On Loving Our Enemies; a sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Epiphany

Matthew 5:38-48

“You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. 39 But I say to you that you must not oppose those who want to hurt you. If people slap you on your right cheek, you must turn the left cheek to them as well. 40 When they wish to haul you to court and take your shirt, let them have your coat too. 41 When they force you to go one mile, go with them two. 42 Give to those who ask, and don’t refuse those who wish to borrow from you.

43 “You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. 44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you 45 so that you will be acting as children of your Father who is in heaven. He makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.

Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

I have rejoiced at a man’s death.

I say this as a matter of confession. As a matter of confession because I believe that it is a central tenet of the Good News of Jesus Christ that every single life is precious, is of sacred worth, is a creation of such beauty that nothing any human being can do would ever make that life anything but beautiful.

But there are people who have done such harm to other people that the temptation to celebrate their passing rather than mourn with their families, their friends, with my own friends who love and respect these murderous, closed-minded, callous ideologues…

The temptation is great.

I have rejoiced at a man’s death.

I have enemies.

Sometimes that’s my own doing. Sometimes I pit myself against other people, sometimes as a matter of contrast, sometimes because I so heartily disagree with something they are doing or something they have done. Sometimes I declare, “This person is against me!”

Sometimes someone does the same thing to me. Or they place me in a box with other people they deem outside of their ideology or theology. Other heretics, allies, socialists, nerds, tree-huggers, gem-x, new evangelicals. Whatever. Whatever labels, false or true, make someone feel superior over another.

I have enemies.

They will rejoice at my death.

Unless.

Unless we can change the conversation.

Unless, with no exception, none at all, we can stop pitting ourselves against each other and declare that we are one body, united in Christ.

I can’t declare the rule any better than Jesus does. I can’t declare the logic any better:

If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have?

What I can do is dream of something better, imagine the possibility of a world with no enemies.

Or at least, imagine the possibility of my life with no enemies.

I have rejoiced at a man’s death.

But I don’t have to. I can fight that compulsion. I can declare, “No more!”

Rachel Held Evans is a popular author living just down the road from us who occasionally bridges the gap that is, contrary to the rest of our culture, actually shrinking between evangelicals and progressives. This past week, she reflected on the cost of pitting ourselves against each other:

I have made assumptions about my brothers and sisters in the faith, only to learn that they too have struggled through big questions, they've just arrived at different answers. I’ve spoken with twenty-somethings whose families ridiculed them when they came to Christianity and with women whose professors sneered at them when they challenged feminist teachings. Once, after I told someone he must certainly have never met a gay person in his life, he responded that his ex-wife was a lesbian and he struggles with how to raise his children with her in a gracious and loving way.

How little I know of other people’s stories. How swift I am to judge based on where we met in the path without bothering to ask where they've come from.

I’ve been thinking….

We fight like brothers and sister because we are. We've all been adopted into God’s family. 

Maybe we don’t have to change each other’s minds to lighten one another’s load by not assuming motives, by giving each other the benefit of the doubt that we arrived at our beliefs through honest searching.  

There’s a cost to every conviction.  

What mine have cost me may be different than what yours have cost you, but the sense of loss is the same.  And so is the hope that comes with breaking bread together in spite of our theological and political differences and settling into the sweet certainty that following Jesus doesn’t have to cost this.  It doesn’t have to cost our love for one another.

Not if we don't want it to.

What is it we want? What do we want for our enemies? Do we want their destruction? That’s certainly not Christlike. It’s a relic of a theology from a bygone era to which Jesus has declared, No More. Do we want their conversion? Don’t you think they want ours, too? Don’t you think that they feel just as justified by good sense and by scripture as we do?

It doesn’t matter if we think we’re right. It doesn’t matter if we know we’re right. In fact, that only makes us far more dangerous. It pits us more firmly against our enemies with no firmer footing than they have.

Now, here’s the problem with this sermon: When you leave here, those of you who think this “love your enemy” thing is a bunch of malarky, or just won’t work in the real world, will still leave here thinking that way.

That’s the problem with the sermon. Any sermon. I can’t convince you if you’re not willing to listen in the first place.

And that, friends, is exactly the problem with our world today. We aren’t willing to listen. When we find ourselves in the company of those who agree with us, we congratulate each other on being right, on being convinced by each other; we affirm our mutual belief and remind each other of the evils that surround us that seek to convert us, to soften our hardened hearts, to open our closed minds.

I’ll never convince you.

Neither will Jesus.

God help you.

If, on the other hand, you don’t think this “love your enemy” thing is a bunch of malarky, then I think Jesus is offering you room to grow. What will you do with it?

You have an opportunity to shape the conversations you share. You can not only reject words and attitudes that are hateful and grown from fear of what’s different; you can also help shape other people’s vocabulary and ideas. Refuse to have ugly speech around you. Stand up for people, even if you don’t know them. 

The danger in doing that is that it might lose you friends. But if your friends are hateful and reactionary, and if your friends will abandon you because you stand up for someone else, are they really the kind of friends you want?

You can shape conversations around you.

You can also put yourself directly into communities of folk who are not like you. That is the best way to understand what their experience is. And, oddly enough, if you spend enough time with someone, you’ll probably find that you have a lot more in common than what separates you.

Now, I am not suggesting that you go and be in ministry to people who are not like you. That still sets up a hierarchical system that puts walls up and keeps us from being in relationship with each other. It sets up one group of givers and one group of receivers, and the two cannot develop community.

We are not clients and providers. We are people.

Our best relationships happen when we share more experiences. The more you have in common with someone, the deeper your potential relationship can be.

The deeper your relationship, the more you can understand each other. The more we understand each other, the more we stand up for each other. The more we stand up for each other, the fewer enemies we have.

The fewer enemies we have, the closer the Kingdom of God comes.

Will you be a Kingdom-bringer?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

On Being Salty and Lit; a sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Epiphany

Matthew 5:13-20

“You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its saltiness, how will it become salty again? It’s good for nothing except to be thrown away and trampled under people’s feet. 14 You are the light of the world. A city on top of a hill can’t be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a basket. Instead, they put it on top of a lampstand, and it shines on all who are in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before people, so they can see the good things you do and praise your Father who is in heaven.

17 “Don’t even begin to think that I have come to do away with the Law and the Prophets. I haven’t come to do away with them but to fulfill them. 18 I say to you very seriously that as long as heaven and earth exist, neither the smallest letter nor even the smallest stroke of a pen will be erased from the Law until everything there becomes a reality. 19 Therefore, whoever ignores one of the least of these commands and teaches others to do the same will be called the lowest in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever keeps these commands and teaches people to keep them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20 I say to you that unless your righteousness is greater than the righteousness of the legal experts and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

What is the point of law?

See, it’s my job to occasionally ask philosophical questions.

What’s the point of law? Not a specific law, just law in general.

That depends on who you ask, I suppose.

Ask Aristotle and you come up with the idea that law’s function is to define the purpose of the state. Often, we see law as overbearing, as constricting our liberties, but Aristotle points out that the law, in fact, reflects who we are as a society.

Want to understand more about the character of a family? Look at their household rules and economics. What standards to they value and invest in?

Want to understand more about a society? Look at the laws by which they govern themselves and the priorities their legislation defines regarding their national and international economy.

Aristotle is interested in forms, in ideals, in seeing all of history and all of creation in magnificent, sweeping strokes. Other scholars, contemporary scholars, tend to seek more pragmatic, immediate definitions.

Law is designed and implemented to set guidelines for conduct and behavior within a society.

Keep us organized. Keep us safe. Keep us protected.

It’s a very practical approach to life together, unlike Aristotle’s. Also unlike a lot of our Biblical opinion.

Now, if you want it quite beautifully put, spend some time meditating on Psalm 119. It’s an acrostic meditation on Torah, a word of praise and wonder about the way the Hebrew people encountered the Divine.

On the other hand, Paul speaks about the purpose of the law, referring specifically to Torah:

Before faith came, we were guarded under the Law, locked up until faith that was coming would be revealed, so that the Law became our custodian until Christ so that we might be made righteous by faith.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a custodian.

The Law kept us locked away, “confined” being a safe translation of the word, like a child in a playpen.

But now the law has been fulfilled. Another one of those words that means something different to everyone you might ask, especially in this context.

The law, after all, isn’t a cup about which we can argue whether half-full or half-empty is a more appropriate description. It’s more than a contract between two parties that could either be completed or neglected. It’s a covenant, or the mark of a covenant between God and the children of Israel.

More specifically, it’s a conditional covenant. 

Is that familiar?

There are conditional covenants and unconditional covenants. The most famous covenant is the covenant with Noah. Noah gets off the ark, unloads all the animals who trudge through the mud and populate the world, sees a rainbow and hears God say, “I am NOT doing this again!” and promptly gets himself smashingly drunk.

God doesn’t say, “I won’t do this again IF people can behave themselves.” God says, “I won’t do this again. Period.”

Unconditional covenant.

Unlike the law.

God tells the people:

So now, if you faithfully obey me and stay true to my covenant, you will be my most precious possession out of all the peoples, since the whole earth belongs to me. You will be a kingdom of priests for me and a holy nation. 

That “if” makes all the difference.

That “if” shows us what kind of a God we have.

The people certainly don’t keep their end of the covenant, which means God has every reason to reneg on the Divine end of the covenant, too. That is the expected response. One covenant party defaulting on the covenant frees the other party from holding true to their end.

But instead of walking out, God commits even more deeply.

God becomes human to fully commit to the covenant.

Because the covenant isn’t about right and wrong. It isn’t about following rules. The covenant, even the covenant of the Law, the covenant of Moses, is about God fully loving people.

That doesn’t sound like law, does it? That’s not about just keeping an orderly society. It’s not just about implementing guidelines for conduct and behavior.

It’s something a lot more like Aristotle. Rather, I think Aristotle’s understanding of law may enlighten what Jesus is doing to fulfill the law.

If the function of the law is to define the purpose of the state, then God becoming incarnate because God loves us enough to ignore our unfaithfulness, our neglect of the covenant, tells us that the kind of state, the kind of people of God we are called to be is a family of people who love each other and all God’s creation enough to forgive… and forgive… and forgive… until we’ve forgiven as much as God has.

We’re called to be people who share that forgiveness everywhere. We’re called to be people who rethink law, who rethink the purpose of law, because God has turned the law on its head.

We’re called to be a people who understand what God speaks through Isaiah:

You quarrel and brawl, and then you fast;
    you hit each other violently with your fists.
You shouldn’t fast as you are doing today
    if you want to make your voice heard on high.
Is this the kind of fast I choose,
    a day of self-affliction,
    of bending one’s head like a reed
    and of lying down in mourning clothing and ashes?
    Is this what you call a fast,
        a day acceptable to the Lord?

Isn’t this the fast I choose:
    releasing wicked restraints, untying the ropes of a yoke,
    setting free the mistreated,
    and breaking every yoke?
Isn’t it sharing your bread with the hungry
    and bringing the homeless poor into your house,
    covering the naked when you see them,
    and not hiding from your own family?

That’s what it means to be the salt of the earth. We are what make life worth living. We are what give life meaning, flavor, intensity of experience in the same way that salt intensifies taste.

That’s what it means to be the light of the world. We’re called not to reveal all that the world has done wrong. That’s not what God’s light does. We’re called to shine love into those dark places, to warm the hearts that are cold, to dispel the shadows that are the stuff of nightmares, dancing trees in the moonlight scraping long claws onto the cold walls of our midnight rooms. God’s light burns through the nightmares, melts our frozen hearts, shows us each what God has created us to be.

Salt and light. That’s what God has created us to be.

People who free each other, untie the yokes of slavery, share our bread, shelter the homeless, cover the naked, bring relationships into wholeness.

Will you do that for Jesus today? Will you be salty and lit with God’s love?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Behold! a sermon for Epiphany

Matthew 2:1-12

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the territory of Judea during the rule of King Herod, magi came from the east to Jerusalem. 2 They asked, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We’ve seen his star in the east, and we’ve come to honor him.”

3 When King Herod heard this, he was troubled, and everyone in Jerusalem was troubled with him. 4 He gathered all the chief priests and the legal experts and asked them where the Christ was to be born. 5 They said, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is what the prophet wrote:

6 You, Bethlehem, land of Judah,
        by no means are you least among the rulers of Judah,
            because from you will come one who governs,
            who will shepherd my people Israel.”

7 Then Herod secretly called for the magi and found out from them the time when the star had first appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search carefully for the child. When you’ve found him, report to me so that I too may go and honor him.” 9 When they heard the king, they went; and look, the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stood over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were filled with joy. 11 They entered the house and saw the child with Mary his mother. Falling to their knees, they honored him. Then they opened their treasure chests and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 Because they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their own country by another route.

Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

The United Methodist General Board of Discipleship has been offering online a ministry called Chuck Knows Church. It’s a series of videos about stuff we do and say and see around church, from a specifically United Methodist perspective. The videos are genuinely fun and entertaining and informative. All in all, it’s one of the potentially most effective ministries that the Church has produced.

I recommend that you check it out.

This past week, Chuck offered some background on the story of the magi who came to present Jesus with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. If you were watching the Circuit’s FaceBook page, you probably caught it, too.

And I warned you, on that FaceBook post, that there would be a quiz.

So let’s see what we know about the wise men.

First, in how many of the gospels is the story of the wise men found? Only in Matthew. We can guess as much as we’d like about the reason Matthew may have included this story, but in the end, guessing is all we have. We can’t get in Matthew’s head with any degree of accuracy.

Second, how many wise men were there? We don’t know. Matthew doesn’t tell us. We just infer that there are three because there are three gifts mentioned (v.11).

Then they opened their treasure chests and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Third, when do the wise men come? I talked a bit about this last week. We don’t know. Again. We infer from Herod’s statement (v.16) that it was some time before the child was three:

When Herod knew the magi had fooled him, he grew very angry. He sent soldiers to kill all the children in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding territory who were two years old and younger, according to the time that he had learned from the magi.

Plus, Matthew tells us (v.11) that the Magi don’t come to a stable, but to a house. Apparently Joseph has put down roots in Bethlehem:

They entered the house and saw the child with Mary his mother.

Fourth, what does Matthew call them? He calls them magi, μαγος, which is a designation for people of wisdom from the east. They could be philosophers, astrologers, teachers, priests, sorcerers… we really don’t know. We assume they are astrologers because it is a star that guides them to the Child King. We call them scientists today because astrology is as advanced a study of the heavens as we find outside of Greece at that time.

What they are not is kings. So the bit that the first line of “We Three Kings” gets right isn’t in the title. It’s that the magi are vaguely oriental.

Not the first time one of our hymns has gotten our theology wrong. And it won’t be the last.

What the story gets very right is how broadly important Jesus is. For that matter, I’m a bit surprised that it’s Matthew who includes the story and not Luke. It is Luke who records the movement exploding far beyond Judea, through Paul, into the broader greek world. If somebody were to point out, even this early, just how wide the implication of Messiah is, I’d expect it to be Luke.

But I didn’t write it. I don’t make those choices.

Matthew doesn’t bother to point out that the heavens rejoice at Jesus’s birth. He doesn’t point out the good news reaching the shepherds first, one of the filthiest and most degraded groups in Judea.

He points out that a group of magi from somewhere in the east, non-Hebrews, probably worshipers of some other god, see a sign in the stars and figure out that something amazing was happening in Judea.

They aren’t Jews. They don’t belong to the local synagogue. They don’t even know who YHWH is.

They just know something amazing is happening, and they come to behold the Child King.

They have an epiphany, a revelation of a miracle, and with no back story and no context, they recognize that something important is going on, so they come not just to check it out, but to pay homage.

But today, the Church claims a monopoly on miracles. If there’s going to be an epiphany, it has to happen through us. If Christ is going to come again, it’s going to be according to the way we understand it.

Since when does God play by our rules?

The Good News Matthew tells through the magi isn’t such good news for the institution that is the Church. It’s good news for a world that is often unknowingly looking for a revelation from God. It’s good news because this is a story that tells us that God can work through any means God chooses to bring humanity an epiphany today.

We, meanwhile, have our noses stuck in a book, expecting a revelation through the very ancient words that tell us, time and time again, that revelation happens wherever God chooses to make it happen.

During Jesus’s time, it is the people with their noses stuck in books who miss the revelation of Christ.

Friends, we can’t afford to miss Jesus. We as a church can’t afford to be blind to the Messiah we find in the poor, the widow, the orphan, the alien, the prisoner, the hungry, the abandoned. If we forsake them, then we should remember that God’s historical response is to forsake us. We as individuals can’t afford to bury our heads in our books and our presuppositions and miss the blessings and miracles God is working around and in spite of us every day.

We can’t afford to miss that.

Sure, there are occasional moments of epiphany that happen through the Church and her people, but increasingly, God’s miracles are happening outside these walls, outside this Body.

And increasingly, it is the world outside the Church that’s catching on to the grace and mercy God is working all around them, while the Body trudges on slowly into atrophy and inevitable death.

The world may not call those moments by their Divine Name, but that doesn’t make them any less miraculous or God-sent.

We can’t afford to miss that.

Friends, we have to open our eyes and call out those God moments, proclaiming, Behold! The risen and powerful King! Behold! Emmanuel, God with and through us!

We have to open our eyes to the inevitable epiphanies happening all around us every day. When we do, God’s Spirit will speak to us and breathe through us and make us powerful proclaimers of the goodness of God.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Holy Cowardice; a sermon for the First Sunday of Christmas

Matthew 2:13-23

13 When the magi had departed, an angel from the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up. Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod will soon search for the child in order to kill him.” 14 Joseph got up and, during the night, took the child and his mother to Egypt. 15 He stayed there until Herod died. This fulfilled what the Lord had spoken through the prophet: I have called my son out of Egypt.

16 When Herod knew the magi had fooled him, he grew very angry. He sent soldiers to kill all the children in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding territory who were two years old and younger, according to the time that he had learned from the magi. 17 This fulfilled the word spoken through Jeremiah the prophet:

18 A voice was heard in Ramah,
    weeping and much grieving.
        Rachel weeping for her children,
            and she did not want to be comforted,
                because they were no more.

19 After King Herod died, an angel from the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt. 20 “Get up,” the angel said, “and take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel. Those who were trying to kill the child are dead.” 21 Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus ruled over Judea in place of his father Herod, Joseph was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he went to the area of Galilee. 23 He settled in a city called Nazareth so that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled: He will be called a Nazarene.

Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

So we’re approaching this story backward. When last we met, Jesus was born and the Magi hadn’t appeared. Now they’re leaving and we’re learning of Herod’s plot.

Next week, we’ll bring the Magi into the scene.

Backward. We do that sometimes.

By the way, do you remember into what scene the Magi are wandering? It’s probably not the one you put on your mantle or your coffee table this season. Matthew tells us that the Magi come to a house, not a stable.

And there’s some vagueness about how old Jesus is when the Magi appear. Listen to Herod’s actions:

He sent soldiers to kill all the children in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding territory who were two years old and younger, according to the time that he had learned from the magi.

I, frankly, don’t know exactly what would cause some vagueness in the age of the child the Magi are seeking. Maybe they told Herod that they were seeking a nursing child, or an infant. I’m willing to bet that the way we define those terms today is different from the way the terms were defined in ancient Judea.

Or maybe Joseph and Mary don’t actually remember when this happens, either. We don’t know how much later they’re relating this story to the early Christian community, but it’s certainly after Jesus’s resurrection. Do they remember, decades later, exactly when it was that Herod sent out his mercenaries? Imagine the terror, the wailing of young mothers, fearful enough in those days of losing a child to natural death, now facing soldiers in their homes, stealing and murdering their infants in cold blood.

Parents mourn when children are lost in the womb. Mothers mourn when they are compelled to make the decision to terminate a pregnancy. It is never a decision made lightly, and we are callous fools when we trick ourselves to believe otherwise.

But when we have had time to learn the child, adapt to infant patterns, watch the child grow…

This, friends, is the stuff of nightmares. This is the stuff, specifically, of my very worst nightmares.

Maybe it is unfair that God warns Joseph about Herod’s plan. Maybe it is a callous God who warns one person but not another. What kind of God does that?

Or maybe God does warn the people of Bethlehem. Maybe they hear and do hide their children. But Matthew suggests that, at least for some, that doesn’t happen.

A voice was heard in Ramah,
    weeping and much grieving.
        Rachel weeping for her children,
            and she did not want to be comforted,
                because they were no more.

Perhaps ours is a God who warns all people, but some of us are unable to hear. I hope so. I confess as much, but I always leave room in my faith for mistake, for learning. At all times, I reserve the right to be wrong.

I hope God warns all of Bethlehem, but I know that God warns Joseph, and he flees.

Now, flight is one of two reactions to danger, to fear. The other reaction is fight.

One exemplifies courage. The other exemplifies cowardice.

Is cowardice a holy trait?

Is fear a God-given gift?

Is there a time when God calls us to be afraid?

When a rabbit is faced with a wolf, he doesn’t stand his ground. He uses those magnificent huge rear paws to blast out of that place. He uses his agility to find cover that the wolf can’t reach.

God gives the rabbit fear in the same breath in which God gives the wolf hunger.

Fear is natural. Fear is created for creatures to keep them safe.

And perhaps, sometimes, out of fear is born wisdom.

I can say this with relative certainty: wisdom is almost never born of hunger. Wisdom is certainly never born of violence.

In violence, we make rash decisions we often regret later, even if we spend years or lifetimes trying to rationalize our violence.

In hunger, we make starved, ill-nourished decisions that seem to benefit us in the short term, but hurt or destroy us as time goes on.

If our reaction to danger is to make a decision that we will regret, where is God in that decision?

If our reaction to danger is to flee, to react by running to safety to re-evaluate our situation, then we have a chance to learn and better protect ourselves.

We have a chance at wisdom.

Thank God that Jesus has given us a middle way, something between flight and fight, a way to stand against violence and oppression without becoming the oppressor but without spending generations cowering in fear. Thank God that Jesus has given us a way that King and Ghandi recognized and have modelled in grace and truth in our world today.

But that middle way sometimes takes forethought and planning that we don’t have time for in every situation.

Joseph has to flee immediately.

Get up, the angel tells him. Take the child and flee. Stay hidden til I tell you otherwise.

I think that, in essence, Joseph’s decision is holy because it allows room for God to speak, for wisdom to be imparted. But I think, more immediately, that Joseph’s decision to flee is holy because it’s what God says to do.

And what God says to do in the moment is more pressing and perhaps more important than what we may read in pages and pages of history covering decades and centuries of blood shed in the name of God the conqueror.

What God says to us, right here, right now, is exactly the Word that we need to hear, because God’s Word is alive and speaking today, not just the written witness of the ages but the living, breathing, inspiring voice whispered in our hearts and shouted by the poor and the oppressed of every age and place.

Sometimes that Word is a Word of courage. But sometimes that Word is a Word of cowardice, one commanding us to take flight from an immediate threat.

And when we escape, God will make space for a miracle. When we flee, God will still send Emmanuel to be with us today.

And eventually, the threat will leave. We may climb down from the attic, come out from our closet, come back home to remake our lives. But first, we must flee.

Sometimes, what God is calling us to is exactly holy cowardice.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Promise of Emmanuel; a sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent

Matthew 1:18-25

18 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ took place. When Mary his mother was engaged to Joseph, before they were married, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. 19 Joseph her husband was a righteous man. Because he didn’t want to humiliate her, he decided to call off their engagement quietly. 20 As he was thinking about this, an angel from the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because the child she carries was conceived by the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you will call him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” 22 Now all of this took place so that what the Lord had spoken through the prophet would be fulfilled:

23 Look! A virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son,
        And they will call him, Emmanuel.

(Emmanuel means “God with us.”)

24 When Joseph woke up, he did just as an angel from God commanded and took Mary as his wife. 25 But he didn’t have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son. Joseph called him Jesus.

Let the words of my mouth
and the meditations of my heart
be pleasing to you,
Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Some of us take dreams seriously. We recognize them as the opportunity our subconscious takes to calm and be quiet and let other influences shape our minds. We assume, I suppose, that those other influences would be divine and not devilish.

Some of us don’t take dreams seriously. We recognize them as our brain’s way of organizing our daily experiences and processing them into some useful form. We assume, I suppose, that our subconscious mind is going to be better suited to that activity than our conscious mind.

Me? I don’t remember my dreams.

So it’s a moot point.

I suppose there are some that haunt me. I think that if I were to have a dream like Joseph’s, that might be the case.

Joseph’s dream is memorable for probably a few reasons, any number of which may or may not apply to you, but I think that any one of them alone would make the dream one that sticks with a person:

The angel. Who has an angel appear in a dream? A relative who has passed, maybe. Not usually an angel. The unusualness of the angel makes the dream memorable.

It’s a dream in first person. Again, this may not be unusual for you, but I don’t seem to have a lot of dreams in first person. Not as myself, anyway. When I am myself, present, seeing and experiencing everything in the dream as myself, the dream has a better chance of standing out and being memorable.

What’s going on in the dream is something that’s actually, factually happening in Joseph’s life. There’s no misplacing one person for another. There’s no hyperbole. It’s very real and completely in touch with exactly what he’s experiencing.

The angel makes this crazy detailed prediction. It’s going to be a boy: That’s something we can only know now because of modern medical developments. You’re going to call him Jesus. Well, that might be self-fulfilling, but it’s a detail that not every dream gets. It’s one last step making this a uniquely memorable dream.

Now, would one of those characteristics stick with you? Is one of them, at least, something unusual about your own dream life? Wouldn’t it haunt you?

But put all that together: Who’s going to forget this dream?

Not Joseph; that’s for sure.

He seems to have remembered it well enough that it got passed down through however many storytellers to get to Matthew, a quarter of a century after the birth itself. And it was a memorable enough dream, and important enough, that whoever heard it from Joseph remembered it, and whoever heard it from that person remembered it, and so on.

And maybe for Matthew, there’s something important about recognizing a new Joseph, having dreams that mean something important, just like Joseph of old telling the court of Pharaoh all the exciting dreams that he was having, bringing the tribe of Israel into a transformative new era. Maybe Matthew is pointing to Jesus as a new era for Israel as well, pointing to the dream and the covenant of David as it is passed beyond the borders of Jerusalem, which is flattened and evacuated by the time he’s writing.

Yup. That’s our context.

Not complicated at all.

Maybe there’s a statement Matthew is trying to make, but perhaps the most important thing for us to focus on today is who the proclamation is about. It’s not Joseph, and it’s not Mary, and it’s not the angel. It’s Jesus. It’s Emmanuel, as Matthew quotes the prophet Isaiah:

Listen, house of David! Isn’t it enough for you to be tiresome for people that you are also tiresome before my God? Therefore, the Lord will give you a sign. The young woman is pregnant and is about to give birth to a son, and she will name him Immanuel. He will eat butter and honey, and learn to reject evil and choose good. Before the boy learns to reject evil and choose good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned.

But perhaps Matthew is onto something. After all, our Gospel writers don’t pick their quotes willy-nilly. Folk who are literate in the first century aren’t typically just a little literate. Putting yourself to learning the art of writing is hard work, and ostracizing work when everyone around you is illiterate.

You think maybe Matthew had in mind Isaiah’s context? Because we don’t tend to.

Before the boy learns to reject evil and choose good, the land of the two kings you dread will be abandoned.

Is that the promise of Emmanuel? That when God Is with Us, everything around us falls apart?

That would be a dark reading of both of these stories, and of the original Joseph story, too: as Joseph receives the dreams, the world falls into famine and his family enters into an eventually enslaved and oppressive situation.

But that’s not the promise of Emmanuel.

The promise of Emmanuel is that, even when things fall apart, God Is with Us.

And frankly, folks, that’s all we need.

When the day has gone from bad to worse, God Is with Us.

When every conversation has been an argument, God Is with Us.

When you just want to give in, God Is with Us.

When the world is falling apart, God Is with Us.

Who else do we need but our Rock, our Stronghold, our Comforter, our Salvation, our Redeemer. Our God who is everything for us, and better and more than we could ever ask. And differently than we could ever hope.

Jesus, the one who saves, but not in the way the people hope. Not the one who will save our political structures, or even our ecclesial structures. Not the one who will save the nation, the church, the environment, the budget, or the status quo. But the One who will save the world, who came not to condemn it, but to bring life.

The promise of Emmanuel isn’t simple. It’s hope, it’s justice, it’s mercy, it’s joy, it’s comfort, it’s salvation, it’s all that.

The promise of Emmanuel is a God Who Is with Us, in all the many meanings that may take on. A God Who Is with Us no matter what we’re going through, and sometimes in spite of our failure to recognize God present in this wretched situation. But a God Who Is with Us powerfully and unfailingly, everything we need even when, and often when, that God isn’t exactly what we want our Savior to be.

But God Is with Us.

And in every situation, whether the nation is falling into exile, the family is in famine, or the baby isn’t ours, whatever the situation, God Is with Us, and God is exactly what we need.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Emmanuel, Three in One, God Always with Us. Amen.

The Promise of Justice; a sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent

Matthew 11:2-11

2 Now when John heard in prison about the things the Christ was doing, he sent word by his disciples to Jesus, asking, 3 “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”

4 Jesus responded, “Go, report to John what you hear and see. 5 Those who were blind are able to see. Those who were crippled are walking. People with skin diseases are cleansed. Those who were deaf now hear. Those who were dead are raised up. The poor have good news proclaimed to them. 6  Happy are those who don’t stumble and fall because of me.”

7 When John’s disciples had gone, Jesus spoke to the crowds about John: “What did you go out to the wilderness to see? A stalk blowing in the wind? 8 What did you go out to see? A man dressed up in refined clothes? Look, those who wear refined clothes are in royal palaces. 9 What did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10 He is the one of whom it is written: Look, I’m sending my messenger before you, who will prepare your way before you.

11 “I assure you that no one who has ever been born is greater than John the Baptist. Yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

John is in prison. Prison is a place in which it’s generally difficult to get news. Somehow he gets wind of this nifty stuff his cousin Jesus is doing, and he gets a word out: Coz, who do you think you are? Are you Messiah?

Because he can’t see for himself. He had that voice-of-God-and-dove moment with Jesus’s baptism, but that seems to have been the end of it. He isn’t witnessing any of the stuff going on around Jesus.

He needs to see more clearly. He needs to connect to the Jesus webcam. X-ray binoculars or something.

He can’t see.

I was running the other day, through the park, and I should’ve known to be more careful, because Ann Vicars told me about a fall she took just the previous week there.

Wet leaves, rain coming down; I rounded a switchback on the trail coming downhill and suddenly I was on my face, rolling across the trail. I couldn’t see how thick the leaves were, and how unstable my footing would be there.

I just couldn’t see.

Nobody saw, though, and I didn’t break anything. So even my pride wasn’t wounded. Well, except now y’all know. Oops.

What do we do when we can’t see? Put on glasses, turn a light on, squint? We have to find a way to bring something into focus, whether that’s by bringing in more light or introducing a light-refracting lens like spectacles or a telescope.

I want to introduce you to a word. A Greek word that Luke uses to translate Mary’s song: μεγαλυνο.

The Latin translation of that word gives us the title by which we know the song today: Magnificat.

Magnify, as in, “My soul magnifies the Lord”.

Those of us who have grown up on Mary’s hymn might not question the word, but it’s a bit of a strange one.

After all, how do you magnify God? Isn’t God infinitely big? How do we make God bigger?

But magnification isn’t about physically making something bigger. It’s about making something look bigger so that it can be more easily seen. A better, but less poetic, translation is, “clarify”.

My soul zooms in on God’s character so I can see better.

Running a nine-minute mile downhill in the rain, it’s a little difficult to zoom in on the ground cover, but you can bet I was more careful about where I placed my feet after that.

My eyes, my mind magnified the trail. I paid more attention to where leaves were loose and where I could see gravel and mud. I even slowed down on the curves, which isn’t something I tend to do.

Think about how you go about your day, what you do. What does your mind magnify? To what do you pay attention? What do you ignore?

What does your body magnify? In what ways does your body zoom in on things, clarify them, make them bigger than they actually are?

What do your emotions magnify? What gets to you? What do you allow to get to you?

What does your soul magnify?

When John asks to see Jesus more clearly, Jesus sends word to him:

Those who were blind are able to see. Those who were crippled are walking. People with skin diseases are cleansed. Those who were deaf now hear. Those who were dead are raised up. The poor have good news proclaimed to them.  Happy are those who don’t stumble and fall because of me.

When God is magnified, what do we see? What do we witness?

I suppose it depends on what part of God’s being we observe. We confess that God is Love, but we also confess that God is Sovereign, that God is a Mighty Warrior, that God is Judge.

What gives us the best picture of the Divine? Is there a part of God we can magnify that will give us a clear understanding of the nature of the only truly Sovereign Being in creation?

I doubt that. Would you like your character to be determined by a single aspect of your character or decision you’ve made? What if it were the wrong decision? The one you’ve always regretted over all the others? What if it were that one?

What if God were seen only through the destruction of Jericho? What if God were seen only through the bloodshed of the Crusades? What if God were seen only through the Holocaust of the Jews?

Or what if we see God as Mary sees God?

Remember what her marital status is? Remember the stigma attached to being a woman of experience outside of wedlock? Remember that stoning is a perfectly valid option for her if her neighbors find out, if the Temple hierarchy finds out?

Why should Mary have a generous perspective on God at all?

Why should she not be like any number of people who go through unbearable challenge, inexplicable tragedy, unfathomable fear, and who decide that no just and loving God would ever allow this to happen? Therefore, either God is not just and loving, or God is simply absent.

I’ve had those moments. Have you?

How do we respond?

I’ll tell you what the least effective response would be: God is watching your faith fail and if you stumble, your very salvation is at stake.

That is also not just and loving. That is not a witness to our God. That is a witness to human fear.

Mary, the most unlikely of persons to have any courage at all, shows us exactly how to respond.

‘My soul magnifies the Lord,
   and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour,
for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.
   Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
   and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him
   from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
   and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
   and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
   in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
   to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

God looks at us and sees the potential, the promise, the good in us. God saw Mary, her hopeless state, and lifted up everything that was good about her. To this day, Mary is revered - not worshipped, not idolized, but profoundly respected - because God lifted her so far out of her hopelessness, because God magnified all that was good about her.

And so Mary, in turn, magnified all the good that she was able to see about God.

Is that a fair reading of the exchange? It’s only one perspective.

But that’s all we ever have: our own unique perspectives.

We have to choose what to highlight, what to magnify.

Mary chooses to magnify God’s justice. So does Jesus.

Tell John:

Those who were blind are able to see. Those who were crippled are walking. People with skin diseases are cleansed. Those who were deaf now hear. Those who were dead are raised up. The poor have good news proclaimed to them.  Happy are those who don’t stumble and fall because of me.

The promise of Jesus, the promise of Emmanuel, the promise of a God who is so intimately and unfailingly with us is justice. Because that God is our protector who desires that our wrong be made right. Because that God is simultaneously our judge who sees the irreconcilable harm we do to others.

And yet that God is unfailingly forgiving to we who repent, and that God expects us to repent thoroughly and not go back to the wrong we have done.

The witness of a faithful life is moving into that way of being in relationship with others and with God, moving toward Christ-likeness, moving toward Godliness, moving into the place in which every breath we take and every word we exhale is God’s own Spirit.

Go tell what you see. Let your soul glorify, magnify God. Bear witness to the amazingness you see.

And God will also magnify you.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.