… someone scattering seed on the ground (Mark 4:26)

… a mustard seed (Mark 4:31)

… a circle of strangers sharing in a word of prayer

… a new day dawning full of fresh possibilities

Monday evening: we wait, a little apprehensively, for the clock to read 6:00.  Outside the glass doors, a crowd of women wait also.  Scott, Dorisa and I are volunteering as part of FCC’s young adult group at  the the old YWCA building where a winter shelter has been set up for homeless women.  We, along with volunteers from Our Lady of Grace, are here to greet the residents as they arrive at 6:00pm – women who are homeless right now, trying to put their lives back together, working to find somewhere to live come spring.  I’ll admit that I’m outside my comfort zone, not sure what to expect or do.

Cold air meets warm as Dorisa holds the door open for the residents to make their way inside out of the cold, wet night.  “Good evening,” she greets them with her warm smile.  They line up for Scott to sign them in and then make their way into the gymnasium where beds are arranged and tables set for dinner.  When it’s time for dinner, I find a place in the circle of people – volunteers and residents, holding hands for a word of grace.  As I look around me, I realize that God’s kingdom is like this circle – a place where people who would normally have no reason to cross paths find themselves joining hands in prayer and thanksgiving.

This week reading Mark 4:1-6:29, I have found myself particularly drawn to the parables. Many of Jesus’ parables offer insight about Jesus’ identity, which in Mark even his closest friends do not seem to understand, and about the nature of the kingdom of God.  Jesus’ parables remind us that we can learn about Christ and the kingdom of God through the seemingly mundane and ordinary parts of our lives – the sowing of seeds or watching a garden grow.  This week, standing around a circle with strangers lifting up prayers of thanksgiving to our God reminded me of the inclusivity of the kingdom of God – that it is open for all.  The parables remind us that there are opportunities all around us to hear news of God or to see God’s kingdom revealed.  What in your life today reveals to you the kingdom of God? Think about what in your life can help to finish this sentence:

The kingdom of God is like…

Holy God, we give thanks for all those things around us that remind us of you and reveal your kingdom to us.  Help us to work to build your kingdom.  Help us to shine our lights, that we may share the good news of your love and peace with others.  Amen.

If the internet had been around when Mark was writing his gospel, I think he might have been a blogger. He would have appreciated the immediacy of our information age, when news gets to us fast, when stories are told quickly, and with urgency. That’s how Mark wrote the story of Jesus’ life: there’s an intensity to it, as if he’s so excited to tell us the good news that he can hardly catch his breath.  Here’s what Eugene Peterson, author of The Message, has to say about Mark’s gospel:

“Mark wastes no time in getting down to business – a single-sentence introduction, and not a digression to be found from beginning to end. An event has taken place that radically changes the way we look at and experience the world, and he can’t wait to tell us about it. There’s an air of breathless excitement in nearly every sentence he writes. The sooner we get the message, the better off we’ll be, for the message is good, incredibly good: God is here, and he’s on our side.”

Over the next six weeks (January 15 – February 19), we’ll be making our way through Mark’s gospel, in worship and in a new Sunday school class. We’ll explore the historical context of this earliest gospel and listen for how God might be speaking to us through these stories today.

Mark is also the shortest of the gospels, and it’s a good read. You might want to read through the whole thing before we get started this Sunday. However, if you want to spread it out and read along with us, here’s the schedule:

January 15: Mark 1:1-20
January 22: Mark 1:21 – 3:35
January 29: Mark 4:1 – 6:29
February 5: Mark 6:30 – 7:37
February 12: Mark 8:1 – 10:52
February 19: Mark 11:1 – 16:19

It is, of course, the season of giving. Little wrapped packages topped with bows are appearing everywhere. Cards and candy and homemade goodies are being passed around and enjoyed (and, in the case of the chocolate treats that make their way to my desk, devoured). The food donation box at the church is overflowing with holiday meals that will be delivered to the food bank today. I’ve been especially inspired by stories of people anonymously paying off layaway bills for families they didn’t even know. This is a season that inspires people to give.

It is good, and holy even, all this giving. It is a glorious thing to let people know we love and appreciate them. It is right to respond to the good news of Christ’s birth by sharing what we have.

However.

Is giving really the last word for this season? Here are a couple of challenges to mull over as you’re wrapping up the last of those gifts this week:

The first is this: Hungry people need food in June just as much as they do in December. Families struggle to pay their rent and utilities year round. I hope our giving doesn’t stop when we take down the Christmas lights, and I hope that we ask the harder question that lurks just below the surface: What does such need exist in the first place, and what can we do about it?

The second challenge comes from Will Willimon, who says this in an essay entitled The God We Hardly Knew:

“The Christmas story is not about how blessed it is to be givers but about how essential it is to see ourselves as receivers. We prefer to think of ourselves as givers – powerful, competent, self-sufficient, capable people whose goodness motivates us to employ some of our power, competence and gifts to benefit the less fortunate. Which is a direct contradiction of the biblical account of the first Christmas. There we are portrayed not as the givers we wish we were but as the receivers we are… God wanted to do something for us so strange, so utterly beyond the bounds of human imagination, so foreign to human projection, that God had to resort to angels, pregnant virgins, and stars in the sky to get it done. We didn’t think of it, understand it or approve it. All we could do, at Bethlehem, was receive it.”

 May you be blessed in your giving and your receiving this Christmas.

I have a collection of Advent devotional readings that I pull out every year. Even thought I’ve read it all before, I find something new every time. This week, these words jumped out at me:

 “The great question to us is whether we are still capable of being truly shocked or whether it is to remain so that we see thousands of things and know that they should not be and must not be, and that we get hardened to them. How many things have we become used to in the course of the years, of the weeks and months, so that we stand unshocked, unstirred, inwardly unmoved. Advent is a time when we ought to be shaken and brought to a realization of ourselves.”

These words were written by Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest who was condemned and hanged in 1945 for his opposition to Hitler. He wrote this piece in a Nazi prison.

Today is the 70^th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which marked the beginning of the United States’ involvement in a war that was already going on, the war that would reveal the terrible ugliness of humanity but also give birth to stories of courage and hope, like that of Alfred Delp.

It takes people like Delp, and so many others, who are willing to be shocked and shaken by what they see, people who are willing to point to the atrocities of our time and say, it does not have to be like this. There is another way.

This, I think, is why we in the church try to resist the rush toward Christmas. It’s why we squeeze an extra season – Advent – in between Thanksgiving and December 25. It’s why we focus on the waiting and watching, before we get to the celebrating.  It’s because we know that we need to be shaken. We know that there are still atrocities happening all around us. We know that we live in this in-between time, in a broken and hurting world, and so we are not ready to rush ahead to the celebration. Instead, we wait and watch, hopefully, expectantly.

But the good news is that the Christ has come and will come again. God’s peace will reign. God’s hope is everlasting. There is – and will be – good news of great joy.

May our lives be shaken as we wait.

Living overseas, my family did not make a point of celebrating Thanksgiving.  Our relatives lived thousands of miles away, and our friends and neighbors where we lived in rural South Africa and Zimbabwe did not celebrate this particular holiday.  It is not that we did not take time to be thankful, simply that it was not on this particular fourth Thursday of November.  Indeed, it has not been until the last few years that I have come to really appreciate Thanksgiving.  A time to gather, a time to join people we love, to join people we are just getting to know, or even to join strangers to share food and fellowship, to give thanks for company and food, shelter and clothing, the wonder of God’s awesome creation.  This last Sunday, JT Moore preached on “Table Talk” – the many conversations that Jesus had with friends, with family, with religious leaders, with religious outcasts, and with common people over shared food.  Each week, we celebrate our own feast, the feast of communion, inviting God’s Spirit to move among us and to dwell within us.

As we break bread (and turkey and mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce and pie) together this Thursday, may we remember God’s presence with us in the sharing of a meal.  May we rejoice in God’s love and generosity.  May we give thanks, and in giving thanks, may we extend God’s love and generosity to our neighbors.

God of brilliant sunsets and shining rainbows,

God of golden daffodils and glowing autumn leaves,

God of all the blues of sunlit seas,

God of all the shades of green in bush and field, in rivers and

Oceans and lakes, in rough stones on a beach and polished jewels in a showcase,

God of people, brown and amber, pink and ebony, artistic and athletic,

Practical and visionary, compassionate and laughter-bringing,

God who colors us a world of variety,

We thank you that you have made each of us unique,

That you call us to contribute our special colors to the life around us.

We come to you today in thanksgiving.  Amen

 -Beverly L. Osborn, Aotearoa/New Zealand

(from “Gifts in Open Hands: More Worship Resources for the Global Community”)