Sometimes I wonder what Jesus was like when he was a kid. What toy did he like to play with? Was he just like any kid when he was three demanding things for himself and getting vocal when Mary and Joseph didn’t oblige? Did Mary hang up his drawings on the fridge? Did he struggle at spelling or math? Did he love being outdoors and playing with his friends? Were there things that Mary made for dinner that he didn’t like to eat?

We get on full display how John’s gospel begins in a much more mystical way than the others. The synoptic gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—all dive right in to the narrative first. They describe the foundational stories of Jesus and his ministry, and present either birth narratives or Jesus’ baptism in their openings. But John takes us back to words that point to creation. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” We learn quickly that Jesus is in fact the Word , and the beginning of his story is so much earlier than when Gabriel broke the news to Mary at the Annunciation that she would bear a son. 

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. 

We were supposed to be back by now. This church full to the brim, if not overflowing in the pictures I had in my mind, including the candlelight service for those who stay up past their normal bedtimes. We would be having people over for an overladen Christmas buffet, and we’d be talking about the joy of having survived a pandemic as we raised another glass. Our family would then be hopping a plane on the 26th to the desert Southwest for the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park to celebrate 25 years of marriage, 50 years of my life, and a decade of shared ministry here at St. Mark’s. Instead I am preach a Christmas Eve sermon to you while looking at a camera and my son sitting behind a computer screen and nothing else is stirring, not even a mouse. Our vacation remains on hold, our feast and raised glasses substantially toned down, and the only people we’ll see will be found in those tiny boxes of impending Zoom.

A few years ago, I read Thich Nhat Hanh’s book No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering. Hanh is a Zen Buddhist teacher originally from Vietnam, and he lived in his home country during the Vietnam War. He describes that time as “dark and heavy” making it nearly impossible for anyone to see their way forward. As a teacher, he was frequently asked if he thought the war would end soon. He replied, “‘Everything is impermanent, even war.  It will end some day.’”

If someone were to ask you to describe those who have received God’s favor, how might you respond? What are the types of people you imagine? Perhaps those who are well-off, or the ones who are well-spoken. Maybe you conjure up those who have done something for God or given back to humanity. Possibly you’d think of a renowned world leader, or someone who’s worked hard in the medical field. I suspect many of us would include those who’ve done the right thing and have thereby “earned” God’s favor. We would expect that the ones we’ve imagined that God has shown favor to have done something remarkable to deserve it. Chalk it up to that ledger we also believe God has up there in heaven where every good and bad thing we do gets meticulously noted down, and we just hope to have more credits than debits during our lifetimes and earn God’s favor.

A few weeks ago my good friend the Rev. Laura Everett, who is also the executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches, wrote an essay about the grapevine in her backyard. She described how much she and her wife looked forward to the harvest this fall, how grateful they were for the heartiness of the Concord grapes, the way 2020 had been bitter and how the produce of that vine would bring solace. 

Back in late March, Boston native and actor John Krasinski debuted a Youtube news series titled, “Some Good News.” Shot entirely in his home during the COVID-19 shutdown, Krasinski wanted to only share good news stories with his viewers. The stories shared included a couple getting engaged in front of a chalk drawn Eiffel Tower — they had planned to go to Paris, of course, before flights were shut down—and a 15 year old girl who finished her last chemo infusion and was greeted by hundreds of friends socially distanced in their cars shouting their support. It was a much needed break for us as the numbers of Covid infections and deaths climbed. Back then the US was seeing about 20,000 infections each day and around 500 deaths. This week we’re seeing 175-200,000 infections each day and averaging over 1000 daily deaths. It still seems we need some good news.

Today we mark the beginning of a new Church Year. We light the first of these four Advent candles to mark the Sundays until Dec 25, and we see these weeks as a time to watch and wait for Jesus to be born once more in that stable. Yet instead of our gospel lesson being about the Annunciation of the Angel Gabriel to the maiden Mary—something you might expect as we begin to prepare—we get Jesus teaching Peter, James, John, and Andrew about the end of the world as we know it (h/t to REM). If you studied theology, you’d have learned that religious professionals call this passage Mark’s “Little Apocalypse.” Jesus tells us that at the time the sun will be darkened and the moon will go dim, and stars will be falling out of the sky. Chaos reigns. Of course, we might also just call it another 2020, but I digress.

The kingdom of heaven is as if a man went on a journey, and doled out some money to his servants. One gets five talents, another two, and another one, Jesus says, based on their ability. Now let me pause right here to let you in on the math that Jesus’ first listeners would have at their fingertips. A talent was worth about 15 years of wages. In the US, the average salary is $50,000, so in rough figures we’re talking a talent being about $750,000. So this parable starts really like this: A man went on a journey and gave to his three servants 3.75, 1 and a half, and three quarters of a million bucks, each according to his ability. Jesus’ followers who were primarily working class folks probably would have been really paying attention from this point on. That’s a lot of dough.