Scripture Passages you should read: I Corinthians 13, Luke 4:21-30, and Jeremiah 1:4-10.
You may think it from the way I begin today’s sermon that I’m going to talk about something other than God’s kind of love today and how we should evidence kind of love in our lives by loving ourselves and loving others like we love ourselves.
We have this picture in our minds of Jesus as always being overly polite and extremely courteous, never ruffling feathers or making anyone angry or upset. We snap at other Christians when they say or do something that we don’t like, “Jesus wouldn’t act that way,” as if we are delivering some kind of chastisement for their so-called offensive behavior. But is that a true picture of Jesus or even of a Christian. Are we supposed to always be so meek and mild as to never offend, never upset, never disagree, never act with courage and honesty? I don’t think so. Is it ever possible that doing or saying the Christ-like thing might just result in a riot?
I’ve said many times that Jesus was first and foremost honest, calling for persons to lovingly act with integrity, honor, justice and mercy toward others. Jesus wasn’t afraid to be honest with people when they misunderstood and misinterpreted God’s Truth from the Scriptures. That’s one of the biggest reasons why the religious authorities of his day had him arrested and killed. They couldn’t allow anyone to disagree with their interpretation of who God was and how God would act in the world. Killing Jesus would prove they were right and put an end to his kind of insolence, wouldn’t it?
In Today’s gospel reading from Luke, Jesus is the hometown hero returning to his adoring family and friends where they are sure he will work for them the same kind of miracles he is reported to have done for others. Why shouldn’t they expect this from him? They deserve it, don’t they? He grew up here among them. He owes it to them. When he begins preaching however they quickly develop a very different opinion of him.
This scripture story is an example of just how honest Jesus was with his own family and friends, as well as with others, and as Dan read to us, the folks he preached to that day tried to kill their hometown hero because he pointed out to them their own misunderstanding of how God would act in Love toward those who they thought didn’t deserve God’s Love and Care. In fact they felt that such people, the gentiles, were so far beyond the hope of God’s love and help that they could rightly ignore them, reject them, even hate them without any fear that God would disagree with their opinions or actions. But Jesus reminds them that the scriptures tell a very different story about whom God is and how God will act.
The prophets of old said that when God declares the Jubilee, that great celebration party of God’s New Community, all people will come together, even the hated gentiles, and the diseased, and the handicapped, and the stranger and even the eunuch; everyone that they thought God would exclude would be right there at the party with them sharing in the same happy blessings that they thought only they deserved. What? Those filthy people coming and enjoying the same holy blessings as we are promised? That was more than they could accept from him. It went against everything they thought and felt to be true about God and about them.
The truth is they were terribly confused about who Jesus was. They thought they knew this kid from down the street, Mary and Joe’s oldest child. He may have gone off and made a name for himself, but just who does he think he is telling us this kind of crap? But Jesus refuses to fulfill their expectations of him and so ‘filled with rage’ they try to throw him over a bluff to his death. Not only does Jesus elude them physically, but he eludes them spiritually as well.
Have you heard about any modern day religious authorities who think or act this same way when we don’t meet their expectations of who and what a Christian should be? They yell at us “You have no right to disagree with us because we have history on our side.” So did Jesus’ adversaries. “We understand the scriptures exactly the way God intended for people to understand scriptures,” they say. That was what Jesus’ adversaries believed about themselves. “We know exactly what God thinks,” they say. So claimed Jesus adversaries. And like Jesus we have to say to these modern day religious authorities, “We don’t think so. We think that there is another way to look at these scriptures and to understand them that are more in line with God’s kind of love.”
Some of you sitting here today have been so beaten down by others by their way of interpreting scripture that you have given up on loving yourself or ever being loved by anyone else, let alone by God, because of who you are and who you love. Listen to me clearly, when you are in a situation where religious authorities make your feel rejected, hated, excluded and judged, because you aren’t living up to their heterosexual standards, you aren’t in a situation where God’s kind of love is being shared with you the way that God wants God’s loved shared with you. So get out of that situation! Go someplace where you feel God’s kind of love evidenced in the hospitality, and welcome and acceptance that God wants you to have so you can live a healthy, happy life together with those who share your best interests and want to see you succeed being yourself exactly the way that God created you to be!
Some of you flip flop frequently between religious communities. You may come here to get some relief from the oppression you feel from other religious communities, then you start to question your feeling better about yourself and you go to back to them and get beat up and abused one more time. Stop that. Don’t let them do that to you anymore. Give up being a part of those kinds of negative religious groups and claim the wonderful, positive, life-giving Love of God for yourself. Love yourself with God’s kind of love!
Remember: God knew you were queer long before you came out about it. How? Because God created you that way. Accept that if God created you gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, or trans, or heterosexual, then God loves you exactly the way that God created you and God wants you to live an abundant happy life exactly the way you were created. God doesn’t make mistakes. You don’t have to change yourself, even if that were possible, which I believe it isn’t, in order to be loved by God. God already loves you exactly the way God created you.
Others may try to tell you that it is a failure of faith on your part that you won’t allow God to change you, when in reality it is a failure of faith on their part to accept God as being much greater and much more creative, loving, and welcoming than they ever thought possible. That was the reason the people in his hometown wanted to kill Jesus. His concept of God was so much bigger than their own, that they couldn’t accept it, couldn’t and wouldn’t even let him say it out loud.
I get hate mail all the time telling me I’m going to hell because of my understanding of God and God’s Truth which I try to share with you. We got one of those letters this past week from an anonymous person in Florida telling us that gay cities in America were going to be destroyed and all of us gathered here today will be destroyed, too, simply because the person who wrote the letter believe God hates Queer persons. Mostly I just throw those kind of things away. They aren’t worth the time it takes me to open them, and I don’t read them once I figure out that it is hate mail. But I used to be bothered greatly by that kind of belief. Yes, truthfully, there was a time as a teenager when I thought it might just be possible that I would go to hell simply because I was gay because I believed the lies that others were telling me about God. I also knew there wasn’t anything I could do to change myself. Lucky for me, I didn’t have to change.
It took me a long time to get this God-loves-you-just-the-way-God-created-you stuff straight in my own head. I prayed for many long years for God to take away the gay. I had been so thoroughly brain-washed by those in authority over me telling me what the scriptures said that I didn’t read those scriptures for myself to discover what they really said. I thought my only choice as a Christian was to live my life unhappily in a heterosexual relationship with a wife. Don’t misunderstand. I loved my wife and my children. I still do in fact.
But, imagine my surprise when I got to seminary and began to read all of the scriptures on my own and see those few verses used against gays and lesbians, trans and bi folk, were just that, a very small part of a vast amount of scripture which told a extremely different story about the incredibly affirming love of God for everyone, even for me, even if I was gay.
The first thing I started doing was to stop repeating what other people had told me was true and to stop acting on their false truths in my ministry with others. Imagine the complaints I got from my churches when I began to include Queer people and other outsiders in my ministry, to support them, to encourage them, to love them? It was okay as long as I was going away from the church to minister to them during the week. But when I started inviting these Queer folk into the church and allowing them to volunteer to work in the church they decided they couldn’t put up with that any longer. “You can’t have a gay man reading the scriptures because someone might think our church thinks gay people are okay.” “You can’t have a divorced person teaching a children’s class, someone might think we supported her decision to divorce her husband.” “You can’t let a pregnant teenager interpret for the death, someone might think we encourage premarital sex among our teens.” Oh, they didn’t try to throw me of a high bluff to my death, but I got kicked out of the church I had originally started in my own home. I had led that church to grow from a small handful of people to more than 300 worshipping together on Sunday mornings in less than two years, but that congregation had no place for a pastor, even the pastor that had led them to grow so quickly in so short a period of time, if that pastor believed that when the Bible said that God loves everyone that God really did mean everyone.
The leaders of that church wanted to keep excluding, hating, and rejecting those who they felt didn’t live up to their kind of definition of holiness, be they gay, lesbian, pregnant out of wedlock, divorced, or of a different race or ethnic group. Their vision of church was so radically different from the one I had when I began the church that I didn’t recognize that church as God’s church any longer. They called a meeting to censure me because according to them I wasn’t administering my pastorate in a biblical manner since I had officiated at the marriage of two formerly divorced persons. It was an angry, hostile group. There was no way I could win, so I got up and I walked out of that church and never went back. You and I owe it to ourselves to not stay in so-called Christian situations where people are twisting and breaking the Word of God into something God never intended and doesn’t desire. Rejection and hate are never part of God’s kind of love.
Several years later, following the failure of my own marriage for reasons other than my sexuality, I ultimately came out about who I truly was. And I found this wonderful denomination called Metropolitan Community Churches where I could be myself and could enjoy the company of others who felt about God’s kind of Love for all persons just like I did, and I could be a pastor again living my life with integrity and truth and love and hope.
We who are Queer have been excluded from communities because we haven’t fit their heterosexual norms. But we should ask ourselves the question today, “Have we excluded members of our own Queer community because they don’t fit our expectations of what it means to be Queer?” Are we doing the same thing to others that has been done to us? We need to seriously consider and answer this question if we are to truly become the New Community of God that welcomes and includes everyone.
God knows you and me more intimately than anyone else could ever know us. God’s love and knowledge of us is deeper and more profound than anyone else’s, including hometown family and friends, or even our own selves. This is what the Jeremiah scripture is trying to tell us today. When God called Jeremiah to be God’s prophet, Jeremiah responds a lot like you and me. “Oh, no God, you can’t possibly mean poor, little, pathetic me. Surely there is someone much better you could call upon to do your great and important work.” But God is insistent and tells Jeremiah that God knew Jeremiah before he was formed in his mother’s womb, long before he was born God had chosen and blessed Jeremiah with the abilities and skills to do exactly what God was calling him to do. God knows you and I better than anyone else knows us because God created us exactly the way we are. God knew us before we came to know ourselves. God is creatively present in our formation and our sexual orientation and our gender expression.
“One commentator I read this week (Allen) says that we are all OUT to God. God calls LGBT people from the very beginning and knows us in every moment. We are set apart by God and given the holy work of being fully ourselves. Sometimes just being who we are as LGBT people and witnessing to God's knowledge, love and acceptance of us in this world is our (holy work), our (divine) calling. Being known is like coming out—being out is being known.” (Out in Scripture).
We did not read it today, but Psalm 71 affirms that God who knows us chooses us to speak out God’s truth. God is our ever-present refuge from a world that shames us. God is our confidence in our weary fight against injustice. God is our stronghold in the climb over the seemingly unmovable rock of prejudice. (Out in Scripture)
How do we demonstrate God’s New Community to the world around us and welcome them into to celebrate the party with us? Paul tells us it is by loving others with God’s kind of love. It is a love that proclaims the good news of grace and acceptance, and it commands us to love God, and to love our neighbors as ourselves—to do justice and to love mercy. Now, lest you fear I am now going to preach on 1 Cor 13 also right now, I have good news for you. That is a sermon for another day.
Remember: No matter who you relate to this week, take a chance on Love. Be God’s light and love to the world by what you do and what you say. For Love, God’s kind of Love, is the more excellent way!
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
The Beautiful Body of Christ 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
The Beautiful Body of Christ
Read 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Paul actually begins his teachings about the church being the body of Christ back in Chapter 10 of 1 Corinthians when he writes: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. (1 Cor. 10:16-17).
You and I together make up the body of Christ present and powerful in Seattle. The church, the body of Christ in the world today isn’t about buildings and budgets or programs and promotions, no matter how important American society tends to make us believe in those things.
Several years ago I went to visit an historic church in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania while on leading a youth mission trip. It was a beautiful cathedral the sanctuary of which could sit more than 2,000. However, on the day we went to worship with them there were less than 100 pitifully gathered together at the front of that enormous canyon of a room. I asked how they could care for and support such a large facility with such a small congregation. “Oh,” they bragged, “We’ve got tens of millions of dollars invested and the interest alone keeps the church running and the building cared for. We could go on for a hundred years or more without ever passing the offering plate again.” I wondered if they even cared about anyone getting involved in volunteering to do ministry to anyone. They had become nothing but a building and a budget. Everywhere we went there were signs that said things like: “Don’t touch the fabrics.” “Stay on the marked pathway.” “No entrance to this area allowed.” “Restricted admission.” They weren’t a church any longer. They were a museum.
Truly being the church, the Body of Christ is about persons united in belief and faith, creating a bond of love with each other by serving Christ and serving each other through the talents, and abilities that God has given to each one of us and using those to the fullest extent possible for the development and growth of the New Community of God.
What unites us? The powerful presence of God, the Living Jesus Christ, whose Holy Spirit dwells within each one of us and connects us to all of the rest of us.
There were some obvious problems in the church at Corinth that Paul was addressing in his letters to them. These new first century Christians were trying to create and grow one of the first churches in the world. They were doing something that hadn’t been done before. Paul had to help them do a lot of course corrections as they drifted off the path of Christ and into selfish human behaviors.
Apparently some of them felt that they were more important than the other folk in the church because they had a unique talent or ability that others didn’t possess. It probably wouldn’t have been unusual to hear someone think or even say, “I’m a better Christian than you are because I’m a missionary,” or “I’m the best Christian because I’m a spiritual healer.”
This need to one-up everyone else caused some might big problems between people and pretty much took the focus of that congregation off of Christ as they got into some petty arguments with each other about who was going to rule over who and who was going to have the most important position of leadership in their church.
Leading up to Advent and Christmas this past year we took a Biblical journey to Jerusalem with Jesus and his disciples. Do you remember a similar situation where James and John wanted to Lord it over everyone else by asking Jesus to put them into the most important positions of leadership when he establishes his earthly kingdom. Their request upset the other disciples and created quite a scene that only ended when Jesus turned around to them and asked them, “Just what are you boys arguing about?”
Of course, James and John and the others didn’t understand that the New Community of God Jesus would establish wouldn’t be an earthly government with positions of authority and power but a spiritual community where each person was to become a servant to others.
Jesus said it this way, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” Or, in contemporary language, “If you want to be first in God’s New Community then you will have to go to the very end of the line.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t like going to the end of the line in any situation. In fact, at the grocery store I’ll even switch lanes if I think I can get a shorter line. However, when I do there is inevitably a problem at the checkout counter… “Price check in lane one!”…and the line I left behind a few moments ago because it was too long suddenly become the shorter line that I should have stayed in. Isn’t life ironic that way?
Paul extends Jesus’ teaching by telling us that we are all a part of the body of Christ, the New Community of God: No part of the body can say that it is the most important part, nor can it say it isn’t important, nor that other parts are more important than it is. The body of Christ needs every single part that God blesses the body with. Likewise as we grow our church, the New Community of God in Seattle, we need every single person that God blesses us with, no matter how different he or she might be from you and me.
It is very clear that Paul speaks about the health of us all being dependent upon our honoring and caring for each other. We all need each other, we all have something to give and we need to liberate ourselves from any barrier that we or society erects to keep us from achieving God’s goal.
Reading from the scriptures in Nazareth as he begins his ministry Jesus tells his hometown community that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him, to heal, to lift up, to open eyes and free the prisoners. These are the things that Jesus will do in his ministry and he will not allow anyone to keep him from accomplishing that ministry even when he takes the Good News to those who his hometown folk feel aren’t worthy to know or receive God’s love. Now Paul says that we are the body of Christ, but the question we have to ask ourselves is are we a courageous body? IF we know what it is to be the Body of Christ, that is, if we know what it is we should be doing, if we are listening to God’s Word, then are we brave enough to bring justice and mercy to all of those who live on the margins of society and in the shadows of our community? If we are to know God fully, then we must live justly, we must be involved in bringing into reality God’s just community. If the world is to know Jesus through us then we must be about the business of bringing the good news to everyone, not just to those who are like us, but those who are different from us, too. But to do that effectively, you and I must learn how to live together harmoniously within the church. We cannot take to the world what we aren’t living out and sharing with each other.
We don’t get to chose who is a part of the our New Community of God anymore than my leg got to chose to be a part of my body or could decide to go off by itself because it didn’t like my nose. I don’t like my nose, but I wouldn’t chose to live without it. My leg doesn’t get to decide such things anymore than you and I get to decide who belongs or doesn’t belong to our community of faith.
It is God who invites. It is God who welcomes. If God invites and welcomes then you and I must do the same to and for each other and for anyone that God sends our way. To do otherwise would be to go against God’s Will and God’s Way. It would mean becoming less than God intends for us to become.
Never forget that you and I together are the beautiful body of Christ.
Read 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
Paul actually begins his teachings about the church being the body of Christ back in Chapter 10 of 1 Corinthians when he writes: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. (1 Cor. 10:16-17).
You and I together make up the body of Christ present and powerful in Seattle. The church, the body of Christ in the world today isn’t about buildings and budgets or programs and promotions, no matter how important American society tends to make us believe in those things.
Several years ago I went to visit an historic church in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania while on leading a youth mission trip. It was a beautiful cathedral the sanctuary of which could sit more than 2,000. However, on the day we went to worship with them there were less than 100 pitifully gathered together at the front of that enormous canyon of a room. I asked how they could care for and support such a large facility with such a small congregation. “Oh,” they bragged, “We’ve got tens of millions of dollars invested and the interest alone keeps the church running and the building cared for. We could go on for a hundred years or more without ever passing the offering plate again.” I wondered if they even cared about anyone getting involved in volunteering to do ministry to anyone. They had become nothing but a building and a budget. Everywhere we went there were signs that said things like: “Don’t touch the fabrics.” “Stay on the marked pathway.” “No entrance to this area allowed.” “Restricted admission.” They weren’t a church any longer. They were a museum.
Truly being the church, the Body of Christ is about persons united in belief and faith, creating a bond of love with each other by serving Christ and serving each other through the talents, and abilities that God has given to each one of us and using those to the fullest extent possible for the development and growth of the New Community of God.
What unites us? The powerful presence of God, the Living Jesus Christ, whose Holy Spirit dwells within each one of us and connects us to all of the rest of us.
There were some obvious problems in the church at Corinth that Paul was addressing in his letters to them. These new first century Christians were trying to create and grow one of the first churches in the world. They were doing something that hadn’t been done before. Paul had to help them do a lot of course corrections as they drifted off the path of Christ and into selfish human behaviors.
Apparently some of them felt that they were more important than the other folk in the church because they had a unique talent or ability that others didn’t possess. It probably wouldn’t have been unusual to hear someone think or even say, “I’m a better Christian than you are because I’m a missionary,” or “I’m the best Christian because I’m a spiritual healer.”
This need to one-up everyone else caused some might big problems between people and pretty much took the focus of that congregation off of Christ as they got into some petty arguments with each other about who was going to rule over who and who was going to have the most important position of leadership in their church.
Leading up to Advent and Christmas this past year we took a Biblical journey to Jerusalem with Jesus and his disciples. Do you remember a similar situation where James and John wanted to Lord it over everyone else by asking Jesus to put them into the most important positions of leadership when he establishes his earthly kingdom. Their request upset the other disciples and created quite a scene that only ended when Jesus turned around to them and asked them, “Just what are you boys arguing about?”
Of course, James and John and the others didn’t understand that the New Community of God Jesus would establish wouldn’t be an earthly government with positions of authority and power but a spiritual community where each person was to become a servant to others.
Jesus said it this way, “The first shall be last and the last shall be first.” Or, in contemporary language, “If you want to be first in God’s New Community then you will have to go to the very end of the line.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t like going to the end of the line in any situation. In fact, at the grocery store I’ll even switch lanes if I think I can get a shorter line. However, when I do there is inevitably a problem at the checkout counter… “Price check in lane one!”…and the line I left behind a few moments ago because it was too long suddenly become the shorter line that I should have stayed in. Isn’t life ironic that way?
Paul extends Jesus’ teaching by telling us that we are all a part of the body of Christ, the New Community of God: No part of the body can say that it is the most important part, nor can it say it isn’t important, nor that other parts are more important than it is. The body of Christ needs every single part that God blesses the body with. Likewise as we grow our church, the New Community of God in Seattle, we need every single person that God blesses us with, no matter how different he or she might be from you and me.
It is very clear that Paul speaks about the health of us all being dependent upon our honoring and caring for each other. We all need each other, we all have something to give and we need to liberate ourselves from any barrier that we or society erects to keep us from achieving God’s goal.
Reading from the scriptures in Nazareth as he begins his ministry Jesus tells his hometown community that the Spirit of the Lord is upon him, to heal, to lift up, to open eyes and free the prisoners. These are the things that Jesus will do in his ministry and he will not allow anyone to keep him from accomplishing that ministry even when he takes the Good News to those who his hometown folk feel aren’t worthy to know or receive God’s love. Now Paul says that we are the body of Christ, but the question we have to ask ourselves is are we a courageous body? IF we know what it is to be the Body of Christ, that is, if we know what it is we should be doing, if we are listening to God’s Word, then are we brave enough to bring justice and mercy to all of those who live on the margins of society and in the shadows of our community? If we are to know God fully, then we must live justly, we must be involved in bringing into reality God’s just community. If the world is to know Jesus through us then we must be about the business of bringing the good news to everyone, not just to those who are like us, but those who are different from us, too. But to do that effectively, you and I must learn how to live together harmoniously within the church. We cannot take to the world what we aren’t living out and sharing with each other.
We don’t get to chose who is a part of the our New Community of God anymore than my leg got to chose to be a part of my body or could decide to go off by itself because it didn’t like my nose. I don’t like my nose, but I wouldn’t chose to live without it. My leg doesn’t get to decide such things anymore than you and I get to decide who belongs or doesn’t belong to our community of faith.
It is God who invites. It is God who welcomes. If God invites and welcomes then you and I must do the same to and for each other and for anyone that God sends our way. To do otherwise would be to go against God’s Will and God’s Way. It would mean becoming less than God intends for us to become.
Never forget that you and I together are the beautiful body of Christ.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Continuing the Dream: Martin Luther King Day 2010
It's very hard for me to accept the fact that I am almost 61 years old. I remember thinking as a ten year old child that when the new century rolled around I'd be 50 years old which to me at the time seemed like a very ancient age. Now 50 seems so young, and 60 isn't ancient at all. During the last six decades I have seen our nation come through many challenges that have literally changed the face of our society.
I remember the excitement at the election of John F. Kennedy as our president when I was in sixth grade. Our teacher brought a TV set into the classroom so we could watch the inauguration during class. That was quite an unheard of thing back then. I remember the fear that overcame us during the Cuban Missile Crisis and how groceries disappeared off the store shelves as people stocked up hoping to live through the nuclear nightmare that was expected to descend upon us. But mostly I remember the hope that Kennedy's presidency put in the hearts of so many that lived on the edges of society, hope for equality, hope for economic and social justice for all. Then as I sat in my high school language class the loud speaker suddenly blared with the radio news announcing that the President had been assassinated. All the dreams of a better life for the nation were shattered...or so we thought. But his death led to an enormous amount of legislation being passed that caused fundamental changes in how our nation took care of the elderly and the poor. His dream lived on.
When I entered college, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was constantly in the news bringing his non-violence campaign to cities and states across our nation to realize equal rights and justice for all people. His prophetic style of preaching and his eloquent manner of casting a dream of a possible future of justice, peace, and harmony for all peoples filled us with visions of the dawning of a new age of hope. But as I sat watching TV in the living room of a student religious organization we learned that Dr. King had just been gunned down. All the dreams of a better life for the nation were shattered...or so we thought. But his martyrdom led to the passage of many laws enhancing the civil rights and liberties of all peoples. His dream lived on.
A few months later I worked as a volunteer on the campaign of Senator Robert Kennedy who was running for the presidency. It was an exciting time as we chalked up on our homemade charts the progress he was making in winning the democratic nomination. Then as we watched the events unfolding after the California primary election we were grieved to discover that Robert Kennedy had been gunned down. Again our dreams of a better life for the nation were shattered...or so we thought. Again his death caused actions and reactions that led to better laws and better life for many. His dream lived on.
Sure the years following their deaths were filled with strife as a nation argued over what was the best course of action to take to achieve the dreams of those three men and others like them. But we saw a great change in our society, a change that wouldn't have happened if they hadn't shared their individual dreams with all of us. We caught those dreams and they became our own dreams and we put those dreams into action and brought them to reality.
American society is so very different now, changed for the better in so many ways. I can see it, for I have lived through it. I remember drinking fountains and bathrooms with signs over them saying, "Whites only." I remember restaurants with signs on the doors that said, "No blacks allowed." It was a very different country then. I'm glad it has changed for I didn't much like seeing friends scorned and rejected simply because of the color of their skin.
Sure we have great problems still. Many old prejudices still exist. I hear it when I'm at work and someone says, "What do you expect from them? They're foreigners." "No," I correct them, "they're Americans. Just like you."
We elected a President last year whose skin color would have prevented him from being nominated much less elected 40 years ago when Martin Luther King first gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. But his words have echoed down the years and filled the hearts and minds of so many that we can now claim to have heard the dream and acted on the dream in so many different ways that we can celebrate the hope-filled presidency of President Barack Obama. Sure there are those who will not accept his leadership and will fight against any kind of progress he hopes to legislate. There will always be dream killers amongst us.
But as long as you and I continue to dream the dreams of John and Martin and Robert and work to bring those dreams into reality, then hope remains for a better world to be born. One in which the hoped for jubilee of God's new community where all are welcomed, all are accepted, all are included lives on...eternally.
I remember the excitement at the election of John F. Kennedy as our president when I was in sixth grade. Our teacher brought a TV set into the classroom so we could watch the inauguration during class. That was quite an unheard of thing back then. I remember the fear that overcame us during the Cuban Missile Crisis and how groceries disappeared off the store shelves as people stocked up hoping to live through the nuclear nightmare that was expected to descend upon us. But mostly I remember the hope that Kennedy's presidency put in the hearts of so many that lived on the edges of society, hope for equality, hope for economic and social justice for all. Then as I sat in my high school language class the loud speaker suddenly blared with the radio news announcing that the President had been assassinated. All the dreams of a better life for the nation were shattered...or so we thought. But his death led to an enormous amount of legislation being passed that caused fundamental changes in how our nation took care of the elderly and the poor. His dream lived on.
When I entered college, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was constantly in the news bringing his non-violence campaign to cities and states across our nation to realize equal rights and justice for all people. His prophetic style of preaching and his eloquent manner of casting a dream of a possible future of justice, peace, and harmony for all peoples filled us with visions of the dawning of a new age of hope. But as I sat watching TV in the living room of a student religious organization we learned that Dr. King had just been gunned down. All the dreams of a better life for the nation were shattered...or so we thought. But his martyrdom led to the passage of many laws enhancing the civil rights and liberties of all peoples. His dream lived on.
A few months later I worked as a volunteer on the campaign of Senator Robert Kennedy who was running for the presidency. It was an exciting time as we chalked up on our homemade charts the progress he was making in winning the democratic nomination. Then as we watched the events unfolding after the California primary election we were grieved to discover that Robert Kennedy had been gunned down. Again our dreams of a better life for the nation were shattered...or so we thought. Again his death caused actions and reactions that led to better laws and better life for many. His dream lived on.
Sure the years following their deaths were filled with strife as a nation argued over what was the best course of action to take to achieve the dreams of those three men and others like them. But we saw a great change in our society, a change that wouldn't have happened if they hadn't shared their individual dreams with all of us. We caught those dreams and they became our own dreams and we put those dreams into action and brought them to reality.
American society is so very different now, changed for the better in so many ways. I can see it, for I have lived through it. I remember drinking fountains and bathrooms with signs over them saying, "Whites only." I remember restaurants with signs on the doors that said, "No blacks allowed." It was a very different country then. I'm glad it has changed for I didn't much like seeing friends scorned and rejected simply because of the color of their skin.
Sure we have great problems still. Many old prejudices still exist. I hear it when I'm at work and someone says, "What do you expect from them? They're foreigners." "No," I correct them, "they're Americans. Just like you."
We elected a President last year whose skin color would have prevented him from being nominated much less elected 40 years ago when Martin Luther King first gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. But his words have echoed down the years and filled the hearts and minds of so many that we can now claim to have heard the dream and acted on the dream in so many different ways that we can celebrate the hope-filled presidency of President Barack Obama. Sure there are those who will not accept his leadership and will fight against any kind of progress he hopes to legislate. There will always be dream killers amongst us.
But as long as you and I continue to dream the dreams of John and Martin and Robert and work to bring those dreams into reality, then hope remains for a better world to be born. One in which the hoped for jubilee of God's new community where all are welcomed, all are accepted, all are included lives on...eternally.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Rise and Shine! Epiphany1C
“Rise & Shine” for Sunday, Jan. 10, 2010 (Epiphany 1C)
Scriptures: Matthew 2:1-12, Ephesians 3:1-12, Psalm 72:1+7, 10-11, Isaiah 60
Sing: “Rise and Shine and give God the glory, glory. Rise and Shine and give God the glory, glory. Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory. Children of the Lord.”
Such went the chorus of a song I used to sing for and with the children of a church camp I directed in Wisconsin in the mid-1980’s as we gathered for breakfast each day. I wanted the children and their leaders to truly give God the credit for everything that God had provided and blessed them with and to also see themselves as gifts from God living to bless each other.
Today we celebrate Epiphany. Oh, yeah, you might say to yourself, that’s the day the Magi came to worship the infant Jesus and to give their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Yes, that’s right, but it’s so much more than that. Epiphany means the appearance or revelation of something.
In literature, however, an epiphany is usually used to refer to the appearance of a divine being or the revelation of a basic truth about something. It is associated with light, as if a switch were tripped and the flood lights of realization suddenly came on about something or someone so that you immediately came to know the truth about the person or thing. And that truth may not be what we thought it would be. That truth might just twist our expectations.
Think about it. The Magi weren’t Kings, that’s a tradition that got started when someone read the Psalm today and decided that the Kings who would pay tribute to the Annointed One of God had to be the Magi that came to worship the infant Jesus. Matthew doesn’t write the story that way, but it didn’t stop us from creating many versions of the story of the Wise Men also known as the Three Kings.
There probably weren’t three of them, we get that from the number of gifts they bring. Some Christian traditions have as many as 12 coming to worship Christ. In fact Matthew’s word of these persons probably means priests or astrologists from the region of Iraq, most likely Zoriastrian priests or philosophers, if you will, those who study the stars and planets for religious or spiritual interpretations, a career that the Old Testament Law prohibited. Not only were these persons foreigners, they weren’t even believers in God, but they knew what the Jewish scriptures had to say and they realized that something had happened and they wanted to be in on it. They came to Jerusalem to find and pay homage to the new King of the Jews.
When they inquire at the palace in Jerusalem King Herod knows nothing about this new born king. Whoops. In fact, such a birth would be politically threatening to him and he would want to know who was claiming his throne even before he had even died. Herod was known to be a little angry whenever he suspected anyone of trying to take over his throne. He had killed many in his own family who he suspected rightly or wrongly of such behavior including a wife, a mother in law, and his own sons. Do you think he would spare a cute little baby?
Herod asks his religious advisers, the priests of the temple, to tell him where the baby would be born. Why, in Bethlehem of Judea, the city of King David, they tell him, every Jew knows that. So he sends the Magi off to Bethlehem to find this new king and, oh, by the way, bring back the good news to me before you go home, so I can go and worship him. Wink. Wink. Herod has no intention of worshipping this usurper of his throne.
I imagine the Magi have their own version of CSI to play out as they try to find the Christ child. By now Mary and Joe have moved into better living accommodations and Joe is working in the local carpentry trade. The Magi ask around about a baby born under unusual circumstances. Perhaps people think and then remember that a bunch of seemingly drunken shepherds were racing about town one night a couple of years ago crazily going on about angels and a new king being born in a barn. But nobody paid much attention to them then. Perhaps the Magi even went and interviewed the shepherds. Wouldn’t you like to see that on an episode of CSI! Eventually the Magi find Mary and Joe and Matthew tells us that they worship him. What you say? I don’t get it, unbelievers, non-Jews, worshipping God in Christ? Yes, that’s what the prophet predicted would happen. That’s what Matthew wrote down to prove to his Jewish readers that Jesus was the Christ, their expected Messiah.
Today we celebrate the Epiphany of Jesus who comes as the Light of the World and to whom the entire world will come and adore. The Magi were the first of the world’s people to realize this and to come to worship Christ, Immanuel, God with Us.
God wanted Israel, the children of Judah, to know that they were blessed because God had chosen them to be a blessing to the world. Through them, the prophet said, that the world would come to know God. Upon the arrival of God’s anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ, the new leader of Judah, upon them would come a great homecoming to which all the peoples of the world would stream into Jerusalem to worship God. This would be a great pouring out of God’s Love for all peoples no matter who they were. None were to be excluded from this great gathering in to God’s self all of God’s human creation.
The Prophet says, “Arise, Shine, for your light has come, and the glory of God rises upon you.” The prophet is describing a picture of a dark and hopeless night that has finally come to an end with the flashing brilliance of the dazzling hope of God’s Presence and Power dawning brightly upon God’s people who had given up all hope of ever being freed from their oppression and slavery in Babylonian exile. Written hundreds of years before the birth of Christ these passages and similar ones were claimed by the infant church in the first century after Christ’s resurrection to represent the realization of the hope of the ages: God has stepped in human form into the world and brought God’s peace, love, and justice to all people, but especially to those who previously had been rejected by society and cast off as unimportant and useless.
With the advent of Jesus Christ God says to each one of us: “The world is wrong about you. You are important because you are loved by me. You are blessed because I love you. You are good and worthy because I care about you. I created you just as you are. I love you exactly the way I created you.”
There is a tension in the Old Testament scriptures that cannot be denied. On one hand the children of God are told that they are to be a blessing to the world, that through them the entire world will come to know the love of God and will experience in to a fabulous party of celebration and joy to which the world has been invited to attend.
However, the Children of God, Israel, came to see themselves as the blessed ones but forgot that they were suppose to be a blessing to others, ushering in a new world order in which all peoples would exist peacefully with each other, a world in which no one would be excluded and no one would suffer injustice or harm. But, instead, they came to see themselves as especially blessed by God above all others and therefore they believed themselves to be better than anyone else and because of that they decided they should keep themselves pure and separate from everyone else, including even their own family members who might be born differently a-bled or injured or ill. Anything that kept you from being perceived as a perfect human specimen was to them evidence that you were not acceptable to God, someone who deserved to be excluded from God’s presence and therefore from their presence, too.
Shannon shared with us a wonderful passage from Isaiah two weeks ago from Isaiah 56:3-5: “Let no foreigner who has bound himself to God say, "God will surely exclude me from God’s people." And let not any eunuch complain, "I am only a dry tree." For this is what God says: "To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant, to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.” This passage full of hope for you and me who were created to be differently oriented sexually and differently gendered, is in direct conflict with other passages that told the people of Israel to exclude the eunuch, anyone who was sexually different than they thought everyone should be, those who were outside of the acceptable boundaries of behavior and existence from their midst, and especially from the worship of God.
Some of us have experience the modern day equivalent of this kind of misinterpretation of the scriptures and have found ourselves excluded from the religious communities of our formative faith when we came out as Queer, as differently oriented sexually or differently gendered. We found out that the ancient exclusion of those who were not acceptable to the religious leaders of Israel had become the modern day exclusion of those who were unacceptable to the Fundamentalist Religious Right who claim that they must exclude us and others in order to keep their faith pure and themselves holy.
We often wonder how the Spanish conquistadors in the new world, who were suppose to be Christian, could so brutally murder so many Native Americans. Because their religion told them that the Native Americans weren’t even human and had no souls. Killing a Native American, according to their religious leaders at the time, was of no more concern than killing a bothersome animal or insect.
One conquistador wrote in his diary after shooting a Native American and watching him die these words: “He suffered just like a Christian would suffer.” He realized that the man he had just killed was a person just like himself regardless of what he had been told by his faith leaders.
Those who would exclude you and me and others from their faith and from their God fail to see us as being Christian or even human at times. Mostly they fail to see that it is they themselves who are failing God, God who rejects no one and includes everyone even those who are different from ourselves. Like Martin Luther King, who shaped much of my thought and theology, before and after he died a martyr to our faith in God, I came to see that we cannot exclude anyone in the name of God, because in Christ Jesus God has chosen to include everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, politics, or even religious faith.
Nor was the new Christian church above this kind of exclusionary thinking using such logic to even exclude their own fellow members. Paul writes to the Ephesians, just like he had to do with the Corinthians for the same reason, because they are letting strife and bad attitudes destroy that new congregation as people begin to tell each other: “I’m better than you are. God loves me more than God loves you.”
They were literally fighting over who had the most important spiritual gifts for ministry. Who was God blessing better and bigger than anyone else was being blessed? Who was a real Christian? “I am,” one claims, “because I have the gift of speaking in tongues.” “No,” another would cry, “I am the best Christian because I have the gift of interpreting tongues.” “Not so fast,” another would cry, “it’s me, I’m the best Christian because I can heal with my touch.”
Paul tells them that they are all members of the body of Christ and that God pours out God’s blessings upon the Body of Christ, the Church, because God wants all the members of Christ’s body to work together in harmony. No one is better than anyone else. All are needed, whether Gentile or Jew, male or female, no matter what your economic status or political beliefs, you are all a part of the Body of Christ, so start acting like it, by letting the Spirit of God unite you into a peaceful, harmonious, reconciling community where no one Lords it over anyone else.
We, too, like the ancient Children of Israel, or the Christians of first Century Ephesus, can let ourselves get sidetracked and spend our time arguing about how you believe I’m not being the kind of Christian leader I should be, while I spend my time telling you your faults as a Christian. We won’t accomplish much in the way of building a church or reaching Seattle with the Light and Love of God.
It happens to churches all the time. Good growing churches that are truly connecting to the greater community around them often let themselves get sidetracked by internal issues and personalities. They forget to keep their eye on God and let their focus wander to less important things.
MCC Seattle has come through an exciting year of beginning again, of starting over. I’ve been with you as your residential pastor now for some ten months and we have seen our ministry extend into the community touching lives in ways we are only now beginning to realize. Whenever we make contact with one person we explode the possibilities of making contact with others through them.
I read some interesting posts on the internet this week talking about MCC as a denomination and how, in one person’s opinion, it is our liturgy, how we worship that makes and breaks us as a church. Well, I’ve got some news for that preacher, “Building a church is all about building relationships.” People don’t really come to church to worship God because of the liturgy; so much as they come to church to build meaningful friendships with God’s people. Researchers have known this to be true for many years even though churches and church people want to think otherwise.
Most people come to church because they are lonely and they want to fill the void in their lives with new friends with whom they can share something in common. Hopefully, they think, they will be able to find that kind of friendship much easier in church than anywhere else. I pray they are right about MCC Seattle.
Sometimes, however, we church folk tend to concentrate on the wrong things. I remember the first church I served full-time after completing seminary. On one particular morning I had spent the hour and a half before worship visiting adult and youth and children Bible Study classrooms. I greeted visitors and members building relationships and saying hello to folks I’d only spoken to on the phone or sent invitations to in the mail, or met while visiting them in their home and now they were coming to church.
Over a six month period of time we had added over 100 to the Bible study membership, increased attendance in Bible study and worship significantly, and added more than 50 new members to the church, because we had realized that we needed to build friendships and community with persons in uniquely different ways than that church had been doing. And the changes were producing growth. A twenty year decline in attendance and membership had been reversed in six short months.
But when I walked into the worship service that morning having just welcomed some first time families to worship and helping them take their infant children to the nursery and then ushering them to seats and introducing them to several people, I sat down next to the guest speaker who leaned over to me and said as the organ prelude began, “Just where is your Bible, young man?”
Mind you, there were Bibles available in the pews for anyone to use, but this guest minister decided to make an example of me because I didn’t have a Bible with me that he could see. I had laid my Bible down accidentally in the nursery when I had helped a young mother get her child comfortable before she left for worship. I tried to explain, but he wouldn’t accept my explanation and he proceed to get up to speak, pointed directly at me said, “I just can’t believe that a minister of the Word of God would come into a worship service without bringing the Word of God with him. I hope, Ray, this is the last time we see you without the Sword of the Lord in your hands.”
I wasn’t humiliated by the fact that I did not have my Bible with me. I was humiliated by the fact that this man thought that simply by carrying a Bible with me where others could see it that I would somehow be more able to carry out the work God had called me to do. I truly do think it is more important to ‘carry’ the Word in my mind and in my heart than to have a book in my hands. In fact, I usually need my hands to actually do the Word…kind acts of mercy and encouragement to others.
We all come to church with our own ideas of what it means to serve God, to be God’s servant. But let us remember that just because someone does things differently from us does not mean that he or she is not serving God. They are simply serving God differently than we serve God. Let us look to the results that are evident in the other person’s life and in the lives of others to whom that person shares his or her understanding of God by what he or she does and says to truly build the new community of God.
It is so easy for us to criticize others, to fail to see beyond the issue that has captured our attention for the moment, be it the fact that someone isn’t carrying a Bible, or the fact that he or she isn’t acting exactly like we believe a Christian should act and speak. Thank God that God created a world full of variety and diversity. Let’s try to allow God to bless MCC Seattle with as much human variety and diversity as God wants to give us. Then, let’s remember to celebrate God’s presence in ourselves and in others together in joyful praise and worship!
But most importantly on this Epiphany Sunday, let us remember that God blessed us so that we can become a blessing to others by sharing with them the light and love of God in Jesus Christ. Rise and shine this week and turn on the light switch in someone else’s life this week by being Christ to them.
Scriptures: Matthew 2:1-12, Ephesians 3:1-12, Psalm 72:1+7, 10-11, Isaiah 60
Sing: “Rise and Shine and give God the glory, glory. Rise and Shine and give God the glory, glory. Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory. Children of the Lord.”
Such went the chorus of a song I used to sing for and with the children of a church camp I directed in Wisconsin in the mid-1980’s as we gathered for breakfast each day. I wanted the children and their leaders to truly give God the credit for everything that God had provided and blessed them with and to also see themselves as gifts from God living to bless each other.
Today we celebrate Epiphany. Oh, yeah, you might say to yourself, that’s the day the Magi came to worship the infant Jesus and to give their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Yes, that’s right, but it’s so much more than that. Epiphany means the appearance or revelation of something.
In literature, however, an epiphany is usually used to refer to the appearance of a divine being or the revelation of a basic truth about something. It is associated with light, as if a switch were tripped and the flood lights of realization suddenly came on about something or someone so that you immediately came to know the truth about the person or thing. And that truth may not be what we thought it would be. That truth might just twist our expectations.
Think about it. The Magi weren’t Kings, that’s a tradition that got started when someone read the Psalm today and decided that the Kings who would pay tribute to the Annointed One of God had to be the Magi that came to worship the infant Jesus. Matthew doesn’t write the story that way, but it didn’t stop us from creating many versions of the story of the Wise Men also known as the Three Kings.
There probably weren’t three of them, we get that from the number of gifts they bring. Some Christian traditions have as many as 12 coming to worship Christ. In fact Matthew’s word of these persons probably means priests or astrologists from the region of Iraq, most likely Zoriastrian priests or philosophers, if you will, those who study the stars and planets for religious or spiritual interpretations, a career that the Old Testament Law prohibited. Not only were these persons foreigners, they weren’t even believers in God, but they knew what the Jewish scriptures had to say and they realized that something had happened and they wanted to be in on it. They came to Jerusalem to find and pay homage to the new King of the Jews.
When they inquire at the palace in Jerusalem King Herod knows nothing about this new born king. Whoops. In fact, such a birth would be politically threatening to him and he would want to know who was claiming his throne even before he had even died. Herod was known to be a little angry whenever he suspected anyone of trying to take over his throne. He had killed many in his own family who he suspected rightly or wrongly of such behavior including a wife, a mother in law, and his own sons. Do you think he would spare a cute little baby?
Herod asks his religious advisers, the priests of the temple, to tell him where the baby would be born. Why, in Bethlehem of Judea, the city of King David, they tell him, every Jew knows that. So he sends the Magi off to Bethlehem to find this new king and, oh, by the way, bring back the good news to me before you go home, so I can go and worship him. Wink. Wink. Herod has no intention of worshipping this usurper of his throne.
I imagine the Magi have their own version of CSI to play out as they try to find the Christ child. By now Mary and Joe have moved into better living accommodations and Joe is working in the local carpentry trade. The Magi ask around about a baby born under unusual circumstances. Perhaps people think and then remember that a bunch of seemingly drunken shepherds were racing about town one night a couple of years ago crazily going on about angels and a new king being born in a barn. But nobody paid much attention to them then. Perhaps the Magi even went and interviewed the shepherds. Wouldn’t you like to see that on an episode of CSI! Eventually the Magi find Mary and Joe and Matthew tells us that they worship him. What you say? I don’t get it, unbelievers, non-Jews, worshipping God in Christ? Yes, that’s what the prophet predicted would happen. That’s what Matthew wrote down to prove to his Jewish readers that Jesus was the Christ, their expected Messiah.
Today we celebrate the Epiphany of Jesus who comes as the Light of the World and to whom the entire world will come and adore. The Magi were the first of the world’s people to realize this and to come to worship Christ, Immanuel, God with Us.
God wanted Israel, the children of Judah, to know that they were blessed because God had chosen them to be a blessing to the world. Through them, the prophet said, that the world would come to know God. Upon the arrival of God’s anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ, the new leader of Judah, upon them would come a great homecoming to which all the peoples of the world would stream into Jerusalem to worship God. This would be a great pouring out of God’s Love for all peoples no matter who they were. None were to be excluded from this great gathering in to God’s self all of God’s human creation.
The Prophet says, “Arise, Shine, for your light has come, and the glory of God rises upon you.” The prophet is describing a picture of a dark and hopeless night that has finally come to an end with the flashing brilliance of the dazzling hope of God’s Presence and Power dawning brightly upon God’s people who had given up all hope of ever being freed from their oppression and slavery in Babylonian exile. Written hundreds of years before the birth of Christ these passages and similar ones were claimed by the infant church in the first century after Christ’s resurrection to represent the realization of the hope of the ages: God has stepped in human form into the world and brought God’s peace, love, and justice to all people, but especially to those who previously had been rejected by society and cast off as unimportant and useless.
With the advent of Jesus Christ God says to each one of us: “The world is wrong about you. You are important because you are loved by me. You are blessed because I love you. You are good and worthy because I care about you. I created you just as you are. I love you exactly the way I created you.”
There is a tension in the Old Testament scriptures that cannot be denied. On one hand the children of God are told that they are to be a blessing to the world, that through them the entire world will come to know the love of God and will experience in to a fabulous party of celebration and joy to which the world has been invited to attend.
However, the Children of God, Israel, came to see themselves as the blessed ones but forgot that they were suppose to be a blessing to others, ushering in a new world order in which all peoples would exist peacefully with each other, a world in which no one would be excluded and no one would suffer injustice or harm. But, instead, they came to see themselves as especially blessed by God above all others and therefore they believed themselves to be better than anyone else and because of that they decided they should keep themselves pure and separate from everyone else, including even their own family members who might be born differently a-bled or injured or ill. Anything that kept you from being perceived as a perfect human specimen was to them evidence that you were not acceptable to God, someone who deserved to be excluded from God’s presence and therefore from their presence, too.
Shannon shared with us a wonderful passage from Isaiah two weeks ago from Isaiah 56:3-5: “Let no foreigner who has bound himself to God say, "God will surely exclude me from God’s people." And let not any eunuch complain, "I am only a dry tree." For this is what God says: "To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant, to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.” This passage full of hope for you and me who were created to be differently oriented sexually and differently gendered, is in direct conflict with other passages that told the people of Israel to exclude the eunuch, anyone who was sexually different than they thought everyone should be, those who were outside of the acceptable boundaries of behavior and existence from their midst, and especially from the worship of God.
Some of us have experience the modern day equivalent of this kind of misinterpretation of the scriptures and have found ourselves excluded from the religious communities of our formative faith when we came out as Queer, as differently oriented sexually or differently gendered. We found out that the ancient exclusion of those who were not acceptable to the religious leaders of Israel had become the modern day exclusion of those who were unacceptable to the Fundamentalist Religious Right who claim that they must exclude us and others in order to keep their faith pure and themselves holy.
We often wonder how the Spanish conquistadors in the new world, who were suppose to be Christian, could so brutally murder so many Native Americans. Because their religion told them that the Native Americans weren’t even human and had no souls. Killing a Native American, according to their religious leaders at the time, was of no more concern than killing a bothersome animal or insect.
One conquistador wrote in his diary after shooting a Native American and watching him die these words: “He suffered just like a Christian would suffer.” He realized that the man he had just killed was a person just like himself regardless of what he had been told by his faith leaders.
Those who would exclude you and me and others from their faith and from their God fail to see us as being Christian or even human at times. Mostly they fail to see that it is they themselves who are failing God, God who rejects no one and includes everyone even those who are different from ourselves. Like Martin Luther King, who shaped much of my thought and theology, before and after he died a martyr to our faith in God, I came to see that we cannot exclude anyone in the name of God, because in Christ Jesus God has chosen to include everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, politics, or even religious faith.
Nor was the new Christian church above this kind of exclusionary thinking using such logic to even exclude their own fellow members. Paul writes to the Ephesians, just like he had to do with the Corinthians for the same reason, because they are letting strife and bad attitudes destroy that new congregation as people begin to tell each other: “I’m better than you are. God loves me more than God loves you.”
They were literally fighting over who had the most important spiritual gifts for ministry. Who was God blessing better and bigger than anyone else was being blessed? Who was a real Christian? “I am,” one claims, “because I have the gift of speaking in tongues.” “No,” another would cry, “I am the best Christian because I have the gift of interpreting tongues.” “Not so fast,” another would cry, “it’s me, I’m the best Christian because I can heal with my touch.”
Paul tells them that they are all members of the body of Christ and that God pours out God’s blessings upon the Body of Christ, the Church, because God wants all the members of Christ’s body to work together in harmony. No one is better than anyone else. All are needed, whether Gentile or Jew, male or female, no matter what your economic status or political beliefs, you are all a part of the Body of Christ, so start acting like it, by letting the Spirit of God unite you into a peaceful, harmonious, reconciling community where no one Lords it over anyone else.
We, too, like the ancient Children of Israel, or the Christians of first Century Ephesus, can let ourselves get sidetracked and spend our time arguing about how you believe I’m not being the kind of Christian leader I should be, while I spend my time telling you your faults as a Christian. We won’t accomplish much in the way of building a church or reaching Seattle with the Light and Love of God.
It happens to churches all the time. Good growing churches that are truly connecting to the greater community around them often let themselves get sidetracked by internal issues and personalities. They forget to keep their eye on God and let their focus wander to less important things.
MCC Seattle has come through an exciting year of beginning again, of starting over. I’ve been with you as your residential pastor now for some ten months and we have seen our ministry extend into the community touching lives in ways we are only now beginning to realize. Whenever we make contact with one person we explode the possibilities of making contact with others through them.
I read some interesting posts on the internet this week talking about MCC as a denomination and how, in one person’s opinion, it is our liturgy, how we worship that makes and breaks us as a church. Well, I’ve got some news for that preacher, “Building a church is all about building relationships.” People don’t really come to church to worship God because of the liturgy; so much as they come to church to build meaningful friendships with God’s people. Researchers have known this to be true for many years even though churches and church people want to think otherwise.
Most people come to church because they are lonely and they want to fill the void in their lives with new friends with whom they can share something in common. Hopefully, they think, they will be able to find that kind of friendship much easier in church than anywhere else. I pray they are right about MCC Seattle.
Sometimes, however, we church folk tend to concentrate on the wrong things. I remember the first church I served full-time after completing seminary. On one particular morning I had spent the hour and a half before worship visiting adult and youth and children Bible Study classrooms. I greeted visitors and members building relationships and saying hello to folks I’d only spoken to on the phone or sent invitations to in the mail, or met while visiting them in their home and now they were coming to church.
Over a six month period of time we had added over 100 to the Bible study membership, increased attendance in Bible study and worship significantly, and added more than 50 new members to the church, because we had realized that we needed to build friendships and community with persons in uniquely different ways than that church had been doing. And the changes were producing growth. A twenty year decline in attendance and membership had been reversed in six short months.
But when I walked into the worship service that morning having just welcomed some first time families to worship and helping them take their infant children to the nursery and then ushering them to seats and introducing them to several people, I sat down next to the guest speaker who leaned over to me and said as the organ prelude began, “Just where is your Bible, young man?”
Mind you, there were Bibles available in the pews for anyone to use, but this guest minister decided to make an example of me because I didn’t have a Bible with me that he could see. I had laid my Bible down accidentally in the nursery when I had helped a young mother get her child comfortable before she left for worship. I tried to explain, but he wouldn’t accept my explanation and he proceed to get up to speak, pointed directly at me said, “I just can’t believe that a minister of the Word of God would come into a worship service without bringing the Word of God with him. I hope, Ray, this is the last time we see you without the Sword of the Lord in your hands.”
I wasn’t humiliated by the fact that I did not have my Bible with me. I was humiliated by the fact that this man thought that simply by carrying a Bible with me where others could see it that I would somehow be more able to carry out the work God had called me to do. I truly do think it is more important to ‘carry’ the Word in my mind and in my heart than to have a book in my hands. In fact, I usually need my hands to actually do the Word…kind acts of mercy and encouragement to others.
We all come to church with our own ideas of what it means to serve God, to be God’s servant. But let us remember that just because someone does things differently from us does not mean that he or she is not serving God. They are simply serving God differently than we serve God. Let us look to the results that are evident in the other person’s life and in the lives of others to whom that person shares his or her understanding of God by what he or she does and says to truly build the new community of God.
It is so easy for us to criticize others, to fail to see beyond the issue that has captured our attention for the moment, be it the fact that someone isn’t carrying a Bible, or the fact that he or she isn’t acting exactly like we believe a Christian should act and speak. Thank God that God created a world full of variety and diversity. Let’s try to allow God to bless MCC Seattle with as much human variety and diversity as God wants to give us. Then, let’s remember to celebrate God’s presence in ourselves and in others together in joyful praise and worship!
But most importantly on this Epiphany Sunday, let us remember that God blessed us so that we can become a blessing to others by sharing with them the light and love of God in Jesus Christ. Rise and shine this week and turn on the light switch in someone else’s life this week by being Christ to them.
Singing With Mary, Christmas 2009
From Christmas Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009 at MCC Seattle
We are given two noteworthy passages to focus our Advent attention on this week (Luke 1:39-55 and Micah 5:2-5a). Both of the passages tell us about a Great Reversal, that is, an unexpected turn of events that we can truthfully say could only be caused by God because…this isn’t the way that things normally work in our world. We begin with the Micah passage in which the prophet foretells of the birth of a Savior, of a new King for Israel, who will be like his ancestor King David, who will bring those who have been exiled back home. This is the same passage that King Herod’s scribes quote as evidence that the messiah is to be born in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:5-6) when the Magi from the East come to Jerusalem expecting to find a new king of the Jews.
The references to David are obvious. Bethlehem was the birthplace of David, Israel’s most famous ruler who also was a shepherd. This was probably not a prophesy about Jesus, but the infant church saw this passage exactly that way and claimed it for their own. Bethlehem was not thought of as an important city, being on the outskirts of the politically and religiously important Jerusalem. Historically it was the home of the smallest, the littlest, the most inconsequential tribe of Israel. References to Bethlehem are used to describe one who was younger, of lesser social status or of little political power.
However, we know that Jacob, Joseph, and David were all younger brothers who were chosen over their older siblings to become leaders, and who were honored by the rest of Israel throughout its history. They are examples of the Great Reversal. Jacob gets the birthright over his brother Esau. Joseph is elevated above his older brothers and becomes the one who saves all of his people and also all of Egypt from starvation.
When Samuel comes to look over the sons of Jesse, seeking to annoint a new King, David is so insignificant that his father doesn’t even call him in from the fields until Samuel has rejected all of his siblings and asks if there aren’t more sons. Then David, the youngest and most insignificant son, is brought back from the fields where he was caring for the sheep, and Samuel anoints him. David later becomes Israel’s greatest King.
"But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the littlest clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days" (Micah 5:2). The most unlikely, the most insignificant are exalted by God in a great reversal of fortune.
Bethlehem, literally, “The house of bread,” was a backwater village located some 8 miles outside of the walls of Jerusalem. One who comes from Bethlehem cannot be expected to amount to much similar to Nathanael's statement when he hears about Jesus, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:46).
Can anything good come out of Nazareth, or Bethlehem? And yet, in the case of Bethlehem and those who come from her, the old biblical pattern holds true: the insignificant are exalted. The tables are turned, and the most unlikely of people become instruments of God's salvation. From this insignificant little village, a young shepherd boy grows up to become the most beloved king in Israel's history. And a descendant of that king, also born in Bethlehem, fulfills God's long-awaited promises of deliverance, not just for Israel, but for the whole world.
It is not the way of the world, this exaltation of the lowliest. But it is the way God works, over and over and over again throughout history. An insignificant village. A child born to a poor, very young unmarried girl. In today’s second passage it is Mary, who sings a song of the Great Reversal.
Mary rejoices in the promise that the proud will be scattered, the powerful dethroned, the poor raised up, the hungry fed, and the rich emptied. Mary sings out of her own experience, her own hope, but out of the experience and hope of her people as well.
The Magnificat, Mary’s Song, is indeed a lovely expression of joy at God's promises kept, a celebration of the tables being turned, or overturned: the lowly are lifted up, the proud are brought down, and the hungry are fed. God remembers the people of Israel, and the promises God has made to them. What a powerful text for every heart hungry to hear the good news that God is with us: Emmanuel!
In this week's unique situation, we have, in a sense, four unlikely prophets gathered not in the wilderness but on the front step of Elizabeth's home, two of them not even born yet, and still the infant John is already able to acknowledge the One who is greater by leaping inside his mother’s womb. The other two prophets are women, women with names and stories, women with voices and something to say, or in Mary's case, something to sing.
Women and babies: were definitely not at "the top of the heap," here, especially so, since there's an actual priest in the house, Zechariah, a professional, licensed and learned, knows-what-he's-doing expert in matters of faith. Ironically, though, Zechariah is the very one in this scene without a voice, literally, since he's been struck speechless during his own angelic visit for his disbelief and lack of faith. The stage is set this week, then, for us to have the rare opportunity to hear from the women and children for a change. And what a change they dream of!
This rejoicing in the Great Reversal is of course a powerful theme in the whole prophetic tradition, and is the more particularly connected with the Song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2:1-10, Hannah’s song of vindication and joy at the conception of Samuel when she has been barren for so long. And it was Samuel who set the pattern of relations between prophets and kings that more or less defined the prophet’s role for centuries. Mary’s song echoes this prophetic tradition powerfully, and at the same time looks forward to the role she will play in God’s mercy being shown to generations “from now on”: because “the Mighty One has done great things for me,” because of God’s particular action in empowering Mary to conceive Jesus, she herself is blessed and is the channel through whom blessing will enter the world “from generation to generation.”
When we take Mary’s own words and speak them out as we did today, we are including ourselves in the work of the Great Reversal, and we in our time and place are included in the bringing-forth of blessing that feeds the hungry and lifts up the lowly and transforms the distribution of power. In taking on these words as our own, we can be encouraged to think about the concrete ways in which Mary’s song bears out “the promise made to our ancestors” in our own work for justice and peace today. These are the things that make our spirits rejoice in God our Savior.
Today’s passage begins “In those days Mary set out,” with little or no explanation of what “those days” include. The situation is this: Elizabeth is six months pregnant with the child who will grow up to be John the Baptist, whose conception, birth, and vocation were foretold to his father Zechariah by the angel Gabriel. However, Zechariah has been struck speechless because he wouldn’t believe Gabriel’s message. Contrary to Zechariah’s lack of faith, Elizabeth, his wife is rejoicing that her barrenness has been relieved and she has been vindicated by God’s empowering her to conceive. In that respect Elizabeth stands in the line of Hannah the mother of the prophet Samuel.
Just before this episode, Mary had also been visited by Gabriel, who announced to her that she would conceive and bear a son, despite her protest that she was a virgin. Gabriel continues by telling her that this son would be called the Child of the Most High. Mary receives this startling news by saying “Let it me with me according to your word,” giving her “Yes” to God, and so co-creating with God the possibility of blessing and salvation.
But because she is not yet married, and to conceive and bear a child would put her in a very precarious and potentially life-threatening social position in Nazareth, and possibly a precarious position with Joseph—so perhaps Mary decides she needs the wisdom and guidance of an older woman who can understand her unusual situation. That is why she “set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country,” where Elizabeth and Zechariah live, to stay with them for about three months.
When Elizabeth hears Mary’s greeting, it touches off a series of recognitions. Such “recognition scenes” were a staple element of classic Greek literature, and Luke, being a fine storyteller in the Hellenistic style, uses that Greek literary element to good effect in his narrative. When Mary greets Elizabeth, the unborn John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb recognizes the presence of the unborn Jesus in Mary’s womb, and leaps for joy. Elizabeth then recognizes the meaning of her baby’s movement—not just a random kick, but a ready greeting—and in turn recognizes Mary as “the mother of my Lord” and “she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
This recognition on Elizabeth’s part is the work of the Holy Spirit, which empowers her to identify realities she herself could not have witnessed firsthand. Mary, in turn, recognizes the work of the Spirit in Elizabeth’s sudden knowledge, and responds by singing her famous song, the Magnificat.
It is in this complex weave of recognitions and recognitions-within-recognitions that the witness to the coming of the Christ emerges. No one element alone tells the whole story; but together these women and their unborn children proclaim the advent of the God into the world in human form. Emanuel, God with us. They are therefore living signs of the Great Reversal: two women, insignificant in the eyes of their male-dominated patriarchal culture—one old and one young; one previously barren and one just entering her childbearing years; neither possessing any particular dignity nor power— yet they are the first to recognize the embodiment of God’s holiness in a human form.
Put another way, in more relational terms, Elizabeth and Mary’s relationships—with each other, with God, with Zechariah and Joseph, with the townspeople and villagers; relationships both of support and subjugation, both suspicion and rejoicing—Elizabeth and Mary’s relationships form the social matrix in which God can bring forth new possibilities for the realization of justice, peace and love. Those new possibilities are gathered most obviously in the unborn John and Jesus, whose potentials will unfold in their adult lives of ministry and mission. But those new possibilities are also immediately evident in Elizabeth and Mary, in the inspiration and insight and songs they share, in the way their lives are redirected by the potentials for justice and peace God opens up for them.
The new life promised in Mary's pregnancy, is the focus of Luke's story, as it fulfills God’s promises to all humankind, but one wonders how these two humble women must have felt about what was happening in their own lives. Henri Nouwen says, "Who could ever understand? Who could ever believe it? Who could ever let it happen? But Mary says, 'Let it happen to me', and she immediately realizes that only Elizabeth will be able to affirm her 'yes'. For three months Mary and Elizabeth live together and encourage each other to truly accept the motherhood given to them." As Nouwen reads this story, neither woman had to wait alone for the extraordinary events to unfold, slowly, as pregnancies do: "They could wait together and thus deepen in each other their faith in God, for whom nothing is impossible. Thus, God's most radical intervention into history was listened to and received in community."
You and I and those gathered around you this morning are joined in community with each other. We are those who are blessed to hear the Good News about Jesus Christ today. It is to us that God has come again this Christmas: Emmanuel, God with us. It is through us that God will complete God’s work, through our relationships with each other, through our joint efforts to take that Good News to our own families, friends, and acquaintances, and to the greater community around us here in Seattle.
The question we must ask ourselves this morning then is how will we recognize the presence of Christ within and among ourselves, what will we do to bring into reality God’s justice and God’s peace in our own lives and in the lives of others? How will we redirect our lives to make it possible for us to accomplish the new opportunities God desires to bring forth for us, for our church, for our community, for our city, for our world?
Like Mary and Elizabeth we do have a choice: We could reject God’s presence with us this Christmas. Or we could accept the Christ Child into our lives again and also accept with Him the blessings God wants to give to us and to bring about through us? Will you sing joyfully and boldly with Mary this Christmas about the promises of God?
We are given two noteworthy passages to focus our Advent attention on this week (Luke 1:39-55 and Micah 5:2-5a). Both of the passages tell us about a Great Reversal, that is, an unexpected turn of events that we can truthfully say could only be caused by God because…this isn’t the way that things normally work in our world. We begin with the Micah passage in which the prophet foretells of the birth of a Savior, of a new King for Israel, who will be like his ancestor King David, who will bring those who have been exiled back home. This is the same passage that King Herod’s scribes quote as evidence that the messiah is to be born in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:5-6) when the Magi from the East come to Jerusalem expecting to find a new king of the Jews.
The references to David are obvious. Bethlehem was the birthplace of David, Israel’s most famous ruler who also was a shepherd. This was probably not a prophesy about Jesus, but the infant church saw this passage exactly that way and claimed it for their own. Bethlehem was not thought of as an important city, being on the outskirts of the politically and religiously important Jerusalem. Historically it was the home of the smallest, the littlest, the most inconsequential tribe of Israel. References to Bethlehem are used to describe one who was younger, of lesser social status or of little political power.
However, we know that Jacob, Joseph, and David were all younger brothers who were chosen over their older siblings to become leaders, and who were honored by the rest of Israel throughout its history. They are examples of the Great Reversal. Jacob gets the birthright over his brother Esau. Joseph is elevated above his older brothers and becomes the one who saves all of his people and also all of Egypt from starvation.
When Samuel comes to look over the sons of Jesse, seeking to annoint a new King, David is so insignificant that his father doesn’t even call him in from the fields until Samuel has rejected all of his siblings and asks if there aren’t more sons. Then David, the youngest and most insignificant son, is brought back from the fields where he was caring for the sheep, and Samuel anoints him. David later becomes Israel’s greatest King.
"But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the littlest clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days" (Micah 5:2). The most unlikely, the most insignificant are exalted by God in a great reversal of fortune.
Bethlehem, literally, “The house of bread,” was a backwater village located some 8 miles outside of the walls of Jerusalem. One who comes from Bethlehem cannot be expected to amount to much similar to Nathanael's statement when he hears about Jesus, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:46).
Can anything good come out of Nazareth, or Bethlehem? And yet, in the case of Bethlehem and those who come from her, the old biblical pattern holds true: the insignificant are exalted. The tables are turned, and the most unlikely of people become instruments of God's salvation. From this insignificant little village, a young shepherd boy grows up to become the most beloved king in Israel's history. And a descendant of that king, also born in Bethlehem, fulfills God's long-awaited promises of deliverance, not just for Israel, but for the whole world.
It is not the way of the world, this exaltation of the lowliest. But it is the way God works, over and over and over again throughout history. An insignificant village. A child born to a poor, very young unmarried girl. In today’s second passage it is Mary, who sings a song of the Great Reversal.
Mary rejoices in the promise that the proud will be scattered, the powerful dethroned, the poor raised up, the hungry fed, and the rich emptied. Mary sings out of her own experience, her own hope, but out of the experience and hope of her people as well.
The Magnificat, Mary’s Song, is indeed a lovely expression of joy at God's promises kept, a celebration of the tables being turned, or overturned: the lowly are lifted up, the proud are brought down, and the hungry are fed. God remembers the people of Israel, and the promises God has made to them. What a powerful text for every heart hungry to hear the good news that God is with us: Emmanuel!
In this week's unique situation, we have, in a sense, four unlikely prophets gathered not in the wilderness but on the front step of Elizabeth's home, two of them not even born yet, and still the infant John is already able to acknowledge the One who is greater by leaping inside his mother’s womb. The other two prophets are women, women with names and stories, women with voices and something to say, or in Mary's case, something to sing.
Women and babies: were definitely not at "the top of the heap," here, especially so, since there's an actual priest in the house, Zechariah, a professional, licensed and learned, knows-what-he's-doing expert in matters of faith. Ironically, though, Zechariah is the very one in this scene without a voice, literally, since he's been struck speechless during his own angelic visit for his disbelief and lack of faith. The stage is set this week, then, for us to have the rare opportunity to hear from the women and children for a change. And what a change they dream of!
This rejoicing in the Great Reversal is of course a powerful theme in the whole prophetic tradition, and is the more particularly connected with the Song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2:1-10, Hannah’s song of vindication and joy at the conception of Samuel when she has been barren for so long. And it was Samuel who set the pattern of relations between prophets and kings that more or less defined the prophet’s role for centuries. Mary’s song echoes this prophetic tradition powerfully, and at the same time looks forward to the role she will play in God’s mercy being shown to generations “from now on”: because “the Mighty One has done great things for me,” because of God’s particular action in empowering Mary to conceive Jesus, she herself is blessed and is the channel through whom blessing will enter the world “from generation to generation.”
When we take Mary’s own words and speak them out as we did today, we are including ourselves in the work of the Great Reversal, and we in our time and place are included in the bringing-forth of blessing that feeds the hungry and lifts up the lowly and transforms the distribution of power. In taking on these words as our own, we can be encouraged to think about the concrete ways in which Mary’s song bears out “the promise made to our ancestors” in our own work for justice and peace today. These are the things that make our spirits rejoice in God our Savior.
Today’s passage begins “In those days Mary set out,” with little or no explanation of what “those days” include. The situation is this: Elizabeth is six months pregnant with the child who will grow up to be John the Baptist, whose conception, birth, and vocation were foretold to his father Zechariah by the angel Gabriel. However, Zechariah has been struck speechless because he wouldn’t believe Gabriel’s message. Contrary to Zechariah’s lack of faith, Elizabeth, his wife is rejoicing that her barrenness has been relieved and she has been vindicated by God’s empowering her to conceive. In that respect Elizabeth stands in the line of Hannah the mother of the prophet Samuel.
Just before this episode, Mary had also been visited by Gabriel, who announced to her that she would conceive and bear a son, despite her protest that she was a virgin. Gabriel continues by telling her that this son would be called the Child of the Most High. Mary receives this startling news by saying “Let it me with me according to your word,” giving her “Yes” to God, and so co-creating with God the possibility of blessing and salvation.
But because she is not yet married, and to conceive and bear a child would put her in a very precarious and potentially life-threatening social position in Nazareth, and possibly a precarious position with Joseph—so perhaps Mary decides she needs the wisdom and guidance of an older woman who can understand her unusual situation. That is why she “set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country,” where Elizabeth and Zechariah live, to stay with them for about three months.
When Elizabeth hears Mary’s greeting, it touches off a series of recognitions. Such “recognition scenes” were a staple element of classic Greek literature, and Luke, being a fine storyteller in the Hellenistic style, uses that Greek literary element to good effect in his narrative. When Mary greets Elizabeth, the unborn John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb recognizes the presence of the unborn Jesus in Mary’s womb, and leaps for joy. Elizabeth then recognizes the meaning of her baby’s movement—not just a random kick, but a ready greeting—and in turn recognizes Mary as “the mother of my Lord” and “she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
This recognition on Elizabeth’s part is the work of the Holy Spirit, which empowers her to identify realities she herself could not have witnessed firsthand. Mary, in turn, recognizes the work of the Spirit in Elizabeth’s sudden knowledge, and responds by singing her famous song, the Magnificat.
It is in this complex weave of recognitions and recognitions-within-recognitions that the witness to the coming of the Christ emerges. No one element alone tells the whole story; but together these women and their unborn children proclaim the advent of the God into the world in human form. Emanuel, God with us. They are therefore living signs of the Great Reversal: two women, insignificant in the eyes of their male-dominated patriarchal culture—one old and one young; one previously barren and one just entering her childbearing years; neither possessing any particular dignity nor power— yet they are the first to recognize the embodiment of God’s holiness in a human form.
Put another way, in more relational terms, Elizabeth and Mary’s relationships—with each other, with God, with Zechariah and Joseph, with the townspeople and villagers; relationships both of support and subjugation, both suspicion and rejoicing—Elizabeth and Mary’s relationships form the social matrix in which God can bring forth new possibilities for the realization of justice, peace and love. Those new possibilities are gathered most obviously in the unborn John and Jesus, whose potentials will unfold in their adult lives of ministry and mission. But those new possibilities are also immediately evident in Elizabeth and Mary, in the inspiration and insight and songs they share, in the way their lives are redirected by the potentials for justice and peace God opens up for them.
The new life promised in Mary's pregnancy, is the focus of Luke's story, as it fulfills God’s promises to all humankind, but one wonders how these two humble women must have felt about what was happening in their own lives. Henri Nouwen says, "Who could ever understand? Who could ever believe it? Who could ever let it happen? But Mary says, 'Let it happen to me', and she immediately realizes that only Elizabeth will be able to affirm her 'yes'. For three months Mary and Elizabeth live together and encourage each other to truly accept the motherhood given to them." As Nouwen reads this story, neither woman had to wait alone for the extraordinary events to unfold, slowly, as pregnancies do: "They could wait together and thus deepen in each other their faith in God, for whom nothing is impossible. Thus, God's most radical intervention into history was listened to and received in community."
You and I and those gathered around you this morning are joined in community with each other. We are those who are blessed to hear the Good News about Jesus Christ today. It is to us that God has come again this Christmas: Emmanuel, God with us. It is through us that God will complete God’s work, through our relationships with each other, through our joint efforts to take that Good News to our own families, friends, and acquaintances, and to the greater community around us here in Seattle.
The question we must ask ourselves this morning then is how will we recognize the presence of Christ within and among ourselves, what will we do to bring into reality God’s justice and God’s peace in our own lives and in the lives of others? How will we redirect our lives to make it possible for us to accomplish the new opportunities God desires to bring forth for us, for our church, for our community, for our city, for our world?
Like Mary and Elizabeth we do have a choice: We could reject God’s presence with us this Christmas. Or we could accept the Christ Child into our lives again and also accept with Him the blessings God wants to give to us and to bring about through us? Will you sing joyfully and boldly with Mary this Christmas about the promises of God?
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