A king dies, a baby lives

Joseph, a good guy who followed his dreams. Herod, a powerful, demanding ruler. Which one protected the son of God? Which one kept the baby Jesus alive? Who succumbed to death - and who made life possible for everyone else?

This message was shared at the Stewart Health Center at Springmoor Retirement Center on December 29, 2019. It's unusual that I would be at Springmoor two weeks in a row, much less three times in one month, but the people at the Health Center were not going to have a worship service. I cherish the time with that congregation and am delighted to be able too spend so much time there this year.

You can listen to a recording of the sermon as delivered here.

The lessons of the day are:

Isaiah 63:7-9 

Psalm 148

Hebrews 2:10-18

Matthew 2:13-23

Triune God – Almighty Preserving Father, Redeeming Son Jesus, Everpresent Holy Spirit – reveal to us how you would have us love. Let these words touch our hearts and bring us together in you. Amen.

Well look who’s back!

It’s our stand-up guy Joseph. You might remember that last week Joseph followed God instead of the culture of the day and did what needed to be done without saying too much. He did what God asked of him in a dream and provided for Mary and her baby Jesus.

So this week Joseph is back:

* Dreaming – multiple times!

* Listening to God’s message in that dream

* Caring for the baby Jesus and his mother Mary.

In this week’s Joseph story, Joseph and his little family could be any restless immigrants, not that different than the immigrants today who are fleeing their homelands. The places that have familiar food and culture, landscape and weather. The places that look and take and sound and feel like HOME.

No matter how lovely a place, it’s hard to leave home and go be the stranger, the different one.

There is no doubt that Joseph knew what his people had experienced in Egypt centuries before – the slavery and the exodus, the 40 years of wandering and the miraculous escort into the Promised Land. 

When the Israelites had complained it was because they wanted to go back to Egypt, back to the land of fish and cucumber, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic. Tasty foods. And it was relatively easy to travel to Egypt but was out of Herod’s grasp. But it was not home. 

Still, Joseph went. Once again, he did what needed to be done to protect the baby. He didn’t try to stay and demand fairness and justice, he just stepped out of the way of Herod’s wrath.

I wonder if he thought “Oh, this is the Son of God… I have to protect him!”

Maybe.

But I’m guessing that Joseph’s concern may have been more immediate than that. A little less cosmic and a lot more practical: Herod the King had ordered that all the babies the age of Jesus. Joseph was in that baby’s life since the very beginning, Joseph loved his wife Mary and her baby, and he was going to do what he could to keep them safe.

Joseph didn’t have to worry about the Son of God, it was enough that he lived in a way that protected and preserved life – a very normal thing for parents to do.

And then there’s Herod:

Herod was a very different sort of man than Joseph.

We don’t know a whole lot about Herod, but in the text today he comes across as someone for whom power is more important than thoughtfulness.

Of course, he didn’t know the WHOLE story. He didn’t know about the angels who had appeared to Mary and Elizabeth, to Joseph in a dream and to the shepherds in their fields. 

And then there were the Wise Men, or Kings, or scientists/scholars who had come by thinking that SURELY he would know about this new king that had been prophesied but Herod did not. And when he found out?

He did not take it well.

In his world, king meant only one thing: power.

And power meant exactly one thing: winning at all costs.

And Herod was not interested in being challenged. He liked his power and the most important thing to him was to keep it. To keep the power over the people – even if it meant hurting and killing some of them.

So he gave orders:

First to the visiting scientist/scholars – go find that baby and then come back and let me know what you found, ok?

But that did not work out so well either. The scientists/scholars figured out that this Herod guy was not going to be kind. They saw that baby, they saw the miracle of it. And they just wandered home another way.

In their wisdom, and like Joseph, they just stepped out of the way of Herod’s wrath.

Herod was NOT GOING TO HAVE IT though. Herod got madder – the text says INFURIATED. Did he stop to think? Did he notice how easy it was for the scientists/scholars to sidestep his order? Apparently not.

So he gave another order. This time a horrific, terrible order. He used his significant human power to kill. He ordered that all the boy babies younger than 2 should be killed. He had decided that his human power would be enough, that he could control the world, and protect himself by harming others.

Protect himself by killing babies – babies the age of Jesus. 

So many senseless deaths, and Herod still did not get what he thought he wanted. God had selected Joseph, so the baby Jesus was not among them. It was not Jesus’s time to die.

And here is the miracle of it:

Herod, the one with all the power, power to 

* Pitch a fit rather than learn about the actual promise

* Find it surprising when people did not obey him

* Take his self-centered anger out on everyone around him AND

* Demand the destruction of two whole years’ of baby boys….

That’s a lot of power, at least by human standards.

But it is nothing – absolutely nothing – compare to what God did through individuals who had little or not social or political power.

* The three kings just went home a different way, bypassing Herod completely. I wonder how long it took for Herod to realize he was being ignored?

* Joseph and Mary, young parents of a toddler, got up and took that baby out of the country to a safer place in Egypt.

* And Joseph, Mary, and Jesus went back to their homeland, having outlived that angry king, despite all his worldly power.

And in this encounter, we see the difference between God’s power and human power:

* God worked quietly, gently, through weak (by worldly standards) human beings like Mary and Joseph and the least powerful of all – a baby. God led the kings home on a different road and stymied Herod’s plan to nab the baby.

o Herod, on the other hand, was interested primarily in himself and his earthly power. He used that power to force people to obey his anger-fueled will. He relied on power, not relationship.

* God worked under the radar – first in coming as a baby, then in Egypt, and always at a straightforward human level.

o Herod wielded power on a large scale, even to the point of destruction of a whole segment of the population.

* And here is the biggest difference: Herod died. Eventually, of course, Jesus would die too, but unlike Herod, Jesus did not stay dead.

That baby who was loved and protected, spirited away as a child, 

     who lived a humble life without anything fancy

     

      who consorted with the people that were cast out of polite society

     

      who never killed anyone but did bring people back to life

     

who loved and cared so much that the power people – the Herod’s of the time – had him killed

THAT is the Jesus of the Resurrection.

And that is where the meaning lies in our story today.

In the end, human power cannot save you.

In the end, aligning with Jesus, following Jesus, 

     Following God’s call on your life 

Focusing on God’s will by being in relationship with God and in loving relationship with those around you

Those are the outward signs of a life that has been transformed and saved by Jesus, the Savior.

Loving God more than human power… Loving each other rather than harming others to accumulate human power that cannot last. Loving Jesus.

That is how we are saved.

Like Jesus -- In Jesus -- By Jesus.

Amen.

Does it really matter?

Lots of people celebrate this time of year. Some because presents are fun. Some because it's a family or cultural ritual. Some people will recite a story of a baby and his teenage mom and stepfather/protector. There are songs and traditions. But does it matter - does it REALLY MATTER - for our everyday lives? Will it matter on January 1 or January 7 or June 14?

This message combines the Gospel lessons from the last Sunday in Advent and Christmas Eve. I was speaking at the Stewart Health Center at Springmoor Retirement Village on Sunday, December 22 (Advent 4) and Atria Southpoint Walk on Tuesday, December 24 (Christmas Eve). Since this was the only Advent 4/Christmas Eve service that the residents would have, I combined the two Gospel lessons into one message. The theme riffs off of the message in the Old Testament reading that the Messiah would come from the stump of Jesse - not a new tree, but the roots and remains of an older one. You can listen to the message here.

The two Gospel lessons were:
Matthew 1:18-25
Luke 2:1-20

These are the two Gospels that record the story of Jesus being born.

Father who created us, baby Jesus who we celebrate in this season, Holy Spirit who lives and moves among us constantly, take these words and transform them by your love that we may know you more.  Amen.

At the tail end – ALMOST TIME!

Waiting and waiting

For restoration of creation

Short days and long nights

Seeking relief from brokennss

But this story that we heard today – does it still matter today?

I mean, there were lots of babies born and we don’t think about them. They lived and died and that was that.

But this one… was it special, aside from the poverty?  

I think that if the story is to make a difference it really does need to have some application for the lives of people today. 

Let’s start with Joseph:

* Wanted to do THE RIGHT THING

* Right according to social order

* Right by Mary

* Right according to God (in the dream)

* And he chose God

He doesn’t speak much and we really don’t hear much about Jesus, but…

* Did he build a crib for that baby?

* Took some punches – when Jesus was 12 (FATHER’S house? Ouch to step dad)

* And then we don’t hear from him again

Joseph’s legacy lives today in people who show up and go unheralded.

* The people who work in the cafeteria and make sure you have nutritious food, even on holidays.

* The people who keep the electricity going to we can all be warm.

* The nurses and medical professionals

o The people who show up at churches and missions and ministries

And then there is the story of Jesus being born. Who was part of that story?

* Not the perfect nuclear family, but a teenaged unwed mom and the man who would take care of a child that was not his

* Shepherds – scoundrels who got sent out with the sheep because they weren’t nice enough or rich enough

* The innkeeper who took in that (soon to be) family that they did not know

Angels came and sang and the glory of God broke through the very heavens. But there were no tickets, it was just for who was there.

It was a foreshadowing of what Jesus cared about: being present for the people that are not all about what the social order said was most important. In particular:

* The wicked tax collectors who oppressed the people and stole from them because they could – supported by the government that absolutely knew what they were doing. There is no mention of an “honest” tax collector.

* Mentally ill people who were relegated to tombs – people that got chained up because nobody knew what else to do with, for, or about them.

* Children, who had no standing.

* Crowds of strangers who came for the spectacle, out of curiosity

That is a life that the story of Jesus being born in a stable points to. It’s like he was born in poverty and never really saw a need to go anywhere else.

He was also setting an example for the people who would follow him. A call to

* Spend time with the scoundrels – the people who do not end up at the center of power and social importance

* Provide housing for people who are poor and in need – even if they look like a pregnant teenager and her boyfriend 

* Mentally or physically ill people who are doing the best they can and who need love more than anything else

* Children, who require so much work and have so little to give back – except for love. Most of the time.

* Strangers that seem odd for whatever reason

The birth of Jesus pointed to the life of Jesus, and to the degree that we can care for all the people, not just the ones who have something to give back to us, we are following Jesus. And I see it every day in the faces and hearts of people who have need and the people who make sacrifices to meet those needs in the ways that we can here and now.

And then there is Mary. Right in the middle of all this. After she had 

* learned she was going to have a baby – despite being a virgin

* learned that her cousin Elizabeth was pregnant even though she was old

* taken the trip to Bethlehem

* found a place to stay after all  

* visited by those scoundrel shepherds who had an astonishing story of…

* ANGELS

She kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.

I have always wondered… WHAT DID THAT MEAN???

Until I embarked on this life of ministry. And I saw:

* There were exactly enough boxes of food for the people who came.

* There were an abundance of gifts from strangers, given to people they would never meet.

* Ministries that are touching lives despite negativity from people who think that ministry can look only one way

Daddy used to say you don’t have to believe me, just remember.

* Not disbelief; lack of understanding

* Tools before we know we need them

This pondering is our call to faith

      Notice the things that make no sense

      See how it shows up in our lives

Because that humble birth foreshadowed the REAL reason that Christmas is still important to us today.

* Jesus walked humbly

* Jesus lived so far outside of the world that valued human things, like wealth and power and privilege that

* Jesus was killed

Of course, people are killed all the time for living outside of our society’s standards.

But this is the difference with Jesus:

Jesus was resurrected. His life that started in a stable and was characterized from the beginning and all the way through by humility and caring for “the least of these” was apparently so powerful that it defeated EVEN DEATH.

And who would not want to follow that kind of life?

If we want to defeat death, then we have only one example: the Jesus who was born among strangers, announced to scoundrels watching animals out in the pasture, and cared for by his teenager mother and a man who was not his father.

The Jesus who fed everybody, gravitated to the outcasts, and turned a bunch of fishermen into people who spread a faith that we profess today.

And so yes, this story DOES still matter to us today. 

Not because a guy named Joseph did what needed to be done but because we are called to be gracious to each other and do what needs to be done. 

Not because God’s heavenly messangers, the angels, sang to shepherds in the field but because we are called as earthly messengers of God‘s will to go to the scoundrels and to give the gifts that we have been given so richly. 

Not even because a teenager named Mary was faced with confusing things and pondered them in her heart, but because we are faced with confusing things and ponder them in our hearts. 

As a result the story of that a pregnant teenager, a good guy, angels, shepherds, and a baby in a manger matters for us today. More than ever. 

So today I wish you a Merry Christmas and rejoice with you that we too will one day be resurrected. And in the meantime, we will be loved.

Amen

Stump or sapling?

It's all very upside down, this being with God. Advent in particular seems like an upside-down time. People are running around busily having parties and buying gifts and decorating and baking, or maybe working hard, wondering how they will have the resources to celebrate as it seems they are "supposed" to. But Advent in the church year is a time of waiting and wondering, which is quite the opposite of the very busy doing that consumes so many people.

That was the theme this week at the Stewart Health Center at Springmoor Retirement Village, where I preached to my beloved congregation of people who no longer have the capacity to run around busily. Bodies and minds that don't quite work the way they used to, and yet... each and every person is completely beloved of God and can therefore wait and wonder and rejoice. You can listen to the message, recorded live, here.

Isaiah 11:1-10

Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19

Romans 15:4-13

Matthew 3:1-12

Come Holy Spirit. Show us who you are and how you are. Let you Word be the Word that is heard today. Amen.

I have been noticing something recently. I don’t think it’s anything new, but I have noticed that we – people in general – spend a lot of time talking about how things are supposed to be.

Take the weather – at the beginning of October it was 100 degrees, way hotter than it is supposed to be! Then at the end of the month it was in the 40s, way colder than it is supposed to be.

Then there are parents and children: are children wilder than they are supposed to be because their parents are not controlling their behavior, or are parents more protective than they are supposed to be, never allowing their kids to get in trouble or learn from their mistakes?

It comes up over and over – people aren’t supposed to be so rich, or so poor, or so sick, or have it so easy.  There are even people who might say the pastor is not supposed to wear jeans and sneakers to a worship service! And yet… here I am.

We seem to have some pretty strong ideas of how things should line up.

Which is why it is always so surprising to read passages in the Bible like the ones we heard today. Those passages seem to be exactly opposite of everything we “just know” about how things are supposed to be.

Take the first reading. Isaiah is encouraging the Israelites, who are about to have a really, really hard time in captivity… and his encouragement is that the big promise – their big redemption is going to come from a stump.

Many people would not look for something new in the leftover end of a tree that has been cut down.

Or say you are a shepherd… every shepherd knows that you do not let a wolf into the pen to sleep with sheep! And yet, in this new time that Isaiah talks about, brought on by a branch from a stump, wolves will lie down with the sheep.

Is it that the sheep will no longer be in danger, or is it that the wolves will no longer want to hurt sheep?

And then there is the one that horrifies me most: a baby playing near the hole of a snake. Who would DO that?!?! And yet… what if the pains of our world were gone? What if babies were safe everywhere, even by a snake’s hole.

What if that is how creation was meant to be, and our sense of how things are supposed to be is based not on the perfect creation of God, but of our own experience of a very broken world?

Now this is a hard thing. It’s hard to remember that God is different than most of our experiences ever… that our common sense is not God’s common sense. And yet, when we have spiritual experiences, encounter God in some way, we notice how different it is than the world around us. And it is beautiful or magical or just sticks with us in some part of our being in a way we can’t seem to shake.



I wonder if that is why, in the gospel lesson, people from all over Judea came out to see John. He certainly wasn’t wearing the finery of the priests. He ate bugs and honey, not the rich meat and bread from Temple sacrifices. But people from all over the place heard something special when he spoke. Something wild and different, but also something special. Something more like God than like the broken world they were living in.

Even the well-fed, well-dressed, religious expert Pharisees and Sadducees came out to see what was up. John was not like them, but they apparently wanted to see what was going on. Was it because they sensed God’s presence? Or were they jealous that John was drawing a crowd? We don’t really know… but what we do know is that John calls them…

VIPERS. A whole brood of vipers. The dangerous kinds of animals that we keep our babies away from.

John told them that they were looking in the wrong place for their hope – that the hope would not come from what they thought was supposed to happen.

John told them that the ax was at the root and the trees that weren’t bearing good fruit would be cut down. Into STUMPS. Like the stumps of Isaiah, maybe.

John did not say everything would be destroyed and started fresh. In fact, God had promised Noah a long time ago that everything would NOT be destroyed. But the useless trees would be cut down and something new and better would come from the stumps. That is a hopeful message! Unless you are one of the trees being cut down….


It’s true for each of us: we are in a broken world that tells us that greed is good, wealth is more important than work, poverty is a moral failing, and illness is our own fault. None of which are part of God’s original, perfect creation. And the more we look to the world the more pain we feel when we are cut back to stumps.

That is why, even in the most secular parts of our world, when individuals encounter generosity, creative work, compassionate healing, and love for all people we notice that it is different. And we like it. We long for it. Even when it comes from preachers wearing jeans and purple camo sneakers. Even when it comes from the places we least expect it.

Those encounters with God give us hope. It isn’t going to fix the brokenness of the world but it does reassure us that the brokenness has not completely won the day.

It gives us hope for things that seem out of step with “contemporary” values (which are remarkably similar to the ways the world has been broken since near the beginning.)

We hope that this goodness and compassion and love can spread and we recognize it in people who love and care without regard to the prevailing society. We notice it when someone cares about children, or eats with tax collectors or criminals. We notice when people are being fed for no other reason than that they are hungry.

We notice when people (sometimes surprisingly) do things that Jesus did consistently, all the time.


And that brings us to the good news that I bring to you again today:

If you feel more like a stump than a sapling, it’s ok. Because Jesus was the goodness that came from the Stump of Jesse that Isaiah mentioned. If you feel like a stump you can remember that Jesus was a stump, too.

If you feel a little out of step, like somehow things are not as they are supposed to be, remember today’s messages that the way things are is not the way God intends and that ultimately God will have God’s way. And when that happens you will be returned to the perfection you were created to be.

In the words of Jesus, the words we will hear again at the culmination of this Advent time of hope – Fear Not.

Jesus knows you and loves you.

Jesus lived a human life and did not fit in.

Jesus was so far from what people were supposed to be that they killed him!

Fortunately for us, Jesus was also so far from what people were supposed to be that he did not stay dead. The divine Jesus was Resurrected and because of that we too will be Resurrected someday, to be fully the people that God originally created humanity to be.

So here we are in Advent. Living in ongoing hope for a Savior to come again. A Savior who would not stay dead will certainly not be held by any broken earthly ideas of how things are supposed to be.

So be encouraged.

You are loved.

You are wonderful and marvelous and can be who you were created by God to be in every moment of your life… regardless of how the world says things are supposed to be.

Amen.