It feels weird to me that it’s Christmas Eve, but there’s no snow on the ground and it’s been in the forties all week. I don’t know why this feels weird to me. I’m from southern California, a place where we sang I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas with the same seriousness as we sang Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. Every kid knows reindeers fly and unless Grandma decided to do some roofing on midnight on Christmas Eve, Grandma is perfectly safe. But even though the forecast says it should be in the sixties and sunny tomorrow when I get to my parents’ house, like it was for every Christmas of my childhood, there’s still this part of me that grew up with the same Norman Rockwell paintings as you all did and feels like there’s something missing, like it’s not quite Christmas, without snow.
And beyond snow, the whole Christmas season is a time thick with expectation. We often come into this holiday with this vision in our minds of how this is supposed to be, and rarely does expectation meet reality. Maybe it’s a simple thing. The church office computer met its untimely demise on Wednesday. Inconvenient and anxiety-producing, yes, but we’re still here, we still have bulletins. Gwen’s friend rescued the files from the now-fried motherboard, Gwen worked on the bulletin on her home computer, and it all worked out. Even if it hadn’t and we were sharing copies of the hymns copied out of the office hymnal, it still would have worked out and it would have made a good story. Like the time the power went out mid-worship and we all had to migrate to the social hall. Maybe your Christmas crisis is like the office Christmas crisis, the goose got over-cooked, or the dishwasher chose today to die, or your family got stuck in traffic, something annoying and frustrating and not what you’d envisioned, but something that will make a hilarious Christmas tale for years to come.
But maybe too, the misplaced expectations are more serious. The relationship you’d hoped could mend cannot. The loved one’s absence stings more severely than you expected. The grief, fear, disappointment, sadness, pulls stronger in the festive lights and sounds of this “most wonderful time of the year.” In a culture, and a season, so all-consumed with a carefully curated joy, it feels like there shouldn’t be space for anything but radiance on this night. So what do we do when real life creeps in, when our actual humanness messes with the perfect divinity of how we imagine this season to be?
The good news is that there is no scene more unexpected, more messy, then the one we hear this night. First off, we have an angel who came to two families to proclaim to them their role in ushering in God’s salvation. But these two families were not leaders or rulers, kings or diplomats, warriors or wise sages. They were an aging priest and his equally aged wife living their days in the hill country of Judea, and an unmarried teenager and her cautious fiancée from the even more unlikely region of the Galilee. These are the two families who were to give birth to, to raise, the one who would be called “Prophet of the Most High” and the one who would be called “Son of the Most High” and “Son of God.” When the people had heard the “promises made to their ancestors” and the words God “spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets,” that God would “raise up a mighty savior… in the house of his servant David,” this was not the branch of the Davidic family tree that they imagined such a savior would come. People who are supposed to be powerful, people who are to change, to save, the world, are supposed to be strong and mighty and, well, have power. A pretty far cry from two babies born in out-of-the-way corners of society. At least Moses had the whole basket switch-a-roo and was raised by the daughter of the Pharaoh. These two had no indication that they could possibly be the Savior of the world and his messenger. The Angel Gabriel’s proclamation, Mary’s Magnificat, and Zechariah’s Benedictus notwithstanding, Jesus does not have the pedigree to be the sort of successor to David for whom the people of God had been waiting.
And then there’s the manger scene itself. Mary and Joseph, relegated to the barn because there was “no room for them in the inn.” The King of Kings resting not on pillows of silk, but in feed trough. Not attended to by servants, but lulled to sleep by the rustling of cattle, sheep, and goats. And despite the pastoral quietude with which the scene is portrayed, I went with my godson on his class trip to the farm this fall and was reminded that there is one dimension of barns that really cannot be captured in images, the smell. It smells in barns. The sickly sweet, cloying aroma of livestock packed in a contained space is something that never comes up. There are a lot of Christmas theme scented candles this time of year, but no one ever sells manger-scented ones. If we want to really remember the reason for the season that may be a missed marketing opportunity.
And then we pan out from the manger a bit, and there are some shepherds. Which shepherds have a bit of a mixed metaphor here. Because on one hand, shepherds were an image of kingship in the Old Testament. King David, from who’s line Jesus has come, was himself a shepherd, and his kingship was often described as shepherding Israel. Protecting it from invaders and watching over it as a shepherd cares for his sheep. But, on the other hand, the shepherds in this story actual shepherds, not metaphors for royalty. And actual shepherds bear about as much similarity to King David as Christmas-spice scented candles bear to an actual manger. It’s a pretty image, until you get a whiff of it. But these are the people who are given the first notice that a savior has been born. Not Herod in his palace in Jerusalem, Quirinius in Syria, or Emperor Augustus way off in Rome, all three locations, by the way, way more expected places for the birth of a king who would shepherd God’s people. But this angel appeared to actual shepherds, in a field, with sheep. Who immediately upon hearing the news dropped what they were doing, or more likely gathered their sheep with them and brought them along, to see this promised Messiah.
So friends, on this night of all nights, I invite you to put aside your expectations of what this night should be, and who you should be to enter into it. Put aside whatever poor measuring device, be it paycheck or pant size or general holiday cheeriness, under which you are not measuring up, and just be in the promise of the presence of our infant savior. Because trust me, I can smell you, or, more accurately, I cannot smell you, so I can say with great confidence, there is nothing about you that is weirder or more unexpected or ill-fitting then where the Christ child was actually born. Jesus was not born into a Norman Rockwell painting, Jesus was born into our world, into our lives. It is in the mess, the real mess and muck and reality of this world that God came, that God wanted to come, and that God still comes.
So, if only for tonight, set aside your expectations, and just wonder at the sight. For as the Angel Gabriel once said to shepherds in a field, “To you is born this day in the City of David, a Savior who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Thanks be to God. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Monday, December 24, 2018
Sunday, December 23, 2018
Change Has Come: A Sermon on Luke 1:57-80
A bit of an aside before we begin, but I had a really interesting first hand experience with this text this week. I meet monthly with a group of colleagues, and one of them had surgery on his vocal chords this week. So when we gathered Thursday, he was completely unable to speak. He communicated with us through gestures and a text-to-talk app on his phone. The text-to-talk app, while helpful, was a slow process. And for reasons I don’t know its already robotic voice had a British accent, which made it pretty hard to understand. So mostly, he just listened. And while my colleague is always an excellent listener with a gift for asking good questions, somehow in his silence I noticed that gift even more profoundly. I missed his quick wit and the ease of conversation, and felt the weight of the dialogue having to be carried by the two of us who still had voices, but I did really notice, and appreciate, his mostly silent presence in the space, interspersed with short, robotic British, comments that gently moved the conversation forward. Had I been the voiceless one, I may have simply not come. I’m really glad he had the wisdom to be there because voice or no voice, in this busy pre-Christmas week, I appreciated his calming presence.
Before we get into the meat of this Gospel reading, lets recap a little bit for anyone who wasn’t here two weeks ago or who just needs a refresher on who Zechariah and Elizabeth were and why it was weird that Zechariah wasn’t talking. We read earlier in Luke’s Gospel that Zechariah and Elizabeth were faithful followers of God. Zechariah was a priest and Elizabeth a descendent of Aaron, both were described as “righteous before God, living blamelessly.” But the couple had no children, and were both “getting on in years.” One day, Zechariah was given the privilege of entering the Temple to offer incense to the Lord. And while he was in the Temple, the Angel Gabriel appeared to him and told him his prayers had been answered because Elizabeth was going to become pregnant and give birth to a son. And not just any son. This son was to be named John, a name which means “God has shown favor” or “God is gracious,” because, “he will be great in the sight of the Lord… even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people to Israel to the Lord… [and] make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
Yet despite Zechariah’s righteousness, his response to this miraculous messenger, and message, was not joy but hesitation. “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years?” While one has to admit Zechariah’s very legitimate question, Gabriel had no time for such concerns. “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you… But now, since you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occurred.” Zechariah came out of the Temple unable to speak and following the completion of his Temple service, they returned to their home in the Judean hill country where Elizabeth did become pregnant, as the angel had said.
All that happened nine months and eight days ago. We pick up the story after child has been born, Elizabeth’s relatives and neighbors have rejoiced at the birth just as the angel said they would, and the time has come, per Mosaic law, for the child to be named. By first century custom, the right to name a child belonged to the father because naming something was seen as a way to claim ownership over it. But since Zechariah was unable to speak, their neighbors and relatives assumed they would name the boy after his father, thus labeling the child as belonging to Zechariah. But contrary to custom, Elizabeth spoke up and interjected, “No; he is to be called John.” One interesting aside in Luke’s narrative is that both John and Jesus were named not by their fathers, as per custom, but by their mothers. According to the direction of the Angel Gabriel, but still. Already in this subtle shift away from the cultural narrative of the father claiming naming rights, we see that God doing a new thing here, a thing that is shifting the power balance from its traditional centers to those whom have been marginalized. Watch that theme develop; we’ll see it for the next year we spend in Luke.
But this was still the first century, so despite Elizabeth’s assertion, the relatives and neighbors weren’t sure about choice. “‘None of your relatives has this name.’ Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him.” To which Zechariah, by writing on a tablet, affirmed, “‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed.” But what’s really amazing is what happened next. For immediately after affirming the child’s name was to be John, Zechariah regained the ability to speak. And speak he did, praising God with this beautiful prophetic message, which is often called the Song of Zechariah or the Benedictus, after the first word in the Latin translation, “blessed.”
The Song of Zechariah is one of my favorite pieces of scripture. The Service of Morning Prayer in our hymnal has a song based on this passage, and in seminary, this service was the setting for our Tuesday chapel worship every week. So every Tuesday we would chant these beautiful words, “Blessed be the God of Israel, who comes to set us free. Who visits and redeems us and grants us liberty. So have the prophets long declared that with a mighty arm, God shall turn back our enemies and those who wish us harm.” And like anything you do over and over, week after week, even six years out from seminary, I still carry that song, still find comfort and strength and hope in it.
What I find so powerful about Zechariah’s words is how assured and confident they are. Like Mary’s Magnificat, Zechariah’s Benedictus speaks of the coming Savior, speaks of Jesus, in the past tense. “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, because he has… redeemed his people. He has raised up a mighty savior… He has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant.” Again that repetitive past tense, he has, he has, he has. It is only when Zechariah gets to the part of the song where he is speaking of the human realm, when he is speaking of his own son, that he switches to the future tense, to what for us and for his listeners would be the proper order. “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.” Also like Mary’s Magnificat, Zechariah’s song is full of references to Old Testament promises of God’s saving acts. The phrase “mighty savior” in the Greek literally translates to “horn of salvation,” an image the Psalmist used to talk about God’s power and might. There is reference to the covenants, the promises, God made to Abraham and to David, and now Jesus and John are the fulfillment of those covenants. References to dawn and light evoke God’s triumph over sin and death. There is so much hope and promise packed into these few brief verses; I could talk all day about it if you’d let me.
But this morning, at this time, what I find the most hopeful, the most powerful about the Song of Zechariah, is that Zechariah is the one who sang it. Because remember who Zechariah is, remember what just ended for him. Zechariah, a priest and righteous man, who’d lived blamelessly before God for his whole life, doubted the seemingly ridiculous claim of an angel who appeared to him in the Temple, and then was struck mute for nine months. This guy literally just got his voice back, is set in his ways, and, let’s face it, is probably sleep-deprived because he’s got an eight day old baby, and the first thing out of his mouth is this powerful song of praise. This seems out of character to me for a guy who encountered an angel in a Temple and was like, “I don’t know if I should trust you, I’m pretty old.”
What the Song of Zechariah shows us is the power of God to change us, to transform us, to make us capable of more than we know. In Zechariah’s mind he was old, set in his ways, unable to do anything but the faithful, settled things he’d always done. But God had a new purpose, a new task, a new adventure, in mind for Zechariah, and in this song we see Zechariah embracing it. Yes it took him a while, but he got there eventually. Some of you may have heard one of my common quips about my relationship with God. Oftentimes when I’m facing a major choice or transition in life, it seems like I’ll spend a great deal of time carefully explaining to God exactly what would be the best thing to happen, the best place for me to end up. And then God, with boundless compassion, will look at me and say, “awe, that’s adorable that you put all that time into a plan. But no, I’m going to put you over here now,” and there I go. It’s how I ended up in Syracuse on internship. Not my first choice, but probably the place I learned the most. It’s how I ended in California for my first call, when I determinedly wanted to go back to DC. And it’s how I ended up here; Battle Creek being a place I didn’t even know existed, and thus couldn’t imagine being.
The good news, dear friends in Christ, on this final Sunday in Advent, as we await the imminent arrival of the promised savior, is that in the birth, death, and resurrection, God has changed, has saved, the world. “Has” as in already has, past tense, our salvation is upon us. And we, much as we, like Zechariah, may not be able to understand or imagine it, are the people God is using to bring this revelation of God’s love to light. We can and we will be the ones who bear this good news. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Before we get into the meat of this Gospel reading, lets recap a little bit for anyone who wasn’t here two weeks ago or who just needs a refresher on who Zechariah and Elizabeth were and why it was weird that Zechariah wasn’t talking. We read earlier in Luke’s Gospel that Zechariah and Elizabeth were faithful followers of God. Zechariah was a priest and Elizabeth a descendent of Aaron, both were described as “righteous before God, living blamelessly.” But the couple had no children, and were both “getting on in years.” One day, Zechariah was given the privilege of entering the Temple to offer incense to the Lord. And while he was in the Temple, the Angel Gabriel appeared to him and told him his prayers had been answered because Elizabeth was going to become pregnant and give birth to a son. And not just any son. This son was to be named John, a name which means “God has shown favor” or “God is gracious,” because, “he will be great in the sight of the Lord… even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people to Israel to the Lord… [and] make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
Yet despite Zechariah’s righteousness, his response to this miraculous messenger, and message, was not joy but hesitation. “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years?” While one has to admit Zechariah’s very legitimate question, Gabriel had no time for such concerns. “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you… But now, since you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occurred.” Zechariah came out of the Temple unable to speak and following the completion of his Temple service, they returned to their home in the Judean hill country where Elizabeth did become pregnant, as the angel had said.
All that happened nine months and eight days ago. We pick up the story after child has been born, Elizabeth’s relatives and neighbors have rejoiced at the birth just as the angel said they would, and the time has come, per Mosaic law, for the child to be named. By first century custom, the right to name a child belonged to the father because naming something was seen as a way to claim ownership over it. But since Zechariah was unable to speak, their neighbors and relatives assumed they would name the boy after his father, thus labeling the child as belonging to Zechariah. But contrary to custom, Elizabeth spoke up and interjected, “No; he is to be called John.” One interesting aside in Luke’s narrative is that both John and Jesus were named not by their fathers, as per custom, but by their mothers. According to the direction of the Angel Gabriel, but still. Already in this subtle shift away from the cultural narrative of the father claiming naming rights, we see that God doing a new thing here, a thing that is shifting the power balance from its traditional centers to those whom have been marginalized. Watch that theme develop; we’ll see it for the next year we spend in Luke.
But this was still the first century, so despite Elizabeth’s assertion, the relatives and neighbors weren’t sure about choice. “‘None of your relatives has this name.’ Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him.” To which Zechariah, by writing on a tablet, affirmed, “‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed.” But what’s really amazing is what happened next. For immediately after affirming the child’s name was to be John, Zechariah regained the ability to speak. And speak he did, praising God with this beautiful prophetic message, which is often called the Song of Zechariah or the Benedictus, after the first word in the Latin translation, “blessed.”
The Song of Zechariah is one of my favorite pieces of scripture. The Service of Morning Prayer in our hymnal has a song based on this passage, and in seminary, this service was the setting for our Tuesday chapel worship every week. So every Tuesday we would chant these beautiful words, “Blessed be the God of Israel, who comes to set us free. Who visits and redeems us and grants us liberty. So have the prophets long declared that with a mighty arm, God shall turn back our enemies and those who wish us harm.” And like anything you do over and over, week after week, even six years out from seminary, I still carry that song, still find comfort and strength and hope in it.
What I find so powerful about Zechariah’s words is how assured and confident they are. Like Mary’s Magnificat, Zechariah’s Benedictus speaks of the coming Savior, speaks of Jesus, in the past tense. “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, because he has… redeemed his people. He has raised up a mighty savior… He has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant.” Again that repetitive past tense, he has, he has, he has. It is only when Zechariah gets to the part of the song where he is speaking of the human realm, when he is speaking of his own son, that he switches to the future tense, to what for us and for his listeners would be the proper order. “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.” Also like Mary’s Magnificat, Zechariah’s song is full of references to Old Testament promises of God’s saving acts. The phrase “mighty savior” in the Greek literally translates to “horn of salvation,” an image the Psalmist used to talk about God’s power and might. There is reference to the covenants, the promises, God made to Abraham and to David, and now Jesus and John are the fulfillment of those covenants. References to dawn and light evoke God’s triumph over sin and death. There is so much hope and promise packed into these few brief verses; I could talk all day about it if you’d let me.
But this morning, at this time, what I find the most hopeful, the most powerful about the Song of Zechariah, is that Zechariah is the one who sang it. Because remember who Zechariah is, remember what just ended for him. Zechariah, a priest and righteous man, who’d lived blamelessly before God for his whole life, doubted the seemingly ridiculous claim of an angel who appeared to him in the Temple, and then was struck mute for nine months. This guy literally just got his voice back, is set in his ways, and, let’s face it, is probably sleep-deprived because he’s got an eight day old baby, and the first thing out of his mouth is this powerful song of praise. This seems out of character to me for a guy who encountered an angel in a Temple and was like, “I don’t know if I should trust you, I’m pretty old.”
What the Song of Zechariah shows us is the power of God to change us, to transform us, to make us capable of more than we know. In Zechariah’s mind he was old, set in his ways, unable to do anything but the faithful, settled things he’d always done. But God had a new purpose, a new task, a new adventure, in mind for Zechariah, and in this song we see Zechariah embracing it. Yes it took him a while, but he got there eventually. Some of you may have heard one of my common quips about my relationship with God. Oftentimes when I’m facing a major choice or transition in life, it seems like I’ll spend a great deal of time carefully explaining to God exactly what would be the best thing to happen, the best place for me to end up. And then God, with boundless compassion, will look at me and say, “awe, that’s adorable that you put all that time into a plan. But no, I’m going to put you over here now,” and there I go. It’s how I ended up in Syracuse on internship. Not my first choice, but probably the place I learned the most. It’s how I ended in California for my first call, when I determinedly wanted to go back to DC. And it’s how I ended up here; Battle Creek being a place I didn’t even know existed, and thus couldn’t imagine being.
The good news, dear friends in Christ, on this final Sunday in Advent, as we await the imminent arrival of the promised savior, is that in the birth, death, and resurrection, God has changed, has saved, the world. “Has” as in already has, past tense, our salvation is upon us. And we, much as we, like Zechariah, may not be able to understand or imagine it, are the people God is using to bring this revelation of God’s love to light. We can and we will be the ones who bear this good news. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Monday, December 17, 2018
Mary Knew: A Sermon on Luke 1:26-56
While we at Trinity are still enjoying the treasure trove of amazing Advent music, the rest of the world has gone full on Christmas by now. Their loss really, because Advent songs are so great, but anyway. One of the more modern carols that gets play this time of year is the praise and worship song from the early nineties, “Mary Did You Know.” If you haven’t heard it, it musically really is a lovely song. Pentatonix has an especially beautiful, haunting and almost aching rendition of it. The music, and of course their harmonies, are gorgeous. But, musicality aside, I’m not a huge fan of the song because friends, Mary totally knew. She knew.
She knew because the angel told her, “you will conceive… and bear a son... [who] will be called Son of the Most High.” She knew when she saw her cousin Elizabeth, miraculously also with child. She knew when that same child leapt in Elizabeth’s womb, and when Elizabeth proclaimed, “Blessed are you among women… the mother of my Lord.”
And not only did Mary know, Mary agreed to it. Mary said yes. Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber says the biggest miracle of the birth of Jesus is not the whole Holy Spirit conception thing, but the fact that the angel found someone willing to take on the project in the first place. Because in first century Palestine, bearing a child out of wedlock was at best an invitation for gossip, and at worst could end in stoning. And let’s not be too judgmental on the first century. While stoning’s off the table, I can tell you from my own experience, and I’d guess the rest of the women in the room have similar stories, whether a woman, by choice or not by choice, has or does not have children, many people still feel entitled to have a say in decisions that should belong to oneself, possibly with consultation from one’s significant other and/or doctor. But, I digress. The point is, Gabriel showed up and laid this whole pretty much unbelievable scheme out, and after just a few clarifying questions, Mary said yes. Not just yes, but yes with conviction. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
Last week we heard Gabriel present a similar promise to Zechariah, though with much lower stakes as Zechariah a) had been praying for a child, b) was married, c) was quite a bit older than Mary, and, maybe most importantly, d) was a dude, and thus not the one getting pregnant. But Zechariah was all, I don’t know about this. I’m old, Elizabeth’s old, you’re a weird messenger from God, “how will I know that this is so?” Mary, on the other hand, with such a bigger task assigned to her, was all in. “Here am I… Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” While Zechariah can be a comforting companion for us, reminding us that even those who seem the most faithful, the most devout, the most connected to God, can become comfortable with the status quo and miss the miraculous inbreaking of God among us; Mary is a challenging companion, because Mary gives us a model of what it looks like to take risks in our faith. To respond, “Here I am,” when God interrupts our lives to call us to stand up for those in need, to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, and advocate on behalf of those whom the rich and powerful have forgotten or silenced or trampled in their reach for the top. To proclaim, “Let it be with me according to your word,” when we are given the seemingly impossible task of bringing God’s kingdom to earth, of being God’s hands, and feet, and heart, and voice in the world.
This is a big, bold statement, to say to God, let your word decide how I live, how I love, how I serve, who I am. Let your hope, your grace, your expectations, define me and not those of the world around me. Let me act with courage and bravery when I am the one in a place to stand up to injustice, to speak for the voiceless, to love God’s people. Let me believe the unbelievable, stand up to the undefeatable, risk the impossible, trusting in the promise that nothing is impossible with God. These are big words, and this is a big ask.
But let’s be clear, Mary didn’t make this statement naively. Mary didn’t enter into this project of bearing the Christ child recklessly. Mary knew exactly what she was signing up for, and she did it because she knew who God is. She knew God’s power, God’s commitment, God’s love for God’s people and for God’s whole creation. Mary knew God, and because she knew God, she had the courage to take this bold step. We know this, because of the song Mary sang at the end of this reading.
“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior… Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed.” We who know the two-thousand year arc of Mary’s narrative know this to be true, but in the short term Mary demonstrates one of the core truths of what it means to be blessed by God. To be blessed by God does not mean that things will be easy, that we’ll get what we want, or that life will be smooth. In fact, more than likely we cannot tell based on how we feel or how our lives seem to be going if we are blessed or not. Because as Mary demonstrates, to be blessed by God means to be in a place where God can use you for God’s purpose in the world, where you can be an instrument of bringing God’s saving, loving, grace-filled, hopeful, presence to places and people who so desperately need it. Being blessed by God does not always feel like blessing, as Mary probably experienced as she endured the whispers in her small village as the news spread that she was pregnant, as she worried over her missing twelve-year old son, and as she watched her thirty-three year old son handed over to be crucified. Being blessed by God means believing that God is playing the long game, and that the end of God’s story is never the end. It is always life, always hope, always resurrection. That is what Mary knew blessing to be.
The rest of Mary’s song speaks of God’s redeeming work not as the future, but as something that has already be fulfilled. “He has shown strength… he has scattered the proud… he has brought down the powerful… and lifted up the lowly… he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” He has, he has, he has. Remember, this song was sung while Mary was still pregnant. And barely pregnant at that. This was early yet, like first trimester. But Mary was able to sing this song with conviction because she had the promises of scripture. She knew how God has acted in the past, she had the stories of “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,” and so she could sing that these things that had not yet happened, will happen. For the child she was bearing, is the one whose impending death has already destroyed death. Because just as God is not bound by space and time, the crucifixion is not bound by space and time. Jesus’ death on the cross echoes forward and backward throughout time and space, it is the historical event that changed history, that fulfilled the promises made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants, and to all of God’s creation, forever.
Dear friends in Christ, Mary knew. She knew she was carrying the Christ child, she knew the importance of this task, she knew the saving effect it would have, it had already had, on the world. She knew the risk, she knew the challenge, she knew the fear. But she also knew that she was blessed. Not because of who she was, but because of who God is, and because of what God was doing through her. Mary knew, and it gave her the courage to step forward boldly. May we too be filled with such hope and courage. The courage to know that we do not have to be afraid, because God has already acted. Amen.
She knew because the angel told her, “you will conceive… and bear a son... [who] will be called Son of the Most High.” She knew when she saw her cousin Elizabeth, miraculously also with child. She knew when that same child leapt in Elizabeth’s womb, and when Elizabeth proclaimed, “Blessed are you among women… the mother of my Lord.”
And not only did Mary know, Mary agreed to it. Mary said yes. Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber says the biggest miracle of the birth of Jesus is not the whole Holy Spirit conception thing, but the fact that the angel found someone willing to take on the project in the first place. Because in first century Palestine, bearing a child out of wedlock was at best an invitation for gossip, and at worst could end in stoning. And let’s not be too judgmental on the first century. While stoning’s off the table, I can tell you from my own experience, and I’d guess the rest of the women in the room have similar stories, whether a woman, by choice or not by choice, has or does not have children, many people still feel entitled to have a say in decisions that should belong to oneself, possibly with consultation from one’s significant other and/or doctor. But, I digress. The point is, Gabriel showed up and laid this whole pretty much unbelievable scheme out, and after just a few clarifying questions, Mary said yes. Not just yes, but yes with conviction. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
Last week we heard Gabriel present a similar promise to Zechariah, though with much lower stakes as Zechariah a) had been praying for a child, b) was married, c) was quite a bit older than Mary, and, maybe most importantly, d) was a dude, and thus not the one getting pregnant. But Zechariah was all, I don’t know about this. I’m old, Elizabeth’s old, you’re a weird messenger from God, “how will I know that this is so?” Mary, on the other hand, with such a bigger task assigned to her, was all in. “Here am I… Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” While Zechariah can be a comforting companion for us, reminding us that even those who seem the most faithful, the most devout, the most connected to God, can become comfortable with the status quo and miss the miraculous inbreaking of God among us; Mary is a challenging companion, because Mary gives us a model of what it looks like to take risks in our faith. To respond, “Here I am,” when God interrupts our lives to call us to stand up for those in need, to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, and advocate on behalf of those whom the rich and powerful have forgotten or silenced or trampled in their reach for the top. To proclaim, “Let it be with me according to your word,” when we are given the seemingly impossible task of bringing God’s kingdom to earth, of being God’s hands, and feet, and heart, and voice in the world.
This is a big, bold statement, to say to God, let your word decide how I live, how I love, how I serve, who I am. Let your hope, your grace, your expectations, define me and not those of the world around me. Let me act with courage and bravery when I am the one in a place to stand up to injustice, to speak for the voiceless, to love God’s people. Let me believe the unbelievable, stand up to the undefeatable, risk the impossible, trusting in the promise that nothing is impossible with God. These are big words, and this is a big ask.
But let’s be clear, Mary didn’t make this statement naively. Mary didn’t enter into this project of bearing the Christ child recklessly. Mary knew exactly what she was signing up for, and she did it because she knew who God is. She knew God’s power, God’s commitment, God’s love for God’s people and for God’s whole creation. Mary knew God, and because she knew God, she had the courage to take this bold step. We know this, because of the song Mary sang at the end of this reading.
“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior… Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed.” We who know the two-thousand year arc of Mary’s narrative know this to be true, but in the short term Mary demonstrates one of the core truths of what it means to be blessed by God. To be blessed by God does not mean that things will be easy, that we’ll get what we want, or that life will be smooth. In fact, more than likely we cannot tell based on how we feel or how our lives seem to be going if we are blessed or not. Because as Mary demonstrates, to be blessed by God means to be in a place where God can use you for God’s purpose in the world, where you can be an instrument of bringing God’s saving, loving, grace-filled, hopeful, presence to places and people who so desperately need it. Being blessed by God does not always feel like blessing, as Mary probably experienced as she endured the whispers in her small village as the news spread that she was pregnant, as she worried over her missing twelve-year old son, and as she watched her thirty-three year old son handed over to be crucified. Being blessed by God means believing that God is playing the long game, and that the end of God’s story is never the end. It is always life, always hope, always resurrection. That is what Mary knew blessing to be.
The rest of Mary’s song speaks of God’s redeeming work not as the future, but as something that has already be fulfilled. “He has shown strength… he has scattered the proud… he has brought down the powerful… and lifted up the lowly… he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” He has, he has, he has. Remember, this song was sung while Mary was still pregnant. And barely pregnant at that. This was early yet, like first trimester. But Mary was able to sing this song with conviction because she had the promises of scripture. She knew how God has acted in the past, she had the stories of “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,” and so she could sing that these things that had not yet happened, will happen. For the child she was bearing, is the one whose impending death has already destroyed death. Because just as God is not bound by space and time, the crucifixion is not bound by space and time. Jesus’ death on the cross echoes forward and backward throughout time and space, it is the historical event that changed history, that fulfilled the promises made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants, and to all of God’s creation, forever.
Dear friends in Christ, Mary knew. She knew she was carrying the Christ child, she knew the importance of this task, she knew the saving effect it would have, it had already had, on the world. She knew the risk, she knew the challenge, she knew the fear. But she also knew that she was blessed. Not because of who she was, but because of who God is, and because of what God was doing through her. Mary knew, and it gave her the courage to step forward boldly. May we too be filled with such hope and courage. The courage to know that we do not have to be afraid, because God has already acted. Amen.
Monday, December 10, 2018
New Ways, Old Love: A Sermon on Luke 1:1-25
So I’m going rouge this year and we’re breaking away from the Revised Common Lectionary this year for Advent. The Revised Common Lectionary, FYI, is the order of readings we read every Sunday, readings which are shared by a lot of different churches, not just Lutheran, all over the world. And I love using the Revised Common Lectionary, one because it forces me to preach on texts that I wouldn’t necessarily choose, as I’ve expressed in sermons before. And two, because I like the continuity of being in step with other Christians around the world, all of us reading the same texts in our own languages and contexts. Always feels a bit like Pentecost in that way.
But since we’re in Luke this year, I decided it would be fun to break away from the Lectionary for a season and start this year of journeying with Luke by hearing the story told the way the writer wanted to tell it. So for the next three weeks, we are going to work our way through the first chapter of Luke. That way when Christmas Eve comes and we hear the beloved account of Jesus’ birth in a stable, we’ll know how we got there. So let us then, in the writer of Luke’s own words, undertake the reading of this orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us.
The Gospel of Luke begins with what theologian R. Alan Culpepper, “a perfectly constructed prologue… [that is] both carefully worded and deliberately vague, simultaneously clarifying and obscuring.” Which is neither here nor there, but the quote made me laugh when I read it, so I wanted to share it with you all. I like Culpepper’s dry humor and he’s the writer of my favorite commentary on Luke, so we’ll be spending a lot of time with him this year as well.
But for all it is “both carefully worded and vague,” the prologue does lay out for us three important themes for what will follow. First, this orderly account is “of the events that have been fulfilled among us.” Which means, as crazy as this claim that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, taking on human flesh and walking among us, the writer reminds us that this is not a new claim. God did not just show up on the scene in the person of Jesus and start redeeming humanity. God has never left God’s people; God has been at this work of redemption for time immemorial. Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise that Christ will come, and so we can wait with confidence that Christ will come again.
Second, this orderly account “was handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses.” This means that this story isn’t something we have to come to on our own; it is given to us by witnesses since the beginning. There are others who know it to be true, who have experienced its truth, and who’s testimony we can trust. We are not alone in this story; we follow in well trodden footsteps.
And finally, this orderly account is so we “may know the truth.” This phrase translated here as “know the truth” has this sense not only of intellectual understanding, but of something deeper, richer, and fuller than that. Luke is talking here about heart knowledge, of those truths beyond words that we hold in our bones. Luke tells this story, we read this story, because this is a story of knowing (point to heart). This story is meant for us to find comfort, to find hope, to see how God keeps God’s promises, to hear this corroborated through many witnesses, and through those witnesses and through these stories, to experience for ourselves God’s redemptive love and power, so that we too become witnesses to that same truth for others. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of long-held promises, the presence of knowledgeable companions, and an assurance of God’s trustworthiness. Keep those three things in mind as we journey through Luke’s Gospel.
So we get past the prologue and the writer of Luke first introduces us not to Jesus, but to a priest named Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, whom Luke described as “righteous” and “blameless.” Even their names evoke piety, Zechariah means “God has remembered” and Elizabeth something like “My God’s oath.” He is a priest and she, a descendent of Aaron, married one, these two are all the right things. Yet even with this stellar pedigree, they have no children. Now today not having kids is a totally acceptable life choice, but not so much in their time. And now they’re old, too old to have kids. A righteous couple, past childbearing age, whose prayers for a child have thus far gone unanswered. There are echoes in this story of quite a few Old Testament characters, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekkah, Jacob and Rachel, Hannah, who’s song of praise we’ll read next week, just to name a few. Remember the prologue; this is not God’s first time at the party.
Then the story goes on, one day, “when he was serving as priest… he was chosen by lot to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense.” Now on one hand, this was a totally mundane action. Twice a day, a priest would enter into the sanctuary to make an incense offering to the Lord. “The whole assembly of the people” whom Luke described as “praying outside” would have gathered daily for this ritual. But for Zechariah, to be chosen to be the priest who actually made the sacrifice would have been a once in a lifetime honor. This day marked the pinnacle of his lifetime of service. And then, right in the middle of his big moment, an angel of the Lord appeared and threw off everything. We don’t even know if Zechariah actually got to offer the incense or not, because from that point on all that matters is this angel, and Zechariah’s response to him. The angel’s interruption of this moment that is both sacred and mundane tells us something else important about the nature of God, and that is God shows up in the sacred, and the mundane, and for that matter, the sacredly mundane. And Zechariah, as faithful and as righteous as he was, and as long as he had been praying for just this very moment, to be in the Temple, to be in the presence of God, to be told he would have a child, when that event, the thing he had wanted and watched for and prayed for for so long, when it finally happens, his response was first terror and fear, followed immediately by doubt. “How will I know that this is so?” Which, I feel like the proof he’s looking for should be pretty easy to tell, he’ll know it when Elizabeth gets pregnant, but anyway. “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” Now Zechariah, a faithful and righteous priest, should have been well aware that age was not his biggest concern. Abraham and Sarah were like ninety-nine when they had Isaac. Again, Zechariah and Elizabeth, not God’s first rodeo with the miraculous birth thing. And I love the angel’s response. Zechariah says, “I am old,” and Gabriel responds, “I am Gabriel.” I’ll see your biological limitations, and raise you, because I’m an Angel of the Lord. I have come to inform you that God is about to act in a mighty way on the earth and in your life. Just like he did in the time of Abraham and Sarah, but also in a new way. For your child is not the start of a nation, your child is the pronouncer of salvation. Because of John, the whole world will know that the one who will bring all the nations together, the one who will turn the world over, is coming into the world.
This story of Zechariah is a good one for us who gather here every Sunday, who are the faithful, because it reminds us that God shows up in our worship, that God transforms us in worship, but God does that in ways we often do not expect. Because Zechariah, in a lot of ways, is us. Yes he was a priest, and yes he was righteous and blameless, and that’s a high bar. But he was one of a whole bunch of priests, and he wasn’t one of the big powerful ones. The kind of priest he was is like the kind of people we are, well-meaning, faithful, long-standing folk going through the steps of a life of faith to the best we are able, over and over and over again. And yet it was to Zechariah and Elizabeth, in the middle of their everyday lives, that this pronouncement was given. So this Advent season, I invite you to be alert for those moments of God breaking into our world to do the same old thing, love us, forgive us, redeem us, but in a new way. Because the Old story of God’s love never changes, but God is never through inventing new ways to demonstrate the same old, trusted love. Amen.
But since we’re in Luke this year, I decided it would be fun to break away from the Lectionary for a season and start this year of journeying with Luke by hearing the story told the way the writer wanted to tell it. So for the next three weeks, we are going to work our way through the first chapter of Luke. That way when Christmas Eve comes and we hear the beloved account of Jesus’ birth in a stable, we’ll know how we got there. So let us then, in the writer of Luke’s own words, undertake the reading of this orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us.
The Gospel of Luke begins with what theologian R. Alan Culpepper, “a perfectly constructed prologue… [that is] both carefully worded and deliberately vague, simultaneously clarifying and obscuring.” Which is neither here nor there, but the quote made me laugh when I read it, so I wanted to share it with you all. I like Culpepper’s dry humor and he’s the writer of my favorite commentary on Luke, so we’ll be spending a lot of time with him this year as well.
But for all it is “both carefully worded and vague,” the prologue does lay out for us three important themes for what will follow. First, this orderly account is “of the events that have been fulfilled among us.” Which means, as crazy as this claim that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, taking on human flesh and walking among us, the writer reminds us that this is not a new claim. God did not just show up on the scene in the person of Jesus and start redeeming humanity. God has never left God’s people; God has been at this work of redemption for time immemorial. Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise that Christ will come, and so we can wait with confidence that Christ will come again.
Second, this orderly account “was handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses.” This means that this story isn’t something we have to come to on our own; it is given to us by witnesses since the beginning. There are others who know it to be true, who have experienced its truth, and who’s testimony we can trust. We are not alone in this story; we follow in well trodden footsteps.
And finally, this orderly account is so we “may know the truth.” This phrase translated here as “know the truth” has this sense not only of intellectual understanding, but of something deeper, richer, and fuller than that. Luke is talking here about heart knowledge, of those truths beyond words that we hold in our bones. Luke tells this story, we read this story, because this is a story of knowing (point to heart). This story is meant for us to find comfort, to find hope, to see how God keeps God’s promises, to hear this corroborated through many witnesses, and through those witnesses and through these stories, to experience for ourselves God’s redemptive love and power, so that we too become witnesses to that same truth for others. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of long-held promises, the presence of knowledgeable companions, and an assurance of God’s trustworthiness. Keep those three things in mind as we journey through Luke’s Gospel.
So we get past the prologue and the writer of Luke first introduces us not to Jesus, but to a priest named Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, whom Luke described as “righteous” and “blameless.” Even their names evoke piety, Zechariah means “God has remembered” and Elizabeth something like “My God’s oath.” He is a priest and she, a descendent of Aaron, married one, these two are all the right things. Yet even with this stellar pedigree, they have no children. Now today not having kids is a totally acceptable life choice, but not so much in their time. And now they’re old, too old to have kids. A righteous couple, past childbearing age, whose prayers for a child have thus far gone unanswered. There are echoes in this story of quite a few Old Testament characters, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekkah, Jacob and Rachel, Hannah, who’s song of praise we’ll read next week, just to name a few. Remember the prologue; this is not God’s first time at the party.
Then the story goes on, one day, “when he was serving as priest… he was chosen by lot to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense.” Now on one hand, this was a totally mundane action. Twice a day, a priest would enter into the sanctuary to make an incense offering to the Lord. “The whole assembly of the people” whom Luke described as “praying outside” would have gathered daily for this ritual. But for Zechariah, to be chosen to be the priest who actually made the sacrifice would have been a once in a lifetime honor. This day marked the pinnacle of his lifetime of service. And then, right in the middle of his big moment, an angel of the Lord appeared and threw off everything. We don’t even know if Zechariah actually got to offer the incense or not, because from that point on all that matters is this angel, and Zechariah’s response to him. The angel’s interruption of this moment that is both sacred and mundane tells us something else important about the nature of God, and that is God shows up in the sacred, and the mundane, and for that matter, the sacredly mundane. And Zechariah, as faithful and as righteous as he was, and as long as he had been praying for just this very moment, to be in the Temple, to be in the presence of God, to be told he would have a child, when that event, the thing he had wanted and watched for and prayed for for so long, when it finally happens, his response was first terror and fear, followed immediately by doubt. “How will I know that this is so?” Which, I feel like the proof he’s looking for should be pretty easy to tell, he’ll know it when Elizabeth gets pregnant, but anyway. “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” Now Zechariah, a faithful and righteous priest, should have been well aware that age was not his biggest concern. Abraham and Sarah were like ninety-nine when they had Isaac. Again, Zechariah and Elizabeth, not God’s first rodeo with the miraculous birth thing. And I love the angel’s response. Zechariah says, “I am old,” and Gabriel responds, “I am Gabriel.” I’ll see your biological limitations, and raise you, because I’m an Angel of the Lord. I have come to inform you that God is about to act in a mighty way on the earth and in your life. Just like he did in the time of Abraham and Sarah, but also in a new way. For your child is not the start of a nation, your child is the pronouncer of salvation. Because of John, the whole world will know that the one who will bring all the nations together, the one who will turn the world over, is coming into the world.
This story of Zechariah is a good one for us who gather here every Sunday, who are the faithful, because it reminds us that God shows up in our worship, that God transforms us in worship, but God does that in ways we often do not expect. Because Zechariah, in a lot of ways, is us. Yes he was a priest, and yes he was righteous and blameless, and that’s a high bar. But he was one of a whole bunch of priests, and he wasn’t one of the big powerful ones. The kind of priest he was is like the kind of people we are, well-meaning, faithful, long-standing folk going through the steps of a life of faith to the best we are able, over and over and over again. And yet it was to Zechariah and Elizabeth, in the middle of their everyday lives, that this pronouncement was given. So this Advent season, I invite you to be alert for those moments of God breaking into our world to do the same old thing, love us, forgive us, redeem us, but in a new way. Because the Old story of God’s love never changes, but God is never through inventing new ways to demonstrate the same old, trusted love. Amen.
Sunday, December 2, 2018
Sponge Cake: A Sermon on Luke 21:25-36
I had to drive up to Mt. Pleasant this week for a meeting with the synod outreach committee that handles our grant funding. As David probably knows, north of Lansing is out of the Michigan Radio listening area, so as I was driving back I was listening to a podcast interview with physician Rachel Naomi Remen. Dr. Remen was telling a story about how her grandmother had grown up under oppression as a Jew in Soviet Russia. As a response to the hunger she’d experienced in her childhood, her grandmother’s refrigerator was always stocked to the gills. So much so, that if you weren’t careful when you opened the door, an egg would tumble out and break on the kitchen floor. And whenever this happened, her grandmother would always smile slyly and remark, “tonight, we’ll have sponge cake.” Now, I confess I don’t completely understand how the broken egg ended up as sponge cake, if she was scrapping it off the floor or what, but the point of the story was concerned as her grandmother was about not having enough to eat, a broken egg wasn’t a reason to be sad, it was an opportunity to make a cake. Dr. Remen then went on to share how she never met her grandmother, who died before she was born. But when she was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease at fifteen and told she probably wouldn’t live past forty, her mother put her arms around her and said, “we’ll make a sponge cake. We don’t know the recipe yet, but we’ll figure it out, and we’ll make a sponge cake.” Her whole life, Dr. Remen said, has been figuring out the recipe for how to turn the broken egg of her diagnosis, and other broken eggs along the way, into sponge cake.
So it’s the first Sunday of Advent, and Advent always starts with these really strange and scary texts about how “there will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars… [and] People will faint with fear and foreboding… for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” This proclamation from Jesus comes right on the heels of the reading we heard two weeks ago about how the Temple, believed to be the dwelling place of God on earth, would be torn down, not a stone left on stone. Now, we can argue all day if Jesus’ words here were literally or metaphorical, and what events he was precisely referring to, and my read is probably the truth is closer to a bit of both, but really none of that matters. What matters is Jesus’ words here are frightening, and they were meant to be frightening. To put this in context, we’re reading it in early December, but this story happened a couple days before the Passover. In just a day or so, the disciples will watch Jesus arrested by a crowd in the garden, handed over to Pilate, tried in a sham court, beaten, mocked, and hung on a cross to die. The disciples were headed into a dark and scary time, for they were about to see the powers of heaven not just shaken, but destroyed. Betrayed, killed, and left in a tomb for dead. And death, as we all know, is the end. There’s no coming back from death. There is no way to turn that egg into cake.
But at the end of all these dire predictions of peril and destruction, Jesus went on, “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Let me read that again. “Now when these things begin to take place.” These things, remember, being, “signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among the nations;” “wars and rumors of war,” “Jerusalem surrounded by armies… they will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken away as captives…and Jerusalem will be trampled on.” When all “these things begin to take place, stand up and raise up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” I’ve never actually been to war, but I’m pretty sure that when you are in peril the thing you are not supposed to do is to “stand up and raise up your heads,” because that is going to increase the likelihood that you will get shot, but that is exactly what Jesus told the disciples to do, “because your redemption is drawing near.”
What Jesus is telling the disciples here, has been telling them throughout this whole section, is to not trust their eyes, because what they think they see, what they think they understand, is not the full story, it’s only a part. “Many will come in my name and say I am he,” and promise you safety, “and they will lead many astray,” do not trust them. “There will be wars and rumors of war,” do not trust them. “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars… and people will faint from fear and foreboding,” but you, you don’t need to faint, and you don’t need to fear. Instead, you are to “stand up and raise up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
The amazing thing about Christianity, about this faith we claim, about this God we follow, is that entering into the Kingdom of God is the experience of having everything we’ve thought to be true, everything the world has told us to expect, turned upside down. All Advent we wait for the coming of a great and powerful king, and we are given a refugee baby born to an unwed teenage mother and a reluctant fill-in father. The manger scene would be the least powerful image imaginable, except what is more powerful, what is more fierce, what is more permanent, than a parent’s love for a child. And what turns over your expectations, upends your understanding, takes over your existence, and shows you a love deeper, fuller, and more completely than you ever imagined, than a baby.
Then that baby grew up, gathered a rag-tag band of fishermen and tax collectors, and set out on a ministry among the poor and suffering. Crowds gathered in his wake, crowds of the hungry, the hurting, the sick, and the poor. He passed over the wealthy and powerful to break bread with sinners and prostitutes. He entered Jerusalem on a donkey, a farce of the imperial parades of the powerful, and he died the death of a political prisoner, hung on a cross between two common thieves, robed in purple, the color of royalty, a crown of thorns on his head, under a sign that mockingly read, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” But mockery or not, it was true that he was, that he is king, not just of the Jews but of the whole of the universe. As Paul wrote in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “for the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Don’t trust your eyes, Jesus told the disciples, Jesus tells us. Don’t trust your eyes, don’t trust your wisdom, don’t trust your fear. Trust only this: The Kingdom of God is the unexpected reversal of all you knew. The powerful will be laid low, and the lowly will be lifted up. If it looks like the end, it is not the end, it is only the beginning of what is to come. So stand up, raise up your heads, for your redemption is near. Amen.
So it’s the first Sunday of Advent, and Advent always starts with these really strange and scary texts about how “there will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars… [and] People will faint with fear and foreboding… for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” This proclamation from Jesus comes right on the heels of the reading we heard two weeks ago about how the Temple, believed to be the dwelling place of God on earth, would be torn down, not a stone left on stone. Now, we can argue all day if Jesus’ words here were literally or metaphorical, and what events he was precisely referring to, and my read is probably the truth is closer to a bit of both, but really none of that matters. What matters is Jesus’ words here are frightening, and they were meant to be frightening. To put this in context, we’re reading it in early December, but this story happened a couple days before the Passover. In just a day or so, the disciples will watch Jesus arrested by a crowd in the garden, handed over to Pilate, tried in a sham court, beaten, mocked, and hung on a cross to die. The disciples were headed into a dark and scary time, for they were about to see the powers of heaven not just shaken, but destroyed. Betrayed, killed, and left in a tomb for dead. And death, as we all know, is the end. There’s no coming back from death. There is no way to turn that egg into cake.
But at the end of all these dire predictions of peril and destruction, Jesus went on, “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Let me read that again. “Now when these things begin to take place.” These things, remember, being, “signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among the nations;” “wars and rumors of war,” “Jerusalem surrounded by armies… they will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken away as captives…and Jerusalem will be trampled on.” When all “these things begin to take place, stand up and raise up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” I’ve never actually been to war, but I’m pretty sure that when you are in peril the thing you are not supposed to do is to “stand up and raise up your heads,” because that is going to increase the likelihood that you will get shot, but that is exactly what Jesus told the disciples to do, “because your redemption is drawing near.”
What Jesus is telling the disciples here, has been telling them throughout this whole section, is to not trust their eyes, because what they think they see, what they think they understand, is not the full story, it’s only a part. “Many will come in my name and say I am he,” and promise you safety, “and they will lead many astray,” do not trust them. “There will be wars and rumors of war,” do not trust them. “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars… and people will faint from fear and foreboding,” but you, you don’t need to faint, and you don’t need to fear. Instead, you are to “stand up and raise up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
The amazing thing about Christianity, about this faith we claim, about this God we follow, is that entering into the Kingdom of God is the experience of having everything we’ve thought to be true, everything the world has told us to expect, turned upside down. All Advent we wait for the coming of a great and powerful king, and we are given a refugee baby born to an unwed teenage mother and a reluctant fill-in father. The manger scene would be the least powerful image imaginable, except what is more powerful, what is more fierce, what is more permanent, than a parent’s love for a child. And what turns over your expectations, upends your understanding, takes over your existence, and shows you a love deeper, fuller, and more completely than you ever imagined, than a baby.
Then that baby grew up, gathered a rag-tag band of fishermen and tax collectors, and set out on a ministry among the poor and suffering. Crowds gathered in his wake, crowds of the hungry, the hurting, the sick, and the poor. He passed over the wealthy and powerful to break bread with sinners and prostitutes. He entered Jerusalem on a donkey, a farce of the imperial parades of the powerful, and he died the death of a political prisoner, hung on a cross between two common thieves, robed in purple, the color of royalty, a crown of thorns on his head, under a sign that mockingly read, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” But mockery or not, it was true that he was, that he is king, not just of the Jews but of the whole of the universe. As Paul wrote in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “for the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Don’t trust your eyes, Jesus told the disciples, Jesus tells us. Don’t trust your eyes, don’t trust your wisdom, don’t trust your fear. Trust only this: The Kingdom of God is the unexpected reversal of all you knew. The powerful will be laid low, and the lowly will be lifted up. If it looks like the end, it is not the end, it is only the beginning of what is to come. So stand up, raise up your heads, for your redemption is near. Amen.
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