Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Advent IV, Year A
December 22, 2019
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
This is the only time of year that I really look forward to going to the mailbox.  During the rest of the year, the box is filled with waxy advertisements, bills, and things pretending to be personal letters that are trying to sell me insurance or a reverse mortgage.  But this time of year, we receive missives from the far reaches of the many places we have lived, from dear friends, and family we do not see as much as we would like.  It is good time to catch up and correct our address list.  It is a good time to remember good times and important connections through the years.  And of course, we love to see the family photos.  Aside from big funerals and weddings, this is our most connective time of year.
 
Inevitably, we receive a number of Christmas letters: you know, those narrative annual family biographies that catalog fabulous trips, successful children, and over achieving grandchildren.  My dear friend, first boss, and mentor, The Rev. Dr. Matt Currin used to write his unabashedly proud letter about his life, ministry, and family, until the year he died.  He devoted a paragraph to his dear wife, and one for each of his three sons and their families.  All of them received completely glowing accolades.  The final paragraph, he wrote about himself, but he maintained the third person voice as if some outside reporter had crafted the letter.  It would go something like this:  “This year, Matt has finished a new book on the history of the parish, exceeded all stewardship goals, quit smoking (again), and lost over three inches on his waist.  He continues to be a leader as the senior clergy person and longest serving rector in the diocese.”  Of course, I teased him unmercifully, about his style and revisionist perspective.  I called it ‘the epistle from the holy family of Pensacola.’
 
I should not cast too many stones here.  I have written such letters and attempted to hit the high points of our family life.  At Thanksgiving for many years, we have shined up the kids, brushed up the dogs, and made ourselves look merry and bright for the annual Christmas card shoot.  Many of you have done the same, as you should, for we have much to celebrate in gratitude.
 
But let’s not fool ourselves.  We all know that just before that tie got tied or that hair was perfectly arranged, there were threats, arguments about wardrobe, and endless retakes while the turkey and stuffing got cold.  He pinched her, she punched him, the dog had just thrown up a piece of a deer carcass, and we could not figure out how to work that ten second camera delay so that last person to make it into the picture.  And if we wrote the letter, in first second, or third person, we left out personal and professional disappointments, lackluster grades, theater parts not received, and the inevitable college rejection letters that go along with the acceptances.
 
Added to the normal pressures of life, we find ourselves in a driving narrative of curated perfection and achievement.  Tools that used to be reserved for glossy airbrushing magazine photographers are now simple apps, wherein glow can be enhanced and wrinkles can be faded through a simple filtered setting.
 
As we approach the beauty and grandeur of Christmas, we do find a whole tradition of art and imagery that is also glorified and scrubbed clean.  The Christmas card that we sent all of you depicts a perfectly pudgy Christ child, swaddled in bright white, and clean, full, and lively adoring faces.  We send and receive serene images of winter scenes and good wishes for peace on earth and good will to all absent any sense of rancor, division, or stress.  Such images transmit the beauty and calm we seek and that for which we hope and long.
 
And yet, our gospel story for today, reminds us that all was not calm, all was not bright, all was not neat, tidy, and perfect, at least not in the process of bringing God to earth in person.  As the story goes, Mary and Joseph were engaged, but not cohabiting.  Mary was found to be with child.  Scandal, impropriety, and shame generally followed such a discovery.  Ordinarily, Mary brought to account and, potentially, stoned publicly.  But Joseph was a good guy.  He conceived of a subtle and gentle separation.  But then, he had a dream, not a burning bush, a whirlwind, or a thunder from heaven, but a dream, telling them this child was of the Holy Spirit, fulfilling an ancient prophecy predicting the birth of God among all humanity.
 
We are so used to that part of the pageant that we underestimate how much of a load both Mary and Joseph had to bear publicly and privately.  They had plenty of friends and lots of extended family, as all people did, and they were not learning of this from annual letters or curated photos, they were all around them.  Can you imagine Joseph telling his buddies at the carpenter shop that Mary’s baby was of the Holy Spirit?  Yeah, right, tell us another one Joseph.
 
Matthew starts this telling with the heads up “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.”  And Matthew is particular about the no marital relations business right there in the Bible. And this getting married anyway, is what we would call a shotgun wedding.  This is not all beatific looking, is all really messy.  That’s right, the way Jesus the Messiah, that glowing little Christ cherub came to be in the world was and is a matter of biological impossibility, even for the first century folk who definitely knew where babies came from.  It took a leap of faith, hard questioning, and deeply embarrassing appearances that had to be maintained and sustained against all standard and acceptable practices and norms.  Our Holy Family was stuck together with bailing twine and duct tape on the hope of a dream and a revelation to Mary that no one else saw or understood.  And that is where God is, right there in the messiness of unknowing and questionable provenance.
 
We are right there with them too.  We are not Hallmark people and our homes are not those of Martha Stewart or Real Simple design.  The God of all creation -- the God who sees us, seeks us, and saves us -- comes to us and lives among us in the context of all kinds of crazy circumstances.  We are not perfect, and we are not called to be perfect, rather we are being brought to perfection because God loves us enough to meet us where we are.
 
On Advent IV, the Sunday before Christmas, we might as well go ahead and curate imperfection as much as we seek to look good on the outside.  It is not only ok to embrace the messiness of life, it is right in line with the story we so revere.  As we gaze on those beautiful families who send us greetings, as we hear of fabulous vacations, and milestones attained, we do well to remember that we are all a mixed bag of holiness and humanity.  There is always a backstory that is more complicated than we see.  It was true for Mary and Joseph.  It is embedded in the one called Emmanuel – God with us.  It is our story too. 

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Advent 2, Year A
December 8, 2019
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
As the sunlight faded on the Friday after Thanksgiving, a few of us were here preparing for a David and Arline’s wedding.  As we discussed details, four young people came in the front door of the church.  I assumed that they were coming for the wedding, but they were not dressed for it.  As they entered, I greeted them and introduced myself. 
 
One of them said “We saw the lights on, and this beautiful church, and decided to stop.  Is it ok if we come in and look around?”
 
“Of course,” I said, and then asked them about themselves.  It turns out they had met up in Charlottesville to carpool back to college at American University in DC.  What struck me was how at ease they were together and in talking with me, a perfect stranger, in a collar.  Not only that, they looked like a poster for the United Nations.  One was white and blonde, another was black, another was Asian, and another was Hispanic.  I inquired further and they said they were all friends from school and of different faiths.  And finally, I asked, “What made you stop here?”
 
“Well,” one of them said, “we were are headed back to school to take exams, we have been with our families for several days, and we all agreed that we needed to seek a little peace.” 
 
At that, I told them to seek away and left them to wander.  They came up front and looked back at the organ.  They walked up to the altar and looked up, wide eyed, and out the window.  They stood silently for a time and then talked quietly among themselves, and after a few minutes they thanked me for the welcome.  I walked them outside and paused with them to ask a prayer for God’s peace and blessing on their journey and they headed back to college.
 
Now, I am not much of a magical thinker, but I am just mystic enough to believe God sends us messengers on our journey of faith.  After I had spent the week before reading somewhat dismal Pew Research statistics on young people and their relative disaffiliation with faith, in come these really diverse young people seeking peace – in church!  Reflecting back, I was reminded that Church really does have something crucial to offer our fragmented culture.  We make spaces for reflection, reconnection, and aspiration.  We offer a message of love, reconciliation, healing, and helping in a far too callous and sound bit pattern of public discourse.  For some good reason, the Spirit intervened in these young people’s lives and brought them here -- to receive a message of peace, but also to remind me of its sticking power and importance.
 
In making this journey through Advent, we hover in the already but not yet-ness of God’s interaction with the world.  The reason we slow it down is to listen.  And this week’s lessons are all about listening to some of God’s messengers.  Isaiah talks about a shoot or sprout coming out of the long left for dead legacy of the great King David.  St. Paul echoes the Isaiah text and gives the persecuted church in Rome a pep talk on believing in the future even if things seem dark and difficult.  And then we get to John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness.  He is not the kind of guy you want at your family dinner party as lays waste to anyone who believes their family, tribe, nation, or particularized theology guarantees them a spot on God’s good side, automatically.   John’s rant sets up a future where the world to come is turned inside out and upside down.  He is right about the radical thing God will do in sending Jesus.  But the Holy One he predicts we will come to know is not exactly what he portends.   John is a little harsh about that God’s judgment and notably short of God’s grace, but hey, he is on a roll, and he gets everyone’s attention.  He is a messenger, but he is not the message.
 
When I was an undergraduate college student at the University of the South, we had this crusty old athletic trainer that had been there for at least 60 years.  He was not of the modern sports medicine ilk of athletic trainer, he was of the rub your ankle, tape you up tight, and put you back in the fight kind of athletic trainer.  He was more like a combat medic than anything.  Nevertheless, he was legendary.  He had recalled when our little division three college was a football powerhouse in the South (In 1899, Sewanee went 12 and 0, beating Texas A&M, Texas, Tulane, LSU, and Ole Miss in the span of six days… and as the story goes, on the seventh day, they rested).  As much as our trainer took care of athletes, he was also a teller of stories and a keeper of history.
 
Inevitably, sportswriters and students would ask the trainer about the most important game the University ever played.  With an encyclopedic knowledge of the past, eyewitness experience, and generations of contests he had seen, without hesitation he would say;  “The most important game for the University is the one coming up.”  He may have been nostalgic, but he was also practical.  Every season, on just about every team, that message was delivered like a mantra.  The most important challenge we face is the one coming up.
 
It is not a long leap to apply this to the messengers of Advent.  While they are rooted in a rich and deep tradition of covenant worship of the living God, they tell us that God is about to do a new thing.  In the person and work of Jesus, God grabs hold of us, showing us different ways to think about power, different ways to live in faith, and challenging ways to be people of love.
 
We worship in a parish that began meeting in 1860.  The buildings were built over time, and renovated over more time.  There have been 19 rectors.  Some stayed only a few years because the money was not there.  Others stayed for many years and ministered through generations of people.  Even though they have long since moved on Marston and LaRue and are folks many of our people remember.  I feel a kinship with them already as I have read their stores and memoirs.  Together with Mulally and Garcia, they are part of our story and part of our history. And that is just the clergy.  George Ellinger is 106 years old and living in Waynesboro.  He was a local realtor and Senior Warden in 1942… and about 30 years after that!  This was before term limits.
 
The messengers of Advent: the young people who came here seeking peace last weekend, the prophets of old, the gospel of now – all of them urge us to a deeper and most important purpose.  Our mission is to seek, serve, and glorify God in Christ in the world that is now and the world that is to come.  With past as prologue, we are the people God has at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in Greenwood, Virginia.  Our message is that of peace, healing, and help for a broken world so desperately in need of God’s grace.  It is good work.  It is God’s work.  It is our work too.  Amen.

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Advent 1, Year A
December 1, 2019
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
For a number of years, we lived in Sewanee, Tennessee.  Sewanee is an interesting place.  It is a mix of Appalachia and academia with an Episcopal boarding school, an Episcopal liberal arts college, and an Episcopal seminary, all on top of a plateau in an impressive collection of gothic sandstone buildings.  The “Chapel” there rivals most cathedrals in its beauty.  The whole rhythm of the place flows the church year as much as the academic calendar.  I refer to it as the nations only Episcopal theme park.  It is almost too much at times.
 
While I was head of the prep school, we lived in this tight little community among undergraduates, professors, seminarians, and a reputable group of biblical and theological scholars.  Among them was the legendary The Rev. Dr. Robert Hughes, an immensely tall man with an Abe Lincoln beard and a stern visage.  Hughes taught New testament Bible and Preaching, but everyone there knew him as the chief of the Advent police force.
 
A little background:  Advent is our season before Christmas wherein we light candles and hear lessons of waiting and anticipation.  Unlike much of the culture, we do not do Christmas before Christmas.  We do simple greenery.  We keep it quiet and reflective. 
 
Dr. Hughes, the chief of the Advent police in Sewanee was deadly serious about observing Advent.  Our gospel lesson for today, Jesus warns “you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”  If you were an unsuspecting seminarian in Sewanee, you may be waiting for Jesus, but you would also be watching for Dr. Hughes.  That’s right, he drove around in seminary housing village, and if he saw the slightest little twinkly light, a red bow, or, God forbid, a Christmas tree, he would knock on the door and shout “Advent before Christmas.  ABC.”  Sometimes the second and third years would hide that fact from first year seminarians just to witness the spectacle.  I guess that is what passes for hazing in a seminary.
 
On this first Sunday of Advent, I am sure that many disciples of Dr. Hughes inhabit pulpits all across the Church, insisting that their congregations remember that Advent is a season of preparation and that Christmas is a 12 day season beginning on December 25 at the stroke of midnight.  I have colleagues who will not be putting up a tree until Christmas eve, and who will lambast those who do as cultural sell outs, claiming some Anglican high ground of liturgical and theological purity.
 
The basic point is a good one.  Advent is a reminder for us not to buy in, literally, to the hype, the noise, and all of the glittery sentimentality Hallmark has to sell us.  The way we observe the season is to slow it down, light a candle, pray expectant prayers, and make room in our lives for Jesus to be born anew.
 
That being the case, the Church’s voice should not be one of shame and rebuke.  We observe Advent with all due respect, anticipation, watching and waiting, but this is a great moment for us, Church folks, to welcome the culture that yearns for what we have to offer not just in this season, but for the whole year.  If the wider world recognizes that selfless giving is a virtue, this is a good thing.  If people want to crowd into our pews and take our usual places on Christmas Eve, it stands as our opportunity to be welcoming and loving and encouraging.
 
A recent Pew Research study finds that more people than ever do not identify themselves as Christian.  Given the way some Christians judge, exclude, and act hypocritically, this is understandable.  I suspect that this survey reveals that more loosely affiliated folks are willing to admit their skepticism where they might not have before, and that is not such a bad thing.  As a thinking person’s Church, we have an amazing opportunity in this season.  With the searching, serving, and saving life and work of Jesus to proclaim and emulate, we have a great gift to offer a self-centered, callous, and cynical culture.  Wielding all manner of technology that is supposed to bring us together, we are more and more isolated and anonymous feeling than ever.  But what we do here is a profoundly low-tech antidote as we gather, love, pray, and care for one another.
 
In our inaugural Advent collect today we prayed:  “Almighty God give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.”  Those are powerful words that stand the test of time and stand out as a clarion call for us.  In this season where the physical darkness is longer and darker, in a time when dark deeds and motives are as part of the daily news cycle, and in a season where the darkness of depression and anxiety is most prevalent, twinkly lights are a nice reminder that all of the darkness there ever was cannot stand against the light of God’s grace.
 
If you are of the purist Episcopractice and hold fast to a strict Advent observance, go ahead and you be you.  But for God’s sake, let our message to the world not be one of scorn or indifference to those who seek to come in from the cold.  Because Jesus birth brings us joy, we will tell that story.  Because God chooses to come among us a human, we can know God and live closer and closer to God’s will for our lives.
 
As a young man, I was a Boy Scout.  And one of the adventures my troop made was to spend two days caving in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee.  For two whole days, we were enveloped in total darkness, squeezing through caverns and listening to the dripping sounds of water as the only background noise.  As an anxious and somewhat paranoid youth, I was deathly afraid of the dark and of cramped spaces, but part of being a scout was making tackling such fears in the company of others.  I will never forget waking up in the middle of the night, unable to see anything with my eyes wide open.  But when I switched on my tiny penlight, it pierced the darkness and chased away most of my fears.
 
Light has that power.  And we are sent to be light and life for the world in the name of Jesus.  And so we begin our Advent again.  Don’t tell Dr. Hughes and the Advent Police on this priest, but as for me and my house, we are putting up some twinkly lights this afternoon – casting away the works of darkness and putting on the armor of light.  Amen.