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RELIGIOUS, BUT NOT SPIRITUAL
Sunday, February 2, 2020
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Micah 6:1-8

Hear what the Lord says: Rise, plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice. Hear, you mountains, the controversy of the Lord, and you enduring foundations of the earth; for the Lord has a controversy with his people, and he will contend with Israel. “O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of slavery; and I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember now what King Balak of Moab devised, what Balaam son of Beor answered him, and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal, that you may know the saving acts of the Lord.”

“With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

It was at this moment that I understood the world had truly shifted: Marcos and I were at a very fashionable garden party up in the Catskills, hosted by some friends of ours.  It was a beautiful summer evening, and we had gathered on the large deck as the sun dipped behind the mountains and a sudden coolness came to the air.  As one does at these kinds of things, we mingled.  I’m not the most natural “mingler” in the world, but I’ve learned to fake it.

As I was mingling, I suddenly came face to face with a very elegant woman.  We chatted for a moment about the view and the delicious food and our mutual friends.  She told me a little about herself.  And then she asked me the dreaded question: “So James, what do you do for a living?”  There was a pause, as there always is when I’m asked this question, as I tried to get the lay of the land.  After a few seconds, I replied: “Well, I’m a Congregational minister.”  For a split second, her polite smile vanished before she managed a recovery. “What’s that?” she asked - just like that.  And so I gave her the user-friendly answer that I have perfected over the years.  But about three sentences into my perfect explanation of what a Congregational minister is, she mumbled, “Excuse me” and walked away, leaving me in mid-sentence.

It wasn’t always like that, you know.  When I first started in ministry back in late 80s, there was still a general respect for the clergy.  I was treated with some deference in the grocery store and at the barbershop and the gas station.  But those days are long gone.  With each passing year, American society is less and less religious, and experts see no slowing in that trend. With each passing clergy scandal, ministers and priests and rabbis and imams are more and more distrusted.  Nowadays, I don’t often tell people what I do for a living unless I just have to.  Why would I invite that kind of discomfort when I’m only trying to get my haircut?

Now despite this decrease in religion in America, spirituality is said to be on the increase.  People now proudly declare themselves “spiritual, but not religious.”  Maybe that describes you or someone you love.  Frankly, it describes sometimes me, when I feel fed up with religion but am still inextricably drawn to the spiritual life.

To declare oneself “spiritual, but not religious” implies that these two things are somehow opposed to one another or at least organically unrelated.  And while this may feel like a new thing happening in the world, it’s actually a very old thing.  There has always been a tension between religion and spirituality.  There has always been the temptation for religion to try to codify and control the things of the spirit, followed by an inevitable pushback.  And we see that tension in this passage from Micah.

We don’t know much about Micah except that he was a small-town boy from a place called Moresheth, about 20 miles southwest of Jerusalem.  He was a younger contemporary of other prophets you may have heard of like Isaiah, Amos, and Hosea.  Interestingly enough, scholars note that there are some striking similarities between the writings of Micah and Isaiah, implying that there may have been collaboration between the prophets, or maybe even a prophetic school from which they all borrowed.

Micah’s prophecy is presented as a courtroom drama.  God is the plaintiff and the people are the defendants.  And in the closing argument, God makes a striking case against the people, particularly the upper echelons of society, the intelligentsia, and the cultural elite, accusing them of being particularly hypocritical.  God also laces into the clergy, declaring them all false prophets.  And the rich, God says, are the most violent of them all.  Yet all of those accused were religious.

Well, apparently, Micah was a pretty good preacher, because the people saw the error of their ways and responded with fervent repentance.  And as a way to show their repentance, they did what they knew best.  They became more religious!  Instead of sacrificing three or four rams to show how sorry they were, they would sacrifice a thousand! Instead of one hundred gallons of their best olive oil, they would offer ten thousand of rivers of oil.  They even went so far as to offer their first-born children.  They were sorry for what they had done and they thought that more religious observance was the cure.

They were not so unlike many of us.  Sometime we feel sorry for our selfishness or dishonesty, and decide that the cure is more piety.  We will go to church every Sunday! We’ll make a bigger pledge!  We’ll say our prayers every night!   But those things don’t necessarily get us what we need.  And according to Micah, God doesn’t want more religion.  What God wanted is more spirit.  God wants personal transformation that results in societal transformation.

So, how does Micah describe that?  Well, his answer is one of the best-known verses of the Bible: “God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”

If you Google that verse, you will find scores of beautiful images that you can post on Facebook and Instagram.  It will make you seem “woke” and enlightened.  But what does it actually mean, from God’s point of view, to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with God?

In our current state of political division and entrenchment, the word justice has become a bomb we lob at one another.  Each side lays claim to its true meaning.  But the biblical notion of justice, to which we are all called whatever our political opinions, is enshrined in what we call the Golden Rule.  To do justice is to do unto others exactly as you would like them to do to you.  The great theologian Cornel West puts it this way: “Justice is (simply) what love looks like in public.”

And what about kindness?  Aren’t we kind already?  Well, we might be nice, but kind is something far deeper. The Hebrew word translated here are kindness is “chesed” – a very rich word that references the idea of holy covenant and obligation between people.  This is not about smiling at the cashier at Big Y.  Chesed is about trust and vulnerability as an essential building block of human relationships.  In this way, justice (doing to others as you would want done to you) and kindness (vulnerability and trust) are cousins.

And humility?  Well, is there any more precious commodity in our world today?  In a culture in which we are regularly encouraged to think of ourselves as the best or #1, cultivating humility as a spiritual discipline is about as counter-cultural as you can get.  So, what is it?  Well, here’s a very simple definition of humility: to be humble to remember that God is God… and you are not.

The prophet Micah proclaimed that the religious life is not necessarily a spiritual life. Micah preached that religion cannot make one just and kind and humble.  But here’s the thing.  It sure can help.

And that’s the truth that some “spiritual, but not religious” folks don’t quite understand about what we do in this room – that religion practice can serve an essential purpose in our spiritual quest – because justice and loving kindness and walking humbly is hard work, and best done in community, with others who will hold us accountable and pray for us and laugh with us and cry with us.

Do justice.  Love kindness.  Walk humbly.  That’s a beautiful, spiritual idea.  It will make this world a better place.  And religion, done right, can actually help to get us there.

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"The most important thing the church can do in this world is to feed and water hope."

1/19/2020

A HOPE THAT DOES NOT DISAPPOINT
January 19, 2020 – Dream Sunday, MLK Weekend
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Romans 5:3-5

And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

I’ve loved birds for as long as I can remember.  So you can imagine my delight when we moved to Connecticut, hung a bird feeder from the dogwood in the front yard, and watched from our living room as they came to feed.  We’re have been lots of sparrows, some cardinals and blue jays to add a splash of color, the occasional yellow finch, and every now and again a redheaded woodpecker far too large for the feeder - but undeterred nonetheless. But there is one type of bird that has eluded my affections for a long time.

It all began years ago when I had a job in Times Square working for a theatrical press office.  One day while running errands, the largest pigeon I had ever seen made a target out of me as I was walking down Broadway.  Its gift was so forcefully delivered that it knocked the glasses right off my face!  A few people screamed and everyone else kept their distance.  I spent the next hour or two trying to clean myself up enough.  And ever since then, I have regarded pigeons as the enemy.

My dislike of pigeons reached its crescendo some years later when we moved into a new apartment.  It had windows on three sides, and after years in a very dark first floor apartment, we were hopeful for some sunshine.   We didn’t have much, but every afternoon for about an hour the sun would light up the fire escape and cast a soft glow in all the rooms.  When the spring came, I filled several planters with the brightest, reddest impatiens I could find.  And every time I walked into the kitchen and looked out the window onto the fire escape, I had this feeling of deep satisfaction.

I loved my flowers.  But unfortunately, so did the pigeons. Who knew pigeons ate impatiens?!  They would sit in a row on the railing waiting for me to turn my back before they feasted. And then one day, to my horror, I discovered a pigeon actually roosting in one of my planters, its overfed body crushing the life out of them.  I angrily chased it away.  Every day, I chased all of them away.  But every day those pigeons returned.

Finally, one of my neighbors told me about something called bird spikes – those awful little plastic spikes mounted on window ledges that would not kill the pigeons, but would certainly discourage them from landing.  Soon every window ledge in our apartment looked like the Berlin Wall.  I had conquered them or so I thought.  -- But those pigeons were persistent, despite the obstacles. They found other places to land, still near enough to our windows for me to see what looked like disdain on their faces; still close enough for me to hear their constant cooing.  They never let me forget that they were still there.

Emily Dickinson famously wrote: “Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune--Without the words, And never stops at all…”  Maybe Dickenson was thinking of pigeons when she wrote those words about hope, because hope, like pigeons, is persistent despite our best efforts to try to chase it away.

Hope both amazes and perplexes me.  Human history should have beaten the hope right out of us by now.  The sins of the fathers and mothers are indeed visited upon each generation.  We seem doomed to repeat our history, and yet hope springs eternal.  Hope sings on.  Why is that?  Why do we continue to hope despite all the evidence to the contrary?  Why does hope survive in the face of what seem to be insurmountable obstacles blocking its fulfillment?

Last week in Confirmation class, as we prepared for this Sunday, I asked the students to name some of their fears and then to name some of their hopes.  Their fears were significant.  They wonder about the future of the planet as it warms, and what that will mean for them and their children and civilization, as we know it.  They expressed fear that another world war was looming on the horizon.  Serious stuff that worries me too.  And yet, when I asked them about their hopes, they seemed to spring to life.  They said they hope for a better future.  They hope for unity and true acceptance among all people.  They hope to make a positive difference in the lives of others.  –In the midst of this fearful moment, where does their hope come from?  Where does your come from?

From a psychological perspective, hope allows people to approach their problems with a frame of mind that encourages them to strategize for success. Hope increases the chances that you and I will actually accomplish our goals, despite difficulties.  In this way, hope is essential for our flourishing and our psychological well-being.  But again, where does it come from?

From a biological perspective, hope helps to ensure the survival of the species. Hope helps us to adapt and evolve and to even thrive in spite of tremendous obstacles.  But where does it come from?  And why is it so persistent?

St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome that, “hope does not disappoint us.”  Now that was quite a statement to make in the first century because the Roman Empire was mighty and vast, while the church was small and weak.  Even so, the early Christians were viewed as a threat to Rome.  They were a threat to the social order because Christians claimed that a dusty rabbi named Jesus was Lord, while the Romans proclaimed that Caesar was Lord.  That made the Christians heretics and politically dangerous.  And so they were persecuted.  Christians were hounded and imprisoned, discriminated against and martyred.  And yet it was to these suffering people, living in the very seat of imperial power, that Paul proclaimed that their suffering would produce endurance, and their endurance would produce character, and their character would produce hope, and hope would not disappoint them.

This rather ridiculous message, that despite the state of the world, hope does not disappoint, has been the message of the church since the very beginning.  What else could the resurrection mean except that hope is triumphant against all odds? That belief has inspired saints and sages throughout the centuries to do marvelous things.  It has been the catalyst for massive social changes in every generation as people seek the Kingdom of God.  And it was on full display on this day…

On August 28, 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave what is now considered one of the finest and most defining speeches in American history, entitled: “I Have a Dream.” Delivered to over 250,000 people gathered on the Mall in our nation’s capital, Dr. King argued for the resiliency of hope in the face of overwhelming odds; hope in the face of entrenched racial discrimination and the violence that protected it.

Interestingly enough, Dr. King’s prepared remarks that day did not contain the most famous words we all know – that refrain “I have a dream.”  That phrase was actually from other speeches he had given previously, but did not plan to give that day.  But one point while delivering his prepared remarks, the great Gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who had sung before his speech, shouted out from the crowd, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.”

And going off script, he that’s exactly what he did.  Dr. King did what God’s prophets have always done.  He spoke the hopeful word of the Lord, despite how ludicrous it sounded.  He spoke the word of the Lord, despite the current circumstances of the people.  He spoke the word of the Lord and it stirred hope in the hearts of those people. And it was a hope that did not disappoint, as that moment became a catalyst for change in American society.

I cannot listen to his speech without tears. No matter how many times I have heard it, its words move something deep inside of me.  It’s hope.  And hope, it seems to me, is so resilient because it comes from God.  And it rises in us because we are made in the image and likeness of God.  Therefore it is irrepressible.  It calls to us, because it bears witness to a truth that is larger than we are.  It rises in us, despite all odds, and sometimes it even changes the world.

And because that is true, because history bears that out as the truth, it seems to me that the most important thing the church can do in this world is to feed and water the hope God has planted in each person.  If we don’t do that, who will? Who will remind the people that they are made in the image and likeness of God? Who will tell them, again and again and again, until they believe it, that they are loved beyond compare? Who will proclaim to them that this present moment need not define the future? Who will help them to see beyond this world’s brokenness to its shattering beauty?  Who will show them a hope that does not disappoint?

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Baptism is a physical reminder of a love that will go to any length, descend to any depth, take on any ugliness… in order to raise us up.

1/12/2020

BAPTIZED IN TRUTH
Sunday, January 12, 2020
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Matthew 3:13-17

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

It was 1968.  I wore a pair of gold trousers, a white turtleneck, and some matching gold socks.  Very sharp.  I stood in the wings watching my father wade into a deep pool of water.  I don’t know what he said to the congregation, but I do remember that he turned to me and invited me to join him in the warm pool.  I swallowed hard and began to move toward him.  Even though I walked on my tiptoes, the water came right up to the bottom of my nose.  My dad reached out his hand and drew me close, pulling me through the water.  Then he said some words about baptism and how I had decided (at the ripe old age of seven) to follow Jesus for myself.  My dad instructed me to cover my mouth and plug my nose with one hand, and then to grab my wrist with the other (like this).  With one of his hands, he covered mine.  And with the other, he supported the back of my head.   Then he said something very much like this: “Upon your profession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in obedience to his divine command, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

The next thing I knew, I was literally plunged under the warm water.  My feet went out from under me as I lost all sense of control.  But I wasn’t afraid because my dad was literally holding me.  And when he lifted me back up out of the water, the congregation rejoiced that I had made my own profession of faith.

Mine was a baptism based on a personal decision.  And it was baptism by full immersion in water.  It’s called Believers Baptism, a reference to the fact that you need to be able to believe first before you’re baptized.  There is a whole theology around why this is the “right” kind of baptism.  Like all theology, it grows out of a particular reading of the Bible, mixed in with lots of history and tradition and firm opinions.

That’s very different from the kind of baptism we see around here.  More often than not, we are baptizing babies and children.  We place a small amount of water on their foreheads.  No immersion here.  And this too is based on a particular reading of the Bible, mixed in with lots of history and tradition and firm opinions.

So who’s right?  That’s a question with a very long history.  That’s a question over which blood has been spilled and people excommunicated.

After I was ordained, I remember a conversation with my dad in which he was trying to understand how someone raised with Believer’s Baptism, someone who had experienced it personally, could possibly be baptizing babies.  And so we talked about the Bible and tradition.  We talked about what baptism means.  We talked about what we think happens to a person in baptism.  We talked and talked and talked.  And at the end of all of that talking… we agreed to disagree.

So, what do you think?   What does baptism mean?  What happens to the person being baptized?  I know folks who love to debate questions like that.  I used to be one of them, right in the thick of those debates.  But I tired of such conversations a long time ago because I understood what those arguments were really about.  Most arguments about theology, it seems to me, are attempts to make divine things fit into our already conceived worldview. Theological arguments are about defending your own tradition or your history or your preferences. They are about protecting the status quo.

Now, please don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to say.  I’m not saying that good theology is not important.  It’s just that theological discussions so rarely happen with open hearts and minds.  And while many claim to have the Bible as their source, many also do all kinds of intellectual acrobatics in order to make the Bible say what they want it to say, instead of letting the words of Scripture challenge and mold us.

Today’s reading from the book of Matthew does challenges some sincerely held beliefs about baptism and about who Jesus was and about what it is he came to do.

Matthew writes: “Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him.”  What a seemingly innocuous statement.  Except that it’s anything but innocuous.  You see, in the Judaism practiced in ancient Palestine, to be baptized by someone meant that you were submitting to his authority; that you were literally becoming her disciple.  So, what on earth was Jesus, who is Lord of all, doing submitting to anyone’s authority or becoming anyone’s disciple?

In addition, John was preaching about baptism as a sign of repentance of sins.  And yet the book of Hebrews declares that Jesus was “one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) So what on earth was Jesus doing participating in a ritual of repentance?  Didn’t that send the wrong message about the Sinless One?

Hi cousin John very clearly understands the problematic nature of Jesus’s request and protests: “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”  John gets the dissonance.  John understands how this challenges the dominant theology of the day. But Jesus replies: “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”

This shocking story does not fit easily into anyone’s theology of baptism.  And it certainly messes with our Christology – our beliefs about Christ.  In fact, the early church found this story to be a huge embarrassment and mostly ignored it.  We no longer ignore it, but we do all sorts of theological acrobatics in order to make this story fit into our beloved systems.  We say things like “Well, Jesus was just going through the motions, but he didn’t really need to repent.”  Or we say, “Jesus might have been baptized by his cousin, but he certainly did notsubmit to his authority.”  These are arguments from silence – a particularly weak way to make one’s point.

But theology is not arithmetic.  When talking about the Divine, one plus one rarely equals two.  Our problem is that we have superimposed our Western assumptions about the nature of truth onto what is actually a living, breathing, dynamic relationship called faith.  And when we do that, we often miss the transformative truth of who Jesus was and how he came to remake this world.

Did Jesus need to repent?  Did he submit to his cousin’s authority?  To get lost debating those questions misses the more important point all together.

The River Jordan, where Jesus was baptized, empties into the Dead Sea.  And the surface of the Dead Sea is the lowest place on the surface of planet Earth.  And that details sets the stage for introducing the main point about the Baptism of Jesus.

You see, this is not so much a story about what happened in the water that day as it is about shared human experience.  This is a tale of flesh and blood, tears and pain, laughter and hope.  This is a story about the Incarnation. This is another scandalous tale about how far down God would come to meet us where we are; to identify with us fully in our messy, complicated, sinful human condition.  This story dares us to ask: did Jesus only pretend to be one of us or did he come all the way down, into the mud and silt of this beautiful but broken world.

The blessed waters of baptism are many things to many people.  Folks may argue about those meanings if they wish.  But I am satisfied with this meaning alone: these waters are physical reminders of the fathomless love of God.

In a few moments you will be invited to come forward, if our wish, to receive some water on your head and to hear these words: “Remember your baptism and be thankful.”  Some of us can actually remember it.  Many others cannot.  You’re not really coming to remember an event.  You’re coming to remember a love that would go to any length, descend to any depth, take on any ugliness… in order to raise us up.

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It’s just enough light for me to know I am not alone. And neither are you.

1/5/2020

JUST ENOUGH LIGHT
Epiphany Sunday, January 5, 2020
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Matthew 2:1-12

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’” Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”

When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

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The following story is rated PG-13 for language.

In the insular religious world in which I was raised, morality was defined very narrowly and mostly by personal behaviors. It was largely about what you did not do.  And what we did not do was smoke or drink of chew, or go with girls or boys who do.  And we didn’t swear.  Ever.

At my Christian liberal arts college, we had chapel services three times a week.  One day a famous evangelical preacher named Tony Campolo came to address the student body.  Campolo was a sociology professor and ordained American Baptist minister.  Dr. Campolo was interested in moving evangelical piety far beyond the prohibitions against alcohol, tobacco and dirty words.

In his chapel sermon that day, Campolo recited a lot of statistics about hunger and the daily deaths from hunger-related causes around the world. I don’t know what the numbers were back then, but today approximately 25,000 people will die from a lack of food.  That’s 9.1 million people per year.  So Campolo regaled us with these grim statistics and then he paused for dramatic effect and announced: “These people died today and most of you don’t give a…” (rhymes with “fit.”) – The audience gasped.  And then there was a stunned silence.  Campolo continued: “And the really tragic thing is that more of you are offended that I said that word than you are that 25,000 people died from hunger today.”  I don’t know how everyone else in the room experienced what he said, but I can tell you that my own Christian faith has never been the same.  It was a very effective sermon.

A few years ago, I was reminded of Campolo’s influence on my life because there was an article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine about his son, Bart.  Bart Campolo, like his father, had also been a dynamic Christian speaker.  But Bart, unlike his father and unbeknownst to most, struggled with his faith. One day, while riding his bicycle, Bart hit a soft patch of dirt and had a very serious accident.  When he finally woke up in the hospital, he admitted what had been true for him for a while: that he really didn’t believe in God anymore.  The article detailed his journey from an evangelical preacher’s son to an evangelical preacher himself, and finally to a humanist chaplain at the University of Southern California.

I read the article with great interest, not only because his father had been such a significant influence on me, but also because I am fascinated why some people believe and others don’t.  I too was raised by an evangelical preacher.  I too have had periods of intense doubt.  So what is the difference between us? Why do I still believe when Bart doesn’t?  Why is the pinprick of light in an otherwise dark night sky enough for me to believe in the Light of the World?

In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, wise men came from the East to Jerusalem looking for the King of the Jews. Traditional says there were three of them, but that tradition is only based on the number of gifts they brought.  And we don’t know their names, although tradition named them Gaspar, Balthazar, and Melchior.  And we don’t know what that they actually saw in the sky.  All we really know about them is that whatever they saw, it was enough to get them to take the first steps of a very long journey.

Like so many other Bible stories, this one has been domesticated by time.  Its transformative truths are buried under tradition and sentimentality and familiarity.  But if we take a moment to unearth it from all of that, we find a subversive and transformative tale of how God works in our world.

What do I mean?  Well, consider this: the heroes of this story are foreigners.  And more than that, they are pagans.  These Wise Ones received this revelation, not through the established channel of Judaism, but through their own religion.  They were like Zoroastrians, practitioners of a monotheistic Persian religion founded six centuries before Christ was born.  So, they were the wrong kind of people with the wrong kind of religion, and yet it was to them that the Christ was revealed.

And consider this: they literally found God in and through their observations of the natural world.  It was a star and not a book or an approved theology that led them to Jesus.  This story reminds us that creation itself reveals the glory and truth of God.  And finally, the news of the Messiah’s exact whereabouts was delivered through the mouth of a duplicitous politician, wicked King Herod, proving once again that God can speak through anyone. These details, so often lost on us, are Matthew’s way of underscoring the new thing that God was doing in Christ – an out-of-the-box, draw- the-circle-wide, kind of thing.

But there’s one more detail in this story that breaks the mold of how we assume God works in the world.  Matthew’s story also strongly implies that the way to Jesus is not illuminated by a blaze of glory.  It is, more often, simply hinted at in the faint twinkling of a star.

What do you mean faint twinkling?  Don’t we sing: “Star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright!”  Indeed, we do.  But that’s not what Matthew says.

Apparently, the star wasn’t bright enough to take them directly to where Jesus was.  The Wise Men ended up in Jerusalem, which is about 5 ½ miles from Bethlehem.  They had to stop and ask for directions before they could continue on their journey.  And once they did, the implication is that it was still dark.  Matthew writes:  as “they set out; …there, ahead of them, went the star.”  In other words, further revelation was only given as they put one foot in front of the other – meaning that they had just enough light to continue on their way.

In an essay about her decision to adopt out of the foster care system, Mennonite pastor Joanna Harader writes of her own experience of having just enough light to take the next step.  She writes: “God did not lead us to adopt in any big and dramatic way.  There was no voice from heaven, no angelic visions, not even a series of inexplicable coincidences.  Just a dim gleam on the horizon, a slow but steady wind blowing in a certain direction, an accumulation of prayers and conversations that seemed to nudge us down this one blessed and treacherous path.”

Just a dim gleam on the horizon.

I don’t know why Bart Campolo concluded that there is no God.  But I can tell you why I believe that there is.  It’s that dim gleam on the horizon.  It’s enough to get me to put one foot in front of the other.  And every now and again, just like the Wise Men, I actually stumble upon the Christ.  I turn a corner and there he is – the light of his glory blazing in my dark world, making everything clear.  It’s only a flash and then it is gone.  But it’s just enough light for me to know I am not alone.  And neither are you.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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The Incarnation, Emmanuel, God-with-us, in the muck of life - that is the reason I still call myself a Christian.

12/27/2019

LISTEN: "JUST LIKE US"

WHAT IF GOD WAS ONE OF US?
Christmas Eve, 7:30 and 11 PM
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 2:8-20

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “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 in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

There are all sorts of reasons that people stop believing in God.  Sometimes it’s a trauma so intense, so painful, that we cannot imagine how a God of love would allow such a thing to happen.  My grandfather was one of those, after being left alone to raise eight children when my grandmother died before she was 40.  Other times, people stop believing in God because of the clash between science and what they have been told the Bible teaches.  They assume those two disciplines – religion and science - speak the same language – but they don’t.  Some others just loose interest as the years pass.  But of all the non-believers I’ve ever known and loved, the majority of them stopped believing in God because of religion.  These folks, once part of the church, experienced hypocrisy, the love of money, and the abuse of the vulnerable at church.  Sometimes they were the abused ones.  And so, the only conclusion they could come to, the only one that made any sense, was that all of this – the building, the liturgy, the tradition - was a bunch of hogwash.

Maybe you are one of them.  Maybe you don’t really believe any of this.  Maybe you are here tonight because of tradition or because of grandma or because you’re trying to keep the peace at Christmas dinner tomorrow.

Well, I know how you feel.  Despite my title and the fact that I am standing in a pulpit on Christmas Eve, dressed like, I know, first-hand what it’s like to doubt because of religion.  I’ve seen religion do a great deal of damage in the world.  I’ve seen it used to draw lines between people – who’s in and who’s out. I’ve seen it used, as a weapon to bash those not approved of, used as a manipulation or as a power play.  And so there have been times when I too was tempted to call it all a bunch of hogwash.

Those who don’t believe have been in the news a lot in recent years.  Non-believers are coming out of the closet in large numbers.  And people assume that the swelling ranks of those who don’t believe is a new phenomenon. There have always been those who entertained doubts, they just did it quietly for the most part.  And there have always been those who wanted to believe but were pushed out by religion.  Some of those were around that first Christmas night.

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping what over their flocks by night.

I’ve never really given those shepherds much thought.  My view of them has been shaped mostly by movies and the Charlie Brown Christmas Special and my own role in multiple Christmas pageants, dressed in a bathrobe and with a towel on my head.  At the 5 PM children’s service today, I had a pillowcase on my head.  And so my view of shepherds in the ancient world is a romanticized one.

But those shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night, were actually some of the most persecuted and misunderstood people of their day.  And religion played a major part in their persecution.

By the time that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, shepherding was at the very bottom of the social order.  It was the job that you took when no one else would hire you.  It was the job you could get when you got out of prison and no one wanted you.  And that made shepherds the brunt of a thousand jokes; the folks you could make fun of at polite dinner parties and no one would object.

Shepherds were commonly categorized as liars, degenerates, and thieves.  Thus, it was easy for politicians to use them as foils against all of society’s ills.  If there was a rise in crime, blame the shepherds.  If they moved into your neighborhood, sell your house.  If there was civil unrest, blame them.  If you wanted to score cheap political points, make the conversation about them.  After all, they’re all just liars and degenerates and thieves.

So demonized was this group of people, that their testimony was not admissible in a court of law.  Why would you believe a liar?  Additionally, many towns in ancient Palestine had ordinances barring shepherds from even entering the city limits.

And to make matters worse, the religious establishment, who should have been advocating for the outcasts as the Hebrew Scriptures teach, instead took a particularly dim view of the shepherds.  Because they lived with the sheep, and because sheep need tending seven days a week, the shepherds were not able to keep the Sabbath as others did.  They had to work on Saturday.  And because they did, and because this was breaking a foundational religious law, the shepherds were considered ritually unclean. And any ritually unclean person was shunned by the rest of society.

Now when people are shunned, they have two basic choices.  They can either accept their condition – even come to believe it’s true - and slink quietly into the shadows.  Or, they can be more proactive in their condition and simply stop caring that they are shunned.  They reject the society that rejects them. They may even claim that as a badge of honor.  Not belonging becomes its own identity.  And when religion is a cause of your social isolation, well then, forget religion!  -- And maybe, just maybe, that’s what these shepherds had done.  Maybe, just maybe, they, like some of us, had stopped believing altogether. But it was to them – these skeptics and the doubters and the outsiders – that the angel of the Lord appeared.

The Gospel of Luke is written from the point of view of the outcast - the weak, the vulnerable, the misunderstood – those are the heroes of Luke’s Gospel. So it’s not surprising that the angel of the Lord did not appear to the King.  She did not appear to the priests.  She did not appear to those who went to Temple every week.  Instead, this herald announcing the birth of the Savior of the world - trusted that precious message to nobodies.

Now, that alone was shocking enough.  But there is even more scandal here.

Shepherds were also the brunt of jokes because they lived with the animals they cared for.  They slept with them and ate with them and everybody thought they smelled like them.  But the angel of the Lord told the shepherds that this Baby would be found wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger – an animal-feeding trough.  The Son of God would be found among the sheep and goats and cows and manure and the smell – the very things that made the shepherds outcasts.  That’s where God would be found.

Back in the 1990s, when I had left the church and was feeling very much the outsider because of the church, the singer Joan Osborne recorded a song that, in some ways, literally saved me.  The song simply asks “What if God was one of us?  Just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on a bus, tryin’ to make his way home.”

I remember at the time that some religious people were scandalized by these lyrics.  They were scandalized because they needed a God who was high and exalted; a Heavenly King, a being so wholly other that we humans could have no real connection.  They complained that this song demeaned the Almighty and brought him down to our level.  But they shouldn’t have worried about that so much – because Christmas already took care of that.

The Incarnation, Emmanuel, God-with-us, in the muck of life - that is the reason I still call myself a Christian.  And so on this holy night, I am once again left to ponder: what wondrous love is this that God would come to live like one us, to smell like one of us, to laugh like one of us, to cry like one of us, to die like one of us.  Just like us.

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"I have sometimes wondered what a Christmas pageant would look like if we allowed Mary a speaking part that was more in line with what she actually said."

12/16/2019

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SING MARY, SING!
Sunday, December 15, 2019 – Advent III
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Luke 1:46b-55

And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

“Oh! You better watch out, You better not cry, You better not pout, I'm telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town!  He's making a list, Checking it twice, Gonna find out who's naughty or nice. Santa Claus is coming to town! He sees you when you are sleeping, He knows when you're awake.  He knows if you've been bad or good, So be good for goodness sake!  Oh! You better watch out, You better not cry, You better not pout, I'm telling you why: Santa Claus is coming to town!” (John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie)

As a kid I hated that song!  It always sort of creeped me out, this notion that there was an old man in a red suit who lived all the way at the North Pole and still could somehow manage to see everything I did.  Everything.  And not only did he see what I did, but he judged me accordingly.  I didn’t like that song because, quite frankly, it reminded me of my version of God.

God was likewise an all-seeing old man.  God knew when I had been naughty or nice and was fully prepared to reward or punish me in kind.  As a child I lived under the constant threat of the all-seeing eye of God.  I didn’t need Santa Claus to do that too.  I was already neurotic enough.

Well, obviously, I didn’t stay there in my concept of God.  Instead I grew into a relationship with God.  Through the hard knocks of life, I learned, first-hand about mercy and grace.  And I came to depend, body and soul, on that marvelous affirmation from I John 4:8: “God is love.”  I still believed that God was watching us.  I still believed that I should be nice instead of naughty.  But, I thought, in the end everything would be OK.  It was sort of a “I’m OK, you’re OK” approach to Christian faith.

I found a new spiritual home where those “I’m OK, you’re OK” values were affirmed.  In that new home, the religious concepts with which I had grown up were largely absent.  One almost never heard the H word (hell) or the J word (judgment).  Instead we heard a lot about the L word (love).  We heard the P word (peace).  And we heard a great deal about another J word (justice).  And all of that seemed very nice.  And all of that seemed the way it should be.  And all of that was being said from an ivory tower.  But the more I lived, the more I understood that one J word actually required the other.  Justice and judgment walk hand in hand.  And those who easily dismiss the judgment of God have probably never really needed the justice of God.

But Mary did.  Blessed Mary, the mother of our Lord, needed the justice of God because she was a poor, uneducated, unmarried and pregnant teenager.  She lived under the oppression of a government bent on her subjugation.  She had watched her parents and relatives and friends suffer the constant humiliations of a police state.

In Mary’s world, the divide between the rich and the poor never seemed to narrow because government policies favored the rich.  Mary never had a chance at full Roman citizenship with all its rights and privileges because she was the wrong kind of person.  She was destined to be part of the visible but largely ignored underclass.

But Blessed Mary was not only shaped by the dominant culture of Roman Imperialism.  Mary was also steeped in the traditions of the Jewish people, who believed that God would one day set this world right.  She had heard the stories of the great prophets, who called the people to live in hope and expectation despite their circumstances.  And she knew that some of those prophets were women like her: Miriam the sister of Moses, Deborah one of the great judges of Israel and the childless Hannah, who longed for and received another baby of promise.  Mary lived, like we do, in that in-between place of the world as she knew it and the world that she hoped for.

One day, pregnant and afraid, Mary went to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was also pregnant with John the Baptist.  And when those two faithful and strong women met each other, the moment was suddenly charged with the power of the Holy Spirit.  And Mary, like Miriam and Deborah and Hannah before her, began to prophesy.  First she talked about the incredible thing that God had done for her.  She sang that despite her lowly position, God had looked on her with favor and chosen her for special purpose.  And she prophesied that all the future generations would call her blessed.  I sometimes wonder how we Protestants fulfill that prophecy since we so remiss in speaking about her at all, let alone calling her blessed.

Blessed Mary sang about the shape the world was in.  And then she sang about what God was going to do about it.  She proclaimed that the wicked and the selfish and the corrupt would get what was coming to them (judgment); and that God would give to the oppressed what they needed (justice).

Her prophetic song is called the Magnificat, and although we might read or sing it at Christmas time, most Protestants don’t pay it much mind.  And besides that, its basic premise messes with our images of the Mary of Christmas pageants - silent and serene and utterly harmless – a womb without a voice.  But I have sometimes wondered what a Christmas pageant would look like if we allowed Mary a speaking part that was more in line with what she actually said.  Can you imagine your daughter or niece or granddaughter coming center stage, lifting her head and voice, and thundering the words of a prophet calling out for justice?

Thundering Mary said that the One coming into the world through her own flesh would change everything.  Forget “Silent Night, Holy Night.”  This child, she sang, would turn up the volume and raise a ruckus.  Through this baby, God would scatter the proud like sawdust in the wind.  Through this Jesus, God would bring down the powerful from their thrones of arrogance.  God would fill the hungry with good things, but the rich would go to bed with their stomachs empty.  The coming of Christ would be good news for the “have nots,” but bad news for those who have because they took it from those who didn’t.  -- And that, in essence, is the message of Christmas.  That’s hard to wrap in bows and feel sentimental about, but that’s exactly what Blessed Mary sang.

And her powerful song has never stopped.  Every time people see their worth and demand justice, Mary’s sings.  Every time the poor demand their place at the table, Mary’s sings.  In the protests for freedom that are currently rocking our world, Mary’s song is heard above the din.  When people put their own bodies on the line for what is right, it is her holy song that inspires them.

Mary put her own body on the line.  She said yes to the angel.  She said yes to the unbelievable.  She said yes to an incarnational faith.  Blessed Mary literally gave birth to justice.  And in that regard, she is not exceptional – because that is exactly what we are all called to do.

The medieval German mystic, Meister Eckhart, once famously said that we are all called to be the mothers of God.  Now don’t get lost in those words, dear Protestants.  What Meister Eckhart meant was simply this: in each of us, in every reaction to injustice, in every act of kindness, Christ is given physicality through our own flesh. And each time that happens, the Kingdom of Heaven has come near, and judgment and justice walk hand in hand.

So, sing Blessed Mary, sing! And teach us your song.  Sing about how Christ longs to be born through us.  And sing it until we learn it.  Help us to sing it, until the Kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ.

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We sometimes need a bit of shock and awe to get our attention long enough to stop, consider, and then turn around.

12/8/2019

Listen here!

SHOCK AND AWE
Sunday, December 8, 2019 – Advent II
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Matthew 3:1-12

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

Some years ago, a parishioner gave me a print of a New Yorker cartoon. The drawing is of minister standing outside a lovely stone church, dressed in his finest vestments, and with a very self-satisfied look on his face.  He’s greeting the people as they spill out into the sunshine. But the people look anything but serene.  Instead, their hair is standing on edge.  Or it’s burned down to the nub.  Their clothes are singed and tattered.  Some have huge dark circles around their eyes. And the caption simply reads: “Excellent sermon.”

How would you define an excellent sermon?  What is it that you hope to hear from Pastor Alison or me on any given Sunday? Do you come here looking for comfort or encouragement?  Is it a good story you want?  Or do you want us to entertain you?  Maybe it’s a little bit of all those things.  But if I had to guess, I would say that what you probably don’t want is a sermon that leaves you deeply unsettled, disturbed, perturbed.

I heard lots of disturbing sermons as a kid, but one of the most memorable actually happened at a UCC Association meeting.  If you don’t know, an Association is a group of UCC churches within a particular geographical area.  This church, for instance, is part of the New Haven Association.

As was our custom in that Association, we gathered in the sanctuary of the host church for the worship service that would open the meeting.  The appointed time came, but oddly there was no prelude, no one on the chancel, no one in the pulpit.  We began to shift uncomfortably in our seats thinking that something must be wrong.  All of a sudden, from the back of the church, a voice boomed: “You brood of vipers!” she shouted.  “Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruit worthy of repentance!”  The voice belonged to one of my colleagues – a very nice woman - most of the time. She walked down the center aisle of that church, a bowl of water in one hand and a branch with leaves in the other.  She dipped the branch in the water and flung it at us over and over again, shouting all the while: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!”

I told this story at staff meeting this week. And our Sexton Kevin chuckled and said that one could get away with that at an Association meeting, full of clergy, but that I probably shouldn’t try it here.

That woman who called us “a brood of vipers” was, of course, quoting John the Baptist. John the Baptist, who looked like a lunatic.  John the Baptist, who could never pass the first round of a Search Committee interview. John the Baptist, dressed in a camel’s hair tunic and eating honey and bugs.  John the Baptist, preaching that the end was near.

Despite his strangeness and the harshness of his preaching, or perhaps because of it, people flocked to hear him. The Roman historian Josephus reports that on one day alone, as many as 50,000 people showed up for his sermon. But why?  Why make the trek into the wilderness to hear that you need to repent?  Why spend a day traveling just to hear that the world as you know it is ending?  What was it about that message, which most of us don’t want to hear, that was attractive to them?

Well, I think the answer to that question is two-fold.  First of all, unlike we who live pretty good lives, those folks were happy that the world as they knew it was about to disappear, because that world was stacked against them.  They were poor and oppressed. They had no power or agency.  The boot of the Roman Empire was on their necks.  Their religious leaders had sold them out, trading faithfulness for expediency.  So when the dominant social order means disorder for you and your family and your village, who wouldn’t want it to end?

Secondly, John preached that those folks, who had little to no power, could actually participate in this new world order.  They could be part of the change that was coming in Jesus.  They could repent and prepare the way of the Lord.

But why was that message of repentance attractive to them while it may be the last thing we want to hear? Part of the answer to that is that they understood that word differently than we do.  How can we understand a word that has been so parodied and perverted?  It’s the punch line of a 100 jokes.  It’s used and abused by huskers, seeking to manipulate and control, to divide and to conquer.  It’s the hammer of judgment for people we don’t like or approve of.  In addition, we imagine repentance to be feeling – usually feeling really sorry or terribly ashamed of something we have done.  We imagine it to be the demand of a God who is disappointed and angry all of the time.  And if we don’t repent, then we imagine the threat of damnation.

But true repentance, while it might involve regret and sorrow for what we have done, is really about something far more transformative than wallowing in self-recrimination. Repentance, simply put, is about a change of direction.  Repentance is about the realization that some behavior or attitude or habit is actually detrimental to you and others.  And once realizing that, you turn around and walk another way.

If only it were that simple, right?  The problem with us humans is that our harmful or selfish behaviors are often far more ingrained and pernicious than simply being confused about the way to go.  We sometimes need a bit of shock and awe to get our attention long enough to stop, consider, and then turn around.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s why John lays it on so thick.  John preached about slithering vipers and a razor sharp ax at the root of a tree and, the “piece de resistance,” something called UNQUENCHABLE FIRE.

Most of my life, I heard that interpreted as the fires of hell – the result of refusing to repent.  Maybe you have too. But here’s something interesting: most of the time when the Bible speaks of fire, it doesn’t speak of it as punishment. Instead, fire is about cleansing or refining.  It’s about a new beginning, rebirth, resurrection.

Serotiny refers to an ecological adaptation exhibited by some seed plants, in which the release of the seed only occurs in response to an environmental trigger, rather than spontaneously when the seed matures. The most common and most studied environmental trigger is fire.  I was interested to read this week that there is a species of pine that only releases the seeds from its cones when there is a forest fire.  For those trees, it takes extreme heat to create new life.

I am, so often, that pine tree.  So John turns up the heat.  John understood that fire could release new life, new hope in us.  And because it can, that makes the message of repentance really good news. Its ultimate purpose is not to manipulate or frighten or punish us. To repent – to change direction - is to actually be set free from those things that really manipulate and frighten and punish us.  Repentance creates space for something new and wonderful to be set free in our lives – like a seed.

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Christ comes again and again and again. Are we ready? Are we watching?

12/1/2019

CHRIST WILL COME AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN
Sunday, December 1, 2019 – Advent 1
First Congregational Church of Cheshire
© the Rev. Dr. James Campbell

Matthew 24:36-44

“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore, you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.

A few Sundays ago, I spoke about the technical meaning of the word “Apocalypse:” which is a revealing or an uncovering.  But today, I want to use that word in its more common usage, as in “the end of the world as we know it.” And more specifically, about “the end of the world” as the Bible is said to predict it.

We don’t really talk much about the end of the world in churches like ours.  But in the church of my childhood, it seemed that we spoke of little else.  And all of that “end of the world talk” used to scare me to death.  It was so depressing for a young person who had his whole life in front of him.

Even at church camp, riding horses and learning archery, I could not escape all of that Apocalyptic talk.  I remember one summer being forced to watch a film entitled: “A Thief in the Night.”  Its basic premise was one I had been raised with: that Christ would come again when we least expected him, that he would rapture or take away all of the righteous ones.  But the rest – the vast majority of the people left on this earth, who did not have the right kind of theology – would suffer something called the Great Tribulation.  That film depicted all of this in great detail and gave me nightmares for years.  How is it, I used to wonder, that God would so blithely abandon so many of his children just when we needed God the most?

This theology, in addition to literally scaring the hell out of me, had some other very  negative results.  It set up an “us versus them” approach to everything.  It divided the world between the saved and the unsaved.  And because we were so fixated on being saved, we had little time to serve our neighbors or to care for the earth or to simply enjoy this incredible blessing we call “being alive.”

The passage we just heard Pastor Alison read, was one of our primary texts in this apocalyptic theology.  It seemed to describe the very things we had been warned about – this idea that the good would be rescued but that the bad would be left on their own.  Matthew describes it like this: two would be in a field.  One would be taken.  The other left behind.  Two women would be working together.  One would be taken.  The other left behind.  The passage ends with this ominous warning: “Therefore you must also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

In the church of my childhood, we were convinced that this passage was all about us.  We were convinced that we were the one living at the end of time.  We never considered that those passages must have also meant something to the people who first heard them.  Those words had to have resonance in the first century as well as our own.  Because the truth of the matter is that the earliest Christians were convinced that they were the ones living at the end of time.  They could have never imagined that 2000 years later, the church would still be waiting on the Second Coming of Jesus.

In fact, in verse 34 of this same chapter of Matthew, Jesus makes this prediction to the people listening to him speak: “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.”  One of my seminary professors called this the Bible’s most disturbing verse, because, he said, it seems to not have been true at all.  That generation did pass away, and still Christ has not returned.  This so disturbed the second and the third generation that they had a crisis of faith.  We see that in some of St. Paul’s epistles.  They wondered where Christ was.  And so to address this concern, the church changed its theology and its expectations about what it meant to wait for the coming of Jesus.

Now, you might be wondering why we’re are talking about such things as we gear up for Christmas.  You might be wondering why I’m preaching on such a dour text when you feel ready to sing “Joy to the World.”  Well, for one thing, the lectionary texts were already chosen for me.  And besides that, it might do us all well, in this season of giddy hedonism and consumerism run amok, to think about what it means to wait for Jesus in our day.  And it might do us well, in this season of waiting, to see the first and the second coming of Jesus not as two distinct things, but as one continuous event.  And if we can do that, then this season of Advent, with its repentance and silence and preparation actually starts to make sense.  We need this time to make our hearts ready to actually see Christ each time he returns.

Seeing Jesus has always required preparation.  The first time he came, Wise Men, first studied the stars and then traveled a great distance to find him.  The first time he came, shepherds came in from their fields and scoured the streets to find him.  No one was exactly sure who they were looking for.  Most folks, even when they saw him, had a hard time believing God would come to us in poverty and amongst the animals.

But 2000 years later, we’re so familiar with the story that there is no surprise left in it for us.  We know the setting and all the characters.  We know story and how it ends.  But what we do not know, and what should keep us on our toes, is a Christ who didn’t just come at Bethlehem, but comes again and again and again and again.  Christ keeps coming, and always in brilliant disguises. And always, as Matthew says, “at an unexpected hour.”

I read this passage now with very different eyes than I did as a child.  I read it conscious of the fact that it had to have resonance with its first hearers, as well as Christians in every age.  I read it and see in these words the promise that Christ will come again, and again, and again.  Therefore, Matthew says to us, “Keep awake!”

A few weeks ago, we had a presentation here at church about the humanitarian crisis at our southern border. This presentation was not about the politics of how to handle immigration.  It was simply about the human need already present in that place and what people might be able to do to alleviate the suffering.

One of the slides we saw was of a drawing by a little girl attempting to demonstrate the journey that she and her family had made from Guatemala to northern Mexico where they wait in an asylum-seeking process.  The little girl had drawn the footsteps of her journey between the two places.  She had thrown in some flowers and butterflies to signify the beauty she saw along the way.  And then across the top, in her child-like handwriting, she had written: “Todo lo puedo en Cristo que me fortalece.” Which translates, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”

And in that electric moment, Christ came to me just as surely as he did 2000 years ago.  In that moment, Christ was absolutely present.  And my eyes suddenly filled with tears as I realized, once again, that this ever-elusive Christ will come again and again and again when we least expect him and when we most need him.

Advent is meant to prepare us for the very coming of Christ into this world.  And so I ask you: how will you prepare?  How will you make your heart ready to receive him?  How will you open your eyes to behold him?  For in the faces of the poor and dispossessed, Christ comes.  In the dehumanized and the ill, Christ comes.  In the lonely and the forgotten and the hated and the misunderstood, Christ comes again and again and again. Are we ready?  Are we watching?  Are we waiting?

“Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.”

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"The One who made you will never forsake you. And on that foundation, you can build your lives."

11/17/2019