Sermon, Year A, Second Sunday of Advent, "The Begats Matter"

 

A Advent 2 Pilg AL 2022

Matthew 1:1-17

December 4, 2022

(Trigger warning:  Within this sermon are allusions to sexual violence.)

           As I hope anybody who has been a part of our Bible 101 and Bible 201 classes can tell you, I don’t get really excited about providing answers when it comes to Bible study.  Certainty and answers are not what the Bible even tries to provide.  What really gets me going, has me super stoked, is when the class starts to realize that many of the questions they have long had, questions many people thought disqualified them from garnering meaning from the Bible, are the real and true questions needed to engage Biblical story, parable, and genealogy.  And that happened in both Bible 101 and Bible 201. 

           Wonderful questions, great questions by people in each class showed folks to be deep and courageous thinkers, willing to challenge the tradition they grew up to sometimes feel isolated our out of place in that tradition.  The two Bible studies described who we are as a United Church of Christ church.  We are a people of good questions rather than certainty and final answers—true of any healthy and deep and whole spirituality.

           In that vein, I would like to read the gospel passage for today, one rarely included in church services.  It is the genealogy of Jesus, according to the writer of Matthew.  I don’t know about you, but when I first began reading the Bible, all of those “begats” added to my boredom with the Bible.  Puhlllllease.  Why?  Why include all these begats? 

The ”begats” are important.  And this one is different and unique.  The Biblical text is usually male-dominated, patriarchal, particularly genealogies.  In other words, Biblical genealogies are exclusively male in tracing our ancestors.  Except this one.  Matthew’s genealogy includes some interesting females from the stories of faith. 

Begore we begin, I’ll need a good question from you to help me move through Matthew’s genealogy, as a way of imagining how that genealogy must have fallen on the ear of the reader or listener in ancient times.

           Six years ago, Dean James Ryan gave the address at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s diploma ceremony.[1]  Ryan told the soon-to-be graduates that life had five essential questions.  The first one was, “Wait.  What?”  as in talking to his kids, the first thing they must hear from him is “Blah, blah, blah, blah,” and then he breaks into their consciousness with “and then clean your room.” 

“Wait.  What?” they respond.  This is a question of clarification to ensure understanding, a question to ask before making decisions or coming to conclusions.  The “wait” is a reminder that we need to slow down to make sure we truly understand.  Dean Ryan goes on to share that the final question is, to which hopes the graduates will all respond, “I did,” is, from a poem by Raven Carver called, “Late fragment.”[2]  In that poem, Carver asks, “Did you get what you wanted out of life, even so.”  Even so, is a wonderfully poetic phrase which reminds us that there will be tragedy, trauma, pain, and suffering in life.  Did you get what you wanted out of life, even so—even with the tragedy, trauma, and pain?  And the answer in the poem is, “I did.  I wanted to call myself beloved, to know myself as seen.”  I am able to say, “I did,” because I faithfully moved through life’s essential questions.

So I am going to read through the genealogy of Jesus responsively.  Responsively, because when I say one of the women included in the genealogy, you all are going to be great United Church of Christ people and ask that great clarification, “Wait, what?”  And then I will help with the clarification.  When you hear the females in the story of faith—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, the wife of Uriah, Bathsheb—I would like you to respond with, “Wait, what?”

Ready?  Matthew, chapter 1, verses 1 through, well, we’ll go through about the first seven verses.

¹ An account^[of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.  ² Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, ³ and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar,

Wait, what?

Tamar disguised herself as a prostitute and deceived Judah, her father-in-law, in order to have sex with him, become pregnant from that sex, and have a child from him. From this union, Perez was born

 

and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Aram, ⁴ and Aram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, ⁵ and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab,

Wait what?

Rahab wasn’t even a Jew or Israelite.  But was a foreign woman who was a prostitute living in Jericho who hid the messengers Joshua sent to spy in Jericho.

and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth,

 

Wait what?

 

Ruth the Moabite was certainly not a Jew and  did something that must surely have felt “improper”: after Boaz had eaten and drunk… she came softly, uncovered his feet (a euphemism for genitalia in the Hebrew Bible) and lay down.  In other words, Ruth offered to have sex with Boaz to redeem her life and the life of her mother-in-law.

 

and Obed the father of Jesse, ⁶ and Jesse the father of King David.  And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, ⁷ 

Wait what?

Well, the wife of Uriah was Bathsheba, who was married to a Hittite and raped by King David.  She lost this pregnancy but was later taken as David’s wife and gave birth to the child who would become King Solomon.[3] 

           I’m going to end it there, the final woman mentioned in the genealogy being Mary who gave birth to Jesus.  All of these women named by the writer of Matthew, sexually suspect in some way, all of them included in genealogies that are almost always exclusively male.  Could it be that Matthew includes these women to say something about Mary of Nazareth?

Just before the birth of Jesus, the city of Sepphoris was considered a Jewish city of rebellion, strongly anti-Roman, and within view of the rural community of Nazareth.  When King Herod the Great died, Jews saw an opportunity, and revolted.  Rome had had enough.  Quinctilius Varus marched with his legions from Antioch and burned Sepphoris to the ground, wiping the city off of the map and then turning to do that to the city of Emmaus.  Men of fighting age would have been slaughtered or enslaved.  Every implement of rebellion or revolt impounded, taken as treasure, or burned.  All of the women would have been raped.  This was the way the Roman Empire, the Roman legions would have maintained the peace, by crushing any hope of conquered peoples, to traumatize those already living in so much poverty, sickness, and death.

Wait.  What?  What do we think the writer of Matthew is trying to say to include these women in the genealogy of Jesus, to then also include Mary of Nazareth?

I share this genealogy so that all of us might be able to see ourselves in the Biblical story.  Too often we think the story of faith is about pretty, romantic stories that are for the “in crowd,” the ones who live charmed lives, the people who live lives without pain or blemish or suffering or death.  What I want us all to hear is that if our lives have been messy, maybe filled with trauma, or a life that has sometimes felt like everything has been against you, what these stories tell us, is that we can get what we want out of life, even so.  That even so, even when our lives might be marked by pain or torment, we can know that we are beloved by God, seen by God. 

Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary of Nazareth were beloved by God, seen by God.  Into such a scandalous family tree, Jesus is born, to bring a different kind of peace.  So let us continue to be people of questions, remembering that though we may think our lives too scandalous for us to be known as beloved or seen by God, the scandalous has already been written into the story for us. 

Too often, during this time when we tell the Christmas story, we read these stories with so much romanticism and a lack of critical questioning that we wonder how we might be worthy of them—that there must be something we do to believe this season is written on behalf of the scandalous, the suspect, and those who are regularly seen as unworthy. 

Do not believe that anything we have done or that has been done to us has taken us outside God knowing us as beloved and seen.  For we are.  Wait, what?  Yes, that’s right.  Did you get what you wanted out of this life, even so?  We did.  For in this story, that tells us of the ancestors of Jesus, the family of faith, we know we are beloved.  And we are seen.  Amen.

---

[1] “Dean James Ryan’s 5 Essential Questions in Life,” Harvard Graduate School of Education, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW0NguMGIbE&ab_channel=HarvardGraduateSchoolofEducation

[2] Raymond Carver, “Late fragment,” A New Path to the Waterfall, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990.

[3] Some extra resources, https://www.wilgafney.com/2014/10/19/who-are-you-calling-a-whore/

https://www.wilgafney.com/2021/11/14/remember-jesus-of-the-line-of-bathsheba/

 

Sermon, Year A, First Sunday of Advent, "We are the tellers of the tale"

Advent A1 ColPaul 2025

Isaiah 1:10-28; Matthew 3:1-12; Psalm 94

November 30, 2025

 

           In chapter 1 of the great prophet Isaiah, God entreats us, “Come now, let us argue it out,” says the Holy One, “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.  Come now, let us argue it out.”  Never has a singular passage made it so clear that what God wants . . . is relationship with us.  Isaiah, the prophet, believes that God has a case against the people, but enjoining the people, God wants to hear their side of the story.  “Tell me, so I understand,” God seems to be saying, “help me figure out how you could have gotten it so wrong.  Don’t hold back.  Don’t pull punches.  If you have something to say, make your case.”

           Some scholars believe that the first chapter of Isaiah is the prologue for all of the latter prophets, prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, all who spoke from the Eighth Century B.C.E. forward.[1]  All of these prophets understood judgment and hope as the two sides of one coin.  This same understanding is part of the gospel text we have with John the Baptist preaching repentance to the people in the Jordan River.  Repentance is not about hell-fire and damnation.  Repentance is about purification leading to a different set of values, a different way of being in the world that shows we have chosen a different path. 

           There is no hope in the old path.  Reform is impossible.  A new way needs to be made.

           These prophets hear the same old, tired message from the people in protest, “But we are the chosen people.  We are the people of Judah and Jerusalem.  We are the people who regularly go to church and do our religious duty.  We are the ancestors of Abraham and Sarah.”  To the prophet, these are empty titles which do not recognize what God truly desires—to protect the weakest in their communities, the widows and the orphans, by doing justice.  And the prophet shrugs as if to say, “Stop being so defensive, so self-protective and join with me, join the collective pilgrimage, in creating the new way that transforms.”

You will hear it from me time and again because I believe it is worth repeating. There are several places in Scripture where God refuses the people’s worship because they continue to do injustice.  But nowhere in the Bible, absolutely nowhere, does God refuse the people’s justice because of the imperfect way they pray, or sing hymns, or do worship.  It is one of the most common themes throughout these Latter Prophets:  God refuses the people’s worship because of their unwillingness or inability to do justice. 

Isaiah clearly states in this passage that God will not accept the worship practices, religious observances or festivals, because of their violence and injustice.  Isaiah literally says, “Their hands are full of blood.”

John the Baptist, much like the Hebrews walking in the wilderness, does not depend on the Roman meal for his food.  He practices repentance.  He eats locusts and wild honey as a way of showing his independence from Rome and dependence on God.  John screams along Jordan’s shore, that the axe is being laid to the root of the tree, because the whole system is sick and diseased.  No good or real fruit can come from running the world in this way.  In this judgment, asking for people to show their repentance, this is our hope against hope.  We recognize that we cannot re-make the world without God and God will not re-make the world without us.

As we begin this Advent season, we remember early followers of Christ who believed God was acting to continue the story of salvation during a dreadful time in human history.  They created a narrative that ran counter to the violence and death and injustice and night they found all around them.  Dawn was breaking and they knew they were to pay attention to the breaking of that dawn.  They were practicing repentance.

One of my all-time favorite people to read for sermon preparation was Rev. Grant Gallup.  Rutgers University gave him a portal, a webspace, to express his incredible heart and wisdom.  He died way back in 2009 and then Rutgers slowly removed his web presence.  I miss his words so much.  Rev. Gallup was someone who was a gay Episcopalean priest who served the poor in Chicago, felt a loneliness and aimlessness there and so moved to Nicaragua.   Rev. Gallup said of early Christians:

Our believing ancestors thought of themselves as the subjects of their own history, for they were The Story and they were the tellers of the tale.  They were wide awake dreamers of wonderful dreams, in a world of nightmares, and they were awake to tell the dreams.  They brought light into a world of shadows.  They brought hope into a world that had lost its hope and lost its way.  They had been told by the God who visited them in Jesus that they were Light in the world.

 . . . God saves us not as a pinchpenny saves coins but as a mother saves her child from danger and delivers it to safety and health and maturity and responsibility . . . [2] 

 

I love that line.  “God saves us not as a pinchpenny saves coins, but as a mother saves her child from danger and delivers that child to safety and health and maturity and responsibility.”  God does not save us to continue the same violence and death and injustice and night.  God saves us to be the fruit of a different tree.  God saves us to be people who bring health and maturity and responsibility to our community and our world.  We are to be the actors not the acted upon, the subjects of salvation not the objects done-in by the violence, death, injustice, and night that surrounds us.  We cannot save the world without God, and God will not save the world without us.

           (start soft and pick up anger as you go) Too often, in the church, we have acted too courteously when God has asked us to be lovingly confrontational, too polite when God has asked us to protest in truth, too respectable when God has asked us to be resolute in seeking out justice for the most vulnerable among us.  “Come, let us argue it out!” God says, the Holy God who desires not platitudes or a fake politeness, but a real relationship with us.

           The late Rev. Dr. Peter Gomes, at one time the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in The Memorial Church at Harvard University, spoke at the United Church of Christ General Synod for our 50^th Anniversary, in Hartford, Connecticut almost 20 years ago.  Speaking as an American Baptist in the mist of New England Congregational heritage, (a heritage that is part of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Coloma), Rev. Dr. Gomes showed his appreciation for the United Church of Christ, saying that we have led out on every important social movement in this republic.  But, he said, one of the greatest things we could do in our own time is “to overturn the climate of low expectations” in mainline churches.  People in communities like Coloma/Bainbridge and Watervliet have very respectable expectations of local UCC churches, and it is our job to turn these respectable expectations upside down. 

           He went on.  We give the occasional heifer (referring to the Heifer Project), have the funeral for the respectable person, every once in while marry the person not so respected.  “Here is a chance,” Gomes said with a smile, “for a great church to behave badly.”

           As the late Congressperson John Lewis said, and I’m sure many of us can quote it, after his sit-in on the Congressional floor to protest the lack of collegial courage around gun violence, “Sometimes you have to find a way to get in the way.  Or get in trouble.  Good trouble.  Necessary trouble.”[3]

           What do we think of that wild-eyed prophet calling for repentance out by the Jordan River, eating bugs and wild honey for lunch?  Do we think he cared more about individual respectability or the world’s salvation?

           Is it possible in a United Church of Christ Church, that our best days are ahead of us?  Many mainline churches have a habit of acting like their heydays are all in the past.  As in, “Oh, you should have been here back then.”

           Gomes ended his speech by wondering aloud whether all the history of the United Church of Christ was leading up till now, a time for us to act with conviction and character . . . with a hope that God is still acting and speaking.  What Rev. Dr. Gomes wanted to know is, “Are we still listening?”

           “Dare it be said,” he challenged, “dare it be said, that the last 50 years (back then the whole of our life as a denomination), the last 50 years were mere prologue for what is to happen, for whatever role you were meant to play?  Dare it be said that your founders simply began what it falls to you to carry on and complete?”[4]

           Dare it be said that all of those people who began the First Congregational United Church of Christ of Coloma/St. Paul’s United Church of Christ, that they simply began this incredible project that now falls on us to carry on and complete?  As we look at the violence, injustice, night, and death that surround us in this time, a time not unlike the time of Christ, we may be the Light of the world, the subjects of our own history.  So here we are, sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins, members and friends of the First Congregational United Church of Christ of Coloma/St. Paul’s United Church of Christ.  Here we are.  This is our story and we are the tellers of the tale.  Amen.

---

[1] J Clinton McCann, “Commentary on First Alternate Reading—Lectionary for August 8, 2010”  WorkingPreacker.org, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=8/8/2010 .

[2] Grant Gallup, “First Sunday of Advent A,” Homily Grits, http://rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits04_05/msg00020.html.

[3] “Interview with Congressperson John Lewis,” The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, September 1, 2016.

[4] Rev. Dr. Peter Gomes, Synod in the City, United Church of Christ General Synod, Hartford, CT, June 26, 2007.

Sermon, Year C, Reign of Christ, "Christ as our king"

 

C Reign of Christ Col Paul 2025

Jeremiah 23:1-6; Luke 23:33-43

November 16, 2025 

          I have always thought that the Revised Common Lectionary should include I Samuel 8 for every Reign of Christ Sunday.  In explaining that passage, Jewish scholar, Everett Fox, shares the fundamental Jewish understanding that serves as a critique against every foreign ruler and despot, every authoritarian regime and supposed righteous shepherd within Israel and Judah.  God alone is your Ruler and King and would govern quite differently from every earthly administration.  Fox shares the poetry when the prophet Samuel comes back to tell the people what will happen if their demands to, “Give us a king!” are met. 

          God says, “Here is what will happen.  The king will take.  Be careful about what you demand for if this demand is met, and I grant you a king, the king will take and take and take.”

          The king shall take your sons.  The king shall take your daughters.  The king shall take your slaves.  The king shall take your animals.  The king shall take your land.  The king shall take.  The king shall take.  The king shall take.  Heck, after the king finishes “taking,” there is hardly anything left for your promised Israelite freedom and enjoyment.  The people shall return to being slaves under their own Israelite king.

          Later, in I Samuel, chapter 12, four chapters later, Yahweh, the Living God, makes it clear that as Sovereign of Israel, and the Ruler of the Universe, the Living God never took a darn thing from you.[1]

          Storming against the people, Yahweh asks, “Whose ox have I taken?  Whose donkey have I taken?  And whom have I defrauded?  Whom have I oppressed?  And from whose hand have I taken a bribe so that justice might not be done?”

          I pray that all of you have heard Frederic Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus enough times within your life that you have a vague recollection of the wording.  At the campus church I served in Champaign, Illinois, and the city church I served in Billings, Montana, it was tradition to sing it every Easter Day. Handle composed the oratorio, The Messiah, containing the “Hallelujah” chorus in 1742, using Scriptural text and Psalms that were a part of the Book of Common Prayer.

          And maybe you have been in attendance for its singing enough times, to know the tradition f standing when it is sung or when you are singing along to a performance of the “Hallelujah” chorus.  Nobody is exactly sure why, but legend has it that when King George II heard the chorus during a performance in England, he assumed it was being sung in praise of him and his reign.  So he stood that he might be rightly recognized.  When the king stood, the rest of the audience was obliged to stand with him.  “King of kings” and “Lord of lords” King George II was.  If not King George, whosoever could they be singing about?  As people of faith, who is our king?

          One of my spiritual mentors in Champaign, Illinois, a retired Disciples of Christ campus minister, told me to try and sing the “Hallelujah” chorus without any political language.  “Hum the political parts,” he told me, “and all you have left is hallelujahs.”  Jim’s point was that we have made religious faith such an impoverished romantic, sentimental practice that it barely speaks to real life at all.  And there it is, right before us, buried in the tradition of a song we consider central to that same faith. 

          Jim also reminded me of the famous quote by a theologian who counseled young preachers about the reality of walking into such deep waters.  “Always preach the gospel with your bags packed,” he said.  It is not the nature of the gospel to make things easy, agreeable, or comfortable for those in the pews or the pulpit.  University of Chicago professor and political scientist David Easton defined politics as “the authoritative allocation of values for a society.”[2]  In that definition, a focus on values, how can we not understand the inextricable ties between religious faith and politics?

          We wax nostalgic about Congregational ancestors who provided refuge for freedom seekers just before the start of the Civil War.  False walls are found in many of those homes around the I-80 corridor in my home state of Illinois.  Think about that.  Our Congregational ancestors regularly broke federal law in the Fugitive Slave Act. 

          We puff out our chests remembering our Evangelical ancestors who formed the Deaconess movement in St. Louis, Missouri, providing health care for German immigrants, leading to other hospitals in the Midwest.  Advocate Health Care, based in Downers Grove, Illinois, and a descendant of that Deaconess work, is the largest integrated health care system in the State of Illinois.

          But that was back then.  Racial tension, breaking federal law, immigration, and health care weren’t considered political issues way back then.  Literally, thank the heavens, that these religious issues of racial tension, breaking federal law, immigration and health care aren’t political issues in our day.  Our faith might require something of us if they were.  After all, when is the last time you have heard something in the news about race?  Or immigration?  Or health care?

          Scholars of early Christianity believe that Jesus had a habit of referring to the movement he was leading as “the Empire of God” movement.  In Greek, Basileia tou Qeou.  It was a way of acknowledging, as Jewish prophets like Samuel and Jeremiah had done before Jesus, that the sitting ruler did not carry the authority of God and stood as a juxtaposition to how God would rule rightly and justly.  In the time of Jesus’s early life, that Augustus Caesar (“Augustus” meaning “the one to be worshipped and adored”) sitting on the throne had no real claim to the throne and should be removed and replaced by the Holy One of Israel.  The Empire of God stood as a critique over and against the empire of the Romans or the empire of Caesar.

          Today we heard words from the prophet Jeremiah.  Because Jeremiah shows up regularly in the Revised Common Lectionary this autumn, you have heard me say that the prophet Jeremiah was thrown into a well, accused by his own countryfolk of not being patriotic, and locked in jail for his critique of the sitting rulers of his own country.  Jeremiah lashed out at the way they destroyed the lives of the poor and took advantage of the vulnerable, regularly dismissed their responsibility for their neighbor in favor of amassing their fortune and power.

          In the passage before us today, Jeremiah imagines the “shepherds” of his time, “shepherds” a term regularly used for the political rulers or kings, Jeremiah imagines them deposed and replaced by “shepherds” or kings of God’s own choosing.  Those rulers, Jeremiah says, shall make mishpat and tzedakah, justice and righteousness, central focus. 

          Here is how Jeremiah defined those terms.  Mishpat, justice, is making sure all members of the community have access to resources and goods for the sake of a viable life of dignity.  In the covenant tradition, Hebrew Scripture focuses particularly on three groups who are vulnerable to having their access to resources and goods compromised—the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant.  In a culture still largely governed by the whims and wishes of adult, Hebrew males, these groups needed an advocate.  The widow, the orphan, and immigrant had no standing of their own in the senate or the square, at the bank or the market—the places of power and wealth.  To do justice then, was to see and know life from the perspective of the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant.

          Tzedekah, righteousness, is about the active intervention into social affairs to rehabilitate society.  Tzedekah is also about having an inner integrity that is expressed through outer action.  Interrupting the status quo and working toward transformation are hard.  Nobody likes to enter into that much conflict.  Righteousness says that if interruption, transformation, and conflict need to happen to rehabilitate society, then bring it on.  No hurdles are too high, no stumbling blocks are too many which will keep us off the path.  If one says, “I value this but then blinks and gives up when things get tough, that person betrays themselves as something less than a righteous peep.

          To paraphrase Dr. Cornel West, “Never forget that justice and righteousness are what love looks like in public.  They are love with legs on.”[3]

          The prophet Jeremiah proved he was just and righteous through his prophetic witness—exhibiting a solidarity and special concern for the poor and vulnerable even when it cost him. 

          Jeremiah does not ask that we be merely neutral.  As the great Brazilian educator, Paolo Freire, who worked in the slums of Brazil would say, “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and powerless means to side with the powerful, not to remain neutral.”[4]  Or Howard Zinn, the late, great American educator who said, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”[5]

          As we look to Reign of Christ or Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday in our liturgical year, we are now called to the countercultural mission, practice, and way of being to ask how the world would be different if the God of Jeremiah sat on the throne.  Better yet, how might the world be different if the crucified Christ sat on the throne?

          How shall our Advent and Christmas in 2025 be defined by that mission, practice and way of being in the world?  A new church year approaches with Advent and Christmas.  I know so often I plan to have a different Advent and Christmas only to throw up my hands in exasperation a week before the season starts and say, “Well, it’s too late now.”

          We know the onslaught is coming and it would seem that what was once, at the very least, a segue season in Thanksgiving, has been lost, tossed aside, in favor of getting the season started sooner and sooner.  Those orange and black M&M’s and Hershey’s kisses seem to be replaced in ever-faster record time by green and red ones with every passing year.

          The prophet Jeremiah knew.  The first thing to go in God’s created order is an appointed time of Sabbath.  Remember Sabbath?  It is the idea that times of rest and re-creation are necessary for the thriving of all creation.  Slaves work 24/7.  Now the store times are extending sooner and later.  More and more businesses will be open on Thanksgiving Day.  Many people standing against authoritarian rule are asking us not to buy any items during the busiest shopping week of the year that begins with Black Friday.  That we might fast to show not only our freedom in Christ but to also assert our power as people who are not slaves to the capitalist onslaught.

          Who is our king?  Are we dominated by rhythms of production and consumption?  It is to acknowledge that the culture is cutting further and further into what it means to thrive.  We will have to be more and more intentional to not let the culture carry us on a wave of convenience that means always on, always open, and trample others to get the biggest sale.  Find meaning in glitz, gluttony, and greed.  In other words, don’t let the tryptophan stop you from a bag of thinly cut, highly-salted fries late Thursday night.

          It ripples out.  People have to work those hours.  And as long as they are offered, someone will always want or maybe even need those hours.  Even the earth, which needs its own cycles of Sabbath and rest, loses its balance and begins to spin out of control.

          The culture comes like a runaway train, maybe even like an indiscriminate natural disaster, making us whisper, “Thank God I survived this time around.  I didn’t get crushed.  I didn’t go without family or friends.  I am not an emotional wreck from the season.  I didn’t exhaust myself this time.”

          But we should be asking in the midst of the devastation, “What intentional practices will we be about this Advent and Christmas season such that everyone knows that Christ does reign in our lives, that Christ is King, stepping into a throne originally ruled by a Caesar—a Caesar who wants us to stay busy, buy more, eat more, and deplete ourselves to near ruin?”  To the point where the mere mention of Advent and Christmas 2025 will fill us with a holy dread.

          How shall these holy seasons be filled with not one more thing tacked onto our list?  How could we make a wholesale replacement of the usual cultural practice to grant ourselves Sabbath and rest, love our neighbor, and strengthen that connection a little more, display our love and care for the earth a little more?  How do we come out of the somber, sometimes scary and terrible Scriptural texts for Advent and Christmas to hope in the same way the gospel hopes. 

          Those hopes are found not at the center of Caesar’s spirituality, in Rome, nor at the center of Herod’s theology in Jerusalem, but in a young, suspect Jewish girl from a backwater town, maybe a family that just finished harvesting in Bainbridge, Watervliet, or Coloma.  The gospel passages from Matthew will tell us that she and her child will be hunted as refugees and immigrants. 

          The crazy Revised Common Lectionary places not only the Jeremiah passage before us on Reign of Christ Sunday, but, in speaking about Christ the King, the lectionary has us reading the crucifixion story, a story of political execution.  It is a reminder that if we are to claim the Reign, the Empire of Christ, Christ as our King, we will need courage to join in solidarity and friendship with those people who are persecuted, tortured, and executed by the Caesars of the world.  Caesar must be de-throned not only in our hearts but through practices that say we welcome the Empire of God.

          For the crazy and odd thing about calling Christ as King or Caesar is that we recognize our power comes from not being “over” others but having “power with” and “power for” others.  Christ as King is a parable that somehow does not make sense logically.  For it subverts the notion of king and suggests that God in Christ should also be about making sure that we work alongside the atheist and non-believer, we join hands with the most vulnerable and hurting, we cast our lot with the crucified in the world.  Biblical Christianity is always suspicious of a religious faith that cares more about power over and winning rather than identifying with those who might be the most vulnerable, the political losers.

          As we begin to enter one of the most somber seasons in our Christian liturgical calendar, a season that begins in the darkest of night, let us not add one more thing to our list this year.  Do not walk away from this worship service saying, “And now Mike wants me to find time to rest too?  When is that going to happen?”

          Rather, write a thoughtful card to a loved one, one who would understand, and tell them that rather than a gift, you would like them to give to one the non-profit where they volunteer, or have a passion for the world, or are most human, and to do it in your name.  Cout it as a sign of hope for the world. 

          Write one note to your local Congressperson, thanking them for their service, but challenging them to specifically adopt policies that would bring more shalom—wholeness, connectedness, and well-being.  Count it as a sign of peace on earth. 

          Replace a day of shopping with this.  Each day, take five minutes, start out with five, and just dwell on the love of God for you.  See it as a gift and God’s intent for you.

          Finally, turn off all the lights in your house for one half hour each night and light Advent candles, remembering the unquenchable and insatiable love Go has for this good earth.  In that time of small light and surrounding darkness, pray that you might mirror that love.  Remember people in the rural countryside, those poor so often found in places like Coloma, Bainbridge, and Watervliet.  Or in the Sudan.  During that time, ask God softly each night what must be done to turn back a season that probably does more for ravaging the planet than any other.

          Let Christ reign in your heart and be part of your regular practice during these upcoming seasons.  May he be your king—spiritually, religiously, politically, and economically.  When Christmas arrives, let it not be said that we have to hum all the words to the “Hallelujah Chorus” because we are unwilling to recognize that our faith necessarily intersects with politics. 

          Look up ahead!  There is some crazy guy baptizing people in the Jordan River.  He is not found in Rome or Jerusalem but out in the wilderness, out in the rural countryside.  During these Advent and Christmas seasons, let us draw close enough to hear what he is saying.  So that the Empire of God movement might continue through you. 

          And let God in Christ reign forever and ever.  Amen.   

---

[1] Everett Fox, Give Us a King!  Samuel, Saul, and David (New York:  Shocken Books, 1999), pp. 33-34.  I use Fox’s beautifully poetic translation of this passage which shows the author repeating the word “take” as a header to every phrase.  Fox also interpret God’s name YHWH as “I-Will-Be-There.”

[2] James Hanley, “What is Politics?”  The League, December 21, 2010.  http://ordinary-gentlement.com/2010/12/21/what-is-politics/. The other common definition Hanley quotes is from Lasswell, “who gets what, when, how.”  If justice is about the material bases of life, as John Dominic Crossan suggests, then politics and justice should have an intimate relationship.  Wen Hanley, in his critique states,”’Politics’ as a term should not be limited to any one set of activities but should be applied to a class of human behaviors that have a common purpose,” how can we not understand that as intersecting with a definition of ‘church?’”

[3] “Cornel West’s Catastrophic Love,” bigthink, http://bigthink.com/videos/cornel-wests-catastrophic-love.

[4] Paolo Freire, The Politics of Education:  Culture, Power, and Liberation (Westport, CT:  Bergin & Garvey, 1985), p. 122.

[5] Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train:  A Personal History of Our Times (Boston:  Beacon Press, 1994).

Sermon, Year C, Reign of Christ, "Love in the particulars"

C Reign of Christ Pilg 2022

Luke 23:33-43

November 20, 2022

           In the time of Jesus, Augustus Caesar and Tiberius Caesar were the undisputed kings, sovereigns, rulers.  So it is a curious thing that we come to this time in the liturgical year, the end of the liturgical year, and reference it as Reign of Christ or Christ the King Sunday.  Jesus was certainly not the king in his time, made undeniably clear by his arrest, torture, and death. 

Common to the Jewish story was an uneasy relationship with even their own kings.  For God alone was king, ruler, sovereign.  As a result, claims to the throne immediately created a Jewish countercultural narrative where pharaohs, kings, and caesars were imagined as unseated for their cruel, wicked, and violent practices and replaced by a God of definitively different values.   Hebrew Scripture is replete with stories of how the Jewish people negotiated this reality—Moses before Pharaoh, Daniel in the lion’s den, Esther in the royal court, Jeremiah challenging the royal and religious elite—all risked their lives to speak with a strong voice and join hands with those laid low, those vanquished and conquered, or put under threat by the rulers of their time. 

Curious then, that in all three years of the Revised Common Lectionary, the Gospel passages chosen for Reign of Christ or Christ the King Sunday are uncharacteristic for those of a king.  In Matthew, in Year A, Jesus sits as judge over the nations and tells them they are only welcome in the kingdom as they met the needs of those who are naked, hungry, thirsty, and those thrown into prison.  This is the character of our king, not unlike the God who chose Hebrew slaves over Egyptian taskmasters, who cried like a fountain on behalf of the poor when the king had aggrandized the wealthy and powerful.  In Years B and C of the liturgical calendar, we read passages like Johnny read for us today.  They are the stories of Jesus’s betrayal and crucifixion. 

This is your king.  Much like 1.1 million Jews during his time, Jesus was tortured and executed through crucifixion.   What are we to make of that?  How are we to respond?

The apostle Paul, writing out of his context as a faithful Jew, responds by saying that he preaches not Christ triumphant, not Christ with power over, not Christ doing as Caesar does, but Christ crucified, Christ the defeated, Christ the vanquished.  In so doing, Paul remembers a long tradition that is not about ladder climbing, or grasping and clutching at power over others, or even “winning.”  Paul remembers a God who chooses Hebrew slaves over Egyptian taskmasters, the brave choices of Esther to protect a conquered people, and Hananiah, Misha'el, and Azariah who are better known by their Babylonian names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  Those three are bound and thrown into the fiery furnace for refusing to bow to the image of King Nebuchadnezzar II, king of all of Babylon.  They worshipped the king of a different character.

I want to make it clear that all of these pharaohs, kings, rulers, and caesars did not see themselves the way the Jews saw them.  They saw themselves as the protectors of their people, the Father to many nations, chosen by gods or God to rule.  In the Priene inscription at Actium, the military victory of Octavian Caesar is referred to as “the gospel.”  Octavian is referred to as Augustus, “the one to be worshipped” and, ten years before the birth of Jesus, Octavian is referenced as the savior, his birth heralding the beginning of all time.  Caesar Augustus was known as the son of god, the prince of peace, the kind and benevolent father of the fatherland. 

This is the way of cruel conquerors.  They make general allusions to their benevolence and charity to the masses, their love for their people.  Even their violence and war are characterized as loving and kind and just.  The prophets, meanwhile, call pharaohs, kings, and caesars into account by naming the specifics, remembering historical pain, unmasking hypocrisy, and speaking out of a particularity which does not allow the Powers-That-Be to get away with broad, inclusive, decorative language which ends up being empty.  When Paul preaches Christ crucified, he is not only calling people of faith to a different way of being but he is also indicting the cruelty and savagery of Caesar.  However difficult or uncomfortable, whatever trouble it might get him into, Paul wants the truth told about what is happening to the Jews in First Century Rome.  You are not the benevolent father of the fatherland.  You are the crucifier of the Jews, the one who rapes and pillages our people, the one who pales in comparison to the one Jews know sits on the throne, the King and Shepherd of Israel.

Particularity, when it comes to inclusion--love, and justice, matter.  We know this in our primary relationships.  My oldest, Jacob, knows that I love him when I try to learn the language of computer software and how he put his latest project and make a concerted effort to visit him and Consuela.  Abe knows I love him by my willingness to listen to his efforts in emotional intelligence and leadership and let him know that I see him when he is trying to be fair as he negotiates life between me and his mom.  Sophia knows I love her when I read her latest poem, listen to her favorite podcast, when I seek her out for play slapfights, and when I seek out long car rides with just the two of us.  I could say I love all of my kids.  But they are listening, wondering, knowing that I live out that love in my willingness to do hard work on our relationship—in particularity.

Churches can also do this.  We are notorious for it.  In my work as a Healthy Congregations Facilitator, I have historically tried to help congregations develop words and mission statements that distinguish their identity and work.  One congregation wanted to use the word “inclusive” believing that so many of the other churches in their area were the opposite of inclusive.  But when we turned to how all of those other churches defined themselves, one of the primary words they all used was “inclusive.”  They wouldn’t say inclusive of what but I asked the congregation to think about that.  Maybe these other congregations were inclusive of young families, different kinds of music, maybe even different cultures, all things the “inclusive” church struggled with, but seemingly, every church in a 60-mile radius thought of itself as inclusive—in a general kind of way. 

Let me give you another example.  In 2001, the United Methodist Church began a what it referred to as a welcome and a call with the identifying words:  “Open Hearts.  Open Minds.  Open Doors.”  But here was the problem.  Open to what?  Open to whom?  To my disappointment, the church that my uncle who led Chaddock Children’s School, was a part of, the church my mom belongs to, and the church so many of my best colleagues led out and are a part of, fractured not so long ago by the way some people defined those words.  Because while the whole church uses the welcome and call “Open Hearts.  Open Minds.  Open Doors” there are some members of that blessed church who did not believe that should include the LGBTQ+ community.  And for many years, the United Methodist Church had contentious fights that led to fracturing.  When inclusive means “bland vanilla,” it actually means nothing, has no teeth or bite, is really non-offensive, but then can intentionally and unintentionally leave many knowing outside of the circle knowing what the message is.

“Life is messy,” my Pastoral Care professor, Peggy Way used to say, “and church is coming to the table to talk about the impossible things.”  Because we are all held in the particular, detailed love of God for us.  Even now, God is recognizing that the little scar that you have right behind your ear, God loves that.

Any number of churches I have served, some that have chosen to walk the journey of “Open and Affirming, often want how that is phrased to signal something more than the LGBTQ+ community so some people will not be offended.  They would like a blanket, more general statement, which conveys inclusion for everyone.  But my concern, in using glittering generalities, is that when we say “all” what we really mean is that we want to avoid messy history, difficult conversations, the grit and grist of courageous leadership which calls us to be particular.

I often try to explain it in this way.  Tracy and I regular tell each other we love each other in hellos and goodbyes and sometimes throughout the day.  “I love you,” is her text to me.  “I love you too,” is my text back to her.  But when we really want to capture each other’s attention, there are words she says to me or I say to her that let each other know, “No, now I’m really serious.  Pay attention.”  Or . . . I could sweep and mop the house . . . which she knows is not a value of mine so it is something I do to bring her peace of mind.  I could say to her, “You know, TM (Tracy Marie), you are really, really beautiful.”  And she might smile back and say, “Thank you.”  But then what happens when I would say, “And you know, there are many beautiful women out there your age?”  Isn’t that wonderfully inclusive?  And could get me killed?  And she is really, really beautiful and the most beautiful woman I know.

Or I could say, “I love you,” in one of those texts, and say, inclusively, “But you know, as a pastor, I have to love everybody.”  My love for her now loses a grit, an indication of my devotion and solidarity for and with her.  And I would duck and run for cover after saying this. 

           Our love is not called to be bland and general and vanilla.  Our love, as the people of God, is meant to be spicy, and creative, and detailed and not tied to winning or advancing or power over.  Miriam and Moses knew that.  Esther knew that.  Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego knew that.  Paul knew that.  We should enjoy flavor.

           And all of that shows our intent to grow spiritually because we all know we are in process with these messy, uncomfortable things.  They show our direction, our intent to go and grow deeper.

           In the same way, the land and water acknowledgment made reminds us that our history has not been without its own violence and conflict.  And that we must repent of that, repair what we can, be on a different path to join hands with the conquered, too often vanquished, people who would be forgotten unless we intentionally remembered the particularity of our place.

           My hope then is that these things become so rote, so ordinary, that they get deep within us so that we cannot live life without the knowledge and wisdom of them. 

           There is one other thing I do every week because I want it to be a part of us.  And the absolutely wonderful things is that I have not only had children repeat it to their parents knowing what courageous thing they had to do at school but also had young couples repeat it in their wedding vows.  Whenever we have a children’s sermon, I say to them, “We will shout this out because we need to practice speaking with a strong voice, even when we are scared or shaking in our boots.  And, we need to stay connected, touch feet, to remember that we won’t make it alone.  We need each other.”  And children in churches I have served have said things to their mom like, “And then I remembered, when Josie, was being picked on by my friends, that I was supposed to speak with a strong voice.  Because Josie and I are connected.”

           And in one moment in time, the particularity of love issues forth, and some crazy thing I did in worship matters, even when we boringly repeat it thousands of times.  For that moment in time, what I do with you all doesn’t feel like it is wasted or useless but actually makes me believe that the reign of Christ might have a chance in our world.  Speak with a strong voice, Daniel, Esther.  Stay connected, Corinthians, Ephesians.  Maybe it has worth?  Amen.