yes – Salvaged Faith

No Christmas without Consent and Commitment

Posted on December 27, 2020Leave a comment

One Christmas, when my niece was about six years old, I carefully wrapped up a gently loved American Girls doll and accessories that had belonged to a dear friend of mine.
When Cami unwrapped that gift, she literally burst into tears.
“I’ve wanted one of these for my whole life!” she cried out between sobs!

Have you ever waited your entire life for something?
Have you ever been so moved by the experience that it overwhelmed you? Overpowered you? Changed everything about you?
The gospel of Luke tells us about a particular man who had been waiting his whole life for the birth of God’s savior… a man named Simeon.

While the Advent journey takes us through an emotional rollercoaster of joy, fear, humility, and anticipation, there is no other emotion to guide the days after Christmas than pure celebration. Each of the readings assigned for this Sunday call us to take a deep breath of relief, to look around at the beauty of what God has done, and to simply enjoy it.
The gospel of Luke tells us about a particular man who had been waiting his whole life for the birth of God’s savior… a man named Simeon.
Simeon was a man filled with the Holy Spirit, and long ago a promise was made to him that he would not see death until the Messiah had come.
Most people were looking for a leader to rise above the people – a powerful and spiritual figure.
But when this infant child crossed his path, Simeon knew that the promise had been fulfilled.
In this painting by Ron DiCianni, you can sense that overwhelming, outpouring of relief and gratitude and praise as he holds this tiny, precious child.
You see, Simeon understood that this child would grow to become not just a light of revelation to his Jewish brothers and sisters, but would be the light of salvation to all the world.
This man had given his whole life to God and in this moment, he understood what it was all for.
But there was something more.
The Holy Spirit helped him to understand that this path to salvation would be a heart-breaking journey for Mary and Joseph.
“This boy is assigned to be the cause of the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that generates opposition… a sword will pierce your innermost being too.”

Throughout Advent, we have heard the stories of the women who were part of the genealogy of Jesus… but there is one remaining.
The angel Gabriel appeared before a young woman named Mary.
She is proclaimed to be favored in God’s eyes, blessed among all women, for she will bear a child who will be called the Son of God.
I have always considered being found favored in God’s eyes to nothing but joy, but as this young woman sat there, wide awake, talking with a messenger from God, I wonder what was going through her mind.
Now that we have read through some of these ancestral stories over Advent, I find that God’s favor isn’t always filled with abundance.
As Helen Pearson ponders, “Maybe she imagined what Sarah, pregnant at ninety because God favored her, must have experienced. She might have recalled Abraham, favored by God yet commanded to sacrifice his only son… Perhaps she remembered Joseph, the favored one, sold into slavery by his brothers… Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba found favor with God, but they suffered betrayal deaths, scandals, and isolation… Finding favor? What might it mean?” (Mother Roots, p229)
All she can know in this moment is that saying yes to what God wants to do in her life, with her life, through her life, will not be a walk in the park.
As that famous… or maybe infamous Christmas song goes, “Mary, did you know?”
Maybe not every detail…
But she understood what it meant to follow God.
She knew that not only would her life be transformed.
As she sang out in praises to her cousin Elizabeth, in words that have remained with us all throughout the season of Advent,
“God will pull down the powerful from their thrones and lift up the lowly. God will fill the hungry will good things and send the rich away empty.”
She knew the world would be transformed, turned upside down and inside out.
And that kind of work is messy, and hard, and painful, and oh so good and needed.
And so Mary gives her consent to everything that this miracle will entail: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
We witness her willingness to accept the joyful burden that God is bestowing upon her.
We hear her song of praise to the God who has come to her, a lowly servant. “Let it be with me according to your word.” And we forget how difficult it must have been to not only accept this joyful burden with those words, but to carry that joyful burden in her life.

Two thousand some years ago, a young woman, a girl really, said “yes” to God’s invitation – and the world was forever changed.
But then, if you think about it, that was how God had been working all along.
From the very beginning, the people of God were transformed and moved along and inspired by ordinary nobodies who hesitantly said “yes” to God.
Think of the widow, Tamar… the prostitute, Rahab… the immigrant, Ruth… the victim, Bathsheba…
Each of them, in their own way, said “let it be with me according to your word.”
They remembered God’s promises and lived the rest of their lives committed to obeying and fulfilling those promises.
And God accomplished amazing things through them.

Right now, we find ourselves celebrating the good thing that God has done in our midst.
But I find myself left with a question.
What are we doing to actively wait and look out, like Simeon had, for the new thing that God is about to do?
When the call of God rings out again, how will we respond?
You see, we are not all that different from these faithful, ordinary folks in these stories.
We are imperfect people with imperfect lives and yet we are asked to say yes to God.
Not a temporary commitment, like a new years resolution that we make today and forget about tomorrow…
We have been asked to give our lives to following Jesus Christ.
Can you turn your heart to God and say, “let it be with me according to your word.”?
Are you ready, are you prepared for something new to be born within your spirit?
Within this community?
Are we ready for Christ to enter our midst, our hearts?
Does that idea terrify you?
You know what. It terrifies me a little bit.
What is so scary is that saying yes means everything will change.
In fact, I think we all hope that we have said yes in the past, but because we have just kind of kept on the same path we’ve always been on, nothing has actually happened.
If we want to experience the kind of transformation God is brining into this world, we have to give ourselves to God completely.
It’s not just about saying yes. It is about continuing to say yes every single day.
Everything changed for Tamar. Everything changed for Rahab. Everything changed for Ruth. Everything changed for Bathsheba.
Everything changed for every single one of those disciples who put down their nets and their tax bags and decided to follow Christ.
But you know what… they didn’t have to do it alone.
And when someday, we find the courage to say yes to God, we will not be left on our own either.
Because while God freely chooses to use ordinary people to accomplish his will – God also gives us everything that we need.

Starting next week, with this new year, we are going to spend a few weeks working and praying and studying together and thinking about what it might mean to say yes.
What it might mean to truly follow Christ.
What it might mean to allow God to transform our lives.
I’m excited about the journey… I hope you will be too.

YES! We are Able to Claim Our Faith

Posted on October 2, 2018Leave a comment

63% of American households have pets. According to estimates from the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association that Americans own approximately 73 million dogs, 90 million cats, 139 million freshwater fish, 9 million saltwater fish, 16 million birds, 18 million small animals and 11 million reptiles.

And as one pet therapist noted: “Love is the most important medicine and pets are one of nature’s best sources of affection. Pets relax and calm. They take the human mind off loneliness, grief, pain, and fear. They cause laughter and offer a sense of security and protection. They encourage exercise and broaden the circle of one’s acquaintances.” (http://www.sniksnak.com/therapy.html)

In our gospel lesson from Mark this morning, we discover how a woman, who was callously called a dog, broadens the circle of God’s love… even for Jesus.

First, some important background. Jesus is traveling with the disciples on the border lands of Israel – out by Tyre and Sidon. Not only were they in Gentile territory, but there was long held animosity between the people of Israel and “those people.”

As Mark’s gospel relates, Jesus really doesn’t want to be bothered. He ducks into a home for some peace and quiet, but somehow this woman knows that he is there. Before they know it, she’s inside, prostrate at his feet.

In Matthew’s version of this story, she appears yelling and shouting, begging and pleading for the healing of her demon-possessed daughter. And, Jesus – the one who is always supposed to have the answers and who models to us how to treat others – surprisingly just ignores the woman. Doesn’t even bother to give her the time of day.

When he finally does respond to her pleas, it is with these words: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Jesus is making clear that his focus, his mission, is first to the children of Israel. And this woman, this Syrophonecian, was not his problem.

We can see parallels in the kind of animosity taking place between these cultures with how Europeans denigrated Native Americans. Like the Israelites, Europeans believed that the land of America was their promised land. It was a gift from God. But those who already occupied the land had to be deal with first and what came as a result was the demonization of a whole group of people. The others were seen as nothing more than mongrels, barbarians, dogs.

She belongs to the wrong culture. She is the wrong gender to be making such a request. She was not included and not welcomed. And yet, she drops to her knees in an act of worship and begs Jesus to help her.

Biblical scholar Scott Hoezee, writes, “this woman is asking for a place at the table, but Jesus, chillingly, relegates her to the floor of life. ‘It’s not right to toss perfectly good bread meant to feed the children to the dogs.’ Jesus calls her a dog. It’s a kind of slur, an epithet, and the disciples no doubt approved.” (Scott Hoezee http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/index.php)

Jesus has denied her want she wants, what she needs. And, he has insulted her in front of the disciples.

But what I love about this woman is that she doesn’t back down. She is quick and witty, she rolls with the punches and she boldly speaks back. “Okay, so you want to call me a dog? Fine. You say that as a dog I don’t deserve the food off the table. Fine. But you know what? Even dogs get the leftovers. Even dogs get the crumbs that fall under the children’s feet. Even dogs deserve that… so, c’mon! throw me a bone here Jesus!”

We don’t know why Jesus initially excluded this woman, except that he felt like he had a mission to preach the Kingdom of God to the Israelites.

So in a sense, he had drawn a line – a boundary – he had placed a limit on what he was willing or able or felt called to do.

He had drawn a circle that shut her out.

But then this woman had the wit and the courage and daring to flip his statements on him and to draw the circle big enough so that she was not only included, but that others could be included as well.

This woman reminded Jesus, in this moment of his human weakness, of the promises of his divine calling. We proclaimed them together in our call to worship. Our help is the God of Jacob. God is faithful forever. The Lord gives justice to the oppressed and makes the blind see and loves the righteous and helps orphans and widows.

She acknowledges that Jesus might have a call to first help the people of Israel, but she claims her own faith and her own place within the larger vision of God’s mission in this world.

I think that far too many of us hesitate to say “YES!” to God’s work, because we don’t believe that we are included or important. Maybe, because someone IN the church has made a comment that has put us in our place or has denigrated us… whether they meant to or not.

You are too old or you are too young.

You don’t dress the right way.

You have made different choices about how to raise children or care for aging parents.

You can’t get up early enough.

You stay up too late.

You are too busy.

This church is full of imperfect, human people and we all have a vision in our head of what our mission should be about. Sometimes, as a result, we step on one another’s toes and say things without thinking.

When we find ourselves on the receiving end of such words, it is natural to want to tuck your tail between your legs and slink away.

But I want to remind you of the persistence of this woman.

She claimed her faith.

She claimed her position.

She claimed her reality.

And she claimed her place.

You know, I admit in a church that it is easy to get caught up in one idea of what we are supposed to be about. One defined goal. But if we aren’t careful, we allow that one thing to so define our work that in fact we have drawn a circle. We have built a wall and we have imprisoned the gospel. Because, although we may think we know exactly who should be included in our ministry, we must remain open to whomever God sends our way.

Dan Nelson writes that “Even Jesus, who presumably has divine authorization for his limits allows those limits to be stretched by another’s necessity. In other words, the rule here is that there is no rule, only a creative tension between our finite capacities and the world’s infinite need.” (http://sio.midco.net/danelson9/yeara/proper15a.htm)

Our finite capacities and the world’s infinite need.

As a fully human person, Jesus was aware of the limits of his time and energy, but as fully divine, Jesus never stopped being aware of this woman’s need.

Paul wrestles in the book of Romans with whether or not the love of God for any person changes – if people can ever fall out of their standing with God. And his answer is simple: NO.

God never turns away from us. God is always there, from generation to generation.

The church, gets it wrong sometimes. We forget that we are charged with the task of making God’s name known throughout the world – to all people in all places.

Like ungrateful children, sometimes we take the bread that was set on the table and meant to be shared and we toss it carelessly on the floor.

But as the Syrophonecian woman reminds us – even there, even in the crumbs, even in the scraps, the gospel finds a way to feed and transform and bring life to people.

We need to hear the voices from those we have set on the outside, on the margins.

We need every person who has ever felt like they have been excluded to claim their faith.

Shout out your needs.

Tell aloud your faith.

Speak your truth.

Because when you do, when you say YES to God, even if and when you feel like the church is saying NO to you, you transform the church.

You help us to recognize those we have unintentionally left out.

You enable us to respond to pain we couldn’t see.

You make us a better church.

You stretch us and stretch our hearts and stretch the gospel around the world.

We are finite and there are limits to what we can do – but when every single one of us claims OUR faith, we are able to wipe away the boundaries around the gospel – and we will find that God will give us the strength and power, mercy and compassion, that we need to be in ministry in new ways and places each and every day.

YES!: Are Ye Able?

Posted on September 23, 2018Leave a comment

Text: Mark 10:35-45

This summer, we invited each of our households here at Immanuel to read a book together: Defying Gravity by Tom Berlin. Berlin invited us to try to break free from the gravity of this world, the culture of more, and the kingdom of self-centered ways in order to follow Jesus and find freedom within the Kingdom of God.
This fall, as we approach our Stewardship Sunday we are going to be exploring ways that the early disciples found themselves saying YES to Jesus. Ways that they, and we are invited to break free from what is burdening us, so that we can follow Jesus Christ.

On first glance, the disciples James and John in our scripture today don’t seem to be breaking out of the kingdom of self-centered ways. In fact, they seem to be completely focused on their own success and glory.
In the verses immediately before our scripture reading for this morning, Jesus is predicting his own death and resurrection… but these two don’t seem to be paying attention.
In fact, they are too busy trying to find their way to the best seats at the table.

I’ve discovered whenever we go to have meals with my nieces and nephews that this very topic, where people get to sit, is really important. Sometimes, before I’ve even taken off my coat at the door, I find a nephew tugging at my hand, showing me where my seat is. It is always very strategically placed next to him.
The only problem with all of this maneuvering is that I only have a right side and a left side. And there are now four nieces and nephews all vying for one of those coveted spots. Someone’s feelings usually get hurt because they didn’t get the chance to ask first and sometimes a fight breaks out. Usually we have to do some negotiating so that if I sat next to one of them last time, it gets to be someone else’s turn. Or perhaps we are there for the weekend and we can all get a chance.
Suffice it to say – I almost never get to sit by my husband at family meals.

Well, James and John, they, too have their eyes on the best seats, right next to Jesus, at this great heavenly feast and coming of God’s glory that they keep hearing about.
They have conveniently forgotten all of the tough times that await.
Or maybe they haven’t.
Maybe they are terrified about all of these predictions about death and trials and rejection and they are doing what we all naturally do when we encounter our fears… they are trying to secure their own future.

Biblical scholar Charles Campbell suggests that “fear breeds the desire for security.” (Feasting on the Word).
We find ourselves fearful of all sorts of things in this world. Fear of strangers, fear of terrorism, fear of falling behind, fear for our children.
A good friend of mine went out for a run by herself this weekend and posted on facebook that the entire time she was uneasy and anxious in light of the recent attacks upon women who were alone, minding their own business, living their life.
And you know what – fears breed the desire for security. People quickly responded with ways to work to keep safe – from wasp spray, to sonic whistles, a buddy system and more.
Fight, flight, freeze… we seek security and protection from our fears by buying things to help us fight back or get away or we allow the fear to keep us from engaging all together.

These disciples weren’t running away from this difficult journey of Jesus, but they wanted to fight for a seat by his side when it was all over. And James and John rush to ask the question first. They want a guarantee of where they will land at the end of it all.
Jesus invites them to consider a different way. He turns their eyes from the heavenly seat of glory and instead invites them to think about images of baptism, communion, and the cross.
He’s asking them to break free from the gravity of fear that leads them to seek their own spot at the table and to instead embrace the Kingdom of God that is the way of the servant.

Are you able? Jesus asks them and us.

Are you able to drink from this cup?
We are being invited to say YES to the holy practices of the table. A table of love and grace, mercy and forgiveness. Around God’s table, all are welcome – sinners and saints – and there is no seat that is more important than any other.
Around God’s table, we discover that it is in giving that we receive and we learn that God has always provided enough to sustain us. We don’t need to fight or grasp or cling to secure our own future, God has already done the work. Christ is the bread of life, broken for us, and when we eat and when we drink, we offer ourselves as a holy and living sacrifice. We become the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood, shared with the world.

Are you able to receive my baptism?
We are being invited to say YES to the sacred practices of death and renewal. At the font, even this morning, we remembered that our very life was nurtured by God in the waters of a womb. We are invited to enter these waters and die to our old selves and to rise with Christ. And we are reassured of the grace of God that will continue to make our lives new.
In response, we are called to embody a life that rejects the kingdom of the self and all that would pull ourselves and those around us, into that black hole of thinking that we are never enough or we will never have enough. We become living witnesses to the gospel, standing against injustice and oppression and evil and proclaiming hope.

When Jesus asks James and John if they are able, the truth is that he knows they are able.
He knows that no matter the shortcomings and the fears that led them to ask this question, they can and will break free. Charles Campbell sees this as a great promise to us as the church today. He writes:
“We need not always live in fear; we need not continually seek our own security. Rather, we have Jesus’ promise that we can and will live as faithful disciples as we seek to follow him.” (Feasting on the Word, p. 193)

Are you able to take up my cross?
In a world in which rulers show off their authority and the powerful push people around, Jesus invites us to say YES to a different way. The cross, you see, is not just about the forgiveness of my personal sin. It forms all of us into a community of faith that is not organized by winners and losers, the honored and the shamed, but by how we love and care for and serve one another. As Saint Francis of Assisi invites us to pray:

O Divine Master, grant that I may not seek so much
to be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love,
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

When we say YES to Jesus, we are set free from our fears and our drive to secure our own future. And we are empowered by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to truly follow Christ. We are able, not because any of our own abilities or knowledge or power… but because the practices of this church like baptism and communion fill us with the grace and strength we need to keep saying yes, day after day.

There will be many things around us that cause us to fear. But by living into the practices of community Jesus has offered, we find the courage and the strength to change the world one moment at a time. We are building a kingdom where no person will ever have to fear again. Thanks be to God, Amen.

Let it Be with Me…

Posted on December 21, 2008Leave a comment

This is our fourth week of waiting for that coming of Christ – and we are so close we can almost taste it! We are ready for the heavenly choirs of angels mingling with the smelly shepherds in the field, for the time when wise men led by celestial signs witness the fragility of an infant of a manger. It is a season of holy anticipation – not for experiences beyond this world, but ones that are embodied in things that we can touch and feel, live and breathe. We are getting ready for God to take on human flesh in our midst!

This morning, we get to hear the beautiful telling of the annunciation – the announcement ! – in Luke’s gospel this morning. The angel Gabriel appears and proclaims Mary to be favored in God’s eyes – blessed among all woman – for she will bear a child who will be called the Son of God. And Mary, for her part, asks but one question: How will this happen? And then responds with that very familiar statement: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Maybe this is because for over half of my life I have heard this story as a child – but Mary has always been in my mind a wise and beautiful woman, full of the grace of God and ready to face any challenge that might come her way. She is filled with a maturity that to me has always belied her age. She seems so much older than me, so much more ready to accept God’s joyful burden, and yet- Mary was probably no more than fourteen or fifteen years old when the angel Gabriel stood before her.

Fourteen or Fifteen years old! For nearly half of my life I have been OLDER that this amazing young woman who said yes to the impossible.

Now, granted, Mary was living in a world of prearranged marriages and was likely promised to her husband-to-be, Joseph, for many years. Young women would have been married and having children by the age of eighteen to be sure. But it was also a world where a woman’s only education would have been in the home, a world of Jewish faithful living under a Roman occupation, a time of darkness and poverty, disappointment and despair.

We witness her willingness to accept the burden that God is bestowing upon her. We hear her song of praise to the God who has come to her, a lowly servant. “Let it be with me according to your word.” And we forget how difficult it must have been to not only accept this joyful burden with those words, but to carry that joyful burden in her life.

Because of the nature of Christmas, we hear the annunciation on Sunday, and by Wednesday evening we have a beautiful, bouncing, baby boy in a manger. There is so much we skip in these precious few days before Christmas… and in part, we skip this part of the story because we do not know what happened. The scriptures leave us to fill in the blanks.

We are told in the gospel of Matthew that Joseph probably would have quietly broken off the engagement had not an angel of the Lord intervened. Thank God for angels.

Mary would have still been living with her parents at this time, but we don’t know how they responded. I can tell you that it was customary to send an unwed mother off to live with distant relatives, so as not to shame the family… perhaps this is the cause of Mary’s hasty trip to visit her cousin Elizabeth after the angel Gabriel appeared. Elizabeth, herself, was overjoyed to greet Mary and her unborn child – yet Elizabeth was also in on the secret of this divine birth and was in the middle of her own miraculous pregnancy. Her husband Zechariah wasn’t so sure… at least not at first.

With the exception of these two, we don’t know how the rest of the family responded, or how her community responded. A young woman, still unmarried, becomes pregnant and the people are supposed to…what? Celebrate? Extol her virtues? Even if Mary told everyone that it was the Son of God in her womb, who would have believed her?

I think that this is an important part of the story that we miss, because if she wasn’t believed, and if she wasn’t protected, Mary would likely have been stoned for adultery. And yet, it is precisely in this vulnerable and difficult experience that we come to understand that Christmas as the celebration of God entering the world, not to condemn it, but to redeem it.

Christ comes into this world not to condemn it, but to redeem it.

Two thousand some years ago, a young woman, a girl really, said “yes” to God’s invitation – and just look at how the world has changed. But then, if you think about it, that is how God has been working all along. It is how God has always changed the world.

From the very beginning, the people of God were transformed and moved along and inspired by ordinary nobodies who hesitantly said “yes” to God. Think of the poor nomad Abram, think of the murderer Moses, think of the shepherd boy David.

Each of them, in their own way, said “let it be with me according to your word.” And they opened themselves up to God’s will in their lives. They followed his call. They tried to live obediently. And God accomplished amazing things through them. That is how God works.

Does that mean it was easy? No. Does it mean that they faced straight paths with no obstacles? No. Does it mean that they found perfect happiness? No.

Think again of our young Mary. She would have to struggle to protect her child from the slaughter of infants by fleeing to the foreign land of Egypt. And then she would live to see her own son crucified by the Romans. There was no way of knowing when she said “yes” to God that this would be the course her life would take. But still she said, “let it be with me according to your word.”

We look back, and perhaps we are thankful that we have not been faced with such a momentous decision. We are thankful that we do not face persecution because of our faith. We are glad that God did all of that work a long time ago, so that we can now enjoy this life that we have in Christ.

The Gospel of John reminds us that:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God…. And the Word came and lived among us, and we have seen his glory… From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

The Word came and lived among us. God took on flesh – God worked through human lives, God’s will was embodied in the small “yeses” of many insignificant people. And the world was changed.

But you know, right now, in this season of Advent, we are not only preparing to celebrate what happened in the birth of Christ 2000 years ago, we are also preparing for Christ to come again – we are getting ready for the new thing that God is about to do in our midst.

And the question I want us to really ponder today, is what would it mean for the call of God to ring out again? How would we respond, if we, as ordinary people not unlike Mary or Joseph, or Moses or David, we asked to say yes. Not as some kind of temporary commitment, like a new years resolution that we make today and forget about tomorrow, but in a real and powerful way?

What would it mean for us to stand here, fully and openly before our God and say, “let it be with us according to your word.”?

Are you ready, are you prepared for something new to be born within your spirit? Within this community? Are we ready for Christ to enter our midst, our hearts? Does that idea terrify you?

You know what. It terrifies me a little bit. Because I hear that call of God all the time. I hear that call of God challenging me and challenging us to really and truly take the plunge, to hand our lives over to God’s will.

I hear God calling us to stop being simply Sunday Christians, or even, every other Sunday Christians, and to fully let the Word of God dwell in our hearts every single day.

I hear God challenging us to take risks and to put ourselves on the line as we go out into the world to be the hands and feet of Christ. I hear God urging us to say yes, because God doesn’t want to change the world without us.

And what is so hard, what is so scary, is that saying yes means everything will change. The kind of transformation that God wants to see in this world – the kind of redemption that God is continuing to bring about is only possible if we leave behind everything that we know and follow.

The reason that we haven’t fully said yes in the past is because we keep assuming the path will be easy. We keep hoping that whatever comes our way won’t involve some kind of radical change. We want to believe that we are already living the way we are supposed to and that not too much more will be required.

I can guarantee you – that is not the case.

Everything changed for Abram. Everything changed for Moses. Everything changed for David. Everything changed for Mary. Everything changed for every single one of those disciples who put down their nets and their tax bags and decided to follow Christ.

But you know what… they didn’t have to do it alone. And when someday, we find the courage to say yes to God, we will not be left on our own either.

As the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, one of the first things that he whispered in her ear was: “Do not be afraid.”

The words of that hymn we have used quite often – “You are Mine,” seem to express the words of encouragement that might have helped Mary find the strength to accept this blessing in her life, in spite of the difficulty, in spite of the whispers behind her back, in spite of the long hard road ahead. “Do not be afraid, I am with you… I love you and you are mine.”

No, we will not be left to our own devices when the time comes and the call is given. Because while God freely chooses to use ordinary people to accomplish his will – God also gives us everything that we need.

That is what grace is all about. That is what love is all about.

During this time of year, there are goodies everywhere. My sister-in-law loves to bake, but she also really wants to involve her children in the process. Now, Cami and Xander are 3 and 7 respectively, and so there is only so much that they can do as children in the kitchen, but Bevin tries hard to include them nonetheless. She calls them each into the kitchen, gives them various small tasks to do, and pretty soon, before they know it, they have made a beautiful and delicious masterpiece.

In many ways, that is how God works. God wants so much for this world to be transformed, but he also loves us so much that he lets us in on the secret, wants to teach us the recipe, and hopes that we will want to help out where we can. So little by little, we are charged with the task of redeeming this creation. Little by little, we do what we can. Little by little, God helps us along. Like a loving parent, God will not leave us on our own to burn ourselves, or let us be with a sharp knife, but carefully, painstakingly, helps us to navigate through the dangers. God molds us, supports us, guides us and leads us.

Don’t be afraid. I love you. I will see you through this. You are mine and I am never letting you go.

Are we ready to roll up our sleeves and say yes? Have we spent enough time preparing? Have we put off the call long enough?

In three days, we will come together again in celebration and joy for the birth of the Christ child. May these days of waiting and anticipation help us to get ready for Christ to be born in our hearts. May these days help us to be able to say, “Yes, Lord, Let it be with us according to your will.”