What I have learned in these past few years of living in Atlanta is that the traffic is really not as bad as it is usually made out to be. It is the driving that is terrible. Nearly every trip I make feels like some kind of road hazard simulation, wherein the objective is to arrive at your destination alive, the car in one piece, on time, and in obedience to the law. Often, I am forced to sacrifice at least one of these objectives to get where I am going and home again. Since I arrived here alive, in an intact vehicle, and on time, I’ll let you guess which objective I most often sacrifice. This seeming simulation is not gridlock, all of us stuck on the freeway, inching along, hour by hour. It is more like an obstacle course of pedestrians, racecars, school busses, debris from accidents, roadkill from armadillos to contorted deer, out of state tags, and distracted drivers. Almost every day, I have to maneuver around someone going 12 miles below the speed limit, and as I pass, I can see the tell-tale chin to chest posture of someone looking at their phone. Or they’re navigating the GPS on their mounted device. I have seen folks putting on makeup at 32 mph in the left lane. Once on 285, I saw a man reading a full-size newspaper with both hands in a car that I am almost certain does not have a self-driving feature. I’ve seen folks eating entire meals, vaping mushroom clouds out the driver’s window, changing shirts, holding a lapful of small dogs— or children— and I’m sure each of you could add to this list of circus tricks. Father Richard Rohr says that how we do anything is how we do everything. That is, if we take just a moment to consider our driving, we can see that we are driving like we are living our whole lives— distracted, in a hurry, anxious, and dangerously inconsiderate. We are all in a hurry, and none of us are used to doing one thing at a time. We have been conditioned by our culture, by our employers, by social media videos of life hacks, to believe that we should be maximally efficient, that we should be able to walk and chew gum and do calculus in our heads, all at the same time. All of the preparations leading up to this holiday only add to a never-ending list of responsibilities, expectations, deadlines, and outcomes we have to meet. It’s no wonder we can’t drive undistracted. And it’s no wonder that we are so resistant to the idea of prayer. Who has time? Who can be still? Even if I sit still, my mind is racing, filled with to-do lists and disquiet, with memories of that time when the guy in the drive thru said, “Come again!” and you said, “You too!” You can’t stop feeling kind of offended when that lady at work saw your new shirt and said, “What a unique color.” What’s that supposed to mean? You can’t stop feeling the mixture of anger and sadness that only grief can bring. We think of prayer, contemplation, mindfulness, as something beyond us, something for monks and mystics not parents and people with day jobs. Multitasking is the opposite of contemplation. But I think it is also the beginning. Near the end of our gospel reading is a curious phrase. “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” Now, Mary, while traveling, has just given birth in a barn, with a feeding trough for a crib. She’s been visited by a band of uninvited— and likely unwashed— shepherds who were directed to this barn by a company of the heavenly host. Road-weary and child-birth exhausted Mary receives the shepherds’ story, treasuring and pondering it “in her heart.” There is another form of contemplation, meditation, prayer, for us working stiffs that we aren’t often taught. Mary is the mother of an infant. Do you really think she has the time for a 20-minute meditation practice twice per day? No. Nor could most of us carve out such time in our busy days to sit silently and meditate. But Mary can be our model for a new kind of prayer. ************************ St. Julian of Norwich is often depicted with a hazelnut in one hand. St. Julian saw a truth about the whole universe contained in this tiny hazelnut. She wrote, “In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.” In the focused attention of St. Julian she became aware of a truth beneath, behind, and beyond the hazelnut, namely that God made, loves, and holds together the whole universe. This is the same truth proclaimed to Mary by angels and shepherds which she treasured and pondered in her heart. But instead of a hazelnut, she had this baby, wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. When we are multitasking like a one-man band we cannot focus our attention on just one thing. But if we can focus on just one thing we too might find the love of God hidden beneath, behind, and beyond this one thing. We, like Mary, are given this baby to focus our attention this Christmas. We are given this hour, this worship service, to treasure these words and ponder them in our hearts. We are given this bit of bread and this sip of wine that focusing our attention on Body and Blood of Jesus we too might find that we are made by God, loved by God, and kept by God, just like everything else in the universe. Tonight, tomorrow, and over the days to come, from time to time, take just a moment to focus your attention on the thing at hand, your work in the moment. As you pack away your decorations, maybe this year, keep out the manger and the baby Jesus. Let this baby be a reminder to focus your attention in the moment. Over time, you will begin to see as Mary and St. Julian saw, the love of God hidden beneath, behind, and beyond this moment, this work, this object. This seeing will transform your whole life. And it might even make you a better driver. Amen.

In liturgical year A, our gospel readings will be set primarily in the Gospel of Matthew. Each of the four gospels provides a unique perspective on the message, ministry, and person of Jesus. Historically, the Gospels are each depicted in art with symbols that represent the tone of the book. Mark, probably the first of the four, is short and action packed, and is depicted as a winged lion. Luke, written by a physician, and the most complex, is depicted as a winged ox, a beast of burden, for all the work this gospel is doing. John’s gospel, written last, is written once the church has had ample opportunity to grapple with who this Jesus is, and because they know him to be God in the flesh, one step ahead of everyone else. John’s gospel is depicted as an eagle, an image of Jesus’ soaring rhetoric and transcendence. But the gospel of Matthew, written sometime between Mark and Luke, is about Emmanuel, God with us. For Matthew, Jesus is a prophet, a priest, a king. Jesus is the new Moses, the new Elijah. Matthew’s gospel begins with the promise that this child born to Mary is Emmanuel, God with us, and ends with Jesus’ promise, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.” The Gospel of Matthew is depicted as a person. For Matthew, this image of God— born of the flesh, born of a woman, born into the care of Joseph— this Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us in the flesh. But Joseph didn’t have the benefit of 2000 years of interpretation and art history to help him understand that the news he had received about Mary’s pregnancy was anything more than an insult, a slap in the face, an assault on his manhood, on his dignity. Joseph was a righteous man, by all accounts. He was perfectly within his rights under the Law, to send her away, to break the engagement, which actually required a divorce, even though they were not yet married. He would also have been within his rights to expose her, to reveal her obvious treachery, her infidelity, to condemn her. But because he is a man of righteous character, and possibly because he loved her, he chooses to simply sidestep the issue, after all, this clearly isn’t his problem. This was done to him. But rather than open the both of them to public shame, he will send her away quietly, and he will return to his normal life. And who could blame him. Why should he be responsible for someone else’s child? Someone else’s family? There are many in our own lives we would be content to “put away quietly,” to wash our hands of, to absolve ourselves of any responsibility for. It is easy to think, “I cannot cure poverty. I do well to make my own ends meet. Surely, God does not expect me to do more for others that I am able to do for myself.” Maybe our thinking sounds more like “I have worked my tail off to get where I am. Those who don’t have what I do couldn’t have worked as hard as I have, so let them work for it like I did.” “I don’t mind people coming here to escape violence in their home countries, but they should do it legally. We can’t help everybody!” Maybe we’ve been tempted to throw up our hands give up on the idea of climate change, or social justice, or even just loving our neighbor because the difference we’d make alone will never solve the problem. Or maybe we’re ready to walk away from Christianity altogether, because it seems like it’s more obsessed with self-preservation than living the example of Jesus. Whatever it is, you are not alone in feeling crushed by the weight of something larger than you, larger than you can change alone, larger than you can solve alone. And like Joseph, there is nothing to stop us from leaving, nothing and no one to prevent us from putting away quietly all the things we’d rather not be responsible for. When Joseph has made up his mind to use the right he has to walk away, God comes to Joseph in a dream. God comes and confronts Joseph with the opportunity to go beyond the letter of the law to live by the root of the law: Love. God calls Joseph to do what God is doing. God too is righteous. God too could have looked at the human race in our neediness and wantonness, and God could have walked away. God could have killed Adam and Eve in the Garden. God could have killed Noah in the flood. God could have let the children of Israel remain in slavery in Egypt, or killed them with starvation and thirst when they complained about their freedom. God could have put away Israel because of David’s sin, could have destroyed the people under the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans. But God didn’t. God loved anyway. God left the garden too. God gave the rainbow to Noah as a promise that God would overlook human sin. God wandered the desert in a tent and received no sacrifices when the Israelites ate only manna. God tied God’s honor and glory to the honor and glory of David. And when Solomon’s temple was destroyed, God went into exile, too. And now, God has come to Joseph in a dream. God has come to Joseph in the life and faithfulness of Mary. God is coming in the flesh and bones of Jesus. And beloved, God is still coming in flesh and bone. Matthew’s gospel is represented by a human face to remind us to look for God hiding behind human faces. God is with us in those we would prefer to put away quietly. God is with us in solidarity with the human condition, choosing our lot as God’s own, making our needs God’s needs. Making our suffering God’s suffering. Making our joy God’s joy. This is love; choosing to live in solidarity with another until their problems are our problems, their joys are our joys, their lives are our lives. Joseph shows us what it is to love, what it is to live in solidarity, by hearing and trusting the call of God to take Mary as his wife and Jesus as his own son. We too have the opportunity to live in this solidarity, seeing God in the human faces we encounter in our work, in our world, in our homes, and even in the mirror. God is coming in the flesh. O come to us, abide with us, our God, Emmanuel!! Amen.

I grew up singing in church. I didn’t grow up a Lutheran, and so, the hymnody I learned was not the baroque melodies and ancient chants of the early and medieval church, but the old timey, shaped note, and bluegrass tunes of early 20 th century Appalachia. When I was growing up, the church choir sounded more like the Grand Ol’ Opry than a grand old opera. There was no pipe organ, only a piano, and a reluctant pianist, who was more talented than confident. There were a few different choir directors in my time there. This position was usually filled like the pianist’s position; whoever could say “no” least convincingly ended up with the task. It was pick-up choir. We didn’t rehearse, and everyone who wanted to was invited to join us from the congregation. It was often a 50/50 or 60/40 split between choir and congregation. It was in this church singing that I was introduced to the Spirituals. Songs like “Were You There?” “Sweet Little Jesus Boy,” and “Sweet, Sweet Spirit.” These songs moved me in ways that the other old-timey music we sang never did. Singing in church turned into singing in school, where I learned more Spirituals, like “Elijah Rock,” “Soon I Will Be Done” and a cadre of Spirituals arranged and composed by Jester Hairston. In his autobiography, Fredrick Douglass writes about his experience as a slave in Maryland before his escape. Douglass writes about the songs the slaves sang. He writes: “[These songs] told the tale of woe which was then altogether beyond my feeble comprehension; they were tones loud, long, and deep; they breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every tone was a testimony against slavery and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. … I have been utterly astonished, since I came to the North, to find persons who could speak of the singing among slaves as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.” This as all made me wonder, What should we make of Mary’s singing? How should we hear Mary’s words? What tune was her heart singing that day? Would her happy words be set in a minor key, or in ecstatic exaltation to make the Hallelujah Chorus sound like a radio jingle? Our gospel reading today is a song that Luke’s Gospel tells us arises from the heart of a young girl, visited by an angel, pregnant before her arranged marriage, sent away to live in secret with her distant cousins, in a land occupied by a foreign power. When she arrives at her hiding place, her secret is known, even by the baby in her cousin’s womb. Mark Lowery’s “Mary Did You Know?” is a sweet song, but the better question is, Mary, did you cry? Did you stress eat? Did you doubt? Were you afraid? Were you embarrassed? Did you hold the hand and wipe the brow of Elizabeth as she gave birth to John? Did this terrify you? How did you bear the weight of being “blessed” for “all generations?” Were your hands raised to the sky as your soul magnified the Lord, or did your tears wash the dust from your face? As Douglass reminds us, spontaneous singing ought not deceive us into believing that the joy of Mary’s song was somehow proof that Mary’s ankles didn’t swell, that her back didn’t hurt, that she didn’t have morning sickness or weird cravings, or that this child now “with child” wasn’t overwhelmed by the enormous weight of all that she knew. Mary sang to remember; to remember the promises of God, to remember the promises of the angel, to remember the faithfulness of God, the goodness of God, the mercy and justice of God. Mary sang to remind us, of God’s promises, and faithfulness, and goodness, and mercy, and justice. Mary sang to remind God. Mary sang to “breathe the prayer and complaint of bitter souls boiling over in anguish…. a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.” A prayer to God to scatter the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, and to scatter proud thoughts in her own heart. A prayer to God to bring down the mighty and raise up the lowly, and to make sure she was one of the lowly ones. A prayer to God to fill the hungry with good things and send the rich away empty, and to trust that what filled her now was indeed a good thing. Mary sang for joy, a joy born of anguish transformed, sorrow transcended, suffering transmuted. Mary’s song did not spring from her joy. Mary’s joy sprang from her song. Beloved, Mary’s song is a form of prayer we have long neglected. Mary’s song arose from her willingness to embrace the reality that was. Mary’s song, and the songs of slaves were not weak resignation to the suffering of the moment as God’s divine, inscrutable plan, but blessed assurance in the nearness of a God who suffered with them, the steadfastness of a God who would deliver them, the justice of a God who would vindicate them, and the power of a God who transforms pain into comfort, sorrow into solace, suffering into relief, and death into resurrection. Mary’s pondering of the angel’s greeting and treasuring the truth in her heart reconciled her to the harsh reality of the world as it is, and grew in her the hope of the world to come. When we allow these songs to rise up in us, to well up in our hearts, and minds, and mouths we too have joined Mary’s song, the song of hope for slaves, the oppressed, the hungry, the lowly. We have become the mother of God, bearing life and hope and salvation into the world by our song, by our prayer, by our joy. Amen.

Of all the Christmas cards I’ve ever seen, I have never seen one featuring a wild-eyed desert mystic wearing animal skins, honey in his beard and a bug leg stuck in his teeth, yelling, “You brood of vipers!!” It’s the second Sunday of Advent. If you’ve been around for Advent before, you may have braced yourself for John the Baptist - an apocalyptic street preacher whose “good news” sound more like a dire warning. Maybe he missed the “Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem” part of Isaiah’s prophetic poetry. The curmudgeonly prophet raises his voice and lets us have it: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance." If you’re looking for a soft, comfortable entry into the season before Christmas, John is not your guy. There’s nothing “lowly and mild” about child of promise. The Gospel of Matthew makes a point of telling us that John both appears and cries out in the wilderness, in a landscape that is desolate and barren. Why the wilderness? Why the lonely desert for our Advent reflections? Well, if you have any experience with real estate, you know the mantra: “Location location location.” Location is key. The place where we stand, the terrain we occupy, the space from which we speak — these things matter. While it’s unlikely you’ve ever seen John the Baptist featured in an Advent calendar or on a Christmas greeting card, all four Gospels place him front and center in Jesus’s origin story. John’s austerity is the only gateway we have to the swaddling clothes, angel's wings, and fleecy lambs we hold dear each December. And as baffling as it may seem, the holy drama of the season depends on the disheveled baptizer’s opening act. But why the wilderness? Wouldn’t John be more successful yelling in the center of town - at the gate of the emperor? Well, let’s look at the scene Matthew is setting. John comes from the wilderness to the Jordan. The crowds, including the Pharisees and Sadducees, come from Roman occupied Judea, from civilization. On one side of the river is the wilderness, a place of vulnerability, risk, and powerlessness. In the wilderness, there is no safety net, no Plan B, no rainy-day savings account, no quick fix, and no 24hr grocery store, which means if all you can find to eat are locusts and wild honey, you’re having sweet grasshoppers for dinner. In the wilderness, life is raw and unsettled, and illusions of self-sufficiency shatter very quickly. On the other side of the river is Judea, Jerusalem, and imperial oppression. When these city folk come to the river, they find themselves on the outskirts of the peace through strength offered by Rome. It is a place where the soft neediness of our common humanity is exposed. In the wilderness, people have no choice but to wait and watch as if their lives depend on God showing up, because quite frankly, they do. It is into this environment so far removed from safety, an environment so formless, so void that the Word of God speaks, and what we learn about ourselves in this environment will be as hard to swallow as honeyed insects. John cries from the wilderness, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” Crowds stream out of the cities and towns, out of the jurisdictions of Herod and Caesar, out of the promised land to its threshold. This river, the wilderness on one side and the land of milk and honey on the other, is the way to freedom. Slaves and wanderers waded in and the redeemed people of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob walked out. John now calls this redeemed people back, back to the wilderness, back to the doorway, back to the waters of salvation. Repentance is the path of return, to meet the wander in the waters and to walk out redeemed. These words, “sin” and “repentance” are quite loaded, even avoided in modern Christian circles. If you, like me, grew up in a fundamentalist circle, the word “sin” and its association with shame, guilt, and condemnation likely bring a good amount of discomfort. Many of us also distrust the word of scripture because we've seen how easily it can be manipulated to justify one moralistic agenda over another. Yet Advent begins with an honest, wilderness-style reckoning with sin and we can’t get to the manger unless we go through John the Baptist, and John is all about repentance. Does all this talk of wilderness and repentance mean there is no room for comfort at all? If we’re able to get past being triggered by John’s words to follow him out into the wilderness, perhaps what we’ll find is comfort - comfort in the fact that something more profound is at stake in our souls than personal moral failure and private reconciliation. Perhaps what ails us is something deeper, grimmer, and far more consequential. Growing up, I was taught that sin was "breaking God's laws," "missing the mark," "committing immoral acts," or “anything that separated me from God.” These definitions aren't wrong. They’re just incomplete. They don’t go far enough. They don't name the fullness of all we struggle with. Sin, at its heart, is a broken relationship to reality itself. It's anything that interferes with the opening up of our whole hearts to God, to others, to creation, to our very selves. Sin is estrangement, disconnection, disharmony. It's the sludge that slows us down, that says, "Quit. Stop trying. Give up. Change is impossible. I’m not responsible for my actions. You’re not my problem." In other words, sin is apathy, care-less-ness, the frightened resistance to an engaged life. It is the opposite of creativity, the opposite of abundance, the opposite of flourishing. Sin is a walking death. And it is easier to spot, name, and confess a walking death in the wilderness than anywhere else. We have to be confronted before we can be comforted. This is why John underscores his message of repentance with a harrowing description of the coming Messiah: "He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather the wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." If you weren’t squirming before, I bet you are now. How in the world is this good news, this portrait of a Jesus with pitchfork and fire who judges, sorts, and burns? In Malachi 3, the Lord says, “I will draw near to judge you.” Often, we equate judgment with condemnation. But what if God was saying “I will draw near so I can see you better.” What if John is saying that the coming Messiah really sees us? That he knows us at our very core? That the winnowing fork is an instrument of deep love, patiently wielded by One who wants to separate from us all the dried-up husk that we once used to protect the precious seed within? Perhaps then, it's in offering God every piece of our lives that we give God permission to "clear" us — to separate all that's no longer useful from all that is good, beautiful, and worthy. John calls us to return, to come back to the water, to the threshold, to re-enter civilization, no longer a slave or a wanderer, but as citizens, neighbors, in a promised society. God calls us to the water to make peace by making justice, with God, within ourselves, among each other. When this happens, the wilderness and our lives, become a place where we can see the landscape as a whole and participate in God’s great work of leveling inequality and oppression. “Prepare the way of the Lord,” John cries, quoting the prophet Isaiah. “Make his paths straight.” We prepare for the coming of Jesus by becoming accountable individuals within a just society. We are called by our baptism to accountability and responsibility for the way of the world. Accountability and responsibility make justice. Justice makes peace. Peace prepares the way to a better world. Amen. 

When I was in middle school, my grammar teacher was terrifying. He was the sort of teacher who commanded silence by his very presence. I do not ever remember there being a disruption in his class. He taught from a desk in the front of the class room, which he had modified to contain an overhead projector, which he used instead of the white board. He was then able to sit facing the classroom, never turning his back to us. Day after day, we were all subjected to lesson after lesson on grammar; syntax, diagramming, punctuation; I learned all of the helping verbs by heart to the tune of “When the Saints Go Marching In” so I would never use the past tense of a verb when I should have used the past participle. But then I became one of those people. One of those people who correct people’s grammar. More precisely, I became a 12-year-old who corrected the grammar of adults. I couldn’t believe how many of the adults in my life didn’t know or didn’t care that they were using the wrong verb tenses all the time. I also couldn’t believe how many of the adults in my life didn’t appreciate being corrected. Didn’t they want to speak English correctly? I mean, language needs to be precise. It is one thing to say, “I seen a deer this morning.” But the stakes are a bit higher if you forget the comma in the sentence, “Let’s eat, Grandma.” Because, “Let’s eat Grandma” means something a bit more sinister. With mastery, language can give us control. Grammar and dialect can expose our education and socio-economic status. Mastery of the rules about what is vulgar or profane and what is polite or elegant becomes mastery over those whose language makes them vulgar or profane. This mastery can remove ambiguity, making it easier to convey instructions, commands, ideas, emotions, even over great distances. Even over centuries. Mastery of the languages of the Bible— Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Latin— have given interpreters a great sense of confidence that they are conveying the ideas of the original languages to us in their translations. We can hear the metaphors of Jeremiah as he describes these bad shepherds and how God will gather the scattered sheep from all the places they’d been driven. We can hear the esoteric cosmology of the author of Colossians as he tells us that Christ is firstborn of Creation and of the dead. And we can imagine the historical scene described to us in the Gospel of Luke, vivid in the horror of what it describes, and yet pallid in its sanitized familiarity. Making meaning of these readings in hard. We want to be able to skim the surface of these texts and understand their meaning like mining for diamonds with a boom and dustpan. But where we want mastery the texts often give us only mystery. Here in this passage from Luke, Jesus speaks to those crucified with him. Jesus says to the one who asks to be remembered, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” In an attempt at mastery, the translators have added a comma. The original Greek doesn’t have commas. The original Greek doesn’t even have punctuation, not even spaces between the words. The original Greek leaves us with an uncomfortable ambiguity. Does Jesus say, “Truly I tell you, Today you will be with me in paradise?” Or does Jesus say, “Truly I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise?” Where we want mastery, to know exactly what Jesus meant, the text gives us only mystery. My inner 12yo loves knowing the right answer, especially when others do not, especially when it allows me to think of myself as better, or brighter, or in control. But the reign of Christ is not about mastery. In the reign of Christ, I am not in control. In the reign of Christ, I don’t have to be better or brighter. In the reign of Christ, I don’t have to know where all the commas go. In the reign of Christ, God is calling us to ministry instead of mastery. I don’t have to have mastery over the cosmos, over theology, over the syntax of sin and salvation, or even over my own life. In the reign of Christ, we can embrace the sacred mystery, the great unknowing. We can take a deep sigh of relief at not having to have all the answers. Where we want mastery, Christ gives us mystery and the call to ministry. God is not some terrifying grammarian teaching us the rules and grading our homework, modifying our native dialects and polishing our heart tongues until the empire can see its own reflection. God is often nonverbal, humming tunes in vagal tones we only understand by being held close. God’s love is not bound to syntax and structure, but is free and syncopated, speaking in image and analogy, silence and epiphany, instead of imperative and exclamation. In the reign of Christ, there are no kings, no bad shepherds who divide the flock to keep control, no thrones or rulers or dominions or powers. The reign of Christ has come, Beloved, without punctuation, without even a space between this age and the one to come. Amen.