Three years of Laughter

December 30, 2019

My dear Isaac,

You are three! And a cuter, kinder, sweeter three-year-old boy never existed. Oh, my Isaac, could I

Grass Valley, CA, at Grandpa's 70th birthday

love you any more than I do already?

From the day you were born, the word I have used regarding how I feel about you is “affection.” I have a deep affection for you, my son, that, while echoed in my relationships with others I love, is in many ways reserved just for you. Following are some of the things we each love most about you.

First, Grace. I asked Grace recently, “What do you love about Isaac?” and she said, “He’s funny. He laughs a lot.” It’s true, you completely live up to your name! Your laugh is contagious, and you share it readily, making jokes and playing along with others’ jokes, and always asking for more. You are quick with a smile. You and Grace play so incredibly together because you simply enjoy each other’s company, as you work together to solve the world’s problems, save those who need saving (a la your favorite TV show, Paw Patrol), or simply act out Grace’s latest princess fantasy. You are regularly her groom, her

Best friends!
(Yes, Grace is covered in blue marker)

handsome prince (whom she has generously named “Ryder Prince,” so you can also be your favorite character from Paw Patrol), her husband, her baby – and you willingly go along with almost all of her ideas, investing in them almost as fully as she does.

Snow buddies

Which brings me to your dad’s favorite thing about you: your kindness. You are routinely sweet. When someone is upset, you search out something to cheer them up. If someone has lost something, you look for it. If someone (usually Grace) feels lonely or scared, you offer to go with her. If toys need to be picked up, even if you didn’t get them out or maybe didn’t even play with them, you happily help pick them up. If someone needs a fork, you volunteer to go to the kitchen to get it. And you don’t seem to want anything in return for your kindness – you only want to do the right thing, and to make the people you care about happy. And you do, my son – you absolutely do! You are friends with everyone, and everyone wants to be friends with you. After church yesterday, you found some foam circles in various colors, and you came out to coffee hour and asked around, “Does anyone want a circle?” And

September, 2019

you handed them out to people, offering commentary: “This one is blue, my favorite color. Do you want one? Here is one. It is green, mommy’s favorite color.” With this
simple and innocent gift, you won the hearts of everyone standing there, even those you’d never met!

Christmas Eve

And that finally brings me to my favorite thing about you: your generosity. You, kid, are a helper. One of your most uttered phrases is, “Can I help you? Mommy, do you need help?” You hear me head to the kitchen and you immediately run in after me, asking me if I need help. The times we spend working together in the kitchen are some of my favorite – you dump in ingredients, stir things, help me scrape cut veggies into the pan, fetch things from the fridge – and always with joy and contentment to be of use, and to be doing such big-boy jobs with mom. You also like helping with laundry, picking up toys, setting the table… really anything that you can help with, you do. You are generous with your things, too: you share toys with your friends, you let Grace sleep in your bed when she’s scared, you invite people into your world with joy. A few weeks ago, we invited our friends over for dinner, and Grace asked if they could sleep over. I said there weren’t enough beds. You piped up, “Well, I only have one pillow, but they could sleep in my bed.” That is so you, my child. Always ready to share your blessings with others. It is heart-warming and inspiring – I want to be more like you, Isaac!

I also love about you the very thing which sometimes makes you a challenge: you are (and always have been) a very emotional kid, who feels things deeply and has a strong sense of justice. While you are generally pretty happy, when you are unhappy about something (usually that Grace got to go first when you wanted to), you express that fully and at length. An hour later, or at bedtime that night, you will bring it up again, “I was sad when Grace got to go first.” But we are helping you articulate your feelings, and hope this will help you manage them as you grow.

Happy 3rd birthday!

For posterity, here are also some things that you love: cars cars cars! You love to play cars, look at cars, draw cars. Also planes and trains, but cars are #1. You love Paw Patrol (especially Chase), and you like to wear the Ryder vest that Dede made you. You love pancakes, and peanut butter, and despite loving to help me cook, and pretending to cook with your toy kitchen and play dough, pancakes and PB make up most of your diet (with some berries, graham crackers, cheese, apples, and carrots thrown in for you know, some balance). You love doing all things “together” – “Let’s drink together! Let’s eat together! Let’s talk cars together!” You love to figure things out, be it a puzzle or how to build a track for your cars or trains, and though you delight in doing these things with others, you are also perfectly content to do it quietly all by yourself.

Christmas morning 2019

You are quite a package, my son. I think we’ll keep you!

Love,

Your adoring mother

Christmas Eve Sermon: Into messy cookies and messy lives (2019)

Christmas Eve 2019

St. Paul’s Lutheran Church

            My 3-year-old son loves to cook and bake with me. It is simultaneously one of the best and worst things – best when I have the time to be patient, worst when I’m in a hurry or really want things to, you know, turn out. Occasionally his 4-year-old sister joins in, and then? All bets are off. I just hope I come out with something edible.

Such was cookie-baking for this holiday season. Both kids wanted to help. With our assortment of cookie cutters, and what little knowledge they had gained from their abundant playdough toys, we made my favorite cookies: spicy Christmas cut-outs. Now, my mom, knowing that I love these, makes them for every occasion – hearts for Valentine’s Day, stars and trees for Christmas, we even had them at our wedding, in the shape of hearts and, obviously, airplanes (my beloved’s second most loved thing). When mom makes them, they are perfect. The frosting doesn’t drip down the sides, and although I’m sure there are broken ones, they are never the ones that end up being passed around on the pretty holiday plate at Christmas dinner.

Some of our survivors... messy frosting, rough edges and all!

         Our batch of cookies? Not so much. There are several with a single bite out of them. Another bunch with stray marks from the cookie cutters, from over eager children being less than careful. Frosting that somehow made it on the bottom from the rush job I did after I got home from some late-night commitment. Of course, the precious few that are beautiful, I pulled out for gifts to special people – but the ugly cookies, with the broken edges and the messy frosting? No one outside the house gets to see those!

That’s sort of a metaphor for life, isn’t it? Especially at Christmastime, we only put forward our very best face for other people to see (the prettiest cookies, loveliest dresses, and the best smiles) … and the brokenness (both the broken edges on our cookies and our emotional brokenness)we save for a more private place. After all, there’s no reason, especially at such a merry time as Christmas, to dwell on the dark shadows and brokenness of our lives, right?

But you and I both know: there are very real dark shadows and brokenness in our lives. Our country is reeling after only the third impeachment of a president in our 250-year history. We read weekly, it seems, about another shooting, another tragedy, another hate crime. Rochester City Schools’ budget cuts and consequent teacher and staffing cuts will leave already at-risk students with even less stability in their lives. New and devastating diagnoses. Broken families. People we love making choices we cannot understand. It can be hard to see the light when there seems to be so much darkness everywhere we look. It can be hard, sometimes, not to hear the angels’ song of “peace on earth” as mere wishful thinking. Peace, huh? I’ll believe it when I see it.

Perhaps that is why we portray the Christmas story the way we do. I mean, it is an amazing story, miraculous, moving, but did you ever notice how much we either gloss over or sentimentalize the rougher edges of it? Like, Luke doesn’t tell us about Mary’s labor pains, or how messy birth is, or about how her laboring moans filled that silent night. He doesn’t mention how scared and appalled Joseph was to be there for the birth, which was not in any way a normal or appropriate place for a man to be, but who else was there to catch the baby when he came out – the donkey? I don’t think so! There is no reflection on how mortified Mary and Joseph were when the dirty shepherds, the lowest of the low in society, showed up with their equally dirty sheep. Or what about when baby Jesus made a mess in those swaddling cloths, as newborns are prone to do, and they had no more clean ones to change him into? Did he just have to sit there in a messy diaper?

No, those aren’t the parts of the Christmas story that we like to tell and put on greeting cards, is it? Our preferred version shows two faithful, saintly people caring gently for their newborn who no crying makes, oxen and asses before him bowing, shepherds looking like upstanding citizens, and not a hint of the smell of a stable that is home to animals. You see, we don’t want to dwell on the gross, painful or difficult parts of the Christmas story any more than we want to dwell on the gross, painful or difficult parts of our own stories. Maybe, we think, just maybe, if the Christmas story can be clean and sweet tonight, so can our lives. Like the plate full of cookies that are not at all broken, our lives, too, can be perfect, at least for one holy night. That is, after all, the expectation we have for Christmas.

But from the very beginning, you see, the incarnation, Christmas, did not meet expectations. This year the kids of St. Paul’s showed us this in their delightful Christmas pageant, called, “An Unexpected Christmas.” It is framed as sort of the prequel to the Christmas story. It takes place in heaven, with God and the angels, as God tries to figure out what to do about how far humanity has strayed from his original intention. God has the idea to send his son in the form of a newborn baby, to a peasant girl in a stable. The angels urge God to reconsider, to send an army, or at least to send his son someplace safe, like to a strong ruler in a palace. With each wacky, irrational, risky idea God has, the angels are aghast – all but one, who keeps commenting, “Brilliant! They won’t be expecting that!”

But that’s really the point of Christmas, isn’t it? That repeated line: they won’t be expecting that. The way that God chooses to come and dwell among us is completely unexpected, completely risky, and when it comes down to it, completely wacky.

But that irrational wackiness is what makes the Christmas story – the real Christmas story with all the rough, broken edges – such good news. It would have made sense for God to make His grand entrance into the earthly scene dramatic, noticeable, and more important than a baby born in a stable in a backwater town to an unwed teenage mother, announced only to the shepherds in the fields. But that more “important” version wouldn’t mean much for the brokenness of my life. And so that isn’t what God chooses to do. God doesn’t come and take one of the perfectly intact cookies from a freshly polished silver plate. God doesn’t come into a family with a mom and a dad and 2.5 kids and a dog. God doesn’t come into a table laden with succulent and expertly cooked food, a sparkling Christmas tree with all the best ornaments on the front and the ugly ones in back, into a meal in which no one says anything snarky or sarcastic, no one shares the pain going on in their lives, and everyone is just as merry as can be.

No, God comes to the earth among the lowly, the hungry, the displaced, the refugees, the weak, the despised. God comes to earth in the dark of night, when all the scariest and most mysterious creatures are out and about, where crime happens, where nothing seems quite as safe. God comes to earth among people who are terrified, like the shepherds; to those who are exhausted like those traveling many miles to their hometowns to be registered; to those in pain, like a young mother giving birth; to the overwhelmed, like the new father suddenly thrust into the role of midwife. God comes into a plate full of broken, drippy, and partly eaten cookies, the ones you never intended for anyone to see, but which, nonetheless, are a part of your story.

This is where God decides to come to earth, shining light into the darkest streets, and promising us that, Merry Christmas or not, God is and always will be Emmanuel, God-with-us, on this dark night, and always.

Let us pray… Everlasting light, as you shone into the dark streets of Bethlehem that night, shine into our hearts this night. Come shine your light through our cracks and our breaks and our imperfections, so that we will find peace in the fact that you love us enough to be with us in all times. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Joseph's story (Dec. 22, 2019)

Advent 4A

December 22, 2019

Matthew 1:18-25

INTRODUCTION

This fourth and last Sunday of Advent in the year of Matthew is the Sunday of Emmanuel, God with us. We hear it first in Isaiah, and then again in Matthew, when the evangelist will quote the very same Isaiah text we’re about to hear to give validity to this strange pregnancy that has just been discovered. So, here’s a little context for both Isaiah and Matthew.

King Ahaz is one of many kings who did not trust the Lord. In this text, he is fearfully anticipating an attack from a foreign king, and rather than trusting God when God says that everything is going to be fine, he seeks out help from an enemy nation, the Assyrians, to fight back. Yet still, God promises a sign: a child born of a virgin whose name will be Emmanuel.

Even though Ahaz doesn’t trust God and heed this sign, that prophecy hangs in the air for several centuries… until another virgin, this one named Mary, becomes pregnant with a child. Joseph plans to “take care” of things, and just dismiss her quietly, so as not to draw attention to it and cause as little damage to their respective reputations as possible. To calm Joseph’s fears, an angel hearkens back to Isaiah’s prophecy, as if to say, “You see? God makes good on God’s promises. Trust in God, Joseph, not yourself.”

In both of these texts, the men involved, Ahaz and Joseph, find themselves in tough places, where it would seem much easier to trust their human means than to trust the crazy thing God is doing. So as you listen, recall a time when you have been in such a spot, and found it difficult to trust God, a time you maybe tried instead just to take care of things yourself without consulting with God about it... Where and how did God show up in those times? Let’s listen.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

King Ahaz of Judah is in a pretty tough spot. You see, an enemy army is marching toward Judah and is ready to attack, and Ahaz and his people are pretty terrified. But God is watching over them – God sends Isaiah to bring a message of hope to Ahaz, assuring him that the disaster he fears will not come to pass. Yay!

Ahaz doesn’t believe it. So, God says, “Well ask for a sign, then – any sign! – and I will grant it to prove to you that I mean it.” Ahaz feigns piety: “Oh Lord, I just couldn’t possibly do that.” God sighs a deep, divine sigh, and says, “Fine, then. I’m gonna give you a sign anyway, alright? You don’t believe what you hear? Maybe you’ll believe what you see. A child will be born, whose name literally means, “God is with you,” and by the time that child is two years old [that’s the agreed-upon age of when kids know good from evil], by the time he is two, those kings coming after you will no longer be an issue.”

Pretty sweet offer. But Ahaz still doesn’t believe it, and still seeks aid from a foreign nation. Ahaz could not or would not trust in God’s promise; instead, he reacts in fear. Consequently, the kingdom is conquered by the very powers from whom Ahaz had sought help. His lack of trust is what sowed the seeds for his own kingdom’s destruction.

To be honest, I can’t blame Ahaz. He was afraid, and feared his kingdom would be demolished, and like we are all prone to do, he trusted himself more than he trusted God. He turned to his own devices, ideas that felt much more concrete than simply, “Trust, and God will take care of it.” I get it. I can’t say for sure that I wouldn’t have done the same thing… that I haven’t done the same thing sometimes, in the situations I face in my own life.

         Isaiah’s prophecy lingers for the next 800 years or so, as Israel continues to long for that child, that promise of Emmanuel. Many centuries later, another virgin conceives, one named Mary, who is betrothed to a carpenter named Joseph. Have you ever wondered how that conversation went? The one where Mary told Joseph she was pregnant, and that it wasn’t his, and furthermore that the Father was God… I suspect it didn’t go too well. Matthew doesn’t tell us much about Joseph’s reaction, leaving us plenty of space to guess and imagine. But there are some extrabiblical sources that give us a little more information. The Infancy Gospel of James, allegedly written by Jesus’ half-brother, tells us that when Joseph saw Mary’s swollen belly after she returned from visiting Elizbeth, he threw himself on the ground, struck himself in the face, and wept bitterly, crying out in anguish to God. What an image that is!

         I think it is worthwhile to dwell here for a moment, and not to gloss over Joseph’s reaction too quickly, because it is a very real moment. So many depictions of the Holy Family show a serene couple with haloes around their heads. But this in-between place, when Joseph knows Mary is pregnant but has not yet heard from the angel nor actually seen this kid, shows that being blessed by God is not always idyllic. Making the right choice, the godly choice, the faithful choice, is very often not the easiest or smoothest choice, and it may very well overturn all the order and structure you previously enjoyed.

Like, here’s this man, Joseph, with an impeccable reputation, an upstanding and righteous guy who has the respect of his neighbors. And now, by no fault of his own, he is thrown into a scandal, and all the doubt, shame, and controversy that goes along with it. He is called into a mess he didn’t create, to protect a baby he did not sire, to love and care for a woman with a messy story. I mean, we think families are complicated now – the Holy Family is the epitome of a blended, unconventional family! Jesus is born out of wedlock to a mommy and two daddies – it’s a mega scandal! And in a culture in which reputation is everything, Joseph finds himself in a humiliating spot that threatens the order that had structured his whole existence. We must not take lightly Joseph’s role in this story!

         Thank God for that angel. I do wish I had more angelic input for the very tough decisions of life, right? Yet even still, I don’t want to jump past Joseph’s decision to stay with Mary. We so often laud Mary’s decision, and rightly so. Her beautiful words, “Here I am, a servant of the Lord. Let it be with me according to your will,” are a beacon of faith. The song she sings after that, the Magnificat (a setting of which we will sing today in Canticle of the Turning) is a revolutionary song for the ages! But I do so wish we had a song of Joseph, a song that wrestled with his understanding of his role in this plan. Because even with that angelic guidance and affirmation… Joseph’s decision to stay, and leave behind everything he had imagined for his life, is truly remarkable.

         Maybe some like to read this story and picture Joseph as a righteous and faithful man who, once he heard from the angel, never doubted again his role in all this, who always trusted in God. But not me. I like to imagine Joseph a little more like Ahaz – at first preferring to trust his own instincts rather than a sign from God – because I can relate to that. I like to imagine that Joseph, unlike Ahaz, did finally come to the right and faithful decision, but that he still grappled with moments of doubt and wondering – because that, too, is something I can relate to. I like to imagine Joseph sometimes even resenting the fact that being blessed by God, as generations since have assumed of this Holy little Family, doesn’t always look like getting everything you wanted or dreamed of; indeed, sometimes it means giving something up – because that is something that is real to me, too! Every time we say yes to God, it means saying no to something else, even something else we may have loved.

         Joseph shows us this. Joseph shows us that being faithful does not mean sacrificing your humanity, that being righteous does not mean being without doubt, and that being blessed does not mean getting your heart’s desire, but sometimes means giving up that desire.

         Yes, Joseph shows us this… and God shows us that even into this, God still comes. “He will be called Emmanuel,” says the prophet to Ahaz, says the prophet to us still. He will be God with us: God with us in our doubts, our resentments, our frustrations that God’s will doesn’t match up with our own. God with us when we’d really rather rely upon ourselves and our own ideas, rather than trust God’s sometimes wacky plans. God with us when we are scared about what lies ahead, when the journey looks long and rough, when we’re afraid of what people might say, when our reputation is on the line. God with us when our plans for our lives crumble.

         My kids are at an age right now where, even as they long to be independent, they also really still like to know we are there – it makes them feel safe. And so they are always asking, “Will you come with me (to the potty, to get my blankie, to the kitchen for a snack)? Will you come with me?” For us parents, it gets pretty tedious – sometimes we long for them to have more independence (“Just let me eat my breakfast!”)! But not for God. God never tires of being with us, whenever we know we need that presence, and even when we don’t know. That is the promise we celebrate these last days of anticipation, and every day thereafter: a virgin shall conceive a bear a child, and he will be called: God-with-us.

         Let us pray… O come, o come, Emmanuel. Come and be with us. Help us to trust like Joseph, even if we do not understand, and make us ever certain of your presence with us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.