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Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 26, 2023
Pastor Ashton Roberts • March 26, 2023
I cannot hear this gospel lesson
without thinking of Aretha Franklin.
In 1972,
Aretha recorded a live gospel album
called Amazing Grace
at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church
in Los Angeles,
accompanied by the Southern California Community Choir.
One of the songs on the album
is “Mary Don’t You Weep,”
and Aretha sings this song
as only Aretha can.
I have listened to it many times,
including many times this week
in preparation for preaching on this text.
There is something visceral about this album.
It is an actual worship service
in the African American tradition.
You can hear in the background
a call and response pattern
to the singing and speaking,
a organic sort of liturgy
where the whole congregation
is caught up in this moment of transcendence.
This style of worship,
this style of singing,
the message of the preaching,
the message of the songs,
is born at the intersection
of the best the African American experience has to offer
and the worst it has endured.
Frederick Douglass writes in this autobiography
of the singing of enslaved persons.
He writes:
I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.[1]
This singing,
this faith,
holds collective and private trauma in one hand
and hope in the other.
Present-day theologian and author
Barbara Holmes
calls this two-fisted faith
“joy unspeakable.
She writes:
Joy Unspeakable
is not silent,
it moans, hums, and bends
to the rhythm of a dancing universe.
It is a fractal of transcendent hope,
a hologram of God’s heart,
a black hole of unknowing.
For Africans in bondage
in the Americas,
joy unspeakable is that moment of
mystical encounter
when God tiptoes into the hush arbor,
testifies about Divine suffering,
and whispers in our ears,
“Don’t forget,
I taught you how to fly
on a wing and a prayer,
when you’re ready
let’s go!”
Joy Unspeakable is humming
“how I got over”
after swimming safely
to the other shore of a swollen Ohio river
when you know that you can’t swim.
It is the blessed assurance
that Canada is far,
but not that far….
For Africana members of the
“invisible institution,” the
emerging black church,
joy unspeakable is
practicing freedom
while chains still chafe,
singing deliverance
while Jim Crow stalks,…[2]
This music is for people who have been through something,
for people who hurt,
for people who need healing,
need hope
need to experience now
a longed-for peace and freedom.
In this season of Lent,
we have been hearing the stories
of people who have been through something.
First,
Jesus went experienced loneliness,
experienced hunger and thirst,
experienced the temptation
to take the quick way out,
to avoid pain and patience
and meet his own needs
instead of trusting God.
Nicodemus experienced doubt,
confusion,
embarrassment
in trying to reconcile
the God he learned about
and the God he met in Jesus.
The woman had the well
had been passed around by 5 different husbands.
She had been ostracized by the Jewish people
for being a Samaritan,
by her own people for being a woman,
and by subsequent centuries of mostly male
biblical scholars, theologians, and preachers
who assumed this woman had lived more like Liz Taylor
than that she had been inherited like a piece of furniture
by a cascade of brothers-in-law
and been treated like a burden her whole life.
The man born blind
had lived his whole life as a stigma,
or a theological exercise,
with friends and neighbors,
even Jesus’ disciples,
assuming that some moral shortcoming—
on his part or his parents’—
had caused his blindness.
And even when he was healed,
these same folks were mad
that he had been healed on the Sabbath.
And now today,
we meet a two sisters—
Mary and Martha—
smack-dab in the middle of their grief.
Their brother was sick,
but they had connections.
They knew Jesus.
And Jesus knew them.
They loved Jesus,
and Jesus loved them.
So they sent word,
and asked,
expected Jesus to come
and heal this friend he loved.
But Jesus waited.
And their brother died.
Now Jesus is coming to visit,
four days too late.
Martha hears he’s coming
and goes to meet him.
“Lord, if you had been here,
my brother would not have died.”
And maybe it’s that line
that we realize
we have been through something too.
“Lord if you had been here…”
And you can fill in the blank.
Lord if you had been here,
I wouldn’t have gotten sick.
I wouldn’t have lost that job.
I wouldn’t be divorced.
I wouldn’t need that surgery.
Maybe some of us aren’t bold enough
to finish the sentence,
for fear of cursing God.
Maybe if the Lord had shown up for us
we would still believe at all.
Maybe you know in your heart
what Martha meant in that question.
Maybe you can sense the flutter in your chest,
taste the bitter adrenaline,
and feel the clinching in your fists
that wants to shout,
“I thought you loved me!
Why would you wait to come!?
Why didn’t you just fix it
from wherever you were hiding?!
“I know the resurrection is coming one day,
but I need you to answer me today,
to help me through this now,
to fix this now.”
Jesus listens to her questions—
that I can only imagine
sounded more like accusations—
and he asks to speak to Mary.
Mary comes not accusing,
but weeping.
Mary falls at Jesus’ feet,
“Lord if you had been here…”
And Jesus wept with her.
Jesus got up
and through tears
asked to be taken to Lazarus’ tomb.
The whole crying, grieving mass of them
went to the tomb,
and Jesus grieved with them.
Jesus came
in their grief,
in their anger,
in their sorrow,
in the stench of death,
and he wept with them,
he grieved with them,
he embraced them,
he walks with them
right up to the tomb,
and he brought life from death,
joy from grief,
wonder from worry;
not by overcoming or avoiding this pain,
but by undergoing it.
Beloved,
this is still the God we worship,
this God of solidarity and redemption.
We can wish for a god
of avoidance and prevention.
We can harbor a grudge
against a distant god
of abandonment and disappointment.
Or we can find a two-fisted faith
in a God who’s been through something,
a God who will go through something with you,
a God of joy unspeakable,
a God who will cry their own tears
before they wipe away ours,
a God who will call you by name
out of every tomb in which you find yourself,
bound and stinking.
We can pray to a god we wish we had
and always feel abandoned and disappointed,
or we can sing to the God Who Is,
to the God who is always bringing joy from grief,
hope from pain,
and life from death.
Lazarus would die again.
Mary and Martha eventually die too.
But I cannot imagine
that any of them
felt abandoned or disappointed,
because they had been through this before.
They could hold death in one hand
and resurrection in the other,
and call “faith”
what they had in the meantime.
They could practice freedom
while the chains still chaffed.
They could cry real tears
and hurl real accusations
onto shoulders big enough to hold them.
And we can too.
We can go through something
with Jesus.
We can shout Hosannas and wave palms.
We can gather around a table,
break bread, drink wine,
and remember.
We can witness the terror of the Cross
and grief with Jesus’ mother and Magdalene.
We can walk right up to the tomb,
where the one we love has been three-days dead,
and call his name into the darkness,
“JESUS, Come out!”
Then we can unbind him
and let him loose in the world.
[1] Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, chapter 2. 1845.
[2] Barbara A. Holmes, Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practices of the Black Church, second edition (Fortress Press: 2017), xvii-xviii.
Anybody else feel yesterday’s weather right in the joints? I always know when the weather is about to change, because at some point, my left hip became a sort of weath er station, sensing the slightest change in pressure, humidity, and temperature and alerting me by hampering my ability to walk. It is a literal pain in the rear. Maybe it’s not your hip, but I would bet you can relate to some degree. Living in these bodies can be a challenge. This is much more true for some than others, but even the most able bodied among us know the limits of living in a body. Our Bodies can be a source of immense pleasure and a source of debilitating pain. Our bodies divide us, isolate us, scare us when they need food and drink, shelter and healthcare. Our bodies break and get sick. Our bodies are embarrassing, inconvenient, uncomfortable, sweaty, smelly, gross. And then they die. We worry that there isn’t enough for me to have what I need and for others to have it too, so we try to take care of ourselves, of our families. We think, I’d better get what I can, while I can, and before someone else does. So, generally, we take one of two different paths. Some folks commodify bodies, exploiting our fears and aspirations, promising safety and plenty, so long as we prioritize this group of bodies over that group of bodies. And in this eutopia of safety and plenty, we forget we live in a body, never hungry or thirsty, never uncomfortable or sweaty, because some other group of bodies has borne that burden for us. The second path seeks to transcend the body in an entirely different way. This path leads to the sweet by-and-by, a blessed tomorrow when the world will be made right, where our suffering bodies will be exchanged for a cloud and harp, a disembodied existence where pain and need will be no more. Similarly, some seek to transcend the body by becoming a digital avatar, projecting their egos into a virtual reality where they can be a preferred version of themselves and not have to think about the limitations of having a body and all its messy, inconvenient needs. It seems to me that our readings for today are mostly about bodies. Jeremiah seems to be saying, “Don’t live disembodied, cut off like a shrub in the desert from the source of life and vitality. We shouldn’t be fooled by every impulse toward self-preservation or nihilism, but we should be grounded in reality, rooted by our baptism, and we will be able to weather the storms and droughts, blessings and woes, of this life.” Jesus’ answer to a disembodied existence is incarnation. We are more than an animated corpse, more than a soul in a flesh prison. We are an extension of the incarnation. Paul argues that our hope in the resurrection comes from sharing in the incarnation; if Christ is raised bodily from the dead, then we can hope to be raised bodily too, because we share in the incarnation. Jesus comes down to this level place, and he meets all sorts of people bound up in the condition of their bodies. Jesus does not exploit their pain to gain a following. Jesus does not tell them to ignore all their pain and suffering because there is hope in the great beyond. Jesus heals their bodies. They reached out and touched his body. Power to heal was coming out of his body. Then Jesus speaks to the poor, and the rich. He speaks to the hungry and the well-fed. He speaks to the grieving and the maligned, as well as the jubilant and celebrities. God cares about bodies. God cares enough about bodies to come down, to inhabit a body in all its messy inconvenience, to stand on level footing with other messy, inconvenient bodies; and to redeem embodied-ness from birth to death and beyond. Sharing in this incarnation calls us to a very specific way of being in the world. We are baptized in our bodies that we might be like a tree planted by the water, that we might be planted in a community of other bodies, that we might be planted in the body of Christ. We are nourished by the body of Christ, by wheat and wine and word that has become body and blood for us. These sacraments are not given to us as concessions. These sacraments are not given to us as poor substitutes of things to come. These sacraments are not given to us because we cannot yet transcend our bodily existence. These sacraments are given to us because we share in the incarnation, because there is only one reality, because God cares about our bodies. God came down to us in Jesus to show us that we share in the incarnation, to teach us that our bodies should bring us together and not tear us apart. We are like a tree, planted in the solid ground of reality, with our roots stretching out toward the waters of baptism, toward a community of other bodies. We are not trapped in our bodies. We are incarnate, a meeting of matter and spirit on level ground. This old hip may ache, my beard continue to gray, my eyes and ears weaken, my heart fail, and my corpse decay. But I share this incarnation with One who has come down to redeem this union of matter and spirit and promises to raise me up on the last day, not with harp and cloud, but in a body. And in the meantime, this incarnation is shared not only with Christ Jesus, but with the whole of humankind, with every other body. If your body is sick, hungry, thirsty, cold, naked, sweaty, inconvenient, uncomfortable, scary; then my body is not safe until yours is. There is only one reality, one incarnation, and we share it— good and bad, storm and drought, dying and rising, blessing and woe. The incarnation calls us to equal footing in a level place, shared with Jesus and each other. Amen.
To the best of my knowledge, I have never met anyone famous. I have met the authors of a few of the books I’ve read, but I wouldn’t call academic theologians and Biblic al Studies professors famous people. I think I saw Matthew Perry in an airport once, but I can neither confirm that sighting, nor can I call a supposed sighting the same thing as a meeting. Do you know of the game ‘six degrees of separation’? The idea is that between you and anyone else there are only six degrees of separation, or a maximum of six relationships separating you from someone else For instance, I have a friend and colleague who discerned his call to ministry while sitting at the kitchen table of Coretta Scott King and talking about the state of the world. So, I know this friend, who knew Mrs. King, who was married to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. There are only two degrees of separation between me and Martin Luther King, Jr.. This same friend met and received a blessing from Pope St. John Paul II, which I think makes him a second-class relic. I have another friend who, in the course of our last conversation, casually mentioned that Bryan White had called him that morning to see if my friend had any songs he could record for his new project. That’s one degree of separation between me and Bryan White. I have never met anyone famous, but I know people, and I know people who know people. And to be honest, I get the same kind of feeling from all our readings today. Each of our readings give us an account of a direct encounter with the Living God. “In the year that King Uzziah died,” says the prophet Isaiah, “I saw the Lord.” “As one untimely born,” says the apostle Paul, “[the risen Lord Jesus] appeared to me.” “[Jesus] got into one of the boats,” St. Luke tells us, “the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore.” Isaiah is grieving the way things used to be and reeling from his newfound sense of uncertainty at the end of the 54-year reign of King Uzziah. Paul, then called Saul, is murderously angry at the followers of Jesus and on his way to take action that would rid the world of these folks. These fishermen and would-be disciples are exhausted from an unfruitful third-shift when a street preacher shows up and asks for a favor. Maybe you can relate. I know I can. Exhausted, grieving the way things were, mad at those other people who are messing things up and wishing I didn’t have to share the planet with them… Where is my encounter with the Living God? When is God gonna show up and shake the doorposts of this place and give me a new purpose? When is Jesus gonna come and prove the resurrection to me? When is Jesus gonna step into my boat and show me what I’ve been doing wrong this whole time? Grief, and anger, and exhaustion have a way of distracting us from the bigger picture, of turning our gaze inward until all we can see is our own pain. And in each of these stories of encounter, this is precisely where the prophet, apostle, and weary fishermen encounter the Living God— in the depths of their pain. It was IN Isaiah’s grief and uncertainty that Isaiah saw the Lord and became a prophet It was ON THE WAY to murder the followers of Jesus that Jesus knocked Saul off his high horse and called him to be an apostle. It was IN THE EMPTY BOAT that Simon discovered the Living God in Jesus. Each of these hurt, hateful and harried folks, encountered God IN their exhaustion, grief, uncertainty, and blind rage, and each of them are called to obedience. The invitation to obedience, to faithfulness, to discipleship, is the call to be transformed by an encounter with the Living God in the midst of our circumstances. Discipleship is the result of encounter and obedience. But, what if you’ve never had that encounter? What if it feels like there are too many degrees of separation between me and the Living God? If discipleship is the result of encounter and obedience, then start with obedience. Start right where you are. Are you grieving the way things used to be? Then go and share that grief with those who are grieving. Are you angry you have to share the planet with those other people? Then climb off your high horse and follow the risen Jesus. Are you worn-out and burned-out with nothing to show for it? Then be faithful and trust Jesus for the result. By our faithfulness, by our obedience, we embody the presence of God. And an exhausted, grieving, uncertain, angry world discovers that we and the Living God are all in the same boat. Discipleship is the result of obedience and encounter. By our faithfulness, by our obedience, we will become the world’s encounter with the Living God. Paula D’Arcy says, “God comes to us disguised as our lives.” There are no degrees of separation between us and the Living God. But sometimes it takes an encounter to see through our grief, uncertainty, anger, and exhaustion. And sometimes that will take a disciple. Who else has God sent? Will you go?
If you haven’t remembered, yes, this is exactly the same gospel reading as last week. The Revised Common Lectionary had the reading split up into two separate readings, but I found it hard to discuss one half of the story and not the other. So, last week, we talked about the consequences of preaching. Jesus preaches and while many speak well of him, when he preaches in his hometown, they cannot hear his critique and nearly throw him off a cliff. Preaching has consequences, because a good preacher will show you the law— which will offend and condemn you— before they show you the good news— which will comfort you. Preaching has consequences for both the preacher and the hearer. This week, we hear comforting passages from Jeremiah and from I Corinthians. “Before I formed you in your mother’s womb,” says the Lord to Jeremiah, “I knew you.” A comforting thought, for sure, echoing the sentiment of Psalm 139. And then, I Corinthians 13, the Love Chapter, read at many a wedding, including my own. We so often hear this passage in the context of a wedding ceremony that we forget that the passage comes in a longer discourse about spiritual gifts, and assume that Paul is talking about marital love, covenant love, an all-you-need-is-love kind of love, the love-will-keep-us-alive kind of love, instead of the God-is-Love kind of love. This passage from Jeremiah’s call story and this passage from I Corinthians play into a way of reading the Bible that I think is exactly what got Jesus in trouble that sabbath morning in Nazareth. When we read these passages, we glom onto the parts that make us feel good and we gloss over the parts that make us confused or feel bad, and we assume that we are the main characters, the ones being saved, the prophet being called, the lovers having their union blessed. We hardly ever see ourselves in the wayward backsliders who need a prophet to call them to repentance. We hardly ever see ourselves in the softheaded and hardhearted congregation who needs the apostle to write to them so they remember that the whole of the law and prophets is summed up in Love. We hardly ever see ourselves as the assembly turned lynch mob who wouldn’t even have Jesus for a preacher. None of these passages— not a single one of them— was written with a single living person in mind. Each of them were written in different places, at different times, in different languages, by different authors. We can read the scriptures and we can find parity with the people of Israel in Jeremiah’s day; we can feel a sense of kinship with the faithful and foolish followers of Jesus in the ancient city of Corinth; we can find ourselves sitting in the pews and listening to a sermon that confronts us a little more than it comforts us; and this is a very faithful way to read the scriptures. But it is unfaithful to gloss over, leave out, refuse to listen to the bits that ask something of us, the parts that call us to repentance, the pieces that call us to the carpet and show us how we should be living. It is the job of the faithful preacher to call you out, to dress you down, to rattle your nerves a bit. It is the very work of preaching itself to assail your ego as Public Enemy No. 1, to expose you to yourself as you’ve been unable to perceive, to hold up the mirror to the spinach in your teeth. There is a part of preaching that should feel like that dream where you’re back in high school, you’ve shown up for the exams, in your underwear, all your pencils are broken, and the test is in a different language. But the rest of preaching should feel like being suddenly shaken out of that dream, coming to consciousness, realizing that high school has long passed, all your exams are over, and your safely in your nice warm bed. God has sent us apostles, prophets, teachers, and preachers to show us who we are and to show us the way to a better world. And Jesus has come to show us that still more excellent way. Preaching certainly has consequences, but by and large, those consequences depend on the hearer and not the preacher. We can choose what the consequences of preaching will be. We can kill the messengers or we can heed the message. So, let me show you this still more excellent way. If I could preach like Jesus and Billy Graham but didn’t have love, I would be no better than any other late-night, cable-access huckster that wants to sell you miracle water. If I could see the future and answer every question you could muster with perfect clarity; If I had the faith of all the saints such that I could cure all your doubts and diseases, but didn’t have any love, what good would I be to anyone. If I were to give away everything I owned; If I were to give away a kidney, part of my liver, and my bone marrow, but I didn’t do out of love, what good could it really do? Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful, or arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Said another way, Love doesn’t make itself the main character. Love can be the consequence of preaching if we will choose it. Love can be our response to being called out. Love can be our response to feeling exposed by the law. Love can be our response when our neighbors have less than we do. Love can be our response to a world in need of good news. Love can be our response to our neighbors awash in cable news. Love can be our response when party loyalty demands our allegiance. Love can be our response when everyone else wants to throw Jesus off a cliff. Preaching has consequences, but I think we get to choose them. What will we choose? Will we drive Jesus away? Will we be offended by his message and his ministry if it feels like it’s more focused on our neighbors than on us? In our rage, will we let Jesus pass through our midst? Or will we choose love? Will we let God be the main character? Will we rejoice with the truth even if it stands on our toes? Will we let love be our response to both the law and the Gospel? Will we choose the still more excellent way? Amen.
This morning, I lengthened gospel reading through verse 30 of Luke 4 to include the rest of the story, which we would have heard next week. This week and next we will be hearing this same passage, in its entirety, and we will be talking about preaching and consequences. What are the consequences of preaching? For the Preacher? For the listener? Looking at today’s lessons gives us some clues. In the reading from Nehemiah, the Persian King has allowed Nehemiah to come back to the ruined city of Jerusalem and rebuild it. But before they do, he has Ezra the scribe open the book of the Law of Moses and begin to read it to the people with interpretation, so that the people might remember and the city might be consecrated. The people listen to Ezra, standing in reverence to hear the reading of the book of the law, and the people are moved to tears. They cried Amen, Amen— or “Let it be so!! Let it be so!!”— and they bowed their heads and worshiped God, afraid even to look up as they worshiped. Ezra assured them of the Lord’s favor and called them to wipe away their tears. It is this “with interpretation” that we call preaching. Ezra not only read the text to them, but expounded and explained it to them, such that they were able to see themselves as in a mirror, and they were cut to the heart by what they saw. Ezra didn’t stop there, but assured them of God’s grace, the Lord’s favor. This is what God does by the law, holds up a mirror to our sin and shame, forcing us to face and fix it. And, this is what God does by the gospel, assures us of the unearned favor of God who now calls us to repentance and reconciliation instead of sin and shame. Jesus’ preaching, on the other hand, seems to have mixed reviews. Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returns to Galilee. Where was he? Jesus comes back to civilization from the wilderness. He has just been tested in the desert, fasting and fighting with the devil for 40 days. When the Spirit brings him back, he preaches in the synagogues and is “praised by everyone.” But then he goes home. When Jesus comes to Nazareth, he goes to the synagogue, “as was his custom,” he stood up, read the assigned text, everyone sat down, and “the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.” If Luke were a TV writer, I am certain this is exactly where the network would have inserted the commercial break. “We’ll be right back after these messages.” And maybe that is what the compliers of the Revised Common Lectionary were trying to do, build a little suspense to keep folks in the pews next week too. But I hate it when they do that on TV and I’m not gonna do it here! Having crescendoed to this moment, the Gospel of Luke gives us Jesus’ inaugural sermon. “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” Jesus said. Luke says, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is this not Joseph’s son?’” So far, so good. But Jesus had more to say. He brings up the prophets; Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, Elisha and Naaman the Syrian. He says a prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown. And these folks who were just speaking well of him, are suddenly so violently angry that they drive him out of town to the edge of a cliff hoping to throw him down to death. Yes, beloved, Preaching has consequences. For Nehemiah and Ezra, their preaching led to worship and restoration. For Jesus, they tried to throw him off a cliff. Preachers are under an enormous strain to be funny, to be smart—but not too smart. Preachers have to be poignant and timely, without being too trendy or edgy. Preachers have to be insightful and inspiring but they also have to be practical. Preachers also try desperately not to offend anyone, though most often, we only get to choose who to offend. Because Preachers also have to preach the Word of God. Now hear me, I do not mean to sound like one of those Bible-thumpers screeching diatribes and polemics, insults and hate-speech while hiding behind a literal reading of the Bible and calling it the Word of God. When I say that Preachers have to preach the Word of God, I mean three distinct things: First, Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. Second, God’s promise to love and save the whole of Creation through Jesus, which is contained in the Bible. Luther called the Bible “the manger that holds the infant Christ.” Third, the proclamation of who Jesus is and God’s promise love and save the whole of creation. This is what preaching is. And the main problem with this kind of preaching, is that it is impossible to not offend everyone. And that is just what Jesus did. He talked about the poor, which offends the poor by embarrassing them and the rich by pointing out that they exist. He talked about releasing the captives, which means that he’s advocating amnesty, which offends the lawyers and the judges, and people think he’s making the streets less safe. He’s talking about recovery of sight, well that’s healthcare. He’s talking about the oppressed, and that’s just socialism. And then he proclaims that it’s the year of the Lord’s favor. “What’s that supposed to mean, Jesus? We know your dad. We know your family. Who do you think you are, anyway?” If Jesus’ sermon can go this badly, if Jesus’ preaching offended everyone, well, then, maybe we cut every other preacher a little slack. This is what Preaching does. It wounds our egos with the Law before it comforts our souls with the Gospel. Preaching holds up a mirror so we can see the broccoli in our teeth. Preaching will embarrass us a little, will cause us to bow our heads and worship with our faces to the ground, before it calls us to raise our eyes and hearts in praise and adoration. Preaching has consequences. Stephen, the first Christian martyr recorded in the book of Acts, is stoned to death after giving a sermon in response to a question. Through the centuries and millennia, preachers have been stoned, arrested, imprisoned, and assassinated as a consequence of their preaching. Jesus was almost thrown off a cliff. Preaching has consequences. So, if you hear an offensive sermon, lean in and not away. The Law has wounded your ego, but the Gospel is about to free you, to restore your sight, to proclaim the time of God’s favor. There is some bad preaching out there, and some bad preachers. But we should be asking ourselves; Did this sermon offend my conscience, or did it offend my pride? Was it way off base, or was it a little too close to home? Preaching has consequences. For both the preacher and the listener.
I was recently reminded of a story, a sort of parable, that I believe originates with AA, though I was not able to verify this. A man was walking down the street and ha ppened to fall into a hole. The hole was deep and the man was wounded from the fall, and there was no way he could climb out by himself. Shortly, a doctor walked by the hole and the man yelled up, “Help! I’ve fallen down this hole, I’m hurt, and I can’t climb out.” The doctor pulls out a pad and pen, writes a prescription, throws it down the hole, and shouts, “Good luck!” as he goes on his way. A short time later, a priest walks by, and the man yells up, “Father, help me! I’ve fallen down this hole, I’m hurt, and I can’t climb out.” The priest has pity on the man, and prays for his healing, offers his absolution, and continues on his way. A short time later, a good friend of this man comes by and notices his friend in this deep hole. Without hesitation, this good friend jumped down in the hole too. The man says, “Are you crazy! Now we are both stuck down here!” The friend says, “Yes, but I’ve been down here before. I know the way out.” I like this story. It reminds me of another quote I heard recently from Brittany Packett Cunningham, who says, “Train yourself toward solidarity and not charity. You are no one’s savior. You are a mutual partner in the pursuit of freedom.” This man in a hole needed help. The doctor’s concern was the man’s health and his response was professional, even if unhelpful. The priest’s concern was the man’s soul and he appealed to God for help, and offered the man God’s forgiveness when the man had fallen in the hole, not jumped, and all the blessed assurance of God’s grace this priest could offer did nothing to change the man’s circumstances; he remained wounded and in a hole. The man’s friend understood the assignment, as the kids say these days. The man’s friend had fallen down this hole before, he had suffered the same woundedness and he knew that neither medicine nor ministry were going to change this man’s circumstances. What this man needed was solidarity. He needed someone who knew what it was like, someone who knew that the doctor’s prescription felt like a Band-aid on a bullet hole. He needed someone who understood that being forgiven for something you cannot control, for circumstances you cannot change, feels more like judgement than absolution. There is a sociological term coined by Abraham Maslow for the law of the instrument, “Maslow’s hammer.” Essentially, Maslow says, if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. The doctor and the priest where just utilizing the only tools they had, and the tools they had were not designed for the problem at hand. The doctor saw a patient, the priest saw a sinner. But the friend saw a friend. The friend had been down there before and knew he needed no special tools. He didn’t need the rescue squad, didn’t call 911, didn’t rush to the hardware store and buy a ladder. He knew the only way his friend was coming out of that hole was with guidance and support. So the friend drew close, close enough to lean on, close enough to share the danger and the burden, as long as it took for the two of them to walk out together. This is solidarity. Said a little more theologically, this is incarnation. In our own context, we don’t have to look far to find folks who are down the proverbial hole. There is often so much more suffering around us that we are able to address with the tools we have. It is understandable that we might take the Maslow’s hammer approach, doing what we can with what we have, and hoping that if it doesn’t fix the problem, that all our hammering might at least make a dent. Or, we take a different approach. Recognizing that we cannot solve the issue, we avoid it, we walk away, turn a blind eye, labeling the circumstances a “tragedy,” absolving ourselves or our self-protective apathy. So, what do we do when we find someone in hole, and we don’t know the way out? This story of the wedding at Cana gives us some insight, I think. Jesus and his mother, and all the disciples, have been invited to a wedding. These ancient near-eastern weddings were essentially a multi-day feast. If you were throwing this party, you wanted your guests to thoroughly enjoy themselves, and it was more than a social gaffe to run out of wine before the whole thing was said and done. Jesus’ mother seems to be the first to notice. “Do something,” she says to Jesus. “This is not our problem,” says Jesus. Mary turns to the waiter and says, “Do whatever he tells you.” Mary saw that the hosts of this wedding were in a hole. They were running out of wine and out time before this was noticed. Mary knew that she didn’t have the tools to solve the problem, and she didn’t know the way out of this hole. But she knew the one who did. Mary didn’t try to be the savior herself, but she directed them to the savior and the savior to them. Mary practiced solidarity with the wedding hosts, drawing close enough to know the problem, standing and calling attention to the problem, knowing she was not the savior, but knowing that the savior would know the way out. We are not the savior. We are Mary. Our calling is not to be the savior, but to bare this savior into the world, to stand in solidarity with the suffering of the world, to call the savior’s attention to this suffering, saying, “Do something!” and the attention of the suffering to the savior, saying, “Do whatever he says.” And that is where the miracle happens, in the following together. In the following together, we find that we have more tools at our disposal than a bludgeoning hammer. In the following together, we find that the tragedies of the world do not absolve us from standing in solidarity even when all we can do is share in the ache. In the following together, doctors and priests and professionals have a role to play alongside friends and strangers. In the following together, we not only find the way out, but we can begin to fill in these holes so our neighbors don’t fall down there in the first place. We are not the savior. We cannot solve many of the problems of the world. We cannot save the world. We cannot rescue everyone from every inescapable circumstance. But we can learn their names. We can know their stories. We can grow close enough to feel their hurts and hopelessness, to hear their stomachs growl, to dress their wounds, to wipe their tears as we shed our own. And we can call the attention of the savior to this suffering. We can call the attention of the suffering to the savior. And we can follow the savior out of this hole together. Amen.
I’m a 90s kid. I grew up on Nickelodeon, Toys R US, Blockbuster Video, TGIF, CDs, the looming threat of Y2K. Many of the cultural touchstones of my teens have passed into the dustbin of history. I recently saw an episode of Antiques Roadshow where a young woman had brought in a binder full of Pokemon cards to have them appraised. And I thought, so this is middle age, huh? The toys of my youth are now valuable collectors’ items. Do you remember Magic Eye posters? I used to love these optical illusions. “Magic Eye” is a brand name. In fact, if you’re feeling nostalgic, magiceye.com is still a functioning website, with the original, 90’s era internet aesthetic, and many examples of their work. The site feels like a time capsule. These images, technically called stereograms, are created of many overlapping pixels in bright colors. But their ‘magic’ isn’t obvious at first glance. Often folks have to be thought how to see the ‘magic’ image hidden in the obscuring chaos. If you stand at a medium distance, relax your focus, so that you’re seeing kind of through the image and refocusing beyond it, suddenly the two-dimensional jumble becomes a three-dimensional image. This optical illusion was all the rage when I was a teenager. Posters, advertisements, t-shirts, virtually anywhere you could plaster a 2D image these digital creations, a testament to computer age technology and human artistry, became the hallmark of an era. But not everyone could see this phenomenon. Some folks couldn’t quite see beyond the two-dimensional chaos to the image within. Some folks could only get there by practice, but then, once they ‘got it,’ it was kind of like having to explain a joke, it just doesn’t have the same impact. I wonder if this Christmas story lands like that sometimes. We tend to live in a world of two-dimensional chaos, pitting us against each other, each side vying for dominance. We are awash in pixelated images, fragmentary information, loose relations, and advertising, private propaganda hoping to narrow our focus even more. And all of this draws us in so close or pushes us away so far, we cannot see the deeper picture, the message beyond, the image obscured by the chaos. So, we come here, and I have the great fortune of being the one to stand up here and try to ‘explain the joke,’ so to speak, to explain how, if you tilt your head just right, and stand a little closer, but not too close, and relax your eyes, you can see a miracle. And then we all leave underwhelmed, coming down from a sugar high, and dreading how early everything is going to start tomorrow. But if you’ll indulge me, I think the invitation in this Christmas story is to something much deeper, more hopeful, and anything but an illusion. Like those magic eye posters, the Kingdom of God is about perception. You have to be taught how to see it, and then you have to practice seeing it, and then you cannot un-see it. It is not obvious to anyone in the story that Mary and Joseph are parents to God in the Flesh, otherwise, I am certain that someone would have found some room somewhere for Mary to give birth. It is not immediately obvious to the shepherds abiding in the fields by night where they should look for this great news for all people, until the angels tell them where to look and that they are looking for a baby in a barn, wrapped in strips of cloth, and lying in a trough of hay. That is not first place I would have looked for Christ the Lord. When this baby grows up, he will tell us that we enter the kingdom of God by repentance, a really churchy word that literally means a change of heart and mind— that is, a change of perspective. And then this grown-up baby will give us the sacraments so we can keep practicing this kind of perspective change. We bring our beautiful, perfect, totally innocent little babies to this font, only to find out that baptism begins with an exorcism and a ritual death. When our conscience condemns us as vile and depraved sinners, enemies of God, we are taught we should come to the same font to remember our baptism and that God claimed us there as beloved saints, pure and guiltless. We bring bread and wine as an offering to this table and it is given back to us as the Body and Blood of Jesus. A bite of bread and a sip of wine become a feast of celebration. And when we begin to perceive the sacred, ineffable mystery, it is transfigured again into a vision of bread on every table, blessed, broken, and given for all to eat. And the whole point of the practice of these holy mysteries is to teach us how to see through and beyond a flattened-out reality to the depth within the obscuring chaos. We can see in the vulnerable babe of Bethlehem that God has drawn near to us. Paula D’Arcy says, “God comes to us disguised as our lives.” And this is the Good News of Great Joy for all people. God comes to us in every hurt and disappointment, in every joy and exclamation; in every sigh and every sorrow; in every baby and every meal; in matter and in spirit. And that is how stereograms work. Two 2D images at slightly differing angles are placed side-by-side, and when the eyes relax and focus beyond the images they merge into one image with new depth, they reveal reality in all its dimensions. That is the story of Christmas; the merging of two images from slightly differing angles to reveal what is real, and that this reality includes us, with all our joy and sorrow. So, as the shepherds came to the manger, come to the altar. You will find there the flesh and blood of Christ. Ponder these things in your hearts. Come and worship, then go and tell. This is good news of great joy for all people. And when you can see it, you will not be able to un-see it. Amen.
To most of us in this room, a “Hail Mary” is an idiom for a last-ditch effort, a long shot, a fingers-crossed, eyes-closed, hold-your-breath attempt to win the game, sav e the day, avoid a dreaded outcome in the last possible second. You don’t have to be a sports historian or an Oxford theologian to understand where the name “Hail Mary” comes from. The idea being that, as the player throws that final pass toward the in zone, the player is asking Mary to make intercession to Jesus to make the play successful before the clock runs out. It comes obviously from the prayer to Mary, the mother of Jesus, that begins “Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee.” If you learned this prayer in a Catholic school or in a Catholic confirmation setting, you might not realize that it is almost a direct quote from the archangel Gabriel in Luke 1, when the archangel announces that Mary will conceive and bear a son. The angel’s greeting in the King James version is “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” All of this makes us Protestant types a bit uncomfortable. We don’t pray to Mary or the saints, taking our intercessions directly to Jesus himself. “We don’t need no intercessor!” Mary belongs to the Catholics and the Orthodox, even the Anglicans and their American progeny, the Episcopalians. But not the Lutherans. Mary is a bit player in our minds, a plot devise, a supporting actress since Jesus can’t give birth to himself, since babies need a mama, and little boys need their booboos kissed, and preteens need to be reminded to bathe, and teens need someone to fret over their whereabouts. But then we tend to grant an honorary, sentimental status to our mothers, like dowager queens, we might still call her Mama, but we can wipe our own faces now, thank you. And yes, this is what I’m wearing! Like our own Mama’s we make it a point to spend time with Mary at Christmas, but most of the rest of the year, we need some reminders to reach out, and even then we put off calling on her because, well, we know it has been a while, if we have called at all, and frankly, I just can’t deal with all of that right now. If the Catholics have a better relationship with Mama Mary, the Orthodox are Mama’s favorites. While the Hail Mary is mostly comprised of language taken from the Gospel of Luke, the Orthodox heap praise and honor on Mary that makes us Lutherans cast each other a side eye and theorize that maybe this relationship is a little unnatural; like Norman Bates keeping Mama in the house. They even have a special name for her, Theotokos, the God-bearer, the Mother of God. A portion of one hymn of praise to Mary, the God-bearer, is as follows: An Angel, and the chiefest among them, was sent from heaven to cry, “Rejoice! to the Mother of God!” And beholding you, O Lord, taking bodily form, he stood in awe and with his bodiless voice he cried aloud to her such things as these: Rejoice! You through whom joy shall shine forth! Rejoice! You through whom the curse shall be blotted out! Rejoice! You, the restoration of fallen Adam! Rejoice! You, the redemption of the tears of Eve! Rejoice! Height hard to climb for human thought! Rejoice! Depth hard to explore even for the eyes of angels! Rejoice! For you are the throne of the king! Rejoice! For you sustain the Sustainer of all! Rejoice! Star that causes the sun to appear! Rejoice! Womb of the divine incarnation! Rejoice! You through whom creation is renewed! Rejoice! You through whom the creator becomes a babe! Rejoice! Thou bride unwedded! I mean, we all love our Mama’s, but this seems like a complex. If all this talk, and prayer to and adoration of Mary is just some ancient infatuation, some foreign cultural familial obligation in which we are too well-educated to participate, then we are off the hook. We can visit at Christmas, and other than that, keep her packed away is bubble wrap with the rest of the nativity set. But then, I think today’s gospel lesson invites us to something more. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit at the sound of her voice, greets Mary with praise as the prenatal John summersaults in joy. Elizabeth repeats the words of the angel, “blessed are you among women.” Elizabeth calls her “the mother of my Lord,” which in the Greek is very close to the word Theotokos, the Mother of God. As we look back to the moment of the angel’s announcement, the angel says the Spirit of the Lord will “overshadow” Mary, the same language used to describe the power and presence of God resting on the ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, the innermost room of the temple, a place so holy that only the high priest could enter, and only once per year. Maybe, instead of thinking the Catholics have overstepped and the Orthodox have a mommy issues, maybe we Lutherans could reconsider our position. Maybe instead of seeing ourselves as more theologically evolved than these ancient traditions, we see ourselves as teenagers who think we are too old to be asking Mama for help or advise. Maybe we can hear her story again, not as the supporting actress, but as our own family history, as the story of our own flesh and blood. The blood that won our salvation, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, first flowed in her veins. Before Jesus would feed us with his body Mary fed Jesus with hers. Maybe a change of perspective could lead us to see Mary not as an authority we have outgrown but as a wise, elder friend. Maybe we see that the Catholics and the Orthodox aren’t kiss-ups or weirdos but older siblings who found a friendship with this wise, elder friend when they each realized that they too were called to be God bearers. Overshadowed and overwhelmed, Mary sought out Elizabeth, a wise, elder friend who could guide her through what it means to be a miracle mother, to understand what she must endure, to prepare herself for the labor to come. And as Elizabeth blesses Mary for believing what the angel had promised, the Gospel continues with one of the most famous passages in the New Testament. But the English translation hides an ambiguity in the original language. The English says, “And Mary said,” presuming, as the Church generally has, that what follows is Mary’s song of praise. But the original Greek reads “And she said.” And since Elizabeth was the one just speaking, it is somewhat unclear whose song this is. One the one hand, that uncertainty could breed some anxiety, even entrenched camps arguing for one side or the other. Instead, I believe it invites some room to wonder— if this is Elizabeth’s song, then the coming of the God-bearer brings the rejoicing of a weary world. If we too are called to bear Christ into this weary world, what rejoicing there will be when we have shared in this labor! Mary is not a supporting actress. She is a wise, elder friend, a miracle mother, a guide to help us understand what we must endure, to prepare us for the labor to come. She is an archetype for the Church, the ark of the new covenant, the first among the redeemed, the new Eve, mother of a new humanity. When we have gone out with haste to bear this Christ into all the weary world, then maybe this no-longer-weary world will sing praises of gratitude to the Bearers of God even as they worship God; maybe their souls will magnify the Lord because of those who labored to deliver the good news. Maybe the no-longer-weary world will rejoice in the restoration of fallen Adam and the redemption of the tears of Eve because of the new creation conceived and delivered in us by our baptism. When we learn from Mama Mary how to live lives overshadowed by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit surely all generations will call us blessed and worship the God of Israel because the strength of God’s arm has been revealed though our work for justice; because the powerful among us have stepped down to make room for the lowly; because the rich among us have divested their wealth to fill the hungry with good things. Hail, Beloved, full of Grace, the Lord is with us! Blessed are we among the Children of God and blessed is the fruit of our sacred yes. Holy Beloved, bearers of God, pray with us sinners, now and in the hour of our liberation. Amen.
This is the third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, A day of rejoicing Set inside a penitential season. Our first reading begins Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! We go from Zephaniah to Isaiah: Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. And Paul picks up from there with this letter to the Philippian church: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. So, by the time we have reached the Gospel for this jubilant day of rejoicing, we are expecting at least a similar amount of exuberance from the Gospel text for this Sunday. If we think back to last week’s readings, This week’s reading picks up where that one left off. John the Baptizer has appeared on the scene. His father burst into song at his birth, And Luke uses the language of Isaiah, Both to tell us how this John will be the forerunner of the Messiah. So, After all this build up, And all this talk of rejoicing at the coming of the Salvation of Israel, we finally get to hear John in his own words: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” It kind of reminds you of that old Sesame Street bit, Which one of these is not like the others, Which one of these just isn’t the same? John is the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness. John is the leveler of mountains, And the straightener of paths. John is the bringer of the good news. So, why does John sound more like a crazed bible thumper Preaching destruction and unquenchable fire? And how are we supposed to rejoice in this dire warning? I think we can begin to draw a closer connection Between John’s preaching and John’s commissioning If we look at the response to John’s preaching. John goes into all the region around the Jordan Preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John’s message is that the ax is already at the root of the tree, Ready to fell every tree that does not bear fruit And throw it into the fire. The crowds ask, What then should we do? John tells the crowds "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." Tax collectors ask John, “Teacher, what should we do?” John tells the tax collectors, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." Soldiers ask John, “And we, what should we do?” John tells the soldiers, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages." John imagines the community of the baptized looks different than those who have not been baptized. This is John’s mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening ministry that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. The community of the baptized will prepare the way of the Lord by repentance. Now, On the surface this may not sound super “Lutheran.” We don’t often talk of doing things, And we often lean on a definition of repentance That means more of a change of mind and heart Than on the change of one’s behavior. But this repentance To which John calls the community of the baptized Is mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening ministry that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. One notable Lutheran spoke of repentance in this way. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, In his book The Cost of Discipleship Spoke of cheap grace. Cheap grace is an understanding of the grace of God That leads a person to believe that the life of discipleship Requires nothing of them. Back when I was a fundamentalist, We would have called this fire insurance, A “Get Out of Hell Free” card That allows a person to escape eternal damnation And then go about their merry way. In contrast, Bonhoeffer speaks of costly grace, The sort of understanding of the grace of God that elicits a grateful response. The kind of gratitude that asks And we , what should we do? It was this kind of costly grace That led Bonhoeffer in his day To resist the Third Reich And ultimately led to his execution At the hand of the Nazi regime. In John’s day His message or repentance and forgiveness Came to the people of Israel, And John warns, “Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” John warns that their access to the history, To the covenants, To the promises Does not preclude them from call to repentance, From the call to be about the mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening ministry that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. John says, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. John says, Don’t fool yourself into thinking That God’s faithfulness Depends on you. God’s faithfulness Is your salvation. The call to repentance Is not a call for your help But an invitation For your cooperation. John says, Bear fruits worthy of repentance, Because the ax is already at the root of those trees That do not bear fruit. And those fruitless trees will be cast into the fire. This sounds like terrible news, Until you read that Jesus is the bringer of the fire. John says, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire .” Jesus is coming, Says John, And he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit And with fire. Luke mixes his metaphors a bit here Telling us through John, That Jesus comes with a pitchfork To gather the grain into the barn And throw the chaff into an unquenchable fire. It would be easy here To overlook John’s warning And presume ourselves to be insured against the coming fire by the waters of our baptism. But this would be a very cheap grace. We won’t be saved from the fire to come, but through it. Jesus will burn up the chaff of us and gather up our grain. Jesus will transform our fruitlessness into firewood. And, having been saved through the fire we, like the crowd, like the tax collectors, like the soldiers, ought to ask, “And we , what must we do?” The Spirit is inviting us To be about the same, mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening ministry that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. We, like the crowd, can give away our second coat and share our food. We, Like the tax collectors, Can refuse to consume more than we must. We, Like the soldier, Must decline to abuse our privilege. We must work for the peace that is not the absence of conflict But the presence of justice. We must live without covetousness. This season of Advent, While the rest of the world Is overcome with consumption And deludes itself With a bland sentimentality It calls the “Christmas spirit,” We must be about the mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening work that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. This is the Christmas spirit. In fact, This is the Christian Spirit. So, Rejoice, you brood of vipers! Shout aloud, Sing for Joy. One is coming who will baptize us with fire and the Spirit and all flesh shall see the salvation of God! Amen.
Often musicals get a lot of flak. People scoff at how unrealistic it is that characters would simply burst into song in perfectly choreographed routines and no one else in the story seems to be put out by just how odd it must be to witness something like this. A more recent phenomena is the flash mob. This is where a group of people get together, rehearse a routine, complete with song and dance, and then preform this routine in a public space, like an outdoor plaza, college campus, or a shopping mall. Naturally, these events become a YouTube sensation, reaching viral status quickly, as the videos focus not only on the routine itself, but on the slack-jawed confusion of the standers-by. I saw one video of a choir who clandestinely took their seats in a mall food court. With no warning or introduction, a soprano rose to her feet, and began to sing, “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” By the third Hallelujah, she was joined by a tenor, who also rose to his feet and began singing. Shortly an alto and a bass joined in. Eventually, entire sections joined in until almost one third of the people in the food court were on their feet, singing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. The video pans the crowd, capturing stunned and confused reactions. People break out their cell phones and cameras and begin to record the sudden jubilation with huge smiles. One woman wipes a tear from her eye as she videos. And one small boy, who has taken to standing in his chair to investigate this heavenly sound, never breaks his enraptured gaze as his mother slips her hand into his. By the final Hallelujah, The food court erupts in thunderous applause. Then everyone retakes their seats. And everything returns to normal. One lady returns to her newspaper. A couple gets up to return their tray. The little boy who was standing in his chair lets go his mother’s hand and sits down to finish his French fries. These first few chapters of the Gospel of Luke Can feel a bit like a musical Or a flash mob. In just the first two chapters, Mary, Zechariah, A host of angels, And Simeon All break into spontaneous singing. Their songs are all about how the promise of God has been fulfilled. Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, sings of how the redemption of Israel has been accomplished, how God has raised up a savior from the house of David. But then, Everything seems to go back to normal. After Zechariah sings of a savior from the house of David, John’s ministry begins with someone else on the throne. Tiberius is emperor. Pontus Pilate is governor. Herod is ruler of Judea, Philip and Lysanias each rule their respective realms, And Annas and Caiaphas are in charge of the temple in Jerusalem. Somehow, The day of the Lord has come, And also not yet. John is to proclaim a baptism of repentance, a rite of washing the body to mark a change of mind and heart. John’s ministry is to shave down the mountains, And fill in the valleys; To straighten out the crooked paths, And make the rough places smooth. Despite Zechariah’s song the mountains are still in the way, the valleys are still empty, the paths are all still crooked, and the rough places are still rough. We Lutherans talk about a theology of glory, A cheap grace. The TV-preacher kind of theology where God wants to give out cars and fortune-cookie advise like some cosmic Oprah. “You get a blessing! And you get a blessing! EVERYONE gets a blessing!!!” And meanwhile, wars rage, children die of cancer, fires and floods destroy whole communities. At first glance, all this talk of God’s blessing Like its already here, Can sound a lot like this TV-preacher theology, a shiny, pleasing distraction, but little more than a good parking space as a consolation prize for some very real pain. As though, the Good News broke upon us like a flash mob singing the Hallelujah Chorus while we were just trying to eat our French fries, and then everything went back to normal. We Lutherans also tend to counter the theology of glory with the theology of the Cross. The theology of the cross is a lot less attractive than the theology of glory. Especially in the short-term, where it forces us to look directly at all the pain and suffering of the world. But in the long-term, the theology of the cross deals with the world as it is, with all its mountainous obstacles, gaping emotional valleys, hair-pin paths that snake a 180-degree turn when you’re not looking, and rough patches that seem to rub us raw before they leave us callus and numb. The theology of the cross tells us that the day of the Lord comes like a refining fire and fuller’s soap. The theology of the cross proclaims the baptism of repentance and the forgiveness of sins; that is, the theology of the cross reveals and confronts us with the world as it really is, persuades us to change our minds because of this reality, and it gives us a means to cope with our sense of guilt and a path to making amends. The theology of the cross recognizes that the breaking of the dawn of the tender mercy of God is only good news to those who first sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. And like the dawn, he light has come, and yet, the darkness remains. This leveling of the mountains and the elevation of the valleys is the promise that John has come to preach in the twilight of this new day, to pierce the long silence with the sound of joy, to sing a song of reveille, “Wake up! The Lord is coming, and there is work to do.” John is sent to level the path to the good news, to call sinners to repentance, and to proclaim the forgiveness of sin. John is sent to proclaim the coming of justice which is very good news in the ears of the oppressed, and feels like bad news in the ears of the oppressors. In this season of Advent we are called to heed the message of John, to level the path of the Lord by our repentance, being confronted and persuaded by reality as it really is to change our perception and our way of living in the world. We should neither look for God in seats of political power or high holy places, nor fear that we will be abandoned in the depths of our despair, because in reality, there are no holy mountains and there are no God-forsaken valleys. There is only Zechariah’s song in the reign of emperor Tiberius. There is only Hallelujah in the food court, and “the kingdoms of this earth are the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ!” The Lord lives on the level ground at the foot of the Cross. The level path of the Lord is like the breaking of the dawn, a gentle light that lives alongside the darkness. The level path of the Lord is like the voice crying out in the wilderness, like a single soprano in the food court, awaiting the growing chorus to flood the mundane with wonder. The level path of the Lord is everything seeming to go back to normal, as our eyes strain to adjust to the growing light, and our hearts hum a tune for which we can’t seem to remember all of the words, and our bodies long for just a moment’s more rest. This is our Advent discipline; to level the path between the sacred and the mundane, to sing the song of reveille and wake a sleeping world to the breaking of the dawn of the tender mercy of God. The Lord is coming, and there is work to do! Amen.
My great-great grandfather on my mother’s father’s side was a man named William Riley Johnson. When I was in high school, my mom became very interested in genealogy. S he spent hours researching in libraries, archives and databases; reading books and attending workshops. She interviewed relatives and recoded lineages. On her mother’s side, she could trace her family back to colonial Virginia before the trail ran cold, and if she had been able to link a man named John Shelton to a man by the same name in the same county one generation earlier, she would have been able to trace that line through the barony of Shelton to the time of its creation by Edward II in the 14 th century. But on her father’s side, she knows his father, Hobart, and his father, William Riley, and beyond that, nothing. In fact, save for the census and a newspaper article about his death, Mom could barely prove William Riley ever existed. Through some of these interviews, and deciphering some family lore, Mom came to believe all the answers and missing pieces lay in William Riley’s Bible, now in the custody a cousin, a cantankerous old haint who not only knew all of its secrets, but guarded them like a dragon’s hoard. She believed that she had been charged with obscuring some stain on the family’s honor and not with preserving and passing on family history. She insisted, “you don’t want to know.” And that made my mom crazy. Not only did she really, really want to know, well, now she HAD to know. But we don’t. We lost track of this ogress of a cousin, and therefore the chain of custody of the Bible. William Riley was a Baptist preacher at the time of his death in 1950, and he is buried in the church yard of his last congregation, in a place called Caney Ridge. What could a Baptist preacher have written in his Bible that would make a woman so ashamed that she would prevent even the rest of the family from knowing? We have devised all sorts of theories. Given the sensibilities of the day, and his dark hair, dark eyes, and year-round tan— in a coal mine— we speculated that perhaps he was half black, or half indigenous. We speculated that maybe he had a second family. We wondered if he was a fugitive, if had confessed to some crime or to the love of another man; or if we were all just beholden to some Appalachian cultural peculiarity that would inflame the sensibilities of an old woman but wouldn’t even register in the 21 st century. We still have no idea. The people have all passed, the book itself is lost, and with them the keys to this mystery. And that is precisely were we find ourselves in the scriptures today. We have a Bible, and we have just heard its contents, and yet the foreboding mystery remains. Daniel speaks of a white-robed, snow-haired, ancient judge, seated on some kind of flaming wheelchair attended by thousands upon thousands, opening a book and giving some human-like something everlasting dominion over the whole of creation. Revelation opens by blessing the reader with grace and peace from “the one who was, who is, and who is to come,” along with “the seven spirits” and has Jesus coming back with the clouds, all the nations of the earth wailing at his appearing. Then even Jesus seems to speak in riddles. He stands before Pilate, and says, “Hey, you’re the one who called me a king. But I do have a kingdom.” Pilate says, “Gotcha! You are a king!” To which Jesus replies, “No, I am the truth.” And Pilate says, “Whatever ‘truth’ means.” It sure feels like this Bible holds as many secrets as my lost family Bible. But the stakes seem higher here. My family lost information about our collective past. These passages seem to talk about the future, and missing information about the future seems a lot scarier. I mean, what good is a wet floor sign if you’re already lying in the puddle. The future is scary enough without warnings about it that do little more than communicate, “you don’t want to know.” We are inundated with information but we are starving for wisdom. There are so many news channels, and websites, magazines, newspapers, and social media outlets, all vying for our attention and our allegiance, that we tend to echo Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” We are exhausted from this overload and wish that someone would come along and just fix it, stop all the noise and fighting, tell us what to believe so we don’t have to try to figure it out anymore, and we can finally have some peace. We wouldn’t have to worry about the future if someone else was in charge of it. Throughout history, this has been the response of an overwhelmed and exhausted people. Dictators have seized this opportunity to get and keep power. Preachers have seized this opportunity to win converts. Each promise that a time of retribution is coming when everything will be instantly overhauled and from which loyal followers will be immune. Daniel writes of a coming king one like a human, who will be given all power and dominion. Revelation speaks of the coming of the King of kings, when nations will wail, and Jesus will be revealed as the be-all/end-all of time and space. Each write under duress. Daniel is in exile under Nebuchadnezzar. John the Revelator is in exile on the Isle of Patmos. They cannot write openly about their distaste for the current regime or promise their readers that God is the ultimate arbiter of Justice and not the king or emperor; and even if the current regime kills or represses you, God still loves you and asks you to remain faithful. The same goes for Jesus, who is bound as a prisoner, standing before the Roman governor, being questioned about sedition for alluding to some king who isn’t Caesar. So these writers use a literary style called apocalypse, or revelation. This style is like turning over a rock and being horrified to discover all the creepy and terrifying things it had sheltered. These empires insist “you don’t want to know.” Jesus promises “You can know the truth because you can know me.” Sometimes knowing the truth means leaving no stone unturned. Knowing the truth takes work, because knowing the truth is a relationship to reality, and relationships take work. To know the truth, we will have to push through our exhaustion and our desire for someone to just tell us what to believe. We will have to be persuadable, we will have to be able to change our minds; this is literally the definition of repentance. If we are incapable of changing our minds we are incapable of repentance. There are three things we can do to overcome our exhaustion and become acquainted with the truth. First, Turn off the TV, walk away from the computer, and put down the phone. These are the source of your exhaustion. Second, Learn to feel lonely and under stimulated, because trying not to feel these things has made us more lonely and overstimulated. We use TV and the internet to feel informed, entertained, and less alone, and they have made us the loneliest and most misinformed generation in the history of the world. When you are lonely, make a visit, make a call, send a text, write a letter or email. When you need information, find trusted sources in the real world, that hold to journalistic standards of practice and ethics. Subscribe to a reputable newspaper or magazine. Go to the library and ask for assistance. You will never be able to eliminate bias, but you can account for it with professional standards. Lastly, the third thing we can do to overcome our exhaustion and become acquainted with the truth is pray. Having a daily practice of prayer that fits your lifestyle and brain chemistry, and supports your spiritual growth is becoming acquainted with the truth precisely because it is becoming acquainted with Jesus who is the truth. Meditation, contemplation, mindfulness; walking, sitting, writing; breathing, speaking, singing; Anything that builds, maintains, and expands your intimate knowledge of Jesus is prayer. Then ordering your life, your daily or weekly schedule, to account for this regular practice becomes a tether to reality as it is and severs any ties to virtual reality the empire wants to sell you. If you need information about these practices, I am happy to help you find the right one for you. Deacon Intern Sue will also be holding office hours here at the church beginning in Advent to offer spiritual direction in developing these practices. This is the reign of Christ: That we would make room in our hearts and lives for the truth, for “reality with a personality,” for Christ. It means leaving no stone unturned and confronting all the creepy, terrifying things we find underneath— and especially all the things we hid there ourselves. The Bible can feel like one of those stones, an ancient, opaque object sheltering unsettling and unseemly secrets. But our hope is not in the object of the Bible, but the Subject of the Bible, that is Christ, come to reign over a kingdom of hearts as the truth, as reality with a personality. So, come, and live your apocalypse, by a practice of media fasting and prayer, make your life a revelation of the lies of strongmen and corporations. Then Jesus will reign in your hearts and the whole world will know who is the Truth. Amen.