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

First Presbyterian Church

December 21, 2025, Advent 4A

Luke 1:18-25

 

Advent Disruption: An Unexpected Calling;

or, The Silent Partner

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

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

 

Sermon: 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: 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 afterthoughts: The Deceptiveness of Light

What came into being in him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

--John 1: 3-5 (NRSV) 

"Very well then, we must corrupt it. No doubt you often practice transforming into an angel of light as a parade ground exercise, now is the time to do it in the face of the Enemy."

-Screwtape to Wormwood, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis

My sermon on John 1 today got hijacked along the way by the sentences above quoted from verses 3-5. Mostly this was because, as noted early in the sermon itself, I found myself wondering a lot about the particular ritual that closes so many Christmas Eve services involving the congregation holding up lighted candles in a darkened sanctuary. As written there, in cold hard computer-screen text, it doesn't look very impressive, does it? In practice, people tend to be transfixed. If other pastors are like me, they might worry that nothing else from the service will stay with anyone in the congregation once that's all over.

I couldn't let the sermon pass without noting how that light/dark dichotomy gets misused to treat, say, darkness of skin (or any other darkness) as tantamount to darkness of spirit or absence of light. There's a long history of that, behind justifying slavery and a whole lot of other civil rights abuses. What I didn't have time to get to, on the other hand, is the observation that the opposite can also be true; lightness of skin (or any other kind of lightness) as automatically good or perfect or right or holy. And goodness knows, that's just not true.

The quote lifted above from The Screwtape Letters riffs on Paul's admonition to the Corinthians about false teachers and deceivers. Goodness knows there's enough of that among us in the church, frankly pointing supposed followers of Christ towards all manner of falsehood and wrong theology and frankly evil-doing. We're only four days away from the anniversary of one of the most egregious and grotesque examples of such falseness in the 'Christian nationalism' that drove many participants in the attack on the Capitol.

'Christian nationalism' is particularly pernicious at the moment, but it is hardly the only false light luring people away from genuine faith, is it? The prosperity gospel has been eroding the church for decades. The strictures of "biblical manhood" and "biblical womanhood" have been breaking lives and hearts for at least as long if not longer. (Mandatory plug for Kristin Kobes du Mez's Jesus and John Wayne and Beth Allison Barr's The Making of Biblical Womanhood on those subjects.) The false lights, and the fake angels of light pushing people towards those false lights, are thick on the ground these days, and some of them are mistaken for real followers of Christ way too easily.

Light, indeed, can be deceiving, even without such false prophets and wrongdoers posing as angels of light. To bring in my favorite bit of Christmas-season public theology, A Charlie Brown Christmas, where do the brightest lights appear in that little parable? I think one might have to point to CB and Linus's journey to the Christmas tree lot, the one with all the big shiny aluminum Christmas trees. Remember the big spotlights that led the two to the spot? 

Or one might think of the brightly lit stage with all the kids dancing in lieu of rehearsing for the Christmas play:

This one stands out most in contrast to that same stage when Linus finally steps up with Luke 2 in answer to Charlie Brown's desperation:

John's seemingly simple dichotomy masks the much more demanding task of discernment that we face: which light is the true light? Seeking the "true light" as John calls it in verse 9 requires sorting out a lot of fake or artificial light. John doesn't really address that so much, outside of course of spending his entire gospel trying to portray that Light.

Maybe the difference is that the "true light" is the one that actually does shine in the darkness, that isn't unplugged or turned off so easily. The "true light" is the one that the darkness did not, could not, cannot extinguish.When other false lights have shorted out or burned away, the true light still shines. 

One of my former seminary professors, when the occasion arose, frequently (OK, almost always) pronounced a benediction that included something along the lines of this: "and may light, love's own crucified, risen, incarnate light guide each and everyone of us out of every darkness and all the way home." What does a "crucified, risen, incarnate Light" look like? Maybe more to the point: what does a "crucified, risen, incarnate Light" not look like? Perhaps in the end this is the thing that points us towards the true light and away from all the parade-ground devils practicing their transformation-tricks on gullible souls.

What am I listening to?

 The title question popped up on Facebook a couple of days ago (I think?), from a colleague/friend asking what music others were listening to right now. I did not answer at the moment, being a bit busy and distracted (my default state these days). When I had a moment to stop and check myself I didn't answer either. I still haven't, mostly because when I finally put my finger on the music that was most occupying my ears and my mind right now, neither of them seemed to be a "jam," and the question did ask what was one's "current jam." Making a currant jelly joke seemed a reach, so I left it.

In fact there are two things that have been lodging themselves on my sonic devices in particular - one which has been occupying my mind for quite a while, and the other coming to the fore more recently, apparently tied to the advent of the Advent/Christmas cycle now upon the church. 

When last I darkened the door of this blog I confessed to an ongoing obsession with the late piano sonatas of Franz Schubert. At that time his penultimate sonata, no. 20, was foremost in my ear and mind. Since then my listening has broadened...all the way to his last sonata, no. 21. In particular the second movement has taken hold. (Fair warning: this movement itself is about ten minutes long, although obviously I consider such minutes to be well spent.)

You will note that this movement ...  is ... slow. Now this is not itself so odd; your average Classic/Romantic era piano sonata has a slow movement. What's odd here is that in this particular case, the first movement of Schubert's sonata is also rather slow, and two slow movements back-to-back is less typical.

Also, this movement is not only slow, it is quite spare, for lack of a better word. Aside from the slightly faster and somewhat fuller middle section, this movement is joltingly spacious in its texture. Rather than being spun out in a line (a not-atypical way to talk about musical melodies or motives), these notes and figures seem almost suspended in empty space. Laden with the burden of pandemic time, it almost sounds as if the notes are socially distanced.

Even when things seem to get busier, the musical activity often consists of repeated notes or figures, which manages to sound busy without necessarily sounding full, at least as Schubert deploys them. And even then, after what passes for great agitation in this movement, the music ultimately returns to the arrestingly spare sonic space of the first section, with slight tweaks of harmony and rhythm,  the emptiness of notes and motifs hanging from gently swaying mobiles in a darkened room. It is not the sound of silence - that is Simon & Garfunkel's territory - but perhaps it is the sound of quiet - quiet in the way Frederick Buechner describes a room where people are not speaking; the room is darkened, perhaps, but not empty. 

I hesitate to guess why this movement has latched on to me of late. Maybe in the deafening emptiness of pandemic-tide the genuine quiet of the movement provides sanctuary. Maybe I'm just really geeked by Mitsuko Uchida's interpretation of the sonata. Maybe it's just the pleasure of ten minutes that invite me not to be overwhelmed or ragged or confronted with the endless rounds of I don't know how to do this that constitute so many of my days in this time. Or maybe it simply invites me in the direction of mystery, and some part of me that is normally shouted down and drowned out sneaks into my consciousness through it.

The second, more recent, more seasonal, and shorter fascination of late is a more modern composition, by an American named Daniel Pinkham. It is the second movement of his Christmas Cantata, a setting of the ancient text "O magnum mysterium." You might notice some similarities to the sonata movement among the obvious differences. 

I have had the intense pleasure of singing this work a couple of times. "Spare" and "spacious" are fitting adjectives here also, and the hints of medievalism add to the effect. This is a movement to tax the breath control of the finest choral singers and brass players, and the sheer length of notes makes more space rather than filling it. 

The effect is, to be sure, deepened by those initial words of the text - O magnum mysterium, "o great mystery." The hearer is led directly into that contemplation, in this case the mystery of the Nativity and Incarnation. The mystery does not avoid the seemingly ludicrous; barn animals the first witnesses of the infant Messiah. There is a thickening of the music as the Blessed Virgin gets her shout-out, a build to a volume climax spiced with discordant intervals and the long sustained notes underneath it all interrupted for a fraction of a moment, and yet at the last it all collapses in slow motion back into the space, the quiet, repeated motifs from the brass and organ strung together and fading away, to one last unresolving chord. 

It is a text for the Nativity, but musically it is all Advent - waiting, quiet, unbearable anticipation. It is much shorter than the Schubert sonata movement, but it is still music that demands time. Somehow, I guess this is something I need in some way or other. 

Anyway, that's what I'm listening to.

Overlooked Christmas hymns

Ugh, I've become desperate enough to resort to a listicle.

Hopefully it will be at least a somewhat thought-provoking listicle, though. Having now passed through a Christmas season worth of Sundays, i.e. no more opportunities for the corporate singing of Christmas "carols" and songs, I'm left to wonder at what I included that possibly not a lot of other pastors/churches did, what I didn't manage to work in, and what I might never get to in whatever length of pastoral career I might have.

So, without further apology, five hymns of the Christmas season you might not have sung:

5) "From Heaven above to earth I come." Martin Luther, for pete's sake. It's an interesting hymn in that it moves from angelic proclamation to human response. Musically, the VOM HIMMEL HOCH tune is pretty sturdy and maybe not some people's ideal of Christmas Eve, but there's always the Sunday after.

4) "It came upon the midnight clear." Maybe this seems an odd inclusion, but somehow it feels like it's always the first to go, so to speak. In some ways the reference to Christmas is pretty indirect: aside from the angels and their song, there's not necessarily a lot of obvious Christmas stuff in it. What it does is bring that message - "peace on the earth, good will to all" - forward to and through a world that has known more of suffering and wrong than our Christmas services tend to acknowledge, and that makes it worth holding on to.

3). "On Christmas night all Christians sing." For an old English carol (some of which can be pretty trippy and obscure), this hymn actually does some decent theology. It takes up the subject of sin and our deliverance from it and the new life that comes out of that deliverance, things that are often overlooked at this time of year.

2) "Of the Father's love begotten." I'm guessing that not all congregations (or their pastors) are super comfortable with singing a chant tune, one that is typically rendered in an unmetered fashion even in Protestant hymnals. It's a shame to miss this one, though. It touches on the typical Christmas-story stuff but also soars heavenward in its exultation of the One born "the world's Redeemer." Perhaps the most outright beautiful imagery and description of any Christmas hymn I know.

1) "Who would think that what was needed." Much more recent than the above selections, this John L. Bell/Graham Maule text plays wonderfully (as its title suggests) with the upside-down nature of the Christmas event. The final stanza also invites reflection on our current, progressed-but-not-necessarily-improved state, and brings that surprise to us into our very current lives.

All of the above are in Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal. I have absolutely no doubt that there are other such not-so-well-known Christmas hymns out there that are, in fact, not so well known to me. But this simply comes from my own experience as hopefully a prompt to reflect on what the hymnody of the church has to offer this time of year, besides those that have become so familiar as to be almost meaningless.

Ironically, the image comes from a blog entry from Concordia Publishing House, a couple of years ago, doing the very same thing I just did. Two of the same hymns are included: "From Heaven Above" and "Of the Father's Love Begotten."

Dear Pastor: Advent hymns

Note: more illness, more interruptions, and some major ones coming along in the future. But for now, plugging away, and trying to find something else to think about...

I suppose, depending on the church you attend, that either it has been Christmas for a couple of weeks now, or it's not Christmas yet.

This is a bit tongue-in-cheek, of course. Christmas is on December 25, most churches have some sort of service on Christmas Eve, and that's how the liturgical calendar frequently used in mainline churches draws it up. The four Sundays prior to Christmas Eve constitute the season of Advent, registered as a two-sided time of preparation; for the birth of the Christ child at Christmas, and for the coming return and reign of Christ for eternity.

It is possible, however, that the music congregations sing might not - not quite - reflect this particular liturgical orientation.

It's just a guess, mind you, but I'm going to wager that guess that some of you, even in seriously mainline churches, have started seeing some decidedly non-Advent hymns slip into worship by now. Dare I say, quite possibly, that maybe some of you sang Christmas carols this morning? Or maybe even last Sunday morning? Again, just a guess.

You're probably expecting some sort of argument (or screed, depending on your opinion) about why churches shouldn't jump the gun on Christmas carols. Or possibly you're making the argument in your head, rehearsing it for when you get the chance to spill it, that there simply aren't enough worthwhile Advent hymns to sing for four whole weeks, and "jumping the gun" is simply a necessity.

First of all, I have to say I can't buy the latter argument, at least not if your church has Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal (or its ecumenical counterpart). They're not all prime, but you can make it through four weeks of Advent on the Advent hymns it offers (especially if you have the wit to break up "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" and its seven verses over two or even three spots in your service, especially on the Sunday of Advent that falls on December 17, 23, or somewhere in between.

However, I'm going to go a different, I think, route with this question. Ultimately, the question of how much Advent hymnody to sing or how soon to jump on the Christmas carol bandwagon is probably best not addressed in isolation. Rather, it should be a part - one part - of a much broader question about how a church approaches the whole season.

A couple of weeks ago this article (over a year old) somehow popped up on my Facebook feed. One doesn't have to take the positions put forth by the visiting couple in the article to open up some fairly serious questions about how the church participates in the season that is currently underway. Indeed, the very identity of the season opens the question: is this the "Christmas season"? Or is it really Advent? And no matter how we answer the question verbally, what, for example, does our sanctuary say about how we answer the question? Even if we exhaust the full complement of Advent hymns in our hymnal, is their message getting lost amidst the wreaths and Christmas tree (even if it is decorated solely with "chrismons" - and what exactly are those supposed to be anyway?) and all the trappings that look like a pale imitation of the local shopping center? (As for the "Chrismon tree" business, am I the only person who gets the sinking suspicion that it was invented as a backdoor excuse to put a Christmas tree in the sanctuary?)

Do we, in short, send a mixed message in what our congregation (or especially a visitor) sees and sings? And what purpose is served in looking like a pale imitation of the mall? Is it possible that what we do with everything in our church during this season - not just the songs we sing, but what we show the world in our place of worship - might be worth reconsidering?

Is this the only visual evidence of Advent in your church?

Note: in the interest of full disclosure, I have recently written a batch of hymns for Advent, which can be found here, here, here, and here; an accompanying hymn for Christmas Eve is here.

When memory attacks

So I suppose this post is a companion piece to this one from almost five years ago.

I'm not sure why -- whether it be the usual stresses of the season, amplified by many pastoral care needs; being rather sick, such that tending those needs becomes unwise or even dangerous; feeling the strain of relationships fading or failing across time and distance; the daily soul-crushing quality of life in 2017; strangely fluctuating weather; or who knows what -- I suddenly started talking about my mother yesterday in a mini-sermon.

We had a "jazz evensong" at the church yesterday afternoon (not really an evensong in the formal sense, but let it go) and, in the spirit of jazz, I concluded my brief reflection should be improvised. I had some basic ideas going in, but I wanted to try to respond to the seasonal tunes played by the quartet in "real time," so to speak.

I'm not fond of unscripted sermons (and I am wildly hacked off by the smug condescension of those preacher-types who insist that memorized sermons are the only way to go; if I'd been able to memorize that much I'd be a singer or actor, or both, and neither musicology nor preaching would ever have crossed my path). The one time I tried to do so, the sermon went twice as long as it should have. And don't even start with that Holy Spirit crap; if the Holy Spirit only "comes upon you" once a week, for an hour on Sunday morning, you seriously need to re-examine your faith.

But, for this occasion, a meditation that was necessarily going to be brief, it seemed worth a shot.

The basics were easy enough to start with -- a lot of popular Xmas tunes (not Christmas carols, but the more secular stuff) have a fairly deep streak of melancholy in them. That led to an o.k. reflection about how this particular season can be deeply painful for some, but in some ways we only harm ourselves if we can't at least acknowledge the grief or sorrow even as we celebrate the joy of the Nativity. Not going to enter it into any preaching contests (especially since it wasn't written down or recorded), but it was, I think, working for the occasion.

Then, suddenly, I was talking about my mother.

You see, she died suddenly twenty-eight years ago today.

I told that story about as much as possible eight years ago, in one of those Facebook notes that I would occasionally write before I discovered blog sites and headed off into the fool's errand of seminary and this regularly-remade blog. I can't say much has changed. As much as I blanch to admit it, there are some years where the anniversary slips by almost unnoticed. Then there are years, like this one, where it smacks me in the face out of nowhere, in the middle of ruminating about melancholy Christmas songs.

I guess I'm caught this time by our relentless drive and unflagging energy to suppress memory that we don't want to recall. We can bury it and push it away and consign it to its place in the murky and unwanted past...until we can't.

Churches do that too, on a much larger scale. We studiously avoid reflecting on the blood on our hands over decades or even centuries, until #metoo or #blacklivesmatter or Roy Moore inevitably shines that infrared or whatever on us that shows the blood we thought we had wiped away ages ago. And it's not just any one branch; mainline church folk owned slaves and oppressed and abused women and settled themselves on land stolen from the native peoples who had lived there for centuries every bit as much as more "evangelical" types did.

Memory is unpredictable. Maybe it's just the not-quite-flu-but-bad-enough bug talking, or other general sources of melancholy, or just the unquenchable need for memory -- even the nasty ones -- to assert itself and force me to look it in the eye and acknowledge its existence, its part-of-me-ness, when I just want to get well and get ready for Sunday. But even if twenty-eight is not a round number, that memory of loss and ongoing absence is claiming my attention this year. I don't quite understand what its plans are for me, as the day winds to its close. But it his here, and it is there, and there is nothing to do but ride through it.

Sermon: The Refugee Jesus

Grace Presbyterian Church

January 1, 2017, Christmas 2A

Matthew 2:13-23

The Refugee Jesus

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

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

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

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

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

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

O sisters too, how may we do,

For to preserve this day

This poor youngling for whom we sing,

Bye, bye, lully lullay?

Herod the king, in his raging,

Charged he hath this day

His men of might in his own sight

All the young children to slay.

That woe is me, poor child, for thee,

And ever mourn and may

For thy parting neither say nor sing

Bye, bye, lully, lullay.

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

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

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

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

Thanks be to God. Amen.

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

#113 Angels We Have Heard on High

#147 The First Nowell

#154 Jesus Entered Egypt

#133 O Come, All Ye Faithful

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

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