A Helpless Babe

“Advent teaches us that God does not come with power to make the world right. God comes (…), and hope for a new world is born in a nondescript cow stall in an obscure town called Bethlehem. God arrives by way of the human sweat and blood in which everyone is born. God comes (…) to save the world, not by what the world calls power but by the subversive and often hidden power of self-giving love. God comes (...), and hope is born.” James Harnish (The Upper Room)

Waking up this morning to these words made me feel both challenged and inspired. Christmas is coming. As each day passes, more and more of us are leaning in, trying to get a peek. Something is happening in the manger. Not a silent night by any stretch of the imagination. It’s labor. The human experience of agony, relief, anxiety, and hope all occupying the same space. Is the product of this all too human dawning what we expect? What now?

A helpless babe; is that all? This infant won’t survive the night without constant care. He has no way to maintain his own body heat, so his mother wraps him tightly in whatever rags are close at hand. He will starve unless someone gives of themselves to supply him with food. He can’t protect himself. Someone will need to stand up for him when he can’t stand up for himself. He has no means, no shelter, and no strength; yet, to us a savior is born?

The messengers sing. They sing glory to the new born king, born is the king of Israel, today a savior is born – a message heard in pastures close by and in cities far away. Fear not??? I wonder if the fear we are trying to prevent is fear of an unexpected message given by a stranger, or fear that our savior is a helpless babe, fear that our savior needs a great deal of saving himself.

This helpless babe seeks to heal our lives by the wonders of his love. Maybe the fact that he comes to us in this neediest of forms is just the balm we need for our sin sick souls. Are we not moved by the faces of need? Are we not called by a needy savior to new ways of life – life abundant? To the face of need, wise men bring presents. To the face of need, a community brings presence. When we lean into the manger, do we see the face of need – a helpless babe? Do we feel challenged and inspired by an infant lowly, an infant holy?

The face of need is breaking into my world this Christmas. The food pantry gave out 150 bags of food last night. The face of need waited patiently at our doors throughout the cold and breezy day. The face of need will show up again – we will eat a hot meal together at 5:30 on December 22^nd. It is a wondrous love that calls us together – makes community where we imagine competition. As I gaze upon the landscape of our community beside the faithful servants of this church, we notice together needs that overwhelm us. The helpless babe shows us our fears as well as our capacity for love – both are so powerful.

The helpless babe challenges and inspires us to embrace the power of love in spite of the power of fear. My prayer is that we see the holy within the lowly in the Christmas moment and in the moments that follow. God give us new hope. Show us that our offerings of presents and presence are truly the beginnings of relationships. Nurture in us the willingness to be in relationship. Open our hearts to welcome the helpless babe into our celebrations, into our churches, into our communities, and into our lives. Make born this day, a savior. Hope; it’s what’s for Christmas.

 

Enjoy God,

pg

Blue Christmas

Seasons come and go, but not always on a schedule. Our society wants to schedule the season of Joy. We want to put merriment on the calendar so that we can prepare for it. In many cases, this arrangement makes perfect sense.  For thousands more people Christmas joy has been eagerly anticipated until recently. Despite its joys, Christmastime can evoke feelings of hurt for some individuals experiencing difficult life situations. Losing a loved one, especially on Christmas, being let go from a job or financial struggles in general, dealing with broken relationships, suffering from an illness or loneliness can cause depression during the holidays.

The traumas of life can make us feel immune to the “Christmas spirit” at times. Imagine how the world looks when we are out of sync with the season. It seems like the whole world is out of balance. Someone flipped a switch and we are invited to be “merry” six times a day. Radio stations have changed their programming to meet the new demand for celebration. We are shopping for groceries to a serenade of expectation – “have a Holly Jolly Christmas. It’s the best time of the year…” The firemen put antlers on engine #3. Everywhere we look, there is a fashion resistant sweater, a house covered in blinking lights, another tray of cookies and fudge, cards filling the mailbox, trees being lit, commercials, even church embraces this pervasive sentiment. It certainly is not for a lack of trying; but, some of us just can’t get on the jolly train.

The questions begin to mount both internally and from the world at large. Is there something wrong? Are we so different that we should avoid contact with the cheery world at all costs? Should we be “faking it” just so our families don’t worry?  Are we ungrateful – unwilling to pay the debt of cheer to a deserving community? Are we changed forever? Are we doomed to spending months every year as a gloomy contrast to the world of twinkling red and green? Should we seek help for our conditions of hopelessness? Am I not capable of hope anymore?

Even the tales of Christmas woe are a little oversimplified. Scrooge Mc Duck needed to be cured of greed. Ebenezer suffered from being out of touch with the common suffering of humanity. The Grinch had never witnessed an unexplainable love. So when the world is exposed to sorrow in the season of joy, the natural assumption is that there is something “wrong” with the person who is experiencing sadness – we just need the right “cure”: we can ”fix it.”

The fact is, we just need to create space. Sadness is not hopelessness. Grief does not pay any attention to the calendar. If we are honest, we can recognize that many of the deepest experiences of hope, love, and faith are discovered in the depth of lamentation. We are emotional beings. Our understanding of the richness of life seems to come through the emotional highs, but this point of view is an emotional illusion. Emotional highs are in and of themselves evidence of emotional lows. We cannot cherish one without the other. When we give ourselves permission to be present for the sadness in our lives the door is wide open for life and life abundant.

 Diving into a season of hope with eager longing doesn’t need to look the same for everyone. Some celebrate with green and red. Some want to glitter with gold and silver. It can be just as valid to welcome the season of Christmas with the color blue. It is fertile ground for hope when we ring in the new year with a tear instead of a kiss. 

When we come to worship, we need to bring our real selves. We need to be able to say that I am here. I am completely here and completely welcome with my sadness, my loneliness, my frustration, my illness, my sorrow. We need to be able to recognize that we are here together – there is space for your complete emotional being and mine together. We need to know that God is also here – God that suffered, God that prayed, God that died, & God that lives, resurrected and calling us beloved. Worship is communion with God and one another. Worship welcomes me in both sadness and joy.

Blue Christmas will be celebrated at 7:00pm on December 21^st, 2013 in the sanctuary of the United Methodist Church of Merced (899 Yosemite Parkway). This is often called a service of the longest night because it is the longest night of the year.  Yet, this is also the day that the season of encroaching darkness gives way to the season of encroaching light. We will acknowledge the emotional wilderness of sorrow and grief. We will give each other personal space to hold, identify, and recognize the weight our sorrows. We will honor this way of being with prayer, candle lighting, communion, and song. We will know Emmanuel – God with us. Not conditionally upon our behavior or our attitude; but, God with us in all of the seasons of our lives. Hope: It’s what’s for Christmas.

Praise be to God,

pg

Bazaar Christmas

The United Methodist Church of Merced is many things, but I relish the fact that one of UMC Merced’s titles could be “Home of Bazaar Christmas.” It was like someone shot the starters pistol. The moment I was back from my Thanksgiving vacation the church was a new place. There were people bustling around the halls at the earliest hours in the morning. I was shocked by the level of intensity in everyone’s eyes. I was impressed by the seemingly unspoken organization that gave structure to everyone’s activities. I noticed that I am seeing Christmas. In every community Christmas has its own shape. It’s more than a season. It’s a culture that runs deep: living in memories, modeled for generations, revered and dripping with hope, pride, expectation, and sacrifice. Is it any wonder that as a newcomer I  would call it Bazaar Christmas. Where would we be if not for the Bazaar?

This year we are holding the 83^rd annual Bazaar. The United Methodist Women weren’t even United Methodists when this started, since the name United Methodist was created in 1968. The Church wasn’t on Yosemite Parkway when it started. In fact, it was before the church at 19^th & M too. This all started on 20^th and H Street. Why? All of these decades of Bazaar Christmas have been dedicated to raising money for mission in the community and around the globe – often as much as $10,000. It is people gathering in response to God’s grace; seeking to make an offering of time, talent, treasure, witness, & prayer. It is a fermenting Christmas hope; hope that fills the hearts and lives of the workers, hope that overflows and enriches the community, hope that encourages and supports and reveals a Christmas meaning so deep that the absence of this event would create a profound void in the community.

I got the chance to ask people all week what inspired hope in this time of year. Questions like this attempt to engage us in the enduring presence of hope. They remind us of hope’s persistence throughout the years. They alert us to the hope waiting for us on the horizon. I was so touched by the comment of Jim Macedo. Even though he is struggling through another round of Chemotherapy, unable to eat without the assistance of a feeding tube, he shared profound image of hope with me. He said, “I am so glad to be here for Thanksgiving with family. It’s sure different when you can’t eat, but I was able to listen for the laughter. It’s all about the laughter. That’s living and I love it.” Hope overflowed from Jim and I was drenched in it. Life is always changing; maybe Bazaar Christmas is the new normal.

For many people that I talked to we noticed that life has changed so much, we don’t even know how to anticipate and participate in the hope of Christmas anymore. These words echoed in so many conversations. “I am much older than I use to be.” “Things just aren’t the way they use to be.” “I don’t look forward so much anymore.” “So much is changed with the loss of (My wife, my husband, the children).” “That’s a hard one.” Yet hope has never abandoned us. We’ve had precious opportunities to celebrate together, to remember, to create Christmas memories during this Bazaar Christmas. Singing carols with workers has filled me with joy as I remembered my childhood singing with aunts and uncles and learning harmonies. We shared the fragrance of the Noble Pine and I remembered the smell of Lake Tahoe where I received the gift of my first child Kaela. (Joy to the world). We prayed in the hallways and I remembered how moving work can be when we take time to dwell in the spirit of life. Even when hope is hard to apprehend, it flowed so freely and so often – Bazaar Christmas indeed.

You can’t imagine how grateful I am for a Bazaar Christmas. I met people in new ways and we recalled the legacy of the event with warm hearts. I was in the “Christmas Room” with Michelle Moore. She is brand new to our community and participates at every opportunity. She showed me the hand stitched snowman ornaments that she made and so many other detailed ornaments. New talent is a blessing. She was in the room that smelled like pine because Donna Hall has been dedicated for years to weaving nature into Christmas reminders of God’s glory.

 

Jane Matthews was smiling away in the Jam & Jelly Room. This year we named this room for Margaret Freed who passed this summer. We can’t help but remember the passion and spirit of Margaret. She made a mission out of this Bazaar stuff; platooning people into pomegranate crushing for her famous jelly, personally eradicating the concept of idle hands. Yet we give thanks to God that Jane would give herself so freely to a labor of love that honors a legacy so freshly left. 

It occurs to me that if we had to try to store hope in a container, the container would have to be legacy. Charlene Smiley found a hand stitched Christmas stocking at home. It has an adorable little mouse peeking out of the top. Suddenly she was awash in the memory of Dorothy Shiely who made crafts in so many years passed. Connie Jones was moved to make the poured mint candies in honor of Enid Olive. ( I just received my invitation to Enid’s 100^th birthday party in January) Connie tells me that Enid has been a continuous supporter of the candy room for decades. This room is now staffed by hearts and hands – a group that includes Joyce Hambley who just discovered that she can make candy too. After the annual one-pound cheese ball making extravaganza, Laura Warner laughed out loud remembering the eager children; like Anna Durbin, who would bite into the cheeseball as soon as it was purchased every year, enjoying the rest of Bazaar Christmas with more cheese face than cheese ball. Our Hmong congregation has found the spirit irresistible; creating a special room for egg rolls and special Hmong handicrafts. The legacy container never seems to empty. One group recalled the tea room where tea accompanies delicious desserts for weary shoppers. Mattie Rose can still be pictured serving tea; until the picture in our mind changes to her daughter Mary Fran Rowe. Suddenly the picture changes again to her granddaughter Claudia Speziale and I am sure some of you have even pictured her great granddaughter Kaytie Rose holding tea and pie as well. An event like this is not something I’ve ever seen before – this is Bazaar Christmas.

Where would we be without the Bazaar? We would be missing something precious. We would be missing something overflowing with hope. We would be missing something Christmas.  What a blessing!

Hope: It’s what’s for Christmas.

Enjoy God,

Pg