I shared this message at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on Christmas Eve, 2021. Based on the nativity story in Luke 2.
I want you to think about where you were last year at this time. I don’t actually remember where I was—possibly visiting my in-laws already instead of waiting until Christmas morning. I know where I wasn’t, and where nobody was: here. Last year at this time, our in-person worship was still shut down. We wanted to be able to welcome everyone, but feared that Christmas Eve especially would become a super-spreader event with all of the out-of-town visitors.
On December 11 of last year, the first COVID vaccine was approved. Soon after, a second vaccine, and then a third, were approved. First, they went to people over 65 and those who were otherwise vulnerable, and eventually they rolled out to everyone, now including children over the age of 5 and boosters for adults.
Easter was our first worship back together after all of that. By then, a good fraction of our congregation was vaccinated, so we felt more comfortable worshipping together. We haven’t shut down since. We thought the pandemic was behind us, that we were on the path back to normal life.
This congregation was dealt another blow in June when Pastor Lou Ellen left us. God was calling her to a new ministry. That left us to figure out what God was calling us to do.
Meanwhile, the pandemic has not really ended. First the delta variant swept the nation, and now the omicron variant. It seems we can never escape COVID-19. We can never escape the brokenness of this world, no matter how hard we try. Yet, we should remember that life today, as hard as it is, is wonderful compared to the grinding misery of life under the Roman Empire in first-century Judea.
Think back to the story we have heard. Mary, a teenager, was pregnant and her time to deliver had come. Still, the power of empire forced her and her husband to make an arduous journey of roughly 90 miles, probably on foot, so that the Romans could more efficiently extract wealth from their subjugated people. On Sunday, we will hear that the Holy Family was soon afterwards forced to flee for their lives to Egypt. Life was hard under the Romans.
That night, while Mary and Joseph comforted their newborn son, there were shepherds hard at work. Shepherds sometimes get a bad rap in modern retellings. There are some ancient sources who describe them as lazy, untrustworthy, and unclean. But the best evidence is that at the time and place of Jesus’s birth, the shepherds were respected. They were hard-working, tough men who protected their sheep from predators and bandits.
See, at night, sheep don’t need to be herded to keep them from wandering off. They’re asleep. So why were the shepherds keeping watch? Because a sheep is like money that walks around. They were making sure no bandits came to steal them. They were protecting their sheep from lions and bears, just as David did as a youth. The shepherds were hard men, tough men who risked their lives to protect the helpless sheep under their charge.
That night, God broke through. An angel appeared, and “the glory of the Lord shone around them.” This is just like what happened to Moses, and just like what will happen at Jesus’s Transfiguration. They were tough men, but they were terrified at first. Sure, a lion or a bear might take a sheep or two, but here was God’s army coming. Was the angel there to destroy them all? Had the Day of the Lord arrived, the prophesied day of God’s terrible judgment?
No. The angel tells them not to fear, that a savior has been born for them. Remember that they were suffering under the weight of the Roman Empire just as Mary and Joseph were. They remembered the glorious past of Israel under David and Solomon, and were waiting expectantly for a Messiah who would save God’s people. Like us, they were waiting for deliverance from the evil of the world around them. Their fear turned to joy at God’s presence. God had finally sent a savior for them.
They didn’t know what kind of savior was born that night, though. They didn’t know that their savior was also our savior, someone to bring God’s eternal kingdom to earth. They were living in the Pax Romana, a sort of “peace through strength” where the Roman Empire was so strong that nobody dared challenge their rule, no matter how burdensome or evil. They didn’t imagine that their Messiah, God’s anointed one, would replace the false peace of empire with the shalom of God’s rule in our hearts. Jesus came to establish a new kind of peace. Instead of the peace of a police state in which everybody is equally degraded, Jesus came to establish a kingdom in which everybody is equally uplifted. He came to establish a kingdom of justice, of righteousness, of wholeness, and of harmony.
Tonight, we gather to remember that Jesus came, and comes again this night, to disrupt our lives just as he disrupted those shepherds’ lives. He came not to rule the world, but to rule our hearts. And of his kingdom, there will be no end.
Our congregation, our families, our nation, and our world have challenges ahead of us. But when it seems that all is lost, we can remember that night, two thousand years ago, when God’s glory shone around the shepherds. God broke through with good news of great joy: a savior who came for them. That same savior came for us and dwells among us. I pray that you will all know the hope, love, joy, and peace that our Messiah brings, the wholeness that comes from Emmanuel, God with us. Amen.
Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Luke 1:39-56. YouTube archived video:
During Advent, we talk about people other than Jesus who prepared the way for his coming. Last time, I preached about John the Baptist. He was a great prophet, the last of the prophets who heralded the coming of the Messiah. John’s mother, Elizabeth, was an old woman, thought to be barren. The miracle was that even when she was beyond child-bearing age, she was still able to get pregnant. God blessed Elizabeth with a son.
Today, we talk about Mary. Mary was different. She was young—too young. Not even married yet. Maybe 14 years old, little more than a girl. Yet God chose her for the unimaginably important task of bearing our Savior.
In the verses preceding today’s reading, the angel Gabriel comes and visits Mary. His words to her are the source of the first part of the Hail Mary prayer, which then continues with Elizabeth’s words and then some embellishments. I know it’s a Roman Catholic prayer, but Mary is revered in all traditions. Would you pray with me?
Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Such a sweet prayer for such a sweet woman. Right? I read this week that the word translated as “hail” might be better translated “rejoice.” The angel Gabriel rejoices at meeting Mary, just as Elizabeth and her unborn son rejoice and bless her.
Full of grace. That phrase evokes a kind, gentle woman, graciously blessing each person she meets. But perhaps we should understand it more as an indication that God has richly blessed her.
And how has God blessed her? God made her a prophet and the mother of the most important man to ever live. Listen to her proclamation to Elizabeth. This is not a hymn of submission and gentleness. “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.” These are not sweet words. This is a prophetic proclamation of God’s power. A few minutes ago, we sang the Canticle of the Turning, which I think is a fantastic setting for the words. It captures the strength and impact of Mary’s song.
Mary was not some shrinking violet, some meek background character in the Gospels. She was in the middle of the action. She was trusted not only to give birth to Jesus, but also to be his first teacher. God saw a strength within her that would be essential throughout those hard years of Jesus’s childhood.
One thing that struck me as I was preparing this week was Mary’s response. In every other angelic encounter I can think of, the person being visited is terrified. That’s why the angel’s first words are always, “Do not fear.” Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, was a priest in the Temple when an angel appeared, and we read, “he was terrified, and fear overwhelmed him.” On Christmas Eve, we will hear about the shepherds—an angel of the Lord appeared, and they were terrified. But not Mary. She was “perplexed.” Gabriel, being not-so-observant, still told her not to fear. He tells her what God is asking of her. Is she afraid? She should be. Being an unmarried woman who gets pregnant will bring shame upon her. If Joseph so desired, he could break off their engagement, and might even be able to have her stoned. Even if they marry, the shame will linger, and being the mother of such an important boy could bring dangerous attention to her—and indeed it does. Still, her response tells us why she was favored. She simply asks how it will work, then says, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” My life is about to be torn apart and I will live in constant danger? Sure, sounds good.
She understood what was coming. She was not just the carrier of God’s words like the other prophets, but of THE Word of God. Her hymn of praise makes it clear that she knew who Jesus would be: Son of God, a revolutionary who would change the world. There is a famous, or perhaps infamous, song that is often played or sung this time of year, “Mary, Did You Know.” Here’s the second verse.
Mary, did you know that your Baby Boy will give sight to a blind man?
Mary, did you know that your Baby Boy will calm the storm with His hand?
Did you know that your Baby Boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little Baby you kissed the face of God?
Clearly, the lyricist didn’t read the Magnificat. Because the answer is emphatically, “YES!” She knew. She knew that God was doing great things in her, world-changing things. The name she was told to give her son, Jesus (or actually Yeshua in Hebrew), means, “The Lord has saved.” She knew that God would save her, and all of us, through her son. She knew that the hierarchies of power and wealth would be overturned. She knew that God’s chosen people would be saved and glorified. She knew.
So what did she do? After saying yes, she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth. I’m thinking that Elizabeth must have been a pretty distant relation. They lived pretty far apart. Mary was betrothed to a man from the tribe of Judah and Elizabeth was from the tribe of Levi. But they were close relations in another way: they were bound together by the abundant grace poured out on them both by God. They both experienced the miracle of pregnancy—Elizabeth in her old age, Mary in her virginal youth. So Mary went to Elizabeth, in the first gathering of Jesus’s followers. Why? For confirmation? For courage? Perhaps. Mary had an encounter with the divine, and she thought she knew what God wanted of her, but it was a little like a dream. You wake up and think, Did that really happen? Mary was sure that she was called to serve God, but maybe not quite 100% sure. She had a long road ahead of her and she knew that Elizabeth was on a similar road. They could walk together for a bit and lean on each other. But also, Mary knew that she shared something else with Elizabeth: joy! Joy is not the same as happiness. Happiness is a surface-level emotion. Joy is deeper. Joy is that warm fire within your soul telling you that life is good. Well, maybe it doesn’t look so good right now, and maybe it’s hard to see what’s so good, but God’s light is shining through and telling you that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.
This is a critical message to us this Christmas season. Boy, things have been rough for the last little while. The political climate has been increasingly divisive over the past decade, and shows no signs of getting better—indeed, it seems that every news story adds fuel to the fires of tribal politics. A raging pandemic that has taken lives, disrupted our society, and fundamentally re-made our interactions with each other. This year has seen a huge number of natural disasters, from 120-degree heat in Canada to droughts to floods to tornadoes. I could go on, but this is supposed to be a message of joy!
Through all of the chaos of the world, all of the divisiveness and loss, one constant remains: God’s presence. No matter how bleak things look, we can be confident that God is with us. God came among us as a baby one night two millennia ago, because Mary said yes. Jesus is born again each December, as we remember that amazing gift of his presence and his offer to enter our lives, and say yes. God remains among us by the power of the Holy Spirit, flowing in us and through us all.
And just as Mary’s encounter with an angel led her to visit Elizabeth, we gather together here. It’s common these days for people to say that they don’t need a church to follow God, and I would partially agree. God is no more present here than anywhere else. There are people worshipping remotely with us, and God is as present with them as with us here in this sanctuary. I have encountered God on the sea and on a mountaintop.
But mostly, I have encountered God through other people. We gather together to share those experiences we’ve had. Not just so-called “mountaintop” experiences, vivid encounters with the divine, but the subtle ways God works in us and through us. The ways God is revealed each day through the people we meet and interact with. As you know, I volunteer regularly at the Mission. Each time I go in there, whether to volunteer for a shift or just to check in and prepare for a future shift, I can tell that God is working in the lives of the patrons—and also in the lives of the staff and volunteers. We seldom talk about religion there, but you can feel the Holy Spirit guiding each person to be a little better each day. As you also know, I am a professor and so I interact with students on a regular basis. There’s an energy when students are working together to learn or to solve problems. There’s an openness of their minds that reveals their hearts. One of the best moments I had this semester was at a help session where I was going through a derivation, and at the end, the student I was helping had a sudden moment of understanding that transcended my words.
My office is near the Mobil On the Run station, so I frequently walk up there to get a drink. There’s a woman who works there that I’ve developed a bit of a relationship with—not a friendship exactly, but more than just customer and clerk. Enough that she shares some of the struggles her son is going through, or the joy of visiting with her granddaughter who was born in November. Those moments reveal her humanity, and in turn reveal the way God is working in her life and her family’s lives.
We gather as Christ’s body to share these experiences, just as Mary and Elizabeth gathered to share their experiences. This is a place where there is no taboo about discussing God, where we can let down the barriers that so often keep people from truly understanding one another. Our relationships are stronger because God is at the center of them. We are bound together not by something superficial like a shared hobby, but by the deep and abiding love of God.
Life is hard. The pandemic has made easy things harder and hard things almost impossible. It has kept people apart, disrupted relationships, and taken loved ones away from us. Even before COVID, though, for thousands of years, the people of God have struggled. We struggle to do God’s will and follow the path Jesus laid out for us. We struggle to understand the evil and brokenness of the world around us. We suffer pain, and loss, and grief. And yet, we know that one night two thousand years ago, a young woman was called to give of herself, and because she said yes, God came to dwell among us, fully human and yet fully divine. Jesus became the fulcrum of history, the person that changed all of our lives. With Jesus at the center of our lives together, we can know hope, and love, and joy.
Several of you have commended me for the work I do for the church, and I appreciate being noticed. However, the work I do is no more important than what others are doing—it’s just more visible. I stand up here in a pulpit and preach, and my words go out on the Internet to the far corners of the world, because I have been given the ability to understand God’s Word and to preach about it. The job of a preacher is to encounter God in scripture on behalf of the congregation, and to witness to the encounter. But that job is no more important than, for example, the way the deacons witness to God’s grace as they meet behind closed doors with people who are homebound, or sick, or grieving. In fact, their witness can be even more crucial to building God’s kin-dom than my words because those moments they share live in heart space, rather than head space. I can perhaps convince you to think a certain way and maybe even act a certain way, but it is God’s presence and creative power that softens your heart and forms you into the person God desires. It is Jesus walking beside you who guides you through the hard times. It is the Holy Spirit dwelling within you who strengthens you and brings you joy.
We have received a great gift, the love of God expressed through the person of Jesus, born more than two thousand years ago because Mary said yes. Let us respond just as Mary did. God is calling us all to be witnesses of God’s grace. In all that we do, let us share the hope, the love, the joy, and the peace that Jesus brings as he is once again born in us by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla. Based on Malachi 3:1-4 and Luke 3:1-6. Podcast linked below. YouTube archive:
Before we talk about John the Baptist, I’d like us to take a whirlwind tour through the history of Israel, as recounted in the Bible. It all started with Abraham. God chose him to be the father of a great nation. His descendants were fruitful and multiplied in Egypt, then God freed them from the pharaoh’s rule and guided them to Canaan. For several generations, the Israelites tried to live up to their end of the covenant, and failed. God established Israel as a kingdom and instituted the Temple under Solomon. Almost immediately, the kingdom split and one half abandoned God. The other half, Judah, swung wildly between obedience and idolatry. Finally, God says, Enough! Judah is conquered and exiled. The great prophets step in, including Ezekiel who says, Do this right, rebuild the Temple, purify yourselves, and worship God properly. For 600 years, the people of Judah tried, with varying degrees of success. We are right now in the midst of Hanukkah, which commemorates the re-dedication of the Temple after the Maccabean revolt. But the Maccabees didn’t last long, and Rome took over.
For most of the time after the end of the exile, there were no prophets, no one to speak on God’s behalf. Malachi, whose words we read this morning, was the last prophet and was active in about 450 BC. For all this time, God’s people were just muddling through, trying to figure out how best to serve God. Some people said that the best way was to be more scrupulous in observing the purity laws, eventually being called Pharisees. Others said that the best way was to be more dedicated to Temple worship, eventually being called Sadducees. There were many other groups, including the Essenes who gathered the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Into this turmoil stepped John the Baptist. Finally, a new prophet! Someone to tell them all what God really wants them to hear. He preached not about the purity laws or Temple worship, but about repentance. He meant that they should follow the basic laws about loving God and neighbor. The examples of his teaching given throughout the Gospels include sharing your wealth and doing your job without cheating or extortion. He preached to observant Jews and to the Gentile occupying soldiers. He said that the kingdom of God was not inherited by Abraham’s descendants, but by those who God favored. And above all, he said that the Day of the Lord was coming, that God was coming.
John was a revolutionary. God’s word did not come to the powerful. Luke situates John in the midst of powerful men: Emperor Tiberius, prefect Pontius Pilate, tetrarchs Herod Antipas, Philip, and Lysanias, and high priests Annas and Caiaphas. These were the men who supposedly controlled the lives of God’s people, the civil and religious authorities. But God’s word came not to one of them, but to John, “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.”
John himself could have been a priest. His father, Zechariah, was a priest. At that time, the priesthood was hereditary, for the descendants of Zadok within the tribe of Levi. He could have been a priest, but wasn’t. He walked away from his inheritance and reinvented worship. He proclaimed that the way to God was not through stricter religious observances, whether in daily life or in the Temple. Instead, the way to God was through a changed heart. Repent, he said. Turn towards God. Orient yourself towards God’s love. Do what is right in God’s eyes—share your wealth, do your job honestly. He didn’t go to the Temple, but to the wilderness, to the River Jordan. He knew that we can encounter God anywhere, but especially in those places where we are not distracted by the temptations of the world.
That’s a valuable message to everyone, but especially young people. As you probably know, I’m an advisor to Common Call Campus Ministry, which is co-sponsored with Christ Episcopal Church. The goal of campus ministry is to enable young people to transition from an inherited faith to a personal faith. Most people of college age have some awareness of spirituality or religion. Maybe they have attended church with their family, or maybe not. At a college like ours, they are often away from home and independent for the first time. They are free to grow in their received faith, or in some other faith, or to walk away from God. Our goal as a campus ministry is to help them find their own path. That means engaging with the issues that are meaningful to them in a way that enables them to see God at work in their lives, and to help them find the right language to express their beliefs, and the right practices to continue their growth.
Each new generation faces new challenges and has new formative experiences. I think that the most impactful events happen when you’re between the ages of 10 and 30. That’s when you go through adolescence, become an adult, maybe go to college, maybe start a family. Whatever dominates public discourse at that age affects the way you perceive the world for the rest of your life.
How many of you were in that age range in 1962 and 1963? Think back on that time. 1962 had the Cuban missile crisis and 1963 had John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Now let’s fast-forward to 1974 and 1975. Think a minute. There was Watergate, and then the fall of Saigon. What about 1989? The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. 2001—9/11.
Each of us have different memories that affect what matters to us. I still think of Russia instead as the Soviet Union, the enemy that was defeated when I was in high school, even though it was more than thirty years ago. At the same time, I know the story of the Vietnam War, but I have no visceral reaction to it. Why? I was only two years old when it ended.
Most of you probably remember 9/11 vividly. I do, and Rhonda does, but Sam doesn’t. Rhonda was stranded in Dallas with Sam, but he was only 15 months old. Jesse wasn’t even born yet. Their generation has little to no visceral reaction to Islamic terrorists.
What events do impact their psyche? Sandy Hook. Parkland. Las Vegas. The shooting at a Michigan high school just this week, yet another incident that strengthens the low-grade anxiety that is part of their lives. Unite the Right. January 6, 2021. They don’t fear al-Qaeda or ISIS. They fear groups like the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters.
As a set of institutions, mainline Christianity has been essentially silent for these recent events and more, or at least not a major part of the public conversation. We have failed to live up to our prophetic calling, to speak to the problems of the day, to see God in all things and exhibit God’s kingdom to the world, to prepare the way for Jesus to enter into people’s hearts and lives. I challenge you to have this conversation with a stranger sometime. First, ask them what Christians think about current events, that is, where they think “Christians,” generically, stand on a given topic. You will probably be amazed at how far removed it is from what you personally believe. Then, ask them what they know about Presbyterians in general or our church in particular. If they are under the age of 40, I bet they know us for our preschool or they’ve been in our sanctuary for a concert, but they have NO IDEA where we stand on the Black Lives Matter movement, or gay rights, or white nationalism. For that matter, I’m not sure that we know ourselves.
Last week, Bob said that the problem of mainline Christianity is a lack of discipleship, and instead too much focus on social issues. My immediate response was to think he was dead wrong. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. What is discipleship? Is it spending time in prayer or studying the Bible? Is it sharing our faith with others? Yes, but that’s not all. Discipleship is about connecting God’s Word, Jesus’s message of love and reconciliation, to the world. To do so, you have to know what’s going on in the world and be relevant to the people you meet. If a young person says to you, “I don’t dream of labor,” do you know what they mean? Do you understand how it connects to Jesus’s parables or the instructions given to the Israelites during the Exodus? If not, how can you meaningfully, and without judgment, tell that young person about God’s message to them?
Preparing the way for Jesus to come means being confident in your understanding of Jesus’s teaching and how it connects to the world so that when something happens, you instinctively know how to respond. This congregation didn’t respond in any tangible way to the Black Lives Matter movement. If we had already had serious conversations about systemic racism and police relationships with our community, we would have been prepared. Maybe we would have engaged, maybe not. Maybe we would have been a moderating voice, steering between the “All Lives Matter” crowd and the “Defund the Police” crowd and perhaps building a bridge between them. But as it was, we said nothing because we had nothing to say. The message to young people in our community was that we don’t care.
That moment is past now. What’s next? What other issues are simmering below the surface that we need to engage with NOW, so that we are ready when they blow up? Or what issues have passed us by and become a part of the fabric of life, so that if we don’t know where we stand, if we are not educated about the changing language and cultural landscape, we are simply becoming increasingly irrelevant?
You might be thinking, Yes, but if we talk about political issues, or social issues, or other things going on in the world, won’t that divide us? Well, if you pay attention to the news, you’ll notice that America is divided already. Our calling is to build God’s kingdom so that “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” If we cannot talk to people that we love and respect, people who are part of our local church family, about things that matter, how can we possibly talk to strangers about them? As a congregation, we have been through some things together and have forged deep, loving bonds. Even if we disagree with each other, we know that we all are seeking God’s will. We can rely on the strength of those relationships to see where God is moving in the world outside our doors.
Life is usually not very easy for prophets. Jeremiah was thrown in a cistern. John’s reward was his head on a platter. Jesus’s reward was crucifixion. But you know what? They mattered. They spoke to God’s people at critical times and told them where God stood on the topics of the day. First century Judea was suffering under the weight of the Roman Empire, and political revolution was in the air. People were looking for a strong military leader like the Maccabees who would throw off the Roman yoke. John the Baptist wasn’t that leader. Instead, John’s message was, Repent! Get ready! God is coming! Start loving one another, right now! Live into God’s kingdom so that you’ll be ready when the Messiah comes! Jesus’s message was, The kingdom of God is here! It’s not just for Jews, but also for Samaritans and Gentiles. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done or who you are. What matters is that you turn towards God NOW. Don’t worry about the Romans. Worry about loving God and loving your neighbor, and by the way, here’s what I mean and how to do it.
I have good news for you all: Jesus’s message is still fresh and new. Maybe we have missed some opportunities. Maybe we have fallen short of our calling. But that’s true of everyone, always. The past doesn’t matter as much as how we respond today. John is still calling us to repent and prepare for the coming of the Messiah. The kingdom of God is still near, already here but not yet in full glory. There is still time to turn our hearts towards God.
Advent is a special time. It’s not just a time to decorate and buy gifts and have parties. It’s also a time to remind ourselves that Jesus is coming. It’s a time to start over, to re-dedicate ourselves to following God, to living into God’s kingdom, to turning away from our past sins of omission as well as our sins of commission. A time to let Jesus be born anew in our hearts.
We have been given a great gift. We are about to celebrate a holy feast, which connects us to Christians throughout the world and through all time. We have been made a part of Christ’s body. We have been shown God’s love in the greatest way possible, through the sacrificial love of God himself. John prepared the way for Jesus in ancient Judea. Let us now prepare ourselves so that we can prepare the way for Jesus in modern America, right here in Rolla, to change hearts and lives and to build God’s kingdom today. Amen.
