In a recent sermon, I mentioned a concept that I picked up from “Find Your Inner Monk.” We don’t learn philosophy and spirituality and ideology in a vacuum. We don’t simply observe our surroundings and make sense of them on our own. Rather, we form our attitudes and beliefs within our communities of belonging.
Our first community of belonging is our family. As teenagers, each person then starts finding new communities to join. Some find belonging on sports teams, others in clubs, still others in musical ensembles (choir, band) or other artistic endeavors. Or in a church, or in a gang. Each community forms its own belief system; each member both absorbs the community’s beliefs and contributes to their formation and propagation.
I am an advisor to Common Call Campus Ministry, which recently had an event titled, “What Is Progressive Christianity?” It was an information session open to the community. I firmly believe that there are students on campus who find their best path to God through other campus ministries. Yet I also believe that there are students who cannot find belonging in any of those communities, and therefore believe that they are not welcome in God’s kingdom. Our mission is to help those students learn and grow as they seek the path God has chosen for them.
An unfortunate circumstance has emerged over the past few decades. Where before, communities had a lot of diversity of viewpoints, now they are all becoming more single-minded. We see this in politics: both parties are being taken over by their extremists who are purging (or trying to purge) those who disagree with them. We see this in churches: each denomination or association is adopting theological stances that tend to push out those who disagree. I am proud to be a member of a denomination (PC(USA)) that not only endorses gay marriage, but also allows gay ordination. Unfortunately, some of the largest congregations in our presbytery could not stand to be associated with a denomination that held those beliefs, and left. As a result, our presbytery has become more liberal because we lost those conservative voices.
Last night, I had the pleasure of attending The Gathering, which is a group of people who have been disaffected from existing churches. They are striving to formulate just who they are and what it means to be in community with each other. My prayer for them is that they find a way to disagree agreeably, and keep their priorities aligned. Patrick Wilson opened the evening with some discussion of the Great Commandment:
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Jesus’s entire ministry was an exposition of this commandment. Through words and deeds, he showed how we can love God, and how we can love our neighbor. Yet we still struggle with his teachings and seek to limit God’s dominion over our lives (say, to just Sunday morning) or to limit who we consider to be our neighbor.
Yet if we keep this commandment front and center, we can avoid many of the pitfalls that so many churches fall into. So often, we obsess over petty slights, or argue minor points of doctrine or behavior. Jesus taught that we can disagree about almost everything, except for the fundamental value of each person. If we love each other, we can remain in community together and then grow and change together, each seeking the path that God has laid out for us individually and as the body of Christ.
For a little over two years, I have used a planner called a Monk Manual. The motivating principle behind it is that monks are some of the happiest and most productive people. Steven Lawson, the creator of the Monk Manual, studied the monastic life and developed a way to achieve similar results in secular life. His approach encompasses these ten principles:
Gratitude
Simplicity
Intentionality
Order
Generosity
Relationships
Reflection
Presence
Balance
Transcendence
The question is, how can we incorporate these in our daily lives? Lawson developed the Monk Manual as a way of integrating spiritual practices that lead to living out these principles. Just last week, I started a program he calls, “Find Your Inner Monk,” which delves deeper into these concepts.
I want to focus on just a few today to set the stage for the rest of our time together. The first is simplicity. Simplicity begins with letting go. Monks express this tangibly by paring down to the essentials—both emotionally and physically—liberating themselves from the things that weigh down their mind, body, and spirit. The vows of poverty and chastity are the tangible expressions of a dedication to simplicity. Much easier said than done. If you start making a list of all the things in your life that you “need,” you will find that it includes many things that were unknown a generation ago. Do I “need” a smartphone? Probably not, but getting rid of it is unimaginable to me.
Next, there are relationships. Monks vow chastity, but do not live without love. Instead, they embrace a different kind of love, the chaste love of brotherhood. In the same way, we can have lives filled with loving relationships. In the Monk Manual, there is a spot for daily gratitude. Most of my entries there are people with whom I have a relationship—sometimes family members, but often friends who enrich my life, or even casual acquaintances who reveal God to me. Hospice nurses cite that the biggest regret of the dying has nothing to do with achievements or financial investments—but has everything to do with relationships. I’m an engineer and an introvert, so for much of my life, I’ve focused on developing a few close relationships. Over the past few years, I’ve tried to broaden my social circle. The pandemic has made that difficult—I think everyone’s social circles have been collapsing just because it is SO HARD to get together. Still, I’ve been striving to stay connected with old friends and develop new friendships.
The last principle I want to discuss is presence. Presence means letting go of the past and the future and being fully in the moment. It means really listening to the person you’re talking to, rather than thinking about what you’re going to say next. We are so used to control that it’s hard to let go, and trust that it really is going to be okay, after all. Engaging with what’s right in front of us, which means giving ourselves fully to the present moment, requires vulnerability—which can be terrifying. But if you’re ever with someone who has real presence—like my friend Ashley Brooks—it’s exhilarating. Their openness and presence are contagious and make you more open and present with them.
Simplicity, relationships, and presence—three ways we let go of our attachments to the material world and surrender to God. This week’s Gospel lesson is the opening part of the Sermon on the Plain, which is Luke’s parallel with Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount. As in Matthew, Luke opens the sermon with blessings, but unlike Matthew, Luke includes the woes here as well. We see these pairings: Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Basically, if you’re down, you’ll be lifted up; if you’re up, you’ll be brought low.
The blessings are for those who trust in God. The woes are for those who trust in worldly things. If you are rich and you think you can rely on your wealth, you will be reluctant to trust in God. But as the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. One day, you’ll have no choice but to surrender all that you have. If you release your attachments now, you can break free of the cycle of blessing and woe inherent to our world and you’ll be more able to live in God’s realm now. Jesus’s message that the kingdom of God is at hand reminds us that we can live in God’s kingdom now, not later. But living in God’s kingdom means not living in a worldly kingdom.
Jeremiah has similar curses and blessings. Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals, but blessed are those who trust in the LORD. Then Jeremiah follows up with a reminder that, “The heart is devious above all else.” It’s easy to turn your whole life over to God, or rather to say that you’re turning it over, but hard to really let go. Most often, we say that we will put our trust in God alone, but then don’t follow through. On Sunday, we believe that God will provide, but on Monday, we go to work or check our investments. When I was working with Rocco to design our new house, I started out with the intention of downsizing because our family doesn’t need so many attachments—but by the end of the project, we ended up with a bigger house and more storage space for all the stuff we don’t really need. I’d like to let go and trust in God completely, but it’s a struggle every day.
It’s important to remember, though, that these blessings and woes are not commands, but rather are descriptions of reality. If you put your trust in your wealth, you’ll worry about every dip in the stock market. If you are attached to your possessions, they wind up owning you. If instead you let go of your possessions and trust in God, there’s nothing you can lose. I’m reminded of Nino—some of you know him from the Mission. He went through some things, including alcohol addiction and prison, but then found Jesus and turned his life around. He posted once on Facebook, “I don’t have much but I have it all.” He has let go of all his material needs and dedicated himself to serving God, and he’s filled with joy. It’s always great when he stops by the Mission. He lifts people up and makes the community better just by his presence, which reflects the glory of God.
Nino has enough. We live in a society where a scarcity mindset prevails. We worry that we won’t have enough time to do everything we “need” to do. We worry that we won’t have enough money to be secure. So we chase after more money, which uses up the time we don’t have. I was listening to a recording by Father Richard Rohr recently, and he pointed out that our homes and kitchens are full of “time-saving devices,” and yet we have less time than ever. The pursuit of abundance leaves us always feeling scarcity. We think, If I just have X, I’ll be happy. I just need a new car, or a new job, or a bigger TV, or a faster computer. Then we get it, and it’s nice at first, but eventually it leaves us unsatisfied. The more we have, the more we want, and the less it satisfies.
So the opposite of scarcity is not abundance. The opposite of the scarcity-abundance trap is enough. Kurt Vonnegut wrote this poem as an obituary:
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!”
Enough. Instead of striving to have what you want, enough-ness is wanting what you have. The root of this enough-ness is relationships.
Father Rohr reminds his audience that many poor people in Third World countries are much happier than relatively well-off people in America. The reason is that instead of relying on things, they rely on each other. They know that if they are in need, their family or their neighbors will help them out. Instead of putting their time and energy into building up a big bank account, they build up a big social account—wealth in the form of social connections. Elsewhere I have heard this called the gift economy. I give something to you, not as a loan against some future gift you’ll give me, but as an investment in our friendship. And maybe you won’t “pay me back,” but in sharing of myself, I help build up a community of belonging where people support each other. God’s realm is built on something even more powerful: the grace economy. We share not only our time and resources, which are limited, but also God’s grace, which is limitless. God’s grace multiplies our efforts and strengthens our relationships.
I mentioned that I started a program called, “Find Your Inner Monk.” It’s described by Monk Manual founder Steve Lawson as a pilgrimage, but a pilgrimage that takes place in your daily life. In the first lesson, he talks about how we form our ideas, values, and goals, and how we answer life’s big questions. Especially in America, we have this image in our minds of the solitary individual deriving answers from first principles and formulating their own vision of how the world works. That image drives the phenomenon of those who say they are spiritual but not religious, instead seeking answers to life’s questions on their own. But Lawson points out that that’s not a reflection of reality. In reality, the influences on our ideologies and beliefs are first our communities of belonging, then the broader culture, and then our personal experiences. That is, our communities of belonging have the strongest influence, and the more we feel belonging, the more permeable we are, the more open we are to the community’s beliefs.
As we let go of our worldly attachments and invest instead in relationships, we build up those communities of belonging. The more I give to this church, in time, talent, and treasure, the more I feel a part of it, and the more it molds me into its image. We should work towards making our church both a place where people feel complete belonging, and a place where we lift up Jesus Christ and his self-sacrificing love as the ideal that we are all striving to achieve.
I’ve noticed something curious about the human psyche. You would think that receiving a gift would make you value the giver more and make you feel more a part of the giver’s community. But that hasn’t been my experience. In reality, it is in giving that we ascribe more value to the receiver, and in giving that we feel more a part of the receiving community. It’s as if the receiver validates our gift, and therefore validates us as a person and as a member of the community. That’s why so many people volunteer at the Mission and at GRACE and at all of the other charitable organizations in town. That’s why a great way to reconcile with someone is not to give them something, but to ask them for a favor, which shows that you value them.
So to build a true community of belonging, we need to value the gifts each person has to offer. If we want to grow in our impact on our community, we don’t need to raise more money for charity, although that won’t hurt and I would still encourage you to give on this Souper Bowl Sunday. We don’t need to be more entertaining, or to have more programs. What we need is to create spaces where people feel valued, where the gifts they have to offer matter. Some people have financial resources they can share; others have musical or artistic talents, or know how to fix things, or know how to organize and plan, or are good with numbers, or whatever. All of us have life experiences that we can share, things we have learned that can help others see God in a new way. All of us have a yearning to love and be loved.
A community where people truly feel belonging, where they can bring their full selves and all their life experiences and skills and talents, has a name: the kingdom of God. I’m not sure how to build such a community, but Jesus tells us that the kingdom of God is at hand. It’s nearby, just waiting for us to enter it. Let us all strive to create spaces where people can give of themselves, their whole selves, and receive in return the grace of God and membership in God’s glorious kingdom.
Well, here we are, first Sunday of February. How are you all doing on your New Year’s resolutions? I didn’t make any resolutions, per se, but did intend to change my morning and evening routines. I have been somewhat successful in changing my evening routine, but my morning routine is another story. My intention was to go running every morning to stay active. Well, New Year’s weekend was bitterly cold and also deer season, so I didn’t get off to a very good start. Since then, I’ve gone running occasionally, but not regularly.
My dear friend Ashley Brooks recommended a book to me, Resisting Happiness by Matthew Kelly. I finally got around to reading it over winter break. One of its motivating concepts is the idea that we resist things that we know will make us happier. I know that I feel better and have a better day when I run in the morning, and I know that I enjoy the run itself, and yet I struggle to convince myself to get dressed and go when it’s 12° outside or when there’s freezing rain, sleet, and snow on the way, or 6” of snow on the ground. In the same way, I know that praying, reading the Bible, and other spiritual practices will bring me closer to God, yet I resist doing them. We all have this resistance inside of us.
There’s one concept in the book that I take issue with. It’s the idea that we can choose or seek “happiness.” So often, seeking happiness becomes a search for hedonistic pleasures. But that kind of happiness is fleeting. What the author is really talking about is the deep joy that comes from our relationship with God and with God’s people.
It’s hard to know, though, what choices we can make to become happier or more joyful. In a podcast about our relationship with time, I heard a concept that can help: Choose enlargement. It’s hard to know which paths will lead to happiness or joy, but it’s often easier to know which path will enlarge you. For example, playing an instrument well requires hours and hours of practice, much of it drudgery. I wouldn’t say that I enjoy playing scales or arpeggios or chord progressions, but I know that those exercises make me more able to make music. The example in the podcast was parenthood: Nobody will claim that getting up in the middle of the night to change a dirty diaper is “fun,” but parents do it because it’s part and parcel of the parenting journey.
In today’s reading, Simon reacts to the miraculous catch by saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” In what way was he sinful? I mean, we never hear that he was a murderer or thief or anything. Partly, I think he recognized his sinfulness in comparison to the perfection of Jesus. But more than that, he recognized his finitude, his limitations. We all fall short of the glory of God because we are limited. We love some people more than others. We acknowledge that people in our community, state, nation, and world are in need, but we don’t help them all. Compared to the Lord of Creation, we are small people of limited capabilities. But if we each choose a path that leads to enlargement, to making us a more complete person, we will become better versions of ourselves.
One way we can enlarge ourselves is to become a part of something bigger than ourselves. Let me explain. As an individual, if I see someone who is homeless, I can give them a little money or food, but that’s about it. But if I connect to The Mission, I can help that homeless person get meals regularly, have a place to stay, and get other services they need. As an individual, I can teach a few people about a few topics in electrical engineering. As a professor at a university, I can contribute to a large number of students becoming fully-qualified electrical engineers. We all have a desire to be a part of something bigger than ourselves.
And that’s basically why we are here today, right? We want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, and what’s bigger than God’s family? In the sanctuary today, there are a few dozen members of Christ’s body, but we are connected to other Presbyterian churches in our presbytery, synod, and general assembly, and more broadly are connected to all expressions of Christ’s teachings. We are all connected throughout time and space. We are connected to the great cloud of witnesses, the communion of saints who enjoy the abundant heavenly banquet. We are connected to poor Simon who just wanted to catch a few fish, but saw God’s realm breaking through and dropped everything to follow Jesus. Simon saw a glimpse of the heavenly banquet that is to come and chose to be a part of it—chose enlargement.
In following Jesus, Simon was promised that he would be a valued part of Jesus’s efforts to build his kingdom. As we heard in the introit, Jesus promised to make Simon worthy. He promised that Simon would do important work fishing for people.
Jesus asked Simon to leave everything he had, everything he thought was important, and abandon his own earthly desires. Simon’s yes had to be followed by a thousand nos. We are finite. We have limited time and resources. We can only be in one place at a time. So, to say yes, I will do this thing for Jesus, means saying no, I will not do these other things for myself or my family or my job. This is a hard calling. I’ve been listening to a recording of lectures by Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar, wisdom teacher, and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation. Father Rohr reminds us that in the affluence of America, it is hard to obey Jesus’s call. We are bound with golden shackles—unwilling to let go of the things that make our life comfortable, for the sake of following Jesus. This is the part of the sermon when I preach to myself—as much as I’m willing to give to God, I’m very happy living in a nice house and driving a nice car and having a nice life. I struggle to turn away from my career as an engineering professor and spend more time and energy on God’s kin-dom.
But Jesus didn’t ask Simon to set aside his true self. I know it’s a metaphor, but Jesus told Simon he would still be fishing, but for people instead. In the same way, Jesus asks us to bring our true selves, our whole selves, to his service. Jesus doesn’t ask me to cease to be an engineer or a scholar, but instead to bring my skills and talents to bear on his Gospel. Each of us have special gifts that we can use in God’s service. We are all grateful for Jeff and Lorie devoting their musical gifts to God. Nora brings her lifetime of teaching children to her stewardship of the Presbyterian Preschool. I’m glad that Ming brings the skills he developed over an illustrious career as an academic leader to his membership on the PNC. In ways too numerous to mention, we each have skills and talents that we have developed over our lives that we can draw upon and dedicate to God’s service, to building up God’s kin-dom.
Here in Rolla, there are surely thousands of people, maybe more than ten thousand, who are not connected to Christ’s body, which is the church. Jesus is drawing all people to himself, reconciling the whole world and seeking an intimate relationship with each person. He calls us to help in this work, to build up connections person-to-person so that we can experience God’s kin-dom here and now. But the challenge is too big. I cannot personally tell ten thousand people about the love God has for them. Even as a congregation, we can’t possibly reach everyone. But that doesn’t excuse us from trying to reach someone. We need to start somewhere.
Let’s start by thinking about who is not here. Who is not worshipping in the sanctuary this morning? Well, for starters, our homebound members and others for whom worshipping remotely is preferable due to their life situations. Today, that group is probably a bit bigger than usual because of the weather. Some of us, particularly the deacons, are called to help those members stay connected to Christ’s body even if we don’t see them in our sanctuary. Looking beyond our members, let’s think about those vast groups of people who aren’t here. There are the younger generations, by which I mean anyone under the age of 50. For a variety of reasons, many of them have heard the message that they are not welcome in God’s kin-dom. Some have been explicitly told that “their kind,” whatever that means, aren’t welcome in a particular church. Or maybe their friends have been excluded, and so they won’t go anywhere their friends aren’t welcome. Or maybe our inward focus, on the worship style, architecture, music, and programs that matter to people like us, implicitly excludes people who are intimidated by our sanctuary, dislike our music, or whatever. By failing to meet them where they are, we send the message that they aren’t welcome, that they don’t matter to us.
Jesus said, Come, follow me, and I’ll teach you. He knew that Simon would be in challenging situations, dealing with people he had nothing in common with or even people he hated, such as tax collectors and Roman soldiers. In the same way, Jesus knows that if we follow him, we will be challenged. We’ll meet people who have very different life experiences from us. We’ll meet people who are made anxious by the very things that bring us comfort and who need comfort that we don’t know how to provide. We’ll meet people dealing with problems we cannot even conceive of.
We are called to bring our whole selves to those encounters. I will never cease to be an engineer or a professor, no matter what happens in my career. I think like an engineer, solve problems like an engineer, and communicate like a professor. I cannot change my past experiences that have formed me into the person I am today, and that’s OK with God. Like removing chaff from wheat, Jesus removes just those things that hold us back from participating in kin-dom building while retaining that core, that nugget of self, deep inside of us. Jesus promises, though, that he will be with us. When we peel back those layers of worldly attachments that separate us from God and each other, we are left exposed and vulnerable. Yet Christ is always with us, protecting our true selves, loving us completely, and enabling us to share his love with our neighbors.
Serenity is what comes when you stop wishing for a different past. Courage is what we need to build a different future. We all, each one of us individually and our congregation as a whole, can have a future filled with God’s glory if we choose it. If we choose to go where God is calling us, we can experience a taste of the abundant life that is to come when God’s realm is complete.
When Simon saw God’s realm breaking through, he immediately responded, “Go away from me, for I am a sinful man.” He realized that, like all of us, he was limited. He was not ready to participate in the full abundance of God’s realm. Jesus said, It’s OK. We don’t have to change the whole world by ourselves. Jesus is the one doing the work, really, and anyway, the world is a big place. All we can do, and all we are asked to do, is to follow Jesus and change the world for one person. And then another. And then another.
I’m not sure what or where my true calling is. I have some idea, but I’m still groping blindly for the next step. What matters is that I’m trying to follow God’s call. It’s OK to be wrong, but it’s not OK to quit trying. I’d like to close now with a prayer written by Thomas Merton that encapsulates what I’m saying, and that I hope will be helpful to you, each one of you, as you strive to follow where Jesus leads you. Let’s pray:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.
A few years ago, our younger child, Jesse (who was in high school at the time), had a friend that I’ll call “Pat” to protect their identity. Pat was assigned female at birth (AFAB) but realized he was transgender male. He definitely did not have accepting parents and greatly feared that he would be homeless if he came out. This was unacceptable to Jesse, so we talked about what we could do to help. We do have resources in Rolla, particularly The Rolla Mission, but living on the streets is dangerous anyway. We had a spare bedroom, so we offered it to Pat as a transitional option until he went to college. Thankfully, when he came out, his home life was unpleasant but not unbearable. He was able to survive the last months of high school and then move on to new horizons.
Not everyone is so lucky. I am aware of another young person who came out and was then subjected to severe emotional abuse until they turned 18 and were able to leave home—thankfully, to live with a supportive friend. Again, not everyone is so lucky. Many LGBTQ youth do not have accepting parents, do not have healthy home environments, and do not have friends who will take them in. According to True Colors United, LGBTQ youth are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than other youth. Although they comprise about 7% of all youth, up to 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ. In addition to the usual reasons (like family poverty), major reasons for LGBTQ youth homelessness include being forced out or abused because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. (This is actually why I started volunteering at The Mission. I may not be able to help homeless LGBTQ individuals explicitly, but fighting homelessness anywhere helps indirectly.)
Importantly, the two individuals that I know who might have fallen prey to these family issues would not show up in the statistics as “youth” because they were both 18. Our society treats an 18-year-old as an adult, but at the same time expects parents to support them for a few more years. For example, colleges assume that parents’ financial resources are available to their children. A story in Rolling Stone describes a college sophomore, Jackie, who came out and was immediately cut off—her car taken away, her credit cards canceled. Of course her tuition immediately became her own responsibility, regardless of what the college may have expected. In the ensuing years, she experienced intermittent homelessness.
Sadly, the Christian church has had an outsized role in driving division within families. In the Rolling Stone story, Jackie’s parents were devout Catholics. When she called them to tell them she was gay, “After what felt like an eternity, her mom finally responded. ‘I don’t know what we could have done for God to have given us a fag as a child,’ she said before hanging up.”
Somewhere along the line, Jackie’s parents had been told that being gay made her irredeemably sinful and unacceptable to God. Indeed, many churches continue to preach that the Bible clearly states that being gay is inherently evil, based on a handful of “clobber passages.” They ignore the other 99% of the Bible that preaches love for neighbor and equality before God.
This week’s lectionary passage is Luke 4:14-21, which I refer to as Jesus’s mission statement. Up to this point, Jesus was teaching and healing and calling followers, but had not yet clearly stated what kind of Messiah he was. Would he be a warrior and lead a rebellion to expel the Romans? No. He picked up Isaiah’s mantle and said,
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Luke 4:18-19
Jesus brought good news to the poor—all of the poor, not just the “worthy” poor. He proclaimed freedom to the oppressed, including those who are abused—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. And no, homelessness is not freedom.
Then he followed his proclamation by saying, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Today. Not tomorrow, not next year. Not when it’s convenient. Not when the world is ready. TODAY.
Last weekend we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday. As part of my celebration, I read Letter from a Birmingham Jail. In the best prophetic tradition, his words were right on target for his time and circumstances, while also describing a broader truth about the way the world works. “The time is always right to do what is right.” He went on,
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was “well timed,” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This “wait” has almost always meant “never.” It has been a tranquilizing thalidomide, relieving the emotional stress for a moment, only to give birth to an ill-formed infant of frustration. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” We have waited for more than three hundred and forty years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward the goal of political independence, and we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward the gaining of a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.
Too many of us are comfortable with the way the world operates. I’m a cisgender, heterosexual, white, middle-class, well-educated man. It’s hard to imagine a more privileged place in American society. Oh, and I have tenure. The world works just fine for me. But there are plenty of people for whom the world does not work so well. Women’s rights have come a long way since the time my mother was forced to quit teaching due to pregnancy, but women are still subject to discrimination that results in lower wages and less economic stability. Explicit discrimination due to race has been outlawed, but systemic racism built over the centuries continues to maintain a gap between White and Black Americans. In my lifetime, I have seen tremendous strides in LGBTQ rights, including marriage equality, but there remains no state or federal law against discrimination over sexual orientation or gender identity.
Unfortunately, as MLK Jr. wrote elsewhere in his letter,
The contemporary Church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the archsupporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the Church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the Church’s silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are.
The Christian church, born as an egalitarian movement, has evolved into a patriarchal, White-centric institution. We have built systems of inequality. We have driven LGBTQ individuals into closets, and when they come out, they have suffered at our hands.
The time is always right to do what is right. Today is the day to work towards reconciliation. There are plenty of sins of which the Church must repent, too many to list. My calling is to work towards reconciliation with the LGBTQ community—not by asking them to change, but by changing the Church from within.
This weekend, I’m attending the virtual Q Christian Fellowship Conference. Their theme this year is Making a Way. How will we enter into full fellowship with our siblings in the LGBTQ community? I don’t know, but I know that God will make a way.
Wheat is a grass species with large grains around their seeds. Humans have cultivated wheat for thousands of years. The grain itself has three parts: endosperm (used for white flour), bran, and germ (the part that sprouts). As it grows, though, special leaf-like structures surround the grain. These structures, called chaff, are inedible and must be removed. A major development in agriculture was the cultivation of free-threshing wheat, in which the chaff can be easily removed by beating (threshing) the harvested sheaves. After threshing, the chaff is no longer attached to the grain, but everything is all mixed together. “Winnowing” involves throwing the mixture up in the air with a light wind (possibly provided by a fan). The grain falls while the chaff blows away.
John the Baptist was a firebrand of a preacher. He held nothing back when he was teaching his followers. And yet, he said that worse was to come: “I baptize you with water, but … [the Messiah] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” Pretty strong words! Hearing them, I’m not sure I would really look forward to the coming of the Messiah.
What is chaff? One common interpretation of this verse, and many similar verses of judgment, interprets the wheat and chaff as people: righteous people are the wheat, wicked people are the chaff. Yet Solzhenitsyn had a brilliant insight:
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Nobody is perfect. Nobody is righteous in themselves. Everybody falls short of the glory of God. Everybody can point to ways they have hurt other people.
Yet we often feel compelled to hurt people, by action or inaction, as a way to protect ourselves. We know that we should welcome the stranger and help the poor, but when confronted with an actual poor stranger, our fear prevents us from welcoming and helping them. We know that we should put God first in our lives, but spend most of our time chasing money so that we can have a comfortable life.
Plus, we are all connected to various social structures: our family, community, workplace, church, other organizations, state, and nation. I may be willing to follow God’s call in a certain way, but I have to work within the rules of these social structures. When I have to choose between my urge to do the right thing and my desire to belong to a certain organization or community, I may choose belonging as the easier, more comfortable path.
This is the chaff. These are the things that protect us in this world as we grow into the people God desires, but do not serve us in God’s kin-dom. Our fears, our attachments, our covetous yearnings, our anger, our anxiety—they all separate us from each other and from God, yet they are necessary to function in this broken world.
I am currently on my second reading of Resisting Happiness by Matthew Kelly, on the recommendation of my dear friend Ashley Brooks. (It’s one of the things that led her to become the executive director of the Rolla Mission.) It is written from deep in the Roman Catholic tradition, so there are some things that just don’t apply outside of that context. One valuable part of Roman Catholicism, though, is the ritual of confession. Repentance is a critical part of the Christian tradition, one that we include in Presbyterian worship each Sunday. There are three main parts of confession: self-examination to prayerfully consider the ways in which you have failed to meet God’s standard; the actual confession in which you put words to your sins (either speaking to a priest or, in my tradition, directly to God through prayer) and express contrition; and the joyful response in which you celebrate knowing that God has forgiven you, so you share God’s mercy with others.
There is also a need for restitution. As we confess, God forgives us, but that doesn’t necessarily resolve any pain we caused someone else. I’m reminded of the confession scene in Moonstruck. (I can’t find a better video, sorry.) Loretta, Cher’s character, confesses that “once I slept with the brother of my fiancé.” The priest absolves her, but her life is still a mess. She still has to deal with the disruptions in her relationships, but she can do so with the confidence that God loves her.
In the same way, we each need to reflect on the ways in which we have fallen short of God’s calling—the people we have hurt through action or inaction, the barriers we have erected between ourselves and our neighbors or between ourselves and God. Self-examination and confession are essential, but so is the response: work towards restitution and reconciliation.
Jesus’s message throughout the Gospels was, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand!” Then he told people what that meant in their lives. For each person, there was a different answer, but in every case, Jesus told them to set aside anything that was preventing them from fully entering fellowship with God and all of God’s people.
John the Baptist taught a baptism of repentance. All four Gospels report, though, that Jesus was baptized. We believe Jesus was the only human who was sinless. So why was he baptized?
In other passages that describe John’s teachings, he emphasized social issues like generosity and fairness. Jesus was not himself sinful, but he was a part of sinful social structures. That’s unavoidable in this world. If Jesus wanted to worship with his fellow Jews, he had to visit the Temple, which excluded people that he would have included (women, Gentiles, lepers, the disabled). He was able to connect with all of these people individually, but could not overcome the sinful exclusionary practices of the religious establishment. He was part of a sinful economic system governed by an occupying army.
So Jesus was baptized to proclaim his participation in the reconciliation of the world. By himself, Jesus of Nazareth could not change the social, political, and religious structures of Judea, but he could start a movement that would. Through his death and resurrection, and through the action of the Holy Spirit, he could continue to work through people everywhere, in every age, to reconcile us to each other and to God. Even today, he is working through me, through you, through each person who hears his message or feels the Holy Spirit’s nudges to create a more connected, inclusive, just, and righteous world.
Our task, then, is to look at the world, see where there are problems that God is trying to solve, and try to be a part of the solution. There are so many problems, though. It can become overwhelming. In five minutes of doomscrolling, you can read about political struggles in the US and abroad, wars, famine, homelessness, climate disruptions, and more. There is too much for anyone to fix, so it’s easy to lose hope and just quit.
I’m taking the other approach. I can’t fix everything, but I CAN fix something. I can’t change the world, but maybe I can change one person’s world. I will continue to work at the Mission as my small contribution to resolving the issue of homelessness in America. But my true calling is to work for the reconciliation of the Christian church with the LGBTQ+ community.
There are some people who read that and think, Right, gay people need to repent of their sinful desires and become Christians. That’s not what I mean. I mean that the CHURCH needs to repent of its sins. For centuries, LGBTQ+ issues were completely in the closet—ignored, not even castigated, as the church pretended that concepts like sexual orientation and gender identity didn’t exist. Over the past century, Christianity at large has turned its attention on first sexual orientation and now gender identity as problems to be eliminated. Instead, we should be treating LGBTQ+ individuals as people to be loved and welcomed. Not to “pray the gay away,” but to learn from their different perspectives and to show them that life is better in Christian community. To teach them that God loves them, and then to show that we love them, too. A person’s sexual orientation and gender identity are deep within them—wheat, not chaff.
That’s my calling. What’s yours? Where do you see God at work? What is the chaff in your life that needs to be removed so that you can be the person God desires? What are the social structures that are preventing you from doing so, that need to be changed? Blessings as you discern your path through this world as a participant in building God’s eternal kin-dom.
Preached at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on January 2, 2022, in celebration of Epiphany. Based on Isaiah 60: 1-6, Ephesians 3: 1-12, and Matthew 2: 1-12. YouTube archive:
The story of the three wise men is an old one, maybe a little too familiar to us from being retold every year at Christmas. But let’s try to see it with new eyes.
First, imagine yourself as one of the magi. I’m sure you all know this, but there were not necessarily three magi—there were three gifts, so we assume three people. The magi were priests, probably Zoroastrian, and king-makers. Zoroastrianism is an ancient Persian religion that acknowledges one god, Ahura Mazda. The magi were learned men who studied nature, looking for signs of their god working in the world. They found a sign: a star that indicated the birth of a great king, the king of the Jews. Persians knew about Jews but didn’t know all the details, kind of like the way we know about Islam or Buddhism. But they knew that something important was happening. One of their jobs was to choose a king of their own people, so they decided to honor the newborn king of the Jews. They traveled to the region where Jews lived and sought the leaders who should know what was going on and would be able to help them.
Now imagine yourself as one of the scribes. They were scholars, people who studied the Hebrew scriptures. The Torah, which is the first five books of our Bible, contain the law and the deep history, while the prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi, speak to specific events. The scribes would study these scriptures and try to apply them to their contemporary problems. They knew that Micah had foretold the birth of a great king in Bethlehem, but didn’t know when. They were wrapped up in their scholarly studies and didn’t pay attention to signs in nature. They were ready, though—when someone noticed something, they were ready to interpret it, to give it the right scriptural context.
Herod had yet a different perspective. He was a ruler. He wasn’t a scholar, and probably wasn’t a particularly religious man. He didn’t pay much attention to the details of scripture, but he knew that God’s revealed words to the Israelites were important to his subjects. So he kept the chief priests and scribes handy. He knew a problem when he saw one, and boy did he see one when the magi arrived! A new king—a rival to his throne. Whether or not he believed that the words of Micah were relevant, and whether or not he believed that the magi saw a divine sign, he knew that the Jewish people would believe it. So he used his knowledge of human nature to learn the truth and manipulate its revelation.
Epiphany, which we celebrate today, is a synonym for revelation. We celebrate the day when Jesus was revealed as God’s anointed one, which in Hebrew is the Messiah, or in Greek is the Christ. Magi were king-makers, just like the prophet Samuel was, so like Samuel they went to Bethlehem to find out who God favored. When they found Jesus, they anointed him king of the Jews, a title that would stick with him right up to the day of his death on a cross.
In the nativity narratives of Matthew and Luke, we read that God revealed Jesus’s divine nature in many ways to diverse people. First, angels appeared to Jesus’s parents to tell them how Mary would become pregnant and who their son would be. Then on the night when he was born, angels appeared to shepherds to tell them good news of great joy, that a savior had been born for them. Finally, God’s message of a new king and a new kind of kingdom was revealed to foreign, Gentile priests of a different religion, and only through them to the religious insiders and the ruling class of Judea.
One of my core beliefs is that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the path to wholeness in God’s eternal kin-dom, both here and hereafter. But another of my core beliefs is that I cannot control who receives God’s wisdom or in what form. God chooses. God’s revelations come through the study of scripture, and also through experiences in God’s creation and through our interactions with other people whom God loves, which means everyone. God revealed the Truth to the ancient Hebrew people, but also to people around the world and throughout history. God’s ultimate Truth is unknowable from any one perspective.
There is an old parable from India that you have probably heard: A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said: “We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable.” So, they sought it out, and when they found it, they groped about it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said, “This being is like a thick snake.” For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. Another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant is a wall. Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.
We are like one of those blind men. We can know God through Jesus, but Jesus was born a Jew in Roman-occupied Judea and raised in Roman-occupied Galilee two thousand years ago. God’s revelation through the person of Jesus of Nazareth was limited by the ability of the Judeans and Galileans to understand. The magi give us another perspective, but still one that is limited. If we want to truly understand God, we need to be open to wisdom from many sources.
One way to do that is to engage in interfaith dialogue. Our campus ministry, Common Call, is part of the Campus Ministries Association. The main event that CMA sponsors each spring is an interfaith dialogue. We strive to get a variety of Christian perspectives as well as people from a broad range of religions. We are often successful in connecting with Muslims, and sometimes with Hindus or Buddhists or atheists. I have found discussions with non-Christians to be more illuminating and satisfying than, say, arguing with Christian fundamentalists about the literal truth of Genesis 1. We are all striving to be who God wants us to be, and to discern how God is working in our lives, whether we revere Jesus Christ or Allah or Buddha or Vishnu. Now, I don’t believe that all religions are equally valid, but I do believe that God’s revelation can come in many forms to many people.
Last Sunday, the world lost Bishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu was an Anglican bishop who was in the center of the anti-apartheid movement that transformed South Africa. He was a devout and committed Christian. Yet he worked closely with Nelson Mandela, who was at best a tepid Christian, sometimes described as a Christian humanist who drew deeply on the indigenous African concept of Ubuntu. Now, Ubuntu is itself pretty well aligned with Christianity—it is the belief that an authentic individual human being is part of a larger and more significant relational, communal, societal, environmental, and spiritual world. Sounds a lot like the Beloved Community described by the Old Testament prophets like Isaiah and lifted up by Christian leaders like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Tutu also worked closely with The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people and the world’s most prominent Buddhist leader. Tibetan Buddhism is more of an atheist philosophy than a religion, in the sense that its adherents do not worship any gods. They instead seek enlightenment, which is essentially the elevation of the self into the godly realm. And yet, the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu worked closely for decades, learning from each other about the path to wholeness and holiness. I highly recommend The Book of Joy, which is the product of an extended interview with these two holy men giving different yet congruent perspectives on how a person can attain joy in their life.
Let’s return to the story of Epiphany. The chief priests and scribes thought that they had the whole Truth, the only revealed message from God. Yet they were unable to see God’s revelation through the stars, which the magi correctly interpreted. Herod didn’t know much about either scripture or heavenly bodies, but he did know people. It took all three perspectives to arrive at the Truth of Jesus’s birth. In the same way, we need a variety of perspectives to understand how God continues to work in the world. We cannot, on our own, completely understand God, because we cannot construct a box big enough to contain God. Any time we think we have fully described God, we have simply projected our own prejudices and misunderstandings onto the divine. Any time we think we know who is in and who is out, who is favored and who is not, we have allowed our limited human knowledge to corrupt God’s expansive message of love for all people.
I have it on good authority that a conservative church in town has preached that we are struggling because we allow women in leadership, including ordained Ministers of Word and Sacrament. Well, here’s a little bit of my story as to why I’m a member of this church. My sister is a United Methodist pastor. When we moved to Rolla, we wanted to find a church where my family felt comfortable, and I had one non-negotiable requirement: They must allow women in the pulpit. That immediately eliminated most of the churches in Rolla. I did a little research and determined that this church was of a denomination that ordains women, so we gave it a try. The rest of my story is how we were welcomed when we got here.
We have a message of inclusion, a message of equality, and a message of hope for our community. I would guess that more than half of the city’s residents are unchurched, and that many of those only know about Christianity from the media. They don’t know about churches that welcome everyone, that elevate women, that allow but do not require their members to vote Republican, that allow members to question authority, and that tolerate a wide range of beliefs about and interpretations of the Bible. I am proud to be a part of such a loving community. I believe that there are people in Rolla who need Jesus in their lives, but who have not been able to see Christ’s light because of the clouds of exclusion, judgmentalism, authoritarianism, and patriarchy that fill the media depiction of Christianity. Honestly, if all Christian churches were like the ones described in the media, I wouldn’t be a Christian either.
Like the magi, we have seen the light of Christ. We have been called to worship him. We have been drawn into God’s kin-dom, God’s family. We have been given a message of hope, love, joy, and peace. We have been released from our bondage to sin and death. This is good news! This is the best news! Like Paul, we have been given insight into a great mystery, the mystery that God’s grace is for the Gentile as well as the Jew. The magi were partially right: Jesus was born king of the Jews, but he was also born king of the Gentiles. He was born lord of all creation. He was the eternal Word of God made flesh. We have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
We are called to shine Christ’s light forth so that all people may be drawn to Him. We do not, and cannot, know the whole Truth of God’s grace. We know only in part. In our humility, we should learn from and not denounce others who have a different understanding of God. But we do have a story to share, a story of love, a story of welcome, a story of membership in God’s eternal family, a story of hope and joy. Let us now seek to discern God’s will revealed throughout the world as we shine forth Christ’s light and draw all people into God’s beloved community. Amen.
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.
