Pain and the Power of God

This past Wednesday, I had an incredible experience. I got to spend the morning with Scott Brown, an art historian and professor at UNF who is teaching the Bible Challenge with me.  Scott took me to an exhibit at the Cummer Museum on The Mother of Sorrows, featuring artwork from the 14th and 15th centuries. This artwork depicts Christ hanging on the cross or dead and his mother, often holding him or weeping.  These are such incredible depictions of suffering as I have ever seen.  Scott and I are to speak on a panel regarding this exhibit in early February.

For hundreds of years, people have gazed upon the pain of Mary and Jesus and seen an image of God. They have seen God in pain.

In the Old Testament, we have come to the prophet Elijah.  One of the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, Elijah fed the hungry and even raised a dead boy to life.  He was anointed by God, chosen to be a prophet, and yet his life was lonely and often painful. At one point, Elijah sits down under a tree and begs God to just let him die. Being chosen by God did not mean that his life was easy.

In the passage that we see today, Elijah knows that he is about to die and he shares this fact with his disciple, Elisha.  Elijah asks Elisha if there is anything that he can give him before he goes to God and Elisha asks for "a double share of your Spirit." Elijah lets his disciple know that if he is able to see his master go to God, ie watch him die, then he will receive that Spirit. If Elisha is included in that most intimate of moments, then it will mean that forever after, he will hold some of his master in his heart.

Soon afterwards, Elijah does die but not in our normal way.  His body is literally carried up to heaven and his disciple Elisha gets to see it all.  Elisha cries out in surprise and pain as he watches his master die, but he is blessed with a double share of Elijah's spirit as a result of being present with him when he died.

Often when a person dies, their relatives want to be there when they take their last breath.  I will explain that this is hard to orchestrate. Introverts will often wait until they are alone to die. But even I have to admit that actually being present with a person when they take their last breath is something special, something sacred happens.  It is a moment of incredible intimacy, of grief and pain. God seems to be especially present at the moment when a person dies.

When John the Baptist saw Jesus coming, he said, "Behold the Lamb of God!"  A lamb was a helpless animal that would have been killed on or in front of the altar in the temple.  A sacrificial lamb was slaughtered in order to gain God's favor. Somehow the suffering and death of the lamb made things right with God. John saw Jesus as a lamb, someone who would be slaughtered. He foresaw that Jesus would suffer and die.

Human beings want to avoid pain.  Of course we do, pain hurts. We dont want to hurt and we dont want to admit to others that we are hurting.  But God feels differently about pain.  For God, pain is an opportunity to grow closer.  It is a chance to hold onto God, a chance to inherit a piece of the Spirit.

All of you who go to the beach know what it is like to swim in the waves. In his book Open Secrets, the author tells the story of Rabbi Akiva, who was once lost in a shipwreck at sea.  He alone survived, and when people wanted to know how he did it, he explained it quite simply. "Whenever a wave arose, I bent into it."  This is how we are to approach suffering and even dying, by bending into it and allowing it to wash over us rather than letting it sweep us away.

I think of Elisha, watching the person that he loved most in the world be taken away from him, crying out and yet bending into the wave of sorrow that came.  And then emerging with part of his master inside of him, emerging a better man.

Jesus let us see his dying, you know.  He included you and me into the most intimate and painful moments of his life. Not only did he allow the world to see his death but he allows us to paint about it and write about it and create beautiful art exhibits about it.  The Lamb of God let himself be slaughtered right in front of us and for thousands of years we have been picturing and imagining what he went through. We meditate on the cross.  We bend into the wave of his suffering and in doing so, we inherit a glimpse of his spirit.

We remember Dr. Martin Luther King tomorrow.  He too died for all the world to see and when he died, we inherited a piece of his spirit. This country was changed forever by his death and his dream of justice lives on in our hearts, because he died for all of us.

Whenever you have the courage to let another person see not just your dying but simply your pain, you invite them to share with you in your spirit.  You give that person a gift, a glimpse of Christ in you.

We try so hard to act as if we are always happy and prosperous. We pretend to have it all together.  But you do not experience Church if you only tell each other the superficial parts of your life and pretend to never suffer.  Tell each other the truth.  Let someone inside your world.  Share your pain. And bend into the wave, not holding onto it and not fighting it but facing it, moving through it, and you will emerge stronger than before.

I wish we all led perfect lives, lives free of pain or suffering.  But then I walk into an exhibit like the one at the Cummer and I see the beauty of the cross and I begin to understand that life would not be so holy and we would not grow so much if we all sat happily together.  It is the moments of hardship that shape us, so long as we understand how to bend into the wave of pain and not let it consume us.  Tell the truth about your life, share your pain with the ones you love. And remember that by speaking of your pain you are neither giving in nor wallowing in it.  Rather you are bending into the wave and letting it wash over you.  Remember that the waves do pass, calm does come and there is light at the end of the tunnel, resurrection on the other side of the tomb.  The Lamb of God did not suffer forever.  And neither will you.

The Music of your Baptism

King George VI of England had a terrible studder.  All of you who have seen the movie The Kings Speech know the pain of watching someone studder. It is agonizing.  All you want to do is to say their words for them.  Poor George, or Bertie as he was called by his loved ones, had to make public speeches and even before his coronation, this was agony for him.

You see, the more that a person struggles with a stutter, the worse the stutter becomes.  A person can become literally tongue-tied and unable to speak at all, as if all sound is just blocked from coming out their mouth.  They become paralyzed with fear, anger and disgust at their own inability to utter the simplest of phrases. One of my cousins had such a stutter growing up.  It was so painful.

Bertie has almost given up hope that his life will be anything more than just pure public pain and embarrassment when he comes to a speech therapist named Lyle Logue. Logue has trouble even keeping Bertie in the room, for he is tired of trying and wants to give up on speech therapy entirely.  As a last resort, Lyle does an experiment with Bertie.  He puts earphones on his client and plays a symphony loudly in Bertie's ears.  As the same time as the music is playing, Lyle asks Bertie to read the To Be or Not To Be Speech from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Bertie cannot hear himself at all. He assumes that he studders as usual.  He yanks off the earphones after only a few moments of reading and storms out of Lyle's office.  Only months later does he get a chance to listen to the recording that was made and to realize that he read Shakespeare flawlessly for the first time in his life.  He read flawlessly because he was listening to the music and not to his own mind.

King David did not have a stutter but he had other problems.  He had united all Israel under his reign.  He had defeated Goliath the giant and all their enemies.  He was loved and popular and everyone thought he was the best King that Israel had ever had (which isnt saying so much since they had only had one other King and his name was Saul and he went insane). David had it all and then he got comfortable and started believing that he deserved it all and he took a woman as if she were his wife when she was married to someone else. And when she got pregnant, he tried to bring her husband home but her husband would not lie with her.  So David had the woman's husband killed. Adultery turned to murder. And this was a King who had more wives than anyone alive.  But he wanted the one person he could not have. 

David began to stumble in his life from this point on. He could not discipline his children.  They warred with one another. David became paralyzed in his life. In the reading that we heard from II Samuel, one of David's sons violates his half-sister, David's daughter, and yet David will not punish his son.  His boys end up killing each other.  It is as if his whole life, which was once a glorious song to God, becomes a stuttering mess.  David speaks less and less and becomes a passive, miserable old man who cannot even name hs successor.

    

Why do we stumble in life?  Why do we stutter?  King George was punished cruelly by a nanny when he was a little boy.  She would pinch him so that he cried when he was with his parents and then she would not feed him. He stuttered because crying or talking had caused him pain. That Nanny, in so many words, was telling him that he was worthless and that he did not have a voice. And he believed her.

And after David's sin, he too began to hear voices telling him that he was not a good man and could not be an adequate father and these voices of self-hatred prevented him from taking charge of his family and protecting them from one another. God forgives David but David does not forgive himself. He becomes paralyzed, silent, passive. And his family is torn apart right before his eyes.

Today we will baptize seven little ones.  When Jesus was baptized, God spoke in a voice from heaven.  God only did this twice in the course of Jesus' life, once at his baptism and once at his transfiguration and both times, God said the same thing.  God says, "This is my Son, the beloved, listen to him."  God was telling us that Jesus had a voice and we must hear and follow that voice, for it was the voice of God.

When the waters pour over the heads of these little ones, God will say the very same thing.  I think of it as the Song of the Almighty to each beloved child of God.  God sings, "You are my Son...You are my Daughter.  You are worthy and beloved and you have a voice to be heard."

As these children grow up, no matter how hard you parents work to guide and protect them, they are going to encounter pain and suffering.  They will be told that they are not worthy.  It will happen in school one day when someone says something mean or they are passed over for a sports team.  It will happen when they work hard on an assignment at school but they do not get a good grade. It will happen when they begin to notice that there are people starving in this world and that they dont know how to begin helping. It will happen when they disappoint themselves and realize that they told a lie or let someone down. And the voices of this world will tell them to stumble and stutter, to forget who they are, that they are worthless, that they cannot be forgiven.  Sometimes these voices will get so loud that it is hard to hear the song of God.  It is hard to remember who you really are, a beloved child of God.

The hardest part of baptism to understand is that you are already loved.  God already adores you.  It is done.  You are God's child. So when the voices of the world get so loud that they make you stumble, dont forget who you are. Put on earphones and listen to the music of your baptism, to the voice of God who has already claimed you.  Sit still in prayer, come to church, worship in holiness.  Return to the music of your baptism again and again. Remember you are children who belong to God. Ironically, when we focus on God and God's music, we can find our own voice again. No one can silence a person who understands the full implications of their baptism.

Let me say that again...

No one can silence a person who understands the full implications of their baptism.

In the movie The Help, there is a two or three year old girl whose mother is a white Southern socialite. The little girl is heavy set and her mother constantly tells her that she is too fat. The black maid, Abilene, every day and sometimes multiple times a day, will take the little girls aside, hold her in her arms and say, "You is kind.  You is smart.  You is important."

King David forgot who he was, a servant of God, and that was when he made his greatest mistakes.  King George forgot who he was, a child of God with a voice, and he let the fear of his stutter consume his life.  Don't let these children ever forget what happened here this morning.  Don't let them forget what God is saying to them.  Bring them here to church regularly. You will take vows this morning to raise these children in this church. Practice the faith.  These children will not be able to remember that they belong to God if they do not listen to God regularly. Come to church and put on the earphones that play the real music, the music that tells these children that they belong to God and that they are called to serve God above themselves. A church body moves us out of self-centered isolation into the realization that our lives are precious and designed to be given in service to God.  A church reminds us of who we are. Why do you think that the baptismal font is right there, at the entrance of our Sanctuary?  We dont want you to enter this beautiful building without walking right by the place of your baptism and remembering who you are. You belong to God and to no one else.  You are a child of God, every single one of you and you have a voice.

WISE

2014. A New Year.  A chance to make a new start.  A chance to lead the life that you want to lead, to be the person that God calls you to be. 

Do you want to be wise in 2014? What would that look like, to be wise? Today we are on the cusp of the Feast of the Epiphany, the day that the Wise Men arrived at the manger.  They were so wise that they found their way to the baby Jesus. Do you want to be like that?

We call them the Three Kings but there is no word in the Bible about them being kings or about there being three of them.  They are simply called Wise Men from the East and there could have been two of them or twenty. Tradition calls them kings because they bring kingly gifts of gold, frankencense and myrrh, but then again, they were wise and knew what gifts would be appropriate for the King of Kings.  And we may picture three men because there were three gifts. 

What made them wise?  We have only to examine their behavior to see.  And the first thing that they did was to listen. They were watching the stars. They looked up and they listened. This is the most profound kind of prayer, listening to what God is doing in your life and in the world. The Wise Men took the time to reflect on the events of nature, the signs of their times and they wondered about what these things meant.  I do believe that God speaks to us through the events that surround us, both globally and locally. So ask yourself what God might be calling you to do in response to what is occurring around you.  The Wise Men listened.

The Wise Men did something else that was incredibly important.  They asked for directions.  All you men out there, do you hear me?  Wise Men ask for directions!! And I am not just talking about while driving.  How can we possibly lead wise lives if we make our decisions without the help and perspective of others? It takes courage to actually ask for feedback and evaluation, but that is wisdom, so if you want to be wise seek out those who are excellent in your field and ask them to give you honest direction and feedback.  Where are you and where are you going? You cannot see clearly from out of just your own head. The Wise Men asked for directions.

The Wise Men also were willing to move.  Life is a journey. If you think that you are going to plant yourself and get comfortable, you are not being wise.  God is often best found while we are in motion, in times of upheaval and change.  To be truly wise, you must be willing to change and adapt. You must be willing to get up and leave all that is comfortable and familiar in pursuit of God above all.

The Wise Men traveled together.  No doubt, they leaned on each other, protected each other.  God does not ask you to make the journey of your life alone.  Wisdom comes when we travel with others.  No wonder Jesus sent out his disciples two by two. So don't tackle your life alone. God meant for us to travel together.

The result of wisdom?  When, the Wise Men reached their destination, when they laid their eyes on the holy child of God, the Scripture says that they were "overwhelmed with joy." Wouldnt you like to be overwhelmed with joy in 2014? I know that I would!

And strangely enough, our Bible Challenge reading today gives us the opposite of the Wise Men.  In this reading from I Samuel, we hear of an UnWise King.  Poor Saul, who does not listen carefully to God and does not do what God asks and then gets scared and runs away from God and even tries to hunt down and kill his son-in-law David.  Saul becomes consumed with fear and insecurity and these feelings obstruct his vision and make it impossible for him to listen to God or follow God. Fear and insecurity can do that, they can obstruct your way to wisdom, block your path, cloud your vision. Never make a decision based solely on fear or insecurity for these feelings do not come from God.

Saul's story is a tragic unraveling of a man who fails to listen to God, does not trust in God and tries to make his own decisions.  As Saul's life progresses, he becomes less wise and more and more scared, insecure and angry.  He tries to kill his son in law because the people favor David and want him to be king. Instead of stepping down and honoring God's will, Saul tries to murder his competition.  And when he is in a cave going to the bathroom, David sneaks in.  David could have killed him but David is listening to God and he cuts off a piece of Saul's cloak to show he was there. Then he confronts Saul.  He explains that all this hunting is purposeless.  David is not Saul's enemy.  David says

"What are you chasing? A dead dog? A single flea?"

Saul was chasing nothing.  Nothing but his own fears and insecurities.  Nothing at all.

I suppose that, when you boil it down, wisdom consists in the choice to follow God rather than something else or someone else. For we all will follow something. Will it be your ambition? You anxieties? You might as well follow a dead dog or a flea, for these guides will take you nowhere. Or are you willing to step out of your own mind and listen to the mind of God?  Being wise is unpredictable and it is scary, for you never know what God will do next. But listen, watch, ask for directions and travel with others.

When the Wise Men arrived at the home of the baby Jesus, they did another wise thing.  They came to Jesus not to take anything, but to give.  They were not like the crowds that would later come to Jesus to be healed. They came to give. They gave gifts to God. Now, that is wise.  Nothing feeds the soul like generosity. 

And lastly, those Wise Men went home another way.  They were willing to change course and do things differently. They were flexible. They stayed away from Herod and found their way home by another route. Even after they had seen Jesus, the listening never stopped.

To be Wise, listen, ask for help and directions, lean on your friends and travel with them, be generous and flexible. And you will be overwhelmed with joy. I'm not saying that life will be easy, after all the Wise Men traveled a long way and had to work hard.  But you will find joy as they found joy. For true wisdom breeds joy, it generates joy.

2014....Will you be wise?

The Upside Down People: A Christmas Sermon

His name is Bill. He is a monk.  He lives in Chicago in the heart of the city, where there is a gang war going on. Bill dresses in a robe made of patches of old jeans. He spends his days befriending gang members, talking to them, taking them to the store, the hospital, out to eat. He drives a beat-up Buick LeSabre. Everyone on the streets calls him Brother Bill.  

A few months ago, two rival gangs met in the street after midnight to try and kill each other.  One gang was going to loose this war.  There was no other alternative but to face each other in the street and shoot it out.  And they were about to do just this when Brother Bill arrived.

Bill walked to the no man's land between the two gangs and just stood there, unarmed.  "Please dont hurt each other," he said.  "If you hurt each other, you hurt me."

Gang members started yelling at him to get out of the way.  "You are going to get hurt, Brother Bill!  You cant stay there!  Move!"

"I will not move," Bill said.  "I am here to stay."

Someone threw a bottle. It broke at Bills feet and he felt a shard of glass hit his leg. A bullet flew over his head.

"I will not move," he said.

This past Friday, I saw the most beautiful thing here at the Cathedral.  We had a Living Nativity, a Christmas Pageant, but it was different from any pageant that I had ever seen before.  This pageant was not acted out by children, it was acted out by the developmentally disabled.

Mary was old and in a wheelchair and she could not speak.  The angel Gabriel was a black woman with Down's Syndrome who wanted to sing a song to Mary and she was almost completely tone deaf, but her song was so beautiful that it made me cry.

The star was a man named Paul.  My husband and I have known Paul for years. He is in his sixties and has Downes Syndrome.  Paul carried that star with such exuberance as if he had never done anything more important in his whole life.

And then, there was the little Drummer boy. He was a grown man, so disabled that he could hardly walk.  Someone had to walk with him down the aisle.  He could not say much but what he could do was play the snare drum and he played with such fervor, such unabashed, glorious exuberance.  It was like nothing that I have ever seen.

The Little Drummer Boy hit that snare drum and limped down the center aisle and they helped him up to the altar, where the tiny baby lay in a manger.  They put a microphone to his lips and the Drummer Boy simply said, "I play my drums because I love Jesus!"

I found myself weeping the entire time. I just sat there like a fool in the pew with tears streaming down my face.  These people knew how to adore the Christ child.  They really knew what it was all about. Because of their disabilities, they did not have the shame or self-consciousness that most of us have. They could adore Jesus without hesitation or analysis.  They were free to love Him.

I have been trying to explain the mystery of the Incarnation for all my adult life.  And the deeper I move into the story, the less I seem to understand.  The great mystery of why God would become a child still takes my breath away and I cannot adequately and fully explain it to you.  I don't think that any human being can completely grasp the depth of love and sacrifice that happened when the Divine Creator of the Universe became a helpless child. 

But I do know this.  Jesus was born in the heart of the most violent part of the world, into the middle of a war that was going on between the Jews and the Romans.  Jesus was born so helpless and so poor that he did not even have a proper crib.  His mother and father were young and they had no idea what they were doing.  Jesus just planted himself, as helpless as any human being could possibly be, in the middle of a war.

Here I lie, God said.  In the heart of the Middle East.  I place myself, completely helpless as a baby, in the midst of your war and hatred.  And I ask you to love one another.

They call him The Prince of Peace, for there is only one way that this human race is going to survive.  If we are to be saved, then we must become like that baby in the manger.  We must be willing to be helpless.  We must be willing to be vulnerable and broken.  I am not talking about nations, I am talking about individuals. The only way to begin to find peace is to start with the person right in front of you and to tell them the truth about who you are.  This goes against everything that you have ever been taught.  For most of our lives, we are told, in subtle and unsubtle ways, that we must win to succeed.  Get the best grades. Earn the most money.  Make people like you. But these things do not make our lives meaningful. And the one with the most toys does not win.

If we are to survive and not kill one another as a human race, then we must be willing to admit our frailty and our helplessness to one another. We must stop trying to be impressive, to win somehow at life and instead, share our brokenness with one another.  Show each other your wounds.  Admit that you too have disabilities, that you have wounds.There is no other way to bring about peace.

The gang members did not shoot Brother Bill that night.  They could not shoot him, though he was willing to die, because they knew him and he knew them.  And they could not kill someone that they loved. But even if they had killed him, Brother Bill was on the right track. In his helplessness, he stopped the cycle of violence and he made them think.

Jesus showed us his weaknesses.  He came to us completely helpless as a baby and he left us completely helpless, hanging naked on a cross. If you want your life to have meaning, then you must be willing to admit when you are helpless too. Stop acting like you have it all together.  We are so confused! We think that the one with the most money or the most impressive home or the best behaved children or the most impressive career, that it is those people who win at life.  But in reality, there are no winners and losers in life.  The point of life is to worship and adore that little baby.  If you want your life to have meaning, to have purpose and direction, then ask for help from the only one who can help...and give your life to Him.  Stand in the breach between the hatred and violence and the souls who are lost and offer to help. Be honest about your inability to do things right. And learn to truly love and adore him.

It says in our gospel that the first people to hear the news about Jesus were the shepherds. We have an image of shepherds as gentle folk singing sweet songs by a campfire. In fact, shepherding was a despised occupation. In the first century, shepherds were generally scorned as shiftless, dishonest people who grazed their flocks on others' lands. They weren't the pleasant Hallmark faces we're used to seeing this time of year. They were dirty and often dishonest.  They were lonely wanderers, outcasts. We have sentimentalized them so on our Christmas cards and art that they look like gentle folk waiting to go to a homecoming celebration. No picture is farther from reality.

Jesus did not come to the people who had it all together. Angels did not appear to religious authorities to to nobility on this night. He came for the shepherds.  He came for the broken.  He came for you and me.

The truth is that we all need to be a bit more like Paul and the Little Drummer boy.  Didnt Jesus say that unless we are like little children, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven?

Dont be afraid to admit who you really are this Christmas.  We are all lost.  We all hurt. We all make mistakes. When we admit our brokenness, that is when angels show up and invite us to the manger. 

Do you know what people said about the early Christians?  In the Book of Acts, it says that people thought that "they had everything upside down." Christians think that the poor are rich and the lame are blessed and the helpless are beautiful.  Christians give a standing ovation to the Christmas pageant where everyone forgot at least one line and the Drummer boy needed help walking down the aisle. For we know that it is only in our weakness that we can honestly approach that manger.  That, when it comes to interfacing with God Almighty, we are all desperately disabled.  And once we realize the truth about who we are and stop pretending that we have it all together, then and only then, can we truly be saved.

Joseph and the Extraordinary Possibility

Last week, Nina Searcy, a faithful member of the Cathedral, brought in a book that she had written.  It was a history of her family lineage.  It took her many years to write.  Together, we prayed a prayer of thanksgiving and blessed the book which is now in print.

My grandmother, before she died, wrote a memoir of her life. At the time, I wondered why she felt that this was so important.  Now that she is gone, I am beginning to understand.  Having the story of her life in print has been a gift to me.  Because in some mysterious way, our family shapes us.  And I am not just talking about our parents, grandparents and siblings, I am talking about our ancestry.  We are shaped and formed by our family tree.  It is part of who we are.

Family trees are becoming more and more popular, now that we can go online to ancestry.com and research our roots.  I encourage all of you, no matter whether your childhood was stable or hurtful, to learn more about your ancestors.  They can teach us about aspects of ourselves.

Back in the time of Jesus' birth, ancestry was even more important than it is today. Your net worth, what people thought of you, what tribe you were in in the house of Israel, all this was determined by your ancestry.  People were not thought of as individuals so much as they were thought of as part of a whole lineage, an unbroken line of life.  And if you came from a good heritage, your life was of value.

Joseph was from the family and lineage of King David, the most popular and greatest King of Israel.  People would have known Joseph.  He was a simple carpenter but people would have known his ancestry and he would have been respected and watched. Now this did not mean that all of Joseph's ancestors were good. They were not. One of his ancestors, King Ahaz, was one of the worst kings of Israel. The prophet Isaiah pleads with King Ahaz to ammend his ways, but the king instead builds a pagan altar in the Temple itself. So not all Josephs ancestors were good.  But they were royal and they were respected. 

Joseph is often overlooked in the Christmas story.  He stands in the background.  In all of the gospel accounts, he never actually speaks a word. By the time Jesus is grown, Joseph is gone, probably dead. The Bible uses one word is describing this man, this step-father of Jesus. The Bible says that Joseph was just.

        

It says in the gospel that "Mary was found to be with child." Did she tell Joseph herself?  You better believe that in the small town of Nazareth, the news of Mary's pregnancy out of wedlock spread.  And you'd better believe that people were talking badly about her.  Women could be stoned to death for pregnancy outside of marriage.  Joseph would have heard the gossip.  He would have understood what people were saying.  Her pregnancy would have shamed and humiliated him. It was an insult for her to have sex with someone else and before their marriage.  But Joseph does not fly off the lid or even scream at her. He is wise and just. He tried to dismiss her quietly so as to save her life, but he wanted no part of a tainted woman.  Until the angel appeared, Joseph believed the hype. And you can believe that EVERYBODY was talking.

And then an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream.

Let's really think about this.  Joseph had a choice to make, a choice between what everyone in his town thought, the gossip, his reputation and what was told to him in a dream.  In a dream!  He had to choose whether to believe the gossip or to believe the good news about this young woman.

Gossip or Good News?

It is so easy for us to judge others.  We talk badly about the decisions that other people make, about their behavior, their choices, the way they raise their children.  It is so easy to sit back and criticise.  Joseph must have know that to believe in Mary would mean that, for the rest of his life, people would whisper and gossip about who had his wife first. To take her as his wife was to accept her shame and share in it with her.  It was to be the subject of gossip for the rest of his life.  The ancestor of David takes a whore for a wife.

You are about to embark upon the Christmas holidays.  You will be with family and friends and you will have free time.  Lots of time to gossip and talk about each other.  But each of us must make the same choice that Joseph made...Do we gossip or do we seek out and search for the good in others?  Will you choose to dwell on the faults and mistakes of your relatives or will you strive to believe that they too are children of God and that there is something within each one of them that is worth praising, something that is worthy and good.

When the angel appeared to Joseph, the angel told him not to be afraid.  I think that we talk badly about others mainly because we are afraid.  It makes us feel more secure to gossip and criticize.  It makes us feel that we must be doing something right, we must be at least better than those guys.  It gives us a false sense of power.  Seeing the good in others, searching out and actively seeking the good in others-now that takes energy and that takes courage.

There is this incredible scene in the movie A Beautiful Life. John Nash, the famous mathematician, suffers from skitzophrenia.  He is so ill and so consumed with the people and voices that he hears that he pushes his wife and almost hurts his newborn baby boy.  The doctor comes to the house and advises Nash's wife, Alicia, to commit him to an institution for life.  Nash knows that if he is locked up there, he will never come out. 

Nash sits on the bed in their bedroom.  He looks completely deflated as he waits for his wife to make her decision.  Will she lock him up for life?  

Alicia enters their bedroom and kneels on the floor by the bed.  She takes his face in her hands and this is what she says,

"I have to believe that something extraordinary is possible."

She decides to believe in the goodness and sanity that lies somewhere inside her husband.  And they live together for the rest of their lives.  When John Nash wins the Nobel Prize, she is right by his side.

If Joseph had believed what everyone was saying about Mary, Jesus might never have been born.  Mary might have been stoned to death right there in her village.  If Joseph had believed the hype and the bad news, the entire world would have looked a whole lot worse.  If Joseph had cared about what people thought of him, no one would have remembered him at all. But Joseph chose to believe in the unlikely possibility that the angel was right, in the outrageous idea that this child was from God.  He chose to believe in the truth of Mary's word and the possibility that something that looked scandalous might actually be the very best thing that ever happened to him. He chose to believe that something extraordinary was possible.

How do you view the world?  Do you choose to see the good?  Do you believe the angel of God when that angel tells you not to be afraid? Whatever you look for in this world, you will find it.  Why not seek out the good?