Have you started receiving Christmas cards yet? 

We got the first ones yesterday, unless you count that tire shop in Riverside.  We got theirs just after Halloween.  

If you haven’t gotten many quite yet, you may yet be in store for one of this year’s most surprising Christmas card themes.  

I noticed it when I was shopping for our family Christmas card.  

Suddenly, it seems, there are all these Christmas cards with UFOs in them. 

Don’t believe me?  

Oh good—because I brought examples.  

So, these two are sort of classic, and have the virtue of being mirror images of one another.  

In the one, Santa’s sleigh is a UFO pulled by reindeer. 

In the other, the sleigh is being pulled by a line of UFOs.  

But we’re not done, friends.  Not at all.  

Well, the obvious theme is “beaming up”…though the message seems not so cheery, somehow.  

Fortunately, Santa is on the case…or, well, maybe he isn’t. 

(Is Santa running here?) 

Some seem to imagine that the encounter could be a good thing.  

Maybe it’s just a variation on what Christmas has always been about.  

That’s sort of how it looks here: 

(I think the one on the bottom might be an album cover from the 70s.) 

And here: 

But in the end, maybe the one that sums it up best is this one: 

What do you think? 

Is anybody rushing out to go order one of these before they’re all gone?  

Clearly, if there are so many variations to choose from, this whole concept must be having a moment. 

Still, I’ve been trying to put my finger on just what the moment might be.  

Maybe for a certain kind of ruthless skeptic, there is amusement to be found in a mash up of seemingly outlandish stories.

Alternatively, it may be that the traditional pastoral, northern European imagery of flying reindeer no longer much speaks to us.

By contrast, space fantasy does.  

Those prepared to admit that “Star Wars” is fundamentally a old-style western that just happens to be set in a galaxy far, far away have been saying this, more or less, for years.  

Besides, how would Santa challenge the laws of physics as we know them? 

Ask the aliens – surely, they’ll know.  

Yet at a more basic level, it seems to me that these cards are trying to say something about encounter – close encounter, if you like, but nevertheless: encounter. 

Because what is it, after all, to have something utterly beyond us appear out of nowhere?  

Does the appearance of something that changes everything represent destruction or salvation…or strangely, maybe both at the same time? 

What is it to see with your very eyes that we are not alone…that we have never been alone, and will now forever know that we are not alone? 

And if we don’t know how to answer any of those questions, maybe we should ask someone.

In fact, the Bible has some suggestions for whom we might approach with questions such as these. 

It might point us to Mary, Jesus’ mother, or the shepherds, Mary Magdalene or the disciples on the road to Emmaus, or Paul out there on the road to Damascus.  

Any of them might know.  

Because isn’t the strangeness, but also the certainty of encounter precisely what they have come to understand? 

Whether it’s Christmas or whether it’s Easter or whether it’s some other time entirely, the story the houses of worship keep telling and retelling is this story of encounter.  

It’s a story that runs up against our expectations and our faith in the world as we know it.  

Somehow, it always seems to reemerge just when we shake our heads with exhaustion. 

We all know those moments when it seems like there is nothing new under the sun, whether we’re speaking about the world or, more specifically, about ourselves.  

There are times when we start feeling boxed in, especially by life and its tough choices or, on a grander scale, by fate and its stern decrees. 

But are we really prepared to live differently? 

Christmas is here to press that question.  

Because you can’t encounter God and bumble along, entirely the same as before.  

When Nicholas of Myra, whom we know as St. Nicholas, was walking the nighttime streets of his hometown in 4^th century Turkey, he heard a poor man praying through an open window that he would not have to sell his children to pay off his debts.  

Nicholas took it upon himself to answer that prayer by throwing a small purse with gold coins through the window, where it landed in a shoe.  

This was the origin of gift-giving at Christmas. 

Its point was not affection, but liberation. 

It was a moment of encounter between total hopelessness and new life, not just courtesy of Nicholas (though he was part of it), but through the power of the living God.  

The fruits of the spirit that emerge from a life in God remind us of the source from which all good gifts must spring. 

This is wonderful, and when it happens, maybe even a little weird.  

This is what Christmas is trying to say.

If you ask me, it might not be so different to wake up and find gold in your shoes, or a baby in a manger, than it would be to look up and see a spaceship the size of Manhattan hovering in the sky.  

The point is: you can’t go on the way you did before.  

And it strikes me as entirely correct to begin the Christmas season by reaffirming that in every way possible.  

This morning’s Scripture readings are driving toward this same conclusion.  

Luke’s Gospel comes, not from the beginning of his account, but actually from the end, looking to Good Friday. 

Jesus talks frankly about disruption and confusion—even a dark hour to come just before God’s new dawn.  

“Be alert,” he warns, “praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” (Luke 21:36)

By contrast, the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah offers more hopeful words from God:  

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.  In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous branch to spring up for David…and in those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will live in safety. (Jeremiah 33: 14, 16)

The Gospel presents a kind of agony in waiting for deliverance, anticipating a moment when everything would seem in doubt, even for those who followed Jesus. 

The earlier words from the prophet were more confident, even though they came very much in the midst of agony, at the moment when God’s ultimate deliverance might have seemed most improbable of all. 

But both of them are quite sure that things as they were would not…could not…continue in the same old way. 

Strange as it may sound, they saw this ultimately as a source for hope. 

Because for those who were (who are) willing to live differently, it was (it is) just the beginning.  

So it’s right to hold onto the weirdness of Christmas and to embrace the joy it finds in Godly disruption.  

However we can recapture the enormity of its claims is good, because this may be the only way we can reclaim the something of the enormity of the God we know in Jesus – the impossible grandeur God places, paradoxically, in a tiny baby. 

Christmas is when we remember God’s promise that the world would never be the same again.  

And it’s when we recommit ourselves to making sure it won’t be, starting with ourselves. 

Amen.  

This morning, I want to begin with a confession. 

It’s about Thanksgiving.  

Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday.  (That’s not the confession.) 

But there’s one thing I can’t stand about it. 

That thing is cranberry sauce.  

There.  I’ve said it. 

Since I’m confessing, I will also confess that I can’t stand mint jelly on lamb.  

This will be the subject of my 2025 Easter sermon. 

But really, it’s cranberry sauce that I don’t like. 

I like cranberries; I like sauce.  But not the combo. 

I tell you this because it was something that I hid from my family for years.  

You see, my family is one of those families where you don’t just load your plate.  

The person at the head of the table, my dad, serves you. 

Each plate gets passed down.  

And each person, each link in the chain, looks down and kind of feels free to comment on your choices.  

“Wow…that’s a lot of mashed potatoes.” 

“Wait, since when do you like dark meat?”

“You know, I don’t observe a lot of color on this plate.” (That’s my mom.)

The year my cousin Penny came from California and shared that she was vegetarian was something we discussed and adjudicated among ourselves for the next decade. 

The fact that, at some point, my cousin was no longer vegetarian did not moot anything, at least for my grandmother. 

In fact, this coming Thursday, it would not surprise me if the topic came up yet again, even though both my grandmother and my cousin are now gone.  

That being the case, you can see why, even early on, I always made sure to get cranberry sauce, at least a little, on my plate. 

I knew they suspected.  

My grandmother always inspected the plates back in the kitchen before my mom tackled them.  

She would have seen that little schmear untouched. 

But plausible deniability can be an important part of living in families.  

I rode it as best I could, and I rode it for as long as I could.  

Families are so powerful, aren’t they? 

Their ways of marking love and belonging, rewarding loyalty, identifying disappointment, nursing heartbreak, what they’re determined to hold onto and what they’re ultimately able to let go —these all shape us in their way.  

Each one is a community of memory at its most hyper-local. 

At best, the strength of those memories keeps us grounded. 

At worst, it keeps us tethered.  

That grounding and tethering are not always easy to sort out.  

This was a truth that even Jesus knew.  

In our gospel this morning, we’re returning to a story that I may well have preached on earlier this year.  

It is Mark’s account of an early moment in Jesus’ ministry, as he is first beginning to attract real crowds but has not ventured too far afield from his own hometown.  

He is preaching in a house, and the place is full. 

In fact, it’s so full that the crowd has spilled out well into the front yard.  

The disciples have had to give up their own seats. 

They’re outside, doing their best to shush people and keep them from walking all over the flowers—but truth be told, the whole scene is a little chaotic.  

Nobody is quite prepared for the impact that Jesus’ words and his growing reputation already seem to be having. 

And it turns out, the ones who are least prepared for this impact are Jesus’ own family.  

The story doesn’t say so explicitly, but it seems likely that they think he’s in desperate need of help, even a danger to himself and others.  

They come to collect him…to get him back home to Nazareth.

They floor it all the way there to stop this flood of preaching and so-called healing they’ve been hearing about.  

They come out of love.

For all the best reasons, they are trying to do the very thing that the many nay-sayers standing there will ultimately do out of spite: to shut Jesus up.  

But there is no “plausible deniability” for Jesus on this. 

And so, when the disciples pass the word down the chain from the front yard to the living room, like people passing the Thanksgiving plates down an enormous table, Jesus makes a stand.  

Mark writes, “A crowd was sitting around Jesus when word was brought that his mother and brothers were outside asking for him. 

‘Who are my mother and brothers?’ he replies. 

And looking round at those who were sitting in the circle about him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’” (Mark 3:31-35)

It’s not a confession.  

It’s not even a declaration of independence, although in some ways it may sound like one. 

We know from Scripture that his mother stays close throughout his ministry straight through Good Friday and Easter, and that his brother James, in particular, would go on to become an early leader of the church after Jesus’ death.  

It’s important to note that this story isn’t marking a moment when he cuts ties with them. 

He doesn’t do that.  

But he’s declaring that he doesn’t belong to them in quite the same way as he did before, because now he knows that first and foremost, he belongs to God…and not for nothing, so do they.  So do we all. 

This will have some consequences for him, and also for them. 

In the short term, it means that his days in the family carpenter’s shop are over.  

More to the point, he is inviting them to give up a way of love that is hyper-local and exclusive for something more expansive, more generous, and infinitely more surprising.  

This isn’t so easy. 

As we know for ourselves, it can be hard for our families when we give up their customs and their loves.  

It can be even harder when we seek release from some of their worst impulses and downright prejudices. 

Loving without lecturing doesn’t always come easily, especially as we are trying to find our own way and doing our best to live as those who are grounded but not tethered. 

Jesus is blessed, indeed, that this seems not to have been so difficult for him. 

So many of those he loves take him up on the invitation to live differently.  

But as we do, we are gathered into a new family—a family not only of common ancestry, but truly of the heart. 

It’s a family that does not shrink by slow attrition, but which is forever expanding, always making new things possible, reminding us how to love one another again and again.  

Rather than binding us, it gives us wings. 

All other loves are, well, relative. 

As we meet one another once again around the table at Thanksgiving, may love prompt us to be patient and generous, but also unafraid to be ourselves.

And may we always know the presence of Jesus there in the midst of us, calling us to the heart’s true home in him. 

Amen.   

A long time ago, I attended a church that had one genuine celebrity in it.  

She was an English actress, based mostly in New York, who had a weekend home in the area—a home that became a real refuge for her during what became an extremely salacious, painful, and public divorce.  

Our small town was far from perfect, and like many small places, it ran on gossip the way an airplane runs on jet fuel. 

But when it came down to it, even we were no match for the relentless gaze of the New York Post, and the actress slowly found a lot of healing by being among us.  

And church was very much a part of this.  

She was a faithful person for sure.  

But in her case, church (specifically) and our town (generally) allowed her to be something she didn’t get to be very often, anymore—it was a place where she just got to be a person.  

One among many.  Unremarkable.  

If you were a kid, she was just another mom-aged person who was blocking the cookie table at Coffee Hour.  

And she could not have been more grateful for or in need of just that very thing.  

What a gift it was to be able to be just a person. 

It’s funny because in that same church at that same time was another woman, the unofficial soloist of the church choir.  

If you’re not familiar with small churches in small places, you may not quite have a picture in mind.  

If you know that kind of church, then you probably just had a picture, maybe even from your distant past, snap into your mental Viewmaster.  

Small choirs in small places can be like karaoke at the office Christmas party—there are a few people who are very enthusiastic, but only one or two who can really carry a tune.  

And carry it, they do, indeed. 

This woman was that person for this choir.  

It was incredibly important to her.  

The rest of her week was fairly quiet, even by local standards. 

This meant that, for her, the gift of church was that it was a place to shine.  Theplace.  

I don’t mean it in any selfish way.  

I know this because the church brought out, not her inner diva, but the better angel of her nature.  

For one hour a week, anyway, she radiated joy. 

Now, if this was a Hallmark movie, the next story would be about the duet on Christmas Eve with the famous actress and the small-town soloist. 

Maybe you’ve seen that clip from a few years ago with Kristen Chenoweth and that voice teacher who gets called out of the audience, doing a duet at the Hollywood Bowl?  

I’m sorry to report that, as far as I know, a duet with the actress and the church soloist never happened.

The real point, of course, is that it didn’t need to. 

The point is that they needed different gifts. 

And the point is that somehow, in the endless creativity of God’s abounding love, the church was where each of them received what they needed most. 

Actually, that’s the thing that’s worth remembering.   

Truth be told, I wish more people knew how often that happens, not only in that church, but in any church – and certainly, also in this one.

While we’re at it, I wish more churches remembered how often that actually happens…(and if I may say it with love) including this one.  

It seems to me that it’s so important to remember, especially now, when time and space to gather can be so hard to come by. 

Our world seems so intent on putting us and keeping us in silos that only let us live into one small part of who we are—silos that let us learn only some small portion of what we’d like to know.  

There is so much that seems to be conspiring to keep us strangers, unwilling and unable to see one another’s point of view, eager to have us faithful in rejecting what one another have to say, if we even get together long enough to hear it.  

This is more costly than we know.  

It forgets that some of God’s blessings can only come into being through the work we can only accomplish when we do it together.

It’s a conspiracy that denies the power of God to give us exactly what we need through the miracle of one another, and maybe even work through our very differences.  

We see a moment of that in this morning’s gospel, which comes from Luke. 

It’s the story of a Roman centurion, clearly long-stationed in Capernaum, with some remarkable consequences. 

Because while he’s a centurion, he’s no longer exactly Rome’s man.  

Rome was all about keeping people divided and afraid of one another. 

Rome was all about silos and whatever it took to enforce them.  

Ironically, this man, the centurion would have been one of their enforcers – two of their boots on the ground, as it were. 

But in the endless creativity of God’s abounding love, something has happened to this man. 

Do you think he just showed up at the old synagogue one day? 

They’re all there, at prayer, and suddenly at the door, there’s this 7 foot tall Roman officer, with his bronze helmet and armor and his cape and cudgel…and the room goes completely silent, waiting for him to step forward to arrest someone. 

But he doesn’t.  

Instead, he takes off the helmet and sits in one of the pews in the way back, and he listens as the service picks up again, uncertain at first but slowly getting back into its rhythm.  

And the next sabbath, he’s back.  And the sabbath after that.  

It’s all very careful—and they give him space, and he never pulls rank.

And over time, it becomes clear that it’s here, in the synagogue of all places, that this man just gets to be another person. 

In fact, the gift of this is so precious, that he decides that he’s going to be a blessing to these people – even to the point of building them a new synagogue out of his own pocket, and even though he’s still just sitting in the back, all by himself, a fish out of water, evolving in front of their eyes.   

And so, sometime after that, when his servant is sick, and he asks for Jesus’ help—Jesus’ healing—these are the people who vouch for him. 

Because to them, he’s not just a person.  

He’s a shining light.  

The better angel of his nature has inspired their better angels into trying to bless him back. 

But the real blessing comes from each one of them doing what only each could do, refusing the world’s silos, making space for God’s abundance through the miracle of one another, and building something they can only create together.  

It seems to me that we find ourselves in a similar moment, and that once again, God is calling us to a similar project. 

 Our neighbors need many things.  

If we’re honest, we come with plenty of needs, ourselves. 

Yet in the miracle of God’s abounding love, we all gather to receive and to be transformed in receiving.  

May our eyes be opened, and may we recognize him, especially as strangers become partners, enemies become friends, light shines forth in darkness, and each of us finally gets to be who it is we really are. 

Amen.

Congregationalism understands “saints” differently than, say, Catholics, Orthodox, and some other Christians do.

In our tradition, when we use the term at all, we look to how the Apostle Paul introduced it in his letters. Following his lead (as we understand it), we see saints in two particular ways: first, not as a way of talking about “super-Christians,” but rather about ordinary folks whose lives have been transformed by God’s extraordinary love; second, we always speak of saints in the plural, collective sense, and not as individuals.

(We also eye with suspicion any notion of praying “to” anything other than God…which is a theological misread that justified a ton of Protestant sanctimony and anti-Catholic bigotry…but that’s a story for a different newsletter.)

Yet, according to us (or, if you prefer, according to Paul as we read him), saints are who we are together, as our church community is genuinely moved to live in the light of God.

Knowing ourselves as well as we do, maybe it’s no wonder that we use the term sparingly, if at all — we’re all too aware of our limitations and hostilities to hazard any claim to sainthood, whatever the definition might be.

For some, saints represent an ideal that can only collapse under the reality of human shortcomings.

But we forget that saints, even by traditional ways of reckoning, don’t need to be perfect (if “perfection” even means never having a grouchy word, or a dark or an impure thought). Certainly, communities can’t claim to be perfect in that way, try as we might.

That misses the point.

Because far from being undone by the reality of imperfection, sainthood is an affirmation of the counter-reality of good.

It names the remarkable fact that, in a world that can be so dark and broken, there are, nevertheless, lives and communities where the light still shines through.

It reminds us that we do not need to be perfect to be kind or for God to use us.

More controversially, perhaps, it goes so far as to suggest that wherever the legacy of the divine presence is remembered and shared, it still offers strength and guidance—God uses it and is present through it once again.

As someone who has never given much thought to saints, I still find that to be true. I find myself remembering people and places where, however improbably, I found light by which to see.

All Saints’ Day reminds me to make sure I find ways to keep passing it on.

I hope you will, too.

See you in church….