January 22, 2023 Disciples First Missionary Work, Matthew 10

             In our gospel reading Jesus sends his disciples out on their first missionary journey.  I believe the only directive that Jesus gives that unsettles us more than the idea of going out and spreading the gospel is the one of selling all that you own and giving the money to the poor!

            Now, that one may unsettle us more.  We’ll cover that when we get to it.  For today we focus on going out and testifying.  We should ask ourselves why that so unsettling for us.  I think answering that will go a long way to making us more comfortable with it, and also make us more effective at it.  Because ultimately the same command comes to us.  Some things haven’t changed.  The harvest is indeed plentiful, and the laborers are few!

            I think part of our discomfort with testifying is that we’ve all been annoyed by a Jehovah’s Witness or Mormon who greets us at our door and annoys us by wanting to talk about faith.  We’ve probably also at some point experienced someone on an airplane or similar place we can’t escape decide to evangelize to us.  Christianity can easily come across as annoying.

            Many of us may have been taught that faith is something you keep private.  You don’t really talk about faith outside of church events.  You may not even talk about it much at home.  Americans are known for: championing rugged individuality, being a ‘self-made man’, or being capable and independent.  There is something weak about truly having Christian faith.  Christian faith suggests brokenness, neediness, and incapability.

            In the last hundred odd years the divide between faith and science has grown significantly.  If you speak of Christian faith people think you must be an ignorant simpleton who believes myths and fairy tales.  Oh, it’s okay to be a church member, because at its best the church is a do-gooder organization, but to take it seriously and to proclaim it in public is another thing entirely.

            And then add to it the way the clergy abuse scandals rule news stories, and stories of judgmentalism and hypocrisy, and you realize just how hard it is to be public with your faith.  Our society is functionally agnostic and presses hard to keep it that way.

            My one colleague has a daughter who is in second grade.  In Sunday school she received a bunch of colorful cards with pictures and Bible stories on them.  They’re from Augsburg Fortress, our denomination’s publishing house.  You can be sure they are good quality, show critical scholarship, and are non-judgmental.  In other words, they are solidly good stuff!  This girl enjoys looking at them and imagining the stories.  A couple weeks ago she took the cards with her to school.  She was looking at them on the bus and some of her friends were curious.    So, she gave cards to everyone who wanted one.  Being a pastor’s kid, she knew she could get plenty more.

            How much more sweet, authentic, and wonderful can it get than a little girl sharing colorful Bible story cards with her friends who are interested?

            By that afternoon my colleague got a text from her teacher.  Apparently a parent of one of the kids who received a card contacted the school, who contacted the teacher, who contacted my colleague who gently asked her to not allow her daughter to pass out religious materials on the school bus.

            Perhaps we could get angry.  A child has the constitutional right to pass out religious materials on the school bus, after all!  It was not an official school lesson or anything like that.  It was not endorsed by the school or passed out through the school’s formal channels.  But still, the social pressure is very strong to not express faith in a public place.

            My colleague could fight it.  And she would certainly win the legal battle hands down.  But it would be embarrassing and ultimately counter-productive.

            Yes, keep your faith to yourself.  No one wants to hear it.  It makes people uncomfortable.  They don’t like that.

            Imagine you were at a meeting at work.  The company wants to move forward with something that is counter to your faith.  Are you going to raise your hand and object?  Are you going to say you’re uncomfortable with it because it goes against your Christian principles?  That’ll take guts if you do it!  And people will look at you like you’re weird.  If you raise ethical objections you’d better find something other than faith to base them on!

Jesus warned his disciples that the work of spreading the good news of God’s love wouldn’t be easy.  And in their case you’d think it would be very easy!  They had just heard Jesus’ great Sermon on the Mount outlining an ethical foundation of authenticity, humility, and grace for a way of life.  They’ve just witnessed numerous miracles.  You’ll remember we read two chapters full of them last week.  There’s no counter-Christian movement out there to cause them trouble.  But trouble they will have. 

It’s not easy.  It’s never been easy.  I doubt it ever will be easy.

So let’s learn five things from what Jesus tells the disciples as he sends them out with their newly minted faith.

First, their tactics are to be invitational, not judgmental.  They are not to use fear or guilt.  Every Thursday morning when I drive to Lyons to work with the church there I pass the LED sign of another church.  It usually has some message of fear or anger on it.  Last Thursday it proclaimed that Jesus is coming soon, and then red letters overlaid the frame with VERY SOON.  That’s a threat.  That’s intended to cause fear.  And Jesus never set a time frame.

Second, they are to be respectful.  If people aren’t interested, then just move on.  When he tells them to shake the dust off their feet from the towns that will not respect them he is not suggesting they become angry or spiteful.  Shaking the dust off your feet when you left a town and returned home was standard practice.  Jesus is basically saying don’t worry about it.  When it comes to consequences for their rejection of God’s messengers, the Sodom and Gomorrah reference we heard is just saying that that is God’s concern, not theirs.

Third, they are to be creative; cunning and clever even.  He says to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.  Use your brains.  Use your creativity.  God gave them to you for a reason, so use them!

Fourth, they are to carry out their actions without fear.  If and when they receive pushback know that there is nothing that humanity can do that is ultimate.  God is the only one who can do something ultimate.

There is a fifth thing that is not exactly relevant to us, but that it will tear apart families and friends.  There will be serious conflict.  So be ready for it.  We can consider ourselves fortunate that expressing our faith will at most get us social disapproval and not imprisonment or execution.

I want to wrap up with one thing to keep in mind, especially as we have our annual congregational meeting later today.  We have a lot of work to do as Christians to overcome the highly negative attitude our society has towards Christian faith.  Much of it is deserved.  The church has indeed not acted the way Jesus taught his disciples to act.  And yet much of it is undeserved.

Moving forward, I think we need to change a lot of long-held tactics.  In the past churches tried to create programs, ministries, and fun activities to attract people.  Worship tried to be a fulfilling splash of, if not entertainment, at least a well-crafted public performance: comfortable, inviting, good preaching, good music, etc.

I don’t think high quality worship should be the end goal of churches who want to evangelize.  I’m not saying worship should be careless.  I’m just saying that if churches think a great worship service to invite someone to is the key to evangelism they’re barking up the wrong tree.  The same goes for all programs and ministry options.

We have to remember something very significant.  Jesus never taught his disciples to invite people to church.  That’s obviously because the church didn’t exist.  But then again Jesus never taught his disciples to form churches!!!  He just taught them to spread the good news of God’s love into the world and invite people to live it in.  The church is the outcome, not the goal… and not the driving force.

In other words, don’t invite people to church.  Invite people to know that God loves them with abundance.  And that embracing that love is central to living a truly fulfilled life.  True Christian faith is authentic, honest, unafraid, deeply rooted, and empathetic.  There’s nothing offensive or ignorant in that.

Whether people know it or not, that is what they are seeking.  Fortunately for you, you have found it.  Finding it doesn’t mean life’s sorrows and problems go away.  Finding it means that you can manage life’s sorrows and problems with confidence.

Live like that and you will find opportunities to genuinely share the love of Christ with people who are truly interested.  You will probably even find them in abundance.  For indeed, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

January 8, 2023 Jesus’ Testing and Early Ministry Matthew 4

             When I began doing research for today’s sermon one of the first things I came across was the phrase, “practical atheism.”  (M. Eugene Boring, New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 8, Pg. 164)  It was in reference to Jesus being tempted to bow down and worship Satan and thus be given the whole world.  Perhaps a story of a literal historical testing of Jesus by Satan sounds passe in today’s world, but let’s not be too quick to dismiss it just because the format seems scientifically impossible.  There is a deeply real thing to that test.  It is the very same test we all face each and every day.

When the devil shows Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and says, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” he is simply inviting Jesus to accept the status quo of the world.  It is inviting Jesus to use his skills for his own personal fulfillment.  Think of the power and glory a person who can perform miracles could have!

But you don’t necessarily have to go that far.  It’s really just live life the way the world expects you to.  Go with the flow.  Do things the way everyone else does in search of self-fulfillment.

If we think this is a test to see if Jesus will disobey the will of the Father we would be right.  We can also easily go one step deeper and find a very practical application.

I had nothing on my social calendar for New Year’s Eve.  I decided I didn’t want to watch the ball drop all by myself at home.  So I went to see the fireworks at Finger Lakes Gaming and Racetrack.  They were being launched over the racetrack.  The only way to the grandstand overlooking the racetrack is to go through the gaming floor.  So before they opened the grandstand I wandered through the rows and rows of video lottery machines.  I also kept an eye on the Ohio State/Georgia game to see how that turned out.  The final quarter was certainly spectacular!  But aside from the game, I thought the whole place was an interesting commentary on the state of the human condition.  Setting aside any wisdom or biblical ethics about gambling, it was hundreds of people mindlessly pushing buttons on the lottery machines.  They weren’t thinking in what they were doing.  They weren’t having fun in what they were doing.  They weren’t being fulfilled by what they were doing.  They were doing what?  Hoping to hit some jackpot of significance that would give them enough money to rise above the pointless mundane lives they are currently living? 

I don’t know.

I do know that more money will not buy you a more fulfilled life.  And I do know that more power will not buy your more prestige.  And I do know that more will not buy you satisfaction.

The test for Jesus was to buy into that life philosophy though.  It is “practical atheism” because it is looking to the human systems of the world for fulfillment rather than looking to God.

That really shouldn’t surprise us.  All the way back to the Adam and Eve story we find that temptation: humans, seek fulfillment on your own terms rather than on God’s terms.

Put that way it seems so simple.  Just trust God.  But the world always offers us simpler, easier, quicker forms of fulfillment – or so they seem.

Jesus is alone, starving, driven by the Spirit into the wilderness.  Is he, the Son of God, going to use his powers to rise above the limitations of the human condition?

When God isn’t giving us answers as clearly or as quickly as we want – and I think I can say we’ve all been there – the world’s answers are very convenient.  We take them.  But they take us nowhere.

In a sense, the rest of Matthew 4 is along the same lines.  Jesus calls the first four disciples: Peter, Andrew, James, and John.  They are fishermen.

Some interpreters have suggested that these fishermen were struggling with their profession.  Or that they were dissatisfied and wanted a life of meaning.  But there is nothing in the text to support those conclusions.  Sure, professional fishing was hard work.  It was then.  It is today.  But it was good, honorable, decent, and meaningful work.  Who can argue with the value of a job where you provide food for people to eat? 

Jesus’ call to discipleship upends the lives of these four men.  While Jesus doesn’t exactly immediately call them away from their families and livelihoods (we’ll hear more about that in a minute), it is a call that is a life priority that is distinctly different from what they are living.  If they become Jesus’ disciples that will take priority over the other life agendas they would be living.

The question for them is, are they going to unquestioningly continue their current life direction because it is stable, predictable and straightforward, or are they willing to let their lives be interrupted by God’s kingdom.

I say they are not exactly being asked to leave their families and livelihoods because of something else we learn just prior to them being called.  We learn that Jesus has moved from Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum.  Capernaum was probably also the home of Peter, Andrew, James, and John.  If Jesus is living there and they are to then while they may have left their nets to follow Jesus that day, they have not left their lives entirely.  I suspect that many days they did continue to fish and that they did return home.

Here is the interesting thing.  And here is where we see the way God works.  In today’s age if you wanted to start a movement to change the world perhaps you would gather some followers from around here.  You’d put together a plan and then head to Albany or Washington, along with your followers, to push for it.  You’d lobby.  You’d have rallies, or protests, or maybe even use civil disobedience.

Does Jesus do that?  Note that Jesus is not born in the power center of Judaism.  That would have been Jerusalem.  And he did not center his ministry by going to the religious and political leaders and trying to persuade them to his world view.  No, Jesus shows that God really sees no significant value in human centers of power and prestige.  God works on the outskirts with the people who are there.

We’re back to the testing of Jesus to live by the world’s ways and receive the world’s rewards, or live by God’s ways?

I think it could be said that from the point of view of many of Jesus’ followers, he was whipping up a following and then heading to Jerusalem to press for changes.  I think the religious leaders thought that was what Jesus was doing too. 

But no.  Jesus goes to Jerusalem simply to celebrate the Passover holiday.  While he knows full well what is coming, and while he does preach and teach in the temple – the center of Jewish religious power – he has not actually whipped up a following and brought them to Jerusalem to create a dramatic crisis.  Jesus is just a Jew celebrating a holiday in the holy city.  It is his opponents that raise it to a crisis. 

Practical atheism is what our society lives by.  It says there is effectively no God – or that there is effectively no God who will meaningfully be a part of your life.  Practical atheism says that you should be a good person because it is the moral thing to do for the betterment of the human system; and… if it turns out that if God really does exist then you want have a lifetime of morality to draw upon to get you into heaven.  But, practical atheism lets you be your own God.  That’s what we humans want.  We want to be our own source of fulfillment.  We want the video lottery terminal to give us a win for a life of meaning.

When Jesus says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” he meant it in a very real literal way.  The kingdom of heaven – with its trust upon God, and its attitude of ‘there is enough for everyone to have what they need’, and that you can live a meaningful, solid, authentic life right here and right now is something for you to have.

Will you be immune from the often painful limits and realities of your humanness?  No.  Will your life be easier?  No.  But your life will be worthwhile.  It will be fulfilling even if it isn’t easier.

When Jesus says to Peter, Andrew, James, and John, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” it may have been a radical life change, but it was not an earth shattering crazy daring change.  It was a change away from the world’s ways of practical atheism and into God’s kingdom.

The farther we go into the future I am sure that ways of Christianity will diverge from the ways of society.  By that I don’t mean the hot button political topics of abortion or immigration or climate change.  I do not want to minimize any of them, but they are ultimately side shows that draw us from the real truth.  The truth is where are you going to point your life for meaning.  Society’s ways will take you nowhere except ongoing anxiety and emptiness.  God’s ways, while difficult, will fill you.

It isn’t hard to start.  It takes no great revelation.  It just takes a critical look at why the world is doing what it is doing and what it hopes to accomplish.  And then turning to God’s ways of loving your neighbor and discovering the truth is there.  May you have such courage and sight.

January 1, 2023 John the Baptist Matthew 3

             Not all that many hours ago people were wishing each other, “Happy New Year!” and then we come to worship and hear John the Baptist say, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  Well, ‘Happy New Year to you too, John the Baptist!’

The thing is, I believe John’s repentance message can put us on the right track for the new year.  I think we can get at that by looking at a very famous person this time of year, although a fictional person, Ebenezer Scrooge.  He is certainly an example of repentance.  But it is important that we understand the true nature of his repentance.

Here is what it is not.  This is a Facebook post by Daniel Williams that has been going around recently.

Every single major life trauma to happen to Ebenezer Scrooge happened at Christmas time: his parents abandoned him at boarding school, his fiance left him, his beloved sister died. It's not like Ebenezer just woke up one day hating Christmas - it's painful for him, and so he does what a lot of us do: he ignores the pain, he tries to keep the painful reminders of his own loss at bay. So of course he gets upset and lashes out when other people (unknowingly) insist on reminding him of his trauma by telling him he *should* be in the Christmas spirit. Then what happens? An old friend recognizes his maladaptive strategy and forces him to get help from experts who allow him to: first, confront his past traumas; second, recognize other, healthier ways of coping with them; and, finally, understand the probable consequences of continuing with destructive strategies designed to avoid hurt by avoiding human relationships.

A Christmas Carol isn't a story about how you're so much better than the mean rich person. It's a story about how anyone, even the rich and powerful, can struggle with trauma.

Um, no.  Wrong.  If it’s been a long time since you’ve read Charles Dickens’ book, A Christmas Carol, or if you’ve never read it at all, I encourage you to do so.  It’s relatively short.  Lots of interpretations and adaptations have been made to it.  I think if this Daniel Williams reread the original story he’d realize just how wrong he is.  It is the right interpretation of the story that gets us to where John the Baptist is.

If you know the story well then you know that early on the ghost of Scrooge’s former business partner comes to Scrooge and warns him that he needs to change is ways or suffer the consequences.  Scrooge rejects this notion.

The first ghostly visitor, the Ghost of Christmas Past, shows Scrooge several scenes from his past.  We learn that Scrooge was indeed abused by his father and neglected as a child.  But we also learn that there were significant improvements in his father.  We learn that Scrooge had a fiancé who genuinely loved him and cared for him.  In the early days of their relationship Scrooge was loving in return.  But over time he began to distance himself from her and went down a path of greed.  She only leaves him when she realizes that despite her ongoing love, he has chosen earthly wealth over human relationship.

By the time Scrooge is done with his time with the second ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Present, we realize that Scrooge has had a change of heart.  He has decided to change.  He has decided to become a better person.

Dickens could have left the story off there.  It would indeed be the story of a rich and mean old man who has a change of heart because, and Daniel Williams says, he has seen the probable consequences of continuing with destructive strategies.  If that were the case the story would be no different than hundreds of other stories that show up on the Hallmark Channel.  If it were that sort of story it would have been forgotten in the dustbin of sentimentality over 150 years ago.

But Dickens continues the story.  There is one question remaining.  That question is, why has Scrooge changed?  If he has changed because he recognizes there will be dire consequences if he does not change, then his change would merely be a strategic move for his own ultimate gain.  But if he has changed because he has truly become a better person, then his change will not have a strategic benefit.

This is the part that Daniel Williams gets completely wrong.  Enter the third ghost.  As the ghost shows Scrooge horrific things in the future that happen to a dead person Scrooge eventually comes to realize that the dead person is him.  And he asks the ghost repeatedly -he even pleads with the ghost to know- can he, by making changes in his life, change the course of the future.

Now we are at the core of the story.  If you know the story well you know that the Ghost of Christmas Future never ever says a word.  All it ever does is point.  And so as Scrooge pleads for an answer… he never gets one.

This is where the magic of Dickens’ story happens.  If Scrooge changes it will be because he has become a fundamentally better person with no desire whatsoever for personal gain.  He will truly be generous, selfless, loving, and kind.

You know how the story ends.

This is the ultimate, deep, genuine repentance John the Baptist calls for in our gospel reading.  He is like the Joseph Marley character in A Christmas Carol.  He is telling people to repent or suffer the consequences.  But the repentance is to be absolute and real; not a strategy.

When John is so cruelly harsh to the Pharisees and Sadducees he knows that they fundamentally believe that they are good people.  At the beginning of A Christmas Carol Scrooge considers himself to be pragmatic and wise when it comes to the way he treats other people, especially those who are struggling.  I want to avoid drawing too strong a parallel between Scrooge and the Pharisees and Sadducees, but there are similarities.  If you have convinced yourself that you are good, and if you have surrounded yourself with life dynamics that affirm your goodness all the while keeping hidden the bad things that result from your life, then you feel no need for repentance.

John the Baptist did not invent the idea of baptism.  There are records from Judaism at that time that shows that Jews did have ceremonial washings.  But John is the one who elevates baptism to a one-time event meant to bring about serious and permanent life changes.  Baptism as John did it predates Christianity, but Christianity adopts it as its own initiation rite. 

For most of us living in a generally Christian culture baptism doesn’t really change much.  But in those days, being baptized into Christianity meant a serious life change.  It may mean many life changes.  It may mean stopping doing all sort of things.  It may mean changing one’s friends.  It may even mean being ostracized from your family.

And central to that is what John the Baptist had in mind – a genuine, authentic, enduring, fundamental change of heart and life direction.  No longer would a person live strategically for themselves.  No.  Now, it would be a life of genuine love and giving for the sake of God’s kingdom.

John the Baptist’s core message was, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  When John is arrested and goes off stage Jesus picks up the identical message, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 

The kingdom of heaven is when people genuinely live that life direction.

The Pharisees and Sadducees probably thought their lives just needed a little bit of a tune-up when they came to John to be Baptized.  He felt they also needed a major change in life priorities.

If you are driven to being kind and giving because it is a strategy to avoid negative consequences, well, I suppose that works.  But understand that your life is one of calculation and a constant subtle cost/benefit analysis.  If your life is one of constant cost/benefit analysis then joy will at best be fleeting, and you will live a half life of anxiety and exhaustion.  You will question your purpose, meaning, and direction in life.

If you are driven to being kind and giving because it is a natural flow from the love and goodness God has for you, then I make no promises as to how your life will go.  Remember, Scrooge received no promises from the Ghost of Christmas Future.  Things may go poorly.  Or they may go quite well.  But know that you will discover deep and enduring satisfaction, wholeness, and meaning. 

It is January 1^st 2023.  It is a new year full of new possibilities.  May it be a year where you become nothing short of excellent at living in God’s love and goodness. 

 

December 11, 2022 Arrival of the Wise Men Matthew 2

“We three kings of orient are bearing gifts, we traverse afar.”  So goes the words of the famous song, and the song we’re going to sing after the sermon today.  I think the gospel writer Matthew would take issue with it however.  Most obviously is that they are not kings.  They are of a foreign priestly class of diviners, astrologers.  The idea that they were kings comes from a later application of Psalm 72 and Isaiah 60 to the birth story of Jesus.  Second, Matthew never actually says how many of these wise men there were.  The idea that there were three comes from the idea that each one was bearing a different gift, and there were three gifts.

The third issue is where these guys actually came from.  Matthew just says from the East – not from the orient.  It’s safe to say that the “East” Matthew had in mind was the immediate east – the Parthian Empire.  We’ve talked about the importance of the Parthian Empire before and it is good to remember now.  At the time of Jesus’ birth Parthia was declining a bit but it still covered about 1.1 million square miles of territory.  In the first century it was about equal to Rome in power.  I put a map in your bulletins that shows the Parthian and Roman Empires are side by side.  Judea, where Jesus is born, is the eastern end of the Roman Empire.  It was a bit of a buffer zone right up against the western end of Parthia.  Neither empire could realistically conquer the other.  

The distances between their power centers was just too great to muster the massive armies necessary.  But Rome was an empire built around the coast of the Mediterranean Sea.  Controlling Judea was already a bit of a stretch, but it was strategically necessary.  Otherwise they’d lose the land route to the southern end of empire.  In other words, Rome needed Judea.  Parthia would have liked to have had it, but did not need it.

The Herod family, of dubious Jewish descent, was sort of in power when the Romans came in and took control decades before.  And the Romans found it beneficial to let the Herods stay and use them as puppet kings.  Defending the eastern end of the empire against the Parthians was costly.

So, put yourself in Herod’s place.  Some Parthian priestly officials come to you, you who have faked your family tree and are pretending to be the legitimate Jewish leader, and ask where was born the new king of the Jews?  They say they want to pay him homage.  But why pay him homage?  Because these Parthian officials, your arch enemy, are nice guys?  No!  Of course not!  For all appearances they have come to buy the favor of the newly born Jewish leader and swing Judea away from Roman allegiance and into the hands of the Parthians.

If you are Herod what are you going to do?  You’re going to call in your equivalent of the CIA!  You’re going to track these astrologers.  You’re going to let them lead you to the target.  And then you’re going to eliminate the target.  The Herods may have been cruel, but they didn’t get to power by being stupid!

The story in Matthew is highly troublesome.  The Parthian astrologers are warned by God in a dream.  They give Herod the slip.  Joseph is warned in a dream and he, Mary, and Jesus flee.  When Herod realizes the treachery he has all the children in and around Bethlehem under the age of two killed.

How can God let that happen?  Why should all those innocent families suffer like that?  Indeed, if you ask those questions of Matthew’s gospel you get some very disturbing answers!

But Matthew isn’t interested in answering those questions.  If it helps you feel better remember that Matthew is a theologian, not an historian.  While some parts of Matthew’s gospel can be independently historically verified, what we read today cannot.  There is no outside evidence of a star appearing, Herod killing the babies, or a trip by Parthian astrologers.

Matthew is, however, wanting to state some theological truths: Baby boy Jesus is bringing together two rival superpower empires.  Foreigners – definitely non-Jews, come to pay homage to this savior of the world.  Also, the Wise Men had good intentions.  Their act of devotion was genuine.  Even so, the powers that be weren’t happy.  All too often in life innocent people suffer.  Sometimes the saying, “Only the good die young,” is all too true.  Innocent people suffer every day.  We do well to keep that in mind.  When we pray, when we buy things, when we vote, etc., keep in mind the full impact of your decisions.  Power tends to protect itself.  Innocent people often suffer as a result.

But the suffering of the innocents is not the end of the story is it?  Will this baby boy Jesus grow up to become a hero whom all love as he rises to incredible power and stature, and live a long and happy and successful life?  No.  This baby boy Jesus will grow up.  He will cause controversy.  Though he doesn’t lift a finger to hurt, he himself will also be caught in the web of power and be an innocent sufferer.

That takes us to the three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Each one is symbolic.  As We Three Kings gets right, gold is a royal gift fit for a king.  While Jesus’ kingship will not be like any others, he will usher in the kingdom of God.  Frankincense is a gift for a priest.  Frankincense was used in temple worship as part of the sacrifices.  Priests were the go-betweens between God and the people.  Priests were the ones who pronounced forgiveness.  Though Jesus never performed official service in the Jerusalem temple, he will fulfill all those roles.

Myrrh is the mysterious disturbing gift.  The hymn says, “…its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in a stone-cold tomb.”  For myrrh was a burial spice.  Its gift here at Jesus’ birth already anticipates the crucifixion.

If we put ourselves in Matthew’s story I wonder how Joseph and Mary felt about that gift?  How would you feel you had a new baby and someone stopped by offering you a gift of embalming fluid for your newborn!?!  Creepy!

And yet, this is perhaps a little joke in the Bible.  These Parthian astrologers appear to be quite knowledgeable about what is going on.  They have spotted what the Jewish leaders have not.  They have recognized the birth of a new king.  They have come to pay him homage.  They have brought highly significant gifts.  But this one they got wrong!

Jesus will die, yes.  But do you need embalming spices for someone who will be dead only three days?  Certainly not!  The gospel of John makes a bit of a joke about that when the man Nicodemus brings a whopping 100 pounds of myrrh for Jesus’ burial!  Jesus probably didn’t weigh a whole lot more than 100 pounds himself!

No, the resurrection is not anticipated in the three gifts.  That will be the twist in the story that no one but Jesus himself predicts.

And for our lives today, some 20 centuries later, what does this text mean for our day to day lives?

Two things stand out to me.  First is a challenge.  The Parthians wise men were not citizens.  They belonged to a rival enemy power.  The Parthian wise men were also not Jewish.  They were leaders of a pagan religion.  Yet God chooses to connect with them in order to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

We cannot automatically dismiss those who are Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or any other religion.  They are not unworthy of God’s notice.  They are not unworthy of God’s love.  While I will never teach something so foolish as, “all religions are just different branches of the same tree,” for that is utter nonsense, other religions are worthy of our respect, our notice, and our Christian love.  We do not help ourselves, and we do not help the work of the gospel, if we fear them or attack them.  Though we disagree about God in ways that are insurmountable, in Matthew’s gospel we see that God is quite capable of working remarkable things through them.  All things are God’s.  God will take care.

The second thing is to not underestimate the power of what God is doing.  We hear this lesson over and over again, but we easily forget it.  God comes to human form in Jesus.  It will be God’s greatest and most significant act in the history of salvation.  Yet Jesus is born in basically a military buffer zone to parents of no account.  He will not be raised in a fine household.  He will not have a fine expensive education.  He will work with his hands, have dust on his feet from walking, and collect a group of followers; all of whom will betray him when he’s in trouble.

Yet no historian or religious skeptic can doubt that Jesus creates the largest and most significant organization in history – the Church.  The movement Jesus founds will outlast the Parthian Empire.  It will not only outlast, but help to bring down, the Roman Empire.  It will go on to spread to every nation on earth.

Never ever underestimate how important or powerful a seemingly insignificant action can be.  God works in unexpected ways.  God has absolutely no respect for things that look powerful or important.  Even the church itself cannot become cocky thinking itself grand and an end unto itself.

God works in powerful ways that the world misses utterly.  Never dismiss an opportunity to share the love of Christ no matter how insignificant it looks.  Never think anyone or any issue is too trivial to be important.  None are.

God is working.  God is working in hard and powerful ways all the time.  Keep your eyes open.  Be ready for the unexpected.  And rejoice in the surety of God’s success.

December 4, 2022 2nd Sunday of Advent Matthew 1:18-25

 Let’s call this sermon, “What to do when you can’t tell what God is calling you to do.”  That is probably an odd name for a sermon, especially one that is based on the birth story of Jesus, but I think our gospel text takes us there.

Let’s start by noting that Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus is very different from what we’re used to, which is the version from Luke.  The words of that story flow to us like a well-known legend, “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus…”  We’ll hear that story on Christmas Eve.  But in Matthew’s account there is no census, no inn that’s too full, no angel chorus, no shepherds, and no manger.  Also there’s no Mary, “pondering these things in her heart.”

In fact, the birth story in Matthew doesn’t even have Jesus in it!  All we’re told is that Joseph has a dream of an angel visitor.  And then he, “did as the Lord commanded him.”  The very next scene, which we will read next week, is about Jesus already being born.

As Matthew tells the story about Jesus’ birth, it is not about Jesus.  It is not about Mary, who gets a pretty big role in Luke’s gospel.  No, in Matthew the story is all about Joseph.  That may seem odd; especially if you remember from last week that Matthew took Jesus’ genealogy to Joseph, even though Joseph really has no biological connection to Jesus at all!

But it is what happens with Joseph that gets us into our theme of, “What to do when you can’t tell what God is calling you to do,” this way.

In what we read Joseph has a dream telling him what to do.  Then he acts on it.  Next week we’re going to read about three more dreams Joseph has.  In each case it is pretty specific about what to do.  And Joseph dutifully acts on it.

My guess is that none of us have had literal dreams giving us, with some detail, instructions on what to do.  Does that mean that God is using us less?  Are we somehow less important to God’s overall plan for the world than Joseph was?

In contrast to Joseph who received a number of instructional dreams, my guess would be that most of us fall closer into the category of, “What to do when you can’t tell what God is calling you to do.”

It may seem like the lives of biblical characters are somehow clearer, cleaner, more straightforward than our lives.  They receive visions or dreams or angel visitors or something telling them what to do beyond doubt.  Now, they don’t always act on them.  Plenty of people in the Bible ignore God or reject what God calls them to do.  Nevertheless, they are still told clearly.  I think we want the same.

I should acknowledge that there are plenty of people in the world who appear to be going through life with no purpose or direction whatsoever.  They seem to be perfectly okay with that; at least for now.  I wonder if they’ve ever really given any thought as to what their purpose is?  What will their legacy be?  Will they leave any positive mark on the world at all?

A person of faith, and by that I mean any number of the world’s religions – not just Christianity, is going to want to live in a way in which their faith gives their life purpose and meaning. 

This is an aside, but I think a necessary one.  I disagree with those atheists who say that having faith is a crutch for the weak minded.  Or that faith is nothing more than a society’s morality made large and imagined onto a divine being; who then punishes or rewards after death with heaven or hell based on how well a person followed the morals.  Religion then is about keeping a population in line.  I respond that faith is not about pleasing a supernatural being with the way you live.  Faith is, as I said, about living in a way that gives purpose and meaning to what you do.  It means that you are connected to some value which extends beyond yourself; and even beyond your society.  But that can create a problem.

There is no problem when you feel like God is telling you what to do.  There can be a problem when you don’t feel like God is telling you what to do at all.  Simply going through life with the idea that you’re just supposed to be a good person – and have some fun when you can - doesn’t help much.  I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we want more than that.  We do want to feel like our lives have a purpose, that we’re a constructive part of something bigger than ourselves.  Sure, we may dream of becoming world famous and being a household name like Albert Einstein or Benjamin Franklin, but we don’t really think that could be.

I feel like some people work really hard to figure out what God wants them to do.  They pray.  They meditate.  They may read scripture.  Maybe they go on a discernment retreat, or take all sorts of skills inventories to see what they’re good at.  Of course there’s nothing wrong with any of that.  But it’s likely that something is still missing.

If we approach life with the idea that God has a purpose for us to fulfill, and it is up to us to figure out or discern that purpose, - and I believe many people think that’s exactly what life is – then it’s as if God is a scientist and we are all lab rats running through the maze of life searching for a piece of cheese.

If we take the way Matthew describes God giving directions to Joseph and apply it to the way we think God will interact with us, then we are unknowingly making a basic mistake.  But it is an easy mistake to make because we live in a society that values and encourages individualism. 

What was that old Army advertising slogan?  “Be all you can be!”  It surely is appealing.  But you can’t stop there.  The Army is not a collection of individuals.  No effective army is. The Army is a community of skilled people; skilled people with a purpose.

What do you do when you can’t tell what God is calling you to do?  The Army is a good example.  And the same answer will unfold as we move forward in Matthew’s gospel.  Jesus does not create a faith of a bunch of individuals.  Jesus creates a community with a purpose.  The purpose is to make God’s reign of grace reality in the world.

I do not think God has pre-planned individual purposes for us to do in life.  I do know God wants His reign of grace to be reality in this world.  And he’s called us collectively to help do it.  Also, just as new threats emerge and old threats fall away and so the Army changes, so does what we collectively are called to do changes.

Even Jesus didn’t work as an individual.  You know he had the twelve disciples, and there were many more.  Consider the Lord’s Prayer.  Does it start off with, “My Father who aren’t in heaven”?  Is this the prayer of an individual?  Does the Lord’s Prayer even work if you are the only one praying it?

Yes, indeed it can work.  But this simple foundational prayer assumes that it will be spoken by a community.  “Our Father who aren’t in heaven…”  Everything in that prayer about us is plural.

It is the Church’s weakness when it thinks it’s a bunch of individuals trying to discern God’s will.  It is the Church’s strength when it realizes it is a diverse and dynamic community with a common purpose.

If you don’t know what God is calling you to do with your life – and remember that calling will change with your age, your life circumstances, and changes in the world around you – then don’t feel like you are lacking, or missing something, or weak in faith, or any of that.

It is the role of the Church to be our common expression of God’s grace in the world.  It is the role of the Church to be the community that gives our lives solid meaning and value.  It is the Church that is to be the community that offers us meaningful forgiveness from shame.

That is a very high bar for the Church to achieve.  We certainly don’t do it perfectly here – far from it.  But when we are at our strongest and our healthiest, that is what we do.  When we do that well we should not have to ask as individuals alone in this life what is it that God wants us to do.  We know that we are part of a much greater whole.  It is the work of the community that God’s reign becomes real.

So, may we make our church the community of faith that it needs to be in order to give us purpose and value.  And may we see the efforts of our labors come to life in the world.  In Matthew’s gospel we’ll see a community of believers struggle to get it together.  And we join them in that struggle.

November 27, 2022 1st Sunday of Advent Matthew 1:1-17

 The first thought coming out of your mind after hearing the genealogy of Jesus might very well be, “So what?  Why bother listing all those hard to pronounce names if it’s going to end with Joseph?  If Joseph isn’t Jesus’ biological father then what’s the point?”

Indeed, those are very good questions.  For as far back as we have records of people reading Matthew’s gospel those questions have arisen.  People have invented some very creative answers to those questions, but those answers are absurd. 

But there’s more.  If you were able to follow the names and do math at the same time you realize that Matthew can’t count.  He says there are fourteen generations between Abraham and David.  Indeed he listed fourteen generations.  Then he says there are fourteen generations between David and the deportation.  And again he listed fourteen generation.  Then he says there are fourteen generations between the deportation and Jesus.  But he listed only thirteen generations.

Yet there are more problems still.  Much of the genealogy we cannot verify at all.  But some of it we can.  Those years between David and the deportation – a time period for which we have reliable records – was actually eighteen generations.  Matthew overlooks four of them.  Plus, that time period is 400 years – roughly 22 years per generation.  But for the remaining 28 generations, covering 1350 years, the average generation would have to be 48 years.

And to further add to the problems, we can contrast Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus to Luke’s genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3 and immediately realize that they do not match.  No matter how creative you want to be, and how many excuses you want to make, you just can synchronize them.

What then do we do with such a text?  If the Bible is authoritative for our lives then how can such an unreliable source make any claim on us?

You may remember from several weeks ago that we encountered similar problems when we were reading from 1 Timothy.  It was the passage where the text said that women should be secondary to men and be silent in church.  We had problems with that not only because we fundamentally disagreed with it, but because the author showed he neither knew the scripture he was quoting to back up his claims, nor were his arguments even logical.  At that point I also said that we’d be turning to Matthew’s gospel soon, and we’d find some similar dynamics there.  And here we are.

This past week I spent a good amount of time searching for answers to these questions.  Ancient authorities try to tap dance around the issues or come up with complicated ways to wiggle out of it.  You see, Matthew is an enigma.  He knows his Jewish scripture very well.  His writing style uses layers of complex chiasmus patterns.  You have to be both very smart and very well educated to do that.  And yet, his scriptural interpretation is downright wrong in several places.  His genealogy doesn’t work.  And as we read on we’re going to see that in some places he warps things severely so that they say what we wants them to say.

Well let that be the beginning of an answer for us.  Matthew’s writing shows that we are reading the work of someone who is highly educated and in that person’s story that is carefully crafted.  Personally, I think Matthew did make an outright mistake when he listed only thirteen generations rather than fourteen.  But otherwise, his logic and his conclusions are pretty tight.

How do we respond to all of the various problems that we can note in the genealogy?

I like this straightforward answer by Douglas R. Hare in the Interpretation commentary:
“Our answer to these questions must be based on a single observation: apparently they posed no serious problem to Matthew and, by extension, to his first readers.  The details of the genealogy were obviously of secondary importance to the [Gospel writers], as Matthew shows by his intentional deletion of three generations of Judean kings.  What was important to hi was that Jesus was truly David’s son.  He was this not by the natural process of male procreation but by the direct will of God.  How God’s intention was effected in this instance is the topic of the next passage.”  (Interpretation Commentary, Matthew, Pg. 9)

Is that a satisfying answer?  Maybe not.  But it is the answer that does take us to what Matthew really wants us to realize.

Matthew’s first readers were almost certainly Jews who had decided to follow.  And for their belief their lives had become chaos.  Matthew was probably written in the 80s of the first century.  You may remember that in the year 64 Rome burned.  Emperor Nero, who was probably insane, blamed Christians.  Persecution began.  In the year 70 the Romans burnt the temple in Jerusalem and destroyed the city as punishment for Jewish revolts.  It was a tumultuous time!

Where was God in all this chaos?  What was God up to? 

If you look carefully at the genealogy you realize Matthew is giving you answers.  The people listed in the genealogy, or at least those we know something about, are really a mixed bag.

Some are prim and proper.  Some are faithful.  Some are righteous.  Some are wise.

And some are cruel.  Some are killers.  Some are faithless.  Some are stupid.  Some are scoundrels, scandalous liars and manipulators. 

And the women listed – well, let’s say no one who calls herself a “lady” would have anything to do with that lot!  The thing that four of the five have in common is infamous sexual scandals.  The fifth woman is Mary the mother of Jesus.  And well, in the next scene her situation is going to get questionable as well!

All in all, we ask ourselves, is Jesus’ genealogy one of picture-perfect virtuous people?  Is God willing to claim only the righteous?  No.  Rich/poor, good/bad, known/unknown, all are included.  God wants us to know he is rooted in the same messy reality we live in, not something perfect.  God will come into this world as a human connected to all the imperfections of the past.  God embraces and claims as his own: both our good and our bad.

There’s one more thing to point out about four of the five women.  They are all outsiders to Judaism; foreigners.  God is not confining the origins of his coming to just the chosen people.  The very final line of Matthew’s gospel, Matthew 28:19, is, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”

Being Jewish may have been a blood line and heritage thing.  Being a follower of Jesus was not restricted at all.  Right from the get go, Matthew’s original Jewish readers are realizing that God has all nations in mind for what is to come.

Right or wrong, accurate or inaccurate, the purpose of the genealogy in Matthew is to show how God has deeply rooted himself into history – into our history.  Even though the genealogy goes to Joseph, and thus shows no actual DNA connection to Jesus, for Matthew this is an important connection.  Matthew wants his readers to know that God didn’t just pop into the world for a short time and then just pop back out after the resurrection.  Our human story and God’s story are one in the same.

And though the genealogy itself doesn’t point it out, Matthew wants us to know that God is still very much with us and that our story is still God’s story.  Matthew begins the gospel with a genealogy and lets jump to the end again with the absolute final line Matthew writes.  Jesus says, “And remember, I AM with you always to the end of the age.  Matthew’s fearful original readers were not lost or forgotten.  They are not unimportant to God.  And the same goes for us too.