When Peace Broke Out...

Just one hundred years ago, an astounding event took place in the trenches of the First World War. Quite simply, both German and British troops refused to continue to fight. They laid down their weapons and celebrated Christmas Day together. If you have never heard this story, here it is -- my Christmas gift to you!

It was just 100 years ago that it happened – 100 years ago this very night! In some places on that night, men slept in their warm beds amid dreams of beautifully decorated trees and gaily wrapped gifts. But things were very different in central Europe; for on this night 100 years ago, a conflict was raging. Today we call it the First World War.

On this very night in 1914, men in central Europe awaited not the voices of loved ones calling “Merry Christmas,” but the explosions of hand grenades and artillery shells. Two great armies faced each other across a front that extended along the French-Belgian border. The troops lived in soggy trenches that were filled with mud. British and German alike were cold, wet, and miserable. Between the two lines of trenches was 50 to 100 yards of “No Man’s Land.” Snipers had orders to shoot anything that moved in No Man’s Land. In preparation for Christmas, the British troops had received cigarettes, plum puddings, chocolates, and a greeting card from King George V. German troops had received a pipe and tobacco, sausages, beer, and a card containing the profile of Crown Prince Frederick Wilhelm. In some places along the line, they had even received bundles of Christmas trees! But no one on either side expected to be able to celebrate the holiday.

On Christmas Eve, the shooting slowed down, and finally stopped altogether. No one ordered that cease fire; the troops simply stopped shooting. The silence was almost eerie. Men tensed, awaiting an attack. And then, somewhere along the German lines, a lone voice began to sing. “Stille nacht, heilige nacht…” Others joined in. When the song was over, silence fell again; but it didn’t last long. From the British lines, the song resumed – in English, this time: “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright…” Soon British and German had joined together in singing, up and down the lines. A German voice cried out, “Here comes a gift!” The British dove for cover, expecting a grenade; but what fell into their trench was a boot filled with sausages. The British responded in kind by sending back a plum pudding and chocolates.

When Christmas Day dawned, a white flag appeared over the German trenches. The British suspected a trap; but a German voice called out, “We good. We no shoot.” Men from both sides climbed nervously out into No Man’s Land, leaving their weapons behind. German and British met and exchanged handshakes and greetings. They swapped pipes, tobacco and cigarettes, sausages and plum puddings, and even personal items that they had with them. One German soldier cut a button off his uniform and gave it to a Brit. In some places, soccer games broke out. In other places, soldiers from opposing armies sat down in middle of the mud and worshipped together.

When the military commanders heard of such scandalous behavior, they ordered the troops to resume hostilities immediately; and, after a few days, the shooting resumed. But for one brief moment – on Christmas Eve just 100 years ago tonight – the power of love defeated the world’s violence at its worst. John Buchanan writes, “The Christmas truce is almost too good to be true; and yet, it is no more unrealistic than an angel announcing that a newborn baby is the Savior.” His birth means that peace is always possible, even in the midst of the worst that we can do to one another. God’s light still shines in the darkness… and the darkness has not overcome it. Thanks be to God!

What Child Is This? Prince of Peace

The Christmas story proclaims that the Christ will bring peace on earth. Oh, really? Where is it, anyway? This sermon might help you think about the answer.

Of all the names that we give to the Messiah, surely the one that strikes a chord closest to our hearts is the Prince of Peace. Peace is what we yearn for most deeply; and peace always seems to be in the shortest supply. Violence, not peace, is what usually surrounds us. I subscribe to a periodical titled The Week. It is a summary of recent news events in the opinions of a wide variety of columnists. Reports of violence can be found on nearly every page. In a recent issue, the cover story highlighted the riots in Ferguson, Missouri following the shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer. The issue also mentioned a Japanese woman who has allegedly poisoned four husbands; 28 bus passengers who were slaughtered in Kenya by an Islamic extremist group; and 43 student teachers in Mexico who disappeared and are presumed dead following their participation in a demonstration against drug cartels. And we delude ourselves if we think that this kind of violence will stay away from our own back yards. You may have heard about the military veteran who recently murdered his ex-wife and five members of her family in small towns just north of Philadelphia. My husband’s sister and brother-in-law live in a home just a block away from one of those murders.

Yes, we long for peace, but it eludes us. We read Isaiah’s description of the peaceful kingdom in which the lion and the lamb lie down together, and we shake our heads in dismay, because that’s not the world in which we live. Woody Allen once quipped, “The lion might lie down with the lamb, but the lamb won’t get much sleep!” We frequently don’t get much sleep, either. Like the lamb, we lie down with one ear listening for the tones of the smoke detector, the weather alert, or the security alarm. We don’t have much of that peace that the Messiah promises us. Where is it, anyway?

A part of the answer to that question is that the peaceful kingdom of the Messiah is on the way, but it hasn’t arrived in its fullness yet. Every now and then, if we pay attention, we might catch a glimpse of it peeping through the violence of our world. We see it when, for example, Palestinian Arab and Israeli Jew become friends, and work together for peace in their little corner of that troubled part of the world. But those glimpses of the kingdom are usually obscured by the violence and suffering around them. No, the peaceful kingdom of the Messiah that God has promised isn’t here yet, although we pray every day for its arrival.

But the delay of the peaceful kingdom isn’t the whole picture when we talk about God’s peace. The very definition of “peace” itself is a problem. We mostly define “peace” as political peace – the absence of war. If that’s the case, then Jesus’ lifetime during the height of the Roman Empire was one of the most peaceful eras in human history. That peace was called the Pax Romana, the “Roman peace.” It was enjoyed everywhere the Romans governed, throughout the whole civilized world. And it is true that few wars broke out during that time in history. But if we dig deeper, we find that the Romans maintained that peace through a system of violent punishments. Lawbreakers were subject to whipping, imprisonment in a dungeon, or even crucifixion. Oh, the Roman Empire may have been at peace, but that peace was a thin veneer over a system of legal violence. The Romans claimed that they had established “peace on earth,” but it certainly wasn’t peaceful for everyone! Surely this isn’t the kind of peace that the Messiah offers us!

So let’s suppose for a moment that political peace isn’t the only kind of peace around. What if the Messiah offers us a peace that is deeper and more profound than a peace that any government could supply? What if the peace that the Messiah promises us isn’t outside us, but inside us – inside our hearts and minds and souls? What if the peace that can carry us through all the difficulties of our daily living is an inner peace? What would that kind of peace look like? For that answer, we don’t need to look any farther than a newborn baby cradled in its mother’s arms. That newborn child is the very picture of God’s peace. His head rests comfortably on his mother’s shoulder, and his sleep is undisturbed. He isn’t worried about a thing! He rests safe and secure in the embrace of his loving mother. Now, that child won’t always be happy. Sometimes he will be cold, hungry, or in pain. But through all those things, his mother will be right there next to him, nourishing and protecting him when she can, and holding his hand when she can’t. That child can be absolutely certain that his mother will never leave him, not even for a second; and because of that certainty, he is filled with peace.

That peace can be ours, too, when we realize that because God was born to us in the person of Jesus Christ, God will never abandon us! God’s peace can be ours when we realize that all the names of the Messiah are true. He is the Dayspring, the One who floods us with the light of truth, and lights our path wherever it might lead us. He is the Key of David, the One who liberates us from all the chains that we wind around ourselves. He is Emmanuel, God with us, the One who has promised to be with us forever, both in this life and in the next. And when we are filled with the peace of the Prince of Peace, nothing in this world can threaten us! Trouble can’t disturb us. Neither can hardship or persecution or hunger or nakedness or danger or even war. That’s how Paul describes the peace that he found in Christ in his letter to the Romans (8:35). Nothing can take God’s peace away from us once it has filled our lives. Oh, we’ll still be frustrated and angry and upset now and then. We’ll still weep and mourn and suffer, because that’s part of life until God’s kingdom comes in fullness. But that foundation of peace assures us of God’s loving presence – a presence that we’ll never lose. In the end, God’s peace is what allows us to stand against all the evil that disturbs the peace of the world. The certainty that God is with us is what enables us to state “This is wrong!” when we witness injustice around us. The peace that the Prince of Peace offers us gives us the courage to resist violence of every kind. We can reject greed and prejudice and hatred when we are filled with peace. Peace leads to peace. You can rely on it.

Where is the peace that the Prince of Peace gives us? First it must be in us, and then it can be around us; and Christ offers it to every one of us, free of charge. In the gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.” This is the gift of Christmas – the peace that passes all understanding and the Savior who gives it to us. Thanks be to God!

What Child Is This? Key of David

The Messiah will free the prisoners and loose the captives, says the scripture. As we read that, we are grateful that we are not prisoners... or are we? My sermon for this week in Advent explores the kinds of prisons that Christ will open. Maybe one of them sounds familiar to you.

I have never been inside a jail. I haven’t been in a federal penitentiary, a state prison, or a county jail – not even to visit. What I know about prisons I know from watching crime shows on TV. But those shows tell me all I need to know about life inside “the big house.” I’ve watched scenes of handcuffed felons shuffle down hallways between burly guards, and heard the sound of a cell door swinging shut with a loud metal clang. I know that if I was in prison, I couldn’t go where I wanted to go, do what I wanted to do, even eat when I wanted to eat. If I were in prison, a 10 p.m. attack of the munchies would just have to wait until 7 a.m. breakfast. Someone else would tell me when to eat, when to sleep, and when to exercise – if I could exercise at all. Prisoners can only do what someone else tells them to do. A prisoner’s life is lonely, frustrating, and humiliating. Prisoners have no control over their own lives; never mind the ever-present threat of violence from guards and from other prisoners. Prison is a living nightmare. And it’s even more so for those who shouldn’t be there at all – those men and women who have been wrongly convicted, or who are political prisoners, held captive because of the whims of tyrants. No wonder that scripture often mentions prisons with the same horror that it mentions illness and death.

It is the Messiah, proclaims that same scripture, whose job it will be to loose the captive and set the prisoner free. When we sing about the Key of David in our songs of Advent, that’s the Messiah. He is the one who holds the key to every lock that keeps us imprisoned. And there are many kinds of prisons. Not all of them are made of stone and steel, like Alcatraz or Leavenworth. Some of them are conditions that people are forced to endure. Some people are imprisoned by physical disability or mental limitation. They rely on wheelchairs, oxygen tanks, and medical devices. Others are prisoners of their own experiences – military veterans suffering from PTSD, for example. Still others are prisoners of the economy. If you don’t believe that being unemployed is a prison, ask anyone who is seeking a job and can’t find one. None of these folks have done anything to deserve the prisons in which they are held. But they are nevertheless dependent on others for food, clothing, and shelter. Their lives are as limited as if they were behind bars. But through the grace of God, these prisons are being knocked down brick by brick. Physical limitations are constantly being addressed through medical research. Lost limbs can now be replaced with prosthetic ones; and medication can keep many chronic illnesses under control. Emotional conditions like PTSD are being treated by long-term therapy. And certainly we are all trying to create a society in which everyone who wants a job has one! We differ in our opinions as to how best to do that; but the health of our economy is on everyone’s mind. Yes, these prisons may yet disappear – not in our lifetimes, perhaps, but with God’s help and our own hard work.

These are dreadful kinds of prisons – physical prisons of stone and bars, and those we must endure because life’s lottery has put us there. But we can be freed from those. Most prison sentences have a completion date when the prisoner will leave his cell and rejoin society. And as we join together to address physical and mental limitations, we will freed from those conditions, as well. But there is another kind of prison that is just as bad as the ones that I have already mentioned – the prisons that we build for ourselves. If you’re familiar with the story A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, you’ll also be familiar with the ghost of Jacob Marley. Marley’s ghost was in a prison of his own making. As he climbed the staircase to visit Ebenezer Scrooge in his sitting room, he dragged a heavy chain behind him. Dickens described it this way. “[The chain] was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made… of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.” When Scrooge asked him, “You are fettered. Tell me why?” the ghost replied, “I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard. I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you? Or would you know the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was as full and heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have labored on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!” Indeed, a ponderous chain. Marley had focused on nothing but his own financial gain; and that focus had imprisoned him in a cell of greed, blinding him to the cares and needs of the world around him. Scrooge was in the very same prison, and headed for the very same fate.

Now, most of us don’t drag Marley’s chain behind us. Oh, sure, we worry about paying the bills; that’s just part of life. But the generosity in this congregation tells me that we’re not in the prison of selfishness and greed. But we may very well be imprisoned in another way. Well, here – let me describe some common prisons to you; and you can judge for yourselves if any of them are a little too familiar. Some people are caught in a web. Oh, it’s not a spider’s web. It’s much stronger than a spider’s web; and they have spun it with their own hands. These folks have paid way too much attention to the expectations that others have for them; and they are tied hand and foot by those expectations that pull them this way and that. Dad expects him to carry on the family business, although he really wants to be a forest ranger. Mom expects her to go to medical school, even though she’d rather try her luck as a Broadway actress. The neighbors expect elaborate landscaping around the house – after all, they live in a nice neighborhood – and so they spend countless hours every summer mowing the grass and weeding the flower beds. The boss expects lots of overtime; and how important is the preschool Christmas pageant, anyway? With every additional expectation, that web holds tighter and tighter, until you can’t move without offending someone or other. But the good news is that Christ has not only the Key of David, he also has a very large pair of scissors. He can cut us out of our web of expectations if only we will allow him to do it. After all, his expectations are the only ones that count. He expects us to live as free people, answering to no one but God.

If that web of expectations doesn’t sound familiar, try this one on for size. It’s the prison of appointments. Now, all of us have commitments that sometimes get in the way of other things that we would like to be doing. That’s just life. But when we build a prison of appointments, we trap ourselves inside a cell that doesn’t allow us any time for activities that enrich our souls. The walls of this prison are built of calendars, Post-It notes, clocks, and appointment books. There is no soothing music inside this prison, only the ring of alarms and reminders. If we consider even for a moment taking time to just relax and be, a telephone rings with another request for help. Pretty soon, the walls are so high that we can’t even see the possibility of anything else. But the good news is that Christ has not only the Key of David, he also has a very efficient paper shredder. He will eliminate all those calendar pages and appointment books if we’ll only allow him to do it. He can free us from the tyranny of obligations.

The last prison is one of the most powerful; and I think that we all suffer from it in one way or another. It is the prison of the past. Now, we all have had experiences that we’d like to forget. We have all made bad choices, done foolish things, and generally behaved badly. Who hasn’t? But some people are trapped by their experiences. They carry deep wounds of anger or resentment that have never healed properly. Instead of putting that anger behind them and moving ahead, they revisit those wounds over and over. Pretty soon, those wounds of yesterday are dictating what they do today. They are crippled by grudges, trapped by feelings of worthlessness, or unable to form close relationships. They are covered with so much emotional scar tissue that they can hardly move! But the good news is that Christ has not only the Key of David, he also has a very good first aid kit. He will tenderly bandage our open wounds, carefully cut away the scar tissue, and allow us the freedom to heal.

Freedom, after all, is what the Messiah offers us. And like a beautiful diamond, it has many facets. God shows us the way out of the prisons that keep us trapped in old ways of living. God invites us to be open to new ways of doing things – to change, grow, and develop in healthy ways. God’s freedom is a path away from death and towards life. Because the Messiah has come among us, the way to freedom is open to us. The Key of David has unlocked the door, now and forever. Thanks be to God!

What Child Is This? Dayspring

Who is this Child whose coming we are awaiting with such anticipation? One of his ancient names is "Dayspring," the name for the day's dawn when night is pushed back by the first rays of the sun. This sermon considers what significance that name might have for us.

In every home, there are a few corners that never seem to get cleaned! You know the places that I’m talking about. Some are under the stove. Others are behind the refrigerator. The really nasty ones are in the garage behind a pile of boxes that you set aside months ago – or maybe even years ago – and you just never got around to doing anything with them. It’s easy to overlook those corners. They were clean once upon a time! But then they got dusty, and all kinds of dirt built up in them. Spiders found out that they were safe back there, and they built their webs over top of all that dirt. The dirtier the corners got, the less we wanted to clean them. Pretty soon, those corners were completely buried under dust and dirt and spider webs. And then, it was easier to ignore them altogether than to try to scrape out all that crud!

Now, if we decide to clean out those dirty corners, we know what we need. We need a strong light to help us see what’s really in there; we need an assortment of cleaning tools; and we need lots and lots of motivation to get into those corners and dig out the crud. When we find that motivation, first we head over to Home Depot and buy a high-intensity light so that we can see what we’re doing. Then we put on old clothes, roll up our sleeves, pick up a broom, a mop, a bucket, and a bunch of rags, and we get to work.

But we have dirty corners in our lives, too; and those aren’t nearly as easy to clean out. Some of those dirty corners contain memories that we’ve hidden away. We throw our secrets into the farthest corners of our lives so that no one can see them; and we’re secretly relieved when spiders spin their webs over top of them and hide the dirt underneath. Other corners of our lives don’t have any secrets in them; they’re just stuck just in out of the way places where we don’t go very often. We don’t clean those corners out much, either. The problem is that sometimes those corners give us trouble. One day, we realize that something is nagging at us. Sometimes, it turns out to be the dirt in one of those corners that we never got around to cleaning out. Now, we can’t just run over to Lowe’s and buy a high-intensity light to help clean out a corner of our life. It takes a different kind of light to do that – the kind of light that only God can give us.

One of the names for the Child whose birth we are awaiting is the Dayspring. We sang that in the introit this morning. “Dayspring” is a very old term for the dawn, that time of the day when light appears and darkness vanishes. That’s an appropriate name for God’s Messiah. After all, God has been associated with light since the most ancient times. Light was God’s very first creation, beams of beauty into the dark, chaotic mess that once was the cosmos – way back before God organized it into galaxies and stars and planets. In Psalm 104, the psalmist describes God as “wrapped in light as in a garment.” Wherever God goes, light goes with him. You remember what John said in his first letter: “God is light, and in God there is no darkness at all.” And in the text of Isaiah that we heard this morning, the prophet promises that “the Lord will rise upon you, and his glory will appear over you.” God doesn’t keep that light to himself. He shares it with all of us. This child that will be born to us comes to bring God’s light into a world of darkness. “Light and life to all he brings…” That’s what Charles Wesley wrote in his hymn “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Light and life comes from Christ. And that’s the only kind of light that will help us when we want to clean out the dark corners of our lives – the light that God offers us in the life of his Messiah.

We need the light of Christ when we decide to poke around in those dark corners of our lives. After all, the dirt in there can be mighty deep and caked in. And we all know what that dirt is made of. It’s made of anger… resentment… grudges… fear... Sometimes, we don’t even realize what’s in there! The remains of an old argument might be buried way down deep – so deep that we’ve forgotten all about it. But that dirt is still hanging around, influencing our decisions and our actions in ways that we don’t want at all. The only way to get rid of that dirt is to shine the light of Christ into that corner so that we can see what’s there and get rid of it. Now, that’s a frightening prospect to some people. None of us want other people to see our dark corners, do we? We’re afraid of what might happen if we let anybody see the dirt that’s in there. We feel like Pig Pen in the old Peanuts comic strip, grimy with dirt and surrounded by clouds of dust. We even worry that God might not love us. But God loves us no matter how deep the crud is in our dark corners. Christ doesn’t shine his light into our lives to condemn us. He brings God’s light to us so that he can heal us! The gospel of John talks about light and darkness all the time; and it claims that “God sent his son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” Salvation, not blame, is what God is all about.

And that’s a good thing, because we’re not the only people who have cruddy corners to be cleaned out! The world is full of them, each one caked with dirt of one kind or another. Our public programs are full of them, even though those programs were set up with the noblest of goals and the best of intentions. All of them have a corner somewhere that’s full of corruption and greed. Our judicial system certainly has some cruddy corners. Although we say that justice is impartial, the reality is that it is riddled with bias and prejudice. And do I need to say anything about government? There are so many dirty corners in government – ours or any other – that I hardly know where to begin. The world is so full of dirty corners that it is easy to cry in despair, “Where is the Dayspring? Where is the Messiah? Where is the Light that God promised to send us?” Hang in there. He’s coming! When all seems lost… when the darkness is the deepest… when there seems to be no light around us at all… he will appear.

Author Mary Winifred tells a story about realizing the power of God’s light. “I was tired,” she writes, “after working long hours on a project that seemed as though it would never come to fruition. A friend had invited me to spend a few days at her home on the New Jersey shore; and one morning, after much encouragement on her part, we got up early to see the sunrise over the ocean. The morning was dark and the misty breeze that hit our faces was uncomfortably chilly. As we watched in silence, suddenly from the edge of the water’s horizon came the huge golden roundness of the sun… My tiredness and depression [were lifted]. …It is in just this, often unexpected, surprising way that Christ the Dayspring enlightens our souls and spirits.” [Hasten the Kingdom, 1966, Liturgical Press, p. 32] “O Dayspring,” she prays, “…bright clearness of the light…, I watch for your coming to unravel the darkness, to [reveal] the unknown, to unmask the shapes and shadows of the night, and… to discover the secrets of righteousness and justice….” [Hasten the Kingdom, pp. 32-33] During this time of Advent anticipation, that is our prayer, too.

Children of God

Last Saturday was All Saints Day, a church holiday that more and more Protestants are reclaiming. It is a day to remember all our loved ones who have passed into the life eternal. This was my meditation on Sunday as we celebrated this occasion.

No one asks to be born. We’re all here because of decisions that our parents made. No child is born because of what he or she did, but because of what someone else did first. We’re children of God in the very same way. We never asked to be born into God’s family. God, in the fullness of love and grace, adopted all of us into his holy family before we could even understand what that meant. Now, we like to think that we asked to be there. We like to think that we came to God all on our own! But we didn’t. What actually happened was that we responded to God reaching out to us, and we reached back. Long ago, when we were tiny babies, before we could respond to much of anything except cold and hunger and pain, God set us apart to be saints.

That’s what the word “saint” means. It comes from a Hebrew word that means “set apart.” Now, we think of saints as being perfect. We think of Mother Teresa, or Martin Luther, or Martin Luther King; and we imagine them as human beings who never did anything wrong. But if any of them were here this morning, they would laugh when they heard that. They would be quick to tell us that they weren’t perfect! They would recite a whole list of flaws that they lived with every day. Martin Luther would tell us that his temper frequently got the better of him. Martin Luther King would confess that he made very bad decisions sometimes. (Don’t we all?) And Mother Teresa would admit that she didn’t think she had a very strong faith. Can you believe that? But her letters that were published after her death reveal a deep doubt about her own faith. Everyone is imperfect, even the Christians who have had the most impact on our world. They aren’t saints because they were perfect! They are saints because they are children of God, just like we are!

And God’s children are at all kinds of places in their growth. Some are little baby Christians, just beginning to understand who Jesus really is. Some are like teenagers. They question everything that they have been taught about the faith because they want to make it their own. Others are mature adults. They know what following Jesus means, and they do their best to it the very best way they can. And a few get all the way to seasoned old age. When we look at those folks, we marvel at the depth of their faith, the extent of their love for others, the joyful service that they offer to God, and the wisdom that they willingly share. But whether we’re little baby Christians, somewhere in our middle age, or wise in the faith, God loves all of us. After all, parents don’t just love their children after they are grown up and successful. They love them as soon as they take their very first breath! God loves us like that, too. God sets us apart to be in his family – to be saints – as soon as we have life and identity. We have all been saints since our first breath; and we’re all saints right now – children of the God who loves us, who adopts us, and who has a place prepared for us when our earthly lives are over.

As we remember the saints from this congregation who have gone on to glory; as we remember the saints in our own lives; I hope that you not only give thanks for their lives that touched ours. I hope that you also give thanks for your own adoption into God’s family. I hope that you give thanks that you, too, are a saint. Because you are! Thanks be to God!

Looking Towards the Promised Land

This is the last sermon in the series that I have been preaching on the Exodus experience and the wilderness wanderings of the Israelites. This morning, Moses stands on the top of the mountain looking over at the Promised Land. What was he thinking? And do we think the same things from time to time?

How do you suppose Moses felt as he stood on the top of Mount Nebo and saw the Promised Land off in the distance? It was so near, and yet so far! If he reached out his hand, he could almost feel the rich soil on the far side of the Jordan River. If he closed his eyes, he could almost taste the milk and honey that the land would provide. But he would only experience its blessings in his dreams.

Do you suppose he was resentful? After all, Moses had led the Israelites for 40 years through the wilderness – for most of his lifetime! – and now, when they had almost reached the end of their journey, he wasn’t going to be able to enjoy the fruits of his labor. We could understand if Moses resented that. Or he might have been relieved. 40 years is a long time to lead a big group of people through new territory and new experiences. It had been a very tough job. Just ask any parent how she feels when the last child has graduated from high school and the duties that come with being a band parent have finally disappeared! Oh, yes… it’s a relief! And Moses surely must have been happy for the people he had led for so long. Only a few more days, and they would take possession of the land they had been promised! That is certainly an occasion for joy!

Joy… resentment… relief… maybe Moses felt all of those emotions mixed together. But there’s one more emotion that I’m sure he felt: a deep sadness. Moses had probably imagined life in the Promised Land more than once. Little children would run and play in a place of their own, place that was safe. Their mothers would bake bread with wheat from their own fields, and their fathers would drink wine made with grapes from their own vineyards. The soil would be fertile, and the rain would be abundant. Even the luxuries of milk and honey would be available to everyone. But Moses would never experience that. He must have felt like an aged grandfather feels as he holds his first-born grandson. He can see in his dreams that child holding a son of his own; but he knows that he won’t live to see it. Joy for the blessings of the future mixed with the deep sadness that he will never experience those blessings: that must have been how Moses felt as he stood on Mount Nebo gazing at the Promised Land.

I feel a little bit like that every year during October when I’m planning that month’s worship services. October always begins with promise as we celebrate World Communion Sunday. My sermon for that day always emphasizes our unity in Christ, and the welcome that all Christians receive at the Lord’s Table. We sing music from around the world, and even the prayers come from other countries. The first Sunday in October is a joyous celebration of Christian unity! It offers a vision of all Christians joining together to serve Jesus Christ. How does the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers” describe it? “One in hope and doctrine, one in charity.” That’s what I can see from the mountain top on the first Sunday in October.

But the last Sunday of October always yanks me back to reality. That day is Reformation Sunday. Many churches don’t celebrate Reformation Sunday, but those in the Reformed Tradition do – Presbyterians, for example, and many UCC churches. Reformation Sunday is the last Sunday in October, the Sunday just before October 31. On that day in 1517, Martin Luther posted a list of debate topics on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. They were topics on which Luther disagreed with church officials. Luther only wanted to discuss these topics; but church officials threw him out of the church altogether because he dared to question Roman Catholic doctrine. And so, the Reformation began. It has that name because it was a movement to “reform” the church, which Luther believed was off on the wrong track about many, many things. But instead of reforming the Roman Catholic Church, Luther’s efforts led to a split in Christianity: Protestants went one way, and Roman Catholics went another. It has taken nearly 500 years for these two sections of Christianity to even talk to one another, let alone work together!

So much for the view of Christian unity that we can see from the mountain top. The reality is that we Christians have a long, long way to go before we are really united in ministry. We still throw one another out of the church now and then. More commonly, these days, we throw ourselves out! UCC congregations do that regularly if they take exception to a stand that the national church takes on an issue – they just leave the denomination. Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists do the very same thing! Almost every week I read of congregations withdrawing from a denomination because they don’t like the action of other people who are in it. “One in hope and doctrine, one in charity”? Not in our lifetimes! We get all wrapped up in who’s right and who’s wrong, and we forget that our goal is not to judge one another, but to serve Jesus Christ in the best way we can!

So, like Moses, I stand on the mountain top in October, and I can see what blessings might be realized if we would all work together. At the same time, I know that I’ll probably never experience those blessings. But in the midst of my sorrow, I can see signs of life in the Promised Land that are already starting to appear around us. They’re like the little snowbells that pop up in our gardens in January. Even though the world looks cold and dead, these little flowers remind us that spring is on the way. The signs of the Promised Land are like that, too. In the middle of the reality of church arguments and splits, and some Christians refusing to talk to others, these signs give me hope that one day, we might get where we’re going.

One sign is the history of our own denomination. 57 years ago, the Evangelical and Reformed churches joined with the Congregational Christian churches to form the United Church of Christ, because they were all convinced that they could do more together than they could do alone. Our denominational seal contains a phrase from one of Jesus’ prayers in the gospel of John: “That they may all be one.” Our ancestors dreamed of Christians uniting to serve Jesus Christ. After 57 years, we’re still trying to do that. Another sign is as close as the Milton-Union Council of Churches. The Council of Churches to which we belong is made up of a lot of different kinds of churches: Brethren churches and Nazarene Churches and Methodist churches as well as UCC churches. All of us believe a little differently and practice those beliefs a little differently; but we all join together to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. Ohio has a Council of Churches, too. There is a National Council of Churches, and even a World Council of Churches! We may not be one in doctrine, but some of us certainly try to be one in hope and one in charity! Finally, I take heart in the work of organizations such as Church World Service. Donations to One Great Hour of Sharing as well as proceeds from the CROP walk go to Church World Service. The mission of Church World Service is to “work… to eradicate hunger and poverty, and to promote peace and justice around the world.” It is active in over 30 countries, and works with 37 Christian denominations, as well as Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and members of the B’hai faith. Surely that is a sign of God’s kingdom springing up among us!

But most of all, I hope in the future that is in God’s hands alone. If we stand on the mountain top and look beyond even the dream of Christian unity in this world, we can catch a glimpse of a unity that will never be fulfilled in this life. It is a unity that joins Roman Catholic and Protestant, Russian Orthodox and Pentecostal, Quaker and Methodist and Baptist, all in one great hymn of praise and worship. It is the unity that will be realized around the table of Christ when time itself comes to a close, and all God’s people join in one final, grateful feast of fellowship. We’ll celebrate that unity next week when we celebrate All Saints’ Day here in worship. Of course, we’re not there yet. That’s because we’re all only human, and we make mistakes. We are limited by our cultures and our customs, our backgrounds and our families, our situations and our economics. And because we’re limited, the church on earth will never be perfect. We will always need reformers, prophets who speak the truth in love to correct the church when it wanders off the path. Our unity will probably never be complete in this life. But we are headed towards the Promised Land, where all divisions will be healed, and where Jesus Christ will be worshiped completely and perfectly. When I stand on the mountain top and look way off, I can see it! And if you join me there, I’ll bet that you can see it, too.

Who Was That Masked Man?

Many fictional crime fighters wear masks to protect themselves from the criminals they fight. God wears a mask, too, but it's for a very different reason. What is that mask? Maybe this sermon will help you to think about that very thing.

I hope that you smiled when you saw the title of today’s sermon. Did it bring back memories of a black-and-white TV show that you watched many years ago? So, who was that masked man? Why, it was the Lone Ranger! I remember watching that show when I was a kid: the Lone Ranger on his white horse Silver, and Tonto, his faithful companion on his paint horse Scout. At the end of each episode, after the Lone Ranger had cleaned up the town of outlaws, or saved a widow’s farm, or provided a role model for an adoring young boy, somebody would ask “Who was that masked man?” And somebody else always responded, “Why, don’t you know? That was the Lone Ranger!”

The Lone Ranger was one of a long line of heroes who wear a mask. Batman, Spiderman, the Green Hornet: all of them wear a mask. And they all wear a mask for the same reason: for protection. They want to protect themselves from retaliation by the thugs they help to put in jail. After all, if you’re fighting criminals, it’s a risk to let them know who you are. That’s why people are put into the witness protection program after they have testified against someone like a mob boss. When you’re fighting evildoers, protecting your identity can be a very wise thing to do.

God hides his face for protection, too. But God doesn’t hide his face to protect himself from evildoers; God hides his face to protect us. In this morning’s reading from the book of Exodus, you heard God’s response when Moses asked to see God’s glory. “You cannot see my face,” said God, “for no one can see my face and live.” To protect Moses from harm, Moses was only permitted to get a glimpse of God’s back. The sight of God’s face, where his full glory is visible, is off limits. If Moses had seen God’s face, he would have died. He might have met the same fate as the bad guys in the movie “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” They melted when they opened the Ark of the Covenant and confronted God’s glory! God’s face – God’s full presence in all its majesty and power – is just too much for human beings to see.

So, does that mean that God has to remain invisible and unknown? Do we have to rely on reports of God from people of the Bible who experienced God long ago? Of course not! We can see glimpses of God all around us right now! One obvious place is in the natural world. We can see part of a painter through her paintings, and we can catch glimpses of a sculptor through his statues. In the same way, we can see some of God in creation. When we gaze at the multicolored beauty of a forest in autumn, or stand in awe on a rocky shore next to thundering ocean waves, or marvel at the intricate laciness of a dragonfly wing, or consider the incredible vastness of the universe, we catch a glimpse of the one who created it. God is beauty, power, complexity, and majesty; and we can see that reflected in his creation. Many years ago I learned a song that asks, “Did you ever look at the sunset, with the sky yellow and red, and the clouds suspended like feathers?” If you have, then you’ve seen God.

But we can see God in more than just creation. We can look at the face of Jesus Christ. Now, we can’t look at the historical face of Jesus. That is lost to us forever in the mists of the past. The pictures that we see of a fair-skinned, bearded young man may not look anything at all like the historical Jesus! But that really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that Jesus shows us what God looks like. In the gospel of John, Jesus claims “If you have seen me, you have seen my father.” He wasn’t talking about the color of his hair or his eyes. He was talking about tuning in to God’s feelings, values and actions. He was talking about understanding what is most important to God. He was talking about knowing how God responds to us – and how God wants us to respond to him.

When we look at Jesus, we see someone who loved people, accepted them, and was patient with them. We see a healer, a teacher, and a friend. Oh, we see someone who got angry, but most of the time that anger was directed against the oppressive structures of society that keep some people poor and hungry; and against the powerful leaders who keep those structures in place for their own benefit. Jesus got angry with the religious leaders of his time because they didn’t care about the people at all. They only cared about the quality of their own lives! Jesus wanted all people to have lives that were good and full of joy. And that’s what God wants for us, too. When we see God’s face, we don’t see the face of a judgmental tyrant who takes pleasure in punishing us. We see the face of a loving parent who wants the best for all of us.

But we see God’s face somewhere else, too. We see God’s face in the faces of people around us. Now, it’s not a perfect resemblance. We frequently distort God’s face through worry and pain and suffering. Sometimes it’s marred by rage or frustration or grief. But behind all of our responses to the situations that this very imperfect world throws at us, the face of God still shines through. We can see God’s face in the serenity of a young mother holding her baby – and in the contentment of the child who snuggles in her lap. We can see God’s face in the concern of a nurse for her patient – and in the trust of the patient who is in her care. We can see God’s face in the zeal of a crowd that has gathered to demonstrate on behalf of a living wage for migrant workers – and in the gratitude of those migrant workers that someone cares about them and about their families. God hasn’t hidden his face from us at all. It’s all around us, wherever we look, in the faces of our family and our friends and even those unknown people we see on the street and on the evening news.

And that means that we are the face of God for other people! That’s a sobering thought, isn’t it? We Christians claim to have the spirit of Jesus in our lives. If that is the case – and Jesus himself says that it is – then when others look at us, they see Jesus; and if they see Jesus, they see God in us! What do they see when they look at us? We all know what they should see, because we know that kind of people we should be. We should be people who offer love, compassion, and mercy. We should work for justice, but also try our best to offer forgiveness. We should be people who look for the best in others, but who don’t get discouraged when we see the worst, because we live in hope. We should point beyond ourselves to the God who created us, because that’s what Jesus did in his life, death, and resurrection.

Yes, we are God’s face now, through the spirit of Jesus Christ who has called us to love the world the way that God loves it. We don’t show God’s full glory, because no one but Jesus Christ can do that. God’s face is masked by our own very human faces – and by the problems and the sorrows of our world. But every now and then, we catch a glimpse of God’s face – in creation, in our experience of Jesus Christ, and in the people around us. And when we do, we won’t have to ask, “Who was that masked man?” We will know!