Christmas Eve 2013 Sermon

Luke 2: 1-20
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.
Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.
While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see--I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger."
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!"
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us." So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.
The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

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Christmas is a busy time.

It sounds like things were busy around Bethlehem in our scripture story. Mary couldn’t rest and prepare for the completion of her pregnancy and the delivery of her baby boy. No, she and Joseph had to travel from Nazareth, which was about a 70 mile trip. The word that is translated as “inn” can also mean “guest room”, and there are many who now interpret this story as referring to the extra room in a typical house from that time, where the animals would be brought in during the night, and where there would often be a manger built into the floor. So it’s likely that she and Joseph had arrived there some time before the baby was born, and were staying with extended family, sleeping in this spare room. But they were there to be counted in the census, and there were likely others staying in this home as well, so it was probably quite a busy place in which to be delivering a baby.

And then the shepherds sure had an unusual night. First the angel that terrifies them, arriving out of the blue, and telling them such “good news….of great joy….. for all people….”. And just as their fear is being transformed into joy and wonder, an entire host of angels – the Greek word used here for host can also mean “army” – an army of angels from heaven light up the sky, singing and rejoicing at the birth of the Savior, God with us, Jesus. And off the shepherds go, to see for themselves this unbelievable event, this baby boy.

Of course, this creates even more stir where Joseph and Mary are staying, when out of the blue a group of smelly shepherds, who have been working in the field with animals for days on end, show up wanting to see the new baby, and telling them all about the visit from the army of angels, about the song, about the joy.

It was a busy time, Christmas, for this new family, their hosts and their visitors. Probably not as Silent a Night as the hymn might cause us to believe.


And it’s surely a busy time for us, too as we celebrate Christmas, each in our own way.

Some of us are traveling to be with family and friends, and some of us are welcoming those who are traveling to be with us.

There are lots of parties, celebrations, all with lots of good food, and so there is cleaning and decorating and cooking and all the things that go with hospitality this Christmas season.

And there are gifts to be given, so there is list-making, and Santa-visiting, and shopping, and wrapping, and mailing cards and packages…..

And there is also an extra measure of caring that happens this season, remembering those who are less fortunate. So there are lists to make, and volunteers to find, and baskets to fill and to deliver, and more presents, and donations, and taking the time to be with those who are lonely, or are sick, or are sad, because it’s especially challenging to be feeling blue at this time of year.

And some of us who are feeling lonely, or sick, or sad, might give anything for some of that busy-ness to be part of our lives this Christmas season.


But the mystery and the miracle of Christmas is not about how busy we are, or about the travel or the shopping or the preparations and the celebrations.

No, what Christmas is all about, the reason we gather this night, the thing we are here to proclaim is what God has done for us.

Christmas is not about the things we have done to get ready. Chrismas is not about you, and it’s not about me.  Christmas is about God – about who God is and about what God has done for us.

Christmas is about a God who thinks that you – each of you – we – all of us - are so special, and so important, that nothing can separate God from you. That’s the  good news of great joy for all people.

Christmas is about a God who will go to any length to be part of your life – even to a manger in Bethlehem; even to a cross in Jerusalem. When we call Jesus Emmanuel - God with us – this is what it means. It means that God will come and will find you wherever you are.

This Christmas may find you rejoicing; it may find you stressed; it may find you lonely or grieving or feeling hopeless. But however this Christmas finds you, no matter what, God is with you there. God With Us. Because nothing can separate us from the love of God.

So as you celebrate Christmas, however you do, remember that what we truly celebrate is that God is with us, and God walks alongside us, and God will never let us go. This is the great miracle that is Christmas.

Plan B - Sermon for Advent 4A

Matthew 1:18-25

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.  Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.  But 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.  She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.”

When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife,  but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

Plan B

This reading from Matthew’s gospel is the birth narrative in full, according to Matthew. It’s not about Mary’s visit from the angel (that’s in Luke), it’s not about the manger and no room in the inn (that’s in Luke, too). In fact, Matthew is the only gospel writer who provides any sense of Joseph’s character for us at all.  It comes right after the genealogy of Jesus, which connects Jesus to Joseph on one end, and then goes all the way back to Abraham on the other.  Then, in this passage, it tells us, basically, why that bloodline connection to Josephis not very relevant, at least at first, since Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit.

We’ll get back to that in a minute.

The passage first sets the stage for us. Joseph and Mary are betrothed. This is a legal term, which means they will be married, and means she is not to be with anyone else from that point on. We can expect that, like many young men about to be married, Joseph likely has plans in mind for their lives together after they are wed, plans involving his work as a carpenter, plans about where they will live, dreams of raising a family together, of his children following in his footsteps someday.

And then the unthinkable, the unimaginable becomes a reality in his life; his betrothed is pregnant.

From the Holy Spirit.

Mary might have told him this, trying to explain to him her predicament, or perhaps he does not yet know this at all, but the narrator is telling us. Because the dream has not yet happened to Joseph. The angel has not yet filled in this detail for him.

How must this have felt to him? What a horrible situation! What will the community think? What should he think about this woman?

We are told he was a righteous man. This means he followed the law. And the law, the Torah, said that a woman who commits adultery when she is betrothed is to be publicly shunned at best, and publicly stoned at worst.

So the first thing we know is that this righteous, law-abiding man makes the choice to step aside from what the law would have him do. Joseph has already decided to take a kinder, gentler, more loving approach to this dilemma; he will divorce her quietly. He will avoid bringing the wrath upon her that would ordinarily be deserved, according to the law. He is “unwilling to expose her to public disgrace”, our scripture tells us, even though that is what the law would have him do.

He is showing mercy, by not giving Mary what it appears she deserves.

So he makes new plans for how to best handle this situation, to bring about the best outcome he can figure out, given the dilemma and the pain it must bring to him. Clearly he wants the best for both himself and Mary, as best as he can imagine it.

And then comes the dream.

We should note that the angel begins by saying, “Do not be afraid.” These are words that will be spoken over and over throughout the gospels. “Fear not.”  Next, he is given the so-called reassurance that “the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” The words after that are even more astonishing, if that is possible: “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins."

Imagine yourself waking up from a dream, after a troubled sleep in a difficult time of your life, a time when you had a great challenge to deal with, and you had a game plan in mind, but you didn’t really know what was the right thing to do.

And you wake up with a clear message, like this one, a clear direction that’s been planted in your head. And the clarity of the message is completely at odds with the absurdity of it, the total unexpectedness of it, the contradiction of it with everything that makes sense to you.

“The child is from the Holy Spirit. You will name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

What is a law-abiding guy like Joseph supposed to do with this?

Well, the response we see from Joseph centers around obedience and trust. Joseph hears totally unexpected news. Perhaps he recalled the words of the prophet Isaiah that we heard in our first scripture reading – that a young woman would conceive, bear a son, and he would be called Immanuel – God with us. Perhaps he made the connection between that and the Holy Spirit that the angel spoke about, and the name he was given for this child, his son, the name Jesus – meaning God saves. And by taking the action the angel instructed, by Joseph naming this child, Jesus becomes his son. Joseph adopts him by the act of naming him. The child’s humanity and divinity is reflected in these words. Jesus is conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, adopted by Joseph the carpenter. And we need to recognize that beyond that, Joseph has no idea, has no plan, for what comes next. Even the law does not give him a guideline for this. It’s not as if the whole story line is given to him before he had to decide to go along with it. All that he can do is to step forward in obedience and trust.

How does this story speak to us today? What can we learn from this, about ourselves and about God?

First, Joseph is told by an angel of God, “do not be afraid”, in the face of a situation that was clearly troublesome to him, if not downright frightening. What courage it must have taken for him to stand faithfully by Mary, as the baby grew inside her and people wondered, quietly or out loud, how this could have happened and what Joseph had to do with it.  He is remaining faithful to God, even as he remains faithful to Mary.

So what about us? Do we have the same sort of courage it takes to be faithful to God, even when all the appearances may cause others to be skeptical of us, cause others to wonder why on earth we aren’t following a game plan that makes sense to the culture we live in, the societal norms? Can we remain faithful to a person whose situation complicates our life in a big way? Can we look at our own plans and humbly recognize those places where we are working out of our own fear? Can we put aside our fear, even when nothing seems to make sense?

Second, Joseph obeys the angel in the dream. Joseph has already made a decision, in his own initial plans, not to obey the letter of the law.  Even though Matthew describes him as a righteous man, an upstanding, law-abiding guy (and I mean the Jewish law, the Torah, all those rules we find in the ten commandments and beyond, Leviticus, Deuteronomy), in this case he decides that it is best to act out of care for another person’s dignity, to save Mary’s reputation as best he can, rather than strictly adhering to the law.  Matthew is beginning to show a theme that continues throughout his gospel, displaying the tension between the prevailing understanding of God’s commandments and the new thing that God is doing in Jesus Christ. It’s the same as what we hear when Matthew’s tells the story of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus says, over and over,  “you have heard that it was said, but I say to you”.  In this difficult moral situation that Joseph is facing, he chooses to set aside his previous understanding of God’s will in favor of this word from the living and saving God. He attends to the voice of God.

So what about us? Can we accept that the Holy Spirit is still actively at work in the world, even today, making all things new, and that the Bible is not intended to be a rule book, but is rather the story of God’s love and God’s saving action in the world?

Third, Joseph trusts an incomplete plan with an unknown outcome.  Actually, Joseph trusts God’s providence in the face of an incomplete, unknown plan. We have got to think that if Joseph knew the rest of the story – the fact that they would have to flee to Egypt with a newborn to save his life, the challenging child that Jesus would be as he grew, the painful acknowledgement during his public ministry that he was not simply “their child”, not to mention the arrest and the torture and the cross and the resurrection – how could Joseph possibly bear it? We really have to acknowledge that in this case, only knowing the next step was, for Joseph, the only way to possibly take it in and to trust.

So what about us? Are we willing to trust God’s providence when the plan is only known one step at a time? Are we willing to step forward in faith when we don’t know the outcome? Are we willing to accept that an outcome that may seem crazy and hopeless and even tragic may, in fact, be the path to New Life?

As we get to know and understand Joseph a bit better through this passage, let us commit ourselves to becoming more like Joseph – to not be afraid to give up plan A and take on plan B; to claim the good news that God is still making all things new, and that we have a role to play in that, by being obedient to the living Word of God as it is revealed to us; and to trust that, one courageous step at a time, we will live and move and have our being, trusting in God’s providence without knowing the final outcome.

And as Paul wrote so beautifully in his letter to the Ephesians, “Now to God who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

Worthy Fruit - or, When Life Gives You Apples......

Gospel Lesson: Mathew 3:1-12 

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming,  "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."  This 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.' "  Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.  Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan,  and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.  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?  Bear fruit worthy of repentance.  Do 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.  Even now the ax 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.  "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.  His 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."

Sermon: “Worthy Fruit”

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(or…) When life gives you apples….

About two weeks ago I brought home from church a grocery bag half full of apples. A friend of mine had posted on her FB page that her backyard tree was bearing sweet Fuji apples, way more than they could use. Free to anyone who wanted them. But they were wormy - must be carefully cut into pieces. 

The bag sat around for a few days, until I could get at them.

One of the things I loved about my brief season of “ real” retirement - which consisted of six months since May of this year, when I finished my studies - is that I have time to sit down and do things like trim up 20 pounds of little apples to make applesauce. Most of my life has been filled with multitasking - at least 3 things happening at once - and now to be able to sit down for however long it takes to trim apples is a joy and a blessing. I will admit that the laundry was running in the background, though - I still seem to find ways to do two things at once!

I didn’t really know what wormy apples would be like. I guess I have always bought the pretty, fully-grown, nicely shaped, healthy-skinned apples.

That’s not what these were like at all. They were small, misshapen, puckered, and each one had either multiple tiny holes or one big cavity in it.



As I rinsed them and sat down to start cutting into them, I wondered what wormy apples would be like on the inside. Would I cut one open and find a worm popping out to smile at me like the Richard Scarry books I used to read my kids?  

Well, it wasn’t like that at all. It was basically nice apple fruit, and yucky apple fruit. And every apple had some good fruit.

Now, that didn’t mean that I used every apple. I didn’t have the patience to deal with some that were extra ugly - I just cut them in half and tossed them into the scrap pile.

But I thought as I worked about how every single apple had something salvageable, useful, in it - and I may not be willing to take the time to save every good piece of it, but God does - God sees our ugly selves, our wormy souls, the sin that is in each of us, and God looks past it to the good fruit that is also inside every one of us. This is the fruit that is worthy of repentance. No matter how messed up or broken or incapable of doing good we may feel, or we may see others as being, we all have good, and God delights in that good, and encourages us to use that to bear even more good fruit. 

How many of you recognize the name Antoinette Tuff? She is the woman who talked Michael Hill out of a terrible potential tragedy in late August of this year, when he walked into her school near Atlanta one morning, loaded up with weapons and ammunition. Both Michael and Antoinette had good fruit in them - and both of them had difficult, ugly pasts that also misshaped them and made life extra challenging for them.

Antoinette’s life was a mess at the time this had happened. She was struggling to care for a child with multiple disabilities. Her husband had left her after 33 years of marriage. She had been so despondent that she had tried to take her own life. If you imagine yourself in Antoinette’s shoes, you can begin to understand how hard it could be to overcome the ugliness and sadness, the discouragement of her life, to get up every morning and go to work as a receptionist, to get through the day with no real way of knowing how or when things would ever get better for her.

Michael’s life was a mess that morning too. All we know about him is that he hadn’t taken his medications, that he thought he needed to be hospitalized for his mental illness, and that in the depths of his illness, he had gathered up guns and ammunition and headed for the school where Antoinette worked.

And what had perhaps looked at its beginning like another humdrum, boring day, same as all the others, for Antoinette, became a defining moment. And for her it was defined by her faith, by anchoring on her faith, as she said her pastor had been preaching just recently. And so not only did she step out – way out - in faith and courage and hope that morning, but she very intentionally sought out the goodness in Michael – she calmed him, she reassured him, she encouraged him, and clearly she spoke loving kindness and compassion to him – even though he was heavily armed and had already shot off a few rounds to show what he was capable of.

Bear fruit worthy of repentance. What does John the Baptist mean by that? We know that to repent means to turn – to turn away, certainly, from evil and sin and its grip on our lives, but even more it means to turn toward, to anchor on, to choose the straight path, every time we have the opportunity to choose. Repentance doesn’t happen once for all time. That’s why we acknowledge our sinful nature every time we gather for worship, in our words of confession. And it’s why we remind ourselves, and one another, that our pardon is already assured, undeserved, unearned. It’s grace. It’s the peace of Christ that we share with one another. It doesn’t make the brokenness go away. But it says that it’s OK to turn from it, to recognize and to focus instead on what is good in one another, to love one another and to work together, even with those who we would rather judge or turn away from, or run away from, so that together we can add up all our fruit, all our good fruit, all that is worth the courageous act of repentance, in order to help build up the kingdom of God.

So then, out of a bag of ugly apples, blemished, partly rotten, invaded by worms that made them damaged goods, we can gather together their goodness, and we transform them – dare I say merge them together - into delicious, useful, worthy, applesauce.

Into something that doesn’t look like what it started as, that makes use of the good, that steps away from the inevitable bad parts, that rejoices that God has promised that every branch that bears good fruit will be pruned – will be pruned – for the purpose of bearing more good fruit; and that, just like Joseph said, even when his brothers intended to do harm to him, God intended it for good.

So let us find strength in knowing that God sees the good in ourselves and one another, let us joyfully accept the grace that comes from the Holy Spirit to forgive us for what is not good, and let us be the body of Christ to one another by acknowledging the good in each other and by working together to bring unity, and reconciliation, and to build up the kingdom of God, in this Advent season and always.