When Christ was born, he was a promised hope for many people. However, for every single one of them, save maybe his mother Mary, he was not the expected hope. He failed at meeting the expectations of his people, who had been suffering under one oppressive regime after another, and had been crying out for a champion, a chosen one, someone that embodied God’s power who would release them of their perpetual captivity. Instead, they got a poor carpenter from one of their smallest tribes, a man who preached love of enemies and praying for those who persecute you. Jesus was the promised hope, but he was not the expected hope.

Pastor Chris Brown
File photo

The Christmas story is special because it’s a direct response to hope expected. The details of Jesus’ humble birth and origin are intentional. They are meant to disrupt hope expected so that we might better see the hope that is promised. If the moment at which God chose to be humanly present in our world is through a persecuted tribe, and more specifically, through a humble and poor person in that tribe, than how much more certain can we be that God is with us in our moments of struggle, doubt, pain, suffering and grief. That is the promised hope of Jesus and it’s a hope that is present no matter what our expectations of the world are. However, our disappointment at our expectations not being met can blind us from seeing hope that is promised. We can become so focused on our real or perceived loss and miss how hope is present in the midst of all things.

I realize many of you might have different beliefs outside of Christianity and I would not try to persuade you to a particular belief with this message. However, I think there is truth here that all people can find. In a time where we can become so focused on missing out on seasonal expectations, hope, love, kindness and compassion are still present. While we’re apart, there are examples everywhere of how together we still are and how much we continue to love one another. It might not meet our expectations, but hopefully it meets our needs. And truth be told, this realization might be the best gift we can receive during these holidays.

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Bethania Lutheran Church

My church will not likely be gathering this year as we normally do for Easter Sunday, which in many ways is heartbreaking. If you would have asked me of this possibility a few months ago I would have parroted Wallace Shawn from “The Princess Bride” with a staunch “inconceivable!” It’s still shocking to me that we’re in this moment of “shelter-in-place” orders and social distancing, in which the world we knew a few weeks ago is starkly different than the world we know now. 

After years of services that follow the trajectory of Jesus entering into Jerusalem, celebrating the Passover, and then going to the cross to finally emerge out of the empty tomb, I think we’ve taken for granted the experience of these stories. We always start the story knowing how it ends, perhaps cheating ourselves out of what it was like for the disciples to enter Jerusalem triumphant only to have their world turned upside down at the death of their leader. But it sure feels like we’re living this experience now. We can relate to that space between Friday and Sunday, when time disappears because all our plans, expectations and hopes have been upended. 

As a pastor I live in the seasons of the church. The landscape right now feels on par with the season of Lent, a time of reflecting on our need for the divine and waiting for its fruition come Easter Sunday. But now that COVID-19 will stretch us beyond Easter, I have found myself wondering if Lent will end and if we’ll have Easter at all this year. I’ve had low moments begging God for that Easter experience to be here now and I’ve had hopeful moments reminding myself that it will come and to just live in the present. However, it has been in those low moments when the greatest hope of Easter has hit me and filled me with promise. We are not destined to experience the cross and the empty tomb separately, but rather a balance of Lent and Easter all the time. 

Even though I feel the pangs of the longing for Easter, in the last few weeks I’ve experienced the Easter promise through so many little acts of compassion and love. 

I’ve seen local restaurants donate food and meals to families in need; I’ve seen churches suspends services, but continue donating and distributing food; I’ve seen individuals volunteer to bring groceries and medicine to people quarantined in their homes; I’ve seen people pool their money to be distributed to those hardest hit; I’ve seen people choose social distancing to protect the most vulnerable in our community; I’ve seen children prepare cards and art full of love and beauty for nursing and retirement home residents; I’ve seen people once divided along political lines suddenly cast those divisions to the wind and come together to help others. The truth is the Easter experience has been present this whole time in these subtle yet remarkable ways, and when I can pull myself away from the encroaching fear, I see these glimmers everywhere – and they give me hope. 

I’ve also encountered the Easter experience in a rather provocative way. Someone sent me a news report of dolphins swimming in the canals of Venice – something that hasn’t happened in a long time because of all the traffic. It dawned on me that human activity has been curbed so drastically that much of creation is having an Easter experience … from us. Creation has been given room to breathe in ways it hasn’t been able to for a long time. I’m not putting any divine intent into this, but I also can’t help but see God in creation that has renewed vigor. And I pray we can see this part of Easter too. 

I know that big Easter moment is coming – that time when we’ll be rid of social distancing and engage in physical community. While we’re waiting, I pray that you encounter those subtle Easter moments, the ones that show God is present with all of us in these special little acts of beauty, love, and compassion. I pray these moments can carry you to the point when this is past us. But I also pray that when we get there, we allow this to change us, to see how love triumphs division and crises tend to highlight how much we need each other, to see ourselves not as the center of our planet, but in partnership with it, to see that we aren’t destined to either pain or joy, but that we can choose to experience the balance of both, which enables us to find hope in either.

– In God’s Love, Reverend Chris Brown  

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Bethania Lutheran Church

I’ve been watching the news a lot over the last couple weeks, engrossed yet again in the coverage of our country’s latest mass shooting, in which 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School died. If watching coverage of the shooting wasn’t enough, I’ve also (foolishly) engaged in social media debates about gun violence in our country.

For me, it’s the same as last time – the same arguments, the same points, the same anger and tribalism. I’m somewhat overcome with the feeling that our country is heading to a bad place with a dark ending.

And then I think of Lent and I think of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. I think about how his disciples were embroiled with their own agendas. This was the Messiah they were following and he was going to restore the Kingdom of God to Israel. He was going to drive out the Romans and take up his rightful place as king, and the disciples were going to be at his right hand with status and power.

And while they were heading to Jerusalem with Jesus and entertaining their own fantasies of grandeur, Jesus knew he was heading to the cross. Jesus knew he was heading to a bad place with a dark ending.

As I watch the news and see the same old arguments, anger and tribalism (which I think not coincidently has some influence in the violence we see), I want to cry. My heart is so heavy with sadness that I can feel it in the pit of my chest, banging to come out. I think this is what Jesus must have been feeling as he was walking toward Jerusalem – to a bad place with a dark ending.

Yet the truth of the Easter story is that while Jesus, being accompanied by his disciples, was walking to an ending, a destination, a goal, he was walking his disciples to a beginning. For Jesus, Jerusalem was where it ended, but for the disciples, Jerusalem was where it would begin.

You see, as people we are oriented to end points, destinations and goals. We’ve taken this as Christians and turned heaven into a place we go after life. Some Christians have envisioned an endpoint to this entire world that culminates in Jerusalem. And with recent events in our country, it seems like we might be getting close to that time. Except that Jerusalem was an ending for Jesus, but for all of us it’s a beginning.

We may not be aware, but faith is not about an ending, a goal, or a destination. It is about the experience. Faith is about recognizing the moments that feel like we are heading to a bad place, or a dark ending, and realizing those moments might be our Jerusalem — when we’re being led not to an ending, but to a beginning. That is the story of Easter.

As I’ve watched the news over this last shooting and as I’ve been overcome with sadness and exhaustion and an impending feeling of no resolve, something different was happening this time around. Students from Stoneman Douglas High were holding rallies, giving speeches, taking to social media to share their stories and their resolve that something needs to be done in response to the perpetual mass shootings our country faces. They organized walkouts, drove to their state capital, met with the president and have hit the ground running.

When much of our country has felt like this was taking us to a bad place with a dark ending, these kids reminded us that these heart-wrenching moments do not have to suck the Spirit from us, but rather can feed the Spirit within us and move us forward to creating spaces of respect, empathy, compassion, love and peace. Not an ending, but a beginning. That is the story of Easter.

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