Sermon for Christmas Eve, "The Irrational Season," Luke 2:1-20

Sermon 12/24/21

Luke 2:1-20

The Irrational Season

One of my roles as a doctoral student at Drew Theological School is serving as the Chapel Graduate Assistant. I assist in crafting the liturgies for the worship services, coordinate guest preachers, prepare the worship space and slides for the screens, and so on. It’s a really great outlet for me since I’m not serving as pastor of a local church anymore while I’m in school to do some of the ministry tasks I love, like planning and leading in worship. Our last service of the semester was a service of Advent lessons and carols, and we alternated scripture readings, poems, and musical selections. We started the service with a very brief poem by Madeleine L’Engle called “After Annunciation.” 

“This is the irrational season

when love blooms bright and wild.

Had Mary been filled with reason

there’d have been no room for the child.” 

When we read the poem, it got a chuckle - no doubt the congregation thinking about children, and the fact that they bring both joy and chaos, and no matter how parents and doting family members prepare for the arrival of children in their lives, thinking you can be “ready”, really and truly “prepared” for the arrival of someone as unpredictable as children are is indeed just that - irrational. And so everyone chuckled knowingly. “Reason” and “children” don’t always go together. 

But I think this little verse is also quite deep. “This is the irrational season, when love blooms bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason, there’d have been no room for the child.” What’s so irrational about the Christmas story? I’ve been thinking about all the aspects of the telling of Jesus’ birth that we might call irrational. L’Engle’s poem reflects on the annunciation, the act of the angel Gabriel, God’s messenger, telling Mary that she would give birth to the Christ Child. That happens in Luke 1, before the nativity story we read from Luke 2 tonight. Everytime I read about Mary hearing the shocking news of her own pregnancy, I’m amazed at how she reacts. She asks just one question - how can this be? And then she response to God saying, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” I would have asked a million questions. Why me? Why now? Is this for real? What if I can’t do this? What if people don’t believe me when I try to explain? Won’t I be at risk? Isn’t there a better way? Wouldn’t it have been more sensible, more rational to ask questions? To get the details? To ask what God was thinking? Aren’t God’s expectations of Mary unreasonable? Isn’t her response unreasonable? 

And then there’s Joseph. Joseph’s story features mostly in Matthew’s gospel. Does he act rationally? Reasonably? He does at first. When he finds out Mary is pregnant, and he knows he isn’t the father, he resolves to quietly part ways with Mary. That’s a sensible course of action. But Joseph starts to get visits from God’s messengers in his dreams, convincing him that Mary’s child is of God, and that he should stay with Mary despite what people will think. And Joseph does. Aren’t God’s expectations of Joseph - that he’ll just mold his life around Mary’s and this child who doesn’t quite belong to him - unreasonable? 

Of course, the most irrational of all in the Christmas story is God, who acts in all sorts of unreasonable, unpredictable ways. God chooses Mary, a common young Jewish woman who doesn’t particularly stand out in any way. God comes in human form in a way that’s likely to make people doubt Mary, doubt Joseph, and disbelieve that Jesus is God in the flesh. God makes a big heavenly dazzling announcement about Jesus’ birth - but this heavenly dazzling announcement, a glorious display of heavenly messengers filling the skies - goes to a bunch of shepherds, people on the fringes of society, hanging out with animals, not other people. Jesus’s birth isn’t announced to anyone who might be described as influential. Jesus is instead born where there seems to be no room for him, where no one is likely to notice. Indeed, Christmas is the irrational season because God seems to act so irrationally in entering the world in human form. Yet, this is the irrational season when love blooms bright and wild, and God is determined that we find room for the child. God’s love for the world - for me and for you - is bright and wild, irrepressible, and so here God comes, in unreasonable ways, tucking into unexpected places even when it seems like there is no room for God in all the places you’d think to look first. 

In response to this good news, this great joy, this very irrational story that has gifted us with bright and wild and blooming love, how shall we respond? What is our call, if we are to be Christmas people? As the poem suggests, I think we’re meant to imitate Mary, and figure out what unreasonable responses the gospel story, the birth of Christ, calls us to make. I think for us to make room for the Christ child, God calls us to do some irrational things. What do I mean?

The first response that popped into my head is thinking about my irrational mother! My mom lives in a small two bedroom apartment. Most of the time, it is just the right size for her. She’s got a bedroom, and there’s a guest bedroom for when her children or grandchildren are visiting. But right now, I’m staying with her for a month while I’m on break from school. And my roommate came to spend Christmas week with us. And my brother is about to arrive, visiting from Illinois. And another brother is coming to stay for a few days because he doesn’t want to miss out on seeing everyone else. And so my mother has carefully arranged how to make everyone fit with air mattresses and rollaway beds and doubling up in rooms and napping on couches and piling suitcases into corners. And it is chaotic, and occasionally claustrophobic. And nothing brings out our childhood sibling squabbles like cramming us into a small space together for a week. And my mother loves every second of it, because her heart is full of love and joy in this season and she will always make sure there is room. There’s room for everyone in her home, and making sure we know there’s room is a priority for her. I wonder how I can take that spirit, her irrational spirit, how we can take Mary’s irrational spirit, God’s irrational unreasonable way of loving extravagantly, and embody it in our own lives. 

I think we act “irrationally” and “unreasonably,” at least according to the world’s measure, when we say yes, as Mary did, to God’s requests, even when what God is asking seems impossible. What has God been challenging you to do that seems impossible? What if you said yes? 

What if we acted like the angels, and carried messages of God’s grace, of hope, and of joy to the world. What unsuspecting people are longing and needing a message like the angels delivered? How can we work for peace in a world where peace seems so far off, like an irrational dream that can never be attained? 

What if we tried to live in lives patterned after God, in whose image we are created? We’d focus our attention not on the privileged and elite, but on the marginalized, those pushed to the fringes. We’d visit our contemporary equivalents of fields of shepherds and animal stables instead of places of wealth and status, and burst forth with pronouncements of divine favor. 

What if we’re irrational like Joseph, and humbly take our place as supporters of those we see taking big risks for God, even when it means we’re not the starring player, and even when no one else will lend support? 

When we commit to peace in a world of violence, when we reject the typical ways of measuring success, when we love in the face of hatred, and we love without condition, when we listen for God’s calling voice, and try our best to answer with our whole hearts, no matter what risks God is asking us to take - we are embodying this irrational season, making room for the child, and letting love, wild and bright, take root in our lives. Friends, my prayer for you this Christmas is that you may remember that this is an irrational season. To receive this gift of God with us, to make room for the child, we might need to be a little unreasonable. Instead of being reasonable this season, let’s be hopeful, and faithful. Let’s be joyful peacemakers. Let’s be irrational, extravagant, unconditional givers of love, and may that love, the love of God, bloom bright and wild in our world, in our hearts. Amen. 

Sermon for Christmas Eve, "We Know by Heart," Luke 2:1-20

 Sermon 12/24/20

Luke 2:1-20

We Know by Heart

I didn’t decorate much for the Christmas season at my apartment in New Jersey. Of course, I knew I would spend the last part of Advent and all of Christmas in Syracuse with my family, so decorating a place I wouldn’t be in seemed a bit silly. But also, most of my Christmas decorations are in a storage unit here in East Syracuse, and my apartment in New Jersey is tiny, and I couldn’t give up valuable space in my apartment to decorations that would come out only for a few weeks a year. I do miss, though, my collection of nativities. I have several beautiful nativity sets that have been purchased by me or gifted to me over the years, and I love seeing all the different ways different artists and different cultures have envisioned the scene of Jesus’ birth, beautiful, creative, and moving. The sets are all different - some include 2 or 3 wisemen, or none at all. Each has a different variety and number of animals thought to be witnesses of Jesus’ birth. Some include just a crib of straw for Jesus, and others include a stable, the humble shelter where we typically envision Jesus’ birth taking place. Which nativity set do you think most represents the true picture of Jesus’ birth? 

During Advent, I saw an article posted several times on facebook, written by Ian Paul titled, “Jesus wasn’t born in a stable—and that makes all the difference.” His basic point is that the story of Jesus’s birth in Luke does say Jesus is laid in a manger, but it doesn’t say he was born in a stable. And the word that we read as “inn” - as in, “there was no room for them in the inn” can mean inn - but it can also mean “place to stay.” So, it was too crowded where Mary and Joseph were when Mary gave birth, but they weren’t necessarily in a stable behind an inn, but perhaps in the lower room of a family member’s home that also would hold the animals - hence the manger, the feeding trough, when Jesus was born.

 Well, of all my nativity sets, certainly none of them depict the holy family in the lower room of some family member’s home. So what do I do with this information about Jesus’ birth, assuming it is, or at least that it could be true? Does it matter if we’ve been picturing Jesus’ birth wrong? Do I need to scrap the nativity scenes I treasure, and look for a new one? Do the details make a difference? My mom has been doing an online Bible Study at her church this advent, University UMC in Syracuse, and she’s been asking some similar questions. The book that they were using for their study suggested that some of the “facts” we learn about the events surrounding Jesus’ birth aren’t quite right, or that we’ve misunderstood them. For example, the author suggests that there might not have been a census, or that people didn’t travel to their ancestral homes, or other nuances to the details we know from Luke’s account. At first, my mom found all this new information pretty troubling. She’d never heard anyone suggest that not everything unfolded just as written by Luke. 

But then, she started thinking. She thought of a math problem - those word problems you get on math worksheets when you’re in grade school. “If Bobby has 5 apples and Susie has 3 apples, how many apples do they have all together?” Finding out that there’s no real Bobby and Susie with apples, she said, doesn’t change the truth that five apples and 3 apples totals 8 apples, and that’s the point of the story to begin with. The truth doesn’t change, and that’s the only reason for the word problem to exist. The details of the problem help us figure out the answer, set the scene, draw us in. But the answer doesn’t change. 

What matters most about the story of Christmas, the story we know by heart? What’s the essence, the truth that Luke is telling us, unfolding in the midst of shepherds and angels, trips to Bethlehem and bright stars in the sky? I can’t help but flashing to Linus, trying to explain to Charlie Brown what Christmas is really all about in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Linus declares that he can tell Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about, and in his speech, he focuses on exactly what I’d say is the heart of the Christmas story too. Linus shares the words of the angel, God’s messenger, and the words sung by all the messengers in God’s angelic chorus. First: “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day ... a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” and then “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” Jesus is born - and God’s messengers tell us why that’s important: Jesus is good news, great joy in the flesh, so no need for fear. Jesus’ arrival is meant for all people. This Jesus is a savior, the messiah, the anointed one, reigning in God’s name. And the rest of the angels offer us more, a blessing: Glory to God in heaven, and on earth, peace for all those God favors. And hopefully many of you remember from worship on Sunday - God’s favor doesn’t mean favorite. Favor means God’s grace. So the angels announce an offering of peace on earth for all those to whom God has shown grace - in other words, peace for all of us. Jesus is born, so fear not, but instead be full of joy. There’s good news: Jesus comes to save us all, and God, who shows us grace, wants us to experience peace on earth. That’s the truth of Christmas. God comes to be with us, as close as possible, in the flesh, in person, as one of us, to bring us grace, peace, and joy. Whether we know for sure if Jesus was born in a stable or a guest room, behind an inn or among family, we know why Jesus was born. And that’s the truth that matters to me.  

I want to share with you some words from Scott Erickson, author of a book called Honest Advent. His reflection, I think, touches on some of these themes we’ve been thinking about. He writes about the story of Jesus’ birth: 

It’s assumed that Mary rode on a donkey, but the Bible doesn’t say she did. ⁣

⁣It’s assumed there was an innkeeper, but it doesn’t mention one anywhere. ⁣

⁣It’s assumed there were three Magi, but it doesn’t give a number of those who showed up. ⁣

⁣It’s assumed there was a star overhead when Jesus was born, but it doesn’t say that either. ⁣

⁣It’s assumed that Jesus was born in a stable, but all it says is that He was laid in a manger - and that could’ve been any number of places. ⁣

⁣Christmas comes with many assumptions—some helpful, some not so much. ⁣

Spirituality also comes with many assumptions, and the ones that fail us are the ones we make about what it’s supposed to look like, who is worthy for it to happen to, and what kind of outcome it’s supposed to have for us. Assumptions like . . . ⁣

⁣

You should be more than you are now to be pleasing to God. ⁣

⁣Your weaknesses are in the way of God’s plan for your life. ⁣

⁣Your lack of religious excitement disqualifies you from divine participation.⁣

⁣You’re probably not doing it right.⁣

⁣Other spiritual people have something you don’t have.⁣

⁣

⁣Our assumptions hinder our spiritual journey in all kinds of ways, and the antidote to assumption is surprise. The surprise of Christ’s incarnation (Beth: God being with us in the flesh) is that it happened in Mary’s day as it is happening every day in your lack of resources, your overcrowded lodging, your unlit night sky, your humble surroundings. ⁣

⁣

It’s a surprise that life can come through barren places.⁣

⁣It’s a surprise that meek nobodies partake in divine plans. ⁣

⁣It’s a surprise that messengers are sent all along the hidden journey of life to let you know you are not alone.⁣

⁣It’s a surprise that you will be given everything you need to accomplish what you’ve been asked to do.⁣

⁣It’s a surprise that nothing can separate you from the love of God.⁣

⁣Nothing can separate you from love. Your assumptions believe there must be something that can . . . But surprise! ⁣Nothing can. ⁣

May you thank God with joyful surprise at how much you have assumed incorrectly. ⁣

***

I love this reflection, that invites us to imagine how looking again at the story we’re sure we know by heart can still shake us up, stir our hearts, change our world, even while I love that the truth of Jesus’ birth and what it means is unwavering: A savior is born. God is with us. Grace for all. I love all of my navities. But pretty nativity scenes aren’t what makes me want to devote my life to following in the ways of Jesus. That’s not what makes me prepare my heart for the weeks of Advent to receive the Christ child into my life anew. They’re not putting a call on my life to love as God has loved, showing grace in abundance and working for peace on earth. What does inspire me, what I hope is driving you too? The truth: “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day ... a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Thanks be to God! Amen. 

1. Paul, Ian, “Jesus wasn’t born in a stable—and that makes all the difference,” PsePhizo, 20 November 2020, https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/jesus-wasnt-born-in-a-stable-and-that-makes-all-the-difference/. 

Sermon for Christmas Eve, "Keep Christmas Well," Luke 2:1-20

Sermon 12/24/19

Luke 2:1-20/9pm version

Keep Christmas Well

This Advent, I’ve been reading a book called Almost Christmas: A Wesleyan Advent Experience, which opens like this: “In a particular episode of the classic comic strip Dennis the Menace, Dennis is standing in the living room on Christmas morning, brightly decorated tree in the corner, with stacks of empty boxes and shreds of wrapping paper all around him. Having opened up his mountains of Christmas gifts, he stands there, arms outstretched and yelling at the top of his lungs for all in the house to hear: ‘Is that all?’ 

“Of course, we want to tell Dennis that he missed the point. We prefer to remember that Christmas is not about receiving presents, checking off your wish lists, and getting everything you want. Despite what holiday retailers would want us to believe, Black Friday does not define Christmas Day. 

“Yet, if we are honest, we do find ourselves resonating at a certain level with dear Dennis. As we go through a December filled with the frenzy of gift-buying, party planning, house cleaning, home decorating, and one-social-gathering-after-another, we can see ourselves stepping back from the madness of it and saying to ourselves, ‘Is that all?’ Is this all there is to Christmas? Isn't there something more that should define our observance of this season?” (5-6) 

Dennis, of course, is supposed to be a bit ridiculous. An immature child, always getting into trouble. But I’ll admit that I relate to his sentiment, to this book’s introduction. It’s not that I’m longing for more presents, more stuff. Generosity abounds, and by the end of the season, I can barely keep track of all the thoughtful things that folks have done for me, have given me. Rather, somehow, by the time Christmas evening rolls around, I sometimes feel a little like a deflated balloon. Tomorrow is actually the first day of the twelve days of Christmas, but sometimes I already feel like Christmas is done and I am too. I know some of that is just the unwinding that comes for those of us who are part of planning and leading worship services. Christmas Day usually involves some kind of nap - and I hope it does for you too! But it’s more than that, I think. Sometimes, I feel like I miss the “all that” of Christmas. Maybe you do too. Maybe we all relate to Dennis a little bit. 

All through the season of Advent here we’ve been following the story of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. You’re probably familiar with the story. Scrooge is a rich, greedy, stingy, cranky man who stores up all his riches, who generally doesn’t share, and who, because of his attitude, his priorities, finds himself quite alone. He’s visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present, and Yet to Come, and they lead him to repent of his sins and vow to lead a new life. 

When Scrooge awakens, and finds he hasn’t missed Christmas yet, he’s overjoyed, eager to begin the work of making amends. He says, “I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future! … Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this! I say it on my knees!” His face is wet with tears, and he’s also full of laughter for the first time in a long time. He starts out his day by purchasing the biggest prize Turkey and having it sent anonymously to his poor clerk Bob Cratchit’s for dinner. As he heads out, he smiles at everyone in the street, and returns their Christmas greetings warmly. He pays down the debts of some who owed him money with his own funds. He goes to dinner with his nephew Fred, who has been trying to build a relationship with Scrooge, but til now Scrooge hadn’t been willing. And the next morning, he teases Bob for being 18 minutes late to work, but instead of seriously reprimanding him as he once would have done, he raises Bob’s salary, and commits to assisting Bob’s family. And he does just that. He becomes like a second father to Tiny Tim, who doesn’t die, as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Be had warned was possible. Dickens tells us that Scrooge “became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew.” Some people laugh at how changed Scrooge is, but he doesn’t care. We read, “he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.” Finally, Dickens writes, “It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

What about us? Do we know how to keep Christmas well? Would people say of you that you know how to keep Christmas well? Scrooge is so transformed by his journey of repentance that people laugh to see it, they’re so amazed. I wonder: Does the impact of Christmas - of Christ being born, of God dwelling with us in the world - does it show on our faces? Does it show in our lives? How are we doing at keeping Christmas? 

As we wrestle with those questions, we can dig a little deeper. What exactly does it mean to “keep” something? It’s a pretty simple word, maybe even a simple concept, but there are some nuances. Often, “keep” means “possess.” “Can I have that toy you’re playing with?” “No, I’m keeping it.” Sometimes “keep” means to continue doing something, to persist in a certain action. “She’s been keeping up with her piano lessons.” We also use the word “keep” to mean guard or protect. “The parents wanted to keep their children from harm.” When we think about “Keeping Christmas,” do we know exactly what we’re supposed to be doing, given those nuances? Sometimes, I think we’ve gotten mixed up.  

If we turn to our Christmas story from Luke’s gospel, we can search for the theme of keeping there. Matt Rawle writes, “The scene begins at the palace and ends with no place. It begins with Caesar, who was named emperor of the world, and ends with a baby placed in a feeding trough. It begins with the seat of human power and ends with those who live in powerless poverty. It begins with everyone being counted and ends with a baby revealing that everyone counts. God is beginning to turn the world upside down for all of the right reasons.” (The Redemption of Scrooge, 129) So, as our text opens, the emperor is doing some keeping. He’s keeping count. He’s counting up all the people, because he wants to make sure he’s getting taxes from everyone to support his government, his lifestyle, his empire. The emperor’s kind of “keeping” is the “possessing” kind. He’s not sharing toys with anyone! 

The only place we see the actual word “keep” in our translation is when we read about the shepherds. “In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. The shepherds are “keeping watch.” The word here has the sense of “keeping” that means guard or protect. That’s just what the Greek words means. It also means “to defend” or even “to cherish.” So, the shepherds are doing some keeping - they’re guarding what’s been entrusted to them, protecting the sheep from harm. 

But “keep” is actually implied in another place in our text. When Mary and Joseph receive the shepherds who visit their new baby Jesus, the shepherds are amazed and exuberant. Mary, though, is reflective. We read, “but Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” The word we read as “treasured” is actually something like the word “keep.” It means literally “to protect.” Mary is treasuring everything that’s happening, and she’s protecting her experience in her heart. In both these cases from Luke, the “keeping” of the Christmas story isn’t about possessing, keeping as in having something so that others don’t. Rather, both the shepherds and Mary are doing some protecting, some guarding, some cherishing. What do you cherish? What do you guard with your heart because it is invaluable? 

This Christmas, as we welcome Jesus, ever-God-with-us, into our hearts and lives anew, we decide what we will keep and how we will keep it this Christmas. I suggest we take our cue from the gospel, and do the kind of keeping that leads more toward cherishing and protecting than possessing. We can laugh at Dennis the Menace, but sometimes we find ourselves after the peacefulness of Silent Night lost in the torn wrapping paper on Christmas Day, clutching at stuff, or feeling empty, and wondering how we missed Christmas. Instead, let’s keep our hearts open for Christ to dwell within us. Let’s treasure God’s word, God’s child, God-made-flesh, which, in the way of God, we do best by sharing, letting the light of Christ shine out from our hearts. Matt Rawle writes, “We should keep Peace...keep Hope...keep Love...keep Joy … We do not have to keep the same level of gift-giving debt … We do not have to keep the fear and anxiety of creating the perfect Christmas. We do not have to keep the same invitation list to the white elephant party, which excluded the family member with whom you were fighting. We are called to keep the Scriptures and the truth within them.” (The Redemption of Scrooge, 135) Friends, everything else we’re trying to keep? Everything else we’re clutching so tightly? We can give all that to God, who knows the number of hairs on our heads, who knows each lily of field and bird of the air. 

Tomorrow or the day after or sometime in the week or so to come, there might be a moment where we feel like we are done with Christmas. We can’t eat one more cookie. We can’t stand the sight of our decorations anymore. Every present has been unwrapped. But if we keep Christmas well, it isn’t a day or even twelve to cross off our calendars. It’s our transformed lives, because we’re keeping - cherishing - treasuring - the light of Christ in our hearts. Let us keep Christmas - treasure it, cherish it, share it - and let us keep it well. Amen.  

Sermon for Christmas Eve, "The Verbs of Christmas," Luke 2:1-20

Sermon 12/24/18

Luke 2:1-20

The Verbs of Christmas

As I shared in my Christmas letter this year, I recently finished reading Anna Carter Florence’s book Rehearsing Scripture: Discovering God’s Word in Community. Anna Carter Florence is a professor of preaching at Columbia Theological Seminary, and I have had the privilege of hearing her preach and lecture when I’ve attended the Festival of Homiletics, a preaching conference. Two memorable times stick out to me. Once, she designed her preaching and worship around the conference, held in May, as an Easter Morning Service. We started out singing Christ the Lord Is Risen Today, and she preached a resurrection sermon. Like most of the other attendees, I’m usually leading worship on Easter Sunday, not attending worship. It’s been 15 years or so since I just attended worship on Easter Morning. I didn’t realize how much I had needed it. I think I cried through the whole service. And this last year she preached on the book of Job, one of the hardest books of the Bible to figure out, and she blew me away, helping me understand the scripture in a way I never had before. I find her preaching to be a balm for my soul. So, when I heard her mention her new book, Rehearsing Scripture, I knew I had to pick it up.

I was so glad I did! I found her work profoundly moving, and I also found it practical, with many concrete suggestions for how we can read scripture together. She takes themes from theatre and acting, something she has experience with in her background, and she applies them to how we read scripture. One of Carter Florence’s first guidelines is to “read the verbs” in a text.  She invites readers of scripture to focus less on the nouns in the text, and more on the verbs, the action of scripture. Focusing on the nouns keeps us separate from the Bible stories, she says, because the nouns can be so unlike ours - confusing names and places and objects. If we focus on the nouns, which are strange to us, it is hard to notice how much we have in common with our biblical forebears. But, our verbs haven’t changed. We share verbs with people in the Bible.

She writes, “We all have verbs - the same ones, actually. You and I share verbs with Adam and Eve and Abraham and Sarah and Moses and Miriam and Ruth and Naomi. We share verbs with Mary and Joseph and Peter and James and John and Martha and Lydia and Paul. We even share verbs with Jesus. That does appear to be the whole point of the Incarnation, doesn’t it? - that God came to share our verbs. The Word became one of us and lived among us. Apparently, even God thought the best way to reach us was to meet us, verb for verb. Meet us and raise us and change the whole game.” (20)  

God came to share our verbs! I’ve certainly never heard the incarnation, God becoming one of us in the birth of Jesus - described quite like that. Carter Florence gives some guidelines for how we read the verbs of scripture. She says that we should note “who gets what verbs”: For example, in Genesis 3, what verbs does God get and what verbs do people get? What verbs does Adam get and what verbs to Eve and snake get? And, we should note in what order the verbs appear, like how in Genesis 1 God says and then right after there is. It gives us a pretty clear sense of our place in the creation. God first, the creator, then us, the creatures. And, we should ask what verbs surprise us and why. Where is there a verb in the text that catches us off guard, catches our attention? (Chapter 3)

What happens when we apply Carter Florence’s questions to our Christmas story? What happens when we focus on the verbs of the nativity story? What does the angel do? What do Mary and Joseph do? What do the shepherds and Magi do? What are their action words? Once we figure that out, we get to the most important questions of all: What is it that God does at Christmas, and what will we do in response? What will our verbs be, because of how God acts in the world and in our hearts?  

So, I did as Carter Florence suggested, and looked over our text from Luke 2 and focused on the verbs, and who gets what verbs, and what order they show up in. When we do that, here’s what we get. Emperor decreed. World registered. All went. Joseph went. He went. Mary was expecting. Time came. Mary gave birth. Mary wrapped the baby. Mary laid the baby in a manger. Shepherds lived. Shepherds kept watch. Angel stood. Glory shone. Shepherds were terrified. Don’t fear! See! Angel brings good news. Shepherds will find. Baby lays in manger. Angels praise. God favors! Angels left, went to heaven. Shepherds said. Shepherds go. Shepherds went with haste. Shepherds found. Baby lays in manger. Shepherds saw. Shepherds made known. All heard. All were amazed. Mary treasured. Mary pondered. Shepherds returned. Shepherds glorified. Shepherds praised because shepherds heard and shepherds saw what angel told. This text really moves when we focus on those verbs, doesn’t it? Let’s take a deeper look.

I notice Mary and Joseph’s verbs. I admire Joseph’s verbs. Joseph went, went, went (and of course Mary with him!) If you’re in worship on Sunday, you’ll hear the scriptures about what happens while Jesus is still a baby, you’ll find that the little holy family has more much travel ahead of them. Joseph does a lot of going where God tells him to go. And Mary gets an impressive set of verbs - Gave birth. Wraps the baby, lays the baby down. Treasures. Ponders. Her verbs succinctly deliver to us the Savior of the World, and in the midst of so much busyness, she just reflects in her soul on all that has happened. I’m not sure I’d have it as together as Mary does. The angels have dramatic verbs. Glory shines near them. They praise. They issue imperatives - verbs that leave no wiggle room - Don’t fear! See! Find!  

But when I’m looking for a set of verbs that we might share more fully in this Christmas story, the shepherds really shine in this text. Depending on how you count, they get almost half of the verbs in this passage. They live. They keep watch. They are afraid. But they will find the baby, the Savior. They talk. They go. They go with haste. They find. They see. They tell. They hear. They are amazed. They return. They give glory. They praise, because they heard, and they saw.

It is their verbs that I connect most to in this story. They’re living. They’re working. That’s just their day to day. Living and working. Can you relate? They’re just doing their everyday thing. But then God speaks, through the angels. As a rule of thumb, when we’re reading the verbs in scripture, God’s speaking should be followed by our acting. And we certainly see that here. The angels speak on God’s behalf to the shepherds, and it prompts their let’s-make-haste reaction. The shepherds are terrified when the angels first appear. As much as we (say we) long for it, sometimes the ways God shows up in our life are terrifying! We didn’t mean like that, God! Maybe just a warm feeling during the Christmas Eve service, not showing up in all your glory sending us on a quest! Disrupting all that living and working we’re used to doing!

But the shepherds move beyond their fear because of the words of God through the agnels. Once the shepherds act, they find that things are just as God through the angels have told them. How do we react when God speaks to us? What has God shown you? What do you do in response?  The shepherds go, and they go with haste. And they find the good news God has told them they will find: a savior, a great joy, a sign of peace for all people. They see it, and they tell how God sent them. And everyone hears and is amazed.

And then, they return, the shepherds, back to their flocks. They haven’t abandoned their lives. They don’t become celebrities. They’re still shepherds. They return, though, praising and thanking and glorifying God for what they’ve experienced. I wonder: How do you think their lives might have changed? They’re still shepherds, but maybe they think differently about what that means. Maybe they think differently about how God works in the world. Maybe their faith is forever strengthened because God spoke to them, and they went and saw. Maybe they understood for the first time that God wasn’t just for the priests and the scholars and the religious authorities. God was for them! Maybe what they heard and saw and did gave them to courage to hear even more from God, see even more of God at work in the world, and do even more in response to God’s amazing gift in the Christ-child. What will their next verbs be? We don’t know, but I bet they get some new ones, after God changes the world like this.  

How about you? When you return from your visit to the Christ-child this Christmas, what will your verbs be? Hopefully, we can start by sharing some verbs with the shepherds. We praise. We glorify, because Christ is born and God is with us. God speaks and we act. What will we do because of what we have heard and seen? What will your new verbs be? Amen.  

Sermon for Christmas Eve, "Come and Behold Him," Luke 2:1-20

Sermon 12/24/17

Luke 2:1-20

Come and Behold Him

            Sometime last fall, I told you about a news article from the New York Times that was circulating quite a bit, showing results from a scientific study suggesting that two strangers could fall in love with each other by following a certain set of instructions: the pair answers 36 questions in a conversation with each other. The questions are increasingly more personal, beginning with easy things and moving on to deeper, revealing questions. And then, after that, you and your conversation partner are supposed to stare into each other’s eyes – sustained eye-contact, no talking, for four minutes. The author of the article actually fell in love with the person with whom she tried this exercise.

            I was thinking about this study this week as I was thinking about how significant making eye contact can be in our lives. There are many cultural expectations around eye contact. In some cultures, men and women are discouraged from prolonged eye contact with each other. In some cultures, people who are in subordinate work roles in hierarchical cultures are discouraged from looking into the eyes of their superiors. I think of our own culture, where we emphasize the importance of making eye contact when we’re engaged in public speaking, for example. Or how many have become frustrated with how the rise of smart phones and tablets and other electronics have decreased how frequently we’re making eye contact with each other, even while carrying on conversations. However we interpret it culturally, eye contact is certainly powerful and meaningful.

            I still remember attending an intergenerational retreat weekend at Camp Aldersgate when I was in Junior High. My friend Weston and I decided to go to the adult Bible study since we were very mature, and somewhere along the way during the study, we had to pair up and look into our partners eyes for a few minutes. I don’t remember exactly how long we had to do it for. I can’t remember why we had to do this, what the exact purpose was. I only remember that it seemed like an eternity. It was awkward and uncomfortable. That describes most of my junior high experience, so this was like that in sharp, intense focus. We survived, but I will never forget the experience – it was intense, and something about that time made me feel vulnerable and exposed. Seeing and being seen – it can be powerful, meaningful, vulnerable.

            My brother Tim is mostly blind in one eye. He was born with a scar on the center of his eye, which means he has only peripheral vision in that eye. It’s taken me a long time to figure out what exactly this means for how things look to Tim on a day to day basis. Basically, it’s like if you took a picture and folded it over so the middle section was hidden. You would only see the edges of the picture. That’s what Tim sees with his bad eye – just the edges, not what is directly in front of him. My mom still vividly remembers when the doctor discovered this at one of his appointments when he was about 5. The doctor covered up Tim’s good eye, which compensates and works extra hard to cover up for the other. And with the good eye covered, Tim’s other eye didn’t know what to do. His eye just sort of wandered all over, unable to focus on anything without the anchor of his other eye, because everything left was what was supposed to be peripheral. As I said, Tim has learned to compensate. As difficult, as vulnerable and exposing as it can feel to look someone in the eye, and to be looked in the eye, it’s a gift to be able to do so, not to be taken lightly. To focus on someone, to give them your full attention, to look them in the eye, to try to really see them is an important experience, even if it is sometimes challenging.

Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, two psychologists who met at Harvard in the late 1990s, developed an experiment that shows how limited our perception and attention to what is going on around us can be when we’re focused on something else. In the experiment, you are asked to watch a video of people in white shirts and people in black shirts passing basketballs to each other. You are instructed to watch the video and count how many times people in white shirts pass the ball. It is a little confusing, but if you are careful, you can produce the correct number: 15 passes. But then, the video narrator asks: But did you notice the gorilla?

Fifty percent of viewers of the video, including me, when I first saw the video as part of a lecture on preaching years ago, respond, scratching the head, what gorilla? Sure enough, when the video of the two groups passing the basketball is replayed, you, the viewer, now looking for the gorilla, instead of white shirts, can’t miss a woman in a gorilla costume walk directly through the group, beat on her chest, and walk off. The first time I saw this video I really wanted to believe that they were two different videos, that the gorilla was not there the first time. (Looking at these still images from the video, it seems hard to believe that one could possibly miss the gorilla!) But no, it is just how our minds work. When totally focused in on one thing, we can miss other things, no matter how obvious they seem, altogether. This is why my mother always likes to see Todd, my actor-brother’s shows, at least twice. One time, she says, the first time, she can only focus on Todd, no matter what else is happening on stage. But if she actually wants to see the whole show, she needs to see it a second time, so that she can pay attention to everything she missed by watching only Todd the first time through. As long as we are focused on the right thing, the important thing, our inattention to all the other details isn’t so bad. But if we’re paying attention to the wrong thing, we can end up in trouble. Scientists say that our limited attention capacity, our working memory capacity, is why you can walk right by someone you know and not notice them, if you are looking at or thinking about something else, or why you can’t really text and drive as well as you think you can, and people end up in automobile accidents. Sometimes there are big consequences for paying attention to the wrong thing.[1]

It’s Christmas Eve. Are we paying attention to the right things? What is holding our gaze today? What’s got our focus? What’s catching our eye? This year, as I read the Christmas story from Luke again, words I know so well I could practically recite them for you, I noticed how many phrases in the story seek to grab our attention, turn our heads, make us look, really look, at what is going on. Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem, and Jesus is born, laid in a manger because there is no room for them in the inn. And a spectacular attention-getting display unfolds to get the attention of some nearby shepherds to make sure that they know to go and see this newborn. A messenger from God stands before them, and we read, “the glory of the Lord shone around them,” and sensibly, they were terrified. But the angel says to them, “Do not be afraid, but SEE! I’m bringing you good news of great joy for all people: Today, a savior is born, a messiah, God-in-the-flesh.” And then, the whole sky is filled with angels, “heavenly host,” and they praise God saying, “Glory to God, and peace on earth!” When the messengers leave, the shepherds say to each other, “Let us go and see this thing that God has made known to us.”

They go and find Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and the text says, “When they saw this,” they let Mary and Joseph know that the angels had sent them. Some who they tell their story to are amazed, but Mary treasures their words, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds head back to their work, but as they go, they praise God, give glory to God, telling everyone just what they have heard and seen. 

            “Don’t be afraid!” the angel says. “Don’t be afraid, rather look! See! See the sign of good news, the message of great joy! See this one who brings peace. See this one who is a savior. See this one who is God-on-earth with us.” “Let’s go and see,” the shepherds say. “You won’t believe how we ended up here,” they tell Mary and Joseph. “Thank God for what we saw today,” they told anyone who would listen.

            Eventually, Jesus too will invite people to “Come and see.” It’s a phrase he uses more than once in his preaching and teaching, and more than that, it’s a grounding in invitation to us that pervades his ministry. He asks us to look and see: look and see people we don’t usually see, but Jesus is so good at bringing to the center. Look and see God at work in the world in places we usually don’t give a second glance. Look and see God at work in our own lives, as we realize we are precious to God, of sacred worth, created in God’s own image. Jesus asks us to look and see him: living in our hearts, living in our world, living in each person we encounter. Look, see. Pay attention. Let Jesus at work in the world hold your gaze, and hold your attention.

            Tonight we’re being invited, encouraged, charged with the task: “Come and behold him.” We sing the words. We read them in the familiar story. Do not be afraid: Look! See! So let’s do just that. We have made it to the manger. Let’s make sure we’re really seeing what is held there. Let’s look deeper. Let’s give this child in the manger our full attention. Our time. Our focus. All of our eye contact. To us, a child is born. There are so many other places to look, I know. Let’s make sure we’re focusing on the right thing. As the messengers promised the shepherds, so they promise us still. If we’ll look, if we see, we’ll find good news, great joy, peace. We’ll find God, lying in a manger, filling our hearts, changing our world. Amen.  

             

             

           

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[1] This illustration and commentary is adapted from my newsletter article at Liverpool First UMC, September 2013.