(Scriptures: Isaiah 63:7-9, Hebrews 2:10-18 Matthew 2:1-23)
Note: Due to the forecasted snow, Emanuel has cancelled services for Dec 26. Here is the sermon planned for this morning
I’d like to begin by thanking everyone once again for all that everyone did to make our Christmas Eve service a night of beauty and wonder. From the beautiful decorations to the Scripture readings which everyone did so well, to Ralph’s beautiful organ music, to preparations for Holy Communion, I thought this year’s Christmas Eve service was especially meaningful.
And here we are again, not even two full days later, in worship to God. The presents have been opened, the turkey mostly eaten – or not – and we may feel like we need a vacation to recover from our Christmas holiday. We’re grateful for the privilege of making our annual pilgrimage to the manger, to pay tribute to the Christ child, but the time we spend there goes by all too quickly. We hope today will be a day of blessed rest, but tomorrow, we’ll be going “once more into the breach,” once more back to our daily lives. We may feel that while the lights and carols are beautiful, there’s no rest for the weary.
All this may give us at least a small taste of Mary and Joseph’s experience in today’s Scripture reading. This week’s and next week’s readings are out of sequence: next Sunday is Epiphany, when we read of the visit of the Wise Men. Today’s reading tells what happens in the aftermath of their visit, when Herod tries to have Jesus killed. Both readings tell of events approximately two years after the birth of Jesus. Mary and Joseph are no longer in the manger – we’re told that the wise men found the child, not in the manger, but in a house.
But we’ll hear from about the wise men next week. This week we’re stuck with brutal, paranoid Herod. Herod kept order and control over his subjects, but it could hardly be called peace – it was more like a reign of terror. We may remember news accounts in recent decades over the brutality of present and past rulers in the Middle East, who out of their paranoia arranged assassination attempts on members of their own family and their advisors. Herod would fit right in….in some ways, the more things change, the more they remain the same.
Does anyone here today like to watch old westerns, maybe on Turner Classics? One familiar plotline is a new sheriff or US marshal riding in to clean up the town. At some point, the sheriff and the bad guy will run foul of each other, and the bad guy will tell the sheriff: “this town ain’t big enough for the both of us and I’m giving you 24 hours to clear out.” Of course, we know that the sheriff will chase out the bad guys, win the girl, and ride off into the sunset, and that’ll be the end of the story.
While the scenery is much different, today’s Gospel follows a similar plotline. The wise men had traipsed into Herod’s court and asked, “where is the king......., for we have seen his star?” Of course, as far as Herod was concerned, he was the king in them thar’ parts. Herod consulted his scribes and was told that a new king would be born in Bethlehem of Judea. And while Herod forced a smile when he talked to the wise men – “when you find him, let me know where he is; I’d like to come and…uh….worship as well. Yeah….worship…that’s the ticket” – our Gospel makes it very clear that, for Herod, his province wasn’t big enough for the both of them, Herod and the baby who is to become king; that Herod had, not worship, but murder on his mind.
For Mary and Joseph, who had endured one exhausting trip to Bethlehem to give birth to Jesus, there was no rest for the weary. But God does not leave the babe defenseless. Like the Joseph of whom we read in Genesis, whose dreams warned Egypt of impending famine and enabled Joseph, with Pharoah’s support, to store up grain against the upcoming years of hunger, the dreams of Mary’s husband Joseph warn of Herod’s murderous plans. Warned in a dream, Mary and Joseph and the babe become political refugees, fleeing to safety in Egypt until Herod’s deathMatthew is very explicit in drawing parallels between Joseph in Genesis and the Joseph who would become Jesus’ earthly father. In the same way, Matthew draws explicit parallels between Jesus and the Moses of the Exodus: Jesus for a time lives in exile in Egypt, until he, like Moses before him, can emerge to return to Galilee, to bide his time with his family until, as an adult, Jesus emerges to lead all humanity to salvation. Herod reacts in character to God’s intervention – unaware that Mary and Joseph and the babe had evaded his grasp, Herod has all the babies in and around Bethlehem 2 years and younger killed. And again, there are parallels to Exodus: here Herod is re-enacting the role of Pharoah, who instructed his midwives to have all the male Hebrew babies killed. For Matthew’s community of Jewish converts to the way of Jesus, these parallels between the Genesis and Exodus accounts and the birth narrative of Jesus would have been rich with meaning.
As extreme, as literally crazed as Herod’s reaction is, at one level it’s an entirely rational response. You see, Judea really wasn’t big enough for both Herod and Jesus. In fact, the whole world isn’t big enough for the ways of Herod and the way of Jesus. The ways of the world, the ways of Herod and the way of Jesus are incompatible. As believers, we can’t treat the way of Herod and Jesus as items on a buffet table, where we can take a little of one and a little of the other. The ways of the world, the ways of Herod, are ways of death, whereas the way of Jesus is the way of life, abundant life in this world and eternal life in the world to come.
In Jesus, God’s reign was breaking into our world in a new way, to break the grip of the powers of sin and death. As Ralph (in one of his moments away from the organ) read from John’s Gospel with such passion and eloquence at Christmas Eve, the Word, the creative power of God through whom all the universe was brought into being, became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. All who receive Jesus, who believe in Jesus’ name, are given power to become children of God. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made God known to us.
But, as Ralph also read, while the world came into being through the Word, the world did not know him. Jesus came into the world to save, and in response the world, through Herod, sought to destroy. Mary and Joseph were entrusted with the care of Jesus, the Word made flesh, and while their lives were eventful – the stories they could tell! - they could hardly have been called easy.
And so it often is with us. When we become disciples of Jesus, we turn away the ways of the world, the flesh, and the devil. And the world, the flesh, and the devil will push back. We may find our lives becoming, not easier, but more complicated, just as Mary and Joseph’s faith led them into life as political refugees. There are costs to being a disciple of Jesus. We find ourselves, not in a sheltered retreat, but on a battlefield, in the thick of the action. And we can’t even pick up Herod’s weapons and use them against Herod. The ways of Herod only lead to death. We can only combat Herod with the weapons of the spirit, following in the way of Jesus. God does not promise us an easy life, but God does promise his presence in the struggle, his presence on our journey of life.
Jesus said, “Come unto me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” It’s a strange kind of rest, not a rest of idle inactivity, but a rest that comes with knowing that, while the battle may be fierce, the outcome is assured, and we will welcome it. Perhaps it could be compared to the calm at the center of a hurricane; while life swirls around us, we can find a calm center within ourselves that comes with faith in God. And while our lives may not be easy, we are promised that we will have the peace of Christ, that peace that passes all understanding, that peace that the world can neither give nor take away. May that peace be with us now, and go with us always. Amen.
**************
Please start off 2011 right, by joining us next Sunday at 10 am (Epiphany or "Three Kings" Sunday) at Emanuel United Church of Christ. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson).
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
God With Us
(Scriptures: Isaiah 7:10-16
Romans 1:1-7 Matthew 1:18-25)
Joseph had a problem. It came at a time which should have been the among the happiest of his life – he had just gotten engaged, to Mary. Wedding plans were in motion, and Joseph and Mary were ready to begin a life together. And then Mary turned up pregnant. And Joseph knew perfectly well that whoever’s child it was, it wasn’t his, as he and Mary had not been intimate. Uh oh.
What to do? Well, what does the Bible say? And at that time, the “Bible”, of course, would be the Old Testament, as the New Testament hadn’t been written yet. Deuteronomy 22:23 reads as follows: “If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”
Ugh…kind of a harsh way to break off an engagement! Joseph loved Mary. He didn’t want to embarrass Mary, embarrass Mary’s family, risk Mary’s being dragged to the town gate and stoned to death. On the other hand, he certainly didn’t want to take responsibility to raise a child that wasn’t his. What a mess. How could Mary have let this happen to herself? Joseph’s dream of spending the rest of his life with Mary was turning into a nightmare.
Joseph turned embarrassing situation over and over in his mind, and had come to the conclusion that the best thing for both parties was to send Mary away quietly, to give both of them a chance to move on with their lives. Of course, that would still leave Mary raising a child alone, or maybe moving back in with her parents, but it would avoid public humiliation, and maybe even the risk of a public execution, for Mary. And Joseph could take some time to catch his breath, to get over his embarrassment and anger and sense of betrayal, and maybe begin a life with another girl. There need be no blood on the ground over this. Send Mary away quietly….yes, that’s how to make the best of a bad situation. Joseph had settled on his course of action……..
…….when he was visited in a dream by an angel, a messenger of God, who turned all his careful plans upside down. “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for this child is from the Holy Spirit.” Mary hadn’t been unfaithful to Joseph. Rather, the baby was a gift from God. You are to name him Jesus – it’s the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua, meaning, “The Lord saves” – because he will save people from their sins. And then the angel reminds him of a text that had been one of Judah’s stories, about a baby named Immanuel, meaning “God with us,” whose birth had been the sign that Isaiah had given to frightened King Ahaz, that he might trust in God’s protection. And unlike King Ahaz, whose faith in God was wobbly at best, Joseph trusted in the angel’s message and took Mary as his wife.
Our reading from Matthew began with these words: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” The Greek word translated as “birth” is Genesis – the same word that is the name of the first book of the Old Testament. The book of Genesis gave us creation; the birth or genesis of Jesus Christ gives us new creation. In the birth of Jesus, as at the story of creation, all things are made new, never to be the same again.
God with us. Despite all of humanity’s resisting God and turning away from God, God insisted on being with us, intimately with us, with us as a little baby, with us needing to be fed and diapered, with us depending at every step on Mary’s love and Joseph’s protection from those who would soon be seeking to take the child’s life.
We all have those moments when our faith in God is shaken, when we feel that God is a distant, a million miles away, way out there in the heavens. We all have those moments of great tragedy, or daily moments of frustration, when we feel that God has forgotten us, like God has too much on God’s mind to be bothered with our problems. We ask, “where was God when my loved one got sick, or was in an accident, or was cut down unexpectedly in some other way. Where was God when these things happened to me?” The voice of doubt in our mind, like the voice of Job’s wife during Job’s afflictions, cries out in despair, “Curse God and die.”
Jesus is the sign of the promise that God is with us, intimately with us, with us in every experience of human life. Jesus knew what it was to be helpless, to be hungry and thirsty, to need to have his diapers changed. Jesus knew what it was to be a child, having to ask his parents for answers to every question, to be a teenager, finding his way, to grow into adulthood. Jesus experienced every bit of what it means to be human, and yet, Scripture tells us, without sin. Because of this, Jesus is truly God-with-us, God with us in our joys and our sorrows, our moments of helplessness, in all our daily trials and tragedies. In our moments of rejoicing, because of Jesus, God is with us, rejoicing. In our moments of sorrow, because of Jesus, God is with us, weeping on our behalf.
We might be thinking, “I don’t want God to stand next to me and weep. I know plenty well how to weep all by myself. I want God to fix things!” But for reasons best known to God, God doesn’t promise to insulate the faithful from life’s trials, but rather to be present with us, never to leave us nor forsake us. Despite God’s presence in their midst, Mary and Joseph faced life for a time as refugees from Herod’s wrath. In their trials God was with them, present to warn them of approaching danger, present to provide strength for the journey. As Paul said in I Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in this world to shame the wise; God chose what was weak in this world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in this world, the things that are not, to reduce to nothing the things that are.” At every turn, at every step, the ways of God turn the ways of human beings upside down – or more likely, our ways are upside down and God is turning them right-side-up. The power of human beings is like boots tramping down the ground, or like a sledgehammer coming down from above. The power of God is like seeds sprouting up secretly. When Herod wants to make his presence felt, he sends an army. When God wants to make God’s presence felt, God sends a baby.
For us who gather here today at Emanuel Church, this is good news indeed! God who has been with this congregation at every step of the way through the past 150 years, is still with us every step of the way, even today, this hour, this moment, in our midst. With our small membership, we who are weak by the worldly standards of numbers and dollars are open to being used by God in a way that those who are strong by worldly standards can’t. Our numbers and our resources, our own might, won’t get us very far; it is only by God’s grace that we can stand at all. Paul’s words again: “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” Sounds like us at Emanuel all right! But those are the very people with whom God’s presence will abide, the very people who are open to being used by God to bring God’s great good news to others.
One of the prayers of confession in the UCC book of worship begins, “God, we confess that it is not easy to wait for you. Our world worships the power that acts quickly through force; how difficult it is for us to wait for the power of your rule which comes slowly through love.” Advent’s season of waiting will soon be over; in a few days, on Christmas Eve, we’ll celebrate the birth of the Christ child. May the season of Advent waiting give us patience to wait for Jesus, called Immanuel, God with us, to be attentive and alert for the signs of God’s presence.
Hear these words from Catholic author and mystic Thomas Merton, as he meditated on Jesus’ birth in a manger: “Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected by power, because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.”
And let me close with these verses from a familiar hymn, written not so far from here in Philadelphia:
“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin.
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.”
Let every heart prepare him room. Amen.
******************
At Emanuel Church, we are thankful that God has been with us for almost 150 years. You can be with us, too, on Christmas Eve at 7 p.m. We're at 2628 Fillmore Street (off Thompson) in Philadelphia's Bridesburg neighborhood. Let every heart prepare Him room!
Romans 1:1-7 Matthew 1:18-25)
Joseph had a problem. It came at a time which should have been the among the happiest of his life – he had just gotten engaged, to Mary. Wedding plans were in motion, and Joseph and Mary were ready to begin a life together. And then Mary turned up pregnant. And Joseph knew perfectly well that whoever’s child it was, it wasn’t his, as he and Mary had not been intimate. Uh oh.
What to do? Well, what does the Bible say? And at that time, the “Bible”, of course, would be the Old Testament, as the New Testament hadn’t been written yet. Deuteronomy 22:23 reads as follows: “If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death, the young woman because she did not cry for help in the town and the man because he violated his neighbor’s wife. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.”
Ugh…kind of a harsh way to break off an engagement! Joseph loved Mary. He didn’t want to embarrass Mary, embarrass Mary’s family, risk Mary’s being dragged to the town gate and stoned to death. On the other hand, he certainly didn’t want to take responsibility to raise a child that wasn’t his. What a mess. How could Mary have let this happen to herself? Joseph’s dream of spending the rest of his life with Mary was turning into a nightmare.
Joseph turned embarrassing situation over and over in his mind, and had come to the conclusion that the best thing for both parties was to send Mary away quietly, to give both of them a chance to move on with their lives. Of course, that would still leave Mary raising a child alone, or maybe moving back in with her parents, but it would avoid public humiliation, and maybe even the risk of a public execution, for Mary. And Joseph could take some time to catch his breath, to get over his embarrassment and anger and sense of betrayal, and maybe begin a life with another girl. There need be no blood on the ground over this. Send Mary away quietly….yes, that’s how to make the best of a bad situation. Joseph had settled on his course of action……..
…….when he was visited in a dream by an angel, a messenger of God, who turned all his careful plans upside down. “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for this child is from the Holy Spirit.” Mary hadn’t been unfaithful to Joseph. Rather, the baby was a gift from God. You are to name him Jesus – it’s the Greek version of the Hebrew name Joshua, meaning, “The Lord saves” – because he will save people from their sins. And then the angel reminds him of a text that had been one of Judah’s stories, about a baby named Immanuel, meaning “God with us,” whose birth had been the sign that Isaiah had given to frightened King Ahaz, that he might trust in God’s protection. And unlike King Ahaz, whose faith in God was wobbly at best, Joseph trusted in the angel’s message and took Mary as his wife.
Our reading from Matthew began with these words: “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.” The Greek word translated as “birth” is Genesis – the same word that is the name of the first book of the Old Testament. The book of Genesis gave us creation; the birth or genesis of Jesus Christ gives us new creation. In the birth of Jesus, as at the story of creation, all things are made new, never to be the same again.
God with us. Despite all of humanity’s resisting God and turning away from God, God insisted on being with us, intimately with us, with us as a little baby, with us needing to be fed and diapered, with us depending at every step on Mary’s love and Joseph’s protection from those who would soon be seeking to take the child’s life.
We all have those moments when our faith in God is shaken, when we feel that God is a distant, a million miles away, way out there in the heavens. We all have those moments of great tragedy, or daily moments of frustration, when we feel that God has forgotten us, like God has too much on God’s mind to be bothered with our problems. We ask, “where was God when my loved one got sick, or was in an accident, or was cut down unexpectedly in some other way. Where was God when these things happened to me?” The voice of doubt in our mind, like the voice of Job’s wife during Job’s afflictions, cries out in despair, “Curse God and die.”
Jesus is the sign of the promise that God is with us, intimately with us, with us in every experience of human life. Jesus knew what it was to be helpless, to be hungry and thirsty, to need to have his diapers changed. Jesus knew what it was to be a child, having to ask his parents for answers to every question, to be a teenager, finding his way, to grow into adulthood. Jesus experienced every bit of what it means to be human, and yet, Scripture tells us, without sin. Because of this, Jesus is truly God-with-us, God with us in our joys and our sorrows, our moments of helplessness, in all our daily trials and tragedies. In our moments of rejoicing, because of Jesus, God is with us, rejoicing. In our moments of sorrow, because of Jesus, God is with us, weeping on our behalf.
We might be thinking, “I don’t want God to stand next to me and weep. I know plenty well how to weep all by myself. I want God to fix things!” But for reasons best known to God, God doesn’t promise to insulate the faithful from life’s trials, but rather to be present with us, never to leave us nor forsake us. Despite God’s presence in their midst, Mary and Joseph faced life for a time as refugees from Herod’s wrath. In their trials God was with them, present to warn them of approaching danger, present to provide strength for the journey. As Paul said in I Corinthians, “God chose what is foolish in this world to shame the wise; God chose what was weak in this world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in this world, the things that are not, to reduce to nothing the things that are.” At every turn, at every step, the ways of God turn the ways of human beings upside down – or more likely, our ways are upside down and God is turning them right-side-up. The power of human beings is like boots tramping down the ground, or like a sledgehammer coming down from above. The power of God is like seeds sprouting up secretly. When Herod wants to make his presence felt, he sends an army. When God wants to make God’s presence felt, God sends a baby.
For us who gather here today at Emanuel Church, this is good news indeed! God who has been with this congregation at every step of the way through the past 150 years, is still with us every step of the way, even today, this hour, this moment, in our midst. With our small membership, we who are weak by the worldly standards of numbers and dollars are open to being used by God in a way that those who are strong by worldly standards can’t. Our numbers and our resources, our own might, won’t get us very far; it is only by God’s grace that we can stand at all. Paul’s words again: “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” Sounds like us at Emanuel all right! But those are the very people with whom God’s presence will abide, the very people who are open to being used by God to bring God’s great good news to others.
One of the prayers of confession in the UCC book of worship begins, “God, we confess that it is not easy to wait for you. Our world worships the power that acts quickly through force; how difficult it is for us to wait for the power of your rule which comes slowly through love.” Advent’s season of waiting will soon be over; in a few days, on Christmas Eve, we’ll celebrate the birth of the Christ child. May the season of Advent waiting give us patience to wait for Jesus, called Immanuel, God with us, to be attentive and alert for the signs of God’s presence.
Hear these words from Catholic author and mystic Thomas Merton, as he meditated on Jesus’ birth in a manger: “Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others who do not belong, who are rejected by power, because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.”
And let me close with these verses from a familiar hymn, written not so far from here in Philadelphia:
“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin.
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.”
Let every heart prepare him room. Amen.
******************
At Emanuel Church, we are thankful that God has been with us for almost 150 years. You can be with us, too, on Christmas Eve at 7 p.m. We're at 2628 Fillmore Street (off Thompson) in Philadelphia's Bridesburg neighborhood. Let every heart prepare Him room!
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Are You The One?
In last week’s Gospel reading, we met for the first time John the Baptist, the wildman in the wilderness, that voice, crying in the wilderness, saying, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” In a few weeks, we’ll read of what happens when Jesus as an adult responds to John’s voice, and comes to be baptized. John is so overawed by meeting Jesus that he says that instead of John baptizing Jesus, Jesus should instead be baptizing him.
In today’s Gospel, we’re given a glimpse of both Jesus and John, maybe a year or two after Jesus was baptized. Time has passed, and both Jesus and John continued their respective ministries. In Matthew we’re told much about Jesus’ teaching ministry, particularly when Matthew gives us Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We’re also told early on that Jesus was a powerful healer, and following the Sermon on the Mount we’re given several accounts of healing – Jesus cleansing a leper, Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever, Jesus restoring two demoniacs by casting out the demons, healing a paralytic so that he could stand up and walk, healing two blind men, restores speech to one who was mute, and even raising the daughter of a synagogue leader from the dead. At this point, the crowds following Jesus are so great that Jesus commissions his disciples to heal and to proclaim the good news.
While all this is going on, John the Baptist for the most part drops out of sight. But when we do get a glimpse of John, we get the feeling that John….has mixed feelings about Jesus. John preached about judgment, about the unquenchable fire of God’s wrath against the unfaithful. His message could be summed up in three words: “turn or burn.” John lived an ascetic, bare-bones life, living on locusts and wild honey.
Jesus’ ministry was different from John’s. While John’s preaching was all hellfire and judgment, Jesus spoke of a gracious God who forgave those who repented. While John’s disciples fasted, Jesus and his disciples ate, drank, even partied. When John’s disciples questioned the propriety of Jesus’ disciples feasting while they were fasting, Jesus said that fasting was inappropriate while Jesus was with them, part of the old wineskins that could not hold the new wine of the kingdom of heaven of which Jesus spoke. So John’s disciples and Jesus’ disciples, John’s ministry and Jesus’ ministry, began to part company. In today’s Gospel, John, now in prison because he fell foul of Herod, sends his disciples to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” John, who earlier in his ministry in holy boldness had publicly compared the Pharisees and Sadducees to a snakepit, was in prison, awaiting execution, and feeling discouraged. John, who earlier in Matthew’s Gospel was in such awe of Jesus that he wanted Jesus to baptize him, now has serious doubts. “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another? Jesus, you sure aren’t the kind of Messiah I was expecting. Are you the Messiah, or are you not?” John, who had done so much to prepare the way for Jesus, is now wondering if it had been all for naught. It had to be a painful moment, for John who had baptized and prepared the way for Jesus, and for Jesus himself, whose public ministry began with being baptized by John.
Jesus’ response is interesting. Rather than getting his back up, rather than mounting some lengthy defense of his authority, Jesus prefers to let the fruits of his ministry speak for themselves. “Go and tell John what you see: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” Remember our reading from Isaiah earlier today, about the eyes of the blind being opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame leaping like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless singing for joy - the very things Isaiah said would happen, Jesus did – and more. Isaiah didn’t say anything about raising the dead, but Jesus did it nonetheless. Jesus went on: “And blessed is anyone who does not take offense at me” – the Greek means literally “blessed is the one who is not made to stumble because of me”.
After John’s disciples return to report Jesus’ words, Jesus goes on to talk about John. And while John had doubts about Jesus, Jesus had no doubts about John. Despite John’s doubts, Jesus proclaims that John is a prophet, and indeed more than a prophet – he is the one preparing the way for Jesus, the Elijah figure that many had looked for. And yet for all this, Jesus has these surprising and poignant words: “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” If John was like the prophet Elijah, John was also a bit like Moses, who prepared his followers to enter the promised land, yet who himself could not enter, but could only look at it from a distance. For all his prophetic ministry, John was stuck in old expectations and old practices, and struggled to accept fully that in Jesus, God himself had entered the scene and was doing something radically new.
While I don’t think any of us have been out in the desert eating locusts and wild honey as John did, I suspect that in a sense, we’ve all from time to time been with John in prison, feeling discouraged and having doubts. We’ve sacrificed much – time, energy, material wealth – to follow Jesus. We believed that becoming a disciple of Christ would totally transform our lives – we believed Jesus would save us, save us from our sins and shortcomings in this life, and save us for eternal life in the world to come. We’re on fire for the Lord! We want to see our lives, and the world around us, change – and not some time way out in the distant yonder, either, but right away, today, yesterday even! And yet, life around us goes on as it ever has, same annoyances, same problems, same tragedies. In fact, since we’ve begun following Jesus, maybe instead of getting better, things have actually gotten worse: we’ve lost a job and despair over how we’re going to feed our family, someone we’ve for whom we’ve poured out prayer upon prayer has instead of recovering, gotten sicker, maybe even died. Maybe we’ve prayed for God to help a family member turn their life around, but we see that family member stuck in the same self-destructive behavior. Or maybe our involvement in church has turned family or friends away from us. We invite people to church, and nobody comes. We read about passages like our Isaiah reading today about the wilderness and the dry land becoming glad, the desert rejoicing and blooming – but what we see in front of us and around us looks like the same desert we saw yesterday, the same wilderness we’ve been trudging through for days and weeks and years on end. And we begin to doubt: was committing to following Jesus a mistake? Is what I’m doing a total waste of time? Should I just go back to the life I knew before I met Jesus?
In these moments, let’s remember Jesus’ words for John’s disciples: “Go and tell John what you’ve seen: the blind can see, the deaf hear, and so forth.” In those moments of discouragement, remember what it was that made you follow Jesus in the first place. In those moments of discouragement, remember how God has blessed you along the way. Remember those times when God has used you to bring good news. Scripture tells us that “the word of the Lord will not return void.” Though we may not see the fruit of our efforts, we can have faith that nothing we do for Jesus is wasted. Our reading from the letter of James reminds us that just as farmers have to wait for their seed to bear fruit, so we must be patient, and continue in faith, keeping on keeping on in faith until the coming of the Lord.
A recent personal example: before I began hanging out in Bridesburg, I was a member of a larger United Church of Christ congregation in Center City. Compared to Emanuel, my former congregation was a good bit larger – even on a bad Sunday, they get 100 out to worship - and, unlike here, it was easy for folks to get lost in the crowd. Here at Emanuel, if you’re not here, everyone knows it, and your presence is missed – not to condemn, but just in the sense that we’re a family here at Emanuel, and we feel like we’re not complete when a familiar pew is empty, just like an empty seat at Thanksgiving dinner reminds us that a family member is missing from the table. But in a larger congregation, someone could - and quite a few people did - drop out of sight and it might be months until someone asked, “whatever happened to so and so.” Over and over at board meetings, I used to lament, “we have a big front door” – where people enter – “and we have a big back door” – where people sneak out and leave, never to return. And so one thing I did as one of the elders was to get the attendance records periodically from the secretary, and call or write cards to folks who hadn’t been to church for a while, or to folks I hadn’t seen recently. It was nothing very formal or organized, just something I did on my own in a fairly random, disorganized way. Three times a year – usually a few weeks before Christmas, a few weeks before Easter, and in mid-August, just before school started, I’d go through the attendance records, write out two dozen or so “thinking of you” cards and mail them out. And while every once in a great while someone would come back to church – for a few weeks anyway – the vast majority didn’t. And I got discouraged: “Is what I’m doing a waste of time and stamps? Why am I doing this? I’m beating my head against a wall. Nothing is happening.” But I kept on keeping on over a number of years, until I was called to be pastor here at Emanuel Church.
In mid-November, just about a month ago, I got an email from the pastor of my former congregation. He told me of his recent visit to a shut in member, who had a progressive illness that made it hard for her to get out, and as a result, while she had once been quite active, she had gradually come to church less and less until now she hadn’t been to church in years. The church sends out lots of broadcast emails to the membership, a few every week, and one day she wrote back, saying, “Could someone from the church contact me?” and hit reply. And the pastor went to visit. And as the pastor and this shut-in member talked, she told the pastor, “There was this guy at the church named Dave, and when I started getting sick and couldn’t come to church as often, I used to get cards from him, and he kept me in touch with what was going on at church. And then a few years back, the cards stopped. Whatever happened to him?” Of course, the pastor told the shut-in that I’m now serving a church in Bridesburg. But I felt like this was God telling me that I hadn’t been wasting my time; that all that time God had been using what I did, that for some people, those random cards over the course of the year were one of the threads that helped connect them to the church. And now, in those moments when I get discouraged, I can remember what the pastor of my former congregation told me about that shut-in visit, remember that God who was working at my former congregation is at work here at Emanuel Church, and receive encouragement to keep on going another day.
“Are you the one who is to come,” John’s disciples asked, “or should we wait for someone else?” And Jesus told them to tell John what they saw: the blind seeing, deaf hearing, dead being raised – people being blessed. While we may not feel God’s presence or see God working in exactly the way we expect, nonetheless God is present – God will never leave us nor forsake us. When we’re discouraged, like John’s disciples, we can remember those “God moments” in the past when we’ve felt God especially close. In moments of discouragement, may we remember and give thanks for the blessings we’ve received, and may we remember and give thanks for the ways that God has used us to bless others. Amen.
**************
O come, all ye faithful to Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street, just off Thompson. www.emanuelphila.org
In today’s Gospel, we’re given a glimpse of both Jesus and John, maybe a year or two after Jesus was baptized. Time has passed, and both Jesus and John continued their respective ministries. In Matthew we’re told much about Jesus’ teaching ministry, particularly when Matthew gives us Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. We’re also told early on that Jesus was a powerful healer, and following the Sermon on the Mount we’re given several accounts of healing – Jesus cleansing a leper, Jesus healing Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever, Jesus restoring two demoniacs by casting out the demons, healing a paralytic so that he could stand up and walk, healing two blind men, restores speech to one who was mute, and even raising the daughter of a synagogue leader from the dead. At this point, the crowds following Jesus are so great that Jesus commissions his disciples to heal and to proclaim the good news.
While all this is going on, John the Baptist for the most part drops out of sight. But when we do get a glimpse of John, we get the feeling that John….has mixed feelings about Jesus. John preached about judgment, about the unquenchable fire of God’s wrath against the unfaithful. His message could be summed up in three words: “turn or burn.” John lived an ascetic, bare-bones life, living on locusts and wild honey.
Jesus’ ministry was different from John’s. While John’s preaching was all hellfire and judgment, Jesus spoke of a gracious God who forgave those who repented. While John’s disciples fasted, Jesus and his disciples ate, drank, even partied. When John’s disciples questioned the propriety of Jesus’ disciples feasting while they were fasting, Jesus said that fasting was inappropriate while Jesus was with them, part of the old wineskins that could not hold the new wine of the kingdom of heaven of which Jesus spoke. So John’s disciples and Jesus’ disciples, John’s ministry and Jesus’ ministry, began to part company. In today’s Gospel, John, now in prison because he fell foul of Herod, sends his disciples to Jesus to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?” John, who earlier in his ministry in holy boldness had publicly compared the Pharisees and Sadducees to a snakepit, was in prison, awaiting execution, and feeling discouraged. John, who earlier in Matthew’s Gospel was in such awe of Jesus that he wanted Jesus to baptize him, now has serious doubts. “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another? Jesus, you sure aren’t the kind of Messiah I was expecting. Are you the Messiah, or are you not?” John, who had done so much to prepare the way for Jesus, is now wondering if it had been all for naught. It had to be a painful moment, for John who had baptized and prepared the way for Jesus, and for Jesus himself, whose public ministry began with being baptized by John.
Jesus’ response is interesting. Rather than getting his back up, rather than mounting some lengthy defense of his authority, Jesus prefers to let the fruits of his ministry speak for themselves. “Go and tell John what you see: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” Remember our reading from Isaiah earlier today, about the eyes of the blind being opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame leaping like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless singing for joy - the very things Isaiah said would happen, Jesus did – and more. Isaiah didn’t say anything about raising the dead, but Jesus did it nonetheless. Jesus went on: “And blessed is anyone who does not take offense at me” – the Greek means literally “blessed is the one who is not made to stumble because of me”.
After John’s disciples return to report Jesus’ words, Jesus goes on to talk about John. And while John had doubts about Jesus, Jesus had no doubts about John. Despite John’s doubts, Jesus proclaims that John is a prophet, and indeed more than a prophet – he is the one preparing the way for Jesus, the Elijah figure that many had looked for. And yet for all this, Jesus has these surprising and poignant words: “the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” If John was like the prophet Elijah, John was also a bit like Moses, who prepared his followers to enter the promised land, yet who himself could not enter, but could only look at it from a distance. For all his prophetic ministry, John was stuck in old expectations and old practices, and struggled to accept fully that in Jesus, God himself had entered the scene and was doing something radically new.
While I don’t think any of us have been out in the desert eating locusts and wild honey as John did, I suspect that in a sense, we’ve all from time to time been with John in prison, feeling discouraged and having doubts. We’ve sacrificed much – time, energy, material wealth – to follow Jesus. We believed that becoming a disciple of Christ would totally transform our lives – we believed Jesus would save us, save us from our sins and shortcomings in this life, and save us for eternal life in the world to come. We’re on fire for the Lord! We want to see our lives, and the world around us, change – and not some time way out in the distant yonder, either, but right away, today, yesterday even! And yet, life around us goes on as it ever has, same annoyances, same problems, same tragedies. In fact, since we’ve begun following Jesus, maybe instead of getting better, things have actually gotten worse: we’ve lost a job and despair over how we’re going to feed our family, someone we’ve for whom we’ve poured out prayer upon prayer has instead of recovering, gotten sicker, maybe even died. Maybe we’ve prayed for God to help a family member turn their life around, but we see that family member stuck in the same self-destructive behavior. Or maybe our involvement in church has turned family or friends away from us. We invite people to church, and nobody comes. We read about passages like our Isaiah reading today about the wilderness and the dry land becoming glad, the desert rejoicing and blooming – but what we see in front of us and around us looks like the same desert we saw yesterday, the same wilderness we’ve been trudging through for days and weeks and years on end. And we begin to doubt: was committing to following Jesus a mistake? Is what I’m doing a total waste of time? Should I just go back to the life I knew before I met Jesus?
In these moments, let’s remember Jesus’ words for John’s disciples: “Go and tell John what you’ve seen: the blind can see, the deaf hear, and so forth.” In those moments of discouragement, remember what it was that made you follow Jesus in the first place. In those moments of discouragement, remember how God has blessed you along the way. Remember those times when God has used you to bring good news. Scripture tells us that “the word of the Lord will not return void.” Though we may not see the fruit of our efforts, we can have faith that nothing we do for Jesus is wasted. Our reading from the letter of James reminds us that just as farmers have to wait for their seed to bear fruit, so we must be patient, and continue in faith, keeping on keeping on in faith until the coming of the Lord.
A recent personal example: before I began hanging out in Bridesburg, I was a member of a larger United Church of Christ congregation in Center City. Compared to Emanuel, my former congregation was a good bit larger – even on a bad Sunday, they get 100 out to worship - and, unlike here, it was easy for folks to get lost in the crowd. Here at Emanuel, if you’re not here, everyone knows it, and your presence is missed – not to condemn, but just in the sense that we’re a family here at Emanuel, and we feel like we’re not complete when a familiar pew is empty, just like an empty seat at Thanksgiving dinner reminds us that a family member is missing from the table. But in a larger congregation, someone could - and quite a few people did - drop out of sight and it might be months until someone asked, “whatever happened to so and so.” Over and over at board meetings, I used to lament, “we have a big front door” – where people enter – “and we have a big back door” – where people sneak out and leave, never to return. And so one thing I did as one of the elders was to get the attendance records periodically from the secretary, and call or write cards to folks who hadn’t been to church for a while, or to folks I hadn’t seen recently. It was nothing very formal or organized, just something I did on my own in a fairly random, disorganized way. Three times a year – usually a few weeks before Christmas, a few weeks before Easter, and in mid-August, just before school started, I’d go through the attendance records, write out two dozen or so “thinking of you” cards and mail them out. And while every once in a great while someone would come back to church – for a few weeks anyway – the vast majority didn’t. And I got discouraged: “Is what I’m doing a waste of time and stamps? Why am I doing this? I’m beating my head against a wall. Nothing is happening.” But I kept on keeping on over a number of years, until I was called to be pastor here at Emanuel Church.
In mid-November, just about a month ago, I got an email from the pastor of my former congregation. He told me of his recent visit to a shut in member, who had a progressive illness that made it hard for her to get out, and as a result, while she had once been quite active, she had gradually come to church less and less until now she hadn’t been to church in years. The church sends out lots of broadcast emails to the membership, a few every week, and one day she wrote back, saying, “Could someone from the church contact me?” and hit reply. And the pastor went to visit. And as the pastor and this shut-in member talked, she told the pastor, “There was this guy at the church named Dave, and when I started getting sick and couldn’t come to church as often, I used to get cards from him, and he kept me in touch with what was going on at church. And then a few years back, the cards stopped. Whatever happened to him?” Of course, the pastor told the shut-in that I’m now serving a church in Bridesburg. But I felt like this was God telling me that I hadn’t been wasting my time; that all that time God had been using what I did, that for some people, those random cards over the course of the year were one of the threads that helped connect them to the church. And now, in those moments when I get discouraged, I can remember what the pastor of my former congregation told me about that shut-in visit, remember that God who was working at my former congregation is at work here at Emanuel Church, and receive encouragement to keep on going another day.
“Are you the one who is to come,” John’s disciples asked, “or should we wait for someone else?” And Jesus told them to tell John what they saw: the blind seeing, deaf hearing, dead being raised – people being blessed. While we may not feel God’s presence or see God working in exactly the way we expect, nonetheless God is present – God will never leave us nor forsake us. When we’re discouraged, like John’s disciples, we can remember those “God moments” in the past when we’ve felt God especially close. In moments of discouragement, may we remember and give thanks for the blessings we’ve received, and may we remember and give thanks for the ways that God has used us to bless others. Amen.
**************
O come, all ye faithful to Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 a.m. We're on Fillmore Street, just off Thompson. www.emanuelphila.org
Sunday, December 5, 2010
A Voice In The Wilderness
(Scriptures: Isaiah 11:1-10, Romans 15:4-13, Matthew 3:1-12)
We continue today in the season of Advent. While many of our neighbors are going to the mall and letting their kids sit on Santa’s lap, we in the church are out in the desert with John the Baptist. The contrast couldn’t be more stark. And yet, today we also watched Al walk to the Advent wreath and light the candles of hope and peace – and these themes are picked up in our reading from Isaiah. And so even though John’s words are unlike anything you’ll ever hear from a shopping mall Santa, we can have faith that, ultimately, they are gospel – good news.
Today’s readings give us two powerful, and very different sets of images. The Isaiah reading tells us of a person coming in a spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord – who is described as a shoot coming out of a stump. This person will bring such incredible peace that even the animal world will no longer be predatory. Even the animals will testify to God’s reign of peace. It’s almost like comparing the images we see on a nature show like Animal Planet – in which bigger animals hunt down and kill smaller animals – into something that looks like an old Disney cartoon, where all the animals live together in harmony. This mighty one to come will look out for the interests of the poor and vulnerable – will judge with equity for the meek of the earth. And then come these beautiful words: “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” And Isaiah’s vision is inclusive – even the nations – the Gentiles - shall inquire of Jesse. This image of the Gentiles coming to Judah to learn of God is echoed repeatedly in our reading from Romans, and we’ll see it again in Matthew’s Gospel. Similarly, last week’s Old Testament reading was also from Isaiah, and also had a theme of peace – it was the passage which prophesied that swords would be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; nation would not rise up against nation, neither learn war any more. Isaiah gives us the image of the shoot coming out of a stump – the image is that of a place where there had once been a great tree, which had been cut down. The stump appeared lifeless and dead, beyond hope. The stump represents Judah, currently under attack from the very Gentile nations who will later come to Judah to inquire of God. But then, a shoot starts sprouting – in that stump, there’s still life. Even after a time of calamity and destruction, comes a sprout of hope. And that sprout, that shoot, will bring life, to Jew and Gentile alike.
And then comes that other image – that of John the Baptist, the wildman in the wilderness. We don’t get much background in Matthew’s Gospel, but Luke’s Gospel gives us some back-story – his father, Zechariah, was a priest, of the priestly order of Abijah. An angel proclaimed his birth to Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, both old and long past the years of childbearing. But while John was born into a priestly family and likely spent at least part of his formative years among his father’s priestly colleagues, by the time we meet him in Matthew, he has long since left behind the world of the Temple, of sacrifice and liturgical ceremony. John is out in the desert, dressed strangely – in fact, with his robe of camel hair and leather belt, his dress evokes the community’s memory of the prophet Elijah. He lives a marginal existence, eating locusts and wild honey - a diet like that of the guy on Survivorman or one of those other wilderness survival shows - telling people they had to repent and get right with God – and people flocked out into the wilderness to hear him.
It’s not hard to imagine what his message sounded like – because we have street preachers right here in Philadelphia. They look funny. Sometimes they smell funny. Their voices grate on our nerves. Usually we try to avoid them. There’s one in particular, who died some years back, that I remember, and maybe you might as well – she was a lady with the sandwich board that used to preach in the area around City Hall some years ago – she had a sing-song, raspy voice, and day after day, fair weather or foul, she proclaimed her message: "Sinner….
Sinner…If you want to see the devil, take a look in the mirror…..” If you were on the El and she walked into your car, you might move to another car. But Matthew’s gospel said that folks went out into the wilderness to hear John the Baptist – his message that they had to change their lives hit home with them. In fact, Matthew goes out of his way to say that the people of Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region along the Jordan – some of which was Gentile territory – came out to John. In Isaiah we read about the Gentile nations coming to inquire of Jesse, and we see that vision playing out in John’s ministry. John sacrificed much in the way of comfort – plentiful food and comfortable clothing, community life – in order to be faithful to God’s call. In this sacrifice, John’s listeners could see that John’s message had integrity – John not only talked the talk, he walked the walk of faith.
Matthew’s gospel says that Pharisees and Sadducees were coming out to see this wilderness prophet. Remember that the Pharisees and Sadducees didn’t get along – the Pharisees believed in the resurrection while the Sadducees didn’t; the Sadducees were tied into the Temple leadership – John’s father Zechariah likely knew lots of Sadducees - and the Sadducees played politics with Rome while the Pharisees were more for the common people. But, as the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend – at least for the moment. They were able to put their differences aside for the moment and join together in a temporary, cynical sort of alliance against the threat both groups saw in John. And of course, John sees right through their charade of piety: “You brood of vipers -Who warned you to flee the wrath to come….!” Ouch! But, remember, John had grown up among the Temple establishment, so he likely knew what he was talking about. Heaven knows that in our day, there is no shortage of vipers among the clergy and lay leadership of some churches and even some denominations.
Of course, as Jews, the Sadducees and Pharisees saw themselves as God’s chosen people, while the Gentiles in the surrounding nations were not. The Sadducees and Pharisees thought they would be saved by their family heritage, their status as leaders of God’s chosen people, their membership in a long line of ancestors leading back to Abraham. But John the Baptist bursts their bubble – “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor.’ ” Last week’s Isaiah reading, as well as this week’s reading from Romans, speak of the Gentiles coming to glorify God’s name – and John the Baptist tells the crowd that God can raise up children for Abraham out of the very stones on the ground, if God so desires. The Sadducees and Pharisees cannot rest on the accomplishments of their ancestors. Their own lives had to be right with God. In a sense, through John, God is telling these religious leaders, “Yes, yes, I know your ancestors well – but their deeds of faith are in the past. So what have you done for me lately?”
John goes on to use even more urgent imagery – “the ax is lying at the root of the trees”. If I’m a tree, one thing I don’t want to see anywhere near me is an ax. If I’m a tree, an ax has the power to turn me from a towering oak into a stump – sort of like the stump in the Isaiah reading. John is giving the Sadducees and Pharisees a stark choice: bear fruit or be cut down. Produce or perish. Grow - or die.
John also uses the image of a winnowing fork. A winnowing fork was used with grain that was newly harvested from the fields. The farmer would use the fork to throw the grain up in the air. The chaff, or husk, of the grain was lighter, and when the grain was thrown up in the air, the breeze would carry it off. The heavier kernel would fall to the floor, and it was those kernels of grain that would be used to bake bread, after the chaff or husks had first been removed.
In the United Church of Christ we rarely hear this sort of stark, “turn or burn” language. It makes us uncomfortable. It reminds of us slick TV evangelists and wild-eyed fundamentalist preachers condemning everyone around them to hell. That’s not who we are in the UCC. So I’d like to follow John’s words in a slightly different direction than what you’ll hear from the TV preachers – though I have no intention of letting anyone off the hook of John’s words.
John’s words are first and foremost motivated by a sense of urgency. He is presented as announcing the coming of “one who is more powerful than I.” The coming of this “more powerful” One will change everything. John wants his listeners to be ready for the coming of this powerful Savior of the World. I can see almost picture John wanting to pick these smug religious leaders off the ground and shake them – “Wake up! Pay attention!”
John knew well the words of Isaiah that we read today – the image of the peaceable kingdom of God, in which justice and peace would be the order of the day. He also saw clearly how things were – and that the status quo of hostility and injustice wasn’t leading toward the vision in Isaiah. John also knew that this “powerful one” who was coming would bring in the Kingdom of God – Isaiah’s peaceable Kingdom – but this would require, not just minor tweaking or tinkering with the status quo, but radical change, gut-level, heart-wrenching change. John’s listeners couldn’t rely on religious ritual – as represented by the Sadducees – or the inherited faith of their ancestors. For them to experience the blessings of the Kingdom, they had to make a personal commitment – and this meant their lives had to change.
Today’s readings offer a very real challenge to us here at Emanuel, but also offer great hope. John’s words remind us that we can’t put our faith entirely in our history and our heritage – as if to say, we’ve always been here, so we’ll always be here. John challenges us – in fact, urgently challenges us - to continue to make a personal and a congregational faith commitment, a commitment that will bear good fruit, both in our individual lives and in the life of our gathered congregation here at Emanuel. We can’t rest on our history. God is always challenging us, as individuals and as a congregation, “So what have you done for me lately?”
The image of the winnowing fork separating wheat from chaff may lead us to think of God separating the good people from the bad people. That is one way to read John’s words. However, I think we’ll acknowledge that most people, likely including all of us here, are a mixed bag, wanting to be faithful to God, but often distracted by other priorities or led by sin into behavior destructive to ourselves or others. And I very much count myself in that description. The line between good and evil is not a line that has perfect people on one side, and perfectly awful people on the other – but rather the line between good and evil runs through every individual human heart, and every congregation. So I see the winnowing fork as a symbol of God’s commitment to work in our lives to clear away the chaff, the distractions, to clear away anything that stands between us – us as individuals and us as a congregation - and God. This is how John’s voice in the wilderness calls us to prepare the way of the Lord – to allow God to remove the chaff of evil and destraction in our lives, to clear away the rocks and fill in the potholes on our life journeys, to allow the Lord to clear the way so that we may walk in fellowship with God.
The great hope in our readings comes from our faith in an awesome God who, even if we are cut down like the stump in the Isaiah reading, can always help us to sink our roots deep into the soil of Christian faith and bring forth a shoot of new life. Or, to use John’s image, we as Gentiles are like those rocks and stones that God can use to produce children for Abraham.
God uses our individual acts of faith, hope and charity to help bring Isaiah’s vision into reality. God can use the caring community here at Emanuel to inspire those around us to say, “See how these Christians love one another.” God can use us to help change Philadelphia into a place that is truly a city of brotherly love and sisterly affection. All we have to do to be awake, and to be willing to let God use us in His service.
During this Advent season of anticipation and preparation, may we be awakened to God’s powerful presence, here on Fillmore Street, and in our individual lives. Amen.
*******************
Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 am. as we prepare the way to welcome the coming of the Christ child. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
We continue today in the season of Advent. While many of our neighbors are going to the mall and letting their kids sit on Santa’s lap, we in the church are out in the desert with John the Baptist. The contrast couldn’t be more stark. And yet, today we also watched Al walk to the Advent wreath and light the candles of hope and peace – and these themes are picked up in our reading from Isaiah. And so even though John’s words are unlike anything you’ll ever hear from a shopping mall Santa, we can have faith that, ultimately, they are gospel – good news.
Today’s readings give us two powerful, and very different sets of images. The Isaiah reading tells us of a person coming in a spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear of the Lord – who is described as a shoot coming out of a stump. This person will bring such incredible peace that even the animal world will no longer be predatory. Even the animals will testify to God’s reign of peace. It’s almost like comparing the images we see on a nature show like Animal Planet – in which bigger animals hunt down and kill smaller animals – into something that looks like an old Disney cartoon, where all the animals live together in harmony. This mighty one to come will look out for the interests of the poor and vulnerable – will judge with equity for the meek of the earth. And then come these beautiful words: “they shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” And Isaiah’s vision is inclusive – even the nations – the Gentiles - shall inquire of Jesse. This image of the Gentiles coming to Judah to learn of God is echoed repeatedly in our reading from Romans, and we’ll see it again in Matthew’s Gospel. Similarly, last week’s Old Testament reading was also from Isaiah, and also had a theme of peace – it was the passage which prophesied that swords would be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks; nation would not rise up against nation, neither learn war any more. Isaiah gives us the image of the shoot coming out of a stump – the image is that of a place where there had once been a great tree, which had been cut down. The stump appeared lifeless and dead, beyond hope. The stump represents Judah, currently under attack from the very Gentile nations who will later come to Judah to inquire of God. But then, a shoot starts sprouting – in that stump, there’s still life. Even after a time of calamity and destruction, comes a sprout of hope. And that sprout, that shoot, will bring life, to Jew and Gentile alike.
And then comes that other image – that of John the Baptist, the wildman in the wilderness. We don’t get much background in Matthew’s Gospel, but Luke’s Gospel gives us some back-story – his father, Zechariah, was a priest, of the priestly order of Abijah. An angel proclaimed his birth to Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, both old and long past the years of childbearing. But while John was born into a priestly family and likely spent at least part of his formative years among his father’s priestly colleagues, by the time we meet him in Matthew, he has long since left behind the world of the Temple, of sacrifice and liturgical ceremony. John is out in the desert, dressed strangely – in fact, with his robe of camel hair and leather belt, his dress evokes the community’s memory of the prophet Elijah. He lives a marginal existence, eating locusts and wild honey - a diet like that of the guy on Survivorman or one of those other wilderness survival shows - telling people they had to repent and get right with God – and people flocked out into the wilderness to hear him.
It’s not hard to imagine what his message sounded like – because we have street preachers right here in Philadelphia. They look funny. Sometimes they smell funny. Their voices grate on our nerves. Usually we try to avoid them. There’s one in particular, who died some years back, that I remember, and maybe you might as well – she was a lady with the sandwich board that used to preach in the area around City Hall some years ago – she had a sing-song, raspy voice, and day after day, fair weather or foul, she proclaimed her message: "Sinner….
Sinner…If you want to see the devil, take a look in the mirror…..” If you were on the El and she walked into your car, you might move to another car. But Matthew’s gospel said that folks went out into the wilderness to hear John the Baptist – his message that they had to change their lives hit home with them. In fact, Matthew goes out of his way to say that the people of Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region along the Jordan – some of which was Gentile territory – came out to John. In Isaiah we read about the Gentile nations coming to inquire of Jesse, and we see that vision playing out in John’s ministry. John sacrificed much in the way of comfort – plentiful food and comfortable clothing, community life – in order to be faithful to God’s call. In this sacrifice, John’s listeners could see that John’s message had integrity – John not only talked the talk, he walked the walk of faith.
Matthew’s gospel says that Pharisees and Sadducees were coming out to see this wilderness prophet. Remember that the Pharisees and Sadducees didn’t get along – the Pharisees believed in the resurrection while the Sadducees didn’t; the Sadducees were tied into the Temple leadership – John’s father Zechariah likely knew lots of Sadducees - and the Sadducees played politics with Rome while the Pharisees were more for the common people. But, as the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend – at least for the moment. They were able to put their differences aside for the moment and join together in a temporary, cynical sort of alliance against the threat both groups saw in John. And of course, John sees right through their charade of piety: “You brood of vipers -Who warned you to flee the wrath to come….!” Ouch! But, remember, John had grown up among the Temple establishment, so he likely knew what he was talking about. Heaven knows that in our day, there is no shortage of vipers among the clergy and lay leadership of some churches and even some denominations.
Of course, as Jews, the Sadducees and Pharisees saw themselves as God’s chosen people, while the Gentiles in the surrounding nations were not. The Sadducees and Pharisees thought they would be saved by their family heritage, their status as leaders of God’s chosen people, their membership in a long line of ancestors leading back to Abraham. But John the Baptist bursts their bubble – “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor.’ ” Last week’s Isaiah reading, as well as this week’s reading from Romans, speak of the Gentiles coming to glorify God’s name – and John the Baptist tells the crowd that God can raise up children for Abraham out of the very stones on the ground, if God so desires. The Sadducees and Pharisees cannot rest on the accomplishments of their ancestors. Their own lives had to be right with God. In a sense, through John, God is telling these religious leaders, “Yes, yes, I know your ancestors well – but their deeds of faith are in the past. So what have you done for me lately?”
John goes on to use even more urgent imagery – “the ax is lying at the root of the trees”. If I’m a tree, one thing I don’t want to see anywhere near me is an ax. If I’m a tree, an ax has the power to turn me from a towering oak into a stump – sort of like the stump in the Isaiah reading. John is giving the Sadducees and Pharisees a stark choice: bear fruit or be cut down. Produce or perish. Grow - or die.
John also uses the image of a winnowing fork. A winnowing fork was used with grain that was newly harvested from the fields. The farmer would use the fork to throw the grain up in the air. The chaff, or husk, of the grain was lighter, and when the grain was thrown up in the air, the breeze would carry it off. The heavier kernel would fall to the floor, and it was those kernels of grain that would be used to bake bread, after the chaff or husks had first been removed.
In the United Church of Christ we rarely hear this sort of stark, “turn or burn” language. It makes us uncomfortable. It reminds of us slick TV evangelists and wild-eyed fundamentalist preachers condemning everyone around them to hell. That’s not who we are in the UCC. So I’d like to follow John’s words in a slightly different direction than what you’ll hear from the TV preachers – though I have no intention of letting anyone off the hook of John’s words.
John’s words are first and foremost motivated by a sense of urgency. He is presented as announcing the coming of “one who is more powerful than I.” The coming of this “more powerful” One will change everything. John wants his listeners to be ready for the coming of this powerful Savior of the World. I can see almost picture John wanting to pick these smug religious leaders off the ground and shake them – “Wake up! Pay attention!”
John knew well the words of Isaiah that we read today – the image of the peaceable kingdom of God, in which justice and peace would be the order of the day. He also saw clearly how things were – and that the status quo of hostility and injustice wasn’t leading toward the vision in Isaiah. John also knew that this “powerful one” who was coming would bring in the Kingdom of God – Isaiah’s peaceable Kingdom – but this would require, not just minor tweaking or tinkering with the status quo, but radical change, gut-level, heart-wrenching change. John’s listeners couldn’t rely on religious ritual – as represented by the Sadducees – or the inherited faith of their ancestors. For them to experience the blessings of the Kingdom, they had to make a personal commitment – and this meant their lives had to change.
Today’s readings offer a very real challenge to us here at Emanuel, but also offer great hope. John’s words remind us that we can’t put our faith entirely in our history and our heritage – as if to say, we’ve always been here, so we’ll always be here. John challenges us – in fact, urgently challenges us - to continue to make a personal and a congregational faith commitment, a commitment that will bear good fruit, both in our individual lives and in the life of our gathered congregation here at Emanuel. We can’t rest on our history. God is always challenging us, as individuals and as a congregation, “So what have you done for me lately?”
The image of the winnowing fork separating wheat from chaff may lead us to think of God separating the good people from the bad people. That is one way to read John’s words. However, I think we’ll acknowledge that most people, likely including all of us here, are a mixed bag, wanting to be faithful to God, but often distracted by other priorities or led by sin into behavior destructive to ourselves or others. And I very much count myself in that description. The line between good and evil is not a line that has perfect people on one side, and perfectly awful people on the other – but rather the line between good and evil runs through every individual human heart, and every congregation. So I see the winnowing fork as a symbol of God’s commitment to work in our lives to clear away the chaff, the distractions, to clear away anything that stands between us – us as individuals and us as a congregation - and God. This is how John’s voice in the wilderness calls us to prepare the way of the Lord – to allow God to remove the chaff of evil and destraction in our lives, to clear away the rocks and fill in the potholes on our life journeys, to allow the Lord to clear the way so that we may walk in fellowship with God.
The great hope in our readings comes from our faith in an awesome God who, even if we are cut down like the stump in the Isaiah reading, can always help us to sink our roots deep into the soil of Christian faith and bring forth a shoot of new life. Or, to use John’s image, we as Gentiles are like those rocks and stones that God can use to produce children for Abraham.
God uses our individual acts of faith, hope and charity to help bring Isaiah’s vision into reality. God can use the caring community here at Emanuel to inspire those around us to say, “See how these Christians love one another.” God can use us to help change Philadelphia into a place that is truly a city of brotherly love and sisterly affection. All we have to do to be awake, and to be willing to let God use us in His service.
During this Advent season of anticipation and preparation, may we be awakened to God’s powerful presence, here on Fillmore Street, and in our individual lives. Amen.
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Please join us at Emanuel United Church of Christ on Sundays at 10 am. as we prepare the way to welcome the coming of the Christ child. We're on Fillmore Street (off Thompson). www.emanuelphila.org
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