(The Rev.) M. T. Curry

Easter Sermon - The Next Chapter

I. Intro: 

Precious Ramotswe is the only licensed female private investigator in the south African country of Botswana, so even though she is training herself while on the job it is entirely accurate that she named her firm “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” in the first episode of the BBC television series by the same name based on the novels by Alexander McCall.  To drum up business for the agency, she has leaflets printed and passed around that asks, “Is there someone that you know and love who has mysteriously vanished?”  This catches the eye of Petal Siphambe, whose husband Peter disappeared two Sundays ago.  Petal is Catholic, but Peter had gotten involved with an apostolic church… though the wife is suspicious that it is another woman he is really involved with.  Precious Ramotswe calls this “the case of the absconding apostolic,” and after some effort she finds the pastor of Peter’s church and confronts him at the riverside where he performs baptisms.

“He’s gone to a better place,” Pastor Shadrack says.  “You mean he’s dead,” our lady detective presses.  “Nope, he’s alive, in a way that you and I can only dream of.  The good Lord has taken him… Two weeks ago I was baptizing sinners; there were six deacons in the water helping that day; Peter Siphambe was one of them.  I immersed the young lady sinner, then I saw to my amazement there were only five deacons in the water; I counted again, but still only five.  Peter Siphambe completely vanished… the Lord has taken him body and soul.  But I made no report to the autorities of this miracle.  You know, sometimes it’s difficult to explain these things to non-believers.”

A few days later, Mma Ramotswe concludes her investigation proving that Peter was eaten by a crocodile, which stragely is a relief to his wife.  What sticks in my mind though are the pastor’s words: “I made no report to the authorities of this miracle.  You know, sometimes it’s difficult to explain these things to non-believers.”

II.

This morning we also have a story about a miracle going unreported – a body gone missing.  The passage we have heard read from the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark is the original ending of the book.  In my opinion, it’s an awkward and unsatisfactory ending, listen again to Mark chapter 16, verse 8: 

“So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

That’s not the way to end a book!  This was supposed to be the climactic moment.  The hero, whom everyone had counted as dead is dead no more.  We are supposed to end this story on a high note, right?  We are here for a celebration, not a funeral… we sing of joy, not of fear.  And what do we hear?  That the women who gather at the tomb that very first Easter don’t seem to get it, instead when they encounter the angel at the empty tomb, they get scared and run away.  While the traditional “they all lived happily ever after” might be an inappropriate way to end a book of the Bible, at a very minimum, aren’t we entitled to a positive, inspirational conclusion to the story of Jesus’ life.  The word “gospel,” after all comes from the Old English meaning “Good News.”

III.

Imagine memorizing the entire Gospel of Mark and performing it as a broadway-style one-man show. Donald H. Juel, the late New Testament scholar, spoke about a student of his who did just that.  During the first performance, the actor got to these last verses of Mark and shifted from foot to foot… kind of sputtering to the end.  The tension in the auditorium as he finished, “they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid…” was so thick that after a few moments he said, “Amen.” And the relieved crowd broke into loud and appreciative applause.  As satisfactory as this “Amen” was to his audience, in subsequent performances he decided that sticking to the text, with all the tension of its original ending would be a more faithful reading, so he stated those words in what could be called a confident whisper, “they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  He then paused for a breath and walked off the stage in silence. “The discomfort and uncertainty within the audience were obvious,” said Juel, “and as people exited … the buzz of conversation was dominated by the experience of the nonending.”[1]

Mark did not have to end this way, in fact, the other gospel-writers – those responsible for Matthew, Luke and John – take a considerable approach in ending their books.  They each have unique conclusions that include Jesus himself appearing to the women… and they don’t stop there.  Jesus eats breakfast with the disciples, appears behind locked doors, travels with friends on a dusty road; in one famous example, Jesus even allows Thomas to touch the holes in his hands and side.  These are what the experts call post-resurrection appearances.  These stories are placed at the end of the Gospels to prove a point: Jesus is alive and he is reaching out to his followers to comfort, encourage and forgive them.

But Mark is different.  Mark’s ending leaves us feeling like a child enchanted by her favorite TV show to have it end abruptly with the words “stayed tuned for next week…” or “to be continued…”  It is a let-down. 

And whose fault is it that we feel let down?  We could blame the gospel-writer, it’s as though he was pulled away from his desk just at the moment he should have been working on the grand finale – or his deadline came and the story had to go to print before he could formulate his conclusion.  We could blame the women for not getting it, for letting their emotions get the best of them.  But at least they were there!  We could blame Peter, James, John and the other disciples, for not understanding Jesus’ teaching from the beginning, for being there that Sunday morning in anticipation of such an event – someone could have at least accompanied the women to help them move the huge stone which had stood at the entrance of the tomb.  Any number of people could have intervened and kept us from such a “non-ending.”  In fact, at least two other ancient Christian writers tried to resolve this non-ending by providing their own ending to the story, but these fall flat and seem incongruous with the original.  In the end, we still have Mark’s non-ending.

That is how Mark leaves us, really, with an experience of a “nonending.”  I would say it a little differently, though: the way Mark ends this story of Jesus is with ellipses – the dot-dot-dot that we often encounter in our communication with friends.  It’s an indication that the story really isn’t finished, yet – that there is a next chapter to be written.  And this is Good News.  To understand this, we should take just a few steps back into the sixteenth chapter of Mark.

IV.

The absolute power of Mark’s gospel is contained in the fact that it even has a sixteenth chapter.  The fifteenth chapter ends with the crucified body of Jesus being wrapped in linen cloths and placed in a borrowed tomb.  A heavy stone is then rolled in front of the sepulcher to seal it.  That is it.  The story might have ended there… and the story of any other person probably would have ended there, but this is the story of Jesus Christ.  The stone, the tomb, the crucifixion were not enough to end this story.  The sixteenth chapter shows that Jesus has defeated death… that his story continues.

The women who come to Jesus’ tomb are there to attend to his dead body.  They bring spices for embalming, to cut the stench of death and dry the flesh; their concern is both practical and tenderly compassionate.  Their conversation as they walk to the garden is about how they will get the stone away from the entrance of the tomb.  We know that two of them are named Mary and the other Salome.  They have anticipated their task so eagerly that they arrive at the cemetery at sunrise.  This is where their stories and our story changes.  The stone has already been rolled away and inside the tomb there is no lifeless body of Jesus, but a stranger dressed all in white.  He is seated quite casually and seems to be expecting these women.  The man – an angel, we assume – tries to comfort the women, while passing on an important message: “Don’t be alarmed… You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’”

We get the sense from Mark’s Gospel that the message of the angel is lost, never forwarded by the women to Peter and the other disciples.  The angel’s message is fool-proof in a way – which is necessary because Jesus’ followers are always blundering and blubbering and “not catching on” in Mark’s Gospel.  We need to remember that Galilee is where these women, and most of the other disciples, are from in the first place.  This is where they would have ended up anyway, even if they didn’t receive the message given to the women in the empty tomb.  And there they will see the resurrected Jesus, just as they attempt to pick up the lives they had had in the years before they dropped everything to follow him.

Galilee is also where the Gospel of Mark chapter 1 begins.  So, in a very significant way, the angel’s message to the women is telling you and me to go back to the beginning and read the story again.  To reevaluate Jesus’ ministry in the light of his resurrection, even if we do not fully understand the significance of these events.  What the Easter angel is offering to the women is the instrcution to start over again.  The Easter message for us this morning is that we too have a chance to start over again… to turn the page to the next chapter.

V.

The famous radio personality Garrison Keillor tells the story of an encounter he had with the even more popular radio personality Paul Harvey.  They were sitting next to each other at a stuffy dinner in Chicago; Keillor said the highlight of the evening was “When the salad plates were whisked away and the entree brought in, he leaned over toward me and said, ‘Page … 2,’ just like he does on the radio.”

Who among us does not need to turn the page to the next chapter in our lives?  And this is what is possible.  Mark’s Gospel does not end with a satisfactory exclamation point, or even a period.  Instead we get this dot-dot-dot that invites us in to help finish the story, to be part of its next chapter.

In the end, or should I say, at this point of beginning we are quite a bit like the three women who went to the tomb that early Sunday morning.  The women came bearing spices, expensive perfume to preserve Jesus’ rotting flesh, or at least disguise its odor.  Similarly, many of us have arrived at this place this morning reeling from the personal cost of trying to cover-up the decay of our flesh, our relationships and our planet.  We pay an enormous price to cover our blemishes and anesthetize ourselves against the effects of our own destruction.  Keeping up appearances, play-acting that we are fine when our world is crumbling around us… these are costly pursuits.  There is good news for us this morning: this Easter is time for us to turn the page and begin a new chapter that recognizes that God has defeated death and we can face it head on ourselves.

The women’s conversation as they walked toward the garden that first Easter morning was about who would roll the stone away from the tomb.  Many of us are here this morning with a similar concern; stones have blocked our way.  Huge stones that we cannot seem to move out of the way ourselves.  These are stones that stop up our relationships making it nearly impossible for communication and affection to get through.  For others our stones are addictions that are preventing us from moving forward.  And for still others, these stones are the barriers that have been flung in front of us by mounting debt, the loss of a job, a child who seems to be spinning out of control.  There is good news for us this morning: this Easter is the time for us to turn the page and begin a new chapter that recognizes that God moves stones, God can make a way where we see no way, or as Paul teaches in Romans, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (8:38-9)

Finally, if we are honest with ourselves, we – like the women at the tomb —are stricken with fear.  Our anxiety levels have us in that constant place of either fight or flight.  We are paralyzed and perplexed.  We try to end violence with more violence, or find ourselves in the place of constant victimization.  Fear is real, but it is not the most powerful force at work in our world today. “He is not here, he has risen!”  Death and fear have been defeated.  There is good news for us this morning: this Easter is the time for us to turn the page and begin a new chapter in which life rules the day.  It is time for us to understand what Jesus has been trying to show us all along, that the opposite of fear is not courage or the ability to cause fear in others, but love.  The “war on terror” is not a military campaign.  The Bible teaches us that “Perfect love casts out fear,” and in the story of the empty tomb we see it realized: God’s Love Brings New Life.  “God’s Love Brings New Life.”  Perhaps that should be the title of your life’s next chapter.

[1] Thomas G. Long, http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=1944

Palm Sunday Sermon - I Love a Parade

I have always enjoyed a good parade: the spectacle, the sounds, the gathering of people together in a common celebration.  While I know not all of you may enjoy parades, something about them is in our DNA; can you imagine Thanksgiving without the Macy’s Parade or summer without the Mt Kisco Firemen’s Parade?

Parades are definitely in my DNA; after all, before Charlie Curry and Kathy Jamison were my parents, they were trombone players in the Grove City College marching band.  That’s where they met.  Maria and I met in marching band, too.

Parades were part of growing up.  Twice I remember marching in children’s parades.  One was the Children and Pets Parade at Fredonia Old Home Week in my grandfather’s hometown in Pennsylvania.  There were four of us grandchildren at the time:  I was 7, my sister Jen was 5, my cousins Andrew and Megan were 4 and 2.  We were dressed in matching short suits and were accompanied by the families’ three Shetland Sheepdogs: Branka, Toby and Katie.  I pulled the red wagon with Megan on-board.  Just to tug a little more at the heartstrings of the locals, we all wore Pittsburgh Pirates baseball caps.  This was the early eighties and some of you may remember those caps: the cylindrical ones with the flat top and the horizontal stripes.   Everyone in Fredonia called my grandfather “Butch,” though he had gone by “Harold” for decades; that day Butch was very proud.  And we took home a blue ribbon (maybe every kid did—if you were there, don’t tell me).

Our family had another success in the children’s parade realm when we entered the Billy Bowlegs Little Pirates Parade at the Santa Rosa Mall in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.  This was a couple years later, but again I was pulling a red wagon.  We disguised the wagon as a pirate’s ship with the help of a lot of cardboard, markers and duct tape.  My sister Becky was on-board this time.  Jen and I weren’t wearing Pittsburgh Pirates hats, instead we were dressed head to toe as the other kind of pirates: bandanas on our heads, our old jeans and shirts respectably distressed and tattered, we wore eye-patches that we constantly switched from one side to the other.  We made chains out of black construction paper and put them on Becky’s chubby toddler ankles, but the real booty we took home was first prize: a shell-encrusted treasure chest and a gift certificate for a department store at the mall.  The parade officials were so impressed by us that they asked us to march in the “real” parade the next night.  We did march in that parade… all two miles of it, though our cardboard pirate ship — which had been designed for the carpeted and climate controlled environment of the shopping mall — was left in the gutter bout ¾ of a mile along the route.

I could tell you about other parades in my life – remember, I was in the marching band—but we have another parade of sorts to address this morning.  The church’s Palm Sunday ritual is to look to our children to reenact Jesus’ triumphal entry to Jerusalem, but we should probably be reminded that this was not child’s play or even Old Home Week; the consequences of Jesus’ actions were a march to the cross a few days later. 

But I am getting ahead of myself.  The story from the Gospel of Mark shows that this was an event carefully orchestrated by Jesus.  In fact, the actual procession into Jerusalem is covered in four or five verses, while it takes 7 verses to describe the preparations.  In the Gospel of Matthew, which we didn’t hear today, the writer is so careful to describe the preparations that he has Jesus riding both a colt and a donkey. 

Preparation is a major theme each Passover, and that is the real reason so many people are gathered in Jerusalem.  It is the Passover meal that Jesus has so carefully planned to celebrate with his Disciples in the Upper Room this week. 

The crowds of Passover meant Jerusalem’s population was probably double its normal size.  The size of this crowd and the emotions of this holiday celebration deiverance and freedom threatened Pax Romana in the region, so Rome took this opportunity to throw its own parade; this parade which ushered the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate to the palace in the middle of Jerusalem contrasted greatly from the Palm Sunday procession, but it ultimately serves as the context for the actions of Jesus and his followers.

Pontius Pilate’s parade was a show of Roman military strength.  Chariot after chariot was joined by the unfurled banners and golden eagles atop tall staffs.  Soldiers on foot wore armor and carried their swords and spears.  Fanfares would have gone before the Roman governor’s chariot so that there was no doubt that Pontius Pilate was in charge here. If you were looking for a contemporary parallel here, you might think of the procession of American tanks into Baghdad six years ago crossed with a tickertape parade for the New York Yankees.  The people of Jerusalem would have been strongly urged to attend this parade and offer their solemn salute.

So, when Jesus throws his own parade, the contrasts would have been obvious: here the soldiers are replaced by children and peasants; the weapons of war replaced by palm branches; the national flags replaced by coats covering the dusty streets.  Jesus would not have been mistaken for Pilate in this parade—there were no war horses or golden chariots.  Instead Jesus was on the back of a donkey, and a colt of a donkey at that.  It would have been almost comical, Jesus probably had to lift his feel to keep them from dragging on the ground.  The solemnity of Pilate’s parade is replaced by the sounds of boisterous celebration: “Hosanna in the Highest!  Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna!”  The people were offering the greeting due to the Messiah and the King.

And Jesus is Messiah and King; his parade comments on just the kind of ruler he is.  This is street theater, a satire of the Roman imperial power structure that reveals both the oppressors and the Jerusalem religious and political officials who march in step with it.  If we pay attention, this Palm Sunday procession also reveals our own imperial problem; Jesus’ claim of authority on our lives challenges the other powers that claim our allegience: our national identity, our greed, our acquiescence to the systems of oppression that form our own sense of Pax Romana.

The great American poet Carl Sandburg once related the story of a little girl coming to him after he read his description of battle and saying, “What if they gave a war and no one came?”  We are, in a very real sense, called to decide which parade we will join: the tanks and John Philip Sousa marches which proclaim “might makes right,” or the Holy Week procession which shows a King and Messiah on a donkey barely big enough to carry him.  We are challenged to think of whether we rely on the temporary peace enforced by sword and spear, and threatened by missiles over the Pacific Ocean, or will we look to the Prince of Peace and welcome him with shouts of “Hosanna, come save us!”?

If we choose to pick up palm branches we will also be choosing to walk through Holy Week with Jesus and experience him with towel around his waist washing his friends feet.  We will gather around the table for an intimate meal with Jesus as both host and meal.  We will try to stay awake when Jesus prays in Gethsemane and stay loyal when Jesus is arrested.  We will be asked to take up our own crosses and walk with Jesus to Golgotha.  And here’s why it will all be worth it: in one week, we will go to the Garden and find Jesus’ tomb empty.

Of course, its never so simple.  I am sure that some of those who were in the crowd shouting “hosanna,” were giving their voices to the cry of “crucify him.”  If we are honest, we have Good Friday moments everyday.  Our hope is that the disloyalty, fear and death of Friday and the darkness of Saturday eventually and always leads to a Sunday morning.  As Christians, we can call this the parade of life, and as I have said, “I love a parade!”

Sermon - Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

11 January 2009 - Baptism of the Lord

In its witty and soulful telling of a journey home, the film O Brother, Where Art Thou  makes constant reference to Homer’s classic epic poem The Oddessey.  This Coen Brothers’ movie is one of my favorites, featuring George Clooney as Everett Ulysses McGIll an escaped convict with two goals: saving a $1.2 million booty from a bank heist hidden at a place that will be flooded in just 4 days and saving his marriage and family that is threatened by the engagement of his wife (and mother of his seven children) to a more bona fide man.

The action takes place in the Mississippi delta in 1937; and the real hook of the film, besides the wonderful soundtrack, are the great characters that Everett encounters on his journey.  The first of these characters are Delmar and Pete, who must accompany Everett from the start because the three of them had been shackled together on the chain gain.  Delmar is a loveable dim-wit, while Pete is bad-tempered; they are the perfect foil to Everett, who is dapper and silver-tongued

The planned flooding of Everett’s homestead to create a TVA-style hydro-electric plant is the constant doomsday clock that drives the action through obstacles of Cyclopean Bible Salesman, a gubernatorial campaign and a KKK rally, just to name a few.  One of the most memorable scenes deals with a different kind of flood

First, there is the baptism of Pete and Delmar.  Delmar goes first, finding himself drawn into a river, breaking in line with a procession of white-robed church-goers as a preacher immerses each of them backwards into the muddy water.

Pete, who has been taking it all in from the river bank, says, “Well, I’ll be. Delmar’s been saved.”

Delmar leaps with joy in the water. “Well, that’s it boys,” he cries. “I’ve been redeemed! The preacher done washed away all my sins and transgressions, the straight and narrow from here on out, and heaven everlastin’ is my reward! 

Delmar is beside himself with relief. “The preacher says all my sins is washed away, including that Piggly Wiggly I knocked over in Yazoo.”

A skeptical Everett says, “I though you said you was innocent of those charges.”  “Well, I was lyin’,” Delmar said, “and the preacher says that sin’s been washed away too. Neither God nor man’s got nothin’ on me now.” And then throwing his arms up, he shouts, “Come on in boys, the water’s fine!”

This morning, as we gather to celebrate Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan, we also remember that we have joined a long line of church-goers who have been baptized.  For most of us, this has not been as radical a conversion experience as depicted on so many Hollywood films; if you are like me, your baptism occurred while you were still an infant.  Yet, on this Sunday and others we are implored by the liturgy to “Remember our baptism and be thankful.”  Today we do so while also remembering Jesus’ own baptism.

Jesus’ came to John for baptism, joining a long-line of seekers and repenters who had gathered around this powerful hermit of a preacher.  He is the one foretold by Isaiah, a voice in the wilderness shouting, “Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” and “repent, the time is at hand!”  As we heard from this morning’s Gospel lesson, John is a lot more popular than Jesus at this point in their lives.  Mark’s Gospel even begins as though it might be John who is more significant than Jesus, and at other points in scripture we see that John still has his own followers who create a sort of rivalry between the two camps of Jesus and John.

It has always been a bit of a puzzle to explain why Jesus is baptized by John.  In other Gospels, great care is shown to have John himself protest their roles of baptizer and baptized, but Jesus tells him to go forward with the act.  Jesus may not have been in need of personal repentance, but he still enters into the water to be baptized by John. 

Water is a starting point for Jesus, just as it was for all creation in Genesis.  Throughout scripture we find that water marks a new beginning in the life of the faithful, from the creation of the world, to Noah and the flood; from Moses leading the people out of Egypt through the Red Sea, to Joshua leading the people into the promised land through the Jordan River.  Just as the snow outside gives us a brief glance at what it might mean to have a fresh start, water is a symbol of grace: the great loving power of God that is constantly offering us the opportunity to “Start at the very beginning.”  Water in scripture is also the water of the womb of God, a source of new birth.

At creation, God moves over the face of the water, and the scene of Jesus in the Jordan River offers a recollection of that event.  As Jesus comes out of the water of baptism, the heavens are opened and God’s spirit descends like a dove.  Here is a moment of new creation, of God breaking into our world.  Here is our first experience of our God as trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  God’s own voice confirms it, addressing Jesus, but somehow also addressing you and me: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

For the writer of Mark’s Gospel, this is the proper way to start the story of Jesus (he doesn’t have any of that Christmas stuff in his first chapters).  Instead, Jesus is plunged directly into public ministry.  Baptism is Mark’s birth narrative.

I think we could argue with Mark that baptism is the very beginning.  It is our initiation into the redemptive work of God, both for our individual lives and for our world.  In fact, our baptism marks us as partners with God in working for the salvation of our world.  The waters of baptism are the starting point for our faith, as affirmed by our United Methodist rituals for marrying, burying and Holy Communion.

As a minister, participating in baptism represents the moment of single most priviledge.  Whether I am baptizing an infant whose parents are taking the vows on their behalf, or an adult who can take the vows for themselves, each baptism is a moving, powerful moment in our life together as a church.  If you have not been baptized, I urge you to speak to me about it.  Baptism is a sacrament through which God achieves God’s act of salvation, that’s not to say God cannot act to save those who have not been baptized, but that this is a central part of who we are as Christians,

Which is why we are told to “remember our baptism and be thankful.”  In this act of remembrance and thanksgiving we are stated that God has a claim on our lives; that God has not only given us our name, but has called us by that name into ministry in and to our broken world. Baptism marks our entering into covenant with God, which means we make promises and have responsibility to God, just as God make promises and has responsibility to us.

In our movie, O Brother, Where Art Thou, the Soggy Bottom Boys—as they become known—find themselves twice more at the water’s edge.  Once it is after giving into the seduction of the sirens’ song: three beautiful washer-women who ply them with strong drink and seemingly turn Pete into a frog.  And at the place of the treasure.  The object of the Boys’ odyssey has shifted by the film’s end, it is no longer the $1.2 million that Everett seeks, but his wife’s wedding ring which is in the drawer of the bureau deep in the valley that will soon be the bottom of a lake.  They are met at the spot of this treasure by Sheriff, executioner and freshly-dug graves.  The pardon given them by the governor has no persuasive power on the lawmen.  This seems to be the end of Everett, Delmar and Pete, until the ground begins to shake and water appears, first as a trick and then as a deluge.  The flooding has begun and it’s the only thing that could have saved them from their demise.  The movie closes with Everett starting at his own beginning, courting the woman he had married with seven kids in tow.

+++

Here is our moment of beginning: at the waters of our own baptism.  Here is the moment of God’s new creation.  This is our odyssey home.  “Come on in boys, the water’s fine!”  While our national conversation includes talk of another WPA or TVA, the works-progress that is promised to us is rooted in the work of God’s Holy Spirit washing over us, giving us a new beginning and inspiring us to discipleship: the meaningful work of partnering with God to minister to the world around us.  Remember.  Be Thankful.

AMEN.

On My Heart and Mind - Christmas

22 December 2008

Lily wanted to celebrate Jesus’ birthday this evening.  I told her that Christmas was on Thursday, but after already attending two Christmas parties today she was not so easily convinced.  “We can celebrate his birthday today if we want to,” she said—besides, she already had a cupcake chosen for this surprise party.  I stuck to my guns and delayed this little celebration for another day, but I’m not convinced we will make it all the way to Christmas with the cupcake intact.

Of course, most of us are already aware of the fact that there is no birth certificate to verify Jesus’ birth on December 25^th.  If there were, the History Channel would have already told us.  Many scholars have posited other possible times of the year for Jesus’ birth with some convincing arguments; truth-be-told, no one really knows.

The explanation that is often given for why Christmas is celebrated on December 25^th is that the Church was looking for a way to counter—even co-opt—the pagan observances of Winter Solstice.  It was well within the Church’s modus operandi  to use the images and symbols of pre-Christian culture to illuminate the truths of the Gospel.  For some Christians, even discussing this thorny topic is criminal, for others it is quite liberating and insightful.  Some find the influence of culture on Christianity a stain to be washed out, while others see it as a way of honoring the traditions of our ancestors… most people fall somewhere in between.

I think the linking of Christmas to Winter Solstice can be a powerful expression of Christian truth.  Winter Solstice (December 21^st, this year) marks the longest night of the year; a time when the sun does not linger late in the day and yet seems delayed in returning the next morning.  It is a time when darkness seems stronger than light.  The events commemorated on Christmas refute such a notion.

There are many of us who come to this time of year with a real, palpable sense of long nights growing longer.  I was reviewing the Christmas Eve bulletins from last year and on the poinsettia page was the name of my last living grandparent, Charlotte Curry.  Grandma died this past January and now we are celebrating Christmas for the first time with a whole generation missing.  These are long nights, and I know many of you are in the midst of long nights of your own.  The parties go on around you and you still feel alone; the carols are being sung and you can’t find your voice.

In the midst of these long nights, tradition interjects Christmas: a birthday celebration for Jesus.  It’s not always easy to proclaim, but nonetheless we do: Jesus Christ is the light of the world; a light no darkness can extinguish. 

On Winter Solstice this year a group of all ages from our church gathered to tell the “best story ever told” through the means of our Christmas Pageant.  That Sunday morning was marked by falling snow that grew heavier with each hour.  Yet, despite the ready excuses, a cast and a congregation gathered to share in this story with simplicity and faith.  Setting the scene for the “baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger,” our narrators read the scripture this way:

“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.  We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son.  Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.” (John 1:14, The Message)

As I prepare for Christmas this year, I have been struck by just how relational Christmas calls us to be.  Christmas is not just relational from the standpoint of gathering together family and friends, but from its very beginning and premise it is about relationship: about a God who could not stand to be apart from us, so God came and lived among us.  And still lives among us. 

It would be easy this year to circle the wagons and keep Christmas to ourselves, but we are being called to reach out to others the way God himself reached out to us in the Christ-child.  It’s time to give our gifts… it’s Jesus’ birthday!

Grace and peace,

Pastor Matt.

Some announcements:

Our services on Christmas Eve will be at 7 and 11pm.  The seven o’clock service is designed to be multigenerational with traditional carols, candles, sermon and special message and gift for our children; a multigenerational choir will be singing.  The eleven o’clock service is a traditional Candle-light Communion service; special guest participants include Sen. Hillary Clinton reading scripture and Bishop Jeremiah Park celebrating the Lord’s Supper.  Please plan to attend one of these services and bring your friends.

On 12/28 at 10:15am we will have a Service of Lessons and Carols in the English tradition.

On My Heart and Mind - Mid-Advent Thoughts

6 December 2008

‘Tis the Season

The signs of Christmas are all around us… and tonight’s snow is just one more sign.  Throughout today’s Christmas Bazaar I heard many members of our church and community saying that this annual event marked the official beginning of their Christmas season; a big “thank you” goes out to the many people who have made this event a wonderful tradition.  I love this time of year, and I also acknowledge that just as the nights grow their longest, many persons experience great pain, grief and emptiness during the holiday season.

One source of joy for me during Christmas is the music.  I especially love the concerts of choirs and organ performing music of the masters.  Earlier this weekend I attended the annual Christmas Concert of the Grace Choral Society in New York City.  Well over a thousand people attend this concert each year and the line to get in the door of the grand stone edifice went around the corner.  One particular piece they sang is a favorite of mine and gave me chills; “The Christmas Carol” by Charles Ives combines the austerity of New England transcendentalism with the familiar story of Jesus’ birth:

Little star of Bethlehem!

Do we see Thee now?

Do we see Thee shining

O’er the tall trees?

Little Child of Bethlehem!

Do we hear thee in our hearts?

Hear the Angels singing:

Peace on earth, good will to men!

Noel!

O’er the cradle of a King,

Hear the Angels sing:

In Excelsis Gloria, Gloria!

From his Father’s home on high,

Lo! for us He came to die;

Hear the Angels sing:

Venite adoremus Dominum.

Maybe it’s the angel’s chorus back in Bethlehem that makes Christmas choir concerts so appropriate this season.  We are having our own “Victorian Christmas Concert” at 3pm (Sunday,12/7) that will feature music created or popular when our sanctuary was built 140 years ago.  I heard part of today’s rehearsal and this is going to be an awesome event with professional musicians, our own choir and our children.  Dr. Joan Forsyth has put together a program you will not want to miss.  I expect you will attend and will want to bring a friend!

Gloria in excelsis deo,

Pastor Matt.

PS-  About the snow: we will have a worship service and ask that everyone be careful, only attending if you can do so safely.  I anticipate that the snow will not affect the “Victorian Christmas Concert.”  Any cancellations will be place on the church’s answering machine: 666-5014.

Sermon - Mothers of the Messiah: Tamar

November 30, 2008

The Gospel of Matthew begins like this:

The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

 2Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren;

 3And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram;

 4And Aram begat Aminadab; and Aminadab begat Naasson; and Naasson begat Salmon;

 5And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse;

 6And Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias;

And it continues on through Mary and Joseph before getting to Jesus’ birth.  This is the original Christmas list, a collection of Jesus’ ancestors that ultimately points to who Jesus is and how God works through the generations to accomplish divine purposes. 

I have some friends who are really into genealogy, one has visited cemeteries around the country trying to put together the most complete family tree he can.  For the most part, family trees and lists of ancestors are only significant to those who belong to the family that’s being traced (and certainly not everyone in the family is going to be so enthralled).  It’s easy to dismiss the genealogy of Jesus as uninteresting, but I want us to pause and consider five persons on the list that didn’t have to be there, and certainly stick out from the rest; the are: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba and Mary.

These five women did not have to make the list.  Indeed, precedent says that Matthew should have just left them out.  But he doesn’t, and their presence gives us reason to pause… which is what we will be doing this Advent season leading up to Christmas.  Families and lists… that’s what this season is all about afterall.

The fact that Matthew includes the first four of these women has been a topic of discussion for theologians, each of which have tried to answer two questions:  a) Why are they included here? And b) What does their inclusion say about Jesus?

The early church father Jerome, the patron saint of theological learning, tackled these questions and came up to the following conclusions:  a)T hese women are all quintessential sinners and b) Jesus came to save sinners.

Martin Luther answered these questions by saying: a) they are all foreigners and b) Jesus came not just to save Jews, but to save Gentiles, also.

A more contemporary, and more satisfying, attempt to answer these questions say puts their roles in comparison to Mary: a) these are all women surrounded by scandal, or in unconventional marriages, who worked actively to advance the cause of God, and b) Jesus is also a scandalous, unconventional advancer of God’s will, the product of Mary’s radical partnership with God.  Father Raymond Brown puts it this way:  “These women were held up as examples of how God uses the unexpected to triumph over human obstacles and intervenes on behalf of his planned Messiah.”[1]

Which is where we are in Advent 2008: looking to how God uses the unexpected to make Christmas happen despite all the obstacles we and others put in God’s way.  And all of this leads us back to Tamar.

Tamar married Judah’s eldest son Er, but before they could have a son Er was killed for being a downright bad dude.  The levirate law established by God said that Tamar must then be married to Er’s brother Onan.

Now, this story is already a bit creepy: we don’t experience God as one who just goes off and kills wicked people, and we do not follow the tradition of levirate marriage… where a man is obligated to marry his brother’s widow, especially if they did not have a male heir.  The levirate laws remained in Judaism even to Jesus’ times, and were designed as a safeguard on three major fronts: 1)  most importantly, providing male heirs to continue a man’s legacy; 2)  preventing too much intermarriage with outside groups; 3) lastly, providing support to widows.

Well, Onan gets concerned that if does successfully spawn an heir for his late big brother, then that heir will receive the bulk of his father’s estate and he practices a bit of birth control.  So God takes care of him.  Tamar’s father-in-law Judah is down to one last son, and fears that Tamar has been the cause of the end of his first two, so he drags his feet on sending his baby boy into her arms.  He apparently also refuses to release Tamar to marry someone outside his family.

Tamar is tired of living back home and realizes that she’s probably not going to get a third marriage proposal out of this family.  She’s not getting any younger, so she takes matters into her own hands, going into town disguised as a prostitute and seducing old Judah.  Judah’s not carrying any cash on him, so he leaves his signet ring and staff as collateral.  Tamar then slips into back into something less comfortable and heads home.  When Judah’s buddy Hirah went to find the prostitute and settle the debt, he was told there were no working girls who met that description.

Fast forward three months and Tamar is pregnant.  She’s carrying twins, so she’s really beginning to show.  When word of this gets back to Judah he immediately calls for her to be burned at the stake, but when she produces his staff and signet ring he realizes he is the father and that he is in the wrong, admitting that she should have been married to his last son.

And that’s how the story ends, with twins born into a family of rivalry and scandal.  Except the story doesn’t end there.  This is the family that Jesus will eventually be born into many generations later. 

So, what are we supposed to do with this R-rated story from the pages of our bible?  How is this story any indication of who Jesus is going to be?  Does anyone know any Christmas carols that even mention Tamar?

Yet, this woman is a foremother of Jesus of Nazareth.  Her deception, her use of her sexual power, her claims to her rights no matter the means points in an important way to Jesus’ life and character.  When the men resisted God’s commands, Tamar accomplished God’s will as her son Perez becomes a part of the lineage that links Abraham, David and Jesus.   For the men in the story, with their power and the perogative that came with it, God’s law was something to be used and ignored on a whim.  Their manipulation and neglect of God’s law pointed to their petty and selfish destructiveness; when God’s law is best understood as a set of standards to protect our relationships with God and one another.

Jesus says during his ministry: Matthew 5:17“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. 18I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

We are all expecting a child this Christmas: the fulfillment of God’s plan.  On this Advent journey we will encounter other Mothers of the Messiah: a prostitute and protector of spies, a loyal convert who will go to great lengths to care for her mother-inlaw and herself, an unwilling adulterer who becomes aqueen and ambitious mother, and an unwed, pregnant teenage.  All these woman are part of Jesus’ genealogy, and like Tamar they remind us that what we expect in this Christmas child may happen in an unexpected way.

[1] Raymond E. Brown.  The Birth of the Messiah. 73-4.

On My Heart and Mind - An Encounter with a Very Important Person

I was on my front porch the middle of last week, taking care of the last details for hosting houseguests.  After an afternoon of washing the linens, rearranging books and knick-knacks, vacuuming and then hiding all the cleaning supplies that were not manufactured by Procter & Gamble (my brother-in-law works for them), I was filthy.  Such was my state as I watered flowers and swept spider-webs from the front porch eaves.  Such was my state when former President Bill Clinton appeared on the sidewalk in front of our house.

Our conversation began with a simple “hi.”  He called me “Reverend” and I called him “President”. He explained that he was trying to walk off some of the weight he’d gained on the campaign trail this Spring.  As we spoke about diner food in Puerto Rico and South Dakota, Lily and Lincoln came around the corner of the house with Maria in tow.  The Secret Service agent who had been standing a few yards away seemed at ease, but stepped a little closer with the appearance of a three-year old girl and the 140-pound black dog that accompanied her. 

I took Lily by the hand and attempted to introduce her to the man she and Lincoln had walked right past.  Here was one of the most powerful persons in the world, but none of the words she knew for a significant male seemed appropriate—I could not introduce him as “Grandpa,” “Uncle,” “Doctor,” “Pastor,” “Prince” or even “Daddy’s friend.”  So, I said, “Lily, I’d like for you to meet President Clinton.” Before I could say, “Can you say, ‘Hello’?” her hand had slipped from my grip and she was with Lincoln looking into the bushes.

I offered somewhat of an apology and explained that there was a stray kitten hanging around that commanded the attention of both girl and dog.  We continued our conversation by speaking of Bobby Kennedy’s Newfoundland “Brumis” and a friend of Maria’s who works for the Clinton Global Initiative.

The Bible teaches us that God is “no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34).  We have developed highly sophisticated mechanisms of language and decorum to convey the significance of certain office-holders. Perhaps the lesson we are to learn from our encounters with three-year olds and dogs, is a lesson about God’s view of us, a view unimpressed by the titles and marked by unconditional love. 

Someday Lily will learn about the forty-second President of the United States of America and I will tell her about the time she met him on her own front lawn.  By then, she’ll probably be even less impressed, rolling her eyes and sighing at her lame-duck father.  I imagine she will always remember the deep affection she experienced with Lincoln Duncan, her first dog.

I have been humbled many times these past few weeks of living with our little girl; I am glad I could share this gift with the child of God who stopped for conversation on our front lawn, even if I will continue to call him “President.”