When our staff at St. Mark’s meets for Morning Prayer on Tuesdays, we always pray that we’ll catch a glimpse of the face of Christ in everybody who crosses our path.  And because we see the face of Christ all the time, I know God answers prayer.  For the record, here’s where I saw the face of Christ in twenty four hours more or less.

In the apologetic face

of an adult

who showed up at a breakfast program for high school students.

“May I have breakfast, too?” she said. “My cheque won’t arrive until tomorrow.”

In the transfigured face

of a man who struggles with addiction

just after he got a free hair cut at the high school.

In the tear-streaked face

of someone telling me

about a death in the family.

In the compassionate face

of a nurse

trying to find a good vein.

In the desperate face

of a mother

trying to get help for her child.

In the angry face

of someone describing mistreatment.

In the face of a child,

filled with purpose and wonder,

pushing her kitten around in a toy grocery cart.

In the happy face

of a colleague

showing off family pictures.

In the anxious face

of a taxi driver

as he said, “I guess God is here somewhere.”

The face of Christ:  apologetic…hopeful…familiar…strange…happy…sad…anguished…angry…filled with wonder…purposeful…desperate…anxious.

When did you see the face of Christ today?

When did others see the face of Christ in you?

Grief is the deep blue of sadness,
bottomless
like the ocean
and just as wide.

Grief is the raging red of anger.
So many things you can’t control.
Who can you blame?
Where is God?

Grief is the dark murkiness of fear.
Things changing so fast,
churning in the dark.
Not sure where to turn.

Grief is the splatter pattern of confusion,
too much happening all at once.
What now?

Grief is the bracing white light of clarity.
How precious life is
and how uncertain,
worth every spontaneous hug
and kiss
and I love you.

But what is the colour of regret?
The colour of so many things
unfinished and unfinishable?
Purple like a bruise?

Grief is the colour of grass,
locked up in memory for now,
waiting to rise up green again
alive beneath the snow
when springtime comes.

But not yet.

1/11
From the funeral sermon for rbw

For several nights before Christmas, the homes of church members are prepared to receive visitors and to offer an open door, hot chocolate, coffee and sweets.  After the preparations are made, on the designated nights, groups of people move from one home to another carrying candles and singing songs as they walk.

In the lead is a young girl playing Mary, soon-to-be the mother of Jesus, very obviously pregnant, sometimes with a big balloon or pillow under her blouse.  Mary and her partner Joseph are far from home, out on the streets of a strange city, in need of a place to stay. Mary is just about ready to give birth.

The procession includes kids dressed up like shepherds and kings and angels (the other characters in the story), and when everybody arrives at a darkened house one person knocks on the door and asks for a warm place to stay.  Because Mary is about to have a baby and she’s in a strange town, far from home, and she has nowhere to give birth.

“There’s no room here!  We will not let you enter.” [1] After they knock, this is the first response Mary and Joseph hear from those who are safe and warm and cozy inside the house.  “There is no room here!  We will not let  you in!”

There follows a heartfelt pleading for hospitality: “We are cold. We need a place to stay. We need refuge.  Our baby is just about to be born.”

“What good is it, brothers and sisters,” the people outside in the cold say to those inside who are safe and warm, “What good is it if you say you have faith but take no action?  If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what good is that?  So faith by itself, if has no actions, is dead.”

And with that the people on the inside of the warm and cozy house switch on the lights, throw open the doors and say: “Come inside, holy pilgrims.  With much joy, we will receive you, and give you a place to stay.  Receive a place, not in this humble home but in our hearts.”

And then let the party begin.  The strangers are welcomed inside, and Jesus has a safe and warm place to be born.

Las Posadas strikes me as an honest tradition–a tradition that tells the truth.  Las Posadas shows both sides of Christianity.

The side that says “No” to strangers in need of welcome.

And the side that opens up the door and says: “Yes.  Come in.  Line up your shoes inside the door.  You must be hungry.  Come have a bite to eat.  Our house is your house.  We will treat you like family.  There is a place for you here in our home and in our heart.”

And people old and young respond, enthusiastically, thoughtfully, hungrily, hopefully:
“Thanks be to God!”

Lately one of the kids has taken to shouting out the words–which puts a smile on everybody’s face!

Over the years these words have welcomed:
• mommies and daddies who break off a little piece of the bread to feed their babies,
• toddlers with shy, outstretched hands who are learning to eat the bread and say Amen,
• people walking with canes and walkers, people in wheel chairs,
• dying people coming to church one last time,
• children somewhere on the autism spectrum who love the rhythm of this particular meal,
• gay people, sometimes in couples, sometimes not,
• a Hindu man visiting his dying wife in the hospital next door who came to the table on the arm of one of the ushers, both of them hungry,
• patients on passes from the Psych Ward next door,
• prisoners on passes from the prison on the other side of town,
• doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, mail carriers, artists, guitar players, fork lift drivers, drunks, liars, cheaters, murderers and thieves,
• people born in Canada and people born in Germany, China, El Salvador, Guatemala, The Netherlands, the US, Jamaica, The Sudan, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and who knows where all else,
• folks waiting to be baptized who suddenly feel the need to share in the meal.

Because we believe that Christ doesn’t turn anybody away, we don’t turn anybody away. We who need Christ’s wide embrace all have a place at the table.

Once in awhile a child who’s two heads taller than I am spontaneously grabs the plate of bread from me and says, “Pastor Nancy, this is the Body of Christ.”

And indeed it is!

Thanks be to God!

Photographers talk about taking pictures with available light, without a flash.  It’s a great image:  available light!

Well, in the time just before Jesus begins his ministry, the time of John the Baptist, there’s little light available to for people to live by.  People are longing for light, just like we are today.  People are hungry for someone who will shine the light on God’s love and illuminate God=s Way.  They need more light than they can make for themselves no matter how hard they try.

And along comes John the Baptist to point people’s attention towards the light that’s available to them…to poke holes in the darkness, so to speak, so that they (and we) can get a glimpse of the light of Christ that’s still shining brightly in the darkness.  John himself isn’t the light; he’s very clear about that.  But John is certain that someone else is coming, someone who is worthy of praise, someone who will bring such a big flood of light into the world that the darkness will never be able to put it out.

John can already see a little bit of that light even when nobody else can.  That=s his job: to see catch a glimpse of the light nobody else can see and to say so up front and out loud so that we, too, might believe.   So that we, too, might have hope.

My guess is that John the Baptist is just about as scared of the dark as we are.  And at the same time, he sees the shining of a beautiful, mysterious, universally available light!

there and start up a conversation. I close my eyes and make myself as small as

possible. Soon I am aware that someone is sitting down next to me, and it takes me
awhile to open up my eyes and check out who it is.

When I finally look sideways cautiously, I see a young woman with her head covered.
She smiles at me cautiously. I smile at her cautiously. Apparently she doesnt speak
my language, and I certainly dont speak hers. So here we are, forty five minutes left to
travel side-by-side. Her name is Nema, she tells me. And I am Nancy.

Soon Nema covers her face, and I know enough to know that she is lost in prayer. I
take out my book and begin to read, a prayer in itself. When Nema has finished her
prayers, she turns to me and points to the cross on the cover of my book. Ah, I think.
Yes. I understand. We are so different you and I.

Meanwhile Nema is heading in a different direction. Nema has something else in mind.
Urgently, she keeps pointing at the cross on the cover of my book. She wants me to
understand something. And finally with great effort, the words come as she continues
tracing the sign of the cross on my book.

Same Father, she says, leaping ahead to somewhere I’ve never been before. Same
Father.

Here am jumping to conclusions about the differences: age, skin colour, culture,
religion. And Nema is going somewhere else entirely, tracing the sign of the cross on
my book. Same Father, she repeats, very slowly, as if to make sure I get it.

“Same . . . . Father.”

Confusing all my categories, consuming my heart.