I absolve you. It’s in my power to do it and I’m glad to do it. I’m offering you Christmas absolution.
That guilt you feel about your inability to make the season perfect, to purchase, wrap, and present in time the just-right gift to everyone on your list: I absolve you.
That sense of nagging unease you feel about trying to squeeze a month’s worth of delight, wonder, rest, and cozy into a couple of days of vacation: I absolve you. 
That anxiety you feel about whether or not your purchases are local enough, sustainable enough, and virtuous enough, about whether or not you are doing enough for the economy, I absolve you of all the things that produce it.
The pressure you feel to perform the part at Christmas, and the guilt you feel when you fail to, the way you wince when you hear the mirthless ring of your own “ho, ho, ho,” I absolve you of that too.

Absolution is forgiveness adjacent, but it is not the same. Both absolution and forgiveness have to do with wrongdoing and the moral account, but with a distinction. 
If there is a person in the house whose job it is to water the tree regularly, but that person neglects the job so entirely that the tree expires before we make it to Christmas, that is a sin for which he might be forgiven. 
But say someone is under a cloud of dread and guilt because it has occurred to him that he doesn’t know whose job it is to water the tree, but he knows that he hasn’t done it and he suspects that no one else has. During the day when he’s out and about he worries that the desiccated tree has caught fire and that he will return to find his house burned to the ground and, worst of all, Christmas ruined. 
But two significant facts pertain to our anxious fellow. First he was not negligent in the fulfilment of an obligation. And, secondly, the tree was fake (he was more anxious than perceptive.)
In such a case the poor fellow doesn’t require forgiveness, but absolution, a removal of guilt by a rejection of fault. 

We must be careful of absolution. It should be a crime to withhold absolution from anyone to whom you might offer it. But it should also be a crime to offer absolution anywhere that forgiveness is more in order. When I sin and come to you with my excuses for that sin, be very critical of those excuses. I, like most of us, have a bad habit of asking for sympathy when what I need is grace, asking you to agree with me that I’m not really at fault, because I crave vindication.
But if you accept my excuses and shush my nagging guilt you are helping me build up a wall to keep out grace, because, after all, what would I need grace for if it wasn’t really my fault?
So, yes, we must be careful with absolution. But we mustn’t be stingy with it.
Satan would prefer to lead you into sin. But he will gladly satisfy himself with crippling you with misplaced guilt. He’d like to see you in prison for a crime you committed, but he will chortle if you make yourself an inmate at home without the help of any prosecutor. 
Absolution is well called for at times, and perhaps never more so than at Christmas.

I, like the angels outside of Bethlehem, have come to bring you good news.
You are not a consumer, not a shopper. God did not bring you into existence because he thought you’d be good for the economy. What you are is a child of God whose body, with its need for sleep and nourishment and recreation, has been sanctified by the fact that God himself shared our physical condition in the person of Jesus Christ. Take a deep breath with lungs that will one day breathe the air of heaven, and reject the pressures that would reduce you to a mere component of the global economy. 
You have not been given the assignment to make Christmas perfect. Not by God, in any case. If there are people in your life who really feel that you ought to be making things perfect (and perhaps there are) they are wrong to do so. You no doubt would like for things to be perfect, and your disappointment is legitimate. I sympathize with you and am lamenting disappointments of my own. But guilt? No. We reject it. 
And what of the moving goalposts of “enough?” There will not be enough this Christmas. There will never be enough. Not enough time in pajamas, not enough gifts under the tree, not enough holiday frivolity. “Enough” is elusive and unattainable and the guilt you feel about it is misplaced. You might just as well feel guilty about walking all day and never arriving at the horizon. 
And it is not your job to read from the holiday script, to wear a mask of giddy pleasure, to dance when commercial interests pull on your puppet strings. If you haven’t got it in you, there is no fault in that. Spurn the director, wipe off the makeup, dismount from the stage; you’re free from the obligation to play the part.

I’m offering you Christmas absolution, merry Christmas! Please accept it. It’s sweeter than eggnog, and more nourishing than figgy pudding. Take it. Nibble, then chew, then gulp great mouthfuls. Be at liberty and celebrate the birth of our Savior in a state of perfect peace. 

​

​There was a raising of eyebrows and a whispering of surprise around the sanctuary on the Sunday of my childhood when garlic matzah crackers and fruit punch accidentally got served for communion. It detracted, admittedly, from the reverence, but it did contribute somehow to the general sense of fellowship.
Growing up in the church, I have always appreciated the capacity food has for carrying sacramental significance. I sense it most clearly in the matter of the Lord's Supper, but I have also sensed it at other times. My parents befriended Latin American immigrants who were intent on expressing their appreciation by cooking us a meal in our own kitchen. The parsonage on that occasion was more holy with the smoke of a spicy offering than any temple ever was, and there was something pentecostal about our happy scorning of the language barrier.
Then there were the "Agape Feasts" my father organized in the fellowship hall of our little church. Those feasts captured my imagination because of the menu (such foods as Jesus and his disciples might have eaten: fish, pita, honey, dates, olives) and the utensils (we ate everything with our fingers,) but the testimonies I heard on those occasions and the sense of being part of something connected to an ancient reality made an impression on me as a young believer. 
Such "agape feasts" were a regular feature of church life from the early days of the church (there are directions on how to observe such a feast included in the Didache written in the Third Century,) and they have been an important part of our own tradition. 
John Wesley was first exposed to a "love feast" in a meeting of the Moravians in Georgia in the 1700's, and for years afterwards they were a feature of Methodist worship and faith life, though it has now fallen out of practice.
But in this season we sense that God is calling us away from an expression of church that is focused on the platform and back to a vision for church that revolves around hearth and table. It's time to rediscover the sacramental power of shared meal. 

Rules for a "Peace Meal"

• Let the menu be simple and wholesome. It could be ancient middle eastern fare to invoke the diet of the Apostles or something more contemporary, but it is not an occasion for showing off your cooking ability or trying out a new recipe.
• While we are eager for you to practice hospitality to unbelievers, these meals should be an expression of the life of faith. 
• Let the host begin the meal by saying "Thy will be done, Thy Kingdom come," to which everyone will respond, saying "on earth as it is in heaven."
• Have the youngest capable participant serve in a meaningful way. Let him hand out the food or let her pour the water.
• Have the oldest willing participant pray an individual blessing over each attendee.
• The meal concludes with the reading of a Psalm of the host's choosing.

Pastor Tate will be hosting these meals in a regular ongoing way at the church as soon as we are established in our new location, but we want this to be happening in homes all around our area. We are asking everyone to try to participate in at least one such "Peace Meal" every month, either as a host or as a guest. 
This is an important thing for us to do together as we make our church a church of hearth and table. What do you say?

​Earlier this week, Lucy and I went on a hike. We did a section of the Long Trail taking us to the summit of Bromley Mountain. It was a lovely day and there were no bugs and I was in high spirits but early in the hike I slipped on a wet rock in such a way that I really hurt the heel of one foot. It hurt badly enough that I thought about abandoning the hike and returning to the car. Lucy, who is an awfully good girl, would have been disappointed, but she would have been supportive. Still, I decided to soldier on. 
But each step was painful. And at one point, as we were balancing across some planks keeping us above deep, muddy places, I realized that I had a choice. i could either be painfully on a plank or cheerfully on a hike. The hard part was that, because of the nature of the path, I had to keep my eyes on the ground the whole way, which made it hard to keep my mind on the summit. 
But I resolved to keep my mind on the summit and the summit ahead of me had an effect on the trail beneath me. The prospect of a grand arrival rendered all the slippery rocks and gnarled roots and narrow spaces into a ribbon of adventure threading its way through a lovely forest. 
I'm glad I kept hiking.
And, of course, the preacher is making a point. You might feel like you and your church are on a plank in the wilderness with an aching heel, but I am eager to lead you on a hike and to have you join me at the summit. In his second letter to the church at Corinth, Paul writes, "Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."
We are making good use of the Marble Museum and the internet and we are doing really good work at the Pittsford Food Shelf. The board is being wise and strategic about finding our path forward. And the mission of making more and better disciples for Jesus advances. And we are not the turning back type. 

Does Vermont need Furnace Brook Wesleyan Church? Does this progressive and breathtakingly beautiful place with a high standard of living need a community of believers belonging to an ancient faith with out of step values?
It's a good question and the answer depends on who you ask.
Some of our neighbors would say that the answer is a flat "no." No, Vermont does not need Furnace Brook Wesleyan Church. We're doing quite well on our own, thank you.
Other neighbors, people who are attached to a certain version of Vermont, would say that yes, Vermont needs churches the same way it needs covered bridges and fall foliage. 
Some others, people who appreciate the benevolence and soul care that churches like ours provide, would say that Vermont might not need Furnace Brook Wesleyan, but that it could use us, so long as we stick to stuff like taking on the food shelf. 
But the important question to ask is not whether or not Vermont thinks it needs Furnace Brook Wesleyan, but whether or not God believes that Vermont needs us. And the answer to that question is resounding and was provided by the Apostle Paul long before the first maple creemee was ever dispensed into a cone. 
In his letter to the Church at Philippi, Paul writes in chapter 2, verses 14-16, "Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life. And then I will be able to boast on the day of Christ that I did not run or labor in vain."
The very existence of a faithful church serves to glorify God and to provide the community within which it is located an alternative to itself and a way marker. We are the blazes on the trailhead that leads to heaven. Salt and light. 
But we can hardly blame our neighbors for taking lightly a church that its own members demonstrate little commitment to. 
If we really believe that we are the shining stars offering our neighbors the "word of life," our commitment to each other and to the mission should be marked by cheerful devotion. But I'm afraid that what the world often sees is carelessness and half-hearted effort. 
We're all still feeling the effects of the pandemic and all of us have experienced that in different ways. I myself am tired and am still licking my wounds. 
But now is the time for actively loving the other people in my church and working with them to accomplish the mission of making more and better disciples for Jesus. Are you with me?

It wasn’t always this way, but we are at a point in history when, for most of us, it is easier to know of someone at a distance than it is to know the people who are close to us. 
Two hundred years ago you could barely avoid knowing your neighbors, like it or not, and being known by them, while almost everyone outside your immediate vicinity was virtually unknown to you and unknowable. 
One of JD Walt’s recent devotionals at Seedbed made me think about this when he pointed out how strangely and deliberately opposed Jesus was to his own fame. 
So here’s the question I’ve been asking myself: would I rather be well known or known well?
Truthfully? If I’m going by the indications of my life it looks like I’d rather be well known. I do things to try to expand my “platform” on the one hand, while doing little more than dipping my toes in the shallow end of those pools of relationship where I might be diving. 

In 1 Corinthians 13:12, Paul says “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror: then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I am fully known."
And I want that. I want to see face to face and know fully and be fully known. But I’m also terrified at the prospect. I don’t feel I’m ready for it. I’d like to make some changes before I’m thrust into that place of intimate and mutual knowledge. I’d like to approach God with the benefit of filters. 
But God is not interested in some instagram version of me. 

So these are some things I’m coming to terms with:

Fame is toxic for those who don’t achieve it and it is toxic for those who do.
It is a dangerous thing to want to be well known.
For one thing, it is an objective with moving goalposts. Make it your goal to get a thousand followers and you will arrive at that lofty peak of notoriety and survey the landscape and see that there are summits above your own on which other people are standing. And as you look at them, your standard of “well-known” will shift so that you will now feel more obscure than you did when you started. 
For another thing, aspiring to fame will make you feel disconnected from who you really are. You will present yourself in ways calculated to make you more appealing than authentic. 

Being well known is unsatisfying.
Our souls desire the intimacy of being comprehensively known, even though we run from that intimacy. We are conflicted and acting at cross-purposes with ourselves. 
It is telling and significant that the euphemistic language employed by the King James Version of the Bible to talk about sexual behavior is that of “knowledge.” “And Adam knew Eve his wife and she conceived.”
It seems quaint, right? But it also helps us understand how intimate it is to be known in either sense of the word, and how you could want to be known and also be afraid of it at the same time. 
Being well known is a very poor substitute for the intimate pleasure of being known well. 

Churches that can help people to be known well will have an advantage in the days to come. 
If people end up recoiling from the expectations of social media notoriety and go looking for safe personal intimacy, we would hope that they would go to church to find it. 
But too often churches are run as though the church itself is primarily useful and effective to the extent that it is a good platform for a good pastor. Think about the biggest churches you know and ask yourself if you know more about that church or that church’s pastor. You might not know anything about that church at all beyond its name and who its pastor is. 
And many of these pastors do use the platform to very good effect, preaching sermons and writing books and developing leaders with a positive impact far beyond the boundaries of their “parish.”
But for enduring Gospel effect, it is better to have a church that makes lots of people known well than a church that makes a few people well known. 

Discipleship and small groups
So if you are ready to shift your emphasis from being well known to being known well, where do you start? By engaging in discipleship and small groups. By offering to lead someone or to be led by someone along the "way everlasting." By asking your pastor for help in connecting with people other than your pastor. By doing life with other believers with the goal of complete authenticity in a context of safety and love. 

A natural pearl occurs when a piece of grit works its way into an oyster, after which the oyster, to defend itself from the irritant, secretes layer upon layer of coating fluid on the piece of grit until a pearl is formed. 
Christmas, as a global celebration, is a lot like that pearl. Layers and layers of the shiny and smooth have been built up to protect the world from the irritant at its heart. Twinkling lights, cheerful colors, elves, ugly sweaters, bows, gifts, tinsel, snow, Bing Crosby, reindeer, candy canes, silver bells - the world's oyster has been adding layers to this pearl for about 2000 years now. And it's as lovely as you would expect a pearl to be. 
And Christians who object to all of this stuff can have a point and miss the point at the same time. 
Yes, the world finds the incarnation to be an unbearable irritant and protects itself from the grit of Jesus' birth by layers of shiny pearl. But it does not, in doing so, defeat the grit. The grit is not neutralized but enshrined. Every pearl is a temple devoted to the power of a particle. And if the pearl appears to succeed in obscuring the grit, it also succeeds in keeping it securely right at the heart of things. 
And what is the grit that is intractably at the heart of Christmas?

Violence
Jesus was born as an act of war. His incarnation was a dramatic escalation in the heavenly fight for our redemption and he was born, unequivocally, that he might die. His birth itself was violent in the way that all births are; it featured blood and raised voices. And, though it was a crudely ineffective gesture, Herod's slaughter of the Innocents is very much a part of the nativity.
Poverty
In both relative and historic terms, Jesus was born into an underprivileged household. The account of the nativity highlights the lack; lack of housing, lack of furniture, lack of resources, lack of privilege. Time and sentimental depiction would render that poverty less offensive, but think about it very hard and you will see it for grit. Jesus' parents had to worry about things like food and clothing. And their example prevents us from using our own bank accounts as a reason for why we can not be obedient to God until our circumstances improve. 
Rebuke
The manner of the incarnation is a rebuke to the elite, to the connected and entitled. Jesus' parents were pedigreed, but they were powerless. The birth did not happen in Rome at the height of its power, nor Imperial London or cosmopolitan New York. Jerusalem, it turns out, was a fine place for Jesus to die, but for his birth a backwater village was called for. And the only elites who play any part in the nativity are wise men who show up so late that they have nothing to contribute to the event but worship, gifts, and the threat of a danger that came from their penchant for palaces. 
​Sin
This is the gritty thing at the heart of Christmas that will always be the biggest source of painful irritation to the world. Jesus birth was not a divine excursion, or the heavenly equivalent of a semester abroad.  Jesus left the courts of heaven and endured nine months of gestation, an ignominious birth in squalor, the peril of adolescence without modern medicine, and all the worst this world has to offer so that he could, as an adult, die for the sins of those who killed him. And it wasn't because of sin in the abstract that he came, but for sins as specific as the straw on which he lay in the manger. It was for my particular sins and your particular sins. And what amount of built up pearl could ever make pleasant as irritating a piece of grit as that?
No, this grit at the heart of Christmas is made beautiful by the pearl built up around it, but no amount of pearl could ever make it safe. 

And so I'm happy to wish you a merry Christmas, a Christmas with all the lustrous pearl the season has to offer. But I'd also wish you an irritating Christmas, one where the grit at that heart of the season makes its way into your own heart. 

Back in 2004 the band Modest Mouse released the album “Good News for People Who Like Bad News.” I’ve thought about that title more than once this year. The year 2020 has been full of good news for people who like bad news, hasn’t it?
And not only is it easy to focus on the negative stuff; it’s necessary to acknowledge it all. That’s an important part of the grieving process. 
But there is good news and cause for optimism, too. If you’ve felt unsure about Furnace Brook Wesleyan Church and had concerns about how it will come out of this, I’d like to give you five reasons for optimism. 

The Mission
    We are making more and better disciples for Jesus. Our efforts have not been put on hold and they are bearing fruit. People are getting discipled and are meeting in small groups in person and online. We baptized 8 people earlier this summer! Our live streamed services have expanded the scope of our ministry; on youtube, facebook, and PEGTV each week many people are edified by our worship and teaching who never joined us in a building. Our mission is how we decide to do what we do, and it’s also how we measure how well we’re doing it. So take heart.

Difficult Decisions
    The leadership of Furnace Brook (Pastor Tate and the Board) have made difficult decisions in a timely fashion. They have looked at the budget with clear eyes and have taken necessary steps to reduce overhead and to put us in a sound financial position to bless others and to go into the future with confidence and margin. 

Elasticity
    Our church has elasticity in our spiritual DNA. We have demonstrated again and again that we are willing to be flexible in our pursuit of God’s will. And this leaves us uniquely suited to not only survive but flourish in the upheaval of this season. God is doing a new thing and our church is not so brittle and backward facing that we will foolishly resist him. And God rewards supple wineskins with new wine.

Building
    We all miss our building, and no one more so than the pastor. But the Board of Furnace Brook is wisely committed to the process. We are earnestly investigating all sorts of possibilities, but we also have the patience needed to make sure that we get this right. We are determined to end up with a situation that is forward looking and that takes into consideration the ministry requirements of this new season that we are in. That’s huge. The place where we arrive will be so good and so right as to redeem the journey by which we came to it. 
​
Prayer and Revival
    We are committed to prayer and to revival, and this is no small thing. This isn’t the spiritual stuff you say to check off the spiritual box. Please consider signing up to join us on September 25 for “A Night with New Room.” You can participate from home or join us in one of the locations we hope to set up for the purpose. And from now to then, would you consider taking the Psalm 85:6 challenge to join us in concerted prayer? And let me tell you something personal about my own prayer: I have been praying really hard for the last several months and God has consistently responded to my prayer by giving me a sense of peace and a conviction about the good things to come, even if he has been vague on the details. 

So be encouraged. The things in our favor greatly outweigh the challenges we are facing and God is with us.