A God of the Shadows

I once heard a story about a young boy who stood outside a store looking through the widow. A woman walked by and saw the tattered clothes and dirty fingers of the child that gave away his poverty. She saw him looking in and said, “What are you looking at in there?” “Oh ma’am, I’m sorry to disturb, but I am looking at the shoes.” He turned back around and peered through the window. The woman looked down and saw that his feet could be seen through the holes in the shoes he wore. It was cold out and she experienced that tinge of pity and mercy that we all know because we have all felt that moment when we want to do something for someone who needs help. Her heart stirred and it would not be quieted. “Come with me little boy,” she said to him. And she took his hand and took him into the store. Some people gave weird stares in their direction, the stares of disapproval or distaste, or some combination of both. She took him to where the shoes were and took off his beat up shoes, measured his feet, found him the nicest pair of shoes she could find, put new socks on his feet and then tied the shoes for him. “How’s that feel?” she asked him. The boy looked up at her and said, “Are you an angel?” Words could not come to her when she heard that question. The boy kept on, “Oh I’m sorry maybe you can’t say. Of course you are an angel, because I was just praying that an angel would help me get a pair of shoes.” Charity increases at this time of year. It cannot be any other way really. Many recall the gift that God has given them in their need, and in turn they realize they can give to others in need too. People come out and volunteer more hours in December than other months. It feels good, and it is good, and at this time of year, well, if not at Christmas then when? And those poor and sad souls are easier to see. People who drive right by need and pain in the course of the year find their eyes cannot ignore such things as easily. The Christmas spirit takes hold and even those with the hardest of hearts find them somewhat softened. A friend once asked me what about this time of year made people more inclined to help others. Honestly I think it has do with God. It is easy to ignore the hurting and destitute. They exist in the shadows of society, in the back alleys where we would never go, and in the seedy places we rarely consider. We come into our churches and we worship God and we try to focus on God and give God all the praise we can muster. So what does God do? God shows up in the shadows, born in them so that we must look for God there. Jesus was born to an unwed teenage mother, what kind of God would show up there? A God who wants us to look in the shadows perhaps. Jesus was born in filth, far away from the nurses and doctors of our society who help ensure the heath and safety of mother and child, what kind of God would show up there? A God who wants us to look at the filthy perhaps. Jesus was scandalously born in poverty and obscurity, what kind of God would do such a thing? A God who wants to redeem the world perhaps. The only way to redeem the world is to enter the worst places of the world. That is what the birth of Jesus teaches us, and maybe that is why we want to help others more at this time of year, because we know that God would help them too. So there was a little boy who stood peering into a window outside a store. He claimed he met an angel. The woman claimed she met God. Maybe they were both right.

A Time of Miracles

I called someone up the other day. There I was praying and suddenly I felt like I had to call this person up. For a moment I thought I should wait, I should finish the prayers, but I could not shake the feeling that I had to call. So I did it. I made the call. “Hey how are you? I was just thinking about you and needed to call.” And you know what I discovered? The person needed to talk. I was told that I called at the moment I was most needed. I had no idea of course, I simply felt like to do it and I did it. It is a miracle really. How else can I explain that? Oh I know that some will tell me it was coincidence and maybe it was, but I am someone who believes that miracles make more sense that coincidences so that does not work for me. Others will tell me it was nothing, but that is simply another way of saying it was a coincidence. Instead I will choose to believe it was a miracle. Then, I suppose, I say all of that to say that I believe miracles happen. If they happen now, I have no problems believing they happened before and will happen again. Maybe that is part of the reason I love this time of year. This time when we get to replay the old story of Christmas in our minds and sit in wonder at just how many miracles it took to make it happen. There was an older couple, too old to have children. They were unable to have children when youth still provided them the hope that such a thing would happen too. And yet with them is where the story starts in one gospel. Two dried up childless old people who are suddenly expectant parents. The stories of the older testament bubble up into the newer testament, and in the midst of the same old, same old, God starts something new. Then we come across a young girl, probably no more than 13, way too young to be having children in our day. We try to stop such things, and the truth is so did the people then, especially if the girl was not married, and this one was not. And she ends up pregnant too even though she is a virgin. Within 30 verses we have two pregnant women, a barren woman now too old to become pregnant, and a young woman too inexperienced for such a thing to be possible, and yet there they are participating in something new. And maybe that is why some people call this their favorite time of year. We recite and recall the ancient stories that bubble into today and await miracles of our own. We look around believing that there is something new to be had, the impossible to be made possible, and perhaps it can happen with us. That is a part of what makes that story great. Those two women were so unlikely. Who would have guessed an older barren woman would be used in such a way? Who would have guessed that a virgin teenager, not many years removed from running with bands of children would be used in such a way? Maybe you would, but I doubt I would. Then again I recall my own story. I was a little child with a voice so high some people asked me if I was a boy or a girl. That little voice did not change when other voices did. It was hard to get through a class presentation or even a new encounter without someone saying something about my squeaky voice. At times I did not want to talk in front of people. I knew how I sounded and it was best to keep quiet. Who would have guessed I would end up as a preacher one day, someone who has to talk in front of people? Not me. And so we celebrate this time of year and to many it is their favorite time of year, and I think it has something to do with miracles. God still uses people that no one would expect for amazing things. That means you too of course. You cannot be too old, or too young, or too shocking inadequate for God to use. Yes enjoy this time of year and know that maybe you too will be a part of a miracle.

Minister's Minute from the December Journal of Hope and Joy

What is Christmas but the celebration of the God who comes? That is good for us to remember. I wonder if we now try so hard to keep the Christ is Christmas that we have ignored who the Christ is? And the answer, of course, is the God who comes. Occasionally we make our prayer, “Come Lord Jesus, Come,” but at this time of year we celebrate that God did come. Came like one of us. Crying, cold, wetting himself, needing to cared for, weak, just like us. Some people do not want to hear that and I understand why. We want to lift up God past this dirtiness of life, to move God beyond the gross and mundane and terrible and sad. We want God outside the limitations of our humanity, and outside the things that we cannot control, because, I suppose, we are looking how to get out of it ourselves. It is hard to think of a God that shows up as a little baby right smack dab in the middle of the messiness of all of this. And, if we are to be honest, it was even worse than we think. It is nice to sentimentalize things, because it allows us to stand at distance from it psychologically. However, as the story goes, he was born into utter filth. An unwed mother and a father who was not his acting as a nurse having to birth him into some place where animals ate and defecated, not exactly a lovely beginning. Yet we cannot see that in our scenes of the nativity that we use to adorn our homes. Why would God choose that? Perhaps the answer is truly simple, because God wanted to. God wanted to be born into the muck and mire, the filth and garbage, the horror and terror, the sickness and sadness. God wanted to be discovered where others would never think God would be. And therein lies the hope of it all. When we pray for God to show up, God does. God shows up in the mess that is our lives even if we think is too messy for such a holy God. God makes way into the places where evil reigns and death rules. God goes to the places of illness and treachery and grief. We expect to find God in places that we deem are sacred, and yet we keep finding God in places of filth turning the filthiness sacred simply by being there. We have the God who comes! This is the good news of great joy and it still is. We do not have to go to places to find God, God comes to us to find us. God comes into our lives and works to redeem them. God does not care what grossness may be found within us or around us. We have a God who was born into utter filth, something that we could not imagine, and we know why. Because God’s love moves God forward even as we run back. God’s love forces God in. God’s love is not turned off by icky, awful mess we are, because God’s love does not stop and goes where we would never think of going to find those who God loves. This Christmas season pray for God to come into the mess again. The good news is that God will, and in that way we will not need to try to fight to keep Christ in Christmas, he will come on his own. With anticipation of the Spirit’s wave, Garrett

When the Church is Better

I was having a conversation with another minister. Us minister types like to use one another to talk shop, and to say the things we would never say to others. Well here I was speaking to this minister and he says, “You know what? Our churches about to get fuller because for some reason people always come around the holidays. I don’t have any idea how to bring them in at other times, but around the holidays there they are.” He said that like it was a bad thing, and I am not sure that it is. Just today I have been on the phone with some people who know this time of year as a hard time of year. It is hard because they have lost loved ones. Some of have lost children, others have lost parents, and they are learning to cope. It is hard to make it to a time of year when we are used to having someone in our life and that person is gone. Our memories are all we have left, and there will not be new memories with that person, and that is hard. The grief, even if it had been well managed, can come back then. And I wonder if that is why some people come to church around this time of year. Do some come back because they are looking for support, friends, maybe even family? Maybe they do not know that is what they are doing, but it is part of it. And yes, us minister types can get frustrated by this because we wish that they would be there year round, but we probably should not be. It is best to love in these next couple of weeks. I know I am praying that there might be more love in me, more love for the people that might grace the doors of the church, more love for the people who are always there but are hurting more at this time, and more love for the larger family of God that congregates to hear the old story again. At her best the church is a place where people who are in need can come in and be loved. Now I am the first to admit the church is rarely at her best, but the church is broken too. Therefore, while the church is not always at her best, the church is true when it is full of people who are hurting and who need to know they are not hurting alone. Only God is good, the church is still being reworked and reformed by that good God. But what I do know is that church is better with people together. Church is better when the huddled mass of broken humanity that we are come together and believe that with God we can still find wholeness and love in a world in which there is pain and grief. Mind you that is church that is better, not church that is at its best, but better is something. I suppose, in short, I am praying that my church, and your church if you have one, might become better this holiday season. Not trying to guilt the people that enter our doors we would never otherwise see to come throughout the year, but trying to see them as those that are seeking solace in a difficult world. After all, that is what the miracle of the Incarnation, God becoming human, is all about. We are not alone! May all churches become places where those who feel alone at this time of year find they are not alone. And who knows? Maybe they will come back because they discovered the wider net of love that they needed.