Sermons:

 **September 16, 2001 Attack on America

 **December 30, 2001 Dreams for 2002

 **March 17, 2002 "Dry Bones"

 **Palm Sunday

 **Easter Sunday

 (Sermons are in Microsoft Word. If you cannot open them, please email us and we will see that you receive copies. One complete sermon is included below as well for anyone who has trouble opening them.)

December 30, 2001

Matthew 2:13-23
Isaiah 63:7-9

Jesus was born into a world of contrasts: angelic dreams, gifts to the new born child, faithful wise men, courageous and devoted father on one side; evil ruler, deaths of scores of tiny children, a flight in terror on the other. Rachel weeping, wise men rejoicing, the birth of the one who has been born king of the Jews, murdered babies: sorrow and hope, life and death - this story has it all. And that's because Jesus was not born in paradise but in the real world of intrigue and power struggle, of extraordinary goodness and unimaginable evil - in other words, Jesus was born into our world; this story is our story.
As we look at it now as we prepare for the new year, let's allow it to help us think about our lives and our world in this moment; where have we come from and where are we going?
An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child and destroy him." Where would these birth narratives have been without the angelic dream messengers, bringing information, comforting, and warning? For me they are a reminder of God's presence with us and of the oh-so-thin veil between the holy and the ordinary, so thin that all of life, it seems, can be sacred. What are your dreams - what are God's dreams for you - in 2002? Sadness and discouragement can cause us to close our hearts to our dreams, to feel that dreaming has no place in our lives and that it is better just to plod along and do the best we can day to day, noses toward the ground rather than toward the heavens.
This is a place where today's reading from Matthew can help us - this is a story about people who did extraordinary things because they dreamed extraordinary dreams - but they dreamed them in the midst of a world as full of pain and disappointment as our own. It could not have been easy for the wise men to follow that star; it could not have been easy for Joseph to take Mary and Jesus and flee to a strange land, but their dreams gave them the power to act in a way that gave their dreams life.
Do you dream of a safer world? Do you dream of an end to violence and poverty for our inner city children, for all the children of the world? Do you dream of more vital spiritual life? One writer says this: "Like Joseph, we must also be God - dreamers, Holy dreamers. Joseph heard the call of the Holy in his dreams, and responded by putting that call into action. The power of the Holy transformed the motivation behind all that Joseph did. Joseph did not simply have a bad dream and run away from Egypt. He had a Holy dream and immediately implemented God's rescue plan." [Homiletics 1 2/31 /95] What are your Holy dreams? What are you going to do with your will and your energy and the power of the Holy Spirit to give your dreams life this year?
Joseph and his family were fleeing from a dangerous, scheming, power hungry
monarch. But for us Herod can be the symbol of anything that causes us to flee. Sometimes, as with Joseph, fleeing in the face of danger is the only thing to do. But sometimes we need to turn and face whatever it is that we are running away from. We will only know whether to run or to confront if we have identified our Herods. Are you wisely staying away from an encounter which could only do you harm, or are you running away from something you need to deal with: addiction, a troubled relationship, a childhood fear, a new responsibility, the fulfillment of something which you feel called to do but are afraid of? There is much in this story that is horrible - probably the thing that seems most appalling to us is Herod's slaughter of the babies. Why, we might ask? Why could God allow such a thing to happen? When Elie Wiesel asked himself where was God in the Holocaust, he said he had to believe that God was right there, suffering and dying with them. And God was weeping with the mothers of the babies Herod had killed. Weeping with the survivors of those killed in the Twin Towers. And God goes with us as we run from our Herods, and stays with us giving us strength and support if we discover we must stand and fight our Herods.
The angel warned Joseph to flee to Egypt. Egypt is refuge in this story, the safe place where Joseph and Mary and Jesus can ride out the storm until it is safe to come home and take up the daily struggle again. Where do you take refuge? I remember in seminary my supervising pastor once said to me, "Know where your support lies." That's another way of talking about recognizing your safe places. Be in touch with the places you can go for refuge, the people you can go to for refuge. The world that Jesus was born in, the world that we inhabit - working in this world demands that we know how to get rested and recharged and comforted, or the world will wear us down and defeat us. The living out of our dreams requires holy rest - know where yours lies, and take it when you need it. But we also have to know when to come back. Joseph knew because an angel appeared to him in a dream. We must listen well enough to know when it is time to shoulder our dreams again. .
So we go into 2002, seeking to make the lessons of the Christmas story real in
our world. To support you on the way, take with you the words of three saints, one
from the 16th century and two from our own day:
.
Hildegard of Bingen - God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of
God.
Dorothy Day - It is only in the duties of the moment that we are able to see and find .
Christ. Love is indeed a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, of each of us, but it is
the only answer.
Mother Teresa - To describe her life Mother Teresa called herself "a pencil in God's
hands." And she asks us to "do the ordinary thing with extraordinary love."
So I send us into 2002 with a wonderfully mixed metaphor: We are called to be pencils
in God's hands, and to make that possible, we must remember that God hugs us -
that we are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God. It is the only thing that
makes anything possible - but it makes everything possible.