After college, I did a year of volunteer service with an organization called the Lutheran Volunteer Corps. Now, fun fact I learned while in DC, there are a ton of service corps from all sorts of faith traditions, and the DC non-profit scene runs on this cheap labor. We’d have service corps parties on the weekends with Catholics, Mennonites, Jews, Presbyterians, Evangelicals, Quakers, you name it. Each of these service corps were slightly different, but all of them shared focuses in social justice and spirituality. So one day my co-worker Natalie, who was part of Avodah, the Jewish service corps, and I decided to hold a community conversation for our two services corps on the scriptural basis of social justice from Jewish and Christian perspectives. The idea was I would bring scripture passages from the Bible, she would bring some from the Torah, and we would read them together as Jews and Christians and talk about what they meant to us.
So we get there, and I open with the passage from Luke that we just heard this morning. Jesus entered the synagogue, was handed the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah, and read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, [and] to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” After I finished reading, I was all set to launch into the little piece I had prepared about how this passage marked the start of Jesus’ ministry in Luke, and how the entire rest of the Gospel is about Jesus putting into practice what it meant to do those things, and how he taught his disciples to live in that way. But before I could begin, Natalie started laughing and said, “before you share what this means to you as a Christian, let me read you the first scripture passage I prepared for today.” And she read from Isaiah chapter sixty-one, verses one and two, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And as Natalie and I had hoped, a rich conversation followed, but it was not the conversation either of us had planned or researched for. What followed was a conversation about the nature of God. About how both of us chose these passages because for both of us what was important to us about our faith was that God is a God who brings good news to the oppressed, who binds up the broken-hearted, who sets free the captives and the prisoners, and who proclaims the year of the Lord’s favor. Both of us felt we were called to be about this work of justice making, because it was the nature of our God to be about justice.
Another thing I found particularly powerful about Natalie and I essentially choosing the same passage was for me it illustrated the persistence of God in bringing this message of liberation. Isaiah said it, and then the people still hadn’t gotten it, so Jesus said the exactly same thing eight-hundred years later. And all the other prophets said it in various ways and forms between. So if God hadn’t given up on this project in the eight-hundred years between Isaiah and Jesus, like hadn’t given up on it enough to become human, walk around the world, and die so that we would be liberated, God’s not giving up on this project now. This wasn’t a one-time thing. God is committed to this work of bringing good news, binding up the broken-hearted, setting free the captives, and proclaiming God’s favor. So when we do these things, when we bring good news, when we comfort the broken hearted, set free people who feel trapped, tell people about God’s love for them, we are entering into a rich history. This stuff has staying power, friends. We are not in this alone; we have literal millennia of allies on our side.
This is all good news, but as the pastor of this hard-working and justice-loving little congregation, there is one more super important piece of good news that I need you to know. In our Gospel reading for today, after Jesus read this passage from Isaiah, after he read: “‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, [and] to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down... Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’”
Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Friends, what that means is Jesus was sent to bring good news to us, to proclaim release to us, to free us, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor of us. That is what Jesus meant when he said “this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” He meant that all of the things the Spirit of the Lord had sent him to do, he had done them, in the synagogue, to those listening. And, by extension, to us, in this sanctuary, listening to these same words two-thousand plus years later. All so often we think about these promises being for other people. For those who are poorer than us, more imprisoned then us, more broken-hearted then us, more in need of favor then us. And certainly there are always people more in need then ourselves, and Jesus wants us to be about the work of liberation of them. But Jesus also is about the work of liberating you, the work of loving you. You, who you are, what you need, where you need healing and wholeness and liberation, Jesus cares about that way more then he cares about what you do. That’s not to say Jesus doesn’t care about our actions, but our actions flow out of the love of Jesus, they are not the way we get Jesus to love us. God’s love for us is cruciform, it comes down to each of us first, and then it flows from us to others.
Today during worship we are going to take some time to formally adopt our welcome statement and commit to be a congregation that is fully inclusive of people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. This is super important work dear people of God, it is life-changing work, it is life-saving work. But what I need you to know is that this welcome statement is about how we welcome those outside the community, but it is also about how we welcome each other, and how we welcome ourselves. Because each of us come into this space with things that make us feel like outsiders. For some of us it is a sexual orientation or gender identity that society has deemed unacceptable. For some it’s a health condition, or our economic situation, our mental health status, our age, too old, too young, our background, our belief, or lack thereof. And what we’re committing to this morning is not just that we will be welcoming of all of those other people, because they are beloved of God. We are also committing to the promise that all of us people are beloved of God. Take a look at the welcome statement printed right there on the back of your bulletin. Where it says “we believe God created all humanity in God’s image,” that means you too. You were created in the image of God. You are a part of God’s family. You are welcome here. I think it’s important to say this because I don’t know about you, but for me some days it can be way easier to believe that God loves some amorphous other then to believe that God loves me. Because I don’t know everything about someone else, but I know a lot about myself, and there are a lots of parts of myself that I keep pretty well hidden that I’m pretty sure are pretty unlovable. So it’s one thing to say, everyone is welcome and it’s another thing to know that you, all of you, really is welcome. But that’s what we’re saying today.
And yes, we are going to screw this thing up. We are going to be mean to each other, and hurt each other’s feelings, and make someone feel unwelcome or unloved. We’re people, it happens. That’s why we’re committing to being a Reconciling in Christ congregation, not a Reconciled in Christ congregation. That –ing reminds us that it’s a journey, that we’re still on the road, that we’re not all the way there yet. So give yourselves, and each other, some grace. But know this. Jesus came, Jesus comes, today and everyday, “to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’ Today, to you, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Thanks be to God. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Sunday, January 27, 2019
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Grace Upon Grace: A Sermon on John 2:1-11 and 1 Corinthians 12:1-11
The church calendar worked out pretty well this year with Epiphany falling on a Sunday, because it means we get to hear all three of what are commonly thought of as the Great Epiphanies of Jesus’ early ministry: the appearance of the star that led the Wise Men to Bethlehem, Jesus’ baptism at the Jordan, and the miracle of water turned to wine at the wedding at Cana.
Since we’re in the season of Epiphany, let’s start with a quick refresher on what an Epiphany is. Epiphany is from the Greek ephiphania, which means manifestation or appearance. To “manifest” something is to make something clearly visible and understandable. Remember this definition because our hymn of the day today is Songs of Thankfulness and Praise, which is one of my favorite hymns but also seems to be an answer to the challenge, how many times can you work the word “manifest” into a song? If I counted correctly, the answer, according to hymnist Christopher Wordsworth, is eleven.
All this to say, the point of these epiphany stories is to reveal to us something about the nature of God, about who God is, as demonstrated by Jesus. The question this season invites us to ask this text this morning is, “what does Jesus turning water into wine reveal to us about who God is?” Keep this question in mind as we walk through the story.
First some background on first century wine and weddings. Scripture is filled with references to wine. An abundance of wine was frequently an example of God’s blessings on those who kept God’s commandments. Psalm 104 talks about God giving “wine to gladden the hearts,” and the prophet Isaiah spoke of day when God will “make a feast for all peoples… of well aged wine.” So wine was celebratory, but wine was also practical. Remember, this was the time before water treatment plants and water a lot of times was not actually safe to drink. Alcohol was created not for parties, but as a way to kill bacteria and make the water potable. Unlike today when water comes out of our taps more or less safe to drink, in the first century you had to drink wine or beer, because water could kill you.
And first century weddings involved a lot of wine! Like today, wedding receptions were gatherings of friends and family to celebrate the start of the new couple's life together. Unlike today, these parties could last as long as a week. A week during which food and wine were expected to flow freely. This, obviously, could get very expensive. But a thing I learned while researching for this sermon was providing the food and wine was not solely responsibility of the groom. Guests were expected to bring gifts of food and wine to the wedding, to help the new couple get off to a good start. So running out of wine was a failure not of the groom alone, but of the community who failed to support the new couple adequately.
But, even if in reality the blame belonged to the community, in practice blame would fall squarely on the shoulders of the groom. For the rest of his life, this guy would be known as the one who didn't have enough wine at his wedding.
Enter Jesus. Or more precisely, enter Jesus' mother. Because when his mother pointed out to Jesus, "The wine has run out," he dismissed her. "My hour has not yet come." But she was undeterred, saying to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you." And her trust was warranted as soon there was not just wine, but 120 to 150 gallons of wine. And not just any wine, the best wine. Both the amount and the quality vastly more than what was needed. Jesus did not just fill the community's lack and preserve the groom's pride; he exceeded it. A quantity and caliber well above requirement. A manifestation, if you will, a physical, tangible example of what John meant in chapter one when he said that from Jesus we have all received "grace upon grace."
The writer of John described Jesus turning water into wine as "the first of his signs... [in which he] revealed his glory." So getting back to our earlier question, what does this sign reveal to us about who God in Jesus is? God is a God of abundance. God does not just meet our needs, but exceeds them. God is extravagant and expansive in love for us. God gives us the best. While the community can, and will, fall short, God never will. When the prophets spoke of how God is preparing a feast for God’s people, that feast is one where the wine never runs out, and just keeps getting better and better and better. At God’s table there is not just enough, there is abundance for all.
I don’t know about you, but that by itself is some pretty solid good news. The love of God is a font of blessing that never runs out, and only gets deeper, richer, and more abundant. Even when we fall short, God is there it fill in the gaps and provide everything we need. I could say Amen and sit down, and that would be enough. But there’s more. Because for the next six weeks we’ll be reading parts of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. And the section we read today lets us see just one of the ways God provides this abundance of blessing is actually through the gathered community.
Bit of background on the church in Corinth. Corinth was a pretty diverse city, with a lot of different people from different places, experiences, skills, and income levels, and that diversity was represented in the church. Which for a while worked pretty well, but then, as people do, they started to bicker with one another about who was the most important. Those with money thought they should get more attention because they paid for the church, those who were gifted leaders thought they should get more, because they led the church, those who were skilled in maintenance thought they should get more, because they repaired the church, you see where this is going. So Paul wrote this letter to tell them, no, you all need each other. No skill or gift is more important than another, because all gifts and services are from the Holy Spirit and all can be used to build up the body of Christ.
And not just can all skills be used to build up the body of Christ, but this diversity of skills are what makes church work. Just think of our own congregation. Imagine if every single one of us were amazing craftspeople, but no one could balance a checkbook. Yeah, in theory we could have a really well-maintained building, but in practice we wouldn’t be able to afford the supplies to repair it. Or if all of us were fiscal geniuses, but no one had any gifts in hospitality or welcome, no one would want to hang out with us. Or if we were super welcoming, but any time someone played the piano it sounded like cats dying. Or if everyone was in the choir but no one was ever there to listen to them. Actually, that last one happens sometimes, and then I get a private concert, but I digress. The point is, it is this rich diversity of skills and gifts, all signs of the abundance of the Spirit, which make our community work. And not just work, but thrive. And not just thrive, but in fact become richer, deeper, and more abundant the more we are able to lean into this rich diversity of people and experiences.
Dear friends in Christ, it is in us, in the diversity of gifts and cares we bring, that the abundance of God is made manifest. We are examples of grace upon grace. Amen.
Since we’re in the season of Epiphany, let’s start with a quick refresher on what an Epiphany is. Epiphany is from the Greek ephiphania, which means manifestation or appearance. To “manifest” something is to make something clearly visible and understandable. Remember this definition because our hymn of the day today is Songs of Thankfulness and Praise, which is one of my favorite hymns but also seems to be an answer to the challenge, how many times can you work the word “manifest” into a song? If I counted correctly, the answer, according to hymnist Christopher Wordsworth, is eleven.
All this to say, the point of these epiphany stories is to reveal to us something about the nature of God, about who God is, as demonstrated by Jesus. The question this season invites us to ask this text this morning is, “what does Jesus turning water into wine reveal to us about who God is?” Keep this question in mind as we walk through the story.
First some background on first century wine and weddings. Scripture is filled with references to wine. An abundance of wine was frequently an example of God’s blessings on those who kept God’s commandments. Psalm 104 talks about God giving “wine to gladden the hearts,” and the prophet Isaiah spoke of day when God will “make a feast for all peoples… of well aged wine.” So wine was celebratory, but wine was also practical. Remember, this was the time before water treatment plants and water a lot of times was not actually safe to drink. Alcohol was created not for parties, but as a way to kill bacteria and make the water potable. Unlike today when water comes out of our taps more or less safe to drink, in the first century you had to drink wine or beer, because water could kill you.
And first century weddings involved a lot of wine! Like today, wedding receptions were gatherings of friends and family to celebrate the start of the new couple's life together. Unlike today, these parties could last as long as a week. A week during which food and wine were expected to flow freely. This, obviously, could get very expensive. But a thing I learned while researching for this sermon was providing the food and wine was not solely responsibility of the groom. Guests were expected to bring gifts of food and wine to the wedding, to help the new couple get off to a good start. So running out of wine was a failure not of the groom alone, but of the community who failed to support the new couple adequately.
But, even if in reality the blame belonged to the community, in practice blame would fall squarely on the shoulders of the groom. For the rest of his life, this guy would be known as the one who didn't have enough wine at his wedding.
Enter Jesus. Or more precisely, enter Jesus' mother. Because when his mother pointed out to Jesus, "The wine has run out," he dismissed her. "My hour has not yet come." But she was undeterred, saying to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you." And her trust was warranted as soon there was not just wine, but 120 to 150 gallons of wine. And not just any wine, the best wine. Both the amount and the quality vastly more than what was needed. Jesus did not just fill the community's lack and preserve the groom's pride; he exceeded it. A quantity and caliber well above requirement. A manifestation, if you will, a physical, tangible example of what John meant in chapter one when he said that from Jesus we have all received "grace upon grace."
The writer of John described Jesus turning water into wine as "the first of his signs... [in which he] revealed his glory." So getting back to our earlier question, what does this sign reveal to us about who God in Jesus is? God is a God of abundance. God does not just meet our needs, but exceeds them. God is extravagant and expansive in love for us. God gives us the best. While the community can, and will, fall short, God never will. When the prophets spoke of how God is preparing a feast for God’s people, that feast is one where the wine never runs out, and just keeps getting better and better and better. At God’s table there is not just enough, there is abundance for all.
I don’t know about you, but that by itself is some pretty solid good news. The love of God is a font of blessing that never runs out, and only gets deeper, richer, and more abundant. Even when we fall short, God is there it fill in the gaps and provide everything we need. I could say Amen and sit down, and that would be enough. But there’s more. Because for the next six weeks we’ll be reading parts of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. And the section we read today lets us see just one of the ways God provides this abundance of blessing is actually through the gathered community.
Bit of background on the church in Corinth. Corinth was a pretty diverse city, with a lot of different people from different places, experiences, skills, and income levels, and that diversity was represented in the church. Which for a while worked pretty well, but then, as people do, they started to bicker with one another about who was the most important. Those with money thought they should get more attention because they paid for the church, those who were gifted leaders thought they should get more, because they led the church, those who were skilled in maintenance thought they should get more, because they repaired the church, you see where this is going. So Paul wrote this letter to tell them, no, you all need each other. No skill or gift is more important than another, because all gifts and services are from the Holy Spirit and all can be used to build up the body of Christ.
And not just can all skills be used to build up the body of Christ, but this diversity of skills are what makes church work. Just think of our own congregation. Imagine if every single one of us were amazing craftspeople, but no one could balance a checkbook. Yeah, in theory we could have a really well-maintained building, but in practice we wouldn’t be able to afford the supplies to repair it. Or if all of us were fiscal geniuses, but no one had any gifts in hospitality or welcome, no one would want to hang out with us. Or if we were super welcoming, but any time someone played the piano it sounded like cats dying. Or if everyone was in the choir but no one was ever there to listen to them. Actually, that last one happens sometimes, and then I get a private concert, but I digress. The point is, it is this rich diversity of skills and gifts, all signs of the abundance of the Spirit, which make our community work. And not just work, but thrive. And not just thrive, but in fact become richer, deeper, and more abundant the more we are able to lean into this rich diversity of people and experiences.
Dear friends in Christ, it is in us, in the diversity of gifts and cares we bring, that the abundance of God is made manifest. We are examples of grace upon grace. Amen.
Sunday, January 13, 2019
Unquenchable Fire - A Sermon on Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
This week I was listening to a podcast on how language affects how we think about things, and I learned about the term “co-location.” Co-location is when you hear a word and your brain automatically fills in what comes next.* So, for example, when I say “coffee,” your brain may automatically fill in the word “hour.” This ability to quickly associate words with other words without even really thinking about it is what makes the Star Wars / church joke, “the force be with you, and also with you” work.
Our brain’s ability to very quickly see and make connections between ideas can be super helpful. It is one of the reasons we continued to exist as a species. Back when our ancestors were roaming the wilds, our ability to catch a glimpse of something, think “saber-toothed tiger” and react accordingly, kept us from being eaten. The problem is the world has moved on from needing to escape saber-toothed tigers, but our brain’s immediate response hasn’t always. So if we stay in that first co-location idea, we can miss the wider nuances of the situation. The dark side of co-location is the same ability that makes the Star Wars joke funny is what allows stereotypes and prejudice to persist. I heard an interview with a police officer about the importance of doing implicit bias training for police. The officer shared how his implicit bias that mass shooters are almost always men almost got him killed when he came around a corner in a shoot-out and was face to face with a woman, who was the shooter.
Listening to the podcast this week about co-location was really timely because I’d been thinking about the concept without a word to define it since part of my sermon last Sunday. Last Sunday I talked about how the Wise Men giving gifts and leaving was an example of a line Mary’s Magnificat, about how the hungry will be filled with good things and the rich sent away empty. I loved that connection but I have to share with you; I am not that brilliant. I got the idea from an article by Diana Butler Bass, a leading Christian historian and scholar. I had never linked Mary’s magnificat and the gifts of the Wise Men together. When I thought of the hungry being filled and the rich sent away empty, and maybe I took too many political science classes in college, but it was much more class warfare-y in my mind. Which is weird, because I don’t see Jesus as being about class warfare, but there you go, co-location is weird. But Dr. Bass instead painted this beautiful picture of generosity, of the rich not having their things forcibly taken from them but giving them up, and receiving in their place gifts of gratitude and love. It was one of those light bulb moments for me to suddenly be confronted with this bias I didn’t even realize, and see how God’s intention in Mary’s song was both more powerful and more hopeful than I had made space for in my mind. So this got me thinking, if I’d made that leap with the magnificat, where else was I missing, completely unintentionally and without realizing it, a fuller understanding of how God’s plan in unfolding in love.
Enter John the Baptist. We didn’t read the traditional advent texts this year so we missed John’s yelling about people being a “brood of vipers… flee[ing] from the wrath to come,” but he did in verse seven. So when John started talking about the “chaff burn[ing] with unquenchable fire,” that co-location skill in our brains immediately fills in an image of destruction. Which isn’t wrong. This summer’s wildfires were a powerful demonstration of the uncontrolled fury fire can unleash. But destructive is not the only thing fire is.
Growing up in the California school system, we learned about the Giant Sequoias. The Giant Sequoias are these massive trees with trunks twenty to as much as thirty feet in diameter. To protect these natural wonders, the National Parks service got really invested in preventing forest fires, and they were really effective at it. Fire almost completely stopped within the parks. But after a few years of this practice, they started to notice that while the mature trees were still going through their natural life cycle, dropping seed-rich cones, no new trees were sprouting. One of the things wildfire does is it burns out all the brush that gathers on the forest floor, cleaning it essentially. So at first, the scientists thought maybe the seeds were sprouting, the tiny seedlings just could make their way through all of the accumulated debris. But even clearing the brush, still no seedlings emerged.
After more research, scientists discovered a surprising thing. Those seed cones only opened to release seeds in the heat of a wildfire. That heat is what triggers the seedcone to know, the brush has been cleared away, rich, nutritious ash remains, and this combination of cleared space, access to sunlight, and nutrient-rich soil is now the perfect place for a new tree to root. For the Giant Sequoia, the destruction of a fire is the birthplace of new life.
Another common image in scripture is that of a “refiners fire.” Fire is how metals like iron, steel, copper, even gold are made. Ore, rock and sediments which contain the mineral base, are superheated, burning away the unwanted material and forcing the mineral itself to go through a chemical transformation, leaving the desired metal in its place. And here’s your, or at least my fun fact for the day, because this was an interesting thing I learned while reading for this sermon that I didn’t know. With the exception of gold, which mostly comes as gold in nature, most metals aren’t metals in their natural state, they’re mineral deposits. To create the iron, copper, lead, silver, what have you, the minerals have to undergo a chemical reaction and be transformed. The most basic way to provoke this chemical transformation is through heat. That’s the refiners fire the prophets Zechariah and Malachi talked about. It’s not just about getting rid of the impurities; it’s about an actual transformation from one way of being to another.
And back to our saber-toothed tiger dodging ancestors, humanity’s ability to understand and control fire is another reason we still exist as a species. Fire, our ability to make it and control it, is what allowed us to cook and store meat. Plenty other animals are meat eaters, but we are the only ones who can keep it, who can carry it with us. Fire burns away the unhealthy bacteria in meat as well, making it safe for us to eat. Fire also allowed us to spread into colder regions of the planet then our generally furless, not cold resistant bodies would have permitted us to survive. Destruction, regeneration, purification, transformation, warmth, stability, and protection, all of these different purposes and ideas are layered into John the Baptist’s message of how Jesus will come with “unquenchable fire.”
How do we know this? From the second part of this morning’s Gospel reading. Luke described how when Jesus had been baptized and was praying, a voice from heaven said, “You are my Son, the Beloved.” You. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is baptized, Jesus put on flesh at all, so that what is true for him is also true for us. Throughout Luke’s Gospel, we can replace ‘you’ with our own names. When the Angel Gabriel said to Mary, “you have found favor with God,” we are the ones in God’s favor. When the angel said to the shepherds, “to you is born this day… a savior,” we are the ones for whom a savior has been born. And when that voice from heaven spoke to Jesus, “You are my child, the beloved,” that too is us. Throughout Luke’s gospel, we will see Jesus again and again going to those who are overlooked and left out, to confirm again and again that no one is left out of God’s love. And an expanse this great, is too broad for only one definition of fire.
Dear friends, in the waters of baptism, we are baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire. A fire that destroys the chaff in our souls, that burns away the impurities, that regenerates, that transforms, that warms, that protects, that guards, that loves us into newness. Thanks be to God, who is all things. Amen.
*"Sexism in Language" 4 January 2019. Stuff Media LLC. 9 January 2019.
Our brain’s ability to very quickly see and make connections between ideas can be super helpful. It is one of the reasons we continued to exist as a species. Back when our ancestors were roaming the wilds, our ability to catch a glimpse of something, think “saber-toothed tiger” and react accordingly, kept us from being eaten. The problem is the world has moved on from needing to escape saber-toothed tigers, but our brain’s immediate response hasn’t always. So if we stay in that first co-location idea, we can miss the wider nuances of the situation. The dark side of co-location is the same ability that makes the Star Wars joke funny is what allows stereotypes and prejudice to persist. I heard an interview with a police officer about the importance of doing implicit bias training for police. The officer shared how his implicit bias that mass shooters are almost always men almost got him killed when he came around a corner in a shoot-out and was face to face with a woman, who was the shooter.
Listening to the podcast this week about co-location was really timely because I’d been thinking about the concept without a word to define it since part of my sermon last Sunday. Last Sunday I talked about how the Wise Men giving gifts and leaving was an example of a line Mary’s Magnificat, about how the hungry will be filled with good things and the rich sent away empty. I loved that connection but I have to share with you; I am not that brilliant. I got the idea from an article by Diana Butler Bass, a leading Christian historian and scholar. I had never linked Mary’s magnificat and the gifts of the Wise Men together. When I thought of the hungry being filled and the rich sent away empty, and maybe I took too many political science classes in college, but it was much more class warfare-y in my mind. Which is weird, because I don’t see Jesus as being about class warfare, but there you go, co-location is weird. But Dr. Bass instead painted this beautiful picture of generosity, of the rich not having their things forcibly taken from them but giving them up, and receiving in their place gifts of gratitude and love. It was one of those light bulb moments for me to suddenly be confronted with this bias I didn’t even realize, and see how God’s intention in Mary’s song was both more powerful and more hopeful than I had made space for in my mind. So this got me thinking, if I’d made that leap with the magnificat, where else was I missing, completely unintentionally and without realizing it, a fuller understanding of how God’s plan in unfolding in love.
Enter John the Baptist. We didn’t read the traditional advent texts this year so we missed John’s yelling about people being a “brood of vipers… flee[ing] from the wrath to come,” but he did in verse seven. So when John started talking about the “chaff burn[ing] with unquenchable fire,” that co-location skill in our brains immediately fills in an image of destruction. Which isn’t wrong. This summer’s wildfires were a powerful demonstration of the uncontrolled fury fire can unleash. But destructive is not the only thing fire is.
Growing up in the California school system, we learned about the Giant Sequoias. The Giant Sequoias are these massive trees with trunks twenty to as much as thirty feet in diameter. To protect these natural wonders, the National Parks service got really invested in preventing forest fires, and they were really effective at it. Fire almost completely stopped within the parks. But after a few years of this practice, they started to notice that while the mature trees were still going through their natural life cycle, dropping seed-rich cones, no new trees were sprouting. One of the things wildfire does is it burns out all the brush that gathers on the forest floor, cleaning it essentially. So at first, the scientists thought maybe the seeds were sprouting, the tiny seedlings just could make their way through all of the accumulated debris. But even clearing the brush, still no seedlings emerged.
After more research, scientists discovered a surprising thing. Those seed cones only opened to release seeds in the heat of a wildfire. That heat is what triggers the seedcone to know, the brush has been cleared away, rich, nutritious ash remains, and this combination of cleared space, access to sunlight, and nutrient-rich soil is now the perfect place for a new tree to root. For the Giant Sequoia, the destruction of a fire is the birthplace of new life.
Another common image in scripture is that of a “refiners fire.” Fire is how metals like iron, steel, copper, even gold are made. Ore, rock and sediments which contain the mineral base, are superheated, burning away the unwanted material and forcing the mineral itself to go through a chemical transformation, leaving the desired metal in its place. And here’s your, or at least my fun fact for the day, because this was an interesting thing I learned while reading for this sermon that I didn’t know. With the exception of gold, which mostly comes as gold in nature, most metals aren’t metals in their natural state, they’re mineral deposits. To create the iron, copper, lead, silver, what have you, the minerals have to undergo a chemical reaction and be transformed. The most basic way to provoke this chemical transformation is through heat. That’s the refiners fire the prophets Zechariah and Malachi talked about. It’s not just about getting rid of the impurities; it’s about an actual transformation from one way of being to another.
And back to our saber-toothed tiger dodging ancestors, humanity’s ability to understand and control fire is another reason we still exist as a species. Fire, our ability to make it and control it, is what allowed us to cook and store meat. Plenty other animals are meat eaters, but we are the only ones who can keep it, who can carry it with us. Fire burns away the unhealthy bacteria in meat as well, making it safe for us to eat. Fire also allowed us to spread into colder regions of the planet then our generally furless, not cold resistant bodies would have permitted us to survive. Destruction, regeneration, purification, transformation, warmth, stability, and protection, all of these different purposes and ideas are layered into John the Baptist’s message of how Jesus will come with “unquenchable fire.”
How do we know this? From the second part of this morning’s Gospel reading. Luke described how when Jesus had been baptized and was praying, a voice from heaven said, “You are my Son, the Beloved.” You. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is baptized, Jesus put on flesh at all, so that what is true for him is also true for us. Throughout Luke’s Gospel, we can replace ‘you’ with our own names. When the Angel Gabriel said to Mary, “you have found favor with God,” we are the ones in God’s favor. When the angel said to the shepherds, “to you is born this day… a savior,” we are the ones for whom a savior has been born. And when that voice from heaven spoke to Jesus, “You are my child, the beloved,” that too is us. Throughout Luke’s gospel, we will see Jesus again and again going to those who are overlooked and left out, to confirm again and again that no one is left out of God’s love. And an expanse this great, is too broad for only one definition of fire.
Dear friends, in the waters of baptism, we are baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire. A fire that destroys the chaff in our souls, that burns away the impurities, that regenerates, that transforms, that warms, that protects, that guards, that loves us into newness. Thanks be to God, who is all things. Amen.
*"Sexism in Language" 4 January 2019. Stuff Media LLC.
Sunday, January 6, 2019
No Strings Attached: A Sermon on Matthew 2:1-12
A couple of years ago, my cousin found a letter my father had written to my great aunt when he was ten or eleven. The letter read: “Dear Aunt Lee. Mom said I have to write you a thank you note to thank you for letting me come visit this summer. I told mom that you would not be expecting a note from me, because you know I don’t write letters. But mom said I have to write a letter anyway. Love, Glen.”
First off, let me say that hearing this letter from my father at ten made me understand my brother a whole lot better. But more to the point, while I think my grandmother was absolutely right in enforcing a thank-you note writing policy, I myself am a bit proponent of the thank you note, as it is just good manners, I have to admit my father also has a bit of a point. Writing a thank you note is good manners, but expecting a thank you note for a gift given implies there is a string attached to the gift. Like, I’m giving you this, and here’s what you owe me in return.
Thank you notes are a bit of an innocuous string, and again, I am a big proponent of the thank you note. Children listening, you should definitely write your grandparents, aunts and uncles, whoever, thank you notes. It’s good manners. But gifts can come with other, more constricting strings. Strings that make us question if we should really accept the gift, if it is even a gift at all. Most non-profits actually have written into their donation policy that they have the right to refuse a gift if it restricts or doesn’t fit their mission. Imagine, for example, if someone gave us a million dollars to start an Icelandic language learning center in the Post Addition. Or left us a house with one hundred thousand owed in back taxes. Yeah, it’s a gift, but neither help our mission. What are the youth of Post going to do with Icelandic as a second language? Every Icelander I’ve ever met, and there are only 300,000 of them to begin with, speaks fluent English. And a house mired in that much debt could destroy us.
Working in volunteer and donations at the women’s shelter before seminary, I admit I got more than a little jaded about this sort of self-satisfying so-called “gift giving.” Especially around this time of year. I’d get calls from companies wanting to dump off baby formula or children’s things to get the tax credit, who would then get mad at me when I explained to them that we were not a family shelter, and really had no use for their baby formula. My least favorite was the one and done volunteers who would call the day before Thanksgiving or Christmas wanting to “serve the homeless,” who would then yell at me when I patiently explained that we were set for the holiday, but could really use their help in January. I was always polite, but in my head I thought, “who do you want to serve here? Our women, who need to eat every day, or your own ego for doing the “great deed” of “giving up your holiday” to “help” those “less fortunate.” It’s a sermon so you can’t see the air-quotes around all those words but trust me, they’re there.
OK, off my soapbox. The point is, some gifts have strings attached. And in the first century, all gifts had strings attached. Gifts were a means of ensuring compliance or angling for support. A first century peasant might give gifts to a ruler to demonstrate their loyalty, beg for mercy, or ask a favor. And in the unlikely event that a higher status person gave a gift to a lower status person, that gift almost certainly came with the expectation of there now being a debt of gratitude owed, in the form of service or loyalty. In first century gift giving, there truly was no such thing as a free lunch.
Which is what makes this story from the Gospel of Matthew all the more extraordinary. Because in this story we have wise men from the east bringing gifts to a newborn peasant child. And not just any gifts, but gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold is, of course, gold. Frankincense literally translates to “high-quality incense,” franc being an Old French word for “noble” or “pure.” And myrrh, along with frankincense, was used as a holy anointing oil to bless priests, kings, and the Temple itself. These gifts are not a meat pie; they are seriously expensive items, items that could only be befitting a powerful king. We don’t hear Mary and Joseph’s response to these gifts, but one must wonder if they were filled at first as much with dread as with gratitude. What could these wealthy strangers want in return for such exorbitant offerings?
And then, just as unexpectedly as they’d come, the wise men left. There was no expectation of repayment, no on-going obligation of loyalty. These were gifts, freely given and received in response to love. What the wise men do here is turn gift-giving on its head, ushering in one of the first examples of what Mary sung about in the Magnificat, of the rulers being brought down and the lowly lifted up, of the hungry being filled and the rich sent away empty. What we see in this story is the rich bringing gifts to the poor and going away empty-handed and joyful. No exchange of loyalty, no expectation of gratitude. Mary and Joseph couldn’t have even written a thank you note if they’d wanted to, how do you address a letter to “wandering Zoroastrian priests following stars.”
We talk a lot in our tradition about grace, how grace is a gift that God gives to us, that we could never earn or deserve, and friends, the gifts of the Magi are the kind of gifts that grace is. In this story we see just the first glimmering example of what the new world birthed in a manger will be. Grace is God’s unconditional yes to us. It is the promise that we are unequivocally loved and claimed and treasured by God. That the Creator of the universe, the one who formed the very stars in the sky, slipped into skin, came into this world to be with us, and died on a cross for us, so that even death itself could not separate us from God. God did all this with no expectation of loyalty, no debt of gratitude, no requirement of repayment. Grace is pure gift; nothing expected or asked for in exchange, which is good because nothing we have to give could ever measure up. Like Mary and Joseph, we may feel unsure at first when we realize the enormity of the gift, the vast outreach of the love God has for us, we might wonder what we owe in return. But I encourage you, hard as it is, to remember that that is the wrong question. Rather than trying to earn it or deserve it, all that God asks of us is that we lean into this love. Because love this grand, this vast, changes us. Trying to earn love or deserve it keeps us focused on ourselves, on our own actions, and it holds us back. But if we instead, like the wise men, find ourselves swept up in the wonder of this gift, we will discover, without even knowing it, that we are living even more fully out of the grace we have received.
Dear friends in Christ, you are beloved of God. Not because of who you are, not because of what you’ve done, but simply because of who God is. God gives you this love because God loves you. Don’t worry about understanding it, trusting it, or even believing it. Instead, I invite you to just lean into the promise of this love. For it will transform you. It already is. Amen.
First off, let me say that hearing this letter from my father at ten made me understand my brother a whole lot better. But more to the point, while I think my grandmother was absolutely right in enforcing a thank-you note writing policy, I myself am a bit proponent of the thank you note, as it is just good manners, I have to admit my father also has a bit of a point. Writing a thank you note is good manners, but expecting a thank you note for a gift given implies there is a string attached to the gift. Like, I’m giving you this, and here’s what you owe me in return.
Thank you notes are a bit of an innocuous string, and again, I am a big proponent of the thank you note. Children listening, you should definitely write your grandparents, aunts and uncles, whoever, thank you notes. It’s good manners. But gifts can come with other, more constricting strings. Strings that make us question if we should really accept the gift, if it is even a gift at all. Most non-profits actually have written into their donation policy that they have the right to refuse a gift if it restricts or doesn’t fit their mission. Imagine, for example, if someone gave us a million dollars to start an Icelandic language learning center in the Post Addition. Or left us a house with one hundred thousand owed in back taxes. Yeah, it’s a gift, but neither help our mission. What are the youth of Post going to do with Icelandic as a second language? Every Icelander I’ve ever met, and there are only 300,000 of them to begin with, speaks fluent English. And a house mired in that much debt could destroy us.
Working in volunteer and donations at the women’s shelter before seminary, I admit I got more than a little jaded about this sort of self-satisfying so-called “gift giving.” Especially around this time of year. I’d get calls from companies wanting to dump off baby formula or children’s things to get the tax credit, who would then get mad at me when I explained to them that we were not a family shelter, and really had no use for their baby formula. My least favorite was the one and done volunteers who would call the day before Thanksgiving or Christmas wanting to “serve the homeless,” who would then yell at me when I patiently explained that we were set for the holiday, but could really use their help in January. I was always polite, but in my head I thought, “who do you want to serve here? Our women, who need to eat every day, or your own ego for doing the “great deed” of “giving up your holiday” to “help” those “less fortunate.” It’s a sermon so you can’t see the air-quotes around all those words but trust me, they’re there.
OK, off my soapbox. The point is, some gifts have strings attached. And in the first century, all gifts had strings attached. Gifts were a means of ensuring compliance or angling for support. A first century peasant might give gifts to a ruler to demonstrate their loyalty, beg for mercy, or ask a favor. And in the unlikely event that a higher status person gave a gift to a lower status person, that gift almost certainly came with the expectation of there now being a debt of gratitude owed, in the form of service or loyalty. In first century gift giving, there truly was no such thing as a free lunch.
Which is what makes this story from the Gospel of Matthew all the more extraordinary. Because in this story we have wise men from the east bringing gifts to a newborn peasant child. And not just any gifts, but gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold is, of course, gold. Frankincense literally translates to “high-quality incense,” franc being an Old French word for “noble” or “pure.” And myrrh, along with frankincense, was used as a holy anointing oil to bless priests, kings, and the Temple itself. These gifts are not a meat pie; they are seriously expensive items, items that could only be befitting a powerful king. We don’t hear Mary and Joseph’s response to these gifts, but one must wonder if they were filled at first as much with dread as with gratitude. What could these wealthy strangers want in return for such exorbitant offerings?
And then, just as unexpectedly as they’d come, the wise men left. There was no expectation of repayment, no on-going obligation of loyalty. These were gifts, freely given and received in response to love. What the wise men do here is turn gift-giving on its head, ushering in one of the first examples of what Mary sung about in the Magnificat, of the rulers being brought down and the lowly lifted up, of the hungry being filled and the rich sent away empty. What we see in this story is the rich bringing gifts to the poor and going away empty-handed and joyful. No exchange of loyalty, no expectation of gratitude. Mary and Joseph couldn’t have even written a thank you note if they’d wanted to, how do you address a letter to “wandering Zoroastrian priests following stars.”
We talk a lot in our tradition about grace, how grace is a gift that God gives to us, that we could never earn or deserve, and friends, the gifts of the Magi are the kind of gifts that grace is. In this story we see just the first glimmering example of what the new world birthed in a manger will be. Grace is God’s unconditional yes to us. It is the promise that we are unequivocally loved and claimed and treasured by God. That the Creator of the universe, the one who formed the very stars in the sky, slipped into skin, came into this world to be with us, and died on a cross for us, so that even death itself could not separate us from God. God did all this with no expectation of loyalty, no debt of gratitude, no requirement of repayment. Grace is pure gift; nothing expected or asked for in exchange, which is good because nothing we have to give could ever measure up. Like Mary and Joseph, we may feel unsure at first when we realize the enormity of the gift, the vast outreach of the love God has for us, we might wonder what we owe in return. But I encourage you, hard as it is, to remember that that is the wrong question. Rather than trying to earn it or deserve it, all that God asks of us is that we lean into this love. Because love this grand, this vast, changes us. Trying to earn love or deserve it keeps us focused on ourselves, on our own actions, and it holds us back. But if we instead, like the wise men, find ourselves swept up in the wonder of this gift, we will discover, without even knowing it, that we are living even more fully out of the grace we have received.
Dear friends in Christ, you are beloved of God. Not because of who you are, not because of what you’ve done, but simply because of who God is. God gives you this love because God loves you. Don’t worry about understanding it, trusting it, or even believing it. Instead, I invite you to just lean into the promise of this love. For it will transform you. It already is. Amen.
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