A Service of Lessons and Carols for Epiphany

Note: This order was devised last year for a service for Epiphany, emphasizing the coming of Christ as being for all nations (represented in scripture by the Magi who brought gifts to the child Jesus). Obviously different hymns could also be used for the "carols" of such a service, and there are certainly different scriptures which would also tell that story in the form of "lessons." 

A Service of Lessons and Carols for Epiphany

January 6, 2023

 

Prelude

 

Welcome

 

Opening sentences: 

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.

Nations shall come to your light, and rulers to the brightness of your rising.

Let us pray: 

Eternal God, by a star you led magi to the worship of your Son. Guide the nations of the earth by your light, that the whole world may see your glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

 

The Lessons: 

 

Lesson 1: Matthew 2:1-12: The Magi travel to behold the child Jesus.

Carol: As with Gladness Men of Old (GtG 150)

 

Lesson 2: Matthew 8:5-13: Jesus heals the servant of a Roman centurion.

Carol: For the Healing of the Nations (GtG #346)

 

Lesson 3: Matthew 28:16-20: Jesus commissions his disciples to go into all the world.

Carol: Go to the World! (GtG #295)

 

Lesson 4: Acts 8:26-39: Philip witnesses to an Ethiopian official.

Carol: Take Me to the Water (GtG #480)

 

Lesson 5: Acts 10:34-48: Peter welcomes the family of Cornelius to be baptized.

Carol: In Christ There Is No East or West (GtG #317)

 

Lesson 6: Acts 16:11-15: Paul is welcomed into the home of Lydia in Philippi.

Carol: Go in Grace and Make Disciples (GtG #296)

 

Lesson 7: Romans 15:7-13: Paul declares his call to bear witness to all peoples.

Carol: Help Us Accept Each Other (GtG #754)

 

Lesson 8: Ephesians 2:11-21: Christ has joined all peoples into one humanity.

Carol: There's a Wideness in God's Mercy (GtG #435)

 

Lesson 9: Revelation 7:9-17: A great multitude from all the nations at God's throne.

Carol: From All That Dwell Below the Skies (GtG #327)

Litany for Epiphany:

 

All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God, Alleluia!

Shout to the Lord, all the earth, Alleluia!

With joy let us pray to our Savior, the Son of God who became one of us, saying: The grace of God be with us all. 

The grace of God be with us all.

 

O Christ, let your gospel shine in every place where the Word of life is not yet received. Draw the whole creation to yourself that your salvation may be known through all the earth.

The grace of God be with us all.

 

O Christ, Savior and Lord, extend your church to every place. Make it a place of welcome for people of every race and tongue.

The grace of God be with us all.

 

O Christ, Ruler of rulers, direct the work and thoughts of the leaders of nations that they may seek justice, and further peace and freedom for all.

The grace of God be with us all.

 

O Christ, Master of all, support of the weak and comfort of the afflicted, strengthen the tempted and raise the fallen. Watch over the lonely and those in danger. Give hope to the despairing and sustain the faith of the persecuted.

The grace of God be with us all. Amen.

 

O Christ, light made manifest as the true light of God, gladden our hearts on the joyful day of your glory; call us by our name on the great Day of your coming; and give us grace to offer,

with all the hosts of heaven, unending praise to God in whom all things find their ending,

now and ever. Amen.

 

Postlude

 

"When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone,

when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins:


to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner,


to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people,


to make music in the heart."

 

--Howard Thurman

 

Sermon: Unexpected Prophets

First Presbyterian Church

December 31, 2023, Christmas 1B

Luke 2:22-40

 

Unexpected Prophets

 

 

As we gather on this seventh day of Christmas, we are presented with a scripture that takes us to the fortieth day in the life of the infant Jesus. That fortieth day was a significant one for a Jewish baby (particularly a first-born male child) and its mother, as it was a day for the two to be presented in the Temple for the child to be dedicated to the Lord. One might look back to the story of the child Samuel, whose mother Hannah had dedicated her child to the Lord, for a model of how this worked. Presuming that they had stayed in Bethlehem since the birth, the trip to Jerusalem and the Temple was a fortunately brief one for Mary and her husband Joseph.

It's worth noticing that the offering they were named to offer says something about Joseph and Mary. For those who could afford such, the offering meant to be used here was a lamb. The "pair of doves or two young pigeons" were designated specifically for those who couldn't afford a lamb. In other words, Joseph and Mary were poor.

It wasn't unusual for the Temple to be crowded; between such work as what Joseph and Mary had come to do and any number of other small rituals, there was usually a lot going on. This visit, however, turned out to be anything but routine for this new family. 

First appeared a man named Simeon. Luke wants to make sure you know he was a "righteous and devout" man, possessed of a vision that he would not die before seeing the Messiah. He was moved by the Spirit to be at the Temple that day, and presumably that same Spirit pointed out this family to him and to the child in particular as that promised Messiah. He takes the child from the parents (a move that would likely bring an attempted kidnapping charge today) and lifted up his praise to God in words that have become one of the occasional songs of the church even today, like Mary's Magnificat that we heard a couple of weeks ago. (You can find a version of Simeon's song in your hymnal at #545.)

When he had finished his praise, he blessed the couple, but (again presumably moved by the Spirit) had something more to say to Mary, a hard word in this case, both about the fate of this child and also how Mary herself would be affected: "a sword will pierce your own soul too." Here was something that had not happened to this point in Mary's experience with this birth; no such warning had been given by Gabriel or by Elizabeth or anywhere along this way she had traveled. It's hard for us to imagine how such a statement must have hit her.

While Simeon was with the family, another surprise prophet was drawing the whole Temple crowd's attention to them. Unlike Simeon, Anna is definitively named as "a prophet," indicating that this was not new territory in her long life. She had apparently taken to staying in the Temple full-time and not eating, perhaps in her own kind of waiting parallel to Simeon's. By this time the Temple authorities might well have started to consider her a nuisance. While he is speaking to the family, she is proclaiming to all who are passing by, all who "were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem." One might argue that this makes Anna "the first evangelist," the first to bear public witness to the Messiah, to speak that news to not just a select few, but to all who were present in the Temple that day. 

It had been forty days since Jesus's birth, and months before that for Mary's encounter with Elizabeth and her own song of what this child was to be, and months before that when Gabriel had first appeared to her. Obviously, a lot had happened in between; the months of pregnancy, the unexpected trip to Bethlehem, the birth itself, and the appearance of those shepherds. Now, after all this, comes this unexpected encounter with prophets while doing their religious duty in the Temple. How much had time dimmed the memory of those initial encounters? And how much was the memory of those encounters stirred up now in this new encounter? 

If Mary, with all she had experienced to this point, could be caught off guard by Simeon and Anna, how much more so are we unprepared for any kind of prophetic word? We live in a time and culture in which "Christmas" starts sometime after Labor Day and ends no later than, say, 2:00 p.m. on December 25; how much are we capable of hearing a word about this Messiah, this Son of God no less, who did not disdain humanity but instead became one of us and lived among us? Can we still hear and hold that message of God breaking into the world as one of us on a day when much of the country is preparing to party mindlessly over the end of one year and the start of another? 

How do we remember to listen to unexpected prophets when they receive a word? (One hint: anyone who calls himself or herself a prophet is virtually never a prophet.) How do we stay ready to receive? How do we stay prepared to discern what the Spirit is doing and where it is leading? 

Perhaps this is our one quest to take with us from this season of Christmas: how to stay ready for the word from unexpected prophets.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #143, Angels from the Realms of Glory; #121, O Little Town of Bethlehem; #124, Still, Still, Still; #132, Good Christian Friends, Rejoice; #---, What child is this (additional verses); #123, It Came Upon the Midnight Clear; #144, In the Bleak Midwinter; #147, The First Nowell (stanzas 1, 2, and 6 only), #136, Go, Tell It on the Mountain

Confession: I Was Wrong About "A Charlie Brown Christmas"

I was about ten months old when A Charlie Brown Christmas first aired on CBS in December 1965. I can't say for certain that I was propped up in front of the television set for that premiere, but it's entirely possible and maybe even likely.

I would then watch that special every Christmas season, whether it involved clearing that night on my schedule, or pulling out a VHS or DVD, or in the most recent years finding it on the particular streaming service that now holds the broadcast rights to it. I'm not proud; we subscribe to that service mostly (at least from my point of view) for A Charlie Brown Christmas and other Peanuts titles they hold. (OK, so I also watch Major League Soccer matches on that service, and sometimes Ted Lasso.)

This season I've gotten to watch the special three times, and wasted nothing about any of those viewings. I can tell you about how the musical shifts in Vince Guaraldi's score for the show give away so much about what Charlie Brown is going through at different stages of the show. I am always ready for Shermy's one line: "Every year it's the same. I always end up playing a shepherd."  I will tell you which of the lines spoken by any of the characters weren't quite understood by those speaking the parts (clearly the one who voices Lucy's "real estate" line doesn't know what real estate is, and that's exactly as it should be). And yes, I get as choked up as anyone when Linus says "Lights, please" to no apparent character, those lights go dark nonetheless, and Linus begins with the narrative from Luke 2 that he had memorized under threat of physical violence from his sister.

And for all these years, I thought that was the turning point in the show. 

It was certainly the dramatic climax, as unexpected and kind of shocking as it was. Even by 1965, saying or doing something so overtly religious in a network television broadcast was not at all expected or encouraged. You can find a number of sources that will point out how CBS foofs were convinced the show was going to be a disaster, with that very recitation a big part of the reason why. 

Yes, even in 1965 television executives had no idea what they were doing.

So yes, that recitation, with Linus's voice suddenly echoing all around the auditorium, was the dramatic climax of the show, punctuated by his simple statement afterwards, "That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."

Dramatic climax, yes. Turning point? I don't think so, not anymore.

After all, what happens next? Charlie Brown picks up the barely-there Christmas tree, heads for home (skipping at least part of the way,) gets to Snoopy's first-prize doghouse with some lament and then resolution, and finally plucks an ornament off the doghouse, and then tries to attach it to the tree - and in so doing, by his own description, kills it. With great wailing ("everything I touch gets ruined"), he exits to drown in his sorrows once more.

The rest of the gang shows up. Linus, seemingly a day late and a dollar short, decides that the tree isn't so bad, he kinda likes it, and all it needs is "a little love." And then he wraps his blanket around the base of the tree, which somehow is able to stand up straight.

There's your turning point, almost at the very end. Linus wraps his blanket around the base of the tree.

Linus wraps his blanket around the tree.

Already twice in the show Linus has had to defend his blanket against Lucy's machinations to get rid of it. In the final case, as Lucy is yet again ready to commit violence to get her way, Linus somehow whips it into part of his shepherd's costume to thwart her plans. "See? You wouldn't hit an innocent shepherd, would you?" Also, at the very beginning of the show, he has had to hold on to his blanket despite Snoopy's running grab-and-dash. 

Thinking across the broader history of Peanuts, how often does Linus willingly give up his blanket? Not very often at all. Those times when he does he seems to be in critical condition, something like this:

And yet, in this moment, Linus wraps that blanket around the tree seemingly without hesitation, and doesn't appear to pass out over the strain. 

Charlie Brown heard Linus's Luke 2 recitation, but it didn't seem to sink in quite right. In his head it was still about using the tree to do something right. How that tree, alone amidst all those aluminum trees (side query: were aluminum Christmas trees ever a real thing?), had survived all that time, seemingly losing more needles than it actually had every time Charlie Brown picked it up; I have no idea. But still, for all that, CB was still trying to do something for himself; make the tree be the "right" tree for the Christmas pageant.

Whether or not it came of some of that Luke 2 passage sinking in on him, Linus saw what needed to be done for the tree. He wrapped his blanket around it, the rest of the gang stripped Snoopy's doghouse of Christmas paraphernalia, and then came the Miracle of the Fully-Greened Tree. The kids start to hum, CB returns and sees the Miracle of the Fully-Greened Tree for himself, they all sing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," and the credits roll.

Charlie Brown tried to use the tree to prove something to the other kids, and it didn't work. Linus gave up his blanket to support the tree (remember, "it just needs a little love") and it lived. 

<puts pastor robe on>

In the end, it isn't just hearing the word, or the Word, that changes things. It's what you do with it that matters. 

[Note: as I write this it's only the fourth day of Christmas. You have time to watch the special at least two or three more times, minimum.]

Sermon: Love.

First Presbyterian Church

December 24, 2023, Advent 4B

Isaiah 7:10-16; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

 

Love.

 

 

One might conclude, after hearing today's scripture readings, that "love" - the presumed theme of this fourth and final Sunday of Advent - seems kind of absent. Between what seems like a tense scene between a prophet and a king, a big flowery elaborate farewell salutation from an epistle, and what must have seemed a terrifying scene of an angel bringing challenging or even terrifying news to a young girl, there isn't much here that suggests "love" as a major part of the story. 

Or is there? 

Isaiah's account comes in a time when the nation had not yet been dragged off into exile, but threats loomed all around. Two of its neighbors had made an alliance with each other, amplifying the threat against the kingdom ruled over by Ahaz. The prophet Isaiah challenges Ahaz to receive a sign from God about what is to come, but Ahaz, for whatever reason, refuses. Of course, that's not going to stop God or God's prophet, so the sign is given. Book-study participants will recognize this one right out of the oratorio Messiah that we've studied this month: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel: GOD WITH US." 

From there Handel goes off in different directions in his composition, but Isaiah fills in the picture a little more, culminating in the promise that the two kings threatening Ahaz and his people wouldn't even last as long as it takes for the child to learn the difference between good and evil. Even to a stubborn rebellious king like Ahaz, God is acting out of love. 

Now it isn't clear to whom Isaiah is referring when he speaks of the woman who will conceive and bear that son. In some studies of this passage, it is suggested that the woman belongs to Ahaz and the child she will bear will be Ahaz's successor, Hezekiah, who would become one of the most favored kings in the history of Israel/Judah, maybe even second most favored (no one was going to beat King David). Of course, as years continued to pass and the desire for a messiah continued to grow, this passage began to be interpreted as a prophecy of just such a figure coming. From there it was only a small step for Matthew to quote from his gospel this very passage for that very purpose. 

Compared to God loving a recalcitrant king anyway, maybe it seems easier to find "love" in the reading from Luke's gospel, the immediate predecessor to last week's reading. This love, though, is coming in a way that is going to be awfully challenging for the young woman chosen to be the vessel for that love's coming. 

It sure looks like Mary is alone when Gabriel shows up with his big proclamation. One curiosity about how this account is treated is that, in their haste to elevate Mary as something almost not human, some readers of this text overlook the fact that, far from meekly accepting her fate, Mary questions the angel. "How will this be?" she asks. Even if you are an angel, it still doesn't explain how exactly this is going to work.

In Gabriel's previous visit, to the old priest Zechariah, he had been charged to announce the birth of a son to the priest and his wife Elizabeth, who in her long life had never been able to bear a child. Maybe it was understandable that Zechariah had questioned this news, but Gabriel's reaction there was a bit harsher; he essentially hit the mute button on Zechariah and announced he would not be able to speak again until this child was born and given the name John (as in the Baptist). Here, though, Mary's question is met with ... well, an answer. I wonder sometimes what we miss in scripture readings when we can't hear the tone of voice, as to why Zechariah got muted and Mary did not.

Gabriel does answer, no mute button this time, and then comes the moment of (forgive the pun) pregnant pause, as so much hinges on the answer Mary gives. Luke is much more eloquent in his account of Mary's answer, but one could easily summarize it with any one of a number of different modern vernacular sayings. "Let's do this ... bring it on ... make it so." She answers the call, and the rest is gospel.

One could argue that the presence of "love" here is fairly obvious. In another gospel it is flat-out stated that the coming of this child is an act of love; remember "...God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son..."? How this might look to Mary, one could wonder. This seems like a lot for a young woman, betrothed but not yet married, to bear. Social stigma was as real back then as it is now, and being pregnant before being married was going to carry as much, if not more, of that social shame for her as it would for someone in that situation today. Knowing this, Mary stepped up anyway. 

It seems like the news that Elizabeth was carrying a child might have helped, and again, perhaps it's not an accident that Mary spent six months of her pregnancy with Elizabeth for solace from the stigma. And perhaps in a situation where love wasn't going to be apparent, finding family, finding someone else in a very different but also similar situation probably helped keep Mary from feeling cut off from God's love. At the very least, Mary and Elizabeth could be there for each other. 

One more time, an epistle reading helps us pull it all together. This is a bit more florid than Paul's usual final benediction to his readers. This one, though, besides being an extremely effusive salutation, sums up in its own way just what this Advent we've been waiting through is all about. Paul has proclaimed gospel, opened up what had been a mystery for ages, and now sees this gospel no longer confined to the land of Jesus's birth and ministry but spreading to "all the Gentiles," out into the whole world. Again, harkening back to the famous verse from John's gospel, when it says "God so loved the world," it really does mean the whole world, no exceptions. 

Yes, it's good to see signs of hope, promises of peace, and occasions for joy in the weeks of Advent, but love - God's love for us, which hopefully ends up in love for one another - is, in essence, why we're even here. The God that loved his chosen ones so much even when they rebelled against them, the God who so loved the world, the God whose love was meant for all the world, is the God who loves us. One could even say that's what Advent is all about. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #---, When Isaiah spoke a word; #83, Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus; #88, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (verses 1-4); #88, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (verses 5-7)

Sermon: Joy!

First Presbyterian Church

December 17, 2023, Advent 3B

Isaiah 64:1-4, 8-11; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; Luke 1:39-56

 

Joy!

 

 

While modern folk are accustomed to being deluged with song during the Christmas season – the sacred songs and carols we know very well, but also songs about everything from roasting chestnuts to snowmen to reindeer with incandescent noses - in many congregations (as I am reminded by many of my colleagues in ministry), there is exactly one “song of the season” for Advent that is at all familiar: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” Even those congregations that consider it a familiar song of Advent haven’t always been terribly familiar with the whole hymn. It came as a shock for many, in starting with the new Glory to God hymnal, to find this hymn stretched out to seven stanzas, in contrast to the three that had been included in the previous collection simply called The Presbyterian Hymnal. (We'll be singing this next week.)

Perhaps the more curious among Presbyterian congregations noticed the short informational note at the bottom of the page, informing us that this hymn has its roots in a quite ancient practice of the church, dating back at least to the era of the great European emperor Charlemagne and probably farther back than that. Rooted in a practice of daily worship, these stanzas (or “antiphons”) were assigned to the seven-day period before the Vigil of Christmas (or Christmas Eve to us) as evocations of Old Testament passages evoking the longing of the people for a Messiah. These verses draw on not just the book of Isaiah (a popular source of Advent readings) but four other different sources from Hebrew scripture, each one read as looking forward to a promised Messiah and evoking some aspect or characteristic of that Promised One. 

That lofty origin sets these ancient stanzas, and the more modern hymn we sing that was adapted from them in the 19^th century, in a rather different social status than one of the other texts that is frequently sung during the season of Advent, which Lisa just sang. While the one evokes the words of kings and prophets and priests, the Magnificat is drawn from the words sung in Luke by an unwed woman, pregnant under what her community and maybe even her husband considered to be suspicious circumstances (go read Matthew's version of the story for that). Maybe you remember how in our own past such a young woman might have been sent away to stay with distant relatives to deflect the scandal of such pregnancy? I wonder sometimes if that’s what was being done to Mary here, sending her off to escape the prying eyes and wagging tongues of Nazareth. In this case the distant relatives were Zacharias and Elizabeth, themselves looking forward to a new arrival after decades of barrenness. Maybe that’s what was happening here; let’s keep those embarrassing pregnant women off in the hills away from prying eyes and gossip.

It’s all the more remarkable a scene, though, as these two women, off in the hills, prophesy to one another. Elizabeth names the One in Mary’s womb as no less than, in her words, “my Lord,” and in response Mary sings out the brief but powerful words we know as the Magnificat, from the first word of its Latin translation Magnificat anima mea, which translates roughly “my soul magnifies.”

This prophetic utterance operates differently than the "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" verses. Where those stanzas sing about attributes of God – “O wisdom,” “O Immanuel” (or God-with-us), and so forth, Mary’s song is all about deeds; what God is doing, or more what God has done. God has looked with favor on lowly Mary; God has done great things for her; God has shown mercy from generation to generation. Then Mary’s song stops preaching and goes to meddling; God hasn’t just shown strength, but God has “scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts”; God has toppled the powerful (an emperor like Charlemagne, perhaps?) and elevated the lowly; God has fed the hungry ones and sent away the rich with nothing. And all of it is sung with great joy.

It sounds a lot like parts of today's reading from Isaiah, and it (like the Isaiah reading) is a challenging text if you pay too much attention to it. And for years certain corners of the church did their best not to pay attention to it. Instead of singing the Magnificat, brash and even a little subversive as it is, hymnals were filled with such carols as “The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came,” where the focus is on Gabriel’s announcement from earlier in Luke 1, with Mary’s role limited to verse three, a not-very-Magnificat-sounding little stanza that tells us:

Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head,

“To me be as it pleases God,” she said.

“My soul shall laud and magnify God’s holy name.”

Most highly favored lady, Gloria!

 

You notice just the hint of the Magnificat, but not enough to be dangerous. And not nearly so joyful.

I have no interest in forcing a choice between the only two Advent songs most people know. What must be said, though, is this: if we tune out the powerfully disruptive song of Mary, we are pretty likely to fall prey to the solemnized, imperially sanctioned tones that would point us to attributes of a high and distant God to keep us from looking for a God who breaks into humanity and upsets the order of things. Both belong; both are needed. 

But at the same time, when we find it hard to see God doing anything in the world, Mary's words can ring hollow. Again, the epistle reading helps put things into perspective. For today, the key words are the very first two in verse 16: “Rejoice always.” I mean, the rest of the passage is good too, but here this simple reminder from Paul to his beloved Thessalonians, reminds us that our joy is not contingent. When our rejoicing is in God, rather than in some particular thing we think about God or some particular thing God has done or we expect God to do, that joy is sustained even in times when joy might not seem the most obvious reaction. 

Nadia Bolz-Weber is a popular author and minister who works in women's prison ministry in Colorado. In a regular essay series she writes, the most recent essay addresses this thing exactly and reminds us of things we might easily forget: 

For the rest of us, a gentle reminder that Christ will be born on Christmas with or without us "feeling" Christmas-y. Because this pattern of time, this story, these rituals and practices and songs have gone on long before us and will continue long after us. Sometimes we are floating in that river of faith, just swimming in it and feeling the transcendent warmth of the season. And other times we seem to be standing in just a half inch of the stuff; not even enough to cover our feet. But the power of the river, its source and its destination changes not at all. And both things: submerged in and barely having our feet in are the same. There’s no ranking system at work here. One is not "better" than the other. One does not "count more". That's just not how this thing works. Thank God.

 

Joy in God is not contingent, and Christmas happens whether we feel like it or not.

Advent is not a passive season. It looks both backward and forward; it sees the degradation and sorrow of the world and still insists on hope; and it most definitely does not submissively endorse the way things are. When we have learned that, when we have understood what it means to wait in hope and expectation and to rejoice always anyway, we may finally have grasped the whole point of Advent. And when we’ve grasped that, we might be ready for Christmas.

For the God on High who comes and acts among us, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #104, O Lord, How Shall I Meet You; #92, While We Are Waiting, Come; #93, Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates

 

 

 

Sermon: Peace...

First Presbyterian Church

December 10, 2023, Advent 2B

Isaiah 40:1-11; 2 Peter 3:8-15a; Mark 1:1-8

 

Peace...

 

 

The years from 27 BC to about 170 are often loosely labeled in history as the Pax Romana or "Roman peace." That term was most likely invented in the year 55, as a kind of Roman propaganda to encapsulate the order and "peace" found in the realm of the Roman Empire. That empire was fully in charge over a large swath of Europe and the Mediterranean and guaranteed a period of peace and prosperity ... for the right people. If you were well-off, or well-connected, with the right status and the right income and the right place to live and especially the right family, sure, the Pax Romana was a great thing.

If, however, you were someone like these shepherds and other field laborers in this stable over here, that Pax Romana probably didn't feel particularly special. 

It should also be noted that the definition of "peace" involved in calling this era a Pax Romana allowed for a decent amount of violence, as long as Rome prevailed. Depending on whether you hold that the gospel of Mark was written just before or just after the year 70 (and you can get good scholarly arguments both ways), Mark's readers and hearers (mostly in and around Jerusalem and the Roman province called Palestine) were either experiencing the buildup to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem that year or living in its aftermath. Either way, such a "peace" doubtless rang hollow.

The prophetic oracles of the book of Isaiah were written well before any Pax Romana or even any Roman Empire existed. Nonetheless, the conquest of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and the carrying off of so many of the Hebrew people into exile, left bitterness and sorrow on the hearts of both those who were exiled and those who remained. Pax Babilonia was no more a real "peace" than Pax Romana.

Despite the name attached to it, the letter called 2 Peter was written well after the apostle's death, probably by a student or disciple or follower, maybe one that might be thought of as a "school of Peter," who endeavored to preserve the apostle's teachings and ideas. It's not impossible that 2 Peter was written as late as the middle of the second century, or towards the end of that aforementioned Pax Romana. By this time, the church has experienced full-fledged persecution, is no longer joined in any to the Jewish tradition from which it was born, and is struggling to stay afloat in a world where the Empire itself was starting to see signs of struggle.

In short, "peace" is not really an accurate description of the life of any of these settings. Whether open conflict or increasing persecution or outright conquest, none of these audiences for our biblical writers are experiencing anything like "peace," no matter what Roman or Babylonian propaganda might want to suggest. 

And yet...

In Mark's gospel, reminding us that we are not the first to await the coming of the Messiah, we get just the briefest introduction to John the Baptist (or John the baptizer), appearing on the scene instantly and presented as the one fulfilling Isaiah's prophetic claim of a voice "crying out in the wilderness,  'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight'." It's not as if John was preaching a prosperity gospel or anything so appealing and enticing; his entire message could be summarized "repent" and baptizing those who did so. Nothing fancy, no great deep theological insight, just "repent." For all that, though, there's this thing about repentance; it's a great and even necessary step towards peace within. Unrepented sin doesn't make for a soul at peace. 

As for Isaiah, how often do you hear or see the prophets of Hebrew scripture being instructed to "comfort, O comfort my people"? The prophetic literature is so often stereotyped as judgment and demands for repentance and foretelling of grim consequences for those who don't. But here the prophet is instructed, not do rail against the children of God when they're down, but to speak even tenderly, to offer reassurance that their suffering is not forever. 

This time it's the prophet who pushes back against the words of comfort; people are grass, no constancy, no faithfulness, they wither and fail in even a breath...but in the end, for all of that, the prophet has to acknowledge that the word of God stands forever. 

As an aside, it's little wonder that most of this reading, all but the "flesh is grass" part, got borrowed and written into much of the opening material for the oratorio Messiah composed by George Frideric Handel; it should be noted, though, that the one part not taken up by Handel was lifted by Johannes Brahms, some one hundred-plus years later, and made the central text of the second movement of that composer's most remarkable work, which he called Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem). You are, in some ways, looking at one of the most musical chapters of scripture.

As for 2 Peter, for some reason this author chooses to offer some apocalyptic images not far off from last week's gospel reading. Still, though, it is these authors and their readers and hearers who in all of scripture come closest to our situation; awaiting the promised return of Christ. Admittedly, we've been waiting a lot longer by now than they had. But there are two non-apocalyptic elements of this passage worth considering:

1) That first verse, with its "thousand years like a day" image that gets borrowed and misquoted a lot, puts an interesting spin on the absence of Christ's return that was troubling many churches in this time. The delay is, far from forsaking or forgetting, an act of mercy; God is being patient, wants no one to perish, and all to come to repentance (shades of John the baptizer). Delaying is, in this reading, God's compassion and mercy in action. 

2) the author follows up at the last of this passage with that acknowledgment that the patience of the Lord is our salvation, and also suggests how we ought to respond in this time of God's patience; be found striving for peace. It's not enough to wish for peace, it's on us to work for it.

It can feel like a mockery to speak of peace at a time when war seems to be running rampant in the world, and even our own doorstep doesn't look so immune to such conflict. Yet our call remains; repent, speak words of comfort, and strive for peace. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #---, A voice cries out in the wilderness; #106, Prepare the Way, O Zion; #96, On Jordan's Bank the Baptist's Cry; #87, Comfort, Comfort Now My People

 

Sermon: Hope?

First Presbyterian Church

December 3, 2023, Advent 1B

Isaiah 64:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37

 

Hope?

 

 

The are two things that tend to be true of the liturgical season of Advent, which we mark beginning today; it tends to start off with a bang, as we will see momentarily, and it is usually organized around some theme or pattern, mostly to make sense of the whole thing. One such pattern assigns to the Sundays of Advent a series of commands or imperatives reflective of the scriptures assigned to each day; "watch," "prepare," "rejoice," and "behold." The other evokes more general themes for each Sunday: "hope," "peace," "joy," and "love." As you might guess from the scripture readings we've heard, it is easy to speak of the need to "watch" where this first Sunday is concerned. We might have to look harder to find themes of "hope," however. 

Also, this liturgical season is "two-sided," both remembering the coming of Jesus the first time and looking ahead to the return of Christ, but the structure of the season tends to move backwards. That “looking ahead” part of the season tends to be confined to the first Sunday, while later Sundays move backward from there – presenting the proclamation of John the Baptizer in advance of Jesus’s public ministry, and finally working back to the events before the birth of Jesus such as Gabriel’s announcement to Mary or other events, depending on the gospel of the year. (With this new liturgical year B focused on the gospel of Mark, there is no pre-birth narrative to work from, so bits get borrowed from the gospels of John and Luke; Mark does appear today, as you've noticed.)

The texts for this first Sunday of Advent B do bring the fireworks. The gospel selection for today brings us Mark’s “mini-apocalypse,” a spectacle to taunt even the flashiest of Hollywood special-effects types. Those first verses are the stuff of more hellfire-and-brimstone “rapture” sermons than you can shake a stick at, with the sun and moon going dark, stars falling from the sky, and “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with angels scattering in all directions to gather in the faithful. The verses that follow turn to encouraging disciples to “be alert” and “keep awake” with all sorts of sign-watching and being prepared thrown in. It’s a nerve-jangler of a passage, to be sure, but there is at least that one note of hope - the Son of Man descending with the angels gathering up all the faithful - as frightful as the imagery itself might be.

The reading from Isaiah cuts a surprisingly similar profile, although from a different perspective; rather than foretelling the coming of the Lord, the prophetic oracle is practically begging for it. “O that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you” – that would also be a Hollywood-worthy spectacle, but here the tone is of longing rather than of warning. Speaking from the midst of a people who have fallen away from faithfulness and have lost touch with God altogether, the prophet pleads for God to return – with as much drama as necessary, one might say. Again, though, the passage is not completely without something to hope for, or to hope in, at least in verses 8 and 9, even if that final phrase - "for we are all your people" - might sound more pleading than confident.

It’s no surprise that these two passages get most of the attention on this day, to be sure. However, it might just be that in this time of Advent, particularly in the times in which we live, the most important or needful or even hopeful statement out of today’s readings might just be in the one passage that quite possibly no preacher preaches (besides me, I guess) to inaugurate this liturgical season: the epistle reading from Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth.

This is at least the second letter Paul has written to this church, although it is the first such letter we have in scriptural canon. It seems that some things have gone off the rails since Paul last wrote, and the Corinthians have gotten to be a bunch of folks rather pleased with themselves, for all the wrong reasons. The backhanded complimentary tone of this “thanksgiving” points to the trouble spots that will be made explicit later in the letter; it turns out the Corinthians are rather proud of the “knowledge” mentioned in verse 5 and the “spiritual gifts” noted in verse 7, as if, somehow, they were themselves responsible for them or had somehow earned them. Paul gently rebukes that idea here even before addressing it directly, reminding the Corinthians that both of those were gifts of God, as verse 5 makes clear; "in him you have been enriched in every way." To put it in a modern idiom, Paul reminds the folks in this church that, apart from the gifts and the grace and the strengthening that comes from God, you aren’t ‘all that.’

But the key phrase, really, is the seemingly offhand line that comes after that spiritual gift bit: “…as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (emphasis mine) 

The word to the Corinthians, as it is to any church that thinks it is ‘all that,’ is: you do not hasten the “day of our Lord Jesus Christ” by your knowledge or your spiritual gifts or your money or your votes or by any thing you do. As Jesus says in that mini-apocalypse passage in Mark, nobody knows when that day will be, not even the Son, only the Father. And you can’t do anything to change that or hurry it up. What you do is wait.

Waiting is not passive. Waiting is doing the work the church has always been called to do. Waiting is ministering to one another and to the world around us as Jesus showed us how to do. 

That’s why we keep going with things like serving the CUFF meal this Thursday and providing free flu shots as that season approaches. That’s why you are still making your pledge commitments to the work and ministry of this congregation (you have done this, right?) Because waiting, in this case, means doing the work.

If we’ve learned anything in this time of a pandemic that should be over, but isn't, it is that we live in a society that is abhorrently bad at waiting. Had we had leadership and citizens who were willing to do the hard work of waiting back when this virus first appeared, we wouldn’t have become the world’s official coronavirus petri dish. (For evidence of this claim I offer basically every other country in the world.) In this and many other ways we have proven ourselves incapable of or unwilling to wait, to the point of hostility and threat of violence in some cases. We have utterly failed at waiting and it has cost us.

Guess what? When it comes to the “day of the Lord,” that is our main job: to wait. We do the stuff Jesus called us to do, and we keep doing it, and we keep doing it. We don’t get to ‘force the issue’ or hasten the timetable in any way. We don’t get to negotiate an accelerated schedule. We don’t earn our way to a quicker second Advent. We don’t manipulate Jesus into an early return. 

We do our job, and we wait. 

And yet we don't do so without that hope. Even in this passage we are reminded of that, and we are also reminded of the source of that hope. Even while Paul is previewing those things for which the Corinthians are going to be held to account, he's also reminding them that it is no less than the Christ whom we await is the one who will "keep you firm to the end," as verse 8 puts it. 

Paul goes on to add in verse 9 the simple yet profound reminder that "God is faithful." Perhaps we ought to be more deliberate about contemplating this simple statement. No matter how we might get a little stuck on ourselves like the Corinthians, no matter how much we might want to see our enemies get it in the end like Isaiah and his readers, no matter how dark or terrible or apocalyptic our times might seem as for Mark or his readers, "God is faithful." No matter how bleak things look as we wait, we are assured of the faithfulness of the God we worship and serve, and therefore we can wait in hope. 

One might be reminded of a passage of reassurance from another of Paul's letters, the one to the church at Rome, in which he reminds those readers that "in all things God works for the good of those who love him." (Romans 8:28) In all of our circumstances, great or awful, God is working for our good. Perhaps that helps us remember that in our waiting for Mark's promised coming of that Son of Man in the clouds with angels descending to gather up the faithful, we wait in hope. Hope, and not fear. Hope, and not despair. Hope, and not hopelessness. 

For the time of hopeful waiting, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #---, When the world tells us; #352, My Lord, What A Morning; #105, People, Look East; #348, Lo, He Comes with Clouds Descending

Sermon: Sheep

Grace Presbyterian Church

November 26, 2017, Christ the King/Reign of Christ A

Ezekiel 34:11-24; Matthew 25:31-46

 

Sheep

 

 

It may be some surprise, on a day designated as marking the Reign of Christ, to start off with a passage comparing a king to a shepherd. It turns out, though, that such a comparison was actually fairly common in the period in which the book of Ezekiel was written. When the first part of the chapter, before the portion included in our reading, takes aim at the kings of Israel, those who are judged as “bad kings” for their failure to lead as God intended, it in fact falls into line with a metaphor of king as shepherd that was actually pretty common in ancient Middle Eastern thought.  Egyptian writings often stressed the role of kings or even deities as shepherds of the people.  The Babylonian god Marduk was interestingly described as the “shepherd of all the gods.”[i]  In more mundane terms, the famous Law Code of Hammurabi stresses the role of the king (namely, himself) as being “to promote the welfare of the people, to cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil that the strong might not oppress the weak” – exactly the kind of language describing a shepherd’s responsibility towards the sheep under his care.  

Given this context, Ezekiel’s discourse here comes as a relief and fits into a familiar political as well as theological framework.  The kings of Israel are indicted for their failure to be true shepherds to the people, as in verse 3 and following: “You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep.  You have not strengthened the week, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have scattered them.” In turn God promises through Ezekiel to take such leaders away; beginning with our passage in verse 10, the “right” shepherd is revealed to be none other than God.

God promises to re-gather the sheep who have been scattered or driven away by the bad shepherds, to seek them out and to restore the flock.  God promises to feed them and to restore their health.  There are times the language here sounds an awful lot like the ever-familiar Psalm 23, with its promises of good pasture and good water.

Still, though, God has a bit more for Ezekiel to say about not just bad shepherds, but bad sheep.  The gentle pastoral nature of the passage is badly disrupted at verse 16, in which God promises that “I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy.  I will feed them with justice.”  What seems like a jarring interruption (seemingly too much for the lectionary makers) turns out to be a major interjection, in verse 17 and following:

As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord God: I will judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats: Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, but must you tread down with your feet the rest of the pasture?  When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet?  And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have fouled with your feet?

Therefore, thus says the Lord God to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep.  Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they will no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep. (17-22)

 

It isn’t just bad leaders God condemns through Ezekiel; the grabbers, the greedy, the hoarders among the sheep themselves also come under condemnation.  Those who greedily consume the good grass and water, and even go so far as to foul the grass and water they aren’t consuming, are judged by God.  There are probably three different sermons to be preached just on this passage alone.  For today, let it be enough to note that the flock, the community of God’s people, are disrupted both by bad shepherds who scatter the flock and exploit their rule to enrich themselves, but also by members of the flock itself who gorge themselves and crowd out fellow sheep from access to good grass and water. The good gifts of God given for all the people of God, not just a select, privileged few.  

The thing is, I’m guessing the “fat sheep” talked a pretty good game about righteousness and “living right” and being children of Abraham and all that. We’re not talking about obvious wolves here; they are sheep, part of the flock. But their behavior towards the other sheep sets them apart as not being the “good guys” after all. How often it is that the ones who do the most harm are not those who threaten from outside, but those who destroy and hurt from within!

Ezekiel promises that God will intervene for the sheep, both casting aside the bad shepherds and promising, where the fat sheep are concerned, to “feed them with justice” (v. 16).  It’s hard to resist the urge to read that phrase as suggest that God is going to shove justice down the throats of the fat, greedy sheep, but in any case their grasping, wasteful ways are under the judgment of God.

Whether one sees this passage as prophetic of Jesus as the good shepherd king or not, one thing that it does make clear is that we humans are in need of this divine intercession.  As much as we might see ourselves us as among the innocent sheep scattered or starved by the bad shepherds or fat sheep, it’s never too far a trip from lean sheep to fat sheep.  Humans, particularly humans placed in power or even merely more advantaged than another, fail.  Don’t doubt that each one of us has at one time been the sheep treading down the grass or fouling the water with our feet.

The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr probably expressed this best in his Moral Man and Immoral Society: 

…the limitations of the human imagination, the easy subservience of reason to prejudice and passion, and the consequent persistence of irrational egoism, particularly in group behavior, make social conflict an inevitability in human history, probably to its very end. (xx)

 

We are, particularly in large numbers, prone to wrongdoing and exploitation.  We need deliverance.  And the Shepherd King is promised to deliver us from the exploitation of bad shepherds and fat sheep, and even – maybe most of all – from ourselves.

It’s not hard to make the leap from this Old Testament prophecy to today’s Gospel lesson, the familiar “parable of the sheep and goats,” particularly as the parable as Jesus tells it uses the same kind of metaphor as Ezekiel attributes to God, sorting “sheep from sheep … rams from goats.”  Jesus’s point in the parable is also pretty similar; those who feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, cared for the sick, and visit the imprisoned are the blessed ones, while those who did not do those things are not, because whether you did or did not do those for “the least of these,” you did or did not do them for Jesus himself.  

Jesus’s teaching directs us to care for “the least of these,” and in so doing puts an affirmative spin on what comes off as punitive in Ezekiel’s prophecy. What is striking in the parable is that this sorting is not applied only to the people of Israel, as in Ezekiel’s case or in much of Matthew’s gospel, but to “all the nations” – a term Matthew’s readers would instantly have recognized as including the Gentiles, the non-Jewish people of the world. The Reign of God, in other words, is not restricted to the "people of God." Nonetheless, much of Ezekiel’s warning is echoed in Jesus’s parable. Jesus may call “goats” those whom Ezekiel labels “fat sheep,” but the warning is still clear; you won’t like being sorted that way, and having justice shoved down your throat.

But let’s not forget the part that probably bothers a lot of us most; the degree to which even the sheep in Jesus’s parable don’t seem to realize who they are or whom they are serving. We tend to want our Christ the King scriptures to be all about the obvious “good guys” getting in and the obvious “bad guys” being cast out into that eternal fire. But how does that work when even the good guys don’t realize that they’re the good guys? What do we make of that?

For generations this day was known only as Christ the King Sunday; the term “Reign of Christ” is a recent one, but it has at least one definite advantage. To speak of the Reign of Christ places the obligation of responding to that reign directly on us. Are we doing the work of Christ’s reign? Are we giving food and drink, welcoming, clothing, caring, visiting? Are we doing the work instead of merely talking about it? Or have we devolved into Ezekiel’s fat sheep, crowding in and butting out and fouling the water and trampling the grass so that the other sheep can’t feed and drink, all the while hiding behind “thoughts and prayers” or some other slogan to cover for the work we won’t do? 

Where are you going to be when the Big Sorting happens?

For the Reign of Christ, and that it compels us not just to talk, but to do, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #320, The Church of Christ in Every Age; #767, Together We Serve; #---, The reign of Christ compels us

 

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[i] Among may other epithets: http://www.gatewaystobabylon.com/gods/lords/marduk1.html