Sermons
I love Snow
May the God who creates us, redeems us and sustains us, be with us now and always. Amen.
Please be seated.
Good Morning!
I love the snow. It's a childhood thing. I wonder if people who grew up with it as a regular occurrence have the same infatuation as I did living where I did--neither Hawaii, Virginia, nor California have much of it is I'm always thrilled when it starts dropping out of the sky. Part of it is the sixth grader in mewho knows that if I get all of my homework done then the snow forecast for the middle of the night will indeed materialize and if more than two inches sticks to the ground and because it's Virginia and school will be cancelled for at least a day or maybe more. Six inches and a real cold spell once got us out for a weeks for they have very few plows in Fairfax County and fewer people with any ability to drive in the cold white
stuff.
I love snow because from it lies the tantalizing prospect/ memories of sleeping in, building forts, ambushing cars and when that was said and done curling up in front of the window to admire the beauty with a long book and a warm dachshund.
I love snow because it slows down the rest of life I love waking up and hearing that the world is quieter. I love snow because shoveling it is as tangible a job I get. A beginning, middle, and end. Until of course, it snows again.
The thing about snow is that it's always the storms with the really small flakes that pile up on each other an amount to something. The big, fluffy wet ones on this side of the lake never really matter. But if it starts coming down pelting your cheeks with dry, little bits of ice and those are the ones that stick, build up and insert their six sides into every crevice of our lives. It's the really tiny flakes that you have to watch out for.
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It begins with Mary then Joseph then shepherds, angels, and wise ones come to see. John the Baptizer clears the way. And today it starts with Andrew and Simon, then James and John and it keeps going one after the other ordinary folks not known to the world but by the end of this morning's passage his fame begins to spread and crowds from all over are gathering. Like white flakes on a winter sidewalk they begin to accumulate "Follow me." "Come and see."
The thing with snow is that it is countless crystals freezing, bonding particle at a time. One bit on top of the other. Christianity, if you think about it happens in much the same way. From one person to anotherlistening connecting living God's words, embodying the truths and telling the story one life at a time.
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Are you satisfied with the world as it is? With our country as it is? With city as it is? With this congregation this faith community as it is?
How does change take place? A movement begin? Transformation occur?
There is lament of the absence of the religious left. Lament that a viable, honorable segment of theology is seemingly absent from our nation's debate. How can it be seen recognized?
Transformation, true change does not take place with giant strides but rather by small steps
continuously taken by many people.
Too often our temptation is to lament the world as it is not. To fall in love with the ideal the world we would have. Spending our time on the world we would have and pulling back disengaging from the world as it is. Too often we seek vast global changes and recoil in sadness and despair when we see that we lack the capital, the power, and the will and to implement our ideals.
Jesus Christ began one person at a time. First Andrew then Simon, then James and then John and so on. Too often in our sadness over the lack of the ideal we abandon the modest and the doable as not good enough or big enough as just not enough. Our temptation is to worship grand scale action, unilateral change and overlook and pass by moderate goals with slightly perceptible changes.
And yet I remember it's the small snow flakes that accumulate it's the small icy ones that matter.
Amen.