I heard on the news this week that last Monday was what is known as Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. Normally the third Monday of January, this date is apparently not arbitrary. A brief search through that great bastion of all absolute facts, the Google, produced a formula for how this date is selected, taking into account the following factors: “weather conditions, debt level (the difference between debt accumulated and our ability to pay), time since Christmas, time since failing our new year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and feeling of a need to take action.”
Further Google research uncovered, probably to no surprise, that there is actually no scientific proof of January 20th as the most depressing day of the year. In fact, apparently the whole thing started in 2005 as a publicity stunt by a UK travel agency to get people to book vacations. Fun fact: the same guy who invented Blue Monday was also sponsored by an ice cream company to come up with a formula to calculate the happiest day of the year, sometime in mid-June. But, while Blue Monday may be nothing more than an unsuccessful marketing campaign, it is true that winter is hard because we humans need light. Our bodies are attuned to the rhythms of the sun and when, like in winter, our actual schedules do not line up with the sun’s schedule, the result can be a chemical imbalance in our brains that leads to increased fatigue and depression.
We need light. We need light because we are by and large a visual species. Our preference for light is not a modern pop-psychology excuse to stay in bed and watch Netflix in the winter, it is an evolutionary trait honed from the time when the things that hid in the dark could, and probably wanted to, eat us. A time like that of the writer of Isaiah.
Isaiah was talking metaphorically about the people walking in darkness, but it wouldn’t have been a hard metaphor for his audience to understand because the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali were pretty metaphorically dark places. If you’re up on your Old Testament Bible stories or your Andrew Lloyd Weber musicals, you may recognize Zebulun and Naphtali as two of the twelve tribes of Israel. According to scripture, after the conquest of the Promised Land, Joshua allotted land to each of the twelve tribes of Israel. Naphtali was given the northeastern most corner, north of the sea of Galilee, and Zebulun the land directly below it, what after the time of King David became the northern kingdom of Israel. This location meant when the Assyrian Empire started to strengthen and expand in the 8th century BCE, Zebulun and Naphtali were the first line of defense, and the first, therefore, to fall. And Isaiah, if you remember, was a prophet sent to get the southern kingdom to change their ways before what happened to the northern kingdom would happen to them. Which means these people who were in “anguish” and “contempt,” these were a people conquered people, people without safety or security, people without hope. This was what it meant to be people who “lived in a land of deep darkness.”
And to the southern kingdom of Isaiah’s time, these people sort of had this coming. There was great rivalry between the northern and southern kingdoms of what had been Israel, and the south saw the north’s fall as proof that their wicked ways had caused God to turn God’s back on them.
It is these dark and weary people whom Isaiah announced had “seen a great light.” This light comes not from the foreign powers, nor from the people’s efforts, this light comes from the God who had never left them, dark and alone as things had seemed. Because that is one of the cruel characteristics of darkness, when you are in the midst of it you often cannot see what is there alongside you, that potential for light that is just about to break through.
This is the power of the Epiphany season. Epiphany, this season of light, reminds us that even in the midst of darkness, when we cannot see our way through, the light of Christ is with us, just waiting for the right moment of illumination. The light of Christ is not a switch we can turn on; it is not waiting for our action. Rather, it is there beside us, moving in the darkness, though we cannot sense it, until finally we are drawn into recognition of the in-breaking presence of the kingdom of God.
This in-breaking presence is what the writer of Matthew was referring to in quoting Isaiah in our Gospel reading for this morning. We are only just a few verses out from the adult Jesus’ first appearance on the scene following the bold declarations of John the Baptist, yet already things seem to have taken a turn. Verse twelve informs us that John, who had built such a following in announcing Jesus’ arrival as the one “who will baptize…with the Holy Spirit and fire,” had been arrested by Herod and is in prison.
In the face of this setback, Jesus “withdrew [pause]… He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali.” This withdrawal may seem like retreat at first, which is why the writer of Matthew reminded us of the words of the prophet Isaiah. Because “from that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’”
Repentance, this demand by Jesus to repent, feels loaded because we’re used to hearing it from one another. Calls to repent often come from those with very specific definitions of who is in need of it and what such repentance should look like. But remember the one who is doing the calling here is not a person, it is the Word made flesh. The one who is making this call to repentance is Jesus. And repentance to Jesus is restoration to relationship. Jesus, who the writer of Matthew takes pains to remind us, is God with us, is always the actor, always the subject of any sentence, the one whom is driving the transformation of us. To repent there for is not to transform ourselves but to be transformed. To be drawn in to the light of Christ that is already breaking through the horizon.
Like John, Jesus suggests in this passage that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. The Greek word here is engidzo, which has this sense of impending to it, like the first hints of grey in the dark of the eastern night sky, like the shifts in the soil of springtime before the crocuses burst forth from the snow. Engidzo says that this thing is coming already and though we cannot yet see it, like a freight train it cannot be stopped.
This thing that is coming is the kingdom of heaven, a new state of affairs in which all are “united in the same mind and the same purpose.” This invitation to repent is not so that we can receive the benefit of this kingdom, for that, remember, is already ours. That is the action that is the grace and the gift of Christ Jesus. Rather, this invitation to repent is so we can be about the work of spreading this kingdom, of sharing this gift with others. We see this call to repentance lived out in the rest of this morning’s Gospel reading when from his withdrawn location in Capernaum, Jesus called Simon and Andrew, who immediately left their nets and followed Jesus as he “went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.” The lectionary would stop us here, but if we go on two more verses we find this great light dawning further and further as Jesus’ “fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics”—read here all those whom society had cast aside as not worth the effort—“and he cured them. And great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.”
Dear friends in Christ, do not believe the lie that the darkness wins. For the pattern of dawn in night, the pattern of winter to spring, the movement of Advent to Epiphany, reminds us again and again, that Christ is with us, though we cannot yet see it. But the in-breaking of the kingdom is at hand. Thanks be to God. Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Bearing Witness - A Sermon on Isaiah 49:1-7 and John 1:29-42
I am fast becoming a fan of Dr. Juliana Claassens, the professor of Old Testament from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa. Last Sunday I basically read her commentary on the Isaiah text to you. This week, her commentary started with what is apparently a famous quote from theologian Soren Kierkegaard, though I’d never heard it before, “the door to happiness opens outward.”
Like last week our Isaiah reading for this morning places us among a people whose lives had been upended. Israel returned from the bonds of exile and is now trying to rebuild a community from the ruins. Which is a complicated place to be, because Israel is looking around, as one often does after a major disaster and finds itself faced with conflicting emotions. On one hand, they’re back in Israel. The exile is over and they survived. Things are not as bad as they were, not as bad as they could have been. But on the other hand, things are pretty darn bad. In Isaiah we see a person who is trying to make sense of how both of these conflicting realities could be true, how there could be both gratitude and despair. If it is possible for one to recognize blessing and still honor loss.
Short answer, yes. Yes blessing and grief can co-exist. Yes you can be grateful that things are not as bad as they could be and devastated that things are as bad as they are. Just like we can in fact walk and chew gum at the same time, we have the capacity to be both thankful and heartbroken. The way through this is balance. It is not enough to wallow in the grief, but nor is it helpful to pretend the grief is not real and focus only on the positive. And when faced with two extremes, sometimes the way to find balance is to introduce a third thing.
The thing God introduced for Israel was to turn their focus outward, Kierkegaard’s door to happiness. As we talked about last week, when we are afraid or uncertain our natural human tendency is toward self-preservation. We look inward, trying to bolster our own resources, ensure our own survival. Some of us at least. Others of us try to live in total denial that the bad thing ever happened and focus only on the positive. Friends, hard truth, neither work.
You know how on a plane the flight attendant tells you to put on your own oxygen mask before assisting other people. That is great wisdom for within the confined space of an aircraft, you have to look out for yourself first or you will be unable to look out for others. Fortunately and unfortunately, in the vast open complexity of the world, the strategy of looking out for yourself first before assisting others is often not only inefficient, it more often than not will hasten your own destruction. Because outside of a closed system, we need each other. It is in fact impossible to be fully self-sufficient, to make sure you have everything you need before you help. And if you try, you’ll miss the gifts others have to offer. Take our congregation for an example. The moment we decide we are too important to fail, that we have to make sure we have everything we need to ensure our own survival, that we have adequate resources, training, support, etc. for ourselves before we serve others, that is the moment our doors will shut. Yes, depending on the help, support, and resources of others, people we don’t know, people who might be different than us, who might challenge us, might change us, is scary. But the fact is God created us for each other, God created us to be in relationship with each other. So if you’re on a plane, yes, put your oxygen mask on first. But when you’re not, turns out the mask won’t work if it isn’t connected to another.
Now granted the people God was speaking to in Isaiah weren’t on a plane, or for that matter had any idea what a plane was, but that was essentially God’s message to Israel. The way to survive the upheaval of everything you knew is to reach out to others. Listen to the flow of this text. “The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me. He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away. And he said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” So here we have Israel declared God’s servant, in whom God will be glorified, hidden away. Think of the history of Israel. Way way back, Abraham had been promised his descendant would number the stars, and it was a rough road from then on. They ended up slaves in Egypt. God led them out of Egypt and established for them a nation. They wanted a king. God gave them Saul, he wasn’t a winner. Then they got David, he was better but definitely still had his down moments. Israel split into two, the northern kingdom was destroyed, then the southern, and then the people went into exile. This history of struggle and failure is clear in verse four, “But I said, ‘I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.’” Listen to the despair in that, God you said we were your people, we tried to do what you wanted, to remain faithful. But here we are, amidst the ruins of your city, Jerusalem your jewel now destroyed, so what was the point of it all. But God, who remember in verse three just declared them to be God’s servant, goes on: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant[,] to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel. [No,] I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” Friends, how would we live if we truly believed that? What would we do, who would we be, how would we live if we truly believed that the door to happiness, to fulfillment, to not just survival but satisfaction and faith and wholeness, lay in the opportunity to share with others? In this Isaiah text we have a God who says to us, you are not my servant, you are more than that. And this promise is not to Israel, it is wider than that. Friends to me that just feels like freedom because it means it’s out of my hands. It feels like freedom, it feels like purpose, and it feels like trust.
Which brings us to John. First, just as a point of clarification, let’s remember that John is a super common name in the Bible. You might remember from the Passion story on Good Friday there were three women all named Mary. Jesus’ “mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene.” The name John is like that. There’s a million of them. So the John we’re reading about in this story is not the same John who wrote the Gospel of John. So we’ve got John who, like I mentioned last week, is an important enough character to appear in all four Gospel accounts. But John in the Gospel of John differs from John in Matthew, Mark, and Luke in this way. In John’s Gospel, John talks about baptism but we never actually see him baptizing. John’s real role in John’s Gospel is not baptizer but witness. John’s job is to witness to who Jesus is, John baptizes in order to witness.
The John from John’s Gospel is a great one to start Epiphany with because this John is one we can emulate. Obviously, the call to travel to the wilderness to begin a mission of baptizing people in the river and eventually baptize the son of God himself is not something we can all aspire to. But we can all aspire to do what John does in this text, we can all aspire to witness. We can all aspire to look for the presence, the action, the spirit of God in the world and to say, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.”
Pointing out God’s presence in the world may seem so simple, too simple, to matter. But look how this story unfolded. Jesus’ first disciples did not begin to follow because Jesus called them. They were not impressed with Christ’s message or transformed by his power. Jesus didn’t heal them or feed them or even speak to them. Verse thirty-five: “John was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.” One of those two turned out be Andrew, who brought his brother Simon, soon to be called Peter. Then through Andrew and Simon, Jesus met Philip, and Philip brought Nathanael, and you see where this is going, a long string of witnesses across time and space that leads all the way to us. All because John said, “Look.”
Dear friends in Christ, our witness matters. Our words matter. When we speak out against injustice, when we lift our voices to point out God’s presence, when we support each other, when we serve our neighbor, these things change things. Verse thirty-seven is the last appearance John makes in the Gospel of John, as he watched his own disciples walk away from him at his own command. We know from the synoptics that John won’t even live to see the resurrection, so it is very likely that John never knew the impact his words, his witness had on the world. But we know that they did, for we gather today as heirs of that first call to look and to follow.
So again, the same question the Isaiah text left us with, in Epiphany we become witnesses to the presence of Christ in the world. What would you do if you truly saw Christ? And what will you do now that you have? Amen.
Like last week our Isaiah reading for this morning places us among a people whose lives had been upended. Israel returned from the bonds of exile and is now trying to rebuild a community from the ruins. Which is a complicated place to be, because Israel is looking around, as one often does after a major disaster and finds itself faced with conflicting emotions. On one hand, they’re back in Israel. The exile is over and they survived. Things are not as bad as they were, not as bad as they could have been. But on the other hand, things are pretty darn bad. In Isaiah we see a person who is trying to make sense of how both of these conflicting realities could be true, how there could be both gratitude and despair. If it is possible for one to recognize blessing and still honor loss.
Short answer, yes. Yes blessing and grief can co-exist. Yes you can be grateful that things are not as bad as they could be and devastated that things are as bad as they are. Just like we can in fact walk and chew gum at the same time, we have the capacity to be both thankful and heartbroken. The way through this is balance. It is not enough to wallow in the grief, but nor is it helpful to pretend the grief is not real and focus only on the positive. And when faced with two extremes, sometimes the way to find balance is to introduce a third thing.
The thing God introduced for Israel was to turn their focus outward, Kierkegaard’s door to happiness. As we talked about last week, when we are afraid or uncertain our natural human tendency is toward self-preservation. We look inward, trying to bolster our own resources, ensure our own survival. Some of us at least. Others of us try to live in total denial that the bad thing ever happened and focus only on the positive. Friends, hard truth, neither work.
You know how on a plane the flight attendant tells you to put on your own oxygen mask before assisting other people. That is great wisdom for within the confined space of an aircraft, you have to look out for yourself first or you will be unable to look out for others. Fortunately and unfortunately, in the vast open complexity of the world, the strategy of looking out for yourself first before assisting others is often not only inefficient, it more often than not will hasten your own destruction. Because outside of a closed system, we need each other. It is in fact impossible to be fully self-sufficient, to make sure you have everything you need before you help. And if you try, you’ll miss the gifts others have to offer. Take our congregation for an example. The moment we decide we are too important to fail, that we have to make sure we have everything we need to ensure our own survival, that we have adequate resources, training, support, etc. for ourselves before we serve others, that is the moment our doors will shut. Yes, depending on the help, support, and resources of others, people we don’t know, people who might be different than us, who might challenge us, might change us, is scary. But the fact is God created us for each other, God created us to be in relationship with each other. So if you’re on a plane, yes, put your oxygen mask on first. But when you’re not, turns out the mask won’t work if it isn’t connected to another.
Now granted the people God was speaking to in Isaiah weren’t on a plane, or for that matter had any idea what a plane was, but that was essentially God’s message to Israel. The way to survive the upheaval of everything you knew is to reach out to others. Listen to the flow of this text. “The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me. He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away. And he said to me, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified.” So here we have Israel declared God’s servant, in whom God will be glorified, hidden away. Think of the history of Israel. Way way back, Abraham had been promised his descendant would number the stars, and it was a rough road from then on. They ended up slaves in Egypt. God led them out of Egypt and established for them a nation. They wanted a king. God gave them Saul, he wasn’t a winner. Then they got David, he was better but definitely still had his down moments. Israel split into two, the northern kingdom was destroyed, then the southern, and then the people went into exile. This history of struggle and failure is clear in verse four, “But I said, ‘I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity.’” Listen to the despair in that, God you said we were your people, we tried to do what you wanted, to remain faithful. But here we are, amidst the ruins of your city, Jerusalem your jewel now destroyed, so what was the point of it all. But God, who remember in verse three just declared them to be God’s servant, goes on: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant[,] to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel. [No,] I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” Friends, how would we live if we truly believed that? What would we do, who would we be, how would we live if we truly believed that the door to happiness, to fulfillment, to not just survival but satisfaction and faith and wholeness, lay in the opportunity to share with others? In this Isaiah text we have a God who says to us, you are not my servant, you are more than that. And this promise is not to Israel, it is wider than that. Friends to me that just feels like freedom because it means it’s out of my hands. It feels like freedom, it feels like purpose, and it feels like trust.
Which brings us to John. First, just as a point of clarification, let’s remember that John is a super common name in the Bible. You might remember from the Passion story on Good Friday there were three women all named Mary. Jesus’ “mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene.” The name John is like that. There’s a million of them. So the John we’re reading about in this story is not the same John who wrote the Gospel of John. So we’ve got John who, like I mentioned last week, is an important enough character to appear in all four Gospel accounts. But John in the Gospel of John differs from John in Matthew, Mark, and Luke in this way. In John’s Gospel, John talks about baptism but we never actually see him baptizing. John’s real role in John’s Gospel is not baptizer but witness. John’s job is to witness to who Jesus is, John baptizes in order to witness.
The John from John’s Gospel is a great one to start Epiphany with because this John is one we can emulate. Obviously, the call to travel to the wilderness to begin a mission of baptizing people in the river and eventually baptize the son of God himself is not something we can all aspire to. But we can all aspire to do what John does in this text, we can all aspire to witness. We can all aspire to look for the presence, the action, the spirit of God in the world and to say, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.”
Pointing out God’s presence in the world may seem so simple, too simple, to matter. But look how this story unfolded. Jesus’ first disciples did not begin to follow because Jesus called them. They were not impressed with Christ’s message or transformed by his power. Jesus didn’t heal them or feed them or even speak to them. Verse thirty-five: “John was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.” One of those two turned out be Andrew, who brought his brother Simon, soon to be called Peter. Then through Andrew and Simon, Jesus met Philip, and Philip brought Nathanael, and you see where this is going, a long string of witnesses across time and space that leads all the way to us. All because John said, “Look.”
Dear friends in Christ, our witness matters. Our words matter. When we speak out against injustice, when we lift our voices to point out God’s presence, when we support each other, when we serve our neighbor, these things change things. Verse thirty-seven is the last appearance John makes in the Gospel of John, as he watched his own disciples walk away from him at his own command. We know from the synoptics that John won’t even live to see the resurrection, so it is very likely that John never knew the impact his words, his witness had on the world. But we know that they did, for we gather today as heirs of that first call to look and to follow.
So again, the same question the Isaiah text left us with, in Epiphany we become witnesses to the presence of Christ in the world. What would you do if you truly saw Christ? And what will you do now that you have? Amen.
Monday, January 13, 2020
A Map of Hope: A Sermon on Isaiah 42:1-9; Matthew 3:13-17; and Acts 10:34-43
It’s Baptism of our Lord Sunday this morning, so we’ll get to baptism eventually. But 2020 feels like it’s started with a rush. I read a commentary on Isaiah this week that gave me hope in the midst of this, so I want to start us out with Isaiah. Juliana Claassens, Professor of Old Testament at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, characterized Isaiah as “a map of hope for disoriented and dislocated people at risk of losing their bearings.” I read that and found myself taking a deep breath, thinking, “a map of hope is exactly what I’m searching for right now.”
“So,” Claassens asked, “how does a prophet go about talking to people who have been completely traumatized by seeing their city destroyed, their family and friends killed or taken away in shackles to a foreign land and who even feel that God has deserted them?” What Isaiah gives us here and throughout this book is a variety of images to help us see God in new ways, and thus see God with us in the midst of unexpected chaos, tragedy, and fear. God in Isaiah is both a mighty warrior who will deliver God’s people and a shepherd who clutches the little lamb. God is a divine warrior and a woman in labor. God is a highway in the desert, God is water in the wilderness, God is that wilderness flourishing. God is sight to the blind, God is light and life to those in dark dungeons. God is the bruised reed that will not break, the dimly burning wick that will not quench. In contrast to the image of God depicted in the psalm we read, which another commentary I read described simply as “loud,” here we see quiet, steady persistence. This one “will not cry or lift up his voice,” yet neither will he “grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth.”
First off, as one who, as you know, is not one to raise my voice, I found great comfort in this idea that there is a place and a role for quiet, steady, persistence. That justice can, and in this passage is, established not by the mighty but by those whom God has “called in righteousness… taken by the hand and kept… [and] given as a covenant to the people.” But more than that, Claassens went on to note “the remarkable thing we see in this text is how the people who have been traumatized are called not to do the typical human thing of what has been called “circling the wagons”… in Isaiah 42, the prophet offers a vision of the world in which an individual or a group of people in the midst of brokenness, in spite of brokenness, or maybe because of brokenness, will be a light to the nations.”
This passage, and Claassens read of it, is hope for me in two ways. First it says that we do not have to be mighty and powerful to be the ones God takes by the hand to do justice. We do not have to be the ones who have never been knocked down, who have it all together, to be “called in righteousness.” Claassens even quoted the great theologian Leonard Cohen, “Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, but that’s where the light gets in.” And second, the message of Isaiah to the people of its time and to us is that in the midst of the most difficult times, in the midst of the times when things feel the most out of control, the most broken down, when we feel the most helpless, God is still with us. And not just with us, God is moving us. God is leading us, guiding us, moving us out, not just for ourselves but for the sake of the whole world. I don’t know about you, dear people of God, but this promise of hope and the transformative power of compassion was, is, a message I need in this time where I feel so little power and control.
Which brings us to Matthew and the baptism of Jesus. The passage opens with Jesus coming to John in the wilderness to be baptized. This is important because it demonstrates Jesus’ control over the situation. By having Jesus travel all the way from Galilee to the Judean wilderness in order to be baptized, we see the first sign of the upside-down nature of the kingdom of God. In Jesus’ baptism by John we see Jesus define his identity in submission to another. Jesus maintained control by placing his ministry in the hands of another. John’s mission was to baptize and bear witness, Jesus came to John in the Jordan in order that John might fulfill that mission. Dr. Eugene Boring called this a “literary preemptive strike.” Given the current state of world affairs, Dr. Boring’s description struck me because this preemptive strike of Jesus’ is so unlike the definition of a preemptive strike I’m used to. Now, this is not to say anything about the necessity or benefit of any military action. There are certainly times and places in which preemptive strikes are necessary to save lives and prevent worse violence. But the very nature of a preemptive strike is a move to retain power, and in Jesus’ preemptive strike we see a move to share power. This is a very different definition of power. This is the “power made perfect in weakness” that Paul will talk about in Romans, when Jesus the sinless came to be baptized “with water for repentance,” before taking his place as the one who will “baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
John himself questioned this move. Now wait a second here Jesus, “‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.’” Let me read that again, “for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” As we saw with Joseph righteously going against the law and refusing to divorce his wife, righteousness in Matthew’s Gospel is about being in right relationship with God, it is about living in the way God has revealed even when that way of living goes completely against the religious, social, and cultural expectations of what it means to be righteous.
Jesus’ baptism is a fulfillment of righteousness because in Jesus’ baptism God is revealed. In this moment we see the heavens opened, the Spirit descending like a dove, and a voice from heaven proclaiming “This [this one, this one right here, This] is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, and at his baptism, Jesus’ identity is made abundantly clear.
And baptism for us too is a fulfillment of all righteousness, because in our baptism our identities too are made clear. In the waters of baptism we bear witness to the death of Christ, which takes away the bonds of sin and death that separate us from God and the declaration that with Christ we too are resurrected, we are made new, claimed as God’s beloved children. In the Acts text, Peter declared “We are witnesses to all that [Jesus] did both in Judea and Jerusalem” and in baptism we too become witnesses to all that God has done. That, as an aside, is why we baptize infants in the Lutheran church. We baptize infants because baptism is not a choice we make, it is a promise God makes to us. In baptism, God says, this is my child, my beloved. This one can never be separated from me. The promise that God made is true whether you chose to be baptized as an adult or whether someone chose for you as an infant. Because the act of baptism is God’s declaration to us.
As Peter declared to Cornelius and his family, we have been chosen by God as witnesses to this good news: That God shows no partiality, but in every nation everyone is acceptable, everyone is welcome, everyone is a part of God’s family. As Isaiah declared to the people of Israel so long ago, so it is declared to us today. “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord, that is my name… See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.” Dear people of God, you, we, are the ones God has called, through the waters of baptism, to be light to the world. So do not fear, persist, for God “will not faint or be crushed until justice has been established in the earth,” and we are the ones God has sent to do it. Thanks be to God. Amen.
“So,” Claassens asked, “how does a prophet go about talking to people who have been completely traumatized by seeing their city destroyed, their family and friends killed or taken away in shackles to a foreign land and who even feel that God has deserted them?” What Isaiah gives us here and throughout this book is a variety of images to help us see God in new ways, and thus see God with us in the midst of unexpected chaos, tragedy, and fear. God in Isaiah is both a mighty warrior who will deliver God’s people and a shepherd who clutches the little lamb. God is a divine warrior and a woman in labor. God is a highway in the desert, God is water in the wilderness, God is that wilderness flourishing. God is sight to the blind, God is light and life to those in dark dungeons. God is the bruised reed that will not break, the dimly burning wick that will not quench. In contrast to the image of God depicted in the psalm we read, which another commentary I read described simply as “loud,” here we see quiet, steady persistence. This one “will not cry or lift up his voice,” yet neither will he “grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth.”
First off, as one who, as you know, is not one to raise my voice, I found great comfort in this idea that there is a place and a role for quiet, steady, persistence. That justice can, and in this passage is, established not by the mighty but by those whom God has “called in righteousness… taken by the hand and kept… [and] given as a covenant to the people.” But more than that, Claassens went on to note “the remarkable thing we see in this text is how the people who have been traumatized are called not to do the typical human thing of what has been called “circling the wagons”… in Isaiah 42, the prophet offers a vision of the world in which an individual or a group of people in the midst of brokenness, in spite of brokenness, or maybe because of brokenness, will be a light to the nations.”
This passage, and Claassens read of it, is hope for me in two ways. First it says that we do not have to be mighty and powerful to be the ones God takes by the hand to do justice. We do not have to be the ones who have never been knocked down, who have it all together, to be “called in righteousness.” Claassens even quoted the great theologian Leonard Cohen, “Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, but that’s where the light gets in.” And second, the message of Isaiah to the people of its time and to us is that in the midst of the most difficult times, in the midst of the times when things feel the most out of control, the most broken down, when we feel the most helpless, God is still with us. And not just with us, God is moving us. God is leading us, guiding us, moving us out, not just for ourselves but for the sake of the whole world. I don’t know about you, dear people of God, but this promise of hope and the transformative power of compassion was, is, a message I need in this time where I feel so little power and control.
Which brings us to Matthew and the baptism of Jesus. The passage opens with Jesus coming to John in the wilderness to be baptized. This is important because it demonstrates Jesus’ control over the situation. By having Jesus travel all the way from Galilee to the Judean wilderness in order to be baptized, we see the first sign of the upside-down nature of the kingdom of God. In Jesus’ baptism by John we see Jesus define his identity in submission to another. Jesus maintained control by placing his ministry in the hands of another. John’s mission was to baptize and bear witness, Jesus came to John in the Jordan in order that John might fulfill that mission. Dr. Eugene Boring called this a “literary preemptive strike.” Given the current state of world affairs, Dr. Boring’s description struck me because this preemptive strike of Jesus’ is so unlike the definition of a preemptive strike I’m used to. Now, this is not to say anything about the necessity or benefit of any military action. There are certainly times and places in which preemptive strikes are necessary to save lives and prevent worse violence. But the very nature of a preemptive strike is a move to retain power, and in Jesus’ preemptive strike we see a move to share power. This is a very different definition of power. This is the “power made perfect in weakness” that Paul will talk about in Romans, when Jesus the sinless came to be baptized “with water for repentance,” before taking his place as the one who will “baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire.”
John himself questioned this move. Now wait a second here Jesus, “‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.’” Let me read that again, “for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” As we saw with Joseph righteously going against the law and refusing to divorce his wife, righteousness in Matthew’s Gospel is about being in right relationship with God, it is about living in the way God has revealed even when that way of living goes completely against the religious, social, and cultural expectations of what it means to be righteous.
Jesus’ baptism is a fulfillment of righteousness because in Jesus’ baptism God is revealed. In this moment we see the heavens opened, the Spirit descending like a dove, and a voice from heaven proclaiming “This [this one, this one right here, This] is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us, and at his baptism, Jesus’ identity is made abundantly clear.
And baptism for us too is a fulfillment of all righteousness, because in our baptism our identities too are made clear. In the waters of baptism we bear witness to the death of Christ, which takes away the bonds of sin and death that separate us from God and the declaration that with Christ we too are resurrected, we are made new, claimed as God’s beloved children. In the Acts text, Peter declared “We are witnesses to all that [Jesus] did both in Judea and Jerusalem” and in baptism we too become witnesses to all that God has done. That, as an aside, is why we baptize infants in the Lutheran church. We baptize infants because baptism is not a choice we make, it is a promise God makes to us. In baptism, God says, this is my child, my beloved. This one can never be separated from me. The promise that God made is true whether you chose to be baptized as an adult or whether someone chose for you as an infant. Because the act of baptism is God’s declaration to us.
As Peter declared to Cornelius and his family, we have been chosen by God as witnesses to this good news: That God shows no partiality, but in every nation everyone is acceptable, everyone is welcome, everyone is a part of God’s family. As Isaiah declared to the people of Israel so long ago, so it is declared to us today. “I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people, a light to the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness. I am the Lord, that is my name… See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.” Dear people of God, you, we, are the ones God has called, through the waters of baptism, to be light to the world. So do not fear, persist, for God “will not faint or be crushed until justice has been established in the earth,” and we are the ones God has sent to do it. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Thursday, December 26, 2019
The Innkeeper's Hospitality - A Sermon on Luke 2.1-20
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 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.
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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