Micah 5: 2-5a
Matthew 1:18 - 2:15
This week in Advent we take a week
out from the quiet and contemplative weeks of waiting, and we open our hearts
to the joy of the baby Jesus coming to live among us. The wise men, following
the star, were overwhelmed with joy when it stopped over the stable. So let’s
talk about how we, too, can be overwhelmed with joy, even in these times.
Frederick Buechner once wrote,
“The Gospel is bad news before it is good news.” And in our Gospel story today,
we are reminded that the birth of Jesus was not simply a joyful, lovely, peaceful,
secure story. There was fear, and risk, and the need for this new holy family
to even become refugees, fleeing for their lives in the middle of the night to
a land where their people had once been slaves.
According to Micah’s prophecy, the
one who is coming will stand, and feed his flock, in the strength of the Lord.
And they will live secure, for he will be great to the ends of the earth, and
he shall be the one of peace.
They will live secure. He shall be
the one of peace.
But when?
When will we live secure?
When shall he be the one of Peace,
bringing true peace to all people?
How long, O Lord? We are waiting.
Not so patiently, to be honest, but waiting, because what choice do we have but
to wait?
But are we really waiting for security
and peace?
Are we waiting for God to bring
them about?
What if God did bring them, already,
in the person of Jesus Christ, and is now waiting for us, waiting for us to
live into them as God has offered them?
What if God’s security is security
in the midst of fear, is safety in exile, is home even when we are forced to
escape our home?
What if God’s peace is peace in
the midst of conflict and trouble?
What if God’s joy is not about
what’s on our Christmas wish list or based on who we get to spend it with, what
we serve for dinner, but instead is about how we bring joy to others?
Brothers and sisters, the Kingdom of
God is here already AND it is not yet here.
There will be a time when every
knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
But what about now?
Not everyone claims Christ as Lord
yet.
But we do.
So given that we do – how then shall
we live, here in this thin space between earth and heaven, in this meantime?
How do we feel and share joy in
the face of risk, and threats to security, and violence instead of peace?
How shall we open our hearts to
the joy that God has sent down for us, even in a world that seems so joyless so
often?
What is God calling us to do?
In our Gospel reading today,
Joseph, Mary, and the wise men from the east all relied on Words of God through
angels in dreams. That was how God spoke to them – not through the things they
heard from their family members, and certainly not through Herod. They relied
on these messages from God for their security and the security of others.
The message Joseph received from
an angel of God in a dream caused him to go ahead and make a family with Mary
and this child who had come from God-knows-where.
The message the wise men received
from an angel of God in a dream caused them to travel home by another
direction, to avoid Herod even though he had said he wanted to pay homage to
the child who was born in Bethlehem.
And the message Joseph and Mary
received from an angel of God in a dream caused them to get up in the middle of
the night and flee to Egypt, to a land where their ancestors had been slaves,
to become refugees in order to find safety and security from Herod’s plans.
God spoke to them in dreams, and
in obeying, they took risks, they changed their plans, they went in a new
direction, while trusting in God for their security.
How do we hear God speak to us?
And how do we recognize messages from God?
Messages from God will be
consistent with Christ’s commandments. This means they will be different from
the messages we receive from the world. And we need to be quiet in order to
hear God.
Often the things we are hearing create
insecurity in us, and suck the joy out of us. Often the things we hear on the
news, or the things we talk with one another about, are things that fuel our
feelings of anger and fear. It’s hard to hear a word of peace or hope from God,
to feel joy inside us, when we have filled ourselves up with things that
frighten or upset us.
And when we are filled with these
things,
it is easier to believe that it’s
OK to want to strike back, to hurt or even to kill others when they hurt us, or
in order to accomplish what we think is most important. When we focus on the
terrible things that seem to be most of what is happening in the world, we
begin to think that are primary attention ought to be on our own
self-protection, on the protection of our loved ones, even on protecting our
own hard-won freedom.
So if the Word of God is telling
us to turn the other cheek, to give in, even to let a bad guy come out ahead,
we can’t hear that. We can’t accept that.
A man on the radio yesterday, on a
show called “The Moth Radio Hour” that was about forgiveness, told a story
about his childhood, about being bullied in high school by this guy named
Mario. Mario was big, and he was mean. And he picked on this boy every day. The
boy tried to ignore Mario, and he tried to punch Mario back, but nothing
worked. Mario kept on bullying him. And so one day this boy dreamed up a scheme
to get back at Mario. He bought a subscription to a magazine and had it sent to
Mario’s house. The magazine was the kind of topic that caused Mario’s parents
to believe that Mario was involved in some really bad behaviors. And one day,
not long after the subscription was begun, Mario didn’t show up at school. For
a whole week. And then the boy who was being bullied, the one who bought the
subscription to this ugly magazine, heard through the grapevine at school that
Mario was in the hospital. That his father had beaten him up so badly that he
had to be hospitalized. And when Mario came back to school, he wasn’t the same
anymore. He didn’t pick on the guy he had been bullying. He really didn’t do
much of anything anymore. He seemed like he had been totally humiliated. He
wasn’t Mario anymore.
Now. Was the boy’s action
justified? He had been bullied a long time. He couldn’t figure out how to make
it stop – until finally he did. He wanted to feel safe and secure again. Did
his actions bring the kind of security and peace that God promises us, in the
person of Jesus Christ? Did his actions reflect the joy that Christ has brought
for us, the inner joy even when things aren’t going our way? Is this what we
are allowed to do, as Christians, in order to establish security and peace for
ourselves?
I don’t think so.
In a conversation about the
scripture passage this week, someone asked me if war wasn’t justified when it
brings about the establishment and protection of a free country like the USA?
They asked me if violence isn’t justified when someone we love is at risk?
And I said I don’t really know
what God would want me to do, how far God would want me to go to save the life
of another.
Is it God’s will that I hurt
someone?
Is it God’s will that I kill
someone?
Does God expect me to decide for
myself when I, or my family, is in mortal danger, and to shift from loving my
enemies, and trusting in God’s providence, to protecting myself?
Is it OK to trust myself to not
lash out when I am simply being wronged, or robbed, but not in mortal danger?
You know, I don’t know.
Here’s what I do know.
Thanks be to God, I rarely face
such a situation. The odds of something like this happening in our lifetimes
are low.
Thanks be to God, most of the
moments of my life are made up of chances and choices to do good, and are
surrounded by people who desire to do good in their heart of hearts. The
apostle Paul said to the Phillipians, “whatever is
true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence
and if there is anything
worthy of praise, think about these things.” If we focus our lens to these
things, we will see that God has filled the world and people’s hearts with
these things.
I know that I am human, and thanks
be to God, God knows that too.
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we
ask God to not lead us into temptation, but to deliver us from evil. I think that
is especially about when the temptation is to do evil to another.
Thanks be to God, when I do make
the wrong choice – when I hurt another, when I do not help another – I can
trust that God is merciful and forgiving. God knows my weaknesses.
So, given that I know these
things, here is what I can do.
With God’s help, I will focus on
my own sin and brokenness, not that of others. I will work on the log in my own
eye. I will work on my own forgiveness and my salvation with God. I will not
focus my time and efforts on the failings of others. When I focus on others, it
will be for the purpose of sharing the love of God, the joy of life in God, to
the best of my ability. “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.”
With God’s help, I will seek to
forgive the evil of others, to trust God to deal as mercifully with them as God
has dealt with me – even though I may feel that they do not deserve God’s mercy,
certainly not as much as I do.
And I will try to hear God’s word
in the midst of all the clamoring sounds around me, knowing that God’s word
sounds like LOVE.
With God’s help, I will try to
remember that God’s peace is not the kind of peace that the world can ever
give, and God’s security is not the kind of security that the world can ever
give. It is peace and security in the midst of hardship and trial and
persecution – because we know that Christ has already conquered sin and death
for us, so we do not need to fear it anymore. This is the true source of joy.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, a poet and
a post-trauma specialist, wrote a piece this week entitled “We Were Made For
These Times.” In it, she said this:
“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of
stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any
small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some
portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us
to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an
enduring good.
“What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding,
adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on
Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will
not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.
One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a
stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold
in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds
signal fires, causes proper matters to catch fire. To display the lantern of
soul in shadowy times like these - to be fierce and to show mercy toward others;
both are acts of immense bravery and greatest necessity.”
With God’s help, I will come to
the table with my heart open to take in Jesus Christ in the bread and the cup,
and to carry him out into the world with and in me, remembering always that it
is in me – in my words and actions and behaviors - that Christ’s peace, hope,
love, and joy, is revealed to a world that so desperately needs Good News.
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