Worth - Christmas Eve

December 24, 2016    Christmas Eve                         Luke 2:1-20

            As I was graduating from Gettysburg Seminary in 1999 I was given the paperwork for this church.  When people familiar with upstate New York found out about it they said, “Lucky you.  They have Wegmans up there.”  My thought was, “What’s a Wegmans?” as if was a breed of dog or a type of wine.  “Oh, you just wait.  It’s the best store ever!” they said.  And off people would go raving about Wegmans.  I came to this area with high hopes for this magical place called a “Wegmans.”

            Of course Wegmans doesn’t disappoint.  They truly are an amazing grocery store chain.  I’m impressed that when I’m in the bakery section it feels like a bakery.  When I’m in the seafood section I feel like I’m in a fish market.  Produce is good.  Prices are right.  No one can complain that they put things like milk right by the door so I don’t have to walk half a mile to the back of the store where other stores put it.  Everything you want Wegmans has.  Wegmans prices are often very good, even competitive with discount grocers.  And they pay close attention to detail, right down to the grammatically correct signs at the express lines which say, “Ten items or fewer.”  Rather than, “Ten items or less.”

            One thing I notice whenever I go into a Wegmans is that I like who I am when I’m there.  I’ve talked to some of the people in Wegmans marketing department and they say they are very deliberate about that.  They want customers to feel good about who they are.  They are respected, worthwhile, and good.  Contrast that with say Aldi, where despite the fact that you may feel good that you’re saving a lot of money by shopping there, you can’t get away from feeling like a cow going down the chute in a slaughterhouse.

            Now Wegmans is not the first store to do this, and much as people around here love Wegmans, I can think of other stores that do it better.  Arguably the all-time best was Wanamaker’s, the department store chain.  If you were a child growing up in Philadelphia or New York City in the first half of the twentieth century you know what I am talking about.  While Wanamakers had a number of stores, nothing could rival the one in downtown Philadelphia and the three in New York.  I believe all the New York stores are gone, but the Philadelphia store is still open and operated by Macys. 

I had a friend in seminary, Louise Reynolds, who grew up poor in Philadelphia and remembers going to Wanamakers.  She said it was always spectacular.  Wanamakers employees were always taught to treat every customer with dignity and respect.  And everyone was always welcome there whether they were rich or poor, clean or dirty, whether they were there to buy something or not.  If you’ve ever been to the Philadelphia store you know that it is palatial.  It is built around the Grand Court which is a room so big it can hold over 10,000 people.  The ceiling of the ornate room is around 140 feet high.  The centerpiece of the room is a two-and-half-ton bronze eagle cast for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.   Say to any Philadelphian, “Meet me at the eagle,” and they know exactly where you mean. 

Wanamakers did not pipe in music for its customers to listen to while they shopped.  No, in the Grand Court is another item from the St. Louis World’s Fair, the largest pipe organ ever built.  Customers heard live music every day from some of the world’s top musicians.  No matter how bad your day was going or who you were, no matter how ugly the world was outside you could go into Wanamakers and be in a warm beautiful place with wonderful sounds and smells.

Louise especially remembered going to Wanamakers at Christmas.  She said there was a tiny train kids could ride on for free in the vast toy department.  And she remembered most fondly singing Christmas carols.  She said it felt like all of Philadelphia would turn out and cram into the Grand Court.  Thousands and thousands of people would gather and the store would hire some world famous organist and everyone of all races: rich and poor, famous and unknown, clean and dirty, virtuous or sinful would all sing together.  And you felt like you were somebody.  You felt good about yourself.  You felt like you were worthwhile; whoever you were.  That’s what Wanamaker’s wanted its customers to feel; worthwhile.

Let’s go one better in terms of making people feel worthwhile.  We’ll have to leave wonderful smells and sounds and beauty behind and step into the truly profound.  We find ourselves in a small, crude, smelly stable in Bethlehem.  There a person’s worth does not come from the surroundings, but by what happened.  In fact if the surroundings were fancy the events themselves would be ruined, for it is because it is crude that it is profound.  God comes go be in human form.  Jesus is born.

We read in Psalm 8 earlier, “Your glory reaches beyond the stars… What is humankind that you remember them, the human race that you care for them?  You treat them like gods, dressing them in glory and splendor.  You give them charge of the earth, laying all at their feet…”

Later by candlelight we’ll read the great opening words from John’s gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”

Don’t hear those words as if they were trying to be a scientific thesis, for they are not.  They are an existential statement.

Look around you and consider.  The world appears to be a big place.  We can look at our human inventions and our powers of science and building and weapons and machinery; and all of it is insignificant in light of the size of the solar system, let alone the size of the universe.  When you consider that an ordinary solar flare from the sun delivers over 300 million times more energy than all the explosives detonated in World War 2 combined, and then you consider we’re tiny beings on a little planet around an ordinary star at the edge of a galaxy… what are human beings that you are mindful of them God?  What is their worth that you even notice them?

We are so small.  We are so insignificant.  We’d be incredibly bold and arrogant to think that God would even notice our existence in the vastness of it all.  But God does more than notice.  God becomes one of us.

There is nothing more flattering to our existence than having God become like us.  There is no more profound way to say you are worthwhile than what God has done.

Wegmans and Wanamakers make everyone welcome and feel worthwhile.  Our gospel reading lists the rich and powerful: Emperor Augustus and Governor Quirinius.  It lists ordinary people: Joseph and Mary.  It brings in shepherds, the bottom of the barrel humans in those days.  All are welcome.  All are joined in Jesus’ birth.  All are worthwhile because of him.

You shouldn’t have to go somewhere to feel worthwhile.  God is with you always.  That is God’s eternal gift to you.

If nothing else, I hope this is a space where you always feel worthwhile.  But my bigger hope is that you can see that because of Christ’s birth God has shown that he considers every person worthwhile.  And that you can go from here seeing that worth in every other person’s face.  Maybe you like them.  Maybe you don’t.  Maybe you agree with them and maybe you don’t.  Maybe you respect them and maybe you don’t even respect them.  But they are worthwhile enough for God to come to be born and later to die to have them.  It is not yours to determine who is or is not worthy.  That is God’s.  Our job is that when they are around us they feel like they are somebody and that they are worthwhile.

Worth, dignity, respect – the greatest gifts we can give another person.  It is what God has given us.  

Strangers with Even Stranger Gifts

December 11, 2016    3rd Sunday of Advent              Matthew 2

The stars I showed for the children’s sermon also set up our time today.  I said that this one star is called a pentagram, or sacred pentagram.  Its origins are unknown but it is certainly ancient.  I understand there are traces of it as far back as 3000 BC in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq.  Many pagan nature religions used it and it is widely used in witchcraft today.  The website Esoteric Online says that the five points originally referred to five planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

If you think for a minute you realize that we met some stargazers in our gospel reading – the Wise Men, or astrologers, Magi in Greek.  And what leads them to Jesus?  Of course a star.

But the pagan astrologers are not the only people we meet in our gospel reading.  We also meet Herod the Great, puppet ruler of the Romans from 37 BC to 4 BC.  He is the father of the Herod we meet again at Jesus’ crucifixion.  And along with Herod there are the Jewish leaders.  This group also has a star, the Star of David.

Now remember that Matthew is a thoroughly Jewish writer.  Jews understood the world as composed of two types of people:  Jews, and non-Jews - or Gentiles.  And so we have those who use the pentagram as their star and those who use the Star of David as their star coming together because of new star, the Natal Star.

Artists often depict this natal star as a huge and unmistakable thing up in the sky.  But that’s an artistic guess.  Have you ever been outside in the dark where there’s no light pollution?  I like going to the Adirondacks and looking up at night and there, clear as anything, is the vast Milky Way galaxy.  The stars are beyond counting.  Only the keenest observers would note if one was new or one was missing.  I think it better to imagine this “star” the Wise Men following as something like that; tiny, minute, not grand at all.

This idea of a new star or a heavenly sign appearing at the birth of a king or a great ruler was nothing new.  Many ancient rulers were said to have heavenly signs occur at their birth.  While we may question it scientifically, this would be nothing out of the ordinary for Matthew’s readers to think.

Last week we talked about Jesus’ birth and Joseph’s role in it.  We talked about how God invited Joseph to be a part of God’s divine work and how Joseph agreed and participated in it.  I said life is not about giving to God so that God can bless you in return.  That would ultimately be a selfish business strategy.  No, life is a partnership where God invites you to be a part of his work and you can participate in it.  In doing so there is great wholeness and a deep set of joy.  But is it a easy way to live?  That is another question.

So Joseph agrees to God’s plan.  Does that mean that he and Mary went out to the suburbs and bought themselves a three bedroom house with a white picket fence, two cars, two and a half kids and a dog?  Were they in for a quiet and sedate life?

Nope.  Jesus is born and they have these weird foreigners show up with even weirder gifts.  The Bible doesn’t say how many Wise Men there were.  Since they bring three gifts church tradition has deduced that there were three of them, but it could have been two or it could have been fourteen or who knows how many.

Weird as they are, the gifts have symbolic significance.  Gold is a gift fit for a king.  Jesus will be the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  Frankincense is a form of incense often used in the temples.  Ancient temples were more like unrefrigerated slaughter houses than anything else.  Have you ever gotten a whiff of your garbage in the summertime when you’ve thrown some meat scraps in there?  Now imagine that on a grand scale and that’s what a temple smelled like.  Incense was burnt to help cover the stench.  Frankincense was a gift fit for a priest.  Jesus will become the High Priest, the ultimate priest who intercedes on our behalf before God.

Those two gifts are strange but okay.  Myrrh is unnerving.  Embalming fluid… If you’ve had children how would you feel if some strange man showed up in the hospital room after you’ve given birth and given you a bottle of embalming fluid for your child?  It’s downright creepy!  Yet just like we draw the natal star in the form of a cross we know what’s in store for this little baby.

Here’s the ironic piece of Matthew’s gospel.  Will Jesus ever need any of these three gifts?  While they all foreshadow what is to come in his life he will not have need of any of them.

Anyway, back to our main point.  Three strange gifts given by foreigners, then there’s another dream to Joseph about fleeing the country.  Herod gets scared and does what all tyrants do, they kill and destroy to keep their power.  To me the most troubling piece of the Christmas story is the killing of the babies in Bethlehem.  True, in those days Bethlehem probably had the population of East Victor but it is still an outrage.  Why would God work this way?  I’m not happy about it.  But we are given no answers.  We are to know this, that even though God has come into the world in a completely innocent and helpless form the powers that be feel threatened.  Will Jesus ever go on to threaten or attack these leaders?  No.  But the killing of the infants of Bethlehem give us a forewarning that the world does not like God’s ways.  Life as a part of God’s plan does not guarantee a smooth and easy passage. 

There’s no indication of how long the holy family spends in Egypt.  (There’ll be no honeymoon for Joseph and Mary!)  After Herod’s death Joseph has another dream to return home.  But as he learns more he is warned again and changes course and moves to Nazareth.

I think there is an important distinction to make between Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth and the more familiar story from Luke.  While Matthew doesn’t reject the idea, his story alone suggests that Mary and Joseph were living in Bethlehem all along.  As if they had the three bedroom house.  Then Jesus’ birth puts their lives on a totally different course.

There are lots to learn from this text and we’re skipping hours’ worth of details.  But let’s stick to this.  Similar to last week, notice how Joseph and God interact.  God does not lay out the whole plan from the beginning.  It comes to Joseph bit by bit.  But Joseph is not just a passive player either.  I’m sure he doesn’t go to Egypt and twiddle his thumbs until he gets another dream.  Look verses 21-22, “Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel.  But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there.  And after being warned in a dream, he went away to the district of Galilee.”

Joseph retains a great deal of autonomy.  He is not God’s well-trained dog who gets his slippers and newspaper when he comes home from work.   God and Joseph are partners in accomplishing a larger goal.

I do not think that God wants to take over our lives and utterly remove our individuality.  Then we’d just be robots.  God wants to be with us, work with us, and together get things done.

We say Jesus is Immanuel, God with us.  We do not say God overpowering us.  We do not say God ignoring us.  We say God is with us.

What are the first words spoken by a human in Matthew’s gospel?  It goes to the pagan astrologers and they say, “Where… Where is the child…?”  They want to know where to find God.  Our answer today is that God is with us everywhere.  The last words of Matthew’s gospel go to Jesus, “I am with you always to the end of the age.”

Our lives as Christians is not a matter of place, where.  It is a matter of purpose.  What are God and you going to do together?  

A Baby Story About the Dad

December 4, 2016      2^nd Sunday of Advent               Matthew 1:18-25

In trying to understand what makes a person who he or she is I think we’d all agree it is something of a mix of nature and nurture.  Certainly you’ve gotten the genetic material of your parents.  That goes a long way to shaping who you are.  It’s complicated because there are dominant and recessive genes, but it shapes you.  You may have done the same activity in high school biology that I did – where you look at things like your eye color and how your ears attach to you head and whether or not you can roll your tongue and realize all of this is because of genetics.

Of course there is also nurture.  How you are raised also has a major impact on who you are.  Many of your thoughts and feelings about things comes from your experiences.  Some things are serious, like your ability to form safe relationships as an adult.  And some things are trivial.  I learned from an early age that anyone who lived under my father’s roof was going to be a fan of Philadelphia sports teams.  That was non-negotiable; and perhaps to my father it was also not trivial!

Nurture can also have a big impact on our body’s biology.  I’ve heard that circumstances can have an impact on some of our genetics.  For example, without certain nutrients some genes are unable to activate.

Last week we read Jesus’ genealogy.  You’ll remember it was a long list of mostly boring people with a few juicy bits thrown in.  Something I pointed out, and a couple of you also mentioned, that the genealogy goes to Joseph, not Mary.  If Joseph had no part in Jesus’ conception, then what’s the point of a genealogy to Joseph?  Shouldn’t it be a genealogy to Mary?  The other genealogy of Jesus that is recorded in Luke also goes to Joseph, not Mary.

That’s a potentially big problem.  The birth story of Jesus that we read today gives us an answer.  In order to hone in on it lets notice what is not in the story.  There’s no shepherds, no heavenly host of angels singing.  There’s no over-full inn and a birth in a barn.  There isn’t even a star, at least not yet.  Even the place, Bethlehem, hasn’t been given yet.  Matthew wants to draw our attention to something else, something I fear we overlook too often.

I’m going to suggest that if you’re given over to trying to create a theology of Jesus’ based on where his genetic material comes from then you’re quickly going to run into a ditch.

Though it may be impossible for us with our knowledge of genetics today, we have to set them aside and at least temporarily place ourselves in the worldview of Matthew.  In that worldview the mothers’ body was seen as the vessel to bring to life the material of the father.  If you were to ask Matthew how Mary’s genetics came into play in the creation of Jesus, he’d look at you blankly.  He wouldn’t know what you’re talking about.  It would make no sense to him.  I think I can safely say that the biblical writers understood Mary’s body as a vessel that she willingly allowed God to use to be born, and nothing more.  What actually happened I cannot say, but from the point of view of the Bible Mary gave no genetic material either.

Okay, if that’s the case then does Jesus’ genealogy matter at all?  To our way of thinking, maybe not.  But at least in Matthew’s way of thinking it was vitally important.  Remember, who we are is a combination of both nature and nurture.  Our genetics and our environment combine to make us.  It is nurture that Matthew’s Christmas story focuses upon.

In Luke’s gospel Mary takes center stage and Joseph is in the background.  In Matthew’s gospel it is Joseph who takes center stage.  We learn in verse 18 that Joseph and Mary are engaged.  Engagement those days was different from our understanding of engagement today.  Today engagement is a step before a legal marriage.  In those days engagement was a legally binding arrangement between two people.  Unfaithfulness was considered adultery and the engagement could only be broken by death or divorce.  They didn’t really have a marriage ceremony in those days for common people.  Only the wealthy would have a big ceremony.  For most common people like Joseph and Mary your marriage began when you starting living together – as Matthew points out, “…Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together.”  Even look at verse 19.  Matthew starts the sentence with the words, “Her husband Joseph…”

Mary being pregnant at this point would probably raise no one’s eyebrows; except of course Joseph’s who knows full well what he has and has not done.

Moving on in verse 19 we learn that Joseph is aware of the pregnancy but he is a righteous man.  Righteous here does not mean stuck up and superior.  It means he is a just, kind and considerate man.  He knows what the law says about what should happen to Mary.  According to Deuteronomy 22 Mary should be executed for her crime.  Probably with a torn and broken heart and out of consideration for this woman he still loves deeply, he decides not to press charges and instead do the only decent thing he can – divorce her quietly.

Would that God had stepped in sooner, for it would have been great if Joseph had been let in on God’s little plan from the beginning, but only now does he have a dream that explains what is going on.  If I’m honest I don’t like it when God does this kind of thing!  I wish God would include all the players right from the beginning.  But I am not God and I do not understand all things.

All of that is an aside, because the key thing in the whole passage is verse 21, “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

The name Jesus means “Yahweh helps,” or, “God saves.”  The Hebrew pronunciation of Jesus is Yesua, a shortened form of Yehosua.  Jesus was a common name of the time.  There was nothing special about it, and indeed there are other people named Jesus running around in the Bible.  Perhaps the best known in Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus, son of Abbas, the man Pilate releases, instead of “Jesus BarJoseph”, Jesus, son of Joseph.

Nevertheless the name has significance.  In both Hebrew and Greek the name for Jesus is the same as Joshua.  You may recall that it is Joshua that takes over after Moses’ death and leads the people to the Promised Land.  Some scholars believe Jesus was a popular name in the 1^st Century as Jews sought to have a new Joshua arise who would overthrow the Romans.

In the New Interpreter’s Bible commentator Eugene Boring makes an all-important point about Joseph naming Jesus.  He says, “The angel gives as explanation for Mary’s pregnancy, announcing the divine act that has already occurred.  Based on this, a command follows: ‘You shall name the child, accepting him as your own and adopting him into the Davidic line as an authentic “son of David.”’” (New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume VIII, Pg. 134)  That is why the genealogy is important.  The Son of God’s nurture comes from the line of David, and comes at the hands of a just, kind and considerate man.

In Matthew’s day naming something was important.  To name something was to have power over it, to create its identity.  Here we see Joseph working along with God’s plan.  God is at work.  Joseph is a willing participant.

I think the birth story of Jesus is to teach us that about how God works.  God acts, we are invited to be willing participants.  If we won’t, God will still get his work done.  But if we will, then we get to rejoice in having Immanuel, God with us.

Sometimes Matthew is criticized as being a product of patriarchy and not caring about Mary – making her only a passive vessel in the story.  That is an unfair critique.  Women will play a significant part throughout Matthew’s account of Jesus’ life.  And contrary to the norms of the time, you’ll remember from last week that Matthew listed five women in the genealogy.

Nowhere does Matthew give us a cute baby story about the birth of Jesus.  Jesus comes where God and people work together.  This sounds like a great and wonderful way to live, and indeed it is; at least I hope you find it so.  But not all is bliss.  Next week we’ll look at the rest of Chapter 2 and we’ll discover that some unexpected people come to Jesus, but some people are threatened.  Death will come to innocent people because some stand opposed to God’s plan.  May we never be found among them.