Category: Preachments
2 Fell Through The Cracks: Sermon on Acts 2
In case you missed it, Teer Hardy preached his maiden sermon this weekend and did a great job. How could he not, listening to me every week?
There’s audio of it here and in the iTunes store under ‘Tamed Cynic.’
1 Red Jesus, Blue Jesus, Post-Liberal Jesus
My post the other day about post-liberalism left some, understandably, wanting an example or clarification of how post-liberalism would be applied to a specific biblical text vs how a Protestant liberal and an evangelical might handle the same text.
Rather than come up with something from scratch, I’d point to a sermon I wrote (Gosh, was it last year? I can’t remember.) I titled it Red Jesus, Blue Jesus and the text was Luke 10, the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
You can click here and read it. Hopefully you can see the moves I made, illustrating how a liberal would read the text (Blue Jesus), as a summons for us to serve the least, lost, blah, blah, blah; how an evangelical would read the text (Red Jesus), as simply an entree into their own agenda- in this case, an altar call- and then how a post-liberal would read the text (the third reading that I didn’t name as post-liberal in the sermon), treating the text as text and letting it narratively shape us.
9 Hell is for Real
Below is my sermon on Hell for our Razing Hell sermon series. I used a large door in the course of my sermon to illustrate my points so the visual might be helpful to you. I will post the video later.
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At the beginning of my ministry, I worked for a couple of years as a chaplain at the maximum security prison in Trenton, New Jersey. I enjoyed it. In a lot of ways, the Gospel makes more sense in a place like that than anywhere else.
But I didn’t enjoy everything about the job.
Part of my routine, every week, was to visit and counsel the inmates in solitary confinement.
It was a sticky, hot, dark wing of the prison. Because every inmate was locked behind a heavy, steel door, unlike the rest of the prison, the solitary wing was as silent as a tomb.
Whenever I think of Hell, I think of that place. But not for the reasons you might expect.
Whenever I visited solitary, the officer on duty was almost always a 50-something Sgt named Moore.
Officer Moore had a thick, Mike Dikta mustache and coarse sandy hair he combed into a meticulous, greased part. He was tall and strong and, to be honest, intimidating. He had a Marine Corps tattoo on one forearm and a heart with a woman’s name on the other arm.
If we weren’t in church, I’d also tell you he was a blank-hole.
So…you get the picture.
Whenever I visited solitary he’d buzz me inside only after I refused to go away. He’d usually be sitting down, gripping the sides of his desk, reading a newspaper.
I hated going there because, every time I did, he’d greet me ridicule.
He’d grumble things like: ‘Save your breath, preacher, you’re wasting your time.’
He’d grumble things like: ‘Do you know what these people did? They don’t deserve forgiveness.’ He’d grumble things like: ‘They only listen to you because they’ve got no one else.’
Once, when we gathered for a worship service, I’d invited Officer Moore to join us. He grumbled that he’d have ‘nothing to do with a God who’d have anything to do with trash like them’ and refused to come in.
Instead he sat outside with his arm crossed.
The locked prison door between us. About halfway through my time at the prison, Officer Moore suffered a near fatal attack; in fact, he was dead for several minutes before the rescue squad revived him. I know this because when he returned to work, he told me. Tried to throw it in my face.
‘It’s all a sham’ he grumbled at me one afternoon.
‘I was dead for 3 minutes. Dead. And you know what I experienced? Nothing. I didn’t see any bright light at the end of any tunnel. It was just darkness. Your god? All make believe.’
Even though I don’t put much stock in the light at the end of the tunnel cliche, that didn’t stop me from saying: ‘Maybe you should take that as a warning. Maybe there’s no light at the end of the tunnel for you.’
He grumbled and said: ‘Don’t tell me you believe in Hell?’
‘What makes you think I wouldn’t believe in Hell?’ I asked.
‘You actually believe in it?’ he asked, as though I’d surprised him for the first time.
‘Well, Jesus talks about Hell,’ I said, ‘more than the rest of the Bible combined.’
‘Oh, and since I don’t believe in your Jesus, I’m going to Hell? Is that it?’
He pushed his chair back and fussed with his collar. He suddenly seemed uncomfortable.
‘When Jesus talks about Hell,’ I said, ‘he doesn’t say anything about unbelief. It would be easier if he did. Jesus talks about Hell, he talks about people with contempt towards their neighbors, religious people who are gossips and hypocrites, people who refuse to help those in need. Those kinds of people.’
Officer Moore stared at me. ‘So what the Hell’s Hell like then?’ he asked, smirking. ‘Fire and brimstone, I mean, really?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘fire, brimstone, gnashing of teeth, those are probably all metaphors.’ He let out a sarcastic sigh of relief. So then I added: ‘They’re probably metaphors for something much worse.’ That got his attention. ‘I’ve got a book you should read sometime,’ I said and walked to the first cell.
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During the course of my ministry, I’ve met far too many people who’ve been hurt by Christians who spoke callously or cavalierly about Hell.
That’s the last thing I want to do.
So today I want to be uncharacteristically restrained and non-confrontational.
Sort of. I say sort of because I also know that for most of you, like for most middle and upper class Christians in America, Hell is an absurdity. You tell people to go to Hell, but you don’t actually believe in it. So today I want to be uncharacteristically straightforward. No sarcasm or jokes, sorry. I don’t want to give you another reason to think the doctrine of Hell is just an absurdity.
Now, it can be misleading to say ‘the doctrine of Hell’ because within the Christian tradition there are a variety of perspectives.
What I want to do today is walk you through three of the primary ways the Christian tradition has conceived of Hell. I want to point out the strengths and problems in each view, and then I want to offer you what I think Jesus is trying to teach us when he teaches about Hell.
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The first way the Christian tradition has thought about Hell is the one you’re all acquainted with: Hell as Eternal Punishment.
God takes the sinner. Throws them into Hell. And locks the doors. Forever.
In this view, Hell is physical and spiritual anguish.
As the rich man in Jesus’ parable begs: ‘Cool my tongue for I am in agony…warn my brothers so they don’t come into this torture chamber.’
And in this view, Hell is endless. You never escape. You can never repent. And you never perish.
This is Dante’s image of God’s inferno, where the message above the doors to Hell read: ‘Abandon all hope.’
Now, I can tell from the looks on your faces that this is the view of Hell you best know and most resist. You can feel the problem in this view even if you can’t articulate it.
It’s a moral problem. It’s hard to imagine the god who died for us turning around and turning us over to perpetual torment?
And the word perpetual gets at the problem. There’s a problem of proportion. Even the very worst of human sin is finite. That it should meet with infinite punishment is disproportionate.
The graphic imagery of this view of Hell can lead to caricature, and it’s easy to dismiss a caricature.
But notice. Who doesn’t seem to object to the idea of Hell as punishment? Lazarus.
Notice too- the rich man knows Lazarus’ name; therefore, he must’ve known Lazarus’ suffering.
And the rich man did nothing.
And Lazarus died.
Lazarus isn’t gleeful over the rich man’s punishment, but neither is he troubled by it.
Behind all the Medieval exaggeration, what this view of Hell is trying to proclaim is God’s promise that one day he will judge sin and evil and set things right.
Of course, people tell me all the time ‘I believe in a God of love; I don’t believe in a God of Judgement.’ But before you completely brush aside the notion of a Judgmental God, listen to this. It’s from Miroslav Volf. He’s a theologian from the Balkans and in the ‘80‘s he was tortured for being a Christian:
“If God were not angry at injustice, God would not be worthy of our worship. The practice of Christian nonviolence requires the belief that God will one day judge. If you disagree, I suggest imagining that you are in a war zone (which is where my paper was originally delivered). Among your listeners are people whose cities and villages have been first plundered, then burned, whose daughters and sisters have been raped, whose fathers and brothers have had their throats cut.
Imagine telling them that they should not punish their enemies because God does not judge or punish. Soon you would discover that it takes the quiet of a suburban home to insist that an all-loving God does not judge or punish. You would do well to reflect about many other pleasant captivities of the liberal mind” (Exclusion and Embrace, 303).
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The second view of Hell is Annihilation.
Rather than God throwing people into Hell and locking the door closed behind them.
Picture instead God throwing open the doors of his Kingdom and saying: ‘Get out of here. Leave’
This understanding of Hell recognizes that scripture’s imagery for Hell is…imagery. Annihilation isn’t about physical punishment. God instead judges by saying to the sinner: ‘Depart from me.’ And because it’s in God’s presence that we live and move and have our being, once the judged sinner departs from God’s presence they simply cease to exist. Poof.
You can think of how the rich man in the parable no longer has a name after he dies. Whereas in life the rich man probably had thousands of Twitter followers, in death as he departs from God’s presence he loses his name and eventually his very self. He’s in the process of disintegration.
The strength of this view is that it holds onto the biblical importance of God’s justice while avoiding the nasty visual of God tormenting sinners endlessly.
The problem with this view of Hell, however, is God’s sovereignty. If God is all-powerful and God desires to share fellowship with us in God’s New Creation then how is it that some are lost forever? How is it that the Sovereign, all-powerful God fails?
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A third way of viewing Hell is, functionally, a denial of it: Universalism.
Universalism pictures a Hell where the doors are never closed.
Although Universalism has always been considered a heresy, it has just enough Gospel-logic to it that it’s never died away. In other words, God created all of us. God called Israel to be a light to all nations. God so loved all the world that he took flesh in Jesus, and while we were sinners Jesus died for all of us. Therefore, ultimately God will get what God wants. All will be saved.
You could point to the parable today- how it shows a chasm between the rich man and Heaven but even still the rich man doesn’t appear to be permanently lost to God. The rich man can see Heaven and speak to Abraham. And it’s true the rich man is punished, but it’s not clear that he’s damned. Abraham calls the rich man: ‘My son…’
Despite being a heresy, Universalism persists because it points out what the Eternal Punishment view frequently obscures: the allness of what God desires. But the problem with Universalism is that it emphasizes what God desires at the expense of what we desire. God’s grace in this view is so irresistible it is, in fact, coercive. In the End, ultimately, we’re not free. We can’t freely choose NOT to choose God. Our loving relationship with God then is more like an arranged marriage.
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Those are three ways the Christian tradition has viewed Hell. In the end, I believe all three of them are inadequate.
Here’s why: Christians believe that in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, God has defeated Sin, Death and the Devil once and for all, it is finished- that’s why I never talk about the Devil.
Christians believe Jesus suffered for us, took our punishment on himself, descended all the way into Hell to experience the forsakenness due us.
So to say God chooses to send us to Hell is to suggest that there’s something God did not accomplish in Jesus, something God did not defeat on the Cross. And that’s the glaring theological problem with the three traditional views of Hell. The premise, the assumption, behind each of them is that Hell must be something God chooses for us.
But, in scripture, especially in Jesus’ teachings, Hell is something we choose for ourselves. And that’s scarier than pitchforks and gnashing teeth.
It’s not that God needs to be reconciled to us. He does that on the Cross.
Hell is our refusal to be reconciled to God. Hell is something we choose.
Look at the parable. The rich man doesn’t ask to get out. He doesn’t repent. He doesn’t beg for mercy. Like an addict, he denies the reality and severity of his situation. He shifts the blame: ‘Abraham, warn my brothers so they won’t end up here too.’ Meaning: I didn’t get a fair shake; I don’t deserve to be here. What’s the first thing the rich man says? ‘Send Lazarus down here to wait on me.’ The rich man’s not trying to get out of Hell. He’s just trying to get Lazarus in. He still sees Lazarus as beneath him. Who he chose to be on Earth is now all he is in Hell. He’s just a ‘rich man.’
The rich man made himself the Lord of his life. He loved himself more than he loved God. He lived his life as though the world revolved around him just as a Kingdom revolves around a King.
Imagine if the rich man were in God’s New Creation where God is Lord and King. If the rich man were in heaven, heaven would feel like Hell to him. He’d be in agony. As Orthodox Christians say, the ‘wrath of God’ is only how those who reject God experience God’s love.’ To those who turn their back against God, heaven feels like hell.
Could God forgive the rich man’s sin and welcome into heaven? Of course. God already forgave him. On the Cross.
But would the rich man choose heaven?
Even in Hell he doesn’t choose it.
The question people always want to ask is:
Is it possible for God to forgive Hitler and Stalin and let them into Heaven?
But that gets it all backwards.
The better question is:
Would they choose Heaven?
The still better question is: Would we?
And this isn’t just abstract speculation about where we’ll spend eternity. No, whenever the bible teaches about eternal life it does to call attention to your present, earthly life.
I know enough about enough of you to know that this where you should pay attention:
The flames of Hell that scripture speaks of- Jesus is trying to show us how those flames burn within each of us.
Within each of us there is something:
anger, resentment, contempt, greed, self-love, self-loathing
that if we don’t put it out, if we don’t ask God to extinguish it,
it can consume us.
In this life.
And into the next.
If you don’t believe me or know what I’m talking about, ask any divorced person in this room what it’s like to have such anger it nearly burns your life down.
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A few days after our conversation about Hell, I left in Officer Moore’s mailbox a copy of a book, C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce.
It’s a fable about the residents of Hell taking a bus trip to Heaven. They’re given the option to stay but, one by one, they choose to turn and go back.
I had dog-eared some pages and highlighted some text for Officer Moore, hoping we could talk about it the next time I saw him.
Specifically, I highlighted these words:
Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others . . . but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God ‘sending us’ to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud. In the end, there are only two kinds of people: those who say to God, ‘Your will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘Your will be done.’
I left the book in his mailbox.
A week later I went to solitary to see if he wanted to talk.
As always he refused to buzz me in but this time when I mentioned I was there to talk to him, he didn’t give in. He wouldn’t let me in.
I asked if he read the book.
Not saying anything, he got up and walked to the entrance door, his body was one big snarl.
He slid the book between the bars.
‘A whole lot of nonsense’ he grumbled at me.
And then he told me to go the Hell away.
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Here’s what Jesus wants you to realize:
In this life and the next,
Hell is prison where the doors are locked from the inside.
2 How Do I Explain Heaven to My Kids? Or To Anyone?
Sunday’s sermon for our series Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Heard about Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and the Second Coming included two audio clips of me talking about last things with my two sons, Gabriel and Alexander who are 7 and 10.
You can find those audio clips, here, are by clicking on the links as you get to them in the text below. They’re also in iTunes under ‘Tamed Cynic.’
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Heaven: It’s Not Forever
Sermon on Isaiah 65, Revelation 21
When we first announced that we’d be doing our January sermon series on heaven and hell, I received a handful of emails from you, all asking roughly the same question:
‘How do I explain heaven to my kids?’
Evidently some of you see me as a model of child-rearing and maturity. Which just shows how little you know me.
Now, because I’m a pastor, many of you assume that I sit around with my family and, like, talk about God and read the bible every second of the day. But that’s not the case.
My boys do stare at their comic book bibles as if they were Playboys, but as a family we probably spend more time talking about The Lord of the Rings and making fart jokes.
My boys have attended funerals and burials and even prayed next to an open casket, but to my recollection I’ve never actually talked with my kids about heaven- not in any formal or deliberate way.
So this week, over dinner, I decided to talk to my kids about heaven:
Is there an age when your-anus stops being funny?
I can see several of you nodding your heads so I guess so.
Not that I need to but, just for the record, my wife insisted I be clear about who’s responsible for the potty humor in my family.
It’s easy to laugh at how kids talk about heaven.
But let’s be honest.
And this is the part where I insult you to try and get your attention.
I’ve done enough funerals. I’ve sat with enough dying people- Christians and non. And I’ve counseled enough grieving families to know that virtually every one of you think about heaven and life after death just like my boys do.
And to be totally honest: in most cases your thinking isn’t much more sophisticated than my boys’ thinking.
If I asked you the same questions I asked my boys then, with few exceptions, you’d picture it this way:
There’s a God in Heaven above.
There’s the Earth below, which God has created along with each of us.
We live our mortal lives on the Earth, but, as the bluegrass song says, ‘This is world is not our home. We’re just passing through.’
And when we die, our soul- that eternal, immortal, spiritual part of us- leaves our material bodies and goes up to heaven to live eternally with God.
We fly away, as that other song says.
And maybe you’d add a variation or two, like:
If you believe in God
Or if you believe in Jesus
Or if you’re a good person
Then your soul gets to go to heaven when you die.
But basically you picture it the same way my boys do.
And you assume that’s what the bible teaches.
You assume this is what the Church preaches.
You assume this is what Christians believe and always have; in fact, it’s what atheists think this is what Christians believe and always have.
But it’s not.
It’s NOT.
Just to make sure you heard me, I’ll say it again: It. Is. Not.
It’s actually what any Jew or Christian, until recently, would have called, without flinching, paganism.
Preachers like me can’t say that at a funeral. I’ve learned that the hard way. Deathbeds and gravesides are not the proper or pastoral place to deconstruct someone’s piety.
It only upsets them.
But, we’re not at a funeral today.
So I’ll just say it: there is nothing in scripture about our souls going up to an eternal home in heaven after we die.
Christians only started talking this way a couple hundred years ago, starting in the Enlightenment when people started disavowing the Resurrection and after the Civil War when this world did seem to be a wicked place that should be abandoned.
The reason so many of our hymns get scripture exactly wrong on this point is that they come out of that very time period.
What we take for granted about heaven and life after death- you won’t find that way of thinking anywhere on the lips of Jesus.
You won’t find it in the words of Paul.
And you do not find it in the vision given to Isaiah.
Or to St John at the very end of scripture.
What we take for granted as biblical, Christian teaching is actually a mishmash of pagan superstition that’s been superimposed on scripture to the point where we no longer notice what scripture repeatedly and unambiguously teaches.
Now that I’ve kicked over all your mental furniture: what is the ancient, biblical understanding of heaven and the life to come?
If this (our souls going to heaven when we die) isn’t what scripture teaches, then what is?
What do we tell our kids about heaven?
I tried with my boys this week. You can have a listen.
When you turn to the very first page of scripture, you read that in the beginning God created Heaven and Earth.
Both of them.
A better way to think about that is in the beginning God created the Spiritual and the Material. They’re both part of God’s creative design and NOT to be distinct from one another or in contradiction to each other.
What God intends in the very beginning is this unity, this overlap, this marriage of the heavenly and the earthly.
And this marriage- and that’s an important word- of the spiritual and the material is present in the humanity God creates too.
Genesis 2 says God created adam, which is Hebrew for the Man, from the adamah, which is Hebrew for earth.
Then after God pulls up the adam from the adamah, God breathes into adam his ‘ruach’ his Holy Spirit.
So in the beginning, God doesn’t just create Heaven and Earth. God creates this marriage of the spiritual and the material within humanity.
And in Hebrew this marriage of the material AND the spiritual that God creates in humanity is called our ‘nepesh’ and that’s the word your bibles misleadingly translate into English as ‘soul.’
But what happens?
Through the catastrophe of Sin, Heaven and Earth, the spiritual and the material, are pulled apart. They’re torn asunder.
Death enters God’s creation, and that curse- as we sing in Joy to the World– comes not just to Adam and Eve but to all of creation.
Everything God created and called very good suffers because of this breach between Heaven and Earth.
And so the plot of scripture- and, yes, scripture is a book comprised of many books but, like any good book, scripture has an overarching, unifying plot to it- the plot and promise of scripture is God’s work to restore what God creates in Genesis 1 and 2.
To undo Death.
To reunite the Heaven and Earth.
Salvation, Eternal Life, is about the reclamation and permanent restoration of God’s creation; it’s not about our disembodied evacuation from God’s creation.
It’s about Heaven coming down to Earth and the two becoming one, once again and forever.
That’s Isaiah’s vision. Isaiah doesn’t see our souls going up, up, up and away to Heaven and leaving behind everything else that God called very good.
It’s about Heaven coming down to Earth so that what God created is restored. That’s what we pray every time we pray the prayer Jesus taught us: ‘Thy Kingdom come…on Earth…’
Jesus gives us that prayer because Jesus is at the center of what God is doing to heal his creation.
Dennis said it on Christmas Eve. In the Incarnation, in Jesus’ own body, is this marriage of Heaven and Earth. He’s our future made present.
Jesus is the beginning of a New Creation- that’s how Matthew and John begin their Christmas stories.
And in his life, his teaching, his faithfulness all the way to a Cross Jesus undoes the curse of Death.
What we call Eternal Life- begins in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. God raised Jesus from the dead as the first fruit of God’s New Creation. He’s the Second Adam, scripture says.
If it’s just about our souls going off to heaven when we die, then why didn’t God leave Jesus in the tomb?
And just take the spiritual part of him up to heaven?
Why bother with a Resurrection?
As St. Paul says, Jesus isn’t the first fruit of anything if that’s not also what God will do with each of us.
The plot and promise of scripture, from the first page of scripture to the last, is that what God did in Jesus Christ, on the last day God will do for us.
And what God will do for us, God will also do for all of creation.
The promise of scripture is that one day Heaven will come down and be made one with the Earth. That’s why the very last image in scripture is of a wedding, a marriage, between Heaven and Earth. And on that same day all who have died in the Lord, all who are resting in the Lord, will be Resurrected and Restored just like Jesus on Easter morning.
‘Heaven,’ wherever or whatever happens to us right after we die, is not forever.
Heaven is not forever. When I first became I pastor, back before I was the sensitive and pastoral person you know now, I actually said that to a grieving widow. She asked me if I thought her husband was in heaven, and without thinking I replied: ‘Well sure, but he won’t be there forever.’
And she then started sobbing. And, maybe it wasn’t the best moment say it, but it’s still true.
Heaven- what we think of as heaven- is not forever.
When Jesus promises to the thief on the cross, ‘Today you will be with me in paradise.’ The word ‘paradise’ in scripture refers to a temporary state of bliss.
And when Jesus says to his disciples ‘In my Father’s house there are many rooms…’ The word Jesus uses is ‘tent.’ A temporary structure. That’s not what we usually think of when we think of Eternal Life. But according to scripture, we have a life after life after death.
What scripture means by Eternal Life isn’t whatever happens to us right after we die.
What scripture means by Eternal Life is our resurrected life in God’s New Creation where Heaven and Earth are made one, once and for all.
That’s the work God began in Jesus Christ, and that’s the work God is doing today in history through the Holy Spirit.
And that’s the work God enlists us to join in today. Now. Through baptism.
That’s what we do here.
If it’s just about our souls going up to heaven, then you don’t need to be here.
Sleep in on Sundays.
But if it’s about God one day reconciling Earth and Heaven, then what we do here as Church,
learning to love,
learning to hallow God’s name,
learning to be satisfied not with our desires but with our daily bread, learning to give and forgive,
learning to recognize and resist temptation,
learning to forgive those who trespass against us.
If it’s about God one day reconciling Earth and Heaven, then the work of reconciliation we do here, as Church, is forever.
Because it’s what God will do when his Kingdom comes to Earth…
That’s what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer.
And that’s what we pray at the end of the communion prayer: ‘By your Spirit make us one with Christ, one with each other and one in ministry to all the world until Christ comes back.’
And his Kingdom comes.
On earth.
As it is in heaven.
0 Christmas Eve Sermon
A lot of you have asked about a podcast from the Christmas Eve service. If you weren’t there, the format followed something more like the arc of a play with ‘the sermon’ being drawn out over the course of the service in vignettes using actors. For that reason, it’s been tricky to get a good recording.
Here’s a video from one of the 5 services.
Here’s audio of just my portion of the sermon. It’s also in iTunes under ‘Tamed Cynic.’
Below is the full script of the sermon and actors’ lines.
Merry Christmas. Only 1 day left of the season.
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Believe
Opening
You want to know a dirty, little secret?
There’s a whole lot of every Sunday church people who think its enough just to believe in God.
There’s a whole lot of religious folks who think they’ve done their job if they just believe that God exists.
But there’s a difference.
There’s a difference between believing in God and believing God.
There’s a difference between believing in God in here (the mind) and believing the promises of God in here (the heart).
There’s a difference between believing in God and believing God, believing God can be at work in your life, alive in you, fill what is missing in you and turn your world upside down.
And you want to know another secret?
That difference- that difference is the secret of the Christmas Story.
Act 1: Zechariah
[Zechariah kneeling, holding a bible, praying silently with incense]
Everyone thinks the Christmas story begins with Mary and the angel Gabriel.
Not so.
The Christmas story begins months earlier with Jesus’ uncle.
A man named Zechariah, who’s a priest.
For generations Zechariah and his people have suffered at the hand of Caesar and his Empire. Rome.
And for generations they’ve prayed for God to send them someone to save them, to send them an Emmanuel, a Messiah.
Every day of his life Zechariah has prayed this prayer. He’s an old man now.
His prayer’s expiration date has long since passed and Zechariah has given up all hope that God will ever answer.
But one day, when Zechariah is in the Temple offering the same stale prayer he’s always prayed, God sends a message:
Gabriel: Zechariah…Zechariah….
(Zechariah, falls back, completely startled and visibly shaken.)
don’t be afraid.
Your prayers have been heard.
Your wife, Elizabeth, is going to have a son.
Name him John.
He’s going to bring you great joy and happiness, but that’s not all.
Your son will also be the Lord’s messenger. He will be the one to prepare the people and make them ready for the One you’ve been praying for for so many years, the Messiah.
Zechariah: (confused) But this is too much to believe!
Look how old I am! My wife, Elizabeth, too!
It’s much too late for those prayers to come true.
Zechariah’s an every Sunday religious person.
Zechariah believed in God; he just didn’t believe God.
He’d given up believing God would ever answer his prayer, would ever work in his life.
And because he didn’t believe, the angel renders him mute.
(Zechariah, rendered mute, feels his mouth and tries to talk to no avail.)
He’s pushed to the sidelines. Because he didn’t believe God, Zechariah has to watch what God’s doing in the world from the outside looking in.
You want to know a secret? [Zechariah begins to take off costume]
Once you get past the incense and bible-timey, Raiders of the Lost Ark costume, Zechariah’s no different than you.
He’s just an old man who’s rubbed the same prayer raw.
Until he finally tossed it in the trash. [Chucks his bible off to the side]
Now I don’t know all of you. I only know the every Sunday folks.
Even still, I know enough of you to know there are Zechariah’s all over this room.
Sometimes-
Zechariah is a woman with cancer, convinced God’s not with her. Convinced God can’t beat it.
Sometimes-
Zechariah is a mom, who’s exhausted from praying the same prayer for her teenager and no longer believes that anything can be done for her.
A lot of times-
Zechariah is a husband and a wife, whose relationship has frayed past the point of repair and if anyone, angel or otherwise, told them anything different, then they’d react the very same way as Zechariah: ‘That’s too much to believe.’
There are Zechariah’s all over this room.
But hear the good news: Emmanuel does come. You’ve got to believe.
Act 2: Magi
The magi- the wise men- were Gentiles.
Meaning: they weren’t Jews.
Meaning: they didn’t know anything about God or God’s promise of a Messiah.
They were astronomers. Not priests or prophets.
They were men of science. Not faith.
They were men of cold, hard empirical facts, trial and error, objective observation.
They were the kinds of people that if you can’t see it with your own eyes, if you can’t hold it in your hands for yourself, if you can’t explain it rationally and back it up with evidence then it simply isn’t true.
It’s a fantasy we might still tell our children but we’ve outgrown it.
[Magi’s cell phone begins to ring underneath his costume…Magi picks up and begins to argue with his mom]
Jason:
Um, excuse me.
Magi: [to Jason]
Just a sec.
Jason:
I’m kind of in the middle of something here. was just about to make my big point about how the magi were basically like all of us.
[To Magi]
What else do you guys have under there? [Magi pull out other gadgets]
Magi:
It’s not what you think…See, I’ve this Star-Finder App on my iPhone. That way, not only can I track the star I can research it on Wikipedia. I can learn about this obscure Jewish prophecy and Google maps can lead us right there to this King.
I bet you don’t know that the magi’s star charts- their reason and research, the latest technology- only gets them as far as Jerusalem.
It doesn’t get them to Bethlehem.
The wise men get lost. They miss Bethlehem by about 9 miles.
The wise men have to ask for directions, which implies they had some wise women with them too.
[female magi enter]
The wise men had to ask for directions.
Who do they have to ask?
Scribes. People who studied scripture. People of faith.
They’re the ones who point the magi in the right direction.
The magi believed in facts, in data, in human wisdom.
And maybe they believed in god the way you believe in gravity.
But that kind of belief only got them so far.
For them to find their way to Bethlehem, to make their way to the manger, they had to believe God.
To believe God’s promise about a little, no account town 9 miles beyond Jerusalem.
For them to make their way to the manger- they had to believe- believe God was doing things in this world they couldn’t see or prove, Google or Tweet, deduce or demonstrate.
They had to believe.
And so do you.
If you want to get close enough to the manger…
close enough to offer this God your best gift
close enough to see him at work in the world with your own two eyes
close enough to hold his presence within you
close enough for him to change your life in a way that resists all explanation
…if you want to get close to the manger, then you’ve got to take a leap of faith.
And believe.
Act 3: Mary
If you’re like me-
When you picture Mary, you picture like the Mona Lisa but dressed in pink and blue. You picture a 30-something woman who looks like Al Pacino’s Sicilian wife from Godfather Part II. Before she explodes.
If you’re like me, you picture this angel who’s glorious and not threatening at all even though he’s constantly having to say ‘don’t be afraid.’
And you picture Mary bowing down stoically ready to serve the Lord at a moment’s notice.
You picture something like this…[Overly dramatic and stoic]
Gabriel:
Mary! The Lord is with you! You are touched by his grace! Among all the women in the world you have been blessed.
Mary: (like she was expecting this)
Gabriel :
You have found favor with God. Listen, you are going to have a Son. His name will mean: ‘God will save us.’ He will be the answer to your people’s prayers.
Mary:
How can this be?
Gabriel:
The Holy Spirit will come upon you and overshadow you. That’s why this holy child is not just your son but is the Son of God. Remember Mary, the impossible is possible with God.
Mary: (Bowing stoically)
You want to know a secret?
That’s not who Mary was. And that’s not how it went down.
Not at all.
[Mary removes her costume, revealing more ordinary and contemporary clothing]
According to tradition, Joseph was an older man, marrying Mary as a favor to her family because they couldn’t afford to provide for her.
According to Jewish Law, because Mary and Joseph were betrothed, any you-know-what before her wedding day would be considered adultery.
And now the angel Gabriel has just told Mary she’s expecting.
Not by Joseph.
By the Holy Spirit.
Just curious: if someone told you they were pregnant by the Holy Spirit, how likely would you be to believe them?
I didn’t think so.
That’s the dark side of the story we never picture when we picture Mary.
The angel’s news is news almost no one will believe.
And Mary’s got to know that the second Gabriel’s finished talking.
I’ll tell you what else a good Jewish girl, like Mary, would’ve known.
Mary would’ve known that if she was accused of adultery then, according to the Jewish Law, she would be brought before a priest.
She would be shamed publicly.
And then-under oath- she’d be forced to drink a mixture of ash, holy water and the ink from the priest’s written accusation against her.
If the drink made her sick, which was very likely, then she was guilty.
And if she was guilty, then she’d be stoned.
Mary would’ve known that the second the angel started talking.
She would’ve known that Joseph would be humiliated.
And she certainly would’ve known that her child would be regarded as illegitimate and banned as an outcast.
No matter what we picture when we picture Mary, that was the reality she knew.
And yet-
And yet when she hears Gabriel’s news: [Understated, Gabriel more empathetic, Mary more troubled]
Gabriel :
Don’t be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God.
Listen, you are going to have a Son. His name will mean: ‘God will save us.’ He will be the answer to your people’s prayers.
Mary:
How can this be…I’m not…I mean, I’ve never….how is this possible?
Gabriel:
The Holy Spirit will come upon you and overshadow you. That’s why this holy child is not just your son but is the Son of God. Remember Mary, the impossible is possible with God.
Jason: And Mary replies…
Mary:
‘May it be with me according to your word.’
Jason: In other words, Mary says…
Mary:
‘Here I am God. I trust you.’
Don’t take it from me. Take it from Mary.
There is a big, life-changing, ante-up, make-or-break difference between just believing in God and believing God.
Believing that, no matter how things look now, no matter what obstacles stand in your way, no matter what it seems life has dealt you, nothing is impossible.
Nothing is impossible.
Nothing is impossible.
With God.
Act 4: Joseph
[Jason interrupts music]
Wait …what is that?
[Musician replies]
[To crowd]
Do you all know that song?
Actually, come to think of it, do you all know any songs about Joseph?
I didn’t think so. I don’t either. I mean, there are no ‘Ave Josephs.’
I’ll let you in on a secret:
The Church has treated Joseph like an extra in a story starring his wife and her child.
It’s the annunciation to Mary that artists have always chosen to paint, not the annunciation to Joseph.
You don’t see many Renaissance paintings of Joseph snoring on his sofa as the angel Gabriel whispers into his ear:
[Joseph laying down to sleep]
Gabriel: [whispering]
‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, all this is happening to fulfill what the Lord promised: ‘The virgin will conceive and bear a son, and they will name him Emmanuel.’
But when we ignore Joseph, we miss something important.
Because everything about Christmas- it all hinges on the angel’s three words.
Gabriel: [whispers]
‘Joseph, son of David.’
If Emmanuel is to be born the son of David then Joseph’s got to be the father.
Our salvation hinges on what Joseph decides to do about Mary.
If Joseph believes the angel then Mary will have a home and a family and her child will be born the son of David.
But if Joseph wakes up from his dream, rubs his eyes and files for divorce, then Mary is an outcast forever- either stoned by the priests or disowned by her family, leaving her and her illegitimate child to beg.
Or worse.
Whether or not he’s the biological father doesn’t matter. According to Jewish Law, Mary’s child becomes Joseph’s child just by Joseph claiming him as such.
So everything about tonight hangs on Joseph.
You think you struggle with believing the virgin birth?
Joseph wakes up one morning to find his fiancee pregnant, his trust betrayed, his future and his reputation ruined, the life he thought he had gone forever.
And then he’s asked to believe.
The unbelievable.
Everything we celebrate tonight- it all hinges on a very big IF- if Joseph believes.
Even though we treat him like an extra in someone else’s story, of all the people in the Christmas story, Joseph is just like you and me.
Joseph doesn’t get a Burning Bush telling him beyond a shadow of a doubt what he should do.
Joseph doesn’t get an Annunciation like Mary does. The angel Gabriel doesn’t stand in front of Joseph’s own two eyes and say: ‘Hail Joseph.’
Joseph just has a dream. [Gabriel whispers silently into Joseph’s sleeping ear]
Which would’ve felt like… what exactly? A hunch? A gut feeling?
Joseph doesn’t get a Burning Bush.
And neither do we.
When we’re faced with circumstances beyond our control
When we’re tempted to choose the easy way out
When we worry about it might cost us or what pain will come our way or what others might think
We have to wrestle with what God wants us to do
And then we have to believe
Believe that if we make the hard choice and do the right thing
Then God will be with us.
Because that’s what Emmanuel means.
God is WITH us.
Act 5: Angels and Shepherds
[Luke’s Nativity is read. Shepherds and Gabriel take spots during reading.]
Has anyone seen the Monty Python movie, Life of Brian?
It’s set in first-century Judaea when the Jewish opposition to the Romans is hopelessly split into factions.
There’s a scene where one of the splinter groups has a secret meeting where a vigilante soldier asks, “What have the Romans ever done for us?”
One by one his fellow freedom-fighters grudgingly admit a host of benefits the Romans have brought the Jews. But Reggie, their leader, remains unconvinced.
He finally demands, “All right … all right … but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order … what have the Romans done for us?”
To which the reply comes, “Brought peace.”
And Reggie has no answer.
I’ll tell you a secret, something most church folks don’t know.
Before Luke ever wrote his Gospel.
Before Jesus ever preached ‘the’ Gospel.
Rome already had a Gospel of their own. You know what it was?
All over the Empire, Roman citizens- ordinary men and women just like you- would proclaim with thankful hearts: ‘Glory in the highest. Caesar Augustus, son of god, our savior, has brought peace to the whole world.’
Peace by any means necessary.
To anyone who wasn’t stuck under Rome’s boot, the advent of Caesar Augustus was considered gospel: “Good news of great joy.”
You see, it’s no accident when the angel Gabriel appears to the shepherds, he plagiarizes Rome’s Gospel.
He takes it and he literally turns it upside down:
Gabriel:
“Do not be afraid. I’m bringing you GOOD NEWS of great joy for all the people. For you, a SAVIOR has been born. Glory to God in the highest…and on earth, PEACE TO THOSE ON WHOM GOD’S FAVOR RESTS.’
Glory to God in the highest.
Gloria in excelsis Deo…We hear those words as a pretty song.
But to the shepherds, to Mary or Joseph, to Zechariah., to anyone else living in Israel- for a generation those words had instead always sounded more like this…
(Liz plays the Darth Vader music).
The angel Gabriel takes Rome’s Gospel and he twists it and then he turns it to point not at a throne but at a manger.
And of all the people in Judea, Gabriel delivers this news to shepherds.
We’d call them unskilled workers.
[Shepherds remove their shepherding costumes]
Shepherds were at the absolute rock bottom of society.
Not only that, their work made them ritually unclean, which made them invisible to the rest of society.
We’d call them unskilled workers.
Gabriel:
“I’m bringing you GOOD NEWS of great joy for all the people. For you, a SAVIOR has been born. Glory to God in the highest and on earth, PEACE TO THOSE ON WHOM GOD’S FAVOR RESTS.’
That’s not just a birth announcement written in the sky.
It’s a defiant declaration. It’s a declaration that dares us to believe.
Not just to believe in God. Anyone can do that.
No, the angels dare us to believe that things in our world are not as they seem.
That Caesar and Herod and Rome and anyone like them in our day or in our lives- they’re not in charge.
That pain does not have the last word.
That poverty does not exclude you from the grace of God.
That Power goes by another name. Because Christ is King.
The angels dare you to believe.
That as small or insignificant or unlikely you might see yourself, just like shepherds, you can play a part in his Kingdom.
Act 6: Simeon
The Christmas story doesn’t end with ‘Silent Night.’
After Jesus is born, Mary and Joseph take their baby to Jerusalem, to the Temple.
To offer a sacrifice to God. Two pigeons, a peasant’s offering.
[Mary and Joseph and baby enter]
And there in the Temple they dedicate their baby to God.
But the story doesn’t end there either.
An old man sees them there in the Temple.
[Simeon rushes up to them]
Scripture says he was a man who’d been praying his entire life for a Savior.
Scripture says God had promised him that he would not die without seeing the Savior for himself.
But God never gave him any details: no who, what, when, where or how.
So he’s has just been waiting and praying his whole life.
And somehow he doesn’t need an angel or the heavenly host or any clues about a babe wrapped in bands of cloth to point him in the right direction.
Somehow when he sees this tiny scrap of a child- somehow he believes:
Simeon:
‘God, I’ve been waiting my whole life for this moment, but now I have peace for I see salvation with my own two eyes.’
His name’s Simeon.
I’ll let you in on one last secret.
The Christmas Story doesn’t end there either.
It can’t…because here are all of you.
And I know enough of you to know there are Simeons- young and old, religious and not so much- all over this room.
Maybe like Simeon, you’ve been waiting and wondering if what’s missing in your life will ever come.
Maybe like Simeon, you’ve been longing for the hole you feel in your life to be filled.
Maybe you’re like Simeon and peace is the one thing in your life, the one thing in your family, the one thing in your marriage that you still don’t have.
If you’re like Simeon, if you’re like Simeon at all, then I dare you.
I double-dare you.
To believe like Simeon.
Believe that the meaning you’ve been waiting for, the significance you’ve been longing for, the peace you’ve been praying for your whole life-
It’s there in Mary’s arms.
Merry Christmas.
And may the peace of Christ be yours now and forever.
4 With Us: A Christmas Sermon
Here’s a Christmas Eve sermon on John 1.1-16 from several years ago. Merry Christmas to all of you.
The first time I ever went to church was on a night like tonight. Christmas Eve.
My mother made us go, my sister and me. We’d never gone to church before so we didn’t know on Christmas Eve you have to come early. We sat far up in the balcony in some of the last seats left.
I was a teenager then, 16 or 17 years old. And I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to get dressed up. I didn’t want to sing songs that others knew better than me. I didn’t want to sit in a hard, uncomfortable pew and listen to a minister preach. Or tell lame jokes.
I mean- why would anyone want to ruin Christmas by going to church?
I didn’t believe. Better still, I disbelieved more strongly than I believed in anything.
I was convinced you Christians just turn God into whatever and whom ever you want God to be. If you’re a Republican then so is God. If you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat then, surprise, God agrees with you on most essential things.
You put God in a box. You wrap him in whatever flag you’re already flying. You put him on your side of this or that issue.
And what better example of that could there be than tonight? I thought. Christmas Eve, the night when, you Christians say, God Almighty swapped heaven for a trough, when God took flesh and became a baby: a sweet, passive, docile, wordless, dependant baby.
You know…if you want a god that can be used by us, then Christmas Eve is made to order. A baby? That’s a god that lets us be in charge. That’s a god we can worship and celebrate without having to be changed or challenged. I thought.
The philosopher Ludwig Feurbach said that when Christians say “God” they’re really just talking about themselves in a loud voice. When I was 16 or 17, I was a lot like Feurbach- except I also like Super Mario Brothers and Professional Wrestling.
I didn’t believe. And I knew all the arguments why I didn’t.
The thing is, back then, I didn’t know much about babies.
My first son, Gabriel, was already 15 months old when I got to hold him for the first time. My wife and I, we held him for the first time not in a hospital or maternity ward but in a hotel.
That’s where our adoption worker brought him to us. Instead of pinks and blues, the “delivery” room was decorated with tropical plants and Mayan art.
Technically speaking, he wasn’t still a baby. He was no longer a newborn but his toddler’s eyes still looked out at the world with innocence and wonder. His fingers were still small and fragile beneath their soft, pudgy skin, and they still clutched onto my fingers for protection. And even though he knew a handful of words already, he still most often spoke in shrieks and cries that demanded care.
We spent our first few days as a new family in that little hotel in Guatemala while we completed the paperwork for Gabriel’s adoption.
The wrought-iron table in the hotel courtyard was where I first sat him on my lap and learned how to feed him and wipe his mouth and clean up after his spills.
The slate patio outside our hotel room, where we sat down on the ground opposite each other, pushing plastic cars back and forth, that’s where I learned to earn his trust.
The hotel garden had a tall, thin palm tree growing in it. That’s the tree I pulled on and swayed back and forth, pretending to be an angry gorilla. That’s where I made Gabriel laugh for the first time. That’s where I made him laugh away his fears.
And then there was the old burgundy armchair in our room- that’s where I held him against me and, for the first time in my life, let my too-cool, cynical voice sing soothing and silly songs to him.
When I was 16 or 17, I didn’t know much about babies. I thought that just because they’re wordless and dependant then they must be passive, harmless. I didn’t know then that babies alter lives. They clutch and grab and pull on us when we’d like to get on to something else.
How could I have known at 16 or 17 how babies disturb schedules, how they force us to think about someone other than ourselves? They jumble and reorient priorities. They call out of us a tenderness and compassion we didn’t know we possessed.
Babies give us a glimpse at the person we could be if everything else in our lives was wiped clean or made new.
I didn’t know it when I was 16 or 17, but if you really want to invade someone’s life, if you want to mess with their priorities and preconceptions, if you want to change them or draw out them love and mercy- then you send them a baby.
If the Gospels were college courses, then John’s Gospel would be a 400-level class. John’s Gospel is the course with all the prerequisites because John presumes you’ve already heard the Nativity story before.
John expects you to know that, when the story opens, Caesar rules the world by the sword and that he needs a census to pay for it.
John expects you to remember that this “king” is born to a poor, unwed, 15 year old Jewish girl, whose unlikely pregnancy few will believe is a sign of anything more than what you could read on the bathroom wall about her.
John expects that by the time you get to his Gospel you should be able to write a short answer essay on the paradox of this cosmic news being delivered not to the press or priests, not to the wealthy or the wise, but to shepherds, who in first century eyes were about as smart and savory as the sheep they kept.
You need to know that the news the shepherds hear from angels is an answer to a prayer so old it had almost been forgotten.
John expects you to know all that because John doesn’t just want to tell you the story of Christmas. He wants to interpret it for you.
He wants you to be able do more than point at tonight’s scene and say ‘the manger goes here, the wise men go over there.’
John instead wants you to be able to creep up to the manger and look down upon the baby it holds and say to whoever will hear your awed whisper: ‘This is what it means. This is why this birth, this night, is more holy than any other.’
Holy because the baby Mary holds is, inexplicably, God- made flesh.
His cooing voice is the same voice that long ago said: ‘Let there be light.’ His tiny fingers that hold onto Mary’s are somehow the hands that first hung the stars in the sky, and the light in his half-open eyes is the same unquenchable fire that once met Moses in a burning bush.
Tonight, his skin is still splotchy. It feels new and warm, but the truth is he is timeless. Eternal. And in his small, gently rising lungs is the power to make worlds.
John wants you to know that tonight.
John wants you to look down into the manger and know that God’s plan to finally disarm us of everything but our love is to send a baby.
And not just any- but Himself, made weak and wordless and wrapped in strips of cloth. Made flesh.
Made every bit like one of us so that every one of us might be made more like God.
Our first night with Gabriel was Easter night, a year and a half ago. My wife was asleep on top of the bed still in all her clothes. The television played softly in Spanish and showed pictures of Easter parades from earlier that day. Gabriel stirred awake next to my wife, crying and fearful.
At that point in my life I’d been a Christian for 11 years. I’d been a minister for 5. And it was Easter. But it was the first time in my life that I really understood tonight.
I sat Gabriel in the burgundy armchair with me. He curled up in my arms and I sang him back to sleep. I saw pictures of the Easter Jesus play across the TV screen and I looked down at Gabriel: tiny, trusting and unknowing. And I thought to myself: ‘This could be God. In my arms. Breathing against me.’
That’s when the strangeness and mystery of what John tells us tonight really hit me for the first time. Thinking about how much Gabriel had already changed me in just a few hours, I realized for the first time what a powerful thing it is that God does tonight.
I used to scoff at Christmas because I thought a baby was just a safe idol that could be used by us, could be made into whatever and whomever we wanted. But it’s actually the opposite. Babies have within them the power to remake us. What God does tonight is actually more powerful than a hundred floods or a thousand armies.
I mean- go ahead and ask a baby about what you’ve done or not done in the past. Ask a baby about that relationship you’ve yet to reconcile. Ask them about the expectations you’ve not met or about the sins you’ve committed or that thing you’re afraid to tell your spouse or your children or your parents.
You’re not going to get an answer. Babies don’t give answers. They just give light. With babies all that matters is that they are present, that they are there, that they are with you.
I mean- try telling a baby you’re not completely convinced they exist. Try telling a baby: ‘I don’t think believing in you really works in a modern world.’ It’s not going to get you off the hook. With a baby all our questions are relativized.
Babies force us to love them on their terms.
The calendar and the TV said it was Easter, but to me that first night with Gabriel was like Christmas. Holding him in my arms I could sense a new life that he opened up to me. He had neither the words nor the power to absolve me, but, holding him, I felt that everything had been forgiven. Who I’d been before he came into the world no longer mattered.
It only mattered who I would be from that moment on.
Tonight, the baby Mary holds in her arms, the baby breathing against her, IS God. Maybe you’ve heard the story before. Maybe you know where the manger and the wise men should be placed.
But I don’t want you to leave her tonight without knowing that- without knowing that because God takes on a life that means your life is sacred, without knowing that God is new and warm and cooing tonight in order to disarm you of everything but love, without knowing that God is born tonight in order to draw out of you the person you no longer thought could be.
Tonight, Mary holds him in her arms: the Word made flesh.
Tomorrow, Mary’s reputation will still be suspect in the eyes of her community. Tomorrow, she and her fiancé will still be homeless. They’ll still be poor. Tomorrow, their lives will be in danger. Tomorrow Mary won’t know what the future holds or if she’s strong enough to get there.
Tomorrow, her questions and fears and doubts will still be there. And so will yours.
But tonight none of that matters. Tonight, all that matters is he is with us. Tonight, that’s enough.
So listen to John’s invitation and creep up to the manger. Look at the light in his eternal, newborn eyes and know that everything you’ve done or been before tonight is forgiven. Know that all matters is who you are from this moment on, the moment he comes into the world.
Because I can speak from personal experience- this child, he has the power to make you new again.
Merry Christmas.
3 Do You Even Like Christmas? The Sermon That Prompted The Question
Last Sunday for our ‘Questions about Christmas’ sermon series I pulled your questions at random from a bingo tumbler and just answered them off the cuff. As I warned, sometimes off the cuff Jason quickly slips into off color Jason but I think I was mostly clean.
This week I will try to post responses to the questions that didn’t get pulled and also summaries of how I answered some of the other questions.
———————————————————
I answered this question yesterday: Do you even like Christmas? Every year you seem determined to ruin Christmas by preaching on the dark, depressing stories.
Here’s the sermon (WORST SERMON EVER #3) that prompted the question:
Matthew 1
The Genesis of Jesus
During dress rehearsal that morning, stomach flu had started to sweep through the heavenly host. When it came time for the angelic chorus to deliver their lines in unison: “Glory to God in the highest” you could hear Katie, a first- grade angel, discharging her breakfast into the trash can over by the grand piano. The sound of Katie’s wretching was loud enough so that when the other angels should’ve been proclaiming “and on earth peace to all the people” they were instead gagging and covering their noses.
Meanwhile, apparently bored by the angels’ news of a Messiah, two of the shepherds- both third-grade boys and both sons of wise men- started brawling on the altar floor next to the manger, prompting one of the wise men to leave his entourage and stride angrily up the sanctuary aisle, smack his shepherd son behind the ear and threaten: “Santa won’t be bringing Nascar tickets this year if you can’t hold it together.”
This was the Fourth Sunday of Advent several years ago at a church I once pastored. A brusque, take-charge mother, who was a new member in the congregation, had approached me about staging a Christmas pageant.
And because I was young an didn’t know any better and, honestly, because I was terrified of this woman I said yes.
The set constructed in the church sanctuary was made to look like the small town where we lived.
So the Bethlehem skyline was dotted with Burger King, the local VFW, the municipal building, the funeral home and, instead of an inn, the Super 8 Motel.
At every stop in Bethlehem someone sat behind a cardboard door. Joseph would knock and the person behind the door would declare: ‘We’ve got no room.”
The man behind the door of the cardboard VFW was named Fred. He was the oldest member of the congregation. He sat on a stool behind the set, wearing his VFW beret and chewing on an unlit cigarillo.
John was almost completely deaf and not a little senile so when Mary and Joseph came to him, they didn’t bother knocking on the door. They just opened it up and asked the surprised-looking old man if he had any room for them.
For some reason, the magi were responsible for their own costumes.
Thus, one wise man wore a white lab coat and carried a telescope. Another wise man was dressed like the WWF wrestler the Iron Sheik, and the third wise man wore a maroon Virginia Tech bathrobe and for some inexplicable reason had aluminum foil wrapped around his head.
King Herod was played by the head usher, Jimmy. At 6’6 and wearing a crown and a white-collared purple robe and carrying a gold cane, Herod looked more uptown gigilo than biblical character.
When it came time for the performance, I took a seat on the back bench in the narthex where the ushers normally sat.
I sat down and King Herod handed me a program. On the cover was the title: ‘The Story of the First Christmas.’ On the inside was a list of cast members’ names and their roles.
As the pageant began with a song lip-synced by the angels, the other usher for the day sat next to me. His name was Mike. He was an imposing, retired cop with salt-and-pepper hair and dark eyes. Truth be told, he never liked me all that much.
Mike sat down, fixed his reading glasses at the end of his nose, opened his program and began mumbling names under his breath: Mary played by…Elizabeth played by…Magi #1 played by…
His voice was barely above a whisper but it was thick with contempt. I knew right then what he was getting at or, rather, I knew what had gotten under his skin.
There were no teenage girls in the congregation to be cast. So Mary was played by a woman married to a man more than twice her age; she’d married him only after splitting up his previous marriage.
Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, was played a woman who was new to the church, a woman who often wore sunglasses to worship or heavy make-
up or who sometimes didn’t bother at all and just wore the bruises given to her by a boyfriend none of us had ever met.
Of the three magi, one of them had scandalized the church by ruining his father’s business. Another was separated from his wife, but not legally so, and was living with another woman.
The man playing the role of Zechariah owned a construction company and had been accused of fraud by another member of the congregation. The innkeeper at the Super 8 Motel…he was a lifelong alcoholic, alienated from his grown children and several ex-wives.
Reluctantly shepherding the elementary-aged shepherds was a high school junior. He’d gotten busted earlier that fall for drug possession. His mother was dressed as an angel that day, helping to direct the heavenly host. Her husband, her boy’s father, had walked out on them a year earlier.
Mike read the cast members’ names under his breath. Then he rolled up his program and he poked me with it and, just when the angel Gabriel was delivering his news to Mary, Mike whispered into my ear: Who picked the cast for this? Who chose them?
Then he shook his head in disgust and accused me:
Do you really think this is appropriate?
St John begins his Christmas story with cryptic philosophy: ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.’
St Luke weaves the most popular nativity story, telling us about the days of Caesar Augustus and a census, about angels heard on high and shepherds watching their flocks by night.
But Matthew, by contrast, begins his Christmas story with a genealogy:
“An account of the genesis of Jesus the Messiah…Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar…”
Matthew gives us sixteen verses of ‘so and so was the father of so and so’ before we ever even hear the angel Gabriel spill the news about the Messiah’s birth. I wanted to read it all tonight but Dennis wouldn’t let me.
Matthew tells the Christmas story not with emperors or angels or shepherds. Matthew doesn’t bother mentioning how the baby’s wrapped in scraps of cloth and laid in feed trough.
Instead what Matthew gives us is a family tree, 42 generations’ worth of begats, going all the way back to the first promise God ever made to bless the world.
It’s as if Matthew wants to say:
Everything about Christmas
Every promise this Christ child offers you
Every word of good news that comes spoken to us in Emmanuel
All of it can be found in his family tree just as easily as you can find it in his
stable.
The funny thing about Jesus’ family tree- it’s not the cast of characters you’d choose for a Christmas story. If God were to take human flesh you’d expect him to take the flesh of a much different family.
For instance-
There’s Abraham, who tried to cut his son Isaac’s throat.
Issac survived to be the father of Jacob, an unscrupulous but entertaining
character who won his position in Jesus’ family line by lying and cheating his blind, old father.
Jacob got cheated himself when he slept with the wrong girl by mistake and became the father of Judah.
Judah slept, again by mistake, with his own daughter-in-law, Tamar. She’d cheated him by disguising herself as a prostitute.
I mean- these aren’t the sort of people you’d invite for Christmas.
There’s a man named Boaz in Jesus’ family tree. Boaz was seduced by a foreigner named Ruth. He woke up in the middle of night and found Ruth getting in to bed with him.
Not that Boaz ought to have been shocked. His mother, Matthew tells us, was Rahab, a prostitute who betrayed her people.
Boaz’s son was the grandfather of David, who fell in love with a girl he happened to see bathing naked one evening. David arranged for her husband to be murdered. He then slept with her and became the father of Solomon, the next name in the family tree of Emmanuel.
Of course, the family tree ultimately winds its way to Joseph.
Joseph, who, Matthew makes no bones to hide, wasn’t the father of Jesus at all. He was just the fiance of the boy’s mother- Mary, the teenage girl with a child on the way and no ring on her finger.
Matthew doesn’t tell us about shepherds filled with good news. Matthew doesn’t bother with imperial politics or mangers filled with straw.
Matthew instead tells us the Christmas story by first telling us about the messy and the embarrassing and the sordid and the complicated and the disappointing and the unfaithful parts of Jesus’ family.
And then, having said all that, Matthew tells us this baby is Emmanuel, God- with-us, God-for-us, as one of us, in the flesh.
Do you really think this is appropriate? Mike asked me and then gestured with the rolled up program of names.
As if to say…when it comes to Christmas shouldn’t we at least try to find some people who are a bit more pious, people whose families are a bit less complicated, people whose lives are less messy?
The narrator for the Christmas pageant that year was a woman whose name, ironically, was Mary. She was old and incredibly tiny, no bigger than the children that morning wearing gold pipe cleaner halos around their heads.
Emphysema was killing Mary a breath at a time. She had to be helped up to the pulpit once the performance began.
I’d spent a lot of hours in Mary’s kitchen over the time I was her pastor, sipping bad Folger’s coffee and listening to her tell me about her family.
About the dozen miscarriages she’d had in her life and about how the pain of all those losses was outweighed only by the joy of the child she’d grafted into her family tree.
About the husband who died suddenly, before the dreams they’d had together could be checked-off the list.
About her daughter’s broken marriage.
And about her two grandsons who, in the complicated way of families, were now living with her.
Mary was the narrator for the Christmas story that year.
As the children finished their lip-synced opening song, and as the shepherds and angels and wise men took their places, and as Billy climbed into his make- shift throne, looking more like a pimp than a King Herod- Mary struggled up to the pulpit.
Her oxygen tank sat next to her in a wheeled cart. Her fierce eyes were just barely visible above the microphone but from my seat there in the back I was sure she was staring right at her family.
With her medication-bruised hands she spread out her script and in a soft, raspy voice she began to tell the story, beginning not with Luke or with John but with the Gospel of Matthew.
The cadence of Mary’s delivery was dictated by the mask she had to put over her face every few seconds to fill her lungs with air:
“All this took place…(breath)…to fulfill what had been spoken by the prophet…(breath)…they shall name him Emmanuel…(breath)…which means…(breath)…God with us.”
Do you really think this is appropriate? Mike asked me through gritted teeth.
And sitting in the back, I looked at Mary behind the pulpit and I looked at all the other fragile, compromised people from our church family who were dressed in their costumes and waiting to deliver their part of the Gospel.
‘Appropriate?’ I whispered back. ‘No…no, I think it’s perfect.‘
I never stepped foot inside a church until a Christmas Eve service when I was teenager.
Growing up my father was a severe alcoholic. He was in and out of our lives. My parent’s marriage was up and down and then it was over.
I have an uncle who was in prison every other Christmas.
What I mean to say is-
I know how its easy to suspect that this holiday isn’t really for you.
I know how easy it is to worry you don’t belong, to think that at Christmas you have to dress up and come here and pretend you’re someone else, pretend your family is different than it really is behind closed doors.
I know how easy it is to believe that at Christmas- especially in this place- you have to hide the fact that you’re not good enough, that you don’t have enough faith, that you have too many secrets, that if God knew who you really were then he wouldn’t be born for you.
This family tree Matthew gives us- you might think it an odd way to tell the Christmas story. I mean there’s no two ways about it- Jesus’ family is messed up.
But then again, so is ours.
And that’s the gift given tonight in Emmanuel.
And it’s a gift Matthew doesn’t think needs to be wrapped in angels’ songs
and shepherds and mangers filled with straw.
The gift given tonight is that God comes to us just as we are.
Not as we wish we could be. Not as we used to be. Not as others think we should be.
Tonight Emmanuel
God with us
Comes to us
Just as you are.
Take if from me, that’s the only gift that can change you.
0 Question: Do You Even Like Christmas?
Last Sunday for our ‘Questions about Christmas’ sermon series I pulled your questions at random from a bingo tumbler and just answered them off the cuff. As I warned, sometimes off the cuff Jason quickly slips into off color Jason but I think I was mostly clean.
This week I will try to post responses to the questions that didn’t get pulled and also summaries of how I answered some of the other questions.
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Question: Do you even like Christmas? Every year you seem determined to ruin Christmas by preaching on the dark, depressing stories.
Yes, for the record, I like Christmas. Love it.
I hate preaching Christmas though. Hate it.
People complain about the commercialization of Christmas and ‘Happy Holidays’ secularism, but actually I think the greatest threat to a Christian understanding of Christmas isn’t commercialization or secularism. It’s sentimentality.
And people love sentimentality. Believe me. I got a shoe box worth of hate mail the last time I preached Christmas Eve. Actual snail mail.
The problem with sentimentality is that it isn’t true. The Gospels don’t tell a sentimental Christmas story. Jesus is born in to poverty and oppression. His mother would’ve been viewed as an adulteress. He’s born with monsters like Herod and Caesar at this manger. When Jesus is born all the other new born sons are slaughtered- it was not a silent night. And no sooner is he born than his family become political refugees in Egypt.
So when we make Christmas sentimental, we forget the actual story. And when we forget the actual story, we risk forgetting why Jesus came in the first place and why we’re waiting for him to come again.
And on another note, I’d just add that, I grew up up in a broken home that was chaotic and anything but happy. So, I’m aware that when we make Christmas sentimental we’re not only describing something that’s not true about the Christmas story, we’re also describing something that’s not true for a whole lot of people in their own lives.
So for me, making sure Christmas isn’t all cuteness and cheer is a way of making sure those people know the story is for them too. For them especially maybe.
3 Midrash in the Moment: Sermon Audio
This weekend, because I was pulling questions at random and answering them, ‘Midrash in the Moment’ is how I coined it. Midrash being an informal sort of commentary on scripture.
Each ‘sermon’ was a bit different. Some of the same questions came up in more than one service and others came up only once.
I recorded audio of the 9:45 Sunday service, which was the longest sermon time, and it is available here and in the iTunes Store under ‘Tamed Cynic.’
Audio of all four sermon Q/A sessions is available at here.
2 Midrash in the Moment: Doesn’t Jesus’ Genealogy Fall Apart If Joseph Isn’t Really Jesus’ Father?
This Sunday for our ‘Questions about Christmas’ sermon series I pulled your questions at random from a bingo tumbler and just answered them off the cuff. As I warned, sometimes off the cuff Jason quickly slips into off color Jason but I think I was mostly clean.
This week I will try to post responses to the questions that didn’t get pulled and also summaries of how I answered some of the other questions.
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One thing you have to remember is that the early church was an oral culture. They were good storytellers and, being good storytellers, they would never begin a Gospel with a list of begats unless there was a good point they wanted their listeners to catch.
The first thing Matthew’s audience would’ve noticed is the fact that this isn’t a traditional Jewish genealogy. You can compare Matthew’s list to the lists in the Old Testament. Jewish genealogies were men’s only clubs. But Matthew’s has women in it.
And not just women. Gentiles. Matthew’s constructs a genealogy of Jews and Gentiles, and the only way Matthew can include Gentiles is through women because all the men in Jesus’ family were Jews. So Matthew works in Ruth and Rahab and Tamar and Bathsheba.
Those women aren’t just Gentiles. Matthew also constructs a genealogy of saints and sinners. Tamar slept with her father-in-law, on ‘accident.’ Ruth seduced Boaz. Bathsheba very likely seduced David. Rahab was a hooker.
So what Matthew’s doing isn’t trying to biologically tie Jesus to Jewish history because that would be impossible. What Matthew’s doing is giving you the overture to his Gospel; he’s hinting at the themes to come.
And one of those themes is the compassion Jesus shows women like Tamar and Rahab, who, incidentally, are the kind of women that most would’ve assumed Jesus’ own mother was.
He’s foreshadowing themes: Jesus’ compassion on sinners and women, Jesus’ ministry to Gentiles and outsiders. This becomes more obvious when you flip to the end of Matthew’s Gospel and see that it closes with Jesus giving his Great Commission to ‘make disciples of all nations…‘ Meaning: Jews and Gentiles.
So the genealogy isn’t about Jesus’ biological make-up; it’s about the make-up of his Kingdom. It’s Matthew’s of telegraphing that Christ will be a different of King.
A couple of other points:
The word genealogy is genesis. In the beginning. Matthew begins his Gospel in the same way the Hebrew Bible begins. This is Matthew’s way of saying that Jesus is the beginning of a new creation.
Another thing, Matthew says ‘from the deportation to Babylon to the birth of the Messiah…’ In other words, Matthew’s suggesting Israel’s exile to Babylon never ended, that even though Israel returned from Babylon, their exile never truly ended until Jesus was born. That’s what makes ‘Come, O Come, Emmanuel’ an Advent song.
Lastly, Matthew’s not trying to give a proper, traditional family tree for Jesus, but if he wanted to he could do that through Joseph. As an adoptive father myself, I have a stake in this point. In the same way my boys have Virginia birth certificates though they were born in Guatemala, according to Jewish law, Jesus becomes Joseph’s legal son the moment Joseph claims him as such, which is what makes Joseph’s leap of faith and participation in the Christmas story so vital.