In the Troubled Circumstances of Life

 Luke 2:1-20

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My first church here in Canada was a small church but we had enough youth to have the challenge of a youth group.  One year they decided they wanted to come up with a drama of what if Jesus were born today somewhere in the Greater Toronto Area.  It was an interesting presentation that culminated with them gathered around the piano singing The Beatles tune, Let It Be.  What they came up with was Jesus being born to a young, unwed teenage couple at the Finch subway station.  They were disappointed that there was not a station at Jane and Finch.  They thought they would have been able to highlight better the circumstances of prejudice that surrounded Jesus’ birth.  You see, Mary and Joseph were from Nazareth and Nazareth was considered to be an undesirable little town in Northern Israel. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” they used to say.  The youth also had this child’s parents resting Jesus in a homeless man’s shopping cart.  Not the cleanest of places for a newborn, I’m sure.  Jesus himself was wrapped in rags and laid in a feeding trough…not quite the image we have of “swaddling clothes” and a “manger”.  

Looking at the Bible’s account of the circumstances of Jesus’ birth and trying to understand them in the way first century people would have is an eye-opening experience.  We’ve accumulated a lot of Christmas pageant nostalgia that prevents us from seeing his birth clearly.  It was as eye-opening in their time as it would be if Jesus had really been born in a subway station at Jane and Finch today.  Let me give you a few examples.

Little baby Jesus had several visitors the night of his birth, shepherds and Magi.  Shepherds in his day were near the bottom of the food chain along with drunks and lepers.  The Magi were indeed kings and scientists.  Interestingly, their science was astrology, that’s horoscopes and stuff.  They were following a heavenly sign they had discerned to mean the birth of a great king in the land of Judea.  Scientists today say it was probably a supernova they saw, but we people with enquiring minds who want to know, well, we know it was a UFO leading them to Judea, right?  

God’s announcing his coming to shepherds and astrologers was a bold slap in the face of the Judean king and the religious leaders back then.  They were the ones who should have known what this heavenly sign in their own backyard meant.  But they didn’t.  They were blinded by power and privilege.  The birth of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ caught them by surprise and threatened their privileged positions.  When Herod the King otherwise known as Herod the Great famous for killing his own sons because they were a political threat to him; when he found out, he wanted Jesus dead and actually killed all the male children in the area of Bethlehem under the age of two.  Incidentally, in the youth’s drama they have Jesus’ birth announced to some homeless people who go to welcome him which should remind us that we church-going, upper-middle class white folk just might not have a monopoly on who God speaks to and reveals himself to. 

Then there’s the question of the paternity of Jesus.  Mary was pregnant.  Joseph knew the baby wasn’t his.  His choices were to believe an angel or break the engagement as quietly as he could.  He didn’t want to go through with the marriage.  Nazareth was a small, very religiously conservative town.  Everyone would have likely been thinking that Joseph had dishonoured himself by having relations with his fiancé before being married.  And we have to think about Mary’s predicament.  According to Old Testament law, Mary’s life would have been ruined had Joseph not decided to continue with the engagement and adopt the child as his own.  It is quite possible she would have been stoned to death had Joseph not gone ahead and married her.  That Joseph adopted or claimed Jesus as his own by being the one to name him is important.  That’s what links Jesus to King David and Messianic bloodline.  

            The story of Jesus birth really is an eye-opener.  Our Lord was born out of wedlock, to say it politely, to a couple who were a young teen-age girl and a man likely in his thirties.  They came from Nazareth of all places to a stable in Bethlehem outside of an inn because, for whatever reason, no one in the inn had compassion enough to forfeit their room to a birthing mother.  Jesus was born in a stable.  How scandalous can all this be?  God choose to unite himself to humanity in not only a humble birth but a troubling birth.  It was indeed under very humiliating circumstances.  So also, the scandal surrounding Jesus’ birth was not unlike the scandal surrounding his death.  It leads us to believe that if we want to know where to find God at work in the world maybe we should start looking in the most troubling of circumstances.

While we’re on the topic, maybe we should stop and ask where is it that we should look if we want to find God?  If the profoundest meaning of Christmas is that God is with us and deeply bonded to us, then where is he?  The answer would be not in the nostalgia of religion but in the troubling details of real life; in the brokenness, in the shamefulness of the everyday lives of everyday people like us.  Jesus was not born in the glamour of the temple in Jerusalem and praised by the good, upright, wholesome, and devout “robe-wearers” of his day.  He was born to an unmarried couple; a teenage girl and a slightly older gent who both said “yes” to a call to endure shame and scorn for God’s sake and for human healing.  

So, where should we look for this Jesus present in our lives.  Well, getting together with family and friends is a good place to look, even better if you welcome into your celebrations those who have not the luxury of family and friends, and even better if you all gather to worship and to pray and even better if you try to heal the rifts that exist your families with confession and forgiveness.  But, I think there is an even better place to look for Jesus.  That is to look inside ourselves and go to that person called “me” who hides from others, hoping that nobody ever finds out who “me” really is…we all have a “me” that we try to compensate for… a “me” who’s been victim as well as victimizer, a “me” who is powerless as well as powerful in this world, a “me” who grieves because life is unfair…go there this Christmas…that’s your dirty, dark, dank stable in the basement of the inn.  It is there that Jesus will be born in you and you shall be born from above.  In an inexplicable moment of grace your heavenly Father will pick you up and say “My Beloved.”  That, my Beloved, is the miracle of Christmas.  Amen.

Joseph's Dilemma

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Matthew 1:18-25

In my previous church in Caledon, ON we had a spell of having Fundraiser concerts.  We were fortunate enough to have one among us who had “connections” and so we were able to host some pretty big names in Canadian folk and traditional music.  Being the minister I found myself in the (for lack of a better word) awkward situation of having to introduce famous artists and groups like Tanglefoot, The Brian Pickell Band, Pierre Schreier, Garnet Rogers, and a few others.  I never knew quite what to say and for the most part the artists themselves didn't care.  Yet, as the one doing the introducing, I needed to make it sound like I knew a little something about them and liked their stuff.  I had to praise the artists and commend them to the audience.  Failure to do so would have offended artist and audience alike.  

Well, looking at the Gospel of Matthew and how he introduces Jesus the Jewish Messiah and Lord and Saviour of all Creation I have to say that I'm left scratching my head because it seems he means to offend.  He begins with Jesus' genealogical pedigree and simply says, “A record of the lineage of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.”  Then it is name after name after name.  Strangely, in the midst of the names Matthew mentions four relationships: Judah and Tamar, Boaz and Ruth, David and Bathsheba otherwise known as the wife of Uriah, and then Joseph and Mary.  If you know the Old Testament, then you know that by mentioning those particular relationships Matthew is quite obviously saying that Jesus' family link to David and to Abraham is morally tainted and not upright according to the Law.  There’s prostitution, some “uncovering of the feet”, and adultery there.  Jesus was born into a whole lineage of “Sin” and, moreover, a lineage into which he had to be adopted.

Moving on from the begets, Matthew is the only Gospelist to portray Joseph's dilemma.  Joseph had to deal with the fact that his bride-to-be had suddenly become pregnant with a child that was not his.  While pondering what to do, he had a dream in which a messenger of the Lord tells him that this child was conceived by the Holy Spirit and would save his people from their sins.  Moreover, there's that prophecy in Isaiah about a virgin conceiving and let's not fail to notice that this baby is Emmanuel – “God-with-us”.  Should Joseph believe this crazy dream and be gracious to Mary?  Or, should he do what the religious/moral authorities of his day would have him do and that would be to break off the engagement, divorce her?  This would have grave consequences for Mary.  

And so, Matthew begins his Gospel with a troubling if not offensive introduction.  If we are thinking people, and I assume we are, we will want to ask why.  Why does Matthew introduce Jesus with scandal rather than by praising Jesus and commending him to us as our Lord and Saviour?  Well, venturing a guess, it may be that Matthew wants us at the very outset to catch a glimpse of the steadfast love and faithfulness of God towards us and how God chooses to be gracious towards us rather than condemning.  Matthew does this by making us to consider Joseph's dilemma in deciding what to do with Mary and the child.  

Joseph graciously stays with Mary and the he honourably adopts Jesus as his own.  It’s probably not at the front of our minds, but Joseph had to adopt Jesus for Jesus to be the Messiah of the line of David.  So it is with us and God’s adoption of us into the family of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Born from above through the gift of the Holy Spirit indwelling us God has adopted us as siblings of Jesus and thus we share in that relationship that God the Father has with God the Son in the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit bonds us to Jesus so that we share in Jesus' own relationship with God the Father.  Joseph's steadfast love and faithfulness towards Mary and the child within her beams brightly of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness for Israel and the children of the Holy Spirit to be born through her...that's Jesus…and…you and me.  

I find it quite staggering that God the Father in and through the presence and powerful and utterly gracious work of the Holy Spirit loves us as much as he does Jesus, his own Son and is as steadfastly faithful to us as he is towards Jesus.  Even when we are in the midst of impossible situations, when it seems all hell is breaking loose around us, God is indeed with us and faithfully working for our good making us to be more and more like Jesus by making us to know who Jesus is in his very self as the one who gives himself selflessly in all love and humility for us.  God is working in us especially through our most difficult times to heal and deliver us now in the present from the effects that our sin and the sin of others have on us.  As we draw close to Jesus in prayer, devotion, and service, we find that he removes the deepest of our character flaws.  He frees us from fear and self-pity, and pride, and our constant striving to be our own god.  He truly saves us from our sins by adopting us as his own and from the inside out making us to be like him in such a way as to give us his own blood and DNA, so to speak, by the gift of the Holy Spirit.  

Now to ponder Matthew's introduction and Joseph's dilemma a bit further we have to note with an exclamation point how Matthew wants to show us right from the beginning that the reality of God coming and being with us as one of us is going to be something that does not meet our expectations and something difficult to handle especially for those who think they have mastered morality and religion and who indeed think they have mastered God.  Grace is the element in this story that is so unexpected, so unpredictable, and so hard to handle.  If we were reading or rather hearing Matthew’s gospel back when he wrote it, we would expect Joseph to publicly denounce Mary and that the village would react with such bitter anger towards her “sinful ways” that they took her outside the city and stoned her to death.  That’s what we would expect.  But instead, grace calls us to take another look at the situation. God calls us to be gracious towards people in situations that trouble us for what we assume to be religious and moral reasons.

Joseph's dilemma was whether or not to be gracious and it reminds us that we must be careful how we judge people and their troubling situations.  We never know when we might be passing judgement upon those through whom God is working or will work.  We are called to be gracious in all situations.  Grace leads people to Jesus.  God’s kindness leads us to repentance it says in Romans 2:4. God shows his kindness to people when we choose to be gracious towards others.  The baby Jesus, God’s means to save all of humanity, became Messiah as the direct result of Joseph being faithful to God and gracious to Mary rather than condemning her on a false pretence of faithfulness.  When we let our hearts be moved with compassion and show grace it lends to salvation, to people discovering that they have been adopted into the loving communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It lends to the presence of God working visibly and effectively in people’s lives to save.  Amen.

The Life-Giving God

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Isaiah 35:1-10

From the Sea of Galilee down to the Gulf of Aqabah, which is a finger of the Red Sea, there runs a valley cut by the Jordan River at the top and then by the Dead Sea at the Bottom.  The Dead Sea ends there because of a slight maybe fifteen-foot rise in elevation.  From the Dead Sea to the Red Sea there is nothing but a dessert wasteland, which the Bible calls the Arabah, or “dry land” as it’s called in our translation.  The Arabah according to the Book of Genesis was once fertile land, but the Lord destroyed it when destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. 

To either side of this valley are high plateaus which the Bible calls Midbar or here, “the wilderness”.  These are simply uninhabitable lands which are covered mostly with very sparse, dry grass and tumble weed.  The Midbar itself is carved up deeply by dry river beds. The largest of these are comparable to the Grand Canyon.  These dry rivers flow from the Midbar down into the Arabah.  When the rainy season comes, walls of water pour down these river beds as if it were God himself coming in vengeance to destroy and wash away the land.  I can only imagine how fearful the sound of that running water must be as it comes down the valley carving out destruction.  If we heard it, I think we too would think that God was indeed coming and he just might be a bit angry.  

I remember when I lived down in Marlinton, WV, which is a town that gets some major flooding, how you could the sound of the roaring water all over town when the Greenbrier and Knapp’s Creek were rising to flood levels.  You’d think the train from Gloryland was roaring into the station.  It’s powerfully scary.  You know a lot of devastation could come from it if the waters get too high and will they?  

But in the Midbar and the Arabah, miraculously, after the rain the area around these river beds comes to life with green grasses and purple and pink flowers.  It is as if all of creation is filled with joy and the glory and majesty of God the giver of life is shining forth from it.  The Midbar and the Arabah become glad Isaiah did say.

Isaiah tells us of a glorious end for the Arabah.  When the Lord returns to Zion by means of a highway through the Arabah, it shall become as green as Lebanon, as majestic as Mt. Carmel and as fertile as the plain of Sharon.  All these places are in northern Israel and they are the best agricultural land in the Middle East or as many like to call it today, West Asia.  Water will be so abundant in these desert wastelands that burning sand will become a pool of water. The land will be so full of life-giving water that there will be marshes full of reeds and rushes instead of dead dry grass and tumbleweed.  Isaiah says this will be a miraculous time for humans as well for, in like manner, blind eyes will be opened, deaf ears will hear, the lame shall leap like deer, and the speechless tongue will sing for joy for the Spirit of the Lord will fill the earth.  

Jesus spoke of this day also but with reference to his own work.  If you remember from the Gospels, there is a story of when John the Baptist was in prison and feeling more than a bit discouraged if not maybe disillusioned.  He sent some of his own disciples to inquire of Jesus as to whether he really was the Messiah or should they wait for another.  I think John did this in an attempt to prod Jesus into action as far as setting up the Kingdom of God in real-time.  “If you are who you are, Cousin Jesus, then get on with it ‘cause prison really sucks, Man.”  Jesus answered, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.  And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (Matt. 11:4-6).  The age of Jesus, his time on earth was actually the age of the fulfillment of time as the prophets saw, the age when the Arabah would be as green as Lebanon, that age was present wherever Jesus was and will be present again when he returns.

In fact, it is present wherever Jesus is present today.  The age of fulfillment exists with us right now, today.  It is here as we gather for worship.  As we are gathered here as the Body of Christ in God’s presence through the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us and around us, the Age of Fulfillment is here present with us in part as well as something we expectantly wait for in the future when God heals all of Creation of Sin, Evil, and Death.  When we gather for worship the age of the fulfillment of time is with us.  Jesus is with us.  Eyes blinded in human brokenness open to see God, to sense God’s presence and feel his love and the impact of his love on us.  For some that’s overwhelmingly encouraging and strengthening and for others, it’s (for lack of a better word) convicting.  Deaf ears are unstopped to hear the Word of God.  Lame souls leap for joy like dear.  People find strength to face their trials knowing God is with them.  There is a peace that comes that enables us to entrust our wills and our lives to the care of God.  Tongues which before could not praise God, now sing for joy.  In worship the Spirit of God can and will break forth in our hearts like waters breaking forth in the Midbar, the wilderness, and like streams gushing in the Arabah, the desert.

Isaiah also speaks of a highway called the Way of the Holy which shall be for God’s people to travel on.  There shall be no lion or ravenous beast on this highway.  By means of this highway the redeemed of the Lord shall go to Zion, the mountain of the Lord singing with everlasting joy.  When they get there, they shall obtain joy and gladness, and furthermore sorrow and sighing shall flee away.  My friends this highway is here.  Set before us to travel on.  It is the way of following Jesus, and of worship, and of prayer.  The Way begins here in our worship service and it remains with us when we wake in the morning and praise God for another day and when we go to bed and thank God for the blessing of this day.

God is the Life-giving God.  People may ask what God is like.  Isaiah’s answer here, and ours, is that God is Life-giving.  Our God is the God who gives life to the dead world of the desert.  Our culture has a default idea of what God is like.  It’s that God is like Santa Clause.  God’s a bearded old man who is a judge with a list of who is naughty and nice.  He gets the naughty and rewards the nice.   A lot of people have quit believing in God altogether because of that misunderstanding of what God is like.  Isaiah gives us a really beautiful image here of God as being life-giving.  God gives hope.  God powerfully acts to heal and restore.  We have to wait for God to act and that is brutally hard, but when God finally does it is as beautiful as a dessert in bloom.  

So, it is with us.  The Life-giving God who causes the desert to bloom also causes us to bloom by the watering of the Holy Spirit.  As we come to our Life-giving God in worship, bringing the dry wasteland of our lives before him, the life-giving God meets us with the floodwaters of His Presence and we bloom.  We see more clearly, hear more clearly, and are strengthened.  We bloom.  The life-giving God makes us glad.  So, as the prophet told the people long ago, “Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God.  He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompence.  He will come and save you.”  Come to the Life-giving God and bloom.  Amen.

            

Full of the Knowledge of God

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Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13

“The Earth shall be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”  “The Earth shall be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”  That is a very rich metaphor.  Though I had read this passage at least once every Christmas season for who knows how many years and on many other occasions, the first time I never really heard it, noticed it was there, was well over fifteen years ago while listening to a New Testament scholar named N.T. Wright talk about our future hope as Christians, a future where everything is filled with the knowledge of God. I have pondered this very profound metaphor ever since.    

N.T Wright is very keen to point out that the future reality that the Bible points us forward to is not our disembodied souls going to heaven when we die and staying there.  Yes, we will spend a little time after death without our bodies with Christ in a place Jesus called Paradise.  But, that is not our ultimate goal.  Rather, what we are headed for is Resurrection to live in Creation made new.  This wonderfully awesome and beautiful Creation that God created, blessed, and called very good will be healed and freed of Sin and Death and Evil and as Isaiah says…wait for it…wait for it…, it will be full of the knowledge or better yet the knowing of who God is and what God’s nature is like, full of the unveiled presence and glory of God just as the waters cover the sea.  The goal of our existence is as Wright says, “God is going to do for the whole Creation what he did for Jesus on Easter morning.”  Resurrection into a New Creation, this is our hope in Christ.  This is what God is up to and pointing forward to that is what we the church are about.

Isaiah’s prophesy here, like all of the biblical prophesies which look forward to the Day of Creation’s deliverance and restoration is symbol rich, metaphor rich.  We need to “crack the code” on the meaning of the symbols and yet be careful to not get too specific or literal with them by trying to peg them down to specific dates and so forth.  They are meant to provoke “hopeful imagination”, to make us want to see God’s promise fulfilled, to make us “abound in hope”.

The first metaphor or symbol in Isaiah’s prophecy here is that a shoot shall come up out of the stump of the lineage of ancient Israel’s King David, a ruler full of the Holy Spirit, a righteous ruler who will judge fairly on behalf of the weak and oppressed.  This metaphor is a pretty obvious one to nail down.  This ruler is Jesus.  He is the Jewish Messiah who has brought and will bring the Kingdom or Reign of God to earth.  

The next metaphor/symbol that Isaiah gives us is of a world that is free of predation, free of those who kill and devour.  The nature of relationship in creation will change from predation to Peace/Shalom.  The nature of relationship in creation as we know it now due to sin is predatory.  The strong devour the weak.  Poverty, war, climate change are all the result of the powerful devouring the weak.  With this image of a world without predation Isaiah means to cause us to hopefully imagine that the world that Jesus is bringing about will be free of all forms of predation.  There will be peace, harmony, Shalom.

Looking at this third image, that of the earth being full of the knowledge of God as waters covering the sea.  Well, the symbol of the “sea” in the world of apocalyptic/prophetic imagery often means humanity, the chaotic sea of humanity.  Water is the symbol of the source of life.  As God is the source of life, I think this image is telling us that the personal, life-giving presence of God is going to be visible among the relationships of humanity.  The image of God which was marred by sin will be restored by God resting his presence upon and in us.

So then, what Isaiah wants us to imagine is the coming of the Messiah, full of the Holy Spirit to put things right in God’s creation and the noticeable difference will be that predation will not be at the heart of relationship anymore, but rather in its place will be the personal presence of God.  The image of the Trinity – the loving communion of God the Father Son and Holy Spirit – will radiate forth from humanity in our relationships with each other and in our relationship with the Creation as a whole.

Leaping forward in time a few centuries from Isaiah to Paul, this hope-filled image of the image of God restored in humanity undergirds Paul’s understanding of what the church is.  To Paul, the Holy Spirit-filled Messiah has come.  Jesus is that shoot rising from the stump of Jesse.  Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom of God.  His death and resurrection is God’s judgement against humanity that kills wickedness.  With the breath of his lips, the Holy Spirit, God puts wickedness to death and recreates humanity in his image.  The Christ-like, Holy Spirit filled fellowship of Christians, us, is the first fruits of this new predation-free humanity.  As far as Paul, the former zealous Pharisee who hated Gentiles, was concerned, the fact that Gentiles and Jews were together in harmony, like-minded in their devotion to Jesus as Lord, worshipping God the Father with one voice is evidence that the day Isaiah held forth has begun.  The knowledge of God has begun to fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.

The New Creation, predation-free, Spirit of God-filled humanity that Isaiah put out there for us to “hopefully imagine” is now embodied in Christian fellowship.  The Holy Spirit filled life of Christ in which predation is disappearing and the loving communion of God is becoming evident shines forth in Christian community. Christian community, Holy Spirit filled congregations in whom the self-giving, self-sacrificing love of Jesus Christ is embodied is living proof that God is faithful, that God gives strength to endure, and that God will deliver his Creation from the futility that pervades it. 

I hope you are catching a glimpse with your “hopeful imagination” of what exactly is going on in our midst as a congregation.  What Isaiah prophesied with spoken word as a promise, we embody as a visible, felt reality in our fellowship also as the promise of what God will ultimately bring about in Christ.   The love of God abides in us and is making us to be the type of people who go and comfort others.  The presence of the Lord is with us.  Christian acts of support are more than just good deeds.  They are living signs of the New Creation coming.  Our acts of support are the earth becoming full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.  Imagine that.  The love shown by each of you is the earth becoming full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.  Amen.