​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Advent III, Year B
December 19, 2021
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
When I read Deacon Karulyn’s reflection for the week, it shot me back to clear and vivid memory.  Our daughter, Emily, was a toddler and our son, Sam, was about six months old.  I was serving at St. Luke’s in downtown Atlanta, and Janice at a school-based health clinic in southeast Atlanta.  To say that logistics were complicated is an understatement.  Janice left at the crack of dawn, so mornings were mine to get us all out of the house and to our respective places for the day.  Feed the kids, dress the kids, pack the diaper bag, and bottles, and extra clothes (Sam was a hurler).  Emily also needed extra clothes for something called messy play (which I call daily life), lunch, and a signed off daily report from the day before.  Then we loaded the car buckled the car seat and infant bucket.  Sam went to his child care center, and Emily went to hers, which of course, were not in the same place.  God help us if one or both got sick or I forgot something for the field trip or teacher appreciation day.
 
That is just the context for the memory, and this where Karulyn’s reflection on the ear worm struck a literal chord.  As soon as we were underway, the cry came from Emily: “Nooosic!”  Thus, ours was a singing commute.  The soundtrack came from a cassette tape called Wee Sing.  Wee Sing is a panoply of Bible songs sung by cute young voices.  The first 10 times it is cute… it can get annoying.  The big favorite was the very same song as our Deacon’s.  I got the joy joy, joy, joy, down in my heart, and then comes the call and response.  Daddy: Where?  Emily: Down in my heart.  Daddy: Where?  Emily: Down in my heart.  And on and on as nauseum.  The tune would stick with me all day.
 
I will never forget one warm spring morning with the windows open and pollen haze in the air, at the long light at Ponce de Leon and Peachtree, when we were doing our 4,335th run through of the duet.  Mid joy, joy, joy, I looked to my right and a woman was looking at me, thumbs up, laughing hysterically.  Then, she sang along.  She chose to get that joy, joy, joy, down in her heart.
 
This is a long way of saying that the refrains of our brains can be valuable reminders of our faith.  This is that season.  Lots of refrains echo in our memory:  O Come O come Emmanuel, Hark, the Herald Angels Sing! All the greatest hits.  Even shopping has a holiday soundtrack as market tested tunes nudge us toward jolly generosity.  Not all memories are happy, that travels with us too.  In that way, the season can mix up our emotions.  None of them are good or bad, they just are. 
 
Before we move from joy to love (flip) this fourth season of advent, I am reminded of a helpful quotation.  The Dali Lama gets credit for this, but it is lodged deeply in many wisdom traditions.  It is this: “Suffering is inevitable.  Misery is optional.  Joy is a choice.”  Notice that it does not say happiness is a choice.  Then happiness movement is big business.  And it leans toward something real called toxic positivity.  I find so called self-help mantras to be neither about myself, or particularly helpful.  There are scads of titles about happiness.  For joy, we need to go to the Religion and Spirituality section.  Joy is deeper, and can be experienced even in grief.  Joy is about loving, and loving hard.  Joy and love are the twin engines of whole-hearted living.  Both have verbal roots.  They are actions.  And they are a choice.
 
Today, with the fourth candle lit serving as count down we see that Jesus’ birthday comes next.  Our eyes are set on Bethlehem, but we are not yet there.  In fact, we take one last detour, to Cousin Elizabeth’s house, where Mary goes from Nazareth to Hebron, an 81-mile walk, 27 miles out of the way toward Bethlehem.  Clearly, that is a choice, and given her condition, an inconvenient one, at that.
 
Luke opens with the line “In those days Mary set out and went with haste” to visit her extended family.  Word reached her that Cousin Elizabeth, who was way past her childbearing years, was also expecting a child.  This was the other miracle baby.  In that culture, the expectation of birth was cause for public celebration and in Elizabeth’s case, a sign and wonder of God’s doing.  But for Mary, not so much.  An unmarried pregnancy was the opposite: a scandal bringing shame on her family and her family to be.  By law, her seemingly scorned husband to be could have her stoned to death to save face.  Joseph chose not to exercise that right.  While he is a largely silent character, that one crucial choice is lodged in love for Mary, for the child, and for God.
 
Given that fact, it is no wonder that Mary made haste to get out of Nazareth, away from prying eyes, away from grumbles of condemnation, away from human judgement of what she knew in her heart that God was doing.  When she proclaims the Magnificat (My soul proclaims the Lord… the whole thing), the traditional Song of Mary, she does not submit it in writing, nor are all the words hers.  In fact, they are assembled from Psalms, the Book of Daniel and other radical Old Testament prophecies.  Mary is not doing her own thing; she is connecting her condition with a deeply held belief that God is not finished with the world.  Far from being a potted plant, a holy pawn, Mary despite all appearances and social mores, chooses not to be miserable, she chooses to be joyful.  Her change in geography reflects her decision to move toward celebration instead of wallowing in condemnation.  What better place to be than with family and a fellow miraculous child bearer?
 
Along with John the Baptist in utero, and Elizabeth and Mary and all the other celebrants, despite all appearances to the contrary in a world of pain and suffering, we catch a vision of our own opportunity of choice.  Other more modern prophets riff on this theme as Professor Dumbledore tells Harry Potter “It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”  The legendary basketball coach, told his players “The choices you make in life, make you.”  And, even, the fictional soccer coach, Ted Lasso, draws on the greats, saying, “choices are chances fellas.”
 
Joy and love are choices, and those abstract words are, really, actions.  If there is any earworm we need in journey of now, it is this: Suffering is inevitable, misery is optional.  Joy is a choice.  With Joseph and Mary and Elizabeth, with shepherds and angels and seers men from the East, with coaches and coworkers, with children and check-out clerks we have every chance to choose what we make this life.  The choice is ours and no matter what we do, or what we do not do, God has already chosen us.  Amen.

​Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Advent III, Year B
December 12, 2021
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
On a regular basis, people ask about my calling to ordained ministry.  I will admit that I really do not mind the question, but the answer is much longer and circuitous than some might expect.  I do not have a one-paragraph version.  I do not have a flash of light, God speaking out of a sunset, or slain in the Spirit moment to describe.  My story is more like a rising tide of awareness, a series of doors that kept opening, and a wrestling match with the twenty-three-year-old not quite fully developed brain trying to make sense of who I wanted to be.  I had checked off my plans: an Eagle Scout rank with Troop 4, Athens, Georgia, high school diploma, Athens Academy, a collegiate level varsity letter in Soccer, and a BA in English, with a focus on poetry, The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, including two summers of study at St. John’s College, Oxford.  Along the way, I had worked as a whitewater raft guide, a paralegal, and a clerk/driver for the twelfth Bishop of Virginia. 
 
While I am grateful for an amazing education that pushed me to think critically, interact with certain kinds of people, and write reasonably well, all of this was great, but what I never considered realistically was: great for what?  There followed young adult despair and angst.  With good counsel from some trusted friends and mentors, I was called back to the one constant of my whole life: a lively and curious faith.  Faith was more important in driving me than all the credentials I chased.  In time, I realized that as crazy as the Episcopal Church, or any church can be, these we are my people.  The Church had formed me and I was invited to faith my way -- yes that is a verb – to faith my way through an ordination process.  And the rest happened.  From childhood into so-called adulthood, through marriage, ordination, raising two children, and all the ups and downs of life, I have lived in twelve different places in six different dioceses.  Fortunately for me, Janice is resourceful and agile in her vocation and outlook.  In all of that, when anyone asks me where home is, the best answer I can give is Church. 
 
That is a lot of long sentences that leave out the nitty gritty of life, occasions of profound joy, and my share of trauma, misfires, and failure. Nevertheless, that is shortest answer I can give about my experience of calling.  The best summary I can give is that you know in your knowing place when you know, you know?  That is how we all shape our lives, choose with whom we live our lives, and what we do to sustain our lives.  Logic plays some part, but illogic works in us too.  Faithing is important. 
 
While much of God’s calling is the steady backbeat of life, today we hear super loud calling with the ringer turned up loud and the vibrate setting in earthquake mode.  Our annual Advent guide, John the Baptist, upstages the scene and commands our attention.  At first, he seems like a crazy, ranting relative.  In fact, John is a crazy, ranting, but holy relative.  Let’s play the ‘who are your people’ game for a minute…  John’s mother is Elizabeth gave birth to him long after her child rearing biological clock had stopped ticking, which places him he is among the small club of miracle babies in the Bible This is the biblical version of a flashing red light, saying “pay attention!”  John’s father is Zechariah, a Jewish priest, which lends to the stereotype of priest’s kids tending toward a rebellious walk on the wild side.  And as it happens, Elizabeth is Jesus’s mother’s cousin, making John is Jesus’s second cousin on his mother’s side.  As to familial relations of Jesus’s father’s side, it’s complicated.  The family tree there is more like kudzu.
 
No matter how prickly the package, John’s really zeroes in on the heart and soul of calling.  It is not about pedigree: “Do not say ‘we have Abraham as our ancestor.’”  It is not about intellectual accomplishment, status, or station.  He says that God’s calling is not a philosophical ascent, an intellectual exercise, or something earned as an accomplishment.  When the people ask what they should do, he tells them to be givers and not takers, being satisfied rather than seeking more through positional leverage.
 
Be careful not to use the last paragraph about wheat kernels being separated from the and husks as some form of transactional judgement.  It is not about the good folks being the kernels, and the bad folks being the chaff.  We are all of it: the whole plant.  We all have the kernel, the seed, the DNA.  We all have the self-protective detritus that is no longer useful.  The work is allowing God to do the threshing, to slough off our outer coating, and get to the heart of matters – moving with God’s heart beat.
 
The last line is almost comedic.  After all the talk of axes at the tree, and burning in unquenchable fire, Luke adds this “So, with many other exhortations [John] proclaimed the good news to the people.”  What sounds like hard news is, really, Good News.  This business of ministry is not business at all.  The profit and loss statement is all profit. This what the prophet sees. 
 
As we live out this season in anticipation of gentle Jesus meek and mild, born in a lowly stable with looing cattle, bathrobed shepherds, and the boychoir anthems as the heavenly host, we must know that Jesus is not a cooing little child for long.  While he comes gently, he comes with the force of a storm, not a sunset.  Our calling is not to do holy, it is to be with Jesus.
 
Faithing is a verb, but our doing is not about earning anything or posing as anyone we are not.  God is perfectly capable of being God, even when we run off in on our own.  In God, there is no call waiting.  Living whole heartedly, out of the heart of who we are, out of who we are created to be, is the calling, is true fulfillment, and is our only. real. home.  Amen. 

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Advent II, Year B
December 5, 2021
The Rev. John Taliaferro Thomas
 
If you have been a child, or been around child, grandchild, of young person left in your charge, it is likely that you have encountered the Where’s Waldo books.  For the uninitiated, the Waldo empire is a vast library of 27 books that began as Where’s Wally in the U.K., and went international with Where’s Waldo about 20 titles ago.  There is no complex plot or character development.  There are not many words.  Each page is a wildly ornate and animated scene.  A jungle, a circus, Sydney, London, Paris… and somewhere in the cornucopia of busyness, Waldo is hiding in plain sight.  The task is to find Waldo and move on to the next scene.  I lost the find Waldo race with my children several times, but I think they studied ahead of time.  Apples do not fall far from the tree.
 
Waldo does have a particular look, with his trademark red and white sweater and matching toboggin hat, and he should be easy to find, but alas the pictures are so busy and detailed. Waldo can be obscured in a field of red tulips or among the bright lights of a Hollywood movie set.  You get the picture, or maybe not.  It depends on how long and how closely you look.
 
The book series is delightful and teaches children how to be observant, to pay attention to detail, and differentiate between patterns and shapes.  The scenes from everyday places as well as iconic or historic places reminds us that not all we see at first is all there is to see.  And as I have quoted the British rocker, Rod Stewart, before: “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?”
 
As we embark on a new year in the Church, we move from last year’s following of Mark’s picture of Jesus, to following Luke’s illustration.  Whereas Mark is a just the facts kind of writer, Luke is a more flowery story teller.  No matter the year, we defer to Luke’s Christmas story with angels, shepherds, and all that.  Every year, I cannot help but hear Linus’s recitation of Luke’s narrative in A Charlie Brown Christmas.  It is hard to forget that image where he explains the real heart of the celebration, among the confusion of Snoopy’s high wattage dog house, and Charlie Brown’s despairingly sparse Christmas tree.  
 
This week’s reading may be familiar, especially if you are a Handel’s Messiah fan, but it is also an unusual outlier among the lexicon of Gospel stories.  Normally, a Gospel reading tells about and illustrates a particular picture of Jesus as he helps, heals, speaks in parables, and challenges the way things appear to be, over against the picture of God’s presence and action in real time.  But in this passage, where’s Jesus?  Today’s narrative does not include Jesus at all, or does it? 
 
Right of the bat, Luke provides a time stamp: a particularly and agonizingly difficult to pronounce set of names of those in notable power positions in a particular moment of history.  Luke’s audience knows that time well.  It was a time of great tribulation and oppression for their people.  And for Luke’s people, the times are even worse.  They are wondering “where is our God?”  Psalms 42, 79, and 115, bring that question to their regular worship.
 
Luke’s narrative cuts through the busyness of human machination and points to John the Baptist, saying that even in this present mess: “the Word of God comes to John.”  And here’s the tricky part: the Word does not come from John.  The Word is already there.  The Word comes through John, as he brings their well-known Isaiah prophecy right into the present.  John points to Jesus as being in the picture already and not yet.  Though Jesus is not there, Jesus is there as the Word.  Get the picture?  Yeah, sometimes I don’t get it either.  We do not sit easy with mystery.
 
This John the Baptist character as a wild man who gets it, but doesn’t get it.  John speaks the truth, but he is so odd and off putting with his rage, his hairy poncho, and fire and brimstone vocabulary.  His vision of Savior is not gentle.  It is one of retribution and fiery redemption.  At least he talks a good forgiveness game.  At least he gets that right.  Signs are not reality.  Signs point to reality.
 
On the surface, John’s drama makes for the ideal Hollywood prequel to the Jesus story, but Luke doesn’t set him in the beginning of the story.  Luke puts John the Baptist in his picture after the author’s trademark nativity story, after Jesus and his folks moved back to Nazareth, after the child Jesus appears in the Temple and astounds them with his precocious teaching.  Then, Luke looks back to the Baptizer in the Wilderness, as if to say: See! See, Jesus was there all the time.  This is not the new plan, this is THE plan, that has been here from the very beginning.  Get the picture?  With a little context, it makes more sense.
 
We are still gazing at this picture not because in falls into an interesting historical moment, but because we are part of Luke’s audience.  Through time and space, we are part of Luke’s curious community, and we wonder, along with them, “Where is our God?”
 
Now is a moment in our history, where Ralph Northam is governor of the Commonwealth, with Glenn Youngkin about to succeed him; where Michael is the Presiding Bishop, and Susan and Jennifer and Porter are our Bishops.  Perhaps, even in our convoluted wrestling with ideas, issues, and theology, we might look past the clutter and ask: “Where is Jesus?”  Are there signs pointing us toward him that we have breezed by without notice?  Where is Jesus in Greenhouse, Mudhouse, or the Harris Teeter?  Jesus is there, just like Waldo in those books.  Where is he?  Maybe Jesus is obscured in the aching bones of a package deliverer, in the tenacity of a young mom with kids in a racecar shopping cart, or even in the invisible frailties of the person sitting next to you right now.  When we look for Jesus, we are more likely to see Jesus.  We we love, we are more able to love more. 
 
The Gospel is not a quaint bedtime story or a game of hide and seek.  The Gospel is a picture of God, with a picture of us laid right over it, like one of those old overhead transparencies.  God is right here in the picture that is of us.  Can’t find God?  Keep looking, watching, or waiting.  As we look with hope, with faith, and with love, God is not hidden at all.  God is in plain sight.   Instead of asking “What would Jesus do?," ask "What is Jesus doing?"