This week I found myself wishing for more stable times.  Between the surge in COVID cases, the anniversary of last year’s uprising on January 6th, predictions of winter storms that never happened around us, and winter weather that did—I found myself wishing life would just level out!  Which is saying something, because usually in January, there’s a let down after Christmas, and I find myself missing the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. But not this year.  This year I find myself wishing for more stable times.

Reading our scripture lesson today, I imagine Joseph and Mary found themselves wishing for more stable times, too.  Although, as my husband pointed out, when Jesus was born, they might have been wishing for less stable!  As in, less stable and manger and animals, and more homey and comfortable and clean.  I guess we are always wishing for something different than what we have!  Mary and Joseph went from an  undesired stable, to even less stability as they had to flee from Bethlehem to Egypt.  Stable times they were not.  Yet, God protected them.  God provided for them.  God was with them every step of the way.

And that is the great good news we bring into January from the Christmas season:  Emmanuel, God with us.  What I’ve noticed in my own spiritual life, though, and you may have seen it in yourself from time to time as well, is sometimes I don’t really want God with me along the journey, through all the ups and downs.  What I most want is for life to level out.  For things to slow down, stop changing, stop demanding so much from us, and just let us be for a while.  Do you know what I mean?

Well, we can’t keep the earth from spinning on its axis.  We can’t keep things from changing, or life from happening.  The best we can do is to cultivate a sense of inner steadiness, despite whatever is happening around us.  And that inner steadiness is exactly the same as the great good news of Christmas:  abiding in the knowledge that Emmanuel, God with us!  That inner steadiness is our best-case scenario this side of heaven.  How about that—it turns out, God gives us the very best of gifts.

We’re not really a “can I get an Amen?” kind of church, but if we were, I would definitely ask for an Amen at this point!  God gives us the very best for us.  Amen!  My son Wes recently worshipped in a United Methodist church in Dallas, Texas, and immediately afterwards he texted me to tell me that the pastor said, “Yee haw!” in his sermon instead of Amen.  Actually, there were multiple “Yee haw”s!  We don’t hear Yee Haw much in our neck of the woods.  But I like it.  God has placed us in a world that demands a lot from us, but it also offers us a lot of adventure, and best of all, God is with us every step of the way.  Can I get a “Yee haw!” for that?

But it’s hard to say “Yee haw!” for our scripture lesson today.  Matthew’s account of how threatened Herod was of the baby Jesus isn’t a story we talk about much.  It’s violent, it’s dark, it’s really upsetting to think about Jesus and his family as refugees, having to flee to Egypt to find safety.  It’s upsetting to think about Herod ordering the killing of all infant boys aged two and under.  It’s upsetting to think about human beings deciding it is better to follow Herod’s evil order than to show even a tiny bit of respect for life.  It is definitely not the story we want to hear when we are wishing for more Stable Times.

But this story explains a lot.  Have you ever noticed that, as soon as you resolve to do something good, the universe seems to conspire to thwart your good intentions?  Like for instance, say you made a new year’s resolution to be on time for meetings and events.  Dollars to donuts, two days later, your watch battery dies.  Or you get a flat tire.  Or you are on time, but you forget to bring a piece of important paperwork.  Or more likely, all three of these things happen in a matter of days.  It just seems to be how the universe works!  Resistance is a common phenomenon because change, on some level, is frightening.  Even changes that we see as good, seem to trigger circumstances that work to hold back the changes.

So it makes sense that something as good as Jesus coming to earth would stir up a lot of resistance.  When I was serving at Newtown UMC, one of my nearby clergy colleagues invited me to be part of a movement to share the light of Christ all over the world.  About 1,000 years ago, some monks decided there needed to be candles burning constantly in Bethlehem, at the grotto where it is believed Jesus was born. Through all kinds of strife and upheaval, the light has burned as a constant reminder that Jesus is the light of the world.  In recent years, an effort has been made during Advent to spread the flame from Jesus’ birthplace.  They enlisted the help of Boy Scouts to carry candles lit from Jesus’ birthplace to other churches in Europe, and eventually even to North America and other continents.

In 2016, we got word that the flame had made its way from Bethlehem to Scottsville UMC in lower Bucks County.  Figuring this was a unique opportunity, I drafted a choir member to make the half hour drive to the Scottsville church, light a couple of our candles, and bring them back to Newtown.  Our first trip was not successful.  Both our candles blew out on the way home.  So we made improvements to our system, and went back a second time.  It worked!  We were able to place a candle lit with the flame carried all the way from Bethlehem in our sanctuary.  I thought it would be wonderful to have that light with us throughout the Christmas season.

But it did not turn out to be that wonderful.  The pastor who shared the flame with me told me he had trouble sleeping the first night there was a burning candle in his sanctuary, but after that he was fine.  It did not work that way for me.  The first night I was nervous and didn’t sleep well, but the second night I was panicked.  I woke up in a cold sweat, convinced I had burned down the church.  Even though I went outside and confirmed that there were no flames or smoke coming from the building, I had a hard time getting back to sleep.  For the first time in my life, I had a sense of the fear Herod must have felt upon learning a new king had been born in his region.  Newtown’s sanctuary was built in 1896.  It has housed worship for over one hundred and twenty years.  The previous year we had raised over $100 K to put a new slate roof on it.  If we had a fire, something people had worked for years to build would be destroyed.  This tiny little flame made me very afraid.

We tend to see candles as objects of beauty and comfort, but we know all flame can be dangerous.  That is how Herod saw this new baby boy in his region.  Not as precious and cute, but as a tiny seed of destruction.  On Epiphany we celebrated how the Wise Men came from the East to worship Jesus as their king.  But it is good to remember that others were threatened by the news that the Messiah had come.  Herod knew that the helpless baby Jesus was not a harmless baby Jesus.  It was only a matter of time until he would usher in a new kingdom, one built on grace and love and justice, a kingdom that provides abundant life for all.   Herod was only interested in abundant life for him!  He built his kingdom on injustice.  He knew that this newborn king threatened to undo all he had worked so hard to build.

After two rough nights, I moved the candle from the sanctuary to the living room of the parsonage.  There I could keep a close eye on it, and we had lots of smoke detectors, and worst-case scenario, I’d only be burning down a house, not a whole church!  Jenkins was just a puppy then, so I was up a couple times every night with him anyway.  I’d come downstairs, see the flame burning on the fireplace mantle, and feel reassured.  Then on Sundays, I carried the flame to the sanctuary for worship.  It gave me a great appreciation for the duality of the Light of Christ:  how it brings comfort, peace, salvation—but how it also can be scary and threatening.

The instability we are experiencing in this life as we begin 2022 is an echo of this truth.  God’s goodness begets goodness.  But it also causes the ears of evil to perk up and get busy.  And that mix can be very tiring.  We might find ourselves wishing for more stable times.  But God offers us an alternative to wishing, and that is to help spread the light.  On Christmas Eve, we lit our candles and held them up in the dark of a winter night, proclaiming our faith that God’s love is stronger than any darkness, stronger than any evil, stronger even than death.  Herod heard about the baby Jesus and feared it meant the death of his kingdom, and he was right.  The baby Jesus is the spark of life, come to bring to all of us a spark that can turn into a lifetime of burning devotion and transforming power.

And so, instead of wishing for more stable times, we can join God’s Spirit in spreading the love, born in a stable, to other seemingly small and insignificant parts of the world.  That is one of the reasons we have named Zoe Empowers as our January Mission of the Month.  About six months ago, we were designated as the sponsor for a new Empowerment Group formed in Rwanda.  Our group consists of 27 “heads of households”—teenagers, all charged with caring for themselves and their younger siblings.  They named their group “Lift One Another”.  They will meet for three years, with the help of Zoe staff and community volunteers, to learn how to provide for themselves.  The Zoe Empowers unofficial tag line is, “From Beggars to Bosses in Three Years.”  The goal is for the young people in the program to never need charity again.

In a few minutes, we will watch a video provided for us by Zoe Empowers, footage shot at the recent Christmas party that our Lift One Another group was part of.  You will hear the narrator say that in 2021, Zoe Empowers formed 25 groups, just like our Lift One Another group.  That’s 25 groups of orphans, totaling 656 families and 2,168 children.  That seemed like a really high number to me, so I called the Zoe Empowers office to verify.  I thought maybe there were 25 active groups across all three years of the program.  I’m glad I called—my hunch that I might be misunderstanding the numbers was right.  But I was misunderstanding the numbers in the wrong direction!  Turns out, there were 25 groups formed in Rwanda in July of 2021, and our Lift One Another group was among that 25.  But in January of 2021, 24 empowerment groups were formed!  Those groups had a different Christmas party and made a different Christmas video.  There are second and third year groups active in Rwanda as well.

I was stunned by the number of orphans being helped.  I did a little research, and it turns out, the population of Rwanda is almost exactly the same as the population of Pennsylvania.  Rwanda has 12.95 million people.  Pennsylvania has 12. 96 million people.  If you add up the children being helped by Zoe in the 49 Empowerment Groups formed in Rwanda in January and July of 2021, that is about 4000 children.  Guess what the enrollment of our Rose Tree Media School District is?  3,985 children.  I am not kidding.  There are as many orphaned children who became part of a Zoe Empowerment group in 2021 in Rwanda as there are in all of Rose Tree Media School District.  If you add in the children in the second and third years of the program in Rwanda, that’s like adding in all the students of Penn-Delco and Garnet Valley as well.

And of course, the number of vulnerable and orphaned children in Rwanda did not just end in 2021.  When I called Zoe Empowers, they told me that they are forming 33 groups in Rwanda this January.  It is mind boggling how many children are orphaned.  We cannot wrap our heads around the great level of need, and Rwanda is just one of seven countries Zoe Empowers helps.  Across all seven countries, they have 50,000 children engaged in their program.  And since their start in 2007, they have graduated 153,000 orphans who are now empowered to be self-sufficient adults.

All this empowerment is happening because people like us have decided to light a candle in the darkness instead of just wishing the world would quiet down for a bit.  All of this healing and hope are coming because people like us are convinced that one little flame can spread to create a whole lot of light.  We know that the Light of Christ stirs up resistance and evil, even as it brings hope, peace, joy and love—and that we have a choice what to do with that light.  I hope that the witness of Zoe Empowers will strengthen our conviction, that God comes to us in the unwanted stables of our lives, and leads us into a life of inner stability, faith in Emmanuel, God With Us, every step of the way.

Yee Haw and Amen.