Sermon: Endings, Beginnings, and Pilgrim Journeys

Matthew 3:13-17

Endings, Beginnings, and Pilgrim Journeys

James Sledge                                                   January 12, 2014 – Baptism of the Lord

Roger Nishioka, professor of Christian Education at Columbia Theological Seminary and former director of youth and young adult ministries for our denomination tells a story that I assume comes from his time as a youth worker in a congregation.

Kyle was nowhere to be found, and I missed him. In the weeks following his baptism and confirmation on Pentecost Sunday, he was noticeably missing. Several other members of the confirmation class asked about him too, as did his confirmation mentor. Kyle and his family had come to the congregation when he was in the fifth grade. They attended sporadically, so I was more than a little surprised when I asked him and his parents if he was interested in joining the confirmation class and they responded positively. In this congregation, the confirmation class happened during the ninth-grade school year (as if God calls all ninth-graders simultaneously to be confirmed, just because they are in the ninth grade). Kyle and his parents came for the orientation meeting and agreed to the covenant to participate in two retreats, a mission activity, work with a mentor, and weekly classes for study and exploration. Kyle was serious in attending and missed a class or event rarely. He quickly became a significant part of the group and developed some wonderful friendships with other ninth-graders who had barely known him. Since Kyle had not yet been baptized, he was not only confirmed but also baptized on Pentecost Sunday. It was a marvelous celebration for all the confirmands, their families, and their mentors.

That is pretty much where it ended. That is when I knew we had done something wrong. When I checked in with Kyle and his folks, they all seemed a little surprised that I was calling and checking up on them. I distinctly remember his mother saying, “Oh, well, I guess I thought Kyle was all done. I mean, he was baptized and confirmed and everything. Isn’t he done?”[1]

Kyle’s situation is far from unique. It’s so common there’s even a joke about it. Several pastors are having lunch together when one of them shares that they have an infestation of bats in their steeple. The other pastors suggest a variety of things that might rid them of this problem, but it seems they’ve all been tried without success. Finally the Presbyterian pastors says, “We had that problem and solved it. We enrolled all the bats in our confirmation class, and once it finished, we never saw them again.”

For some reason, church folks are often good at mixing up beginnings and endings. It happens with confirmation. It happens with Christian education/formation where people “graduate” from Sunday School when they graduate high school. And more than a few parents come to have their children baptized – I’ve heard them refer to it as “having the baby done” – then disappear entirely, another beginning that got changed into an ending.

Our Refuge and Strength Is...

God is our refuge and strength,
     a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
     though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
 though its waters roar and foam,
     though the mountains tremble with its tumult.  Psalm 46:1-3

We will not fear even if the very foundations of the earth are shaken. So says the psalmist. Rarely do I live as though it were true. I wonder how many people do. I wonder if the psalmist did. Was that poet a person of rare faith? Or did she write these words in one of those rare moments when faith feels sure and certain? Or did he simply churn out a hymn that said the right words without really believing them himself? (Perhaps you've seen those articles about atheist pastors who continue to serve congregations and preach sermons calling people to faith.)

I'm no atheist, but I have a long list of fears and anxieties. In many Presbyterian and other Mainline congregations, fear and anxiety are pervasive: fear of not meeting the budget, fear of losing members and wasting away, fear that conflicts within congregation or denomination could rip things apart. The list goes on, and as the surrounding culture seems to be fleeing traditional churches in ever increasing numbers, the anxiety increases.

God is our refuge and strength,
     a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear...

The institutional church faces real threats. Attending seminary is a much more risky proposition than it was when I enrolled some 20 years ago. Small churches are closing and larger churches are calling fewer pastors. There are many more people looking for church positions that there are positions. Of course many people who work outside the church, in the "real world," have dealt with this for decades. But at least in the church, shouldn't we be less afraid, less anxious?

God is our refuge and strength,
     a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear...

We will not fear because of God. God... I wonder if some of our fear and anxiety, especially in the church, comes from getting this mixed up. Speaking of us pastors, we have often counted on the church or the denomination to provide for us, to have good positions with good health care and pensions. But the church isn't God, and if the church is our refuge and strength, no wonder we are caught up in fear and anxiety. We've put our trust in an idol.

We pastors sometimes trust in our own abilities, in those seminary educations we received and our (presumed) stellar preaching skills. When things don't go well we attend seminars and conferences to improve our skill set. Then if things still don't get better, we may be filled with self-doubt, we may blame the congregation, or we may do some of both.

Congregations often do something similar. They have many gifted and skilled lay leaders and volunteers who know how to be successful. But when things don't go well they may bring in an expert consultant or hire a new pastor. Then if things still don't get better, they may be filled with self-doubt, they may blame the pastor, or they make do some of both.

But neither the pastor's nor the congregation's gifts and intelligence and abilities are God, and so when we put our trust in such things, when they become our refuge and strength, no wonder we end up in fear and anxiety. We have put our trust in idols.

Perhaps this pattern becomes more inevitable the more institutional faith becomes. When church becomes more about buildings and worship styles than following Jesus, we are bound to stumble. Maybe the travails facing many congregations these days are wake-up calls from God, invitations to refocus our trust on something other than institutional things or human skills.

God is our refuge and strength,
     a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear...

God... Dare we let God/Christ become the very center, the very core? Dare we trust in the way Jesus calls us to walk over the ways of the world, over our own logic or intelligence, over our own skills and abilities, over the images of God we create for ourselves that have all the same opinions and biases we have?


God is our refuge and strength,
     a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear...

God... Not us, not the church, but God. I wonder if I can do that.

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Certain We're Not Certain

I've long been fascinated with how what we "know" can be in impediment and stumbling block to us. It happens in all fields and walks of life. People "know" that someone is no-good because of their appearance, race, nationality, etc. A record executive once refused to sign the Beatles to a contract because he "knew" their sort of music was a passing fad. All learned people once "knew" that the sun revolves around the earth.

The realm of faith is perhaps especially prone to problems rooted in what we "know," in our certainties and assumptions. Religion has given its approval and blessing to all sorts of evil as a result, from crusades to child abuse to slavery. Many people still "know" that a female pastor or a gay pastor is abhorrent to God. And the religious leaders in today's gospel reading "know" that the Messiah cannot possibly come from Galilee. They even have scriptural proofs. (The gospel of John makes no mention of Jesus' birth and seems totally uninterested in his human origins. He is the word made flesh, and he comes from God.)

Religious certainties - I include many atheist certainties in this category - are often some of the most unattractive forms of things people "know." Some of the most ardent Christians and atheists are the worst possible advertisements for what they "know" because their certainties are so arrogant and divisive. Most people reading this probably don't fall into such extremes, but we still are often better at skewering others' problematic certainties than we are at recognizing our own.

In my own faith tradition, and especially in the more "progressive" wings of it, we have a kind of certainty about uncertainty. We are, understandably, suspicious of people who sound very certain about religious and faith things. We are rightly troubled by all those bad advertisements for our faith from Christians who would happily send everyone who disagrees with them to hell. And so we become certain that we can't say anything for certain.

A certain level of skepticism about our own certainties, an awareness of the limits of knowing, along with some healthy self-examination, are good things, but this can go too far. At some point, being certain that certainties are impossible makes it as hard for us to see Jesus for who he is as it was for those who were certain he couldn't come from Galilee.

I've recently started reading Brian McLaren's Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World. The book is in large part a challenge to the church to develop a "strong-benevolent Christian identity," and McLaren's categories of "strong/hostile" versus "weak/benign" Christian identities line up well with my division between arrogant and divisive certainties versus fear of any certainties. And if I were to restate his project in the terms of this post I might say, "How are we to claim Christian certainties that are neither arrogant nor divisive?"

If our answer is, "We can't," then I fear that this certainty is every bit as harmful to Christian faith as those folks who are certain about who is in hell.

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Tourists, Pilgrims, and 40 Year Journeys

Frederick Buechner once said something about coincidences being a way God gets our attention. In the coincidences, or perhaps providences, of this day, I found myself thinking about faithful, life-long obedience, which then spurred me to look for a quote in a book by Eugene Peterson's A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Then, when I looked at today's lectionary passages and read from Moses' words to the Israelites as they prepare to cross the Jordan River and enter the land of promise, I found myself again thinking of long obedience.

Deuteronomy is as "second" hearing of the Law, a reminder to Israel of who they are and what their calling is. Moses instructs them one last time before his death, and in today's passage he says, "Remember the long way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments." A long, forty years way to an unseen and unknown destination, a destination of great hope and promise, if you could trust what God had said.

Peterson's book speaks of our world's aversion to such long journeys. He writes, "Religion in our time has been captured by the tourist mindset. Religion is understood as a visit to an attractive site when when have adequate leisure. For some it is a weekly jaunt to church. For others, occasional visits to special services. Some, with a bent for religious entertainment and sacred diversion, plan their lives around special events like retreats, rallies and conferences."

Speaking of the people he has pastored, Peterson continues, "They have adopted the lifestyle of a tourist and only want the high points. But a pastor is not a tour guide... The Christian life cannot mature under such conditions and in such ways." Finally, as a setup to developing images of disciple and pilgrim as preferable alternatives to tourist, he draws on Friedrich Nietzsche. " 'The essential thing in heaven and earth is... that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which made life worth living.' It is this 'long obedience in the same direction' which the mood of the world does so much to discourage."

I recently had a conversation with a Christian who is a recent immigrant from Africa. He was talking about the similarities between worship in this congregation and what he knew back home. It was all quite familiar, he said. The order of worship and such was much the same. "Except it is much shorter here," he added. He went on to talk about how people often walked for hours to attend worship, and how such an effort demanded more than a brief interlude of worship. "People are always in a hurry here," he said. They don't have time, and so they squeeze in a bit of worship. And in a turnabout that had never occurred to me, he spoke of how, prior to getting a car, it took a very long time for him to make his way to our church site, and how it didn't seem worth the effort required to get here for our brief, "touristy" worship.

He didn't use that word. I'm thinking of Peterson's term, but I think it fits perfectly with what this young, African man was describing when he spoke of people in his home country having "the gift of time," something we have lost, leading to the tourist forms of religion and faith necessary for people with no time.

Many pastors and writers have been working for decades to help people in churches think of themselves as "disciples" rather than as "members." I include myself in that number and long for the day when congregations speak of "disciples" and no longer use the language of "members" and "membership." But today I'm thinking we may need to claim "pilgrim" as well. Both as individuals and as congregations, we need to think of ourselves as people who are headed somewhere, on a journey toward what Jesus called "the kingdom," a journey that will not be done in our lifetimes, a journey that cannot be taken during our leisure time or vacations.

We Americans are in an awful hurry. Living inside the beltway of Washington, DC, this hurry appears even more awful. But it is not at all clear to me where the hurry leads. Sometimes it reminds me of the prophet Amos' famine of hearing the words of the LORD. "They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east; they shall run to and fro, seeking the word of the LORD, but they shall not find it." (Amos 8:12)

Do you ever wonder where you're headed? Are we headed anywhere, or are we, as the saying goes, simply going nowhere fast? Sometimes all of us who so easily wear the label "Christian" would do well to recall that before that easy label arose, a more descriptive term was used: "The Way." Sounds like people who were headed somewhere.

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An Epiphany "So What?"

In the Christian calendar, today is Epiphany, a feast day celebrating the arrival of the Magi or Wise Men who come to see the new king who has been born. This calendar puts Epiphany twelve days after Christmas although, according to Matthew's gospel, the actual arrival of the Magi may have been as much as two years after Jesus' birth. (Speaking of biblical accuracy, Matthew makes no mention of how many Magi there are. The three comes from the gifts of frankincense, gold, and myrrh.)

The Christian calendar has two distinct feast days of Christmas and Epiphany, but for all practical purposes we have collapsed it all into Christmas. I once served in a church that had an evening Epiphany service on January 6. I'm not sure why we bothered. Some years the choir outnumbered those in the pews. How different from Christmas Eve when we had to drag out folding chairs for additional seating.

I have no desire for Epiphany to get the same star-treatment as Christmas. If anything, I'd like to see Christmas get toned down a bit. In the same way that Hanukkah grew into a bigger Jewish celebration than its religious significance would suggest because of the proximity to Christmas, so too the church's celebration of Christmas has intensified alongside the growth of the secular Christmas celebration. Christmas can sometimes become little more than an orgy of joy, nostalgia, and good feelings without much connection to the significance of Jesus' birth.

Epiphany at least begins to deal with the impact of that birth. As Jesus symbolically is revealed to the world via the visit of foreign, Gentile Magi, the loyalty problems created by Jesus quickly become apparent. King Herod and "all Jerusalem with him" are frightened at the news of a king's birth. As well they should be. If Jesus is king then Herod has a competitor for allegiance and loyalty. If God has come in Jesus to reign, then all those accommodations people in Jerusalem have made in order to live in a world often at odds with God's hopes and dreams suddenly become problematic.

The same can be said for us in today's world, which is a big reason we like to celebrate Jesus' birth and then ignore much that the adult Jesus says. But Epiphany reminds us that the birth of a king is a crisis moment, one where we must decide if we are loyal subjects to this king or not. Too often, our celebration of Christmas raises no such issues. It celebrates and basks in the warmth of the moment, oblivious to this king's call to follow him, to take up the cross, to love enemies, to deny self and be willing to lose our lives for the sake of his kingdom.

When we pull the Magi into our Christmas extravaganza, we simply add the star and camels to our manger scenes, and the Wise Men become little more than additional revelers at the party. We certainly don't include the part of their story where Herod kills all the children under two and Jesus and his family become refugees in Egypt.

But Epiphany begins to raise "So what?" questions regarding Jesus' birth, questions that we'd often like to avoid. And so we ignore Epiphany, folding a redacted version of it into Christmas. But the questions of Epiphany remain. Christ is born; so what? A new king has arrived and has begun to assemble his new dominion; so what? God has taken flesh in Jesus and called us to join him on his way; so what?

In my most recent sermon, I included this quote from C.S. Lewis. "Christianity is the story of how the rightful King has landed and is calling us to His great campaign of sabotage." Called to join the new king's sabotage campaign; now that strikes me as a fitting answer to Epiphany's "So what?"

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Sermon video: Weeping with Rachel... and God

Audios of sermons and worship available on the FCPC website.

Sermon: Weeping with Rachel... and God

Matthew 2:13-23

Weeping with Rachel… and God

James Sledge                                                                           December 29, 2013

In the church I previously served, we usually held a “Hanging of the Greens” service sometime early in Advent. In one of the first of those services I participated in, I leaned a wooden cross against the manger that sat in our chancel area during Advent and Christmas. I also talked with the children who gathered around it about how Jesus, whose birth we would soon celebrate, would die at a young age on a cross. The choir sang an anthem called “Child of the Manger, Child of the Cross.”

It was all a pretty stark reminder that foreboding surrounds Jesus’ birth, a foreboding that is picked up on one popular carol. The fourth verse of “We Three Kings of Orient Are.” says, “Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb.” The joy and excitement of Jesus’ birth is tempered by the knowledge that Jesus is, in some sense, born to die.

Some people found that cross against the manger poignant and meaningful, but others were bothered and offended by it, even more so when I left it leaning against the manger for the rest of Advent. Boy, did I hear about that. I learned my lesson. I still brought that cross out sometimes during the “Hanging of the Greens,” but then I put it away until Lent.

Very often, people insist that Christmas be about pure unadulterated joy, but apparently Matthew didn’t get the memo. Every year we hear from the gospel of Luke a quaint tale of a babe laid in a manger, attended by shepherds who’ve been alerted by angels. We even drag the Wise Men to the manger, appropriating them from Matthew’s gospel, but in Matthew, the wise men never visit the newborn Jesus. 

Matthew simply reports that Jesus is born. He tells of no angels, no heavenly choirs, no nativity scene. No one in Bethlehem knows. But sometime later, maybe a year or two later, foreigners show up. Tipped off by a celestial sign, they realize that a new king has been born, and they come to pay their respects. They don’t really seem to understand what is going on, something made all too clear by their going to King Herod to ask directions. But their visit is a cosmic signal. Creation itself has announced the birth of a new king, and, symbolically, the nations have come to bow before their new ruler.

A Christmas Stoning

If you went to the daily lectionary texts for December 26, expecting to bask in glad tidings and good cheer, you were likely disappointed. From the Old Testament we read of Zechariah being stoned to death, and from the New Testament we learn of Stephen's death by the same means. Not exactly angel choirs or a babe in swaddling clothes.

In this year's lectionary cycle, the readings for the first Sunday after Christmas are not much better. We hear of King Herod slaughtering the young children of Bethlehem in an attempt to kill the new king Herod has learned about from the magi. Joseph and Mary escape with Jesus, but must flee as exiles to Egypt. Not your typical Christmas story, and I suspect that many preachers avoid the gospel reading for this Sunday. We want to bask in the warmth of Christmas a little longer. (It also helps that so many of us pastors take vacation following Christmas and therefore often miss this Sunday anyway.)

Yet if we use the daily lectionary in our devotions, we are rudely shaken from Christmas warmth and mirth well ahead of Sunday and its "Slaughter of the Innocents." We are confronted with the fact that loyalty to God often does not ingratiate one to those in power, and that's often true of both political and religious power.

The people who killed Zechariah, the people who killed Stephen, and the people who killed Jesus all claimed to be acting as God's people. Many of them were no doubt absolutely convinced they were doing God's work. It is so easy to assume that God agrees with what we want and how we do things and so to see those who challenge us as our enemies as well as God's.

The story of Christmas is the story of God's entry into the world in the most vulnerable way, as a helpless infant. And while that infant escapes Herod's slaughter at Bethlehem, the man he grow up to be will face execution. He will not wield divine might against the powers that be, but will instead go quietly to a cross.

As much as we love the Christmas story, it proves difficult for many, certainly for me, fully to embrace the God of that story. The God of the Christmas story does not intervene to stop Herod's slaughter, or the slaughter of the Holocaust, or the slaughter today in Aleppo, Syria. Rather God confronts the evil and brutality of our world by entering into that suffering, by suffering as Jesus and calling us to join Jesus in his work, in the way of the cross.

Christ is born! Angels sing and celestial signs appear. And the powers that be still resist, by brutal force and by subtle co-opting of Jesus' name. But Jesus keeps calling us to join him in carrying a cross, in living as boldly as he did because we have discovered a power and freedom that makes no sense by the world's measures. As Jesus taught us, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."

Jesus' words do not have much logic in the reasoning of the world and the powers that be, nor in the reasoning that most of us live by. But when the strange and wonderful ways of God begin to transform us, we start to see a new possibility.

This Sunday I'm preaching on Matthew's story of Herod's slaughter. Providentially a friend shared a post by Amy Merrill Willis on the passage, and I've added a quote from it to that sermon, a quote where Teresa Berger reflects on the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The divine presence wept. And then I saw: in her strong brown arms she was gathering the remains of her beautiful creation, all the maimed and the burnt, the dying and the dead, the unborn, the orphaned, the lost, and those who inflicted loss… And I saw that she was a woman in travail, desperate to birth new life, a child of peace… Then I heard the voice of the divine presence saying, Who will labor with me, and who will be midwife to life? Here I am, I said, I want to birth life with you. And the divine presence said, Come, take your place beside me.

Christmas is cause for rejoicing. But it is also a call to join God in something new, in the painful process of birthing something new. It is the beginning of Jesus' call to lose ourselves in something strange and wonderful and, in the process, to discover what it means to be children of God.

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Drawn to the Light

Arise, shine; for your light has come,

and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.

For darkness shall cover the earth,

and thick darkness the peoples;

but the LORD will arise upon you,

and his glory will appear over you.

Nations shall come to your light,

and kings to the brightness of your dawn.    

Isaiah 60:1-3

This passage from Isaiah seems perfect for Christmas Eve. People are indeed drawn to the light of this dawn. (The word translated "nations" in verse 3 is goyim, a word that has come to mean "non-Jews," but in Isaiah's time also referred to humanity, other nations and peoples, etc.) At Christmas, people who don't normally have much connection to church or faith come, drawn in by the light, the hope of this day.

It is easy to get caught up in the darkness of the world, and as we enter winter in this hemisphere, that darkness can seem amplified by short and dreary days. The lights of Christmas, both those in churches and those in secular decorations, provide a pleasant contrast, the promise of light and hope and warmth in the mist of coldness, darkness, and, all too often, despair.

That is not to say that any light will do. The bright lights in my neighborhood are lovely and do brighten things up a bit. It is enjoyable to look at them as I go home from the church each evening. But when they are soon gone (granted, some will remain through much of winter), they will not have changed anything. They will have been little more than a pleasant diversion.

Christmas can be little more than such a diversion. That happens when Jesus' call for us to follow him as his disciples gets lost in the seasonal cheer. If the celebration of a Savior's birth does not draw us toward the one who calls us to new life, then Christmas at church isn't much different than the decorations in my neighborhood. 

But when this strange story of God entering fully into the messiness of human existence helps open our eyes to the ways of God, ways that are so different from ours, when it pulls us toward God's power made perfect in weakness, then there is hope and light and warmth that remains when all the decorations and crowds are gone.

The light has come into the world. Sing and rejoice. And also, walk in that light. Let the light guide you in the ways of life, or true and full humanity that Jesus embodies and calls us to share as his sisters and brothers.

Joy to the world! The Lord is come. May God's love be born in you and lead you toward the life God created you to live.

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A Gathering of Regulars and Christmas Pilgrims

I was glad when they said to me,
    “Let us go to the house of the LORD!”  Psalm 122:1

In ancient Israel, people who didn't live near Jerusalem did not see the Temple on a regular basis. Synagogues didn't appear until the time of the Babylonian exile, so prior to that there wasn't anything comparable to our neighborhood church. I suspect that some people didn't have much regular contact with formal, authorized religion. For many of these, a trip to the Jerusalem Temple would have been a much anticipated pilgrimage, not unlike some Catholics making a trip to Rome or Muslims on the hajj to Mecca.

I wonder if this sort of pilgrimage doesn't also get enacted by some who will journey to church sanctuaries tomorrow evening. (Brief commercial: our family service is at 4:30 and our lessons and carols candlelight service is at 8:00.) A fair amount of disparaging of these once or twice a year worshipers goes on in church circles. Some of it has warrant, but some of it is rooted in the institutional nature of church congregations. Unlike the Jerusalem Temple or other pilgrimage sites, we cannot stay in business if we are dependent on irregular pilgrims. We need regulars who show up to volunteer and who provide a steady stream of income.

However, the nearly every-week-regular does not necessarily have any better handle on faith than the once-a-year pilgrim. Granted, regular participation holds within it the disciplined activity that is needed for being a disciple of Jesus, but not every discipline is connected to Jesus. I've known my share of church folks over the years who seem to derive a great deal of satisfaction out of their church participation but who seem hardly at all interested in what Jesus says they should do. Perhaps they would embrace Jesus if he showed back up, but I suspect many of them would be modern day versions of the religious folks who rejected  him. (I suspect I am in that camp myself at times.)

By the same token, there are irregular church pilgrims who practice disciplines in their lives that seem very much in keeping with some of Jesus' commands.

As so often happens when I begin writing one of these little reflections, I don't really know where this is headed. But I wonder if all of us who plan to show up for the big celebration tomorrow night - whether we are pilgrims or regulars - wouldn't benefit from an examination of our own reasons for being there. Why is it we made this pilgrimage? Why is it we show up the rest of the year, too?

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Preaching Thoughts on a Different Sort of Preaching Sunday

Our choirs and orchestra treated us to a magnificent performance from Christmas portions of Handel's Messiah this morning so I did not preach, at least not in that service. However, we recently began an early, informal service. It features a sermon like reflection that is a bit more interactive and less formal. It's something of an off-the-cuff version of the sermon prepared for the traditional service, but today I had the opportunity to be genuinely off-the-cuff.

Today's gospel reading is the familiar tale of Joseph learning of Mary's pregnancy and planning to divorce her quietly. (In Jesus' day, engagements were legally binding and pretty much a marriage in the law's eyes. And so Mary would seem to be guilty of adultery and could have been stoned to death for her "crime.") Not only is Joseph a righteous man, seeking to live according to God's law, but he is also a compassionate man. Whether we are to understand this compassion as part of his righteousness or as something more is not clear to me. Regardless, Joseph is all set to do quietly what the law requires and what society expects. That is, until he has a dream.

If I were to begin acting contrary to the law and contrary to what was expected of me as a pastor, defying all custom and convention, I'm sure I would get called on it. People would want to know what I thought I was doing. And if I responded to them that I had had a dream where an angel from God told me to do these things, their next call might be to a mental health professional.

I grew up in Spartanburg, SC and Charlotte, NC in the 1960s and 70s. In those days society's Christian veneer was still quite well preserved. As a child, I assumed that most people were Christian and the society I lived in was Christian. And so to me the phrase, "good, Christian person" meant more or less the same thing as a good citizen. Such a person would obey the law, have a job, keep their yard in decent shape, etc. In fact, I frequently heard the term "good, Christian feller" applied to folks who weren't necessarily church people, but nonetheless were reasonably upstanding members of the community.

My understanding of what being a good Christian entailed was quite minimal. And one thing that understanding definitely did not include was doing crazy things because God - or God's representative - said so. Good Christians didn't rock the boat, upset their neighbors, or call time honored ways of doing things into question. No wonder a great many white Christians of my childhood thought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to be decidedly unchristian. In my childhood world, nearly everyone was a good Christian, and most of them would not react kindly to the mention of Dr. King. It did not happen in the churches where I grew up, but Dr. King was condemned in no uncertain terms from many pulpits as lots of good, Christian folks nodded in agreement.

Most good Christians love the Christmas story, even if we miss the fact that it requires people to act contrary to what was expected, contrary to the law and to time honored practice and convention. Mary must say yes to an angel, and Joseph must do as he is told in a dream, even though it is not what a "good Christian" is supposed to do. God's dream of something new is dependent on people who listen to angels and dreams rather than abide by how things are done, time honored traditions, or what is expected of them. And it doesn't stop with Jesus' birth. The people who most easily embrace Jesus are on the margins of society, while the good Christians of his day see him as a troublemaker, a rabble-rouser who doesn't understand what it means to be "a good, Christian feller."

"When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him..." We are about to celebrate the birth of God's dream, the birth Joseph embraces because a dream told him to do so. God's dream is still being born, and it still depends on those who will pause to listen for angels, attend to crazy dreams, and get caught up in the dream of God. Never mind what the neighbors or the "good Christians" say.

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God Could Never Work Through Them

The gospel of Luke begins its story about Jesus by announcing a birth but not the birth of Jesus. Before we hear of Mary and Joseph, we meet Elizabeth and Zechariah. We learn that they are both righteous before God and blameless with regard to keeping God's commandments. "But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years."

In our day, this inability to have children may seem no more than an unfortunate, perhaps even tragic, medical condition. But in ancient times, an inability to have children was always the woman's fault, it basically robbed her of her only valid purpose in life, and it was thought to be a punishment of some sort. Some god was involved in closing a woman's womb and rendering her barren. This happened for some reason.

I can only assume that people talked about Elizabeth and Zechariah, speculating about what one of them had done to tick off God. Zechariah was a priest, so maybe it was Elizabeth's fault. Yet Luke tells us quite clearly, "Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord."

Modern folk are less likely to blame God's personal activity for every event and misfortune, especially if we understand the scientific process behind the event. But that doesn't mean we don't make assumptions about who deserves what. We may even hope for some people to get what's coming to them, wishing for karma, the universe, or perhaps even God to intervene and set things right.

But Luke opens his gospel by knocking over basic assumptions about karma, justice, and people getting what they deserve. A righteous and blameless couple seems to have incurred God's wrath. By all appearances, God is against them, and yet the story of Jesus begins by telling of their critical place in God's plan to save and renew.

You needed by a conservative fundamentalist to think you know who God prefers and who God would and wouldn't use as part of God's plan. I was once at a church conference populated mostly by Presbyterians, many of them of a more moderate or liberal ilk. The speaker was Brian McLaren, and at some point he made a comment about there being things we Mainline Christians could learn from our more evangelical brothers and sisters. The visceral reaction from a great many was astounding to me. It all but said out loud, "God cannot possibly work through such folks. They have offensive views and bad theology. Surely that disqualifies them."

Some of the recent furor over an interview given by Duck Dynasty star, Phil Robertson, is perhaps instructive. I think what he said is completely wrong, but that doesn't mean that he is the anti-Christ as some Facebook posts or Tweets would seem to suggest. And it doesn't meant that this person is now so tainted that he cannot be a disciple of Jesus. He may be a flawed and misinformed one, but then again that probably describes all of us in some way.

Some years ago, Tom Long preached a sermon at a Covenant Network of Presbyterians conference where he told of meeting a hairdresser who was a member of Creflo Dollar's mega church in Atlanta. He laughted to himself about how he was going to get some bad theology to go with his bad haircut, but then he discovered through their conversation that God at work in this woman, and in Creflo Dollar's church. (You may be able to find the sermon via Google or on the Covenant Network website. It's truly wonderful.)

I think one thing we can say with absolute certainty is that God rarely acts in quite the manner we would have done it. The cross alone is sufficient confirmation of that. And so as we draw toward the end of Advent and near to the celebration of a Savior's birth, perhaps we should be especially attentive to surprises that are contrary to our assumptions. Perhaps we should be a tad suspicious of our well constructed doctrines and theologies, designed by the most learned and scholarly sorts. After all, the first person in Luke's gospel who begins to expound on the character and intentions of God is a teenage girl (Luke 1:46-55). And she didn't even have a seminary degree.

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