For Helen

The Composer, Claude Debussy, died in Paris on March 25, 1918. In 1903, he published a piece of music called, Suite Bergamasque, the fourth movement being its most famous, Clair De Lune. You know the music, they play it in movies all the time. At the end of “Oceans 11” and most recently in the movie “Twilight.” You would recognize it if you heard it. Its minor key is distinctive. And the rogue nature of its composer is summed up in his quote about his early life in the music conservatory He writes, “I am sure the Institut would not approve, for, naturally it regards the path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamored of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas.” And that freedom and those ideas led to a most beautiful piece of music

Clair de Lune takes its influence from a poem by the same name written by the French poet, Paul Verlaine. Who died in Paris on January, 1896. The Poem is a simple one:

Your soul is a chosen landscape

charmed by masquers and revellers

playing the lute and dancing and almost

sad beneath their fanciful disguises!

 

Even while singing, in a minor key,

of victorious love and fortunate living

they do not seem to believe in their happiness,

and their song mingles with the moonlight,

 

the calm moonlight, sad and beautiful,

which sets the birds in the trees dreaming,

and makes the fountains sob with ecstasy,

the tall slender fountains among the marble statues!

 

For me the poem and the music invoke themes of the duality of my life, the tension I feel between my living and my dying, tension masked as happiness on top of sadness amidst celebration. Minor keys among major ones. Like water fountains, sculpted artistic wonders that constantly cry tears. Human beings. We are chosen landscapes, purposefully made things, with the capacity to love and be loved, to laugh and celebrate, all the while the whisper of the gods echoes in our ears, you are mortal. And we are, and it is a part of the living. But as the poem Allison read says:

"Until then, I will live my life to its fullest and when I need you, I will whisper your name in my heart...and I will know that you will be there."

 We live a life hopeful and anticipating laughter. But we also live a life aware, charmed by masquers and revelers playing the lute and dancing and almost sad beneath their fanciful disguises! And for me, I like the line, almost sad. I am almost sad, not quite, almost, under my mask as I revel in the moonlight, my soul a chosen landscape.

     We are here today to celebrate the life of one, Helen Maxine Theresa Ruth Cardone Harrell. Yes I know, she was a small woman with an extremely long name. We could have put her full name in the obituary, but who likes a braggart. Certainly not Helen Maxine Theresa Ruth Cardone Harrell. From my experience, pretense was not her thing. Her long and distinguished name would mislead you. She was proud, but not haughty, and she would cut you if you got to haughty. And as Juliet says, “"What's in a name? That which we call a rose,
by any other name would smell as sweet." And that is true, call her Helen, call her Ruth, you pick, she would still be as sweet. And she was that too. Kind, loving, good. Helen Maxine Theresa Ruth Cardone Harrell.

     But what is in her name. Helen, from the Greek Helene, meaning torch, or light. The daughter of Zeus and Leda and wife of Menelaus, considered to be the most beautiful woman in the world. Whose abduction by Paris caused the Trojan war. And

Maxine, which is the 20^th century derivative of a Roman family name Maximus which in Latin means "greatest". And Theresa, from the Spainish Teresa, itself from the Greek, Theros, or Therizo, meaning Summer, or Harvest. And Ruth, a Hebrew name which was meaning "friend", listed in the genealogy of King David and Jesus. And Cardone, from Sicilian carduni meaning‘thistle’. And Finally, Harrell, from the Old English personal name Hereweald, which goes back to a Germanic personal name composed of the elements hari ‘army’ + wald ‘rule’. Army Rule.

Torch/Greatest/Summer/Friend/Thistle/Army Rule, pick one, and I think you will agree they all describe Helen. They each point to a moment her long and wonderful life, and they each act as a touchstone for all of us here, her family and her friends and her extended family and friends. We each encountered a light, a friend, a thistle, someone great and noble, someone with the air of summer, someone who could rule like an army, each of these is a truth about her. A truth she passed on, into three generations of people. From Jack and Melissa, to Allison, Russ, Christian and Matt, and then to Madison, Henry, Lili and Catherine. And the echoes of her influence goes beyond that. Her wisdom reverberates into the lives of her patients, and then the nursing students, into the lives of her surrogate children, of which I am one, into the lives of those people we encounter. Part of us is her. And the each have a torch to shine, a great part of us to show, a piece of the season of summer to display, the ability to befriend and love, a thisle part and an army rule part. We each have a piece of Helen in us right now. And that makes us who we are. We can measure her 86 years by realizing her impact. Without her I would not have the delight to know and love Allison. Without her, I would not have known the delight and love of Henry and Catherine. For those three gifts are the most precious of things to me. And when I think of life without them, how much better the world is with them in it, I give thanks to God for Helen Maxine Theresa Ruth Cardone Harrell.

     At round 5:10 last Saturday evening, I was on a walk with my two children. Allison had called and said she was going to see her grandmother on her way home. Earlier I had tried to connect a wireless remote to a set of speakers in our garage so I could listen to the music on my computer while I was working in the garage. I am not savvy, so the project was not working very well, with only intermittent success, the music came out of the speakers in fits and starts. While we were on our walk, Henry tried to scoot down a driveway, and was unaware of the car coming at him. Like al good and angry dads, I was both fearful and glad that he did not get hit by a car. As I was firmly reminding him to look both ways before scooting down driveways. My phone buzzed in my pocket. “She is gone” was all the text read. In a mad dash to do several things at one time, and in the frenzy to care for my wife and get to the place where she was, and in my rush to gather up these children and get them home and squared away, and in that harried and disjointed state you get into when you need to be somewhere and cannot quite get there as soon as you want to and you are putting strollers and scooters and diaper bags and barking order and all of that stuff where I was, suddenly, those speakers that did not work so well, suddenly and clearly they played Clair De Lune by Claude DeBussy a piece of music based on the poetry of Paul Verlaine. And I stopped, and I listened. And I thought to myself, here came Helen, on her way to wherever she was going, to check on her great grand kids and calm her grandson in law down. It was going to be alright.

     And it is. I do not know if Helen ever knew of Claude DeBussy, or Paul Verlaine. But both men died in Paris, a city named for a man who was so in love with a woman named Helen that he was willing to cause a war for her affection. Helen, a torch, a light. Helen, who was a wife, a mother, a grandmother a great grand mother, who loved her family. Helen. A soul a chosen. A soul charmed by masquers and revelers. A soul calm in the moonlight, sad and beautiful. Helen, a life which sets the birds in the trees dreaming, and a death that makes the fountains sob with ecstasy, the tall slender fountains among the marble statues! Helen came, and gave each of us a life. Now it is our turn to live the life that Helen gave, even while singing, in a minor key, of victorious love and fortunate living We must believe in our happiness, as our song mingles with the moonlight. Helen gave us life, so let’s lead it as she would have, in all that her name implied. Torch/Greatest/Summer/Friend/Thistle/Army Rule

Helen Maxine Theresa Ruth Cardone Harrell. Amen.

Christmas II

There is a game I play on New Year’s Day, it has been a tradition of mine for a couple of years now. I try and remember where I was and who I was with each of the New Year’s Eves I have lived, going back as far as I can remember. There are a few New Year’s Eves that I do not remember too well. And there are a few I would choose to forget, Nuevo Laredo 1991/2 is one I wish had played out differently. I can start with 1978, and John Dunn and I are prank calling Stacey Ford. From there I go all the way to this past New Year’s eve, and staying home while Allison took Catherine to the ER. She is OK by the way, we think it is a milk allergy. Even though we stayed in, good friends and neighbors stopped by. We had a running game of dominoes going. The conversation was familiar and easy, and I discovered that my friend Joanne cheats at Mexican train. Or, at least that is how I describe it when she wins and I loose.

     These memories are each marked by the tick of a clock. The earth spins and orbits and we have learned to mark the passing of this action and called it time. We mark time, the thing that we use to calculate our lives, from travel, to age, to tenure, we mark these things based on the orbit of our planet in its own life around a sun. And the time that we have to live is finite and small in comparison to the rest of the universe we belong to. The games that we play with our memories really do not matter all that much in the scheme of things. If I make it to 80, and I hope I do, I will only have 70 or so New Year’s eves to commend to my memory, if I can remember them all. And that is not that much. Not that much at all.

     I am a sucker for year in review montages. Not sure why. And last year’s montage is one that many of us want to forget. Our collective society took as much as a 41% loss on its investments. We finally declared ourselves in a recession. We had a bitter political season, one that opened up our deepest, darkest feelings about gender and qualification and race. We watched as mother nature blew in and took out much of Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston Island and interrupted our lives for as much as three weeks, maybe even six, maybe even into this New Year. Amidst all of that, we here at St. Mark’s, you and me, we went through our own transitions, me as a baby rector, full of energy and missteps, and you, as a congregation getting use to me, and now to James, and all that comes with change in clergy leadership. My children had to figure out a new house, a new school, my wife had to figure out new routes to her work and new habits for her schedule. As a parish we said goodbye to several wonderful people, people who led us and inspired us and made us better by being around. We also watched as new people came, 77 people, 42 families, coming and joining us here. We watched as a very talented group of volunteers lead an effort to refinance a debt that was an obstruction to us all. We watched as we saw, for the first time in a long time, our balance sheet end in the black. All of this was great news. And as in all things, in all years, there were things of regret and things of celebration. All of this takes energy, the energy to trust, the energy to act, the energy to engage. And the year 2008, as the sun burned, and as the earth took her orbit and spun on her axis, and as the moon rotated around the earth, we did what we do, we absorbed all of this activity and change, we took it all in, the good and the bad, we witnessed it, we stood in the middle of it and we lived it. Because that is all we can do. We have only one thing to do, you and I, we can only live. And each New Year allows us a chance to mark life, check off a box of existence. Take a breath. And punch our ticket and go again. Let’s see what 2009 has to offer us, what will come our way? What prophecy will be revealed to us? What dreams will we have to guide us? What tragedy will we have to overcome? What occasions will give us pause? What event will cause us to celebrate? Each New Year finds us saying to ourselves, “Here is my ticket to live, I cannot help but ride the ride.” And so we do.

     The prophets of our current world have begun to declare that 2009 is going to be bad. Talk to most people in the finance world and they have a funny way of talking. It is much like watching Hurricane Ike on the weather channel. Yep it is coming. Yep it is going to be big. Better hunker down. Bring the plants in. Anything that can be blown away should be brought inside. Storm is coming. Hide. Change is also coming in our government. Whether you voted for him or not, we will have a new President this month. New leadership will emerge. New political games will be played. New scandals will surely happen. In Texas we are already watching as our leaders are spending their energy to fight over the speaker of the house. No one in Austin is really talking about to lead us through the fiscal crisis we are about to face, just about how to unseat Speaker Craddack. A financial hurricane is coming to our town, let’s figure a way to fire the mayor before it gets here. 2009 is only four days old, and we are already predicting doom. 2009 has not yet been fully revealed, and we are already sad. 2009 is just born, and we will not allow it to be itself, we are comparing it to its ugly brother 2008, sure that it will be more of the same. How un-Christian of us, we the people of little faith.

     Too often, when given the choice, we are those Israelites in the dessert. We marvel and we grouse. We watch as Pharaoh is defeated, we watch a sea be parted, we watch water spring from a rock, we watch as we are fed in a desert. We watch as a pillar of smoke leads us by day, and a pillar of fire leads us by night. We watch as a simple man with a lisp named Moses, who has to have his brother Aaron speak for him, we watch as this man speaks with God face to face, bringing law to a dessert people. We watch and we see time and again, through our faith history, through civil wars, and bad leadership and scandal ridden kings. We watch and hear prophets tell us of God’s purpose for us, and psalms that proclaim God’s goodness to us, and we hear of God with us, and we see God in us, through Jesus, and we see disciples willing to leave their lives to follow, and we see a crucifixion and we see a resurrection, and see an ascension, and we see a man Paul proclaiming, and we hear time and time again the good works of the faithful people of God and we hear years and years of struggle matched with years and years of goodness, and we hear of wars and rumors of wars and we hear of hope and of salvation and we marvel at all that God can do, and will do, and does do, “Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance,

and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy,I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.I will give the priests their fill of fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my bounty,says the LORD.” We hear this time and time again, and yet in the fourth day of 2009 we are already sad? Already worried? Already defeated? Already deflated? Sure it will be tough, life is hard, being an adult is hard. Caring for those you love is hard. Grieving for those who die is hard. No one said it would be easy.

 

But, no one said you would be alone. And no one said you would have to cry and suffer by yourself. And no law says anyone of us cannot find comfort in the other.

 

And the command for each of us is to find the lost and bring them hope. 2009 is a year of comfort. A year of return. 2009 is not a year of fear. 2009 is when we will shine as a people of God. Watch it and see if I am right. 2009, with its predictions of despair, will be the year that Christians were allowed to show their faith in ways yet to be revealed. Faith that God will show the way, show the way to go. God will reveal in our dreams and in our waking what it is we are to do.

The Angel says, “Get up and take the child to Egypt.” The Angel says,  “Get up and bring the Child home.” The Lord says, “Get up and see the year God has for you.” The Prophet says, “Get up and participate in its creation.” The Priest says,  “Get up and see the goodness of the Lord your God.” Patrick says, “Get up and feel the call of your faith.” You say to yourself,  “Get up and demand more from yourself than despair.” We say to each other, “Get up and seek more from your life than disaster.” Get up and find that on New Year’s Eve 2009, that you lived more, that you laughed more, that you loved more than you ever did in your whole entire life. Happy New Year. Amen.

Christmas Eve 2008

In the last minutes of the last episode of the HBO series ‘Six Feet Under’ the young sister of the Fisher Family, Claire, prepares to leave for a new job in New York City. Gathered on the porch she has a last conversation with her mother and her brother. “I don’t know how to do this.” She says. “You just say goodbye, You just say I love you I will miss you.” Her brother tells her. “Be happy.” She tells him. “I am.” He replies. She turns to her mother, “My sweet baby girl… don’t let them work you too hard at your new job.” Her mother says. “I hope you can come visit.” Claire replies. Her mother says, “I pray that you will be filled with hope as long as you possibly can.” “Thank you for everything, for giving me life…” Claire responds. “You gave me life.” Her mother says. Later in the scene Claire says, “ Oh wait I want to take a picture of this…” The ghost of her dead brother Nate tells her,  “You can’t take a picture of this, it is already gone.”

 

It is a poignant moment, bookended by the departure of a child into the world and the reality that each of the moments of our life are over as soon as we realize they are happening. Pictures capture them, but Nate is right, you really can’t take a picture if it, as soon as you do it is already gone.

 

The Christmas story in Luke is a lot like that. It is an attempt in words to capture a moment where angels come and announce to shepherds the birth of the messiah. We have heard it a dozen times, the ruddy shepherd people, the glorious angels, the holy family in a manger, with Mary pondering all these things in her heart. The writer of the Gospel is trying to take a picture of that moment, but really you cannot. It is already gone. All we have left is a future. The future we already know. The fragile baby grows up, leaves home, preaches peace and repentance to a rough and angry world. His life is taken in a brutal and tragic way. His life is then restored in a fantastic and mystical way, and after his resurrection he stands in a room and breaths on his disciples saying, “Peace be with you.” In an instant the Gospel story goes from a simple stable with simple shepherds and a new baby to a heckling crowd and a horrible cross to a the passing of the peace from the son of God to his Disciples. These are moments in life you cannot take a picture of, they are only something you can remember and proclaim.

 

As Claire Fisher drives away, a song by the singer Sia called “Breath Me” plays. As Claire drives, pictures of the future play on the screen, cutting back and forth from present day Claire in her car, to the distant future, and vignettes of the lives of the characters from the show. We see weddings and birthday parties. We see reunions and fancy vacations, and we deaths. All interspersed with Claire driving and the words of the song playing: Help, I have done it again/ I have been here many times before/ Hurt myself again today/ And, the worst part is there's no-one else to blame

 

Be my friend

Hold me, wrap me up

Unfold me

I am small

and needy

Warm me up

And breathe me

 

It is an amazing moment in television and theology, because the scene serves as a reminder that life is a journey. And that in our journey there are people who come in and out of our lives. All journeys have a beginning and an end. And that life is fragile and fleeting. You cannot take a picture of it, you cannot freeze it, the moment is gone. Mary knows this, as the busyness of the manger scene swirls around her, she ponders the birth of her child, the report of the angles visit to the shepherds, the proclamation of what the future holds for her child, all of these things are locked in her heart. Claire realizes this, as she journeys into her own life. We discover it in the busyness of the world which surrounds us, and as we drive off to our own futures, and as we sit in a manger surrounded by shepherds, all we really have is the ability to ponder these things in our hearts. And while we are locking these moments to memory we see the child, the child in the manger, the messiah child, the savior child, the son of God child, and we hear the words of the song, as if they come out of the child’s mouth, “Be my friend, hold me, wrap me up, unfold me. I am small and needy. Warm me up. Breath me.” The fragility of the child in the manger, who will later show his fragility on the cross, this is a fragility that we can relate to. We know this fragile self all too well in our own lives. We know it and too many times we have realized it, and what makes the incarnation of God in Jesus that much more powerful, is that now God knows it too. Here is the manger, look at it. Here are the scenes of your life, look at them. Take them all in, ponder them in your heart. The divine and human, something you cannot take a picture of. What the manger story tell us, what the life and death and resurrection of Jesus proclaims to us, what is revealed to us is that God knows it too.

 

There is another song I am fond of. “On the radio” by Regina Spektor. She sings, “This is how it works /You're young until you're not/You love until you don't /You try until you can't /You laugh until you cry /You cry until you laugh /And everyone must breathe /Until their dying breath. These lyrics fit with my idea of journey in the sense that there is a tension to living, and we human beings are an odd bit of existence. We have to live until we die. And we have a choice about that living everyday we get up, and no matter the choice we will have to keep breathing. We cannot quit living. No matter how painful it gets, we cannot quit until we are all six feet under. Again the incarnation points to this. Jesus lives an authentic life and asks that we do the same, live as authentically as we can, living as much as we can, and loving as much as we can. Our relationships are more precious than our gold. This is the message of the manger. The Messiah is found in the proclamation of Shepherds. The messiah is found as the child of peasant people. The messiah is found as a weak baby. His arrival points to not to Ceasar, or Herod, or the Governor, or the rich. His arrival points to people, common people. You and me.

 

Regina Spektor’s other verse in “On the Radio” Goes like this, “No, this is how it works /You peer inside yourself /You take the things you like /And try to love the things you took /And then you take that love you made /And stick it into some /Someone else's heart /Pumping someone else's blood /And walking arm in arm /You hope it don't get harmed /But even if it does /You'll just do it all again

 

That is a line that gets me, “And walking arm in arm /You hope it don't get harmed /But even if it does /You'll just do it all again.” In this life we lead, we are called to take the risk to love, to take the love that we have and incarnate it into someone else, in flesh it in someone else, be in community with someone else, risk loving, all the while knowing that we each will have to leave. And even in the leaving, and even knowing the risks of loving, we’d just do it all again. This is what Jesus did, he loved, and he showed God’s love to the world. God’s love, a love of peace and mercy, even in the midst of pain and suffering, is the love of God for us. And the call to us is simple, breath me.

 

Breath me. As you look at the child on this Christmas Eve, as you look at the babe lying in a manger, as you look at his eyes Look at the world through those eyes. Breath me. See the world and see the Christian life in the lyrics of a pop song played during a montage of a cast of characters at the end of an HBO Show about a dysfunctional family of undertakers. See Jesus there, being herald by Claire and her family and then by Mary and by angels and shepherds, see the divine and human commingled together in one pronouncement. See the call of God through the life of Jesus, Be my friend Hold me, wrap me up Unfold me I am small and needy Warm me up, And breathe me. Look at the world around you, in the middle of this living journey you are on, look at the world around you and see that child, the child that later breathed the Holy Spirit onto those first disciples, told them not to be afraid, and breathing on them he said peace be with you. The call then is for you and me to go out into this night, like the shepherds did. We go out into this night rejoicing for this community of St. Mark’s. Ordinary as we are, as ruddy and dysfunctional and human as we are, we go out into this night and we breath the breath of Jesus into our lungs and we risk to love each other and we see the face of God in each other, because really we are the incarnation too. We are children of God too. This night is for us too. We are holy too. And as we journey in and out of each other’s lives, we see that this is holy as well. And walking arm in arm /You hope it don't get harmed /But even if it does /You'll just do it all again. Risk to love this night. Risk to live. Risk to keep on the journey. Ponder it in your heart. And know that every moment is precious, beyond pictures, breathing until you don’t, finding God in the oddest of places, seeing love in all that you do. And as Claire’s mom said to her I say to you, “I pray that you will be filled with hope as long as you possibly can.” Holy Hope. The hope found in living, the hope that was found in that manger, on that cross, in that tomb, in the lives of those who proclaimed it before us. Hope as long as you possibly can. Amen and Merry Christmas.

 

Advent III

In the Archives of our church there are about twenty group pictures of our parish each taken on Easter day. The first one was taken in 1942. It was a tradition that lasted well into the late sixties. The thing about pictures is they capture an instant and they freeze it, for good or for ill, and the instant they freeze is two-dimensional. In most pictures there is back-story, front story, circumstances surrounding the subjects. Many high school group pictures have the same moment.

My high school group shot always fascinates me. There we all are, 17-18 and ready. In all of our eyes are the hopes of what will happen next. And what happened next over these last 24 years was not what any of us had planned. Brian’s dad died. Suzanne was killed in a car wreck. Billy married his college girlfriend after she got pregnant. Ellen married early and divorced early. Glen became famous. Amy went away. To everyone’s dismay, I became a priest. In that group picture, frozen in time, are the faces of who we wanted to be, and for a moment who we were. But time and life switch on us, and the cutbacks and the turnarounds and the downturns, the bad families and then the goodness and kindness and bravery that it takes for all of us to make it through the days, you can maybe see a glint of it in the eyes of us in 1985, you can maybe see it in the eyes of the parishioners of 1942. But we are more than our pictures. We are more than those pictures with Santa. We freeze time, capture a moment, play tricks with film, stop the earth from rotating for a split second, and we see ourselves as we would like to be presented. Combed hair, brushed teeth, standing up straight, pleasant, smiling. But our pictures hide us, and the candid pictures we take reveal so much more. The background stories reveal narratives we do not share with the world. Sometimes do not want to share with the world. Sometimes should not share with the world. The lost pictures of me at a fraternity party in 1988 will one day surface, and you will then question the holiness of your ordained pulpit friend. But I am already a step ahead of you, I question my holiness and calling everyday. Who me? Guy in the front row from 1985? Me? The misfit seminarian? The occasionally depressed and insecure one? You want me to be ordained? Look at the pictures of my life, the ones I display and the ones that I hide from you. Find those, study those, and you may not like what you see. I sometimes do not. Here in the 4^th Sunday of Advent, a few days before Christmas, I am having a hard time believing that calling. It is a hard time of year, where the pictures with Santa show smiles, but they hide the truth behind the camera. Behind the camera is stress and worry and the sin of comparison, the blight of not measuring up, the hurry and the social side of the season where all of us must look happy when inside we are crying for the season to be over. We are unable to meet our obligations, we are tugged from all directions. We are out too late, eating too much, laughing at jokes that are not funny, being with people we do not like, demanding from ourselves that we all smile for Santa. And the lens snaps, and I smile, and the smile hides me. “Who am I,” we ask ourselves in slow motion. “Who am I?” to run this business, or to be a mom, to parent children, to represent another in a courtroom, to perform surgery, or to counsel someone on their life savings, to lead a congregation. Who am I? How am I worthy of this? Behind the camera, if you look, you will see my doubt and self-pity. You will see me as I am, a face in a group shot, worried and sometimes very afraid. Who am I, besides, it is Christmas time and I am reminded every Christmas time about all that I cannot do, all that I do not have, and all that I cannot accomplish, and all that I have lost. It is not the most wonderful time of the year. Who am I? Take the picture will you? I have presents to wrap. Who am I to be a Christian? Merry Christmas to you too, now move out of my way. Click.

In the sixth month, which in the Hebrew calendar is Elul, and coincides with August and September, and means “To search” the Angel called Gabriel, which means, God’s “able bodied one, or hero of God” visits a young woman named Mary, whose name is a variant of Miriam, which is also the name of Moses’ sister, who hid him in the rushes when the other babies were being killed. Gabriel visits her in a town called Nazareth, which means “One guarding or Watching” to tell her that she has found favor with God and is going to have a child. The angel reflects with Mary about Elizabeth, who resembles Sarah from the Genesis story about Abraham in her own old age birth miracle. Elizabeth had conceived six months earlier in the first month of the year, or Nissan, which means “miracles, or redemption.” All of this underlying meaning in one snap shot of one story from one Gospel makes your head spin. On the surface, the story is about an angel delivering a message to a girl in a back water town, and her older barren cousin. But dig a little, and suddenly you have God’s able bodied one, showing up in the searching month, in a town named for Guarding or Watching to a girl named after the girl who saved Moses, telling her she will have a son, and he will be like David in kingly stature. And yes, your cousin is pregnant too, conceiving a child in her old age, like Abraham’s wife in the miracle/redemption month of Nissan, and suddenly the picture changes. There is a story to tell, and it has many layers indeed. God is up to something, and it is not happening as we would expect it to happen. It is different, better maybe, more concrete. The story being told has more layers than we do. The story being told is greater than we are. More is happening in the picture than we realize. And it is not a trick. God is taking, asking, hinting, showing, in as many ways as God can, he is looking at you and me right now, and in the month of December, on the longest night of the year, in the winter solstice, in these few days we have left before Christmas, in this precious time of living, in the pictures with Santa, in the hidden parts of our lives, in the ugliness that can be us, in the doubt that we can often hide, in the hurt and the pain and the unworthiness of us, in the cruelty and the arguments, and the exhaustion and the grind, in the middle of the worst economic disaster since any one can remember, God is sending you and me his able bodied hero of an angel to us once more, God is sending this angel to us once more in this story and God is asking us just like he asks Mary, just like he asked Ruth and Rachel and Deborah and Miriam and Sarah. God is flying into the hearts of each one of us and he is yelling at us over the voice of the holiday season, yelling at us in our hunt for gifts and solitude, yelling at us in our incomplete and fragile selves, yelling, Greetings favored one, the Lord is with you. And we are asked to bear the Son of God, again. Will you, God looks upon you, now, here in 2008, so many years later and asks you to bear the Son of God. The young woman did. Will you? Will you take this child into the world, past the pictures? And will you bear this child, incarnate in your flesh, in your eyes? Will you not be concerned about your age? God uses all people, no matter what age to bear his children. In this winter of 2008, in this advent of the birth of the child Jesus. God swoops into our hearts yet again and asks us, yet again, “Will you bear my child?” Will you bear my cross? Will you follow me and let me be your God? Will you see past the noise, and look to the watchful city of Nazareth, here in the 12^th month of Adar, which means strength. Will you bear the Son of God? I cannot speak for you, and the month, no the year, has been hard on me too, and I am exhausted, and doubtful, and worried too, but I can declare, with a humble heart, as she did, as so many after her have done, in the middle of wars and pain and disease and hurt, like so many before, and as broken a person as I am I can still say "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."  I will bear your son, I will bear his cross, I will see this through, let it be. Then the Angel departed and the work began. Amen

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1http://www.angelfire.com/pa2/passover/months-of-the-jewish-calendar.html. One rabbinical interpretation is that the word "Elul" means "search." Elul is a time to search our hearts. During the month of Elul we "search" our hearts for evil and repent in preparation for Rosh Hashanah. The Targum on the words 'losur osah' (to search it [the land)] Bamidbar (13:32) translates "Le'allelah yas ar'ah". From this it is derived that the word "Elul" means "search" or "inspect", alluding to the nature of our task during this month. Another rabbinical interpretation of "Elul": "Elul" means "returned with," specifically with those Jews who returned to Israel after the 70-year Exile in Babylonia Repentance

2 Gabriel means, “God’s able bodied one, Hero of God.”

3 http://www.christiananswers.net/dictionary/nazareth.html-one guarding or watching, thus designating the hill which overlooks and thus guards an extensive region.

4 Genesis 18 ¹¹Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. ¹²So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’ ¹³The Lord said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh, and say, “Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?” ¹⁴Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.’ ¹⁵But Sarah denied, saying, ‘I did not laugh’; for she was afraid. He said, ‘Oh yes, you did laugh.’

5 http://www.angelfire.com/pa2/passover/months-of-the-jewish-calendar.html- The word "Nisan" or "Nissan" is a cognate to the word "nissim", meaning "miracles" Miracles, redemption.

Advent I

I have been thinking about Moshe Holtzberg lately. Moshe is the son of Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg. Gavriel and Rivkah were two of the 171 people killed in the attacks on Mumbai last week. Moshe was spared when his nanny, Sandra Samuel, herself hiding from the gunmen in a closet, heard the boy, went to him and rescued him from the horror of the attacks. Moshe is two. My daughter Catherine is two. Stuff like that hits close to home for me.

Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife did good work for the world. They led an effort called Chabad House, a Jewish outreach center in Mumbai. This was an outreach effort that taught Torah classes, kept kosher food ready, ministered to Jews traveling for business or pleasure, provided humanitarian aid, a prison chaplaincy, medical services, women’s groups, drug prevention classes, an after school programs, and a free internet café. I struggle to find the reason to kill anyone, much less two people trying to put good into the world. I struggle to make sense out of terrorist attacks, especially ones directed at people simply providing shelter and food. Rabbi Holtzberg and his wife did ministry, like me and my wife. They just did it in Mumbai. The Holtzbergs sought the good. They loved. They brought Moshe into the world. They died in a horrible way.

The world that the Miller’s occupy and that the Holtzberg’s occupied is separated by thousands of miles and multiple cultures. No doubt Hasidic Judaism and Moderate Anglicanism look completely different to each other in everything from theology to dress codes. No doubt Mumbai and West University Place look completely different to each other in everything from street plans to coffee houses. Language wise, the mix of English, Hebrew and Hindi would separate the Holtzberg’s and the Miller’s even more. What would unite us, what does unite us, miles away languages apart, and culturally opposite, what does unite us are the simple words, “Comfort ye, oh comfort ye my people, says your God.” I struggle to find the meaning of this senseless killing a young rabbi and his wife, of the attack that left 171 people dead. And in my struggle to understand why, I see a nanny, frightened and horrified, I see her scooping up a young child and ferrying him away to safety. I see her, running, holding the boy close, running away from the danger to a place of safety. “Comfort ye, or comfort ye my people says your God.” I cannot explain the acts of violence and the desires of one people to kill another. I do not have that kind of understanding. But I do understand compassion. And I do understand that God is bigger than I am. I do understand that in the middle of tragedy is often the most graceful of places. I do understand that a frightened woman did a brave thing by saving a two-year old boy. In the middle of tragedy God is there. In the middle of the worst possible scenario, God is there, scooping us up, and running us to safety.

I feel pretty secure in my situation right now, yet I live in fear that I might lose my children or my wife in some tragic way. I feel pretty solid in my financial position right now, but the money could stop tomorrow and like many, we are always about six months away from being homeless and destitute. I feel confident in my health and wellbeing, but there are no guarantees. Life is like that. Just the way it is, from West University to Mumbai, we live in an existence that is tenuous at best. And in the middle of tragedy the image of the brave woman running with a frightened child sticks with me as an example of the kind of God we proclaim.

"Here is your God!"

See, the Lord GOD comes with might,

and his arm rules for him;

his reward is with him,

and his recompense before him.

He will feed his flock like a shepherd;

he will gather the lambs in his arms,

and carry them in his bosom,

and gently lead the mother sheep.

In the middle of hatred, is God. In the middle of killing, is God. In the middle of pain and suffering, is God. In the middle of Advent, this second Sunday, is the reminder of the proclamation of faith that we all make, God is in the midst of us, St. Paul asks the Romans, “if God is for us who can be against us? He writes further, “⁵Who will separate us from the love of Christ? …³⁸For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The Holtzberg’s proclaimed their own belief in God, and it cost them their lives. And yet, in the middle of their death their child was spared. I cannot help but see this boy as a symbol of God’s goodness and St. Paul’s words. I cannot help but see the bravery of Sandra Samuel as a symbol of living and giving for all of us to see ad embody. The risk to save someone else’s child, someone else’s people, the risk of your life to save another, here is God’s call in Advent, a voice crying out in the wilderness. A proclamation of faith. A voice calling you and me to safety, to meaning, to hope, to a life in the middle of death. To life in the middle of Advent. To a kind of being that would have us save the other at great risk to ourselves.

Because the world is indeed weary, and we do indeed need comfort. Too often we are Moshe, helpless and alone in the middle of tragedy and we can also be Sandra, frightened and scared but courageous and valiant. We proclaim a God who desires to save us, who seeks us out in the middle of our lives, who calls to us, who finds us, who risks with us, holding us close finding us when we do not think we could be found. Here is our God, running to safety carrying us close. Here is our God, loving us, hearing us, comforting us. Here is our God in the middle of the worst thing we can imagine, a God who leads us to safety, to shelter, to salvation. A living God, a loving God. A God incarnate. Our God. Amen