Preaching Thoughts on a Non-Preaching Sunday

It is somewhat rare that I preach on the Sunday following Christmas.  Pastors often travel to visit family after Christmas day, and substitute preachers are in big demand on this first Sunday following the celebration of Jesus' birth.  And so I'm not sure if I've ever dealt with today's gospel in a sermon, and I'm not at all sure what I would say.

The first thing that comes to mind when I read these verses is the terror that Jesus' parents must have experienced. I once "lost" one of my daughters.  She was still preschool age and decided she would head on to the grocery store, our next stop, on her own.  I looked up from the shelves in the drug store to find she was no longer beside me. I looked on the adjacent aisle, and then the next, and then ran back and forth all through that store as a feeling of total panic began to rise up inside me.  For a brief moment I think I experienced the most terror I have ever felt. (In desperation I rushed over to the grocery store and found her getting the free cookie the bakery there gave to small children.) Jesus' parents must have felt what I did many times over. Rather than a few minutes, they could not locate Jesus for days. 

This is the only childhood story the Bible has about Jesus.  And while it does highlight the exceptional nature of Jesus, it also puts his parents through great agony. It's nowhere near so terrifying as Matthew's story of Jesus' family fleeing the slaughter of all the young boys in Bethlehem, but like it, Luke's account of Jesus' arrival quickly takes a troubling turn.  Maybe that is why our culture and our congregations, for all the attention we lavish on Christmas, turn away from it almost the moment the day arrives.  The Christmas story is not the saccharine sweet thing we want it to be. The story immediately encounters the world's enmity along with hints that following Jesus will demand loyalty exceeding that given to family, country, etc.

Our gospel says that Jesus' mother, Mary "treasured all these things in her heart."  I wonder what she found to treasure about this episode. I also wonder if this is the best translation.  Another possibility is that Mary "carefully remembered" all these things, and that seems more likely to me. She knew they were important, but I wonder if she would not have gladly given them up in order to prevent what would happen to her son.

I suspect that this sort of "treasuring" is an unavoidable part of faith. In a world that is out of step with God's ways, it is inevitable that taking up those ways will cause us pain and struggles over loyalties.  And if we do not realize this, we may have misunderstood the whole Jesus business. Maybe that is why Matthew and Luke (the only gospel writers who mention Jesus' birth) immediately attach dark and foreboding episodes to the story of Jesus' arrival.

It makes me wonder about the careful remembering that I need to be doing, the reflecting on things troubling and disturbing that I need to hold close if I am to understand what Jesus is asking of me.

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On Lighting Candles

I've never preached on Christmas Eve, but these were the "instructions" for the candle lighting at our service tonight.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." In the darkness... On Christmas Eve we gather in the darkness. Some of us do so every year, but the darkness seems to press in a bit more this year.  Whether it is a dysfunctional Congress more bent on partisan bickering than actually helping the American people, or the terrible shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, or the horrible violence in places like Syria and the Congo, it is hard to deny the awful reality of the darkness.

If you were here last week for our Service of the Longest Night, you heard Diane remind us that the Christmas story is a dark story.  That sometimes gets lost in all the sentimentality and nostalgia and celebration, but it is still there. A couple forced by imperial power to travel, even though a birth is imminent. A birth far from home in a dirty and smelly place meant for farm animals. And as the story continues, this new family becomes refugees, fleeing those who would kill a newborn Messiah.

To say the light shines in the darkness is no act of sentimentality. Rather it is a bold assertion that the light that comes as a vulnerable baby, the love of God that comes in vulnerability and weakness, is somehow stronger than all that darkness.

And so as we light our candles and bask in their glow, it is much more than an ooh-and-aah moment. It is an act of defiance in the face of the darkness, an act that says we trust and hope in the power of God's weakness and vulnerability over all the terrors of the darkness.

The light, the vulnerable light of a newborn baby, shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it. Let us embrace that light, and carry it with us, that we might share it with a broken and hurting world that desperately needs it.

A Vulnerable God

We in the Church make far too much of Christmas, and far too little at the same time. We expend too much energy on Christmas extravaganzas and pageants that mirror the secular frenzy surrounding Christmas. Many seem to feel that Christmas-themed religious hoopla needs to keep up with the ever expanding secular hoopla.  I'm not sure why. Perhaps to hold on to some notion that all this energy is related to faith in some way.

But at the very same time, we sometimes get numbed to how remarkable the Christmas story is. The baby Jesus makes the briefest of appearances in the Bible, actually seen only in Luke's gospel. But the implications of that moment manifest themselves throughout the New Testament. God's love and power comes, not with earthquake and thunderbolts, but vulnerable and at risk.

What is more at risk than an infant? At Christmas God incarnate is totally dependent on others, just like all babies. Some Christians have always struggled with such notions, imagining that the baby Jesus wasn't like real babies. But nothing in Scripture would seem to support such a notion. A truly human baby, totally dependent on his parents, would grow to be a truly human adult who suffered and bled and died like other human beings.  He was, as the Apostle Paul wrote, God's power made perfect in weakness.

The notion of a vulnerable God seems to run counter to basic assumptions about God. God should be powerful, not vulnerable. So it's not surprising that the first big theological fight among early Christians was over the nature of Jesus' humanity.  Surely he only appeared human. God cannot be vulnerable or experience mortal jeopardy. And many modern Christians, living long after such debates were "settled," still struggle, picturing the biblical Jesus as some sort of aberration, a historical blip necessary to fulfill a salvation formula. But Jesus isn't like that anymore. And, they point out, when Jesus returns he will be just what you'd expect a god to be like, all powerful, no more meek and mild and vulnerable.

Expecting a returning Jesus who won't be such a disappointment in the godly power department seems to echo expectations of a conquering Messiah from 2000 years ago. But I think Christmas and the Incarnation reflect God's deepest nature. I see that nature on display in today's reading from the book of Revelation. Many presume Revelation to be violent predictions of God's coming wrath. But not only does Jesus still appear in it as one who is slain, but the closing of the book sounds much like the gospel Jesus.

"It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star." The Spirit and the bride say, "Come." And let everyone who hears say, "Come." And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

"Water of life as a gift" seems totally consistent with the vulnerable love we meet in the gospel Jesus, that story whose beginning we rehearse tonight. The story of a manger is the story of a God who enters fully into our vulnerabilities, who confronts the pain and brokenness of our world with a remarkably vulnerable love. We've still not fully embraced this love or this God. In many ways, we still prefer coercive power to vulnerable love.

Maybe it's just me, but sometimes the flash and pomp and magnificent displays of Christmas seem the sort of things that should accompany celebrations of worldly power such as coronations or inaugurations. There's a kind of dissonance between them and the story of a baby in a manger that reminds me of how I feel when I see the Pope, in all his royal finery, engaging in ritual foot-washing on Good Friday.

But even if the vulnerable baby gets lost amidst the bright lights and pageantry, he is still there. We just need to look beyond the pageantry and attend to the story itself. In the context of Rome's imperial might, a most vulnerable human act occurs, a birth. And this most vulnerable act occurs away from the safe confines of home, dependent on the hospitality of strangers who are able to provide only marginal accommodations. And there, God is.  There, with this act of remarkable vulnerability, God beckons us to become vulnerable ourselves, and to become bearers of God's love.

May you encounter the vulnerable God of Christmas as we remember and celebrate our Savior's birth.

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Sermon audio: A Strange Day in Zechariah's House

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Sermon video: A Strange Day in Zechariah's House

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Sermon: A Strange Day in Zechariah's House

Luke 1:39-55

A Strange Day in Zechariah’s House

James Sledge                                                                                       December 23, 2012

It was a strange day in the house of Zechariah as two women, both pregnant, greet one another.  They are relatives of some sort.  I’d always heard that they were cousins.  The old King James translation says as much, but in fact, Luke doesn’t specify how they are related, only that they are.

They are a study in contrasts.  One is six months pregnant; the other hasn’t even begun to show.  One is old, too old to have children, so old that her pregnancy can only be described as a miracle.  The other is young, so young that she is not yet married in a culture where girls were often married by 14. 

As the door opens, the very pregnant, very old woman greets her very young, barely pregnant, barely out of childhood, niece or cousin or whatever she is. It must have been quite an encounter. They’ve not seen one another in a long time. Mary had just learned of Elizabeth’s pregnancy from the angel Gabriel.  Elizabeth has no way of knowing that Mary is pregnant, yet she knows.  Imagine the greeting, the screaming, the joy, the tears. 

Imagine poor Zechariah.  Two pregnant women in the house and he can’t even talk, struck mute by the angel Gabriel for not believing that he and Elizabeth would have a son so late in life.  I wonder if Zechariah headed out to the local tavern to escape the screaming and yelling and singing of these two pregnant women.

I also wonder why Mary went to see Elizabeth.  Is she seeking reassurance, going to confirm what Gabriel told her about Elizabeth and so confirm what Gabriel said about her own pregnancy?  Is Elizabeth is the one person who can understand, who she can talk with about these strange goings on?  Is Mary just scared, wondering why she ever said “Yes” to Gabriel, wondering what she will do when she starts to show?  Is she wondering how to tell Joseph?  Did she come to sort all of this out, or perhaps to borrow some maternity clothes.

As I said, it was a strange day in Zechariah’s house.  All these things going on.  All these unanswered questions, not to mention the more run of the mill questions about morning sickness and mood swings and midwives.  So much to discuss and talk about, yet we hear none of that.

Mary walks in, and Elizabeth’s baby jumps in her womb.  I still remember putting my hand on my wife’s abdomen and feeling a kick.  It’s an amazing thing, to feel that life moving.  You might even call it miraculous, but it’s a fairly routine miracle.  It happens all the time.  I’ve heard people try to interpret these fits of activity.  Some say that a loud noise can trigger it.  Some try to predict a child’s gender based on how vigorous the activity is.  Some claim that spicy food can send their child into all sorts of flip and flops. 

Elizabeth has a different take on her baby’s movement.  It’s a rather novel interpretation , but Luke tells us that she is filled with the Holy Spirit, so I suppose it is to be trusted.  Elizabeth fairly screams out to Mary, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”   And she calls Mary “the mother of my Lord,” all because her baby jumped or kicked.  As I said, it was a strange day in Zechariah’s house.

Curses and Blessings

Finally the Daily Lectionary starts to talk about Christmas, or at least giving us the preliminaries.  Zechariah the priest and his wife Elizabeth are getting on in years, but they have no children.  This can be extremely difficult for couples in our day, but in Elizabeth's time, a woman's worth was measured by children. She was, in ancient biblical parlance, cursed.

But as so often happens when God acts to bless or save, the story moves through those one would least expect. The messenger who prepares the way for a Messiah will come from this cursed one, this one who has endured disgrace because of her childlessness.  Strange that the Bible sometimes speaks of barrenness as a curse where God has closed a woman's womb, but then those "cursed" wombs become instruments of blessing.

Even though God routinely works this way, Zechariah (and we?) has trouble believing it, leading to his being rendered mute.  It seems a fit of pique by Gabriel.  People in the Bible routinely ask for a sign when they have a divine epiphany.  Moses asks for several.  Perhaps we shouldn't consider it entirely as punishment.  It would be a daily reminder to Zechariah of God's blessing on him and Elizabeth. Even before his wife began to show, he would not be able to forget or question God's promise. Sometimes I wish God would give me such an unavoidable and unambiguous sign as this.

Zechariah is an interesting case.  He is a priest, an important person in important circles.  But his wife is "cursed." And as this new chapter in salvation history unfolds, the angel Gabriel will go through even more unexpected channels - a not yet married teenager from a backwater town. 

In a few days, we will celebrate another Christmas in our decorated sanctuaries with all the musical fanfare we can muster.  Television will broadcast Mass and services from huge cathedrals with magnificent choirs and ornate finery.  And we'll hear these old stories of a God who goes through back channels and brings blessing and hope in unexpected ways, through unexpected people, even those who are "cursed." And we'll rejoice as we remember the birth of one who became cursed for our sakes.

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Frightened of Atheists

I confess that when I read the Daily Lectionary passages (I'm subscribed so that they are emailed to me each day.), I almost never make it to the Evening Psalm.  I read the morning psalms and other passages on most days, but stop at the gospel. I almost never make it back in the evening and didn't mean to do any differently today, but as I finished the gospel, my eyes caught the beginning of Psalm 53. "Fools say in their heart, 'There is no God.'"

I've heard a lot of Christians who seem terrified of atheists. I've never understood this, but some of them seem to think there is no bigger threat to faith than atheists. It's as though the fact of some not believing is contagious.  I'm a little suspicious that the mere fact of atheists opens a window they would rather not acknowledge, poses a question that they are afraid to consider for themselves.

There certainly are many things that work against a meaningful and deep Christian faith, but I'm not sure atheists are a significant one. I could perhaps understand feeling sorry for an atheist, hoping he might come to realize what he's missing out on, but even the more obnoxious and militant sort, those who try to convert others to their view and belittle people of faith, pose little threat to faith that has any substance.

I've heard Psalm 53 quoted as proof that God is as repulsed by atheists as some Christians are, but the psalm doesn't seem to speak of atheists at all. The fools of this psalm say there is no God "in their hearts." Nothing here about public professions of non-faith.  The psalm's ire is directed at those whose actions betray an inner disposition that doesn't acknowledges God. It does not address the sort of atheists some Christians seem to fear so much. Rather it addresses the sort who belong to churches and perhaps even attend them with some regularity but whose lives produce little evidence of being shaped by God's priorities.

The prophets and Jesus, not to mention a few psalms, regularly chastise religious folks, and almost never for failing to do worship correctly or for believing the wrong doctrines. They save their ire for those who faithfully maintain worship and religious observance but do not live in ways that demonstrate God's concern for the lost and least, the vulnerable and oppressed, the outsider and the lowly.

Most of us have likely known some atheists or agnostics whose lives seemed to reveal hearts that are canted toward God, or at least toward the desires of God.  I wonder what the psalmist would say about such folks. If they are not fools, are they in some ways wise?

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Beginning to Dream Again

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.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
     their young shall lie down together;
     and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
     and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder's den.
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.     Isaiah 11:6-9


They will not hurt or destroy...  What a wonderful vision. What a wonderful dream. But is that all it is, a vision, a dream?

A world without violence certainly seems like a dream. Most of us don't dare imagine such a thing. We'd be happy with less violence, with only occasional hurting or destroying on a small scale. Not hurting or destroying at all, even in just one city? That seems impossible.

I wonder if only prophets can see such things.  I don't restrict prophets to the Bible. I'm certain Martin Luther King, Jr. was a prophet.  He dreamed things that many could never imagine happening.  It hasn't happened all the way to what he dreamed, but even non prophets like most of us can see it partially now.  I suppose that's a bit like the first Christians beginning to glimpse what Isaiah had dreamed.  In Jesus they saw enough to join with Isaiah saying, "Yeah, I see it now, too."

Jesus was certainly a dreamer and a prophet.  He read a passage from Isaiah, "(The Lord) has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." And when he'd finished reading he said, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

All the oppressed weren't freed, and the year of God's jubilee didn't really take hold in full, but Jesus could apparently see it, the way that only prophets can.  And those who drew near him began to glimpse it, too.

But somewhere along the line, Christianity lost sight of its dreams. Maybe it was when it became "Christianity," and institutional religion rather than simply followers of the dreamer, Jesus. Regardless, we traded in Jesus' dream of a new day, what he called the kingdom of God, for a ticket to heaven if we believed the right things. We relocated Jesus' dream to another place even though Jesus clearly was able to dream it and see it right here on earth.

The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians that no one can say Jesus is Lord without the Holy Spirit. (I assume he talking about actually meaning it and not just saying the words.)  And he insists that all members of the body of Christ are given gifts of the Spirit, including some who are given the gift of prophecy.  I think we would do well to discover who they are in our churches, and see if they can't help us begin dreaming again.

Even within church congregations, we often seem unable to imagine anything but the possible, the things we can manage on our own, the things that seem reasonably doable. No visions and dreams, just doable action plans, the same sort of things devised in company offices and corporate boardrooms.

We say "It's only a dream" to dismiss something, to write off an idea as impossible. But prophets, including the prophet Jesus, dream dreams.  And they call us to catch their dreams, their visions.

God, we need some dreams.  Help us to dream again.

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What To Do?

I'm still not sure about what I preached yesterday.  I don't mean I thought it was a bad sermon (at least no worse than the norm). Rather, I'm not sure if it was the correct response to the horrific events of Friday.  Should I have spoken more directly to the events? I really don't know.

I had already written a sermon on John the Baptist, and perhaps I didn't want to "waste" it.  But I did think it fit is some ways. It talked about the "What then should we do?" question asked by those who came out to John in the wilderness, those John called snakes. Maybe I wasn't specific enough, but I think that question is an appropriate one in light of the Sandy Hook shootings.

John says, "Bear fruit worthy of repentance." And some of the specific actions he recommends begin to equalize society. Those with two give to those with none. It has a rather socialist feel to it, as does a great deal of Luke/Acts.  And this is the repentance, the change John calls for to get ready for the one is who coming.

Today's gospel lection describes Jesus' arrest. It ends with Jesus saying to the authorities, "But this is your hour, and the power of darkness!" Darkness still seems to be exercising a great deal of power.  So what does it mean to stand for the light at such a time?

Perhaps yesterday's sermon only hinted at it, but I do think the question, "What then should we do?" is about how to stand for the light. It is about bearing witness to the light, to a new day, a redeemed society, a different world. And contrary to many religious voices, this new thing does not involve a going back. It is not a nostalgia for bygone days.  It is a hope for days that have  never been, at least not fully.

"Putting God back in the schools," whatever that actually means, does not get ready for the light in any significant way. That is so much religious window dressing, the very sort of thing that prompted John to say, "Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor.'" John wants to see something much more substantial, much more concrete.

Exactly what needs to happen with regard to better gun regulations or better access to mental health care will require serious discussion and debate, but there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that an essential move toward the light is less concern about me and my rights and more concern about the needs of the other, including the safety of young children. 

In the Apostle Paul's famous words on love (not romantic love by the way), he says love is at the top of the list, above faith and hope. And love "does not insist on its own way." At some fundamental level, rights are about protecting people and not running roughshod over them. But at the level they often operate in our society, they are about "I want it my way, and I don't care what impact that has on anyone else."

I don't have well formed answers for how events like those of last Friday could happen or why God didn't intervene in some way. That we are about to celebrate the birth of a Messiah born into a hostile world, nearly killed himself as a child, and finally executed by the state with assistance from his own religion, surely says something about God's way of entering into our world.  But yesterday, I wanted to hear from, John who yells at people, "Do something!"

We may never be able to fully answer the "Why?" questions, but we can surely set about making such events less likely.  We can surely create a world where it would be much more difficult to shoot scores of people, and we can surely create a world where it is easier to get effective mental health treatments for those who need them. Just as we could create a world with less poverty and hunger if we truly wanted to.  And that sounds to me just like what John the Baptist says we need to be doing if we are to "get ready."  We cannot bring the kingdom, that hoped for new realm of God, but we can point toward it. We can aim in its direction.

There is still darkness, and its time is not fully run out. But it did its best against Jesus and failed. And so we who follow him must surely be about the work, the doing, of that which reveals light.

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Sermon video: Of Snakes and Imperatives

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Sermon: Of Snakes and Imperatives

Luke 3:7-18

Of Snakes and Imperatives

James Sledge                                                                               December 16, 2012

I’ve never been very big on poetry and never much cared for the practice of pastors quoting poems in their sermons, something I heard a bit of growing up. But I am drawn to song lyrics, my version of poetry I suppose. And a song from my favorite group, The Mountain Goats, immediately came to mind when I first read today’s gospel.

I’m not about to attempt singing it, so I realize that, for all practical purposes, I am going to subject you to the sort of poetry reading I never much cared for growing  up.  Sorry about that.  An even bigger concern; I’m not at all sure what the song means.  It has a connection to our gospel reading, but I’m not really clear about its message.  That might argue against using it, but I’m also somewhat puzzled by our gospel reading today.  So I’ll go ahead and recite some puzzling song lyrics.

Sun just clearing the tree line when my day begins.
Slippery ice on the bridges, Northeastern wind coming in.
You will bruise my head, I will strike your heel.
Drive past woods of northern pine, try not to let go of the wheel.

Dream at night, girl with the cobra tattoo
on her arm, its head flaring out like a parachute.

Prisms in the dewdrops in the underbrush.
skate case sailors' purses floating down in the black needle rush.
Higher than the stars I will set my throne.
God does not need Abraham, God can raise children from stones.

Dream at night, girl with the cobra tattoo
And try to hear the garbled transmissions come through.[1]

Along with haunting music you didn’t hear, there’s a lot going on in these verses. A tattoo of a snake, a viper.  A line borrowed from the Garden of Eden story.  A line from Isaiah’s taunt of those who foolishly imagine themselves equals to God, right next to an echo of John the baptizer’s warning to “children of Abraham.”  Not to mention the line about garbled transmissions, which could sometimes describe my prayer life. 

I’m not at all sure what to make of it. Is it about someone drawn to the devil, to evil? Is this someone who finds himself fated to enmity with another, even with God. Is it a lament over patterns in which he is trapped? I don’t know, but nevertheless I feel myself drawn to it.

At times I feel much the same about Luke’s picture of John the Baptist.  Last week Luke told us that John was proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  And today we hear that crowds came out, drawn to that message.  Now if I were holding a tent revival in the wilderness and huge crowds showed up, I’d think that a good thing. But John calls them snakes; not some of them, but all of them; a brood of vipers, children of serpents.