Cam Miller

1 Epiphany: A little something about spiritual practice…

January 9, 2022 by Cam Miller

The five promises of the Baptismal Covenant

With God’s help, we will continue in the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers.
With God’s help, we will persevere in resisting evil, and, when we fall into sin, repent, and return to the Lord.
With God’s help, we will proclaim by word and example the Good News of Christ.
With God’s help, we will seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves.
With God’s help, we will strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.

I prefer to write poetic sermons,
at times even sacrificing the “So What?” at the end
for the joy of sharing and hearing it.
It is more fun and challenging
to ring the melody and notes from something like,
a descending dove
with a message that you are my beloved,
than it is to examine if it has any meaning for us.

This is not one of those poetic sermons.

An esoteric conversation with Michael Hartney
about Epiphany, the Magi, and
our Revised Common Lectionary
caused me to read about the evolution of Epiphany
from its absence before 361 CE
and its current use in both Eastern and Western
Christianity.

Having read these tomes of Church history
about the conflicts and controversies
that shaped the modern-day liturgical
observance of Epiphany,
I am left
with the same feeling
as I had when reading about such things
in seminary.
It is the same feeling
that the great lay theologian Verna Dosier
must have felt when she said to young Cam Miller,
after I had delivered
what I thought was a spanky, fresh sermon
at the College of Preachers.
She looked at me and said, “So what?”

Even though I am interested in history
there is something about the history of the Church
that leaves me cold, as in, “So what?”
I think it is because it is so rarely
about things that matter.

So much of church history
seems to me to be like the argument
between Sadducees, Pharisees
and scribes
about whose wife
will a widow be in heaven
because she has outlived five husbands.

First, like so much of church history,
it is an argument about something
we do not know and never will;
two, it is about nothing
that matters here on earth;
and three, it does nothing
to change the social
and economic status of the woman,
and instead preserves an unjust patriarchy.

The reason I mention all of this,
is because baptism itself
gets buried
and neutered in church history.

I mean, it is such a painful irony
that Jesus never looked under the table
to make sure those he was eating with
were circumcised or not,
yet the first thing the church did
was to turn baptism into circumcision —
you’re either in or your out.

Today, and I think all season of Epiphany,
is a wonderful time to focus on baptism —
our baptisms
and the relevancy of baptism to us.

Actually, even to make the claim
that baptism is relevant,
might seem startling these days.

Here is a little living history.
The Baptismal Covenant in the 1979
Book of Common Prayer
is the answer to “So what?”
To my mind, the five promises
of the Baptismal Covenant
that we will be sharing each week of Epiphany,
matter.

They put flesh on the bones
of our beliefs.
The covenant says, “this is what it looks like
to practice Christianity.”
It says, “we believe
the ‘So what?’ of our faith
is these five commitments
that will make us different.”
The Covenant asks, “this is what I do,
will you join me in doing it?”

The five promises of the Baptismal Covenant
are not an argument
about angels on the head of a pin,
or the nature of Jesus,
or three-in-one or one-in-three.
Instead, our covenant is a DEscription
of how to practice Christianity.
It is a DEscription
of the “So what?” of our practice.
It is a DEscription
of the plumb line we use
to measure how we are doing.

Unlike so much of Christianity yesterday and today,
it is not about espousing beliefs
and shoving them down other people’s throats.

It is descriptive not prescriptive.

Our covenant is not a PREscription
because The Episcopal Church
does not understand its authority
as prescriptive.
Any authority we have
rests in the integrity of our practice:
the distance between our five promises
and how we actually live our lives.

Scrubbing clean our soul or heart
from original sin
so that we can enter heaven,
is not what baptism is about.
If you want to know how baptism got
so terribly corrupted
and turned into a ticket out of hell,
then read some church history.
It is not a pretty story.

Rather, baptism is about how we practice Christianity.

For those of us who were baptized as infants,
it started with a promise from our parents
that we would be raised in the community of faith
so that we could come to understand
the Baptismal Covenant
and to learn the wisdom of Jesus.

But baptism became ours
when we were Confirmed,
or if not Confirmed,
when we embraced Christianity as our own
rather than a club we just grew up in.

If I can keep from getting distracted,
I am going to continuously bring us back
to the five promises throughout Epiphany,
using them as a meditative focus.
So to begin that,
please notice two things.

The first thing to note
is that our own congregational mission statement
is based upon and rooted in
one of those promises —
“to respect the dignity of every human being.”

And actually, so is the second sentence,
”and treat each person entering our doors
as if that person is Christ.”
That reflects the promise to “seek and serve Christ
in all persons…” — as opposed to only some persons.

And that mission statement wisely connects
all of this to both our personal lives
and our life together in community —
as if they are the same,
as if it is a practice
we are engaged in
no matter where we are.

Finally, I want to draw our focus
to the statement, “With God’s help…”
Without that caveat
these promises would be an arrogant
and soul-less list of test questions —
as in, are you good enough
or have you been successful enough.

”With God’s help…”
acknowledges that we are incapable
of a meaningful practice without God’s help.
We are dependent.
The covenant
is not the promise of a personal achievement
or New Year’s resolution
we fulfill or not.
It is not a Scout’s Promise
or Pledge of Allegiance,
or any other kind of loyalty oath
or standard of perfection.

”With God’s help…”
means that our spiritual practice,
from the very beginning,
is an act of surrender.
Just like the first step of Alcoholic’s Anonymous
that acknowledges powerlessness over alcohol,
”With God’s help…”
acknowledges our powerlessness
to engage in a meaningful spiritual practice
without openness to the presence of God in our midst.

So even before we begin the practice
of the Baptismal Covenant,
we acknowledge our powerlessness
and then welcome God’s help —
the first steps
in our spiritual path.

It is a tough and challenging place to begin:
acknowledging our dependence
and opening ourselves to God’s participation.

You and I have this spiritual practice,
or craft, as young Amanda Gordon calls it.
She may not have had the Baptismal Covenant
in mind when she wrote that poem, but it works:

“Every day we are learning
how to live with essence, not ease.
How to move with haste, never hate.
How to leave this pain that is beyond us,
behind us.
Just like a skill or any art,
We cannot possess hope without practicing it…”

We have a concrete and doable practice of hope
we call Christianity,
and it is described with five promises —
each with a powerful
and sometimes radical, “So what?”

More next time.

Christmas Eve & December 26: Who is with us…in the darkness

December 25, 2021 by Cam Miller

Scroll down for a video presentation if you prefer to watch

I spent some time
trying to think of
another historical figure —
or even someone personally known to us —
whose birth story
has such a robust narrative
that it travels over time
and across history and borders
in good times and bad.
I couldn’t think of any.

There are some historical figures with stories,
some even miraculous stories.
But none of them do we gather around
every year —
at great expense,
with celebratory preparation,
and these days,
at some personal risk.

There are of course,
solid, unmiraculous, and explicable reasons
that this birth is what it is for us —
historical reasons,
sociological reasons,
economic reasons,
theological reasons,
personal and family reasons.
But there is yet something else.

There is something more.

This story,
this birth narrative,
is our story.
And I do not mean merely a Christian story.
It is the human story
writ large and profoundly
upon the pages of our lives.

It’s a story that happens in darkness.

No matter how safe and secure
our affluence allows us to feel,
we know we are vulnerable
to forces beyond our control.
We begin to know that as early as three
or four years old.
Somehow the existential truth
of irreverability
gets known very early for us humans.

This year, once again,
a microorganism invisible to the human eye,
is a threat to all of us.
Covid is not unique, merely
another agent of hazard stalking the world
we share with hundreds of billions of them.

A baby, his anguished mother and father,
huddled in darkness
surrounded by agents of harm —
human and otherwise — is us.

Now we do not explicitly recognize this
when we hear the Christmas story,
nor hover over it
as if a detail central to its plot.
But deep down
we recognize it
because we live it
over and over and over again.

What is with us in this darkness?
Who is with us in this darkness?
Who and what can we always count on
to be with us — to be present
no matter how this story unfolds?

We know, or intuit, or fear
the hazards that inhabit our darkness,
but who or what else
is present — to be
with us?

That is what matters to us,
what really matters.
Who is present with us?
Not to protect us — we understand
our vulnerability
and come to terms with it
somehow.
But who is present with us?

In this story that we tell every year,
the Christmas story,
that presence is symbolized by light.
Whether it is the star
or brilliance of angels —
depending upon whether we are reading
Matthew or luke —
light is the metaphor for presence.

It points to that presence within us
that allows us to hold the darkness
when we cannot see our hand in front of our face
or know what is in the next moment.
Presence.
Simple presence.
The power of simple presence
that turns out to be enough to hold the darkness.

My words are limited this year
to keep our time together briefer than usual —
because our vulnerability this year
is clearer than in most years.

So this is as far as I can go with you,
but it is far enough.
It is the whole story in brief.

We understand the darkness
we sojourn —
it is composed of our vulnerabilities.

The Christmas story
reminds us
of what we also know:
that there is a presence with us,
some say a power greater than ourselves,
that is with us
in every moment and in every darkness.
A simple presence
that travels with us
and turns out to be enormously powerful.
Powerful enough to staunch our fear
and pierce our anxiety
and calm our tremors
with something
we cannot quite name.

We know there are COVIDS
and Deltas and Omicrons
and lions and tigers and bears, oh my,
that make up a constellation of hazards
which darken the skies within us.
But we also know
there is a presence.
And even though we more often than not
want protection more than anything,
we also know,
can also feel,
that somehow
that simple presence is enough.

In this beautiful moment,
present to one another
and together
holding the darkness,

I wish you a blessed, healing,
and hope-filled Christmas.

4 Advent: Where hope is found

December 24, 2021 by Cam Miller

A video version can be found by scrolling to the end of the text

Micah was a prophetic oracle
of both judgment and hope,
and he announced the coming destruction of Israel –
which would have seemed obvious
to anyone not in denial.

But then Micah locates hope for the future
in someone to come from Bethlehem –
which would have also seemed
like an obvious choice
to his contemporaries.

The Matriarch Rachel, died in Bethlehem
and her grave was a place of pilgrimage.
Bethlehem was the setting for the Book of Ruth,
itself an eloquent oracle of hope.

King David was born in Bethlehem.
So it was an auspicious location
to posit the future of hope.

Then in Luke, two pregnant women connect
and a gusher of hope rushes out
like a heart pumping blood.
We know that Bethlehem
will be brought into that story too.

I think this year,
heck, the past two years or more,
might constitute a dark time

in which it has been
a challenge to have hope.
That seems obvious to me,
but maybe I’m wrong.
Maybe this hasn’t been a dark time for you.

I knew someone once
who made me feel like a real Derick-downer —
when most people, I think,
would see me as optimistic.

I’ll come back to that in a moment.

But dark times never have clear outcomes —
that is part of their darkness.
When we can see light at the end of the tunnel,
even just a sparkle,
we know we can get through.
It is the not-knowing,
or more particularly, the not-seeing
that we find so difficult.
When we cannot tell
if something is going to end well
or how it might be resolved,
and all we know are the hazards,
then we feel surrounded by darkness.

Light and dark
have to do with what
we can see
or not see.

This is a dark time
because we cannot see how it gets resolved —
the pandemic
our democracy
or the Earth’s climate.
The stage curtain is closed
on those big items
that fill the atmosphere around us.
So if we want some light,
some hope,
then staring into that darkness
will not deliver it.

I’ll come back to hope
but first I want to go back
and tell you about Theoda.

Theoda is one of those saints
I always bring to mind and give thanks for
on All Saints’ Day.

She used to tell people,
“I was married three times
and the only husband that lived
is was the one that left me.”

She was raised by a
7th Day Adventist minister-father
and her growing up
was as stern and as harsh
as the back of an old fashioned church pew.

She was told she was ugly,
and truth be told,
she was not beautiful to look at.

She was told she was stupid,
but I think she was dumb like a fox.

She was called names
and given a name
that stuck out like a sore thumb.

I didn’t get to know Theoda
until she was in her 70’s
when she walked laboriously with a cane,
and had to watch every penny she spent.
But Theoda was like a cat.
You know how you can drop a cat
upside down
and it always lands right side up?
Theoda was like that.
No matter how desperate things looked
or how sour the taste of sorrow,
she found an up side.

Some would call it naivete
wishful thinking
or even magical thinking
or denial,
and it might have been all of those
and more.

But still…
Theoda was able to survive
and thrive,
in spite of horrendous pain
that might have wiped out
someone else.

I knew her when I was a
baby priest only a couple years out
of the very liberal
Episcopal Divinity School
of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
I was suddenly surrounded by cornfields
and preaching and teaching
to my fellow Hoosiers
who I frequently felt out of step with.

So I was aghast
every time I drove Theoda somewhere
and she prayed for a parking space.
And I was infuriated
that every time she did,
we got one.

She took the Bible literally,
more or less word for word, whatever it said.
She prayed for people and things
I would never have had the chutzpah to pray for.

As far as I know
she never wrestled with God
and instead,
walked through much of her life
holding hands with God.

There are days that I live
that I wish I were more like Theoda.
But I am not.
If indeed God has a plan for Cam,
I generally do not recognize it
until it is in the rear view mirror
and I am too tired wrestling with it
to resist any more.

The demons
and angels
of my better nature
are more often than not,
indistinguishable from one another,
at least to me.

And when I get dropped
I land on my back.

It was people like Theoda
that helped me begin to be curious
about prophets like Micah
and Isaiah
and Jeremiah.

At the time, I was much more like the prophet Amos,
ferociously pointing out
all the threatening stuff
floating around in the darkness with us,
and naming those to blame
for our misfortune.
The other prophets do that as well,
but they also do something else.

Micah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah
are good at drawing lines
between current darkness
and future hope.
They see the hope
buried in the moment
and they name it.

They see the hope
like a fleck of gold in a gravel sieve
and they point to it.

The see the hope
when everyone else shouts
or cowers
or flees the present dangers,
and they find safe-keeping for it
knowing it will be discovered
sometime in the future.

While those prophets
are good at naming what darkens the moment,
they are also good at recognizing
and naming the hope of restoration
at the other end of the dangers.

That is also
what I think the Christmas story
does for us.
You may not remember
or care
that I said at the end of last week’s sermon
that the Christmas story,
at its core,
is a prophetic story.

The Christmas story
is surrounded by darkness.

Masses of people
who have nothing —
I mean nothing —
are being pushed and moved around
through the arid hill country of Judah and Galilee
on the whim of distant imperial bureaucrats
moving pins around on a map.

People who own enormous resources
and who have deadly power
to employ against peasants,
sharecroppers,
and shepherds,
are squeezing even more taxes
from already burdened people.
While some imagine they can rebel
against the darkness,
most see no chance for change.

Then the census comes along
and everyone knows it is for more control
and yet more taxes.
Now they will be able to record
every name
and every property owner
and every male heir.

There will be no guessing
as to how many sheep or goats or donkeys,
crops or children you have.
They will know.

And then there is the slaughter of the innocents.
As God’s plague in Egypt did,
Herod sought out every male child
with orders to slit his throat.

It wasn’t enough
to live with the randomness of death
that comes from wild animals
or mysterious illness,
or suffer rape and robbery
from bandits or soldiers.

Now it would come in methodical,
organized,
and engineered means
by an empire
that spoke other languages,
wore clothing that was strange and foreign,
and with an emperor they claimed as a god.

That and more is the darkness
that surrounds the story of an anonymous infant
born homeless
in the darkness of night.
The story of an infant
tearing open his mother’s womb,
his throat breaking the silence
with loud cries from the sudden coldness on his skin,
the coo of his mother
as he his brought to her breast,
the sound of him sucking loudly
when he discovers her in his mouth.

This is the story
of human beings,
of a baby
and his mother and father
surrounded by night
and danger
and randomness
totally beyond their control.

We know they make it
when thousands of others
born that night
will not.

We know they crawl
into the future
together as a family
until they don’t.

We know that baby
becomes an embodied hope
even though his body
is cruelly taken from him
by the same murderous power
that sought him out
as an infant.

We know that somehow
in spite of randomness
in spite of violence
in spite of brute force
and in spite of the thousands of hazards
that surrounded him that night,
and that eventually took his life,
he lives as hope
now
within our own darkness.
That baby, and who and what he becomes,
is a veritable constellation of hopeful light
texturing any darkness.
I think many of the places and people
we look to for hope
in our present darkness,
may not shine.
But I do think there is light
we do not expect to see
residing in the Christmas Story
we are about to tell.

Let’s look for
and give thanks for that hope
next Friday.

3 Advent: Do you have two shirts?

December 12, 2021 by Cam Miller

Washington National Cathedral

Video version follows the text
Sermon Texts: Isaiah 12:2-6; Theologies for Korah, a poem by Dante Michael; Luke 3:7-18

Alright, how many of you still have two shirts?
That’s what John the Baptist wants to know.
But as for me, as the poet wrote,
“I have learned to keep my head
while speaking the truth.”
That is a pun.

I dare say, there are not many other poems
about John the Baptist,
nor that many sermons.
It is kind of like preaching about John Brown —
another prophet who came to prepare us
but isn’t talked about in polite society.

We like our prophets
in the rear view mirror
after we have enough distance
to pluck the insect wing from their beards
and can no longer smell the musk.

We clean them up and sanitize them
so we can make national heroes of them.
Another word for it is domestication.
If they were alive
we could never get away
with domesticating them
because they just wouldn’t sit still for it.

On the other hand, nobody in their right mind
wants to be a prophet.
Nobody who has other options
ever sits around and thinks to him or herself,
”I think I’ll grow up to be a prophet.”

Whereas once upon a time
there were schools of prophets
and even professional prophets,
it long ago fell out of favor as a profession.

One generation of amazing prophets included
Amos, Micah, Hosea, and Isaiah
and somehow, miraculously really,
we still have their poetry —
lo, these twenty-seven hundred years later.

Decades and decades ago,
at the beginning of my ministry,
I attended a once vaunted institution
now closed, called The College of Preachers.
It was in the nation’s capital
on the grounds of the National Cathedral.
20^th century greats like Reinhold Niebuhr
taught seminars there,
and after initially being an invitation-only program,
it came to be more open —
even to punks like me.

I anxiously drove to Washington, DC
from Indianapolis, Indiana
my “real” sermon text in hand
which we were instructed to bring.
Like everyone else, of course,
I brought one I thought was really, really good.
The first full day we delivered our sermons
to a group of colleagues all there for the same thing.

As I recall, I was one of the youngest of the bunch,
with longish hair and a bushy beard,
without a doubt, the least refined.
The feedback was nearly unanimous:
too harsh,
too radical,
too angry.
You can’t get away with talking like that
from the pulpit.

I was downhearted, of course,
but tried to stay open and learn
because that is what I was there for.

Somewhere toward the end of the week,
the faculty gathered us
to watch a video of the retired Presiding Bishop,

John Hines.
I had heard of him but that’s about all,
never read or heard him speak.
We watched as he ascended the tall pulpit
of the National Cathedral,
two canes helping him up the steps.
In the red and white of bishop’s robes,
he also sported a long beard —
at least in my mind’s eye.
I can’t find any photos of him with a beard.

Anyway, he was older in this video,
and clearly had to hold the edges of the pulpit
to remain standing.
But his voice boomed,
and filled every nook and cranny
of that vaulted cave.
As the camera panned the congregation
it was filled with fur coats
and Georgetown black suits
sitting there under the hot breath

of that lion who preach a wildly prophetic sermon.
We were all blown away
at the power of that man’s words
and his very demeanor – resonating as it did
out of a shrunken body that was crumbling.
All around the room,
all of us commented on the sermon
in glowing tones.

Then one of the faculty members
very quietly remarked,
”Isn’t it funny how Cam said nearly the same things,
but he was perceived as an angry young man.”

It is a hard reality to learn
that youth, gender,
race, and class
are robed in countless presumptions
that we cannot get rid of
nor deny.

Neither John the Baptist nor Jesus,
both brown men of color
adorned in the aura of poverty,
would be able to speak to us
in our world and churches,
still segregated as they are by class and race.

We have about as much chance
of changing that reality
as we do making a silk purse
from a pig’s ear.
But you know what?
With God, all things are possible.
(Jesus said that, I didn’t make it up).

There are more ways than poetry
and violent rebellion
to be prophetic.
Whenever we can offer a witness
that could cause other people to stop and wonder —
to stop and ask themselves how or why we did that —
and have their pondering lead
like ant tracks back to God,
we are being prophetic.

Someone remarked to me this week,
about how remarkable it is,
the robust quantity of goods and money
this small congregation
is able to collect and give away.

Indeed, during the pandemic shut down,
we were recognized in the diocese
as one of the few congregations
that were able to keep our outreach going.
In fact, it was then that we really began to accelerate.

This is not meant as a boast of any kind,
just a moment to stop and recognize
that one way we can be prophetic
in this community, is to have an outsized heart.
Like John Hines,
many of us are no longer
in our best physical condition,
and that narrows some of our options.
But because of that very fact,
how and what we can do
is able to boom and resonate
our conviction
that with God, all things are possible.

I also believe
that by choosing to leave our building
when we did
and how we did,
and our dogged persistence
in the face of struggle,
that we can offer hundreds
if not thousands
of congregations around the nation
a prophetic message of hope.

(The congregation voted in 2016 to allow the historic building to become a boutique inn
while it moved into a former wine bar in downtown Geneva).

Being prophetic doesn’t require us
to eat insects
or break into armories
in pursuit of abolition.
We can also be prophetic
by living out a cherished value
in ways that other people begin to wonder
why we did that?

In the darkest moments of his generation,
Isaiah offered the poetry of hope and restoration.
Then, when prosperity made his contemporaries
forget who they were,
his poetry turned radical and challenging.

What he didn’t do
was sit around and fret
that no one would notice
and so be rendered speechless.

It is Advent
and after today
we turn the corner toward Christmas.
Next week the stories and images
we associate with Christmas
begin to leak through the purple curtain.
What we need to know
is that Christmas itself —
the stories we associate with
hot cocoa and silent night, are
at their core, prophetic stories.

More about that next week.

2 Advent Year C

December 5, 2021 by Cam Miller

Scroll down for video version

Take good care — this is Advent.

Why do I say it that way?
Because the culture is hostile
to authentic presentations of Christianity.

If we are clear-eyed and honest about it,
authentic Christian faith
is disrespected in the Public Square
and silenced by subjugation
to stereotyped images on television and in the movies.

The culture is hostile to Christianity
because the Chemists of Culture –
those who mix the proportions and ingredients of
market economics, education,
arts, entertainment, and government,
are scared of Christianity —
of religion in general.
They should be.

Buddhism is not a threat yet,
at least here in the US,
so it has been lionized in the popular culture.

Islam? Well it has been ravaged
in the public square since 9/11,
and always presented almost exclusively
as a dangerous and violent theology.

Judaism? Polarized.
The actual faith and theology are obscured
by the Geo-political conflicts
between Israel and Palestine.

But Christianity?
In the United States, authentic Christianity
is the biggest threat of all.
Because it was once the dominant religion,
and still by far the majority religion,
and it has held sway for so long.

But take a look at that reading from Luke.

When Luke is going to tell us about the “Word of God”
coming to John the Baptist in the wilderness,
why does he begin
by telling us who the politicians are?
Why does he begin this story
by telling us it was in the reign of Tiberius,
under the local dictatorship of Pontus Pilate?
Or, as we will hear on Christmas Eve
when Luke begins to tell the story
of when Jesus was born,
why does he begin by telling us
that it was in the reign of Augustus
when Quirinius was governor?

It is because history is always told
from the point of view of the winners –
and by the professional historians
who work for the Chemists of the Culture.

If that culture is hostile to you,
and you want your story to be remembered,
then you have to peg it to the milestones
that the winners keep.

From the very beginning,
when we were slaves in Egypt,
we have understood
that we are counter-cultural in a hostile environment.
We have forgotten this from time to time,
and acted more like Pharaoh than Moses,
but it doesn’t take long to be reminded
about which is the spiritual path.

From the very beginning,
when we were prophets
warning the kings and the religious authorities
that their decadence and consumerism
was going to lead to a tremendous national tragedy,
we have understood
the social and economic implications of being spiritual people.

From the very beginning,
when we were healers for people who had been marginalized
because of their illness and woundedness,
and when we became marginalized too
because we dared to embrace them,
we have understood the subversiveness
of being spiritual people.

From the very beginning,
when we were prophets, messiahs and disciples
who were reformers of a religion that had become
fat and corrupt around a hierarchy of men,
enmeshed and beholden to
the economic and military powers,
we have understood that rubbing salt in their wounds
is part of what it means to be spiritual people.

And though our religion
and our leaders and institutions
have often become
hawkers and shills for the economic culture,
we have always had strong currents in Christianity
that remembered…
Those that remembered ordinary spiritual people
are yeast for justice,
advocates for mercy, and
the lovers of peace.

And that, my friends, is the Christmas story.
We have already begun telling it
and will continue to tell it through Advent –
building week by week
to that moment on Christmas Eve.

It is a story told from the margins of society
with a profound and poignant reminder
that being spiritual people,
we are always working against the culture.

It should make us angry on some level,
that our story is never truly told
in the public square —
at least not with any authenticity.
I do not mean from an evangelical point of view
because we know and respect
that our story is not everyone’s story.

But all the Christmas stuff
we see and hear
on the radio or television,
or Lowes and Walmart for crying out loud,
is sentimentalized yuck.
Those manger scenes and decorations,
and fa-la-la carols,
are stripped of any true spiritual content.

Instead, they are totally appropriated
by the Chemists of Culture
to reinforce the story
they want us to spend our money on.

Being spiritual people,
we understand that the story of Christmas
is counter-cultural and subversive,
and we share in the joy of surprise
when those who never knew it
suddenly stumble into that wisdom too.

So let me conclude with this whisper from the past
that blows like a January wind into the future.
The words of this prophet are the same distance from us
that Luke was from Jesus.
It is the Christmas story we wish to unleash.

In the reign of Joseph R. Biden,
when a woman named Hochul was Governor;
in the time an Argentinian named Francis
was Bishop of Rome,
and an American Black man
named, Michael, was the presiding Bishop;
in the second year of Valentino’s administration
in the city cradled by a region known as Finger Lakes;
the Word of the Lord came to an oddball group
of people gathered in a former wine bar
at the heart of the city.

As it was written in the words of the prophet:
“This is our hope.
This is the faith that we go into our lives with.

With this faith
we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair
a stone of hope.

With this faith
we will be able to transform the jangling discords
of our nation into a beautiful symphony of community.

With this faith
we will be able to work together,
to pray together,
to struggle together,
to stand up for freedom together,
knowing our freedom cannot be paid for
on the backs of peasants and sweatshop workers
in other regions of the world.

When we allow freedom to ring,
when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet,
from every state and every city
we speed up that day when all God’s children,
black and white,
Jews and Muslims,
Protestants and Catholics,
will be able to join hands and sing the words
of that old (African American) spiritual,
‘Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God almighty, we are free at last!’”

You remember those words
and that prophet, right?
(The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

THAT voice,
that wisdom,
that vision,
is the same voice
and the same wisdom
and the same vision
that spiritual people have always told —
the same as Luke’s voice we read this morning.

It is the whisper that changes the chemistry of culture.
It is the current that subverts the course of the stream.
It is the relentless hope
that never, never, never has and never will
be beaten down
by the Chemists of Culture.

No matter how successful they are in subjugating our story
for their economic and military purposes,
the voice and the wisdom and the vision
escape.

Now take care.
This is a tough season for spiritual people.
We see things
and know things
that weigh heavy on our hearts and minds.

We understand what is going on
and we recognize the motives of people
who are led by profit more than prophets.

It is a weary season for spiritual people
who are by nature and desire healers.
We see and feel the woundedness of others,
even as we experience most acutely our own wounds.

So take care.
Spiritual people need to be nurtured
in such a difficult season.

Allow yourself to be held in the arms of community.
Allow yourself to find the arms of those who love you most closely.
Allow yourself to stop and breathe
and remember the larger picture…the deeper hope…the greater love.
Allow yourself to rest and be touched
by the peace of God that surpasses our understanding…

The mysterious and even whimsical movement
of the Spirit through ordinary moments
and our time in history.

Allow yourself to stop and look around
and see the marvelous people in the world around you – even here, even now –
and know they are a gift.

Who would have thought,
given what we have been told
by all those that are hostile to Christianity,
that a religion could be so spiritual
and that being spiritual
we could be so counter-cultural…so subversive?

Take good care – this is Advent.

1 Epiphany: A little something about spiritual practice…

Christmas Eve & December 26: Who is with us…in the darkness

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4 Advent: Where hope is found

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3 Advent: Do you have two shirts?

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Sermon Texts: Isaiah 12:2-6; Theologies for Korah, a poem by Dante Michael; Luke 3:7-18

2 Advent Year C

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Video version follows the text Sermon Texts: Isaiah 12:2-6; Theologies for Korah, a poem by Dante Michael; Luke 3:7-18

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Visit “savetrinity.org” which tells the exciting story of historic re-use striving to be born. You can help us save this magnificent building by visiting savetrinity.org and signing a letter of support! Thank you.

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Links

Site Navigation

Video version follows the text
Sermon Texts: Isaiah 12:2-6; Theologies for Korah, a poem by Dante Michael; Luke 3:7-18