by Patrick Heery

In our culture, success means more: more people, more money, more fame, more comfort. The bigger the better. It’s made a lot of us—from churches to non-rofits, from print media to the arts, from justice advocates to working people — feel like failures. But I wonder if we’ve gotten it wrong.
I think back to my first year in college and to how I would have been alone for Easter but for a small kindness. Many of the students had left for the weekend, and to be honest, it was hard not feel a little lonely, a little homesick. The thought, however, that I could skip the measly offerings of the dining hall made me smile. An older couple at my church had invited me, along with several other college students, to Easter dinner.
It was like going home. The hug I received at the door. The smell of roasting turkey and buttery stuffing. The table full of green beans, carrots, toasted rolls, mashed potatoes and pies. A family of sorts around the table, though several of us had just met.
I don’t know exactly why this moment out of so many has stuck with me. I suspect it’s because I felt loved in a very simple and familiar way.
Here in this smallish congregation, people wanted to know me, talk with me, sit with me. That year, I started going to a small Bible study before worship. I connected with the pastor who took me out for coffee. I was invited to preach and read Scripture. I met friends as we gathered in the church basement to watch and discuss "The Matrix." I threw on borrowed gloves to plant flowers outside the church. Every Wednesday, I stopped by for a free, home-cooked lunch for students.
There was nothing particularly fancy about the church — traditional worship, no projector screens, no sweeping catalog of programs, no big-budget website. But I felt loved. And really, that’s all I wanted.
I talk with so many congregations that feel like they’re failures because they’re small. They think they can’t accomplish great things because they don’t have the money or the membership numbers. They are battered almost daily with doomsday messages of decline and the need to “grow.” And through it all, one terrifying thought persists: that all their devotion, all their love, is not enough.
Maybe you can relate. Churches aren’t the only ones struggling these days.
As I listen, all I can think of is Jesus on some slapped-together cross, perched on a hill beside thieves, most of his disciples nowhere to be seen, a paltry dozen to begin with. And I wonder: Was there ever a moment that Jesus thought to himself, “I’ve failed”?
To be clear, we are not Jesus. We are, more often than not, the disciples who were not there at the cross that day. But the image does raise an interesting question: Would the Joel Osteens and Dave Ramseys of the world have considered Jesus a success if they had lived in the first century, or would they have chastised him for driving away his flock by demanding too much from his disciples, associating with the unwanted, failing to maximize his financial potential, and “settling” for the small moments of footwashing and breaking bread?
The fact is that being faithful to God can mean that we’re going to be small. In our churches, in our professional endeavors, and in our personal lives.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t large, faithful congregations or small, unfaithful congregations. There are plenty of congregations that are small because they are change resistant or just don’t want new people.
Being small, though, should be the least of our worries. These are the questions that matter: Are we present in our community? Do we welcome strangers? Do we have the courage to speak up even when it’s unpopular? Are we growing in our faith and putting it to practice in our daily lives? Is our worship passionate? Do we risk thinking and creating in new ways? Are we obedient to Truth and Justice?
And most importantly: Do we love?
In this, we pray we will not fail. In all else, let us, whether large or small in number, gladly, ambitiously, triumphantly, be failures. I’ll settle for a home-cooked meal with the lonely any day.

by Jill Fandrich

​​These columns are due a week before they appear in print, which sometimes puts me in a bit of a time warp. As I write this, I am wrapping Christmas presents, mailing a few last cards, and getting ready for the arrival of my family. When you read this, all the presents will be unwrapped, the cards will be received, the tree will be down, and the kids will be gone.  For the moment, I have one foot planted in the expectation of Christmas and one foot planted in post-Christmas daily life.  But in reality, isn’t that pretty much how life is-- living out our stories, rooted in the past, living in the present, and hoping for the future?
 
In the church world, Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus—the arrival of God on earth as a baby in human form, sent to live among us.  Everything about his birth is a surprise.  His birth is announced by an angel. He is hailed as a king, yet his parents are humble people. He is born in a strange place surrounded by animals. The first people to worship him are shepherds, and later, wise men from other countries. Even his parents wonder what child they have brought into the world.
 
The surprises keep coming.  Jesus grows up. There are very few stories about him as a child, so in a few quick weeks at church, we skip right to the stories of Jesus as a man, being baptized into public ministry by his crazy cousin, John the Baptizer.  Then he starts hanging out with all the “wrong” people--the marginalized, the poor, the sick, the ostracized, the despised—preaching a message of love and a vision of a world turned upside down. “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” “Love your enemies.” “Turn the other cheek.” “Don’t worry about tomorrow.”
 
It’s easy to get caught up in the “gentle Jesus, meek and mild” imagery of the nativity, picturing Jesus as a sweet baby who doesn’t cry, growing up to be the ultimate nice guy. The Christian message has often been portrayed that way. But actually Jesus was a radical and his message is hard. He called out the hypocritical religious leaders, calling them “You brood of vipers.” He challenged the political leaders of the day. He told people that they would have to give up everything to follow him. He befriended prostitutes and tax collectors and lepers and criminals. This is the baby Jesus, the Christ child, whose birth we just celebrated at Christmas, and whom we now are called to follow through his strange and challenging life right through to his death on a cross.
 
Jesus came to earth to live among us and to show us a different way to live. He was called Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” He gave us a vision of a world in which all people are loved and valued because all are children of God. He lived a life of sacrifice and a life of service. The challenge to us is to live that life in today’s world. How do we spread God’s love today? Who are the marginalized among us? How can we show God’s love to others, including those who are hardest to love? The work continues and it is up to us to be God’s eyes, ears, hearts, hands, and feet today.
 
Every year, when Christmas celebrations are over and we return to our “normal” lives, I reflect on one of my favorite poems by Howard Thurman. Thurman was an African-American Baptist minister, theologian, scholar, writer, and civil rights leader. His theology of radical non-violence influenced a generation of civil rights activists, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Thurman expresses in this poem what “The Work of Christmas” is all about:
 
The Work of Christmas
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and the princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers,
To make music in the heart.
 
May the work of Christmas continue in your life and in mine.

by Patrick Heery
​Be honest. Some of us started our Christmas shopping months ago. A defiant few were even singing Christmas songs or putting up their decorations the day after Halloween. Today may be the first Sunday of Advent (that time in the church calendar when Christians light their candles and prepare for joy that has yet to arrive), but most of us would prefer it if Christmas Day just hurried up and got here.
Personally, I can't blame the world for wanting to rush ahead to Christmas. Christmas is happy. We open presents and sing carols. It's when all that we've been hoping for becomes reality: The Christ child is born and we are saved. Living through Advent, on the other hand, is tough. The nights grow longer, darker, and each day, the manger is still empty.
Mary, mother of Jesus, must have felt the same way, as she waited for God's promise to be fulfilled. When the angel first appeared to Mary, she was an unwed teenage mother, living in the rural hills of Palestine. God's promise to bless her and to change the world through her probably sounded like a cruel joke. The world she saw wasn't changing. The religious elite still snubbed people like her. The Roman Empire still ruled with iron and shield. The poor were still hungry, and the rich still didn't care.
All she saw were ruins. There are a lot of things in ruins these days. Every day, I pray with people facing cancer, job loss, family crises, depression and just plain weariness.
We look out and see loved ones slipping away because of illness or age. We see a church, once full and bustling, now empty and captive to fear. We see a democracy in crisis — and a world enthralled with greed and power, consumed by violence and poverty, unashamed of its objectification and assault on women, held under the dominion of racism and bigotry.
We may ask why we were born into such times. We may wish that we could go back to the time when we were innocent of this grief — or maybe just rush ahead to the happy ending of Christmas.
Karl Marx once described Christianity as an opium of the people, meant to dull our senses to the pain and injustice around us, to blunt the sharp uncertainty of Advent. And perhaps he would be right if the Bible did indeed rush to Christmas (and later to Easter). But Marx was wrong. Because what we see in Mary is no cowering servant to illusion. We see a woman who does not retreat but meets the reality of life head-on. In her song, she tells the story of struggling people, and of a God who — far from whisking them out of reality — plants them squarely there, amid the ruins, that they, like relentless roses through cracked stone, would push, push and push until those ruins are rebuilt and God is visible to all.
God tells Mary that she was made for such a time as this. Appointed, anointed, called — she is the prophet of a God who does not give up. The prophet of Advent, without whom there would be no Christmas.
And so she praises God, even when there's nothing yet visible to praise. She sings, even when there is no song to be had, because she sees the world not only as it is, but also as it can, and will, be.
A world of mercy, where God scatters the proud and brings the powerful down from their thrones, where God lifts up the lowly and fills the hungry with good things. A world where ruins become the seat of God's glory. Where the unwed pregnant girl becomes the mother of God.
Mary fights for this world. And not just her, but every worshiper in every empty cathedral, every man who won't stop praying, every person who won't stop loving, every first responder who plunges in, every caretaker of the aging and dying, every refugee at the border, every woman declaring "Me too" — all Emmanuel, Jesus coming to us. The heralds of Advent.
Let us sing like Mary. Let us sing our Advent song and not rush to Christmas. We are the poets and makers of tomorrow. We are the shepherds telling everyone, the mother singing, the angel announcing, the child leaping, the star pointing: God is coming.
We are the eyes through which God looks hope upon these ruins.