MMC: Snow and the Word

Good morning on this snowy windy day

I hope that you all are safe and warm this morning and that your Christmas time with family and friends was wonderful. 

Thank you to everyone who helped make the Christmas Eve services possible, all the readers, choir members and percussionist, ushers, communion assistants, decorators, and attendees.  Both services were beautiful and I heard a lot of positive feedback.  Please let me know if you have any thoughts about what you liked or didn't like about worship so that everyone's experience can be improved in future years.

As many of you know, Bob and I will be head to the upper mid-west later this week (fortunately we are traveling after this snowstorm should be cleaned up and before another one reaches Minnesota).  Pastor Joan Breckenridge from Zion Lutheran in Stamford as volunteered to be on call in case there are any pastoral emergencies while I'm away.  She can be reached at Zion's church office 203-327-7751.  I will be gone Wed December 29th through Wednesday January 5. 

But who is preaching next Sunday?  Pastor Ned McMillen, the former pastor of Bethlehem, will be preaching and presiding on January 2.  Come join Pastor Ned in the first worship service at Bethlehem in 2011.

And mark you calendars, Tuesday January 4th at 7pm, people will be taking down the tree and other decorations in the church.  Please come and help out as many hands make light work. 

This week's book of faith puzzler is:   :  How old was Jesus when the Magi arrived to see Jesus?  A) just hours old.  B) 12 days  C) 3 months D) 3 years E) the bible doesn’t say  If you know the answer, send me an email by noon on Wednesday to be entered into this week's drawing. 

Now onto this week's text:  (Just because I won't be at Bethlehem doesn't mean that I won't hear the same text at whatever church I attend in the mid-west.

The first lesson is Jeremiah 31:7-14.  God promises to bring the Israelites back from exile and they will celebrate and rejoice.  When have you been brought back from exile whether, physical, emotional, spiritual or social?  How have you celebrated?  Or has a loved one been brought back to you?  Israel would celebrate with food and dancing; when you celebrate, for any reason, how do you celebrate?

The second lesson is Ephesians 1:3-14.  The author says that through Jesus all of God's plans have been made known, that we are to be saved through Jesus' death on the cross.  When has it seemed like you can't figure out what God has planned for you?  When has God's plan for your life seemed easy to discern?

The gospel is John 1:1-18.  The Word is important throughout the gospel of John, so much so that it gets capitalized.  This is more than a word, a part of language, but the Word which implies both the actions and greatness of God.  In this midst of winter, we hear the words "the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it."  Light is a greater forces than darkness.  How has darkness in your life been overcome by the light?  John is sent to testify to this light and the Word.  How do you testify to the light and the Word?

Hope you all have a wonderful week and I leave you with a blessing "May your snow-blower work, may your shovel be light, may your back not ache and may you have no where to go so you can enjoy the snow."

An Imperfect Christmas

Merry Christmas!  As we celebrate our Saviour's birth may God be with you and your family.  No Christmas is perfect but may your imperfections be minimal.  


My Christmas Eve sermon is below.  And to re-read the Christmas story, go to Luke 2:1-20. 

Okay admit it, how many of you have already had on fight, argument or mental break down over Christmas this year?  How many of you are dreading seeing a certain family member?  And how many of you are worried about how you are going to get everything cooked and cleaned in time for people to come over tomorrow, or was worried about that earlier today as people were arriving? 

We want Christmas to be PERFECT!  We want everyone to enjoy the presents that we so loving purchased for them!  We want everything to be in the right color, size and style so that no one has to go to the mall on Sunday in order to return the gift you bought them.  And we want someone else to pay the credit card bills come January.

We want Christmas to be PERFECT!  We want dinner to be delicious.  We want all the recipes to turn out well.  We want the ham or turkey to not be burnt.  We want everyone to enjoy what we make even the pickiest of eaters and we want no one to have an allergic reaction.  And we want to not gain any weight from all of the Christmas cookies we have been eating. 

We want Christmas to be PERFECT!  We want the stockings to be hung with care on a mantle above a pleasantly glowing fire. We want the tree not to dry out.  We want the Christmas lights outside to shine perfectly and not a single bulb burn out.  We want the cat, dog, or young child to stay away from the tree so that no ornaments get broken.  We want them to be magically put away so that we do not have to do it.

We want Christmas to be PERFECT!  We want to be with our families and friends.  We want to have delightful conversations.  We want everyone to get along.  We want the family to sit down together for a delicious meal, open gifts and possibly even sing a carol or two.  And we want nobody to leave upset or no major arguments from happening.

We want Christmas to be PERFECT!  But no Christmas is perfect.  No matter how hard we try Christmas will not be prefect.  The gifts will not be perfect - one person will not like the gift we give them or we will receive a crappy gift that was grabbed from the end cap at CVS as the person was on their way over to see us. 

No matter how hard we try Christmas will not be prefect. Dinner will not be perfect – one dish will be undercooked or overcooked, or someone will not like it or have an allergy to one of the ingredients or we will not get to all the Christmas cookies baked we planned on making. 

No matter how hard we try Christmas will not be prefect. The decorations will not be perfect – the tree will fall over, or a sting of lights will be burned out or one decoration will not stay up or a favorite ornament will get broken. 

No matter how hard we try Christmas will not be prefect. Our family will not be perfect – old arguments will arise, or new ones will begin.  Someone will have a few too many spirits.  Or there will be an empty chair at our table, one that belongs to a relative that can’t make it since they are on the other side of the country or working or the chair belongs to a parent, spouse, sibling or child who has died and we are sadden when we remember all the Christmas that we had with them. 

We want Christmas to be PERFECT!  But Christmas is not perfect.  Yes our family Christmas may not be as bad as National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation or another Christmas movie where all the problems magically solve themselves by midnight on Christmas Eve.  But something will go wrong.  Something that we weren’t planning on. 

This is why Christmas is so stressful.  We plan for weeks, if not months, the perfect gifts, meal, and decorations.  We vow that it will not be like last year.  And yet because of all the stress we put upon it, something happens and our perfect Christmas is no longer perfect.  Christmas is not perfect, because we are not perfect!

We want Christmas to be PERFECT!  We want Jesus to be sleeping the manger, no crying he made.  We want the shepherds to be clean respectable gentlemen who bow at Jesus’ crib.  We want Mary to be glowing in the joy of having just given birth.  We want Joseph to be a proud papa adoring the birth of Jesus.  We want the sheep to be fluffy, white and clean.  We want the donkey to be perfectly groomed.  We want the cows to be quietly lowing.  We want the stink of animal dung, birth, and sweat not to be hanging in the air.

Even the first Christmas wasn’t perfect.  We have just made it into this wonderful story, we have taken away anything that was shocking for the first hearers of this birth narrative in Luke and romanticized it. 

We want Mary and Joseph to be perfect.  But Joseph wasn’t even sure if he wanted to be part of this family.  And Mary had conceived a child and the dad was not her fiancé. These are not perfect people.  And at the time of Jesus’ birth, no one who have traveled when they were so heavily pregnant.  No self-respecting mother would give birth in a room for animals, she would have given birth in a birthing room and no animals allowed near.  No caring father would have allowed their child to be put in a pen that animals ate from, he would have had a special crib or bassinet made, especially for the first born child.  We forget about the pains of labor and of birth that Mary went through, the bloody mess it would have been.  This is not a perfect setting for a birth. And yet it is from this disorder and into this imperfect setting with these imperfect people that Jesus is born. 

We want the shepherds to be perfect.  But at the time of Jesus’ birth, shepherds were unclean, the lowest of the low.  They were smelly individuals who did not bathe regularly, for they were living in the fields with their sheep.  They hardly ever attended religious services, they spent time alone out in a field often trespassing on others’ property and keeping themselves entertained with alcohol and offensive jokes just as many teenage boys and young men still do today.  They were considered ignorant, irreligious, immoral, crude and vulgar.  They were far from perfect.  And yet these were the first people to see and worship Jesus.  These were the first people that God chose to proclaim the Good New about Jesus to and they were the first people to proclaim the good news about Jesus’ birth to others.

We want Jesus to be angelic, sleeping peacefully, for him not to cry.  But yet Jesus was fully human.  He was wrapped in bands of cloth, in diapers, ready to catch any bodily acts this fully human child would eventually do.  He was wrinkly and covered in vernix, that cottage cheese like covering that protects the baby in utero.  Jesus pooped, he peed, he cried. 

And yet Jesus was PERFECT!  Jesus was fully human and yet he was fully God.  He was and is the prefect gift that God sent to this imperfect world.  God took Mary and Joseph two imperfect people, and gave them a perfect child.  God took a stable, an imperfect setting for a child to be born in, and made it the perfect place for the Son of God to be born in.  God took shepherds, imperfect people and made them the perfect people to go out and tell the world about Christ’s coming.

And God takes us, imperfect people, people who cannot get Christmas right, people who buy the wrong presents, burn dinner, can’t figure out a simple strand of lights, and fight with our families and God makes us perfect.  God gave us the perfect gift:  The Son of God, who became one of us so that we might live.  Jesus Christ who died for us so that we might live.  Jesus Christ who took away the sins of this imperfect world, and made us perfect. 

So regardless of how imperfect our Christmas is, God has made us perfect.  The shepherds were made perfect even though they were imperfect and that is the reason why the shepherds went out into the streets, glorifying and praising God.  Mary and Joseph were made perfect even though they were imperfect and that is the reason why they treasured all that God had done.  We are made perfect, even though we are imperfect and that is the reason why we go and tell others about Christ.  We are perfect even though we are imperfect and that is the reason why we rejoice in Christ’s birth.  We are perfect even though we are imperfect and that is the reason why we celebrate this Christmas and everyday.  We are perfect even though we are imperfect and that is the reason why we receive Christ as our King.  We are perfect even though we are imperfect and that is the reason why we rejoice “Joy to the World!”

Christmas Craftiness - Gift Edition

Yesterday I posted some of the decorations around the church so today I thought I would post some of the gifts that I made for Christmas this year.  I'm only going to post the ones for kids since I know they won't see this post and ruin the surprise.

This past year I finished two needlepoint stockings.  One for my youngest niece:

And one for my oldest godson:

Last year I found online a tutorial to make a felted potato person (though a different name was used).  Due to copyright infringement, that post has been deleted but a few pictures are still out there and I was able to figure out how to make them.  I made three potato people, for my two youngest nephews and a friend's daughter.

My tutorial in a nutshell:

• Make a lump shape on a piece tan/brown felt, cut it out and sew pieces of Velcro in the appropriate places.  
• On a second lump shape of tan felt, make a pouch
• Take two rectangles (one twice as tall as the other) of the same color felt and attach a piece of Velcro to the center edge of each piece
• Sew three sides of the large rectangle to lump shape felt (you can fold in the sides to make a pleated pouch) with velcro facing out
• Sew the top of the smaller rectangle to the lump above the large rectangle where the Velcro meets.
• Put good sides of lump together, sew around edges leaving a two inch opening.  Flip right side out, stuff and close.
• Using scrapes of felt, cut hats, eyes, arms, mouths, noses and ears as you like.  
• Sew piece of Velcro to back of the back. 
• Sew any embellishments to front before sewing the front and back pieces together. (i.e. for the eyes, sew the pupils on the front white piece before sewing front white and back white piece together)
• Sew front and back pieces together by sewing around the edges with right sides out.  Leave a small opening to stuff, then sew shut.  
• One hint I will pass on is Velcro now makes a version of it's product were the hook and latches are on the same piece so everything attaches to everything else.  If you go with the traditional two piece Velcro, sew all the latches onto the lump and all the hooks onto the accessories.  

I also made two other large gifts for people and some ornaments.  I will post pictures after Christmas as to keep the surprise for any friends or relatives who might read this post.