leadership to advance this treaty.

This week I am frantically finishing Christmas Eve bulletins. Our Advent theme at Woodland Park United Methodist Church has been on "peacemaking." We have hung photos of peacemakers from around the world in our sanctuary. We handed out peace cranes to people so they would be reminded of peace every day. We have sung of peace, preached about peace, and prayed for peace. We hosted conversations with leaders from other cultures and faiths to discuss peace in their philosophical traditions and to dialogue about the obstacles their communities face regarding peace. Peace is on my mind, and, fortunately, has burrowed itself in my heart this Advent.

The New Start Treaty, as flawed as it may be, is about peace. It is a tangible work by two governments to advance the idea of peace. This is a rare thing. I hope those senators who understand themselves to be Christian will think about the connection among peace, Christmas, and this treaty. This week the Senate can do something quite sacred. It can make real in the world, if only in an incomplete and finite way, this peace for which we all yearn. They can make their faith real by voting to reduce the threat of nuclear war. I hope they will. I don't want the generations that follow us to have the same kinds of memories that I have of bomb drills and fear of strangers. I dream of a better world. I believe in the Prince of Peace. And, I hope my fellow Christians who are senators do as well.

Republicans, Christmas, Partisanship, and Governance

It may not surprise anyone who reads this blog where my political leanings lay. However, I try to keep this blog from being a divisive place. On the whole, people pretty much want the same things: meaning, safety, a sense of home, belonging, and peace. People - rich and poor, Democratic and Republican, people of all colors and hues - yearn for wholeness and completeness, and they dream of a world that is better than the one in which we currently live. We may not all agree on how to get there or exactly how that dream looks, but in the main, I don't think people are as far apart as we are generally portrayed.

Given that paragraph on unity, I now move into dangerous territory - political territory - a partisan landscape that is fraught with ideological land mines, presumptions, coded language, and suspicion. Yet, as I labor to prepare the people in the church I serve to welcome the Christ-child, Emmanuel, the Prince of Peace, my heart is heavy and my soul wearied by the theatrics that are taking place in Washington, D.C.

Both parties play childish games, hold up processes necessary for governing our nation, and resort to name calling. It is disgust of both parties that compels many people to identify as "Independents." The childish maneuverings of people who should otherwise know better push the potential voter into a malaise from which it is difficult to be shaken or moved. Many potential voters in our political process stay home rather than choose between two evils on election day.

Yet, the Republicans have taken a no holds barred approach lately - an approach that I feel compelled to denounce because they have now invoked my faith, my religion, my Savior, and my holy festivals in their political high jinks.

When the Republicans won the House and made gains in the Senate, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made this statement to the National Journal, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." While he appeared to ease back from that statement in an interview on FOX News, it seems that his party has not backed off it at all. They have been playing the obstructionist role with great verve. First, they would not allow any legislation to progress until passing a tax bill that includes an extension of the Bush tax cut for those making over $250,000. Once they won this battle, they did not step aside and allow other legislation fair hearing. Up next in their sights were the Health Care bill, DADT, the START Treaty, the Dream Act, and the omnibus bill. South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint went so far as to demand a reading on the floor of the Start Treaty, something that has been available for review for eight months. Senators John Thune (R-SD) and John Cornyn (R-TX) called a press conference to decry the wasteful spending and pork in the omnibus bill -pork they themselves put in - and when pressed by reporters why they were making hay out of a bill they helped draft and over earmarks which they requested, they fled the podium. Their basic defense: Yes, we put those in, but we're going to vote against this bill because it's full of pork. Even in an interview on Republican-friendly FOX News, Senator Cornyn did not give a cogent reason for requesting earmarks and then voting against them. But none of this is what drove me to write this post. What drove me to this post was the Republican invocation of Christmas as a reason to cease the work for which they have been elected.

Vice President Joe Biden has some feisty words for Republicans hiding behind Christmas (below). In Senators Thune and Cornyn's press conference regarding the omnibus bill, Senator Cornyn cried foul at the Democratic leadership jamming and cramming this bill down the necks of the newly elected at a time when they would like to be "shopping" and spending time with families. He seemed unconcerned with the families affected should the government grind to a halt. He seemed utterly distant from the realities of what occurs when the government is not fully funded and cannot operate even for the sake of national security. He seemed ignorant of the irony in allowing people to go unpaid and vital programs unfunded so that he can go home and celebrate the birth of Jesus, a poor child who would grow into the one whom Christians profess as Savior - healer and redeemer - of the earth. Moreover, he seemed completely ill-informed that Christmas doesn't begin until December 25 - not before. Christmas begins December 25 and lasts for twelve days. It does not begin in October or at Thanksgiving or a week before - it begins on December 25. That gives him plenty of time to do the work for which he was elected. Moreover, at the prospect of a post-Christmas Day session, Senator Jim DeMint rebelled against Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), saying that such a session would be "sacrilegious...deeply offensive to me and millions of working Americans across this country." And Senator Jon Kyl complained that coming back after Christmas would be "disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians and the families of all of the Senate."

As a working American and as a professed Christian, it is deeply offensive to me that people elected to be stewards and leaders of this nation and all that is in it are playing games with people's lives and with our security - and using the Prince of Peace as the one to hide behind. It is offensive to me when we cannot make steps toward peace by ratifying the START Treaty because it may give President Obama political leverage and because it may interrupt shopping. It is disrespectful of their office, of our nation, and to this Christian when people "use" the name Jesus to further their own self-interested partisanship to the detriment of the least, the last, the weakest, and the most vulnerable - the very ones to whom Jesus comes.

When Mary discovers that she is pregnant, she offers one of the most poetic proclamations of biblical faith when she gives God glory in singing what has come to be known by Christians as The Magnificat. She says:

My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has looked with favor on

the lowliness of his servant.

Surely, from now on all

generations will call me blessed;

for the Mighty One has done

great things for me,

and holy is his name.

His mercy is for those who

fear him

from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with

his arm;

he has scattered the proud in

the imaginations of their hearts.

He has brought down the

powerful from their

thrones,

and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with

good things,

and sent the rich empty away.

(Luke 1:46b-53)

If the Republican Christians in the Senate need to read something on the floor, I ask them to let the atheists, Muslims, and Jews head home and for them to stay and read Mary's song. Perhaps it will instruct them on who they are to be as Christians, and then perhaps they could spend some time in reflection before defaming the name of Jesus the Christ in the course of their political reindeer games.

I close my rant with a re-rendering of the Old Testament Reading from Advent 3A (December 19). The prophet Isaiah is speaking to King Ahaz, who does not trust God and who will not do as God says.

Isaiah: Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also?

Katie: Hear then, O party of Reagan! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also?