Written for the Week after January 1, 2012

Christmas is over for most people. Trees that were beautifully adorned just a few weeks ago are now ignominiously tossed onto the curb.  Boxes of Christmas lights, wrapping paper, ornaments, and yard decorations are hopefully back in their storage places for the annual eleven month wait. School is back in session or soon to restart.  But Epiphany is not until Friday, January 6 --on Old Christmas, twelve days after the Christmas Day that most celebrate on December 25th. 

SO WHAT?  Why do we push Christmas further? Why bother?  Precisely because of the apathy and that curious on/off switch that Christmas is for most people. 

Stick with us for another week.  Come to church and see our sanctuary still decorated for one more Sunday.  Our theme will extend from The Epiphany unto the First Sunday after The Epiphany with the Baptism of Jesus.  The story of the Magi is part of the readings.

For the Last Sunday of Advent we lingered on the connection both Matthew and Luke made to the genealogy of Jesus as it pertained to the royal Davidic Line.  It might have seemed out of place to be reading 2 Samuel in the Advent/Christmas lineup, but I think all present for the message on December 18 will tell you it was, indeed, a good thing to hear as we remembered what it was about David that made him such a great king and why Yahweh loved him so. That then is what we need to remember when we see the same sort of lowly and humble details the gospel writers provide of the birth of our savior. And that THEN is what we need to hear as we consider what God is doing in our lives --in this place, in other humble conditions and where some would least expect it.

One of our members commented on the part of the story having to do with the containment of God that the temple David wanted to build would have undoubtedly provided.  Boxing in God, who thinks and dreams outside the box is what many people do in their religious observances, but as she expressed so well as she was leaving church, God won't be boxed in, can't be boxed in, and wants us never to try to box up the divine --regardless of our good intentions. Getting ourselves out of the box is part of the Christian task, too.

As you unwrap your presents, your boxes this Christmas, think about this and try to release any of your preconceptions that bind up the God we find in this manger!  Open yourself to the amazing GOOD NEWS that God is doing a wonder in our midst. Everyone knows it happened once, but not everyone knows it is happening now --in you --in us!  Thanks be to God!

Listen to Pastor Jack Anglin's

Advent 4 Sermon

the reading is from The New International Version
found in the Second Book of Samuel, chapter 7:1-11, & 16

_______________________________________

The Song of Mary is the topic/theme for The Third Sunday of Advent. Some people are glad that the Advent sequence is finally showing up more Christmassy readings (you've heard that word before). Actually, most of the lectionary readings are part of the birth narrative sequence, and are related but not always what some would connect, especially if all they want is the abridged version.

In the Advent 3B sermon we explore this remarkable woman, a young girl at that time who, Luke reports, says an enthusiastic yes to God's overture, even though her questions are unanswered and what is spoken about is certainly peculiar and bound to be difficult. What Mary does show us is that she trusts God to work out the details, and expects to be OK after all is accomplished. She is an amazing disciple, and an example Luke offers for discipleship, a theme that he uses again and again throughout his two volumes.  But it all starts with her.

As much as it can be for that age, Luke paints a stunning portrait for us in such few words of a woman who participates in God's remarkable dream for the world.  And what is this all about for people who live so many hundreds of years later if not to do the same thing as Mary --to believe and trust that we can participate in and help make a reality of God's dream and hope for the world? As the pastor remarks about Jesus, it is not so much about venerating Mary as it is following and being like her.

Mary's magnificent song has always sounded great to most everyone who heard it --except the rich and powerful.  "Watch out!" --is what it is really saying!  Watch out, everyone, because NOW God is truly making a difference. Please don't miss the point. It's not about being just a witness to God's activity, it is about being God's activity! Advent/Christmas is not at all about presents, but being present, being conscious and aware, being involved and complicit in God's glorious dream and vision.  And almost as it was with Mary, God makes an amazing overture to you --and awaits your reply!

Listen to Pastor Jack Anglin's

Advent 3 Sermon

the reading is from The New International Version
found in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 1

The quotation is from
The Illegitimacy of Jesus,
by Jane Schaberg
Expanded Twentieth Anniversary Edition
Sheffield Phoenix Press 2006
page 128

_______________________________________

The second Sunday of Advent hosts a wonderful reading from Isaiah, chapter 40, verses 1 thorugh 11.  Every time I read these words of that Hebrew prophet I can't help but remember driving through The Virgin River Gorge, otherwise known as The Veterans Memorial Highway, on Interstate 15, halfway between La Vegas, Nevada and Zion National  Park in Utah.  This stretch of highway was called the most expensive roadway in America.  Watch the video and you'll understand why.  If you ever drove through it you can probably understand why this highway comes to my mind.  Here's another link.

What Isaiah states, and what is usually also applied to John the Baptist, as the voice crying out in the wilderness, --both are calling for an extraordinary change of things before the Lord will come, or as Isaiah more eloquently wrote,

"Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
  and all people shall see it together,...".

Then! THEN! AFTER the mountains are made low and after the valleys are filled up!

John was preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Somehow, he hopes (or God hopes), in the sinners change, the earthshaking seismic shift that can occur in an person, --THEN the glory of the LORD shall be revealed. 

While many Christians hope for some cataclysmic end of the world, it seems the LORD hopes for the cataclysmic end of the ego's sinful reign. In other words, HEY YOU! --straighten out the crooked ways!

How to do that?  There are a variety of ways to act to effect the change, but the good news is that since the LORD is calling for it, it must be possible --old dogs can learn new tricks. Thanks be to God!

_____________________________________

First Sunday of Advent 11/27

Advent has begun! So has the New Year!--the new church year, that is! Quite a few things are starting at Chalice Christian on this occasion and we hope you're a part of the changes and direction we are heading in this new year and into 2012.

Many people call this season the Christmas Season--it is, but it isn't. According to the church calendar, this is Advent. The painting above is by Henry Ossawa Tanner, entitled The Annunciation (1898, an oil on canvas, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art), and in it Tanner powerfully depicts the news that was delivered to Mary, according to the gospel tradition. Tanner's view is not the usual scene we find in many earlier artistic expressions. We don't need to be told that the annunciation would precede December 25th by many months, so we can see that parts of our story that we usually roll up into one tale actually have a preliminary time frame or longer set up to the birth of the messiah. In a way, we have the very real honor of acting like the angel Gabriel in likewise proclaiming what is to come and to do so long in advance to a world that longs for such good news. Then after Christmas does come, and in the days after the 25th, when the rest of the world has put the decorations away and thrown the trees out onto the curb, then the church has a decent chance to dwell on the meaning of Christmas when for a few weeks we stand outside the commercial whirlwind of the Christmas Shopping Season. Then we can tell our story apart from the common emphasis that has so dominated our culture. 

Some people call this kind of schedule Old Christmas, which means the other might be called New Christmas. Some churches celebrate Advent, then on the 25th Christmas begins, and extends until Epiphany (the appearing) two weeks later on Old Christmas. Perhaps it will do us good to consider what is best, --old, new, or both!

Below: Angels Appearing before the Shepherds
by Henry Ossawa Tanner
ca. 1910,  oil on canvas 25 3/4 x 31 7/8 in. 
Smithsonian American Art Museum

 
Our church is decorated for Christmas, of course, and over the next month we will sing plenty of wonderful seasonal carols and Christmas hymns, and you will find much of the Christmas spirit at CCC, but for these next few weeks and Sundays we will try to pace ourselves to enjoy this preliminary ADVENT SEASON and see what it is about.  For if we can learn one thing from these gospel birth narratives, it is that angels are simply those who bring good news. Whether to an individual or a group, to a young female or a group of male shepherds, to kings and peasants, our story is partly about God sending angelic messengers to announce what is starting to happen and what's really going on!  We can be messengers of God, too; anytime we can in such a way.  Maybe some may think of themselves more like old Clarence in It's a Wonderful Life than Michelangelo's (Angel Michael's) mighty Gabriel, but we can be messengers of the gospel, nonetheless.  Maybe our doing something a little differently is all it takes to make the difference for others--to stand apart from the world and essentially be other worldy beings, harbingers and angels of the living God, the one who makes all things new!

Listen to Pastor Jack Anglin's

Advent 1 Sermon from 11/27

The Scripture Reading is based primarily on The New Revised Standard Version and is found in Mark 13: 24-37