…We sing a lot this time of year about worshipping and bowing before Christ our King, but the more surprising question of Christmas is, where are we to find this king and to whom is the invitation to honor him sent? In the Emmaus and Pilgrimage community we often say a prayer that goes something like this. “Lord, bless the one who needs a touch from you the most and bless the one who has the tremendous problem of thinking they have no problems at all.” It’s funny how we sing about God knowing our need and our weakness while we ourselves are often the first to say we don’t need anything and are the last to admit our weakness. As Matthew West writes in his latest song, “Truth Be Told,” we say,

"I'm fine, yeah, I'm fine, oh, I'm fine, hey, I'm fine"
But I'm not, I'm broken
And when it's out of control I say it's under control
But it's not and You know it…

…The good news of the Christmas story is that God meets us first in the manure, not in the mansion. Well, it’s good news, that is, if we’re actually willing to step into the mess and kneel before the newborn king in the manger.

…Like the wise men, our weary world and our weary souls are all searching for a light to follow. Tragically, most of the lights we see today are artificial and easily controlled and manipulated by their human creators. It is rare in our cities and towns to look up in the night sky and see a star clearly enough to follow as the early navigators did across deserts and seas. Perhaps it is all this artificial light that makes us weary in the first place. New York may have a reputation as the city that never sleeps, but with light beaming into our eyes from screens of all sizes day and night, it is a wonder that any of us sleep at all. In truth, many do not, at least not well…

…Either we follow the starlit path to the Light, or we light our own paths into the darkness…

Why do you say, Jacob,
and declare, Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
my God ignores my predicament”?

Isaiah 40:27

In our weariness, it is easy to despair. I admit I have personally experienced a level of weariness this year beyond what I have ever felt before. It’s not just about being busy or tired. It’s a weariness that gets deep into our souls the way an icy wind gets deep into our bones…

…This year is different. This year is 2020. In January it was pumped up as a year of clear vision, and perhaps it has lived up to that promise in ways we would have preferred to avoid. 2020 has indeed opened our eyes and given us clearer vision. It has exposed our deepest fears and vulnerabilities. It has intensified the countless battle lines that divide us from our neighbors. And it has brought out both the best and the worst in everyone as we face one trauma after another and struggle to live into the unknown with hope.

Perhaps more than ever, we are a weary people living in a weary world.

That is why I am inviting us to Advent early this year…

… Every day is election day!

• Every day we make a choice between God’s Kingdom and the powers of this world.

• Every day we choose between faithful obedience and sin.

• Every day we choose whom we will serve… God or ourselves.

When we choose God…

• we make a choice against individualism and the assertion of our personal rights and opinions

• we make a choice to put others above ourselves and to serve by humbling ourselves and washing the feet of our friends and our enemies alike.

• we make a choice to be part of God's family, and to live among our brothers and sisters who don’t always look like us, think like us, act like us, or even vote like us.

• we make a choice to love our neighbors as ourselves… even the ones we don’t like…

Let's just be honest, it's been a tough year.

We're finally rounding the corner toward the holiday season and we're looking for hope.

• We hope next year will be better

• We hope the pandemic will end

• We hope political tensions will die down

• We hope we can be reconciled with those who have hurt us and those we have hurt.

• We hope that the final sun of 2020 will not set on our anger and pain.

This year has been a year filled with death…

…Let us not allow those who have died to become a faceless mass. Let us faithfully carry on their legacies in our lives as we seek to live into who God made us to be…

…After the religious leaders realized that Jesus had stumped every one of their opposing groups, a legal expert poses one final question. What is the greatest commandment?

Essentially that is the question we are still arguing today. We are destroying each other, even in the church, over laws and policies and judicial rulings on everything from abortion to the environment to education to immigration to marriage to guns to healthcare and the list goes on and on. But in all of our fighting, nobody is listening. All we care about is that the laws of Caesar's Kingdom align with our personal beliefs, no matter how those laws might affect people who do not share our beliefs or who do not have the same opportunities and privilege we have.

That is why Jesus' answer is so crucial for us"

LOVE GOD... LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR... PERIOD.

It's really that simple...

...or is it?…

…Today, as in Jesus’ day, the state often seeks to use religion for its own purposes, and like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, we are quick to fall in line for the sake of the many benefits our complicity may garner us with the state, such as tax-exemption or social status. As Todd Weir writes,

Power interests like emperors can pressure you to do stuff you don’t believe in… They want to stamp their image on you and sometimes you feel like you can’t escape it.

In asking whose image is on the national currency, Jesus reminds us that we are not stamped with the image of an eagle or an American Flag and we are certainly not stamped with the image of an elephant or a donkey, despite how many would try to pigeonhole us for political gain…

…we have all been in situations where we find ourselves dressed inappropriately. We are either underdressed, overdressed, or simply not dressed for the occasion.

The same is true in God’s Kingdom. We’re not talking about what we wear to church. Jesus is not demanding that men wear three piece suites and ladies go back to hats and gloves for Sunday morning worship. But when it comes to the Kingdom of God on earth, there is a dress code and it doesn’t just apply on Sunday mornings.

In Romans 13:14 Paul tells us to “put on Christ” and to the Galatians he writes, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ (Galatians 3:27)…

We may not think of ourselves as the kind of people who would want to kill Jesus to gain our heavenly inheritance, but how often do we think of salvation in these terms. We pray a prayer asking God to forgive us and thanking our Heavenly Father that through the gift of his son, we can receive the inheritance of eternal life. And then we take our “inheritance check” and go on about our lives, knowing it is safely tucked away in our spiritual bank account so that we can cash it in when we die.

Essentially we have done what both the prodigal son and these tenant farmers have done. We have valued the gift more than the giver and the inheritance more than the father / landowner. We forget that “the land” is not ours…