Chris Yaw

One Monday morning investor Warren Buffett opened his newspaper.

He noticed that oil prices were falling. And, upon further analysis, concluded this decline would continue. Warren Buffet decided that this would be very good for airlines.

So Buffet started to buy up shares in airline stocks. And later that week in an interview, shared his opinion. Because Warren Buffett is such a highly respected investor, people followed suit and by the end of the week, airline stocks had increased by 15%. People wisely concluded that if Warren Buffett invests in something, it must be worth it.

During these 12 days of Christmas you and I ponder the Incarnation, which is a fancy word to describe God coming into the world through Jesus. And we can understand this event as God’s investment in the world – that God sees potential in humanity and where it’s all going – and wants to buy into it.

This may run counter to what you and I see all around us - the formidable fears of terrorism, oppression, violence, and conflict. But God doesn’t see things this way. God sees this world as worthy of his time, attention, and investment. So much so that God is all in.

How about us?

The faith needed for 2017 is to go all in. It is to believe that God has things under control and that our best work is investing in the good being done around us. You and I are to try to hand our worries and concerns over to Jesus - and to think seriously about with whom we have conflict and what we can do about it.

Again, God is “all in” in this world. How can we make 2017 the year we do the same?

I have an unmarried friend who wants to be married.

She’s divorced, has a child, and is ready to find someone. The problem is, she hasn’t. And this weighs heavily upon her.

Statistically, the odds are very good she’ll meet someone, fall in love, and marry again. Sure, he probably won’t be who she suspects, and it may be at a time she least expects. But this doesn’t matter because statistics aren’t doing it for her.

Instead, she finds herself regularly lamenting her situation, the roadblock caused by her broken marriage, her hectic job, and her aging figure. She wonders if God is actually listening to her. She wonders if God sees her loneliness. She wonders if God cares and if he is going to work things out.

My friend’s anxiety most certainly mirrors Joseph’s – the man highlighted in Sunday’s gospel who was engaged to Mary. His situation was a mess: his fiancé became pregnant, he fretted about what to do, he certainly considered his reputation, and he too faced the possibility of living the rest of his life alone.

However, Joseph held on.

He was taught then, the very thing he teaches us today: faithfulness.

Somehow the strong and silent Joseph (who never utters a word in the Bible) held on to that notion that God was in control. No matter how confused and complicated his situation, he held out and held on: we can thank Joseph for Christmas.

And we can thank God that no matter how murky and muddled our situations are, God is at work as well.

Hang on. God is in control. God is up to something.

The Rediscovery of Pompeii

I spent the weekend with a guy who had no place for God.

Alan grew up in church. He had a good experience there. But when his mother died way before her time he got mad at God and never came back.

As we discussed the benefits of church; being part of a community focused on love, the availability of outreach activities, the regular, soul-nourishing exercises of sermon and sacrament, Alan said none of this would outweigh his sense of God’s betrayal to him.

And I wondered if God had really betrayed Alan, or if the Church had done a poor job teaching us that our understanding of God is always different than God.

How much easier might it be if God was the Church! But it isn’t and it isn’t supposed to be. Churches are families of children ‘on the way’ who should constantly be reminding us that we’re not to predict God, but accept God, we’re not to play God, we’re follow God, we’re not to harbor certainty about our opinions about God, but be open to God.

On the third Sunday in Advent we brush up against John the Baptist’s confusion about this and we can’t help but come face to face with our own: in what ways do we get angry and frustrated with God – and in what ways might God not be to blame, but our understanding of God? In what ways are we being called to rethink and rediscover God? How might we open ourselves up to a wider vision of possibility in what God is up to in the world around us?

The first trains could only move in one direction.

Turning them around soon became an issue. So roundhouses were built. These were yards for locomotives that feature a gigantic turntable in the middle that allows trains to change direction.

Like these trains, our lives move in one direction.

We barrel down the track thinking we are who we are, we do what we do, we’ll be who we’ll be, and we can’t change that.

But life also has roundhouses.

One is called Advent – which says our directions can change.

I’ve found this nearly always happens in small ways - we take a baby step to becoming a little kinder, a little more generous, a little more present.

Then we step back, repeat those small changes, and see bigger ones.

Advent, with its emphasis on repentance, preparation, and serenity, wants to be our roundhouse. It wants to be our inspiration and crucible for the kinds of change we sense God calling us towards.

How is Advent your roundhouse?

Thanksgiving is when the wheels can fall off.

During this holiday weekend somebody’s going to drink too much. Somebody’s going to say something inappropriate. Some part of the meal will be less than perfect. Somebody who’s not around will be deeply missed. Somebody’s going to cancel.

Holidays are often emotionally charged affairs that can magnify our family dysfunction. Both conflict and compromise arise. While they are also the things family photos and long-time memories are made of, beneath the cheery veneer our humanity shows up to cloud things.

In case you didn’t notice, Thanksgiving always inaugurates the church season of Advent. In addition to marking the Christian ‘New Year,’ Advent invites us to take the themes of pause, preparation, and attentiveness to heart.

On Sunday, we will kick off Advent with a Gospel reading that urges us to, ‘keep awake.’ We are to keep awake to Christ in his many forms, including generosity, charity, and the warm smiles of those we love.

However, Advent also invites us to keep awake to the imperfections of the season - to irritation, inconvenience, and discomfort. These are our growing edges; for growth rarely comes comfortably or conveniently.

This holiday weekend let’s be awake to the myriad of ways God is trying to communicate with us. Let’s accept the gifts of love and friendship, but also be attentive to the imperfections, misses, and miscues. God often speaks to us through them. Advent is here. Keep awake.

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In 1982 "Lawnchair Larry" Walters of Los Angeles made his historic voyage. He attached about a dozen weather balloons to a lawnchair and floated to 16,000 feet before shooting out a few of the balloons with a pellet gun and safely floating back to earth.

He said it was something he’d wanted to do since he was 13 years old, to float up into the sky, to be awed by the view and the calm, to drift lazily above the fray.

This Sunday the Church celebrates the end of the Christian year with the commemoration of Christ the King.

His kingship reminds us of the ways Jesus lives above the fray

And so the Gospel reading is that famous passage in which Jesus is led to his execution and actually prays for his assailants. He doesn’t say, ‘Hey, get me down from here!’ rather he seems remarkably calm through it all. He sees to the heart of the matter, which is that he must die knowing that, of course, he cannot be constrained by death.

His attitude forces us to ask why we’re so unwilling to join Jesus in living above the fray. Before each of us is a battle, a tussle, a conflict. And we are constantly getting too close, too involved, and too convinced that the fracas is where we have to put all of our energies.

When we are caught up in the details of life we are diminished. When we occupy ourselves with small worries we become small people. The scratch on the car, the spot on the carpet, the dirty dish in the sink – we can, and do, get preoccupied with these things but the world does not turn on them.

How can we live above the fray?

A lawyer recently sent me a letter.

He said I overpaid on my taxes. He said he would go to court and get the money back. He told me I’d receive $1,000.

I want you to help me spend it.

Well, not all of it. I decided to keep half (this is to remind you that I may be a priest, but I’m not Jesus).

However, the other half, $500 - I want you to help me give it away.

So I’m asking 10 parishioners to take $50 and creatively spend it.

I don’t want you to simply pass it on to your favorite charity – no - take time and pray, then act. Whose day can I make? What’s that creative Spirit saying to me?

Maybe you’ll buy $50 of really great chocolate and make brownies for a shut in. Maybe you’ll go to the Eastern Market and buy $50 of flowers and give them away on the street corner. Maybe you’ll buy a crate of apples and make applesauce for our homeless friends?

So if you want in, send me an email, a letter, or a text. I’ll choose the top 10 and arrange to get you your cash.

The only hitch is that you have to report back to me in a month and tell me what you did. I may make your story public, but I won’t use your name if you don’t want me to. After all, it is a ‘secret society.’

Why am I doing this? Because November is stewardship season and I constantly need to remind myself of the liberating power of giving. And if your pastor can’t be generous, what business do I have asking you to be?

So go ahead, start dreaming – it’s a season of generosity – who can you bless? How can you bless them?

The Pope is driving a 5-year-old Ford Focus.

He’s traded in the Mercedes Benzs and Volvos of previous pontiffs and settled for a set of wheels that will help him follow Christ more nearly. In more ways that one, he has found focus…

Of course, Francis is still among the well-off, 93% of the world does not own a car. But in deliberately downsizing he is reminding us, like Jesus did, that the Christian life is about continually removing the obstacles that keep us from more completely following our savior.

In Sunday’s Gospel we meet a familiar character named Zacchaeus. Like you and me and Pope Francis, he is well off. We also relate to Zacchaeus’ deep desire, ‘he was trying to see Jesus.’

As the story unfolds, we see that Zaccaeus is willing to put aside his possessions, reputation, and respectability in order to get a clearer picture.

The story invites us ask: what’s getting in our way of seeking a clearer vision of Jesus? What changes is God asking us to make? What needs to stay? What needs to go?

The only thing wrong with well-stocked backpacks is that they can keep us from going as fast and as far as we want to go.

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The Pope is driving a 5-year-old Ford Focus.

He’s traded in the Mercedes Benzs and Volvos of previous pontiffs and settled for a set of wheels that will help him follow Christ more nearly. In more ways that one, he has found focus…

In Sunday’s Gospel we meet a familiar character named Zacchaeus. Like you and me and Pope Francis, he is well off. We also relate to Zacchaeus’ deep desire, ‘he was trying to see Jesus.’

As the story unfolds, we see that Zaccaeus is willing to put aside his possessions, reputation, and respectability in order to get a clearer picture.

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94% of college professors rate themselves above average.

32% of software engineers put their performance ratings in the top 5% of their company.

And the vast majority of U.S. drivers consistently rate themselves as above-average behind the wheel. It's called illusory superiority. It points to our propensity toward poor self-assessment and self-awareness.

And no one is immune.

On Sunday we will hear a familiar Bible story about a priest and a tax collector who go to the temple to pray. What follows is an exercise in illusory superiority, as the clergy person boasts of his self-worth, while the tax collector seems to see things more clearly and reaps the benefit of this parable's payoff: he is forgiven.

And this is the only viable antidote to our pervasive illusory superiority: we can awaken from our Illusions to forgiveness. God is well aware of our self-deceptions and deals with them in the most merciful way possible: God forgives us.

The questions are, how self-aware are we and how willing are we to forgive ourselves for our poor judgment?

Forgive yourself.

God does.

It happened on the first day of track practice.

That’s when the coach asked the freshman to run a quarter mile. Matt Stevens won – by a lot. In fact, during that first two weeks of track practice it became clear that Matt was the best one on the team - and had an amazing gift of speed and stamina that could take him far in track and field.

But when week three rolled around, Matt was nowhere to be found.

When I called him he told me he quit. He said he was bored and would rather watch TV and drink milk shakes.

As the year went by, the talent on the team grew to be defined not so much because we were inherently faster than others – but because we showed up and worked the program.

More and more studies seem to show that giftedness and talent actually play a small role in one’s success when compared to the capacities to work hard, keep on task, and persevere.

In Sunday’s Gospel Jesus tells his disciples a parable that urges them to do the same - not to lose heart, to keep at it, to be relentless in their pursuits.

What do we feel like quitting today? In what ways do we need more perseverance?

If Jesus is calling us to do something, chances are he’s given us the perseverance to make it happen.

Be awakened to:

What we read – because we become what we read

What we eat – because we become what we eat

Whom we befriend – because we become like our friends

How we’re entertained – because we become what we watch

What we admire – because we become what we admire

What we boast about – because we become what we boast about

What we love – because we become what we love

This Sunday Jesus is out to awaken disciples of all ages to the presences, gifts, and graces of God. When we pray for more of God in our lives, we’re really praying for more of an awareness of God in our lives. We do that by being awakened to the influences around us.

How do we need to be awakened and how is God trying to do that?

Chris Yaw

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