Chris Yaw

Out of the wilderness of Silicon Valley appeared a prophet named Steve. He wore only black turtlenecks and horn-rimmed glasses. He kept a peculiar diet of fruits and vegetables. And he cried out to throngs of people, “Repent! Change your ways!"

And so entire cities, from New York to Sydney emptied out and formed long lines around Steve's stores, camping out overnight, paying exorbitant prices, waiting to be baptized into his movement.

Why did they come?

Steve offered a better way - life would be easier, people would feel better about themselves, and join a like-minded community, evangelical in their fervor.

Prophets, disciples, and societal movements that affect millions of people are still alive and well today.

They thrive because we are all looking for happiness, community, and a way to get excited about life again.

That we are willing and even capable of changing, morphing, and becoming again, spea ks to this deep-seated desire.

And then along comes Advent.

This is our annual call to inward analysis: are we happy, are we forming real community, are we excited about life?

When we hear John the Baptist crying from the wilderness in church this Sunday, that wilderness represents those places of loneliness and longing in our lives, where we have strayed, left others, even God behind, perhaps off on a detour or distraction - and where we yearn to get back on track.

What Advent offers is Hope that change can happen. It is the run up to Christmas, when God told us in no uncertain terms, that God loves us enough to be with us, even to be one of us.

How is Jesus inviting us to change our ways, to repent, and to get back on track?

What do we need to leave behind, what do we need to say yes to?

What does allegiance to the Jesus movement look like for us today?

What if Christmas came not on December 25, but on the first snowfall?

My friend Jim likes to ask this question to help us imagine how chaotic our preparations would become: how do we plan a huge, holiday feast on a moment's notice? Our Christmas shopping season would shift to August. And move over Disney and Cartoon channels, our kids' favorite TV program would be on the Weather Channel!

A drop in temperature to 32 degrees, the appearance of a storm cloud, the sighting of even the smallest of snowflakes would trigger alarms in stock exchanges, shopping malls, broadcast networks, and airports.

This is a timely exercise given this Sunday, the start of Advent, and the run up to Jesus's first coming, which is always predicated in Church by the contemplation of his Second Coming - at an unpredictable hour.

It's been said that, "power is influence over external events, and peace is influence over internal events."

Concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl said, "Everything can be taken from humans but one thing... Our inner attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

In light of the fragility, unpredictability, and powerlessness of our lives, how might we cultivate inner peace at this time of year by reminding ourselves that God is with us, we will never be abandoned, and our final resting place is in love?

This spinning top of a world will continue to whirl out of control, but let's use Advent to gain control of that inner dialogue and attitude, focusing on the God who loves us, keeps us, and provides for us, no matter how or when it snows.

Once there was an emperor whose kingdom bordered two others.

His Medium-size Kingdom bordered the Grand Kingdom that had many natural resources, lots of farmland, an exquisite Royal palace, and generations of rulership under a benevolent family. It also bordered the Humble Kingdom, which had very few resources, not much farmland, and a small Palace for the small Royal family.

Every year the emperor of this Medium-sized Kingdom would make three times as many visits to the Grand Kingdom as he did the Humble Kingdom, always impressed with the latest innovations the wealthier kingdom was able to implement. The emperor would arrive home, meet with the Royal treasurer and immediately demand tax hikes and longer working hours from his people in order to keep up with the Grand Kingdom.

But when he arrived home from his visits to the Humble Kingdom, the emperor would frequently relax, and sometimes even call for a special holiday in his Medium-size Kingdom.

After one such visit, he sat at the dinner table with his wife who pointed out that when he spent so much time visiting the Grand Kingdom he came home anxious, demanding, and unhappy. But when he returned home from The Humble Kingdom he was much more relaxed, content, and even grateful.

So the queen asked: Why don't you spend more time visiting the Humble Kingdom than the Grand Kingdom?

Friemds, a secret to happiness is to always compare downwards, not upwards.

This Sunday, the Church commemorates Christ the King Sunday, and a chance for us to reflect upon the kingdoms we visit. How much time are we spending in the Grand Kingdom versus The Humble Kingdom?

Should we be spending less time comparing upward and more time comparing downward?

Two friends monitored election night returns this week.

The first pulled up a news app and gave it a cursory glance before heading to bed.

The second started watching election coverage on television at dinnertime and didn't stop until well after midnight. "How could I go to bed?" She said, "The entire weight of democracy hangs in the balance of this election!"

Of course this year's election is important. In fact, some people have been using apocalyptic language, not unlike what we hear in Sunday's Gospel: 'You will hear of wars and insurrections,' and 'there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.'

Dancer and activist Lena Horne once said this, "It's not what you carry, it's how you carry it."

While we certainly have control over how we vote and even campaign and lobby for our beliefs, many of the things we face - health, financial, relational, and, of course, political, are beyond our control.

Often, we can't control what we carry, but we can control how we carry it.

This is where Jesus comes in with his neverending offer to help us carry the load, shoulder the burden, release the weight of it all. This is not a cop-out or an excuse to shun responsibility - but a gracious invitation to help us keep our wits about us in turbulent times like ours

Handing over a burden, of course, demands proximity: to give it over to Jesus means being near him.

And so, in these tense times:

How are we carrying out burdens?

In what ways are our worries distancing us from Jesus?

How might we better hand over these things to the One who deeply desires to take them?

It's not what we carry, but how we carry it.

A day before officiating a wedding, my child care plans fell through.

After calling my usual babysitters, who by that time were booked, I made a frantic call to my sister, who graciously dropped her plans and came over to watch the toddler.

So you can imagine, a week later, when the phone rang, and my sister asked if I would do her a favor, that I would pretty much do anything she asked. I would have cleaned out her garage, made her a three course dinner, taken the trash out for 2 months, or emptied the cat litter until Christmas.

The point is that generosity begets generosity.

And what we'll see in Sunday's Gospel is that God's epic generosity with us, is meant to inspire our own generosity with others.

As I am to recall the generous act of my sister dropping everything and coming to my rescue, you and I are to remember Jesus's pinnacle gifts of forgiveness, acceptance, and love for us as we consider what Jesus asks of us.

Here's a hint:

"Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you."

Praying for those who voted differently than I did, who hold political views that I think are destroying democracy, and who exhibit greed and selfishness that oppress and abuse the most vulnerable in our society, is not easy for me - or any of us.

But what makes loving my enemy easier, is when we contemplate the forgiveness, grace, and acceptance that God has given us: How many things have we done that have offended God and our neighbors - that God has forgiven us for? How many times has God let us off the hook, come to the rescue, and accepted us with open arms when we deserve the opposite?

Friends, performing the difficult - if not impossible - task of being kind to those who are offensive, accepting of those who don’t like us, and forgiving of those who harm us - and would even do so again - is only palatable when we consider how God does this for us.

Who do we need to pray for, make peace with, and accept?

Contemplating God’s generosity can give us what we need to make that happen.

Telemarketers...

Why do they always call during dinner time? Or when I'm on a ladder? Or when I'm in the middle of a conversation with somebody else?

...trying to sell me replacement windows, a timeshare, life insurance...

So when I answer the phone I will admit that I'm not always on my good church behavior. I can only imagine the amount of displaced anger and vitriol these phone bank staffers put up with, what kind of thick skin they must have, and why they chose this line of work.

In Sunday's Gospel, you and I will meet someone else whose profession makes them easy to be looked down upon, a tax collector, who goes to the temple to pray, and is mocked by a high-minded clergy person who treats him with about as much respect as some people treat telemarketers.

This epic story is an invitation for you and me to judge people not by their professions, but by their personhood - not by what they do, but by who they are.

So let’s take telemarketers, 2/3 of whom have a high school diploma, 1/3, though, who don’t even have that. On average, they make $13.46 per hour, for an annual salary of less than $28,000 per year. This is less than half of the $61,000 that is considered to be a living wage in the United States.

So when I interact with that person, who has come into my life, I am talking with someone who is among the less educated and less wealthy among us. And instead of using this opportunity to vent my displaced anger, it becomes a chance to talk with someone with whom Jesus and the entire Bible give a preferential option: the poor and powerless.

Instead of seeing telemarketers, or anyone else in the same circumstances, as an aggressor or pest, wouldn’t I do better to see them as someone who very well may need a good word? Instead of seeing my annoyance, can I see their personhood - someone who deserves respect and affirmation?

Who are the tax collectors (or telemarketers) in your life?

How do you treat them?

How might God be calling us to do better?

When Etienne Martin was 12, and the Germans came to occupy his hometown of Bordeaux, France, he and his friends decided they would not idly sit by. Because they knew the city so well, and the occupiers didn't, they were able to move around almost freely at night, hiding from guards and doing incredibly destructive things to German vehicles.

Specifically, Etienne and his friends liked to put things in gas tanks: water, urine, sand, metal shavings - anything to foul up the car's engine.

Yes, we don't need to remind anyone here in the Motor City of an automobile's need for refueling, specific fueling; gasoline, Diesel fuel, and now electricity. Automobile makers clearly communicate the exact kind of fuel that's needed to make the vehicle functional. Cars don't run well on orange juice, Maple syrup, or Diet Coke - no matter how many Mentos you add...

This Sunday you and I will hear a familiar parable Jesus uses to tell his disciples about their need to pray. After all, prayer is the Christian's fuel.

It's our regular act of talking with God, reflecting and meditating, in which we take in the values, goals, and ambitions, indeed the image of the Most High, knowing that the more connected we stay with God, the more likely we are to find our own wholeness, to do God's will, to lead altruistic and contented lives.

Of course the problem arises when we put other things into our tanks, when we think that we will run optimally on things that are not recommended by the manufacturer.

So when Jesus talks about our need to pray, we can ask ourselves, how are we fueling our tanks?

What are we letting in and what are we keeping out?

How might we put more of the right fuel into our souls?

My friend Diana tells the story of a college friend who seemed to have everything.

She came from a wealthy family, went to private schools, had a great wardrobe, and was very popular. Yet over time Diana noticed how often this woman would complain. She did not get the perfect grades she wanted at school. The man she was dating was not popular enough. Her wardrobe was never right. And on and on.

Eventually Diana and her rich friend parted company, and soon after Diana came upon some research that talked about headwinds and tailwinds.

Tailwinds are those blessings we have that we have a hard time remembering, our wealth, education, status, etc. Our headwinds are the challenges that beset us, often with our careers, our families, our finances, etc. And research finds that we are much more apt to pay attention to the headwinds than the tailwinds, often to our demise.

This may have been the case in Sunday's gospel, when 10 lepers approached Jesus asking to be healed, Jesus heals them all, sending them to the high priest, who has the authority to readmit them into society. Curiously, only one of the 10 return to Jesus, and a Samaritan at that. Jesus, then lifts up a lesson about the importance of paying attention to our tailwinds.

Many of us are more than familiar with the scientific research on gratefulness, that grateful people have lower blood pressure, sleep sounder, are more resilient when faced with adversity, etc. - this, as we fight forces around us that would have us pay more attention to our adversitties than our blessings.

So perhaps we are being asked,

What are our tailwinds?

How often do we remember them and thank God for them?
What might I do this week to more regularly take note of these blessings?

Board up the windows, empty the basement, and head for the hills: there is a storm coming.

This is the mood, of course, across Southwest Florida as Hurricane Ian bears down, set to wreak multi-billion dollar damage upon a typically serene Florida coastline. Our hearts and prayers go out to those whose lives and livelihoods are in danger, especially the poor and vulnerable who most often fare worst.

But the idea of weathering a storm is not just a challenge facing Floridians.

In our own places, in our own ways, each of us is weathering a storm or two of our own. We have bodies that are ailing, friends who are suffering, jobs that don't fulfill, and relationships that are far from perfect. And no one is immune to the general societal apathy, negativity, discouragement, and anxiety that pervades our every day.

How do we endure our storms?

This was at the heart of a question the disciples brought to Jesus in this Sunday's gospel when they asked him to, “Increase our faith!"

Jesus gives a response that assumes the disciples already know the answer - which is to draw closer to Jesus:

Make God a bigger part of our lives.

Adopt God's point of view over our own, seeking to see the world through the eyes of the Divine.

When Jesus responds to the disciples by asking them to command a 'mulberry tree to throw itself into the sea,' he gives them something absurdly impossible.

Well guess what?

Having faith that our storms will pass, may also seem absurdly impossible.

But, how often are we reminded, that with God, nothing is impossible.

No matter what we’re facing, we are not here alone, we are not forgotten, we are part of a bigger picture, well-known and well-loved by our Creator - and that our end will always be in God.

As my young daughter once reminded me, ’There’s no place we can go where God isn’t.'

So may God grant our wish, to increase our faith, that the storms we face may be weathered with grace, that we might live on to help bring others through theirs.

In high school my friend drove a bunch of us to Florida for Spring Break in his family's convertible.

After we arrived we used the car every day to get to the beach and cruise the local strip. It was at that point the 'Check Engine ' warning on the dashboard began to light up. My friend, paying more attention to the fun we were having than the oil we were burning, paid no mind to the bright red warning. That is, until he had to.

Yes, we had run out of oil.

Yes, the engine block had cracked.

Yes, the car was damaged beyond repair.

We had to rent a car to get home.

Nobody's parents were happy.

Not paying attention to warning lights can do that - which is at the heart of Sunday's Gospel and that well-known story of the Rich Man and a poor beggar named Lazarus.

Here we witness the blinding power of wealth and comfort, privilege and prestige, as the Rich Man heartlessly ignores the beggar at his doorstep.

It reminds us of the ways we can get caught up in our own personal pursuits of fulfillment and contentment that we forget others - those who may be sick, impoverished, addicted, even tortured and enslaved.

We, too, can get lulled into the popular belief that the reason for our prosperity is our own personal contentment, when the reality is that those with 'much' have a moral duty to care for those with 'less.' This is why we have it. This is what we're supposed to do with it.

So what lights are going off on our dashboard?

Is someone waving a red flag?

Are we getting too caught up in ourselves to notice those who are hurting around us?

What might we do about that?

After working for 10 years as a cowboy and two years studying herbal medicine with the Hopi Native Americans, Clark Stanley was ready to launch a new business.

Clark said he had discovered a product with incredible healing properties. It was suitable for the treatment of a wide variety of maladies from arthritis to back pain, frost bite to mosquito bites.

After setting up manufacturing plants on the East coast, Clark figured the best way to market his new discovery was to personally sell it, going from town to town in a covered wagon emblazoned with the company name: Clark Stanley's Snake Oil.

Naive purchasers lined up to hear Clark's convincing pitch. He often employed a shill, or a paid audience member, who would tout the product's miraculous powers to increase sales. And the great advantage of a covered wagon was that, come nightfall, things could be easily packed up and Clark could be out of town and on the road, before anyone could figure out that his product did not soothe, cleanse, heal, or do anything it promised to do.

Today the term 'snake oil' is synonymous with deceptive business practices or products (after all, the original snake oil was nothing more than doctored up mineral oil), and refers to things that just can't live up to its promises.

This Sunday, we will hear Jesus describe something like that - only it's not medicine, it's money.

'Dishonest wealth' is a term we will hear not once, but twice, along with its incumbent allusions - that money can't do what it's cracked up to do. In our culture wealth promises security, popularity, contentment, comfort, and stress-free living.

In fact, we are constantly hearing subtle and not so subtle messages that if we just had a bit more money for this possession or that experience, then we would find the happiness, security, status, acceptance, and fulfillment for which we so deeply yearn.

Jesus wants to remind us that all those things are attainable, but they're only attainable through God.

'Seek first the things that are above, not the things that are below,' says St. Paul. Time and again our faith urges us to put people over stuff - to put aside the temptations that push us towards seeking our security or contentment in anything other than God.

And so we ask:

What's the Snake Oil in our lives?

What are the false promises we're buying into?

And how is God urging us to try something else?

We recently set up a gravestone exhibit on our back lawn here at church to help us count the number of victims of gun violence in Oakland County this year - we are trying to make ourselves more compassionate and mindful of our neighbors who fall victim to, what has been called a national epidemic.

What struck a lot of people was observing the large number of folks in our community who died by suicide. We venture to say these are folks who were in pain, who perhaps felt hopeless, all alone, people Jesus may have called lost.

This Sunday we will hear Jesus talk more about the lost.

These are those who, for whatever reason, are not where they are supposed to be, not where they want to be, not in a comfortable, safe place - they are worried, troubled, don't know where to go, and can't find their way anyhow.

Sure, they are the suicidal, the drunks, the addicts, the thieves, and prostitutes, but they are also parents, students, businessman, and nurses - all of us who wander from the Shepherd's path, choosing our own way instead of God's.

Getting lost happens to us all, and God has something very profound to say about that.

God says,

'I have not forgotten you.

'You have not slipped my mind.

'On the contrary, your predicament is my obsession:

'I am currently working overtime to get you out of your jam.

;Like a Shepherd who leaves 99 sheep behind, to chase after the Lost One, hang on.

'I'm looking for you and I'm determined to find you.'

So friends, don't give up.

Don't lose hope.

Your contentment is God's mission.

You're thriving is God's intent.

Your restoration is God's goal.

You are sought after.

You will be found.

You are worth all of God's time and energy to find.

Chris Yaw

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Steve at the Jordan

Snowflakes and the Second Coming

Compare Downward

It's Not What You Carry...

Why Love My Enemy?

Tax Collectors and Telemarketers

What's in Your Tank?

Headwinds VS Tailwinds

Handling Storms

Warning Lights

Snake Oil

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