The questions are heavy, ominous. They sound like they come from a different age or perhaps from a horror movie:
Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces that rebel against God?
Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God? Continue reading
I’ve done something for this Sunday that I don’t think I’ve ever done before as a preacher. I’ve significantly altered the appointed Gospel reading for the day. Instead of choosing between either Mt. 2:1-12 (the story of the Magi) or Mt. 2:13-15, 19-23 (the story of the Flight into Egypt), we’ve read them both. Truthfully, it’s not all that radical. It’s always an option to lengthen the lectionary readings. So today, we heard the gospel appointed for 2 Christmas, the second half of chapter 2, and the gospel appointed for the Feast of the Epiphany which is tomorrow, vss. 1-12. What’s left out is the story of the slaughter of the innocents—Herod’s decision to have all of the children of Bethlehem, age 2 or under, killed.
What I would like to do today is something a little different than my custom. We are in year A of the three-year lectionary cycle. It’s the year we will spend our time hearing from the Gospel of Matthew. Last year was year C, the year of Luke, and next year will be the year of the Gospel of Mark. The gospel of John doesn’t have a year of its own. It’s interspersed throughout the three year cycle, especially during Lent and Easter. So this year is Matthew and I would like to take some time to focus on some of the central themes and concerns of Matthew, using chapter 2 as a starting point.
One of the distinctive characteristics of Matthew is his use of “fulfillment quotations.” We see several of them in this chapter. In fact, they are rather curious. If you go back to the original references in Hebrew scripture, it’s usually not at all clear what the connection is with the gospel of Matthew. They are not simply predictions. Rather, they are resonances, echoes that Matthew uses to make connections between Hebrew scripture and the story he’s telling.
Matthew shapes his story in this chapter around a biblical story from the books of Genesis and Exodus—the story of the enslavement of the Hebrew people and their miraculous deliverance by acts of Yahweh. Is it coincidence that Jesus’ father is named Joseph, just as it was Joseph in Genesis who dreamed, believed in God, and did as God told? In response to a word from an angel in a dream, Joseph took his family out of harm’s way into exile in Egypt; just as Jacob and his family went to Egypt to seek refuge from a famine. In the earlier story, it was Pharaoh who sought to kill all male Hebrew children under age two because of fear. In Matthew, Herod is indiscriminate, killing all of Bethlehem’s children under two.
Those are two examples—the fulfillment citations and the echoes of Genesis and Exodus—of one of Matthew’s overarching interests or concerns: to make a connection between the story he is telling, the story of Jesus the Messiah, with the Hebrew Bible and its long story of the relationship between God and God’s chosen people. Those echoes and resonances fill Matthew’s gospel. Jesus appears as the new Moses, reinterpreting the law; Jesus is the fulfillment of prophecy, the Messiah hoped for by the Jewish people of first-century Palestine.
There’s another deep connection between the Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth and the Genesis/Exodus story. Matthew depicts Herod as an arbitrary, fearful, and vindictive tyrant. He is an almost perfect replica of Pharaoh in Exodus who is shown to be equally arbitrary and vindictive. Indeed, one of the key themes in this story is the contrast between the two kings: Herod on the one hand, and Jesus on the other.
Although a convert to Judaism, Herod was hated by most Jews as the king of Judea, in part because they thought he was Jew in name only and in part because of his pro-Roman leanings. He became king by submitting to Roman authority. He lavished his territory with building projects, including a renovation and expansion of the temple in Jerusalem. Known for his ruthlessness, Herod executed at least three of his sons for conspiring against him. Herod’s lavish spending and propensity to violence are a sharp contrast to the powerless and impoverished infant Jesus.
Jesus seems to be powerless. In fact, throughout this chapter he is acted upon. The magi see him and worship him; Joseph takes him and Mary to Egypt, and then takes them both back to Galilee. Jesus’ family flee Herod’s wrath, so the contrast between the two kings is drawn especially dramatically. Yet in the narrative itself there are hints of a different reality—the power of the reign being ushered in with the birth of Jesus Christ and the threat it poses to the powers of the world. The text says that Herod was terrified at the news of the birth of a king. It also alludes to his death at least three times. And at the end of the chapter, it is Jesus who is alive and well, while Herod is dead.
There’s another important theme in this chapter that carries throughout Matthew’s gospel. We see in the first few verses the response of Jerusalem’s religious and political leadership to news of Jesus’ birth. No one in Jerusalem has any idea what is happening in Bethlehem, even though the “chief priests and scribes” seem to know where to look. Instead of the religious experts looking for the birth of the Messiah, it is outsiders, wise men from the east who are eager to pay homage to Jesus.
These Magi are probably meant to be Zoroastrian astrologers, adherents of another religion. They were about as exotic as a gospel writer could imagine in the first century, completely outside one’s ordinary experience in Palestine. The magi paid close attention to the skies, charting the movements of the planets in an effort to understand the relationship between the skies and life on earth. They discerned in those skies evidence of something new and came in search of it.
We don’t know what happens to the magi after they return home. We don’t know what precisely they thought, how they responded to their encounter with Jesus Christ. It’s not clear that they came to any conventional sort of faith. They came to Bethlehem to pay him homage; they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and then they returned home by another route.
But their presence here in the story is not simply an excuse for us to add figures of the magi to the crèche, or to explain why we exchange gifts at Christmas. Their presence here is evidence of the power of God to work outside of ordinary channels—the religious elite, the insiders, those who should have known who the Messiah was, where he was going to be born, and what sort of Messiah he would be—the religious elite consistently rejected Jesus. The political elite, the powerful finally killed him. The magi are a reminder that we can see signs of God’s presence and activity in nature and in the world around us, and some people can come to know God through such signs and experiences.
But there’s something else. At the very end of the gospel, just before Jesus departs from the disciples, he tells them: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” In the beginning of the gospel, the nations come to pay him homage, worship him. At the end of the gospel, as the disciples are bowing down and worshiping him, Jesus tells them to go out to the nations to make disciples.
We know which king is more powerful—Herod goes down in history as a petty tyrant while billions across the world worship Jesus Christ. But the story of Jesus’ birth in Matthew stands to us as a stark reminder that the powers of the world are in conflict with the power of Bethlehem and of the cross; a warning to us too that our religious certainties may mislead us to side with the powers of this world and that Jesus is present in all sorts of ways we don’t know and can’t understand, present among the victims of suffering, present with political refugees, present with the weak and powerless. We should seek him there to pay him homage, not in palaces or halls of power.
Christmas may be over in our culture, but for us it continues for twelve days, through January 5. I don’t know whether any of you actually observe the twelve days of Christmas in any way, about the only nod Corrie and I make to the traditional season of Christmastide is to leave our Christmas tree up through the duration. In the stores, I assume the Christmas decorations are down and the Valentine’s Day displays are up. While many people’s outdoor decorations remain, the number of discarded Christmas trees curbside is growing by the day. We’ve moved on to other things—last minute plans for New Year’s, thinking about what January will bring, bowl games, NFL playoffs, all of that. Christmas is receding into the past, now memories, hopefully joyful memories, but memories nonetheless. Continue reading
In this way, God chose to come
I had great joy in a three-week period this past summer to offer blessings soon after the births of three babies. It’s one of the highlights of my priestly ministry, to be invited to come into a hospital room and be with a new family, new parents, as they rejoice over the gift of a baby they’ve received, to pray with them, to share their joy, their hopes, their exhaustion, and yes, some of their apprehension. For all three families, it was their first child. I could see in the parents’ eyes their wonder, amazement, and love. Although extended families gathered around and they were all in the care of excellent hospitals and medical professionals, I could also sense the awesome responsibility that the parents felt.
As I’ve been talking, many of you will recall your own experience in hospital rooms like that, a few years ago, or perhaps decades ago. Some of you will be hoping for similar experiences in the near or not-so-distant future; and some of you may feel sadness that this is something you will never know personally. Whatever our individual experience may be, we know about the happiness and responsibilities, the joy and the heartaches, that come with newborn babies.
I encountered other babies over the last few months; babies that whatever the circumstances of their birth, were now living with their mothers on the street, or nearly so. Three or four months old; their mothers had come to me for help, for housing, or gas, or food. I could see in the faces of those mothers the same love I saw in the faces of the parents in those hospital rooms; the same hopes for the future. But what I saw most was worry and fear. Like most of you, when I encounter mothers and babies in these circumstances, I feel great compassion and sorrow, but that’s also often tinged with a little judgment, as I wonder what brought them to this place in life. I give them what financial help I can thanks to the generosity of members and friends of Grace, and I also try to point them in the direction of agencies that might help them with some more permanent solutions.
Tonight, at Christmas, we encounter another mother and baby, one whose situation is much more similar to those babies in need that I just described than the newborns I met in the hospital last summer. Mary and her husband may not have been homeless in our contemporary sense, but that night they had to find shelter in a stable, or more likely, a cave.
Mary was pregnant under suspicious circumstances—although she and Joseph were legally married according to Jewish law, the contract or marriage license had been signed, their relationship had not been consummated. According to that same Jewish law, Mary’s pregnancy meant she had committed adultery, and Joseph was legally obligated to divorce her. Mary’s pregnancy brought public shame on her and on her husband.
These are things we tend not to think about when we hear the familiar story of Jesus’ birth. Most of us know it so well, and if we haven’t heard it many times before, we probably still know its basic outline—a manger, a stable, no room in the inn; Mary, Joseph, the baby, shepherds, angels, all of that. We know it but we tend to overlook its messiness, the embarrassment of it all. It is a messy and embarrassing story in spite of everything we do to sanitize it and sentimentalize it.
Our images of Christmas are dominated by paintings like the reproduction on tonight’s service bulletin, crèches like the one that stands before our altar. Mary is young, beautiful, well-dressed; Joseph looks distinguished, mature, an upstanding member of the community. Except for the crude surroundings, things are serene, respectable, beautiful.
The reality was rather different. Mary was young, uncomfortably young by twenty-first century standards, her reputation in danger because of her pregnancy. Joseph too was disreputable, if not already, then he would be by deciding to stay with her. They were not from Bethlehem. They had come here because of imperial fiat, a distant and ruthless ruler imposing its whim on subject peoples. The shepherds who came to worship were even less respected than Mary and Joseph may have been; virtual outcasts living on the edge of society obeying none of society’s norms.
Here, to this place, God chose to come. To a tiny village, a manger, a feed trough in a troublesome backwater province of the greatest empire the world had ever seen.
Here, to this couple, God chose to come. To a young girl and her husband. We wonder about them. Christians have pondered the mystery of God becoming flesh through Mary. We have argued and debated; we have painted, and played music, and sung and prayed to her. We have imagined all manner of things about her. But what we can know is that when word came to her that she would have a son; when God chose her, she said yes. We don’t know much about Joseph other than his name and occupation. We don’t know how old he was; we know he was righteous—the Gospel of Matthew tells us that—and we know that when word came to him that Mary would give birth to God, Joseph said yes. To this couple, God chose to come.
Here, to this newborn infant, God chose to become flesh. If you’ve ever seen a newborn, if you’ve ever seen your own newborn child, you know about the beauty, love, excitement of a new baby. You also know about their weakness, vulnerability, their complete and absolute dependence on others for everything. Without the help of other humans, a baby will die in a few minutes or hours. They are utterly helpless. They are weak and needy and messy. In such a form, in such a body, God chose to become flesh.
The miracle of Christmas is not just the lovely story. In fact, the miracle of Christmas has nothing to do with virgin birth, or shepherds or wise men or angels. The miracle of Christmas is that in that newborn baby, we see God become human, God become one of us. In the vulnerability, weakness, utter dependence of that infant, we see the face of God. The miracle of Christmas is also that in two quite ordinary people, in Mary and Joseph, in two ordinary people who chose to say yes to God, we learn something important about the nature of faith.
That’s the miracle of Christmas, the miracle of Christianity. The God we worship is not a god of thunder resident on a high mountain. Nor is the God we worship a god who demands we bow to him because of his vast superiority. Our God is a God who created us, knows us, became one of us. The God who created us, knows us, became one of us, that very God chooses us.
We may encounter God or the presence of the divine in all manner of things—the beauty of nature, or of music or art, in a place that is sacred to us or sacred to a memory. None of that is beyond the possible. But our faith proclaims that we encounter God most certainly, most completely in the one who was born in Bethlehem, walked the dusty roads of Palestine, was crucified by Romans and was raised from the dead.
Our faith proclaims that we encounter God most certainly and most completely in a human who was born like us, lived like us, suffered like us and died like us. That’s the mystery of Christmas, the mystery of our faith.
We see the burden and the joy of that faith, the mystery of our faith in that couple as they wrap the newborn in swaddling clothes and lay him in a manger. We sense the burden and joy of our faith, the mystery of our faith as the gospel tells us, “and Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”
We cannot hope to comprehend or make sense of God becoming flesh in a newborn babe. We cannot hope to understand why or how or to what end. What we can do is treasure and ponder. We can respond to the needs of those in whose faces we see the face of Jesus Christ; we can wrap them in swaddling clothes and embrace them with the love of Christ. And above all, we can open our hearts and say yes when God asks us to bid God welcome.
May your hearts be filled with the joy and love of Christ, and may you share that joy and love with all those you encounter today and in the days to come.
Merry Christmas!
I’m sick of Christmas already. I’m tired of the Christmas decorations and holiday sales that have been up since early November. I’m sick of the War on Christmas and the debate over whether to say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” and promised boycotts of stores that use “Happy Holidays” in their publicity. I’m sick of the consumerism, the conspicuous consumption, the culture wars. I’m sick and tired of all of it. There’s a debate whether the abbreviation Xmas is taking the “Christ” out of Christmas. There’s apparently a debate whether “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer is pro or anti bullying! I thought it couldn’t get any worse but then FoxNews’ Megyn Kelly announced to the world that Santa Claus and Jesus Christ were both white. My twitter feed exploded with the righteous indignation of progressives everywhere; and my head exploded. The cacophony and shrillness is deafening; outrage has overwhelmed our yearly remembrance of Christ’s birth. At least Phil Robertson of the Duck Dynasty didn’t weigh in on the War on Christmas, but what he did say was enough to spark more indignation and outrage. Continue reading
In my sermon last week, I gave you some background about Isaiah the prophet, his historical context, and I focused on the images he used, especially the images of beating swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks. I’d like to continue to look at Isaiah this week, even though the gospel encourages us to reflect on John the Baptizer. Continue reading
I was shopping for a belt sander this week—one of my next projects around the house is to strip and refinish the staircase that goes up to the second floor. I visited a couple of stores as I began to price the tools and I was struck again by how much has changed in the world of carpentry since I was a teenager working for my dad. My dad was a finish carpenter and contractor who began to work in that trade in the late 40s. He began just as the revolution in power tools was beginning, and until the end of his life he continued to use the drill and the router he first purchased. Continue reading
We have an old travel poster from the 30s. It’s an image of Berlin showing that city’s main shopping district, the Kurfürstendamm, looking toward the Kaiser Wilhelm’s Memorial Church. That church was constructed in the 1890s as a memorial to the first ruler of a united Germany, Wilhelm I. The image that appears on my travel poster no longer exists. Largely destroyed during WWII the original church’s tower remains, surrounded by a new church built in the style of modern architecture. Now the church stands as a memorial to all of the victims of WWII and also as a warning of the cost of war. When I was studying and travelling in Germany as a college student in 1979, one could still see visible signs of the destruction of World War II in many places. Occasionally, as with the Gedächtniskirche, the ruins remained as memorial and caution. But in many places, especially in the East, the rubble remained because of the lack of funds to rebuild and the uncertainty of what might replace the old. Continue reading
Every Sunday evening these past few weeks, my Twitter feed and facebook page have filled up with messages about a TV show called The Walking Dead. Given that many of those I follow on Twitter are younger and hipper than me, perhaps that’s not surprising. What did surprise me was when an Episcopal bishop I know declared on twitter and facebook that he was settling down this past Sunday night to watch the current episode. In case you don’t know, and I only know thanks to social media, The Walking Dead is something of a cult hit. It’s about a zombie apocalypse. A guy wakes up in his hospital bed and discovers that everyone is either dead or has become a zombie. I watched an episode yesterday so I could talk about it and I’ll admit that I used to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and when I was a teenager I loved the Creature double feature on Saturday late night TV that was hosted by the Ghoul. Our culture, film and tv are awash with tales of the undead, vampires, werewolves, and zombies. We seem to be fascinated by the prospects of life after death, even if we find it hard to believe in it. Continue reading
I’ve been thinking these past couple of weeks of the nature of community in the twenty-first century. I did weddings on consecutive Saturdays for members of Grace and the only person besides me in attendance at both was Grace member Carol Carlson. She’s a violinist and had been hired to play at both weddings. At the funeral yesterday of longtime Grace member Clark McMillen, the small congregation was made up of friends and family, and Grace members were present primarily because they were assisting in some way with the service. Continue reading
Preaching Grace on the Square 