Tag Archives: Gospel

Leaning Into The Future

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Matthew 6.10

Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 

Matthew 22.2-10

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, “Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.” But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, maltreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests.https://open.spotify.com/embed/episode/0witHZzJ5Te8lxO7mV8mEs

Don’t mix politics and religion.

That’s the etiquette maxim for church, dinner parties, and just about every other part of our lives. We’re told, again and again, to keep these seemingly incompatible things as far away from one another as possible. Whatever political proclivities we hold and whatever it is we believe, they are meant to remain in the private sphere and no one has any right to interfere with either.

Except, we confuse them all the time!

We blur the line between church and state with such reckless abandon that we don’t even notice that we’re doing it. We view (and judge) one another through the names on our bumper stickers rather than the name that is above all names, we act as if what happens on a certain Tuesday in November is more important and more determinative than what happen in church every Sunday, and we tend to get all worked up over who sits behind the desk in the oval office rather than rejoicing over the one who rules from the arms of the cross.

Oddly, the so-called Separation of Church and State actually looks more like an extremely tumultuous marriage in which neither partner knows why they are still together.

And, honestly, it’s not even our fault.

We get to blame this on Jesus.

“Listen,” Jesus says, “when you pray, pray like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.”

That’s good and fine and tame. No one is going to squirm around in their pews or lose sleep over words like those. But then listen to what Jesus prays next:

“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

Woah, woah, woah. Politics have crept into the Lord’s Prayer!

Here we are, minding our own business, talking about God and heaven and holiness and then boom – we arrive in the middle of a political argument about a kingdom, transferred from one place to another, that calls into question all the things we think rule the world.

That’s the great wonder, and the great challenge, of the Lord’s Prayer – we’ve said it so many times in so many places with so many people that we no longer think about what it is we are praying for when we pray.

Let your kingdom come Lord, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 

Notice: we don’t pray, “Lord, let my political party finally be in charge for a little bit.” “Lord, watch over this nice little church so that we can knock out the competition across and down the street.” “Lord, please bless this country so that everyone else in the world will start acting like us.”

No, we pray, “Lord, let your kingdom come! Let your will be done!”

brown wooden cross against wall
Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash

We live in a time in which there is a growing industry for all things spiritual. You can book a spiritual retreat at a spa for the weekend, you can download an app on your phone to connect you with the spiritual realm, you can hire a spiritual guru to guide you in the practices of meditation and transcendence. And all of that’s fine, some of it might even be Christian. 

But, this prayer is a ringing reminder that Christianity is inherently materialistic.

In other words, physical and tactile things matter. Jesus will shortly tell us to pray for bread, not spiritual bliss. 

Following the Lord, taking up our crosses, is not simply adhering to a sets of ideas or doctrines. Discipleship is as much about our bellies and our hearts and our politics as it is about our brains. Being Christian is a concrete reality, we might call it an adventure, that has implications for the way we live our lives from what we eat to who we eat with.

But we can save more of the bread talk for next week.

Suffice it to say, this petition in the Lord’s Prayer is what the whole prayer hinges on. Or, as Hauerwas and Willimon put it, calling for God’s kingdom is the reminder that this prayer is not for getting what we want but rather for bending our wants toward what God wants.

It’s about praying for God’s kingdom, rather than our own.

But what does this kingdom we pray for look like? What, exactly, are we praying for?

Jesus, thankfully, talks a lot about the kingdom of God, in fact he talks about it more than anything else. And when he does, he does so with hints and hidden glimpses, parables and puzzles, rather than with definitions and exposition. 

Jesus proclaims the kingdom instead of explaining it.

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The Kingdom of God is like… a mustard seed, a fig tree in need of manure, a field of wheat and weeds.

The Kingdom of God is like a wealthy man who gives away all his wealth to his slaves and then abruptly leaves town.

The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who starts throwing seed every which way without caring, at all, whether it lands on soil, among the thorns, or even on the sidewalk.

The Kingdom of God is like a Vacation Bible School volunteer who, when responsible for 15 kids, lost 1 and left behind the 14 in order to go find the one who was lost.

But the Kingdom of God is also more than the stories Jesus told, the kingdom is visible in him and the way he lived. Jesus is forever reaching out to the last, least, lost, little, and dead, bringing hope to the hopeless, offering mercy to the wretched, and grace to those in disgrace.

Photo by drmakete lab on Unsplash

We know about the kingdom we pray for because we know Jesus Christ.

And, of course, Jesus’ kingdom looks nothing like the kingdoms of the world.

For, the kingdoms of the world are run by power and fear, constantly deciding who is in and who is out, and they crumble with the arrival of every new kingdom. 

But God’s kingdom obliterates all of the world’s means of deciding who is in and who is out. When we say something like, the kingdom of God is for all, we mean it. We mean it because the kingdom is the most inclusive thing in the cosmos. It is inclusive because Christ draws all into himself when he mounts the hard wood of the cross, it is inclusive because Christ comes not to condemn the world but to save the world, it is inclusive because Christ brings the Good News to those who need it: namely, everyone.

All the divisions in life that cause us grief – rich and poor, Republican and Democrat, UVA and VA Tech, those divisions are overcome in the kingdom of God. That’s not to say that those distinctions don’t have meaning, they merely lose their power over us in the reckless inclusivity of the Kingdom.

To pray “Your kingdom come” is to be willing to become part of a rather weird gathering of motley, mediocre, and messy people who were once considered outsiders but who have discovered their insiderness in Jesus.

And yet, we pray for God’s kingdom to come because it is not yet here in its fullness. It’s the whole “already but not yet” thing. To be Christian is to be unsatisfied with the status quo, with how things are. 

We are unsatisfied because our faith is eschatological. That is, we are a people who insist on leaning into God’s future.

However, that’s doesn’t mean we’re just standing around on our tiptops hoping to catch a glimpse of the ever arriving day after tomorrow – to pray this prayer means we are already participating in that strange and wondrous future.

We Christians are a people who live outside of time. We gather together to read words from the past that give us an assurance of a future that allows us to live differently now.

We know how the story ends which means we are clued in to how God’s future, what we call the kingdom, is already in-breaking with the present.

That’s why we do such wild and wondrous things like loving our enemies, and befriending the friendless, and feeding the hungry. We live that way because each of those things are foretastes of the kingdom made possible and manifest in Jesus. And, at the same time, we can do the wild and wondrous thing we are doing right now: worship.

Do you see? In a world as broken and backward as ours, we can take the time to have a party, a party we call worship. Part of our faith is the gift of grace to let loose and celebrate each Sunday.

Listen – The Kingdom of God is like a king who gave a banquet for his son. He sent his slaves out to go collect the invited guests with descriptions of all the lavish preparations for the party. But each of the invitees had an excuse for missing out on the party, they were either too busy, too indifferent, or too agitated to take the time to let loose and have fun. 

But this king was no ordinary king. Nothing could stop his party. So he sent his slaves back out again, and this time he ordered them to drag in people off the street, the nobodies and the lowly, bring them all in, the good and the bad, so long as the place was packed to the brim.

Therefore, the kingdom we pray for every time we pray as Jesus taught us, it is both political and it is a party. It has ramifications for how we live and move and have our being. But it’s also fun. 

Last weekend our church was decked out for Winter Vacation Bible School where we were out to solve the mysteries of the kingdom. We had Rec in Memorial Hall, Science upstairs along with Crafts, we had Music with Mr. D, and story time with the Reverend Detective here in the sanctuary. The kids would saunter in with their little magnifying glasses and we would always start with finding a story in the altar bible but, of course, the Bible was missing every time they walked in so the kids would have to run around the sanctuary in search of the scriptures.

After doing it three different times, one of our Preschool age kids said, “Pastor Taylor, you have got to be more careful with that Bible!”

It was a great and riotous weekend with the kids running all over this building. But for me, above all the stations and even the scripture stories, my favorite moment came when, on Saturday, it was all said and done, a set of parents came in to pick up their kids and they asked, “How was it?” And their son shouted, “I HAD SO MUCH FUN!”

That’s the kingdom of God that we pray for. 

And it’s not out there somewhere else waiting for the right moment to finally show up. That raucous kingdom is already here, in ways seen and unseen, and it is worth our celebration.

Or, as Robert Capon so wonderfully put it…

“God is not our mother-in-law, come to see whether her wedding-present china has been chipped. God is a funny Old Uncle who shows up, unannounced, and uninvited, with a salami under one arm and a bottle of wine under the other.”

The Lord comes to start the party we call the Supper of the Lamb, the party we catch glimpses of every week, the party to which we are invited even though we don’t deserve it. 

And so, every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, every time we eat and drink the Lord’s Supper with Jesus, we live into the reality of Jesus’ kingdom we pray for. 

God’s kingdom is a bunch of people like us, good and bad and everything in between, eating and drinking and having fun with Jesus. 

That’s the future we lean into whenever we pray the Lord’s Prayer. Amen. 

The Law Brings Wrath

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Romans 4.13-17

For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation. For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”) — in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.

brown wooden stand with black background
Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

We think the “law” can save and fix our messed up and broken lives.

From infancy we’re spoon-fed a narrative of righteous self-determination, that if we do all the right things, and go to the right school, and marry the right partner, then everything will be as it should be.

Until it isn’t.

And then the “law” refuses to let us go.

So we adopt new habits: we buy a Peloton, we go on a new diet, we stay up late into the evening looking at Zillow for the next perfect house, we “Marie Kondo” our lives in order to get things under control.

And, even if some things change, perhaps we get that nice dopamine hit from imagining ourselves in a new place or we can fit into clothes we haven’t worn since college, we can’t actually fix ourselves with the “law.”

At some point the new house becomes the hold house, a few weeks away from the gym brings our waistline back, and on and on.

The law kills, or as Paul put it: the law brings wrath.

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But Jesus came to bring us something better than another law, something better than another set of things we must do in order to get God to do something for us. Sure, we’re called to love God and neighbor, turn the other cheek, pray for our enemies, but those are never prerequisites for the Kingdom.

Remember: The Kingdom is already among us. Our sins were nailed to the cross and left there forever. 

The Law (from scripture and from life) is good, but it kills us. It exists to accuse us and it shows us, over and over again, who we really are. For, to borrow another expression from Paul, no one is righteous, no, not one.

Even our subtle exercises in self-denial during Lent help to remind us of the condition of our condition: Lent isn’t about participating in spiritual olympics in which we compete with one another to see who can be the most holy – instead it’s about confronting the fact that our desires will always get the better of us.

But the Law, and its ability to deaden us, is Good News and exactly what we need. It’s only in death (read: Baptism) that we begin to know the One who came to give us grace.

Contrary to how we often water down the Gospel, we worship a rather odd God. Our God who, among other things, speaks from a burning bush, promises offspring to a wandering octogenarian, and saves the cosmos through death on a cross.

And for Christians, we know who this odd God is because we know Jesus Christ. 

Therefore, Jesus is not some new Moses who offers a set of guidelines to save ourselves and the world. Instead Jesus comes to be our salvation in himself.

Here’s the Good News: On any given Sunday the people of God called church gather together to hear the most important words we will ever hear: Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, and that proves God’s love toward us – In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven.

Notice – Christ died for us while we were sinners, not before and not after. Christ chooses to die for us right in the midst of the worst mistake we’ve ever made or will ever make. 

In the end, that’s what it’s all about. 

We don’t follow Law in order to get God to save us. 

We are already saved which then frees us to follow the Law – we do the things Christ calls us to do not because they earn us anything, but simply because they set us on the adventure we call faith. 

A Peculiar Prayer

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What makes a sermon, a sermon?

I’ve long held that the mere writing of a sermon, words on a page, don’t actually make it much of anything. A sermon is only a sermon when it is proclaimed among and for God’s people within the context of worship. The prayers, music, and even presence of individuals make the sermon what it is because the Holy Spirit delights in making the words proclaimed from the pulpit God’s words for us.

And so, I have a sermon that is not really a sermon. I prayed over these words and put them together for the first Sunday of Lent, but became sick prior to Sunday morning and asked Eric Anderson, the Director of Next Gen Ministries at Raleigh Court UMC to preach it on my behalf. I am thankful to serve a church that is willing to pivot when necessary and to work alongside Eric who, admittedly, probably did a better job preaching “my” sermon than I would have had I been well enough to do it.

Here’s the sermon I wrote and that he preached…

–

Matthew 6.9

Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name.

John 15.13-17

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.

people inside room
Photo by Pedro Lima on Unsplash

When we pray, if we pray at all, we usually do so because circumstances have convinced us that we are completely and totally alone, and that we have to navigate and figure out our circumstances alone.

This is my fault and I have to fix it.

No one knows what this feels likes, which is why no one else will understand it.

If I just pretend this isn’t happening, maybe it will all go away.

And all of those lies begin to unravel with the words, “Our Father.”

Jesus is in the middle of his Sermon on the Mount. It begins with blessings, and talk of salt and light and law. Jesus warns his disciples about practicing their piety publicly. And then, without much warning, he teaches them (and us) how to pray.

When you are praying, Jesus says (notice, Jesus assumes they/we are already a praying people. What’s important is not that we ought to pray, but that we ought to pray a certain way). 

When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.

In other words, don’t puff your prayers up with all sorts of adjectives and adverbs. You don’t need to sprinkle all that fancy stuff on top because, Jesus says, your Father already knows what you need before you ask.

And yet, when you pray, pray this way:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, and we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trail, but rescue us from the evil one.

What a peculiar prayer.

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Notably, this isn’t the only prayer in the Bible. The psalms are filled with prayers. Any speech toward God is a prayer, so when Peter is encountered by Jesus and says, “Go away from me Lord for I am a sinful man,” he is praying. Jesus tells stories about prayer, and rebukes others for the way they pray. And, in Luke’s telling of the Gospel, Jesus teaches this prayer, though the words are a little different, not in the middle of a sermon, but because the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray.

Among the many things that might describe what it means to be Christian, to be disciples of Jesus Christ, at the very least we are people who pray. We understand prayer to be important, whether we can articulate it or not. We speak to God and we listen to God. 

Contrary to how we might imagine it, living a life of faith isn’t about adhering to a certain set of beliefs as much as it is learning how to pray. 

Karl Barth once wrote, “To be a Christian and to pray are one and the same thing; it is a matter that cannot be left to our caprice. It is a need, a kind of breathing necessary to life.”

And yet, among all the prayers in scripture, both the Old and the New Testaments, and among all the prayers we might discover in something like The Book of Common Prayer, even our own extemporaneous prayers, this prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, is what makes prayer possible. 

It is, admittedly, a bit strange to pray to God as Father. For, even since the beginning of the church, Christians have understood that God is beyond our human understandings of gender. God is neither male nor female. God is God.

And yet, for as strange as it is to refer to God as Father, it is far stranger that we begin the Lord’s prayer with the word, “Our.”

brown wooden cross on brown wooden wall
Photo by Josh Eckstein on Unsplash

Our, of course, is often understood as a plural possessive pronoun, but when we say, “Our Father,” we are not communicating that God belongs to us. Rather, the our in the Our Father is a bewildering claim that God, the author of the cosmos, the One in whom we live and move and have our being, has determined to become our God. That is, God doesn’t belong to us, but we belong to God, together.

In other words, long before any of us reached out to God, God reached toward us, claimed us, and promised to make us God’s people. 

It is never because of what we do or have done, but because of what God in Christ has done that we are able to pray, “Our Father.”

And it’s not just that we are able to pray those words, we are bold to pray them. 

Does it feel bold to you to pray the Lord’s Prayer? I’ll be the first to confess that, as a liturgical moment in our worship every week, it can feel a little boring rather than bold, just another thing we have to do.

Hence this sermon series.

But there is a boldness to this peculiar prayer. We do well to not pray it lightly, or treat it as one more thing we have to do. It takes guts to pray this prayer.

It takes courage to address the great I AM who can make the impossible possible. As Buechner put it, “We can do nothing without God and without God we are nothing.”

And yet, we can boldly pray this prayer because we belong to God. God has intruded into our lives in spectacularly weird and peculiar ways in the person of Jesus… who teaches us this prayer. And the us is important. 

Being Christian isn’t something that comes naturally, and its not something we can figure out on our own. Being Christian is a result of being initiated (through baptism) into a group of people called church who are shaped by this prayer. 

Therefore, the our in the Our Father is admission that we are not alone. Even if we pray this prayer away from other people, the “our” is a stark declaration that there is no such thing as a solitary Christian.

We are bound to one another, and we are bound to God.

Can you imagine how different the faith would be if Jesus taught us to pray, My Father who art in heaven, give me my daily bread?

Our faith is a communal one where we cannot know what we are doing unless there is a we. 

In other words, The Beatles were right, We get by with a little help from our friends!

Thomas Aquinas, the great Catholic thinker from the 13th century, is famous for quipping that we are created for no greater purpose than friendship with God. The our in the Our Father reminds us that we cannot pray without friends. This is why you can tell if someone is a Christian by who their friends are.

And, oddly enough, Jesus chooses us to be his friends. 

It would be one thing if Jesus called us his servants, serving the Lord is a worthy task. But, instead, Jesus befriends the disciples and all of us.

And what is the surest sign of a deep friendship? Listening.

Do you have someone in your life who is a good listener? I hope so. I wouldn’t be where I am were it not for those who have been willing to listen.

And that’s exactly what Jesus does for us. But not just that, Jesus listens to our prayers, and Jesus responds to them.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be they name.

The God we worship, the God we pray to, our God, rules from heaven. That we pray to God in heaven is important. For, it is the reminder that God is placed, located, and active. Our God is somewhere and that somewhere is different than where we are. But it’s only because of God’s location, that God is able to do far more than we could ever ask or imagine. From the throne of the cosmos God acts and it made known to us in ways seen and unseen. 

Therefore, we pray not because it’s good for us, though it may be. Prayer is not self-help. Rather, prayer is the recognition that we need help from outside of ourselves. For, if it were all up to us, things would remain the same. We need others to enter and act in our lives just as we need the acting and enacting Lord of heaven and earth to make a way where there is no way. 

We hallow God’s name, we call it holy, out of recognition that God is God and we are not. We pray to the Holy One because only the Holy One can make us holy. Otherwise, prayer is just empty words offered to no one but ourselves.

But the Gospel is a stark reminder that we are not alone. Our Father will not let us remain isolated and abandoned. Whenever we lift these words up, words straight from the lips of Jesus, the connections between us, one another, and the Lord are reconstituted and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Our Father reigns from heaven, God’s name is holy, and because of such, we can pray the rest of the prayer. Ultimately, we learn how to pray by following Jesus, who is God’s prayer for us. Amen.

Everyone Has A But

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Matthew 5.21-37

You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murder shall be liable to judgment.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or a sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or a sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool,” you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your bother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny. You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your member than for your whole body to go into hell. It was also said, “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.” But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, cause her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. Again you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.” But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let you words be “Yes, Yes” or “No, No”; anything more than this comes from the evil one.

The narthex is buzzing at First Church Galilee.

A young seminarian, the son of a construction worker is the rumor, just finished preaching a sermon and the amount of responses was staggering. 

It started with oohs and ahhh. A scattering of amens. But then there was silence, and head scratching, and even a few audible “Excuse Mes?”.

Mrs. Smith, the dedicated Sunday school teacher has amassed a crowd by the coffee decanter. “The nerve!” she begins, “Can you believe what we just witnessed? Don’t you think that boy would’ve had the good sense to know that we don’t come here to be told what to do, but instead to hear about who God is?”

Parishioners shake their heads in affirmation.

Mr. Cline, the head usher, then steps in, “Well now. He is young and so full of the Spirit. Maybe he didn’t really mean it.”

“Give me a break Jim,” Mrs. Smith retorts, “You know he meant it! You don’t get up in the pulpit and say things like that if you don’t mean it!”

And right then the preacher stops shaking hands at the door and walks up to the small but rather agitated crowd. Before he has a chance to speak, Mrs. Smith lights into him, “You’ve got a lot of nerve you son of a carpenter! It’s not responsible to tell people to pluck out their eyes and cut off their arms! There were children present during your message! You know, I have half a mind to send a note to the bishop about you!”

And, oddly enough, the preacher closes his mouth into a smile and says nothing. In the oddity of his silence, the congregation awkwardly begins to disperse, and they leave amazed and astounded at his teaching.

It is a strange sermon that our Lord preaches, a sermon we call the Sermon on the Mount. I think we can agree to an extent with my fictional parishioners who witnessed his proclamation – it is a bit weird to hear such word from the Word made flesh.

It’s one thing to tell people their blessed when they’re grieving and mourning. It’s still yet another thing to talk about being salty and shining your light into the world. But it’s another thing entirely when Jesus takes the law and cranks it up to eleven.

You have heard that it was said that you shall not murder, but I say that if you are angry with a brother or sister you’ve committed just as bad of a crime. 

You have heard that it was said you shall not commit adultery, but I say that if your eye lingers just a second too long on someone other than your spouse, you’ve become an adulterer. 

You have heard it was said that you shall worship the Lord your God, but I say to you that if you miss even one Sunday at church you are liable to the H E double hockeys sticks of fire.

Geez Jesus. What’s the deal? What happened to loving our neighbors as ourselves and doing a nice thing for someone else every once in a while?

And that’s not even mentioning the abject craziness of being told, by the Lord, that it would be better to rip out our eyes and cut off our hands than to continue living in the sins of our imaginations!

Now, we all know that Jesus spoke in parables. It’s important, of course, to note that Jesus also spoke in hyperbole, exaggerated speech, what Stephen Webb calls, “blessed excess.” 

Though, it doesn’t sound very blessed, even when Jesus does it.

Hyperbole – overstating something in order to underscore. We do it all the time do, we add for emphasis. We spice up our stories for effect, we exaggerate in order to drive something home, we give ourselves over to hyperbole. 

Even in the church we do it. Have you ever heard the hymn “O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing”? I don’t see 1,000 people here today…

I mean, it would be irresponsible for us to take Jesus at his word, to take him literally. If we did, this congregation would turn into a bunch of one-armed cyclopses. And that’s just the verses we read today. He keeps going!

And yet… and yet…

Might it be that we don’t feel comfortable with these words from Jesus not just because of how graphic he is, but also because of how close it hits to home? 

I suspect that only a very small selection of Christians enjoy this part of Jesus’ sermon. Honestly, this preacher didn’t want to have to preach a sermon on Jesus’ sermon on the mount this week. It’s a lot. But there are some out there for whom this sermon, these words of Jesus taking the people to task, it rings of truth because they know there is more at stake in the Kingdom of God than merely being accepted.

Acceptance is a passive reality that actually runs counter to God’s nature.

God doesn’t just accept us otherwise God, in Christ, would never heave preached this sermon. Acceptance isn’t enough. Neither is tolerance. 

Nobody wants to be accepted or tolerated.

We want to be loved.

And Jesus does love us, even me and you, but his love is intense, frightening, and overwhelming. In fact, Jesus loves us so much, he’s willing to do something most of us avoid at all costs – he tells the truth. 

But there’s a reason we avoid the truth – that we run from it whenever it rears its ugly head. No one wants to be told they are a sinner, let alone admit it themselves.

We all have our “buts,” our excuses, when it comes to Jesus’ sermon.

Just because I looked it doesn’t mean I acted on it. 

C’mon, what’s a little grudge got to do with me being able to come forward to the altar? 

So what if I get a little judgmental every once in awhile, it’s not like its hurting anyone!

Sure, maybe I went a little too far but I’m not as bad as some other people!

Okay, I’ll admit that I said some thing that I shouldn’t have, but words are not the same things as actions.

Yeah, it was a mistake, but I won’t do it again.

Everyone has a but, and each of those buts is just a further reminder that, at the end of the day, we’re all sinners! And, to be honest, the sermon only gets worse. Jesus will shortly command his followers to turn the other cheek, love and pray for their enemies, and more! 

The whole thing builds and builds with a crescendo, like many good sermons, until Jesus hammers it all home with this: “Do Not Judge lest ye be judged. Why do you seek the speck in your neighbors’s eye and neglect to see the log in your own?”

In other words, the sermon functions to help us see that we can’t judge anyone else for what they’ve done or left undone because, according to Jesus, all of us are incompatible with Christian teaching. 

Any straight reading of scripture, Jesus’ sermon included, shows us that the Law is inflexible and total. Do your best and God will do the rest is not the message of the Bible.

The Law functions to drive us out of our propensity toward sinful self-sufficiency. That’s why Jesus preaches his offensive sermon. Otherwise, we are doomed to remain exactly as we are. And the Lord doesn’t arrive to keep things the same – the Lord arrives to make all things new. Including us. 

But there is no resurrection without crucifixion. Hence the expression: The Gospel can only make alive those whom the Law has killed.

Jesus’ sermon accuses us – you are dead in your sins – and it also promises us new life – for the One who preaches these words is the same one who mounts the hard wood of the cross for people like us – people who don’t deserve it according to the words of his sermon.

It’s a bit odd to claim Good News in the midst of the sermon on the mount that sounds like such terribly bad news. But there is Good News because God in Christ does for us that which we cannot do on our own. 

We can’t live up to the expectations of Jesus’ sermon, but that’s kind of the point. Again, it reminds us that we are no better than anyone else. In fact, it helps us to see that we’re all in the same boat. Therefore, like Peter who jumps out of the boat, Jesus’ sermon give us the strength to call out, “Lord, save me.”

And that’s exactly what Jesus does.

Wading for Jesus

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Matthew 4.12-23

Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali, on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.” From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him. Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. 

We have a new bishop in the Virginia Annual Conference, her name is Sue Haupert-Johnson. She was interviewed this week by the Conference office in order to introduce to the people called Methodist in this place. And, among all the interesting and theological bits from the interview, she was asked about our vision. 

Those without vision are doomed to perish, the scriptures say. So it was a worthy question. And this was her response: “Vision doesn’t come from the top, but rather from the people. However, the heart of the vision of the church always contains this question: How do we introduce people to Jesus?”

John the Baptist is arrested.

That’s how our scripture starts today. It’s an odd beginning, and one that is all too easy to breeze over without realizing the implications of such an introduction.

Why is John arrested? The last we heard of him in Matthew’s Gospel he was out in the wilderness, far removed from the movers and the shakers, proclaiming a baptism for the repentance of sins. That doesn’t sound like much rabble-rousing, let alone enough to warrant being thrown behind bars. But, of course, he did call the Pharisees and the Sadducees “a brood of vipers!” Even still, it’s not like he was committing a crime.

However, whenever the power that be are called into question, they’re going to do whatever it takes to stop those questions. 

John has a sense, a glimpse, of what the world could be. As the herald of the One to come, he stands squarely between the times and beckons the gaze of those with eyes to see that not all is at it seems. Something is on the way. And that something has a name: Jesus.

The drama begins.

John is arrested and how does Jesus react? He retreats to Galilee. That’s a bit odd when you take a step back from the strange new world of the Bible… I mean, we’re talking about the incarnate God! Perhaps we would prefer it if Jesus called the people to arms, if he stormed the gates of the prison to free his cousin, or any other number of reactive activities. 

But, instead, Jesus responds to John’s arrest by preaching.

Words are powerful things, more powerful than we often give them credit for. John’s words were so powerful that they put a target on his back. Jesus’ words wind up sending him to the cross. And today, our words are just as powerful, they can build up and they can destroy. 

Jesus’ mission and ministry in Galilee is for a purpose, one that Matthew begs us to see. Jesus preaches in order to fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy.

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

That text might sound familiar, and if it does it’s because we read those words every Christmas Eve – the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. The great light, now, happens to be the One who preaches in Galilee. 

And then the text moves to the call of the first disciples. 

Jesus is preaching, but he’s also searching. He’s looking for those who can help manifest and live according to the strange new world we call the kingdom of God. Notably, Jesus does not call his disciples from the powerful or the elite, he doesn’t create a big board of draft prospects for kingdom work, rather he calls those who are ordinary knowing that, with the power of the Spirit, they can do extraordinary things.

There are no crowds yet waiting to see what the hope of the world can do, the Pharisees and the scribes haven’t started their plot to get rid of him, because this is still the beginning. And one day, while walking by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and Andrew, casting a net into the lake. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets behind and followed him.

That’s it.

Luke’s Gospel adds some flavor and flourish to the story with some drama out on the water, but according to the Matthew the call of the first disciples was as quick as “Follow me.”

Much has been made about this moment in scripture and what it means for us today as followers of Jesus. 

In other words, this is the story of the first call and what we, in turn, are called to do.

Life, today, often feels a lot like U2’s song, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” We on the search for something. Some of us are looking for fulfillment, or purpose, or belonging. We look for it in people, jobs, vocations. 

I have a friend from seminary who embodied this searching perfectly. Every few months there was a new fad that dominated his existence. At first it was the desire to eat in a more local and healthy manner. He cultivated a backyard garden, read recipes book, even interned with a local farmer in between his classes. And, for a while, it took. Until it didn’t. At some point the garden was overrun by weeds, but by then he was on to the next thing: Barefoot running. He listened to some podcast about how our modern shoes are bad for our posture, and he became convinced that he needed to start running, every day, without shoes. So he did. He adopted a running calendar based on his class schedule and figured out the optimal times and places to run barefoot. And, for a while, it took. Until it didn’t. At some point the weather started to change and running sans shoes was starting to take a toll on his feet, but by then he was on to the next thing: Reading a book every three days. He encountered some article online about the devolution of our minds and the necessity to read as much as possible as quickly as possible. So he did. He set up timed alerts on his phone that told him when and what he was supposed to read. Every moment of the day was calculated down his average page per minute so that he could finish a book every three days. And, for awhile it took, until it didn’t.

I could go on. He certainly did.

He still hasn’t found what he was looking for.

And though curiosity is good, and frankly we could do well to have more of it in some ways, when it comes to the realm of the kingdom, we’ve got it backward. The Bible is not so much a long record of our search for God; rather, it is the amazing account of the extraordinary lengths to which God will go to search for us.

Perhaps that’s why the reference to Isaiah before the call of the disciples is so important: The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. In the darkness of our lives, when we least expect it, God shows up.

The disciples weren’t looking for a teacher to follow, or a barefoot running regimen to adopt, or a spiritual guru who could help bring fulfillment to their lives. If they were looking for anything, it was fish. And then Jesus shows up with the nerve to flip their vocation completely upside down. 

Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.

God in Christ shows up, and then gives us something to do. Though, how we respond to that call is as varied as the people who Jesus delights in calling. What comes to your mind when you hear the commission?

Evangelism can sound like a dirty word in United Methodist circles. It is often manipulative and preys on individual fears in order to get people in the pews. 

Some will take evangelism as our responsibility to save souls, or win people for Jesus, or knock on doors until we find someone who is willing to accept Jesus as their Lord and savior. Some will stand on street corners shouting about the end times, while others (a few blocks away) will hand out tracts with 3 simple steps to make sure you go to the right place when you die.

On and on.

Fishing for people. It’s the Lord’s metaphor, so we’ve got to work with it. Though, I’m always a bit fearful of the language since fishing is inherently a coercive endeavor. We try to trick fish into eating something fake in order to reel them in. 

Maybe that’s not the best metaphor for evangelism. Except for the fact that fishing requires us to go where the fish are. 

Therefore, perhaps we are called to wade for Jesus just as much as we are called to fish for Jesus. The earliest Christians weren’t converted to Christianity because they were looking for something, or because they were convinced or duped by the disciples. The earliest Christians were encountered by the living God and they couldn’t help but follow. 

Wading into the muck and mire of a stream to catch a fish is inherently a messy and frustrating endeavor. The same is true of wading into someone’s mess. But that’s exactly what God did and does for us.

Each of us here are here because, somehow, God showed up in our lives. And, more often than not, God shows up through someone else. 

There’s a big difference, a huge difference, between trying to convince someone of the Gospel, and living according to the Gospel. For, living according to the Gospel, puts us in relationships with people we would otherwise ignore and, because God has a sense of humor, it usually results in someone seeing how we live and then asking, “Why are you the way you are?”

And the answer, of course, is Jesus. 

Notably, the word evangelism just means, bearing the Good News. After Jesus called the first disciples he went through Galilee proclaiming the Good News and great crowds began to follow.

He didn’t try to coerce them, or frighten them, or even convince them. He just preached the Good News. 

Hear the Good News: You are loved by God. There is a place for you in God’s church. There is nothing in your life, no matter what you do or leave undone, that can ever separate you from God’s love. 

Introducing people to Jesus is at the heart of what it means to follow. How we introduce people to Jesus is actually quite easy. It’s the why we introduce people to Jesus that we often overlook. We, of course, do it because Jesus tells us to. But also because our lives have been changed by God and we want that for others. My life is fundamentally better because of the church’s willingness to relentlessly wade into the muck of my life reminding me of the Good News when everything else sounds like bad news. 

I am who I am because God waded into my life. 

Following the Lord will bring us places and to people we would never have picked on our own. Living according to the Gospel will make us appear strange to those who have not heard it. Strange enough that they might wonder what happened to us. 

And, of course, it’s not what happened to us, but who: Jesus.

The Gospel According To Francis Spufford

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This week on the Strangely Warmed podcast I speak with Teer Hardy about the readings for the Second Sunday After the Epiphany [A] (Isaiah 49.1-7, Psalm 40.1-11, 1 Corinthians 1.1-9, John 1.29-42). Teer is one of the pastors serving Mt. Olivet UMC in Arlington, VA. Our conversation covers a range of topics including sin, coffee and contemplation, Prayer School, sharp swords, prophetic preaching, miry bogs, Pelagius, trust, sanctification, gifts, blame, low anthropology, the Lamb of God, and discipleship. If you would like to listen to the episode or subscribe to the podcast you can do so here: The Gospel According To Francis Spufford

The Adventure Begins

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Matthew 3.13-17

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Tell us what you remember about your baptism.

So spoke the instructor in my Spiritual Formation class in seminary more than a decade ago. We were huddled in a basement classroom, devoid of any natural light, squirming in our plastic chairs, wondering who would be the first to share.

“I remember,” one of them began, “being afraid.”

He described the fear of Y2K and what horrors it could bring. And so, on the last Sunday of the calendar year, he marched up to the font at the end of church and asked to be baptized because, as he put it, “I wanted to make sure I would go to heaven if the world ended when we hit the year 2000.”

“I remember,” another classmate began, “feeling pressured into by my friends.”

She described the teenybopper convictions of her closest friends who told her she had to be baptized. She didn’t even go to church. But then, one Sunday, she was picked up in a minivan by one of her friend’s parents, and a bunch of strangers surrounded her at the font and water was dumped all over her head. When she got home, soaking wet, her parents demanded to know what happened, and all she could say was, “Jesus happened, I think.”

“I remember,” someone else intoned, “the storm.”

She described her reluctance to attend church her entire life until, well into middle age, a particular tragedy drew her in the direction of mystery that happened to be her local church. She started reading the Bible, participated in worship, joined a small group, and felt like God was calling her to be a Christian. So they scheduled her baptism, and in the middle of the service an unexpected thunderstorm rolled through the town. All was well until they began praying over the water and lightning struck nearby with the thunderclap shaking the sanctuary. In the silence that followed she, apparently, shouted, “The devil ain’t got me no more.”

And then I raised my hand and said, “I remember nothing. I was 19 days old.”

We can only ever begin again, Barth once said. Christians, those who follow Jesus, are ever in a state of starting over. We have a liturgical calendar that folds in on itself every year, we return to the same scriptures and the same songs and the same prayers not out of tireless commitment to the old, but because they make us new.

We can only ever begin, again.

Today is Baptism of the Lord Sunday, when churches across the world read about Jesus’ baptism by his cousin John in the Jordan. 

It’s a bit odd, when you take a step back and think about it, that John is the one who baptizes Jesus. It’s odd for a variety of reasons. Notably, John shows up in the wilderness proclaiming a baptism for the repentance of sins. He looks out on God’s people who have completely lost their way and he beckons them back, again, to the truth of the Lord who delivered them from captivity into the Promised Land. Like all the prophets before him, John speaks with clarity and authority and power about repentance.

And yet, what does Jesus have to repent? Why does Jesus need to be baptized by John?

Repentance is such a churchy word. Where else can you hear that word thrown around with such reckless abandon?

What is it? Repentance is not feeling bad about what we’ve done, or thinking differently than we once did. Repentance means nothing more than turning around, or returning. The church, in our unending concern with encouraging people to think for themselves and make all the right choices, often confuses God’s kingdom with the benefits of the kingdom. 

We talk about turning our lives around so that we can finally find our purpose. We talk about repentance so that we will finally start behaving and make the world a better place. We talk about making changes or resolutions in order to finally become the people God wants us to be.

And those things are fine, they have their place. But they are not the Gospel. They are just the bonus, the 2-for1 deal which is handed over by the One who hands himself over on our behalf. 

The Gospel is the Good News of Jesus. Repentance is just the word that describes our activity whenever we encounter it.

John, out in the wilderness, is not offering a better way to live. The kingdom does not come about because we actually start doing the things we’re supposed to do. Rather, the kingdom of God is already present in the person of Jesus, and we are not worthy of it. That’s why we repent, we return. We wander off in all sorts of directions, but then in the waters of our baptism we return to the truth of who we are: Sinners in the hands of a loving God. 

Wandering is at the heart of who we are. There’s this gnawing lack of something inside all of us. It’s why we flock to the self-help section in bookstores, hoping we will finally discover who we really are. 

And, again, if self-help books worked, there wouldn’t be any of them anymore.

Find yourself! Says the slogan for clothing companies, vacation destinations, and retirement portfolios. 

Do you want to find yourself? You don’t need to go climb a mountain, literal or figuration. You don’t need to sign-up with a spiritual guru or enroll in a CrossFit class. 

All you need is some water.

Look in it and you’ll see who you are. 

It used to be the case that, when a set of parents brought their child forward for baptism, they only had one name – their family name. And then, someone like me would say, “What name is given this child?” The answer would be the first public declaration of a person’s identity. Our first names, which in certain places are still called Christian names.

Names are gifts. We don’t get to choose them or pick them. They’re given to us.

And then, with the waters of baptism, we receive yet another new name. A larger and more important name: Christian.

Whenever I baptize someone, whether they’re a shiny new baby, or covered in wrinkles with gray hair, I always say the same thing: I baptize you in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit – you are a precious Lamb of Jesus Christ.

I say that last part not because I was taught to say it, but because that’s what one of my grandmother’s has called me my entire life. 

I’m still growing into it.

It takes time for all of us to live into our names, that Christian name in particular. It’s something we return to every so often because sometimes we forget who we are.

It’s easy, all too easy, to forget our identity. The world will strive to tell us who we are, and what we should care about it, and what we should think. We’re told by the world, and others, that our lives are journeys of self-discovery whereas, in baptism, God finds us.

Our lives are the adventure of being lost and being found over and over again. 

Martin Luther, the great reformer of the church, was often prone to depression and anxiety. And he said that in those most awful moments, those dark nights of the soul, it was a great comfort to take a drop of water, place it on his forehead, and say, “I am baptized.”

Why?

Because we belong to God and that can never ever be taken away.

Or, as Paul puts it, I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

We return to that promise because sometimes we forget.

In the end, becoming and being a Christian is something done to us and for us before it is anything done by us.

In other words: faith requires others. Just like baptism. Someone has to hold us, pray over the water, tell us about Jesus and the promise of what he has done, is doing, and will do. Someone has to model that faith, a whole life of faith. Otherwise, we would have no idea what we are baptized into.

To know who Jesus is and what he means has got to come to us through others as a gift – a gift like grace.

Before the church was called church is was called EKKLESIA, which just means gathering. Church, then, is people who are together. People who hold fast to one another as we hold fast to the promise of the Gospel. 

And that’s why the church gives us this day, this same Sunday every single year, that we might remember who and whose we are.

I don’t remember my baptism. There was no peer pressure, or fear, or even reluctance. I had no choice in the matter. But the choice made on my behalf has made all the difference in the world. 

And that’s true for all of us, whether we marched to the font on our own or someone carried us to it. From the moment of our baptisms, it becomes impossible to explain our lives without reference to the water, the promise, the story, and the others who made it possible.

Baptism is where the adventure we call faith begins. 

Jesus’ baptism by John unleashes him into the world. The heavens are opened and he sets out on the adventure of preaching, healing, teaching, feeding, dying, and living again that makes possible the rectification of all things, even us. This is where his journey begins, as do our own, in the waters of baptism.

Don’t Look Back

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Isaiah 42.8-9

I am the Lord, that is my name; my glory I give to not other, nor my praise to idols. See, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them. 

The church has always had a “problem” with looking backward. And, we come by it honest. The scriptures are ripe with stories of God’s people remaining stuck in the past (“At least we had food back in Egypt!”) and refusing to see how God makes all things new. 

One of the reasons we’re content with looking backward is the fact that the past feels under our control whereas the future is totally unknowable. 

Or, as Jesus bluntly put it, “No one who puts a hand on the plow and looks back is fit for God’s kingdom.”

But, as Christians, we are called to the dance, one that becomes manifest whenever we gather at the Lord’s Table, between remembering and anticipating. We remember God’s mighty acts in Jesus Christ as we feast on the bread and cup because they point us to the ways in which God is moving in our midst here, now, and in the future. 

There’s a story about a church where a concerned group of members called for a meeting about new ministry opportunities. For hours they went back and forth about each new possibility but they were all struck down because they seemed impossible. 

An older man from the congregation sat in silence throughout the meeting until, when he could no longer stand it, he raised his hand and said, “If I hear the word impossible one more time, I will leave this church forever. Have you all forgotten? Nothing is impossible with God!”

Here, at the beginning of a new calendar year, it is good and right for us to wrestle with the impossible possibility of God. The Lord shouts to us through the scriptures, “The former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare!” God is in the business of making all things new. Even the church.

Or, as Will Willimon puts it, “God’s future is for those who ask tough questions, come up with surprising answers, and dare better to align themselves with their core identity and purpose as the Body of Christ in motion.” “The church,” he says, “for any of its faults, is Christ’s big idea to put right what’s wrong with the world.”

In Luke’s Gospel, on the day of Easter, two figures walk toward Emmaus with their heads stuck in the past. Along the road they talk only of what happened to Jesus and they no longer have any hope. That is, until the hope of the world shows up on the road right in front of them.

“What are you talking about?” The strange figure asks.

Clops responds, “Are you the only fool in Jerusalem who doesn’t know the things that happened?” 

“What things?”

“Jesus is dead! Locked up and forsaken in a tomb. We had hoped he was the one who would save us.”

The strange figure spends the rest of the walk preaching, reinterpreting the scriptures, and (sadly) the two are no wiser than they were at the start. Until they get to Emmaus, and decide to share supper together. They break bread, share wine, and suddenly they see. 

They race all the way back to Jerusalem with nothing but hope. 

Every Sunday is a little Emmaus. We gather with all of our worries, fears, and hopelessness. We can’t help but only look backward. And then, as we open up the strange new world of the Bible, Jesus encounters us proclaiming the scriptures anew. We gather at the table, receiving the gift we do not deserve but so desperately need. And our eyes are opened to God’s new future.

Don’t look back! God is in motion! Let’s go!

The Reason For The Season

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Isaiah 9.2-7

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness on them light has shined. You have multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. 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. His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. 

I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a good Christmas sermon. I certainly haven’t preached one. No commentary, no anecdote, no perfectly delivered joke can ever come close to the outrageously wonderful news of the Christmas story. 

The story is better than any sermon and yet, I wonder what you were thinking as the scriptures were read and the notes from the songs were lifted up… 

Perhaps some of you have heard the Christmas story so many times before that it flew right over your hears. Maybe some of you think it a mere fairy tale, far removed from the realities of life. Perhaps some of you were transported to Christmases past and remembered hearing the story from other people in other ways. Maybe some of you drifted off to the dream-like space where the boundaries of reality become fuzzy.

And then BOOM! Christmas! The angel of the Lord appears and shakes us up. The angel shows up in the Gospel, just as much as the angel of the Lord is present with us right now, downright shouting the Good News for all to hear: “For to you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

Notice, the angel does not say, “For us is born.”

The angel says, “For you.”

That’s so strange. Which is really saying something because the strange new world of the Bible was plenty strange before this angel showed up with glad tiding to tell.

You see, the Christmas story is not meant for certain people in particular places. This news is for you. You! Regardless of who you are, whether or not you understand it, or even believe it, whether you are on the nice list or the naughty list this year. There are no qualifications for who should receive this news because this news, the Good News, is for you!

And what, exactly is the Good News?

God took on flesh to liberate us from sin and death.

In other words, the Good News is Jesus.

Jesus is the reason for the season. All of the other trimmings and trappings and traditions serve only to point to the One who arrives for you.

And yet, we could just as well say that the reason for the season is the joy of giving.

Indeed, it is true that Jesus says it is better to give than to receive. It is true that our brains release more endorphins when we do something for someone else, than if someone does something for us. 

But Christmas, at least according to the strange new world of the Bible, isn’t about what we’re supposed to do for others. It’s about what God does for us. For you.

Many of us love Christmas because we believe, whether or not it’s true, that Christmas brings out the best in us. Christmas has the power to reform even the Scroogiest among us. Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has probably done more to form our notions about this night than Luke’s story of the manger. Luke gives all the agency to God, reminds us through shepherd and song that Christmas is about God’s gift to us, whereas Dickens tell us about how we can give to others.

But that betrays the necessity of the incarnation. God does not take on flesh to help us see that we have the power to save and fix ourselves. God takes on flesh to save us. Full stop.

The Gospels go to great lengths, through various stories, to demonstrate how we can’t help ourselves, how utterly dependent we are on the God who comes to us. 

The great joy of Christmas is that we do nothing to make it happen – Christmas happens to us. Even the biblical characters that we read and were singing about, they are all so wildly passive in the story. They are recipients of God’s grace made manifest in the manger.

This is often the way God loves us. Not with a drill-master attitude of begging us to see our potential if we would only work harder. But with strange gifts that we did not know we needed, gifts that transform us into people we don’t necessarily want to be. 

Christmas is about the great gift given to us, to you. And that gift has a name: Jesus.

The angel address us personally, individually, with the gift of the one born. But, at the same time, the angel’s proclamation ties all of us together. For in receiving the gift, in receiving the news, no one is first and no one is last. 

The Christian life is one great communion, the great fellowship that transcends all things.

Christmas created and creates a new community called church. At any given time and place we have no idea what it will look like, except we know it will be filled with people whom we would not have chosen if we were not friends with Jesus.

Put another way, through the gift of Jesus Christ, God has also given us each other.

Look around. You might not know it, or even believe it, but these are the people God has chosen for you to be with this Christmas. Men and women. Old and young. Conservative and liberal. Gay and straight. Courageous and cowardly. Stupid and smart. Hideous and handsome. Saints and sinners. 

All sorts of people who are only here because of Jesus.

Jesus is the Good News, Jesus is our only hope, Jesus is the reason for the season.

There’s this thing that we do every Christmas Eve, in addition to the drama and the lines and the songs, we end worship same way every year: with the lighting of candles and the singing of Silent Night. It’s a tradition. Some of my earliest memories are of standing up on the seat of a pew on Christmas Eve, holding up my little candle, and watching wax fall onto the floor. 

But last year, as we rounded out our worship, I came forward with my tiny little candle, and brought it up to the Christ Candle. From that one candle the light spreads throughout the church. And I’ve done this countless times. But last year something happened to me. I brought the light down to the first person sitting in the first pew, I don’t even remember who it was, but I remember their eyes. I remember seeing the light of the candle flickering in their eyes, and I remember them crying. And right then, and it hit me hard in the chest, a sensation I can’t quite describe with words, I was overwhelmed by the conviction that it’s true. All of it. The light of God’s love outshines the darkness.

In the candlelight spreading across the sanctuary, I saw and felt the Good News of Jesus Christ.

God in Christ, born to us, has brought us salvation. God is our helper, liberator, and redeemer. God rescues and delivers us. We live because God is with us.

God in Christ, born to us, has brought salvation to all, without reservation or exception, simply because that is who God is.

God in Christ, born to us, has changed the cosmos free of charge, without our earning or deserving. The only thing we are asked to do is stretch out our hand, receive the gift, and be thankful.

To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 

Merry Christmas.

Good News!

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Luke 2.8-14

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

It was my first Christmas Eve service as a pastor. I was standing by the main doors welcoming the last stragglers in for worship. And just as the organist began to play the opening hymn, during which I was supposed to walk down the center aisle looking like I knew what I was doing, one final car pulled into the parking lot.

So I had a choice – either get the show on the road and parade down the aisle or stay by the door and greet the one last, and perhaps lost, sheep.

I chose the sheep.

I could feel the organist’s eye like daggers cutting through me as the song went on without a pastor, but I waited.

And I waited.

Out of the car stepped an old little man who shuffled across the lot with the help of a walker and a decisively Ebenezer Scrooge scowl across his face. By the time he made it to the door the organist had started the hymn over again, much to the surprise of the congregation. So I very quickly, but politely, offered him hand and started to make a break for the sanctuary but the man grabbed me by the robe, pulled me down and said, “Listen son – I only come to church once a year so the Good News better be good.”

That man’s quick quip has stayed with me over the years because, I think, we all feel that way. We want, in fact we need, Good News. We need good news because it feels like all we ever encounter is bad news. We can’t turn on our TVs, or turn to our phones, without being bombarded by all that is wrong with the world.

But then we come to a place like this at a time like this. 

Chances are most of us, if not all of us, know the story we’re about to hear through scripture, drama, and song.

We know how the holy family traveled to Bethlehem with a pregnant Mary riding on the back of a donkey. We know how they were turned away by a greedy innkeeper. We know how Jesus was born in a stable, laid in a manger, surrounded by farm animals, admired by shepherds, and sung to by angels.

Never mind the fact that half of these details aren’t actually in the strange new world of the Bible! But we’re ready to remember it that way!

Indeed, it is a tradition to remember the story with these details. We sing the songs, we read the scriptures, we get out the pipe cleaner halos, and the plastic baby Jesus.

Tradition is one of those words that we either love or hate. Some of us rejoice in traditions, the habits and practices passed on to us. Others of us find those things to be constrictive, or even oppressive.

And yet, traditions serve to root us in the world. Traditions teach us who we are and, more importantly, whose we are.

The tradition of Christmas, of gathering with others for the worship of God, locates us in a community constituted by hope, peace, joy, and love.

Which is why we need things like child-led dramas, Christmas pageants, because they brings great godly things down to earth. Often, in church, the things we talk about seem so far away, removed, and distant. Even preachers fall prey to the stained glass language that flies over the heads of our dozing congregations.

And then Christmas! This is the Good News! It is a story that is down to earth because God comes down to us. It has all the hallmarks of real life: birth, death, marriage, relatives, taxes, babies, work.

It was into this world that God arrived as one of us. And, oddly and wonderfully, the great joy of Christmas is that we do nothing to make it happen – Christmas happens to us. Notice, during our pageant, how wildly passive all the biblical characters are. They, like us, are recipients of God’s grace made manifest in the manger.

The story itself, as I noted before, is so warm and familiar that the shock of it all has dimmed. And yet, Christmas is absolutely astonishing!

God, the author of the cosmos, chose a young woman from a forgotten village to birth God’s very self in a sleepy little town in a tucked away corner of the empire. The first to know of God’s birth were shepherds, those relegated to the margins of society and ignored by most. 

Jesus, fully God and fully human, grew into an adult who had a brief public ministry that was spent among the riff-raff and the elite, announced God’s forgiveness of sin for a world undeserving, and in whose death and resurrection, we are made holy.

And it doesn’t matter who are you or what you’ve done. This all happens for you.

The world will tell us again and again and again that we are not worthy, that there is always more to do. Christmas tells us the opposite. God makes us worthy. There is nothing we have to do, except open our hands to the gift that is Jesus Christ. 

That is how the Good News works, it’s good news.

Christmas is the end of the beginning and its the story we are about to receive through pageant and song, but before I hand it over, I want to share one final thought:

There’s this thing that we do every Christmas Eve, in addition to the drama and the lines and the songs, we end worship same way every year: with the lighting of candles and the singing of Silent Night. It’s a tradition. Some of my earliest memories are of standing up on the seat of a pew on Christmas Eve, holding up my little candle, and watching wax fall onto the floor. 

But last year, as we rounded out the pageant, I came forward with my tiny little candle, and brought it up to the Christ Candle. From that one candle the light spreads throughout the church. And I’ve done this countless times. But last year something happened to me. I brought the light down to the first person sitting in the first pew, I don’t even remember who it was, but I remember their eyes. I remember seeing the light of the candle flickering in their eyes, and it hit me hard in the chest, a sensation I can’t quite describe with words, I was overwhelmed by the conviction that it’s true. All of it. The light of God’s love outshines the darkness.

In the candlelight spreading across the sanctuary, in the little children in their costumes, I saw and felt that the Good News really is good.

God in Christ, born to us, has brought us salvation. God is our helper, liberator, and redeemer. God rescues and delivers us. We live because God is with us.

God in Christ, born to us, has changed the cosmos free of charge, without our earning or deserving. The only thing we are asked to do is stretch out our hand, receive the gift, and be thankful.

God in Christ, born to us, has brought salvation to all, without reservation or execution, simply because that is who God is.

To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 

Merry Christmas.