Author Archives: Greg Johnston

The Unfamiliar Story

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The Unfamiliar Story

 
 
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Sermon — December 24, 2023

Michael Fenn

Lectionary Readings

If you are like me, primarily a dweller of the city of Boston, there is a normal level of this kind of existential terror that happens when you move to Wyoming. And not just because of the hunting, fishing, cowboys, bears, or the ever-present wind. 

I moved to Wyoming to do the Episcopal Service Corps right after I graduated from college. I arrived on the last flight into Cody, Wyoming and the director of my program picked me up in the pitch blackness. I got vague glimpses of the asphalt as we wound through the roads of the Bighorn Basin, going to Walmart because I had forgotten some basic necessities, and then eventually pulling into the house at the retreat center I would live in around 9:30 pm. 

Over the course of the next few days I would steal glimpses out of windows, and see the landscape as it passed by as we drove around on various errands around Cody. I remember this feeling of terror, of anxiety, of wonder, and pure awe. For the first time the world was so big, the mountains so grand, the sky so looming, the desert basin so vast, and the glory of God reflected in such a way that I was wholly unaccustomed to. I had a number of conversations with people that confided that they had shared a similar experience upon moving there, it was a landscape that inspired awe and wonder and terror for the unaccustomed. 

At some point in October after I had moved I got used to it though, seeing for dozens of miles in every direction became expected, I grew accustomed to distances that were unfathomable to my Massachusetts mind, it became my normal life just like my life in Boston. The views settled in and became commonplace–the background image of my new life. Until they didn’t.

Every so often, I would suddenly see the landscape around my house as if it were the first time–the terror, the awe, the wonder renewed in my sight. I would look at Foretops’s Father (the mountain at the center of the Bighorn Basin) again and my heart would be strangely warmed, I would sit on the top of the hill out back of our house and see Teepee’s Doorway (the valley that leads into Yellowstone) and wipe tears from my eyes. There was no pattern to these moments, nothing that I could do that would definitively make these new moments of wonder unlock for me. Though I did have to make the first motion to actually look, and look again, and to keep looking. 

As we approach Advent this year, I am feeling like we have allowed a lot of our most profound and radical stories to settle into the landscapes of our lives. Though, I cannot deny that the familiar stories bring a level of comfort. The birth narratives of Jesus are what many Christian children cut their teeth on when they are being introduced to the faith, and at this time of year we easily settle back into them like a big comfy chair–particularly as Christmas becomes an ungrounding and stressful time. There is a nostalgia and a familiarity to the birth narratives such that they remain stalwart in people’s minds even if they do not remember much else about Christianity. 

And this makes sense, there are really cool angels who bring the glory of God to earth and talk to people, Jesus is born in humble (but usually depicted as quite cozy) beginnings, wise men come bearing strange gifts, in some apocryphal traditions a small boy comes to play the drums for the newborn Jesus and his family, and humble shepherds are invited to witness the newborn king. However, I have been attempting. comforting as I find these stories, to put myself out there into the stories again, to look again and again and hope for that same sort of radical transformation. 

Today’s story, the Annunciation, feels to me like it has settled into the territory of a bit nice and mystical. Mary just seems to have some cool stuff happen to her, the angel Gabriel comes, and the Annunciation seems to be the mystical stepping stone to the real hoo-rah that we are waiting for, the birth of Christ. 

However, if we look and look again, I think what we miss in this story is how brave Mary’s “yes” actually is. In my reading, the bravery of Mary’s action in this story is threefold. 

First, this angel greets her in a very strange way, and she is greatly troubled. Here we can note that an unrelated man and woman conversing in public would have been unusual and scary. And also that this man is an angel. Mary is truly greatly troubled to even find herself in this situation. 

Second, we can note what exactly the angel is saying to her. In the first bit of what the angel Gabriel is saying to her, the whole thing about kingdoms and her son, is a direct threat to the Roman occupation under which she lives. The region in which Mary lives is a powder keg of a place ready to explode at a moment’s notice. It had only recently come under full Roman occupation and dissent was brewing in major ways. At this tense moment an angel comes and tells her that her son will be the one to upend all of this. 

We see this idea most clearly in the Magnificat, one of our most ancient Christian hymns that we sang today. It promises that God will totally cast down the powerful–the kings, the emperor, the governors. It promises that the rich–the landowners, the merchants, the emperor–will be sent away empty-handed. It promises that the proud–the generals, the politicians, the scholars–will be scattered in the imagination of their hearts. All the normativity of the world under which she lives will be destroyed and upended, and she will be an accomplice to this.

Third, Mary is a young, unmarried woman who is told she is going to bear a child. I think there are a lot of apparent dangers here that we can understand. Being any one of these things in Mary’s society comes with a certain amount of danger, to be a young unmarried woman who is bearing a child puts Mary in significant danger. Many modern commentators note that Mary’s subsequent visit to Elizabeth–her cousin who lives kind of far away where nobody knows Mary and she can lay low for a bit–may well have been the result of the danger that she must live through in order to bear the Christ-child.

I hope I have sufficiently highlighted the bravery of Mary’s “yes” in this story, and maybe even shifted your view of this story to how earth-shaking this moment is. For this brief moment the fate of the world hinges on one young woman’s decision to make the brave choice to say yes to bearing the Christ-child. The birth of the Christ-child is predicated on Mary’s  heroic choice to step out of what would have been a normal life to step into danger. 

The good news is that Mary did say yes. Because of Mary’s bravery our savior in Jesus can join us in our humanity. Because of Mary’s daring decision, Jesus can be incarnated to be our salvation. The world has been profoundly changed because one woman decided that she would make the brave choice and say “yes” to what the Lord called her to do. We only get to revel in the joy of Christmas because of the danger Mary took upon herself, and she did so with great faithfulness and with rejoicing. 

So let us rejoice because of Mary’s yes, on account of Mary’s courage, and for the coming of the Christ-child to be with us this Christmas. 

Much Perplexed

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And Gabriel came to Mary and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. (Luke 1:28–29)

The Annunciation tends to pass us by. You might think that this day—when the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will give birth to the Messiah, the Son of God—would be a big one in the Church year. But the holiday itself falls on March 25 (you can do the math), right around Easter, and it often gets rescheduled if it falls during Holy Week or Easter Week. (This year, the announcement will be delayed slightly to April 8…) We tell the story again on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, but of course this year, that falls on the morning of Christmas Eve, and once again, few will hear it. And of course, when I say “we” here I mean “we Protestants,” who’ve always been a bit skeptical about the role of the Mother of God, relative to our Roman Catholic friends.

But an obscure Annunciation is somehow appropriate for the day.

An angel of the Lord—scratch that, not just any angel, but the Archangel Gabriel!—appears to a young woman with an extraordinary message, and a greeting: “Greetings, favored one!” (in some traditional translations, “Hail, full of grace!”) “The Lord is with you!” And Mary is not frightened, or impressed, or flattered, but perplexed. The angel goes on at length, describing the amazing thing that is happening: “you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus! He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David! He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end!” And Mary is not shocked, or terrified, or lost in rapturous praise. She simply asks the obvious question: “How can this be?” And the angel gives an answer I’ve always loved for its wild inadequacy: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”

Thanks, Gabriel. That clears things up.

The angel of the Lord appears to announce the most important event in human history, one which is completely fundamental to Christian theology, and this is as clear as he can be? This is as public an announcement as God wants to make? One angel, to one person, with a few short, confusing sentences?

But sometimes that’s all that we get. The world moves underneath us, and no one else notices. God reaches out to touch us, and no one else sees it. God speaks into our lives, and the message is confusing, and we are perplexed.

And we’re left with a choice. We can ignore that message from God, or shrug it off as something else. We can try to make perplexity precise, transforming ambiguity into fundamentalism in pursuit of something we can wrap our heads around. Or we can simply accept that we’re going along for the ride, and echo Mary’s words: “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Free of Charge

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Last night, a hardy group from St. John’s bundled up against the wind and cold and set up a table on Main Street as part of Visit Charlestown’s Holiday Night Out. Whether by accident or by Providence, we were stationed next to the entrance of The Cooperative Bank, where Santa Claus was available for photos, so a steady stream of neighbors young and old walked past us on their way to see the Big Guy. We blasted Christmas music, handed out cookies and candy-cane gift bags, and collected a few bids for our Red Sox ticket Silent Auction.

But by far the most heads were turned by Simon’s voice announcing, as they walked past, “Free Raffle! Free Raffle!”

It’s astounding how quickly someone’s path can change when you say those simple words. We were just raffling off a gift basket, nothing crazy. But it was free. All you had to do was risk frozen fingers to write your name on a slip of paper and put it in the box for a chance to win.

And so we witnessed dozens of bundled-up yuppies on their way home from work or out for dinner turn aside with a look of delight. Scores of seniors chatted with us as they scoped out the goods. More than one elementary schooler checked with her mom to confirm that the family email address was, in fact, correct.

And why not? It was a free raffle, a chance to win a nice little gift, no strings attached.

But as the box of entries filled with free raffle tickets, so did the “Donations Welcome” jar at the other end of the table. A young guy who never would’ve stopped to buy a church raffle ticket slipped a twenty across the table in exchange for his free cookie and chance at a prize. Kids searched their pockets for leftover dollar bills. And best yet, when someone said she had no cash but could she Venmo us, we said no, it’s free; just fill a ticket out and put it in.

As Pia observed, halfway through, this is like grace. And she was right, and in fact I can’t think of a better way to put it.

In God’s economy, everything is free of charge. You are loved, and you are forgiven, and you are (from time to time) inspired, and you do not have to do a thing. God’s grace is a free raffle for a wonderful gift, and if you show up without cash, you get a ticket anyway. God’s love is completely gratuitous, in every sense of the word.

And yet this freedom doesn’t lead to freeloading. Not a single person, when confronted with the news of a free raffle, came up with a scheme to game the system, to take advantage of our generosity. They responded with their own. As the ticket box filled up, the tip jar filled up too, and if that doesn’t sum up Christian life, I don’t know what does. When we are loved, it leads us to love. When we are forgiven, it leads us to forgive. When in the midst of darkness we see a glimpse of light, we do not hide it away for ourselves, but show it to the world.

I walked home last night wondering what else we could give away for free, and what gifts we’d receive in return. I wondered how much money the Harvest Fair would raise if the Turkey Dinner were free (suggested donation: $20). I wondered what the church’s budget would look like if instead of charging tickets for church, we opened our doors and accepted donations. (Psych! We already do this! But churches used to actually rent pews.) I wondered what it would look like in my life to remember that everything I have is a gift from somewhere else, and to give myself as a gift in return.

I wonder what it would look like in yours.

On Bishops

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This week, we welcome the Right Reverend Alan Gates, our Diocesan Bishop, for a visit to St. John’s, which will be his final formal visit here before his retirement next fall. This morning, our diocesan Bishop Nominating Committee published a new diocesan profile, the result of several months’ work reflecting on the life of our diocese and gathering stories and input from people all over the area. Wednesday, we celebrated the feast day of arguably the most famous Christian bishop in history, St. Nicholas of Myra—better known to his modern disciples as Santa Claus.

  • An old pencil drawing of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza sitting on their horses, by Wilhelm Marstrand.
  • An old pencil drawing of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza sitting on their horses, by Wilhelm Marstrand.
Have you ever seen a mitre so floppy?

I mean: Come on! Same guy.

In the spirit of seasonal fun, and as a break from our exceptionally-apocalyptic Advent lectionary readings, I thought I’d share my three favorite stories about Saint Nicholas of Myra (c. 270–343), in their family-friendliest versions.

  1. Saint Nicholas, like many early Christian leaders, was born into an aristocratic family, but gave much of his wealth away. One poor family included three teenaged daughters whose father could not afford a dowry, limiting their prospects for marriage.* Wanting to help the family without dishonoring them, Nicholas secretly dropped three bags of coins into their home, one for each girl’s dowry. One version of the story says that he dropped the bags of coins through the window; another says that Saint Nick dropped the gold even more circuitously through the chimney, whence it fell into the stockings they had left drying by the fire. (Sound familiar?)
  2. In another story, Nicholas visits a region undergoing a great famine. He happens to pass by a butcher’s shop when he senses something strange going on. Nicholas makes the sign of the cross over a large barrel, upon which three small children emerge. The children had been killed and pickled by the butcher, who had planned to sell them to the hungry townspeople as ham. Luckily, Nicholas’s prayer was sufficient to achieve their resurrection. This is an extraordinary tale, but one that was widely believed and often depicted in medieval art—with the result that Saint Nicholas became commonly associated with children, of whom he is a patron saint!
  3. Saint Nicholas’s Day (December 6) became the day on which some communities elected a “boy bishop” for the year, a child chosen to exercise episcopal authority until Holy Innocents’ Day (December 28). In a tradition of tremendous theological depth** and great silliness, the boy bishop donned the (adult) bishop’s mitre and crozier, and he and a coterie of boy priests ran the cathedral for the month, leading all worship except the Mass.

One wonders whether our Bishop’s appearance just after Saint Nicholas’s Day ought to evoke any of these associations. I don’t believe we’re missing any possibly-pickled parishioners,*** and I haven’t spotted any bags of gold—But should our acolytes attempt a coup in the chancel this Sunday, then… Well. They may well be within their rights.

Not quite the same, but… the color scheme is uncanny.

* One can fill in the details about the likely future employment of three poor young women who could not be married.
** “he hath put down the mighty from their seat / and hath exalted the humble and meek”
*** although at home, we’ve just finished reading The Big Friendly Giant…

Look Alive!

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Look Alive!

 
 
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Sermon — December 3, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Now, I don’t often stand up here and brag about my own accomplishments, but you should know: In addition to being loving father and a decent cook and a once-distinguished student of ancient languages, I happen to have been known, in the late-’90s Winchester youth sports scene, as one of Little League baseball’s worst-ever hitters.

Now, I know it’s hard to believe, but no matter how many hours my mom and I spent in “spring training” out in the front yard, no matter how many how many times I fantasized about being up to bat for the Sox in the bottom of the ninth, there I’d be, batting ninth—they’d have me batting tenth if they could—failing to connect with yet another pitch.

I had a brief renaissance during the first years of “kid pitch,” when the combination of my gangly frame and my peers’ complete inaccuracy led me to an on-base percentage driven by walks and being hit by pitches, but I swear my batting average was never above about fifty; and I do mean that like .050.

But my coaches were nice guys, so I was mostly on the receiving end of positive, affirming coachly shouts. “Good eye!” they’d say as the ball sailed past, four feet from the strike zone. “Keep your head in the game!” as I instinctively ducked to avoid a pitch we all wished I’d let hit me in the helmet. And my favorite piece of sports advice: “Look alive!” an expression they surely teach in Dad School.

“Look alive!” Now that’s one I can do. I cannot hit a baseball to save my life, but I can look alive, because I am alive, gosh darnit. And I can look the part!

Of course, that’s not what “look alive” means. It’s not “look alive,” but “look alive.” Pay attention, be alert, keep your eye on the proverbial or literal ball. If Jesus were your baseball coach—surely that’s the title of a country song, right?—if Jesus were your baseball coach, he’d say, as you stepped up to the plate, “Come on, now! Keep awake!”

“Look alive!” Advent is here.

“Keep awake,” Jesus says to his disciples. “Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.” (Mark 13:37, 33) We often spend these four weeks in December looking forward to Christmas Day, to God’s arrival in the world in the form of the baby Jesus, born in Bethlehem. But the church’s worship also looks forward to something else. When Jesus says “you do not know when the time will come,” he’s not talking about his own birth. That would be a little odd. He’s not talking about the “First Coming” of Christmas. He’s talking about what’s sometimes called the “Second Coming,” some future day when “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,” the stars will fall and the heavens will shake and “they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory.” (Mark 13:24-26)

And this is why Jesus tells the disciples to “keep alert,” “keep awake,” because that day is coming, “but about that day or hour no one knows,” neither the angels, nor the Son, nor any preacher who tries to calculate the date—but only the Father. (Mark 13:32) So they should keep watch, Jesus says, lest it catch them unawares.

Now of course it’s hard to know just what this means. Jesus has to be exaggerating, somewhere. If the “Second Coming” is some actual day of earth-shaking darkness and divine judgment, which still hasn’t happened yet, then the urgency is exaggerated: surely the disciples do not need to stay awake for more than two thousand years. And if they really did need to keep awake, to keep alert, to “look alive”—if it’s really true that that first generation of disciples wouldn’t pass away before these things happened—then maybe he’s not actually talking about some literal day of darkness, some future day of the “Second Coming.” Maybe he’s talking about something else.

Advent, after all, isn’t just a season of vigilance. It’s a season of memory, and comfort, and hope. It’s a season in which, during what are literally the darkest days of the year, we are reminded of the great things that God has done, and the great things that God will do, and the great things that God is doing even now.

The prophet Isaiah looks back to the past, reminding God of the times “when you did awesome deeds that we did not expect.” (64:3) And Isaiah hopes for the future, Isaiah prays for God to do something—one of my favorite prayers, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!” (64:1) But Isaiah also acknowledges the ongoing work of God: “O Lord… we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.” (64:8) And my middle-school pottery-class skills were as poor as my elementary baseball skills, but even I know that a potter’s work is not one and done. There’s a shaping and a guidance that takes place, between a potter’s hands and a sad old lump of clay, and I love this as an image for human life, because you can’t look at any given pot at any given moment and know what the future has in store for it, any more than you can do with people. That one looks pretty rough now, but it’s still on the wheel. That one looks pristine, but maybe it’s about to crack in the kiln.

Paul does the same thing, balancing the future and the past with a healthy dose of the present. He begins his letter to the Corinthians by giving thanks for the grace that has been given them in Jesus Christ. (1 Cor. 1:4) And he reinforces the promise that God will strengthen them, so that they can be found blameless at that Second Coming, “on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 13:8) But he’s more focused on the present: on the ways in which God is enriching them now, on the spiritual gifts God is giving them now, as they wait. He talks about what God is doing for people in the present, because he wants to talk about what the people are doing to each other in the present: after this positive and encouraging opening, he’ll go on to spend most of the letter trying to sort out the conflicts and disagreements that keep happening between the members of this very human church. Like Jesus, Paul also wants these Christian disciples to be vigilant—not for the ways in which God will one day come to them, but for the ways in which God is already now among them, working in them and through them, and in and through the people around them, people who sometimes really get on their nerves.

In the darkest days, in the midst of great suffering, when it seems like the whole world, the whole universe, is coming apart—in other words, most days—the Son of Man is coming, wrapped in clouds. But those clouds are apparently pretty thick. You’d think that when God does tear open the heavens and come down, it would be an obvious thing. And yet Jesus tells the disciples, over and over again, to look alive. Keep awake. Be alert. Because this awe-inspiring appearance of the Lord might otherwise go as unnoticed as his birth did, in the back of an inn, somewhere in Bethlehem.

How many awe-inspiring moments sail on by while we’re swinging at something else and missing? Not the baby’s first steps, or your first time at Niagara Falls. But the child’s 100th drawing of a ninja or the blueness of the sky on a November morning. Not the few big moments in life, but the hundred thousand small ones. Not the one big life-changing experience, but the million little spiritual gifts that lie hidden for us, scattered throughout the stuff of daily life.

So keep awake, this Advent! Be alert! Keep watch for the ways God is appearing to you here and now; keep watch for the hand of the potter shaping you, and the people you love, and the people you don’t much like. Keep your head in the game, and eyes on the ball. And if that’s too much, during this chaotic season before Christmas—if it’s too much, amid the shopping and the cooking, the family visits and the final exams—then at the very least: Look alive! Because you are alive, thank God—and “I give thanks to my God always for you,” knowing that God loves you, and that “God is faithful” to you, and that by God you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.