A New Thing - Sermon for Christmas Eve Year A 2022

A New Thing

Christmas Eve

Christ, Preston, MN

December 24, 2022

Luke 2.1-20

Christmas is one of those times that evokes strong memories.  Most of those memories are good ones, but some are tender and poignant, almost painful even. Growing up, our family always opened presents on Christmas Eve, one before dinner and the rest after church. Speaking of presents, my parents were scrupulous about making sure that all four of us children received  equal presents. One year we all got identical clock radios. I still had mine until a few years ago. One of my most poignant memories was when my sister got her last doll. She’d always got a doll each year until the time when we all knew it would be her last one because she was growing out of them.

I baffled that same sister one year by ingeniously disguising a record album she desperately wanted. (If you don’t know what a record album is, ask your grandparents.) I took great pleasure in both stumping her and seeing her delight at receiving what she wanted. One year my mom made lutefisk because my Dad’s aunt and uncle, full-blooded Swedes, came for dinner. Thank God it was the last time. My Uncle Floyd, a confirmed bachelor until he married when I was a freshman in college, joined us “as long as you don’t get me anything,” as he said. We always did, but he still came. It was a joy to see his joy as he oohed and aahed over everyone of our presents. Of course, getting married and having two daughters has made more traditions and memories, but that’s for another time.

In church, we have our own memories of Christmases past, even as we make new ones as we did last week with the wonderful children’s program. Like our personal lives, each year Christmas is the same only it’s not. Ture, we read the same story each year about Joseph, Mary, Jesus, the angels, and shepherds. But it’s different each year because we’re not the same each year. That is one reason why the Bible is so powerful in general, and this story in particular. The Bible speaks to us in new ways because each year we are in different places. That’s why the words of the angel are so important: “to you is born this day … a Savior.” That announcement wasn’t just for the shepherds; it was for us as well.

We tell this story each year, not only because it’s a good story that makes for great children’s programs and generates wonderful hymns, but to help us see where Christ is being born today. God is not a “one and done” kind of God, but a God who continually births new things in us. We tell this story every year because we need to hear again how God is born into painful places. As my favorite hymn, “O Holy Night” says, “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”

If we are being honest with ourselves, there’s a terrifying aspect to this new thing that gets born every day. Not only does God push us out of our comfort zones with new things being birthed, but the display of God’s power is awe-filled. Mary experiences this awe as she ponders all these things in her heart. She is trying to put together what God is up to and make sense of it all. Because we know the rest of the story, this is something that is going to shake her and Jesus’ future followers to their core. This baby, wrapped in swaddling cloths, laying on the wooden manger, will be naked on a wooden cross.

But that’s another story for another time. Even so, although we are reminded that our world can be very dark, the Christmas story reminds us that God has not forsaken it or us. For to you is born this day a savior, God in the flesh, Immanuel, God with Us, every day. As you open your presents this year, I invite you to open your eyes to see where God is doing that in your lives. May your Christmas be merry, my siblings in Christ, as you make new memories this year. And may heart as well as your eyes be open to the new thing God is doing. Amen.

My sermons often preach a little differently than written and you can find the video here.

Are You the One? - Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent

Are You the One?

Advent 3A

December 11, 2022

Christ, Preston, MN

Matthew 11.2-11

Ed Friedman was a Jewish rabbi who in addition to his congregational duties, worked with families as well as with clergy of all stripes about church leadership. In one of his books, he talks about Columbus and other earlier explorers. Whatever you think about Columbus, his voyage and those following him helped to unlock the imaginations of 15th & 16th century Europe stuck in the Dark Ages. Friedman’s observation about this event: it took a long time for them to realize what they found was more important than what they were looking for. 

I was reminded of this statement a few years ago during the Nobel Conference XLIX at Gustavus Adolphus College. Astrophysicist and Nobel Laureate Dr. Samuel Ting showed a graphic of roughly a dozen satellites, what scientists were looking for, and what they ultimately discovered. In every case, what the scientists found was more important than what they were looking for.

It took the early church, not to mention John the Baptist and Jesus’ disciples, quite some time to understand this about Jesus as well. It’s the Third Sunday of Advent, which means John the Baptist is featured again. Only this time John is not preaching repentance and the advent of the kingdom but instead is in prison. We don’t learn for three chapters that he’s there because he has been calling Herod, the Jewish ruler, to account because Herod stole his brother’s wife and Herod put John in prison to keep him quiet.

John sends his disciples to ask a strange question, “Are you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”  In essence, John is asking Jesus, “When are you going to do what you came to do?” It’s peculiar because, as we heard last week in chapter 3, John had been preparing people for Jesus’ arrival. Also, we know from the Gospel of John (different John) that he and Jesus were related, perhaps second cousins. The only reason for John to ask this question that makes sense to me is that Jesus is not what John expected. Most likely, John was expecting Jesus as the Messiah to be like his ancestor King David, kick Roman butt and restore Israel to its perceived former glory.

Jesus, as he so often does, doesn’t answer directly, but says, “Tell John what you hear and see.” The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised, and the poor receive good news. Jesus’ response does two things: first, it sends John and others back to the scriptures, what we know as the Old Testament, to look for other views of the Messiah. Second, it lets them know Jesus is not going to be bound by their expectations of him. Of course, as the story goes on, of which we know the ending, Jesus does a very un-Messiah-like thing: he dies on a cross.

As we prepare to celebrate Jesus’ coming at Christmas, we are reminded to check our own expectations. What kind of Jesus Messiah are you looking for this year? Is it possible you are limiting God with your expectations? The season of Advent in general and this Sunday in particular invite us to stretch our imaginations about what the power and presence of God looks like, to open us up to where God is working in the world. Can it be that what we find will be far more important than what we are looking for?

When we realize that and discover God’s presence, we experience a deep joy at what God has done, the candle theme for the day. Those desert areas of our lives suddenly blossom and “everlasting joy shall be upon our heads,” as Isaiah 35 says. Jesus is the One, my siblings in Christ, who comes as we least expect to give us what we need. Thanks be to God. Amen.

My sermons often preach a little differently than written and you can find the video here.

The Promise of Peace - Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent Year A

The Promise of Peace

Advent 2A

December 4, 2022

Christ, Preston, MN

Matthew 3.1-12; Isaiah 11.1-10

Like many of you, I grew up going to a school that had release time for an hour once a week. For those that don’t know, it meant being excused for an hour a week to attend a nearby church for religious instruction. I don’t know if I did this because my parents wanted me to, because I wanted to, or to get out of class for an hour, but there I was. I don’t remember much about the instruction, but I do remember one session vividly. We were given a so-called “comic book,” except this one wasn’t funny. It showed people who weren’t saved burning in hell. I guess the idea was to literally scare the hell out of us (or us out of hell). I still carry the scars from that very frightening experience.

Yet, that seems to be the thrust of John the Baptist’s message in our gospel reading from Matthew today, “repent or else.” We aren’t really told why so many people are coming to hear John preach and be baptized. Maybe it was the threat, but certainly, he was an intriguing figure. The description Matthew gives made the people think of the Old Testament prophet Elijah. This is significant because people believed that Elijah’s return would herald the coming of the Messiah to set people free. Even so, John’s message doesn’t even deter the religious leaders, for whom John reserves some especially choice words: “You brood of vipers!” But for all of them John exhorts them to repentance declaring that the kingdom of heaven is near.

Now, we moderns tend to think of repentance as feeling sorry for the bad stuff that we have done and there is that sense of the word. But biblical repentance is a far richer concept. It is based on the literal meaning of repent to “change one’s mind.” Repentance means turning around, going a different way, “doing a 180,” if you will. St. John Climacus, 6th–7th century. monk, put it this way: “To repent is not to look downwards at my own shortcomings, but upwards at God’s love; it is not to look backwards with self-reproach but forward with trustfulness; it is to see not what I have failed to be, but what by the grace of Christ I might yet become.” Repentance means changing your life.

When John the Baptist proclaims that the kingdom of heaven is at hand (or coming near) with the advent of Jesus, he is inviting us to live into the way of living implied by that phrase and to do so right now. It’s true the kingdom of heaven (or kingdom of God) is a future promise, but with the advent of Jesus the promised future breaks into the present. As we pray every week in the Lord’s Prayer, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” As Martin Luther said in the Small Catechism, “we pray that it would come to us.”

The advent or coming of Jesus promises many things. One such promise is the security of peace that the prophet Isaiah imagines in ch. 11, the theme of the Advent Wreath litany we heard earlier. The vivid imagery of the one upon whom God’s Spirit rests lays out Jesus’ kingdom agenda. There will be righteous and equal treatment for the poor and marginalized who suffer at the hands of the powerful. Those who are bitter enemies will reconcile with one another. And shalom, or well-being, will be present with all.

That sounds impossible, doesn’t it? And perhaps on one level it is, at least for us mere mortals. On the other hand, we can anticipate Christ’s reign in our small corner of the kingdom. One of the themes that emerged from the Hope Slips exercise from last week was that you hope that Christ Lutheran Church will be a welcoming place for all people, one that would continue to unite to embody God’s love through Jesus Christ. We don’t need to scare the hell out of people (or people out of hell), because the promise of peace and new life is so much better. Amen

My sermons often preach a little differently than written and you can find the video here.