First Sunday of Christmas

This is the rough text of a sermon preached at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia on the 27th of December, 2015, the 1st Sunday of Christmas.  The Gospel reading for the day was Luke 2:41-52.   Please note that these are not exact transcriptions and that there may be some spelling and grammatical errors.

When I hear this story of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus in Jerusalem and the ensuing confusion that occurs I can’t help but think that this is a parent’s worst nightmare, at least it’s one of mine.  I mean, TJ is with me and then suddenly he’s gone!  And now to some degree the situation that is presented by the author of Luke seems pretty unlikely, but I’m here to tell you that I have seen this happen. 

So my father and grandfather were Shriners and generally our summer vacations would be to some Shrine convention in the southeast.  There was one family who would travel with us who had, like, eight kids.  We had all stopped for breakfast one morning and when we went to leave, they realized that two of their kids weren’t with them, but figured that they had just ridden with another member of our group.  So about an hour and a half later, we stop for gas or something and they realize that, oops, they left their kids at the Denny’s about 100 miles back. 

Now this portion of Luke is not meant to be representative of parenting failures throughout the centuries, but it does show us that Jesus experienced things that could happen to any kid.  Kids get left behind in the rush and chaos of traveling.  Parent’s get frustrated with their kids for driving them crazy, and really, after three days of searching, I have a feeling that the exact words used by Mary have been slightly edited for younger ears.

Jesus was a teenager who was trying to assert his independence.  Jesus was acting, in many ways, like any other teenager.  This story about Jesus reminds us of two things, first that Jesus really was human, and second, that Jesus was very grounded in the Jewish scriptures. 

Let’s look at the humanness of Jesus first.  It may seem obvious that Jesus was human, I mean, we confess it every week when we recite the creed, and when you read or recite the Nicene Creed, it becomes even more obvious that this dual nature of Jesus is a core component of our Christian belief.  Yet, I think it’s easy to succumb to thinking of Jesus as perfect and godlike and to forget that this same person who healed the sick and raised the dead also had to eat food and drink water.  This is same person who on the cross cried out, ‘I thirst!’  This story about Jesus, which is really the only one in the gospel’s about Jesus that takes place between his infancy and the beginning of his ministry almost twenty years after this invites us to open up our imagination, our theological imagination, and wonder about the person of Jesus and what he experienced, how he lived his life, what that life was like for him and others around him during the time leading up to his, very brief public ministry, which was anywhere from one to three years depending on how you read the various gospels.

What were his friends like?  Did he have a girlfriend?  What was it like to be Jesus and experience hunger?  Did he ever experience unemployment?  We know that he experienced grief.  What was his reaction to the constant oppression of the Roman Empire?

I ask these questions not be disrespectful or sacreligious but because as we think about how Jesus, entirely human, experienced the same pains and challenges of everyday life that we do, it starts to make us think about the miracle of the incarnation.  And that’s really what the Christmas season is about.  It’s about the God who became flesh and dwelt amongst us, experienced the same things we dod, suffered like we suffer, laughed like we laugh, hungered like we hunger.  I heard somebody the other day suggest how crazy God’s choice to become human really is considering all the junk that we have to deal with in this life.   To chose to become human in a situation where Jesus is part of an oppressed minority group that is marginalized and abused.  Where poverty and hunger are a way of life.  That God became incarnate amongst these people tells us about the nature of God, about a God who cares for the oppressed and marginalized, a God who cares for the poor, and sick, and hungry.  A God whose love is abounding.

The simple humanness of this story, that it is something that we can all in some way relate to, either as the teenager struggling for independence or the worried parent only serves to remind us that this Jesus who would go on to be revealed as the savior of the world, as God incarnate, was also human just like us. 

In addition to displaying the humanness of Jesus, the author of Luke is reminding us of just how truly Jewish Jesus really is.  It’s something that can be somewhat easy to forget.  I mean, I don’t think any of use define ourselves as being Jewish today despite the fact that Christianity grew out of a sect of Judiaism. 

But the more important thing about Jesus’s Jewish identify is that it if fundamentally links the Christ of the New Testament with the God of the Hebrew Bible.  Through Christ we see a continuation of the story that is first revealed to us through the Torah and then through the remainder of the books of the Hebrew Bible.  I think that if we are honest, we will all admit to at some point or another saying, yeah, I love Jesus, but I have a lot of problems with the ‘Old Testament God’ and all that ‘anger and wrath.’

A lot of times we tend to misread the Hebrew Bible and we start to think of there being two separate God’s.  And there is a word for this, and it is Marcionism.  And we all are, at times, a little bit like a man who lived in the second century named Marcion who rejected the God of the Hebrew Bible and believed the Jesus was sent by the true God to save us from the evil God of the Israelites.  Now I’m not suggesting that we’ve gone that far in our thinking, but there is a bit of ‘minor’ Marcionism in all of us. 

I bring that up not just to give a history lesson, but to say that reminder of Jesus as being so firmly rooted in Jewish life and practices, making the pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem during Passover ever year, possessing such wisdom and insight about the Torah that even the priests of the Temple were amazed reminds us that Jesus was not just culturally Jewish, but that he was fully and completely Jewish.

And because of that completeness, we begin to understand that the incarnation that we celebrate, that radical notion that God would become human, is not something crazy and new, but that it is a continuation of the story of the relationship between God and creation.

In Christ we are reminded that the same God that created the heavens and the earth, the mountains and the seas, the birds and the fish is the same God who made a covenant with Abraham, and a promise that all people would be blessed through the people of Abraham.  Jesus is the continuation of this story, the bringing of salvation to all people, a fulfillment of the promises of God.  It’s not something new, it’s part of the way God had always acted and it’s part of the way that God still is active in each of our lives today. 

The God of the Hebrew Bible is revealed as a God of abundant love, mercy and grace who chose the people of Israel and in doing so chose all of creation.  So the incarnation of Jesus as the appearance of the grace of God in this world is exactly the kind of thing that a wildly loving and all-forgiving God would do. 

So as read of a 12 year old Jesus, hanging behind in Jerusalem, driving his parents crazy, we remember that the Jesus that would later die on the cross is not just God incarnate, but is also very much human.  Jesus’s suffering at the cross is a reminder that God truly understands our own suffering and that when we are filled with grief or sorrow or loneliness or pain, that God is fully present with us at the moment, holding us and comforting us because God knows that pain and has experienced that pain. 

All throughout Advent we would sing ‘o come, o come emmanuel’  o come, o come God with us.  And in Christ, the fully human, fully divine Jesus, who is the continuation of the sotry of God’s relationship with us, we are reminded that God is truly with us, through all parts of our lives, bringing comfort, shining a light in our darkness, making a way for us when it seems as if all is lost.  Because of that love, because of that grace, we can truly say, thanks be to God.  Amen.

Christmas Eve

This is the rough text of a sermon preached at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia on the 24th of December, 2015, Christmas Eve.  The text for this sermon came from Titus 2:4-11.   Please note that these are not exact transcriptions and that there may be some spelling and grammatical errors.

So I made the mistake the other day of watching some of the news coverage of the upcoming presidential election.  And I was, and I remain, astonished at the way that the campaigns have become so full of divisive rhetoric.  I mean if it isn’t about Christians versus Muslims, it’s citizens versus immigrants, or it’s about some other false division that the candidates have created to try and scare people into voting for them and not the other person. 

And it’s into just such a divisive scene that we find Paul writing to Titus, who Paul left in his stead on Crete.  The division facing Titus is one of Jewish followers of Christ versus non-Jewish followers of Christ and the way that many of the Jewish followers are trying to impose restrictions and requirements on the gentile converts so that they can be ‘real’ followers of Christ.  It’s a sense that one group is superior to the rest of the people and that as a result of that superiority they can impose certain things on the others.  So these divisions that we see being created today are nothing new, but have, in fact, been with us for a very long time.

And it’s in the midst of a world dividing itself up that Paul reminds us that the birth of Christ, that our celebration this Christmas, is a celebration of the appearance of God bringing grace and salvation to all people.  No if’s, no but’s, no hierarchy, no division, Christ brings salvation to all people.

It’s in the birth of Christ that we find this unifying event that is for all creation.  We are reminded that we are all children of God, that the divisions that we have created, be they based on race, gender, country of origin, sexuality, occupation of socio-economic status are all false and that the birth of Christ was a moment of hope and love for all people.  Paul also reminds us that this event has real implications for each of us.  This is not just a theoretical conversation about God’s love, but it is a recognition of how God’s grace changes us and reorients us to be part of that work of love that was revealed through the birth of Christ.  The former Pope, Pope Benedict reminds us that, ‘Salvation, then, like everything Christ does, is not a finish-line, but a new beginning, the ordination of a particular man into a being-for-others, the breaking-open and turning-out of the soul to the world.’

Paul talks about ‘good deeds’ to Titus, but I think that in the context of this reading, what Paul is talking about is a call to show love to all people; to care for those in need, to welcome those who are seeking refuge and a better life; to speak a word of peace to those feel rejected and broken.

God made no distinction with the saving actions of Christ and likewise as we go out into the world, we are called to remember how big God’s table is.  And this is something I keep coming back to because it’s something that is both humbling to me because God’s grace is so abundant and it’s what gives me hope. 

If we were to be given a test to be able to sit at God’s table, we would all fail because of our sinful nature.  But because God’s grace and love defeat that sin, because through Christ we have had a place set for us at God’s table so that we might eat and drink with other as brothers and sisters, with our differences cast aside.  At God’s table we are reminded of our unity through Christ, whose birth we remember tonight, and who brought hope and love to all creation.  And it’s because of that persistent hope and love that speaks into all of our lives that we can truly say, thanks be to God.  Amen.

2nd Week of Advent

This is the rough text of a sermon preached at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia on the 9th of December, 2015, with readings from the 2nd week in Advent, Year C.  The Gospel reading for the day was Luke 3:1-6.   Please note that these are not exact transcriptions and that there may be some spelling and grammatical errors.

So I should probably start out by talking about my love of the revised common lectionary, the thing that tells us what texts we are reading each week.  I mean, the way that the texts speak to the events of our world on a regular basis just keeps confirming for me that God was truly at work in the creation of this thing.  Not to mention that there is something insanely beautiful about the fact that so many Lutherans, roman catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, and many more are reading the same texts together each and every week.  It’s one of those things that I think really unites Christendom together.

That said, this is the second week of Advent, it is, according to tradition, the week of peace.  Last week was the week of hope and this was one of peace.  And I think that fact alone is worth meditating upon some with regard to the gospel reading this week.  But additionally, I think that we should focus on the last verse of the reading and the idea that the salvation that is being given through Christ is for all of humanity, for all flesh, for all creation.

There is a relationship between the weeks of advent, I think.  I mean, peace is only truly possible if we believe in the hope that was proclaimed last week.  The hope that is given through Christ allows to both seek and find peace.  Hope dispels fear and means that we are not driven to conflict, but we are driven to seek reconciliation and to seek peace.  Peace is not possible without hope.

But I don’t think we always get that.  I mean, look at this past week and we see so many examples of fear leading people to reject peace and embrace conflict.  First, I want to point you to the comments of the president of Liberty University, Jerry Falwell, Jr, who suggested that it was the duty of Christians to arm themselves and murder our muslim brothers and sisters.  And then, we hear a candidate for president suggest that people be denied entry into this country because of their faith.  Aside from that fact that I think this individual has failed at basics civics, the notion that we would deny refuge, that we would deny shelter to a person flies in the face of the commandments of God who instructs us to love the stranger among us, to care for those who are different from us just like they were one of us. 

But what we are hearing is rejection of peace because it is a rejection of hope.  It fails to recognize the beauty of what Christ is doing to reconcile all of creation to God, to bring salvation to all people.  What we are hearing from all parts of the political spectrum today is fear.  And the fear leads us to embrace conflict and war.  It leads us to reject our brothers and sisters.  Peace can never come from fear.  Peace can only come from hope. 

And it’s important to remember as we seek to deal with this violence that seems so pervasive in the world that more violence is not the answer.  More violence is simply us putting more sin into the world. And what do we know about sin?  We know that God defeats sin through love, through the love that Christ showed to us through the cross.  And that means that as part of God’s work in this world, we defeat terror through love.  You may have heard the saying that bullets defeat terrorists, but love defeats terrorism.  Showing our enemies a different way of life is what will change their hearts.  Feeding into their own fearful beliefs will only exacerbate the problem and lead to more death and destruction. 

And showing people a different way is not just the work of the leaders of nations, its something that we all can practice.  And I have to give credit to a pastor out in Denver named Jerry Herships for this concept, but basically we can do one of two things in our daily lives.  We can either put more love into the world with our actions or we can take love away.  In each of our daily interactions we can put more love into the world or we can take love away.

And I got to tell you that when you read the bible, when you see what Jesus does, you quickly realize that Jesus calls us to choose to put more love into the world.  More love brings more peace, more people embracing the teaches of Christ, brings more peace.  This is how we prepare the way of the Lord.  This is how the hills are made flat and the rough spots made smooth.  Love prepares the way of the Lord.

And that love brings peace.  That peace that we talk about speaks, ultimately, to the massiveness of God’s love.  Like John the Baptist says in the text today, quoting Isaiah, all humanity will see God’s salvation. 

So if peace was the first big thing about this week, that peace of God that is proclaimed this second week of Advent is shown through the knowledge of God’s abounding love as displayed through God’s intent to save all of humanity and in fact all of creation.

God’s love is big.  It is all encompassing.  God’s love is not tribal or territorial.  God’s love is not bound by any differences which we create.  God’s love is, in fact for all.  We are all God’s children, regardless of race, gender, sex, professed faith or sexuality.  We are all chosen by God.  We are all called by name to be part of the greatness of God’s love.  That’s what John the Baptist is proclaiming today.  That recognition of God’s abounding love for all of us can help lead us to peace because it can tear down the walls between us. 

A few years back I was in Nigeria for work.  As I and the two cowrokers I was with were trying to depart the county we realized that one of the folks I was with had not had her passport stamped upon entry into the country.  Things were not looking good for us.  We were detained by security, I mean men with scary uniforms, sub machine guns, the works, were deciding our future.  And then here comes the boss.  And this man is big, I mean big, taller than me and at least a hundred pounds heavier.  He was intimidating.  And he was dressed in traditional muslim garb.  And he did not want to be friends. 

So the situation is explained to him, he is trying to figure things out and then he glares at me.  So I offer to him the traditional Islamic greeting, “a salaam alaikum’, which is basically like sharing the peace.  And suddenly all of the walls which had been present were torn down and this giant of a man is literally embracing me like we were long lost brothers and proclaiming how despite our difference we are all believers in the one God.  That man chose peace and love in that moment.  That man recognized that God is bigger than the boxes we draw, that God’s love transcends this muslim/Christian/jewish divide and what we all experienced is the peace that God desires.  Now personally is meant that I got to go home with my friends, but in the larger context it demonstrated what the great expanse of God’s love is supposed to look like in this world. 

I think that if we all start to realize that we are all, and I truly mean all, are beloved children of God, we might start to reject the fear and hate of this world and we might start to live into the love of God that brings peace.   If we realize that those who we think of as others are really our brothers and sisters, then we can have peace.  If we don’t recognize that, we risk sinking back into a time when we felt it was ok to send all people who were Japanese-Americans into concentration camps, we risk descending into a time when it was ok to discriminate against people based on the colour of their skin.  We are in a place where we can choose to act with love and to act towards peace or we can react with fear and we can reject peace.  And I think we all know what God’s calling is.  God calls us to peace.  God calls us to be together. 

And if we ever forget we only need to think about the table.  Many of you have heard me declare each week how God invites us all to this table and I truly believe that.  God’s table is a big table.  It can accommodate differences of opinion, differences in matters of faith, whether small or large, and any other differences that we can create between us.  The act of communion of sharing the same bread and wine with all of those assembled around us demonstrates to us how can be come together in peace.  The experience of the Eucharist is the experience of the same type of peace which John the Baptist proclaimed.  And it is because of that peace, it is because of that love of God which is given to us that we can truly say, thanks be to God.  Amen.

1st Sunday of Advent

This is the rough text of a sermon preached at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia on the 29th of November, the 1st Sunday of Advent, Year C.  The Gospel reading for the day was Luke 21:25-36.   Please note that these are not exact transcriptions and that there may be some spelling and grammatical errors.

So today is the first day of the new church year, it’s the first Sunday in Advent and Advent is a time of reflection, it’s a time of preparation, and at least for me the most visible sign of Advent is the Advent Wreath, and I just learned something recently. 

Did you know that each Sunday in Advent, that each candle in the advent wreath, has a name.  Does anybody know what the names of the candles are?  This is a bit of congregational participation so if you know, just shout it.  (As an aside, several people did know some of them!)

Well the first week is the week of hope, the second week is the candle of the peace, the third week is the candle of love, and the fourth week is the candle of joy  The concepts comes from the readings assigned for that Sunday.  So today is the candle of hope…

And I know that as we get close to Christmas, it’s easy to start thinking presents, you know what we want for Christmas, what we hope for, but it’s not that kind of hope that we are talking about.  It’s not a hope for a big television or a new Xbox or jewelry or anything material like that.  Instead the hope that we proclaim today is the hope for salvation, it’s the hope that we will feel the presence of God in our lives, changing our situation, changing this world, bringing justice and equality.  It’s the hope that we would be filled with love and that wars would cease.  We’re talking about that kind of deep and powerful hope.

And it’s hard to talk about that kind of hope when you look around the world.  I mean two weeks ago we watched in horror the attacks in Paris.  This week we saw armed people storm a hotel in Mali and kill innocent people.  We see two countries appear to be on the brink of war when we look at Russia and Turkey.  We see hundreds of thousands of people fleeing death and destruction in their homelands and seeking safety and refuge in the people of Syria.  And if that weren’t tragic enough we see people who call themselves Christian declare that these people are not worthy of our compassion and love.  Friday afternoon we watched what can only be described as terrorists attack a clinic in Colorado and kill four people  And as if that wasn’t enough we watched a video of another young man being executed by the police in Chicago.  And the list could, sadly, just keep going. 

And you just wonder when it’s going to end.  And I think it’s challenging to talk about hope in the midst of this.  It’s challenging to talk about the light when it seems like everything is getting darker.  So we are living in a time when it is easy to say that we recognize the signs that Luke talks about in today’s readings.  We see frightening things in the sky and in our weather patterns, we see discontent amongst nations, we watch the news and we see things that make us quake in fear. 

But before you get nervous and think that I’m about to preach that it’s the end of the world, the same signs that we see are signs that would have been recognizable to the original readers of Luke, who had witnessed the temple get destroyed, who were living through the intense persecution of Christians by the Romans.  Since then we can look all through history and easily see over and over again times when it looked it was all about to end. 

And think that’s part of what Luke is telling us.  That we live in an in between period.  We live between the death and resurrection of Jesus and the coming again of Jesus to fully bring the kingdom here.  And what we are reminded of is that what Jesus was talking to the disciples about is still relevant for us today.  This text is still speaking to us about our world around us right now. 

We face a situation, like the disciples are about to face because it’s after this speech in Luke that we enter into the Passion story in Luke and hear about the trial, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.  We face a situation like the original hearers of this Gospel.  We face a situation like the one that the community that Jeremiah was prophesying to. 

We face a situation where we can do one of two things, we can give into fear and let fear and everything that comes from living in fear rule our lives, or we can have hope.  And Jesus is very clear about what he asks us to do in the face of these daunting challenges.

Jesus says that when we are faced with all these signs, with this oppression, with this despair that we see around us that we should stand up straight and raise our heads.  Jesus says that we should have hope. 

The thing is, our natural tendency is to embrace fear.  Fear causes us to seek our own needs and desires over those of our neighbor.  Fear leads us to push out people who don’t like us, or think like us, or love the same way that we do.  Fear, in other words, separates us.  I would argue that fear often forms the basis of sinfulness as it sees us thinking more and more about ourselves and focusing only on our own desires.  Luther talks about sin as being this curving in so that we only seek our own good. 

So what Jesus is telling us is that the things which may seem like signs of the end aren’t actually signs of the end.  They are instead simply things that we will experience until the coming again of Jesus.  We will know what the signs look like, that’s what Jesus tells us, they will be blindingly obvious, but until then we will continue to see and experience suffering in this world.  But we also know that in the midst of that we should not be paralyzed and cower in fear.

The Jewish Talmud, echoing Micah 6:8, tells us, ‘Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do justly now.  Love Mercy now.  Walk humbly now.  You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.’ 

And so we begin the church year with the reminder that the first coming of Christ was not the end, but was just the beginning and that there is still time until Christ comes again, but until then we continue to be filled with God’s presence so that we might be prepared, so that we might live out that sense of hope in our relationships. 

Advent, while a time of preparation, is not a time of despair.  It is a time of hope.  A time of peace and love and joy as we remember what God has done for us through Christ and as we prepare for what God is still do for this world. 

Advent tells us to hold onto hope.  It tells us about a God who makes promises to us and who keeps those promises.  A God who heard the cries of Israelites and delivered them from slavery.  A God who heard the cries of the exiled people of Judah and Jerusalem and returned them to Israel.  Advent tells us to have hope in the God who is still present with us. 

And I get it, a lot of us have a hard time grasping hold of that hope.  A recent poll showed that the number of people who thought that terrorism was the biggest issue facing the United States today had jumped in the past two weeks so that it was now equal to the number of people who felt that the economy was the most pressing issue facing the country.  What we see here are people becoming more and more fearful in the face of those who seek to do us harm. 

Rather than standing strong, joining with our neighbors and facing this threat, examining what it means to respond as Christians and to respond as people called to love our enemies, we are, like Luther said, curving in, turning inward and forgetting about all that Jesus has taught us. 

We quickly abandon that Christian hope as if it is just mindless chatter.  But the thing that we are reminded of, both in the readings today and in our ongoing daily life and work, is that our hope is built on a firm foundation.  It is anchored to something.  Our hope is real and tangible. 

Hebrews describes the hope we have as being anchor for our soul.  Our hope is tangible.  Our hope is based in the experience of the cross.  Our hope is made manifest by the reality of the God who came down to us, walk amongst us and through the cross freed us from sin and death and fear.  We have been freed to live into this hope through Jesus. 

And so now our calling is to embrace this hope and to live it out through a life dedicated to comforting those who are discouraged, to helping those who are weak, to always seeking to do good for all people, even our enemies.  Our hope leads us to live a life of prayer and service, to a life where we are filled by God’s spirit so that we might be a light unto the world so that other’s might experience this hope and stand against fear.

And we can always remember the reality of this hope through the experience of the bread and the wine.  Through the knowledge that the same God who created the heavens and the earth, who has intervened on our behalf throughout history, the same God who loves us in spite of our sinfulness meets us here in the experience of the Eucharist.  We have the real presence of Christ with us to ground our hope in.  So as we enter this new year, as we begin advent let us go out into this world with our back straight and our heads high, proclaiming hope to the world and telling them about the real hope that God gives each of us.  And because of that hope, we can truly say, thanks be to God.  Amen.