I’m the oldest of 4 kids: me, Emily, Mark, Anna. We’re packed in there…Anna is only 6 years younger than me.

A few months ago, Anna started a new job at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. The agency where she works has a weekly staff spotlight, and one of the questions they asked when it was her week was:

“What’s the story your family always tells about you?

Here’s Anna’s answer…

When I was 2 or 3, the youngest of four, I used to sneak out of my room at naptime and head down to the kitchen, where I’d dump the trash can on the floor and eat all the food scraps I could find. As my mom tells it, “That’s when I looked at your father and said– ‘Now this one– she’s a survivor.’”

I think it’s a great question: what’s the story your family always tells about you. We do all have these family stories, and they tell us something about who our families are. My family was laid back enough not to freak out because the baby was exploring the garbage can. And optimistic enough to spin the story into something positive.

And the stories tell us something about who we are: Anna is the super-independent, adventurous survivor of the family. She wasn’t a neglected child, but my parents will admit that by the time she came along, with 4 kids under 6, everything was kind of a blur…

I love family stories…both my own and other people’s families. Think of how many well know stories are some sort of family stories: cinderella; Hansel and Gretel; Snow White Winnie the pooh–all those animals in the 40 acre woods are sort of like a family for Winnie; even Barbie has a family of some kind…all those dolls who are somehow part of her entourage; and comic book and action hero character stories eventually get around to explaining where the hero comes from.

Big parts of the Bible, too, are nothing more than family stories…Joseph’s family story is a bit ore extreme than Anna the garbage eater, but there it is: another story that a family tells to remind themselves about who they are.

And another story about finding your way as one of the youngest in a big family. About family at its best and at its worst, about how families can fall apart and how they come back together, about how families can setroy each other or take care of each other.

It’s not a story about a perfect family: this is a family with a father, Jacob, who shows blatant and unfair favoritism to his youngest children (maybe I notice that because I’m as oldest child!); this is a family where brothers get jealous and lash out at each other; this is a family where a talented child (Joseph) brags about his talents; this is a family where someone gets sent away, and a father becomes so devastated that he barely cares about the sons (and the one daughter) he still has.

Even when we’re very little, I think we know that our families aren’t perfect. Hopefully, not as bad as Joseph’s family. But it doesn’t take long to know that families are messy things. They are places where people grow, but they can also be places where people get hurt.

I asked the kids at VBS this week about this moment in the story, one morning, the morning before we told them that part of the story. I said, “If Joseph met his brothers again, after they were so mean to him, what do you think he would do to them? What would you do to them?”

One boy, with incredible honesty, gave the non-churchy answer: “He should punch them in the eye.”

We know we’re supposed to forgive, but let’s be honest: if your brothers sold you into slavery, what would you do? Would any one blame you if you never let on to who you were; if you threw them in the same prison you were stuck in; if you punched them in the eye?

There are so many stories in the Bible about families, but they are not perfect families. And I, for one, am glad…

Because God uses people and situations that are not perfect, sometimes even really messed up, God uses these things to work out good.

And I, for one, am glad, because I come no where close to being a perfect person. So it’s good to be reminded that God can use even me.

But if there’s one thing that we learn from the Joseph story, it’s that great moment at the end where all the brothers are trapped in a room together.

When Joseph sees his brothers again, of course, he doesn’t punch them in the eye. But he does poke and prod and test, and it takes a couple visits before he can even tell them who he is:

He finally says to them: I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither ploughing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God

It was not you who sent me here, but God…don’t worry. You did a terrible thing. But God turned it into something good.

See, it’s not just that God uses imperfect people: God FORGIVES imperfect people. And if we’re honest with ourselves, if someone can forgive us, we can learn to forgive other people: to be like God, and to try to make good things come from bad.

Even this story of forgiveness in the Bible is a family story: and not just because there are families in the Bible who desperately need to forgive each other.

Because Joseph and his 12 brothers and their children and their children’s children, and those children’s children, and those children’s children, and on and on and on, they survive the famine. And they survive slavery in Egypt. And they survive 40 years wandering in the Sinai desert…and on and on and on.

Until, one day, one of the children’s children’s children has a baby named Jesus. A baby who is God’s own son, but also a great great great ever so many greats grandson of Joseph’s father Jacob. Part of Jacob and Joseph’s family.

And Jesus is God’s answer to all of us, daughters and sons of God, who need so desperately to be forgiven.

Our God is a God of forgiveness.

And that means that we can forgive others, even our families.

And even when the hurts feel to big to get over, too much to bear, we can know this:

We are part of this one big family, God’s family, messy as it is, but a family where we are all children of God.

And where we are all forgiven,

And where we can all learn to forgive.

This is our family story…
Thanks be to God!

I have not been practicing what I am about to preach…I’m home for one week after 3 weeks of traveling, and I leave at about 6:00am tomorrow on another youth trip. in a sermon about doing and being, about taking time to sit contemplatively at the feet of Jesus, I will be quoting other people frequently. Because I had a week of very busy doing–faxing forms and sending e-mails, organizing and filing, unpacking and cleaning and repacking, preparing for the trip, not to mention dealing with the demands of a 3 year old who is coming off a few disruptive weeks…a whole lot of doing, not leaving much time for being.

I am by no means an expert on being. I’m muddling through this with the rest of you who get busy and forget to sit and be quiet and listen.

And maybe that’s the way it should be for the preacher this week…in order to address the problem, I’ve been living it more than thinking about it!

We are, says author Wayne Muller,
enthralled in the trance of our work. It is all important, it must be done right away, it won’t get done without me, I cannot stop or it will all fall apart, it is all up to me, terrible things will happen if I do not get this done. I have to keep working because there are I have things to buy and there are bills to pay for those things and I have to buy faster computers and more expensive telephones to help me get more done so I can keep up and make money to pay the bills for the things I need to buy to help me get these things done…..There are always a million good reasons to keep on going, and never a good enough reason to stop.

I find that to be a frighteningly accurate description of our relationship to work, whether that work be in an office, from our home, in schools, in factories, in fields. We live by the clock, by our calendars and schedules, and we are always trying to cram in more and more efficient use of time and energy. We’ve even seen some creep of this mentality into the work of raising children: calculations of the monetary worth of a stay at home parent’s tasks, and suggested child-rearing practices that are centered more on the clock than the needs of the individual child.

In spite of technologies that are supposed to make us more efficient and leave us with more time for leisure, we find that we are increasingly tied to e-mail, phones, computers, employers, and efficient achievement and consumption.

And we even tie our children into this schedule. I am not making a value judgment here, simply observing that only a few decades ago, children’s and teen’s leisure time was less scheduled and more open…and, we adults all seemed to turn out OK. I suspect that most of us actually would prefer that sort of free-form experience of childhood we had for our own kids, but we are pushed and tugged by our schedules, the expectations of friends and neighbors, the desires of our kids, until even our children get sucked into
the great hamster wheel that that is middle class life in North America.

Even our sense of leisure has become quantified. In the 1970s, an economist named Stefan Linder wrote a book called (I love this title) The Harried Leisure Class. He wrote:

We had always expected one of the beneficient results of economic affluence to be a tranquil and harmonius manner of life…what has happened is the exact opposite. The pace is quickening, and our lives in fact are becoming more hectic.

Linder’s theory was that as labor was more and more specialized and productive, there was an increase in the monetary value of each worker’s hours, and thus an increase not just in the value of work time, but in the value of non-work time(from Judith Shulevitz, The Sabbath World, p. 21-22). So, think about it, that means that even the hours you have for leisure: vacation, hobbies, work around the home, even those hours suddenly have a high monetary value.

For instance, here’s my own (somewhat faulty) logic about this: I love to sew and knit. So do many of the other women in my family history. My grandmother talks about her older sister Kay’s skill in taking the coats of the older children in the family and recutting and retailoring them into smaller coats for her. That was a necessary skill for a farm family in the 1930s, but knew Auntie Kay and I knew her work, and I know she sewed and knit not just out of necessity but because it was an activity she loved, a source of beauty, creativity, and leisure beyond her factory job as a young woman.

But there are times when I begin to think about an sewing project, and discard the idea because I begin to calculate in my head what the cost would be, not just of materials, but also of labor, and I figure that my hours are worth enough that I would be better off “splurging” on the purchase of a pre-made dress or coat. With 8 years of post-high school education, my labor hours are worth more than Auntie Kay’s were. (And, stated that way, it chokes me a bit even to say it, because the truth is that in our family today, a pair of slippers knit by Auntie Kay is an incalculable treasure…)

Even our leisure is quantified. How many us get back from a vacation and find we are exhausted because we tried to do too much, to get the full value out of that time away?

Put simply, we need more rest. Both the kind associated with sleep and the kind associated with Sabbath. One of the early Christian monks was once asked by younger monks what they ought to do when the monk next to them fell asleep during longer prayers and liturgies. He answered: “For my part, when I see a brother who is dozing, I put his head on my knees and let him rest.” (A Sourcebook About Sunday, p.148)

Yes we need that kind of rest: file away this idea in your head: there’s a writer who recently decided for the season of Lent, instead of giving something up, she was simply going to get more sleep. I might do that some year, although, since I will have a one month old infant by the time lent hits in 2011, this might not be the year.

But we also need more Sabbath rest. The word in Hebrew for this kind of rest is menuha. Abraham Heschel, one of the great rabbis of the 20th century, describes it this way:

[It] means more that withdrawal from labor and exertion, more than freedom from toil, strain, or activity of any kind. Menuha is not a negative concept, but something real and intrisically positive…to the bibilcal mind, menuha is the same as happiness and stillness, as peace and harmony….it is the state wherein humans lie still, where in the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. It is the state in which there is no strife and no fighting, no fear and distrust. The essence of good life is menuha.”

(from Sunday Sourcebook, p. 161-162)

And there’s one more thing Heschel says about menuha. The ancient rabbis thought that, since it was not a negative concept, not an absence, but a presence, it had in fact taken God work to create it. That the seventh day of creation what not an absence of God’s creative power, but in fact the action of God creating rest, stillness, menuha as a good for God and for all of creation.

I think that tells us this: Sabbath rest doesn’t just happen. There is an active component to carving out, to prioritizing, to creating, the time and space to be still. It is not simply there for the taking. We know all too well that we do not live in a time or a place that supports our creation of rest.

We have to make a choice to do it, whether we can do it for a whole day once a week. Whether we can only catch it in snatches here and there.

But there must, for our spiritual health and well-being, be some pattern to our lives, where we stop, where we rest.

I’ve been talking in concepts, heady quotes, through most of this sermon. I only think it’s fair to leave you with pictures.

Psalm 52 is the Psalm the lectionary gives us for today. I can’t figure out what it has to do with Mary and Martha, and I’ve decided not to read you the whole thing, because it has its own issues and tricky bits. It starts with a condemnation of people who are wicked, who put their trust in things other than God. It’s pretty harsh.

But near the end, it gives us this picture:

Psalm 52:8

But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the steadfast love of God forever and ever.

There it is: a green tree in courts of the Lord, fed and nourished by the water of life. trusting in the forever and forever love of God. The love of God that is unbounded by time and space, but schedules and value of work hours.

Can you picture yourself as that tree? Happy and content simply to BE in the house of God, rooted down, stretching up. And simply by being the tree you are supposed to be, the things that you do: growing green leaves and flowering, and swelling olive fruit.

And think of Mary and Martha, then. Of Martha, hurrying and distracted by the schedule, by the calendar, by the expectation of what she ought to DO. Asking Jesus to give her some relief by reminding Mary to get up and get busy.

Maybe what Jesus says to her is not critical, but said in love for her as much as for Mary. “ Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; but there is need of only one thing.”

We don’t know what happens next, but I’d like to think that Martha wipes her hands on the kitchen towel, and sits down next to Mary, next to Jesus. That the bread comes out of the oven a bit too brown and there are some dishes that don’t get washed as quickly as they should. That the neighbors notice that no one is taking care of the kitchen…
But that Mary and Martha both get some menuha. And are able not just to do, but to be.

May we all be the tree, rooted in the good soil of the word. Nourished in the water of baptism, growing toward the blessing of God’s rest.

And my we all be Mary and Martha, stopping to rest, finding time
in the middle of what we have to do
to simply be in the presence of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

My bike repair shop has a bumper sticker up on the wall: “Illinois Earthquake Survivor.” By God’s grace, that earthquake on February 10 was a minor one. (I know I rolled over and went back to sleep right after concluding that perhaps a snowplow had hit out building.)

But I know, for me, that earthquake is a metaphor for what has been a shaky winter.

We are living in world where things are changing, shifting, shaking, maybe even sinking depending on how much of a pessimist you are.

And the truth is that everything is not always changing and shifting for the better. It’s a fearful time. We don’t know when the economy will rebound, where the next earthquake will hit, if our Toyotas will slow down, if health care can or should be fixed, or when the snow will stop falling. We worry about who has what, and if we have enough, and if there might just be some people who simply have to get left behind or swept under a rug–as long as those people are not us.

This week especially, our own particular community at this church is reeling, over grief for people we’ve lost, and in sadness for the losses of people we love.

And when people get scared and anxious, sad and exhausted, it’s easy to get grabby and crabby, worried for ourself and ours first and foremost.

Which, I think, makes this a tough parable to hear this week. I know that what I need is something placid and peaceable. Some Bible passage where lions lie down with lambs and Jesus wipes away tears.

Not a passage where people get beat and seized and struck in the head, where tenants kill servants and sons, and owners kill tenants. And we’re supposed to find God in the middle of all that bloody mess.

So maybe here we can find a road into the passage. Who was Jesus talking to, and what would they have heard in this?

The Israel of Jesus’ day was a country under siege. The Greeks and then the Romans had trampled across the Mediterranean world, and under their feet were crushed nations, from Spain in the east all the way to Persia in the west. And guess who made out best economically in this system? The occupiers held the power, politically, socially, and monetarily.

For the occupied countries, the Romans were not entirely welcome. So the people Jesus spoke to were an occupied country. There were rumblings of revolution. There were periodic uprisings. There were absentee-occupier land-lords, and people who were desperate to get back land that they thought was rightfully theirs. Land ownership could shift based on squatters rights and the tenant of an absent or dead landlord could easily take over what someone else owned.

It was a world where things were changing, shifting, and shaking. And where people were anxious and scared about the future.

And that may just be our road into this passage this morning.

The vineyard is an old image for Israel. Isaiah and the prophets use it. Israel is the vineyard,

Those called to the vineyard are the workers. And they work there on behalf of God, one with God in mission and purpose: doing God’s good work, growing fruit, and creating joy for all of creation.
The understanding, if you are a tenant farmer, is that the fruit you produce is not all yours to keep. You owe something to the owner. Not so much that you can not live and be happy yourself. But enough that the owner’s work in setting up walls and watchtower and winepress are rewarded. It is not your vineyard, after all.

And so the tenants in this story are way out of line. It’s not just that they withhold what it rightfully the owner’s. They beat the messenger sent to collect some of the fruit.

On that violation alone, the owner has every right to evict the tenants.

But, he keeps trying, again and again, as the violence escalates.

And, in the end, he makes what is clearly an unwise choice. He sends his only son, whom he loves.

This is a huge mistake for two reasons: first, the obvious: these are bloodthirsty, irrational tenants.

But secondly, the fact that isn’t quite as obvious to us: according to the laws of the time, if the landowner died without a clear heir, the tenants would claim the land. By sending the Son, the owner accidentally suggests that he has died and his heir has come to collect. So the tenants could see this as an opportunity to gain the land for themselves.

And they kill the son.

The owner is reckless to send his son. His servants have been killed. But he does it anyway.

He is either reckless, stupid, or eternally hopeful that the tenants will get the message.

And since we are quick to see the owner in this parable as God, it’s probably the third option that fist best with what we’ve learned about God throughout history. God is long-suffering when it comes to our human inability to recognize the messenger, to hear the good news, and to live it out.

Over and over and over again, we fail to see, we fail to hear, we fail to do what God would have us do.

Maybe not literally, but al least figuratively, we have all had those moments when we kill the messenger. Or at least tie him up in a corner so that we don’t have to listen to what God has to say.

Think about it. Think about some of the things the Good News of Jesus has to say to us. The ideas of the Gospel sound nice, but if you really think about it, they go against how we think the world works.

The Gospel says: Ask and you shall receive.

The world says: If you really want something, you have to take it.

The Gospel says: Goodness is stronger than evil.

The world says: Might makes right.

The Gospel says: Death is not the final word.

The world says: Death is the end.

The Gospel says: Grace is free.

The world says: There are no free rides.

So when the messenger arrives, we aren’t always sure that the message will really help us get along in this world.

And it’s easy to get stuck on the parts of the message that bug us.

If I’m not careful, here’s where I get stuck in this parable: That the landowner, who I thought was God, just out and kills the tenants.

Like I said earlier, that is not the message I need to hear this week.

But it’s not the end of this story.

Jesus takes it a few steps further. Remember, he says, that old line from the Psalms?

The stone the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone
the Lord has done this
and it is marvelous in our eyes.

It’s from Psalm 118, one of the Psalms that I think of as one of the “Israel goes to war” Psalms. Psalm 118 is a pep rally for the people of Israel going into battle. And these lines are an elevated way to talk about their king.

The kings around us thought them could disregard OUR King? Oh, no they don’t. Because he, the one they rejected, has becomes the most powerful, the one who holds everything together, the one by whom the standards are set.

But Jesus is about to turn that image completely on its head. His journey from this point is Mark’s Gospel is toward Jerusalem. He’s about to walk into Jerusalem on palm Sunday, with crowds acclaiming him as the coming Messiah. With crowds imagining that he will be the new cornerstone, with all the military and power-filled connotations that Psalm 118 has in place.

But what Jesus is about to do is become the son of the landowner, foolishly sent into danger, on the face of it, an utter failure. He is about die a death that looks like a senseless waste.

The opposite of victory. The opposite of a marvelous thing in our eyes.

A bad judgement and folly, a complete and total defeat,

…until the earth shakes on Easter morning, and two women find an empty tomb and a strangely familiar gardener.

In a world that shakes and shifts, the messenger is the one who turns everything upside down.

It is death that brings life.

It is folly that becomes wisdom.

It is weakness that speaks to power.

It is the shaking that brings stability.

It is the breaking apart of a gravestone that gives us a cornerstone.

And so it is that a story of a bloody vineyard reminds us that God’s ultimate plan is not foolishness or vengence, or defeat.

God’s ultimate plan is to give us the sure footing of Jesus as the cornerstone.

The sure footing from which we are able to see that there will be enough in the vineyard. and in the world, so that we can face fear, anxiety, scarcity, sinking and shifting ground, and know that we stand on something solid.

Amen.

Fox Valley Presbyterian Church

(Originally Preached on Lent 1C, February 21, 2010)

Temptation is not really a dirty word anymore. Think about it: it’s a word used to brand and identify: chocolates; resorts; a dating service in the UK ; there’s even a men’s deodorant line that has a scent named: “dark temptation”

Think about it: in all these cases, the implication if the word is not the the product is something t be avoided, but something to be craved. Because once you cave in and buy whatever it is being sold, it’s going to be good. Chocolatey good. Sexy and fabulous.

Temptations are not something bad…they are things that, when you finally step over, you will enjoy.

Even Tiger Woods weighs in the word this weekend….in his apology to the general public on Friday, he said this: “ I felt that I had worked hard throughout my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me.” Now, I know, taken in full context, Tiger was admitting that what he did was wrong, but do you hear it? Temptations can be something we deserve to enjoy if we’ve worked hard enough.

I’m not going to make a long argument this morning trying to undo everything the culture around us has done to the word temptation. I’m not going to battle the word, and try to point out how the true temptations around us are not things to be enjoyed, but pitfalls where we get stuck (although, Tiger Woods is an awfully good example of that…)

Reclaiming the word can wait for another day.

But for now, how about a little reframing? Leaving the idea of temptation aside for now, maybe we can look at this story about Jesus a little differently.

What if the story of Jesus in the desert is not as much about temptation, as it is about identity?

This idea of 40 days in the desert, 40 being the Biblical shorthand for “copmleteness”; 40 days without food, with little water; 40 days completely alone, it’s the idea that Jesus is stripped down to the most basic nature of who he is. Jesus at his most basic. No expectations from anyone about who he ought to be. Every last thing has been stripped bare, and he is his most genuine self.

And this is when the devil comes…with 3 challenges.

Turn these stones to bread; Gain power; Test God’s faithfulness

(Notice, on the surface, except for the part about worshipping Satan, that none of these temptations are things we would quickly classify as big sins…)

And, in fact, each of them has some little twist of truth…Jesus is, after all, the bread of life; Jesus is, after all, the one to whom every knee shall bow; Jesus is, after all, the firstborn of the resurrection, the one who God rescues and raises from the dead. In a strange way, by giving in to the devil, Jesus could have accomplished some version of all these things that he is called to do.

It’s not so much a matter of refusing the results the devil is promising. It’s more about the way they happen. It’s not about the ends, it’s about the means.

And Jesus’s response to these things is to go back to the most basic grounding of who he is.

So notice the foundation he takes for his response:

“It is written: One does not live by bread alone.”

“It is written: WOrship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”

It has been said: Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Three times, what Jesus comes back to, the most elemental thing about who he is…3 times, he quotes Torah, Scripture. 3 times he goes back to the book of Deuteronomy. Even the third time when the devil tries to match the game by quoting the Psalms, Jesus simply comes back with an unwavering answer, that the Book, SCripture, is the center of who he is, the solid place where he stands.

This is not just a matter of dry quoting, rote memorization, with no body or spirit behind it.

This is the book Jesus lives. He has lived his life, a good Jewish boy in Nazareth, immersed in this book and the story of his people. ANd so, by the third time he responds, he doesn’t just say, “it is written.” He packs more punch. “It has been SAID.”

Scripture is not just something written, waiting silent on the page. Scripture is alive. From the mouth of the Holy Spirit in the beginning, it was said, and What it said was so important that it was passed down, mouth to mouth, until it was written. And over and over and over again, it has been read, silently and out loud, over and over and over, it has been SAID. It is not moldy words on a page. It is the word that has been said, breathing and real and alive.

In fact, this is the Book that Jesus is. Jesus, Word made flesh, says John’s Gospel.

In fact, this the Book that we are.

Sometimes, it takes an outsider to make the most insightful points about us. ANd our relationship to the Bible is something that Muslims perhaps have understood better than we have. Islam refers to Jews and CHristians as “people of the book” (and, traditionally, says that for this, we ought to be respected and even protected within majority Muslim societies). And did you know that the Western value placed on literacy for everyone in a society has its roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Think about it: this book is so very important and fundamental to our faith system, that Christianity truly cannot survive unless people know the text. That means either: we have to have methods for your average person to memorize this whole book; or we have to have a population that is literate enough to read the book.

And moreover, this Book is a story about us. Unlike some religions where the stories are about the gods and their doings, or one great teacher and his lessons, this book has an overarching story in it about God’s people.

And every once in awhile, the book reminds us that it’s not just a story it is our story.

What Jesus quotes back to the Devil comes from the OT book of Deuteronomy. It’s not the most exciting reading in the OT. it’s mostly laws. And, laws that are being given a second time.

But late in the book, there’s a reminder that this is story:

When you have come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and settle in it, 2you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3You shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, “Today I declare to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us.” 4When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord your God, 5you shall make this response before the Lord your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. 6When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, 7we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 10So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.” You shall set it down before the Lord your God and bow down before the Lord your God. 11Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.
It’s a passage about religions ceremony and obligation. But notice what it does: you don’t just show up and hand over your gift. You have to set a context. And the context for everyone is this: telling the story. Here’s who I am and where I came from. This is my identity. It’s why I follow all the laws in this book. It’s who my parents and my ancestors were; and it’s who I am.

We are the people of this book, this Bible. We are people with a story. This is our identity. And without that identity, we cannot face up to temptation.

And 40 days into his desert time, this is where Jesus finds his identity, stable footing: he is a person of this book. A book that is not just written, but a book that is said.

Lent is 40 days…40 days in large part because Jesus was in the desert for 40 days. So the idea is that this is another way for us to participate in the story….to think of these 40 days as 40 days to walk alongside Jesus in fasting, in stripping away things so that we can know who we truly are. It is another way that we are encouraged to make this Book a living and breathing thing, a way that we invited to enter the story.

The truth is that the Bible is a terrible self-help book by the world’s standards. On the face of it, Jesus’ choices looks like a failure in the eyes of the world.

He chooses to preach and teach in a backwater part of the world, with backward, confused, often dense student-disciples. He chooses to keep walking toward Jerusalem even when it’s clear that this path is a death-wish.
He is killed as a common criminal, in a manner that is shameful and disgusting.
It looks like utter failure.

But in the weakness and failure is power and victory.

And maybe this is the reason that for 40 days we are called into the desert. It’s not about becoming more powerful. It’s about becoming less. It’s not about becoming who we think we should be, it’s about becoming who God thinks we should be.

And it is such an odd journey, walking with Jesus through the desert, through Galilee, and the road to inevitable death in Jerusalem, such an odd journey…but it’s the journey in which we learn who we truly are.

I’m not sure we can take that journey without the right grounding. And the only grounding is in the story, the Book.

The hymn says: “How firm a foundation you saints of the Lord is laid for your faith in his excellent Word.” It’s an old hymn, but a true one. The desert can be a rocky, uneven place.

But here is the Book…a solid place to stand

It has been written.

And it has been said.

It is who we are.

Amen.

Ephesians 3:1-12

Fox Valley Presbyterian Church

Sunday Before Epiphany

It’s been over a week since you ripped open those treasure boxes under the tree. And for the most part, you know exactly what’s in them. And now you have  a sense of how much you will actually use the gift. What each gift might mean, what it might really be for, which toy is your favorite, which gift you will return, which gift you wish you could return but can’t, what use you will get out of a gift, what you really love, which gifts you will remember forever, and what you will forget in a few weeks.

For those of you who are bummed out that the gift-giving is over, here’s an idea for a second shot at it (we might want to keep this a secret from retailers and marketers!):  in some Christian traditions the gift giving happens not on Christmas, but on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany…when we remember the arrival of the wise men and their gifts.

Now, there’s a whole lot to talk about with the wise men. The details: (Were there really 3? And did they actually make it to the stable? How far away were they from? Was Jesus probably a toddler by this time?) The whole Herod thing: (what a terrible guy…the awful story of what he did…) The theological significance of these foreign visitors honoring a Hebrew king…

But this morning we are just going to peek into the treasure boxes.

Imagine what happens when Mary and Joseph unwrap these gifts: sitting in their home, probably one room with the carpentry tools stowed on one side and the kitchen on the other, and these marvelous magi admiring the toddler Jesus. And in the boxes and chests they set out are…gold…frankincense…and myrrh. Whatever they mean, they are riches that this little family of craftsmen in a tiny backwater town have never set hands on or even imagined.

Enough to ease their lives for a few years. And enough to make the mystery of who their child really was even greater.

Enough for them to wonder what to do with it…there was no need for a college fund, no such thing as an IRA or a stock portfolio. Could they invest in flocks of sheep? Maybe it meant another room added onto the house or money for an extra cow or goat.

But what did it mean?

Luke’s gospel sums up the story of Jesus’ infancy with this: “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.”

I imagine they had to treasure away a few pieces of gold, maybe behind a mud brick loosened from the wall of the house, and it sat there much the same way the strange events of Jesus birth and early years sat in Mary’s heart.

That’s the thing about some gifts…there are some that you just don’t really understand until later on. Some that change meaning as the years go on. Some gifts start out as one thing and turn into another. Gifts can take on different meaning.

When I was about 10, my great grandparents bought everyone of their great grandkids a Bible, engraved with our names.

I think I knew it was important at the time, because I handed it back to my Great Grandpa Hank and asked him to write in the front that he and Great Grandma Alberta had given to me. (I guess, with over a dozen great grandkids, writing us each a  note was a step they understandably skipped)

When I was little, I thought the pictures in the Bible were too babyish for me. When I was a teenager,  I learned to loved the words, but wished I had a more grown up Bible for youth group. When my Grandma Alberta died a few years later it meant more. When Grandpa Hank died my freshman year of college, it meant even more.  When I stood on my Great-Grandparents grave to say prayers and help bury my grandmother right next to them, that Bible became irreplaceable.

So, did Mary remember, when she was helping to prepare Jesus’ body for burial, when the other women went to the market to get the embalming spices, the myrrh and the frankincense, that once, years ago, she had taken to market to exchange for the money? The frankincense and myrrh that had been a baby gift for her son?

And the mystery of everything that has happened is bigger than the treasure boxes of the wise men, the little treasure box of Mary’s heart…because the gifts of the season are not comfy sweaters or uggs or zhu zhu pets or Wiis or food processors…the gifts are not the boxes of gold and frankincense and myrrh…the gifts are not eve the amazing birth and surprising stories that Mary and Joseph pondered and treasured…

The gift is Jesus. And we say it too often that we forget…the gift is Jesus, baby born in Bethlehem, but also Emmanuel,  God-among-us.

In Ephesians, Paul reminds us…it is not the gift of a cute and cuddly Baby.

This is a gift of cosmic significance.

So it may begin meaning simply that God affirms the life-giving love and care of a kind mother, the bright beauty of a baby.

But the meaning of the gift, the mystery of it, grows and grows each time we look in the treasure box.

This is a mystery: that God should grow in a woman’s belly,

This is a mystery: that God should be born among us…

This is a mystery: that the stars and angels should sing…

This is a mystery: that everyone from shepherds to wealthy men should come…

This is a mystery: that God would walk with us, pray with us, suffer for us…

This is a mystery: that God would save us  from ourselves by becoming one of us, in such a strange and remarkable way.

This is a mystery. Unfolding and unfurling. Stretching out over time and space.

And every time we open the treasure box, we will see it a new way, in a way that changes everything we thought we knew, over and over again.

It is mystery. It is epiphany. It is a great and mighty wonder.

It is the greatest of all treasures.

So, keep seeking, keep pondering, keep taking it out of the box…

God-among-us, God-one-of-us, Savior of the World, Creator of the Universe, word made flesh…

…the world will never be the same.

If there’s any Bible story that is truly a part of “youth culture”, or at least the culture of the youngest of youth, it’s Noah and the Ark. If you do a search on Amazon for “Noah’s Ark toys” you get 303 results. That’s a whole toy-store-full of options!

When the Bible shows up in the toy aisle, I figure that’s a pretty clear sign that we’d better pay closer attention. Because, let’s be honest, Bible stories are often a little twisted. And if you can mass-produce the story in colorful plastic, you’re probably skipping over the difficult parts…

…As anyone who has ever tried to tell the Noah story to a little kid knows. Because, eventually, the kid starts to ask tough questions: like the people and animals who don’t make it onto the ark. The possibility that 40 days and 40 nights in a ship being battered by cataclysmic weather was not so much comfy and cozy as nasty and nauseating. That a grand total of 150 days with all of the animals of the world likely involved some of the most tremendous pooper scooping efforts in humans history, and all of that doesn’t even begin to account for the bizarre appendix to the story where Noah gets drunk and naked.

All of that to say, that in one church service we are not even going to go near half of that stuff, but just sit for a bit with what happens immediately after Noah and his messy, mucked up menagerie get off the ark.

Noah is a strange place to go for the beginning of Lent. All you would think this has to do with Lent is the whole 40 days thing: it rained for 40 days in this story, and 40 keeps popping up in this particular season: 40 days for Jesus to prepare and fast in the wilderness leading up to his ministry, 40 days for us to prepare and fast (although likely, not as well as Jesus) leading up to Easter.

But here’s one thing to notice, one piece of this very strange Bible story, one place to land for the day. Think about what God promises at the end of the story:

A covenant between God and the earth. And not one of those covenants that are a two-way commitment between two parties. This is a covenant where one powerful individual simply commits, absolutely, positively, no strings attached, world without end amen. And God commits to exactly the opposite of what has just happened. Never again, says God, will I destroy the earth with a flood. Never again will I let the waters that I controlled at the time of creation spill out from the sky and from under the earth, never again will I let chaos reign and destroy everything I have made.

There is no condition. There is nothing for Noah to do. God just says this is the promise and God will stick to it. And that’s the end of that.

Now, on the surface, this is a very nice part of the story…we like it. It fits well with the whole children’s toy vibe of the Noah story. It even has a rainbow to make things look pretty.

But here’s the thing…think about what God is really saying.

Remember why the flood happened in the first place? Because everything on earth spun so out of control that God could see no other remedy than starting from scratch. God made the whole creation to be good and peaceful, whole and perfect, but then sin came along, and suffering and death, and pain and evil, and within a few generations things were a mess.

And God was angry.

At least, that’s how I remembered it. That’s how I was sure the Bible said, that God was angry to wipe everything out.

But that’s not what the text says. If you go back to Genesis chapter 6, when this whole thing begins, you get this:

And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.

God is not angry. God is grieved. God’s heart hurts. The whole thing is such a mess that even God cannot be the way he intended to be, the living God of a good creation, and there seems to be no other solution than to blot out the whole sorry mess.

Now remember that, because we know that God is wise and smart, and we know that God has some idea that the flood hasn’t fixed everything. Of course there was bickering on the ark, animals snapping at each other and Noah and Mrs. Noah getting testy with each other, and maybe a few minor fistfights between the brothers.

So hear what God is saying in the promise in its full beauty…I promise not to unleash chaos on the world again. I promise to hold things together, not matter how bad it gets.

In other words, I won’t destroy it and start over. I, God, I choose to be grieved. I choose to suffer. I choose the pain of a broken world.

That is how deep God’s love is. God chooses to let his heart hurt.

In 1983, Nick Wolterstorff, a philosophy professor, lost his 25-year-old son Eric in a mountain climbing accident. He wrote a small book as a grieving parent.  And in trying to sort through his own grief, he saw God’s grief, not just over Eric, but also over the whole world. (I quote this much of it because I can’t say it better…)

God is not only the God of the sufferers, but the God who suffers. The pain and fallenness of humanity have entered into his heart. Through the prism of my tears, I have seen a suffering God.

It is said of God that no one can see his face and live. I always thought this meant that no one could see his splendor and live. A friend of mine said perhaps it meant no one could see his sorrow and live. Or perhaps his sorrow is splendor.

And great mystery: to redeem our brokenness and lovelessness the God who suffers with us did not strike some mighty blow of power but sent his beloved son to suffer like  us, through his suffering to redeem us from suffering and evil.

…

But I never saw it. Though I confessed that the man of sorrows was God himself, I never saw the God of sorrows. Though I confessed that the man bleeding on the cross was the redeeming God, I never saw God himself on the cross, blood from sword and thorn and nail dripping into the world’s wounds.

And here’s where I come to Lent.

This idea of God suffering is messing with one of the images I’ve always had for the season.

For years, this has been my working picture for Lent: we are on a journey with Jesus toward Jerusalem. It’s dangerous for Jesus to go there, right to the center of power, right to people who are threatened by his ministry. And even without 20/20 hindsight, the disciples and Jesus seem to know that this is a not a safe trip.

But the disciples go with him. They aren’t perfect companions, but they go along and try to be supportive as best they can. They make that choice. And if someone stopped them on the road asked them, “Where are you going?” they’d point at Jesus and say: “We’re with that guy.”

I think I’ve always thought about Lent this way: that we can choose to walk alongside Jesus and give him some moral support along the way. And maybe that means fasting or giving something up, or living simpler, or just trying to be more holy so that we can be good companions for him. “We’re with that guy.”

But what if I’ve got it backwards?

Because it’s not Jesus who is inevitably headed toward Jerusalem. It is not Jesus whose path is already drawn out for him, who inevitably has to go toward the cross, toward sin and death and evil. It is not Jesus whose destiny is suffering.

This is not Jesus’ journey. It’s ours. We are the ones who are headed for Jerusalem. There’s no choice for us: the suffering and pain are ours already.

And if someone stopped and asked where he was going, Jesus would point at us and say, “I’m with them.”

And that, for me, throws all my ideas about Lenten spiritual practices on end. It’s not about what I can do to get ready. It’s about what Jesus has already done.

And so I do not travel with Jesus, I do not fast or give things up or add time in prayer or try to be holier to make the way easier for him. (And, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really very good at those things anyway.) I do not travel with Jesus, but thank God, Jesus travels with me.

And if I strip away some extra things so that I can see it a little better, so that I can walk for 40 days (or even spend 40 days in the stinky hold of the ark) and know that God is with me.

I can pull the extra stuff out of the way, see the suffering for what it is, and know that Jesus Christ, God the Almighty One, chooses to walk alongside of me, chooses to suffer, chooses to be wounded to his very heart by my pain, and the pain of the whole world.

And maybe even see that we are called, like God, not to escape the world, but to be God’s image in it, an image of a God whose heart aches. As Peter says, since Christ has suffered arm yourself with the same intention, and try to do the will of God. God chooses to enter the suffering of our world—that is what it means to follow, to do the will of God.

I think Lent gives us a strange opportunity, as well, to be the church. Lent is a time to prepare ourselves, but also our self as the body, to prepare for what it means on Easter morning to be the church, resurrected, triumphant, and in the image of Christ.

Because, if we are Christ’s body, if we are truly the image of God, then what the world should see is a community that takes on suffering.

A community that chooses to cry when it sees pictures of refugees.

A community that chooses to give more when finances are tight, because it can’t bear to send anyone away from its doors cold or hungry.

A community that does not run from the sick, but embraces them even when it gets messy. or even contagious.

A community that chooses to let the world’s pain in through its doors, that plans its life and its future around the needs of those who need the most.

And so we are on this journey for 40 days, not because we choose to be here. We were already headed in this direction.

The only difference is that we try to hear the one who chooses to travel with us, the one who says: “I’m with them.”

Every once in a while, my two-year old comes up with little theological insights, new ways of explaining church-y things to herself, and one of my current favorites is the “church bath”. It’s what she calls the baptismal font. The place where she sees babies getting their heads wet. I know, at two, she doesn’t get that much about baptism, but she seems to get the clean part: baptism is the place where we get clean and fresh and get a new start.

Naaman’s story is not about baptism, but the pictures and images it carries probably take most of us in that direction: a man dipping himself into the waters of the River Jordan. You read it and start to think about all those Jordan stories in the Bible: the people of Israel crossing into the promised land, John the Baptist standing in the Jordan while hundreds, thousands, stream out of the cities to be baptized. And, of course, Jesus himself coming to his cousin John, John dipping him beneath the waters, the sky opening, and God’s voice declaring that he is pleased with this Son, Jesus Christ.

And in those pictures, isn’t the Jordan deep and wide? You can see the rocks at the bottom, and the sparkle of a few small minnows in the deeper pool. Clean and blue and clear as a bell, water you could scoop up and drink right from the stream. Safe and pure and you’d feel a whole lot holier after a sip.

I’ve heard that the Jordan isn’t as clean and fabulous as we like to think…

When I read this story of Naaman, I get the idea that maybe the Jordan didn’t look so inviting.

And the whole idea of healing is a lot messier than I usually picture it.

Naaman was probably one of the rare people in the ancient world who had access to plenty of good clean water, a guy with no reason t go near a body of water that looked even a little bit suspect.

He was a general, a successful one, a guy who had the ear of the king and a houseful of slaves. I picture him as kind of sleek, with well done hair, and perfectly tailored suits, everything neat as a pin and in its place. He smelled like success…maybe some combination of leather and money and subtle cologne.

And he had to project this slick image on the outer layer, because underneath everything he was itchy. It took all his military discipline not to scratch, because scratching brought attention to the problem: he had this nagging skin disease, and all of his money and resources, connections to the King, every slave who helped salve his rash with oils—only a slave, after all, could be forced to touch it—couldn’t cure him.

Like so many powerful men, he was a little bit aloof and untouchable, and maybe that was what made the skin condition OK in the circles of power. He was so powerful you wouldn’t want to touch him…and you wouldn’t want to touch him anyway, because there was that whole skin thing…

So everyone kept their distance just a bit. They didn’t shake hands, maybe an occasional awkward clap on he shoulder of his fine suit.

And no one dared suggest a new cure. Because Naaman, a man with his position and power, surely he’d tried everything.

But then there was this tiny little slave girl in his wife’s quarters, just a no-name serving girl, who piped up with her strange accent about some faith healer in her homeland. But she said it with so much matter-of-fact faith that the wife took notice, and started to pester Naaman about it.

And after enough gentle pushing, Naaman did what you do if you have the ear of the king: he arranged for a special letter from his king to the king of Israel…a guarantee that he would get the best and brightest of what Israel had to offer. Such a great faith healer would surely be directly tied to the court.

But when Naaman arrives in Israel, donkeys piled high with gold and gifts, servants streaming behind him in a great parade, the places of power are powerless…the King of Aram’s letter bungles the request…skips right over the healer the slave girl mentioned, goes straight to the power of the King of Israel. And the King has no idea what this letter, let alone this visit is about…what can he do for Naaman? It looks like a set-up, a grand power-play between two kings.

Word gets out, and Elisha sends for Naaman.

Imagine Naaman outside of Elisha’s house…just an average place, a little dusty, roof needs patching, just a servant or two. Imagine Naaman. Maybe he’s game for anything. He’s tried everything, right? So some strange, back-water faith healer? Sure. Whatever works. And if it works, well, how good for the healer…fame and fortune. He’ll be the man who healed Naaman. Naaman will leave him with enough to fix up the roof of the house, get some decent furniture, and live well for a good long time. Word will get out. It’s the most Naaman could do if this guy can make his skin good as new.

But Elisha doesn’t even come out. Naaman’s a little offended. He’s Naaman, after all. Everyone knows about him. The little snubs of refusing a handshake he can understand, but what kind of healer is this who’s too scared to come out and talk to him face to face?

And then there’s the messenger’s message: go wash in the Jordan River, seven times.

No healer, no potions, no magic, no one waving their hand over the spot.

Just the advice to go wash in some half-rate, half-dried, muddy foreign stream. They crossed it on the way here. Who knows what sort of nasty bugs are in the water in this little back-water country? Washing in it? A joke! You’d come out dirtier than you went in.

Naaman’s had it. He’s ready to go home.

But his servants have had it, too. They’re sick of walking. Sick of carting around Naaman’s expensive gifts, sick of the salves and the suffering. And maybe a little sorry for Naaman. So they plead with him: just try it. what can it hurt?

So Naaman goes to the river. The muddy little creek. And undresses, exposes the rash, totally open to the world, vulnerable right there in front of all the servants.

And wades in. And holds his nose. And shuts his mouth tight. And goes under, under the water, into the murkiness.

And he comes up a little muddy, a little silty.

The servants yell from the shore: “Six to go.”

He goes again. A little water leaks into his mouth. He comes up and spits. “Five”

He goes quickly, doesn’t open his eyes. “Four” “Three”

He can feel mud in his hair. All he can think about it toweling this water off when it’s over. He goes in again.

“Two”

“One”

And it’s over. He squeezes the water from his hair, feels the sun starting to dry his back, wipes his eyes clean of the silt before he opens them.

He starts to stumble toward dry land. Glad it’s done. Reaches to brush water off an arm, the muddy water comes off…

A slave runs to him with a towel, but he is too shocked to take it. He just stands there, looking at an arm, a leg, his chest, he cranes his neck to see his back, and it is all perfect, under the fine layer of drying silt, Jordan River water dripping off and drying in the sun, the skin of a child

There’s more that happens here…he goes back to Elisha, professes belief in Israel’s God, Yahweh, and even more after that about the gifts Naaman brought, about a greedy servant of Elisha…there’s s much more to this story.

But wait a moment on the banks of the muddy River Jordan. Because this is where the healing happened for Naaman.

It was not what he expected, it was not where he wanted to go. It was not because he had power or connections.

I’m not even sure he went into that water believing, or that he went in for any reason other than getting his servants off his back.

But somewhere in the middle of those seven dips into muddy waters, something happened, and Yahweh got involved, and Naaman came out clean and healed, like he was freshly born.

It’s a story, and it really doesn’t answer any questions. We don’t know how it works, God’s healing. We don’t know how Elisha knew it would work, we don’t know why God healed Naaman, in spite of his unbelief.

We don’t know if it means that we could all be healed this way.

All we know is this: there’s a moment when it’s just you and God in the river.

When you are stripped of your fine suit, the thing that disguises our sickness.

When the power and prestige that you have in the world has done you no good.

When you feel tossed aside by the people who are supposed to serve you.

And the water is not a place we want to go…it’s murky and muddy, and it’s not clear, and we’re not sure how it can get us clean, let alone heal us.

No one goes in with us—they stand on the shore and watch.

But somehow, down there in the mud and the silt, somehow that is where God does something to us.

For most of us here, our “church bath” was a pretty clean affair…the water clear and warmed, just a sprinkle. And once was enough.

Maybe our baptismal water is too clean and clear…because this God of Israel, this God of Moses and Miriam and Abraham and Sarah, of David and Bathsheba, of Elisha and Naaman, of Jesus and Mary, this God gets involved in the muddy messes of the world, and calls us down to the water, down to the river’s edge on our own, to go where we don’t want to go, to do something that just can’t work.

But what if we see the need for healing as a return to that moment: what if we could come back to the river edge again and again, remembering those waters as the place where we were on our own with God, the landmark we can return to when we need God’s power and healing?

Not always coming because we are sure it will work. Not always coming because the water looks clean and clear and makes sense.

But coming because somehow, down there in the mud and the silt, somehow that is where God does something to us?

To ask God for healing: when nothing else will work, even when we struggle with doubt or disbelief or the murkiness of the water.

In our words, our action, and our prayers today, that’s all we do: step into the river, plug our nose, close our eyes, and dip down into the water, waiting for that moment when God will make us new.

• Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-14
• Hope Christian Reformed Church, Oak Forest, IL

I don’t like to talk about sermon structure or process as part of the sermon. It’s one of my unwritten rules. My guess is that it’s about the most boring way to start a sermon, a complete minister-nerd kind of thing to do, and a surefire way to put everyone to sleep from the get go. I figure ministers ought to leave those sorts of discussions to later in the week, with other minister-and-theology-nerd types who actually give two hoots about how the sermon got onto the page.

As you can already tell, I’m planning to break that rule completely this morning. (I hope you’ll forgive me, and I hope you’re still awake…)

There are two things happening in this sermon, you see…there’s the topic I wanted it to be about…and then there’s the topic it had to be about when I really settled in with the texts.

And it’s partly all of your fault that there are these two parts. Let me explain…

On a quick read-through of the lectionary texts a few weeks ago, I was hit between the eyes by the clear connection of Jeremiah and Ephesians. Both passages about how God is calling people back together, pulling them in from north and south and east and west, gathering in an adopted family of people who had strayed from the center or weren’t even in the center to begin with. Amidst Christmas music and candle-lit choirs singing, I was thinking of the two texts to the tune of “O Come, all Ye Faithful” and watching the masses gather in, joyful and triumphant, around the manger-bed of Jesus Christ, the word made flesh. And that is where this sermon sat and simmered for about a week.

And then when I came back, and read the texts again, I realized I had entirely missed something.

The Ephesians passage is THE go-to-place for the Biblical idea of predestination. How could this have slipped my attention?

And there was certainly no way that I could walk into the pulpit of a church with the word “Reformed” in its name and ignore that. Maybe, perhaps, with a group of Presbyterians, who often have to be reminded that they in fact are Reformed, I could get away with it. But not here.

So here it is, the sermon in two parts: part one: what I thought this sermon would be about: Adopotion.  And part two, what the text made me do: Predestination.

A few weeks ago, my friend Alexandra posted a sermon about Christmas and adoption in an on-line ministry magazine. Alex is a Presbyterian pastor, and she has this family that looks like the new heaven the new earth. Alex and her husband are white, but their kids are Guatemalan and black. When Alex looks at the nativity scene, Joseph takes on a special role for her:

Sometimes people say to me, when they meet Thomas and his sister, Lily, for the first time, “Are these your natural children?  Are they your real children?  Are they really sister and brother?”  The implication, sometimes communicated more explicitly than others, is that because our kids did not come to us in the “natural” way, that we must not really, or fully, love them.  But then I see the love of Joseph for his son, Jesus.  Talk about not joining a family in the natural way – the unlikely union of Mary, Joseph and their son, Jesus is the very family on which all of Christianity places its foundation.  Yes, they are my real children.  Yes, Joseph really loved his son.

When Alex looks at the nativity scene, she sees it as a model for her own family, and then, as a model for the Christian family…we are truly gathered in, a picture of the new creation, a family formed, as Dorothy Day said, from the people who show up.

And that is exactly what these passages describe: God gathering in, bringing the remnant of Israel back from exile, from north and south and east and west, welcoming them not just as long-lost friends, but declaring them the firstborn child, embracing them as fully adopted heirs, as brothers and sisters of the Jesus child in the manger.

It’s not just a picture of homecoming: when the early church heard the word adoption, it was not just a way to increase the size of a family. Full adoption changed one’s status…not just by confessing that this child was beloved of the adoptive family. It often meant that the new parents took on legal obligation, outstanding debts, even going so far as to change the status of a child from slave to free.

There are songs about Christmas that picture Jesus as our brother, often songs that are gentle and lilting and geared toward children.

I like reading the high theology of the Ephesians text at Christmastime, because it reminds us of that contrast…really, the concept is simple…Jesus is your brother.

That means you have been adopted as God’s own child,
a full daughter, a full son,
tucked into the manger next to Jesus,
with the angels singing overhead
and the protective wing of God keeping you warm and safe.

And yet, simple as that idea is, it is breathtakingly beautiful, incredibly intricate, and intellectually mind-blowing.
You, and you, and you, and you,
all children of God.

By God’s own eternal choice and intent, you have been gathered in from north and south and east and west.
Somewhere, in the mystery of time, God knew and chose and called you out.

Maybe this is where the metaphor starts to fall apart. In North American adoption circles, the hot topic of the last decade has been openness…open adoptions, digging through the records, trying, even in the case of international adoptions to preserve or to unearth as much information as possible.  And, again, this may be where the metaphor falls apart, because this change of talking openly about the fact of adoption and access to information has been an incredible thing for many people in the adoption community.

But not every person has been interested or able to in uncover these mysteries. And, we have to remember that there are many people for whom uncovering the mysteries about their origins won’t be possible: whether because of missed opportunities to meet, intricate international adoptions, bad records, or unwilling parties, not everyone can find all of these answers. This week, one adopted person wrote in a New York Times column about the mystery of adoption:

I AM not adopted; I have mysterious origins.

The trend [in adoption and gestational technologies], certainly, is toward openness, a growing “right” to know. I am not against this trend. I simply want to give not-knowing its due. I like mysteries.

The word Ephesians uses even before it gets to the image of adoption is “mystery”. As God’s children, we all have mysterious origins.

Because in the end, the workings of this are mysterious. How is it that we can be called children of God, that we can be placed on the same level as the Son of God? And, even more, how is it that we could be known and called out before the world began?

And that brings us to the other sermon we are stuck with this morning. Because swirling in the midst of this mystery is that sticky wicket of a word, predestination.

I will admit to an affection for the idea of predestination as it connects to the idea of adoption: That through no willing or doing or being of our own, God grabs on and holds onto us, from the very beginning to the very end. I like that. It’s comforting, and it works.

But when I read Jeremiah, I’m reminded that there is another side to the idea of choice—the side that I don’t like as much. Because Jeremiah is about the ingathering of the remnant. It is not, like some similar passages in the prophets, about ingathering of the nations, all people’s coming from north and south and east and west. Not all peoples, but God’s people.

And I honestly don’t know how to resolve that piece of it. It is part of theology that I have to take off the shelf every once and awhile to turn over and examine, and try to reason out. But it never feels comfortable in my hands, it never feels resolved.

Since 2009 is John Calvin’s 500th birthday, I figured I’d give him his due and re-read what he has to say about predestination, see if I could find some morsel there.

I found the same contrast of comfort and questions, and nothing that sits well with me as an answer.

But what I did notice this time was this: there is a narrow path, according to Calvin, that we have to walk when we dig deep into the mysteries of God, and especially predestination.  On one side of the path is the danger of simply not thinking and talking about the mysteries, throwing our hands up and giving up.

But on the other side is the danger of digging and poking around that we leave no beauty in mystery, we leave no room for God’s thoughts to be larger than our thoughts.

Some where in the middle, one foot in front of the other, we have to find a way between our need to know and God’s need to be God.

We will always want to keep probing a bit more, poking around for an answer, digging through the records, unearthing the information. That curiosity is part of how God made us, and it is what leads us to catch a glimpse of how wonderful and incomprehensible God is.

But God is incomprehensible. And sometimes we need to be willing to live with mystery. To give up some control. Information is power. But we really can’t have all the facts.

Both Jeremiah and Ephesians remind us that we are not in control….Jeremiah 31 is written at Israel’s darkest hour, when the kingdom is shattering and exile is looming. And the very idea of hope is so very impossible that Jeremiah’s words probably sounded more like lunacy than prophecy. And Ephesians reminds us that there is nothing we could do, nothing we could ever do, to ensure God’s choice of us. God spoke, and we were his children.

Somewhere deep in the mystery of time, God called and chose us. We understand this in part, and use the stories and words and pictures that help us see a bit of what God has done for us. And so we say we are adopted, we are sisters and brothers of Jesus, we are the remnant returning.

But we have mysterious origins.

And somewhere deep in the mystery of the future, we will come to the God who calls. And so we say we are looking forward to an inheritance, we will come from north and south and east and west.

But we don’t know exactly what that looks like, or exactly who will be. We have mysterious origins, and even the future is wrapped in the mystery of God’s thoughts.

And in between, we are called to celebrate, to pray, to sing, and weep with joy as we try to understand the mystery, as we try to live into it.

So, on the last Sunday of Christmastide, take a step back to the manger to contemplate the mystery for what it is in this moment…not to pick apart the past, or probe the future, but to appreciate this moment…

With Mary, who treasured it in her heart,

With Joseph, who loved Jesus without always knowing what it meant to call him son.

With the angels, who sang out of excitement and astonishment at the daring of God’s plan

And with Jesus, word made flesh, king of heaven and earth,

But by some great mystery, our brother.

Amen.

Pray for us, because at the next service, we’re handing the preaching of the word over to the children. They’re doing a Christmas pageant.

Christmas pageants are not safe. Let’s be honest: when Mary is 8 and Joseph is 5 and the innkeeper is 3, you just don’t know what’s going to happen.  Even if the roles are given to slightly older children, the whole thing is really a little subversive. One year the high school where I taught religion had a Christmas pageant as part of our Christmas program. I’ll never forget the nervous energy radiating out like static from our principal as she watched the whole thing unfold. To begin with, it was a story about a pregnant teenager, exactly the sort of thing inner city teachers are trying to avoid. The high school dean of students had organized the pageant, and had the brilliant idea of setting the Christmas story on the near west side of Chicago, exactly where our school was. By the time the shepherds, dressed as homeless guys , hit the stage, the principal’s knuckles were turning white. And when the wise men showed up, in full baggy pants and bearing armfuls of bling for the baby Jesus, we all knew that the dean was about to get called into the office for a little talking to.

Is the nativity story even supposed to be safe? There’s an episode of the Simpsons, (my favorite yellow-cartoon-theologians) that suggests the danger of the nativity. As a winter storm is blowing into Springfield, the whole town hustles to get everything ready for the stormy winds. Ned Flanders, the Simpson’s super-churchy neighbor looks at his font lawn life-size nativity scene, turns to his sons and says: “Make sure the Baby Jesus is tied down…if he gets loose he could really do some damage.”

It would truly be easier to leave Jesus in the manger, snuggled in his swaddling and hay, than to think about what this really means. And, I worry that we Christians, the “insiders” who show up the Sunday before Christmas even though we’re going to be here anyway for Christmas Eve services, I worry that we buy a little too much into cute-ness of the season.

Luke is by far the most adorable of the Gospel accounts, probably why it gets used in Christmas pageants, with a little side trip to Matthew for the appearance of the wise men.

Maybe this is why John’s Gospel ditches the baby-scene altogether and lets us have the theology right up front:

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.

John is not cute, but certainly is beautiful. If it only sounds repetitive in English, let me assure you the original Greek is just stunning to hear, spine-shivering stuff.

If Advent is about getting ready for what the manger scene really means, then this 4th Sunday is sort of our last chance. If you’re here this early on a Sunday morning, I can only assume that you wanted to set aside the presents and pine needles, the traffic and the travel, the baking and bundling for an hour, to sit still and take a last chance to get ready for what comes on Wednesday night.

And so I’m throwing us a Christmas curve-ball…the text for the day is not from the gospels or the prophecy about Jesus’ birth.

Be strong and take heart, because we are headed right into the middle of Revelation, John’s hallucinogenic take on all of history, from the perspective of the spiritual world.

As I read Revelation 12, I encourage you to sit back and close your eyes–and you can begin by picturing the classic Luke 2 nativity scene, but from there, let your imagination run wild.

(A link to Revelation 12)

What if this were the picture we illustrated in life-size inflatable plastic scenes in our front yards? A bit different, isn’t it?

This vivid picture comes smack dab in the middle of Revelation. Revelation is a cosmic fantasy story retelling of the struggle for creation. And so, instead of the stories of faithful men and women, of journeying nomads in the wilderness, of simple Palestinian peasants, we get dragons and stars falling and giant, birthing women.

If you’ve gotten a bit too used to the idea of Christmas, this ought to open your eyes a bit.

Behind the fully human struggle of Mary, a mother giving birth that night in Bethlehem, behind that scene, there was something even larger…God’s powerful yet delicate plan to lay hold of the world he loved so much.

Luke gets at this in reverse: in his account of the birth, we start with the big, powerful picture: the Roman Empire, with the entire known world at its beck and call. And from that vantage point, Luke zooms in on one miniscule moment: a peasant child born in a stable in a little no-importance town.

But in Revelation, we pull back from that scene and see it for the important moment that it is: the moment when all history collapses on itself, when God’s great plan comes to be born, when everything is at stake.

Most of you probably had that moment in school or in church when someone explained that the “AD” after a year did not stand for “after death” but for “Anno Domini” “The year of our Lord,” and that the time between BC and AD was divided not by an estimated date of Jesus’ death, but by the estimated date of his birth.

At the moment when Jesus was born in that stable, the entire perspective of history changed. The powerful, the Ceasar Augustses and the Quiriniuses of the world, were outdone by a tiny baby. The Herods of the world were threatened enough to strike out like fearful animals, and both the outcast shepherds and power-broker wisemen were called to visit an insignificant child, barely understanding who he was or what he was about to do.

In Revelation, we get the full perspective of the picture. Because, in fact, it is not just the powers of kings and emperors that are threatened by the birth of a baby. It is the entire order of the world, a world become so twisted and mangled that it looks like a dragon. Herod, in all his jealous cruelty, is just one scale on that terrible creature. Herod is the least of this baby’s worries.

If we have a few more days to prepare for Jesus’ coming, then we need to spend time looking at things with the perspective that Revelation gives us. Now, we Presbyterians are not the type to spend too much time with our noses buried in Revelation, but think of it this way: your task for the next few days is to take the movie camera and pan out into the big picture, and to peek behind the scenes, in order to get ready for what Christmas really means.

To begin with, what is the actual state of this world? It is the place that God created and there is so much good in it, but yet there are forces that mess things up. Stars are thrown down from the sky: in other words, Beautiful things that should be permanent are damaged and ruined. The woman in childbirth is threatened: in other words humanity at its most vulnerable, but also most productive collective moment is in peril. The world is laboring away while wars rage and people scatter in fear.

No amount of wrapping paper or lights can make the bad things go away. We are a world at war, we are people who cannot embrace peace, we are unable to love and share and give as we ought. And if that seems over-dramatic, a few minutes scanning the news should remind you that things are surely not the way they were created to be. We love the world we live in, because God made it, but we know that something has gone very wrong. And part of the reason we wait expectantly in Advent is that we are waiting for the moment when God will make things right, when all of history will collapse on itself and God’s great work of salvation will be made known.

But if we continue to look at that broad perspective, if we are honest about the state of the world, then we also have to look at who God truly is. And one of the great things about the raw-fisted power of the book of Revelation is that God is not hidden behind the scenes, but active and powerful, and altogether present. There is no screen in the way, and we can see exactly who is in control, and exactly how much God would lay out for this world, the world that God made and loves. God is more powerful than any strange, nightmarish evil the book of Revelation throws at us. It is always God who triumphs, and there is no question about God’s power.

And with that perspective, then how would we come to that moment on Christmas, that moment that God’s people waited for then, the fulfillment of that moment that we wait for now?

It is not just about the comfort and coziness of a family in a stable. It is not just about the promise of new life in a baby’s round cheek, it is not just about the people gathered in by that moment.

It is something cosmic. Because behind that moment God is snatching victory away from every that threatens to undo us. That moment is the moment when things begin to turn, and God regains ground against sin and death and evil.

But it is even more amazing than the raw-fisted power of a God breaking into human history.

And it is amazing because it is contained in such a small place, and in such a small person.

What should send shivers up your spine is this thought: in Jesus, tiny peasant baby, all of heaven and earth are cradled and contained.

In the tiny, quick heartbeat of one so small is the mighty power and love of God. And God’s power is so strong that Jesus was preserved. Think of it: not just Herod, but one stray step of a stable animal, one cruel act of a soldier, one small virus, could have stopped the whole thing. But the baby grew into the man, and even when the powers that be hung him to die, God overcame sin and evil, and even death.

And so maybe the danger of the Christmas pageant is right on target. Could there be anything more appropriate than handing over our most precious story, our most incomprehensible moment, to children? Because the truth of the incarnation is that something so powerful was contained in something small. That the great God of the universe came to us as a child, and lived among us so that we might see God’s power and glory.

Amen.

Twice in my life, on a bus in a foreign country, I’ve had a moment where I understood how big Americans really are.

In Guatemala, I rode a chicken bus (called chicken buses because people transport everything, including their chickens).  Latin America is where North American school buses go to die:  chicken buses are reclaimed and only slightly refurbished school buses, usually painted bright colors, and usually decorated with religious slogans…appropriate since the ride often feels like you are taking your life into your hands.

I got on early in the day, and within a few stops, the seat I had to myself was occupied by me and a much shorter Guatemalan woman and her children.  As I crammed my body farther into a seat that would have fit me best when I was in third grade, I took stock of my seat mates, and marveled at the fact that there were 4 of us in the seat:  the woman, her daughter between us, and a small son on her lap.  Wow, I thought, 4 of us in the seat.  Then the mother shifted a little and I noticed that there was a small baby slung on her back.  5 of us in the seat?  I was impressed, but honestly felt a little bad for this family when I realized that this surely had to be the least desirable seat, occupied as it was by a giant of a “gringa” (and let me assure you—I am a giant, a freakish giant, in Guatemala!)

Space, though is not always physical.  In college, during a year in England, I remember a bus ride through a smaller city with a group of a few American friends.  A few minutes into that ride, we realized that everyone from the dear old lady coming home from the market in one seat to the soccer-hooligan looking tough guys in another, were all staring at us.  What had we done to get such rude stares?  Well, we were talking and laughing at a very American volume.  And even though the bus was half empty, we were taking up much more than our fair share of space.

Americans live large.  We are the country of the Big Mac, Big Gulp, Grand Canyon, Lip Plumpers, mega churches, multi-plexes, Boob jobs, manifest destiny, big guns, McMansions, blockbuster movies, SUV’s, Great Lakes, Big Screen TV’s, Big Sur, sky scrapers, big ideas, mega millions. 

We live bigger than the vast majority of people in the world.   Even those of us who are below the US poverty line live well above the standards of the majority of people in the world.  We each use, on average, 5 times the carbon resources per person as the rest of the world.  We are admired for our bigness, but we are also resented when we take up too much space.

Some of us try to simplify, to live smaller, to view ourselves in appropriate proportion to the whole world.  But it’s hard to do.  We may say, “More is less,” but the truth is that we live and move and have our being in a culture and climate causes us to step back and think, “If more is less, then how much more must more be?”

None of the beatitudes are easy.  They are not supposed to be.  They are supposed to challenge us to our very core.  If you find that they are easy to swallow, you are not hearing them right.  I won’t say that meekness is the hardest one.  But meekness is an uphill battle when you sit in the place where we each sit as North Americans.  Bigness is in our blood.

Meekness is not bigness.  It’s not the exact opposite, but it’s close.  Meekness is about taking up the space that is allotted to you, and no more.  Meekness is about getting out of the way when God needs to be in the forefront.  Meekness is the quiet strength that comes when you know God is behind you.  Meekness is the humility of being able to reconsider yourself, your position, if the Spirit so moves.  Meekness is about our posture in the face of God and in the context of the creation.

Now, we often get uncomfortable with the idea of meekness because it sounds like a person who is a doormat, someone who gets kicked around and beat up, stepped on and muddied.  Someone who does nothing about it when they are used and abused.

That’s not what the Christian virtue of meekness is about…the Christian virtue of meekness is about knowing who you truly are, and living into the reality.

Meekness is not about making less of ourselves…it’s about understanding who we really are.  And we do not understand who we are in isolation…as Christians, our identity is tied up in God, and tied up in each other.

When Paul writes about meekness in Romans, he talks about it in context of the community, and in the context of the community’s relationship to the world:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer

your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is true worship.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing

of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his

good, pleasing and perfect will.

For the grace given me I say to every one of you:  Do not think of yourself more

highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in

accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.

What makes us meek is the place we have in God, the place we have in the world, and the place we have in the community.

Meekness, says Paul, must seep down into your very being, into your gut, so that it is, in fact, a spiritual act of worship.  This does not mean that you start to slouch and try to physically make yourself smaller.

Meekness means that you recognize your whole self: spirit, soul, and body, as an offering to God, so that in everything you do, in everything you say, in everything you are, you live in the context of God’s mercy.  And in the face of that mercy, you only offer your whole self.  It’s about accepting, through and through, that you are God’s own.

You are God’s own—that is the way to think of yourself.

You are God’s own, loved and redeemed and called out to be part of the community of saints.

Imagine, for a minute, that you are in a place where baby Matilda is this morning.  There you are, at the font, and at this very moment, as the water pours down your head, as you hear words you do not even understand, at this very moment, all eyes in this church are on you.  But so is the eye of God.  And as God calls you through the water, God could not possibly love you more.

A preacher friend of mine (Jack Roeda) says, “Imagine the heartbeat of your mother.  Multiply it by infinity.  That is how much God loves you.”

This is the delicious irony of meekness.  If meekness is seeing yourself in your proper place in the world, taking up the appropriate space, thinking of yourself in the right way, it is not about being a doormat.  It is not about getting pushed aside and stepped on and ignored.

It is about getting your self-conception out of the way so that God can break in with infinite love.

And in that thought, you cannot think of yourself more than is appropriate.

The presence of the community is what keeps us in check here…because the further irony of this is that God loves you infinitely, just as God loves the rest of the creation infinitely.  In the book, The Shack, a man spends a weekend on a cabin face to face with God.  And God has this delightful habit…whenever the man mentions any other person in the world, God chuckles fondly and say, “Oh, I am especially fond of her.”

 
If you think you are the only one who God is fond of, you don’t understand infinite love.  You are not less than others, you are joined with others by God’s amazing love, all-encompassing compassion.  You belong to God, along with the whole creation.  God looks down at you, at you, at you, and at you, and says “I am especially fond of him…I am especially fond of her…I am especially fond of him,” and on and on and on into infinity to the whole creation.

Meekness in the context of community reminds us of God’s infinite love.  There is always enough.  We are not at the center:  God is.  And the gift of God’s love includes the presence of a community where we are all valued for our individual gifts, and for the infinite love God places on each of us.

You cannot be a doormat if you know who you are:  God’s precious child.

Often, when people are asked to cite examples of meekness, they go for great leaders in civil rights struggles.  Even though we struggle with the idea that meek means weak, we still cite people who showed incredible strength:

Rosa Parks refusing to sit in the back of the bus. 

Nelson Mandela telling a judge that he was willing to go to prison or even die for protesting against Apartheid.

Martin Luther King, Jr. leading marches not just in the south, but even dodging bricks while marching down Cermak Avenue in Chicago.

Fannie Lou Hamer (I know this one is unfamiliar, but it’s such a great story), at the Democratic Convention in 1964, standing up to party leaders when she felt a compromise was selling short people fighting for their rights, standing up to Hubert Humprey and saying, “Senator Humphrey, I’m going to pray to Jesus for you.”  (If that is not gutsy meekness, I don’t know what is!!)

It is no coincidence that all of these people had a deep sense of their worth in the eyes of God.  Not one of them was a doormat, because they knew what they were worth.  But even though they are among the most famous names of the 20^th century, even with their individual human foibles and short-comings, we recognize a greatness in them that was about taking up the place that God had set for them. 

When you know that God loves you, you can stand confidently and meekly in the face of adversity.  In some ways, that knowledge is where a Christian ethic of non-violence comes from.

Psalm 37, on the surface, makes me a little skittish.  

Do not fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of wrongdoers,

for they will soon fade like the grass, and wither like the green herb.

Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security.

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

 Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath. Do not fret—it leads only to evil…

For the wicked shall be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.

Yet a little while, and the wicked will be no more; though you look diligently for their place, they will not be there.

But the meek shall inherit the land, and delight themselves in abundant prosperity.

(Verses 1-4, 8-11)

Isn’t there a little too much of God’s people against the rest of the world in this Psalm?  Imagine Psalm 37 as a freedom song—free from fear, free from injustice because we know God is behind us.  Imagine Psalm 37 as the song that Christians sing together as they link arms and face a world where things are not always the way they are supposed to be.  Imagine the power of that.  And imagine the meekness of that.

Meekness is a perspective of hope.  It means that we look forward with confidence to what God will do, what God is already doing.  Hopelessness is often paired with a sense that there is nothing we can do (a sense that we are a doormat).  Meekness comes with a generous side of hope.  We don’t hope in ourselves because of a false, over-inflated sense of hope.  We hope in a god who works in us and through us even when we don’t take up that much space in the grand scheme of things.

We have a hope:  a new heaven and a new earth realized and brought about by a God who loves us infinitely.  Inheritance is something we hope for, something we look forward to, and what God promises is that we inherit a world where our smallness is transformed into God’s glory.  Already in our meekness we see the world in a new way.  The last are the first; the weak are the powerful, the small becomes big.  Because we see through the Lamb of God in Jesus.

But in the meantime, while we wait for the promises to be fulfilled, what does our meekness look like? 

If we are meek, we scoot aside to give someone a seat on the bus or the train or at the lunch table.  We find ways to take up only the space and resources we truly need so that other people can have the space allotted to them, so we think about turning lights on and off, when and how we drive, letting others into a conversation, remembering those we are ignored, how our nations uses its resources. 

Meekness is taking the time to care about someone who seems less in the eyes of the world because she is more in the eyes of God.

Meekness is about asking our leaders to think not just about our personal needs and priorities, but the needs and priorities of the whole nation and the whole world.

As a church, meekness is about growing not just for the sake of numbers, but so that we can get out of the way and show the world the all-encompassing love of God.  Meekness is about being a good neighbor to the community, and standing up as a group for the people who get forgotten.

Meekness is about living a small life.  A life contained in a drop of water, the drop that hits our bodies as we are baptized, and sealed as God’s own beloved one, one who will inherit all that God promises to his children.

For all that is small, intricate, and beautiful, for all that is hopeful and God-filled, thanks be to God. 

Amen.