In The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate John H. Walton asserts that a proper, and what he calls “literal,” reading of Genesis 1 does not concern material creation of the world, but rather the functional creation of the cosmos. This does not deny that God is the creator of the material, but simply that Genesis 1 is an account of that process. The author of Genesis 1 is explaining God gives function to all that has been created, bringing order out of the chaos of verse 1. The ultimate function of all that is created is to make the earth habitable for humanity.
Most intriguing to me is Walton’s conclusion that Genesis 1 is the account of God creating a temple in which he will dwell. Through some great extra-biblical examples and passages from the Hebrew scripture, Walton makes a convincing argument that the statement that on the seventh day God rested, is a statement of God taking his place in the temple of the cosmos he as completed. This idea of God dwelling among us, rather than watching us from a remote heaven, is an important and often missing piece of one’s theological understanding of our lives.
This argument of God’s creative work including giving purpose (rather than limiting God’s creation to shape and form) allows for God to remain the eternal creator. In other words, it is not as though after Day 6 of Genesis 1, God hung up his work boots, never to create again. Rather, as God gives each of us purpose, not just an eternal purpose, but a purpose for today, God is continuing his creative work.
I would have liked the book to turn toward a discussion of how this understanding of creation informs the rest of the Old Testament, the ministry of Jesus, the authors of the New Testament, our eschatologies, and the church. I am still processing these areas on my own. If you are interested there, you might want to turn to N. T. Wright’s Simply Jesus. But this was not the purpose of this book.
Instead, the final section of the book is a discussion of the evolution/creation/darwinism/intelligent design debate. I have recognized for some time that this debate is asking Genesis 1 to do something the author never intended, so I found this section a bit tedious. For those mired in the debate though, Walton offers some great insight. He argues that science deals solely in the material which Genesis 1 does not address, and Genesis 1 deals only with function/purpose which is outside the realm of science. Thus the conflict need not continue.
I recommend this book to all who have questioned what Genesis 1 is about, and those who feel that acceptance of science is somehow a denial of Genesis 1, and by extension the whole canon of scripture.
As one who has read N. T. Wright would expect, this book is brilliant, accessible, and challenging. Wright’s ability to frame the ministry of Jesus in a way most of us have not thought about before is enlightening. We are finishing up a sermon series this Sunday and the mid-week class last night using Simply Jesus as our basis. The sermon series and the class are taking our congregation to new levels of understanding, commitment, and mission in the world around us.
While out shoveling snow recently, I had Pandora playing in my pocket. The station was one of several I have based upon a worship artist. I was concentrating more on the cold than the music, until the music moved to the fore and I heard a new song. It was a live recording of what I call a worshiper-centered song (as opposed to one that is centered on the object of our worship, God). As I heard it, these words from scripture started rolling around in my head: ” Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an overflowing stream” (Amos 5:23-24). I didn’t actually know the scripture word for word, but I had the general gist of it and looked it up later.
Amos, a prophet, is speaking a word from God to the people of Israel in that passage. The people were very concerned with correct worship and relatively unconcerned with the needs of the people around them. Because of that, God calls their songs noise and, in an earlier verse, says that he despises their festivals, doesn’t get excited about their worship gatherings, and doesn’t accept their offerings (Amos 5:21-22). That’s pretty strong language. I wonder how God feels about our worship today.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think this was some kind of prophetic voice I heard while shoveling snow. I’m not one who condemns contemporary worship music. I am a worship leader, for goodness sake, who has been moved by that type of music and uses it to bring others to an experience with God. But I sometimes worry we’re sending the message that singing the right songs is all that we need, as if we can live out our entire life of faith one hour on Sunday each week.
I’m concerned that we have raised up a generation of worshipers and not a generation of servants. There are many who tend to be very comfortable singing songs about God, and less comfortable working for justice and righteousness, serving our community, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and walking alongside the broken. We need a healthy balance of worship and service, right thought and right action, singing and doing.
In the meantime, I switched Pandora to my Bruce Springsteen channel and kept shoveling.
I have been thinking about eschatology, a seminary word for the last things, lately. Don’t worry. I haven’t gone all “ivory tower” on you. There’s a Simpsons reference coming.
In his book Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters, theologian N. T. Wright contrasts two types of eschatology prevalent at the time of Jesus. He writes:
whereas the Romans had what we might call a retrospective eschatology, in which people looked back from a “golden age” that had already arrived and saw the whole story of how they arrived at that point, the Jews cherished and celebrated a prospective eschatology, looking forward from within a decidedly ungolden age and longing and praying fervently for the freedom, justice, and peace that, they were convinced were theirs by right. God would do it! It was going to happen at last! (Wright 32).
In other words, the Romans thought their story had already reached its climax and were looking back to their golden age.
I liken it to Homer Simpson’s evaluation of music: “Everyone knows rock n’ roll attained perfection in 1974; It’s a scientific fact.” Homer is a huge fan of Grand Funk Railroad. From that point forward, music has gone downhill to him. He longs to go back to 1974.
The Jewish people were instead looking forward to a climactic moment still to come. Their history was an indicator of God’s provision and ability to free people from bondage and slavery. From a place of oppression in Jesus’ day, they looked forward to a day to come when God would do that to the full.
Which leads to the question: Are we looking forward or back? I would guess many have a retrospective eschatology. That may explain our annual struggles over public nativity displays and the like. Those fights may say less about our desire to worship freely, and more about how we long to return to a simpler time.
I believe Christians are called to have a forward-looking faith. We ought to be praying for the coming of the Kingdom of God, and working as the Kingdom’s agents in the present. Not looking back to what used to be, but working for what is to come.
Series: The Meaning of Jesus – week 5 (see bobkaylor.com for others in series)
Audio: Listen to it HERE
As many of you know, I am originally from the New Jersey shore. I grew up in the Toms River area, just to the west of Seaside Heights where they film The Jersey Shore – oh,we are so proud. That’s where we went to the beach, played at the arcades, and experienced water slides.
Occasionally we would drive about 20 minutes north to another boardwalk in Asbury Park, which was nice but past its prime. Mostly we just wanted to drive by the Stone Pony, where Bruce Springsteen used to play, and ride the old Merry-Go-Round with the brass rings to grab as you went by. From the Asbury Park boardwalk, if walk south past the last arcade and food vendor, you come to a stretch of boardwalk that is very different. There are no stores, no arcades, no rides. You have entered Ocean Grove. There is just boardwalk, beach, and old houses. It feels like time stopped about 100 years ago.
Ocean Grove is a unique little town, that holds a very dear place in my heart. My youth leaders, Dale and Carol Whilden, live in Ocean Grove where Dale is a dentist, and part-time dental missionary. In his younger days, Dale was daring enough to invite our youth group over to his house for summer lock-ins. I remember campfires on the beach, walks on the boardwalk, nights in his Victorian era house, concerts on the beach, and the open-air amphitheater called The Great Auditorium.
Oddly, in the center of this quaint little town, is an old 6,000-seat concert venue known as The Great Auditorium. This is because Ocean Grove started in the late 1800s as a Methodist Camp Meeting. People from all over would come to camp in tents around the Great Auditorium where many very popular preachers of the day would preach. Today a combination of speakers, concerts, worship services, and festivals are held every summer in The Great Auditorium. I have seen Tony Campolo and Duffy Robbins preach there, participated in the summer Choir Festival, and attended concerts by Petra, Jars of Clay, and Third Day. It is a remarkable place.
At the very first gathering of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association in 1869,
Rev. Ellwood Stokes, who would become the first president…, felt compelled to speak. About an hour into the meeting, he said that he felt called upon by God to speak the first four words of the Bible: “In the beginning, God…” After having spoken those words, he said it was as if God had taken hold of the land as His own! (“Brief History of Ocean Grove”).
Today that idea carries on through the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association motto: “God’s square mile at the Jersey shore.”
Being good Methodists, no alcohol is sold anywhere in Ocean Grove and I remember a time when you were not allowed to drive in Ocean Grove on a Sunday. The residents would park just outside of town, mostly in Asbury Park, on Saturday night, if they had someplace to go on a Sunday. I remember the outcry when they decided to repeal that blue law in the late 1970s or early 80s.
God’s time, space, and matter
That concept of God inhabiting a place, is something we don’t talk much about today. We used to. Today many churches call the place where they gather on a Sunday morning the Worship Center. We used to call it the Sanctuary – it was special, sacred space.
We used to do that with time as well. A day was set aside for worship and family. We used to have Sundays to slow down a little. Today, one day runs into another. Work dominates and so we need Sundays for games, practices, shopping, and maybe even for an hour or two in the office.
There was also a time when we saw some things as special. The church used to designate some objects as “relics” – things with special meaning, significance, and the presence of God.
When it comes to space, time, and matter, human nature fills us with the desire to place things on a continuum, similar to what Bob talked about in the first week of this sermon series. On this continuum we have sacred on one end, and secular on the other. Ocean Grove – sacred: my office – secular. Sunday – for God: Tuesday – normal. The communion table here on the platform – holy: my dining room table – ordinary.
This was certainly the thinking of Jesus’ contemporaries. For the Hebrew people of Jesus’ day, the world was neatly divided into the sacred and the secular. I introduced this idea last Sunday when we talked about the Temple. We heard Jesus talking about the Kingdom of God/Kingdom of Heaven as a present reality, here and now, which was cause for celebration – the celebrations that Jesus talked about and lived.
I illustrated this thought with two intersecting circles: one representing our space, and one representing God’s space. The point of intersection for the Jewish people of Jesus’ day was the Temple. It was believed that the Temple was the center of the world, the place from which God was to rule and reign the globe. When the people of God went up to Jerusalem, they literally felt that they were entering into the place where Heaven and Earth met. More than just an emotional attachment, as I have with my memories of being with God in Ocean Grove, this was the most sacred of sacred space.
The same is true for time. For the people of Jesus’ day, the sabbath was time that God inhabited in a special way. This was not simply a day to rest and relax, for doing the New York Times Crossword puzzle, or watching some football game. It was for that, but more than that. Each sabbath was also a recollection of God’s promise to once again reign and rule.
You may remember from a previous sermon that Pastor Bob talked about how there is an understanding among the religious of Jesus’ day that the story of creation is, in some sense, the story of God building God’s own Temple. On the first six days of creation, God builds. He forms earth and water, light and dark, sun and moon, animals and fish, and eventually people. Then on the seventh day, God rests. “This doesn’t just mean,” as N. T. Wright pens, “that God took a day off. It means that in the previous six days God was making a world – heaven and earth together – for his own use. Like someone building a home, God finished the job and then went in to take up residence, to enjoy what he had built” (Wright 136).
The people were then waiting for the ultimate Sabbath, the day when God’s work and plans in the world would come to full completion, and God would come again to inhabit his creation – this time even more fully. So that day of the week, set aside as the Sabbath (from root of “to rest”), was the sacred time to reflect on history moving forward toward that time of ultimate completion.
What the Temple was to space, the Sabbath was to time. There was also believed to be sacred stuff, or matter. When you read the Gospels you will pretty quickly get familiar with the concept of clean and unclean. This sounds like hygiene, but it is so much more. In Mark 7, we read about Jesus in a conversation with some religious leaders about him and his disciples eating without washing their hands (Mark 7:1f). Mark, probably writing to a non-Jewish community, includes an explanation:
“For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles” (Mark 7:3-4).
And we think, “good for you scribes and Pharisees, you should wash your hands, plates, utensils, and food before you eat to get the germs off.” But this is not about hygiene. Ritual washing is about making sure everything you put in your body is ritually clean, or holy. Eating something that was unclean would cause the person ingesting it to also become unclean, or unholy, and therefore unable to participate in their faith until they went through another ritual to be made clean.
The Pharisees, remember, expected strict adherence to the Law to be the way to encourage God to return to rule and reign from the Temple. In some sense they were assuming the role the sheriff in an old western movie who has been sent to “clean up this town.” They had good intentions, but they went about it in such a way that the Temple began to become divisive. People were being seen as either clean or unclean.
The poor were not blessed by God with wealth or someone to take care of them, so they must be unclean. People with diseases must have done something wrong, and are not favored by God, so they are unclean. That social status we hear in the Gospels of “tax collectors and sinners” had all done things wrong, so they were unclean. Those born differently-abled were also considered unclean. Maybe their parents had sinned in some way to make them unclean. Not to mention people who weren’t Jewish, they were certainly unclean.
According to the scribes and Pharisees it was fairly difficult to remain clean because any contact with anyone or anything unclean (like unwashed food or utensils) made you unclean. If something clean touched something unclean, the clean object/person would be made unclean. We see this illustrated in the parable Jesus tells of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37).
A Jewish guy is walking between cities when he is mugged, beaten, and left for dead on the side of the road. The first two people to walk up to him are both religious people: a priest and a Levite (a member of the religious class). Both of the religious people avoid the hurt man because blood and a dead person is unclean. Rather than becoming unclean, and thereby make them unable to perform their duties in their synagogue or the Temple, they walk around the hurt man and leave him there. The one who does the right thing is the Samaritan, a non-Jewish and therefore unclean person, who is not concerned about ritual cleanliness and just does what needs to be done.
Jesus does something very different. He reverses the flow.
Jesus heals a leper: Mark 1
Which finally brings me to today’s text. Jesus is approached by a leper who asks Jesus for something. Listen to that text again, in case you missed it the first time.
A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40 emphasis added).
Leprosy, as the footnote in your Bible might indicate, was a generic term in Jesus’ day for any kind of skin disease. So we read that, and think the leper is asking Jesus to clean up his complexion. But leprosy was also a disease that made one ritually unclean. So this request is more than just about skin. This is about a man who has been disconnected from God, the Temple (the presence of God on earth), and his family and friends.
Jesus picks up on the leper’s language and reaches out to touch him, which ought to make Jesus now ritually unclean, and says, “I do choose. Be clean!” Mark continues, “Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean” (Mark 1:41).
Jesus is doing something here. For him the flow of cleanliness travels the other way. When something unclean comes into contact with Jesus, Jesus is not made unclean. Rather the unclean becomes clean. That is radical. And that is radically heretical to the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day.
You see, there were rituals and rites that had to be performed at the Temple in order for someone to be declared clean. That is why Jesus sends this man to the Temple authorities so that he can be officially declared clean and give an offering of thanksgiving before moving on.
Then at the end of this story about the leper we read, “Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country” because the leper had blabbed about what Jesus had done for him. This is not just about celebrity. This is about Jesus having to lay low from the religious leaders who see him as a heretic.
By “cleansing” this leper, Jesus has performed what was the role of the Temple. To put it another way, Jesus is usurping the authority of the Temple. And this is not the only time.
Another example – Mark 2
Another telling account is the story of the paralyzed man being lowered down through the ceiling of the home where Jesus was teaching so he could be healed (Mark 2:1-12). Jesus doesn’t at first heal the man. Instead Jesus says to the him, “You sins are forgiven.” After which the man might have said, “That’s really nice and all, but I was really hoping you could make me walk again.”
The scribes watching this start to grumble about Jesus claiming to forgive sins, asking the question that needs to be asked, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” In other words, who does this guy think he is.
Jesus then says, “‘so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’ — [then] he said to the paralytic — ‘I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home’” (Mark 2:10-11).
Jesus and Temple
This is the rub that Jesus has with the scribes and Pharisees and all the religious leaders of the day. Jesus is doing what can only be done by the religious authorities in the Temple. He declares people clean, he forgives sins. Oh, and one other thing, he apparently ignores the Sabbath. There’s a story about Jesus and his disciples picking grain on the sabbath, one about encouraging a man to break sabbath by carrying his mat home after Jesus heals him, and several about Jesus doing healings on the sabbath, all of which bring the ire of the religious authorities.
Again, Jesus is not observing that separate, sacred time. Instead Jesus is celebrating the ultimate Sabbath, that seventh day where God will come and inhabit all of his creation. Jesus is declaring that day has already come in him.
Throughout his ministry Jesus serves as the herald announcing the reign the God here and now. He also acts as the one through whom the reign of God is coming. In other words, what Jesus is doing is replacing the role of the Temple and its leaders with the very presence of God dwelling in him.
Let me try to get at this another way, very briefly. One of the basic tenets of the Christian faith is the doctrine of the incarnation – meaning that somehow Jesus was God and human all at the same time. Or to put it another way, Jesus is the place of intersection between God and humanity. But rather than it being just a part of him (where there is this whole other human part – and whole other God part) these two circles fully intersect. There is not a point of intersection, but rather overlapping. Both are fully contained in the one.
Jesus then has replaced the Temple. He is that intersection of the Kingdom of God and this world. One need no longer go to that spot for a place of intersection. Now each one needs to follow Jesus, to enter into that space, the complete intersection of God’s space and ours.
This is not just about people. Sin has distorted, or broken, the original intent of creation to be the dwelling place of God. But 2 Corinthians 5:19 tells us that, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself” (emphasis added). In other words, in Christ God is reconciling, repairing, reestablishing the entirety of creation as his dwelling place – his Temple. Jesus tells us there is still a day to come, when the creation will be fully restored in the end.
We read in Revelation 21 that there will be one day a new heaven, a new earth, and a new Jerusalem. Most telling, we are told that there is “no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb [a symbol for Jesus]” (Rev. 21:22). Jesus is the Temple.
No longer sacred v. secular
I think we have the right idea today of not separating the sacred and the secular. I think that is exactly what Jesus is talking about as he goes around throughout his ministry forgiving sins, declaring people clean, and ignoring the sabbath laws. The problem is, I think we have gone the wrong way.
We have made everything – all time, all space, and all matter – ordinary. We have declared that Sunday is a day like all the others, so we might as well just get to work. We have decided that a church building is just like our office building – just bricks and mortar. We have decided that our communion table really is not different from our dining room table. We have declared, in essence, that nothing is special.
That is the opposite of Jesus’ message. What Jesus is saying instead is that your Tuesday, when nothing of any eternal import seems happens, is just as sacred as your Sunday. That your office is as filled with the presence of God, as is the room in which you worship. That the meal you share around your dining room table is as much about sacred community as the meal that will be shared at the communion table in a few minutes.
Jesus is not saying that everything is mundane and ordinary. Rather, Jesus is declaring that God is present in everything. Everything is sacred. Everything is holy. Everything is spiritual. By following Jesus, we begin to have our eyes opened to see the holy in the ordinary.
Thin places
There is this piece of Celtic theology that has made a significant impression on my heart. It is the idea of the “thin place.” The Celts understand what we have been discussing of the Kingdom of God and our world coexisting, as I described it last week as a sphere within a sphere. The image they use to describe what separates one world from the other is a veil – a thin, permeable layer keeping the two worlds apart. The Celts say that there are times and places where the veil gets thin, and we experience in a powerful way the other side, the Kingdom of God. When that happens, one has been in a “thin place.”
The subtle difference, which is far more than semantics, is that when you have that experience, it is not that God has sent his spirit from his realm far away to give you that moment before the spirit returns to God. Rather it is that the spirit has lifted the veil, made it thin enough, for you to see through to the fullness of the Kingdom of God that is here now and is still to come in fullness one day.
That happens, just for a moment, on a mission trip with the youth group, at a rally or retreat, in a class at church, over coffee with a friend, during a Bible study or a worship, or on the beach in Ocean Grove as a teenager with my youth group.
Ocean Grove is a thin place for me. So is the sanctuary in the church where I grew up. So is this platform, and being with the TLUMC youth on a mission trip wherever we are, and the room I use as an office in my house. They are holy ordinary places.
Holy ordinary places. May you and I stop longing for the holy to come to us, and find those holy ordinary places in our holy ordinary living.
Jesus came to tell us that every space, every moment, everything is filled with the glory of God.
Bibliography
“A History Of Ocean Grove.” The Historical Society of Ocean Grove. http://www.oceangrovehistory.org/Histories/OGHistory.htm.
“Brief History of Ocean Grove.” Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association. http://www.ogcma.org/
Wright, N. T. Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters. New York: HarperOne, 2011.
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version available online at http://bible.oremus.org.
Text: Luke 14:15-24
Series: The Meaning of Jesus – Week 4 (see bobkaylor.com for previous sermons)
Audio: Listen to it HERE
I came across this picture several years ago. I think it would be a great cover for a book I haven’t written…yet.
The story behind the picture is this. Around 1903, the people of Waterloo, Iowa were struggling with some fairly regular flooding from the Dry Run Creek. So they engineered and began construction on a massive storm sewer – over 3,000 feet long, 12 feet high, and 12 feet wide – to catch the runoff from heavy rains. When the project was complete the people decided to celebrate this great achievement at their annual League of Iowa Municipalities banquet. And what better way to celebrate that which would make life easier for the people than to have the banquet right there in the sewer.
The New York Times reported the event: Dateline, October 14, 1903. “The city officials and business men of Waterloo this evening gave a banquet to the League of Iowa Municipalities in the ‘Dry Run Sewer’ … A section of the sewer 400 feet in length was set apart for the banquet. A long table was spread to accommodate 350 persons.”
They also report that 2 mayors and the Attorney General of Iowa were among the speakers. All of this is under the headline “Banquet Given in a Sewer” (New York Times). This picture is from a postcard circa 1915 that commemorates the event (sewerhistory.org).
I get what they were going for, but I’m not sure I would have wanted to be there. I would love to see a picture of all of those gentlemen and ladies in their 1900s formal attire enjoying a meal there in the sewer. There is something about the incongruity of the beautiful banquet table with the formal silverware, the napkins neatly folded, the filled wine glasses, and the decorations on the table all set up in a storm sewer that fascinates me. Somehow I think this is a Kingdom of God image.
Jesus known for celebrating
One of the things for which Jesus was fairly well known, or maybe infamous for in his day, was enjoying a good party. In fact, there is this verse we don’t often preach on, found in both Matthew and Luke, where Jesus responds to the accusation of the religious elite that he is a “glutton and a drunkard” (Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:34). How did he gain that reputation? By attending banquets and dinner parties fairly regularly.
His ministry begins, according the Gospel of John, with his first miracle. At a wedding banquet, Jesus turns water into wine. Running out of wine was a sign that the party was over. By making more wing, Jesus keeps the party going. A symbol of his ministry. John, and the rest of the gospels, tell us that Jesus; ministry ended with celebratory meal with his disciples right before the series of events that led to the cross. He starts at a party, ends at a party, and mixed in throughout his ministry in between, there is mention after mention of Jesus eating. Sometimes at dinner with a scribe or Pharisee; sometimes with his friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus; sometimes at the house of a tax collector like Zacchaeus or Matthew; sometimes out on the field with 500 friends and a miraculous amount of fish and bread.
It seems that just about everywhere Jesus went, he was ready to celebrate.
Why? Because he knew something no one else did. Jesus knew and proclaimed that “the Kingdom of God has come near.”
You may remember from Pastor Bob’s sermon on “The Perfect Storm” a couple of weeks ago, that the Jewish people were looking for the return of God to Jerusalem to rule, but they differed on how they thought that would happen and how they would participate in it. The sect called the Pharisees believed that God would come back when God’s people paid strict adherence to God’s law. Jesus bumps up against them often. They think Jesus is lax with the law, and is therefore impeding the return of God. Another group, called the Sadducees were expecting their alliance with Rome to pave the way for God’s return. By currying favor and gaining some power, they believed they were living God’s way for God’s people by keeping the Temple fully Jewish and not allowing it to be corrupted by the gods of the Roman Empire, as other empires had done previously. The Zealots took quite the opposite approach. They believed that God would come back to re-inhabit the Temple and rule the world when they were able to drive the Romans out of Jerusalem and come out from under the occupation. Finally, there were the Essenes who felt the Temple was corrupt and when God returned he would judge the Temple and its leaders. So they went out to live in the caves of the Dead Sea, to get away from it all and live “purely.” They are the authors of what we now know as the “Dead Sea Scrolls.”
Jesus comes with a completely different message. He is not talking about what needs to be done in order for God to return. Rather, Jesus announces right at the outset of his public ministry that “the kingdom of God has come near” (Matthew 4:17, Mark 1:15, Luke 10:9 – and others). God is already here, and already king. There is no denying that this is central to Jesus’ earthly ministry. He has come to announce that people no longer have to wait for God to come as king in Jerusalem and by extension to the rest of the world. Instead, Jesus announces that the Kingdom of God is here now and that is cause for celebration.
Biblical image of the Kingdom of God
I want to reiterate something that Bob introduced over the last several weeks about what Jesus means by the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of God, or Kingdom of Heaven (those two phrases are synonymous), as Jesus talked about it, is not a place out there somewhere for us to attain later. In fact, it is not “out there” at all. Jesus always talked about the Kingdom of God as a present reality, but one that we do not always see.
One representation of this phenomenon would be two intersecting circles. One of those circles represents this world. This is “our space” – the world which we experience through our five senses; it is where we live, work, and play every day. The other circle represents the Kingdom of God. Very simply, if the other circle is our space this is “God space” – the place where God dwells fully.
For the Jewish people of Jesus’ day, the place where the two circles intersect would be the Temple – where God’s space and our space meet. In other words, the closest one could get to being in the very presence of God was to enter in to Temple.
For me, this two-dimensional drawing is limiting. I would rather it be three-dimensional – like a sphere within a sphere. One sphere representing God space, and the other our space. When we do that, rather than only a single point of intersection, there can be many intersecting points at any time.
You have probably experienced this. When you go on that mission trip, or that retreat, or meet with that friend, or come to worship, and you know that you are in the presence of God – that is one of those intersecting points. In other words, it is not as though the Spirit of God has come to you from someplace else, but that you have spent a moment in God’s space.
The biblical image of this for me is the story of Jacob’s ladder, from which we get the well-known song. In Genesis 28 we read of Jacob lying down to sleep during a journey. While he is there, he has a vision where he sees a ladder between this world and the next with angels ascending and descending, a sign that God is present in the world constantly. When Jacob awakes from this dream he says, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Gen 28:16-17). Jacob had spent time in that in-between place.
Kingdom of God Parables of Matthew 13
Throughout his ministry, Jesus was proclaiming much the same thing. The kingdom of God has come near, he said. The problem seems to be that we have trouble seeing it.
Take a look with me at the series of parables told in Matthew 13. Turn there, skipping down to verse 31. Listen to this quick succession of parables.
Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it becomes the greatest of shrubs.”
Next one: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast…mixed in with three measures of flour.”
Next one, down in verse 44: “The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field.”
Next one, verse 45: “the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
Next one, verse 47: “the kingdom of heaven is like a net thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind.”
There is a pattern that emerges here – a seed that is planted, yeast mixed in dough, treasure hidden in a field, a pearl that was difficult to find, and fish just below the surface. There is this sense that the kingdom of God is right here, but yet somehow just out of reach.
Jesus is pointing out that if only we had, in another expression he liked to use, “ears to hear” and eyes to see, we would begin to notice the kingdom of God all around us, just waiting to break through. Jesus has come to announce that the kingdom of God is here – not out there somewhere, and that he is the king of that kingdom.
We are going to talk much more about that next week, when we talk about Jesus and the Temple. For now, just try to keep that in mind as we continue to talk about Jesus’ parables and parties. Jesus is announcing and celebrating that the kingdom of God has come near – it is right here, right now!
Keep that in mind as we begin to talk about a couple of Jesus’s parables.
What is a parable? N. T. Wright reminds us that Jesus’ parables “were not, as children are sometimes taught in Sunday school, ‘earthly stories with heavenly meanings,’ … Some, indeed, are [kingdom of God] stories…with decidedly earthly meanings.” Meaning that these are not stories meant to teach us about something about the world we hope to inhabit one day, but are instead stories about that other realm, the God space, that should change the way we live here in our space.
A parable about a banquet – Luke 14
Which leads us to the parable we read this morning, skipping over to Luke 14. If you still have your Bible out, go toward the back of the Bible a few pages, past Mark to Luke 14. If start back up at verse one we get the setting for this parable:
One one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. (Luke 14:1)
Jesus is at dinner with a “leader of the Pharisees.” In the next section he heals someone, and then he makes a comment about humility. Then we come to verse 15 which Michelle/Ruth read for us earlier. So in the midst of what appears to be a dinner party with a Pharisee, Jesus tells a story about a dinner party. The story is told in response to a guest’s comment about eating bread in the Kingdom of God.
In the parable, Jesus revisits the Mission of God that Bob talked about last week. Remember that was to (1) bring good news to the poor, (2) proclaim release to the captives, (3) give recovery of sight to the blind, and (4) to release the oppressed and declare the year of Jubilee when everything is to be forgiven. The kingdom of God casts a much wider net than the people wanted to believe. They wanted to keep God for themselves, and not the others whom they believed were not worthy to be called the children of God.
At this kingdom of God party Jesus describes, the so-called worthy people all have better things to do. Property to inspect, oxen to test drive, a new relationship that is pulling them away. So the host asks that “the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame” be invited instead. Those who thought they deserved a place at the table are then shut out, because eventually the table is filled. The kingdom of God is for everyone!
No doubt Jesus’ host, a leader of the Pharisees, must have gotten the point of the parable. As a Pharisees he was one that was concerned about other things. And sure enough, Jesus’ story seems to end the dinner party. The next verse has Jesus back on the road, “Now large crowds were traveling with him.”
Soon after leaving the Pharisee’s house, this parable begins to come to life. We read that Jesus has “tax collectors and sinners” coming near to him. This gets some Pharisees grumbling about his choice of dinner guests – the impurity of it all. In response to this accusation, Jesus tells three more stories. The first is about a lost sheep. The shepherd leaves to find the lost one, and when he finds it – he throws a party. The second is about a woman who lost a coin and searches her house and when she finds it – she throws a party. The third is about a son who leaves home with his inheritance. Eventually he comes home, and when he does – his father throws a party.
This party image is not just something that Jesus talked about in his parables. This is a parable he lived. Time and again we find him celebrating with all the “wrong” people. When Matthew, a former tax collector, tells the story of his own call to discipleship, he includes the dinner party that he threw that night with Jesus and his former friends, “tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 9). We could go on and on with example after example.
The point is that one of the centerpieces of Jesus ministry was the announcement that the kingdom of God was here now, and it was to be celebrated.
This is not a celebration that denies the difficulties of life. It is a celebration that brings meaning within the difficulties. The people Jesus is calling to celebrate are living a difficult life. They are not free, many are poor, and there is little hope that is going to change. The message of the banquet is that those who have been cast out, who do not belong, who are told they are unfit, who have no power over their situation, and appear to have little hope for the future in this realm – there is a place for them at the table of the Kingdom of God. The sad part is that there are so many that miss the celebration because, in their words, they have better things to do.
Often in Jesus‘ parables about banquets and parties, and the stories that the Gospel writes tell about the parties Jesus lived, we read about those who refuse to celebrate. The father in the prodigal son story begs the older brother to join the feast, but that son can’t bring himself to celebrate. In the story of Matthew’s dinner party upon becoming a follower of Jesus, we are told that there are Pharisees and scribes on the outside looking in. In this morning’s story we hear about those who very politely turn down the invitation to the banquet because they have other things – land, oxen, marriage – that keeps them from joining. Today I wonder how many stay away from the kingdom of God because they don’t realize that it is supposed to be a party.
Christians in the culture
Have you ever noticed how the culture views Christians? Back in my youth, one of the most recognized Christian characters was “the church lady,” Dana Carvey’s character from Saturday Night Live. She hosted a little show called “Church Chat,” where her primary activity was pointing out where other people were not living the proper Christian life. She took great pride in telling them what they were doing wrong.
Several years later it became Ned Flanders, neighbor of the Simpsons, and his pastor Steven Lovejoy. Two of the most boring, joyless characters ever on television. I don’t know that Rev. Lovejoy has ever smiled on an episode of The Simpsons.
Or how about more recently, and more real, someone like Harold Camping. In the media for his predictions of doom and gloom about the end of the world. So many preachers, encouraging so many Christians to simply shake their heads over the state of the world and thank God they will be evacuated before it gets worse.
Do we think it was much better in Jesus’ day? Many long to go back to a better, simpler time. Oh, if only the world were like it were back in the days of Jesus. Really? The people Jesus preached to were living in a terrible time. They were persecuted and oppressed. They were doing things that had to grieve the heart of God – treating women poorly, casting people out for their disease, telling people they were unfit for the love of God. Yet Jesus didn’t walk around the streets of Galilee all doom and gloom just shaking his head. Instead, he said, “Let’s eat.”
From confrontation to invitation
When I was in Loveland last week I was talking with a young woman, a youth minister, who had recently graduated from college and was serving a church in a different college town. She had such a heart for the college students, and was grieved by what she saw as animosity toward the church. Apparently she witnessed a rally where some students were actively campaigning against the existence of god, and that Christianity was wrong, and things like that. She talked about how there was so much darkness on the campus and very little light. She was concerned for the students who were away from home and who might get sucked into this type of thinking because they were not connected to church and thereby susceptible to this type of reasoning.
By the way, I think this is happening on many campuses across the country. During that time of life it is easy to believe that more knowledge will help us evolve to solve our own problems, and we don’t really need a god to do that. That is what is called humanism.
She said something like, “I just don’t know what to do. I want to go up to those students and confront them, and tell them that they are wrong, and get them to stop. I want to convince them that Jesus is the way.” In a Holy Spirit moment I said something like, “I’m not sure that’s the way to go. I think it might be more effective if you set up an alternative. Those students that are protesting, don’t really know what the church is all about. Don’t fight them, and feed their perceptions. Go show them what the church really is.” Within seconds, she was brainstorming ways to do that. Setting up a coffeehouse in an abandon spot in the middle of campus, gathering people together for study, prayer, and fun. She went from wanting to fight, to trying to figure out ways to invite people to the party.
That sure sounds a lot more like the way Jesus would operate. Sure he called people out and challenged their difficult behavior, because all of that business was keeping them from celebration. Jesus said, you think property, work, and marriage are great – I’ve got something even better for you.
Dry Run Sewer Banquet
Which brings me back to Waterloo, Iowa, 1903. A group of townspeople set up a banquet in a huge storm sewer. That is an awfully odd place to celebrate. The banquet doesn’t belong there. It belongs in a grand hall, with chandeliers and a dance floor. A sewer is no place to celebrate. We should leave the sewer and wait until we get to a beautiful place far away.
But then again, what better place for a party? Let’s get together right there in the presence of that which is going to save our town from future floods, that is going to improve our lives and change the way we live. Why can’t a giant storm drain that brings peace to a community be a place to celebrate? As ordinary as it appears, there is something very special about this place that is worth celebrating.
Jesus came proclaiming that the Kingdom of God has come near. This, he said, was something to celebrate. Right here. Right now.
The table is ready! Come! Come join in the kingdom party!
Bibliography
“Banquet Given In a Sewer.” The New York Times. [New York, New York] 15 Oct. 1903. Web. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=FB0C17FB34591B728DDDAC0994D8415B838CF1D3.
“Sewers in our Culture” at SewerHistory.org. Accessed at http://www.sewerhistory.org/grfx/misc/cultur1.htm on January 26, 2012.
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version available online at http://bible.oremus.org.
I needed to read this very slowly:
Over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by. We have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer and deeper than all this hurried existence, a life of unhurried serenity and peace and power. If only we could slip over into that Center! If only we could find the Silence which is the source of sound!
- Thomas Kelly, twentieth century Quaker
as quoted in Common Prayer : A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, p. 80
(Claiborne, Shane, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro.
Common Prayer: a Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010. )
This one is a little rough. I have not taken the time to make it more readable. Hope you get the gist of it. Enjoy!
Listen to this sermon HERE.
Text: Matthew 1:18-25
Remember what Christmas morning was like when you were a kid? The excitement and anticipation got us out of bed very early.
I knew I wanted to share a song with you this morning, and when I went looking for a video of it, I stumbled across one that reminded me so much of Christmases when I was younger. As you watch the video, try to listen for the words to the song.
Somewhere in my parent’s attic there is an 8mm movie projector, a screen, and a box of movies a lot like those. Trees decorated with tinsel and those huge Christmas lights. Moms with perfectly coiffed hair because they knew the camera would be rolling. Dads not pictured because they were running the camera. Kids in their footie pajamas tearing through paper, hugging dolls, and climbing on new bicycles.
When I was a kid, my brother Ron – 16 months younger than me – and I shared a room with bunk beds. One of my favorite Christmas memories is how the first one awake would rouse the other one with the anticipation of Christmas morning. We always had to ask to get up – mostly so that my dad could get down the hall and set up the movie camera with the blinding light so he could capture the moment we saw the tree, and all of our gifts.
That plea in the song, “You gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta get up! It’s Christmas morning!” is something we could have said all those years ago. We pled for what seemed an eternity for the yes to finally come that we could get up and get started unwrapping.
Christmas is a time for gifts. It is the gifts that got me up at 0-dark-thirty when I was a child, and get your kids up today. The chorus of Rich Mullins’ captures the anticipation of Christmas morning so well:
Did my sister get a baby doll?
Did my brother get his bike?Did I get that red wagon
the kind that makes you fly?
But then the chorus shifts a little -
Oh I hope there’ll be peace on earth
I know there’s good will toward menOn account of that Baby
born in Bethlehem
The gift of the wagon seems to remind the narrating child of the true gift of Christmas – “that baby born in Bethlehem.”
Gifts of the Wise Men
Whenever children in the church ask me why we get the presents on Christmas Day when it is really Jesus’ birthday, I tell them that it is a way of remembering the gifts that the Wise Men brought to Jesus – and wonder with them if that is why we get presents on our birthdays too. There is something remarkable about those gifts of Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh.
Several years ago, back when we were doing the 5pm Sunday night service, I prepared a sermon series on the gifts the Wise Men gave to baby Jesus. You see, I only preached three of the four Sundays of Advent, because the 4th one was usually a music event like we had last Sunday night with our choirs. When I thought three, I thought of the gifts.
I was surprised to find that all three gifts – gold, frankincense, and myrrh – are found in the same chapter of the Old Testament – Exodus 30. Now this is my own exegetical work, and not something I read from some Bible scholar, so it makes me a little nervous to assert it with confidence. It has become though an important part of my understanding of the Wise Men, and a way of understanding what the story of Jesus’ birth is all about.
In this section of Exodus, the people are being given instructions for the building of the tabernacle – the “tent of meeting,” the dwelling place of God. While they are a nomadic nation it is a tent structure that they are to take with them, and will become the template for the designing and building of the Temple later when they settle in the Promised Land of Jerusalem.
Gold – In verses 1-10 of chapter 30, the people are given instruction for building an altar of incense. This is a block structure that is to be made of acacia wood overladen with GOLD. The instructions then continue to say that the altar of incense is to be placed right in front of the place where the ark of the covenant is to be placed – or in other words, right in front of the throne of God.
Myrrh – Later in the chapter, beginning at verse 22, the people receive the recipe for the anointing oil. The primary ingredient of the anointing oil is myrrh:
Take the finest spices: of liquid myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet-smelling cinnamon half as much, that is, two hundred fifty, and two hundred fifty of aromatic cane, and five hundred of cassia—measured by the sanctuary shekel—and a hin of olive oil; and you shall make of these a sacred anointing oil blended as by the perfumer; it shall be a holy anointing oil. With it you shall anoint the tent of meeting and the ark of the covenant, and the table and all its utensils, and the lampstand and its utensils, and the altar of incense, and the altar of burnt offering with all its utensils, and the basin with its stand; you shall consecrate them, so that they may be most holy; whatever touches them will become holy. You shall anoint Aaron and his sons, and consecrate them, in order that they may serve me as priests. (Ex 30:23-30)
Frankincense – Skip down a little farther, to verse 34, and you come across the third gift of the Wise Men.
Take sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense (an equal part of each), and make an incense blended as by the perfumer, seasoned with salt, pure and holy; and you shall beat some of it into powder, and put part of it before the covenant in the tent of meeting where I shall meet with you; it shall be for you most holy. (Ex 30:34-36)
Matthew being a good Jewish writer and presumably writing to a Jewish community, he and his first readers may have been able to call all of this to mind in the few moments it takes him to name the gifts that the Wise Men brought.
Gold used to craft the altar of incense at the doorway to the Holy of Holies, the place where the veil is thinnest and God is most present on earth. Frankincense, the primary ingredient of the incense to be burned on that altar, a sign of the place where God meets with Moses. Myrrh, the primary ingredient of the oil used to anoint the holy things and people of God. All three of these are symbols of God’s willingness to meet with his people as they wandered the wilderness with Moses, and when they settled down in Jerusalem at the Temple.
Not to mention that the words Messiah in Hebrew and Christ in Greek, simply translate to “anointed one” in English. Read through this lens, these gifts symbolize who Jesus is – the presence of God with his people and the messiah.
And note who gives them. A group of outsiders – from another country, another religion. This is a foreshadowing of the faith that we now all know. That Jesus is not just a messiah for the Hebrew people, but he is the very presence of God come to all of his people. The promise to Abraham that he is being blessed to be a blessing is coming to its fulfillment in this moment. All through gifts.
Jesus the gift of God
There is one more gift to talk about here, and that is the gift of the baby in the manger. I have yet to find an effective way to communicate the wonder of the incarnation at this moment. God coming to us in a baby.
When we think babies, we often focus on the cuteness,, but think about what else you know about babies and childbirth. Childbirth is messy and painful. Babies are completely dependent on their parents for food, drink, and clean diapers. Babies cry loudly to get what they want. Newborns cannot sit up or even hold their heads up on their own.
We often picture Mary and Joseph just staring at baby Jesus and cuddling him in their arms. But they had many other, far less fun and glamorous tasks to do as well. Do you have good picture in your mind now of a real baby? Good.
Now think about this: that baby is God in the flesh. We are told that one of his titles is Emmanuel, which translated from Hebrew means “God with us.” God – the all-powerful, all-knowing, everywhere-at-once, has-got-the-whole-world-in-his-hands creator of the universe – is the one lying that manger. Cold, vulnerable, helpless, fully dependent on his “parents.” This baby like any other, is also a baby unlike any other.
One of my favorite authors, Donald Miller who wrote Blue Like Jazz, posted a blog the other day that expresses a similar thought. The post is called “Changing God’s Diaper”:
I can’t think of a better way for God to enter the world then as an infant. He became one of His creation, for the sake of His creation. For a period in world history [humans] changed the diapers of God. He nursed at his creation’s breast. How disarming of Him. What a fantastic way to build a bridge between an infinite God and finite [humanity]. He depended on us for food and shelter and even life. He gave up power and control in an effort to love and rescue. Merry Christmas indeed (Miller “Changing God’s Diaper”).
This baby is not a gift from God – we often say that about babies. This baby is the gift of God. God in the flesh. It is hard to comprehend how incredible that is. And the gifts the Wise Men bring remind us that this is the gift of God’s presence freely given to all people. Remarkable.
We often forget that. Sometimes we think we need to find, or even make, our way to God. Sometimes we feel like we need to do certain things in order to please God. The Christmas story tells us though that God comes to us instead. The God we know in Jesus doesn’t wait for us to get our act together, but comes into the messes – like the mess childbirth in a stable. We don’t worship a God who demands obedience from us while he sits on high. Instead we know that God came to us, and still comes to us, to invite us into a relationship with him.
And he was willing to come as a baby to make that happen.
As you enjoy your gifts today, as you eat your Christmas meal and celebrate with family and friends – may you be reminded that today is a day we celebrate that God is with us.
Bibliography
Miller, Donald. Donald Miller’s Blog. “Changing God’s Diaper.” December 23, 2011. Link: http://donmilleris.com/2011/12/23/changing-gods-diaper/ accessed December 24, 2011
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version available online at http://bible.oremus.org.
Christmas Eve 2011 at Tri-Lakes United Methodist Church
5:00 pm Family Worship
Text: Isaiah 9:2, 6-7
Listen to this sermon HERE.
Christmas Lights
One of my favorite parts of the Christmas season is the Christmas lights. I enjoy driving by the wonderful Christmas light displays in people’s yards.
At my house we have a decorated tree in our yard, a string of lights over the garage, and a lighted Nativity Set on our porch. Our neighbor across the street has outdone us with lights that play some quiet music, and the lights go on and off to the beat. His are way cooler than mine. There is a house that I can see from Baptist Road on my way to and from church that has a large display. I enjoy driving by that every year as the trees in this families back yard are lit so beautifully. There is another I can see from 105 when I look north. The display is very bright and beautiful. When I was growing up, one of our neighbors was known for his lights every Christmas. It was very cool that he turned his flagpole into a Christmas tree of lights. When I was a youth, there was a concert venue near the church I served, that did one of those drive through light displays every Christmas. One Sunday night on the way home from youth group, we would drive through and enjoy the lights.
Some people use a lot of lights; some just a few. Some make them twinkle and flash; some shape them into Christmas trees and wreaths. Then there are displays like this:
Have you ever gone to the one on Windjammer Drive, just off of Lexington in Colorado Springs? It is one of the best you will see anywhere. The lights dance to Trans-Siberian Orchestra music, and last year a reindeer sang “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” to the Grinch. All done with lights. It is very cool! Christmas lights have come a long way since their origins.
Legend has it that the reformer, Martin Luther, was the first to use Christmas lights in the early 1500s. The story is that one Christmas Eve he went for a walk in the woods near his house. He was struck with the beauty of a group of evergreen trees as they glistened in the ice and snow. He wanted to share the beauty with his family, so he cut down one of the trees and put it in his house, decorating it with candles.
Over the years the tradition caught on and people started bringing in Christmas trees and decorating them with candles – which, by the way, is not the safest way to do things. Along came Thomas Edison in the 1880s with his discover of the lightbulb and to promote it, he decorated a Christmas tree with electric lights. Later came the safety light, that didn’t burn as hot as the old-fashioned ones, then the minis, and eventually the LED. All leading to the rockin’ “Amazing Grace” and Rudolph singing to the Grinch.
One of the reasons that all of this has caught on, is not because of the technology, but because light is such a powerful image of the Christmas story.
Advent
Every Sunday since Thanksgiving, we have set aside part of our worship service to light another candle on our Advent Wreath. For us this year the candles have been to remember the people in the story, who were visited by God’s messengers, and who said “yes” to their role in the coming of the Christ Child.
Tonight, for the first time this season, we lit the large white candle in the center – the candle we use to celebrate the coming of Jesus on this night. Later in our worship we will celebrate with our “Festival of Lights” where at this service we will light glow sticks as we sing “Silent Night” to symbolize the moment when the Gift of God was given to us.
Biblical images of light
The story of light, probably begins all the way back in Genesis 1, the very first chapter of the Bible. We read (Genesis 1:1-4):
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep…
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good;
The first thing that God creates is light. The light is the first step of bringing order out of chaos.
We know that story all too well. We put night lights in our children’s rooms, so that when they wake up in the middle of the night they can see and don’t imagine monsters in the closet. And we know how when one of our kids is afraid to go into a room in the house, one of the first things we tell them to do is to turn on the light. Somehow the light seems to dispel the fear.
We still use that image as adults today. When we are unsure about what to do, we might say that we are “in the dark” about our situation. Or when we are going through a difficulty, we might call it a “dark period” in our lives, or we might call an especially trying time our “darkest hour.”
The good news is that when things are getting better, we say that we can see “the light at the end of the tunnel.”
In some ways, that is what this Isaiah text is all about. Approximately 700 years before the birth of Jesus, Isaiah is writing to the Hebrew community in Israel that has been conquered by the Assyrians. They are living in fear, hunger, and poverty. At any time, all they have worked for could be taken from them by their conquerors. They are a people living in a land of deep darkness, a land with little or no hope of getting better.
To those people Isaiah shares a word from God. He says it with such certainty that although it has not yet happened he writes it in the past tense as if it already has. He says that they have “seen a great light” and that “on them light has shined.” In the midst of the darkness, even the darkness of having been conquered there is hope – and not hope in the wishful thinking sense of “I sure hope things get better.” Rather it is hope in the sense that things will get better because God is still with us even in our darkest hour.
Isaiah goes on to talk about a day when there will be peace, a peace so great that the very tools of oppression will be “burned as fuel for the fire.” Then he writes these words that touch us so deeply on this special night (Isaiah 9:6-7):
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
Isaiah is speaking a word of hope to a people in a hopeless situation, and the hope is not that God will come, but rather that the presence of God is with them even in their darkness. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, Isaiah, speaking God’s word to the people is saying that God has not left or abandoned them. The light is there, and a new day is coming!
Seven hundred years later the Hebrew people are no longer living under the oppression of the Assyrian Empire, but now of the Roman Empire. As it was under Assyria, there is little or no hope. They are a small nation that has been conquered by a worldwide superpower, and they are at the mercy of a government under which they have no say. They are overtaxed, oppressed, and occupied. When someone gets the idea that they might have the power to rise up against the Romans, they are publicly crucified to remind them of who holds the power.
Into that world, a child is born, a Son is given. One with ultimate authority who rules in perfect justice and righteousness. One who will lead his people to a new peace. One who is the God in the flesh living among us. He is the One we celebrate tonight – the great light that shone in the darkness of first century Roman oppression.
We are told that to mark his birth a special star appeared in the night sky – a bright light in the midst of darkness. God was making a statement that this is the one who can make a difference in the darkness.
But he is not just for that time and place. He is also for us today.
Fast forward to today. You and I know what darkness can lie around us. Jobs hanging by a thread, or the darkness of unemployment. We know the darkness that can be experienced in grief, and in the diagnosis that we just don’t know how to process. We have been through broken relationships with parents, spouse, children that can put us in the darkness. Some of us have been blindsided by a darkness that seems to have no cause other than a feeling of hopelessness that overwhelms us.
Tonight we do not deny the darkness. On the contrary. We recognize it. But we will not let it overwhelm or overtake us. Tonight we celebrate that a light has come into the world that can dispel the darkness. A Christmas light, if you will, that turns our mourning into dancing; One who brings order out of chaos; One who embodies the presence of God among us right here, right now – even in a rough economy, even with all your problems, even with all of your mistakes. This is not a light for someone else who has it all together. This is a light piercing the darkness of our lives – physical, emotional, and spiritual darkness. That is what we celebrate on this holy night.
With this understanding, listen the way that John, the most poetic of the gospels, describes Jesus’s coming (John 1:1-5, 14):
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
The original Christmas light is not the LED, or Edison’s incandescent bulb, or even the candles Luther put on the first Christmas tree. No, the first Christmas light was a baby born to a poor couple. A birth that was testified to by the angels to the shepherds, which led them to a baby lying in a manger. It is a birth signified by a light in the night sky that led the wise men to the child to worship him. It is a light that was promised some 700 years earlier, and a light that continues to shine two-thousand years later.
It is a light for you and for me, and for all of us to celebrate even today!
May you know that the light has come into the darkness and that the darkness has not, will not, and cannot over come it. Jesus has been born for you this day! When we give our lives to him, we find that there is order even in the chaos.
It is a gift freely, graciously offered to you and me who do not deserve it.
With that all in mind, let me share one more Christmas light display.
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined.”
“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us;”
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it”
That is the true Christmas light. Given to us who do not deserve it by the Amazing Grace of God. May we let that light shine in and through us.
Merry Christmas! Amen.
Bibliography
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version available online at http://bible.oremus.org.
Series: The First Carols: Week 3
Listen to it HERE.
About fifteen years ago Diane accompanied me to a National Youth Workers Convention. I had attended the previous two years with my friend Scott – the first time in Philadelphia and the next time in Cincinnati. Scott had moved to Texas earlier that year and was not going. So Diane graciously agreed to come with me possibly because it was being held in Nashville. I would like to tell you I learned a lot about youth ministry at that conference, but that would not be true.
As he had done the previous two years, Mike Yaconelli, the president of the company that put on the convention, gave the welcoming address. Yaconelli’s speech was the about the same every year which included an invitation to miss session of the conference. He told us that some of us in the audience might need a break, and that taking that break would be the best thing we could do that week for ourselves, our churches, and our families. He reinforced by saying that we should not feel obligated to attend all the sessions of the conference.
Somehow in Philadelphia, a city I had grown up around, and the following year in Cincinnati that invitation did not have the same appeal that it did in Nashville. I quickly grabbed the agenda for the conference and noticed that I had heard most of the speakers before. Challenge accepted! Diane and I took Yaconelli up on his invitation to miss portions of the conference.
Nashville was fantastic. There seemed to be music everywhere. Many genres were represented, but most of it was country which I didn’t mind because I grew up around country music (my Dad, who grew up in the Bronx is a big fan of George Jones, Patsy Cline, Tammy Wynette, Roy Clark, and the like). We went to the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Grand Ole Opry, and the Ryman Auditorium.
One afternoon was particularly fun when we decided to walk the strip to find a place to have lunch. We were surprised to find almost every venue hosting live music. After having lunch at one place and hearing some live music, we then spent several hours moving from venue to venue to hear more live music.
I remember one guy in particular, although I don’t remember his name. He was very good, but everyone in Nashville was good. What made memorable was his accent. We didn’t notice it when he was singing, but when he told stories between songs, it was pretty thick. Now a country singer with a southern accent would not have been remarkable, but this country crooner had an Australian accent. I heard him sing country, then speak with an unmistakable Australian accent, and I was confused. As they say on Sesame Street, “One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong.” Country singers should sound like Sam Elliot not Crocodile Dundee.
You may have noticed over the past several weeks that the Christmas story has a similar quality to it. Things don’t exactly seem to fit. Two weeks ago, Bob talked about Mary – an ordinary young woman of little note, whom God selects her to be the mother of Jesus. Last week we met a priest named Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth from a long religious tradition. They certainly seem like the kind of couple God would use to be the parents of the Messiah, but they are not. They are the parents of John, the one who will be the “voice of one crying out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord” (Luke 3:4).
Like an Australian accent on a country singer, the Son of God is born surrounded by those who do not seem to fit the scene. These are not extraordinary folks of great merit. There are instead very much like you and me. Today’s passage, which includes another angel visitation and another song, reinforces this thought.
The angel’s announcement
When we read this passage, we tend to focus on the angels – the heavenly beings in the sky. But we miss a great deal of what the passage has to say for us if we do not consider the audience to whom the angels appear. It is true that this is a song FOR the whole world, but it is not a song sung TO the whole world. Rather, this announcement and song are addressed to a specific audience – a handful of shepherds and probably a bunch of sheep.
Luke sets the scene when he writes, “In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them” (Luke 2:8-9).
I don’t know any shepherds, and I don’t even have a point of reference to understand what a shepherd is. So when I hear shepherds, I often think cowboy. But having grown up in New Jersey, I have never met any real cowboys, So I don’t really think cowboy, I think movie cowboy – someone like Jack Palance in the movie City Slickers.
Palance plays a seasoned, rugged old cowboy with a wealth of wisdom because he has spent his days out on the prairie – unencumbered by the distractions of modern life. He knows the meaning of life, not because he read it in a book or learned it in a classroom, but because he has long pondered it out on the range overseeing the cattle. Ah, the homespun wisdom, philosophy, and theology of the cowboy.
While that is where my 21st century mind goes, that probably would NOT have been the predominant view of a cowboy in the nineteenth century. What I have is a sanitized, Zane Grey, John Wayne, movie version of a cowboy that probably never existed.
The same is true of our common understanding of the shepherd. The shepherd’s contemporaries would not have seen him like a movie cowboy. First century documents paint a different, far less glamorous, picture of the shepherd. They were not respected theologians on the plain with a wealth of untapped wisdom gleaned from the time they had to be in deep thought. Rather they were viewed, if seen at all, as those whom the rest of proper society was more than happy to have living on the hillsides outside of town. One commentator, quoting several ancient sources, puts it this way:
in the First Century … shepherds…had a rather unsavory reputation. … “most of the time they were dishonest and thieving; they led their herds onto other people’s land and pilfered the produce of the land.” … Consequently, the pious were warned not to buy wool, milk, or kids from shepherds on the assumption that it was stolen property. Shepherds were not allowed to fulfill a judicial office or be admitted in court as witnesses. A midrash [a sort of ancient, Hebrew Bible commentary] on Psalm 23:2 reads, “There is no more disreputable occupation than that of a shepherd.” Philo, a Hellenistic Jewish philosopher [at the time of Jesus], wrote about looking after sheep and goats, “Such pursuits are held mean and inglorious” (Wilson).
The picture we get from these sources is quite different from the clean-cut boy with the lamb on his shoulders that are included in many of our nativity sets. Rather they are assumed to be dishonest, petty thieves whom people were encouraged not to even do business with. They were considered so unreliable that they were not allowed to testify in court. They are called disreputable and inglorious. They are not exactly the kind of people one who select to make the birth announcement to.
Bethlehem was filled that night with the right kind of people, descendants of David, the great king from whom the messiah was prophesied to be born. This announcement would appear to pertain more to them. In Bethlehem were the good, upstanding, law-abiding, ritually clean, Temple observant Jews. Yet the angel goes out to the fields, to a group of people living out on the hills, outside of respectable society, and considered ritually unclean, to announce this:
I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. (Luke 2:10b-12, emphasis added)
Four times the angel directly addresses the shepherds. The angel says this message, this child, this sign are for you. Then the angel invites them to go and see when he says “you will find.” Often we hear this addressed to us, the church-going, believing Christians. It wasn’t originally. Our first century counterparts were in Bethlehem, the City of David, getting counted for a census and paying their taxes. The angel was instead sent to announce the birth of the Messiah to those discounted by society, the irreligious, the untrustworthy, the rough around the edges.
Then, as the announcement draws to a close, the angel is joined by a whole host (or army) of angels who sing:
Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors! (Luke 2:14)
Which, by the way, is the entire song of the angels that we celebrate so much at Christmas. We know that song so much better than Mary’s which is quite a bit longer, and certainly better than Zechariah’s, which is even longer still. I’m sure we know it better than Simeon’s song which Bob will preach on next week, which though shorter than Mary’s and Zechariah’s, is still about twice as long as the angels.
We know the song well because we sing about it constantly throughout the Christmas season. When I was looking for hymns to sing today, I joked with Pastor Bob about how easy it was – unlike just about every other Sunday in the year. I could have picked just about any Christmas carol in the hymnal and we would sing about the angels. “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “Angels from the Realms of Glory,” “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” “Angels We Have Heard on High” (where we get to sing part of the song in Latin), “The First Noel,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” even “Away in a Manger” has the angels in it.
Each of them is longer than the song of the angels that barely takes up one verse. We like this song and know it well, but we may be missing something when we remove it from its original context. We cannot forget to whom this beautiful song of worship is sung.
The angels sing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” At least that is how the NRSV translates it. If you are my age though, you may remember it differently. When Charlie Brown asks “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” Linus recites these same verses from the King James Version. The passage ends with a slightly different translation of the angels’ song, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
The difference “peace, goodwill toward men” and “peace among those who he favors” is due to a difference in the last word of the song in the Greek texts. In some texts there is an s, a sigma, at the end of the word, and in other texts the s is not there. Is it eudokia or eudokias?
The word eudokia/s has at its root a sense of delight, pleasure, satisfaction. The question about the sigma at the end simply changes its part of speech. With the s, as the NRSV uses, it is about God taking delight in people. Without the s, as the KJV uses, it is about God giving delight to the people.
Scholars write lengthy linguistic and historical debates about the sigma, but I wonder how much it really matters. What seems more important is that we are talking about God taking delight ing or giving delight to the shepherds.
Before we look at that though, let’s eliminate a possible misreading of this text. When the angels sing, “peace among those whom he favors” it may sound as though the angels are dividing the world into two categories: those whom God favors, and those whom he doesn’t. There are several pieces of evidence that won’t allow us to accept that reading.
First, if that is the case we would have to believe that the angels have the wrong address. Certainly lowly shepherds would not be considered “favored ones.” If we read it that way, we would have to believe that God is making an announcement to those for whom it does not apply.
Some might suggest that God is holding out a carrot in front of the shepherds trying to get them to “straighten up and fly right.” In other words (in my best Price is Right voice), “This peace can be yours, if only you will do what it takes to become the favored ones of God.”
I don’t like either of those explanations. Neither sounds like God to me.
Further, we need to remember that the song follows the announcement which, we have already noted, is specifically addressed TO the shepherds – “I am bringing you good news of great joy… to you is born this day… This will be a sign for you: you will find a child…” The announcement is clearly addressed to the shepherds and there is no reason to suspect that the song is any different. Further the angel says that this news is “for ALL the people” – no qualifier there. For these reasons I do not believe that we can read “among those who he favors” as a qualifier.
I believe it is intended as a modifier. Rather than dividing humanity, I believe this statement about God’s delight (eudokia/s) is intentionally directed toward a group of people who have been told all of their life that they don’t matter. The shepherds have lived hearing that they are poor and outcast because God doesn’t like them; that they are somehow unworthy of the love of God; and not welcome in the Temple until they get their act together. The message to the shepherds that night is that God takes great delight in, or gives that delight to, them. Those living outside of town, outside of proper society, outside of the religious elite, are loved. Jesus, the Messiah has been born for them. Yes, even the shepherds. It seems odd that God would choose to send the angels to them, but then again, God has always seemed to have a soft spot in his heart for shepherds.
Shepherds in the Old Testament
Abraham was a herdsman when God appeared to and called him. When Moses noticed the bush that was burning but not consumed, through which God called to him, he was on Mount Horeb tending his father-in-law’s flocks. When Samuel came to the house of Jesse with word that one of his sons was to be anointed to be the next king of Israel, David was presented after all of his older brothers had been rejected because Davie was out in the fields tending sheep at the time. Abraham, Moses, and David were all shepherds.
Additionally, there are several passages in the prophetic books of the Old Testament that talk about a day when God will return to rule his people, and the image used is that of a shepherd. In Psalm 23 “The Lord [YHWH] is my shepherd.” In Jeremiah 31 God says to his people that he will return to them and care for them “as a shepherd a flock.” In Ezekiel 34, God is described as the Great Shepherd coming to guide his sheep, the people of Israel. In his own ministry, Jesus identifies himself as the Good Shepherd who “lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).
There is a theme throughout the Old Testament and that is picked up right from the start of the story of Jesus – that those often considered the “wrong people” are actually the “right people.”
Shepherds to the manger
Unlike Zechariah who responded to his angel appearance with skepticism – “How will I know that this is so?”; unlike Mary who responded to her angel-visit with a resounding “yes” but then was called to wait nine months; the shepherds are people of action. When the angel chorus finishes, they go. And they go with haste. The text reads,
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste. (Luke 2:15-16a)
There in Bethlehem the shepherds find the scene as the angel described it – Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus lying in a manger. Luke continues,
When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. (Luke 2:17-18)
Those thought to be too unreliable to be witnesses in a court of law are the reliable witnesses of birth of the Messiah.
Luke then concludes the story of the shepherds,
The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. (Luke 2:20)
Those who have been sung too, now have a song to sing. Those who had been welcomed, go to invite others. They have heard the good news, experienced it for themselves, and become the first evangelists, sharing the news at the birth of the messiah. Remarkable!
Outsiders
As a boy, my family’s tradition was to put up and decorate our Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. It was a great way to celebrate. On that day of great anticipation, my brother and I had something to do. This also meant that throughout December our primary Christmas decoration was the nativity set.
My parents’ nativity set is very cool, not very historically accurate, but cool. There is a Christmas light hidden under the eave of the wooden stable. The bulb was always orange, to give that warm glow to the scene. There is also a music box in the back that plays “Silent Night” when wound. The figurines are beautiful – not ornate like some, but simple and beautiful. I was always a big fan of the nativity set, but there was something I never noticed as a child. Being the weird kid that I was, there were times when I would turn out all of the lights in the house, plug in the bulb, wind the music box, and just take it in.
What I failed to notice back then is how the figurines in the scene are similar to an Australian accent on country singer. They just don’t seem to belong together. The shepherds had a reputation for living on the edge of society. The Wise Men were from a different country and a different religion. Joseph was of the ancestral house of David, but he was hardly regal as a laborer. Mary was from a historically priestly family, but it is her cousin Elizabeth who married a priest, not Mary.
Jesus is born just outside of an inn that is just outside of Jerusalem, to a woman whose cousin is married to a priest, and a man who is of the house of David but works with his hands. He is visited by spiritual people, but they are from another country and a different religion. There are some Jewish people who visit, but they are ritually unclean shepherds. Everything seems to be just a little outside of the upstanding, religious surrounding one might expect.
Jesus continues this theme throughout his ministry. The people he calls to be his disciples are fishermen, tax collectors, and the like. All those who had some education in the Hebrew scriptures, but obviously were not seen as promising enough to become apprentices of a more traditional rabbi. He touches those who were considered untouchable, loves the unlovable, and welcomes everyone to his table – even those with questionable pasts. Throughout his ministry, starting right here at his birth, and even predating his birth through the likes of Abraham, Moses, and David, we are introduced to a God who is no respecter of status, but loves us all. Yes, even you.
Jesus loves you
One of the primary messages of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that it is for you. Not your potential you if you worked really hard and got your act together – but you. The gift of the messiah, of peace and joy, is not just for the got-it-all-together, calm, responsible people. It is also given to the harried, the over-worked, and the underpaid. It is for the rich, the unemployed, and those with embarrassing debt. It is for the overwhelmed, the short-tempered, and the frazzled. It is extended to the active church member, the Christmas-Eve-only attendee, and those angry at the church. It is for the picketers, the picketed, and those caught in the crossfire. It is for those who have made a big mistake, those who have made a bunch of little mistakes, and those who make habitual mistakes. The love of God is for all – who please him – the priest, the Wise Man, the shepherd. The love of God is for you.
Some of you may think, “Well, that is nice for everyone else, but it doesn’t apply to me. You wouldn’t say that if you knew my secret sin, my addiction, my pain.” No, but God does. And he makes the offer anyway. That barrier is not God’s. It is yours. The angels announced to the shepherds that Jesus was for ALL people. Even them. Even you.
The angel’s announcement to the shepherds reminds us also that Jesus comes to the shepherds among us today. Those who have been pushed to the margins of our society, and outside of the church. They are all around us everyday – angry, frustrated, confused, struggling. They wonder if God, or anyone else could love them. They wonder if they can ever be forgiven for that thing that they have done, and in some cases continue to do. You probably know some. Who are those “shepherds” you come into contact with? The message is for them as well.
The song of the angels is an invitation to those who think they do not belong.
After meeting the baby Jesus, Luke tells us “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” Those who had been sung to are now singing. We need to follow their lead – no longer separating the religious from the irreligious, the insider from the outsider, but instead extending an invitation to those on the outside – where Jesus was born, ministered, and continues to dwell.
May we hear the angels’ song inviting us, the outsiders, to the manger. May we then go as the shepherds did, into our world singing the song we have heard, inviting others into this relationship that changes everything.
Bibliography
Wilson, Ralph F. “Shepherds in Bethlehem” at JesusWalk.com. Accessed at http://www.jesuswalk.com/lessons/2_8-20.htm on 08Dec2011.
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations of Scripture are from the New Revised Standard Version available online at http://bible.oremus.org.
