Sermon: Of Water and Spirit

Grace Presbyterian Church

January 10, 2016, Baptism of the Lord C

Luke 3:15-17, 20-21; Acts 8:14-17

Of Water and Spirit

Well, if it wasn’t clear before, it is now. Christmas is over.

The greenery is gone, no more poinsettias, and those wandering wise men have completed their journey from the narthex to the nativity, to their ultimate destination: the worship committee storage room. All of the visible symbols are gone.

The way the liturgical calendar falls this year is a bit unusual, in that the turnaround from Advent/Christmas to Lent is pretty brief: Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent, is actually one month from today, on February 10. It’s an early-Easter year, with that pinnacle holiday of the Christian year falling on March 27.

As a result, this in-between season is pretty brief. It would be fairly easy to check out for a few Sundays as a pastor, to “just get by” until Ash Wednesday and gear up for the season of Lent.

That would be easy, but I think we would be missing something if I did that.

Let us look for a moment at how this in-between season begins and ends. The Advent-Christmas cycle ends with the observance of Epiphany, in which the church commemorates the visit of the wise men, or magi, to pay homage to the child Jesus. We observed that event Wednesday evening in a small service. Perhaps the main “takeaway” from Epiphany is that it represents a particular manifestation, a particular recognition of God, in this case in Jesus, the child, to whom those magi came by following what might best be labeled a divinely-appointed star. The Epiphany story, found in Matthew 2, stands out in the broader Advent-Christmas cycle as a revelation particularly directed to the Gentiles, not to others in the Jewish population into which Jesus was born. Despite the meager appearance of a child born in an out-of-the-way place, those sages knew enough and recognized enough to understand that they were in the presence of something divine.

On the other end of this mini-season, on the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday, is that strange event known as the Transfiguration. In that event, told from Luke 9 this year, Jesus goes up a mountain with a small group of his disciples, and while there, Jesus is transfigured – his appearance altered, marked by dazzling brightness – and Moses and Elijah appear with him. Strange, to be sure, but again the kind of thing one might possibly expect when dealing with a divine figure.

Now, looking at today’s readings, maybe we can see something that might represent a theme we can develop. Perhaps the story of Jesus’s baptism, as told by Luke, might help us here. Coming down to the river where John preached and baptized, we see Jesus among the crowds there. We hear a bit of John’s sermonizing – this was a pretty consistent theme with John, talking about the one who was to come after him, with a bit of scary-sounding imagery thrown in about winnowing forks and unquenchable fire. And then we hear that Jesus is among them and also being baptized.

Even this acknowledgment is perhaps a bit theologically puzzling. Exactly what was Jesus being baptized for? What did a man who had no sin for which to repent need to be here for? It’s enough of a troublesome idea that the gospel of John actually does not portray Jesus actually being baptized by John. Jesus does go to John and John essentially points at him and says “he’s the guy!” but John never does baptize Jesus. In Matthew’s gospel John does baptize Jesus, but only under protest. Only in Mark’s gospel does the baptism of Jesus by John happen in a fairly straightforward and direct fashion, without resistance.

What Luke and Matthew and Mark point to in this scene is the degree to which Jesus fulfills the “fully human” part of the “fully human, fully divine” characteristic by which we know Jesus. Sinless as he was, he submitted himself to be baptized. The thing we do at the baptistry or the river or at our little font cannot be dismissed as an empty or meaningless gesture when the One whose name we claim, the one by whose name we are called, went down to the water to be baptized himself.

Now, most of us don’t get the extra-special heavenly shout-out that came after Jesus’s baptism, when he had found a place aside to pray. We aren’t accustomed to seeing the heavens open up and having a voice from above calling us “beloved.” But it matters nonetheless, and it’s not wrong to expect or to think that something special and important is happening.

But the reading from Acts points to something else we should learn to expect.

In this account, the deacon Philip has been journeying in regions outside Judea or Galilee, and has been proclaiming the gospel in Samaria since being run out of Jerusalem after the persecutions of Saul. In addition to Philip’s preaching, miracles were happening: demons were being cast out, the paralyzed were being raised up to walk, and many others were being cured. The word got back to those followers still in Jerusalem that “Samaria had accepted the word of God.”

You would think the first reaction would be rejoicing, but no. The first reaction of the Jerusalem group was an investigation. That’s a little bit of an ugly sign. We should remember that Samaritans were regarded as deeply inferior people with corrupt worship practices but the Jews of Judea, but that’s not a good enough reason to react with suspicion and something like fear at what should be good news.

So Peter and John arrive in Samaria and start asking questions. And indeed it does turn out that something is missing. In the post-Pentecost world in which the Jerusalem group found itself, they did recognize that the activity of the Holy Spirit that had first dramatically been shown on that day meant that they, no matter how they tried, couldn’t be the same people they had been before. But the Samaritans hadn’t heard about this Holy Spirit yet. Peter and John taught and prayed and laid hands upon them, and “they received the Holy Spirit,” although we aren’t in this passage given any specific indication of how this showed itself, whether it was some kind of Pentecost-like demonstration or something else. But something changed. In some way the presence of the Holy Spirit showed itself in the Samaritans that made it clear that the Holy Spirit was there.

Something changes.

If we are to claim our baptism, if we are to be called followers of Christ, if we claim to be marked as children of God, something changes. Living conventionally doesn’t do any more. If we claim to be the family of God, the body of Christ, worshiping and learning in God’s house, our time together should look different and leave us looking and sounding different.

So maybe that’s what this miniature season is for. What does it look like – what do we look like – when God shows up? What does it mean to be answering God’s call, whether to be an elder, as four of our number are answering today, or to be teaching in Sunday school or singing in choir or even simply being here as part of the church? How are we changed, if what we say about ourselves is true? If we dare apply the word “Christian” to ourselves, how do we look or sound or act different? What does it mean to take our baptism seriously? What does it mean to be under the influence of the Holy Spirit? What’s different about us?

This is a particularly crucial time to ask ourselves that question. We live in a time and a society in which a lot of people are very loudly and insistently calling themselves “Christians” and yet living and speaking and showing absolutely zero signs of their baptism or of having received the Holy Spirit. Whether at political rallies or sporting events, or in courtrooms or corporate offices or internet comment sections, or even holed up in wildlife refuges in Oregon, there are so many self-appointed Christians living zero evidence of the life and teaching of Christ, living in absolute rebellion against the moving of the Holy Spirit. As a result when we go out and claim to be Christians, to be followers of Christ, to be led by the Holy Spirit, we’re going to be viewed with suspicion.

So maybe it’s worth some time in this in-between season to look to scripture and ask ourselves what it looks like when God really is here. Maybe we should ask what it looks like then the Holy Spirit truly is received and welcomed among us. Maybe we should ask ourselves what it looks like to live up to our baptism, to answer God’s call, to live and act and talk like a follower of Christ.

And then maybe we have to ask ourselves how much we look and act and sound like that. So let’s spend a few weeks on that, shall we?

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns: “Shall We Gather At the River” (GtG 375); “How Firm a Foundation” (PH 361); “Baptized in Water” (PH 492); “How Clear Is Our Vocation, Lord” (PH 419)

Epiphany sermonlet: Light For All

Grace Presbyterian Church

January 6, 2016, Epiphany C

Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12

Light For All

So here we are for Epiphany. At last, our long-suffering Magi can finally join the others at the manger. (For now we’ll leave aside the fact that the shepherds would likely have been long gone by now.)

I don’t know that this church has ever had a service specifically on Epiphany, January 6, unless it happened to fall on Sunday. After all, we tend to mash the main event of Epiphany – the homage offered by the so-called “wise men” or magi – into our Christmas Eve stories, even if we don’t explicitly read the Matthew account. Note how many of our Christmas carols throw the shepherds and sages and everything all into the same pot – a verse for one, a verse for the other. The stable and manger, the shepherds and the angel chorus – those are all Luke. But the magi, and the star, and angels appearing in dreams (and Joseph as anything more than a bystander, for all practical purposes) – those are Matthew’s contributions.

Matthew also gives us political intrigue, and terror. The wise men somehow seem less than wise when they show up at Herod’s court asking about the newborn future king. Herod’s panic is palpable. All of Jerusalem is troubled, because when the king isn’t happy, nobody’s happy. Hoping to use the sages to smoke out the child, Herod directs them to Bethlehem, and waits his chance. When the sages foil Herod’s plans by taking a detour home, Herod reacts with the rage of the tyrant; beyond the bounds of this evening’s reading we see children, all age two or less, massacred, and Joseph and Mary and their new son on the run, fleeing to Egypt. Refugees.

But back to the visit itself. We don’t know exactly where these Magi come from, but most scholars think they were most likely from Babylon, the region encompassed today by the nation we call Iraq. Wherever their home, they were outsiders to this scene, definitely not wanted by Herod, and probably a puzzle to the new parents. And they were Gentiles, not participants in the Jewish faith or tradition.

Even at this earliest stage of his story, Matthew is clueing us in that this newly born Messiah, this Son of God, is not just a local story. This revelation of God, this new Light of Heaven to which the travelers were guided by that heavenly light, was not only for the nation or people into which he was born. He was, as the old prophets had said, a Light for all the nations.

The letter to the Ephesians alludes to this, written as it was to a church that already showed this in practice; that “the Gentiles have become fellow heirs” to the gospel, to the good news, to the Light. In a very real way these visiting sages are our entry into the Christmas story, for we are only heirs to this gospel and this Light because it is indeed a “Light for all the nations,” a light that the darkness could not overcome, could not prevent from shining out to all the world. More than anybody else in the story, they are us.

So it is fitting to give the event its due, all on its own. It is right to remember the star and the sages and the odd gifts, and to be reminded that our Holy Family were forced to flee for their lives because of a jealous tyrant, and that Joseph actually had a role to play. And most of all, it’s good to be reminded that this Light really was, even from the beginning, a Light for all of us.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (PH ’90): “O Gladsome Light” (549), Psalm 72: “All Hail to God’s Anointed” (205); “From a Distant Home” (64); “As With Gladness Men of Old” (63)

Sermon: Word and Light

Grace Presbyterian Church

January 3, 2016, Christmas 2C

John 1:1-18

Word and Light

If I had gone looking for a cute title for today’s sermon, it might have been “Yes, This Is Really a Christmas Sermon.” Nothing about infants in mangers, or magi from the East, or any of the usual trappings of the Nativity story as we usually tell it. The story that usually takes up this season is mostly a mashup of Luke’s narrative with bits of Matthew’s story. Mark offers us nothing before Jesus’s adult life and ministry, and none of the other New Testament books – not Acts nor Paul’s epistles or anything else – have anything to say about the birth of Jesus.

This is John’s “Christmas story,” or as close as you’ll get from this evangelist. And while, in A Charlie Brown Christmas, the character Linus doesn’t quote John 1 in response to Charlie Brown’s plea, this passage is a pretty good summation of “what Christmas is all about” nonetheless.

While it can’t necessarily be captured in a cute nativity scene or rendered in a sentimental Christmas-card scene, this passage John offers here is full of theological insight and understanding that is foundational to the most basic Christian thinking about God. Even the very confessional statements we use in worship rely on some of the claims John makes in this passage on behalf of Jesus.

Verses 6-9 and 15 offer an interjection on a key figure, named John (not the gospel author, who after all never identifies himself). John (we often call him “the Baptist,” but this gospel never does) is described as a “witness.” He is not the main subject of this gospel discourse, our author wants to make that much clear, but his witness is considered important enough to be inserted into John’s account of the Word. At the very minimum, this should be a lesson for us. But we’ll come back to that later.

This prologue to the gospel makes three important points about the Christ, the man Jesus, the Word. Each of them is potentially a subject for intense and long-term study. But for us, and for the purposes of a single sermon, we can take a look at these three points a bit more briefly than in, say, a seminary class (and yes, any one of these important ideas about Jesus could be a semester’s worth of study).

First of all, the Word goes all the way back. In a pretty direct echo of Genesis, the first thing this gospel tells us is that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” To those who would argue that Jesus was merely a human son, the gospel places this figure in the beginning, even a vital and inescapable part of creation itself. This is something our confessional statements regularly help us to rehearse. For example, the Nicene Creed (which we will be using today) speaks of the one who is “eternally begotten of the Father,” the Scots Confession describes him as “begotten from eternity.” The Word “was in the beginning with God.” And the life that was in this one, the Word, was “the light of all people.”

But perhaps the most fascinating part of this opening statement is in verse 5. After the succession of past-tense verbs, all following the “in the beginning” setting, we get out of the blue a present-tense verb: “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” From all that was, this Word – the Light – still is. The Word that was “in the beginning” is the Light that still shines.

Second, this Word (and Light) was in the world, but “the world did not know him.” Philip Jamieson points out just how profound this alienation is: “humanity is alienated from the very creation of which it is a part.” For humanity to “not know” the Word is for humanity to be cut off from its very place in creation, the creation which God (and the Word) created humanity to be a part of. That alienation did not remain complete, as those who believed were empowered to be “children of God,” but this clearly was, and by all evidence around us remains, only a partial reclamation.

Thus, the third and most deeply inexplicable point of the gospel’s opening statement, in verse 14; “and the Word became flesh, and lived among us.” We use the fancy theological word “incarnation” for this mind-twisting knowledge: the Word, the one who was from the beginning with God, the one who was God, became not merely human – no, this word the gospel uses for “flesh” connotes everything that is earthy and mundane about human existence. This wasn’t a god who put on a skin suit and walked around Earth for a while; this was no less than God born into the humanity that God had created, the muck and mire of physical existence, God eating and drinking and yawning and sleeping and waking and hurting and weeping and laughing (and yes, all the other even more mundane and yucky stuff humans do too) because God was human. God didn’t live like a human being; God was a human being.

This Incarnation, this “Word become flesh,” is the unspoken but indispensible underlying principle behind everything we celebrate at Christmas. The birth of a baby and the placing of that baby in an animal feed trough is no less than God become human, in all the glory of God and the mundane-ness of humanity. This inexplicable act becomes to us the means of the grace of God, extended to us, for us, without which we do not know the Light or the Word or any of God’s salvation for us.

And so, back to John, the witness to the Light.

John isn’t necessarily the most frequently portrayed in art over the centuries. Many portraits of Christ are out there, and Mary also appears frequently. But there are portraits of John, the baptizer, the witness.

But there’s an interesting tendency in those paintings. Virtually always, whatever else John is doing in the portrait, John is pointing. Maybe to his side, maybe up, maybe over, but always pointing, pointing to Jesus. Bearing witness to the Light.

Most sermons encourage to you imitate Christ, to ask “What would Jesus do?” And that’s a good object of a sermon. But today, I charge you with something different.

Imitate John.

Point to Jesus.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (PH ’90): “Angels, From the Realms of Glory” (22); “What Child Is This” (53); “Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts” (510); “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow” (50)

agnusday.org, bringing the word on the word "Word," and the Word

Sermon: Going Into His Father's Business

Grace Presbyterian Church

December 27, 2015, Christmas 1C

Luke 2:41-52

Going Into His Father’s Business

It is remarkable how little we truly know about the life of Jesus.  During the season we are accustomed to hear much about Jesus’s birth, of course, but remarkably little is told; only two of the gospels have any sort of birth story for Jesus, and Luke’s story spends almost as much time on the birth of his cousin John as on Jesus himself.  Once Jesus is born, aside from the text for today, we fast-forward almost thirty years to the public, adult ministry of Jesus.  Of this we are given, between the four gospels, about a three-year period of ministry before Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. 

This is not typical of the biographies of most major religious figures.  A casual scan of Wikipedia entries for figures such as Muhammad or Buddha will reveal stories that, if not complete, at least don’t have decades-long gaps in the life of the subject.  Even in the early Christian world stories of ancient heroes or demigods were far more complete, and likely to contain accounts of the subject’s childhood that suggest that the essential traits of that hero’s character, if not their miraculous abilities, were well-established at an early age.

It seems that in the early days of Christianity, around the second century or after, the absence of such stories about Jesus helped spur the writing of a number of “gospels,” some of them specifically infancy narratives or childhood stories, purporting to fill in the yawning gaps in the life of Jesus.  These “gospels” of course were not ultimately accepted into the biblical canon as we know it, and in more than a few cases we’re probably glad of this fact.  One such collection, known as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas today, purports to cover an eight-year span of Jesus’s life, beginning from age five. Most of the stories are miracle stories, not surprisingly.  Some of them are harmless, or even cute: at age five Jesus is creating birds from clay and bringing them to life, and a little later, when helping Joseph in the carpenter shop, he magically stretches out a board that was too short for the use Joseph intended.  Some of the stories, however, are rather frightening. Jesus strikes dead a boy who bumped into him, and then strikes blind those who complained about the boy’s death. In another story Jesus raises a boy from the dead, but only so the boy could testify that Jesus wasn’t the one who pushed him off the roof. Frankly, in many of these stories Jesus comes off as little more than a brat with superpowers.

Fortunately, the one account of Jesus’s young life to be found in the canonical gospels is rather less gruesome. Indeed, it is a story that is at first glance remarkable for its unremarkability. Its context is that of a very typical, devout Jewish family life for its time, with regular trips to the Temple in Jerusalem for the observances required of the faithful. 

One such observance was the Feast of the Passover, which Luke tells us the family traveled to Jerusalem every year to observe. The year when Jesus was twelve years old 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 of 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 very typical of a devout Jewish family of the time, this was.

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, this story is hard to believe, 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 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.

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, 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. Child, why have you treated us like this?  Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety. Now let’s put that in terms we can understand: 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! 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, 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? Did you not know that I must 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, the strange angel apparitions and stars and shepherds?  And now, to be confronted with such a harsh declaration? No wonder they couldn’t understand it.

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.

Still, even though the scene doesn’t have the lurid appeal of a superboy striking people dead or blind in a fit of pique, what we do learn of Jesus in this account is disconcerting and disorienting in its own way. 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, but because being a child of God means we do those things – we love God’s children, we care for those poorer than we, we worship when we’d rather be sleeping in, 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 working in our Father’s business.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns (all PH 90): “Once In Royal David’s City” (49), “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming” (48), “O Sing a Song of Bethlehem” (308), “Go, Tell It On the Mountain” (29).

from JesusMafa.com, Jesus Among the Teachers

Christmas Eve Sermon: Unsilent Night

Grace Presbyterian Church

December 24, 2015, Christmas Eve C

Isaiah 9:2-7; Luke 2:1-20

Unsilent Night

John Bell, a hymn writer and leader of the Iona Community in Scotland, occasionally gives talks on the subject of the songs we sing as congregations and the ways they shape our thinking about God, for better or for worse. Bell is particularly keen to point out that our hymns and even carols sometimes have a really bad habit of putting in our heads very unrealistic images. For example, Bell cites the carol “Away in a Manger,” in which we are informed that even though “the cattle are lowing, the baby awakes, but Little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” Given the scene in which the infant Jesus is resting in a feed trough, with cattle and who knows what other animals are “lowing” and probably worse, I’ve always thought Bell’s response to that “no crying” line was quite on point: “Why not? What’s wrong with him?”

Even though we will in fact sing “Silent Night” toward the conclusion of the service, we need to be able to acknowledge that the Nativity was probably a bit more chaotic scene than we might imagine in our Christmas carol-informed minds. Because there was “no place for them in the inn,” Joseph and Mary had been shunted aside into an animal stall of some sort, where the newborn child Jesus was wrapped up in cloths and laid in a manger. There was no room in that inn most likely because the Roman emperor of the time had ordered an empire-wide census of all of the residents within the Roman realm, which led to the chaos of families and individuals packed up and returning to their family hometowns to be counted (remember this in 2020, and be glad all you have to do is fill out a form). Bethlehem wasn’t exactly a bustling metropolis, so the number of people filling the inn argued against quiet as well.

The animals accustomed to having the stall to themselves were most likely a bit unsettled by the presence of these unfamiliar humans in their space, and were likely making noise about it. Finally, the act of childbirth itself is not exactly a stress-free experience for most; if Mary was in fact quiet and silent, it was quite possibly because after their stressful travel and then giving birth, she was exhausted.

Finally, the child. Children are chaotic creatures. Whether it is the infant crying out for no apparent reason, or the toddler who can inexplicably get to everything in the house no matter how you child-proof it, or the twelve-year-old who really knows how to cause trouble (that’s a preview of Sunday’s sermon, by the way), children tend to wreak havoc. In short, no matter what Joseph Mohr and Franz Gruber might have come up with, it’s pretty unlikely that the night of Jesus’s birth was anything at all like a “silent night.”

And that, my friends, is part – a big part – of the good news.

The kind of event Isaiah’s prophecy describes isn’t “quiet” news, for one thing. It’s joyful news, it’s news of something exciting and uplifting that God’s people will be delivered. It’s exciting that “a child has been born for us” – how many times do you hear an announcement about a new or impending birth being greeted by demure, polite commentary? No, people shout and laugh and make joyful noise. Isaiah truly wouldn’t get this business of a silent night.

Luke’s own account is pretty chaotic as well, even once you get past the actual birth itself. As if Mary weren’t wiped out enough, here come these shepherds, rousted from their pastoral duties by a decidedly unquiet “multitude of the heavenly host” singing their most unquiet song about “Glory to God in the highest heaven.” As the angels have told them, the shepherds do indeed go and find “Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in a manger,” which was a wonder for the shepherds but a little bit of a riot for the new parents, having a bunch of shepherds who had likely been out in the fields for weeks suddenly crowding into the stall.

No, it’s not a silent night, and that is good news.

God does not wait around for our lives to be perfect and orderly and prim and proper before breaking in on our world. God doesn’t wait for a room to open up at the Hampton Inn (or at Shands for that matter) before being born. God doesn’t wait until you’re ready for a holiday open house or homes tour before bursting into our lives with the deliverance and salvation we didn’t even know we needed. God comes to us when the time is right, not necessarily when we’re ready.

Amidst the chaos and clutter, “a child has been born for us.” Amidst the uncertainty and fear and disquiet of our own lives, “a son given to us.” Even as we face disorder and chaos and illness and even death, the angels deliver “good news of great joy for all the people,” even us. The one is born who will be called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace,” whether everything is peaceful and orderly or not.

And this, maybe more than anything else about this night, is good news.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hymns: “O Come, All Ye Faithful” (PH 41); “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” (PH 31); “Good Christian Friends, Rejoice” (PH 28); “The First Nowell” (PH 56); “Silent Night, Holy Night” (PH 60); “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” (GtG 123)

Sermon: Love, Not Apathy

Grace Presbyterian Church

December 20, 2015, Advent 4C

Micah 5:2-5a; Luke 1:39-55

Love, Not Apathy

The Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI, is an organization that, as its name suggests, conducts research on public attitudes about religion. Their research covers both attitudes of members of particular religions or denominations towards particular issues, and more general attitudes among Americans towards events or issues that involve religion. Their research is conducted primarily through polls and surveys. I follow them on social media, because sometimes it’s useful for a pastor to know such things.

In the wake of presidential candidate Donald Trump’s widely discussed proposal to bar all adherents of the religion of Islam from entering the United States, one of PRRI’s most recent polls asked respondents whether the “values” of Islam were “at odds” with American “values” and way of life. You probably won’t be shocked to know that Trump’s supporters answered the question overwhelmingly in the affirmative, with supporters of other candidates scattered across a spectrum of affirmation.

Yes, it is a shame that we are in such a state of frenzy that such a question is even necessary, about Islam or any religion. As long as politicians and other public figures find stoking fear to be a useful way of garnering attention, however, organizations like PRRI will be prodded into answering such questions. It’s worth remembering, though, that a few weeks ago that presidential candidate was obsessed with keeping Mexicans out of the US, not Muslims.

On the other hand, though, after spending time with both Micah and Mary these last couple of weeks, I think there’s something else that’s an even bigger shame, and perhaps a poor reflection on how we Christians in the US live. PRRI has never felt compelled to ask if the “values” of Christianity are “at odds” with American “values” and way of life. Both of these readings call attention to God’s ongoing and unapologetic favor towards those who don’t always find any favor at all in our society today, or in its past.

Micah’s oracle is a happy one for those who have had their fill of Advent and are ready to steamroll into Christmas: it brings us to Bethlehem! Or, at least it mentions Bethlehem, and that’s Christmas, right? But Micah also makes a point about Bethlehem that our sentimentalized tellings of the Christmas story don’t always bring home; Bethlehem was, well, nowhere. A small, insignificant town in one of the least significant tribes of Israel. Nowhere. Nothing. And yet from this Nowheresville was to come a great leader of Israel, a leader whose rule was rooted in ancient days.

This leader from Nowheresville is portrayed in a way that the old prophets like to talk about a lot, but that Israel and Judah had experienced seldom, if ever:

And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace.

The greatness of this ruler, unlike those who had ruled over Judah or Israel in their unhappy existence, is marked by two things: “feeding his flock” and being “the one of peace.” Feeding the flock points to a long tradition in prophetic literature in which the king – the good king – was likened to a shepherd, feeding and caring for the people of the kingdom the way a good shepherd cares for the sheep of his flock. Chapter 34 of the book of Ezekiel is a good extended example of this metaphor in practice. You will, of course, notice that both psalmists (Psalm 23, anyone?) and gospel writers (“I am the good shepherd”) picked up on this metaphor as well.

This isn’t exactly how we determine that leaders are “great” these days, it seems. We don’t see a lot of leadership that follows the model of a shepherd these days. Micah wouldn’t necessarily see a lot of examples of the kind of leader he describes among our world leaders these days, or among those who want to be world leaders for that matter. Nonetheless, when Micah challenges Israel to look for this great ruler, this is what he describes; a king who rules like a shepherd. And the leader “of peace”? Do you see one?

If Micah challenges us to look outside our usual and predictable comfort zones for true leaders, then Mary makes it clear that this “siding with the underdog” thing is still a trait of God that we just don’t seem to remember very well (or want to remember?) these days.

The traditions that have accrued around Christmas over the centuries have had a remarkable tendency to sentimentalize and trivialize the events of the birth of Christ, sometimes scandalously so, and possibly no character has been more harmed by this sentimentalization than Mary. And the carols we sing are some of the worst offenders. “Gentle Mary laid her child lowly in a manger.” “Still, still, still, he sleeps this night so chill! The Virgin’s tender arms enfolding … .” From “Once in royal David’s city,” “Mary was that mother mild … .”

Even the Advent hymn we just sang piles on a little bit in verse 3: “Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head, ‘To me be as it pleases God,’ she said.” Mary gets to be painted as “gentle” and “meek” all in one phrase! If Sabine Baring-Gould had managed to work in the world “mild” somewhere we’d have the Triple Crown of Mary references.

A plain reading of the first chapter of Luke should argue against such a simplified characterization of Mary, if only because an unmarried pregnant woman, possibly a teenager, doesn’t manage to survive on gentleness, meekness, and mildness, today or in first-century Palestine. Such a young woman could certainly be put to shame even in our day; in the era of this passage she could very well have been put to death.  

Add to this Mary’s immediate reaction of perplexity and guardedness to the angel; her pointed question about how she was going to be pregnant if she wasn’t married and had never, uh, done what married couples do; and finally the exultant prophetic song Mary lets out in today’s reading, a song which is many things, but decidedly not gentle, meek, or mild. No, we don’t really do Mary any favors in the way we do the Christmas story.

Actually there are three moments of prophecy in this passage; Mary’s well-known song, Elizabeth’s greeting to Mary before that, and even before that, the lone instance of prophecy of which we know of being delivered by a child in the womb. Elizabeth’s child, the one who will be called John, leaped within her at Mary’s arrival. Once Elizabeth recovered from that pleasant sensation, she offered her own prophetic salutation, one which echoed much of what the angel had told Mary, and flat-out made it clear, with no doubt, just who Mary was carrying when she exclaimed “and why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me?” And then Mary responds with her own prophetic exclamation. The Holy Spirit was quite a busy member of the Trinity in this meeting.

Mary’s song starts well enough; praise to God is a pretty typical, and of course highly appropriate, way to begin such a proclamation, and Mary’s words fit very snugly into the prophetic traditions of Israel and Judah. Perhaps it gets a little unusual when she offers that God has “looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant,” but that’s only the tip of the iceberg. As Mary’s song continues, it is very important to keep this one thing in mind: Mary’s song is all in past tense. This is what the Lord has already done:

ü  Shown strength with his arm;

ü  Scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;

ü  Brought down the powerful from their thrones;

ü  Lifted up the lowly;

ü  Filled the hungry with good things;

ü  Sent the rich away empty;

ü  Helped his servant Israel, in accordance with his mercy.

That’s not necessarily a comfortable list. Sure we can convince ourselves that we’re not proud, nor are we powerful; still, though, we don’t really tend to think of ourselves as being lowly, and we probably take a little pride (oops!) in making sure we and our families don’t go hungry. And again, we probably don’t call ourselves rich, but we see enough of the world around us to know that we’re closer, most of us, to rich than to poor. And maybe we even get nervous about the word “servant” as well. When we start seriously paying attention to Mary’s song, it might not seem such a comfortable fit with our manger scenes and sentimental carols.

And yet the one to come, the one to whom Mary will give birth, is the very Son of the God who has done all these things. The baby who will finally show up in the manger this Thursday night is the very Messiah come to be the fulfillment of all that God had and has done for his people. This is, in the sense that matters most, what Christmas is all about.

What we celebrate this week is ultimately about overwhelming, unstoppable love. God loves this world so much that he lifts up the lowliest of its people, feeds the ones who hunger, disperses the ones full of pride, overthrows the power-mongers. God cares deeply and passionately about this world, and frankly wants us to care too.

It’s easy, so easy to be overwhelmed by the need we see around us. And we don’t have to go off looking in the big cities to see that need. There’s plenty of it right here in Gainesville and Alachua County. And this is a generous congregation when there is need that we see, let there be no doubt about it.

But even amidst generosity it’s still possible to be so overwhelmed that we lose a little bit of our passion or our compassion. We don’t mean to, but there’s just so much poverty and hopelessness out there. We get calloused. We, maybe, get just a little apathetic. We can’t maintain a fever pitch of compassion, so we swing so far the other way that we just can’t work up our concern.

And yet the God who loved the world so much that he lifts up the lowly, who loved the world so much that becoming a helpless baby was not too much of a stretch to continue to lift up the lowly and to lead us all to keep lifting up the lowly, calls us to keep on loving, to keep on caring, to keep on lifting up and yet more: to reach out, and to welcome in, and to be with. It means not being comfortable with being comfortable any more with anything less than the world God wants.

That is our challenge as people who would dare call ourselves followers of Christ. That is where the child in the manger will call us to go. You see, that child won’t stay in the manger forever. This is the Jesus who will spend a life on earth caring for the least of these, challenging the religious authorities and those comfortable with them, and bringing the glad tidings of good news to all, what really is good news even if it doesn’t always sound like it to us. And if we truly call ourselves followers of Christ, that’s where Christ is going to lead us.

Thanks be to God. Amen. 

Hymns: “O Little Town of Bethlehem” (PH 43); “The Angel Gabriel From Heaven Came” (PH 16); “My Soul Cries Out With a Joyful Shout” (GtG 100); “Savior of the Nations, Come” (PH 14)

Sermon: Peace, Not Corruption

Grace Presbyterian Church

December 6, 2015, Advent 2C

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

Peace, Not Corruption

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. We have been at war for fourteen unbroken years; 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, “constantly praying with joy” for them, expressing confidence that “the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ,” and so forth. It does, though, take a slightly less joyful turn by its end, when Paul expresses the hope that “in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless,” which at least 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 (which was not read), 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. 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 who sit 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 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 “in whom you delight” 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, and 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 gets 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:

For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness.

Being refined by fire and purified by the harshest soap there is, again, seems in discord with the Lord  in whom we delightappearing 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, 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.

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 (all PH ’90): “Prepare the Way” (13), “Song of Zechariah” (602), “Come Down, O Love Divine” (313), “O Lord, How Shall I Meet You?” (11)