Goodbye

Goodbye

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

December 31, 2017

Scripture: Micah 6:6-8; Romans 8:31-39

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Well, the day some of you have longed for and some of you have dreaded has arrived. Today is my last day as your pastor. As of midnight tonight I’ll be off the payroll and will no longer be your pastor. The decision to resign as your pastor was entirely mine, and before I go on I want to say just a bit about that decision. It was prompted by what I experienced as a crisis in my pastoral leadership here and my awareness that some of you just don’t like the job I was doing as your pastor. That’s partly because I see the Christian faith differently than some of you do. It’s partly because you wanted me to do things that I don’t think it’s the pastor’s job to do or that it is possible for a pastor, or at least for me, to do. We needn’t go into all that now. There is no longer any point, but there is one thing I do want to say. Since I made the decision to resign I have had quite an unexpected reaction to it. I have not regretted it for a minute. That’s not because I don’t like you. I do. It’s rather because I have discovered that it took that crisis to get me to do what I probably should have done quite some time ago. Maybe that crisis was a blessing in disguise for me and perhaps for some of you. See, I’m not just leaving this church. I am retiring from parish ministry, and I am really looking forward in ways I didn’t expect to being retired. About the only downside of it for Jane and me is financial, but we’ll manage the finances. I am quite looking forward to being out of the need of doing a bulletin and writing a sermon every week. I am looking forward to more of my time being mine. Not that you made great demands on me. You didn’t. Still, I will be happy to have my time less scheduled. I will, in short, be happy to be retired, or at least I expect to be. I didn’t anticipate that when I resigned, and I wanted you to know it.

So what can I say about my time as your pastor? It’s been quite a ride I must say. We’ve had high highs and low lows. We’ve had fun, and we’ve had troubles. We have celebrated, and we have mourned. We have agreed, and we’ve disagreed. We have communicated, we have miscommunicated, and we have failed to communicate at all. We have had successes, and we have had failures. Some new people have come to the church, and some people have left the church. We have worshiped, sung, and prayed together. I have been in the homes of a few of you—very few actually. I have visited some of you in the hospital. Some of you have shared intimate aspects of your life with me. Most of you haven’t. All pastorates end, for all pastors and all church folk are human beings—wise and foolish, involved and distant, committed and indifferent, healthy and ill, alive and dead. Churches have their eyes on heaven, or at least they should; but they also have their feet on the ground, or at least they should. Churches may be inspired by the Holy Spirit, but they are very human institutions. They do good and they do bad. They succeed, and they fail. People come, and people go. That’s just how it is, and it cannot be otherwise. That’s how it has been with us. That’s how it will be with you once I’m gone.

We’ve had our troubles, but I don’t want to leave you with a litany of problems and challenges. You know what your problems and challenges are. I don’t want to leave you discouraged or depressed. See, for all our agreements and disagreements we are all people of faith, and people of faith can never be discouraged or depressed for long. That’s because we believe in God. We may see God differently. We may think God expects different things from us, but we are all people of faith. The one word I want to leave you with is hope, and I want to do that by talking a little bit about those two scripture passages we just heard. They are my two favorite passages in the Bible, or at least two of my favorite passages among a few others. For me they sum up both the foundational truth of our Christian faith and what God wants from as as we seek to live as Christians. I’ll start with Paul’s words from Romans.

If I could keep only one sentence from the Bible I would keep Romans 8:38-39. Let me read it to you in my preferred translation, the New Revised Standard Version: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” There’s Christianity in a nutshell. There’s the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a nutshell. Nothing, absolutely nothing, nothing we do or don’t do, nothing we say or don’t say, nothing we believe or don’t believe can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Do you get that? Nothing, nothing whatsoever, can separate you or me or anyone else from the love of God. We have that assurance in Christ Jesus. Do you think you’ve done something God can’t forgive? I hope not, but if you do you’re wrong. There is nothing God can’t and doesn’t forgive. There is nothing God hasn’t already forgiven. Our problem isn’t that we aren’t forgiven. Our problem, if we have one, is that don’t really know and feel deep in our bones that we have already been forgiven. Whatever comes our way in life God is with us. When we succeed God is with us. When we fail God is with us. When we are healthy God is with us. When we are ill God is with us. When we are alive God is with us. When we die God is with us. And not just with us but for us. Holding us. Loving us. Challenging us to respond in love to God’s love. If there is anything I have said to you that you never forget let it be this: God loves you. God loves everyone. God forgives you. God forgives everyone. God calls you. God calls everyone. If you feel that God is far away, that feeling is of your making not God’s. When you start to doubt that God is with you go read Romans 8:38-39 again and take it, really take it, to heart. It is a sacred word of salvation to us and to everyone. Absolutely nothing can or ever will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Then there’s Micah 6:6-8. Those words come to us across the millennia from the eighth century BCE, but they speak powerful truth today every bit as much as they did when they were first spoken so long ago. The prophet Micah was dealing with how he saw the people of Israel misunderstanding what their God wanted from them. They thought God wanted grain and animal sacrifice. They thought God wanted worship, and it’s not that they thought God wanted the wrong kind of worship. The kind of worship wasn’t Micah’s issue. He accepted as much as those against whom he prophesied that worship meant sacrificial worship. No, what Micah says is far more radical than “you’re doing the wrong kind of worship.” He says God doesn’t want or care about your worship at all, or at least God doesn’t want or care about your worship if you worship and then go out and live the wrong kind of lives. That’s why he famously says, again in the NRSV translation: “He has told you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Be just. Be kind. Be humble. That’s what God wants from you. That’s what God wanted from the ancient Israelites, and that’s what God wants from us.

And notice which requirement Micah put first: “Do justice.” The life of faith is a life of justice. That doesn’t mean a life of due process. Ancient Israel never heard of due process. It means a life of caring for those in need and of calling on those in power to rule in ways that care for those in need. Micah’s first demand is for political and economic justice. His second demand is personal. Love kindness. Be kind. Treat everyone with kindness, even (or rather especially) those toward whom you don’t want to be the least bit kind. His third demand is spiritual. Walk humbly with your God. Remember always that God is God and you’re not. Don’t claim to know what don’t know. Don’t claim to know what you cannot know. Don’t try to do what you cannot do. Don’t try to do what no mortal is ever able to do. This is God’s world not your world. You are God’s people. You are called to be God’s disciples, to be Christ’s disciples; but God always comes first. God is always so much more than you can ever see or ever know. Remember that, and walk humbly with your God. Do these things, and your lives will be pleasing to the God from Whom nothing in all creation can separate you.

And now the time nears for us to say good-bye. You shan’t hear me up here again. I shan’t see you out there again. I acknowledge those truths with some regret. I wish things had worked out better between us, but they didn’t. I go to the next stage of my life, and you go to the next stage of this church’s life. As you do I wish you nothing but the best. You will search for a new pastor, or maybe you already are searching for a new pastor. Your pastoral search is really none of my business, but I’m going to say a few words about it anyway. Please take your time. Determine what you want in a pastor before you start talking to candidates. More importantly, figure out what you need in a new pastor, then look for a person with those qualities. Don’t call someone just because he or she is available, which is essentially what you did with me and what I did with you. You are better off being a church without a pastor than you are being a church with the wrong pastor.

And one final admonition. The world in which you live and in which your church seeks to operate has changed, and the changes that we see now will broaden and deepen in the decades and maybe even centuries ahead. Discern what that change is and what it means for you as a church. Understand the context in which this church lives. Don’t assume that that context is what it used to be. It isn’t. Study. Discern. Pray. No pastoral search can end successfully unless it is done with those disciplines always in mind.

So as we go our separate ways my prayer for you is new life, new growth, a new sense of God’s call, and a new willingness to respond to God’s call with joy and enthusiasm. And remember: In whatever you do, in whatever happens, in whatever blessings or challenges come your way, God is with you. God will hold you and keep you. No matter what. Please never forget it. And as you go on your way may you go in the peace of God, the peace that is ours in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Magnificat

Magnificat

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

December 24, 2017

Scripture: Luke 1: 46-55

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

One of the wonderful things about Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth is that it contains three songs, ancient Christian hymns actually. Luke gives one to Zechariah, in his story the father of John the Baptist, one to Mary Jesus’ mother, and one to Simeon, someone the Holy Family meets in the temple when they take baby Jesus there for the first time. One of sort odd thing about these songs in the Christian tradition is that we usually refer to them by the Latin version of their first word or words. Zechariah’s song is known as the Benedictus, the first word of the song that in English is “Praise.” Simeon’s song is known as the Nunc Dimittis, Latin for “Now you are dismissing.” Mary’s song is known as “the Magnificat,” Magnificat being the first word of her song in Latin where the song begins “Magnificat anima mea Dominum.” The NIV translation that we just heard translates that word as “glorifies.” It is more traditionally translated as “magnifies,” I suppose because magnifies is an English word that derives from the Latin “Magnificat.” These translations presumably understand magnifies to mean glorifies. The Magnificat has been set to music so often that sometimes many of us want to sing it rather than just read it. Be that as it may, the Magnificat is a wonderful song that tells us a lot about how the earliest Christians understood the faith and about how the Gospel of Luke is going to relate Jesus’ story. I want to talk with you about the Magnificat this morning. To many of us Christians the words of the Magnificat are so familiar that I think we miss their meaning; and that’s a shame, for the Magnificat really is full of really important meaning.

Mary starts her song by saying that she glorifies the Lord and she rejoices in God her savior because “he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.” Mary knows that God has chosen her for the sacred work of bearing the Christ child not because she is rich, not because she is powerful, not because the world holds her in high esteem, but precisely because none of those things is true about her. God has chosen a virtuous young woman of no special account in the world to bring God’s Son into the world. We see in her words here how the good news of Jesus Christ comes first and foremost to the humble, to the poor, to ordinary folk whom God esteems but the world does not. It is precisely because Mary is humble that she becomes the mother of Jesus.

Mary says that God’s “mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.” Her use of the word “fear” here shows that she lives and thinks entirely within the ancient traditions of her Jewish faith. Hebrew scripture frequently uses the phrase “the fear of God” to mean to believe in God, to love God, and to stand in awe of God. Mary doesn’t see what is happening with her and Jesus as standing outside the Jewish tradition but rather entirely within it. We see the same thing in the way her song ends. She closes her song saying that God “has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendant forever, even as he said to our fathers.” I’ll have a bit ore to say about that closing line shortly. God is doing anew thing in Mary, but it is a new thing entirely within a faith tradition that was already ancient in Mary’s time.

Those things about the Magnificat are important. Really important, but it’s what she says in the middle of her song that I think is the most important thing about it. It is part of her song, and part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that many Christians prefer to overlook. To ignore or to spiritualize out of its original meaning. In the middle of her song Mary says: “He [God] has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.” Luke 1:51-53 There are several things to say about this passage, and some of you aren’t going to like some of them. But then I’m only with you for another week, so I’m going to give it to you straight.

First, these words seem a bit odd because they say that God has done things that it sure looks like God hasn’t done. It sure doesn’t look like all the proud people of the world have had their inmost thoughts scattered. They’re still strutting around being proud for all the wrong reasons. It sure doesn’t look like God has brought down mighty rulers from their thrones. I mean, mighty and mightily unjust rulers do get overthrown from time to time; but it sure seems like they often get replaced by other mighty and mightily unjust rulers. Mighty rulers sitting on thrones and acting unjustly, which are the rulers the Magnificat has in mind, haven’t exactly gone away. They’re still very much with us.

Then, has God lifted up the humble like Mary says God has done? Well, in God’s eyes maybe, but hardly in the world’s. Has God filled the hungry with good things but sent the rich away empty? Hardly. The world is full of people who are still hungry, and the rich are hardly empty. Oh, they may be spiritually empty. Many (not all) of them are, but they’re still very much full materially.

So what’s going on here? Well, what’s going on is what theologians call “already and not yet eschatology.” Don’t worry about what eschatology means. Ask me about it afterwards if you’re curious. The idea behind this obscure phrase is that God has already accomplished what God wants to accomplish in the world, it’s just that what God has accomplished hasn’t come to full fruition yet. The mighty rulers have been brought down, it’s just that they don’t know it yet. In a spiritual, cosmic sense God has done all these things Mary sings about. It’s just that those things await their fulfillment on earth.

OK. I suppose that’s obscure enough, but there’s something else really important to say about these verses. They are political, and they are economic. They just are. They speak of political power and economic stratification. They speak of the powerful and the lowly, of the rich and the poor. Yet these verses don’t just speak of political power and economic stratification. They say how God relates to political power and economic stratification. They say which side of power and economic imbalances God is on, and it’s not on the side of the rich and powerful. In Mary’s hymn God sides with the humble against the powerful, bringing down the mighty and lifting up the lowly. In Mary’s song God sides with the hungry against the rich, filling the hungry and sending the rich away empty. In Mary’s song, and indeed throughout the Gospel of Luke and through the whole Bible, that’s just how God is. God may anoint rulers, as God did with David and so many others; but God is always on the side of the ruled. Mary here echoes the ancient prophets like Amos and Micah. Maybe she had recently heard or read Amos bellowing “let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Her songs suggests that she saw God the same way Amos had more than seven hundred years before her, that is, as the God who demands justice for the poor and the marginalized. Yes, I know. Some of you don’t like hearing me say things like that from the pulpit, and maybe especially not on Christmas Eve. Well relax. You won’t hear me say it again.

Now Mary’s lines about political and economic justice may leave you hungering for some good news. It is Christmas Eve after all, and we all long to hear the good new of Jesus’ birth at Christmastime. Actually, that God is on the side of the poor and the powerless is good news for most of the world’s people, although that may not be the kind of good news you’re seeking today. Fortunately Mary’s song ends with some other good news, although it may take a little unpacking to hear it as good news.

Mary’s song ends by saying that God “has helped his servant, Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.” Luke 1:54-55 So just how has God helped his servant Israel and remembered to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants? Well, precisely by sending them Jesus, the child Mary is bearing as she sings her song. Jesus is God’s mercy incarnate. Jesus is God’s help to Israel and to us. Mary doesn’t use the word the way Matthew’s Gospel does, but we know that Jesus is Immanuel, God with us. I’ll have a bit more to say about God With Us this evening, but God sending Jesus to us is the best news any of us has ever had or ever could have. In Jesus we know that God is with us always, no matter what. In Jesus we know that God loves God’s world despite all of the ways in which the world must disappoint God. In Jesus we know that God is here to help us through whatever we must get through in life. That’s how God has helped God’s people, by coming to us as one of us in Jesus.

So tonight as we gather for our annual Christmas Eve service and tomorrow on Christmas Day let us rejoice. Let us truly celebrate, for we celebrate the greatest gift God ever gave humanity, the gift of God’s Self, the gift of God’s son, the gift of Jesus Christ. May this Christmas truly be blessed time for all of us, a time of peace whatever the circumstances of our lives. A time of grace filling our hearts. A time of love—love of God, love of family, love of friends. Tonight at 9 we will celebrate here. Whether you join us for that service or not, may you have a blessed Christmas and a good, meaningful new year. Amen.

God With Us

God With Us

A Christmas Meditation

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

December 24, 2017

Scripture: Luke 2:1-20; Mark 7:25-30

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

As some of you know I serve on the Committee on Ministry of the Pacific Northwest Conference of the United Church of Christ. That’s the committee that deals with authorization for ministry in the UCC, at least in this part of the country. One of the primary things that committee does is authorize candidates for ordination in the UCC. At our December meeting we interviewed a candidate for ordination, a really wonderful candidate by the way, not that that matters for my purposes this evening. In the course of her interview our candidate said she loves the story of Jesus and the Syro-Phoenician woman, a story that appears in both Mark and Matthew. Mark 7:25-30, Matthew 15:21-28. In that story Jesus learns. He first rejects the request of a Gentile woman that he heal her daughter of an evil spirit. In Mark’s version he says to her “First let the children eat all they want...for it is not right to take the children’s food and toss it to their dogs.” Mark 7:27 Sounds like he’s calling this woman and her daughter dogs just because they aren’t Jewish. Ouch! Many of us I think find it hard to believe that our Jesus would ever say such a thing to anyone, but there it is, in two of the Gospels. The woman replies to him “Yes, Lord,...but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Not perhaps how we’d reply to him, but it is how this woman replies in this story. Whereupon Jesus seems to realize his error and cures the woman’s daughter of her evil spirit.

When our ordination candidate mentioned this story one of the committee members started asking her questions like: Is Jesus human or divine? Is he like us or different from us? If he is different from us, is he more different from us than we are from one another? Those are perfectly appropriate questions for an ordination interview, and our candidate handled them well enough. Yet it occurred to me that she could have answered them all with just one word: Both. Is Jesus human or divine? Both. Is Jesus like us or different from us? Both. With the ancient Christian tradition we confess: Jesus is both fully human and fully God.

That’s why tonight we don’t just celebrate the birth of a human child. We do celebrate the birth of a human child of course. Jesus comes to us as a human baby not noticeably different from other human babies. He is a particular human baby of course. He is a boy. He is a Jew. He is born in what we now call ancient Judea. He has a human mother like we all do, or did. He also has a human father, although both Matthew and Luke say he doesn’t have a biological human father. He is fully human.

He is also fully divine. That’s what we can learn from so many of the things in Matthew’s and Luke’s stories of his birth. Annunciation by angels. A virgin conception. A miraculous star. Angels. The glory of God shining in the heavens. Matthew calling him Emmanuel, God With Us. The most profound statement of Jesus’ divinity in the New Testament of course isn’t in either birth story, it’s in the Gospel of John. That’s what we’ll end our scripture reading with tonight: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” Jesus is fully human, but he is also fully divine. There’s a line in the Christmas song “Mary Did You Know?” that sums the point up perfectly. The lyric goes: “Mary did you know that when you kissed your little baby you kissed the face of God?” A little baby who is the face of God. That’s who we welcome into the world tonight.

Folks, that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine is almost incomprehensibly great good news there ever was or ever could be. At Christmas we don’t just celebrate the birth of a great man. We do so much more than that. We celebrate God coming to earth in the person of a newborn baby. We celebrate God coming to earth in the particularity of one child. We celebrate the Universal becoming particular—for us. We celebrate the Infinite becoming finite—for us. We celebrate the Immortal becoming mortal—for us. We celebrate God coming to us not in mere words in a book but in a human life, in a way we can see, in a way we can relate to because God comes in a human life not so very different from our own human lives. Many Christians believe that God’s greatest revelation to us the Bible, but really, God’s greatest revelation to us is Jesus Christ to whom the Christian New Testament testifies. God’s greatest revelation to us the Immanuel, God With Us, whose birth we celebrate tonight.

And really isn’t that Christmas by itself is that great revelation. At Christmas Jesus is just a newborn baby, helpless, voiceless, powerless. It’s what we learn from Jesus as an adult that makes him worth celebrating as an infant. In Jesus as a adult we learn a lot of things about God, but the the thing that we learn that I want to celebrate tonight is that God is love. God comes to us in Jesus because, as the Gospel of John says, God so loved the world. God comes to us in Jesus to reveal God’s love for all people. Jesus loved all people. Maybe not at first. There is the way he treated the Syro-Phoenician woman that troubles many of us. But eventually. Eventually he got it that God’s love is for everyone. God’s love is even for us.

That’s the great good news of Christmas. Gos comes to us as one of us. God reveals Godself as fully as we mere mortals are capable of understanding. God comes to us in love and calls us to love God, others—all others, and ourselves just as God does. None of us does it perfectly, but God forgives our imperfections. Jesus is God With Us, and God is love.

So as we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ this year let’s do our best to show God’s love to the whole world and everyone in it. Those it is easy to love, and more importantly those it is hard to love. If we can do that, then our Christmas celebration will truly have meaning. If we can do that we will show that we understand God With Us. We will show that we understand what Christmas is really about. May it be so. Amen.

Joyful Always

Joyful Always

Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson, Pastor

December 17, 2017

Scripture: 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

One week from tomorrow is Christmas Day. Once again we will celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ with joy in our hearts. As I was working on this sermon I wanted to say here “celebrating Christmas is easy,” but then I remembered that celebrating Christmas isn’t always easy for everyone. There are some things that can make Christmas hard. Many of them, sadly, are of our own doing. We turn Christmas into the busiest retail season of the year. We so overemphasize giving gifts that many of us spend the time before Christmas spending a great deal of time fretting about giving gifts. We worry: Have I waited too long so that silly toy little Suzie simply must have has sold out? Will Uncle Fred like the shirt I bought him? What in heaven’s name can I buy for my wife that she’ll just love? Won’t the older grandchildren just take anything I give them back to the store for a refund so they can buy themselves something they really want? Do I have to buy something for my boss, or my employees, and if so, what? Will that package get to Uncle Fritz in Germany or nephew Sam on a Navy ship out in the middle of the ocean somewhere on time? The number of things to worry about that we come up with at Christmastime is almost endless.

But there are more serious things that make Christmas hard for some folks too. Christmas is often very difficult for people who are experiencing it for the first time after the death of a loved one. Many of us have been there. One of us, Elsie, is there today. Christmas can be hard for anyone who is alone and lonely remembering happier Christmases past. Sometimes loved ones are unavoidably distant, as when they are serving in the military like Joey Carter is this Christmas season. So no, Christmas isn’t always easy.

But what Christmas is really about isn’t hard, is it? I mean, celebrating the birth of Jesus comes easily for us Christians, doesn’t it? Sure it does. We love to hear the Bible’s stories of Jesus’ birth, especially in the one in Luke with Jesus born in a stable and laid in a manger—a feeding trough for livestock—and the shepherds coming to town to adore him. Maybe we don’t so much love to hear Matthew’s story of King Herod killing all the young children in and around Bethlehem in a futile effort to kill off this new King of the Jews, but then we usually just leave that story out of our Christmas celebrations. For many, perhaps most, of us hearing the Christmas stories brings back the warmest memories of Christmases past. We sing the old carols we know and love so well. There’s nothing hard about that, is there?

We love to celebrate Jesus’ birth. I mean, what’s not to celebrate? Once again, however, as there so often is with me, there’s a “but” here. We love to celebrate Jesus’ birth, but his birth of course is hardly all there is to him. When we focus on Jesus’ birth we tend to overlook just who this baby became when he grew up and what the adult Jesus means for us. When we do pay attention to the adult part of his life and his teachings as they are recorded in the Gospels of the New Testament we find that being a Christian isn’t always as easy as it seems to be on Christmas day. For as an adult this Jesus makes demands on us. He preached the love of God made real in the world and called it the kingdom of God. He taught us the kingdom life and showed it to us in how he lived his own life. Then he says follow me. Live like me. If necessary die like me. Say what? Die like me? Yes, that can be part of the life of faith too. Following this adult Jesus isn’t nearly as easy as celebrating his birth is.

There are other passages in the Bible besides the Gospels that can kind of bring us up short too. We just heard one from Paul’s first letter to the church in Thessaloníki. In that letter back to the Christian church he had founded Paul writes: “Be joyful always; pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16 There’s a lot to say about this passage. I’ll just say a little bit about it here. First, notice that Paul says “give thanks in all circumstances” not give thanks for all circumstances. Paul knew full well that there are difficult circumstances in all of our lives that it wouldn’t make much sense to give thanks for. But he calls us to give thanks “in” all circumstances. He calls us to find in whatever the circumstances of our lives are something to be thankful for. Perhaps it’s just for the gift of life itself, or for the love of family and friends. And of course we can always give thanks for the love of God. He says “pray continuously.” Some other translations have that line as “pray without ceasing.” There is a tradition in Russian Orthodox Christianity of people, usually monks, striving to do precisely that. They will silently recite a prayer that goes “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner” over and over and over every waking moment. How many of us are prepared to do that? Not me. I’m pretty sure not you.

Then there’s the one Paul opens with here. “Be joyful always” What? Joyful always? Is he kidding? How can we be joyful always? It would be a whole lot easier for me to pray without ceasing than for me to be joyful always. I mean, just look at the world! What a mess! Rampant incompetence and bad policy in government. War, famine, oppression, climate change, homelessness, etc, etc, etc. We’re supposed to be joyful in the face of all that? Then at your own life. Is everything in it cause for joy? Maybe, but if that’s true you’re one of the lucky few. It’s not true in my life. I don’t think it ever has been. We’re supposed to be joyful when loved ones become terminally ill or we do ourselves? We’re supposed to be joyful when we can’t pay the rent or the mortgage and face homelessness? We’re supposed to be joyful when our children or grandchildren struggle in life can’t seem ever to straighten things out? I mean, give me a break. Joyful always? I don’t think so.

I don’t think so, but Paul apparently did; and he didn’t exactly have it easy. He was forever being set upon by mobs made angry by his teaching and being thrown in jail for causing public disorder. He had conflict with some of the Christians back in Jerusalem that must have kept him up at night. Our tradition says he was eventually arrested and executed in Rome. Whether that really happened or not he must have spent most of his adult life being aware that it could. And he tells us to be joyful always? Really?

Well, yes. Really. Now I’ll never say being joyful is always easy, but I do believe that there is a way we Christians can do it. And one week from tomorrow we’ll again celebrate the great event that makes it possible. We will celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, that baby whose birth it is so easy to celebrate who became the adult it can be so hard to follow. But at his birth we feel nothing but joy, or at least that’s all I feel at his birth. One of my favorite Christmas carols is “Joy to the World.” It begins “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.” Jesus coming into the world is a cause of great joy. Luke’s angel say to the shepherds “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” Luke 2:10-11 Good news of great joy. That’s what the birth of Jesus is. The angel said so, and we know in our own experience that it is true. Christmas is a time of great joy. Even when the circumstances of our life are hard we can give joyful thanks that God came to us as one of us at Christmas, came to bring us peace and salvation, ame to show us God’s unconditional love in a way we can get, in a human life.

We feel joy at the birth of Jesus at Christmas, but let me ask you something. Why can’t we feel that joy always? I mean, it’s not like Jesus is born, then goes away. He doesn’t. He never goes away. That’s what the risen Christ tells us at the end of the Gospel of Matthew. His last words to his disciples are “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:20b See, that’s how I think it can be possible for us Christians to be joyful always. Not because the circumstances of our lives are always a cause for joy. We all know they aren’t. Not that, but because in whatever our circumstances are we can know that Jesus Christ is with us. Because he suffered and died on the cross we can know that he knows what we feel when we suffer. He’s been there, and worse. He didn’t scorn our pain or our mortality. He entered fully into them and overcame them—for himself and for us.

So joyful always? Well, yes. It’s not easy. Our pain, physical, emotional, and spiritual, is often real enough. But folks, it really makes a difference when we know that Jesus Christ is with us in whatever pain we must face in life. It really makes a difference when we know that he is there holding us up, cradling us in the palm of his hand, and reassuring us that whatever happens to us we are safe. Not safe in a worldly sense perhaps, but save in a much deeper, more powerful, more important sense. Save with Christ. Safe with God. Eternally, cosmically, spiritually safe. That is the knowledge that makes it possible to obey Paul’s command to be joyful always. Joyful in the deep, peaceful knowledge that neither death nor life no anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, to quote my favorite lines from Paul.

So one week from tonight as we hold our Christmas Eve service, and one week tomorrow as you celebrate Christmas however you celebrate Christmas, be joyful. Feel the joy that comes from seeing God come to us as one of us. Feel the joy of Christmas, they remind yourself that that joy can be with you always. No matter what. God came to us at Christmas to show us that God loves each and every one of us no matter what. May that joy be ours not just at Christmas but every day of our lives. Amen.