The Second Sunday of Advent Isaiah 11: 1 – 10
Sunday, December 5, 2010 Romans 15: 4 – 13
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 3: 1 – 12
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
Luke 3: 1
Our journey through Advent began last Sunday in hope, the hope that God would come again and finish what God began in Christ, overcoming forever the power of evil and death, making all things new. And now, on this the second Sunday of Advent, we meet John the Baptist, a wild and crazy man who lives in the wilderness, dresses in camel’s hair, eats locusts and calls the religious elite “a brood of vipers!”
The portrait of John the Baptist in the gospels is not warm and fuzzy but harsh, insistent and intent, a prophet convicted that kingdom of God is at hand and the children of Abraham are not ready to meet their King. To get ready, John leads them all into the Jordan river to confess their sins and be baptized. John the Baptist has one thing and one thing only on his mind: repentance.
And to those who were the most mindful of the Mosaic Law and sustaining worship in the Temple – the Pharisees and the Sadducees – John unleashes scathing condemnation calling them “a brood of vipers.” John the Baptist looks a little like a fiery T.V. evangelist, thumping his Bible and pronouncing damnation on all those who refuse to repent and “be saved.” God is coming, John announces, and to those who believe that they are God’s chosen who God will never forsake, John warns that when the Messiah comes he will separate the wheat from the chaff and the chaff “he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
If last Sunday we looked forward to our journey through Advent with hope and expectation, this Sunday makes us wonder if we really want to continue. Is the God upon whom we wait going to bring us to all joy or cast us away like so much chaff to the wind?
John the Baptist was a Jew who preached to a people who honored the Torah, the commandments of God, who prayed daily, who knew their scriptures better than any of us, and who made sacrifices in the Temple to atone for their sins. John the Baptist was not preaching to a people who were clueless about how to love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself. John the Baptist, did, though, think these righteous people were not all bearing fruit.
The people Israel, our ancestors in the faith, were chosen by God to bear fruit, to bring light to the world. Through Moses, God gave to Israel the Law, the Ten Commandments, which was intended to separate the Israel from all the other peoples of the earth, to mark Israel off as a particular people, the people of God. Through Israel, and the Jewish way of life, God was making Godself known to all peoples. The Jewish way of life was to mirror God’s own desire for the world – that the world might be a place of justice and mercy - so that through this particular people and their peculiar way of life, the whole world might come to know and to love the goodness of God.
The Jewish way of life was to embody justice and mercy in order to show forth the character of God, not to secure God’s favor. And when Israel forgot who they were and what they were about, God raised up prophets to remind the people of God of their vocation to bring blessing and light to the world. “The Lord has told you, O mortal, what is good;” preaches the prophet Amos. “And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” The Jews were, and are, called to be holy as God is holy. The Jews were and are called to be holy because God wants the whole world to be holy.
And so to the Sadducees and the Pharisees, John the Baptist says, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” The children of Abraham had been chosen for a purpose, elected for a vocation, called to be holy for the sake of the world, and were not to presume that God would exempt them from judgment, would not render them accountable to their call.
We believe that Israel’s vocation to be a blessing to the world was fulfilled in Jesus, who suffered death and was raised up by God on the third day. And we believe that the church is the body of Christ in the world, given the vocation to continue Christ’s mission of healing and blessing, of the making of peace and the doing of justice. And we believe, as we confess in the creed every Sunday, that Christ “will come again to judge the living and the dead.”
When God does come again, when God comes in power and in great glory to establish forever God’s reign on earth, God will take away all injustice, all violence, and all suffering from the face of the earth. In whatever ways you and I have contributed to the not-so-rightness of the world, God will take that away as well. Does that mean we will be held accountable for the ways in which we have colluded with the power of evil, in seeking our own pleasure and comfort and gain at the expense of others, I believe the answer is yes.
I believe God will hold us responsible because God has made us responsible, able to respond to God’s call or to ignore God’s call, able to respond to others with compassion and mercy or to ignore others, able to be both concerned for our own well-being and the well being of others, able to love our neighbor as ourself.
The time when God does come again, when justice and peace become the way of the world forever, was often, and still is, used by some in the church as a weapon, a fear tactic to turn folks to God in order to keep from burning in hell. Keeping away from the fires of hell was and is, for many the motivation to be “good,” even if being good is not always as clear as it may sometimes seem.
This fear of condemnation, of some kind of final horrible recompense for your wrong deeds, suggested to others in the church that God was punitive and vengeful and not the God of mercy and compassion we see in the life and ministry of Jesus. So, the pendulum swung the other away, away from a God of justice who would one day make all things new and brings things round right, to a God who would always understand, who would always forgive us and love us no matter what. What we did, did not matter because God, like our grandmother, would always understand.
But what we do does make a difference. We know this in our bones. Every act has consequences; no act is wholly inconsequential. We can choose to further God’s life-giving purposes or choose to destroy what God has created. With a word we can give hope to another and with a word we can hurt and wound someone else. We can choose to live lives separated from others, especially others who are not like us, or we can choose to be with others, others who are different from us.
What we do makes a difference because what we are looking forward to is the life of the world to come, not “going to heaven when we die.” What we do makes a difference not because we are trying to earn God’s favor who will reward us after we die with our own cloud, a set of wings and a harp, but rather because God is bringing to birth a new world, a world in which all of God’s creatures will live in peace and joy, a world of abundance and generosity and friendship. What we do makes a difference because what we are looking forward to is the world so beautifully described in our Old Testament reading this morning from Isaiah, a world in which “The wolf shall lie down with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” In that world, the prophet Isaiah tells us, “they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
John the Baptist is a little bit crazy and a good bit pushy. But wouldn’t you be if what you saw just over the horizon was a world so unimaginably wonderful, so unlike this world in which we live, that you just could not wait to tell folks what lay ahead?
Sunday, December 5, 2010 Romans 15: 4 – 13
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 3: 1 – 12
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
Luke 3: 1
Our journey through Advent began last Sunday in hope, the hope that God would come again and finish what God began in Christ, overcoming forever the power of evil and death, making all things new. And now, on this the second Sunday of Advent, we meet John the Baptist, a wild and crazy man who lives in the wilderness, dresses in camel’s hair, eats locusts and calls the religious elite “a brood of vipers!”
The portrait of John the Baptist in the gospels is not warm and fuzzy but harsh, insistent and intent, a prophet convicted that kingdom of God is at hand and the children of Abraham are not ready to meet their King. To get ready, John leads them all into the Jordan river to confess their sins and be baptized. John the Baptist has one thing and one thing only on his mind: repentance.
And to those who were the most mindful of the Mosaic Law and sustaining worship in the Temple – the Pharisees and the Sadducees – John unleashes scathing condemnation calling them “a brood of vipers.” John the Baptist looks a little like a fiery T.V. evangelist, thumping his Bible and pronouncing damnation on all those who refuse to repent and “be saved.” God is coming, John announces, and to those who believe that they are God’s chosen who God will never forsake, John warns that when the Messiah comes he will separate the wheat from the chaff and the chaff “he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
If last Sunday we looked forward to our journey through Advent with hope and expectation, this Sunday makes us wonder if we really want to continue. Is the God upon whom we wait going to bring us to all joy or cast us away like so much chaff to the wind?
John the Baptist was a Jew who preached to a people who honored the Torah, the commandments of God, who prayed daily, who knew their scriptures better than any of us, and who made sacrifices in the Temple to atone for their sins. John the Baptist was not preaching to a people who were clueless about how to love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself. John the Baptist, did, though, think these righteous people were not all bearing fruit.
The people Israel, our ancestors in the faith, were chosen by God to bear fruit, to bring light to the world. Through Moses, God gave to Israel the Law, the Ten Commandments, which was intended to separate the Israel from all the other peoples of the earth, to mark Israel off as a particular people, the people of God. Through Israel, and the Jewish way of life, God was making Godself known to all peoples. The Jewish way of life was to mirror God’s own desire for the world – that the world might be a place of justice and mercy - so that through this particular people and their peculiar way of life, the whole world might come to know and to love the goodness of God.
The Jewish way of life was to embody justice and mercy in order to show forth the character of God, not to secure God’s favor. And when Israel forgot who they were and what they were about, God raised up prophets to remind the people of God of their vocation to bring blessing and light to the world. “The Lord has told you, O mortal, what is good;” preaches the prophet Amos. “And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” The Jews were, and are, called to be holy as God is holy. The Jews were and are called to be holy because God wants the whole world to be holy.
And so to the Sadducees and the Pharisees, John the Baptist says, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” The children of Abraham had been chosen for a purpose, elected for a vocation, called to be holy for the sake of the world, and were not to presume that God would exempt them from judgment, would not render them accountable to their call.
We believe that Israel’s vocation to be a blessing to the world was fulfilled in Jesus, who suffered death and was raised up by God on the third day. And we believe that the church is the body of Christ in the world, given the vocation to continue Christ’s mission of healing and blessing, of the making of peace and the doing of justice. And we believe, as we confess in the creed every Sunday, that Christ “will come again to judge the living and the dead.”
When God does come again, when God comes in power and in great glory to establish forever God’s reign on earth, God will take away all injustice, all violence, and all suffering from the face of the earth. In whatever ways you and I have contributed to the not-so-rightness of the world, God will take that away as well. Does that mean we will be held accountable for the ways in which we have colluded with the power of evil, in seeking our own pleasure and comfort and gain at the expense of others, I believe the answer is yes.
I believe God will hold us responsible because God has made us responsible, able to respond to God’s call or to ignore God’s call, able to respond to others with compassion and mercy or to ignore others, able to be both concerned for our own well-being and the well being of others, able to love our neighbor as ourself.
The time when God does come again, when justice and peace become the way of the world forever, was often, and still is, used by some in the church as a weapon, a fear tactic to turn folks to God in order to keep from burning in hell. Keeping away from the fires of hell was and is, for many the motivation to be “good,” even if being good is not always as clear as it may sometimes seem.
This fear of condemnation, of some kind of final horrible recompense for your wrong deeds, suggested to others in the church that God was punitive and vengeful and not the God of mercy and compassion we see in the life and ministry of Jesus. So, the pendulum swung the other away, away from a God of justice who would one day make all things new and brings things round right, to a God who would always understand, who would always forgive us and love us no matter what. What we did, did not matter because God, like our grandmother, would always understand.
But what we do does make a difference. We know this in our bones. Every act has consequences; no act is wholly inconsequential. We can choose to further God’s life-giving purposes or choose to destroy what God has created. With a word we can give hope to another and with a word we can hurt and wound someone else. We can choose to live lives separated from others, especially others who are not like us, or we can choose to be with others, others who are different from us.
What we do makes a difference because what we are looking forward to is the life of the world to come, not “going to heaven when we die.” What we do makes a difference not because we are trying to earn God’s favor who will reward us after we die with our own cloud, a set of wings and a harp, but rather because God is bringing to birth a new world, a world in which all of God’s creatures will live in peace and joy, a world of abundance and generosity and friendship. What we do makes a difference because what we are looking forward to is the world so beautifully described in our Old Testament reading this morning from Isaiah, a world in which “The wolf shall lie down with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” In that world, the prophet Isaiah tells us, “they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
John the Baptist is a little bit crazy and a good bit pushy. But wouldn’t you be if what you saw just over the horizon was a world so unimaginably wonderful, so unlike this world in which we live, that you just could not wait to tell folks what lay ahead?
The Third Sunday of Advent Isaiah 35: 1 – 10
Sunday, December 12, 2010 James 5: 7 – 10
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 11: 2 – 11
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
Matthew 11: 2
The signs of Christmas are everywhere. Homes are ablaze with lights, candles glow in the windows, wreathes decorate doors and Christmas trees are finding their way from Food Lion into living rooms. Christmas cards come and go in the mail with pictures of a babe in a manger or adoring shepherds who encounter an angelic heavenly host or the magi who follow a star or sometimes just a simple cottage in the woods surrounded by snow. The signs of Christmas proclaim to all that Christmas is a season of joy and peace and hope and love.
But this morning in our gospel reading from Matthew, neither joy nor peace nor hope nor love are mentioned. On this, the third Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist is in prison, wondering if indeed, Jesus is “the one who is to come or if we are to wait for another?” Twelve days before Christmas we meet John the Baptist, the one who came to prepare the way for the Lord, the one who baptized Jesus in the Jordan River, locked behind bars soon to be executed by Herod.
And Jesus sends a message back to John in prison, saying: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” John the Baptist seems to be stumbling today, not quite sure if Jesus is God’s promised Messiah, the one through whom God will rescue God’s people from their enemies. John is a prisoner of Rome and perhaps is wondering what Jesus is going to do about it.
The blessing Jesus offers this morning is for those who “take no offense” at him. The Greek verb our evangelist Matthew uses which we translate “to take offense” is σκανδαλιζω and means to cause someone to give up their faith. This word is the root of our verb “to scandalize.” You are blessed, Jesus says, if what I do and who I am does not offend you, does not scandalize you. Jesus is suggesting that who he is and what he does may be offensive, maybe even scandalous.
Our evangelist Matthew is inviting us this morning to add one more word to our Christmas lexicon: Christmas is the season of joy and peace and hope and love and the season of scandal. I doubt we will soon find Hallmark printing Christmas cards with a picture of John the Baptist in chains, imprinted with the message: “Blessed are those who are not scandalized by me.”
Scandal is not a word most of us would associate with Christmas. But scandal is the word our evangelist Matthew uses today to describe the coming of Christ. The coming of Christ is a scandal.
A scandal is anything that breaches the norms of culturally acceptable behavior. When I was a child, being divorced was a scandal as was getting pregnant out of wedlock. Having an affair is a scandal, embezzling from your employer is a scandal, lying about your credentials in a job interview is a scandal, abusing a small child is a scandal. A scandal shocks us, gets our attention, because what has happened is not what was supposed to happen. According to Webster’s Dictionary, a scandal is “a bad example.”
Scandal is a strong word, a good bit stronger than the word in our present translation - “offense.” I am offended by ethnic jokes but not scandalized. When President Richard Nixon authorized the break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters in 1972, at Watergate, the nation was scandalized, not merely “offended.” To say that this sweet babe in a manger is a scandal does not mean that Jesus said some things with which some folk disagreed. To say that Jesus scandalized folk means Jesus was not what people, including John the Baptist, expected.
What John the Baptist expected, what all Jews expected, was a Messiah who would overpower Rome, enabling the Jews to live out their way of life in peace. When the Messiah came, Israel’s enemies would be judged and their power over Israel would be no more. If Jesus was the Messiah, the authority of the Roman Empire was soon to be taken away. But John is in prison, imprisoned by Herod, named King of the Jews by the Romans in 40 B.C. If Jesus is the Messiah, John the Baptist should not be a prisoner of Rome.
Jesus was not the Messiah anyone expected and when Rome put Jesus to death, Jesus was for many just one more failed Messiah, a Messiah who could not even save himself, let alone anyone else. A crucified Messiah was, in the words of Saint Paul, “a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” A crucified Messiah was, to borrow from Webster’s Dictionary, a bad example of a Messiah.
God did come into the world, but not in the way anyone expected. Jesus did not overthrow the Roman overlords nor seek to remove Herod from his place of power over the Jewish people. Jesus ate and drank with all the wrong people and went to his death without offering any resistance. Jesus was a scandal because through Christ, God exposed the lie of this world that our power comes from our strengths and not from our weaknesses. The power and the wisdom of God we came to know in Christ is the power of self-giving, not self-serving, love.
Self giving love our evangelist Matthew will tell us in the Sermon on the Mount, turns the other cheek, gives away whatever you have whenever someone asks for it, loves their enemies, is not anxious about food or clothing, and considers the judgment of self a pre-condition to the judgment of others.
But in this world, if someone hits you and you do turn the other cheek, you probably will get hit again. In this world if you give to everyone who asks anything of you, you will become poor. In this world, if you love your enemies, others will accuse you of being a “bleeding heart liberal.” In this world, if you are not anxious about where your next meal is coming from, you will be labeled either “lazy” or unwilling to plan ahead. In this world, if you judge yourself before you judge others, you may discover you are not as innocent as you might wish to be.
The scandal that was Christ was the scandal that Jesus created when Jesus simply did not play by the rules – the rules of this world that say you need to take care of yourself and that if you cannot take care of yourself, it’s your own fault; that there are “good” people and “bad” people in this world and we know who they are; that “charity begins at home” and caring for your blood line is more important than caring for your brothers and sisters in Christ. Jesus did more than disturb the peace; Jesus turned the values of this world upside down.
I am grateful that in this season of Advent, folk are hearing and seeing and reading words like joy and peace and hope and love. And I am grateful that Christmas Day will bring many families together, that on that day gifts will be given and received, a meal will be shared and stories of past Christmases remembered. What saddens me is that for many in this world, that one day will be the only window into a coming kingdom they will ever know. This year, Christmas is on a Saturday. Sunday we will gather for worship but I suspect we will not see the crowds who will gather on Christmas Eve. On Monday, many in this world will go back to work, back to a world that expects us to be competent and resourceful, rewarding us when we are and dismissing us when we are not.
For the Church, no one is indispensable and no one gets dismissed. Every Sunday, year in and year out, we gather, and we give our gifts at the offertory and we receive back bread and wine. Every Sunday we offer up what we have, whatever that may be - call it the drummer boy effect. And every Sunday we celebrate a common meal in the Eucharist. Every Sunday is Christmas in the church. Every Sunday we celebrate the scandal that God raised Jesus from the dead, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, is at work among us bringing us to life and making all things new. The “good news” that God is with us not just on Christmas Day but every day of the year is the scandalous good news we share with a world that wonders if indeed, God intends the joy of Christmas to be ours the rest of the year.
Sunday, December 12, 2010 James 5: 7 – 10
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 11: 2 – 11
When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
Matthew 11: 2
The signs of Christmas are everywhere. Homes are ablaze with lights, candles glow in the windows, wreathes decorate doors and Christmas trees are finding their way from Food Lion into living rooms. Christmas cards come and go in the mail with pictures of a babe in a manger or adoring shepherds who encounter an angelic heavenly host or the magi who follow a star or sometimes just a simple cottage in the woods surrounded by snow. The signs of Christmas proclaim to all that Christmas is a season of joy and peace and hope and love.
But this morning in our gospel reading from Matthew, neither joy nor peace nor hope nor love are mentioned. On this, the third Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist is in prison, wondering if indeed, Jesus is “the one who is to come or if we are to wait for another?” Twelve days before Christmas we meet John the Baptist, the one who came to prepare the way for the Lord, the one who baptized Jesus in the Jordan River, locked behind bars soon to be executed by Herod.
And Jesus sends a message back to John in prison, saying: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.” John the Baptist seems to be stumbling today, not quite sure if Jesus is God’s promised Messiah, the one through whom God will rescue God’s people from their enemies. John is a prisoner of Rome and perhaps is wondering what Jesus is going to do about it.
The blessing Jesus offers this morning is for those who “take no offense” at him. The Greek verb our evangelist Matthew uses which we translate “to take offense” is σκανδαλιζω and means to cause someone to give up their faith. This word is the root of our verb “to scandalize.” You are blessed, Jesus says, if what I do and who I am does not offend you, does not scandalize you. Jesus is suggesting that who he is and what he does may be offensive, maybe even scandalous.
Our evangelist Matthew is inviting us this morning to add one more word to our Christmas lexicon: Christmas is the season of joy and peace and hope and love and the season of scandal. I doubt we will soon find Hallmark printing Christmas cards with a picture of John the Baptist in chains, imprinted with the message: “Blessed are those who are not scandalized by me.”
Scandal is not a word most of us would associate with Christmas. But scandal is the word our evangelist Matthew uses today to describe the coming of Christ. The coming of Christ is a scandal.
A scandal is anything that breaches the norms of culturally acceptable behavior. When I was a child, being divorced was a scandal as was getting pregnant out of wedlock. Having an affair is a scandal, embezzling from your employer is a scandal, lying about your credentials in a job interview is a scandal, abusing a small child is a scandal. A scandal shocks us, gets our attention, because what has happened is not what was supposed to happen. According to Webster’s Dictionary, a scandal is “a bad example.”
Scandal is a strong word, a good bit stronger than the word in our present translation - “offense.” I am offended by ethnic jokes but not scandalized. When President Richard Nixon authorized the break-in of the Democratic Party headquarters in 1972, at Watergate, the nation was scandalized, not merely “offended.” To say that this sweet babe in a manger is a scandal does not mean that Jesus said some things with which some folk disagreed. To say that Jesus scandalized folk means Jesus was not what people, including John the Baptist, expected.
What John the Baptist expected, what all Jews expected, was a Messiah who would overpower Rome, enabling the Jews to live out their way of life in peace. When the Messiah came, Israel’s enemies would be judged and their power over Israel would be no more. If Jesus was the Messiah, the authority of the Roman Empire was soon to be taken away. But John is in prison, imprisoned by Herod, named King of the Jews by the Romans in 40 B.C. If Jesus is the Messiah, John the Baptist should not be a prisoner of Rome.
Jesus was not the Messiah anyone expected and when Rome put Jesus to death, Jesus was for many just one more failed Messiah, a Messiah who could not even save himself, let alone anyone else. A crucified Messiah was, in the words of Saint Paul, “a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” A crucified Messiah was, to borrow from Webster’s Dictionary, a bad example of a Messiah.
God did come into the world, but not in the way anyone expected. Jesus did not overthrow the Roman overlords nor seek to remove Herod from his place of power over the Jewish people. Jesus ate and drank with all the wrong people and went to his death without offering any resistance. Jesus was a scandal because through Christ, God exposed the lie of this world that our power comes from our strengths and not from our weaknesses. The power and the wisdom of God we came to know in Christ is the power of self-giving, not self-serving, love.
Self giving love our evangelist Matthew will tell us in the Sermon on the Mount, turns the other cheek, gives away whatever you have whenever someone asks for it, loves their enemies, is not anxious about food or clothing, and considers the judgment of self a pre-condition to the judgment of others.
But in this world, if someone hits you and you do turn the other cheek, you probably will get hit again. In this world if you give to everyone who asks anything of you, you will become poor. In this world, if you love your enemies, others will accuse you of being a “bleeding heart liberal.” In this world, if you are not anxious about where your next meal is coming from, you will be labeled either “lazy” or unwilling to plan ahead. In this world, if you judge yourself before you judge others, you may discover you are not as innocent as you might wish to be.
The scandal that was Christ was the scandal that Jesus created when Jesus simply did not play by the rules – the rules of this world that say you need to take care of yourself and that if you cannot take care of yourself, it’s your own fault; that there are “good” people and “bad” people in this world and we know who they are; that “charity begins at home” and caring for your blood line is more important than caring for your brothers and sisters in Christ. Jesus did more than disturb the peace; Jesus turned the values of this world upside down.
I am grateful that in this season of Advent, folk are hearing and seeing and reading words like joy and peace and hope and love. And I am grateful that Christmas Day will bring many families together, that on that day gifts will be given and received, a meal will be shared and stories of past Christmases remembered. What saddens me is that for many in this world, that one day will be the only window into a coming kingdom they will ever know. This year, Christmas is on a Saturday. Sunday we will gather for worship but I suspect we will not see the crowds who will gather on Christmas Eve. On Monday, many in this world will go back to work, back to a world that expects us to be competent and resourceful, rewarding us when we are and dismissing us when we are not.
For the Church, no one is indispensable and no one gets dismissed. Every Sunday, year in and year out, we gather, and we give our gifts at the offertory and we receive back bread and wine. Every Sunday we offer up what we have, whatever that may be - call it the drummer boy effect. And every Sunday we celebrate a common meal in the Eucharist. Every Sunday is Christmas in the church. Every Sunday we celebrate the scandal that God raised Jesus from the dead, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, is at work among us bringing us to life and making all things new. The “good news” that God is with us not just on Christmas Day but every day of the year is the scandalous good news we share with a world that wonders if indeed, God intends the joy of Christmas to be ours the rest of the year.
The Fourth Sunday of Advent Isaiah 7: 10 – 16
Sunday, December 19, 2010 Romans 1: 1 – 7
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 1: 18 – 25
“She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
Matthew 1: 21
The story we hear from the gospel of Matthew this morning about the birth of Jesus is familiar to all of us. Only two of the four gospels narrate the story of Jesus’ birth – the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of Luke. And, whereas, Matthew and Luke do not tell the story of Jesus’ birth in exactly the same way, in both gospels, Mary and Joseph are the key players.
Over the centuries, Mary has received significantly more attention than has Joseph. The Madonna and child are imaged frequently in works of art and in the late middle ages, Mary came near to becoming an object of worship. Joseph, on the other hand, is rarely the focus of a painting except as a member of the Holy Family, whose significance seems to be that he took pity on his intended when he discovered she was unintendedly pregnant.
Our evangelist Matthew, however, places Joseph center stage in the story of Jesus’ birth which we hear this morning. Upon Joseph’s shoulders is placed the conundrum of Mary’s unexpected pregnancy and Joseph must decide what to do. For our evangelist Matthew, though, the decision Joseph must make is not between being kind or being harsh to Mary, but is rather a decision about Mary’s child – will Joseph give Mary’s child Joseph’s name?
Joseph has a problem: his fiancée is pregnant and the child in her womb is not his. Clearly, the nuptials cannot procede. The only decision to be made is to how to break the marriage contract – Joseph could acknowledge Mary’s obvious transgression and leave her to the shame of public disgrace or Joseph could simply “dismiss her quietly,” meaning he could file for a “no fault” divorce. Joseph determines not to humiliate Mary.
But then Joseph receives an angelic visitor in a dream who calls Joseph “son of David.” Joseph is a son of David, King David, the king by whom Israel became a great and glorious nation, and through whom God promised to bring forth “a shoot,” a branch from the house of David that would, in God’s time, give birth to God’s promised Messiah. Joseph is told to “name” this child, to give this child Joseph’s name, to declare that this child is the long awaited Son of David.
Just before the verses we hear this morning, our evangelist Matthew gives us a genealogy, beginning with Abraham and ending with Jesus, a careful unfolding of how God, beginning with Abraham, has faithfully kept God’s promise to deliver the people of God, beginning with Abraham. When Joseph determines to make Jesus his own, Joseph is not just acting benevolently toward Mary, but naming Mary’s child the long awaited promised Messiah of Israel.
Joseph gives this child a name and names, as we all know are hugely important. In our text this morning, we hear no less than four names to identify this child: Messiah, Son of David, Jesus and Emmanuel. And from this moment on, Matthew’s gospel will turn on the question Jesus asks Peter midway through his gospel: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” Matthew’s gospel begins with Joseph naming a child; the gospel will continue with one person after another wondering what to call this child.
For some, Jesus was the devil incarnate. After casting out demons, the religious leaders accused Jesus of being in league with the prince of demons. In his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus was anything but the local hero. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?” they ask, taking offense at what Jesus was doing. Even the disciples wonder about this man who ends up dying on a cross placing their own lives in jeopardy as people who followed this criminal of Rome and could be found guilty by association.
In our own time, the name of Jesus has posed huge problems. If we say, as the gospel of John does, that “no one comes to the Father except through me,” what does that mean about other faiths and interreligious dialogue? What do we mean that Jesus was Emmanuel, God with us, and not just a really, really good man, a great moral example? What do we mean when we say that Jesus is the Messiah, the one who came to save us? Can we not, by making the right choices, save ourselves? To name this one child Jesus, “the only Son of God,” in the words of the Creed, inevitably leads us into deep waters.
The name Jesus sounds safe enough until some Bible thumping preacher declares that “Jesus saves” and if you have not been saved, you are going to hell. The name Jesus sounds safe enough until we meet a Muslim for whom Jesus is a great prophet but not the savior of the world. The name Jesus sounds safe enough until we meet someone who wants to talk only about God and not about Jesus. What are we to do with this child and what shall we call him?
Joseph gets prodded by an angel this morning. Joseph goes to sleep with a problem and wakes with a solution. Actually, Joseph goes to sleep with a resolution and wakes with a new one. God intervenes and Joseph becomes in the gospel of Matthew, the first one to take Jesus to himself, to name him, to begin a new life with this child and all that will happen to Joseph as a result. And Joseph does not have to wait long to get a hint of how much trouble this child will be. Within just a few verses, Joseph must flee to Egypt with his family because King Herod is massacring all the children of Bethlehem.
Today is the last Sunday of Advent. Throughout Advent, we have been waiting, waiting for God’s promised Messiah. Today, the Messiah has a face and a Name. This child who we confess to be “the only Son of God,” fully human and fully divine, the saviour of the world who died on a cross, this child will disturb us every bit as much as this child disturbed first century Palestine. This child was a threat to kings and governors and a perplexity to those who sought to follow him. For over two thousand years, the Name of this child has provoked both unimaginable acts of selflessness as well as horrific atrocities.
To name this child and only this child, the “Christ,” the anointed one of God, is the beginning of a journey that will lead us, maybe not fleeing for our lives into Egypt like Joseph, but probably into places we would like to avoid and to ponder questions that may make us uncomfortable. We are given a Name this morning, a Name like no other name on earth or in heaven, the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Sunday, December 19, 2010 Romans 1: 1 – 7
The Rev. Bambi Willis Matthew 1: 18 – 25
“She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
Matthew 1: 21
The story we hear from the gospel of Matthew this morning about the birth of Jesus is familiar to all of us. Only two of the four gospels narrate the story of Jesus’ birth – the gospel of Matthew and the gospel of Luke. And, whereas, Matthew and Luke do not tell the story of Jesus’ birth in exactly the same way, in both gospels, Mary and Joseph are the key players.
Over the centuries, Mary has received significantly more attention than has Joseph. The Madonna and child are imaged frequently in works of art and in the late middle ages, Mary came near to becoming an object of worship. Joseph, on the other hand, is rarely the focus of a painting except as a member of the Holy Family, whose significance seems to be that he took pity on his intended when he discovered she was unintendedly pregnant.
Our evangelist Matthew, however, places Joseph center stage in the story of Jesus’ birth which we hear this morning. Upon Joseph’s shoulders is placed the conundrum of Mary’s unexpected pregnancy and Joseph must decide what to do. For our evangelist Matthew, though, the decision Joseph must make is not between being kind or being harsh to Mary, but is rather a decision about Mary’s child – will Joseph give Mary’s child Joseph’s name?
Joseph has a problem: his fiancée is pregnant and the child in her womb is not his. Clearly, the nuptials cannot procede. The only decision to be made is to how to break the marriage contract – Joseph could acknowledge Mary’s obvious transgression and leave her to the shame of public disgrace or Joseph could simply “dismiss her quietly,” meaning he could file for a “no fault” divorce. Joseph determines not to humiliate Mary.
But then Joseph receives an angelic visitor in a dream who calls Joseph “son of David.” Joseph is a son of David, King David, the king by whom Israel became a great and glorious nation, and through whom God promised to bring forth “a shoot,” a branch from the house of David that would, in God’s time, give birth to God’s promised Messiah. Joseph is told to “name” this child, to give this child Joseph’s name, to declare that this child is the long awaited Son of David.
Just before the verses we hear this morning, our evangelist Matthew gives us a genealogy, beginning with Abraham and ending with Jesus, a careful unfolding of how God, beginning with Abraham, has faithfully kept God’s promise to deliver the people of God, beginning with Abraham. When Joseph determines to make Jesus his own, Joseph is not just acting benevolently toward Mary, but naming Mary’s child the long awaited promised Messiah of Israel.
Joseph gives this child a name and names, as we all know are hugely important. In our text this morning, we hear no less than four names to identify this child: Messiah, Son of David, Jesus and Emmanuel. And from this moment on, Matthew’s gospel will turn on the question Jesus asks Peter midway through his gospel: “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” Matthew’s gospel begins with Joseph naming a child; the gospel will continue with one person after another wondering what to call this child.
For some, Jesus was the devil incarnate. After casting out demons, the religious leaders accused Jesus of being in league with the prince of demons. In his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus was anything but the local hero. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?” they ask, taking offense at what Jesus was doing. Even the disciples wonder about this man who ends up dying on a cross placing their own lives in jeopardy as people who followed this criminal of Rome and could be found guilty by association.
In our own time, the name of Jesus has posed huge problems. If we say, as the gospel of John does, that “no one comes to the Father except through me,” what does that mean about other faiths and interreligious dialogue? What do we mean that Jesus was Emmanuel, God with us, and not just a really, really good man, a great moral example? What do we mean when we say that Jesus is the Messiah, the one who came to save us? Can we not, by making the right choices, save ourselves? To name this one child Jesus, “the only Son of God,” in the words of the Creed, inevitably leads us into deep waters.
The name Jesus sounds safe enough until some Bible thumping preacher declares that “Jesus saves” and if you have not been saved, you are going to hell. The name Jesus sounds safe enough until we meet a Muslim for whom Jesus is a great prophet but not the savior of the world. The name Jesus sounds safe enough until we meet someone who wants to talk only about God and not about Jesus. What are we to do with this child and what shall we call him?
Joseph gets prodded by an angel this morning. Joseph goes to sleep with a problem and wakes with a solution. Actually, Joseph goes to sleep with a resolution and wakes with a new one. God intervenes and Joseph becomes in the gospel of Matthew, the first one to take Jesus to himself, to name him, to begin a new life with this child and all that will happen to Joseph as a result. And Joseph does not have to wait long to get a hint of how much trouble this child will be. Within just a few verses, Joseph must flee to Egypt with his family because King Herod is massacring all the children of Bethlehem.
Today is the last Sunday of Advent. Throughout Advent, we have been waiting, waiting for God’s promised Messiah. Today, the Messiah has a face and a Name. This child who we confess to be “the only Son of God,” fully human and fully divine, the saviour of the world who died on a cross, this child will disturb us every bit as much as this child disturbed first century Palestine. This child was a threat to kings and governors and a perplexity to those who sought to follow him. For over two thousand years, the Name of this child has provoked both unimaginable acts of selflessness as well as horrific atrocities.
To name this child and only this child, the “Christ,” the anointed one of God, is the beginning of a journey that will lead us, maybe not fleeing for our lives into Egypt like Joseph, but probably into places we would like to avoid and to ponder questions that may make us uncomfortable. We are given a Name this morning, a Name like no other name on earth or in heaven, the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
The Nativity of Our Lord Isaiah 9: 2 – 7
December 24, 2010 Titus 2: 11 – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 2: 1 – 20
But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
Luke 2: 19
On Christmas Eve, many years ago, just before going to bed, a little girl kissed her father good night. Her father, always one to enjoy the excitement of the day to come, asked his daughter what she was hoping Santa would bring her. The little girl answered without hesitation: “Oh, a new pair of ice skates!” The little girl loved to ice skate but had grown out of the ice skates that had served her well but which no longer fit. Her father’s smile waned as he replied: “Oh dear, I’m not sure Santa Claus knew that you wanted a new pair of skates.”
Her heart sank. Surely Santa Claus knew that she wanted a new pair of ice skates! Her belief in Santa Claus was, for sure, beginning to admit some measure of doubt, but for the time being, what she knew was that her dad and Santa Claus had some sort of relationship, a relationship she did not wholly understand but was important nonetheless. If Dad thought Santa Claus did not know about her desire for new ice skates, she dared not think about tomorrow and what she might or might not find under the tree. She went to bed that night, wondering, uncertain what would happen come the dawn, hoping still for ice skates, but fearing she would not find them.
On this most holy night, we hear once more a story that is being told throughout the world, a story of “good news of great joy,” the story of the birth of a child who is the savior of the world, who has come to make all things new and to deliver this world and all of us from suffering, evil and death. And yet, we know that many in this world this night are not rejoicing, but rather are struggling with poor health, concerns about troubled children, a poor economy and all kinds of grief. For many the joy of this night is haunted by fears of what tomorrow might bring.
Tonight we celebrate the birth of a child, the promised Messiah, and with the shepherds and Mary and Joseph are amazed that this child, this very human child, is the savior of the world. What the shepherds hear from the angels tonight is what Mary heard months ago from the angel Gabriel who told she would conceive and bear a son and he would be great and be called the Son of God and whose kingdom would have no end.
Tonight this child is born and our evangelist Luke tells us: “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” For Mary, the birth of her son evokes reflection and contemplation, a time of pondering as she considers what the birth of her son will mean for her and for her world. The night her son was born, Mary had no idea what the days ahead would like. And our evangelist Luke does not tells us what she thought about. But I for one would not be surprised if Mary was not just a bit fearful about the road ahead. Amidst the joy of this birth, the amazing angelic pronouncements, Mary needed a bit of time to think through what had happened and what this birth might mean.
And so do we. Christmas Eve is a holy night, a night set apart to remember a night long ago when a child was born, a child who we confess to be the savior of the world. On this night we remember that night when God himself entered this world, our world, taking on our human nature so that we and all the whole world might come to know joy and peace and gladness. Tonight is a glorious night but a night which we celebrate in the midst of a not so glorious world.
Tonight we come together in this place, surrounded by candles and poinsettias, to sing and to pray and to hear the story of a child in a manger. Yet we do so, in the midst of a world in which many this night will not be rejoicing but will be pondering why indeed if God the Almighty came into this world, the world continues to look pretty much the way the world has always looked – a place where children starve, where disease robs us of our strength, where our homes can be destroyed by hurricanes and our lives wrecked in an instant by a gun or a drunk driver. We do rejoice this night, but we rejoice in the midst of a world that still suffers and often wonders why.
Some both within and without of the church have been quick to give an answer to the question of why, if God did indeed come into the world, we continue to experience heartache and pain. Some say it is our fault the world is in a mess and your fault in particular if you suddenly find yourself struggling with grief and despair. We just need to pray a little harder, some say. For others, what we need is a pair of rose colored glasses, to only see the good things in this world and blind ourselves to the not-so-good things in this world.
To ponder, though, as Mary pondered, means to resist coming up with a quick answer and to sit, however uncomfortably, with the reality that in this world we can indeed know joy but we will indeed also know suffering. To ponder means to remember that God does not will our suffering or that of anyone else and is “with us” even and maybe especially when, all we can perceive is God’s absence.
What we celebrate tonight is the goodness of God, the goodness of a God who brought forth life and each of us, and who desires our well-being not our undoing. What we celebrate tonight is a God who desires to be with us, not without us, who loves us, not just for a time but forever. What we celebrate tonight is a God who is near us, as near to us as was that child in a manger to Mary and Joseph. What we celebrate tonight is the goodness of this God who, when God’s beloved creation started to unravel, did not turn away from us, but rather turned toward us in the face of a babe in manger. This is exceedingly good news of great joy.
Tonight we celebrate because next week we will all return to a world that is weary, to lives that for many are burdened by poverty, violence, injustice, disease, and broken relationships. Tonight God gives us a story to treasure and to ponder, the beginning of a great love story in which God comes to us, gracing us with God’s presence in the midst of this weary world. Come next week, we may be challenged to believe that God is with us and for us and not either altogether absent or simply too distant to care what happens to us. Come next week we may wonder if indeed there really is a God and if so, a God who loves us and actively wishes us well.
God did come and live as one of us. That preposterous claim hallows human life in this world, and means that life, all life, is not meant to be a game of survivor in which the strong “win” and the weak “lose.” That God took on human flesh means that life in this world is not an experience to be endured, but a treasure to be enjoyed. That the child whose birth we remember this night was crucified also tells us life is not a bowl of cherries.
We are given a gift tonight, a story to be treasured and pondered, not an answer to the many questions this story provokes. From the beginning, great minds have pondered deeply the meaning of the Incarnation, what affirming the Incarnation, the coming of God into this world, means about what we believe about God and what we believe about ourselves. To say that God was born into this world may be a treasure but not a treasure we will ever fully understand. This story invites us to ponder and ponder hard. We will need courage to hear this story in the midst of the world in which we live. We will need companions along the way who will remember this story for us when we would prefer to forget this story or desire to simply dismiss this story as one more lovely but not altogether reasonable legend.
On this night, I would like to put away all of my doubts and uncertainties and simply glory in the knowledge that God is with us and for us. What I want to say to that little girl who went to bed that night so many years ago, wondering if new ice skates would show up under the Christmas tree, is “Yes, yes, they will be there! Do not be afraid.” But I can’t and neither can you. What I can say is that God loves us more than we will ever know and because God is love itself, God, unlike all of us, can will only one thing – that we and all of God’s dearly beloved creation will be well and very well indeed. May each of us on this most holy night come to know the love of God, which surpasses all understanding, and be at peace.
December 24, 2010 Titus 2: 11 – 14
The Rev. Bambi Willis Luke 2: 1 – 20
But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
Luke 2: 19
On Christmas Eve, many years ago, just before going to bed, a little girl kissed her father good night. Her father, always one to enjoy the excitement of the day to come, asked his daughter what she was hoping Santa would bring her. The little girl answered without hesitation: “Oh, a new pair of ice skates!” The little girl loved to ice skate but had grown out of the ice skates that had served her well but which no longer fit. Her father’s smile waned as he replied: “Oh dear, I’m not sure Santa Claus knew that you wanted a new pair of skates.”
Her heart sank. Surely Santa Claus knew that she wanted a new pair of ice skates! Her belief in Santa Claus was, for sure, beginning to admit some measure of doubt, but for the time being, what she knew was that her dad and Santa Claus had some sort of relationship, a relationship she did not wholly understand but was important nonetheless. If Dad thought Santa Claus did not know about her desire for new ice skates, she dared not think about tomorrow and what she might or might not find under the tree. She went to bed that night, wondering, uncertain what would happen come the dawn, hoping still for ice skates, but fearing she would not find them.
On this most holy night, we hear once more a story that is being told throughout the world, a story of “good news of great joy,” the story of the birth of a child who is the savior of the world, who has come to make all things new and to deliver this world and all of us from suffering, evil and death. And yet, we know that many in this world this night are not rejoicing, but rather are struggling with poor health, concerns about troubled children, a poor economy and all kinds of grief. For many the joy of this night is haunted by fears of what tomorrow might bring.
Tonight we celebrate the birth of a child, the promised Messiah, and with the shepherds and Mary and Joseph are amazed that this child, this very human child, is the savior of the world. What the shepherds hear from the angels tonight is what Mary heard months ago from the angel Gabriel who told she would conceive and bear a son and he would be great and be called the Son of God and whose kingdom would have no end.
Tonight this child is born and our evangelist Luke tells us: “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” For Mary, the birth of her son evokes reflection and contemplation, a time of pondering as she considers what the birth of her son will mean for her and for her world. The night her son was born, Mary had no idea what the days ahead would like. And our evangelist Luke does not tells us what she thought about. But I for one would not be surprised if Mary was not just a bit fearful about the road ahead. Amidst the joy of this birth, the amazing angelic pronouncements, Mary needed a bit of time to think through what had happened and what this birth might mean.
And so do we. Christmas Eve is a holy night, a night set apart to remember a night long ago when a child was born, a child who we confess to be the savior of the world. On this night we remember that night when God himself entered this world, our world, taking on our human nature so that we and all the whole world might come to know joy and peace and gladness. Tonight is a glorious night but a night which we celebrate in the midst of a not so glorious world.
Tonight we come together in this place, surrounded by candles and poinsettias, to sing and to pray and to hear the story of a child in a manger. Yet we do so, in the midst of a world in which many this night will not be rejoicing but will be pondering why indeed if God the Almighty came into this world, the world continues to look pretty much the way the world has always looked – a place where children starve, where disease robs us of our strength, where our homes can be destroyed by hurricanes and our lives wrecked in an instant by a gun or a drunk driver. We do rejoice this night, but we rejoice in the midst of a world that still suffers and often wonders why.
Some both within and without of the church have been quick to give an answer to the question of why, if God did indeed come into the world, we continue to experience heartache and pain. Some say it is our fault the world is in a mess and your fault in particular if you suddenly find yourself struggling with grief and despair. We just need to pray a little harder, some say. For others, what we need is a pair of rose colored glasses, to only see the good things in this world and blind ourselves to the not-so-good things in this world.
To ponder, though, as Mary pondered, means to resist coming up with a quick answer and to sit, however uncomfortably, with the reality that in this world we can indeed know joy but we will indeed also know suffering. To ponder means to remember that God does not will our suffering or that of anyone else and is “with us” even and maybe especially when, all we can perceive is God’s absence.
What we celebrate tonight is the goodness of God, the goodness of a God who brought forth life and each of us, and who desires our well-being not our undoing. What we celebrate tonight is a God who desires to be with us, not without us, who loves us, not just for a time but forever. What we celebrate tonight is a God who is near us, as near to us as was that child in a manger to Mary and Joseph. What we celebrate tonight is the goodness of this God who, when God’s beloved creation started to unravel, did not turn away from us, but rather turned toward us in the face of a babe in manger. This is exceedingly good news of great joy.
Tonight we celebrate because next week we will all return to a world that is weary, to lives that for many are burdened by poverty, violence, injustice, disease, and broken relationships. Tonight God gives us a story to treasure and to ponder, the beginning of a great love story in which God comes to us, gracing us with God’s presence in the midst of this weary world. Come next week, we may be challenged to believe that God is with us and for us and not either altogether absent or simply too distant to care what happens to us. Come next week we may wonder if indeed there really is a God and if so, a God who loves us and actively wishes us well.
God did come and live as one of us. That preposterous claim hallows human life in this world, and means that life, all life, is not meant to be a game of survivor in which the strong “win” and the weak “lose.” That God took on human flesh means that life in this world is not an experience to be endured, but a treasure to be enjoyed. That the child whose birth we remember this night was crucified also tells us life is not a bowl of cherries.
We are given a gift tonight, a story to be treasured and pondered, not an answer to the many questions this story provokes. From the beginning, great minds have pondered deeply the meaning of the Incarnation, what affirming the Incarnation, the coming of God into this world, means about what we believe about God and what we believe about ourselves. To say that God was born into this world may be a treasure but not a treasure we will ever fully understand. This story invites us to ponder and ponder hard. We will need courage to hear this story in the midst of the world in which we live. We will need companions along the way who will remember this story for us when we would prefer to forget this story or desire to simply dismiss this story as one more lovely but not altogether reasonable legend.
On this night, I would like to put away all of my doubts and uncertainties and simply glory in the knowledge that God is with us and for us. What I want to say to that little girl who went to bed that night so many years ago, wondering if new ice skates would show up under the Christmas tree, is “Yes, yes, they will be there! Do not be afraid.” But I can’t and neither can you. What I can say is that God loves us more than we will ever know and because God is love itself, God, unlike all of us, can will only one thing – that we and all of God’s dearly beloved creation will be well and very well indeed. May each of us on this most holy night come to know the love of God, which surpasses all understanding, and be at peace.
The First Sunday After Christmas Day Isaiah 61: 10 – 62: 3
Sunday, December 26, 2010 Galatians 3: 23 – 25; 4: 4 – 7
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 1: 1 – 18
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1: 1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So begins the gospel according to John, a gospel very much like a cathedral, with arches that soar heavenward and whose sheer majesty takes our breath away. Reading the gospel of John is little like pushing open the huge oak doors of Notre Dame and discovering yourself in a vast space, dimly lit by the light coming through stained glass windows, barely able to see the high altar far in front of you or the apex of the roof hundreds of feet above your head.
We are no longer in Bethlehem this morning, in a stable with angels and shepherds and a manger, but somewhere else altogether. With his opening words, John takes us back to the beginning of creation, when in “in the beginning” God “created the heavens and the earth” and “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.” And then God spoke, saying: “Let there be light”; and there was light. God said let there be land and there was land. God said let there be plants and animals and fish in the sea and so it was. With a word, God spoke all of creation into being.
With a word, God brought forth everything that is and for our evangelist John, this creative life giving Word of God is Jesus.
On Christmas Eve as we heard the familiar story of the birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph, we could picture what was happening – we can imagine a stable and a manger, a young woman and a man who gaze upon a small child. Indeed, in our Christmas pageant last Sunday, we dramatized this story of Jesus’ birth, bringing the Christmas story to life. But now, in the gospel of John, John bids us to enter a strange new world, a world which for us is as different as is a modest white clapboard New England church on a town green from a cathedral built from stone over several generations, carefully and intricately carved everywhere you look, large enough to accommodate literally thousands of people.
For John, words are terribly important and John uses words like “bread,” “water,” “light,” “life,” “shepherd,” and “door” to proclaim the Christian message. In the gospel of John, Jesus tells us he is “the light of the world,” “the gate,” “the good shepherd,” “the way, the truth and the life.” Words are significant and have depths of meaning that challenge us to look beyond their common concrete associations. For John, water is not simply that substance created by a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, but is rather that which sustains all of life and without which, life will die.
Indeed, the word which we translate as Word, with a capital W, is the Greek word “logos,” and can mean a word or reason itself, rationality, the capacity to make sense of things. For the Greeks, the world turned with an internal logic, a kind of governing principle, which, we humans are able to perceive and by which we could then live. Living in accord with this divine design, would enable us humans to live well. In other words, once we know that there is such a thing as the law of gravity, jumping off tall buildings would not be in your best interest.
So when John calls Jesus the Word of God, John is appealing to those who are searching for this divine design and saying that in the person of Jesus, the will of God for the world has been revealed. “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” In Jesus, God’s plan for the world and us humans in particular, has been given to us.
And the Word became “flesh,” became human. For the Greeks, this divine logic could never take on human form – God or the gods were divine and we are human. The divine and the human cannot be mixed. We may be able to perceive the wisdom of the gods, but we cannot become gods. The Incarnation was a category mistake, a mistake as grave as saying that something can be both at the same, round and square.
John is writing his gospel toward the end of the first century to a mixed community of Jews and Greeks. And John is exploding the thought worlds of both. To the Jews, John says Jesus was “with” God as God’s Word at the beginning of creation. To the Greeks, John says, that which you have been seeking, the divine wisdom you seek in order to live well has come to you enfleshed, in human form, in this man Jesus of Nazareth.
Exploding our worldviews is probably not the way most of us think about Christianity. Most of us have grown up in a world in which churches are a common site and Sunday is a day off for most of us. Our faith fits comfortably into our world of family, work, and community. We are not persecuted for what we believe. We can be a Christian and live pretty comfortably in twenty-first century America.
As we look forward to the season of Epiphany, the season of revelation in the church, I wonder how the gospel might challenge, rather than confirm, what we believe about ourselves and the way we live out our lives in the world. What might the gospel have to say about the way we spend our time or what we do with our money or even for whom we vote? What deeply held beliefs about ourselves and the world in which we live do we bring into church and which, without even realizing it, may color the way we hear the “good news”?
We live in a world, much like that of our evangelist, that preaches its own “gospel.” We only have to turn on the T.V. to get a hint at what that gospel says. That gospel tells us we are consumers, not creatures made in the image of God. That gospel tells us we are free individuals with rights, not a community bound together by love. That gospel tells us we can choose where we live, what we eat and what we wear, not be determined by the needs of others.
In the gospel of John, we live in a world of darkness, groping for light. We think we know where we are going but actually we are quite lost. In the gospel of John, only in the person of Jesus can we find our way. May the light of Christ reveal the darkness in which we live and give us hope.
Sunday, December 26, 2010 Galatians 3: 23 – 25; 4: 4 – 7
The Rev. Bambi Willis John 1: 1 – 18
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1: 1
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So begins the gospel according to John, a gospel very much like a cathedral, with arches that soar heavenward and whose sheer majesty takes our breath away. Reading the gospel of John is little like pushing open the huge oak doors of Notre Dame and discovering yourself in a vast space, dimly lit by the light coming through stained glass windows, barely able to see the high altar far in front of you or the apex of the roof hundreds of feet above your head.
We are no longer in Bethlehem this morning, in a stable with angels and shepherds and a manger, but somewhere else altogether. With his opening words, John takes us back to the beginning of creation, when in “in the beginning” God “created the heavens and the earth” and “the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep.” And then God spoke, saying: “Let there be light”; and there was light. God said let there be land and there was land. God said let there be plants and animals and fish in the sea and so it was. With a word, God spoke all of creation into being.
With a word, God brought forth everything that is and for our evangelist John, this creative life giving Word of God is Jesus.
On Christmas Eve as we heard the familiar story of the birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph, we could picture what was happening – we can imagine a stable and a manger, a young woman and a man who gaze upon a small child. Indeed, in our Christmas pageant last Sunday, we dramatized this story of Jesus’ birth, bringing the Christmas story to life. But now, in the gospel of John, John bids us to enter a strange new world, a world which for us is as different as is a modest white clapboard New England church on a town green from a cathedral built from stone over several generations, carefully and intricately carved everywhere you look, large enough to accommodate literally thousands of people.
For John, words are terribly important and John uses words like “bread,” “water,” “light,” “life,” “shepherd,” and “door” to proclaim the Christian message. In the gospel of John, Jesus tells us he is “the light of the world,” “the gate,” “the good shepherd,” “the way, the truth and the life.” Words are significant and have depths of meaning that challenge us to look beyond their common concrete associations. For John, water is not simply that substance created by a combination of hydrogen and oxygen, but is rather that which sustains all of life and without which, life will die.
Indeed, the word which we translate as Word, with a capital W, is the Greek word “logos,” and can mean a word or reason itself, rationality, the capacity to make sense of things. For the Greeks, the world turned with an internal logic, a kind of governing principle, which, we humans are able to perceive and by which we could then live. Living in accord with this divine design, would enable us humans to live well. In other words, once we know that there is such a thing as the law of gravity, jumping off tall buildings would not be in your best interest.
So when John calls Jesus the Word of God, John is appealing to those who are searching for this divine design and saying that in the person of Jesus, the will of God for the world has been revealed. “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” In Jesus, God’s plan for the world and us humans in particular, has been given to us.
And the Word became “flesh,” became human. For the Greeks, this divine logic could never take on human form – God or the gods were divine and we are human. The divine and the human cannot be mixed. We may be able to perceive the wisdom of the gods, but we cannot become gods. The Incarnation was a category mistake, a mistake as grave as saying that something can be both at the same, round and square.
John is writing his gospel toward the end of the first century to a mixed community of Jews and Greeks. And John is exploding the thought worlds of both. To the Jews, John says Jesus was “with” God as God’s Word at the beginning of creation. To the Greeks, John says, that which you have been seeking, the divine wisdom you seek in order to live well has come to you enfleshed, in human form, in this man Jesus of Nazareth.
Exploding our worldviews is probably not the way most of us think about Christianity. Most of us have grown up in a world in which churches are a common site and Sunday is a day off for most of us. Our faith fits comfortably into our world of family, work, and community. We are not persecuted for what we believe. We can be a Christian and live pretty comfortably in twenty-first century America.
As we look forward to the season of Epiphany, the season of revelation in the church, I wonder how the gospel might challenge, rather than confirm, what we believe about ourselves and the way we live out our lives in the world. What might the gospel have to say about the way we spend our time or what we do with our money or even for whom we vote? What deeply held beliefs about ourselves and the world in which we live do we bring into church and which, without even realizing it, may color the way we hear the “good news”?
We live in a world, much like that of our evangelist, that preaches its own “gospel.” We only have to turn on the T.V. to get a hint at what that gospel says. That gospel tells us we are consumers, not creatures made in the image of God. That gospel tells us we are free individuals with rights, not a community bound together by love. That gospel tells us we can choose where we live, what we eat and what we wear, not be determined by the needs of others.
In the gospel of John, we live in a world of darkness, groping for light. We think we know where we are going but actually we are quite lost. In the gospel of John, only in the person of Jesus can we find our way. May the light of Christ reveal the darkness in which we live and give us hope.
