Roger Ray, pastor
December 9, 2012 Advent 2
Malachi 2:17-3:4
17You have wearied the Lord with your words. Yet you say, "How have we wearied him?" By saying, "All who do evil are good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them." Or by asking, "Where is the God of justice?"
3See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight--indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. 2But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap; 3he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. 4Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.
Christmas came a little early for me this week. I didn't know that there was any chance of getting same sex marriage considered by the Supreme Court in this session but the announcement that two related cases will be reviewed by the court this year is good news to me and reason for you and all progressives who have been trying to raise this civil rights issue to national attention for the past twenty years to give yourselves a round of applause. They say that the court doesn't consider popular opinion and that is every bit as true as saying that the sky is green and grass is blue. The nation's highest court has a long history of acting only when the prevailing public opinion makes it obvious that it is time to change and because people like you have had the courage to speak up, I am very hopeful that we will see a landmark decision handed down in the next few months.
But that was not my only Christmas gift this week. I have to admit that my darker side rejoiced when I heard that Fox had removed Carl Rove from their programs. Rove now gets to join Glenn Beck in that special little Darwin's Waiting Room reserved for people who are too crazy, even for Fox, and that is quite a water mark to rise above. Rove was a part of what many are now calling the "conservative entertainment industry," blaming them for a part of the loss of stature and credibility of the Republican party.
I think that is a fair analysis. You expect certain commentators or consultants to be partisan.... It is their job to get a particular candidate elected and so they understandably want to exaggerate the positive and down play the negatives but there is still a fundamental expectation of being devoted to both reality and honesty and that has been absent from many in the conservative entertainment industry. I know that there are offenses on both sides of political spectrum but the score of misleading statements or entirely fabricated facts is distinctly in favor of the Glenn Becks, Karl Roves and Rush Limbaughs of the media.
Now that the election is over, I for one, am glad to hear Republicans doing some soul searching to rid themselves of dishonest advocates and to try to restore intellectual and moral credibility to the political process.
But I don't want to stand up here and crow about credibility and honesty because as a Christian pastor, I am a part of an institution that is in bigger trouble in the arena of both intellectual and moral credibility than our modern political parties.
This is the fourth advent and Christmas season that Sean and I have worked together and every year when this season rolls around we get ourselves all tied up in knots trying to deal with both the scripture readings and the songs that are traditionally used in churches during December.
And in spite of what a wonderful job that Handel did in setting several of the favorite Old Testament texts used in this season to music in his epic work, The Messiah, honesty demands that we preachers begin to say clearly that there is nothing in the Hebrew Bible about Jesus.
The early church was determined to take texts entirely out of context from Isaiah, the Psalms, Genesis and Exodus as well as this text from Micah that we read today, to say that the prophets were foretelling the coming of Jesus.
If you have any lingering doubts about this, I would be willing to lead a class for as many weeks as necessary to treat each of these texts individually but I hope that you will trust me on this one.... Early Christian preachers did not have a New Testament so they turned to their revered Hebrew scriptures and interpreted them to fit their situation.
Sure, it was a part of their tradition to use scriptures in this way, just as it is a part of the tradition of political advisors to manipulate polls, statistics and history to suit them but it is still dishonest.
I just finished my college lectures on the letters of Paul this week.
For our last reading assignment in that class, I ask my students to read the oldest Christian letter that did not make it into the New Testament. It is written by Clement who was a bishop in Rome and he was writing to the church in Corinth right around the end of the first century.
The apostles were all dead at this time and even though Paul's letters and the synoptic gospels were in circulation, Clement does not quote from them. At that time, the only scripture that had authority in the church was the Hebrew Bible. Exhaustively, Clement quotes from Isaiah, Exodus, Genesis and Psalms, building these really bad arguments for why and how the Corinthian Church was to understand Jesus.
Finally, in attempting to prove to them that a physical resurrection is in God's plan for them, he turns to nature, saying that resurrection is at work all around them in the daily movement of the sun from light to darkness and the annual change of the seasons that always brings life giving spring back to us.
But then he goes on to tell them about a certain bird that lives in eastern lands, called the Phoenix. The Phoenix, he tells them, lives for 500 years and when its time of dissipation is upon it, it builds a nest out of frankincense and myrrh and dies in it. The Phoenix, he tells them, attracts a particular kind of worm that feeds on the carcass of the dead bird and then begins to grow feathers and these worms become a new Phoenix.
The Phoenix, he tells them, is evidence of the resurrection of Jesus. There were other reasons why I and II Clement didn't make it into the New Testament, but at least a part of it had to be, even though he manipulated the Hebrew Bible about the same way as his early church peers did, this Phoenix thing is kind of tell tale.
The ancient church held a lot of beliefs that we need to be able to generously allow to them because they lived in a pre-scientific age but we need to just as generously allow ourselves to move on. The earth is not flat. There is not a firmament above us nor are there angels and demons populating the air.
Though the prophets of the Old Testament did not know that Jesus was coming and they did believe in sea monsters, giants and even unicorns, they were not limited in their moral vision.
For centuries the church has used the writing of the prophets like hand puppets, manipulating them to serve the purpose of giving congregants false assurances like Karl Rove telling their constituents that their party would win.... The church has told us to believe things about Jesus that Jesus wouldn't have believed about himself and we shouldn't either.
Getting our credibility back, getting our facts straight and our message oriented to reality, we come back to these prophetic texts to see that in every case they were calling the people of their day back to living up to their own spiritual conscience.
The Micah text read in churches all over the world this morning begins with chapter 3, verse 1, with those familiar words, "Behold, I am sending my messenger to prepare a way."
And the lectionary would have preachers in pulpits on seven continents look right into the eyes of their parishioners and tell them, "See, the Hebrew prophets foretold that John the Baptist would prepare the way for Jesus to come."
But if those corpulent clerics would just trouble themselves to read the passage in context, it is immediately evident that this is has nothing to do with John or Jesus. Micah mocks the people of his day because they have become morally lax. They have taken advantage of the poor and the weak and they say, "See, God never does anything about it so it must be okay with God!" They taunt the prophet saying, "Where is your God who loves justice?"
So Micah is the messenger he references in his preaching. Micah is the messenger who tells the ruling class of Israel that they are about to be destroyed because they have abused the poor, neglected the sick among them and waged war on their hungry neighbors. Micah is the prophet we know for the beautiful imagery of turning our spears into pruning hoods and our swords into plowshares. Micah is the prophet that tells the people that God will show compassion on them when they start to show compassion on the vulnerable around them.
You know, a lot of our critics in the religious community here in Springfield insist that we are not really Christians. In many ways, I'm starting to agree with them. I like to think that we are devoted to the message of Jesus and the prophets but the message of the Christian Church seems to me to be weighed down with a lot of superstition, magic and no small amount of fundamental dishonesty and sloppy thinking.
In our life times, the American Civil Rights movement was born in churches that embraced a prophetic message of liberation and civil rights were codified by Supreme Court decisions only when the belief in racial equality became deeply rooted in the conscience of America. The Supreme Court didn't rule on even mix race marriages being legal until 1967 and that not until persons of conscience demanded an end to the discrimination.
You cannot trace the genesis of women's reproductive rights directly to churches but I can tell you that among that movement's most outspoken proponents were courageous communities of faith. It took a long time to being our war in Vietnam to an end but moral outrage began in progressive houses of worship.
Much of my discomfort with the religious traditions of this season is that so much of it seems to trivialize the liberating message of Jesus and the moral challenge of the prophets.
No number of recitations of "Away in a Manger" and "Joy to the World" would ever have made the Supreme Court decide that it is time to take the yolk of oppression off of the shoulders of our gay sisters and brothers. No "Little Town of Bethlehem" will ever address the people who have been turned out of their jobs and their homes and turned away from necessary medical care.
Micah's critics taunted him, "Where is your God who loves justice?" His answer was to stand up to the corrupt leaders of his nation and say, "God is right here, in my flesh, in my words, in my witness for justice."
And to you, in this Christmas season, we may ask, "Where is this Jesus who is born King of the Jews?" And the answer is not in a crèche scene in front of McDonalds nor in a Constantinian church in Bethlehem.... He is born right here, in each of you, when you decide that you will not tolerate injustice, you will speak up for liberation, you will defy the oppressors and seek justice for the weak.
Sure, I'll have a merry Christmas, as soon as all devoted loving couples can marry one another, and all sick people can see a doctor, and everyone who wants to work can have a job and everyone who works can have a home. Where is the God who loves justice? Right here and woe be unto our own government if they dare to turn their backs.
