A message for the community of St. David of Wales on Good Friday, April 15, 2022.

I confess that I have never wanted to call this day “good,” that the crucifixion leaves me heartbroken, despite knowing what comes next. I have imagined, time and again, a different story that didn’t require death.
 
Each year as our Holy Week journey takes us closer to the cross, I have hoped against hope that just this once, events would unfold differently, that history would be rewritten, that the powers of church and state would surrender themselves to the radical power of love that Jesus professed and embodied.
 
I have wanted alternative scriptures where, having fully instituted God’s will on earth as in heaven, Jesus retires to Galilee, resumes carpentry, marries, raises a family, and lives to a ripe old age.
 
I have wanted all this because I wanted to believe that if only enlightened twenty-first century believers, like me and you had been around back then, the loud Hosannas on Sunday would not have turned into shouts of “crucify him” come Friday. I’ve wanted to believe that we, unlike the disciples who travelled with Jesus, would’ve been able to influence leaders and crowds and even Jesus to broker a death-free outcome.
 
Like the disciples, I have wanted to tell Jesus to stop talking about his imminent death, to stay away from Jerusalem, to fight back, to win. And every year I find myself alongside the disciples, having failed to keep Jesus safe, and having failed to walk boldly alongside him to death.
And as if the Reverend Nadia Bolz Weber had read my mind, she wrote this in her Palm Sunday email:
[N]o amount of improved humanity could have stopped it. No good intentions, no nobility, no sin avoidance, no piety. Nothing could have stopped this Paschal mystery of God and humanity. No amount of super-good discipleship or wisdom or woke-ness would make a lick of difference to God’s determination to draw all people to God’s self.
 
Every year, I have come to this broken-hearted Friday filled with the shame of being a self-centered and small-minded human, wrestling with my own complicity in Jesus’ death. Sounding like Peter, I say, “How can I be responsible? I don’t know him. I’ve never met him.” Except I have, within each of us, every day.
 
I can’t bear to be the cause of Jesus’ willing walk to execution, as though it happens over again every sorrowful Friday. I can’t stand to watch him suffer. I want to deny that he knew his death was necessary and that he chose to allow it. But the gospels are heavy with Jesus’ own foretelling of his death.
 
I want to protest that even if Jesus had to die back then, his choice wasn’t necessary to open the way for my, and our, reconciliation with God. That it’s all ancient history. But what do I know?
 
In her email Rev. Bolz-Weber reminds me, “It would have happened like this even if the Jesus event were happening now instead of then. Even if we knew everything in advance.” 
She writes: God did not become human and dwell among us as Jesus to save only an improved, doesn’t-make-the-wrong-choices kind of people. There is no improved version of humanity that could have done any differently. Because we, as we are and not as some improved version of ourselves… are [who] God came to save from ourselves.”
 
Using her words as a lens to examine my desires for an alternate reality, I find that my fantasy only serves to keep me distant from God.
It is only when I acknowledge the pain of separation from God, and my utter helplessness to control life and death, that I can allow myself to experience the grief this day brings. The grief Jesus carries as he surrenders his spirit is a grief that radiates from the cross and encompasses all that has been broken in God’s creation. How could he possibly bear it? How can we?
 
In German, this holy day is “Karfreitag,” which translates to Suffering or Sorrowful Friday. And on this suffering and sorrowful Friday we’re asked, for just one day, to witness and not turn away. We’re asked to find faith and love and hope where it seems absent. I can only call this day “good” when I gather the courage to sit in the full weight of my sorrow.
 
Only then can I, can we, embrace the love of God which knows no bounds.

A Message on Luke 15: The Parable of the Prodigal Son for the community at St. David of Wales, March 27, 2022
 
In the New International Version, and many others, this morning’s lesson from Luke is titled “The Story of the Lost Son.” In the Expanded Bible it’s “The Son Who Left Home.” The New Testament for Everyone labels it, “The Parable of the Prodigal: The Father and the Younger Son.” In the Contemporary English Version, the title reads “Two Sons.” And finally, the New Revised Standard Version follows suit with “The Parable of the Prodigal and His Brother.”

No matter how we refer to it, this longest of Jesus’ parables which appears only in Luke’s gospel, has resonated deeply over the centuries, perhaps more than any other story Jesus told. And it still speaks to us in circles far beyond the church. Even as a secular child, I’d heard of the prodigal son—and even without knowing that the word prodigal (it’s something like recklessly wasteful), I knew the son was up to no good.

I’m sure I encountered the parable as a Sunday School teacher and parishioner in my twenties, and thirties, but the first time I remember reading it, it came to me on a photocopied sheet of paper as the final assignment in the first creative writing class I took at community college as a mom of pre-teens back in the fall of 2000. The parable was titled simply, “A Story,” and after reading it aloud, my instructor had this to say:

“In my view, this famous story fails in almost every aspect of writing that we have been discussing this semester: lousy motivation and poor character development, way too much summary narration at crucial points, very little detail, and an unbelievable ending. We’ll discuss these issues and what it would take to make this story work in contemporary terms. Then, with these considerations in mind, you write your version.”

This was my first invitation to enter the Bible imaginatively, to use the words of scripture not just as a study guide for living a moral life, but as a source of inspiration and creativity. I was given free reign to inhabit the parable, to invent new characters and new situations in order to understand and amplify Jesus’ message.

Every family seems to have a prodigal someone. A cheater, addict, or opportunist who makes life altering mistakes and then runs away, or who runs away and then screws up. A person whose schemes leave them destitute, unemployed, and evicted, with no other choice than to return home. So, it wasn’t difficult for me to imagine a prodigal daughter.

Though the mother forgave the daughter I’d written, the prodigal still had to live out the consequences of her actions, and trust had to be earned. The story revealed a belief I held but hadn’t quite grasped: That offering and accepting complete forgiveness was fine, for God. The rest of us had to deserve it. But there was no way to calculate deservedness. The deep belief that forgiveness demands an accounting is a character trait consistent with the older brother in Jesus’ parable—a character I managed to leave out of my story completely.
 
Six months later, in June 2001, I had the opportunity to preach this parable on Father’s Day. In my sermon preparation, I came upon Dutch priest Henri Nouwen’s 1992 book, The Return of the Prodigal Son, an account of how Rembrandt’s painting of the prodigal son’s return shaped his life.

Nouwen, who left his home in the Netherlands for life in the U.S. wrote about his initial identification with the prodigal, but he came to realize that though he was geographically distant, he was not the greedy and callous younger son who said essentially, “You’re dead to me, Dad. Hand over the cash.”

As a priest and college professor bound to formal institutions, Nouwen came to see that as a church man, he was much more like the older son who refuses to join the celebration, standing by in judgement as God welcomed others home. As I read about his identification with the older brother, I saw myself clearly in that role as well.

The literal oldest child, the rule follower who stays behind to keep things running, the one who must be perfect because everyone else is unreliable.

Like the prodigal who refers to his own brother as “that son of yours,” I identified with the wary, weary, resentful son, afraid of being sucked back in by the prodigal’s false promises. The unforgiving son who sees the father as unappreciative and unfair, and weak and foolish for being manipulated.
 
Fast forward twenty years and I’m gifted with the opportunity to immerse myself in this passage, Nouwen’s book, and Rembrandt’s painting once again. This time I approach with return as a 60-year-old who has launched children into the world, uprooted an entire life, rebuilt a new one in a new state, lost more dear ones than I want to count, and reconciled relationships I never thought possible.

This time around, it is the father who now shimmers before me, standing in a pool of light as he does in Rembrandt’s painting.
 
As a young man, Rembrandt painted himself as “The Prodigal Son in the Tavern,” and “The Prodigal Son in the Brothel,” seemingly celebrating the carefree carousing life.

“The Return of the Prodigal Son,” is one of Rembrandt’s final paintings, completed shortly before his death in 1669. In the work, Rembrandt, who outlived all five of his children, and both his wives, portrays himself as the father, frail and nearly blind, a man who has known great suffering, and extends a compassionate loving, embrace.
 
Nouwen writes of a spiritual journey that led him to examine his life through the lens of each character in the parable, and he calls us to do the same.

First like the younger son, we’re challenged to recognize our need for repentance, for confessing, accepting, and basking in the joy of being welcomed by God after wandering and failure.
Then we are called to set aside any bitterness and resentment that separates us, as it does the older brother, from one another and from God.

We’re called to accept and embrace our belonging.

And finally, once we are secure in the knowledge of God’s love for us, we are called to become like the father. We are called to create space in our lives and hearts where others may come to experience God's forgiveness and reconciliation.

As I read Nouwen’s book a second time, part of me thought, “What a beautiful and glorious insight,” while another part of me thought, “Act like God? That’s never going to happen.”
 
Our journey with Jesus in the Lenten season brings into sharp distinction the clash between his message, and that of the religious and political authorities of his time. And it highlights that we still live in the tension between our hope for the wide-open all-encompassing just-and-generous love of God to govern all of life, and the reality of man-made systems that dehumanize and oppress many for the benefit of the few.

Living in that tension, I’m thankful for the artistic expression scripture inspires, like Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son.

In it I see two unnamed women in the shadows, and wonder who they are—wife, mother, daughter—and how they’ve influenced the scene.

I see the older son standing inside the house. And though he is not inside the father’s embrace, I see light on his face and wistful longing in his eyes, as if soon he will step into his father’s arms.

I see the exhausted and contrite younger son reuniting with his family, moved beyond words with gratitude, tears flowing.

And I see in the father a love generous enough to have let go and allow both sons to live their choices. I see the grief that letting go exacts, and the hard-won equanimity and wisdom of accepting what cannot be changed.

I see in the father a gaze softened by circumstance, the bone-deep relief and joy in the reunion never thought possible. I feel the heart-deep compassion for all that has been suffered, and the assurance love that endures all things.
 
And looking closely at the father’s embrace, I see the hands Rembrandt has rendered. One aged, wide, firm. One soft, smooth, tender. This father is more than father. This father is not bound to time. Though wounded like Jesus, this father is wholly human while radiating divinity.
 
In these past two years, the pandemic has taken the lives of those we love. It has kept us apart. Care for each other’s safety has unintentionally isolated us. Pastoral transition has shifted the stability we crave in a worshipping community. And now war threatens our peace of mind, feeling helpless feeds our anxiety.

Yet in the midst of all this, we found new ways to gather. We found new ways to honor the departed and celebrate the milestones of living. We found new ways to worship and pray for and with one another. And we’re finding ways to support those who feed the hungry and house refugees.

Because of our history, together and apart, because of our circumstances and choices now and long ago, because of all that we have loved, and all that we have suffered, and all that we have believed and all that we have doubted, because of our resilience, and our faith, however fragile, I see each one of us becoming that father-mother-creator-comforter.

Like the father in Rembrandt’s painting, we gleam with God’s light, and hold out our arms to another hurting human desperate for belonging. We offer love and forgiveness, without condition. We speak forgiveness with a touch, with a tear, with a word if it comes.
​
May you and I embody that father, if only for a moment. And may that moment carry us as far and long, delivering us, finally to God’s eternal embrace.

 A Message delivered to St. David of Wales Episcopal Church on  Luke 6:17-26
 
Luke’s gospel leaves no doubt that Jesus has come to turn the powers of the world upside down.
When our readings for this liturgical year turned to Luke’s gospel in Advent, we heard the promises of God’s plan through the song of Mary. Upon learning that she would give birth to the Messiah, Mary—an unwed teen in occupied territory—proclaimed that she had found favor with God, that God had lifted up the humble, and fed the hungry, while casting down the powerful and sending the rich away hungry.

A few weeks ago, when we read of Jesus beginning his public ministry, we found him in his hometown synagogue reading from the scroll of Isaiah and proclaiming that he was the one sent to free the oppressed.

And in this morning’s gospel lesson, Jesus offers blessings to “comfort the afflicted” and woes “to afflict the comfortable” as the saying goes.

Most of us are used to hearing the blessings, or Beatitudes from Matthew’s gospel, where there are only blessings for the poor and downtrodden, those who mourn and those who weep. In Matthew’s account, there are no woes for those who appear comfortable, as there are in Luke’s.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus delivers the beatitudes to the disciples in the Sermon on the Mount—he has gone up the mountainside and called his disciples to him. But in Luke’s account, the blessings and woes aren’t spoken in the rarified mountain air by a teacher calmly seated with his disciples circled around him.

In Luke’s gospel Jesus had spent the night on a mountain with his disciples, of whom he singled out 12 to become apostles. Twelve who would not just listen and learn from Jesus but would spread his message as well.

In the morning Jesus, the disciples, and his newly chosen apostles head down the mountain to a level place, and people from all over the region come to be healed. Jesus is alive with healing power, and it radiates through the crowd. Word spreads. More and more people come.

Imagine a time without newspapers, TV, or social media news, a time when aside from secondhand conversation, the only way to know what someone said, did, or believed was to find out in person.
Imagining that, we can surmise that there were plenty of people in the crowd who came not because they needed healing, or believed in what they’d heard about Jesus, but who came out of curiosity, disbelief, and even scorn.

Those who gathered from towns and villages would have been from a variety of social classes, power, and privilege. And here on the plain, in this level place, no listener is elevated above another. It’s not like going to the Super Bowl with the rich in their private boxes, or club level seats, and the less well-to-do in the nosebleed sections watching the action through binoculars, and the poor, unable to afford tickets listening to radio broadcasts or watching the game at home on TV.

In Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, the playing field is level, so to speak. The religious authorities and town officials aren’t invited up front. The women and children aren’t herded to the back. Everyone’s view is obscured by everyone else. Everyone is struggling to hear over the noise of each other.

No one is getting special treatment, and the equality of everyone before God is made visible just by that fact.

And then we have Jesus’ blessings and woes themselves. Here is Eugene Peterson’s interpretation in “The Message” Bible:
 
You’re blessed when you’ve lost it all.
God’s kingdom is there for the finding.
You’re blessed when you’re ravenously hungry.
Then you’re ready for the Messianic meal.
You’re blessed when the tears flow freely.
Joy comes with the morning.

“Count yourself blessed every time someone cuts you down or throws you out, every time someone smears or blackens your name to discredit me. What it means is that the truth is too close for comfort and that that person is uncomfortable. You can be glad when that happens—skip like a lamb, if you like! —for even though they don’t like it, I do. . . and all heaven applauds. And know that you are in good company; my preachers and witnesses have always been treated like this.

But it’s trouble ahead if you think you have it made.
What you have is all you’ll ever get.
And it’s trouble ahead if you’re satisfied with yourself.
Your self will not satisfy you for long.
And it’s trouble ahead if you think life’s all fun and games.
There’s suffering to be met, and you’re going to meet it.

“There’s trouble ahead when you live only for the approval of others, saying what flatters them, doing what indulges them. Popularity contests are not truth contests—look how many scoundrel preachers were approved by your ancestors! Your task is to be true, not popular.

In her “Living by the Word” commentary for the Christian Century Amy Ziettlow, pastor of Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Decatur, Illinois, writes this about the gospel passage:

On first read, I often fall into the trap of reading these blessings and woes as I would a personality quiz. I want to find a comfortable place to land and find my identity.

But every verse can seem to fit, so I see myself in conflicting categories. On subsequent readings, it seems Jesus cares less about sorting us out than welcoming us to live in the tension of all these experiences.

She continues: Jesus aims to remove any barriers to seeing God’s image reflected in our lives. Poverty, hunger, tears, and being hated can distort our reflection and convince us that we are less than human. Jesus brings blessing, comfort, and hope in order to restore a sense of holy createdness.
 
Wealth, full bellies, mirth, and the esteem of others can also distort our sense of self. Jesus calls out, “Whoa!” and in that holy pause we can repent and make room for God’s presence in our lives. Jesus does not come into the world to condemn.

Jesus doesn’t come into the world to condemn. And he doesn’t come into the world to save us from the pain of being human. He comes to the world as an infant, utterly dependent and vulnerable. The former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams wrote, “God acts by giving away all strength and success as we understand them. The universe lives by a love that refuses to bully us or force us, the love of the manger and the cross.”

In her sermon at the Washington National Cathedral on God's vulnerability, Mariann Edgar Budde says, “We’d like our God to be more powerful than a baby or a man sentenced to die… The truth is we don’t know what to do with a God who gives all power away; with healing that comes through suffering; with love that meets us in our vulnerabilities and stays there with us, rather than providing the escape from it that we so desperately want.”

The saving that Jesus offers us, doesn’t save us from experience the blessing or woe of being human. Throughout our lifetimes we will experience plenty of each. We might experience blessing of marriage and the woe of divorce and widowhood. Or the blessing and worry of raising children. Or the blessing of employment and vocation and the woe of unemployment, layoffs and closures. Or the blessing of home and the woe of fire, flood, or homelessness. Or the blessing of good physical and mental health, the woe of disease, addiction, and mental illness.

We are certainly all experiencing the woe of pandemic and the blessing of new ways to interact because of it.

We will prosper, and we will suffer no matter what we believe. But it is so much harder to embrace blessing without hubris and to weather woes without fear and despair our faith begins and ends with our own efforts. When we make room for God in our ever-changing circumstances, we are able to grasp the one constant Jesus offers us: the gift and surety of his presence.

When we call Jesus Emmanuel, we are saying, “God with us.”

​God is with us in all things. Always.

A reflection on Luke 21:25-36 for the community of St. David of Wales Episcopal Church, Shelton, WA. First Sunday of Advent, November 28, 2021. 
 
Everybody is ready for Christmas. The Thanksgiving leftovers that crowd our refrigerators are almost all gone. Radio stations are playing Christmas songs 24 hours a day. Stores have been stocked with holiday décor and gifts since Halloween. Black Friday sales flooded our email inboxes this weekend. Neighbors are stringing up lights and inflating super-sized Santas.

Everybody is ready to celebrate, except us. We who worship Christ and follow the church calendar have flipped the page to the first day of a new year that begins not with decorations, celebratory champagne, and countdowns, but with weeks of waiting. And what a strange sort of waiting it is. We wait for what was promised and what has already occurred. We wait for a sign that God is with us. We wait for God to break into human history with the birth of Jesus. And we wait for what was promised but has yet to be fulfilled. We wait for the final redemption of humanity and all of creation. We wait for peace and justice to prevail throughout the earth. We wait for the Son of Man to come again in power and glory.

In today’s gospel, Jesus said, “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Jesus was speaking about the turmoil that beset the church and the people at that time. And the Temple in Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish worship and authority, was destroyed twenty years later never to be rebuilt. Luke wrote his gospel shortly after the Temple’s destruction to people still reeling from that loss. There have been so many dark periods of human history since then, times when it seemed as though the end must surely be at hand. And the signs are still all around us today. As New Testament professor Audrey West says in her commentary on this scripture written for Luther Seminary:

Jesus speaks in the language of apocalyptic, or revelation. Vivid images—the heavens being shaken, the Son of Humanity appearing in the clouds—depend on the metaphors’ capacity to express a community’s trauma while also offering powerful hope in the midst of those experiences.
When the present reality includes wars and political tumult (distress among nations), climate catastrophe (signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars), global pandemic (breathless from fear and foreboding), unemployment, hate crimes, racist ideologies, death-dealing illness, displacement by terror, or anything else that traps people in fear or despair (weighs down hearts), it is then that we look for the coming of the Son of Humanity, the Christ whose promised future makes all the difference for today.”

Growing up outside a faith tradition in a family that was fractured by divorce multiple times, I was terrified of being abandoned. Both my stepparents disappeared from my life without saying goodbye, and when I encountered scripture passages like those in today’s Gospel on my own before I found a church, it seemed as though a lasting relationship with God was impossible for someone like me and that could disappear from my life without warning.

Even when I became a Christian, it was the mid-1980s at the height of the Cold War, and I lived in fear that nuclear war and the end times were a moment away. I worried that I would never be vigilant enough to be saved, after all I had to sleep. I would never be clever enough to interpret the signs. Was the USSR that President Reagan called “The Evil Empire” the Antichrist or just our biggest nuclear threat? And I was sure I would fail to recognize The Messiah at the second coming, convinced that I would fall for a false prophet instead and be one of those forever separated from Jesus.

From the Left Behind books, to The Da Vinci Code, to the cults that have set dates for the destruction of the earth and Jesus’ second coming, it’s clear I’m not the only who worried about how and when redemption would come. But time has changed me. I’ve been in a relationship with my husband for 40 years, and no longer worry about abrupt and unexpected endings to marriage. I’ve been a Christ follower for 35 years, which isn’t very long compared to many of you, but it’s been long enough to help me relax into my faith, and to find hope, rather than fear in waiting.

When I was training to become a United Methodist lay pastor in California in the late 1990s, my Bible teacher said something about God’s salvation never being narrow. That God’s invitation is wide open and accessible to anyone who will say yes. He said that believing salvation is available only to those who correctly decipher Biblical codes, or believe a specific selection of Bible verses, is bad doctrine, and that those who preach bad doctrine are false prophets who misrepresent the true nature of God and the Good News offered in Christ.

I also learned the distinction between our human concept of time, Kronos, and God’s time, Kairos. Markey Makridakis, in her book, Creating Time, explains it like this:

Kronos (from which we take our word chronology) is sequential time. Kronos is the time of clocks and calendars; it can be quantified and measured. Kronos is linear, moving inexorably out of the determinate past toward the determined future, and has no freedom. Kairos is numinous time. Kairos…cannot be controlled or possessed. Kairos is circular, dancing back and forth, here and there, without beginning or ending and knows no boundaries.

In our personal lives, we get a glimpse of Kairos and the unbound nature of time when memories and dreams transport us back in time to people and places that no longer exist in the physical world but are alive in our imaginations. The idea and experience of Kairos helps us understand our Advent experience, waiting for the birth of Jesus, a past, present, and future indwelling of God with us.

But Kairos time is harder to apply to the external world we live in, bound by chronology where we see worrisome signs of destruction and ending all around us.

The season of Advent begins with the opportunity to ask ourselves how we deal with fear and anxiety, how we cope with tragedy and injustice. Do we hide, ignore, or deny? Jesus warns us to "Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life.”

Weighed down by the worries of this life, I don’t indulge in drunkenness, but I am extremely skilled in dissipation, which can be defined as wasting by misuse, mental distraction, amusement, and diversion. When I’m overwhelmed by world and family events, I binge-watch: Fixer-Upper, The Great British Baking Show, Top Chef, America’s Got Talent. It’s a waste of time, but I’m here to say that God can redeem even our dissipated time.

The week before last, I was brought low by the common cold. Too exhausted to go to work, or to work at home I binged Dancing with the Stars. In one of the last episodes of this season, the TV personality Amanda Kloots and her partner danced to Live Your Life, a song by Nick Cordero, Amanda’s late husband who died in 2020 after a drawn-out battle against COVID. The performance was haunting and beautiful, a journey through love, loss, and grief and ultimately to hope shared with millions of viewers. A moment of transcendence through a medium we often disdain.

How do we bear loss, grief, anxiety, and fear? How do we cope with tragedy and injustice, both personal and global? How do we wait and wait for God’s righting of the world that seems so long in coming?

As co-creators with God, we tell our stories in art, music, and words, transforming pain into healing, bringing the light of hope to the dark of despair. As a community bound by faith, we engage in worship and prayer, in stewardship and fellowship as testimony to our belief in the redeeming power of Christ and the promise of God’s salvation.

Today’s gospel passage closes with Jesus’ exhortation: “Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
But there is no escape from being human in this world. There is no escape from illness, loss, and death. No escape from hurricanes, fire, or floods. No escape from the ravages of war, inflation, and unemployment. No escape from the consequences of the decisions we’ve made as individuals and as a species that impact all creatures on earth, and the land, water, and air upon which our lives depend.

There is an escape from believing that what we see is all there is. And there is an escape from believing that we have the power to control others—even when we want to use that power to help. And there is an escape from believing the political, economic, and religious powers of the world are the ultimate powers and arbiters of our faith.
​
Our escape lies in faith. Our escape lies in hope. Our escape lies in prayer—God’s will be done on earth as in heaven. Our escape lies in staying alert, in noticing, seeing, dreaming, speaking, and empowering the coming and current reign of Christ. Our escape lies in standing before the Son of Man, who has come, who is here, who will come again, whose existence is God’s bequest to us. Our escape lies in receiving the gift Christmas will bring us: Radical never-ending, ever-present love.