Congratulations to you all. You have just endured the longest night of the year. This morning at 2:44 am our earth was tilted the furthest away from the sun, 23.5 degrees, called the winter solstice, and now we are on our way back. Yippee!!! It is sometimes nice to be reminded that our darkness has a limit. No suffering lasts forever even though we have a hard time remembering that when we are in the middle of a dark night. 

Sometimes hope means remembering that the darkness will, at some point, give way to the light. There is a limit to pain, and the light does return. This is not to diminish or down play the reality of dark times. Sadness and heartache are real emotions that accompany our times of difficulty or confusion. And yet it is sometimes helpful, in the middle of the trouble, to remember that there is a “furthest” in regards to darkness. 

It might be helpful this Christmas, as we reflect on the coming of the light into the world, to remember that darkness will not overcome us. In fact John 1 says this very thing, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” 

I know many of you are dealing with extremely challenging circumstances at this time in your lives. You are having a winter solstice of your own. And during these difficult and dark seasons it can be hard to feel positive or hopeful even during Christmas. The Christmas message reminds us that hope and light are sometimes best proclaimed, not with a bullhorn from above, but quietly and humbly, from a baby in a barn. Hope can be delivered as we stand silently and humbly with each other in the reality of the pain or suffering. We want the people we love to know that they are not alone as we wait with them in the dark. When the nights are longest, hope is most appropriately delivered in silence. So when we sing silent night, holy night this Christmas, let us remember that sometimes the loudest encouragement might be our silent presence among those having a tough time waiting for the light to return. 

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​December is upon us, which means daylight hours are lessening, plants are almost freezing, and Christmas shopping pressure is growing daily. We are in the middle of the season of Advent, which is a time of anticipation and expectation for new things that are coming our way. We will soon be remembering again the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, and the surprise that this infant would become the one to point the world toward peace, unity and compassion.
 
He was born into a culture that was being oppressed by the Roman Empire; a time when peace and compassion seemed very far away.  Jewish faith was being tested daily, and yet it was also ripe for change and inspiration. We are living in one of those ambiguous and confusing periods as well. I wonder if remembering the birth of Jesus can cause us to take courage in the face of impossible circumstances and troubling times. Maybe it can create a wider perspective in our living and believing, so we too might find hope about the future.
 
I’m not sure it is very easy for our hope to stay strong alone. It seems that we need a loving and engaged community, where we are known and loved by others, in order for hope to take root, blossom, and endure. Advent is one of the special times in the liturgical year when we concentrate on our reasons and motives for trusting in possibilities and potential.
 
We are getting ourselves ready to remember a very small and obscure event, which seemed unimportant and insignificant at the time, but later would become an inspiration to all people who felt passed over and forgotten. This obscure insignificant birth, humble and unimpressive, would eventually become a hopeful beacon for a divided and disconnected world. The world needed another image besides power, control, and dominance over others. I hope the coming celebration of this birth event in a manger will be as inspirational for us as it was for those earliest followers of the way of peace. 

​One day, while still a campus minister in VA, I was reminding our group of students about what to pack for our overnight trip to the beach.  A trip we always took to kick off the new school year. I reminded them to bring a sleeping bag, a towel, normal toiletries, and then I said, “and of course don’t forget your thongs.”  What happened next was as shocking to me as, evidently, my use of the word “thong” was to them. Their eyes grew wide and their jaws dropped to the floor, and they were suddenly speechless. I could see that something was wrong but I couldn’t figure out exactly what. After staring at each other in silence for what felt like a long, long time, one of them finally said, “Uh Bob, why do we need thongs?” It finally occurred to me in a revelatory moment that there was a generational difference in the meaning of the word “thong.” I, of course, was referring to beach sandals, and they were thinking of a kind of revealing bathing suit, not very appropriate for our kind of beach trip.
 
In our rapidly changing culture, words seem to pop up daily that are either completely new, or re-purposed with new meanings. Another word like that is the word “viral.”
As a medical term, a virus is an infection or disease that is easily and rapidly passed from one person to the next. But in today’s culture, it is also used to describe an idea, or video, or product that has quickly spread to a large percentage of the world’s population. When something “goes viral,” it means that a lot of people are thinking about it, buying it, or watching it. 
 
I was listening to a podcast interview of business guru Seth Godin recently describing the difference between good ideas that go viral and those that do not. After years of observation, he said, it was really only one thing. Something goes viral if it is captivating, or life changing, or amazing enough that people tell their family and friends about it…or in Facebook lingo, “share it.”  That’s it…when people are compelled to immediately pass it on, it goes viral.
 
He gives the example of the most famous “great idea,” which has been used for decades as the standard for all other great ideas…“sliced bread.” But Godin says that there was a time when sliced bread was not viewed as the great idea it would soon become. When it was first invented, it did not catch on right away, and was even viewed with some suspicion. Bakers thought it would cause the bread to go stale more quickly and so they didn’t trust it. And since they didn’t trust it, not many people were willing to try it. For about fifteen years sliced bread was available but no one was calling up their neighbors about it. That finally changed one day when a new bread company, “Wonder Bread,” decided to make it the focus of their marketing campaign and persuaded people to give it a chance. When that happened, the idea spread so fast it quickly became known as the “greatest thing since…??” 
 
But how does one go about actually getting something to “go viral?” That has been the focus of thousands of business and entrepreneurial conferences, business seminars, publications, and MBA dissertations, ever since people began making their living selling things to each other.
 
So, we might ask, how did an obscure carpenter and rabbi, who never wrote a book, never had his own podcast, was never interviewed on the local radio or TV stations, become remembered and talked about and celebrated for over 2000 years?
 
In Luke 24, When Jesus met up with those two on the road to Emmaus, and played dumb about recent events, they said to him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” They were shocked that this person walking with them wasn’t aware of all the amazing and staggering events that surrounded the final days of Jesus’ life, including his missing body.
 
When we open a loaf of bread in the 21st century we take for granted that the bread will be sliced evenly, ready to pop into a toaster. When we hear of people that are standing up for justice and equality, for love without condition or limits, for hope in the face of tragedy or heartache, we can sometimes be equally nonchalant and casual. It is easy and common to miss the “amazing” in it.  And yet there are still many places and people who are suffering under the mistaken understanding that love must be earned and acceptance given only to the worthy. 
 
But fortunately, over 2000 years ago, a group of people were astonished and surprised enough to call their friends and tell Jesus’ story, and together create a new community dedicated to remembering and living His message of kindness and mercy. So from that time forward “sliced bread” has been available for all to enjoy.  Jesus wasn’t the only or even the first to talk about unconditional love, but he was the Wonder Bread Company of the world, taking the message of God’s unmerited favor and love, viral.

Having just finished a five-week Epiphany sermon series, we will now turn our full attention to the season of Lent. When Easter comes early, as it does this year, what is shortened isn’t Lent, but the season prior to Lent, Epiphany. So I’ve recently decided that this is my excuse for not ending my Epiphany series on time. If Easter had been a little later, as it should be, I could have finished. 

Speaking of good and bad excuses (mine is definitely the latter), the real message of Lent is that we don’t need to waste our time on them. It doesn’t matter who is to blame, or why something happened in our lives, but only the recognition that we are in a fix and may need to do something about it. We are already forgiven so no need to worry our minds about coming up with common sense reasons how it all happened. Preemptive forgiveness gives us amazing freedom to evaluate our situation, and make a course correction if necessary (the real definition of repentance by the way). We don’t have to waste our energy fighting against the power of shame or disgrace by scouring around for excuses or blame. 
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No one ever told me that when I was younger, so many of us would spend a lot of time fretting over the why’s and how’s of our troubling circumstances. We would stay awake at night wondering if our mistakes were big enough to awaken God out of his compassionate slumber and visit us with a bit of brimstone. The real meaning of Lent tells us that we are free to focus on the “what” of our lives instead. When shame is no longer attached to the reality of our weaknesses, we can spend all our time thinking about how to make great changes. We can also remember that God's compassion as anything but sleepy.

​Have you ever wondered why the date of Easter moves around so much from year to year? Sometime ago I thought I’d find out the answer so I could appear smart and knowledgeable in case one of my students were to ask me that question. Unfortunately, I’ve been waiting now for over two decades and no one has ever asked. That is either because everyone already knows the answer, or because it’s not a very interesting question. Consequently in my weekly today, I decided I’d just ask it myself.  “So Pastor Bob, why is it that the date of Easter moves around so much from one year to the next?” “Well, Bob, I’m so glad you asked.”
 
The date of Easter is connected to the Jewish date for Passover. Passover is celebrated on the first full moon following March 20th, the vernal equinox in the Gregorian calendar (pay no attention to the fact that the date of the vernal equinox can occasionally be March 21st, but don’t ask me to explain that). The council of Nicaea in 325 AD, the first major all-church council of the church, decided that Easter should occur on the first Sunday following the first full moon following the vernal equinox (this is the same church council that established the doctrine of the Trinity and the Nicene creed). However, Easter is delayed by one week if the first full moon after the vernal equinox lands on a Sunday in order to not have Easter and Passover on the same day (no wonder no one ever asked). This means that Easter can occur as early as March 22, or as late as April 25.  The importance of the full moon in the Jewish calendar is a hold over from the days of the lunar calendar, when the dates for the Jewish Holy Days were determined by the lunar cycle. 
 
So this year, the full moon will happen on Wednesday, March 23, only three days after the vernal equinox, which means Easter is celebrated on Sunday, March 27th. There has been some effort to fix the date for Easter on the same day each year but nothing has ever been officially adopted. For example, one proposed reform occurred in the United Kingdom, where the Easter Act 1928 was established to allow the Easter date to be fixed as the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April. However, this law was not implemented, although it remains on the UK Statute Law Database.  
 
For full disclosure, if you were a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which still uses the Julian calendar among a few other dating variances, you would celebrate Easter this year on May 1st. Clearly there has been a great degree of reform and variation through the years on the topic of how we mark the passage of time. Even this year, February will have an extra day in order to insure that the time it takes for our globe to circle the sun remains accurate and constant. It is my personal opinion that every four years, February 29th should be celebrated as a national paid holiday. Let’s start a movement.
 

Tucked away in our subconscious minds is an idyllic vision in which we see ourselves on a long journey that spans an entire continent.  We're traveling by train, and from the windows, we drink in the passing scenes of cars on nearby highways, of children waving at crossings, of cattle grazing in distant pastures, or smoke pouring from power plants, of row upon row of cotton and corn and wheat, of flat lands and valleys, of city skylines and village halls.
 
But uppermost in our minds is our final destination – for at a certain hour and on a given day, our train will finally pull into the station with bells ringing, flags waving and bands playing.  And once that day comes, so many wonderful dreams will come true.  So restlessly we pace the aisles and count the miles, peering ahead, waiting, waiting, waiting for the station.
 
“Yes, when we reach the station, that will be it!” we promise ourselves.  “When we're 18...when we win that promotion...put the last kid through college...buy that Mercedes-Benz...pay off that mortgage...have a nest egg for retirement.”  From that day on, we will all live happily ever after.
 
Sooner or later, however, we must realize there is no station in this life, no one earthly place to arrive at once and for all:  the journey is the joy.
 
The station is an illusion – it constantly outdistances us. Yesterday's a memory, tomorrow's a dream.  Yesterday's a fading sunset: tomorrow's a faint sunrise.  Only today is there light enough to love and live. Yesterday belongs to history: tomorrow belongs to God.  So gently close the door on yesterday and throw the key away.  It isn't the burdens of today that drive men mad but rather the regret over yesterday and the fear of tomorrow.
 
So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles.  Instead, swim more rivers, climb more mountains, kiss more babies, count more stars.  Laugh more and cry less.  Go barefoot more often.  Eat more ice cream.  Ride more merry-go-rounds.  Watch more sunsets.  Life must be lived as we go along.
 
“Relish the moment” is a good motto, especially when coupled with Psalm 118:24: “This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”