December 23, 2024 – Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age

“Exiled from the truths that the old ones knew, we fill our days with distractions to help us avoid the hard questions that we fear can’t be answered. Or we give ourselves over to false enchantments—the distractions and deceptions of money, power, the occult, sex, drugs, and all the allure of the material world—in a vain attempt to connect with something beyond ourselves to give meaning and purpose to life.” (Dreher, Rod. Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age (p. 13). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.)

“The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What do people gain from all the toil at which they toil under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever.” Ecclesiastes 1:1-4

The word Vanity or Vain can have several meanings. We all know someone who is so self-centered that we call them “vain”. Carly Simon wrote that famous line “You’re so vain, I bet you think this song is about you.” In the reading from Ecclesiastes, the writer uses the word in an attempt to tell the world how meaningless it all felt. His attempts to make money, to gather a harvest were “vain” to him because he realized it would all go to someone else after he died. It all was vanity – fleeting and useless. In my reading from the book Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age, Rod Dreher is also talking about the useless ventures of a lot of people to find meaning in their lives through the material things of this life. Again, we know a lot of people in our lives who suffer from such vain attempts.

But this exposes a flaw of our world today. While so many think they find meaning through technology, that they are dazzled with the newest gadget or the most amazing Artificial Intelligence, this is all smoke and mirrors when it comes to the mystical and the divine. We have heard of the experiences of the people in the village of Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, seeing visions of the Virgin Mary back in June 24, 1981 – or the Garabandal apparitions — appearances of Saint Michael the Archangel and the Blessed Virgin Mary. These visions occurred throughout the years of 1961 to 1965 to four young schoolgirls in the rural village of San Sebastián de Garabandal. And, in my mind, that is the same mystery we experience when we proclaim and have the faith that Jesus is present in the bread and wine of our Holy Communion.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Join me as we once again experience the mystery and the wonder of Christ Jesus coming into the world born to peasant parents in an unknown, backwater town like Bethlehem. How mysterious and wonderful it all is.

Pastor Dave

December 22, 2024 – Advent 4C

“In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” Luke 1:39-45

What were Mary and Elizabeth expecting once the children were born? In a world and a society that is getting more and more complicated, and more and more impersonal, busier and busier, I am not sure that any of us can have a grasp on what we might expect will come around the next corner. I believe we are losing our love for each other, diminishing our face to face time, and allowing technology to replace our relationships. Look, I know we do not live in an idyllic world, and divorce and separation and failed relationships and sin are a part of this broken world. I just have to think that maybe, just maybe, after these last four years of the Covid pandemic and all of the changes that have come with it, maybe people are reassessing their priorities and looking at ways to simplify their lives, and changing their expectations. 

So, what were Mary and Elizabeth expecting? I have a feeling that both Mary and Elizabeth were expecting to be reassessing their priorities – and changing their expectations, now that they were “expecting”. I also believe they were rejoicing in the new directions and possibilities that G-d had gifted them. This is the real gift G-d gives to us in these texts – something none of us could have been expecting — and that is the gift of new possibilities. You see, no matter what age you might be at in your life, G-d is not finished with you – in fact G-d may just be starting with you. When a woman is expecting, she hopefully comes to accept the fact that there are major changes coming in her life – especially when their children are born. The same is true for you and me – when Jesus is born into our lives and into our hearts at Christmas, and every Sunday with the sacraments, and every day with G-d’s Word, we too are to make changes in our lives.

This Christmas season, I want you to ponder some things: with the gift of Jesus born into your hearts anew again this Christmas, I want you to consider where your priorities are in regards to your faith, and to your faith lives? What are you expecting G-d to do in your life this coming year? Do you need to reassess the time you give to your family, to your church, or to your savior Jesus? You have the gift of time – but we never know how much time.

Pastor Dave