Sermons and thoughts on faith on Scripture from my time at Old Presbyterian Meeting House and Falls Church Presbyterian Church, plus sermons and postings from "Pastor James," my blog while pastor at Boulevard Presbyterian in Columbus, OH.
It happens over and over and over in the Bible. God's newness springs from the most surprising places, from places that had been given up for dead. The story goes all the way back to Abraham and Sarah, when God forms a covenant people from an old, childless couple. The story echoes in the birth of Samuel to Hannah, in the return of exiles from Babylon, and in the beginning of Luke's story of Jesus.
Luke, the source for our Christmas nativities, begins his story with Elizabeth and Zechariah who "had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years." It is another unlikely place to begin a story of hope and newness, with an elderly couple who have no children. But once again, this is precisely where God starts.
In ancient times, barrenness was thought to be a curse from God. Some texts speak of "God closing her womb." And so in stories such as this one, God's newness not only comes from what appears dead, but from what is presumed to be cursed.
As we draw near to Christmas, congregations such as mine are planning their biggest extravaganzas of the year. We will go all out to celebrate the birth of a Savior. In one sense the is quite appropriate, but in another sense it mirrors our culture's notion that anything important and worth notice is big and vibrant and filled with activity.
Amidst all the Christmas frenzy, both inside and outside the Church, I wonder where, in a place that seems lifeless and hopeless, God is at work creating something new. I wonder where we should turn our gaze so that we might see where God's newness is being born from what seemed to be dead.
Joseph was a "righteous man," a law-abiding, do-what-is-right, upstanding citizen, play-by-the-rules sort of guy. Yet for God's plans to move forward, he must break the rules and say "Yes" to a dream.
Joseph was a “righteous man.” It says so right there in our gospel reading this morning. Of course I’m not sure that very many of us have a real clear image of what a righteous man looks like. After all, when was the last time you heard anyone called a righteous man or a righteous woman? Not a term that get bandied around in everyday conversation.
So then, who in our world looks like Joseph? Who would our gospel writer, if he were alive today, say is righteous?
I thought about that question for a while when I was working on this sermon, trying to come up with something comparable for our day. Occasionally when a person has died and I’m talking with people about a funeral, someone will say, “He was a good Christian fellow” or “a good Christian woman.” That might be a candidate, except that I have learned over the years that this label gets applied to anyone who ever belonged to a church and isn’t a registered sex offender.
There are other possibilities, though: “a pillar of the community.” We hear of people who have “great integrity and morals.” There are those who always “do the right thing.” There are “good citizens” and there are good sports who always “play by the rules.”
I suppose that Joseph is all this and more. After all, near the end of Matthew’s gospel, when Jesus speaks of those who unwittingly fed him when he was hungry or visited him in prison when they did it to “the least of these,” he calls them “righteous.”
And so Joseph is the sort of fellow who always goes above and beyond, who returns the bag of money that falls from the armored truck, who pays the sales tax on the television he bought online, who always opens his wallet for the needy person who approaches him on the sidewalk, and gives at least 10% of his income to the local church.
Yet this Joseph is all set to undermine God’s plans when we first meet him. He’s not doing it out of meanness or spite, but nonetheless, he is about to make the mother of Jesus a single mom in a world that offered no protections for such mothers or their children, in a world where only prostitutes were expected to find themselves alone with a child.
Joseph is a good and decent guy, a pillar of the community who always does the right thing, and so he doesn’t want to hurt Mary. But there are rules, and the law is clear. He will try to spare her and “dismiss her quietly.” But of course people will still find out. People will still talk. But what else can Joseph do? Rules are rules.
If you are a regular reader of the letters to the editor, you may have noticed the string of letters in the Columbus Dispatch sparked by Upper Arlington Lutheran pulling out of their denomination over objections to ordaining gays and lesbians. In the usual way such letters go, someone spoke against what UALC did, prompting someone to defend them, which prompted someone to respond to that letter, and so on.
None of the writers seemed to be official spokespersons for the church, so keep that in mind, but I was quite struck by a line in one the letters defending the decision to leave the denomination. The writer argued that they had no choice. They had to follow the rules. In fact, said the letter writer, God is bound by those rules, too. “God cannot trump his truth with his love. He will not.”
I’m always a little surprised at the way some Christians think God’s love is confined within whatever boundaries they imagine for it. Often these boundaries are lifted from the Bible, but the trouble is; there are often other passages in the Bible that show God crossing that very same boundary. Jesus had no trouble routinely crossing religious boundaries that the church authorities of his day said were absolute. Whether it was Sabbath keeping or not touching people who were “unclean,” both straight from the Bible, Jesus would ignore such rules if doing so allowed him to help someone, heal someone, or show God’s love.
And in our gospel verses this morning, Joseph finds himself in a position where embracing God’s plan means ignoring the rules and crossing religious boundaries. Now I suppose we could get technical and say taking Mary as his wife only seems to be against the rules. She isn’t pregnant because she cheated on Joseph; at least that’s what Joseph dreams.
How many of you would make the sort of decision Joseph did on the basis of a dream? “Joseph, don’t worry about Mary already being pregnant. God did it. Go ahead and take her as your wife, and claim the child and raise him as your own.”
If I had such a dream, I can just imagine my thought process the next day. “Well in my dream, the angel said this was all part of God’s plan, so maybe I wouldn’t actually be breaking the Law. But if God really wanted me to adopt this baby, couldn’t God have told me first, let us get married, and then get Mary pregnant?”
I don’t know about you, but I think it highly likely I could talk myself out of doing what the dream said. And if I was as straight an arrow as Joseph? A dream – God’s Law… God’s Law – a dream (weighing the two in my hands as though scales).
Today is the last Sunday in Advent. Finally we get to hear about a pregnant Mary and the baby Jesus. We finally get to see God’s plan take shape. But many of us have been doing Christmas for so long that there isn’t much surprise left in it. For us, Christmas isn’t about rule breaking and crossing religious boundaries. It isn’t about being surprised at the lengths God will go to save and restore, the risks God will take to draw us into the divine embrace.
But from beginning to end, the story of Jesus defies convention, breaks rules, upsets the status quo, and crosses cherished religious boundaries. It is quite remarkable. And perhaps even more remarkable, the whole plan depends on others joining God in this surprising, boundary-crossing enterprise. Mary must say “Yes.” Joseph must disregard the rules and “Yes” to a dream. Fishermen must drop their nets and say, “Yes” to Jesus’ call. And we must say a “Yes” of our own.
As we celebrate another Christmas, as we bask in the warmth of God’s love become flesh in Jesus, we also hear once more the promise of God’s coming new day, a day that brings good news to the poor, justice, and peace. We encounter this strange Messiah who regularly crosses boundaries, upsets religious sensibilities, breaks the rules, and upends the status quo, all to point to God’s new day, God’s coming rule.
And in the wisdom of God, this coming Kingdom requires us to do our part. It requires more than right beliefs, more than following the rules, more than being moral. It requires our “Yes.” It demands a “Yes” that trusts divine dreams and visions, and trusts that God’s love is the most powerful thing in all creation. It demands a “Yes” that would risk anything, even life itself, to be a part of the new thing God is doing.
Joseph was a righteous, law-abiding man, and rules are rules. And yet, When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. I grew up "in the country,"and we occasionally would thin out some of the heavily wooded areas near our house. Once cut down, some types of trees were done. The stump and roots begin the slow process of rotting away. But others types will put out shoots from the trunk. I have no idea if such shoots would ever grow into a full fledged tree, but that is the promise Isaiah makes regarding the nation of Israel, a nation that has become a shell of its former self.
We just finished packing Community Christmas Packages at my congregation. It is truly a community effort. Neighbors and people from other congregations, service groups, stores and local schools all contribute. This year we packed almost 400 boxes full of food, a grocery store gift certificate, and presents for each child in any family receiving a box, about a 1000 presents in all.
For us this is a huge logistical operation. Collecting all the food and gifts, wrapping presents, filling all the boxes, and organizing routes to deliver all the boxes tomorrow takes a lot of planning and work. But none of us involved expect it to end hunger or poverty in the Columbus area, or even to make a big dent. So why do it?
Our world worries a lot about goals and objectives. In long range planning you are supposed to set goals that are difficult enough to challenge you, but not so difficult so as to discourage you. And so no church congregation, no matter how big or with how many resources, would ever set out to end hunger. But that is not our job. Our job is to show signs of God's coming reign, to show hints of a day when no one is hungry and no one does without, and to call others to join in the move toward that day.
We are called to be shoots and sprouts, signs of a life that God promises will one day be a great tree. And so we are not discouraged when our efforts alone don't produce the fulfillment of that day.
It is easy to look at the world and only see the dead stumps. But we are called to point out the shoots and sprouts, to be the shoots and sprouts, trusting that in God's time, the earth will bloom in peace and abundance and life for all.
We're only one week away from Christmas Eve, and so you'd think the Daily Lectionary would get with the program and have readings that are a bit more seasonal. Who cares about the Assyrians. Let's hear about something that promises a Messiah.
The Lectionary seems uninterested in our Christmas fervor, but then again the Bible seems similarly uninterested. The "Christmas Story" barely makes it onto the pages of Scripture. But we have loaded up Christmas with all sorts of freight and expectations. For retailers, Christmas determines whether or not it will be a profitable year. For students, Christmas provides an extended break from school. For many in the Northern hemisphere, Christmas is supposed to inject a bit of joy and brightness into an otherwise dreary time of year. For others, Christmas brings the hope of family get-togethers and Norman Rockwell moments.
I don't suppose there is anything inherently wrong with any of these expectations, but for the most part, none of them are related to Jesus and his message. And because Christmas has taken on so many layers of meaning for so many different people, it is easy to invoke Christmas in all sorts of cultural fights. People get upset over "Happy Holidays" in place of "Merry Christmas" as though the birth of Jesus is primarily about seasonal decorations and shopping malls. Currently one Republican legislator is objecting to a possible session of Congress from December 26-30 as an "insult" to Christmas.
Sometimes I think the Pilgrims and Puritans got it right when they decided to ban Christmas. Well into the 1800s, there was a law in Massachusetts that forbid celebrating Christmas. Taking a day off for Christmas, except on a Sunday, was illegal. The Pilgrims decided that Jesus' birth should not be connected to holiday revelry and people ceasing from their productive labors to join in that revelry.
Too often, Christmas becomes the worst sort of religious veneer in America. We can feel self righteous about insisting people "keep Christ in Christmas" without actually feeling the need to do much that Jesus commands.
On his show last night, Stephen Colbert handled this topic with much more flair than I can. I think that this blog post might have been greatly improved if I simply said, "Nothing to say, but watch this." So hear it is. And if you are unfamiliar with Colbert, he is a real person, but his persona is a comedic character who is a parody of conservative talk show host Bill O'Reilly. He's a bit over the top and sometimes crass. But even if you're not a fan, this is well worth the watch.
During the Advent and Christmas seasons, we often hear the voices of the prophets. "For unto us a child is born... Behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel... The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light." Many Christians relish the promises of a Messiah found in the prophets, and yet many Christians seem unaware that these same prophets cry out for social justice.
Only a few verses from "the people who walked in darkness" we hear, "Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey!" The prophets often rail against the rich and the powerful, against those who insure that the laws and the policies of the land favor them, who worry more about their own profits than about the poor.
And Jesus aligns himself with these prophets, proclaiming "good news to the poor" and warning those with wealth that their many possessions are a curse rather than a blessing, that it is harder for a camel to pass through an needle's eye than for a wealthy person to enter into the kingdom.
On some level, Christians seem to know that the coming of a Messiah calls us to care for the poor. The outpouring of charity around Christmas, by people in and out of the Church, is quite impressive. Yet I fear that it is only a token of the life the prophets and Jesus call us to live.
We had an interesting discussion the other day in a Bible study about the distinction between service and servanthood. The first are things we occasionally do while the second is a pose, a way of life. When Jesus washes his disciples' feet on the night of his arrest, it is an act of service, but more importantly, it is the pose of a slave or servant. Jesus does something not done by dinner hosts but done only by slaves and servants. And he says that this is an example for us to follow. We are to take the pose of servants and slaves.
Amidst all the hoopla of Christmas, it is easy to forget that Jesus comes to call us to a new way of life. This is the true gift of Christmas, even though we often see the call to discipleship like a child who got socks for Christmas. It seems to us an unwelcome burden. But Jesus insists, "Those who lose their life for my sake and the sake of the gospel will save it." Jesus offers the gift of true and abundant life to those who would walk in his ways, the ways of servanthood, self-giving, and social justice that both he and the prophets proclaim.
The true gift Jesus offers us at Christmas, and every other day of the year, is the hardest gift for many of us to receive. We struggle to believe that this gift could bring us happiness and fulfillment because we have believed the false gospel we hear every day, that happiness comes from having more - more and more things, more and more power, more and more prestige. We struggle to trust Jesus when he tells us that less is really more, that crosses and self-denial are to be embraced. But still Jesus comes to us, and still he offers us new life.
The Daily Lectionary would have great difficulty if it tried to pick readings for Advent that all pointed toward Christmas. Especially when it comes to the gospels, there just isn't that much material. Neither Mark nor John bother to tell of Jesus' birth. Mark's opening verses, today's gospel, begin abruptly with, The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,'" John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
In Mark, the beginning of the good news is John who baptizes people and calls them to repentance. The word repent has taken on connotations of conversion and swearing off one's previous life, but the word means more that confessing one's sin. It is about turning, about moving in a direction appropriate to the new day that comes in Jesus. Preparing is about starting to live now by the ways of God's coming rule.
Over the past six months, I have come to rely on Father Richard Rohr's daily meditations to get my day off to a good start. In his meditation this morning, Rohr speaks of our need for a wisdom that can "name the darkness as darkness and the Light as light," our need to reject a pie-in-the-sky attitude that doesn't see the darkness, but without allowing our view of the darkness to obscure the "more foundational Light." Between these two poles lies true Christian wisdom that lets us "wait and work with hope inside of the darkness—while never doubting the Light that God always is—and that we are too (Matthew 5:14). That is the narrow birth canal of God into the world—through the darkness and into an ever greater Light." (Click to read Rohr's meditation.)
I think John's call of repentance invites us to do something very similar. It calls us to turn away from the darkness in the world, to work against that darkness in the certainty and hope of the light that overcomes the darkness. It is about a willingness to both name the darkness and to live in ways that defy its power. This sort of repentance prepares for God's rule by refusing to simply go along with the "ways of the world," by living instead by the ways of God's coming day, a way of life clearly shown in the life of Jesus.
The beginning of good news is to get ready for something other than how things are. It is to see the darkness in all its ugliness, but to reject its power and live at odds with it. This is the hopeful realism* of our new life in Christ, a realism that clearly sees the world's darkness, but lives and works with confidence that the Light still shines in the darkness, and Light will triumph over darkness.
*I borrowed this term from Doug Ottati's book of the same name.
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
I don't know about you, but when I hear these verses from Isaiah, I think of Advent and of Christmas. What else would I think about? But there is near universal agreement among Old Testament scholars that Isaiah is not speaking of some far-off, future Messiah. More than likely, these verses speak of King Hezekiah, a new king whose reign the prophet expects to bring good days for Israel, a hope Hezekiah largely fulfills. After Hezekiah's time, people in Israel begin to hear these words as still having weight, still containing a promised ideal ruler who would come some day. This promise was active in the time Jesus appeared, and so naturally his followers understood him to be its fulfillment.
As a Christian, I share this belief of Jesus as prophecy fulfilled, but I also think it a good idea to recall the original, very political sense of the prophecy. The prophet spoke of God's Anointed One taking the throne and bringing righteousness and justice to the land. This new king would end oppression from foreign empires, and would bring a time of peace and flowering in Israel.
It seems to me that if some in Jesus' day were disappointed when he did not take up arms and defeat the Romans, many in our day seem to have lost any sense of Jesus as a political Messiah. Jesus does not conquer with traditional weapons, but he speaks of God's will being done on earth, he says the kingdom of God has come near, and he speaks of a great reordering in the society with the poor and outcast being lifted up while the rich and powerful are pulled down.
And so if people 2000 years ago sometimes wanted to overly politicize Jesus, we often want to overly spiritualize him. We want to "believe in" Jesus without necessarily embracing the Kingdom, the rule of God that he says he brings. We imagine a Jesus who is no threat to our political system or our way of life, as though we were living in the Kingdom.
Perhaps one of the reasons we want Advent and Christmas to be about baby Jesus in the manger is that a baby Jesus is no threat. A babe in a manger cannot shout, "Blessed are you who are poor... But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation."
Jesus did not get arrested and put to death simply because he offered up a different take on private, personal religion. He got himself killed because people in power, both religious and political power, viewed him as a threat. And in a season when we so often say, "Come, Lord Jesus," I can't help but wonder who Jesus would threaten if he walked our streets again.
This beautiful cantata, at one time attributed to J. S. Bach, is performed by the Boulevard Presbyterian Chancel Choir, accompanied by chamber orchestra.
