 I'm going to make that a little bit more specific. Oh, I used to do this shorter one. I'll see if you can hear me. I'd like to get this to you. Oh, good. It's not something you'd have to ask. What? Oh, I'll see if I can hear you. Oh, I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. I'll see if I can hear you. Please join me in a few moments of centering silence. Now please join me in singing our in-gathering hymn, number 126, but please note that the words are those that are printed in your order of service. Someone made me aware of that last service. Some people were confused because there's more than one set of words. So these are the ones to use. Thank you. To the First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Karen Rose Gredler and on behalf of the congregation I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation so whomever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life journey we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium. Bring your beverages and your questions. Members of our staff and lay ministry will be on hand to answer your questions and welcome you. You may also look for persons holding teal colored stone, stoneware coffee mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would welcome visiting with you. Experienced guides are generally available to give a building tour after each service and I know that Richard Miller is planning to give a service, a service, a tour after this service so if you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed audition or our national landmark meeting house please meet Richard over near the big glass windows right after the service. He's an excellent guide. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service however because it is difficult for some in attendance to hear in this lively acoustical environment our child haven back in that corner and our commons area along the back of the auditorium are great places to retire if a child needs to talk or move around. The service can still be seen and heard well from those areas. This would also be an excellent time to turn off all devices that might cause a disturbance during the hour especially cell phone ringers please. I'd now like to acknowledge those who make our services run smoothly. We have a staff member on sound this morning because there weren't enough volunteers hint hint and Smiley is our lay minister Margie Marion is spilling in as our greeter upstairs because no one else was signed up hint hint. Wally Brinkman Patricia Becker and who else a third person we snagged I'm so sorry. Our ushers hospitality is Jeannie Hills and she was getting help from Jean Sears and as I said Richard Miller is leading the tour and I just remembered it's Vivian Littlefield who pitched in to do the ushering today. Please note the announcements in the red floor insert in your order service which describes events going on around the church during this period of time and particularly notice that the Christmas Eve services all one two three four of them are listed in there so hopefully you'll see something that fits your schedule and join us for one of those services. Again welcome we hope today's service will stimulate your mind touch your heart and stir your spirit. We gather in the dim light and the damp chill of mid December finding warmth from each other turning darkness to a time of light and nourishing hope where reason fails. Grateful for small miracles and everyday blessings we rejoice in the wonder of making light out of darkness love out of enmity and hope out of despair. I invite you to rise and body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice and if you will join your voices in reading the bolded italicized sections. May the light of joy we kindle this morning brighten our lives. May the light of morality teach us the right. May the light of freedom burn more purely in our hearts. May the light of hope give us high vision. May the light of Hanukkah solstice and the Christmas season never be extinguished from our lives and in the spirit of the season please turn to your neighbor exchange with Emma Warren greeting and if there are some children among us I see a few bright young smiling faces out there. Time to come forward for the message for all ages is a story about a fellow with a very strange name Mr. McPhiz and Mr. McPhiz is a chipmunk. We've all seen chipmunks haven't we? Well he was a chipmunk that lived in a burrow and the burrow was underneath a big oak tree and that was just as safe and as sound and as comfortable as it could be and it gave Mr. McPhiz great peace of mind but the previous owner of this burrow from whom he had bought it had left it a terrible mess and Mr. McPhiz had to see what needed to be done if he worked really really hard. Now fortunately there wasn't anything that Mr. McPhiz loved to do more than to clean and so the job was a happy one and so he swept and he scrubbed and he repaired and he painted and when everything was in good order Mr. McPhiz was just as pleased with himself as he could be. He took immense pride in his little house so imagine Mr. McPhiz's horror when a family of pack rats the griswolds moved into the den next door. You ever seen a pack rat? This is a pack rat. Looks kind of like a gerbil doesn't it? Yeah that's a pack rat. It's kind of like a big mouse big furry mouse. So the griswolds and Mr. Griswold in particular they weren't bad sort of people but unlike Mr. McPhiz they were kind of messy. Mr. Griswold was a serious collector and he was forever finding these lovely treasures in other people's garbage and he would drag them home and he would stockpile them believing at some point the stuff was going to come in in the handy and actually pack rats that's what they do. If they find some kind of little shiny object like a bottle cap they'll take them back to their home and they'll store them there. Well Mr. McPhiz could barely look out of his window without growing very irritated about the growing pile of trash in his neighbor's yard and the situation just went from bad to worse and Mr. McPhiz's irritation turned to disgust and then to loathing as that clutter gradually accumulated. In other words Mr. McPhiz wasn't very happy with the Griswolds but it wasn't until December came around that his feelings about the Griswolds turned into genuine hatred. Like all fussy creatures Mr. McPhiz had very few friends. In fact he didn't have a single one and most of the time it didn't bother him that he didn't have any friends because he was always busy with doing what? Cleaning. But at Christmas time he got a little sad about this. Now every day Mr. McPhiz would sort through his mail that came into his mailbox and there would be advertising circulars and there would be bills to pay and he wished that someone anyone would just send him a handwritten Christmas card but he never found one. Now in the past he'd been able to deal with this emptiness in his life but then one horrible day that December after another disappointing trip to his own mailbox no Christmas cards he noticed that there were several large square envelopes in Mr. Griswold's mailbox. He went over he pulled him out and examined the envelopes they were all hand addressed to the Griswold family. They must be Christmas cards and then he looked up and you can see Mrs. Griswold was standing in her doorway staring at him. He was so embarrassed and he guiltily walked back to his own house. However this was only one of many bad days that followed as Mr. McPhiz saw this steady stream of Christmas cards that were coming to the Griswolds. He was never so relieved as when Christmas was finally over but he couldn't forget about it and so he worried about it all through the year and when Christmas came again the following year Mr. McPhiz decided he was going to play a nasty trick on the Griswolds. His plan was simple. In late November he took all of his savings and he went out and he bought as many Christmas cards as he could and that each night he would address them to himself and mail them and every day that he would be getting Christmas cards but they were ones that he was sending to himself and the closer Christmas came the more and more Christmas cards he mailed to himself and then knowing that the postman stopped at this particular little restaurant for coffee every morning he crept up to the letter bag each day and stole all the Griswolds Christmas cards before they could be delivered. Mr. McPhiz then settled into what he thought was going to be a delightful daily routine of collecting his own Christmas cards and watching with satisfaction as Mr. Griswold went to his mailbox and opened it up and never found a single card. Served him right for being such a slob but to his surprise Mr. McPhiz didn't feel very good as he watched his neighbor walk sadly back from his mailbox to his home every day. He actually began to feel kind of sorry for Mr. Griswold and so one evening he went to his little writing desk and he made out a Christmas card to the Griswolds and he put it in the mail. A few days later he watched as Mr. Griswold found and opened the card that he had sent and you know what Mr. McPhiz felt good. He said to himself this is what Christmas is really all about but the best part was yet to come because the very next day Mr. McPhiz found a Christmas card in his own mailbox but it was one that he had not written to himself. Not only did it wish him a very merry Christmas but it also invited him to share Christmas dinner with guess who the Griswolds which he did and together they drank eggnog and they ate chestnuts and they sang Christmas carols beside a roaring fire and Mr. McPhiz could not remember a time when he enjoyed himself more but even so all throughout that lovely evening he kept thinking to himself what can I say to the Griswolds to convince them to clean up their property. Oh well he thought to himself as he drank another glass of eggnog. I guess that conversation will have to wait until Easter. So that's the story of Mr. McPhiz and the Griswolds in the Christmas spirit. I hope you enjoyed it and we're going to sing you out now to your classes with our next hymn. Thank you for listening. Share with us our first reading. Dean is from the Christian Bible Luke chapter 10. Jesus was teaching and a lawyer stood up to test him. Teacher he said what must I do to inherit eternal life. Jesus replied what is written in the law what do you read there. The lawyer answered you shall love the Lord God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus said to him you have given the right answer do this and you will live. But wanting to justify himself the lawyer asked Jesus and who is my neighbor. Jesus replied once a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers who stripped him beat him and went away leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down the road and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite when he came to the place and saw him also passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan while traveling came near him and when he saw the stricken man he was moved by pity. He went to him and bandaged his wounds having poured wine and oil on them. Then he put him on his own animal brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two Danari gave them to the innkeeper and said take care of him and when I come back I will repay you whatever more you spent. Which of the three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? The lawyer said the one who showed him mercy. Jesus said go and do likewise. Thank You Karen Rose. The second reading is also based on a section of the Gospel of Luke the fourth chapter but it is a reworking of that particular passage by the British author Philip Pullman who is best known for the dark materials trilogy which includes the golden compass. When he returned to Nazareth he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath as he always did. He stood up to read and the attendant handed him a scroll scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Isn't this the son of Joseph someone whispered in the crowd? Jesus read the words from one part of the book and then from another. The spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Jesus gave the scroll back all eyes were fixed upon him because everyone was eager to hear what he might have to say. You want a prophet he said more than that you want a miracle worker. You need to think a bit harder. Some of you know who I am Jesus the son of Joseph the carpenter and this Nazareth is my hometown. When has a prophet ever been honored in his own hometown? Consider this if you think you deserve miracles because of who you are. When there was a famine in the land of Israel and no rain fell for three years whom did the prophet Elijah help by God's command? An Israelite widow? No. A widow from Zoporot in the country of Sidon a foreigner. And again there were lepers in the land of Israel in Elijah's time were there not? Yes there were many. And whom did Elijah cure during this time? Naaman the Syrian. Do you think what you are is enough? You better start considering what it is you do. Who does this man think he is someone from the crowd demanded? How dare he come in here and speak to us like this yelled another. This is scandalous said a third. We shouldn't have to listen to this man running us down his own people here in our synagogue. And before Jesus could say another word they seized him and they dragged him to the hill above the town and they would have hurled him down from the top but in the confusion in the struggle for some of Jesus's followers were there too and they fought the townspeople Jesus managed to get away unharmed. In the Christmas spirit what will? And with the approach of the Christmas holidays the putative birthday of Jesus of Nazareth old images of and ideas about him resurface. And in this season even non-subscribers to Christian orthodoxy are more attuned to stories of Jesus Jesus's nativity and to his subsequent ministry in Palestine. But I suspect that much of what the average person believes about Jesus is really fairly benign that he was generally speaking a gentle and peaceful man who roamed about the countryside proclaiming love forgiveness and a redeemed human condition. Yes he could have a sharp tongue and yes at times he did offend people but in the end hauled before the Roman prefect Pontius Pilate for judgment Jesus was was judged to be utterly blameless. I find no basis for an accusation against this man Pilate declares in the Gospel of Luke and Mark and Matthew concur here too Pilate seriously questions whether Jesus deserves to be crucified what evil has he done Pilate asks a Jewish mob that's clamoring for his execution. And in John's Gospel Pilate examines Jesus about his claim to kingship to which the latter replies my kingdom is not of this world. The answer reassures Pilate that Jesus is not an enemy of the Roman state and so to his accusers Pilate says I can find no case against him but the Jews continue to demand Jesus's death and although he demures twice more Pilate finally does do the crowds bidding. But what I wish to emphasize is that all four Gospel writers go to considerable lengths to portray Jesus as basically harmless a victim of Jewish jealousy and resentment but by no means a threat to Pax Romana. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not the Pharisees ask Jesus in an attempt to trip him up. Give me a coin of the realm Jesus says whose head whose title are on this coin. The emperors the Pharisees replied then give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what belongs to God Jesus tells them the Pharisees slink away shaking their heads. Earlier on and after his baptism Jesus retreats to the wilderness. The devil appears to him and subjects Jesus to three temptations the last of which is a chance to become a mighty ruler. Away from me Satan Jesus commands for it is written you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only. Clearly he has no desire to supplant the Roman emperor. The Gospel writers drive a wedge between Jesus and his Jewish co-religionists while strongly suggesting that he has no bone to pick with Rome. According to Luke early in his ministry Jesus even cures the servant of a Roman officer a centurion. Contemporary New Testament scholars are in substantial agreement that these writers these ancient writers composed their Gospels not out of a concern for historical accuracy but first to win converts for the new faith and second to protect themselves and those nascent Christian communities from persecution. And so to this end they embellished Jesus's accomplishments and they recast his message so that it could not be construed as seditious. And the Gospel writers had reasons to be fearful of the Romans who had only recently crushed a major Jewish rebellion in Palestine the year was 66 AD. Serious questions had been raised about Judaism and whether its followers could be trusted to toe the line and to submit themselves to Roman authority. And at that time the middle of the first century Christianity was still regarded as a branch or an offshoot of Judaism. So this is the thing Matthew Mark Luke and John wanted to establish Jesus's bonafides for their readers but also to allay Romans suspicions about the intentions of Jesus's followers. Jesus was not a rebel neither are we and that is the subtext that the evangelists hoped that the Romans would take to heart. But now these men were writing their Gospels 30 40 50 years after the fact none of them were eyewitnesses to the events they described nor were any of them in any of the audiences that Jesus addressed. And so scholars now offer considerable evidence that the evangelists quite watched the story so that Jesus would appear less revolutionary than he really was. And as a result the Gospels seriously understate the controversy that surrounded Jesus during his brief and tumultuous ministry. Any analysis of his message has to begin with the signal concept of the kingdom of God. Variations on this term appear more than three dozen times in the Gospel of Luke 32 times in the Gospel of Matthew. But what exactly was Jesus referring to? What sort of kingdom was this? And in what sense might it possibly have been subversive? Now for the British comparative religions scholar SGF Brandon, the kingdom of God could have meant only one thing for Jesus's Jewish listeners in the first century. And what it meant was the restoration of Jewish sovereignty. Brandon suggests that Jesus had a great stake in the future of Israel, a much greater stake than mainstream Christian commentators have typically allowed. Jesus was executed Brandon says as a rebel against Rome and not as a heretic against Judaism. Brandon offers several telling points in support of this thesis. First, two of the Gospels mentioned that Jesus's inner circle, his disciples, included a man who was a self identified zealot, an individual who today might be described as a freedom fighter. The zealots were declared enemies of Rome. And it is they who launched the insurrection in 66 AD that I mentioned a moment ago and which was quickly and brutally put down by the Romans. Second, Brandon addresses Jesus's actions in the great temple at Jerusalem where he drives out the money changers and chastises the priests. This was a truly provocative and revolutionary act because the temple was the supreme religious institution of Israel presided over by a priestly and hereditary aristocracy. And so Jesus's attack would have been seen as a direct assault on the tithing system that benefited those elites enormously. And it was also a serious challenge to the spiritual authority enjoyed by those same elites. And by sowing anarchy and disorder within the Jewish community, Jesus made life that much more difficult for the Roman overseers. This invasion of Israel's holy of holies was audacious enough that the upper echelons of Israelite society, both Jewish and Roman, would have had ample reason to apprehend and to neutralize Jesus. Now, Luke is the only gospel writer who makes even passing a reference to the serious charges that Jesus faced. Having delivered him to Pontius Pilate, the Council of Jewish Elders charged Jesus with perverting the nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to Caesar and saying that he himself is the Messiah. Now, Luke, the gospel writer, intends his readers to understand that these accusations were malicious. But Brandon says they had the ring of truth. And then finally, Brandon notes that after his death, Jesus's closest associates established a community, a congregation in Jerusalem. And the members of this congregation predicted that Jesus would return shortly in supernatural power and glory for the purpose of redeeming Israel from oppression and giving it sovereignty over the Gentiles. In other words, for those Jews who were closest to Jesus, a number that included his own brother James, he was and he continued to be the long awaited Jewish Messiah, the savior of God's chosen people. The historian Michael Grant says that his was a stormy personality. Jesus argued constantly and with formidable ferocity. He felt an immovable certainty that he was the figure through whom God's purposes would be fulfilled. This absolute conviction of an entirely peculiar relationship with God was not unknown among Jewish religious leaders, but in Jesus it became so much more vigorous and violent than anyone else's. Pretty revolutionary. But now let's introduce another school of thought that diverges from the one that I've just described. It is similar in that it paints a picture of Jesus as an authentic rebel, but the difference between the first and the second view hinges on variant interpretations of that key concept, the kingdom of God. Was Jesus first and foremost a Jewish patriot, a militant advocate for Israelite sovereignty? The second school says not so much. Rather, he was a religious reformer bent on breaking down the historic and cultic barriers to full human communion. Jesus's vision of the kingdom of God was radically inclusive and therefore profoundly threatening to the parochial stakeholders in a social system that prevailed at that particular time. You see, for establishment Jews of the first century, Pharisees, Sadducees, Levites, Scribes, Priests, all of them, for all these folks, nothing was more important than purity, holiness. And holiness in the Hebrew language literally meant separateness. To achieve and to maintain holiness and purity, one had to observe a strict code of rules, avoiding contamination from anything or anyone that was judged to be unclean. And this purity code created a world of sharp social boundaries and by extension of vast inequities. And Jesus himself was probably a victim of that very system. He was from Nazareth in the province of Galilee. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? A future disciple asks in the first chapter of John's Gospel. And although Jewish Galileans were regarded by their southern Judean brethren as tainted, scratch a Galilean and find a Samaritan was a commonly held opinion. Moreover, Jesus bore the stigma of being a Mamsur. He was an Israelite of suspect paternity. The people of his own village called him Mary's son, not Joseph's, as would have been customary. And as a Mamsur, Jesus would have been excluded from the mainstream of religious life. Such people, Bruce Chilton writes, lived as a caste apart and they were denied a voice in Israel's public and religious life. And this may explain why why Jesus spoke most of the time to audiences who gathered in the open air beside the Sea of Galilee or up on hillsides rather than in synagogues. So this may have been a man who suffered from the indignities of ancient Judaism's purity system. And as a result, he identified with those who had been subjected to similar treatment. And the list of those would have included all Gentiles, the abjectly poor whose poverty was believed to be the result of their own sinfulness, the diseased, the deformed, the maimed, because bodily wholeness was associated with purity. Certain occupations like tax collector and shepherd. And finally, all women were unclean. The purity system, Marcus Borg writes, established a spectrum of people ranging from the very poor through varying degrees of purity all the way down to the radically impure. And according to the purity map of the time, priests and Levites, they came first. And the great temple was the geographic and cultic center of that map. The Gospels provide ample evidence that Jesus was adamantly opposed to this system in both word and indeed he sought continually to undermine it. And the parable of the Good Samaritan, that's a case in point. And it undoubtedly struck its first century listeners as subversive. As you heard a few moments ago, here we have a near dead man, probably unconscious, and he's lying in a ditch. A priest, then a Levite approach. They see the man and they walk a wide berth around him. They refuse to render him any aid whatsoever. And why is that? Why are they so callous? Fear of contamination. The man is bleeding. Perhaps he's dead for all they know and thus on two counts he's unclean. And putting their own purity concerns first, the priest and the Levites, they leave him be. Now the Samaritan not only helps the stricken man, but goes above and beyond. He bandages up his wounds, pays for his care and his lodging. But in Israel, Samaritans were themselves classified as unclean. And so to compare this man favorably with the ultra clean priest and Levite would have struck many as utterly inappropriate. Why does Jesus share this story? Because he was bent on overthrowing a purity system in order to replace it with a kingdom of love and compassion. And his behavior was of apiece with his teaching. Jesus touched leopards and hemorrhaging women. He entered a graveyard to exercise a man's demons. He practiced indiscriminate table fellowship. All are welcome. And he challenged the practice of ritual hand washing before meals. He invited women into his intimate circle where they enjoyed essential parity with men. On one occasion he called a woman afflicted with a spinal disease. He called her a daughter of Abraham. This is an expression not found in any other Jewish literature Walter Wink observes. Women were saved through their men. So to call this woman a daughter of Abraham was to give her status as a full-fledged member of the covenant with equal standing before God. So now let's revisit that Jerusalem temple episode. Here we have Israel's holy of holies the place where the strictest rules of purity had to be maintained. The temple, Jack Miles tells us, was not just the central shrine of the Jewish religious establishment. It was also the seat of such political power as the nation of Israel still retained. And thus Jesus's invasion would have been seen as an act of the utmost seriousness and it could indeed have been grounds for his execution. This was a frontal assault on conventions that many many Jews solemnly upheld. It disrupted an economic activity that a powerful elite depended upon for their livelihood and many Jews of that time believed that it was only by living in strict accordance with God's commands and with God's prohibitions maintaining this high degree of holiness that the Almighty would be moved to intervene on the behalf of Judaism and drive the Romans out of their country. So in the eyes of the officials and many others Jesus's actions would have seemed like megalomania or even of madness. But Jesus's experience of God his personal experience and his convictions about the kingdom were of a completely different order. For him Marcus Borg explains compassion not holiness was the dominant quality of God and it is therefore the ethos of the community that wishes to mirror God. That's ultimately what the kingdom of God was all about and yet at times Bart Ehrman says at times Jesus pushed his emphasis on love to such an extreme that it seemed to others that he was completely discounting God's law. What happened to this Jesus? What happened to Jesus the rebel? It largely disappeared with the first century destruction of Jerusalem in 66 and with the destruction of Jerusalem the great temple and that original community of followers that sought to carry Jesus's work forward. Separated from Israel Christianity became a Gentile religion. It's founder a dying and rising God similar to many others that were popular in the Greco-Roman world and the cause the cause became so much greater not deliverance from Roman oppression not from a harsh purity system but deliverance all humankind from sin and the penalty of sin death. Rebel Jesus is not the one we celebrate in our Christmas carols but it is the one that Jackson Brown the great folk rock singer celebrated in one of his songs and so I conclude these reflections with the lyrics to Jackson Brown's Rebel Jesus. The streets are filled with laughter and light and the music of the season and the merchants windows are all bright with the faces of the children and the families hurrying to their homes as the sky darkens and freezes will be gathering around the hearts and table giving thanks for all of God's graces and the birth of rebel Jesus. They call him by the prince of peace they call him by the savior and they pray to him upon the sea and in every bold endeavor and they fill his churches with their pride and gold and their faith in him increases but they've turned the nature that I worshiped in from a temple to a robber's den in the words of Rebel Jesus. We guard our world with locks and guns we guard our fine possessions and once a year when Christmas comes we give to our relations and perhaps we give a little to the poor if the generosity should seize us but if any one of us should interfere in the business of why they are poor they get the same as rebel Jesus but pardon me if I seem to have taken on a tone of judgment for I've no wish to come between this day and your enjoyment in this life of hardship and of earthly toil we have need of anything that frees us so I bid you pleasure and I bid you cheer from a heathen and a pagan on the side of rebel Jesus Blessed be an Amen. I downloaded loaded those lyrics at the advice of one of our parishioners and I noted that the chord patterns were fairly simple so next year I'll be playing it for you but now it is the time for our offering and as you can see the offering will be shared with Briar Patch which does wonderful work on behalf of young people in our community. Please be generous. We gather each week as a community of memory and of hope and to this time and place we bring our whole and at times our broken cells we carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past seeking here a place where they might be received and celebrated and shared Cease Bullyard a member of our community asks for our thoughts and our prayers for a niece of hers who has recently been dealing with stage four cancer so our thoughts are with Cease and her family and her niece this hour and in addition to that one concern just mentioned we would also acknowledge any unexpressed joys or sorrows that occurred to you that remain among us as a community we hold we hold them with equal concern in our hearts let us sit silently for just a moment or two in the spirit of empathy and of hope and so by virtue of our brief time together today now our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded now i would invite you once more to rise in body or in spirit as we sing our concluding hymn number two seventy six this week all over the west children have been asking their parents that age old question when will it be Christmas why is it taking so long and i think i know the answer it will finally be Christmas when every crib is a shrine it will finally be Christmas when every child is received as though he or she were the messiah it will finally be Christmas when we learn to see that the holy and the sacred is not up there or out there but in here readily apparent in this ordinary world of sight and of sound it will finally be Christmas when we learn to value our differences rather than fear them and it will finally be Christmas when we recognize that the holiday is an anticipation a foretaste of the peaceful kingdom for which our hearts long and not just the vague remembrance of a particular birth that took place so long ago it will finally be Christmas when the birthing of a new consciousness takes place in all of us all year long may we each do what we can to hasten that day bless it be and amen