New Year's Monuments and Movements

You can’t have gotten to this point in your life or to this point in 2006, without having felt this at one time or another. Sometimes doctrine leaves more doubt than certainty. Other times teachings simply taunt and tease rather than tutor us. When that happens, it’s best to own up to what we’ve got, rather than to deny the depths to which we’ve sunk.

There, we’re often left with not much more than memories of promises that propelled our ancestors in faith. There, professing the promises’ power to deliver, we can look, honestly, at where we’ve been. We can see who and where we are. We can begin to fathom that future God holds out to us as the promises continue to beckon us forward.

The end of the year is a good time to do all that. This place, with this people, is a safe space to begin making that happen.

William Faulkner wrote, “(some things) are not monuments, but footprints. A monument only says, ‘At least I got this far,’ while a footprint says, ‘This is where I was when I moved again.’“ You can build a monument to 2006, or move again in 2007.

Ending the old year, beginning the New Year, inside the story of the dawn of God’s promise for us, God’s taking on our own flesh and blood, coming amidst us in the birth of Jesus, can be an awesome experience. N.T. Wright, biblical historian and Anglican bishop, says, “By the time the first two chapters (of Luke’s Gospel) are finished, almost all his readers will have found someone in the story with whom they can identify.”

I encourage you to give yourself the gift of time with Luke. Receive time, either on this last day of the old year, or tomorrow, on the first day of the New Year, inside these two chapters.

Be aware from the beginning. Luke writes to Theophilus, in Greek, “friend of God.” Has that ever been you? Could you be God’s friend again?

We meet an elderly, married couple, faithful to God, but without children. Disappointment doesn’t diminish their trust in either God’s goodness, or God’s power to make good on the promises. What do you do to cope with disappointment?

Zechariah, pious priest, moves ritually. Certainly, he’s been lifted at times by what he’s given to do. No doubt, he’s sometimes faked it till he could make it again. How does your time worn piety fuel your faith and, likewise, on occasion, dull your desire for God?

An angel, literally, “a messenger from God,” visits Zechariah. Who’s been your envoy for the loving God who walks with you? Zechariah responds to God’s unpredictable ways, “You and your wife will bear a son,” by demanding proof, rather than offering a gifted heart’s praise. What do you say when God shows up unexpectedly in your life?

Luke brings us into a teenager’s room; remember those days? She’s favored by God and so asked to do God not merely an adult-sized, but a God-sized favor. In faith, she seeks understanding, not proof. She asks, “How;” then responds with one word, “Amen.” How many words will you offer next time God expresses more confidence in you than you hold for yourself?

Before you rush to the story’s highpoint, listen to the lyrics Mary and Zechariah sing. They recall God’s long-ago promises and reclaim both their power and presence inside the unfolding of their personal stories. They don’t live inside a series of disjointed episodes over which they have no control. Rather, they harmonize the unfolding of their lives within the dynamic rhythm of God’s coming near. How do you, on your path, resonate with God?

Luke’s main characters, an engaged couple, have their lives disrupted by what looks to be personal scandal. The complexities of their confounded relationship are compounded by a cast of coercive, corrupt civil leaders, hell bent on a course of corrosive cruelty, domination and oppression. As social outcasts, Mary and Joseph are forced to migrate toward margins few of us can imagine. What sort of government do you contribute to? How do you perceive those beset by scandal? When do you consider that those who live on the margins of our worlds are folk no different from us, children of God?

Next Luke brings us to out of the way workplaces, staffed by low wage, ill regarded laborers. They’ve taken jobs no one else wants. To such as them, in places like that, God sends angels. What border fence could keep these envoys from announcing Emmanuel, God-with-Us? What homeland security can these heavenly choirs not penetrate to herald their refrain, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will among all people.” Will you join God’s once again near and present movement for peace? What might that look like, different than ever before? Can it include Arab immigrants, Mexican migrants, African, Cuban and Haitian illegals, teenaged, even convicted social outcasts?

These shepherds showed up, Luke says. They outran their fear as they rushed to find the Song’s source. When they arrived, found it to be as they were told, they showed out the news they’d heard. It was incredible. The Most High God, whom prophets and priests shielded their faces from, here as Prince of Peace, shone irresistibly, vulnerably, looking for all the world, no more than a baby, a peasant baby.

It caused, Luke writes, wonder. Not scratch your head wonder, but a lift your head, dry your eyes, thank you, Jesus wonder. Mary kept pondering, leaning into what she couldn’t fully grasp, and leaning onto what she could vaguely remember. Maybe you, too, reminded inside the story, will be able once again to outrun your fear, rush toward the God who calls you, weep with joy and sigh in wonder.

Mary and Joseph did what faith people do. They took their mixed bag of emotions to church. Faithful to their tradition’s promises, as well as the responsibilities those promises called forth from them, they went to the Temple. There they offered all they could afford, did for the boy as God did to Abraham, and named him Jesus, which meant, and still means, God saves. See, this spot, amidst this people, is always the best place for your mixed feelings about God’s will and God’s ways!

Inside that place Mary and Joseph met elders. Neither Simeon nor Anna had much left on their “to do” lists than wait to die. They lived those days, as they always had, trusting God, and watchful for signs that God, in power, was delivering on those promises. The age of their bodies did not shrink their spirits. Their faith remained vital and vigorous; their voices bold and strong.

Seeing the child, they gave thanks to God, recognizing that the favor granted them signaled blessing for Israel and redemption for humankind. What will you keep vigorous enough to wait patiently for the day when God’s spirit moves you to name and to claim God’s in-breaking, that life-giving, freedom-bringing, home-making presence when all that seems well past your prime? How will you testify to the favor God’s shown you in ways that convince others God’s got their backs, too?

Luke closes out his two-chapter prelude to John’s and Jesus’ adult ministries with his account of a 12-year-old Jesus lost in the Temple. That’s the name we give the story. To hear it from Luke, though, it sounds more like Jesus at home in the Temple.

It’s not the place Jesus calls home. Jesus is at home with the relationships God nurtures there. Jesus is at home with those whose lives are steeped in God’s promises remembered there. Jesus is at home with folks’ anxieties, their doubts, their questions, and with their seeking. For his part, he amazed them; his answers and his understanding. He still makes his home amidst us. He’s still comfortable with us. He can still amaze us; his answers and his understanding! Will you take Jesus up on his offer to be at home with you, to understand you?

Finally, to make sure we grasp how truly human this God-in-flesh has become and intends to remain, Luke presents a typical family standoff. We see terrified parents whose son is missing, now wounded by a pre-teen facing off fiercely against authority. What could be more real, more human, more wonder-full?

These parents, as did ours, wanted only good for their child. Instead, they got greatness. Great teaching, great insight, great compassion, great upheaval, and great suffering, all rooted in the wonderful, ponderous promises of God with us, God for us.

As Luke’s foreword concludes, Jesus returns to Nazareth to complete his preparation for moving forward to Galilee. There he grew in age, wisdom, favor with God, and from those who came to know him. He did that by obeying, literally, listening, receiving the fruits of Joseph’s wonder and Mary’s pondering. And he learned from them his own way to wonder at God, ponder in God.

As 2006 ends, on the brink of 2007, to what place, amidst what people, is God calling you to return? Whose wonder and whose pondering is God asking you to obey, to hear and listen?

For us, now as then, greatness lies ahead. It’s a priceless greatness, purchased at great cost. Who will this Jesus be for you, a monument to observe, or a footprint to follow?