Today's Sermon - Out of Darkness - Hope 1/26/20

Out of the Darkness – Hope

(based on Isaiah 9:1-4, Matthew 4:12-23, 1 Corinthians 1:10-18)

          A professor once quoted a newspaper ad that read, "For Sale: Hot tub, plumbing included.  Will trade for pickup truck.  Call (and the telephone number was listed)".  It doesn't take a Ph.D. to determine that here is a life in major transition!  From one that was enjoying the life of leisure and a hot tub after work to a life that needs a pickup truck, even if it is sort of a hand-me-down.  Often these major transitions of life are caused by crises.  The disciples, in our New Testament reading, are in the midst of major transition.  Perhaps this transition is caused by the crisis of their decision to repent and follow Jesus.  Perhaps it is caused by the fact that John the Baptist has been put in prison.  Many of Jesus' disciples had first followed John.  It would have been easy for these disciples of John to succumb to disillusionment, retreat into fear, or just quit because they were tired.  But in Jesus' voice and the message they heard from him, they heard a new call and it was the time to respond.

Why did they respond to that voice?  Perhaps something was lacking in their lives.  Sensing in John a glimmer of hope, they realized a new opportunity in the dynamic preacher from Nazareth.  In Jesus, they found a place.  We all know that the church is people.  The Greek word we translate as "church" means "called-out ones."  But the church also is a place.  And having a place is important.  When they sinned, Adam and Eve were tossed out of their place.  Cain was doomed to wander without a place.  Abraham and Sarah were called to journey looking for a place.  The children of Israel were delivered from Egypt upon the promise of a place flowing with milk and honey.  Having a place to call your own is important.

In Christ, the disciples found a place where they could find mercy, purpose, stability, forgiveness, security, and a sameness that gave unity to their lives.  Out of darkness - hope.

Matthew also reports that they responded immediately, almost as if they left their father in the boat and just walked away.  "It is now time," Jesus says. "The kingdom is near".  

Have you heard about the Procrastinators' Club?  They boast five hundred thousand members. Actually, only thirty-five thousand members have joined.  The others intend to but they just keep putting it off!

Here in Matthew, Jesus is saying, "Don't put it off."

The Bible uses at least two Greek words we translate as "time."  One word is chronos, from which we get our word chronology.  This is the linear, day-to-day living of our lives.  We are really good with chronos time.  We get up and we are already onto our daily routines, we have our calendar of events to accomplish and our list of things to do.  We fill up our days ceaselessly with chronos time.   But another word used in Greek is kairos.  This is crisis time.  The moment is here.  Opportunity awaits.  Seize it.  It is the recognition of that penultimate moment for a decision to be made or an action to be taken.  "The kingdom is near," Jesus said.  Without delay, those whom Jesus called, followed him.  Out of darkness – hope.

In the play Becket, the king selected his old hunting buddy and fellow carouser to be the archbishop, expecting to control his pal and the church.  But in the role of archbishop, Becket changed.  "Something happened to me," he told the angry king.  "When you put this burden upon me in the empty cathedral, it was the first time in my life that I had ever been entrusted with anything.  I was literally a man without honor.  Now, I am a man with honor, the honor of God."  He had found his place because he recognized the time.  

For the disciples, they recognized in Christ, that a significant moment had arrived.  Out of their crisis of life, of searching for something more, out of their own fog of desperation they found purpose and a place.  Out of their own darkness, they found hope.  That found joy waiting for them in Jesus. 

One of the most pressing problems in our society is depression. Millions are affected by it; perhaps some of you today struggle with depression.  The prophet Isaiah ministered to an entire nation gripped by depression because of their circumstances.  Although to many, it seemed there was no hope, Isaiah proclaimed that even in the midst of despair, God is able to bring life and light.

The Darkness of despair feels overwhelming.  The reading of verse 1 in Isaiah is obscure but clear enough: gloom, anguish, and contempt are the daily bread of the people of Israel, who have borne the brunt of an Assyrian invasion of 733 B.C.  Verse 2 fills out the image: "The people who walked in darkness...." This darkness is what the people of Israel have lived with, day and night, week in and week out.  To walk in darkness, to live "in a land of deep darkness," is to lose one's sense of reality, of bearings, of memory or hope.       

What Isaiah describes is a kind of communal defeat and despair, an experience most of us have never known.  We have all, however, witnessed such events, such tragedies, or read of their occurrence in history.  Famine, genocide, plague, civil war, holocaust—all of these are instances where a crisis is so great it leaves the entire community or country in a chronic state of shock.  Since most of us have never lived that kind of communal despair we can only imagine it.  However, any of us who have experienced acute depression ourselves know the weight of such darkness.  Now multiply that by the weight of an entire people with everyone around you feeling that same depression.

Such was the existence of these oppressed people during this time period in history for the Jews.  They walked, but to where?  They lived, but for what purpose? 

Into the deep darkness comes a bold announcement from Isaiah, their prophet: the coming of "a great light".  Weeks and months and years in complete darkness, all at once dissipated by great light, shining light, as though they were given sight for the very first time.

The result of such an experience of coming into light is expressed in verse 3 with one predominant word: joy.  We spoke of this joy all through the Christmas Season as we celebrated the 300th anniversary of the hymn Joy to the World.  "You have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest."  The image is no longer of heaviness but the very opposite—lightness, levity, mirth.  The promise of Yahweh through the prophet Isaiah is that however heavy the darkness of national defeat, humiliation, and exile may be, the darkness is not the end.  Something better is coming.  Out of darkness – hope.  There is hope for joy to come again. 

And so it is with your own life, as well.  Whatever the cause of your despair, God can bring new light and new joy to you.  This joy comes with God’s love.  But leaving the darkness and coming into the light of hope and joy is a time of deep and difficult transition.  You must leave that darkness behind and go towards something unknown. 

The disciples did not know what they were getting themselves into when they chose to follow Christ.  They stepped out of the dark and into the light.  The people of Israel had no idea what Isaiah was talking about when he told them that a light was coming.  That joy would return to them.  But, out of faith, they followed.

It is difficult when we are in deep depression to know and believe that light and joy can come.  Sometimes we need a guiding hand to help us find the way.  For the entire community of Israel, it was Isaiah.  For the disciples, it was Christ.  For you, it could be a friend, a pastor, a trusted aunt or a counselor.  Reach out through the fog of despair and find the light that Isaiah talks about or the purpose that the disciples found in Christ.

Out of darkness – hope.

Today's Sermon - A Servant Soul - 1/12/20

A Servant Soul

(based on Isaiah 42:1-9, Matthew 3:13-17)

If you ask a child, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" it's unlikely you'll receive the answer, "I want to be a servant."  Being a "Servant" is not found on any of the lists of hot new careers.  Yet servanthood and being a good and faithful servant is at the essence of our faith and who we are as Christians.  In fact, God chose the very image of the servant to describe the One God would send to give his life on our behalf.

In our Old Testament reading this morning from Isaiah 42, the servant is linked closely with God: "Here is my servant, whom I uphold,/my chosen, in whom my soul delights".  Further, "I have put my spirit upon him”, someone whose very identity and purpose is derived from God who has chosen that person for service or a particular role.  But what is that role?  I think it’s pretty well defined in the first few verses of Isaiah 42: to bring justice to the nations and on earth.  But not justice that wields a sword, but rather one that does the work of justice with care, gentleness, and perseverance.  Justice will be brought about without the servant's voice having been raised, without a wick being snuffed out, and without the servant having been overcome by the size or difficulty of the mission. The images of restraint that Isaiah uses here like a bruised reed unbroken, or a dimly lit wick unquenched, give new meaning to the word grace.  If justice is the mission, it is not to be marched in by a lock-stepping holy army, but cupped in hand, cradled in arms, shielded by the body.

In Frederick Buechner's fictional account of Jacob, The Son of Laughter, God is sometimes called "the Shield," meaning that God "is always shielding us like a guttering wick...because the fire he is trying to start with us is a fire that the whole world will live to warm its hands at.  It is a fire in the dark that will light the whole world home."  It’s that image of cupping your hand against the breeze, protecting us or shielding us, so that the candle’s flame or our flame does not go out.  I love that image.

This profile of identity in Isaiah for the servant leaves us with a picture that is both inspiring in its tenderness and exemplary for any life of faith. Not only does the image of such a strong yet gentle worker of justice give us pause to contemplate, it also becomes a model for how we should be living our own lives after Christ.

This passage from Isaiah coupled with the passage from Matthew regarding Jesus’s baptism works really well together to describe the meaning and purpose of the servant in whom God has put God’s own Spirit.  That spirit, Isaiah claims, leads the servant to bring forth justice on the earth—not through power and might, but through gentleness and a tireless pursuit of God’s redemption and liberation for all the peoples of the earth.  

So, once we get to Matthew and this idea of servanthood, "What did baptism mean to Jesus?"  I think it was an experience of blessing for him. God said, "You are on the right track. Continue with my blessing." The voice of blessing is one that many people take for granted. Many people wander through life, like Esau, searching for a blessing that is never pronounced.

But being blessed isn’t something that is simple given, it also involves responsibility.  Jesus lived in obedience after receiving the blessing.  He took the hand he had been dealt and he played it.  That's what we can do. That may be all we can do.  We must be like Jesus and let nothing deter us.  The crowds wanted to make him king.  He resisted.  His best friend wanted to talk him out of it.  He refused.  Judas tried to force another course.  Jesus chose to play the hand God had dealt.  We can do the same.  Parents and other significant adults will fail to bless us even under the best of circumstances.  Other times we will not feel worthy of blessing. That is true—we're not worthy.  As in Jesus' most famous story, the parent waits to bless whether or not we are worthy.  God's presence depends not on our faithfulness but on God's.  So we continue.

Keith Miller asked, "Who gives you your grade?"  Who is the audience to whom we play out the drama of our lives?  It can be an audience of the One who will never fail to be with us as we carry out God's will.  John Claypool quotes a rabbi who once said, "When I stand before God, He will not ask me why were you not Abraham, Jacob or David?"  He will ask, "Why were you not Bernie?"  In 1969, Bob Whelan, six two and two hundred pounds, departed for Vietnam.  Within a year this fine athlete returned weighing eighty-seven pounds.  A land mine had blown away both legs.  A long recovery followed.  Never did he bow to despair or see himself as unblessed.  "Before," he said, "I had one hundred options.  Now, only five, but I'll make the best of those five."

In 1990, Bob Whelan completed the Boston Marathon. He covered all twenty-six miles-plus running on his hands and arms—hopping much like a frog. When he crossed the finish line, few dry eyes were seen. He is a winner. He chose to look to God in gratitude for what he was, not what he was not. He played the hand he was dealt. So can we, for each of us already has the blessing. (Gary L. Carver)

Baptism is serious business.  A National Public Radio story a few years back told of a seventy-one-year-old Frenchman who was seeking to be de-baptized.  The man, Rene LeBouvier, formally petitioned French church officials to annul or invalidate his baptism.  He had been raised in a very religious family, and his mother dreamed that one day he might become a priest.  Yet, in the 1970s, like many of his counterparts, Rene dared to explore intellectually beyond the confines of his strict Catholic, religious community, and that was the beginning of the end as far as his faith was concerned.

After years of attempting to have his name removed from church rolls and baptismal records, Mr. LeBouvier learned that this simply was not possible.  He then decided to take the church to court.  A magistrate found in his favor, but the church appealed.  It was not possible to erase history, they argued, nor to deny that a sacred rite had taken place, vows and eternal declarations made.

Baptism is more than simply a rite of passage or a religious ceremony; it’s one of life’s defining, threshold-crossing moments.  It’s a destiny moment when, whether you chose it or not, you were declared God’s beloved “and marked as Christ’s own forever,” as the liturgy poetically states.  Nothing you can do, even renouncing your faith, can ever nullify that fact.  This is why baptism is serious business.

In baptism we claim that everything changes.  That’s what happened at Jesus’s own baptism.  It was literally a “heavens opening” moment. Imagine Jesus as Matthew depicts him—curious, searching, insightful, precocious.  Being spiritually adventurous, he decided to go down by the river, where so many others were flocking to hear his relative, John, preach a fiery message, and they were being baptized into a new relationship with God.  There is so much we cannot know about that day and what motivated Jesus to join John and the others, but what we do know is that at the moment of his baptism, everything changed.  He went down to the river that day searching, longing, open, and he came back a changed man. He discovered, or had confirmed, his true identity and the true nature of his relationship to God.  The church has always claimed that in baptism the same is true for each of us.

This is why Mr. LeBouvier cannot be de-baptized.  What happened to him as a child in baptism had the essence of God in it, regardless of how broken the institution that celebrated this truth might be and regardless of Mr. LeBouvier’s later rejection of God’s eternal declaration about him.  His baptism cannot be undone because it was God’s doing in the first place. The good news about our God is that God’s choice to love us so fully, and to claim us eternally, cannot be undone.

-      Javier Viera

“In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that bridges all divides and heals all wounds.” (Henri Nouwen)

That is the role of the servant soul.  Let us follow the example of Christ and be servants in this world of ours.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

Today's Sermon - Epiphany Sunday: A Star - 1/5/20

A Star

(based on Isaiah 60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12)

There are so many amazing aspects of the events surrounding Christ’s birth, but one that has especially made its way into our decorations, cards, carols and nativity scenes is the Star of Bethlehem which was foretold in the ancient texts and followed by the wisemen.  The account of the star has fascinated biblical scholars and astronomers for centuries. Some claim it was a conjunction of planets, some say a comet, others a supernova in the sky.  So, what was this star, and why is it important? What was God’s purpose behind this Star of Bethlehem?

Have you ever gone outside on a clear night and looked up into the night sky?  Probably when you’ve been on vacation, away from all the city lights and other distractions of everyday life.  It’s beautiful, isn’t it?  About a thousand years before Jesus was born, King David (one of Jesus’ ancestors) sat out under the same night sky and wrote in Psalm 8:

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?”

David was awestruck by the beauty and the majesty of God’s handiwork.  And yet he had no conception of the vast distances and sizes of the objects he observed.  We have so much more knowledge of the universe today.  And so, when we look at the heavens, we should be even more awestruck than David was when we consider the wonders of the universe in which we live.  It is vastly immense and actually growing larger every day.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.  God created the galaxies and the stars, and God set them spinning in space in astronomical precision.  As the ancients studied the night sky, they observed this beauty and order.  For the most part, they found the sky was predictable.  As the great star wheel turned above the earth, each of the stars stayed in relative position to each other.  But there were also some surprises.  Meteor showers, comets, sudden flare-ups in the sky – many of the ancients viewed these as signs or portents in the heavens.

It was that the Magi, written in our scriptures as men from the East, who noticed something unusual in the sky around the time of Christ’s birth. Something out of the ordinary caught their attention and spurred them on to make the long journey to Jerusalem.  If God had not first created a universe of such order and precision, this star would not have stood out to them.  

When the Magi got to Jerusalem, they began to ask the people: “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews?  We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.”  Somehow, they connected this star with the birth of an enormously important new king, and they came seeking to worship him.  You have to remember that for the most part the entire world was under the rule of Rome, and Caesar it’s Emperor.  If a star showed up to announce the birth of a new king, this king would be even more important than the Emperor, therefore someone worthy of praise and worship.  They searched the ancient scriptures of Israel as this trajectory of the star and found in it the mention of a Messiah, the Christ. 

Long before Christ came into the world, the Scriptures foretold his coming.  God chose the people of Israel to be his very own, and he gave them the law, the sacrifices, the temple and the promises – all of which pointed forward to Christ.  One of those early promises was recorded in the book of Numbers, where it was prophesied: “A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel.”  This promise was connected to an earlier prophecy about the scepter in Genesis which says: “The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his.” Another prophecy that may have influenced them would be today’s Old Testament reading from Isaiah 60:

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you.  See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you.  Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.”

Taken together, these prophecies speak of a ruler who will come out of Israel from the tribe of Judah and to whom the obedience of all the nations belongs and all nations will come to sit under his rule.  Reading these texts, it might be possible to see how the Magi related the image of the star in Genesis and Numbers to this mysterious star in the east arriving over Jerusalem as a sign that the King of the Jews was finally born into the world.  And if the obedience of the nations was his, then this Christ was not only King of the Jews but he was a king for all people.  Remember there’s an Emperor who rules over the whole world at this time, so this wasn’t really a big stretch even for these Magi that come from a distant land.

Whatever Scriptures they knew, somehow, they were able to make the connection between the star they saw rising in the east and this ruler who was prophesied in the Old Testament.  And so, they came to worship him.

We know the Magi initially saw the star in the east, they made the connection to Christ, and then they came to Jerusalem, for some unknown and miraculous reason, the star moved across the sky and then stopped over Jerusalem and ultimately over Bethlehem.  There is some question as to whether the star led the Magi all the way from their home to Jerusalem, or whether it reappeared once they reached Jerusalem and then led them to Bethlehem.  But either way, as they traveled from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, “the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.”

So, what was the Star of Bethlehem?  There have been many attempts over the years to identify this star and I’ve written previous sermons about that, but in a quick review here are the four most common explanations:

A comet: The early church father Origen was the first to suggest that the star may actually have been a comet.  Halley’s Comet made an appearance in 12 B.C., but that is much too early for Christ’s birth.  Another comet appeared for about seventy days in March and April of 5 B.C.  That is closer to the time frame of Christ’s birth, but it does not explain the miraculous movement of the star toward Bethlehem.  Also, comets were generally considered omens of evil rather than bearers of good news.

A conjunction of planets: Others have suggested that the star was really a conjunction of planets.  Johannes Kepler, one of the fathers of modern astronomy, pointed to the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 7 B.C. (later joined by Mars in February of 6 B.C.).  However, once again it does not explain the movement of the star.  Also, planetary conjunctions are fairly brief events, lasting at the most for several nights and in their most compact configurations only for a few hours.

A supernova: Kepler actually preferred a different explanation himself – the possibility that the Magi saw a star that had gone supernova.  A supernova is basically an exploding star.  It is a spectacular event as the star suddenly flares up in brilliance and maintains that brilliance over a period of time due to a series of internal explosions.  The last supernova that occurred in our own Milky Way galaxy took place in 1604.  It is reported that the star was so bright you could actually see it in the daytime. Now the ancients sometimes got comets and novas confused; they often called novas “comets without a tail.”  There are reports of a tailless comet in the year 4 B.C. which may actually have been a supernova.  The timing is close, but once again it does not account for the movement of the star.

Given what knowledge we have today, we still cannot fully explain the Star of Bethlehem yet.  Perhaps God did something that we still do not understand – imagine that.  When all is said and done, we have something much better than an explanation, though.  We have a mystery.  We have a miracle.  And the miracle of the Star of Bethlehem is one of the many wonders of the Christmas story that draws our hearts to worship the Lord each Christmas season.

But even if we cannot explain the Star of Bethlehem, we aren’t left in the dark as to its purpose.  God’s purpose for the Star of Bethlehem was simply to point the Magi to Christ.  God used the star to catch the Magi’s attention and bring them to Jerusalem.  It was there that they received a fuller revelation of Christ from God’s Word, when the teachers of the law, under the direction of Herod, opened the Scriptures and pointed them to Bethlehem as to the place of Christ’s birth.

And then, somehow, the star went on ahead of them to Bethlehem until it stopped over the place where Christ was.  Matthew 2:10 says: “When they saw the star, they were overjoyed.”  Why were they overjoyed? Not so much because they saw the star, but because the star had led them to their goal.  It had pointed them to Christ.

I would say that this is still God’s purpose for the Star of Bethlehem today.  It points us to Christ.  Just as the purpose of a reading lamp is to shed light on the book you are reading, or the purpose of a spotlight is to highlight the person on the stage, so the purpose of the star is to point us to Christ.

It’s interesting that the gospel of Matthew begins with foreigners from a distant nation coming to worship Christ.  And the gospel of Matthew ends with Jesus’ commission to the church to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  So, the Star of Bethlehem has a missionary thrust.  It’s a reminder to us that we are to share the good news of Christ with everyone, everywhere we can.  We are to make disciples of all nations as we point them to Christ, for He IS the true Star of Bethlehem.