Christmas Eve, Year C

"Radically Different!"

Given on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at Church of the Redeemer, Cairo, IL; and at St. James’ Memorial Church, Marion, IL.

Radically different!....The Christian faith is radically different from every other religion in the world….

And it is this difference that we celebrate at Christmas…the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, sent by God the Father, to save us from ourselves.

To contrast Christianity with the religions of the world, let’s summarize some of the ways that human beings have thought about spiritual things, the things that are in the realm of the divine (we should remind ourselves that human beings, in almost every age and in almost every place have tried to explain or account for spiritual things – we are “hard – wired” to be aware of some spiritual reality beyond ourselves).

Some of the beliefs that we humans have had down through the centuries might be described this way (this is not intended to be a complete list, just some of the major ideas that have been formed):

1. There are a whole host of gods: This is called “pantheism”, and would describe the beliefs of ancient Greece and Rome…Many times, these gods would take on human form, and were often engaged in mischief…A person appeased these gods with offerings and sacrifices.
   
   
2. There is one god: This would characterize the beliefs of Judaism, and also of Islam….To each of these religions (though there are some major differences in the two religions), this one god has revealed his law, and people relate to god by keeping the laws that he has given.
   
   
3. Nature religions: Everything might be a god…the rocks, the trees, animals, and so forth….many times, this concept of the divine is very fluid, able to be adapted to many different circumstances.

These various beliefs have some things in common:

1. The gods are removed from human existence: Usually, there is a great gulf between the human race and the god that created it.
   
   
2. The gods are do not have human beings, or their welfare, in mind: Often, these belief systems think that the gods are following only their own self – interest, and do not have the interests of human beings in mind.
   
   
3. The spiritual world is so vague that everything is OK to believe: such a concept could aptly be applied to the New Age spirituality that is so prevalent in modern society today….As a result, many people create a “designer god” to suit their own needs, or become very “spiritual” without any one focus for their spirituality (which, again, often becomes quite self – centered).

But the Christian faith is radically different from all other beliefs….How is it radically different?

Our Gospel reading from John, chapter one, provides some answers…And it is to John’s retelling of God’s work in Jesus Christ that we now turn…..

John addresses the issue of the uniqueness of God and the specific action of God in the “Word”: He says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Wow! Do you get the sense that this is “cosmic language”? John is stretching to find words to describe the “Word”…..

We should stop right there and define “Word” (with a capital “W”)…..To us modern human beings, there is a separation between an idea (and the word that describes it) and the actual object being described….But to the ancient Hebrew people, the two were intimately intertwined…we can hear this unity in the description of the creation of the world, in Genesis, chapter one (verses 1 – 2): “In the beginning, (notice how John’s Gospel begins in the same way that Genesis begins – many Biblical scholars have noted the similarities between Genesis, chapter one, and the beginning of John)…In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light.” Notice how the speaking of the word and the reality of light are connected….this pattern will be repeated as God continues creating the world: a word is spoken and something is created. To the ancient Hebrews, speaking a person’s name was just as real, just as powerful, as actually having the person present with you….the ancient Hebrew conception of all of life was very holistic, that is to say, it viewed all of life as a unified whole (the idea of a separation between spirit and flesh, between ideas and physical reality, is an idea we get largely from the ancient Greeks).

So, for John, the “Word” is that force, which is God (notice John’s very explicit language: “the Word was with God, and the Word was God”), and which created the world: notice (in verse 3) that John now says “through him all things were made: without him nothing was made that was made”. Wow again! John is saying that Jesus Christ is one with God the Father, and that the entire world was created through this “Word”, which came from God the Father. So, the “Word” is eternal, without a beginning and without an ending….fully God.

But John goes on to say that this “Word” is life….notice verse four: “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” Here we have another parallel to Genesis, for in Genesis 1: 3 (quoted a minute ago), we note that light was the first thing that God created.

So Christianity maintains that:

1. God created the world, through His specific actions: Unlike a vague “spirituality”, Christianity maintains that God specifically acted in the “Word” to create the world, and in the “Word” to offer us a new life, a new creation (John 1: 12: “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God”).
   
   
2. God has not separated himself from the world that He created: John tells us very clearly (verse 14), “The Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us. We have seen the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Here is the critical difference between Christian belief and all other ideas: God loved the world enough to send the very best – himself! God himself, sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, to become fully human (yet fully divine)…..John, a little further on in 3:16 & 17 will say, “For God so loved the world, that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.” Notice the emphasis on sending, love, and saving. Clearly, God has our best interests in mind!
   
   
3. God acted out of love for people: “For God so loved the world” we read a second ago….God’s relationship with people can’t be spelled out by a rigid set of rules and requirements, whereby we seek God’s favor (unlike the ancient pagan practices of offering sacrifices to the gods in order to appease them). Our relationship with God, through Jesus Christ, is based on love….since, in our modern world, the idea of “love” is so often confused with “permissiveness”, we ought to remind ourselves that the genuine concept of “love” involves seeking another’s welfare and good, not just our own….that means that our response to God is characterized by wanting to respond to God, wanting to respond by living our lives in accordance with God’s designs for us as human beings. We respond to God in love, living as God wants us to out of love, not out of rigid, legalistic demands.

So, let’s return to the question we began with: “How is Christian belief radically different from all other concepts of things spiritual and the things of God?”….

This question is at the heart of the Christmas message, because it dwells on the exact identity of the baby born in a cow’s stall in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.

John supplies the answer, chapter one, verses 17 & 18: “….grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known.”

In Jesus Christ, God’s light has shown among us….and just like the light of day in the created order of the world around us, God’s light makes possible life itself…without light, the world would be so cold that everything would be frozen. Without light, nothing could grow….What is true in the physical world is also true in the spiritual world: without the light of Christ, the spiritual world would be separated from the source of light and life, and would be spiritually frozen. Without the light of Christ, we cannot have life itself, spiritually.

But light also provides the means to see where we are going…without light, we would stumble around, bumping into things right and left….Without the spiritual light of Christ, we would stumble spiritually, as well.

Thanks be to God, for reaching out to us, and for sending us the gift of His only Son, born in Bethlehem, to save us from ourselves, and to offer to us life through belief in His name.

AMEN.

4 Advent, Year C

"God is Getting Ready, Too"
Given on Saturday, December 23, 2006 at Church of the Redeemer, Cairo, IL; and on Sunday, December 24, 2006 at St. Stephen’s Church, Harrisburg, IL.


God’s getting ready, too….

All through Advent, our readings have been preparing us for the arrival of Jesus Christ, whose birth we celebrate on Christmas Day.

Remember back with me to some of the major themes of our Advent Gospel readings:

On our First Sunday of Advent, we heard Luke 21, and the reading which called us to “wake up” for the “kingdom of God is near!”.[1]

For the Second Sunday, the theme was the witness of John the Baptist, the “voice crying in the wilderness, ‘prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”[2]

Then, last week, we heard John the Baptist tell the crowds who’d come out to see him to “bear fruit worthy of repentance.”[3]

All the while that our readings have been calling us to “get ready”, we recognize from our reading for today that God has been getting ready, too.

As we begin to look at the Gospel reading for today, Luke, chapter one, we should back up into the earlier part of this first chapter to see the various things that have taken place, which lead up to today’s encounter of Mary with her cousin, Elizabeth….look at the various pieces that God is putting together: Gabriel’s announcement to Zechariah (John the Baptist’s father) that his barren wife will bear a son,[4]and Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she will bear the “son of the Most High”.[5]

And now, in today’s reading, we see some more of the pieces coming together, God’s “getting ready”:

We should begin by remembering Gabriel’s work in telling Zechariah and then Mary that they would soon have baby boys coming into their families….God is making His plans known.

Then, we should take careful note that God is able to work around the impossible: Luke makes it clear that Elizabeth was old, and was also barren.[6] As if that wasn’t enough, Mary told Gabriel that she was a virgin, and without a husband.

Notice the work of the Holy Spirit[7] in the reactions of the baby in Elizabeth’s womb, as well as Elizabeth’s praise of Mary, which will be echoed in just a minute in Mary’s song, the Magnificat (“From now on, all generations will call me blessed”).[8]…God is “making connections” between the various persons who will carry out His will. We might call these reactions “divine encouragement” that God’s will was being carried out.

Of great importance to Luke is the fact that God works with the down-and-out, the humble of the earth.[9] Mary was most likely only a peasant girl, perhaps in her teens when Gabriel came to tell her the news of God’s plans for her and for the world.

Well, what lessons can we learn from “God’s getting ready” as we hear it today? Perhaps the following are important for us to look back over our shoulder to see God at work in each of our lives:

First of all, God is going to “get the word out” somehow…We might recognize God’s voice when we hear someone else say something to us that seems to “resonate” especially deeply (perhaps, in itself, the work of the Holy Spirit, working with our spirit?). We might hear God’s voice during our Scripture reading, perhaps a verse that seems to leap off the page at us….there are countless ways God speaks to us. How has He spoken to us in times past?

Then, remember that God works around the impossible….the barriers and obstacles we face in life are nothing to God. How has God opened the closed doors in our lives?

God “makes the connections”….I used to have a spiritual director once who said, “We often know what God’s will is by what God makes possible!” How true! How true in my own life, as one closed door suddenly and unexpectedly opened to a wider and better view than I had ever been able to imagine….that’s how God works….And, God’s plans for us are always better than our plans for us: imagine how we might remember Mary, if she had told Gabriel, “No, tell God to get someone else.” (I think Mary could well have said, “No”.) But, we call her “blessed” exactly because she said “May it be to me as you have said.”

God can only work with the humble…the proud and the mighty, He will remove from their seats. For God to be able to use us for His purposes, we need to be like potter’s clay, moldable in God’s hands, just as Mary was.

So, God is also “getting ready” for the birth of His Son, working with the human beings who would be faithful to God’s plans.

God is also getting ready for the rebirth of His Son in our hearts. May we be blessed for answering, with Mary, “here we are, the servants of the Lord.”

AMEN.


[1] Luke 21: 25 - 31
[2] Luke 3: 1 - 6
[3] Luke 3: 7 - 18
[4] Luke 1: 5 - 25
[5] Luke 1: 26 - 38
[6] Note the parallels to Abraham’s wife, Sarah (Genesis 17: 15 – 19), who was also old and unable to bear a son.
[7] The work of the Holy Spirit figures very prominently in Luke’s Gospel, and also in the Acts of the Apostles, also written by Luke.
[8] Like 1: 48
[9] God’s care for and use of the humble is a consistent theme throughout Luke, as is God’s use of women to carry out His plans.

3 Advent, Year C

"Dead - or Alive?"
Given Sunday, December 17, 2006 at St. Mark’s Church, West Frankfort, Illinois; and at St. James’ Memorial Church, Marion, IL.

Dead, or alive?

That’s the choice that John the Baptist, whose voice roars out to us, even as it did to the crowds who’d come to see him baptizing in the River Jordan….

“You brood of vipers” (it’s clear that John the Baptist was no graduate of the Dale Carnegie course “How to Win Friends and Influence People”), he said, “who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”

“Produce fruit in keeping with repentance…” The choice that John the Baptist laid out before his listeners that day comes down to this: “do we bear fruit, or not?”….in other words, “are we dead, or alive?”

Let’s remember that John was the forerunner for Jesus….in last week’s Gospel reading, just in the verses which precede today’s lectionary, we hear Luke’s quotes from Isaiah, chapter 40: “a voice of one calling in the desert…prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him…”[1]

John prepares the way for the coming of Jesus Christ….John is announcing a new covenant, a new way of relating to God.

So, let’s look at today’s reading from the perspective of: dead –or- alive

We begin with what’s dead – or dying:

• A relationship to God based on birth: Notice that John tells the crowd (perhaps as if to read their minds), “do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’” In fact, God’s chosen people had come to regard their status in just those terms: if one was born into the chosen people, one had a relationship with God. It seems that this claim rested on something that was received, the benefit of God’s work (in choosing Abraham) and an accident of birth. It was a done deal, a past event that was looked back to with pride.
  
  
• Relationships that bear no fruit: Notice how John the Baptist ties together the claim of relationship with God through Abraham’s bloodline to the image of a tree which is firmly rooted in the soil, but which bears no fruit…..Picking up his earlier comments about “bearing fruit”, John continues, “The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” John is saying that a group identity (such as being a descendent of Abraham) is dead. Every individual is to bear fruit, and to cultivate a relationship with God so that fruit can be produced.
  
  
• Extreme individualism is dead: Desires that put ourselves first and others last are to be done away with….John responds to the crowd’s question, “what shall we do then?” with these words (paraphrased): “share with one another, do not steal from others, do not extort money using threats and force.”[2]

So, what’s “alive” then? How are people to relate to God in a new covenant, a new agreement, that comes into being with Jesus Christ? Luke provides the following answers:

• A relationship with God is accepted willingly: Just as people willingly came to John for baptism, and a cleansing of their sins, so those who come to God through Jesus Christ will come willingly. No accident of birth, no past relationship to God by some other person will suffice to make the children of the new covenant “children of God”.
  
  
• A relationship with God will be a one – on – one matter: Here again, we rely on John’s words, “every tree”.
  
  
• Concern for others will mark the fruits of this new relationship, this new covenant: Here we should pause for a moment, for Luke seems to be deeply concerned with the question, “how do we live out the Gospel, if we (the believers) are going to be here in earth for awhile (assuming that the Lord was not going to return in glory as soon as many in the early church had previously thought)?” Luke’s answer, found throughout his Gospel account, seems clear: 1. concrete, observable actions will prove that God resides within the heart and mind of those who claim to be God’s children; 2. actions which take care of others’ needs will be a significant part of those fruits; 3. a genuine repentance from dishonest, illegal or harmful actions which are associated with living in a pagan culture (like the first century – or increasingly, in our own times), will mark the actions of God’s children (here we come again to the ways in which tax collectors and soldiers often behaved in the first century).

Some final thoughts are in order here…..

1. Notice that this new covenant is conditional: In the Old Testament,
   some of God’s covenants with His people were conditional…usually, they could be summed up this way (this example is from II Chronicles 7: 14):
   
   “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble
   themselves and pray and seek my face, and turn from their evil ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
   
   And so we hear John the Baptist saying today, “every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”
   
2. If God can’t work with us, He’ll work with someone else: John’s message seems clear….”do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father’, for I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham”.
   
   We are called to be living stones, being built into a spiritual house, whose foundation is Jesus Christ (this image is found in I Peter 2: 4 – 10).

John’s message asks us to take stock of ourselves, as we prepare for Jesus’ coming…..

• Does my claim to be a Christian come from something in the past, some past action (like being baptized), some association through some other person, -or- does in come from a deeply rooted relationship, freely chosen, willingly accepted, and frequently renewed relationship with Christ?
  
  
• Do I cultivate my personal relationship to God, even as I live it out in the community of the Church?
  
  
• What are the fruits which show that I am firmly rooted in Christ, and particularly, what are the fruits that are demonstrated in acts of love, generosity and kindness towards others?
  
  AMEN.
  

[1] The composer George F. Handel set Isaiah’s words to music beautifully in his “Messiah”.
[2] The tunic was an undergarment which was worn next to the skin. Tax collectors were usually Jews who collaborated with the governing Roman authorities, and so were hated for being a part of a hated regime….the tax system encouraged graft and corruption, for it allowed tax collectors to take additional amounts above and beyond the actual tax, which they could keep. Soldiers were probably poorly paid, /and often may have extorted money through threats of force to supplement their income.

2 Advent, Year C

"Baggage"
Given Sunday, December 10, 2006 at Church of the Redeemer, Cairo, IL.

Ever watch closely when the holidays roll around at the stories on TV of people traveling? The stories always show scenes of people in long lines, either at the airport, the train station, or the bus station, waiting to get on board in order to get to their destinations.

Ever notice how much “stuff” people carry with them?....Some carry just one small suitcase, leaving people like me to wonder how they can manage on so little in the way of needed supplies while they’re gone…Others, however, seem to be carrying absolutely everything they own with them….maybe they figure they just have to have all that “stuff” in case there’s the remotest possibility they’ll need it while they’re gone.

Today’s Gospel reading is all about “baggage”, it seems to me….

As the scene opens, we see John the Baptist in the country around the River Jordan, preaching a “baptism of repentance”. John’s call is one of preparation, in much the same way people get ready for a trip….in this case, however, John tells them to get ready for the arrival of God’s salvation.

Now baptism carries with it three images in the New Testament: 1. it is a ritual cleansing from sin; 2. it is dying to the old self, being “buried with Christ in His death”;[1] as St. Paul says; and 3. it is a conveying over the waters (like Noah’s ark) in safety to eternal life with God.[2]

John’s baptism, which Luke tells us is a “baptism of repentance” corresponds most closely to a “washing away of sin”, and also to a “death” to old ways of life.

Sin and our old ways can be like baggage…..in some cases, the old ways we carry around with us are like excess baggage that weighs us down, and gets in the way of our ability to meet God….in other cases, we carry sin around with us which prevents us from being able to prepare to meet God at all….much like trying to carry a pair of scissors on board an airplane, the sin we harbor will prevent us from getting on board with God.

Let’s look at two aspects of “getting ready”:

1. Old habits/ways that require cleansing: We live in a world that is full of images, full of information…one writer, Richard Lischer, describes our world as being “a sea of words”.[3] Lischer describes the information environment we live in as being full of “white noise”.[4]
   
   Is it any wonder, given those circumstances, that it’s difficult for God’s word to get any “air time” or attention at all?
   
   So, maybe one old habit we could wash away is some of the hectic nature of our lives….allow God some quiet time with a devotional booklet, a Bible reading, or the Book of Common Prayer.
   
   Maybe the hustle and bustle of life, the many tasks and duties we all carry, drown out God’s deepest desire for a two – way relationship with us. Perhaps we could “slow down” a little, washing away the old ways of running hither and yon.
   
   
2. Dying to sin: In our Baptismal Covenant, [5] we answer this question, “Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?” Our answer is, “I will, with God’s help.” Notice the word whenever….We are realists! We recognize that, once we are claimed as Christ’s own in baptism forever, there will be occasions when sin creeps into our lives, separating us from God and making it impossible to greet the coming of God’s salvation as it unfolds in our lives, day by day. Whenever that happens to each of us (no one is exempt from the certainty of sin’s presence in their lives!), we need to “die to self” and “die to sin” again, seeking God’s renewing of our minds, souls and bodies.
   
   Sin can make it impossible to pass the security checkpoint to relationship with God….seeking forgiveness restores the relationship by removing the offending items in our lives.

So, “get ready” John seems to be saying…the “voice of one, crying in the wilderness, ‘prepare the way for the Lord.’”

“Take stock”, John seems to telling us…. “take stock” of our lives, to decide what will simply weigh us down as we greet the coming of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords…. “take stock” to determine what will prevent us from entering into a full relationship with God.

AMEN.

[1] Romans 6: 1 - 10
[2] See I Peter 3: 18 – 22.
[3] From his book “The End of Words” (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005) page 11.
[4] Ibid, page 18
[5] Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 304