Born to Us -- Christmas Eve

Luke 2:1-20

December 24, 2016

He was not the only baby born that night.

Other infants must have pierced the dark stillness with their first cries.

Other young women were transformed into mothers;

Other young men changed to fathers.

Other mothers fell in love gazing into the eyes of their child.

Other fathers felt the weight of new responsibility
laid like a mantel on their shoulders.

Surely his was not the only birth that night.

He was not the only child brought into this world in the way we all are –

through pain that melts into euphoria, and fear that gives way to joy.

Certainly he was not the only baby born that night.

Yet the news of those other births, those other newborns,

was shared family to family, neighbor to neighbor.

His birth was announced by angels.

Those other babies were born to their parents,

to their families,

to siblings and grandparents,

cousins, aunts, uncles,

villages and communities.

This baby was born to his parents.

And this baby was born to shepherds.

This baby was born to innkeepers and shopkeepers.

To the poor and to the rich,

to the lost and to the found,

to the lonely and to the loved.

This baby was born to shepherds.

That’s what the angel told them,

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

To you.

This was no ordinary birth announcement.

This baby was born to shepherds.

This was no ordinary birth announcement.

This baby was born to be a sign.

Signs point the way.

That was the good news the angel proclaimed.

That was the good news the multitude sang;

that holy cacophony that filled the heavens and earth with joyous sound.

On a dark night, a silent night, this baby was born to shepherds.

This baby is born to us.

This baby is a gift, a savior a sign.

Pointing us to love, to truth, to God,

God in our midst,

God with us,

God for us.

This baby is born to us.

The world is still full of Herods.

The darkness still threatens

to overwhelm and overcome us.

Some of that darkness we make ourselves.

Some of that darkness we create,

pulling it around us like a blanket.

Afraid of the dark, but more afraid of the light.

We are blind but we believe we can see.

We are lost, but we think we know the way.

Into this Herod-filled world,

this dark and blind world,

this baby is born to his parents.

To shepherds.

To us.

There must have been other babies born that night.

Other infants must have pierced the dark stillness with their first cries.

Other young women were transformed into mothers;

Other young men changed to fathers.

But this baby was born to us,

to be our savior,

our shepherd,

our sign

showing us the way to God.

This baby was born to the world.

To us.

Because God is for us.

God is with us.

God loves us, all of us.

This is our good news.

This is our hope,

that the Word became flesh,

that a baby was born

to his parents,

to shepherds

To us.

Alleluia!

Amen.

God With Us -- Fourth Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 7:10-16

December 18, 2016

There’s an old joke about a man whose house is flooding. The man climbs up on the roof and prays, “God, I love you! I believe in you! I know that you will save me!”

The water rises higher, and neighbors row up in their rowboat. They call to the man to let them help him into the boat and carry him to safety. He refuses, telling them that God will rescue him. The boat leaves.

The flood waters are lapping ever closer, and the man prays again. “God, I love you! I believe in you! I know that you will save me!”

Rescue workers in a powerboat arrive, and they urge the man to get into their boat with them and let them carry him to safety. The man refuses their help too, saying that God will rescue him. He is waiting for God. The rescuers speed away.

The waters have almost reached the man, and he prays earnestly, “God, I love you! I believe in you! I know that you will save me!” He has just finished his prayer when a helicopter flies overhead. Rescuers have a ladder they can send down, and they plead with the man to let them pull him up to safety. The man refuses, assuring them that God will rescue him. The pilot and the rescuers in the helicopter reluctantly fly away to save other stranded folks.

The waters overcome the man and he drowns. He gets to heaven, and when he meets God face-to-face, he says, “God, I love you and believe in you. Why didn’t you save me?”

God looks at the man and says, “I sent you two boats and a helicopter. What were you waiting for?”

Whenever I have ever heard this story told, it has been used as an example of how God works. This is how God answers prayers. This is how God helps. This is how God sends signs. God works through other people. God sends uses ordinary means. Obviously the man in the story expected something far more dramatic. Perhaps he was waiting for the hand of God to reach down through the storm and lift him up and set him on dry land. That may be how we want God to save us, but that isn’t how God works. So, if you’re stranded on top of your house, with the flood waters rising, and you pray for help, and a boat comes by – get in the boat! That’s God at work.

God uses ordinary means to do extraordinary things.

I would hope that I would have enough sense to see God’s hand in an offer of rescue. Just like I hope that if God actually offered to give me a sign, so that I would trust him, I would accept that sign. Most of the time, signs from God are not always easily recognizable. Often, signs from God are ambiguous at best. I’ve had to make many leaps of faith in trusting that I had recognized a sign from God. How wonderful it would be if God would just offer me a sign, any sign. Surely, I would never ever be foolish enough to refuse that offer.

But that is just what Ahaz did in our verses from Isaiah. The Lord offered a sign and Ahaz refused. The Lord didn’t just offer a sign, the Lord told Ahaz to ask for a sign, any sign.

“Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, saying, Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.”

There were no limits to the sign that the Lord would give Ahaz. All Ahaz had to do was ask. Yet Ahaz did not respond in the way we might think.

“Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.”

At first, this sounds like an acceptable response. Ahaz knew the Law and followed the Law. It would also seem that Ahaz was not greedy about signs. He was modest. He was not going to push the Lord or test the Lord, even if God opened the door for it. Surely to our ears, this would have been the correct answer, because these are the same words Jesus spoke to Satan when he was tempted by him in the wilderness.

            However, as one commentator pointed out, Jesus spoke these words to Satan. Ahaz spoke them to God. God offered to give Ahaz any sign he asked for, no matter how big or small. God wanted Ahaz to trust him, so God was willing to give him a sign if that would ensure Ahaz’ trust. Yet Ahaz’ excuse was that he did not want to test God. Responding to God’s invitation is not testing God. If anything God was testing Ahaz. God wanted Ahaz to trust, so if a sign was necessary for that trust to flourish, then God would give Ahaz a sign.

            This is actually the second sign God gave Ahaz. To fully understand the context of our verses, we need to look back the first verses of this chapter. Ahaz is the king of Judah, the southern kingdom, the land of Jerusalem. Two other nations, Israel and Syria, had formed an alliance against Judah. They wanted to overthrow Ahaz, capture Jerusalem and set their own “puppet king” on the throne. Knowing this, Ahaz and the people of Judah were terrifed.

            God sends Isaiah and Isaiah’s son to reassure Ahaz that all would be well. The powers of the two nations threatening him and his people would not stand. A child was a symbol of hope and promise, and the presence of Isaiah’s son would have pointed to that.

I don’t know if Ahaz didn’t seem assured enough with this first sign, because immediately God made the offer we read about this morning. A sign, any sign, just trust God. Ahaz’ refusal tested God’s patience. Ahaz may not have wanted a sign of God with him, but he was going to get one.

“Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name Immanuel.”

Immanuel – God with us. When we read this passage from Isaiah and our passage from Matthew together, it seems logical that this sign for Ahaz pointed to Jesus. Perhaps it did, but Ahaz would have heard that prophecy in his own time and context. While we might immediately conclude that these were happy words to hear; in reality they are ambiguous. Not only would there be a child born named Immanuel, God with us, by the time that child was old enough to know good from evil, the nations that Ahaz feared so much would be as nothing, deserted.

“The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on your ancestral house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah.”

Were those good days or bad days? What would it mean for God to be with them? Perhaps Ahaz refused God’s offer of a sign because he didn’t really want to know what God had in store. Perhaps Ahaz wasn’t so sure that God with him would be a good thing. Ahaz was faced with military and political disaster, and in that moment trusting that God would be with him may not have seemed as certain as trusting in another leader, another nation. Other sources reveal that’s what Ahaz did. He put his trust in the ruler of the Assyrians. It didn’t end well.

What does it mean for God to be with us? I suspect that many of us hear this as comfort. God is with us, all shall be well. God became like us because God was and is Immanuel because God wants to be with us. God loves us. God pursues us. God wants to be with us. Yet God with us is not just about sweetness and happiness. God with us brings light; light that invades even the darkest corners and chases away every shadow. God with us means that we are brought into the light, and the light reveals everything about us. God with me means that God sees me – all of me, everything that is good and everything that is bad. God with me means that the parts of my life that I have shoved into the deepest, darkest recesses are exposed and uncovered. God with me makes me vulnerable. Being vulnerable can feel frightening.

Yet isn’t the incarnation about God entering into our vulnerability? Wasn’t Jesus as helpless and vulnerable as any newborn baby? Wasn’t he as dependent on the care of others as any infant? It seems to me that God with us is somewhat of a double-edged sword. God with us makes us vulnerable. God with us shows us the truth about ourselves. God with us brings us into the light, whether we want to go or not. But God does not choose to be with us out of some need for vengeance or spite. God chooses to be with us out of God’s infinite grace and mercy. God chooses to be with us out of a place of relationship. God chooses to be with us because of love.

God with us is a present reality and a future promise. God with us does not give us security or safety. God with us gives us hope.

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!” Amen.

The Blooming Desert -- Third Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 35:1-10

December 11, 2016

            Last year, as we were making the transition from the big church to our little church here, Alice noticed that a volunteer petunia had begun to grow in a crack of pavement; just where the concrete met the brick wall of the big church. It was a small blossom, but it was sturdy. We took pictures of it, and Alice made the comparison that it was a metaphor for our own situation. We were small like that flower, but we were going to bloom where we were planted – or where we landed as the case may be. We shared that picture and that metaphor in the church newsletter. We hoped that it would inspire all of us to have faith and keep going.

            It was an inspiring flower, because it bloomed and bloomed and bloomed. It got bigger and fuller. The weather remained warm and there was rain, so it had no reason to stop growing. I don’t remember how long that petunia grew in that break in the concrete, but it was a good while – much longer than we expected. As the weather changed, it finally withered and died. As tenacious as that little flower was, it wasn’t sustainable without the right soil for its roots.

            But what was it doing there in the first place? I can imagine how the flower got started in that inhospitable environment – the wind or a bird scattered the seed of the petunias that were planted. A seed must have found a tiny patch of dirt to grab hold of, and then we know the rest. But seeing that beautiful flower flourishing in a crevice of pavement was a wondrous but strange sight. It seemed to have no business there, but there it was in spite of itself.

            I think the same could be said of this passage in Isaiah. Barbara Lundblad Taylor asked the question, “What is it doing here?”

Taken on its own, this passage in Isaiah is an example of beautiful and compelling language. It is poetry at its most masterful. The imagery and the visceral response the words evoke are both beautiful and amazing.

            “The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing…. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.”

            That is powerful. But hear these other powerful words from the mouth of the prophet:

            “For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of vindication by Zion’s cause. And the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulfur; her land shall become burning pitch. Nigh and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up forever.”

            That is Isaiah, chapter 34: 8-10; the chapter just before the one we read today. The chapter after ours tells of King Sennacherib’s capture of the people of Judah. He challenges them, demanding that they submit to him. So these eloquent words of promise – of creation being reordered to reflect the fullness of God’s glory; words that tell of the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, the lame walking, the speechless singing – are prefaced and followed by words of judgment, vengeance, capture and forceful submission.

            What is this passage, this chapter of beauty and promise, of expectations upended, of miraculous reordering, doing here; stuck between prophecies and stories that convey the exact opposite? Some of the scholarship of this passage claims that it is in the wrong place in the text. It belongs to Second Isaiah – which is considered to start at chapter 40 and contains words of new hope after the exile of God’s people has finally come to an end. It must have been moved by some scribe. Lundblad Taylor wrote,

“Some things even our best scholarship cannot explain. The Spirit hovered over the text and over the scribes: ‘Put it here,’ breathed the Spirit, ‘before anyone is ready. Interrupt the narrative of despair.’”

Interrupt the narrative of despair. Isn’t that what we desperately need right now? Isn’t that what every generation has needed? An interruption in the narrative of despair. Isn’t that what we are preparing for during this season of Advent? An interruption in the despair that seems to not only loom around us, but also seems to be growing exponentially. How is God interrupting us right now? How is God speaking words of hope, whether we are ready for them or not, whether we are capable of recognizing them or not?

How is God’s interruption turning upside down our expectations of God and of the world? How is God’s interruption like a blooming desert, like streams rushing through arid land, like waters flowing recklessly out of a sparse and thirsty wilderness?

These words of Isaiah are an interruption in the narrative of despair; they are “a word out of place.” Marian Wright Edelman, who is the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, speaks about pushing for just causes whether the world is ready for those causes or not. She names Sojourner Truth as her role model, and after a defeat of a bill that would have served to protect the children she advocates for, she contemplated the following story about Sojourner Truth.

Sojourner Truth was a slave. She couldn’t read. She couldn’t write. Yet her speeches against slavery are some of the most articulate and eloquent words I have ever read. She was determined to push for the end of slavery, an evil and unjust institution that went against all that was good and right and true. Truth gave a particularly passionate anti-slavery speech in Ohio. After the speech, a man came up to her and said, “Old woman, do you think that your talk about slavery does any good? Do you suppose people care what you say? Why, I don’t care any more for your talk than I do for the bite of a flea.”

Truth answered him, “Perhaps not, but, the Lord willing, I’ll keep you scratching.”

I’ll keep you scratching.

A word out of place.

An interruption in the narrative of despair.

Perhaps this is what faith is all about. It is not just that we believe in what we can’t see. It is not just that we put our hope in doctrine or creed. Perhaps faith is even more than how William Sloane Coffin said, defining it as “Trust without reservation.” Perhaps faith is remembering how God has interrupted our own narratives of despair. Perhaps faith is not just clinging to those memories, but pinning our hope to our belief that there are more interruptions to come. Perhaps faith is trusting that God’s greatest interruption – the incarnation of the Word, the birth of a baby into the world – was not just an interruption that happened once, long ago and far away, but is an interruption that continues to occur. It is an ongoing, constant, ever present word out of place.

Isn’t our being here, in this little place, unsure of our future but believing that there is more to come, that our ministry is not yet finished, an interruption in the larger narrative of despair over church decline? Is not the gospel, with its reordering of what is just, what is righteous, what matters and what doesn’t, an interruption in the narrative of despair? Doesn’t Mary’s song in response to the angel’s news about who God called her to be and who she was called to become ring with God’s glorious interruption? In the midst of the mundane, we are interrupted by words of a blooming desert, of flowing water, of expectations upended, of what was dead becoming alive, of what was old becoming new. A flower can grow in a parking lot and monochrome deserts can bloom with color. God’s word out of place is the foundation of our faith. God’s interruption of hope and promise is the center of the gospel, the reminder that the kingdom is here among us.

A flower can grow in a parking lot and a desert can bloom with color.

Thanks be to God! Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!” Amen.

The Stubborn Shoot -- Second Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 11:1-10

December 4, 2016

            There is a scene in the movie, Children of Men¸ where the protagonist, Theo, is trying to help a young woman, Kee, escape from a building that is the center of a fierce battle. This is not just another war movie. Kee is the first woman in two decades to give birth to a baby. That is the premise of the movie and the book by the same name. The human species is teetering on extinction because of worldwide infertility. The story opens with the news of the youngest human being, a young man in his early twenties, being killed outside of a bar. According to the story, the United Kingdom is the last nation on earth to have any sort of rule of law. But immigrants have been targeted by the government as anti-government, anti-law and order, anti-everything. Yet this young African immigrant, Kee, has given birth.

            Through a series of plot twists and turns, Theo is trying to help Kee reach the safety of an organization that is working to reverse infertility and restore the human race. In this battle scene, fierce fighting has broken out between government forces and immigrants. And it is this fighting that Theo and Kee are trying to escape. Theo slowly walks Kee, with the baby in her arms, down a bullet riddled hall. The baby is crying, a miraculous noise after so many years of silence. At the sound of the baby’s wail, people are reaching out their hands to the mother and child. Immigrant fighters point their guns at three of them, then stop when they hear the baby. A government soldier races up the stairs, hears the baby’s cry and calls for a cease fire. Theo keeps moving them slowly down the stairs and out of the building. Soldiers lower their weapons. Some kneel and cross themselves. Some almost smile as they stare down at the blanket wrapped child in Kee’s arms. Just as Theo, Kee and the baby move past the line of troops, someone on the inside of the building fires a shot and the battle begins again in earnest. But for a moment, a beautiful, tender, heart-wrenching moment, guns are lowered, the fighting stops, and there is a shared, stunned awe as the notes of the newborn’s weak cry pierces the sudden quiet.

            This movie, and the book that inspired it, depict a world falling into despair and chaos. It is a hopeless world filled with hopeless people. Without the possibility of a child being born, there seems to be no reason to hope, to believe, to welcome the future. The world is bleak, and the future, if there is to be one, is bleaker still. It is a hopeless world filled with hopeless people.

            This is not quite the world that Isaiah was speaking to in our passage this morning – children were still being born – but despair was real, and I suspect that chaos seemed imminent. It was a time of great political turmoil. Isaiah was prophesying from the southern kingdom of Judah, and threats of conquer from other nations were real and intense. Isaiah read the signs of the times and called on the people to take heed. In the verses immediately preceding ours, Isaiah spoke these words, “Look, the Sovereign, the Lord of hosts, will lop the boughs with terrifying power; the tallest trees will be cut down, and the lofty will be brought low. He will hack down the thickets of the forest with an ax, and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall.”

            If I heard from Isaiah only words such as these, I would have been tempted to give up completely. If God has despaired of us, if God has promised to bring us low, to hack down the tallest of trees, what point is there in hoping for anything? But these words of judgment are not the end. They point to something more. Trees might be hacked to stumps, but out of the stump will grow a shoot, a tenuous but stubborn shoot. The promise of God did not end in that dead stump. No, it only made it possible for a new shoot, a new promise, a new life to begin.

            Not only does Isaiah speak of a stubborn shoot growing from that cut down and dead stump, we hear words of what the world will look like when that shoot, that branch appears. It will be a peaceable kingdom. A world where wolf shall lie with the lamb, the leopard shall lie with the kid, the calf, the lion and the fatling shall be together. The cow and the bear will graze in the same pasture. The lion will eat straw as does the ox. One child shall play by the hole of the rattlesnake, and another child shall safely put his hand into the hole of the adder. There will be no more prey, no more predator, but all of creation will live in peace.

            This image of the peaceable, peaceful kingdom has been depicted in art hundreds of times. It is an image that captures our collective imagination. How wonderful it will be if the picture becomes reality – a reality where even natural enemies live together in quiet, harmonious peace!

            But this is not a sentimental, sweetness and light description of God’s kingdom. It is both a foretelling and a reminder that creation itself will be reordered and realigned with God’s promise and covenant. When this shoot, this branch from the stump of Jesse appears, everything will be changed. Everything will be new. God’s kingdom will be in our midst. No more harm will be done on God’s holy mountain. No one will be unaware or ignorant of the Lord, because a word from this King will fill the earth with knowledge of the Lord.

            How beautiful are these words! How I long for them to become reality! Yet when I hold up our present world with the world Isaiah’s words convey, I realize how far away from this peaceable kingdom we actually are.

            In our world now, predator and prey are alive and well. Wolves and lambs do not lie down together. Cows and bears don’t graze side by side. I would never let an adult, much less a little child, play by poisonous snakes. Nature is not so peaceable. We are a part of nature, and we are not so peaceable. Strife and hatred and enmity are alive and well here and around the world. I feel a deep guilt if I focus on one source of pain over another. The fires in the Smoky Mountains have hit close to the heart of this Tennessee girl. I am appalled at what is happening to non-violent protestors over the Dakota pipeline. The anger and division throughout our country worries me, and I know that I am a part of it; that I contribute to it. I can barely stand to see the images that still flow out of Syria; images of civilians caught in this terrible civil war being harmed and killed. My heart hurts at the pictures of the children – those who survive and those who do not. And my heart continues to break at the images of the refugees who continue to flee from that region, seeking safety for their families someplace, anyplace else.

            Every picture, every image, every story I see and hear and read in the news and on social media shows the direct opposite of the peaceable kingdom Isaiah prophesied. The gap between that kingdom and our own reality is wide and seemingly unbridgeable. But these words were not spoken in order for God’s children to despair. No they were given to us so that we might hope. God’s promise did not die along with that stump. God’s covenant with God’s people lives on – in that stubborn shoot. God refuses to give up on us. God refuses to abandon us to our own sinful devices. God’s promise did not end with that stump. God’s promise flourishes in that stubborn shoot.

            May our hope in God’s promise be like that shoot. We know that the chasm between God’s kingdom and our reality is wide, but our hope has not died. It may seem fragile and tiny like a shoot growing from a blackened stump, but hope is tenacious. Hope is persistent. Hope is stubborn. So too is our God – tenacious, persistent. Thanks be to God for God’s tenacity in loving us. Thanks be to God for that stubborn shoot of promise. Thanks be to God.

            Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia! Amen.