Epiphanies

Old Testament: Isaiah 49:1-7
New Testament: Matthew 2:1-12

God is always showing up for us in unlikely places.

Some stories in the Bible are just plain weird. We have tales in which snakes and donkeys talk, fish swallow people whole, flaming chariots come down from the sky, blind people receive sight, and the dead come back to life. Perhaps a churchier term would be to say that these accounts are “mysterious,” but I think “weird” pretty much fits the bill.

In the stories I just mentioned, the weirdness is obvious to us, even reading the stories thousands of years after they’d been written. Perhaps the story from our gospel text this morning doesn’t strike you as too terribly weird. Unless you’re famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, you might not pick up on the fact that stars don’t move in the sky the way the story portrays it happening. Other than that, there’s not too much that stands out to us as odd. But for Matthew’s audience, this story would’ve been very weird.

Magi, from the East, following a star.

Let’s think about that star for a moment. Astrology was seen as a science at the time, and the Bible tended to frown upon it. The primary reason for this is that the Jewish faith calls us to look to God for guidance and direction in our lives, and astrology – the idea that the stars direct our fates – makes it easy for us to forget that the Lord is in control. It’s just a step away from idolatry and, as such, several passages in the Old Testament warn against it.

Usually, when stars are mentioned in the Bible, they are noted to be a reflection of God’s awe-inspiring creative power. They are not often seen as being linked to a specific revelation (or “epiphany,” in Greek).

To any faithful Jew looking up into the sky in the first year or so after Jesus’ birth, this new star would’ve perhaps been interesting, but it would not have been a message. This means that God took the time to put a star in the sky that would’ve been utterly meaningless to the “chosen people” – with the sole intention of signaling the Magi.

These “wise men” saw that star and discerned that there was a message in it for them. Perhaps you noticed in our reading today that the Bible doesn’t specify how many of them there were. The traditions of the Western Church indicate that there were three, based on the three gifts they bring to Jesus, while the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates as many as twelve! These particular Magi seem to specialize in astrology and may actually have been priests of the Zoroastrian religion, which pays close attention to the stars.[1] 

What’s strange about this story – at least, one of the things that would’ve sounded strange to Matthew’s first readers – is that, as you read the Gospel, these men – who are not Jewish – are the first to recognize Jesus as “the King of the Jews,” “the Messiah,” and “the promised ruler of Israel.”[2] Making things even stranger, while the Magi meet Jesus with overwhelming joy and bow down to pay him homage, there is no strong indication that they decided to convert to Judaism. They go back to their own country and are never heard from again. And the star is gone. Its light is inside them, now.

“So,” writes Craig Satterlee, “these Wise Ones from the East [practiced the science of astrology] and [the religion of Zoroastrianism], and God used their faith and knowledge to bring them to the Christ. More ironic, God used scientists who practiced other religions to [alert] King Herod and the chief priests and scribes of the people [of] the news that their Messiah had been born.”

It seems that God will stop at nothing to reach out to people. And not just the “chosen” people, not just the ones who look and think and act like you and me, but outsiders, strangers, even those who believe differently than we do. God can be found in the most unlikely places – like the feed trough of a stable, or a small one-stoplight town like Bethlehem, or in the faith of a person who practices a different religion.

In 2002, the Presbyterian Church USA released a document called “Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ.” It sought to address a growing question among those in our denomination – and a question that I’ve heard a few times during new member classes here: is faith in Jesus Christ the only way of salvation? The answer – at least, the one our denomination came up with – is, as you may have guessed, not a simple “yes” or “no.”

“No one is saved by virtue of inherent goodness or admirable living, for [Ephesians tells us] ‘by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God’ (Ephesians 2:8). No one is saved apart from God’s gracious redemption in Jesus Christ. Yet we do not presume to limit the sovereign freedom of [the God described in 1 Timothy], ‘our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’ (1 Timothy 2:4). Thus, we neither restrict the grace of God to those who profess explicit faith in Christ, nor assume that all people are saved regardless of faith. Grace, love, and communion belong to God, and are not ours to determine.”[3]

In other words, it is not our job to decide who God can and cannot welcome into the community of faith. While we see Jesus as the ultimate revelation (or epiphany) of God’s love for us, the Lord is powerful enough to call people to faith by any means possible. By means of a star, perhaps.

The Magi have a message for us: perhaps learning about other faiths can illuminate or enhance our understanding of God. 

I experienced this when studying world religions in college. I remember, in particular, learning about the Buddhist concept of a “bodhisattva” – a person who has achieved the goal of Buddhism: complete enlightenment – and who could choose to leave behind this world of suffering and pain in favor of entrance to Nirvana. Instead, the bodhisattva chooses, selflessly, to stay in this world and help others on their path to enlightenment. This concept didn’t cause me to convert to Buddhism, but it did add richness and depth to my understanding of Jesus, who selflessly chooses to take on suffering on our behalf. It also brought me to a deeper understanding of my calling to selflessly serve others, working to bring light out of darkness.

God is always showing up for us in unlikely places.

One of the books we’ve been given for Norah is called “God Gave Us Christmas,” and it’s a pretty heavy-handed and overly-sweet story about a polar bear mama teaching her cub about the true meaning of Christmas: Jesus. It’s an okay story, but there’s one moment that stands out as especially meaningful. Mama Bear and her cub are trudging through snowy Alaska, seeing things like the Northern Lights and learning that God is “more powerful than any king on earth.”

On the way home, Mama Bear stops by a tiny flower, peeking up from the hard, frozen ground. “Oh, you’re too early, little flower,” she says.

“Little Cub,” she continues, “Jesus is like this flower – God in our world. Living where you wouldn’t expect. Surprising us! Christmas is a lot about surprises.”[4]

Our faith is a lot about surprises. The surprise that God doesn’t wait for us to be perfect before breaking into our lives. The surprise that, in the face of everything we’ve done and everything we’ve failed to do, we are loved. The surprise that, despite all evidence to the contrary, there is light in this world.

Maybe that’s the weirdest, most mysterious claim the Bible makes – the one we affirmed Thursday night as Annie and Rachael lit the Christ candle – that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never overcome it.” After all, in the past year, we have come face to face with tragedy – personally and on the national or even global level. 

We have been touched by cancer and addiction, loneliness and despair; we have experienced a political process that preys on fear and mistrust; we have seen the rise of ISIS and Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab and other chaotic terrorist movements around the globe; we have been confronted with sudden, unexpected, inexplicable death.

There are times when it feels like a lot of darkness.

The HBO series “True Detective” concluded its first season with a conversation about darkness and light. The two main characters, Rust and Marty, find themselves standing outside a hospital, looking up at the night sky.

“I tell you, Marty,” Rust says, “I look up at that sky and I can only think of one story. The oldest.”

“What’s that?” Marty asks.

“Light verses dark.”

Marty looks up at the blackness, punctuated by tiny dots of starlight. “It appears to me,” he says, “that the dark has a lot more territory.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that,” Rust replies. “But you’re looking at it wrong.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, once there was only dark. You ask me, the light’s winning.”[5]

What about you? Where do you see God’s light?

Is it in the story that came out of Kenya this week, in which a group of Muslims shielded their Christian neighbors from an attack by Al-Shabaab militants?

Is it in the news earlier this month that climate talks in Paris yielded the beginning of an agreement – between 195 countries – to make substantial efforts to reduce greenhouse gases and global warming.

Maybe it’s closer to home: looking into your children or grandchildren’s eyes; the phone call that came at just the right moment; the lyrics of a song that popped on the radio; the words of a novel that spoke to your heart; the friend who showed up when you needed her most.

God is always showing up for us in unlikely places.

I don’t know what your star is – what brought you here today. Was it hope or habit? The desire to reconnect with something larger? The urge to share your joy with people you love? The need to share your pain with this community? The thirst for justice or the hunger for spiritual food? The longing for a word from the Lord?

Whatever led you here, I thank you for the gifts you have brought: your voice, your body, your perspective, your presence – all of which make our worship richer and deeper. I pray that you have felt the relentless love of God, which follows you wherever you go. I pray that you have been a witness to the light that never goes out. 

And I pray that you, like the Magi, will depart from this place changed – with the light inside you, so it can shine for others.

Amen.

Preached December 27, 2015 by Rev. Joshua T. Andrzejewski

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[1] Craig A. Satterlee, https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1525

[2] Paul J. Achtemeier, Feasting on the Word: Year C, Vol. 1. Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. (217)

[3] Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. Office of Theology and Worship, 2002. (11-12) https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/theologyandworship/pdfs/hopeinthelord.pdf

[4] Lisa Tawn Bergren, God Gave Us Christmas. Waterbook Press, 2006.

[5] Adapted from True Detective, Season 1, episode 8: “Form and Void,” written by Nic Pizzolatto. See: www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/03/09/true_detective_on_hbo_rust_s_final_speech_about_how_the_light_s_winning.html

WWMD?

Old Testament: Micah 5:2-5

New Testament: Luke 1:26-55

Do you believe a song can change the world?

Mary’s song is called the Magnificat – named after its first word in Latin: “Magnifies.” It is truly beautiful, as we heard our choir sing part of Bach’s setting of the words just now. It has also been set to music many other times: Palestrina wrote 35 different settings for the words, Pachelbel wrote some 90 different Magnificat Fugues, and various other composers throughout history have been captivated and inspired by the language of Mary’s song. The words are irresistible to musicians, it seems; they are beautiful.

But, if we listen carefully – if we truly understand what Mary is saying – we will hear in these words not just beauty, not just a meek and mild and obedient girl, but a radical revolutionary calling for the world to be turned upside-down.

How do you picture Mary? According to Luke’s gospel (the only one of the four gospels that highlights her story) she was a Jewish girl, born into the peasant class in Galilee, an out-of-the-way part of the world that had been conquered by the Roman Empire. Scripture tells us she was engaged, but not yet married to Joseph, which means she was very likely a young teenager at the time the angel appeared to her. All these things contribute to a portrait of someone who could not be less powerful: a child, woman, a peasant, a Galilean, a Jew – none of these are markers of strength or privilege.

However, despite all these factors, Luke does not treat Mary as powerless. When Gabriel – an angel, a supernatural messenger of God – approaches Mary, he addresses her with words of great honor: “Hail Mary, full of grace!” It’s not only musical artists who have been captivated by Mary; many painters depict the angel kneeling before her, in recognition of her grace.

This “grace” that she is full of is not to be confused with submissive meekness; blogger Nancy Rockwell sees Mary’s grace playing out in her conversation with the angel and her later actions. When Gabriel speaks to her, she challenges him: “What sort of greeting is this?” she wonders. When he tells her she will become pregnant, she pushes back: “How will this be?” she asks. “God chose a spunky woman,” Rockwell writes. “[A woman with] courage, boldness, grit, [and] ringing convictions about justice. Not submissive meekness. … The power of God is never meek.”[1]

When I picture Mary, I’m thinking less of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and more of Katniss Everdeen and Hermoine Grainger.

Rockwell goes on to point out that, while many women in the Bible are characters in domestic settings – baking, drawing water from a well, taking a bath, fussing around in the kitchen, sweeping the house – Mary is never portrayed in scenes like this. Instead of a love for housekeeping, she appears to have a love for adventure. Over and over again, we find her traveling. As soon as the angel finishes talking to her, it seems, she sets off on her own to see her cousin Elizabeth. Months later, she will travel with Joseph to Bethlehem; shortly after that, they will become a family of refugees on a life-and-death flight to Egypt. Once it’s safe, they’ll travel back to Nazareth. Then they’ll journey to Jerusalem for annual pilgrimages. Mary will make one last trip to Jerusalem (at least, the last one Luke tells us about) when Jesus is crucified. Perhaps it is Mary’s “bold, independent, adventuresome spirit” that led God to choose her for a radical mission.

At this point, it’s pretty clear that Luke views Mary not as an ordinary teenage girl, but as a powerful prophet. In the Old Testament, prophets are sometimes given words to say, but often they’re given tasks to do: God tells Ezekiel to eat a scroll; Isaiah has to walk around naked for three years; Hosea is called to marry a prostitute; Jeremiah has to publicly smash clay pots. All these actions are meant to symbolize a message from the Lord to the people. God wants to communicate not just with words, but with human bodies. And Mary is no different: she is called to bear a child – to bring life into the world, symbolizing the way that God is going to bring new life into the world through Jesus.

But what will that life look like? This is where things get dangerous and threatening, because Mary refuses to be a silent prophet.

“God has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts,” she sings, “bringing down the powerful from their thrones and lifting up the lowly; filling the hungry with good things, and sending the rich away empty.”

These words are, quite literally, revolutionary. She is talking about emperors falling from power and peasant uprisings. She is talking about the top one percent losing what they have while those in poverty receive blessing. She is talking about upending the whole social order.

“An urban legend surfaces occasionally in church circles, claiming that the military junta in 1980s Guatemala banned the public recitation of Mary’s words.” Scholar Matthew Skinner explains that there is no evidence of this ban, “but if it did happen,” he says, “it would have indicated that the political bosses [really] understood what [Mary] was saying.”[2]

And she is not just speaking privately. She sings the Magnificat in the home of her cousin, Elizabeth, whose husband, Zachariah, is an official temple priest. The temple priests were in a position of some authority in society, allowed to provide a level of local governance among the people. If I had to reimagine this scene in contemporary America, it might look something like a 13-year-old African American girl, unwed and pregnant, standing in the home of her congressman uncle and reciting a political manifesto calling for the country to immediately adopt socialism.

Actually, we don’t have to imagine a contemporary version of this scene, because we have a real-life example of someone with the bravery, grit, and determination that characterize Mary. Her name is Malala Yousafzai, and she is the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Malala was born in 1997 in the Swat district of Pakistan, the daughter of Ziauddin Yousafzai, a Sunni Muslim poet, school owner, and activist. In 2008, when she was just eleven years old, she spoke to a local press club: “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?” she asked. At the time, the Taliban was growing in influence in the region, banning television, music, and girls’ education. The BBC was looking for a unique way to report on what was going on in the region and sought a schoolgirl to act as a blogger. None of the parents felt safe enough to let their daughters do it, but Malala, a seventh-grader, volunteered to write anonymously.

She wrote honestly and fiercely, describing the dwindling numbers of girls coming to school due to the Taliban’s edicts. The Taliban then moved on to attack and destroy schools in the area, prompting Malala to critique the response of the Pakistani military: “It seems that it is only when dozens of schools have been destroyed and hundreds of others closed down that the army thinks about protecting them.

Had they conducted their operations here properly, this situation would not have arisen.”[3] 

(Again, this is a seventh-grader!)

Over the next few years, Malala continued her activism. She was the subject of a New York Times documentary and began appearing on television to speak out in favor of girls’ right to education. In 2011 she received Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize. As her public profile grew, she received death threats. These did not deter her, and in October of 2012, when she was just 15, a masked gunman stopped her bus as it took her and a dozen other girls home from school.

“Which one of you is Malala?” the gunman demanded. No one said anything, but a few girls looked her way, and the gunman fired three shots. She was rushed to the hospital and spent over a week in a coma. She was then flown to a hospital in Birmingham, England, to receive intensive treatment. Despite her injuries, she made slow but steady progress and, three months later, was discharged for rehabilitation.

Less than a year after being shot, Malala continued speaking out – not just against the Taliban, but against the Obama administration’s use of drones in Pakistan. “Innocent people are killed in these acts,” she said, “and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact.”[4]

What better illustration could we find of Mary’s assertion that “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly”? If you’ve ever seen Malala in interviews, you know she has a beautiful spirit – she radiates kindness, peacefulness, and grace. She can also do magic tricks! Her beautiful spirit helps to magnify the prophetic message she has about education and nonviolence. I think Malala is the perfect example of a modern-day Mary.

“[Mary’s] restlessness beautifully characterizes Advent,” Skinnner writes. “[This is] not a season of slowing down or shopping, but a time when Christians should survey the world and shout to God, ‘Enough already!’ Her revolutionary song embarrasses those of us who prefer to count our [own] blessings. Its lyrics expose how docile and faltering we are in comparison to Mary. About her, poet Thomas John Carlisle wrote, ‘An offense against our apathy / this pathetic refugee mother.’”[5]

Several years ago, the catch phrase “What would Jesus do?” – WWJD? – was very popular. And, of course, it’s great to try to live up to Jesus’ example for us. However, I don’t know about you, but it can be a bit daunting, since Jesus was not just fully human, but also fully God. Can I ever really live up to that?

Perhaps, instead, we could ask ourselves, “What would Mary do?” WWMD?

What would Mary do, faced with the reality that, ever since we invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the United States has been engaged in continual warfare, even if there are fewer “boots on the ground” now than there were five years ago?

What would Mary do in response to the racial injustices that persist in our country: the incarceration and death rate for African American young men; the disparity between college graduation rates for black and white students; the levels of poverty that persist among minority families?

What would Mary do about the number and frequency of deaths due to guns in this country?

What would Mary do in response to the levels of food insecurity that exist in our own state, where 11.8 percent of our population – more than 900,000 people – do not know where their next meal will come from?

What would Mary do, faced with the fact that close to 25,000 people in Virginia experience homelessness at some point during the year?

What she would never do is throw up her hands, as I have at times, and say, “Well, it’s just too big a problem. There’s nothing that can be done.”

No, Mary did not sit back and accept the injustices of her world, and neither can we. She spoke out. She acted in faith. She gave birth to a son, and she taught him about the topsy-turvy, upside-down nature of God’s kingdom. And he grew up to say things like: “The last shall become first and the first shall become last” and “Blessed are the poor.”

Mary would not be silent in the face of adversity. Mary would sing. What will your song be?

Preached December 20, 2015, by Rev. Joshua T. Andrzejewski

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[1] Nancy Rockwell, “No More Lying About Mary”
www.patheos.com/blogs/biteintheapple/no-more-lying-about-mary/

[2] Matthew Skinner, “The Most Powerful Woman in the World” 

www.sojo.net/articles/most-powerful-woman-world

[3] “Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl” BBC News. 19 January 2009. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7834402.stm

[4] “Malala Confronts Obama” CNN. 11 October 2013.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/11/obamas-meet-with-malala/

[5] Matthew Skinner, “The Most Powerful Woman in the World”
www.sojo.net/articles/most-powerful-woman-world

Preparations

Old Testament: Malachi 3:1-4 

New Testament: Luke 3:1-6

Are you ready? Are you ready?

This is a question with which I became very familiar over the summer and into the fall, as my wife got closer and closer to the due date for our first child. In my full-time job, I work as a hospital chaplain, covering pediatrics and women’s health – four floors and dozens of staff members, all of whom were very curious to know: Are you ready? I’m sure I got that question at least five times a day, every day. Once we’d had our baby showers, my standard response was, “Well, the baby has things now…”

As the father of an almost-three-month-old, I now know that we were absolutely NOT ready. In fact, our daughter Norah came three and a half weeks early, so we were definitely not ready! We still might not be… I’ll get back to you on that.

Advent is a season of preparation – of getting ready – and so as I reflected on the scripture passages this week, I thought about the many ways in which we prepare for certain events.

Are you ready … for company to come over? When it’s time to have guests, as our opening hymn said, we clean the house – “trimming the hearth and setting the table” – I don’t know about you, but the most cleaning happens in my house during the fifteen to twenty minutes before visitors show up! I want everything to look its best, even if I’ve cleared a bunch of junk off the table, only to put it on our bed upstairs. I want to trick people into thinking I’ve got it all together.

Are you ready … for the big test coming up at school? You spend time reading and studying, doing flashcards or taking practice exams. You want to know as much information as possible, so that nothing surprises you when your teacher says “Okay, begin.”

Are you ready … for when disaster strikes? My wife is the one who does this at our house. Every time there’s the hint of bad weather – snow, in particular – she makes sure we have bottled water, bread, peanut butter, candles, matches, batteries, the cars are gassed up – all the things I fail to think about. Usually I tease her about this, except for the year that derecho came through and knocked out our power for a couple days. She wants to be sure we’ll be well-stocked if the power goes out or we lose heat or who-knows-what happens.

Are you ready … for the big performance? You spend extra time practicing your part – maybe singing in the shower, or humming in your head as you ride to school. You want to get things just right. You want it to be perfect.

Are you ready … for Christmas? You pull the decorations out of storage, search for the perfect tree, make a list of things you want and another list of things you have to buy for others, dig out your Christmas card mailing list, write up the holiday letter – making sure to list all your big accomplishments (it’s a lot of lists, come to think of it) – brave the hectic malls or, if you’re like me, avoid them altogether and do your shopping online. You want it to be the picture-perfect family holiday, with everything just right.

What do all these things have in common? Whether we’re preparing for company to come over or for the big performance, we’re always trying to put our best faces forward. We’re trying not to let people see our vulnerable side, the side of us that’s not quite perfect. And there’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, per se – there’s nothing wrong with doing well on a presentation, or having a really beautiful Christmas light display on your lawn – and there’s certainly nothing wrong with acing a test! I should really make that clear on a Sunday when we have so many students present!

But there’s another dimension to preparing for all those things I’ve just mentioned, especially preparing for Christmas: we’re trying to be in control. And that is not the kind of preparation we do at Advent, when we stand back and recognize that we are not in control at all. There’s a difference between preparing for Christmas and preparing for Christ.

When we’re preparing for Christmas, we want to make everything look good.

When we prepare for Christ, we confess that things don’t really look all that good.

“How could we possibly celebrate if we are paying attention to this world?” writes blogger Sarah Bessey. “How do we make merry when our hearts are broken by Paris, by Syria, by Kenya, by Beirut, [by Colorado Springs, by San Bernadino]? [How do we celebrate] when, in response to every crisis, our communities seem splintered and divided in how to respond, and careless words are flung like rocks at our own glass houses? [How do we celebrate] when, closer to home, perhaps we are lonely or bored or tired or sick or broke? In these days,” she writes, “celebration can seem callous and uncaring, if not downright impossible.”[1]

When we’re preparing for Christmas, we don’t want to be surprised by anything.

When we prepare for Christ, we will be surprised by everything.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Christ came – not as a conquering king or a supernatural lightning strike from heaven – but as a humble baby, in a seemingly unimportant corner of the world.

Listen to how Luke’s gospel sets up this shock: he lists off the great and powerful rulers of the world at the time – Emperor Tiberius, Pontius Pilate, Herod, Philip, Lysanius – and then he lists off the powerful rulers of the church – Annas and Caiaphus – and then he says, in essence, “The word of God didn’t come to any of those people. Instead, it came to an apparent lunatic who spent his time wandering around in the wilderness, eating locusts and honey, quoting centuries-old passages that had, so far, failed to come true.”

When we prepare for Christmas, we want everything to be perfect.

When we prepare for Christ, we recognize that we are far from perfect.

We hear this in John the Baptist’s call for people to “repent and be baptized” in the text today. In fact, this recognition of the need for repentance is embedded in our worship practice every week in the form of our prayer of confession, which is not actually designed so that we may silently list off the ways we’ve messed up during the week. Instead, we lay before the Lord not only those sins which … belong to us individually and personally, but also the sin and brokenness of the world itself. “We do not confess primarily specific acts … but rather [acknowledge] the tragic brokenness of our human condition, in which, even without intending to, we are constantly running away from God and our neighbors.”[2]

In our Advent preparations, we repent – we turn from our brokenness – not so that God will come into the world, but in response to the glorious good news that God is already coming into the world! As we heard in our promise of forgiveness: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

We want to be in control, we want everything to look good, we don’t want to be surprised, we want to be perfect. God’s coming into our lives thwarts all those expectations. And so, as I reflect on Advent this year, it strikes me that it really is a lot like preparing for a baby.

Before my daughter was born, I was told again and again: You have no idea how your life is going to change! And I took that seriously; I believed people when they said it. “It will be hard,” I thought. “It will be hard to fit this baby into our lives.” And then Norah was born – and she was early, and she needed to be fed, and she needed to be changed, and she needed to be held. And I suddenly realized, “Oh, no – it’s not about fitting her into our lives; it’s about fitting our lives around hers.”

I think – I hope – something similar happens when we decide to put our lives into God’s hands. Dietrich Bonhoeffer explains it this way: “The coming of God is not only a message of joy, but also fearful news for anyone who has a conscience.”[3]

He meant that God’s coming into the world opens our eyes to the suffering around us and calls us to truly embrace Christ’s call: “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.”

What does this mean? It means recognizing that all people are children of God. And if we do that, then we can’t join others who mock the weird kid at school; we are actually called to befriend him. We can’t walk by the homeless woman on the corner; we are called to clothe and shelter her. We can’t demean those whose political or religious views are different from our own; we are called to listen to them, to find common ground. We can’t ignore the hungry among us; we are called to feed them, just as we are about to be fed by God at the communion table before us.

And so, maybe the most radical thing you can do this week is to eat this bread and drink this cup, to lose your life by casting in your lot with a God who defies all expectations, who comes unbidden, who surprises us; who takes us to places we’d rather avoid and pairs us with people we’d rather ignore; who accepts us completely, just as we are, and who loves us too fiercely to allow us to remain just as we are; who calls us to join in the healing of this broken world – a task that is daunting and dangerous, difficult and probably never done.

So what do you say?

Are you ready?

Preached December 6, 2015, by Rev. Joshua T. Andrzejewski

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[1] Sarah Bessey, www.shelovesmagazine.com/2015/advent-matters.

[2] Peter C. Bower, ed. The Companion to the Book of Common Worship, p. 23.

[3] Edwin Robertson, ed. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons, p. 25.

Voices

Old Testament: Joel 2:28-32
New Testament: Luke 18:9-14

We need each other. In particular, we need each other’s voices. And sometimes, the voices we need are the ones we’d least expect.

There is a old story, retold by Jonathan Sacks, in which a rabbi’s disciple approaches him with a question.

“Do you think,” the disciple asks, “that God created everything for a purpose?”

“I do,” replies the rabbi.

“Well,” asks the disciple, “Why did God create atheists?”

It’s a good question. It’s one I ask when I hear some of those in the “New Atheist” movement, like Sam Harris, who wrote, “Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings.”[1]

Or take the magician/comedian Penn Jillette, whose “This I Believe” essay for NPR begins: “I believe that there is no God.” He goes on to, apparently, ridicule the idea of faith, claiming: “You can’t prove there isn’t an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word ‘elephant’ includes mystery, order, goodness, love, and a spare tire?”[2]

After reading a certain number of these obnoxious quotes, I begin to think, “Thank you, God, that I am not like these atheists!”

But back to the disciple’s question: why did God create atheists? The rabbi takes a moment to think carefully before answering the young man. “Sometimes we who believe, believe too much. We see the cruelty, the suffering, the injustice in the world and we say: ‘This is the will of God.’ We accept what we should not accept. That is when God sends us atheists to remind us that what passes for religion is not always religion. Sometimes what we accept in the name of God is what we should be fighting against in the name of God.”[3]

And so, with that in mind, I try to listen more closely to the rest of Jillette’s essay.

“Believing there’s no God,” he says, “Means I can’t really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That’s good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around. …

“Believing there’s no God means the suffering I’ve seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn’t caused by an omniscient, omnipotent force that isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future.”

These are powerful correctives to ways in which the Christian faith has been misused and misunderstood. We believe in forgiveness, but that isn’t a free pass to be thoughtless. We believe God will ease suffering, but that doesn’t let us off the hook from working to relieve suffering ourselves.

We need each other. And we need each other’s voices.

This is something you might not expect from the parable we read this morning. There are two voices in that story: One who says, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people.” And another who says, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” It would be easy to dismiss the first voice – the voice of the Pharisee, who sounds like a self-righteous jerk. But as we have seen over the past several weeks, Jesus’ parables are not easy to interpret. Jesus didn’t need parables to tell people what not to do; instead, he used them to uncover the complexities of life in this world and life in the world to come. On the surface, this story looks like a clear-cut comparison between a haughty religious person and a humble, repentant sinner. But let’s dig a little deeper.

What is it, exactly, that rubs us the wrong way about this Pharisee? He certainly thinks highly of himself: “I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” And perhaps if that were all he’d said, we could be okay with him.

But instead, he prefaces these remarks by contrasting himself with others: “I am not like other people – thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector!” I don’t particularly like what he says, but how many of us have said something similar? We even have a common expression – “There but for the grace of God go I” – that says, essentially, the same thing: “Thank you, God, for not putting me in the same circumstances as this person.” If we walk away from this parable thinking, “God, thank you that I am not like this Pharisee,” then we will have totally missed the point.

If I’m going to try and elevate the Pharisee (at least somewhat) in your sight, then I also need to take the tax collector down a peg or two. “Be merciful to me, a sinner,” he says. This tax collector is humble. He has an accurate view of himself. Oftentimes, tax collectors would overcharge people, keeping the extra for themselves. They were seen as traitors who were willing to sell out their neighbors in order to collect taxes for Rome. And so, this tax collector confesses his sin. But notice what he does not say.

In the next chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus meets a tax collector named Zacchaeus who seems to be an exception to the rule – he’s honest. “If I’ve cheated anyone of anything,” he says, “I pay four times the damage.”

Our tax collector doesn’t seem to be willing to make the same promise. “Be merciful to me, a sinner,” he says. And don’t you get the sense, perhaps, that he’ll walk out of the Temple still a sinner? That he’ll go back to work on Monday and, more than likely, that he’ll add a few dollars to Mrs. Green’s tax bill?

And speaking of walking out of the Temple, let’s take another look at the last verse of our passage for today: “I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other,” it says. Except, maybe that’s not what it says. As you probably know, the New Testament wasn’t written in English. It was written in Koine Greek, and while I don’t often delve into translation issues in a sermon (because usually it feels like showing off), in this passage I think the translation of one word changes the whole image of what’s happening in that last verse.

“I tell you, this man went down to his home justified para the other.” The Greek preposition para is the word that most translations take to mean “instead of.” This paints a picture of the tax collector being justified instead of the Pharisee. But think about that for a second: isn’t there something strange about that? Is God’s justification a limited commodity? Is there not enough forgiveness for two people? The word para can, indeed, be used to compare two things; however, it is more commonly used to join two things. Think of English words that use para as a prefix: parallel lines run alongside one another; a paralegal works alongside lawyers.

With this in mind, the more straightforward reading of the verse would be: “I tell you, this man went down to his home justified alongside the other.”

How do you feel about that? Does it seem right to you? Does it seem fair? The haughty Pharisee and the unrepentant tax collector, walking out of the Temple, both justified in God’s eyes? I’ll be honest, it unsettles me.

You’ve heard me talk about Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish scholar of the New Testament, who argues that Jesus’ parables are meant to unsettle us. This story reminds her of the times she had to do group projects in middle school. There was always someone in the group who didn’t seem to be pulling his weight. And then, at the end of the project, everyone got the same grade, regardless of what he contributed. How fair is that? It’s not. By definition it’s not fair! And neither is the story of a corrupt tax collector and a self-involved Pharisee, both of whom receive God’s forgiveness after praying in the Temple.

Jesus’ story provokes us. It pushes us to think more deeply about that gut instinct. That rush to say, “It’s not fair.”

Levine explains what this parable helped her realize: “My sense of justice then was too narrow, my sense of generosity was too constrained, my sense of self-import too great. But that … person, whom we dismissed as lazy, as stupid, or as unable to contribute, may well have done what he could. … And what if he didn’t care at all? What if he depended on us, even thought we were fools for doing his work for him? What we do is still worthwhile. We can afford to be generous. … We all have something to contribute, even if what we give is the opportunity for someone else to provide us a benefit.”[4]

We need each other.

I wonder if Jesus was thinking of the prophet Joel when he told this story. The prophet who said that, in the end, God is not stingy with salvation but is extravagant: “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.”

I wonder if that passage informed his decision to tell a story about complicated people who both receive justification from God. I wonder if that passage sprung to mind when the woman from outside Jesus’ community asked him for help, saying, “Lord, even the dogs eat the crumbs from the table!”

I wonder how this story might change us. Perhaps it can remind us to be more tolerant of the person at work whom we’d rather not deal with. Perhaps it can inspire us, not just to tolerate that person, but to actively look to them for what God is saying to us. Perhaps it can remind us that, when we argue, when our opinions differ, the one option we don’t have is to walk away from each other.

Because we need each other. We need rabbis and atheists; we need the proud, the humble, the arrogant; we need the wise and the foolish and all those in-between; we need the rich and the poor; we need the faithful and the faithless; we need the lovers and the broken-hearted.

And we meet each other at this table, where there is a place set for all those who love God and those who want to love God more.

So come: you who have much faith and you who have little,
you who have been here often, and you who have not been for a long time,
you who have tried to follow and you who have failed.
Come, not because I invite you: it is the Lord,
and it is God’s will that those who desire life should meet God here.[5]

Amen.

Preached November 1, 2015, by Rev. Joshua T. Andrzejewski

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[1] Sam Harris, The End of Faith (2004).

[2] Penn Jillett, “There is No God,” Nov. 21, 2005.

[3] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Why God Created Atheists

[4] Amy-Jill Levine, Short Stories by Jesus (2014), p. 194.

[5] From the Iona community