The Story I Shared at Our Christmas Eve Service -

Look what I can do! the son shouts, skipping through space, stars and planets shooting out the ends of his fingertips like Fourth of July sparklers. Their arcs merge into spirals; spirals became galaxies; galaxies arc off into forever.
The father laughs. Laughs at the sheer joy of the son, the joy of creating something out of nothing, the joy of being one. “Come over here a minute,” he calls to his only begotten.
They join hands, the father points to one of the newly spinning planets, shiny and blue. “I especially like that one,” he says.
“Thanks dad … I’m not done with it yet, though.”
“Oh? …What’s next?”
“What would you like?”
“Fecundity!” Booms the father. “Fecundity! Life! A Chia Pet of a planet with all kinds of stuff sprouting and spreading till it tends to wild. And creatures, lots and lots of creatures! Flyers, gliders, crawlers, hoppers, creepers, gallopers, scuttling scurriers across the sea floor, and something to keep it all growing aright. Make that a someone, not a something.
“Dad, you sure do like a lot of different stuff.”
“I love a lot of different stuff. Everything the same gets boring.”
And as the words are spoken, each thing comes into being on the shiny blue planet.
“Still not done yet, Dad.” says the son.
“I know, I know son … what’s next?”
“I’ve been thinking of something kind of like us, kind of but not exactly.”

So the two of them bear down onto the blue planet, finding a patch of damp earth beside a river.
“Go ahead, knock yourself out,” chuckles the father.
A little mud here, a little spit there, and pretty soon the son has sculpted a fine little mud pie man. The son stands mud pie man up on his mud pie feet: “Stand up mud pie man!” But mud pie man’s left leg breaks at the hip and down he goes.
“Let’s give him a name,” suggests the father.
“Adam’s a good one,” shoots back the son.
“It is good,” says the Father.
The son focuses on the hip, repairing the break. Once again, he begins standing him up, but the father stops him short: “You have to give him life before he can live.”
The son smiles, nods, and sucks so much air in through his nose it seems to peel the atmosphere right off the planet, and all the world waits, holding its breath, until the son blows it all right back over Adam. The breath comes out with a roar like a hurricane, but it hits like the light evening breeze. It takes form, shifting shapes, some curling into each nostril, some directly into Adam’s mouth. Some splits off and curls around arms, legs, and torso. Each wisp finds a way into Adam, whispering his name and the unspeakable name of the father as it goes, disappearing under Adam’s skin until he starts to glow.
“Spirit to spirit,” chants the father. “Live, live, live.”
“Stand up Adam!” shouts the son. “Let’s play!”
And Adam stands. He takes in his maker, his friend, and his friend’s father. He takes in his world, puts a toe into the river and smiles at the feel of flowing water. The son laughs. Adam laughs. The father laughs. . Laughs at the sheer joy of the son, the joy of creating something out of nothing, the joy of being one.
“Come on Adam,” says the son, “There’s all kinds of things we can do now.”
Not knowing any language yet, Adam just smiles.
“I can give you words, and teach you all kinds of handy things you’ll need: syntax and grammar, animal husbandry, botany and agriculture, and best of all, how to make the best tree forts ever. But you get to name all the animals. That may take awhile, my dad likes all kinds of things. So I made 3,000 different kinds of fruit flies. Good luck with that one.”
The father watched as they went off and played as friends.
“Oh, that’s good,” says the father.

Some time later the father and son are talking. It’s a slow conversation with long pauses before either of them speak, like each one is thinking through a game of chess that they’re playing, but on the same side against an absent opponent.
“So, Adam has gone down Death Avenue.” It was a statement, not a question from the father.
“I’m afraid so dad. I’ve lost a friend. Just turned his back on us. Said something about it being better to rule in hell than serve in heaven. As if he would rule there. I wonder where he heard that. And now he’s as good as dead and has taken the whole planet down with him. It’s all over except for the shrieking. Is there a way to bring him back?”
There was a long pause. The quiet interval being filled in with the hushed weeping of angels.
“Absolutely. There’s always a way,” says the father.
Long pause.
“You want to tell me?” asks the son.
Long pause.
“It’s you … you’re the way.” says the father.
“Uhh-huh. Can you flesh that out for me some, dad?”
Longer pause.
“Well, basically, that’s it in a nutshell.”
Even longer pause.
“Ok, let me get this straight, I’m the way that you’ll flesh out?”
“Yep, pretty much,” says the father.
“So I’ve grasped the plan and I don’t even know what I’ve said,” chuckles the son.

Together they sit down, heads leaning in towards each other. The father began whispering into the son’s ear while all heaven waits. He tells him something about what it would be like, strapped down by gravity, human ignorance, space and time; engaging in hand to hand combat with the devil and all the evil he would throw at the son; as well as the giddy winning feeling of plucking souls right out of that snake’s jaws; and most of all, a hill where it would all be finalized.
Signaling that all that needed to be said had been said, the father puts his hand on the son’s shoulder, “I’ll always be with you my son,” he says.
There was just one thing left, which was for the father to ask, without a shred of sentimentality or manipulation, the question on which that now less shiny blue planet, Adam and all his sons and daughters, now hung: “So my son, I will never coerce you - are you willing to go?”
“Dad?”
“Yes son.”
“Dying … does it hurt?”
“Yes, my son, but its a short lived pain compared to separation.”
“Ok, I’ll go. But you’ll be there for me, right?”
“From beginning to end my son.”

Silent night, holy night.

If you're a Bread of Life attender, you may have heard me pray for Tristan during prayers of the people. He was diagnosed three years ago with an especially nasty brain tumor. Christmas came early for Tristan this year. He died Wednesday morning.
I got the word later that morning as I was reading over the lectionary for Sunday's sermon. Here's a snippet from Isaiah 65:

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

Weeks before entering hospice, Tristan had been wrestling dark, dark dreams. Maybe they were just the percolations of understandable anxiety. Maybe they were his conflicted relationship with God taking shape. You could say Tristan and God had been having an extra special long-lasting lovers' quarrel. He had his share of anger towards God: an adolescent's anger over a dad killed by a drunk driver; an adult man's anger over missing out on the wife and kids he quietly but desperately wanted. No doubt there was more. Taken together, the reasons formed a wedge that leveraged Tristan away from the light and into a darker place. At night, when that place became tangible, he preferred not to sleep, ducking the dreams.
But a few days before he died, there was a change. He slept and smiled, sometimes even chuckled. When he woke up, he talked about the bright light in his dreams. Once, very near the end during a brief stint of consciousness, he asked his stalwart friend Bill, "do you see that light in here? how bright it is? He let Bill know that the quarrel was over, the darkness gone, peace had come.
The reach of God's arm astounds me. Over and through lifetimes of stubbornness, hurt and pushing Him away, God comes. Christmas looks back to Christ's manger, and forward to his throne, our here once and coming again king. Whether we see Him on that throne from this life or the next, its still a fact. And he'll be bringing all kinds of newness with him, just like Isaiah describes. No more tears, no more distress, no more too-short lived lives, no more wedges that leverage us into darker places. So rejoice. I'm sure Tristan is.

On getting slapped upside the head for no good reason.

Last night a friend sent me an article written by Francis Frangipane. I found it timely and powerful. It talked about how to be like Jesus when you take a shot from someone, especially when you're trying to do what you think to be God's good pleasure.
Here's my reply to the friend:

Hi

I read and want to say thanks for the email & article.

One paragraph especially struck me:

"Yet, let us beware. We will either become Christlike and forgive the offenders or we will enter a spiritual time warp where we abide continually in the memory of our wounding. Like a systemic disease, the hurtful memories infect every aspect of our existence. In truth, apart from God, the wounding that life inflicts is incurable. God has decreed that only Christ in us can survive."

I think it struck me because I feel like I've been the recipient of a few people's "spiritual woundedness time warp stuckness" this fall, and I feel the temptation to swallow all that crap and enter that time warp myself.

Line from a Dylan song:
"I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry face.
and every time I pass that way I always hear my name."

Its funny. No matter how far down this road I go following Jesus, its still the same hills that are hardest to climb, and this one is called return good for evil.

Thanks again.
Grace and peace
Matt

One last loving look back at summer before the snow flies.