A Homily for Christmas Eve

John 1:1-5, 9-14

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.

              “The Word became flesh and lived among us…” Matthew’s gospel employs language from the prophet Isaiah to speak of the same truth: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, ‘God is with us.’” We will most likely say that this season is to celebrate the birth of the Christ-child, the birth of a savior—and that is true, but the deeper meaning to those words is captured in Matthew’s use of Isaiah and most-poetically in the prologue to John’s gospel. You see, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, we are celebrating the Incarnation, the arrival of God God’s-self in the flesh and blood and bone of a baby. When we gaze into the cradle at Christmas, we are viewing the Creator of the universe, vulnerable and helpless, small and fragile. When we proclaim the birth of Christ, we are proclaiming the arrival of God as one born in the most unexpected circumstances, to the least likely to wield power, in the most obscure of places.

              Of course, the Incarnation of God in Christ isn’t about the birth of a super-child who will go on to become a super-man, nor is it the story of a child born to be some sort of demi-god with herculean strength and human mortality. The Incarnation of God in Christ is a deep mystery with which we may be too reluctant to wrestle, for after all, if God has been born as a helpless baby who needs to be burped after he’s been fed, changed several times a day, and put down for a nap or two, who is steering the universe? If God is a child being cared for by a mother and father, who’s making sure the sun comes up? Who’s making sure time ticks onward? Who’s answering all those prayers about rain, money, and someone’s favorite team winning the game? If God comes to us as a child, as an adolescent, as a teenager, as a man, walking the very ground we walk, what does that really mean for our understanding of God? After all, if God has come to us, what are we supposed to do with him?!

              To get at where I’m going, I want to share some words with you from one of my patron saints, Clarence Jordan. This is what Clarence said once about the birth of Christ and the Incarnation of God:

What the virgin birth is trying to say to us is not that a man became divine, but that God Almighty took the initiative and established permanent residence on this earth!

Now we, today,…have reversed the incarnation. Instead of the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, we turn it around and we take a bit of flesh and deify it. We have deified Jesus and, thus, effectively rid ourselves of him even more than if we had crucified him. When God becomes a man, we don’t know what to do with him. If he will just stay God, like a God ought to be, then we can deal with him. We can sing songs to him if he’ll just stay God…. We can build our cathedrals to him. This is the bind we get in today. We reverse the action—from heaven to earth—and we turn it around and build it from earth to heaven. And salvation becomes something that we will attain someday, rather than God coming to earth to be among us. So we build churches, we set up great monuments to God and we reject him as a human being.

A church in Georgia just set up a big $25,000 granite fountain on its lawn, circulating water to the tune of 1,000 gallons a minute. Now that ought to be enough to satisfy any Baptist. But what on earth is a church doing taking God Almighty’s money in a time of great need like this and setting up a little old fountain on its lawn to bubble water around? I was thirsty…and you built me a fountain. We can handle God as long as he stays God. We can build him a fountain. But when he becomes a man we have to give him a cup of water. So the virgin birth is simply the great transcendent truth that God Almighty has come into the affairs of man and dwells among us [emphasis mine].[1]

              Tonight, we come to gather around the Lord’s Table, to eat the bread and drink from the cup that remind us of the ultimate reality of God’s Incarnation—that God has endured the pain and cruelty of crucifixion, that Christ (in the words of the Apostle Paul): “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.” Tonight, we are reminded that we serve a God who has refused to simply “stay God,” but has come to be among us, to share in our pains and our joys, to dwell among us in the midst of all that life throws at us. Tonight, on the eve of Christ’s birth, we celebrate the arrival of God and the great mystery of God’s Incarnation, of God’s love and eternal presence among us.

              So may we be encouraged in knowing that God is indeed with us. May we be strengthened in believing that God is not cloistered in the out-of-reach corners of a heaven beyond the sky. May we rejoice in knowing that the love of God that became real all those centuries ago in a stable in Bethlehem still lives among us and is forever calling us deeper into itself, deeper into that love that compels us to welcome the stranger, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, heal the sick, and strive for justice and righteousness for all people. May we celebrate God’s coming to us—though we may not fully comprehend all that it means for us, and may we rejoice in the truth that “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.”  Amen.

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[1] From Clarence Jordan’s Substance of Faith

"Emmanuel" (Fourth Sunday of Advent)

Matthew 1:18-25

18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 20 But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." 22 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23 "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us." 24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, 25 but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

              "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." In his most famous play, Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare puts those words on the lips of the young Juliet as she expresses her love to Romeo. If you know the tragedy of that young couple, then you know that it is in fact their names that initially keep them from being together. Juliet’s family, the Capulet’s, and Romeo’s family, the Montague’s, were the Shakespearean equivalent of the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s; that is to say they didn’t exactly get along well with one another. Juliet, however, doesn’t care, and her love for the boy from the Montague family provokes the question that summarizes the entire conflict in the play: “What’s in a name?”

              Well, what is in a name? I suppose you could make the case that names really aren’t all that important these days. After all, I don’t get nervous about typing my name into a form online or giving my name to someone over the phone; it’s when I have to start adding more specific information like my date of birth, address, and of course, my credit card number. But then again, I have a pretty common name. I’ve tried “Googling” myself before (that’s when you type your name into the internet search engine Google and see what comes up), and I’ve never seen the first page with any information specifically about me: it’s usually stuff about a random NFL receiver, a college basketball player, or the blues musician Chris Thomas King. Names (at least my name) just don’t seem to carry that much meaning these days. Take for example Douglas Allen Smith, Jr., at least that is what he used to go by. The former Mr. Smith lives in Eugene, Oregon, and after watching the television show Chuck several years ago, decided to change his name to something he felt may suit him better. No longer would he be called Douglas Allen Smith, Jr., Doug, or Mr. Smith; no, today he is known (legally) as Captain Awesome.[1] So, yeah, I guess you could make the case that names aren’t all that important these days.

              But then again, names do have some value don’t they? I have friends who, when they were expecting their first child, they created blog asking for input as to possible baby names. According to Amazon there are over 2,000 books on the subject of baby names alone![2] People fret over whether or not they will give their child a good name, so I guess you could make the case that names are actually important these days. When we were adopting Kohl, we received his file with his Chinese name, Long Xin Shua, and an English name, Kohl. We liked it, it seemed to fit him. And while other parents had long stories as to why they chose their kids’ names, I would respond with something along the lines of, “we liked the one they gave him.” We chose Carter’s name, though I was slightly in favor of keeping his nickname, “Han Han,” and calling him “Han-han Solo,” but Sallie (being all the wiser) vetoed it. After all, it’s his name.

              Regardless of whether you think names are important or not today, there is no doubt that names in the ancient world were incredibly important. Your name gave you an identity; it told strangers who you were, what you did, and where you were from. Knowing someone’s name meant you knew that person. Furthermore, in the ancient world of the Hebrew Bible to know a god’s name meant one could control and even manipulate that god. That’s why in Exodus 3 Moses says to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,' and they ask me, ‘What is his name?' what shall I say to them?" The people thought if they had God’s name they could use it to their advantage, so God said to Moses, "I am who I am." He knew why they wanted to know his name, so he just simply said “I am…and that should be enough.” Yes, names in the ancient world were extremely important—which, of course, shines a different light on the familiar passage before us this morning.

              Verses 20 and 21 say, “But just when [Joseph] had resolved to [divorce Mary quietly], an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’" Now up until this point things weren’t all that great for Joseph: his betrothed was pregnant with what was obviously someone else’s child; he faced disgrace and the difficult decision of divorce from a woman he never really got a chance to call wife; and while you and I may think an angelic dream is something to be welcomed, Joseph would have initially thought it something to be feared, and it sort of was! The angel that appears in Joseph’s dream doesn’t give him some sort of divine divorce counseling or advice regarding what attorney to hire for the ordeal. No, instead the angel heaps more on Joseph, and it has everything to do with a name.

              You see, in the family customs of ancient Judaism, the father named the child, and when the father named the child, it was understood that he was claiming the child as his along with all the responsibility of raising the child. So, in verse 25 when Matthew tells us “and [Joseph] named him Jesus,” Joseph put aside all those former notions of divorce, took Mary as his wife and Jesus as his son. Truly he was a righteous man.

              But back to that whole name business: why Jesus? The angel tells Joseph in verse 21, “you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” Now the name Jesus comes from the Hebrew name Yawheshua, Yeshua, or Joshua, which literally means “YHWH saves.” So that seems pretty straight forward: “You’re going to name him ‘YHWH saves’ because God is going to save his people through him.” Never mind the overwhelming responsibility that must have thrown upon Joseph, what about that the passage from Isaiah that Matthew quotes in verse 23? “‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’" Can you remember any passage in the gospels where one of the disciples says something to the effect of, “Hey Emmanuel, what’re we going to do for lunch?” Matthew is referring to a prophecy from Isaiah about a child being born that would signal the end of tyranny and the beginning of a new era in the history of Israel, one marked by prosperity and joy. Maybe you can see why Matthew found the prophecy fitting and referred to Jesus as Emmanuel.

              Of course Jesus is known by many names: Jesus, Christ, Messiah, the Word, the Son of God, the Son of David, he called himself the Son of Man, the Good Shepherd, John the Baptist called him the Lamb of God, the Alpha and Omega, the Vine, King of Kings and Lord of Lords; and during this season of Advent and Christmas, one of the names of Christ truly stands out: the Prince of Peace. That title comes from another passage in the prophet Isaiah, chapter nine verse six: “For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

              What’s in that name? If Jesus is the Prince of Peace, why do we still seem to be running on little more than the fumes of peace? I mean, when Mary cradled the Christ Child in her arms and Joseph called him Jesus, did they think that some two millennia later that some of the ground they walked on would be torn by bullets and bombs? When Matthew undoubtedly read the prophecies of Isaiah could he have ever imagined the future followers of Christ lining up to go fight in war after war? Did those shepherds, magi, and those first followers of Jesus ever consider that those of us who follow him today would still deal with the chaotic cacophony of doubt, depression, fear, anxiety and addiction? After all, is this what it means for God to save us, that we should be tossed about by the violence of sin and evil in this world, waiting either for death or some apocalyptic second coming to take us to a place where there is peace—peace not only from war, but pain, heartache, tragedy, and death? Is this really who the Prince of Peace, Jesus, “YHWH Saves,” is?

              It may seem that way to you at times. It may seem that Christ only shows up in the cradle at Christmas, on the cross on Good Friday, or rising from the empty tomb on Easter. It may seem to you that the salvation that Jesus offers is a part of some eternal lay-away program, where you pay a little now, but get the reward in the end. It may seem that the Prince of Peace is simply holding back that peace, waiting for the hereafter to distribute it among the clouded mansions of heaven. It may seem that way to you, but then we hear again this other name of Jesus, the name Matthew gives him from Isaiah’s prophecy in verse 23: “‘they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’"

              What’s in a name? Emmanuel, “God is with us.” God is with us when the holidays seem too depressing to bear. Emmanuel, God is with us when the way is dark and cold. Emmanuel, God is with us when it feels like there will never be peace. When the pain of death, the sting of doubt, the weight of addiction, depression, anxiety, and fear, when the loneliness of life, is all too much and you feel like you’ll never find peace…Emmanuel. God is with us. That’s what all of this is about, Advent, Christmas, the very message and the person of Christ himself—God is with us! We are not alone in this world; we are never alone in this world. We are not alone in our darkness; we are not alone in our joy; we are not alone when we’ve lost everything; we are not alone when we feel like we have it all; we are never alone. That’s the truth of Emmanuel; that’s the truth of Christmas. God is with us. Always. Amen.

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[1] http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2010/1207/Oregon-man-changes-his-name-from-Douglas-Smith-to-Captain-Awesome

[2] http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_10?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=baby+names&sprefix=baby+names

"Should we wait for another?" (Third Sunday of Advent)

Matthew 11:2-11

2 When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" 4 Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. 6 And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me." 7 As they went away, Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? 8 What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. 9 What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. 10 This is the one about whom it is written, "See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.' 11 Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

              “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” What an odd question to come from John, isn’t it? I mean, just last week we heard him declare, “…one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and Fire…” He was talking about Jesus, and I suppose it was easy to proclaim Jesus as that one with “His winnowing fork in his hand…clearing his threshing floor…burning the chaff with unquenchable fire,” when you’ve got all the people coming out to hear you, when you’re on a roll, when you are full of spit and vinegar. But John’s not out in the Jordan now; he doesn’t have throngs of followers lining up to be dunked in the water for repentance. No, John’s in prison, placed there because he spoke out too loudly in criticism of Herod Antipas, one of the Tetrarch’s of Judea, and the way he unlawfully married the wife of his own brother. John isn’t a wild holy man on the outskirts of town anymore—he’s a political prisoner, sitting in a cell, awaiting his trial.

              You see, prison in the Roman empire of the first century wasn’t exactly what you and I think of as prison. It was more of a holding place, a place where criminals were to await their trial, and at their trial they would receive one of three likely sentences: acquittal, exile, or execution. One didn’t spend a lengthy amount of time in prison, and John knew his time was drawing to an end—an end he likely assumed wouldn’t come until the Messiah came into his own, when he would start all that fiery baptizing and winnowing John had been preaching about in the Jordan just a few weeks prior.  So maybe it isn’t such an odd question for John to ask after all: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” John had a lot riding on Jesus being “the one who is to come.” I suppose we all have a lot riding on Jesus being who John said he was.

              I think John is just expressing the sort of doubts we all have from time to time, right? I mean, if you just flip a few pages back in Matthew’s gospel, to the Sermon on the Mount, you’ll hear Jesus say in chapter seven, verse seven, “Ask, and it will be given you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” Now here’s the thing: I’ve asked….I’ve searched…I’ve knocked—sometimes until my knuckles bled—and I didn’t receive what I asked for and I didn’t find what was I was searching for and the door stayed pretty closed in front of me. So, I get why John might ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

              I have to say, too, that this time of year can raise up more than one or two opportunities to ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” After all, what does it mean to sing hymns to the Prince of Peace, while people are so eager to raise the rally cry to war, so ready to create conflict, so determined to be divided in our world, in our nation, in our homes? If Jesus was the long-awaited Prince of Peace, did he forget it sitting on the counter when he left heaven? “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

              This is the third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday of Joy, a Sunday when we sing “Joy to the World, the Lord has come…” But those words may sound almost cruel to those who’ve experienced no joy this past year, this past decade, maybe ever. To those who’ve been told that Christ was their savior, their deliverer, yet they’re still drowning in the same darkness, still overcome by the same weight of this world, still wrestling with their addictions, fears, instabilities, and anxieties, I can see where they might gaze through the prison bars of their own minds and ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

              I mean, what do you do when Jesus just doesn’t live up to your expectations? What do you do when you’re pretty sure you’ve done everything right, you’ve checked all the right boxes, prayed all the right prayers, believed all the right things, but still things aren’t the way you want them, but still you’re stuck in a rut, still you’re falling behind, still you don’t know what to do, still you wind up in prison waiting to hear the sentence of execution come down. What do you do? What do you do when this faith, this Jesus you’ve been following, just doesn’t seem to be holding up his end of the bargain, when God doesn’t seem to be showing up to fix all the things wrong with the world, all that’s wrong with “those people,” all that’s wrong with you? No, I get it. I get why John would send word and ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jesus just wasn’t living up to the image in John’s head, to the expectations John had of the Messiah. And maybe that’s where so many of our failures begin, where so much of our fear and anxiety finds its roots—in our expectations.

              My roommate had expectations the night he decided to he’d try to show off in his jeep to one of our friends and three other girls. I suppose he expected that his Jeep could go anywhere, and that the wet, red mud of a development off of Lakeshore Drive would be no match for his driving skills and his Jeep’s all-terrain tires. But after he buried it up to the axles, he called me, asking if I could our friend John’s four-wheel-drive Bronco and come pull him out. I suppose he expected we’d just show up, drive down into the mud, throw a strap around his bumper and ever-so-easily pull him out of his self-inflicted hole. However, when we arrived, we found him stuck over a hundred yards from anything John was willing to drive his Bronco over, so we trudged down to where the Jeep was stuck, and I decided our best course of action was to dig it out. There were eight of us in all, so I figured we could dig it out in about an hour. Well, after ten minutes I noticed I hadn’t heard anyone else digging, and as I turned around, I found fourteen eyeballs just watching me. So, with my shirt soaked in near-freezing sweat, my pants caked with mud and clay, I stood up, threw the scrap board I had been digging with in the nearby woods, and declared I was done helping and anyone who could fit in the Bronco was free to ride back to campus with me. See, he expected that I would show up, and with my South Alabama, Redneck, Mechanic voodoo powers, I’d liberate his Jeep and save him the potential charges (financial and criminal—since he was technically trespassing).

              I think John had similar expectations about Jesus…I think we have similar expectations about Jesus. Maybe John thought Jesus was just going to show up and start all this fiery baptizing, all this winnowing of those unfit for the kingdom, that Jesus would just show up, snap his messianic fingers and set things right. Maybe we think Jesus will just come into our lives and make everything better, that Christmas will come, and all will be set right. Maybe we’re looking out for a Jesus who is coming to fulfill our expectations, but what we have is a Jesus who shows up to call us into action. Maybe the catch in John’s question isn’t his doubt, but his verbs: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Should we be waiting in the first place? I mean, think about Jesus’ response to those from John: "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me."

              Jesus doesn’t tell them to tell John what Jesus has said; rather he says, “Tell John what you hear and see…what you have experienced.” In other words, when John wants to know if Jesus in the “the one we’ve been waiting for…” Jesus says, “You tell him what you think!” I mean, Jesus almost sounds impatient in his reply as he turns to the crowd: "What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? Look, those who wear soft robes are in royal palaces. What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.' Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”  

              Here’s the thing: this whole Jesus thing, this whole Advent thing, this whole Kingdom of God, is not something that just shows up like a train running on some sort of cosmic schedule. It’s not some sort of production with a sharp start time. Jesus asks, “What did you expect to see in John? Someone who was going to do it all for you? John was just the beginning! The first one, the one who would have to figure the rest of this out, same as you, doubts and all!”

              That’s why I think John’s question is a fine one: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Well, Jesus, are you? And Jesus says, “I’m not the one who is to come, the one you’ve been waiting on…I’m the one who is here, calling you to be a part of this now!” To paraphrase theologian John Caputo, the kingdom of God doesn’t exist it insists. God isn’t a static being like the moon—there whether we believe in it or not. No, God is calling us to take part in this in-breaking kingdom, to be the response to the call of Advent, to be like those messengers from John, reporting to those who ask “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” everything we’ve heard and seen ourselves. The advent of the kingdom of God in Christ isn’t just an event we secure tickets to, it isn’t something that we passively take part in, letting it arrive like some date on the calendar. It is the reality Jesus is calling us to create here and now.

              When someone asks of Jesus “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” we respond by showing them the ways Jesus is the One who has come, that Christ is so much more than they expect, that the kingdom of God is here—Emmanuel—God is with us. That doesn’t mean we’ll go around handing our halos, white robes, and harps. That’s not what the kingdom looks like. The advent of God’s kingdom began in Christ and continues with those of us who are called by his name as we seek to make it a present reality. We do that as we love one another, as we feed those who are hungry, as we care for those whom no one else cares about, as we stand up for justice for the oppressed, as we practice peace, as we carry our own portion of the light of hope and joy to those who are in darkness.

              This Advent/Christmas season, while so many of us will be singing carols and hymns of praise and joy to and about Jesus, there will be others who are asking “[Jesus,] Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  How will we respond? How will we answer the insistent call of the Kingdom of God to make it real here and now? In the coming year, how will we bring the Kingdom to those who have doubt enough to still ask the questions, how will we bring the kingdom to those who still have faith enough to look for the questions, how will you answer when they ask of Jesus “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Amen.

            

"A Voice in the Wilderness" (Second Sunday of Advent)

Matthew 3:1-12

1 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2 "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." 3 This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’" 4 Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5 Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6 and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. 7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8 Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9 Do not presume to say to yourselves, "We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10 Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 11 "I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

              It was as close to a ritual as anything I had growing up. Most weekends I spent with my dad, and since my dad lived right up the hill from Grandma, and since my cousins David and Brad spent most weekends with Grandma, I would often spend Friday night at Grandma’s house. When we were little, Grandma would let us stay up and watch The Golden Girls, and as we got older, we’d stay up late in Granddaddy’s old shop, drinking Check Colas, eating Vienna sausages, and listening to “The Charlie Gilmore Show” on 95.5 WTVY. While our Friday night habits changed and evolved, the one thing that remained almost unchanged was Saturday morning. We’d wake up to Grandma having fried some bacon, made some biscuits, and having drank a cup of instant coffee she drank from a saucer, and we’d put on some clothes and go to town.

              That’s what Grandma always said: we were going to “go to town.” Now, that meant all sorts of things for us: going to the grocery store, the laundromat, the produce stand, Uncle Rays’ garden (even though Uncle Ray didn’t live anymore in town than he was our actual Uncle). “Going to town” could mean we were going to the Goodyear store to get the oil changed or make a payment on the lawn mower Grandma bought there; it could mean going to the bank, the drug store, the Burger King in front of Winn-Dixie (Grandma always said she like a good Whooper), or it could mean going to the Barber Shop on the corner of the Westgate Shopping Center. Regardless of where we were going or what we were doing, “Going to town” was necessary for life to have any sense of normalcy; after all, everything was in town. No one living in town got up on Saturday morning and thought, “I guess I need to get ready and head out passed the paved roads to get my groceries, my haircut, my bills paid…” No. everything happens in town, not out in the country, not out in the wilderness.

              Which is why it is a bit odd to find ourselves on this Second Sunday of Advent in the opening verses of Matthew 3, where “In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’" I mean, if you want to draw a crowd, if you want to be where the action is, you don’t set up shop in the wilderness; you stand on a soapbox on the corner of Main Street, right? You stand on the steps of the First Church, in the shadow of its steeple, within earshot of its bells. If you’re John, you stand before the columned porticos of the Temple, the smell of burnt offerings in the air, the grand image of God’s grandness behind you—that’s what you do if you’re going to talk about the nearness of God, stand and proclaim at the doors of God’s house! You don’t stand in a muddy creek wearing “clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around [your] waist…[eating] locusts and wild honey.” I mean, if I stood up here in a Chewbacca costume,  with my hair uncombed, bits of bugs in my beard, sucking on a honeysuckle for breakfast, would you believe a thing I said? Of course not! (you may not even with my hair brushed and my tie reasonably straight!)

              But there’s John, standing out in the wilderness, in the creek, looking out of his mind, going on and on about the nearness of the Kingdom of God—and folks are flocking to see him! “[T]he people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.” But surely the Kingdom of God isn’t out there in the wilderness, out there where the grass grows wild, where the bugs crawl on the ground, where snakes slither, where there’s only the shade of the trees to block the sun…surely it’s not out there where civilization is absent, right? I mean, if the Kingdom of God is coming, if God is going to show up, it’s going to be in town, right? Maybe that’s why the Pharisees and Sadducees come out to John, to bring him in town, to check his papers, see if he has the proper permits for assembling such a group of folks, to be sure he had the proper ordination, maybe even offer him somewhere in town to hold his meetings. “But when [John] saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’”

              Now, is that any way to welcome the ones who’ve “come for baptism?” Who in the world would want to respond to the invitation for repentance and baptism if they’re just going to be called a bunch of sons of snakes? But what is interesting here is that the Greek word used to describe the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism (epi) can also be translated as “coming against baptism.” Maybe John knew these folks weren’t coming as supporters, but rather as those who sought to shut him down and shut him up, as those who would have the correct, traditional, “downtown” religion preserved. The rest of John’s words in our text this morning are aimed squarely at these Pharisees and Sadducees: “Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire…”

              They came to John, believing that their heritage, their ancestry, their very identity was enough, and now John was usurping their power, their claim to salvation by proclaiming repentance in the wilderness and baptizing all who would come to the water. You see, that’s just not how it was done. If you wanted to be “in,” you had to come in town, to the Temple, to a synagogue at least. You had to be seen by a professional, someone who had been properly trained, in the inherited line of Levitical priests or by one approved by such priests. If you were going to be counted among those in the kingdom of God, you had to qualify, meet the minimum standards, be of a certain lineage, a certain race, have the right confession, the right theology, the correct way of seeing the world and the scriptures according to those who were overseeing the whole thing. But John’s just letting them all come in the water, claiming the Kingdom is near—in the wilderness, for everybody, and what’s more is that he’s not even the head man in charge!

              No. John’s out there in the wilderness, like the one mentioned by the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” He’s in the wilderness as one who is making ready the way for the one who is to come. He says, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." This one is coming after John, following him, out there, in the wilderness. John isn’t the opening act for someone who’s going to show up in town the next day, where he’s supposed to be. John, in his camel’s hair underwear, his unkempt hair, with locust legs stuck in his teeth, is saying the one who is coming will follow after him—in the wilderness. And this one who is coming will be even more powerful, baptizing with fire, a fire of refinement and judgement.

              But no one like that would come in the wilderness, right? No one like that would really come after John, right? I mean, the God of the universe would surely make his presence known in the gold-gilded marble halls of the temple, right? At the very least, God would appear in the grand palaces of power, perhaps in the pulpits before the unrolled scrolls of scripture. Surely God would chose to show up in town, where the action is, where the power is, in the expected places of strength and authority among those chosen or powerful enough to wield it, yes? God would never really follow after someone, especially someone so…radical…right?

              That’s about as crazy as driving out past the city limits to get your dry cleaning, as crazy as heading to outskirts of town to do all your grocery shopping. God showing up in the wilderness, after someone like John…why, the next thing they’ll say is that God would be born as a helpless infant in a feedbox to some unwed teenager in some Podunk town in the middle of nowhere, that God isn’t some old man with a beard on a throne in the clouds, but one who was executed as a criminal after a rigged trial, that God isn’t taking names and judging like some sort of cruel gameshow host, but is actually taking names and calling us beloved in spite of our sins and failures. Yeah, the first thing they’ll tell us is that God is going to show up outside of town, in the wilderness, after some baptizing preacher, then they’ll tell us that God was a baby in a manger, that God is love, that God loves us enough to die to show us, and that God loves all of us…

              No wonder folks want to drag him back into town, shove him back in the temple, keep him settled safely in the syntax of the words on a page. No wonder the Pharisees and Sadducees come out to hush John up. God belongs in town, in the proper understanding, in the proper context, among the proper people—those who already believe the right things about God. After all, if you listen to a voice in the wilderness, if you get dipped in the muddy creek by a bug-eating Baptist, if you really believe all that stuff about the manger, the shepherds, the magi, the feeding of thousands, the washing of feet, healing the sick, the nailing to a cross, and the whole thing about him being raised from the dead, about this Jesus of Nazareth being the “one who is coming after John,” the one with the power to baptize with fire…chances are you may not be so willing to go along with the religious folks “in town” who want to claim a monopoly on God.

Jesus came to set the whole thing on fire, to refine a religion bogged down with the notion that God was only for those who met the qualifications, to burn away the chaff of a system that sought to make those of the margins, in the wilderness of existence, invisible and insignificant. Christ came to show us that the way of God isn’t found “in town” among the well-to-do and the brightly polished, but out in the wilderness, in muddy creeks, in stables, in the fields with young, frightened shepherds, in the leper-lined streets, in the crowded cells of prisons, in the welfare lines, the overflowing homeless shelters, the side of the on-ramps, the drafty trailer parks, the crowded border crossings—that the way of the Lord is always among those we least expect, always among those we would never expect. The way of the Lord comes like a voice in the wilderness, calling us to repentance, calling us to “come and see,” to come and follow the one who baptizes with a fire that burns away every single things that stands between us and our neighbor, a fire that burns away everything that stands between us and God. On this second Sunday of Advent, may we heed the voice in the wilderness, as we draw closer to the cradle of Christ, as we draw nearer to the coming of the one whose “winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Amen.

"Two-Edged Hope" (First Sunday of Advent)

Matthew 24:36-44

36 "But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 37 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, 39 and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. 41 Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. 42 Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. 43 But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

              Hope is a wonderful thing. It pushes us on though life may be tumultuous and depressing. It allows us to live in the present while longing for a better, fuller future. It calls our hearts and minds forward, giving us motivation to change the present to bring about that brighter, fuller future. But then again...hope can also be a dangerous thing. It keeps us stuck in a rut, unwilling to accept the inevitable so we can deal with what's here and now. It lets the ideal, the perfect, linger in the midst of a world that is anything but ideal or perfect. It keeps us frozen, unwilling to move forward with healing and progress. It is a double-edged sword that may cut to the quick of joy or saw right to the marrow of desperation.

              It is that same double-edged sword that cut the way for an entire nation to persevere through centuries of defeat and devastation. By the time Matthew penned his gospel Israel had a history laced with tragedy and despair. They had once been the chosen people of God: blessed by the calling of Abraham, delivered from the bondage of Egypt, only to cycle through epochs of devotion, rejection, judgment, and disaster... devotion, rejection, judgment, and disaster... The Israel that Matthew knew had been ruled and oppressed by the nations of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and was now squarely under the thumb of the Caesar and Rome. Aside from the empire’s tyrannical display of power with the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., this was the same Israel that Jesus knew—a nation clinging to the sharp edges of hope.

              They began clinging to that hope sometime after the Babylonian deportation (around 586 B.C.). That’s when Israel became a nation defined by such hope—hope in a new deliverer, hope in the coming vengeance of God, hope in his Anointed, the Messiah. By the time of the first century messianic hopes were so high that one could easily find a messiah on just about any street corner. The British comedy troop Monty Python illustrates just such a point in their satirical film The Life of Brian. In that film, Brian, just a regular, everyday guy (who just happened to have been born in the stable next to Jesus) has to go throughout his life fending off the crazed mobs that attempt to declare him the Messiah. While they are rather loose with the morals and historical accuracy of such first-century Jewish, messianic claims (all the while being completely respectful to Jesus and his actual teachings), the boys from Monty Python aren’t too far from the mark. Messiah’s popped up everywhere. One doesn’t have to look too far in the records of that ancient historian Flavius Josephus to find many of their stories.

              Jesus of Nazareth, however, was different. With Jesus, the hopes of Israel seemed to be materializing right before her people’s very eyes! Matthew tells the story of Magi coming to worship him as the king at his birth; he’s performing miracles and healing the sick; he’s claiming the authority to forgive sins and interpret the Law; this Jesus was surely the long-hoped-for Messiah! Matthew even records some of his most beautiful words as he stood atop a hill to proclaim the coming kingdom of heaven in his Sermon on the Mount. Israel’s hope seemed to be coming to fruition. Jesus, however, was taking his time. There’s no mounted attack on Rome, no blueprint for the reconstruction of the kingdom of Israel, no armory or even one sharpened stick! In fact, for most of Matthew’s gospel Jesus only seems to hint at the coming kingdom and always with some roundabout ethereal allusions. If he is the hope Israel has been waiting for, when is he going to start paying dividends? 

              That (I think) is where Jesus’ words in this section of Matthew’s gospel seem to come into play. In chapter twenty-four Jesus begins to really lay the whole “end of the age” stuff on real thick. In verses three through eight of chapter twenty-four he talks about false Messiahs and “nations rising up against nations”—now we seem to be getting on with the stuff Israel’s been hoping for from a Messiah. In verses nine through twenty-eight of that same chapter Jesus speaks of coming persecutions and the desecration of the Temple by a “desolating sacrilege.” Just before our passage this morning Jesus, in verses thirty and thirty-one, speaks some of the most hopeful words one in his day could have heard from such an obvious Messiah: “Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see ‘the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven' with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” Man, doesn’t that sound awesome!? The Son of Man (obviously Jesus) is going to send his angels to gather all us good, Christian folks up! He even goes on to tell us we’ll be able to discern with signs when it’s all going to go down. “Just look at the fig tree,” he says, “as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near.” There you have it: all that Israel, all that humankind, has been waiting for is about to bust loose all over creation: just look for the signs.

              But what’s all this about not knowing the time, being like the folks in Noah’s day, one being taken and one being left, and being watchful and ready in the passage in front of us this morning? Is this the other edge of the sword called hope? I mean, we all tend to like Jesus and his “end times” predictions up to this point, but we really get nervous when Jesus says he doesn’t know things. In fact, some of the later Greek manuscripts we have of Matthew leave out the expression “nor the son” because of what it may imply about the limited knowledge of Jesus. After all, we want Jesus to know. Heck, we want to know! We want to know when it’s all going down; we want to know when the end is coming, when our hopes will be realized and fulfilled.

              That’s the trouble with the keen edge of hope: it’s not enough to rely on a word from Jesus, especially if he says he doesn’t know. It’s too difficult to be satisfied when we hear words of technical uncertainty; words that seem to confuse us more than assure us. That’s where Israel was prior to the first century. They had the words of the prophets; they had the teachings of the rabbis; they knew the prophecies and myths about the coming Messiah. But it wasn’t enough; they were too vague; they left too much room for interpretation and confusion. So what did they do? From the gaping hole left by the biting blade of hope they formed their own conclusions of who the Messiah would be and what the Messiah would do. And what came of that? Well most of them missed him altogether!

              We stand on the other side of history. We see the great cut made by hope and yet when we hear these words of Jesus we want to toss around the possibilities of allegory and interpretation. We want to exhaust our mind in trying to figure out when, where, and how the end will happen. Hope isn’t enough for us anymore. We’re creatures of detail and specifics; we want to know so we can begin to make plans, so we don’t have to hope anymore. Because hope is a double-edged sword, and it’s razor sharp! We want the inside scoop because hope just leaves us too far in what seems like the dark. Perhaps that is why, however it may be, that Jesus didn’t know the day and hour when the end of the age would come. Maybe the Father chose to conceal such information so that there would be no way we could get away with procrastination, because after all, we are a notoriously procrastinating species.

              Whatever the case may be, theses are still words of hope from Jesus: “Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.” Yes, Jesus did say he didn’t know the day or hour when the Lord will come, but here in these words Jesus assures us that the Lord is indeed coming! We have hope!

And hope is a double-edged sword. While most of us may hear these words from Jesus as words that give us joy in the coming of the Lord and a call to immediate action for the cause of the kingdom, there may be those who are frozen in their tracks because of their hope in the coming of Christ. They are petrified, simply waiting for time to wind down so they may be taken up. They are cut by the other side of hope. The hope that comes in these words from Jesus is found in knowing that Christ calls us to be about the work of the kingdom until that unknown hour, so that we may be found “in the field” or “grinding meal together,” so that we may be found feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, visiting the prisoner and the shut-in, welcoming the stranger, loving our neighbor...

              These words before us this morning are not merely words for theological debate and amateur interpretation. These are words of motivating hope. These are the words we hear at the beginning of Advent so that we may know that this season is not simply a time to stretch the celebration of Christmas. These are words we hear to begin Advent so that we may be motivated by the hope of the coming Lord to be about his work until he comes—to be ready! So when you hear these words, what feelings of hope do you have? Are they feelings of motivating joy, causing you to pursue the will of God and the coming of his kingdom? Or do your feelings of hope leave you fixed where you stand?

Jesus says in verse 44, “Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” Are you ready? Are you ready for the fulfillment of the hope of Advent? Will your hope make you ready, when the Son of Man comes at an unexpected hour?

Amen.

"Woe to the Shepherds" (Reign of Christ)

Jeremiah 23:1-6

1 Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord. 2 Therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the Lord. 3 Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. 4 I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord. 5 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. 6 In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: "The Lord is our righteousness."

              In 1963, Bob Dylan released his album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and on that record was a track titled “Masters of War.” Now, the first time I ever heard the song it wasn’t Dylan who sang it, but Eddie Veder, lead singer of Pearl Jam (a personal favorite of mine). The lyrics to Dylan’s “Masters of War” were aimed directly at those people who were in power, those people with money and influence who were often the driving forces behind wars and military conflicts that (at least in the 1960s) drafted young men into combat, putting them in harms way while the wealth elite stayed home and reaped the benefits of such bloody conflict. In case you haven’t heard it, here are just a few of the lines from the fourth verse: “You fasten all the triggers/ For the others to fire/ Then you sit back and watch/ When the death count gets higher/ You hide in your mansion/ While the young people's blood/ Flows out of their bodies/ And is buried in the mud.”

              The next year, Bob Dylan would release The Times They Are a-Changin’ and on that album, Dylan included a song titled, “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” a sort of musical tribute to civil rights activist Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963. In his song, Dylan didn’t lay the blame solely on those who shot Evers, but instead placed it directly at the feet of those Southern politicians in those days who used fear and ignorance to influence poor whites to vote for racist legislation and enact violence towards people of color. In both “Masters of War” and “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” Bob Dylan sounded less like a counter-culture musician and more like the exiled prophet, overlooking the shambles of Jerusalem as it lay smoldering in the wake of Babylonian might. Dylan echoed the truths that the prophet Jeremiah proclaimed in those early years of exile: in the end, the people’s hearts turned from God, because their kings, priests, and leaders had sought for themselves power, wealth, and self-adulation.

              Our passage this (Reign of Christ) morning (the final Sunday of the liturgical year before we enter in the anticipation of Advent) begins right after the prophet’s words of judgement directed at the king Jehoiachin, and it continues the prophet’s theme of judgement aimed at those who were over the people of Judah: “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! says the Lord…It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the Lord.” Rather than aim his words at the people, the mass population of the folks in Judah, the prophet’s words are barbed for the nation’s leaders. They were supposed to be the ones who led Judah in the paths of righteousness, the ones who called the people back to God whenever they were tempted to stray, The kings, priests, and tribal elders were supposed to be the ones who exemplified lives lived by the Law, lives lived in line with the commandments of God. Instead, they used their inherited positions for personal gain and comfort. They used their power oppress the poor, to exploit widows, to malign the stranger, to gain for themselves even more power and wealth—and all at the expense of the people and their security, knowing that’s God’s judgement was coming from Babylon, yet refusing to listen to the voices of those prophets who came before Jeremiah. Now, Jeremiah stand among them in exile and declares that God’s judgement has fallen on them, and while there will be a remnant that will return to Judah, to Jerusalem, they will not be found among them.

              Jeremiah’s words are harsh, most especially if you found yourself on the pointed end of them. Of course, I can hear what many might say these days about the prophet’s words: “Amen! Woe to those leaders who don’t do the will of God! That’s why we have to vote for people who share our values! That’s why we have to have leaders who will stand up for God! Amen, Jeremiah! Woe to those shepherds!” Those voices aren’t wrong, of course. We should vote for people who share values important to us, who will act and lead in ways we find to be congruent with the words of scripture and our faith in Jesus. But I am not so sure that’s all Jeremiah’s words have for us. No, I think on this Reign of Christ Sunday, as we’re staring down the hall at Thanksgiving and the Christmas season, the prophet’s words might need to hot us a little closer to home, they might be words we need to hear, those of us who are less likely to call ourselves “shepherds of the people.”

              You see, our text this morning doesn’t just leave us with the prophet’s judgement of the kings and leaders of Judah. No, there are some words of promise as well: The Lord says, “I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the Lord.” For the people of Judah, God still has a plan for them to prosper in their land: God will raise up new shepherd, and under these shepherds (the prophet declares) the people will no longer be afraid, and they will flourish and thrive. And that’s the thing—God is the one who will bring this all about, and God is going to accomplish it all by way of the promise God had made to David, a promise that had become a sort of prophetic prediction by the days of the exile: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness.’”

              Now, here we are, Christmas trees in some of our living rooms, Mariah Carey singing to us about all she wants for Christmas on the radio, lists laid out for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and “Why did I buy that?” Wednesday, looking forward to shifting into holiday high gear once we’ve put up the Thanksgiving leftovers. We’re anticipating carols, ugly sweater parties, candles, “Silent Night,” and communion on Christmas Eve. We know the one whose name will be called “The Lord is our righteousness,” and we’re all but ready to hang the green and welcome him into the manger. We know he’s coming because he’s already been here, already heard the Little Drummer boy, met the three kings, smelled the shepherds, preached his sermon on the mount, healed the sick, raised the dead, been crucified, dead, buried, and raised on the third day. We are in the likely enviable position of sitting on this side of Judah’s Babylonian exile, with “The Lord is our righteousness” having already come to show us the way, the one Good Shepherd to lead us all back into the flock. So what do we take from Jeremiah’s words into these joy-filled, hopeful, anticipating days ahead of us? Well, I have a thought.

              While you and I may not be like the priests and kings of Judah, with the power and wealth to lead and manipulate a nation, you and I are in the position to show others the way, and there may be no other time of the year when the eyes of others are so intently trained on us. What does that mean then? It means that during this week of thanksgiving, folks are watching to see if those of us with so much for which to be thankful are truly living with gratitude, or simply looking for another opportunity to complain, another opportunity to gain, another opportunity to want more. It means that as we enter into the Christmas season, folks will be watching to see if those of us who claim “the reason for the season” celebrate and revere that reason, or if we simply seek to use it as a pious ploy to set ourselves over those we deem to be spiritually inferior.

              No, you and I are not kings, but we are leaders—whether we want to be or not, for there are those who are following us into this coming season of hope, peace, love, and joy, those who are following us like sheep behind a shepherd to see if we’ll lead them to the cradle of Christ or if we’ll lead them towards more of the empty, self-seeking materialism the coming weeks put before us. As those who follow Christ, those to whom others look when they want to know what it means to be a Christ-follower, will we lead others in the path of God’s kingdom, or will we be like those to whom the prophet Jeremiah speaks, those who sought only what was best for them? Amen.

"Two Men Praying" (Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost)

Luke 18:9-14

9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.' 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."

              "Two men went up to the temple to pray...” Isn’t that a lovely thing? Two men, entering into the sacred space understood and reserved as the “house of God,” and they’ve come to pray, to commune with the Almighty, to spend time in the focused presence of God. That’s a pretty good introduction to a parable if ever there was one. Jesus wants to teach his disciples then (and now) about the dangers of trusting in oneself to be righteous while looking down your nose at others in contempt.  What a better way to teach about such things than through a parable of exemplary prayer? "Two men went up to the temple to pray...”  It doesn’t take long, however, before the wheels on the parable start to wobble a bit.

              Jesus says, "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.” Aha! So it isn’t just two ordinary men, two average, run-of-the-mill fellas kneeling in silent prayer in a candle-lit corner of the temple—it’s a Pharisee and a tax collector. Well, I suppose that may be another way to teach about the dangers of self-righteousness and the judging of others. After all, we know about Pharisees don’t we? Just the word itself conjures up all sorts of Sunday school lessons and images of ancient, uptight religious folks in the dark-colored robes, with scowls scratched across their bearded faces. Our minds quickly turn to images of those who go everywhere with their Bible tucked under their arms and their “Jesus fish” on the tailgate, yet act like angry children in private and behave as if they’ve never even read the Scriptures. Whenever we hear the word “Pharisee” we already have a pretty good picture in our mind of where Jesus is going with this story: this Pharisee is going to turn out to be a hypocrite, a “play-actor,” one who wears a public persona of piety, while privately parading his depravity. That’s how we know Pharisees. But before we rubber-stamp him like the rest of his kind in our created, Christian tradition, let’s hear him out; let’s at least listen to the prayer Jesus says this Pharisee prays in the temple.

              Jesus says: “The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus…” Isn’t that a bit interesting? Jesus says the Pharisee was standing by himself (or perhaps “to himself”). This Pharisee isn’t standing on the street corner, on a soapbox, megaphone in hand, waving his signs of judgement at the passersby, no. He hasn’t posted on social media that he’s “Heading to the temple for some quality God time.” #blessed #prayedup #Phariseeyouatthetemple.”  No, there’s nothing of the sort; this Pharisee seems to be keeping quietly to himself in prayer, perhaps even modeling a bit of what Jesus teaches in Matthew’s gospel in the Sermon on the Mount, when he said in Matthew 6:6, “But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” This Pharisee is praying to himself. Isn’t it interesting the sort of things we’ll pray to ourselves, especially those things we wouldn’t dare pray out loud, with others around?

              When others aren’t around to hear our prayers, when we think we’ve got the ear of God all to ourselves, isn’t it something the things we’ll pray for? “Lord, if it be thy will, I hope Suzy Q gets transferred next month; I’m tired of having to put up with her at work…God, I’m thankful for all the things you give me, but if you’d let my team make this field goal and go on to the playoffs…Jesus, I wish you’d do something about the neighbors’ dog; I’m tired of that thing barking all night and digging up my yard…” Isn’t it something the things we’ll pray when no one’s listening, when we think we’re praying all to ourselves?

              I’d like to say this Pharisee prayed some pretty egregious prayers while he prayed alone in the temple, but to be fair, his prayer isn’t all that terrible: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” Sure, he could have worded it a bit better, but it’s a fine prayer, isn’t it? After all, what’s wrong with being thankful for who you are and what you’ve been given? Sure, it sounds a bit harsh to pray, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people…” but it wasn’t like he was talking about his good neighbors across the street or those other Pharisees in his Torah study class or those other, good, tithing, fasting, God-fearing folks who gathered together to read the Scriptures and pray together. No, he was thankful he didn’t turn out to be a thief—who can fault him for that? How many of you parents have ever thanked God that your kids turned out halfway decent—not strung out, running around, broke, or locked up? That’s not a bad thing to thank God for, is it? This Pharisee is thankful that he didn’t wind up on the wrong side of the law, that God saw him through life to be a good, clean person. He’s thankful he’s not a “rogue,” an unjust, unrighteous person in opposition to that which is good and right in the world. Again, that’s not a bad thing, is it? He’s even thankful that he’s not an adulterer—an awful, hurtful sinner who has ruined his family and the lives of those in it.

We may want to find fault with his wording that he’s “not…even like this tax collector,” but the truth is such a sentiment would have likely received more than one “Amen!” from those listening to Jesus’ parable—maybe, if you’re honest, you might have given him an “amen” yourself. You see, tax collectors were despised (more so than they would be today if such a profession existed); they were seen as collaborators with the oppressor, Rome; they took advantage of those from whom they collected taxes, often taking far more than the law required in order to keep the balance for themselves, and Jewish tax collectors (those who themselves were Jews hired by the Romans to collect taxes) were seen as especially egregious in their betrayal of their own people, so when he prays, “God, I thank you that I am not…even like this tax collector,” it may have been a bit rude to say so, but most folks would have thought nothing about it. They would have simply nodded their heads in agreement; it’s a good thing not to be like that tax collector, wretched traitor he is!

After offering his thanks to God, the Pharisee winds up his prayer with a little bit of a…let’s call it a “check in” with God: “I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” This Pharisee has his ducks in a row! He’s not just fasting once a week, or on the prescribed fast day, no, he’s fasting twice a week (he’s clearly not a Baptist then!). He’s one of those folks who doesn’t just come to worship on Sunday mornings: he comes to Sunday school, Wednesday night prayer meeting, Tuesday Bible Study, Thursday visitation, and every day of Vacation Bible School! And, on top of his stellar fasting schedule, he’s a regular tither. I suppose we have to take the Pharisee at his word (after all, he is just a character in Jesus’ parable), but it has generally been my experience that whenever someone talks about how much they do, give, or attend, they tend to be lying through their teeth in order to cover up some other insecurity.

But if we take the Pharisee at his word, he’s a standout man of faith: he’s at prayer in the temple, to himself, without making a show of it, and he’s thankful to God as he recognizes that God hasn’t let him fall into a life of “ill-repute,” while also blessing him enough to faithfully fast and consistently tithe. Isn’t that great? So why does the tax collector go “down to his home justified rather than the [Pharisee]?” How is it that the Pharisee has “exalted himself” if he’s just thanking God for what God has done for him? What is it about the tax collector’s prayer that’s so much better than the prayer of the Pharisee?

Jesus tells us, “But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'” This tax collector hardly finds himself worthy to be in the same place of the temple as the Pharisee; he’s “standing far off.” Perhaps he knew the weight of his betrayal, the soul-crushing costs of swindling folks out of their money in order to line his own pockets. Maybe he knew his righteousness could never even come close to that of one like this Pharisee—I suspect that tax collector didn’t even fast once a week and the few times he did show up for service he let the plate pass right by him! Perhaps he recognizes his lowliness, brought on by his terrible vocational choices. He beats his chest (a sign of extreme mourning and repentance) and cries out to God: “be merciful to me, a sinner!” It’s a simple prayer, a prayer of confession, a pleading for mercy in the light of one’s realization that one has strayed from God. It’s the prayer we will all make at some point in our lives, a prayer we will all say (hopefully) more than once. It’s the prayer that grounds us, reminds us that we cannot do or be anything on our own, and it is the prayer that reminds us that we are truly in need of God’s mercy and grace because no matter how hard we may try on our own, no matter how many schemes we may devise or lies we may tell ourselves, each and every one of us will fall short of God’s perfect love, and we will over and over again. Such a prayer calls us back to the realization that while we may always fall short, God’s mercy is sufficient to fill us with God’s love all the more.

The Pharisee prays and thanks God for the ways God has provided for him, kept him free from a life of treachery and debauchery, and the tax collector prays for mercy, yet Jesus says only the tax collector returns home justified. Why?

Why? You know why. Because we don’t have to interpret the Pharisee’s words all that much. Yeah, maybe he’s thankful, maybe he’s sincere in thanking God for not letting him become like those he despises. But I know this Pharisee’s heart. I know it, because too often it’s my own heart, too often I’m the one praying to myself, “God, I’m glad I’m not like them.” Of course, it’s not always in the temple, in the sanctuary in a moment of called prayer. Sometimes, it’s in the car, windows rolled up, waiting in the line of traffic trying to merge on to the interstate. He’s standing there with his sign I hesitate to ever read, because I know if he sees me look his way he’ll come over to my car: “God, I’m thankful I’m not like him.” Sometimes it’s in the parking lot, waiting for my wife to come out of the store, when I see a woman, back bent, searching the pavement for half-smoked cigarettes. She lifts the lids of ash cans, looking for more small tokens to slake her habit: “God, I’m glad I’m not like that.” It’s when I hear about another crazy politician, another sleezy criminal arrested on charges that would make my stomach turn, another image of a family fleeing for their lives, and I pray, “God, I’m thankful I’m not like those people.”

Because we all have those people in our lives, those tax collectors we’re thankful we’re nothing like, and when we’re praying to ourselves, when no one else can really witness our confession, we say, “God, I’m thankful I’m not like that.” But here’s the thing, here’s the thing I’m coming to learn more and more every day: do you know why the tax collector was justified and the Pharisee wasn’t? Because the tax collector isn’t play-acting; the tax-collector knows the truth: we all stand in need of the mercy of God. We are all sinners in need of grace of God. We are all—each and every one of us—no better than the next. The tax collector recognized his need for God’s mercy. The Pharisee looked around for someone he was better than. The tax collector “went down to his home justified rather than the [Pharisee]; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted." Amen.