Sermon: Star-Struck

First Presbyterian Church

January 12, 2025, Epiphany C

Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Matthew 2:1-12

 

Star-Struck

 

 

Having passed through all of Advent, from its unsettling look at the end times through all of its anticipation of the birth of a Redeemer, the call of John in the wilderness and the prophecy of the unwed mother Mary, and finally through the manger at Bethlehem and the song of the angels to the shepherds, and through all twelve days of Christmas, there is one more part of the story to tell. 

Our story so far has come from the gospel of Luke. The details found here in the gospel of Matthew are quite different. All of the business about John’s unlikely birth and angels visiting Mary and the journey to Bethlehem are absent; instead, late in Chapter 1, it is Joseph to whom an angel speaks, warning him off of divorcing Mary over her pregnancy and confirming just who this child Jesus would be. Joseph follows the instructions of the angel and marries Mary, and then Jesus is born. 

As Chapter 2 opens, the story shifts to Jerusalem, where an unstable king is visited by foreign dignitaries asking about the birth of his successor – to Herod, what else would the “king of the Jews” be? He consults his advisors in a panic, gets an answer from them about where this was happening, and then tries to con the visitors into betraying this new child’s location to him so he could eliminate the threat to his throne. These visitors, most likely astrologer/astronomers from Persia, make their way to Bethlehem following this strange star, and there they find the child, probably about two years old by this time (and in a house, not a stable). They pay their homage, leave their strange gifts, and then…head home, “warned in a dream” to go a different way and avoid spilling the beans to Herod.

If Luke’s Nativity story is all sweet and romantic, Matthew’s narrative has more elements of conspiracy thriller, with intrigue and double-dealing aplenty. One can understand why Luke’s account is so much more popular. Nonetheless, the account of these magi and their visit is compelling, and presumably we do need to be able to take some sort of instruction from it. But what?

In tandem with the psalm we read earlier, we could speak of how Jesus fulfills the prayer of the psalmist for a good king and what that should be (especially when contrasted with the double-dealing Herod). Or we could talk about the meaning of those odd gifts, or how these magi were the first non-Jewish persons to behold the Christ child as far as we know – they are us, so to speak. But maybe there is something else. Maybe, in the case of this story, we need to look up. 

These wise men (and there’s nothing that says there were three of them in this scripture) were prompted to take this journey by the appearance of that star. As noted above, these men were most likely a cross between astronomers and astrologers, and watching stars was certainly part of their business. But to be provoked into such a journey certainly suggests something powerful and compelling in what they saw, and how it matched up with their studies and learning. They were prepared for its appearance, and were ready to act accordingly when it appeared. 

What this star did just isn’t normal. To speak of a star, or frankly any kind of heavenly body, that not only rises, but then moves ahead of the travelers and finally stops over this particular house in Bethlehem…that’s not how heavenly bodies work. Something different was happening here.

And it’s not as if these particular sky-watchers should have been the only ones who could see it, right? Any number of observers probably saw this thing going on if they watched with any sort of attention. But no one else was moved to make such a journey.

Only these particular magi, we might say, were star-struck.

Only they were prepared to see the sign, and ready to act upon what they saw. 

Might we learn from these people?

We Christians (which these magi were not, we should remember) will sometimes use the term “followers of Christ” or “followers of God” or some variant thereof to describe who we are or what we are to be about. That implies that we are watching, observing, looking and listening to see where Christ leads us, one assumes. 

Are we, though?

Are we truly alert and ready to act when we see, for lack of a better word, a sign from God? Are we truly motivated, charged, energized to get up and follow, to act, to move should we see and hear such a call? What would it take for us to be so prepared and so ready to act?

The trip on foot and by camel from Persia (what we now call Iran) to Palestine is neither short nor easy, and yet these astrologers took it, seemingly without flinching or hesitation, all to pay homage to a child-to-be-king of a foreign nation. What does it take to get us inspired to act? What does it take to get us to do the work of the church, to carry out Christ’s work in God’s world? 

Are we truly watching and listening for the Spirit to do something in our lives, to lead us into something that might even be challenging and difficult? 

Maybe what we need to learn from this final part of the story is that, after all, we could stand to be a little more star-struck.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #152, What Star Is This, With Beams So Bright; #147, The First Nowell; #150, As With Gladness Men of Old

 

Sermon: Home Alone 8: Lost in Jerusalem?

First Presbyterian Church

December 29, 2029, Christmas 1C

Luke 2:41-52

 

Home Alone 8: Lost in Jerusalem?

 

The one account of Jesus’s young life to be found in the canonical gospels is a story that is at first glance remarkable for being rather ordinary on its surface. There’s nothing particularly miraculous or glamorous about it, from our perspective just five days after hearing the Nativity story on Christmas Eve. The context here is twelve years later by which time Mary and Joseph are parents of twelve-year-old Jesus and some younger children, who experience a horrifying moment: their oldest child is apparently lost in the big, frightening city of Jerusalem. Without that context it might as well be a sequel to the Home Alone movies.

Luke tells us the family traveled to Jerusalem every year to observe the Feast of the Passover. This year was no different than the years before, evidently; the family gathered itself up and made its way to Jerusalem, in the company of relatives and other faithful acquaintances, for the Passover observance; they remained in Jerusalem for all the appropriate events of the festival, and when it was all over, they, along with their relatives and fellow travelers, made their way home. All this was very typical of a devout Jewish family of the time.

Only after a day’s return journey towards Nazareth did the story take its unexpected turn. Maybe in our extremely cautious age, where parents can keep children on leashes or attach beepers to them or track them on their iPhones, this story is hard to relate to, but a day into the journey home it became clear that Jesus wasn’t there. He was nowhere to be seen. 

The sense of panic Mary and Joseph must have experienced, on the other hand, is probably not hard for you to imagine. Emotions rise to a fever pitch, desperation sets in. And there’s no 911 to call, no Amber Alerts to issue; he’s just … gone. At last the only answer is for Mary and Joseph to retrace their steps to Jerusalem and try to find the boy.

Jerusalem is a large city, even at the time in which Mary and Joseph are searching. The frustration of wondering how this boy, normally such a good boy, could go off and do something so irresponsible was no doubt mixing with the sheer terror of desperately trying to find the boy before it was … too late. He’s not at the lodging. He’s not at the market.  Where could that boy be???

Finally, after three days of searching, the parents arrive at the Temple. Sure, this was where no doubt the family had spent much of their time during the Passover, but why would Jesus come back here with the festival over? And yet that’s exactly where Jesus was. Home Alone 8: Lost in Jerusalem? Not exactly.

Seated among the teachers in the Temple, far removed from the celebrating crowds that had thronged there only a few days before, was the boy Jesus. Luke tells us he was listening to the teachers and asking them questions, and that those hearing him were extremely impressed, to say the least, by his questions, by his attentiveness, by his intelligence, and by his insight. 

Not surprisingly, though, the parents are not really in the mood to be regaled with stories of their son’s intelligence and perceptiveness. No, the first thing on their minds, perhaps first after OhthanktheLordhe’ssafe, is “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO US???” Luke describes the parents as “astonished,” or “astounded” – but not in a good way. "Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you." Now let’s put that in terms we can understand: Maybe Mary starts Oh, Jesus, how could you put us through this?  Your poor father and I have been searching all over Jerusalem for you, and you’ve just had us worried sick! Now perhaps Joseph steps in with What were you thinking, son? How could you just go off on your own like this? Don’t you know it’s not safe?  

At this point it’s impossible to speculate what kind of response Jesus’s parents expected from him. Maybe Mary and Joseph themselves didn’t even know what to expect, or perhaps they expected no response at all, or maybe they didn’t care as long as he was quiet and did what he was told and took his scolding and didn’t sneak off again. 

They most certainly did not expect the reply they got, though. That much is certain.  “Why were you searching for me? Didn't you know that I had be in my Father’s house?”  Why would you think I’d be anywhere else? The words must have cut like the sharpest of knives. How long had it been since Mary and Joseph thought back to those events of twelve years before, that unplanned journey to Bethlehem, the strange angel apparitions and stars and shepherds? No matter what Mary and Joseph thought, Jesus wasn’t lost in Jerusalem; he was right where he needed to be.

For all the seeming disconnect between parents and child, in the end Jesus was obedient, Luke tells us; he went home with Mary and Joseph, his mother and his earthly father, and if there were any similar incidents in Jesus’s teenage years Luke does not tell us about them.

What we learn of Jesus in this account is disconcerting and disorienting for us. At the age of twelve, on the cusp of manhood in the Jewish tradition, Jesus has made his own declaration that, ultimately, he would be going into his Father’s business. Above all else, this twelve-year-old boy tells us, he is the Son of God; and this above all determines where he must be, what he must do, how he must live. Even as we’re told that Jesus grew up well and was well-regarded by those who knew him or met him, the overriding and unbreakable marker of his life was to be in favor with God, no matter how much his parents might not understand, or his brothers or sisters, or his fellow citizens of Nazareth.  

The biblical scholar R. Alan Culpepper describes two ways of understanding obedience to God, saying:

 

Some define their religious practices with lists of things they may not do: “thou shalt not … “.  Such lists set boundaries, but they do not define goals. A commitment to God that is born of the experience of God’s love and presence is expressed in grateful participation in God’s redemptive work. There are some things we have to do just because of who we are: “I must be about my Father’s business.”

 

 

In the end, that’s what we are given to learn from the youth Jesus. No matter how much others – even one’s own family – might misunderstand or resist, if we are truly to be about our Father’s business, there are things we must do, not because they are written down in a list of rules or held over our heads as threats or dangled before us to entice us towards some reward. 

To be sure, there are plenty of “Christians” who live exactly that way and by that reasoning and are quite eager to enforce those strictures on others. Let us be clear on this one thing: folks who live as “enforcers for Christ” are the ones lost in Jerusalem. That’s not why we do what God calls us to do.

No, we do these things because being a child of God means we do these things – we love God’s children, we care for those poorer than we, we worship when we’d rather be sleeping in, and we teach our children what it means to be a child of God even at the risk of their taking it seriously. To borrow words from our confessional document, A Brief Statement of Faith, we pray without ceasing, we witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, we unmask idolatries in church and culture, we hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and we work with others for justice, freedom, and peace. And we do it because we must, because that’s what it means to be a child of God, and because that’s what it means to be going about our Father’s business.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #143, Angels from the Realms of Glory; Hymn Sing: #144, In the Bleak Winter, #142, 'Twas In the Moon of Wintertime, #132, Good Christian Friends, Rejoice; #---, Child In the Temple; #134, Joy to the World 

Sermon: From ... Where?

First Presbyterian Church

December 22, 2024, Advent 4C

Micah 5:2-4; Luke 1:39-56

 

From...Where?

 

 

Let’s do a little experiment for a moment with this reading from Micah. Imagine for just a moment hearing this:

But you, O Hodgenville of Kentucky,

who are one of the little towns of Kentucky,

from you shall come forth for me

one who is to rule in the United States…

 

For the most part I’d suspect that the largest number of people would respond to such a proclamation with a puzzled expression and a grunted “huh?” For many people it just wouldn’t make any sense at all. They might wonder if Hodgenville was some kind of tobacco-growing town, or if perhaps it was one of the towns hit by that horrible tornado outbreak some years ago.

For some, though, that pronouncement would be freighted with history. You see, Hodgenville, Kentucky holds the distinction of being the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, or at least the closest town to that reported site. There’s a quite nice national historical center set up there that tells you the whole story and includes a replica of the cabin in which he was born. Lincoln, of course, was the sixteenth president of the United States, the president who served through the US Civil War, and who virtually always ends up either no. 1 or no. 2 on any list of the top US presidents in history. For folks who know this connection, the invocation of Hodgenville evokes a significant history and importance.

The parallel is not exact by any means, but perhaps it suggests something of what Micah’s hearers and readers would have experienced at the proclamation found in the first two verses of this reading. The mention of Bethlehem, which Micah even notes is from one of the smaller clans of Judah, would have meant little to, say, the region’s Assyrian foes who dominated Judah and Israel by extracting heavy financial tributes, nor would it have meant much the Babylonian emperors or armies that had hauled off numerous people into exile. It might have sounded vaguely familiar as a central town in the part of Judah that produced much of the region’s wheat, but otherwise, it didn’t mean much, most likely.

But to the people of Israel and Judah, those who knew their history, the name Bethlehem meant much, much more. It was, of course, the town from which David, regarded as the greatest king of Israel, had come. In that light a prophecy that “one who is to rule in Israel” was going to come out of Bethlehem immediately brought up all sorts of memories and associations with the great King David and tremendous expectations for this one whose coming was being proclaimed. 

Verse 4 of this reading only amplifies those expectations, describing the promised ruler as one who “shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,” as one under whom the people “shall live secure,” one who “shall be great to the ends of the earth” and who “shall be the one of peace.” Strong expectations, indeed, in a land that had known mostly foreign domination and exile for many, many years.

Prophetic oracles, such as this one from Micah and others we have heard across this Advent season, gave hope to the peoples of Israel and Judah across exactly those kinds of dark times, and darker times yet to come. The region continued to be dominated by foreign powers until at last the Roman Empire became the ruling outside force in the region, now given the name Palestine and divided up into smaller units for greater control. 

It is in this context that the reading from the gospel of Luke takes place, as Mary comes to meet her relative Elizabeth. Of course, both women are bearers of miraculous children; Elizabeth is soon to deliver John at this point, with her husband’s angel-induced muteness looming in the background, while Mary’s own angel-announced pregnancy is moving along as well. As Mary arrives the Holy Spirit gets busy, and first Elizabeth and then Mary are given things to say. 

Elizabeth’s exultation should not be overlooked; she knows exactly what child Mary is carrying. While she acknowledges this, her blessing is very much for Mary, naming her “blessed among women” and naming Mary’s willingness to believe what she had been instructed by God through Gabriel the angel. 

Mary’s song, on the other hand, is all about the God who is doing all these marvelous things. The “strength” invoked in Micah’s oracle does make an appearance in Mary’s song – “He has shown strength with his arm” – but there’s a lot more about things like mercy in this proclamation; not just in verse 50’s direct claim about God’s mercy for those who fear him or verse 54’s remembrance of mercy, but more indirectly in God’s favor in looking upon “the lowliness of his servant,” or lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry. 

It’s all fine and good, perhaps, until Mary starts singing about things like God bringing down the powerful or sending the rich away empty. Even in a land dominated or occupied by foreign powers, there were still going to be rich people within those occupied borders. Perhaps they got that way by collaborating with the occupiers, or just taking advantage of conditions to get ahead, or who knows how. In any case, such a person would not take this Magnificat as good news. Nor would a person for whom power is life, whatever kind of “throne” they might occupy or seek. For that matter, even “the proud,” however that term might be defined, come under sanction in this song. It's no wonder that even in more recent times authoritarian regimes - even the British empire in the late nineteenth century - have seen fit to ban the reading or speaking or singing of Mary's song, as being too likely to stir up unrest in oppressed populations. Far from the "gentle Mary, meek and mild" of way too many poems and hymns, if you're that kind of person of power or wealth, this woman is nothing less than "scary Mary."

At this point Mary is unlikely to be thinking anything about Bethlehem. She’s from Nazareth, after all. She and Joseph both live there. Nobody has said anything about a great empire-wide census or registration that was going to require folks to get up out of their current dwellings and go back to their ancestral towns and cities. But that decree is coming, and as a result Mary and Joseph (who we will learn is of the lineage of David) will be in Bethlehem by the time this child is born, and prophetic oracles like Micah’s will come into play. 

So many words over so many centuries became attached to this child, the one who ended up born in the seemingly nondescript but historically magnified little town. So much weight of history, so much hope and expectation, so much crying out for relief, for comfort, for mercy. 

We are so often misled about where to seek such things. We live in a society that is not dominated by a foreign power, despite the efforts of some. We still, though, can be easily confused about where to look for hope. We get bamboozled by fame, or the bright lights of the big city, or any number of other willing distractions. We look for answers to our troubles in Washington, or New York, or possibly Los Angeles, and discount with a laugh the idea that anything good could come out of a place like Hodgenville, Kentucky. Or, for that matter, Independence, Kansas. 

God works in the margins. God shows up in the least-expected places. God moves in and through folks from no-account towns, or folks from the “wrong side of the tracks” in the big city, or any number of places that don’t look like much from the outside but have their own hopes and heritage and history. God moves not just in mysterious ways, but in places we don’t remember to look, or don’t choose to look. 

You see, the challenge for us is to remember what to look for rather than getting caught up in the where to look. We need to be looking for the one who stands and feeds the flock in the strength of the Lord. We are challenged to behold the one who looks with favor on the lowly, who shows mercy over the many generations, who brings down the powerful and lifts up the lowly, fills the hungry with good things (and yes, sends the rich away empty), who remembers promises. And that one shows up sometimes in the least-expected places. 

For the little places where God acts, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #349, "Sleepers, Wake!" A Voice Astounds Us; #99, My Soul Gives Glory to My God; #---, With the rising of the sun; #104, O Lord, How Shall I Meet You

Sermon: Rejoice? Now?

First Presbyterian Church

December 15, 2024, Advent 3C

Zephaniah 3:14-20; Isaiah 12:2-6; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18

 

 

Rejoice? Now?

 

 

Today, the third Sunday of Advent, is sometimes known as “Gaudete Sunday.” “Gaudete” is the Latin word for “rejoice,” and has for generations appeared as the first word of the introit of the Latin mass for the day. The appointed lectionary texts for the day tend to reflect that imperative call to “rejoice,” and the procession of purple candles in the Advent wreath is interrupted on this day by a pink candle, suggestive of a slight lift of joy in an otherwise reflective season.

You can hear the rejoicing in at least three of the texts we have heard this morning. Leave it to John the Baptizer, out in the wilderness, to be the exception. You’re not going to look for a call to rejoice in a text that starts with John calling some of his hearers “You brood of vipers!”. Rejoicing isn’t John’s thing; straight-up call to repentance and change of life is his work and he doesn’t let up in the face of anything. The two outer portions of this passage feature John at his harshest. Besides the “brood of vipers” invective in part one, he swats down the “children of Abraham” privilege defense his hearers were likely to claim before they even had a chance to claim it, with the pithy observation that God could raise up “children of Abraham” out of the stones on the ground. Then he conjures up the image of an axe ready to cut down trees that don’t bear fruit. The third part invokes separating wheat and chaff, with the latter consigned to fire.

The middle section might not rise to the level of rejoicing, but it at least contains good instruction to those who would hear. It’s also specific instruction; what the tax collectors were challenged to do was not the same thing as what soldiers were challenged to do. In each case, they were called out for the abuses associated with their profession and told to stop it. For all, the challenge was most basic: share with those who don’t have. Notice that John isn’t telling everyone to give everything away; keep one coat for yourself but give one to the person who doesn’t have one. Not quite rejoicing, but solid instruction to build upon, and potentially a source of joy in the doing.

Meanwhile, the snippet from Paul’s letter to the Philippians, on the other hand, puts the “rejoice” imperative right up front. Notice, though, that this isn’t written as a part of some enthusiastic outburst of praise. No; the way the passage is structured, the call to “rejoice” is but one instruction among many. Paul follows by telling his readers to be gentle, know that the Lord is near, don’t worry about stuff, but pray and make your requests to God with gratitude. The quick sequence of instructions is wrapped up with a promise, and a beautiful one at that: “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hears and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

This kind of thing happens pretty often in Paul's letters. Yes, there are some stretches of harsher critique to be found, but the patches of instruction and correction seem fairly frequently to lead to this kind of encouragement, or at the minimum a generous blessing offered by Paul for the readers and hearers of the epistle in question. For the Philippians, a church with which Paul seemed to have no particular disagreements at the time of writing this letter, Paul is free to offer this moment of rejoicing. 

Today's canticle (in place of a psalm reading) from the prophet Isaiah, begins with calls for trusting in and giving thanks to God, but at the last the prophet cannot help but break into song, a call to break forth into song at the greatness of God. It's the kind of thing that happens reasonably often in Isaiah's work, moments of hope and joy (and even singing) amidst the darker prophetic moments that make up more of the book.

But for the real outburst of rejoicing on this Gaudete Sunday, you have to go to that reading from Zephaniah, another one of those short prophetic writings from the tail end of the Hebrew Scripture we find in our Bibles. What we have here is the end of that book, and what a passage it is! Amidst all the calls to sing and shout and rejoice comes the word that “The Lord, the King of Israel, is in your midst” in verse 15, and “The Lord, your God, is in your midst” in verse 17. And look at the promises in this finale; 

§  God will take away the judgments against you (15); 

§  Remove disaster, so that you will not be judged for it (18);

§  Deal with your oppressors, save the lame, gather the outcast (19);

§  Bring you home, make you renowned and praised, restore your fortunes (20).

It is big, it is bold, it is exuberant – the whole image that God “will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival” in verses 17-18 is just wonderful to contemplate. It is a beautiful and exuberant song of rejoicing that is so utterly and completely out of place in the context of the rest of this book. 

As short as Zephaniah is, I don’t think I have time to read the entire book here in the sermon. So to give you an idea, here are a few choice moments from the book. Take the very first chapter. Verse one is an introductory statement, and then come verses 2-6:

I will utterly sweep away everything from the face of the earth, says the Lord. I will sweep away humans and animals; I will sweep away the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. I will make the wicked stumble. I will cut off humanity from the face of the earth, says the Lord. I will stretch out my hand against Judah, and against all the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will cut off from this place every remnant of Baal and the name of the idolatrous priests; those who bow down on the roofs to the host of the heavens; those who bow down and swear to the Lord, but also swear by Milcom; those who have turned back from following the Lord, who have not sought the Lord or inquired of him. 

 

Encouraging, yes?

How about verses 17-18 from that same chapter: 

I will bring such distress upon people that they shall walk like the blind; because they have sinned against the Lord, their blood shall be poured out like dust, and their flesh like dung. Neither their silver nor their gold will be able to save them on the day of the Lord’s wrath; in the fire of his passion the whole earth shall be consumed; for a full, a terrible end he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth.

 

Chapter 2 directs the same kind of thing against Israel’s enemies, and chapter 3 turns the focus back to Jerusalem before the lift at the end of the chapter. But hopefully you get the idea. You can see, hopefully, just how jolting that song of rejoicing at the end is in the context of all that has come before. It’s jolting enough that some scholars are convinced that 3:14-20 was not original to Zephaniah but added by a later editor. 

Part of the uncertainty has to do with whether Zephaniah was written while Israel was still in exile in Babylon, or after they had returned to the the barren and broken-down land of Israel. Either way, neither is a situation that suggests rejoicing. In the one, you can only dream of home from far away; in the other, you can only dream of home even though you are home. 

And yet, whichever bleak and seemingly hopeless situation the people were in, the song is of rejoicing. The rejoicing doesn’t wait; rejoicing trusts in the promises of God, the goodness of God, the love of God, the nature of God, and takes assurance that the deliverance of God will come. 

It’s not unrelated to why this particular Sunday, “Gaudete Sunday,” happens now, before we get to the end of Advent. A few years ago in a previous congregation, when we first began to use banners in worship for Advent, a member asked why the “rejoice” banner came on this third Sunday, before the “behold” banner that was to be hung the next Sunday. It turns out our rejoicing isn’t based on seeing; rejoicing comes by faith. It comes by trust. It comes from dwelling in God and knowing God’s promises for us, God’s love for us

I don’t quite think our situation is quite so bleak and desperate as the one in which Zephaniah’s original hearers lived, whether they were in exile or returned from it. It ain’t great, though. And yet the exaltation to rejoice, the invitation to rejoice, even the command to rejoice isn’t nullified by any adverse circumstances. We rejoice in God not because of any one thing we see, but because of who God is: a God faithful and just to forgive us our sins, a God who love us enough to rejoice over us with loud singing, a God who fulfills promises, a God who delivers. In the goodness and faithfulness of God, the God who shows us the Promised One coming, we rejoice. And not just on Gaudete Sunday.

For a God in whom to rejoice, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #105, People, Look East; #96, On Jordan’s Bank the Baptist’s Cry; #---, How then shall we live; #92, While We Are Waiting, Come

 

Sermon: The Work of Refining

First Presbyterian Church

December 8, 2021, Advent 2C

Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 1:68-79; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6

 

 

The Work of Refining

 

This Christmas finds us a rather bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without. Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night. Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities. And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and goodwill can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some utopian. If we don’t have goodwill toward men in this world, we will destroy ourselves by our misuse of our own instruments and our own power.

 

 

These are the opening words of a sermon preached by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., during the Christmas season of 1967. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that they have every bit as much relevance now as then; if anything, the “paralyzing fears” are perhaps more intense and more present than ever. War has not gone away; violent attacks across the world jolt our sense of security; even the most sober-minded and emotionally restrained individual has to consider the possibility that, no matter where they go, a mass shooting could break out. No, we are not at peace, within nor without.

If we turn to the scriptures seeking consolation, today’s offerings are a mixed bag. The reading from Philippians, one of Paul’s more effusive and loving greetings found at the beginning of his letters, seems a cheery prospect, as Paul rejoices in the Philippians, giving thanks for them, saying he “always prays with joy” for them, expressing confidence that “he who began a good work among you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus,” and so forth. It does, though, take a slightly less joyful turn by its end, when Paul expresses the hope that “you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,” which carries the implication that something will put that purity and blamelessness to the test.  

The other readings offered for the day put that difficulty, or at least potential difficulty, more in the foreground. The gospel reading for today from Luke 3 features John the Baptist beginning his work of stirring up trouble, while citing the words of Isaiah about one crying in the wilderness and rough places being cleared out. On one level, such a word - "the crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all people will see God's salvation" sound hopeful enough, but there's a lot of demanding work to be done before that happens. 

The morning’s canticle offered in the place of the psalm, from Luke 1, takes us back to John’s father, Zechariah, and his prophetic exaltation upon John’s birth. The story of Zechariah and Elizabeth is a heck of a story itself, as two senior citizens are jolted out of their comfortable if lonely lives by the announcement of a son to be born to them. When Zechariah’s doubts come tumbling out of his mouth in unguarded fashion, he is struck mute by the heralding angel, his tongue to be released only upon his son’s birth and naming. 

The words Zechariah utters are words of rejoicing, yes, but that rejoicing in the gloriousness of God and celebrating of the newly-born child is underscored with danger. God has been required (yet again) to redeem his people, to save them from enemies and those who hate them; the newly born son John will be called upon to give light to"those living in darkness and in the shadow of death.” This newly-born herald of the Messiah is not being born into a peaceful and calm world, and the word John will be charged to bring (as we see in Luke 3) will not be an easy word to bear.

And then, there is this passage from Malachi. Yikes.

It sounds promising at first. The messenger will come (we Christians have tended to interpret this a prophecy of John the Baptist), and then the Lord will come to his temple. Indeed, the one “whom you deaire” is coming! Joyful stuff indeed, and entirely suitable to our celebratory impulses as the day of Christmas approaches.

But then, the ominous question: “But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears?”

This passage makes up one of the familiar early sequences of the oratorio Messiah, by George Frideric Handel, that is often heard from large choirs this time of year. Handel, of course, is working from a different translation so the text will be different, but he clearly gets the difficulty and portent of this passage – [sing] “But who may abide the day of his coming, and shall stand when he appeareth?” Not a song of comfort.

It’s as if Malachi has taken the encouragement of the first verses and turned it on his head. The one in whom we delight is coming … and we cannot possibly endure it? 

Novelist and Presbyterian pastor Frederick Buechner got at something like this in his book The Alphabet of Grace, writing about doubt:

Not the least of my problems is that I can hardly even imagine what kind of an experience a genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be. Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.

 

We have, in modern Christianity and particularly in modern American Christianity, become rather saturated with the notion that Jesus is our buddy, our best friend, maybe even our boyfriend in some settings. The ancients would have been utterly baffled by this idea. For all that Jesus undoes our understanding of God by coming down to walk among us in human form, what does not change is that God is a mighty God, powerful, fearsome, even terrible. To be before the face of such a God was not, in the mind of the ancients, something a human could expect to withstand without being fearfully and terribly changed by the experience, even in the face of a God who is also loving and merciful and compassionate. The love and mercy do not erase the fearfulness and terribleness. 

What comes next is also a challenge: (from the Common English Bible)

He is like the refiner's fire or the cleaner's soap. He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver. He will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. They will belong to the Lord, presenting a righteous offering.

 

Being refined by fire and purified by the harshest soap there is, again, seems in discord with the Lord in whom we delight appearing in his temple, and certainly seems at odds with the shepherds and angels and Baby Jesus and all we associate with Christmas.

And what does all that have to do with peace?

Perhaps it has to do with the things that prevent peace.

We know we are not at peace. We know ourselves, when we’re honest to be fallen, to be corrupted, even if we don’t use the theological language. We know ourselves to be sinful. And that sin, no matter how great or small, leaves us unable to know genuine peace.

We cannot stand before God in that state. But who may abide the day of his coming?

But we are not destroyed, Frederick Buechner’s concern notwithstanding. The Lord is like a refiner’s fire. A metal like silver, or gold, was in those times purified by fire. The silver or gold was changed, but it was not destroyed. The corruptions and impurities were removed, purged away by the fire. The worst stains were purged away by fuller’s soap. As in the reading from Philippians, we are made ready to be "pure and blameless" after all.

So it is with us, in the day of the Lord. 

If we truly seek the child of the manger, we cannot avoid the purifying and refining God. As much as it seems a paradox, it is all part of the same package. The terrible and fearsome purging away of our fallenness and corruption is that end to which the babe of Bethlehem takes us, even if we dare not contemplate it. And this is our deliverance, this is our hope, and yes, this is our peace, even amidst the refiner’s fire.

For the refiner’s fire and the fuller’s soap, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise noted): #666, O Splendor of God's Glory Bright; #109, Blest Be the God of Israel; #---, The Lord began a work in John; #106, Prepare the Way, O Zion 

Sermon: Advent, Part II

First Presbyterian Church

December 1, 2024, Advent 1C

Jeremiah 33:14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13; Luke 21:25-36

 

Advent, Part II

 

 

Well, here we are again. At the inauguration of a new season of the church, even a new year in the life of the church, with the trappings of the season now on display in our sanctuary, somehow we’re right back where we were two weeks ago; instead of looking backward to the birth of Jesus, as Advent is popularly portrayed, we are looking ahead, into the same apocalyptic discourse we covered then, albeit written by a different gospel writer. Advent does both, we are reminded, and as the scriptures of the season are typically arranged, it looks forward before it turns its gaze to the past. Part II comes before Part I, you might say. It’s a season Doctor Who would love.

Before we plunge into Luke’s version of Jesus’s apocalyptic discourse, it might help to step back into the prophetic literature – not for the apocalyptic predecessors of Jesus’s speech, but to a word of hope given in the midst of an apocalypse in progress. 

For one often called the “weeping prophet,” and one whose name was turned into a descriptive term for the kind of accusatory tirades against wrong that pepper his writing, Jeremiah turns out to have a way with words of hope as well. Chapters 30-33 of this prophetic volume have been known as the “Little Book of Comfort” since Martin Luther’s time, for good reason; amidst the storm of prophetic outrage and the devastation of prophetic warnings fulfilled (and then some), these three chapters speak of comfort, based on the needed reminder that even in the worst of situations the Lord is still acting. 

This particular passage gets its place in Advent mostly because of its promise of “a righteous Branch to spring up for David” who “shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” It’s not hard to leap to a conclusion (from a much later perspective) that this must somehow be a reference to Jesus, born of the house and lineage of David as the gospels tell us. There are two problems with this; one, it’s misguided to assume that this is the statement Jeremiah means to make, and two, it distracts us from the meat of this passage, the part that actually makes demands upon us.

It is today far too easy to dismiss the word “righteousness” in modern thought. We are frankly more likely to hear the word in combination with the prefix “self-” as a criticism than to hear it on its own. Pastor and biblical commentator Deborah A. Block reminds us that this is a key concept of the coming of Christ as portrayed in Advent: 

…”righteousness” is one of the first words of the language of Advent. In Matthew’s gospel, “righteousness” is Jesus’s first word, spoken to John the Baptist: “Let it be so now … in this way to fulfill all righteousness” (Mt. 3:15). Righteousness is not an attitude or an absolute standard. It refers to conduct in accord with God’s purposes. It is doing the good thing and the God thing: right doing as opposed to wrongdoing, and doing as opposed to being. Self-righteousness is the inflated ego of self-approval; righteousness is the humble ethic of living toward others in just and loving relationships.[1]

 

Here is the challenge for us in Advent, particularly on this first Sunday when apocalyptic stuff gets thrown at us again. 

The language of this reading from Luke is the kind of stuff that has been lifted by writers and others over the decades to make a quick buck off a best-selling book (or in recent years movies as well). The images are fearful enough; the suggestion of “signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars” is ominous and foreboding; the suggestion of natural disaster run rampant resonates too easily in our own time. After the images of fear and destruction comes the line, found in very nearly these words in Mark’s “little apocalypse” from two weeks ago, that should be the impetus for our reassurance: “Then they shall see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.” 

It should be noted that this expectation has been baked into the church's thought since its very earliest days. The short excerpt from Paul's first letter to the church in Thessalonika demonstrates this expectation in a rather matter-of-fact fashion, as Paul simply prays for his hearers and readers there that their hearts might be strengthened "that you may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints." 

Back to Luke, what follows after all the signs and disasters is the part that all those Left Behind books and movies don’t include: “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” The illustration of the fig tree that follows is one we can grasp well enough if we substitute a tree more familiar in these parts; when it sprouts leaves and turns green, you know what season is coming. Likewise, when we see these signs that have been laid out in this chapter, we know that “the kingdom of God is near.” 

To borrow a line from Mark 13, all those signs are only “the beginning of the birth pangs.” And Luke, like Mark, makes sure to remind us that everybody on the earth will see it come – no getting lifted away to miss the bad stuff. And yet the directions are the same: be on guard, keep watch, be awake. Pray for strength to endure it all and to be ready to “stand before the Son of Man.” After all, the very word “apocalypse” that we have so associated with destruction and chaos is in fact derived from a Greek word that means “unveiling,” “revealing,” or “revelation.” That’s how that last book of the New Testament got its name. And this reminds us that for all the fearful imagery in these apocalyptic readings, the point of it all is revealing – revealing the Son of Man, revealing the kingdom of God coming near. Revelation, not destruction.

Here’s where Jeremiah’s words connect. To live in the righteousness of God – not that nasty self-righteousness we rightly condemn, but the real thing – is going to be the thing that keeps us ready and mindful and watchful and aware as the signs of the approaching kingdom of God keep piling up. And we need to be reminded of this now, right at the beginning of Advent, lest we mistakenly start to think that the coming birth of the Messiah is the end of the story.

What we commemorate in Advent, the birth for which we prepare and celebrate, is a beginning, not an end. And for that matter, the events of Holy Week that come along in a few months, even including the Resurrection we celebrate on Easter Sunday, are not an end either. Seeing the working of God in the world will require great endurance on our part, doing justice and righteousness and being on guard and keeping watch while the signs of the times keep unfolding. 

Another biblical commentator, Michal Beth Dinkler of Yale University, summarizes our task as the season of Advent leads us towards the Christmas event:

As we move into the Christmas season, let us not get so myopic in single-mindedly over-preparing for Christmas that we forget God’s vision for the world — a vision that is God’s to control, a vision that is far broader and more expansive than either/or thinking can allow. What is at stake is not just another annual celebration or making Christmas memories with friends and family. What is at stake is the coming of the kingdom of heaven, which, Jesus reminds us, is both already and not yet here.[2]

 

Even that birth we will celebrate ere long points to this coming and here and now and not-yet kingdom of God. For all our sentimentality over the event, it is the challenge that follows that we need to take from and live into during this and every Advent season. Living in God’s justice and righteousness; that’s how we remain on guard and keep watch for the coming of the Son of Man, in power and great glory.

For even the challenging and difficult words of scripture that are, after all, words of hope, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless indicated): #93, Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates; #87, Comfort, Comfort Now My People; #---, For lo! the day will surely come; #102, Savior of the Nations, Come

 

 

---

[1] Deborah A. Block, “Pastoral Perspective” commentary on Jeremiah 33:14-16, in Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary, Year C, Volume 1, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009, 6. 

[2] Michal Beth Dinkler, Commentary on Luke 21:25-36, Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-of-advent-3/commentary-on-luke-2125-36-4 (accessed November 30, 2024).