I listened to a story on NPR that said Virgin Mobile had a study done about how the role someone played in the Christmas pageant affected their future. Marys and Josephs were the most successful, with Marys slightly outpacing Josephs. Jesus’s did surprisingly poorly, possibly because they had no lines. Though, I was baby Jesus and never chosen for Mary, though I did play a tone-deaf star once, and I feel like I turned out alright. Donkeys did better than sheep. Shepherds slightly outpaced wise men. But the one character the story didn’t cover at all was what were the future prospects of innkeepers?
The innkeeper is a central role in any pageant, their refusal to admit the Christchild is the turning point that sets the crisis in place. A weak or easily swayed innkeeper is liable to just let the Holy Family in, ruining the setup for everything that came next and forcing some poor parent volunteer to rush onstage and redirect Mary and Joseph back to the stable scene. But is this strict regard for regulation a benefit or a detriment to future success. How do our innkeepers fare?
I learned something this week about the design of first century Palestinian houses that has me rethinking the whole Christmas story, or at least the role of the innkeeper. The word translated as “inn,” as in “there was no place for them in the inn,” that word is better translated as “upper room.” It is the same word that shows up twenty chapters later when Jesus asked his disciples to prepare the Passover in an upstairs room for what will end up being the Last Supper. “Inn” is in fact sort of an odd choice of a translation because there weren’t inns in the first century. Instead, because of the expectation of hospitality and providing a respite to travelers, visitors passing through a city would be put up in the homes of local residents, a set-up not unlike an Air bnb. The reference to the “upper room” is because first century Palestinian houses were two story. The family lived on the second floor, while the first floor was home to the family livestock. Which is practical, if you think about it, because cows don’t navigate stairs all that well. And even if they did, do you really want to live below a cow? The other benefit of living above the stable is that heat rises. Israel is a moderate climate, but it is a desert so nights can get cool. Living above the stable gave the family the radiant heat of the animals downstairs.
The other thing we know about this story is that due to the registration, many people were on the move. With “all the world” forced to return “to their own towns to be registered,” Joseph and Mary would not have been the only people seeking refuge in the homes of the people in the small town of Bethlehem that day.
So here’s the shift all this made for me. So often this story is portrayed as a tragic example of human selfishness. A pregnant woman turned away at the door. The Son of God forced to lay in a feed trough, reminiscent of how at the end of his life he will hang alone on a cross, abandoned by all whom he loved and cared for. The innkeeper is cast as the first in a long line of people who will reject the Christ, the question then posed, will you be different? But what if that’s the wrong question, what if that’s the wrong portrayal? Given the background information about houses and the expectation of care for many many travelers, what if the story of Christmas is actually a story of incredible hospitality?
Picture it this way. Joseph and Mary, and many others travel to Bethlehem. A journey forced on them from Emperor Augustus’ need for power. Think of the hubris of this request in the first place, that “all the world should be registered.” Thousands upon thousands of people counted and recorded, measured for taxes and the distribution of soldiers. This registration was about tightening the imperial grip, it was about fixing a population in place so that they could more easily be controlled. It is a striking scene to picture, people uprooted and forced on the road at the whim of one person’s word.
By the time Mary and Joseph arrive, exhausted from their long journey, many others are in town as well. The resources of this small community are already stretched thin by the influx of visitors seeking hospitality. Imagine the owner of the home of whom Mary and Joseph sought refuge. He had already taken in many others, along with his own family, there is no space available in the living quarters, no room in the “upper room,” the inn where visitors would normally stay. But our “innkeeper,” if you will, took one look at this exhausted, bedraggled couple, one look at Mary’s bulging belly, and knew he could not turn them away. And he found space for them. There was no room, but he made room, made room in his home, in his heart, for the Christ child, so that the Holy Family would have a place to lay their heads.
The Christmas story is a story of the miracle of God’s economy, the abundance that exists if we only know how to see it. So many others might have thought of their own overpacked homes and thought, we simply cannot house another. But this man, rather than turn away the Christ child, found just a little bit more to share, and in that sharing, in that expanding of his expectations of what he had to offer, played host to the greatest miracle of all time.
In a few minutes we will gather around this table, where anyone who wants it is welcome to a piece of bread, or a gluten free cracker, and a sip of wine or grape juice. If you came to church hungry, this will not be enough. No one would call the food we are about to eat a meal. And yet, for those of us who come again and again to this table, we have experienced it as so much more than what it seems. This bit of bread and sip of wine is the food that feeds our souls, that nourishes and nurtures for the journey ahead. More would not satisfy the way this simple taste will.
Dear friends in Christ, the message of our innkeeper hero is this: you have enough to share, and whatever you have to share is enough. So often it feels like we have so little, we can do so little, so why try at all. Better to leave the trying to those with a lot, those who have power, who’s actions can make a difference. But the truth in this story is that there is no such thing as a small gift in the service of God. So come to this table for the taste that satisfies. Be fed with the presence of Christ. And then go out, filled for service, knowing that who you are, what you have, what you can offer is not just enough, it is exactly what this hungry and homeless world needs. Thanks be to God. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Thursday, December 26, 2019
Monday, December 23, 2019
Jesus' Origin Story: A Sermon on Matthew 1:18-25
Well it’s taken us four weeks, but we finally get an Advent reading about the birth of Jesus. Though you might have noticed, or maybe you think I stopped early or came in late, but Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus may not have all you think it should. This is not the one Linus read in Charlie Brown Christmas. Matthew doesn’t have the angel appearing to Mary or the child leaping in Elizabeth’s womb. Matthew doesn’t have the decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. There’s no angel chorus, no shepherds, no manger or lack of room at the inn. Matthew does have one thing that Luke is missing; Matthew has wise men following a star. But other than that, this is not the Christmas story you might have been expecting.
We tend to try to lump all the Gospel accounts into one cohesive narrative. Which I think really does us a disservice because each Gospel has something different they are trying to tell us about the nature of God. So I promise you’ll get shepherds and angel choruses of Luke’s beloved Christmas version on Christmas Eve. But for today I want to encourage you to put all that aside for a bit, and let us just dig in to the good news that Matthew has for us. Good news that starts not at the birth of Jesus but actually forty-two generations before. So let’s jump forward a few verses and begin at the beginning.
The Gospel of Matthew starts: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacbo, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez…” You see how this is unfolding. Fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, fourteen from the exile to Joseph, forty-two generations of who was the father of who, was the father of who, was the father of who. This section gets left out of the lectionary because, I get it, it’s kind of boring.
It’s boring, but its one of my favorite features of Matthew’s Gospel because tells us some super important things about who Jesus is. First, before it gives us this miraculous birth story of Jesus being conceived by the Holy Spirit, being the Son of God, this genealogy asserts an important truth about Jesus, that he is human. Jesus is the Messiah because he is from the promised lineage of David. God promised a Messiah would come from the root of the tree of Jesse, and we know God keeps God’s promises, because God also promised Abraham his descendants would number the stars, and, look, Abraham is in this lineage too.
So that in and of itself is cool. But here’s my favorite part about Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. I pointed out the so and so is the father of so and so, and so and so is the father of so and so, and so on. But, there are four exceptions to the “father of” pattern. Four women are listed in the genealogy of Jesus; Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah. These aren’t characters who come up in the greatest hits bible stories all that often, so let me give a really quick snapshot of who these women are, before I tell you why I think this is so important.
Tamar was the daughter-in-law of Judah, one of Joseph of the technicolored dreamcoat’s brothers. Tamar’s husband died, and as we talked about a couple months ago now, there was at the time the weird rule that if a husband died without an heir, a man’s brother had to produce an heir for him. In this case, brother wasn’t particularly keen on this plan, and also died. Now, there was a third brother, but seeing how this was all unfolding, Judah told Tamar, you go back to your father’s house, and when the younger brother is of age, we’ll come get you. After a few years Tamar realized this wasn’t going anywhere, so in order to both do right by her husband and protect herself, she took matters into her own hands. She disguised herself, seduced Judah, and became pregnant. At first he was furious, but when he found out he was the father, he admitted “she is more in the right than I.” Which makes zero sense by current standards, I get it, but at the time by this action Tamar redeemed both her deceased husband and her father-in-law. Tamar displayed righteousness, right relation with her husband and the law, in assuring an heir for him.
So that’s Tamar. Rahab’s story’s not quite as scandalous, though she was a scandal. Rahab was a self-made woman, an owner of a “house of ill-repute,” attached to no man, who hid the spies of Israel as they came to figure out how to take over Israel from the Canaanites. Rahab’s righteousness was in supporting the people of Israel.
Ruth was also a widow, a Moabite whose loyalty to her Israelite mother-in-law led her to leave her own people and travel to a foreign land. Upon arriving in Israel, she met her next-of-kin by marriage, whom she brazenly approached to request him to fulfill his ethical responsibility to her deceased husband and, like Tamar, marry her so she could have an heir for her first husband. Boaz agreed, but there was actually a closer relative who had first “dibs” there is no less awkward way to say it, on Ruth, but when Boaz pointed out that any children would actually belong to the first husband, that man gave up his rights and Ruth and Boaz were married. Ruth was righteous in her relationship to Naomi, and righteous in her relationship to her family of marriage.
And then there’s the story so scandalous that Matthew doesn’t even name the woman, referring to her instead as “the wife of Uriah.” Uriah was a soldier in King David’s army, and while his army was in battle, David saw Uriah’s wife, wanted her, took her, and she became pregnant with David’s son. Now this would obviously have been problem for David, so first he tried to get Uriah to come back, so he would think the child was his. But Uriah was an honest man and a good commander who refused to leave his troops, so instead David made it so that Uriah was killed in battle, so he could take Uriah’s wife as his own. But here’s the piece that makes this woman such a powerhouse. She was not David’s first wife; she was his third, at the same time. Which, as an aside, when people talk about wanting to get back to the biblical view of marriage, I’m not sure which of these bad examples they’re hoping for. But anyway, and this child was not David’s first child, not by a long shot. There were many children ahead of him in line to be heir. But this woman, despite all that has happened to her, the death of her husband, she makes it so that her kid is the one in this genealogy, her kid is the one in David’s royal line, the one from whom the redemption of the world comes. In spite of David’s total disregard for righteousness, the wife of Uriah raised up a son who was righteous before God.
What these stories being included in this lineage tells us is that the pedigree of Jesus is messy and complicated. These are not the sort of stories you’d expect from a Messiah, not at least if you’re playing by the traditional social order. So the inclusion of these stories tell us, this is a God who isn’t all that concerned with the proper social order, this is a God who is concerned with expanding what it means to be in the family tree of God’s people.
Which brings us to “Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.” The reading talked about how Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, and he knew the child wasn’t his, but “being a righteous man, and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” What Matthew does here is right off the bat, he makes us grapple with the question of what does it mean to be righteous. I’ve generally defined righteous to mean being in right relationship with God. But righteous can also mean being right by the law. And the law said that Mary ought to be stoned for being pregnant outside of marriage and especially from someone other than her husband. And yet, after a visit from an angel—which, sure it’s an angel but still, this is a lot the angel was asking Joseph to buy into—Joseph took Mary as his wife, named Jesus, and raised the boy as his own. So if righteousness meant following the law, Joseph was not righteous. Not when he planned to dismiss Mary quietly, and definitely not when he went along with this crazy-sounding story. But of course history has proven Joseph to have been righteous. Joseph was righteous just as Tamar was when she tricked Judah, just as Rahab was when she hid God’s spies, just as Ruth was when she propositioned her next-of-kin, just as the wife of Uriah was when she advocated for her kid. Dear people of God, what these stories tell us is that righteousness is complicated. Righteousness doesn’t always look like what the law or the world tells us is expected.
And what I love the most about this lineage is thinking about how these stories must have impacted Jesus. What would it have been like for him to grow up knowing that he was the descendant of a woman who risked it all to protect her husband’s name, a self-made business woman, a loyal daughter-in-law, and a woman who overcame unspeakable horrors? What was it like to grow up in the household of a man who put his relationship with his wife above society’s expectations and a woman who took the greatest risk in answering God’s call? These earliest lessons set the framework for all of Jesus’ ministry, when he will reach out to heal the sick and the suffering, when he will break bread with tax collectors and sinners, and challenge those who see themselves as above reproach.
So dear people of God, here is the unique good news that Matthew has for you. Jesus the Messiah is divine. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin, this is a life that is nothing short of miraculous. But Jesus the Messiah is also totally human. And just like us, he brings with him family baggage, baby momma drama, and a whole lot of just plain weird and messed up. So this holiday season, and every other season, remember this: Righteousness, living in right relationship to God and to God’s people, is messy and complicated. Just like life is messy and complicated. Each of us comes to this life with our own genesis, our own origin story, our own struggles and situations where righteousness, right relationship seemed impossible. But look, Jesus’ family history, Jesus’ life, the people Jesus chose to associate with throughout his ministry, those people, those stories, were messy and complicated as well. Ours is a God who gets complicated human relationships. The way we struggle and fall short, the way we hurt each other, the way we tend to label and disabuse. And in all of this there is, there can be, righteousness. Thanks be to God. Amen.
We tend to try to lump all the Gospel accounts into one cohesive narrative. Which I think really does us a disservice because each Gospel has something different they are trying to tell us about the nature of God. So I promise you’ll get shepherds and angel choruses of Luke’s beloved Christmas version on Christmas Eve. But for today I want to encourage you to put all that aside for a bit, and let us just dig in to the good news that Matthew has for us. Good news that starts not at the birth of Jesus but actually forty-two generations before. So let’s jump forward a few verses and begin at the beginning.
The Gospel of Matthew starts: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacbo, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez…” You see how this is unfolding. Fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, fourteen from the exile to Joseph, forty-two generations of who was the father of who, was the father of who, was the father of who. This section gets left out of the lectionary because, I get it, it’s kind of boring.
It’s boring, but its one of my favorite features of Matthew’s Gospel because tells us some super important things about who Jesus is. First, before it gives us this miraculous birth story of Jesus being conceived by the Holy Spirit, being the Son of God, this genealogy asserts an important truth about Jesus, that he is human. Jesus is the Messiah because he is from the promised lineage of David. God promised a Messiah would come from the root of the tree of Jesse, and we know God keeps God’s promises, because God also promised Abraham his descendants would number the stars, and, look, Abraham is in this lineage too.
So that in and of itself is cool. But here’s my favorite part about Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. I pointed out the so and so is the father of so and so, and so and so is the father of so and so, and so on. But, there are four exceptions to the “father of” pattern. Four women are listed in the genealogy of Jesus; Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah. These aren’t characters who come up in the greatest hits bible stories all that often, so let me give a really quick snapshot of who these women are, before I tell you why I think this is so important.
Tamar was the daughter-in-law of Judah, one of Joseph of the technicolored dreamcoat’s brothers. Tamar’s husband died, and as we talked about a couple months ago now, there was at the time the weird rule that if a husband died without an heir, a man’s brother had to produce an heir for him. In this case, brother wasn’t particularly keen on this plan, and also died. Now, there was a third brother, but seeing how this was all unfolding, Judah told Tamar, you go back to your father’s house, and when the younger brother is of age, we’ll come get you. After a few years Tamar realized this wasn’t going anywhere, so in order to both do right by her husband and protect herself, she took matters into her own hands. She disguised herself, seduced Judah, and became pregnant. At first he was furious, but when he found out he was the father, he admitted “she is more in the right than I.” Which makes zero sense by current standards, I get it, but at the time by this action Tamar redeemed both her deceased husband and her father-in-law. Tamar displayed righteousness, right relation with her husband and the law, in assuring an heir for him.
So that’s Tamar. Rahab’s story’s not quite as scandalous, though she was a scandal. Rahab was a self-made woman, an owner of a “house of ill-repute,” attached to no man, who hid the spies of Israel as they came to figure out how to take over Israel from the Canaanites. Rahab’s righteousness was in supporting the people of Israel.
Ruth was also a widow, a Moabite whose loyalty to her Israelite mother-in-law led her to leave her own people and travel to a foreign land. Upon arriving in Israel, she met her next-of-kin by marriage, whom she brazenly approached to request him to fulfill his ethical responsibility to her deceased husband and, like Tamar, marry her so she could have an heir for her first husband. Boaz agreed, but there was actually a closer relative who had first “dibs” there is no less awkward way to say it, on Ruth, but when Boaz pointed out that any children would actually belong to the first husband, that man gave up his rights and Ruth and Boaz were married. Ruth was righteous in her relationship to Naomi, and righteous in her relationship to her family of marriage.
And then there’s the story so scandalous that Matthew doesn’t even name the woman, referring to her instead as “the wife of Uriah.” Uriah was a soldier in King David’s army, and while his army was in battle, David saw Uriah’s wife, wanted her, took her, and she became pregnant with David’s son. Now this would obviously have been problem for David, so first he tried to get Uriah to come back, so he would think the child was his. But Uriah was an honest man and a good commander who refused to leave his troops, so instead David made it so that Uriah was killed in battle, so he could take Uriah’s wife as his own. But here’s the piece that makes this woman such a powerhouse. She was not David’s first wife; she was his third, at the same time. Which, as an aside, when people talk about wanting to get back to the biblical view of marriage, I’m not sure which of these bad examples they’re hoping for. But anyway, and this child was not David’s first child, not by a long shot. There were many children ahead of him in line to be heir. But this woman, despite all that has happened to her, the death of her husband, she makes it so that her kid is the one in this genealogy, her kid is the one in David’s royal line, the one from whom the redemption of the world comes. In spite of David’s total disregard for righteousness, the wife of Uriah raised up a son who was righteous before God.
What these stories being included in this lineage tells us is that the pedigree of Jesus is messy and complicated. These are not the sort of stories you’d expect from a Messiah, not at least if you’re playing by the traditional social order. So the inclusion of these stories tell us, this is a God who isn’t all that concerned with the proper social order, this is a God who is concerned with expanding what it means to be in the family tree of God’s people.
Which brings us to “Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.” The reading talked about how Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, and he knew the child wasn’t his, but “being a righteous man, and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” What Matthew does here is right off the bat, he makes us grapple with the question of what does it mean to be righteous. I’ve generally defined righteous to mean being in right relationship with God. But righteous can also mean being right by the law. And the law said that Mary ought to be stoned for being pregnant outside of marriage and especially from someone other than her husband. And yet, after a visit from an angel—which, sure it’s an angel but still, this is a lot the angel was asking Joseph to buy into—Joseph took Mary as his wife, named Jesus, and raised the boy as his own. So if righteousness meant following the law, Joseph was not righteous. Not when he planned to dismiss Mary quietly, and definitely not when he went along with this crazy-sounding story. But of course history has proven Joseph to have been righteous. Joseph was righteous just as Tamar was when she tricked Judah, just as Rahab was when she hid God’s spies, just as Ruth was when she propositioned her next-of-kin, just as the wife of Uriah was when she advocated for her kid. Dear people of God, what these stories tell us is that righteousness is complicated. Righteousness doesn’t always look like what the law or the world tells us is expected.
And what I love the most about this lineage is thinking about how these stories must have impacted Jesus. What would it have been like for him to grow up knowing that he was the descendant of a woman who risked it all to protect her husband’s name, a self-made business woman, a loyal daughter-in-law, and a woman who overcame unspeakable horrors? What was it like to grow up in the household of a man who put his relationship with his wife above society’s expectations and a woman who took the greatest risk in answering God’s call? These earliest lessons set the framework for all of Jesus’ ministry, when he will reach out to heal the sick and the suffering, when he will break bread with tax collectors and sinners, and challenge those who see themselves as above reproach.
So dear people of God, here is the unique good news that Matthew has for you. Jesus the Messiah is divine. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin, this is a life that is nothing short of miraculous. But Jesus the Messiah is also totally human. And just like us, he brings with him family baggage, baby momma drama, and a whole lot of just plain weird and messed up. So this holiday season, and every other season, remember this: Righteousness, living in right relationship to God and to God’s people, is messy and complicated. Just like life is messy and complicated. Each of us comes to this life with our own genesis, our own origin story, our own struggles and situations where righteousness, right relationship seemed impossible. But look, Jesus’ family history, Jesus’ life, the people Jesus chose to associate with throughout his ministry, those people, those stories, were messy and complicated as well. Ours is a God who gets complicated human relationships. The way we struggle and fall short, the way we hurt each other, the way we tend to label and disabuse. And in all of this there is, there can be, righteousness. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Monday, December 16, 2019
Hear and See, Go and Tell - A Sermon on Matthew 11:2-11
Well, the lectionary gives us John the Baptist again this week. And like most sequels, it’s not as exciting as the original. Last week we had John as the “voice crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.” This morning we have him in prison, asking of Jesus, “are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” What happened to our wild man in the wilderness, eating bugs and shouting “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”?
In fairness to John, this text has jumped us all the way to chapter eleven. A lot happened since we last saw John in the wilderness way back in chapter three, and none of it looked much like John had described. John spoke of the coming of one who was more powerful than him, one whose sandals he would not even be worthy to carry. One who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, who like an ax, would cut down those who do not bear good fruit, to be burned with unquenchable fire. But what John had seen in the ensuring nine chapters involved a lot less burning. In fact, there wasn’t any fire at all that I could find. First Jesus went up a mountain and talked about how the poor, the meek, and the hungry would be blessed for three chapters. Preview of coming attractions, we’ll deep-dive into that in January and February, mark your calendars. Then he came down from the mountain and performed some legit miracles: healing a leper, a centurion’s servant, Peter’s mother-in-law and a whole bunch of other people who happened to be around the neighborhood, two people possessed by demons, a paralytic, a hemorrhaging woman, two blind men and one man who was both mute AND had a demon. He also calmed a storm and raised a girl from the dead. So, yes, a lot of impressive stuff. But do you see what was missing from John’s proclamation? Judgment. No one got judged, at least not in an obvious way. No one got cut off, cut down, or destroyed. Jesus said some more eschatological things—eschatological remember being our vocab word from a couple weeks ago, meaning “words about the last”—talking about not being afraid, gathering up the harvest, and gaining or losing the reward. But in terms of actual burning in unquenchable fire, not so much.
And John was concerned about this because John’s world looked like one that was in need of some judgment. First century Palestine, remember was the time of the Pax Romana, the “Peace of Rome.” And the so-called “peace of Rome” wasn’t peaceful, it was oppressive. Yes there wasn’t out and out warfare or riots in the streets, but that’s because the population was held in place by ruthless Roman soldiers, excessive taxes, and the selling out of those whose role it was to protect the people to serve their own greed. The Pharisees and Sadducees whom John called a “brood of vipers,” were getting richer and more powerful, and all of Jesus’ incredible healing miracles must have seemed to John like trying to protect your home from a forest fire with a garden hose. John wanted it to burn out of control, so that a whole new thing would spring up in its place.
And to be frank, I get John’s concern. I even get John’s desire for this whole mess to be wiped away and a new one to take its place. I drafted this on Wednesday, and right here was a line about how there hadn’t been a school shooting this week, and when she replied, she shared there had been two school shootings in Wisconsin and her local school was closed due to a “credible threat.” More times than I’d ever imagined could be possible so early into my career I’ve felt the need to completely scrap my sermon and start over because of some major catastrophe. There are still families being separated at our southern border. The war in Syria is still racking up death and destruction. The glaciers in Greenland are melting at an alarming rate, the rate of income inequality continues to widen. Oh, and the rate of opioid-related death in Calhoun county is twice the rate of the rest of the state, in case you wanted some good news closer to home. I could go on. And this is two-thousand years after John first asked the question, “are you the one who is to come?” I’m not, as you know, a believer in the whole “rapture theology” concept, the theory that God will remove all the faithful from the earth before destroying what remains in violent and bloody battle of death and destruction. I can give you the historical, scriptural, and theological reasons why I don’t adhere to that viewpoint, but that’s really a bible study topic not a sermon point. So I’ll leave it alone except to say that while I don’t believe it, I do get the popularity of it and the comfort some find in it. It’s a simple answer to a complex question, to be able to say, “yes, things are bad, but that’s because God’s going to destroy it and start again.” Terrifying, but simple.
John too craved a simple answer. Things are bad, Herod is a crook, the Roman Empire is oppressive and destruction, people are suffering. Jesus, you claimed to be the Son of God and bringer of the kingdom of heaven, now show up and be that. Take out the powerful with some axes and unquenchable fire and institute your own kingdom in its place. Or did I hope for the wrong person? Did I announce the wrong one?
And I love how Jesus responded, because Jesus gave John’s disciples such a simple answer, “Go and tell John what you hear and see.” Jesus didn’t make claims of his authenticity or titles. He didn’t berate John for doubting him, didn’t command or demand John’s loyalty. Instead, he took John back to the basic role of the prophet, “Go and tell what you hear and see.” That, remember, is the role of a prophet. Not to predict the future, but to see the present for how it truly is, and to testify, to bear witness, to that truth. What comes of that truth-telling is out of the prophet’s hands. And there’s more even than that layered in Jesus’ words. Hearing and seeing in the Gospels are the first entrance points into discipleship. Being a disciple of Jesus starts not with proclaiming allegiance, confessing faith, or some other act of intellectual assent. Being a disciple of Jesus starts first with seeing, so that “soon you will see greater things than these.”
Notice also what Jesus reminded John’s disciples they had seen. “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” If those words sounded familiar when you heard me say them during the Gospel, that’s because you heard Laurie read a version of them. Isaiah chapter thirty-five, verses five and six, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” It’s key that Jesus reference Isaiah, because remember who John was. John was “the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke,” so this reference back to Isaiah was familiar ground for John.
Another thing that occurred to me about Jesus directing John’s attention to these actions that seemed to fall short of the upending John had expected is that John won’t get to see the end of the story, John won’t live until the resurrection. John, you may remember, gets killed by Herod in chapter fourteen. John is never going to get to see the great upheaval of the crucifixion, when “darkness came over the whole land” and “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.” John didn’t get to see the completion of his proclamation; he only saw the start. What we see from Jesus here is assurance for John in the middle of the journey, that what he could see only in part would come into fullness, that his work would indeed “bear fruit worthy of repentance.”
And that, dear people of God, is the good news for us today. We, though resurrection people, like John live in the time between Christ has come and Christ will come again. We do not get to see the unfolding of the whole picture, we see only a foretaste of the feast to come. But that we see the kingdom only in bits and pieces, a piece of bread and a sip of wine, does not mean that the kingdom is not still coming, that the kingdom is not already here. And the gift of the stillness of Advent is how it, like Jesus did for John, calls us to hear and see. The Tree of Wishes went up last Sunday, and we are already down to one envelope. For many years this congregation had no children, and now there are days when we struggle to hear over them. The expanse of empty lot behind our building now spends its summers as a thriving community garden. Woman’s Co-op is creating a video project to project the voices of those in our community who are so often overlooked and unheard. Friends, hear and see these signs of the kingdom.
Hear and see, and then go and tell. Because the other good news of this passage is that we, like John, have a role to play. We are called not just to be witness but to bear witness. To be prophets ourselves, to take our place in bringing into being the unfolding kingdom of heaven. And just as we are called to hear and see God in ways both large and small, going and telling requires actions of all types and sizes. We don’t all have to be John the Baptist, no witness of the kingdom is too small to matter to God. Write a check to support an organization you care about, buy a cup of coffee for the person behind you in line, come in on a weekday and strike up a conversation with a Co-op member you haven’t met before, thank them for using our space during the week. Visit one of our homebound members, let someone in front of you in traffic, invite your neighbor to come with you to worship. Any and all of these actions are ways that we go and tell the good news of God. So see and hear, go and tell. Thanks be to God. Amen.
In fairness to John, this text has jumped us all the way to chapter eleven. A lot happened since we last saw John in the wilderness way back in chapter three, and none of it looked much like John had described. John spoke of the coming of one who was more powerful than him, one whose sandals he would not even be worthy to carry. One who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, who like an ax, would cut down those who do not bear good fruit, to be burned with unquenchable fire. But what John had seen in the ensuring nine chapters involved a lot less burning. In fact, there wasn’t any fire at all that I could find. First Jesus went up a mountain and talked about how the poor, the meek, and the hungry would be blessed for three chapters. Preview of coming attractions, we’ll deep-dive into that in January and February, mark your calendars. Then he came down from the mountain and performed some legit miracles: healing a leper, a centurion’s servant, Peter’s mother-in-law and a whole bunch of other people who happened to be around the neighborhood, two people possessed by demons, a paralytic, a hemorrhaging woman, two blind men and one man who was both mute AND had a demon. He also calmed a storm and raised a girl from the dead. So, yes, a lot of impressive stuff. But do you see what was missing from John’s proclamation? Judgment. No one got judged, at least not in an obvious way. No one got cut off, cut down, or destroyed. Jesus said some more eschatological things—eschatological remember being our vocab word from a couple weeks ago, meaning “words about the last”—talking about not being afraid, gathering up the harvest, and gaining or losing the reward. But in terms of actual burning in unquenchable fire, not so much.
And John was concerned about this because John’s world looked like one that was in need of some judgment. First century Palestine, remember was the time of the Pax Romana, the “Peace of Rome.” And the so-called “peace of Rome” wasn’t peaceful, it was oppressive. Yes there wasn’t out and out warfare or riots in the streets, but that’s because the population was held in place by ruthless Roman soldiers, excessive taxes, and the selling out of those whose role it was to protect the people to serve their own greed. The Pharisees and Sadducees whom John called a “brood of vipers,” were getting richer and more powerful, and all of Jesus’ incredible healing miracles must have seemed to John like trying to protect your home from a forest fire with a garden hose. John wanted it to burn out of control, so that a whole new thing would spring up in its place.
And to be frank, I get John’s concern. I even get John’s desire for this whole mess to be wiped away and a new one to take its place. I drafted this on Wednesday, and right here was a line about how there hadn’t been a school shooting this week, and when she replied, she shared there had been two school shootings in Wisconsin and her local school was closed due to a “credible threat.” More times than I’d ever imagined could be possible so early into my career I’ve felt the need to completely scrap my sermon and start over because of some major catastrophe. There are still families being separated at our southern border. The war in Syria is still racking up death and destruction. The glaciers in Greenland are melting at an alarming rate, the rate of income inequality continues to widen. Oh, and the rate of opioid-related death in Calhoun county is twice the rate of the rest of the state, in case you wanted some good news closer to home. I could go on. And this is two-thousand years after John first asked the question, “are you the one who is to come?” I’m not, as you know, a believer in the whole “rapture theology” concept, the theory that God will remove all the faithful from the earth before destroying what remains in violent and bloody battle of death and destruction. I can give you the historical, scriptural, and theological reasons why I don’t adhere to that viewpoint, but that’s really a bible study topic not a sermon point. So I’ll leave it alone except to say that while I don’t believe it, I do get the popularity of it and the comfort some find in it. It’s a simple answer to a complex question, to be able to say, “yes, things are bad, but that’s because God’s going to destroy it and start again.” Terrifying, but simple.
John too craved a simple answer. Things are bad, Herod is a crook, the Roman Empire is oppressive and destruction, people are suffering. Jesus, you claimed to be the Son of God and bringer of the kingdom of heaven, now show up and be that. Take out the powerful with some axes and unquenchable fire and institute your own kingdom in its place. Or did I hope for the wrong person? Did I announce the wrong one?
And I love how Jesus responded, because Jesus gave John’s disciples such a simple answer, “Go and tell John what you hear and see.” Jesus didn’t make claims of his authenticity or titles. He didn’t berate John for doubting him, didn’t command or demand John’s loyalty. Instead, he took John back to the basic role of the prophet, “Go and tell what you hear and see.” That, remember, is the role of a prophet. Not to predict the future, but to see the present for how it truly is, and to testify, to bear witness, to that truth. What comes of that truth-telling is out of the prophet’s hands. And there’s more even than that layered in Jesus’ words. Hearing and seeing in the Gospels are the first entrance points into discipleship. Being a disciple of Jesus starts not with proclaiming allegiance, confessing faith, or some other act of intellectual assent. Being a disciple of Jesus starts first with seeing, so that “soon you will see greater things than these.”
Notice also what Jesus reminded John’s disciples they had seen. “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” If those words sounded familiar when you heard me say them during the Gospel, that’s because you heard Laurie read a version of them. Isaiah chapter thirty-five, verses five and six, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” It’s key that Jesus reference Isaiah, because remember who John was. John was “the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke,” so this reference back to Isaiah was familiar ground for John.
Another thing that occurred to me about Jesus directing John’s attention to these actions that seemed to fall short of the upending John had expected is that John won’t get to see the end of the story, John won’t live until the resurrection. John, you may remember, gets killed by Herod in chapter fourteen. John is never going to get to see the great upheaval of the crucifixion, when “darkness came over the whole land” and “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.” John didn’t get to see the completion of his proclamation; he only saw the start. What we see from Jesus here is assurance for John in the middle of the journey, that what he could see only in part would come into fullness, that his work would indeed “bear fruit worthy of repentance.”
And that, dear people of God, is the good news for us today. We, though resurrection people, like John live in the time between Christ has come and Christ will come again. We do not get to see the unfolding of the whole picture, we see only a foretaste of the feast to come. But that we see the kingdom only in bits and pieces, a piece of bread and a sip of wine, does not mean that the kingdom is not still coming, that the kingdom is not already here. And the gift of the stillness of Advent is how it, like Jesus did for John, calls us to hear and see. The Tree of Wishes went up last Sunday, and we are already down to one envelope. For many years this congregation had no children, and now there are days when we struggle to hear over them. The expanse of empty lot behind our building now spends its summers as a thriving community garden. Woman’s Co-op is creating a video project to project the voices of those in our community who are so often overlooked and unheard. Friends, hear and see these signs of the kingdom.
Hear and see, and then go and tell. Because the other good news of this passage is that we, like John, have a role to play. We are called not just to be witness but to bear witness. To be prophets ourselves, to take our place in bringing into being the unfolding kingdom of heaven. And just as we are called to hear and see God in ways both large and small, going and telling requires actions of all types and sizes. We don’t all have to be John the Baptist, no witness of the kingdom is too small to matter to God. Write a check to support an organization you care about, buy a cup of coffee for the person behind you in line, come in on a weekday and strike up a conversation with a Co-op member you haven’t met before, thank them for using our space during the week. Visit one of our homebound members, let someone in front of you in traffic, invite your neighbor to come with you to worship. Any and all of these actions are ways that we go and tell the good news of God. So see and hear, go and tell. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Monday, December 9, 2019
God's Judgment is Better than Santa's - A Sermon on Matthew 3:1-12
Merry Christmas, it’s time for unquenchable fire. I think I probably make this joke every year, but I really feel like Hallmark is missing out on a great line of John the Baptist themed holiday cards. Who doesn’t have someone in their life they want to send a card to with a picture of a man with wild hair and wild eyes eating bugs that says “Merry Christmas you brood of vipers” on the inside?
Our Gospel text today is all about judgment. At first this may seem like an unusual theme for the holiday season but Christmas is really the season of judgment. After all, let us remember this beloved Christmas song. “He’s making a list / He’s checking it twice / Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice.” Just to up the creep level just a bit, he isn’t just getting reports, he’s watching. “He sees you when you’re sleeping / He knows when you’re awake / He knows if you’ve been bad or good / So be good for goodness sake.” Who is this person for whom “You better watch out / You better not cry / You better not pout / I’m telling you why”? None other than “Santa Claus is coming to town.”
Sorry if I just ruined a beloved Christmas song for you, but the point is, our culture is talking about judgment this holiday season, and thus so too should we. We also need to talk about judgment, because we’re spending the rest of the year with the Gospel of Matthew, and this is not the only time we’ll hear about unquenchable fire. Matthew loves him some unquenchable fire. He’s also a big fan of weeping and gnashing of teeth, so it’s helpful to set some background now.
So let’s talk about judgment. First, we can acknowledge that we don’t really like to talk about judgment. We’d rather focus on the cute baby Jesus, and leave out the ax and the unquenchable fire. I think we don’t like to talk about judgment because we tend to think about it in the same strict dichotomy that Santa Claus presents. With Santa you’re either bad or good, naughty or nice. With judgment, you’re either wheat or chaff, either taking the proverbial down elevator to the hot place, or the up elevator to sit on the clouds with St. Peter. And we’re Lutheran, a lot of us have that edge of Minnesota nice that doesn’t want to make those kind of declarations of people, we’d rather just ignore judgment altogether.
But friends, here’s the thing about judgment. Judgment is actually good news. Let me say that again, it is good news that we have a God who judges. For theologian O. Wesley Allen, judgment and salvation are two sides of the same coin. Allen writes: “God’s mercy and love are meaningless if God cannot choose to see us and our situations in different ways. For Matthew, to meet and know Christ is to be judged and saved at the same time. I think most of you know I help coach girls basketball at St. Philip High School. The head coach, Devon, is always telling the girls don’t be concerned if we’re critical of you. Don’t be concerned if we’re pointing out things you could do differently or challenging you to try harder. Be concerned if we stop criticizing you. Because when we’re critical of you, when we’re pointing out how you can improve, it’s not because we don’t like you. On the contrary, we’re critical of you because we believe in you. We believe in your potential as a player and as a person. We see how much you’re capable of, we know how good you are, and we want to you know your own potential as well.
And if this is true about coaches of Class D girls basketball, how much more true is it about the creator of the universe. God’s judgment is a sign of God’s attention, it is a sign of God’s concern. We have to be judged in order to be saved. To be saved without first being judged would be meaningless. Think about it. If I came up to you and was like, “hey, I just wanted to you know that I forgive you” and you haven’t done anything to me, my forgiveness is meaningless. Not only meaningless but maybe hurtful, because am I just assuming you’ve done or are going to do something to warrant my forgiveness, so I am magnanimous to offer my forgiveness in advance. That’s not forgiveness, that’s showing off.
When we profess God’s salvation by grace, what we are professing is that God has judged us, has recognized our need for forgiveness, and has offered that forgiveness without us earning or deserving it. The only natural response then to this gift, as we have talked about, is gratitude. This is the fruit worthy of repentance.
Here is another good news about God’s judgment, it is not binary. God’s judgment is not the judgment of Santa, where you are either bad or good, naughty or nice. You are not destined to the eschatological version of either a lump of coal or the Red Ryder BB gun of your dreams. Judgment in a theological sense is truth telling. It is God seeing us exactly as we are, both the things we do right and the places we fall short, and revealing that truth to us. The prophets, and John the Baptist falls in that beloved company of the faithful, the prophets are always about truth telling. Prophets come to proclaim God’s judgment, that judgment being a true assessment of the situation as it is. Like my coaching example from earlier, this judgment is what allows us to change, what opens our eyes to the things that are wrong and empowers us to be different.
God judges us. That feels like sort of strange good news, but in a world that feels increasingly out of control, where there is so much hurt and hate and violence and despair, where there seems to be little truth-telling and no consequences from those who benefit the most in the oppression of others, I have to say that the promise that there is judgment feels like a comforting one. I want there to be some judgment. I want to know that those who are causing such pain, who are destroying our planet, who are living above the law will not do so forever. Yes, I’m a pastor and I’m supposed to be above such retributive hopes, but I’m also a person, and so I confess to you that I am not. This passage, and many others we’ll read in Matthew, assures us that there is judgment.
The challenging corollary to this of course, is that if God’s judgment is truth-telling, then God is also telling the truth about me. God is also calling me out for my failures, my shortcomings, the times that, like in that last paragraph of this sermon, my ego gets the best of me. Of course, that too is good news, though hard good news, because at the end of the day I want to do better, I want to be better. I want a God who judges, even if that judgment is uncomfortable, because if the truth of my actions are not pointed out, I can never hope to change.
Dear friends in Christ, as we await the coming of among us of the Son of God, know that you are judged by God. You are judged because God loves you so much that God wants only the best for you. So lean into that judgment. Let it challenge you, let it change you. Let it open your eyes to your struggles, open your heart to others, and your hands to those who need you. Bring that judgment to the waters of the font, carry them in your hands to the table, and let them be replaced with the promise of Christ’s presence. Yes, we are judged. We are judged because we are so so so loved. Amen.
Our Gospel text today is all about judgment. At first this may seem like an unusual theme for the holiday season but Christmas is really the season of judgment. After all, let us remember this beloved Christmas song. “He’s making a list / He’s checking it twice / Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice.” Just to up the creep level just a bit, he isn’t just getting reports, he’s watching. “He sees you when you’re sleeping / He knows when you’re awake / He knows if you’ve been bad or good / So be good for goodness sake.” Who is this person for whom “You better watch out / You better not cry / You better not pout / I’m telling you why”? None other than “Santa Claus is coming to town.”
Sorry if I just ruined a beloved Christmas song for you, but the point is, our culture is talking about judgment this holiday season, and thus so too should we. We also need to talk about judgment, because we’re spending the rest of the year with the Gospel of Matthew, and this is not the only time we’ll hear about unquenchable fire. Matthew loves him some unquenchable fire. He’s also a big fan of weeping and gnashing of teeth, so it’s helpful to set some background now.
So let’s talk about judgment. First, we can acknowledge that we don’t really like to talk about judgment. We’d rather focus on the cute baby Jesus, and leave out the ax and the unquenchable fire. I think we don’t like to talk about judgment because we tend to think about it in the same strict dichotomy that Santa Claus presents. With Santa you’re either bad or good, naughty or nice. With judgment, you’re either wheat or chaff, either taking the proverbial down elevator to the hot place, or the up elevator to sit on the clouds with St. Peter. And we’re Lutheran, a lot of us have that edge of Minnesota nice that doesn’t want to make those kind of declarations of people, we’d rather just ignore judgment altogether.
But friends, here’s the thing about judgment. Judgment is actually good news. Let me say that again, it is good news that we have a God who judges. For theologian O. Wesley Allen, judgment and salvation are two sides of the same coin. Allen writes: “God’s mercy and love are meaningless if God cannot choose to see us and our situations in different ways. For Matthew, to meet and know Christ is to be judged and saved at the same time. I think most of you know I help coach girls basketball at St. Philip High School. The head coach, Devon, is always telling the girls don’t be concerned if we’re critical of you. Don’t be concerned if we’re pointing out things you could do differently or challenging you to try harder. Be concerned if we stop criticizing you. Because when we’re critical of you, when we’re pointing out how you can improve, it’s not because we don’t like you. On the contrary, we’re critical of you because we believe in you. We believe in your potential as a player and as a person. We see how much you’re capable of, we know how good you are, and we want to you know your own potential as well.
And if this is true about coaches of Class D girls basketball, how much more true is it about the creator of the universe. God’s judgment is a sign of God’s attention, it is a sign of God’s concern. We have to be judged in order to be saved. To be saved without first being judged would be meaningless. Think about it. If I came up to you and was like, “hey, I just wanted to you know that I forgive you” and you haven’t done anything to me, my forgiveness is meaningless. Not only meaningless but maybe hurtful, because am I just assuming you’ve done or are going to do something to warrant my forgiveness, so I am magnanimous to offer my forgiveness in advance. That’s not forgiveness, that’s showing off.
When we profess God’s salvation by grace, what we are professing is that God has judged us, has recognized our need for forgiveness, and has offered that forgiveness without us earning or deserving it. The only natural response then to this gift, as we have talked about, is gratitude. This is the fruit worthy of repentance.
Here is another good news about God’s judgment, it is not binary. God’s judgment is not the judgment of Santa, where you are either bad or good, naughty or nice. You are not destined to the eschatological version of either a lump of coal or the Red Ryder BB gun of your dreams. Judgment in a theological sense is truth telling. It is God seeing us exactly as we are, both the things we do right and the places we fall short, and revealing that truth to us. The prophets, and John the Baptist falls in that beloved company of the faithful, the prophets are always about truth telling. Prophets come to proclaim God’s judgment, that judgment being a true assessment of the situation as it is. Like my coaching example from earlier, this judgment is what allows us to change, what opens our eyes to the things that are wrong and empowers us to be different.
God judges us. That feels like sort of strange good news, but in a world that feels increasingly out of control, where there is so much hurt and hate and violence and despair, where there seems to be little truth-telling and no consequences from those who benefit the most in the oppression of others, I have to say that the promise that there is judgment feels like a comforting one. I want there to be some judgment. I want to know that those who are causing such pain, who are destroying our planet, who are living above the law will not do so forever. Yes, I’m a pastor and I’m supposed to be above such retributive hopes, but I’m also a person, and so I confess to you that I am not. This passage, and many others we’ll read in Matthew, assures us that there is judgment.
The challenging corollary to this of course, is that if God’s judgment is truth-telling, then God is also telling the truth about me. God is also calling me out for my failures, my shortcomings, the times that, like in that last paragraph of this sermon, my ego gets the best of me. Of course, that too is good news, though hard good news, because at the end of the day I want to do better, I want to be better. I want a God who judges, even if that judgment is uncomfortable, because if the truth of my actions are not pointed out, I can never hope to change.
Dear friends in Christ, as we await the coming of among us of the Son of God, know that you are judged by God. You are judged because God loves you so much that God wants only the best for you. So lean into that judgment. Let it challenge you, let it change you. Let it open your eyes to your struggles, open your heart to others, and your hands to those who need you. Bring that judgment to the waters of the font, carry them in your hands to the table, and let them be replaced with the promise of Christ’s presence. Yes, we are judged. We are judged because we are so so so loved. Amen.
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