No One Left Out

 

December 24, 2021 – Christmas I

Isaiah 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-15-20

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video of the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 55:50.

Good news is hard to come by these days, isn’t it? Often, people in charge tell us that they have good news even though what they really mean is that they have news that is good for them. The boss tells us that profits are up, but she doesn’t mention that our Christmas bonus pales in comparison to what those with corner offices are getting. The White House says that inflation is slowing down and incomes are going up, but what about people who got laid off in the downturn and haven’t found a job yet? After the 6:00 p.m. service, Lora Walsh joked that the new $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill now allows those of us with unspent money in a 529 college savings account to roll those funds over to a Roth IRA, which is good news…for some of us. But not everyone has the privilege of unused college savings, do they?

When it finally is our turn to receive some good news, sharing it with other people has become increasingly awkward. With all the illness and death around us, it feels unfair to tell other people that our latest scan was clear. We want to celebrate a long-awaited pregnancy, but we know that there are those around us who have lost children or who have been struggling for years to conceive. Our digitally connected lives make it hard to have unqualified good news because, by the time we post it on social media, we see someone else whose news is anything but good. And good news doesn’t feel good when the people we love don’t have good news of their own.

The awkwardness and incompleteness of selective good news is not a new phenomenon. Back in the days of Mary and Joseph, the authorities never missed a chance to proclaim the good news of the Empire in order to remind their subjects where that good news came from. After defeating his rivals Mark Antony and Cleopatra in the War of Actium in 30 BC, Gaius Octavius was hailed by the Roman Senate as Caesar Augustus—a title which means “the exalted one.” The Roman Republic had been plagued by civil wars for more than a century, but this victory ushered in a new age of peace—a Pax Romana that would last for two hundred years. 

Under his leadership, the Republic became the Empire, and its Caesar became its god. In addition to being heralded as Augustus, the Emperor also became known as Savior and Lord, titles reinforced through imperial propaganda. The Caesar himself was not initially deified, but he instituted an imperial cult, through which the powers at work in him—Victory, Liberty, Security, and Peace—were themselves worshipped. It didn’t take long for the lines between the virtues and the virtuous to be blurred.

Every time his name was uttered, the good news of what the Exalted One had accomplished was proclaimed. And it was hard to argue with his success. After seemingly endless conflict, Augustus had ushered in a new age of peace. The Empire was growing. Large investments in infrastructure were being made. The glory of the capital city was being restored. The system of taxation was reformed, and Roman coffers were full. It was a time of seemingly limitless good news, but it wasn’t good news for everyone.

What did the Pax Romana mean for the residents of Palestine, the Roman province of Syria? What did God’s people, living under imperial rule, know about peace and prosperity? What did liberty and victory mean to them? Luke tells us that, in those days, Emperor Augustus issued a decree that all the world should be registered. It didn’t matter that the Jewish people didn’t think of themselves as his subjects, and it didn’t matter that Mother Mary was too close to delivering her child to travel anywhere. 

If anyone had the power to command the whole earth to get up and move in order to be counted it was Emperor Augustus. His authority was unparalleled. His success was unrivaled. But what good was that for the people who lived in Bethlehem or Galilee or Jerusalem? That power and prestige made some feel secure, but those who scratched together a life on the edge of the Empire knew that the soldiers in their towns were not there to protect them but to safeguard the interests of Rome. So they prayed for a peace that could only come from God.

On this holy night, those prayers are answered. In the fields outside of Bethlehem, when the heavens are torn open and the angel of the Lord gives voice to God’s good news, God reveals a different vision for peace and prosperity: “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” There is no small measure of irony contained in the angel’s words. This proclamation takes the form of something you were likely to hear from an officer of the state, but this is God’s rejection of any imperial proclamations. Our savior is found not in the city of the emperor but in the ancestral city of Israel’s king. This good news is not proclaimed to the rich and powerful but is meant for all people, starting with the lowly shepherds.

That’s the curious thing about true peace and prosperity. No emperor can provide them because they cannot be imposed from above. In order to be effective for all people, they must start at the ground and work their way up. Whenever human beings rely upon expressions of power to provide their peace, someone will always be overlooked. Whenever we put our faith in earthly accomplishments, whether they are our own or those of our government, there will always be a gap or a flaw. Someone will always be left out, and that someone could be us. When we are truly connected with each other in meaningful ways, we know that good news for a few is not good news at all. 

But, in the birth of Jesus, God does something radically different. In this miraculous birth, God declares to all the inhabitants of the earth that God is providing what no empire can offer—a peace that is given to all people because in Christ that peace comes from the bottom up.

On this night, God not only comes to us but actually becomes us. God saves us by being born for us. God protects us by becoming vulnerable with us. When God takes our humanity upon Godself, there is no speck of our lives that is not completely given over to God’s transforming love. No part of us is immune to God’s salvation. There is no place, no border, no circumstance, no sickness, no battlefield, no assembly line, no living room, no church pew, no warming shelter, no hospital bed—there is no person or situation anywhere that is beyond the reach of God’s redeeming love. 

On this night, the brightness of God shines within each one of us. In the birth of Jesus, all of us have been united inseparably with God. Our true peace comes from the gift of God that is inside of us—contained within our very nature. There is nothing that can take it away from us. It is delivered just for you and me. This good news is as real and personal as if the angel of the Lord had appeared to each one of us, and, because this good news is for all people, we can share it far and wide. This is the good news of Christmas. 

God's Sense Of Timing

 

December 18, 2022 – Advent 4A

Isaiah 7:10-16; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 23:45.

“An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” That’s how Matthew starts his gospel account—with a genealogy. It’s a pretty dry place to start. Luke, on the other hand, begins with a dramatic visit from the angel Gabriel to Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist. John, of course, starts with the poetic prologue: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Mark skips all of the introductory fluff and launches straight in with John the Baptist’s call to repentance. But Matthew? Matthew starts with a list of forty-two generations, winding all the way from Abraham down to Jesus.

If you have the patience to get through all forty-two names, you discover that Matthew is actually trying to make a significant point. He summarizes that genealogical introduction in the verse right before today’s gospel reading: “So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations; and from David to the deportation to Babylon, fourteen generations; and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, fourteen generations.” It is perfectly symmetrical—from the calling of Father Abraham as the patriarch of God’s people to the devastation of Jerusalem in the Babylonian Exile to the birth of Jesus, the son of Joseph, who was God’s Messiah—the Anointed, the Christ. 

But if that’s the point Matthew is trying to make—that the birth of Jesus came at just the right time—he has a funny way of doing it. “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” Think about that for a minute. Matthew bothers to trace Jesus’ earthly ancestry all the way down from Abraham to Joseph, but then he tells us that Joseph wasn’t Jesus’ biological father after all. What a strange way to start his account of the good news! What is Matthew trying to tell us?

It turns out that God has everything planned perfectly—even down to the forty-second generation—but Matthew also wants us to remember that God’s perfect plan doesn’t always fit our earthly expectations. If human history were the only thing that matters, Mary could have given birth to Joseph’s son the good old-fashioned way. That’s how God had always brought anointed rulers and inspired prophets to the earth before. Remarkable human beings, graced with God’s power, filled with the divine Spirit, had served God’s people in admirable, even miraculous, ways throughout the generations. As a descendant of King David, Joseph’s son would have had a natural claim to that earthly throne. There is no reason to expect that God would intervene in the course of human affairs in any other way. But, for some reason, this time was different.

“When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” Even though we still place great emphasis on Mary’s virginity two thousand years later, I still think we underestimate how significant God’s activity was in this birth. This year, in our Christmas pageant, the youth who are playing Mary and Joseph are seventeen years old. That is shocking enough, but the real Mary was probably only eleven or twelve, and Joseph was likely just a year or two older. Back then, families arranged marriages for their children even before they were old enough to have children of their own. Those betrothals were as significant as a marriage and could only be dissolved through divorce or death. After she was engaged to Joseph, Mary would have stayed at home, under the protection and control of her family, until she was old enough to have a child, at which point the entire community would celebrate the fulfillment of the marriage promise. So, when Mary was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit, it upset the natural course of things in a way that would have threatened to tear not only their families but also the whole village apart.

This pregnancy was God’s way of doing something that history both anticipated and yet never could have seen coming. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said to him in a dream, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” God’s messenger began to disclose what God was up to in this unplanned pregnancy. “She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus.” Jesus or Joshua or Yeshuah—they’re all the same—is a name that means “God saves,” an appropriate name for the child who will grow up to claim the throne of his ancestor David and deliver God’s people from their imperial occupiers. But no sooner had the angel revealed the name of the child than it gave voice to a kind of salvation that could not be achieved through an earthly king: “…you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

This was not the sort of savior that could be born to Joseph, the son of David. This child was truly Emmanuel, God-with-us. God had not brought God’s people to the forty-second generation since Faither Abraham to raise up for them a mighty ruler who would save them from their Roman oppressors. God was giving them Jesus, the one who could save them from their sins. Although this child would inherit the throne of David, he would not rule over an earthly kingdom but establish God’s everlasting reign upon the earth. He would deliver his people from the forces of evil but would accomplish that not through military might but by suffering for the sake of the world. All that the prophets had foretold would come to pass but not in the ways that human history expected yet still as the fulfillment of God’s perfect plan.

That’s a beautiful thing, but it can also be disappointing. Sometimes we want God to come and rescue us from the trouble we face here and now. Sometimes we get frustrated that God doesn’t show up and fight our earthly battles for us. Sometimes we feel like giving up because the savior we want—the one we’ve been expecting—isn’t the savior we’ve got. And I think that’s ok. I think it’s ok to feel like giving up because the salvation we desperately want in this moment isn’t the salvation we’re offered by God. How do you think Mary felt? How did you think Joseph felt?

That’s the wonderful thing about how God works. The salvation God gives us doesn’t depend on us or our sense of timing, and it isn’t defeated by our disappointments. It’s bigger than what we can see. It’s more significant than what we can imagine. It’s even more perfect than the most perfect timing we could orchestrate. We want God to come and save us from this moment, but God’s plan is to save us for all time.

In Christ, we have been saved from our sins. Why does that matter? Because now nothing can keep us away from God’s saving love. Freed from the power of sin, we are no longer subject to anything that would stand in the way of God coming to us and saving us. The struggles we face here and now are real, but they have no real power over us. Because of Christ, they cannot win. If the victory we had been given through David’s son had come in the form of another king, another prophet, another ruler, then no matter how perfectly timed that person had been, once that chapter in human history was over, we’d be right back where we started. In the birth of Jesus Christ, God has given us a savior. In him, our Emmanuel, God is with us. We need not wait for anyone else.

Take A Detour To Your Best Life

 

December 4, 2022 – Advent 2A

Isaiah 11:1-10; Romans 15:4-13; Matthew 3:1-12

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the entire service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 20:45. 

Imagine that you are getting ready to take a trip—the trip of a lifetime. You’ve been talking about it forever. You’ve spent years saving up. You’ve made all the necessary arrangements. The time has finally come, and you couldn’t be more excited.

On the day of your departure, you wake up extra early, full of anticipation and a little nervous. You get to the airport in plenty of time. Your first flight takes off and lands without any trouble. You make it to the connecting gate, board the plane when your group is called, and sit down into your seat, allowing yourself to imagine what it will feel like to stick your toes into the sand and feel the warm, tropical sun shining on your face. 

But then you are jolted back into reality by a loud cracking sound and a sudden lurch to one side by the plane. Everyone on board looks around anxiously. After a few seconds, which feel like an eternity, the pilot comes over the intercom to inform you that there has been a mechanical problem and that the plane will need to land at a nearby airstrip. He assures you that everything will be ok, but he tells you to prepare for an emergency landing just in case.

It is a rough landing, but everyone is ok. The flight attendants tell you to leave your carry-on luggage behind and make your way to the door, where you are told to cross your arms over your chest before sliding down the emergency slide, which has been inflated below. The first thing you notice when you get to the aircraft door is how cold and windy it is. “Where are we?” you ask the flight attendant, standing above the slide. “Somewhere in far-western Russia,” she says, nudging you down the ramp. “A long way from Phuket,” you think to yourself.

At first you allow yourself to think that you’ll be on your way in a few hours, but pretty soon you realize it’s going to be longer than that. There are no significant hotels in this tiny town—no where to put the two hundred or more passengers—so some local officials set up a makeshift shelter in the school gymnasium. Pickup trucks, apparently driven by volunteers, come to the airstrip to get the passengers and carry them to the shelter. You are greeted warmly by your driver, who seems as fascinated by this whole adventure as you are frustrated by it. Using gestures for eating and sleeping, you discern that your driver is offering to put you up in his house. At first you decline, but, when you get to the gymnasium and see what the shelter looks like, you reconsider and take him up on his offer.

Sitting at his family’s table, sharing a goat that they have taken from their own yard, you are overwhelmed by their generosity. One of the children at the table has been studying English, and she helps you communicate in the simplest terms with your host. She describes in broken sentences what life in that community is like—simple, honest, family-centered living. You are drawn in by her words. You see in the way that the family members treat each other and in the way that they welcome you a holiness of life that is most compelling. A strange and totally unexpected thought comes to your mind: maybe this is better even than being on a secluded beach. Maybe it is a good thing that this has happened.

One day in this Russian village becomes two and then three. You’re told something about the airstrip being too small for a replacement plane to land except in an emergency and something else about the only road in and out of the town being washed away in a flood. What surprises you most is that you don’t really mind. You’ve found a deep sense of peace and restoration. All that had worn you down over the years is being washed away not by the tropical waves you’d been searching for but by the ice-cold mountain water that you never expected to find. In a strange way, the life you have found in this village is the life you’ve always been looking for. You don’t know when you will be able to leave, and a part of you hopes you never will.

***

The strange and beautiful thing about God’s reign—God’s great restoration of all things—is that, even though it has come close to us, we must turn aside from our life’s path in order to find it. That’s why John the Baptist is out in the wilderness—out beyond the edge of civilization, out where no one has any business making a home. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near!” he proclaims—not near the palace, not near the temple, not near the market or the houses or the village square—but near to that place where survival is anything but a given, where the comforts of everyday life disappear. It’s out there, where grasshoppers and wild honey are our only sustenance, as far away from the table scraps of the rich and powerful as you can get, where God and God’s way of being are found.

We can’t get there without taking a detour. That’s what repentance is all about. Repentance isn’t going through the motions of being sorry for the mistakes that we’ve made but turning aside from the direction our life would naturally take in order to embrace a different way of being. We repent when we let go of our dependence on the ways of this world and embrace instead the ways of God. We repent when we forsake our attachments to the comforts of this life and instead hold on to the values enshrined by God’s reign. 

John the Baptist isn’t calling us out to the River Jordan in order to make a big show of how sinful we have been. He’s calling us out to that place where life is wholly dependent on the mercies of God. He’s calling us to embrace a life that centers on what God is doing and what God is promising to do in this world. He knows that we won’t find that life of deepest fulfillment as long as we’re chasing after the comforts of a self-secured, self-insulated lifestyle. 

But the call to repentance is more than a temporary diversion. John the Baptist knows that a weekend away on a spiritual retreat will not be enough. Just hear what he has to say to the Pharisees and Sadducees—those religious insiders who presume that their ancestral pedigree is their ticket into God’s reign: “You brood of vipers—you children of serpents—who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” If we are going to embrace the reign of God, we must belong to God not only with our lips but with our lives.

It's hard to imagine new life springing forth in the desert. It's hard to imagine a life rooted in something other than the wealth, status, and power of this world. It’s hard to imagine that our best life is found not by getting ahead but by stepping aside. But that’s what John wants us to see—that the very best possible life, the life that God has prepared for just for us, is found not on the path that we’ve always taken but by turning aside to accept an entirely new trajectory.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near. Turn aside, for the life God has in store for you is just around the corner. John the Baptist’s message is the same one that Jesus brings to the earth. He is the one whom John is calling you to meet—the one who will fill you anew with God’s Spirit—God’s breath of life. A great multitude of people has gone out in search of that new life. They have learned that the ways of this world lead only to burnout, emptiness, loneliness, and death. They seek the ways of God, which are ways of true flourishing, fulfillment, and peace. 

We know that we cannot get to that life on the path we’re already on. We must turn aside—we must repent—and embrace the life that God has promised us. That life may not be easy, but God has brought it so very near to us. It is a wonderful, beautiful, way of living. It is the life God calls us to live. All we must do is turn aside and accept it.