Christmas Eve Sermon 2014
Isaiah 9:2-7

“Light”

In a season of dimness, when the nights are long and the sunshine is rare, we come to you in hope of brighter days. When shadows lengthen in our hearts and souls, we come for the warmth and sunshine of your spirit filling our lives, as it filled the life of Mary, as it rose in the life of the nation of Israel, as it filled the life of Jesus, spilling out into his world and into our own. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Often by the time that Christmas Eve rolls around, we have gotten a little tired of the endless cheer, bright lights, and glittering tinsel of the season, if we haven’t come to a place where those have little to do with our preparation for the coming Christ in any way. Most of us enjoy a little glitz and sparkle, but somewhere in the middle of it, I get a little overwhelmed and realize that beyond the sparkle, there’s not much substance to offer. In spite of the appearance of gold, the shining foil is just that.

It is then when I begin to seek out the meaning of God’s incarnation in my life yet again. I might ask questions.

God, where are you this year? Are you looking to be welcomed?

Jesus, how can we serve you now and into the next year?

Where can I find your light when my own feels dim—and all the sparkle in the world isn’t going to change that?

How can we discern between the joy of your presence and the giddy, momentary, and materialistic wants and desires that fill our moments?

Hearing ancient words of faith and hope can bring us to a place where we can gently and hopefully seek out the genuine sources of light in our lives. Light that illuminates and warms and doesn't just glare blindingly, hiding from us the beauty that is still in the darkness and mystery—the things just beyond what we can know. The light we seek doesn't remove darkness, we seek the light that defines and clarifies the mysteries of our lives. I won’t say it’s always comforting or comfortable—the light of Christ will illuminate the words, thoughts, and actions we’d rather hide—instead I’d say that the light of Christ moves us toward wholeness, revealing the hidden that needs to be seen and nurtured into health or changed from the evil to the good.

Sometimes we are afraid to lose darkness, afraid to let go and embrace the light God has placed within us—in Christ and through the very life that we contain. “We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”[1]

It is in this time of year that we realize the partnership between the darkness and the light. The definition that each gives the others. The bright shining hope that carries us forward is a partner with the quiet, dark, hope that most of us need in times of rest. In this time of year, when the earth is darker here in the northern hemisphere, we are reminded to seek out the light—the light of Christ, born into a work dark like our own. We are reminded to see the depths of this night and experience the joy, deeper than cheer, let us experience the light of Christ, brighter than the brightest gem.

CHRISTMAS hath darkness

Brighter than the blazing noon,

Christmas hath a chillness

Warmer than the heat of June,

Christmas hath a beauty

Lovelier than the world can show:

For Christmas bringeth Jesus,

Brought for us so low.

Earth, strike up your music,

Birds that sing and bells that ring;

Heaven hath answering music

For all Angels soon to sing:

Earth, put on your whitest

Bridal robe of spotless snow:

For Christmas bringeth Jesus,

Brought for us so low.[2]

To the glory of God, born as we all were: naked and cold and full of light. Amen.

---

[1] from A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson.

[2] Christmas Eve by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Sermon December 21 2014

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Luke 1:46b-55

Romans 16:25-27

Luke 1:26-38

“Great Reversals”

Life-giving God, fill us with your grace. May we, who hear the announcement of Jesus’ coming, give birth to your good news. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

The season of Advent reminds us every year that we are all waiting for something. We anticipate some event, sometimes with fear and anxiety, sometimes with happiness and barely contained excitement and sometimes a mixture of both. We may be waiting on a person to enter our lives or know that a time of departure is nearing—and we may not desire either one. We may be waiting for good news, bad news, or any news at all. We may be waiting for the other shoe to drop—for the world to end—for our lives to begin . . . for someone, something, somewhere . . .

The season of Advent reminds us that even as we prepare what we are awaiting has come. We are waiting for the light of the world—even as the sky in our part of the world gets darker and darker. Tonight, on the longest night of the year, we celebrate the light, grace, peace—and love that is already in our lives. We know that Jesus is born—so long ago—and still we wait, every year, preparing for Christ to come into our lives, preparing for Christ to gather us all into Christ’s life, forever and eternally.

The season of Advent and this fourth Sunday of Advent, again, reminds us that though what we are awaiting, the birth of Jesus into the world, the salvation of Christ in the world, the presence and grace of God in the world are already here. We still are waiting for the fulfillment of God’s kindom in the world that surrounds us—and in our own lives. Jesus is here; God is here and God is still building something—a kindom, a family, a realm, and we are part of that act of building. Or at least we can be a part of it, if we choose to say yes.

In the text from 2 Samuel, we get a glimpse into the life of David, the king of Israel, after he’s come to a time of respite from the wars that put him onto the throne. He has a home, a house of cedar, he said, and he thinks that God might want a house, too, to live in. God’s word to Nathan, the royal prophet, denies God’s desire for a house built by human hands.  Instead God proclaims that God will build. God will build David a legacy, a throne, a kindom that lasts forever—instead, I think, God makes a claim on the life of David’s legacy, revealing God’s plan, not David’s plan.

David wanted to house God. God wants to build a legacy, create possibilities for revelation. God wants to be God for the people, not simply a place for the people to worship. And God wants it to last—houses don’t last, temples don’t remain, churches don’t live forever—God’s kindom, that’s eternal. God’s love, it’s steadfast and everlasting.

So we enter the story of Jesus in Luke’s gospel this morning knowing that this is God’s intention. For people who want to follow Christ, God’s intentions lead us here, to Jesus, to Mary, to the messenger God sent to give Mary some news.

The world into which the messenger brings news to Mary was a world very different from our own in many ways. As you know, the Romans occupied Galilee where Mary lived in the town of Nazareth. Galilee was a part of the land that had been Israel, but the Israel of King David hadn’t existed for a long time—about 1,000 years. Mary lived in a land occupied at various times by whatever empire ruled at the time. The Romans ruled her world and before that the Greeks, the Persians, Babylon or Chaldea, Aram, and Syria and before that, the two kingdoms that split from David and Solomon’s one kingdom. It had been a long time since God spoke with Nathan, the prophet, and promised a reign that would last forever. And because it had been so long, the promise God had begun to be seen differently. The throne of God, given by God, wasn’t one for kings, this throne was  . . . well, this throne was for Mary’s—not yet born, not yet conceived—son.

Mary’s world was very different than our own, but there are still similarities. The hungry and the sated are still with us, the poor and the rich, the servants and the rulers (one way or another) and God’s people are still waiting. In Mary’s world and in our own, some people have everything and more and some people not enough to live.

Mary heard the messenger’s word to her in a world occupied by empire and characterized by inequality, a world more our own than it would seem. And she heard the message in a world, like our own, that was waiting for answers, waiting for a long time.

In spite of the time that had passed, with no hesitation other than her confusion at her unmarried, uncoupled state, Mary accepts the news of the messenger, Gabriel. She would have a son, the Son of God. She would name him, Jesus, which means Savior. And somehow, he would inherit the throne of David, unoccupied, nonexistent, really, for many, many years.

So what does it mean that her son, the Son of God, the Son of the Most High was to be born? In that day? In that world?

As Luke tells the story, Mary’s reaction, her emotive and rational, theological response to actually understanding what God has done comes after she meets her relative, Elizabeth. When Elizabeth announces her baby’s reaction to meeting Mary, it is only then that Mary sings her song—her glorious Magnificat.

And she sings or tells of God’s action in the person Jesus will become.

She sings of God’s salvation revealed by her son not only in her own life, but in the fullness of all God’s people. Her words well up and name the justice of God.

God is merciful. God is strong and scatters the proud—the arrogant?

God brings power down from thrones and lift up those seen as lowly.

God fills the hungry. God sends away those who have all they need—and more.

God helps Israel, fulfilling God’s steadfast love.

God fulfills all the promises God has ever made—all of them.

Her child, but more than her child, will overturn all the world.

God was arriving, is arriving, always arriving, to reverse the way that we live with one another. God comes to turn us away from pride, from wealth, from gluttony and greed, from the power we have over one another—God comes in Jesus, born to a very young woman, into not a wealthy or powerful family, to save the world.

God comes into our lives this day to do the very same thing. Human beings, it seems, tend to wander into the same sins today as they did then. Then the rich and powerful, symbolized by Rome’s empire, kept people from realizing who God fully intended them to be—and God’s son’s life of healing, hope, humility, peace, grace, joy, and love overturned what a ruling power could be. And though it may look different, we still somehow live as if the world would be perfect if only the right set of people had enough power, like Rome. But with Mary, we sing, declaring that in us now already, God has accomplished a great reversal. Amid the disorder and evil of our day, we now sing the great reversal sung by Mary. We are not afraid. God is yet at work liberating and setting things right. The wrong is judged to be empty, and the right judged to be blessed. Within us, the empire has no hold; it has collapsed even as we contend with it daily.

With Mary’s son, the Son of the Most High, we can say, with Mary, “Let it be with me, according to your word.” Amen.

We had a casual service of Lessons and Carols--Story books and Carols, really . . .

Stories and Carols December 14, 2014

Sermon December 7 2014

Isaiah 40:1-11

Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13

2 Peter 3:8-15a

Mark 1:1-8

“A New Social Order”

Comforter, you speak to us tenderly, revealing to us paths of restoration and peace. You show us the path of righteousness and peace. We trust in your steadfast love and faithfulness. We find your salvation in repentance for our offences, seeking forgiveness from those we have injured, and amending our ways. May my words and our thoughts be acceptable to you, God who strengthens, who redeems. Amen.

At the time when Jesus was born, in what we now call 4 B.C.E., the lands of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the lands of Samuel, David, Solomon, and Isaiah had been under the thumb of the Roman Empire for a while. It was long enough that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph would have known nothing but Roman occupation, nothing but Roman oppression, nothing but what could be called Roman peace through violence.

Rome, by this time had spread its influence through most of the known world by bringing in soldier engineers, as one author called them, to not only defeat the native inhabitants of a land, but build the infrastructure necessary to remain there indefinitely and drain from that land any and all resources, human and otherwise. Rome regularly and violently put down any resistance to its governance. Rome had realized in the previous generation that it could either be a Republic governed by the people (or some of the people, representation was limited to free, male citizens of Rome) or it could be an empire spreading out over the known world. Empire and the amassing of land, wealth, and power do not go together with democracy and human rights—then or now.

Whenever any group of people gathered up a few people within a resistance to push away the violence and corrupting wealth of Rome, Rome simply killed them—well, not simply. Rome violently and publicly killed people and often left behind, in the place of a thriving, but rebelling village, the peace of a desert. Rome violently and publicly killed individual leaders of rebellions by crucifixion—They didn’t mess around with negotiation, they quashed any defiance.

Jesus’ birth was into this world; Jesus’ life was pressed into service in a world where his people were under threat if they chose to speak up against the injustice and violence that was everywhere around them. The peace of Rome was the peace of violence and fear. The peace of Rome was ever and always threatening to break into rebellion and violence—and that rebellion was justified and some of the violence could be understood as justifiable anger at unforgivable oppression. Few of us in our social and racial identities can relate to that kind of anger—but I think Jesus could. The anger of daily injustice, the daily grind of being told about your inferiority, and the daily words and actions that enforced that kind of oppression. [1]

That is the world where Jesus was born.

The world of Mark 1:1-8 is the world of John the Baptist—a world grown even more volatile in the 3-4 decades that have passed since Jesus’ birth. And this world would have been familiar to the world where Isaiah prophesied.

Several hundred years before Jesus was born, someone continuing the prophetic tradition of the author of Isaiah’s first 39 chapters began another set of prophecies many scholars call Second Isaiah. Isaiah 40 is the first word of the Lord that has been spoken to Israel in about 48 years.

Forty eight years prior to this text, the Empire of Babylon had taken the southern kingdom, Judah, into captivity. They had killed all of the king’s sons, then blinded and finally killed the king. Almost 200 years before that, the northern kingdom of Israel had fallen to the Assyrian empire and for all practical purposes, those people disappeared. Judah and its people were the people who held God’s promise and they have lived in Babylon after the temple and Jerusalem were destroyed.

The word came, just before Second Isaiah began to prophesy, that Cyrus, the Persian emperor was going to send the Judea people back to their home, back to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple. It hadn’t happened yet, but soon. Isaiah’s word of comfort reinforces this good news.

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term and that her penalty is paid—that more than that, she has served double anything that was ever intended.

Isaiah’s word of comfort comes with great upheaval. Isaiah’s word of peace comes only with great change. Isaiah’s word, accompanied by the word of the psalmist reminds us that the road to peace, faithfulness, steadfast love, and good news is exactly that, a road, a way, a journey to travel. And that road, as the mountains, hills, valleys and potholes are evened out will take time.

The peace of violence quashing of rebellion is swift. The peace of Empire, Assyrian, Babylon, Peria, Greece, and Rome comes with parades, soldiers, and fortification. The peace of God’s justice, the peace that transforms human avarice, greed for stuff and for power, into a divine generosity that comes only in God’s presence—and our constant awareness of God’s presence.

The peace of God’s justice comes as God gathers us together in our mutual vulnerability rather in our show of strength, our wielding of physical power and prowess, or our ability to overwhelm one another. God’s peace comes by our dependence upon God’s way toward justice for all people—not a violent force upon people to live according to some human standard. God’s peace comes to us as Christians through Jesus, who called people toward God’s kingdom, an empire characterized by justice, not violence.

The world into which Jesus was born was created by the Roman Empire—and God gave the world in Jesus’ Way to reveal how we are to be at peace with one another. The way comes through the wilderness of our violence, so that God’s peace will come, through the valleys and over the mountains, recreating and creating in us a peace that is evident to all peoples, all nation, all creatures, and all creation.

We are called, in the life of Jesus, who was born into the peace of Rome, the peace of violence, to hear the good news proclaimed, that it only justice creates Gods’ peace, slowly, incrementally, and that that kind of peace changes the world. That peace, the peace of God’s presence, the peace of Jesus’ life of resurrection, the peace that can stand forever.

To the glory of God. Amen.

---

[1] The peace of violence and the peace of justice, from The First Christmas, Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan