"Living on Fulfilled Time" (First Sunday in Lent)

Mark 1:9-15

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. 11 And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." 12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, 15 and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

              Time. I used to think time was a simple thing, something I even took for granted. Like the rest of you (I hope), I learned in school that time is measured in second, minutes, hours, days, etc. I learned 60 seconds make a minute; 60 minutes make an hour; 24 hours make a day; 365 (or technically, 365.25) days make a year. Time moves at a steady pace—or at least it seems that way to us; I mean, the second hand on my watch doesn’t move faster from one tick to the next. That was how most people understood time, until a German physicist in the early twentieth century came up with this theory about how time is actually a relative dimension of the fabric of the universe called spacetime, and time can be subject to the speed of an object or whether an object is caught in an extreme gravitational field (like a black hole). Now, don’t ask me how all this works, but Einstein’s theory of relativity has revolutionized the way we observe and understand the universe.

              Of course, Einstein isn’t the only one who theorized the relative nature of time. Why, I’ve heard it most of my life from folks older than me who couldn’t spell Einstein, much less understand his theory or relativity, and I’m pretty sure most of you have to. I’ve heard it from the parents of adult children as they recall the days when their kids were still small, days when they would run around with an untamable (and sometimes frustrating) energy: “They grow up too fast,” they say, “The days when they’re little seem to go by the fastest.” Do the younger years of our children really pass by quicker than their later years? I generally hear about the relative nature of time every year around December; inevitably, someone will say, “I swear, Christmas arrives faster every year!” But does Christmas arrive faster, or does it just seem to arrive more frequently as we experience more of them? I don’t know…I do know that time is a fickle thing, taking too long to pass when you’re waiting, passing too quickly when you’re trying to hold on, and never moving backwards. But what does it mean for time to be “fulfilled?”

              There’s an awful lot that goes on in these six verses before us this morning, in the five verses before Jesus shows up in Galilee preaching, “"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." For starters, Jesus is baptized by his cousin John in verse nine: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” That’s it. Mark doesn’t give us the exchange between John and Jesus in the river, the whole, “Why are you coming to be baptized by me when I should be baptized by you?” conversation we get in Matthew’s version, and there’s no detailed account of who’s there like in Luke’s version. Mark has things to do; the second hand on Mark’s clock ticks with a quick, thunderous reminder that there are things to do, places to go, people to heal.

              That’s why we move on from the single-verse baptism to the direct proclamation from God in verses ten and eleven: “And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’" The sky rips open, the Spirit of God descends, and Jesus hears the voice of God affirming his divine sonship. You might think we’d stay in this space for a while, savor this miraculous moment, but no! It’s with hair still wet from the waters of the Jordan that Jesus is driven by the Spirit out into the wilderness. “He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.” No detailed description of the exchange between Jesus and Satan in the wilderness, no remarks about turning stones to bread, no being shown the kingdoms of the world, not discussion about jumping off temples as in Matthew and Luke’s account—there’s just not that kind of time!

              Jesus has endured his temptation with Satan, survived the wilderness with all of its wild beasts, and had angels wait on him in the aftermath, but before he can mount his comeback narrative, before he emerges from the wilderness with a renewed sense of mission and a steadfast determination to do what God has called him to do, he gets the terrible news: “John was arrested.” His cousin and forerunner, the one who cleared the way, setting the example, going ahead of him, has been arrested. It’s only in the wake of the news of John’s arrest that Mark says, “Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.” It’s straight to the work, no time to visit John in prison, no time to take John’s one phone call, or drop by for his court date—the proclamation of God’s good news was the priority.

              It’s the nature of Jesus’ message that catches my attention this morning on the first Sunday in Lent: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." "The time is fulfilled…” all of that rushing, all of that hurrying through baptism, divine declaration, temptation, and arrest, and now the time is fulfilled? If it had been me, if I had been deciding when the time was fulfilled, it would have been in that single, glorious moment when the heavens opened up and the Spirit descended and the voice of God—that’s when I would have tapped on the glass, clapped my hands, whistled real loud, and said, “Alright folks, listen up! The time has come! Now is the time! The time is fulfilled!” That’s when to do it, when the very cosmos is responding to the arrival of God’s son, not after all the other stuff, especially not after temptations from Satan, wild beasts, and the arrest of the prophetic hype man. But I suppose that’s the reality of time, at least God’s reality of time: the fulfilled time of God’s kingdom doesn’t wait for the roses to bloom, it doesn’t spring up when things are going well or when the theatrics of the moment demand it. The fulfilled time of God’s kingdom is our time, happening in the midst of our ups and downs, our divine declaration AND our satanic temptations.

              And that’s the thing—God’s time is fulfilled even now! Let that sink in for a minute. When you’re “waiting on God,” when you’re trying to hold on to that fleeting feeling of closeness to Christ, when you’re wondering if things are working out in “God’s time,” remember that God’s time has been fulfilled. Jesus proclaimed the time of fulfilment for God’s kingdom after the transformative experience of his baptism, after the sky was torn in a moment of the Spirit’s transcendence, after being driven into the wilderness to deal with the devils that awaited him there, after the terrible news of his cousin’s arrest…the fulfilment of God’s kingdom, of God’s time, is after all of this, including all of this. Jesus didn’t push “pause” in the wilderness. He didn’t cut out the part about John’s arrest, nor did he elevate his experience in the waters of the Jordan. It’s all part of it, the ups and downs, the divine and the devious, the good news of liberation and the heartbreaking news of imprisonment—it’s all part of the fulfilment.

              Now, I suppose from here I could slip into the easy inclinations of those friends of mine who so glibly claim that “God is in control,” or that “God has a plan,” or “Things work out in God’s time…” I mean, those are somewhat easy, comforting notions, to believe that bad things happen to us when they do and good things happen when they do because God has somehow already laid out every detail, every moment of our lives right down to what cereal we’ll eat in the morning, but that’s not what I’m getting at. No, what I’m trying to tell you is that all of time—whether we measure it by the passing hands on the clock or by Einstein’s equations—belongs to God, and God’s kingdom finds it’s fullness in that time. Each and every second, minute, and hour—every moment—is pregnant with the possibility of the presence of God. I believe that why Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

The kingdom of God is close, at hand, a second away, and every once in a while, it’s so close that it slips in on us…if we’re looking for it. It can slip in unnoticed, like the way a baby smiles at a stranger from across the restaurant. It can sneak in, quietly breaking through the chaos and confusion of life, like the way a sunset on the drive home gives you an indescribable sense of peace after a horrible day. Most of the time, though, the kingdom of God is so close, the very fabric perhaps of spacetime, that it passes unnoticed, lost in the familiar, unseen in the mundane, hidden in plain sight, just beyond our consciousness as we’re distracted by what we think is important in this life. But it’s there. The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is close at hand. All we have to do is reach out for it. All we have to do is stop and look for it. It may be right beside us, in the aching heart and troubled soul of our neighbor. It may be right behind us, in the stranger we’ve passed on the street, the one we’ve avoided making eye contact with, but that strange feeling won’t leave us alone, that feeling to turn around. It may be right in front of us in the work we do every day—the work we sometime cuss because it’s repetitive, hard, and the pay is terrible. It may be right in front of us in the time we spend, in the people who surround us, in the opportunities we have and the ones we must work for. The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand, and it may be found in the grand, mystical experiences that click by but ever so often in our lives, or it may be found in the simple, less obvious things. Like a neighbor handing you a tray of bread and juice…who knows? Maybe you’ll catch a glimpse of God’s kingdom today. After all, the kingdom of God is at hand, and we’re living on fulfilled time. Amen.

"Unveiled" (Transfiguration Sunday)

2 Corinthians 4:3-6

3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake. 6 For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

              A few years before my grandma died, she had fallen and broken her hip. She got up in the middle of the night (as she was prone to do), walked through the door of her bedroom on her way to the kitchen to make a cup of instant coffee, when a motion-activated light my uncle installed flashed on, temporarily disorienting her and causing her to fall in the hallway. She had hip surgery and the subsequent weeks of rehabilitation required, which all took place in the nursing home in Enterprise. Now, my grandma had sworn to us if she ever wound up in the nursing home she’d kill us, and while she may not have technically been in the nursing home, she was inside the building, so whenever my dad and I came to visit her, as soon as she saw us coming down the hall, she’d start into to calling us names I cannot repeat in mixed company, let alone from a pulpit!

              Now, I don’t recall exactly how many weeks she was in rehab, but while she was there, my uncle (who lived with Grandma at the time) decided to change a few things around her house: push the kitchen table up against the wall, reorganize the bathroom, make a clear path in her bedroom from the bed to the door, and rearrange the furniture in the living room. While I think he had the best of intentions in doing all that he did, when we brought Grandma home, all the changes left her confused—I’d go so far as to say I don’t think she was ever quite right after that. She’d look around the living room from time to time while I was there, then look at me and say, “Chris-fer, I want to go home,” to which I’d say, “You crazy old lady, you are home!” But it all looked different to her; there were literally corners of rooms she hadn’t seen in years, patches of carpet that were a different color because they hadn’t been faded like the rest, even discolored rectangles on the wall where the same pictures had been hanging for decades. It was the same place, yet it was completely different, and all because a few things had been rearranged and exposed. For Grandma, the whole place had changed—relocated even—because a few things had been uncovered.

              You know, I can’t help but wonder sometimes, how this whole place, this whole world, might appear to change—relocate even—if we could just uncover a few things, how the world might look a bit different if we rearranged the furniture of our faith to expose the darkened corners a bit, how jarring it might be to discover how much we’ve worn a path around the objects, ideas, and concerns we’ve used to decorate our consciousness. I wonder…would the world be transformed by what it witnessed? Would we be transformed?

               Perhaps that’s why Paul was having to explain himself in this letter to the Corinthians: his preaching of the “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” had perhaps uncovered something within the believers at Corinth, something that had been ignored, glazed over, or contradicted by the so-called “super-apostles” and other preachers and philosophers who were attempting to woo the congregation there with other thoughts about life, faith, and the divine. Paul’s words before us clearly sound defensive: “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.” It’s as if he’s saying, “Oh yeah? If we’re wrong, it’s only to those who think they’re always right!” But what Paul is getting at is something much deeper, I think, something that touches on what just may be the biggest conundrum facing the contemporary Church (or perhaps the Church of any era).

              You see, Paul speaks about a “veiled gospel,” a gospel that can only be identified by its reduced appearance. While there’s definitely some connection with Moses and his veiled face in Exodus, guarding the people against the frightening transformation that had taken place in the presence of the glory of God, I think Paul’s words go farther, hinting at what just may be veiling the gospel in the eyes of many today. To tell the truth, it’s not any one particular issue (though there are many who would line up at the soapbox for their turn to plead their case for the singular cause of moral corruption in our present age), but I might be so bold as to say it can be summed up in the further words of our text from Paul: “For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus' sake. For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

              In other words, when we seek to proclaim the gospel, to unveil the truth of God in Christ Jesus to the world, we do not do it in a way that seeks to put ourselves first, to lift ourselves up as some shining example of pious righteousness. When we seek to “let light shine out of darkness” we do so while proclaiming ourselves servants—slaves in fact!—of others. Any other method, any other attempt at proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, will always present a veiled gospel.

              I can remember hearing a couple of, rather famous, televangelists one time talking about how they absolutely had to have a private plane whenever they traveled the world to preach (I won’t tell you their names but they rhyme with Kenneth Copeland and Jesse Duplantis). One of them said he had learned that lesson (the necessity of flying in his own, private plane) from Oral Roberts. He said, “Oral Roberts used to fly airliners…but it got to the place where it was agitating him…people coming up to him—he had become famous—wanting him to pray for them and all that…”[1] Imagine that! A famous preacher, and folks wanting him to pray for them! They went on to say how a private plane allowed them to do the Lord’s work better because it meant they’d be protected from being trapped in a commercial plane with all those  (in their words) “demons”—you know, all those people traveling to visit family, to go on mission trips, to attend conferences and business meetings, those “demons.” If we need to keep others at arm’s length in order to proclaim the good news of God in Christ Jesus to them, if we need sanitized, private, velvet-roped pulpits from which to preach, if we need to make sure that the real awful folks, the real dirty folks, the just plain real folks are kept out of our way, then at best we are preaching a veiled gospel.

              Of course, it’s not just the prosperity preachers who present a veiled gospel to the world. You see, Paul says, “we proclaim Jesus Christ…For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ means that there is, in fact, something different about our acts of benevolence, that we are more than just doers of good deeds seeking to earn a merit badge, a few good words said at our funeral, or an award named in our honor. Proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ means that our lives are lived in such a way that our actions, our words, are unmistakably grounded in who Christ is.

              On the wall in my office, there are a few, printed pictures hanging in cheap, plastic frames. To tell the truth, they’re mostly there to cover over the number of nail holes from multiple other frames that have been there over the years. In one of those frames, there is a picture of Clarence Jordan, with one of my favorite quotes of his: “The measure of a Christian is not in the height of his grasp but in the depth of his love.” Clarence embodied that quote. See, Clarence is growing in popularity among some younger folks these days, but in his lifetime he was all but despised, especially in his home state of Georgia, for preaching a gospel of acceptance and inclusion—most especially when it came to matters of race. Clarence, however, didn’t just preach that gospel: he lived it. What’s more, Clarence didn’t just live his life in quietness with the other folks at Koinonia (the interracial farming community he started in Americus, Georgia): he preached in whatever church would welcome him into the pulpit. Clarence didn’t just live his life, leaving the rest of the world to draw their own conclusions about his motives—he was unapologetically vocal about his allegiance and obedience to the calling of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and as such, I believe Clarence exemplified what’s missing from the veiled gospel of my friends on the more progressive and liberal side of Christianity: Clarence was not ashamed to say that he did what he did, he lived the way he lived, because he believed Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that Jesus meant what he said when he said, “You shall love the Lord your God…[and] your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."[2]

              Today, it seems as if we are stuck with two options as contemporary Christians, two veiled gospels in need of transfiguration, in need of having their furniture rearranged, in need of full revelation to “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” On the one hand, we can confess with our words that we are Christians—reciting creeds, signing faith statements, and quoting Bible verses at those we have determined are sinners worse than ourselves. This veiled gospel places us at the center, fooling us into believing that what matters most is our personal, cognitive agreement to some argument that will secure our seat in heaven. It veils the full-orbed truth of Christ’s gospel because as “we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord”  yet fail to proclaim “ourselves as [others’] slaves for Jesus' sake.”

              On the other hand, we are presented with a muted gospel, indistinguishable from the benevolent deeds of those donating their time and money for the tax benefit, a gospel veiled by the still self-seeking actions of philanthropists hoping to have a wing of their college named in their honor. Even this half-hearted gospel places us at the center, for we will all but hide Jesus from the spotlight, hoping instead to either pass it off without the embarrassment of faith to the ear of reason or to claim the work as our own along with the adoration and praise. It veils the full gospel of Christ because it flatly fails to "Let light shine out of darkness," by “giv[ing] the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

              Friends, I am becoming more and more convinced that what we truly need—what the contemporary Church needs—is an unveiled gospel, a gospel that rearranges the furniture and exposes the worn-out rugs of our faith, a gospel that puts action to our confessions and confessions to our actions, a gospel that demands more from us than pious attitudes with proof-text bumper-stickers and politically watered-down doctrine. We need an unveiled gospel that demands that our actions are undeniably driven by our faith in Christ and not by our need for attention or praise. We need to fully take hold of the whole gospel of Jesus, the selfless gospel that always puts Christ first and all other ahead of ourselves. For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as…slaves for Jesus' sake. Amen.

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[1] You can check out the video of this conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdH2DGSXjss (accessed 2.10.2018)

[2] Matthew 22:37-40

"Waiting on the Lord" (Fifth Sunday after Epiphany)

Isaiah 40:21-31

21 Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; 23 who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. 24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble. 25 To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One. 26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing. 27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God"? 28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. 29 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. 30 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; 31 but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

            The longer I live, the more I notice just how out of sorts life can get in the wake of pain, grief, sorrow—really just any general negativity. It seems as if the world around us completely stops spinning, as if we’ll never be able to get on with our lives, like there’s never going to be any sense of normalcy or happiness ever again. To some degree, this is normal: to be young and experience the sting of a first heartbreak, believing you’ll never find true love again and that all the joy in the world has been drowned in an ocean of your tears (or some sappy notion like that). It’s normal, to grieve the passing of a loved one—especially a tragic passing—for a time. For most of us, this feeling of being stuck, these feelings of futility and hopelessness, pass with time and the healing presence of others in our lives. There are those of us, however, for whom the days never seem to grow brighter, the world never seems to be set right, those of us for whom every day is just another periodic reminder of the darkness from which we cannot escape.

            Like the daughter—in her sixties now—who cannot let go of the grief that came with her mother’s death over fifteen years ago. The shadow of her despair lingers in the corners of her home, in the numerous shrines to her long-departed mother; it creeps its way into every conversation and every drag of a cigarette and every swig of water taken to wash down the pills. For her, the earth was thrown off its axis the day her mother died, and from that time on she’s wallowed in the dark shadows of that pain, never allowing the realities of life, death, and time to heal her heart.

            Then there’s the ex-husband, the one who didn’t see it coming. After twenty years and two kids, he came home to find a letter stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. Twenty years, and all he got was a letter, followed by a visit to the lawyer’s office. Twenty years, and all he got was an occasional drop in from the kids from whom he’d weasel the latest gossip. It’s been twenty years now, and he still keeps his ring in his pocket, her picture in his wallet, and he winces whenever the kids mention her new last name. For him, that day was the beginning of the end, the first day he began looking forward to his last.

            There are those people for whom there seems to be no escaping the tragedies of life and the repercussions that follow. Like those people, the ones who had believed they were God’s special people, a chosen nation, blessed and untouchable, they believed that theirs was a nation that would continue on in perpetuity, but then the Babylonians came. The king Nebuchadnezzar led his forces into the capital, exiled the elites, the leaders, the upper-crust, raided the riches of the temple, and left the rest to be divided among his own people who would intermarry with the remaining “chosen people.” In exile, these people of God began to despair, to believe that the world as they knew it—as they wanted it—was over. They were surrounded by the idols of a foreign people, surrounded by the visible signs that they had lost (and by extension, that their God had lost). They were reminded with each new day that they were not home, that they may never return home, and that in the grand scheme of geo-political power, they were little more than a pawn on the chessboard.  For so many of them, all that was left was to accept their fate, to slump into the belief that God was gone and with him went hope and the joy of the future they once envisioned.

            Into this supposed hopelessness, the prophet speaks these words: “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in; who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.” While you’ve all been in exile, giving in to what you perceive as the inevitability of defeat and assimilation, have you forgotten what you’ve been told since you were little? Have you forgotten all those songs you sang in Sunday School? Have you forgotten about the very nature of your God? You’re worried about the power of princes, presidents, dictators, and emperors, yet God is so far above that! You don’t worship a God whose fate is determined by the outcome of wars fought by men, of laws passed by governments. Yours is a God who hangs the sky like it was a set of curtains in the guest room, spreads them out like a pup tent over the weekend. Yours is a God who by mere presence shows the reality of the way things are—that the people of the earth are like grasshoppers, their rulers come and go and are easily forgotten as their memories fade with the pages of history books. The prophet arrives to remind these exiled people that their God is beyond their present pain, that there is hope to be found in the very transcendent nature of God.

            I think the truth of that reality, of God’s transcendence, is one which we seem to lose over time, but not when things are going wrong. No, we seem to lose sight of God’s true transcendent nature when things are going well, when we’re getting everything we want, when our ducks are in a row, and everything is going according to plan. It’s in those times that we lose sight of the reality of God, because it’s in those times that we begin to take God for granted, that God is blessing all that we do, that God is pleased with everything we are. We buy into the inverted narrative of exile: if nothing is wrong, then everything must be right (and alright with God).

            Think with me for a moment about the exiles to whom the prophet is speaking in our text this morning. Now, were they exiled unfairly? Was the arrival of the Babylonians an accident of history, the inevitability of a world superpower consuming land, resources, and people on its way towards global dominance? Were they being picked on? No! The Babylonian captivity was (according to the prophets) a direct result of the people of Judah’s actions: their actions towards the poor, the strangers, the vulnerable among them, and their overall greed. As far as the people were concerned, before the Babylonians showed up, everything was fine, because the rich were getting richer and the poor were keeping their mouths shut. As far as they were concerned, they were fat and happy, so God must also be happy.

            We lose sight of God’s nature, of God’s calling on our lives when we don’t have to wait on God to set everything right. When life glides on effortlessly, when things are without complication or confusion, that’s when we begin to misunderstand God’s true nature, because it is in those seasons of our lives when we can so easily fall into believing that everything has God’s blessing on it. That’s really why we begin to doubt and question and fear when troubles come, because we’ve taken it for granted that everything else was blessed by God. It’s why the prophet says, Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God"? Why do you think your way is hidden from the Lord? Why do you think you have been disregarded by God? Because you’ve had to wait a little while in exile? Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. It’s as if the prophet is saying, “Why are you suddenly concerned about being hidden from God? Why do you suddenly think God has disregarded you? Don’t you get it? God is above all this; God made all of this. Can you really understand God?”

            Then, there are these great poetic lines: He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted. Power to the faint? Strength to the powerless? Youths will faint and young will fall exhausted (I’m assuming “young” means something besides three years old here…)? That doesn’t make sense. Why would God grant power to those on the brink of passing out? Why would God grant strength to those without power? Why? Because those are the ones who need it, and they know it. You see, of course the youth with faint and be weary—they’ll eventually grow old, tired, exhausted. Of course those who are carrying on in their lives as if God has blessed every step they take and every decision they make will eventually run out of breath—we all do! But when the days come when youth has disappeared, when strength has gone, when power has faded, all that we’ll have left to do is wait, but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.

            It turns out, that we really don’t get the nature of who God is until we have to wait for God, until we have to understand that everything we think is our own, everything we think we’ve earned, everything to which we believe we are entitled, is nothing more than junk on its way to dust. It turns out that we can really only find our strength when we realize we don’t have any in the first place, that we can only soar to the heights of this life when we realize such heights are on an entirely different plane from the one we use to measure success, that we can only walk and not faint when we realize we’re really too weak to stand on our own.

            When things are going great, we can give our religious obligation to God (show up to church, put a few dollars in the plate, say the blessing at the dinner table) and believe that everything we have and everything we do is blessed and approved by the Almighty. When things take a turn for the worse, we can wallow in self-pity, linger for too long in the dark shadows of our own needs for reassurance and security. We can go through this life believing that it’s in our hands or believing that every choice we make is somehow predestined in some intricate plan set before the foundations of the world and we’re just living it out in real-time. Or we can choose to believe that we worship a God who transcends our ways of thinking, a God who could quite possibly hang the sky like a curtain and pitch a tent with the stars, a God who does not come and go with the fleeting notions of religion, politics, or culture, a God who does not grow weary with the passing of time, a God who does grants strength to the powerless and help to the helpless, a God who does not run on our clock, by our rules, according to our expectations, a God worth waiting for. Amen.

"What is this?" (Fourth Sunday after Epiphany)

Mark 1:21-28

21 They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. 22 They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes. 23 Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, 24 and he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." 25 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!" 26 And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27 They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, "What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him." 28 At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.

(Opening omitted/improvised)

The man never set foot back in the church. He came looking for help, for liberation from the illness that clouded his mind, for love from those who claimed to love everybody, for acceptance from those who were really just as broken and messed up as he was. He just wanted someone to say that he wasn’t alone in his struggle, that there was something more powerful than the oppression of fear and rejection, yet all he got was more of the same—it just happened to come dressed in its Sunday best. He was looking for freedom from the chains of illness and loneliness, freedom from the so-called authorities of this world that tell us how to think and how to act, but instead he got a new dose, a new authority with cleverly disguised “God language.” And he wasn’t the first, and he won’t be the last (even if he exists in a world of my own creation).

Of course, it could have gone differently. It could have gone more like that meeting at Capernaum some two thousand years ago, where Jesus (fresh from his bout with Satan and the calling of his first disciples) was teaching in the synagogue there. The congregation, we’re told, was “astounded at his teaching,” when “Just then [in the middle of their service] there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit.” Now, nothing can really throw a wrench in the gears of a good service like some giant, obnoxious distraction, and I’m sure to many that were there in the synagogue at Capernaum, that’s exactly what this man was—a distraction. Not only that, but he had no right to be there! This man had an unclean spirit, whether that refers to a demonic possession (though the word “demon” does not appear in this text), a mental illness, or something else entirely is really irrelevant. This man is unclean, which means he is not supposed to be gathered with the others in the synagogue. Perhaps he had successfully kept this unclean spirit hidden from the others and Jesus’ authoritative teaching had forced his hand. Maybe he had snuck into the meeting that day just to test the new rabbi from Nazareth. Mark doesn’t give us a lot of details; we just know he appears and threatens to throw things off track.

The unclean spirit cries out through the man at Jesus: "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." But Jesus doesn’t roll up his sleeves and ball up his fists in preparation for a physical altercation. Jesus doesn’t begin a systematic utterance of incantations to expel the spirit. No, Jesus (in a matter-of-fact sort of way) rebukes the spirit and says, “’Be silent, and come out of him!’ And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.” Jesus showed his authority over the unclean spirit—over those things which are beyond our control and comprehension—and in doing so gave this unnamed man a new life. No longer was this man ruled by the authority of this unclean spirit, but now he has come face-to-face with the ultimate authority that rests in the Son of God.

That’s all we get about this man; there’s no follow-up. We never even get his name, but we are told in verses 27 and 28: “They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’ At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.” Jesus kicks off his public ministry with a bang! His fame begins to spread as those at Capernaum witnessed what Jesus had done to the man with the unclean spirit. It’s really a great testimony, isn’t it? A man who was once tormented by an unclean spirt, a man who was once under the influence of a false authority, a man who was once enslaved to a power outside of himself, a man who was once lost is now found. That’s the kind of story we can get behind. It’s the kind of story we like to share with others. It’s the kind of story we like to tell…but it’s not really the kind of story we want to live.

See, like those first witnesses at the synagogue in Capernaum, many of us are anxious to hear exciting teachings; we’re excited about telling these grand stories of how Jesus saved someone from an unclean spirit, a life of crime, fornication, drugs, evil, and sin. But when it gets down to it, and we have to be a part of that story…well…we kind of lose that excitement. There are those of us who find ourselves standing on the other side of a decision, the other side of baptism, and believe (whether we admit it or not) that we no longer need Jesus to save us, to exorcise those unclean spirits that pollute our lives and cloud our conscience. We would much rather witness that in the lives of others, of those we call unbelievers, sinners, reprobates, different. We’d rather watch it unfold in the lives of others, to watch as the love and forgiveness of Christ becomes real in their lives, all the while we withhold our own love and forgiveness from those who need it. We love to tell to the stories, but we’re not so anxious to live them.

We’re quick to point out the need for Jesus’ authority in the lives of others, but not so quick to confess that our lives aren’t always steered by the presence of Christ within ourselves. In other words, it seems to me that we are always ready and willing to call out the unclean spirits in others, to tell the stories of how someone else has been liberated from a sinful life we were fortunate not to lead, but when it comes to acknowledging that there are blind spots in our own lives, places where we have yet to allow Christ to take control...we’re not so ready to confess that. It’s as if we have some kind of diet, low-cal, fat-free faith: “all the salvation with none of the surrender.” Do we really believe that Jesus has the authority to be Lord of our lives—our entire lives? Do we really believe that Jesus still has the authority to forgive even our darkest, most secret sins? Do we really believe that Jesus has power over those things that are beyond our control and outside of our understanding? Do we really believe that Christ has that sort of authority, that sort of power? Sometimes I wonder…          

            I wonder sometimes if we still believe that Jesus has the power and authority to change this very world, our very lives in an instant, if we’re ready to confess that we still have places in our own hearts we have yet to fully give over to Christ’s authority and power. I wonder if we’re just a bunch of folks who want to tell others’ stories, to make Jesus famous by sharing stories of how he has changed those we believe needed to be changed. Or are we ready to confess that we are still in need of Christ’s love each and every day, that we need to let go of more of ourselves that it may be changed by more of Christ and his love?

What is this power that Jesus has? Is it the power to make the unclean clean? Is it the power to bring the addicted out of their darkness? Is it the power to turn the lives of nasty, unfit folks around? Is it the power to get folks into heaven? Of course it is! But it’s the same sort of power that can save good, clean church folks like you and me, with each new day we face. Amen.

"God Alone" (Third Sunday after Epiphany)

Psalm 62:5-12

5 For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him. 6 He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. 7 On God rests my deliverance and my honor; my mighty rock, my refuge is in God. 8 Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. (Selah) 9 Those of low estate are but a breath, those of high estate are a delusion; in the balances they go up; they are together lighter than a breath. 10 Put no confidence in extortion, and set no vain hopes on robbery; if riches increase, do not set your heart on them. 11 Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God, 12 and steadfast love belongs to you, O Lord. For you repay to all according to their work.

            From time to time as a preacher, you come across one of those stories that other preachers love to tell. Maybe they heard a popular preacher tell it on the radio or a professor share it in a chapel sermon in seminary or maybe (these days) they found it online; whatever the case, there are those stories that preachers love to tell and retell, and one that comes to my mind this morning is a story that is attributed to the late Dr. Haddon Robinson, who was professor of preaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.

            Dr. Robinson was born in New York City, but he tells the story of a Baptist evangelist from Alabama, a preacher by the name of Monroe Parker. The story goes that Rev. Parker was traveling through South Alabama—the real South Alabama—on one of those days, late in the summer, that folks down there refer to as “the dog days of summer.” It was one of those hot, sticky days—the kind of day where you couldn’t even walk out of the house to check the mail without your shirt sticking to your back—and Rev. Parker was parched. Well, as he went on down the road, he came across a man selling watermelons on the side of the road. Now, this isn’t an unusual site in South Alabama; I knew quite a few folks who would have a little watermelon patch, and when they picked them (which, by the way, may be the hottest job in the world next to volcanic scientist), they’d load them in a wagon, a trailer, or the bed of a pickup, and park alongside the highway, usually somewhere close to a service station, and sell their wares. Well, the story goes, Parker strolled up to the man selling watermelons and asked how much would it take to buy one.

            “They’re a dollar and ten cents apiece,” the man said. So, Rev. Parker got to feeling around in his pockets, trying to come up with one dollar bill and one dime, but all he could come up with was a dollar. He held out his hand to the man and said, “All I have is a dollar,” to which the man replied, “That’s ok. I’ll trust you for it.” Then, as the story goes, Rev. Parker put the dollar back in his pocket and proceeded to pick out a watermelon, which he started to carry off to eat and get a little refreshment from the heat of the day, when the man hollered at him, “Hey! Where do you think you’re going with that?!” Rev. Parker said something to the effect that he was going to go sit down and eat his watermelon, to which the man said, “But you forgot to give me the dollar!” "You said you would trust me for it," Rev. Parker said to him.  "Yeah,” he said, “but I meant I would trust you for the dime!" Now, according to Dr. Robinson’s retelling, Rev. Parker replied, "Mack, you weren't going to trust me at all. You were just going to take a ten-cent gamble on my integrity!"[1]

Today, that story is probably close to a hundred years old, but it testifies to a reality of the human experience that is more real in our current culture than perhaps at any other time in recent human history. You see, we live in a world in which trust is becoming a very rare commodity, a world in which we are less likely to trust someone for a dime, never mind a dollar. It’s difficult to have trust in much of anything lately: we’re living in a time when a day can’t go by without hearing about some celebrity, athlete, or politician who has been unfaithful, committed a crime, or has been hiding something from the public for years. We live in an era when the very people we are supposed to be able to trust—doctors, ministers, elected officials—constantly and consistently let us down as we hear story after story that erodes our culturally created confidence in these authorities.

Just this week, former USA Olympic gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar pleaded guilty to federal child pornography charges, and more than 125 women have accused him of sexual misconduct, many USA Olympic gymnasts among them.[2] He was supposed to be a medical miracle worker, a trusted doctor who would help injured athletes recover quickly and get back to doing what they loved to do, but instead, he used his position of power, influence, and authority to abuse young girls and women who were simply trying to live out their dreams through their hard work and God-given talents. We’re supposed to be able to trust our doctors, but can we? Anymore? Always?

Then there are the countless stories of young boys and girls who have been taken advantage of by those who wear clerical collars or stand behind pulpits to preach. Just this month, a pastor at a megachurch in Memphis confessed to the congregation there that he had a “sexual incident” with a seventeen year old girl when he was a youth minister at a different church in Texas.[3] The congregation gave him a standing ovation…but for the rest of us outside of that room that morning, it was just another reason to withhold our trust from another person in whom we should be able to confide.

Of course, it would take years to just list the number of ways various politicians, elected officials, and leaders in our various forms of government have corroded our trust. Whether it’s an overwhelming number of denied allegations, audio tapes, emails, or their own words, far too many of our leader have a consistent track record of malicious misdirection when it comes to our trust and confidence in them to lead.

We’re supposed to be able to trust these people and the institutions they represent. We’re supposed to be able to feel safe in their care, under their direction and leadership. We’re supposed to be able to place our trust in those whose expertise, experience, and vocation have given them the authority and opportunity to serve in roles of service and stewardship. But time and time again, we are let down, let down by their faults, let down by their egos, let down by their ignorance, let down by their own sense of self-preservation. Will there ever be a time again when we can place our trust in those occupy positions of influence, power, and authority? Was there ever really a time when we could trust them fully?

Of course, there are those who were born skeptical, those among us who place their trust—not in the given authority of individuals—but in the earn outcomes of their own hard work, determination, and abilities. They place their trust in their ability to persevere, their own self-perception as one who can overcome any challenge without even the slightest bit of assistance. They trust in their own physical strength, their own work ethic, their own skills, and they believe fully that those are enough to get them over any challenge, that those are enough to get them by in this world—that is until reality proves otherwise. I have lived a great deal of my life around these sorts of folks; they share my last name and a great deal of the genes that make up my DNA. What I have witnessed through them is that often our own strengths, our own determination to persevere, can be overcome by the relentless hardships of reality and the never-ending (and always rising) costs of life. What I have learned is that all the hard work, skill, and grit in the world cannot stay the hand of time nor ward off the inevitability of cancer. What I have learned is that to put one’s trust in his or her own strengths is to put our trust in a bucket with a rusted bottom.

So where do we place our trust? If it seems we cannot trust those who occupy the places and positions of power, if we cannot trust the institutions we’ve created, if we cannot trust our own power and abilities, then who or what can we trust? Who or what has the ultimate power? In whom or what do we find an ultimate purpose, our “ground of being?”[4]

If we listen to the voice of the psalmist this morning, we will find our answer: “For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from him.” The psalmist places his trust in God—not in the personalities posturing for political power, not in the insular institutions insisting on protecting the status quo, not even in the psalmists own personal resolve to endure whatever hardship through which he finds himself going. The only one worthy of the psalmist’s trust is the one who is beyond all comprehension and understanding. The one next to whom “Those of low estate are but a breath, those of high estate are a delusion; in the balances they go up; they are together lighter than a breath.” The psalmist sings, “On God rests my deliverance and my honor; my mighty rock, my refuge is in God. Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us…Put no confidence in extortion, and set no vain hopes on robbery; if riches increase, do not set your heart on them.” The exhortation it to rest fully and completely on God, to trust God at all times—no matter what those times may bring, to not place our trust even in those things that seem themselves to be evidence of their trustworthiness. In other words, even if placing your trust in others, in institutions, in yourself has led you to a life of comfort and ease, it does not warrant your trust to be placed in anything outside of God God’s self.

Now, I suppose, at first hearing that sounds like church business as usual: of course we aren’t to place our trust in anything except for God. But the truth is, when it comes down to it—I mean really comes down to it—trusting God just doesn’t make a hole lot of sense. After all, I can see the work of my own hands; I can sit across the table from another human being (or at least get an email from someone in his or her office); I can hold money in my hands, possess the deed to my home or the title to my car; I have the skill and knowledge to earn a paycheck in any number of ways should the need present itself. I can verify and authenticate references, run background checks, do a Google search, and simply look someone in the eye when I ask them a question, so why in the world would I put my trust in a God I cannot see, whose voice I’ve never audibly heard, and whose email address is not listed in my contacts?

Why should I place my trust in God? Because when everything else fails—and it will fail—when everything else fails, God won’t. Because there will come those times in my life (and in yours) when nothing will pull our lives out of the tailspin, when nothing else will bring us up from rock bottom…God spins right along with us…all…the way…down. Why trust God? Because God is there with you (and there’s nothing you can do about it), riding the waves of life’s reckless rhythms with you. When you look to put your trust in those things that you hope will deliver you, God is in the midst of the very thing from which you hope to be delivered! That’s the whole point of the cross! The cross tells us that God has left the power of heaven to dwell in the dirt of the earth, the bear the pains, frustrations, heartaches, and joys of life that we all experience. The cross tells us that God deserves our trust because God doesn’t just free us from our difficulties—God bears them with us!

Sure, the psalmist may sing, “Once God has spoken; twice have I heard this: that power belongs to God,” and the psalmist may mean that he has heard of the power of God to shake the mountains and crush enemies, but there is a greater power, a greater power that alone is worthy of our trust, and the psalmist testifies even to that power when he sings, “and steadfast love belongs to you, O Lord.” The greatest power, the power of God, the power that alone is worthy of our trust, if the power of God’s chesed, the power of God’s unfailing, limitless, reckless love, the sort of love that follows us through all of life’s peaks and valleys, the sort of love that walks alongside us in the present pace of life’s predicaments, the sort of love that goes on ahead of into the unseen future, the sort of love that proves its trustworthiness in the image of Christ on the cross, broken and dying—just like us. Amen.

           

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[1] You can find one version of this story here: http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/t/trust.htm (accessed 1/19/2018).

[2] One of many stories about Nassar and his victims can be found here: http://abcnews.go.com/US/sexual-assault-victims-confront-olympic-doctor-larry-nassar/story?id=52378336 (accessed 1/19/2018).

[3] Find Baptist News Global’s story on Andy Savage here: https://baptistnews.com/article/metoo-spotlight-turns-southern-baptist-megachurch/#.WmLUZqinHIU (accessed 1/19/2018).

[4] To borrow a phrase from Paul Tilich’s Systematic Theology  (1951).

"Come and See" (Second Sunday after Epiphany)

John 1:43-51

43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, "Follow me." 44 Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. 45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth." 46 Nathanael said to him, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said to him, "Come and see." 47 When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!" 48 Nathanael asked him, "Where did you get to know me?" Jesus answered, "I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you." 49 Nathanael replied, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" 50 Jesus answered, "Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these." 51 And he said to him, "Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."

            Has this ever happened to you? You get home after a long day at work, maybe you fix yourself a glass of tea, kick your shoes off, and just sort of flop down on the couch or your favorite chair that’s worn just right for all your various nooks and crannies, and just when it feels as if all the worry and frustration of the day is sliding off your shoulders, your lovely spouse calls from kitchen, “Hey babe, come look at this!” Or maybe it’s your child, calling from their bedroom down the hall, “Momma, Daddy, come see what I did!” That ever happen in your house? Now, I know y’all are better people than I am, but when that happens in my house, I tend to (at frist) just shout back, “What is it?” “You got to come see!” “But I just sat down, can’t you just tell me what it is?” “No! Come see!”

            If I’m honest with you, most of the time, when Kohl asks me to come and see what he’s made or what he’s drawn or what he’s set up in his bedroom, I haven’t the slightest notion as to what it is or what it’s supposed to be, but I do what every good parent ought to do: I get up, go down the hall, and when I see what he’s done I say, “WOW! Look at that! Show me what it does. How’d you do that?!” I know it’s nothing all that amazing before I ever get up from my seat, but I know that he’s proud of it, that he’s got something he wants to show off to Momma and Dada, something he wants to share with us. And every, single time, whether it’s a weird-looking stick figure drawn with a marker on a cardboard box, an unidentifiable blob of play-doh, or a random stack of blocks and hot wheels—every, single time, I’m going to get up and go see it, because he’s just so proud of it, because he believes it’s worth showing off, because he believes it’s worth sharing with someone else, and hearing about it just won’t do.

            Maybe that’s why Phillip wouldn’t walk off and leave Nathanael alone. I mean, all we’re told about Philip is that Jesus finds him in Galilee and says to him, “Follow me.” We’re not told if Jesus mentioned to Philip why he should follow him. We’re not told what Philip was doing. Was he a fisherman like Peter and Andrew, a tax collector like Levi, a zealot, a guy just minding his business on an otherwise regular day?—we’re not told; all we’re told is that after Philip was found by Jesus, Philip found Nathanael and said to him, "We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote…”

            Now, we can gather from what Jesus says to Nathanael later that Nathanael was under a fig tree when Philip found him. What does that mean? Well, depends on who you ask: some folks point to the symbolism of the fig tree and its representation of Israel; I had a professor in seminary who made the case for fig trees being used as places of private prayer and devotion; still, some say it’s really nothing more than a way for Jesus to specify Nathanael’s location, a way of proving his divinity to Nathanael. Personally, I’m not terribly certain in any direction, but I know if someone’s sitting down under a fig tree, they’re most likely taking it easy, maybe resting beneath its broad leaves, out of the pounding sunlight, or perhaps taking a break to indulge in one of nature’s sweet blessings (though I’d prefer a pear tree). Either way, Nathanael is sitting under this fig tree, when Philip comes and says, "We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote…”

            Now, I can imagine this stirred Nathanael a bit. I can almost see it: Nathanael sitting under the fig tree, maybe reading a good book, glass of milk and a peanut butter fold-over next to him, when his neighbor Philip starts in about what he’s been up to. Nathanael (according to Jesus a few verses later) is an upstanding Israelite, has a strong prayer life, worships at the temple regularly, is up on his memory verses for Sunday school, tithes every week, tries his best not to cuss or think bad thoughts (you know, all the stuff good church folks do), so when Philip says to him, "We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote,” you can bet Nathanael had some sense of what Philip was talking about—and he likely got excited about it. Why, I can imagine that before Philip could finish his sentence, Nathanael slammed his book shut, shook the crumbs out of his beard, tucked his shirttail in, and slipped on his shoes—he got ready quick to find out where this one about whom Moses and the prophets wrote. But then…as quickly as he got excited, his spring unwound when he heard who this one was that Philip was talking about, or to be more specific, when he heard where this one was from.

            Philip tells him it’s Jesus…son of Joseph…from Nazareth. I can see it: Nathanael countenance fading, the slight frustration of throwing his half-eaten sandwich down and losing his place in his book as he untucks his shirt and kicks his shoes back off: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

            Nazareth. Nazareth? Do you know how many Old Testament prophets came from Nazareth? Nazareth: Do you know how many notable events took place in Nazareth? Nazareth: I bet you can guess how many times that town is even mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. Nazareth was a place of no consequence, a one-stop light town, a place from where no one seemed to be, where nothing seemed to happen. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Seems to be a fair question when all the evidence seems to point to “no.”

            Of course, when you’re from a place where nothing seems to happen and no one seems to care, you tend to highlight things that might otherwise be silly or inconsequential. Why, I remember when I moved to Birmingham to go to college, I think I told just about everybody that I came from a town with the world’s only monument to a pest—the boll weevil. Most folks didn’t know or care what a boll weevil is or why a small town in Lower Alabama would have a monument to it in the middle of their town, but to me, I figured folks over in Europe had surely heard of Enterprise, Alabama and its monument to a bug (it was in a text book after all!). When you’re from a place few people have heard of, it’s the small things that excite you, like gathering around the television with family and friends and making the local paper because your audition for American Idol made it on air (even if it was only 11 seconds long). When you’re from a small town, a community that’s anything but famous, you tend to focus on those things that have the best chance of being more widely known, those things that surely someone outside of your zip code have heard about.

So I’m surprised when Philip doesn’t mention some of those things about Nazareth. I’m surprised he doesn’t try to build up Jesus’ hometown just a little bit to impress Nathanael. Maybe I’m more surprised that Philip doesn’t try to explain what it is he sees in this rabbi with a common name from a forgettable town. I mean, why doesn’t Philip give his testimony here? Why doesn’t he tell Nathanael about how, like the apostle Paul, Philip was walking along the road to somewhere only to be struck blind and hear the booming voice of God Almighty calling his name? Why doesn’t he tell Nathanael about the way his hands used to tremor, how his back was bent and how he couldn’t speak until this Jesus from Nazareth touched him? Why doesn’t he tell Nathanael about the mysterious check he received in the mail a week after agreeing to follow this nobody from nowhere? Why doesn’t Philip tell Nathanael about how he kicked the habit without counseling, twelve steps, or rehab when he met this son of Joseph? After all, that’s the way to get them to walk the aisle, right? That’s how you get them in the baptistry, to pledge money, to make a decision, to join the church—you got to have a good hook, a good story, especially if the one you’re trying to sell them on isn’t a famous person from a famous place.

But Philip doesn’t do any of that. He doesn’t try to sell Nathanael on the merits of Nazareth, and he doesn’t try to sell him a good story or share a moving testimony. What does he do then? Philip, in response to Nathanael’s question, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" simply says, "Come and see." “Come and see.” What is it? Come and see. Can’t you just tell me? Come and see. Is it worth getting up from under this tree? Come and see. Will it make me mad? Come and see. Will it change my life? Come and see. Is it worth all the fuss? Come and see…

You know, I’ve found that the things in this life that are truly wonderful, the things in this life that truly exceed my expectations, the things that really make this life worth living, are things that defy description. I can tell you all about the dirt road where I spent most of my childhood memories, about the woman who lived in the Jim Walter house on the right who used to whip me and my cousins with limbs of a peach tree for wrestling the living room, but if you want to really know what it was like, well, you’d have to go there and see it (as much as you can these days) for yourself. I can try to describe to you the way the air smells on a street in Port-au-Prince, the way the smiles from strangers and the laughs of children can melt any sort of ignorant prejudice you might harbor, but really, you’d have to go and witness it yourself. I could try to paint a picture of what it’s like for a couple dozen folks to sit around folding tables passing tamales and homemade hot sauce around, while drinking Sprite and Dr. Pepper after a hot morning’s work, but really, you’ll have to join us and find out what it’s really like.

I could tell you all about how a nobody from nowhere with nothing had his life turned upside down and inside out by a son of Joseph from Nazareth, but really, the best thing I can tell you, the only thing I can tell you, if you want to know about him, if you want to know what it’s like to have your horizons stretched farther than you ever thought possible, if you want to know what it’s like to have joy indescribable and life unbelievable, if you want to know what it’s like to live each day for someone other than yourself, then all I can say to you this morning is “Come and see.” Amen. 

"God has come to us" (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 a 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 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