Messengers

Isaiah 63:1-6

December 29, 2013

What to do on the Sunday after Christmas?  It’s kind of a vestige of Christmas Eve and day.  It’s a Sunday between our beautiful candle light service and the familiar story of epiphany, when the magi arrive from the east to see Jesus.  Liturgically it’s still Christmas, the decorations of Christmas are still up, but there are no additional candles to light on our advent wreath and the silent night has been replaced by plain white. 

Even the gospel lesson is a misfit in some ways with this Christmas Sunday.  The gospel lesson today is the story about Herod killing all of the children aged 2 and under in Bethlehem in hopes of doing away with Jesus.  It’s always a little hard to move so quickly from birth on Tuesday to death on Sunday.  So I left that alone this week.

Instead, I’m departing from the gospel and the newborn Jesus and using a passage from Isaiah that always evokes many emotions in me.

You see, when I was in seminary, my Hebrew bible professor would start every class with a prayer.  In general, I really appreciated this.  It felt like it kept me focused on why I was there.

But one day he read a prayer and it didn’t focus me – it was entirely disorienting.  It resonated in my soul – and when something resonates in your soul it means someone has been able to articulate one of your deepest truths or desires.  The prayer was written by St. John of the Cross, a monk and mystic who lived in the mid 16^th century, and it was inspired by our passage from Isaiah, but not because it expresses what Isaiah writes, but because he’s almost jealous of how Isaiah describes God coming to the people without messengers or angels.

I am going to read that prayer – not because I expect you to have the same experience I did, but because I think it raises a question we all face from time to time.

Here is the prayer:

I no longer want just to hear about you, beloved Lord, through messengers.  I no longer want to hear doctrines about you, nor to have my emotions stirred by people speaking of you.  I yearn for your presence.  These messengers simply frustrate and grieve me, because they remind me of how distant I am from you.  They reopen wounds in my heart, and they seem to delay your coming to me.  From this day onward please send me no more messengers, no more doctrines, because they cannot satisfy my overwhelming desire for you.  I want to give myself completely to you.  And I want you to give yourself completely to me.  The love which you show in glimpses, reveal to me fully.  The love which you convey through messengers, speak it to me directly.  I sometimes think you are mocking me by hiding yourself from me.  Come to me with the priceless jewel of your love.  Amen.

Send no more messengers, St. John pleads.  It is the desire to know God directly, as intimately as possible, unfiltered by sages, pastors, prophets, etc.  Not in the words of people who write the doctrines, theology books, and sermons.  No messengers…no filters. 

Yes! – my soul cries.  I’m up for that.  God in the fullness of God’s goodness and glory. 

The God St. John yearns for is the God that Isaiah describes, the one who comes without messengers.  For Isaiah, God answers prayers like St. John’s.  God does come without messengers or angels.  And when that happens, people are redeemed – made whole again. The effect is pure salvation – it is restoration of Israel as a nation…it wipes away the tears of exile…it fills them with the love and compassion of God…a love so complete it cannot be imagined…only experienced.

But like St. John, this is not always a familiar God to me.  In all honesty, much of the time I do feel like there are filters between me and the divine.  I can’t quite see, can’t quite grasp, can’t quite feel what I imagine one would if God were present without the veils.  

Yet here we are, four days after Christmas, when we hear that Jesus is, precisely, God given to us without messengers.  The author of Matthew, the author of Luke, in their birth stories told us from the very beginning that Jesus is no mere messenger.  For them, Jesus is the answer to that prayer:  Immanuel.  GOD with us.  That was what we learned on Tuesday.  Jesus is fully God…fully revealing the nature, character and actions of God.  And that Jesus, as God incarnate, restores nations, wipes away tears…fills us with the love and compassion of God. 

So the question is, if Jesus is God without messengers, why do I still have the yearning of St. John?  Why does Jesus sometimes look suspiciously like a messenger to me?

There have been doctrinal debates about this question since the day Jesus died.  Was Jesus fully divine as well as fully human?  Was he God?  How can Jesus be both?  And where is Christ and the Holy Spirit in all this?  But these debates are exactly the ones that frustrate St. John and me.  These debates about doctrine…I want to know God, and sometimes Jesus – whether fully anything – is just not enough.  The authors of our scriptures are just not enough.  To hear others talk, or write, about God is just not enough.  I want more!  I want what Isaiah described.

Then I remember that this passage in Isaiah about God’s unmitigated presence as love sits between two other passages about how people sometimes think they are feeling God’s anger and vengeance.  The whole book of Isaiah is a story of how the Israelites experienced both God’s presence and absence as they moved from being a united nation to being an exiled people – driven from their homeland – to finally being a people returning home after the pain of exile.

These experiences of God – both when God is absent and when God is present – are descriptions of the human condition.  St. John was a reformer of the Catholic Church in response to the Protestant reformation.  For this spent time in prison where he was tortured.  It makes sense to me that God felt “distant” as he says in his prayer.  It makes sense to me that someone in his situation would cry out for God’s presence. 

And it makes sense to me that he would later write a poem called The Dark Night of the Soul.  But amazingly, when you read the Dark Night of the Soul, it is different in its tone than the prayer I read.  It acknowledges the pain of God’s absence sometimes, but it also acknowledges that this pain is, in and of itself, a divine yearning.

He writes:

“In that happy night.

In secret, seen of none,

Seeing naught myself

Without other light or guide

Save that which in my heart was burning.”

It’s the burning of his heart that ultimately guides him to the divine.  That’s why he can call such a dark night a happy one.

It’s the crying itself that prepares us for God.  We can’t get to God by trying to come up with the perfect doctrine describing everything that is “true” about God.  We can’t get there by relying on others to give us the secret path.  It is the burning of our hearts that becomes the playground for the divine.

I know many of you have different experiences; your lives are lived more consistently sustained by a sense of God’s presence.  But I admit most of the time I rely on messengers to help me understand God and God’s will for my life.  Though I know he’s otherwise, Jesus functions more like a messenger to me.  And most of the time that works for me.  It does give my life purpose and direction.  And truthfully I can’t really ask for anything better than that.  Maybe it’s selfish, but there are moments when that frustrates me.  And it feels like there is no substitute for those moments of divine connection – especially when the world feels like it’s collapsing in on me.

Have you ever felt like God was absent?  Have you felt like all you hear and know of God is through other people talking about it?  Sometimes I’m relying on people I know and trust to tell me about God’s love.  But with St. John I feel like that that is not enough.  That my soul yearns for more, because the yearning itself is an invitation to the unfiltered divine.

The truth is even Jesus comes to us through messengers.  If Jesus was the full revelation of God, we still only hear about him through our biblical authors..messengers.  But my desire to know God fully drives me to read about and understand the life of Jesus – the one who is different from other messengers.

Remember, we’re still in Christmas.  Remember that Jesus was born among the lowly, the exiled, those living under occupation, just as the Israelites did in Isaiah’s time.  Jesus is the one who comes, as Isaiah writes elsewhere, for people living in the darkness.  People who are desperate for God to dwell with them.  Jesus comes precisely in the midst of our darkest nights of the soul.

When God comes unmitigated, often it’s for those living under occupation, those mired in war, those devastated by poverty.  God comes for those living under the weight of grief and illness.  God comes without messengers for those who suffer in darkness.  Not all the time.  Part of the human condition is that we do live in darkness sometimes.  Part of the human condition is that life is not fair, people hurt each other, we have times of exile and willful disobedience to God.  That we can’t change.  That is why we pray with St. John.

But I suspect we also have those moments of unfiltered love and grace.  More rare then we would like maybe, but I can think of at least one powerful experience in my life that has sustained me in times of deepest need.  And I suspect many of you have had similar experiences. 

Meanwhile, whether we have or haven’t, I believe we need the prayer.  We need to acknowledge our deep desire for things to be different.  It is precisely in that that we affirm our belief that God is active in the world.  If Isaiah can claim God’s presence in the midst of the world in which he and the Israelites lived, then I can yearn for the God that feels absent in the midst of our world’s pains and sufferings.  And in fact, if Jesus is God in any sense, isn’t that exactly where God comes in full – unmitigated love: the places of pains and sufferings.  Isn’t that where Jesus came – isn’t that the world into which Jesus was born? 

Please pray with me:

I no longer want just to hear about you, beloved Lord, through messengers.  I no longer want to hear doctrines about you, nor to have my emotions stirred by people speaking of you.  I yearn for your presence.  These messengers simply frustrate and grieve me, because they remind me of how distant I am from you.  They reopen wounds in my heart, and they seem to delay your coming to me.  From this day onward please send me no more messengers, no more doctrines, because they cannot satisfy my overwhelming desire for you.  I want to give myself completely to you.  And I want you to give yourself completely to me.  The love which you show in glimpses, reveal to me fully.  The love which you convey through messengers, speak it to me directly.  I sometimes think you are mocking me by hiding yourself from me.  Come to me with the priceless jewel of your love.  Amen.

A Peace That Never Ends

Isaiah 9:1-7

Christmas Eve:  December 24, 2013

So if I asked you what part of the story from Luke is the most incredible, what would you say? That Jesus was born to Mary through the Holy Spirit?  That one of the most famous persons of history was born in a barn?  The angel and multitude of hosts filling the sky and singing praises to God?  The fact that the shepherds somehow found their way to Jesus in the manger?

These things are all so amazing, and they make for a story that lives in all of our hearts – having heard it since we were children. 

But the most incredible thing to me about this story is who wrote it and when.

Hindsight is 20-20, right.  If only I had known then what I know now…”  We all have those stories.  And it’s true for the author of Luke as he writes his gospel, right?  Hindsight is 20-20.  Luke, and all the other authors of the New Testament, are on this side of Jesus’ death.  They have the luxury the disciples didn’t – they can look back and evaluate how Jesus did in his role as Messiah – savoir of all people. 

Luke’s understanding of the Messiah is drawn from the prophet Isaiah.  He refers to a passage in Isaiah that says “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.”  And then from our Isaiah passage tonight, “a child has been born for us…and he is named…Prince of Peace…and there shall be endless peace.”  Endless peace:  that was the expectation of the one called Immanuel… Messiah.

Jesus was born into anything but peace on earth.  He lived in a ruthless time, characterized by leaders – both Jewish and Roman – who stripped the Jewish people  of their lands and demanded taxes few could possibly pay.  They killed, without thought and certainly without trial, anyone they thought wasn’t loyal to the king.  The people around Jesus when he was born were under Roman occupation, and they were suffering:  peace is not a word they would have chosen to describe their lives.

Into this, Luke tells us, the Prince of Peace is born.  This is what Luke believed about Jesus.  He believed Isaiah, he believed Jesus came to bring this endless peace. But the author of Luke had hindsight.  He knew not just of the birth story, but also of Jesus’ death on a cross.

And after Jesus died, Rome still occupied the Jewish nation and people; they lived in poverty,  indebted to the rulers; they saw people try to rise up against the king only to be killed without remorse; all they had was taken from them indiscriminately.  Peace was not a word they would have chosen to describe the world …not before Jesus was born, and not after he died.

Luke knew this – he knew there was still not peace in his day.  He was aware of the Roman occupation and its ruthless leaders.  And Luke, in his gospel is particularly concerned for the poor and the oppressed – for the ones suffering most because of  powerful dictators.  He knows where their suffering comes from, and he still believes Jesus brought endless peace into this world.

Knowing all this, in hindsight, isn’t it incredible that Luke and the other authors of our scriptures hear this story of Jesus’ birth and still believe it’s true?  Jesus didn’t establish an endless peace for all. 

We live 2000 years later.  There are still versions of the Roman emperors and corrupt religious elite around us.  There are wars, genocides, poverty, discrimination, and that all needs to stop.  Jesus’ death before the world knew peace causes problems for all of us.  Why would we possibly believe the Christmas story in light of Jesus’ dying before peace came to all?  

Well, why not?  Why not believe Jesus came to bring peace to earth.  An endless peace.  What if we, like the authors of our bible, set aside the fact that in a global sense peace is not here and instead look at the incredible line of unbroken peace we see when we look at the peacemakers across every time and place.  They are there –you know they are.  We have never been without them.  It’s why we can tell this story every year – because every year we can point to countless peacemakers in our world.

Yes, we have to tell it every year because it has not come in full – but, just like Luke, we can boldly tell the story knowing Christ lives on in us.  Because not only are we on this side of Jesus’ death, we are on this side of the resurrection.  And we have hope in the resurrection because Jesus is brought back to life in the ongoing work of God in this world.  He’s born again and again.  Brought back to life not just every year, but in every moment. 

Every Christmas our family draws names to see who we will give a gift to this year.  The best part is, in addition to getting them a small gift, we find a charity we think they would really like and give money in their name. 

Now, spoiler alert…but only for my mom.  I got her name and I want to tell you about the charity I chose. 

In 1964, a French man – whose name I will butcher – Jean Vanier, was introduced to the plight of many institutionalized people with developmental disabilities.  Vanier felt called to invite two institutionalized men he had come to know to live with him, creating a new kind of community. That experience led to a number of communities worldwide where both people with disabilities and people without live in community together.  These communities are called L’Arche.  They live, eat, work, pray, and play together. 

Vanier was moved by the some of the most vulnerable people in our midst, and his first impulse was not to try and topple a government – or an institution for that matter.  That came later.  His first impulse was to invite two vulnerable people to live with him.  That’s where he started.  He now works to topple the systems and institutions that crush people with disabilities, but that’s where he started – “come live with me.”

Vanier was awarded a peace prize not long ago, and in his speech he spoke about the peace of Christ:

“Peace comes not when we say or believe that each and every person in the vast human family is precious and important, but when we begin to leave the security and comfort of our own clan and group in order to meet and become friends with those who are different and who belong to another clan, group, or culture.

He continues, “Over the years L’Arche has been led by the beautiful, gentle and tender hand of God.  So many wonderful men and women from different cultures, churches and religions, or without religion, seeking new ways of peace, have come to share their lives with those who are weak and fragile and have been transformed by them.

The road of peace which we have learned in L’Arche is a very simple one.  You see, we are not very austere or stressed, struggling to be heroes.  We eat wonderfully, we drink merrily …we sing loudly and frequently out of tune, and we dance wildly as we play as much as possible.  We pray with all our hearts but not long hours.  We do put our trust in God who is watching over us. 

Finally he says, “Jesus calls us to live a wonderful beatitude, the beatitude of eating …with the poor, the lame, the disabled, and the blind; those who are on the margins of society.”

Maybe it’s that simple – and that hard.  But when we live this beatitude, the impact on our world is incredible.  Maybe we have to know and love one of the fragile ones to see it, but trust me, the impact is incredible.  Maybe peace is right in front of us and all we have to do to join the unbroken line of peace is to eat and live with those on the margins of society.  Every time we do, I’ll bet if we stopped to listen we might just hear an angel and a multitude of the heavenly host singing praises to God.

That is where we find the peace Jesus brought – peace that continues from the day he chose to be with the marginalized – peace that continues from when the prophets chose to align themselves with the marginalized.  Peace that continues from the time of creation until now in the people throughout history who have chosen the peace of Christ as their guiding star in the night sky. 

It endures – it will endure, because something about this story – of God coming in a baby to live with the most marginalized people from the day he was born…the story of the birth of the Prince of Peace – the whole story of his birth, life, death and resurrection – something about this makes all the difference in the world.  “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace…a peace that never ends.”  Amen.

Out of Step: Out of the Ordinary

Matthew 1:18 – 25

Fourth Sunday of Advent:  December 22, 2013

This is our final week of looking at how the Advent and the Christmas seasons can be out of step with each other.

The first week we looked at the contrast between the Christmas season starting earlier and earlier every year, and the way Advent waits for Christmas and starts with the end in mind…the end being not just the birth of Jesus on December 25^th, but the very coming of the kingdom of God.

The second week Jesus was compared to the Santa Claus that judges the naughty and nice by looking with fresh eyes at the passage about Jesus separating the wheat from the chaff. 

Last week we talked about how Christmas is more than parties, gifts and Jesus’ birthday.  In the midst of that there is a scandal – that Jesus comes not to the parties but to the poor, lost and oppressed.

This week there is a funny twist.  This week Advent is out of step with the Christmas season because we beat everyone to the punch.  Jesus isn’t supposed to be born until Tuesday night.  Advent is about waiting, but here we have the birth of Jesus two days early. 

Surprise!

Well, I think that surprise is appropriate to our text this week. 

Let’s remember that in Jesus’ day there were many people who were expecting a Messiah.  There were also many, many different ideas of what a Messiah looks like and what the Messiah would do.  In fact, there were people who were already claiming to be the Messiah before Jesus was born.  The Messiah is a big deal for Jews, and many were willing to risk their lives when they believed they were following the one God sent.

And Matthew had decided Jesus was the Messiah.  But what kind of Messiah did Matthew believe in…in other words why did he believe Jesus was the Messiah and what did he think Jesus accomplished with his life, death and resurrection?

There was much agreement in Jesus’ day that the Messiah would be a descendant of King David.  King David was the last King to rule over a united Jewish nation – it was the golden era.  The Messiah, most people believed, would be a king just like David: a king that sits on a throne, has armies at his disposal, and leads the fight against all enemies.  Someone pretty extraordinary.

Is that what Matthew thought?  Well, yes and no.  This is why we get in trouble when we take biblical passages out of their context.  The story of Matthew’s Jesus does not start at verse 18…it starts, of course, at verse 1. In fact, to read this passage without reading the first 17 verses of Matthew is very misleading.  What he says in the first 17 verses about Jesus and his birth is just as significant as what he writes about in our passage.  Neither can be read without the other without risking misunderstanding.

The first 17 verses of Matthew is a genealogy.  A boring, long, passage full of begats.  A passage way too boring to make Montie read during worship – not to mention all the hard names.  But it is an important genealogy.    It is a genealogy of Jesus…and it proves that Jesus is, indeed, a descendent of David.  According to tradition, Jesus is perfectly suited to be the Messiah.  He’s got the credentials…the right pedigree.

But there’s something amiss in all this.  If we were to read the genealogy, we would notice that it ends with Joseph, Jesus’ father.  Jesus is tied to David through Joseph.  Well, that’s odd, right?  Joseph, Matthew makes a point of telling us in today’s passage, is not Jesus’ biological father.  And in that day, you could not adopt sons into an inheritance.  Ancestry was only biological at that time.

Jesus’ lineage, if we’re being technical, would have to be traced through Mary, and that would definitely not fit the bill for a Messiah.  Mary has no ancestors of note for Matthew.  He spends no time drawing her family tree.  For Matthew, it seems that Jesus both is a descendent of David, and is not a descendant of David.  He fits with the ordinary expectations, and yet is completely out of the ordinary as far as Messiahs go – but, interestingly, he’s out of the ordinary because he comes from out of the ordinary, instead of the extraordinary royal bloodlines.

Now, sadly, for those of us trying to figure out what the bible means, we have a really tricky little word that begins our passage.  It’s one, simple, oft used word in the bible:  de.  Two letters, but so frustrating.  This word is translated equally as a conjunction and disjunction.  In other words, that word could be translated, “and,” “therefore,” or “now.”  But, it could just as appropriately be translated, “but,” “yet,” “nevertheless.”  In the version Al read, it is translated, “now,” which is a wishy-washy conjunction.  Things take on a different hue if we translate it, “but.”

Maybe it seems insignificant to focus on one word like this, but for me, there is something important at stake in its translation, which is what did Matthew really think about the Messiah.  Listen to how it reads with a disjunction instead of the conjunction that Al read.

Verse one of Matthew reads, “this is the genealogy of Jesus,” then lists the genealogy.  Then vs. 18: BUT, Matthew says, THIS is how Jesus was born.  Here is his pedigree, but this is how God comes into the world. 

I think the disjunction is more likely, since we already have the disruption of Jesus not being the biological son of Joseph.  The ordinary is already twisted into something off/amiss/out of the ordinary. 

Something about Jesus as Messiah from Matthew, will be unlike the ordinary understandings of what a Messiah looks like.  “BUT, Jesus came this way.”

And this way both connects Jesus to Joseph – Joseph is the one who names him…the act of a father in that time – and disconnects Jesus from Joseph…the baby didn’t come from any part of Joseph.  Mary alone is the biological parent. 

Which sets up, I think, something Matthew will spend his entire gospel elucidating:  Jesus is both of human beings and not of human beings.  He both comes out of the ordinary – it doesn’t get more ordinary than being born to a peasant girl who counts for nothing in society. – and he is out of the ordinary – extraordinary – from the very beginning; it doesn’t get more extraordinary than a child being conceived of the Holy Spirit.

For Matthew this sets up what it is the Messiah came to do…on the one hand he came to be a new king, but on the other hand he does that by taking the extraordinary step of living among the truly ordinary: the nothings, the peasants, the poor in the world.  And then, he does the most extraordinary thing of all:  he gives the gift of salvation.

An ordinary man with ordinary people doing things more extraordinary than any king could dream of.  Jesus, Matthew says, came to save people from their sins.  Now, remember what sins were in the gospel writers’ minds.  Sins were the ways Israel had broken its covenant with God.  The prophets laid them out over and over:  Sin was not caring for the poor, orphan, or widows.  Sin was to let people suffer while others lived high off the hog.  Sin was systemic oppression.  Sin was exclusion, judgment of people just because they didn’t fit the mold.  Sin was hurting the most vulnerable, outcast, least among us.

Jesus came to save the world from these sins.  And he did so by being as ordinary as the ones who were crushed when the covenant was broken.  He became poor.  He became a part of the peasant, oppressed class.  At the same time, he acted in extraordinary ways:  He didn’t submit to the authorities.  He was brazen, powerful.  He healed, he forgave people, he declared people clean…when that wasn’t his job.  He used his extraordinary power to free the most ordinary people.

The Christmas season, the conventional one, looks forward to only one birth story – the one we all hear on Christmas Eve.  Luke’s beautiful, dramatic story of the birth of Jesus (he certainly dispenses with all the begats).  With Luke we focus on how extraordinary this baby is…how fantastical the story.  This week, maybe we learn that our ordinary lives can be like Jesus’.  Maybe we realize that out of our ordinary lives, something extraordinary might happen.  We don’t need to be kings to save our world from its sins.  We don’t need to be powerful to bring down systems of power. 

Being with the ordinary, the flesh and blood people who are the peasants of our day – the ones the system conspires against, can bring about the most out-of-the-ordinary things.  And we don’t have to wait to be kings to do this.  Jesus, with his life, pointed out that it’s only when you reject ordinary king-hood that you actually bring in the kingdom of God…the only kingdom that matters.

The extraordinary thing about Jesus, in Matthew’s version, is not found in the beautiful manger scenes – heck, Jesus is born at home in Matthew’s version.   The New York Times had an editorial this morning that quoted Erich Auerbach, a literary scholar who lived in the first half of the 20^th century.  Auerbach wrote that the biblical narrative depicted “something which neither the poets nor the historians of antiquity ever set out to portray: the birth of a spiritual movement in the depths of the common people, from within the everyday occurrences of contemporary life.”

The birth comes in the midst of our Advent season – it slips in quietly and makes the claim that everyday life is where God is born.  Not just on December 25^th, but everyday – in the normal.  But there is nothing normal about what happens when God comes.  If we look for God in the ordinary, we will find ourselves caught up in the extraordinary message of salvation – when we spend time with the poor, the homeless, the outcast…our lives will automatically take on the power of Jesus:  the homeless will be given shelter, the poor will be fed, the outcast will be welcomed.

That is salvation – and it’s the true meaning of Christmas.  Amen.