Nurturing Blossoms

Isaiah 35
Matthew 1: 2-11
“The Ransomed of the Lord shall be returned and come to Zion with singing! Everlasting Joy shall be upon their heads, they shall obtain joy and gladness, and Sorrow and sighing shall flee away!”
Would you do me a favor? Take a deep deep breath, and sigh out your last sigh. Come on, sigh out your breath, as if expelling all the pent up sorrow and frustration and helplessness hidden in your being.
For this morning is about a new way of life, a fresh beginning. Sorrow and Sighing are filled with regret about circumstances past and present, we feel hopeless to change. The GOOD NEWS of this season, is the focus of life has shifted, away from the past and present, to believe in a future of Love.

This week, Elizabeth Smart who at age 14 had been kidnapped from her bedroom in Salt Lake City, and made a slave for 9 months, testified against the man who had enslaved her and he was imprisoned. In 2002 and 2003, her Kidnapping was one of the top stories, second only to the Olympics. This week in Sudan, 306 people were set free from Slavery, that number brings the total this year of Sudanese who had been held as slaves and now are free to 2000, 2000 people freed this year. And yet the estimate is that there are another 35,000 people still enslaved. It's hard for us to imagine that Slavery still exists. People treating other people as if inhuman, punishing one another for the past, for hate.

These are not words that can be recited monotone, they are words of passion, alive with possibility of what has not ever before been! Words and ideas that are foreign to us in the 21st Century in Upstate New York. “Ransomed,” “Healed,” “Redeemed,” “Restored,” “Salvation” these are ideas that require us to have a different perspective on life. We have been taught to believe that we are all Middle Class, some more so, some less, but all Middle, all Equal, all Free. We may be on the Right or the Left politically, yet as much as we may fight with our opposition, we know there is room for compromise. We believe in education, that every person has the ability to make a difference in their own life. We live in a land of freedoms and opportunities, we too often take for granted. “Ransomed, Healed, Restored, Forgiven, Salvation” these are realities we cannot do for ourselves, you cannot succeed at making yourself “Ransomed,” yet here they are named as not only possible, but promised to those who believe.

The question of John the Baptist from Prison to Jesus, is of One who believed at one time, but now struggles to have hope. Are you the One, or must we continue seeking? What is life about? Is there only what we have known, or can there be something more to life? And the word of hope sent from Jesus to John is that the enslaved are set free, the blind given sight, the deaf made to hear. Not simply that the crippled can stand up, but that those who were once lame will leap and dance like a deer. Christian Faith does not suggest that Jesus was a good man, a holy man, a great teacher, but that people can only take themselves so far and Jesus is Savior. Routinely, at Baptism, Confirmation, Membership, Ordination, we affirm Jesus as “Lord and Savior”, LORD meaning that God is the greatest Authority, the supreme goal of our lives. But claiming Jesus to be the Christ, the Savior, redefines life, redefines reality, not on the basis of power, or authority, but to imagine possibilities never before thought possible, that we could be saved.

Years ago, when I interviewed to become your pastor, I knew this to be a good church, rock solid, with caring and love, if you had not been, I would never have been interested. When I came for the initial face to face interview we made a list of all the things that needed to be done. And upon arrival, we began clicking them off together. Success built upon success. Then one evening, leaders of the Church came together describing that in business the common vernacular for what we had done was “to pluck the low hanging fruit,” not that these had been wrong each needed to be done, not that any were easy, they had been costly and required dedicated hard work to bring to fruition. But in addition to picking the low hanging fruit, accomplishing what was ripe and ready, we needed to see the world with fresh perspective imagining where are there branches that have not yet ever borne a blossom and to question what is needed?
Everywhere we look in the world today, this is the question. We have evolved and reasoned, building strength upon strength, success upon success, but still we can only go so far. We need to imagine new paradigms, new realities and possibilities of what has never been and could be with faith.

This week, results were published of the State of Education for America in the World. Where historically, America had been a leader, we ranked 19th and 29th in the world, in Language and Mathematics. I am told that The Empire State Building was built because just prior at the World's Fair the Eiffel Tower had been unveiled as the world's tallest structure, and our Architects and Engineers and Builders determined that we could not only build a taller steel structure, we could create a building that scraped the sky. Our determination for the Apollo Moon Landings was driven because the Russians had launched Sputnik, and being second to orbit the Earth, we resolved to be the first to the moon. What will it take for us to Nurture Blossoms in Education? How can we nurture blossoms of human dignity and human rights, that slavery will be no more?

I am not suggesting that we make ourselves to be God, trying to change the world to fit our expectations, but that at times there are limitations based on where we have gone before, and we need to believe in God anew. None of this is easy, acting in faith in a world with instantaneous communication, with a lack of privacy, with ever changing expectations is intimidating. But this is the only way that slaves can be liberated. It will not happen slowly and gradually by reasonable folk, but by those who believe demonstrating different possibilities.

In the Wednesday evening Bible Study, we have dared to name the question of what does it mean to be “Saved” to believe in “Salvation”? Is this about life after death, or being able to claim a day and hour when suddenly you were convinced, and began living life differently? I have to believe that the Coming of the Savior, is about more than claymation movies of a red-nosed reindeer and a cartoon Grinch, even if with computer animation we can make it look real. Salvation is about living with life after marital problems, after extended job loss and the end of a career, is about life lived after having been very afraid. In another Church, we had a man, who had been a Prisoner of War during the Korean Conflict. He described having lived in a cage four feet square, suspended between heaven and earth. He described often hoping he would die, as the end of suffering and fear. Yet one Christmas Eve having been liberated and set free. He described, “Joy to the World” does not begin to name what I feel.

Two of my favorites stories come from World War I, what at the time was described as The War to end Wars. The first is reported to have occurred on Christmas Eve. The fighting had been quite brutal, with many casualties and deaths on both sides. As night fell, it began to snow, and in the darkness the fighting stopped. After a few hours, the soldiers began singing Christmas Carols. Which side began, I have no clue, but many that were in English were also known in Europe. And those in Deutsche had been translated into English. After a few more hours sitting in the darkness, the men began crawling out of their trenches and crossing over to meet in the middle with scraps of fruitcake and cookies to share as presents.

The other was of four friends in France. One was killed, and the other three carried him to the nearest Church. They knocked on the door, asking if they could bury their friend in the Church Cemetery. The priest asked if the man were Catholic, and they said no, and sadly the priest said I'm sorry. They turned and walked away, but just outside the grounds of the Church Cemetery they dug a grave and prayed and buried their friend. Years later, after the war, the three friends returned to honor the grave of their fallen comrade, but now everything looked different. What had been bombed and scarred, was growing with new life, and with the trees in bud, and flowers in the fields, all the landmarks seemed different. Reluctantly, they knocked at the door of the Church and the priest answered. They described that they had gone ahead and buried their friend just outside the gates of the Cemetery, but now everything seemed different. The priest smiled and confessed, that he had seen what they done as an act of faith in honor of their friend. So while the man could not be buried on Catholic Church soil, the priest had moved the fence to encompass the place where their friend was buried. Maybe what we need to do, is to make our fences wider, or even to take down the fences, declaring all ground to be holy unto God.