Hey CNN! Over Here!!

CNN is all-a-twitter, wondering what the new Pope will say in his first Christmas Eve mass.  The Pope is a popular guy.  Over 80% of Roman Catholics and over 70% of everyone else surveyed say that they like him.

This Pope drives a little, older model car.  Not a limo.

This Pope was caught leaving his little apartment to spend some time in a homeless shelter.  He also sent some immigrants postage stamps and phone cards so they can contact their families back home.

I loved it when he allowed a precocious little boy to wander around his pulpit while he was preaching.  And, it was very moving when he singled out a disfigured man in a very large crowd, offering him a special blessing.

All of that is very likeable and draws the attention of the TV cameras and world media.  I’m very glad that a preacher is being portrayed in a positive light, for once.

Here is the deal, though.  We have preachers and church folk in the Potomac Highlands District who are doing things like that all the time:

·       We have churches where precocious kids roam the sanctuary, sometimes their parents are there, too, many times not.  But, these kids are being loved.

·       We have churches feeding senior citizens, kids who don’t come to church at all, and anyone else needing some assistance.

·       We have pastors who could be making a lot more money (some were) but they have heard a call to offer the hope found in Christ and they find their riches in a lost soul found, a lonely soul loved, and when the “least of these” are greatly valued.

·       In the Potomac Highlands District there are youth who are finding protection and direction; college students who are challenged to invest in the lives of others; and, prisoners who are learning that God offers them freedom.

·       In the Potomac Highlands we have folks investing themselves in faraway lands where God is saying to society’s throw-away-people, “I have a future for you.  I love you.”

·       Etc.

·       Etc.

·       Etc.

I don’t think CNN is going to come running with cameras turned on.  But, tonight, the heavens have taken notice and they are rejoicing because Christ is being formed in you (Galatians 4:19) and through you, a good work is being done.

Oh, and the DS notices, too.  THANK YOU!  Merry Christmas.

 

THE RIVER

About 10 years ago I stood on the banks of a river with my arm around a shivering teenager.  A flock of church folks encircled us and sang “Shall We Gather at the River”.

Together we walked into the river.  Her journey to that river had been a long one; born in Hawaii, moving to rough neighborhoods in the southwestern U.S., parents unable to care for her, an aunt and uncle in West Virginia who decided to take her in.  “I baptize you in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Dying with Christ.  Be raised with Christ.”

She served as liturgist in one of my churches.  I would be there to pray with her aunt when she went astray.  I picked on her when she ran over a fence and the neighbor’s goat escaped.  I watched her graduate; did her wedding.

This evening her family will gather around her ashes and memorialize her.  Her tire blew out.  As she tried to get the car out of the road another driver struck her.  At 23 years of age she died.

THE CRADLE AND CROSS

At Christmas we hear the good news that God so deeply loved us that Jesus willingly came into this world in vulnerable flesh and blood.  God, in Christ, would be born into a cradle of poverty, and live in rough neighborhoods where even infants were not safe.  He, also, would come to a river and identify himself with all who would go astray, all who need grace.  His life would lead him to a cross.  To new-life resurrection.

There is great mystery in what Christ choose in becoming human, in identifying with those who needed saving, in dying and rising.  But, I do know that there is a passionate, loving anger in Christ.  God’s heart is broken by the way this world breaks us.  So, God became incarnate in Jesus to defeat death; to not give tragedy the last word; to promise a new creation.

On the phone, speaking across the miles to Aunty, I say, “I know you are angry.  God is angry at what this broken world does to us.  Only Jesus can do something about this.  You are loved.”

Indeed, this Sunday, perhaps on Christmas Eve, as you gather before a manger scene cradle and a cross know that you are loved; deeply, sacrificially loved.  The cradle, the river, and the cross testify that no matter what happens in life, you are loved.