Luke 3: 1-6 (links validated 11/23/24a)

Mise en place. Unless like me, you’re fascinated by French cooking videos on YouTube, Mise en place may not be a familiar phrase. It’s a French that translates roughly, ‘Preparation’. It means before you set out to make something, getting all the ingredients ready and at hand. For example, I make Hollandaise sauce at home. It’s a fussy sauce, prone to falling apart if you don’t attend to it. So before I start, I separate two eggs and put them in a little bowl. I slice a butter quarter into bits and put the bits on two separate little plates. I zest two lemons and then squeeze the juice into a cup. Only when all the preparation is complete do I start actually cooking. It makes a lot of dishes—but when the ingredients are combined and heated and the critical moment occurs and the sauce thickens, I’m not looking for something I forgot. Mise en place: preparation. Today’s reading calls us to a spiritual mise en place, spiritual preparation, and advent is the time to get ready...

I live in Vancouver, BC where preparations are already underway to host part of the FIFA World Cup in 2026. The estimated cost to the host cities has bloated to double what it was just two years ago; seven soccer matches here in Vancouver are now coming at a 581 million dollar price tag. Projected revenue is expected to offset about $400 million of that cost with the rest being billed by our mayor as a “month-long commercial” for the city and improved infrastructure for the community. (Read more in this article.) When it comes to our own personal preparations for the Messiah, we don’t usually commit to the grandiosity of a city hosting the World Cup! But what if we were as unabashed about it as Mayor Ken Sim? After all, in his words, it’s a “massive, massive opportunity.”

A blizzard hit the Kansas prairie. Two feet of snow drifted to five and six feet in places. The telephone rang in the doctor’s home. The time had come for John Lang’s wife to have her baby. But it was impossible for the doctor to get through those drifts. John Lang called his neighbors: Can you help the doc to get through? In no time, from all directions, came men and boys with plows and shovels. They labored with all their might for almost two hours until finally the old doc was able to make it, just in time to deliver the Lang boy. — Today, to all of us comes a call from another Father, God the Father, through His prophet Isaiah, repeated by Jesus’ own cousin John the Baptist: “Make ready the way of the Lord.” But we are called, not to remove piles of snow, but piles of sin, neglect, thoughtlessness, the things that make it difficult and often impossible for the Divine Child to be reborn to our hearts and lives.

I once memorized a line of Latin prose, from an epistle of St. Ambrose of Milan. Our Latin teacher, Father Reginald Foster, thought it to be such an eloquent turn of phrase. It is found in the Office of Readings on his feast day, Dec. 7. Tene clavum fidei, ut te graves huius saeculi turbare non possint procellae. “Take firm hold of the rudder of faith so that the severe storms of this world cannot disturb you.” That admonition of St. Ambrose came to mind as I was reading the prison diaries of the recently murdered Russian dissident, Alexei Navalny. They were published in the Oct. 21 edition of The New Yorker. In them, Navalny explains how he made peace with the possibility of dying in prison. One approach was to lie in his bed and imagine “the worst thing that can happen, and accept it.” For Navalny that meant, “I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here.”...

During my time as a graduate student in seminary, I served part-time as a student chaplain at a maximum-security women’s prison in Atlanta. My very first year, I was invited by the head chaplain, Chaplain Sherry, to serve Christmas Eve communion to those who were in lockdown or the infirmary...Upon arrival at the first floor of lockdown, I expected that the inmates would come out of their rooms to take communion in the common room or in the hallway. Or, at worst, Chaplain Sherry and I would get escorted into each room by the officer on duty to give these women the elements. That was not the case. We got to the first cell and, instead of unlocking the door, the officer simply unlocked and unlatched the little slot in the door—about 12 inches wide by 4 inches tall—something that looked more appropriate for the delivery of mail than the Lord’s Supper. Chaplain Sherry invited me to bend down and, looking through the opening, I saw two eyes peering out. “Would you like Christmas Eve communion?” Chaplain Sherry asked. And with a muffled “yes,” two hands appeared, reaching out as far as they could through that same slot in the door. I couldn’t believe it. Was this really how this was going to go? Was this really how we were going to share this “glorious feast of the Kingdom of God”? One by one through a slot in a door? But we did. We went door by door, cell by cell, with eyes and hands peering out, reaching for the morsel of bread dipped in juice, a small taste of something barely resembling the sacrament I knew. When we got to the end of the first hall—about 30 doors in all—I secretly hoped we were done. I found this practice both demoralizing and heartbreaking. But that wasn’t the case. “OK,” Chaplain Sherry piped up, “one hall down, six to go. And then there’s the infirmary.” Chaplain Sherry read the look on my face and she set her hand on my shoulder. “Remember, Kim,” she chided, “this is Christmas for these women. The reason we serve them here is because they aren’t able or allowed to come to worship. This is their Christmas. We are bringing Christmas to them right now.” While I think she was trying to offer me encouragement, I just felt more devastated by that realization. I thought of my Christmas—filled with family and gifts and food, filled with corporate hymn-singing and candle-lighting and the telling of the story of the birth of Christ. But this—this chunk of bread shoved through a 12x4 slot in the door—this was their Christmas. It was almost too much to process. But on we went. We began our procession down the next corridor, accompanied by the guard, unlocking slots, handing out communion, saying a quick prayer, and locking up. My sadness began to change to numbness as I followed Chaplain Sherry to each door. And then, all of a sudden, a melody wafted from the end of the hall where we had just come. A woman with a wispy soprano voice began to sing the first words of the hymn “Silent Night.”...

includes lots of Greek exegesis!

always good insights!

See performance here.

See performance here.

(excellent exegesis)

One major life change for me as a result of the craziness of the viral pandemic has been going through what I’ve called a “media detox.” I’m not sure of when exactly in the almost 2 years that this has been going on, but there was a moment, a shift for me where I started to realize how much information I was consuming. I would go in the car and had satellite radio with hundreds of options that competed for my attention as I drove around. I would turn on the television just to catch up on current events while answering some emails or doing something else and finding myself getting drawn into interview after interview, story after story, not even aware of how much time had passed. Without realizing it, every one of my devices – from phone to laptop, to iPad – was in on the effort to help distract me or intrude into my life in ways I didn’t even recognize for a while. Even when I was praying. How did that happen?...

The Rev. Traci Blackmon is now the Executive Minister of Justice and Witness Ministries for the United Church of Christ. In 1985, she was a registered nurse in Birmingham, Alabama. Arriving for the evening shift, she was told that there was an “AIDS patient” on the unit. The staff said that he was mean and belligerent. He was spitting at nurses and trying to infect them. They said he was so mean that not even his family had visited him. This was in the early days of HIV/AIDS when not much was understood about the disease. The staff was afraid of it and of this patient whose name was James Bell. Like her staff, Traci was afraid, but she was the charge nurse. So, at the start of shift, she went to James’ room to introduce herself. There was full isolation wear outside his room, but even though she was afraid, she said “the spirit told me not to gown on my initial rounds.” She opened the door to his room and could not believe her eyes. There were disposable trays of food stacked up on various surfaces. The trash cans were overflowing. It was obvious his room had not been tended to in at least a couple of days. She called for cleaning but no one would come...

When the Transcontinental Railroad was being built in the US after the Civil War, the Central Pacific Railroad (going from West to East) laid 690 miles while the Union Pacific Railroad (going from East to West) laid 1086 miles, meeting in Promontory, Utah. The reason why the Central Pacific Railroad company laid so much less track is because they had to engineer and prepare the way through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. While the Central Pacific Railroad was making the path “straight” through the mountain pass, the Union Pacific Railroad company covered four times the amount of ground through the flat American plains. When we consider both the commands to prepare and to make the path for the Lord straight, and that God takes charge for levelling the valleys, hills and mountains, we can be extremely thankful.

Picture, if you will, what it might have looked like on a given day around 30 A.D. had there been at that time some equivalent of the CNN.com website. Along the top banner of the page would be the “Breaking News” of the moment. Perhaps on one particular day it would read “Jewish Zealots Attack Roman Forces: Troops Obliterate Zealots.” Below that would be a picture of King Herod the Tetrarch receiving a delegation from the Caesar in his regal throne room. Off to the right side would be a list of the day’s “Hot Topics,” that might have included news bulletins from Rome, from Asia Minor, and other such globally vital areas. Then would come the “Top Stories” for the day that might have included some political intrigue involving Pontius Pilate, a story involving a new retail market that was selling that year’s must-have toy, and a report on the doings of some of the more famous and beautiful people of the Roman Empire...

There was a young woman who lived in an apartment, in a very rough neighbourhood. It was the east end of a very large city. Many of the people who lived in this neighbourhood got by on welfare, others earned their living any way they could. The young woman moved into the apartment because it was close to the office where she worked, the rent was cheap and quite frankly she was young and foolish. She ignored all the warnings of her family and friends and moved into the apartment convinced that she could handle anything that came her way. Her neighbourhood contained the most unsavoury of characters. The office where she worked was just down the street from her apartment and every morning as she walked to work she would meet some of her neighbours returning home from an evening of plying their trade on the streets and in the alleys. Each morning, she would be met at the entrance to her office by an old man named Ed...

The first herald I can remember didn’t drape himself in camel’s hair or consume locusts and wild honey, but he did wear leather pants and I’m pretty sure that he consumed more than his share of magic mushrooms. My grade nine English teacher let’s call him Mr. Ripple, just in case he’s still teaching, and because I’m sure he’d rather I didn’t use his real name; Mr. Ripple wasn’t like any teacher I’d ever met before. In addition to the black leather pants and tie-dye t-shirts which he wore despite the fact that all the other male teachers wore boring old suits, Mr. Ripple had a long unkempt mustache which made him look a little like a cartoon bandit. I remember the very first class I had with Mr. Ripple shocked me into believing that he might just be some sort of joke the principal was trying to play on us and that Mr. Ripple wasn’t actually a teacher at all but an imposter who just needed to hide out for a while. My suspicions were only heightened when Mr. Ripple insisted that we call him by his first name. This John went on and on about pushing beyond the barriers imposed upon us by the system. John insisted that we needed to… get to really know who we are because in his view self knowledge was crucial to living a life that was worth anything at all...

William Willimon tells about the year his congregation was asked to set up a “holiday display” at a shopping mall. A committee went to work and developed a display that focused on a line from “Good Christian Friends, Rejoice”: Christ was born for this, Christ was born for this. In this display, the hymn was played over and over, while a movie screen showed scenes of contemporary life—some of them traditional holiday scenes, with a family decorating a Christmas tree or building a snowman; others more sober, scenes of hungry children, of riots and violence. But all of it under the rubric, “Christ was born for this.” After two days, the mall management asked them to take it down. It was, they said, too depressing and bad for business, because people don’t want to think about things like that at Christmas...

In high school I learned a poem called “Ozymandias” (by Percy B Shelley) and was quite taken by it. I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” In just a few years we have seen statues topple - literally, as regimes and sensibilities change...

The poet Theodore Roethke wrote in his Journal, “Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.” I believe that deep in our hearts, all of us keep the Christ who was, who is, and who is to come, the Light of the World. However, you need to prepare for God’s coming, you can still rest in the fact that the highway home is straight and clear. Because this season, like all seasons of human existence, begins and ends in God. The table is set, and the Light will come. And the darkness will not overcome it.

Some years ago, Robert Waller published a book that became a runaway bestseller and an immensely popular movie. Entitled, The Bridges of Madison County, it stirred the romantic imagination in a way that few other stories have in recent times, especially as it was played out in its film version by Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep. The story runs this way: A photographer for National Geographic magazine is sent out to photograph a series of old bridges in Madison county. Lost, he stops at a farmhouse to ask for directions. As chance would have it, the man of the house has just left for a cattle show. His wife is home alone and she and the photographer instantly sense a deep connection and fall violently in love. Karma, soul-mates, mysticism, whatever, they experience a rare and powerful affinity. Within hours they are in bed with each other, triggering a love-affair that leaves them both sacramentally scarred for the rest of their lives...

For Jesus, baptism was about identity, and it is for us as well. Identity is something that can be slippery and something we may struggle with at times. And identity can be constantly changing. I read the Northcrester, the newsletter from Northcrest, a couple of days ago, and it included a poem by Lorene Hoover that gets at the issue of identity. Lorene is in Arizona, but I called her and asked if it would be OK to read her poem. And she said yes. I began life as the new Marshall baby my brothers’ little sister until my sister was born. Then I became one of the look-alike name-alike Marshall girls. Few could tell which was which. In high school I was one of the country kids. At a Kansas college I could at last be ME in class, in choir, on the news staff— except when I was Mary’s roommate or one of the Iowa kids. On my first job I was the new office girl until I tired of writing down words of six male bosses. That sent me to college again to become some kid’s teacher. Later I was my husband’s wife my children’s mother. Now I am only ME writing to be me except when I’m my grandchildren’s “Nana” one of those old people at Northcrest except when I’m an Arizona “snow bird” an Iowan. At family sing-a-longs I am again one of the Marshall girls a writer, writing to be ME...

Many Christian traditions have taken this preparation more seriously than others. In the history of Protestantism, there have been numerous reformers that have called believers to qualities of life, to holy living, even to attempts at perfection. One of these movements touched the Welsh in the early 1900s bringing about conversions and a striving for sanctity that has been unique in modern Christianity. A hymn, known in Welsh as Calon Lȃn, spells out the intent of the movement in a powerful way. “I do not ask for a luxurious life,” the hymn begins, “but only for a pure heart.” In four-part harmony the Welsh still sing this today-- coal miners on the way home from work (e.g., in the well-known film “How Green Was my Valley”), young teens on the TV program “Britain’s Got Talent” and, most astonishing of all, entire stadiums at all national soccer events in Wales! John the Baptist would have loved it! People striving to be renewed, to have a full and whole life, centered in God’s love, as the attraction of the world’s superficial promises are set aside...

It was fourth grade. I was in Gym class and we were playing baseball. Our teacher, Mr. Hanson, picked two kids – Frankie and John, both of whom were Little League All Stars – to be the ‘coaches’ and asked them to pick, from the rest of the class, the members of their teams (I’m sure this scenario isn’t unique just to those of us that went to Frank K. Hehnly Elementary School); and, so, you can imagine, the drama began. Of all the people that were ‘chosen’ to make up teams, the real drama was for those who were picked first – and for those who were picked last. For the ‘coach’, this selection process is important – does he go with friendship and pick his closest, best friends? Or will his competitive nature win out, with him picking one of the best, fastest or all-around top athletes, regardless of friendship or loyalty? In the cut-throat world of elementary sports, those two moguls of the sports world went with the best...

For most of 2015, however, visitors to First Fridays have had an additional experience while browsing at the corner of 19th and Eye Streets in the form of a 23-year old street preacher named Nathaniel Runels. His preaching consists of standing on top of a small crate painted with the words 'Jesus Saves' and preaching against the evils of moral sin. He tends to center his attacks on traditional forms of sexual immorality and he delivers his messages at the top of his lungs as people pass...

"Christianity burst into the Greco-Roman world on the same ground as the mystery religions: the personal quest for meaning. One was baptized into its mysteries as a way of self-fulfillment. That's what originally made Christianity such a threat to the empire. The faith was about the search for individual meaning, not civic duty. Its adherents also gathered in secret, pursuing rites meant to inculcate a sense of personal dignity, individual destiny...."

"A part of the backbreaking process of 19th-century road construction is captured by Gustave Courbet in his work The Stonebreakers. Courbet, a French artist, established Realism as an anti-academic approach to art in the middle of the 19th century. The picture, treated harshly by many contemporary critics, shows two figures engaged in clearing stones from roadbeds and then breaking them into smaller pieces..."

"With the invention of the light bulb, balance became a myth. Now human beings could extend the day and deny the night. Now human beings could break the natural rhythm of work and rest and sleep. Now human beings could begin to destroy the framework of life and turn it into one eternal day, with, ironically, no time for family, no time for reading, no time for prayer, no time for privacy, no time for silence, no time for time..."

"In the fall of 2008 the citizens of the USA went to their polling places and they voted. The person who one the election for president was Barack Obama, but the candidate that many of us voted for was 'change'..."

("It was fourth grade. I was in Gym class and we were playing baseball. Our teacher, Mr. Hanson, picked two kids - Frankie and John, both of whom were Little League All Stars - to be the 'coaches' and asked them to pick, from the rest of the class, the members of their teams; and, so, you can imagine, the drama began. Of all the people that were 'chosen' to make up teams, the real drama was for two groups of people...")

My father was a rich man’s son. He came from Ireland in 1928, right into the Depression, one of the worst depressions in American history. And for ten years the times were hard times and very difficult. And he himself had a wife and three children. And, in such terrible times and difficult times, he had a simple job in an odd lot house on Wall Street that didn’t pay as much as he needed just to keep us in the things that we actually had to have. But he had great faith and trust in God. And so our days were rather tough, my two sisters and I. At the same time, our parents protected us from any feeling that we were poor, or any feeling that we were needy, because they treated us like little kings and queens, and this was a great help. But my father, he was a rich man’s son, and he remembered one thing: the wonders of Christmas. Christmas, to him, was the centre of his life as a boy growing up in Ireland. And, of course, coming from a rather rich home, his father could give him nothing but the best...

(includes several quotes)

("I don't know how we got there, but my colleague from across town offered, 'I think the most vulnerable time for a pastor is when we get called into a crisis.' I was glad I thought to ask why for his answer was good and true: 'I can only speak for myself,' he said, 'but I feel vulnerable because I know I can't fix it...")

("Last week, the music world lost a giant: jazz legend Dave Brubeck. He died Wednesday, the day before his 92nd birthday. He was the first jazz artist to sell a million records; he was only the second one, after Louis Armstrong, to make the cover of TIME magazine. He was also a man of faith. In 1980, Dave Brubeck was baptized into the Catholic Church. He didn't like to call himself a convert")

("To Hope! A Celebration was Brubeck's first encounter with the Roman Catholic Mass, written at a time when he belonged to no denomination or faith community. It was commissioned by Our Sunday Visitor editor Ed Murray, who wanted a serious piece on the revised Roman ritual, not a pop or jazz Mass, but one that reflected the American Catholic experience. The writing was to have a profound effect on Brubeck's life...")

("Joy for Flannery O'Connor was something to be gained in the choices one made. 'Always you renounce a lesser good for a greater; the opposite is what sin is'. What comes through in her fiction and her letters is that the enemies of joy have entrenched themselves in our society, and in our hearts. As she once put it, the subject of her fiction was 'the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil'....")

There is a scene in the final Narnia book, The Last Battle, which flashed before my mind’s eye as I was reflecting on today’s scripture readings. The people of Narnia are being cruelly oppressed, and one of the lies that is told to them to keep them from rebelling is that the demonic god Tash and the true God Aslan are actually one and the same and are giving the orders that result in the present oppressive conditions. In the course of maintaining this lie, the captain of the ruling militia makes a great display of publicly calling on Tash and Aslan, although he secretly doesn’t believe in either of them. Then in the course of a great crisis, strange things begin to happen and in a series of jolting surprises, he becomes aware that there are great and dangerous forces at work that he doesn’t understand and is powerless to control. And at one of those moments, observing the flash of shock and terror that has come across the captain’s face, Farsight the Eagle says, “Ahh, there is the face of a man who has called upon gods in whom he has not believed.”...

("On my most memorable birthday, I so desperately wanted a party. I'd been to the birthdays of fellow classmates and Cub Scout buddies. They all had kids galore, endless cake and ice cream and scores of presents. One brave family even handed out water pistols and told everyone to have fun: indoors, outdoors, everywhere!...")

("Many years ago, unsettled because my practices of prayer were off-kilter, I sought help from a friend, a colleague in ministry. God felt distant, I said. Worse, I felt distant in my relationship with the Holy. My friend listened, asked questions and listened for a while longer...")

What MapQuest had indicated was a real road was, in fact, a road under construction. He should have known, the man sighed to himself. When he had turned onto the road and left the main highway, there had been a warning: “Proceed at Your Own Risk. Construction Ahead.” But the sign gave no information about how long the stretch of construction was. Just past the turn-off, the surface was paved, but there were no markings, just blacktop. After a few miles, the asphalt gave way to gravel and a thin layer of tar. The smell of the tar and the sound of gravel bouncing up against the bottom of the car got the children’s attention. They had been sleeping in the back seat, dozing while the family made its way to the next stop on their vacation. They had slept while their father had driven them through this vast section of forested wilderness on their way to the lodge in a national park where they had reservations. Now they were awake. “Are we there yet?” “How much farther?” “We have a ways to go,” said the father as he rifled through the glove box looking to see if he still had an old-fashioned map in the car. When the gravel ended and they hit dirt, he started to worry. It didn’t help that they seemed to be the only people on this road, and they had seen no one else coming from the other direction. Worse yet, what at first seemed to be dirt was actually mud. He decided to keep driving and hope that this was just a bad patch – that the “real” road, the passable road, was just ahead. It was clear, though, that the car had begun to sink...

("Almost a century ago, Dr. Roland Walker, a faculty member at Ohio Wesleyan University at that time, wrote these words: 'To the Governing General of the Universe, Dear Sir: "I hereby resign my self-appointed position as directing superintendent of my own life and the world...")

("In November of 1989 I arrived in Prague. The old city had always managed to avoid the physical ravages of war. Its old town squares and buildings, churches, palaces and bridges remained standing over a thousand years. The human toll was less evident. There had been many signs from outside Czechoslovakia that the fervor for liberation was building but the first hint of the uprising that assaulted my awareness was the music of Bob Dylan...")

("A man was repainting the outside of the church one Saturday to get it nice and spiffy for the service on Sunday. He had two sides of the church done, when he realized that he didn't have enough paint left to finish the job...")

("Popular novelist John Grisham published a book in 2001 entitled , in which he turns a satirical eye to the overblown ritual of the holiday season. His story revolves around a typical middle-aged American couple, Luther and Nora Krank. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, they put their daughter on plane headed for Peru where she will work for the Peace Corps..." and other illustrations)

("The First Sunday in Advent begins with apocalyptic images that, in the popular imagination, are as non-Christmasy as can be imagined. Now in the Christian tradition the Second Sunday in Advent confronts the church (and the world) with John the Baptist, whom the church has also long insisted is an absolutely necessary character in the Advent drama...")

("In the movie Life or Something Like It, every day at the corner of Fourth and Sanders in downtown Seattle, Prophet Jack scrambled onto his crate, dramatically thrust his arms into the air, arched his back, threw back his head, gazed into the sky, and then prophesied: 'I see and I say,' intoned Jack...")

"Will Willimon, who is now a United Methodist bishop, used to be at Duke and had a wonderful ministry there. He tells the story of meeting a medical student working on his M.D. and his PhD at the same time. Willimon was quite impressed with this student's depth of self-awareness. So he asked the student about what helped him the most in practicing his profession in medicine..."

("In his tape Living Faith, President Jimmy Carter shares that forgiveness is fundamental to his life. He says that without the knowledge that he can be forgiven, it would be impossible for him to face his own shortcomings. This even includes forgiveness of himself...")

("Once upon a time a group of young people were playing basketball on the parish courts. An bald African American man, with a large diamond in his ear, strolled up and watched them. He looked kind of familiar but the boys knew it couldn’t be. He asked if he might play...")

"Once there was a seeker who lived in a broad, broad valley. In the valley there were many towns and cities. This seeker was good and kind, only wanting to serve God and to help others. But all around in the cities and towns of the valley there was fighting and jealousy, greed and unkindness. People were always trying to have things their own way ..."

["In the movie Life or Something Like It, everyday at the corner of Fourth and Sanders in downtown Seattle, homeless Prophet Jack (played perfectly by Tony Shaloub) would scramble onto his crate, thrust his arms into the air, arch his back, throw back his head, gaze into the sky, and then prophesy: 'I see and I say'..." and other illustrations]

("As we all know Ebenezer Scrooge was the most miserly, penny-pinching, money-loving tightwad who ever lived. The total preoccupation of his life was his work and his money. Nothing else mattered to him....including Bob Crotchet who worked in his office and the sadness of his crippled son, including Tiny Tim and the poverty of that family..." and other illustrations)

("To help us understand the mood of this desert prophet, we need the help of the rock opera GODSPELL. I love the rock opera GODSPELL, and especially the role of John, the Baptist. I would like to recreate the opening scene of GODSPELL for you and the role of John the Baptist...")

Now what if in the fifth year of the reign of George W. Bush, when Stephen Harper was the Prime Minister of Canada and Gordon Campbell the Premier of British Columbia, during the time of Pope Benedict and David Giuliano being the Moderator of the United Church of Canada that the word of the Lord came to a prophet in the downtown east side. What would he say…imagine…listen…dream. The street is cold tonight, this unloved place for the unloved. Those people—they stink of the city. I can only scrub them so much. They tell me their hard-luck stories—how they have been defaced, debased, dishonoured. Sometimes their sorry souls leave draglines behind them in the dust...

Are you familiar with the little fable called, The King’s Highway? It has to do with an elderly king who had no heir. So, one night he sent his servants out to place a pile of rubble on the road leading to his castle. The next day he sent word that he was in search for a successor to the throne, and that whoever best traveled his road would be the next king. Wannabe kings came from far and near. When they got to the pile of rubble, they grumbled and complained, but somehow they managed to get around it. All the while, the king watched from the castle. Now, it just so happened that there was a young shepherd boy named Michael who also aspired to be king. His friends just scoffed when he told them. “The king will never pick you,” they said, “Why, you’re nothing but a peasant.” But Michael would not be discouraged and so, he headed out to see the king. But when he got to the pile of rubble he stopped to clear the stones out of the way. To his surprise, when he got to the bottom of the pile, there was a beautiful gold ring with the king’s royal crest. Michael stuck it in his pocket and rushed to the castle. “I’m sorry it is so late,” Michael whispered as he knelt before the king. Then he reached in his pocket and pulled out the ring for the king to see. “I found this on the road,” he said, “I’m sure it must belong to you.” The king examined the ring carefully. “This ring is not mine,” he announced. “But it must be yours,” Michael said, “It bears your crest.” “Indeed it does,” said the king, “but it is not mine. It belongs to the one who will be seated on my throne.” Then giving the ring back to Michael, he said, “It now belongs to you. I proclaimed that he who best traveled the highway would become the new king. By clearing the road so that all may travel safely, you showed that it is not fine clothing, fancy horses, or even great wealth that make a king. True greatness comes through serving others.”

Do you remember the Andy Griffith episode in which Andy has been elected chairman of the “needy children” charity drive? (2) They were taking up money at the schools for this charity as well as all over town. Word gets back to Andy that Opie has given only a penny at school even though he had a ton of money in his piggy bank. Andy is mightily perturbed. He’s not only the highly regarded sheriff of Mayberry, but he’s the chairman of the charity drive. And his own boy gave only a penny! So, on several occasions, Andy tries to explain to Opie why he should give more than a penny to this most worthy charity for needy children. But every time Opie would tell him that he couldn’t give more because he was saving that money. Andy, of course, thought Opie was saving his money to spend it on some foolishness, so his vexation increased. Even Aunt Bee thought Andy should ease up on the boy. Long story short: One night, Andy calls Opie for supper and tells him they would just forget about the incident. If he wanted to skip out on this charity this one time so he could buy something he wanted, that was okay. It was only then that Opie told his father why he was saving his money. It seems there was a little girl in his class who needed a coat, and he was saving his money so that he would have enough to buy it before winter...

("The opening song of Michael Card's album The Word is entitled The Prophet. The words of the refrain are: 'I am the prophet and I smolder and burn; I scream and cry and wonder why you never seemed to learn To hear with your own ears with your own eyes to see I am the prophet, won't you listen to me. I am the prophet, won't you listen to me...")

"Anne Lamott writes that 'Christianity is about water. "Everyone who thirsteth, come ye to the waters". It's about baptism… It's about full immersion, about falling into something elemental and wet. Most of what we do in worldly life is geared toward our staying dry, looking good, not going under..."

("I remember one December when my daughter was in the church high school youth group, she was cast as Mary in the Christmas Eve pageant at one of the Christmas Eve services. The young man she was dating attended the service and sat toward the front. He listened intently as the story of Jesus' birth was read and presented in a series of tableaux..." and another quote)

("Last week I went to see a movie called Stranger Than Fiction – you may have seen it too or seen previews. If you've seen the previews, you've seen the basic premise: Will Farrell plays a straight-laced IRS agent who finds that his life is being narrated by some voice, and the voice says his death is just around the corner...")

("Let’s focus on St. John’s commandment a minute. and think about a road that he’s talking about. Let’s imagine that road. And let’s give that road a name. Let’s call that road US Route 22. Picture a road named Route 22 as it curves through the blue hills of Kentucky on down to a county seat called . And let’s you and me go for a Sunday drive on Route 22...")

"Blaise Pascal was an influential scientist who lived in the 1600’s. He was something of a genius. For example, at the age of twelve, even before he had received any formal training in geometry, Pascal independently discovered and demonstrated Euclid’s thirty-two propositions. He was also a Christian. When he died in 1662 his servant found a small piece of parchment sewn into his coat..."

("Genuine repentance leads us to rejoicing. This was demonstrated recently by a clergy friend who spoke of an encounter he had with a parishioner. This parishioner was angry that God wasn't working more rapidly in his life in the midst of a variety of crises and upheaval. The priest and the parishioner talked together at great length..." and others)

("Many years ago C.S. Lewis wrote the Screwtape Letters. Screwtape was an assistant devil writing to his nephew Wormwood. Screwtape was telling his nephew how to make the 'patient' leave the camp of the arch enemy, the Prince of Peace, and dwell in the camp of the real boss, the prince of darkness...")

Perhaps you remember the story that was told about Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, a man who spent his life amassing a fortune in the manufacture and sale of weapons. One day he woke to read his own obituary in the newspaper. A French reporter had made a mistake, and though it was Alfred’s brother who had died, it was Alfred’s obituary that appeared in the paper. The headline was “The Dynamite King.” The entire obituary spoke of him as a merchant of death. Nothing else he had done in his life was mentioned. Reading the characterization with horror, Alfred Nobel resolved to change his life, to make clear to the world what his true meaning and purpose were. He decided his last will and testament would be an expression of his life’s ideals. The result was, of course, the most valued of international prizes: the Nobel prizes, one of which is given to those who work for peace in the world...

"When Charlene and I are driving somewhere and she notes that I make five right-hand turns in succession she may ask: 'Are you lost?' Being the humble soul that I am I respond 'no, I'm not lost.' She notes that I make three more right hand turns and then says something that no loving spouse should say to another: 'Why don't you ask for directions.'..." and another illustration

"Pamela Bondy, writing in the religion section of the London Free Press a few years ago about why people do not come to church as they used to, seems to ignore that we need to live by the laws of peace when she states that the reason people do not attend church like they used to is because most people within our society are unresponsive to God's call..." and another illustration

("An elderly parishioner was suffering from poor eyesight. She couldn't see anything clearly anymore so she had surgery to remove cataracts. I picked her up from the hospital and took her home. As she walked into her kitchen a look of horror came over her face. The kitchen, that she thought had been left clean and tidy, had flour on the floor, spider webs in the corners, and a dried up puddle of milk on the table...")

("Max Lucado tells the story of a man who had been a slob most of his life. He just couldn't comprehend the logic of neatness. Why make up a bed if you're going to sleep in it again tonight? Why put the lid on the toothpaste tube if you're going to take it off again in the morning? He admitted to being compulsive about being messy...")

("Once upon a time it was announced that the Pope was coming to town and indeed to a certain parish in the town. This was a surprise to everyone, not least of all to the pastor and the bishop. Well, clearly the parish had to be spiffed up for his holiness...")

"Let me then bring in a lawyer to plead my case. Not an attorney from the city, county, state, or federal system. The attorney who pleads this case is an old Harlem street lawyer, a social activist, a theologian, and even an Episcopalian, though more radical and biblically based than many of us may find comfortable..."

("December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day, the 'date which will live in infamy' according to President Roosevelt. . December 7, 1941 was, for what is called 'the Greatest Generation', the day that changed their world, just as September 11th is the day that changed the world for the generation of today...")

"Yes, there ARE boring, blah times in our lives - those may even make up the major portion of our lives - but what define us are those times that are anything BUT boring. The SHOCKS! And they happen to all of us. They might come on a global scale - September 11th or December 7th..."

Once upon a time a small Jewish boy went to his rabbi and said he didn’t know how to love God. “How can I love God since I’ve never seen him?” explained the boy. “I think I understand how to love my mother, my father, my brother, my little sister, and even the people in our neighbourhood, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to love God.” The rabbi looked at the little boy and said, “Start with a stone. Try to love a stone. Try to be present to the most simple and basic thing in reality so you can see its goodness and beauty. Then let that goodness and beauty come into you. Let it speak to you. Start with a stone.” The boy nodded with understanding. “Then, when you can love a stone,” the rabbi continued, “try a flower. See if you can love a flower. See if you can be present to it and let its beauty come into you. See if you can let its life come into you and you can give yourself to it. You don’t have to pluck it, possess it, or destroy it. You can just love it over there in the garden.” The boy nodded again. “I’m not saying it’s wrong to pick flowers,” added the rabbi. “I’m asking you to learn something from the flower without putting it in a vase.” The boy smiled, which meant he understood—or maybe he didn’t. Just in case he didn’t, the rabbi chose the boy’s pet dog as the next object of loving and listening. The boy nodded and smiled when the rabbi talked about his dog; he even said, “Yes, Rabbi.” “Then,” the rabbi went on, “try to love the sky and the mountains, the beauty of all creation. Try to be present to it in its many forms. Let it speak to you and let it come into you.” The boy sensed the rabbi wanted to say some more, so he nodded again, as if he understood. “Then,” the rabbi said, “try to love a woman. Try to be faithful to a woman and sacrifice yourself for her. After you have loved a stone, a flower, your little dog, the mountain, the sky, and a woman, then you’ll be ready to love God.”...

("We might recall the passion of Alexander Solzhenitsyn when he first came to the West from the Soviet Union. As had John the Baptist, Solzhenitsyn was formed in harsh and solitary places...")

("The opening song of Michael Card's album The Word is entitled The Prophet. The words of the refrain are: 'I am the prophet and I smolder and burn; I scream and cry and wonder why you never seemed to learn To hear with your own ears with your own eyes to see I am the prophet, won't you listen to me. I am the prophet, won't you listen to me...")

("The Boy Scouts teach boys to be ready in any and every situation, ready to face whatever the future - or the present - might hold. I also thought of the dark and foreboding song from the movie The Lion King. Do you remember it? There's a scene where the 'bad lion', fallen from glory, teams up with the hyenas, the other bad guys...")

Cashiering in a supermarket may not seem like a very rewarding position to most. But to me it is. You see, I feel that my job consists of a lot more than ringing up orders, taking peoples money, and bagging their groceries. The most important part of my job is not the obvious. Rather its the manner in which I present myself to others that will determine whether my customers will leave the store feeling better or worse because of their brief encounter with me. For by doing my job well I know I have a chance to do Gods work too. Because of this, I try to make each of my customers feel special. While Im serving them, they become the most important people in my life. Sometimes a sincere smile helps me to achieve this goal. More often than not, however, it takes more effort on my part. Recently, an elderly man came to my register. I sensed immediately, by the expression on his face, that he was lonely. I wanted to brighten his day. But, how? I wondered. He had failed to respond to my smile, nor had he replied to my genuine greeting of "How are you today?" As I began to ring his order, I spotted a box of birdseed. It was then that I knew I had found my opportunity. "Oh, I see you have a pet bird too. Aren't they fun?" I asked. Suddenly a warm smile appeared on his face. Then he began telling me all about his parakeet...

("In the book The Grip of Grace by Max Lucado, there is a story about a man who changed. This particular man was a true slob. He didn't believe in being neat. He saw no need to make his bed since he would sleep in it the next night. He saw no need to put the lid back on the tube of toothpaste. He even admitted to being compulsive about being messy...")

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