Sermon: Blessed Are...

Grace Presbyterian Church

January 29, 2017, Epiphany 4A

Micah 6:1-8; Matthew 5:1-12

Blessed Are…

I remember my first teaching job. I don’t mean the kind of teaching one does as a graduate assistant; I mean my first real, away-from-grad-school teaching position with an actual title – Visiting Assistant Professor of Musicology. At Texas Tech University. In Lubbock, Texas.

At this point in my life I had never driven past the Mississippi River, save for a few academic trips to LSU. But here I was, making the drive from Tallahassee to Lubbock for a one-semester teaching job. Julia was remaining in Tallahassee so the sense of displacement was heightened just a bit.

I drove through an ice storm in the Panhandle, spent a night in Shreveport, Louisiana, and then entered Texas, which, as the ads used to say, is like a whole other country. Once I got past Fort Worth all the green stuff stopped; it was as if I was driving off the edge of the world. A Mars rover was at that time sending pictures of that planet back to Earth, and having seen a few of those pictures in the news I thought I recognized what I was driving through. And between Midland and Lubbock my car actually got hit by a tumbleweed.

But I got there and it was time to get to work. First day of class, in this strange new place, with two different courses to teach, and it was time to begin. I don’t think I’ve ever had a more self-conscious day in my life. Is my hair going to stay out of my eyes? Do I have my lecture notes? Is the media equipment working? What am I forgetting? Man, oh man, my throat is dry…(that’s still a problem, sometimes…).

Eventually I got through it and ended up having a pretty enjoyable time that term.

“Firsts” can be rather nerve-wracking. Being conscious about doing your job but also about “making an impression,” or just trying not to embarrass yourself, can be exhausting. I invite you to remember such “firsts” in your own life as we begin to explore this, Jesus’s first public sermon as recorded by Matthew.

You might remember last week’s scripture, the last half of chapter four, followed Jesus setting up shop in Galilee, calling his first disciples, and healing a great many people – his first action, so to speak, which revealed Jesus as an upsetter of the order in which the people had been burdened and oppressed. This sense of revealing of Jesus and about Jesus continues a theme we can trace all the way back to the Epiphany story, when the child Jesus was visited by those eastern sages, being revealed to the world, so to speak. Continuing with Jesus’s very public baptism by John and the work of healing from last week, Jesus continues to present himself, or to reveal what his ministry is about, to an unsuspecting world.

The numbers of people who came for healing, from all around Galilee and beyond, meant that quite a crowd had accumulated around Jesus, and the presence of those crowds seems to have prompted Jesus to decide it was time to begin the long process of educating his disciples, and the people as well. He goes up the mountain (understood as a place of holy instruction at least since Mount Sinai), sits down (a position of teaching authority in that culture), and begins to teach and preach.

And the first words out of his mouth are “Blessed are…”

Just a few verses ago, back in chapter four, Jesus had been taking up John the Baptizer’s message, the one that started with the word “Repent…”

But now, “blessed are…”

Of the Beatitudes (as they have come to be know) much has already been said in Christian literature, sometimes not to best effect. I recall from my younger days a book, written by a preacher well-known from the televised program from his rather ornate church out in California, purporting to offer a practical application of the Beatitudes, with possibly the worst title possible for summing up their actual import: The Be-Happy Attitudes.

Um, no.

Before going anywhere with these eight statements, we need to get one thing straight: “blessed” and “happy” are not synonyms. Not remotely.

Let’s remind ourselves who is being blessed here: “the poor in spirit,” “those who mourn,” “the meek,” “those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” “the merciful,” “the pure in heart,” “the peacemakers,” “those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake,” and finally “you, when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”

These are the ones who are called out as “blessed” here. But in the midst of any of those situations, “happy” isn’t very likely the dominant feeling going on. I don’t think any of you are typically “happy” in the midst of mourning, for instance. Being in the position of being a peacemaker typically means some kind of conflict is going on, and people who are happy about that are frankly awful people. And those who are somehow “happy” in the midst of being persecuted are frankly crazy people. And the blessings promised in each case, amazing and wonderful blessings all, you will notice are mostly paired with future-tense verbs – “will be comforted,” “will inherit the earth,” “will be filled,” and so forth.

These blessings are, to use a fancy seminary word, eschatological. In the future, maybe even in the end times. These Beatitudes are not about turning us into perpetually smiley-faced, shiny happy people all the time. If anything, quite the opposite is true: Jesus knows his disciples are going to face hard times just for being his disciples, and these blessings are part of getting through the hard times to come. Forewarned is forearmed, so to speak.

You see, each one of is most of these things at one point or another. I am going to guess that most of us have known mourning, all too frequently. I frankly hope you have longed, even hungered for righteousness, or have been in the position to need to show mercy. Frankly I hope you have not been persecuted for righteousness’s sake, but these days don’t rule it out.

At some point or other we find ourselves in many of these places. Jesus knew that those disciples were going to face these hard things, and his very first teaching to them is about preparing them for these hard things, and equipping them to remember that even in the midst of these hard things, they are blessed.

This probably isn’t what Andrew and Simon and James and John were expecting back when they jumped off their fishing boats as fast as they possibly could and followed Jesus. It’s hard to know what they were thinking, maybe thoughts of fame and glory, or of some kind of perpetual blissed-out existence, or maybe just anything but the backbreaking work of fishing, but probably not anything along the lines of “know that you are blessed when the hard things come.”

And yet that is precisely what these Beatitudes say to these disciples: know that you are blessed when the hard things come.

This leads to another point that we should take from the verses: the hard things will come, if you are truly following Christ.

If indeed you are submitted to the will of God, being led by the Holy Spirit, and striving to live in the way Christ taught and lived, hard times will come. You will be reviled and persecuted and have people utter all kinds of false things against you. And the most distressing part will be that, if your life follows anything like the path that Jesus walked, that reviling and persecuting and slander will come, and it will come from other people who call themselves Christians. And coming from your supposed brothers and sisters in Christ, it will be far more venomous and bitter than any Muslim or Jew or Hindu or Buddhist would ever be towards you.

But our call, our mission, is to follow, to be so submitted to Christ and so overtaken by the Spirit that we live up to these Beatitudes not because of our own effort, but because we as so following Christ that we don’t know any other way to live. The reviling and persecuting and slandering will come, it will come because when we live in Christ and are possessed in heart by Christ, when these words and others like the amazing words from the prophet Micah are written on our hearts, we won’t be able to keep quiet about rampaging injustice being practiced in the name of patriotism. We won’t be able to stop ourselves from receiving the stranger, no matter what country that stranger comes from. We won’t be able to sit still when prejudice is passed off as prudence and enshrined in law. And when we can’t shut up or sit still or stop ourselves, we will catch Hell, in the most theological sense of that word, and we’re pretty likely to catch it from others who call themselves by the same name we call ourselves. Hard to believe that meekness and mercy and hungering and thirsting for righteousness could be so divisive, but they surely can.

So there it is. This is how Jesus introduces himself to the world, by promising that those who follow him will be so contrary to the way of the world and the way of empire that they will live regularly in the crosshairs of the world. And he calls them blessed for it.

And then he tells them to rejoice, because the prophets before them were treated the same way. Like Micah, with those amazing words about doing justice and loving kindness and walking humbly with God, you’ll catch heat for it.

And you will be blessed, and yours will be the kingdom of Heaven, and great will be your reward.

For these utterly backwards blessings, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal):

#749            Come! Live in the Light

#419            Lord, Who May Dwell Within Your House

#172            Blest Are They
#700            I’m Gonna Live So God Can Use Me

Credit: agnusday.org -- and that's a REALLY GOOD QUESTION, isn't it?

Sermon: Undoing the Empire

Grace Presbyterian Church

January 22, 2016, Epiphany 3A

Matthew 4:12-25

Undoing the Empire

Empire is bad for your health.

Odd statement, perhaps, but one that historians have increasingly come to accept (albeit stated in different ways), particularly in regard to perhaps the most famous empire in history, the one seated in Rome – not coincidentally, the one in which we find Jesus inaugurating his public ministry in today’s reading from Matthew.

For one thing, outside of the privileged class of society, one had little other way to make or keep a living besides grueling physical labor, without even the most rudimentary labor-saving devices we know today. Furthermore, due to the inefficiencies of distributing such basic needs as food and medical care in such a far-flung empire, maintaining the health and strength required to do such physical labor was extremely difficult. Poverty was endemic; sanitation and hygiene, even in Rome itself, were poorly understood and not well executed; water quality and availability was poor; social stresses were frequent and high. Such conditions also made raising children extremely difficult, and many did not survive infancy or childhood. The extraction of heavy taxes for imperial purposes – somehow always levied on those who already didn’t have enough – only made matters worse.

The rich had it better, to be sure, but decadence has its own health risks, including obesity and other diseases. Soldiers were probably the most well-cared-for in Roman society, aside from, of course, the whole thing about fighting wars. In short, as suggested above, the Roman Empire, like other empires, was bad for your health.

Maybe this helps us understand why the accounts of Jesus’s acts and miracles of healing in the gospels, Matthew included, are often characterized by descriptions of great crowds coming to see Jesus and be healed, particularly from far-flung geographical locations across this particular corner of Roman territory. The list of regions or territories from which people come to Jesus seeking healing is impressive, second only to the varieties of diseases and pains they brought, all of which – “every disease and every sickness among the people” – Jesus healed.

It’s a disruptive way to announce your presence, in the face of an empire that responded to sickness and disease with whatever the Latin equivalent of “tough, get over it” or “that’s just the way it is” would be. It’s a challenge, not only to the power of Rome, but also to any basic claim of goodness it might have held over the poorest of the poor. It exposes the emptiness of human power and might.

This last chunk of today’s reading seems almost a throwaway, squeezed in as it is between Jesus taking up John the Baptizer’s message (“repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”), the calling of Jesus’s first disciples and the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. Up to this point Matthew has been up to something that is a major theme that you can find all through this gospel. You might notice how Matthew includes in verse 14 the phrase “so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled…” It’s even possible that might have sounded vaguely familiar to you; if so, good – you’ve been paying attention. So far in this gospel we’ve encountered some variant of that description in 1:22 (about the angel appearing to Joseph in a dream about Mary’s unexpected pregnancy), 2:5 (the scribes confirming to King Herod the Messiah being born in Bethlehem), 2:15 (about the family returning from Egypt after Herod’s death), 2:17 (about the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem), and 2:23 (about the family settling in Nazareth). You can also see Jesus making a somewhat similar statement in 3:15, exhorting John to baptize him “, 2:15 (about the family returning from Egypt after Herod’s death), 2:17 (about the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem), and 2:23 (about the family settling in Nazareth). You can also see Jesus making a somewhat similar statement in 3:15, exhorting John to baptize him “to fulfill all righteousness.”

Here the “fulfillment claim” is applied to the territory in which Jesus ministered. Zebulun and Naphtali were two of the many sons of Jacob, whose names were in turn given to the distinct regions of the Promised Land in which their descendants had settled. Situated as they were in the northern reaches of the land, those two ancestral lands had been among the first to suffer when the Kingdom of Israel experienced conquest and captivity in the decades after King David. In effect, there really hadn’t been a distinct territory of Zebulun or Naphtali in centuries. Matthew is summoning up the people’s most ancient history, using this citation from Isaiah 9:1-2, both to acknowledge the darkness that was and still is prevalent in the land, and to highlight that no less than “the Light of the world” is now come to them.

Next of course comes the calling of Jesus’s first disciples, the two sets of brothers would ultimately make up the “big four” in terms of how much notice they get in the gospels (aside from Thomas, famous mostly in the gospel of John, and the betrayer Judas). First Andrew and Simon (the name “Peter” comes later), and then James and John are called from their fishing boats, and their response is instant; “immediately,” Matthew says, they left their boats (and their father, in the case of James and John) and followed Jesus. It’s hard for us to comprehend, so easily and so quickly abandoning everything they know; if you were to film a movie scene of this there would not be nearly enough drama or tension to make the scene work at all. They just…leave.

And the first thing they see, as Matthew tells it, is Jesus going about Galilee teaching, preaching, and (especially) healing. His fame spread well beyond what might be called Jewish territory, into Syria and across the Jordan. We have no evidence that anyone was being turned away for being of the wrong religion; all who come – all who come – are healed, of whatever debilitating or embarrassing or wasting disease they suffered.

Jesus isn’t performing these miracles for the top 1% of Roman society. These are the outcasts. These are the poorest, the most neglected or forgotten or abused peoples caught in one of the most neglected or forgotten abused corners of the Roman Empire. As noted at the beginning of the sermon, empire is bad for your health, but Jesus is announcing his presence to the people by undoing the damage caused by an empire that vacillated between neglectful and abusive of those caught up in its borders.

Empire is bad for your physical health, to be sure. It’s also bad for your mental and emotional health. Empire doesn’t tell you the truth; it tells you what it wants you to believe and what you darn well better believe if you don’t want to get hurt. Empire glorifies its Caesar, no matter how decidedly un-glorious he (and it was always he, remember) might be, how corrupt or venal or cruel or incompetent. The Caesar turns up on coins, on frescoes on walls, in statues or busts, and even in shrines of worship. And if you don’t to get hurt, you’d better pay homage to that Caesar, no matter what your personal beliefs might be. You’d better be sure you honor and revere Rome First, you might say.

To a people who had been relentlessly hammered down by the heavy hand of empire, ignored when not being exploited, Jesus interrupts like a blinding flash of lightning. Quite likely the people had no clue what was going on; they only knew that their body was no longer broken, no longer withering, no longer diseased or wracked with pain.

This is the beginning of Jesus’s ministry; undoing the pain and suffering in which the people had lived, and nicely exposing the weakness of empire in the bargain. But physical healing wasn’t going to be enough. The lies of empire, the glorification of corrupt human authority and unrelenting propaganda had also been doing their damage for ages, and Jesus will undo that harm as well, starting in chapter five (right after today’s reading, the one we’ll read next week) with a few statements about who is truly blessed in God’s sight.

Matthew’s gospel needs to be heard always in this light – undoing and healing the damage imposed upon “the least of these,” whether by empire or other forms of human corruption. In such a context even acts of healing are acts of insurrection – a rejection of status quo, a rejection of “deal with it,” a rejection of anything that decides that any person or any group or anyone exists only to be subjected to or abused by anyone else. And if we truly want to claim to be followers of Christ, participants the kingdom of Heaven, then we’re part of that rebellion, that resistance to empire, no longer tolerating or acquiescing in the oppression of women or people of color or any people that empire tells it’s OK to abuse or suppress.

There’s no middle ground; there’s no accommodation; there is the way of Christ or the way of empire, the way of human corruption, the way of greed and dishonesty and oppression. And that is the choice Jesus puts before us – dare I say demands of us? – every day. Even today.

For a Jesus who undoes oppression, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal)

#620                        Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven

#841                        God Is My Strong Salvation

#721                        Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore

#720                        Jesus Calls Us

Credit: agnusday.org; those of you with long memories, enjoy.

Sermon: Partners

Grace Presbyterian Church

January 15, 2017, Epiphany 2A (Elder Ordination)

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Partners

On the surface it doesn’t seem much of a text from which to preach. It is the opening of a letter from Paul, directed at the church in the city of Corinth. It’s a fairly typical greeting at that, both in the context of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean formal practice of the time and among Paul’s letters. Nonetheless it speaks greatly to Paul’s way of working with and communicating with the churches in which he was involved, and might just be instructive to us as well on a day when we are commission some of our number for a particular role in the life of this church.

Even the very first verse of this greeting has something to tell us. If you’ve looked at all at the New Testament, or heard any sermons on it, you have some idea who Paul is. The great missionary, set apart by his experience on the Damascus Road, high-powered preacher and church planter and frequently persecuted Christian leader, author of a large chunk of the New Testament. Paul, we know.

But who is Sosthenes?

This does help make a worthwhile point about Paul: he doesn’t work alone. Of the letters we can confidently attribute to Paul, only Romans does not include some kind of co-author indicated in the greeting – and Romans is a rather different book in Paul’s output; but we’ll get to it later this year. Anyway, sometimes the co-correspondent is a more familiar name, like Timothy (in 2 Corinthians), or sometimes it’s a more collective general reference (as in Galatians, referring to “all the members of God’s family who are with me”.

Sosthenes, on the other hand, only seems to appear one other time in the New Testament, but the context in which he appears does seem to fit with his appearance here. In Acts 18:17, a synagogue official named Sosthenes was seized and beaten by a mob after a local tribunal had refused to hear their accusations against Paul. This occurred in the city of Corinth, while Paul was staying there. The idea that Sosthenes was a local Jewish official who converted and later became one of Paul’s co-workers isn’t hard to get to from there.

At any rate, such a greeting does make a useful point for us to remember, that even Paul didn’t “go it alone.” This constant presence of ministry partners, in Paul’s travels in Acts as well as Paul’s letters, should serve as a reminder to us that the church, this church or any church, is not a playground for superheroes. We need each other to help get things done around here. The fact that we’re going to have a fancy liturgy in a few minutes and lay hands on Annette McGee is not going to turn her into any kind of super-saint who is going to singlehandedly save Christianity (or even singlehandedly save Grace Presbyterian Church, for that matter). That’s not how it works. Whatever number of elders any church chooses are not that church’s “saviors” – only Jesus gets to be that. What they are, in Presbyterian practice, are the folks who are set aside to do, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, what it takes to keep the church going and working and ministering in the way that Christ calls us to do. And they need each other to do that, and they need all of the church to do that.

So Paul’s greeting goes on, and verse 2 makes another good point; no one church is in it alone. Paul addresses the church in Corinth, but also takes in “all those who in every place call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.” Not only do we not go it alone in this individual congregation, we as a church are not cast off by ourselves in this world or even in this community. We work together, or at least we should be working together, with other congregations or communities of faith to accomplish what God calls us to do and to become the world God calls us to be.

Maybe the larger key is in verses 5-6.

For in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind – just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you – so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Did you hear that? Not lacking in any gift.

Now the reasons Paul goes into this start to become clear in verse 10, after today’s reading, when Paul starts to work over the Corinthians about how they’ve used those gifts, and that’s a good reminder that when we get into behaviors of spiritual pride about our own gifts and abilities, or pride that dismisses the gifts and contributions of others, we are not in God’s will, pure and simple.

But here the point is made that God gives us what we need, both as individuals and as the church, to live into God’s will as we await being reunited with Christ. Every gift.

But that does mean all of us together, not just a select few who get ordained. What we do in a few minutes, ordaining Annette and installing her along with Karen and Lois, is by no means any kind of sign that you are off the hook for the next three years. We are a church that truly needs everybody’s gifts and abilities all pulling together if we’re to be anything like what we are called to be. Nobody gets to ride the bench.

I know what you’re already saying under your breath or in your head. I can’t do it anymore. I’m not physically up to it. I am on the road a lot. I have trouble getting here.  None of those things mean that you have nothing to contribute. It isn’t necessary to serve as an elder in order to serve. Do what you are able to do.

You haven’t been on a committee before? Find one and join. You haven’t been on one in a while? Same thing, find one and join. Find what God has given you that you can do and find the way to use it so that this church can be the witness it is called to be. And there is one thing that anybody can do. Anybody can pray.

Elders, this has a message for you, too; your role isn’t about going it alone, or being a hero, or anything like that. Find partners in the work. Delegate. Find what help others are able to give, and receive it gratefully.

If you are here, you have something to contribute. And there are plenty of people who aren’t here today who also have something to contribute. In whatever understated, mild-mannered way, you have something. Find that thing and do it.

That sounds like a goal, doesn’t it? Maybe even a New Year resolution.

In a few moments, as we are ordaining Annette and installing Karen and Lois, I invite you to hear the questions they are asked and the responsibilities with which they are charged, and take them to heart yourself. We all have a vocation in this congregation, whether we are ordained or not. And we are partners in that vocation, all of our gifts and abilities and talents and passions working together to be Christ’s church, Christ’s body, in God’s world. Let us all know and believe that we are, all of us, called today.

For partners in ministry, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal):

#298            Lord, You Give the Great Commission

#651            I Waited Patiently For God (Psalm 40)

#417            How Clear Is Our Vocation, Lord

#837            What a Fellowship, What a Joy Divine

Sermon: To Fulfill All Righteousness

Grace Presbyterian Church

January 8, 2017, Baptism of the Lord A

Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17

To Fulfill All Righteousness

As is the case in Mark and Luke as well, Matthew makes Jesus’s first adult appearance in his gospel the occasion on which he went out to the Jordan to be baptized by John the Baptizer. While the Gospel of John does record Jesus going out to where John was baptizing, and John witnessing the Holy Spirit descending upon Jesus, it never does record an actual baptism of Jesus by John, as the other three gospels do.

Matthew’s account is most similar to Mark’s – the one that was most likely written first – but there are a couple of noteworthy differences between the two narratives. One is a simple matter of wording; while Matthew’s account of the post-baptism descent of the Spirit merely says that the heavens were “opened to him,” Mark goes for the much more dramatic suggestion that the heavens were “torn apart” for the Spirit to descend. Now that’s a difference you could make sermons from, but I’m not sure it’s the most important difference from the perspective of reading Matthew’s gospel.

No, the difference in Matthew’s gospel, the one that makes this account unique, is that brief exchange between John and Jesus in vv. 14-15. It is for some an answer to a thorny theological question, but it is also a tremendous clue to what it means, way back in chapter 1 of this gospel, when Matthew starts setting up Jesus as the one who is to be called Emmanuel, or “God-with-us.”

As Jesus approaches John, the Baptizer is hesitant, reluctant in a way that is not at all like the brash character presented in the first twelve verses of this chapter. That John the Baptizer is relentless in message – “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven has come near” – and outright hostile to the Pharisees and Sadducees who show up, not to mention the camel-hair clothing and locusts-and-honey diet. That John,…it’s hard to imagine him hesitating one way or the other about his task.

But as Jesus comes forward, John suddenly is reticent, recognizing the “one who is more powerful than I” he had just mentioned back in verse 11. His words – “I need to be baptized by you” – are remarkable for the self-awareness of his own sinfulness; that this one comes to him – him! – to be baptized is more than John can bear.

And in truth, John has a point.

John says it plainly in verse 11; “I baptize you with water for repentance.” The first word of his message is “Repent.” The people were coming out to the Jordan for John’s baptism, as verse 6 says, “confessing their sins.” Even his chastisement of the Pharisees and Sadducees challenged those religious authorities to “bear fruit worthy of repentance” in verse 8. Clearly, the principal point of John’s baptism is repentance of sin.

But what, exactly, does Jesus have to repent?

In the later words from the book of Hebrews, we hold that Jesus was “tested as we are, yet without sin.” Back here in Matthew we can see that “testing” played out in the temptation of Jesus, for one, but those final words – something that John recognized in this Jesus who now stood before him – do raise a perfectly acceptable question; if Jesus really was “without sin,” then why would he submit to John’s baptism of repentance of sin? What’s the point?

Actually, we could argue that there are a couple of points. One potential point of Jesus’s human baptism has to do with his relationship to God the Father, and the other with his relationship to us.

In coming down to be baptized, Jesus is on the one hand showing his complete submission to the task set before him in his human ministry. Simply put, Jesus’s action is in accordance with God’s will, and is an initial demonstration that all of Jesus’s actions – be they deeds or words, teaching or ministry or dying or rising again – are going to be in accordance with God’s will. You could also argue that in doing so Jesus presents a model for us to follow, but in this case the act of obedience still holds up whether we follow it or not. Jesus will do God’s will, no matter what. And in the vision that follows Jesus’s baptism, with the heavens opening and the Voice proclaiming him “my beloved son” for all to hear, God confirms Jesus’s obedience and identity for all to hear.

On the other hand, Jesus’s presence at John’s baptizing spot also speaks very directly to how Jesus relates to us, providing at the very beginning of his public life and ministry a demonstration that Jesus is, as Matthew called him way back in chapter 1, “God-with-us.”

Sinless though Jesus is, he nonetheless comes to us in our sinfulness, in our desperate need for repentance. He is with us at the Jordan, standing in solidarity with us sinners that we are, because that’s being God-with-us. Jesus as Son of God will tolerate nothing separating us from him. That’s a huge part of Jesus being God-with-us.

No matter how low, God-with-us; no matter how lost, God-with-us; no matter how estranged or separated, God-with-us.

Even at his very beginning Jesus is, before the temptation, before the Sermon on the Mount, before the teaching and healing and trouble with the authorities and crucifixion and resurrection, God-with us.

And Jesus always is to be God-with-us.

For God-with-us, no matter what, Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal):

#375                        Shall We Gather at the River

#164                        Down Galilee’s Slow Roadways

#688                        Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart

#480                        Take Me to the Water

Credit: agnusday.org. Hmm, good question...

Sermon: The Refugee Jesus

Grace Presbyterian Church

January 1, 2017, Christmas 2A

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 untold numbers 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 thing, 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 Friday night, when we observe Epiphany and share a meal together to mark the end of the Advent/Christmas orbit.)

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?

I made two mistakes this week that prevent me from crying out so. First, on Tuesday I saw a PBS program, titled Exodus, on the travails and hardships faced by refugees from war, economic depravation, and other world calamities – from Syria, yes, but also from numerous other conflicts in the Middle East and on the African continent, wars and tyrannies and persecutions we know nothing about in this country. Then on Friday I made the mistake of going to the Harn Museum, for the next-to-last day of its photography exhibit called “Aftermath: The Fallout of War – America and the Middle East,” which included among other things numerous photographs, again from war zones both famous and forgotten, images that make clear why so many are forced to flee their homes, becoming refugees. Then I was of course reminded of the recent re-conquest of the Syrian city of Aleppo, in which civilians who had managed to survive that war thus far were shot on the spot.

And so, even in the face of this story, 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.”

The table before us on this day, when the carols and praises are caused to stick in our throats and wilt in our hearts, reminds us that Jesus calls all of us to come; all of us, including Jesus’ fellow refugees, from Aleppo or South Sudan or Guatemala or anywhere from which any of God’s children flee death or despair or tyranny 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: The Presbyterian Hymnal):

#113 Angels We Have Heard on High

#147 The First Nowell

#154 Jesus Entered Egypt

#133 O Come, All Ye Faithful

"Omran, Angels are Here!", Judith Mehr, 2016

Painting in response to the virally circulated photo of Omran Daqneesh, a five-year-old boy in Aleppo, Syria, after a bombardment in August 2016 that killed, among others, his ten-year-old brother. One can barely resist wondering where the angels were for the other children in Bethlehem, after Joseph, Mary, and Jesus had gone...