Friday, January 31, 2014
05 January 2014
Epiphany
January 5, 2014 – Nativity Lutheran
Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-12
Pr Martha Myers
Well, so here we are, already 5 days into 2014, the unknown future, the beginning of life without Pastor Bob. It is a little like returning home after dropping the last child off at kindergarten or the last one off at college. The house seems a little empty and echoes. But there is also that whiff of a sense (tiny, teasing hint, barely detectable,) of something coming loose, something opening up.
In fact, we already have something to celebrate: we have completed the very first task of the interim period: saying good-bye to the one who has been pastor. And I have to say, I think that we have done an outstanding job of expressing our appreciation for these last ten years. We have not shrunk from acknowledging our sadness and sense of loss in saying good-bye and at the same time we are turning toward the future with excitement and joy, along with the usual anxiety.(with our predictable anxiety well seasoned with excitement and joy.) So good job, Nativity. You said good-bye and you did it well. And now we are start of our new journey.
In our scripture readings today we have a wide screen view of the journey ahead and abundant encouragement for our travels. The day we are celebrating today is Epiphany which literally means “to make visible”. (All through the Sundays after Epiphany, our gospel readings will center on times in Jesus’ life when people got a glimpse of God’s presence in Him.
Today is “making visible” Sunday, so it is not surprising that the first words of our first reading are “Arise! Shine!” “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.” The people that first heard these words from the prophet Isaiah lived roughly 500 years before Jesus’ birth. These people were in a slump, actually more than a slump. They were tired and depressed, almost to the point of despair. For 40 years this group of Jews had been living in exile in Babylon, the area we today call Iraq. But recently there had been new political developments. The Persians conquered the Babylonians and took over their empire and their leader, Cyrus, offered them a chance to go home to their own country. Full of hope and excitement, these people had made the long trek (how long?) back to Jerusalem. But when they go there they found that everything was still in ruins. The joy of regaining their freedom and returning home faded as they realized how enormous was the task of rebuilding their homes, the temple and the entire infrastructure.
To these weary, despairing people Isaiah says, “God’s word to you is arise from your despair, stand up. Look beyond the ruins that you see all around you, for God’s power is greater than the power that left your city in ruins. Trust God’s promises. Act in faith. Arise, shine. Visualize the future that God has in mind for you. Reflect the light that God shines upon you and let God use you to reflect God’s glory in the darkness of this world. There are two important features of the future that Isaiah sketches: the first is a very tangible economic recovery, even wealth and prosperity and the second, which is a little more hidden is of the reflected light of the glory of God drawing all the nations of the world to Israel to worship the one true God.
Our gospel reading tells the very familiar story of the visit of the magi to Jesus. Even though we include the magi in our manger scenes and on our Christmas cards with the shepherds and the angels, chances are that they showed up as much as a year after Jesus’ birth. We say they are from “the east” but there is an enormous amount of territory that lies east of Bethlehem, just as when we say “back east” we might mean Spokane or Chicago or Boston. While there had been priests of the Zoroastrian religion that flourished in ancient Persia who were called magi, by Jesus’ time the word had a more general meaning. They are sometimes called wise men or astrologers or even kings. What seems to be most important about the magi in Matthew’s story is that they are “not from here”, they are outsiders, strangers.
The magis’ job is to observe the movements of the stars and the planets and to report anything out of the ordinary because it was generally believed in the ancient world that changes in the sky might signal important events on earth. The one thing we know for a fact about the magi’s religion is that it wasn’t ours. The magi were not in any way connected to Judaism or the roots of Christianity. (So what are they doing in the middle of our Christmas decorations?)
The magi are at a disadvantage. They don’t know the stories of God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They haven’t heard the words of Isaiah and the prophets. But what they do have is the natural world around them, the sky, the planets and the stars. So when the rising of a new star speaks to them of something important happening in the west, they pack up and travel hundreds of miles to Jerusalem. The natural world gets them within close range, but to find the precise location of the event, they bring their question to the present king Herod: “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?”
But Herod doesn’t know. He is not from Judea but a little country to the south and while his grandfather had converted to Judaism, Herod has no use for the Jews or the Jewish religion. But if there is anyone who might be a threat to his power, Herod wants to put a stop to it immediately. So he calls in the Jewish authorities who tell him that Bethlehem is the place where the messiah is to be born and with that, the magi are on their way, with instructions to return with news of the child’s location. Herod’s intent, of course, is not to pay homage to this child but to get rid of him as quickly as possible as we learn from the rest of the story. To the magi’s great joy, the star appears again and leads them to the exact spot where they find the child and his mother. They can hardly have been an impressive sight, but the magi are overjoyed. They pay him homage, they honor him as someone of great importance and they offer their gifts. What are these magi doing at the birth of our Savior? As Matthew tells the story, the magi act like model believers. In some strange way they “get” what God is doing in Jesus, at least a little corner of it.
Meanwhile, back at the palace, King Herod is overwhelmed, not with joy but with fear and the chief priests and the scribes share his concern. The balance of power is delicate and any insurgency will bring down the wrath of the Roman occupation. Herod cares about keeping his power more than anything else in the world. Ever suspicious he arranges the execution of anyone he suspects of intrigue, including his own children. (Herod is an illustration of the distortion and violence and meaninglessness that we create when nothing matters except getting our own way.)
What is more surprising, though, is that the chief priests and the scribes who have the scriptures are strangely lacking in curiosity about what has brought these pagans to their land, searching for their messiah. (Did they think, “If anyone is going to be born king of the Jews, we are the people who would know about it.” Did it never cross their minds that God might be at work in the lives of these wise men from the east? (The outsiders seem to know more about what God is up to than the insiders.)
Let’s drop back for a moment to our second lesson where Paul, the early Christian missionary is talking to people who are following in the footsteps of the magi. They are Gentile Christians, people who unlike the first Christians are not of Jewish background. Paul, on the other hand, is Jewish through and through; he has observed all the laws and customs that separated Jews from Gentiles, that were intended to keep God’s people holy and uncorrupted. (so much so that he even persecuted the church) But God’s grace has interrupted his life, turned upside down all his assumptions about where God is at work and led him beyond his upbringing to an understanding of “the mystery of Christ” which has been hidden for ages in God. And the mystery is that “the Gentiles have become joint heirs of God’s promises to the Jews, joint members of the same body and joint sharers in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. (This is not shocking news to us today, but remember how shocked people were when Pope Francis insisted that God’s concern for human beings extends way beyond the borders of the church, that Christ died not just for Catholics but even for atheists? )
Not only has God in Christ upset all of Paul’s assumptions about how God is at work, but God’s grace has commissioned Paul to share the “boundless riches of Christ”, to “make everyone see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.” And the point of all this is “that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might be made know to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. The Gentiles of Paul’s day believed there were other heavenly powers like fate. But you, says Paul, are part of making known this wisdom of God, of boldly proclaiming to whatever powers there be that the wisdom of God in Christ is stronger, the wisdom of God in Christ has got them all beat.
This passage is really dense, but it is my favorite picture of the church so this is how I imagine it. The wisdom of God in Christ is pure, white light and the church is like a kaleidoscope with each of us like one of those multi-colored fragments of glass that reflects the light of God in a different way. And as that light is reflected through more and more people, the pattern just becomes more beautiful.
What are the magi, these strange wise men from the east doing at the birth of our Savior? They are a hint ahead of time of the direction of God’s plan. The star of Bethlehem as brought the magi to the light of Christ, to the side of the one who is born “king of the Jews”, but they themselves are a sign that God’s plan stretches out far beyond the Jews to include the whole creation. But the star has not reached its final goal until the light of Christ comes to rest in your hearts. The star has not reached its final goal until the light of Christ shines forth in the life of this congregation and sprinkles out across the community in each of your individual lives as well.
What are they doing here at the birth of our Savior?
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
24 December 2013
“Celebrate the Child!”
Christmas Eve
Titus 2:11-14
24 December 2013
In the midst of every Christmas Eve worship service, there’s a brief Word, a little gem, tucked away, that we read and hear each year, but it probably breezes right past us, as we’re singing and listening to the oh-so-familiar words of the Christmas story from Luke’s gospel.
This little gem is the three verse New Testament reading from Paul’s letter to Titus.
Now – granted – reading from the Letters on Christmas Eve – even one from Paul – doesn’t have the appeal of telling a story, especially such a well known and beloved story as the one we hear about the angels and the shepherds, the young mother and the baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.
Paul’s letter to Titus comes from a time many years after Jesus’ birth.
The Apostle has left his associate Titus behind on the island of Crete, to continue to build the church of Jesus Christ there. In this letter, Paul is doing what he does in virtually every letter he writes … encouraging the church-builders to continue to be faithful in teaching, preaching and practicing the Word of Jesus Christ.
It’s a great, solid, profound word for us.
Which usually goes thud or gets lost, for us, every year.
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.
SNORE.
Honestly, who can get excited about a Word that sounds like it belongs in a college textbook?
But the problem isn’t with the Word, it’s with our translation of it.
So let’s take the advice I give, whenever people come to me, usually around this time of the year, asking about “which Bible translation should I get, or give, to someone?”
The translation we use in worship, is the one appointed by our denomination, the ELCA, for reading in public worship. It’s called the New Revised Standard Version, and most of the time, it’s very good for public – aloud – reading of the texts.
It’s admittedly at a 10th grade reading level, though. And sometimes it uses words and sentence structures which are difficult to read, and hear, and inwardly digest and understand.
So let’s try hearing Paul’s words to Titus, again, using a more modern, simple, straightforward translation … this one’s called The Voice:
We have cause to celebrate because the grace of God has appeared, offering the gift of salvation to all people. Grace arrives with its own instruction: run away from anything that leads us away from God; abandon the lusts and passions of this world; live life now in this age with awareness and self-control, doing the right thing and keeping yourselves holy. Watch for his return; expect the blessed hope we all will share when our great God and Savior, Jesus the Anointed, appears again. He gave his body for our sakes and will not only break us free from the chains of wickedness, but he will also prepare a community uncorrupted by the world that he would call his own—people who are passionate about doing the right thing.
Now that’s easier to hear, and take in, isn’t it?
We have cause to celebrate because the grace of God has appeared, offering the gift of salvation to all people …
Absolutely we do have cause to celebrate. The grace of God has appeared … is appearing … and will continue to appear … in the Word and Way of Jesus. It is a full, rich and complete story which begins well before the Word from Luke’s Gospel which highlights our reason for gathering here tonight.
It comes even before the Word from the prophet Isaiah which was our Hebrew Scripture reading.
It comes through God’s age-old story for us.
It comes through Jesus’ life of service, suffering, and death on the cross.
It comes through the Easter story of life everlasting.
And it comes through Paul’s instructions here … grace’s instructions … the way God calls us to live in this way of God’s gift of love for us in Jesus.
These are community instruction … the way of Jesus to be lived out, in and with others in the body of Christ together … the body of Christ where there can be, where there are … faith guides, mentors, brothers and sisters who lead and love in the way of Jesus, which means repentance and forgiveness when we don’t follow the instructions … which is the way it is for all of us …
… and who also provide encouragement and hope along the way.
And so we can hear and risk in love to live the Way of Jesus …
…running away from anything that leads from God …
…abandoning the passions of this world (the stuff and situations that lead us from God) to have passion for the Kingdom way of Jesus … giving, serving, living for those who Jesus especially loves … the poor, the powerless, the downtrodden, the sick and suffering and dying, those on the margins of our world …
… and being people who are passionate about doing the right thing.
These are community instructions … for how will we ever know what “the right thing” is apart from the community which enfleshes it for us …
… who eat at Jesus’ table …
… who study and hear and meditate and pray on Jesus’ word …
… who bear his forgiving and freeing Word into the world …
This isn’t just what Christmas is all about, Nativity … it is what this faith, this life is all about. What is real, and true, and for us, for this life, and for the life to come.
It’s a Word especially for you, Nativity, to carry you through in these days and weeks and months ahead … KEEP ON KEEPING ON … keep doing, keep being, the people who Jesus calls, leads, forgives and frees you to be …
… people who are passionate about doing the right thing …
For indeed, we have cause to celebrate tonight … to CELEBRATE THE CHILD … the child Jesus, the one who grows to be the Christ of the Cross and empty tomb, the One who is the Light, and Life, of All.
Amen.
Christmas Eve
Titus 2:11-14
24 December 2013
In the midst of every Christmas Eve worship service, there’s a brief Word, a little gem, tucked away, that we read and hear each year, but it probably breezes right past us, as we’re singing and listening to the oh-so-familiar words of the Christmas story from Luke’s gospel.
This little gem is the three verse New Testament reading from Paul’s letter to Titus.
Now – granted – reading from the Letters on Christmas Eve – even one from Paul – doesn’t have the appeal of telling a story, especially such a well known and beloved story as the one we hear about the angels and the shepherds, the young mother and the baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.
Paul’s letter to Titus comes from a time many years after Jesus’ birth.
The Apostle has left his associate Titus behind on the island of Crete, to continue to build the church of Jesus Christ there. In this letter, Paul is doing what he does in virtually every letter he writes … encouraging the church-builders to continue to be faithful in teaching, preaching and practicing the Word of Jesus Christ.
It’s a great, solid, profound word for us.
Which usually goes thud or gets lost, for us, every year.
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.
SNORE.
Honestly, who can get excited about a Word that sounds like it belongs in a college textbook?
But the problem isn’t with the Word, it’s with our translation of it.
So let’s take the advice I give, whenever people come to me, usually around this time of the year, asking about “which Bible translation should I get, or give, to someone?”
The translation we use in worship, is the one appointed by our denomination, the ELCA, for reading in public worship. It’s called the New Revised Standard Version, and most of the time, it’s very good for public – aloud – reading of the texts.
It’s admittedly at a 10th grade reading level, though. And sometimes it uses words and sentence structures which are difficult to read, and hear, and inwardly digest and understand.
So let’s try hearing Paul’s words to Titus, again, using a more modern, simple, straightforward translation … this one’s called The Voice:
We have cause to celebrate because the grace of God has appeared, offering the gift of salvation to all people. Grace arrives with its own instruction: run away from anything that leads us away from God; abandon the lusts and passions of this world; live life now in this age with awareness and self-control, doing the right thing and keeping yourselves holy. Watch for his return; expect the blessed hope we all will share when our great God and Savior, Jesus the Anointed, appears again. He gave his body for our sakes and will not only break us free from the chains of wickedness, but he will also prepare a community uncorrupted by the world that he would call his own—people who are passionate about doing the right thing.
Now that’s easier to hear, and take in, isn’t it?
We have cause to celebrate because the grace of God has appeared, offering the gift of salvation to all people …
Absolutely we do have cause to celebrate. The grace of God has appeared … is appearing … and will continue to appear … in the Word and Way of Jesus. It is a full, rich and complete story which begins well before the Word from Luke’s Gospel which highlights our reason for gathering here tonight.
It comes even before the Word from the prophet Isaiah which was our Hebrew Scripture reading.
It comes through God’s age-old story for us.
It comes through Jesus’ life of service, suffering, and death on the cross.
It comes through the Easter story of life everlasting.
And it comes through Paul’s instructions here … grace’s instructions … the way God calls us to live in this way of God’s gift of love for us in Jesus.
These are community instruction … the way of Jesus to be lived out, in and with others in the body of Christ together … the body of Christ where there can be, where there are … faith guides, mentors, brothers and sisters who lead and love in the way of Jesus, which means repentance and forgiveness when we don’t follow the instructions … which is the way it is for all of us …
… and who also provide encouragement and hope along the way.
And so we can hear and risk in love to live the Way of Jesus …
…running away from anything that leads from God …
…abandoning the passions of this world (the stuff and situations that lead us from God) to have passion for the Kingdom way of Jesus … giving, serving, living for those who Jesus especially loves … the poor, the powerless, the downtrodden, the sick and suffering and dying, those on the margins of our world …
… and being people who are passionate about doing the right thing.
These are community instructions … for how will we ever know what “the right thing” is apart from the community which enfleshes it for us …
… who eat at Jesus’ table …
… who study and hear and meditate and pray on Jesus’ word …
… who bear his forgiving and freeing Word into the world …
This isn’t just what Christmas is all about, Nativity … it is what this faith, this life is all about. What is real, and true, and for us, for this life, and for the life to come.
It’s a Word especially for you, Nativity, to carry you through in these days and weeks and months ahead … KEEP ON KEEPING ON … keep doing, keep being, the people who Jesus calls, leads, forgives and frees you to be …
… people who are passionate about doing the right thing …
For indeed, we have cause to celebrate tonight … to CELEBRATE THE CHILD … the child Jesus, the one who grows to be the Christ of the Cross and empty tomb, the One who is the Light, and Life, of All.
Amen.
Sunday, December 22, 2013
22 December 2013
“Thank goodness for St. Joseph!”
Advent 4A
Matthew 1:18-25
22 December 2013
Like many of you … I was often treated by mom’s home remedies when I was little.
When I had a sniffle or cold or flu, I knew the routine. Out would come the bottle of children’s aspirin. Orange flavored St. Joseph Children’s Aspirin. It was the great cure for sore throat, high temperature, or whatever mom thought was wrong. “Chew up these two little orange pills and you’ll feel better.”
And do you remember the little advertising jingle that was on their TV commercials? “Thank goodness for St. Joseph’s.”
St. Joseph Children’s Aspirin. The great protector, guardian and comforter of American children in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
You know, that’s … being the protector and guardian of children … that’s probably how that children’s aspirin got its name.
Because its namesake, Joseph … St. Joseph, if you prefer … he is the one who is known … called by the Church … as the “Guardian and Protector of our Lord.”
This Matthew year of our three year lectionary cycle, this is the only year we get to hear about Joseph … two short texts in the first two chapters of the Gospel … three dreams and Joseph’s actions in their aftermath … which the Church has historically treated as Joseph’s “guarding and protecting” the infant Jesus.
Today we get the briefest of introductions to the one who Matthew simply refers to as Mary’s husband.
Here in these verses, Joseph plays the part of what we used to call “an upstanding man.” Once he hears of what was now Mary’s condition and lot in life, he wants to do the right thing, at least, according to the social norms in that honor-and-shame-based society in which they lived.
The honorable thing would have been to “dismiss Mary quietly,” to send her away, back to her parents, to have her baby in seclusion where her family and immediate community could, would, likely, surround her and help her raise the child.
But this wasn’t God’s plan. And the way God chooses to let Joseph know what The Plan is, is to come to Joseph in dreams.
And this is where that word about “St. Joseph, guardian and protector of our Lord” comes about.
Historically the Church has never been able to call Joseph “Jesus’ father.” Even though, that he certainly was, if not by biology, then certainly, by relationship and actions.
Certainly the community, their community, Jesus’ friends and family, they would have known Joseph as Jesus’ father.
Ah, but the tradition insists that Jesus can’t have two dads, and so Joseph is called Jesus’ “guardian and protector.”
Here, in this text, the guarding and protecting isn’t so clear, unless you interpret those words about Joseph “dismissing Mary quietly” as putting her and the baby at risk … which, as a single mother in that culture, perhaps would have happened, but perhaps, not … her family might well have surrounded her with love and helped her with the birth and raising Jesus … we just don’t know.
But Joseph doesn’t dismiss her. He stays, she stays, in the safety of this new family.
Later … in the verses we’ll have as our Gospel text next Sunday … that “guarding and protecting” becomes clearer … as Joseph moves Mary and Jesus out of Bethlehem just in time, before Herod in his jealous anger has all the boy babies in Bethlehem killed.
But still … there’s something about that “guarding and protecting” business … that really bugs me.
In my almost twenty years of servant-leading as an ordained pastor in this church, this has been a constant theme; I’ve run up against it so many times I’ve stopped counting.
Jesus needs protecting, my protecting, our protecting. The Church needs protecting, my protecting, our protecting.
There’s been a run on “protecting the Church” over the past couple of decades, complete with zealots for the cause on either and any side, whether it’s been social issues, economic issues, political issues, wars, women’s rights, worship formats and musical styles, etc. etc.
“We’ve got to protect the Church from …” … and you fill in the blank.
“We’ve got to protect the Church … “ just like St. Joseph protected and guarded Jesus from those who would do him harm.
But wait just a minute.
Do we really believe for a minute that God needs our protection of Jesus, to make this whole enterprise work?
The God who created and creates it all … needs our protection? REALLY?
Well, we must believe we’re pretty hot stuff.
What a load.
Let’s get this straight … Jesus doesn’t for one minute need Joseph’s protection.
God could, God can, God does, have all it takes to do this whole enterprise without our guarding or protecting it.
So why have Joseph around at all?
Aha. Maybe … perhaps … God’s at work, trying to bring to pass something new in Joseph … a change in Joseph’s thinking, doing, being …
… showing Joseph that God is willing, desiring to show people, the world, the whole creation, God’s vulnerability … coming to the world as a tiny baby … which, in turn, moves Joseph to be vulnerable himself, taking in an already-pregnant fiancé, pregnant with a child who isn’t his … taking him in as his – Joseph’s – own.
God, willing, wanting, making Godself so totally what the world would say is not-God – coming to a poor girl from a nothing town in a nowhere part of creation – to show, to prove to the creation … to US … that God loves, God gives, God saves isn’t a political slogan but a real-flesh-and-blood promise, a realized promise, for Mary, for Joseph, for their people … for all of creation … for you and me.
That’s what Christmas is all about, Nativity.
So this year, Nativity, you’ve got this strange Advent and Christmas gift … a nearly empty office down at the end of that hall … and a question mark as to what comes next.
We’ve been talking about this now for the four Sundays of this season … talking about this time of gift, gift of time for you to, yes, work and serve and give like you always have, even as you wait patiently for the Spirit, to lead and guide, as you pray and study and explore, doing the deep work of faith, asking “where is God leading us next?”
And, as I said last week, there will be those who will not want to do that deep work which is part and parcel of the interim process. They may want to rush through it like the world wants to rush through Advent.
They may say that they’re just trying to “protect” or “guard” Nativity in the interim, until you get a “real” pastor. (You will have a real pastor in the interim.) They may say that they’re just trying to hold on to the way things used to be, or have always been, or even … God forbid … keep it just the way it was when Pastor Bob was here. (The Church was never meant to be a museum full of well-preserved displays of the past.)
Again, as I said last week, don’t let them stop you. And just keep loving them anyway. Love them into the interim process. Trust the process. Because the process works. Because God’s Spirit makes it work.
Nativity Lutheran Church needs no protection by us … it may at times need protection from us, but Nativity needs no guardians … the same way Jesus needed no guardian or protector.
For, after all, protecting, guarding, that’s just our idea, of what we think needs guarding or protecting. In the end, it comes back to being all about US.
No, what Nativity Lutheran Church does need … is for you to be all about Jes-US … to be a people willing to be open, and vulnerable, and ready to hear the voice of God calling to you, to lead, to guide, to prepare, to build, to lead this faith community, this community of God’s creation, into the future where God is already waiting … calling … gathering us.
So be those Jesus-people, Nativity, people of new birth, people of new life.
Be open and vulnerable, be ready and willing, be honest and eager to explore the what and where of God’s working and leading, prodding and pushing and pulling and calling in you.
And use this time, this interim time, this Kairos moment in the midst of Chronos straight line time, this breaking in time of God’s good and creative Spirit, use this time to be like Joseph ... to listen, to be obedient, to worship and work, to serve and give.
No, it won’t be easy. It wasn’t for Joseph either. Sometimes it will be hard work. Self-examination, keeping what is true and right, tossing out what doesn’t work anymore, bringing in the new … this is the hard work of faith and life.
But as God was with Joseph, so God will be with you, Nativity, place and people who also cradle the Christ, to and for the sake of your community, your place, your people … God will be with you, and will bless you in this time … as surely as God has blessed our time together, so God’s blessing will continue … as you do the good, good work of faith … sharing that Word that God loves, God gives, God saves, into your worlds, into God’s world. Amen.
Advent 4A
Matthew 1:18-25
22 December 2013
Like many of you … I was often treated by mom’s home remedies when I was little.
When I had a sniffle or cold or flu, I knew the routine. Out would come the bottle of children’s aspirin. Orange flavored St. Joseph Children’s Aspirin. It was the great cure for sore throat, high temperature, or whatever mom thought was wrong. “Chew up these two little orange pills and you’ll feel better.”
And do you remember the little advertising jingle that was on their TV commercials? “Thank goodness for St. Joseph’s.”
St. Joseph Children’s Aspirin. The great protector, guardian and comforter of American children in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
You know, that’s … being the protector and guardian of children … that’s probably how that children’s aspirin got its name.
Because its namesake, Joseph … St. Joseph, if you prefer … he is the one who is known … called by the Church … as the “Guardian and Protector of our Lord.”
This Matthew year of our three year lectionary cycle, this is the only year we get to hear about Joseph … two short texts in the first two chapters of the Gospel … three dreams and Joseph’s actions in their aftermath … which the Church has historically treated as Joseph’s “guarding and protecting” the infant Jesus.
Today we get the briefest of introductions to the one who Matthew simply refers to as Mary’s husband.
Here in these verses, Joseph plays the part of what we used to call “an upstanding man.” Once he hears of what was now Mary’s condition and lot in life, he wants to do the right thing, at least, according to the social norms in that honor-and-shame-based society in which they lived.
The honorable thing would have been to “dismiss Mary quietly,” to send her away, back to her parents, to have her baby in seclusion where her family and immediate community could, would, likely, surround her and help her raise the child.
But this wasn’t God’s plan. And the way God chooses to let Joseph know what The Plan is, is to come to Joseph in dreams.
And this is where that word about “St. Joseph, guardian and protector of our Lord” comes about.
Historically the Church has never been able to call Joseph “Jesus’ father.” Even though, that he certainly was, if not by biology, then certainly, by relationship and actions.
Certainly the community, their community, Jesus’ friends and family, they would have known Joseph as Jesus’ father.
Ah, but the tradition insists that Jesus can’t have two dads, and so Joseph is called Jesus’ “guardian and protector.”
Here, in this text, the guarding and protecting isn’t so clear, unless you interpret those words about Joseph “dismissing Mary quietly” as putting her and the baby at risk … which, as a single mother in that culture, perhaps would have happened, but perhaps, not … her family might well have surrounded her with love and helped her with the birth and raising Jesus … we just don’t know.
But Joseph doesn’t dismiss her. He stays, she stays, in the safety of this new family.
Later … in the verses we’ll have as our Gospel text next Sunday … that “guarding and protecting” becomes clearer … as Joseph moves Mary and Jesus out of Bethlehem just in time, before Herod in his jealous anger has all the boy babies in Bethlehem killed.
But still … there’s something about that “guarding and protecting” business … that really bugs me.
In my almost twenty years of servant-leading as an ordained pastor in this church, this has been a constant theme; I’ve run up against it so many times I’ve stopped counting.
Jesus needs protecting, my protecting, our protecting. The Church needs protecting, my protecting, our protecting.
There’s been a run on “protecting the Church” over the past couple of decades, complete with zealots for the cause on either and any side, whether it’s been social issues, economic issues, political issues, wars, women’s rights, worship formats and musical styles, etc. etc.
“We’ve got to protect the Church from …” … and you fill in the blank.
“We’ve got to protect the Church … “ just like St. Joseph protected and guarded Jesus from those who would do him harm.
But wait just a minute.
Do we really believe for a minute that God needs our protection of Jesus, to make this whole enterprise work?
The God who created and creates it all … needs our protection? REALLY?
Well, we must believe we’re pretty hot stuff.
What a load.
Let’s get this straight … Jesus doesn’t for one minute need Joseph’s protection.
God could, God can, God does, have all it takes to do this whole enterprise without our guarding or protecting it.
So why have Joseph around at all?
Aha. Maybe … perhaps … God’s at work, trying to bring to pass something new in Joseph … a change in Joseph’s thinking, doing, being …
… showing Joseph that God is willing, desiring to show people, the world, the whole creation, God’s vulnerability … coming to the world as a tiny baby … which, in turn, moves Joseph to be vulnerable himself, taking in an already-pregnant fiancé, pregnant with a child who isn’t his … taking him in as his – Joseph’s – own.
God, willing, wanting, making Godself so totally what the world would say is not-God – coming to a poor girl from a nothing town in a nowhere part of creation – to show, to prove to the creation … to US … that God loves, God gives, God saves isn’t a political slogan but a real-flesh-and-blood promise, a realized promise, for Mary, for Joseph, for their people … for all of creation … for you and me.
That’s what Christmas is all about, Nativity.
So this year, Nativity, you’ve got this strange Advent and Christmas gift … a nearly empty office down at the end of that hall … and a question mark as to what comes next.
We’ve been talking about this now for the four Sundays of this season … talking about this time of gift, gift of time for you to, yes, work and serve and give like you always have, even as you wait patiently for the Spirit, to lead and guide, as you pray and study and explore, doing the deep work of faith, asking “where is God leading us next?”
And, as I said last week, there will be those who will not want to do that deep work which is part and parcel of the interim process. They may want to rush through it like the world wants to rush through Advent.
They may say that they’re just trying to “protect” or “guard” Nativity in the interim, until you get a “real” pastor. (You will have a real pastor in the interim.) They may say that they’re just trying to hold on to the way things used to be, or have always been, or even … God forbid … keep it just the way it was when Pastor Bob was here. (The Church was never meant to be a museum full of well-preserved displays of the past.)
Again, as I said last week, don’t let them stop you. And just keep loving them anyway. Love them into the interim process. Trust the process. Because the process works. Because God’s Spirit makes it work.
Nativity Lutheran Church needs no protection by us … it may at times need protection from us, but Nativity needs no guardians … the same way Jesus needed no guardian or protector.
For, after all, protecting, guarding, that’s just our idea, of what we think needs guarding or protecting. In the end, it comes back to being all about US.
No, what Nativity Lutheran Church does need … is for you to be all about Jes-US … to be a people willing to be open, and vulnerable, and ready to hear the voice of God calling to you, to lead, to guide, to prepare, to build, to lead this faith community, this community of God’s creation, into the future where God is already waiting … calling … gathering us.
So be those Jesus-people, Nativity, people of new birth, people of new life.
Be open and vulnerable, be ready and willing, be honest and eager to explore the what and where of God’s working and leading, prodding and pushing and pulling and calling in you.
And use this time, this interim time, this Kairos moment in the midst of Chronos straight line time, this breaking in time of God’s good and creative Spirit, use this time to be like Joseph ... to listen, to be obedient, to worship and work, to serve and give.
No, it won’t be easy. It wasn’t for Joseph either. Sometimes it will be hard work. Self-examination, keeping what is true and right, tossing out what doesn’t work anymore, bringing in the new … this is the hard work of faith and life.
But as God was with Joseph, so God will be with you, Nativity, place and people who also cradle the Christ, to and for the sake of your community, your place, your people … God will be with you, and will bless you in this time … as surely as God has blessed our time together, so God’s blessing will continue … as you do the good, good work of faith … sharing that Word that God loves, God gives, God saves, into your worlds, into God’s world. Amen.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
15 December 2013
“John the Baptist has left the building”
3 Advent A
Matthew 11:2-11 / James 5:7-10 / Isaiah 35:1-10
15 December 2013
Yes, it’s true, on this third Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist has left the building.
Did I hear a “Thanks Be To God?” Well, that’s OK.
Just don’t get too excited too soon.
John may have left the building, but he still looms large in today’s Gospel text.
Several chapters and a good course of time has passed since last week’s “brood of vipers” calling out, John’s baptizing, preaching and teaching repentance out in the wilderness … now, this week, John is in prison.
Physically, he’s locked up because of sedition … preaching and teaching against the political ruler … in John’s case, Herod Antipas (one of Herod the Great’s four sons) has had him arrested because John criticized Herod Antipas’ leaving his own wife and marrying his brother’s wife (though we don’t read of this explanation until chapter 14).
But spiritually, John is locked up, too.
John just does not understand this Jesus.
He doesn’t get why this one who he pointed to as the Messiah, isn’t being Messiah-like in the way he – John – said he would be.
Remember what we heard from the hair-shirted bug eater last Sunday:
One who is more powerful than I is coming after me … he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
He will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
But Jesus hasn’t been doing this. He hasn’t been a scorched-earth Messiah.
And so John, indeed, becomes one of those who Jesus implies are taking “offense” at him. Literally, being scandalized by Jesus. This Jesus, he isn’t who John said would come, he doesn’t match up with some of the prophetic word written and proclaimed about him … especially the prophetic word which John knew, and proclaimed himself.
What had Jesus been doing? Being a very human Messiah. Making life better for God’s children on earth.
The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.
And this is precisely what’s scandalizing John. And others. And, perhaps, maybe, us too.
Theologian Robert Farrar Capon puts it well:
The human race is, was and probably always will be deeply unwilling to accept a human messiah. We don’t want to be saved in our humanity; we want to be fished out of it. We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he blasphemed: he claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It’s not that we weren’t looking for the Messiah; it’s just that he wasn’t what we were looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from a cross. He would carry a folding phone booth in his back pocket (so he could be like Superman). He wouldn’t do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying.
And so John sits in prison … physically imprisoned by the King … spiritually imprisoned by his being scandalized by Jesus. He misses his friends and community and, likely, most of all, he misses certainty … the certainty of his preaching and teaching about a Messiah who, in his view, is very different from who has come in Jesus.
John isn’t very patient, is he?
Perhaps he should heed the words of James from our New Testament reading.
Be patient, therefore, beloved … the farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You must also be patient … beloved, do not grumble against one another (literally, hold a grudge against one another). As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.
John isn’t one of those patient prophets, that’s for sure. He’s heard of Jesus’ miracles, but they aren’t helping him. The certainty of his wilderness “scorched earth” Messiah proclamations have now turned into uncertain questions … Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?
Being patient. Enduring. Doing the work of disciples. Trusting the process. Those are all words you have heard from me, from Nativity’s leadership these past few weeks since I announced that I am resigning in two weeks to take another call. And I heard your words this past week, at our congregational meeting last Sunday … hopes, but also fears … how shall you continue to do and be, to be an attractive faith community to others, and to retain the disciples who are already here?
You have been given a unique opportunity, Nativity, the gift of time, time of gift, for you … time to simply be with yourselves, to ask questions, “who … where … what is God calling us to be now, in this time of change for us?” It is the gift of time, time of gift to do the deep work, the inner work, of being a disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ, a congregation of followers of Jesus.
It can be a blessed time, a time of hope and preparation and planning for the future where God is already waiting, and calling you to be. How often do we get gifts like this, to simply be, to self-reflect and study and pray and listen for the movement of God’s Spirit?
Now, it won’t necessarily be easy. Doing the deep work of faith often means discovering, hearing and seeing things about ourselves that aren’t necessarily comfortable … as it wasn’t for John, so it may not be for you. But don’t let that dis-ease of spirit imprison you like it did John. The interim process is deliberately designed to question and challenge the status quo … meaning, just because we did things this way with Pastor Bob, doesn’t mean it always has to be this way … we can change. So it is also a freeing time … leaving room for re-evaluating, ambiguity, dreaming and growing.
The world doesn’t like self-examination. So there will be some who will say, “This process is not going fast enough.” “We don’t need to do all this self-study.” “When will Nativity have a real pastor again?”
Well, you will have a real pastor in your interim. Welcome her. Trust him. Do not make the interim time into a prison where you are miserable, or from which you wish to escape. And do not let some make it that way for most. Instead, receive it as gift. Receive it as gift. And love those who don’t like it, love them anyway, love them into the interim gift of time, time of gift. Because you will be richly rewarded. Who knows? You may even be able to witness that the blind see, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised. If not literally, then, surely, figuratively. Those of you who were here during the last interim know that of which I speak. You others, ask them. They know. Because the process works. Trust the process. Trust the interim process.
Blessed are those who are open enough to receive and accept whatever God sends.
Because what God sends is most surely renewal … renewal for God’s people, renewal for all God’s creation.
Once again this week, Isaiah gives us this word of inevitable renewal … and promised hope.
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad …
The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
There the lame shall leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
They shall obtain joy and gladness,
And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Shall. Shall.
It shall be, it will be, because this is the will of our God … our God who loves, who gives, who saves in Jesus the Christ.
John had forgotten this prophetic word, from the greatest of the Hebrew prophets before him. That’s why Jesus says of him,
Among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
Nativity people, people of new hope, new birth, new life … you don’t forget this word … this hope, this promise. Yes, the pastor is leaving, but the ministry, the work, the witness, the giving, the service of the Kingdom of Heaven remains.
And it is good work … good giving … good service, to be sure. Given to us, yes, in round time … Jesus’ time … time of gift, gift of time, time when things are not nailed down and stamped shut and clean and clear, but ambiguous and yes, messy. Endings and beginnings are always messy.
But they can be messy precisely because we know how it all turns out in the end.
Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?
Jesus is. In his messy, sometimes ambiguous humanity … working, suffering, serving, giving, dying … he points the way for his disciples to live here on earth … in Jesus’ time, even as we wait in straight-line time.
Jesus is. In his clear divinity … rising, healing, teaching, saving … he gives us the certainty we need to follow him.
Therefore, beloved … take heart … and wait … and worship … and watch … and work.
In great joy. Always, in great, great joy.
Amen.
3 Advent A
Matthew 11:2-11 / James 5:7-10 / Isaiah 35:1-10
15 December 2013
Yes, it’s true, on this third Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist has left the building.
Did I hear a “Thanks Be To God?” Well, that’s OK.
Just don’t get too excited too soon.
John may have left the building, but he still looms large in today’s Gospel text.
Several chapters and a good course of time has passed since last week’s “brood of vipers” calling out, John’s baptizing, preaching and teaching repentance out in the wilderness … now, this week, John is in prison.
Physically, he’s locked up because of sedition … preaching and teaching against the political ruler … in John’s case, Herod Antipas (one of Herod the Great’s four sons) has had him arrested because John criticized Herod Antipas’ leaving his own wife and marrying his brother’s wife (though we don’t read of this explanation until chapter 14).
But spiritually, John is locked up, too.
John just does not understand this Jesus.
He doesn’t get why this one who he pointed to as the Messiah, isn’t being Messiah-like in the way he – John – said he would be.
Remember what we heard from the hair-shirted bug eater last Sunday:
One who is more powerful than I is coming after me … he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
He will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
But Jesus hasn’t been doing this. He hasn’t been a scorched-earth Messiah.
And so John, indeed, becomes one of those who Jesus implies are taking “offense” at him. Literally, being scandalized by Jesus. This Jesus, he isn’t who John said would come, he doesn’t match up with some of the prophetic word written and proclaimed about him … especially the prophetic word which John knew, and proclaimed himself.
What had Jesus been doing? Being a very human Messiah. Making life better for God’s children on earth.
The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.
And this is precisely what’s scandalizing John. And others. And, perhaps, maybe, us too.
Theologian Robert Farrar Capon puts it well:
The human race is, was and probably always will be deeply unwilling to accept a human messiah. We don’t want to be saved in our humanity; we want to be fished out of it. We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he blasphemed: he claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It’s not that we weren’t looking for the Messiah; it’s just that he wasn’t what we were looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from a cross. He would carry a folding phone booth in his back pocket (so he could be like Superman). He wouldn’t do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying.
And so John sits in prison … physically imprisoned by the King … spiritually imprisoned by his being scandalized by Jesus. He misses his friends and community and, likely, most of all, he misses certainty … the certainty of his preaching and teaching about a Messiah who, in his view, is very different from who has come in Jesus.
John isn’t very patient, is he?
Perhaps he should heed the words of James from our New Testament reading.
Be patient, therefore, beloved … the farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You must also be patient … beloved, do not grumble against one another (literally, hold a grudge against one another). As an example of suffering and patience, beloved, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.
John isn’t one of those patient prophets, that’s for sure. He’s heard of Jesus’ miracles, but they aren’t helping him. The certainty of his wilderness “scorched earth” Messiah proclamations have now turned into uncertain questions … Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?
Being patient. Enduring. Doing the work of disciples. Trusting the process. Those are all words you have heard from me, from Nativity’s leadership these past few weeks since I announced that I am resigning in two weeks to take another call. And I heard your words this past week, at our congregational meeting last Sunday … hopes, but also fears … how shall you continue to do and be, to be an attractive faith community to others, and to retain the disciples who are already here?
You have been given a unique opportunity, Nativity, the gift of time, time of gift, for you … time to simply be with yourselves, to ask questions, “who … where … what is God calling us to be now, in this time of change for us?” It is the gift of time, time of gift to do the deep work, the inner work, of being a disciple, a follower of Jesus Christ, a congregation of followers of Jesus.
It can be a blessed time, a time of hope and preparation and planning for the future where God is already waiting, and calling you to be. How often do we get gifts like this, to simply be, to self-reflect and study and pray and listen for the movement of God’s Spirit?
Now, it won’t necessarily be easy. Doing the deep work of faith often means discovering, hearing and seeing things about ourselves that aren’t necessarily comfortable … as it wasn’t for John, so it may not be for you. But don’t let that dis-ease of spirit imprison you like it did John. The interim process is deliberately designed to question and challenge the status quo … meaning, just because we did things this way with Pastor Bob, doesn’t mean it always has to be this way … we can change. So it is also a freeing time … leaving room for re-evaluating, ambiguity, dreaming and growing.
The world doesn’t like self-examination. So there will be some who will say, “This process is not going fast enough.” “We don’t need to do all this self-study.” “When will Nativity have a real pastor again?”
Well, you will have a real pastor in your interim. Welcome her. Trust him. Do not make the interim time into a prison where you are miserable, or from which you wish to escape. And do not let some make it that way for most. Instead, receive it as gift. Receive it as gift. And love those who don’t like it, love them anyway, love them into the interim gift of time, time of gift. Because you will be richly rewarded. Who knows? You may even be able to witness that the blind see, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised. If not literally, then, surely, figuratively. Those of you who were here during the last interim know that of which I speak. You others, ask them. They know. Because the process works. Trust the process. Trust the interim process.
Blessed are those who are open enough to receive and accept whatever God sends.
Because what God sends is most surely renewal … renewal for God’s people, renewal for all God’s creation.
Once again this week, Isaiah gives us this word of inevitable renewal … and promised hope.
The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad …
The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
There the lame shall leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.
Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
They shall obtain joy and gladness,
And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Shall. Shall.
It shall be, it will be, because this is the will of our God … our God who loves, who gives, who saves in Jesus the Christ.
John had forgotten this prophetic word, from the greatest of the Hebrew prophets before him. That’s why Jesus says of him,
Among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
Nativity people, people of new hope, new birth, new life … you don’t forget this word … this hope, this promise. Yes, the pastor is leaving, but the ministry, the work, the witness, the giving, the service of the Kingdom of Heaven remains.
And it is good work … good giving … good service, to be sure. Given to us, yes, in round time … Jesus’ time … time of gift, gift of time, time when things are not nailed down and stamped shut and clean and clear, but ambiguous and yes, messy. Endings and beginnings are always messy.
But they can be messy precisely because we know how it all turns out in the end.
Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?
Jesus is. In his messy, sometimes ambiguous humanity … working, suffering, serving, giving, dying … he points the way for his disciples to live here on earth … in Jesus’ time, even as we wait in straight-line time.
Jesus is. In his clear divinity … rising, healing, teaching, saving … he gives us the certainty we need to follow him.
Therefore, beloved … take heart … and wait … and worship … and watch … and work.
In great joy. Always, in great, great joy.
Amen.
Sunday, December 08, 2013
8 December 2013
“John the Baptist is in the building”
Matthew 3:1-2 / Isaiah 11:1-10
Advent 2 A
8 December 2013
Yes, here he is.
It’s the second Sunday of Advent, and, ladies and gentlemen, John the Baptist is in the building.
Once again.
I know, I know … for those who have been through the four-week season cycle that is Advent before … you know this guy, John the Baptist.
Some may welcome the presence of the hair-shirted bug eater as a milestone along the way of the season … you can set your calendar and your clock by him … two more Sundays till Christmas! Others, perhaps, treat his appearing like the old Listerine commercial, not “the taste people hate,” but “the prophet we tolerate once a year.”
And certainly, there are some who just don’t understand why Mister-Gloom-and-Doom has to be part of our Advent preparations at all. Especially in this year of the three year lectionary text cycle where we get the Baptist, not once, but TWICE … yes, two weeks in a row, come back next Sunday for the second half, “John the Baptist has left the building.”
But that’s next Sunday.
So why is he here, anyway?
Well, there’s a simple answer. John the Baptist is the bridge … the human bridge … between the Old Testament prophets and Jesus.
Our clue is in the first three words of today’s Gospel text …
In those days …
Those days … those years of the turn of the millennium from Before the Common Era to the Common Era … BC to AD … they were turbulent ones for Judea. The freedoms won by the Jewish Maccabees in their revolt (what’s celebrated as Hanukkah) … the Maccabee-won freedoms were forgotten … the Romans had taken over, set up servant-kings (first Herod the Great, then his sons) who kept the Jews in line.
And most Jews did … stay in line, that is. Their leaders divided into two parties … the Pharisees, who were the forerunners of the modern rabbinical movement, and the Sadducees … you remember them from the Gospel of a couple weeks’ ago, they were a rival group to the Pharisees who, unlike the Pharisees, did not believe that there was any life beyond this one.
But there were other groups … the Essenes … the Zealots … and these groups were not about to stay quiet in the face of what they saw was too much cooperation and collusion with the Roman invaders. The Zealots were more violent in their criticism, guerilla warriors trying to keep the memory of the Maccabees alive. The Romans, when they caught them … and they usually did … made a public spectacle of their punishment … death by crucifixion.
The Essenes were not violent … they withdrew to the desert, the wilderness … a group of ascetics who gave up many of the material comforts of this life to be about their reforming and purifying, “cleaning up” Judaism.
It was of this Essene group from which John the Baptist likely got his start … and his learning … for his ministry.
Now in those days of religious and cultural upheaval it wasn’t at all uncommon to find religious fanatics out in the desert, proclaiming repentance, and baptizing people. In those days many people were searching after something, a word, a message, to help them through these difficult times.
John’s message was a familiar one … repent … turn around, confess your sins, change your ways, be baptized. Be baptized … which was a long-established Jewish cleansing ritual symbolizing repentance. This was, after all, the message of the ancient Israelite prophets … repent … and many went out into the wilderness to do just that.
Including … including John’s rivals, the Pharisees and Sadducees.
But our text has a misleading translation in it … it says these Pharisees and Sadducees were coming for baptism … which then doesn’t make a lot of sense with how John reacts to them (for the very act of being baptized was part and parcel of repentance and confession). No, what was more likely happening here was that the Pharisees and Sadducees … the religious leadership of Jerusalem … had gone out to the wilderness to watch, and criticize John, his preaching, his teaching, his religious activity.
And so now it makes more sense why John goes off on them.
You brood of vipers!
Yes, it’s a lot of gloom and doom for this Second Sunday of Advent, especially in the words of John which follow.
Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
One who is more powerful than I is coming after me … he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
He will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
Happy Second Sunday of Advent.
Ah, but wait a minute.
First of all, a word to us self-absorbed twenty first century types. “It’s not all about you … or me.”
These words of John, the final six verses of this text today, on this Second Sunday of Advent, these words were meant to be FIRST for John’s rivals, his enemies, the Pharisees and Sadducees, those religious leaders who often chose to ignore or even mistreat those who God’s law called them to pay special attention … the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger in their midst … these leaders who so often chose the political comfort of collaborating with the Roman invaders, over justice … these were the ones who had come out from Jerusalem to criticize and complain, perhaps to take word back to their superiors in Jerusalem about this hair-shirted bug eater ranting and raving in the wilderness.
It’s certainly consistent-talk with the Israelite prophets who went before John, critical of the political and religious leadership of Israel of their day. Compare John’s words to some from Isaiah, which appear before our text-verses for today:
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good …
Or from Amos:
Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?
Or from Zephaniah:
Gather together, gather, O shameless nation, before you are driven away like the drifting chaff, before there comes upon you the fierce anger of the Lord, before there comes upon you the day of the Lord’s wrath.
Now, make no mistake, we need to hear these words clearly today, too, as a call to repentance … a call for us to turn around and confess our sins. Indeed, Advent used to be known as a “little Lent,” a winter season for introspection, self-denial, and yes, confession and repentance.
However … and this is a big however … however, I think we need to hear the words of John the Baptist with an asterisk next to them.
John the Baptist may be in the building this Sunday, yes, but we must not lose sight of what looms largest in this building.
The Cross.
The symbol for God’s self-giving love, God’s FORGIVENESS, in Jesus Christ.
John may know that he’s the one to come before Jesus, but he sure shows here that he doesn’t know much about Jesus.
John does a great job of calling the people to repentance, to confessing their sins, but he has nothing to say about forgiveness.
John needs a lesson in God’s grace … God’s unconditional love, forgiveness, peace, wholeness, shalom in Jesus Christ.
Strangely, though, the first words John says in our text point toward this.
The kingdom of heaven has come near.
Yes, John, it’s true, the Kingdom has come near. But not with your threats.
It’s come near because God has willed it to come near, in Jesus.
God loves, God gives, God saves in Jesus the Christ, the One coming after John who will not only speak God’s Word of grace, but will live it … Jesus, who will go to his death for it, for us to have it … and who will be raised into God’s eternal Kingdom of Heaven, to bring this love, forgiveness, shalom, wholeness, GRACE to God’s beloved children, on earth as it is in heaven.
And wonderfully enough for us today, on this Second Sunday of Advent, it is this word which Isaiah brings to us … the word of the inevitability of God’s Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven, come to us … as Isaiah looks forward to the Messiah, the Christ:
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him …
… With righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist;
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.
Shall. Shall. SHALL. WILL.
This SHALL happen, this WILL happen, it is inevitable.
No, it isn’t here yet, but it’s a-comin’. As surely as the sun rises each day, it’s a-comin.’
God’s reign of FORGIVENESS, of LOVE, of PEACE … not just endless repentance followed by fear and wondering if we’ve done enough to be forgiven … borne enough fruit to be forgiven … or if we’re just that bad chaff that will be burned with unquenchable fire … offscourings, garbage, dreck …
NO, NO, NO.
John the Baptist is NOT Jesus the Christ. Thanks be to God.
So what of John?
Should we still hear John’s words? Certainly.
Should we still repent? Certainly. We haven’t stopped sinning … screwing up … breaking community-love-body-of-Christ by what we’ve done and haven’t done. That’s for sure.
But don’t John-the-Baptist stay stuck there.
Be drawn into the inevitability of the Kingdom of Heaven, not just come near, but here. It shall be, it will be … and that Word, these signs, word, water, bread, wine, gathered sinner-saints, forgiven and freed … all these give us courage and faith, love and strength to go and show and live the Kingdom of Heaven into being NOW …
Not perfectly, not perfectly, but baby steps. Baby steps.
Risked and shared in love and forgiveness, grace and peace, and certainty, the certainty that comes from the gift of God’s SHALL and WILL … for us, and for all creation.
Yes, John the Baptist is in the building. And … on this Second Sunday of Advent, that’s OK.
But Jesus is always here, FOR US. For us, for grace, for forgiveness, for life.
And that’s far, far better.
Amen.
Matthew 3:1-2 / Isaiah 11:1-10
Advent 2 A
8 December 2013
Yes, here he is.
It’s the second Sunday of Advent, and, ladies and gentlemen, John the Baptist is in the building.
Once again.
I know, I know … for those who have been through the four-week season cycle that is Advent before … you know this guy, John the Baptist.
Some may welcome the presence of the hair-shirted bug eater as a milestone along the way of the season … you can set your calendar and your clock by him … two more Sundays till Christmas! Others, perhaps, treat his appearing like the old Listerine commercial, not “the taste people hate,” but “the prophet we tolerate once a year.”
And certainly, there are some who just don’t understand why Mister-Gloom-and-Doom has to be part of our Advent preparations at all. Especially in this year of the three year lectionary text cycle where we get the Baptist, not once, but TWICE … yes, two weeks in a row, come back next Sunday for the second half, “John the Baptist has left the building.”
But that’s next Sunday.
So why is he here, anyway?
Well, there’s a simple answer. John the Baptist is the bridge … the human bridge … between the Old Testament prophets and Jesus.
Our clue is in the first three words of today’s Gospel text …
In those days …
Those days … those years of the turn of the millennium from Before the Common Era to the Common Era … BC to AD … they were turbulent ones for Judea. The freedoms won by the Jewish Maccabees in their revolt (what’s celebrated as Hanukkah) … the Maccabee-won freedoms were forgotten … the Romans had taken over, set up servant-kings (first Herod the Great, then his sons) who kept the Jews in line.
And most Jews did … stay in line, that is. Their leaders divided into two parties … the Pharisees, who were the forerunners of the modern rabbinical movement, and the Sadducees … you remember them from the Gospel of a couple weeks’ ago, they were a rival group to the Pharisees who, unlike the Pharisees, did not believe that there was any life beyond this one.
But there were other groups … the Essenes … the Zealots … and these groups were not about to stay quiet in the face of what they saw was too much cooperation and collusion with the Roman invaders. The Zealots were more violent in their criticism, guerilla warriors trying to keep the memory of the Maccabees alive. The Romans, when they caught them … and they usually did … made a public spectacle of their punishment … death by crucifixion.
The Essenes were not violent … they withdrew to the desert, the wilderness … a group of ascetics who gave up many of the material comforts of this life to be about their reforming and purifying, “cleaning up” Judaism.
It was of this Essene group from which John the Baptist likely got his start … and his learning … for his ministry.
Now in those days of religious and cultural upheaval it wasn’t at all uncommon to find religious fanatics out in the desert, proclaiming repentance, and baptizing people. In those days many people were searching after something, a word, a message, to help them through these difficult times.
John’s message was a familiar one … repent … turn around, confess your sins, change your ways, be baptized. Be baptized … which was a long-established Jewish cleansing ritual symbolizing repentance. This was, after all, the message of the ancient Israelite prophets … repent … and many went out into the wilderness to do just that.
Including … including John’s rivals, the Pharisees and Sadducees.
But our text has a misleading translation in it … it says these Pharisees and Sadducees were coming for baptism … which then doesn’t make a lot of sense with how John reacts to them (for the very act of being baptized was part and parcel of repentance and confession). No, what was more likely happening here was that the Pharisees and Sadducees … the religious leadership of Jerusalem … had gone out to the wilderness to watch, and criticize John, his preaching, his teaching, his religious activity.
And so now it makes more sense why John goes off on them.
You brood of vipers!
Yes, it’s a lot of gloom and doom for this Second Sunday of Advent, especially in the words of John which follow.
Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
One who is more powerful than I is coming after me … he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
He will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.
Happy Second Sunday of Advent.
Ah, but wait a minute.
First of all, a word to us self-absorbed twenty first century types. “It’s not all about you … or me.”
These words of John, the final six verses of this text today, on this Second Sunday of Advent, these words were meant to be FIRST for John’s rivals, his enemies, the Pharisees and Sadducees, those religious leaders who often chose to ignore or even mistreat those who God’s law called them to pay special attention … the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger in their midst … these leaders who so often chose the political comfort of collaborating with the Roman invaders, over justice … these were the ones who had come out from Jerusalem to criticize and complain, perhaps to take word back to their superiors in Jerusalem about this hair-shirted bug eater ranting and raving in the wilderness.
It’s certainly consistent-talk with the Israelite prophets who went before John, critical of the political and religious leadership of Israel of their day. Compare John’s words to some from Isaiah, which appear before our text-verses for today:
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good …
Or from Amos:
Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light, and gloom with no brightness in it?
Or from Zephaniah:
Gather together, gather, O shameless nation, before you are driven away like the drifting chaff, before there comes upon you the fierce anger of the Lord, before there comes upon you the day of the Lord’s wrath.
Now, make no mistake, we need to hear these words clearly today, too, as a call to repentance … a call for us to turn around and confess our sins. Indeed, Advent used to be known as a “little Lent,” a winter season for introspection, self-denial, and yes, confession and repentance.
However … and this is a big however … however, I think we need to hear the words of John the Baptist with an asterisk next to them.
John the Baptist may be in the building this Sunday, yes, but we must not lose sight of what looms largest in this building.
The Cross.
The symbol for God’s self-giving love, God’s FORGIVENESS, in Jesus Christ.
John may know that he’s the one to come before Jesus, but he sure shows here that he doesn’t know much about Jesus.
John does a great job of calling the people to repentance, to confessing their sins, but he has nothing to say about forgiveness.
John needs a lesson in God’s grace … God’s unconditional love, forgiveness, peace, wholeness, shalom in Jesus Christ.
Strangely, though, the first words John says in our text point toward this.
The kingdom of heaven has come near.
Yes, John, it’s true, the Kingdom has come near. But not with your threats.
It’s come near because God has willed it to come near, in Jesus.
God loves, God gives, God saves in Jesus the Christ, the One coming after John who will not only speak God’s Word of grace, but will live it … Jesus, who will go to his death for it, for us to have it … and who will be raised into God’s eternal Kingdom of Heaven, to bring this love, forgiveness, shalom, wholeness, GRACE to God’s beloved children, on earth as it is in heaven.
And wonderfully enough for us today, on this Second Sunday of Advent, it is this word which Isaiah brings to us … the word of the inevitability of God’s Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven, come to us … as Isaiah looks forward to the Messiah, the Christ:
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him …
… With righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist;
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.
Shall. Shall. SHALL. WILL.
This SHALL happen, this WILL happen, it is inevitable.
No, it isn’t here yet, but it’s a-comin’. As surely as the sun rises each day, it’s a-comin.’
God’s reign of FORGIVENESS, of LOVE, of PEACE … not just endless repentance followed by fear and wondering if we’ve done enough to be forgiven … borne enough fruit to be forgiven … or if we’re just that bad chaff that will be burned with unquenchable fire … offscourings, garbage, dreck …
NO, NO, NO.
John the Baptist is NOT Jesus the Christ. Thanks be to God.
So what of John?
Should we still hear John’s words? Certainly.
Should we still repent? Certainly. We haven’t stopped sinning … screwing up … breaking community-love-body-of-Christ by what we’ve done and haven’t done. That’s for sure.
But don’t John-the-Baptist stay stuck there.
Be drawn into the inevitability of the Kingdom of Heaven, not just come near, but here. It shall be, it will be … and that Word, these signs, word, water, bread, wine, gathered sinner-saints, forgiven and freed … all these give us courage and faith, love and strength to go and show and live the Kingdom of Heaven into being NOW …
Not perfectly, not perfectly, but baby steps. Baby steps.
Risked and shared in love and forgiveness, grace and peace, and certainty, the certainty that comes from the gift of God’s SHALL and WILL … for us, and for all creation.
Yes, John the Baptist is in the building. And … on this Second Sunday of Advent, that’s OK.
But Jesus is always here, FOR US. For us, for grace, for forgiveness, for life.
And that’s far, far better.
Amen.
Sunday, December 01, 2013
1 December 2013
“A stirring beginning to Advent”
Isaiah 2:1-5 / Romans 13:11-14 / Matthew 24:36-44
1 Advent A
1 December 2013
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.
Every year, on the first Sunday of Advent, we being worship with those words, in the Prayer of the Day, what used to be called the Collect … because the presider would, historically, use this time to collect the longings and rejoicings of the congregation, and put them in a short form prayer.
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.
Actually, each Sunday of Advent begins with those “stirring” words, the Prayer of the Day focusing us on what this Season of Advent is all about:
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come …
Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son …
Stir up the wills of all who look to you …
And finally, on the fourth Sunday of Advent, we come back full circle to …
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.
It is a stirring beginning, middle, and end to this season, which is all about being stirred up … paying attention, watching and waiting in expectation and hope.
But perhaps we don’t feel too stirred up this morning.
Our Gospel text certainly can have the effect, of casting a pall over things.
Yes, we have begun a new lectionary year, this first Sunday of Advent, now we are in Matthew’s gospel, but the text we have before us is a continuation of the story we had two weeks ago, from Luke’s gospel.
The story, it starts with Jesus and the disciples walking before the Temple in Jerusalem, during those last few days’ of Jesus’ earthly life, and swiftly moves to Jesus’ discussion of another End … End events, what is formally called Eschatology … words and sayings and teachings about what shall happen, what shall occur, as we enter the times of The End … the End of this Age … and The Beginning of the Eternal Reign of Christ.
Here, today, Jesus starts this text of The End with words meant to urge us to be alert and expectant.
But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father … therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
It is, most certainly, a text which creates feelings of uncertainty and ambiguity. Though we are assured of Who the End is … Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, reigning as Christ the King … we still crave knowing the When.
Like the disciples, we would like the answer to their question:
Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?
When? We just don’t know.
We just don’t know.
Words which, also, well apply to this faith community, this morning.
The pastor is leaving, yes, it’s true. I have received and accepted a call to serve Faith Lutheran Church and School in Redmond, and I have tendered my resignation as pastor of Nativity effective December 31st.
That announcement, itself, I know, has brought many different emotions. I thank you for the prayerful notes of thanks, congratulations and blessing I’ve received over the past week. But I know that there are other feelings at play in us here today … sadness, anger, mourning, and perhaps, most of all, uncertainty.
What will happen now?
Some of you know the process, because you’ve been through it before.
I tried to describe it in broad strokes, in what I wrote in my letter to you this past week:
The pastor is leaving; but another pastor is coming, a temporary shepherd to partner with you in the interim, to help you discern who you are as God’s people in Fairwood, and who and where Christ is calling you to be next. Welcome her. Pray for him. Offer yourselves in service with them. I would expect, hope and pray for nothing less from you. Our bishop, Kirby Unti, and assistant to the bishop, Kathryn Buffum, will soon be in touch with Nativity leaders about an upcoming interim ministry and beginning the preparation process for a new servant leader in your future.
Of that process, you will hear more from our elected leadership, soon … most certainly at our congregational meeting next Sunday evening.
But there’s more for you of this faith community, this place and people called Nativity, people of new birth, people of new life … and this Word is with and for us ABUNDANTLY in our texts today.
Therefore, you must be ready …
Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep …
Let us live honorably in the day …
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ …
The Word for us, followers of Jesus, in the broad, broad sense of being part of the Body of Christ in the world, as well as being particular disciples of Jesus in this faith community called Nativity, that word for us this morning is:
Keep awake. Keep alert. Be ready. Live as God’s people, in faith and hope and love.
In other words, keep on keepin’ on. Keep doing what it is you always do. The pastor is leaving, yes, but the faith community remains. Keep on worshipping, keep on confessing and being forgiven, keep on eating and drinking at the Lord’s table, keep on being sent in other-serving love, be generous in giving, generous in living and serving, for the sake of the world God loves, God gives, God saves in Jesus Christ.
And Jesus Christ is with and for us, in all of that.
And there is more good news for us in the word from Isaiah:
Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord … that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths … they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Hear these words as promise and hope this morning, people called Nativity, people of new birth, new life. Yes, they are still unrealized hope … for God’s ways still have not been learned by the people God loves. Plowshares are still swords, and pruning hooks remain spears. War … which is abhorrent to God … still remains the way we sinners live here on earth.
And yet … the prophet’s words … God’s Word, through the prophet Isaiah’s mouth … is for us, too … in giving us, encouraging us to a sense of living “as if” … no, it’s not here yet, but it’s coming.
It’s coming … The Advent of our God … and the new life, on earth as it is in heaven, it’s not here yet, but it’s coming.
We are given little windows into it, we see little windows into it, in our worship, in our serving, the ways we are led by Christ, sent by Christ, empowered by Christ to be, right here, right now.
The Lord’s Advent gives us hope.
Because we know how this story turns out.
The Son of Man is coming … the Son of Man is coming, Christ the King, to establish his reign of love on earth as it is in heaven.
So we can wait.
And this season of the Church we are now in, this Advent, why, it’s perfect for us, a perfect place and time for us to be in, Nativity.
Because Advent is all about waiting … not the headlong rush to what the false gods of commerce and capitalism call “the Christmas-shopping season” with its Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays … more greed, more stuff, more consumption and debt … no, God’s people, Jesus’ people, we are called to live simply and simply live. And wait. And be ready.
And to world-defying taking Joy in the Waiting.
For us, the waiting is delightful ambiguity … a joyful unknowing. We can take delight in the ambiguity of not having everything nailed down, we can have joy in not knowing how it will all turn out, precisely because we do know how it will all turn out.
What will the next year bring for you, Nativity? Who will come as interim pastor? What will the interim time be like? Who will be your next settled pastor? When will it all be done?
We just don’t know. We just don’t know. And that, Jesus says, that is just OK.
Because “I am with you always, to the End of the Age.”
So for this season … this Advent … we wait, and watch, and hope.
We don’t give into the rush to “Christmas,” but we wait and watch and prepare and hope for the return of our Lord. We look for and celebrate the signs of his presence among us still … Water and Word, Bread and Wine, gathered community, called and sent in service to and for the world God loves.
And then, when it is time, we mark the anniversary of his coming among us once more … the Nativity of our Lord … all the while, looking ahead, watching and waiting, for the day when he will come again to us, and make all things and all people right, and whole, and new.
And so too with you, Nativity, people of new birth, new life.
Yes, it is all right to be sad today, about the news that I gave you last Monday.
But please, DO NOT STAY THERE.
And please, please, DO NOT RUSH THROUGH THIS INTERIM TIME, THIS GIFT OF TIME, TIME OF GIFT FOR YOU.
Just as God calls us to live and be in the moment, the moments, leading to Jesus’ return, to use the time to prepare and be ready, so too, Nativity, you are called to use this time to prepare, and work, and become ready for all that is to come.
So find joy in the process of finding out who you are, who God is calling you to be, where God is leading and guiding. Delight in the ambiguity, take joy in the unknowing.
Because you know how it all turns out in the end. Or rather, with The End.
For The End, our End, is always, always, Jesus Christ our Lord. The One who en-fleshes God’s loving, God’s giving, God’s saving, for you and me, for all the world.
Amen.
Isaiah 2:1-5 / Romans 13:11-14 / Matthew 24:36-44
1 Advent A
1 December 2013
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.
Every year, on the first Sunday of Advent, we being worship with those words, in the Prayer of the Day, what used to be called the Collect … because the presider would, historically, use this time to collect the longings and rejoicings of the congregation, and put them in a short form prayer.
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.
Actually, each Sunday of Advent begins with those “stirring” words, the Prayer of the Day focusing us on what this Season of Advent is all about:
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come …
Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son …
Stir up the wills of all who look to you …
And finally, on the fourth Sunday of Advent, we come back full circle to …
Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.
It is a stirring beginning, middle, and end to this season, which is all about being stirred up … paying attention, watching and waiting in expectation and hope.
But perhaps we don’t feel too stirred up this morning.
Our Gospel text certainly can have the effect, of casting a pall over things.
Yes, we have begun a new lectionary year, this first Sunday of Advent, now we are in Matthew’s gospel, but the text we have before us is a continuation of the story we had two weeks ago, from Luke’s gospel.
The story, it starts with Jesus and the disciples walking before the Temple in Jerusalem, during those last few days’ of Jesus’ earthly life, and swiftly moves to Jesus’ discussion of another End … End events, what is formally called Eschatology … words and sayings and teachings about what shall happen, what shall occur, as we enter the times of The End … the End of this Age … and The Beginning of the Eternal Reign of Christ.
Here, today, Jesus starts this text of The End with words meant to urge us to be alert and expectant.
But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father … therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
It is, most certainly, a text which creates feelings of uncertainty and ambiguity. Though we are assured of Who the End is … Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, reigning as Christ the King … we still crave knowing the When.
Like the disciples, we would like the answer to their question:
Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?
When? We just don’t know.
We just don’t know.
Words which, also, well apply to this faith community, this morning.
The pastor is leaving, yes, it’s true. I have received and accepted a call to serve Faith Lutheran Church and School in Redmond, and I have tendered my resignation as pastor of Nativity effective December 31st.
That announcement, itself, I know, has brought many different emotions. I thank you for the prayerful notes of thanks, congratulations and blessing I’ve received over the past week. But I know that there are other feelings at play in us here today … sadness, anger, mourning, and perhaps, most of all, uncertainty.
What will happen now?
Some of you know the process, because you’ve been through it before.
I tried to describe it in broad strokes, in what I wrote in my letter to you this past week:
The pastor is leaving; but another pastor is coming, a temporary shepherd to partner with you in the interim, to help you discern who you are as God’s people in Fairwood, and who and where Christ is calling you to be next. Welcome her. Pray for him. Offer yourselves in service with them. I would expect, hope and pray for nothing less from you. Our bishop, Kirby Unti, and assistant to the bishop, Kathryn Buffum, will soon be in touch with Nativity leaders about an upcoming interim ministry and beginning the preparation process for a new servant leader in your future.
Of that process, you will hear more from our elected leadership, soon … most certainly at our congregational meeting next Sunday evening.
But there’s more for you of this faith community, this place and people called Nativity, people of new birth, people of new life … and this Word is with and for us ABUNDANTLY in our texts today.
Therefore, you must be ready …
Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep …
Let us live honorably in the day …
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ …
The Word for us, followers of Jesus, in the broad, broad sense of being part of the Body of Christ in the world, as well as being particular disciples of Jesus in this faith community called Nativity, that word for us this morning is:
Keep awake. Keep alert. Be ready. Live as God’s people, in faith and hope and love.
In other words, keep on keepin’ on. Keep doing what it is you always do. The pastor is leaving, yes, but the faith community remains. Keep on worshipping, keep on confessing and being forgiven, keep on eating and drinking at the Lord’s table, keep on being sent in other-serving love, be generous in giving, generous in living and serving, for the sake of the world God loves, God gives, God saves in Jesus Christ.
And Jesus Christ is with and for us, in all of that.
And there is more good news for us in the word from Isaiah:
Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord … that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths … they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Hear these words as promise and hope this morning, people called Nativity, people of new birth, new life. Yes, they are still unrealized hope … for God’s ways still have not been learned by the people God loves. Plowshares are still swords, and pruning hooks remain spears. War … which is abhorrent to God … still remains the way we sinners live here on earth.
And yet … the prophet’s words … God’s Word, through the prophet Isaiah’s mouth … is for us, too … in giving us, encouraging us to a sense of living “as if” … no, it’s not here yet, but it’s coming.
It’s coming … The Advent of our God … and the new life, on earth as it is in heaven, it’s not here yet, but it’s coming.
We are given little windows into it, we see little windows into it, in our worship, in our serving, the ways we are led by Christ, sent by Christ, empowered by Christ to be, right here, right now.
The Lord’s Advent gives us hope.
Because we know how this story turns out.
The Son of Man is coming … the Son of Man is coming, Christ the King, to establish his reign of love on earth as it is in heaven.
So we can wait.
And this season of the Church we are now in, this Advent, why, it’s perfect for us, a perfect place and time for us to be in, Nativity.
Because Advent is all about waiting … not the headlong rush to what the false gods of commerce and capitalism call “the Christmas-shopping season” with its Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays … more greed, more stuff, more consumption and debt … no, God’s people, Jesus’ people, we are called to live simply and simply live. And wait. And be ready.
And to world-defying taking Joy in the Waiting.
For us, the waiting is delightful ambiguity … a joyful unknowing. We can take delight in the ambiguity of not having everything nailed down, we can have joy in not knowing how it will all turn out, precisely because we do know how it will all turn out.
What will the next year bring for you, Nativity? Who will come as interim pastor? What will the interim time be like? Who will be your next settled pastor? When will it all be done?
We just don’t know. We just don’t know. And that, Jesus says, that is just OK.
Because “I am with you always, to the End of the Age.”
So for this season … this Advent … we wait, and watch, and hope.
We don’t give into the rush to “Christmas,” but we wait and watch and prepare and hope for the return of our Lord. We look for and celebrate the signs of his presence among us still … Water and Word, Bread and Wine, gathered community, called and sent in service to and for the world God loves.
And then, when it is time, we mark the anniversary of his coming among us once more … the Nativity of our Lord … all the while, looking ahead, watching and waiting, for the day when he will come again to us, and make all things and all people right, and whole, and new.
And so too with you, Nativity, people of new birth, new life.
Yes, it is all right to be sad today, about the news that I gave you last Monday.
But please, DO NOT STAY THERE.
And please, please, DO NOT RUSH THROUGH THIS INTERIM TIME, THIS GIFT OF TIME, TIME OF GIFT FOR YOU.
Just as God calls us to live and be in the moment, the moments, leading to Jesus’ return, to use the time to prepare and be ready, so too, Nativity, you are called to use this time to prepare, and work, and become ready for all that is to come.
So find joy in the process of finding out who you are, who God is calling you to be, where God is leading and guiding. Delight in the ambiguity, take joy in the unknowing.
Because you know how it all turns out in the end. Or rather, with The End.
For The End, our End, is always, always, Jesus Christ our Lord. The One who en-fleshes God’s loving, God’s giving, God’s saving, for you and me, for all the world.
Amen.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
24 November 2013
“Christ is ALL”
OT 34C / Christ the King
Colossians 1:11-20 / Luke 23:33-43
24 November 2013
Do you remember the Disney movie “Aladdin?” There’s this great, short scene when Aladdin first sets the genie free from being trapped in the lamp … the genie describes to Aladdin what it’s like, being a genie … he blows up huge and says “PHENEMONENAL COSMIC POWERS!” … and then, squeezes back into the lamp and says, “itty bitty living space.”
It’s about the irony of the contrast, that’s for sure. Big powerful genie lives in beat up old cramped lamp.
It’s the same word we might say about our texts for today. The irony of the contrast between those verses from Colossians, and the Gospel narrative of the final portion of Luke’s passion.
The Cosmic Christ … he in whom all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell … suffering, emptying, dying, on a cross between two criminals.
Hear these words of Paul about Jesus, the One in whom all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.
He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.
And in that first-ness is implied, called forth … an attitude … that anyone who hears Jesus’ call to follow him would live life his way … and so achieve his same end … being with Jesus, sharing in his glory forever … sharing in the fullness of God … everything that God so wants to give us, which he first gave to Jesus … new, full life, together, forever, with him.
And so on this Christ the King Sunday – the last Sunday of the Church year’s round cycle of things … we look back at all the words and ways in which Jesus has called to us since September; the words, the lessons, the truths we’ve read and heard this fall:
God’s economic lessons – how we who are loved and gifted and saved by God, how and for what we’re called to live. God risks it all for you and me, and calls us to live the same way, risking and giving to and for others in ways that don’t make sense in a means to an end, straight line, there-just-won’t-be-enough-to-go-around-way.
But our God is not a God of scarcity … but rather, a God of abundance. And God calls us to abundant living, sharing, caring, giving … no, not giving, because giving implies we own it and NO, we don’t … it’s all God’s so it’s STEWARDING, serving, blessing others with God’s blessing through stuff and money, time and talent and treasure.
And we’ve heard God’s call through Jesus to live in a constant attitude of repentance, hearing his call, turning around, admitting our sins, our failures, our over-busyness … whatever and whoever removes Christ from the center of our lives. We hear his Word of forgiveness … and trust his call to live, in the gain is loss, for you first and me last, cross shaped path called sacrificial, sacramental living … our Baptism in Jesus, our eating and drinking at his table, gets lived out in Service, to and for others.
In other words,
Making peace through the blood of his cross.
And so we arrive at today … this Christ the King Sunday. And, yes, our Gospel reading, summing all this up for us, is once more the recounting of Jesus’ last moments on the Cross.
The words we heard last, exactly eight months ago today … March 24, the Sunday of the Passion … remind us that Jesus, Christ the King for us is always Jesus of the Cross.
Here is the throne from which he reigns … not encrusted with jewels and riches … not protected by the Secret Service or the Department of Homeland Security.
No, his throne is made up of rough wood, and nails, and blood … and the only Security comes in, first, the criminal’s word of repentance,
Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom
and then, Jesus’ word of promise and hope, ironically, tragically, delivered from his lowest moment:
Today, you will be with me in Paradise.
And so here it is. How different, how stark the contrast:
He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
When they came to the place that is called the Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And the people stood by, watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him …
It is, most surely, the theology of the Cross … the word of God, the word about God, that speaks most clearly this contrasting, opposite word to us … strength through what appears to be weakness, victory through suffering, life from death.
About this Theology of the Cross, Martin Luther offers these words from his Heidelberg Disputations:
This is clear: He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil. These are the people whom the apostles call “enemies of the cross of Christ” (Philippians 3:18), for they hate the cross and suffering and love works and the glory of works. Thus they call the good of the cross evil and the evil of a deed good. God can be found only in suffering and the cross, as has already been said. Therefore the friends of the cross say the cross is good and (self-building up, meaningless) works are evil, for through the cross these works are destroyed and the old person, who is especially edified by (their good) works, is crucified.
The fullness of God … the fullness of God … stretches out his hands and arms, is nailed to a cross, from where he bids all those who would follow him, to come and suffer, come and give, come and die.
Jesus’ path to greatness ends on the Cross.
Yet even that “End” is an end that is not an ending … for it keeps on going … through the grave and empty tomb … to resurrection … to new life … to being reconciled with God forever. The End turns out to be not an ending at all, but rather, a beginning. “Today you will be with me in Paradise” is not The End of All This … but rather, just the next part of the journey in “dwelling in the fullness of God” … for Jesus, for the criminal, and for us.
In other words, now that we have gone through this death, too … death to all that is self-building, self-aggrandizing, “aren’t we so great and so special” people … now that THAT pride and arrogance is nailed to the cross and dies with Jesus … now … NOW … we can rise with Jesus, in humility, in joy, in love for and service to our neighbor, and in hope, not just for life in heaven SOMEDAY, but life right here, right now, in Fairwood on November 24, 2013.
If you’ve been listening to me over the past few years, you know that I have grown in appreciation of the German Lutheran theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Mostly that is because of all the Lutheran theologians, of all the theologians of the past five hundred years, Bonhoeffer gets the paradox of the Cross. He gets that the only Jesus we can … we must … know … is the Christ of the Cross who also, in him, all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell. He gets this about Jesus … PHENEMONENAL COSMIC POWERS!” … “itty bitty living (and dying) space.”
Perhaps the toughest reading material Bonhoeffer left us were the letters, poems and songs he wrote while he was imprisoned in Berlin in 1944. These works are compiled into “Letters and Papers from Prison,” and some 70 years later, this work continues to amaze, frustrate, tear apart and pull together those who read it.
For, you must remember, Bonhoeffer wrote these words while he was working out being part of the conspiracy to kill Hitler and overthrow his government. A Lutheran pastor, theologian, a man of peace, one who was by all accounts the rising superstar of Christian theology, thought, writing, teaching, of his time, involved in a mission to murder the leader of his government and take it over himself, with the help of his friends. Of course with our perfect hindsight we might easily pass this off as an “of course he had to do this” … but that is our great error, we putting ourselves in the comfort of our easy 2013 seats back into history, and slighting the wrenching decision Bonhoeffer had to make.
Of course, that plot failed, and Bonheoffer was soon put to death for being part of it.
But hear his words, written in that terrible time and place … fine commentary on our Scriptures today, this day of Christ the King:
21 July 1944 … the day after the failed plot
I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a church person, a righteous person or unrighteous one, sick or healthy. … I mean, living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the word … watching with Christ in Gethsemane. How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?
Notes for a book – July / August 1944
The church is the church only when it exists for others. The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell people of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others.
And finally … a poem he wrote to his fiancé and family on the eve of the new year 1945 … as we cross into another church year together … this old one, on this Christ the King Sunday, now ending … next Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent, we begin the cycle of Jesus’ life all over again … may we, too, hear these words as hope … hopeful paradox, to be sure … but hope, clean, clear and bright … as we hear and heed Christ’s call to follow, to follow him, the Christ of the Cross who also, in him, all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.
By Powers of Good
By faithful, quiet powers of good surrounded
So wondrously consoled and sheltered here –
I wish to live these days with you in spirit
And with you enter into a new year.
The old year still would try our hearts to torment,
Of evil times we still do bear the weight;
O Lord, do grant our souls, now terror-stricken,
Salvation for which you did us create.
And should you offer us the cup of suffering,
Though heavy, brimming full and bitter brand,
We’ll thankfully accept it, never flinching,
From your good heart and your beloved hand.
But should you wish now once again to give us
The joys of this world and its glorious sun,
Then we’ll recall anew what past times brought us
And then our life belongs to you alone.
The candles you have brought into our darkness,
Let them today be burning warm and bright,
And if it’s possible, do reunite us!
We know your light is shining through the night.
When now the quiet deepens all around us,
O, let our ears that fullest sound amaze
Of this, your world, invisibly expanding
As all your children sing high hymns of praise.
By powers of good so wondrously protected,
We wait with confidence, befall what may.
God is with us at night and in the morning
And oh, most certainly on each new day.
Amen.
OT 34C / Christ the King
Colossians 1:11-20 / Luke 23:33-43
24 November 2013
Do you remember the Disney movie “Aladdin?” There’s this great, short scene when Aladdin first sets the genie free from being trapped in the lamp … the genie describes to Aladdin what it’s like, being a genie … he blows up huge and says “PHENEMONENAL COSMIC POWERS!” … and then, squeezes back into the lamp and says, “itty bitty living space.”
It’s about the irony of the contrast, that’s for sure. Big powerful genie lives in beat up old cramped lamp.
It’s the same word we might say about our texts for today. The irony of the contrast between those verses from Colossians, and the Gospel narrative of the final portion of Luke’s passion.
The Cosmic Christ … he in whom all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell … suffering, emptying, dying, on a cross between two criminals.
Hear these words of Paul about Jesus, the One in whom all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.
He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.
And in that first-ness is implied, called forth … an attitude … that anyone who hears Jesus’ call to follow him would live life his way … and so achieve his same end … being with Jesus, sharing in his glory forever … sharing in the fullness of God … everything that God so wants to give us, which he first gave to Jesus … new, full life, together, forever, with him.
And so on this Christ the King Sunday – the last Sunday of the Church year’s round cycle of things … we look back at all the words and ways in which Jesus has called to us since September; the words, the lessons, the truths we’ve read and heard this fall:
God’s economic lessons – how we who are loved and gifted and saved by God, how and for what we’re called to live. God risks it all for you and me, and calls us to live the same way, risking and giving to and for others in ways that don’t make sense in a means to an end, straight line, there-just-won’t-be-enough-to-go-around-way.
But our God is not a God of scarcity … but rather, a God of abundance. And God calls us to abundant living, sharing, caring, giving … no, not giving, because giving implies we own it and NO, we don’t … it’s all God’s so it’s STEWARDING, serving, blessing others with God’s blessing through stuff and money, time and talent and treasure.
And we’ve heard God’s call through Jesus to live in a constant attitude of repentance, hearing his call, turning around, admitting our sins, our failures, our over-busyness … whatever and whoever removes Christ from the center of our lives. We hear his Word of forgiveness … and trust his call to live, in the gain is loss, for you first and me last, cross shaped path called sacrificial, sacramental living … our Baptism in Jesus, our eating and drinking at his table, gets lived out in Service, to and for others.
In other words,
Making peace through the blood of his cross.
And so we arrive at today … this Christ the King Sunday. And, yes, our Gospel reading, summing all this up for us, is once more the recounting of Jesus’ last moments on the Cross.
The words we heard last, exactly eight months ago today … March 24, the Sunday of the Passion … remind us that Jesus, Christ the King for us is always Jesus of the Cross.
Here is the throne from which he reigns … not encrusted with jewels and riches … not protected by the Secret Service or the Department of Homeland Security.
No, his throne is made up of rough wood, and nails, and blood … and the only Security comes in, first, the criminal’s word of repentance,
Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom
and then, Jesus’ word of promise and hope, ironically, tragically, delivered from his lowest moment:
Today, you will be with me in Paradise.
And so here it is. How different, how stark the contrast:
He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
When they came to the place that is called the Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And the people stood by, watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him …
It is, most surely, the theology of the Cross … the word of God, the word about God, that speaks most clearly this contrasting, opposite word to us … strength through what appears to be weakness, victory through suffering, life from death.
About this Theology of the Cross, Martin Luther offers these words from his Heidelberg Disputations:
This is clear: He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil. These are the people whom the apostles call “enemies of the cross of Christ” (Philippians 3:18), for they hate the cross and suffering and love works and the glory of works. Thus they call the good of the cross evil and the evil of a deed good. God can be found only in suffering and the cross, as has already been said. Therefore the friends of the cross say the cross is good and (self-building up, meaningless) works are evil, for through the cross these works are destroyed and the old person, who is especially edified by (their good) works, is crucified.
The fullness of God … the fullness of God … stretches out his hands and arms, is nailed to a cross, from where he bids all those who would follow him, to come and suffer, come and give, come and die.
Jesus’ path to greatness ends on the Cross.
Yet even that “End” is an end that is not an ending … for it keeps on going … through the grave and empty tomb … to resurrection … to new life … to being reconciled with God forever. The End turns out to be not an ending at all, but rather, a beginning. “Today you will be with me in Paradise” is not The End of All This … but rather, just the next part of the journey in “dwelling in the fullness of God” … for Jesus, for the criminal, and for us.
In other words, now that we have gone through this death, too … death to all that is self-building, self-aggrandizing, “aren’t we so great and so special” people … now that THAT pride and arrogance is nailed to the cross and dies with Jesus … now … NOW … we can rise with Jesus, in humility, in joy, in love for and service to our neighbor, and in hope, not just for life in heaven SOMEDAY, but life right here, right now, in Fairwood on November 24, 2013.
If you’ve been listening to me over the past few years, you know that I have grown in appreciation of the German Lutheran theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Mostly that is because of all the Lutheran theologians, of all the theologians of the past five hundred years, Bonhoeffer gets the paradox of the Cross. He gets that the only Jesus we can … we must … know … is the Christ of the Cross who also, in him, all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell. He gets this about Jesus … PHENEMONENAL COSMIC POWERS!” … “itty bitty living (and dying) space.”
Perhaps the toughest reading material Bonhoeffer left us were the letters, poems and songs he wrote while he was imprisoned in Berlin in 1944. These works are compiled into “Letters and Papers from Prison,” and some 70 years later, this work continues to amaze, frustrate, tear apart and pull together those who read it.
For, you must remember, Bonhoeffer wrote these words while he was working out being part of the conspiracy to kill Hitler and overthrow his government. A Lutheran pastor, theologian, a man of peace, one who was by all accounts the rising superstar of Christian theology, thought, writing, teaching, of his time, involved in a mission to murder the leader of his government and take it over himself, with the help of his friends. Of course with our perfect hindsight we might easily pass this off as an “of course he had to do this” … but that is our great error, we putting ourselves in the comfort of our easy 2013 seats back into history, and slighting the wrenching decision Bonhoeffer had to make.
Of course, that plot failed, and Bonheoffer was soon put to death for being part of it.
But hear his words, written in that terrible time and place … fine commentary on our Scriptures today, this day of Christ the King:
21 July 1944 … the day after the failed plot
I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a church person, a righteous person or unrighteous one, sick or healthy. … I mean, living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the word … watching with Christ in Gethsemane. How can success make us arrogant, or failure lead us astray, when we share in God’s sufferings through a life of this kind?
Notes for a book – July / August 1944
The church is the church only when it exists for others. The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell people of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others.
And finally … a poem he wrote to his fiancé and family on the eve of the new year 1945 … as we cross into another church year together … this old one, on this Christ the King Sunday, now ending … next Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent, we begin the cycle of Jesus’ life all over again … may we, too, hear these words as hope … hopeful paradox, to be sure … but hope, clean, clear and bright … as we hear and heed Christ’s call to follow, to follow him, the Christ of the Cross who also, in him, all the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.
By Powers of Good
By faithful, quiet powers of good surrounded
So wondrously consoled and sheltered here –
I wish to live these days with you in spirit
And with you enter into a new year.
The old year still would try our hearts to torment,
Of evil times we still do bear the weight;
O Lord, do grant our souls, now terror-stricken,
Salvation for which you did us create.
And should you offer us the cup of suffering,
Though heavy, brimming full and bitter brand,
We’ll thankfully accept it, never flinching,
From your good heart and your beloved hand.
But should you wish now once again to give us
The joys of this world and its glorious sun,
Then we’ll recall anew what past times brought us
And then our life belongs to you alone.
The candles you have brought into our darkness,
Let them today be burning warm and bright,
And if it’s possible, do reunite us!
We know your light is shining through the night.
When now the quiet deepens all around us,
O, let our ears that fullest sound amaze
Of this, your world, invisibly expanding
As all your children sing high hymns of praise.
By powers of good so wondrously protected,
We wait with confidence, befall what may.
God is with us at night and in the morning
And oh, most certainly on each new day.
Amen.
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