Luke 1: 5-17, 26-38

In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron. Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly. But they were childless because Elizabeth was not able to conceive, and they were both very old.

Once when Zechariah’s division was on duty and he was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense. And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.

Then an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped with fear. But the angel said to him: “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he is born. He will bring back many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord…”

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called^[a^] the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”
           “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

Sermon Text

We go backward from our story last week to the pre-infancy of Jesus and John. Years before they become the ministers we know, they were merely the promises given by God to their respective parents. John was promised to Zechariah, though he could tell no one about it, and Jesus to Mary, though no one would believe her. A child born to impossibly old parents on one hand, and to a young woman out of wedlock on the other. Scandal and mystery stand side-by-side, as they often do, and we as people who know the ending look on in wonder to know that God made such wonderful things come from these circumstances.

Strange to both these stories is the appearance of angels. While we tend to think of the Bible as being full of angelic beings, they are really quite rare in scripture. Much like the miracles we consider synonymous with the pages of our scripture, angels were not more common long ago than they are now. Hundreds of years would pass between one recorded appearance of an angelic being and another. If we take out the prophetic descriptions of angels, which often come from ecstatic visions, then we can make that gap even larger. To see an angel is never a common occurrence, and the presence of these messengers here is nothing but spectacular.

Our term “Angel,” just means “messenger,” and the Greek (Angelos,) and Hebrew (Malak,) reflect this. In the Hebrew Scriptures, angels were seen as being wingless young men. The idea of angels with wings comes from the use of wings in Greek art to denote messengers of the Gods (e.g. the winged shoes of Hermes.) The angels in this story would have been differentiated from regular men somehow other than having big wings floating behind their back, but something about them stood out to those who saw them. Maybe it was their sudden appearance or disappearance, the clothes they wore, the sound of their voice.

The appearance of these men are not nearly as important as the things that they said. To the two women, in very different circumstances of life, the same message was given. You’re going to have a baby! It’s a boy! For one person this was the answer to years of prayer and struggling with infertility. For the other, this is a major reason to worry. You’re not married, the kid isn’t your fiancé’s and he knows it? That is a recipe for disaster. People could get killed for that kind of thing in the first century, if not by the powers that be, then by an angry mob. The two contrasts of these circumstances show something about what these children would mean to the world.

John was welcomed at first because he seemed to be bringing a message that everyone could resonate with. Redemption was coming! The harder part of his message was that we had to get ready for that redemption by changing our hearts. This is the message that was harder to hear, but still one that brought even Pharisees and Sadducees to come and be washed by him. John was not an easy person, not an attractive person, but he brought a message that people struggled to find a way to fight against. At the end of the day, his ministry ended over a personal squabble with a politician, and not because of the message he preached. John was the long-awaited prophet that promised something new, and even in his bizarre way of being, he found his niche.

Jesus was a more complicated figure. His birth to an unmarried woman made him a pariah. Legitimized though this birth may have been through his mother’s marriage, there were always going to be rumors. Jesus took John’s message and made it even more urgent. The time to repent is ending, the time to join the movement was short, the Kingdom of God was dawning. Jesus drew in massive crowds, like John before him, but these crowds were far more varied. Even some gentiles began to come to him looking for the redemption he fulfilled. Jesus offered an alternative to the way the world ran, and the world silenced him for his trouble.

I think it would be too simple to make too much of those contrasts. However, I do think that the birth of these men, relatives by blood, shows something of the contrast in their life. Both would die at the hands of the powerful, both lived lives in service to God, and both were ordained by Angels. Yet, while John was seen as another prophet in a long line prophets, Jesus was regarded in a much more varied way. John was the child of two people of good repute, and Jesus was the seeming bastard of a couple too poor to offer more than a few birds at the temple.[1] The worst that John’s critics could say was that he was not really a prophet, but the Gospels say they would never say such a thing in public.[2] Jesus could be shamed, though, because he was born to nothing, and sought to have nothing, and so was deemed to be nothing.

The announcement of two births, in two different circumstances. Both necessary for the start of something new, but both not quite what anyone might expect. Jesus our savior, Jesus the Lord of All, who we celebrate as coming to be with us, and as coming one day to set all things right again. That Jesus, was from his conception someone the world doubted. For Mary long ago, the news of her conceiving a child would have been terrifying as much as it was an honor. There is a reason that the Catholic Church honors her with a prayer modeled after the words the angel says here. To them her willingness to follow God into this terrifying adventure is the start of something amazing, and terrifying.

Faith is the sustaining blood of this life. It is what gives us the ability to hope. It feeds our love for one another. It is the simple commitment to the truth that is revealed in our meeting God, face to face. It is also a big scary thing. To have faith is to say that you trust something you cannot always see, and that you are ok with the road not always going where you expect.

Angels are universally met with fear in the Bible. They appear and people get ready to run. The first thing out of their mouths, therefore, is “Do not be afraid.” I think that those words are very necessary in our walk of faith. “Do not be afraid,” is the natural response to us realizing there is a God. “Do not be afraid,” is the response we need when we realize we have failed to do what is right. “Do not be afraid,” is the comfort we need when we are lost and alone and heart broken. “Do not be afraid,” is the little bit of drive we need to keep going, even when things seem tougher than we can ever imagine.

Mary is the real hero of today’s Gospel reading, because she accepted a heavy burden. She would always be seen after this angel’s visit as an object of scorn. She’d be called all kinds of nasty things by those who knew her kid wasn’t Joseph’s. She’d grow up with a child she could only begin to understand was somehow God and her little boy. She would walk with him as he preached his hard messages, and as countless people called him all the things she had tried to shield him from. She would know the greatest pain of watching him be killed for crimes he did not commit. Stranger still to meet him again, resurrected and glorified. Her little boy, long ago promised, now fully shining as the deity he was. Mary, our lady of sorrows, and mother of God, stands out as the first evangelist. She took Jesus into herself and gave him to the world at great pains to herself.

The angels still speak, though maybe not by appearing to us. The Spirit of God whispers to us, asks us to take the hard road, to try and bring about the Kingdom here and now. Sometimes we like Elizabeth and John, get to face hardships with relative dignity. Sometimes, we like Mary and Jesus, must abandon our self-image and our reputation to do what is right. May God give us the strength to do either, and may angels give us all rest this holiday and for ever. – amen.

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[1] Luke 2: 22-24

[2] Mark 11: 27-33

This sermon is an updated version of one preached for the second week of Advent 2019

Matthew 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 Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore, bear fruit worthy of repentance, and 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; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is more powerful than I, and 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 Text

We continue to look at those who paved the way for Jesus, by look at one of the most influential people in the New Testament, John the Baptist. He is someone who we are not given much information about. He will appear, say a few words, and then disappear before coming back and saying a few more things. From birth to death we are not given a full biography of John the Baptist. What he taught, who he taught it to, or how he ran his ministry. The only thing we know is that whatever he did it must have worked. Whatever it was he did, he was immensely successful at it.

Despite the little bit that is written about him, the biblical text and other ancient texts give us a good idea of who he was and what the general work it included. John the Baptist firstly was non-sectarian. He was not a part of the Temple Sadducees or the Teaching Pharisees or the Monastic Essenes, he existed in a space betwixt and between all of them. Not only did he stand out in this way, but he is the first person in history to be given the title of “Baptizer.” Not only this but he created the concept of “Baptism,” by transforming existing Jewish and Greek rites which were repeated for the sake of ritual purity into a declarative act of repentant reorientation.

His washing was not just a means to becoming clean, but a moment to commemorate something new was happening. That the baptizand had died to this reality and was born into a new one. John’s baptismal ministry gathered a group of disciples who appear throughout the Gospels. Sometimes they worked alongside Jesus and his disciples, sometimes arguing with them.

The strange thing about all this is that, though John was Jesus’s cousin, John never really interacts with Jesus. They usually sent messengers back and forth, and the text following today’s scripture, the baptism of Christ is the only time scripture records a face to face conversation between them. John and Jesus, two distinct separate messengers working toward the realization of God’s kingdom.

Yet, we see in John some indications of what Jesus would bring. John’s ministry was radically inclusive. He preached a message that managed to reach people where they were. He was so effective in his speaking that no matter how he got it out there, people from all over Judea were willing to come out and see him. Judea was not very large, smaller than most states, but to travel from one side of it to the other would be a trip of days if not weeks. People were willing to uproot their lives to hear the message and receive the Baptism of John.

This message, far-reaching as it was, was simple – “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.” We’ve talked about repentance before. We understand the idea that we reorient ourselves toward God. That we reorient our vision of the future to be in line with the goodness that God wants. It is the transformation that comes with the renewing of our minds so that we can become good and do God’s good work. That is the essence of repentance.

If we go a step further I would say that most of us, except in moments of intense doubt or despair, feel as though we have room to grow and are capable of growth. That something can push us to grow by the Grace of God and that we can attain something beyond our current state. With this confidence of self and of God’s goodness, we have a sort of assurance. Here is the question though, is that assurance of God’s grace and our hope of growth just for people like us? Is it only for people in circumstances and situations and churches and pews and denominations like ours? Has the Kingdom of Heaven drawn near to a select few or to all people?

John answers this question in ministering to two groups – the crowd who we can assume were likely peasant farmers or other laborers from throughout the region, and distinct from them the Pharisees and the Sadducees. These two groups controlled, on one hand, the religious instruction of the people and on the other the religious rituals of the Temple. Abundance and necessity, power and powerlessness, potential for action and inability to act met on the banks of the Jordan that day. In the way that John writes a potential confrontation was set up. “[John] saw that many of the Sadducees and the Pharisees were coming to see him.” The moment they are set apart is the moment we know something is about to happen to them.

Many times in reading this we put ourselves in the place of the repentant crowd, watching on as the Pharisees and Sadducees are made an example of, but today I want us to take on the role of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Imagine that you have heard the preaching of this man and that you come out from Jerusalem and step into the muddy waters of the Jordan to see him. Moving through a crowd of people you hear dialects and smell smells that you have never seen before. You walk between crowds of people who society tells you are all beneath you. You walk to see a preacher who your fellow leaders in Jerusalem have decreed a dangerous revolutionary. An apocalyptic preacher who only could cause trouble for someone in power like you.

But you know the power of this man’s preaching because it made a Pharisee and a Sadducee go up to see him. Two people who could not agree on anything religiously suddenly agreeing that this man was worth listening to. Imagine what it must be like then when this preacher you have come to see, looks at you from across the crowd and starts yelling. “You brood of vipers! Who warned you of the wrath to come?” And if it wasn’t bad enough that he insults you and calls you a snake he accuses you of not really being invested in what you’re doing. “Do not presume,” As I am assuming you are, “to say, “I am a child of Abraham because God could rise up children to Abraham from rocks if God wanted.”

Now step away from that time and place and join me back in the here and now. Reading this text I find myself asking a question, which rocks are John pointing to? Is he pointing to the memorial stones down the Jordan at Schechem, can God raise up children of Abraham from the past? Is it to the rocks of the Temple, can God raise up children to Abraham through religious devotion? To the pebbles under his feet, is he recalling Genesis? Or is he pointing to those around him, to the crowd and to the Pharisees and Sadducees, saying, “From these stones, God could raise up children to Abraham.”

The Gospel does not use any special word here to indicate a metaphorical or literal meaning. It does, however, use the same word for stone as Greek translations of the Ezekiel do in describing our hearts before God transforms them. “Hearts of stone,” transformed into, “Hearts of flesh.” So we see that while John is critical of these people he is still looking beyond their present state to what could be. That God could take even a literal rock and turn it into a child of Abraham is a statement of God’s incredible power and grace not a statement about Humanity’s inability to meet expectations.

If the message is that a stone can become a child to Abraham what does it mean for a flesh and blood person if they are willing to take the leap? This is not to say that John is minimizing his criticism of the Pharisees and Sadducees or that the wrong they have done does not matter. John is clear in laying out the stakes. The people must, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” No free pass is given simply because you apologize to God or anyone else you have hurt, but if you are sincere in your commitment to change, then the Kingdom cannot be denied you. If we are people who believe, who speak our contrition and act out our penance then the Kingdom is opened to us.

Yet we so often read this scripture as if it ends with John warning the Pharisees, “Bear fruit or perish.” Yet if we read the text honestly we see that his following statement does not change direction. He is still speaking to the Pharisees when he says, “I baptize you with water for Repentance, but the one who comes after me is mightier than I… He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” John gives correction to the Pharisees and Sadducees but he also gives them hope. “Your present is not the endpoint of your life and even I, John the Baptist, am not the fullest version of myself I could be. But I lead the way for one who will transform all of this.”

Let us return now to the Pharisee walking toward John. Having been insulted, accused, and told to straighten up you are now dipped in the Jordan. You are told those words, “I baptize you with water for repentance.” Now you hold in yourself the hope of the coming Messiah. As you leave the river, the Grace of God literally dripping from your clothing. Ask yourself one simple question, “Can I deny others what to me has been so freely given?” Let that question lead us, shape us, transform us in how we give Grace to the world around us. – Amen

Isaiah 11:1-10

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge for the poor and decide with equity for the oppressed of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist and faithfulness the belt around his loins.

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

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

Sermon Text

Last week, looking into the Torah, we saw a reflection of a deep truth. In God’s promise that the enmity between the serpent and the woman would not be eternal, but have an end through the intervention of her child, we could see a clear image we could use to understand Jesus, born of humanity, and his work against evil. The work of the Gospel, perfectly embodied in the mere matter of a snake and its destruction. Today we jump forward in the history of God’s people. Looking far from the primordial state of the world, we look to the chaos of a world in ruin.

As with much of scripture, the prophet Isaiah preached during a time when conquest was just over the horizon. I was not a secret to anyone that the powerful armies of Assyria would begin making their way through the Levant. The only thing between the recently fallen Northern Kingdom and Egypt was Judah and its neighboring countries. There was no hope for the people not to be taken as collateral in the bid for control of the entire Eastern Mediterranean. Horses and chariots, siege engines and soldiers, all were loaded up and ready to reduce all opposition to their campaign to stubble and ash. This particular prophecy comes when Israel still stands between , this incredible army and the people of Judah, but neither country had a chance.

The promise that Isaiah brings is therefore one that is somewhere down the road. It is not deliverance in the form of a present King, but a future King. From the lineage of Jesse would come a hero who would purify the world. The wicked would be blown away, and peace would spring from where violence once sat. Wolves and their prey are now playmates in the fields. Blood is not shed, but life-giving springs bubble between all creatures in all places. Even the serpents of the world, literal and not metaphysical, are reduced to the toy things of small children. Asps and vipers, copperheads and moccasins, now just friends to all other life.

This idyllic vision of the future is one that any person would gladly see fulfilled around them. To see a world with no more pain, no more struggling just to get by, that is a blessed thing. Not only that, but a world where the wicked are punished and the righteous are allowed to live a full life, unfettered by the cruelty of circumstance. Now that is something worth dreaming of. Isaiah stands looking out over the countryside, knowing that much of it will soon be in flames, but he knows that there is a future ahead for God’s people and for all the world to flourish under.

Assyria would not completely destroy Judah, but it would reduce it to a vassal state. No longer independently governed, it owed taxes to the Assyrian capital and was expected to contribute to its military campaigns wherever possible. This end was far better than Israel, the northern kingdom, which was all but destroyed. The survivors in the land saw their culture merged with people from other Assyrian vassal states, and over time became what we now call “Samaritans.” The friction between Samaria and Judah was still decades off, but only a few days walk from Jerusalem would be the reminders of a people that once were, and now were not, the destruction of their siblings, the loss of ten tribes of the twelve in Israel.

The huddled people of Judah took in what survivors they could, some would go on to have descendants that cross our path in the New Testament – Anna the Prophetess being one such person. Yet, the dream of a king that removed all troubles never seemed to come. It was not achieved by the vassal-kings of Judah under Assyrian rule, nor when Babylon conquered a few generations later, nor when Zerubbabel ruled the exiles in the time of Ezra. Nothing seemed to bring about this prophecy’s fulfillment. The world is still in chaos, copperheads will still bite and kill, and wolves are not the best dogs to keep around our sheep. The world still waits in anticipation for the resolution of this prophecy, for peace without wickedness, but the day of that decisive peace seems distant, like a small light flickering in a dark attic.

It is not surprise then that the Early Church saw this prophecy as something that resonated with their experience of Jesus. Jesus, born into the family of David, was the thing that would someday bring about the kingdom that the prophet had long ago dreamt of. In Jesus’s time on earth we saw that light, distant and flickering, flare up brighter than any star in the sky. In Jesus there was a glimpse of something completely unlike what this world has shown us till now. There was a King who was first and foremost a servant. There was a God who allowed himself to be a slave. There was a Kingdom that promised the best for those with the least, and retribution for those who dared to have when others had not.

The bizarre nature of Christ’s life was a testament to the bizarre and wonderful nature of God’s kingdom. Repentance and forgiveness poured freely from the foot of the cross, a never ending stream that blessed all the world. The Spirit of God descended upon the Church after the resurrection, a great wind that blew them to the four corners of the known world proclaiming this new kingdom. An end to violence was possible, if all people banded together in love and service, a new era dawned upon the land. The root of Jesse had bloomed into a grand tree, and many found shelter beneath its branches.

Yet, of course, the Church has never been perfect, and seldom even successful in this mission, not on a grand scale at least. It took only a few hundred years for worldly powers to take over the Church. One of the first councils of the Church was called by an emperor, not a priest or even a believer, but an emperor seeking to create stability in his newly seized empire. That emperor set the tone of a unified force of Church and State that lasted centuries. The monks at first fled to the desert to avoid it, but even their monasteries fell in line. The Reformation simply moved the pieces around, and by the time of our own revolution even a country that claimed separation of Church and State could not resist power courting power.

The appeal of Christianity, its power and presence across all time, is that it is an alternative to the world. It is not like everyone or everything else, but is instead singularly focused on the object of its devotion – Jesus Christ, the Word of God present here with us. At this table all separations cease, there are no nations or denominations, no borders of IDs. When the bread is broken and the cup is lifted up, there is no distinction in sex or gender or circumstance or fare. We are all, each and every one of us, made equal in distance and proximity to Christ. We can see a little bit of what it is like not to have anger or violence rule the world, even just for a few minutes, if we let the time we gather here be like it was for the disciples to be in the presence of Christ. Here everything melts away, here there is only peace, here there is the glory of the Kingdom that God has always dreamt of.

In this Advent season, we await the coming of Christ into this world. Not just the birth of a Child two millennia ago, but a King riding triumphantly into a city that will know no end. This season, leading up to Christmas, is the time we tell the world that there is a good ending to the story of history. At the close of the book, there is not fear or doubt or struggle, but light everlasting and the life abundant. I hope that when we look into the worlds, shabby and broken as it is, we can do what Isaiah did.

Looking beyond the horizon, beyond all troubles and worry, there is a dawn approaching. Out from the darkness of all our sin and betrayal of God’s true kingdom, one that knows no distinction and seeks no power, there is a blazing flame that seeks to make things right once again. The conflagration at the center of life’s cyclical path is not a devouring and wicked thing, but something that purifies, refines, and will someday see all things made beautiful. Today, as we ought to do everyday, we must make clear the glory of our Lord through the communion of this congregation. We must see in one another the face of God, and show the world the world as it could be. – Amen.