Batshit Crazy Christmas 2016

Isaiah 9:2-7 

Psalm 96 

Titus 2:11-14

Luke 2:1-20 

Here’s my hand.  Take it or chop it off.

I’ll get back to that.

Salvation – that’s our business here in this place, isn’t it?  How do we do it?  We tell stories.  No, really, Sunday after Sunday, and tonight especially, that’s what we do.  We become the stories we hear.  We become the stories we tell.  So let’s start with a story about salvation.

It was the mid 1960s, south side of Chicago.  There’s this neighborhood called Pilsen, south of the viaduct.  It had been a port of entry for Polish and Bohemian immigrants at the turn of the century.  Now it was a port of entry for Puerto Ricans and Mexicans.  That’s when the real estate people figured out the power of fear.  They figured out how to cash in on fear of immigrants.

So the real estate people told the Polish people, children of immigrants themselves, that with this change of ethnicity in the neighborhood, their property values would go down.  What they had to do was sell out of Pilsen, where Mexicans were moving in, and buy new houses in a new suburb called Cicero.  And gosh, the real estate people made a killing on urban flight.  For each frightened Polish family, the realtors earned, not one but two commissions, one on the sale in Pilsen and another on the purchase in Cicero.

Winter is Coming/We Don't Have to Win

Joel 2:23-32
Psalm 122
2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18
Luke 18:9-14

Troubled times, troubled people.

I have a confession to make.  I have never developed any enthusiasm for my presumed role as the Advent police.  Honestly, I don't care whether you put up your Christmas tree this weekend, or if you are humming along with the musak at Ray's.

I think it was my early exposure to the movie Mame.  See, I grew up poor, the sometimes-hungry kind of poor.  And that one year in the depths of the Great Depression, when Mame couldn't pay her staff, when the butcher cut off her credit and she couldn't buy groceries, when she declared, We need a little Christmas now! and they opened their presents early, I knew at a youngster's existential level exactly what that was about.

The heart needs what the heart needs.  And God knows, we need a little Christmas now.

Mental Illness in the Bible

When I Googled mental illness in the bible, I was, frankly, appalled by what came to the top of the page. So I hope this banal title will make a better message easier to find. If you share this post, you can do that service. Now to the sermon:

1 Kings 19:1-15
Psalms 42&43
Luke 8:26-39

I don't often preach about mental illness. I'm not sure I have ever heard more than a mention of it by any other preacher. But today the lectionary asks us to tell stories that are not told.

Because we are no strangers to mental illness,and neither is the Bible. There's Saul, his bipolar episodes and his suicide. There's Job and Jeremiah, hardcore depressives. There's neurotic Paul himself, though that diagnosis has gone out of fashion. And Ezekiel, well, you'll have to read him and decide for yourselves.

Two people in today's lessons -- we'll start with Elijah.

White Privilege

We have been working on this big project at St. Andrew's, to generate your next generation of leadership. Last week we churned out some newsprint about that. I intended this week to bring those of you who missed it up to speed and continue.

But then. Wednesday. Nine people died at Emmanuel African American Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. They included a high school track coach, a state senator, a librarian, a barber who had just graduated from college, a clergy spouse, the janitor, a counselor, a pastor, an 87-year-old member of the Eastern Star, whose nephew dived in front of her and asked the young man with the gun to shoot him instead. But he shot them all, except for two others who pretended to be dead, and survived.

They had gathered for prayer and bible study, when a young man wearing the flag of Rhodesia on his sweater, that sorry leftover of the world's nightmare, apartheid, entered the church. The flag of Rhodesia notwithstanding, they welcomed him. Because that is what Christians do. We reach across the barrier.

We are here for one thing. We have one job on this planet, reconciliation, the healing of the breach that sin creates among ourselves and consequently, between us and the God who will do anything to reclaim his children from our madness.

The Good News for You

Small churches can do things in liturgy that large churches cannot.  At Saint Andrew's, every member is a minister.  So the congregation itself preached the Easter sermon.

And they said nothing to anyone.  For they were afraid. (Mark 16:8)

....

Well, they must have got over it.  'Cuz here we are.

They must have told someone, who told someone, who told someone, who told...

Sister Marilyn.  Who told me that God loves me.  And she gave me a pair of shoes, because mine were worn out.

25 Words or Less -- 4 Lent 2015

Numbers 21:4-9
Psalm 107:1-3,17-22
Epshesians 2:1-10
John 3:14-21

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.

Anybody here watch football? Do you remember, 15-20 years ago on NFL games, there used to be a guy at every televised game who had a seat in the front row in the end zone.

Now, for those of you who are not fans, that means you would see that person whenever one of the teams was close to scoring. Because the camera would show the end zone in the shot, where they were headed for a touchdown or a field goal.

Of course, you wouldn't be looking at the people in the stands, you'd be looking at the teams. Except you couldn't miss this one fan, who had a sign, a big sign. The sign said, John 3:16. You'd see that sign, I don't know, at least fifteen times a game.

Do you know that verse? Can you say it by heart? I didn't grow up memorizing bible verses. But I have that one down. Say it with me.

Now, those were expensive seats. And I heard it was just one guy who went to all those games, all over the country, to hold up that sign. Some people thought he was pushy, embarrassing even, that he put the gospel in our faces, when we just wanted to watch a football game.

Lately, we don't see that verse in public places. The only verse I see put in my face these days is on Facebook.

Those who are ashamed of me and my words, of them

the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in this glory.

If one of your Facebook friends posts that, then you are supposed to prove you are a Christian  by sharing the same shaming statement for all your other Facebook friends to see and be ashamed into sharing it themselves. Or go to hell, I suppose.