06 April 2017

Sermon 1 January 2017 The Feast of the Holy Name Luke 2:15-21 Year A

Christmas Eve at the 5:00 p.m. service the sermon was for children. It was short because of their attention spans, and also because I wanted them to remember it.

A couple of adults told me they were a bit disappointed because they expected something longer. I am sorry they were disappointed, but sermons are like a grab bag of presents. You put your hand out to the Holy Spirit and you preach what the Spirit puts there. A sermon has a great deal of study and thinking, but in the end, it’s listening to the Holy Spirit.

All this is a disclaimer. It takes bravery on my part because the sermon you are about to hear is the shortest I’ve ever preached. Here it is: Two sentences and a question.

· Sentence 1: Today is the Feast of the Holy Name, the Holy Name of Jesus.

· Sentence 2: Our names are how we recognize ourselves, how Jesus recognizes us, and how other people recognize us.

· Question: What will we do, so when people hear our names, they’ll hear the Holy Name of Jesus? AMEN.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

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Sermon 25 December 2016 Feast of the Nativity - Christmas Day Luke 2:8-20

Each year something sticks in my mind from Christmas. Sometimes it’s Christmas lights, sometimes it’s something I read; other times it’s a particular person. A few years ago when I lived in Kansas, I thought I was doomed to remember what I call “the struggling Santa.” I was driving to the place where I exercised, and the place next door had one of those giant blow-up figures of Santa tethered on the front lawn. I’ve never quite understood the popularity of those figures in Kansas. Oklahomans seem to understand there’s too much wind for those giant character balloons to be effective, but not Kansas.

At any rate, here was poor old Santa, with half his air missing, which made him pretty saggy. Not only that, he’d been tethered at the top of a little rise in the person’s yard; so after he lost his air he’d slipped down the rise. All I could see was the top of Santa’s head and his two arms sticking straight out. Not up, but out. As the wind caught him, it looked as though he was struggling to stand up. Up and down, up and down, he bobbed. And I thought of everyone I knew who was struggling to get back up. Struggling against the force of gravity, the force of sorrow, the force of events in their lives. Amusing as poor old Santa’s struggle was, that was what I thought.

That night when I arrived home, something changed. Instead of poor old Santa struggling to get back up, a Christmas card replaced him. It came in the form of three photographs of a friend’s grandson.

My friend’s grandson wasn’t supposed to live. He was born with only half a heart. He’d already had three surgeries and spent a lot of time in a specialty hospital. And here in these photographs was this little two-year old guy, with his blonde hair and his beaming smile. In one of the photos he’s standing on top of a quilt, smiling. In the second photo he’s bending over to get a close look at the quilt. And in the third photo he’s fast asleep under the quilt, with the label turned up so you can read what it says. The label on the quilt reads “The Heart of the Matter” and it’s his prayer quilt.

It’s a big warm, brightly colored, cuddly flannel quilt that was made for him. The quilter stitched away at it most of 2004 and much of 2005 as well. You see, the family knew before he was born that he had this condition and would have to have surgery. And everyone knew the odds for the outcome were not good.

That little guy is a miracle baby. That’s what his parents and his grammies call him. They call him that because many of the other children born with his same condition died.

Yet the “heart of the matter” for this little guy, and for all of us, is what we find in today’s gospel. The angel in St Luke’s gospel tells the shepherds, “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”[1]

That is the heart of Christmas, of the birth of Christ. That God became a child, just like that little child with only half a heart. God became a child of bone and flesh and blood, living among us. A child that cried and laughed and ate and drank and sighed and sang and sorrowed. A child that grew up to be a man who knows both the sorrows and joys we know. That child was flesh: Emmanuel, God with us, and nothing was ever the same.

This is a God is who is present in joy with the parents of the little miracle boy. This is the same God who is present in the sorrow of the parents whose babies died. Because this Jesus, born this day in the city of David, is the one who comes among us as both human and divine. This is the Son of God who knows us in our crying and our laughing, in our eating and drinking, in our sighing, our singing, and our sorrowing. This is the heart of Christmas. That God became flesh and dwelt among us, and nothing is ever the same. He bears our burdens and shares our sorrows. He is present in the bread we eat and the cup we drink. He is present among us wherever two or three are gathered in his name. But most of all, Christ is here. This is the heart of the matter. This is the heart of Christmas. AMEN.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

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[1] Luke 2:10b-12 (NRSV)

Sermon 24 December 2016 Christmas Eve Luke 2:1-120 Year A

It always fascinates me as we read our way through the Bible in church, Sunday after Sunday, how different the gospel stories are. Anyone who is a literalist could get tangled up in the whys and wherefores of what appears in Luke’s gospel and doesn’t in Matthew’s. Or tangled up in what is in John’s and Mark’s gospels and what is only in John’s gospel. If you’ve done any comparative Bible reading yourself, or if you’ve stayed awake in church, then you know about some of these differences.

Some people seem bound to wrestle with what the facts are. They are determined to somehow reconcile all these inequities. As if we could somehow remove all those discrepancies so everyone would agree.

What most folks seem to miss about this is that just like today, the original tellers and writers of scripture had their own ideas about how to express the heart of God made human in Jesus Christ.

Things were left out or inserted into the text to tell a better story, to more fully explain the heart of God so others hearing the story would get the point.

The point of all this is that when we read scripture, when we study scripture, and when we speak or preach about scripture, we should be looking for the essential truth. Not simply the facts. And those essentials are designed rather than as intellectual truth, but instead as things to sink into our hearts and become part of us. Those essential truths are those things on which our hearts thrive and by which we live.

In Matthew’s gospel about Jesus’ birth, there are no shepherds, just the birth. In Luke’s gospel the shepherds appear. Why spend a lot of time agonizing about who was or was not there. Does it really make a difference?

What does make a difference are the truths the gospel writers were interested in having us know. Luke had more to say about Jesus spending time with the poor and the outcast from his beginnings. In Luke’s gospel that we hear tonight on Christmas Eve, Luke gives the shepherds pride of place to make his point about Jesus and the poor and outcasts.

We like to think that because King David was a shepherd and all the wonderful Old Testament or Hebrew scripture imagery and stories about shepherds, that shepherds were beloved by all in Jesus’ time. Quite the contrary, and that is Luke’s truth in his recording of Jesus’ birth. Shepherds were considered the worst of the worst. Often shepherds were marked out as thieves since they sometimes grazed their sheep on ground not belonging to them.

Shepherds were seen as dirty and careless simply because they did not always have access to water for washing. They tended to smell like their sheep, and if you’ve ever been around sheep, well... you know how they smell, and it’s not exactly refreshing. And finally, worst of all, out in the field as shepherds were, they could not make the necessary religious observances and sacrifices. This made them religious outcasts in a religiously observing society.

And yet, society was dependent on shepherds, just as we are dependent on garbage collectors. Do any of you remember the New York City garbage collectors strike some years ago? Or have you lived in a place where an ice storm or other bad weather prevented garbage pick up for a few days? Then you know how necessary garbage collectors are, yet how many of us consider them no better than the shepherds were in Jesus’ time.

The elemental truth Luke is telling us about Jesus is that from his birth, Jesus was surrounded by the cast-offs of society. This truth from the beginning of Luke’s gospel tells us much about Jesus’ life and death. The rest of Luke’s Gospel about Jesus includes those who were outcasts and sinners from all levels and places both in society and outside society. Luke’s story of Jesus tells us that no matter how or where we are; the good news is that Jesus welcomes us to the manger.

When you come up for Communion, take a look at who is at the manger with Jesus tonight. At the 5 pm service the children added some of those who would normally be excluded. They added some animals and cartoon characters, and even some enemies and villains of the super powers. Everyone is welcome into Jesus’ heart. And all were welcomed to the manger where the heart of God was lying, waiting for us to join Him at his birth.

In Luke’s gospel those first to find a place in their hearts for Jesus were the shepherds and the outcasts. For us this means we too are welcome; Jesus has a place for us. Jesus has a place for us at the manger. Jesus still longs for us to open our hearts and let him in. AMEN.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

Children's Sermon 24 December 2016 Christmas Eve Luke 2:8-20 Year A

Do you see who is around the baby Jesus?

You can’t see all of us up here, but being in church tonight means we are around Jesus too.

Did you hear the word “manger” in the song we just sang?

What is a manger? (Explain if no one knows.)

Mary had to put Jesus in a manger because they didn’t have a crib for him.

Did you know when I was a tiny baby my parents couldn’t afford a crib either? So my parents pulled out a dresser drawer and put it on the bed. They filled it with soft cloths, just like Mary did, and then they put me next to the bed in the dresser drawer.

They didn’t put the drawer back in the dresser because a baby wouldn’t be able to breathe if that happened. But the dresser drawer was my crib until I got older and my parents found a used crib to put me in.

So a manger, in a way, is any comfy warm place where we can put a baby. It’s a place where we can keep a baby safe and warm.

We know Jesus was a very special baby. He was the most special baby ever born. And people came to see him at the manger because they knew how special Jesus was and still is. They knew Jesus loved all of us and was born to show us that love.

So it’s okay for anyone to come Jesus’ manger. So maybe tonight, we could do something special. Something special to show everyone that anyone can come to Jesus’ manger.

I have some people and animals and other things we can put around the manger. Who would like to take one and carefully put in near Jesus?

(There were not a lot of children at this service and I walked through the congregation inviting the children to look in the bag I carried and pick out a creature to bring up to the manger. Some of the children wanted their parents to walk up with them and that was fine too. The bag had super heroes and super villains (male and female), My Little Pony, and other easily recognizable cartoon characters and television show and movie people and creatures.)

That’s great. And you know, some of these people and animals and creatures we put near the manger aren’t very well behaved or very good. Some are super heroes and some are super villains or bad guys. But you know what, Jesus invites everyone to be at the manger with him. It doesn’t matter. Yes, we all want to better every day, but we can come to the manger just the way we are and Jesus loves us just the way we are. Amen.

The Rev Nicolette Papanek

Nicolette Papanek was born in San Francisco, California and raised on the east and west coasts and in Canada. She has also lived in northern Germany. Her undergraduate degree is in Human Resources Design, a multi-disciplinary degree with majors in Communication, Design, Behavioral Science, and Business Management. She is a graduate with a Masters in Divinity from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary and was ordained priest in 2002.

Nicolette is called to the specialized ministry of transitions (interim ministry). After a twenty-six year business career in Communications, she has spent her ordained years practicing, studying, and exploring how human beings intersect creatively with new ideas and ministries. Her belief is that the Holy Spirit speaks to us and calls us to discover anew the incarnational ministries to which lay and ordained are called. She believes churches are a mystery to enter into and explore rather than a problem to be solved.

In addition to her ministry in the church she serves, Nicolette is a certified clergy coach, peaching coach, spiritual director, search consultant, and works with lay and ordained leadership in dreaming dreams for the future and making plans to fulfill those dreams in God's name. She calls her work "Holy Meddling." Her personal mission is to bring out God's best in others with love, laughter, and lunch. She is passionate about providing places where individuals and groups can become who God intends them to be, even during times of uncertainty and change.

So far her ministry has taken her on adventures in eleven churches, not counting the ones where she has done consulting (holy meddling), seven dioceses and she has served with what will soon be ten different bishops. Beginning 15 September 2018, she is the Interim Dean at Grace Cathedral in Topeka, Kansas, USA.

Nicolette plays well with others and in her alone time she writes, reads, sleeps, cooks, eats, and creates quilted art works. Although she loves good food, she makes herself do Pilates three times a week to thrive physically and spiritually. Her blog contains sermons, occasional musings, quilted fiber art, and recipes.