Judgement. The Rev'd. Dr. Richard Smith

“Judgement” is a loaded word for us. It conjures images of self-righteous preachers and repressed religious types wagging their fingers and tongues, an image of an angry God, an old guy in the sky with a long white beard, lashing out to punish us for our misdeeds.

Many of us have been on the receiving end of this kind of judgement, told we would burn in hell for loving whom we love in the ways we love. For good reason, “judgement” has become a loaded word for many of us.

But for John in today’s gospel, judgement is something very different. It begins with Jesus, after we’ve completely abandoned him, being lifted onto the cross, completely crushed by the violence and hatred we see all around us and in which we ourselves are complicit.

And in that moment, when he’s lost everyone and everything, when he hangs there tortured, barely able to lift his head, gasping for air, something amazing happens: He keeps loving us, and he doesn’t take it back. No finger-pointing, no condemnation. He just keeps loving us.

And when we encounter this kind of love, when we look on someone we have hurt and who still loves us, it is very unsettling.

There’s a story of a little boy whose dad was putting him to bed earlier than he wanted. The little boy, Benjamin, said, “Daddy, I hate you.” Benjamin’s father, exercising the kind of parental wisdom can only I hope for, replied, “Ben, I’m sorry you feel that way, but I love you.” Benjamin’s response to such gracious words surprised his dad: “Don’t say that!” “I’m sorry Benjamin, but it’s true. I love you.” “Don’t,” his son protested, “Don’t say that again!” At which point Ben’s father said, “Benjamin, I love you…like it or not!”

Love like this is out of our control. We can’t get rid of it, much as we might like to at times.

And sometimes we would like to get rid of it, because it triggers one of those uncomfortable person-in-the-mirror moments. It elicits what some call good guilt--a sadness and shame for the hurt we’ve caused, the evil we’ve done and in which we have been complicit.

I had this kind of experience last Sunday when we took some of our young people to see Selma. The film shows the struggle of the African-American marchers for justice, wanting only to be given the most basic decency and respect. The film also shows the brutal and violent opposition they encountered from larger white society. And it shows how, even as they continued to speak and insist on justice, and even despite the violence inflicted on them, they refused to strike back, refused to return evil for evil.

Seeing that film was a moment of judgement for me: I had to confront my own complicity in the racism of our culture, the ways I have silently contributed to the violence and injustice against them, forgotten that black and brown lives matter.

Notice, there’s no finger-pointing in this dynamic. Jesus and Dr. King issue no threats of hellfire, no condemnations. This kind of judgement just doesn’t do that.

I saw a posting on Facebook the other day about singer Joan Baez. Just before a recent concert, some people showed up with signs protesting her anti-war and pro-choice positions. They were veterans of the Viet Nam war she had opposed, and they were also strongly anti-abortion. They accused her of killing babies and encouraging the shooting of American soldiers--things that were simply not true. Some of their signs said “Joan Baez, soldiers don’t kill babies. Liberals do,” and “JOAN BAEZ GAVE COMFORT & AID TO OUR ENEMY IN VIETNAM & ENCOURAGED THEM TO KILL AMERICANS!"

Before the concert, Joan went out to talk with them. She listened to their stories, and quietly tried to clarify her own positions. She told them that, despite her opposition to that war, she had stood by them from the beginning and that she stood by them now.

Joan's continuing acceptance of their stories and her willingness to hear them out began to melt their anger. In a twist that seems hard to fathom, they then asked her to SIGN THEIR POSTERS!  She replied that she would not sign the front of "those horrible things", but she would sign the back. She wrote "All the very best to you, Joan Baez." Then she gave them copies of her book, and offered tickets to the show, which they did not accept.

During the concert, Joan dedicated a song to the protesters and said "You know, they just wanted to be heard.  Everyone wants to be heard. I feel like I made four new friends tonight."

It’s as though people like Jesus and Dr. King and Joan Baez have a freedom that we often lack: They don’t feel the need to prove themselves right, or to have the upper hand, or to even the score, or repay evil with evil. They live by a different logic. So different from the logic we’ve grown accustomed to, that we take to be business as usual, as just the way things are.

John says that, after gazing upon the man we have betrayed and tortured and lifted up on the cross--the one who kept on loving us through all of that--we are confronted with our own darkness. The judgement lies not in someone pointing a finger at us and condemning us, but rather in our own coming to see that we have not lived up to what we can be, that we’ve blown it, gotten things seriously wrong.

This creates the conditions for a decision, a choice we must make either to return to the darkness, back to business as usual, or to turn a new way, living as free people who are not condemned and therefore do not condemn, living the compassionate life of sinners who know they are forgiven.

That’s the choice we have before us this Lenten morning, and we have all the grace we need to make it.

Transfiguration; February 15, 2015; The Rev'd. Dr. Richard Smith

Years ago, I talked to an elderly Irish woman who told me how she had survived the Great Depression. She had migrated to Portland, Oregon when she was twenty-something and single. She lived in a small damp room in the basement of an old house, and worked two jobs--one cleaning rooms in the local hospital, the other as a waitress on the evening shift at a local cafe. Long days on her feet doing menial work for little pay. A bleak time in her life.

Here’s how she survived. Each week she set aside a few cents from her paycheck for an annual matinee at the cinema. Sometimes she would go by herself, other times with a friend.

When she had finally saved enough, and the special day arrived, she would take her beautiful old long coat out of storage, let it hang out in the fresh air to get rid of the mothball smell. She would take her best shoes out of the box and polish them. She would iron her best dress. She would put on her makeup, take forever getting dressed. Then she would reach the top shelf of her closet and take down the large box that held her favorite hat. She would put the hat on, adjusting it just right with one of those long hat pins with a pearl knob on the end. Then she would put on her long white gloves and her long coat and head out the door and onto the trolley to the theater--one, I imagine, much like our beloved Castro Theater.

When she arrived and paid for her ticket, a handsome man in a long green coat opened the big brass door for her and she stepped into another world, onto the thick red carpet of the theater lobby. She stopped at the concession stand for a small popcorn with extra butter, then entered the magnificent auditorium with all its gold and  statues and paintings of ancient Greece. She found her way to her seat, upholstered in soft, rich velvet.

Soon a hush fell over the crowd and the Mighty Wurlitzer emerged, playing songs like “Begin the Beguine”, and ”Over the Rainbow’’ and “They Can’t Take That Away from Me”.

The lights would dim, the curtain would rise, and the movie would begin--perhaps a comedy or a romance, perhaps with Clark Gable or Mae West, Mickey Rooney or Joan Crawford. She would sometimes laugh, sometimes cry, sometimes be startled, raising her hand to her lips.

Then the lights would come back on and the curtain come down; the show was over. She’d get up from her seat and head home, put her long coat back into storage, her gloves back in the drawer, her hat back on the closet shelf, her best shoes back in the box. She would put on her waitress uniform, tie her apron around her waist, put on her jacket and head to the cafe for the evening shift.

Back to normal. But not really. Because, as she explained, for weeks after that day at the matinee, she saw the world differently. A truth that had escaped her in the humdrum of everyday life had once again become vivid--that the world is full of so much music, laughter, romance, and beauty. And she also saw some truths about herself, truths she had forgotten--that she was not simply a drab working girl from a poor family, but someone truly beautiful, elegant, classy.

It was a transformative experience. She and her world had been transfigured.

Welcome to Transfiguration Sunday which is about a matinee of a special kind, and so much more.

This gospel story was written when the early church was facing persecution from the Roman Empire under Nero. It was written to prepare the early disciples for a price they would likely have to pay as followers of Jesus.

Prior to this point in the story, the disciples have been getting the message that Jesus, far from being the glorious, victorious, rock star messiah they had expected, would be executed on a cross as a criminal, and that following him would mean taking up crosses of their own, losing their own lives to truly find them.

It was sounding pretty bleak. They were bummed.

Time for a Transfiguration moment. It’s a different kind of space the Teacher leads them into--not a theater, but a high mountaintop where Jesus enters a loving communion with God.

The imagery of this story is mystical and poetic and spectacular. It leaves the disciples dazzled and confused. Peter doesn’t even know what to say.

Jesus’ inner communion with God radiates a white light from his inner core outward, through his mind and body, and his clothes become dazzling white. The white light at his center transfigures his entire being.

And there are more spectacular things: Moses and Elijah appear, a cloud descends. The sense of mystery and transcendence deepens. They are as close as humans get to the divine and still live. A voice from the cloud reveals to them “This is my Son, my Beloved.”

This moment is about an overpowering love, a love at the very center of the universe. It reawakens them to what their own journey has been about. It gives them new eyes to see what otherwise might have seemed humdrum at best, bleak and hopeless at worst.

Did they know the power and beauty of the journey they had been on with Jesus? Do we?

For example, do we know the power and beauty of what we do here each week at this table? We call it Holy Communion, and this gift of Jesus on the night before he died has powerfully transformed and sustained our spiritual ancestors for millennia--from Mary Magdalene to Francis of Assisi to Martin Luther King, from Julian of Norwich to Desmond Tutu. Do we know what we have here in this meal?

This is our mountaintop, our moment of privileged Holy Communion with God.

We say that here bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, and that is powerful stuff. But even more powerful and miraculous is the transfiguration meant to take place inside each of our hearts.

Because buried inside each of us lies a power and a beauty, a love, a deep faith given to us by the One who made us. And like the young Irish woman I mentioned, in the humdrum everyday-ness of our lives, we can lose touch with that power and beauty and love. But gathered with each other at this table, in this Holy Communion, we reconnect with it, and we remember who God made us to be.

And as with Jesus on that mountaintop, so also with us. Our own inner communion with God is meant to radiate outward, transforming our minds and bodies, radiating out into the world--into caring for our kids and our aging loved ones, working for justice, stopping the violence in our neighborhood and in our world, resisting the racism and the forces that crush peoples spirits and make them lose hope, creating beautiful music and art. This Holy Communion, when we reconnect with that power and beauty and love that God has placed inside us, is our moment of transfiguration.

The poet Annie Dillard chides us churchgoers. She writes, ”Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?...Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches,” she continues, “are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.”

If we knew what we are up to by telling the dangerous story of Jesus and gathering at this table for Holy Communion week after week, “...we should all,” as Dillard writes, “be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.”

So, welcome once again to this table where you do what you have probably done so many times before, what Jesus’ followers have always done--gathering in all our rich complexity and wildness--with rich and poor; black, brown, yellow, red, and white; gay and straight; cisgender and trans; male and female; old and young--for Holy Communion, remembering the amazing creature you truly are, reconnecting with the powerful truth the Creator has placed at the very center of your heart, letting it shine into a sometimes dark and joyless world.

It is the moment of your very own Transfiguration. Welcome to this table.

Healing Church; Sunday, February 8, 2015; The Rev'd Robert Cromey

“He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up.”

Jesus was a healer.

To heal means to make whole. You know the expression, “I am trying to get myself together.” We want healing wholeness and a sense of being truly human.

What was it like to be sick in Jesus day?
No doctors, nurses, hospitals, drug stores, check ups, much less sanitation and even germ theory.

Casting Out Demons. People who were out of their so-called normal minds were on the streets in Jesus day, just like now. We see men and women all the time on our city streets who seem possessed. They yell, speak out harshly and with great anger.

I was sitting in a Starbucks on Irving St. with my friend Michael. We overheard an aggressive angry man sitting on the sidewalk. He threatened to stab people. We saw no knife. Michael was a nurse and he said, “We need to call the police.” They arrived within five minutes, were firm but clear that the man had to go to the hospital. They took him by the hand and lifted him into the ambulance. Ten minutes this man, possessed with a demon – alcohol, drugs, or insanity, was taken to the hospital.

Not only in Jesus day. The demented just walked the streets until they die. In poverty stricken Africa and in rural America, the demented walk the streets until they are killed or die.

Walking hand in hand with Jesus. Some people have that experience of being in the presence of Jesus. One woman was perplexed about many problems in her life. She went for a walk quietly in her heart and prayed for Jesus to guide her. As she walked she felt Jesus had taken her hand and was walking along with her. The old hymn came to my mind, “Oh he walked with me and he talked with me when I came to the garden alone.”

Another great spiritual is Blessed Lord, take my Hand.  Many people witness to feeling the presence of Jesus, of Jesus taking their hand and lifting them up.

In the movie Selma MLK, Jr., calls up Mahalia Jackson and has her sing Blessed Lord take My Hand, as he has to make hard decisions about moving forward in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

I have never had such an experience of Jesus. Not everyone does or has to. We all relate to the presence of Jesus in different ways.

We want to take our friends and family by the hand and lift them up when we see they are sick. We want to give them a healing touch.

That’s what we do at our healing station here at St. John’s. Healing ministers anoint with oil those people who want a healing touch for themselves or others.  We lay hands, human hands and anoint with oil. People are invited each Sunday to the healing station with our physical and emotional concerns. We need to be taken by the hand and lifted up.

Healing hand to all that are sick. Not just here in church but politically too. Affordable Care Act is trying to be destroyed by many conservative political forces in our country. So many in our land need to be taken by a healing hand and lifted up. Simply by helping people have health insurance.

We heal the hungry.
 When we pass out food at The Julian Pantry on Saturday mornings.

Seek to heal by urging an end to all wars. Lend us a hand some Thursday at noon to stand and say NO WAR!

We seek to give a healing hand to our neighbors frightened that they will be deported.

We hold out our healing hands when we heal people in Nicaragua get clean water.

We give and receive a healing hand when we give each other the peace.

One of our parishioners told me that the only time anyone touches him is when he comes to church and people hug him or shake hands and say The Peace of the Lord. Take a moment and give a healing hand to our brothers and sisters in the church at The Peace.

We Christians are also interested in Political healing. Not just personal healing.

We Christians are healers when we support the San Francisco Organizing Project when they meet in our church this afternoon from 3-6 PM. We take the hands of the powerless and assist them in becoming strong through community organization.

Jesus comes and takes our hands when we take the holy bread, the icon of his body. He takes our hands and empowers us to heal and strengthen others. We are in communion with Jesus and God and with each other.

Call of the Disciples/Annual Parish Meeting, Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

Today we hold our annual meeting. We’ll look back at the past year and forward to the one ahead. We’ll say farewell and thank you to four members who have served with so much dedication and expertise on the Bishop’s Committee, and we’ll elect new members of that committee. We’ll approve a new budget. It will be a meeting that is informative, necessary to our life as a parish, and maybe even a little fun as well.

Much of our time will necessarily focus on our own internal life as a community. Yet as we reflect on our life together, it’s important to reflect as well on the larger context in which we as a community worship and minister.

Mark does this in today’s gospel. Just before he tells us about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, he tells us the context in which that early ministry occurs. It begins immediately after John the Baptist has been arrested, handed over to what will eventually be his death by beheading.

This was sobering news to everyone.

John was the one who had called for a change, invited people repent, to turn away from life as they had known it and turn another way, toward life.

• In a society of glaring inequality like ours, when the crowds asked John, “What then shall we do?”, he told them, “Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.” 
• In a time when tax collectors, like Wall Street tycoons of our own day, were ripping people off, especially the poor, he told them, “Collect no more than you are authorized to do.” 
• When law enforcement officers and soldiers asked him, “And we, what shall we do?”, he told them, “Stop abusing your authority, stop making false accusations against people, and stop taking bribes, be content with your pay.”

It was a new social order that John had envisioned, new ways of living in the world. And in this morning’s gospel, everyone knew that John had been arrested on trumped up charges, and were angered by it.

It is in this context that Jesus emerges after a long sojourn in the desert. And he decides to carry forward John’s message and vision. To help him do that, he calls the first disciples--first Simon and Andrew, then James and John. “Come, and follow me.”

They cannot free John.  But they can take up his work, as they have taken up the nets in the sea. They can become fishers of people.  And they know what that means--it means doing what John had been doing. This is the context in which Jesus and the first disciples begin their life and ministry together.

Sometime religious people get this wrong. We lose sight of the context, the times in which we live. We get caught up in our own little worlds, we lose perspective, and our priorities get all screwed up.

In October 1917, the Russian Revolution was in full swing. The Tsar had been overthrown, the Bolsheviks were taking control of the country. In that very month, the Russian Church assembled in council. The passionate debate of the day was about the color of the surplice, one of the vestments to be worn in liturgical functions. Some vehemently insisted it had to be white, while others, with equal vehemence, insisted it had to be purple.

With the whole world on fire around them, they chose to focus on the color of liturgical vestments. I don't want to dismiss the importance of things like vestments that can add so much beauty and depth to our liturgies. Rather, it's simply a matter of perspective.

Jesus once chided the religious leaders of his own day for failing to pay attention to their own context, the signs of their own times: He said, "When it is evening, you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.' "And in the morning, 'There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.' Do you know how to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?”

So it’s important for us, as we go into our annual meeting, to discern the signs of our times, to be aware of the context in which we meet, in which we are church, in which we establish and ratify our priorities for the coming year.

I can’t name every facet of our context, but let me throw out a few.

• Certainly there is our larger world: The brutal terrorism by the Islamic State, the ongoing assaults against the Palestinians, the attack on Charlie Hebdo, the growing prejudice against Muslims, the prevalence of torture as our own Rebecca Gordon has reminded us, the growing number of police officer involved killings--from Michael Brown in Ferguson to Alex Nieto on Bernal Heights here in San Francisco.
• And there is the ongoing struggle of immigrant families in this country just to stay together. We helped keep the family of Ricardo, Amelie, and Nicole Martinez together, and we joined millions in pressuring the White House to offer some relief. And, happily, President Obama came through for five million immigrants. But although this is amazing news we never thought we’d see, it still leaves six million other immigrants at risk. So this ongoing struggle for justice remains part of the context in which we meet today. 
• Our neighborhood is being rapidly gentrified. As luxury condos spring up, the market value of surrounding homes and apartments skyrockets. Landlords raise their rents, and many families and seniors and people with disabilities get forced out. Some of us in this community of St. John’s are at risk. This, too, is part of our context. 
• And there is the matter of violence. A story… 

Because of the Nightwalks we’ve been doing with other faith communities in the Mission, I was asked by an extraordinary police officer if our parish could help a young man who has been trying to break free of the gangs. He had been released from prison, and had had enough. And he had fallen in love with a young woman he hoped to marry. He needed some work to help him get a footing in a new life. As the saying goes, “Nothing stops a bullet like a job.”

We were able to find some odd jobs for him around the church and in the neighborhood, and eventually Wes Walton got him a job as a dishwasher. The guy worked really hard, he was determined to begin a new life. His fiancee was so proud of him. More importantly, he was proud of himself. For the first time, he could imagine having a life.

Last Wednesday evening, he and his fiancee were in a car with two other people over in Oakland. They were going to pick up some of their belongings at her aunt’s house. On their way there, a car pulled up alongside of them and fired two shots at their car. One bullet struck his fiancee in the head. She slumped onto his chest, her brain dead on the bullet’s impact.

Just as he was making strides toward a new life with the girl he loved, this devastating tragedy struck. This man is now in trauma, and some of us worry that he might lose hope, give up, and go back to the streets where he will certainly be killed. Several of us in the community are trying to surround him with the needed support so that, if he chooses, he can still make a new life for himself. We think he’s worth the risk; that with the right support, he stands a chance.

Pray for him. And since his story is typical of so many other young people caught in the slavery of gang life, pray for them as well. They are part of the context in which we gather for Eucharist each week.

I could go on to include many others who form the context of our life as a community: the many who come to our Saturday food pantry, the young people working hard to stay in school at Mission Graduates, the people of Nicaragua needing fresh water, and the many victims of the brutal wars Robert Cromey so faithfully protests outside the Federal Building each Thursday.

Today, as we at St. John’s rightly reflect on the many important aspects of our internal life as a community, we remember our context and some of the people we carry in our hearts each time we gather at this table. They are part of us, and we are part of them.

In fact, just as Jesus in his own context gathered the first disciples, our ministry to the people I’ve mentioned just might be some of the very reasons Jesus has gathered us here in the first place.

The Flight into Egypt, The Rev'd. Richard Smith, Ph.D.

A few months ago, I spent a couple of days in El Paso along the US border with Mexico. At the time, thousands of immigrants were fleeing to the US from their homes in Central America. While there, I met a young Honduran mother of three named Beatrice.

She said that in her pueblo, the day after the teachers at the local school had received their annual bonuses, a sign appeared on the front door of the school telling them to hand over those bonuses to the local gang. The sign said that each day they refused, one child from that school would be abducted and killed. The next day, a child was missing, and the next day another, and the next day another. Finally, after eight straight days of children being abducted and killed, Beatrice packed up her three kids and, under cover of darkness, headed north to the US, hoping to find safety.

Beatrice is not alone. In this parish, we have met Ricardo and Amelie and Nicole, an immigrant family who fled violence in Guatemala seeking refuge in this country. Millions of others have made the same choice, taken the same risks of becoming immigrants, gathering their children and fleeing for safety, traveling in darkness, not always knowing where they were going and what they would find along the way.

And this immigrant journey is a central theme in the story of Jesus who has no place to lay his head, who faces rejection in his own land and from his own people, who dies as an outcast outside the city walls.

In today’s gospel from Matthew this immigrant journey is writ especially large.

King Herod is threatened by the birth of Jesus, who is called King of the Jews, and in the hope of catching and killing him, he seeks to kill all the male children under the age of two.

In the midst of this slaughter, a tip-off from an angel sends Joseph packing up his family hoping to find safety in Africa, in Egypt.

Down through the centuries, millions of refugees have found strength from this story, because it has reminded them that in their often perilous journeys, they are not alone, that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph have gone before them precisely as immigrants.

What is true of Jesus is true for us, his followers. If we follow Jesus, then we, too, will know the lot of immigrants--perhaps not literally as the Honduran woman I mentioned, or as Ricardo and his family, or, for that matter, as our parents and grandparents who migrated to this country--if not literally, then figuratively, perhaps even spiritually.
This is our lot as followers of Jesus. We are immigrants who are called away from the ordinary and proper, the familiar and the comfortable places, to a new land that God wants to show us.

“Leave your father and mother.” “Let the dead bury the dead.” “Keep your hand on the plow and do not look back.” “Sell what you own, give the money to the poor and come follow me.” The gospels are relentless, calling us to move from where it is comfortable, from where we want to stay, from where we feel at home.

This uprooting can sometimes involve a risky in-between time, when we’re like a trapeze artist in mid-air who has let go of one rope, but has not yet caught hold of the next one. A time of both great excitement and great vulnerability, of grieving for what we’ve left behind, and anticipating what has not yet clearly emerged.

I suspect that in various ways, each of us has already known the lot of an immigrant, whether literally or figuratively. Sometimes we made the choice consciously and deliberately. Other times, we didn’t have to seek it out; it arrived at our doorstep:

• The job that once seemed so promising began to unravel, and you had to move on
• The relationship that suddenly ended
• A transition into another phase of your life, perhaps from school into the workforce, or from the workforce into retirement.
• Or the moment you knew you had to take that next step out of the closet, or the first step toward sobriety

Whether the migration is something we have consciously chosen or not, it always involves a displacement. This can involve moments of grief and confusion and risk. This is the immigrant journey we as followers of Jesus are called to embrace.

What can happen in our work lives and relationships can also happen in our lives of faith. Our old images and understandings of God can suddenly no longer work, and we go through an in-between time of exploration, of being an immigrant waiting for God to reveal new images, new understandings of who God is. This can be a time of confusion and anxiety when we’re not sure where God is or if we even have any faith at all. Or perhaps we find that our old spiritual practices, the old prayers and rituals and symbols that once structured and gave meaning to our lives, no longer comfort and enliven us, and we must seek ways to make them come alive again, seek new ways of connecting our hearts to God and to others.

Why is it so important to embrace this immigrant journey? Because when we embrace this journey, we cast off the illusion of “having it all together” and we remember the vulnerability we share with our fellow human beings of every race and gender and language. We remember our complete reliance on God, and discover each other as members of the same human family with whom we can share our joys and sorrows.

These are the days of Christmas when we remember the mystery of the incarnation, of God becoming human and vulnerable like us. When St. Paul speaks of this great mystery of the incarnation, it’s as though he is describing Jesus as the immigrant par excellence. “His state was divine,” Paul writes, “yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as we are…”

Perhaps no one has undertaken a more radical migration. In the incarnation, God did not remain in the place that was proper and familiar to him, but left it behind and moved to the condition of a struggling and vulnerable human being.

God left behind his heavenly place and took a humble place among us mortal men and women, so that nothing human would be alien to him and he could experience fully the nobility and the joy, the brokenness and the tears of our human condition.

This is what we remember in today’s gospel story in this season of Christmas, that in Jesus we find the immigrant in whom God’s compassion becomes flesh. And this is what we ourselves are called to in today’s gospel story, to become, each in our own way, immigrants like Jesus, as vulnerable and compassionate as he is.

I have some questions for you, and perhaps we can take a few quiet moments to reflect on these:
In what ways, in your own life story, have you already been an immigrant, either  literally or figuratively?

• How did you experience the vulnerability that goes with being an immigrant? What did it feel like to be vulnerable in that way? How did that experience make you more compassionate?
• In this new year, how might you be called to leave behind the familiar and comfortable and begin the risky journey to a new and unknown land?

Christmas 2014, the Rev'd. Richard Smith

Time to hit the pause button. Drop everything. Immerse yourself in the story you’ve heard so many times before--about the simple shepherds in the field watching over their flocks at night, and suddenly in a starlit sky there come the angel and the heavenly host proclaiming good news to all of humanity, and the shepherds go and follow the directions of the angels and they find Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus lying in the manger.

Drop everything--the thoughts about last minute shopping, the worries about tomorrow’s dinner, regrets about the present you forgot to wrap, the cards you forgot to send--drop everything and let yourself get lost in this amazing story. Savor the richness of it with all its heavenly peace where all is calm and all is bright. Savor this as fully as you possibly can.

I know, I know. There is a great irony in my telling you this. Except for the Giants winning the World Series, all in all it's been a bleak year. The world has not been all that calm or bright, and, God knows, we’ve been a little short on heavenly peace this year. It is an irony to tell the story of Jesus’ birth on a night like this after a year like this.

• Children slaughtered in Pakistan, innocent lives ending in beheadings, and a new, brutal terrorist state rolling across Syria and Iraq. The irony of this holy night.
• African school girls kidnapped, legions of women around the globe abused, and the rape culture in our own country. Not very calm and bright is it?
• Atrocious torture by our government that continues to this day
• In Ferguson, Staten Island, and too many other places, black and brown men killed by police, and in Brooklyn, two NYPD officers with young families murdered by a career criminal. The irony of this holy night.
• The other night I stood on Bernal Heights with the parents of Alex Nieto, the young Latino killed by four police officers. At the site where he was killed, we said a prayer. This is their first Christmas without him. For them, this night is neither calm nor bright, but carries more than a few tears. The irony of this holy night.
• I spent yesterday afternoon with a young man and his girlfriend. Like Mary and Joseph, they are pregnant, and like Mary and Joseph they have no place to stay, have spent many nights on the streets. He has a troubled past and is now trying redeem himself, turn his life around. He’s been looking desperately for a simple, low-skill job but no one will hire him. The irony of telling the story of Jesus’ birth on a night like this.
• And here in our own community, we have watched, often with a helpless feeling, as our own beloved Jackie and Tikhon and Nico and Cecil have struggled with serious health issues.

We all get it: It is ironic to tell the story of Jesus’ birth after a year of so much struggle like this past one.

But do it we must, because on this night a child is born. And whenever a child is born, the whole world stands still, and we humans drop everything to stand once more in amazement and hope. Maybe a smile comes over your face, maybe a tear of joy wells up in your eye. We can't help ourselves. It's what we do.

If only for a brief moment, all the sadness and tears and death of the year give way to life and joy and a reason for hope. It's enough to keep us going, a moment like this, as we relax into a peace that is holy and into a time where time itself seems to stand still, and the sounds of violence and gunshots are suddenly far away, overcome by angelic voices drifting through a starry, cold night.

After feasting on this story of the Savior’s birth,  there will be time enough for you and me to get back to work, to once again pick up our gifts and go to work with God

to feed those who come to our Julian Pantry in need of food, 

to stand with our LGBT sisters and brothers and the many immigrant families still being torn apart by our broken immigration system

There will be time enough for us to resume our Nightwalks to end the violence on the streets of our neighborhood, to stand in silent vigil against our country's wars, to work with our friends in Nicaragua for clean water in their villages

There will be time in the days ahead for these things, but for now, we step back from it all to enjoy once again those visions of angels and shepherds, and the manger and the baby in the straw, and the animals, and Mary and Joseph; to sing out all the old carols; to relish the warm and wonderful family memories that we treasure and hold dear; the colors and sounds and scents and flavors that add to the richness of this feast.

These things warm us in the winter, comfort us and give us hope. They brings us back to childhood--every Christmas, year after year after year. Amazing. Just today, just for this one day, let this moment be comforting and traditional. Let it be familiar and warm and loving. Let it nourish and strengthen us for the year ahead.

Garrison Keilor with his down home humor puts it this way: 

...a little faith will see you through. What else will do except faith in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word. What is the last word, then? Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids — all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.

Gentle people of St. John's, gentle guests, on this dark winter night, let us once more savor the story of our Savior's birth, and this feast in all its richness, so that we can keep our campfire burning.

St. John the Baptist; Second Sunday of Advent year B, December 7, 2014; The Rev'd Dr. Richard Smith

On the surface, Mark begins his gospel very matter-of-factly: The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

But looks are deceiving; there’s more going on here than meets the eye. These are words of defiance. When Mark uses the terms “good news”  and “son of God”, he’s invoking terms used by Caesar, terms well-known in the Roman Empire of his day.

Back then, “Good news” was a political term. It was marketing hype that included all the official announcements about the Roman conquests, the victories of the Roman Legions, and their often brutal subjugation of many peoples--including Jesus’ own people, the Jews. Caesar’s good news inspired shock and awe.

In the opening line of his gospel, Mark co-opts this term from the Roman Empire to introduce a counter-story about a different kind of good news, a different vision for how life and the world can be. A vision based on love and mutual service, forgiveness, justice, mercy rather than on subjugation, domination, and brutal cruelty. Mark is writing a counter-story to that of Caesar, and it is an act of treason.

This is also the case when he refers to Jesus as the Son of God. In Mark’s day, that term referred to Caesar. Caesar was the Son of God, and here again, Mark is disrupting the story of the Empire by claiming that the real son of God is not Caesar but Jesus. 

For Mark, Caesar has it all wrong. Being son of God is not about power and control, but about laying down one’s life in love. The punchline in Mark’s gospel becomes clear when Jesus hangs from the cross, having just been executed by the Empire as a criminal. In that moment, a centurion who has just watched Jesus breathe his last declares, “Truly, this is the son of God”. It’s the supreme irony in Mark’s gospel, reflecting an understanding of what it means to be the Son of God that is very different from Caesar’s.

In our context today, we know well Caesar’s version of good news. We’ve seen the recent headlines about the killings of young African-Americans and Latinos by police officers: 

• Eric Garner was a father who was selling single cigarettes to support his family. 
• Michael Brown was a son heading off to college. 
• Tanesha Anderson, a mental health patient, was in need of an evaluation and intervention. 
• Tamir Rice was a twelve-year-old boy playing in the park. 
• Alex Nieto, a student at San Francisco City College, was eating a burrito in Bernal Heights Park while on his way to work.

Each of them killed by police.

Suddenly, as we see the faces of many African-American and Latino mothers, the ancient words of the prophet Jeremiah ring eerily true: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.”

And our judicial system has failed them and all of us as Americans. Grand juries in Ferguson and Staten Island have refused to indict the officers who killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner, meaning those officers will never stand trial. Here in San Francisco, in the police killing of Alex Nieto, police have not released a witness list, not released the recording of a pertinent 911 call, not released the police reports, and not released the names of officers involved. This makes an independent investigation impossible. We’re forced to blindly trust what the police tell us. Given that no officer has ever stood trial for killing an unarmed black or Latino in this City, we have reason to be suspicious. It’s reasonable for us to want access to the available facts.

In our day, even in our City, we know well Caesar’s version of “good news” and how it manifests itself. 

In the very beginning of his gospel, Mark introduces the wild man John the Baptist who preaches repentance. Our spiritual ancestors realized that they had, knowingly or not, bought into Caesar’s story, and that if things were ever to change, they would first need to free themselves from that bitter story. They would need to repent, and so they wade into the muddy waters of the Jordan to be baptized by John.

And perhaps this is true for us as well--that, like our spiritual ancestors, we, too, knowingly or not, have bought into Caesar’s story. In our day, each of us in our own way have become complicit in the racism so deeply, often subtly, embedded in our culture and social institutions. And so, for us as for our ancestors, mountains must be leveled and winding ways made straight in order to find a new way. 

Years ago, in the pre-dawn hours of March 12, 1964, Kitty Genovese was assaulted and murdered in New York City. Her screams awakened at least thirty-eight neighbors who heard or watched how, for another half hour, her assailant stalked, stabbed, raped, and finally killed her. No one wanted to get involved or even call the police. The story attracted international attention. It was not just that many identified with the victim and understood that something like that could easily happen to them. Killings happen all the time.

What could account for the public’s fascination with this crime? Many who have studied the case attribute it to people’s deep-seated fear that, had they been there, they would have been the thirty-ninth silent witness. In this crime people caught a glimpse of the “bad Samaritan” in themselves.

The story of Kitty Genovese shines a light on our sense of being guilty bystanders in a cruel world. Today, with the recent police killings of young people of color, we are more aware of the scope of racism, the fact that we are all, especially if we are white, its beneficiaries if not its agents.

It’s not enough to say that we ourselves would never use the “N-word”, would never mug or kill or exploit others. In the war between good and evil, there is no neutral ground. All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to stand by silently. Martin Luther King used to say that he was more troubled by decent folks standing on the sidelines than by the racists who threw rocks.

The point is not to get down on ourselves but to awaken from a lonely hypocrisy. We are all caught up in this racist web. We too have bought Caesar’s version of “good news”. Better to feel our solidarity in sin and the need for repentance than to cling to a phony righteousness.

It is often said that the longing for liberation begins when you notice that you are in prison. Getting free to love requires facing up to our part in the sin, the racism, of the world. 

In today’s gospel, our spiritual ancestors wade into the muddy waters of the Jordan River. They come to John dissatisfied and desperate. They come for baptism with a look in their eye that says “God, I hope this works”. The past has become intolerable and they know they can’t go on as they are.

We in this country know that our racist past is no longer tolerable, that we can’t go on like this. And so on this second Sunday of Advent, we are invited to join our ancestors in the Jordan to confess our sin along with them, especially our sin of racism and our acquiescence to it, and to repent, to turn away from the story of Caesar and to gently turn a new way toward life, toward what Mark calls “the way of the Lord”.