Throughout the advent season we’ve taken time
To rekindle our amazement
By remembering the amazing announcements
[light first candle]
The amazing acceptance
[light second candle]
The amazing anticipation
[light third candle]
And the amazing adoration
[light fourth candle]
That are all part of the Christmas story.
And is that all that’s amazing about advent?
Asks the dissatisfied in the crowd.
And the answer, of course, is: no.
There’s one last thing for us to be amazed at in advent:
The amazing arrival.
Because Advent is about waiting, of course
And what we’ve been waiting for throughout this Advent Season
Is the arrival of the Baby Jesus,
Born of a woman
Born under the law
To redeem those under the law
And make us all children of God.
Do you remember how amazing his arrival was?
In the dead of night, while lowly shepherds
Watched their flocks in the darkness
And proud kings slept soundly in palaces of gold,
While emperors dreamed grandiose dreams of ruling the world
And all the inns in Bethlehem
Were bursting at the seams because of it
A Virgin gave birth and a baby was born
Isn’t it amazing?
They wrapped him in cloths and laid him in a manger
Because there was no room for him in the inn
Angels announced him
Wisemen greeted him
Shepherds came and worshiped
While Mary pondered all these things in her heart.
Absolutely Amazing!
And so we light this final candle, the Christ Candle, tonight
To remind us all, that so long as he is with us in it
This world, his world, truly is an amazing place
And so long as he walks the road with us
Our way will be overflowing with amazement.
[light the Christ Candle]
For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon His shoulder.
And His name will be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
What's So Amazing About Advent? An Advent Wreath Liturgy (Week 4)
What's So Amazing About Advent? An Advent Wreath Liturgy (Week 3)
Last week we lit this candle as a challenge
for us to be a people who accept the Father’s will for us.
[light second candle]
And before that we lit this candle,
to remind us to be amazed
at the announcements of the advent season.
[light first candle]
But there’s still more to be amazed at in advent.
What else is amazing about advent?
Asks the curious in the crowd.
What about the amazing anticipation that happens this season?
Christmas, of course,
Is one of those few seasons where the waiting
Is perhaps more fun than the arrival.
Where the hustle and the bustle of preparing for the celebration
Rivals, almost, the dawning of the big day itself.
In this it takes its cue from the Christian story.
After all, hadn’t the people of Israel waited millennia
In eager anticipation of their Messiah?
Enthroning their kings and hearing from prophets
Building their temples and watching the signs
For the dawning of Emmanuel?
Amazing anticipation!
And in the days of John the Baptist
Didn’t they head on down to the Jordan River,
To wash away sin and clean up their act
To make straight the paths and get level places ready
In anticipation of his arrival?
Amazing.
And Mary and Joseph,
Knowing that it was none other than
The Son of God, the Maker of Everything
The savior of the world Himself
Kicking in her womb,
Still didn’t they have to wait the normal nine months
Filled with anticipation for the ordinary birth of their
Heaven-Sent Baby Boy?
Absolutely amazing!
Anticipation—the eager act of getting ready,
while we wait for a good thing to arrive—
this is a lost art in our instant-gratification world.
But it is also a serious Christian discipline.
Because whatever else it is,
The Christian life is always lived
In eager anticipation of God’s New Thing
The New Heavens and the New Earth
That he promises to give us when
that same Heavenly Baby Boy
Comes again a second time,
The Heaven-Sent Lord of All.
[light third candle]
And so, in the meantime, we light this,
the third candle of advent
To remind us to stay busy
And to stay amazed
As we anticipate that day.
What's So Amazing About Advent, an Advent Wreath Liturgy: Week 2
Last week we lit this candle to remind us to be amazed
At the glorious announcement of God’s love for the world
That he made to us in the birth of his son.
[light 1st Candle]
But Advent is not only a time of amazing announcements
It’s also a time of amazing … acceptance.
What a strange thing to be amazed at!
Says the skeptic in the crowd; but even so, think it through:
When the angel announced to the Virgin that she would conceive,
Even though it meant scandal and shame
To bear a child out of wedlock
Not to mention the absolute terror
Of bearing in her body
the fetal Son of God
She accepted her role—isn’t it amazing?—and answered in reply:
I am the Lord’s Servant, may it be to me as you have said.
The same is true of Joseph, when he learned that his fiancé
Would bear a child that wasn’t his.
Despite the disgrace that fell on him
He humbly accepted his place in the plan,
As Matthew’s Gospel puts it:
He did what the angel commanded
And took Mary home as his wife.
Isn’t it amazing?
But it is perhaps more amazing that we can fathom,
Because we celebrate an even greater acceptance
Than theirs this Advent season.
Because when the Triune God looked down
On a world weary with sin and blinded with darkness,
And knew that the only way to save it
Was to offer up God’s own very own life for its redemption,
The Son of God—even though he was
Equal to the Father in every way—
Did not consider his equality with God
As a thing to be used for his personal gain
Rather he accepted his place in the Father’s plan
And came to earth to die.
As the Scriptures say
He made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant
Being made in human likeness
And being found in appearance as a man!
Isn’t it amazing?
[light second candle]
And so we light this second candle of Advent to challenge us
To be like him in this:
to accept from the Father’s Hand
Whatever he has in mind
And whatever he wants do
To use us in his plan to show the world his love.
What's So Amazing Advent? Week 1: Amazing Announcements
In his account of the birth of Jesus, for instance
Luke keeps saying things like
“they were amazed,”
“they were filled with wonder”
and “they pondered these things in their heart,”
to describe everyone’s reaction
to the inexplicable events of that first Christmas season.
A Virgin conceived and bore a child…
A heavenly host announced it…
Shepherds welcomed him…
Magi worshipped him …
and little baby John the Baptist leaped in the womb for joy
when he drew near.
Be amazed.
Amazement is sometimes hard for us to come by
in this sordid, cynical, scientific age,
Where every whim can be met with the click of a button,
and every mystery, it seems,
has been inspected and dissected
and charted and exposed.
We have become a people who have forgotten how to stand amazed.
And if we are, perhaps we need the advent season more than we realize,
to remind us that one of the best responses we can have to our Lord and Savior,
when he shows up unexpectedly in our lives,
is just to be amazed.
But what’s so amazing about advent?
Asks the cynic in the crowd.
Well for starters, let’s remember
That advent is a season for amazing announcements.
“Your barren wife will conceive a child,
who will be the forerunner for the Christ,”
is what the angel Gabriel announced to John the Baptist’s Dad,
before the story was even underway.
Amazing!
“You will conceive by the power of the Holy Spirit,”
is what he later announced to the Virgin Mary,
who had never been with a man but had found favor with God.
“And he will be great and will be called the son of the Most High.”
Amazing!
And unto you is born this day in the City of David,
a savior who is Christ the Lord,
is what the herald angels announced
to certain poor shepherds, on that first noel long ago.
Absolutely Amazing!
[Light Candle]
And so we light this first candle to remind us never to stop being amazed
At the Good News of this majestic Christmas God
Who announced it to the whole world in the Birth of his Son:
That we are loved, and he is always with us.
Glory to God in the Highest
And on earth peace, good will to men and women
On whom his favor rests.
Singing a Songful of the Holy Spirit, a devotional thought
What stands out when you read closely, however, is that this filling-with-the-Holy-Spirit happens only after he obeys the Lord, and, more importantly, it happens immediately after his obedience. In v. 61-62, they were trying to figure out what to name baby John the Baptist, and because Zechariah was mute (a result of his disbelief back in v.19), no one's quite sure what to call him. Zechariah, it says, "motioned for a writing tablet and wrote out, 'His name is John.'" Notice that this is in direct obedience to what God told him to do back in verse 13, even though no one in his family is named John, and it would have been a radical break from the cultural custom (see v.61).
The point is: Zechariah's being obedient here, and in verse 64, it says, "Immediately after this his mouth was opened and he started praising God." The way it's worded it sure sounds like the song in verses 67-79 is the "praising" he offered up immediately after his mouth was opened-- he was filled with the Spirit (v.67) and the first thing he said was, "Praise be to God!"
When you connect all these dots, you can't help but notice that: 1) for Zechariah, filling with the Holy Spirit depended on his obedience, and 2) his filling with the Spirit followed immediately and irresistibly after his obedience. Anyone who really wants a deeper and fuller filling with the Holy Spirit in their life would do well to give Zechariah's Advent Song a careful, reflective listen. If Zechariah's example is any indication, we will only be filled with God's Spirit if, and when, and to the degree that, we are obedient to Him.
May God give grace for us to be so.
Great Paradox, a song
I did not originally write this as a Christmas song, per se, but it occurs to me that the lyrics are about as fitting this time a year as anything I've written. I'm posting it today simply as the next track in my song-by-song tour of my latest recording project, "Accidentals," but seasonally, as a musical meditation for advent, it works too. Happy listening.
O great paradox, how I marvel
How I wonder at the mystery of your love
Emptied of your glory
You brought your glory down to us
How marvel, how I wonder, how I marvel at your love
You are prophet and the word
Humble servant and the Lord
Holy God and his perfect sacrifice
Both the shepherd and the lamb
Son of God and son of man
Both the resurrection, and the life
O great paradox, how I marvel
How I wonder at the mystery of your love
Emptied of your glory
You brought your glory down to us
How marvel, how I wonder, how I marvel at your love
You are water turned to wine
Both the firstfruit and the vine
Living rock, become the living bread
You’re the greatest made the least
Both our offering and priest
And you gave your life as ransom for the dead
O great paradox, how I marvel
How I wonder at the mystery of your love
Emptied of your glory
You brought your glory down to us
How marvel, how I wonder, how I marvel at your love
And like a circle, whose centre is everywhere
Whose edge is infinity, whose radius is love
You sustain the universe, and yet you died for me
O beautiful contradiction, that made my sin your victory
How I marvel at your love.
O great paradox, how I marvel
How I wonder at the mystery of your love
Emptied of your glory
You brought your glory down to us
How marvel, how I wonder, how I marvel at your love
All is Bright: A Christmas Story
He swore. Literally, he swore, as an on-coming car jerked in front of him and lurched into the parking spot that he’d been aiming for. As he rolled past the holiday motorist who’d just stolen that prime piece of real estate out from under his nose, he muttered ominously under his breath about decking somebody’s halls.
Looking in vain for a new place to park that was still within trekking distance to the Wal Mart entrance, he came to rest at last at the furthest corner of the parking lot. Flinging his scarf over his shoulder with all the bravado of a WW I pilot, he stepped out into the blinding blizzard.
It would have been lovely, really—haloes of coloured Christmas lights shimmering just barely through the thick white haze—lovely, if it weren’t December 24th.
It would have been breathtakingly beautiful—pure drifting sheets of silent snow—beautiful, if it weren’t 10:33 pm.
It would have been picturesque, even—if he wasn’t a last-minute Christmas shopper on his way to Wal-Mart, of all places on Christmas Eve; Wal-Mart, because they were now open until midnight on this Most Wonderful Night of the Year.
So he squinted into the blinding white wind, and swore: things would be different next year.
By the time he reached the doors, the blizzard had piled a good couple of centimetres on his shoulders—the dandruff of heaven, he might have mused, if his mission hadn’t cleared all whimsical sentiments from his heart and replaced them with one single clear purpose, burning like a Christmas candle in the window of his soul: must find the perfect gift. (At 10:42 pm, Christmas Eve).
He’d need some wrapping paper, too, he noted as he pushed his way through the bottle neck of beleaguered boyfriends, desperate Dads and harried husbands who, like himself, had left this one male shopping duty of the year to the last possible moment, and were now muttering ominously under their breath about showing them who’s naughty and who’s nice.
He stumbled past the happy-face badge on the chest of the sad-faced greeter at the door, and squinted at last in the florescent glare of the store. 10:51.
A robotic Santa Claus boomed a metallic “Ho. Ho. Ho.” at him, from a display of last minute Christmas decorations. The vaguely evil undertones of this animatronic belly laugh mingled with a vaguely threatening rendition of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” that poured from invisible speakers somewhere overhead. For just a moment the Christmas Candle in his soul flickered, and allowed him the briefest of whimsical thoughts: he remembered sitting in church with his buddy Eddie, during a Christmas Eve service they were ignoring as kids, and Eddie had showed him how you could rearrange the letters in the name Santa to spell the name “Satan”; he even wrote it out on the back of the bulletin while they both giggled under their breath.
Nathan squinted suspiciously at the Robotic Santa. “Ho. Ho. Ho.”
But then his mission was burning in him with full flame again, and he pushed past Santa on his way towards the perfume-trinkets-watches-jewelery-sunglasses-make-up-and-other-things-generally-feminine section of the store. Surely if the perfect gift existed, it lay-to-rest under those gleaming posters of radiant young women in jewellery or makeup, photos hung like so many summoning angels over the respective products they announced.
Nathan shuffled his way towards them.
Before he reached the place over which these posters shone, however, a frantic looking dad had knocked him sideways, on his eleventh-hour mission to get the last Liv Doll in the store. A man with a dull gleam in his eye jostled him to the right, pushing past him on his way to the pet supplies because, Nathan could only assume, because little Fido had asked for a box of liver Puppie-Yums for Christmas and they’d accidentally bought chicken.
But by this time, the jewellery section itself was but a faint legend from the distant past, like stories about frankincense and myrrh washing up on the shores of Christmases gone by, and he found himself standing instead in the electronics section, of all places, trying to convince himself that nothing said Merry Christmas like a spool of re-writable CDs made in China.
In the distance he could hear Robo-Santa laughing at him. The florescent light battered him mercilessly.
“You’d better watch out”
Maybe if he threw in a gift card for i-tunes?
“Ho. Ho. Ho.”
The two centimetres of snow had soaked through his coat now and had begun to trickle, like cold regret down his spine.
“You’d better not pout, I’m telling you why.”
The WW I flying-ace scarf slipped from his shoulders as they drooped. He turned to go.
And then: if Nathan’s life had a sound track, the sound of a record needle scratching abruptly on vinyl would have blurted out suddenly, strangling the Wal-Mart muzak to silence. The Ho. Ho. Ho. would have dullened to a slow, echoy, pulse, like an anxious heart. And choral music—the angelic humming of children, maybe, or silvery seraph song—would have begun softly, swelling into a single, throbbing: “Ahhh!” that drowned out everything else.
Because there it was: the perfect gift. She’d asked for it every day of the last 364—in one way or another—she’d been asking for it—maybe all her life. Not with words, of course—never in any audible speech—but with every gesture: that slight turn of her head when she said, “You know what I wish?” That faint droop at the corner of her mouth when she said: “You know what I hate?” That soft sigh that escaped her when she flumped in front of the TV after too-long and too-hard a day at work. That sort of mist in her eyes that she got when the sap was running a bit too thick on a re-run of Little House on the Prairie.
All of it—everything—all of it had really been about this. This gift... this perfect present... The Candle in his Soul burned with white hot light as he reached for it.
And then the lights went out.
The store plunged into instant darkness. A miraculous darkness, he would find later, because the blizzard that had piling snow on the power lines all day, knocked out Wal-Mart’s backup generator, just at the exact moment the wind finally brought down the power poles, and, with a sudden flash at the fuse box that stank worse than a Radio Shack on fire, it plunged the whole world of Wal-Mart into pitch and utter night.
Nathan stood there, frozen in darkness, his hand still reaching for that now invisible, perfect gift.
And in the dark, whimsical thoughts rushed at last through his mind: he saw visions of Pompeii caught in the ash of Vesuvius, frozen forever in the everyday act of living, buying, selling, giving in marriage until the bitter end. In the black distance, Robo-Santa’s laugh ground down to silence, and he thought of air escaping a long-discarded accordion.
“Ho.... ho.... o...”
For a surprisingly long moment nothing happened. The dark was so thick. And more miracles: no one cried out, no one shouted, no one said anything at all, for just a moment. You could hear them all, that hot press of humanity, still and silent, but close, in the dark. And no one dared to move.
And then somehow, more whimsical thoughts rushed at Nathan in that dark pause: he remembered snippets of those stories that he and Eddie had giggled their way through—stories about a little child who broke into the brilliant chaos of this world with a light that no one could see—and about some who could see it, but could barely recognize it as light, because it hurt their eyes.
He remembered vaguely about an old man up at the front who’d said something about how this child had come to upset the status quo... to turn things on their heads... to name our darkness for what it is.
And give us real light.
And he remembered lighting a candle, quite vividly, this, while a chorus of bashful and rusty singing voices lunged for the top note in Silent Night.
Holy Night.
All is Calm.
All is bright.
And his hand fell with heavenly peace, in the darkness, to his side.
Of course, because it was Wal-Mart, of all places, on Christmas Eve, someone in a back room somewhere fired up the back up, back up generator. Florescent light blared out over the store once more and the cogs of the machine started to move again.
But Nathan was already on his way towards the door. As he stumbled outside, into the haloes of coloured Christmas lights, that shimmered just barely through the thick white haze, he checked his watch: it was nearly midnight.
The Triumphal Entry and the "True Meaning" of Christmas.
A while ago I shared some observations on the connections in Luke's Gospel between the nativity narrative and the triumphal entry. Namely: when Jesus is born, angels sing peace on earth and glory in the highest; and later when Jesus rides triumphant into Jerusalem, the disciples echo this back, shouting peace in heaven and glory in the highest.
Luke's not the only one to draw parallels between Christ's birth and his Triumphant Entry. In Matthew's narrative, three magi enter Jerusalem asking about the one born "King of the Jews," and all Jerusalem (Herod included) is "disturbed" at the query (2:3). No wonder they trembled, inasmuch as "King of the Jews" is the exact title Rome had given Herod himself back in 40 BC. This child's birth is as direct a challenge to the powers that be as Jerusalem could imagine.
But, curiously, when Jesus rides his revolutionary donkey into Jerusalem, in open defiance of those powers that be, Matthew notes how all of Jerusalem was "shaken" at the sight (21:10). Like Luke, Matthew seems intent on having the nativity narrative echo hauntingly in the background of this momentous occasion: when he was born, he stirred up the city's complacency; when he rode, thirty three years later, through the gates as its rightful and perfect king, he shook that complacency to its foundations.
I call this curious because I know that if I were to point to an event that fulfilled the "meaning" of Christ's birth, I'd point intuitively and directly to the cross; and yet these inspired narrators of Jesus' story point, instead, and specifically, to the Triumphal Entry. And I can't help but wonder why (admitting, at the same time, that the Triumphal Entry only has meaning because of the way the cross and resurrection turned the very notion of "triumph" on its head).
But maybe Matthew's point here is that the "true meaning" of this child's birth, in part, lies in the way God issues His Messianic challenge, through him, to the status quo-- to Sadducean elitism, to Herodian despotism, to Pharisaical legalism, to Roman hegemony. So when he rides a gentle donkey into the City of the Great King, as the ultimate revelation of God's challenge to the status quo, nothing could be more fitting than to remember how he once squirmed helpless on the knee of his shamed mother in the humble city of David, while foreigners and outsiders hailed him as Lord and "the status quo" worried to hear him named.
And I'm left wondering: what would it look like if we had a "Triumphal Entry" Christmas this year? What might it mean for us if we let Christmas shake our complacency to its foundations and let Mary's Boy Child Jesus Christ, in his coming, issue God's direct challenge to our status quo-- our spiritual elitisms, our unacknowledged despotisms, our self-righteous legalisms, our unseen hegemonies-- where ever they might be?
Prayer for the (Advent) Offering
Over the Advent season I've found the offertory prayer more difficult to write than usual. This is partly because the consumeristic spirit of Christmas these days leaves me hesitant to associate Jesus with the gift-getting impulse of our annual, year-end Saturnalia. Full confession: there's a growing part of me that deeply struggles when I hear things like "Jesus is the Greatest Gift of All" at Christmastime, because it leaves me wondering if we aren't really saying, or at least leaving non-Christians with the impression that we're saying: "Not only does Jesus endorse the hedonistic, consumeristic, materialistic frenzy of December, he is, in fact, nothing more (or less) than its ultimate climax."
As I continue to wrestle with this, I thought I'd post a few of the gift-giving prayers we've prayed at the Freeway.
Father in Heaven,
As we pause in the middle of this busy time of year, it seems almost silly for us to say: Jesus is the Reason for the Season. The one who came to give us divine simplicity, pure generosity and holy rest; is he the reason for all of this hectic buying and getting and rushing around?
But God, he is the reason for what we do in this place this morning, because he is your gift of life and love and hope to us. And his presence has always inspired joyful gift-giving in the hearts of his followers.
So when three learned star-gazers followed the omens at his birth and found him lying in the lap of his virgin mother, they gave gold and frankincense and myrrh in humble awe.
And later when he came to eat in the house of a humiliatingly-short tax-collector who’d climbed a tree to get a glimpse of him, that tax-collector gave half of all he owned to the poor for pure joy.
And later still, when he sat in the house of his friends the week before he would be executed, a woman named Mary gave a pint of pure perfume, poured a year’s wages-worth over his feet and wiped it with her hair in deep gratitude.
God, can you inspire that kind of gift-giving in us again?
And as we worship him through our gifts and offerings today, we invite you to teach us once more the divine simplicity, and pure generosity, and holy rest that is your gift to us in Christ Jesus.
Amen.
***
God, as we give our tithes and offerings today,
We want to do it with the all trust and simplicity of a child.
After all, your Son Jesus told us
that we would enter the Kingdom of Heaven
only if we could receive it with the humility of a child.
And so on this second Sunday of Advent, we remember that
Old children’s carol, and make it our humble prayer today:
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.
If I were a wise man, I would do my part.
Yet what I can, I give him, give him my heart.
Amen.
On the First Snowfall of Winter
Snow fell today, silent,
all day,
wrapping the weary world, grey,
that I walked through on my way to work
with a white, wet grave shroud,
the linen of winter.
All day.
And I missed it,
all day,
locked in my study, silent,
scratching out my still-born ideas
and half-baked circumlocutions
alone
for a talk I must give again
about the unexpected God who upsets this world
and renews our every watching for him,
breaking into the wilderness
of our darkest winter
with pure white light.
Music for the Start of Advent (2)
It wasn't originally written with Advent in mind, but it is perhaps fitting for this time of year, inasmuch as the Advent season is really about preparing for his Second Coming, even as we prepare to celebrate his First Coming ("O Come O Come Emmanuel," for instance, is not really about remembering "the first Noel" as much as it is about our longing for the consummation of the "true meaning of Noel," when Emmanuel comes again, to establish his kingdom in all its fullness, God himself with us forever, in answer to the deepest longing of every hopeful heart (just read Revelation 21:3 and compare it to Matthew 1:23, if you`re not convinced).)
Music for the Start of the Advent Season
Yesterday marked the start of the Advent season.
I won't wax vehement here about the way Evangelicalism tends to run rough-shod over the Advent Season, jumping the Christmas Cheer gun and celebrating the Baby Jesus with carols and "Reason for the Season" banners and what not, all in the lead up to December 25, and then ceremoniously dropping the whole thing December 27th, after the presents are all open. Except to say that, traditionally, Advent is supposed to be about the delayed gratification of waiting-- waiting for Christmas, waiting for His Coming, waiting for the light; and the "Christmas Season" for which the Baby Jesus is "the Reason" are the twelve days between Christmas day and the Feast of Epiphany on January 6, (the twelve days of "Partridge in a Pear Tree" fame). But since we don't do delayed gratification (or sacred calendars for that matter) all that well any more, the theological significance of the Advent season gets discretely glossed over and we let the department stores tell us when to start celebrating Christmas.
But I said I wouldn't wax vehement.
Instead, in the interest of rekindling appreciation for this season of "holding our breath," I thought I'd post some Advent Carols I recorded a couple of years ago. Enjoy; and happy waiting.
This is a piano arrangement of O Come O Come Emmanuel that I worked on last year:
Seasons Greetings from the Prophet Isaiah
A bit of "pilot error" in the pulpit this morning meant that the sermon this week didn't get recorded (translation: I forgot to turn on my lapel mike ... oops). Anyways,since I can't post the audio, I thought maybe I'd post a short excerpt from the manscript of my sermon, instead. My text was Isaiah 9:1-7 ("For to us a child is born"), and the sermon included these reflections on the incarnation:
"And incarnation is good news for us, today. Because incarnation means that God has entered fully into our gloom, whatever it is; God has entered lovingly into our darkness, wherever it is; God has entered completely under the shadow of death, for us, wherever that shadow might fall.
And incarnation means that there is now no part of your life that he hasn’t taken onto himself—no corner of “being human” that he hasn’t swept out for you—no stone of your flesh-and-blood reality that he hasn’t turned over with his love.
And incarnation means that the word “God-forsaken” no longer now has any meaning for us.
Because when God became flesh like that—in all the weakness of a newborn baby—when he came to us like that—he proved to us that there is now no place in heaven, or on earth, or under the earth that could ever cut you off from the love and light of God. I mean, if God himself came as a homeless baby born to an unwed mother in the straw and muck of sheep pen—well—is there any place left that might now separate you from him?
For to us a child is born—and whatever your deepest expectations are—delivery from despair—victory over hurt—the end of injustice—the healing of wrongs—the restoration of what’s broken—the renewal of what’s wasted—whatever your greatest expectations are, Isaiah says: God meets those expectations in the most unlikely way imaginable: through great humility of a newborn child. "
Unexpected Fruit (The Director's Cut)
After I was done preaching this Sunday, one of my friends said to me: "Okay: did you make a bet in Seminary that you could preach a sermon on one of the genealogies in the Bible or something?"
Matthew 1:1-17
Matthew lists 42 generations in all from Abraham to Jesus; then he takes careful pains to note that there were 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the Exile, and 14 from the Exlie to Jesus. All of which is, in one sense, just plain wrong ... or put a different way, sure there were at least 42 generations from Abraham to Jesus, so technically Matthew's not wrong, but there were a lot more that don't get mentioned. Matthew's trimmed out a few generations here, and he's compressed a few others there, and sometimes seems to be using the term "begat" much more loosely to mean "was the ancestor of."
The Weight of Choice
I heard Erwin McManus say once that the most spiritual thing we can do is to choose. I've been thinking about this these days: could choice be the most spiritual thing?
Maybe.
Or at least, it shouldn't surprise us if it were. Anyways, our culture seems to think there's something deeply important about choice. From the moment we're old enough to watch a commercial, we're told that when we have choice, we have power. Choice is freedom. Choice is the potential to define our selves.
And you can tell a lot about a person from the things they choose.
The Bible knows about the spirituality of choice, I think; and I think that's why it points out over and over again that God is a choosing God.
Because you can tell a lot about him from the things he chooses.
So4000 years ago or so, two twin babies were born to a guy named Isaac. And God chose the younger over the older, even though he was the youngest; even though he was second place, second choice. And when God’s people where in slavery in Egypt, and God wanted to bring them into freedom, he chose an exiled shepherd to call them out, even though Moses admitted he was a man of faltering lips. And when God’s people asked for a King, God chose David, even though David was the eighth son of his father, younger, weaker, less significant than all his brothers.
And when he brought Salvation to the world, he choose the things that we would have long since passed over: the lowly, the humble, the outcast.
He chose a humble Hebrew virgin who had nothing to offer but simple acceptance of her place in God’s plan, and an incredible story about a Divine Conception. And he chose a poor Hebrew carpenter who had nothing to offer but a handful of nightmares telling him to get up and do inexplicable things like marry an unwed mother and flee to Egypt for no apparent reason.
And he chose a baby—a shivering baby born into the darkness and stink of a lonely sheep pen— He chose a 1st Century homeless rabbi with a rag-tag band of followers: reformed prostitutes and delivered demoniacs and redirected zealots and failed fishermen— He chose a crucified Jew executed by the state as political revolutionary—
He chose this as his way of making peace between himself and his sin-blinded world.
If it's true that you can tell a lot about a person based on the things they choose, then what does it tell us about God that in Jesus Christ, he chose the things that the world rejects, that the powerful look down on, and the wise despise?
Because in Jesus Christ, he chose us, too. Ordinary, outsider, outcast, lowly, least, poor, insignificant, broken, failed, reformed, rag-tag though we were, he said: in Jesus Christ, I choose you.
And in Jesus Christ, he frees us to choose back.
He invites us to respond with the likes of Mary, who heard the Spirit choose her and answered: "I am the Lord’s servant—I am the servant of a God who chooses the humble—let it be to me according to your word.” And as we choose back like this, in response to his First Choice--we find ourselves following this Little Lord Jesus into a world where—like Gabriel promised Mary—nothing is impossible with God.
Preparing the Way for the Lord
This Sunday was the second week of Advent; an exciting Sunday in our church, because we had a baptism service to go with it. Especially exciting for me, inasmuch as it was my first baptism service. I've led my share of worship jingles over the years, but I've never felt so like a worship leader as I did Sunday, when I stood in the water with Christ-followers as they received the sign of God's grace and salvation that is water baptism.
Because it was the Second week of Advent, I preached Luke 1:67-81: Zechariah's song at the birth of John. John the Baptist doesn't get a lot of air time in church; I'm not sure why, but the negligence is maybe a shame. By his own admission, John the Baptist's entire reason for being was to point the world inexorably to the Coming Christ. Everything about him was a one-way arrow directing us down the made-straight path to Jesus. (In the best illustrations of John, what stands out most is his long, extended finger pointing the World adamantly to the Lamb of God who takes away Its sin.)
But as I prepared the material for Sunday, at one point it hit me: as with John the Baptist, so too with the sign of Christian Baptism. It should point us inexorably to Jesus. Sometimes I wonder if the language we normally use to describe baptism-- personal testimony, step of obedience, personal declaration of personal faith-- doesn't point us more to the candidate than to the Christ they are declaring. I get the words we use, and believe there really is something beautifully personal about being baptized that should be celebrated; but I also believe that baptism itself should always serve as a long, extended finger pointing the World adamantly to its Savior.
The sermon recording was more than a bit fuzzy this Sunday (technical difficulties), but I thought I'd post it here for anyone interested.
Here Comes the Groom
Speaking of the start of Advent, here's my sermon from Sunday.
Psalm 45 is a pretty obscure Psalm, but not so obscure that it doesn't get picked up by the New Testament writers. I feel that preaching from the Old Testament, and especially Christ-centred, Gospel-proclaiming preaching from the Old Testament that still respects the text on it own terms (instead of using it just as a ski-jump to the cross) is a really important part of a balanced homiletical diet.
Important, but hard to do; here's one effort.
The Art of Waiting
And maybe there's something lost there; because there's something powerful in the delayed gratification, the spiritual preparation, the waiting of Advent. It's a time to remember how God's people once sat in darkness, waiting for the light. It's a time to recall their ache, as they longed for the deliverance that God had promised them through their ancient prophets. And it's a time to remember their hope, when they finally heard John the Baptist, that last great prophet of God's Coming One, crying out in the wilderness: "Prepare the Way for the Lord."