Worship > Sermon Archive

The Reverend Beth Fain
December 16, 2007

Advent 3a
Bless, heal, liberate: 10 ornaments for $250 (Matthew 11. 2-11)

I'm back from my annual Advent rest in New Mexico.
All of you were prayed for last Monday, one by one, as I sat in my adobe room in El Prado and watched the snow come down.
I always do some of my Christmas shopping in New Mexico, and I bought these ornaments.
Aren't they beautiful?
I paid $250 for these 10 ornaments, and I believe I got a great deal.
Actually, you paid $250 for these ornaments, because I used money from the Rector's Discretionary Fund to buy these stars (the Rector's Discretionary Fund being money that is given to me each month through your pledges to St. Mary's, money to be used at my discretion for pious acts and purposes).
I'll tell you more about these $250 ornaments later after we look at the gospel for a while.
Because we find in our gospel this morning why I think these $250 ornaments were such a great deal.
John the Baptizer, the one who had the prophet's job of getting people ready to hear and accept the Messiah, is in prison because his message of repentance was preached to King Herod, specifically against the King's incestuous remarriage to his sister-in-law.
King Herod didn't like John messing with his family arrangements, so John ends up behind bars, or whatever they had in Jesus' day.
John sends his disciples to Jesus to find out if God is indeed working through Jesus.
Whether John sent his disciples to question Jesus because John had doubts or so that his disciples would know the truth of who Jesus is so that they could become disciples of Jesus, we do not know.
What we do know is that John's disciples ask Jesus if he is the Messiah?
Is Jesus doing God's work?
Jesus replies to John's disciples-here's how you'll recognize the kingdom of God when you see it.
Here's how you'll know that what is being done is God's work:
Not when you see elegant rulers in extravagant clothes.
Not when you see people living luxurious lives.
It is whenever the poor hear about my love.
It is when the blind see.
It is when the deaf hear.
It is when the lame walk.
It is when those who would be social outcasts are forgiven and return to the community.
And Jesus wraps up with a new beatitude:
Blessed are you who do not stumble and fall when you learn that God's ministry is about being a servant rather than a person a power.
Blessed are you who are not about the love of power but are about the power of love.
This Advent, we are invited by John the Baptizer and Jesus to look at what we buy and do.
Which leads me back to New Mexico.
For the second year in a row, my best friend and I were visiting in Taos on the weekend of the craft fair at Taos Pueblo.
As we turned off the main road through Taos, it was as if we'd left the country and entered a foreign land.
We left behind the rustic beauty and affluence of largely Anglo Taos and drove through the rain and down a road into an increasingly impoverished area.
The road inside the pueblo was dirt, and the rain made everything a muddy mess.
We parked and went inside the Community Center where the air was thick with the smell of Indian fry bread.
Tables had been set up with a variety of hand made wares.
The Taos Pueblo Head Start had three tables.
On those long tables was an assortment of cookie cutter ornaments made by the preschool children.
They had made the ornaments as a fund raiser to pay for a trip into town to see the lights on Taos Square followed by cups of hot cocoa.
The contrast between the affluence of Santa Fe and Taos with the poverty and hard scrabble lives of the Indians of the Pueblo never ceases to wrench my heart.
In Taos County there are over 1,700 children under five years old of whom 1,055 live in poverty.
The Head Start center in Rancho de Taos serves 112 preschool children.
I always take my discretionary fund check book with me on my trips in case I see any opportunity to give back to God's work through the money you give me each month to do that.
I must tell you that I was close to tears thinking of the affluence of the children of St. Mary's, even in our worst years, in contrast to children who don't have the money for a trip to town for a cup of hot cocoa.
I gathered up ten stars and told the teachers personning the table that I wanted to write a check.
I prayed about the amount.
Last year I had given, rather you gave, the Taos Pueblo Head Start $100.
This year, I believe God placed on my heart another amount, $250.
It didn't seem all that much to me, $250.
Less than many of us spend on meals out to eat each month.
Or a trip for a family to Itz.
Or what we may spend for our Christmas feasts.
Or Christmas clothes for our family.
After I gathered my ornaments and handed one of the teachers my, I mean our check, I entered the check in the check book and so I didn't see the response of the teachers.
I hadn't given it for a response, after all.
But my best friend did, and as we left the pueblo, fry bread smell clinging to our clothes, in tears she told me.
It's the reaction to your ministry because it is through your monthly pledge to St. Mary's that I/we have money to give.
The teacher I handed the check to gasped, and then showed it to the teacher standing next to her, who placed her hand on her heart and whispered, "Thank you."
For $250.
This Advent, we are invited by John the Baptizer and Jesus to consider what we buy and what we do.
Have we allowed the lies of the world to tell us to spend our time and money giving our family and friends most everything, if not everything they want-and making sure we fill our ourselves with the food, if not the stuff, of the world?
Does how we spend our money and time this Advent show that Jesus' kingdom is here?
Jesus has given us a yard stick to measure whether or not what we do is God's work.
Does what we choose to buy and do bless?
Does what we chose to buy and do bring healing?
Is the fruit of what we buy and do this Advent the freedom, the true liberation that only God's love and forgiveness offers?
No matter how we've already spent our budget of money and time for Christmas, or even overspent our time and money-it's not too late to be intentional in how we spend our money and time for the next ten days-and beyond.
If anyone here has a need that a gift of money would bless, or heal, or set free, for yourself or someone you know, please let me or James or Russ know.

Because in God's Advent, we are reminded that it takes relatively little to do so very much.
To do Jesus' work. To bless. To heal. To set free. AMEN.

<< photo left: bell outside worship center