My sermon, or reflection as I prefer to cal it, is often an attempt to work out--to clarify and articulate--my thoughts and feelings on a particular issue that is important to me as a Christian, or more fundamentally, as a human being living on this planet in this time and place, with all of the challenges we face as individuals, as communities, and as a planet.
   The issues I reflect upon may be explicitly religious in nature, or they may be political, economic, psychological, emotional, cultural, or environmental. Whatever the particular nature of the issue, I always think of it as "spiritual" in the sense that spirituality has to do with each and every aspect of human life and all of our relationships, whether it's our relationship with our self, other people, the planet earth, the wider cosmos, or God.
   I address these issues, usually, from a Christian perspective, realizing I don't speak for all Christians, but rather from a particular perspective within Christianity, a perspective influenced by Christianity's contemplative tradition, by process theology and liberation theology, by feminist theology and post-modern theology, by traditions, schools of thought, and practices outside of Christianity like Zen Buddhism and Integral spiritual practice, and by my own personal experience.
   Though my reflections are attempts to clarify and articulate my thoughts and feelings on a particular topic, rarely do I think or feel I have achieved final clarity on a topic by the time 11:00 Sunday morning rolls around. As I've shared with some you, I never finish writing a reflection, I just run out of time. Quite often, while I'm up here delivering my reflection, I'm thinking to myself: I don't like the way I've worded this, what I'm saying doesn't really communicate what I think or feel, there's a valid critique to this point that I need to think through more thoroughly, this doesn't feel right. Of course, sometimes I'm up here thinking, wow, this rocks! This is exactly what I think about this issue and I know I'm right. And then I see a bunch of incredulous, doubt-filled faces looking at me.
   Ultimately, my Sunday morning reflections are invitations to dialogue. Almost always, I wish I could sit down and talk to some of you after I share my reflection on a topic--really talk about it in some depth so I could hear how you heard me, so I could hear what you're thinking and feeling about the topic, so I could get feedback from you that would help me as I continue struggling with and working through the issue, so we could support one another in our responses to particular issues.
   Unfortunately, that almost never happens. Every now and then a few people respond to my reflection--they liked it, they disagreed with it, it was moving, it was boring--but these are usually quick comments, with no time for real dialogue, no opportunity for a deeper meeting of hearts and minds.
   And frankly, I find that depressing. I really do. I get home from church almost every Sunday afternoon in an agitated mood, sometimes descending into a deep depression, because I went to church that morning, opened my heart and mind, poured out what was in me, and really wanted a response to an issue I'd been thinking about all week. But didn't get one. I just poured out a fifteen, twenty minute monologue, but there was no dialogue. For me, that's a rather painful experience.
   One thing I'm really looking for in church are serious, thoughtful, wise, compassionate dialogue partners on issues of spiritual import, people with whom I can openly share back and forth, people with whom I can participate in some deep and serious inquiry, people with whom I can grow because we're struggling together with what it means to be a Christian, or a human being, in our time and place.
   Last Sunday's reflection serves as a good example. For those of you who were here you may recall that I addressed the issue of Christmas shopping by tying it to the larger issues of consumption and the health of our planet. I made three main points.

• Powerful corporations who exist to make money from our consumption have convinced too many people that shopping and consuming is an inherent and necessary part of celebrating Christmas. This is a delusion. It has absolutely no basis in reality.
• The planet cannot in the long-term sustain our level of consumption. Current levels of consumption are already damaging the environment in which we live--damaging the land base and its biodiversity, poisoning our air and water, dangerously heating up our climate, and killing species at an alarming and accelerating rate. To believe our planet can sustain our level of consumption, let alone increased levels of consumption, is a delusion. It has no basis in reality.
• Celebrating the birth of Jesus--the one who saves us from the error of our ways, the one who saves us from the destructive patterns that do us, other people, and God's creation harm, the one who awakens us from delusion to truth--celebrating the birth of Jesus by participating in a frenzy of shopping and consumption betrays everything for which he lived and died.
  

   In the course of my reflection, I noted a segment of the News Hour that I had watched in which Jeffery Brown lead several economists in a discussion around the question: will the American consumer come through to rescue the economy during this year's Christmas shopping season? One of the panelists, a Harvard economist, was guardedly optimistic, saying that even though the American consumer is feeling the economic pinch this year and consumer spending is down, we all want to be patriotic and go out and shop this Christmas season to help the economy.
   I was particularly critical of that comment which linked celebrating the birth of Jesus, economic consumption, and patriotism.
   After my reflection, several people approached me and said, great sermon.
   But one person came up to me and said--and I hope I'm not misrepresenting what this person said--he said, "I agree with the Harvard economist. Now is the wrong time to be preaching that sermon. If you had preached that sermon a year ago, I would have agreed with you, but not now. A lot of people are suffering right now from the economic downturn. We have to get the economy moving again, and the economy depends on shopping this time of year. What about all the people who would lose their jobs if everyone stopped Christmas shopping? We have to get the economy stable again, then we can address the concerns you raised." This person did acknowledge, however, that the concerns I raised tend not to get addressed when the economy is doing well.
   But here's my point. I was thrilled that someone had come up to me and critiqued my reflection by disagreeing with me and by raising an important issue, an issue with which I had struggled while writing the reflection but did not articulate because I really wanted to hammer home my chief concern: that linking the birth of Jesus to earth-damaging consumption and patriotism betrays Jesus.
   I really do think that and I feel strongly about that.
   However, I also recognize the incredible complexity of the political, economic, and environmental reality in which we live, and the challenging dilemmas we face, so I was grateful that someone approached me and lifted this up to me for further reflection and struggle.
   I think we really do face some challenging dilemmas.
    From a Christian faith perspective, Christmas can survive just fine without any Christmas shopping whatsoever. If everybody completely stops Christmas shopping and gift-giving, Christmas will not disappear as a Christian holiday. However, and this is a big however, our national economy cannot do just fine without the Christmas shopping season. Our national economy has become highly dependent upon Christmas shopping, and local governments on sales tax revenue. Purely from a Christian faith perspective, we can easily eliminate the Christmas shopping season. From an economic and political perspective, we cannot. So what do we do with that?
   I am aware that my desire to eliminate Christmas shopping season would have a negative impact on the workers who manufacture the items people purchase and consume, on the truck drivers who transport them from factory to store, on the salespeople, shelve-stockers, and store cleaners who work in these stores, be they Wal-Mart employees or the owners of the Mom and Pop boutique, and on the Fed Ex and UPS drivers who deliver the gifts from the warehouse to your home. Does this mean I should abandon my desire to eliminate Christmas shopping season and instead enthusiastically support linking the birth of Jesus to consumption because so many people are economically dependent on this link? Should economic necessity trump my faith? Can my faith ignore the folks who would suffer even greater economic hardship? What do we do with that?
    And my big point from last week--the relationship between our high consumption lifestyle and the health of our planet--all of us are deeply enmeshed within and dependent upon an economic system that I believe is doing harm to our planet. I agree with those who say, to harm our planet less we must change our economic lifestyle, particularly, our level of consumption. But, we all know that changing our lifestyle, particularly our level of consumption, will seriously disrupt many people's lives--all those people whose livelihood is dependent upon continuing or increasing our level of consumption.
   Again, this is the classic economy vs. environment conundrum. We can't lower emissions coming out of those smokestacks because it will affect people's jobs. We can't stop cutting down the trees because it will affect people's jobs. We can't consume less, we can't eliminate Christmas shopping season, because it will affect people's jobs. And yet if we don't make substantial changes in our lifestyle, our consumption, our economy, the environment will continue to suffer which means even greater human suffering down the road for our children's children and their children. So how do we work ourselves out of this conundrum, and how do we work ourselves out of it fast enough to make a difference?
   In today's gospel lesson, the powerful are brought down from their thrones, the rich are sent away empty, the poor are saved and the hungry fed. This lesson is one of the Bible's classic statements of a downtrodden people's hope for justice. God turns the tables and an unjust world suddenly becomes just. It's a nice vision but I don't think it is going to happen that way. I don't think God is going to suddenly intervene and make everything right. And so we are left to face deep and challenging dilemmas ourselves:
   How do we get from an unjust world to a just world?
   How do we balance the short-term needs of our planet's people with the long-term health and well-being of our planet?
   Who is going to make the short-term sacrifices for this long-term health and well-being? And I mean real sacrifices. Who decides which people will make these sacrifices?
What kind of sacrifices am I willing to make?
   And by the way, who's talking about these issues? Is there a church in which people are really wrestling with these issues? If not, why not? If so, where? I want to go to that church.
   This is just one issue I have raised in one reflection, just one issue I think about a lot, one issue with which I really struggle. Maybe some of you do as well. I don't really know. Maybe you disagree with me. Maybe you think I've framed the whole issue in the wrong way, and that I need to think about it from a different angle, or with different assumptions, or with different information and data, or from a different faith perspective. I want to know what you think.
   So here's my strategy. My plan. The window series has been a real success. People have been gathering on the second Sunday of every month to reflect on the images portrayed in our windows. Once we run out of windows to talk about, I'd like to start a discussion group for folks who are interested in discussing some of the issues I talk about on Sunday morning.
   Starting sometime in the spring, we'll meet on the second Sunday of the month to discuss any topic I raised in any of my reflections during the previous month. If you want to take a look at any of my reflections, read them for yourself, prepare your questions, hone your arguments, clarify your own thoughts and feelings, just ask me and I'll e-mail you a copy of the reflection.
   Just in the last month, I've reflected on the issue of divine judgment in response to the harm we're doing to our planet, on the blessings and pitfalls of hope, and of course, the Christmas shopping season. There must be something of interest in those topics we could further reflect on together. Hopefully, when spring rolls around, and we run out of windows to talk about, you'll find something of interest in my reflections, something you'll want to reflect on further with me and with other members of your church, something of spiritual import.

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