For auld lang syne. . .

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,

and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?

Chorus:
For auld lang syne, my jo,
for auld lang syne,
we'll tak' a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stoup!
and surely I'll be mine!
And we'll tak' a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.  Chorus

We twa hae run about the braes,
and pou'd the gowans fine;
But we've wander'd mony a weary fit,
sin' auld lang syne.  Chorus

We twa hae paidl'd in the burn,
frae morning sun till dine;[c]
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
sin' auld lang syne.  Chorus

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere!
and gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak' a right gude-willie waught,
for auld lang syne.  Chorus

For the sake of old times...  For auld lang syne.  Its okay to be a little sad as the day fades into night and one year passes to another.  I am.  It represents the end of an era for me and not simply the end of one year.  I think of those whom we laid to rest during the year.  I think of those who moved and are no longer in our familiar circle.  I think of children who graduated and left home.  I think of people who began this last year healthy and now live with chronic and difficult illness.  I think of a lot of things and I am sad at what I am leaving behind.  Its okay to be sad about that.  This is what sin did.  It took from us more than a clear conscience but life and friendships and health and hope.  Sin left us with a ticking clock that reminds us always of what is temporary (even us in this mortal life).  I am not suggesting we need be morbid or depressed but it is okay to be sad over what is passing away from our lives.  Of course, we are also fully aware of what God has done to answer sin and its claim upon us and those precious to us.  We grieve not as the hopeless but the hopeful who still ache with sorrow over what we lose.  It hurts.  It does.  For the sake of old times we raise a glass and spend the remaining moments of 2024 with those whom we love.  But, if we are smart, we will also spend it with the Lord.  Go to Church.  Join in prayer.  Think of the past that is gone and of the future God provides that can never go.  Shed a tear and spend a melancholy moment but do not forget to rejoice in the goodness of Him who anchors our lives in hope with the gift of His Son and redeems the time from loss to memory and a future we already anticipate even before we enter it.  For old times' sake.

Who's banning books?

In the news where I live are stories about people who want books banned from school libraries.  All the stories fit the stereotype.  Those who want the books banned are inevitably conservative Christians who object to primarily sexual content and the books they wish banned are primarily those that advocate and encourage the kind of sexual content objected to by these people.  The media is happy to paint conservative Christians as book banners and book burners because the pattern sometimes fits reality but always fits the stereotype.  The media loves to hate those kind of people.  Except that the biggest censors of content are not individuals or groups of individuals showing up to school board or library board meetings.  The biggest censor of all is Amazon.

The primary battleground for censorship is online and not in group chat or email but in the retail book business of which Amazon controls more than half!  Yes, you heard me right.  Amazon controls more than half of all the retail book sales in this country.  It is the censor who decides what it is that America reads largely by controlling what it carries.  Gone are the days when physical stores were where we went to find our books -- from the little nooks in small towns or the corner of the drug store that carried books to the giant retailers of the past (Books A Million, Barnes and Noble, or Borders) who set up shop in malls.  Most folk have only one source to purchase books and that is online and Amazon is the bully on the street corner whose decision to stock or omit has profound effect all the way from the comfy chair to the publishing industry itself.

Amazon is wedded corporately and ideologically to the cultural milieu of this moment in America.  So, for example, Amazon decided that Ryan T. Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment was something that conflicted with its values and therefore also America's values while still selling Let Harry Become Sally, Kelly Novak’s response to Anderson's work.  This is of particular interest to conservative Christians but it is not the only way Amazon decides what is available to the general public and what is not.  The point here is not that Amazon unfairly censors conservative Christian positions and books (which, I would argue, it does) but who appointed Amazon the ultimately authority over what we have access to and what we do not?

Large corporate presents in the retail industry (including Walmart, Target, Amazon, etc...) are not simply good at providing the items we want at a lower cost but they are also very good at deciding which things we have access to and which we do not.  Now, to be sure, there are ways around this but those ways require extra effort and a more considered shopper.  Half the time Amazon or one of the big retailers is a choice precisely because they have it, will ship it, and can get it to you yesterday.  It would seem that because they can do this, we as Americans seem to be okay with their parental choices over what it is on which we spend our money.  Why doesn't the media jump on this?  Because Amazon is in the same small club of powerful influencers as the media is.  Furthermore, the consolidation of the publishing industry and particularly the religious publishing industry under the umbrella of these same companies has the same effect upon Christian publishing.  It is not simply a question of getting words onto a published page but having a market open to those books. 

Like a grindstone. . .

In the backroom of my father's hardware store, we had an electric grinder.  More often than not I watched as my dad took a perfectly good tool that was not working for what he wanted or needed and grind it into something he did need and would work.  It was a joke between my brother and I that more screwdrivers were sacrificed to the grinding wheel than would ever be known.  I wish I had that grinder.  I find myself constantly searching for tools that I do not have that could be made by destroying what I do have.

There was a time when I thought faith was like an "aha!" moment.  In the sudden clarity of the Spirit, all things really did make sense.  Long ago I was disabused of that fanciful notion.  Early on in my first parish I begged God to fix what I thought to be wrong there.  I prayed for calls that did not come.  In the end I found myself like one of dad's tools -- ground down by the Spirit.  Contrary to what you might think, this did not lead to despair.  It lead to purpose and from that purpose God worked to achieve results I did not think possible nor could have ever presumed.  The parish I wanted so desperately to leave became the home I wept for when the time and the call did come.  That first day there my wife and I drove through Main Street and she asked how long we would be there.  "Two years tops!" I said confidently.  Nearly thirteen years later, after losing a baby and having three more children, it was the hardest thing of all to leave.  The Holy Spirit had ground us down and shaped us back up in ways we did not even realize.

The work of the Spirit is not a light bulb going off in your head but the slow and painful grinding down of that which is not the Lord's in order that you might belong to Him.  Repentance and sanctification are not decisions made in a moment but the long term work of the Spirit grinding us down and grinding down from us that which is not His work.  That is why it is so hard for us to see the signs of any progress and so easy for us to note the signs of regress.  We want things to happen NOW but God brings all things into their own time at His own time.  That includes you and me.

Now lest some presume that this might also apply to changes in doctrine and teaching, this is not a parallel.  The Spirit is not slowly grinding down in us that which Scripture has said in favor of some new voice, new teaching, new Gospel.  Hogwash!  Balderdash!  Instead it is he opposite.  We are being grown down to fit what God has said and what will not change but endures forever so that we also might endure forever.  God does not have to change the shape of the family or the purpose of sex or create new genders or teach us to appreciate reproductive freedom because that is what we want.  Instead, our views and opinions meet the grindstone of the Spirit and we conform to His will and purpose.  Even if we never understand it or if we think we have it down pat, the purpose is not for us to get Him but for us to know what He has done to get us.  

Let me give you a clue.  In my heart I prayed for God's forgiveness for leaving the first call and coming here to Tennessee.  For a couple of years I thought it was the wrong decision and prayed God to make it right or make me right for it.  Then at some point, the understanding slipped into the background and the Spirit opened my eyes to what needed to be done then and I was as free as I had been in New York -- free from my contrived notions of what should be and of my dogged pursuit for me to understand God and for Him to understand me.  And now I woke up here 32 years later at the end of my active service.  I do not know where the time went but I know this -- the Spirit kept hidden from me His wisdom so that I might know Him and His purpose by faith.  That was enough.  It always is.

Holy Innocents

A Christian martyr is someone willing to face death rather than deny Jesus Christ or His Gospel.   It began even as Christ was born.  The Holy Innocents of Bethlehem, St. John the Forerunner, St. James, St. Stephen, and the whole of the apostles except for St. John.  The deaths were agonizing -- beheading, stoning, sawing, crucifixion, burning at stake, the lions in the Coliseum --  these were were some of the horrific ways Christians were punished for the sake of Christ.   In the latter part of the second century there was a distinction between martyrs and confessors.  Those who were martyrs were those who  suffered the extreme penalty, death, whereas the title of confessors was given to Christians who had shown their willingness to die for their belief but who bravely endured imprisonment or torture but not death. The word martyr comes from the Koine Greek μάρτυς, mártys, which means "witness" or "testimony".  

Tertullian, from the 2nd century, famously wrote that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church" -- telling us that the martyr's willing sacrifice of his life was what gave credence to the faith and encouraged others to believe so fervently.  Far from cautioning the faith and boldness of God's people, persecution ended up sparking the devotion of the saints, facilitating the rapid growth and spread of Christianity.  It was not without problems.  Though Islam is often seen as the religion of the martyrs, it was and is Christianity that martyrdom is most distinctive.  Unlike Islam, by the third century, Christian theologians were arguing that martyrdom should not be sought but neither should it be avoided unless there was no other alternative.  Within a few decades, the orthodox Christian view was that voluntarily seeking execution was not martyrdom but that did not mean that martyrdom stopped.  More than 70 million have been martyred for the cause of Christ over the years.  

What has changed is Christianity.  Martyrdom has become almost mythological.  How many modern Christians believe that martyrdom is either a possibility or a choice?  We live in an age in which compromise and negotiation is the ordinary path of life.  Martyrdom has become the extreme and while we might admire those who die rather than deny, we are not at all sure we would follow them.  Consider how easily Christians accepted the judgment of the government and the new rules of the pandemic that in person worship was not essential and the Church itself irrelevant to the faith.  Consider how willingly churches closed their doors and switched to screens to replace what has always been an incarnational, face to face, and in person faith.  Consider how those who dared to resist these measures were labeled dangerous or extreme?  I wonder how many Christians have drunk the koolaid of your best life now to the point where they could never imagine a circumstance in which they would be willing to deny themselves anything for the sake of Christ.  We no longer rejoice over the blood of the martyrs whose courage stands as example -- no, we are embarrassed by their extremism and presume that there is always a way to preserve your life even if it comes at the cost of your faith.

Percy Dearmer translated a 10th century Latin text that exemplifies how we once viewed the martyr:

1 Martyr of God, whose strength was steeled

To follow close God’s only Son,
Well didst thou brave thy battlefield,
And well thy heavenly bliss was won!

2 Now join thy prayers with ours, who pray
That God may pardon us and bless;
For prayer keeps evil’s plague away,
And draws from life its weariness.

3 Long, long ago, were loosed the chains
That held thy body once in thrall;
For us how many a bond remains!
O Love of God release us all.

4 All praise to God the Father be,
All praise to thee, eternal Son;
All praise, O Holy Ghost, to thee,
While never-ending ages run. Amen.

His is not the only hymn that does so.  Fifteen texts in Lutheran Service Book mention martyrs.  Sadly, the most profound, Rise Again, Ye Lion-Hearted,  did not make it into that book, not even the four stanzas translated by Martin Franzmann.  But the whole hymn did make it into Walther's Hymnal, translated by Matthew Carver and published by CPH.  Tip, buy it!  

Rise again, ye lion-hearted
Saints of early Christendom.
Whither is your strength departed,
Whither gone your martyrdom?
Lo, love’s light is on them,
Glory’s flame upon them,
And their will to die doth quell
E’en the lord and prince of hell.

These the men by fear unshaken,
Facing danger dauntlessly;
These no witching lust hath taken,
Lust that lures to vanity.
Mid the roar and rattle
Of tumultuous battle
In desire they soar above
All that earth would have them love.

To the truth they own adherence,
On the substance train their sight,
Never trusting in appearance,
Judging all by heav’nly light;
Blest in their conviction,
Even in affliction,
Far from human slavery
And its shackles, they are free.

Great of heart, they know no turning,
Honor, gold, they laugh to scorn,
Quench desires within them burning,
By no earthly passion torn.
Mid the lions’ roaring
Songs of praise outpouring,
Joyously they take their stand
On th’areana’s bloody sand.

Would to God that I might even
As the martyred saints of old,
With the healing hand of heaven,
Steadfast stand in battle bold!
O my God, I pray Thee,
In the combat stay me.
Grant that I may ever be
Loyal, staunch, and true to Thee.

But for Thee I weakly cower,
Void of any asset small,
Let alone great feats of power;
On Thee only hangeth all.
Lord, my hope’s assurance,
Pledge of my endurance,
Grant me as a champion now
Not to break my knightly vow!

Grant me, armored by the Spirit,
In Thy name, O Christ, to fight
With a lion’s strength and merit,
Slumb’ring not, but by Thy might
Bravely battle waging,
‘Against the devil’s raging.
Let no rout o’ertake my soul,
But support me till the goal.

Time will come when goes, arising,
Rage again to take the field,
Christian souls in war surprising,
Spilling blood on sword and shield;
Ponder well this warning:
Days of shrouds and mourning
Here our homes again shall know —
Yea, and many a martyr’s blow.

Now at last must come the leaven,
For the measure must be filled, —
Martyrs more be crowned in  heaven,
On the cross of glory killed; —
Eve that morn be ruddier,
Church’s dusk be bloodier,
As the Lamb at even died
Which at morn was crucified!

Courage, brethren! Firm and fearless,
Steady in your calling stand:
Follow we that cloud of peerless
Witnesses in warlike band,
Who, the flesh subduing,
Know no cause for ruling;
Flesh must suffer as it will,
And the soul will flourish still.

Count we not the Cross, betpattered,
Like the wise, a foolish thing!
Let us no from thence be scattered
When we should proclaim our King;
Let it be our station
When the generation
Of the Foe attacks the faith,
Threat’ning us with swords of death.

Slacken not, though thou be slaughtered:
Is it not with martyrs’ blood
That the Church’s beds are watered,
And bedewed her fertile mud?
From these crimson showers
Spring her countless flowers;
Oh, what bounties here she yields
In her fruitful battlefields!

Spirit, as a rain descending!
On our drying hearts be poured,
That for Thee we may unbending
Wilt at neither fire nor sword,
In Thy love surrounded,
Firmly in Thee grounded,
Make Thy Church in faith to be
Rich as in her infancy.

 

In life death. . . In death life. . .

Sermon for St. Stephen, Deacon and Martyr, preached on Thursday, December 26, 2024.

This is the day of the proto martyr, the first of those who died in witness to the faith and for the sake of Christ.  It has an odd juxtaposition, coming right after the dreams and joys of Christmas.  But that is life.  A funeral is today being planned for one of our members, another was life-flighted to Nashville.  The white Christmases of our dreams are always being intruded upon by the harsh realities of life lived under sin.

Without exception, sin is the cause of all our troubles.  Though we can often tie our own sins directly to the dire consequences, most of the time it is the sins of others or just living in a sinful world.  But I can tell you whose sins did not contribute to our sorrows and struggles – Jesus’.  That is because He did not sin.  Mary’s sin and Joseph’s and shepherds’ and everyone’s sins have ended the dreamy holy day of our desire and replaced it with trial, trouble, sorrow, struggle, and finally death.

Even if we are surprised by this – by family tensions or personal failures or innocent sufferings or death – Jesus is not.  He came not for dreams but for darkness, not to live holy so that He would be rewarded but to take on our sin so that we might be declared holy, and finally to die so that we might live.  If this is not in our Christmas story, it is not the real story of Jesus.

Stephen knew this as well.  Set apart as an honorable man to serve as deacon, he could not silence his voice in witness for the sake of Jesus – not even when he was threatened.  So he stood before that hate-filled mod not to die for sin but to refuse to be silent about Him who did die for sin.  He did not relish death as some release from earthly trouble.  He wanted to live as you and I do.  But he was not afraid of what they could do to him because of what Christ did for him.  

Jesus had no death wish but His desire was life for us.  Stephen had no death wish but he had no desire for a life apart from Christ.  And that is where Christmas brings us a day after we were all about the manger.  Christ had no home to call His own but He came so that we might have a home – a home in life and a home in death.  This is what comforted Stephen as the stones were raised to silence his voice and end his life.  But the odd reality is that the names of those who killed him are forgotten while Stephen is remembered – even celebrated.  Well, all the names except one – Saul who would become Paul who held the coats of the killers.

That ought to tell you something.  Stephen lives not simply in our memory but in reality – a life death can no more steal away.  The angry mob lives not even in memory and much less in the presence of God.  Saul, who would be come Paul, lives in memory and in the presence of God but not for his complicity in this act.  No, he lives with Stephen as evidence of the power of God’s mercy and the mighty purpose of His will.

At a season when all the decorations and presents cannot mask how hard it is for us to get along, Saul and Stephen who were on opposite sides are now brothers through the blood of Christ.  Enemies may not become friends on earth nor will family always be easy to live with or to live without but the blood of Christ cleanses us from sin and becomes that which binds together murderers and their victims.  If that can happen, imagine the power of forgiveness to heal us and our hearts, to repair broken relationships, and to unify those who disagree.  Christ is certainly a cause for division here on earth but He is also the bringer of unity between those who have nothing else in common.

Soon all that we have labored to put up will be taken down.  I saw already that Christmas presents were being posted on Marketplace.  The dreams will die but the dead will live.  Long after we have worn out the batteries and eaten up the leftovers and finished the thank-yous, the reality of the manger remains.  Christ has come for sinners and for those who live in the valley of the shadow of death.  The hurts of today will not last but the healing of Christ raises us to life everlasting and bestows the good conscience upon us now.  The stones will still be thrown in anger and the words will still be used as weapons against us but none of these will last.  They will all give way to the power of the One born of Mary by the Holy Spirit and laid in a manger.

So let me say this.  There are no disappointments in our future.  These belong only to the moment.  They are all overcome by Christ and in Christ.  Mortal enemies become blood brothers in Christ.  Sins that once condemned are washed clean.  Fears that once froze us fade away.  Trials that we suffered are ended with their suffering.  Darkness gives way to light.  All because of Jesus who was born to end all that troubles you and disappoints you and to make you strong enough to endure them all for His sake.  So do not give in to sorrow or fear.  Live holy upright and godly lives, not because it feels good but because God has rescued us with His goodness and love to know something better than sin, bigger than death.  Jesus!

St. John, Apostle and Evangelist

Merciful Lord, cast the bright beams of Your light upon Your Church that we, being instructed in the doctrine of Your blessed apostle and evangelist John, may come to the light of everlasting life; for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

St. John the Apostle, the son of Zebedee and Salome, was one of the Twelve Apostles. John was called by our Lord in the first year of His public ministry. He is also known as John the Evangelist, John of Patmos and the Beloved Disciple. John's older brother was St. James the Great, another one of the Twelve. Jesus called the brothers "Boanerges," meaning "sons of thunder." John is believed to be the longest living apostle and the only not to die a martyr's death.  John, with Peter and James, were the only witnesses of the raising of Daughter of Jairus, and the closest witnesses to the Agony in Gethsemane. John was the one who reported to Jesus they had "'forbidden' a non-disciple from casting out demons in Jesus' name." This prompted Jesus to state, "he who is not against us is on our side."  John and Peter were the two apostles sent by Jesus to make preparations for the final Passover meal, the Last Supper. During the meal, St. John sat next to Jesus, leaning on him rather than lying along the couches as was the custom of the day.  John was the only one of the Twelve Apostles who did not forsake the Savior in the hour of His Passion. He stood faithfully at the cross when the Savior made him the guardian of His Mother.

The writings of if Blessed John are highly significant.  Believed by many to have been the last gospel written, John focused upon the divinity of Jesus -- right from the first chapter of the Gospel that bears His name: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1.1)

The Gospel of John contains the “I am” sayings of Jesus. These sayings teach us a a great deal about Jesus. They are:

• I am the bread of life (6.35)
• I am the light of the world (8.12)
• I am the gate for the sheep (10.7)
• I am the good shepherd (10.11)
• I am the way, and the truth, and the life (14.6)
• I am the vine, you are the branches (15.5)

From the cross, Jesus commended Blessed Mary to John:

“Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple. “Here is your mother.“ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. (John 19.26)

John was later exiled to the Island of Patmos; from there he wrote Revelation;  Later he returned to Ephesus.  In his old age he continued to visit the churches of Asia. St. Jerome relates that when age and weakness grew upon him so that he was no longer able to preach to the people, he would be carried to the assembly of the faithful by his disciples, with great difficulty; and every time said to his flock only these words: "My dear children, love one another."  From Eusebius we have this timeline:  St. John died in peace at Ephesus in the third year of Trajan; that is, the hundredth of the Christian era, or the sixty-sixth from the crucifixion of Christ.  St. John was then about ninety-four years old, according to St. Epiphanus.  He might have preferred martyrdom but instead of dying all at one, he died in stages, day by day until the Lord's time was complete.

St. Stephen

‘Good King Wenceslas’ was actually Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia. He was also known as Vaclac the Good, or Svatý Václav in Czech and lived from c.907 to 28 September 935.  The reason we have his exact date of death is that, upon orders from his brother Boleslaus the Cruel, Wenceslas was killed on The Holy Innocents. 

Wenceslas was not raised in a family with a long history in the faith.  His grandfather had been converted to Christianity by Saints Cyril and Methodius while his mother was the daughter of a pagan tribal chief (though she was baptised before marriage).  Young Wenceslas’ father died leaving a power vacuum during which his  mother was banished and his grandmother murdered.  After the dust had settled,Wenceslas was chosen by the people of Bohemia to be their king.  His mother was regent until Wenceslas reached the age of 18; then he banished her.  In the turmoil, the country was split in half and one part given to Wenceslas’ younger brother, Boleslaus.  Boleslaus was not content with half and in September 935 he plotted with a group of noblemen to kill his brother.  It was said of Wenceslas:  “His deeds I think you know better than I could tell you; for, as is read in his Passion, no one doubts that, rising every night from his noble bed, with bare feet and only one chamberlain, he went around to God’s churches and gave alms generously to widows, orphans, those in prison and afflicted by every difficulty.”  

The words to the carol were written in 1853 by John Mason Neale and joined to a much older melody – it’s a 13th-century tune called ‘Tempus adest floridum’ in praise of the spring.  The carol was written for the Feast of St Stephen, better known as Boxing Day.  It continues to celebrate a long tradition of charitable giving on the Second Day of Christmas.

Good King Wenceslas looked out

On the feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about
Deep and crisp and even;
Brightly shone the moon that night
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
Gath’ring winter fuel.

‘Hither, page, and stand by me,
If thou know’st it, telling
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?’
‘Sire, he lives a good league hence,
Underneath the mountain,
Right against the forest fence,
By Saint Agnes’ fountain.’

‘Bring me flesh and bring me wine,
Bring me pine logs hither,
Thou and I will see him dine
When we bear them thither.’
Page and monarch forth they went,
Forth they went together,
Through the rude wind’s wild lament
And the bitter weather.

‘Sire, the night is darker now
And the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer.’
‘Mark my footsteps, good my page,
Tread thou in them boldly:
Thou shalt find the winter’s rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly.’

In his master’s steps he trod,
Where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod
Which the Saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure
Wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor
Shall yourselves find blessing.

Hidden in plain sight. . .

The sermon for the Nativity of Our Lord, Christmas Eve, preached on Tuesday, December 24, 2024.

The older I get the more I find myself misplacing things – ordinary things like keys and my cell phone and important papers.  I do not really lose them.  They turn up.  In fact, they turn up in the obvious places.  But in the moment when I am looking for them, I do not see them.  They are hidden in plain sight.

We have a God who hides Himself in plain sight as well.  We think we lose Him or we at least cannot find Him when we need Him.  When doctors speak bad news or the phone call announces death or the bills accumulate faster than money or a thousand other crises occur, God seems very far away.  We pray but the answers we are looking for do not come or do not come right away.  We look in the Bible for answers but we find more questions there than answers.  We go to Church on Sundays but the preacher is talking about something else and not what we need and the hymns are not what we want to sing and the service lasts too long.  We look for God and end up missing Him.  He is hidden alright but hidden in plain sight.

A thousand details conspired to bring us the Christmas story and they seem more like coincidences than a perfectly orchestrated plan.  Caesar just happens to plan a registration of people and property so that he can figure out how big the empire is.  Bethlehem just happens to be full of visitors and there is no room for a pregnant woman about to give birth and her husband except in a stable.  Angels just happen to organize a choir and learn music to break into song in the middle of the night when the poor baby comes.  Shepherds just happen to be watching their flocks at night.  Magi just happen to be headed across the miles toward Bethlehem.  It is either too perfect to be a plan or too many accidents not to be.

The proof of it all is right there in front of us.  God was acting in His Son to deliver up to us a Savior to rescue us from our lost condition and redeem us from all our sins and restore us as His children.  Here is Emmanuel.  God is not simply for us but with us and we are never alone –no matter how we feel.  God has hidden Himself in plain sight – exactly where the prophets said He would be.  But so very few actually saw or heard or noticed or believed.  God was exactly where He said He would be but no one was looking and the few who showed up had to be told what to look for – angels and shepherds and Magi.

No one expected a baby.  The mighty Lord who made heaven and earth somehow made His way into the womb of a Virgin.  No wonder we missed it; how can it be? But it was and is exactly as He said.  The shepherds found the baby just as the angels said.  The Magi found the child just as star pointed to where He was.  Joseph was a doubter who had to be won over.  Even blessed Mary was not sure how this could be.  And then He was there.  In a manger.  The face of God.  The long promised Savior.  The hope of the ages had now appeared.  It was obvious.  God hid Himself in plain sight.  Only a few had the faith to see and hear while a small town slept the night away and everyone attended to their own business.

We should not be surprised.  It is still that way.  We think God is hidden and He is but hidden in plain sight.  He is where He has promised to be.  He is not in the thunder or the lightening or the storm or the darkness.  But He is in the face of a child who was born to be the man among men who would save His people from their sins.  Yet none of us can go back to Bethlehem to see Him.  We tell the old, old story of Jesus and His birth but the stable and manger are gone.  They are there no more.

God has hidden Himself in a new Bethlehem.  The city of David is no longer in Palestine.  It is where a people gather at the call of the Spirit in the shadows of a night like tonight.  It is where water still births babies and the aged to the new birth of a life that cannot die.  It is where the voice of God still speaks in a Scripture that is an active Word, doing the very thing of which it speaks.  It is where sinners kneel in shame to admit the terrible things they have thought and said and done but God takes those sins away, cleansing and restoring them through absolution.  It is where a house of bread still offers a miracle food that tastes of the body and blood of Christ and nourishes the mortals who eat and drink to immortality.  God has hidden Himself in the obvious places, in the plain sight that seems so ordinary but is anything but.

Jesus did not look like God.  He looked like you and me and every person.  He wore our flesh warts and all.  He was not a looker.  No one would have picked this baby to be the Son of God.  They would have searched in better houses among better people.  But there, hidden in plain sight, the angels sang and pointed to Him who is born King and Savior and Lord of all.

Baptismal water does not look like God.  It looks like, well, water – plain, ordinary and simple water.  Scripture is a book of words.  It is not unique competes with other books that claim to be holy.  
It does not sound like God – at least not how we think God sounds.  Forgiveness does not seem special and actually appears rather weak.  It looks so very passive to be a heavenly voice.  The bread that we soon will eat and the cup we soon will drink do not seem to be anything but bread and wine.  It does not taste anything but ordinary.  Yet God is here.  Here in this Bethlehem of His Word and Sacraments.  

Hidden in plain sight are all the rest of the blessings of God – the husband or wife whose blessing is not fully appreciated until he or she is gone; the children who test your patience but are the fruits of your love; the job you complain about but it gives you purpose and provides for your family; the presents not given or not appreciated as you would like; the food that fills not one holy day but every day with goodness; the health uncherished until illness steals it away; the life too filled with trouble but lived under the grace of God anyway; the forgiveness that seems to cost too much until you realize the value of broken relationships repaired.  These are His gifts too, hidden in plain sight and too easily forgotten in the bitterness of disappointment.

In order for me to find what I have misplaced, I need to remember where I was and what I was doing and then the lost is found – hidden in plain sight.  In order to see God you need to remember what He has promised and then the hidden God is revealed in all His glory – right where He said He would be.  Hidden from the wise and revealed to small children, faith opens our eyes and hearts and minds to the hidden God who is right here, right now, in plain sight.  Faith remembers so we see God where He has promised to be.  Yes, the grace of God is often cloaked in mystery but that does not mean God is not gracious.  No, it means only that in order to see it, faith must guide the way.

In our world of adult problems, it hardly seems that a baby born in a stable and laid in a manger can help.  But this is the foolishness of God that is wiser than men.  He who is born of Mary and present with us here with mercy and grace is the only One who can help.  And that is why He has come.  To help the sinner with forgiveness, to help the sorrowful with joy, to help the lost in darkness with light, to help the hungry with heavenly food, and to help the dead live.  Open your eyes.  Look at Him.  He was always there and will always be – our Emmanuel.  God with us right where He has promised to be, hidden in plain sight, so that we might behold the face of God.  Now, go home and cherish what God has made known.

A Blessed Christ Mass to you. . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David), to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, she being great with child.

And so it was that while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered; and she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes; and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you: That ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. 

Click here for the continuous Christmas music from Lutheran Public Radio. . . 

 

 

 

 

 

For the Eve of the Nativity. . .

An echo from the past. . . 

 ...all our pleasant places have become ruins...so says the prophet Isaiah in 64:11.  It is not simply a call to acknowledge the sorry state of affairs in the broken and fallen reality of what once was.  It is also a call to see in the ruins the former beauty and the present promise of the restoration at the hands of God.  The nature of Advent's call to survey the ruins of our fallen lives is not the lament of the hopeless but the sight of the faithful who see in those very ruins the pattern of what was and what will be again by God's gracious intervention.

Repentance in Advent does not end with the lament of the ruins of our lost lives, the mountains of our sin, and our inability to correct the sinful desire of our hearts.  No, indeed.  The ruins are ruins, to be sure, but they are the visible pointers not only to what was lost but also to what Christ has come to restore.

Walking in the ruins of once noble buildings we are left with two choices.  We can lament their state and grieve over their loss.  But that is not all we can do.  We can imagine their glory within the limitations of human frailty and be encouraged even by those ruins.  So it is with repentance.  We survey the ruins of our lost lives and our world of darkness and death but we can also be encouraged by the promise of Christ and the restoration of what these images point to.  Ours is not the lament of a people who have no hope.  Ours is the repentant heart of a people who see in the images of our fallenness also the promise of what is to come.  What we lost because of Eden's rebellion will be restored to us in Christ.  What was stolen to us by death (the unknown consequence of that rebellion), Christ has come to replace, but with a twist.  Death will no longer threaten us and that which Christ restores will no longer live in tension with the potential for its loss.

Faith trusts not in what is seen but the unseen.  This is not only the hiddenness of God but the promise of what will be.  Faith affirms that despite what we see in the ruins of our world and our lives, God is trustworthy.  He is even now at work in the midst of the broken nature of our lives and our world.  So the Advent cry is not only to look around but to look up, not only to shed the tears of regret that accompany honest repentance, but to weep with joy at the God who gives back what was lost and more.

Advent seamlessly gives way to Christmas when in the midst of the ruins hope is born.  A child's cry stirs the night.  Angel voices and shepherd eyes behold the promise of our tomorrow right in the ruins of the present day.  The shape of our redemption is flesh and blood of the God who has kept His promise and become His people's shepherd and savior.  Christmas seamlessly gives way to Lent and Easter as the promise unfolds.  In the ruins of defeat and suffering, crucifixion and death, God has hidden our hope -- the dawn of the new day of salvation.  Easter confirms that the dead lives so that the dying may live through Him.  And all of this seamlessly unfolds into the waiting of a world living in the in-between of the promise and its unfolding end.  All along the way the Church speaks with the voice of faith.  Maranatha.  Come, Lord Jesus!

Luke2:1-20

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. ² (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) ³ And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. ⁴ And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) ⁵ To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. ⁶ And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. ⁷ And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.  ⁸ And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹ And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. ¹⁰ And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. ¹¹ For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. ¹² And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. ¹³ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ¹⁴ Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. ¹⁵ And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. ¹⁶ And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger. ¹⁷ And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child. ¹⁸ And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. ¹⁹ But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰ And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.

 

Greatness. . .

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent (C), preached on Sunday, December 22, 2024.

It is so very difficult to believe that God really loves you when wealth and health and happiness and privilege and success do not come to you as you hope.  These are how we see things.  This is the lens of this world.  To be great means to have all of these – wealth, health, happiness, privilege, and success.  What else is there?  What other kind of love is there than the love which seeks to give us what we want, what we feel we deserve, and what we think is only fair and right?

When Blessed Mary speaks of the greatness of the Lord, she is speaking of another greatness, love.  This one is not for accolades and honors but for service and sacrifice – the promise long ago given and now fulfilled.  The greatness of the Lord is not something recognizable by earthly standards but that which is manifest in the humiliation of the God who takes on the humble flesh of you and me and of the exaltation not of Him but of those for whom He has come.  It is this greatness seen and acknowledged by faith.  Mary sings from faith the greatness of the Lord to which she invites us to faith so that we may magnify the Lord with her.

We know the greatness of the Lord in the same way we know the greatness of our parents.  They provide for us food and shelter, forgive us, guide us, and sacrifice of their own well-being for us – not in the dollar value of it all.  The greatness of the Lord is in the care that His love provides for you and me.  He washes us clean in baptismal water, guides us through the voice of His Word, absolves and restores us when we lose our way or fall to temptation, and feeds and nourishes us upon the only food that can give eternal life.  This is the greatness of which blessed Mary sings and to which she invites us to join in her song.

I will admit that we Christians are rather idealistic.  We have great expectations of God and of ourselves, of the Church and of her pastors, of our family and our friends and of life in general.  Because we are idealistic, we are also prone to a certain sadness amid all the disappointments around us.  As we encounter and appreciate even more the greatness of the Lord, our dissatisfaction with the world and ourselves can easily make us depressed and resentful.  As we grow increasingly aware of our own faults and failings, it is easy to become sad and to despair over our sins which seem not to decrease but only increase.  

The great temptation is to give up this idealism and to become pragmatic people.  We do what works.  We trust what we can control.  We seek what feels good.
It is the same for pastors.  We would rather have a full church than a holy one, a well-endowed congregation over one with needs, and a well respected parish over one that is faithful.  These shortcuts to our dreams of greatness are the temptation of everyone.  So we want lives that work, prayers that are answered as we want them, dreams that are fulfilled, and hearts that are happy.  If we get these, the means does not matter to us.  Because we get these, we can presume God is great, the Church is great, and faith is great.

Blessed Mary was poor, of low estate.  Not all those in the line of David were rich or powerful.  Most were nobodies.  The Roman Caesar was wealthy.  So was Herod.  The enemies of Jesus had 30 pieces of silver to purchase a rat.  But blessed Mary and Joseph had no room in Bethlehem waiting for them and no one celebrated the birth of Jesus but a few shepherds and an angel host.  Blessed Mary had been shuffled off to visit her cousin Elizabeth because her pregnancy would cause talk.  Still, she sings of the greatness of the Lord and invites us to magnify the Lord with her.

The greatness of the Lord will never be marked by property or power.  We are in but not of the world.  The greatness of the Lord is manifest in the kingdom that lives in YOU by baptism and faith.  It is come not by a mighty army in battle but a Savior who is priest and offering for a people who deserve nothing.  The greatness of the Lord does not live out there somewhere.  It lives in YOU.  You are the least who have become greatest of all those born of woman, the lost who have been found, the helpless who have received mercy, and the people living in the shadow of death who have been raised to eternal life.  This is the greatness of the Lord and it is a greatness imparted to you as gift and blessing.

This is the God who welcomes you.  He accepts you as you are, owns your sins as His, covers you with His righteousness, and raises you from death to life eternal.  This is His greatness.  He has become Your Savior.  Even blessed Mary owns the Lord who from her womb is acknowledged as her redeemer too.  But the fruits of this blessedness will not result in wealth and health and happiness and privilege and success wealth and health and happiness and privilege and success to make the world awe and envious.  Instead they are known as blessed Mary knew the Word of the Lord – by faith.  The greatness of the Lord is known by faith and lived by faith until the promise is fulfilled.  This is greater than all the greatness that passes away and turns the mighty into the forgotten and treasures into rust heaps.

The greatness of the Lord you know by baptism when your new and everlasting life began in you.  When that font became your womb, you were written into the Book of Life and destined for a future unimaginable here.  It is kept in you by faith – faith nurtured by the Word of God and the Spirit working through that Word, rescued from sin and temptation by the power of forgiveness, guided by the voice of the Good Shepherd leading you, His sheep, and fed upon the rich food of His flesh for the life of the world and His blood that cleanses you from all sin.

Blessed Mary was not comforted by her genealogy or her comfortable life.  She was comforted by the promise of God.  That is your comfort as well.  Greatness is not the wealth to insulate you from need but the riches that will not fade that come from God’s hand.  Greatness is not health that preserves the body only to surrender it to death but Him who raises you to eternal life.  Greatness is not in the fleeting whims of happiness but a heart filled with love and manifest in forgiveness.  Greatness is not in privilege of earthly note but in names written in the book of life.  Greatness is not in successes eclipsed by others but in the one all sufficient sacrifice that sets you forever free.

So join her song today and everyday – not because you have all that you want in this life but because you have eternal life.  Join her song today and everyday – not because this life is good but because no matter how good it can be, the life Jesus gives is better.  Join her song today and everyday – not because you deserve today or eternity but because His mercy continually raises up those of low degree and sets them as high as God’s own presence.  Join her song today because here is the rescue of the sinner, the washing of regeneration, the voice of absolution, and the table that feeds us the food of heaven.  This is the only greatness that cannot and will not disappoint you.  Because of this, order your lives by this Word and direct your hearts to this purpose – living as His children now.  Amen

A Long Overdue Collect Study. . .

The Collect for the Fourth Sunday in Advent is similar to two other Advent Collects and yet distinct.  In this and in none other of the Sunday Collects are there three imperatives. On this last Sunday before the feast of the Nativity, the Church raises the stakes of the prayers lest we miss the fullness of the grace of our Lord's incarnation and therefore miss out on the grace of His coming again in power and glory. First, the Collect repeats the call begun on the First Sunday in Advent.  Excita or rouse or stir up Your power, O Lord, and come.  The object of this excita is magnified by the urgency of the prayer.  Hasten to aid us with Your great power and might or it will be too late and we will be lost.

In the purpose clause of the Collect (even without the ut) is the reason for this call.  For it is only by our Lord's first Advent that we can are sustained by His second Advent and prepared for His third Advent.  Indeed, it is by His coming in flesh that He now comes to us through the means of grace and, particularly, by this Eucharist, and it is this Word and Sacrament by which we are sustained and made fit for His coming at the end of the days in power and glory.  Again, it clear that what has the power to prevent us from receiving Him when He comes again is not a spiritual matter of the heart's own preparation or lack there of but our sins.  Our sins can impede the work of God and in particular His coming again in power and glory to receive us unto Himself.  That which causes us to stumble or trip us up are precisely those sins.  Grace is what answers our urgent need (quod nostra peccata praepediunt).  Note here the parallel.  God runs to our aid while in our running we are tripped up and stumble.  This is how much we need His aid and succour (succurre).  We pray the Lord to accelero or accelerate (hasten) to come to our aid. 

Indulgentia means forgiveness.   This is precisely what the long-awaited Savior is coming to save us from: our sins and the damnation they deserve. So, we appeal to His pardon (or “indulgence”) and His mercy (or “propitiation”).

The Gelasian sacramentary (#1121) has this, addressed to the Son, in the first of its propers for Advent. The Gregorian sacramentary (#805) addresses it to the Father and places it for a Sunday after a winter ember vigil. The Gallican Bobbio Missal (#38) has it as a second prayer in the first Mass for Advent. The Sarum Missal has it for Advent 4. The Sarum Missal had four collects beginning with "Excita" (stir up) on Sundays before Christmas (Sunday next before Advent, Advent 1, 2, and 4).  Cranmer kept it for Advent 4, adding "among us" and "through the satisfaccion of thy sonne our Lord":

Excita, quaesumus, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni: et magna nobis virtute succurre; ut, per auxilium gratiae tuae, quod nostra peccata praepediunt, indulgentia tuae propitiationis acceleret.

Praepedio means “to entangle the feet or other parts of the body; to shackle, bind, fetter”, and thus “to hinder, obstruct, impede”.   Something that is “before” (prae) the “foot” (pes) causes you to stumble.  In the Lewis & Short Dictionary this prae-pes also means “swift of flight, nimble, fleet, quick, rapid”.  To the Latin ear, prae-ped hears this interesting tension of opposing concepts. During Advent the Collects have all kinds of movement -- rushing swiftly to a goal: venio (“come”), suc-curro from curro, (“run”), accelero.

Although somewhat wooden and not as poetic as Cranmer, we might translate the Collect:

Raise up Thy power, O Lord, we beseech Thee, and come: and hasten to aid us with Thy great might, so that, through the help of Thy grace, what our sins are hindering, the indulgence of Thy merciful favor may make swift [to aid or resolve].

So we prayed on December 22:

Stir up Your power, O Lord, and come and help us by Your might, that the sins which weigh us down may be quickly lifted by Your grace and mercy; for You live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

This is the stuff that fills my mind.  Awesome!
 

One dogma but many dogmatics. . .

Missouri has struggled over the years with an official dogmatics text.  Walther had his own standard work, Johann Wilhelm Baier’s Compendium Theologiae Positivae which he used as the basic dogmatics to prepare pastors for the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  In fact, CFW Walther edited Baier’s Compendium and annotated it with excerpts from Luther and orthodox Lutheran theologians.  It did not last, of course.  Eventually Franz Pieper's three volumes (in English, anyway) became the standard and lasted for generations.  As John Stephenson reminds us, nobody in Missouri ever sets out to displace the old works but merely to supplement the text in use.  Eventually, the supplement becomes the standard.  So it was that Missouri decided at some point that Pieper needed a supplement.  After a few starts and stops, two different paths emerged.  One was a couple of volumes of essays with somewhat an official stamp on it that began under Robert Preus and ended up being Ralph Bohlmann's project.  In the end, it has almost been forgotten or rendered somewhat irrelevant.  It may become more used than what it has but it was late in coming and largely unwelcome when it arrived.  Preus took it upon himself to produce his own version of a dogmatics and called it the Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics Series.  These were not essays but real books -- though somewhat shorter than some might have expected.  In the end, no single series or collection has come to replace Pieper though nearly everyone thinks he could use some help.  Some have found it an affront to Pieper to even think of adding to what he offered while others honor the name without perusing the pages of the actual work all that much (especially in seminary!).  

Curiously, Lutheran history is rather replete with dogmatics volumes -- at least from its earlier period.  These were not short volumes or mere essays collected but long and tedious and somber tomes.  Every university had its own dogmatician and every dogmatician worth his salt had his own dogmatics.  We found a way to live with various dogmatics and differing ways of expressing a pretty united faith.  Now, we fear putting any official label on any dogmatics except the old ones that need supplements and are honored in principle if not in actual usage.  So we are back at where we began.  We have all kinds of books used in seminary and by pastors as doctrinal texts and even more essays.  What we are afraid of doing is owning up to this diversity.  Pieper has become the icon of our Synod and we honor the icon even though we look at others a bit more fondly and as somewhat more useful.  How odd we are!  In our early years we produced more dogmatics than most pastors could even find time to read and they were long and heavy works.  Now we seem to do dogmatic theology more by anecdote than by text.

I must admit that Lutherans are seldom at home in systematics and prefer to be Biblical theologians rather than dogmaticians but it is an image not quite supported by fact.  In reality, we are dogmaticians and have  had, at least in the past, a rather great affection for producing dogmatic texts -- until more recent times.  The trend is toward more practical works like Lutheranism 101 and its siblings.  It seems that we do not quite have the same stomach for heavy theological works or by the big names of the past (going all the way back to Gerhard and Chemnitz).  I wonder why?  In the end, we will need to figure this one out.  Walther's old offering is seldom read no matter how well it is esteemed (though translations coming out now may change that a bit).  Pieper is like your grandmother's china -- valued on the shelf but seldom used for a meal.  The enterprise begun in 1983 that took some 34 years to complete was received with not much more than a yawn.  The Confessional series is well esteemed but still incomplete and a little uneven (as might be expected).  Gerhard is being translated but he has a lot yet to go.  Everyone from Chemnitz to Krauth and Schmid have their place.  The end result of this little meandering thought it that we have a lot and still little that stands out and stands up to fill in the places of the mighty efforts of old.

Vocation to worship. . .

Worship is often presumed to be an act of the conscious reason, mostly for the mind and only secondarily for the rest of the body.  How odd it is that we think this way.  All creation worships God not by reasoned conclusion or even by experiencing God's Word but simply doing what they were created to do.  So from the birds of the air to every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth to the creatures of the watery deep to the plants, they worship God not by reason but simply by being who they are as God created them to be.  If we would learn anything from them, what we ought to learn is to be who God has created us to be and redeemed us to be.  It is not simply a matter of words, though words are always a part of who we are, but it is also a matter of vocation.

When we reject the divinely ordered pattern of creation as male and female, husband and wife, mother and father to children, we are refusing to worship God as God has made us to be.  It is one thing when a person longs to be married and the right person or time does not come along or a couple longs for a child who does not come to them.  We cannot fault them for the longing that is left unfulfilled.  In their want, they still can acknowledge that these gifts come from God even though they are not realized in them.  We can also lament that this is what sin has done -- it has robbed us of the opportunity to fulfill God's order and left us subject to the broken nature of things since the Fall in Eden.

As much as we acknowledge that sometimes through no fault of our own, we are left without the opportunity to fulfill the vocation God intended for us in creation, we should not dismiss this vocation as of no importance.  It is precisely by living within the vocation of God's design that we worship Him and not simply by the meditation of the mind or the devotion of the heart or the sound of our voices.  The point of vocation is not to find our place in the world but to live out within the places in which we live the lives God intended.  Sin can certainly affect these lives and our ability to live within them in peace and joy but even in this God has provided forgiveness as the key grace to make love like His own.

The birds of the air or the fish of the sea or the animals of the land along with all the plants have been created by God and worship Him by living out their lives within the order God has made.  We sometimes dismiss this as nothing all that important.  In truth it is at least as important as conscious worship of mind and heart and the worship of mind and heart do not replace the worship of vocation but complement this worship that flows from fulfilling our vocation.  Sin has made this elusive and even caused us to dismiss God's order as something less or less noble than the worship of a mind to comprehend God and His ways or the heart to rejoice in them.  I fear we have forgotten this.  Even Christians succumb to the temptation to believe that there is a more noble way to live out our lives as God's people than to live as husband to wife or wife to husband, father to child or mother to child, or child to our parents.  This seem rather mundane to the imagined loftiness of a contemplative life, for example.  But they are not mundane at all.  In fact, it is to our poverty that our sin conspires to dismiss the shape of God's order and our place within that order as something of little consequence.  We must stop doing this.

A few days ago I wrote of how our children got the idea that parenthood was a terrible burden to be avoided.  When I wrote those words, I was also thinking of the other part of that.  By so labeling marriage as a patriarchal or antiquated shape of our lives together and by so dismissing parenthood as something that constrains who we are instead of fulfilling who we are, we have shown the ultimate hubris.  The rejection of God's order is the refusal to worship Him who made us and who redeemed us by His grace so that we might fulfill our places within His order.  Fulfilling our vocations is part of our worship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 

Do we need a John or a Joseph?

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Advent, preached on Thursday, December 19, 2024 (one year series).

John the Baptist is a character necessary to the plot of Christmas but not someone we want or like.  To us and to the Jews of Jerusalem, John was a spoiler who had come to ruin the party.  Things were going fine and nobody asked for John to be there or to open his mouth and upset their happiness with a call to repentance.  No, John the Baptist is like the dad who comes home in a foul mood to spoil our mood with all his talk of sin and death, repentance and faith, morality and truth.

We do not want John either.  We want a happy Christmas in which we open presents filled with things we want and we watch others open gifts we bought that were exactly what they wanted.  Christmas is ruined with all this talk of sin, of preachers who meddle in our business by destroying the carefully crafted myths of the season, and of church that never fits in with our holiday plans.  There is no fun in a father figure who makes you clean up your life by owning up to the wrongs you have said and done or urging us to live lives different from the world around us.  Leave us alone, John.  We have it under control. Or do we?

Look around you.  Are things under control?  John may not be a welcome voice for a people headed to a fairy tale Christmas but he is the voice we need to hear.  He is still warning those who live together outside of marriage that it is wrong – just like he did to Herod.  He is still calling those who want to make a nice memory to own up to their sin and make way for the Lord who comes to save them.  He is still speaking truth to power and calling the dirty to wash in the water of God’s mercy so they might be clean – even if they would rather be a little dirty.

No one wants John to come and ruin our Christmas but we have no Christmas without him.  John opens his mouth to speak not because he is some self-righteous prig but because he is trying to prepare us for the day when there will be no more forgiveness for sin and no more time to repent.  That is why we need to listen to him – as unpleasant and as grating as his voice is.

John is like Joseph.  They must be in this story of Christmas but we do not want them there.  Joseph doubted Mary and was ready to either put her away quietly or publicly announce the sin he accused her of and risk her death – all to preserve the image of his own righteousness.  God sent Joseph because Mary needed him – not to supply some DNA for her baby but to protect her from the threats she would face as the mother of our Lord and to provide a father for His very own Son.

The John the Baptists who preach what we do not want to here and the father figures who protect us from all that we think we can handle are the necessary spoilers for Christmas.  There would be no Christmas without them.  We love the story of a young mother whose Son is the underdog who battles our enemies for us but we do not know what to do with a prophet who warns us to repent and a Joseph who protects Mary to the place where there is no room and who wakes them all out of a sound sleep to sneak away into Egypt rather than spill the blood of the Messiah before its time.

We live amid a broken image of a family in which men do not need women and women do not need men and neither needs children.  We live amid a broken world where the job of religion is to tell us we are all good to do instead of warning us to repent.  We live with the broken dreams of a life negotiated so that we never have to suffer and never have to sacrifice for anyone or any cause.  No wonder people like John the Baptist and Joseph are so unwelcome at Christmas.  They ruin our well cultivated myths and lies that mask our destruction and keep us from hearing the voices of those who want us to be saved.

Let me be blunt.  The good memories of those who suffer in hell will do nothing to comfort them and will only increase their misery and the best memories of those who delight in heaven will be left behind for that which is even better.  But we need to hear the preaching Johns of this world and we need the fathers willing to protect, provide, sacrifice, and suffer for the sake of their families.  They say the truth hurts and maybe it does but it does not inflict the pain of a life forever captive to death’s prison or alone in your misery.  If we knew what we think we did, we would wish for more like John and more like Joseph who are strong enough to be faithful in a world of temptation and lies.

John is dead and he will be raised again but on the last day and that is too late for us.  So we need preachers who will speak the inconvenient truth in love even at Christmas.  We need those who will be voices of John in their homes, for the sake of their children and families.  We need spoilers who will ruin the myth of Christmas with its most profound reality– God IS come to be your Savior.  We need those who will protect the little lives carried in their mother’s wombs even at the cost of their own hopes and dreams and happiness.  We need those who will not only speak of God’s will but demonstrate that will with the forgiveness that is full, free, and for those who deserve not a bit of it.  We need John and Joseph.  We need YOU to be John and YOU to be Joseph in your homes and neighborhoods.  In the end these do not ruin Christmas or spoil a memory but make it possible for us to welcome Him who comes in the Name of the Lord.

Christmas is not ruined by honest preaching that calls us to repent or by strong fathers who love their families enough to bring them to that place where this preaching takes place.  Christmas is ruined by people who think today is more important than eternity, that you have to get your own way in order to be happy, that you have to hide behind a mask in order to get along, or that you have to act like you are good to go in yourself and do not need anyone’s help.  Jesus has not come to give prizes to the perfect family.  Every family is dysfunctional.  Every family is a mess.  Every one of us is weak in the face of temptation.  Everything that is not of God in this world is evil.  But the Baby born in the manger has come for just that – for people who need help, for sinners who love evil more than good, for families which are a mess, and for those who wear a mask in public to cry at home alone.

Make your way straight to the Lord, without delay or detour.  The Christ was born for you and He has been pleased to live and die for your sins.  For every call to repentance, there is the promise of forgiveness.  For everyone who admits they are vulnerable and need each other, there is comfort.  Jesus is under no illusions about who we are or what we need.  Christmas is not about memories or presents but about the Savior who came to us as one of us that He might take away our sins and the sins of the whole world.  Amen.

The drumbeat of death. . .

I listened to Elon Musk (not my favorite person) but one thing he said is spot on.  He indicated that from his view the educational system and even the family has done a great job beating it into our children, particularly girls, that if you get pregnant your life is over.  It is surely true that with respect to premarital sex the uniform witness of nearly everyone has been to do whatever is possible to prevent pregnancy and to expand the difficulties of such a pregnancy for everyone.  Could it be that we learned too well?  The birth control that was for particular situations has become universal and normal to make conception exceptional and rare.  But what was perhaps reasoned advice to the teenager has become the normal way a generation or more has come to see pregnancy in every case.  It is not simply life changing but steals your life away from you.  You do not get a career, you do not get advancement in your profession, you do not get happiness -- instead you get chained to a prison cell called parenthood.  No wonder we see pregnancy as a disease to be prevented and abortion as the sacrament of this religion of unwanted children.

I was a pastor during the time when much of youth ministry seemed focused upon this.  We had countless "Bible studies" and pep talks in an attempt to prevent our teens from becoming sexually active or taking drugs.  Kids got so tired of the predictable message they stopped listening.  But what they did hear and what has stuck with them is the Christian version of the idea that if you get pregnant, your life is over.  Girls especially heard this and took this to heart but boys did as well.  Parenthood was a trap and not a joy.  I wonder what they thought this said about them and how their parents viewed them.  Did they also begin to think that their own moms and dads had dreaded the announcement that it was a boy or it was a girl?  Even if they did not apply this to their own conception and birth, they certainly applied it to their own want or desire to be a parent.  We are now reaping the poisoned fruits of our own failure to speak clearly and authentically.  No, motherhood is not a prison and, no, parenthood is not an unspeakable burden, and, no, children are not a curse upon your hopes and dreams and happiness.  Children are a blessing from the Lord.

Curiously, we seem to have lost the battle to prevent premarital (or extramarital sex).  Christian teens and Christian adults seem to be as tempted by and succumb to temptation nearly as often as those outside the faith.  But we have all rallied around the holy grail of contraception and abortion so well that even Christians are not sure that abortion is wrong or always wrong.  What we are sure of is this.  Don't get pregnant or, if you do, wait until you have everything else out of your life that you desired.  Surely this is part of the issue with IVF -- the age at which women are having their first pregnancy keeps advancing and is nearly at that point when most women in the past were having their last pregnancy.  That is the most profound lesson of all our talk against premarital sex and are warning to our girls and boys that a pregnancy would ruin their lives and we learned that lesson too well.  We have turned sex into pleasure without the bother of a child and the laboratory into the place where we get a child when we finally decide we might want one.  Gone is the joyful affirmation that children are a blessing from the Lord.

The threat against premarital sex is not that it might result in a child.  No, the threat against premarital sex is that it is wrong, it works again a good and positive marital relationship down the road, and it delivers on all that is corrupt about sex and pleasure without any of the blessing.  Stop telling your daughters that if they get pregnant they will ruin their lives.  Start telling them that children are a blessing from the Lord to a husband and wife who promised their lives to each other till death parts them.  We are not asking youth to wait for sex because a child could ruin their lives but to wait as a child waits in anticipation of something that is good and for a time when that good is appropriate.  Pregnancy is not a disease nor is being a mother (or a father) a terrible fate.  These are the most wonderful things in their own time.  It is not our job to manage sex the way we would manage a disorder or diagnosis.  It is our job to rejoice in the Lord who has gifted us with marriage and gifted marriage with the heritage and promise of children.