Gone Fishing

(Scriptures:         Isaiah 9:1-4; I Corinthians 1:10-18;    Matthew 4:12-23)

 

 

 

Today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel gives us the second account in two weeks about Jesus calling his disciples – remember, last week, we read the account in John’s Gospel in which Andrew and another unnamed disciple of John the Baptist approach Jesus, ask Jesus where he was staying, and Jesus says, “Come and see”.  In this week’s story, it is Jesus who is coming to see Andrew and his brother Simon, along with two other brothers, James and John.    

 

Today’s Gospel reading begins with an ominous note: “Now when Jesus had heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee.”   John the Baptist, the forerunner sent by God to proclaim Jesus, John who went ahead to prepare the way for Jesus, also went ahead of Jesus in being arrested and later executed under Roman authority.  John’s arrest is foreshadowing of what will happen to Jesus when he, too, falls foul of Roman authority.

 

We’re told further that Jesus left his home town of Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum.  Matthew, writing to a predominantly Jewish congregation, is eager to provide links between Jesus’ ministry and the Hebrew scriptures, which we know as the Old Testament, and so in this case Matthew links Jesus’ move to Capernaum to a passage from the writings of the prophet Isaiah.

 

"Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,
     on the road by the sea, across the Jordan,
     Galilee of the Gentiles—
  the people who sat in darkness
     have seen a great light,
  and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death
     light has dawned."

 

Growing up, hearing this passage, I always wondered why Galilee is named as “the people who sat in darkness” and “the region and shadow of death” – and maybe you have the same question – and so a little history may help us better understand these words.  Centuries before, the kingdom held together by Kings David and Solomon had split up into two kingdoms, the northern Kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah.  Assyria, a longtime threat to the Jewish peoples, came down from the north and invaded Israel, ultimately conquering Israel, exiling its leaders to Assyria, and settling non-Jews in their place, with the result that much of the northern kingdom of Israel’s religious and cultural identity was lost.  Basically, what Assyria did then, today we would call “ethnic cleansing” – it was an attempt,  for the most part successful,  to destroy a culture.   The southern kingdom of Judah breathed a sigh of relief as they were spared for a time – but they had their own day of reckoning with Babylon a couple centuries later.  The Jews remaining in the Northern kingdom after the exile intermarried with the non-Jews settled there by Assyria, and their offspring would by Jesus’ time become known as Samaritans.  Galilee, in the northern part of the old northern Kingdom, was one of the first places conquered by Assyria, one of the first places to experience Assyria’s version of ethnic cleansing.  Those memories persisted over the centuries, and well might Galilee have been seen as a people sitting in darkness and as a region of death.  And so, for the earliest Christians, and perhaps for us as well, it is striking that the very place that had been the first to experience invasion and destruction from Assyria was also the first place in which Jesus taught and healed and called disciples.

 

So Jesus moved to Capernaum by the sea, and it was by the sea that he called his first disciples.   He meets Andrew and Simon as they cast their nets into the sea, and calls to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.”  We’re told, “Immediately they left their nets and followed him.”  Next Jesus meets James and John.  We’re given to understand that James and John may have been a bit more prosperous, as their family owned a boat, while Andrew and Simon were casting their nets from the shore.  Jesus calls to James and John, and they leave the boat and their father to follow Jesus.

 

Conservative politicians like to claim Jesus as a friend of family values and a staunch supporter of the status quo, but in today’s Gospel reading – and indeed, thoughout the Gospels, Jesus is anything but.  If you went so far as to call Jesus a home-wrecker, you wouldn’t be overstating your case all that much.   After James and John left to follow Jesus, what was their poor father Zebedee to do alone in the boat?  What were Simon’s and Andrew’s family to do after the family breadwinners had left their nets to follow, to put it in modern day terms,  some traveling revivalist named Jesus.  From our perspective, the actions of Simon and Andrew and James and John look reckless and irresponsible.   And yet such is the level of commitment expected and received by Jesus that these followers would be with Jesus throughout his earthly ministry, and after his death and resurrection would make the name of Jesus known far and wide.  It can also be said that Jesus didn’t ask of his disciples anything he hadn’t done himself – remember that before calling his disciples, Jesus himself had left his family in Nazareth to move to Capernaum.  And, just as both John the Baptist and Jesus had been executed under Roman authority, Jesus’ disciples would prove to be a threat to Rome and would die as martyrs to the Christian faith. 

In the Gospels, it is the Roman authorities – Herod and Pilate – and the temple religious authorities, Annas and Caiaphas and their cronies, who support the status quo – and well they might, as they benefitted from the religious and political setup.  Jesus’ message from the beginning to the end of his ministry – and Jesus’ message today - is that God, not Caesar, is in charge – and that is always a threat to the powers that be.  And so it was inevitable that those who proclaimed the message of Jesus would meet with a fate similar to Jesus.

 

Before the sermon, we sang the familiar hymn, “Jesus calls us, o’er the tumult of our life’s wild restless sea.  Day by day his sweet voice soundeth saying Christian, follow me.”  Do we hear his call?  Are we willing to follow?  What are we willing to leave behind – Convenience?   Material possessions?  Secure employment?  Family and friends?   Respectability? – to follow the voice of Jesus?  I threw the word “respectability” in there, because like John the Baptist, like Jesus, like Jesus’ first followers, people still get arrested for following the voice of Jesus.  We think of the arrests of Christians as something that happens in far-away countries led by Communists or persons from non-Christian religions, but people in America are arrested for following the voice of Jesus as they hear it.  Christians from a group called the King’s Jubilee have been arrested right downtown in Philadelphia for feeding homeless people in Love Park, near City Hall.   This past Monday, on Martin Luther King Day, about a half-dozen Quakers and supporters were arrested outside the Lockheed Martin defense plant, as they stood their ground, proclaiming the need for an end to war, as they were removed by police and arrested for disorderly conduct. Advocating for peace can be seen as disturbing the peace – as it was in Jesus’ day, when the peace proclaimed by Jesus was a threat to the famed Pax Romana, the peace of Rome, maintained under brutal enforcement.   And of course, these protesters were following the example of Dr. King, who himself was arrested for following his convictions, and whose courageous but unpopular 1967 speech against the Vietnam War, “A Time to Break The Silence”, made him a marked man in many circles.  One of these Quaker protesters, a woman named Annie, had just celebrated her 94^th birthday, and was so frail she looked like a gust of wind would carry her away, and indeed she was barely able in Monday’s whipping wind to remain upright on her feet, but still, with protesters on either side of her bracing her from falling, she stood her ground before a row of police.  Granted, most of these people were arrested and released fairly quickly – from a police standpoint, these weren’t exactly crime of the century events.  But still – if following Jesus means walking, not into a warm sanctuary on a Sunday morning, surrounded by friends, but into a homeless shelter or onto a heating grate to help those who are homeless?  Or onto a picket line?  Or into a police van?  Would we follow? 

 

A quote from Dr. King, a year before his death, in 1967:  You may be 38 years old, as I am [oh, to be young] – and one day some great opportunitiy calls you to stand up for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause and you are refuse to do it because you are afraid, you refuse to do it because you want to live longer, you’re afraid that you will lose your job, you’re afraid that you’ll be criticized or that you will lose your popularity or you’re afraid that someone will stab you or shoot at you or bomb your house, and so you refuse to take the stand. Well, you may go on to live until you’re 90, but you’re just as dead at 38 as you would be at 90! And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.  You died when you refused to stand up for the right, you died when you refused to stand up for truth, you died when you refused to stand up for justice.

 

And, from our Gospel reading, quoting Isaiah

"Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,   on the road by the sea, across the Jordan,
     Galilee of the Gentiles—   the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,  and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned."

 

It was in a region characterized by defeat and despair that Jesus began his ministry.  It is often in our moments of despair, our dark nights of the soul, that we encounter Jesus, as Jesus meets us where we are and calls us to follow.  Following Jesus means following him into places where others, our brothers and sisters and neighbors and friends, have experienced defeat and despair, so that Jesus can use us to bring light into the darkness.  When Jesus calls, may we have ears to hear.  And where Jesus leads, may we at Emanuel Church follow, regardless of the cost.  Amen.

 

 

 

 

Call Forwarding

(Scriptures:         Isaiah 49:1-7; I Corinthians 1:1-9;    John 1:29-42)

Today’s Gospel, and next week’s Gospel as well, tell us about Jesus’ call of his first disciples.  In today’s reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus gathers Andrew and his brother, Simon whom Jesus calls Peter.  In next week’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel, we will meet Andrew and Simon again, along with James and John, the sons of Zebedee. 

Two different Gospel writers, two different call stories, each told very differently.  In next week’s gospel, we’ll read the more familiar stories about Jesus himself walking along the sea of Galilee and calling out to Andrew and Simon, to John and James, “Follow me”.  Likewise, in last week’s gospel reading about the baptism of Jesus, Matthew speaks of a voice from heaven testifying that Jesus is God’s beloved son.  But in this week’s reading from John’s Gospel, people approach Jesus, not because of voices from heaven or even initially because of Jesus’ own call, but because of what other people say about Jesus.  John the Baptist testifies about Jesus, twice saying “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  Two of John the Baptist’s disciples leave John to follow Jesus.  One of these, named Andrew – and it is only in John’s gospel that we’re told that Andrew had been a disciple of John the Baptist before following Jesus – goes and tells his brother Simon, whom we will come to know as  Simon Peter.  Later on in John’s Gospel, Philip will invite Nathanael.   And in both these call stories, the invitation is issued, first by Jesus to Andrew, later by Philip to Nathanael, “Come and see”.   

Andrew had been a follower of John the Baptist, who wasn’t exactly a status quo guy, so his heart was already open to the possibility that God would lead him in some life-changing new direction; and so when John the Baptist pointed out Jesus as the one greater than John, Andrew was ready at least to approach Jesus. What happens next is a life-changing conversation in which, as often happens in John’s Gospel, seemingly mundane words mean a lot more than we might think at first glance.  Apparently as Andrew and the other of John the Baptist’s disciples were walking behind Jesus, Jesus heard them approaching, turned around, and said, “What are you looking for?” – quite a loaded question, the answer to which could be anything from “I’m looking for a penny that fell out of my pocket” to “I’m looking for the secret to life.”  As it happens, Andrew answers Jesus’ question by saying, “Teacher, where are you staying?”  At first glance, Andrew’s answer seems a bit awkward, as if he’d been caught off guard by Jesus’ question and blurted out something like, “What’s your address?” or “I’d love to see your apartment.” On the other hand, though, it was exactly the right question, because the way to know Jesus was to spend time with Jesus, to hang out with Jesus – and the only way to hang out with Jesus is to know where Jesus is.  In any case, Jesus says, “Come and see.”  They must have liked what they saw, because we’re told they stayed with Jesus that day, and Andrew was impressed enough that the next day, he invited his brother, Simon, to meet him.  And, as the saying goes, “the rest is history”; their lives would never be the same again.

What are you looking for?  What are you seeking?  As it was when Jesus walked the earth in human flesh, people seek Jesus for many reasons.   Some come to Jesus looking for freedom from the past – from bad decisions in the past, from poverty and broken relationships from the past, from past bondage to addiction, from disease, from oppression by the powers that be.  Some come to Jesus looking for freedom to live and love in new ways.  Freedom from sin and bondage, freedom for new life.  In John’s Gospel, Jesus is about freedom.  In calling Jesus the Lamb of God, John the Baptist’s refers to the Passover lamb whose blood saved the Israelites from the plague of death that was visited on the Egyptians, just before Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt – and so John is saying that Jesus brings freedom. 

Each of Jesus’ twelve disciples came to Jesus for any number of reasons, and the same is true of us.  Each of us came here for the first time for any number of reasons – because our parents brought us, because this is where our parents and grandparents found Jesus, because of the invitation of a friend or a flyer or a Facebook posting, or just because we wanted to see what was behind the red door of that little old church on Fillmore Street.  Andrew approached Jesus, asking to see where he was staying, but received far more than he could have asked or dreamed – far more struggle and far more blessing - and it’s my prayer that all of us here, each in his or her own way, along with our struggles, has been blessed by Jesus with far more than any of us could have asked or thought.

Our neighbors are looking, too – looking for healing, looking for love, looking for freedom.  I’d challenge each of us to be like Andrew and reach out to our sisters and brothers and neighbors and friends and invite them to “Come and see”.   Some of us have already – for example, Nessie’s been busy inviting her neighbors, and Susan is here.  Mark invited his family.  And each of us has our own stories of those we’ve invited.

John the Baptist received the call to preach and lead others to Jesus.  John passed this call on to Andrew and another disciple, and Andrew passed the call onto his brother Simon.  This call has been passed on down the centuries, and we’re all part of that story.

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, "Look, here is the Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi" (which translated means Teacher), "where are you staying?" He said to them, "Come and see." They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day.   May we have eyes and ears open to come and see and hear what God would show us, and having seen and heard, may we invite others.  Amen.

Beloved Son

Scriptures: Isaiah 42:1-9, Psalm 29

Acts 10:34-43               Matthew 3:13-17

 Among the records kept by churches, including Emanuel Church, are records of baptisms, confirmations, weddings, and funerals.  Emanuel’s date back to 1861.  The older records are a challenge for me to read, as they’re in German, which I don’t read at all fluently.  But we do get inquiries from time to time from people of German ancestry whose grandparents and great and great-great grandparents lived in Bridesburg.  Nancy [a lifelong member of the church] used to respond to these – she could read the old style German - and I still do what I can, given the limitations of my ability to read German.  The records generally include items such as the date, the parents, the godparents, and the name of the pastor who did the baptism.  Such records document that the person baptized grew up within the care of the church – or, if baptized as an adult, that the person made a conscious decision to follow Christ in the company of a community of faith.

You could say that, in a sense, today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel gives us Jesus’ baptismal record.  We don’t have a date, nor are Jesus’ earthly parents mentioned as being present.  However, we are told that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.  And I suppose you could say that, like any proud papa at the baptism of a son, the smile of Jesus’ heavenly father beamed bright, as Jesus saw a dove descending and heard a voice from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” 

Today, as Protestants, we recognize baptism and holy communion as the two sacraments of the church – two actions in which Jesus promised that God would be especially present for us.    In Judaism, part of the ceremony by which a non-Jew would signify conversion to the Jewish faith by immersing the entire body in a river, or in a ritual bath, called a mikveh, that was connected to flowing water.  It was a sign of washing away the sins of one’s life outside Judaism, in preparation for entering the Jewish faith.

Of course, John the Baptist was known for doing….guess what.....baptisms.  The thing that was different about John’s baptism is that those coming to him were not Gentiles seeking to convert to Judaism, but Jews seeking to turn their lives around and live out their Jewish faith in a more committed way – almost a kind of re-conversion to a more vital Jewish faith and practice.  And as Jews come to be baptized and to recommit to the faith, John is telling them about a Messiah to come, One sent by God who is greater than John.

And then along came Jesus.  While after 2000 years in the church, we’ve kind of lost the shock value of what Jesus is doing, it still comes through in today’s reading if we pay attention.  John’s asking himself – is Jesus a Gentile seeking to convert to Judaism? – clearly not; Jesus was born and raised a Jew.  Is Jesus a lapsed Jew wishing to turn His life around and find his way back to the faith – no, Jesus was completely and unfailingly faithful.  In fact, John senses that Jesus is the One sent by God about whom John had been preaching.  And yet, here’s Jesus standing in front of John asking to be baptized.  And so John asks Jesus, “I need to be baptized by you, and you come to me?”  And Jesus replies, “Let it be so for now, for it is proper in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”  And so John consents, and Jesus goes down into the cold, muddy water of the Jordan.  As Jesus comes out of the water, he has a vision of the Spirit coming down as a dove, and a voice proclaims from heaven, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with Him I am well-pleased.”

Jesus told John this must happen “to fulfill all righteousness”. We might ask, “What righteousness was Jesus fulfilling?”    And so, Jesus, God’s beloved Son, was baptized, not on his own behalf, but on our behalf; not for his sins, but for ours.  In Jesus, God so completely identified with humanity that in Jesus, God went through the whole human experience – being born, being helpless, being hunted, and now, at his baptism, Jesus, God in the flesh, goes down into water - and steps into the muck and mire and mess of the Jordan river, steps into the mud along with the worms and frogs and whatever was living there,  on our behalf.  And as Jesus comes out of the muck and out of the water, God’s spirit comes down as a dove, gentle, graceful, beautiful.  And this tells us the way in which, in Jesus, God is with us.  John the Baptist ranted of fire, fire, unquenchable fire, but in Jesus, God comes to us not with fire, but with gentleness, with vulnerability.  In the words of our reading from Isaiah,

“I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
   he will faithfully bring forth justice.”

Like a dove, Jesus is vulnerable, ultimately giving his life a ransom for many, a ransom for us.  In our baptism, we are united with Christ.  As Paul wrote to the church at Rome,

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.  For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

We are united in Christ’s death and in Christ’s resurrection – and we are to live as those who are united in Christ’s life.  As Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, “It is not I who live, but Christ in me.”  And so, in our baptism, our lives are claimed by Christ.   Christ lives in each of us – our hands his hands, our feet his feet, our eyes his eyes.

Our society, our culture, tries to  hang lots of labels on each of us – citizen, member of a political party, consumer, shopper, worker, unemployed person, person on public assistance – labels of nationality, of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, of age, of disability – lots and lots of labels.  And yet, before all of these labels is our baptismal identity.  No matter what others say about us, no matter what others do to us, nothing can change that identity:  child of God, disciple of Christ, member of Christ’s church.

Through baptism, we are marked forever as God’s beloved children.  May we say, in the words of the old Heidelberg Catechism with which many of us grew up, that our only comfort, in life and death, is that we belong, not to ourselves, but to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, who through the waters of baptism has claimed us for his very own.  Amen.

Special Delivery!

Scriptures :  Isaiah 60:1-6, Ephesians 3:1-12  Matthew 2:1-12

When I was in my teens, I had a paper route – delivering the Reading Eagle, which was the afternoon edition of the main newspaper for the city of Reading, in Berks County, was my very first job, from which I used the earnings to save up for college.  And so I had my list of addresses, and I was fairly conscientious about walking the paper up to the porch of each house, rather than just tossing it in the yard or wherever it happened to land – and especially in bad weather, I was very careful about putting the paper someplace where it wouldn’t get hit by rain or snow.   And as I’d walk up onto each porch and put the newspaper in door or mail slot or wherever, I’d wonder about the families lived behind each door that was on my paper route.  What were they like – rich or poor, happy or unhappy? Some of the houses were large and tidy and well-kept, with large new cars parked outside; others were run-down looking, their porches strewn with cigarette butts and empty bottles and children’s toys and all manner of odds and ends for me to trip over.  Sometimes as I went to the door I’d hear music or the TV playing, or sometimes the voices of people fighting.  Some homes gave off noticeable odors when I was near the door – some were pleasant odors from cooking or baking such; others not so pleasant; odors of mildew or stale cigarette smoke or overflowing garbage pails or occasionally even a faint whiff of backed up sewage.  I remember one house on my route in particular that, to me, looked abandoned – it was a big old place, with a large front lawn that was always overgrown with weeds, with various broken-down household items scattered about in the grass and weeds; there was no front walk, just a path worn in the lawn from the sidewalk to the front door; the wooden front porch had loose boards and sagged; the screen door was broken, and the outside woodwork clearly hadn’t been painted in decades.  I never saw any lights on inside, and I often wondered if anyone actually lived there – and yet every afternoon I delivered a newspaper and by the next afternoon, someone had picked it up.  So I figured maybe Dracula lived there and only came out for his newspaper after midnight.  

Now, once a year, around Christmas, the Reading Eagle printed a calendar for the next year, and it was understood that this was a time for the paperboy to knock on each door on his route, hand whoever came to the door a calendar, and hope for a little tip or Christmas present.  My one chance a year to meet everyone, or nearly everyone, on my route.  And boy, were there surprises!  Some of the families with the affluent looking, tidy, well-kept homes would take the calendar from my hand and hand me a quarter or 50 cents as a tip – which even 40 years ago didn’t go very far.  And some of the families with the run-down homes gave me the biggest tips – including the abandoned-looking Dracula’s castle house.  I never actually did get to meet the owner, but Dracula or whoever lived there left an envelope taped to the door with a Christmas card and a ten dollar bill inside, which was a huge amount of money for me back then.  And of course, there were families with nice homes who gave me nice five-dollar tips and bags of cookies and families with run down homes who had little money to spare, and I realized that from them, even a dollar at the end of the year was a stretch and a sacrifice.  All of which is to say, judging by appearances was misleading – both stinginess and generosity came at times from the most unlikely places.

Our Gospel reading today hits us over and over again with contrasts between appearance and reality, contrasts between what the people in the story expect to happen and what actually happens to them.  First of all, we have a bunch of strangers, wise men from the East, reading the stars and going in search of a baby born as the king of the Jews.  So, following their expectations, they go to Jerusalem, to the royal palace, because of course that’s where you’d expect to find a crown prince, a baby destined to be king.  Except that’s not where they found the baby destined to be king, and Herod, the puppet king propped up by Rome, not only didn’t know about the birth of any baby, but wasn’t any too happy to hear that he had competition.  And in any case, Herod likely wasn’t sure what to make of these strange, oddly dressed, foreign accented men from the East who had landed on his doorstep.  Just as, if strangers dressed in traditional middle-eastern garb – or even strangers dressed as I am today – landed on our doorstep, after we’d gotten done peering at them through the window and gawking, we’d probably had second and third thoughts about opening the door to them.  Especially in this case – these wise men would have come from the very same countries that had conquered and exiled the Jews centuries before, and so Herod and his folks had plenty of reason to be suspicious of their intentions.

So Herod and his counselors consulted the Scriptures and told the wise men that, no, the baby wasn’t at the palace, but rather in Bethlehem, a small town a few miles down the road.  It was there, in that small place, in the most modest humble of circumstances,  that they found the Babe they’d been looking for.   Doubtless Mary and Joseph, like Herod, were startled by the arrival of the Wise Men, and may even have been a bit slow to accept their gifts – just as, if someone in middle eastern robes came to our front door and handed me a box, I might be tempted to ask impolite questions such as “Who are you and why are you here and what am I supposed to do with this?”   But the presents were accepted, and Wise Men, having completed their mission, departed for their own country by a road different from the route by which they’d arrived. 

The story of the Wise Men is closely related to our reading from Isaiah, which was written shortly after the Jews had returned from exile to rebuild in Jerusalem.  Remember that those in Jerusalem at the time lived with memories – their own, or those handed down from their parents – of the Babylonians having come decades earlier to destroy Jerusalem, carry off its wealth, and march them off to exile in Babylon.  It’s understandable that, because of these memories, as well as because of their own distinctive laws and customs, that the Jews would not have welcomed outsiders easily.  But Isaiah paints a different picture, of foreigners coming to Jerusalem, not to take, but to give; not to curse, but to bless – “Your sons shall come from far away and your daughters shall be carried on their nurses’ arms; then your heart will thrill and rejoice, because the abundance of the seas shall be brought to you, the wealth of the nations shall come to you; they shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.”    Again, this passage from Isaiah turns our expectations upside-down – and the coming of the wise men, with their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh, in a small way shows us this Scripture coming to life.

We worship a God who continually delights in turning our expectations upside down.  He sends his Son to be born, not in a palace in Jerusalem, but in a stable in a small, nothing village of, at that time, maybe a thousand people, located a few miles down the road – a town that today is in Palestinian territory, by the way.  The religious and political leaders among his own people, who might have been expected to welcome him, turned against him.  Instead, Jesus’ birth is welcomed by shepherds, who lived on the fringes of their society, and foreigners who traveled far to follow a star. 

And, for us here at Emanuel, this means we’re in the right place for God’s work to happen.  We’re not in a prominent place – Bridesburg isn’t Center City Philadelphia, let alone Wall Street or Washington DC, and you’ll find no movers and shakers of society here at Emanuel.  Instead, we’re in an out of the way place, a humble place, which is the right place to be if we wish to encounter God. 

And, although we’re unlikely to see any Wise Men from the east coming our way, Emanuel has gotten more visitors and even members, some from far distant places, such as Isaac and Stella, who come from Liberia.  We have more people traveling distances – in some cases just a block or two, in other cases a half hour drive or more across state lines, or an hour-long bus ride or more – in hopes of finding Jesus in this place – or in hopes of sharing their experience of Jesus with us and others.  And those who come this way bring gifts – not gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but gifts nonetheless – sometimes financial, sometimes gifts of time and talent, and sometimes just the gift of a life experience different from our own.  And though I know Bridesburg doesn’t always go out of its way to welcome to outsiders, we at Emanuel have found and will continue to find that, at times, the people who are most different from us, the ones who just don’t fit in at all and whom we may resent or avoid or even fear, may wind up being the very people God has sent to teach us and to bless us.  And, in the same way, humble as our church is, I’m convinced that God is using us and will use us in even greater ways to be a blessing to our neighbors, those who attend, and those who don’t, but whose lives are better for our being here.

“Then, opening their treasure-chests, [the Wise Men] offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”  May we be open to receiving the gifts others bring us, and may our treasure chests be open to bless our neighborhood in Christ’s name.  May it be so among us. Amen.