"Called Together" - January 15, 2012

Texts: I Samuel 3:1-10, John 1:43-51

Samuel was young.  He was just a boy.  And Samuel did not have what you would think of as the typical living arrangement.  Samuel did not live at home with his parents, he did not live with his grandparents, he didn’t live with any family at all.  Samuel lived in the temple with the old priest Eli.

The way this came about was that Samuel’s mother, Hannah, was well advanced in years and still childless.  She had prayed and prayed for a child when God heard her prayers and gave her a son whom she named Samuel and dedicated to God.  So when Samuel was old enough, he went to live at the temple with the priest Eli, learning to work in God’s service at the temple.  It doesn’t sound like that fun of a boarding school, but that’s the way it happened.

One night, lying in bed, Samuel hears a voice.  “Samuel, Samuel,” the voice calls out.  Samuel goes to see what the old priest needs.  But Eli has not called Samuel.  He tells him to go back to bed.  It must have just been a dream or something.  But Samuel hears the voice again, and again tells Eli, “Here I am.”  But again, Eli says that he has not called Samuel.  So Samuel is sent back to bed.

And then it happens yet a third time.  And this time, Eli perceives that God must be the one speaking to Samuel.  He tells Samuel that when he hears the voice again, to say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”  Samuel does as Eli instructs, and God speaks to him.  This is the call of the prophet Samuel.

To be real honest, it’s kind of a scary story.  As a child, I would hear this story in Sunday School and feel bad for Samuel, this little boy living what sounded like a sad and lonely life in this cold, dark temple where his mother visited him once a year, to bring him a new coat.  There were pictures of his mother bringing him a coat and Samuel was smiling and looked happy, which didn’t seem quite right to me.  Even though it involved a little boy, it wasn’t really that cheery a story for a kid to hear.

As I have grown older, I have come to appreciate it as a great story, because it turns the tables on what we would expect.  To whom would God speak – a veteran priest, or a little kid?  Samuel wasn’t even a Levite, which meant that he was not eligible to ever become a priest.  Yet God spoke to Samuel.

Although, when we read the whole story, God was really speaking to both of them, and both needed the other in order to hear God.  On his own, Samuel did not comprehend that God was speaking to him.  But the message God had for Samuel was a message of judgment on Eli’s family.  His sons were corrupt and blasphemous and made a mockery of the priesthood, and Eli had sat idly by and let it continue – he was complicit in it.  God had a message for Eli, but he needed Samuel to hear it.  God had a message for Samuel, but Samuel needed Eli to hear it.  Both Eli and Samuel needed the other.

That is often the way it works.  We can have a hard time hearing God all by ourselves – we need each other.  Young Samuel needed the experience and maturity of Eli, who perceived that God was speaking.  But somehow, Eli wasn’t hearing God himself - maybe he wasn’t really listening – and it was the boy Samuel who gave him God’s message.

No matter what our age, we all need some help in hearing and responding to God and we all need support and encouragement in living our faith.  Our New Testament scripture is about Nathaniel, one of the lesser-known disciples.  Nathaniel is only mentioned in John’s gospel. 

Jesus has gone to Galilee and found Philip, and asks Philip to follow him.  For Philip, following Jesus means inviting his friends to follow too, and so he goes to his friend Nathaniel and says, “Come and see the one the prophets spoke of – Jesus of Nazareth.”

And Nathaniel says, “Are you kidding me?  Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Nazareth was not exactly the cultural center of the universe.  It was not known for producing important leaders, and certainly not messiahs.  Imagine somebody saying, “Come and see the long-awaited messiah, Bernie from McCallsburg,” and you get the idea.  Yet Nathaniel learns that he has indeed come face to face with the kingdom of God in Jesus of Nazareth.  And it’s because of Philip.  Without Philip, Nathaniel doesn’t come to Jesus.

Most of us need help hearing God’s call.  Most of us need someone walking alongside us as we follow Jesus.

John Robert McFarland was an acquaintance, pastor of the Methodist church in a neighboring town when I was a pastor in Illinois.  Sometime after losing track of him, I read a wonderful article that he wrote.

John Robert grew up very poor, on a farm in southern Indiana.  He had an older sister named Mary Virginia – everybody called her Mary V.  She got a job in the city 30 miles away.  Mary V. had been away from home a couple of months when the phone rang—it was 2 long and 2 short rings on the party line – and a voice said that Mary V. was in Deaconess Hospital, her kidneys were failing, there was fluid building up in her lungs, and she had from 3 hours to 3 days to live.  The family did not have a car, and so Uncle Harvey drove up from Evansville and took the family to the hospital--all except for John Robert.  Somebody had to stay to feed the animals, milk the cow, and take care of farm, and that somebody was him.

Secretly, he was glad.  He wouldn’t have to watch his sister die.  John Robert sat on the stool to milk the cow and he prayed.  If only God would save his sister, he’d work out a deal.  He didn’t really have any bargaining chips; all he could offer was himself.  He knew that God wanted people to be preachers.  If God would save her, then he would become a minister.  He would preach.

Lo and behold, word came that Mary V. was getting better.  It was totally unexpected.  And she recovered completely.  The doctors didn’t know what had happened – they had only given her painkillers, as there was nothing else they could do.  Yet the illness disappeared as mysteriously as it came.  And the doctors used that word – they said it was a miracle.

John Robert felt like he had been tricked!  Mary V. wasn’t supposed to live.  He had never thought he would actually have to keep his end of the bargain.

He didn’t want to ask the preacher about it, so he asked Aunt Nora.  She was the only real theologian he knew – she played the organ at Francisco, 6 miles away.  John Robert explained to her why Mary V. got well.  And he asked her questions.  “Did God make Mary V. sick to get me to go into the ministry?”  Yes.  “Would he have let her die if I hadn’t said I’d be a preacher?”  Yes.  “Will he come back and get her if I don’t?”  Yes.

John Robert said that he didn’t really believe Aunt Nora - even a 14 year old farm boy knew better than that.  But somehow in all of this, he was called.

We don’t have the advantage of seeing Jesus face to face as Nathaniel did, and not many of us are called in such dramatic a fashion as Samuel or John Robert McFarland.  But something they all shared was that it took another person to help them sort out the call.  Philip invites Nathaniel with this wonderful invitation.  “Come and see,” he says.  Philip doesn’t have it all figured out, he isn’t condescending, he doesn’t tell Nathaniel, “This is the way it is.”  He simply tells him about Jesus, Nathaniel expresses skepticism – Jesus is from Nazareth, after all – and Philip says, “Come and see.”  Decide for yourself.  Nathaniel does – Philip is his friend, after all - and as he learns about Jesus, Nathaniel follows.

Old Eli helps Samuel to understand that God is speaking to him.  He points Samuel towards God and helps him receive the call.  And even if Aunt Nora’s theology was suspect, she was there for John Robert McFarland.  That’s the way it is for most of us.  We aren’t called all by ourselves, we are called together. 

In the church, we need one another and we depend upon one another.  The church is to be a family, a community of faith, and we are to welcome others as brothers and sisters and love one another and care for one another as a family.

We are called together – that is, we discern God’s call to us with the help of others, as part of a community.  Together, we hear our call.  But we are also called together in the sense that we are called to be together.  We are called to community.  We are called to care for all of humanity.

Today is Martin Luther King’s birthday.  If you ask somebody who Martin Luther King, Jr. was, or if you go by what you might hear or read in the media, you will probably be told that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a great civil rights leader and social activist.  And this is certainly true.  But at the heart of it, Martin Luther King was a Christian pastor.  We take pride in the fact that he was a Baptist pastor, and in fact was an American Baptist pastor. 

King popularized the term “Beloved Community.”  As he fought for justice, the goal was not to defeat his opponents, not to bring down the oppressors, but to bring about reconciliation.  King loved and prayed for his enemies.

The church is certainly called to be a Beloved Community, where there is peace and welcome and reconciliation are freely offered, but King extended that idea to all of humanity.  Our concern is not simply to be for ourselves and those close to us.  King understood that we are indeed “called together.”

King wrote an essay called “The World House.”  He wrote,

“Some years ago a famous novelist died. Among his papers was found a list of suggested plots for future stories, the most prominently underscored being this one: “A widely separated family inherits a house in which they have to live together.” This is the great new problem of [humankind]. We have inherited a large house, a great ‘world house’ in which we have to live together—black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu—a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace. . . All inhabitants of the globe are now neighbors.”

Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people share in the wealth and goodness of the earth.  In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because human decency will not allow it. Racism, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood.  In the Beloved Community, disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power.  Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.

What King said about those considered his enemies was very powerful.  As early as 1956, Dr. King spoke of The Beloved Community as the end goal of nonviolent action.  At a victory rally following the announcement of Supreme Court decision desegregating the seats on Montgomery’s buses he said, “The end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community.  It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opposers into friends.  It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age.  It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of [people].”  King actually followed Jesus’ admonition to “pray for your enemies.”

Eli and Samuel needed one another.  Nathaniel needed Philip, and there were no doubt times when Philip needed Nathaniel.  In the church, we all need one another.  We are a family.  And Dr. King would tell us that we are part of a World House, a Beloved Community, and our goal is to bring even enemies into the Beloved Community.

Peter Arnett was a CNN commentator and reporter.  He tells of a time he was in Israel, in a small town on the West Bank, when a bomb exploded.  Bloodied people were everywhere.  A man came running up to Peter holding a little girl in his arms.  He pleaded with Peter to take her to a hospital.  As a member of the press he would be able to get through the security cordon that had been thrown around the explosion scene.  Peter, the man and the girl jumped into his car and rushed to the hospital.  The whole time the man was pleading with him to hurry, to go faster, heartbroken at the thought the little girl might die.

Sadly the little girl’s injuries were too great and she died on the operating table. When the doctor came out to give them the news the man collapsed in tears.  Peter Arnett was lost for words.  “I don't know what to say.  I can’t imagine what you must be going through.  I’ve never lost a child.”

But the man said, “Oh, no! That girl was not my daughter.  I’m an Israeli settler.  She was a Palestinian.  But there comes a time when each of us must realize that every child, regardless of that child’s background, is a daughter or a son.  There must come a time when we realize that we are all family.” (told by Tony Campolo in Let Me Tell You A Story.)

We are all part of a great family.  We are called together.  Called to follow together, called to serve together, called to live together.  May it be so.  Amen. 

"The River of Life" - January 8, 2011

Text: Mark 1:4-11

Last semester I received an email from a student who was taking a religion course. The class had been assigned to visit a place of worship in a tradition different from their own. They were to interview a religious leader, and especially pay attention to the sacred space. What was important about the building, about the structure, about the symbols, why had the group chosen this location, why had they chosen to gather in this place?

It is not unusual to be contacted by a student who wants to talk to me about a religion class assignment. Students call me because our church is nearby or because they want to investigate this strange group called Baptists. Well, we made arrangements and at the appointed time this young man showed up. His tradition was Roman Catholic, and he asked some good questions. I enjoyed visiting with him and we looked around the building, especially the sanctuary. I talked a little about the New England meetinghouse style of our church building. The New England Puritans believed in a simple, unadorned worship space that was free of worldly distractions so that people might worship God. They didn’t even have crosses, they certainly wouldn’t have banners, and would have been mortified at the thought of pew cushions. (I didn’t mention to this student that the Puritans adopted this very plain style because they rejected anything that smacked of Catholicism).

We don’t have a lot of ornamentation in our sanctuary, no fancy stained windows, but we do have something that a person looking at the architecture of sacred spaces might be interested in: I showed him the baptistry and talked about our tradition of baptism. We have the curtains open on the baptistry today as we think about baptism – Jesus’ baptism as well as our own.

Some of you were baptized here in this church. For some, that may have been 50 or more years ago. Some of you have been here early on a Sunday morning, filling the baptistry with water. Some of you have been present to assist baptismal candidates get in and out of the water. But I suspect that a good number of you have never seen the inside of our baptistry.

Ours is actually a huge baptismal pool. The architect made it much larger than it would need to be – we could have big old hot tub parties in there.

All things considered, it really is a strange thing we do, baptism.

Peter Gomes was much-loved chaplain at the Memorial Church at Harvard who died last year. He recalled that a number of years ago, an undergraduate couple approached him asking to be baptized. He talked it over with them, they discussed what baptism meant and he said yes, he would be glad to baptize them. They wanted to be baptized by immersion, which was great, he was a Baptist - an American Baptist, at that - but they did not have a baptistry at the Memorial Church, they had a baptismal font, and it just would not do. So they had to find a place to hold the baptism.

Walden Pond was a special place for this couple, so it was decided to have the baptism there. Unfortunately, it was October, but they found a decent day and headed off to Walden Pond. Gomes said that he went into the water, the two young people followed, there were words of testimony shared, and then Gomes wrote:

I performed the deed as I was taught: down and up, down and up. As soon as I brought the woman up from the water, she being the second, there was a great burst of applause. We were not alone. We looked and found that the shore was full of people who had come out of the woods and were absolutely fascinated at this bizarre activity going on at Walden Pond. Many strange things have been seen at Walden Pond but nothing, I’m sure, quite as strange as this, and clearly some word of explanation was in order lest they call the police. I explained that this was what Christians did when they wanted to make a profession of their faith, and I quoted a little scripture. One of the fellows on the shore asked, “Do you do a lot of this sort of thing?” I replied, “Not as much as I would like, but yes, I do.” He and his friends on the shore scratched their heads and said, “Well, it looks like fun,” and off they went into the woods.

It is a bit more domesticated perhaps with indoor plumbing, but wherever you do it, at Walden Pond or at First Baptist, it is still a bit odd. As a testimony to our faith in Jesus, we put on a robe and get dunked in a pool of water while friends and family watch in anticipation. Someone who wasn’t familiar with the idea, who had no background whatsoever in Christian faith and walked in on a Sunday morning and observed a baptism, would surely scratch their heads like those onlookers at Walden Pond and ask, “What is up with that?”

Well, that is a good question. Since we are called Baptists, the rite of baptism probably deserves some thought. Why do we baptize, and what does it mean? A good place to begin is Jesus’ baptism. It is reported in all four gospels. Only Matthew and Luke tell about Jesus’ birth, but all of the gospels tell about his baptism. We read this morning from Mark, who actually begins his gospel with John the Baptist baptizing Jesus. We read this same scripture back in Advent. Mark identifies John the Baptist as the prophet of whom Isaiah spoke when he said, “A voice cries in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.”

We read that people came from all over the countryside as well as Jerusalem, confessing their sins and being baptized. And then, Jesus himself comes to John for baptism. In Mark’s gospel, the very first thing we know about Jesus is that along with scores of other folks, he goes to John the Baptist in order to be baptized.

Mark makes a point to say how many people were coming to John, confessing their sins. The place was just teeming with sinners – flawed, faulty, sorry, guilty human beings who were hoping that John could help them clean their lives up. These were people who were trying to come clean – with others, with themselves, with God. People who had no illusions about their own innocence.

And them Jesus comes along. He just jumps right in line with everybody else, with all of the sinful humanity to be found there.

Why did Jesus come to John for baptism? While Mark does not include any stories about Jesus’ birth, there is a sense in which he begins his gospel just like Matthew and Luke. Jesus comes and identifies fully with us, in all of our humanity. Matthew and Luke tell of Jesus being born as a baby, born in poverty, born in troubled times to parents of little means or power or reputation. Mark begins with Jesus’ baptism, with Jesus identifying with us in all of our need and brokenness and sin.

If he had listened to his PR people, Jesus might have just stood on the shore and offered words of encouragement. He might not have gotten into the water at all, except perhaps to tap John on the shoulder and say, “Why don’t you take a break? I’ll take it from here.”

Even if he were completely innocent, without sin, submitting to this baptism for sinners could damage a person’s reputation. Who would believe he was their only because he cared about these people and did not want to separate himself from them?

We learn a couple of things from Jesus’ baptism. One of them is that Jesus identifies completely with us.

And then, as Jesus comes out of the water, the heavens open up, the Spirit descends like a dove, and a voice from heaven says, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

What is God pleased with? Jesus has not done anything, not yet. He has simply been baptized, and God says, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Baptism has to do with identity – it’s not about what we do but who we are. Jesus’ identity as God’s beloved son is affirmed.

John preached a baptism of repentance, and that word repentance, metanoia in Greek, means a turning around, a change of direction. One could argue that Jesus’ baptism was a change of direction for him. This is the inauguration of his life work. He is turning toward the ministry ahead, turning toward his calling. Clearly, something very significant took place for Jesus.

John’s baptism was not the same as Christian baptism, but it certainly anticipates it. As practiced in the New Testament, we believe that baptism is for those who have accepted God’s gift of grace and chosen for themselves to follow Christ. As Paul describes it, it is a symbol of dying to sin and rising to new life in Christ. Many of you grew up in other traditions – some of you were baptized as infants and then at a later point professed your own faith in Christ. We honor those who have had that experience of faith even while we practice baptism of believers.

Jesus’ baptism points out for us a dimension of faith that we need to take seriously, and that is, authentic, vital faith is both individual and communal. It is deeply personal, but it also happens in community and involves the community.

At his baptism, Jesus demonstrates a very personal and intimate relationship with God. He decides for himself that this is the path he will follow. As he rises from the water, there is a voice from heaven: “this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” This is a deeply personal experience.

And yet, it happens in community, it happens in the midst of all of those who have come to be baptized by John, it happens as Jesus identifies with the wider community – with us.

Faith is a deeply personal for all of us. We cannot scoot by on our parents’ faith or our church’s faith or anyone else’s faith: it has to be our own. And God says to each of us, even as God said to Jesus, “You are my beloved child.” It is personal, and yet it happens in community. We are baptized into the Church, into a community of faith made of those flawed, imperfect, yes, sinful people who are seeking together to follow Jesus.

We don’t do private baptisms because the community is an essential part of what happens. Jesus doesn’t go to John after business hours, he goes like everyone else; he goes with the crowds to the Jordan River where John is doing his thing. Sometimes we can get into trouble with our emphasis on individual faith and wind up with a kind of “just me and Jesus” spirituality. We have to own our faith for ourselves, it is true; but we come to faith and grow in faith and live out our faith in community with others.

The Church is a community where we encourage one another and challenge one another and support one another and teach one another, a place where we remind each other who we are – God’s beloved children.

Now, the question might be raised as to whether baptism is still a meaningful ritual. I mean, ritual and tradition is not what it used to be. And we don’t believe that baptism is magic – it doesn’t transform a person just by virtue of getting wet. The faith that is present and the commitment that is made and more than that, God’s love and grace toward us are what really matters. We don’t believe that baptism saves us, not in a transactional sense. And so, why even bother with it?

Well, it might be argued that in a world where tradition and ritual and symbol have been kind of devalued, baptism is even more important – not in a legalistic sense but in a very real sense. There is something powerful about entering the waters of baptism as people have for hundreds of years, over the centuries, back to Jesus himself. There is something about having the waters wash over you and experiencing this very tangible sign that we have been made clean, that we have risen to new life. Ritual, symbol, tradition can be very powerful.

The story is told of a Christian community in the old Russian Gulag. These men were unable to have any outward show of their faith. To do so would mean dire consequences. And yet this community celebrated Communion each week during the Sunday meal at the mess hall.

They would silently lift and break their bread together and then eat it. And then they would silently lift their cups of water together and drink it. By doing this, they were strengthened and renewed to face another week in the company of guards who never knew that communion had been celebrated - without clergy or words, but with powerful symbols and a powerful simplicity of faith. These men knew the power and the importance of Christian community and the power and importance of ritual and tradition.

We observe two ordinances, or sacraments, in our church: baptism and communion. Both tell us that we are a part of God’s family. Each connects us to God and to one another and to all who have shared at God’s Table or entered the waters of baptism. And those words that Jesus heard at his baptism are words for each of us: “You are my beloved child.” Amen.

"Joseph's Faith" - December 18, 2011

Text: Matthew 1:18-25

A couple of hours before a church’s annual Christmas Pageant was to begin, a worried mother called the director and reported that her little son, who was to play the part of Joseph that night, was sick with the flu, and could not be there for the performance.

Well, this caused dilemma.  All of the kids had their own special costumes, they had learned their own parts, and it would be hard at this late hour to switch one of the wise men to Joseph.  It was definitely too late to find another Joseph; they had scrounged for all the kids they could find as it was.  It was almost showtime, and the show had to go on.  If you were the director, what would you do?

I don’t know what kind of solution comes to your mind, but the director of this pageant decided to just write Joseph out of the script altogether.  And the plan worked.  The amazing thing was, only a few of those who attended the play realized that the cast was incomplete.  Most of the people in the audience didn’t even miss poor Joseph.

We shouldn’t be surprised.  Joseph doesn’t seem to be all that important to the Christmas event.  Of course, we couldn’t have Christmas without Mary or Baby Jesus.  Without the angels announcing Jesus’ birth to the shepherds in their fields, the story wouldn’t be the same.  The wise men from the East add an exotic touch to the story; majestic visitors making a long journey, bearing costly gifts, and outsmarting King Herod add to the plot.

Our carols tell the story of Christmas.  We sing about Mary.  We sing about shepherds and angels and a Holy Night.  We sing about Wise Men.  We sing about prophecies of a coming savior.  Of course, we sing about Baby Jesus.   

But we don’t sing about Joseph.  To listen to our carols, Joseph is only a very marginal character in the Christmas story.  Only one carol in our hymnal refers to Joseph, and even then, he is barely mentioned.  “Angels We Have Heard on High” includes these words in the fourth verse: “Joseph, Mary, lend your aid, with us sing the savior’s birth.”  If we were to go strictly by our carols, Joseph’s only role in the Christmas story is to help us give praise to Jesus.

If our carols don’t pay much attention to Joseph, maybe it’s because the scriptures do not have a lot to say about Joseph.   “Joseph” appears 36 times in the New Testament, which seems like a lot until you investigate and find that in the majority of cases, it’s not this Joseph.  You’ve got the Old Testament Joseph who is referenced in the New Testament, then there is Joseph of Arimathea, who claimed Jesus’ body and had him buried, and there is Joseph, a brother of Jesus, who is mentioned a few times.  A couple of other Josephs show up in genealogies.   Our Joseph doesn’t rate that much mention, just a few times in Matthew and in Luke.  He is mentioned only once by John and not at all by Mark.  Paul, who wrote about half the New Testament, never mentions him. 

The baby Jesus is front and center in the Christmas story, but a lot of others have solo parts.  Mary, definitely, who literally sings a solo.  The angels, who announce the birth to Mary and to Joseph and then to the shepherds, have solo parts, as do the shepherds, who go to see the baby.  The wise men have solo parts, or at least a nice trio.  But Joseph never utters a word.  In the scriptures, in the whole New Testament, Joseph does not have a single thing to say.  In fact, after Joseph and Mary take Jesus to the temple at age 12, Joseph is never again mentioned, leading most to assume that he died at a relatively early age. 

Joseph is not a soloist.  He is more of an accompanist.  And accompanists are rarely remembered. 

Ask a musician, “Who was the greatest saxophonist?” and you will get answers – maybe John Coltrane or Charlie Parker.  Ask an opera aficionado, “Who was the greatest soprano?” and there will be various opinions – maybe Maria Callas or Jessye Norman.  People might have different opinions about rock singers or jazz singers or trumpet players.  But ask, “Who was the greatest accompanist?” and you will get some blank looks.  Nobody remembers the accompanist.

Joseph is more like an accompanist.  He’s not the center of attention.  But it may be that precisely because he is not the center of attention, he is a good model for us.

It is hard for most of us to relate to Mary.  Mary seems such a tremendous example of faith.  She is depicted in music and paintings and sculpture and all kinds of art, and after all, Mary bore the savior of the world.  Mary seems way beyond us, and it can be hard to relate to many of the heroes and heroines of faith.

But Joseph seems more like us.  He doesn’t stand out.  He is a quiet, hard-working person.  He’s a carpenter.  He works with his hands, and he speaks not so much with his words but with his actions.

Joseph is betrothed to Mary, which in that day means that while they are not yet officially married, they are engaged, and the marriage can only be broken off through divorce.  They have not had marital relations, and he learns that she is pregnant.

What do you do?  Joseph is no doubt angry and embarrassed and hurt and feels betrayed.  The scripture says that “being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.”

Despite whatever pain he felt, Joseph did not want to hurt Mary.  His options were a public divorce, which would be humiliating for her, or he could divorce her privately and quietly.  As a righteous person, he opted to divorce her quietly.

We need to think about this word “righteous.”  As a righteous person, Joseph could not live with what Mary had done (or what he thought she had done).  This had caused irreparable harm to their relationship, and to his honor, which was an especially powerful consideration in that culture.  But righteousness is about more than being untainted by sin.  Righteousness also seems to include a measure of mercy.  Because he is a righteous man, he does not want to expose Mary to public humiliation.

A righteous person upholds what is right, but also has a concern for mercy.  There are so many angry voices we hear who would claim to be speaking out of righteousness but who seem to have no sense of mercy, no sense of shared humanity, no sense that we all fall short, who leave no room for grace.  But not Joseph.  For Joseph, righteousness includes acting with mercy and compassion.

We know what happened.  An angel appeared to Joseph in a dream, telling him that Mary’s child was of God and that he should take her as his wife.  Joseph does not say a word, but he listens and acts on this message from God.  Some find they are going to be a parent through a home pregnancy test, or at the doctor’s office.  Joseph gets the news in a dream. 

Getting the news that you will have a child fills a person with so many thoughts and emotions.  If you have been hoping for a child, there is joy and excitement, much anticipation.  But even when one is excited about the coming birth, there is still concern.  Immediately one’s mind goes into the planning mode – not just planning for the pregnancy and planning for the birth, but planning for this child’s life.  Particularly if it is one’s first child, you start thinking about things that you hadn’t given so much thought to before, things like child-proofing the house and life insurance and elementary schools and on and on.

Often, there is a certain amount of worry.  Worry over finances perhaps, concern for the mother’s and baby’s health, worry over what kind of world this child will be born into.  If it is your first child, there may be a kind of general anxiety over the enormity of what is taking place.  You are going to be a mother?  A father?  You are hit with a sense of responsibility.  While learning that one will be a parent may be joyful news, it can also be a sobering moment.

Think now of Joseph, who perhaps has some of these feelings, but how much more.  An angel of God spoke to him in a dream, but how is he to know that it was really God?  Maybe it was just a weird dream.  When the angel visited Mary, she breaks into joyous song.  When the angel visits Joseph, he sits straight up in bed and breaks into a cold sweat.

And yet, Joseph took Mary as his wife and raised Jesus as his own.  Jesus was to call for a new kind of righteousness, and before he was even born, Joseph demonstrated this righteousness.  It was righteousness that did not simply follow the letter of the law, it was righteousness that actually cost a person something, that required personal investment, personal sacrifice.  We often think of righteousness as impeccable behavior, as always doing what is right.  But Joseph shows a righteousness that is willing to suffer for and with others.

To divorce Mary quietly, as he had planned, would have demonstrated a certain kind of righteousness.  Going ahead and marrying this woman that he loved, based on the word of an angel that appeared to him in a dream, knowing that people were talking, enduring the comments on the street, facing the disapproval of family, facing shame and embarrassment and the disapproval of religious authorities – this was altogether another level of righteousness.  Because even if he did believe that God had spoken to him, who else would believe that?

Quiet Joseph, a hard-working carpenter who is a man of few words, nevertheless speaks volumes.  In a world where talk is easy, Joseph reminds us that actions matter the most.

It is hard to do the right thing when one has to pay a price for it, when one has to suffer for it.  It is hard to do the right thing when you are not 100% sure it is the right thing, and there are easier options out there.  And it is exceedingly difficult to do the right thing when everybody else thinks it is the wrong thing.

Joseph may come across as a relatively minor character in the Christmas story.  But in some ways he has the hardest part.  Mary knows that the child is of God.  Joseph can’t be so sure. 

Think of the other characters that we sing about in our carols.  Shepherds are visited by angels and go to Bethlehem to check it out.  If the report turns out to be wrong, no harm done.  The Wise Men go on a long journey to find the newborn king.  But if things don’t go as they expect, it’s still a nice road trip, and if you are a wise man you can learn a lot of things by visiting other cultures.  If they had decent accountants, they could even write it off on their taxes as an educational expense, and anyway these guys appear to be flush with cash.  For Joseph, there is a lot more riding on this. 

Joseph shows us that while the birth of Jesus brought joy and wonder and awe, it also provoked a crisis in what it means to be faithful, what it means to be righteous.  Joseph may have been the first to face this crisis, but throughout Jesus’ ministry, he caused people to rethink and reconsider things.  “Love your enemies.  Blessed are those who mourn.    Blessed are those who are persecuted.  It is better to give than to receive.”  And on and on.

We don’t sing about him so much, but Joseph is a good example for us.  Out of all the characters in the Christmas story, of the whole bunch, he may be the one we can best relate to.  Because most of us are not soloists.  Most of us are not big talkers.  Most of us are not flashy.  Most of us are pretty ordinary.  Yet in our ordinary lives, God speaks to us.

Joseph is more of an accompanist than a soloist, but you know, accompanists are very underrated.

Once in a while, we have a substitute accompanist who may be unfamiliar with the hymns.  If they play a fast-paced gospel song too slowly or rush through a majestic, stately hymn, it makes a big difference.  Or ask any soloist, and they will tell you how important it is to have a good accompanist.  An accompanist can hide a lot of faults and a good accompanist can help make the soloist really shine.

Joseph is not front and center.  But look at what he does.  He puts up with public humiliation and embarrassment.  He protects Mary and this baby.  After another dream, he and Mary take the baby and flee for their lives to Egypt, to a strange and unfamiliar land.  Then when it was safe, he brought them back and settled in Nazareth.

Joseph shows us what faith involves.  It is not simply following the right rules and procedures; it is following God’s way even when it is costly and even when we are not 100% certain.  It is being willing to suffer with others.  It is demonstrated more in our actions than in our words.

Quiet Joseph, often forgotten in the drama of Christmas, is a model of faith and righteousness for us all.  St. Francis once said, “Preach the gospel at all times; use words if necessary.”  Joseph did not seem to need the words.  Amen.

“Halfway Ready” - December 11, 2011

Text: Luke 1:39-56

For those of you keeping score, last Sunday we looked at John the Baptist, that rude, crude and socially unacceptable prophet who prepared the way for Jesus’ coming.  Mark saw John’s appearance in the wilderness as the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This week the story shifts to Mary.  And just as John’s story is a bit surprising when we really look at it, the same can be said for Mary.  We may like to romanticize Jesus‘ birth and make it a sweet story of a young mother and her child, but that is not exactly the way we read about it in the Bible.  There is a definite edge to it.

Mary is engaged but not yet married when she has this very strange encounter.  A messenger from God – an angel – tells her that she has found favor with God.  She will bear a child, a son, and this is the work of the Holy Spirit.  And this child will be God’s Son, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

Mary believes the angel.  She believes.  We’ve heard the story so many times it has lost it’s punch.  She believes, and this is no small thing.  She doesn’t see it as a figment of her imagination, she doesn’t think she is hallucinating, she doesn’t ignore it, she believes.  And then, almost unaccountably, bravely, Mary, who is perhaps fourteen years old, consents.  She says yes.  “Let it be with me, according to your word,” she says to the angel.

Mary says yes; she accepts God’s call for her.  But that doesn’t mean this will be a trouble-free calling.  She won’t be able to disguise her condition for long—she won’t be able to keep it from her family or from the community – or worse yet, from her fiancé Joseph.  What can she possibly say to him?  And how will she explain this to her own mother?  “Mom, it’s not what it looks like…”

Mary says Yes to God, and right away it causes her trouble.  She is pregnant and nor yet married, and that is a bad combination, actually worse in that culture than it is today.  She is worried, frightened, and no doubt overwhelmed.  The angel had told her that her relative Elizabeth, well up in years, was also with child and so Mary leaves home, leaves town, to go see and stay with this older and wiser relative, Elizabeth.  A frightened teenager flees to a grandmotherly older woman for comfort, acceptance, and understanding.

And amazingly, she finds that Elizabeth is indeed pregnant in her old age.  Elizabeth is the only one who could understand, maybe the only one who could believe Mary.  At Mary’s arrival, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy.  Elizabeth’s child will be John the Baptist, who will prepare the way for Jesus’ ministry.  Old Elizabeth blesses young Mary: “Blessed are you among women.”  After the reception she was expecting in her own town, Elizabeth’s words are pure grace.  “Blessed are you among women.”  Mary stays with Elizabeth for three months.

And it is there, while with Elizabeth, that Mary sings her song, which we know as the Magnificat -- “My soul magnifies the Lord.”  I wonder if the support and love of Elizabeth helped Mary to burst forth with this song.

These are powerful, incredible words that Mary sings.  This song is filled with gratitude and great hope.  There is confidence and there is a prophetic word.  She speaks boldly as to how things are and how things should be in God’s world.  Her witness is both personal and social.  She speaks of what God has done for me, and what God is doing in the world. 

The word that comes to mind when reading the Magnificat is revolution.  God means to turn this world upside down.  And it all begins with Mary.  To accomplish God’s work, God chooses a poor, unmarried peasant girl in an occupied backwater country.  From the very start, God is turning things upside down, doing the unexpected.

Mary looks ahead to the implications of the birth of this child.  “The proud will be scattered.  The powerful will be pulled from their thrones.  The weak and poor will be lifted up.  The hungry will be filled.  The rich oppressors will be sent away empty.”

There were places in Latin America where just a few years ago, the public reading of the Magnificat was forbidden as subversive activity, with all that business about the mighty being pulled from their thrones and replaced by the weak and poor.  Mary’s vision of Jesus’ ministry sounded suspiciously like revolution.  When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, he left the Magnificat in Latin.  The German princes who supported and protected Luther in his struggles with Rome took a dim view of the social and political implications of Mary's song, what with its reversal of social structures.  Luther’s friends and supporters were in high places, so he decided it was best to leave the Magnificat in Latin.

We are not kings or rulers, but if we are honest, these words make us just a bit uncomfortable too.  On a global scale, by world standards, we are not the 99%; we are the 1%.  Compared with most of the world, we are fabulously wealthy.

We read Mary’s words, about the poor being lifted up and the rich being brought low, and we have to ask -- how exactly is this Good News for us?

Sometimes, before the gospel can be good news, it has to be heard as bad news.  What this may be saying to us is, we have to know how poor we are before we can receive God’s gift of redemption.  We can be too full of ourselves and all of our things to have room for God.

The Bible does not glamorize poverty -- we are not to aspire to poverty.  And Jesus did not condemn the people of means who gathered around him, people like Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.  There were a group of women who gathered around Jesus and supported his ministry out of their resources – some were apparently well-to-do.  But it’s instructive that God seems again and again to work through the poor and lowly and unlikely – fishermen and tax collectors and shepherds and a poor peasant girl like Mary.

Maybe what this is about is that poor people know their need.  And rich people sometimes don’t.  The wealthy can feel like they’ve got it all together, that they have everything they need or they can easily get it.  Poor people know better than that.  They know their limitations and know their need.

The folks Jesus has harsh words for are not the overt sinners, not the thieves and adulterers and the social pariahs.  Jesus accepts and forgives them and seems to like their company.  The people Jesus has a problem with are the self-righteous folks who think they are above others and that they have no problems.  Seeing no need for forgiveness, they don’t receive it.  Feeling no need for grace, they are not open to it.  They see no need for redemption, no need for love, no need for God.  And so, they don’t get it.

Mary, the young, poor, unlearned, not-yet-married girl, is open to God.  She is willing to say yes.

Mary’s song prods us to reflect on how we have responded to God’s call.  Have we tried to ignore it?  Have we tried to rely instead on our wealth or status or power or popularity or cleverness?  Or have we, like Mary, been poor and simple enough to hear it and respond -- to hear God’s call and take it to heart?

Advent is about preparing our hearts for God’s coming, about getting ready, about anticipating God’s work.  Mary really didn’t get a chance at preparation.  For her, Advent wasn’t a season of the year; it was a lightning bolt out of the sky.  Or more specifically, an angel who appeared and told her that she would bear the savior of the world.  You don’t hear that kind of thing just every day.  Once she heard the news, she did have nine months to get ready for the birth, but how could anybody possible be prepared to hear that kind of news?

We can easily imagine Mary being terror-stricken by the appearance of the angel.  And it is surprising that she did not faint right on the spot when she got the news that she would have a baby, and her child would be the long-anticipated messiah.  How do you get ready for something like that?

If there is anything that we can learn from the stories of this season, and for that matter, if there is anything we can learn from the stories of the Bible, period, it is that God’s work is surprising.  Often, beyond surprising – you can choose your adjective: amazing, shocking, startling, scandalous, astonishing.

If we are anticipating the coming of the One who constantly surprises us, how can we ever really be ready?  How can we possibly be prepared for that which we would never expect?

We might think of Mary as a very together, very composed young woman.  Think again.  She was probably about 14 years old.  A simple peasant girl, and when told that she will have a baby who will be the savior of the world, she handles it.  And not just handles it, she rejoices in it.

There is no way Mary could see this coming, but somehow she was ready, and somehow, she responds to God’s call with a Yes.

How do you get ready for those things you can’t really get ready for?

Commenting on how people contemplating marriage or having children may be more ready than they think they are, Po Bronson said, “You learn that being half-ready is a significant advantage in this world, and being half-ready may be as good as it gets.”

In this season of preparation, of getting ready, maybe the best we can shoot for is being half-ready.  Maybe, with God, we can never be more than half-ready, because God’s work is so surprising, we can’t fully anticipate it.  But we can prepare our lives so that our hearts are willing and our souls are eager to say Yes to God.  Maybe we can never be completely prepared, but we can be half-ready.

Mary couldn’t have seen this coming, but she was ready enough.  Maybe following Christ in our daily living is about being half-ready - being as open as we can be and trusting in God’s love and goodness, but at the same time expecting the unexpected – anticipating that we will be surprised.

How was Mary able to say Yes?  How was she able to sing, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” when she knew that back home, there were parents and a fiancé to face and neighbors who would cast knowing, demeaning glances her way?  How could she sing, “All generations will call me blessed” when people were talking about her?

Mary is a model for us of love and trust and faith in God.  She believed that God’s word was true.  She found encouragement and support and a confirmation of God's call in her relative Elizabeth, who called her "blessed among women."  She took joy in being an instrument of God’s work in this world.  She rejoiced in being chosen by God.  Because of her love and trust and faith, when the time came, Mary was half-ready.  May we aspire to as much.  Amen.