Is It Christmas Yet?

The texts for Christmas Eve can be found by clicking here.

Eve of the Nativity of Our Lord, Year B

December 24, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

While they were there, the time for came for her to deliver her child.  (Matthew 2:6)

The time has been fulfilled.  The waiting is over.  A child is born.

In the family and house that I grew up in, Christmas began on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  While much of the rest of the world was out shopping or watching football games, in the Caddell household “Black Friday” was the day that we pulled all the decorations down from the attic.  There was no time to waste.  Box after box was brought down, one after another, and soon the living room was filled with dusty boxes. 

In my family, the entire day was spent putting it all out.  There were lights to be put out, Santa Claus figures and nutcrackers to be placed where they go, stockings to be hung, and nativity scenes to be arranged.  There were garlands and bows to be strung and wreaths to be hung.  And, of course, there were the Christmas trees.

In the house that I grew up in, we had five…one in the formal living room, one in the den, a tall skinny one in the breakfast room, and one in both my sister’s and my bedroom.

My family (or my mother) really liked Christmas decorations.

By the end of the day, all the decorations were up, and at the Caddell household, it was Christmas…well, sort of Christmas.

For a young boy growing up in this household, all that early decorating seemed to make time stand still.  For the next month I would be surrounded by Christmas, but it was not yet here.  Packages began to appear under the tree, and I had such a reputation for sneaking around, sizing up and shaking packages, that one year my mother used a coded number system to label the packages so that I couldn’t tell whose packages were whose.

The heightened anticipation was all a boy could stand. Growing up in that house, Christmas seemed to take an eternity to finally arrive.

Now that I am an adult, the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas seems to fly by and it is my own children that I watch who are shaking and sorting and sizing up packages.  They are the ones who ask, ‘how much longer until Christmas’?

Tonight we hear the story, once again, that we have heard so many times.  The Emperor has ordered a census, and Joseph and a very pregnant Mary travel from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea because Joseph is a descendent of the house of David.  And while they are there, the time comes for Mary to have her baby.  The baby is born in the lowliest of places simply because there was no other place for them to be.  Wrapped in bands of cloth and laid in a feeding trough, this new baby has arrived. 

The news is shared with some shepherds who were in a nearby field with their flocks.  An angel appears to them, tells them that a Savior has been born in the city of David.  They are to go and they will find this baby wrapped in cloth, lying in a manger.

The shepherds go, finding the scene exactly as the angel had described, and going out from that place they went about praising God and telling others what they had heard and seen.

The joy of Christmas is complete.  It has finally arrived and we rejoice.

That is the story we remember indeed, and one that I know we could never forget.  It’s been called “The most wonderful story ever told.” 

And yet, tonight is not just about remembering what happened so very long ago.  This isn’t just a story about what happened to Mary, or Joseph, or the shepherds.  It isn’t even a story simply about the birth of Jesus in a stable in Bethlehem of Judea.

It is our story, relived year after year, and one that has deep implications for our lives.

The miracle of this night, of course, is the Incarnation.  In Jesus, God becomes one of us. The Creator takes on the very nature of His creation.  Heaven and earth are joined in a very real and tangible way.

Isaiah’s words are fulfilled:

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness-on them light has shined…For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

One does not have to look very far to see a people who walk in darkness.  In the world and in our own lives it sometimes seems that darkness is all there is.  Brokenness and separation from God abound.  Our world is still racked by war.  Civilians and police are resorting to violence all too often.  And even in our personal lives, we know all too well the darkness that hides there. 

And into that darkness, a Savior is born.  The separation between God and humankind is broken down by the fulfillment of God’s promises.

This is not something that happens only in a stable for Mary and Joseph and the shepherds.  It is for us too…a child has been born for us.

While they were there, the time for came for her to deliver her child.  (Matthew 2:6)

The time has come.  The waiting is over.  A child is born.

As you look around you tonight, you see a church that is well decorated. The boxes that have been stored in the attic all year have been brought out.  The trees are up, garlands and wreaths are hung, the bows are tied, and the joy of Christmas is here.

The question is, is it?  Is it really here?

Tonight my prayer for you is that you, like a child, will long for Christmas.  That you will ask yourself, ‘how much longer will I wait’?

I pray that tonight will not be for you simply about a son born to Mary in the presence of Joseph and the shepherds.  That it will not be a savior born to them, but to us, to you.

I pray that by your presence here, in your seeing, you will know that the separation between you and God is no longer.  That in you dwells the very presence of God, longing for you, calling you into a closer and deeper relationship with him.

I pray that in a world full of confusion and pain you will see Christ’s light and allow it to be seen through you.  That you will choose to see and participate in God’s kingdom here on earth.

And finally I pray that you have a Merry Christmas!  That on this night a Savior is born to you and to me.  Amen.

From That Point Forward

The texts for the Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost can be found by clicking here.

Wheat in the Field

The texts for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost can be found here.

The Sixth Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 11, Year A

July 20, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

Good morning!

Before we jump into the texts we have placed in front of us this morning, I have something to tell you – I really missed you!

Truth be told, while I am grateful for the time away, I am glad to be back in my parish home and to see all of you this morning.  And even though he is taking a well-deserved Sunday off, I want to thank Fr. Larry for making it so easy to be away for a couple of weeks.  It is a gift to have Larry as a partner in ministry in this parish.

I also want you to know what a gift you are.  In my time away I visited three different churches ranging from a small rural parish in Northern Virginia to the Washington National Cathedral.  Not one of them had anything on this parish – Holy Spirit in Dripping Springs. 

I think it is important to be reminded of that every once in a while.  This place and the people of this parish are very much a gift to me just as you are a gift to each other.  There is no better place that you or I could be on this Sunday morning. 

So for me this week, it has been the return to a normal schedule and routine.  And for the most part, that has felt good and been welcome, but there is one thing, one part of my routine that I have not enjoyed coming home to.

Every morning as I ready myself to leave the house, I open an app on my phone that gives me audio snippets of the day’s headline news.  While I was away I dropped this habit, but as soon as I returned I picked it up again. 

The news comes from a variety of sources, and though they are very brief on detail, they always look to fill me in on the bad news that happened since I went to bed the night before.  Rarely, if ever, are the stories about good news.  It won’t surprise you that the stories I left behind are the same stories that I picked up two weeks later.

Gaza has fired more rockets into Israeli territory, and Israel responds with its own force.

Tensions escalate between Ukraine and Eastern Separatists as the US and Russia lob accusations of meddling in foreign affairs and intensifying the violence.

Meanwhile a passenger jet is shot down over Ukraine – who and why someone would do this is still under investigation.

Syria is still in crisis, as is Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. 

And in our own backyard – indeed in our own diocese – children are arriving on our border as refugees and our leaders in Washington seem to be at a stalemate on what to do or how to respond.

I’m sure you could add to this list, as could I, but these are the headlines around the world from this past week.  Not much has changed, and if I were to look back six months or a year ago, or even ten years ago, the locations might be different, but the sentiments would be the same.

What these snippets can’t tell me is the complexity of the issues that surround each of those headlines.  I can get a sense of it when the bias of one news company is heard against another, but even without that, I know there are no easy solutions.

Israel has a right to expect that it should be free from attack and defend itself when that right is violated. And yet many of the policies designed to ensure Israel’s safety are also extremely oppressive to the rights and freedoms of its neighbors.  Both Muslims and Christians suffer as a result of Israel’s walls, and border checkpoints, and economic sanctions.  And the result is that every so often that oppression emboldens radical extremists to commit senseless acts of violence.

In the case of Egypt, or Syria, and even to some extent the Ukraine, it is hard to know who the good guys are and who wears the black hat.  Most of the time it looks like both sides show little potential for good.

Or how does a government respond to the desperate act of children travelling 1,000 miles north with the hope that there is a chance for a better life?  How do you make policies that balance a system that becoming more and more overloaded with each passing day, with the very real fact that these are children who need care?

All of this to say that there are no easy answers, and I am the last to say that I have those answers.

But this isn’t a political sermon.  The truth is that in times of crisis, our lives are not much different than the headline news.  There too, in the midst of the brokenness, there aren’t easy answers or instant fixes.

That’s the whole lesson of the book of Job.  Job, a righteous man who looses everything he has, finds some very unhelpful friends that try to explain away or fix his situation with nothing more than platitudes or neatly contrived theories. 

Perhaps you’ve been there before – and if you have you know the feeling.  Our problems, not unlike the world’s problems, are complex.  Oftentimes there are no solutions, and that can leave us feeling lost, or helpless, or empty, or alone.

Jesus tells a seemingly simple story about wheat and weeds.  Someone sows good seed in the field only to find that once the plants have begun to mature that an enemy had sown weeds amongst the wheat.

There’s an interesting theory that the weeds that Jesus was referring to was the darnel plant, also called false wheat.  As it grows that plant looks very much like wheat and it is only when the head begins to sprout that one can tell the difference.  In the mean time the darnel is very aggressive, and it chokes out the wheat.  At the same time darnel is toxic and if combined with the harvested wheat ruins the harvest.

The slaves are at a loss of what to do.  From their point of view, the crop is ruined.  There are no good solutions, no easy answers.  What should they do?  Pull them up now destroying the vast majority of the crop?

Instead, their master tells them to allow them to grow together, and when the time comes, the reapers will collect the weeds first to be burned, and then will gather the wheat into the barn.

Like it or not, this is an apocalyptic parable, a parable of final judgment.  But it is not the doom and gloom that some fire and brimstone folks like to talk about.  It is, rather, good news. 

It acknowledges that sin and evil are very real powers in this world – a reality that we don’t have to look very far to see.  In a world where wheat and weeds are growing side by side, there will be problems that are beyond our capacity to solve.  The easy answer of pulling the weeds now would do violence to the good wheat, and inevitably do more harm than good.  And so there is no other option but to wait.

But this isn’t a wait and see, but rather a patient waiting with the hopeful expectation that God will, in the end, sort it all out.  The parable is clear it is not the slaves that will do the reaping or the sorting it out, but rather God’s reapers, the angels that he sends to do that task. 

This parable is good news because it gives hope.  Hope that those problems that frustrate us will eventually be set right. Hope that evil will finally be put to flight and goodness and righteousness will reign.  Hope that the world’s problems don’t depend on us, but rather it is God who will set it right.

Yet, the parable does not give us a pass to be complacent.  The seed that has been sown by the master must continue to grow.  Despite the weeds constantly looking to choke the wheat, the wheat must continue to struggle to bear fruit.  The reaper will come, and when he comes the wheat is what he will gather into the barn. 

Our lives of faith do matter, they matter for us and they matter for the field in which we are planted.

I really am glad to see you this morning – not simply because you are all nice people and I love you like my family, though I do, and not simply because I missed you, though I did – but because you, gathered together in this place every Sunday morning remind me that there is wheat in the field. 

Despite those headlines that want to point my attention only to the weeds, I see in you that God has a different view and a different plan.  I see in you that the problems that I face and the problems of the world are indeed being worked out by the one who planted good seed in his field.  I see in you the hope that is promised in this parable. 

That is what I mean when I say that you are a gift, both to me and to each other.

In a moment, when we gather around the table, recalling and giving thanks for God’s ultimate plan for salvation, know that you are a part of that story as well.  Whether you came weighed down by the world’s problems and those of your own, or you came blissfully unaware, give thanks for the fact that God has, is, and will continue to set things right.  Give thanks for the reminder that God has planted good seed, in this community and in the thousands of others that gather together this morning.  Give thanks for the opportunity to be nourished and to grow, week by week, being formed more and more into who God created you to be.  And finally, go out from here giving thanks, being the wheat in God’s field.  Amen.

God of Sacrifice or God of Grace

The texts for the Third Sunday after Pentecost can be found here.

The Third Sunday After Pentecost, Proper 8, Year A

June 29, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

You get a choice this morning. 

I’m not going to embarrass you by asking you to raise your hand, but in your mind I want you to consider and choose.  

Based on the readings we had this morning, which God do you choose? 

Are you more drawn to the God of Genesis, or the God of Romans and Matthew? 

Do you prefer the God of sacrifice or the God of grace?

Do you want the God who asks for a child or the God content with the giving of a welcome and a glass of water?

Which God did you choose?  Is anyone brave enough to share his or her choice?

I probably don’t have to take a poll to find out.  I’m going to guess you picked Matthew’s God over the God of Genesis.

Well now that you’ve made your choice, perhaps it is a good time to remind you that last week it was Matthew that was the hard text with Jesus’ words of setting family member against family member and taking up one’s cross to follow Jesus (which, by the way, is the immediate context of today’s reading). 

And it was Genesis that presented a picture of Divine grace and love as God cared and provided for Hagar and for Abraham’s first son, Ishmael who had been cast away by Abraham and Sarah and left to die in the wilderness.

Don’t you hate trick questions? 

Of course, the question was a loaded one, and before you go home to email the bishop so that you can tell him your priest is teaching you to pick and choose which God you like, let me say emphatically that you don’t actually get a choice. 

The division of God into easy categories often thought of as the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New, is an ancient heresy, going back to the early second century and was soundly rejected by the fathers of the Church.

The God of the Old Testament IS the God of the New.

The God of Genesis IS the God of Matthew and Romans. 

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob IS the God of St. Paul, and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So, the hard reality is that we don’t get to pick and choose.  We must take both the texts that trouble us along with those that are comforting.  We are bound by both the texts that seem to point to an image of God that is harsh and demanding along with those that speak of a God full of grace and love.

And that is what we get today – two apparently opposing revelations of God – one that points to a God who desires an unthinkable sacrifice and one who rewards the seemingly simple act of hospitality.

Last summer I was in the back of the house taking a very holy nap on a Sunday afternoon when I heard the doorbell ring.  A few moments later, I heard Bryn answer the door.  I couldn’t make out exactly what is being said, but I could hear male voices talking to my wife and then my children.

As I woke a little more, I hear Bryn introduce these strangers to Hannah & Gus, and then I heard her say, “Would you like to come in?”

‘What was she thinking?,’ I thought to myself, inviting two solicitors into our house, introducing them to our children, names and all.  I had visions of these two men casing out the house, looking to return a few days later when we were not there – or schemes that were perhaps even worse.

Frustrated with my wife’s poor judgment, I walked out of the bedroom ready to save the day only to find two boys dressed in black pants, white shirt, and black tie.  Immediately I knew, these boys were Mormon missionaries. 

I was ashamed, both of my initial lack of confidence in my wife’s judgment and my knee-jerk reaction to someone who would ring my doorbell on a Sunday afternoon.

I watched as Bryn offered these two boys a glass of water and listened to a bit of their story. 

(By the way, one of the benefits of telling an evangelist you are a priest is that it usually puts an end to the high-pressure sales pitch.  Try it sometime; it might help.)

The boys were very kind and grateful for the water on a hot summer day, stayed only a few minutes, and continued on their journey.

So what do you think? Putting aside any debate about the Mormon religion, is that what Jesus was talking about?  Welcoming two strangers into your home?  Offering them a glass of cold water on a hot day?

Perhaps.  Then again, perhaps not.

There is a fairly wide gap between our notion of hospitality and that of the ancient world.  Hospitality in the ancient world was not the hospitality that we might offer -even in the south.  It’s not a glass of iced tea in a rocking chair under the shade of the front porch. 

The rules and codes that governed hospitality in ancient Palestine were rigid and well defined.  Hospitality was a moral issue with very specific roles and obligations.  Hospitality required providing shelter, water, food, and protection to any stranger who sought that hospitality.  And all of this in a world in which the vast majority of people had very little of those things to share.  Hospitality was a selfless act of love and of sacrifice.

To get a sense of what this might involve, think once again of Abraham.  Abraham who prepared a feast –a whole fatted calf, milk and cheese, and a lavish amount of bread – for three strangers wandering in the wilderness.  Or consider Rahab who to her own peril sheltered Joshua and his spies in her home before the battle of Jericho.  Or the widow who made Elijah a meal from the very last of the provisions that she had for her and her son.  Or the women, Joanna and Suzanna, who traveled with Jesus and provided for his needs out of their own resources.

This is the biblical understanding of hospitality, and this is what welcome looks like to Jesus.  It is costly, personal, even perilous to one’s self or the things that you hold most dear.  It can cost you everything.  It is a form of sacrifice.

And as sacrifice implies, it is also a form of worship, bringing that person into the very presence of God.  For Abraham, it was the Lord’s renewal of the promise of a son, or in today’s story the Lord providing a ram and sparing the child.  For Rahab and her household it was salvation from the coming destruction of Jericho as well as, being brought into the fold of God’s chosen people.  For the widow and her son, it was moving from a life of scarcity and certain death to a life of abundance.  And for the women, it was being in the very presence of salvation, incarnate in the person of Jesus. 

There is much more that could be said about any and all of these stories, but perhaps now Jesus’ words from last week’s gospel that immediately precede those from this morning might make a bit more sense.  Jesus says, “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

Hospitality, sacrifice, worship – all are deeply connected.

God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said, "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you."

God desires everything, even if it pushes us to the brink of danger, because absolutely none of it belongs to me – not the clothes that I wear or the food that I eat, not the roof over my head or the protection I enjoy, not even the life that I live or the lives of those that I love.  All of these things are grace, literally gifts from God, and it is only when we begin to recognize this that we can stop living in fear and anxiety and live lives of gratitude – which is, by the way, what we do and practice every week in the Eucharist, or Great Thanksgiving. 

Yet, to be sure, God does not need sacrifice.  We do.  God desires and is pleased by it because through sacrifice we are deeply formed and changed into who we were always created to be.

To answer “Here I am,” to God’s call to us is to live a life of sacrifice – to literally set a part of our lives and stuff aside and offer it to God in a way that is no longer retrievable to us. And by giving it back to the One to whom it belongs, we cannot help but come into closer contact with the God we seek.

This is the life of faith of Abraham.  This is what Jesus means to loose one’s life only to find it.  This is how we welcome God’s presence though sacrifice.

And there we will find the God of Genesis and the God of Matthew.  The God of Abraham and the God of Jesus.  Indeed, we will find the one God, our God, creator of all things in heaven and earth.  Amen. 

Made to be Fruitful

The texts for Trinity Sunday can be found by clicking here.

First Sunday After Pentecost (Trinity Sunday), Year A

June 15, 2014

The Rev. Christopher L. Caddell

What do you do?

It’s a question that I am trying to use less and less in the normal course of my conversations.  It’s hard, because the impulse is there.  Anytime I would meet someone new, it was early in the lists of questions to be asked.

What’s your name?

Where do you live?

What do you do?

It seems like harmless small talk – a way to get to know someone new – and it is probably harmless.  It is after all the socially acceptable questions that we ask in those situations.

But it also says much about what we think is important – particularly what men think is important.  Essentially we are asking, “What do you produce?”

We are a culture that is obsessed with producing something – and in many ways it is that question that reveals what we value.

Today is Trinity Sunday – a day in which we recall the church’s teaching regarding one of the things that sets us apart from other religions.

Today I am going to share with you the shortest sermon I can give on the Trinity.

One God, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Any questions?

If there are, Fr. Larry will be glad to answer them for you following the service. 

Instead what I hope to speak with you about today is that which caught my imagination this week – the story we know so well, the story of creation in the Book of Genesis.

Light from darkness.

Waters from waters.

Land and seas.

Birds and sea creatures.

Cattle, and every living thing that is on land,

And finally, us, human beings.  Male and female. Created in the image of God. 

And when God finishes creating us, Genesis says, God blessed them, and said to them, “Be fruitful, and multiply.”

Be fruitful.

It is interesting to think about how the rest of this story unfolds.  Adam and Eve are in the garden.  They have all they could ever need.  They produce nothing – the garden, God’s creation, produces everything for them.

We know what happens next.  Adam and Eve eat the one thing God asked them not to eat and they are expelled from the garden. 

Adam and Eve have two sons – Cain and Abel.  Cain worked the land, and Abel was a shepherd.

All of the sudden, human beings, made in the image of God, are no longer focused on being fruitful, but rather on being productive.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not saying that we shouldn’t be productive.  There are things that simply must get done.

The grass needs mowing, the laundry needs to get done. As individuals and as a society we need to be productive.  Someone needs to grow our food, build our homes, lay the pipes that bring us water.  And we, in turn, have our own ways of being productive and contributing to the common life we share as a society.

There are simply some things that require that we be productive.

Yet that is not the blessing and the charge that God gave us in creation.  Living into the fullness of what it means to be human beings, created in the image of God requires that we be fruitful.

Perhaps one way of looking at this is through our relationships.

If I were to describe my relationship with a friend as productive, that implies one thing.  It would probably point to a one-sided, selfish friendship.  But if that relationship were fruitful, that implies something totally different.

In the same way, it is doubtful that you would hear someone speak of his or her marriage as productive, but would not sound so strange to hear that same person say it was fruitful.

Our faith and relationship to God is not a productive relationship, but when it is truly lived, it will be one that is easily described as fruitful.

The point is, in a world that pushes us to be productive all the time, it is no wonder why we are depressed, stressed out, and burnt out.  As a general rule we are not living into that which God created us to be – fruitful bearers of the image of God.

The story of creation, of course, ends with the first Sabbath.  God saw all that he had made and he rested on the seventh day.  This will become a cornerstone of the Jewish faith, and one that we too as Christians will inherit through scripture and the Ten Commandments.

Every seven days, a time for rest.  A time set aside.  A time to be renewed.  A time to remember in whose image we were created.

I said I wasn’t going to preach on the Trinity, but I do have one more thing to add.  At the core of that teaching is not just One God, three persons, but rather the relationship between those persons.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are relational descriptors of how we experience God (and as theologians would say, how God experiences God’s self).  The Trinity was not born out of thin air, but rather was how those first Christians were able to put words to their experience of encountering God – in the persons of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And if we are made in that image, then we too are made to be in relationship with one another.  Male and female he created them – to be in relationship, and to be fruitful.

And yet, when our focus is solely on being productive, we loose sight of those relationships.  But they are who we are created to be.

As we enter this one time of year where our society at least tolerates the fact that we will not be productive every moment of the day, perhaps we can reclaim some of that Sabbath.  A Sabbath that focuses on being fruitful, that focuses on what we were created to be, that focuses on the very nature of what it means to be human, in relationship with God, and with one another.  Amen.