Have You Been Baptized in the Spirit?
by Dr. Graham Standish
Acts 8:14-24
January 10, 2010
Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, ‘Give me also this power so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.’ But Peter said to him, ‘May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain God’s gift with money! You have no part or share in this, for your heart is not right before God. Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and the chains of wickedness.’ Simon answered, ‘Pray for me to the Lord, that nothing of what you have said may happen to me.’
On April 14th, 1906, on a small street in Los Angeles, something significant happened that changed the face of Christianity. A movement was started by someone few would have selected as the leader of a major movement. The man’s name was William Joseph Seymour, and he was a half-blind, self-educated African-American who had only recently moved to Los Angeles.
Seymour was the son of former slaves. His father had escaped slavery at the onset of the Civil War and had joined a Union Army “negro” regiment to fight the South. After the war his parents wandered the country until finally settling in Louisiana. The family was so poor that at one point they listed their family possessions as a chair, a table, and a chest of drawers. Who would have expected a man from this environment to launch the fastest growing Christian movement of the 20th century, and so far of the 21st.
Seymour had studied under the evangelical theologian, Charles Parham, in the late 1890s, and was fascinated by Parham’s emphasis on getting back to the original church by getting back to the experience of Pentecost. Parham taught that the modern church had forgotten about the Holy Spirit, and that it needed to become open and aware of the Spirit. Otherwise the church could do nothing because the Spirit is the engine of life for the church.
So, beginning on April 14th, in 1906, Seymour gathered people in a small house in Los Angeles, and taught them to become radically open to the Holy Spirit. Soon people were manifesting gifts and signs of the Spirit. Many spoke in tongues, which means that they spoke in a language often identified as God’s language (the apostle Paul called it “glossalia”), but which sounds unintelligible to us. Others prophesied. One woman, who swore that she had never taken piano lessons, was suddenly able to play the piano. Over the course of the ensuing months more and more people flocked to Seymour’s gathering, hoping to be touched by the Holy Spirit. Soon they bought a church on Asuza Street in Los Angeles, and thus began the “Asuza Street Revival,” which many see as the birth of the Pentecostal movement.
The Pentecostal movement has grown at an amazing pace in the U.S. In the early parts of the 21st century it was growing at a rate of 250% per year in the U.S., and 500% world-wide. There is something about becoming open to the Holy Spirit that tangibly touches people.
I’m not a Pentecostal by any stretch of the imagination, nor am I anywhere close to suggesting that we become Pentecostals here. Still, I think that the Pentecostals recovered an idea that many of us other Christians ignore, an idea mentioned in our passage. Did you hear the part in the passage where they mentioned being baptized in the Holy Spirit? It says, “Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.” What do you think it means to receive the Holy Spirit?
In the Pentecostal tradition, receiving the Holy Spirit (being baptized in the Holy Spirit) means both receiving the power of the Spirit within us, and manifesting the Spirit through gifts such as speaking in tongues, holy laughter, prophesy, healing, and more.
Again, I’m not ready to suggest that we become Pentecostals, but I do believe that there’s something to their experience. But let me give you a little context to what I mean. As you already know, I’m a bit of an odd duck. I don’t think the way many, or even most, Christians think. I tend to think more in terms of how to bring things together rather than determining what’s right and what’s wrong. I believe that we live in a day-and-age in which people are stuck looking for the exact “right” answer to everything. We live in an “either-or” age in which people believe the answers to all questions, situations, problems, and crises has to be either this or that. I don’t agree. I believe that often the best answers are “both-and,” which means that sometimes the truth encompasses many different belief perspectives. For example, I’m not a Roman Catholic, nor will I ever become one, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that some of what they do is right. I believe in sharing the sacrament of communion weekly, as do the Roman Catholics, because I recognize that weekly communion has an amazing power to connect people with God. As a result we have communion every Sunday during our first service. Like the evangelicals, I believe in a personal relationship with Christ, and as a result I preach about experiencing Christ in our lives. And like the Pentecostals I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit.
One reason we have such an extensive healing ministry is due to my belief in the legitimacy of something the Pentecostals recovered, which is that prayer can heal. I may not believe in the idea that when faith and prayer connect with healing, it should be evidently miraculous the way we see on television with televangelists. I don’t go quite that far. Still, I believe God that God heals, and that God responds to prayer. But unlike many Pentecostals, I believe that healing can come just as much through the hands of doctors and nurses as it can come miraculously. God can heal through both. I don’t believe in either prayer or medicine. I believe in both prayer and medicine.
What all of this means is that I believe that we should work in our faith to become more intentionally open to the Holy Spirit. I don’t believe we should do this to become more Pentecostal. I believe we should do it in order to become more authentically Christian. At the same time, my understanding of what it means to receive and be baptized in the Holy Spirit is different from the Pentecostals. I believe that the sacrament of baptism we do is an important baptism because it connects all of us with God’s grace, a grace that cleanses all of us. At the same time, I believe that there comes a point at which we also need to make a radical decision: am I willing to become open to the Spirit, let it enter my life, and help me to live in God’s way? When we do this, life changes in amazing ways.
So what happens when we are baptized in the Holy Spirit—when we receive the Spirit? I believe that four basic experiences grow in our lives.
First, we begin having a sense of connection with something beyond. We begin to experience the Divine, the Holy, God, in a tangible way that leads us to know God exists. We don’t need objective proof of God’s existence because we have tangible experiences of God. Just as when we fall in love we don’t need someone to prove to us objectively that love is real, when we are open to the Spirit we don’t need proof that God is real. We develop a tangible connection with God that moves beyond objective proof.
Second, we begin having an intuitive sense of what God wants in each moment of life. We develop more than a connection. We gain a sense of God’s will. This is more than just knowing what is right or wrong in life. It’s a sense of simply knowing in each moment what God wants. I don’t want to make it sound as though this sense of God’s will makes each of us an ultimate authority on what God wants. I’m not talking about having a grand sense of what kind of healthcare system God wants for our country. Our sense of God’s will is humbler than that. It’s simply a sense of knowing what God wants for our lives.
Third, we develop a sense of knowing where we fit in life. I believe that one of the primary problems of modern culture is that too many people don’t know where they fit. They wander, wondering what the purpose is for their lives. The Spirit helps us come to know where we fit. That fit may be in something very small, recognizing that where we fit is in simply serving God in simple ways. Whatever our place of fit is, the Spirit leads us to know where that place is, and to accept it.
Finally, we experience coincidences. I believe that experiencing holy coincidences, or providences, is the hallmark of receiving the Holy Spirit. The Spirit makes things happen. Most of these providences are small, and act just as reminders that God is with us in joyful ways. For example, one coincidence has happened as I preached this sermon. The choir sang a song, “I See the Light,” which was an early 20th century gospel song that was a favorite among the early Pentecostals (this is a different song from the Hank Williams song of the same name). What was coincidental about them singing this song was that this hymn was a favorite among the early Pentecostals. And our choir chose the song almost by accident. They had to pick a song for this past Sunday that would work for the members who would be in worship. Because so many would be missing, they had a difficult time finding the right song. They went through six others before finally settling on “I See the Light.” The amazing thing is that by seeming accident they chose this song on the Sunday that I was preaching about Pentecostals. Out of all the Sundays to sing it, why this past Sunday? But this is the kind of thing that happens when we are open to the Spirit. We get joyful coincidences.
I don’t know how many of you actually believe in the ability to be baptized in the Spirit, but if you do and want to receive the Spirit, I have some suggestions. First, ask God to give you the Spirit. Do it simply and sincerely. Just ask God to let the Spirit enter your life. If you are sincere about it, you’ll receive the Spirit. And don’t worry about having some sort of “slain in the Spirit” experience. What I’ve learned over the years about God is that God is merciful, generous, loving, powerful, and polite. In other words, God’s not going to force something on you. You’ll experience the Spirit in a way that fits with your openness and personality.
Second, make a decision to be open to the Spirit in more moments of your life. Don’t just become open in one part. Bring the Spirit into every part. This is not as easy as it sounds. We compartmentalize. We make Sunday morning the time for God. Sunday afternoon is the time for football. Sunday evening? More football. Monday morning we go to work. In the evenings we watch television. Saturday is to play. Sunday is back to God. That’s not the way God wants it to work. God wants us to bring God into every moment of life by becoming open to the Spirit in every moment. God can be there to guide us and help us at church, at home, at work, and everywhere else, but only if we are open to the Spirit in each moment.
Finally, trust the Spirit to flow throughout your life. Trust that if you are open, wonderful things will happen. Learn to look for them. Learn to be open to them. Learn to expect them. If you do, you’ll discover the Spirit everywhere.
We’re called to receive the Spirit in our lives. Faith isn’t just supposed to be an intellectual activity. It’s meant to be a life activity. The question I want you to reflect on is this: how open you are to the Spirit?
Amen.
God's Presence in Our Midst
by Dr. Graham Standish
1:1-18
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
I became very familiar with this passage when I was in seminary. Why? Because I had to spend three months translating it from Greek to English. All Presbyterian pastors have to take two years of a biblical languages during seminary, which means that we have to learn to read both Greek and Hebrew. So, during my first year in seminary I took Greek, learning it through the “inductive method.”
What does that mean? It’s a bit different than the way you would have learned languages in school, where you memorize vocabulary and are taught sentence structures. Inductive learning teaches the language by immersing students in it through translation of a text. Our text was first chapter of John, the very passage you read above. For almost three months we translated the passage, little by little each day, all the while learning the sentence structure and vocabulary. The result was that I became very familiar with it, especially with the first five verses, which you can see below in the original Greek.
1Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. 2οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεόν. 3πάντα δι' αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν. ὃ γέγονεν 4ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων: 5καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει, καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν.
I realize that when you look at this passage,… well, it looks like Greek to you. It does so also to me now that I’m twenty years away from having translated anything from Greek. Still, when you spend three months intensively translating a chapter of the Bible you become very familiar with it. In those three month I became very aware that these five verses may be among the most profound in the Bible. Perhaps that’s why they get ignored so often. They are so profound that people don’t pay attention in their pursuit of something simpler.
I have a theory about religious belief, which is that we want so much for faith to be simple and easy to understand that we intentionally miss or ignore the deeper things of faith. I find this to be true not only among Christians, but among non-Christians. For instance, one reason atheists are attracted to the belief that there is no God is the simplicity of it. When God is cut out of life, then life, at least intellectually, becomes simpler. When you deny the existence of God you don’t have to read the Bible, understand complex theologies, or worry about a relationship with God. Agnostics also have similar benefit to deciding to make no decision on God’s existence. New Agers make religion much simpler by believing whatever they want to believe. They can believe in crystals, the goddess, God, nature, or whatever else they want. Also, you see this kind of oversimplification of faith in radical Islam, where Muslims oversimplify their beliefs to make it allow for the mass murder of innocents in the name of Allah. That is not what Islam teaches, but that doesn’t matter to extremists.
Ironically, this tendency to oversimplify religious belief allows Christians to denigrate Islam as a violent religion, suggesting that just because an incredibly small minority believes in mass murder in the name of Allah, then all 1.2 billion Muslims must believe that. That’s much like suggesting that because White Supremacist Christians believe in the killing of African-Americans, Jews, Catholics, and all non-Christians, that must be what all of us Christians believe.
The point of all this is that it is a chronic human tendency to ignore the more complex and profound points of religious belief in order to find clarity through oversimplification. Thus many Christians miss the depths of our passage for today, which has wonderful things to teach us, if we are willing to learn.
What I find so profound about our passage is that it teaches an understanding about Jesus that you find in only one other place in the Bible, which was the passage last week from Colossians 1:15-17: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Our passage, especially verses 1 through 5, have a similarly profound message. Let’s take a look at the three main points of the five versus in depth, and you’ll see what I mean.
1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
Does this passage strike you as profound? The first hundred times I read it I noticed very little. Then, slowly, I became aware of the ramifications of this passage. It presents a different picture from what we normally think about Jesus. We normally think of him as a historical figure who lived 2000 years ago, or as a messiah who sits on the right hand of God. This passage says that Jesus was and is much more than this.
To give you some context, it helps to give you a quick lesson on the gospels and Jesus. Do you know where each one begins its story of Jesus? Mark begins by telling us about Jesus’ baptism. So Mark basically starts the story of Jesus when Jesus begins his ministry. Matthew goes back a little further and starts with Jesus’ birth. Luke goes back even further and begins telling the story of Jesus with his conception. Look above at where John begins the story. He starts it at the beginning of creation. He is saying that Jesus wasn’t just a man born in 4 B.C. who lived to 30 A.D. John is telling us that the man, Jesus, was the incarnation of God who was at the beginning. There was no time without Christ, since Christ was both with God and was God at the beginning.
Also, John gives Jesus a new name, calling him the “Logos,” which we translate as “Word.” I’m not sure that this is the best translation. “Logos” means much more than just “Word.” It is the root of the word “logic,” which means “reason.” But those words don’t capture the fullness of the word logos. In the ancient Greek world the word logos also referred to something called the “Golden Ratio,” which was a ratio that many in the ancient world thought was perfection. The actual formula for the ratio is this:
I can honestly tell you that I have no idea what this means, but it is a ratio found in mathematics, architecture, and all of nature. It is a ratio that exists in most physical things, such as a right angle of a door, the Parthenon, the pyramids of Egypt, the construction of the chambers in a nautilus shell, and the stem and veins of a leaf. It was a number applied to creation, and it was believed to manifest perfection.
When Jesus is called the Logos, John is saying that he was manifesting the perfection of God in creation. It is saying that in Christ you find the perfection of God—a perfection also found throughout creation.
2. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
Look at what the passage says. It says that in the beginning Jesus existed, he was with God, and he was God, and that all things were created through him. In other words, Christ is the ongoing power of creation. We can say that the Father is the Creator, the Source, but Christ is the power of ongoing creation.
Think of the ramifications of this. It isn’t just saying that Jesus was the power of creation at the beginning. It was saying that Jesus was and is the power of creation now and in the future. Whenever you look at the growth of a plant, you are seeing the power of creation in Christ at work. Whenever you see stars in a night sky, you are seeing the power of creation in Christ. And when we look at each other, we are seeing the manifestation of Christ in us. Christ isn’t just God incarnate in this one human being 2000 years ago. Christ is the life and power of God in all of life today, although unlike the rest of creation we are given the power to deny that life. What is significant about the man Jesus is that we believe he was the full manifestation of God in that his humanity didn’t strive with his divinity. In him divinity and humanity were one. In us, we are always at war internally, as our humanity and spirituality duke it out, but that wasn’t the case with Jesus. And through the life, death, and resurrection of that one man, we’ve seen the way God is. But we can also experience something of God in nature and each other, too.
3. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
This is a continuation of the idea presented in the first few sentences. It tells us the Christ wasn’t just the power of creation, but that he was and is life. In other words, Christ is the life-force in all of us. He is the power of what makes us alive. He is the power of life that God gives to the universe, and he is that ongoing life. It’s for this reason that we can say as Christians that when we are open to God in Christ, we become more alive. Our lives take on a greater substance. In contrast, when we give into the darkness of life and give ourselves over to addictions, attitudes, and actions that are toxic, life diminishes in us because we become cut off from God. The more open we are to God in Christ, the more God’s life fills us and we come alive in wonderful ways.
Do you have any idea of what this passage says to us about our faith? It’s because of this passage that I often talk about the life of Christ within us during communion. I don’t say it as a platitude. I believe that when we take part in the sacrament, we create an opening for this life of Christ allowing the ongoing power of creation, the Logos, to come alive in us. The sacraments allow God’s life to grow in us.
It’s also because of this passage that I often talk about us being little christs. It suggests that the more we are truly open to Christ, the more we are able to incarnate Christ in our thoughts, our actions, and our love.
It’s because of this passage that I believe in more than just the historical Jesus and Jesus on the cross. This passage has led me to believe in Christ who is everywhere, in everyone, and continually leading us to a greater way of living—if we are open to him.
So, with all that said, I want to leave you with a question: How open are you to this Christ? How you answer that question will make all the difference in the world.
Amen.
Jesus Grown Up, Faith Grown Bigger
by Connie Frierson
Colossians 1: 15-20
Graham advised me to make this sermon simple. After the rush and frenzy of the commercial season this is the Sunday for the true faithful, the troopers of the faith who turn out even on the day after the big day. Graham went on to suggest that I use a film clip or keep the sermon to a few good stories. In that vein I scanned through my brain for popular films with theological importance. And I came up with Talladega Nights, The Legend of Ricky Bobby. As you can see my treasury of film clips isn’t as esoteric as Grahams.
In this silly movie there was one theological idea that is worth sharing. Ricky Bobby is a stock car driver and an idiot who enjoys unreasonable success. This movie owes an apology to all things southern and I can’t actually show the clip because there is just no way to clean it up. But here is the scene. Will Ferrell who plays Ricky Bobby is offering a prayer at the dinner table. Ricky loves the Christmas Jesus best, so he begins his prayer to “Dear tiny Jesus, with Golden Fleece diapers and tiny, fat balled up fists.” Ricky Bobby’s wife interrupts and reminds him, “Jesus did grow up you know. You don’t always have to call him baby.”
“Oh no,” says Ricky Bobby. “I like the Christmas Jesus best.” So he goes on, “Dear 8 lb. 6oz. newborn infant Jesus. Don’t even know a word yet. Just a little infant, so cuddly, but still omnipotent… Thank you for all your power and your grace, dear baby God. Amen.”
I think Will Ferrell might be on to something here. We like the baby Jesus best too. We sing, “Away in a Manger no crib for a bed, the little Lord Jesus lay down his sweet head.” We sing, “Silent Night, Holy Night…Holy infant so tender and mild.”
So this morning let’s think together about this love of the baby Jesus and wonder a bit if we aren’t drinking a little too much eggnog, thick and sweet. Is there a problem with our ideas about Jesus? It seems this Sweet Baby Jesus can be both a good and bad thing in our relationship with God.
What is good about a swaddled savior? The good is that God came down, lived in the neighborhood, and dwelt among us, as the First Chapter of John says. A baby Jesus who is allowed to grow up knows what it is to be fully human, is no stranger to family dynamics, bullies next door, greedy tax collectors, oppressive Roman armies, sickness, friendship, love, loss and even death. If we let the baby grow up, we know God to be with us in a brand new way. That fabulous, precious baby Jesus is a way of knowing a God, who knows us.
The nuclear scientist, Robert Oppenheimer said, “The best way to send an idea is to wrap it up in a person.” John Yates of The Falls Church in Virginia tells a story about a little girl who understood the same profound idea that Oppenheimer quote. The little girl said, “Some people couldn’t hear God’s inside whisper, and so he sent Jesus to tell them out loud.” Our God came in person, so that we can know God, in the person, of Jesus Christ.
The only problem with the sweet baby Jesus is when we limit him to babyhood. If we limit Jesus to babyhood, Jesus never grows teeth. A Jesus with out teeth is small, personal and powerless. The danger is when we make our God so personal that we distort who God is. Ricky Bobby’s baby Jesus really had very little power to save anyone in his golden, fleece diapers. Ricky Bobby’s baby Jesus was all about helping Ricky Bobby. That Baby Jesus would never ask you to love your neighbor as yourself, take up your cross and follow him, give to the poor, heal the sick, care for our planet or be a servant to all. The teaching of a grown up Jesus are challenging and following that Jesus changes us and shakes up our world.
So what is the solution to having a baby Jesus and a baby faith? The solution is we need a bigger Jesus. We need to search for the grown up Jesus and even beyond that earthly Jesus. We also need to at least begin to conceive of the Jesus who is God, the Jesus that is the Christ. We can’t box up the Son of God in a cradle. Our passage today Colossians 1:15-20 allows us to glimpse a Christ that is beyond a baby, beyond a man, beyond even a personal savior. Colossians 1 is like the antidote to too many Christmas cookies. The Ancient Hymn of Christ in our scripture this morning is Jesus who is the Christ, a savior on a cosmic scale. This is the Jesus who doesn’t just save us, but saves the world, who remakes a new earth and even a new heaven. This Jesus is the image of an invisible God. This Jesus allows us a glimpse of the power of creation that is beyond our little lives, our parochial concerns and our limited view. When you tinker with your spiritual life you are entering into God’s world on a grand scale, not our own small scale.
Jesus shows us an invisible God. How can we wrap our heads around that? Because we are physical creatures we need to conceive of God in images, in metaphor and things we do know. That is why we love the baby Jesus. We know how to love babies. But how shall we glimpse the invisible God and love a God beyond our understanding?
I think science might help, specifically the science of comets. Scientists believe that comets are like underdone leftovers. Comets are bits of gas and dust that form our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. Comets are little frozen storage containers of the original matter. So they are like little frozen time capsules. Astronomers and physicists believe that if we could capture just a little of a comet before it is burned up in our atmosphere, that we could learn some fundamental answers to how planets were born. NASA has been working on this. In 2006, NASA completed a mission to retrieve comet dust. They created an armored spacecraft with a cosmic catcher’s mitt to go out and catch the comet dust. Then the dust is tucked into a reentry pod and landed in January 2006 in the Utah desert. Decades of research will surround this little teaspoon of space dust. From that tiny bit scientists will draw conclusions about how the earth was formed.
It is the same with God. A single solitary person called the Christ can tell us what we need to know about the invisible God. The meaning of life, my life, your life all of life, is held in one life of Christ. Jesus is our face for an invisible God. Flesh and blood and a life lived and died can tell us about an infinite and eternal Spirit. We learn about God’s love in that little baby and in the man, Jesus. But even before that, “For and by him all things were created.” This is Christ the creator, beyond Jesus the man. Christ is the head of the church, not just our little church, but churches outside these door, and across time. Christ is all the fullness of God dwelling inside of him.
How do we begin to get this glimpse of a bigger Jesus, a bigger God? One of the ways we do this is to pray and meditate on the foundations of our faith in the bible. If you want a bigger God to empower your life, even take over you life, look to scripture. One of the ways we want to help you do this in the New Year is to encourage a practice of reading and praying through scripture. In the next week if you are a church member you will receive a letter and a pamphlet “A 2010 Bible Reading Guide.” The letter outlines how you might use this pamphlet. The very first reading on January 1st includes our passage today from Colossians. By reading, meditating and letting these words work on us, we can begin to see a bigger God and grow into a bigger faith. A bigger faith can respond to bigger challenges. A bigger faith can look beyond our own needs to the needs of others.
So if you want to glimpse God, if you want to grow in faith, look at the baby in Bethlehem. Look at the life and teaching of Jesus. See the compassion of a God who comes to us. Experience the forgiveness he offers. Be awed at the creation he made. Catch a comet’s tail and study the complexities of a world born of God breathed dust. This is the far-reaching aspect of glimpsing a Christ bigger than a baby faith.
My wish for you this Christmas season is that you have all the fullness of Christ in you, that you recognize, treasure and nurture an awareness of that thimbleful of God in us that is Jesus Christ.
AMEN.
Witnesses to Christ's Birth:
by Dr. Graham Standish
Matthew 2:1-12
December 20, 2009
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.” ’
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’ When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
So far during this season of Advent we’ve been reflecting on the different witnesses to Christ’s birth. We’ve looked at the angels, who are beings created by God with a clear mandate to serve God by serving God’s creation. We talked about whether or not they exist, and if they do how we typically experience them. We’ve talked about Mary and Joseph, and about how their desire to do God’s will no matter what. We also talked about the shepherds, and about how the combination of their humility and awe opened them to see the angel and follow God despite their doubts.
Each of those witnesses is interesting, but none of them are as mysterious as our witnesses for today—the magi. We know next to nothing about the magi. The song, “We Three Kings,” calls them “kings.” We don’t know much about them, but we do know that they weren’t kings. We often describe them as three men, but we don’t even know that they were men. They could have been men or women or any combination of the two. What do we know about them? Not much. But we do know that they were astrologers. The magi were actually priests in the Zoarastrian faith of Persia. Their focus was on studying the stars. In effect, they were astrologer priests who tried to divine the future by studying the movement and configuration of the stars. Whenever a Persian king or someone wealthy needed advice, he would call upon these magi. They would divine the starts and give their advice.
Today we know astrologers as those who create our horoscopes for the local papers, which for the most part are total bunk. I know this because I did experiments with astrology when I was younger. For about a month I decided to look each night to see if my horoscope had come true. Over that thirty day period something that could be related to my horoscope came true about six times, and from what I remembered I had to really stretch to say that the predictions came true.
Still, these magi were astrologers, and they saw significance in the stars. Traditionally Christians have believed that the magi saw a special star. In the age of science, many speculated that they saw some great star supernova, or a comet passing by. Unfortunately we know now that neither was the case. Modern-day astronomers and historians have searched for evidence of a supernova or comet, but there is none. There’s no history of either occurring within decades of Christ’s birth. Most scholars today believe that we’ve discounted too much the fact that the magi were astrologers, and could have seen significance in a celestial event that others dismissed.
In all likelihood, the star they saw rising out of the east was a configuration of Jupiter, Saturn, and a star called Regulus. The three of them coming together in the early evening would have been very bright in the eastern sky, and Regulus, the king star, would have traveled westward at night out of that configuration. Scientists who have studied the stars using computers have noted that this configuration existed back in 4 B.C., which is when most scholars believe Jesus was born.
Another mystery about the magi exists that bothers many scholars: why is this story in Matthew’s gospel? You’d expect this story to appear in John’s gospel or Luke’s, but not Matthew’s. Why? To understand you have to understand something about the gospels. The mistake of many people today is in thinking that the gospel writers were just writing history, and that we just have four versions of the same history. The reality is that they weren’t writing history. They were writing about the story of Jesus and his teachings to four very distinct audiences. The differences in the gospels were due to the fact that some stories were included, others taken out, depending on who their intended audience was.
For example, it is believed that Mark’s gospel was most likely written to Jews living in Rome who had become early Christians and wanted to understand the life of Jesus in more depth. So Mark gives them mostly the facts, and it is written in a way that would appeal to a Jewish audience living in the midst of Gentiles. Meanwhile, Luke’s gospel was written by a Gentile to Gentiles, not Jews. The most commonly accepted belief was that Luke was writing his gospel to someone in the Roman emperor’s court, and that the combination of Luke’s gospel and the Book of Acts, which he also wrote, were written as a defense of the apostle Paul, who was on trial in Rome and was facing execution. Other scholars believe he was writing to Gentiles living in Greece. Either way, the gospel is very Gentile-friendly. In his gospel Jesus has many traits that would have been especially appealing to Gentiles, such as sitting down and eating with others, especially non-Jews. Finally, John’s gospel was most likely written to Gentile Christians living in what is now Syria and Lebanon. These Christians had become captivated by a new, heretical teaching called “Gnosticism.” John’s gospel was trying to overcome this heresy by emphasizing that Jesus was real, that he could be touched, that he had been alive in the real world, and that his Spirit is now in us. Who the audience is makes all the difference in how the story is told.
So, why wouldn’t we expect the story of the magi to be in Matthew’s gospel? The answer is that we wouldn’t expect it because out of all the gospels, Matthew’s gospel is the most Jewish gospel. The story of thee Gentiles coming to Jesus would seem to be more appealing to a Gentile audience. Matthew’s gospel was a Jewish gospel, and typically would not have praised any Gentiles. Instead, he praise Jews and Jewish tradition. For instance, he constantly cited how Jesus was fulfilling scripture. Luke and John rarely cited scripture because they were writing to Gentiles who didn’t know Jewish scripture. So, what’s the big deal about Matthew mentioning astrologers? The answer is that not only did the Jews not believe in astrology, but they considered astrology to be evil. To them, the fact that the magi showed up would not be a good thing. But Matthew included this story in his gospel for a reason.
I believe that Matthew was trying to make a very powerful point to the Jews. He was saying to them that the Jews missed the sign of Jesus being born in scripture, but that people of another religion, even an evil one, heard God’s call to revere Jesus. He’s saying that Jesus was so important that God spread the news to both Jews and Gentiles alike. God was not longer just the God of the Jews, but was now the God of everyone, and the Jews need to jump on board.
I also think there was another message here that we can take from this passage, one that it applicable for us today. The message of the magi is that God can speak to us through anything, especially through nature, if we are really listening. If we have a proper openness to God and to God in the world, we can discover God speaking constantly to us. I’m not a big believer in astrology, but I think in this one instance God used it for God’s purposes. God spoke to the magi through the stars, and they heard.
I’ve learned in my life to pay attention to God’s voice coming through the world, and I’m amazed at how often profound messages can come to me when I am looking at the stars, when I am listening to another person, and when I am reading a book. When I am receptive, God speaks over and over and over. Looking back at my life, I know where I Iearned to hear God through the world. As with so much in my life, I learned it on television. Specifically, I learned to hear God speaking through nature from the television show Kung Fu.
I don’t know if you remember the show, but it was about an American-Chinese man, a Shaolin monk, who had to escape to America after he killed the Emperor’s nephew. Each week we followed the man as he wandered the old West looking for a half-brother. In each episode he would face a crisis, which he would always try to resolve peacefully, in keeping with his Shaolin principles. Eventually he would be forced to fight using kung-fu, of which he was a master, and overcome the bad guys.
Often, when faced with a crisis, he would have flashbacks to his training as a child in the monastery. You would see him as a young apprentice monk, speaking to a master. He would ask a question such as, “Master, why is it so hard to know what the right thing to do in each situation?” The master would say, “Place your foot in that stream over there, Grasshopper (he called the young boy by that name). Now place it in again. Did you touch the same water twice?” The young boy would say, “No, because the water keeps moving and changing.” The master would say, “And that is why life is so hard. It keeps moving and changing.”
It may have been just a television show, but God spoke to me through it and taught me that we can find God’s wisdom by observing nature and learning what it can teach us. I believe that the magi understood something similar. They looked at the stars and heard God. Much like the main character from Kung-Fu, they had something that too many of us modern people are missing. They had reverence for nature, and especially the stars.
Last week I spoke of how important awe is—that sense of smallness and wonder in the face of God and God’s creation. Reverence is related to awe, but it’s a bit different. Reverence means looking at what’s around us with a sense that it is all sacred, and that God is reflected through it all. When we have reverence for each other, we sense the sacred in each other. When we have reverence in worship, we sense God’s presence in our midst. If we look at each other with reverence, we can sense God in each other.
Too often we’re missing a sense of reverence. To often we diminish life by making it all about money, or power, or control, or getting things done, or tasks, or a million other ways we diminish life. The question is whether we can begin to live with a sense of reverence, because if we can we can let Christ be born in us. The magi were reverent, and it made all the difference.
Not to belabor the connection between God and labor, but I have a very fun, short video clip I’d love for you to see (I showed it when I preached this sermon). It’s a clip by a Christian musician, Wendy Francisco, and you can find it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H17edn_RZoY.
I want to leave you with a basic question to reflect upon: Can you hear God speaking all around you? This is supposed to be a season of hearing God. How well are you listening?
Amen.
Matthew 2:1-12
December 20, 2009
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.” ’
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’ When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
So far during this season of Advent we’ve been reflecting on the different witnesses to Christ’s birth. We’ve looked at the angels, who are beings created by God with a clear mandate to serve God by serving God’s creation. We talked about whether or not they exist, and if they do how we typically experience them. We’ve talked about Mary and Joseph, and about how their desire to do God’s will no matter what. We also talked about the shepherds, and about how the combination of their humility and awe opened them to see the angel and follow God despite their doubts.
Each of those witnesses is interesting, but none of them are as mysterious as our witnesses for today—the magi. We know next to nothing about the magi. The song, “We Three Kings,” calls them “kings.” We don’t know much about them, but we do know that they weren’t kings. We often describe them as three men, but we don’t even know that they were men. They could have been men or women or any combination of the two. What do we know about them? Not much. But we do know that they were astrologers. The magi were actually priests in the Zoarastrian faith of Persia. Their focus was on studying the stars. In effect, they were astrologer priests who tried to divine the future by studying the movement and configuration of the stars. Whenever a Persian king or someone wealthy needed advice, he would call upon these magi. They would divine the starts and give their advice.
Today we know astrologers as those who create our horoscopes for the local papers, which for the most part are total bunk. I know this because I did experiments with astrology when I was younger. For about a month I decided to look each night to see if my horoscope had come true. Over that thirty day period something that could be related to my horoscope came true about six times, and from what I remembered I had to really stretch to say that the predictions came true.
Still, these magi were astrologers, and they saw significance in the stars. Traditionally Christians have believed that the magi saw a special star. In the age of science, many speculated that they saw some great star supernova, or a comet passing by. Unfortunately we know now that neither was the case. Modern-day astronomers and historians have searched for evidence of a supernova or comet, but there is none. There’s no history of either occurring within decades of Christ’s birth. Most scholars today believe that we’ve discounted too much the fact that the magi were astrologers, and could have seen significance in a celestial event that others dismissed.
In all likelihood, the star they saw rising out of the east was a configuration of Jupiter, Saturn, and a star called Regulus. The three of them coming together in the early evening would have been very bright in the eastern sky, and Regulus, the king star, would have traveled westward at night out of that configuration. Scientists who have studied the stars using computers have noted that this configuration existed back in 4 B.C., which is when most scholars believe Jesus was born.
Another mystery about the magi exists that bothers many scholars: why is this story in Matthew’s gospel? You’d expect this story to appear in John’s gospel or Luke’s, but not Matthew’s. Why? To understand you have to understand something about the gospels. The mistake of many people today is in thinking that the gospel writers were just writing history, and that we just have four versions of the same history. The reality is that they weren’t writing history. They were writing about the story of Jesus and his teachings to four very distinct audiences. The differences in the gospels were due to the fact that some stories were included, others taken out, depending on who their intended audience was.
For example, it is believed that Mark’s gospel was most likely written to Jews living in Rome who had become early Christians and wanted to understand the life of Jesus in more depth. So Mark gives them mostly the facts, and it is written in a way that would appeal to a Jewish audience living in the midst of Gentiles. Meanwhile, Luke’s gospel was written by a Gentile to Gentiles, not Jews. The most commonly accepted belief was that Luke was writing his gospel to someone in the Roman emperor’s court, and that the combination of Luke’s gospel and the Book of Acts, which he also wrote, were written as a defense of the apostle Paul, who was on trial in Rome and was facing execution. Other scholars believe he was writing to Gentiles living in Greece. Either way, the gospel is very Gentile-friendly. In his gospel Jesus has many traits that would have been especially appealing to Gentiles, such as sitting down and eating with others, especially non-Jews. Finally, John’s gospel was most likely written to Gentile Christians living in what is now Syria and Lebanon. These Christians had become captivated by a new, heretical teaching called “Gnosticism.” John’s gospel was trying to overcome this heresy by emphasizing that Jesus was real, that he could be touched, that he had been alive in the real world, and that his Spirit is now in us. Who the audience is makes all the difference in how the story is told.
So, why wouldn’t we expect the story of the magi to be in Matthew’s gospel? The answer is that we wouldn’t expect it because out of all the gospels, Matthew’s gospel is the most Jewish gospel. The story of thee Gentiles coming to Jesus would seem to be more appealing to a Gentile audience. Matthew’s gospel was a Jewish gospel, and typically would not have praised any Gentiles. Instead, he praise Jews and Jewish tradition. For instance, he constantly cited how Jesus was fulfilling scripture. Luke and John rarely cited scripture because they were writing to Gentiles who didn’t know Jewish scripture. So, what’s the big deal about Matthew mentioning astrologers? The answer is that not only did the Jews not believe in astrology, but they considered astrology to be evil. To them, the fact that the magi showed up would not be a good thing. But Matthew included this story in his gospel for a reason.
I believe that Matthew was trying to make a very powerful point to the Jews. He was saying to them that the Jews missed the sign of Jesus being born in scripture, but that people of another religion, even an evil one, heard God’s call to revere Jesus. He’s saying that Jesus was so important that God spread the news to both Jews and Gentiles alike. God was not longer just the God of the Jews, but was now the God of everyone, and the Jews need to jump on board.
I also think there was another message here that we can take from this passage, one that it applicable for us today. The message of the magi is that God can speak to us through anything, especially through nature, if we are really listening. If we have a proper openness to God and to God in the world, we can discover God speaking constantly to us. I’m not a big believer in astrology, but I think in this one instance God used it for God’s purposes. God spoke to the magi through the stars, and they heard.
I’ve learned in my life to pay attention to God’s voice coming through the world, and I’m amazed at how often profound messages can come to me when I am looking at the stars, when I am listening to another person, and when I am reading a book. When I am receptive, God speaks over and over and over. Looking back at my life, I know where I Iearned to hear God through the world. As with so much in my life, I learned it on television. Specifically, I learned to hear God speaking through nature from the television show Kung Fu.
I don’t know if you remember the show, but it was about an American-Chinese man, a Shaolin monk, who had to escape to America after he killed the Emperor’s nephew. Each week we followed the man as he wandered the old West looking for a half-brother. In each episode he would face a crisis, which he would always try to resolve peacefully, in keeping with his Shaolin principles. Eventually he would be forced to fight using kung-fu, of which he was a master, and overcome the bad guys.
Often, when faced with a crisis, he would have flashbacks to his training as a child in the monastery. You would see him as a young apprentice monk, speaking to a master. He would ask a question such as, “Master, why is it so hard to know what the right thing to do in each situation?” The master would say, “Place your foot in that stream over there, Grasshopper (he called the young boy by that name). Now place it in again. Did you touch the same water twice?” The young boy would say, “No, because the water keeps moving and changing.” The master would say, “And that is why life is so hard. It keeps moving and changing.”
It may have been just a television show, but God spoke to me through it and taught me that we can find God’s wisdom by observing nature and learning what it can teach us. I believe that the magi understood something similar. They looked at the stars and heard God. Much like the main character from Kung-Fu, they had something that too many of us modern people are missing. They had reverence for nature, and especially the stars.
Last week I spoke of how important awe is—that sense of smallness and wonder in the face of God and God’s creation. Reverence is related to awe, but it’s a bit different. Reverence means looking at what’s around us with a sense that it is all sacred, and that God is reflected through it all. When we have reverence for each other, we sense the sacred in each other. When we have reverence in worship, we sense God’s presence in our midst. If we look at each other with reverence, we can sense God in each other.
Too often we’re missing a sense of reverence. To often we diminish life by making it all about money, or power, or control, or getting things done, or tasks, or a million other ways we diminish life. The question is whether we can begin to live with a sense of reverence, because if we can we can let Christ be born in us. The magi were reverent, and it made all the difference.
Not to belabor the connection between God and labor, but I have a very fun, short video clip I’d love for you to see (I showed it when I preached this sermon). It’s a clip by a Christian musician, Wendy Francisco, and you can find it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H17edn_RZoY.
I want to leave you with a basic question to reflect upon: Can you hear God speaking all around you? This is supposed to be a season of hearing God. How well are you listening?
Amen.
Witnesses to Christ's Birth: The Magi
by Dr. Graham Standish
Matthew 2:1-12
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.” ’
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’ When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
So far during this season of Advent we’ve been reflecting on the different witnesses to Christ’s birth. We’ve looked at the angels, who are beings created by God with a clear mandate to serve God by serving God’s creation. We talked about whether or not they exist, and if they do how we typically experience them. We’ve talked about Mary and Joseph, and about how their desire to do God’s will no matter what. We also talked about the shepherds, and about how the combination of their humility and awe opened them to see the angel and follow God despite their doubts.
Each of those witnesses is interesting, but none of them are as mysterious as our witnesses for today—the magi. We know next to nothing about the magi. The song, “We Three Kings,” calls them “kings.” We don’t know much about them, but we do know that they weren’t kings. We often describe them as three men, but we don’t even know that they were men. They could have been men or women or any combination of the two. What do we know about them? Not much. But we do know that they were astrologers. The magi were actually priests in the Zoarastrian faith of Persia. Their focus was on studying the stars. In effect, they were astrologer priests who tried to divine the future by studying the movement and configuration of the stars. Whenever a Persian king or someone wealthy needed advice, he would call upon these magi. They would divine the starts and give their advice.
Today we know astrologers as those who create our horoscopes for the local papers, which for the most part are total bunk. I know this because I did experiments with astrology when I was younger. For about a month I decided to look each night to see if my horoscope had come true. Over that thirty day period something that could be related to my horoscope came true about six times, and from what I remembered I had to really stretch to say that the predictions came true.
Still, these magi were astrologers, and they saw significance in the stars. Traditionally Christians have believed that the magi saw a special star. In the age of science, many speculated that they saw some great star supernova, or a comet passing by. Unfortunately we know now that neither was the case. Modern-day astronomers and historians have searched for evidence of a supernova or comet, but there is none. There’s no history of either occurring within decades of Christ’s birth. Most scholars today believe that we’ve discounted too much the fact that the magi were astrologers, and could have seen significance in a celestial event that others dismissed.
In all likelihood, the star they saw rising out of the east was a configuration of Jupiter, Saturn, and a star called Regulus. The three of them coming together in the early evening would have been very bright in the eastern sky, and Regulus, the king star, would have traveled westward at night out of that configuration. Scientists who have studied the stars using computers have noted that this configuration existed back in 4 B.C., which is when most scholars believe Jesus was born.
Another mystery about the magi exists that bothers many scholars: why is this story in Matthew’s gospel? You’d expect this story to appear in John’s gospel or Luke’s, but not Matthew’s. Why? To understand you have to understand something about the gospels. The mistake of many people today is in thinking that the gospel writers were just writing history, and that we just have four versions of the same history. The reality is that they weren’t writing history. They were writing about the story of Jesus and his teachings to four very distinct audiences. The differences in the gospels were due to the fact that some stories were included, others taken out, depending on who their intended audience was.
For example, it is believed that Mark’s gospel was most likely written to Jews living in Rome who had become early Christians and wanted to understand the life of Jesus in more depth. So Mark gives them mostly the facts, and it is written in a way that would appeal to a Jewish audience living in the midst of Gentiles. Meanwhile, Luke’s gospel was written by a Gentile to Gentiles, not Jews. The most commonly accepted belief was that Luke was writing his gospel to someone in the Roman emperor’s court, and that the combination of Luke’s gospel and the Book of Acts, which he also wrote, were written as a defense of the apostle Paul, who was on trial in Rome and was facing execution. Other scholars believe he was writing to Gentiles living in Greece. Either way, the gospel is very Gentile-friendly. In his gospel Jesus has many traits that would have been especially appealing to Gentiles, such as sitting down and eating with others, especially non-Jews. Finally, John’s gospel was most likely written to Gentile Christians living in what is now Syria and Lebanon. These Christians had become captivated by a new, heretical teaching called “Gnosticism.” John’s gospel was trying to overcome this heresy by emphasizing that Jesus was real, that he could be touched, that he had been alive in the real world, and that his Spirit is now in us. Who the audience is makes all the difference in how the story is told.
So, why wouldn’t we expect the story of the magi to be in Matthew’s gospel? The answer is that we wouldn’t expect it because out of all the gospels, Matthew’s gospel is the most Jewish gospel. The story of thee Gentiles coming to Jesus would seem to be more appealing to a Gentile audience. Matthew’s gospel was a Jewish gospel, and typically would not have praised any Gentiles. Instead, he praise Jews and Jewish tradition. For instance, he constantly cited how Jesus was fulfilling scripture. Luke and John rarely cited scripture because they were writing to Gentiles who didn’t know Jewish scripture. So, what’s the big deal about Matthew mentioning astrologers? The answer is that not only did the Jews not believe in astrology, but they considered astrology to be evil. To them, the fact that the magi showed up would not be a good thing. But Matthew included this story in his gospel for a reason.
I believe that Matthew was trying to make a very powerful point to the Jews. He was saying to them that the Jews missed the sign of Jesus being born in scripture, but that people of another religion, even an evil one, heard God’s call to revere Jesus. He’s saying that Jesus was so important that God spread the news to both Jews and Gentiles alike. God was not longer just the God of the Jews, but was now the God of everyone, and the Jews need to jump on board.
I also think there was another message here that we can take from this passage, one that it applicable for us today. The message of the magi is that God can speak to us through anything, especially through nature, if we are really listening. If we have a proper openness to God and to God in the world, we can discover God speaking constantly to us. I’m not a big believer in astrology, but I think in this one instance God used it for God’s purposes. God spoke to the magi through the stars, and they heard.
I’ve learned in my life to pay attention to God’s voice coming through the world, and I’m amazed at how often profound messages can come to me when I am looking at the stars, when I am listening to another person, and when I am reading a book. When I am receptive, God speaks over and over and over. Looking back at my life, I know where I Iearned to hear God through the world. As with so much in my life, I learned it on television. Specifically, I learned to hear God speaking through nature from the television show Kung Fu.
I don’t know if you remember the show, but it was about an American-Chinese man, a Shaolin monk, who had to escape to America after he killed the Emperor’s nephew. Each week we followed the man as he wandered the old West looking for a half-brother. In each episode he would face a crisis, which he would always try to resolve peacefully, in keeping with his Shaolin principles. Eventually he would be forced to fight using kung-fu, of which he was a master, and overcome the bad guys.
Often, when faced with a crisis, he would have flashbacks to his training as a child in the monastery. You would see him as a young apprentice monk, speaking to a master. He would ask a question such as, “Master, why is it so hard to know what the right thing to do in each situation?” The master would say, “Place your foot in that stream over there, Grasshopper (he called the young boy by that name). Now place it in again. Did you touch the same water twice?” The young boy would say, “No, because the water keeps moving and changing.” The master would say, “And that is why life is so hard. It keeps moving and changing.”
It may have been just a television show, but God spoke to me through it and taught me that we can find God’s wisdom by observing nature and learning what it can teach us. I believe that the magi understood something similar. They looked at the stars and heard God. Much like the main character from Kung-Fu, they had something that too many of us modern people are missing. They had reverence for nature, and especially the stars.
Last week I spoke of how important awe is—that sense of smallness and wonder in the face of God and God’s creation. Reverence is related to awe, but it’s a bit different. Reverence means looking at what’s around us with a sense that it is all sacred, and that God is reflected through it all. When we have reverence for each other, we sense the sacred in each other. When we have reverence in worship, we sense God’s presence in our midst. If we look at each other with reverence, we can sense God in each other.
Too often we’re missing a sense of reverence. To often we diminish life by making it all about money, or power, or control, or getting things done, or tasks, or a million other ways we diminish life. The question is whether we can begin to live with a sense of reverence, because if we can we can let Christ be born in us. The magi were reverent, and it made all the difference.
Not to belabor the connection between God and labor, but I have a very fun, short video clip I’d love for you to see (I showed it when I preached this sermon). It’s a clip by a Christian musician, Wendy Francisco, and you can find it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H17edn_RZoY.
I want to leave you with a basic question to reflect upon: Can you hear God speaking all around you? This is supposed to be a season of hearing God. How well are you listening?
Amen.
Matthew 2:1-12
In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, ‘Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.’ When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.” ’
Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, ‘Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.’ When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.
So far during this season of Advent we’ve been reflecting on the different witnesses to Christ’s birth. We’ve looked at the angels, who are beings created by God with a clear mandate to serve God by serving God’s creation. We talked about whether or not they exist, and if they do how we typically experience them. We’ve talked about Mary and Joseph, and about how their desire to do God’s will no matter what. We also talked about the shepherds, and about how the combination of their humility and awe opened them to see the angel and follow God despite their doubts.
Each of those witnesses is interesting, but none of them are as mysterious as our witnesses for today—the magi. We know next to nothing about the magi. The song, “We Three Kings,” calls them “kings.” We don’t know much about them, but we do know that they weren’t kings. We often describe them as three men, but we don’t even know that they were men. They could have been men or women or any combination of the two. What do we know about them? Not much. But we do know that they were astrologers. The magi were actually priests in the Zoarastrian faith of Persia. Their focus was on studying the stars. In effect, they were astrologer priests who tried to divine the future by studying the movement and configuration of the stars. Whenever a Persian king or someone wealthy needed advice, he would call upon these magi. They would divine the starts and give their advice.
Today we know astrologers as those who create our horoscopes for the local papers, which for the most part are total bunk. I know this because I did experiments with astrology when I was younger. For about a month I decided to look each night to see if my horoscope had come true. Over that thirty day period something that could be related to my horoscope came true about six times, and from what I remembered I had to really stretch to say that the predictions came true.
Still, these magi were astrologers, and they saw significance in the stars. Traditionally Christians have believed that the magi saw a special star. In the age of science, many speculated that they saw some great star supernova, or a comet passing by. Unfortunately we know now that neither was the case. Modern-day astronomers and historians have searched for evidence of a supernova or comet, but there is none. There’s no history of either occurring within decades of Christ’s birth. Most scholars today believe that we’ve discounted too much the fact that the magi were astrologers, and could have seen significance in a celestial event that others dismissed.
In all likelihood, the star they saw rising out of the east was a configuration of Jupiter, Saturn, and a star called Regulus. The three of them coming together in the early evening would have been very bright in the eastern sky, and Regulus, the king star, would have traveled westward at night out of that configuration. Scientists who have studied the stars using computers have noted that this configuration existed back in 4 B.C., which is when most scholars believe Jesus was born.
Another mystery about the magi exists that bothers many scholars: why is this story in Matthew’s gospel? You’d expect this story to appear in John’s gospel or Luke’s, but not Matthew’s. Why? To understand you have to understand something about the gospels. The mistake of many people today is in thinking that the gospel writers were just writing history, and that we just have four versions of the same history. The reality is that they weren’t writing history. They were writing about the story of Jesus and his teachings to four very distinct audiences. The differences in the gospels were due to the fact that some stories were included, others taken out, depending on who their intended audience was.
For example, it is believed that Mark’s gospel was most likely written to Jews living in Rome who had become early Christians and wanted to understand the life of Jesus in more depth. So Mark gives them mostly the facts, and it is written in a way that would appeal to a Jewish audience living in the midst of Gentiles. Meanwhile, Luke’s gospel was written by a Gentile to Gentiles, not Jews. The most commonly accepted belief was that Luke was writing his gospel to someone in the Roman emperor’s court, and that the combination of Luke’s gospel and the Book of Acts, which he also wrote, were written as a defense of the apostle Paul, who was on trial in Rome and was facing execution. Other scholars believe he was writing to Gentiles living in Greece. Either way, the gospel is very Gentile-friendly. In his gospel Jesus has many traits that would have been especially appealing to Gentiles, such as sitting down and eating with others, especially non-Jews. Finally, John’s gospel was most likely written to Gentile Christians living in what is now Syria and Lebanon. These Christians had become captivated by a new, heretical teaching called “Gnosticism.” John’s gospel was trying to overcome this heresy by emphasizing that Jesus was real, that he could be touched, that he had been alive in the real world, and that his Spirit is now in us. Who the audience is makes all the difference in how the story is told.
So, why wouldn’t we expect the story of the magi to be in Matthew’s gospel? The answer is that we wouldn’t expect it because out of all the gospels, Matthew’s gospel is the most Jewish gospel. The story of thee Gentiles coming to Jesus would seem to be more appealing to a Gentile audience. Matthew’s gospel was a Jewish gospel, and typically would not have praised any Gentiles. Instead, he praise Jews and Jewish tradition. For instance, he constantly cited how Jesus was fulfilling scripture. Luke and John rarely cited scripture because they were writing to Gentiles who didn’t know Jewish scripture. So, what’s the big deal about Matthew mentioning astrologers? The answer is that not only did the Jews not believe in astrology, but they considered astrology to be evil. To them, the fact that the magi showed up would not be a good thing. But Matthew included this story in his gospel for a reason.
I believe that Matthew was trying to make a very powerful point to the Jews. He was saying to them that the Jews missed the sign of Jesus being born in scripture, but that people of another religion, even an evil one, heard God’s call to revere Jesus. He’s saying that Jesus was so important that God spread the news to both Jews and Gentiles alike. God was not longer just the God of the Jews, but was now the God of everyone, and the Jews need to jump on board.
I also think there was another message here that we can take from this passage, one that it applicable for us today. The message of the magi is that God can speak to us through anything, especially through nature, if we are really listening. If we have a proper openness to God and to God in the world, we can discover God speaking constantly to us. I’m not a big believer in astrology, but I think in this one instance God used it for God’s purposes. God spoke to the magi through the stars, and they heard.
I’ve learned in my life to pay attention to God’s voice coming through the world, and I’m amazed at how often profound messages can come to me when I am looking at the stars, when I am listening to another person, and when I am reading a book. When I am receptive, God speaks over and over and over. Looking back at my life, I know where I Iearned to hear God through the world. As with so much in my life, I learned it on television. Specifically, I learned to hear God speaking through nature from the television show Kung Fu.
I don’t know if you remember the show, but it was about an American-Chinese man, a Shaolin monk, who had to escape to America after he killed the Emperor’s nephew. Each week we followed the man as he wandered the old West looking for a half-brother. In each episode he would face a crisis, which he would always try to resolve peacefully, in keeping with his Shaolin principles. Eventually he would be forced to fight using kung-fu, of which he was a master, and overcome the bad guys.
Often, when faced with a crisis, he would have flashbacks to his training as a child in the monastery. You would see him as a young apprentice monk, speaking to a master. He would ask a question such as, “Master, why is it so hard to know what the right thing to do in each situation?” The master would say, “Place your foot in that stream over there, Grasshopper (he called the young boy by that name). Now place it in again. Did you touch the same water twice?” The young boy would say, “No, because the water keeps moving and changing.” The master would say, “And that is why life is so hard. It keeps moving and changing.”
It may have been just a television show, but God spoke to me through it and taught me that we can find God’s wisdom by observing nature and learning what it can teach us. I believe that the magi understood something similar. They looked at the stars and heard God. Much like the main character from Kung-Fu, they had something that too many of us modern people are missing. They had reverence for nature, and especially the stars.
Last week I spoke of how important awe is—that sense of smallness and wonder in the face of God and God’s creation. Reverence is related to awe, but it’s a bit different. Reverence means looking at what’s around us with a sense that it is all sacred, and that God is reflected through it all. When we have reverence for each other, we sense the sacred in each other. When we have reverence in worship, we sense God’s presence in our midst. If we look at each other with reverence, we can sense God in each other.
Too often we’re missing a sense of reverence. To often we diminish life by making it all about money, or power, or control, or getting things done, or tasks, or a million other ways we diminish life. The question is whether we can begin to live with a sense of reverence, because if we can we can let Christ be born in us. The magi were reverent, and it made all the difference.
Not to belabor the connection between God and labor, but I have a very fun, short video clip I’d love for you to see (I showed it when I preached this sermon). It’s a clip by a Christian musician, Wendy Francisco, and you can find it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H17edn_RZoY.
I want to leave you with a basic question to reflect upon: Can you hear God speaking all around you? This is supposed to be a season of hearing God. How well are you listening?
Amen.
Witnesses to Christ's Birth: Shepherds
by Dr. Graham Standish
Luke 2:8-20
In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!’
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
I want you to stop and reflect for a moment. Take time to think about the places you are most likely to experience God, not including church. Picture places that you’ve experienced God’s presence.
I’d be willing to bet that most of you named somewhere in nature—the mountains, the beach, your back yard, a cemetery, in the woods, along a river, a sunset. There’s definitely something about nature that opens people to the Divine, the Holy, and to God. The places I’ve always been most touched by the spiritual have been in nature. For example, over the course of 35 years our family went to a lake 180 miles north of Toronto. It was there, sitting on a dock at midnight, looking at the stars, that I often sensed God’s presence most tangibly. Something about the stars helped me to feel as though God was there.
Another place that I felt God tangibly was two years ago when Bruce Smith and I led a worship conference at a retreat center in the hill country of Texas. Even though the temperature hovered around 94 degrees, I went for a 4-mile hike through the woods every afternoon. It was beautiful. And twice I came across a small family of armadillos. When I first saw them it scared the giblets out of me. But then I became fascinated with them, especially since they didn’t really care that I was there. They just kept rooting for whatever it is that they eat. Then one little fella put his paws on my toe, then stood up on his hind legs with his front paws against my shin, and sniffed me. He must have thought that I was no good to eat because he (or she) got back down and sniffed the rocks around me. For him (or her) our encounter was nothing, but I was in awe. I never expected to see armadillos. It felt like God had given me such an incredible gift in those woods, and I sensed God smiling.
Why is nature so good at helping us experience the Holy? I believe the answer is fairly simple. Nature inspires awe. It causes us to recognize the greatness of God’s creation while at the same time making us seem small in comparison. We aren’t made to feel small in a bad way. Nature makes us feel small in a way that makes us as though we are part of something great and majestic. I think that this is what those great cathedrals of Europe do. They are awe-inspiring because they make us feel small, but also safe in God’s great sacred space.
Also, nature helps us experience the Holy by reconnecting us with our source—with creation and the Creator. When we are out in nature, we sense God’s presence because we know that God created everything.
Finally, nature helps us experience the Holy by opening us to what is beyond. Nature helps us realize that there is always more than we can possibly take in. For example, when I look at the stars in Canada, I’m reminded that we are on a planet circling one star among 16 billion in our galaxy. And I’m reminded that our galaxy is one galaxy among 16 billion galaxies. Reflecting on that, I realize just how great and beyond anything I can imagine God really is. I am awed by how more there is to the universe, life, and existence there is than I can ever imagine.
We don’t talk much about awe nowadays, but awe is essential to gaining a real sense of God’s presence with us and in us. People who have no awe have no sense of God. The Old Testament talks about awe a lot, although most of our Bibles translate the term as “fear of the Lord,” as in “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” I think “fear of the Lord” is a bad translation. It should be translated as “awe,” as in “Awe in the face of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”
I think the shepherd’s connection with God through nature has something to do with the angel (probably Gabriel) appearing to the shepherds to announce Jesus birth, rather than to the kings, the magistrates, the temple priests, or the rabbis. It’s not just that the shepherds were out in nature. It’s what nature did to them that prepared them to hear the angel and to find Jesus.
How much do you know about ancient shepherds and their situation? To really get an appreciation for our passage it helps to know something about shepherds. First of all, they were considered nothing in the eyes of Jewish society. They were among the lowest ranks of society. Why? Because they had to tend to the sheep all the time. They were considered to be dirty. Their exposure to the sun often caused them to get skin conditions that others thought of as demonstrating sin. And their commitment to the sheep often left them unable to worship at either the Temple or the synagogues. As a result, they were discounted by the culture. But this had a spiritual benefit. Among the sheep the shepherds learned humility. They never had large egos that got in the way of them being open to God. They considered themselves to be nothing, but the result was that they were much more open to God. They had no power, so they were open to God’s power.
Second, their connection with nature caused them to live a life of awe. They were able to experience God in the hills, the sun, the moon, the stars, streams, valleys, and the sheep. They were awed by nature, and their awe created the conditions in which they could be both terrified in seeing the angel, while simultaneously wanting to hear everything the angel said. And their awe led them to be willing to follow.
Finally, they didn’t over-think their experience, but were open to the Holy. Think about us today. Whenever we have a spiritual experience we tend to try to analyze it from all directions. Perhaps part of that analysis is religious and theological, but we’d also try to do a psychological, pragmatic analysis, wondering if we were losing our minds. We’d test the experience against what everyone else says is reality, meaning that people living in reality don’t see angels. We would question the experience, but the shepherds accepted it.
Have you thought much about what gets in the way of our experiencing God? For a lot of us our problem is that we’re the complete opposite of the shepherds. We are all important in our own eyes, both individually and as a culture. We’re a culture of egos, and it’s hard to be open to God when our collective egos are so large. The result is that we don’t spend much time connecting with the divine in nature anymore. Before the 20th century, much of our culture lived amidst nature, whether that means in farming towns or villages and cities where nature was much closer. Today few live amidst real nature, and we’re poorer for it, although I don’t know what the answer is. I know that for me part of the answer is taking walks around Hereford Manor, a local lake in the area. For some of you it is boating or fishing on Lake Arthur, or walking and biking the trails of Moraine State Park.
The problem for most of our culture is that our lack of connection with nature means that don’t look at life with much of a sense of awe. In fact, we Americans are seldom awed. We’re too busy celebrating our greatness to be awed. Or we’re too busy trying to run the world to be awed. Also, we Americans are so well educated that we over-think God and the Holy. I believe that this is the reason so many young adults forget about God in college. They live in cocoons in which their food, shelter, and entertainment are provided for, and so they are free to think of life in a way that’s disconnected from reality. They can entertain thoughts of a world without God or religion because they are disconnected from any sources of awe. Also, college is a place of thinking, analyzing, and rationalizing, which makes the conditions right for over-thinking. Thus, spiritual and theological thinking is diminished.
The result of all of this is that it can be hard for us modern Americans to truly become open to God. So, here’s my question for you: What would it take for you to become more like a shepherd in your life?
I’m not asking what it would take for you to tend sheep. I’m asking what it would take for you to become a truly humble person, a person shaped by awe, and a person open to God in all things? The answers to these questions will offer you a path to the experience of God.
Amen.
Witness to Christ's Birth: Mary & Joseph
Connie Frierson
Matthew 1: 18-25
I have a friend who used to claim to have lived an accidental life. He makes a whole series of jokes about how everything in his life has been accidental. He went to the college that sent him an acceptance letter. But he really didn’t know anything about the college; in fact he was shocked to find that it was a boys only school when he showed up the first day on campus. He met his wife when he accidentally bumped into her at a party and spilled his drink on her. He went to law school to avoid the draft, so he thinks of this as an accidental profession. He claims none of his kids were planned. Yet here is a man with a happy 35-year marriage, healthy grown kids, a prosperous career and years of community service. In hindsight, my friend of the accidental life has had a good life and knows he was blessed, that God was moving in the circumstances and accidents of his life.
As Christians we believe that God works in and through all of life the good and the bad. We believe in more than serendipitous life. We believe in a life of God’s providence.
Graham started a sermon series last week on the witnesses to Jesus Birth. This week we have Mary and Joseph as witnesses to us. Mary and Joseph have had a particular gift from God given to them, a gift that is remarkable even before the miracle of Jesus birth. Mary and Joseph knew that their lives were not accidental or incidental. They knew that God was at work in their lives and how they responded to God made all the difference in the world. Even right down to today and our world.
So who were Mary and Joseph? What was it about them that was faithful, significant and important? Well at first glance not much. My, my, God uses dubious material. At first glance it almost appears random. Mary was one of thousands, no millions of teenage girls in the wide, wide world. If we looked at the 8th grade class at Seneca Valley Middle School would we be any more surprised to see one of those teens as the mother of God? Mary was even more improbable. She was young, poor, powerless and insignificant to anyone except perhaps her parents and Joseph. She had no powerful relatives, no entourage, no four star education. This was no princess.
Nor was Joseph a prince. He was the workingman with a humble but respectable job. He was a good man, Matthew calls him righteous, but of no more importance in the world than millions of other good men. He was from nowhere and had nothing except for a skill set, some homemade furniture and the family background of a long ago King. A small member of King David’s line, a dynasty that had been trounced several empires before the Romans.
So what is God telling us with this Mary and Joseph? If we look with the eyes of the world, we don’t know beans about how God works. God looks at the world and turns what we think we know upside down. God uses common people, poor people, young people, working people to bring in a new world. If you think your life is insignificant, it is not to God. Think you are too young, or too old, or too whatever not to bring Christ into the world, think again. This is a magical aspect of God; God evidently does use sow’s ears to make silk purses.
We are always trying to gild the common story. We make Mary and Joseph saints in retrospect. I respect veneration of Mary and Joseph, but while they lived this story it wasn’t gilded it was messy. The circumstances this couple found themselves in were terribly messy and not just messy but also dangerous and potentially tragic. One of our cultural blind spots is that we don’t understand what a dangerous situation this was for a pregnant teen, how devastating for her fiancé, how lives hung in the balance on the response of Mary, and the response of Joseph.
Betrothal in the first century was a legally binding contract that required a divorce to break it. A betrothed woman whose husband died was considered to be a widow. A man whose betrothed wife became pregnant could be stoned for jumping the gun. The woman could be stoned; any man outside the contract could be stoned. A pregnancy outside of marriage like this was a crime. Hebrew society did not wink and nod at breaking these rules of behavior. Reputations and how you lived or died rested on this. Both Mary and Joseph had lots to lose in the eyes of their communities. Deuteronomy 22 was a clear line in the sand. You don’t fool around with a married woman and a betrothed girl was just as married as some matron with five kids.
This story has a wealth of broken dreams in it. We tend to move on quickly to choirs and angels and gifts. But the gift of God’s son came into the world first with the devastation of best-laid plans. The two people most involved, Joseph and Mary had their young plans, their dreams of how life was to be, broken apart. For Mary, girlish dreams of the wedding and gifts and the whole town turning out to be happy with you, the age-old customs of this high water mark of life, were dashed. Now Mary gets to be suspect. Her reputation is lost. Her very life or at the least quality of life is in danger. Joseph had similar dreams of the respect of being a married man, dreams of a honeymoon, dreams of fathering his own child. Yet now all the eyes of their community would look askance. A reputation has been clouded. What each of these people wanted to happen, planned to happen have been irrevocably changed. Each has to put their lost dreams behind them and share God’s dream for their life.
Isn’t that like our lives too? Each of us has lost dreams, the parts of life that did not go as planned, the parts of life that look accidental or even catastrophic. But angels are urging us on to a new work of God in our life, perhaps a bigger dream. From the ashes of the small dreams of Mary and Joseph came the savior of the world. In the same way God is waiting to let your dreams be taken over by something bigger, stupendous, and eternal.
How well matched these two are. Each in their own way has said yes to God in radical ways. Mary’s response to the angel is so simple: “Here I am the servant of the Lord: let it be with me according to your word.” Mary’s response of the Magnificat is beyond passive acceptance. It is bold and courageous. “My soul magnifies the Lord… all generation will call me blessed.” How simple. How profound. Joseph’s response shows the character of the man even before an angel in a dream changes his plans. Joseph had already chosen a compassionate yet just response to Mary’s scandalous pregnancy. He was going to put her away quietly so that Mary would avoid public disgrace. However, Joseph is completely obedient and completely flexible. Joseph changes his plans on a dime to follow God. These two are evenly matched. These two ordinary insignificant people are really quite extraordinary in their response to God. How open they were. Here God take my body to create a new way to break into the world. Here God take my reputation, my plans, my life and create something new. Mary and Joseph didn’t say yes to God at the edges of their life. They said yes to a divine invasion, a complete take over. Mary and Joseph were radical.
We get this all wrong. We turn the nativity into a sentimental story. We think of Jesus Mary and Joseph, and point to old paintings and say is there anything more traditional than that? Yet Jesus and Mary and Joseph were breaking all the modes, all the models on how God acts and how people respond. Mary and Joseph were iconoclasts. An icon is an image or a symbol of the way things are or the way things are meant to be. An Iconoclast means someone who breaks the image, the mold. Mary and Joseph break all those stock images. God doesn’t speak through powerless working people. Yes God does. God doesn’t speak though an unusual pregnancy, Yes God does. God doesn’t work outside of our cultural rules. Yes God does. Our problem is we pick out the world’s icons. But God is trying to shine through holy icons, to reveal new and timeless truth. This is a love story, yes of Mary and Joseph for each other, but more powerfully of Mary and Joseph for God and more powerfully still of God for us, God with us.
Joseph and Mary are our witnesses today. As a lawyer a lifetime ago, I was used to examining witnesses. One of the fallacies of witnesses is that they are objective observers, like a scientific test of testimony. But every lawyer knows that every witness has a story, a view point a place that they start. When we look at Mary and Joseph we need to know that they aren’t just witnesses to the story. They are part of the story. In the same way you are not just witnesses to the story of Mary and Joseph and God breaking into the world. This Christmas you need to know that you are part of that story, as much as Mary and Joseph. Christ comes into the world when we allow this holy invasion. When you hear this story do you say yes or no to God? Do you view you life as accidental or does God work on and through your life? Do you let God rearrange your dreams, your life? Can you see God creating a new mode of Grace? Christ is waiting to be born in our lives.
AMEN.
Matthew 1: 18-25
I have a friend who used to claim to have lived an accidental life. He makes a whole series of jokes about how everything in his life has been accidental. He went to the college that sent him an acceptance letter. But he really didn’t know anything about the college; in fact he was shocked to find that it was a boys only school when he showed up the first day on campus. He met his wife when he accidentally bumped into her at a party and spilled his drink on her. He went to law school to avoid the draft, so he thinks of this as an accidental profession. He claims none of his kids were planned. Yet here is a man with a happy 35-year marriage, healthy grown kids, a prosperous career and years of community service. In hindsight, my friend of the accidental life has had a good life and knows he was blessed, that God was moving in the circumstances and accidents of his life.
As Christians we believe that God works in and through all of life the good and the bad. We believe in more than serendipitous life. We believe in a life of God’s providence.
Graham started a sermon series last week on the witnesses to Jesus Birth. This week we have Mary and Joseph as witnesses to us. Mary and Joseph have had a particular gift from God given to them, a gift that is remarkable even before the miracle of Jesus birth. Mary and Joseph knew that their lives were not accidental or incidental. They knew that God was at work in their lives and how they responded to God made all the difference in the world. Even right down to today and our world.
So who were Mary and Joseph? What was it about them that was faithful, significant and important? Well at first glance not much. My, my, God uses dubious material. At first glance it almost appears random. Mary was one of thousands, no millions of teenage girls in the wide, wide world. If we looked at the 8th grade class at Seneca Valley Middle School would we be any more surprised to see one of those teens as the mother of God? Mary was even more improbable. She was young, poor, powerless and insignificant to anyone except perhaps her parents and Joseph. She had no powerful relatives, no entourage, no four star education. This was no princess.
Nor was Joseph a prince. He was the workingman with a humble but respectable job. He was a good man, Matthew calls him righteous, but of no more importance in the world than millions of other good men. He was from nowhere and had nothing except for a skill set, some homemade furniture and the family background of a long ago King. A small member of King David’s line, a dynasty that had been trounced several empires before the Romans.
So what is God telling us with this Mary and Joseph? If we look with the eyes of the world, we don’t know beans about how God works. God looks at the world and turns what we think we know upside down. God uses common people, poor people, young people, working people to bring in a new world. If you think your life is insignificant, it is not to God. Think you are too young, or too old, or too whatever not to bring Christ into the world, think again. This is a magical aspect of God; God evidently does use sow’s ears to make silk purses.
We are always trying to gild the common story. We make Mary and Joseph saints in retrospect. I respect veneration of Mary and Joseph, but while they lived this story it wasn’t gilded it was messy. The circumstances this couple found themselves in were terribly messy and not just messy but also dangerous and potentially tragic. One of our cultural blind spots is that we don’t understand what a dangerous situation this was for a pregnant teen, how devastating for her fiancé, how lives hung in the balance on the response of Mary, and the response of Joseph.
Betrothal in the first century was a legally binding contract that required a divorce to break it. A betrothed woman whose husband died was considered to be a widow. A man whose betrothed wife became pregnant could be stoned for jumping the gun. The woman could be stoned; any man outside the contract could be stoned. A pregnancy outside of marriage like this was a crime. Hebrew society did not wink and nod at breaking these rules of behavior. Reputations and how you lived or died rested on this. Both Mary and Joseph had lots to lose in the eyes of their communities. Deuteronomy 22 was a clear line in the sand. You don’t fool around with a married woman and a betrothed girl was just as married as some matron with five kids.
This story has a wealth of broken dreams in it. We tend to move on quickly to choirs and angels and gifts. But the gift of God’s son came into the world first with the devastation of best-laid plans. The two people most involved, Joseph and Mary had their young plans, their dreams of how life was to be, broken apart. For Mary, girlish dreams of the wedding and gifts and the whole town turning out to be happy with you, the age-old customs of this high water mark of life, were dashed. Now Mary gets to be suspect. Her reputation is lost. Her very life or at the least quality of life is in danger. Joseph had similar dreams of the respect of being a married man, dreams of a honeymoon, dreams of fathering his own child. Yet now all the eyes of their community would look askance. A reputation has been clouded. What each of these people wanted to happen, planned to happen have been irrevocably changed. Each has to put their lost dreams behind them and share God’s dream for their life.
Isn’t that like our lives too? Each of us has lost dreams, the parts of life that did not go as planned, the parts of life that look accidental or even catastrophic. But angels are urging us on to a new work of God in our life, perhaps a bigger dream. From the ashes of the small dreams of Mary and Joseph came the savior of the world. In the same way God is waiting to let your dreams be taken over by something bigger, stupendous, and eternal.
How well matched these two are. Each in their own way has said yes to God in radical ways. Mary’s response to the angel is so simple: “Here I am the servant of the Lord: let it be with me according to your word.” Mary’s response of the Magnificat is beyond passive acceptance. It is bold and courageous. “My soul magnifies the Lord… all generation will call me blessed.” How simple. How profound. Joseph’s response shows the character of the man even before an angel in a dream changes his plans. Joseph had already chosen a compassionate yet just response to Mary’s scandalous pregnancy. He was going to put her away quietly so that Mary would avoid public disgrace. However, Joseph is completely obedient and completely flexible. Joseph changes his plans on a dime to follow God. These two are evenly matched. These two ordinary insignificant people are really quite extraordinary in their response to God. How open they were. Here God take my body to create a new way to break into the world. Here God take my reputation, my plans, my life and create something new. Mary and Joseph didn’t say yes to God at the edges of their life. They said yes to a divine invasion, a complete take over. Mary and Joseph were radical.
We get this all wrong. We turn the nativity into a sentimental story. We think of Jesus Mary and Joseph, and point to old paintings and say is there anything more traditional than that? Yet Jesus and Mary and Joseph were breaking all the modes, all the models on how God acts and how people respond. Mary and Joseph were iconoclasts. An icon is an image or a symbol of the way things are or the way things are meant to be. An Iconoclast means someone who breaks the image, the mold. Mary and Joseph break all those stock images. God doesn’t speak through powerless working people. Yes God does. God doesn’t speak though an unusual pregnancy, Yes God does. God doesn’t work outside of our cultural rules. Yes God does. Our problem is we pick out the world’s icons. But God is trying to shine through holy icons, to reveal new and timeless truth. This is a love story, yes of Mary and Joseph for each other, but more powerfully of Mary and Joseph for God and more powerfully still of God for us, God with us.
Joseph and Mary are our witnesses today. As a lawyer a lifetime ago, I was used to examining witnesses. One of the fallacies of witnesses is that they are objective observers, like a scientific test of testimony. But every lawyer knows that every witness has a story, a view point a place that they start. When we look at Mary and Joseph we need to know that they aren’t just witnesses to the story. They are part of the story. In the same way you are not just witnesses to the story of Mary and Joseph and God breaking into the world. This Christmas you need to know that you are part of that story, as much as Mary and Joseph. Christ comes into the world when we allow this holy invasion. When you hear this story do you say yes or no to God? Do you view you life as accidental or does God work on and through your life? Do you let God rearrange your dreams, your life? Can you see God creating a new mode of Grace? Christ is waiting to be born in our lives.
AMEN.
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