Sermon video: The Threat of Christmas

Audios of worship and sermons available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Pharaoh and Herod vs God's Love

Matthew 2:13-23

Pharaoh and Herod vs God’s Love

James Sledge                                                                           December 29, 2019

Every evening when I drive home at this time of year, I pass by a house with an elaborate nativity scene in the front yard. It’s not terribly realistic, but it is huge, covering half of the front yard. It has steps that go up to the floor where Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus are, along with wise men and some animals.

The holy family and their visitors are wooden, stylized figures, illuminated by strands of Christmas lights. But on those steps leading up to the floor are two more realistic figures. They are plastic, brightly colored, and glow from their own, interior lighting. One is Santa Claus and the other is a snowman, Frosty perhaps?

A little odd, I suppose, but it’s hardly the first time I’ve seen Santa and the manger side by side. I don’t suppose anyone actually thinks that Santa was there at Jesus’ birth, but I can understand why people might add Santa to the display. In popular imagination, the story of Jesus’ birth is a joyous, magical, miraculous story, often depicted as sweet and idyllic, something straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Likewise the story of Santa is also joyous and miraculous. It is full of warmth and happiness and a sense of magic that even adults long for. It is easy to see why people would feel that the two stories go well together.

It may surprise some, considering all the attention we lavish on it, to realize how little coverage the Christmas story gets from the Bible. Of the four gospels, only Luke tells of Jesus in a manger. There’s no actual mention of a stable, and many scholars think this manger was inside a home, in the area where the animals were brought inside at night.

If the nativity display at your house is like the one at mine, the Wise Men are visiting the baby in the manger along with shepherds and angels. But the visit of the Magi doesn’t quite belong with Christmas. Young Jesus is likely a toddler in this story from Matthew’s gospel, a story that ends with the fearsome, frightening events from our scripture reading this morning. All the male children two years old and under in the little hamlet of Bethlehem are taken from their parents by government officials, and then killed.

The gospel writer borrows a line from the prophet Jeremiah to describe the scene. The words originally spoke metaphorically of the children of Israel carried off into exile while Rachel, one of Israel’s founding matriarchs, weeps for them. But now the metaphor has turned literal. “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”

Sermon: The Threat of Christmas

Matthew 1:18-25

The Threat of Christmas

James Sledge                                                                                       December 22, 2019

Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. “A righteous man.” Outside of the Bible, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone actually described that way. Have you? I can’t think of a single example. For that matter, I almost never hear the word righteous at all, other than to speak disparagingly of someone who is “self-righteous.”

Some Bible translations try something else: a just man, a man of honor, a noble man, a good man. Unlike righteous, I’ve heard people described as good, noble, honorable, or just, and meant in a complimentary way. Righteous, however, just isn’t part of our everyday vocabulary. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that any of those other words quite capture what the gospel writer is trying to say.

To say that Joseph is a righteous man is to say that he is faithful in keeping God’s law. He is more than simply good. He lives his life by God’s commandments. He is guided by the principles laid out in the Torah, and Torah says he should divorce Mary.

Divorce is required because Mary’s engagement to Joseph is something very different from engagement in our day. When two people get engaged in our culture, they have declared their intent to marry, but there’s no legal change of status. They are still single and, should they call off the engagement, the only issues to navigate depend on how far along things are. It could be a simple as letting friends and family know that the wedding is off. Or it could involve unbooking reception venues and dealing with angry members of the wedding party who’ve already bought bridesmaid dresses or non-refundable airline tickets. But regardless of how easy or complicated, calling the wedding off doesn’t require any legal action to undo the engagement.

Not the case for Joseph and Mary. Their engagement is as legally binding as marriage is for us. It cannot be called off. It can only end with a divorce.

I can only imagine what goes through Joseph’s mind when he learns that Mary is pregnant. He might feel betrayed, although if this is an arranged marriage, perhaps not. In the eyes of the Law, however, Joseph has been wronged. He has made Mary his wife, even if the final formalities are yet to come, but now that Joseph has learned of her presumed adultery, he must divorce her, regardless of what he does or doesn’t feel for her.

Sermon video: Needing John (and Accountability) for Advent

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Needing John (and Accountability) for Advent

Matthew 3:1-12

Needing John (and Accountability) for Advent

James Sledge                                                                                            December 8, 2019

Many of you are aware that the Scripture passages used in worship each week come from something called a lectionary, in our case the Revised Common Lectionary. This is a published list of readings for each Sunday, typically with a reading from the Old Testament, a psalm, a passage from an epistle or letter, and a gospel reading. We never use all the readings, but on most Sundays, we use some of them.

The lectionary follows a three year cycle, imaginatively titled years A, B, and C. Year A features the Gospel of Matthew, year B, Mark, and year C, Luke. The Gospel of John doesn’t get a year but gets woven into all three. As we entered into Advent last Sunday, we transitioned from Year C to A, and so we hear from Matthew today.

If you looked at all the passages listed in the lectionary for Advent, you might be surprised to discover that none sound very Christmassy until the gospel reading on December 22. And John the Baptist shows up on both the second and third Sunday in Advent. A person unfamiliar with church who happened to wander into our worship on those Sundays could be forgiven for suspecting that we didn’t realize what time of year it was. Do we really need to  hear from John so much and so close to Christmas?

Sermon video: Advent, Eschatology, and Moral Arcs

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website

Sermon: Advent, Eschatology, and Moral Arcs

Isaiah 2:1-5

Advent, Eschatology, and Moral Arcs

James Sledge                                                                                       December 1, 2019

Recently I’ve seen a number of articles and posts on social media commemorating thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. What a momentous time. The Soviet Union collapsed. East and West Germany became one country. Former puppet regimes began new lives as independent nations. And people heralded the end of the Cold War.

There was great hope for the future and talk of a “peace dividend.” America was the sole remaining superpower, and many hoped that military spending could be curtailed, allowing increased funding for social programs, education, infrastructure projects, and so on.

There were reductions in nuclear arsenals. Military spending remained flat for a few years, but no big peace dividend materialized. After 9/11, military spending increased dramatically, and we’ve been in an endless “war on terror” ever since. Now Russia’s war in Ukraine and interference in US elections feels a little like a return to Cold War days.

Through much of history, hopes for peace often seem to disappear like mist burned away by the morning sun. “Peace on Earth” will soon by plastered all over Christmas cards and Christmas displays, but our hopes for peace always seem to get overwhelmed by our tendency towards violence and war.

Back in 1928, France, the US, and Germany signed something called the “General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy,” better known as the “Kellogg-Briand Pact.” By the time the treaty went into effect a year later, the majority of the world’s nations had signed it, including all the major players in World War II, which would begin only ten years later.