"Family Plot" Sermon Preached at Benson Presbyterian Church, Omaha, Nebraska, June 22, 2014

Genesis 21:8-21

Matthew 10:24-39

Family Plot

In the wake of the decision to allow Presbyterian ministers, if they so choose, to perform same sex marriage ceremonies I’ve noticed a lot of people on social media bemoaning the decline of Biblical marriage and family.    I’m not sure where those folks are getting their definition of Biblical marriage and family, but it is definitely not from passages like the two we just read.

From Genesis we heard the story of Abraham and his wife and his slave girl and his sons, one son, Ishmael, with Hagar, the slave girl, one son, Isaac, with his wife Sarah.   This was not an uncommon arrangement in Biblical times or indeed throughout the Bible.  The need for the male line to continue was considered more important than anything.  Men needed sons, daughters didn’t count and infertility meant you just went out and got another woman and married her or not in order to procreate the male of the species. 

Genesis chapter 16 tells us it is actually Sarah, who told Abraham to father a child with Hagar, her Egyptian slave.   God had promised descendants to Abraham, descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky.   But like too many women, Sarah did not conceive.  So she decided that if her husband needed a son, at least she could choose who the other woman to bear that son would be.

But after the birth of Ishmael, God renewed his promise to Abraham and said that Sarah would indeed bear him a son.   Sarah, who had been through menopause at this point and who was eavesdropping on the conversation burst out laughing at the notion.   But God always gets the last laugh and Sarah did indeed conceive and bear a son, Isaac.

That’s when the plot gets ugly.   Abraham gave a feast when Isaac was weaned, a traditional feast, to celebrate the child’s survival of what was then a perilous infancy.    But at the feast, or immediately after, she saw Ishmael, the son of Hagar, playing with Isaac.   Oh right.    That won’t do at all.  

So Sarah went to her husband and said, “Get rid of them, cast them out!  You know who I mean that slave woman and her son!   They need to go.  I do not want the child of that slave woman inheriting with my son.”  Sarah could not even bring herself to say Hagar and Ishmael’s names.  

Abraham was very distressed at this, “on account of his son,” apparently, not on account of Hagar.   But God intervenes and tells Abraham, that Hagar and Ishmael will be alright, indeed, God will make a great nation of Ishmael, too.

What follows is one of the most poignant passages in the entire Bible.  Abraham takes some bread, a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar.  He puts Ishmael on her shoulder and sends her away.   Alone with her child, Hagar wanders around until all the water is gone.  When there is no more water, Hagar puts her son under a bush and then goes some distance away to weep.  She goes some distance away so she will not see her son die.

But once again, God intervenes and tells Hagar not to weep, not to fear, but to hold her child’s hand.  And she looks up, and there is a well.

Ishmael does grow up in the wilderness; he becomes an expert with the bow.  His mother gets a wife for him from her home, Egypt.  Tradition tells us that Ishmael is the father of the Arab people.   According to the Bible, Isaac is the father of the Jewish people.  They are two sons of different mothers that I honestly believe that God intended to live side by side in peace.   Sadly, like so much that God intended, that has not yet come to pass.

When you think about it, this Family Plot that could have come from a soap opera or a reality TV show airing today echoes down through the centuries to our very lives today.   Who is in, who is cast out?  Families are still having these fights in our own time. 

Frederick Buechner says that of this family plot, “it is the story of how in the midst of the whole unseemly affair the Lord, half tipsy with compassion, went around making marvelous promises and loving everybody and creating great nations like the last of the big-time spenders handing out hundred-dollar bills.”    

That’s the real takeaway from this story and indeed from much of scripture, that no matter how we fight and abuse and ignore, there is God, loving everybody, the last of the big time spenders.

Jesus, however, is not much help in creating family unity in the passage we heard from Matthew this morning.  “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me…”

Jesus is using some exaggeration here, but not too much exaggeration.  And setting children against their parents?  That is not going to go over with your base, Jesus.  This passage is part of a longer set of instructions Jesus is giving to his disciples before sending them out on their first mission trip, teaching and preaching and healing.  I can almost see them exchanging nervous glances at this point.

First, I don’t for a second think that Jesus is anti-family.   Jesus shows love and help for many families in the course of his ministry: the healing of Peter’s mother in law, his friendship for Lazarus and Mary and Martha, his raising from the dead of Jairus’ daughter spring to mind immediately.   Jesus helps out and shows love for a lot of families in his ministry.

In Biblical times, you family was your social status, your 401K, your social security, your job, your education, your neighbors and housemates. Family = security, religiously, socially, commercially and economically.  Family meant you weren’t wandering around in the wilderness with no water and a thirsty child.

Think of reading the passage this way, I have come to separate you from your security, from your 401Ks, from your cultural ignorance, from your privilege, from your justifications.

Jesus is about restoring and purifying relationships. But when forced to choose between God and security, do we choose God?

In the issues that have faced us, as citizens of the world, as Americans, as Christians, as Presbyterians, sometimes it feels like we are choosing between family and Jesus.   The sad thing is, people on both sides of these issues feel like they are choosing between family and Jesus.  Time will literally tell and I don’t mean that in any kind of flippant way.   As the wise Rabbi Gamaliel said in the book of Acts of the early followers of Jesus, “If this plan or this undertaking is of human origin, it will fail, but if it is of God, you will not be able to over throw them.”  It’s a good thing for us to remember in divisive times.

Divisive and frightening times in our world, in our country, in our church family, in that group of unique individuals bound together by blood and or love that we call family, these times do not feel secure.  But Jesus never, ever promised security.  Jesus promised a changed new life now and salvation forever.    Security cannot be our ultimate issue when we look to our future, the Gospel, the love of that extravagant God, the last of the big time spenders, must be our model.  God, who spent love so lavishly, that God got human skin and bones to love us better and call us home, who is the model for family, for churches, for our world.

Amen.

Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones

Sermon preached at New Life Presbyterian Church, Omaha, Nebraska, May 18, 2014.   

1 Peter 2:2-10

There’s a story told about the artist Michelangelo.  After he unveiled his sculpture of Moses, someone asked him how he was able to bring forth such a dramatic and evocative portrait from a block of stone.

Michelangelo replied, “You just hack away at it until it looks like Moses.”

Now I am pretty sure that if I got a large block of stone and hacked away at it, well, let’s just say, it would not look like Moses or any other great sculpture.   It would look like a pile of stones.

That’s the way life is, isn't it?  One person’s Moses is another person’s pile of stones.

In our scripture this morning from the letter of Peter, Peter is talking about stones.   

Peter is talking about Jesus and in this passage; he quotes extensively from the Old Testament.    “The stone the builders have rejected has become the chief, the cornerstone.”  Peter uses this passage from Psalm 118 to show us something important about who Jesus is.   Jesus was rejected.  Jesus was not only rejected, but reviled, arrested, tortured and executed.  According to the powers of the world, the corrupt religious leaders in league with the despotic Roman government, Jesus was supposed to disappear, be forgotten, become yesterday’s news. 

But instead, Jesus has become the cornerstone, the stone that Peter, quoting Isaiah, points out, “a cornerstone, chosen and precious.”

But, there’s always a but, isn't there?  But, not for everyone.  For some Jesus is the cornerstone, for some, Jesus is a stumbling block.  There’s an old proverb, “The only difference between stumbling blocks and stepping stones is the way you use them.”

I fear that for too many people these days, Jesus is a stumbling block.   We mainline American Protestants are unfortunately not what many non-Christians think of when they think of church.  We have allowed the face of Christianity to become the flim flam TV preacher or even worse, protesters holding up signs that say who God hates.    Unless someone has experienced it, a small loving, accepting and joyous congregation like this one is not what people think when they think of the word Christian.    They imagine judgment and hell-fire and damnation.  They picture people who worship a God who suffered a violent death, yet cry out for capital punishment, ignore torture and call for more guns on the street. They picture a people who profess to follow Christ, who said, “Love one another as I have loved you,” yet hoard their wealth and resources and dismiss those less fortunate as lazy, undeserving of the better things in life. 

This is not a new problem.   Someone once asked Mahatma Gandhi “Mr. Gandhi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?”

Gandhi replied: “Oh, I don't reject Christ. I love Christ. It's just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ.”

That is the problem that we as Christians have.   That is how we make Jesus a stumbling block, by being unlike Christ.   Jesus is how we see what God is like. 

Instead of being stumbling blocks, you and I are called to be stepping stones and building stones.   We are to be the bricks and mortar that builds the church, not just a building, but a people.   And we are called to build not just a building, not just a people, but a bridge, a stepping stone, an open gate for others to enter the people of God because they see the love and acceptance that should be there!

There’s another old proverb that says, “Rocks and mud-bricks and wood and tiles thrown without any structure do not make a house.”    Of course they don’t! Rocks and bricks thrown together is one big pile of stumbling blocks!  But when you build on Jesus the cornerstone, you build something that lasts.  Something that looks like God.

Peter writes, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”   A royal priesthood has responsibilities, responsibilities to proclaim, not just with our words, but with our actions, with our very lives.

This passage today closes with Peter quoting the prophet Hosea:

Once you were not a people,    but now you are God's people.

Once you had not received mercy,   but now you have received mercy.

In gratitude for this gift, we are to lead our lives as God’s people, Jesus’ people: people who receive mercy and act like they have received it.

Thanks be to God!

Amen.

"A Bigger Boat"

"A Bigger Boat"

Isaiah 9:1-4

Matthew 4:12-23

Sermon preached at Benson Presbyterian Church, Omaha, Nebraska, January 26, 2014

I love to go fishing.   My father started teaching me to fish when I was four years old.   I practiced casting in the living room of our house on Florence Blvd. and the first time we went for trout that summer in Colorado, I caught five.  I ran up to a man walking by the shore of the lake and proudly exclaimed, “I caught five fish!”  The man replied, “Well, you need to stop, honey, that’s your limit and I’m the game warden!” 

None of my three brothers liked to fish and eventually drifted away from it, but I didn't.  Pop and I still fished together until just before I went  away to seminary. I still have Pop’s fishing gear and it has been too long since I got a line wet, but some of the happiest days of my life have been spent with Pop pulling trout from a clear Colorado lake or stream.   I like to fish, but I wonder how much I would like it if I had to do it all the time, if I had to do it for a living.   I can still cast pretty well,   but I am strictly an amateur when it comes to fishing.

In today’s story from Matthew, we encounter some professional fisherman.  Simon, called Peter and Andrew are brothers, they are casting nets in the Sea of Galilee.  This is an interesting detail about Peter and Andrew, they couldn't afford a boat.   They would wade out into the water and cast their nets and haul in whatever they could.   It was very labor intensive, very hard work.

So there they are, casting their nets into the sea and this total stranger comes along, “Follow me,” the stranger says “and I will make you fish for people.” There must have been something very compelling about this guy because immediately they left their nets and followed him. Just like that. 

This guy Jesus continued along the shore of the Sea of Galilee and he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. Now James and John were one step up economically from Peter and Andrew.  They had a boat and they worked with their father.  

Unlike Peter and Andrew, who could only fish as deep as they could wade, James and John and their father Zebedee could take their boat out and cast their net in the deep waters.  Still hard work, but they were able to catch more fish and make more money.  Once again, he called them. And once again, immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him. 

Once again, something was very compelling about this stranger.   Peter and Andrew basically were just leaving a subsistence career with no bigger investment than a couple of nets.  But James and John were leaving a boat and their father, Zebedee for this guy who just came out of nowhere.   Matthew does not record Zebedee’s reaction to this. 

So these four professional fishermen became the amateurs and rookies. "Catching people," that’s how Jesus described their new vocation. They had no training for this new line of work.

Yet it is such people that are chosen by God to spread the Good News.   People like Isaiah, minding his own business that day in the temple, not looking for a vision, but finding one.   People like Paul, out to persecute Christians, but becoming the most persuasive Christian of all. People like Peter and James and John, one day catching fish, the next day, netting people.  People like you and like me.  We are called to spread our nets in the broad daylight and bring in the catch of the hurting and lost.  We are called to bring people on board the boat.

One of the greatest movie lines of all times comes from the classic, “Jaws.”  When the three main characters are hunting the killer shark on a small boat, Sheriff Brody played by the great Roy Schneider sees the shark for the first time and we the audience see the shark for the first time.   Sheriff Brody, the amateur goes to the two shark experts and says, the great line, “You're gonna need a bigger boat.”   The shark is actually bigger than the boat that is being used to hunt the shark.  That line has passed into cultural history, for any problem that seems too big, someone, at some time has said “You're gonna need a bigger boat.”

Jesus called James and John, Peter and Andrew to leave fishing for fish behind, and to fish for people.  James and John left their father’s fishing boat for a bigger boat, to become a bigger boat, a boat that catches people.  These professional fishermen stop mending nets and become the nets, nets and boats that catch people.  

And still it continues to this day.  Our job still is to go out and start catching people.   Our job is to be the bigger, most welcoming boat.  Not to be the biggest congregation, but the most inclusive, the most loving.  Our job is to cast the net of God’s love and draw people in.

A fisherman walked past a game warden with a line of fish over his back.  The game warden said, "Great looking fish.  Where'd you get them?"  The fisherman said, "Come with me, and I'll show you."  He took the game warden out in his boat, took out a stick of dynamite, lit it, and threw it in the water.  After a big shuddering blast, hundreds of fish came to the surface.  The game warden said, "That's the most illegal way I ever saw of catching fish, and you're coming in with me."  The fisherman took out another stick of dynamite, lit it, handed it to the game warden, and said, "Ya gonna talk or ya gonna fish?"

That’s the question we have to answer every day.  "Ya gonna talk or ya gonna fish?" 

Amen.  

"Jesus is Baptized"

Sermon preached at Benson Presbyterian Church,

January 12, 2014, Baptism of the Lord.

Isaiah 42:1-9

Matthew 3:13-17

I wonder how many of you here actually remember your own baptism?  I don’t remember my own baptism.   My family is very fond of telling me how the sound of me sucking on my pacifier could be heard in the back of the church, but in the words of Winston Churchill speaking of the circumstances of his birth, “While I was present for the occasion, I have no memory of it.”

As a pastor, most of the baptisms that I have performed have been of infants, who of course, while they were present, have no memory of the occasion.  I have baptized some adults and older children, but not anywhere near as many babies and toddlers.

My mother was raised as a Baptist, so she was baptized by immersion when she was about 12 years old.   She claimed that she had a reputation as a bit of a trouble maker (imagine that!) and that she believed that the preacher held her underneath the water just a little bit longer than he needed to.   She also claimed that’s why she never learned to swim.

The most famous baptism of this past year would have to be that of Prince George, Queen Elizabeth II’s great-grandson and future King of England.  As is the tradition in the royal family, George was baptized with water from the River Jordan.  A seminary buddy of mine observed on Facebook that she has seen the River Jordan and that she hoped they boiled that water before they used it to baptized the baby!

The reason that Jordan River water is used for royal baptism is because of the story we heard from Matthew’s gospel today.  It is the story of Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist in that very same River Jordan. 

The River Jordan was and is a significant source of water in the region.  Like so many things in the Middle East, there is conflict between Israel, Jordan and Syria about the use and pollution of Jordan River waters. 

Friends of the Earth has named the River Jordan as one of the world’s 100 most endangered ecological sites because of pollution and over use.

In the Hebrew Bible, the people of Israel completed the Exodus from Egypt by crossing the Jordan.   The waters of the river were parted by the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant into the river and the people crossed the river on dry land.  The prophets Elijah and Elisha also both made miraculous crossings of the river, parting the waters and walking on dry land.

So the Jordan was important theologically and historically, but it was also important as a source of water for everyday use and agricultural purposes.   It was both historical and mundane like so many things that surround us.  

It was into the Jordan River valley that John the Baptist came, preaching baptism for the repentance of sins.   John came straight out of the wilderness and he was a character to put it mildly.  Matthew tells us that his garment was camel hair and it was not the dignified camel hair coat I remember my dad having.   It was a dead camel’s skin, probably one that John found in the wilderness.  It probably didn’t’ smell too good.  John ate locusts, that’s right, bugs and wild honey.   

But this strange looking man had a message that appealed far and wide, people from Jerusalem and all of Judea came to hear John preach and to be baptized by him.

And amid the people who came to be baptized was Jesus.  John balked when he saw Jesus come to him, because John recognized Jesus for who he really was.  

“I should come to you for baptism!” John exclaims.   But Jesus says, “Let it be so now, for it is proper to fill all righteousness.” So John consents and baptizes Jesus.  

And when Jesus is baptized, the Spirit of God descended like a dove and came down on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

What does all that mean?

A long time ago I learned that the reason that as Protestants our two sacraments are baptism and communion because they are both something that Jesus did and told his disciples to do.  Jesus doesn't baptize anyone in the Gospels, but he tells his disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel to go into all the world, to tell the Good News and make new disciples and to baptize them.  That’s why we baptize infants and new believers, because Jesus said to.  It’s how we welcome new believers to the family.

And baptism is something we share with Jesus.   It’s something we have in common with Jesus.  Jesus said, it was proper for him to be baptized by John.   Jesus is baptized by John because he is sharing in what we will experience.  When we are baptized, we share an experience with Jesus, right down to God claiming us as a beloved child with whom God is well pleased.  In fact, that is the point of every baptism, whether it is with the waters of the Jordan in a royal palace or in a Presbyterian church with plain old Omaha tap water from the Missouri.  God has claimed us no less than God has claimed Jesus.   Baptism is the sign and seal of the claim.

Jesus’ true identity is revealed at the moment of baptism, his identity as God’s child.  Our true identity is celebrated at the moment of baptism, our true identity as God’s child.

And that’s the trick, isn't it?  We have to remember, remember every day, that we are God’s beloved child.   We need to remind ourselves every day, that God is pleased in who God created in us.  We have to live our lives every day to claim our true identity, God’s beloved child.  We don’t see a dove descending every day, but we can choose, every day, to celebrate that identity, to live as God’s child, laying aside the hate and sin and scorn and to remember that everyone we meet is also God’s good creation and to help them to find their true identity, too.

Amen.

Christmas 2

January 5, 2014, Benson Presbyterian Church

Jeremiah 31:7-14

John 1:1-18

On December 23, I happened to see a piece by Rachel Maddow about the year 1968.   For those of you not old enough to remember, 1968 was a year of great upheaval and tragedy.  It was the year of the assassinations of both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and of Senator Robert Kennedy.  It was a year of riots and protests and war and violence, not only in our country, but in many countries around the world.  But, as Maddow pointed out, the year 1968 ended with an amazing experience that the whole world shared.   

On Christmas Eve of 1968, in preparation for an eventual landing on the moon the next year, the Apollo 8 mission circled the moon.  It was the first time that human beings looked back on earth, from the point of view of a different world.   And instead of any other message that the Apollo 8 astronauts could have sent back from their orbit of the moon, looking back on the moon, this is the message they read to the whole of the human race, listening on radio or watching on television.  “We are now approaching lunar sunrise, and for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo 8 has a message that we would like to send to you.

'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.'"

"And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."

"'And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.

And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.'

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas – and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth."

When the Apollo 8 astronauts returned to earth and their film was developed, all of us on earth, saw the good earth that they saw from lunar orbit.  A particular color photo, called “Earthrise” of this beautiful world, blue and wonderful and fragile, showed all of us for the first time where we really lived.   And the message of the astronauts was clear, in a new way, the message of the first chapter of Genesis was clear, this good earth, this beautiful and fragile and powerful place is the gift of a Good Creator, given into our hands, to cherish or to destroy.

This passage we heard this morning from John’s Gospel, called the prologue by Biblical scholars, goes back, way back beyond Bethlehem, beyond Nazareth to the dawn of creation, to the beginning of all things.

In the beginning, John quotes from Genesis, but then he hits a variation, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  John pulls back the curtain and shows us the whole sweep of salvation’s history from creation to the arrival of Jesus in the world.   John shows us God’s gift of salvation, given as a human being, fragile and powerful and precious.  God’s gift of salvation is given into our hands, to cherish or to destroy.

John’s Gospel is not a chronological life of Jesus.  John’s portrayal of Jesus is rich with symbolism and theological discourse and this passage we heard this morning is a prime example of that.  In this short passage, we see the entirety of John’s story of Jesus.

I think one of the things that many Christians find so frustrating about the stories of Jesus is the dearth of information about his early life.  In our twentieth first century context, we want to know how someone is shaped by their upbringing.  “The child is father to the man,” wrote William Wordsworth.  

Yes we have those very charming and very different stories about his birth from Matthew and Luke.  And there is that one incident from Luke about Jesus when he was twelve and was separated from Mary and Joseph in Jerusalem, but really, we don’t know what kind of little boy he was from the Bible, at least.

There are childhood accounts in the Gospel of Peter, one of the later Gospels that didn’t make it into the Bible and frankly, the little boy in those accounts sounds like someone who needs a time out, if not a swat on the bottom.  You can see why this book never made it into the Bible with this bratty Jesus.

Anne Rice, who is best known for her books about vampires, wrote a very interesting novel about the childhood of Jesus, “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt”.  While Rice approaches this book from ideas about Biblical scholarship that I find faulty and while she includes a lot of Catholic traditional teaching that has no basis in the Bible in her novel, the basic idea of the book is one that I find fascinating.  What did Jesus know and when did he know it?

In Rice’s book, Mary and Joseph know about Jesus special nature and destiny, but they try to raise their son as a normal little boy.  For the most part they succeed, but the child Jesus, like any child, is curious about who he is.  He realizes that Joseph is not his father, but he can’t quite figure out what the big secret is about him.

Finally Rice’s Jesus comes to a stunning realization about himself and the nature of the world.  Everything that is born must die.  He realizes that he was specifically born to die, that his special destiny is to lay down his life.

Looking at Jesus’ early life is not even a question for the author of John’s Gospel.  It was not a part of his big picture.  But, he would have agreed with Anne Rice’s conclusion; that Jesus was born to die.

During the Advent and Christmas seasons many churches hold a Service of Lessons and Carols, which has its origins in Cambridge University in England.  In 1918, a young chaplain at the Kings College, Cambridge, had just received that post after seeing the horrors of the First World War.  He wanted to make worship a more meaningful experience and spent his life updating and enriching the worship of the Church of England.  Lessons and Carols became a tradition in Cambridge and spread widely to other churches throughout the world, especially after the BBC began broadcasting the service in the 1930’s.

That service is broadcast, live from Cambridge on Christmas Eve by the BBC and is usually carried by public radio stations.  One year, I was surprised that one of the carols the choir sang was an anthem that in the country is more associated with Holy week than Christmas, John Stainer’s “God So Loved the World.”  In fact, that anthem is part of a longer work by Stainer, “The Crucifixion.”   It is an anthem that I’ve sung many times.

The text of the anthem is a quotation from John’s Gospel, a few chapters hence from what we read today, perhaps one of the best known quotations from the Bible. “God so loved the world that he gave the only Son, that whosever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

I think whoever put the service in Cambridge together that year wanted to emphasize something that we tend to ignore at Christmas:  this child just born, was born to die.  It is something often mentioned in Christmas carols and we think of Christmas as being so joyous, we often ignore this truth.  This child is born to die.

John begins his story of Jesus with this truth: the Word became Flesh.  There is a fancy word for that, incarnation.  You may recognize the Latin word, carne that came into Spanish, carne literally meat.  God became meat, just like you, just like me.  God became one of us.  God in Jesus experienced everything, every emotion, every pain, every joy that ever one of us knows. 

The glory of God can be revealed in the little place and in the everyday event.  Sometimes we look for God in the large places, the loud things, storms, wars, earthquakes, thunderous proclamations from pulpits.    But because of the incarnation, because God became flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, any and every dimension of life becomes an arena of God's extraordinary saving activity.  In the most mundane circumstances, from a space capsule orbiting the moon to you and I gathered here this morning, ordinary people like you and like me become the material for the Kingdom of God, the glory of the saints, the salvation of the world.

Amen.

"Born in a Barn"

Christmas Eve Sermon, 2013.  New Life Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE

Isaiah 9:2-7

Luke 2:1-20

"Born in A Barn"

A question that I used to hear when I was a child, was, “were you born in a barn?”  This question was asked when one of my brothers or I left the door open after entering the house.  I never really understood the question.   As I child, I did not have a lot of experience about barns, growing up as I did on Florence Blvd.  But I did know what the adult asking the question meant. It meant get up and close the door, idiot. 

I looked up the phrase online recently and learned the ordinary explanation; that barns were left open so that cows could leave in the morning and come home at night.  

There is also a more historical explanation, that the phrase originally was, "were you born in Bardney?" Bardney a town in Lincolnshire, England was the site of an important monastery, Tupholme Abbey. When the king Saint Oswald was killed his followers tried to bring his bones into the abbey but the monks kept the doors shut.  Afterwards, because the monks had denied Oswald’s sainthood their penance was to keep their doors open, all the time.  Like a Bucky’s or a Kwik Shop. 

Then there is the ugly explanation.  One dictionary said “Often phrased as a question when used to characterize a person who is rude, or displays ignorance and stupidity.” Or as one commentator I looked at wrote, “It means "corn fed and backseat bred."

After weeks of preparations, we’ve arrived.  Millions and millions of dollars spent, millions and millions of songs sung, millions and millions of cookies baked, plans made, gifts wrapped and here were are face to face with the day itself, the Eve of Christmas, the day we pause to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the World, born in a barn.

You and I could think of much better places for the savior of the world to be born.  In a palace, in a nice clean hospital, in a nice clean modest home for that matter!  But according to Luke, great powers had spoken and poor folk like Mary and Joseph had to make do where they could, even sleeping in a stable, their little son, born in a barn, corn fed, using a manger for a crib. 

 

We do well to remember that this night there are poor folk around the world displaced from their home.   In Syria alone, seven million have been displaced by war.  All over this world and all over this country, men and women and their children are sleeping in make do places, shelters, too small apartments and homes with relatives and friends or much worse places. 

But this is Christmas friends; God is born in a barn.  Beyond all the trappings and decorations, the gifts, the traditions, the music, that is what Christmas is: God becomes one of us, in the least likely place in the world, in a backwards town in the middle of nowhere; God is born one of us. God does not just arrive in our midst as a conqueror with an army; God is born to a simple carpenter and his young wife. In a barn.  In a housing project.  In a shelter.  In a transient hotel.

Born in a barn.   Just as dirty and disgusting, just as precious, just as needy and fragile and noisy, as any human baby ever born.  No more or less beautiful than any child in a young mother’s arms.  God Almighty, born for us.  Born as one of us.  Emmanuel.  God is with us forever.  We are not alone.

Someone online joked this week, “What happens in Bethlehem doesn't stay in Bethlehem.”   The baby born in the barn, doesn’t stay in that tiny place, but is everywhere that people are hungry or cold or hated or unwanted or fearful with the promise of justice and liberation. That baby is everywhere that people are full and self-satisfied calling them to act with justice and kindness.  God is everywhere, because God is one of us, part of our DNA, our flesh and blood, our kin.   God is with us, forever.  We are not alone.

Amen.

All of Them Are Alive

Sermon preached at New Life Presbyterian Church, Omaha, Nebraska, November 10, 2013.  

Scripture is Job 19:23-27a, Luke 20:27-38

This sermon shows some distinct influence of my recent reading of "Zealot:  The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth" by Reza Aslan.

My father was fond of saying that when some people get to heaven, God will have to put them in a cage.  Because they will believe they are the only ones there!

People believe a lot of different things about life after life, most of them not Biblical in the least! I have my own ideas about heaven, maybe a combination of a Starbucks and a really, really good Chinese restaurant?   Maybe not.


Well the Sadducees didn’t believe in heaven or resurrection at all.   The Sadducees were the real religious elite, the group that controlled the Temple.  The Temple was the one place that God could be worshiped, where sacrifices of animals could be offered.   The Sadducees were installed by the Roman authorities and the high priest came from their number.   They were the establishment to end all establishments.  


This story takes place after Jesus has entered Jerusalem.    The first thing Jesus did when he came to Jerusalem?  Do you know?  He went straight to the Temple and drove out all the money changers and all the people that were selling things in the Temple.   He broke open the cages and set free the sacrificial animals.  In other words, Jesus directly changes the Temple elite, the Sadducees, saying, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’ but you have made it a den of robbers!”  Luke tells us that, “Everyday he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him.”    So they tried to question him, tried to trip him up. 

And this story that the Sadducees tell Jesus, about a woman who marries seven brothers in succession is not an something that really happened, but the most ridiculous example they can make up to mock Jesus’ belief in the resurrection of the dead.  “Teacher, there was this woman and she married a man and he died, so according to the Law of Moses, she married his brother.  Now he also died and there were 5 other brothers and she married each one in succession, seven in all!  Seven husbands.  Now in the resurrection, whose wife will she be?"

It’s a good thing the Sadducees didn’t ask me this question, because my first response would have been, “What has she been feeding these guys?”   But Jesus is smarter than the Sadducees, smarter than me, fortunately.   He doesn’t fall into the trap to play their little intellectual games.

Are the Sadducees, suggesting a heavenly version of polyandry, when a woman has multiple, simultaneous husbands?  No.  They are mocking a belief they don’t share.    They didn’t believe that the resurrection of the dead existed. So they tried to mock a heavenly belief with an earthly problem.
They were trying to drag Jesus down with a problem, whose wife will she be?   
The Sadducees are making an assumption about heaven.  Every joke I’ve ever heard about heaven, makes the same assumption.  Every movie I’ve ever seen that depicts heaven makes the same assumption.  Most things that people like you and me believe about heaven makes the same assumption.

That assumption is that in heaven, we aren’t that different than we are now.  We will have the same problems, the same relationships, the same arguments.  “Whose wife will she be?”  Who will she belong to?”  “Who is better?  Methodists or Presbyterians?” 

Jesus is smarter than that.   Jesus refuses to make an earthly problem a heavenly problem.   Because in heaven, there are no problems!  Jesus says, “Those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.”

Jesus is not saying that we stop loving who we love on earth in heaven; he is saying that love is now perfect.   Instead of just loving the handful of people we love in our lifetime; we will love as God loves, because we will see each other as God sees us.

Jesus is teaching something really dangerous here.   In God’s eyes our worth is not determined by who we are fortunate to marry or who we are fortunate be.  Our worth is determined because we are children of God.  God is not some cosmic bean counter determining who is more worthy, who is more privileged; God is mercy and love beyond any words I can possibly give to the ideas of mercy and love.   Jesus knows this.   Jesus came so that we will know this.   Jesus is this.

The Sadducees caught up in the Temple structure, in the day to day operations of this elaborate place of worship, more richly decorated, more elaborate and detailed oriented and power structured than any church, any temple, any synagogue, any mosque in existence in the world today.  The Sadducees cooperated with the Roman authorities, kept the people in line and were allowed to continue this elaborate system of worship as long as the Romans got their cut.   Sounds like the tax collectors we were talking about just last week, doesn’t it?  Except that the Sadducees got to keep their status in the community.  Jesus, Jesus was a threat, to the Sadducees and to their Roman overlords.  They asked this question to mock this threat.

Jesus is still a threat to the powers of this world.  Jesus is still a threat to those who would keep some people down so others may thrive.   Jesus is still a threat to those who would use others for their own greed.  Jesus is still a threat to you and to me when we believe that our own faith gives us a privilege makes us more beloved of God than God’s other children.   To God, all of us are God’s children.  To God, all of us are alive.

We too, must be a threat to the world.  Not to threaten the world with violence, but with love.  Not to threaten the world with violence and hate, but to threaten the world with what God in Jesus offers the world:  love, understanding, mercy.

Amen.