Month: December 2023

Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on December 24, 2023, Fourth Sunday of Advent. Based on Luke 1:26-38, 46-55.

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The event we hear today is memorialized by Roman Catholics in their prayer called the Angelus. When I go to the White House Retreat Center, we pray the Angelus three times daily. Each time through includes three Hail Marys. You know, Roman Catholics kind of have a “thing” for Mary. The Rosary is the most obvious example. The complete Rosary has five decades, each of which has ten Hail Marys. That’s fifty times praying, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.” And so on. I think the reason they focus so much on Mary is that Jesus seems too intimidating. Yes, Catholics pray to and through Jesus, but more often, they pray to a saint like Mary and ask the saint to intercede on their behalf. Mary seems so close to Jesus, and yet approachable.

Yet along the way, Mary has been elevated to this ethereal woman, almost otherworldly. She seems so serene, so meek, an obedient handmaid of God. She is a source of peace and a role model for women. Sinless, placid, humble, obedient. OK, I can accept that she is a saint in the sense that she has joined the heavenly choirs, but the earthly Mary that we read about in the Gospels is nothing like that.

Protestants have rebelled against this elevation of Mary and instead have degraded her. They treat her almost like an empty vessel. She was just a convenient womb to incubate the Incarnation. This attitude gave rise to the popular song, “Mary Did You Know.” It’s a beautiful song that talks about the man that Mary’s baby would grow up to be. I love the melody, and I love the image of a baby growing into our Lord and Savior. But the song is all wrong. Listen to the last verse:

Mary, did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your baby boy is heaven’s perfect Lamb?
That sleeping child you’re holding is the great, I Am.

Mary, Did You Know? Words & Music by Mark Lowry and Buddy Greene

This is a beautiful vision of the man that Jesus would become, and the potential within the infant that we will be celebrating tonight, but the answer to every line is a resounding “YES!” Mary knew, because Gabriel told her.

Mary was neither some perfect model of obedience and submission nor an empty vessel who had no idea what was going on. Mary was tough. When Gabriel gave her his message, she didn’t hesitate to ask what she needed to know: how will it happen? She needed to know what she was getting into.

Motherhood is a blessing, but it’s not easy. It certainly wasn’t easy in first-century Galilee. They had midwives but medical care was, shall we say, meager. Death in childbirth was common—I read somewhere that as many as 1 in 3 mothers died giving birth. Not only that, but infant mortality rates were pretty high, so she would be charged with caring for a very fragile young life. The serene image in Christmas cards or on display in nativity scenes doesn’t reflect the reality of childbirth: noisy, messy, and painful. Nor does it reflect the sleepless nights and utter misery of being a new mother. Compounding Mary’s situation was the fact that she would be pregnant out of wedlock. She was betrothed to a man who was not the biological father, so she didn’t know whether he would follow through with the wedding or not. She didn’t know if the rest of her family, and his, would accept her. And being the mother of the Messiah meant that the birth would be just the beginning. Almost every messianic movement ends in bloodshed. Next week, we will hear Simeon, a prophet in the Temple, tell her, “A sword will pierce your own soul, too.”

And yet, Mary said yes. This was not an act of submission and subservience, but a commitment to take on the challenge. Like so many prophets before her, when God called to her, she said, Here I am, Lord. Choose me.

And like so many prophets before her, she responded with a bold prophetic announcement that we call the Magnificat. This is not a hymn of joy so much as the start of a revolution. “God has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.” And on it goes, declaring that the order of society will be overturned. Mary celebrates her role in the revolution. She rejoices that God has done this great thing for her, allowing her to birth the Messiah. She rejoices at being Jesus’s first disciple.

Catholics pray, “Hail Mary, full of grace,” a phrase taken from the Latin Vulgate. The NRSV translation is, “Greetings, favored one!” This more accurately captures the sentiment that Mary was the recipient of grace, not the source of it. God chose her to give birth to and raise the Messiah. Why? We don’t know. Nowhere does it say that she was particularly devout, or extra kind, or anything else. She was chosen just as other prophets were chosen: for no obvious reason except that God saw great promise in her heart. Her prophetic song helps us to understand the kind of mother that Jesus had. She was convinced that God was doing a great thing for her and for the world through her. She recognized God’s strength and mercy. She was prepared for a revolution that would raise the lowly and bring down the powerful. As we sang earlier, the world is about to turn.

 But wait: in the Bible verses, Mary says that God has done great things—past tense. The hymn says that the world is about to turn—in the near future. Which is it? Well, just as Christ was born and will be born anew in our hearts, the revolution is still going on. The complete transformation of the world takes a while. Yet Mary knew that something important was happening. She knew that without the coming of the Messiah, God’s plan for the salvation of the world could not come to pass. She knew that she had been chosen for a critical role in that plan. God had been hard at work throughout the history of Israel, and had already done a lot, but now the transformation process would go into hyperdrive. She was willing to do whatever God asked of her so that Jesus’s mission could be accomplished.

But again, why was Mary chosen, and what was special about her? Well, nothing, really. She was just an unmarried young woman of unknown lineage from a small village in a backwater. She wasn’t a priest like Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist who received his calling in the Temple. She wasn’t like Simeon and Anna, prophets we will hear about next week who were righteous and devout and spent all their time in the Temple, worshipping with fasting and prayer. She certainly wasn’t one of the rich and powerful. Just an ordinary woman in an ordinary place.

In that way, she wasn’t much different from us. We are pretty far from the seats of power, whether political or economic or cultural. That doesn’t change the fact that God is calling each one of us to take part in the transformation of the world into God’s kingdom. Each of us has a role to play. None of us have as big a job as Mary did, but even small roles are important. I will again remind you to consider how God is calling you personally to work towards the reconciliation of the world. How can you take part in God’s work, and how can this church and its members help to further your calling? What seemingly impossible task has God set before you, and how can you say, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord”?

Tonight, we will gather again to worship and remember that Jesus was born more than 2000 years ago. He took on flesh and came to demonstrate what true love looks like, to help us to turn towards God and participate in God’s work, to re-orient our priorities. Yet that would not have happened if Mary hadn’t said “yes.” May God show you what task has been laid out for you, and give you also the courage to say “yes.” Amen.

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Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on December 10, 2023, Second Sunday of Advent. Based on Mark 1:1-8.

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Repent! That’s the usual word we associate with John the Baptist. He came preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. We commonly understand “repentance” to be related to “penitence.” To repent is to confess your sins, to meditate on your wrongdoing, to make amends where possible, and to suffer the guilt you have incurred.

Prisons used to be set up along these lines. First came the Pennsylvania system, advocated by the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, whose most active members were Quakers. In 1829, they founded the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia that applied the principle that solitary confinement fosters penitence and encourages reformation. Prisoners were kept in isolated cells measuring twelve feet by seven-and-a-half feet. They each even had their own exercise yards to prevent contact among prisoners. They were expected to stay separated and think about their crimes and their sinfulness. Eventually, prisoners were also tasked with solitary crafts like shoemaking and weaving. The Pennsylvania system spread across the US and Europe. There were two criticisms: one, that it had terrible effects on the prisoners’ mental health, and two, that it was too expensive. Guess which one was the more compelling argument.

The Pennsylvania system was largely replaced by the Auburn system, which started in Auburn, New York. Instead of living entirely solitary lives, prisoners were kept in solitary confinement at night but worked together during the day. However, they were forced to remain silent at all times, again so that they could think about their crimes and their sinfulness. Both the Pennsylvania and Auburn systems were predicated on the belief that criminal habits were learned from other criminals and spread like a disease. Ultimately, both were found to be both expensive and inhumane, as well as ineffective.

The conventional wisdom is that repentance starts with confession and ends with some form of penance. But the Greek word that we translate “repentance” is metanoia, which has a slightly different connotation. Metanoia means changing your mind. More broadly, it means a turning of your heart and soul towards God. Only later did confession and penance become a prerequisite for repentance.

Now, I’m not saying that confession is a bad thing, or that there is no need for penance. Both are essential spiritual practices. I’m just saying that the order is wrong. The first step is to turn towards God. John called the people out to the Jordan to have a different look at God. In the Temple, they were too distracted by the rituals and the sacrifices to see what matters. Like so many prophets before him, John called the people not to sacrifice more animals, but in the words of Micah, to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly with God.

When you really turn towards God, though, the first thing you realize is just how far short you fall of God’s plans for you. You are made in the image of God. You are made to love like God and to serve others like God and to forgive like God. Yet each and every one of us falls far short of God’s glory, so when we see ourselves in the bright light of God’s love, we see our flaws. We see the ways in which we need to seek forgiveness from God, and so we confess our sins. God’s response is always forgiving and merciful, but God’s justice is ultimately restorative. Seeing ourselves in the light of God’s love moves us to restore what we can—to heal relationships, to care for those in need, to fix the broken systems that we are bound up in. This is true penitence, true repentance: turning towards God, and then doing God’s work in the world.

Baptism, then, is not the end, but the beginning. It is a sign and seal of God’s grace, an outward symbol of an inward change. Baptism is a ritual in which we accept God’s unwarranted grace, God’s unearned but infinite love. It is a time when we start our walk with God and begin looking at the world as God does.

I mentioned spiritual practices recently, both in a sermon and a newsletter article. By the way, the sign-up sheet I mentioned is on a clipboard hanging from the easel in the narthex. Anyway, over Thanksgiving, I had the opportunity to chat some with my sister, Jennifer, who is a United Methodist pastor. I asked her about her spiritual practices, some of which are similar to mine, though her Bible study is deep rather than broad. Then she told me about one that I have added to my life over the past few weeks. She said that every day, she tells herself to “be on the lookout for God.”

That’s another form of repentance. We turn towards God by looking for God’s work in the world. Have you ever noticed that you tend to find what you are looking for? A prime example is that when a woman in your life is pregnant—your wife, or sister, or daughter, or a close friend, or whoever—you suddenly notice pregnant women everywhere. It’s not that there are more pregnant women then, just that you notice them because your mind is primed to see them. In the same way, if we prime our minds to look for God, we will see that God is at work every day, everywhere.

Let me give you an example. Last weekend, I was gone because Rhonda and I went to Pittsburgh to visit Jesse and see their bell choir performance. Jesse is a senior, so this was their last performance as director. Now, traveling with Rhonda in our new van is much better than in our SUV with the lift on the back to haul the wheelchair, but it’s still a hassle. Each time we stop, I have to put out the ramp, undo four straps, move things out of the way on the floorboard, let her drive out, close the ramp up, and turn the car off. Then when we’re ready to go again, I do it all in reverse—start the van, put the ramp down, let her drive in and get positioned just right, strap the wheelchair down, move things around in the floorboard, close up the ramp. OK, it’s not hard, it’s just a hassle that takes a few minutes.

Well, one morning, we both needed a restroom break and drinks. We stopped at a McDonald’s and got unloaded. Then we realized that the dining room was closed even though the drive-thru was open, due to staff shortages. Ugh. Wish I had seen the sign before we got unloaded! We turned around to get back in the van to drive over to a gas station instead, when a woman poked her head out. She said that they were short-staffed but we could go in to use the restroom. We did, then went on to a gas station to get drinks so that we wouldn’t add to their burden.

Now, where was God? Well, the woman just happened to look in our direction and see Rhonda in a wheelchair. She was working behind the counter and wouldn’t normally have seen anything happening out in the parking lot in that direction. Not only that, but she also took time out of her extremely busy morning to let us in. I’m thankful for the grace she showed.

Now I could just write it off as a coincidence that she looked in our direction, and you might say that it was just common courtesy that she let Rhonda in. We get a lot of people helping in small ways when we’re out and about. But I would rather see it as a subtle way of God working in the world to foster human connection and a better society.

Let me give you another. I was at a university event earlier this week, and a woman came over to me. She introduced herself and thanked me for something nice I had done for her mother, something I don’t even remember doing. Now, to me, it was just one of a thousand things I had done on some day in the distant past, but to this woman and her mother, it was important. It was important enough to the mother that she mentioned it to her daughter, and important enough to the daughter to remember me for it. It touched them. That wasn’t me—that was God at work through me.

These are just two things that happened in the past week that were big enough to share with you. The more I pay attention, the more I see God at work in big ways and small. This was John’s calling: turn yourself towards God and see that God is coming into your life, today.

Many of my spiritual practices are organized in my Monk Manual, which is a sort of planner. I would be happy to show you my Monk Manual or to tell you more about it, but the important point here is that it is built around cycles of prepare, act, and reflect. There is a daily cycle, a weekly cycle, and monthly, quarterly, annual, and lifetime cycles. Each cycle includes a reflection so that you can see what good things have happened to you, what has made you feel unrest, and what God has been teaching you. By looking back on how God was working, you prepare yourself to look forward to God acting in your life on the next cycle—the next day, the next week, the next month or quarter or year. So often, we don’t notice God in the moment, but we can look back and see that God has been guiding us and accompanying us, and then that awakens us to the possibility of God continuing to guide and accompany us. In the same way, John’s call of repentance must be answered by a turning towards God each day, each week, each season, each year. That’s why I have daily spiritual practices. That’s why I worship here each week. That’s why we have the different liturgical seasons. And that’s why each year in Advent, we once again prepare for Jesus to be born anew in our lives.

Christ is coming. Advent is a time of waiting, of anticipation for the great day of the Lord when Christ enters our lives. Yet Christ has already come. God is already at work through Christ’s body, which is the church. God has been at work in the world from the moment of Creation and will continue to work towards the restoration and re-Creation of all things. Advent is a time to turn towards God, to be Christ’s eyes in the world and, being moved by what we see, to act with Christ’s heart, and hands, and feet.

On this second Sunday of Advent, we anticipate the coming of God’s shalom, which is a peace that transcends the absence of war and includes healing and wholeness, a restoration of what has been lost and broken. Let us turn our eyes towards God so that we can see and join in the hard work of building a world filled with God’s love. Amen.

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