Sunday, November 27, 2016

Do Not Be Afraid: Zechariah


November 27, 2016 - First Sunday in Advent
Luke 1:5-25

In the days of King Herod of Judah, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah.  His wife was a descendent of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.  Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord.  But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years.

Once, when Zechariah was serving as priest before God and his section was on duty, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense.  Now at the time of the incense offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside.  Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense.

When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him.  But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife, Elizabeth, will bear you a son, and you will name him John.  You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord.  He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth, he will be filled with the Holy Spirit.  He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God.  With the spirit and the power of Elijah he will turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

Zechariah said to the angel, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.”  The angel replied, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.”

Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah, and wondering at his delay in the sanctuary.  When he did come out, he could not speak to them, and they realized he had seen a vision in the sanctuary.  He kept motioning to them, and remained unable to speak. 

When his time of service had ended, he went to his home.

After those days, his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she remained in seclusion.  She said, “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me, and took away my disgrace I have endured among my people.” 



Sermon:  “Do Not Be Afraid: Zechariah”

I always thought I feared the worst.  I think we’re somehow conditioned in this way: to prepare for the most negative outcome, as if this saves us from disappointment (spoiler alert: it doesn’t.).  I thought I feared my wife Elizabeth dying before I did.  I thought I feared being an ineffective priest in the order of Abijah.  It took a slightly-pushy angel to show me that I was wrong: I did not fear the worst, after all.  I feared the best. 

Ah, I haven’t said who “I” am yet, have I?  I am Zechariah, husband to Elizabeth, father to John...but that comes later in my story.  Back to that pushy angel:

I was doing my priestly duties for the incense offering, going about the decent-and-in-good-order rituals of honoring God on behalf of my people.  To be honest, sometimes we priests get into a bit of a routine with these sorts of things, and so I did not expect anything unusual to happen.  I was looking forward to getting it done well, praying for my wife, and then joining her for a nice lunch with our extended family, and perhaps a little nap, if I was lucky. 

Until a pushy angel showed up.  I wish that being a man of the cloth meant I was open to receiving such an interruption.  I was not.  The appearance of that angel shining like an exploding star terrified me to my core.  I was actually foolish enough to believe that this was the most afraid I’d ever be.  The next moment turned out to strike even greater fear in me.

He sensed my fear, this angel, and said, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard.” 

I anxiously wracked my brains for what I had last prayed for: my knees to stop aching?  Liz to be healthy as she got older?  A nice new set of robes?  Then, an uneasiness began to grow in my stomach.  I suddenly knew what prayer he meant.  Liz and I had prayed for days, then weeks, then months, then years, for a child. 

And finally, our souls weary from hoping that long, we stopped praying for a child, and began to pray for acceptance of our simple life the way it was.  So, as the angel said his next words, they were already echoing in my terrified heart, “It’s a boy, Zephaniah!  His name’ll be John, and he will bring joy like you’ve never known.  He will be great in God’s eyes.” 

You’d think that when God finally answers your deepest, most secret prayer, you’d rejoice.  But joy was not my instinctive feeling.  I felt even deeper fear, especially for Liz at her age.  “How can this be?!” I cried.  “I’m downright old, and Liz isn’t exactly a spring chicken, either!”

The angel didn’t seem to be dissuaded by these practical and rational fears.  “Do you know who I am?” he pushed. “I am Gabriel, kind of a big deal in God’s house, and I’m bringing you good news today!  But you can’t see past your fears.  So I’m striking you mute until that child of yours is born.  You need to see that God’s blessing is beyond your rationality, and perhaps if you can’t talk, you’ll get there sooner.”

I told you he was a pushy angel.  And mute I was, for all 9 months, making my first sounds with my newborn son.  Now, we’ll not ask Liz which was a greater blessing: a child of her own she’d longed for, or her chatty, nervous husband being unable to speak for the entirely of her pregnancy! 

I’ll tell you this, though: a person can do an awful lot of thinking when they’re not able to talk.  I replayed that encounter with Gabriel over and over again.  I pondered the God who was listening to each of those heartfelt prayers for a child for all those years.  Mostly, I examined what it was that made me so very afraid to have my prayer answered.  I came to an unexpected conclusion, one I hinted at in the beginning of my story to you today. 

I don’t think we human beings fear the worst, after all.  I think we assume we do: we do our risk assessments and praise predictability, trying to minimize pain and loss at all cost.  Entire industries exist because they want us to fear the worst, telling us we need stronger security, bigger weapons, more suspicion of those who differ from us.  We digest all that fear and all that anxiety, and wind up feeling like we’re always choosing between lesser evils.  But deep down, beneath all the negativity and pessimism and conditioning, I think we have a deeper fear.  And that fear is of the best.

We fear the unplanned joy and the inopportune grace of God coming in the startling appearance of angels.  We fear a God who actually listens when we pray and sometimes, when it’s least convenient or practical, answers.  Here’s what I learned about this kind of fear in my many months of silence:  it can do just as much damage, perhaps even more so, than fearing the worst. 

Think about it: how deadly is this fear to our sense of expectant hope this Advent season?  How does our fear of God’s unpredictable joy, our most visceral, private prayers answered, keep us living smaller lives than we should, being stricter with our forgiveness than we should, having a faith fueled by pessimism and not the wild hope God can bring?  Fear of the best can actually imprison our souls until we worship not God, but predictability and safety.

Now, an angel might not strike you mute this Advent season, but I encourage you to practice intentional silence and ponder to yourselves: what “best” are you terrified of?  How have you in your life traded daring hope for lesser roads of certainty and security?  What angels has God put in your path to remind you to dream bigger, to love extravagantly, to live bravely? 

New life is coming to you, friends, just like it came to Liz and me.  If you miss it, it won’t be because it’s not there; it will be because you’re too busy talking and not listening, too preoccupied with playing it safe, to recognize it. 


Take it from me, your life will be so much richer if you live it expecting, and not fearing, the best, and if you listen to angels along the way (even the pushy ones).  Amen.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

A Dangerously Good King


November 20, 2016  - Christ the King Sunday 
Colossians 1:11-20
11May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from the Lord’s glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
15He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers -- all things have been created through him and for him. 17He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. 19For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

Sermon:  “A Dangerously Good King”

If there were ever a bunch of folks to have authority issues, it would be us Presbyterians.  We’ve long been suspicious of those in power, especially those who rule absolutely, because of a little thing we like to call total depravity.  All of us sin.  And when sin is wedded to power, well, things can get pretty bad.  Our distrust of authority goes back a long way, and is evident throughout history. 

Take the Revolutionary War, for example.  A letter by King George III published[1] just before the war in a London newspaper said it most clearly:
“Believe me, the Presbyterians have been the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures, and they always do and ever will act against Government, from that restless and turbulent anti-monarchical spirit which has always distinguished them every where.”

Such rebels, we are!  Now, we may like to see the latest pictures of cute Charlotte and George, and we may watch royal weddings with the rapt delight of the masses, but deep down, we still embody that anti-monarchical spirit ol’ George accused us of. 

We traded monarchy for representative democracy, but we have our mistrusts there too, of course.  Sometimes a president makes us pretty anxious, but given the choice, we’d always choose to have a president over a king.

I think this is perhaps why I’ve, in the past, avoided the high church observance of this day: Christ the King Sunday.
I could get behind Christ the Shepherd Sunday, or Christ the Redeemer Sunday, or Christ the Teacher Sunday, but Christ the King?  I’m just not sure.  If Jesus Christ is King, he’s going to have to be a very different sort of king than any we’ve ever known.
As it turns out, he is. 

Colossians, echoed in the Nicene Creed, declares him to be the firstborn of all creation, the One through whom every person and animal and speck of this world is joined together.  He is the fullness of God, not a vindictive, hateful God, but a God who rescues us from the power of darkness, and reconciles us from the power of division.  This king isn’t so preoccupied with his status or his worth, but is absolutely consumed by the desire to make this earth a kingdom unlike any other, where peace reigns forever and ever.

Our Presbyterian Book of Confessions reinforces the sort of King Jesus is.  The Heidelberg Catechism says we call him Christ because, “he is ordained by God the Father and anointed with the Holy Spirit to be our chief Prophet and Teacher, fully revealing to us the secret purpose and will of God concerning our redemption; to be our only High Priest, having redeemed us by the one sacrifice of his body and ever interceding for us with the Father; and to be our eternal King, governing us by his Word and Spirit, and defending and sustaining us in the redemption he has won for us.”
The Westminster Confession reinforces the three-fold office of Jesus, saying, “It pleased God, in his eternal purpose, to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, his only begotten Son, to be the Mediator between God and humanity, the prophet, priest, and king; the head and Savior of his Church, the heir of all things, and judge of the world; unto whom he did, from all eternity, give a people to be his seed, and to be by him in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified.

Finally, A Brief Statement of Faith talks about this kingdom work of Jesus, saying, “Jesus proclaimed the reign of God: preaching good news to the poor and release to the captives, teaching by word and deed and blessing the children, healing the sick and binding up the brokenhearted, eating with outcasts, forgiving sinners, and calling all to repent and believe the gospel.”

This is a king we suspicious Presbyterians can trust and follow, knowing that his reign means not coercive power or greedy gain, but redemption, release, and reconciliation. 

My very favorite description of this king comes from the beloved Narnia series by C.S. Lewis.  Finding themselves in a bewildering and magical place, the siblings Lucy and Susan happen upon Mr. and Mrs. Beaver.  They wind up in a conversation about the elusive and mysterious Aslan, whom of course Lewis included as a divine allegory.
“Is he a man?” asked Lucy.
“Aslan a man!” said Mr. Beaver sternly. “Certainly not. I tell you he is King of the wood and the son of the great emperor-beyond-the-sea. Don’t you know who is the King of the Beasts? Aslan is a lion – the Lion, the great lion.”
“Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man.
Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake” said Mrs. Beaver; “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

No, Jesus certainly is not a safe king.  For if we truly proclaim his reign, it will mean the dangerous work of putting lesser powers in their place. 

If we truly proclaim his reign, it will mean confessing that we hold our words and actions accountable to the Highest Authority, One who does not abide hatred, violence, injustice or petty bickering. 

If we truly proclaim his reign, it will mean living as if his reconciling work on the cross actually did something; actually changes how we treat our neighbor, our friend and enemy alike.

Yes, the reign of Christ puts much in danger: mostly our need to be right, to be in control, to defend our fragile egos and ideologies, and to claim moral nobility at the cost of the least of these. 

If Christ is King, then we are not. Our fears are not. Our opinions are not. Our power is not.
We must live as those who believe and trust this King who works for the redemption of all creation, who proclaims a reign of good news to the poor and release to the captives, knowing that this may be dangerous work, but it is crucial work. 

We must not be afraid to ruffle a few feathers, as we pesky Presbyterians have often done, to proclaim the reign of Jesus Christ.  And we must remember that this reign was and is, at its heart, one of reconciliation: taking all the bitterness, all the violence, all the retaliation and racism and fear and mistrust and pride this world can offer, and putting it in a grave, and leaving it there; and then rising above it, bringing unity, healing, wholeness, rescuing us from ourselves, and making us one new creation.

So, Presbyterians, you who rightly question authority, on this Christ the King Sunday, I ask you: who is your King?   Amen.



[1] Peter Force, ed., “Extract of a Letter to a Gentleman in London, from New York, May 31, 1774” American Archives, Fourth Series, Vol. 1, 301.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

After This

"The Communion of Saints" by Elise Ritter.
November 6, 2016 - All Saints Sunday
“After This”

Revelation 7:9-17
After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying,
“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
11 And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 singing,
“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
15 For this reason they are before the throne of God,
    and worship him day and night within his temple,
    and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.
16 They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;
    the sun will not strike them,
    nor any scorching heat;
17 for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
    and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”


Sermon: “After This”

Well, you got my name right, I’ll give you that.  I am John, but not the one you think.  I’m not John the Apostle, and I’m not the epistle author John (I could never talk as good as he does, y’all).  But that is my name: John.  I did write one book in your Bible, but I’m sorry to say, you got the name of that wrong.

It’s not called Revelation, actually.  (Well, it’s not only called Revelation.)  Go to the first verse of it, and see for yourself…the first five words are the name of my book.  (If you need a little help, it’s on New Testament page 230 of your pew Bibles.)  What’s the name of my book?

The Revelation (or Apocalypse in the Greek) of Jesus Christ.  Right.  It’s not the revelation of the end times.  It’s not the revelation of the antichrist (that word, by the way, doesn’t even appear in my book).  It’s the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Now, I, John, will be the first to admit that my book is downright weird, y’all.  It was a bizarre vision to receive too, believe you me!  I suppose that’s why so many have tried to make sense of it ever since.  Trying to identify rulers of the present day with the Beast; trying to calculate the day Jesus will come back, or the number of people who will be saved.  That was never the point of my book.  I mean, the number of the Beast 666 was actually a pun on Emperor Nero’s name in Hebrew[1] (and he was a beast of a ruler for sure).  Sometimes trying to be clever means no one understands what you’re actually saying! 

As to that other number, 144,000, the number saved when Jesus returns, don’t be too literal about that.  Let me make it clear: I am not a mathematician. I am a prophet: a dreamer who dreamed of the world remade by the Savior who was slain, the Messiah who is both Shepherd and Lamb.  For me, 144,000 sounded like one heck of a lot, which was the point, really.

I never asked for my visions.  I never sought out God’s revelation.  But they came to me anyway.  I wrote these visions around the year 90 CE, a time when tensions between Jews and Romans were even more intense than tensions between certain politicians, if you can imagine that.

I was living in a time of conflict, fear, violence, institutional greed and oppression.  Everything I wrote grew out of that contested context.  It’s no wonder people always connect my words with the particular time they’re living in!  It seems we’re always experiencing these same cycles as human beings.  But my revelation, my apocalypse, was all about the God who interrupts those cycles. The God who takes suffering willingly.  The God who allows the troubling events of earth to shake the very heavens themselves.  The God who believes that violence does not have to beget violence, and hatred does not have to beget hatred.  The God who longs to bring peace on the other side.  You just heard a piece of that peace read.

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.  They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

Not too shabby, huh?  Did you catch that “no one could count” business?  See, don’t get hung up on that 144,000 saved.  God’s grace is beyond numbering.

The vision became even more grand from there:
Angels worshipping the
Lamb.  I bet you know some of their faces.
Saints who made it through the great ordeal.  I bet you know some of what that’s like.
And finally, the death of hunger and thirst, scorching heat, and tears. Even the death of death itself.  Can you imagine?

It’s no wonder people long to take my words and turn them into a GPS for the end times.  What a promise!  But, here’s the thing about my words: they weren’t for the end.

They were for the struggles of today, which is why I wrote, “After this…”

We were in “this” when I wrote these words some 1,926 years ago, and we still are. You don’t need me to tell you that.  I see your grief, your exhaustion, your political fears and your spiritual worries.  I see the wars of this planet, the refugee boats sunk, the emptiness that comes from having too much stuff and too little contentment.

Sometimes it seems like to live is to suffer, and to suffer is to live.  There I go talking in riddles again, so let me be clear; the whole point of my book is this: Jesus lives to suffer with us.  Jesus breaks the cycles of suffering in this world with songs and beauty and saints and healing waters and hope, even now.  The question is not when the end will come.  The question is, how is heaven breaking into earth here, now, today?

The funny thing is, like that elder I read about earlier, you already know the answer.  You just may not know you know it.  Heaven breaks in to earth in so many ways; the veil between this world and the next is not as thick as we may think.  We find heaven breaking into earth in all those things beyond measuring.

In the love and incredible hope of a child’s first breath.
In the holiness and incredible loss of a loved one’s last.
In the time it takes to fall in love.
In the choice it takes to stay in love.
In the advent of that fall smell in the fresh air, or the time it takes a star to shine.
In the waiting for dawn to break, and the night to finally be over.
In the moment just after a laugh, when the world seems just a little bit lighter.
In the shadowed moments of grief, that make the world feel small and empty.
In the time it takes a weary leaf to fall to the ground, and a new leaf to grow on a very old branch.

Heaven is breaking in – can’t you see it?  God gives us special people to help us see this revelation, this apocalypse, this breaking in of eternity into the ordinary, and we call those people saints.  And even if you can’t see heaven right now, you can see their faces, can’t you?  In your mind, in your memory, in your heart?  They are the bearers of the grace of the Lamb to us.  And there’s something magical about these saints: they have a way of turning us into saints, too.  Because we want to be like them.  We want to have the courage to face “this” time, and to hope for the time “after” it. 

So, all this is to say, if you read my wacky book and are filled with fear or despair, you’ve missed the point of it all.  Sure, there’s some downright scary stuff in there, but the time I lived in was a terrifying time to be a Jewish follower of Jesus.  I couldn’t ignore that.  Earth is a messy, messy place. We fear.  We hate.  We regret.  We hurt.  We sin.  But heaven breaks in, the saints help us see it, and the Lamb is in the midst of it all, bringing hope, especially in suffering.  And that is good news.

My story begins and ends just as the world began and will end and begin again: with the grace of God in Jesus Christ.  So, let’s bless one another with those words, now when we, your country, and this world, most need that blessing, turning to the last sentence I wrote, in the last page of your Bible (246).  Let’s say these words together:

“The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.”