Sermon contributions Dec 12 2010  Covenant Mennonite Church  Dave Stobbe
- as part of a 2 person  fill-in sermon challenge when Pastor Kelvin is suddenly sick.

So Kelvin, thanks for getting sick . . . . .
Now I have to wrestle with waiting for a season that troubles me so much
If it all happened like we are about to hear and sing,
I think Jesus would  be quite critical of Christmas . . . .
Why make so much of arrival details in relation to what we do the rest of the year     
        --Especially with how we commercialize it all.                                              
What with lambs, shepherds, camels, stars and heavenly choirs
I feel we are stuck in perpetual childhood belief.
At my most cynical moments I find the birth narrative
holds my attention almost as much as the Santa and his elves narrative.
Perhaps I have seen too many church and school programs . . . . .
Camels talk, donkeys ponder and cows moo in unison . . . .

Forgive me for this little rant.
But I really do have trouble putting my mind back to grade 2 every Xmas
Sure, the nostalgia of carols and my own childhood experiences of Xmas grab my heart.
But I also have to confess that the Jesus birth narrative has trouble competing
with all the other narratives of Christmas past:

• the year I got a train set
• the year I got a used dog for Xmas
• the two years when Candace delivered our children Chris and Sue Dec 22

You see, camels, shepherd, angels and stars just don’t work very well for me .
The Jesus I have come to know took on the establishment.
He rattled cages, he changed lives
And he died a terrible death for it.
We don’t fixate on ML King’s birth, or Ghandi, or Mother Theresa . . . .
our own births barely merit a cake and a gift.

And then I read the scripture that our advent series offers.
We are challenged to pause in our busy lives to prepare for Xmas
READ SAMPLE VERSES FROM TODAY ISAIAH, PSALMS, JAMES
There are many fantastic promises here
But as I look at the challenges many of us face.
My own challenges are relatively minor compared to many I share this season
Kelvin in hospital, my dad alone and 61 years of marriage,
other waiting for diagnosis on life threatening conditions,
several confused students who have given up and left my course
And this brief list doesn’t even get my mind beyond Winkler . . .

So how do I wait for Xmas ?
After reflection on all this over the last few days  - a few‘observations’

So many aspects of the story we fixate on seem to draw me to a childish
understanding of my faith.
If I believe in the xmas miracles of an immaculate conceptions, angles who inform pregnant moms of what lies ahead, other angel choirs in the heavens who draw field workers to a birth, wise men that appear because of a magical star, evil emporers who kill male babies,
If I believe all that literally then it isn’t so hard to believe that enough faith and prayer will give me my mother and Barb and Randy back in a flash.
That faith will see Kelvin jump up and dance in church.
It will see a quick, and amicable way out of Afghanastan.
The Israeli lions will lie down with the Palestinian lambs.
War-torn countries in Africa will settle and everyone will be fed in a just society.
And theses aberrations of weather that take so many lives will cease.. .

So I have talked my way into quite a hole here. . . . . ..
I struggle with belief yet I want and need miracles . . and I might be insulting some of your beliefs by all this . ..

I know I am over the top here,
but wrestling with this season tends to do that to me.
Many others walk away from faith and church as an answer to this predicament.
We want to believe, we want to acknowledge the spirt of God in our lives, but these stories ask our heart to live out what our mind can not accept.

Let me try to dig myself out of this dilema  . . .

Perhaps if I I try to lay aside a literal view of the xmas birth narrative . . . .
The Jesus narrative works much better for me as metaphorical truth that literal truth                                  
What is metaphor fig or speech, compare unlike, enhance meaning\
Metaphor can be MORE true that literal.
Love is like a rose, and it can leave our heart to bleed, means so much more than the melodrama of a million dollar bachelorette production.

One rather unorthodox Catholic scholar said
“ the Bible is true and some of it actually happened”
An aboriginal elder said
“ Now I don’t know if it happened this way or not, but I know this story is true”
A more challenging Swedish proverb goes something like
“Theology is poetry plus, not science minus”   Ron Donovan
Can these stories I struggle with mean more than their literal truth?
OR how can I ‘advent’ this Xmas narrative in  metaphorical way.

Marcus Borg in Heart of Christianity has shown me some of the way

Immaculate conceptions are really about God’s Spirit growing in the barren lives of those around us . . . in ourselves as we find faith in a relationship to the eternal that is so much more and mangers and lambs.
What ideas have been born in our lives that have come from God.? Are we ready to conceive new ideas, projects, visions for our personal lives, our homes, our community our world ?
And what about the chronic disease, driving compulsions, destructive addictions and unhealed wounds so many of us struggle with. . . .
God knows we need to fresh thinking on so many of these challenges.
So often we can’t see a way - can God’s spirit show us one ?
Instead of trying to prove the Xmas star was an actual  nova . . . .  we can watch for light that comes into our own darkness this Xmas season. Even more important we can open our lives as light to others. And listen for the spirit guide us  to shine into the darkness of others lives.

Those shepherds we are waiting for were Gentiles . ..  outsiders to the Jewish culture and the Jewish faith story.. Who are the outsiders in our lives who we share this season with.
Joseph and Mary welcomed them. Who will show up this season that needs welcoming. And will our faith draw them in ? I have several agnostic, and atheist friends. Can I connect to them in this season.  And can I remain gracious to those who hold to a more literal grasp of the scripture.

So too the wise men from the east. Mosques are arriving in abundance in Canada. Our old Mennonite Church in Thompson has formally closed and a new Mosque now lies a stone’s throw away.  Where do the Winkler’s Muslims pray in our schools and workplaces ? 
We have a Palestinian Muslim at GVC. Perhaps I’ll be able to develop a relationship such that I can learn some of  his wisdom.

Angels sang at Jesus birth - their song that ‘Jesus is Lord’ was an affront to Caesar we claimed to be Lord. Do any of our Xmas songs challenge the secular forces that want to be Lord of other lives. Do we even recognize how our careers, compulsions lorded over us. Perhaps old wounds control so much of what we do and they Lord over us. Then there is the obvious forces of media and modern culture the compel us in so many directions.

Could it be that many of us are so busy because we seem to need some confirmation of our worth.  We work and work and work -  trying to prove our worth. Can these demands on our time be our false Lords?
Can this story get us in touch with a different measure of our worth?
Can we honour a more important Lord with our time this season?

And this grotesque story of King Herod slaughtering children is not a tough one to dismiss from literal belief.  I recall a CBC interview in which on expert commented that there is no corroborating evidence of such an event
Many biblical elements have parellel support in historical documents but the baby bloodshed does not. It is in the story that mirrors the Moses Egypt saga about first born children.
How can it make any sense to us today as we wait for Xmas?
Setting aside the images of dead babies, can we think of the Pharohs and Herods of today that attempt to crush hope. Militarism, consumerism, racism, violence, homophobia, cancer and even death do not have the final word.

Look at parts of Psalms and Isaiah again . . .

So I will wait in hope, if Jesus birth was a miracle,
then perhaps this Christmas I too can
wait for a miracle.

READ LYRICS

__ Waiting For A Miracle –      Bruce Cockburn     January 1986. Managua, Nicaragua

Look at them working in the hot sun
The pilloried saints and the fallen ones
Working and waiting for the night to come
And waiting for a miracle

Somewhere out there is a place that's cool
Where peace and balance are the rule
Working toward a future like some kind of mystic jewel
And waiting for a miracle

You rub your palm
On the grimy pane
In the hope that you can see
You stand up proud
You pretend you're strong
In the hope that you can be
Like the ones who've cried
Like the ones who've died
Trying to set the angel in us free
While they're waiting for a miracle

Struggle for a dollar, scuffle for a dime
Step out from the past and try to hold the line
So how come history takes such a long, long time
When you're waiting for a miracle

So I will wait in hope, if Jesus birth was a miracle,
then perhaps this Christmas I too can
wait for a miracle.

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