"Identifying Marks of the Church" (Matthew 25:31-36)

 

watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u02XtY8WYN0

Sunday, December 27, 2020

 

            Back in the 1990’s Willow Creek Community Church outside of Chicago, and Saddleback Community Church in southern California were both a big deal.  Both churches drew 1000’s to their weekend services.  Each became known for being exemplars of a “seeker-sensitive” model as opposed to the stuffy, unwelcoming traditional church.  These churches had cool music.  You could dress however you wanted when you attended.  You didn’t have to put on your “Sunday best” or act in a certain way.  These churches grew rapidly into megachurches because they had innovative, charismatic leaders, and they were known for doing church differently. 

            What is the church known for?

            The Crystal Cathedral, also in southern California, preceded the churches I mentioned as a mega church with a celebrity pastor.  The Crystal Cathedral had huge windows that opened so you could see in from the parking lot.  You’d tune your radio to the right station, you could hear everything, and you’d actually gone to church, seen it all, and heard it all without ever leaving your car.  Convenient!

            What is the church known for?

            A new church here in Chapel Hill, Jubilee Baptist, wants to help people locked in debt, get out of debt.  It’s as wonderful a name for a church as I have heard – Jubilee.  They are trying to live into the name, based on the Old Testament year of Jubilee in which debts were forgiven and everyone in the community could start over.  This church wants to be known for helping people find freedom in Christ.

            What is the church known for?

            Today there are a lot of mega churches, usually known for their celebrity pastors, The Summit in Durham, Elevation Church in Charlotte, Lakewood in Houston, with best-selling author/pastor Joel Osteen.  The Manhattan branch of Hillsong United not had a high profile pastor, but a lot of famous people in the congregation every Sunday.  These oversized operations are known for their glitz, fame, and big productions.

            What is the church known for?  What should it be known for?

            Every congregation I’ve mentioned, however big and famous or small and unknown has its good qualities and its weaknesses.  I pray God will bless every one of these churches and I hope people attending worship services in in these varying faith communities meet Jesus. 

It doesn’t matter how many Instagram followers you have, or how many people come to watch you in concert, or how much you get paid to play basketball.  You need Jesus!  Everyone needs Jesus.  Whether you come to know Jesus through the oversized ministry of a glitzy megachurch or the simple, understated witness of a small country chapel, either way, it’s Jesus.  Everyone needs Jesus.

            We are Hillside Church.  We have existed as a congregation for about 118 years, and have operated under our present name for 1 year.  On this final Sunday of 2020, I invite you, the people of Hillside, to contemplate a question specifically with our church in mind.  What are we, as a church, known for?  What should we be known for?

             “When the Son of Man comes in his glory …” says Jesus.  He’s talking about his return, the Second Coming.  At that time, he will divide everyone up, and we want to be on his right side.  To those at his right he says, “Come, you that are blessed …, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (v.34).

            There’s another option.  To those on his left he says, “You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (v.41).  Jesus presents this as two options: kingdom prepared as an inheritance or fire prepared for the devil and his angels.  I want the kingdom.  I want to avoid the fire. 

            How do those who inherit the kingdom get there, and how can we be among them?  Why are these fortunate ones gifted entry into God’s kingdom?  Jesus tells them, “I was hungry, and you gave me food, thirsty, and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, sick and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.”

            Note a couple of things.  First, the blessed one taken into God’s kingdom did not know they were serving Jesus when they cared for those Jesus calls “least of these.”  When they volunteered for a hospital visitation ministry, they just thought they were going to pray with people in the hospital and encourage them.   It wasn’t O, I’m doing this for Jesus. It was just compassion.  When they donated to the clothing drive, contributed money to Children’s hope chest, performed individual acts of compassion to help hurting people they met, it was just that: a heart of love helping someone who needed the help. 

            I point that out because this passage is not an explanation for how to get to heaven when you die.  In this passage, Jesus explains the characteristics of those who are heaven-bound.  They had no idea that their acts of compassion in this life had any effect on the way they would spend eternity.  They discovered that after they heard the judgment.

            That’s the second important observation.  When Jesus tells this parable, he’s just days away from being arrested.  This is one of the final messages he’ll give.  He’s talking about something that is a done deal.  The sheep and the goats’ fates had been decided and their eternal fortunes were directly tied to how they cared for the most vulnerable and needy people in society.

            That would be a third observation to make.  Jesus identifies himself with the needy and the poor and the struggling.  When the blessed visited people in prison, it doesn’t people wrongly imprisoned.  They were compassionate God-worshipers who cared for prisoners; and those prisoners were guilty.  Jesus even identified himself with the guilty and said when we love them, we’re loving him. 

            The blessed did not understand their acts of compassion would impact their eternal fates, the decision was already made, and Jesus himself identified with the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned.

            Earlier I mentioned churches with famous pastors, churches with different approaches, and different churches here in Chapel Hill and around the country to demonstrate that different churches are known for different things.  I want the people of our church to inherit that kingdom God promised the blessed.  But that comes later, at the end.  Right now, the question facing us is what, in 2021, will Hillside Church be known for. 

            I pray that our members will be known as compassionate, welcoming people who share the love of Jesus with all who come our way.  I pray that around town, when you hear “Hillside,” people will say, “That’s a loving, welcoming church.”  It’s far more important that we be defined by love than that we be known for our creative innovations or rapid numeric growth.  We’d love to have more people in church, and I want us to be creative; however, the biggest aim is that we be known for how well we love as we point people to Jesus. 

            We show our compassion through our ministries.  We are developing a local ministry platform that includes 2 food pantry distributions a month, on-site blood drives every other month, a mobile dental bus in June, and our handyman ministry, once social distancing restrictions are lifted.  We will also resume our tutoring ministries once we’re past COVID-19, and our elders have approved contributing funds to another tutoring ministry here in town during the pandemic.  In all these works, we love hungry people, financially struggling people, and people who have specific needs.  Our motivation is love and compassion. 

Heaven will take care of itself later.  We are driven to bring God’s love to people right now.    We need our members to enthusiastically pray for these ministries and be a part of them.  The vaccine is here.  2021 is not going to be like 2020.  We’ll soon be able to re-enter life and when you do my fellow Hillside member, do it as a disciple of Jesus, determined to love the most unlikely of people with the zeal you’d show if you were loving Jesus himself.

            Our attitude is as important as our programming.  I can stand here every Sunday and do a run-down of our ministry programs and explain our vision for a platform of works of compassion.  This vision will come to life as our members embrace it and live it. 

Many already are!  The volunteer spirit and the generosity of our most committed members is a picture of Jesus.  As you re-engage with the church in the new year, take your cues from those already involved in works of compassion.  Ask God to give you a heart for what matters most to Him.  Decide how you will love Jesus in 2021 by loving people who need help. 

A new year lies before us.  We can put pandemics and contentious politics in the rearview mirror.  This is our time to look to Jesus and decide what our church will be known for.  The need is all around us, so we remember that where needy people are, Jesus is.  We welcome Him in and go out to him.  We do for the “least” because compassion, welcome, and love is who we are.”

                        AMEN

"A Memory that Lives" - Christmas Eve 2020

 

watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXnlvyWETRQ

Christmas Eve, 2020

 

            Fisher Court, in Clawson, MI, a suburb of Detroit is where I spent my childhood.  From the end of our short driveway, you could see the elementary school a half block away to your right and town hall a full block and a half to your left.  On the other side of town hall was the baseball fields where I played little league.  The fields were on the grounds of the junior high school.  We call it “junior high” back then, 7^th and 8^th grade.  The junior high was connected to the senior by our town pool, a wonderful, indoor poor.  It had a high dive and a 12-foot deep-end.  One of the great accomplishments of my life was touching bottom in that deep- end. 

            A Christmastime, when it would be completely dark by 6PM, we would drive one mile to my grandmother’s house.  As we passed the town hall, we kids were thrilled to see the town’s nativity set-up illuminated by neon lights, with glimmering letters that said “Noel.”  When we saw the baby Jesus in the manger, whichever one of us kids saw “Noel” first would shout, “Sing for it, Daddy.”   My dad’s baritone voice would belt out “The First Noel, the Angel did say.”  It feels like we made that trip and asked my dad to sing like that about 100 times.  Every time I remember it, the number grows. 

That memory sticks out for me; maybe your family did something one year, one Christmas.  It affected.  Twenty years later, forty years later, you look back and you swear, “Oh we did that every year.”

What stuck out from that night in Mary’s mind?  Was it how tired she was, making that journey to Bethlehem by donkey while pregnant?  Was it the kindness of the innkeeper?  Our tradition slants the story, casting the barnyard birth as one more misfortune.  Poor Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, relegated to a night among farm animals with no room in the inn.  We forget that hospitality was an ultimate value in the ancient near east.  Joseph and Mary may have been grateful that someone gave them a safe, warm, dry, private place for the baby to be born.  We cast our modern sensibilities, but Jesus was certainly not the first or last to be born in such hard circumstances.  The story shows his humble beginnings.  His entire life, he would identify with peasants and he would alienate governors, priests, and kings. 

What did Mary remember?  The visit by excited shepherds?  The nearness of angels?  Relief at a healthy birth?  The steadfast, quiet compassion of her new husband Joseph? 

What sticks out for you as a Christmas memory, something that transcends time and becomes bigger with each passing year?  How we experience events in our memory impacts us as much as the original event.  When this time of year comes round, what thoughts, unbidden creep into your consciousness?  What memories flood your mind, blindsiding you?

Some are wonderful memories? When I remember yelling “Sing for it, Daddy,” in my memory, my father is an opera-quality baritone belting out “The First Noel.”  I know my dad, in actuality, is a passable church-choir bass-baritone, but not a professional singer.  Knowing that does not change my memory, where my dad sounds just a little better than Josh Groban as we drive and he sings.

I know many of our stories of the birth of Jesus have taken on legendary status that more resembles rich story-telling than precisely recorded history.  Yes, Jesus was born of the virgin, Mary.  Yes, his birth was in a Bethlehem stable because Joseph and many other Bethlehemites were forced to go there by the edict of a Roman census.  Beyond these barebone facts, a story surrounds the birth of the Savior.  In churches like ours, in grand cathedrals where thousands worship, in candlelit, third-world village chapels where less than a dozen gather, and in numerous other places worldwide, God moves in the telling of the story just as God moved in Mary and Joseph and shepherds and the innkeeper the night of Jesus’ birth. 

We have our memory and our memory defines us in powerful ways.  Our entry and re-entry into this story that we hear and believe shapes us.  Part of who we are as God-worshippers is tied to the hearing and telling of the birth of Christ each year.  It’s no longer the year from Hell, 2020!  Not tonight.  Tonight, it’s Christmas Eve, and we are transported to Bethlehem.  Like a thousand Christmas Eves prior, we are gathered with church and family once again for the birth of Christ. 

Moments stand out in our memory.  My mind is fixed upon a moment in 1986 or 1987.  I am not sure of the year, but I remember the moment vividly.  We were staying at my Grandmother’s house on 7 Mile Road in Detroit.  We had gone out.  When we got back to the house, I can see my grandmother’s face as she opened the front door.  Something was wrong.  Someone had broken in and robbed her while we were out.  She lived in a high-crime city, Detroit, and crime came her way Christmas Eve.  It didn’t feel very good at the time, but what I take away from the moment is our family was together, and the feeling of being violated did not last.  The love of family and the spirit of making it a merry Christmas anyway is what lasted.

What moments were fixed in Mary’s mind from that night?  What moments come back to you with instant recall when it is Christmas Eve and you sink from the immediacy of the present into the fullness of your entire story?

From moments and memory, we have to move forward, but not too quickly.  We don’t rush to what’s next. We take our time.   Christmas Eve is not time to rush anywhere.  But calmly, deliberately, we know tomorrow comes and life continues forward.

Mary and Joseph would settle in Bethlehem, but not for long. Within a year, strange visitors from the East, the Magi came.  These Persians gave extravagant gifts to this poor family.  God told Joseph in a dream that had to leave, and so they fled to Egypt, to avoid the murder of Jesus at the hands of Herod’s soldiers.  Then, finally, God told Joseph in a dream they were to return, and they did, settling in Nazareth.  They raised Jesus there. 

We savor the moments that live in our memories.  We also move forward from those moments.  We move forward in faith.  That’s what Mary and Joseph did.  They cherished the baby Jesus, and, in faith, raised the child Jesus.

Think on cherished memories Christmas Eve evokes in your heart.  Take a moment. Ponder them.  Consider what memories might be made tonight, Christmas Eve 2020.  God is here and loves us.  God has you in His hands.  On this very night, His spirit can bless you so that you’re empowered to face whatever life brings next.

As we close our service and sing “Silent Night,” open yourself to God.  Receive what God gives.  Open your heart to receive God’s spirit.  You don’t need to ponder moving forward right now.  Just sit in this moment before God.  Receive his love as His Spirit washes over you. 

Leaving worship full, you will have all you need to go forward in faith. 

AMEN

"The Humble Glory of Christmas" (Romans 16:25-27)

 

watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v75GTIBJIcA

Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 20, 2020

 

            To God be the glory!  Shepherds in the countryside not far from Bethlehem looked to the sky where they saw something not witnessed by the most advanced telescopes we have: hundreds, thousands of angels.  “The Heavenly host [praised] God saying, “Glory to God in the highest” (Luke 2:14).

Mary certainly couldn’t hold in her praise.  A virgin in a purity-based culture, she was pregnant.  No scandal could be worse for a young woman, yet, it came to her because the Holy Spirit came to her.  They didn’t even know God would act in this way.  Once she understood, she went to visit her much older cousin, Elizabeth.  Already having experienced menopause, and also childless, Elizabeth was pregnant.  Who better to understand the miracle that had come to Mary? 

When she arrived Elizabeth said to her, “Blessed are you among women” (Luke 1:42).  And Mary sang, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of His servant.  Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the mighty one has done great things for me, and holy is his name” (1:46b-49). 

That reading was from Luke’s gospel.  Luke 1 & 2 are frequently read during Advent and at Christmas.  Romans 16 is not a familiar Advent text, but Paul’s words of doxology say it perfectly!  “To the only wise God … be glory forever” (16:27).

            Mary’s life is about to become very difficult.  She will make a harrowing journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, while pregnant.  Social scorn will come, as her pregnancy came before her marriage was consummated.  She will deliver her child in a barnyard-cave, surrounded by smelly animals.  As that child grows, she will misunderstand him, and sense her own insufficiency to be parent to the Son of God.  Finally, she will watch as he dies on a Roman cross.

            Of course, she doesn’t know all of that at this point in the story as she sits with Elizabeth and praises God.  All she knows is God called and she responded in faith.  She’s part of what God is doing. God has acted, and she feels blessed, so she raises her voice to praise God.  She feels favored.  She says God has done great things for her.

            Do we get it?  Even people who don’t go to church and aren’t involved in faith can pick up from popular media the religious connection of the season. Christmas is when we celebrate the birth of Jesus.  We know that, but why is his birth something to celebrate?  Why do words of wonder, gratitude, and joy erupt from Mary?  Why should they erupt from us?  What makes this good news, the best news?  Why is God worthy of glory?

God is not a glory hound who desperately needs to hear us extol his greatness.  The person who constantly puffs himself up is tiresome.  The all-star basketball player indignantly confronts the critical the reporter.  “Don’t you question my basket skills.”  I remember hearing one draft pick, a 19-year-old entering the NBA, tell an interviewer, “I am very humble.”  Then he went on to describe all the ways he is great.  Or think of the actor confronting a director on a movie set.  He puts down his fellow cast members and demands special treatment.  Consider the politician who inflates his own record.  “I’ve done more for the military than any other leader in our country’s history.  I’ve done more for our economy than anyone else ever has.”  We recoil at such bombast.  No one likes braggart. 

In the Bible we see that God expects to be praised.  Read Leviticus and Deuteronomy.  Read the prophets and Job 38-41.  Is God as haughty, ego-inflated, and desperately needy for praise as so many of our celebrities are?  The answer would be ‘yes’ if God were a woman or a man.  God is not.  God something else entirely.  Praising God is the only appropriate response to God’s action. 

God’s glory flows out of God’s love.[i]  Where the self-promoting politician is unbearably arrogant, God, sovereign of the universe and creator of everything, is infinitely humble.  God, who actually has reason to say, ‘hey, the best you can do is worship me,’ instead lowers himself to the form of a human being, a baby born into a peasant family at a difficult time in history among a people under the heel of the powerful, imposing Romans.  God steps out of limitless heavenly grandeur to walk the tough, dusty roads of 1^st century Palestine as a poor Jewish man. 

Why praise God?  Look at what God did.  The bigger question is why did God lower God’s self in this way.  He dressed in human skin, subjecting God’s own self to the struggles and pains faced by the poor all over the world.  Why did God do that?

Love!  That’s the answer.  God loves us.  Paul elaborated on this earlier in the letter, Romans 5.  Verse 5, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”  Also verse 8, “God proved his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”  The logic in Romans and throughout the New Testament stands out with great clarity.  Every human sins.  Sin cuts us off from God.  We cannot overcome our sin, so God became one of us – Jesus.

Jesus died even though he did not deserve death.  Jesus suffered that cruel penalty taking on himself the death sin brings, even though he never sinned.  When we say “God is love” our evidence is Jesus, bloody and bruised, hanging on the cross where we should be.  God’s expression of love comes in the form of self-sacrifice.  So, when we glorify God, and there are plenty of reasons to do so, the chief attribute is God’s love.  God’s love is a humble, sacrificial love.  God doesn’t say, “I’ve done more for you than anyone else ever has.”  God says, “I love you enough to die in your place.  I will take you as you are, all the warts and blemishes, and I will make you new.” Then, God does it. 

Grab hold of this! So many people around us are down on themselves.  Maybe you are one. Maybe you feel like life is full of disappointments and failure.  The depression intensifies as it seems that everyone around you has a lot of holiday cheer while you wallow in sorrow.  And you feel like it’s your fault.  Listen!  God loves you more than you can know.  You are precious, of incredible worth, and God cherishes you.  Believe it.  Receive God’s love.  It’s a gift you don’t have to earn. 

Worshiping on Sundays at church is a regular practice for Christians.  Many more people attend worship Advent and Lent.  A lot of attendees miss as many Sundays as they come throughout the year, but leading up to Christmas, more and more people feel drawn to church.  As we ponder the story, Jesus born and lain in a manger, angels singing as hillside shepherds watch and wonder, does it feel different?  Do you feel drawn to seek God?  Does anything in you stir? 

Worship during the season of Advent serves as a rhythm of remembering.[ii]  We know the story.  We’ve seen this movie before.  We listen to again in order to enter the story.  We want to feel the chill of the night air, take in the pungent smells of the manger, and hear the newborn’s cries. 

After his barnyard birth the story moves to his ministry.  Jesus restored the sight of blind beggars and turned water to wine to prolong the celebration of a country peasant’s wedding.  Yet he refused to perform when King Herod demanded miracles.  He bestowed wisdom upon the Pharisee Nicodemus who visited him secretly at night, but would not answer the inquiring Greeks who visited Jerusalem at Passover in search of a new philosophy to scrutinize.  He traveled with poor fishermen, tax collectors of questionable moral character, and a known violent revolutionary, Simon the Zealot.  He entrusted the group finances to a known thief, Judas Iscariot, giving him the opportunity to become honest, knowing he probably wouldn’t take that opportunity.  Yet Jesus refused to answer when the Roman Governor Pilate demanded Jesus give an accounting of himself. 

To God be the glory, but a humble glory indeed!  In the doxology of Romans 16 Paul declares God will strengthen us through the Gospel – the story of Jesus – and through the proclamation of Jesus.  I mentioned how difficult life can be, especially at Christmastime.  Paul’s offer is that the story of Jesus and our participation in telling that story fills us with divine strength. 

That’s what filled Mary when she sang her song.  That’s what filled the sky when angels praised God the night of Jesus’ birth.  That spiritual power filled our members as they baked hundreds of treats given away at yesterday’s food pantry.  This divine strength drove Paul to embrace being arrested if that’s what it took for him to tell Roman leaders and even the emperor himself the story of Jesus.  He knew of what he spoke when he declared that the gospel of Jesus our Savior strengthens us (16:25). 

So, we enter the story.  We tell it with our own voices.  Mary with Elizabeth; angels and shepherds; Paul in his letters; and us – God’s church gathered on the fourth Sunday Advent.  Our voices join the eternal chorus giving God glory.  We see what God has done and we praise Him!  We can’t hold it in. 

AMEN

---

[i] Frederick, John.  Working Preacher website. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fourth-sunday-of-advent-2/commentary-on-romans-1625-27-5.

[ii] Achtemeier, Paul (1985).  Interpretation: A Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Romans, John Knox Press (Atlanta), p.239.

“God the Gift Giver” (Isaiah 61:1-4)

 

Third Sunday of Advent, December 8, 2020

 watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26LCaV0sZAY

Reading for the third Sunday - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw__McD9KmQ

            “To Robby, from Santa”; I loved reading those words on a package under the tree, Christmas morning, 1979.   If I opened that package and it was sweater, I’d force myself to smile and say, “Thank you.”  I was 9!  I didn’t want a sweater.  If I opened that package, and it was a Luke Skywalker action figure, the one where he’s holding a lightsaber, you couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.  I’d run through the house making lightsaber sounds.  It didn’t matter what other presents I might get.  Unless my brother got a Han Solo action figure, and got to make blaster sounds!

            What Christmas present would put a smile on your face? 

            In Isaiah 61, we see God the gift-giver and Isaiah, the delivery man.  Spirit-filled, the anointed prophet recites the gifts God gives and those who will receive them.  To the oppressed, Isaiah delivers “Good News” from God.  This portion of Isaiah comes at the end of the Babylonian exile to a people completely devastated and about to begin trying to re-start life.

            Imagine the newscast after a tornado blows through.  Houses are reduced to rubble.  People’s belongings have swirled and mingled with their neighbors’ and it’s all shredded, waterlogged, and strewn about.  Once treasured possessions now lie as unrecognizable trash to be gathered and discarded.  This wrecked community is supposed to clean-up, rebuild, and start over.  Impoverished Jews in late 6^th century Persia were permitted to return to Israel.  What awaited them there?  Piles of rubble that used to be their homes.  The prophet gives these broken people the promise that God is still God, that God sees them, and that God will, in them, begin building a new community.  They are not abandoned. 

            We are not broken, not forever.  Many today feel like they are.  But, God the gift-giver gives good news.  He sees all the pain the world has endured this year and He has not left us out to dry.  Working through His church, speaking to people’s hearts, and through His ever-present Holy Spirit, God promises a new day.

            What else does the prophet have to offer?

            To the captives, God gives liberty, and to prisoners, God gives literal release. The people of God were in a forced exile in Babylon, just as they had been slaves in Egypt centuries before.  In those days, Moses, working wonders, led the people out of Pharaoh’s clutches.  In the 6^th century, God stirred the heart of the Persian monarch who defeated Babylon, and released the Jews.  They left their exile, their captivity, and walked across the desert home to the Promised Land.

            We have at times this year, felt captive to the virus, unable to go out and live the only lives we have known, whether going to work or out to eat or to the library or fitness club or church.  We’ve been exiled to our houses.  Personal liberty and freedom of movement have become idols that rule our lives.   When these gods of ours are threatened, we feel we’ve lost something precious.

We are also locked in addiction to material wealth.  If something prevents us from spending our way to happiness, we feel chained.

We’re bound by naturalistic restrictions that prevent us from fully understanding the extent of God’s power.  We’ve lost belief in the miraculous.  If we can’t explain something, it must not be possible.  Instead of freeing us as it should, scientifically acquired knowledge reduces us.  We think that phenomena that can be measured is all that there is. 

The Lord gives us freedom – complete freedom, to live in relationships of harmony with Him and each other.  We can even feel this freedom when we’re socially distanced, when we’re at home.  Spending less, buying less doesn’t bother us because our joy is in the Lord.  We appreciate science as a great gift from God given to help us organize and understand our world.  Freed by God, we know science is wonderful, but does not tell us all there is to know.

What other gifts of God does the anointed prophet present?  Comfort!  Comfort is there for all who mourn.

Do you know someone who has died due to COVID-19?  I do.  If you don’t, your neighbor probably does. 

Do you know anyone who has died or been injured in an encounter with a police officer?  I do not, but I have friends who have been unfairly treated, bullied, and intimidated.  Most officers are good people who want to serve.  I had a wonderful encounter with a very compassionate cop this week.  There are, though, some bad apples in law enforcement and they use their power to intimidate.  The victim is not just the unfortunate citizen to be pushed around, but all of us who want to have confidence in the system.  We are put against one another, some shouting “black lives matter,” other responding, “law and order.”  We grieve that our democracy too often doesn’t work, and our sense of community comes apart at the seams, and public trust is at an all-time low.  There is no “we.”

Sorrow comes in personal tragedies.  Some listen through tears because their individual lives have been invaded by grief, the death of a beloved brother, or parent, or friend, or child.  God comforts us when we mourn.  “Give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning.”  God’s light shines into the hazy gray fog of loss, bringing hope and new life.

The prophet spoke these words of God’s newness and God’s gifts in the 6^th and fifth centuries BC.  Then, in the first century AD, God’s spirit came upon a young woman in Israel, Mary.  God became flesh and Jesus grew into a man, the Messiah, the Savior, the fulfilment of the law and the prophets, including Isaiah’s words here.

At the start of his ministry, Luke 4, Jesus stood up in the synagogue on the Sabbath.  Imagine a recent high school graduate, one of our own, standing up in the Sunday morning church service to read the Bible.  In his hometown synagogue, Jesus read this passage we’ve been reading.  By then, Isaiah was already regularly cited as a holy text in worship services. 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news,” Jesus read; the same words we heard this morning.  What commentary did Jesus offer?  What word did he have to say about our gift-giving God?

Luke writes that all eyes in the synagogue were fixed on him (4:20).  He took his time.  He knew they were listening.  Deliberately, he sat down and looked out at the people.  His searching gaze penetrated their hearts.  He said, “This scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  Every promise of God comes to full flower in Jesus. 

Jesus demonstrated love and acceptance, showing no favoritism for the famous, rich, or powerful.  He wasn’t impressed.  He loved those who had no ability to impress.  He taught God’s law and God’s ways thoroughly.  He embodied truth and justice, as well as mercy and grace.  Finally, he gave the ultimate gift, his own life.  For my sins and everyone’s sins, he died on the cross. 

God the gift-giver gives the will to rebuild and the strength to start again to all of us.  To the those in bondage, literally prisoners and slaves, and those enslaved to addictions and dangerous ideologies, he gives liberty, release, freedom.  To the broken hearted, the poor souls locked in sorrow, he gives comfort.  God the gift-giver: he gives us himself.  He gives Jesus. 

I remember Christmas morning excitement, hoping to get a “wow’ gift.  It’s a wonderful time for kids and for all of us.  This year, my wife asked me for my Christmas list, and I couldn’t think of anything.  She’ll give me something to unwrap and I’ll be grateful, but I couldn’t think of a thing to ask for.  It just seems like there are weightier matters to think about than what I’ll find in the package I unwrap. 

I’ll genuinely and gratefully receive gifts people give me.  I count myself blessed.  Transformation is the gift God gives.

He promises that we will build up what has fallen; we will raise up what was crushed; we will repair the broken things in the world.  He, the giver of gifts, will work through us – his church – just as He spoke through his prophet, Isaiah.  We will be oaks of righteousness.  Our church, loving the world and serving others, will be the fruit that displays God’s glory.

A new Star Wars figure sends 9-year-old Robby gleefully running through the house on Christmas morning.  This Gospel hope fills the church.  We – his disciples – are transformed, so that God’s light emanates from us.  We take in the broken, the bound, the grieving, and we give them Jesus, the giver of good gifts.

AMEN

All People are Like Grass (Isaiah 40:1-11)

 

Second Sunday of Advent – December 6, 2020

watch it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifBp6nMdD9k

Her son, 10, and daughter, 5 look at her with sunken, hungry eyes.  The Babylonian army has besieged Jerusalem for weeks.  Supplies have run out.  The assault begins and does not take long.  They break through the city walls.  The few soldiers who put up a defense are quickly impaled on Babylonian spears.  Families are dragged from their homes into the dust of the streets flowing with Israelite blood.  They watch as the Babylonians burn Solomon’s glorious temple. 

            Then, the march.  Mile after mile they walk to their new home, their new normal as slaves in Babylon.  She does not survive the journey but her son and daughter do.  They will live as people without rights on the bottom rung of the social ladder in Babylon until that little boy and girl are in their 70’s, the elder generation of Jews in this foreign place.  They do what they can to keep memories of Israel alive.

            They tell the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  They remember Moses and the Exodus through the Red Sea.  They tell of Joshua and settling the Promised Land.  They remember the victories of David and the temple of Solomon.  But now the brother and sister are old, tired, broken people.  For decades they have listened as their Babylonian overlords mocked their God.  Is it true?  Are the Gods of Babylon superior to Yahweh? Is their God as dead as they feel?

            A rumor spreads of a new prophet rising in the Jewish quarter.  Young people are talking about what he has said.  At a make-shift gathering where one of the few available scrolls of the Torah is read on the Sabbath (thank goodness the Babylonians allow this), people are saying this Jewish prophet has something new to say. 

            This old man and old woman saw their dreams shattered decades ago, a thousand miles way.  Everything they hoped for was violently ripped from them.  Still, they go.  What else is there to do?  The surprisingly large crowd of Jews listen as the young prophet says,   

Comfort, O comfort my people,
    says your God.
² Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her
that she has served her term,
    that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
    double for all her sins.

 

            Can there be comfort?  The people of God have been swallowed by the sands of history, buried under the force of an enemy too powerful for God.  No, says the prophet.  Mighty Babylon? Don’t buy it! Babylon was a tool in the hands of the Almighty God, used to punish his people, says the prophet. 

            Exile did not happen because of Babylon’s strength but because of Israel’s sin.  Now the prophet says the penalty for that sin has been paid.  The Lord’s punishment is over.  It’s a new day.  God punished, but did not abandon His people.  God does not do that.  God faithful and sovereign offers a new word. 

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
    make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
⁴ Every valley shall be lifted up,
    and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
    and the rough places a plain.
⁵ Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
    and all people shall see it together,
    for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

 

            The first command is “comfort.”  Heavenly beings are ordered by the most-high God to give solace to His people.  Scripture gives glimpses of a heavenly realm that is full of creatures we cannot imagine.  These heavenly beings are mentioned in Genesis, Job, Daniel, Revelation and other places, always in service to God.  “Comfort” – the word we see in Isaiah 40:1 – is a verb in the imperative form.  The heavenly beings must obey God’s order to comfort his people. 

A second command is “prepare.” The prophet prepares the way of the Lord – the way God will lead His people back to the Promised Land.  King Cyrus who will lead Persia to overthrow Babylon is to free the Jews and send them home in a second Exodus.  Centuries later, a wild-eyed prophet named John prepares the world for the coming of Jesus by preaching repentance and baptizing those who come to him. 

We who read the Bible, worship the Lord, and believe that God loves us are commanded to prepare the world to meet Jesus.  We tell our story of coming to new life in Christ.  We tell of His grace and the salvation He offers.  We help our friends who don’t know him clear away the clutter that blocks the pathway into their hearts. 

Comfort.  Prepare.  The third command is “Cry out.”  Proclaim God’s word.  What message is the prophet to announce? 

All people are grass,
    their constancy is like the flower of the field.
⁷ The grass withers, the flower fades,
    when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
    surely the people are grass.
⁸ The grass withers, the flower fades;
    but the word of our God will stand forever.

 

All people are grass.  The King of Babylon is grass just like the blind beggar wallowing in the dust of the street hoping someone will spare a bit of bread.  All people are grass. George Floyd, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, you, me – all people are equal.  All wither and fade.  The wealthy slumlord and the renter trapped in poverty stand before God in the same condition.  Right now, some have it easy and others suffer, but that inequality will end.  Injustice cannot stand before the almighty God.  He puts all things right.

The tears that suffering brings are real and maybe you have hard to bear hurt and loss.  God sees the tears shed by shattered hearts.  God knows death is claiming victims everywhere right now.  God hears our cries. 

Isaiah knows suffering.  The Old Testament knows disillusionment, defeat, and death.  Many 6^th century BC Jews had given up.  But the prophet saw beyond the immediate dire circumstances.  The prophet shows us that God is a deliverer. 

Get you up to a high mountain,
    O Zion, herald of good tidings;^[a]
lift up your voice with strength,
    O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,^[b]
    lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
    “Here is your God!”
¹⁰ See, the Lord God comes with might,
    and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
    and his recompense before him.
¹¹ He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
    he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
    and gently lead the mother sheep.

 

We know Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of these words.    

The birth of Jesus reminds us that God sees the inequalities and injustices of our broken the world.  God has done something about it.  In Jesus, God empathizes with us and takes upon himself the worst of us and nails it to a cross.  Our sins, our pain, our grief, our loss – it has been crucified with Christ.  In Him, we are no longer slaves to sin.  We are new creations and we have a mission.

We are witnesses.  In this age, the people of God, we who are in Christ, tell our story about how we have come to know God through the salvation we have received in Jesus.

Withering grass and fading flowers reminded Isaiah that in the end, all are equal before God – equally small, equally sinful, equally lost.  The wealthy, the poor and everyone in between, we all fade.  Isaiah reminds us that God gathers in his shepherd arms, holds us, feeds us, and lifts us to where He is. 

Jesus uses different metaphors, a table, and a cross.  At that cross, we are all dead.  He invites we who are dead to the table – all of us.  Everyone gets a seat.  The imperfect, the defective, the broken – we sit together in a community of love. 

We serve each other bread – his body broken; our sins covered.  We serve each other wine – his blood shed; eternal life given to us. 

As we walk in the promises of Isaiah, acknowledging that pain is real but has been defeated by the power of Christ, we walk to the table, guests of our loving Heavenly Father.  We are invited to be at home at this table.  We dare to believe that God is real, can be trusted, and will make the world right.  We dare to live in that belief.

Once we’ve eaten, we go out and tell our story of life in Christ. We walk in the light and we spend our lives inviting others to come with us as we enter the story of the God who comforts, heals, makes us whole, and gathers us in His shepherd arms.

AMEN