The Things We Do to Our Children

Luke 2:21-24

Christmas 1

December 30, 2018

William G. Carter

After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”

Here we are on the sixth day of Christmas. Somewhere there are six geese a-laying as we sing some of the Christmas carols that we couldn’t squeeze in last week. In a few minutes, we will baptize a little boy named Declan.

I imagine the day will come, sometime in the future, when the young lad will look at his father and say, “Why did you do that?” His father will say, “What? Why did we baptize you?” And the boy will say, “No, why did you name me Declan?” Oh, let’s think for a few minutes about the things we do to our children.

Declan is a noble name, an Irish name. According to my sources, it either means “full of goodness” or “a man of prayer.”[1] Either one is really good. Our great hope is that he will grow into his name.

Declan’s middle name is Arthur, taken from his great grandfather. A graduate of Duke, great-grandpa Art was an extraordinary golfer. Art won the Masters in 1959 and made over forty holes in one. (Declan, no pressure there!)

Today his parents present him to be baptized. Declan has no choice over that, either. It’s not up to him to decide that today is the day when he joins the Christian tribe. Today his parents, his family, and all of you hand him over to God. We trust God to honor this covenantal promise, to be at work in his life, to guard him from evil, and to be both “full of goodness” and “a man of prayer.” We look forward to the day when he claims for himself his full identity as a child of God.

Right now, of course, he had little clue what that means. His parents are choosing all of this for him.

The Bible passage we heard resonates with this. The baby Jesus is presented in the temple. He is only eight days old. The shepherds have gone back to their fields. The angels have returned to heaven. Since Joseph and Mary are only seven miles away in Bethlehem, they decide to take their child to the temple in Jerusalem. That’s what the scripture told them to do.

If they have been home in Nazareth, that wouldn’t have been practical. Nazareth was a four or five day walk to Jerusalem. The rituals would have been done closer to home, in a much smaller synagogue, by a rabbi not quite as notable as the professionals in the Holy City.

So the child is circumcised, just as it says in the twelfth chapter of Leviticus: “On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.” This unusual procedure is not done for sanitary reasons. Rather, it is a commandment from God that marks him as a child of God. No little infant boy would ever choose to be circumcised. No clear-thinking grown-up man would ever choose it for himself, either.

Centuries later, the Christian people saw all kinds of significance in this event. The Orthodox church declared this is evidence that Jesus truly was a human being; he had a physical body and it was cut. The Roman Catholic church delighted that this was the first time Jesus would have his blood spilled, a sign of his sacrificial death on the cross.[2] The Jews would tell Orthodox and Catholic to settle down. This is the moment when Jesus becomes part of the tribes of Israel.

It means that his education starts now. His parents will teach him the psalms, the same psalms that their parents taught to them. “These are the words of prayer,” they will say: “The Lord is my shepherd,” “my help comes from the Lord,” “My God why have you forsaken me,” “Hope in God, for I shall again praise him.”

Joseph and Mary shall teach him the stories that give the little boy his identity:

• In six days, God created the heavens and the earth, and rested on the Sabbath.
• And God said to Abram, ‘Your children will be as numerous as the stars in the sky.’
• A new pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph, and we were slaves in Egypt…
• God brought us out with an outstretched arm,
• and God gave the scripture as a lamp for our feet.

No one knows these truths until they are told from one generation to the next. No one knows automatically that God is concerned with justice and all evil doers will perish. They must be instructed. Otherwise they are left to their own whims, their own distortions, their own screwy ideas. To belong to God means that we will be taught the truth about who God is, what God cares about, and what God wishes to get done – through us or in spite of us. It is a lifelong commitment with eternal significance.

I guess that’s why, when my daughters were young and they complained, “Why do we have to go to church,” I often retorted, “We are going so that you learn who you are, and so you can make your way through a world like this.” I would never back off and allow them to decide for themselves. That would make me an inept parent.

It’s fascinating to me how the Gospel of Luke insists Jesus was a Jew. He may have been born in a barn and visited by ranchers, but he was raised in the promises of God. Luke begins his book by telling about a priest named Zechariah and his vision in the temple. He ends the book in chapter 24 with the disciples meeting regularly to praise God in the temple.

In between, Jesus is saturated in scripture. He teaches in the synagogues, he tells the truth about God, and he knows the tradition so deeply that he becomes a prophet within his own tradition. Nobody gets that way without being shaped, being formed, by a way of life that is far greater than one’s individual opinion.

One of my minister friends talked about doing away with the Christian Education committees in her church. A few of us sat up straight and said, “What?” She smiled and explained, “The work before us is so much more than education; it’s actually formation.”

“We teach Bible stories,” she said, “but it’s always to the end that we shape values, nourish trust, discern the truth, and engage in God’s work in the world. We want to do so much more than teach Bible facts that kids might forget or adults dismiss as myths. We are trying to shape souls. We are working to help our people look more like Jesus.”

So they did away with a Christian Education committee? She said, “We call it the Christian Formation committee, because that is the work for all of us from cradle to grave. All of us are Christians who are still becoming Christians.” I think she’s right about that.

One more thing, she said: “When the children see their parents are still growing in their own faith, they tend to take it more seriously for themselves.”

The brief little Bible story that we heard today tells us a great deal about the decisions that Joseph and Mary made for Jesus. They are Jews, and they are present their son to be a Jew. They pledge to raise him within their faith, to teach him who he is. And they do this, even though they are four days away from home, far from family and familiar surroundings, even though they don’t have a lot of money.

That, by the way, is also in the text. When a child’s birth was celebrated in the Jerusalem Temple, the scriptures declared, “You shall offer a lamb to be sacrificed as a gift for God.” However, if the family cannot afford a lamb, the book of Leviticus offered an alternative: “a pair of turtle doves or a couple of pigeons.”[3] According to Luke, that’s all that Mary and Joseph could offer. They didn’t have much, but they had their faith, they had their pride, and they had their first-born son.

They named him “Jesus.” Not Joseph Junior, but Jesus. The name was given to them by the angel of God, but according to the story, they were far too modest to tell anybody about that. Jesus is a human name, a common name. In Hebrew, it’s essentially the same name as Joshua. You can hear it: Yeshua/Jesus, Joshua.

There were, and still are, a lot of people named Jesus or Joshua. When I was a kid, I opened a pack of bubble gum cards and found one for an outfielder for the San Francisco Giants. His name was Jesus Alou. You’ll never guess who he was named after.

Jesus is a big name, a really big name. In Hebrew it means, “he rescues, he delivers, he saves.” Imagine him growing up and knowing that was his name! Imagine the day his momma told him where the name came from. And after a lifetime of learning the scriptures and reciting the prayers, imagine the day when he decided to grow into the fullness of his name. Jesus … he rescues, he delivers, he saves.

In light of him, and in his name, we can reflect on the things we do to our children. Some things are admirable, some could be mistakes, some may take some therapy to undo, and some might turn out better than we could have ever imagined. Most parents make the best decisions they can, and time will tell how things will turn out.

I am convinced one of the best things we can ever do is to give our children the knowledge of God. When we baptize our children, we place them into the hands of the Love that holds all things, bears all things, and endures all things. And we do this in the name of Jesus, in the rescuing, delivering, saving name of Jesus.

 (c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] https://www.babycenter.com/baby-names-declan-463125.htm

[2] See, for instance, http://www.ncregister.com/blog/gstanton/3-reasons-our-lords-circumcision-is-more-profound-than-you-realize

[3] Leviticus 12:8

Thoroughly Human, Completely Alive

John 1:1-5, 14-18

2018 Christmas Eve Sermon

Bill Carter

By my calculation, this is the 35^th time I have preached on Christmas Eve. That’s not counting the teenage youth group Christmas pageant, where I portrayed the front end of a donkey. 35 Christmas Eves. It takes a while to get it right.

So I thought that I would tell you tonight what Christmas is all about. Ready? I am aiming for the heart of it all. I’ve cut away the fake tinsel and the artificial light. No mention of gift cards, snowflakes, or chestnuts. I’m going put Christmas in three words. You might want to write this down. Here goes.

Union with God. That’s it.

We can expand on that, I suppose. Fortunately I have a few minutes to do that, especially for that guy in the camel hair coat who will meet me at the door and say, “What exactly did you mean by that ‘union with God’ thing?” That’s a good question.

Some people don’t think such a thing is possible, like the Puritans who came to America four hundred years ago. They hated Christmas. They did everything they could to shut it down. They broke off from the Anglicans, accusing them of partying too much. They complained there was too much merriment in late December, too much frivolity, too much celebration, too much brazen activity. Those Puritans declared, “The Gospel is made of sterner stuff!” So they outlawed celebrations of this night and stated that all must spend their time in repentance.

Hate to tell you, but this brand of church came from the Puritans. Well starched. Stiff backed. Affectionately known as the “Frozen Chosen.”

They believed there is no way any human person could ever be united with God, that we are too tainted, too dirty, too broken, too corrupt. It was not uncommon to attend a Puritan church around Christmas time and hear a two-hour sermon about how bad you were. When the congregation was properly chastised, the preacher would remind them that Christ died to take away our sin. If only they repented, their sins might be taken away. That’s the only way they knew how to get united to God: through the cross. They thought you couldn’t really live with God until you died. And then, maybe.

With that, they pulled on grey overcoats and shuffled home to a dinner of cold porridge. Merry Christmas, Frozen Chosen.

This was all they knew. I don’t blame them for that.  Life was hard. Living like Jesus was difficult, and still is. Their only connection to God was through the preaching of their sins, with the tail-end reminder that God could remove that sin if only they were penitent enough. For them, life was only about the death of Jesus. Not even a resurrection could lift their hearts. And so they squelched Christmas.

But here’s the thing: Christmas is the truth of God’s union with us. What did God do? Became a human child. That is the Christmas story. The Creator sets aside all power and heavenly privilege and becomes part of the Creation. “God is with us” – that’s the message. That’s the heart of it all. It’s what we are singing about. And if that’s true, maybe there’s more to life than the death of Jesus. Maybe there’s also resurrection. And maybe, the birth of Jesus matters too. Maybe his birth matters for our life.

Here is what one brilliant soul (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) had to say:

Christ took upon himself this human form of ours … In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God … Through fellowship and communion with the incarnate Lord, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time we are delivered from that individualism which is the consequence of sin, and retrieve our solidarity with the whole human race. By being partakers of Christ incarnate, we are partakers in the whole humanity which he bore.[1]

Now, that’s a lot of theology, especially for those who have had a couple of glasses of wine. So let’s hear it in words from the Gospel of John. First, this verse: “What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. “ And then this one: “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory . . . full of grace and truth.” And if that’s still too much, here’s a line from a Christmas carol: “Light and life to all he brings.”

Light and life. These are the gifts of God. We don’t have to work for them. They are already there, ready to be received. Rather than stretch and strain and stress out, it’s so much better to lean back, breathe in the air, and say, “Thank you God for light and life.”  For God has dignified human life on the day that Jesus was born. It was the sign that God wishes for heaven and earth to be united. We don’t have to wait until we die before we live with God.  We can live with God here and now.  In the depths of prayer, the mystics call this “union with God.”

Now, any of us can lose that sense of living with God. God is quiet enough that a lot of us are accustomed to living only with ourselves. And we do have the freedom to mess up our lives as much as we want. But to mess up your life – or somebody else’s life – is not to own our God-given dignity. And if we wear ourselves out at Christmas time, we are not accepting the grace of God that says, “I made you, I became like you, and I love you just the way you are.”

Bonhoeffer was right: “In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God.”

We do not need to live as those separated from God if we can receive the gift of God-with-us. We do not have to allow our brokenness to break anybody else if we can receive the gift that God holds our broken pieces and offers to mend whatever can be mended. We don’t have to poison our own bodies or twist our minds or pull our arms out of joint by reaching for what we think we do not have; God has already entrusted great riches to each one of us. For our part, we can open our hands to receive what God has already given us and then we can do something beautiful with everything that we have received.

What we have received is life, God’s life - that's the light in everybody’s eyes. No need to make this harder than it is. The Christmas invitation is to stand in the light. Receive the life. And remember, on a night like this, God was found among us … and has never gone away. That’s what Christmas is all about. Union with God. God with us. It's the all in all, and it's enough. I don’t know about you, but it makes me want to sing. Makes me want to dance.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Touchstone, 1995) p. 301

Waiting for the Right One

Micah 5:2-5(a)

December 23, 2018

Advent 4

William G. Carter

But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days. Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has brought forth; then the rest of his kindred shall return to the people of Israel. And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace. 

I dare say if it weren’t for the three Wise Men, we wouldn’t be paying any attention to this brief passage from the prophet Micah.

Micah’s book is largely in the shadows. It’s not as big as Isaiah’s book, and not nearly as poetic. It doesn’t bleed like the poignant heart of Jeremiah nor report the dramatic visions of Ezekiel. It’s a thin little scroll, kept on the shelf, mostly out of sight.

Some of the book sounds derivative. The prophet repeats what we have heard before. There will be a time of judgment followed by a season of restoration; a lot of the Biblical prophets talk that way. There’s the famous peacemaking passage from the second chapter of Isaiah (“they shall beat their swords into plowshares” and “nations shall not learn war anymore.”); Micah likes that and copies it into chapter four.

In the passage we heard today, he repeats a familiar line from Isaiah 40 (“he shall feed his flock”). He must have like that one. He also reminds us that King David, the greatest of Israel’s kings, came from Bethlehem, a small village that has never otherwise shined like the glory of Jerusalem. That's it. OK, Micah, thank you for your work. We will roll up the scroll and put it back on the shelf for another seven hundred years.

That is, until the day when the three wise men knock on the door of the palace and ask, “Where is he, who is born the king of the Jews? We have seen his star at its rising.”

You might remember the story. King Herod is curious, then threatened, then defiant. “What do you mean, you wise guys? I am the king. What are you talking about, that some new king that has been born?” These wise men may be pious, but they are vague. They have followed a new star across the desert, but the directions you can get from a star are somewhat ambiguous.

It’s then that Herod turns to the Bible scholars on his staff. You see, every king worth his salt ought to have some Bible scholars on his staff. These scholars don’t even have to thumb through the scrolls. They already know. Micah, chapter five, verse two: “And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.” 

That verse has been sitting on the shelf, hiding into the shadows for seven hundred years, until the moment that the wise men knock on the door to ask, “Where is the king?”

The answer: in Bethlehem. And you have every reason to ask, “Why Bethlehem?”

The prophet suggests three reasons, in light of what we know about Jesus. The first is that he is born, not only in the hometown of King David, and not only as his great-great-great grandchild, but in the tradition of David. David was the great king. He was the best king anybody could remember. That was three hundred years before Micah wrote his book, a thousand years before Jesus – but people in the Middle East have really long memories.

In all those years between, there were an awful lot of kings. We can take that literally: there were a lot of kings, and they were awful. Oh, there were a couple that were OK. Solomon built the temple, but he had too many girlfriends. Josiah was a great reformer, but the kings before and after him were idiots. When you have terrible national leadership, you grow accustomed to inconsistencies, erratic behavior, and outright brutality.

After a while, you start longing for the best thing that you can remember – and it was David: strong, good looking, fully human David. He was a little rowdy, and certainly playful, but he brought people together. He was a builder. The nation flourished. So that’s the first reason for Bethlehem: we want somebody like King David.

A second reason is due to a recurring theme in the Jewish scriptures that the little guy shall rule over the big one. As you recall, David was the youngest of the eight sons of Jesse. He was the littlest, and he became the king. That’s like Joseph, the young son of Jacob, who dreamed of his older brothers bowing down before him. Or Jacob himself, the younger of the twins, who swindled his older brother Esau out of the family blessing.

That’s a theme that comes up over and over in the Bible. It was how Israel the nation began to understand itself in the world: we are the little guys, we are small but we are mighty. God doesn’t always pick the big guys, the loud ones, the arrogant ones, the pushy and obnoxious ones. God says, “O you, Bethlehem, one of the little clans of Judah.” The inference was that the Messiah would come from a little town, a town with a great memory but not much of a future. So there’s that, too.

And third, Micah is looking forward to Jesus himself. He will not be flashy, but hidden in the hills, living among the peasants. He will be the king, but he is certainly not born in a palace. He will tend the flock with special attention to the weakest and the most broken – and Jesus was known as a healer. And when Jesus speaks, he will turn the world’s values upside down: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek.” Not the mighty, but the meek.

The key to understanding the authority of the Messiah is his gentleness. That is why he is so misunderstood. When the Messiah rules, he will not stand on tiptoe, bearing down and further oppressing the people. No, he will stand on the soles of his feet, as a shepherd among the flock. This is what Micah can see.

As the Bible scholars will later point out, this brief poem from the prophet is a lampoon on every misdirected human ambition. The prophet is poking fun at Jerusalem, the Golden City, which had gotten to be quite tarnished. He’s joking about Assyria, the dominating world empire of his own day. God’s new king is to be born in a humble little town. This king will be a shepherd like David, but he will be surprisingly free from imperial ambition. He will rule over his people, but he will not exploit them or make them afraid. His scepter shall be his compassion.

This is still difficult for so many people to understand. The three wise men did not know it, could not know it, apart from the revelation from the prophet Micah. King Herod didn’t get, either, ruling in obnoxiousness stoked by his own paranoia. Even the Bible scholars on the king’s staff couldn’t imagine what this would ever look like. They had the text in Micah’s old scroll, but they had lived through centuries of nothing actually happening.

And then Jesus is born. Those who saw him, who heard him, who loved him, could recognize that he was the one that they had been waiting for. Is there anybody here still looking for him? For as you know, what matters is not merely Bethlehem, but who is born there?

In the year 1865, the greatest preacher of Philadelphia took a year off. He was thirty years old and needed a break. His name was Phillips Brooks. He was six feet, six inches tall, and his reputation even taller. He had recently preached a sermon at Harvard University at the end of the Civil War that so good it was printed and distributed around the nation. But he was worn out, so he took a breather.

That December, he found himself on horseback in the Holy Land. On Christmas Eve, he rode across the hills from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, past the fields where the shepherds heard the angels announcing the birth of the Savior. As the village opened up into view, he stopped his horse and took in the scene. It was quiet, it was peaceful, in sharp contrast to the four violent years of Civil War that had concluded back home. The spiritual moment was seared in his heart forever.

Three years later, back in Philadelphia, Christmas was coming. The memory of that night in Bethlehem was still as clear as a bell. So, for the children of his Sunday School, he wrote five stanzas of verse. Then he gave the poem to his church organist, Louis Redner, who quickly imagined a fitting melody, completely harmonized. The result was the Christmas carol that we will sing in a few minutes. I think you know it:

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie.

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by.

Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light.

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

As I said, there are five stanzas, although only four make it into our hymnals. I think it’s the forgotten stanza, the one left out, that may be the most poignant. Let me give it to you:

Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed child,

Where misery cries out to thee, son of the mother mild;

Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door,

The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.

That’s what we want. For Christmas to come again, for the Messiah to come among us, for Christ to be “born in us today.” It’s the kind of Christmas that the prophet Micah dreamed: “He shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God. And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth; and he shall be the one of peace.”

This is the promise for you and for me, which by faith we find completed in the birth of Jesus.

No ear can hear his coming; but in this world of sin,

Where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.

I pray that you have a blessed Christmas.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

A Surprising Interruption

Zephaniah 3:14-20

Advent 3

December 16, 2018

William G. Carter

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you, he has turned away your enemies. The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem: Do not fear, O Zion; do not let your hands grow weak. The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival. I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it. I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord.

Most of us don't like interruptions, especially at this time of year

This can be a difficult season to navigate. Family members come and go. There are gifts to purchase and wrap. There are itineraries to manage and parties to stop by. A lot of people try to squeeze in a concert or two if they can. But with the schedule so tight, who wants a long-lost cousin to knock on the door and walk in with warning. Neither do we really want friends to suddenly appear with their children, who are not quite over their stomach bugs or other forms of contamination. It would be an interruption.

There are some people who live with the assumption that they could manage every part of their lives. Should you show up late unexpectedly at a family gathering they are not pleased. In fact they find it's an interruption to their carefully calculated schedule. And you may miss seeing them because you missed your allocated half hour in which their schedule was going to overlap with yours. You are the interruption

Neither do we want to be interrupted by the weather. When a blip on the weather map develops into a full-fledged nor’easter, we scowl and begin to rearrange. And if we succeed in rearranging, and the nor’easter never becomes more than a blip, we are quickly annoyed to rearrange our already rearranged plans.

Christmas comes with a long list of habits. In some homes, the tree is acquired and put up on the same day every year. The lights are strung after being checked and possibly replaced. The packages are wrapped by December 18 so that we can have a week of frenzy-free holiday. The elf goes on the shelf. The star is hung on the front porch. Everything comes out of carefully labeled boxes and will be returned to the same. That is what a tightly managed Christmas will look like.

Some people I know had everything figured out -- or thought they did. They had just liquidated their daughter's bedroom, having helped her move some distance away. Life had been simplified. Then on Christmas Eve, daughter Diana reappeared with a big surprise. She brought mom and dad a new puppy, declaring, “I felt guilty about leaving you all alone.” The puppy’s name is Chester. He is full of life and absolutely charming. Nevertheless he was an extraordinary interruption. Last I checked he still is.

I invite you to do a quick survey of your spirit. What would be the most disruptive interruption that you could possibly face this year? A new puppy? Or a bad diagnosis? Or the sudden unexpected illness of a family member? Or something else?

Perhaps the interruption will break into a pattern of seasonal negativity. You don't have to be a Grinch to get worn down by December. Such long lines, and distracted drivers on the highway, and an impossible wait on the phone to speak with customer service. Or the way that the increasing shadows work on us at the darkest season of the North American year. 

And then suddenly, bam! Something happens to startle us. A situation that we've long taken for granted is pierced. Maybe it's our perspective on life and times, and suddenly it is ripped open from somewhere else.

We had twenty people here on Wednesday night reading through the book of Zephaniah. For most of us, I think it was the first time we've ever done it. It was hard work. Zephaniah was a prophet about 700 years before the time of Jesus. He was one of those gloom and doom prophets that nobody really wants to hear.

It was not that he was foretelling the future. That is one of the misconceptions we have about the Old Testament prophets. People think the prophet is a fortune teller. In the Bible, it is more accurate to say the prophet is a truth teller. That's why nobody wanted to hear them. They spoke a word from God that described the recurring messes that every generation of God's people finds themselves entrenched in.

In the time of Zephaniah, there were plenty of difficulties. The rich were plundering the poor, and then blaming the poor for their poverty. The powerful are taking advantage of the weak and trying not to get caught. The clergy spend a lot of their time spewing empty platitudes and enjoying the rich offerings that supported them. It was the same, old sorry situation that every generation must wade through. In the two and a half opening chapters of Zephaniah's oracles, we hear gloom and doom that the people have come to expect, because the people have created a lot of their own messes and are now accustomed to them.

As we worked around the room for our Bible study, reviewing the first part of Zephaniah's book, it felt as if the prophet was deflating all our tires.

And then, bam. Something new breaks through. “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem!”

This is the last thing anybody in our study group expected to hear. It was also the last thing that Zephaniah's people ever expected to hear. Because they know about the gloom and the doom, they had tasted the judgment and the punishment for far too long. Suddenly everything is interrupted by this call to rejoice.

This is no less an intrusion than any other. Ask one of the twenty families in our congregation that lost a loved one in the last twelve months. Some of them were expecting not to decorate very much for this Christmas. Just imagine that one day they could open the mailbox to find two hundred thirty-seven Christmas cards calling them to rejoice. They weren't expecting that. To some extent, they don't want that. Why not just leave them alone? Let them stay in the dark shadows.

 I do not make light of this in any way. The darkness around us is real. The darkness within us is real, too. But what should happen if light from a source beyond us should puncture the gloom?

Just the other day, I phoned somebody to invite them to tomorrow night's Blue Christmas vespers, here in the sanctuary. She turned me down flat. “I'm not ready for that,” she said. “I'm not sure if I'll ever be ready for that.” The grief is still raw. The loved one is still mourned.

I know why the church has selected this poem by the prophet Zephaniah. It is happy and joyful and hopeful. We tell ourselves that this the way December is supposed to be, and for some people it is. 

Yet let's be instructed by how the prophet Zephaniah understands hope. Hope is an interruption. Hope is an unexpected intrusion. Biblically speaking, hope is not a wish, nor a dream, nor a projection of optimism. It is a gift of God that comes from a source far beyond us.

Someone once asked me, “How do you know that the Christmas story is true?” Without even thinking about it I blurted out, “Because none of us could have ever dreamed it up.” It came from somewhere else, from a source that is far beyond us, from the divine heart that already knew what it meant to be broken and mended. And it comes, ready or not. For the moment we glimpse the truth that our lives are in better hands than our own.

This is the true essence of our hope, our holy hope. It is quiet, and it is subtle, which leads many of us to fill the silence with their own words and the stillness with our own activity. But should we pause long enough to hear the flutter of an angel wing or to see an unusual star that we did not create, maybe we can hear the invitation to rejoice.

I don't need somebody to try to prove to me that the Messiah was born among peasants and placed in a feeding trough in Bethlehem. I know it's true. And you know how I know it's true? I watch the people will begin to cry in the shadows when we sing, “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.” In the gift of such a moment, they know it’s true, too.

Take a good look around and watch for the hope. Expect the disruption of the old status quo. Listen for the giggle of the child who reminds us of the vulnerability of the baby Jesus. Take note of the next winter storm to see the power of God who has the awesome power to create it. Take comfort in the company of good friends, all of whom were given to you as a holy gift so that you wouldn't have to travel your journey alone.

And should someone interrupt your lingering darkness with a word of interrupting grace, be still, unlock your arms, and take it all in as a holy gift from heaven.

As Jesus the Messiah will say, “Fear not, little flock. It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." (Luke 12:32)

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

Shaken, Not Stirred

Luke 21:25-36

Advent 1

December 2, 2018

William G. Carter

“There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Last Tuesday morning, I realized why I’ve always been uncomfortable with the season of Advent. Logically, I understand the purpose of establishing the season. It’s a time to prepare for Christ to be born again among us. Advent slows down the shopping season and invites us to return to God. I get all of that. But I also feel the awkwardness of dressing in purple and royal blue when everybody out there is decking the halls in red and green, and gold and white.

It got clearer on Tuesday, when my spiritual director showed me a sketch from the great artist Rembrandt. We have reprinted it in the bulletin insert today. It’s called “self portrait with eyes wide open.” Take a look at it. Look at his face. See the astonishment? The shock? The disruption?

In that moment I realized why I am ambivalent about Advent: because it shakes us up. Advent reminds me that, not only does God come, (but) the reason God comes is to finish things off, to correct all that is wrong, to confront the evils with which we have become complacent, to heal a long list of ills which we know so well. This is Good News, but it’s disruptive.

Jesus says, “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world. The powers of the heavens will be shaken.” Do we really want that? When it’s winter and the angels have a pillow fight, a pillow rips open and the snowflakes come down. That’s disruptive enough. Imagine what it means for the Son of Man to come on a cloud in the fullness of his glory! It means that everything we hold dearly will be shaken.

As that final day moves toward us, there are moments when we glimpse how God is going to shake the world, how God is going to remake the word as it was intended to be. I’ve had those moments myself. Each is a temporary awakening, where I see and believe what God is going to do. Each one is shocking. In fact I had at least three moments in the last week.

The first was a picture I saw of a homeless man. Actually it was a statue of a homeless. The figure is sleeping on a park bench. He has a blanket pulled over his head. He has no name, no obvious face. The only distinguishing detail are his bare feet. They have nail prints. It is the crucified Christ on a park bench. That sculpture has been replicated many times, often placed in affluent neighborhoods as a reminder of what he said, “Whenever you have done to the least of these, you have done to me.”[1]

What made the picture so striking is that I had just thrown out leftover food in our refrigerator. That’s food that was cooked but not eaten. We made too much food for our t=Thanksgiving banquet and it was not shared… and I was shaken.

Or what about that cup of coffee last week that I enjoyed at Zummo’s coffee shop, my southern office? I was there to meet with a scholar that we have invited in February to lead an adult education class. Her research is uncovering the African-American community in the city of Scranton. Apparently the numbers have been significant over the past 150 years, but generally off the radar of people who look like me. The presence has largely been ignored by the structures of power and the human services in the city.

“How do you do your research?” I asked. She said it’s a challenge. African-American businesses have been left out of the business directories, deemed unimportant or marginal. I was confronted with remembered my own blind spots, the downside of my privilege, the quiet racism that has shaped my life. It is Advent and I was shaken.

Or third, I was sitting at my computer, reviewing the submissions for our online Advent devotional. I hope you find this and read it every day. We have a wealth of talented, insightful writers in our church family. One of the entries is a reflection on the Song of Mary, the Magnificat from the first chapter of Luke. The mother of Jesus sings, “God pulls down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up those of low degree.” That is good news for some, said the writer, but not for everybody.

Along with those words, there was a picture included, a picture of a child being tear gassed at our southern border. It was deeply disturbing. I was shaken out of my complacency, shaken out of my timid desire to live my faith in a vacuum, shaken out of my presumption that the great issues of our day do not matter to the rest of us. And I found myself praying, “Come quickly, Lord Jesus, come and set the world right.”

Those moments come to all of us. Sometimes it is a shift in perception, an opening to see something we have not seen or otherwise ignored. Sometimes it is an unexpected trauma – an illness, or an accident, or a lost job or a divorce. Sometimes the disruption comes as a gift – a child is born, such a wonderful gift, and it turns our world upside down. Sometimes the ground beneath our feet begins to shake; just as ask the people in Anchorage, Alaska, and look at the terrible scenes.

Today’s word from Jesus is an invitation to look more deeply, to watch for what God might be doing, and to take part in it as we are able. That’s not easy, because the disruptions in our lives take a lot of energy. They make great demands on us. They shake us up – and shake us down – and reveal what we are made of.

Will we respond with faith, hope, and love? Can we anchor ourselves in the promises of God in scripture? And will we be able to see our “redemption drawing near,” that great getting-up day when every broken thing is healed and made right?

Every December, I return to a devotional book that offers a reading for every day of the season. It’s a tonic for my soul. One of the pieces that I read every year is a letter written by Alfred Delp, a Jesuit priest and prisoner of the Nazis. Shortly before Hitler ordered his death in 1945, he wrote these words for our generation:  

Advent is the time for rousing. We are shaken to the very depths, so that we may wake up to the truth of ourselves. The primary condition for a fruitful and rewarding Advent is renunciation, surrender. We must let go of all our mistaken dreams, our conceited poses, and arrogant gestures, all the pretenses with which we hope to deceive ourselves and others. If we fail to do this, stark reality may take hold of us and rouse us forcibly in a way that will entail both anxiety and suffering.[2]

But if we hold on and hang in, with faith, hope, and love, it is Christ who is revealed. The same Christ who remains quietly with us until the end of age. The same Christ for whom the whole world waits. The same Christ who promises that (finally) all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

This is the same Christ who welcomes us at this Table, the Christ who says, “Do not rest until every hungry child is fed.”  This is the Christ who says, “Come to me” and “I will come to you.”

May he shake us all until we settle for nothing less than him.

(c) William G. Carter. All rights reserved.

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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeless_Jesus

[2] As translated in An Advent Sourcebook, edited Thomas O’Gorman (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1988) p. 9

Let the Earth Rejoice

Joel 2:21-27, Matthew 6:25-33

November 25, 2018

Thanksgiving / Christ the King

We have heard a couple of Bible passages that sound so attractive that they are almost unrealistic. Jesus says, Look at the birds of the air, consider the lilies of the field. They don’t do anything and God takes care of them.

And then the prophet Joel declares, Don’t be afraid, O soil. Do not fear, you animals of the field. O children of Zion, be glad and rejoice in the Lord your God. You will have plenty to eat. All shall be provided for you.

There’s no question why these are the texts selected for a celebration of Thanksgiving. They state that the world is in good hands. Everybody will be OK. God provides what the world needs. There is no reason to worry. Don't you worry about a thing.

It’s a beautiful vision, so beautiful that it’s difficult to keep it in focus.

Just over a week ago, a foot of snow fell on a Thursday afternoon. I was catching a ride back from an appointment from Binghamton and my driver barely got us home. Knowing that we needed some gas for the snowblower, and that I have new tires on my car, I decided to take a quick trip down the hill and fill up the tank.

At the bottom of the hill, the cell phone rang. My wife was stuck in a snowdrift on the way home from work. It was in the Notch between the mountains, at rush hour, and nobody was going anywhere. “Can you come and get me?” she asked. Without thinking, I replied, “I’m almost there.” Well, little did I realize how terrible it would be, or that she would cross the road on foot, hop over the highway divider, and slide into my slowly moving car, nor that it would take us over another hour to get home.

Now, Jesus can say, "Stop being anxious," but he never drove through a winter storm in the mountains on slippery tires. Surely I can stand here today and say, "God was with me somehow, as I drove through that storm." But frankly, if I had the choice, I would have preferred to be sitting at a hot tub along green pastures, by the still waters, getting my soul restored.

Christ’s invitation is so appealing: consider the lilies, look at the birds. But we get so easily distracted. Or we turn aside because of whatever else is laying heavy on our minds. Either way, anxiety creeps in. Anxiety is a constant companion that never leaves us alone.

Jesus says, "Don't get worried about anything. Have no fear of life or death. Trust God and let go of everything else." Easier said than done.

Nature is his sermon illustration. The birds of the air don't worry about anything. Looking at the lilies of the field, he quips, Ever notice how they don't fret about how they look? It begs the question: why do we worry so much? Why do we worry about such little things, such temporary things?

I don't know, but we certainly do worry. Let's see a show of hands: how many of you have had to wait up until a late hour for one of your kids to get home? How many are still waiting?

As one of those kids, I would get so angry when I would come home on a college break, go out until the wee hours. When I sneaked back into my parents' house, my mom would be sitting in the Lazy Boy chair with a cold cup of coffee, snoozing with one eye open. Dad was upstairs, sawing wood, but Mom was half-awake with worry. "Is he OK? Is he lying in a ditch somewhere? Was he wearing clean underwear?" It made me angry, and Mom said, "Just wait until you have kids of your own."

Well, I don't know what the problem is. I’m not going to let my kids date until they are eighty-five years old. I'm worried about them. Maybe you should too.

Jesus says, “Cancel your ongoing subscription to anxiety. Chill out and look at the birds." It sounds so peaceful, but we must to remember that Jesus got killed for talking like this. He spoke not only to affirm life under God's protective custody, but to confront the prevailing views of how to run a world.

When Peter Gomes was the preacher at Harvard University's chapel, he tells about speaking at the commencement for an exclusive girl's school in New York City. These were able, aggressive, and entitled young women, and he rejoiced with them in their achievement.

He spoke on the words where Jesus asks, "Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Therefore, do not be anxious about your life." It seemed an appropriate message and all the graduates smiled upon him.

During the reception, however, one of the parents went up to Gomes with "fire in his eyes and ice in his voice." He told the preacher that, frankly, his sermon was full of nonsense. Peter said, "The message didn't originate with me; it came from Jesus." The parent looked at him and said, "It's still nonsense." As the man went on to explain,

"It was anxiety that got my daughter into this school, it was anxiety that kept her here, it was anxiety that got her into Yale, it will be anxiety that will keep her there, and it will be anxiety that will get her a good job. You are selling nonsense."[1]

In a town like this, we know a lot of people like that prep school father. What binds them together is the consistent message by which they live. The message goes something like this:

•     If you want to get ahead in the world, you have to carry a lot of anxiety with you.

•     If you want to be successful, you have scramble to get up the ladder.

•     If you want the good life, you must work without ceasing and bear the burden of much stress.

•     In short, anxiety is good. It is both a good motivator and a necessary companion for anybody who wants to get ahead.

There are a lot of people who believe that kind of stuff. Maybe you are one of them. In these words from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is striving to puncture our ongoing illusion that life is ours to manage and control. He pushes us to look beyond ourselves and see God.         

That’s precisely the issue. Have you ever considered how much time we spend thinking about ourselves? Did you ever realize how much emotional energy we burn up by hovering over our own circumstances, fretting over other people, worrying about things we cannot control?

In his commentary on this passage, Tom Long points out that Jesus is trying to get us to trust God. He's not telling to dig in and try harder. He's not saying, "Listen, you need to go for it, reach for it, scramble for it, work for it." Oh, no.

Look at the birds of the air. They are constantly flitting around, looking for food, and they find it. There is a necessary striving in life; you have to go looking for things. But it's there. That's the point. What we need has been provided.

My wife takes this to heart. When the weather turned cold, she went out and bought a lot of bird seed. Certainly God provides -- and maybe God needs to provide through you and me. We can participate in the work of providence, especially if we've been given the resources.

Consider the lilies of the field. Here today, gone tomorrow. They are beautiful in their time, not because they worked at it or worried about it. They were beautiful because that's how they were created. God said, "Let there be lilies," and then God said, "Look how pretty they are!" From the time they were seeds, all the lilies had great potential. With a proper amount of nurture, sunshine, and rain, their beauty breaks forth. They don't need any makeup. They don't hustle around trying to prove anything. They are beautiful because God made them that way.

As somebody once reminded me, "We don't put a ribbon in a young girl's hair to make her pretty. We put a ribbon in her hair because she is pretty."

Look at the birds. Consider the lilies. The Greek words in the text are strong, energetic verbs. Look, really look! Pay very close attention. We spend so much energy striving, working, hovering, as if that's going to improve anything. But the birds and the lilies live in a different world, "a world where God provides freely and lavishly, a world where anxiety plays no part, where worry is not a reality. Jesus invites us to allow our imaginations to enter such a world, to compare this world with the world in which we must live out our lives."[2] 

All of this, I think, prepares us for providence. If our hearts are open, we see God gives us a beautiful world, continues to provide whatever is essential, and promises to complete and fulfill all life through no authority of our own. God provides. God is so securely in charge, so powerfully in control, that even God can kick back and keep the Sabbath.

Look at the birds of the air. Stop and really look, and look behind them to a God who provides in secret. In the words of John Calvin,

When the light of divine providence has once shone upon godly (people), they are then relieved and set free not only from the extreme anxiety and fear that was pressing them before, but from every care.... Ignorance of providence is the ultimate misery; the highest blessedness lies in knowing it.[3]

This is the blessed truth: God provides what we need. We pray for daily bread and God is under no obligation to give us cake. We receive the bread we need, with enough to share. That may be how God provides for others – by giving to them through us.

We are reaching the point where the preacher must stop and the poet takes over, and then we are left to decide where and how we are going to live. The poet, in this case, is Wendell Berry, a Kentucky farmer, and the poem is called, "The Wild Geese." He’s riding through the woods one day, and it strikes him how much has been provided:

Horseback on Sunday morning,

harvest over, we taste persimmon

and wild grape, sharp sweet

of summer's end. In time's maze

over the fall fields, we name names

that went west from here, names

that rest on graves. We open

a persimmon seed to find the tree

that stands in promise,

pale, in the seed's marrow.

Geese appear high over us,

pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,

as in love or sleep, holds

them to their way, clear,

in the ancient faith: what we need

is here.  And we pray, not

for new earth or heaven, but to be

quiet in heart, and in eye

clear. What we need is here.[4]

 (c) William G. Carter. All right reserved.

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[1] Peter J. Gomes, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1996) 178-179.

[2] Thomas G. Long, Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press)

[3] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, xvii. 11.

 4] Wendell Berry, "The Wild Geese," Collected Poems, 1957-1982 (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984) 155.