Sermon: You Shall Be Called "Rocky"

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline IL

January 18, 2026, Epiphany 2A

Psalm 40: 1-11; John 1:29-42

 

You Shall Be Called “Rocky”

 

“Dumb as a bag of rocks.”

I’m guessing you don’t need to be told that this is an insult. It’s a phrase that was popularized on the TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory, but that phrase is only one variant of a general theme that might also be expressed simply “dumb as a rock” or “dumb as a box of rocks.” And it’s probably some kind of rhetorical cousin to one I grew up with, “dumb as a sack of hammers” (and no, hammers and rocks aren’t the same thing, but they do share a certain quality of what we might call denseness). 

Mind you, it’s also true that rock can be thought of as solid (that’s the basis of an old favorite hymn, after all – the “solid rock”) the way a rock appears in the psalm reading today, as the basis for a firm foundation. In another pop culture reference, there was an insurance and financial services company that boasted of its solidity and security with the advertising slogan “get a piece of the rock,” paired with a logo depicting no less than the Rock of Gibraltar. 

To be sure, rocks (great or small) have their uses – great foundation material, nice decorations in a garden, skipping them across a river – but you can still see how they might fit into the insults noted above. You’re not going to look to a rock to solve complex mathematical equations or deep philosophical conundrums.

Yet our reading today ends with Jesus, no less, greeting Andrew’s brother Simon, not with “hello” or anything like that, but with the announcement “You are to be called Cephas” (which John the gospel author helpfully translates for us as Peter). The name “Cephas” comes from the Aramaic word for “rock”; “Peter” is the Greek equivalent.

So in other words, the first thing Jesus says to Simon, before Simon even has a chance to speak, is “I’m gonna call you Rock.” Or maybe even better, “Rocky.”

We come to this place as John, the witness in the wilderness, is directing his disciples towards Jesus as “the lamb of God.” Jesus passes by as John is with two of his own disciples and John repeats this proclamation, with the unspoken subtext being “follow him! Go, already!” It’s not impossible to imagine John practically shoving the two disciples off in the direction Jesus was walking. Finally they do follow Jesus, and his first words to them – the first words Jesus speaks in this gospel at all – are “what are you looking for?” The two disciples ask where Jesus is staying, he invites them to “come and see,” and it seems they end up spending the day with Jesus.

We are given no clue what they talked about or did, but it was apparently quite convincing for one of the two, named Andrew. Not only did he immediately go and find his brother Simon; see what he says to him: “We have found the Messiah.” Something between John the witness’s own testimony to Jesus and what Andrew heard from Jesus himself brought Andrew to this startling conclusion, a claim not to be taken lightly in that day and age. 

Now Andrew is mostly known otherwise for being the one to help set the feeding of the five thousand in motion in John 6, by bringing to Jesus’s attention the boy with the five loaves and two fish. In none of the gospels does he come off as one of the “big names”; normally you hear most of Peter, James, and John, and this fourth gospel sometimes makes a big deal of Thomas. But bringing people to meet Jesus, whether it’s the boy with the loaves and fish or it’s his own brother, that’s a pretty good legacy to leave behind in scripture.

But Andrew brings his brother Simon to Jesus and the first thing Jesus does is…change his name?

In John’s gospel, one of the most consistent characteristics of Jesus is that he sees, particularly that Jesus sees people at their deepest level. In the next verses of this chapter, Jesus will greet Nathanael, another disciple-to-be, with the proclamation “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” (insterestingly, this comes just a few beats after Nathanael has made a derogatory remark about Jesus’s hometown). Think also of the clandestine nighttime visit Nicodemus made to Jesus in chapter 3, in which Jesus is answering Nicodemus’s questions before Nicodemus even has a chance to ask them. Or think of the midday encounter with a woman at a well in chapter 4, while Jesus and his disciples were in Samaria, in which Jesus seemed to know all about her, right down to her marital history. John is keenly interested in presenting Jesus as one who sees into the human condition, indeed into the human heart, from the very beginning. 

So what is it that Jesus sees in Simon that prompts him to bestow the somewhat two-sided name “Rock”? (Or maybe “Rocky”?)

After all, this isn’t exactly a common name for us. Oh, the name “Peter” is now, once it showed up all over the gospels and the book of Acts and a couple of small epistles towards the end of the New Testament. I doubt, though, that most parents who name their child “Peter” are really thinking about this Greek word’s original meaning. 

Parents don’t name their child “Rock,” at least not very often. The famous actor was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr., long before any Hollywood mogul slapped the name “Rock Hudson” on him. And the former University of Miami football player turned pro wrestler (and now turned actor) Dwayne Johnson made sure to avoid any confusion about its meaning by choosing the stage name “The Rock” for his professional career – no confusion about not being so bright there. For that matter, to be fair, our perception might also be shaded by the movie character Rocky Balboa, as played by Sylvester Stallone in all those movies, who for all his boxing triumph doesn’t really come off as the sharpest knife in the drawer.

So what is Jesus getting at with this new name for Simon? Is it all about firmness and stability? But unlike in Matthew’s version of this story, Jesus doesn’t add on the bit about “upon this rock I will build my church,” so can we be absolutely sure that’s what’s up here? Is there something about, maybe, being just a bit of a bonehead at times?

Why not both?

In this season of Epiphany, the Sundays after the revealing of the Christ first to those eastern Magi, one of the ongoing characteristics of the gospel readings is that in some way each of those scriptures point to something about Jesus being revealed. In last week’s reading the baptism of Jesus was the occasion for that opening up of heaven and the Spirit descending like a dove, pointing to Jesus as God’s beloved son. 

In John’s gospel, especially in the earliest chapters, Jesus is presented, as noted before, as one who sees. What is revealed here is a Jesus who knows us before we know him. Again, later in the chapter when Nathanael is caught off guard by Jesus’s unexpected greeting to him, Jesus responds that he “saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” Nor is this particularly new to John’s gospel. One can go as far back as Genesis and its account of Hagar, the slave girl of Sarah who had been given to Abraham in an ill-considered attempt to hasten the birth of the son God had promised them. When Hagar fled into the wilderness from her Sarah’s mistreatment, the angel of the Lord found her and spoke to her, leading Hagar to name God as “the God who sees,” even someone as lowly as her.

So Jesus sees Simon. The tricky part is, though, that Jesus really sees Simon. He sees in Simon both the good and the…less good.

He sees in Simon the rock. He sees the faithfulness that will endure. He sees in Simon the dogged determination to remain with Jesus that will provoke him to say, later in this gospel when many followers have deserted Jesus, “to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” He sees the disciple who will be determined to follow him to the very last, no matter the threat.

But Jesus also sees in Simon the rock-headed one. He sees the one who, in Mark’s and Matthew’s gospels, will be the one who catches on to the “Who do you say that I am?” question with the right answer – “You are the Messiah” – only to turn around and blow it by reprimanding Jesus for talking about his upcoming suffering and death, the act that gets him blasted with “Get behind me, Satan!” And Jesus sees the one who, in all his determination to follow Jesus all the way through, still ends up denying Jesus three times.

And, seeing in Simon both “the Rock” and, well, the bag of rocks, Jesus calls him anyway. There’s no thought of casting Simon aside because he was going to be such a pain to deal with sometimes. Simon is called, flaws and all. 

And of course, flaws and all, Simon, or Peter, does hold on for dear life, even despite his own failing and fumbling. Jesus pulls him back from his awful betrayal, and by the time we get into the history of the early church in the book of Acts who is out there in front, speaking boldly for the fledgling clutch of believers in the face of an indifferent world? It is none other than this same Simon. Or Peter, or Rock, or Rocky. 

Same thing happens with us, you know. Jesus sees us, all the way through, flaws and all, and still calls us. Not necessarily to anything quite so lofty as ol’ Rocky’s calling, but we are still called to follow. In a few moments we will be ordaining new elders and deacons, and installing continuing officers, and God sees them and has seen them. Maybe Jesus doesn’t hang a new name on us, except for his own – our mark of being his. But still, in all our weakness and stumbling and flat-out getting it plain wrong and even sometimes being as dumb as a bag of rocks or a sack of hammers, Jesus sees the good parts too, and calls us, and guides us and pushes us and sometimes cajoles us into serving with our whole selves, never leaving us without what we need to serve in the way we are called.

Your good news for today: Jesus sees us, knows us, and calls us anyway, even when we’re more rock-headed than rock.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #263, All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name; #279, Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove; #688, Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart

Sermon: Water

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

January 11, 2026, Baptism of the Lord A

Acts 10:34-48; Matthew 3:13-17

 

Water

 

It is indispensible to our lives. Aside from air, it is the one most basic element that we cannot survive long without. Even food is not quite as utterly necessary; one could live without food for possibly as much as three admittedly horrible weeks, but without water one can only hope for about three days. Our bodies consist of about sixty percent water.

Water also covers about two-thirds of the planet and is life-giving not only for humans. Animals need it as well. Vegetation, for the most part, cannot live without it. Those fruits and vegetables we take in for nourishment will never come to fruition without the right amount of water at the right time. And yet too much water, or too much at the wrong time, can destroy those very fruits and vegetables, as well as the animal population of an area. On the other hand, too little water, or water too late, leaves a land prone to drought or fire, as much of the West Coast experiences on a frighteningly regular basis..

In short, it is virtually impossible to exaggerate how important water is to the health and well-being of this planet and all that lives in it.

Water, though, is not only subject to nature; human interactions can diminish its life-giving power. The city of Flint, Michigan, had no trustworthy source of drinkable water for more than six years due to gross human mismanagement; in our former state of Florida, mismanagement and abuse of the Everglades system has hastened natural decline to surrounding areas that have relied on those waters for their sustenance; and nowadays water is being hoarded for massive data centers for generating interactive "artificial intelligence" applications, water that people in those areas need to drink. For something so important to life on the most basic level, water can end up awfully mistreated and misused in human hands.

Of course, water has a pretty prominent role in scripture as well. Even at the very beginning, water shows up; the second verse of Genesis speaks of how “darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” The second and third acts of creation, in the verses that follow, involve separating the waters above from the waters below (that is, creating the Sky) and separating the waters below from the land (1:6-10). But later in Genesis, those waters overwhelm the world in a massive and earth-destroying flood, an element of the story we somehow downplay when telling about Noah and the ark. 

By Exodus water becomes both a barrier and a medium in which God performs great miracles. Most famously in Exodus, we read of God parting the waters of the sea to allow the Hebrew people to cross over, while the pursuing Egyptian army is washed away when they try to cross. A smaller-scale version of this deliverance through water occurs when the next generation of these Hebrew people, now led by Joshua, are able to cross over into the Promised Land as the Jordan River parts before them. 

Water also shows up in much of the poetry and imagery of scripture. Think of the most famous of psalms, in which the Lord “my shepherd” leads the psalmist beside still waters. But the images don’t stop there; think of the shepherd-turned-prophet Amos and his thundering oracle “but let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,” or Isaiah’s declaration that “waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.”

Indeed, by the time this fellow John shows up along the Jordan, calling all to be baptized for the repentance of sins [Mt 3:11], water has acquired a pretty prolific stature in the history and story of Israel. 

The story of the baptism is brief; John is baptizing, Jesus comes to be baptized, John is reluctant ("I need to be baptized by you...") but Jesus persuades him to do the work, and when Jesus comes up from the water that voice announces him as the Son in whom God is well pleased.

The meaning and significance of baptism changes between this time, when John baptizes for the forgiveness of sins, and the end of this gospel, when the risen Jesus charges his followers to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” To be sure, repentance is still a part of baptism, but baptism takes on more in Jesus’s commission; it carries not only repentance but also belonging; it marks being in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; it marks discipleship. It marks what comes to be known, over the course of the book of Acts, as the church.

In our reading from Acts 10, Peter has, with some agitation, obeyed a divine imperative to go to visit a Roman centurion by the name of Cornelius, with his family. Cornelius was evidently what was known in the language of the time as a God-fearer, a Gentile who nonetheless feared and prayed to the God of the people among whom he had been dispatched to serve. Finding Cornelius and his family ready and waiting to hear, Peter begins what might be called his go-to sermon, somewhat adapted for the situation. The Holy Spirit, however, had other ideas, and before Peter even got warmed up the Spirit visited a visible and clear manifestation of God’s favor upon Cornelius and his family.

First of all, Peter and the (Jewish by birth) entourage that had accompanied him to Cornelius’s house were floored. This was clearly a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, but…these people were…were…were [shudder] Gentiles! It was inconceivable to Peter and all of the rest, in Jerusalem or any other place, that Gentiles – outsiders – could possibly be so favored. And yet clearly God had visited Cornelius and his household. What could Peter do?

Ultimately Peter realized that, if he were to be true to his Savior, he had no choice. “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” he asks. 

Can anyone withhold the water?

There is nothing magic about the water of baptism itself. The Jordan River water in which John baptized was the same muddy stuff in which others fished or swam or washed clothes or any number of other very mundane life tasks. It’s the same stuff as the water that got parted before Moses’s staff, the same stuff that overwashed the earth in Noah’s day, the stuff that falls from the sky or comes out of your tap. And yet in this very basic element, by Jesus’s example and by Jesus’s instruction, is the sign and symbol of belonging to God. Because of Jesus’s submission to the sign of baptism in water, and because of Jesus’s commission to baptize with that same water, it does mean more than something to drink when thirsty. 

Again, the water is not magic. The water does not save you. And yet in the water of baptism we are shown as God’s own. Whether we are baptized ourselves or bringing our youngest for baptism, we are pledging repentance and even renunciation of sin and evil; we are being claimed as disciples of Jesus, living in obedience to what Jesus has taught and commanded; we are showing the mark of the Holy Spirit, no matter where we come from.

That’s a lot of meaning for this most basic element of human existence. 

And maybe the neatest part of all of this is that, while doing a whole reaffirmation of baptism in worship is kinda cool and fun (yes, I’m serious), we don’t need it to remember our baptism. I know, for those who were baptized as infants it isn’t really literally possible to remember your baptism. Even if somebody shows you a picture of the occasion it’s not going to trigger any real actual memories for you. (As I grew up in a different tradition I wasn’t baptized as an infant; I was baptized when I was nine, and even remembering that is pretty foggy at this point in my life.) So no, we are not literally talking about remembering the actual act and occasion. 

But…

We remember whose we are. We remember the God who claims us despite our best efforts and who calls us children no matter what kind of rebellion we try. We also remember that God does the same for a whole bunch of children we would not claim as our siblings except that God does it for us. We remember the water that could not be denied to us, no matter how far outside the pale it might have seemed. We remember repentance and belonging and being marked by the Holy Spirit. And the neat part is, if we’re open and listening and ready to look at the world – the whole creation – through the eyes of the Creator, then all we need to help us remember all of this is…water.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #375, Shall We Gather at the River; #---, Then Jesus came from Galilee; #482, Baptized in Water

Sermon: God Stooped

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

January 4, 2026, Epiphany A observed

Matthew 2:1-12

 

God Stooped

 

 

It is a story that clanks noisily against the story we tend to think of as the “Christmas story.” We are accustomed to think of what Luke’s gospel teaches us, of all the angelic annunciations, especially Gabriel to Mary; the whole business about everybody having to return to their hometowns to be registered, therefore Joseph and Mary having to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem; the birth in a manger, because there was no room in the inn; the angels singing out to the shepherds in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks, and their surprise journey to Bethlehem. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, we have to wedge in the wise men somehow. Of course they’re not part of Luke’s story; this reading from Matthew is our only source for this event. 

Perhaps that is why making the time to observe this event, under the name Epiphany and on its own date, is a particularly needful thing for the church to do in this time. While we have become accustomed over the decades to having the wise men crammed into the Nativity scene with all the shepherds and angels, the story of their coming to pay homage to the child Jesus has a different lesson to teach us, one that is all too easily and all too often drowned out in the madness of the holidays. It’s a lesson about who God is and who God calls, a lesson we forget at our peril.

In her last book, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, the late Christian author Rachel Held Evans writes of how the God revealed in scripture is often misunderstood by those who claim to be followers:

There’s a curious but popular notion circulating around the church these days that says God would never stoop to using ancient genre categories to communicate. In addition to once again prioritizing modern, Western (and often uniquely American) concerns, this notion overlooks one of the most central themes of scripture itself: God stoops.

From walking with Adam and Eve through the Garden of Eden, to traveling with the liberated Hebrew slaves in a pillar of cloud and fire, to slipping into flesh and eating, laughing, suffering, healing, weeping, and dying among us as part of humanity, the God of scripture stoops and stoops and stoops and stoops. At the heart of the gospel message is a God who stoops to the point of death on a cross.

 

Held Evans goes on to make the point that when it comes to reaching out to us sometimes dumb and witless humans, nothing is beneath God, no matter how primitive or unseemly it might be to us. And what happens in Matthew’s distinctive contribution to the Nativity story might be the most striking example we have of that.

Matthew only identifies our visitors as “wise men from the East.” They show up in Jerusalem looking for the one born “King of the Jews,” and there’s some logic to showing up at a royal palace to look for a future king, I suppose. The ever-paranoid King Herod learns from his scribes what these foreigners could possibly be talking about, gives them directions along with a request to drop back by and talk about the whereabouts of this child, and the wise men are on their way. Should you choose to keep reading the rest of this chapter, you’ll see how that goes (or you can simply remember last week's sermon). 

But about these wise men, or Magi: “from the East” is a pretty vague description. Given the geographical state of the region at this time, far and away the most likely origin for these Magi was the Persian Empire, an extensive region centered primarily on the land occupied by present-day Iran. 

As such, these Magi were probably scholar-priests of the dominant religion of that region, Zoroastrianism. (Remember that Islam doesn't come along for another six centuries at this point.)  While perhaps not as distant as the panoply of gods worshiped in the Greco-Roman culture that occupied Judea at the time, it was definitely different and “foreign” to the Jewish people and culture into which Jesus was born. The Magi tell us up front that they made this trip because they saw a star, and that would fit in well with the pursuits of a Zoroastrian Magi. All in all, not a set that would seem to fit in well with the shepherds and angels and Mary and Joseph.

But here’s the thing: God. Did. Not. Care.

To return to Rachel Held Evans’s phrase, God stooped. To catch the attention of a bunch of Eastern stargazers, God made that Star happen. God did not care how “foreign,” how “different,” or how outside of every norm these Magi might seem to the people of Israel. God wanted them to see and to behold the child Jesus, and so God made that Star happen and made Matthew write it down. God stooped, and not even to the people who long understood themselves as God’s own children. 

Now that's the part that ticks some Christians off. Who invited them? Well, God did. Those who are foreign, the wrong color, the wrong religion, those who don't speak our language or culture, those whom we consider it perfectly acceptable to hate and oppress and even bomb, God stooped and stoops to reach them and to welcome them. 

We have no idea what happened to these wise men after they dodged Herod on their way home. Matthew does not follow their story, and it is not recorded anywhere else as far as we know. Yet their very existence throws an absolutely necessary wrench into our easily sentimentalized “Christmas story,” so often stripped bare of all that challenges and disturbs. They challenge us to look again at the God who tracked them down through the stars and gave them the jolt they required to make a long and difficult journey to see a child like no other. They show us that the God we worship is not satisfied with the way things are, not content to keep the circle of God’s calling to those who are familiar to us or around whom we are comfortable and at ease. God stoops, not just to us, but to the "outsider".

This is perhaps why Epiphany matters in a way we don’t often remember. These Magi come bursting into our cozy and comfortable scene with their strange language and strange religion and strange gifts (the gold is cool, but the frankincense and myrrh...well, hopefully you can get good money for it), reminding us at even this most cozy-fied time of year that there’s a whole world out there beyond our comfort zones and happy places that God is just itching for us to reach out to and to welcome and to bear light to, tobe a shining star even. 

God stooped. Will we follow?

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #152, What Star is This, With Beams So Bright; #151, We Three Kings of Orient Are; #504, We Come As Guests Invited; #150, As With Gladness Men of Old

Sermon: The Refugee Jesus

First Presbyterian Church, East Moline, IL

December 28, 2025, Christmas 1A

Matthew 2:13-23

 

The Refugee Jesus

I wish I could simply preach a simple, carefree, Christmas-y sermon today. I wish I could just ignore this story and keep it cheerful. But this story resists easy cheeriness, and in the world and time in which we live, to ignore this scripture and the way it warns us would be an act of pastoral abdication on my part.

It is one of the most horrifying stories in all of scripture, and possibly the most horrifying in the New Testament, possibly aside from the Crucifixion. The “Slaughter of the Innocents,” it’s called. A frightened and angry tyrant, lashing out in his fear and embarrassment, ordering the death of an untold number of infants and toddlers – all those age two or under in the town of Bethlehem – out of a raging desire to protect his own title and power. Surely we could never imagine such a ruler, or the kind of figure who would commit such an atrocity.

This story slashes across Matthew’s nativity account like the sharp blade of a sword wielded by one of Herod’s men. It all seems fairly innocent at first, if a bit convoluted, as Joseph has to be persuaded in a dream to take his unexpectedly pregnant wife, bearing the Son of God by the Holy Spirit. The appearance of the Magi from the east, how much later we’re not really sure, adds both a curiosity and an element of danger to the event; the so-called “wise men” blunder into Judea asking the sitting king for the whereabouts of the new king, and have to be warned in another of those provident dreams to go home by a different route and not play into Herod’s hands by leading him to the child. (More about the Magi next Sunday when we observe Epiphany.)

At any rate, it would be so tempting to wrap up the story at verse 15, with the Magi following their alternate route and Joseph and Mary left wondering what to do with frankincense and myrrh on the way to Egypt. (the gold, on the other hand, you figure they might have an idea what to do with). Everyone’s safe, Matthew gets to make another of his “fulfillment” references by citing Hosea 11:1 as another prophetic box that Jesus checks off, and we all go home happy.

Herod wasn’t happy, though. And Herod didn’t know when he was beaten.

If the story ever appears in most Christmas celebrations (particularly when the lectionary doesn’t include it as it does this year), it happens only if the “Coventry carol” is sung. That carol dates from no later than 1534, as part of a “mystery play” performed in that city in England, and probably much earlier. This is the one that begins “lullay, lulla, thou little tiny child” which you might have heard before, but the whole carol lays out the horrible story, particularly in the second, third, and fourth stanzas:

 

O sisters too, how may we do, 

For to preserve this day

This poor youngling for whom we sing,

Bye, bye, lully lullay?

 

Herod the king, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day

His men of might in his own sight

All the young children to slay.

 

That woe is me, poor child, for thee,

And ever mourn and may

For thy parting neither say nor sing

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

 

It is, if we’re paying attention, profoundly hard to read this passage without wanting to cry, or to cry out. Even as we can give thanks that the child Jesus was delivered it’s hard not to cry out with Rachel, whose lament from Jeremiah Matthew invokes here. Why, God? Why did these children have to die?

This story never fails to be horrifying, challenging, and difficult if not impossible to bear; however, in the age in which we live now, we can no longer say it is unimaginable. One of the more striking features of this Christmas season is the appearance of what might be called "ICE nativities" among a number of churches in US cities. In some cases the baby Jesus, or maybe Mary or Joseph, or perhaps all of the are missing from the scene, replaced only with a sign saying "ICE WAS HERE." In others, the nativity figures are present, but masked and weaponed ICE agents are seen approaching with masks on and weapons drawn. 

What didn't necessarily get recognized about those scenes in the press (which really needs more religion reporters out there) or those who complained about the scenes was that, as we see in today's reading, were it not for the intervention of an angel in another dream of Joseph's, our Lord and Savior and his earthly parents were going to be caught up in not a display, but an actual physical act of such violence, and even worse.  

Even in the face of this story, though, I find my voice choking, unable or unwilling to cry out at the injustice of this slaughter recorded by Matthew, if only because if I do cry out “Why do these children have to die?” I am entirely afraid that God’s answer might just be “I was just going to ask you the same question.”

On this day, when the carols and praises get stuck in our throats and wilt in our hearts, we are reminded that Jesus calls us, *all* of us to come; all of us, including Jesus’ fellow refugees, from Gaza or South Sudan or Myanmar or anywhere from which any of God’s children flee death or despair or death or tyranny or death or abuse or death *or death* **or death**, calling them, and us, to life, and life together. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: Three Presbyterian Hymnal iunless otherwise noted): #143, Angels from the Realms of Glory: Carol sing - #144, In the Bleak Midwinter, #110, Love Has Come, #132, Good Christian Friends, Rejoice; #---, What Child Is This, additional verses; #136, Go, Tell It on the Mountain

 

 

 

Sermon: Advent Disruption: An Unexpected Calling; or, The Silent Partner

First Presbyterian Church

December 21, 2025, Advent 4A

Luke 1:18-25

 

Advent Disruption: An Unexpected Calling;

or, The Silent Partner

 

 

One of the great challenges in preaching or studying today's gospel reading is the necessity of putting a much more familiar reading out of your head and not getting the two entangled. And we do need to do this at other times in life; it's both rude and harmful, for example, to interrupt a person who is telling their own story by interjecting details of their more famous or popular or successful sibling’s story in the midst of that first person's telling.

We are in the gospel of Matthew today, which means that a lot of the trappings of the Nativity story which we tend to assume or take for granted just aren't there. Hopefully the elements of the church's Nativity set as displayed here will help us sort out those differences.

We have here Mary, Joseph, and indeed the infant. Normally the infant wouldn't appear until Christmas Eve, but Matthew's narrative as it is divvied up in the Revised Common Lectionary does in fact announce the birth of Jesus, albeit barely, at least by comparison to that more famous Nativity story in that other gospel. While the holy family is here, the scene seems to be "missing" the stable that normally shelters them in this display; if you go back and re-examine the reading from Matthew, though, there's no mention of any such thing, nor of any manger (but this child can't be removed from it).

You also can't help but noticing the absence of the shepherds, but again, no mention is made of such a thing in Matthew's account. There aren't even any animals at all, at least not as Matthew tells it - Joseph and Mary aren't required to travel in this narrative, so no donkey is portrayed, and with no mention of shepherds or stable or any such thing no sheep or oxen or whatever are present. We at least justify the Magi (and their camels) off in the distance (on the organ for today), because even they don't appear in today's reading, we can look ahead into chapter two and surmise they're on their way. 

Joseph learns that his betrothed, Mary, is "found to be with child from the Holy Spirit." Let's face it, the very convoluted nature of that phrase is enough to suggest, to most of our suspicious human minds, that something dodgy is going on. There is pressure, just because of the society in which Joseph lives, to get rid of Mary, by whatever means is necessary. 

Not exaggerating there. Having Mary put to death was not out of the realm of a "righteous" response to this shame, as "righteousness" was defined in the culture of which Joseph was a part. Exposing Mary to public humiliation was probably the bare minimum of a "righteous" response to Mary's obvious infidelity and sin. (Remember, the Magnificat celebrated in the reading two weeks ago doesn't happen in Matthew's account). 

Verse 19 describes Joseph as a "righteous" man, indeed, which means both of the above were legitimate options for him. The verse adds, though, that he was "unwilling to expose her to public disgrace," and that he intended to "dismiss her quietly." While this does seem to be a step up, it still potentially left Mary homeless (there's no guarantee her family would have taken her in, again in the name of "righteousness") and with no means to provide for the child waiting to be born, and certainly subject to public humiliation when that child was born with no father in sight.

This is the state of things when the angel appears in that dream to Joseph. By his response (in deeds, not words) Joseph shows, first of all, obedience to God's new and unexpected calling - to be the earthly father of the son of God, the one who comes to "save his people from their sins."

By taking Mary in, marrying her, and giving the name Jesus to the child as commanded, Joseph is making that whole genealogy that fills up the first seventeen verses of Matthew's gospel make sense. If you look at that genealogy, it starts with Abraham, passes through David and some interesting other names, and culminates with Joseph, "the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah." This genealogy makes no claim for Joseph having the role of Jesus's "father"; in the King James Version, there's no "begat" attached to Joseph's name. 

This ancestral line, founded in Abraham and including the venerated King David, would seem to be a bit sketchy in that case; why wouldn't it be Mary's line that was important for establishing Jesus as being from David's line? That's a claim about Jesus that was out there before Matthew's gospel was written down; you can see it invoked in Paul's letter to Rome (1:3), where Jesus is described as "descended from David according to the flesh." It takes Joseph's choice, after this angel-invaded dream, to make that statement hold true. 

A couple of more modern examples of such compassion come to mind. The BBC drama series Call the Midwife (that we tend to get on PBS in this country) featured an episode, a few seasons ago, in which a couple came to those midwives for their child to be born. When the child was born, its skin color made clear that the exuberant father present for the birth did not in fact father the child biologically. Confronted with this stark reality, the present father, without missing a beat, pronounced the child the most beautiful child ever and took in that child as his own.

The poem Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), by the turn-of-the-twentieth-century German poet Richard Dehmel, features a somewhat similar scenario: as a couple is walking in the woods at night, she confesses that, out of an overwhelming desire for a child, she engaged in a liaison (before meeting this man with whom she was walking) in which she became pregnant. Without missing a beat, this man with whom she is now walking declares his unbroken love for her and embraces the yet-unborn child as his own. In both the TV show and the poem we see an act of love portrayed, to be sure. 

Joseph knows, because of the angel's announcement, that Mary has not been unfaithful to him, but even so he faces even a greater challenge than those fictional loving fathers-in-waiting. Again, he's being called to be the father of the Messiah, without the child having any biological relation to him. This is a step of responsibility in such a thing that none of us can know. 

There is also a step of love. It isn't a "romantic" act of love. Joseph has to know that raising such a child will be a task of fatherhood like no other. And yet he takes it on, and he takes Mary as his wife. It is a chosen love, love for God and love for Mary. 

The love that gets invoked in this final candle is given freely by God. Our call is to receive that love and then choose to give that love freely, without condition, in the way God gave it to us. It's hard not to think back to that Call the Midwife story or the Transfigured Night poem, in this sense; inevitably, if we're going to love at all, we're going to be called upon to love *despite*. To love "even though". To love anyway.

We never hear a word out of Joseph in either Matthew or Luke; he is a silent partner in all that happens here, but a partner, nonetheless. We saw at first that he was at least a somewhat compassionate person in his unwillingness to humiliate Mary; in the last he proves to be a loving person. And his choice, his actions in the face of this unexpected calling, speak far louder than any words ever could.

There's an example to follow. Indeed, would that there were more Josephs among us in the world.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #88, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (vs. 1-4); #---, When Joseph heard; #88, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (vs. 5-7)

 

Sermon: Advent Disruption: An Unexpected Song; or, What Mary Did In Fact Know

First Presbyterian Church

December 7, 2025, Advent 2A

Luke 1:39-56

 

Advent Disruption: An Unexpected Song

(Or, What Mary Did In Fact Know)

 

Have you ever heard of the Bechdel test?

The Bechdel test is an informal one, typically applied to movies or works of fiction, that asks of that work two (or sometimes three) questions, to determine if the work has any sort of substantial female characters at all or is simply overrun with dominating males and subservient females. It’s amazing, to be honest, how many movies don’t manage to get an affirmative answer to the two or three questions that follow:

1)                   are there two women in the film (or story) who actually talk to each other without a man around?

2)                   do they talk about something other than a man?

3)                   (sometimes added) do we actually know the women’s names?

It’s a fairly minimal test, to be sure. One conversation between two women doesn’t necessarily change the balance of power in a movie or novel by any means, but that half of the films that get released, on average, don’t even manage to have one such scene in them is pretty amazing.

While the Bible is by no means a work of fiction, it’s pretty heavily male-dominated, if we’re honest about it. For much of the scripture that’s kind of inevitable – Jesus, after all, is pretty much the whole point of the gospels. But today’s reading is pretty remarkable for being exactly that kind of scene – two women, Elizabeth and her young relative Mary, in a conversation with each other, no men around, and not merely talking about those men. It’s a remarkable enough scene that perhaps we ought to pay attention to it and what is said.

Both of these women have had an adventurous first chapter of Luke already. Elizabeth, a woman well advanced in years, has now been pregnant for six months after the angel Gabriel announced to her husband, the priest Zechariah, that the two of them would bear a most important young boy, specifically to be named John. This son would be “great in the sight of the Lord” (1:15) and who would “make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (1:17). Zechariah didn’t respond well to the angelic announcement, and as a result was struck mute; he would only get his voice back after the child’s birth, when he managed to confirm the angel’s command in writing and got his voice back.

Perhaps deciding after that incident it would be better to go directly to the woman involved, Gabriel next appeared to Mary, announcing to her (1:26-38, immediately preceding this passage) that she would bear an even more important son. This son is to be named Jesus. Gabriel rattles off a rather substantial list of characteristics that will be attributed to him: he will be great, called Son of the Most High, receive the throne of David, reign over the house of Jacob (i.e. Israel) forever, have an unending kingdom, will be holy, and will be called the Son of God. She also learns of her older cousin Elizabeth’s pregnancy. While Mary is seriously perplexed by all this, and does have to wonder how this will all work since she and Joseph aren’t even living together much less married, she avoids Zechariah’s mistake and actively gives her consent to what the angel has announced (in a modern movie, her reply would probably be something like “all right, let’s do this”).

So, by the time Mary makes her way to Elizabeth’s house, she’s already been pretty well informed about what’s going on.  She will learn more about all this in her encounter with Elizabeth, some of it in a most unexpected and unusual way, when Elizabeth literally gets a kick out of Mary’s presence, thanks to that infant in her heretofore-barren womb. 

I obviously cannot pretend to know what that sensation would be like, but I’m guessing that those of you who have experienced such gymnastics from a child in the womb probably didn’t have an experience of the Holy Spirit and prophetic utterance immediately afterwards. That’s what happens to Elizabeth, though – she (not the child in the womb) was “filled with the Holy Spirit” and let out an exultation of praise to God and celebration of this young woman before her. In Elizabeth’s words, Mary was to be “blessed among women” and the “mother of my Lord” and in particular blessed because she “believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord” through Gabriel. 

As if all that wasn’t enough to overwhelm Mary, there was more to come from the Holy Spirit. It was Mary’s turn to speak, and she clearly shows that she’s been paying attention not only to the messages she has received from Gabriel and Elizabeth, but to the history of her people. 

Her song (Luke likes to make such utterances into songs) begins with praise to God, appropriately enough. She acknowledges that she’s not exactly a person of great status, and yet God has chosen to bless her with this extraordinary event. 

Then things get interesting.

Here Mary becomes, at least for these few moments, a prophet. What she sings here is rich with echoes of those prophets of old in Israel and Judah, declarations of the Lord’s favor for the unfavored. God’s mercy is for those who fear God (and by implication not for those who don’t). God has “scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts” (but not the humble). God has brought down the mighty and lifted up the lowly. God has filled the hungry, and “sent the rich away empty.” 

This really is the language of prophecy, from Isaiah to Jeremiah to Ezekiel and Amos and Micah and on through Malachi. God overturns our world, upsetting what we tend to think of as “the natural order of things,” or even more resignedly “the way things are.” A world in which the powerful and rich trample over the poor and powerless is not God’s world – not in the prophets, and not in Mary’s song. Our way of living gets disrupted and turned upside down – or perhaps, in God’s view, turned rightside up. 

Mary knew plenty. And if we truly listen to it, it might make us uncomfortable, with the vast majority of us here being much more “the rich” in Mary’s world than “the hungry.” 

Maybe that’s why it became so popular to sing this song that keeps asking “Mary, did you know?” It keeps asking her about all sorts of cool stuff that does happen in the life of Jesus – walking on water, healing a blind man, calming a storm. It goes on to all these grand attributes that are going to be – Lord of all creation, one day rule the nations. Somehow, though, that song manages to avoid this uncomfortable stuff that Mary very clearly knows and has very plainly told us right here in Luke’s gospel. It doesn’t somehow get around to the stuff that, in Mary’s song, is the gospel – the “good news.”

Maybe what we most need, as Advent rapidly segues into Christmas, is to listen more diligently and more honestly to Mary’s song. Maybe we should even sing Mary’s song, and not just in the form of the next hymn. Maybe it should be something we make a part of our song, this celebration and exultation of the overturning and disrupting God.

In the end, maybe we should listen more to what these women, Elizabeth and Mary, have to say to us, through the Holy Spirit, in this most unusual text of scripture.

For Mary’s very real and needed song, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #87, Comfort, Comfort Now My People; #99, My Soul Gives Glory to My God; #500, Be Known to Us in Breaking Bread; #384, Soon and Very Soon