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.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Thursday, December 8, 2011
“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.
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.
Friday, December 2, 2011
“How to Prepare for Christmas” - December 4, 2011
Text: Mark 1:1-8
The traditional reading for the Second Sunday in Advent is about John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus. John is certainly an interesting character, but let’s face it: he is probably not the most beloved Biblical personality.
John is one weird dude. Look at what he eats: locusts and wild honey. Eating locusts was not unheard of, and Leviticus chapter 11 even spelled out the kinds of locusts you were permitted to eat. And sure, they have a lot of protein, but I had a cicada fly right into my mouth one time and it really wasn’t that appetizing. John was eating locusts by choice.
And then he has honey to go with the locusts. Well, if it works for Great Plains Pizza, I guess it would work for locusts. But have you ever gone after wild honey? Harvesting honey from domestic bees can be a lot of work, but harvesting wild honey is not only a messy job, it can be dangerous. We try to get our kids to sit up straight and have some semblance of etiquette at the table, and John just has a grab and go meal of locusts and wild honey.
And then there is the matter of his clothing. I can’t say that I’ve worn camel hair, but from what I understand it makes burlap seem nice and soft. An odd fashion choice, to say the least. He is an outdoorsy, hardworking kind of guy – so why not flannel? Why not Carhartt?
John looks odd, dresses strangely, eats weird stuff. He is not interested in social niceties and he is not the kind of guy you want as a role model for your kids.
John should have been a priest. That’s the way things worked back then. A son was supposed to follow in his father’s footsteps. Even Jesus honored the tradition, becoming a carpenter like Joseph. But not John. Not only did he reject the priesthood, his life was a critique of the religious establishment. His clothing reminded people of the prophet Elijah, who had a lot to say about society and kings and politics and justice. John’s style and dress and manner were all designed to upset the apple cart. John was rude, crude, and socially unacceptable.
But these are mostly superficial issues. We pay way too much attention to the way a person looks or talks or dresses or what they eat. OK, fair enough. But beyond appearances, and maybe more to the point, John is just plain annoying. Especially in this season of the year. John has a lot of nerve.
We have decorated our church so beautifully. We can drive around and see the beautiful lights and displays. We want this to be a happy time and we want to enjoy our carols and parties and shopping and food. And into the middle of our holiday season comes this guy with a harsh appearance and even harsher message, calling us to repent. Our reading from Mark is pretty lean – Mark does not give a lot of details. But if you read Matthew, you’ll find John heckling the religious leaders, calling them a brood of vipers. Can you believe that? A brood of vipers. Come on, it’s the Christmas season. Can’t we just be nice? Can’t we just get along? You’ve got to admit, if somebody like John showed up at our Christmas Dinner and program, it would be more than a little annoying.
John is rude, he is annoying, and yes, he is even embarrassing.
There are certain brands of Baptists who teach church history with a little tract called the “Trail of Blood.” This started in the 1800’s, when strongly anti-Catholic folks sought to counter the idea of apostolic succession – that there is an unbroken succession of bishops going back to Peter, the first bishop of Rome - with a kind of “church successionism.” Their thesis is that down through the centuries, there has been an unbroken succession of churches with Baptist-like beliefs, even if they didn’t have the name Baptist. Well, you can’t really make it work; they’ll claim almost anybody who was outside the Catholic Church as a Baptist, even wildly heretical groups, as long as Rome disapproved of them. At any rate, they trace Baptist history back to the early church, and guess who was the first Baptist? That’s right. John the Baptist. No reputable historians buy this, but there are people who will claim John as the first Baptist. As if that were a good thing.
Let’s face it, Baptists have an image problem. Some people equate Baptists with Jerry Falwell types, or even worse, with Fred Phelps, and the Baptist label can be an impediment to outreach – some people wouldn’t consider going to a Baptist church. Well, a strange guy eating bugs and wild honey, wearing camel hair and a leather belt, preaching in the wilderness about turning from sin and insulting good church folk is probably not going to improve our image.
Taken on the whole, what picture emerges of this strange prophet? He is rude, crude, and socially unacceptable. He flaunts convention and tradition, disrespecting his elders. He scoffs at authority. He was the poster boy for disestablishmentarianism before the word was invented. He forages for food. He has fashion issues. And on top of it all, he is called a Baptist. We work hard to not be thought of as barefoot and backward and obsessed with hellfire and damnation, and then every Advent, John comes along and undoes all of that.
John is rude and annoying and embarrassing. But the worst thing is – are you ready for this? Here’s the worst thing. The worst thing is, he may be right.
Don’t you hate it when people like him turn out to be right?
Let’s look at his message. His message is about preparation – getting ready. In introducing John, Mark quotes the prophet Isaiah: “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
John prepared the way for the Lord by preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins and baptizing those who responded.
It’s a novel idea. It’s not the way we usually prepare for Christmas. When people ask, “Are you ready for Christmas?” what comes to mind? You probably think first of all about your shopping. Have I bought something for everybody on the list? Will that sweater fit dad? Will my niece be happy with an iTunes gift card? And then you may think about cooking. Will we have ham or turkey for Christmas, or maybe do something different – what about enchiladas or lasagna? And what about all the baking?
And then, you may think about getting the house ready. You need to put up your outdoor lights. You need to get the tree up. There is cleaning and straightening and decorating to do. At our house we are trying to get ready getting ready for the college Christmas party tonight. And then, some of us get ready for Christmas by getting our calendars sorted out. We have to synchronize our schedules and fit in the school concerts and the church dinner and the work Christmas party and that play or concert we want to go to, all while working around the ISU basketball schedule. And then we have to arrange get-togethers for the family. Maybe both sides of the family. Maybe 3 or 4 sides of the family.
We are busy doing what needs to be done, making preparations, when John the Baptist shows up and sticks his nose into our Christmas, calling for repentance of all things. He is abrupt, and it is not at all convenient. But maybe we need to be inconvenienced, just a bit. Maybe we need to be embarrassed about what we have made of Christmas. Maybe we even need to be offended, just a bit.
We need to ask ourselves: after all of the shopping and parties and TV specials, after all the cookies and fruitcake, after all the carols and family dinners and gift-giving, what has changed? We go through these days leading up to Christmas, and in a few weeks, it’s back to the regular routine of life, and then we do it all again next year.
There is nothing wrong with that, of course. It’s nice to have a change of pace. There is certainly joy to be found in all that happens in this season. But there is a reason that this is the most stressful time of the year. And it is possible to forget the reason for all of the celebration in the first place.
It’s like the woman I heard about whose child asked, “Mom, why do the Christians keep trying to mess with Christmas by putting all this Jesus stuff into it?”
Maybe we need a character like John to shock us back into reality. John calls us to repentance – to turn around. Repentance is not something we like to talk about, and it’s not often something we think really applies to us. After all, it’s for sinners – real sinners, people who don’t go to church like us. Or, we think of repentance as a one-shot deal that we took care of years ago, when we were baptized. In our better moments, we might say, “OK, we all need to repent from the materialism and self-centeredness that affects us all. We know we’re not perfect and we could all stand some improvement.”
But that is still a shallow understanding of repentance, shallow in that it is rather vague and general. Tom Long described repentance in this way:
Or, when we are able to set aside judgment of others long enough to look and see their need, or we are able to set aside our critique of others long enough to see their gifts, or we are able to set aside our fear of those who are different long enough to see our common humanity, we have repented.
Today we lit the candle of peace. Peace can sometimes be seen as a kind of warm fuzzy feeling. Sometimes people are asked a question something like: “If a genie were to grant you one wish, what would it be?” We all know the correct stock answer: world peace.
Imagine a Miss America contest where a finalist is asked the question – if you had one wish, what would it be? And instead of saying, “I would ask for world peace,” she said, “I would ask for repentance.” Home viewers would gasp. They would think she had gone off the deep end.
But what if we really did seek repentance? And what if, instead of looking for others to repent, we listened to John, and we ourselves repented, and looked to Christ? I have a feeling that would go a long way toward bringing peace – in our lives, and maybe even in our world.
Still, you have to admit that John is an odd duck in the run-up to Christmas. Someone asked the question, “What would it be like if John the Baptist showed up at the mall?” Think about that for a minute. It’s quite an image, isn’t it?
Just imagine: it’s ten degrees and snowing outside, but this guy shows up in sandals and a camel’s hair coat. He passes up the Pretzelmaker stand, preferring the bag of locusts he brought with him. He sets up shop near the fountain with signs saying, “Repent!”
People are asking, “Who is this guy? Somebody call security!” But he is such a powerful preacher that people actually listen. Children hear him and leave Santa’s line, tugging on their parents’ coats and asking, “Who is that man?” Teenagers stop and laugh but wind up staying and listening. And it all starts to make sense. John says, “Turn your lives around,” and people want so badly to do just that, because our lives need turning around. The lights, the trees, the carols, even Santa are forgotten. And people start asking, “What shall we do?” Johns says, “Repent and be baptized,” and they are, right in the mall fountain.
Something that caught my attention as I read the text this week is that John did not go after people. He didn’t seek crowds; crowds sought him. He set up shop out in the wilderness and people flocked to him from all over the Judean countryside and from Jerusalem itself. John’s message drew people. He had something they needed. Maybe repentance is something we all need.
John had issues, no doubt, but he had fire and passion and a deep belief that things could change—that change is possible. And it is. And maybe we prepare for the change God has for us, maybe we prepare for Jesus’ coming, maybe we prepare for Christmas, by repenting – by turning around, by turning toward Christ, by opening our hearts.
John was rude and annoying and embarrassing and offensive. And worst of all, John was right. Amen.
The traditional reading for the Second Sunday in Advent is about John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus. John is certainly an interesting character, but let’s face it: he is probably not the most beloved Biblical personality.
John is one weird dude. Look at what he eats: locusts and wild honey. Eating locusts was not unheard of, and Leviticus chapter 11 even spelled out the kinds of locusts you were permitted to eat. And sure, they have a lot of protein, but I had a cicada fly right into my mouth one time and it really wasn’t that appetizing. John was eating locusts by choice.
And then he has honey to go with the locusts. Well, if it works for Great Plains Pizza, I guess it would work for locusts. But have you ever gone after wild honey? Harvesting honey from domestic bees can be a lot of work, but harvesting wild honey is not only a messy job, it can be dangerous. We try to get our kids to sit up straight and have some semblance of etiquette at the table, and John just has a grab and go meal of locusts and wild honey.
And then there is the matter of his clothing. I can’t say that I’ve worn camel hair, but from what I understand it makes burlap seem nice and soft. An odd fashion choice, to say the least. He is an outdoorsy, hardworking kind of guy – so why not flannel? Why not Carhartt?
John looks odd, dresses strangely, eats weird stuff. He is not interested in social niceties and he is not the kind of guy you want as a role model for your kids.
John should have been a priest. That’s the way things worked back then. A son was supposed to follow in his father’s footsteps. Even Jesus honored the tradition, becoming a carpenter like Joseph. But not John. Not only did he reject the priesthood, his life was a critique of the religious establishment. His clothing reminded people of the prophet Elijah, who had a lot to say about society and kings and politics and justice. John’s style and dress and manner were all designed to upset the apple cart. John was rude, crude, and socially unacceptable.
But these are mostly superficial issues. We pay way too much attention to the way a person looks or talks or dresses or what they eat. OK, fair enough. But beyond appearances, and maybe more to the point, John is just plain annoying. Especially in this season of the year. John has a lot of nerve.
We have decorated our church so beautifully. We can drive around and see the beautiful lights and displays. We want this to be a happy time and we want to enjoy our carols and parties and shopping and food. And into the middle of our holiday season comes this guy with a harsh appearance and even harsher message, calling us to repent. Our reading from Mark is pretty lean – Mark does not give a lot of details. But if you read Matthew, you’ll find John heckling the religious leaders, calling them a brood of vipers. Can you believe that? A brood of vipers. Come on, it’s the Christmas season. Can’t we just be nice? Can’t we just get along? You’ve got to admit, if somebody like John showed up at our Christmas Dinner and program, it would be more than a little annoying.
John is rude, he is annoying, and yes, he is even embarrassing.
There are certain brands of Baptists who teach church history with a little tract called the “Trail of Blood.” This started in the 1800’s, when strongly anti-Catholic folks sought to counter the idea of apostolic succession – that there is an unbroken succession of bishops going back to Peter, the first bishop of Rome - with a kind of “church successionism.” Their thesis is that down through the centuries, there has been an unbroken succession of churches with Baptist-like beliefs, even if they didn’t have the name Baptist. Well, you can’t really make it work; they’ll claim almost anybody who was outside the Catholic Church as a Baptist, even wildly heretical groups, as long as Rome disapproved of them. At any rate, they trace Baptist history back to the early church, and guess who was the first Baptist? That’s right. John the Baptist. No reputable historians buy this, but there are people who will claim John as the first Baptist. As if that were a good thing.
Let’s face it, Baptists have an image problem. Some people equate Baptists with Jerry Falwell types, or even worse, with Fred Phelps, and the Baptist label can be an impediment to outreach – some people wouldn’t consider going to a Baptist church. Well, a strange guy eating bugs and wild honey, wearing camel hair and a leather belt, preaching in the wilderness about turning from sin and insulting good church folk is probably not going to improve our image.
Taken on the whole, what picture emerges of this strange prophet? He is rude, crude, and socially unacceptable. He flaunts convention and tradition, disrespecting his elders. He scoffs at authority. He was the poster boy for disestablishmentarianism before the word was invented. He forages for food. He has fashion issues. And on top of it all, he is called a Baptist. We work hard to not be thought of as barefoot and backward and obsessed with hellfire and damnation, and then every Advent, John comes along and undoes all of that.
John is rude and annoying and embarrassing. But the worst thing is – are you ready for this? Here’s the worst thing. The worst thing is, he may be right.
Don’t you hate it when people like him turn out to be right?
Let’s look at his message. His message is about preparation – getting ready. In introducing John, Mark quotes the prophet Isaiah: “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”
John prepared the way for the Lord by preaching repentance and forgiveness of sins and baptizing those who responded.
It’s a novel idea. It’s not the way we usually prepare for Christmas. When people ask, “Are you ready for Christmas?” what comes to mind? You probably think first of all about your shopping. Have I bought something for everybody on the list? Will that sweater fit dad? Will my niece be happy with an iTunes gift card? And then you may think about cooking. Will we have ham or turkey for Christmas, or maybe do something different – what about enchiladas or lasagna? And what about all the baking?
And then, you may think about getting the house ready. You need to put up your outdoor lights. You need to get the tree up. There is cleaning and straightening and decorating to do. At our house we are trying to get ready getting ready for the college Christmas party tonight. And then, some of us get ready for Christmas by getting our calendars sorted out. We have to synchronize our schedules and fit in the school concerts and the church dinner and the work Christmas party and that play or concert we want to go to, all while working around the ISU basketball schedule. And then we have to arrange get-togethers for the family. Maybe both sides of the family. Maybe 3 or 4 sides of the family.
We are busy doing what needs to be done, making preparations, when John the Baptist shows up and sticks his nose into our Christmas, calling for repentance of all things. He is abrupt, and it is not at all convenient. But maybe we need to be inconvenienced, just a bit. Maybe we need to be embarrassed about what we have made of Christmas. Maybe we even need to be offended, just a bit.
We need to ask ourselves: after all of the shopping and parties and TV specials, after all the cookies and fruitcake, after all the carols and family dinners and gift-giving, what has changed? We go through these days leading up to Christmas, and in a few weeks, it’s back to the regular routine of life, and then we do it all again next year.
There is nothing wrong with that, of course. It’s nice to have a change of pace. There is certainly joy to be found in all that happens in this season. But there is a reason that this is the most stressful time of the year. And it is possible to forget the reason for all of the celebration in the first place.
It’s like the woman I heard about whose child asked, “Mom, why do the Christians keep trying to mess with Christmas by putting all this Jesus stuff into it?”
Maybe we need a character like John to shock us back into reality. John calls us to repentance – to turn around. Repentance is not something we like to talk about, and it’s not often something we think really applies to us. After all, it’s for sinners – real sinners, people who don’t go to church like us. Or, we think of repentance as a one-shot deal that we took care of years ago, when we were baptized. In our better moments, we might say, “OK, we all need to repent from the materialism and self-centeredness that affects us all. We know we’re not perfect and we could all stand some improvement.”
But that is still a shallow understanding of repentance, shallow in that it is rather vague and general. Tom Long described repentance in this way:
Whenever we return to an old and well-worn passage in the Bible and do not, through nostalgia or willfulness, have it to say only what we expect it to say, but allow it to encounter us anew, creating new and demanding possibilities for our lives, we have repented.Repentance comes in many ways. When in our hurried life we visit someone and are able to set aside thoughts of tasks that have to be done and errands that have to be run and work waiting for us really and listen, when we are truly there in the moment, we have repented.
When we invoke some experience in our memory and discover, in our remembering, more evidence of the hand of God there than we first saw, more signs of the grace of God than we ever knew were there before, more call for gratitude to God than we have yet expressed, and we find ourselves wanting to live a different, more faithful and more obedient tomorrow because of what we have discerned, we have repented.
Whenever we return to the faith we have been given, to the gospel we have heard so often, to the stories which have been told again and again, and find there not a retreat, but a renewal; whenever we discover that all that God has done in our common yesterdays is pointing us anew to the Christ who comes this day, to forgive our sins and to make possible a tomorrow of faith and joy, we have repented.
Or, when we are able to set aside judgment of others long enough to look and see their need, or we are able to set aside our critique of others long enough to see their gifts, or we are able to set aside our fear of those who are different long enough to see our common humanity, we have repented.
Today we lit the candle of peace. Peace can sometimes be seen as a kind of warm fuzzy feeling. Sometimes people are asked a question something like: “If a genie were to grant you one wish, what would it be?” We all know the correct stock answer: world peace.
Imagine a Miss America contest where a finalist is asked the question – if you had one wish, what would it be? And instead of saying, “I would ask for world peace,” she said, “I would ask for repentance.” Home viewers would gasp. They would think she had gone off the deep end.
But what if we really did seek repentance? And what if, instead of looking for others to repent, we listened to John, and we ourselves repented, and looked to Christ? I have a feeling that would go a long way toward bringing peace – in our lives, and maybe even in our world.
Still, you have to admit that John is an odd duck in the run-up to Christmas. Someone asked the question, “What would it be like if John the Baptist showed up at the mall?” Think about that for a minute. It’s quite an image, isn’t it?
Just imagine: it’s ten degrees and snowing outside, but this guy shows up in sandals and a camel’s hair coat. He passes up the Pretzelmaker stand, preferring the bag of locusts he brought with him. He sets up shop near the fountain with signs saying, “Repent!”
People are asking, “Who is this guy? Somebody call security!” But he is such a powerful preacher that people actually listen. Children hear him and leave Santa’s line, tugging on their parents’ coats and asking, “Who is that man?” Teenagers stop and laugh but wind up staying and listening. And it all starts to make sense. John says, “Turn your lives around,” and people want so badly to do just that, because our lives need turning around. The lights, the trees, the carols, even Santa are forgotten. And people start asking, “What shall we do?” Johns says, “Repent and be baptized,” and they are, right in the mall fountain.
Something that caught my attention as I read the text this week is that John did not go after people. He didn’t seek crowds; crowds sought him. He set up shop out in the wilderness and people flocked to him from all over the Judean countryside and from Jerusalem itself. John’s message drew people. He had something they needed. Maybe repentance is something we all need.
John had issues, no doubt, but he had fire and passion and a deep belief that things could change—that change is possible. And it is. And maybe we prepare for the change God has for us, maybe we prepare for Jesus’ coming, maybe we prepare for Christmas, by repenting – by turning around, by turning toward Christ, by opening our hearts.
John was rude and annoying and embarrassing and offensive. And worst of all, John was right. Amen.
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