2/3/19 - The Home Crowd - Isaiah 58:6-10, Luke 4:14-30

The Home Crowd

Isaiah 58:6-10; Luke 4:14-30

February 3, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church/FOCUS Churches Worship, Rev. Kathy Donley

In sports, when a team plays on their own field, in their home town, they have an advantage over the visiting team, because their fans will be there in larger numbers or because they’re playing in a familiar setting and they know any idiosyncrasies of the space.   It’s one reason the Super Bowl is being played in Atlanta tonight.  Neither the Patriots nor the Rams will have the advantage of being at home.

I don’t know if anyone has studied the concept of the home advantage for preachers. I’m not even sure how you would measure a winning sermon.  Is it a win or a loss if the congregation tries to throw you off a cliff?  Who scores if they don’t succeed?

Jesus was preaching to his home crowd that day in Nazareth.  It started out well enough.  He took the scroll without dropping it and found the passage he wanted and read it out loudly and clearly.    Everyone was paying attention – all eyes were fixed on him, it says, and they spoke well of him.  He seemed to have the home crowd advantage.

Part of the home crowd advantage was that they knew the text. Those verses from Isaiah about good news for the poor and release for the captives would have been familiar.  This is a vision that has sustained them across generations, as their ancestors returned from exile, as they now suffer under the oppression of Rome.  When Jesus ends with the phrase “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” they would have immediately have thought of the Jubilee, that cycle of renewal and restoration which was supposed to happen every fiftieth year. In the year of Jubilee, debts were forgiven and slaves were freed and the land was allowed to rest. It was a time of starting over for everyone.  And Jesus announces that it starts today.  Imagine, the working people of Nazareth who start to wonder if their mortgages will be considered paid in full, who start to believe their relatives in debtor’s prison may be released. This is good news and they want to believe it.   This is Jesus, Joseph’s son – surely he wouldn’t lie to them, would he?   They want to believe that God is making everything right again.

Maybe a few of them notice that Jesus left out part of Isaiah.  Maybe they remember that the sentence in Isaiah says, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God.”  and it crosses their mind to wonder if Jesus left that part out on purpose.  Nazareth is in Galilee, an area know as “Galilee of the Gentiles” because so many foreigners have been moved in by occupying powers. [1] Many of the native citizens resent that.  They are tired of living under a harsh and hostile regime.  So, maybe some of them wonder why Jesus left out the part about vengeance, because they have been waiting for a long time for the Romans and other enemies to get what they deserve.  They have been counting on, anticipating, praying for, God’s vengeance.  Maybe some of them notice, but at this point, the home crowd seems to be on Jesus’ side. 

It was going so well until he brought up Namaan, the leper who was a Syrian general, and that unnamed foreign widow. He had them in the palm of his hand until he said, “Don't presume that because I am your hometown boy and I've got a reputation as a wonder-worker, that I will work wonders for you. Don't presume that God only loves and cares for you.  Don't presume that you deserve more healing, more food in time of famine, more of God's protection than anyone else because of your religion or national identity. You know, if you choose to remember the stories from history, that God cared for foreigners and enemy combatants, people not like you or your ancestors, people who didn't even worship the God of Israel.” 

And that’s when the fighting started.

What do we make of this incident 2000 years after the fact?  What we make of it depends in part on where we locate ourselves.  Are we part of the home crowd, those faithful ones who were in church every Sunday, even special services, (ahem FOCUS combined worship)? Or do we find ourselves in the outsiders, the foreign woman and enemy general who were encompassed by God’s mercy?  In the tragic history of Christian-Jewish relations, this text has been used anti-Semitically and Christians have claimed superiority over those in the synagogue who would have thrown Jesus over the cliff.  So where do we locate ourselves?

I suggest that most of us here can identify with the home crowd. Each of the covenant churches is at least 150 years old and one is over 300 years old.  FOCUS itself has been in ministry in Albany for over 50 years. We have the home advantage.

If you are here and you haven’t experienced the story and ministry of FOCUS directly, you are welcome here.

If you are here because you are new to one of our covenant congregations, we are glad you’re here.  If you just wandered into Emmanuel today and had no idea this was a special Sunday, thank you for showing up.  You who are newcomers are a gift from God to the rest of us.  Please give us an opportunity to get to know you as you get to know us.

Many, probably most of us,  in this room identify as Christians.  Christians claim Jesus.  He belongs particularly to us.  We are his home crowd.  But that does not mean we are all the same.  Some of you were here when FOCUS was founded.  Some of you remember Bob Lamar or Ralph Elliot as your pastors.  But some of us have come along much later.  In fact, two whole congregations have joined FOCUS in the last ten years.  So we who are the home crowd are not cookie cutters of each other.

And that was probably true for the home crowd in Nazareth too.  It says “They got up, drove him out of the town, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.”  Any time there is a they in a church story, there is also an implied us.  Right?  Someone says, “They want the new carpet to be green” in a tone of voice which clearly says that we don’t want that.   Congregations rarely think and act unanimously.  So when this story talks about they, I wonder . . .I would like to think that there’s a silent minority whose story is not told here. 

Part of the home crowd definitely does not want to hear what Jesus says.  They do not like being told that God was friends with their enemies.  When Jesus makes them face the truth embedded in their own traditions, they respond with anger and violence.[2]  But maybe there could have been a minority report.  Maybe the minority liked what Jesus said.  Maybe some of them had once been outsiders and having been welcomed, they were ready to extend the same welcome to others. 

I would like to think that some of us here in this home crowd would be right there with them.  That’s not just wishful thinking.  Last summer, we set up three open conversations with you, members of FOCUS churches.  We asked for your input on concerns in Albany that we could address better together than separately.  You responded with long lists at each gathering.  We took those lists very seriously.  We combined them and weighed all your answers and eventually we identified 4 issues that rose to the top.  Those four issues, which you named as being of most pressing concern, were food security, housing, racism and immigration.  Food security, housing, racism and immigration.

Those issues, identified by this home crowd, line up pretty well with Jesus’ agenda from scripture. Those of us in leadership at FOCUS are wrestling with ideas and strategies for how to engage these four priorities in hopeful and constructive ways. 

We might take a cue from the church in the Netherlands that just ended a worship service that lasted for 96 days. Dutch law forbids the police from entering a place of worship while a service is happening.  So Bethel Church held worship continuously in order to shelter an Armenian family living in their building for 3 months.  The family has not yet been granted the asylum which they first sought in 2010, but as a result of this church’s initiative, the government has agreed to reassess the status of 700 families who had been previously listed for deportation.  This round-the-clock effort involved almost 1000 pastors of various denominations who came from across Europe, sometimes bringing members of their congregations with them. The oldest daughter in the family is 21. In November, she wrote  “I often think the only place where I am safe is the church.  It really feels like a refuge.”

One of the organizers,  said, “I hope it’s a new way of being a church — a new way of having an impact on society, a new way of standing up for vulnerable people,”[3]

The Bethel home crowd offered safety to the oppressed and then literally welcomed strangers into their building to keep the worship service going. 

Or we might look to some Methodists in Memphis, the heart of the Bible belt, as they responded to those who might have seemed foreign in culture or language, but especially foreign in faith.

Watch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYembGqZF94

Perhaps you know other stories like this, stories that would encourage and edify and empower us.  We should be sharing those stories with each other.  Because this is who we are – followers of Jesus whose self-declared mission was to bring good news to the poor and freedom to the oppressed and to usher in the year of the Lord’s favor. 

FOCUS churches, this is our calling.  Home crowd, this is our mission.  Standing within our broken and bleeding community, perhaps feeling battered and bruised ourselves, we have a loyalty to God who is the creator, redeemer and sustainer of the whole world. As children of God, we are  called to be imitators of God, to live in love as Christ loved us, to welcome the stranger, and the foreigner and even our enemies. May it be so for you and for me.  Amen.

[1] Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, ( Downers Grove, IL;  Intervarsity Press, 2008), pp 152, 154

[2] Fred Craddock in  Preaching through the Christian Year C, (Harrisburg, PA:  Trinity Press International, 1994), p.92

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/world/europe/netherlands-church-vigil-refugees.html?fbclid=IwAR3c4_9zt4eTLGQ_Ael1zos_RpIWmByguhBtI55YvYzpoluq59zN60Cb0uk

1/27/19 - Today - Luke 4:14-21

Today  

Luke 4: 14-21

January 27, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley

A Baptist scholar named Robert Parham wrote this about our text for today.  “Luke 4:18-19 is one of the most ignored, watered down, spiritualized or glossed-over texts in many Baptist pulpits, evading or emptying Jesus’ first statement of his moral agenda.”[1]

That cautionary note jumped off the page at me. I certainly don’t want this pulpit to be one which waters down or ignores or evades anything Jesus said.  These two verses are at the heart of today’s sermon, but next Sunday, we get the second half of this story.  So if you think that we don’t do justice to these words today, please come back next Sunday when we host the FOCUS winter worship, and I will take another crack at it.

This is Jesus’ first recorded sermon.  Many people understand this to be Jesus’ personal mission statement.  In a few minutes, I want to invite you into some conversation about our mission statement.  This is one of those Sundays when you and I will do the out-loud work of the sermon together.  But first, let us see what we can notice about this text.

In the synagogue, he stands up to read and someone hands him the scroll of Isaiah.  It is a short reading. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 

These would have been familiar verses to his listeners.  I wonder if they would have heard the very slight changes between the version that Luke records and verses in Isaiah that Jesus was reading.    Scholars who compare Isaiah 61 and Luke side-by-side,  notice a few nuances in language, but what seems most significant to me is where he ends his reading. He seems to be reading two verses of Isaiah, but he actually only reads one and a half verses.  He stops before the words “the day of  vengeance of our God” which takes away the tone of judgment from the reading.

Jesus’ agenda is one of healing and restoration and compassion.  Robert Parham says, “Jesus was announcing that he came to liberate from real oppressive structures the marginalized – the impoverished, the war captives, the poor in health, the political prisoners. Jesus came to turn the economic structures upside down, instituting the year of Jubilee when crushing debts were forgiven and slaves were freed.”[2]

This is a dramatic announcement in his hometown.  He is claiming his life’s work, and it is not going to be carpentry!

It is a radical change and requires courage from Jesus, but I want us to notice something else.  It does not come out of nowhere.  It comes from within his faith tradition. Luke has been careful to tell us about his Jewish upbringing, about how his parents took him to the Temple to be circumcised and then again when he was 12 years old.  He makes this statement within his hometown synagogue and it starts as a quote from the prophets of old.  Jesus doesn’t come back home to preach a new message that offends ancient traditions. His mission is consistent with the covenant and relationship that God established with Israel generations earlier. 

The text was familiar, but even so, they waited expectantly to hear what he would say – every eye was fixed on him, it says.   How would he approach the text?  Would he compare the hard times his listeners were experiencing under the Roman empire to the hard times of their great-grandparents under the Babylonian empire?  Or maybe instead of looking backward, he would look forward to better times. He might say, “I dream about that day when good news will come for the poor and the captives will be freed and the blind will see. I have a dream that one day, one year, the Lord’s favor will come.”

Jesus the preacher, doesn’t choose either of those.  Instead, he says Today. “Today this scripture has been fulfilled.”  “Today this comes true.”  If he was bold before, this is even more so.

Diana Butler Bass says, “Today is a deeply dangerous spiritual reality – because today insists that we lay aside both our memories and our dreams to embrace fully the moment of now.  The past romanticizes the work of our ancestors; the future scans the horizons of our descendants and depends upon them to fix everything.  But today places us in the midst of the sacred drama, reminding us that we are actors and agents in God’s desire for the world.”[3]

We might remember Dr. King’s letter from Birmingham Jail which was addressed primarily to white clergy who supported the cause of racial justice, but not with his sense of urgency. They wanted him to give it more time.  To them he wrote, “ For years now I have heard the word "wait." It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This "wait" has almost always meant "never.” . . . . We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that "justice too long delayed is justice denied.” And then later in the letter, he wrote “I hope the church as a whole will meet the challenge of this decisive hour” [4]

Diana Butler Bass claims that “Today is the most radical thing Jesus ever said.”[5] and I think she might be right.

If we are honest, we look around and know that Jesus’ good news for the poor and release to the oppressed has not been fully realized. We see that Dr. King’s dream is not accomplished.  We may even  feel that the year of the Lord’s favor has completely passed us by . . .

But friends, hear the good news:

We are here, committed to Christ’s mission in this time and place.  We are here,  boldly stepping out into this year of experimentation.  We are here, ready to act in ways that might be simultaneously new directions and also thoroughly consistent with who we have been as God’s people. We are here, a still vital congregation, praying for the Spirit of the Lord to fall afresh on us,  . . . beginning today.

.We have looked at Jesus’ mission statement, his agenda.  Now for a few minutes,  let us consider our own mission statement. Would you read this out loud with me please?

Emmanuel is a diverse and growing tapestry of faith, woven together in our common commitment to follow Christ. We are God’s many-hued children, gathering to celebrate, to struggle, to serve, and to tell the good news of God’s love in the Capital District and around the world.

Some say this is an identity statement because it describes who we are.  That’s true enough, but it also describes who are becoming and hints at what we are doing to get there.  So, for the time being, I am content to consider this a mission statement.  And I would like for us to do so together for just a few minutes. 

The first sentence says “Emmanuel is a diverse and growing tapestry of faith, woven together in our common commitment to follow Christ.”   I wonder about the different ways we each might understand those words.  I wonder how we perceive the beauty of this tapestry.  I wonder how this sentence is true now and how it is not yet as true as we would like.  Please turn to your neighbor and share your first thoughts on one of those questions.  We are only going to take 3 minutes,  so don’t try to answer all of the questions, just share what is most important to you.  And listen to what your neighbor shares.

.The second sentence has these strong verbs:  gathering to celebrate, to struggle,  to serve and to tell the good news.  Which of these verbs is most important or meaningful to you?  Is there another verb that you would add to our mission? 

Again, please turn to your neighbors and share your thoughts on just one of these questions.  And switch the order of speaking in your groups this time. Let the person who spoke last go first.

 Thank you friends. “The implication of this passage is that whatever we find to be the heart of  the gospel will be the central shaping force in our life of faith.”[6]  It will be our mission, our purpose, our agenda.  As we move forward today, let us trust that God’s spirit is upon us to bring good news.  Amen.

[1] Robert Parham, The Agenda:  8 Lessons from Luke 4: Students Guide, (Nashville;  Baptist Center for Ethcis, 2007, accessible through www.ethicsdaily.com), p 3-4

[2] Robert Parham, The Agenda:  8 Lessons from Luke 4: Students Guide, (Nashville;  Baptist Center for Ethcis, 2007, accessible through www.ethicsdaily.com), p 3-4

[3] Diana Butler Bass in her sermon The Power of Today . http://day1.org/7044-the_power_of_today

[4] Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Letter From Birmingham Jail,  August 1963, accessed here https://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/documents/Letter_Birmingham_Jail.pdf

[5] The Power of Today http://day1.org/7044-the_power_of_today

[6] Carol Lakey Hess, in Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1 David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009), p. 286.

1/13/19 - Water, Fire and the Holy Spirit - Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-22

Water, Fire and the Holy Spirit

Isaiah 43:1-7; Luke 3:15-22

January 13, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. John Paarlberg                                                                                               

 When I was in seminary I had a student field assignment in a Hungarian Reformed Church --in the Reformed tradition we practice infant baptism as well as adult, believer baptism. The pastor there told a story of a baptism he celebrated.  As he poured the water over the child’s head the baby began to cry. “There, there,” said the infant’s father. “Nothing happened. Nothing happened.”

Let me be quick to say that that is not a Reformed doctrine of baptism. We believe that something does indeed happen in baptism, as I am sure you do, too.  But exactly what happens and how it happens, when it happens—that is much more difficult to say.  We say that baptism is “a visible sign of an invisible grace,” or even “a  means of grace,” which is to say that the Spirit of God acts in baptism, that God’s love is communicated—really, substantially, truly.  Just how that comes about remains something of a mystery. God certainly doesn’t act at our behest.  The church doesn’t control God’s Spirit. We don’t dispense God’s love. The Spirit blows where it wills; God acts in freedom.  Yet we trust in God’s promises. In and through the sacrament of baptism God acts. Something happens.

It’s also pretty clear in the New Testament that something happens in baptism,  something powerful, dramatic, maybe even disruptive.  Mark says the heavens were torn open at Jesus baptism. Both Matthew and Luke include these words from John the Baptist: “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; ….  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

Water, fire and Spirit are powerful forces, powerful biblical images. And not necessarily gentle, cozy images either. The picture here is not that of curling up beside a warm fire or soaking away the day’s tensions in a soothing bath. This is a fire that destroys and water that drowns.

Recall some of the biblical stories associated with water. The Spirit hovers over the waters at the dawn of creation. There is the story of Noah and the flood, the parting of the Red Sea, where ‘Pharaoh’s army got drownded’ as the spiritual says. There is the story of Joshua and the people of Israel crossing the Jordan to enter the Promised Land.  Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana; Jesus and the woman at the well where he offers her living water; the healing at the pool of Bethsaida where the Spirit troubles the waters.  Biblical stories about water are stories about power and risk and drama. Water is often an indication that something significant is about to happen; things are going to change.

Water refreshes, cleanses, delights. It means life and new life.  But we also know the power of water in hurricanes, floods and tsunamis. Water erodes, engulfs, destroys and drowns. Water is both life-giving and life-threatening. And the water of baptism is both blessing and threat.  It signifies new life, but for new life to be born something has to die.

Paul wrote to the church in Rome:  “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6: 3-4). In baptism something in us is not only washed away, but drowned.  “Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus,” writes Paul (Ro. 6:11).

In many baptismal liturgies that is reflected in the renunciations and affirmations.  The one being baptized is asked:  Do you renounce the power of sin in your life and in the world?  “I renounce them.”  Who is your Lord and Savior? “Jesus Christ is my Lord and savior.” Baptism is a baptism of repentance, a turning around, the drowning and death of the old self and the birth of the new.

John baptized with water, a baptism of repentance. “But the one who is coming,” said John, “will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.…. his winnowing fork in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire” (Luke 3: 16-17).

The image is of one holding a winnowing fork, or perhaps, as I’ve seen it done, a large, shallow, open basket filled with grain, tossing the grain into the air again and again, allowing the wind to blow away the chaff, the light, worthless stuff, and catching the valuable, heavier grains of wheat in the basket. And then sweeping up the chaff and throwing it into the fire.

Winnowing, separating the wheat from the chaff, is another image associated with baptism according to John.  Not separating the good people from the bad people, but separating the good from the bad in each of us.

You are about to be shaken up and sifted, says John, tossed into the air to allow the wind of the Spirit to blow away the parts that get in the way of what God wants us to be. Then the wheat, the good stuff will be gathered up, but the chaff, the non-essential, the worthless will be thrown into the fire.

“The one who is coming will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

What does it mean to be baptized with the Holy Spirit? In Jesus’ baptism the Spirit is associated with the affirmation of God’s love:  The Spirit descended in the form of a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Yet it was that same gentle, loving, dove-like Spirit that then led Jesus into the wilderness to wrestle with the forces of evil; that same Spirit sent him on his mission to proclaim that God’s kingdom had come near. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me he said “to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed to free” (Luke 4:18).  The Spirit led Jesus to live a life that was about so much more than his life.   And in our baptisms we are called to live a life that is so much more than our own life.   We are called beyond ourselves.  Yes, the Spirit is gentle and loving but the Spirit can also be disturbing, disruptive, empowering.

I’ve been led beyond myself to do such things as  tutor immigrant and refugee children at Arbor Hill elementary school, visit with Palestinians in the West Bank, volunteer in a food pantry, seek reconciliation with someone I’ve wronged, travel to Nicaragua to help rebuild homes— not necessarily great things, but, I hope, small things done with great love, as Mother Theresa said.  Why would I do such things?   There are many motives, but the short answer is: Because I have been baptized.  The Spirit led me.  

To be baptized with the Holy Spirit is to be empowered to be God’s co-workers in a wounded and weary world.  The Spirit leads you to places you would not otherwise go, calls you to undertake tasks you would otherwise not dare, to engage in struggles and conflicts you would otherwise comfortably avoid.

But underlying all of it is the voice from God:  “You are my beloved.” That is both the climax of the story and the source of everything that follows from it.  The alpha and the omega is the affirmation of God’s strong and steadfast love.

We heard it in the words that Isaiah spoke to a dispirited and despairing people: “Now thus says the Lord: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned. . . . You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you” (Isaiah 43:1–2, 4). We hear it again when God speaks another very personal and particular and specific word at Jesus’ baptism: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” God lovingly enters into the life and history of a nation or a community or an individual and makes a particular choice; “I have called you by name, you are mine.”  “You are my Son.”

Henri Nouwen writes that “when I know that I am chosen, I know that I have been seen as a special person.  Someone has noticed my uniqueness and has expressed a desire to know me, to come closer to me, to love me… When love chooses, it chooses with a perfect sensitivity for the unique beauty of the chosen one and it chooses without making anyone else feel excluded.” (Life of the Beloved, pp. 44-45.) 

What God said to Jesus, God says to each of us at our baptism: “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.” In baptism we are not celebrating the concept of love, or the general idea that God loves everyone, but that you in particular— you, your own unique, unrepeatable, individual self are named and loved by God. I think that is at the heart and foundation of everything we believe about baptism.

I spoke earlier of the renunciations and affirmations in baptism, of saying no to evil and saying yes to love. But maybe it should be the other way around: affirmation first; then renunciation.  God’s love comes first.  And when we know the power of that love, when we rest in that love, then our lives are turned around and we say no to the powers of evil.

It is God’s love that washes away the old life and kills in us what needs to die.

It is love that sifts the good from the bad and burns away the chaff.

It is love that gets us outside of our selves.

It is love that leads us to travel a new road.

It is God’s love that brings us to new life.

Luke is the only Gospel that explicitly connects Jesus’ baptism and the descent of Spirit with prayer. “When Jesus … had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended … And a voice announced, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

James David Duncan is a writer, nature lover, fly-fisherman, mystic, and a non-church going lover of Jesus and lover of the Gospel. He bemoans the way prayer has been trivialized and distorted and even exploited by politicians and celebrities and others.  Think of Presidential prayer breakfasts, or ‘sending our thoughts and prayers’ to those who have suffered tragedy.

Duncan makes reference to Jesus’ command in the Sermon on Mount in Matthew 6:6, not to pray on public street corners in order to be seen by others, but to pray in secret in your closet.  He writes:  “The only unfailing guide I’ve ever found through the innumerable blind alleys of my life as a writer, man, husband, father, citizen, steward or believer, is the love burning in my heart.  For me, prayer is about one thing: making contact with that love. Though it burns in there like a candle flame, hot, bright, beautiful, love’s flame is fragile: so fragile, I feel, that the wrong kind of prayer can snuff it out; so fragile, I sense, that it absolutely needs the stillness of ‘the closet’ Jesus recommends in order to burn brightly. So… to every …proponent of mass piety and public prayer, I say Matthew 6:6 forever. If prayer now means we talk to the Flame of Love on TVs and street corners, telling It what we desire rather than seeking Its guidance, then [I want nothing more to do with prayer.] ….  If the wordless yearning or brokenhearted sigh of the Muslim and Jew and Buddhist nun and wordless child…at prayer is not equally pleasing to the One True Listener, [then I want nothing more to do with prayer.]… If prayer is now a means of wooing votes, if prayer has ceased to marvel at an unspeakably sublime Mystery and is now a public gloat [then I want nothing more to do with prayer.]

“Keeping one’s love burning, and living in accord with that burning: this, to me, is prayer.  And love, as the gospels describe it, is not the glorification of self, but the renunciation of it for the sake of the beloved, whether that beloved be God, the words of Jesus, a woman, a child, [or a ravaged piece of God’s beautiful creation].

“When prayer comes to mean asking for ends that please me, first and foremost, God help me stop praying: help me love something or someone instead”  [God Laughs and Plays: Churchless Sermons in Response to the Preachments of the Fundamentalist Right  (Great Barrington, MA: Triad Books, 2006), pp. 112-113.]

I am less clear about the details of baptism--exactly what happens, how it happens, when it happens, but I’m more certain that at the heart of baptism is love:  God’s free, unlearned, gracious love. You are named, known, called and loved.  You are God’s beloved, called to live in accord with that love.

I’m grateful for the doctrine of baptism, particularly for the Reformed doctrine of baptism, my own tradition. I hope you are grateful for tradition’s understanding of baptism. But I experience my tradition’s doctrine, not as a complete and perfect explanation of what baptism means, nor as a fence or boundary beyond which I may not wander, but rather as a sure foundation, a solid place to stand: a strong and constant reminder that I am rooted and grounded in love.  A love that sifts, purifies, cleanses and frees me from myself, sending me out unafraid, into a world that God loves.

1/6/19 - Another Way - Matthew 2:1-12

Another Way                            

Matthew 2:1-12

January 6, 2019

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley

Life Among the Lutherans is a collection of some of the monologues about Lake Wobegon, by Garrison Keillor, the former host of the radio show Prairie Home Companion.  In one of them he speculates that the wise men were conceivably Lutheran. He reports that Pastor Inqvist said, “We think they may have been Lutherans because they brought gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Myrrh is a sort of casserole made from macaroni and hamburger, or as they say in the Mideast and Midwest, hammyrrh, thus the name. You bring it in a covered dish, thus the speculation that at least one of the wise men might have been one of our guys. Maybe he was going to stop at the department store and get something expensive like gold or frankincense, but his wife, a wise woman, said, “Here, take this myrrh. They’ll be hungry. And make sure you bring back the dish.”[1]

Obviously Pastor Inqvist is trying to be funny.  We often try to put ourselves into Bible stories.  Sometimes we understand the stories better that way. But in this case, I think Matthew is making the point that his readers are not like the Wise Men.  The Wise Men are neither Jewish nor Lutheran.  They are foreign.

Matthew is considered the most Jewish of the gospels.  He wrote for a Jewish audience and included more Old Testament quotes than any other gospel writer.  And yet, he is the only gospel writer to mention the presence of these Gentile foreigners.  He spends as much time talking about the magi and Herod as he does about Mary, Joseph and Jesus in these first two chapters.

These Wise Men came from the East.  East of Jerusalem was Persia (now Iran), Babylon (now Iraq), and Arabia (now Saudi Arabia).   Those places did not have a great relationship with the people of Israel.  Their history was characterized by conquest, oppression and exile.  It is not surprising that a visit from these historic enemy countries provokes uneasiness in Herod and all of Jerusalem.   Imagine if the sentence said “Nuclear physicists from Iraq, Syria and Russia came to Washington looking for a baby”.  Many Americans would suspect an underlying, not-so-good motive.[2]  Fear of strangers, especially foreign strangers, is not a new phenomenon.  Matthew acknowledges the fear, but he doesn’t dwell on it.   These foreigners are neither spies nor terrorists. They turn out to be the heroes of the story.

The reading ends “And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way.” 

Another way – this is what strangers, outsiders, newcomers, foreigners often offer. Another way. We sometimes hear the words “another way” and make them negative.  “Another way” sometimes becomes a challenge to “our way”. We often want the comfortable way, the familiar way, the cheapest way, the safest way.  Often we jump to the conclusion that another way is going to be difficult, risky and expensive. We don’t want another way.  We want our way.    Sometimes we just need to stop long enough to listen, to observe, to recognize that another way is just that—another way.  It might be that we could gain something by attending to it.

The wise men come to Jerusalem asking for the child who has been born “King of the Jews.” They go to the palace, where they might reasonably expect a royal baby. 

But what they find is the current King, Herod the Great, whose rule is characterized by fear and rage and even paranoia.  He maintained a private security force and built fortresses in six places so that he would never be far from a defensible refuge. He executed his favorite wife and three of his sons because he thought they wanted his crown.  Then he figured that when the time came that he himself died, the Israelite people would be so glad to get rid of him that they would throw a big party.  The King was infuriated by that idea. So, he left an order that on the day of his death, political prisoners throughout the land should be killed so that there would be appropriate mourning. [3] One commentator describes Herod the Great as “history’s most hysterical megalomaniac.”[4]

Herod was over the top, but this is mostly the way of king and rulers.  Those with power hold onto it, generally without regard for the needs and wants of those over whom they rule.  The way of Herod is deception and fear, the power of money, weapons, and domination.  But there is another way.  This other way is on display in Bethlehem where a peasant family welcomes learned scholars.  Another way where a vulnerable mother, father and child receive strangers in peace, without weapons, and gifts are exchanged.  A way of hospitality and trust.

There is the way of King Herod, a reign of terror.  And there is another way, which is the reign of the God who is repeatedly described in Hebrew scripture as the parent of orphans and protector of widows, the defender of the desolate.  

The wise men seek the “King of the Jews” and they don’t mean Herod. That title is never used for Jesus again until the time of his death.  Roman-appointed Herod seeks to kill him as an infant, and Roman-appointed Pilate orders his execution as an adult. . . .The clash between Jesus the Messiah and Caesar Augustus the emperor started right from the birth of Jesus.[5] 

The wise men know something.   When Jesus is on the cross, he will be mocked as a counterfeit King of the Jews by religious insiders.  The first people to recognize Jesus for who he is, are these foreign strangers. The outsiders have something to teach the presumed insiders.[6]

As the Rev. Kathryn Matthews writes, “It's deeply moving to hear of these foreigners traveling a long, hard way because they had an inkling – just an inkling – of something very important unfolding in a distant land. Something inside them must have been restless, or upset, or hungry for understanding; despite the reputation of "the East" as the place of wisdom and learning, there was something they still needed to find.”[7]

There is a spiritual hunger, a yearning for purpose and meaning in our time.  People may not be looking for it in churches or institutional religion as much these days, but they are still hungry for it.  And I wonder, about those who do the hard work of showing up in a unfamiliar church.  I wonder if they have an inkling that something very important could unfold here.  And I wonder how often they find it.  I wonder how often we find it. 

Scott Peck was an American psychiatrist and best-selling author. His vocation was clearly influenced by his Christian faith. In one of his books, he wrote “The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”[8]  There seems to be a lot of dissatisfaction and discomfort, swirling around us on many levels.  Some respond by retrenching, digging the ruts even deeper.   I wonder if we, as Americans, as Christians, mostly as members of Emmanuel, are ready seek another way.

I note that Herod’s people, the palace insiders, are able to figure out the answer to the magi’s question. They eventually say that the Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. This is the right answer, but it seems to make no difference to them.  They are satisfied with the way of  Herod.  They do not want another way.  But I find this hopeful. 

It suggests that if we can listen to the right questions, we might discover that we already have the resources we need, in scripture, in prayer, in this community, to find truer answers and another way.  The right questions might come from unexpected places or people.   God tends to work, not at the center of power, but on the margins, not in Jerusalem, paralyzed with fear, but in a small village that might have thought its best days were long past.   I want to remember that.

“And being warned of God in a dream, they departed into their own country another way.”  This other way comes from God.  It is not necessarily safer or cheaper or more comfortable. It is not necessarily riskier or more expensive or more difficult.  The only important criterion about the other way in this story is God’s direction and the magi’s obedience.

What the wise men found was a poor child in modest surroundings, lying in a teen mother’s arms.  To the intellectually perceptive, this is not the scholar’s formula for future success. Yet, by grace, they had the faith to experience unbridled, exceeding great joy.[9]  May we seek and find that way together in this new year.

Amen.

[1] Garrison Keillor, Life Among the Lutherans, (Minneapolis:  Augsburg Books, 2010),  p.56

[2] https://thelisteninghermit.com/2010/12/30/can-we-trust-these-foreigners-epiphany/

[3] R. Alan Culpepper, in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 1, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010) p. 167

[4] James Howell, in Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 1, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2008), p. 214.

[5] Marcus Borg and J. Dominic Crossan, The First Christmas:  What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’s  Birth  (New York:  Harper/Collins, 2009), p. 137-138

[6] Matthew L. Skinner in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year C, Volume 1 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Editors, ,  (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2018), p. 158.

[7] http://www.ucc.org/weekly_seeds_consumed_by_the_fire_of_a_star

[8] M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled and Beyond:  Spiritual Growth in an Age of Anxiety, (New York:  Touchstone, 1997),  pp. 32-33

[9], Shelley D. B. Copeland in Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol 1, Advent Through Transfiguration,  David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds.   (Atlanta:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009),  p. 169.