Sermon: We're All In This Together

First Presbyterian Church

January 26, 2025, Epiphany 3C

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

 

We’re All in This Together

 

 

It was a nearly unavoidable song not that many years ago, when the Disney Channel first aired its infectious little show called High School Musical. First it was the television musical, then it became an actual high school musical, and now you can find television shows about productions of the high school musical. And wrapping it all up was the one inescapable, irresistible song that represented the show’s climax: “We’re All in This Together.”

That title happened upon a phrase and idea that has been batted around endlessly, it seems. You could go out and google dozens upon dozens of quotes that either use that phrase as a basis or comment upon the idea. While I don’t want to think about Lily Tomlin’s spin – “We’re all in this together alone” – I have to acknowledge, if this quote is accurate, that Johnny Cash might have put the best spin on the quote in his version: “We’re all in this together if we’re in it at all.” 

I’m pretty sure the Apostle Paul was not much for song and dance, and I doubt he played the guitar or sang songs about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die. But he’d be able to appreciate at least the basic sentiment found in this pithy little saying. Being the eloquent preacher and letter-writer he was, however, it befitted Paul to find a clever and illustrative metaphor to demonstrate just how thoroughly we, the followers of Christ, really are all in this together. Borrowing a metaphor found fairly often in Greco-Roman philosophical rhetoric, Paul came up with the theme of today’s reading: the body of Christ.

That Paul chooses the body as a metaphor for the innerworkings of the people of God is striking and informative in ways that the apostle himself might not even have imagined. 

As noted just now, it wasn’t uncommon for teachers and writers in the Greco-Roman world to use such a metaphor to describe communal life, though no other biblical author makes use of it. Philosophers and political figures were particularly fond of the body metaphor in that culture. For a politician, for example, the metaphor of the body might well be used to suggest that every member of a society had his or place to fill. A body needs a head; that place was to be filled by the “elites” of society – the wealthy, the military elite, those in power. A body also needs hands and feet; here pretty much everybody else in society, those charged with the hard or dirty or dangerous work of society was to fulfill his or her role. Needless to say that metaphor never really has gone away even it if might be expressed in different ways.

Paul, though, takes a different angle on this metaphor. For Paul, what matters is the utter interdependence of the body – the degree to which the body needs everything in good working order. Parts of the body that might be regarded as weaker, or less “respectable,” are treated with greater care and covered or protected more carefully. In Paul’s scheme of the body, no part can claim to be independent of all the other parts. The eye can see all it wants to see, but without feet and legs to move, or hands to hold or to pick up, the eye is powerless. The head is useless without the rest of the body.

Many of us know what it is for our physical bodes to fail us or betray us. We see what needs to be done but we just aren’t capable of doing it physically. If one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers with it. And so it goes with the body of Christ, the church; when one member of this body suffers, we all suffer with that member.

Paul wants us to understand, in verse 13, that in being baptized in Christ we are baptized into this one body, no matter the differences between us. Indeed, following on the first part of this chapter we heard last week, the differences we bring to the body are not accidental; they are necessary, they are by design, both in a given local congregation and in the church universal – we need all those different experiences, all those different backgrounds, for the body of Christ to function rightly and bear witness to the good news.

This is where it gets tricky, though. We are not always good at dealing with difference. We don’t always care for diversity, even as we need it. New Testament scholar Brian Peterson puts it bluntly in noting that “We often confuse unity with uniformity, because it is much easer to gather with people who are like ourselves than it is to reach across the divisions which mark our culture.”[i] We are more comfortable with a church where everybody looks like us, talks like us, is about the same age as us, reads the Bible in the same way as we do – or for that matter, votes like us, roots for the Chiefs like us, and all sorts of other things that may have very little to do with the life of the church. It’s a natural inclination, but it isn’t really all that Christlike. 

In verse 13 Paul refers to two of the great divisions he knew to be at work in the church – “Jews or Greeks, slaves or free.” Admittedly, “Jew or Greek” is not a huge dividing line in the modern church, and while slavery certainly does exist in the modern world still, such a dividing line doesn’t run through the modern church in quite the same way it did for Paul’s Corinthian readers. We do, though, have lots of dividing lines among us in the church today:

Black or white, or Asian, or Hispanic, or Native American…

Or how about Democratic or Republican?

Maybe rich or poor?

Native-born, naturalized citizen, immigrant waiting to be citizen?

Straight or gay?

How about married or single?

Progressive or mainline or evangelical or fundamentalist?

How are we, as the church, the body of Christ, at truly living in the diversity that makes us work? Or are we still inclined to hole up in like-minded enclaves of homogeneity?

Whether we acknowledge it or not, when any part of the body of Christ suffers, whether they look like us or think like us or sound like us or have anything in common with us other than Christ, we all suffer, and we don’t bear witness to the gospel the way the body of Christ is meant to do. And to the degree that we stand by and let that suffering continue, we are complicit in damaging the body and its witness.

Having worked through this body metaphor, Paul now returns to the diversity of spiritual gifts, or manifestations of the presence of the Spirit, that he had discussed earlier in this chapter. Again, the list is incomplete, but Paul now places those gifts in the context of the church as God appoints people to contribute: apostles, prophets, teachers, doers of powerful deeds, healers, helpers, leaders, speakers of various tongues. And just as the body would look rather ridiculous if it were nothing but an eye or a foot, so the church becomes rather ridiculous if it consists of nothing but apostles or preachers or teachers. 

But as Paul closes this thought, he actually “teases” us with something even better, a better, “more excellent” way for the church to live or for the body of Christ to function. 

The diverse and distinctive appropriation of gifts is characteristic and even needful in the church, and the diversity of members matters profoundly as well. And yet, there is something else that matters more than all of these, or more precisely is the very thing that makes this distinctiveness and diversity work. What is it that makes the body of Christ what it is meant to be? What is it that brings all those diverse gifts and abilities and manifestations of the Spirit together in a way that enables us truly to bear witness to the Christ we say we follow?

But that's for next Sunday. 

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #409, God Is Here!; #318, In Christ There Is No East or West; #306, Blest Be the Tie that Binds

 

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[i] Brian Peterson, “Commentary on 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a,” Working Preacher (workingpreacher.org, 24 January 2016 2^nd reading), accessed 21 January 2016.

 

 

Sermon: Just As the Spirit Chooses

First Presbyterian Church

January 19, 2025, Epiphany 2C

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

 

Just As the Spirit Chooses

 

 A few years ago the internet humor site Unvirtuous Abbey posted a cartoon image that suggested the Apostle Paul at work writing one of his letters to the various churches under his care. The captioning of this image, however, took a creative slant: the imagined text of the letter under construction began thus:

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, to the churches of the United States of America – grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ: I don’t even really know where to begin with you guys…

 

It’s a funny line, and easily evocative of just how far much of the church in this country have strayed from being Christlike in any discernible way. The truth is, though, this isn’t that far from how the actual Paul began some of his letters, and how he was compelled to speak to the churches in other letters even when he was able to keep his opening more cordial. For example, in the letter to Galatians Paul barely manages to get through a fairly doxological opening statement before turning to chastisement in verse 6: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel…”. Things were evidently that bad.

As for the letter we are reading today and in the forthcoming weeks, Paul actually manages to get though not only the formal greeting, but a nice blessing as well, before turning to the matter at hand at the beginning of this letter: “Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.” Paul elaborates that the Corinthians have apparently devolved into factions around one leader or another in the larger church – Paul, Cephas (or Peter), Apollos (the evangelist introduced in Acts 18), or even – in a super-self-righteous move – Christ. Paul quickly admonishes the Corinthians for this, but the correction of this division will go much deeper and in fact constitute the bulk of this letter. There are many things going wrong among the Corinthians, and Paul is setting out to address them.

Paul’s work in his travels was frequently made more challenging by the difficulties of churches made up of diverse groups of people and the disputes, disagreements, or contests that too often arose between those groups. For example, by the time Paul is making his travels, the congregations to whom he preaches and writes are usually composed of both Jewish and Gentile converts to Christianity. At times the Jewish party would contend that the Gentiles needed to take up practices associated with Judaism (most notably the act of circumcision for males) before they could be fully accepted into the fledgling group of Christ’s followers. To put it more briefly, they felt that Gentiles should become Jews in order to become Christians. Paul, despite his own thoroughly Jewish heritage, argued against that claim, agreeing with those who called that an unnecessary burden.

The conflict Paul addresses here in today’s reading is a different one, not necessarily based on Jewish-Gentile dividing lines, but one that caused tremendous strain in the church at Corinth no less. In this case, this local church was struggling with the effects of spiritual pride and even a kind of competitiveness, in which some claimed that their specific and distinctive spiritual gifts made them spiritually superior to others. This kind of spiritual elitism never ends well, and Corinth was no exception.

After much chiding and critique earlier in the book on this and other matters, Paul now turns with chapter 12 to address “matters pertaining to the Spirit.” “Spiritual gifts,” the term you see in verse 1, is certainly part of the matter, but not the full extent of what Paul wants to address. 

First, Paul is compelled to remind his readers – a great many of whom in Corinth were Gentile converts to The Way – that all of them had been equal in ignorance before following Christ. The lot of them had been, as Paul describes, duped worshipers of powerless, speechless idols. Even as followers of Christ now, Paul challenges them to understand that they have much to learn, particularly about the Holy Spirit.

For example: no one who is speaking under the influence of the Holy Spirit could ever utter the phrase “Let Jesus be cursed!” You can’t do it. To be sure, there are times when even we followers of Christ speak decidedly not under the influence of the Spirit! But that’s a different story. Similarly, but not quite the same way, one cannot make the claim that “Jesus is Lord” except by the power of the Holy Spirit. Even being able to make the confession “Jesus is Lord” is evidence of the work of the Spirit. 

Understand what it means: anyone who confesses “Jesus is Lord” is doing so by a gift of the Spirit. There is no one who confesses Christ is Lord that is not gifted by the Spirit. If that’s the case, no one has any business claiming that any other believer has no spiritual gift. We all do. That’s how we can even be followers of Christ at all, by the gift of the Spirit. You didn’t think you earned your salvation, did you?

With that understanding, Paul turns to the issue of differences in spiritual gifts and other workings of the Spirit. One of the common threads of what Paul has to say is that difference or variety or diversity is inevitable and indeed is “baked into” the way that the Spirit “gifts” the followers of Christ. Each of us receives different abilities or talents or gifts, and that itself is a very intentional work of the Spirit. 

Paul sketches out only a few of these possible gifts or abilities in verses 7-10. By no means is this a complete list, but Paul mentions the speaking both of wisdom and of knowledge; faith; healing; miracles; prophecy; discernment; and the speaking and interpreting of tongues. And as Paul notes, the Spirit allots these gifts to the children of God quite according to the Spirit’s own choosing, and nothing other – “just as the Spirit chooses,” as verse 11 puts it.

Paul here is urging the Corinthians to understand that this dispersal of the gifts of the Spirit was absolutely no cause for pride. There is no basis for any claim that having any one spiritual gift made you in any way superior to or more important than any of your sisters or brothers in Christ. 

I have been called as the interim pastor of this church for a little more than a year and a half, after eight+ years at my previous call. I believe I do have some gift for the speaking of wisdom or knowledge, perhaps a way of describing preaching. Hopefully those three years I spent in seminary helped develop that gift to some degree. But if I were ever tempted to think that this specific gift was somehow “more special” or more important than other gifts, … well, let’s just say that many weeks or even months in this vocation have really caused me to wish I had a gift for healing or miracles instead. 

What Paul needs the Corinthians (and us) to understand is that we need all the gifts. This church can’t survive on preaching alone. Nor can it survive on any one of the gifts the Spirit might bestow. We need them all, both our own church here and the greater church around the world. And when we turn inward, when we start failing to welcome others into our church, or when we start drawing lines to keep some out and include only certain people, “folks like us,” then we are cutting ourselves off from some of the very gifts or manifestations of the Spirit that we absolutely need to survive, for the common good.

And it’s not even about our surviving, in the end. Our church, local or universal, is not put here on earth to serve ourselves. These flourishings of the Spirit that are made manifest in us are here to show God’s glory to those all around us. We are here to bear witness to the gospel, to be the vessel by which that good news is given to all the world around us. And those gifts of the Spirit are scattered out among us for that very end; giving glory to God that the world might see.

Beyond the matter of not indulging in pride over one’s spiritual gifts, there is also the matter of not dismissing what one contributes to the body as somehow being unimportant or not really mattering. If everybody in a congregation is determined that because their gift isn’t for preaching or prophecy it isn’t important, the church misses out on those less flashy gifts like faith or discernment and suffers for it. All the gifts are needed. 

This is part of the church “being an epiphany,” participating in showing Christ to the world. When we all pull together using each of our distinctive gifts for the work of the kingdom of God, we become a revelation of God to the world, through the working of the Spirit. We show Christ to the world. We show the world what it looks like when the Spirit is working among us. Or, when we start elevating some gifts and demeaning others, when we start indulging in pride about our own spiritual abilities, or when we cut ourselves off from the gifts we need in the church because we don’t like the people who have them? Or when we hold back the gifts God has given us for whatever reason? We fail to bear witness to God’s Spirit, and in fact do damage to that witness among the larger church.

Right now, this congregation is doing alright - better than many other congregations, believe it or not. It takes every spiritual gift that is present among the people of this or any congregation, and then some, to keep things afloat. We don’t have space for anybody to decide that their gifts or abilities don’t matter; we need them all. There is no one whose gifts or talents or abilities don’t matter. We need them all.

The abilities we bring to the body of Christ are not an accident. The Holy Spirit is working in us, each of us, all of us, so that we might bear witness to God and to the gospel of Christ to a world that desperately needs to be reminded of that story and to hear that witness. Being prideful about some gifts or dismissive of others is failure to show Christ to the world. We have no margin for error; we need all those manifestations of the Spirit to do our job in the world. 

For gifts of the Spirit, and the opportunity and obligation to use them together, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal): #292, As the Wind Song; #308, O God, in Whom All Life Begins; #733 We All Are One in Mission

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Sermon: Star-Struck

First Presbyterian Church

January 12, 2025, Epiphany C

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

 

Star-Struck

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Might we learn from these people?

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

Are we, though?

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

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

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

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

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

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

 

Sermon: Home Alone 8: Lost in Jerusalem?

First Presbyterian Church

December 29, 2029, Christmas 1C

Luke 2:41-52

 

Home Alone 8: Lost in Jerusalem?

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

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

Sermon: From ... Where?

First Presbyterian Church

December 22, 2024, Advent 4C

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

 

From...Where?

 

 

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

But you, O Hodgenville of Kentucky,

who are one of the little towns of Kentucky,

from you shall come forth for me

one who is to rule in the United States…

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Sermon: Rejoice? Now?

First Presbyterian Church

December 15, 2024, Advent 3C

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

 

 

Rejoice? Now?

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Encouraging, yes?

How about verses 17-18 from that same chapter: 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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