All the Children of the World

Community Christian Church     

Roger Ray, Pastor   

Dec. 26, 2010  Christmas 1

 

Matthew 2:13-18

As we gather here on this first day after America's most exhausting holiday, my usual bench of reliable biblical scholars are all out of town.  Dr. David Trobisch is still visiting family in Germany.  Dr. Charles Hedrick is in Kansas City playing the role of family patriarch with his daughters and their families.

I am confident, however, had we been able to meet for a salad at MSU this week and discussed this reading from Matthew before us today that they would side with New Testament scholars the world over who say that this account of Herod's slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem is not a historical account.  They would say, and I would agree, that Matthew constructs this story as part of his rather insistent view that Jesus was the new Moses.  Just as Moses was born at a time in Egypt when the Pharaoh was having all male Hebrew children killed, Matthew wants to begin his account of Jesus' life with the same sort of peril from an oppressive, evil king.

Hedrick, Trobisch, and any good seminary text book on the New Testament would say, in fact, that Jesus was probably born in his parent's home in Nazareth and both Luke and Matthew create entirely different accounts to place Mary in Bethlehem at the time of his birth in order to make Jesus more convincingly an heir of King David.

The text books would point out that there is no historical record of such a slaughter during Herod the Great's rule.  The first century Jewish historian, Josephus, certainly catalogues other murders and outrages of Herod's time.

Scholars agree that if Herod had ordered the execution of dozens or possibly hundreds of infants that Josephus certainly would have talked about it.

I am recounting the scholarly view on this passage, not because I disagree with them..... fundamentally, I find their conclusions to be entirely reasonable but I will add this one caveat:  if archaeologists should unearth some bit of evidence to suggest that it really did happen exactly the way Matthew described, I would not be surprised.  Certainly, more biblically conservative scholars have for years pointed out that the slaughter of the innocents would not be out of character for Herod who regularly had members of his own family put to death and ordered the execution of dozens of people at a time in order to safeguard his grasp on the throne which was complicated by an extreme paranoia.

And, yes, first century Palestine was a dangerous place and Herod was a dangerous ruler and even an enthusiastic historian like Josephus could not possibly chronicle ever evil deed committed during that time.

But more than that, I could easily be persuaded to believe that dozens of children might have been killed for political reasons and no one said much about it because, I'm afraid, that sort of thing happens all of the time.  Children don't vote.... They rarely own property.  They are not veterans.... They can lift neither sword nor rifle, they can't write, or drive or command an audience.  They disappear quietly.  They are warehoused in homeless shelters, daycares, and poorly equipped schools.

In Greene Co, the newspaper will occasionally latch onto a particularly heinous story of child abuse or death through violence or neglect, but not often.

In 2003 there were two children killed in Greene Co. by abuse or neglect.  In 2004 there were 4.  In 2005 there were 5.  Only two of those 11 deaths caught even remote public attention..... most were buried in obscurity.... Bad boy friends and negligent mothers quietly went to jail and the conditions which keep creating violent and negligent homes goes unchanged.  It goes unchanged because children can't vote, they can't lift a sword, or write, or drive, or command an audience.  They depend on other people to do that and what those other people do is to warehouse them in homeless shelters, daycares and bad schools.

In 2004 and 2005 we had about 800 children each year removed from Greene Co. homes because of abuse and neglect.  In 2006 we had big state budget cuts and the number of children placed in foster care was cut in half but not because abuse and neglect was cut in half, just our ability to do anything about it.  So we leave the children where they are and we never hear about them.... Because they can't vote, they don't own property, they can't write..... and a lot of them will never learn how to.

You would have to be fairly Pollyannaish not to be aware that the numbers of children in poverty and in danger are on the rise.  Accurate accounting of such things is not as easy as just looking it up on the Chamber of Commerce website but I can tell you from the perspective of working with poverty related programs at Crosslines and Ozark Food harvest that the number of people served each month has doubled in the past seven years.

So, is it possible that mean old King Herod might have ordered the slaughter of the innocent children who lived in the area of Bethlehem early in the first century and no one bothered to record the horrible event?  You bet it is.

We know it is possible because it happens every day and it goes almost entirely unnoticed, even in 21st century Greene Co.  And so we keep this story in Matthew and we read it aloud in church every year.

I and my academic peers and friends in biblical studies will push around the theological themes and even though we will disparage incarnational theology, I do not disparage the claim that the birth of Jesus of Nazareth was a holy and divine event.  What I want to emphasize though, is that the birth of Miguel and Christine de los Angeles, and Mufasa and Nadia, and Tyrone and Chaquita, and Luke and Nola are also holy and divine births.

That Jesus was born into poverty and was almost immediately a refugee from a cruel government is not significant to repeat unless recounting that story also teaches you to let your heart be broken when I tell you that there are 10,000 children on Medicaid in this country...... 10,000 children also born into poverty and at danger in a cruel and indifferent world.

The reason that I have not given up on church..... the reason why I continue to do this.... To keep coming here.... Keep preaching and teaching and writing.... Lifting my sword and casting my vote is because the world needs a voice of compassion, of love and sacrifice, of caring and of interceding for those who cannot act to save themselves.... The ones who are waiting for the spirit of Christmas to be born into our world.

I am deeply grateful for the opportunities which came to me many years ago to study theology at Vanderbilt and later at Harvard.

I feel like a man who won the lottery, being able to go from a poor rural Kentucky background to those wonderful institutions of learning.  But I will tell you that the most important theological lessons I learned early in life.  I learned it in a song I was taught to sing, sitting on a little painted wooden chair in a basement classroom of the 1st Christian Church in Glasgow, KY.  If you remember it, sing it with me:

Jesus loves the little children


All little children of the world.


Red and yellow, black and white


They are precious in his sight


Jesus loves the little children of the world.

So, mothers.... Fathers.... Grandparents..... I believe that your children carry within them something which is holy, divine, important, and powerful. I believe that the entirety of the future of the human race is in them.  And so, I charge you to love them, protect them, provide for them..... teach them love and compassion.... Give them a meaningful spiritual context so that they will also be passionate about justice and so they will be willing to show mercy.

If you are fortunate enough to have a child in your life, receive them as a gift from God and cherish them.

Love your children until you are so good at it that you find that you are able to love children you have not met yet..... children whose parents are in prison.... Children who are in foster care to protect them from abuse.... Children who live in impoverished circumstances .... Who have no one who reads to them, no one who takes them on trips.... Who never get to go swimming, whose meals are irregular and unreliable.

The problem is, you see, that children can't vote.  They don't have jobs, incomes or property.  They cannot write or draw an audience or lift up either a sword or their voices and so they are waiting for you to do those things for them.  I hope that they have reason to believe in you.

Newsletter - Christmas Week!

We had a great experience in worship yesterday made perfect by the blessing of Zayden Angelo-Hart Blankenship with his parents, Alexa Snodgrass and Cody Blankenship.  We had 88 folks in worship which included a lot of relatives of Zayden's.  Our offering just over $2000 with additional gifts for Crosslines purchases and KSMU sponsorships.

FRIDAY, CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICE IS AT 7 P.M.

We knew we were really lucky when we first met Jim and Debby Baugh who are relocating to Springfield in April from their current home in Texas.  They've been with us at least once a month since they first bought their retirement home in Springfield back in the summer.  What we did not know until recently is that Debby is bringing a tremendous amount of piano skills with her!  Barry has to be out of town on Christmas but Debby will step up and surprise you with just how good she really is!

Please bring canned goods or donations for Crosslines as an offering at this service..... gold, frankincense and myrrh also accepted. 

THE CHURCH DOOR

As 2010 comes to a close I look back on this past year with some mixed feelings.  When we gathered for Christmas Eve last year it was right after making the decision to purchase our church property.  We entered 2010 with the remarkable challenge and opportunity to raise the money to buy and then restore this facility.  We were blessed with remarkable generosity and Herculean volunteerism in getting the remodeling done.  The move has been a fabulous boost to our stability and longevity.

I have been, however, frequently disappointed in seeing how many people we did lose due to either distance or simple disagreement over the move.  A recurring nightmare in this pastor's life has been the discovery of just how disposable church affiliation can be in a new congregation.  On the other hand, I am tremendously encouraged by how important and vital the church is to many other people. 

We were first visited by Dan and Mary McKenzie after we had moved out to our Cherry St. property.  They were eager volunteers in the care of our property prior to their annual fishing trip in Alaska which had them away at the time we opened our charter in August for members to sign the membership book.  Sadly, on their way home Dan discovered that he had cancer and since they have been back in Springfield Dan has not been well enough to come back to church. 

In a recent conversation, I asked them if there was anything we could do to help support them.  Mary's answer was that she wanted me to bring their membership book to their home so that Dan could sign it, literally, from his bed.  They became members this morning and made a substantial gift to the church.  I'm always sorry to see the people leave who decide that this prophetic little church is not for them but I choose to dwell on those for whom it is already a vital part of their sense of personal faith and corporate witness.

In a recent e-mail exchange with the director of the Center for Progressive Christianity, Fred Plummer, he pointed out that more than 80% of the congregations in the United States have fewer than 60 people in worship every week.  It is a strange thing to celebrate but we were in the top 20% of American churches in our first year of existence!  

Still, we have yet to tap into what I believe is the huge reserve of people who would be a part of this congregation if they only knew about us and understood our mission.  Our KSMU adds and the web site management of one of our new members, Rob Martin, will help us to get the word out and yet most people first visit the church they join because they were invited to visit by a family member or a friend. 

The best hope we have for growing our congregation is for our current members to invite your unchurched friends who would be open to a progressive community of faith.  We don't want to convert anyone or drag anyone away from another congregation.  We're just looking for those like minded people who would benefit from being a part of our faith community.  I am convinced that there are thousands of progressive thinkers in our area who simply do not believe that there is a church around here which would not offend their sense of justice while insulting their intelligence.  We don't need to find all of them but a couple of hundred of them sure would help us to expand the work for social justice we are doing here in Jesus' name. 

I am glad to be among you as your pastor.  I am grateful that you have given me this opportunity to be in ministry.  I look forward to 2011 and the promises it holds for growth and good works.

Matthew's Spin on Christmas

Community Christian Church

Dec. 19, 2010   Advent 4

Roger Ray, Pastor                

Matthew 1:18-25                                 

18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah* took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 20But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.' 22All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 

23 'Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,  and they shall name him Emmanuel',  

which means, 'God is with us.' 24When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, 25but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son;* and he named him Jesus.

For the next year, on the Sunday's when we have a gospel lesson, with the exception of just a few passages taken from John, our gospel lessons will come from the Gospel of Matthew.  Next year it will be Mark and in 2012 it will be Luke.  In this way we allow each of the synoptic gospels to speak most authentically in their own voice. 

There are only two birth narratives in the Bible.  One is in Matthew and the other is in Luke.  Our Christmas carols and decorations add the two accounts together, ignoring parts of one in deference to the other and blending it all together with a good measure of Catholic mythology and the poetic interpretations of Christmas carols. 

All of the shepherds, the trip to Bethlehem, the no room in the inn, the angel choir, the birth in a stable, the songs of Mary and Elizabeth and the cousins relationship of Jesus and John..... that's all in Luke.  And so, I would like to set all of those images aside so that we can let Matthew tell the story from his perspective.  It is rather short, especially compared to Luke.  Just a chapter and a half sandwiched in between a genealogy and the story of John the Baptist. 

 Everyone who spent their childhood in Sunday School as I did can tell you that Matthew is the most Jewish of all of the gospels.  What is immediately obvious is that Matthew quotes from the Jewish bible a lot more than the other three gospel writers.  What is less obvious to the untrained eye is just how much Matthew strives to make Jesus look like Moses.  Matthew is organized around five sermons the same way Deuteronomy is organized around five of the sermons of Moses.  And Matthew has the first of those sermons being delivered on a mountain, just as Moses makes his major address at the foot of Mt. Sinai. 

Even the rather tedious genealogy which begins this gospel, if you compare it to the equally tedious genealogy in Luke, is entirely focused on the traditional patriarchal accounting which is intended to demonstrate that Jesus was in the lineage of David, Moses and Abraham..... not especially interesting to us but of some importance to Matthew's intended audience.

All of that being said, the Christmas story in Matthew is the least Jewish thing about the whole gospel.  And, frankly, it wouldn't take much to demonstrate that it is an account which would not have originally been written by the guy who wrote the rest of the gospel.  Everything else in the gospel demands that you believe that Jesus was the promised Jewish messiah. 

Everything in the Christmas story seems to undermine that saying that being Jewish is either no big deal or not really such a good thing. Not especially anti-Semitic but you can bet that no one would buy you a drink at Jerusalem's Ramada Shalom bar for telling this story.

One of the things that Matthew talks about a lot in his account is men having dreams.  Women don't get any speaking parts in Matthew's account.  Mary has a role to play but Matthew doesn't let her sing or talk about it..... you know how religious people can be sometimes.

Luke says that real, flesh and blood angels show up and make pronouncements.  In this account, angels show up in dreams.  There are five dreams in this Christmas story and only one in the rest of the gospel and that is at the end where Pilate's wife has a dream, and, as I have mentioned, girls don't get to have dreams in this Christmas story. 

Mary read the first block of Matthew's Christmas account, the part that tells us that Jesus was born of a virgin by divine parentage.  While this has been a bit of a hot topic in modern churches, in ancient times this is the sort of thing a biographer would say about any ruler, philosopher or prophet.  Virgin births and divine parents litter the annals of ancient Egypt, Babylon, Persia and Judea. 

If I tell you that my friend, Kim, is the most beautiful woman in the world, I am not pretending to be giving you the results of a global survey of all the women in the world.  It is a poetic statement and should be heard as such.  There are some parts of the Bible which are intended to stress the importance of Jesus which should not lead one to believe that he had glow in the dark DNA..... come on, let Matthew tell the story to make a moral point, not a bad biology lesson.

The real meat of Matthew's spin on Christmas is in the second chapter.

In chapter two, this account which Matthew, against all odds, preserves for us is one of the strangest things in the Bible.  The narrative takes us from Bethlehem to Jerusalem, to the palace of the half Jew who rules as a procurator for Rome.... Herod.

Into that most Jewish of scenes, right next to the temple in Jerusalem, comes a small band of what Matthew describes as "magi," which is a term used in that era for priests of the Persian religion you will remember me mentioning last week:  Zoroastrianism.  If you ask anyone in the world how many magi visited Jesus in the stable on the night of his birth nearly everyone would tell you that there were three of them. Catholic tradition even tells us their names:  Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. 

It being so close to Christmas, I'm not quite sure how to say this as gently as I ought, but nearly everyone would be wrong.  As I pointed out earlier, Matthew does not set the birth in a stable.  Mary and Joseph live in Bethlehem and Jesus was born in their home.  And there is nothing in Matthew to suggest that there were three magi.  There were three different kinds of gifts named but there could have been two magi or two dozen. 

When I tell you that I got money on Christmas when I was a child, does that tell you how many uncles and aunts sent me cards with a little cash in it? 

What Matthew is telling us about is not an overly sweet creche with three kings bearing gifts to a child in a manger surrounded by donkeys and sheep. 

Matthew is telling us about an even more peculiar scene..... Zoroastrian priests visiting in the palace of the Jewish king just down the street from the Temple.  This was the most unlikely of circumstances and therefore it is the point of Matthew's story.

Every nation on earth believes that they are God's favorite.  Most nations on earth have at least one nation in mind which they believe to be the nation that God hates.  The Jews coined the phrase, "God's chosen people" but, in this story, the Jews didn't know anything about the birth of the Jewish king and had to be alerted to his arrival by astrologers from a distant nation.... The nation which had most recently invaded and enslaved the Jews.  They were from what Ronald Reagan would have called the Evil Empire, and what George Bush called the Axis of Evil and what we we probably be calling North Korea before long. 

As a caveat to everything else that Matthew is going to tell us about Jesus and just how special and how Jewish he is, we have this story in which the Jewish authorities not only didn't know anything about him, but once they learned, they were willing to kill every male child in the region to be sure he didn't survive.  This is a tale of reversals in which the Taliban come to the White House to try to talk some sense into the Americans.  

Matthew is very Jewish.  One can only expect that he was as much of a patriot, as much of an enthusiast for his people as we are for ours. But he sets up this gospel with a more universal message.  Don't be too sure that you know who your enemies are.  

And even if you have allowed yourself to paint any other religion, nation, political party, or race as being the ones that it is divinely approved to hate.... Don't be so sure that they are not the ones God will send knocking on your door.  

To every nation's prayer for "God bless Israel," or "God bless America," Matthew's Christmas story is more like the prayer of Tiny Tim, "God bless us everyone...... no exceptions."

The Highway that Heals

Community Christian Church

Dec. 12, 2010   Advent 3

Roger Ray, Pastor                

Isaiah 35:1-10, Matthew 11:2-6

If you have ever bothered to ask which version of the Bible I prefer then for the past 20 years there has been only one answer and that is the New Revised Standard Version.  Many other translations are either terribly dated and use a language which is nearly foreign to us in the 21^st century or they are not really a translation…. The New International Version and the Living Bible and their cousins are more commentaries…. Translating texts to support church doctrine rather than being true to the original manuscripts.

The Revised Standard Version and, since 1991, the New Revised Standard Version are the most scholarly and technically the best translations into modern American English….. there is an excellent translation in British English but as the years roll by we are increasingly two great nations divided by a common language. 

I’m not a linguist.  Foreign languages were always my weakest subject in school and so I am entirely dependant upon reliable English translations of scripture.  But even this version which is the product of the very best linguists alive in America during the 1980’s is not perfect.  Sometimes a translation committee will feel obligated to go along with tradition.  The Lord’s prayer, the 23^rd Psalm, and John 3:16 are so firmly planted in our minds in the King James Version that modern translators feel that they have to at least bow to the form of King James at many junctures.

As close as I came to the actual translation work of the NRSV was my acquaintance with one of the Hebrew scholars who worked on the translation of Isaiah, Dr. Walter Harrelson.  Dr. Harrelson was the emeritus professor of Old Testament at Vanderbilt when I was a student there and I got to hear him lecture on a translation issue in which the committee voted down his translation of Isaiah 35, verse 8. 

If I may ask you to look at it with me in your bulletin:  The committee insisted that they keep the familiar form of the sentence saying that this highway, immortalized in Handle’s Messiah, this Holy Way; it says in the second half of verse 8, “the unclean shall not travel on it.” 

Which is to say, that this highway which leads to the Kingdom of God is reserved strictly for those who are without sin.  This was not an uncommon sentiment in ancient Judaism.  Priests and those who lead in worship were to be pure both physically and spiritually, with a rash or blemish on their skin or a blight on their soul.  Churches, in one way or another, have a tendency towards the same kind of narrow path….. there are people who are in and there are people who are out. 

Churches have defined people out for a whole host of reasons….. women cannot lead in church because…. Well, because they don’t have the right plumbing….. the handicapped, the divorced, the addict…. Maybe the wrong skin color, the wrong sexual orientation…… the unclean shall not travel on it, but is shall be for God’s people!

Almost all of us here have been found to be unworthy in some religious tradition and so we understand this passage, no matter how much it may set our teeth on edge.

Dr. Harrelson argued, and I think quite convincingly, that they have the sentence structure so that it means the exact opposite of what the original author intended.  It should not be, he said, “The unclean shall not travel on it,” but rather, it should read: Those who travel on it shall not be unclean.  That is, if you will walk on this path…. If you are willing to live your life towards God’s Kingdom, then you will be made clean.  In stead of being exclusive and keeping people out, the prophet’s intention was to insist that everyone is included and that by being in the faith community, by living the live, by walking in the way, you are restored.

And this is not simple wishful thinking on Dr. Harrelson’s part.  Look at verse 3:  Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees.  The prophet is talking about how the call to be in community heals the infirm. 

Look at verse 5:  Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

A lot of you, a lot of us, have been wounded by your religious tradition.  A lot of us have been wounded by family members or that person with whom you once stood with a crowd of witnesses and swore an oath to God that you would love, honor and cherish one another until the day you died.  And sometimes we start to believe in our wounds. 

Sometimes we start to identify ourselves by how we have been hurt.  The tradition in A.A. is to begin the meeting by going around the room and everyone says their name and claims their brokenness:  Hi, I’m Bill and I’m an alcoholic.  It is a part of the tradition which gives me some pause but I can tell you that outside of A.A. meetings, other people will do it for you.

This afternoon I’ll be going back to Louisville, Kentucky where I will speak at the funeral home across the street from the church where I was the pastor for several years before I moved to Springfield.  I’ve been here for nearly 20 years now and I’ve done a lot of things in that 20 years.  I’ve been a part of building dozens of Habitat Houses, hundreds of houses in Nicaragua, I’ve published three books and hundreds of articles.  I’ve been a visiting fellow at Harvard and I’ve become a friend to hundreds of homeless and poor people in this community.  But when I walk into the Foreman Funeral Home where I have not been for many years, to those people who knew me back when I will be, that preacher who got divorced…… twice. You would like to think that no one is keeping score but the people who have known you since you were young…. Keeping score is what they do best. 

What does it mean to be shy other than to be afraid of the judgment of others?  On the list of anxieties, the list of things people are the most afraid of, snakes is number one, death is number three and public speaking is number two.  Now, I think there is good reason to be afraid of snakes and of dying, and for me those two things can come pretty close to one another, but why are you afraid to stand up here and be a worship leader?  Why would you be afraid to speak to gathering of people? 

Because we know how harshly people can judge us…. And, in part, we know that because we know how harsh we are towards other people!  I think the biggest hurdle to getting over being shy is to stop judging other people so harshly so that you can take a more charitable view of human kind. 

One of the great paradoxes of the practice of the Christian faith is the observation that Jesus was tolerant of everything except intolerance.  You cannot find any instance of conflict in the New Testament between Jesus and anyone, not the Roman occupation forces, not even his own executioner or the friend who betrayed him…. The only time Jesus gets mad and calls people names it was for intolerance. 

Jesus was known for keeping company with prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners specifically because that was so uncommon.  Religious people didn’t socialize with prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners…. They didn’t want to be associated with the unclean.  Jesus, on the other hand, didn’t mind being associated with the unclean, he just didn’t want to associate with the people who thought they were clean….. the self-righteous, the religious hypocrites who used religion to brand people because of their failures rather than to try to love them into health.

The vision of the prophet Isaiah was that when the Jews were released from Babylon, when they were again allowed to be a people, a community of faith, that those who walked with them would be healed…. Metaphorically, the lame learn to walk by walking, the blind will see, the deaf will hear and the unclean will be forgiven, healed, made clean, they will be fully restored so that no one remembers their past brokenness. 

Matthew records this very telling exchange between Jesus and some of the disciples of John the Baptist.  It is pretty clear that John the Baptist was from that Essene community which was waiting for God to send a Messiah who would deliver the nation of Israel from bondage in much the same way that the Maccabbees or the kings of old had. 

If you take the baptism scenes in all four gospels as being in any way historical, John the Baptist had endorsed Jesus as being the one but some months have passed, John is in prison, and it does not seem to John that Jesus is getting with the program.  John expected Jesus to get on with some serious butt kicking and name taking…. Getting a revolution started and he just doesn’t seem to be acting like any Messiah John had ever envisioned.

Jesus tells John’s disciples to go back and tell them what they have seen.  Jesus doesn’t really give John an answer in so many words, he just wants his disciples to give him a report of what is going on…. The blind see, the lame walk, the poor have good news preached to them.

John would recognize that language from the prophet Isaiah and we can only hope that he understood and accepted this for what it was.  Jesus wasn’t going to lead a military revolution.  He wasn’t going to change the world by force.  He was going to change it by showing compassion. 

Compassion may not be the quickest way to right certain social wrongs… compassion is not a direct path to justice but it is the right path, and, if you believe the prophet, those who walk on that path will be made clean. 

Still Waiting for Godot

Community Christian Church

December 5, 2010   Advent 2

Roger Ray, Pastor                

Isaiah 11:1-10                   

A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2 The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding,  the spirit of counsel and might,    the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.  He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; 4 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 5 Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist, and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

6 The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. 7 The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,    and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. 9 They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

10 On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious.

Matthew 3:1-12

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, 2‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.’ 3This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, ‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord,    make his paths straight.” ’ 4Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. 5Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, 6and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

7 But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8Bear fruit worthy of repentance. 9Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 10Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

11 ‘I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 12His winnowing-fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’

        

Many of us were first introduced to existentialism in the most tedious way imaginable, not by hearing brief quotes from Kierkegaard in excellent sermons but by having to endure Samuel Becket’s existential play, Waiting for Godot.  The play is very boring because nothing ever happens.  The play consists of two homeless French tramps, Estragon and Vladimir, sitting by a road waiting for the arrival of Godot. 

As the play unfolds, it becomes apparent that these two men have grown old, waiting for Godot.  Their lives are meaningless.  They speak of suicide from time to time but then return to the tedium of a conversation which would make watching paint dry seem like a very welcome diversion.

The playwright, Samuel Becket, always refused to say clearly who or what Godot was.  Though many commentators claimed that Godot was God, Becket would taunt them saying that it was, instead, a play on French slang for “a boot.” 

In one interview, he did acknowledge that it was unavoidable that people would assume that one possible interpretation of the play is that Estragon and Vladimir have spent their lives in meaningless waiting for God, but this is, after all an existential play and so it is also true that they may have been waiting for nothing at all.  The larger point is that life is boring, meaningless and fraught with sorrow.  Aren’t you glad you won’t be spending the Christmas holidays with Becket?

The traditional season of Advent is a season of waiting.  Originally, the church edited an annual calendar of scripture readings which went from the birth and baptism of Jesus, through his preaching career, execution and resurrection and the remainder of the church year led up to the season of Advent which was not a 4 week preparation for Christmas but a time of anticipation of the second coming of Christ at the final judgment.

Belief in the second coming was a lot easier to sell before so many generations of the church had grown old waiting and millennia passed along with holy wars, crusades and holocausts and Godot never shows up.  Advent evolved from being a time of penitence and waiting for the final judgment to a time of festivals, lights, decorations, presents and celebrations of Christmas. 

Culture changes and attitudes evolve but church tradition is slow about catching up, and so the lectionary still hands us these apocalyptic texts about the final judgment to be read during December worship services.  At just the time when we decorate our homes and there are office parties and family gatherings defined by rich foods, decadent desserts and possibly even some excesses of Christmas “spirits,” John the Baptist shows up in church every December, like the crazy uncle you always hope won’t show up at the family gathering. When everyone else is dressed in their holiday finest, he is there by the punch bowl, wearing flea riddled camel skins and eating grasshoppers rather than bourbon balls. 

And when everyone else is jockeying for position under the mistletoe and joyfully singing Christmas carols, John the Baptist delivers the same message he shouts out ever year, “Repent!”

I was trained to be a fairly strict lectionary preacher.  My worship professor very nearly threatened us with our lives if we ever dared to give up the Advent of anticipation of Christ’s return in favor of decorations and Christmas carols.  So far as he was concerned, that was to wait for the Christmas Eve service and then continue for two more weeks until Epiphany.

What I learned, over the years, is that people are interested in singing Christmas carols before Christmas and will look at you like you are a lunatic if you try to keep it up one day after the tree has come down!

Now that we have taken a few steps away from any denominational constraint on how we worship and what we are supposed to do in any particular season of the year, what then does Advent mean to us?

In part, as I have said, I think it behooves us to not cut ourselves off from our roots.  This can be a touchy subject because we don’t come here for a dose of nostalgia and yet, there is a part of what we will say and do which is, in a way, throwing a rose in the direction of the more evangelical faith most of us grew up with.  We have to accept some hymns and carols for their poetry even when their theology wouldn’t be something we want to pass along to the next generation.

But where I really have to part company with the liturgical traditions of the church is in the whole business of waiting for deliverance.  Apocalyptic or “end of the world” images are not unknown in the Biblical narrative but they are rare and I am prepared to take them as being entirely metaphorical.  All of us are racing towards our own “end of time” or “final judgment” but I do not think that the world will come to an end by an invasion from heaven, complete with Revelation style battles and plagues. 

Waiting for the world to change is bad theology.  If, in fact, Vladimir and Estragon are representing the Protestant and Catholic churches, always on the verge of suicide but lingering in meaningless waiting for the arrival of God’s Kingdom then Becket may have given us a good look in the ecclesiastical mirror.

I’m sure that you remember a couple of my favorite proverbs and you’ll have to excuse me for repeating them again, but there really is a Chinese proverb which says, “He who waits for roast duck to fly into his mouth waits a long time.”  And the American version of that is, “If you want milk, don’t just sit on a stool in the field and wait for a cow to back up to you.” 

John the Baptist evidently was something of an apocalyptic preacher.  He preached to the nation of Israel about a coming judgment, about a messiah who was going to lay an ax to the root of their dead culture but I charge you to notice that there is nothing in John’s message about sitting and waiting.

His message was not “wait.”  His message was “get ready.”  Now, I don’t know how you get ready for an apocalypse.  In the mid nineteenth century when there was an apocalyptic craze in America, everyone made ascension robes out of white cotton….. I guess you at least want to be properly dressed for an apocalypse. 

John is something of an obscure figure in the pages of the New Testament but one thing we can be sure of, when he told people to get ready, he did not mean that they should go shopping for an ascension robe and a pair of sensible shoes.  Look at what he said, there in verse 8:

8Bear fruit worthy of repentance.

The Kingdom of God does not literally descend out of the clouds and deliver us from all that is unjust, wrong or immoral.  The Kingdom of God comes when we work to bear good fruit….. the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven, when we work to make it so.

It is not uncommon for me to find myself in an impromptu theological debate.  It happened recently when a man I was talking with turned the conversation to what he has understood to be my teaching about Jesus.  He said, “So you don’t believe in the Trinity or the divinity of Christ, you believe Jesus was just a nice guy who went around doing nice things…..”

That is infuriating to me to try to diminish the integrity of progressive faith by waving it off as if “well you just think that Jesus was a nice guy.”  And yet, it comes from a very honest place….. it comes from a place in the pews of cathedrals and churches where people have been told to sit and wait for Godot to come and do something.  As if simply sitting and believing in contrived religious constructs means anything at all. 

If you are going to meet Jesus, divine or prophet, you probably need to get busy producing fruit which is worthy of what you claim to believe.  As John said to the righteous of his day, in verse 9 of your gospel reading:

9Do not presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our ancestor”; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

We’re not really in the market for any more good Catholics or Episcopalians or Methodists or Presbyterians who just want to sit and wait….. it is time to get busy. 

I had stopped by Chuck and Ruth’s house one day this week to pick up some coats to take down to Bill’s Place….. that’s something John the Baptist would like…. You remember he is the one who said, if you have two coats, give one to someone who doesn’t have one.  Ruth watches for when those big down coats are on sale at Walmart and she picks up a few for those guys who need the extra insulation and the water repellant covers.

Ruth was telling me about their experiences around the Navaho when they lived out west.  The native American spirituality taught that the world you talk about, the world you think about, the world you yearn for is the world you live in.  If you think negative thoughts, say negative things, believe the worst in people…. That will be the world you will inhabit. 

As Gandhi is famous for having said, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.”  The kingdom comes when we have kingdom thoughts, beliefs, language and actions. 

That beautiful poetry which Cheryl read to us early from Isaiah, that fabulous vision of a coming Kingdom in which the wolf lies down with the sheep and the lion with the calf, that beautiful poetic vision of a kingdom in which there is no violence and no fear…. In which a child is safe with the leopard and the bear…. Like that commercial we see on TV so often these days of all of the animals playing together at the water hole, predators and prey, fearlessly cavorting in the sun.

That Kingdom doesn’t come down out of the sky.  That kingdom will come out of your heart.  The ancient Zoroastrian religion, the religion which, in many ways, predated both Christianity and Judaism, taught that the right way to live is to have right thoughts, right speech and right actions. 

Right beliefs are ok too, I suppose, if you need them, but if you have right thoughts, right speech and right actions, I really don’t care what your doctrine is because you have everything that religion has to offer.

You cannot feed your mind on anger and hatred and live in a world of love and joy.  You cannot repeat gossip, lies, slander or utter harsh criticisms of others and expect to live in a world of healthy friendships.  You cannot sit and wait and expect that someone else will feed the hungry, buy a coat for a cold person, or lift the burdens of illness, loneliness and poverty.  If you sit and wait, you can grow old with Vladimir and Estragon but you will never live in the Kingdom you have been dreaming of. 

The root of the English word “belief” is a combination of two words, “by” and “life.”  Literally, your “beliefs” are the convictions you live your life by.  If your beliefs are just in your head then they aren’t worth much….. your real beliefs are the convictions which we hear coming our of your mouth and witness in your actions.  It is a lot easier to simply worship Jesus than it is to try to live your life by his teachings but it is trying to imitate that nice guy that will make the Kingdom come.