"You Shall Be CALLED: Sought Out" Midnight Christmas Eve 2011

Isaiah 62:6-12
Luke 2:1-20
The school was having their annual Winter Concert, so called because the public schools could no longer have a Christmas Concert, and the regular program included songs about snowmen, reindeer and Santa. One class at a time, from eldest to youngest, the classes stood up from their cross-legged position and marched to the stage. Finally, it was the Kindergarden class' turn, and daring to risk protocol the teacher had them singing a song “Christmas Love.” Each child held a large placard with a letter which they held up at the appropriate time. “C” is for Children, “H” is for Home, “R” for Ribbon, and so on. But a young girl about halfway down kept turning her card round and round uncertain at age 5 if the letter was supposed to be an M or a W, as it could have gone either way. When she held up the “W” everyone began to snicker, the older kids pointing... until the song was done, and suddenly everyone stopped laughing and each began pointing out for another, because by her flipping the M to a W, instead of spelling Christmas Love, the message spelled “Christ Was Love.”

Skaneateles is an idyllic place, every season of the year, perhaps every home town is. But of all the moments of all the year, this is one of my favorites. After the Candle Glow, just before Midnight.

From January until September every year, we hear the High School Seniors anxious to get out of this tiny town, where there is nothing to do and no where to go, and whether we want to or not, we know every family's scandal, be it football, or divorce, saying the wrong thing, or doing the wrong thing.
Yet, something happened in the last four months, or 16, or 4 years or however long it has been, by being gone, home has been missed. Even more, traveling the world with Rotary, going to college and discovering new ideas, falling in love, marrying, having children of our own, we have come home to question whether everything we knew and experienced growing up, is still true... or whether like leaving cookies for Santa and carrots for reindeer, our perspective of what is real changes as adults. Once you've been exposed to Bowen's Law of Thermodynamics; once you understand Pascal and Fortran; Plato and Aristotle, and Freud, Niebuhr and Tillich; can Silent Night still warm our hearts? Can we still believe?

The same is described in Isaiah, the Old Testament people had taken faith in God for granted. We had David and Solomon as our kings, we had the largest economy, the grandest palaces, the mightiest army, the world had ever known! Then, everything seemed to fall apart and everyone was dispersed, they called it the DIASPORA. The best and brightest, were sent to Babylon to be immersed in a new and different world, with different foods, languages, ideas and customs, as if being thrown into the deep end to see if you can swim. Others, for survival – escaped, to far distant places, seeing the world. Still others were made slaves, bought and sold by the very economy they once cherished.
Generations later, the word of prophecy, the call of faith is to return to God's Holy Mountain.
Come from the four corners of the earth! Go through the gates! Prepare the way for others! Say to one another: “Behold, Salvation Comes!” and you shall be called holy, redeemed, sought out, a city not forsaken!

Everything is different. That is the point of redemption, of being Holy and being sought out.
We have now been taught to know about micro-biology and plate-tectonics, and virtual worlds. Must there be an either or choice? Rather than leaving behind all we knew, we are now adults with minds that can think and debate. Dictators have been overthrown. Terrorists put to death. Can we recognize there is more to life than the stuff of survival?

Redemption is more than putting in your time, serving your sentence, working 40 years and retiring. Redemption requires reflection upon who we are and what we are doing and why.

The fact of the matter, is that as much as we thought, adolescents grinding on the dance floor, or divorces, or pregnancies, or our daughters and sons and peers being arrested, CHRISTMAS is redemption of the greatest scandal that could ever be. Almighty God, Creator of the Universe, the Force behind all that is, the Ancient God of Ishmael, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who gave the LAW to Moses, that God created humanity with Free Will, so as to be able to choose to love God; but instead because of our own vanity, our own desires, our own blindness to everything except our reflection, we turned away from God, seeking what shimmers and sparkles, but can never satisfy. For thousands of years, Almighty God watched helplessly, as we destroyed ourselves, as we built up for ourselves what rusts and rots in decay. Could there be any greater tragic lovestory? Could there be any greater scandal?

But God has done what seemed impossible. The Divine stripped off divinity. Could anything be more naked? The ruler of Heaven and Earth, left Heaven to be one with us. The Creator stepped into creation but rather than coming as a God, as all knowing, all powerful, invincible and immortal, God came to us in the most humble most vulnerable way of all, as a newborn baby.

Each of us is unique, individual. Imagine what you have wanted more than life itself... I am not talking about the red bike, or the third Lexus, or the house in St. Croix... Imagine the Father of the Prodigal Son, willing to accept the indignation of his child wishing he were dead, willing to face the embarrassment of the world by longing for his child to come home... Imagine you trained for a career and now have been without employment since 2007... Imagine, you want to be reconciled with your family, to be validated and respected... Recognize you have wanted this so long and so painfully that giving up the dream seems the only way out. When suddenly, there is hope, there is a way forward. Redemption, Being “Sought Out,” cannot be taught. There is no mathematic equation, no chemical formula, no technique or training of the voice, this is not linear thinking... But belief that life is HOLY.

In the time of Ancient Rome, not of Julius Caesar, Cleopatra and Marc Anthony, but when the Empire was falling into ruin and decay; when the Legion the Army of Rome had attacked her own people; when taxation for the sake of taxation was the norm, and humanity was powerless to stop, one individual, one person came forward to make a difference in the world, one person can change the world and all human existence. Not the most powerful, not the most influential, not the wealthiest, or smartest, truly one possessing nothing out of the ordinary, who never gave in, never compromised being faithful.

SO which is the great scandal? That God formed humanity to love God, and humanity did not? Or that God so wanted to redeem the world, that God would cheat? God became human in order to redeem us, to love us. More than having a title, having an identity, a career, “You/we are Sought Out,” we have a Calling, to lead as Christ leads, to serve as Christ serves, to trust as God trusts, to love.