The Eve of the Nativity (Christmas Eve) and Christmas 1 – Year B (2020)

Isaiah 9: 2–7 / Psalm 96 / Titus 2: 11–14 / Luke 2: 1–20

This is the homily prepared for St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene Tucker for Christmas Eve, December 24, 2020, and for Christmas I, December 27, 2020.

“FROM A THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE”

(Homily text: Luke 2: 1-20)

Preparing a sermon or homily on the major festivals of the Church Year can be a challenging task to undertake. Part of the challenge lies in the fact that so many of the listeners or readers of the homily or sermon will already know the key ingredients of the text that’s been chosen.

Since we are celebrating Christmas, let’s consider the appointed Gospel text for this festival, the second chapter of Luke’s Gospel account, which tells us about Mary and Joseph’s trip to Bethlehem, where Jesus is born. Many, if not most, of us can list the key ingredients of this very familiar passage. (Perhaps many of us could recite the text, word-for-word, and some of a “certain age” might be able to do so in the King James (Authorized) Version.) My own list of the key ingredients of the account would include: Mary and Joseph make their way to Bethlehem from Nazareth; they do so at a point when Mary is pregnant (nearly full term) and is about to give birth; there is no room in the inn, so Jesus is born elsewhere and is laid in a manger; shepherds are keeping their sheep out in a field; an angel appears to the shepherds and announces great, good news to them about Jesus’ birth; a large, heavenly host joins in celebrating the news; and the shepherds go to Bethlehem, where they confirm what the angel had told them.

Now, let’s take an alternative way to understand the importance of these ingredients. Let’s look at each of them to see what they tell us about God’s activity in these things. In other words, let’s look at them from a theological perspective, for theology has to do with understanding God’s nature and God’s activity in human affairs in the world.

An admission is in order before we begin: These interpretations are strictly my own. I invite you to consider each one. Perhaps you’ll gain an additional or wider understanding of them.

The trip to Bethlehem:  It’s a long way from Nazareth, in Galilee in the northern part of the Holy Land, to Bethlehem, which is located a few miles south of Jerusalem. It’s an even longer trip if it’s taken on the back of a donkey, which seems to be the likely mode of travel available to Mary and Joseph.

Mary is nearly full term in her pregnancy:  Such a trip is difficult enough under normal circumstances, but it’s even more difficult when one is about to give birth.

·         Theological interpretation: God protects Mary and the baby, since the possibility of miscarriage is probably high, given the circumstances of travel and the point at which Jesus is about to be born.

No room in the inn, so Jesus is lain in a manger:  Luke tells us that there was a census going on, one that would have caused many people to travel. Perhaps that was the reason there was no room in the inn. Jesus is then born elsewhere and is lain in a feeding trough for animals.

Theological interpretation: Jesus comes into the world in humble, lowly circumstances. Perhaps that sort of a beginning to His earthly journey will foretell His concern for the lowly, the downtrodden, and the outcasts of the world into which He came. We could also say that such circumstances confirm God’s concern for the least of those in the world. Some also see in the reality that there was no room for Jesus to enter the world because the inn was full, foretells a rejection (by many) of His message once His ministry begins.

Shepherds in the fields:  The great, good news of Jesus’ birth is announced to ordinary people. In fact, shepherds were, in that society, not highly regarded. They fell among the lower echelons of society. But it was to just such people that the good news was given. And, in the fullness of time, it was the ordinary people of the world who responded best to Jesus’ work and message. Kings, highly placed persons, priests, Pharisees and scribes largely rejected Jesus and His message.

·     Theological interpretation:  Perhaps God’s will and work is best received by those who have the least to lose. Perhaps having a lot to lose is an impediment to being able and ready to receive God’s message. After all, knowing God and having a relationship with Him is a “zero-sum” game, in which we admit we are helpless to be able to help ourselves. Only then can God begin to work with us, really.

The angel’s message and the heavenly host:  Angels are God’s messengers (that’s the root meaning of the word “angel”, coming to us from the Greek).

·         Theological interpretation:  The difference between God’s emissary (the angel) and the heavenly host of angels and the shepherds probably couldn’t be greater. Godly things and activity meet ordinary people doing ordinary things. Here, God is at work. God’s agency and God’s hand at work in the birth of the Savior are visible in the angel’s message, which is confirmed by the opening of heaven and the large number of angels, who sing praises to God.

“To you is born in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ, the Lord”:  This is the essence of the angel’s message.

·         Theological interpretation:  God is informing humankind that a new era, a new epoch is dawning. How is this so?  By identifying the newborn child as the “Christ”, the “Messiah”, the angel is saying that the person that so many of God’s people were anxiously awaiting for had come. This child would prove to be the saving agent, by God’s appointment, for people. What is a surprise is, that the expectations of many of God’s people in those days were fulfilled in a radically different way than they expected, for the Christ, the Messiah, didn’t come riding into Jerusalem on a white horse, but instead, came in riding on a donkey.  The Christ, the Messiah, didn’t come to restore Israel and God’s people to the earthly glory that had been theirs a thousand years before when David was king. Instead, a new sort of kingdom was about to unfold before their eyes.

Confirmation of the angel’s message:  The shepherds go to Bethlehem, were they find the child, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger, just as the angel had told them.

·       Theological interpretation:  It isn’t the fact that Jesus was wrapped in swaddling cloths that is significant here, for that was the standard practice for a newborn baby in that time and place. More significant, I think, is the fact that Jesus was lying in a manger, a feeding trough for animals. Perhaps that practice was commonplace, if the circumstances of the household were such that animals were housed in a part of the structure, nearby to the living quarters of the family. We don’t know for sure. Perhaps we can take from this aspect of the account the idea that what God indicates, will come to pass, and will be confirmed in due time. But sometimes we have to look beyond the immediate, even commonplace aspects of a situation, to see God’s hand at work.

In conclusion, the events we recall at Christmastime changed the course of world history forever. I submit to you that they continue to do so, one heart at a time. Individual lives are forever changed, forever brightened, when the Lord Jesus Christ takes up residence in the human heart, for there is the place where God seeks to dwell, within.

AMEN.

       

       

       

Advent 4, Year B (2020)

 II Samuel 7: 1–17 / Psalm 89: 1–4, 19–26 / Romans 16: 25–27 / Luke 1: 26–38

This is the homily prepared for St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker for Sunday, December 20, 2020.

“A HOUSE AND A HOME”

(Homily texts: II Samuel 7: 1–17 & Luke 1: 26-38)

Ever think about the difference between a house and a home?

For example, when we think of a house, we might think of a structure, one that has an address, one in which much of our daily living takes place, a space we might share with others in the same household. If we’ve moved from one house to another in our life’s journey, oftentimes we carry with us memories of significant events that took place during the time we lived in those locations.

What transforms a house into a home?

When we think about a what makes a home, it’s much more (usually) than a physical structure, even one we might have lived in for a long time. Emotions and emotional attachments (loving relationships, in other words) are part of the ingredients that change a house into a home. We invest ourselves in a home, we share our lives (perhaps) with others in the same home. It is from home that we go forth to interact with the world, to go to work or to other tasks. But we want to return home. Home allows us to form an identity. Forming an identity is a critical part of our wellbeing as human beings.

Perhaps there might be other things we could add to the observations here.

Our Old Testament reading from Second Samuel, and our Gospel reading for this morning, the angel Gabriel’s announcement to the Blessed Virgin Mary, have a great deal to do with house and home.

Let’s explore this idea a bit.

King David’s desire is to build a house for God, Second Samuel tells us. Up to the time of David’s reign, God’s people had provided God with a visible place to call home among God’s people, the Tabernacle. It was a moveable tent, appointed with various spaces within it for various assigned duties, furnishings and so forth, all of which enabled the worship of God to take place, and above all, it was the place where the Ark of the Covenant resided. The Tabernacle moved with God’s people during their time of wandering in the wilderness, and then it took up a permanent place at Shiloh once the people of Israel had taken possession of the Holy Land.[1] The Tabernacle served as a visible reminder of God’s abiding presence among His people. 

It wasn’t God’s plan for David to build a permanent house, a home, for God. That task fell to David’s son, Solomon. The Temple in Jerusalem became the permanent replacement for the Tabernacle. The temporary and moveable home for God became the permanent one in Jerusalem.

The Temple’s function, like the Tabernacle’s function before it, was to provide God’s people with a tangible place that served as God’s home among them, as we’ve noted a moment ago. Having a place that they could see, a place they could come to for worship, allowed the reality of God’s unseen nature to be seen in tangible form. Emotionally and spiritually, the Temple and the Tabernacle were “home” for God’s people. It was the place to which they went for sustenance, for worship, for connection with God. From it, they went out into their daily lives to carry with them the blessings and the benefits of their connection with God, their spiritual home.

Turning now to our Gospel text from Luke, we can understand this very familiar passage from the perspective of house and home.

In the fullness of time, God’s son came to take up residence with us. Our Gospel reading, appointed for this morning, relates God’s plan to the Blessed Virgin. God intended to “tent” with humankind. (Yes, that’s the exact word that John uses in John 1:14, as the Greek would be literally translated.) God came in tangible, visible form in the person of Jesus, the Christ.

And it is to this new, spiritual home that we come. We come to worship, to be sustained in our earthly journey, to go forth from this new way of connecting with God to face the daily tasks and challenges of life.

Yet, this new spiritual home of ours is transportable, just as the Tabernacle of old was. We take our connection with Jesus Christ with us, wherever we are. We are emotionally and spiritually grounded because of this way of maintaining our home with God, through Christ.

You and I, created in the image and likeness of God, need the visible, the tangible, the observable, to serve as reminders of God’s continuing presence with us. To that end, our church building seeks to serve those ends, pointing beyond itself to the unseen reality of God’s abiding presence with us. As we come to this house of God, we are surrounded by reminders of God’s holiness, for everything inside the church building and outside of it is designed to evoke within us reminders of the holy.

Then we go out from this spiritual home of ours, like God’s people in ancient times did, to live our lives in godly ways, showing by what we do and by what we say that we are seeking to be living reminders of God’s presence, dwelling within. We might say that this is sacramental living, providing the world with outward and visible reminders of the unseen presence of God in our hearts and minds and bodies.

AMEN.

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[1]   In I Samuel 2:22, the tent at Shiloh is called the “tent of meeting”. Yet, the structure at Shiloh is also called a “house” (see I Samuel 1:7), so it’s unclear what the exact nature of the center at Shiloh was. To be sure, it wasn’t the permanent structure that took shape in the time of Solomon in Jerusalem, the Temple.

Advent 3, Year B (2020)

Isaiah 61: 1–4, 8–11 / Psalm 126 / I Thessalonians 5: 16–24 / John 1: 6–8, 19–28

This is the homily prepared for St. John’s Church, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene Tucker for December 13, 2020.

 “A CAUSE FOR REJOICING: SEEING BEYOND THE IMMEDIATE”

(Homily text: John 1: 6–8, 19-28)

In the midst of the wonderful introduction (often called the Prologue) to his Gospel account (the first eighteen verses), John squeezes in a mention about John the Baptist’s ministry. (Actually, though, there are two such interpolations, the other is found at verse fifteen of the introduction.)

Building on his first two brief mentions about the Baptist’s purpose and work, John then goes on to tell us more detail about John’s activity in the wilderness in verses eighteen through twenty-eight. He says that John’s purpose was to point the way to the coming of the Promised One, the Christ. “I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals,’ John says.

Notice the expectation in the voices of those who had been sent from Jerusalem to check John out: They say, “Why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, not the Prophet?” Obviously, there was some degree of expectation that God might be about to do something wonderful.

But you wouldn’t get the impression that God is about to move into action if the appearance of John in the wilderness is any clue. After all, John was somewhat of a renegade, an outsider, an outsider who’d previously been an insider, as we noted last week. John’s appearance wasn’t particularly impressive either, for he wasn’t wearing the garb of a priest. No, instead, he wore a garment of camel’s hair, bound with a leather belt. Moreover, he was operating outside of the accepted and authorized means of approaching God. Those means were to be found in the Temple in Jerusalem, where the requirements of the Law of Moses were observed. Baptizing people in the Jordan river fell outside of those bounds.

John’s voice calls us to look beyond the immediate and the observable. Oftentimes, that’s where we find God at work, unseen, yet moving to bring hope and renewal to the human condition. The primary locus of God’s concern and God’s work is in the human heart.

For if God can affect a change in the human heart, in the unseen inner reaches of human identity and desire, then what we can see, those things that happen between God and humankind, and between one human being and another, can change. In fact, that’s the only way things will truly change, for if we use our own limited resources to try to bring about change absent God’s help, what we will be able to create won’t endure. Whatever success we might think we’ve created will, in time, decay and return to its former state.

Advent is a season in which we look inward. We look into the inner recesses of our own hearts. There, we may well find that God desires to be at work within us, remaking and reforming us into His image, so that they things we do that others can see will, in truth, change.

Come then, Lord Jesus Christ, take up residence within, causing us to be formed into your image, that we may rejoice in your power and your presence.

AMEN.

 

         

Advent 2, Year B (2020)

Isaiah 40: 1-11 / Psalm 85: 1–2, 8–13 / II Peter 3: 8–15a / Mark 1: 1–8

This is the homily that was prepared for St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene Tucker for Sunday, December 6, 2020.

 “THE INSIDER WHO BECAME AN OUTSIDER”

(Homily text: Mark 1: 1-8)

When we hear Isaiah’s words, “The voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God,’”, we must surely have arrived at the Second Sunday of Advent. For in each year of the three-year lectionary cycle of readings (this year being the second of the three, Year B), we focus in on John the Baptist’s work and ministry, for it is John the Baptist who becomes the focus for today. Our appointed Collect for this day also captures the theme, as it reminds us to heed the voice of God’s messengers, the prophets, and to “forsake our sins”.

That one crying in the wilderness, John the Baptist, was one who had begun his life as an insider, but who became an outsider, one who was (quite likely) a thorn in the side of the chief priests and the other Temple authorities.

This last comment deserves some explanation.

John was the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. His father was a priest, serving in the Temple. Since his father was a priest, John was also expected to follow in his father’s footsteps, for the priesthood under the old covenant was a matter of one’s blood line and lineage. (There was no need, under this system, little need for people to sense a call to the service of God as a priest. There was, also, little need for screening bodies and committees, such as we have today in order to select suitable persons for ordained ministry.) In John’s case, he would have been expected to be schooled in what was involved in serving in the Temple. And at the proper age (usually, the old covenant stated, at age 30), he would have assumed his duties in there.

But along the way, something happened. We don’t know for sure, and we can only guess, but at some point John departed from the usual, customary and expected path he was supposed to take, and he went out into the wilderness, preaching a message of repentance and forgiveness of sins, accompanied by a water baptism.

Maybe John had seen too much during his growing-up years in the Temple. Again, we can only guess, we can only surmise, we don’t know for sure. Perhaps he had seen too many priests and too many worshipers who were simply “going through the motions” of serving God. Maybe he had seen too many people take the ritual bath (called the mikvah) that was required prior to entering the Temple’s precincts, a ritual washing which was just that, a ritual, and nothing more. Maybe he had seen too many people undergo the mikvah, and, after having done their duty under the Law of Moses, those same people went out and lived lives that showed no sign of genuinely different behavior than that which the Law required. Maybe he had come to the conclusion that the Temple, its priests and its worshipers, were manifestly corrupt, living by the wrong set of values.

All of what’s just been said is, at least, plausible.

What we do know for sure is that John had chosen an entirely different career path, that of outsider.

We find him, then, in the wilderness, calling people to a genuine confession of their wayward ways, a confession – by the way – that was surely oral and which may have been, at times, embarrassingly frank to hear. (I think we forget that this may have been a real possibility.)

John had chosen to hang out with the troublemakers, those who lived on the fringes of society out in the wilderness, those who often caused unsettling reminders to come to the attention of the insiders, people like those who ran the Temple in Jerusalem. (It’s worth recalling that one of the factions among the Jewish people at that time were the Essenes, those who had founded the Dead Sea community at Qumran, who also regarded the Temple as being manifestly corrupt, so corrupt, in fact, that they, too, had decided to abandon the Temple and even the society in which it was situated.)

John’s voice speaks with the authority of knowing his subject well. It’s possible he drew on his firsthand observations of what was going on in the Temple, and it could well be that he had come to the conviction that what went on there didn’t really make much of a difference in people’s behavior or lives. Perhaps he had had enough. Perhaps he had to speak out, to challenge the status quo.

The Baptist’s voice calls to us today. His voice calls us to genuine repentance, to a unification of intent with outward, liturgical function. No “going through the motions” are permitted, if we hear John’s voice correctly. His voice calls us to a “zero sum game”, in which we empty ourselves before God, admitting that we’re in such a mess that we can only, at best, be a little bit aware of how big our mess is. (I suspect that Augustine of Hippo, that great fifth century bishop and theologian, would wholeheartedly agree with this assessment.)

And perhaps our confession can wind up being embarrassingly frank, and it might even be oral. Such is the character of the emptying-out we are called to do.

But if God is the God who is holy and righteous, God is also the merciful and loving God, that God who is more ready to hear than we are to pray, and more ready to forgive than we are to ask for forgiveness.

Thanks be to God!

AMEN.