In the Year that King Uzziah Died

  Isaiah 6.1-8

 

　

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.”

 

“In the year that King Uzziah died.” Why is that significant? And who in the world is King Uzziah?

 

Well, to answer the last question first: King Uzziah was a king of Judah, a descendant of David and Solomon, and an ancestor of Jesus. Uzziah was a good king — and trust me, not all of Judah’s (or Israel’s) kings were good. Uzziah’s reign lasted 52 years, and many people consider his reign to be second in glory only to Solomon.

 

So why is it that we don’t hear much about Uzziah? Probably because, while Uzziah was king, everything was fine. Oh, there was a little trouble with pride toward the end, but while Uzziah was in charge, the government ran smoothly. There was no corruption, no scandal, no war. It’s always the bad stuff that makes the news, and, to be honest, Uzziah was boring.

 

And that’s why it was a big deal when Uzziah died. The strong, stable leadership that the people had relied on for so long was taken away, and Judah was left with an uncertain future. It was during this time of uncertainty that God called Isaiah. I think that it’s often during our own times of uncertainty that, if we listen carefully enough, we can hear God calling to us.

 

Despite all the promise and possibilities that life holds for us, we all experience times of doubt, or even despair. There’s a feeling of loose ends, of life hanging by a thread. We feel that time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. We feel like the things that we rely on for stability are crumbling. It is in these times that I think we can learn much from Isaiah. In a time of tragedy and uncertainty, Isaiah focused his attention on God. When Isaiah’s world was in turmoil, he saw the Lord.

 

In our times of tragedy and turmoil, God calls to us. But do we hear the call? Where is our focus? Do we gaze longingly at the casket of Uzziah, remembering the good old days — days which will never come again?

 

Do we remember the days when our pews were filled on Sunday mornings? The days when children’s laughter echoed through our church buildings? In times of trouble, do we focus our attention on how things used to be, and wonder where we went wrong?

 

Or do we focus our attention on God? Aristotle said that the direction of our gaze determines the outline of our thoughts. Are we gazing into the past, or looking ahead to the future? Our thoughts, our attitudes, and our actions depend on the direction of our gaze.

 

“In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.” Isaiah’s gaze was on the future. Isaiah’s focus was on God. In the midst of uncertain and troubled times, Isaiah kept his focus on God, and thus Isaiah was rewarded with a marvelous vision.

 

Let’s take a look at that vision. First of all, notice that Isaiah never actually sees God face to face. Rather, Isaiah sees the evidence of God all around him. Isaiah sees a throne, and the hem of a garment. Isaiah sees seraphs, and hears their voices, glorifying God. Isaiah feels the trembling power of God.

 

We, too, can see the evidence of God all around us — in the beauty of creation, in the smile of a friend. But Isaiah tells us that this vision takes place in the temple, and certainly we can see the evidence of worship: the seraphs in attendance, hymns being sung, the smoke signifying an offering.

 

This tells us that, while there is no doubt that we can see the evidence of God anywhere, experience the presence of God anywhere — this tells us that the best place to experience the presence of God is during our time of worship. This is why I am always stressing regular attendance at worship to you. And this is why I’m always urging you to invite others to come and worship with us.

 

If there is anyone out there whom you care about, anyone who needs to experience the presence of God, you have a choice: You can sit back and hope and pray that somehow, some way, that person will focus his or her attention on God in the middle of the workday, or while lining up a putt on the golf course, or while sitting at home watching Burn Notice.

 

Or you can invite that person to come and worship with you. Because, while a 3-foot putt for birdie might cause someone to say a little prayer, the truth of the matter is that the person who needs God is much more likely to focus on God right here, during worship. After all, this entire setting — the cross, the windows, the hymns, the prayers, the scriptures being read and interpreted — all of this is designed to help people focus on God.

So, we learn from Isaiah the importance of worship. What else?

 

Well, once our attention is focused on God, we may feel the way Isaiah felt — flooded with an awareness of our own sin and failures. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips!”

 

This is not only normal, it’s necessary. Before our sins can be forgiven, we have to be aware of our sins, we have to confess our sins and repent of our sins. In the 17^th chapter of Luke, Jesus tells us that when someone sins, “if there is repentance, you must forgive.” That little word, “if,” is all too often overlooked, and yet it is so vitally important. Basically, Jesus is saying that we don’t have to forgive those who sin against us. We don’t have to forgive them, unless they repent. By implication, Jesus is also saying that our sins won’t be forgiven, unless we repent.

 

1^st John 1.9 says, “If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Again, don’t overlook the word “if.” If we confess, God will forgive. Sounds like if we don’t confess, if we don’t repent, then God doesn’t have to forgive us. Now, I refuse to say that God will not forgive us, because I don’t claim to know the mind of God — like Paul, I see in a mirror, dimly — but why take that chance? If we do confess and repent, then we know that God will forgive us.

 

Isaiah confesses and repents of his sin: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips.” This leads to forgiveness, to a cleansing. Confession and repentance trigger the cleansing action of God’s grace. It is only through confession and repentance that Isaiah is able to experience forgiveness.

 

And notice this: it is only after repentance and the cleansing of forgiveness that Isaiah is able to hear the Lord speaking. “Then I heard the voice of the Lord.” When we are lost in our sin, we are unable to hear God calling us. Only when we have focused on God, repented of our sin, and received God’s cleansing grace can we really and truly experience the presence of God.

 

We can see in this passage the very natural progression from sinner to saint, from lost to found, from despair to grace. First, we come into the presence of God. We come to church, to worship, and there we are able to focus our attention on God.

 

Once our focus is on God, we feel the weight of our sin. We then confess and repent of our sin, and God touches us with God’s cleansing grace. Our sins are washed away, we are made clean and righteous, and we become disciples, followers of God, through Jesus Christ. And then — ah, then we hear God calling. “Whom shall I send?” Most often, we don’t actually hear God’s voice. We hear God calling in our hearts, rather than in our ears.

 

In fact, I think the most common way in which we hear God calling us is in these familiar words: Somebody ought to do something. Somebody ought to do something. Whenever we hear those words, there’s a good chance that God is calling us, a good chance that God is asking, “Whom shall I send?”

 

Somebody ought to speak up about injustice in the world. “Whom shall I send?”

 

Somebody ought to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. “Whom shall I send?”

 

Somebody ought to invite more people to worship on Sunday mornings. “Whom shall I send?”

 

Our ears hear, “Somebody ought to do something.” Our hearts hear, “Whom shall I send?”

 

And our answer — as people who have been received the cleansing grace of God — our answer must be the same as Isaiah’s: “Here am I; send me!” Honestly, as disciples of Jesus Christ, there is really no other answer that we can give, no other response that we can make. “Whom shall I send? … Here am I; send me!” Somebody ought to do something; I’ll do it.

 

So remember the lessons we learn from Isaiah. We need to focus our attention on God. We can’t keep looking at the past; King Uzziah was great, but he’s dead, and it’s time to move on with our lives. Our pews used to be full every Sunday morning; that’s wonderful, but that was then, and this is now.

 

We also can’t spend all our time blaming ourselves, asking ourselves how we got into such a fix. It’s okay to feel the weight of our sin, but we can’t dwell on it. Why are there so many empty pews on Sunday mornings? Where have all our young people gone? Don’t worry about it. Focus on God, and look to the future. How we got to this point doesn’t matter; we’re here, and somebody ought to do something about it.

 

The future of our church is uncertain, and it is during these uncertain times that we hear God calling, “Whom shall I send?” As forgiven and cleansed disciples of Jesus Christ, it’s up to each and every one of us to respond. “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord.” In the year 2010, we can see the Lord at work in our church, if only we will we all answer the call. “I’ll do something about our empty pews. I’ll invite people to come and worship with us. Here am I; send me!”

A Still More Excellent Way

 

1^st Corinthians 12.31b-13.13

　

“And I will show you a still more excellent way.”

 

Paul has been writing about various spiritual gifts, and the way these gifts all work together for the glory of God and the good of the people. Paul compares each of us, as Christians, with parts of the human body, pointing out that, just as a healthy body requires each of its parts to do its job, the Church — the body of Christ — requires each and every one of us to use the gifts which God has given us, in order for the Church to function properly.

 

Paul will pick up this same theme at the beginning of chapter 14, but here in chapter 13 Paul takes a slight detour. The reason I picked up the reading this morning with the end of chapter 12 is because those words — “And I will show you a still more excellent way” — pretty much tell us what Paul thinks about this next section of his letter. For all the time Paul spends talking about other spiritual gifts, it is clear that Paul considers the gift of love to be the greatest gift of all.

 

Chapter 13 is often called “The Love Chapter,” and with good reason. In this chapter Paul has recognized some basic fundamentals about love. While these words are often read at weddings, the love Paul is talking about here is not what we commonly think of as romantic love. Paul isn’t writing about the kind of love that springs up inside one individual and reaches out to another.

 

Rather, the love Paul is celebrating here comes from God. God’s love reaches out to us — to you and to me, to all of us. God’s love claims us, and then through us God’s love reaches out beyond us to other people. True love, as Paul sees it, always begins with God and always reaches out beyond one’s self to others. True love never stops at just one person, but reaches out to God’s children in this broken world we live in.

 

The purpose of this section of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is to place love at the center of the community of faith — the Church. We in the Church are called to reflect on love, to place love at the center of our lives.

 

Dr. J. Paul Sampley, of the School of Theology at Boston University, says that “love is the absolutely indispensable feature of the believing life.” Without love, no matter how many possessions we own, no matter how prominent or important we are — and for that matter, no matter how many other spiritual gifts we have been blessed with — without love we are lost and as good as dead.

 

Today we’re going to take a look at a few of Paul’s observations on love. But first, some of you might recall that the King James Bible used the word “charity” in this chapter, instead of “love.” The reason for this is simple. The scholars who put together the King James Bible in the early 1600s were translating from earlier, Latin translations, not from the original Greek and Hebrew. The Latin word for love is Caritas, and the King James translators simply mistranslated caritas as “charity.”

 

The reason I bring this up is that, when you get right down to it, “charity” isn’t a bad way to look at the love Paul is describing here. According to my dictionary, “charity” can be defined as “the willingness to judge people in a tolerant or favorable way,” or as “the impartial love of other people, especially as a Christian virtue.”

 

Paul says that love “bears all things.” This is an essential characteristic of love: not only does love not keep score of past events, it also looks the other way, as it were, in the present. Think for a moment about your closest friends. Our dearest friendships endure precisely because we are willing to give our friends a break, to give them the benefit of the doubt, willing even to overlook their faults.

 

This is certainly love as charity: a willingness to judge our friends in a tolerant or favorable way; an impartial love for our friends. Love “bears all things” in our friendships, and in our marriages and other romantic relationships. We marry our partners “for better and for worse.” Certainly Melissa is more aware of my faults than anyone else here; because she loves me, she looks at my faults in a tolerant or favorable way.

 

This is not to say, however, that love always allows us to pass over things in silence, to look the other way and ignore everything. When, for example, a person is being injured or abused, whether physically or emotionally, the fact that love “bears all things” cannot be used as an excuse to claim that the victim must put up with the abuse.

 

Too many times, too many churches urge battered women to stay with their husbands because love “bears all things.” This is not God’s plan; being the victim of spousal abuse is not God’s idea of a good and abundant life. Quoting Dr. Sampley again, “In matters of fundamental justice and the protection of less powerful persons preyed on by others, love requires that its handmaiden justice be brought to bear.” In these cases, love must protect the victim, not the abuser.

 

Love bears all things only insofar as no harm is done to another of God’s creatures, whether that harm be physical, mental, or emotional. We, as the Church, have an obligation to see that love does in fact go hand in hand with justice.

 

This is not an easy task. The very things that make love so vitally important — the capacity to overlook wrongs, to not keep score — these very things leave love vulnerable to exploitation. As the Church, we have to be always vigilant to avoid this exploitation. John Wesley’s advice to “first do no harm” is a good rule for us to follow. If harm is being done, love isn’t in the mix.

 

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. [Love] does not insist on its own way.” According to Paul, love means that, in order to find our own good, we have to seek the good of others. This goes against what we are taught by society. “Look out for number one!” Society says that we should take care of ourselves first, and then, if and only if there’s anything left, then we can take care of others.

 

But Paul says that our own good, our own best interests, cannot be achieved apart from the body of Christ. Our personal well-being is tied inextricably to the well-being of our neighbors.

 

There is a kind of circularity to love. Love starts with God. God’s love for us renews us and makes us whole. In response and gratitude, we offer love back to God, and we also turn and pass God’s love along to others. These others, in turn, offer their love and gratitude to God, and pass God’s love along to still others.

 

One thing about love: it cannot be held. Love is fully realized only when it is shared with someone else. You and I, having been fully loved by God, honor God’s love only by sharing it with others. Therefore, to look after the interests of others — to be patient and kind, to not be arrogant or rude, to not insist on having your own way — to take care of others is the best and surest way of taking care of ourselves.

 

“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.” God knows us perfectly. What we know, as imperfect human beings, is partial, and is filled with mysteries and inconsistencies. Paul is telling us to not worry about this. Right now, we aren’t expected to know perfectly.

 

Knowing, like loving, begins with God. God’s knowing and loving gives power to our knowing and loving. Our partial knowledge, and our partial loving, are both capable of improvement and growth. To use another good old Wesleyan term, God’s sanctifying grace helps us to grow in knowledge and love until we come to the end of our days, at which time we will see God face to face; we will finally know as we are known, and love as we are loved.

 

Mountains come and go, but love endures. Faith and hope endure, but love is greater than both of them. Our love endures beyond us. My parents have both been gone nearly 15 years, but I can feel their love for me to this day, and I know that I will continue to feel it until the day I die.

 

“Love never ends.” Love is our enduring legacy. Think about that. Love is your enduring legacy. What rearrangement of priorities, what reallocation of time and energy, do you need to make in order to maximize your legacy of love?

　

“And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” Of all the spiritual gifts God has blessed us with, love is the greatest. In fact, love is the only spiritual gift that we all are required to possess. Some may speak with heavenly tongues, others may understand all mysteries and knowledge, still others may have the faith to move mountains, but all of us need love.

 

“And I will show you a still more excellent way.” The more excellent way of love.

From Our Heads to Our Hearts

 

Luke 4.14-30

　

“When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.”

 

This is not exactly the response we pastors are taught to strive for in preaching school. Of all the books I’ve read, all the classes I’ve taken, all the seminars I’ve attended, not one of them recommended driving the entire congregation into a killing frenzy.

 

Now, occasionally stepping on a few toes is okay; in fact, it’s pretty much expected. Truth be told, there are some congregations where, no matter what the preacher says, one side of the aisle has steam coming out of their ears, while the other side is sitting there nodding their heads, saying, “Amen! You da man, preacher!”

 

So how did Jesus end up in this predicament? “Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to preach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.”

 

After Jesus’ baptism, he was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days, and then he began his ministry in Galilee. Jesus attracted quite a lot of attention. People began to talk about him — and all of it was good! Jesus was a rising star in the preaching business.

 

Eventually, Jesus wandered into Nazareth — the town where he had been raised. A lot of people in Nazareth probably knew Jesus personally. At the very least, most of the people of the town were probably acquainted with Jesus’ family. And so, in Jesus’ success as a preacher, there was a kind of reflected pride, a community pride, the way we feel when someone who grew up in our community goes off and makes good.

 

We say, “Jim Bob? Oh, yes, I know him well. His mother still comes into the store where I work.” Or, “Mary Ann was back home last Christmas and I ran into her at Wal-Mart. She’s still just the sweetest thing; success hasn’t gone to her head at all.”

 

That’s the way the people of Nazareth felt about Jesus. And now here he was. The hometown-boy-makes-good was back and the town was excited! Naturally, he was invited to preach at the local synagogue. Fliers were printed up and posted around town. An advertisement was placed in the Nazareth Daily Gazette. Word began to spread: Joseph and Mary’s oldest boy was back in town, and he was going to preach in the synagogue. “Yes, I remember when he was just a toddler. I always knew that boy was going to make it big some day.”

 

So they packed the pews on Sunday morning — okay, I know, they’re Jewish, so it was actually Saturday, not Sunday, plus they had a different calendar anyway. And yes, I know they didn’t actually have pews back then. But hey, this is my story and I’m telling it my way.

 

So they packed the pews on Sunday morning. They listened to Jesus read the scripture, from the prophet Isaiah. They settled back to hear what Jesus had to say, as he sat down to preach, as was the custom back then — a pretty good custom, if you ask me. I’ve been thinking, we could put a nice la-z-boy recliner up here and … never mind.

 

Jesus started to preach, and at first everything was going smoothly. “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” Smiles of pride, nodding heads. Amen, Jesus! You da man!

 

But then, as the saying goes, Jesus stopped preaching and went to meddling. Don’t you just hate it when that happens? I know, it’s never happened to any of you, personally, because you’ve never done anything that the preacher could possibly meddle in from the pulpit; but you’ve heard of it happening to other people, right?

 

Well, it certainly happened here. Jesus openly challenged the congregation’s notions about God — and to make matters worse, Jesus used their own scriptures to do it!

 

You see, the people of Nazareth thought that being God’s chosen people entitled them to special privileges. And in all fairness, it wasn’t just the people of Nazareth; nearly all of the Israelites felt that way. Apparently, however, this is the first time that Jesus has spoken so bluntly. Anyway, the Israelites believed that, as God’s chosen people, they were somehow entitled to reserved seats in the kingdom of God. After all, they had followed the Law — more or less — they had endured the persecutions and exiles. They had preserved their sacred traditions.

 

So they thought that they deserved special treatment from God. Then Jesus went and pointed out to them that in the past, according to their own scriptures, God had given special treatment to Gentiles, while Israelites who were equally in need continued to suffer:

 

“There were many widows in Israel … yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon … There were also many lepers in Israel … and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

 

Or, read it this way: There are American children suffering from cancer every day, and God cured none of them except a little Muslim boy in Iran.

 

That’s not fair, is it? Aren’t we God’s new chosen people? “One nation, under God.” Wasn’t our nation founded on Christian principles? How could God ignore our suffering, how could God ignore our children, how could God send his healing Spirit to some nonbeliever in a country where he’ll probably grow up to be a terrorist?

 

Now maybe you’re beginning to understand how the people of Nazareth felt. And I think what really hurt was that the people of Nazareth knew those scriptures. They knew them in their heads.

 

Dr. Fred Craddock, one of the truly great preachers of our time, says that the longest journey you ever take is from your head to your heart. The people of Nazareth knew the scriptures in their heads, but the scriptures had not yet made the journey to their hearts. Despite what their own scriptures said, the Israelites firmly believed that, because they were God’s chosen people, God owed it to them to take care of them, first, to the exclusion of all others.

 

What they had forgotten was that God chose them, not so that they could be spoiled and pampered; God chose them so that through them the whole world could be blessed. In Genesis 12, “… the Lord said to Abram, ‘ … I will make of you a great nation … and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’” God chose the Israelites in order for them to tell the whole world about God, so that the whole world might be blessed. The Israelites knew this, in their heads, but they didn’t understand it in their hearts.

 

And, God help us, aren’t we the same way? We, in the Church, we think that because we are Christians, God owes is to us to be nice to us, to take care of our every want and desire. After all, we believe, we have faith. There’s an entire cottage industry of evangelists and writers, spreading what is called the “Prosperity Gospel,” people preaching from pulpits and on TV, and writing books like “The Prayer of Jabez,” preaching that if we’re good and faithful, God will take make us rich.

 

And so we pray, “Come on, God, take care of us. Don’t bother with those who don’t believe, those who don’t care. We love you; they don’t. You belong to us, so take care of us.”

 

John 13: “And during supper Jesus … got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basing and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him … Jesus said to them … ‘You call me Teacher and Lord — and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.’”

 

Matthew 25: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me … Lord when was it that we [did those things] for you? … Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

 

Jesus has set us an example. We know that in our heads; after all, we can read about it in our own scriptures. But has the example of Jesus made the journey to our hearts? Our calling, as disciples of Jesus Christ, is not to sit back and let God take care of us. Our calling is to reach out to others, to take care of the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden; because they, too, are children of God, created in God’s own image.

 

We know this in our heads. And yet, despite this knowledge, the Church still harbors prejudice — racial prejudice, social prejudice, gender prejudice, religious prejudice — all are still harbored within the walls of Christ’s Church. We know, in our heads, but our hearts haven’t quite caught on.

 

We think that God can’t possibly love the people that we don’t love, whether they be the Muslims, the blacks, the homeless, the Hispanics, the gays. We don’t love them, and God is on our side, so God must not love them, either.

 

But God does love them. And God takes care of them, just as much, if not more, than God takes care of us. Because God knows about our prejudices, and God wants us to overcome them. God takes care of those whom we don’t care about, in order to set an example for us.

 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the [Muslims]. God has sent me to proclaim release to the [blacks], and recovery of sight to the [Hispanics], to let the [gays] go free.”

 

That’s a radical gospel — as radical to us today as it was to the people of Nazareth some 2,000 years ago. And yet, we know in our heads that it’s true. Now, in order to be true disciples of Jesus Christ, this radical gospel has to make the journey from our heads to our hearts. We need to rid our hearts of this sense of entitlement. We need to rid our hearts of hatred and prejudice.

 

1^st John 4: “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers and sisters are liars.” Let me rephrase that slightly: Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their black, Hispanic, gay, or Muslim brothers and sisters are liars. “The commandment we have from Jesus is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” Notice there is no qualifier here. Those who love God must love ALL our brothers and sisters, not just the ones we like.

 

We need to open up our hearts to the words of our own scriptures. We need to listen to the words of our own Lord and Savior. We need to love as Jesus loves. We need to treat others the way Jesus treats them. We need to move the Gospel of Jesus Christ from our heads into our hearts.

For the Common Good

 

1^st Corinthians 12.1-11

　

“Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed.”

It’s been said that ignorance is bliss. If that’s true, then, when it comes to the Christian faith, there are an awful lot of blissful people in this world! Understand, I’m not excluding myself from the ranks of the blissful. I make no claim to be an expert on Christianity, nor do I put myself forward as any kind of biblical scholar. Less than 2 weeks shy of my 51^st birthday, after more than 40 years in the Church, more than 10 years as a United Methodist minister, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface when it comes to knowledge of the Christian faith.

 

Trust me, my own understanding of certain topics or certain passages of scripture is often no greater than yours. One difference is that, as I prepare for a sermon, I take an in-depth look at whichever passage of scripture I happen to be preaching from that week. Sometimes the preparation for a sermon is the first time I’ve really taken a good, close look at a particular passage, even though I may have been superficially familiar with the passage for years.

 

Many times you’ll notice that I quote a lot of different people in a particular sermon — or I’ll quote the same person several times. Sometimes this is just because the person I’m quoting says something better, clearer, than I could say it myself; oftentimes, however, when I use a lot of quotes it means that this was a subject I had never really given a lot of thought to, and so I’ve gotten a lot of information and insights from books and commentaries, rather than using my own, original, thoughts.

 

And there’s nothing wrong with that. In a sense, everything we learn we get from someone else. At the very least, we need someone else’s ideas to give us a starting point, something to compare our own thoughts with. Reading our Bibles is a good place to begin, but as we think about what the Bible tells us, quite often we need to read what other people have to say about the scriptures, in order to get our own ideas flowing.

 

And, more than just reading what someone else has to say, we need dialogue, we need back and forth discussion. We need the opportunity to present our thoughts to others, and hear what others have to say about our thoughts. Someone else might see a hole in my thinking that I was completely unaware of. Someone else might take my thoughts and add something to them in a way that I would not have been able to do on my own. And I might be able to help others in the same way.

 

This is just one reason why you’ve often heard me say that it is nearly impossible to be a Christian without the Church — without the community of other believers. Those who think they can be disciples of Jesus Christ apart from other people are fooling themselves. We need to be able to interact with other believers. We need the fellowship of the Church — the communion of saints, if you will.

 

That’s why I’m always encouraging you to attend Sunday School. Worship is a necessary part of the Christian experience; we need to sacrifice some time out of our schedules in order to worship and honor God, and certainly you get to hear my ideas on a particular passage of scripture every Sunday morning. But Sunday School is where we get the dialogue, the back and forth interaction we need in order to learn and grow as Christians. In Sunday School I can learn as much from you as you can from me.

 

And learning is important. I’ve said many times, if you believe today exactly what you believed 5 years ago, you haven’t grown in your faith. So, please, prayerfully consider attending Sunday School; it’s only one more hour out of your week, and it’s important.

Why is it important? Because God doesn’t want us to be blissfully ignorant. God doesn’t want us to be “uninformed.” And because each and every one of you has a gift.

 

“To each is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” Not to some, not to a chosen few; to “each.” Each of us is given a “manifestation,” a disclosure, a particular knowledge, of “the Spirit.” This knowledge is given “for the common good,” which means it is something we are to share with everyone else.

 

Each and every one of you has a gift, a manifestation — something the Holy Spirit has disclosed to you, made known to you; something which you are supposed to share with everyone else. Scary, isn’t it? And yet, if you really stop to think about it, you can see that it makes sense; that it is, in fact, absolutely necessary.

 

Paul goes on, through the rest of this chapter and chapters 13 and 14, to stress the essential unity — or community — of the Church. The Church is the body of Christ. William Barclay points out that “the characteristic of a healthy body is that every part in it performs its own function for the good of the whole.” Unity, however, does not mean uniformity, and therefore just as the different parts of your body perform different functions — you use your eyes to see, your ears to hear, your feet to travel, your hands to grasp — just as the parts of the body have different functions, within the Church there are different gifts.

 

We can look at this idea of the body of Christ in a number of ways. If we look at the Church universal, the worldwide community of faith, we could say that each branch of Christianity has a function: the Roman Catholics have a function, the Orthodox Church has a function, the Protestants have a function. Within the Protestant Church we can say that each denomination has a function — the Methodists, the Baptists, the Presbyterians — each denomination has a function, and our differences all work together for the glory of God.

 

Breaking it down further, we can say that within our own United Methodist Church, each congregation has a function. We here at Lockesburg have a function, a gift, a part to play in the body of Christ. So do the congregations at De Queen, and Dierks, and Mineral Springs, and every other local church. And whether it be our little congregation here, or the several thousand people who make up Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas, we are all equal, in terms of our function, our manifestation of the Holy Spirit.

 

Paul breaks this idea down even further, applying it to the local church, in this case the community of believers in the city of Corinth, but in actuality saying that every local church is the body of Christ, and within that body each one of us has a function, a gift that needs to be shared in order for our body to be a healthy body, a “manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”

 

We have these differing gifts for the obvious reason that if we all had the same gift it would be like a body made up of nothing but hands. We’d be really good at grabbing things, but not so good at seeing what to grab, or communicating with one another, or even knowing where we are.

 

So, among this congregation, this community, there are a variety of gifts. The point Paul is trying to make here is that all of our gifts come from God, all of our gifts are equal in the eyes of God, and all of our gifts are supposed to be used for God’s service.

 

Barclay says that one problem with the Church today is that we tend to interpret the idea of Spiritual gifts too narrowly. When we think of Spiritual gifts we think of things like preaching, praying, maybe writing, singing. We need to realize that all gifts are special. Mechanics, carpenters, plumbers, teachers, accountants, farmers, doctors, nurses — all these people have their special gifts, gifts which are from God, and which should be used for the glory of God, and for the common good.

 

I’m not going to attempt to go into detail today about all the spiritual gifts which Paul has listed here, but even a brief look shows us that the categories are broad enough to include any gift that someone might possess.

 

The first two gifts that Paul mentions, wisdom and knowledge, seem to be closely related. The difference is that wisdom has more to do with the big picture, the overall scheme of things: knowing what is good and true. Knowledge has more to do with the days of our lives. We might say that knowledge is the ability to put wisdom to some practical use. Wisdom is saying that we should love our enemies; knowledge is the ability to show our enemies that we love them.

 

The gift of faith seems a strange addition to this list. After all, as Christians, we all have faith — or we wouldn’t be Christians! J. Paul Sampley, a professor at the Boston University School of Theology, says that Paul includes faith in this list so that no one can feel that he or she didn’t receive a spiritual gift.

 

William Barclay, however, thinks that Paul is talking about more than what we might call ordinary faith. Some people are given the gift of an extraordinary faith — a passionate belief that produces extraordinary results, the kind of faith that turns vision into action. Last week we talked about the faith of Abraham. John Wesley is another person who might fall into this category, or Abraham Lincoln, or Mother Teresa.

 

And, by the way, here we have an example of the dialogue I talked about earlier: Dr. Sampley says one thing; William Barclay has a different viewpoint. Both are acknowledged experts in the field of biblical scholarship. Which one is correct? Decide for yourself. Maybe they’re both right: maybe we’re all given the gift of faith, even if we don’t receive any other gift, but maybe some of us receive an extra boost of faith. You decide.

 

Next on the list is the gift of healing. There are people who have a special affinity for healing others. In some cases this gift leads them to become medical professionals — doctors, nurses, and others who care for patients. The gift, in other words, is not so much a “laying on of the hands and be healed” type of thing as it is the ability to diagnose and treat illness, or the ability to provide a special type of care for those who are hurting.

 

However, there have certainly been people throughout history with the ability to heal with a touch. I have no doubt that there are people alive today with this gift. My guess is that the reason we don’t hear much about this type of healing is because the people who receive this gift do their healing in private, away from the glare of publicity.

 

Even in the Bible, the vast majority of healings took place in private. Often we read of Jesus healing someone, then cautioning that person not to tell others about it. Often, the person disregards Jesus, and does tell others about it — but in a way this proves my point. We know Jesus healed a few people because they talked about it, but how many times did Jesus heal someone in private, and they didn’t tell?

 

The gift of miracles falls under the same category as healing. I firmly believe that miracles occur today, but we hardly ever hear about them. I believe that the people who receive these two gifts, healing and miracles, understand better than most that they have, indeed, received a gift from God, and therefore they don’t go around bragging about it.

 

Next comes the gift of prophecy. This can be a little confusing, because we tend to think of prophets as people who can see the future. Actually, prophecy might be better translated as “preaching.” Prophets are not people who read a crystal ball or tea leaves and can tell you what’s going to happen in the future; prophets are people who speak the word of God.

 

The function of a prophet is to make known the mind and heart of God. Prophets often bring warning and rebuke, true, but they also bring advice and guidance and compassion, seeking to direct people along the way that God wishes for them to go. Sometimes, in making known the mind of God, prophets do say something that happens to come true at a later date, but that’s not the real purpose of prophecy. The real purpose of prophecy is to help God’s people grow in the here and now.

 

The final three gifts which Paul mentions, discernment, tongues, and the interpretation of tongues, go together. I don’t want to get into all the controversy about speaking in tongues this morning, but I will say that the gift of tongues is a true spiritual gift. It’s not greater than any other gift, certainly, but it’s not inferior to other gifts, either. The thing about the ability to speak in tongues, I think, is that those who really and truly receive this gift, like those who can heal or work miracles, don’t go around bragging about it.

 

Sadly, the ability to speak in tongues is probably the most abused of the spiritual gifts — or perhaps I should say the most faked. And that’s why the gifts of discernment and interpretation are so closely related to it.

 

Like all of the other spiritual gifts, the gift of tongues is genuine only when it works for the common good. Anyone who is using the gift of tongues as a way to divide the Church, to cause strife in the body of Christ — that person is not really using the gift of tongues: they’re faking it. “No one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says ‘Let Jesus be cursed’” — that is to say, no one who is really and truly using any gift of the Holy Spirit will use it to cause strife and dissension within the body of Christ.

 

That goes for all of the spiritual gifts. If someone is using knowledge or healing or prophecy in a way that does not glorify God and work for the common good, that person is not truly using a gift of the Spirit.

 

“Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed.” Hopefully, we’ll all leave here today a little more informed than we were when we came in. Hopefully I’ve given you, at the very least, some food for thought regarding the gifts of the Spirit.

 

Again, let me stress: each and every one of you has been given a gift. Maybe it’s a gift of empathy; maybe it’s a gift of music. Maybe you’ve been given knowledge that will help our congregation to grow; maybe you have the gift of miracles, and we don’t know it because you don’t brag about it. Maybe your gift is the ability to keep the sound system running; maybe you have a special way of helping people who are mourning the loss of a loved one.

 

Whatever your gift is, remember that all of our gifts are equal in the eyes of God, and remember that we are all called to use our gifts to the glory of God and for the common good. You are called to use your gift, whatever that gift might be.

 

You have now been informed; the rest is up to you. Use your gift, whatever it is, for the glory of God. Use your gift for the common good — for the good of all of us in this community of faith. The thing is, we really do have to work together, and we all need everybody’s gift. All the rest of us need for you to use your gift, and you need us to use ours. When we all do this, when all of our gifts are working together, for the common good, then we will truly be the body of Christ.

What’s the Bible All About?

 

Genesis 12.1-9

　

What’s the Bible all about? Don’t worry, there’s not going to be a quiz. You don’t have to raise your hands or anything. Just answer to yourself. What do you think of, what’s the first thing that comes to mind, when you think of the Bible?

 

I’ll bet that the majority of you — maybe all of you — when I asked, “What’s the Bible all about?” most of you thought to yourselves, “It’s about God.” And you’re right, okay? Don’t panic; you’re absolutely right — sort of. The Bible is about God, true, but it’s only half about God, so you’re only half right.

 

Now, what’s the Bible about, besides God? That sounds like an old Groucho Marx joke: Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read. Trust me, halfway through lunch you’ll suddenly straighten up and say, “Oh, now I get it.”

 

Anyway, besides God, what’s the Bible all about? Well, the Bible is all about … you. The Bible, you see, is about God, and the Bible is about humankind. Ultimately, the Bible is about how God and humankind relate to one another — about how God relates to you, and how you relate to God.

 

I like to look at the Bible as an invitation, an invitation to all of us, as human beings. The Bible invites us to think about our own humanity. The Bible invites us to ask ourselves just who we really are. In the pages of the Bible we see ourselves. We see joy and sorrow, good and evil, mercy and spite — in other words, in the pages of the Bible we see human beings behaving humanly.

 

The Bible is about God, too, of course. But for the most part in the Bible we see God in the lives of human beings. And, when you stop and think about it, that’s just exactly the way we see God in the world today. We don’t actually, physically “see” God in our day to day lives. We know that God is present with us, here this morning, in our sanctuary, but as we look around we don’t really “see” God, do we?

 

But we see each other. Here, this morning, and in our day to day lives, we see other people, some of them actively seeking to discover and follow the will of God, some of them just trying to survive. It is through these other people that we see God at work.

 

Here’s something interesting: when we really take a good look at the book of Genesis, one of its most striking features is the relative absence of God from its pages. By the way, this time there is a quiz: can anyone tell me the one and only book of the Bible that never once mentions God? [Esther]. But back to Genesis — which is really another way of saying “back to the beginning” — boy, I’m getting sidetracked a lot in this sermon.

 

Anyway, back to Genesis. When you take a good close look at the book of Genesis, you’ll find that God doesn’t really appear very often. Seriously. God creates the world, then Adam and Eve do some stuff. God decides to destroy the world, then Noah and his family do some stuff. God announces that he’s going to bless the world through one family, and then Abraham and his descendants do some stuff. And on and on.

 

Another sidebar: I know our scripture today calls him Abram, but later on, in chapter 17, God changes his name to Abraham, and that’s the name he’s best known by, so I’m going to call him Abraham.

 

My point is that in the book of Genesis, God generally appears, gives a command or makes a promise, and then God leaves the details to us — to human beings. We see that, right here in this short passage. First, a command: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” Then, a promise: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you … and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

 

And that’s pretty much it. God steps back, and leaves the rest up to Abraham. God doesn’t say, “Now, take this highway, cross the river here, detour around that mountain.” God doesn’t offer any specific plans. God just tells Abraham what needs to be done, and then gets out of the way and lets Abraham figure out how to do it.

 

And God still does the same thing, today. In our lives, as individuals, and together as the Church, God calls us on a journey, but God doesn’t specify the details of our travels. God gives us commands: love the Lord your God, love your neighbor. God makes promises: everyone who believes in me may have eternal life.

 

But God never gives us detailed instructions on the wise and proper course of action for responding to God’s call. Oh, God gives us instructions. How do we love our neighbor? Matthew 25.31-46: feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, visit the prisoner, welcome the stranger. But as for how to feed the hungry, or welcome the stranger — that’s for us to figure out on our own. Neither does God explain his motivations, purposes, or objectives — at least not all the time. God mostly leaves everything up to us.

 

We often think that biblical figures such as Abraham must have been particularly close to God, that they must have had an intimacy with God that we can only dream about. But the truth is, Abraham was no closer to God than you and I are. Abraham was just a human being — nothing less, nothing more. We have no idea why God chose Abraham — as usual, God didn’t bother to explain himself. Abraham was just a normal human being, full of faults just like the rest of us — faults which will become quite evident over time, as the story of Genesis plays out.

 

The one thing about Abraham which seems to be remarkable is his faith. After God appears and disappears from the scene, Abraham packs up his family — they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly … no. Abraham packed up his home and his family and “set forth to go to the land of Canaan.”

 

And there, in Canaan, Abraham is faced with the stark contrast between what God has promised and the reality that lay before him. God had promised a land; Abraham found Canaan in the possession of the Canaanites. As the story unfolds in the book of Genesis, we discover that Abraham and his sons will spend their entire lives as interlopers — foreigners — strangers — in the land which God had promised.

 

Abraham’s grandson would, in fact, leave this land in order to seek his fortune and start his family. Abraham’s great-grandsons would go to Egypt, where Abraham’s descendants would spend generations as slaves. Only hundreds of years later would Israel occupy, as its own, the land which God promised to Abraham. When God was making that promise, God failed to mention that little detail.

 

God also promised offspring. That fact that Abraham brought his nephew, Lot, with him to Canaan is a reminder that Abraham and Sarah were childless. Perhaps Abraham’s idea was to make Lot his heir. When Lot left to find his own land, Abraham’s heir became his trusted servant, Eliezer. Later, Sarah suggested an arrangement with her maid, Hagar. This arrangement produced Ishmael, giving Abraham a son. None of these heirs that Abraham provided for himself, however, was the heir that God had in mind.

 

Very late in their lives, Isaac would be born to Abraham and Sarah — but not before Abraham’s attempts to force God’s promise to come true had resulted in a whole lot of pain and sorrow. One can easily imagine the anguish that could have been spared Hagar, if only God had warned Abraham in advance about trying to force the issue, if only God had told Abraham the specifics on when Isaac would be born. But God’s promise of offspring included no such details.

 

Abraham wandered from place to place in Canaan, probably to guard against staying too long in the vicinity of any given Canaanite family or clan, so as not to wear out his welcome. Given their ages and the amount of travel, it’s easy to imagine that Abraham and Sarah spent most of their time simply staying alive. It’s hard to focus on being a blessing for the whole world when you’re tired and hungry and sore, and you’re not sure where you’ll be sleeping the next night.

 

Yes, the one remarkable thing about Abraham was his faith. Abraham responded with magnificent faith to the call of God. But in his day to day life, Abraham had no more insight into the details of God’s plan than you or I do. The story of Abraham is not a story about the secrets of God’s plan for human history. The story of Abraham is a story about human beings, and their struggle to do justice to the call of God, without knowing any of the finer details.

 

So, what do we learn from this? We learn that human experience — the Days of Our Lives — human experience is not a series of divine interventions and manipulations. We learn that God doesn’t treat us like puppets on a string. We learn that, just as Abraham had faith in God, God has faith in us. God leaves life up to us. God lets us struggle to be human, struggle to respond to the call and the promise. God doesn’t provide us with a detailed map of our journey. Life doesn’t come with training wheels.

 

Abraham made mistakes, just like you and I do. Abraham tried to force things to happen, tried to make God’s promises come true, just like you and I do. But in the end Abraham’s faith carried him through. Abraham, and all the other people we read about in the book of Genesis — and all the way through the book of Revelation, really — all the people we read about in the Bible weren’t any different from you and me. They simply lived their lives the best they could.

 

That’s what we learn: we have to have faith in the promises of God, and we have to live our lives to the best of our ability. God doesn’t expect us to do everything correctly. God does, however, expect us to do our best to answer his call. The fact is, we may not live to see God’s promises to us fulfilled; Abraham didn’t. But that doesn’t mean that God’s promises are invalid.

 

God has faith in us. It’s up to us to return that faith. That’s what the Bible is all about: the way that God and humankind show our faith in one another.

Where?

 

Matthew 2.1-12

　

Today we are celebrating the Day of Epiphany. Epiphany means “manifestation,” or “appearance.” Today we celebrate the occasion on which God manifested himself, or appeared, to the whole world, not just the Jewish people. The world, in this case, is represented by Gentile, or non-Jewish, wise men who visited the Christ child.

 

In the early Church Epiphany was celebrated long before Christmas was ever thought of as a holiday, although back then Epiphany wasn’t limited to the visit of the wise men. Epiphany originally included the Nativity — the birth of Jesus — which of course we celebrate today as Christmas.

 

Although we are celebrating Epiphany today, because it is the Sunday before Epiphany, the actual date of the Day of Epiphany is January 6. It is the final day of the Christmas Season — the end of the 12 days of Christmas. I think it’s fitting that Epiphany be at least slightly separated from Christmas, because the visit of the wise men was a separate event from the Nativity.

 

The visit of the wise men occurred anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of years after Jesus was born. Despite what you see in modern Nativity sets, the wise men never saw the manger; Matthew specifically states that the wise men visited Mary and Jesus in a house, not a stable. Joseph is not mentioned in this story, so we can assume that Joseph was out working somewhere when the wise men came, and that the family had settled in Bethlehem for the time being.

 

The visit of the wise men could have occurred within days of the birth of Jesus, or it could have been weeks, months, as much as two years after Jesus was born. We know that when Herod discovered that the wise men had left without telling him who the Christ child was, Herod ordered all the children of Bethlehem aged two and younger to be killed.

 

This would seem to indicate that the wise men mentioned to Herod that they had first seen the star two years earlier. But we don’t know if the star appeared the moment Jesus was born, or if it appeared earlier, in order to give the wise men time to travel to Bethlehem. Of course, we also don’t know exactly where the wise men came from, either, so we don’t know how long it took them to travel to Jerusalem, and then on to Bethlehem. All Matthew says is that the wise men came from the East.

 

In the novel “Lonesome Dove,” young Newt asks Augustus McCrae, “How far is it, up north?” Augustus kindly explains that north is a direction, not a place. When Matthew says that the wise men came from the East, he’s giving us a direction, not a location.

 

If I told you someone came to Lockesburg from the East, I might mean from Nashville, Arkansas, or I might mean Nashville, Tennessee. I might mean Georgia, I might mean Massachusetts. I might even mean from China or Japan, what we call the Far East. There’s actually a legend that one of the wise men came from what is now Korea. Another legend states that all the wise men came from what is now Iraq. Obviously, we don’t even know for certain if all the wise men came from the same place, or if they all started in different places, and met somewhere on the road. For that matter, we don’t even really know how many wise men there were.

 

Three gifts are mentioned, but maybe there were two wise men, and one of them brought two gifts. Or both of them brought a little gold, a little frankincense, and a little myrrh. Or maybe there was a whole bunch of wise men, and several of them brought gold, several others brought frankincense, and one morbid wise man brought myrrh. We just don’t know. All we know is that there were at least two of them, because Matthew refers to them in the plural.

 

The fact is, I could spend the rest of the day up here talking about all the things that we don’t know about the visit of the wise men. The thing is, all those things that we don’t know — How many wise men? Where did they come from? When did the star appear? — all those things have to do with the “facts” of the story, not the “meaning” of the story. And if there’s one thing we should know by now, demanding “facts” from the Bible isn’t going to get us very far.

 

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep on saying it: the Bible isn’t a history book. Matthew wasn’t a journalist, trying to get all the details just right for a story in the Washington Post — or the De Queen Bee. Matthew included this story in his gospel for one reason, and one reason only: because God inspired him to do so. That means that God has something to say to us, today, through this story.

 

All those things that Matthew left out, the answers to all those questions, those things were left out because, in God’s opinion, they aren’t important. Once, when an umpire called a strike on Babe Ruth, the great slugger stepped out of the batter’s box, glared at the umpire, gestured to all the people sitting in the stands, and said, “There’s 40,000 people here who know that last one was a ball, tomato head.” To which the umpire replied, “But mine is the only opinion that matters.” Trust me on this: when it comes to what is and isn’t in the Bible, God’s opinion is the only one that matters. Those “facts” were left out of this story because they are not relevant to the message that God wants us to get out of this story.

 

If it mattered whether the wise men were Arabian or Persian or Korean, or Cajun, the Bible would say so. If it mattered when the star appeared in relation to Jesus’ birth, the Bible would say so. If it mattered whether there were two wise men, or three, or 33, the Bible would say so. Since the Bible doesn’t say so, we need to understand that it really doesn’t matter, and we shouldn’t waste our time and energy worrying about it.

 

So, what does matter in this story? Well, there is one question that I think we need to know the answer to, one question that, I believe, goes to the heart of the message that God has for us, today. It is the same question that the wise men asked when they first arrived in Jerusalem.

 

“Wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking ‘Where is the child who has been born King of the Jews?’ … When King Herod heard this … [he called] together all the Chief Priests and scribes … [and] inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.”

Where? That is the question we need to answer. Where?

 

The answer for Herod and the wise men was “Bethlehem.” The Chief Priests and the scribes knew that the Messiah was supposed to be born in Bethlehem. They informed Herod, and Herod told the wise men. The answer to “Where?” was Bethlehem. Having received their answer, the wise men traveled on to Bethlehem, and there they found what they were searching for.

 

Where? Where do we find the Christ child, today? Where is our Bethlehem? Where do we find what we are searching for?

 

The simple answer is: anywhere. God isn’t confined to one place, or to certain places. God can be found anywhere, everywhere, if we will only open our eyes and look for God.

God can certainly be found inside our church buildings — all kinds of church buildings, from huge cathedrals to “the church in the valley by the wildwood.” From Roman Catholic churches to Unitarian-Universalist churches to Holy Ghost hellfire and brimstone snake-handling Pentecostal churches. From the Southern Baptist church down the road to, yes, even our own United Methodist church. God is there, and God is here.

 

However, God can also be found in our homes, and in our workplaces. God can be found down on the farm, and God can be found in the innermost of our inner cities. God can be found at the Tip Top, God can be found at Hooters, God can be found at Merlotte’s Bar & Grill. God is all around us. God can be found anywhere, if only we will open our eyes and look. That’s the key.

 

The Chief Priests and the scribes knew where the Messiah was, but they didn’t find him. Why? Because they didn’t look; simple as that. The wise men found the Christ child because they were actively seeking the Christ child. And what makes this significant — what makes this a day of celebration called “Epiphany” — is that the wise men weren’t Jewish. Today, we might say that the wise men weren’t church-goers.

 

That is to say, the wise men didn’t know the scriptures. They had never been taught the scriptures; they hadn’t been brought up in church, hadn’t been attending Sunday School since they were kids. But that didn’t stop the wise men from finding God. The wise men didn’t know the scriptures, didn’t know the stories and traditions. But they actively went out and looked for God until they found him.

 

The Chief Priests and the scribes, on the other hand, they knew the scriptures. They knew all the stories, all the traditions. Today we would say they were in church every time the doors were open. But they couldn’t find God, even though God was right under their noses. They couldn’t find God because they never opened their eyes to look.

 

Another point: the wise men didn’t find Christ through what we in the Church would consider conventional means. I mean, they used astrology, for Pete’s sake! Personally, I think astrology is for the birds. To my way of thinking, reading your daily horoscope is a waste of time and brain cells.

 

However, I’ve just made the statement that God can be found anywhere. Doesn’t that mean that God can be found … in astrology? Oh, my, what have I gotten myself into? Can God truly be found through astrology? Can God be found through Islam, or Buddhism? Can God be found through any of these so-called “New Age” religions?

 

For an answer, I’m going to fall back on one of my favorite passages of scripture, Acts 11.17. Peter says, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”

 

Who am I to hinder God? It may well be that God can be found through all of these different religions, and through other means, as well. If I truly believe that God can be found anywhere — and I do — then I have to also believe that God can be found through any means of searching for God. Again, the key is to actively search for God, with your eyes and your heart open to receive God.

 

And I will point out this: although the wise men used astrology to begin their search for the Christ child, they needed the scriptures before they could complete their journey. Astrology — the star — led them, not to Bethlehem, but to Jerusalem. The star led them to the place where someone knew the scriptures — today, we might say the star led them to the Church.

 

It was only after the scriptures had been read and interpreted — just what we do in worship every Sunday morning — only then did the star continue on its way to Bethlehem, until it stopped over the place where Jesus was.

 

So what does this mean for us? I think, maybe, it means that all those people out there practicing astrology, or Buddhism, or Wicca — those people aren’t bad people. They’re just searching for something. They’re searching for meaning in their lives. The problem is, they don’t know where to find what it is that they’re searching for. They don’t have a star guiding them onward. There are an awful lot of people out there, today, searching for answers. Most of them don’t even realize that it’s God that they’re searching for.

 

And I think that the message God has for us, through the story of the wise men, is that we need to help those people find God. We need to be their “star.” We need to guide those people to the place where the scriptures are read and interpreted — to the Church.

 

We also need to be careful not to look down on those who are searching along different paths. Just as the wise men came to Christ through unconventional means, so can people today. Our job, as disciples of Jesus Christ, is not to lecture these people on what they’re doing wrong, not to berate them and tell them how foolish they are to be looking for meaning in the stars, or in the cycles of nature — mainly because it may not be so foolish.

 

Our job is to welcome them with open arms. Our job is to guide them to the scriptures, so that they can complete their journey, so that they can find what they’re searching for. Our job is to invite them to worship with us, so that they can hear the scriptures being read and interpreted. Our job is to help them find meaning in their lives — meaning which can only be found in Christ Jesus. Jesus himself said that he is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” and that no one came come to God except through him. But Jesus never said there was a limit to the ways in which we can come to Jesus.

 

So, back to the question: Where? Where is our Bethlehem? Where do we find Christ?

 

Well, we can find Christ in a manger; we can find Christ in a house. We can find Christ by following a star; we can find Christ by studying the scriptures. We can find Christ inside our church buildings; we can find Christ in the beauty of God’s natural creation. We can find Christ anywhere, and everywhere; but we can only find Christ if we actually look.

 

That’s the message God has for us, today, and that’s the message we need to be spreading, not just in the Church, but in the whole world: If you’re looking for meaning in your life, look for Jesus.

Our Only Hope?

I keep seeing these yard signs that say something like “Prayer is America’s Only Hope — 2nd Chronicles 7.14.” I totally disagree. If we humans could do the things that 2nd Chronicles 7.14 asks us to do, there would be no need for John 3.16, or Ephesians 2.8. Grace is America’s only hope — and China’s only hope, and France’s, and Brazil’s, and … etc etc.

What Christmas is All About

Luke 2.8-20

　

* ‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of sugar plums danced in their heads. And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap, had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the roof there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter. Away to the window I flew like a flash, tore open the shutter, and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave the luster of midday to objects below, when what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. More rapid than eagles, his coursers they came, and he whistled and shouted and called them by name:

Now Dasher! Now Dancer! Now, Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donder and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall! Now dash away! Dash Away! Dash away all!

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky, so up to the house-top the coursers they flew, with the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof the prancing and pawing of each little hoof. As I drew in my head and was turning around, down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, and his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot. A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, and he looked like a peddler just opening his sack.

His eyes — how they twinkled! His dimples, how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, and the beard on his chin was white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, and the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath. He had a broad face and a little round belly, that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, and I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself. A wink of his eyes and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I have nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, and filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk. And laying his finger aside of his nose, and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle, and away they all flew like the down of a thistle. But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight, “Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

*****

Do you know what Christmas is all about? I do! Christmas is all about … PRESENTS!

Admit it: the best part of Christmas is opening up your gifts. And who brings us those gifts? Santa Claus! Santa Claus brings presents to all the girls and boys in the world who have been …. good.

Oh, he’s making a list, checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty or nice. Isn’t that right? We tell our children, “Be good or Santa Claus won’t bring you any presents.” Our parents told us that, and their parents told them.

Is any of this true? Come on, be honest now, were you really good all year when you were a kid? I wasn’t. But Santa Claus brought me presents anyway. Have you ever thought about that? The legend says that we have to be good or we won’t get any presents, but the reality is that we all get presents, anyway. Why?

Okay, boys and girls, I’m about to tell you the truth about Santa Claus. The truth is that Santa Claus doesn’t bring us presents because we’ve been good. Santa Claus brings us presents because someone loves us! That’s it. We receive gifts on Christmas because somebody out there loves us. As kids it’s usually our parents or grandparents; when we get older it’s our spouse or significant other — or it’s our siblings or dear friends or our children. It doesn’t matter who it is, the fact remains that we get Christmas presents, not because we deserve them, but because we are loved.

And you know what? It’s the same thing with God. A long, long time ago, God sent us a Christmas present. We didn’t deserve it, we weren’t really all that good, but God gave us a present anyway, because God loves us.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” God sent his Son, a part of himself, to come and live among us, to be a part of us, to experience all that we experience.

God gave us the gift of his Son in order to save us from our sins. Isn’t that amazing? We haven’t been good — in point of fact, we’ve been downright naughty — and we don’t deserve any Christmas presents. But God gave us his Son anyway.

You know what that’s called? Grace. Ephesians 2.8 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Grace: God’s unmerited, undeserved gift to us, because God loves us. Because God loves … you. “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.”

What’s the first thing you do on Christmas morning, when it’s time to hand out the presents? You check the tag, to see who the gift is for. The tag on the gift from God says, “To: YOU.” God’s Son was given … to YOU. God’s grace is given … to YOU. Why? Because you are loved. Because God loves you, just as you are. God knows if you’ve been bad or good, and God still loves you.

Christmas is all about the presents, because the presents tell us that we are loved. God’s gift to you tells you: YOU ARE LOVED!

Merry Christmas!

* “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” by Clement Moore

The Born Ultimatum

 

Luke 1.26-38

　

Many moons ago I was a huge fan of the TV show Mission: Impossible, starring Peter Graves. I know the younger generation is more familiar with a couple of Mission: Impossible movies starring Tom Cruise, but I’ve never seen the movies. To me, the TV show was one of the best.

 

The premise of the show was that a spy, Mr. Phelps, was given an assignment that was so difficult it was considered nearly impossible. Of course, every week Mr. Phelps and his team managed to complete their impossible assignment. We, the TV viewers, never doubted for a moment that the Mission: Impossible team would save the day.

 

Real life, however, is different. In real life we have great difficulty in believing that the impossible can be achieved. Mary, the mother of Jesus, may have been the “favored one” of God, but she wasn’t much different from the rest of us when it came to imagining that the impossible could actually happen. When the angel said, “And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son,” Mary had enough sense to ask, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”

 

And the angel answered, “Nothing will be impossible with God.” Nothing will be impossible with God.

 

The controversy over the Virgin Birth is almost as old as Christianity itself. The historic creeds of the Church — the Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed, and others — these creeds are very careful to point out that Jesus “was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,” or was “born of the Virgin Mary.” These creeds were written in order to establish the official stance of the Church, against other beliefs, including the belief — which was prevalent at the time the creeds were written — that there was no such thing as the Virgin Birth.

 

In Ecclesiastes it says that “there is nothing new under the sun,” and that is so true. Today a number of Christians are up in arms because of what they see as an attempt to “take Christ out of Christmas.” They act as though this is something new, as if for 2,000 years we’ve celebrated Christmas smoothly, with no controversy whatsoever, and now all of a sudden a bunch of secularists are trying to take Christmas away from us.

 

The fact is, in the early Church, Epiphany was celebrated long before Christmas. It was several hundred years before the Church got around to deciding to celebrate the birth of Jesus — and even then, a lot of Christians didn’t think it was worth celebrating. For example, in early America the Puritans considered Christmas “unChristian,” and they tried their best to keep it out of the new world.

 

Part of the Puritans’ reasoning was that they couldn’t find December 25 mentioned anywhere in the Bible. And, of course, they were right. The December 25 date has more to do with the pagan Roman celebration of the Winter Solstice than it does with shepherds and angels and Jesus. Even after Puritanism pretty much disappeared, there was still a lot of concern that the celebration of Christmas detracted from Christian piety. When the Civil War broke out, Christmas was a recognized holiday in only 18 states.

 

Back to today, some Christians are horrified if a school calls its holiday a “Winter Break,” instead of “Christmas Break.” They threaten to boycott stores that use the words “Happy Holidays” in their advertising, instead of “Merry Christmas.” I haven’t heard anything this year, but I remember a few years ago when a bunch of people got mad because President and Mrs. Bush sent out greeting cards to a couple of million of their closest friends (and campaign contributors) and the cards said “Happy Holidays,” not “Merry Christmas.”

 

Again, people act as though this has never happened before. Throughout history, non-Christians have often objected to having Christmas rammed down their throats. In 1906 the Committee on Elementary Schools in New York City decided to put an end to the singing of Christmas hymns in the classroom after a boycott by some 20,000 Jewish students. Companies have been calling their office parties “Holiday Parties” instead of “Christmas parties” for decades, out of respect for the religious diversity of their workers. The same with schools. This is not a new phenomenon.

 

Another complaint these days is the over-commercialization of Christmas. Once again, a lot of people act like this just happened overnight. Actually, as with most everything else, he commercialization of Christmas coincided with the popularity of Christmas.

 

In 1822 Clement Moore wrote “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” popularly known as “The Night Before Christmas.” This poem, along with drawings by Thomas Nast in the magazine Harper’s Weekly, created the image of a white-bearded Santa Claus who gives presents to children. After the Civil War, Christmas became more and more popular, and more widely celebrated. By the 1920s the retail industry had adopted Christmas as its own, sponsoring annual ceremonies to kick off the Christmas season — you’ve probably all watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV.

 

Christian leaders objected strongly way back then. In 1953 The Methodist Church lamented that Christmas had become a “profit-seeking period.” Christians have been objecting ever since. Meanwhile, the shopping season that once began on the day after Thanksgiving now seems to begin the day after Labor Day.

 

On a side note, I find it rather amusing that a number of Christian organizations bemoan the commercialization of Christmas on one hand, while at the same time blasting Wal-Mart and Target and other retailers for not using “Merry Christmas” in their advertising — but that’s probably just me; I’m easily amused.

 

The point is, we seem to have two Christmases today: the Church Christmas, celebrating the birth of the Son of God, and the secular Christmas, celebrating commercialism. The question is: Is there anything we in the Church can do about this? At first glance, it would seem as if it’s an impossible mission. Which brings us back to this notion of the Virgin Birth.

 

Throughout the years, skeptics have continued to express doubts about the Virgin Birth. Whereas Isaiah seems to give a Messianic prophecy about a “Virgin … with child,” scholars point out, and rightly so, that the Hebrew word used in Isaiah can mean “virgin,” or it can simply mean “young woman.” Luke, however, is unequivocal. Where Luke says “virgin,” Luke means “virgin.” As C. S. Lewis said, the people of Bible times may not have known much about reproductive science, but they knew how babies were made!

 

The real objection to the idea of the Virgin Birth is the same Mission: Impossible view of miracles that Mary had. Miracles are not rational, they don’t make sense. The Virgin Birth was impossible. “How can this be?” we ask. And we get the same answer that Mary got: “Nothing will be impossible with God.”

 

And that’s the key, right there. God brought forth a miracle in Jesus. God brought the impossible into reality, which is the very definition of “miracle,” and which is at the core of Christian faith. True faith is not just about words and doctrines and liturgies, although these things are important. True faith is about the supernatural, the miraculous, the intersection of the Divine Spirit with human life.

 

The teachings of Jesus are a fine moral guide, even for people who are not Christians. Jews and Muslims revere Jesus as a wonderful prophet. But what makes Jesus special is the miraculous. Luke tells us that “the angel Gabriel was sent by God,” and that the Christ Child “will be holy; he will be called Son of God.”

 

God sent the “Son of the Most High” to the world in a particular time and a particular place, and to a special woman — a virgin named Mary. This may seem far-fetched, this idea that God became incarnate in a little baby, the son of a peasant woman. It may seem, in fact, to be impossible. But, as we experience God’s expression of love toward us, we discover that the angel’s words ring true: “Nothing will be impossible with God.”

 

So, what can we do about the secularization of Christmas? It’s been going on a long, long time. Is it a Mission: Impossible? I don’t think so.

 

I believe that what we in the Church can do about it is simply to continue to celebrate the birth of Jesus. I’m not sure that ranting and raving and boycotting are going to do any good. In fact, I agree that non-Christians have the right to not have Christmas forced upon them. We don’t need to issue an ultimatum: Put Christ back in Christmas, or else.

 

All we need to do is keep Christ in our own celebration of Christmas. That is the best witness we can offer of the true meaning of Christmas. There’s nothing wrong with Santa Claus and Christmas trees and all of that, and there’s no reason we should toss them aside, like the Puritans. But we need to make sure that our friends and family know that our primary reason for celebrating Christmas is not to bolster the economy, but to worship Christ, the new-born King.

 

We don’t have to force Christmas down people’s throats. We don’t have to get all in a tizzy if the greeter at Wal-Mart says “Happy Holidays!” Just smile at the greeter and wish him or her a “Merry Christmas!”, and go on with your shopping.

 

And most of all, I think we need to remember the miracle of Christmas. The Son of God was born to a virgin. It doesn’t get any more “impossible” than that. And if God can pull that off, then I have no doubt that God can keep Christ in Christmas, “for nothing will be impossible with God.”

The Born Supremacy

Mark 1.1-8

　

Today we have the second sermon in the “Born” trilogy: The Born Supremacy. As I said last week, the sermon titles are based on the Jason Bourne — B-o-u-r-n-e — movies starring Matt Damon.

 

The other night Melissa and I were watching the TV show “Bones.” One of the characters on the show stated, several times, that she didn’t celebrate Christmas on December 25, because Jesus was born in March. She based this, presumably, on the fact that March would be the time of year when shepherds would be watching their flocks by night.

 

This is a prime example of a problem with the Christmas story as found in Luke and Matthew. Far too many people get caught up in the peripheral aspects of the story. What time of year was Jesus actually born? How many magi were there, and where exactly did they come from? The Bible doesn’t give us answers to these questions, and that leads to a lot of speculation and theories — a lot of time and effort wasted on things that really don’t matter.

 

There’s also a lot of speculation about the childhood and early life of Jesus. Somewhere around the second or third centuries a number of stories sprang up about Jesus as a young boy. There are even a handful of “infancy gospels” that have survived through the years. The best known are called the Infancy Gospel of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. These were obviously never accepted as part of the Bible, but they were popular among Christians in their day — I suppose something like the way the fictional “Left Behind” books are popular today.

 

There are also stories about Jesus’ life as a young man, prior to the beginning of his ministry. You can find books based on this kind of speculation even today. Some claim that Jesus belonged to a Jewish sect called the Essenes. Others speculate that Jesus traveled to India, or some other part of the world. Again, there is no Biblical evidence for any of this, but that doesn’t stop people from theorizing.

 

Dr. Pheme Perkins, New Testament professor at Boston College, says that there is a real danger that “speculations about the childhood of Jesus … may take over from the real story of salvation.” Speculations about Jesus’ childhood, or whether he spent time with the Essenes or in some other part of the world, have no bearing on God’s plan of salvation. If it were truly essential that we know exactly when Jesus was born, or where the magi came from, the Bible would make it clear to us.

 

Mark avoids some of this unnecessary speculation on the birth of Jesus by the very abruptness with which he begins his Gospel. There’s no birth story, such as we have in Matthew and Luke. There’s no poetic proclamation about Jesus’ pre-existence with God, as in John. We have simply this:

 

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

 

This one sentence packs a lot of punch. The beginning of the good news. In Greek the word is “gospel,” which means “good news,” or “proclamation.” It’s sometimes difficult for us to remember that Christianity didn’t begin with a new book. The Scripture for the earliest Christians was the Jewish scripture — what we call the Old Testament. For the early Church, the New Testament didn’t exist.

 

The first letters of Paul began to circulate some 15 to 20 years after Jesus’ resurrection, give or take. The first Gospel — Mark’s — was probably written down some 20 to 25 years after the resurrection of Jesus, with Luke and Matthew coming along several years later, and John’s Gospel first appearing near the end of the first century. The sayings of Jesus, and the stories about Jesus, had been passed along by word of mouth for years before Mark was written.

 

So Christianity didn’t start off with a new book, a new Testament. It began, rather, with a new message about what the God of the Old Testament had done in Jesus Christ. And because this new message was passed on orally, it was simple enough to be remembered without anyone having to write it down. The good news of Jesus Christ is a simple message of salvation. The public ministry of Jesus, the death on the cross, and the resurrection of Jesus are the events through which God’s love is made known to humanity. This is indeed gospel, or good news.

 

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

 

Jesus Christ, the Son of God. These titles are so familiar to us that, again, it’s hard for us to imagine what it must have been like to hear them for the first time. In fact, we say Jesus Christ so often that we may tend to forget that Christ is a title, and not Jesus’ last name. If we stop to think about it, we probably all know that Christ is the Greek equivalent of the Aramaic word Messiah, and that both Christ and Messiah mean “God’s Anointed.”

 

The Jewish people had been eagerly awaiting the Messiah for a long, long time. The Messiah would be the One through whom God would redeem humanity from the powers of suffering, evil, and injustice. Unfortunately, the Jewish people were looking for the Messiah to be a warrior-king, someone like David, who would restore Israel to national greatness.

 

Today we still find Christians who want Christ to be a warrior-lion, rather than a peaceful lamb. Pheme Perkins flatly states that these people are “false prophets,” who are isolating themselves from the very world that God sent Christ to redeem. The Son of God is not isolated from human experience. The Son of God came to earth specifically in order to experience the real world from a human point of view.

 

Although he does possess divine powers, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, cannot overcome the hostility of his enemies, nor can he easily straighten out the misunderstandings of his own disciples. Thus the Son of God undergoes very real human suffering, and even death. For all his miracles, the true power — the true good news — of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, lies in his obedience to the will of God, and his accomplishment of God’s redeeming love on the cross.

 

John the Baptizer proclaimed that “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.” John knew then what we have come to know: Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Anointed One of God, the Son of God. As we celebrate his birth on December 25 — accurately or not — we celebrate and praise God for the fact that this is indeed only the beginning of the good news that Jesus Christ brings for all of us.