December 16, 2018 Advent 3 Luke 1:57-80

            “Does my life have a purpose?” I think is one of the fundamental questions of being a human.  It’s a good question because we want our lives to have meaning.  We want all the struggles and the toil and the obstacles overcome to be worth it.  Otherwise, what is the point?  If we are just accidents in a pointless cosmos then why exhibit any virtues at all? 

Some branches of sociology suggest that religion is an invention of humanity in order to give meaning to life in the midst of meaninglessness.  Some scientists, perhaps Carl Sagan most visible among them, suggest that we really need to divorce ourselves from the idea of God and realize the cold hard reality that there really is no point to existence.  We are just accidents of mathematical probability.

What a cold and depressing way to exist!

But let’s not swing to the other extreme either.  Some people seem to think that everything that happens to them is a sign from God and that every hardship and every success is sent by God for fulfilling their divine purpose.  That’s a pretty narcissistic way to think.  It also makes God into a cruel little man behind a curtain pulling levers micromanaging our lives.  Or perhaps it makes God into a heavenly bungler.  I remember a Far Side cartoon where God is depicted as a little boy who has just received a “Grow Your Own Humans” kit and he can’t wait to get started.

The gospel reading we had for today gives us a good idea of how to understand our purpose.  We encounter Zechariah again.  We met him two weeks ago.  If you were here you’ll remember that he was met by the angel Gabriel who promised that he and his wife would have a son despite their old age.  They were to name their son John.  Zechariah was both terrified by the angel and skeptical.  He probably did the stupidest thing in his life and asked the angel for proof.  His proof was that he would be unable to speak until it came to pass.  And in those days people associated being unable to speak with also being deaf.  Though the text does not say it, the original readers probably assumed he couldn’t hear either.  And that is borne out by the text because it says they had to use hand gestures and writing to communicate with him.

Some length of time has passed since then; nine plus months to be sure.   The child has been born.  He’s eight days old so it’s time to circumcise him, as was the expectation of good Jewish families, and name him.  The expected name would be Zechariah after his father.  But, obeying the instructions of the angel he is named John.  Immediately Zechariah can hear and speak again.

            Let’s not miss that the original readers would have thought two miracles had occurred here.  The obvious one that Zechariah could speak again.  But also the less obvious one that Elizabeth says the boy should be called John.  Zechariah can’t hear this so they motion for him to give a name and he also writes John.  Now they could have somehow agreed beforehand what to name, although Elizabeth was probably illiterate, so the fact they independently come up with the same name would have been seen as a sign of divine intervention.

            Zechariah’s first words are this well-known poem, often called the Benedictus.  It is a grand vision that God is up to something new and great.  The first part of it, vs. 68-75, say what God will do:  God will visit his people, God will redeem them (redeem being the legal term for paying the price for someone).  God will send a savior who will save them from their enemies and those who hate them.  And God will be faithful to the promises made long before.  There are two major promises or covenants God makes with the people in the Old Testament.  One is the Moses covenant.  In that covenant God says that if you obey me I will be good to you and you will stay my people.  The other covenant is the Abraham covenant.  There God says I will be your God and you will give birth to my people… period.  There is no condition.

            Which of the two covenants is mentioned here?  It’s not the Moses one with conditions.  It is the unconditional Abraham covenant.  Therefore God will act and will accomplish his purposes regardless of human acceptance or not.  In other words, there are no “ifs” here.  God will act.

            The second part say how God will act.  And here is where we understand our purpose and how God interacts with us.  God does not say he’s going to do it all on his own; this fulfillment of a guaranteed covenant.  God has chosen John, and his father Zechariah, and his mother Elizabeth, and Jesus’ mother Mary, and everyone else we meet as the cast of characters in the gospel expands.  All are part of God’s plans.  Notice I did not say that God has a plan for each and every one of them.  No, God has one plan, the Abrahamic covenant, and each and every person is invited to participate in it.

            Zechariah says these words over his son John, “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.”

            This is both a very specific purpose, but also a very broad one, for it is our purpose too – to proclaim that God’s salvation by giving knowledge of forgiveness.

            If you’ve looked through the bulletin you may have been puzzled by the two photos.  One shows the famous Budweiser Clydesdales pulling the 12 Horse Ale wagon.  The other is a team of 32 horses pulling a combine harvester in a wheat field in the early 1900’s.

            Some people would like their purpose in life to be like the Budweiser Clydesdales: handsome powerful horses who are individually well groomed pulling a fancy shiny wagon.  I suppose many people would also like the idea of God as the wagon driver whose sole purpose is to deliver beer.

            But I think God’s purpose is much more like the harvesting photo.  You see 32 horses of different colors and sizes.  They aren’t all looking the same direction.  They do not have coordinated steps or anything.  It looks more like a hoard than anything else.  But they are all strong and capable.  That combine does not have an engine on it.  Those horses are not only pulling the heavy thing up and down hills, they are providing the power for the machine to thresh the grain.

            Jesus uses a lot of harvest imagery in his teaching.  And while combines certainly did not exist in his day, I think the image works.  God’s goal is the harvest.  It is sure and certain.  God wants you as a part of the team.  That is the purpose of life.

            You may not get your own individual grooming, and a fancy stall, and perfect food, and get to pull a famous wagon in parades to cheering crowds.  The work will be dusty and dirty.  You’ll be in the hot sun.  You’ll pull hard and have aches and pains, and probably marks from where the harness dug into you.  Sometimes food and care will be good and sometimes not.  But at the end the harvest will be complete.  The task accomplished.

            Are you important to God as an individual?  Yes, of course!  But our purpose, our meaning, our value comes in being part of a hard working team.  God’s first purpose is not to micromanage every aspect of everyone’s life.  God’s purpose is to get the job done.  God’s already given you the capability to do it.

            Don’t embark on a quest for a unique purpose for your life.  That’s a waste of time.  Embrace the purpose that God is already doing.  Zechariah’s words continue with what God is doing, which means we are to do as well:
            “… the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

December 9, 2018 Advent 2 Luke 1:39-56

            You know that I often pick on the way our culture depicts angels – usually cute little cherubs with wings – when the Bible depicts them as fearsome warriors who strike fear into all who encounter them.  I also take issue with the way we depict Jesus’ mother Mary.  She’s always portrayed as an absolute vision of feminine perfection – sweet, flawlessly beautiful, kind, and submissive.  She’s often wearing either white or blue and she’s always spotlessly clean; as if she is so pure that dirt can’t even cling to her.  But again, look at what the Bible really says about her.  She’s never physically described, but you get a bit of her attitude from the Magnificat, which we read in our gospel reading.

            Us First World people read this as a sweet poem of an innocent and immature teenage girl.  But look at the words carefully.  “[God] has shown strength with his arm.  He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”

            These are the words of a faith-filled person, but they are not words of meek submissiveness.  And who are the rich and the powerful and the proud?

            When I was in seminary I had a class called “The Bible from the Underside.”  It was studying scripture from a Third World perspective.  It was very helpful to study the Bible from the perspective of scholars and theologians living in the Third World.  It was also very unnerving.  To them the proud and rich and powerful was us.

            Their portrayal of us was not at all flattering.  I like to think of the United States as the place where people from all over the world like to come.  You get the feeling these days that there are hordes of people wanting to cross the border each and every day looking for opportunities and freedom.  I like the way my one friend from the Czech Republic describes the way people there imagine the United States.  She says they imagine that in the United States life is so easy that cooked pigeons just fall from the sky and into your mouth.

            But that is not the Third World.  Their perspective of us is that we are a global bully exerting imperial oppression over all.  They see our economic policies leading to their exploitation and perpetual impoverishment.  To them the best thing that could happen to the United States is for us to be crushed an annihilated.   I think they’re perspective is inaccurate, and it surely misses the complexity of life in the United States and our global policies.  Still, they probably do have a better handle on what Mary is talking about.

            They do not picture Mary as a sweet teenage girl with an interesting poem.  They see Mary as a fearsome prophet proclaiming God’s guaranteed doom upon people whose lives are the way they perceive ours to be.  To some extent they are wrong.  But they’re also somewhat right, and from that perspective these are not words we like to hear.  We’re going to find a lot that we do not want to hear in Luke’s gospel.

            We tell ourselves we are not rich.  We are not powerful.  We are not exploitative or oppressive.  We can point to people and leaders who are rich and powerful and oppressive, and they are not us.

            But consider the Third World perspective.  And let’s remember just how powerless many people in the world are.  We don’t even realize the luxuries we have, they are so basic to us.  There are basics that are obvious, like food and dependable clean water and heat and air conditioning and that sort of thing.  But how about the even more basic?

            I think we forget just how rich you have to be in this world today in order to have a say in where you live.  Have you ever considered that you are wealthy enough to afford a choice in where you live?  I’m not talking about living in a mansion in a gated community, I mean that you have the money and the freedom to determine where you live.  If the neighborhood becomes violent or goes down the tubes you can afford to move elsewhere.  You have options.  If you own a house you may not want to move if the neighborhood goes down the tubes because you’ll lose a bundle in the sale, but you can still do it.  Many people in the world do not have such an option.  They live where they live because they have to.  Moving away to a different or better area is not an option.

            If you’re working and you lose your job you have options for another job.  It might mean a pay cut or moving or a lower standard of living, but you have options.  That makes you rich.  Many people don’t.

            Consider the life of Jesus’ mother Mary.  She’s living in Judea, an okay place to live but not a great place.  She’s living under the economic and military oppression of the Roman Empire.  In Chapter 2 we’ll read the well-known birth story of Jesus.  We meet Mary and Joseph again, and this time Mary’s on the point of delivering a child.  Why are they on a long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem in such a state?  Because the Romans told them they have to.

            This is abuse.  This is oppression.  This is being an occupied country under imperial rule.  This is life without choices.  If you know The Hunger Games books and movies they give you a perspective of someone powerless living under oppression.  The people in the districts are exploited so the people in the capitol can live in ease.

            Now consider Mary’s words: God will lower the proud, and powerful, and rich.  God will raise up the lowly and the poor and the oppressed.  Things are being reversed.  The rich will now be hungry.  Mary is not a sweet teenager with innocent desires who is so pure that not even dirt can attach itself to her perfect clothes.  This is a hopping mad teenager looking forward to the vengeance God will deliver.  It is not hers to deliver.  It is God’s to deliver, and she is looking forward to seeing it happen.

            All of this could make us feel very guilty.  Perhaps we should feel guilty when we consider how much we consume.  But it is also a reminder to us of just how privileged we are and how much freedom we have.  By privilege I’m not talking about money and luxuries and that sort of thing.  By privilege I mean things like we have a justice system we can basically count on.  We can go through daily life without having to go through endless police checkpoints, or have to always have cash on hand to pay bribes.

            I’ll never forget my dad’s stories about traveling around Zimbabwe.  There were many police checkpoints where they were stopped and questioned.  But the local my father was traveling with knew how to get through them.  He always kept a stock of bottled water in his car.  Simply offer the police a bottle of water in the middle of a hot summer day and they’ll usually let you go through unquestioned.

            Being free enough and wealthy enough to choose where we want to live and who our neighbors are is a privilege.  We do have racial inequality and gender inequality in our country, and they are things we have to work on.  But at least a woman is not a piece of property to be possessed as in many other countries.  At least if a woman is in an abuse marriage she has options available to her.  They may not be easy, but they are options.  That was not the case for Mary as she speaks the words we read today.

            Our thoughts and prayers should be both thankfulness for what we do have, but also for those who do not have.  Those who live trapped in this country or in others.  Those who have no hope.   Those whose lives are so bad that they turn to hatred and cruelty because it is the only thing they have. 

            Mary’s words are a promise of God’s action, but they are also a plea for all humanity to be treated as such.

            As agent of God’s kingdom in this world we should not allow ourselves the luxury of sitting back and letting others suffer.  We should be informed.  We should keep our eyes open.  We should act.  I don’t mean protests and civil disobedience and all that stuff, although if you feel moved to do it that is perfectly fine.  I mean being aware and caring and knowing what you buy and what our leaders are doing.  We do have power and we should use it.  It is a blessing that God has given us.  There is no greater joy and satisfaction than using what you have in order to build and contribute to the lives of God’s people.  May you see ways that you can enact the words of Mary and know the satisfaction of bringing God’s reign into reality.

December 2, 2018 Advent 1 Luke 1:1-38

            I am probably very weird in this, but I find the first verses of Luke’s gospel to be very engaging.  This is one of the very few times in our scriptures that the authors tip their hands as to what they’re up to.  The author, who has been given the name, “Luke,” although he never identifies himself so we don’t have any real idea who he is, tells us that he is not an eyewitness to Jesus.  He never met Jesus.  He never saw Jesus.  He’s writing probably 50 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  He tells us that he’s being an historian.  He has critically examined many of the writings about Jesus that are out there and he has selected some of them to create an orderly account of the life of Jesus.

            We have to remember that there are far more writings about Jesus than made it into the Bible.  This book, called The Other Bible contains some of them.  Many of them are outright bizarre.  A couple weeks ago I read one account to the confirmation class.  There Jesus was a boy and he wanted to play with some of the children in the neighborhood.  Apparently they didn’t want to play and they hid.  So, Jesus turned all the children into goats.  That’s not your usual story about Jesus!  Anyway, in the end Jesus turns them back into children.

            You can see from that that there were many strange and bizarre stories floating around about Jesus.  Luke gathers them, weeds out the nonsense, and puts together the gospel we have today.  He also wrote a second volume that is in the Bible, The Acts of the Apostles.

            One source that did make it into Luke was almost certainly Mark’s gospel.  They rest side by side in our Bibles and it is easy to see how Luke picks up things from Mark and uses them in his own account.

            All of this gives us insight into the formation of scripture.  When I was little I had this image of how Bible texts were written.  I imagined a man hunched over an old wooden writing desk with a feather quill in one hand, a piece of yellowed parchment on the desk, and a sputtering candle too.  I then imagined the Holy Spirit hovering over the writer inspiring the writing with God’s own words.

            While the Holy Spirit definitely had a hand in the writing and compiling of the Bible as we know it, it was actually a much more complex process.  And that is a good thing.

            I get frustrated when people pull out their Bibles and point to a chapter and verse and say, “That’s what the Bible says, it must be true.”  Not so.  If we’ve learned anything from our reading of Bible passages over the last couple years it’s that they are complex; even often deliberately written so as to be self-contradictory.  We are left to conclude that either the authors were complete dimwits who didn’t know how to keep their facts straight, or that something far more complex was going on. 

            A study of ancient Hebrew writings and teaching techniques shows that they often created contrasts and contradictions to make a deeper point.  It often led to debates as to exactly what scriptures meant, and we see that Jesus engaged in those debates as well.

            The Bible is not a simple instruction book where if you simply do what it said God would be happy with you and bless you with a good life.  I fear that all too many Christians these days see the Bible and their relationship with God in that way:  do good and God will like you and give you a good life.  If you actually know the scriptures you know that the most faith-filled people often had very difficult lives full of struggles and troubles.

            It would make my job, and the work of evangelism, so easy if faith were simply a matter of applying word for word what a piece of scripture meant.  It would be so simple, and it would be obvious that those people who lived that way were blessed by God with a statistically measurable better life.  Everyone would want to have a part just to have an easier life.  Not so!

            God made you a creative, intelligent, and complex being.  Do you really think God will then give you an overly simplistic set of instructions, call it The Bible, and then say follow it?  Nope.  If God made you creative, intelligent, and complex then God will also come to you in creative, intelligent, and complex ways.  The scriptures will reflect that.  We need to work with them, struggle with them, and explore them.

            It’s interesting that Luke sort of dedicates his work to someone.  He says, “I too decided, after carefully investigating everything from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth…”

            Theophilus can be a name, but it is a name with a meaning.  It means lover of God.  Some people think Luke actually wrote his gospel, and the book of Acts, for a real person named Theophilus.  Most doubt it, and count me among them.  “Most excellent theophilus” is you.  It’s anyone who loves God and seeks to have a deeper loving relationship with God through what Luke has written.

            And as an aside, isn’t it nice to have the Bible speak out to you and call you, “Most excellent lover of God”?  How often does someone call you “excellent”?  God does through the Bible.

            There are parts of the Bible that read like personal letters and stories, but Luke’s gospel isn’t one of them.  He writes like a grand storyteller making a great public statement.  Theophilus is surely everyone who reads this text!

            So, what does Luke have to tell us –lovers of God- after all his research and finding things like Mark’s gospel to be reliable… and stories like Jesus turning children into goats not so much?

            Well, we meet two people and an angel in the verses today.  Poor Zechariah.  He’s a godly man, working in the temple; a high and holy task.  He’s getting old but he is faithfully serving his shift in the temple when suddenly and angel greets him.  Now this is the temple, so he shouldn’t be surprised to encounter something godly, but the angel’s promise is miraculous: He, Zechariah, and his wife Elizabeth will have a child!  They’re both old and this is highly unlikely.  Can you imagine going to the park with your child when everyone else there is either a young parent or a grandparent with their grandchildren?

            Zechariah does a very reasonable, but it turns out very stupid thing.  He asks the angel for proof.  Here’s a hint.  If you’re ever met by and angel, and the angel promises something beyond belief, just accept it.  Don’t ask for proof!

            Careful what you ask for, because you might just get it!  Zechariah’s proof is that he can’t speak until the child is born.  Who knows, those quiet days may have been the best days of his wife’s life!

            Anyway, contrast Zechariah with the next person we meet – Mary.  Now, if Zechariah was promised something miraculous by the angel, Mary was promised something impossible.  A child!  No way!  Not happening!  She knows enough about the ‘birds and the bees’ to know how things work!  But look at her response to the angel.  Does she say, “Prove it,” or, “Give me a sign,” the way Zechariah did?  No.  Despite the impossibility of the promise she simply says, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

            I think that is Luke’s model of discipleship he wants lovers of God to have.  He also wants his readers to know that when God acts, all normalcy is off.  Luke is not going to ask us to start believing in magical fairies or unicorns, or that Jesus is turning little kids into goats.  He is also not telling his readers that they should expect miraculous and impossible things to happen in their lives because they love God.

            No, Luke is inviting us to see beyond the limits of what we think is possible and open our hearts and minds to what God is capable of doing.  Over and over again in Luke’s gospel we’ll meet people who say something is impossible.  But God acts in ways that are beyond the limits of possible.  Luke doesn’t want his readers to be stuck in the mundane limitations of life and miss that God is at work in many and various, and often VERY unpredictable ways.  The cross is the most unpredictable of them all.

            And so, don’t expect the Bible to give simple answers to complex problems.  No, it is up to the task of being the voice of God journeying with you into the most difficult and complex things that may come up in your life.  And then, in a relationship with God that is not crippled by our sense of limits, we, like Zechariah and Mary and many others we have yet to meet, embark on the adventure of being a lover of God.