Seeing All Things New

I'm a joy freak. And it doesn't take much to get me there. Reading Facebook this evening I noticed several of my friends bemoaning going back to work after the holidays. It seems I'm not the only one who finds early January tough. Yesterday was Communion Sunday, so today I took communion bread and wine to our nursing home residents. We use special Methodist wine by Ernest and Julio Welch. I met a 95-year-old man named Lupe Sanchez for the first time. After I prayed for Lupe following communion he chimed in, giving thanks to God that I came and met him that day. He is in pain from a broken back and he lost his wife last year, so his statement of big gratitude for a small visit was special. I may have to work in early January in cold weather but my back does not hurt, I can see and hear and walk, and I get to do stuff like this and call it work. Life is not so bad.

I concluded yesterday's sermon with a visual aid showing that sometimes we have to rearrange the categories in our minds to allow for finding Jesus in unexpected places. That's what the Wise Guys, I mean Wise Men did when they were directed to Bethlehem. Nobody would have expected Jesus to be born in that village full of country bumpkins, but hey, there He was. It was astounding that the Wise Men didn't say, "It can't be Bethlehem. It has to be Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the happenin' place where the action's at, and Bethlehem? Let's just say we ain't going there. If we hunt around Jerusalem long enough we know we'll find Him here." But they adjusted their perceptions to fit the new reality instead of trying to fit the new reality into their perceptions. That is not easy to do. To show how we all, including me, have to contend with preconceptions all the time, I offered the following quiz to the congregation on poster board. I told them, "If you get this right you're doing better than I did!" As far as I know, nobody figured it out until I told them.

Which number below does not fit in with the rest?

1. One
2. Thirteen
3. Thirty-one

And the answer is: The number two, because all the other numbers contain the numbers one or three. If you're like me, you automatically excluded the digital numbers 1, 2, and 3 and limited the possibilities to the three numbers written in longhand. So I then asked the congregation this. When we search for Jesus, what do we include and exclude? Who do we include and exclude?

That is a very interesting question.