Just As We All Were Born

Christmas Eve 2021 

I don’t know what it is about watching a baby being born, but every time I see it happen, I cry. Now, you may be wondering how often I witness babies being born because you know I don’t work in obstetrics. And you might be surprised to know that this is something I actually see on a regular basis… Because I’m a devoted fan of the television series on PBS, “Call the Midwife” where babies are born several times in each episode. I mean, that’s the whole point of the show. And I confess to you that whenever I watch “Call the Midwife”, it’s with a box of tissues by my side because every time a baby is born, my tears flow. No matter how many times I see it happen, I still cry. 

For a long time, I tried to figure out why I love watching a TV show that makes me cry like this. And then, in one of the episodes, it became clear to me. Sister Monica Joan was a midwife in her younger years, but she had long since retired. In her old age, she had a crisis of faith, and she could no longer bring herself to believe God existed. This went on for quite a while. But then one day she found herself in the unexpected position of once again helping a woman with her childbirth. And witnessing the birth of the baby was all it took for her. It was all the evidence she needed to experience the presence of God. 

The birthing process is gritty. It’s painful. If you didn’t know what was taking place, and you just watched it unfolding, you would see a cataclysmic event where it appears all is lost. It’s horrifying. And then, suddenly—a baby! There’s a strong connection between birthing and resurrection. In both, there is more than enough evidence to experience the presence of God. 

I think we lose a lot of that at the birth of Jesus because of the way we’ve told the story. We like to think of Mary as a girl who radiated sweetness and light from the day the angel visited her and told her what was about to happen. We think she never questioned or complained. She was never afraid. But really, do you think that’s the way it happened? 

We like to believe Joseph was easily convinced by an angel that everything would be okay if he took Mary as his wife, despite the fact that she was pregnant and he wasn’t the father. That he wasn’t troubled by how he would look to others, that he wasn’t wondering if he might not be playing the fool and thinking it would be easier to walk away. Surely, there was more to Joseph’s story than what we read in the Bible. 

And the way Jesus was born. We tend to picture it in the most sanitized way possible. Mary didn’t have labor pains. When it was time for Jesus to be born, he gently tapped on her womb a few times, and she knew he would soon be here. 

Mary was never afraid while she went through something she had never experienced before. She never cried out in pain. There was no pushing from a very unladylike position. No blood. No afterbirth. The baby just magically appeared. He came out sparkling clean, with a smile on his face and a halo on his head. But could that possibly have been the case?

We sing “the cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes” as if he never cried like a normal child. He never kept his parents awake nights so that they never knew the torture of sleep deprivation during the first few weeks of his life, the way other parents do. He took to his mother’s breast immediately, never caused her a moment of anxiety or discomfort and always gave her lots of time to rest between feedings.

And, of course, he never pooped like a normal baby. So, his parents never had to deal with cleaning up his mess, back in the day before there were disposable diapers. He certainly never had diarrhea or a diaper rash. And he never threw up. He never felt any pain when those first teeth were slicing their way through his tender, little gums.

 Have you had enough? Have I completely burst the bubble you’ve been carrying around about the perfect birth of Jesus that was unlike the birth of any other human being? I hope so! Because the whole point of Christ’s nativity story is that God was born into this world the same way we all have been born. We tend to insert so much heavenliness into the story that we rob it of all its earthiness. And earthiness is exactly the point of the story.

The theological term for this is the incarnation. And that’s what we celebrate on this night.

That God didn’t just come to visit us for a while and then return to where God came from. God chose to become one of us. To become a creature as a part of God’s own creation. And it began with Jesus’ birth. Just like the birth of any other baby: crying from the sting of the air in his lungs as he took in his first breaths, clinging to his mother for warmth in a cold world, dependent upon two human beings for his very survival from one minute to the next.

Was he not a sweet baby? I’m sure he was, just as all babies are sweet. For he was born like we all were born. With all the pain, and fear, and messiness of any birth. And that’s the wonder and glory of this night.

The Rev. Dr. Nancy Kraft, Ascension Lutheran Church, Towson, Maryland

Lane Connors, artist

The preacher and the cockroach

I was reflecting on the task of preaching today and came across this little piece I wrote back in 2012. Although I'm happy to say this was the last time I ever shared the pulpit with a cockroach, I wish I also could tell you it was the last time I ever died during one of my sermons. 

Last Sunday, as I sat in the chancel, mentally preparing myself to preach, I looked down at the floor and saw a giant cockroach wedged up against the left side of the pulpit. It was lying on its back with its desperate little legs twitching in the air. That lovely image was still in my brain as I climbed into the pulpit and looked out at my congregation. There they were, waiting for a word from the Lord, and I was thinking about a near-dead cockroach.

 

I had an important message that day. It was all about denying ourselves, taking up a cross and following Jesus. Mind you, this is not something peripheral to the life of faith. For those of us who aspire to live Jesus lives, this is at the center. So why was I feeling like it was totally irrelevant to the lives of the people I was addressing? Most of them weren’t making eye-contact with me, and those who were didn’t seem to be blinking. Hello? Is anybody out there?

 

The more I talked, the more disconnected I felt. Was it that nobody likes to be reminded about how following Jesus isn’t always fun? Was it that I had preached on this so many times before that they must be tired of hearing it? Was my sermon too academic? Too humorless? Too devoid of honest-to-goodness, real- life examples? Should I have started working on it earlier in the week? Seriously, while I was talking, all of those thoughts were racing through my mind. I was second-guessing myself and a part of me was wondering if maybe it was time for me to consider taking up another line of work.

 

Certainly, I don’t preach for the praise. That would be bonkers. But it helps if I can sense some kind of connection with my listeners while I’m putting myself out there. It’s not easy for me to stand before a congregation and presume to know what I’m talking about. Sometimes I feel like such a fake and I wonder if they can all see right through me. Really, why should they listen to me? What do I know? Preaching feeds on all my insecurities. And every once in a while I have a Sunday like this, where I am praying for the proverbial trap door that will both make me disappear from view and put me out of my misery. With each word I spoke, I felt more and more like that cockroach, struggling to survive

 

I love preaching when I have a fire in my belly. On those Sundays, I can’t wait to step into the pulpit and watch the words fly from my mouth. I’m talking about something that burns within me, something I believe will transform the lives of my listeners. This is like an out-of–the body experience for me. Although I am a terribly self-conscious person, in that holy moment, all I care about is getting the message across as effectively as I can and there is not a self-conscious bone in my body. I have no doubt that there is a God-thing going on. There have been lots of Sundays like that for me. But this was not one of those Sundays.

 

Finally, I came to the end of the sermon. I left the congregation with a question, said “Amen” and sat-the-hell down, thinking that’s something I should have done about ten minutes ago. Thank God it’s over.

 

I looked down and saw no more movement from the cockroach. He died while I was preaching. Just like me. I died while I was preaching, too. Of course, the big difference between us is that I will live to preach again. Maybe that’s why Christian preachers get so worked up over the resurrection. We experience it on a regular basis.

 

And now, the rest of my life...

Like many other people, I pushed through the pandemic, hoping there might be life on the other side, while the cynical bias of my brain pulled on me to doubt it. I battled one wave of depression after another and struggled with extreme isolation that challenged even my introverted self. I taxed my capacity for compassion, unsure if I had it in me to care for other people while so preoccupied with caring for myself. I lived for moments of face time with my grandsons and cried when they disappeared with the simple push of a button. I smothered my skittish cat with more lovin’ than he could comfortably handle. I zoomed every day with a group of women who became my lifeline. I went on a quest for yeast, baked my own bread, and had to stop when it was so good that I ended up eating an entire loaf in one day. I grew my iconic pixie haircut into a shoulder length mess. I dieted and lost 20 pounds and then gained 25 of them back again. I reluctantly cancelled the reservations I had to spend a week at Jellystone Park with Nick and Justin. I learned to write, produce, direct and edit worship videos, which used up so much of my creative bandwidth that I had little space for anything else. I hung onto every word Dr. Fauci said and followed the rising and falling rates of infection, particularly in Baltimore County. I got all worked up over people who were cavalier about the coronavirus and spent way too much time venting to anyone willing to listen. I explored new depths of my racism with naked honesty. I helplessly watched from a distance as beloved members of my congregation died without presence of a pastor or community to help them through it. I bawled my way through election night just as I had four years earlier, but for much different reasons. I applied in vain for a Covid-19 vaccine and finally received one as a gracious gift.

That’s a bit of what I remember from the blur of my life over the past 14 months. And now, suddenly, none of it matters to me. What did I just live through? Was it me or someone else? When I look at the movie line-up on the Hallmark channel, I can’t understand how it came to happen that I’ve already watched all of these cheesy movies. I marvel at my clean, organized closets and wonder who the person was who snuck into my house and accomplished such a Herculean task. I vaguely remember that people were pissing me off a year ago, but I can’t recall who they were or what they did to piss me off.

I’ve turned the page and begun the next chapter. Back working in my office, I’m planning for Ascension’s first indoor worship service since March of 2020. I’m driving to my favorite restaurant, parking the car and actually going inside to eat. I’m making plans for a Jellystone vacation with my grandsons and their parents in July. 

I don’t want to waste another moment of my life fretting about all that I lived through over the past 14 months. My desperate angst has been transformed into giddy gratitude. All I can think about is the rest of my life. It’s been waiting for me. And now it’s here!

 

The Day After Today (Easter 2021)

“Jesus Christ is risen today! Na-na-na-na-na-na!” Yeah, I know, that’s not the way the song goes. The way we sing it on Easter morning is: “Jesus Christ is risen today! Alleluia!” But a good alternative to the word alleluia that captures the spirit of our Easter celebration would be: Na-na-na-na-na-na!

For we gather this day to taunt death. We stand up to the great fear that plagues us all, the fear of death. Much the way we might stand up to a schoolyard bully… with an older brother standing behind us, of course.

It feels great to be on the winning side against death. What a glorious day!

 But… what about tomorrow? The thread connecting Jesus’ resurrection and our lives often begins to unravel for us on Monday morning. It’s one thing to revel in the resurrection on Easter morning. And it’s quite another to return to life as usual the day after today. Everything that we worried about yesterday will still be with us tomorrow:

     ·      Strained relationships

·      the continuing global pandemic, the uncertainty of vaccines and variants, and those who still refuse to acknowledge that the coronavirus is real.

·      schools confounded with all the complications involved in safely reopening,

·      civil unrest all around the world,

·      the discomfort of a nation coming to terms with systemic racism that has marred our past and threatens our future, 

     A planet that will not survive the abuse humanity has unleashed upon it.

 It will all be with us tomorrow. Easter doesn’t change any of that.

When faced with the reality of our lives, the resurrection may even seem a bit unreal. After all, we have no way of verifying it. There were no reporters on hand. We don’t have many details about it, and what details we do have seem to vary, depending on who’s telling the story. We don’t know what the weather was like that morning. Was it stormy, was it calm? Was the sky clear? We don’t know why Jesus’ burial cloths were neatly folded and left in the tomb. We don’t know if he found some other clothes to wear or if he was naked when Mary saw him. Maybe he found some of the gardeners’ clothes lying around in a shed somewhere and he put those on. Maybe that’s why Mary mistook him for the gardener. But we have no idea what gardeners wore back then. Certainly, Jesus didn’t appear in a pair of bib overalls. Was it just his clothes, or was it his face that changed somehow? Of course, we don’t know what he looked like before the resurrection, either. There’s so much we don’t know, it’s really amazing that we would believe such a story at all.

And yet, despite that, we celebrate the resurrection today. Some of us celebrate because we believe to the core of our being that it happened. Others celebrate because we want to believe it. Perhaps the one thing we all have in common on this day is that we’re people who can’t bring ourselves to dismiss it altogether.

We’re like the author John Updike, who had a strong Lutheran upbringing, and confessed that although he knew all the scientific and historical reasons for doubting the resurrection, he couldn’t quite "make the leap into unbelief."

And yet, I don’t think it’s our struggle to believe something so unbelievable that keeps us from experiencing resurrection in all its fullness. It’s our inability to make the connection between the resurrection story and our life stories. When we celebrate on Easter Sunday we’re remembering the story of the empty tomb, something that happened in the past. But what power does resurrection have in our lives today?   

Beyond Easter morning, we also invoke the risen Christ at funerals. Yet, if we limit resurrection to an idea that brings us consolation whenever we gather around a hole in the ground to lay a loved one to rest, the resurrection of Christ is no more than an insurance policy against death.

Here’s the Easter truth. The resurrection story isn’t just something that we return to at Easter or funerals. Our God is a God of resurrection. The same divine energy which first took Christ out of the grave, is not just to help us in the hour of death, but to bring us life, here and now.

I know that not many of you have been inside Ascension’s church building since the pandemic sent us all home. But for the few of us who have, it’s a surreal experience to be in this space. Every time I’ve come here over the past year, it’s felt a little like I’m one of the women coming to Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning. Like the tomb, it’s empty. The Body of Christ that once filled this space is not here. In its place, I find folded grave-cloths. A notice on the bulletin board for Lenten Soup Suppers – from over a year ago. A welcome to Angie and Sophia, whose visit with us was cut short when they had to return home to Nicaragua early because of the pandemic. A hymn board for Lent. Handbell tables draped in purple for Lent. A bulletin board for Lenten music madness. All of it from over a year ago. Just as it was when we all went home.

The taste of Ann Reilly’s chocolate chip cookies. The altar guild moving swiftly between services to reset the table. The latecomers slipping silently into their pews. It seems so long ago. And yet, I know this time of dormancy isn’t going to last.

Life will return to this place. It’s more than an empty tomb. It will again become a place teaming with life. We wait patiently to become our future selves. It’s a stark reminder to us that no matter how dead our lives may become, death is fleeting. It’s no match for the life God promises us. Resurrection is coming.

You may wake up tomorrow morning with a resurrection hangover and wonder if anything we’ve done on this Resurrection Sunday makes a lick of difference in the world around you. No matter how desperate things may look, I hope you know where your life is headed. Our God is a God of resurrection. As his people, our stories are connected with his. We can’t tuck the resurrection story between the pages of a dusty old book and return to our little lives of quiet desperation. The world around us may be enveloped in the walls of a tomb from which there appears to be no escape. But as followers of the resurrected Christ, our time on this earth is always filled with hope. Every place among us where death has a stronghold, we stand on the side of the one who defeated the power of death.

Jesus Christ is risen today. Na-na-na-na-na-na! Be assured that Jesus Christ is risen the day after today as well. Alleluia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pastor Nancy Kraft

Ascension Lutheran Church, Towson, Maryland